They're Young. They're Cute. They, Like, Totally Rob Banks

Did you hear about the giggling teenagers who robbed a Bank of America branch inside a supermarket in Acworth, Georgia? And can you imagine the stick-up banter?

GIRL #1: We, like, want your money.

GIRL #2: Shut up! I was supposed to say that!

GIRL #1: Nuh-uuuuh!

GIRL #2: You're such a skank.

GIRL #1: Anyway, like, put everything in my purse. Or like, I'll totally hurt somebody.

GIRL #2: Skank.

GIRL #1: Shut! Up!

GIRL #2: You forgot the thing about the dye whatevers.

GIRL #1: You're such a bee-atch.

GIRL #2: Dye packs. That's it. (Gloating.) Aw, damn, son!

GIRL #1: Shut! Uuuuuup! (Turns to teller.) Now listen carefully. If you don't empty the drawer and place the contents into a white plastic bag... minus dye packs, minus bait money... I'm going to hurt you in a new and profound way. The pain will keep you up nights. It will ruin your marriage. It will haunt you until you die.

(Pause.)

GIRL #2: Skank.

UPDATE (3/2/07): The so-called (alleged) "Barbie bandits" have been arrested, and it looks like it was an inside job.

Memo to Agent Smith: Sign Me Up for One of These, Stat

In my interview with John Kenyon today, I talked about how I loved mixing genres. Well, here's one I never thought of: NASCAR and romance.

It's fucking brilliant. Take fiction's most popular genre, then blend with the nation's most popular... er, sport, and watch the sparks (or, spark plugs as it were) fly. Baby, writing like this just can't help but flood your carburetor:

It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t passive, it was a kiss that instantly proved the two of them were like high-octane fuel, their flesh sparking off each other in such a way that Lance felt the purely caveman urge to pick her up and carry her to bed.

I don't know about you, but I need a cigarette. (Just not near the gas pump.)

UPDATE (7:02 a.m.): I got up in the middle of the night, jotted down these notes on a piece of paper on my nightstand: NASCAR drivers... road race... Jerusalem... trying to find Jesus's bones... James Cameron out to stop them with a submarine... manned by Alec Baldwin. Yes, it's rough. But I think I might be onto something here.

Your Monday Morning Pick-Me-Up

John Kenyon over at Things I'd Rather Be Doing has this cool Monday Interview series, and today he features your favorite Polish crime writer. (That is, your favorite Polish crime writer from Philadelphia. Okay, okay, from the Rhawnhurst section of Philadelphia. Geez, you're so picky.)

Anyway, check it out to learn a bit more about Severance Package, why Hollywood is like a high school sophomore, and my grand career scheme. Which I didn't even know I had until Mr. Kenyon mentioned it.

Oh, Christ

Here's a jaw-dropping bit of news just in time for the First Sunday in Lent. This Monday, director James Cameron is set to announce that... well, you know the whole crucifixion and resurrection thing with Jesus? It didn't happen. At least, not the resurrection part. Because tomorrow, at a press conference in New York City, James Cameron is about to produce the fucking coffin and remains of Jesus Christ.

No, really. Check this out, straight from Time Magazine's Middle East blog, which says the story began at a construction site 27 years ago:

The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.

But what's a few Jewish-sounding names on a bunch of coffins near Jerusalem? Cameron apparently went the distance:

Film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.

Either this is real, and the one-time director of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning is about to bring Christianty to its knees, or Cameron is hoping this stunt will get him the gig directing Indiana Jones and the Body of Christ.

For Appearances' Sake

I know, I know. It's been a week since I last posted. I've been busy with a bunch of things, including some short stories. Three to be exact. One is even a novella (kind of). More on these as I finish them. I hate talking about works in progress. Makes me feel like, as Al Guthrie is fond of saying, a "cuntjobby."

Also, I turned 35 this past week, so I was busy applying for my AARP membership. (I'm telling you, they really make you jump through a bunch of hoops for a friggin' 15% discount at AMC movie theaters.)

