Episode 19: I love my job
May 23rd, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guests: Bud Smith & Devin Kelly
Produced by Katie Rainey
On the cusp of our twentieth episode, we invite Devin Kelly, poet extraordinaire, who dragged along our good friend and peer Bud Smith, a fiction and nonfiction writer whose positive outlook and benefit-of-the-doubt disposition should be profiled and duly archived as a reliable manual to Save Us All. Anyway, today we'll talk about Bud's ability to balance long hours of heavy labor with writing, his new project, Teenager, coming out with the enviable Tyrant Books, and, of course, we'll get a reading from Bud--but only after we talk about a mobbed up individual named Frank Hague who was in Boardwalk Empire, which is a very good show.
>> Brian: Welcome to the nineteenth episode of the Animal Riot Hour brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. We're here today with Devin Kelly, known amongst the known as the OR. The original rabbit. A fantastic writer, both prose and he's got a full length book of poems Blood On Blood with Unknown Press. Right? Is that correct?
>> Devin: Yeah
>> Brian: That's the one with Unknown? And you have one with CCM?
>> Devin: Yep.
>> Brian: Is that the one you did with Bud?
>> Devin: Blood On Blood is the one I did with Bud.
>> Brian: OK.
>> Devin: It's on the table. It's on the table right now. I'm looking at it.
>> Brian: Great. Great.
>> Bud: It looks so good.
>> Brian: You're not allowed to talk yet Bud. I haven't introduced you yet. You don't exist yet. (laughs) Okay, Yes. So Blood On Blood with Unknown Press and he's written other things of quality that supersedes the ever shifting bar of literary expectation, I guess. Is that okay?
>> Devin: Yeah, that sounds great.
>> Brian: Ok, great. We're also very fortunate to have Bud Smith coming all the way across the Hudson, but is the author of Teenager, Double Bird, and Work. Work is the only one on your site that I found, though. What the hell is up with that?
>> Bud: I have a site?
>> Brian: You have a site man.
>> Bud: I was trying to delete that.
>> Brian: You fucked up. I found you. That's why you're here. And he's written a bunch of other shit that's also really good. He's got a great newsletter too. Bud works heavy construction in destroying chemical plants, refineries, and generating stations.
>> Bud: Yes.
>> Brian: An incredible set of work that falls under the purview of work. Okay, but more than anything, Bud it is a super chill dude. An enemy of Bud's is a necessarily unhealthy person with a twisted outlook on life. (laughter) Okay, so what's the last thing I'll say to introduce you is I found... so you don't even know that your site exists. Do you know that quote from Scott McClanahan exists about you?
>> Bud: Yeah, I knew about the quote.
>> Brian: Scott McClanahan wrote Crapalachia, which is like one of the fucking greatest books I've ever read.
>> Bud: It's amazing.
>> Brian: Yeah, so good. Devin told me about that book. Of Bud, Scott says Bud Smith is one of the only writers I don't mind hanging out with in real life. I've seen Bud sober and I've seen Bud drunk. He's great either way.
>> Bud: That's pretty true.
>> Brian: Okay. All right. I'm almost done here. This episode's brand of fuckery is brought to you by, you guessed it, a new research chemical. Adrafinil, which I've consumed today. Adrafinil is a pro drug for modafinil meaning your body converts it from the former into the latter in your liver and is you know.
>> Devin: What's it like?
>> Brian: It's like a stimulant. That's like a rung below Adderall.
>> Devin: I guess I was gonna ask what it did to you.
>> Brian: It made me focus.
>> Devin: Okay. Focus is good.
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Bud: It's just like a legal thing you can buy online?
>> Brian: Yeah you can buy it on Nootropics Depot. I shouldn't be pumping this shit. The Nootropics community's going to come for me. Speaking of which, speaking of whacking, first thing we're going to talk about... let's talk about a story that has nothing to do with your writing.
>> Bud: Alright. What do you want to know?
>> Brian: What is Who's this dude's name? He was he was a crime boss? A mayor?
>> Bud: Yeah. The other day I went visited the grave of Frank Hague.
>> Devin: Hague? H-A-G-U-E?
>> Bud: Yeah.
>> Devin: Ok, yeah. I was just trying to get the spelling right.
>> Brian: So he was a peacemaker, and then a mob boss?
>> Bud: Well, I'm not gonna say he wasn't a mob boss. He was the mayor of Jersey City. I think he got elected, like, 1909 or something like that.
>> Brian: Like Boardwalk Empire times?
>> Bud: Yeah, I think there's a character on Boardwalk Empire that's him.
>> Brian: Perfect.
>> Bud: Yeah, he became the mayor, and he and, you know, he drew like a really low salary. But he died with, like, nine million dollars in the bank. He was taking just so many bribes and kickbacks.
>> Brian: Nah man, he invested wisely. (laughter)
>> Bud: And here he ran all the way here and all the gambling, all the numbers that we ran out of Jersey City. He ran a lot stuff. So there's like a few few really great books about him and what he's done. Anyway, my building is called The Hague. He built in 1919 and yeah, you know, he's just... He's just like this looming figure around Jersey City. Have you lived there long enough, you go to the public library and I will walk to the bathroom It'll just be like a cryptic oil painting of Frank Hague.
>> Brian: Frank Hague. I'm literally just gonna look up Boardwalk Empire. I think he is in it.
>> Devin: Is there a plaque for him in the place you live now?
>> Bud: Yeah. Yeah. There's a picture when you walk in.
>> Brian: Oh, yeah, he's in Boardwalk Empire.
>> Devin: Like a Cooperstown bus. He's in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
>> Brian: He is? I only caught the end of that.
>> Devin: No (laughter)
>> Bud: Yeah and he's standing there looking very ominous. And the little tagline underneath him is, 'I'm the law' (laughter) in your apartment because he used to scream that at, like, political rallies back in the 30s.
>> Brian: My blood is curdling. I love it.
>> Bud: And when FDR got elected, a lot of the votes the East Coast votes were delivered, Frank had something to do with that, and he got a huge kickback from the government. He built his giant ass hospital right down the street from where we live.
