H. Seitz
July 24, 2020
Fiction
I was 26 and had just finished my first novel, or technically, novella. It was a crazed, pointless story about a drunken airline pilot with no discernible plot or structure. My main point, or “meta” point, was that books are mostly filler. Was it vital to know that Gary’s shirt was wrinkled, or that there were always little white blotches of spittle at the corners of his mouth, when he does nothing of consequence and we never see him again? A person’s size matters if they have to cram themselves into an airline seat. He or she had a name if they needed one. The smear of whitewash where some lazy painter had wiped off his roller was important if it helped you to recognize a building. Otherwise, it was just crap. Words to make a book heavy or large or long enough to justify its price. The more time…
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H. Seitz
July 20, 2020
Divine Advice
Anthony Fauci, Baron Trump, Barron Trump, COVID-19, Don Jr., Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Ivanka, Jesus Christ, Mr. Belvedere, Robert Goulet, Satan, Tiffany Trump, Timothy Harleth
Dear DA, Where to begin. I passed Dr. Anthony Fauci this morning sitting alone in a chair facing the corner, like a kid who was being punished. All that was missing was a dunce cap. According to Dr. Faucci, the President told him he was on a “time out” for getting too excited about COVID-19. According to Trump, no matter how many people are dying, that’s no reason to get “snippy,” and frankly, he’s getting tired of hearing about it. Every morning, it’s COVID-19 this and COVID-19 that. Obviously Dr. Faucci had never been to finishing school, otherwise he would have learned that it’s rude to keep talking about diseases all the time. I also passed Ivanka. She was sitting on an ottoman talking to a can of beans and looked terrified. The Trump boys were playing in their pillow fort as usual. They flip a coin to see who…
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H. Seitz
July 13, 2020
Divine Advice
Big Mac, Bill Skarsgard, Burger King, Coke, Fry Guys, Grimace, It, Jesus, John Schnatter, McDLT, McDonald's, McRib, Officer Big Mac, Papa John's, Popeye, Ronald McDonald, Satan, Shamrock Shake, The Duke of Doubt, The Hamburglar, Tim Curry, Wimpy
Dear DA, This shutdown has been rough for me. I literally have billions of burger patties and McNuggets that have been piling up in warehouses for months. Fortunately, most of our food never goes bad, but still, it’s been a logistical nightmare. Most of our regular customers look and feel better than they have in years, and they’re beginning to put two and two together. They still miss our food, but they don’t miss the flop sweat on the toilet or the heart palpitations. At this point, our food is pretty much out of their systems. They’re still addicted to soda, but no one comes to McDonald’s for the soda. I’m still evil just like all clowns, but even I have my limits. How do I get these people back, and do I even want to? And assuming I do want to change, what should I do? There aren’t many…
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H. Seitz
July 10, 2020
Horoscopes
Aquarius, Aries, Cancer, Capricorn, Gemini, Horoscopes, Leo, Libra, Pisces, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Taurus, Virgo
Cancer Sure it’s fun to hang out with your cousin. He has an Xbox, he lets you drink his mom’s wine coolers, and he has the special edition Twilight box set with the pop-up Kristen Stewart. But do you ever wonder why your crotch is always so sore the next morning and you can barely remember a thing? On second thought, maybe don’t bother wondering and just stop hanging out with your cousin. Leo I think it’s time we put an end to this farce. You’re on your third mortgage, pay two grand a month in alimony, and are lucky to have the dead-end, mid-management job you somehow managed to con your way into. Unless you win the lottery or get struck by a meteor, your life, for all practical purposes, is over. Virgo Technically, it’s possible that you could quit drugs and turn your…
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H. Seitz
July 8, 2020
Fiction
Harry Seitz, How I Met Your Mother, Mabel
I met this charming bird in a boutique just south of Oxford Street between Regent Street and Charing Cross Road. I asked her if she’d like to go out to dinner with me, maybe for some Chinese, since Chinatown was just a few blocks south. She said that it was lovely of me to offer, but if it was all the same to me, she’d rather just shag straight off in a little room she had in the back. I asked her why she had a little room in the back of a boutique and she just smiled and laughed at me like I was an idiot. Perhaps what they said about European women was true, “they” being American men who had been abroad, and “what they said” being that European women are the best women on earth. Of course they were flighty and crazy like all women everywhere, but…
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H. Seitz
July 6, 2020
Divine Advice
Abby Hornacek, Ainsley Earhardt, Ann Coulter, Britt McHenry, Carley Shimkus, Dana Perino, Donald Trump, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Gretchen Carlson, Heather Nauert, Jesus, Jillian Mele, Kat Timpf, Katie Pavlich, Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingraham, Laurie Dhue, Martha MacCallum, Megyn Kelly, Satan, Shannon Bream, Suzanne Scott, Tomi Lahren, Trish Regan