But that doesn't mean I'm retreating into a writerly fortress of solitude. Hell no.

On Wednesday, March 14th, I'll be doing a appearance with crime writer D.H. Dublin (in real life, Jonathan McGoran), the author of the cool Body Trace, the first in his Philly-set C.S.U. series. We'll be at Robin's Bookstore (108 South 13th Street) at 7 p.m. But if you feel like a beer, you might find us around the corner at McGillin's Ale House at about 6 p.m. Stop by, I'll buy you a pint of McGillin's Real Ale.

Then in April, it's like I'm on tour again. On April 20th, I'll be flying out to be part of the Alabama Book Festival. (I had a lot of fun in Birmingham and Wetumpka last year; I'm sure Montgomery will rock just as hard.) Then the following Thursday it's the Edgars Banquet. I'll be dusting off the skirt and pom-poms I wore for Sunshine last year and practicing a few cheers for Bill Crider. (Right now, Bill may have just thrown up.) The very next day, I fly out to the Los Angeles Times 12th Annual Festival of Books, where I'll be hanging out (and shacking up) with two other members of the DHS Galaxy of Stars: Victor Gischler and Sean Doolittle.

See? It's almost like I'm sociable.

Phawkin' Cool

Two new Blonde reviews popped up recently. According to Ain't It Cool News's Frank Bascombe, I'm "harder than a coffin nail" and I know "how to streamline a story, keep the pace break neck, sucking all the oxygen out of the room." (Anyone who's attended a party with me knows that last bit is true.) He also called the book a "hell of a wild ride"; read the whole kick-ass review right here.

Phawker.com, which is kind of Philly's own Gawker.com (minus 14 pounds of snark), took a gander at The Blonde yesterday, and reviewer Mavis Linnemann says that "Swierczynski knows how to keep his readers hooked: the twisted-pretzel plot turns and a palpable sense of time accelerating into a race to the apocalypse made it nearly impossible to put down." Okay, it's official: I'm no longer sore about all the times we lost the Artfag Kung-Fu Cover War.

The Boy in the Box, and Why I'm Going To Hell

Two very cool things in tomorrow's City Paper (which is available online right now): Galleycat Sarah Weinman tackles Philly's greatest unsolved mystery, which is a few weeks from being 50 years old: The Boy in the Box. Being a dad, and having a son who is just about the age of the boy who was unceremoniously beaten to death and left to rot in a cardboard box... well, let's say I was already primed. But Sarah pulls off the neat trick of writing a piece that's full of emotion but never mauldin. See for yourself. It will stomp your heart with a hobnailed boot.

The other cool thing? CP staff designer Evan Lopez's cover illustration for this story (above). I have this unofficial habit of taping my favorite covers to my office door, and this one went up yesterday. It could easily be the cover of a noir novel.

Now this next bit is going to sound like a contradiction, but bear with me. For two weeks now, whenever this story would come up in an edit or art meeting, the SNL "Dick in the Box" thing would pop into my head. Every. Single. Time. It got so bad that I started singing it out loud in meetings. Specifically, the middle break, which I modified to fit the details of Sarah's story:

Step one: Find a bassinet box.

Step two: Stuff that boy in that box...

And then managing editor Brian Hickey chimed in with:

Step three: Have a cop open the box. That's the way you do it...

I mean no disrepect to the boy, or the investigation. It horrifies me that crimes like this happen. But sometimes, my reflex is not to cry. Sometimes, it's the exact opposite. As my creative writing teacher, Justin Cronin, once said: "Duane, you are a jelly doughnut just like the rest of us. You have a sentimental center, which you generally keep in check when you write—you bodycheck it into submission, actually.”

Anyway, enjoy Sarah's piece and Evan's artwork. And if you have a spare moment, pray for my soul.

Northeast Philly Freezeout

This is the view from Secret Dead Blog headquarters this morning. It looks like God shot a bag of cocaine open over the entire city. And then sneezed ice on it.

