Scott Creney

Nirvana’s Nevermind - 20 Years Later

This is without question the most challenging thing I’ve written for Collapse Board. It’s hard enough to write about death and suicide - to get it right, to do justice to such a serious thing. It’s even harder when you know that a friend of the suicide will be editing your article.

http://www.collapseboard.com/features/columns/nirvanas-nevermind-20-years-later/

Even though I was five years younger, I could relate to Kurt Cobain in a pretty serious way. Divorced parents? Check. Hick-town surroundings? Check. Sarcastic to a fault? Check. Think playing music is a way out of all this? Check. Hell, I was even homeless from September 1993 through February 1994. Although, unlike Kurt, I spent most of my nights on top of a stripmall above the Dairy Queen I had recently been fired from. As a lyric, ‘Underneath the bridge,’ definitely sounds a lot cooler than ‘Above the Dairy Queen.’ Maybe that’s why I never made it very far in the music world.

The good thing about this somewhat unhealthy over-identification with KC: When he killed himself, it drove home a very strong point. Becoming a successful musician is not going to solve my problems. I haven’t really trusted music since then. Not as a lifestyle, anyway.

Thankfully, a few years after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, I was accepted to a prestigious liberal arts college in Boston. It turned out that I had a talent for writing. It also turns out that a life in poetry and words can get you into nearly as much trouble as music. But at least bookstores smell better than most rock clubs. And the lifestyle is easier on your hearing.

And as you get older, you realize there are tricks you can learn that will help you remain at least one step ahead of the darkness.

Most of the time, anyway.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Mirror Traffic

http://www.collapseboard.com/reviews/cd-reviews/stephen-malkmus-the-jicks-mirror-traffic-matadordomino/

“Your riddles have run dry. Your mystery is no longer engaging. Your sense of abandon morphed along the way from ‘not giving a fuck’ into ‘not giving a shit’.”

And so on… And so forth… 

Scalpers: The Movie - Sample Chapter

Back in 2002, my friend Alex Gang and I had an idea on how to make some money out of writing (because we sure as shit weren’t going to make any off our poetry). Alex hit on the idea of writing screenplays, and over an afternoon we sketched out the basic outline of Scalpers, a movie starring Matt Damon as a character named Ben, and Ben Affleck as a character named Matt. The two would play a couple of ticket scalpers in Boston, Massachusetts.

A year later I was living in Prescott, Arizona. The screenplay remaned unfinished, but I hit on a better idea. Write the movie as a book and then sell the film rights. We’d probably come out better than if we’d written the screenplay in the first place. Thus was born, Scalpers: The Movie. A book. About a movie.

I wrote the book in ten days, fueled by ephedrine pills and coffee. Naturally, the Red Sox won the World Series the following year in such a dramatic fashion that it made my book seem kind of outdated & quaint. Such is life.

 

     The RedSox have to win in some typically cliched Hollywood fashion. Maybe a homerun in the ninth inning? But the RedSox are away, and even with a homerun in the ninth, the Yankees would still have a turn at-bat. Can’t we get George Lucas’ special effect guys to do something? This is the movies after all. It will be anti-climactic to watch the Yankees bat. Maybe they could just quit because they were so demoralized. Maybe a RedSox pitcher could strike out the side in the bottom of the ninth or something
     I know. We’ll have a RedSox pitcher dying from cancer, arm cancer. The RedSox score a run in the first, and that’s all that they get, but this dying pitcher completely shuts down the Yankee hitters. Unfortunately, the pitcher’s arm is getting eaten away so quickly by the cancer that little pieces of it are starting to flake off. A finger here, a finger there, but still the Yankees can’t hit him. Finally, in the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees are down to their last at-bat. The RedSox manager comes out to talk to his pitcher.
            “How much you got left?” asks the crusty old manager, played by… Burt Lancaster.
            “I could pitch nine more, skip,” says the pitcher, his arm at this point only attached to his shoulder by a thin string of tendon.
            “You know, if you get this guy, they’ll build a statue of you in Boston.”
            “Just make sure they remember to put both my arms on the statue, skip.”
            Burt Lancaster slaps his pitcher on the ass. He returns to the dugout with tears in his eyes.
            The Yankee fans are on their feet, confident that history will repeat itself as it has always repeated itself and provide a Yankee victory. The pitcher throws his last pitch, the Yankee hitter swings and misses. Yankee Stadium is instantly silenced.
             The RedSox players burst out onto the field. They can scarcely believe it. And then they see it. Everybody sees it. Lying there in the grass. Spasming like an electroshock patient.
            It is the pitcher’s arm.
            The Yankee manager argues that the pitch shouldn’t count, but to no avail. The umpire rules that the game is over and the RedSox have won. Seeing his severed arm on the ground, the pitcher’s teammates aren’t sure how to react. They just stare at their pitcher for several seconds, until he lifts his remaining arm into the air and extends an index finger.
            “I only need one arm,” he says. “to tell the whole world that we’re number one.”
            “Good thing we didn’t finish in sixth place,” laughs Burt Lancaster, as the RedSox resume their celebration.

