Strunk and White on Steroids

Strunk and White on Steroids

Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable, —mon frère!

Baudelaire, “Les Fleurs du mal” 

Last night I did something mildly perverse: I fed a commercial Facebook post into my ChatGPT—the same one I use for research, copy editing, and tech triage—and asked it if the copy had been generated by AI.

BTW, I refer to my ChatGPT as “Chad,” not because I think it’s human, but because it’s easier to say (and type) than ChatGPT.

Anyway, Chad conjectured that the Facebook post had been produced by AI and then provided these telltale signs of AI authorship (as if Chad were human, and didn’t engage in the same techniques itself).

            The first indicator is that AI produces balanced sentences. [1]

Three-part structures. Nicely paced. Very composed. Humans do this too, of course—but we’re sloppier about it. We interrupt ourselves. We go long when we shouldn’t, or bail out early.[2]

e.g., “Stay alert, stay ready, and don’t talk your way out of the moment.”

The second sign of AI-generated prose Chad calls “hinge sentence moves”—phrases like

“Because it does happen” 

“And here’s the part that matters”

Those little turns feel less like thoughts arriving and more like pre-installed signposts.

The third characteristic of AI writing Chad cites is its tendency to engage in “emotional generalities instead of specifics.”

            “move your life in a direction that feels right”

That’s technically fine, but it floats. A human writer—especially you— tends to ground emotion in something tactile or slightly odd.[3]

Phrases like “move your life forward in a direction that feels right.”

No one ever missed a bus in these sentences. No one spills anything. No one says the wrong thing.

            Number four is “controlled charm.”

“Your dog, who is clearly the decision-maker.”

That line has been focus-grouped by the internet into harmlessness. It lands, but it doesn’t leave a mark.

And, finally, number five: evenness of tone.

No spikes. No awkward sentence that makes you pause and reread. No moment where the writer sounds just a little off—and therefore real.

Humans leave fingerprints. AI wipes the glass.

And here’s the twist: The more people read AI copy, the more they’ll start to distrust fluency.

So, there you have it. ladies and germs, the AI Style Sheet: Strunk and White on steroids. 

Stay tuned. My next project is plugging some Faulkner into AI to see how it would rephrase the opening paragraph of Absalom, Absalom.


[1] I’ve italicized Chad’s direct quotes.

[2] Note the self-referential pronoun “we.”

[3] Chad doesn’t mention this, but AI-prose loves them em-dashes. I’m assuming the “you” in the sentence refers to Wesley Moore III.

Mental Jukebox Tourette’s Syndrome Disorder (MJTD)

Yesterday’s being 4/20 and all, I committed a cliche— got confunctificated on cannabis.[1]  

As I made my way home on foot from Chico Feo, East Erie Avenue was blessedly empty, which meant I could recite out loud the lyrics looping in what I’ve come to call my mental jukebox. Saying the words—or singing them—is therapeutic, much preferable to merely letting them swirl unvoiced like dust devils in the attic of your frontal lobe.

No doubt I’m not the only one who suffers from this niche obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I suspect it’s extremely rare. I can’t find anything about it on the internet, so I’ve had to name it myself—Mental Jukebox Tourette’s Syndrome, or MJTS.

Playing in my head on the walk home was a Beach Boys cover of the Hollywood Argyles’ song “Alley-Oop,” a silly novelty tune inspired by a comic-strip caveman.

There’s a man in the funny papers we all know
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He lives way back a long time ago
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He don’t eat nothin’ but a bearcat stew
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
Well, this cat’s name is-a Alley-Oop

Here’s what got stuck in my head and what I voiced aloud as I walked along:

There he goes.
Look at that caveman go.
Ride, Daddy, ride.
Switch them blades.

The only way to exorcise these jukebox demons—at least for me—is to listen to a recording of the song. So when I got home, I cued the Beach Boys’ version, and lo and behold, I’d gotten the lyrics wrong. After “Ride, Daddy ride” comes “Heigh-ho, dinosaur,” not “switch them blades.”

Actually, the line “switch them blades” comes from another cover on that Beach Boys album, “Hully Gully.”[2]

‘Hully Gully” is a 1959 tune recorded by the Olympians, one of those songs that celebrates a dance. It was covered by, not only the Beach Boys, but also Buddy Guy, Chubby Checker, the Grateful Dead, and the J. Geils band—among others.

