As a child of the ’80s, I grew up watching music videos. You know back when MTV played them instead of reality shows involving people who get drunk a lot and are really into self-tanning.
This music video isn’t a pure parody. Because it’s brilliant. It stands by itself and could’ve been an actual hit from 1985.
Baddy Paris and Rufus Starlight, I salute you. Well done.
WE ARE BROTHERS
He is your brother. And just because he’s older,
He will always try to boss you.
No matter what you do,
You must obey him!
He is your brother.
And just because he’s younger,
You will learn to tell your fists no,
When he beats you on Nintendo.
Do not hit him!
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
But you look like mother.
Don’t want to lose you,
To another.
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
She maybe your lover,
But do not forget,
You are our brother!
You were a loser,
Your haircut was a mullet.
You could not play the bassoon,
You had a dark blue bedroom,
What were you thinking?!
You also had a mullet!
I was always the cool one.
I was the budding rock star,
I’m awesome at the guitar….
…But you work for me now!
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
But you look like mother.
Don’t want to lose you,
To another.
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
She maybe your lover,
But do not forget,
You are our brother!
You were working as a salesman,
In a homeware & design store.
You only ever wore black,
Your life was made of Habitat.
You were lonely.
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh
That was when you met her,
Though you would never tell us.
But then we finally guessed it,
Out came your dirty secret –
You loved your boss!
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh
You loved your boss!!!
You are my brother.
Just look how far you’ve come now.
I used to change your nappy,
Now you’re old & saggy,
Fat like Paddy.
You are my brother.
I always looked up to you.
But now to me it’s quite weird,
Cause you have hair & a beard,
Just like our Daddy.
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
But you look like mother.
Don’t want to lose you,
To another.
Ahhhhhhhhh
Don’t leave us,
You are our jesus.
She maybe your lover,
But do not forget,
You are our brother!
I bet you’ve swerved on I-5 to stop a drifting semi from turning your car into a cube of steel.
As a teenager, I bet there were times buddies dared you to (a) jump off the roof of a hotel into the pool, (b) drag race down a dark county road at 120 miles an hour in a beater that couldn’t break 80 without rattling like it fall apart or (c) chug an entire bottle of Grey Goose they swiped from Dad’s liquor cabinet.
Hear me now and believe me later in the week: these sort of things are good for you.
I don’t mean you should take up base jumping, climbing cliffs without ropes or stupid stunts involving skateboards. It never works out.
HOWEVER: In my experience, whatever hasn’t killed me has made me a happy man for months.
My friend Leo took me mountain climbing for the first time, and when it turned out more crazy than I expected, with white crosses marking where people died, I was insanely thrilled to get down that mountain. My wife says I was a joy to be around for months. Nothing bothered me.
So I had a little surgery yesterday, something that started out as a simple, easy trip to the doctor. Shoot a little local in me, cut it out, stitch me up.
Nope. Got sent to a surgeon, who said they’d have to put me under, because the thing was too deep.
Took all day. I’d had surgery a half-dozen times before, mostly as a kid. I think as a shorty you’re more worried about the moment. As an adult, with a wife and a kid, these sort of things matter more. You worry.
What if this tumor is some kind of crazy parasite I picked up in the deserts of Dubai?
Or what if it’s cancer, and I’ve got to go all Walter White?
Who would be my Pinkman?
Say my name.
Everything should be fine. Even so, there’s that same sense, that feeling each day is a gift.
Sidenote: This month is the anniversary for the blog, born in a haunted oceanfront cabin by Port Townsend when I needed to sell my beater Hyundai.
I believe it calls for a little celebration: a Greatest Hits compilation and a call for ideas. If you’ve got something that would be perfect for the blog, or want to guest post, give me a shout in the comments, on the Twitter or via secret emails.
Meeting so many brilliant and funny writers from around the world has been a pleasure. I can’t thank you enough.
When is something so bad that it circles back to good?
Well, here’s one example: THE FOX by Norwegian duo Ylvis.
The melody sounds like late ’80s emo from Savage Garden, with lyrics set down after hanging around a room full of five-year-olds who’ve had too many juice boxes.
For true music video fans, the actual lyrics are below.
THE FOX by Ylvis
Dog goes woof
Cat goes meow
Bird goes tweet
and mouse goes squeek
Cow goes moo
Frog goes croak
and the elephant goes toot
Ducks say quack
and fish go blub
and the seal goes ow ow ow
But theres one sound
That no one knows
What does the fox say?
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
What the fox say?
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
What the fox say?
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
What the fox say?
Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
What the fox say?
Big blue eyes
Pointy nose
Chasing mice
and digging holes
Tiny paws
Up the hill
Suddenly youre standing still
Your fur is red
So beautiful
Like an angel in disguise
But if you meet
a friendly horse
Will you communicate by
mo-o-o-o-orse?
mo-o-o-o-orse?
mo-o-o-o-orse?
How will you speak to that
ho-o-o-o-orse?
ho-o-o-o-orse?
ho-o-o-o-orse?