>> Brian: Okay, So he rents the block and builds it. That's the Kendrick Lamar way. I love it. So he is on Boardwalk Empire.
>> Bud: No way.
>> Brian: He's played by Chris Mulkey. Not really familiar, but yeah, I don't remember. I watched that show, like, five years ago or something.
>> Bud: Yeah he is a really interesting guy.
>> Devin: I had a great uncle who was a priest. Have I told you this, right by where you live now?
>> Bud: I think so.
>> Devin: At a church, St Aloysius Church in Jersey City.
>> Bud: Yeah. I think that one is one of the giant ones.
>> Devin: It's very big. I used to go there to visit him.
>> Bud: Like the seminary houses?
>> Devin: Yeah, because he was ostensibly like he was my dad's uncle. But my grandfather on my dad's side died when I was young, and so he was sort of like a weird... No he's awesome. He was an awesome grandfather.
>> Brian: Was he mobbed up?
>> Devin: I don't know. My only conception of Jersey City, where Bud lives now, was when I was very little and we would go visit my great uncle before going to catch a Yankees game. We'd do like a weekend up from DC. We would stay at the seminary like a Friday night. We drive up front, and we would get pizza in Jersey City at this place that had, like, a Pac Man arcade thing in those orange, sort of like, lacquer booths. You know, the pizza parlor kind of booth.
>> Bud: Okay.
>> Devin: And my great uncle would walk with us, and he had, like, a derby hat. And with a collar.
>> Brian: Like the ascot? Like the scarf collar?
>> Devin: The priest collar. Like the black collar with white. And he was just He was like a six foot tall, very thin man. We would pass people in the street, and they would say, like Hi, Father Kelly, how are you? As a kid. I loved that, you know, that was the coolest thing.
>> Bud: Yeah, that is cool.
>> Devin: And he would like do a little sign across sometimes was badass.
>> Brian: He's like channeling God. That's awesome. So is any of that culture still involved in, like, construction? Like, do you see it at all?
>> Bud: Oh, mob stuff? No. Mob stuff seems like it was it disappeared with the Internet really came around to me. Doesn't see, you know, I and I don't know anybody who has to, like, who owns a store, gives kickbacks anymore. I've never seen any, like, muscling being done or anything, it seems like it's long gone.
>> Brian: Yeah, yeah, I think like up here in Harlem, there are definitely, like, bodegas that I'm like you guys wouldn't be here if you guys weren't fronting something, you know? But that's all speculation.
>> Bud: Well drugs are everywhere.
>> Brian: They're everywhere. But it's not like some centralized, like, five family shit anymore.
>> Bud: Who knows. I've never came across that. I never really lived in New York or in Jersey City, Whether I'm just blind to what everybody?
>> Brian: Yeah, bumer.
>> Devin: Yeah, Well, New York City is also like it's like a city of people doing what they need to do to do that to live.
>> Bud: Yeah.
>> Devin: And so, like, you'll see, I like I find it fascinating in New York City. This has nothing to do with books, but I find it fascinating New York City how everything has, like, how there's a subculture underneath everything. And so, you know, like there are just cultures that you don't understand that are happening underneath your feet in New York City that allow people you might not see every day. To, like, get a job or to own their restaurant or to run their bodega. I think that's, like, really interesting.
>> Brian: As I get older like I realized how much money is on the black market, like, Not just like, you know, I knew it like abstractly before, but now it's like I feel like I can see it more. I can, like, recognize it more, you know? And it's super interesting. But anyway so but how did you become a writer?
>> Bud: I don't know, I just I used to do a lot more things. When I was a little kid I wrote. I liked to draw on. Play sports.
>> Brian: What did you play?
>> Bud: Little kid sports (laughter)
>> Brian: Tee ball?
>> Bud: Yeah all little kid sports. When I got a little older and I'm doing all those things and started. And I just kept doing things and gaining different things. By the time I was twenty, I started to whittle down on what I was doing. I gave up on this, given up on that. And so by the time I was about thirty, I had given up on everything but writing.
>> Brian: (laughs) It's either this or...
>> Bud: I was just focused primarily on the thing I like to do the best. So I pretty much have always done it since I was a kid. But I just got more serious into and gave up other things I didn't enjoy as much by the time I was about thirty.
>> Brian: Yeah, one of the coolest things about you is like like the subverting, the idea that to be like a serious writer, you have to be like a like a serious person, or like or like, you know, there's, you know, a lot of you know, a lot of people say that thing was like, I take my work seriously, but not myself, but like, you know, and that could be kind of cliche, but also just like the way you approach it, too. You're just not... I remember when we first met like you would always kind of, like, make, like, poke fun of me a little bit about how cerebral I was and stuff like that. I always wanted a little bit of what you had, you know, just like And I think I have, like, over the years, I think I, like, come into it more. It's just like go on the train. I got an idea. I'm just going to write some shit down, you know?
>> Bud: Yeah, well, we all change, you know, Probably have become more cerebral since those days, and you've become less cerebral. (laughter) You know, it really doesn't matter...
>> Devin: You definitely have. (laughter)
>> Bud: I have.
>> Devin: You're a cerebral guy. Lost in my deeper thoughts.
>> Brian: What's been getting to you man? What's going on? You wanna talk about it?
>> Bud: No, I don't know it. It seems hard to accumulate problems that are big enough to take seriously and as a person alive right now, I'm just like everything seems terrible. So I kind of don't give a fuck.
>> Brian: It's good. It's a good attitude to go about.
>> Bud: (laughs) I guess. Not really.
>> Devin: Yeah. When Brian was talking about you and your writing. And well, when you were talking about the being twenty and the things and then I was thinking about you used to build pools, right?
>> Bud: Yeah.
>> Devin: And then I was thinking about like, isn't there a scene in F250 where the character is like Like, is he like throwing garbage out outside of college?
>> Bud: Oh, Oh, yeah. He was cleaning out a pond.
>> Devin: He's cleaning out a pond outside a college?
>> Bud: Yeah and draining and cleaning all the muck away.
