Add a few pads to the resume:

The Moscow Times: "US Army Luring New Recruits With War Game"

Lexington Herald-Leader: "Army Tries New Recruiting Strategy"

The Sun News: "Army launches virtual offensive for potential recruits"

It's time to update the old bio. Our contest last week may have come a bit soon, so lets try this out:

Brendan Sullivan is a lame ass white kid from suburban Connecticut. His stories have been published in The Hartford Courant, The New York Post, The Baltimore Sun, Flak Magazine, Contra Cost Times, Calgaray Herald (Canada), The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale), and Right Here.

Almost all of those credits come from the Cusack for President story, which ran this week in about a dozen newspapers.

Read the story, repeatedly:

New York Post
Calgary Times (USA Today of Canada on Canada.com)
Contra Costa Times (San Fran)
Sun Sentinel

It's running in the Sunday Arts section of the Baltimore Sun, too.

Oh, yeah and the Hartford Courant where my editor said of the story that it wouldn't run as the centerpiece "because we put 'silly stuff' out front."

The boss says today is a big day. "Your Cusack story just went out on the national entertainment wire."

Yeah, hoo-rah, yahoo. "You're supposed to celebrate." Sure, except: it means than any newspaper in the country can take the story, take out anything they want--including my name--and not send me a single dime.

This is the second exciting/depressing peice of news I've received from the boss this week. Yesterday she told me that the managing editor told her it should have been front page. Again: Yeah, who-hoo.

Now I have the joy or reading my own words, after dear old Editor Scissorhands cuts out my little jabs and adds things like "begin optional cut out" or "Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
AP-NY-07-23-02 1122EDT"

The embarassing part is that I was in the middle of reworking some paragraphs to send the story to salon.com when my boss came over to tell me it had been syndicated. Whoops.

Afternoons of "The Beverly Hillbillies" had made me hopeful of sitting in a diner somewhere and responding to the question, "Wee-doggie, boys, what kinda vittles can I rustle up for y’all?"

This was a foreign phrase I had prepared for, but never heard. The way that Americans in French Canadia keep their ears open should someone propose: "Vous le vous cuchous avek mois, ce swah?"

Instead I discovered that certain phrases are said the same but don’t mean the same thing.

Third grade teachers call them "homophones."

At "The OK Café" in Montana on the other side of Yellowstone National Park we sipped water with ice for the first time in far too long and fiddle with salt and pepper shakers. From behind the counter, a weary vein popped out of our waitress’s forehead as she tottered over to the table with our dinner.

A plate that resembled a ceramic hubcap came down with a mighty thunk, and revealed a dozen onion rings of roughly the size and weight of horseshoes. "Good God!" I flinched.

She paused for a few seconds and held on to the plate. Her arm remained upturned and motionless, as if the onion tires had snapped her wrist.

I looked up wondering if she needed someone to lift the plate off of her crushed fingers. The restaurant went a bit silent, and another waitress from beside the milk-shake maker looked at me as thought I had dropped this house on her sister.
"Yes," our waitress said as her fingers curled away from the plate. "God is good."

Afternoons of "The Beverly Hillbillies" had made me hopeful of sitting in a diner somewhere and responding to the question, "Wee-doggie, boys, what kinda vittles can I rustle up for y’all?"

This was a foreign phrase I had prepared for, but never heard. The way that Americans in French Canadia keep their ears open should someone propose: "Vous le vous cuchous avek mois, ce swah?"

Instead I discovered that certain phrases are said the same but don’t mean the same thing.

Third grade teachers call them "homophones."

At "The OK Café" in Montana on the other side of Yellowstone National Park we sipped water with ice for the first time in far too long and fiddle with salt and pepper shakers. From behind the counter, a weary vein popped out of our waitress’s forehead as she tottered over to the table with our dinner.

A plate that resembled a ceramic hubcap came down with a mighty thunk, and revealed a dozen onion rings of roughly the size and weight of horseshoes. "Good God!" I flinched.

She paused for a few seconds and held on to the plate. Her arm remained upturned and motionless, as if the onion tires had snapped her wrist.

I looked up wondering if she needed someone to lift the plate off of her crushed fingers. The restaurant went a bit silent, and another waitress from beside the milk-shake maker looked at me as thought I had dropped this house on her sister.

"Yes," our waitress said as her fingers curled away from the plate. "God is good."

UPDATE

A magazine rejected my story about getting rejected from magazines. A new high and low.

Hey Brendan--Thanks so much for writing. I do like your voice in this piece, but in general I tend to shy away from writing about writing. Maybe you have something else in your hat, though...

Take care and thanks again! AF

Wow.

