A Brief Review of Ben Smith’s ‘Traffic’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The media book “Traffic” from Ben Smith is really good. I highly recommend it if you’re a media nerd like me. There was a minimum amount of eye-rolling on my part and maybe a little too much skipping on some chapters that I already had a very concrete opinion on.

One thing I did enjoy was the talk about Gawker founder Nick Denton (who has blocked me on Twitter because of my Gawker obsession.) It is very interesting that Smith skipped over some notable things in Gawker history — like when Denton published a gruesome picture of a guy with pruning sheers through his face on the blog’s front page without warning.

Anyway, it’s a good book. It’s very well written.

I Don’t Know What To Tell You About This Megan Fox Sleeve Tattoo Thing & My Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. Sex bomb Megan Fox…apparently has a sleeve tattoo now? Maybe? Is it a fake one just for a part? I dunno.

Megan Fox….with a sleeve tattoo?

This is only important to me because my heroine…has a sleeve tattoo. It’s colorful and elaborate like Fox’s too. But there is one specific difference between the tattoos that makes any direct comparison between the two different pieces of ink difficult to do — my heroine has the name of a newspaper on her arm in big black letters.

So. I dunno. If Fox’s tattoo is fake and is for a part, then that obviously makes things more complex. But if she just got a tattoo because of her relationship with Machine Gun Kelly then…lulz? I don’t see there being any creative issue with the real tattoo and my imaginary tattoo.

I don’t think so. But it is surreal and…eerie…that something that is so important to the plot of my novel would come so close to being….real in such a conspicuous manner. Of course, people might say, “Oh, so just like Megan Fox?” which will make me angry because I came up with the idea first!

But you just can’t put the world on hold. Things keep moving forward and its inevitable that, given how long it’s taken me to write this novel, that some Real World event would put a different spin on things.

UGH.

Is Trump An American Caesar?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long believed that Trump is NOT a great man of history like Caesar. But I do think he is a historical and constitutional torpedo headed towards the American ship of state. The key issue is — Trump is, just like Biden, old as hell. And Trump isn’t in the greatest of health because of his weight.

So, there is every reason to believe that Trump could destroy everything…then it will be his MAGA Nazi successor who will do the mop up work. Or, even less conclusively, it could be that the process of turning America into a white Christian ethnostate is half done.

It could be that Trump gets us as far as starting the process of crushing American democracy through a rouge Constitutional Convention…then shuffles off this mortal coil. That would cause even more chaos and uncertainty because…then what?

I think the key thing is that the Republican Party is not fascist and it’s just a question of if we collectively shrug when they attempt to turn us into a fascist state, or if we do something about it. (Not advocating anything.)

The next 18 months will be….interesting, not matter what.

Crooked Media’s ‘What A Weekday’ As A Prototype For A New Gawker-Like Podcast Covering NYC

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the more it is clear that Crooked Media’s What A Weekday is not only great, but is very similar to the vibe of my dream podcast that would be devoted to NYC.

This hypothetical podcast would be topical, funny and peripatetic. It would have a thinking man’s Morning Zoo vibe to it. Most of all, there would be ENERGY. It would have a lot of young, smart, just-out-of-college people talking about the parties they’ve attended, the people they’ve fucked while sprinkling in a white-hot obsession with New York Media — specifically The Old Gray Lady.

I think if you treated the constant power struggles of The New York Times as if it was life-or-death type of situation, people would love it. That was part of what made Gawker so much fun — they “gawked” — if you will — at the colorful characters of media and entertainment in NYC.

I continue to think Ye’s former muse Julia Fox is so naturally intriguing that she would be the one person that the podcast obsessed over the most — maybe to the point of having her come on as a regular guest and just talk about her “dope” life and all the “dope shit” she does.

Also, I think covering fashion would be something the podcast should a lot of. You draw Alpha Males to the podcast by talking constantly about the Wall Street and the women in by taking the colorful figures of fashion seriously. New York Fashion Week would be like the Superbowl for this hypothetical podcast.

Or something like that. That’s the vision I have.

I continue to find it odd that New York City doesn’t have it’s own devoted podcast that is popular enough outside of NYC that rubes in the hinterlands like me know about it and can listen to it.

I want a podcast that is like Late Night With David Letterman and Spy Magazine in the 1980s and Gawker in the aughts. But, as I keep saying, the window of opportunity is closing — soon enough, AI agents will mediate everything for us and there won’t be ANY human generated media at all.

All while we’re living in a fucking MAGA fascist state.

UGH.

The Trouble With Titles

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I have split my novel into two, I find myself struggling with a new title. I know what the novel is about — a power struggle over a community newspaper — but I don’t know what the call it. I have at least one strong idea, but I’m not 100% sure that I want to use it.

I have a naming convention for the rest of the novels in the series and I want to keep to it if I can, but….I dunno. The title I have makes it clear exactly what the story is about, even if it’s in an somewhat ironic manner.

The key issue is to just keep writing. I need to buckle down and write as quickly as possible. I can’t keep just drifting towards my goal, especially with the deadline I’ve given myself. I also need to focus on BOTH novels, not just the first one if I’m going to have any sort of chance of getting both novels finished by my hard deadline.

It will be interesting to see how things work out. In one way, things are moving really fast. In another, I have a real problem with daydreaming way, way too much which does tend to slow me down.

But I am pretty sure that I can have ONE novel done by my hard deadline of July 22. And, if I work REALLY HARD, I might have two done.