Greil Marcus Ponders Better Than Ezra

The writing of Dear Al-Qaeda

Back in 2004, I was living with Maya Connelly in St. Petersburg, Florida. We were saving up money to move to Mexico where I could live very cheaply and crank out novels until I became slightly less poor and slightly more successful. Soon, she would insist that she needed to go to college instead. Being in love and such, I never made it to Mexico.

We arrived in Florida in a state of extreme poverty. The residence hotel we lived in for the first month (the Villa Nova) blew through most of my savings. And work at Orange Blossom Catering was infrequent in the beginning. Eventually we found a tiny apartment. It had a kitchen, a 12 X 12 foot living room/bedroom and a bathroom. There were no doors. It took us a week to find a curtain for the bathroom, though usually we just left it open.

The idea for Dear Al-Qaeda began as joke I made to Maya. This was only three years after 9/11 and terror fears were still running high. While driving through Atlanta on our way to Florida, the alternative rock station broadcast a commercial for some show at Phillips Arena featuring Audioslave or some other such over-testosteroned drivel. I joked to Maya how disappointing it was that Al-Qaeda probably wouldn’t fly a plane into Phillips Arena that night. I then suggested that someone should write them a letter. The idea for a book was born.

Living in a one-room apartment made it very hard to find the necessary space (physical or mental) to write. As a result, Dear Al-Qaeda was written in the six nights, spread out over a period of four months, that Maya worked and I didn’t. At the time, my only computer was an old 1990-ish Apple IIGS that a friend had given me in college. We didn’t have any dining room furniture, or a desk, or anything like that, so I wrote Dear Al-Qaeda sitting on the tile floor in our kitchen. When my ass got so sore that it made sitting uncomfortable, I would switch up and lay on my stomach. Once that position became uncomfortable I would switch back. And so on, in ever decreasing increments until it became impossible for me to write comfortably. Then I’d go watch tv until Maya got home.

In preparation for each night’s writing, I would walk over to Lucky 7 convenience store and by a 24-oz can of Budweiser, which I would proceed to drink as I brewed a pot of coffee. I found the combination worked pretty well for getting me to sit in front of a computer for 4-5 hours and write as quickly as possible.

I’ve written (nearly) three novels since then, and a book of poetry. But Dear Al-Qaeda remains, to this point, the most fun I’ve had writing a book.

A (More or Less Purposeful) Statement of Purpose

Given the number of people who ask me questions about what I’ve written/what I’m currently working on, it makes sense to set up a place for them to go and check it out. At the very least, this site allows me to give a very simple & concise answer to a question that usually leaves me feeling stumbled & irritated.

Feel free to e-mail me directly at scott_creney@yahoo.com if you’re interested in reading more.

There will be news, sample chapters, and explications about my books, writing, achievements, setbacks, etc. as the mood strikes me. Thanks for following.

A Bookography

Two of these have been published.

2002 – Nation Full of Caesars (Poems)
2003 – A Season in El Cajon 2003
2003 - Scalpers: The Movie (with Alex Gang)
2004 – Just Call Me Snickers by Sara “Snickers” Hannon*
2005 – Dear Al-Qaeda: Letters to the World’s Most Notorious Terror Organization
2006 – The Great ATEP Espionage Thriller
2008 – The Iraqnid
2010 – The Tenuous Connection Between Yoga & Shoplifting (Poems) 
2011 (in progress) – The Insurrectionists

* - Due to be published as an e-book sometime this year.

 

Sometimes I'm a music critic for Collapse Board