Suburban sports have become less of a great way to get exercise and more of an excercize of our great ways.

Kids in the suburbs of course grow up now only to play two sports:

Extreme.

And golf.

Golf exists to make use of the suburbs. It takes me twenty-five minutes and four golf courses to get from my suburban home to the city where I work. Sometimes when I wait at a stoplight for an overweight Montana Max characters to drive their golf carts across the street.
I know how they feel. Whenever I skip work to go to the beach or to screw around all day, I drive around in clothes that couldn’t get David Letterman a job and stop for yellow lights. People in the rearview mirror sweat through the light and busy their way back to work, while they stare at a rusty toyota in front of them, where they can faintly hear the driver saying, "Hello and thanks for listening to your favorite radio station this is Double-U-I-don’t-have-to-go-to-work-today."

Golf is acres and acres of waste. Of over-kept lawns, pesticide ridden fields, and leagues of water holes and streams that feed chemicals into the watertable. Greenpaint may be among them.

More expensive than your average 2 mile walk. Most courses run about $20 a game, and that’s for a public course. Country clubs make you pay them $20 grand just to get considered for membership,

While golf may be and exercise in whiteness, everything under the extreme sports umbrella I merely a rejection of whiteness, and an
embrace.

A few alert people have noticed a dearth of people of color in the extremes. The simple fact of the matter is that life just isn’t that scary for white people, specifically white men.

We look around and see our faces everywhere. Statues, currency, nightly news. For those of us in the suburbs, we tuck in to bed at night
and are usually more concerned that we may have missed something on TV than that a car outside is locking or loading.

So we invented the extreme sports. Our own way to kill ourselves, or at least scare ourselves to death. This is not limited to skydiving or bugee jumping—although we can’t ignore the simple fact that for no reason, we white people will attempt to kill ourselves at high altitudes.

Even skiing or snowboarding counts. The conditions breed uncertainty.

Is there ice ahead? What will happen when I hit that bump?

Is there a man hiding in the alley over there? Was that the sound of a gun loading?

Extreme sports attempt to scare us, to make our lives uncomfortable, to push the limits of the country club..

But sadly at the end of a day of skiing or surfing the average suburban person has not come to any new realizations about the fragility of life, nor its meaning. Instead, we end up the way golf begins.

Golf begins with, "Look at me! I am invincible! Can you even see the amount of land and resources I have at my fundamentally unaerobic and silly endeavor?"

X ends with the ego as well, "Look at me! I am invincible! Witness, if you will, the vast array of uncertainties and uncomfortable situations I faced today for a brief period!"

Extreme oriented people wait at golf-cart crossing signs and scoff at the overweight monopoly guys. But honestly. Like golf the x-sports involve funny looking clothing. Pants that zip into shorts, flashlights with headbands straps, and lots and lots of gear that, like golf clubs, are really expensive and justified only by degrees of shininess and the usage of metals that the purchaser could not recall from chemistry class.

And of course, both sports will probably end in beer.

The French word for orgasm—as I understand it—means “a bit of death.”

Le petite mort.

It stems from a long standing belief that everyone carried a finite amount of joy. An orgasm bank account that earned no interest. Each expenditure subtracted years from the balance. A bit of death, a step to dying.

The white truck comes at lunch and sorts out magazines and bills and letters.

On an envelope that I can’t remember buying: my own handwriting, my own name and address.

A letter to me, from me.

I daresay: with love.

The handwriting on the outside looks only similar to my own. To me, from someone somewhat like me. The slow elaboration of someone who writes slow, to assure that handwriting will not impede the arrival of this forgotten letter.

Inside: a letter neither to me, nor from me.

But for me.

A half-sheet of letterhead from a magazine called The Sun. The size of a sick note from your mother. The man whose face emerges from graphic of a sun in the upperlefthandcorner looks serious. As a police officer, it would deliver news like this with its hat off, holding it in its hands.

Thanks for sending us you work, but it’s not right for THE SUN.

This isn’t a reflection on your writing. We pick perhaps one out of a hundred submissions, and the selection process is highly subjective, something of a mystery even to us…

We wish you the best in placing your writing elsewhere.

(Signed)

A Xeroxed Scribble.

Editor, The Sun

My familiarity with these letters is morbid. I collect them, I file them. For a brief period freshman year I sent them in for the Kenyon Review; writing Sorry, But Thanks, on each one in ink. Not Xerox.

Each time they come in the mail I cannot reconcile their existence. As a 19-year-old I wrote a story and—upon convincing myself of its masterpiece-ary—sent it to the magazine in a big manila envelope.

Along with a self addressed, stamped envelope.

