Source: agentbedhead.com
I promised myself that brevity would be the soul of this introduction to the Velociworld interview, but I must say that I have been looking forward to posting this for quite some time. Last August, I sent out an inquiry to a handful of bloggers to gauge their interest in being interviewed. Out of the respondents, I must say that the most disturbing response came from Velociman. He expressed an excessive enthusiasm in being questioned by someone other than an inpatient psychiatrist. “I’m IN,” he responded. Well, it seems that all the interviews from that select group had long been completed, and my quest for his interview still persisted. Finally, after meeting at the Jeckyll blogmeet this past April, confirmation was secured. Now with the coveted wisdom plucked from the mind of the master, in regard to delivery, I quoteth the Velociman himself, “Sho now.”
Interrogator: At Velociworld, your blog persona is mostly as a humourist/satirist. What pleases or displeases you about that expectation from your readers?
Velociman: I never built the blog to go that way. It is really just a fallback position. Cheap thrills, a laugh. The fact is I’m too lazy to write seriously at this site, and I am convinced most readers of blogs have the attention span of sand gnats, simply because there is SO MUCH content out there. Either you grab them immediately, or you lose them. The ’sphere is really no place to wax eloquent or long-winded. So humor fills the need to grab the reader. I don’t consider myself funny to others. Hilarious to myself, but I have a warped sense of the absurd, and I really just play to that. My blog is totally about amusing myself in whatever fashion I feel like that day. If you like it, fine, if not, I really don’t give a fuck.
Interrogator: Something I wondered, and I might have asked you this (whilst drunk) in Jeckyll. I do remember asking Eric this question, and he seemed to think I was rather loony – Often when I’m writing, I amuse myself so much that I just laugh my ass off. Repeatedly. Does this happen to you?
Velociman: Oh, hell, I often laugh my ass off at what I’ve written. Tears coarse down my face. Often as not, these are the posts I eventually pull down as ultimately unsatisfactory. It seems one can highly amuse one’s inner twisted sense of humor, with all the obtuse and obscure inner references that sense of humor entails. In other words, what I may find screamingly amusing, no one else gets. They don’t share my context or my own particular points of reference.
Interrogator: So exactly how dangerous is humour anyway?
Velociman: Humor, dangerous? I think not, ever. It certainly can be hurtful, but the whole point of humor is to diffuse rage, anger. I like the fact that black comedians can venture into the whole sphere of life now. I lived through a generation where the only black humor was poking fun at whitey. It gave them a sense of comeuppance, I suppose, but it was boring ultimately. Cosby and Pryor started the maturation of the black comic. Murphy expounded on it, and then it degenerated into mocking the honky. Glad to see that’s over.
Interrogator: When it comes to your use of language, boldness comes to mind. What words have you invented?
Velociman: Good lord, I forget them as soon as I write them. Please paste my archives into a Word document and do spell check. (insert laughter of interrogator.) “Hinky tight” is the only one that comes to mind recently. I was inspired by the whole John Lennon Spanaird in the Works thing, and Lewis Carroll. Jabberwocky is fucking sublime stuff.
Interrogator: What qualities must good literature possess? Need it have an underlying societal or political message to be relevant?
Velociman: All great novels have an underlying theme that bonds the reader to the message. I don’t care for the political, because it is too transient. Societal messages are extremely important, as long as the author doesn’t prosyletize. Look at Dickens. What a fucking genius! Swift! Twain! Only Swift really touched the political, and that was due to the gaol time. THAT is a crowd you want to aspire to hand with. If you don’t have the Big Message, why are you scribbling in the first place?
Interrogator: Okay then, let’s talk about influences. Who are your favourite authors, and does this list morph with time?
Velociman: Yes, the list changes over time. Faulkner, of course, is the God, as a southerner. I love Stanley Elkin. He’s dead now and will be lost to the ages, but if you read The Living End or A Bad Man, you will see the heavy influence he had on me. Erskine Caldwell for the skinned to the bone nature of his writing, and the raw humor. The Painted Bird had me believing Jerzy Kosinski was the greatest thing alive in the Seventies. Then I saw he was an acrobat, a magician, all smoke and mirrors. Everyone has one good book in them, right? I could never understand the popularity of Being There. Patrick O’Brian rocked. The Aubrey/Masturin series is freaking brilliant. I don’t read. I don’t read contemporary authors much. They suck. The best writers nowadays write for the National Enquirer.
Interrogator: What is your honest reaction to Oprah’s “Summer of Faulkner”? Will she butcher his work completely and turn into some deplorable example of the degradation of women (insert any other so-called minority as well)? Will the mass-commercialization of Faulkner be ultimately beneficial to the literary world, or will it ultimately do nothing at all?