Here’s how it starts:

Well, there’s a dance spreading round like an awful disease
Hully, hully gully
You just shake your shoulders and you wiggle your knees
(Play it like it is!)
Hully, hully gully
Well, there’s a dance spreading round from coast to coast
Hully, hully gully
Well, when me and my baby do it, that’s how we do it the most
Hully, hully gully.

And here’s the bridge:

Hully, hully gully
Do it with your left shoulder
Hully, hully gully
Do it with your other shoulder, now
Hully, hully gully
Switch your blades
Hully, hully gully,

Not “switch them blades,” but “switch your blades.”

Even though I was wrong, you have to admit: “switch them blades” sounds much better.

Anyway, like its ugly distant cousin tinnitus, I’ve learned how to live with MJTS. So don’t worry—I’m not going to hit you up with a GoFundMe request.


[1]I first heard “conjunctificated” from a Black co- worker in 1977 at Whit-Ash, a furniture store in Columbia. This cat rarely said a word ever, but one day—out of nowhere— he proclaimed, “This place is conjunctificated,” and I knew exactly what he meant.

[2] The album, Beach Boy Party, a 1965 studio recording of mainly covers played with acoustic instruments and overdubbed with chatter to make it sound as if it was recorded at a party. The one hit from the album is “Barbara Ann.”

The Old Testament Ain’t the New Testament, But It’s Pete Hegseth’s Testament

The Old Testament Ain’t the New Testament But It’s Pete Hegseth’s Testamentthe

air without refuge of silence,

    the drift of lice, teething,

and above it the mouthing of orators,

    the arse-belching of preachers.

Ezra Pound, “Canto XIV”

One of the most puzzling paradoxes of the Trump era is the veneration he receives from evangelical Christians—those Bible-thumping Pharisees who once considered Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky the Marianas Trench of moral decrepitude.

Here’s Franklin Graham in 1998: “The Bible says we’re to pray for our leaders—but it also says we’re to hold them accountable. When a leader lies and deceives, that’s a serious moral failure.”

And here he is twenty years later: “We’re not electing a pastor. We’re electing a president.”

I mean, hypocrisy of this magnitude makes Tartuffe look like Atticus Finch.

Of course, unless you’ve just emerged from a two-week coma, you’ve seen the above illustration posted on Truth Social by none other than Donald Trump—the same “gentleman” who famously suggested that “pussies” are there for the grabbing.

Trump, of course, claims he didn’t interpret the image of himself miraculously healing one of the eight white figures as Jesus, but simply as a physician.

Graham concurs: “There were no spiritual references—no halo, no crosses, no angels. It was a flag, soldiers, a nurse, fighter planes, eagles. … I think this is a lot to do about nothing.”

Hey, somebody remove the scales from Frankie’s eyes. There might not be a halo, but either the recumbent man (Jon Stewart? Jeffrey Epstein?) has a king-hell high fever, or the divine touch of Trump has transferred the light he’s holding to the man’s body. When’s the last time your physician made a house call in flowing first-century robes?

However, my favorite Trump-administration foot shot belongs to Pete Hegseth, who paraphrased Jules Winnfield’s monologue from Pulp Fiction at a monthly prayer service.

Here’s Jules from the movie:

Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the
Inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in
The name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of
Darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost
Children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious
Anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know
My name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Here’s Hegseth’s rendition:

So the prayer is CSAR 25:17, and it reads—and pray with me, please— “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.”

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.’”

Okay, I’m willing to give Hegseth the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t say he was quoting the Book of Ezekiel, only that the prayer reflected it. Nevertheless, this is O.T. war-god Yahweh bellowing, not the Jesus they claim to worship—the Prince of Peace, admonishing us to love our enemies.

By the way, the aircraft that was shot down wasn’t dropping flowers on southwestern Iran.

Lord, help us.

                                                                                

The Joys of Invalid-hood

When I was five years old living in Biloxi, Mississippi, I was fortunate enough to contract rheumatic fever, an autoimmune reaction to untreated strep throat that triggers the immune system to rev into overdrive, attacking healthy tissue along with invasive streptococcus bacteria. I say “fortunate” because the disease left no permanent heart valve or joint damage and no doubt changed the course of my life because, to echo Jagger and Richards’ “Street Fighting Man,” what’s a poor bedridden boy to do but play with puppets, put together picture puzzles, and be read to?  

Whether for good or ill, these lifelong habits have formed my character.

