for 13 April 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Hit & Run Is there any possibility that someone could notify when the current mcsweeney's publicity stunt has ended? It's true that I will endure almost endless tedium when it comes to Internet magazines (I am a devout reader of suck.com after all), but the current state of mcsweeney's exceeds even my endurance. It seems to me that if a publicity stunt is only marginally funny and/or interesting to begin with, dragging it out for an extended period of time will do little to improve it's level of humour or interest. Mcsweeneys's was never terribly consistent to begin with, but at least that was because of the variety of writing. Inconsistency is vastly superior to something with the consistency of cold oatmeal. Cheers, Matthew Dorrell <matthew@silverorange.com> Don't knock cold outmeal, Matthew. There are over six billion people in the world today, and oatmeal will keep more of them from starvation than good writing has ever managed to do. As for the publicity stunt, I think you should steel yourself to the notion that it will never end. But look on the bright side - since McSweeney's itself has always been something of a publicity stunt, its year-plus existence has already built up your publicity-stunt endurance. Though not as effectively as Suck, which is rapidly approaching its fifth year of shoveling out inconsistently tedious oatmeal. Sucksters  Evidence for the claim that the McSweeney.com bail-out is a hoax: the McSweeney children swim on the "Melrose Sharks" team. This same swim team name was used in one of the fake reviews posted for Egger's book. One of the dry wits was too attached to this darling name and reused it. Now, I suppose if someone were industrious enough to do actual research, more compelling evidence could be found. But I'm not that someone. Tim Mitchell Crack Rabbit Cove British Columbia, Canada <tim.pitas.com> Or one of Eggers' minions saw the swim team at McSweeneys.com and worked the name into the fake book review. Or those bad boys at McSweeney's went to the trouble to set up a dummy real estate firm in Woburn Massachussetts, which is listed in the Woburn phone book, mentions "Gerry McSweeney" as an employee on its web site, and refers calls for "Gerry McSweeney" to a guy who identifies himself as "Gerry McSweeney." Or they really did the deal but no money changed hands. Or they didn't but it did. At some point, if they're willing to go to that much trouble on such an uninteresting prank, you've got to concede the point and say "Knock yourselves out, fellas!" Sucksters Hasn't anyone noticed that www.mcsweeneys.com hasn't changed? Shrug, Chris Piuma Editor, flim.com <piuma@flim.com> Oh sure, go on with your crackpot Kremlinology! You know, it's cynics like you who make it hard for good folks to come together in honest and uncomplicated amity. Sucksters Subject: Re: pranks by the "alternative news media" I think what's even more interesting is when in the middle of the year, a New Times paper writes a hoax article about a judge who sends a kid to jail for writing a book report about Where The Wild Things Are. Now, it might be easily dismissed as satire, except for a few kickers. The thing with Chris Beamon (kid writes story about getting high and killing teacher, etc) happened around here, and the judge who did it was named Darlene Whitten. The judge named in the article is a... Darlene Whitten. And there are quotes. Try searching for her name at http://www.dallasobserver.com - she's now suing the paper. Andrew Hime <hime1@gte.net> You should read Warren Hinckle's book and you'll find, once again, that they did it better in the sixties. Ramparts, which had already distinguished itself as the nation's leading voice in JFK assassination theory, then decided to self-deprecate by running a parody review of a fake four-volume book of extreme Oswald-Ruby-Johnson conspiracy theories by" Ulov LeBeouf." The magazine's JFK assassination buffs recognized the parody immediately and were incensed, but the LeBeouf book ended up being cited in the bibliographies of several later JFK books. yr pal, BarTel The Suck Crassroots Movement Well, I tried. I sent the following to the Talk of the Nation installment today that featured The Onion. Often they'll read an e-mail on the air, especially something contrarian, but not a one today: "Subject: Better than the Onion, funnier than all of them. The Onion is cute and chuckle-friendly, but it lacks the gravitas, the moral center, that makes real satire, and soul-stirring belly-laughs, possible. For the real thing, and the best writing on the Web, go to the best magazine on the Web, www.suck.com. Please ask your guests about Suck. Randy Ratliff Kansas City,MO" I won't ask for the smart Suck ball-cap or t-shirt that I crave. I just wanted you to know your demographic is on the march. Randy Ratliff <rratliff@acgtech.com> Thanks, Randy. All efforts touch our hearts. I can't emphasize this enough - TELEPHONE! Telephone, Telephone, Telephone! Use the telephone. This is 2000: everybody knows about email; they're used to ignoring it, and in every subject line they see a subtext note reading "I secretly want you to disregard this message." Why do you think everybody is willing to give out an email address and nobody is willing to give out a phone number? Because they know one doesn't work and the other does. The phone was, is and will continue to be the only proven method for pestering people and getting their attention. This is straight-up advice I'm giving you here, and it applies as much to your work with Applied Communications Group as to any future guerrilla warfare on Suck's behalf. Whatever it is you're trying to accomplish, use the phone! And maybe we should cheese it on the "Suck is better than So-and So" business. Who's got time for the pissing competitions? Try just going with a nice, round, oracular phrase like: "You and I are just passing through history. Suck is history!" yr pal, tim Filler: Do You Have a Bad Head? Subject: bad head cat faces From the Fish page: "Bad headed individuals can have successful, long-term relationships. They just have to choose their partners very carefully. Possible partners those with bad heads: [...] 