Dexterville

Tuesday is deadline day, which means I'm usually leaving the paper late in the evening. Tonight, it was close to 8. I caught the El and after a few stops, a seat opened up. I pulled out my Pete Dexter collection and enjoyed a few more short columns. I'm really trying to avoid rushing through this book. It's meant to be savored. You can even savor a good Dexter column just by reading the first line:

Friday night in the Northeast, about two blocks from Liberty Bell Race Track, three kids kicked an unarmed, off-duty Philadelphia policeman unconscious in front of his own house.

Old Pete had worked construction since he was eleven.

Sunday is Father's Day, and I'm going to be in Chicago, probably red-eyed and sorry and starting a brand-new drunk with my brother Tom, instead of siting out on the lake with my wife and Casey.

The last time I saw Jack Walsh his head was level on the table with half a dozen empty beer mugs in a bar in Trenton, New Jersey, and he said he was going to do something special for me.

Louie the Dog Boy says he is reformed.

Those are Crumley-worthy lines. Dexter makes it look effortless. And he did it on deadline, all the time.

Meanwhile, I started to become aware of a cell phone conversation behind me, a few seats back. The guy's voice is loud, like he's performing for the entire car. "Yeah I'm doing construction now," he said. "Eighteen bucks an hour. Bought three grand worth of tools, but you know what? Somebody broke into my garage and stole 'em. Yeah. I filed a report with the police. I swear to God."

Man, that sucks, I thought.

Then he continued:

"I gotta be careful, though. I'm on parole. I get so much as a parking ticket and I'm fucked. Judge says he sees me again, I'm goin' away for 22 years. You believe that?" Pause. "Ah, they caught me with all kinds of stuff. I had a .38. Two clips. And a diamond cutter."

This is still Pete Dexter's town.

Required Reading, Vol. 3: Whatever It Takes

I'm a huge fan of 24, but after reading Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on the show's creator, Joel Surnow, some part of me is saying, "Damnit!"

Laura Ingraham, the talk-radio host, has cited [24's] popularity as proof that Americans favor brutality. “They love Jack Bauer,” she noted on Fox News. “In my mind, that’s as close to a national referendum that it’s O.K. to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we’re going to get.”

Another interesting fact: 24 show runner Howard Gordon and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff often socialize together. According to the piece, Chertoff says that, "Frankly, [24] reflects real life."

So the daughters of anti-terrorism agents often run up against mountain cats? The world is scarier than I thought.

Inkstained Poets

There have been three truly great Philadelphia journalists in my lifetime.

Most recently there was Mark Bowden, author of the bloodsoaked epics Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, but also the smaller scale (but superb) Finders Keepers, which I used to assign to my journalism classes a few years back. He was the Philadelphia's Inquirer's superstar throughout the late 90s. (Coincidentally, just today, we all learned that Bowden will be returning to the Inquirer to write a new column called "The Point." This is good news for journalism in a town that could sorely use good journalism news.)

Before Bowden was the amazing Steve Lopez, who wrote a column in the Inquirer's Metro section during the late 80s and early 90s that was essential reading for every city resident. Lopez was funny as shit, and more importantly, he was right on the money, and not afraid to speak truth to power. A sample opening line from one his columns: "I dropped by City Hall Tuesday around noon, carrying some flashcards, and went up to see the mayor." I was old enough to read him in his prime, and he was one of the writers who inspired me to enter this nutty profession. (Later, in 1992, I also had the pleasure of writing a sidebar to a profile of Lopez in Philadelphia Magazine, where I called up Lopez's favorite targets and asked them to fire back. Apparently, Lopez loved it; on the back cover of his 1995 collection, Land of Giants, four of the six blurbs -- e.g., "He wouldn't be the type of guy who I'd have marry my daughter"-- came from that sidebar.) Lopez wrote a few well-received novels, and now pens a column for the L.A. Times that is just as good as his Inquirer stuff. It almost makes you want to move to L.A.

