-- Plot to Kill Gentile Husbands Uncovered --

New York, New York (October 15, 2010) -- In a series of arrests a joint task force of federal, state and city police said today it has destroyed a terror group dedicated to killing the city’s gentile husbands.

The group, Jews for Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) for Cads, advocates the murder of men married to Jewish women in support of its anti-interfaith marriage platform.

Jews for CAD for Cads’ primary technique to kill gentile husbands, as described in literature captured in last night’s raids, is called the “I’d like to make an order for delivery” initiative.

The plan calls for Jewish wives to weaken and destroy their gentile husbands’ cardiovascular systems to create strokes and heart attacks by ordering in Chinese and other ethnic foods.

Because these delivered foods are always cooked in the deadly Admiration brand soy cooking oil, the group believes that ordering in is an effective tool for ending marriages between Jewish women and their gentile spouses.

Jews for CAD for Cads’ chosen weapon in this effort, Admiration brand soy cooking oil, is the most commonly used oil in New York City’s many Chinese, Thai, Mexican and other ethnic eateries. It is widely considered the “crack” of cooking oils by health professionals.

Most of the restaurants that use Admiration brand soy oil also deliver, which has given rise to the culture of “I’d like to make an order for delivery, “ which, while not invented by Jews for CAD for Cads, has become its main strategy to eliminate the city’s gentile husbands.

Early reports that a number of Jewish mother-in-laws in these intermarriages have been successfully recruited by Jews for CAD for Cads only adds another macabre layer to the conspiracy, taskforce spokesman Tom Wayne said. The group reportedly considers these women as its “second front.”

Jews for CAD for Cads founder Adam Shearer said in a statement that while it is too late to stop the assimilation of the Jewish people in the bedrooms of New York City, his group is dedicated to at least making what he calls “ these horny gentiles” pay.

Shearer said, “We can’t, or haven’t yet been able to, figure out how to undo the cross-breeding, but we can shorten the lifespans of the gentile husbands who are responsible for these disastrous marriages.”

The Jews for CAD for Cads leader said “the beauty of our plan is that it was already in place, was already being acted on by many Jewish wives on their own. Knowingly or not, these women were working to hasten the decline and cause the death of their gentile husbands, these men who have had the temerity to steal our Jewish women. We want our women back. All Jews for CAD for Cads has had to do in many of these cases is to help them order in more frequently.”

Yes, the Jewish women are responsible for the choices they’ve made, Shearer said, but it is to late to do anything about that until we off their spouses, he added.

Shearer said Jews for CAD for Cads will set up a post-mortem reeducation program for its newly created Jewish widows as soon as these women get done sitting shiva. This program will include a prayer and meditation component to make sure they don’t jump back in the sack with any more gentiles. Such an outcome would seriously undermine the accomplishments of the ordering in program, Shearer acknowledged.

He said he doesn’t see any reason why this generation of Jewish widows, created by the “I’d like to make an order for delivery” initiative, many of whom are still young and quite attractive, will not quickly enter into marriages with Jewish men.

As for the Cads, the gentile husbands, Shearer went on to say, “We can at least make the husbands pay, kill them, get them out of the picture as quickly as possible and thus erase any influence they may have over our Jewish children.”

Johns Hopkins Study Implicates Admiration Soy Oil in Gentile Cardiovascular Failure --

Baltimore, Maryland - (Oct. 15, 2009) -- According to a recent study by the Johns Hopkins University Cardiovascular Health Team, frequent consumption of take out food in New York City, all of it cooked in the cheap and deadly soy oil that comes in those big white and blue cans you often see at curbs, is responsible for the recent spike in the city’s death rates from cardiovascular diseases.

Within the ethnic groups studied, the Johns Hopkins team found that gentiles married to Jewish women were the most likely to have elevated measures of cardiovascular health such as high cholesterol, excessive triglycerides, high blood pressure and other indicators because of the frequent, almost ritualistic, use of the phrase, “I’d like to make an order for delivery,” in their households. The study notes that some linguists have traced this phrase back to Ashkenazi “forerunner” languages such as German, Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian.

The study goes on to say that many Jews have developed antibodies, which protect them against the devastating effects of soy and other cheap cooking oils. This leaves the prime victims of the frequent consumption of this food to be the gentile husbands of interfaith marriages in New York City.

The Johns Hopkins study says this is because the population in question, gentile husbands, is more vulnerable because they lack the genetic coding that many Ashkenazi Jews have, which helps them fight the deleterious effects of the unhealthy cooking oil.

Apparently, the gene that protects Ashkenazi Jews from cardiovascular deterioration in the face of massive doses of soy cooking oil is linked, literally intertwined, with the same chromosome that makes this community vulnerable to Tay-Sachs Syndrome. Whether Sephardic Jews share this near immunity is still being investigated. In addition, because the gentile husbands are men, they are more at risk for CV disease in general.

Three-way Pact Announced by Gentile Husband Enemies

New York, New York (October 17, 2010) - Empire Szechuan Village, a chain of Chinese restaurants, Admiration Corporation, the producer of the ubiquitous soy cooking oil and Jews for CAD for Cads today announced a historic agreement to join forces in order to amplify their individual assaults on the cardiovascular health of NYC’s gentile husbands. The groups plan to work together to insure that the food ordered in by Jewish wives in the NYC area will be as deadly as possible to the fragile cardiovascular systems of the city’s gentile husbands.

As part of this initiative, Admiration Corp. has promised to increase the density and absorption rates of the oil used in its cooking in order to boost the presence of the most dangerous saturated and unsaturated fats in its marquee product, Admiration brand soy cooking oil. Empire Szechuan Village has pledged to install motors on the remaining 40 percent of their fleet of delivery bicycles that lack them in order to get their food more quickly to their gentle husband customers.
Admiration has also offered to support the Jews for CAD for Cads program by offering a discount rate for any catering orders for food delivered to gentile husband funerals.
In response, Empire Szechuan Village said it has instituted a “buy-back” program by which newly created Jewish widows, if they have saved their receipts or purchased their families’ meals on-line with a major credit card, will be compensated up to ten percent of the internment costs if their deceased gentile husbands are buried at either of two major New York City area gentile graveyards. The agreements have been made with the Gate of Heaven cemetery (Catholic) in Hawthorne, Westchester County and Calvary Cemetery in Queens (Protestant).