4. A little doggie" What about the prototypical bad-head animal, cats? They're surly, clumsily manipulative, and alternatingly cloying and standoffish -- all the better to fit a bad-head owner's moods to a T! They even attack furniture! Sean M. Burke <sburke@netadventure.net> Yeah, but cats are really bad when you need comforting and they don't feel like giving it. I'm not saying that they don't get it right when you feel really awful and look sort of pale and downtrodden. But when you're sort of just annoyed and grumpy and you need a happy greeting from the cat, that asshole's off chasing some fly or staring at you from across the room while you yell, "Damn it, come over here right now and give me a nice cuddle, or else!" How stupid do you feel forcing your animal into a hug? Actually, that's part of the benefit of having a cat, though. Making it struggle to break free from your arms, Abominable-Snowman style. Clumsy mean pet owner, Polly Filler: Adulthood and Thank You Notes Not that you care, but I live in Halifax and Filler wasn't up like it usually is when I got into work this morning. I know we're in the Atlantic-who-really-cares zone but there's nothing like seeing my life online to really perk me up every Wednesday. Today I really had a hard time getting started at my job of whore for an ad agency without that little boost. Please try to be more punctual in the future. I'm fragile enough as it is! Thanks. Kara Holm <kara@mctl.ca> That's so funny, because when Filler didn't go up this morning like it usually does, Phil, the production dude, took a break from huffing lemony fresh Pledge and started to really sweat over making Filler live as soon as possible. Or maybe he was sweating from the Pledge inhalation. At any rate, I said, "Hey, Phil, who really cares about those whores in the Atlantic time zone?" But Phil said, "Those Atlantic whores are fragile enough as it is, Polly!" This from a guy whose lips have a perpetual waxy buildup. More fragile than thou, Polly Subject: American Snooty Dear Polly, Filler this week started off as the usual witty, uplifting in a perverse way, graphically augmented essay. The pizza/sack of shit metaphor cracked me up. However, that was the hanging pause at the top of the roller-coaster. From that point on, I was submerged in vertigo and screaming all the way down to the bottom of the pit of my soul. My ego splattered against the hard concrete of loving your friendly cats more than your catty friends, resembling a puddle of mashed bananas. It was an E-ticket having my mind read like that, but please don't do that to me too often. I'm already maxed out on my Celexa dosage. Cheers, Rob Maybe we all need to make some brand new friends. Make new friends and keep the old, one is warm and fuzzy and the other's cold! Just kidding. Catty intellectuals just don't do it for me, though. I'm always walking the line between wanting smart, busybody type friends, like little parrots sitting on my shoulder, commenting intelligently on everything they see, and wanting warm, lovable friends like little doggies wagging their tails whenever I walk in the door, and then sitting next to me while they chew on their bones or bark at stuff outside. I spend a lot of time with the dogs and then I feel slightly bored and hang out with a parrot or two, but then one of them says, "You know, with all due respect, I really think you're oversimplifying the dichotomy I established earlier." Then I get one of my dogs to rip the parrot to shreds. I like smart people who apply their intelligence to stupid things. But smart people often take discussions so seriously that they feel they have to drive their points home or dispute what you just said, and then you've got a pointless one-upmanship situation going on where people defend their sides just to be contrary, even though they generally believe their own arguments about as much as if they were assigned that side in a debate in 10th grade English. I want everyone making sloppily intelligent, grossly exaggerated points for the sake of humor and then tossing back their drinks and moving on to something else. See, I'm way too dimwitted and shallow to warrant dosage adjustments, Rob. Good doggie. Polly Polly, As far as I can tell, you think the Fish page is your own personal forum for rambling on about whatever comes to mind. You never pay any attention to the point a person makes. You just talk about yourself. Get a life. Alicia Randall <alr61@hotmail.com> You know, one of the best things I've ever seen on TV was this interview with Monica Seles last spring. She was talking in this no-nonsense voice about her strategy while they showed clips of her beating someone on the court. Then they cut to a closeup of her mother in the stands, holding a little terrier. Suddenly Monica's voice changed entirely, and she squealed, "There's my little doggie!" It was like suddenly she was so excited for her little doggie, that it got to be on TV. I thought that was pretty cute. And about a million times more interesting than what came before and after it. It was genuinely dorky. Genuine dorkiness is great. It made John Cusack a huge star, for one. What did you want to know again? Polly Polly, What a reassuring treat to see you back on top of your game! I can't tell you how lovely it was to see you reading my thoughts again. I am truly grateful for your creative contibution to my workday. Again, Thank you Anichka <boroughs@law.duke.edu> Back on top of my game? And I'm on top of my game when I'm...reading your thoughts. Very interesting logic. Hey, have you seen that commercial for Budget where they give the guy the jetpack to get to his car? That's the best commercial that's ever been made. The jetpack engine is roaring and the guy standing next to him is screaming something like, "Just remember to shut off the blahblahblah valve before you..." and then... Well, you gotta see it. But I bet you were just thinking about that already. Mindreader, Polly |
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