RATS OF DIM: An Interview with Self-Deprecating “Author” and Professional “Contortionist” MJ Greenwald [Part 1 of 3]

Yes, welcome.  My name is, of course, Michael Greenwald, and last Tuesday, I sat down in a ratty, cramped, cluttered, window-less, decaying-feet-smelling office at 606 Michigan Avenue in Chicago with the relatively unknown author, MJ Greenwald, for an interview.  While he drank bourbon at ten o’clock in the morning (“beer before ten is my rule”), I asked him questions about his interests, writing projects, his professional contortionist career, and anything else that came to mind.  What follows is an unedited discussion with the self-professed Biggest Writer in America.

(This interview is divided in 3 parts.  This is Part 1)

 

The often-times eremitic author with his philanthropist friend, Sean Lindy.

 

Michael [clears throat]: Question one.  I have to admit it, I’m really nervous.

MJ: Don’t be, man.  It’s not like I’m Stephen King.  No one will read this.

Michael: That’s true.  I see you brought a bottle of Kentucky bourbon.  Any favorite kind?

MJ [picks up bottle of bourbon and pours a couple fingers into a glass and gives it to Michael]:  Try it.

Michael: Oh, I shouldn’t.  I’m working.

MJ [points to the stack of legal pads on his desk]:  Hell, so am I.  Come on.

Michael [takes sip of bourbon]:  Wow!  This is great!  What is it?

MJ:  Hell, if I know.  On the way to the office this morning, I saw some homeless guy passed out at on a bus stop bench and I lifted it off him.  

Michael:  That doesn’t sound right.

MJ:  I’m a writer, you think I can afford my own bottle?

Michael: I don’t know if I should laugh or tear you a knew one.

MJ:  If I had a penny every time I heard that.

Michael:  What?  You could buy your own bottle of bourbon.

MJ:  And get the homeless population of Chicago sufficiently snookered all winter.

Michael:  At this point, I’d just like to let the readers know out there that the opinions expressed by MJ Greenwald are not those of Viacom Corporation or any of it’s subsidiaries.  Okay, lets start this interview.  I’ll kick it off by asking, does this interview format seem odd to you?

MJ: Hmmm.  Maybe a little.  I know my agent tried to talk me out of doing this, but I’ve never been one to listen to my handlers. My philosophy for most things in life is to get drunk and see what happens.

Michael: You have handlers?

MJ:  Oh, yeah.  A whole slew: Charmaine Blake is my publicist; Tammy Hunt is my manager; T. Sticky Fingers, formally employed by Snoop Dogg, is my blunt roller; Trixie and Gretchen are my lady-candy; oh, and Ari Gold is my agent.

Michael:  Wow.  I don’t have any handlers.  How does one get a handler?

MJ [grins]

Michael:  A professional handler, I mean.

MJ [grins wider]

Michael:  MJ, knock it off.  How does one get an agent? 

MJ: Just go to whorepresents.com.  There’s a search engine where you can find an agent, publicist, or manager to fit your needs.  I highly recommend Gold as an agent.  He’s been with me since I started writing cotton-candy detective shorts in Miss Hurley’s fifth grade English class.

Michael [writing whorepresents.com on the back of an envelope]  Hey, isn’t Ari Gold a fictionalized agent on HBO’s Entourage?

MJ:  Best agent I’ve ever had.

Michael [sees something scurry out from behind a stack of books and zip under his chair.]  What the hell?

MJ:  Rat.

Michael:  I noticed.

MJ:  They won’t bother you unless you offend their sensibilities.

Michael:  Rats have sensibilities?

MJ:  Oh, sure.  All animals do.  Just because they can’t articulate them in human-speak doesn’t mean they don’t have them.  Like that rat.  His name is Boris.  And he’s cool, unless you mess with that pile of Russian lit there. [points to a stack of twenty thick hardcovers].  I had a cleaning lady at one time and she moved the Russian books to the shelves [points to shelving behind him, which is empty except for two headless Barbie dolls and a bag of Doritos].  Next time she came to clean, Boris bite her.  She got all mad at me, too.  Like it was my fault.  Boris is his own rat, you know.