>> Devin: I just thought about that. Like all the college students are going like an animal in the zoo.
>> Bud: Yeah. Yeah, I used to have to do that. I didn't have to. That was my job.
>> Devin: The pools or the pond?
>> Bud: Both.
>> Devin: Because you'd have to clean out some...?
>> Bud: Yeah. Sometimes you'd have to... That job was a really creative great job. It was the first creative job I ever had. I would go to someone's house with boulders and stone, and I would build a waterfall on the edge of a pool. That was great.
>> Brian: Holy shit. You might have built my parents pool.
>> Bud: I probably did.
>> Brian: Yeah (laughs)
>> Bud: So I worked for these people. Sometimes he would send me out to build these waterfalls. But then they would get, like, maintenance on cleaning out people's ponds for closing for the season opening for spring. And you have to drain it down with a pump, clear the shit out of it, and then fill it back up with clean water. It was disgusting. But it was just kind of one of those things. Like, it was disgusting and terrible, but I did that because I really loved to build the waterfalls. I'd like to build the ponds. It was the most money I could make doing creative work at the time, you kind of suffered through the humiliating, humiliating work to be able to do the creative, the creative side of it. So I still feel that that's what happens in my life today.
>> Devin: But you threw a party at the end of it?
>> Bud: Yeah, when I would do my only when I would give my own side jobs, I would go to someone's house and I would get I would get them to give me money to do the pool. But I would let him know, I would say, Well, the people that come to work with me are just because they would know it was like a side job. They're paying less than that if they got a real company. I would say, Well, it's gonna look like you're having a party in your backyard because my friends all come here and they'll help build the thing... So the bid was always worked in with a keg of beer, so I would have a keg of beer there. Me and my friends would just drink beer all day.
>> Brian: On the contract.
>> Bud: Well, I will let him know up front. I said, there's gonna be a keg of beer here. There's gonna be a lot of people here to help build this thing. So it's gonna look like a party. And then they're always just like, you know, anybody who's gonna build a pond in their yard, even if they have money, is a little bit of a hippie weirdo. You can work on Wall Street and look like you're uptight, but when I say there's gonna be a party in your backyard there, like it's cool, man. Whatever you need to do (laughter). And it always was. We probably did twelve of them like that. And it was always great. You know, You take, take, take, take a part of fence out, drive the pickup truck in the backyard, unload their thing, and it would just look like mayhem.
>> Brian: It is a party.
>> Bud: It was a party. For, like, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday and usually it was done.
>> Brian: Damn.
>> Devin: Friday night, Saturday... would you stay? Would you work through the night?
>> Bud: Come back Saturday. Come back Saturday.
>> Brian: So a pond with a waterfall? Or it's just that sometimes they were separate?
>> Bud: Yeah, well, a pond and a waterfall really doesn't take much longer than three days to build it.
>> Devin: Yeah, okay.
>> Bud: A waterfall and a swimming pool, same thing, maybe three days.
>> Brian: Do you find Do you find that doing? Like, you know, obviously you're doing the planning for a lot of the shit, right?
>> Bud: I used to. This was like seventeen years ago.
>> Brian: So you were mainly doing, like, manual labor at this point?
>> Bud: Yeah, that's all I was doing. It was manual labor. I mean, it's it's, you know, as non labor as using your mind to build something that looked good.
>> Brian: Right. Right.
>> Bud: There's no tools involved. I didn't even have a level. I had a shovel and wheelbarrow.
>> Brian: I just think like a lot of writers are like, you know, they talk about their day jobs, like Fuck I come home and I'm like, soul sucked, You know, I have no creative energy. Do you think working manually that prevents that from happening or even might like fuel your you know, because you get some endorphins worked up or something or whatever. You know, instead of sitting there all day in front of a screen.
>> Bud: Usually the people who you hear complain about their jobs, it's like a squeaky wheel. Their soul is sucked out.
>> Brian: Yeah, it doesn't matter what it is.
>> Bud: People who love their jobs they never talk about. You're not just sitting around like talking, I love my job. They're very happy.
>> Brian: They just go about the business.
>> Bud: Plus there's a social stigma to going into everyone's face and tell him how great your life is.
>> Brian: Unless you're on Facebook. That's where it's socially acceptable.
>> Bud: Yeah, yeah, but generally speaking, I don't think there is that there are as many people who really, really hate their jobs as we think there are you, you know? Probably half the population has the power just to go get a different job. So if you don't like what you did, go get a different job.
>> Brian: So we'll fact check that Katie... our producers, sorry.
>> Bud: Well half a population in this room. (laughter) I'm not speaking for underprivileged people. Half the population of the five of us in this area.
>> Brian: Us fuckers. Devin, do you hate your job?
>> Devin: I love to teach. (laughter)
>> Brian: Oh don’t worry.
>> Devin: I love to teach. And you know, I wish that everyone who loves to teach can find a place where their love for teaching is also loved.
>> Bud: That's the worst part. When you see people really hate teaching. And they talk about how and they talk shit about their students on social media.
>> Brian: That sounds counterintuitive.
>> Devin: It happens a lot.
>> Bud: And these little fake plays that they put up on Twitter where it will be like, Look what this asshole said. It's like a little skit. Like why the fuck are you teaching?
>> Devin: I follow a lot of teachers. I wouldn't say that a lot of teachers do that, but I would say that it happens more often than you think. I mean just as half the population in the world can get a better job...
>> Bud: Half the people in this room.
>> Devin: I will say that I think a large number of people who teach should not be teaching, and I think that it's a weird.. It's a weird profession because you don't have to go through as many because of the rise of like... Well like at Higher At you need a book and a grad degree, and for a charter school you need an underground degree. For a lot of places, you don't need that much to teach. It's not like being a doctor where you have to go through years of med school.
>> Brian: Yeah. I don't think it's a coincidence that, like you have the same way about being a parent. You know, you don't need to go to any school to be a parent.