Velociman: I think anything that opens up the public to Faulkner is a good thing. Ten percent of the Oprah readers might even “get” him. I’m not an elitist in the sense that I love Faulkner, but only a few of us are intelligent to grasp his ouevre, and I don’t want to share with the plebians, the lowbrows. It’s just like music. Have you ever really heard an obscure band, and once they become very popular, you shun them as having “mainstreamed”? Often the band didn’t change, just your perception of them. High school elitist snobbery is all that is. Being too possessive of the “connection” you had with this artist to want to share. And, of course, as in Faulkner’s case he can’t change, as he daid.
Interrogator: On the matter of content saturation on the web, is anything really relevant online? I mean, with print going out-of-style, what information will actually have an impact on popular culture?
Velociman: I think the beauty of the Net, its accessibility, is also its curse. The power in medieval times lay in the hands of the clergy. They were the only literate folk, therefore they got to tell the story. Gutenberg smashed that. Likewise, the Net was marginalized the MSM. But the written word? It will remain, for the time being, in the hands of the publishing elite. That is a good thing. Thresholds are necessary to cull the wheat from the chaff. I know when I purchase a book, I will receive a modicum of quality. Not so when I turn on the television – Gatekeepers, threholds, whatever. They are the bouncers of the information age. Somebody has to throw da bums out. You won’t get that on the internet. But you get a lot more. Just getting hard to thresh the quality from the shit. TMI.
Interrogator: Speaking from your fatherly perspective, what is the problem with “kids these days”?
Velociman: NOTHING is wrong with kids these days. What’s wrong is their parents, my generation, the fucking Baby Boomers, we grasping, materialistic, self-centered assholes. Slathering our children with every goddamned stick pony and birthday party we never had. And these kids turn out great despite that. Look at the children fighting in Iraq. These are some of the best goddam soldiers any society ever produced. Look at the techies, smart, smart kids. Real genius there. This crop could be the new Greatest Generation. I work with a lot of twenty-somethings. There are slackers, but there are huge peeps there. Good damned people. My kids are going to be great individuals, despite their rather eccentric old man.
Interrogator: Eccentric is one way of putting it, indeed. On a related note, how do you play with reality?
Velociman: I used to do drugs, then alcohol. I dabble a bit still, but there is no thrill in it anymore. I would say I play with reality now with the more preposterous inventions I throw on V-World. The Mutant, that sort of thing. I actually find reality pretty reassuring these days. I missed it for a long time, so I don’t poke the hornet’s nest.
Interrogator: On comedians – Some say that George Carlin has lost his humour, and now he’s just plain angry. Any thoughts?
Velociman: Carlin was cutting edge, and he paved the way like Lenny Bruce did. If everyone stole my thunder and made a career out of it after it was easy, I’d be angry and bitter too. Used to watch him do the Hippy Dippy Mailman on the Kraft Summer Music show in the late Sixties. They wouldn’t let him cut loose. He finally found an audience, and they all ran to the Next Big Thing. Bad ticker on that boy. He’s basically fucked.
Interrogator: Does it much bother you when bloggers “sell out” by accepting donations or advertising money from sponsors?
Velociman: Selling out? I don’t give a fuck. I’m happy some bloggers can make a dime off it. That’s what published authors are in the business of, and I don’t care what they say to the contrary. Those authors always cash the check, eh? Adverts aren’t me, though. I could never do that on my site. I eschew attention here. I am a shitty linker, and I don’t market my site since really, I don’t care. I’d rather have a few amused readers than an entourage, because entourages always turn into corteges, don’t they?
Interrogator: What are you most proud of in your years of tenure at Velociworld?
Velociman: That is hard to say. Six months ago, I would have said “growth as a writer,” or perhaps the realization that I had developed a style, a sense of continuity that would sustain longer work. Lately, however, I consider the World a bucket of shards. There isn’t any real writing going on here anymore. It’s a mere masturbatory exercise to flex the mind. No thought, or passion, behind the cheap shot posts I put up.
Interrogator: Whenever possible, I prefer to end on a sentimental note. Heh. Who inspires you the very most?
Velociman: No one, really. I have no role models, no idols. I had them as a youngster, and they all turned out to be base pricks, just like me. I would like to say I admire those who toil selflessly for the unfortunate, the fucked, but the skeptic asks “Why? So you can sleep better at night?” I suppose I admire those who can rise and shine and put on the squeaky face and engage the world like a freaking Disney character. I admire the ability, but I loathe the concept. I am a misanthrope, hopelessly jaded. We all end up like that, except for Jonathan Winters.
Interrogator: And of course, that’s about as sentimental as Velociman gets. Then again, I was only kidding, since I don’t interview those sensitive folk. To this writer whom I respect beyond words, thank you for the pleasure of interviewing.