Michael:  So, you’re the self-professed Biggest Writer in America, what does that mean exactly?

MJ:  Anyone can be the BEST writer in America.  I’m vying to be the BIGGEST writer in America.  I eat McDonald’s four time a day and Taco Bell twice.  I am on an all-fat diet.  See these cups here.  [points to random Styrofoam cups on his desks].  One hundred percent lard.  Good with bourbon.  [holds out a cup to Michael]

Michael:  Oh, I’m good.  Thanks.  Well, this interview has been sufficiently derailed.

MJ:  Has it?  Or has it just moved onto another rail, a better rail?

Michael:  Like the third rail.  God, I SUCK at this.  I’m gonna get fired.

MJ:  Just relax, man.  Take another sip of bourbon and lets see where this goes.

Michael [gulps down the glass of bourbon]:  Okay.  Lets get serious for a moment.  What are you reading right now?

MJ:  So, I’m working on Ron Carlson’s Five Skies, forgiving him completely for not letting me into UC Irvine’s MFA program; Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife; just finished James Lee Burke’s new novel Rain Gods, which, from a usually master craftsman, disappointed me; I always have a James Sallis book in the queue, currently I’m rereading Drive for like the hundredth time; uh, I’m in and out of The Bible, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson; Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World is my non-fiction selection; Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth; Coyote Blue by my old friend Chris Moore; Dexter In the Dark, which spawned that great TV show Dexter; The Crossing, by Cormac, he’s another one that I always have a book on hand when I feel well; and when I feel like crap I read a James Patterson novel, right now I have The Quickie next to my bed; and I always have a Nicholas Sparks book on-hand in case I need to get in the mood to blow my brains out… lets see…that might be it.

Michael:  Wow.  That’s quite an impressive list.

MJ:  I’m an ADD-reader.

Michael:  What are you listening to?

MJ:  At the moment?  The voices in my head.  No, really.  I am obsessed with Pandora.  Let me check.  The last station I played was The Jayhawks.  Love them.  Then Pandora played Son Volt.  I listened the crap out of “Trace” and “Wide Swing Tremolo”.

Michael:  Those are albums, right?

MJ:  Really?  You have to ask that?

Michael:  I’m just clarifying for the zero people who will read this.

MJ:  Listen.  If anyone out there doesn’t know that “Trace” and “Wide Swing Tremolo” are Son Volt albums, they can kiss my pretentious–

Michael:  Whoah!  MJ, this is wordpress.  A kid-friendly blog host.

MJ:  Well then, F*&% them too!

Michael [clears throat]:  I remind the non-readers that the opinions expressed and language used by the author and contortionist MJ Greenwald are not those of Viacom Corporation or wordpress or any of it’s subsidiaries.  Speaking of being bendy, you’re a professional contortionist, right?

MJ [laughs]:  Only in the bedroom, son.

Michael:  Oh.  Lets–

MJ:  I’m glad you brought that up, I love talking about my voracious sex life.  It all started when I was six–

Michael:  Um.

MJ:  –and living in Scottsdale, Arizona and had this neighbor, she was seven, always loved the older ladies, but we were on my front lawn–

Michael:  Yeah.  Gonna have to stop you there, buddy.

MJ:  Awwww!

[Look for Part II of Michael Greenwald’s interview with author MJ Greenwald next week!]

RATS OF DIM: An Interview with Self-Deprecating “Author” and Professional “Contortionist” MJ Greenwald [Part 2 of 3]

Well, Michael Greenwald’s interview with infamed writer MJ Greenwald was so interesting and long–more long than interesting–we had to divide it up into three parts.  Here’s part II…

Michael:  So, what are you working on?

MJ:  People care about that?

Michael:  Probably not, but what the hell, I’m doing the questioning.  Pour me a little more of that bourbon, would you pally?

MJ [pours bourbon in own glass and tops off Michael’s glass]:  Lets see.  I’m touching up the second draft of my first novel called Haply I May Remember after that Christina Rossetti poem “Song”.