City passes law banning menu distribution in lobbies in response to plot against gentile husbands

New York, New York (October 18, 2010) -- In a statement issued by Mayor Bloomberg, the city said it will ban the practice of leaving menus, especially from Chinese restaurants, but also from any other kind of restaurant, unless it has acquired a certificate proving that it uses olive oil, the so called olive oil is OK (OOOK) certificate, in the lobbies of apartment buildings in the five boroughs.
“We can’t do anything about the thousands of gentile husbands heartlessly murdered by the Jewish wives of this city, but we must do whatever we can to prevent any more gentile husbands’ deaths,” said the Mayor.

Deliveryman’s Statement -- Empire Szechuan Village

I have been in the U.S. for three months. In that time, I’m happy that our bikes got motors. Very good. I hear that our food may not be so good for the men we deliver to who have married the Jewish ladies. I sorry about that. I happy to have a job and to have left Fijan.

I have to pay my smugglers so I can’t worry about our food, Empire Scheuzan Village, not good on the Americans. I not sure what the difference even is between one group of foreign devils and the others, especially these Jews I hear about. I don’t know whether it is true or not that they can eat anything and not get sick. I have to get the food to their apartments quickly. I hope they buzz me up fast and meet me at the elevator.

I hate to have to let the elevator go. Then I just have to wait for it to come back. Best thing is when I can give customer the food and get the money with foot in elevator door.

I’m learning to have fewer close calls on my bike with cars, taxi, other delivery men and American people who walk on the streets. In New York, it seems like everybody stays to the right all the time, not like in Fijin. Sometimes I forget.

I hope our food doesn’t make the Americans sick, but even if it does my job is to make sure they get it while it’s still hot. I am only delivery man, but now at least our bikes have motors. Of that, I am happy.

I hear about big hospital study says our food not good for the Americans. I was thinking about which kind of American our food makes sick most fast while making a delivery the other day and almost got run over by taxi cab.

For now I must focus on my job. I hope our food doesn’t make the Americans sick, but I must work hard, save my money and pay off the gang that shipped me here.



Gentile Husbands Group Releases Medical Statement

New York, New York, (October 25, 2010) -- In response to media reports about the arrests of Jews for CAD for Cads members and the release of the Johns Hopkins study about the cardiovascular health of New Yorkers, especially the city’s gentile husbands, the Gentile Husbands Union solicited the following statement from a New York-area doctor whose identify will not be revealed.

“Hey, we followed all the protocols and then some, who told the poor bastards to live on kung po chicken and sesame noodles? For that matter, who told him them to marry Jewish women?
Take my wife, no, really, I just want to say that my own wife is Jewish. I tell her she can only order in once a week. I make sure we don’t have these big stacks of menus sitting around the house. You can’t stop them from leaving them in the lobby, apparently, but you don’t have to keep them around. I’d don’t care whether she cooks or we just have snacks for the kids.

I open up enough of these boomers and older guys to see what this soy oil crud does to their arteries. Sad to watch these buggers jogging their asses off and going to the gym when night after night, they are eating food delivered on those new bikes with the motors and splashed all over with the Admiration brand soy cooking oil.

And now that they’ve intensified the mixture of near lethal fatty oils under the agreement between Admiration and Empire Szechuan Village and that meshuggunah group, Jews for CAD for Cads, it will just make for that many more easy consults.
In fact, sometimes I don’t even have to look at their records. I don’t even bother with the EKG. I can diagnose just on meeting these gentile husbands. They tend to be artsy or intellectual, or at least think of themselves that way, even if they work in law or finance.

That’s partly how they ended up with these Jewish wives. You get the art history degree from Bennington or you grew up with the Ben Sahn drawings in the living room of their parents’ places on Central Park West, you’re going to attract these artsy gentiles. I feel sorry for these guys on a lot of levels.
Sure, maybe our women are great in bed when everybody is in their twenties and thirties, but by the time the kids are in middle school, that’s over and it’s “You are not skipping out on the seder at my parents’ house ” and “I’d like to make an order for delivery,” all because, and I don’t even know if this true, you know, but anecdotally, these guys from Connecticut or wherever, they like it that our women aren’t all hung up about taking it in their mouths. If that’s even true, I’m a surgeon, not a shrink.”

“Perfect Target”


“It is a fact, that the poet had extremely flat feet and that his left leg was marginally shorter than the other, defects no doubt congenital and which leant to his gait a characteristic swaying motion. In an early poem Lorca complains of his ‘clumsy walk,’ almost certainly an allusion to this handicap, considering that it could be a reason for being rejected in love; and numerous friends later recalled his fear of crossing the street where, given his lack of agility, he felt he might be easily run over. There is no record of anyone ever having seen Lorca run.”

“Bunuel soon acquired a reputation as one of the most original characters staying at the Residencia. A sports addict, he could be seen each morning, irrespective of weather conditions, in shorts and often barefoot, running, jumping, doing press-ups, pummeling a punch ball or throwing his javelin.”

“There were shots and the marchers fled in panic, Nadal among them. When he looked back he saw the poet (Lorca) trying to escape as fast as his congenitally stiff gait would allow him (even fear could not galvanize him into running), his white suit making him a perfect target for the Guardia.”



passages from “Lorca” by Ian Gibson


Lorca comments:

The truth is trained mostly at night. If I was going to run a loop through the Puerta del Sol district or somewhere else where everybody’s out at night, I’d wear a sweatshirt with the hood up. Being gay was tough enough for a Spanish poet in the twenties and thirties without letting on that I was a jock too. I would have really ruined by Andulusian troubadour routine if anybody but the guys on the track team saw me running.

The other thing, and one reason I never argued when the press portrayed me as “the Lora who never runs,” was that I was having a lot of trouble matching my personal bests for all the middle-distance races that I set in my hometown of Grenada as a high school runner. The few insiders who followed my performances at the sparsely attended winter indoor meets in Madrid know that my times were very slow. It wasn’t because, as some sportswriters subsequently alleged, of all the dissipation that was so popular among my peers at the Residencia. No, the reason I was so slow in college and afterward (It probably didn’t even look like I was running.) was the lack of high altitude training available around the capital. Castile is, congenitally, a plain and I could forget about the high altitude training opportunities we took for granted in Granada with the Sierra Nevadas at our doorstep.

When the literary critics talk about how my work celebrates the “lost innocence of Andulusian peasant life,” they never catch on that on a personal level, never mind all that mythic people of the South stuff, what I missed most after leaving home was the chance to go for long runs in the mountains around Granada.