>> Bud: Oh, and by the way, when I when I was saying before about getting up, I think you should get a better job. I don't even feel that I feel like, a job more suited for you. Probably paying less, and socially lower on the ladder. But only you have a better life. Like, you know, I joke around a lot of people of just saying Where should I go? Talk to a group of students back creative writing and at a college, and they were excited. And then, you know, they want to talk to the guy who works construction. And how do you write and work construction and, you know, my teachers... I'm in academia. I'm gearing up towards working in academia, and I just say, Well, you know, you should get a job digging graves, because you will probably make more money then... especially adjuncts. Go work in a cemetery. Dig graves peacefully. Get paid per grave.
>> Brian: Yeah. I feel like it's people have got to be getting rid of little illusion that, like teaching is like the perfect way. Especially trying to get tenure or something. Otherwise, you're making a couple thousand dollars a semester. And that's why I asked you, though, because like I feel like manual labor is so much... because, like, I don't know, I just feel like it's less soul sucking like, But I do agree with you. It depends who you are.
>> Bud: It depends who you are. That's all it comes down to, of course, for plenty of people it's soul sucking to do anything. You just gotta find where you want to do. Good luck. It's tough becoming more self aware. That's that's pretty tough to figure out. What you know who you actually are, what you actually like. But you actually don't like. You're probably not going to figure that out until you're in your seventies. And then you have 5 years...
>> Brian: Well if you're me then you would have been dead for ten years.
>> Devin: But you figured it out (laughter).
>> Bud: Up there in heaven. I finally found out what I like here in heaven.
>> Brian: One thing I'm really interested in hearing about it is you got a book coming out Tyrant. I actually submitted to Tyrant...
>> Devin: Teenager.
>> Brian: Teenager is the title.
>> Bud: Teenager is what it is called.
>> Brian: But let's I want to talk a little bit about the book and what it is. But also, I'm just curious because, like, I think Giancarlo is such an interesting dude and like, I think he's so polarizing. But from my experience with my brief experience with him and like, you know, like, what I hear about him, I think he's all he sounds awesome to me.
>> Bud: Yeah, he's great.
>> Brian: So what's the book and like, what's it been like working with him and stuff like that.
>> Bud: Working with Gian it's great. He's just he's like all the guys that you know in real life, You know, guys I work with, you just talked to him and get a straight answer about things. He just seems too, just to say what, What He's what he's going to say it. It's great. Yeah, it's great. And working with him as an editor has been really wonderful, too, because he's so relaxed.
>> Brian: I think the people that might fall on the other side of, like, not, you know, preferring him or whatever, I feel like they have an opposite conception of him. While as like, that's not the case, right?
>> Bud: Yeah, I don't I can't speak for anybody else. I don't know.
>> Brian: I'm kind of just going off Twitter fights.
>> Bud: I don't know about that stuff.
>> Brian: I don't have direct experience. I thought my interactions with him were great and live. And also just the things I've heard about him. He kind of seems like a hedonist and I'm a hedonist.
>> Bud: I don't even know about that. He's just a good guy. I won't even call you a hedonist. You're just a good guy.
>> Brian: Oh I definitely am.
>> Bud: You think so?
>> Brian: I don't think being a hedonist is bad. You know what I mean? Like, I think I think being a hedonist is okay.
>> Bud: Who are some other hedonist?
>> Devin: The world?
>> Bud: Michael Douglas maybe?
>> Brian: Charlie Sheen?
>> Devin: A hedonist is pleasure above all else, right?
>> Brian: Yeah, it's the pursuit of pleasure.
>> Bud: I wouldn't say anybody is really too much like that in real life. Maybe you are.
>> Brian: I am. It's relative.
>> Devin: Have you read The Stranger by Camus?
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Devin: I think the guy in The Stranger's kind of hedonist. He likes the sun a lot.
>> Brian: (laughs) To like the sun? That's more like naturalist. That's closer to Theroux (laughs)
>> Devin: The sun makes him do things. The sun is the reason why he killed somebody.
>> Bud: He kills an Arab. Which is hedonistic (laughter)
>> Devin: I take it back.
>> Bud: But Gian's great. It's just a really great working with him. He's the editing was really chill and just it's nice. It's nice to work with somebody who's not worried about something going too far. Instead you get edits back where it's like, Hey do you want to go a little farther with this? Which is contrary to my experience, with most editing up to now.
>> Brian: Yeah, that's cool.
>> Devin: Are you still writing the book?
>> Bud: Yeah. We're still doing the edits. We're editing really, really slow. I gave from my last round at its sometime around Christmas day. Haven't really gotten back. I'm expecting a FedEx package of the edits.
>> Brian: Fuck track changes. I love it.
>> Bud: We're not doing track changes, so I send the manuscript marked up, Do another round of edits. So we're going to get together again, go out to dinner and talk about it and is in the next round.
>> Brian: Because he's here in New York. I know he goes to Italy sometimes, right?
>> Bud: He lives in Italy and visits.
>> Brian: So Teenager a memoir about your adolescence?
>> Bud: No Teenager's a straight novel. It's about a... It's about It's a love story. It's about a boy and a girl fall in love. He gets her pregnant. Right when she gets pregnant, he gets sent to juvenile detention because he's gonna blow. He's gonna blow the school up. And when he gets out, she's had an abortion. Her family has pushed for to get an abortion. They were staunch Catholics. They left the Church. Pushed for her to get an abortion at the same time. And she's being sent on an airplane, coincidentally, to Italy. So he shows up right as she's about to be sent away, forever. Gone. And he's got the open page of the book he has, he has a gun in his pocket and he goes to visit the mother and father to talk, talk to them and try to resolve all of this.
>> Brian: Try to resolve. With a gun in your pocket.
>> Bud: And that's where it starts up. It's a, uh, it's a love story, and it's It's a pinball game all across America.
>> Brian: Damn that sounds awesome.
>> Bud: Cops and robbers.
>> Brian: And is it is it funny like your other stuff?
>> Bud: It's like my other stuff.
>> Devin: It reminds me of like Was that book... I'm From Electric Peak.
>> Bud: Yeah, this grew out of that.
>> Devin: Yeah, that was like, That's a Bonnie and Clyde-esque kind of thing.
