There comes a time in every writer’s life (every writer with the possible exceptions of P.G. Wodehouse and Joyce Carol Oates) when s/he just hits that wall. You know the wall…the one where you just can’t seem to go on with that book , that story, that article, that poem, that strangely unclassifiable piece that you just know will land you in McSweeney’s (next to those other writers you are convinced will be exposed as frauds at any moment).

But you are stuck…and what you need (for those of you who missed the title of this post) is a montage. We’ve all seen them in movies…especially 80′s movies…where the lead character goes through all the hard work of getting better at something in a series of swiftly moving film clips set to snappy music (that glosses over the TEN THOUSAND HOURS it takes to get really good at something…at least according to Malcolm Gladwell).

Sure montages are bullshit. Both South Park (in the episode “Asspen”) and Wet Hot American Summer  mocked them mercilessly. And David Wong just about blames them for the collapse of society in his brilliant article “How The Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World”

But let’s face it…we are hard wired to think that they work. And while you are are logging in those 10,000 hours of writing that just might make you an outlier…you might as well have some high energy tunes to help you get through it (along with Brawndo that is).

Now it’s easy to just dial up some famous montage music from your memory: The Theme from Rocky (or Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger for you Gen Xers),  You’re the Best from The Karate Kid, or even the instrumental section of Layla (if your montage involves bumping off your competition). But, those are other people’s montage songs…you need your own.

Now I’m sure some of you are already firing up your iTunes…but for those of you who aren’t (or are just curious), here are five great songs that haven’t been used in montages (but damn well should have), broken up into tidy categories…hopefully one of them will do the trick.

80′s Montage Song (American Style)

Hard to believe this one didn’t get Michael J. Fox or Matthew Broderick through some cinematic jam…sorry there’s no video. But just try to not work with Oates’s dead-eyed stare practically screaming “Get back on the word processor or I will ass-whip you with this mustache.”

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80′s Montage Song (English Style)

These guys are just chock full of montage-worthy songs (give a listen to their debut record if you don’t believe me). AND they actually did have a song on the Rocky IV soundtrack (One Way Street)…maybe the laid-back soulful groove they put down on that one just didn’t fit with the whole American flag wrapped soviet cockpuncher mania.

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Heavy Metal Montage Music

100% synthesizer free for you purists. This was a tough one (Megadeth, Maiden, Queensrÿche, Iced Earth and a lot more all have great songs)…but the Shatner homage in the video put it in the winner’s circle. (…oh and RIP Dimebag)

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Country (?) Montage Music (16 Horsepower: Clogger)

Some people brainwashed by Nashville have told me these guys don’t sound “country” to them…I say if by that you mean they don’t sound like Mariah Carey with pedal steel, or some dude from upstate NY singing an ode to his pick-up truck…I agree. (make sure you watch for David’s clogging around the 2:15 mark)

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Industrial/EBM Montage Music

“So why do I love when I still feel pain?/When does it end, when is my work done?/Why am I lone and why do I feel that/I carry a sword through a battlefield?” Hard not to get inspired by lyrics like that…plus the video sure makes writing seem like a walk in the park compared to slaving away in a box factory or being forced to join some black and white dystopian conga-line. (plus you can imagine that the girl at 4:15 is cheerleading for you!)

Over the past few years, it seems like people have stopped sending Holiday cards and started sending postcards with pictures on them. I suppose this is thanks to cheap print-on-demand technology…and while I should be thankful that it’s taking a chunk out of Hallmark’s profits each year…I just don’t like it.

Why?

Because more often than not, what people send are pictures of their kids. It started out innocently enough. You’d get a picture of the family in their winter best with a hand written note like: “Wishing you a wonderful holiday–from the Kerplotniks.”

But somewhere along the line the family photo was dropped in favor of one with just the kid(s), the santa hats and snowflake sweaters disappeared, and even the courtesy of the hand written note was replaced with a pre-printed message, like the family responsible was some kind of damn corporation.

I know the kids are the most precious little snowflakes in the blizzard to you parent types. But, seriously, I don’t want pictures of your kids. I don’t want them ever, and I especially don’t want them during the Holiday season when I will feel obligated to hang them on the wall in case you swing by for egg nog.