I was really more of a cross-country and road runner than a track man. Readers should remember that in my Grenada years it was the basketball players who got all the media attention. To even go out for basketball in those years, Coach Lope de Vega insisted that we all run cross-country in the fall. So even though I was a starter on his basketball team, I did my hardest training on the roads and on the cross country circuits. As a college runner, the only races I could fit into my schedule were indoor track meets. I’m a little too tall at 5' ll to explode through the corners and get decent results on indoor tracks.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, these track meets, often held at Madrid’s Complutense University, would always have these field event morons like Bunel doing their thing in the infield while we tried to concentrate on running. If you ever saw that Aragonese pipsqueak congenitally risking our lives and limbs tossing his javelin around the dining hall at the Residencia, you could understand my nervousness at these meets in the vicinity of all these javelin throwers and shot-putters. So what you had was me running, if you could call it that, in my worst events, in a lousy competitive environment, and without the high altitude training that was the foundation of my successful high school running career. No wonder it sometimes seems that my college and adult running career didn’t happen.

Lorca’s basketball Coach Lope de Vega:

Much has been made of Lorca’s slowness and lack of agility on and off the court. As his coach for the three years he attended Grenada’s Incarnacion High School, I’d like to set the record straight about Lorca’s athletic skills and specifically, his contribution to my ball club.
Like a lot of your stereotypical “white catholic school” ballplayers, Lora was no speedster. Some of the opposing fans used to chant a little ditty calling him our “Guardia Immobilia” when he was introduced. Under my system he was able to compensate for his lack of foot speed. The so-called experts always said Chris Mullin of St. John’s was too slow for the pros, but he did OK in the last few NBA All-Star games. And no matter what anybody says about his quickness, Lora was a good position rebounder, although I doubt he could jump higher than his ankles.
Of course, you have to remember that in those days, you had a jump ball at the half-court stripe after each basket was scored. So this made the game slower and there was more room for a plodder like Lora on the squad.
It’s true he didn’t exactly run up and down the court. He had a stiff kind of shuffling walk, which, while it wasn’t pretty or fast did get him from the offensive end to the defensive end. If Lora set a pick on you, you stayed picked like it was congenital. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up under the boards. And he wasn’t a big kid either. We listed him at 5' 10 in the program, but I doubt if he made it to 5' 9'’ barefoot.
When he got a chance to settle into our half-court offense and play like a small forward trying to post up the opposing guard if he got a mismatch, he could be an effective scorer. The further the other team could force him out of the paint, the more trouble he’d have scoring. And I’d be the first to admit that against a packed-in zone defense, he had problems putting the ball in the hole.
After he graduated and went up to Madrid and became a literary celebrity, he used to give these interviews to rags like Campo del Sol about how he invented the duende defense. The party line was that he and his pal, the Catalan guard Sal Dali, invented the famous strategy one year when they were playing summer ball in the league at the shore in Cienfuegos. (Dali was another slow, Catholic school kind of guard. But at least Dali, who had step or three on Lora, could sometimes drive the lane and penetrate to the hoop.)

According to the literature teachers here at Incarnacion, duende means the spirit that seizes a performer or writer and transports him to a Dionysian underworld of darkness and foreboding. Be that as it may, I can tell you that on a basketball court, the duende defense is nothing more than the full court press we used to run here at Incarnacion, with the requirement that when the other team gets the ball past the half-court mark, you collapse into a triangle and two with a chaser and play some hard-nosed, congenital zone defense.

As for his often-noted reluctance to cross the street, let me repeat that people have to think of Lora as a position ballplayer. We had no problems with Federico as long as the guys hung together coming and going from games, the way they tended to do on road trips. Home games, OK, he sometimes had a problem getting off the traffic island in the middle of the Paseo de Recoletos and into the gym.

Speaking of Lorca’s years on my team, I have to mention a friend of his who transferred in to play ball for me one year while he was being red-shirted for the Valencia powerhouse Bolivar Poly. You want to talk about a hard-nosed player, you should have seen that scrappy Aragonese Louie “the One-Man Highlight Show” Bunel. He was the off-guard on the Juan y Isabel Parish Center Catholic Youth Organization team I coached in the summer of ‘28. I never saw anybody so willing to throw themselves on the floor diving for loose balls or to give themselves up to draw bone-wrenching charges the way Louie did. You had to see him swing his elbows to carve out some rebounding room for himself under the boards to believe this kid.

I never the saw the film he made in Paris in 1929 with Dali that made such a stink, but if people are going to get all squeamish about watching an eyeball get sliced up in a movie, we would have had peach marchers all over the gym when Bunel was clearing the boards.

I have to admit that Bunel was kind of a pain in the ass insisting on hauling his javelin around with us on road trips. But even there, in what seemed like such nutty behavior, he managed to make part of his nuttiness work for the team. If you ever tried to pop your shots over than Aragonese hard-ass while he was waving his javelin in your face, you’d have some idea of what it was like when I was playing for Salve Regina (It was coed back then, you wise asses.) and we went up against Power Memorial when they had Alcindor. Against either one, you practically had to loft your shots through the rafters.

Give Bunel credit too because it was his memoirs “My Last Three-Point Play” that summed up his generation of players best.

“Myself, Dali, and Lora set the pace for the modern game while we were active. Those French wimps could hardly inbound the ball at their own end. Take Breton with his idiotic manifestos, the only reason we didn’t run the scores up more when we played them at the old arena at the Palais Montparnasse is that we didn’t take them seriously. For all Appollonaire raved about the play of the French Surrealists, the only thing he got right was when he called Breton a “pure shooter.” You know what that really means, a guy that can’t do anything but shoot. Hey, if we could have ever have gotten Lorca to run, he would have dragged that stiff foot of his in rings around Breton.”




The BDM Guide to Locking Bikes on New York City Streets

(BDM or Bund Deutscher MŠdel was the Hitler youth organization for young girls.)

Why Some Lazy People’s Bikes Get Stolen, But Not Mine

By Heike von Schuptfundbocher


I don’t blame the city’s bike thieves. I blame bike riders who make it easy for them by not locking their bikes securely. This is the same as women who have babies with many men and then expect the government to support them. I do not understand this behavior.

In my eight years of bike riding and locking up my bike on the streets of New York, I have never had a bike stolen. I have established this record because I take the extra time to secure my bike thoroughly. If other riders get their bikes stolen, I must say it is their fault if they do not buy the proper equipment and take the time to fasten their bikes securely.

It is my strong belief that locking up bikes on the streets of New York should be regulated. I have a dramaturgy license and a sailing license issued by the state of Bavaria. I think New York City should issue a bike locking license. Until the bike riders of New York achieve this certification, they should not be allowed to lock their bikes on the streets. Frank’s Bike Shop and other retail bike shops should not be allowed to sell locks, Krptonite or other brands, without the purchaser presenting his or her bike-locking license.