Spending a week in a hospital ward and another month in bed on Laurel Street in Summerville contributed to my becoming an avid indoorsman. Even in my young adulthood, I preferred the vicarious adventures reading provides —hunting down that great white whale with Ahab and the boys—to actual deep sea fishing, which I’ve done once but never will again. Not that it wasn’t interesting seeing flying fish skim across the surface of the ocean and that waterspout lazily twisting in the grey distance, but when all is said and done, Wordsworth’s nature just ain’t my thing.

Of course, I’ve moved on from picture puzzles of my pre-kindergarten hospital bed to more sophisticated pastimes like crosswords, sudoku, Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee.  Solving a set series of on-line puzzles has become an unalterable beloved morning ritual during my retirement. 

As far as puppetry goes, you can catch a video of a late life puppet show by hitting this LINK.

But more importantly, back in the day — the summer of 1957 to be precise— by mother read to me. I especially liked the Uncle Wiggily books, featuring a set cast of characters like Peetie Bow-Wow and Neddie Stub tail, the bear chap, and I also enjoyed Mother Goose and the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales.

Newtonian physics de damned!

Hey, diddle, diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed

To see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

After I learned to read myself, I started collecting Classic Illustrated comic books in which the authors and artists attempted to jazz up novels like Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with action packed illustrations that actually belie the dark claustrophobic interiority of the novel’s 720 some odd pages. 

Anyway, in retrospect, I’m okay with swapping two months of playing tag out-of-doors to the subsequent decades of living a life of imagination, and, of course, I know Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, and my pal Jason Chambers have proven one can both love literature and the wonders of nature. Indeed, that love no doubt has deepened their understanding of how it all works.

C’est la vie.

Resting Ogre Face

I’ve come up with the male equivalent of “resting bitch face,” that sexist slight used to describe women who don’t dutifully beam sun-splashed smiles as they slog through yet another day of taxing responsibilities. Unfortunately, my term for the male equivalent—resting ogre face—aptly describes—to echo Eliot’s Prufrock”—the face I prepare to face the faces that I meet. In other words, I shuffle through my world looking like an angry old man, projecting an aura that conveys get out of my way, don’t mess with me, whoever you are.

Even when I should be attempting to look somewhat pleasant—for example, in a public interview at a book festival—I come across like a put-upon assholeTake a look. Notice the interviewer’s cheerful demeanor. Now notice the expression of the man sitting next to him.

I don’t even know, at this late stage of my existence, if it’s worth the effort to emend this unfortunate aspect of my demeanor. After all, a genuine scowl, as opposed to an ersatz smile, might be preferable in today’s timeline, when our country is led by an amoral, narcissistic vulgarian who sports a white baseball cap at a solemn ceremony where he meets the families of slain soldiers in a war he started under false pretenses—apparently to distract the public from the almost assured likelihood that he’s a pedophile.

In any case, until circumstances improve, resting ogre face may simply be the most honest expression available.

An excerpt from my upcoming novel TOO MUCH TROUBLE

This is an excerpt from Too Much Trouble, a stand alone sequel to my novel Today, Oh Boy. In this scene, high school sweethearts Ollie Wyborn and Jill Birdsong, college freshmen home for Christmas after their first semester, meet for pool hall hotdogs in Hutchinson Square in downtown Summerville, SC. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since their breakup in June before Ollie reported to the Air Force Academy.

Hutchinson Square

Jill’s relieved that so far her “date” with Ollie has been low-key, like two old friends catching up. He looks great. His boyish features have become more angular, his posture a bit more rigid. It’s breezy out on the square, the shadows of the trees swaying on the ground in front of their bench.

Unlike most males Jill has known, Ollie seems to genuinely care about what’s going on in her life and listens attentively. Before he left to fetch the chili dogs, he asked very thoughtful questions about life at Davidson, and his follow-up questions demonstrated sincere interest.

Now, in his absence, Jill’s mind drifts to Rusty. She wonders what he does during the day, an exile from his home.

Duh, he reads.

He’s been a booklover since she first met him in the 7th grade. In the fast-track history and English classes they shared, he was engaged, a lot more engaged than most students, and sometimes offered controversial takes on what they were reading, like calling Nick Carraway a smug, arrogant know-it-all, the worst of the slew of unlikable characters in The Great Gatsby. Then again, he didn’t seem to care all that much about his grades.