What does the fox say?
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Chacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Chacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
What the fox say?
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
What the fox say?
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
What the fox say?
A-oo-oo-oo-ooo!
Woo-oo-oo-ooo!
What does the fox say?
The secret of the fox
Ancient mystery
Somewhere deep in the woods
I know youre hiding
What is your sound?
Will we ever know?
Will always be a mystery
What do you say?
You’re my guardian angel
Hiding in the woods
What is your sound?
This is a follow-up to my querying letter about a million-word fictional novel trilogy. You can read that letter anywhere on the planet by firing up AOL and clicking on this World Wide Web thingy here: The Mother of All Query Letters.
Maybe you haven’t gotten to reading it yet, seeing how you’re busy selling my trilogy to Warner Brothers for one million dollars (I figure a dollar a word is fair). My niece Daisy has a library card and her nose in all kinds of books, not just Twilight, and when I told her about my fictional novel, she said I need to send every agent and editor in Manhattan a synopsis.
Now, “synopsis” sounded Latin and possibly dirty to me, so I asked whether that word involved sins, and Daisy said, “That’s a good way to look at it. List all the sins you commit in that book of yours.”
So here’s my list of the sinful things happening in each book of the trilogy, with each novel coming in at 333,333 and 1/3rd words apiece.
Book 1: I KNOW WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED, DARTH SAREK OF VULCAN
A grave-digger falls into a grave and hits his skull on a fat hunk of rock, then wakes up on an alien planet to find he’s six inches taller and half-ninja, half-Jedi, half-Vulcan.
First off, he’s bound for alien slavery on a pirate ship, and I believe slavery to be a sin, despite what Uncle Will says about the War of Northern Aggression.
Second, he kills bushels of aliens, and killing is a sin, though he does it to win his freedom from slavery, so I figure those sins cancel each other out.
Third, our hero does have relations outside of marriage with an alien princess or three, plus an android on a planet run by robots and an evil super-magneto computer made by Bill Gates himself after he bought up an entire Best Buy and started soldering stuff together.
Book 2: LOST IN SPACE AND TIME WITH A GREEN LASER SWORD AND A PURPLE ALIEN PRINCESS
The robot king and his super computer can plug you in, like that Matrix or that Tron video game they had at the 7-Eleven on third street until some pansy replaced it with Ms. Pac Man.
The robot king makes our hero think he’s waking up in that grave, and that nothing in the first book really happened, kinda like that season of Dallas before J.R. got shot and such, and let me tell you, I’d shoot that man myself with my grandpa’s Colt and proudly do whatever time a judge handed down with the bang of his mighty gavel.
Back to the story. After learning kung fu and how to bend more spoons than Yuri Geller, the hero busts out of the fake holodeck world of the robots and uses his laser sword to cut Bill Gates and his super-magneto computer clean in half. Murder is a sin, but he says his prayers and gets forgiveness from his maker while the aliens rejoice in their freedom and put him in charge of their army of spaceships and purple alien princesses.
Book 3: MASTER OF OUTER SPACE,INNER PEACE AND DESTROYER OF SUNS
There’s peace in the galaxy with the hero running things, so he studies his Jedi and his Vulcan to learn the secrets of immortality, raises generation after generation of his young ones with the purple alien princess who’s his queen, and teaches the purple alien army how to be kung fu ninjas — but a new threat arises.
See, suns are alive. That’s right — they’re born, they live, they evolve and they die, with new baby suns arising from the dusts of their supernova. And they see themselves as gods, seeing how they create all the elements in the universe and provide all the heat and light and such. They’re mad as tarnation and they’re not gonna take it one second longer.
I see this third book as a tale of redemption, seeing how the hero starts out committing all kinds of sins in books one and two. Now he’s married and living right, unlike my second cousin Nellie, who’s on her fourth divorce and odds are she’ll hit number seven before we wheel her into the Willapa Valley Nursing Home.
Back to this book: Our hero flies right up to the face of the biggest, maddest, meanest sun and finds a way to communicate, but the solar gods are hell-bent on war and destruction, and they start frying alien planets like eggs on a hot grill with a fine sheet of lard already melted on top.
As a last act of sacrifice at the age of 984, the hero mind-melds with the suns and hypnotizes them into calmness by bringing them into his memories and dreams, which lands himself into a coma for a spell until I figure out the next trilogy of 1 million words, which I figure has to involve the only thing bigger, badder and more amazing than killer suns: black holes with father issues not even Dr. Phil can solve.
So, that’s a full-on synopsis of the first trilogy, with book one attached as an encrypted WordStar document and also available on 5.25″ floppies. Though like I said in that querying letter, I’m running out of those floppies, so make it snappy.
Sincerely,
Sensei George Lucas King
P.S. This is my new pen name, guaranteeing my trilogy sits smack dab next to all those books by Stephen King while appealing to fans of Star Wars and all those kung fu movies, which I figure covers just about every man still breathing, then you got the alien princess love story thing for the women. To write me checks, you’ll need my full legal name, though I’d prefer cash on account of some trouble with the IRS that started in 1997.
