I just read that Snooki, that illiterate drunken fucking troll from some godawful vulgar 'reality' television show, just got a book deal—and not some tell-all quasi-celebrity memoir: a novel. A NOVEL! And this is the shitty industry I've been struggling to break into for the last several years.
God damn it all to hell. What do I have to do?
I give up. Life has no meaning.
Go away. I need to be alone.
You know what you've got to do: your own reality show.
ReplyDeleteHeh! Or some colossally stupid PR stunt just to get noticed—like balloon boy's parents, then build on that platform, as it were.
ReplyDeleteHey. Maybe I could screw Snooki!
Last night on the Colbert Report, Aaron Sorkin said something about Facebook that really put it in perspective: "Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality."
Here's how it would go: Invent a persona, name him after me, have him do some stunt to get noticed, land a reality TV show, retain a PR flack/coach and struggle to be 'interesting' to folks who think Snooki is important somehow, score a novel deal, publish my shitty novel, crash and burn, then find a nice tall bridge from which to leap to my doom.
Thanks for the comment & welcome to the lousy PR mixed bag that is WoW.
Best,
Jim H.
Reminds me of last year's Stella D'Oro cookie factory strike in the Bronx. Management of the crueler-than-cruel VC firm that purchased the previously family-owned business went too far (they went after pensions, sick-pay, etc.) and the astonished and humiliated workers pushed back with a strike. It was not a decision they made lightly. They struck for just shy of a year with remarkable unity and solidarity; so much time elapsed that the NLRB was finally forced to rule (though they had dithered to the best of their ability), and in the workers' favor at that. But management ultimately "won" by shuttering the factory and moving to another state. 135 families were stripped of their livelihoods and whatever dignity that they had found in working in oven-filled rooms with temperatures of 110 degrees, with the tacit approval of those who had had it in their power to affect a different, more humane, outcome, and all for greed lust.
ReplyDeleteIn their moment in time, the Stella D'Oro workers were abandoned by the wider labor movement--the sugar and flour continued to be delivered by Teamsters even with scabs inside the factory and a 24-hour picket line outside--but ultimately the strikers will be remembered as heroes and exemplars. It goes like that sometimes.
Makes me gasp when I think about what happened. Like when you were diving this summer and your old mask gave way and cracked. Remember the advice you gave yourself? Don't panic and follow the slowest bubble up to the surface. Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out in this instance, in the context of forcing change in the book business (it won't happen without it), that you yourself were the slowest bubble just waiting to be followed?
Might be a relief. No one can humiliate us, unless we allow it.
Funny, indeed.
ReplyDelete'The slowest bubble,' eh?
Is that like when Bill Murray's character in 'Stripes' tells Sgt. Hulka that he is 'that big toe'?
Thanks for lightening the mood of an otherwise dreary day!
Hey, maybe I should go on strike. Think that'll make up sit up and take notice?
(You're the) Best,
Jim H.