Michael:  I think we have a video of that, right?

MJ:  I believe.

Michael:  Did you need to set it up?

MJ:  Um.  It’s a poem.  By Christina Rossetti.

Michael:  All right then.  I feel more enlightened than I did a second ago.

MJ:  Are you sassing me, dude?  

Michael [shakes head]: No.

MJ:  I shared my bourbon with you, man!

Michael:  Which you stole off a homeless guy at a bus stop.

MJ:  Hey, there’s currency in cunning.  I didn’t pay for it monetarily, but I sure expended energy.  And let me tell you, energy is priceless.  Once you’re out of energy, you can’t go to the store and buy more, can you?

Michael [under his breath]:  I should have listened to mom and gone to law school.  [Out Loud]  Let’s just watch the video.

Michael:  Pretty intense.

MJ [chugs from the bottle of bourbon, wipes lips]:  Riveting.

Michael:  So, how does the novel incapsulate this poem?

MJ:  It doesn’t.  I just wanted the novel to have literary-cred and the best way to do that is steal a line from a famous poem.

Michael:  Oh.  Well, what’s the novel about?

MJ:  It’s a hybrid between a traditional family drama and a ghost story.  A family experiences a terrible tragedy which causes the surviving three members to go a bit nuts, in different ways, overwhelmed by their grief and loss.  Mix in the fact that the person who died is literally haunting each family member and you’ve got a powder keg and a match.

Michael:  Sounds a lot like Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

MJ:  Except it doesn’t suck like Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

Michael:  I loved that book!

MJ:  You would.  Listen.  My novel is a realistic depiction of the state of frangibility of the American family in the 90’s and the rise of individualism, kids raising kids without supervision, and adults overwhelmed with the burdens of the American capitalistic machine and the ramifications of the whole damn familial mess.

Michael:  Ah.  That explains it.

MJ:  Then don’t read it.   

Michael:  No, really, it sounds interesting.

MJ [takes a long swig of bourbon]:  It’s not.

Michael:  So, when is the publishing date?

MJ:  As soon as Ari Gold gets off his fat behind and sells the rights.

Michael:  Working on anything else?

MJ:  A short story collection, called “Celebratory Gunfire”, which will feature eight to ten of my short stories.

Michael:  Highlights?

MJ:  In my life?  No.  In the collection.  Well, I don’t loath a story called “One Good Story” about a fat, alcoholic writer and his demanding, b*&$ wife and what happens when the writer’s characters decide to rebel against their hack creator.  I also re-read a story a wrote a long time ago called “Weight” and didn’t, after finishing it, want to Cobain myself.  That story is about a teenager about to enter the world of MMA fighting but first he needs to deal with his mother’s abusive boyfriend because his daddy’s dead.

Michael:  I’ve read that one.

MJ:  Of course you have, idiot, you’re me.

Michael:  It reminds me of a Chuck Palahniuk story.

MJ [yawns]:  That’s what everyone says.

[Look for Part III of Michael Greenwald’s interview with infamed writer MJ Greenwald next week.]

Turning, Turning 30

So, yesterday was my birthday (that’s right, folks, and anyone who didn’t wish me a Happy Birthday on Facebook or Myspace, you’ve been subsequently deleted!) and I turned thirty years old (nifty title, right).  Many people asked me the obvious question of how it feels to turn thirty.

Well, here’s my answer.

My first decade, I barely remember (my mother has a minute-by-minute synopsis in case anyone is interested).  We lived in a house in Oak Lawn, Illinois on like 92nd off of Cicero Ave.  My memory of the house was that it was really big and green, though when I went back several years ago, it turned out to be average-sized and yellow and brown.  The bushes where I kissed a girl the first time (Candace, who was a year older–always had a thing for older women) and saw two girls kiss for the first time (Candace and the girl across the street, whose name escapes me, but she had red hair and freckles) were still there.  The fruit trees, which seemed like a great idea, dad, but in the end didn’t bear fruit and attracted swarms of bees, were flourishing.  The people who lived there had a boy about my age and shot hoops with him in his driveway and educated him on the finer points of getting two chicks to kiss in the bushes.