Nein, one should not be allowed to lock up his bike on the streets of the city unless he has passed a combination of tests that show he can perform the task properly and efficiently. The test would include a written part and a hands-on section. The written part would make sure the applicant knew things like pointing the lock face down to make access to it harder and the necessity of leaving as little slack as possible in the alignment of chains so thieves have difficulty getting any leverage. The hands-on section would consist of the applicant being given a strange lock and bike and a choice of a few signs, trees, railings and bike racks to lock the trial bike to. The applicant for a bike locking license thus would have to show that he can lock a bike securely in some of the most common street settings.

If there are bike riders who don’t want to take the courses needed to pass the locking certification test, they should still be allowed to ride in the city. But they must keep their bikes at home or in a storage space that is secure. Or if they are locking them, they must be locked indoors somewhere where the lock is just a back-up, and not the primary defense.



The Only Correct Way to Lock Up a Bike in New York City


First, I locate the street sign, bike rack or other immovable object that I will lock my bike to. The next thing I do is to use a three-quarter inch chain wrapped around the front of my bike’s frame and the front wheel. This immobilizes the front wheel and ensures that the quick- release hub on the wheel stays closed. It means bike theives can’t get the wheel alone and they can’t get the frame without the wheel. Quick-release front wheels are an obvious vulnerability and should not be overlooked as New York City bikers plan the steps they will take to securely lock their bikes.

Next I use a U-shaped rigid metal lock and loop it through the back wheel and the stem, that is, the part of the bike that holds up the seat. This is a different kind of lock, equally sturdy, and I figure a thief must have two sets of tools to defeat both of these locks if they want to get the whole bike.

But sometimes the thieves just go after a wheel. I’m proud to say I’ve also never lost a wheel. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky, maybe it’s because I screw washers down tightly on the axle, which makes it hard to get the nut to turn around. Of course, you have to turn the nut around to get the wheel off. I have those washers on so tight that when they have to take the wheel off at Frank’s Bike Shop to work on it, it gives them a hard time. Of this, I am proud.

I have also never in my entire life smoked marijuana. I am proud to say this too. We, the Huns, have discipline. And I think, you need to have discipline. That’s why it’s so important to work hard. Laziness is a terrible vice. I don’t see anything good about the 1960s. Discipline was lax then. The 1960s were like not taking the time and energy to lock your bike securely and then expecting sympathy when it is stolen. Whom do you have to blame when it is stolen and you’ve done a slipshod job of locking it? Society? The government? That is my view of the 1960s and of Italy too.

People who work in critical care at Mt. Sinai and many other people who hold advanced degrees especially if they are from prestigious schools, are almost 100 percent likely to make the investment in time and equipment to lock up their bikes securely on the streets of New York City. Ja, I have found this to be true.

For example, I admire James Wolfowitz, the former president of the World Bank. He was ousted for the way he handled having an affair with a subordinate. I don’t know how fair that was. He was the head of an important international organization. Any affair he’d have at work would have to be with a subordinate. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on successful men. I’m sure he works very hard and that is important to me. We can’t all be Italian, nor should we be. I’m sure James Wolfowitz, even if he was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, would take the time to lock his bike securely if he were leaving it on the street in New York.

He would not be like these lazy bike riders who just want to snap a single lock quickly and then go on about their business. What right do they have to expect their bike to be there when they come back?

Bike Locking As Foreplay


Men with whom I have been intimate have told me that when I am sexually aroused a sorrowful look is on my face. They tell me that this look of sadness, for me, signifies desire. Do I shock you when I say that when I am locking up my bike, not always, but sometimes, say before I go into that gourmet store on Ave A to buy a Dortmunder cheese, and I finish the 7- to -9- minute process of locking my bike, I am buying the Dortmunder cheese, Ja, with a sorrowful look on my face?

To be more precise, usually I am showing my sorrowful face just before I have intimate relations with a man. And to be versplacset, I do not put the Dortmunder cheese on any part of my body in the store or later at home. Yes, it meets all the requirements of our Hanseatic Purity Laws, why else would I pay $9 a pound for it, but for me the Dortmunder cheese is not an erotic aide. No, when the sorrowful look comes over my face in the gourmet store on Avenue A, it is because I know my bike has been securely fastened to the best of my ability and within the technical specifications of the rules and the tolerances of the city of New York, in which I am currently a legal resident.

And if you don’t believe me, you can check my residency status at the Sixth Precinct on East 5th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. Just make sure you don’t assume you can skimp on locking your bike when you visit the police station just because it will be locked in front of a police station.

If borrowing someone’s bike is like safe sex, as the playwright Tom Stoppard puts it, then locking your bike on the street with someone is like foreplay. I would never show my sorrowful face with a man who was too lazy to lock his bike securely, police station or no police station.






“Wal-Mart Mulls “Gitmo Blues” Deal”



“Veteran rockers AC/DC are set to become the next major band to sell a new album only through Wal-Mart stores . . .” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2008. --

Dear Wal-Mart Executive:

I am writing on behalf of the artists and reportoire department of the Al Agaba Martyrs Brigade. We would like to offer Wal-Mart the opportunity to be the exclusive distributor of the recently recorded “Gitmo Blues” sessions, the first compilation of rock tunes recorded by the brothers in confinement in secret CIA prisons in Poland and elsewhere. These tracks have been remastered with additional vocal backing at the Guantanamo detention facility studios. The tunes range from soft rock in the style of the infidel James Taylor to punk rock as the imprisoned artists/warriors of God kick out the jams on their number “I want to martyred,” which closely follows the tune of the Ramones “I Want to be Sedated.”

While a print version of the lyrics rarely does a song justice, the fairly androgynous, for us, lead singer belts out, “Take over the airport, Take over the plane, I want to be a martyr.”

Another song uses the Carole King hit, “Chains,” with the jihadi words, “chains, chains, the crusaders got us locked up in chains, and they ain’t the kind the brothers can flee.”

We at the AA Martyrs Brigade believe that revenues from the distribution of the “Gitmo Blues Sessions” plus a percentage of ancillary revenue streams from associated products will dwarf even the most optimistic projected earnings from Wal-Mart’s first generation of exclusive distribution deals with washed up, infidel acts like the Eagles, AC/DC and Journey.

We will be pleased to set up the appropriate shell companies to assist in the repatriation of our earnings from this partnership to our system of safehouse vaults and caves in the Northwest Territory, i.e., in the language of the rough version of a contract we have included in this fax, “the lawless border regions.”