>> Bud: And 'I'm from Electric Peak' never came out.
>> Devin: Yeah, I read it when it came out briefly in the never stage.
>> Bud: Yeah, I never got released.
>> Devin: I have a copy. I have a pre release.
>> Bud: You have a pre release copy.
>> Devin: Which, honestly, I should hold on to you at this point, right?
>> Bud: Yeah, I think there's about one hundred or so floating around. It was all the ARCs that were sent out. And then the thing was never released. So that was three years ago.
>> Devin: And this grew out of this is, like, that sort of prompted...
>> Bud: I just kept working on it. Was supposed to come out but it got pulled.
>> Brian: Was that tough for you, or is it kind of just that, like, move on?
>> Bud: No, that's good, because I'm always working on something. It's not important anyway really. Keep writing and keep working on projects. And and, uh and who knows when this was gonna happen? You never know. You have. You had this thing happening that's very important to you. And then enough, it falls through, and it could all fall through.
>> Brian: Yeah, it's happened to me.
>> Devin: How much of Teenager was written on your phone?
>> Bud: Probably none of that. Really. I don't think I wrote any Teenager on my phone.
>> Devin: Really? Are you writing those Nervous Breakdown essays on your phone?
>> Bud: Yeah it depends.
>> Devin: I like thinking you're writing on your phone.
>> Brian: And those are daily right?
>> Devin: Weekly right?
>> Bud: The Good Luck Column is weekly. I am writing them on Google docs, on my phone, on my laptop. I'm writing a lot on the typewriter. Believe it or not.
>> Devin: Good for you.
But: I was I've been trying to learn how to type correctly. I've always had, like, a claw, horrible, crooked hand thing I've done on keyboard.
>> Brian: Do use all ten fingers?
>> Bud: I do now. I learned how to use all ten fingers.
>> Brian: You bought a typewriter to do that?
>> Bud: Yes, it worked to touch time point at work in touch type where I can look at a piece of paper and type.
>> Brian: Oh, shit. Wow, that's next level,
>> Bud: Because I need to be able to do that because I've been doing have write my drafts in longhand I'm working on I don't want keep jump around projects here now doing my new project I'm working on as I'm writing these.
>> Brian: But this is like your process.
>> Bud: I'm just trying to get better at what I'm doing. And I think that myself, as you know, if I'm going to be a writer, I should I should be a great typist too. Because it's like playing the piano. You should play the piano well.
>> Devin: As a piano player, I wonder what you mean by that.
>> Bud: Or you know, if you're a shitty piano player and he was going to do.
>> Brian: You could just start writing longhand and publishing that way. Just scanning the pages.
>> Bud: You can't though.
>> Brian: You definitely can't.
>> Bud: But what Devin was talking about... I'll get a little bit of that with Devin was asking about before was I was writing about reading on the phone, which has always served me well because it's just something I can pick out of my pocket and I can immediately just dive into. And it's been fine, and my willpower is from pretty great with not, you know, fuck around on my phone too much. But you know what it is. I mean, I'm going to have a person. Even if I'm reading a great novel on my phone, I don't really enjoy it. It's much for some reason, it's just like that, LED, like, glowing in my eyes.
>> Brian: I think it's a ubiquitous opinion like. Like I have never met someone I've met people who are like, Yeah, I like my Kindle, but I've never met someone who's been like, Wow, thank God I can read on a Kindle and not a regular book anymore because God damn that really sucked like you know what I mean. Like I've never heard anyone say that.
>> Bud: Anyway, so what I was finding was I'm spending all this time writing on myself, which I still do. And I have to do just because I'm trying to get a lot of work done, and I'm away from everything else and that's all I have, I'll do that.
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Bud: But I thought to myself, Well, what are Some ways I could do to get away from the digital stuff. And actually, I kind of wanted to do a test. I wanted to see how my writing changed if it got worse and I've got better or it's stayed the same if I use a multi retyping process for something. So I started doing that with a novel I've been working on for a while now for like, last year where I write it out... I've been doing the first drafts of this particular novel on the typewriter and I type it out. And then I retype it on the laptop, you know. So I found actually that retyping everything by the time I'm done with that second draft everything is so much further along. That is if I just sit there and piddle around with little drafts on a laptop...
>> Devin: That's what I tell people. That's the only way I can revise anything. If I retype and that's what you look at, something that's on the screen and then stare at it and then figure out what to do. Even my high school students, like they way often ask them to like revise essays that they wrote. And you say, Here's thirty minutes of class to revise this essay you wrote, and then you just look at them and they're all staring at their little laptops. And like okay, then. So the next class I said, I printed out all the essays and gave him to go, and I said, Open up a new document like a blank page. Start typing what you wrote.
>> Brian: And then you're going to start realizing, Oh, I don't want it that way or whatever.
>> Devin: It's a part of this because I think writing is like this weird... It's it's part muscle memory, too, Like you have to be doing the thing to start thinking that way. You know, like you have to be. It's to me. It's like the act of typing will be like, Oh, my brain's like, Oh, you're writing (laughs).
>> Bud: Well, yeah, like your brain works a lot faster than you can type.
>> Brian: So if you guys ever tried and this might only work for shorter stuff... have you guys ever tried to not even. It's like you don't even print out that of the thing. You literally try to just rewrite it.
>> Bud: Yeah, you know, that's how a lot of rewrites happen.
>> Brian: Yeah, and I find that I write a lot of the same lines and it's amazing because I always think of myself as my memory being shit like, you know, for various reasons, probably brought upon myself, but like, it really is amazing. Like wow, I just wrote that exact same.
>> Devin: I thought you're going to say, Have you ever tried and then insert the drug that started the other thing (laughter)
>> Brian: Have you ever tried writing on mescaline?