When Principal Pushcart read the daily announcements each morning over the intercom, Rusty was frequently one of the troublemakers summoned to the office. One time in the hall, Jill overheard Rusty tell Sandy Welch that he was, quote, “nothing but a crazy mixed up kid.” Jill wonders whatever became of Sandy, Tripp’s girlfriend, a wild child. Her family moved back to New Jersey not long after Tripp died, not long after the car chase she never wants to hear about again.

Here comes Ollie, smiling, walking up the paved pathway with a bag of chili dogs, fries, and a couple of Cokes.

“Is this wind bothering you?” he asks once he’s standing in front of her bench. “We could eat these somewhere else.”

“No, I like it here,” Jill says. “I like the sound the wind makes in the trees.”

He glances up at the limbs of the oak overhead, its branches swaying, its Spanish moss holding on for dear life.

“You’ll never guess who I just saw in the pool hall.”

“Who?”

“Rusty Boykin and Alex Jensen.”

“Really! Just now?”

Ollie nods. “Yep, they’re there right now.”

“Did you tell them you were with me?”

“Yeah, since girls don’t go into the poolroom, I was going to invite them over here to say hi, but they seemed to be in a very serious conversation. AJ has really put on a lot of weight, and Rusty’s hair’s down past his shoulders.”

“I know,” Jill says.

“So you’ve seen them over the holidays? Of course, Rusty works at Katz’s.”

“I saw Rusty last night.”

“Last night?”

“Yeah, we went on a date.”

“You and Rusty?”

“Yes.”

Ollie, who has been straining to be upbeat so far, frowns for the first time, then quickly recovers.

He carefully removes the white paper sleeve that holds Jill’s chili dog and hands it to her and then a small bag of rather greasy fries. She reaches down herself to grab a Coke. Ollie hands her a napkin, then retrieves his dog and fries and Coke.

“God,” Jill says, “I’d forgotten how good these are.”

God as an expletive, not gah, per usual.

“Indeed delicious. Did you have fun on your date?”

“Yes, I did. We both did.”

Ollie averts his eyes, takes a bite.

They eat in silence, the wind in the trees indeed highly audible. Ollie hadn’t noticed until Jill mentioned it. It bothers him somewhat that he doesn’t pay more attention to sounds.

Jill takes the last bite of her chili dog.

“Look, Ollie, the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but I haven’t forgotten the last words you said right before you hung up the other day. I’m sorry you think you love me, but I’ve changed a lot since June. I’m not the same Jill you knew. I’ve started drinking wine. I’ve quit believing in God. What you love is the idea you had of me back in high school.”

Ollie, ever quick on the take, instantaneously sees that it’s true. This Jill sitting next to him on the park bench isn’t the same Jill he took to the prom last May. Yet he’s more or less the same Ollie he was in high school. Oh, he’s better educated, in better physical shape, but his philosophical bearings haven’t wavered.

“I can see that,” he says, “but the funny thing is that I don’t think I’ve changed at all.”

“That’s because you’ve always been so mature, Ollie, and so good. I’d hate to see you change. I really would.”

Ollie doesn’t know what to say to this, so he says nothing.

She glances at her watch.

While Ollie pursues an errant napkin, she drops hers in the empty bag, crumples the bag, and deposits it in the trash can.

316 Camellia Drive

When Ollie returns home to his house in the Twin Oaks subdivision, he’s understandably downcast. Although he likes Rusty Boykin as a person and was even going to seek him out for companionship this week, he thinks Rusty’s all wrong for Jill—he’s wild, reckless, disorganized, and countercultural, which means he undoubtedly smokes cannabis and therefore breaks the law. That is, unless Rusty, too, has changed, but it certainly doesn’t look like it with his wild hair and raggedy outfit.

Ollie’s feeling the inherent sadness of the end of a relationship. He realizes that he and Jill will never be friends again in any meaningful sense. However, he also realizes—after all, some of the kids in Summerville call him Spock—that change is the one constant in life. While he’s sitting right now in the model airplane museum of his bedroom, his cells are multiplying and dividing, water is evaporating over the ocean, clouds are shifting shapes, the moon is waning. Virtually every high school romance ends like this. It’s, as his grandma would say, just part of life.

He’s chomping to get back to Colorado Springs. Summerville isn’t really his home. Here he’s a Yankee, and if he lived here for another 50 years, he’d still be a Yankee. He’s never completely understood the fixation they have with the Civil War.

A knock on the door interrupts his musings.

“Come in. Hi, Mom, what’s up?”

“You have a phone call. Cindy Cauthen would like to speak to you.”