My second decade began with the same innocence (if you can call achieving a triple-kiss by seven years old innocent) as my first, though picked up steam in the second half to where I was completely out of control.  Drinking, drugs, throwing parties at my folks house when they were out of town with three hundred plus kids and six kegs and ten bottles of champagne for new years 1996.  Seminal events that I can remember were hitting two home runs to beat Homer Township in the Palos Youth Baseball Invitational.  Swimming at my grandfather’s pool.  Getting my first pubic hair (I made a big deal out of this, for some reason, even though looking back I’m mortified with my need to show and tell).  My first kiss, first girlfriend, and losing my virginity (when I was seventeen, on my parent’s bed–ew, gross, right, though, truth be told they never slept together there–in case anyone cares).  I’d have to say most of my memories of these years revolved around baseball or partying with friends or girls.  Those three things taken separately are fine, but put them together they tend to knock heads, and they did.  When I should have been hititng off of my tee, I was chasing girls.  When I should have been chasing girls, I was hitting off of my tee (no pun intended).  Main regrets from this period in my life were that I didn’t try hard enough academically in high school, didn’t put forth the effort to get into a better college, and I chickened out many times with asking out, ummm, lets call her D-squared.

From 20 to thirty I continued the bad habits accrued during my teens.  College was college, what can I say.  I had a house 423 W. Vernon!!!) with three of my best friends from high school, hung out everyday with a couple of my other best friends from high school, and met two of my best friends in my life to this day.  We did too many drugs, drank too much, but we all lived.  And I learned the skill of entertaining people and turning a profit (something I didn’t learn after spending twenty grand on college marketing classes, from bored, bitter marketing teachers).

One choice I made that I’ll never regret is when I graduated from college (Illinois State!) and packed up my 1986 Chevy Monte Carlo and drove to Los Angeles.  The time I spent in LA, with the people and the experiences and the work, was worth more than college.  I grew more in that time that I ever did in high school or college.  I learned more about myself and the world around me and interacted with such a plethora of people (gay, straight, white, black, dolphin) that I’ll never be the same.  And I don’t regret moving home when my dad first got sick.  And though I’ve been floundering a bit in the five years since I moved back to Chicago from LA, I don’t really regret 25-30 either.  I’ve met some people that will be a part of my life until it’s done.  I dated women that made a clear impression on my life, and though I know I wasn’t the best boyfriend (can I even use that term, ladies?); God, I was difficult, and closed-off, and moody, and selfish, and frustratingly fearful of commitment, and add your own adjective, ladies (for all you SS–single and sexy–women in the reading audience, notice how I said WAS), but I know you made an impression on me, some of you put imprints on my life, and there’s one or two who I know I’ll regret not strapping to the gurney of matrimony.  

At 27, I decided law school was the answer and I moved to Arizona only to decide a year later that law school was the answer for mom and dad, and the only thing in the world that has a shot to make me happy is for me to be a professional writer.  And a couple people, here in Arizona, I am forever in debt to for taking me out of line and giving me the encouragement and advice that I know someday will pay off.

Today, I’m 30 years old and almost nine hours.  Looking back on the first three decades of my life, I see some great accomplishments and feel the pain of some powerful failures and mistakes and missed opportunities.  But we can’t go back, can we?  We don’t get do overs.  All we can do is march forward.  So onward and upward, I say.  My life, so far, is what I made it and I wouldn’t change it because I feel the best decades of my life are in front of me, not in the rear-view.  I feel like I’ve spent thirty years preparing for something and very soon it will crystalize into this coherent vision and all the struggling and battling and starts and restarts of my first three decades will suddenly make sense. 

So, long answer (see above), short answer for how do I feel about turning thirty?

Reflective and hopeful.

Thanks for reading.  Please comment, if you have the urge.  No one will judge you.  Well, maybe a little bit.  🙂

MJ