The twenty-year-old who opens this laughs, thinking about how the postage rate has gone up three cents since then.

The law of averages would argue that I have a finite ratio of rejections and acceptions. That I can only get letters that use my name and include rewrites and suggestions if I am ready to accept that some stories won’t make it back alive.

But still. With each rejection I die a little bit inside.

No more, of course, than with each acceptance letter.

But each one changes the story. Changes the degree to which the handwriting on the envelope will slow itself.

This isn’t a reflection on your writing.

No, it’s a wrinkle.

Interview with Janeane Garofalo

This wonderful internet thing is going to save me all of that embarassment of sending in a half assed interview to the editor. So please, if you would, read through the thing and let me know what you think. After each question there is a place to leave comments. Let me know what works, what doesn't work, what is worthless, what to cut, etc.

Also, I've included a running interview with my inner monologue in the comments part of each question.

Here goes:

For fifteen measley minutes she takes the stage in her cats eye glasses and slightly oversized (by indie standards) torquoise “Le Tigre” t-shirt. Her openers involve the pitfalls of doing standup behind a podium in a coliseum. The audience gives an extra laugh to the unsaid job that she is, of course, just about a foot taller than the four foot high podium

BS: A lot of people saw your name on a Ralph Nader poster for the event and said “Janeane Garofalo, what is she doing there?’ After you did Anita Hoffman in “Steal this Movie” where you played a sixties radical, were alot of people surprised that your political side wasn’t just an act?

JG: But the thing is you know what’s strange is that everyone always says “What are you doing here?” As if people that are in entertainment are not valid. Or their opinions are not valid. Or they are incredibly unintelligent and how could they possibly be. People’s first instinct is just because someone chooses entertainment as a career is How dare they? Or Fuck Them.

Or you know what I mean? Like, Like.

If I was an accountant or someone else you would not go ‘What are you doing at a Ralph Nader Rally? You’re business manager.’ You know what I mean? I never really know how to answer that. Why would they be surprised that anyone is anything? That anybody is politcal in anyway. Everybody’s got something.

BS: When you do your stand up now, you said that you mention the name George Bush and people start applauding. What is the sort of ? you know what is the? How do you get around that? Do you still lean politically?

JG: Oh I always talk about –my show is two hours long and I talk about so many thing, Politics being one of them--or my opinions on them--the thing is that I try and be about as diplomatic as you can be. And I’ll say look I’m just trying to tell you my opinion, this is what I think. And then they’re things I’ll say about George W. Bush that are just facts. And people’ll boo you and say you’re not patriotic. But you know I have very little tolerance for ignorant people. And you are blindly supportive of any sitting president, blindly supportive of any check that he writes to the pentagon. Blindly supportive of anything Ari Fleisher spins out at you every morning, then you are stupid--you know what I mean?--you are stupid and that is your problem.

If you feel the need to boo because you’ve got your head in the sand then I am sorry that you came to see my show. Sorry, but you are not going to like this.

What bothers you the most about people who respond to your act in that way?

It is very frustrating to try and talk to people that have really mediocre ideas on the media and on our sitting president and who don’t see--and you know what else I can’t take? It’s when people say regarding the Gore/Bush/Nader Election ‘Hey, get over it.’ An election was hijacked, we are living with an undemocratically elected president—not that we have democratically elected presidents—but a glaringly undemocratically elected president. And if you say ‘Get over it’ about something as vital as that then you are broadcasting to me that you are ignorant. And you are apathetic and you don’t deserve democratic representation and you don’t deserve to see standup comedy and therefore I think you need to leave.

Like that’s how I feel about it. I have just never understood blind support for a sitting president. I never have understood that. I don’t mind supporting people that I don’t like being given disinformation, being spun, and not having a democratically elected president. And I also don’t like having no choices. The definition of an oppressed person is a person without choices. So therefore we are an oppressed people.

And then when you say that, when you suggest that to other Americans, ‘Y’know you’re oppressed.’ That’s when the booing starts. Because God forbid you suggest something like that. You know?

But yeah we are oppressed. We don’t have any choices. We don’t have any choices about the music we listen to. We don’t have choice of who is President, who is quote unquote leading us. We don’t have choice in the programs we watch on TV. You know?

_________
"Our version of the Burka is the half-shirt."
_________

BS: You’ve always been pretty outspoken about the entertainment industry, especially about how women are represented. Could I get your thoughts on Queen Amidala in the recent Star Wars movie? Did you see it?

JG: No I’ve only seen the first star wars ever and that was in like 1976. I’m not much of a Star Wars enthusiast. So I don’t know what you are referring to. Is that Natalie Portman’s character?