But before Bowden and Lopez, way back in the dirty late 70s and early 80s -- can't you almost hear The Cars and The Clash playing on the jukebox? -- there was Pete Dexter. Before my time, certainly, but his columns for the Philadelphia Daily News were legend... and still are. Dexter was a man who bled for his column. And I mean that literally. In 1981, after writing a column about a drug deal gone bad that left one man dead, Dexter went into arguably the worst neighborhood in Philly to try to talk to man's brother, who was not happy about the coverage. Dexter went into a bar alone, and left with half of his upper teeth missing. He tapped a buddy of his, heavyweight contender, Randall "Tex" Cobb (who you may remember from Raising Arizona), and returned to the bar. That's when 30 neighborhood residents rushed in from a back door, baseball bats in their hands. According to Dexter, Cobb turned to his pal and said, "I hope this is the local softball team."

Of course, it wasn't. Dexter and Cobb made it out of that bar broken men, lucky to be alive.

Later, after a long recovery, Dexter left Philadelphia, and eventually turned to novel-writing full time. And what a series of novels: Deadwood, Paris Trout, Brotherly Love, and most recently, Train. But what made my day today was seeing a new Dexter book on the shelves, released just this past Tuesday: Paper Trails, which is a collection of his columns from the Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, and a few other random magazines. Because as great as the novels are, there's something about the columns that fires me up.

On the train ride home, I flipped to a random column. Number 13. It's almost about nothing -- Dexter's walking down the street, and somebody drops a bottle of Thunderbird wine out a YMCA window on a Monday afternoon. That's it. That's the whole column.

But check out what Dexter does with that moment:

Presently, the oldest one crossed the street and looked down at the bottle and the wet brown bag. Then he leaned back and looked up the side of the YMCA, wondering who would do such a thing.

When he got back, he said, "A whole bottle out the window."

The man with the scar said, "All I know is I got in-surance."

The old man gave him a look. "What the fuck you talkin' about?" he said.

"Just what I'm talkin' about is what the fuck I'm talkin' about," said the man with the scar. "I'm talkin' about in-surance. I'm covered."

The old man said, "You covered in shit."

Goddamn. I'm only a few columns into it, but already, I can't recommend Paper Trails enough.

A Cold 45

I knew there was going to be trouble when I heard the singing.

The Eastbound Frankford El was crowded, as it usually is at 5:20 p.m. on a Monday. But making matters worse was an old drunk guy perched on the handicapped seat with a Colt 45 tallboy in his gnarled hand, belting out a confused medley of R&B; classics while leering at any nearby lifeforms who happened to be female. Nobody wanted to be near him.

I squeezed into an empty space near the side doors and grabbed a pole. A young woman with an unusually full backpack slid in next to me. Her backpack, for some reason, came to a point in the back. This point, unfortunately, was aimed at my crotch.

The drunk guy kept singing, and leering, and drinking, and leering some more. I wished he'd stick to one song. It was confusing trying to identify each with only a single line to go on. I thought I heard a little Peaches & Herb in there, but it was hard to tell.

By Spring Garden Street, he'd goaded a beared guy in a red parka into a rare display of chivalry. They exchanged words.

"You got a girlfriend?" the drunk guy asked.

The bearded guy thought about it, probably wondering how much he should reveal in a crowded train.

"Yeah," he said. "I have a girlfriend."

"She your girlfriend?" the drunk asked, pointing at the object of his affection for the past 30 seconds.

"No, she's not. But if she were, I don't think she'd appreciate you..."

"She ain't your girlfriend, she ain't your girlfriend," the drunk guy crooned.

At Girard Avenue the beared guy exited the train, leaving his non-girlfriend to fend for herself.

By Somerset, even she'd had enough.

"Leave me the fuck alone," she snapped. She stepped out of the doors, rushed down the platform a few yards, and re-entered a different car.

Another woman took her seat.

He started in again with the songs, this time, invading his new victim's personal space to an astounding degree. You better back the fuck off, she said, and the guy responded by taking another hit of his beer, and leaning back in even closer. By the time the train was rocketing towards Erie-Torresdale, the woman stood up and told him, again, to back the fuck off. The drunk guy did not back the fuck off.