“Cindy Cauthen. Okay, I’m coming.”

Submission for Beeple Art Show

I’ve submitted this one minute video entitled Edge Connections for an art show in Charleston. If accepted it would play in a loop projected on one of the walls of the gallery. The audio would be provided by the curator. The theme is Folly Beach Noir, the Edge of America. Click on the box below to engage, even if it’s black.

In Memory of Jack McDonough

Well, here I go again—only three months after lamenting the death of my high school buddy Adam Jacobs, now mourning the death of another of our crew, Jack McDonough, who died unexpectedly last week in Asheville. 

Unlike, Adam, whom I hadn’t had seen in this century, I was lucky enough to hang with Jack each fall when he would visit Folly for three or four days. Here we are with brother Barry at Chico in late October, about three weeks after Adam’s death.

Jack, Adam, and I were among the handful of Summerville kids who surfed. In fact, it was Jack who sold me my first board, a five-foot needle-nosed, home-shaped piece-of-shit that barely floated me, a 135-pound skeleton wrapped in untannable, freckle-mottled skin. In fact, on his last trip, we reminisced about that board, which indeed was fast if unstable.

In addition to his kindness, which you could see embedded in his facial expressions, Jack possessed an enormous amount of stoicism. He suffered from childhood diabetes, which did a number on his feet, and had a stroke some years ago that left him hobbled but unbowed.  With a hiking cane and later a walker, he unselfconsciously inched his way without a scintilla of self-pity. There’s no substitute for self-confidence.

Jack was descendent of the Irish patriot and martyr Thomas McDonough.

Thomas McDonough

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

                                                William Butler Yeats, “Easter 1916”

Jack loved the land of his ancestors and studied Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin and developed lifelong relationships with his Irish cousins. Family was so important to him, his brothers who predeceased him—Patrick and Matthew—and his surviving brother Barry and sister Casey and mother Edith who’s still somehow going strong in her Nineties.

Perhaps he was happiest hanging with his daughter Kate and her two children, whom he adored. 

I’m also very appreciative to Jack for his support in my writing, not only purchasing and reading the books (the latter a rarity with my Summerville brethren) but by offering specific praise that demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the texts. I can’t tell you how much we non-best-selling authors appreciate that.

I’ll end by saying that despite his physical challenges and the tragedies his family suffered throughout the seven decades of his life, Jack was a fortunate man because he was a man of love. He was a devout Catholic who attended Mass daily, so he probably wouldn’t approve of this sentence, but goddamn it, I’m going to miss him.

I’ll end with a bit more of Willy B:

Now shall I make my soul,

Compelling it to study

In a learned school

Till the wreck of body,

Slow decay of blood,

Testy delirium

Or dull decrepitude,

Or what worse evil come –

The death of friends, or death

Of every brilliant eye

That made a catch in the breath – 

Seem but the clouds of the sky 

When the horizon fades;

Or a bird’s sleepy cry 

Among the deepening shades.

A Winter of Discontent

I’m rereading Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, a collection of semi-autobiographical, first-person narratives recalling his years in Nazi Germany before the war. The most famous of these pieces, “Sally Bowles,” later became the source for the musical Cabaret, dramatizing a reckless Englishwoman’s decadent sojourn in the German capital.

As Hitler gears up his war machine (at least he had the decency not to grovel for a Nobel Peace Prize during the buildup), Berliners hit the clubs in a final spasm of decadent hedonism—one last binge before the Jews disappear and the bombs begin to fall.

Many have drawn parallels between Hitler’s Germany and Trump’s America, and the similarities are unsettling: paramilitaries (Brownshirts/ICE), megalomania, bigotry, contempt for established law—not to mention basic human decency. The difference, however, is that we-the-people have access to real-time video documentation of atrocities.

Take the killing of Renee Nicole Good, whom the Trump administration claimed attempted to run down her killer. Video evidence clearly shows otherwise: she was trying to drive away. Her last words were, “Look, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command.”
—George Orwell, 1984

I keep hoping that such footage might turn the tide against Trump’s authoritarian overreach.

“And so yesterday, without any fanfare whatsoever, ICE distributed a ‘legal refresher’ to their thugs, reminding them that constitutionally protected freedom of speech is still a thing—and that, as much as they’d like to, they can’t execute anyone for calling them a ‘pussy-ass bitch.’”
—Jeff Tiedrich, “ICE Is Big Sad Because Everyone Hates Their Guts”

* * *

At any rate, last night I found myself at Folly Beach’s cozy Bounty Bar for an indoor version of 

Foxy G’s Soapbox. Sitting there, it occurred to me that the darkened room and tiny stage of the Center Street tavern bore a faint resemblance to the Kit Kat Club of Cabaret—especially when John David Kulpa took the stage to perform three songs from three of what he calls his “hard rock operas.”