BS: Yeah, there is this once scene that would not exist without Britanny spears where she’s fighting and--

JG: --Does it have to do with a half-shirt?

BS: It does. Yes, it does.

JG: How did I know that?

BS: Yes, so some phallic structure gets wrapped around her and when it tears away she’s got this Half Shirt and she fights—

JG: It is so banal for me to see half shirts now it is like our burka. It’s like our version of the Burka is the half-shirt. And so I feel just as oppressed by the half shirt as I do if I were forced to wear a burka. It is just such an utterly ridiculous statement and when you wear one I beleive you are bowing down to the patriarchy. I do, I beleive you are cowtowing to the fascist beauty standards that are.

Onlooker: Hey man I’m sorry I gotta interpt, but this is Girl Talk here. Don’t spin it as Guy Talk. I’m sure there is some slant going on.

BS: When people spell comedian a comedienne, how do you feel about that?

JG: Doesn’t bother me at all because nobody is doing it offensively. Like I think people think that you are supposed to say Comedienne. That is just a habit that is passed down and people do it because they think they are being respectful I think people are being very polite when they do it. You could say I’m a Comic. But commediene is fine to.

BS: On september 12

JG: Yes?

BS: When you woke up and realized that nothing—

(Enter: Jello Biafra..)

JB: Hey good job out there. You are the first person to every use ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ during one of the Nader things.

JG: Yeah, I wonder if I’m in trouble for that.

JB: Well Daryl Hughley did too but there are a lot of people in their sixties or seventies here to so.

I thought about that afterwards too.

JB: My only other anal critique is that hardly anyone knows who the Carlisle group is.

JG: Oh, really?

JB: Don’t assume that they do.

BS: (to myself: what the fuck? This is great. Can I use this?)

JB: At my own shows with people who oughta kinda know that it takes a good chunk of explaining.

JG: Oh wow, maybe it will cause them to investigate what the Carlisle group is.

JB: A few. But the USA Today readers won’t, they’ll just wait for you to—

JG: I guess I figured it would be such a specific audience that… I wonder if I’m going to get blamed for saying the F word.

JB: Ju-Just a thought for the future.

JG: Oh, thank you—

JB: Hopefully this isn’t the last one of these you’ll do because, I mean, adding more humor to the event is a REAL good idea

JG: HAHAHA

JB: I can’t do it alone and I’m not as good at it, so—

JG: No, you’re better at it than I am. That was a much better set than I did. I felt embarassed, actually, following you. I felt stupid, like the lame man’s version of you.

JB: But the Grammy part was kind of tacked on and didn’t fit. [Garofalo’s ending jokes were about the grammy’s and how people should thank the machines that keep their voices on cue.

JG: I-I didn’t know what else to do because I didn’t know how long I was supposed to be on there.

JB: If you couch it in terms of consumerism and corporate control…

JG: I was trying to make a point about the radio stations making us listen to this music.

JB: Actually, I forgot, but I did the other night as far as how they package that stuff is if people as parent cultivate bullshit detectors in their kids at an early age. Then especially when the girls turn 13 they’re not going to care if they are like Brittany or not. And they’ll actually be themselves.

JG: Uh-huh. Right. That’s giving the parents more credit than they deserve. That would be assuming the parents were progressive people, which is absolutely not certain. So how can they be learning discerning taste from a parent that doesn’t have discerning taste?

JB: Well (thinks for a bit) Well, mine did a little bit to stoke my cynicism at an early age is laughing at TV commericals. You know like, (in parental voice) ‘This woman is not that excited about her detergent, she is trying to sell it to you.’ (in voice of young Jello) ‘Really?’ And then when I started applying that to school and my family the fisticuffs began.

JG: Yeah, I got cynicism from my parents who are extremely glass-is-half-empty but still very mainstream republican. Hardcore republican. Blindly supportive. But the cynicism will be for like everyone and everything. But they tend to still be Rush Limbaugh enthusiasts, so go figure…

BS: (Can I use this, Man I want to use this. Jello said to become the media. That’s all I’m trying to do.)

JG: …And now I’m going to stew about saying the F word in front of old people.

JB: Don’t worry about it, it’s just my anal critique.

JG: I hope Ralph [Nader]’s not that angry. I doubt that he heard it, number one, and it can’t be more oppressive than what we’re actually talking about.

JB: Well his notes look like mine (shows messy, scribbly notepad) he is trying to make sense of them right now.

JG: (to reporter, me) I’m sorry.

JB: Oh, are you doing an interview? I’m sorry.

JG and BS: Don’t worry.