In light of the fact that the brother/ artists will be executed, indeed, have long been seeking martyerdom via execution, at the hands of the Zionist and their allies, touring in support of the CD will not be an option.

However, as the crusader dogs are likely to kill the brothers one at a time, we see each execution as a publicity point that should drive sales of the CD. Irrespective of whether we make a deal with Wal-Mart or another retailer, we don’t plan to waste the opportunity of using our martyrs’ deaths as a marketing opportunity as other groups have, most notably in the absence of any commercial activity linked to the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and others in the 80s.

We would like to emphasize that, unlike other deals in the industry, when we say “exclusive,” we mean just that. There will be no, to the extent one can call the crusader legal system viable, “legal” or “illegal” downloads of this material either on Itunes or on services such as Frostwire or Limewire. If we uncover evidence of bit torrent banditry, rest assured that our sleeper cells will strike mercilessly in a manner that will make the Record Industry Association of America’s efforts to interdict illegal downloading look like the empty threats that have long emerged from infidel dog crusader organizations with the exception, of course, of quality retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Target.

Another point of agreement between our artists, our recording company executives acting as their representatives and, we presume,Wal-Mart management is the belief that lyrics must not contain any dirty words that might influence young listeners or offend conservative customers.
Yes, some of the tracks espouse violence in the waging of global jihad, but you may rest assured that there will no suggestive language that relates to heterosexual eroticism. The only mention of gay unions is the brothers’ condemnaotry, harshly satirical and rocking version of “I knew the bride when he used to rock and roll.”

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss this mutually beneficial project at earliest convenience. Inshallah khayr to you and yours in Bentonsville.

“Dead Man Still Plans To Tell Tale ”

Plimpton’s “Paper Corpse” Pub Date Pushed Back Again


“If anybody can come back and tell us what it’s like being dead, it’s George.” -- Kurt Vonnegut at George Plimpton’s memorial 2004

New York, New York (November 20, 2010) -- Eternity Publishing Corp. said it has postponed the publication date of its long expected “Paper Corpse” volume from George Plimpton in which the writer will report on being dead.

The company said Plimpton indicated he will not be able to deliver the manuscript until the second quarter of 201l. He cited poor accommodations and technical difficulties in this, his second postponement of the manuscript’s due date, originally set for Jan. 1, 2010. The company released the following statement from Plimpton.

“You know, when I was writing my book “Paper Lion,” I used to stick a notebook in my football helmet. Or when I was playing with the New York Philharmonic, I’d jot things down on index cards and stash them in the cymbals case, but down here I can’t seem to find where I put my notes.

That’s why I’m having so much trouble actually writing this piece and getting out of here.

It’s no surprise that this is turning out to be a difficult assignment, Jesus himself only lasted three days down here. Hate to think how he would have done playing goalie for the Blackhawks.

I’ve done the reporting, I’m ready to write this puppy up, I’m certainly not waiting for Lorin Stein or Dan Menacker or someone to say, “Come forth, Plimpton” as Jesus is alleged to have said to his buddy Lazarus, another hack that couldn’t nail this story. I don’t know what the hold up is, exactly, though.

If you look at my reporting on pro football, it is as much about hanging out with the players as it is my brief stints playing their game. But down here, there’s no game and these are some of the dullest characters I’ve ever had to try to animate.

Usually I wish I could stay out longer on these assignments, socializing with the guys on the team or from the orchestra pit and really trying to share their world, but I’m really looking forward to is this being dead story ending.

I’ve never had such an excruciatingly dull assignment. Digging for quotes here is like pulling teeth. Or like pulling teeth up there. Usually, I can’t get a word out of anybody. If I get them to say something, it comes out all garbled. So I write it down as best I can make it out, then I can’t find my notes.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to finish this story. I mean, I’m George Plimpton and if there is one thing I’m not an amateur at it’s writing up these “amateur in the midst of professionals” stories for Sports Illustrated or for this outing, Harper’s and Eternity.

What I do with these “participatory journalism” gigs is I do the reporting until I’ve soaked up so much material that I’m sick of the whole topic. That’s how I know its time to stop taking notes and start writing.

I’m not really picking up any new material, but I don’t seem to be able to start writing. There’s the problem with finding the notes, sure, but by now I should at least be able to get started.

I’ve found in the past that the best way to write the story is while you’re still on the scene, while the smell of the lineament from the locker room is still in your nose, but this time I can’t seem to get started and not for the lack of a stench down here, either.

Well, George Plimpton doesn’t panic. I’ll bang the thing out and when I do it will be nice to get back into the swing of things in town.

The only thing I can compare this story with is the time I was the quarterback for the Detroit Lions and I got buried under a blitz. I was only out for about five minutes that time and for this story I’ve been gone much longer. Harpers is going to have a cow when I submit my per diem, never mind the book deal. This death assignment has been worse than when I was initiated into the secret fraternity at Phillips.

Not only are we all bunched up down here, I can tell you there are a lot of people who aren’t our sort. There’s no tennis courts either. I always found carrying the racquets around to be a pain, but down here you can’t find a game even if you’ve got one of those new pod-like bags with seventeen racquets in it.

The only preparation that has been of any use at all was the time Willie Morris dragged me to see that Spanish movie and, what was the director’s name, Bunel, anyway, the last scene in the movie has a version of this afterlife thing with the hero stuck in a nightclub with pop music blaring and it is kind like that here. I keep complaining, but whomever the disc jockey is, he seems never to have heard of Sinatra or even the Beatles. Instead all you hear is this electro synth music, whatever that is, have you ever heard of LCD Soundsystem? We’ve all packed together and it’s worse than the IRT at rush hour with everyone jammed up against each other and this horrible, throbbing music. Some of these people have never been to Cape Cod.

I don’t know how the regulars down here deal with it. I’ve been to some boring cocktail parties. I mean, I love Norman, but to be pigeonholed by that pugnacious pipsqueak with an empty drink in my hand, that used to seem like an eternity, but it’s nothing compared to how time passes down here.

Yes, I see a few people we know, mostly people that were older than our circle. Howard Cosell is down here, still trying to grab sports stars to interview, but there’s no crew with him and no network to broadcast the results so he’s an even sadder figure dead than alive. Arthur Ashe, now there’s the right last name for this place, is still shaking him off.

