slick

Well, I did. Here were the rules, but to summarize, the winner was going to be selected on the basis of how much this guy, Brandon Scott Gorrell, “enjoyed” the story. So already we’re playing pretty fast and loose. But still, it was only $7 to enter, and it seemed like a fun, sort of grassroots-y kind of contest, a contest I had found out about by reading up on Tao Lin, a writer whom I discovered at a reading at the charity bookstore at which I would eventually volunteer and be crucified.

don't do me like that

I like Lin’s work, at least his poetry specifically, and his blog, to which I already linked. He has a really weird sense of humor mixed in with social dysfunction and depression and technology and self-promotion. He’s sorta shameless in focusing on his career as much as his writing, but, hey, that’s the modern writer, right? All Twittered out with Gmail chats and Facebookings. Lin even sold a MySpace page for, like, $8100. Sold “shares” in his next book, made, like, $12,000. Gotta respect the entrepreneurialism. This Brandon Scott Gorrell has a book or two coming out from Lin’s publishing company, Muumuu House and it’s pretty clear he and Lin are thick as thieves, with Gorrell’s writing a pretty good facsimile of Lin’s.

the mentor/protege relationship

So now, taking into account the curious business sense and grandstanding of the Muumuu House crew and the close relationship between Gorrell and Lin, one could’ve potentially seen how this was all going to turn out, especially with the rules’ ambiguous “I will pick the story I enjoy the most” criteria (although, really, isn’t that how every writing contest is decided? i guess this one was tricky because it was just one person doing the deciding) as well as Gorrell’s declaration *somewhere* that he was going to let Muumuu House employees enter. Lin even said he would probably enter, probably use a pseudonym.

putting the pieces together

Well, you can see where this is going, and so, yes, in fact, Lin did enter and win, though apparently it was more that he “gave” a story to his girlfriend and then she entered the story under her name. Since it wasn’t under Lin’s name, the argument goes that Gorrell didn’t know that it was Lin and so it’s not like the whole thing was totally fixed. And, besides, Gorrell insisted that he had been upfront and totally explained the rules, the rules that allowed and encouraged these kinds of shenanigans. Anyway, the whole thing ignited a shitstorm on the comments section Gorrell’s blog (which was probably the whole idea, I suppose).

"i'm gonna live forever, baby, remember my name!"

The shit goes on and on, but for the most part, the people who were most angry were people who hadn’t entered the contest, but had just heard about how the contest had turned out. Which does sound like absolute bullshit. But I guess Gorrell laid out the rules, so, really, I guess he’s washed his hands of any wrongdoing, other than being just too fucking cute and clever in the retarded chic that seems to be consuming the younger generation. Really, I am around 10+ years older than most of the other contestants, so I was probably barking up the wrong tree to begin with. All I know is, I may be a little retarded, but, folks, I keep it classy. This shit was not classy.

i believe the children are our future

Anyway, Megan Boyle and Michael Inscoe, a couple other losers from the contest have put up a site to collect any other contest losers who want to display their work (and maybe tug a little promotion for themselves after getting jerked around by Gorrell/Lin/Muumuu). So there you can find “The King,” a story I had originally published in Mr. Judas anyway. The version I submitted to the contest has an abbreviated ending.

self... esteem... shrinking...

eyes without a face (or eyes for that matter)

Reports are pouring in about a new Montauk monster. I was excited last year when the original MM (OMM) showed up, as I am usually excited by the term “monster” (who isn’t?). I even sojourned to Montauk itself this February, not so much to see or hopefully see the MM, more out of an inborn instinct to travel to the very tip of things:

Montauk is the tip of the lower pennisula on the far right. Brooklyn is in the lower left.

Montauk was very cool (and cold, as it was February) and very lovely. Devo and I spent an extended Presidentine’s Day weekend at Daunt’s Albatross, which was quaint if backbreaking, and took in a pancake breakfast at the fire station and walked the pristine beaches and forests. We watched a solitary seal lay curved to the sky on a solitary rock until the lapping waves of a stiff wind and rising tide rudely tossed him into the sea and overwhelmed his perch. We saw and a dried-up-and-split-into-pieces carcass of what appeared to be a long-legged starfish (or, you know, a monster). But we saw none of this:

OMMMG

But still, the very notion of a monster, and one so conveniently located, had me hooked. I’ve long been a fan of Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch, the Loch Nech Monster (got to like it when they put “monster” right in the name), Ogopogo, Chupacabra, the Hairy Half-man from Hinkley, dragons, ghosts, aliens, three-card monty and the smile on a dog’s face, so I still carry an affinity for MM, even as it was been explained to me by strangers over coincidental beers that Montauk isn’t far from an animal testing facility and, in all likelihood, MM is just a water-logged pug with it’s face peeled back like a hoodie. So when my friend Lesley said she was selling handmade clay animal heads and would make them by request, I didn’t hesitate to request a bust of the Montauk Monster:

so full of life

a twinkle in the eye

Very cool. I can totally see “Monty” hanging out with Glomer:

But during the design phase of the MM bust, I saw an image, an angle on the beast, that changed everything:

full frontal

Sure, I had been told that MM was just a dog with a ruined face, but now it was clear what I had taken for a turtle beak was just a side view of snout-bone. It’s that angle that had people hooked. Hell, if it had a turtle beak, then anything was possible:

Gojira!

But instead, it’s just some dog gone to pot. Which is the same case with this new photo. Anyone with a casual knowledge of what animal skulls look like (which is maybe less than I imagine, but there are museums full of this stuff) should note the snout-bone jutting from these “monsters” faces. A good axiom for Montauk-monster-hunting: “The snout points it out!”

I think the real question is why are Long Islanders throwing so many dogs into the ocean?

so long, suckers

First, my farewell email to the LA Times was excerpted in an LA Times article about farewell emails several months after I was laid off by the company. I made some “Superman II” references and likened Tribune/LA Times owner Sam Zell to an older version of Non, the mute Kryptonian with the bum heat vision. It was nice to get my name in the paper again, but the article had a sort of undercurrent of “gee, I’m not sure these kinds of farewell emails are a good idea.”

fire bad

Now, after relocating to New York and not finding work for several months and then deciding to volunteer some time at a non-profit bookstore that raises funds for homeless people with HIV/AIDS, I got a note from the volunteer coordinator that NPR was looking to do a video blog story about unemployed volunteers. I figured NPR was cool and, hey, you know, I might as well try to wring some kind of publicity out of my volunteering, so I volunteered to do the interview. I volunteer at the bookstore because it’s a charitable thing to do, plus the bookstore frequently hosts cool literary events featuring writers such as Jonathan Lethem and David Shields. And it’s a book store, and, well, I like books. Volunteering seemed like staying at least tangentially involved in the literary world. So after talking to one of the NPR producers for the NPR, the video crew — who turned out to just be Columbia journalism students — came and interviewed me during my shift. Here is the hatchet job.

cartoonish

I have worked in reality TV, and I have worked in journalism, so I know a certain amount of cherry picking goes into compiling and article or video. You put your trust in the producers/writer/editor’s hands. And these guys squished me like a baby bumble bee. I come off looking like some scoundrel who is dicking around the good people of the non-profit world, leaving them hanging at a moment’s notice. What the video didn’t include is that the bookstore’s volunteer program asks volunteers to agree to a three-month commitment. I have been volunteering there for about two and a half months, so if I did get a job at Barnes & Noble (a line that was basically fed to me by the interviewer and then taken out of context) in the next few weeks, I would have fulfilled my commitment. And there was another unused line where I said that if I did get a job, I would continue to volunteer, though I would probably have to rearrange my schedule (I currently volunteer on Tuesdays, but would probably have to shift to the weekends). Then, on top of that, there’s the part where the volunteer coordinator complains about us unemployed volunteers and how she doesn’t want to spend “five hours” training someone who will then only use that skill for “three hours.” Okay: one, of all the things I have been trained to do at the bookstore, none have taken more than five minutes to learn; two, the volunteer coordinator has never taught me any of these things anyway; and, three, a volunteer shift is four hours, so what is this using the skill for only three hours thing? The math doesn’t add up. Are blogs not subject to fact-checking? I thought this was NPR, not Fox 11.

off you go

Okay, so be crucified in the video itself was rough handling. But then this “Renee” woman gets in a few shots in the comments section under the video blog. She explains that, as a person who works in the non-profit world, it makes sense to her that “these folks [me] are not being welcomed as true volunteers.” “True volunteers.” I am an imposter. A poseur. A burden.

No good deed is left unpunished.

ouch