>> Bud: I mean, the thing with all the different ways to revise wherever they're just they're just they're just silly. They're too silly and they all work. It's like, you know, when you go to when they say If you have your overweight and you're trying to get back into exercising anything works the first thirty days. Anything. Whatever you do, you're gonna walk will lose some weight. If you want to climb stairs for the first thirty days, that's fine. If you want to go to actually do a full body workout routine whatever it is for the first thirty days, you're probably going to lose some weight. So usually with a writing project you kind of think about in the same way in the sense that you kind of need to pick something to do and hopefully something that's just not stale. Something that's not stale for you that makes it fun and strange and weird. Two years ago, a hand wrote out a This is part of the problem. My problem with having to learn how to type This is where it came from to I had decided Well, I've never written a novel longhand or I haven't done it since I was, like thirteen. Really try to write something long, Long hand. So I did that. And then I had all these little notebooks, four of them full with, like a novel I thought was great. But now I had the problem where I'm never going to fucking type that thing up. Ever. So I have been trying to build myself up to learn how to learn how to re type these things and just trying to get better at it. And this has all been practice to work. Finally get to that project, which will be hopefully next year. I'll be doing that one.
>> Brian: But when did you write this thing? Longhand. When was it?
>> Bud: That was, I believe, two years ago I wrote that. I had to learn to build my skills up to be able to do retype it. So I'm approaching and I'm trying to learn. I'm just trying to learn new things I'm trying to keep it fresh. It's the same thing with reading will be a great writer. You need to be a great reader. You gotta read great books. You have to read great books widely. And if you do that, it really doesn't matter what you do for a living and make your money and who you are, who your mom and dad are. That's the great thing about writers to with this amount of your rich kid or a poor kid. Being a rich kid's not gonna make you good or a poor kid's not gonna make it matter. You're gotta put the work in for a long time.
>> Devin: Yeah. I still imagine you like writing... I will always everything you write... I just imagine you writing it on your phone. Like Paul Simon.
>> Bud: Well, I certainly am writing on a lot on my phone. Still on my coffee breaks every day, and on my lunch breaks.
>> Devin: Any new Paul Simon out?
>> Bud: Paul Simon. I have such a bad taste in my mouth about Paul Simon anymore because last year I got back in the Bob Dylan real big and...
>> Brian: Uh oh. Devin's...
>> Devin: That's fine.
Bu: I don't know, I read Bob Dylan's chronicles and I don't know. It's just getting more and more back in his music. And I mean, he's great.
>> Bud: He's great. But my problem with Paul Simon happen because I started reading. I fell down the wormhole of reading all the petty reasons why Paul Simon is jealous and hates Bob Dylan and feels in competition with him. And I'm like, How can you feel in competition with that guy? Paul Simon, You're not even in the ballpark. Like Bob Dylan's like the spokesman of his generation. You're just Simon and Garfunkel (laughter). You know, Garfunkel's your competition.
>> Brian: You're just not Garfunkel. (laughs)
>> Bud: He was married to Carrie Fisher. And Carrie Fisher was like Paul Simon, You know, you're not good enough to stay married to me. So I don't know who he thinks he is.
>> Brian: She was thinking about Dylan.
>> Bud: He's trying to compare with the spokesman of his generation. He can't even stay married to You know that great woman who was in Star Wars.
>> Brian: Wow, I think this is the longest diatribe I have ever heard.
>> Bud: If you're out there Paul Simon...
>> Devin: My favorite Bob Dylan story very quickly is that once he ever listen book about Woodstock and once he came down from Woodstock to sit for Andy Warhol to do one of those like, you know...
>> Brian: A portrait?
>> Devin: Yeah, there was, like very typical Andy Warhol portrait and Bob Dylan didn't really like Andy Warhol, and he never offered to pay him. And so Dylan's sat for this portrait in like Chelsea.
>> Brian: Was that, like, that was the thing like he would want to be paid what isn't making enough money?
>> Devin: Yeah, I mean, no, but like, he just... you should get paid for sitting for a portrait. Bob Dylan just walked out and took one of Warhol’s prints off the wall, and it was like this, like this, like silver screen print of Elvis Presley that Warhol had done. And there's a picture of him you like, carries it over his head, out to Chelsea studio puts on like a station wagon that he had driven from Woodstock on, puts on top and there's a picture of him with his friend. And there's like a hand reaching over out of the driver's seat in one of the passenger seats. Like holding the Elvis print. Elvis is like looking up into the sky, a zip drive away. And they put it up in like their Woodstock home and use it as like a dart board for a long time, beer stained. And then the house that Dylan was living like. There's an estate sale and someone got it for, like, two thousand dollars and then ended up selling it like, thirty years later....
>> Brian: With the dart still in it?
>> Devin: Yeah, and smoke like ash rings like for, like, two hundred fifty grand for half a million for a quarter million dollars. But that image of Dylan just driving away like fuck you Warhol and like Elvis.
>> Brian: I want to know. I want to know. Like how he got that off the wall without anyone noticing.
>> Devin: I mean it's also Bob Dylan. That was like get the height of his career.
>> Bud: Yes. They're like, I will screen print another one left. Let the dwarf go.
>> Devin: Yeah. Tiny man. Go back to Woodstock in your station wagon.
>> Bud: Yeah, yeah, they had, like, a stack of, you know, twelve thousand of those Elvis prints they didn't care about the one about films. I like Bob Dylan. I think he's great. It just seems that he has a really broken brain. He doesn't seem like a person simply cartoon character like that. I like. I love those. There's that cartoon, if years cartoon a few years ago about Danzig, Danzig was a cartoon. You guys ever see that? I just love that idea, Always thinking rock stars as cartoons. I think about writers like that way too.
>> Brian: Especially after when, when, like the addiction memoir started rolling out from like everyone. That's when I started to really look at rock stars as cartoons. I was like, Jesus.
>> Bud: I fell down the David Bowie rabbit hole and I read all about, you know, the Berlin Years and Station to Station when he became, he was like, he had cocaine psychosis and, you know he was befriended Iggy Pop, who was institutionalized.
>> Devin: He's a cartoon character. Iggy Pop is actually never lived.
>> Brian: I've seen Iggy Pop live. I got up on stage with him and he is made of leather. It's unbelievable.
>> Devin: You know who's not a cartoon? Bruce Fucking Springsteen. On a scale of Bob... on a scale of one to cartoon... on the scale of cartoon to ten Springsteen's a ten.
