1.25.2008
Heyo.
Um…that’s not bad news. You can relax. I’m smiling — a big ol’ shit Drug Eating Grin — about this as we speak.
When Hunter S. Thompson finished his masterwork, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, he was plumb giddy with what he knew was an extreme accomplishment. “I’m high as a pigeon.” He wrote to a friend. Oh shit yes! High as a frikkin pigeon.
That’s when it’s awesome dudes.
I got jabbed in the gut, just now, by a fast Woo-Hoo flash of that Pigeon High plumb giddy thing; it’s a glorious feeling.
Hey Satan! Paid my dues.
Playin’ in a rockin’ band
Hey MAMA! Look at me:
I’m on my way to the Promised Land!!
My friend: thank you.
Upset? Me? Fuck nope! I was upset, old flame, when you nosed through my personal Journal lo those many years ago. Because you read what I wrote about the time I inadvertently slept with your best friend. And I then had to Deal With It — and I didn’t want to. Of course the only solid defense I could mount on my own behalf, that silly day, was a “Foul!” cry because you read about it while you snooped uninvited through my journal. So yeah. I couldn’t help but feel a bit intruded upon. I had to!
In retrospect it kinda makes me chuckle.
Quite funny.
Don’t ya think?
If you’re worried, as it seems, that I’ll feel similarly intruded upon over this thing — fret not!
That said, I am compelled to respectfully request that you not send any high school era journals you may have ah, borrowed from me, way back when, off to be published unbidden!
K?
Onward:
The fact — a fact I’m well aware of — is that I direly need an agent. I absolutely need help with the wherewithal of the marketing angle. So I could harp a bit on the fact that you didn’t ask me first — if you had I would have said “certainly yes!” — but why bother?
You’ve done a tremendously good turn by me.
If we’d agreed to this beforehand I likely would have fiddled with the piece a bit, tried to make it better before you sent it out. Maybe I could have improved it, maybe not. But whatever improvements I made would be promptly undone by the magazine’s final-cut editor before (if) they ever printed the thing. Yeah — I know that routine. I can’t even get a letter to the editor in Brattleboro’s po dunk daily printed without a botch job run on it by the editor. So it really doesn’t matter does it?
What counts is that you say they’re considering my story for publication. They really are? I am astonished.
For real? So it seems. I mean why else would they write you back, months later, to ask for an end-of-article Blurb about me? This is genuine. Huge. GIGANTIC. The New York Times Magazine?!
Even if they never print the thing, shit — they noticed it. They’re genuinely interested. This is the NYT Sunday Magazine we’re talking about; that is no small feat.
I have to compliment you on your good eye in picking out the one piece, out of everything on that blog, that I want to see printed somewhere like the New York Times Magazine. I’m pretty insecure about most of my stuff. But I wrote One Stinking Dollar to be published and I want 10,000 people to read it. So thanks.
As far as the blurb goes…I dunno. What do you think? You’re now my new agent afterall so I value your opinion. Maybe something like: Mike E spent the money he earned from the sale of this article on some rent. He now works gainfully as a freelance writer; studies Math & Economics on the side; spends much of his discretionary income betting on fast racehorses; and hopes one day to enroll in the Entrepreneurial Studies MBA program at Columbia University. Or some such thing?
Also if you can find me any other work…please! I’d prefer to churn out something fresh. I want an Assignment. So if you see anything around that pays say $100-plus which you think is up my alley — let me know pronto, dig?
Soon as we get some dough to roll in I will gleefully pay you the standard agency fee.
I gotta fly — my friend Superstar Brown just got back from Africa and he’s having a dinner party.
Righto.
Yippeee!
A thousand Thanks.
Your Friend,
Mike E
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