JB: Right, Right Maybe I’ll see you in a bit. I’m gonna go (walks out the door and pokes out a bottle of Aquafina) drink my corporate water.

JG: I’m sorry, please continue.

BS: Can I ask you about family life? You grew up in Jersey during Vietnam to some conservative parents, how do you think that affected your upbringing?

JG: Well, my experience with Vietnam, I was born in 1964, so I don’t have a lot of experience growing up during vietnam. But my parents are very conservative (my mom’s dead now, but I would still say parents) My Father who is still living is a Rush Limbaugh / Bill O’Reily enthusiast. That has been a fact of my life that my father is immobile in his conservative republican values and refuses to question that. He finds that there is a liberal media that is a part of our cultural problem –The myth of the Liberal Media cracks me up.

BS: I know I sound like your shrink, but tell me about your father.

Most of my life has been spent arguing with him. And my father and I get along very very well. In fact as I am old now we just can’t talk about it anymore because it becomes very vitriolic, very nasty very quickly because I am immobile and he is immobile. I don’t know why he is that way, especially because he grew up very poor and then he did very well for himself. I think he’s like a lot of people who do that and get like “Ah, mine now! And I support the candidate who lets me keep mine now.” Do you know what I mean? And because he had nothing and did work very hard and he was the first kid in his family to ever go to college. And in fact most of the people in his family never got past eighth grade. And he put himself through Columbia working for a Pharmacy. And so I think he really is just one of those people that once he made it was like ‘Get away! I’m not sharing a fucking thing!’ But he is oddly one of the nicest people I know. That’s the weirdest part about it.

But like most republicans and conservatives they like you if they can identify with you.

BS: Has having a father like this made it easier for you to understand the people who you think don't deserve to see stand up?

I think that a lot of conservatives are closet Racists, Sexists, and Homophobes and they get away with it because it is under the guise of being political. Do you know what I mean? People like Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh, and Anne Coulter are homophobic, racist, uh—I think Anne Coulter is a self-hating woman so I can’t call her sexist but, uhm. And you get away with it by being a conservative by pretending you are a boot straps kind of person. But what it means is that you are totally intolerant.

And I really believe that, and I would say that it is on such a subconscious level that when you even say that people go ‘What? You’re insane!” But I think that there are tons of conservatives that are almost skinhead in their ideology. Just this shy of Skinhead.

BS: I have heard it said that everyone has had a crush on Janeane Garofalo at some point in their life.

JG: I have never heard that.

BS: Really?

JG: And I would say that that’s absurd.

BS: You say that it is different when you go into bars now. Because you never felt the attention like that, like there weren’t as many heads turning in college.

JG: There was none. In fact I don’t actually go to bars anymore because I am sober now. But now that I am older the heads don’t turn anymore either. But I did enjoy a brief period there in the mid-nineties where there was a lot of attention from the guys. And it was like ‘What? That is ridiculous.’ Because I have never, ever, ever had it, ever, I don’t have it now. It was just this little window of time from about ’93 to ’97 where there would be an inordinate amount of guys asking me what time it was or if I had a match, just kind of out of nowhere. And since it’s never happened before or since I can only assume that it is because it’s like ‘oh, I’ve seen that actress before so I am going to go pretend that I am flirting with them.’

(Enter, backstage volunteer): Do you want any food veggies?

JG: No I’m fine.

BV: Swedish meatballs? Cause we got like ten of them if you really need some. Are you leaving right after this?

JG: Yeah, right after I am done with this gentleman here.

BS: (Gentleman? Oh, me.)

BV: You’re coming to another one, right?

JG: I don’t know, am I? After saying fuck and hell or damn or whatever I said. But it’s for the cause. I don’t know if they’ll want me back at another rally.

BV: I’m a paid staffer, and I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ll be like, She made people laugh let’s have her back.

JG: Well I don’t know, there might be people who were offended so there might be..

(From out in the hall:) I was offended.

BV: There were people offended about Ralph coming to town let’s not worry about your language.

JG: Ok, Thanks.

BS: Now how many dogs do you have now?

JG: Two? I had four.

BS: Ok, and when you are dealing with them do you ever regret wearing the ‘Question Authority’ button?

JG: I have never regretted the Question Authority button. Altough I will say they do not listen to me at all, if that’s what you are referring to. The dogs don’t have one bit of obedience when it comes to me. Luckily for me they are very nice. You know what I mean? They are very sweet natured dogs but they have not one monocome of discipline. They were never do what you say, not in a million, billion years. They know that I won’t make them do anything, too.

BS: Hey, thank you very much.

JG: Well, thank you. (smiles, hugs, etc)