It’s a win-win. You save yourself the cost of a stamp, and you save me from having to point out that the only kid that ought to be on a Christmas card is the Baby Jesus.

So if you were planning on sending one my way…don’t! I promise I won’t be offended. And if I’ve offended any of you…you can kiss my mistletoe.

. . . it's sooo true!

OK…so a lot of you who would be interested in writing tips are either a) already writers and could use a good way to get that blank page a little less blank, or b) are giving the whole writing thing a shot  via NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those not in the know) and are stuck in the dwindling days of it and would really like to catch up on (or get ahead) of your word count.

Now, let’s just say (hypothetically), that you are on your way to present at the Mid-American Review’s Winter Wheat Festival of Writing along with your super-talented writing partner (whose link is now fixed on your website), and on the way out to Ohio, your car suffers an EPIC FAIL.

Of course, you could use all that down time to grind out some words…but you don’t because you are all stressed out about how you are going to pay for these repairs (and dealing with the fact that you are in fact not going to even get to the conference, let alone get to deliver the two presentations that you and your writing partner spent months preparing)…of course, this is just hypothetical…please insert your own crisis.

probably should have known . . .

So…whatever the reason…you need words and you need them now…well never fear…I HAVE the solution.

Step One: Take a break and watch the video for “Inner City Pressure” by Flight of the Conchords…nothing will seem all that bad once you realize you aren’t going to have to go shopping for secondhand underpants…and if you have a synthesizer…well, even better! (…that statement will make more sense after watching the video)

. . . and after you can use these!

Step Two: Understand that you only need words…they don’t even have to be all that good…they just have to be words that will go in a novel (at least according to the folks who came up with this idea).

I did a quick scan of my latest manuscript…and low and behold the word “The” appears 8,845 times! “A” and “An” another 7,674…so bang! Round it off to an even 17,000 and you’ve got your NaNoWriMo word count for the next 10 days and all you’ll have to do in the “rewrite” stage is fill in all the rest of the words that go in between those.

See? Easy!

…or you could just take your time and do it right…your call

OK folks, it’s been well over a year since I’ve said anything on this blog…and as Jake Blues once said to Princess Leia“ I ran out of gas! I–I had a flat tire! I didn’t have enough money for cab fare!

My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!”

Alright…so maybe it was fault. But check back if you care to…because from now on this blog will be split into three categories…each one getting a new post each week. Writing, Ranting and Raving. I’ll blog about how my writing is going, when things get published, and my random observations on that most masochistic of endeavors. Then I’ll rant about stuff that pisses me (and hopefully you) off. And, to balance it out, I’ll rave about new things that I love.

But let’s start with a RANT. A short one, but a sad one.

I read today that Africa’s Western black rhino has officially been declared extinct. Until as recently as 2000, at least 10 of these creatures were thought to have survived in Cameroon…no longer.

Poachers, along with lax law enforcement as well as habitat loss, are to blame for this tragedy. ”There were very limited anti-poaching efforts in place to save the animals, and anyone caught poaching was not sentenced, hence no deterrents were in place,” said Craig Hilton-Taylor of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

It’s the rhino horns the poachers were after. Allegedly a power aphrodisiac (although that claim is dubious), the ground up rhino horn is primarily sought after by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine who use it to treat fever and high blood pressure…because, apparently, they’ve never heard of f*cking aspirin!

So now the African Black Rhino joins the Syrian Elephant (driven to extinction for its ivory), the Atlas Bear (the only known African bear species…destroyed by habitat loss), the Passenger Pigeon (once one of the most populous birds in North America…totally eradicated in less than a century due to rampant unregulated hunting), and countless other species gone forever because of ignorance, greed and indifference.

Maybe it’s time to rethink our priorities…or soon enough, it’ll be us that’s extinct.

The time has come, my friends, to re-boot my long neglected website and blog. However, there are still a few posts that people visit from time to time (although I’m not sure why) and some that I’d just like to keep up. As a result, from here on down are the greatest hits (and misses) from my old blog…enjoy.

…and, because I can’t bear to delete it…here’s an obscure article in an archived edition of the New Jersey Times from 1985, which gives at least a partial explanation for what that watermelon was doing there at the Banzai Institute.