His hero, Reacher, is beloved by fans for having the brains of Sherlock Holmes and the body of Conan the Barbarian. The man never gets outsmarted and is invincible in a fight. Here’s the last post about these books: Secret recipe for any Lee Child novel
The latest Reacher book, NEVER GO BACK, slams smack-dab into the Superman problem. Because an invincible hero puts the B in Boring.
Did I enjoy the book? Yeah, it’s always fun to read about Reacher. With every new novel, though, Reacher struggles less and less to overcome the bad guys.
If the hero doesn’t sweat, the reader doesn’t worry. Or care.
Because I do care about Reacher and Lee Child, here are six ways to fix NEVER GO BACK.
Lee Child’s NEVER GO BACK. Buy two copies, one of each cover, because I say so.
1) Don’t simply remake THE ENEMY
The only other novel with Reacher in the Army was Child’s best book: THE ENEMY, a true mystery with all kinds of crazy twists and turns and a real sense of menace. Just like that book, the latest novel has big-shots in the Pentagon and such as the criminal masterminds, using other officers as their puppets.
That book was first-person and visceral. It put you in the head of Reacher and made you feel what he felt, see what he saw. I’ve happily read that book seven bazillion times.
NEVER GO BACK starts out feeling like that book, with the full force of the Pentagon and Homeland Security poised to squash Reacher … until he escapes them, easily and repeatedly.
THE ENEMY was amazing, and the ending isn’t a clear win. Reacher is demoted and leaves the service. This latest novel doesn’t hold a candle to that classic. Which proves that yeah, you should never go back.
2) Give Reacher a real daughter, not a fake one
What are the odds that the bad guys randomly picked a fake daughter for Reacher who looks like him, thinks like him and even talks like him?
I’ll tell you the odds: zero.
The fake daughter is an achy breaky big mistakey. It feels like Child planned on making the daughter real up to the end of the book, then decided nope, Reacher can’t have a teenage daughter, because that would tie him down in future books. So he turned her into a ruse.
If you’re gonna do it, do it.
3) One-sided beatings aren’t really fights
Fight scenes are a Reacher staple. A novel without Reacher getting blood on his elbows would be like a Jean Claude Van Damme movie without him doing the side splits and kicking a single guy in the face.
However: there’s a big difference between a fight and a beating. Every fight in NEVER GO BACK is a cake walk for Reacher, who doesn’t even break a sweat when he takes out two angry rednecks with both hands behind his back.
Give us a real fight. Let’s be realistic and let the bad guys land a punch for once.
This leads to Number 4.
4) Tough guy villains better be tough
In this book, there’s one thug we keep getting told is a giant muscle-freak with weird ears. A monster who looks like a match for Reacher.
So for hundreds of pages, you keep expecting the final battle between these two men to be epic. I was getting the popcorn out.
The fight between Reacher and this incredible hulk was over in about two seconds. Boring, and a huge let-down. Come on. That’s like showing us Darth Vader on screen for 90 minutes and Luke training with Yoda for 20 minutes only to have the two meet for the Greatest Lightsaber Battle of All Time … and have Luke cut Darth Daddy in half within two seconds. No.
The badder the bad guy, the longer the fight should last. Redneck idiots can get dispatched in a paragraph. Medium baddies should take a chapter. The boss villain should take a couple of chapters.
When every villain, big or small, goes down without Reacher chipping a nail, or doing anything at all (see Number 6), it’s not exciting.
5) The Girl with a Gun has to be some kind of Challenge
It’s totally fine for Reacher to swim in a sea of attractive women, just like 007.
What’s not fine is for the Girl with the Gun to fall in love with Reacher in about two micro-seconds and be like a loyal puppy dog for 300 pages. THE ENEMY had a good love interest, with a conflict: he was an officer, and her commanding officer, and she was a sergeant. There was risk, and you got a real feel for the sergeant with them doing the investigation a long time before falling in the sack. It was credible and interesting.
A perfect woman who falls in love with Reacher instantly and never really does anything, well, she’s cardboard and snooze city.
6) Finish with a bang
So the bad guys are two high-powered dudes with insane connections, the ability to track Reacher in real-time, a lust for power and a network of thugs. It’s suicide for Reacher to go after them, right? They have the full reach of the Pentagon and Homeland Security to smack him like a fly.
Yet the final confrontation … never happens. Because the bad guys shoot themselves in the head.
What?
Maybe I’m nuts, but I believe, deep in my Swedish soul, that the end of a novel or movie should be more exciting than the beginning. The beginning was exciting. This ending wasn’t even as suspenseful as six random rednecks surrounding Reacher in the motel.
If you set up Reacher as some kind of invincible Superman, the bad guys can’t be cream puffs who fold at the end. To make it interesting, you have to make the villains even tougher than Reacher.
That hasn’t happened yet. Not even close.
I hope someday it will. Because that would be an amazing book.
The Red Pen of Doom 