That’s one thing about being down here, and I’m going to touch on this in my piece, this place, this state of affairs, seems to be easier on the nobodies. If you’ve never had any fame or power, this eternal waiting around is just like an afternoon when you have to get your driver’s license renewed. I’ve always had somebody to do that for me, fortunately.
For people in our crowd, people who had positions or at least a comfortable Park Avenue lifestyle, got out to the Hamptons in the summer, went to the right schools, this place is a comedown. Believe me, when I turn in the story, I’m going to advise people to avoid dying for as long as they can, unless they don’t have much to lose, if they’re poor or wouldn’t know the Loeb Classics from the Post.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to get on my bike and go for a spin. I wonder is it still hanging above Fiona’s desk?

You know, I didn’t get to where I am by being easily discouraged, but it’s hard even for me to be upbeat down here. Everybody mopes around, a lot of the people really aren’t looking too well. Trying to scare up a foursome for bridge is really a challenge.

If I can just break through this whatever it is, I’m going to try to really nail this story so my version of this death thing will be the one that people refer to. I don’t see any editor assigning this kind of piece for a long time because I plan on my take on death becoming the definitive one. God knows, besides spending this time here I’ve done my research. That Mary Roach book is good as is that long fingernails book, but neither of them have the first person component that my story will feature.

I hope I haven’t been gone so long that people have stopped reading this kind of piece, or reading at all.

People up there are so hysterical about things. Let me tell you, if there’s one thing beyond the nuts and bolts, day in and day out, description of life down here that my story is going to cover, what I’m going to take away from this assignment and I hope it lasts well past when I get back to the city and some bastard steals a cab I’m trying to hail or something, is that it pays to take the long view. You might as well enjoy your time up there even if it sometimes seems to consist of nothing more exciting than an endless schedule of speaking engagements.

Oh, about that other thing Lorin asked me to do while I was down here, none of the writers I’ve come across want to sit for one of our interviews. I saw Saul Bellow and he said, “now you ask me? Didn’t have time all those years we were both alive?” He was so unpleasant that I didn’t bother to correct him, to explain I’m only down here on assignment.”

Bunga Bunga Post Accepted by Shirtless Congress Stud Muffin Christopher Lee

“Karima El Mahroug, a dancer known as “Ruby” and who is alleged to have joined erotic “bunga bunga” parties last year aged 17, denies having sex with the prime minister.” Financial Times, Feb. 16

Buffalo, New York (February 18, 2011) -- Former Shirtless Congressman Christopher Lee said today he has accepted a position in the administration of Italian prime minister Sergio Berlusconi to serve in his cabinet as Commissioner of Bunga Bunga.

“I’m not sure where Bunga Bunga is, but I have made arrangements to spend every other weekend either with my family or at the b and b downtown (don’t forget there are a lot of tourist attractions in Buffalo even in the winter) as Michele is still a little steamed.”

“I have received many expressions of support from my constituents during this difficult time for myself and my family. I know what I did was wrong. I should have just paid for it like former Gov. Spitzer. At least he sealed the deal. Part of my arrangement with Silvio will involve counseling to get me past my feelings that there is something “unmanly” about paying for it.”

“Part of my efforts for Bunga Bunga will be to work hard to ensure gender equality and fair treatment in the workplace for Italian women, many of whom I’ve read on the Internet have truly spectacular racks.”

I’d like to thank Silvio for this opportunity to continue to serve my former constituents in western New York whose ties to the people and culture of Italy run deep as well as to serve my new constituents in Bunga Bunga.

I accepted Silvio’s offer secure in the knowledge that his political philosophy and my own are totally in synch. He is center-right and I am a conservative Republican. I believe there are things I can introduce to the Italian political system such as increased gun ownership that will benefit the country as a whole as well as my province or whatever it is of Bunga Bunga.

On social issues, particularly dating, Sergio and I are making progress toward reaching a consensus. He has agreed as part of my compensation package to include a gym membership so I don’t get any love handles from eating too much spaghetti carbonaera. I haven’t been able to convince him yet that our bods make the slightest bit of a difference. He keeps telling me that it’s womens’ bodies that count, not ours, especially for those of us fortunate enough to be able to use our powerful, public positions to attract really hot chicks.”

Statement From Italian Prime Minister Sergio Berlusconi on the Appointment of U.S. Shirtless Congress Stud Muffin Christopher Lee to Bunga Bunga Post

Rome, Italy (February 17, 2011) -- I have followed my latest appointee’s case with interest and I must say that what happened to Congressman Lee would never have happened in my administration.

I have bought so many women during my years in office that sometimes, as with Ruby, I don’t even touch them just to confuse my enemies. You can tell I really am a victim of our leftist judges because my off the cuff comment that the poor Ruby might be the niece of Egyptian President Mubarak, instead of being appreciated for the witty improvisation it was, is being condemned. The poor child was in jail, am I, the Prime Minister of the Republic supposed to do nothing? Anyway, she is from North Africa so how far off was I, really?

Women are all whores anyway so why beat around the bush, scusi, this has been the policy of my administration.

It’s their bodies that matter, not ours. The downfall of this gifted, young congressman is a sad indictment of the unofficial enshrinement of feminism in America. Here in Italy, a man does not spend time in the gym to compete with women for physical beauty. We Italian men simply amass money and power and we pay for it. Duh. That’s nothing to be hung up about. All women are whores except for our mothers and our sisters and I’m only really sure about momma.

Just as I was criticized for making up a little white lie to get Ruby sprung, I’ll probably get grief for giving Christopher a job. But, really, what is the point of being a world leader if you can’t right wrongs?

Poor Christopher. He shaved seven years off his age to attract this Internet woman. I’m 74, should I have to say I’m 67 to attract women? What a joke your American political system is.

It is a shame that this man, your congressman, has to forfeit his entire career over this one episode. Do you think any of the dental assistants, show girls and porn stars I have favored with my patronage, would ever embarrass me by sending something to Gawker? You know why; payment brings loyalty.

A congressman is an important man in America, no. Here at home, I buy them for not so many Euros, but still, a man with a respectable government position shouldn’t have to look for sex on the Internet. I understand that people sometimes lie on these Internet sex ads. If you are a rich and a powerful man, even a mere congressman, why would you sink to looking for women there?

And some of these women lie. Why put all this effort into the chase when you, the man, could be the victim of false advertising? I tell you it isn’t so hard to assess the goods when you see pictures, videos or have them leaning over you in the dentist’s chair, capice?

Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.

*

"our genius is transparent"




Brent Shearer
Principal
Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.
90 Hudson St.
New York, New York 10013

6 October 2011

Dear Harry Shearer,

I have reached out as you suggested to the writer and NPR personality Ira Sher for inclusion as a charter member (Principal) in the company we are founding, Sheer-A-Sortium Plc.

