Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'Now the Hell Will Start'

A Hive of Scum and Villainy

February 1st, 2010 · 8 Comments

The recent passing of J.D. Salinger got us thinking about the small role The Catcher in the Rye played in our decision to wield the (figurative) pen for a living. While we’re pretty sure the book wouldn’t hold up should we crack it again today, it wowed us during junior high. It was, in fact, [...]

Five Hundred

September 1st, 2009 · 13 Comments

According to WordPress’s handy dashboard counter, the words you’re now reading constitute my 500th blog post. So what better time to temporarily drop the royal we and think aloud regarding what this whole blogging deal has taught us—and, perhaps more importantly, why we keep at it despite the ludicrously imbalanced labor-to-reward ratio. When I launched [...]

Done, the Sequel

August 28th, 2009 · 3 Comments

After an insanely hectic five weeks of virtually non-stop mental toil, we can proudly state that we hit our deadline. The second draft of the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay is safely in our boss’s hands, which means it’s time for us to enjoy a rare moment of peace—a moment that’s sure to include [...]

A Word from Our Sponsor

August 25th, 2009 · 4 Comments

Apologies, but posting will be a bit more sporadic than usual over the next few days. We’re in the homestretch on Draft Two of the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay, and we’d really like to avoid imitating the bloke above by blowing our chance at the end. We’re also swamped with an epic Wired [...]

A Death Less Ordinary

August 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments

It’s probably a bit of stretch to file 1999′s Deep Blue Sea under our ever-popular Bad Movie Friday heading. While the premise of the film could scarcely be more ridiculous—hyper-intelligent mako sharks?—the sunken-laboratory thriller is not without its guilty pleasures. Chief among them is this classic scene, which features Samuel L. Jackson at his edgy [...]

Master at Work

August 3rd, 2009 · No Comments

So we’re back to working hard on the screenplay, trying to bang out a second draft by (gulp) August 28th. To get in the right frame of mind, then, we’ve started watching a bunch of cinematic classics that have resided too long on our “must see” list. Chief among these was Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, [...]

“They Do That to Taunt Me”

July 22nd, 2009 · 5 Comments

We’re about to jet downtown for an all-important meeting regarding the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay, so we’ll call it a day with this super-classic clip from Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Though we’re no great fans of the band, we swoon over the doc—a probing portrait of creative minds in crisis, brought on [...]

Mailroom Intelligence

July 13th, 2009 · No Comments

We first fell in love with the oral-history format eons ago, when a copy of Studs Terkel’s The Good War found its way into our grubby hands. Ever since, we’ve rarely passed up the opportunity to comb through typed-up question-and-answer sessions with the sorts of characters who otherwise would be excluded from the history books. [...]

White With Fright

July 10th, 2009 · 3 Comments

There’s an anecdote in Now the Hell Will Start regarding an Assamese tea planter whose arm was chomped off by a Bengal tiger. According to the primary source—a diary kept by an American officer—the trauma of the incident caused the poor planter’s hair to turn white virtually overnight. (The specific time span isn’t mentioned, but [...]

The 75-Cent Plague

July 6th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Reading Walter Kirn’s sharp review of Methland reminded us that speed scares are nothing new. In researching the history of Benzedrine for Now the Hell Will Start, we remember coming across this 1959 Time piece about Eisenhower-era addicts and their penchant for crime. With a few linguistic tweaks, it could easily have been written last [...]

Last Call in Red Hook

July 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments

To borrow a sentiment from Mötley Crüe, it’s time to turn the page on Now the Hell Will Start, our dead-tree labor o’ love. This Sunday, July 5th, we’ll be reading from the book for the very last time, amid the cozy waterfront confines of Sunny’s Bar in beautiful Red Hook. If you’re in New [...]

The Sound of Shreveport

June 17th, 2009 · No Comments

We’re taking the rest of the day to hit the creative reset button—that is, catch up on a zillion-and-one e-mails, and start collating all of the project ideas that piled up while we were banging out the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay. So we’ll outro with this gem from the great African Music Machine, [...]

Heading to the Half King

June 15th, 2009 · No Comments

Shutting it down early to prep for tonight’s reading at The Half King down in Chelsea. For those with easy access to New York’s wondrous subway system, please swing by if the spirit moves you. The address is 505 W. 23rd Street (just west of 10th Avenue), and the festivities kick off at 7 p.m. [...]

Heading to Bed-Stuy

June 11th, 2009 · No Comments

We’re checking out a bit early today, as we’ve got to prepare ourselves for a long-awaited Now the Hell Will Start reading at Bed-Stuy’s primo Browntsone Books. Event details here; please come support The Cause if the spirit moves you.

Microkhan World New York Tour

June 8th, 2009 · 2 Comments

To celebrate the paperback release of Now the Hell Will Start, we’re gonna be hitting the subway system over the coming weeks, doing a trio of readings in our adopted hometown. If any of y’all are in the environs of Gotham, we’d be honored if you’d turn out to support The Cause. Come up and [...]

Breaking the Tape

June 5th, 2009 · 5 Comments

Right around the time this post goes live, we’ll be handing in Act Three of the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay—yes, the project we’ve been using as an excuse to get away with weak blogging for much of the last month. A momentous occasion, and one we would have toasted with copious pints of [...]