So what’s a poor septuagenarian to do
But sit in the dark while the singers sing through?
In a red state fast asleep, way down in Dixieland,
There’s no just place for a street-fighting man—

In the Year 2025

Each December, I assemble a month-by-month retrospective with links to what I consider that year’s greatest hits. Alas, in 2025, we have what my curmudgeonly grandfather Kiki would call “slim pickings.” Most years, I crank out 60 or so posts; however, this year I only produced 40 (and not a one in November). The good news is that the paucity of publishing is a by-product of greater productivity elsewhere. I’ve just finished Too Much Trouble, a sequel to Today, Oh Boy. The new book is essentially “a Southern Gothic romantic Comedy,” and who doesn’t love a “meet cute” during a serial killer’s murderous spree?

Now I’m attempting to land an agent so I can upgrade publishers, a tedious exercise in filling out forms on on-line platforms. Here’s a common request: In one sentence, pitch your novel.

“Oh, y’all, it’s so good, set in 1972, a page turner, literary, with characters you care about, a weird ass combination of pathos and fun, Harry Met Sally meets Night of the Hunter.

Already, even before official publication, David Boatwright is working on a screenplay, and his short film Summerville 1970, inspired by Today, Oh Boy, has recently won a handful of awards on the festival circuit.

So, anyway, grab a beverage, kick back, and gaze into the rearview mirror of 2025 as Jalopy USA races towards the edge of a cliff.

NOTE: WORDS IN BOLD ARE LINKS TO THE POSTS.

January

One of my favorite filmmakers David Lynch died in January, which prompted Caroline and me to take in several of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and, of course, Eraserhead.

February

I’m what our narcoleptic president would consider “a lunatic leftwing communistic fascist low IQ individual,” so I revel in doing political hatchet Howitzer jobs on Donny; however, for the sake of my sanity, I’m only including two in this retrospective, and this one is more of a hit job on Nancy Mace than it is an excoriation of 45/7.

Take it away, Nancy!

Governing as a Performative Art.

March

As an astute reader might infer from the above, I’m also not a fan of Lindsey Graham.

After reading the next one, entitled “Bad Poems, Fake Paintings, and Commerce,” you’ll definitely gonna wanna DM me so you can buy one of these fake paintings before they become unaffordable. By the way, Lowlife Bar now features the very first image in the post on the back of their hoodies. Lowlife’s located on the first block of East Hudson. Go grab you a hoodie before they sell out.

April

I attempted, unsuccessfully it would seem, to transform Today, Oh Boy into a screenplay, and this post explores the differences in the genres from a narrator/filmmaker’s perspective. Click: Novels Vis-a-Vis Screenplays.

May

Here’s what you get when you ask AI about Summerville 70.

“Summerville 70” refers to a recent 15-minute short film, an adaptation of a chapter from Summerville native Wesley Moore III’s novel Today, Oh Boy, depicting life and coming-of-age lessons in Summerville, SC, during the summer of 1970, directed by David Boatwright and produced by Paul Brown, which premiered in late 2025 and has been winning film festival awards.

(AI needs to work on its syntax. You could practically hang yourself with those dangling modifiers.

Anyway, I visited the set and gave Hitchcock a run for his money in fat boy cameo appearances.

June

Oh, yeah, I had a book come out in June. Here’s eloquent Alex Werrell’s introduction of Long Ago Last Summer at its launch at Buxton’s Books, which was, to quote my friend Lee Robinson quoting Alan Shapiro, “the storm before the calm.”

July

What’s real? What’s not? I can’t hardly tell (sic) cause Everything’s Ersatz.

August

Imagine if Flaubert had written the Hardy Boys series.

September

After the premiere of Summerville 70, I wrote this review in which I claim that David Boatwright, like David Lynch, creates “moving paintings.”

October

Caroline and I went to see Elvis Costello and Charlie Sexton.

November

the sound of one and clapping

December

Here’s the first chapter of Too Much Trouble, read in my gorgeous Lowcountry baritone.

Happy Holidays, Happy Solecist, Happy New Year and thanks for reading!