The State of The Novel(s) I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While it’s still at least possible that I will finish not one but two novels by my hard deadline of July 22, it’s beginning to sink in that maybe I should cool it talking about that possibility so much. It’s possible, just not probable.

I have a huge amount of work to do on the first novel and the only way I might finish both novel is if I do a lot of work on the second book while I work on the first. I may not finish two novels by my hard deadline, but I can DEFINITELY finish two novels by the end of the year.

And I hope to start to work on a third novel, a scifi Western, this year as well.

I continue to stew in my juices about how, exactly, I’m going to “comp” these novels. I really don’t read a lot these days and I can’t just comp the two mystery thrillers I’m working on to Stieg Larsson’s stuff. I have to find other novels to compare them to as well.

And, what’s more, I continue to be very worried about what is going to happen when the white liberal women who make up literary agents do “due diligence” on me, a freaky weirdo. At least I’m not a drunk crank anymore, but, rather a sober one.

I can’t help who I am.

One of my biggest concerns is that me being a drunk loser for so long will, by definition, prohibit me from ever — EVER — being a published author. But you have to have hope, no matter what. While there’s life, there’s hope.

Does Dune 2 Portend The End Of Woke Hollywood?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to see a deluge of dude’s dudes being ecstatic about Dune 2. And, I think as Scott Galloway would note, the reason for the success of the movie is it wallows in “dude stuff” that young men feel a connection to.

And I will admit that even as a middle aged man, I was leaning into when some of the “dude stuff” scenes were on the scene. Even though Dune 2 is a “film” and The Empire Strikes Back was a “movie” both movies appeal to young men’s sense of themselves.

A whole 10,000 word New Yorker article could be written contrasting and comparing The Empire Strikes Back with Dune 2. The Star Wars franchise stole from the Dune books a great deal and is far more accessible to the audience, but the Star Wars franchise is a “woke” mess at the moment.

While I think the term “woke” is bullshit, I do think that maybe Disney and LucasFilm could think more about how to tell a good story than how to give a reach around to the advocates of identity politics. And don’t get me started about selling little kids toys.

I do think it’s at least possible that Dune could now become a new major scifi franchise because young men — at least on Tik-Tok — are going crazy for Dune 2. What’s so curious about this is the movie is not a popcorn movie, but a prestige film. It will be interesting to see not only how things progress with the next movie but how the success of Dune 2 will influence Hollywood in general.

Is it at least possible that Hollywood will begin to think more about storytelling and not either churning out either a new MCU movie or another vanity project “woke” movie? Only time will tell.

American Zelensky: Jon Stewart, 2024

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Reading Ben Smith’s “Traffic” book, I am struck by how social media companies had a sense of the popularity of both Obama and Trump long before anyone else did.

Jon Stewart

As such, if I had a choice of for a “Black Swan” event during the 2024 presidential cycle it would be that Something Happened so there was a brokered Democratic convention and Jon Stewart threw his hat into the ring — and won. I think he would be very, very popular.

Now, obviously, there are some problems with this daydream.

One — I don’t want anything to happen to Biden.

Two, ding-dong Trump was SUCH a fucking HORRIBLE POTUS, that a LOT of people would justifiably be very reluctant to vote for another celebrity to be POTUS. And, yet, as Ukraine’s Zelensky has proven, someone like Stewart can, in fact, be a great leader.

And from all the evidence I’ve seen about Stewart’s leadership abilities, he really would be a great POTUS.

But, alas, for some very corrosive and dumb macro reasons, it definitely seems as though the United States is simply going to slouch its way into autocracy. And, really, at this point, in a cruel twist of historical fate, it could be that Trump thrashing around in 2025 could cause a General Strike that deposes him…which, of course, would only lead to a civil war as Red States left the Union.

Good times!

Everything Sucks

by Ender

As of right now, malignant ding-dong Trump is 60,000 votes in five swing states away from turning the United States into an autocracy. And, barring some sort of Black Swan event, Trump is going to (probably) win and start to round up 20 million people.

The camps will open. People like me be rounded up and probably shot in the back of the head by an ICE agent because I refuse to stop calling Trump a fat fucking cocksucker.

About 1 million smug, wealthy Twitter liberals will flee the country until Trump — or his successor — starts to aggressively make it more difficult to leave the country in an effort to stop the massive American Brain Drain.

The press will be coopted and neutered. And we’ll just take it for granted that we are no longer a democracy and people will stop voting. We will become just another autocracy like Hungary, Russia or Turkey.

There is, of course, a very small chance that Trump, specifically, will be such a tyrant in such a quick amount of time that there is some sort of “Blue Revolution” and Trump is deposed, which will, in turn cause a Second American Civil War.

I find myself thinking about how I will survive this dystopian hellscape. All I know is I would rather die on my feet a free man than live my life on my knees a slave.

Fuck Trump. Fuck MAGA. And fuck you if you support either one.

Zoom!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are moving REALLY FAST now with my first novel. In fact, they’re moving so fast that I could be working on my SECOND NOVEL pretty soon. Or not. I don’t know yet. But once I realized that my first novel wasn’t really a murder mystery then everything worked out.

Barfly no more.

My SECOND novel IS a murder mystery.

But taking most of the murder element out of the first novel makes it a much cleaner, easier to explain and understand novel. It tells a coherent, character driven story.

What more could you ask for?