Presenting: LAZY & ENTITLED
"We really love each other. We are the best of friends." - Tom DeLonge, banter between songs, 'The Mark Tom and Travis Show'
Programming note: the shipwrecked sailor blog is now a part of Lazy & Entitled Productions, which is a #grindsetmindset way of saying “here’s a post about this thing Brendan and I have been working on and are now announcing to the world.” Nothing about this blog is changing, except more links spamming my own projects.
One more note for The Line Break fans: ball don’t lie, as a better poet once said. The Line Break is going nowhere. Bob and I will be in your ear talking anaphora and the fundamentals of boxing out once a month, don’t worry.
So yeah, Brendan and I started a thing. And we’ve got a serialized novel-in-stories releasing this Friday, on a website that I can’t link here yet because it is still being excavated from a cave in the mountains of Tennessee. UPDATE 9/8/2023: GO TO STORIESFROMVINE.COM
What Is Lazy & Entitled?
A pair of writers and musicians. Call us a “production company” or “media company” or whatever, but we think of ourselves as a band. One that writes stories, too. We’ve been writing together for over 20 years. We’ve called ourselves other names on websites like Myspace and PureVolume, we’ve done projects separately, now we’re weathered old sailors telling stories whilst press-ganged in USian capitalism. More importantly, we’re here.
Our first project, weight of an anchor, was released in 2020. We lived in separate states when we started writing, met in the frigid slush of February 2020 to record drums and rhythm guitars, resolved to live in the same city again, and then Rudy Gobert touched some microphones. The rest was recorded painstakingly (and painfully) separate from one another, but the end result was the kind of peaceful clarity that comes from creating art with your best friend. We’re going to make more records in future. They’ll sound similar and different to weight of an anchor. Please enjoy weight of an anchor.
Our second project, Vine, is releasing on Friday. We originally had this idea back in like 2015. We wrote a couple stories, thought it was a cool idea. Then a billion life things happened. We started writing it seriously in 2022, and now it’s here. Well, there will be links to where it is in this week’s Friday Links, anyway. Want a cover reveal?
Vine is a serialized horror novel-in-stories centered around a small town in the mountains of Tennessee that may or may not have been consecrated by God. Some of the stories are short, some are long. We will be releasing one per day (sometimes more) Monday-Friday from now until late November. On Fridays, we’ll release The Vine Radio Hour, the “audiobook” version that is us reading every story released that week. We’re doing this serialized independent release because we think it’s a fun idea. If serializing your novels is good enough for Charles Dickens or Haruki Murakami, it’s good enough for us. Please enjoy Vine.
Our goal is one project a year, whether a new record or serialized novel. We’ll have other stuff, too—singles, more music videos, there’s talk of a podcast, there’s talk of a litmag/collaborative writing thing, there’s talk of live readings/shows down the line. We’d like to open this space for collaboration with other artists, as we figure out what that looks like. In the meantime, please enjoy weight of an anchor and Vine.
Chris
When I think of the most creatively fulfilling times in my life, I think of a scene. In high school, we had a suburban, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2-inspired punk scene: shows in church basements or in someone’s garage after a day at the skate park. In college, I co-ran a monthly poetry reading series that produced some of Rogers Park’s most literate drinking binges. It’s harder to be part of a scene as an adult, especially as a parent. I can read or listen to whatever I want, almost whenever I want, but I miss the assorted detritus of a scene: limited-release EPs, covertly passed around chapbooks, that time we added a horn section and played a one-night-only ska set. Nothing survives from that set, so don’t ask, but don’t think I’m ashamed. I wrote the hell out of those horn parts, just like I wrote the hell out of this bass line:
I’m well aware that there’s already a vibrant literary and music scene in Chicago. Other places in the world, too. To me, Lazy & Entitled is our little outpost in the scene. It’s a place for Brendan and I to write the stories we think would be cool to read and make the music we think would be cool to listen to, but also a place to celebrate other artists we like. “Everything worthwhile is done with other people,” Mariame Kaba says, and the mission of Lazy & Entitled is collaborative art.
Brendan
I have been a performer most of my life. I have an incredibly useless B.S. in Speech & Theater, a lengthy rock band resume, and a childhood of community theater and school band, which has given me tons of collaborative experiences. Through all these experiences, I very much believe that there is a form of magic that can exist in the collaborative space. That’s what I think Lazy & Entitled is for me. A space for us to cast spells and create stories.
I am lucky enough to share a friendship with Chris, but we also have a long history of making shit together, whether completed or “completed in our brains,” and now it is official: we are still making shit together.
Why ‘Lazy & Entitled?’
Probably since the dawn of human consciousness, older generations have called younger generations variations on these adjectives. It is especially grating, though, in an era where anything that doesn’t have strong shareholder value is seen as frivolous. Remember when that crypto scammer dork said “if you wrote a book, you fucked up, you should’ve written a six paragraph blog post?” The market economy of the United States rewards guys like him far more than the people who find time to create art in between working two jobs that barely cover rent. LAZY & ENTITLED is two big double birds to that.
‘Lazy & Entitled’ is us saying “fuck it, we ball” to an economic system that doesn’t appreciate artists anyway. It’s a celebration of creativity, art, and inclusivity. It’s a place for weirdos and goofballs and outsiders. It’s a place for art outside of capitalism, and as such, is explicitly anti-capitalist and anti- capitalism’s enablers, like racism, homophobia, transphobia, and an IPO. So if you’re a bigot or an MBA, you might not have a great time here. But if you’ve ever written a novel and not shown it to anyone, or if one of your favorite bands is a local band that only you remember and has had all evidence of their existence washed away, you’re our people.
LINKS!
b and the nothingness on Bandcamp
shipwrecked sailor on Bandcamp
Vine
Thank you for reading, and I sincerely hope you enjoy all this. Let’s have some fun.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris (and Brendan)