>> Bud: Of cartoons or not? (laughs) You know what it is? It's always these, Uh, I feel like it's like the publicist turning into, like, a character. You know how we're going to sell Bruce Springsteen? Oh, he's a working man. He's got a record deal since he was like 17. What kind of work did he do?
>> Brian: I mean, he carries his equipment from show to show.
>> Bud: Having a job is not something celebrate either. I hear that a lot of people who were with me all the time like, Oh my God, it's so cool you have a job. Everybody I know has a job. Ever writer I know has a job. It's just a silly, silly thing to focus on.
>> Brian: Okay, Unknown Press. I do just want to mention I think it's so fucking cool that you're putting your book on Tyrant.
>> Bud: Oh, okay.
>> Brian: I think for me, for some reason, I have this idea that, like Tyrant to me, is like the rock star of literary press. I really like them.
>> Bud: Yeah. I don't know. You know, the thing with them is they just put out books I really wanted to read. A lot of presses I really like, you know, they just let me down one by one where I read more of their books and I'm like, Oh, you don't really have quality control. Because it's not that one vision. I think it's Tyrant is small and often the vision is so focused.
>> Brian: Yeah. That's what we're trying to do.
>> Devin: Yeah, and I think it's one of those things that I think people ask too much of publishers in the sense to where well, publishers grow out of their original vision, and it's like in the end a publisher should be one person or a group of people's vision for what they think art is.
>> Brian: I totally agree.
>> Devin: And that's a cool thing. And then if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't like, you know, like I don't think... what I like about Tyrant is that you read a Tyrant book.
>> Bud: They're still on Plan A. My problem with a lot of other publishers, small press publishers that I read enough for their books, and I kind of see, Oh, this is where the press this is where this press that I used to like went to Plan B and then oh, this Plan C and D and E and F. And they just kept trying to change up what they were doing to try to fit with the times more, whatever it is.
>> Brian: Yeah, and that's that's the point that I think is important to clarify. It's not about doing the same type of book every time. That's not what you're saying. It's like sticking to a sort of like quality or, you know...
>> Bud: Yeah, maybe they seem so the public too much.
>> Brian: But anyway, anyway, Unknown Press.
>> Bud: Yeah, Unknown Press is another interesting art project I've been doing for a little while, and it started out probably I'm going to say going on might be going on ten years now where I haven't put out very many books. I started out putting out anthologies where I was just I was trying to read at that certain lit mags that I like good lit mags, but they wouldn't let me do it. So I thought, Well, you know, maybe I'll just start put out my own books, my own anthologies and that's what I did. I put out calls for submissions, and I got to meet a lot of different writers and meet the community and solicit some great people that I really admired. I admired their work, and just by doing that, I got I got to talk to them and learn from them. Putting together these anthology was great because then I had the kind of had the I was on the line a little bit where now I have to. Okay, so I pick good writing, but I have to learn how to design and layout, and I have to figure and even just doing the bare minimum of getting a book distributed and and doing the right thing, you know, learning how to send rejections, which is the part that you know, people people forget about. You know, you guys send rejections to some of your good friends.
>> Brian: Yeah that sucks.
>> Bud: It doesn't suck. It's just what it is. You know, you can reject your brother. You should be able to reject anybody.
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Bud: It's been in an art project, and it went from anthologies and then I started putting out other people's books and that was great. Poetry collections, short story collections mostly. I think I've put out want to say I've only ever put out one novel. I think I only put out one. Also, its most of it spent short story collections, poetry collections. It's really interesting books that were just books I wanted to read. You know, I was lucky enough just living in New York City, where I would go to a great reading series and I would just see a great writer that was halfway and discovered or just starting out, and they were in the mood to do small press book.
>> Brian: We just did that. We just saw someone. I saw someone at Animal Riot a couple months ago, and I was like, you. You're good.
>> Bud: Yeah, so it's not a big deal. If someone's in the mood and understands the climate of doing a small press book like you're going to make a thousand dollars on this book, probably you're probably going to sell, you know, as a small press writer working with somebody like me on the bottom rungs of it. You might make a grand or two grand, or I hope you make more. I hope the book keep selling and and you do more. Generally what I would do is I would do all the design layout, editing, put the book out, promote it. I would give the writers one hundred percent of everything. So I wasn't taking a cut on any of the profits. All these books, I've put out...
>> Brian: Totally pro bono?
>> Bud: Yeah, it's all pro bono and for most everybody that the money just went directly into their accounts. I think Devin is one of the sole examples... I was trying at this point. I was trying to make the press a little bit bigger. I was going to split it with him a little bit. He was the first experiment in this, and it didn't really work out with me getting the book out wider than I wanted to. So I went and just give them all the money. And now I get royalties, and I just gave them all the Devin. Yeah, most everybody else, they just they just get them.
>> Devin: Yeah, I'm filthy rich.
>> Bud: Well, you are, you know, and in your heart and soul.
>> Brian: Ninety million dollars.
>> Bud: But yeah. It's been cool. It's ticking along. I mean, I don't think I've done a book and going on two years now. Robert Vaughn was the last one. Joanna Valente's book was one of the last ones.
>> Brian: Was that Sexting Ghosts?
>> Bud: Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know how many more there are coming out. I know Monica Lewis is coming out, and then I don't have anything on the tables, but the project isn't over. You know, things just sometimes they work slow for a while.
>> Brian: Yeah, was it one of those things where you're not really just like making sure you get a book like you're kind of just like, Oh, if I find the person that I find the person?
>> Bud: Well, a couple years ago, I was I did that thing again where I said, Well, how can I focus more on the things I really, really enjoyed doing and what I'm getting the most out of? And I thought maybe if I can just focus on my own work for a while, maybe would help everybody in the long run, so I don't know if it is doing that or not, but I've stopped helping other people the way stew and I've been focused on my own. So I don't know if it's good or bad for me, but I'm doing now. And it's been great
>> Brian: The literary world is crumbling without your help.
>> Devin: I forget how Blood On Blood happened. Did you ask me?