I like the company motto you came up with "Our genius is transparent,” though as you noted to make it work we will have to treat Sher as if it is Shear, but I don’t think this is a problem. As for the logo, as you suggested, I have outsourced the design to an art director here in New York.

As we discussed, Sheer-A-Sortium will increase the clout and bargaining power of the founding members, yourself, me and Ira by uniting us three writer-performers under the Sheer-A-Sortium brand.

I totally agree with your point that the pooling of our artistic efforts will be a seminal moment in the history of literary guys who also work in radio, TV and film. You are right, I think, to suggest it will be like when Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglass Fairbanks combined to create United Artists in 1919. That company has had a good run and I don't see why Sheer-A-Sortium won't flourish as well. I think people will pick up that the Sortium refers to consortium without having to spell it out in the marketing materials.

I doubt you need worry that our new partner to be will be touchy, as you put it, about the way that if you say the name of the company, Sheer-A-Sortium, it sounds like you are saying Shearer-Sortium. I think Ira is secure enough to deal with this.

Furthermore, I don’t have a problem with excluding any writer-performers who names start with “Sch.” Let’s see what Ira has to say about this once he comes on-board.

As the least known member of the new company, it is only fair that I should attend to the administrative details of setting it up. I have had a few things published, and more importantly for the brand identity of Sheer-A-Sortium, I did an hour-long appearance on Washington Heights radio earlier this year.

Sure, it's just one of these Web-only radio stations run out of somebody's apartment, but on the plus side I did see a new part of the neighborhood that in my previous drug buying forays, many years ago, I missed.

When Ira signs up, we can plan the road show to sell shares. I think Morgan Stanley is as good as any other bank to be the underwriter.

Until then, keep on trucking, albeit in a digital way, my Sheer-A-Sortium bro. Love that script you sent me, by the way, "Boomer 2.0: How to Keep On Trucking in A Facebook Age." Even as a Harry Shearer project I’m sure it would do well, but with the marketing clout of our new collective behind it, the sky’s the limit.

I agree that it is is important that the Sheer-A-Sortium brand come to represent the best of writer-performers. Certainly with Spinal Tap and the rest of your work, you have set the bar high for all of our artistic endeavors here at S-A-S.

It is my pleasure to be associated with the launch of this brilliant project. Although it was my idea originally, I’m gratified at how quickly an artist of your stature saw the promise and joined.

Sincerely,


Brent Shearer
Principal
Sheer-A-Sortium






Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.

*

"our methods are transparent"




Brent Shearer
Principal
Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.
90 Hudson St.
New York, New York 10013


Dear Ira Sher,

Harry Shearer and I would like to invite you to participate in our pooling of forces so that each of our bylines will gain more clout because of the Sheer-a-Sortium brand that will now accompany any publication or broadcast that any of us are involved in.

We picture the pooling of our artistic careers as a seminal moment in the history of literary guys who also work in radio, TV and film. It will rival United Artists for cultural impact and should provide decades of revenue for ourselves and our descendants.




Harry and I have discussed the wisdom of inviting other writer-performers whose last names start with something other than Sher or Shear into the group, but who might be able to show a secondary last name affinity, and, thus, have some basis for claiming eligibility for membership

He is adamantly against letting in the many Sch names with by-lines that will no doubt be clamoring for admission once we go public and list the stock. He says that any Sch members will mess up the joke of the first word of the company name. He points out that there is no such word as Scheer, although they're are probably plenty of writer-performers out there with that last name.

Of course, Harry and I are eager to get your thoughts on this subject. Perhaps we could issue some kind of second class, non voting stock for Sch members if we did decide to let them in.

Harry and I are confident that you will see the advantages of the creative synergies that joining Sheer-a-Sortium will provide. If there is a gig to be farmed out, we will think first of our two, assuming you sign on, Sheer-A-Sortium principals before using any non-Sheer-a-Sortium labor. Of course, despite the fact that we are three, multi talented individuals, there will be some jobs that we founding members of the company will not be able to accomplish in-house.

Harry was bummed to learn that I was tone-deaf and therefore would of no use, besides writing lyrics, for some of the musical projects he is working on. It is possible that there are some limits to the areas of Sheer-A-Sortium endeavor that you can contribute to. Harry says I shouldn't just assume that everyone with a Shearer or a Sher by-line and a number of production credits can juggle and do a soft-shoe routine but I can, and I'm pretty sure you can too, Ira.


Sincerely,

Brent Shearer














Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.

*

"our genius is transparent"


Brent Shearer
Principal
Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.
90 Hudson St.
New York, New York 10013

6 October 2011


Re: Religious Quotas


Dear Harry and Ira,

I don't know if you've noticed but as the only gentile among the founding members of the Sheer-A-Sortium literary and performance guild, I have been forced to write and perform all the material that is either inspired by gentile life in American or that is aimed at a gentile audience. I think we need to reassess our routing procedure because I'm having to do too much work caring for this "majority" audience, while you guys are carrying much lighter loads of attending to our Jewish audiences, which while significant, don't represent more than a small proportion of our gigs in many sectors of our business such as college shows.




I reminded Harry, and should probably mention to you, Ira, that I recently left Larry Doyle Inc. because I was tired of having to do all the gentile Larry Doyle appearances. You might say that Larry Doyle is the actual gentile Larry Doyle, but as I pointed out in my letter to his agent Sarah Burne that led to my appointment as a staff member at Larry Doyle Inc., if you do comedy writing as well as he does, it graduates you into the firmament of Jewish comedy writers, which while it is a great honor, still left me with all the “live” college shows in the Bible Belt. I have a family and don’t want my experience with Sheer-A-Sortium to resemble the barmstorming and Motel 6 existence I was forced to live for long periods of time while under the employ of Larry Doyle Inc.

While I an grateful for the increased exposure my work has garnered as a result of my membership in the S-A-S, I’m sure both of you will support my bid for equal treatment at this early stage in the creation of this performer-writer thing of ours, the S-A-S.




Sincerely,


Brent Shearer
















Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.

*

"our methods are transparent"





Brent Shearer
Principal
Sheer-A-Sortium Inc.
90 Hudson St.
New York, New York 10013

6 October 2011


Dear Harry and Ira,

I was OK with going along with your guys' inclination,to not let any author-performer with Sch instead of Sh into the Sheer-A-Shortum even as an associate member as long as there was no particular gifted Sch-named author-performer who we were excluding.
But when it comes to the great French film director, Eric Rohmer, whose real name was Jean Martin Something Scherer, I have to object to your insistence on keeping our group only for us Sh-ers.
The Rohmer Foundation has applied to have Mr. Scherer included in our group as an associate member, actually I think we should create a posthumous principal position to give this great artist his rightful recognition, and I urge you two stick in the muds to let the auteur of "My Night at Maud's" and so many other cinematic masterpieces into this thing of ours, the Sheer-A-Sortium.
You know, Harry, if you think about it, if we're going to keep people out of the Sortium on the Sch issue, somebody's going to point out that Ira's last name has no "a" and we're going to have to deal with that.


