T H E K I C K .
I'm reading "Kicking Ass and Saving Souls," David Matthew's biography of real-life action figure Stefan Templeton. So far, Templeton has been a deep-sea diver, a humanitarian relief worker, a blackbelt, a lover of a few dozen or so beautiful women, and an avenger for the weak in the ghettos of Baltimore. He knows several languages, survived an attack by the Yakuza and oh yeah, I'm only halfway through the book. I've had a difficult time believing half of this stuff, but I've done some searches and it all appears to be true. Still, when I interview Matthews next week (no relation to the musician, by the by), I'm gonna lead off with "No, seriously. You guys made all this up, right?"
It's tough, encountering such extraordinary people and not comparing their accomplishments to my own. I don't have a childhood worthy of biography, and aside from a few titillating moments and close calls -- most of them collected while I was working as a journalist in Las Vegas -- I don't have a lot in the way of interesting anecdotes. (None of them interest me, anyway, but I fully admit that I may be too close to this to be objective). That's why so much of my writing deals with the nuts-and-bolts operation of the mind, because everyone can relate to that (everyone with a mind, anyway), and because things are always happening in there. There's deep-sea diving and flying saucer attacks and orgies and stillness, which is my favorite. To paraphrase "Barton Fink," I consider it a privilege to show my readers the life of a mind. And who knows? Maybe I'll piss off the Yakuza today, at the gym or something. It'll give me and Matthews something to talk about.