We Love It!
Flashback to the summer of 2018
Dear All,
This is the latest episode of Don’t Press That Button, a newsletter about books and music and movies and cats and baseball and whatnot. As the name would indicate, we are very cautious about buttons around here.
You are doubtless familiar with the phrase “buttoned-up.” Scully is the buttoned up one in The X-Files, a show that I am honestly only passingly familiar with, but I really like Gillian Anderson. I like David Duchovny (Fox) a lot, too, don’t get me wrong. I just think Gillian Anderson is so great, and I trust her, and my general sense is that it was the buttoned-up Scully who was most responsible for their successful investigations.
Anyway, being buttoned up isn’t as fun as being not buttoned up. It has its merits, though. Look at Scully and her record of closed cases and, on balance, what do we lose when we proceed with care? Not much.
The button below simply subscribes you to this newsletter. If you’re new here, and you’d like to stick around, you can safely do so by clicking on it.
We Love It!
With Self Help landing in comic shops next month — June 19th! — I’ve been reflecting on how Jesse Kellerman and I came up with this story.
For a few weeks back in 2018, I had the incredible privilege to be a part of the writers’ room for The Stand, which is an experience I’ll always treasure. I learned a lot about writing for television, and I’m proud to have contributed to a show that I really love.
I also hadn’t lived away from New York for any length of time as an adult. That was hard! (I believe I mentioned in an earlier newsletter that travel is not my strong suit.)
The production installed me at a hotel right beside the Universal CityWalk, and my room was angled in such a way that the giant three-dimensional Stuart that stood over the theme park seemed to keep me under observation. Although I regard the minions as a benevolent force, and I don’t think Stuart ever wanted anything but the best for me, this was weird.
I had a lot of free time on the weekends, which left me feeling lonely, so I tried to keep busy. I ate lunch a couple of times at the Margaritaville restaurant at the CityWalk and took selfies of myself in my Paranoid Style t-shirt in front of the sign so that the band — hardcore Parrotheads, one and all — would know that I was thinking of them. I never saw a single other customer in Margaritaville; it was just me, the servers, and a looped concert video of Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band playing on all the TVs. When I went downtown a stranger pointed at me and said, “I’ll fucking kill you.” My reply, “…OK,” seemed to disappoint him, and he whirled away; I was spared. There seemed to be one weed store for every human. I hiked to the Bat Cave with Daniel and learned that it was more of a tunnel than a cave. I took a walk with Tom and we randomly chatted with a beautiful movie star whose name eluded us both. Josh brought me to a ballgame at Dodger Stadium, and Verlander was not too generous with the home team.
When I was driving on the 405 one evening, amid a stream of traffic, I noticed that the hills we were passing through were on fire. We kept right on driving.
And, at some point, I thought to myself, I need to talk to someone about this place. I called Jesse.
I can’t remember the specifics of our conversation but, essentially, Jesse, a Southern California native, talked me down. He reassured me that I was not losing my mind. It was all real! The best way to process what I was absorbing — the isolating, gorgeous, plastic, scary, funny, tragic, hallucinatory burning desperation of it — was to write something about it. In fact, he thought we should collaborate, which was a dream come true for me, because there’s few cooler guys in this world than Jesse Kellerman, and he’s one hell of a writer.
How the core idea of Self Help came up, I have no clue, but it happened on that call. By the time we finished brainstorming and rang off, we knew about ride share driver Jerry Hauser and his double, the self-help guru Darren Hart, pioneer of the Hart Method.
The Latest
As mentioned above, Self Help will be debuting on June 19th. We would love it if you’d check it out. You can find your nearest comic book store here. If you don’t have a comic store in your area, one place you can order from is Midtown Comics.
Oblong Books just got in a bunch of copies of Sleeping Beauties: Deluxe Remastered Edition, the graphic novel adaptation by our excellent friend Rio Youers.1 If you’d like me to sign a copy for you, they will gladly make that happen.
The Psychic Benefits
It’s time to get back into it with our friends at the Paranoid Style.
I asked Elizabeth Bracy the following: I know that Columbia Recording Artist Bob Dylan is a major influence on the Paranoid Style. Have you ever considered playing one of his songs in concert? If so, which one?
Elizabeth replied, very quickly: “Honest With Me” from Love & Theft. It would also make a good franchise.
Recommendations
Since Elizabeth mentioned it, Love & Theft is a masterpiece and “Mississippi” is his best song of the 21st-century. You should give it a spin.
James by Percival Everett is also a masterpiece. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read Huckleberry Finn or not. You really, really should read this novel.
And that will do it!
In case you ever have a question or a comment or just want to say hi, if you reply to the email, I will see it. I’m over on Instagram, too, if you’d like to follow along there.
All Best,
Owen
Rio’s latest, The Bang-Bang Sisters, arrives in July. I believe, if you seek him out on Instagram, he’ll send you a signed bookplate for your copy.