Dear DA, I know that we’ve had our differences, but you’ve got to admit that you were impressed when I said, with a straight face, that Trump “is the most informed person on planet Earth when it comes to the threats that we face.” Technically, Trump is one of the biggest threats we face, so you could argue that I was actually telling the truth since Trump knows himself better than anyone, but you’d be wrong. The only test of self-awareness Trump passed was the mirror test, and he yelled at the mirror that it was fake news. The way he is on TV isn’t an act, and all of the worst things you’ve heard about him are absolutely true. He tries to grope me every day, and he keeps calling me Ivanka and accusing me of being a fickle tease. I understand that the conspiracy theories of willfully ignorant…
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H. Seitz
June 29, 2020
Divine Advice
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrew McCarthy, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Ducky, Glasses Girl, James Spader, Jesus Christ, John Hughes, Jon Cryer, Made in Manhattan, Mitch McConnell, Molly Ringwald, Pretty in Pink, Randy Feenstra, Satan, Steve King
Dear DA, Well it’s official: we are on the brink of the Apocalypse. AOC, or as I like to call her, Glasses Girl, just won her primary, and I just lost mine, and she had to go rub my nose in it by calling me out on Twitter. To be fair, I kind of accused her of being a shifty Mexican liar, but the only reason I even mentioned her name was to see if she’d pay attention to me. I know I’m supposed to hate her, but it’s like one of those teen movies where I’m the Superstud Jock and she’s the nerdy Glasses Girl. My plan was to win a bet with Mitch McConnell that I could take her to prom and dump a bucket of pig’s blood on her when we went up onstage to get our crowns, but somewhere along the way, I fell for her…
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H. Seitz
June 22, 2020
Divine Advice
Colin Kaepernick, Die Hard, Hans Gruber, Jarome Iginla, John Tortorella, NASCAR, Tim Tebow
Dear DA, When it comes to protesting, we just can’t seem to get it right. So for taking a peaceful knee before a football game, I humbly apologize. When most Americans stand for the national anthem in front of 60,000 spectators before starting their shift, they don’t take a knee, no matter how much revenue they generate for the league or how little the league cares about issues directly impacting their communities. So if they can suck it up, I suppose I can, too. These poor people already had to hear about minorities being brutalized on the news, and there I go making them think about it again on gameday? Haven’t they already suffered enough? Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking. Tens of thousands of veterans died defending our right to blindly worship a piece of cloth, and I should respect them by respecting that piece of cloth…
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H. Seitz
June 15, 2020
Divine Advice
Anne Hathaway, Brown Bunny, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Hans Zimmer, Heath Ledger, J.J. Abrams, Katie Holmes, Liam Neeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Pornhub, The Dark Knight, Tom Hardy, Vincent Gallo
Dear DA, It seemed extravagant at the time, but I’m thanking my lucky stars I bought my Dolby home theater when I did. The difference is like watching Pornhub on your phone vs being in an actual whorehouse. You want to hear my famous “BWAANG!” sound the way I intended, it’s the only way to go. We’re all working really hard on Tenet, which may be the last major studio release ever. Of all the things affected by COVID-19, the cinema being shut down has probably hit me the hardest. I’ll be sitting around knackered and think to myself that a nice trip to the cinema would be just the thing, but then I remember the cinema is no longer an option. They’ll reopen for Tenet, for one last gasp as they say, and that’ll be that. Maybe Drive-Ins will make a comeback? My “BWAANG!” sound doesn’t quite come through…
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H. Seitz
June 8, 2020
Divine Advice
Charles Koch, David Koch, Hitler, Jesus, Mother Teresa, Satan
Dear DA, Why is it so difficult for most Americans to understand that all I and most of the “radical” right want is to go back in time to a mythical dreamland that never really existed? Where there were milkmen in blue onesies, wives always had supper waiting, and everyone was white. And when are black people going to understand that no matter how many of them “die,” that’s no good reason to damage property or disrupt revenue streams? I get it, I want to protest myself sometimes, especially when it comes to taxes. My net worth of $48 billion might sound like a lot, but really, it isn’t nearly enough. Regardless, when I want to pout, I put on my big-boy pants and do it alone in my garage as God intended. I would never dream of tainting an NFL football game with politics. I know that the media…
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