FSB Author Article
The
Pinball
Theory of
Apocalypse
A Novel
By
Jonathan Selwood
Published by Harper Perennial
August
2007;$13.95US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-06-117387-5
Life -- Or An Amazing Facsimile -- In Postearthquake, Preapocalypse L.A.
For years, painter Isabel Raven has made an almost-living forging Impressionist masterpieces to decorate the McMansions of the not-quite-Sotheby's-auction rich. But when she serendipitously hits on an idea that turns her into the "It Girl" of the L.A. art scene, her career takes off just as the rest of her life heads south. Her personal-chef boyfriend is having a wild sexual dalliance with the teenage self-styled "Latina Britney Spears." If Isabel refuses to participate in an excruciatingly humiliating ad campaign, her sociopathic art dealer is threatening to "gut her like an emu." And her reclusive physicist father has conclusively proven that the end of the world is just around the corner.
Now, with the Apocalypse looming -- and with only a disaffected Dutch-Eskimo billionaire philanthropist and his dissolute thirteen-year-old adopted daughter to guide her -- there's barely enough time remaining for Isabel to reexamine her fragile delusional existence . . . and the delusional reality of her schizophrenic native city.
The story continues at www.isabelraven.com,
where you can view some of Isabel's art, and find out how and when
exactly the
world will end at www.pinballapocalypse.com.
For more information, please visit www.jonathanselwood.com.
Author Bio
Jonathan Selwood -- evil incarnate or poseur
extraordinaire?
I was born in Hollywood, California. In other words, the first time I played doctor as a kid was on a neighbor's circular fur-covered waterbed with a mirror on the ceiling. The girl's parents and two younger siblings were busy out by the pool hosting a nude cocaine party.
My own parents, in contrast, were from back east, and did not partake in nude cocaine parties. I was thus instilled from a young age with a strong New England-style Puritan ethic, while at the same time being raised in what is arguably the most depraved and wantonly hedonistic neighborhood in the world. When I finally graduated high school and left to attend college in Vermont, I was completely ill-prepared for the relative lack of debauchery (i.e., the nude parties had no cocaine, and the cocaine parties had no nudity).
After college, I moved down to Chiapas, Mexico, and tried my best to write on the cheap. It lasted about four months. Then I moved to New York City and tried my best to write on the expensive. It lasted about five years. Eventually I moved to Portland, Oregon, in search of a happy medium.
Portland's been pretty good to me so far, but I must admit that in the dead of a rainy winter, I'm still inclined to wax nostalgic for those carefree sunny southern California days, and the nude cocaine parties of my youth.
Age: 27 (give or take any number of years)
Height: 4 foot 8 inches (seated)
Weight: Enough to throw around
Politics: Lapsed Anarchist
Religion: Evangelical Absurdist
Sport: Shot put
Hobbies: Talking very loudly when intoxicated, composting kitchen scraps, excessively rolling my R's when ordering burrrrrritos . . . using ellipses . . .
Favorite Movie: Without bourbon, Lost in Translation. With bourbon, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Favorite Album: El Poder de New York by Oro Solido
Worst Job: HMO medical equipment denial guy (i.e., "I realize your son has no legs, sir, but I'm afraid his insurance plan doesn't cover wheelchairs. Have you considered duct-taping him to some sort of a skateboard?")
Best Job: Writer
Strangest Job: Bouncer at a bar in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite growing up in Los Angeles, my knowledge of Mexican slang is limited at best. I often resorted to waving a baseball bat in the air and screaming things like, "I throw feces at your slatternly granddaughter's chicken tamales, you obese pubic hair!"
Best Drink I Ever Invented: The Eyeball. (Two ounces Everclear, two ounces water, ice, and three dashes Angostura bitters. Why yes, it is strong . . .)
Worst Drink I Ever Invented: The Exxon Valdez. (Two ounces Kahlua, two ounces Jagermeister. Garnish with an anchovy.)
Reviews
"Read this book, because laughing yourself to death is the second
best
way to go."
--Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up and Chinese
Takeout
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book The
Pinball Theory of Apocalypse
by Jonathan Selwood
Published by Harper Perennial; August
2007;$13.95US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-06-117387-5
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood
Just as I'm touching up the manic glint in Tom Cruise's eyes, another aftershock hits. I stumble back from the easel to try and keep from toppling over, but with the hardwood floor shifting violently in all three dimensions at once, it's like trying to cross a cobblestone street blind drunk in stiletto heels. Fortunately, a waist-high pile of old Celeb magazines breaks my fall.
The tremor ends just seconds after it starts, but a dry fog of lead paint dust continues to sift down from the ceiling. I wait a minute to make sure the ground isn't going to start moving again, then limp over to turn on the clock radio next to the futon couch. A male DJ's voice blares out in midstream.
" . . . is roughly equivalent to dropping a bowling ball off the Eiffel Tower. Please remember that phones should be used only in the case of an emergency, and not to call up the station and request the 'Earthquake Song' by the Little Girls. Let me also remind the two or three of you who haven't heard this before to refrain from firing up that crack pipe until you're absolutely positively sure you don't smell gas, to boil any tap water before drinking, and to slip on those Ugg boots before strolling over the broken glass and shards of jagged metal that most likely carpet your floor. . . . In other disaster news, one of our deservedly unpaid interns managed to spill wheat grass juice in all three CD players, so I'll be dipping into the vinyl vaults as we wait with bated breath for the always riveting Cal Tech report. . . ."
X's "Los Angeles" starts crackling through the clock radio speaker. I turn up the volume, and take a minute to look around at the disaster that was once my apartment.
Dirty plates and cereal bowls are stacked everywhere, improvised ashtrays spill out over piles of old tabloid magazines, and layers of spattered paint cake the hardwood floor in a riot of clown colors. For the past two weeks I haven't seen my boyfriend, Javier, haven't checked the mail, haven't left the apartment for more than half an hour at a time. For the past week I've been too nauseated to eat anything but Trader Joe's pot stickers. And for the past three days I haven't changed out of my paint-spattered black T-shirt and jeans. All of this the result of my attempt to (in the words of my sociopathic art dealer Juan Dahlman) "launch my meteoric rise to fame."
Of course, in addition to the mess are the five new canvases that Dahlman plans to sell for a whopping fifty thousand dollars apiece come my opening Sunday afternoon (he claims Sunday afternoon is the new Thursday). Paintings I originally conceived as a satiric bayonet into the partially hydrogenated heart of contemporary society, but which my two-hundred-dollar-an-hour media training coach has reprogrammed me to call "transcendently kitschy."
Propped against my desk is Raphael's Madonna and Child with the original faces replaced by Britney Spears and her son Sean. Hanging over the futon is David's The Death of Marat featuring a turbaned and bloody Kurt Cobain in the bathtub. And on the easel itself is American Gothic redone with a smiling Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. As usual, the reproductions are technically flawless (with the exception, obviously, of the celebrity substitutions). I suppose if my new career as a sellout artist/media whore implodes, I can always move to Ibiza and become a professional forger.
The aftershock scattered my paintbrushes all over the floor, so I pick them up and carry them into the bathroom to clean. A new earthquake crack has appeared, running diagonally across the mildewed blue shower tile, but the two finished canvases I did with cobalt drier are still miraculously balanced on the towel rack. Placing the brushes in a coffee can on the soap dish ledge, I turn on the faucet. Rust-colored water spurts down into the basin, stops, then starts again with a shuddering of pipes, only to begin immediately pooling up from the paint-clogged drain. I shut the faucet back off, grab a bottle of "eco-friendly" drain cleaner from the ledge of the toilet, and pour the last of it in.
It takes a full minute of staring at the gaunt woman's face in the mirror above the sink for me to recognize it. My skin has drained from what I've always thought of as an SPF 15 pale to a tubercular pallor, my cheeks have sunken in painfully, and the dark circles under my eyes now match my black hair and T-shirt. Jesus, even my eyes themselves seem to be darkening.
The sink finally drains, and I'm about to begin cleaning the brushes, when there's a knock at the front door.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan Selwood