Now the Paperback Will Start

May 26th, 2009 · 10 Comments

So at long last, we’ve come to the appointed hour: The Now the Hell Will Start paperback hits stores today, and can currently be had via Amazon for as little as a tenner. Not a bad deal in our humble (albeit biased) opinion, considering the nearly five years’ worth of mental toil contained within those [...]

In Pace Requiescat

May 25th, 2009 · No Comments

We hope the vast majority of our American readers are enjoying the Memorial Day holiday outdoors, and thus won’t be reading these words ’til much later. Microkhan, alas, won’t be barbecuing with y’all—this is just another work day ’round here, as the screenplay deadline looms. We’re gonna devote the bulk of today’s energies to that [...]

“Scattering Like a Pool of Animals”

May 22nd, 2009 · No Comments

One of the greatest research challenges we faced while writing Now the Hell Will Start was the paucity of primary source material describing day-to-day life for African-American GIs. Enlisted men were discouraged from keeping diaries, literacy rates were low, and post-war archivists too often ignored black contributions to the Great Cause—an unholy trifecta for historians [...]

Corporal Gee Eye

May 21st, 2009 · 5 Comments

Okay, we’ve got a spare second while Microkhan Jr. roams about the Sandman’s domain, so it’s time to dash off today’s installment of NtHWS Extras. Our focus today is on the cartoon art of World War II—not the stuff from the homefront op-ed pages, but rather the quasi-humorous strips meant to bolster troop morale. The [...]

An Obscure Flashpoint

May 20th, 2009 · No Comments

Today’s NtHWS Extras installment will have some modern flavor, as we look at one of the planet’s most obscure—and potentially most lethal—territorial disputes: The Sino-Indian tussle over Arunachal Pradesh, where a fair chunk of Now the Hell Will Start is set. The enormous Arunachal is arguably India’s most remote province, populated largely by tribal groups [...]

“My War-Weary Willie…”

May 19th, 2009 · No Comments

Since the missus is gone and we’re dealing with Microkhan Jr. all by our lonesome, we’re gonna post today’s NtHWS Extras installment a bit earlier than usual. Don’t worry, there are non-book goodies to follow today—but those are more easily written when the kid is napping. Today’s focus is the poet laureate of the Ledo [...]

Konyak Chest Tattoos

May 18th, 2009 · No Comments

Once again we’re pressed for time as the screenplay calls, so today’s NtHWS Extra will be yet another visual quickie. The illustration at right, of a Konyak Naga chest tattoo circa 1923, comes courtesy of the great J.H. Hutton, arguably the great dean of Naga anthropology. Hutton did several tours up in the Indo-Burmese hills, [...]

Chasing the Dragon

May 15th, 2009 · No Comments

Today’s installment of NtHWS Extras is gonna have a past-is-prologue feel, as we look back at Japan’s alleged narcotics profiteering during World War II. We’re accustomed to hearing plenty about the Taliban’s reliance on narco-dollars, but Japan’s wartime opium production is now largely forgotten. At the time, however, American politicians were fond of harping on [...]

Temple of Boom

May 14th, 2009 · 2 Comments

We’re so far behind on the screenplay it ain’t even funny, so we need to jet early today and focus on revising Act Three’s supremely clunky dialogue. We’re thus gonna leave you with a somewhat oddball NtHWS Extra: The promotional trailer for Madlib’s absolutely essential Beat Konducta in India. Yeah, it may seem like a [...]

Calcutta R&R

May 13th, 2009 · 1 Comment

We’re swamped with Wired reporting duties for the remainder of the day, so today’s NtHWS Extras installment must once again be a visual quickie. The photo above depicts several African-American GIs enjoying rickshaw rides in Calcutta, the only Indian city with a nearby rest camp willing to accept black soldiers. White American officers, by contrast, [...]

The Glory of Jungle Juice

May 12th, 2009 · No Comments

We have to jet downtown for an evening of semi-responsible alcohol consumption, so today’s edition of NtHWS Extras will be exceedingly brief. It consists, in fact, of little more than the cartoon at right, which Microkhan discovered in the archives of the United States Army Military History Institute. It comes from a scrapbook donated by [...]

Take a Load Off, Insan

May 11th, 2009 · 5 Comments

In today’s installment of NtHWS Extras, we’re gonna revisit one of Microkhan’s very favorite topics: headhunting. Perhaps the most famous anthropological study of the practice is Renato Rosaldo’s Ilongot Headhunting, 1883-1974. The Ilongot, who inhabit the Filipino island of Luzon, are peculiar in that they don’t preserve their captured heads as keepsakes. Rather, they discard [...]

Comfort Girls at the Ledo Stockade

May 8th, 2009 · 4 Comments

An appreciable slice of Now the Hell Will Start takes place in the Ledo Stockade, an United States Army prison in North-East India. The place was known for the casual brutality of its guards, several of whom had worked as chain-gang supervisors back in Uncle Sugar. The stockade’s abysmal conditions play a key role in [...]

The Burma Surgeon

May 7th, 2009 · No Comments

Today’s edition of NtHWS Extras brings us the amazing tale of Dr. Gordon S. Seagrave, arguably one of the most selfless and impressive American expatriates of the 20th century. There is nary a peep about Seagrave in Now the Hell Will Start, primarily because he’s not the sort of bloke you can just casually mention [...]