>> Bud: I think you asked me.
>> Devin: I think you asked me.
>> Bud: Maybe we have to go back and investigate the, uh I remember I was so excited when we started talking about doing it. It was great because, I mean, you were like acquaintances, but I think doing that book will became kind of friends because you came over my house and we would sit in my house and do the book together. I've done that with a few people. Michael Maxwell. So I went up to his house, stay up there for a few days. We did all the design and layout together, and he would just at the computer screen, move things around...
>> Devin: Are your Nervous Breakdown essays going to become a part of something larger? Are they going...
>> Bud: Yeah, they're part of something larger.
>> Brian: Are you gonna make a book or what?
>> Bud: Well, it's a novel. What you're reading is for, You know, it's happening live. It's the first draft of a novel called Good luck.
>> Brian: Yeah, which is a really cool idea.
>> Bud: Because the essays you're reading, a lot of them are fictional essays.
>> Devin: It hurts because they're so... they come from you.
>> Bud: But like I'm saying, some of what you are reading is a memoir.
>> Devin: Yeah, like F250 is a novel.
>> Bud: Yeah, some of what you're reading is nonfiction, but then you'll get to certain ones where it's clearly not true.
>> Brian: Yeah. Where can people find this? Just you know, because the people are gonna be listening.
>> Bud: The best way to find my work... I really am deleting my website.
>> Brian: How come?
>> Bud: Because it's too much trouble to keep up with everything. There's too much stuff. It's better just to have one page somewhere with just a catch all of the links. My best short story, my best poems that are published, links to my novel. So there's this thing called neutral spaces. So if you go to my Twitter pages that this by the best place just the link on my Twitter page neutral spaces. It's in my bio and you click on that and that's got everything. Just a catchall page. And that's the best place to find the Good Luck series. And I think we're up to the twenty fifth one right now.
>> Devin: And was that you're idea or was that Joey's idea?
>> Bud: That was Joey's idea. Joey asked me if I'd mind writing something every week.
>> Brian: Who is Joey?
>> Bud: Joey Grantham is the editor of Nervous Breakdown. Right now he's the head editor of Nervous breakdown. But he also is the coeditor of Disorder Press, which is one of the my opinion top dog small presses out. There's like Wave Books, Tyrant Books, Disorder Press, New York Review of Books if you want to call them a small press.
>> Brian: And Animal Riot. Our producers are making it very, very important to say.
>> Bud: Yeah. And I think Disorder Press is great. But Joey was just like, he took on his editor and and he's been reading submissions. He kind of got put on his editor to please make something happen at that website has been dead for so long. He's been doing some great things. So he asked me to put something up there every week. Because I think he found out about my writing from when I used to write a column every two weeks for Real Pants. And that's what became a memoir Work, which Joey went up actually being the editor of Work. So he's just integral working with me as an editor, so he's been the kind of people he put the fire on me a little, right, these weekly pieces and it's been called that really working hard on these things. But I send them to him and he copy edits them on Tuesday night. He copy edits and it goes up on Thursday morning, and the only rule we have is we can't miss a Thursday. Nobody said we had to do this, but it's happening. And it's been it's been really great. There maybe fifty two of them. There may be more. I started writing them in because I have some of them in negative one, negative two, negative three. So who knows what we're really going to wind up with, but at least fifty two.
>> Brian: So for a lot of this shit that comes up online. So, like, for example, you had Work up online before it became Work. How much of it is still like up there?
>> Bud: Well, who knows? Because things disappear all the time. Like, you know, just the other day I was reading and I decided I was going to read one of my... I think one of my best pieces to read out of reading, it's Reviews My Corner Bodega. So I go, I go to the reading and I'm like, I'm just going to read them and read this one. I was in New Orleans.
>> Devin: Don't tell me you looked it up on your phone and it wasn't there.
>> Bud: It's gone.
>> Brian: Wow.
>> Devin: Where was that?
Dub: Electric Cereal, I think it was. So it's gone from there.
>> Brian: Are they done or...
>> Bud: I don't know. I'm not sure.
>> Brian: Like the reason I ask is just cause, like, you know, people publishing essays and stuff online and like, you know, maybe you get enough. You want to turn it into a book or something? It's just a weird kind of process where it's out there for people to read or like, you know, How do you know?
>> Bud: I think I think it's cool to do a personal blog, which is gone from the public and consensus, as writers think that, like their shit needs to be polished and perfect. I think it's a great idea as a writer, to have your messy first drafts as you work, work your thoughts on public as close to having that happen in real time as possible. I don't think it's a bad thing. I mean, you can read it later and judge. So this person isn't a master. No one's really very few examples, so it doesn't... to me it doesn't matter.
>> Devin: No one holds that shit in their head for that long. I think people think too highly of the fact that people are reading them.
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Bud: So Good Luck now is on episode twenty five and it's approaching ninety thousand words. No one's reading this thing anymore, or they'll click on a random one, you know, because I know it's a little...
>> Devin: I haven't read all of them. I have read maybe six seven.
>> Bud: Yeah, well, that's the way it should be. You know, I'm every week I'm fighting to write something that I want to recapture people.
>> Devin: The butterfly one was good.
>> Bud: Yeah, Sometimes I think you know, I'm trying to recapture this attention of people who maybe have lost interest in this thing because it's like we're going to do? They're going to keep reading their going to read ninety thousand words. No, what I think is this thing is going to be... It's going to be a six hundred page book novel, that's you sit down with it on a winter day and you read some of it. And that's what it is. You're not going to sit at the computer and read this whole thing.
>> Brian: Yeah, sure.
>> Bud: And if you do, I can point you to some better things to read off. (laughter)
>> Brian: You should have that embedded in the essay. If you finish this far, please stop. (laughs) Okay, that's it for today's episode, if you like what you heard, please subscribe in review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at @AnimalRiotPress or Facebook and Instagram at Animal Riot Press or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the nineteenth episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me, your host Brian Birnbaum, and featuring Devin Kelly and Bud Smith, and we're produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we would be merely three of Shakespeare's thousand monkeys banging on a typewriter.