So the woman pulled out a cansiter of mace and nailed him in the eyes.

Now for most of the trip, the occupants of the car, myself included, pretended to not notice the drunk guy and his crooning and leering. But the mace attack was a little harder to ignore.

The rows surrounding the drunk guy immediately cleared; people herded toward the middle of the car. "That stuff travels," someone said. "That's mace."

I wondered how long it would take before my eyes started burning.

The woman who'd sprayed the mace looked vaguely satisfied, as if she'd fulfilled a civic duty.

Meanwhile, the drunk guy threw his can of Colt 45 onto the Erie-Torresdale platform, where it exploded spectacularly. He rubbed his face. "I'm burning," he said, though not in the voice of a man who was in fact burning. "I'm burning." He whipped off his belt. It was a thick black leather belt. What, was he going to start swinging it around now?

"Push the emergency button," someone said, as the train raced towards Church Street.

No. The guy wasn't on the attack. He was stripping.

After his jacket came off, and then his sweatshirt, he staggered back to where I was standing. I held out my hand, palm up, to brace him in case he knocked into me. Which he did. He bounced off my palm and tilted to the right. I tried to catch him, but then he suddenly fell to the left and curled up in a ball on the floor of the train.

We were approaching Margaret-Orthodox.

The drunk guy made it to his feet, reached into his pants, presumably to relieve some longtime itch, or to check that his gentials were where he'd left them. He took three steps forward, then proceeded to blow his nose onto the floor of the train. First the right nostril. Then the left.

Then he fell backwards.

"Will somebody please push the emergency button?"

Someone did. Not me. I thought it was bad strategy. We were one stop from the end of the line, and the last thing we needed was to be stalled here in the middle of the freezing tracks, waiting for SEPTA police to show up to escort Mr. Colt 45 off the train.

"Can I help you?" a voice said.

"We need help back here. There's trouble on this train."

"Which car."

"The front car."

"Number 1215," someone else said.

"Thanks for your patience. We'll send help right away."

The train ground to a halt for a few seconds, but it was only to let another train pass. We pulled into the final stop, Bridge Street, and the doors opened. The drunk guy seemed content to lay in front of the open doors, then thought better of it. Wearing only a t-shirt, pants and shoes, he crawled out of the car and made his way to a metal bench on the platform.

The SEPTA cops were no doubt on their way, but I didn't hang around to file a report.

I was just glad my eyes weren't burning.

Required Reading, Vol. 2: Life As We Know It

This isn't new--in fact, I'm fairly sure it's been on the web for quite a few years. But I recently stumbled across author Lewis Shiner's online autobiography, and if it isn't the best online essay on the ups and downs of being a novelist, then you need to show me what is. I first read Shiner's work in a collection of his detective stories, along with some co-written by Joe Lansdale, called Private Eye Action As You Like It. (And I just picked up a used paperback copy of his second novel, Deserted Cities of the Heart, originally released in 1988.) And like his fiction, this essay, titled "Life As We Know It," Shiner doesn't pull any punches, revealing a relentless cycle of dashed dreams and newfound hope:

There were times when the frustrations were overwhelming—insulting rejection letters, manuscripts lost, manuscripts left at the bottom of a slush pile and sent back unread when the market closed, manuscripts mutilated by the post office or stained with spilled coffee. Once a magazine returned a story—after it had been completely copy-edited for publication in green-felt tip pen—with a form rejection slip saying it "duplicates material already in our files" and no other explanation.

Yet at the same time I was slowly dragging myself up by my bootstraps, first wearing my influences like coats of bright red paint, then gradually internalizing them, then finally making my first tentative steps toward originality. I remember getting a tax refund and shelling out two hundred dollars for a reconditioned IBM Selectric. It was a profound and nearly religious experience for me to suddenly be able to produce such physically beautiful manuscripts. I loved the sound of the print ball, the smell of the ribbons, the wide "o" of the Courier font. I was determined to write something worthy of the typewriter and began a story called "Kings of the Afternoon."

If you're a writer, aspiring or otherwise, you really should read this.