Sincerely,

Brent Shearer

The Frappachino Next Time

"By one measure, the Starbucks frappachino bottles can serve as the "perfect containers" for a Molotov cocktail, said Kevin B. Barry, a retired NYPD Bomb Squad Technician. "It's small enough to be concealed in your pocket and it fits in your hand, so you can throw it almost like a Nerf football."
Generally speaking, any bottle will do, said Barney T. Villa, a retired bomb technician from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department."Nonetheless, he added: "You don't want a wide-mouth, Mickey beer. You want a small opening." NYT -- Jan. 4

The guys always ask me why I bust my hump to make a wide-mouth, easily throwable Molotov from a consumer bottle. I always say that as a member of the retired bomb technician community, it isn't enough to always have our phones on, yes, even on the golf course, so that we can field calls from reporters.

It is a bomb technician's duty to stay ahead of the curve of these fruitcakes' attacks. Eventually, one of these psychos, by choice or necessity, probably motivated by a desire to show off to their fellow nutcases, in general or maybe in their own cell, is going to come up with a way to use a wide-mouth bottle.

While I wouldn't necessarily agree with that reporter who described the Mickey beer bottle, with its 2.4 centimeter mouth, as the Holy Grail of these whack jobs' efforts, you have to admit that, sooner or later, just like with these nuclear proliferation experts who get the lion's share of the media's attention and go to all the cushy conferences, while, yeah, it's Orlando for us, again, there's going to be a nuclear strike someplace just like there's going to be a wide-mouth, consumer bottle Molotov.

You can't stop progress, but you can at least prepare your sound bite for when somebody does overcome the challenge, really of just making a thick enough fuse so the perp can throw it without it blowing up too soon or being even harder to throw than a Nerf football, the gold standard as far as these douchebags go, which isn't even that easy because to get some decent length, never mind a proper spiral, you have to squeeze the the foam football or the glass container, remember what thin-walled means, so tightly that its easy to squash the projectile before you heave it. And then, if you add the challenge of a thick wad of burning fuse, you can see why your average Omar hasn't figured it out. Some of these guys can't even light their shoes.

Look, its like fly fishing for some of them. If all you wanted to do was to catch fish, you could use a spinning reel. You wouldn't need to get these huge loops of line rocking around behind your head and getting caught in the trees. But, mark my words, as a retired bomb technician, there's going to be a wide-mouth bottle used in an attack. As an industry, we don't have the luxury that these candy-ass, Ivy League nuclear proliferation experts have of having a decent chance of being blown up ourselves, DC a target, never thought of that, and not having to come up with a coherent statement when the bad guys figure things out.

That's why I'm in my garage, night after night, trying to engineer it before they do. Anybody can write the statement. Understanding and even being able to reproduce the technology is what's going to get one of us retired bomb technicians on the podium next January in Orlando. I already got the joke I'm going to use to set up my Powerpoint. " I'm really more of a craft brew guy, but for a malt liquor Mickey's isn't bad."

– The Bathroom Monitor –

I am the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor has sat at his post for either four hours or 75 flushes, whichever comes first, the Bathroom Monitor’s work day is done.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. Sarah, the bookstore’s owner, gave me this little computer that doesn’t work so well so I could look like I was just another writer, working in her bookstore. But that is just so her customers can feel relaxed. In that sense, I am an undercover Bathroom Monitor, but only until the fights break out. Then I spring into action. I run up to the upper level of the bookstore and get help. This is the main job of the Bathroom Monitor.

The funny thing about using the little computer is I have to balance it on my legs. To do this I have to bend my legs in a little. In this way, the Bathroom Monitor resembles the women who are waiting to use the bathroom since, piss-swollen, they too must turn their knees inward to keep the pressure of their enlarged bladders from pressing too much on their lower front parts.

The Bathroom Monitor gets off on the women standing around. I know they have to pee or worse. I like knowing what’s going on inside their bodies, inside their bladders, connected in some mysterious way to their lower front parts.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. I can’t play favorites even when the women say that if I could let them into the bathroom before the other people in the line, I could come with them.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. What would I do in the bathroom?

I am the Bathroom Monitor. The toilet I oversee sounds like a jet taking off when it is flushed. This is useful to the people waiting in line. It is like the plane they are flying on has moved one plane closer to take-off on the runway. Before Sarah installed the Flush-o-meter, it also made it easy for me to count the number of flushes.

There are hardly ever any fights, sometimes not even harsh words, on the weekdays. I must still be at my post during my appointed shift, but there are very few fights on weekdays. But fights do break out on the weekends.

I think it is because of the Jerseys. That’s what we call them. They only come in on weekends. They are often in a bad mood because they are worried about their parking spaces and the inevitable traffic jam at the Holland Tunnel on their way home.

When the Jerseys swell up with piss, I guess they aren’t used to having to wait in line. But they do have to wait in line here at Sarah’s bookstore. And on the weekends, it’s usually a long line. If the Jerseys start fighting about whose turn it is, I know what to do.

I am the Bathroom Monitor. I sit by the bathroom in the left-most, round-backed, wooden chair, the one with the ripped leather seat. Sarah has placed two of these chairs under the stairs. When the fights break out, I’m never confused about where to run. After all, I sit right under the stairs. I am the Bathroom Monitor. I have to remember that when the fight breaks out or even when the harsh words start to get loud, if I jump up, I must lean forward first. Otherwise, I bop my noggin on the stairs before I can run up them to get help.

One time that happened. I forgot to lean forward. I bopped my noggin and got so dazed, and I was bleeding too, that when the police got there, they started to arrest me, because they thought I was in the fight. They had me in handcuffs before Sarah was able to explain to them that I am the Bathroom Monitor.

Sarah always says that the use of the bathroom at her bookstore is a privilege, not a right, and customers should be reminded of that when appropriate.

Sometimes the Bathroom Monitor has to say that a bookstore customer has been using the bathroom too much. Sarah says you can only use the bathroom, three times in each four-hour period. If the Bathroom Monitor sees someone, and it is always a woman, who is lining up to pee a fourth time in that period, I have to tell her, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you have used up all your bathroom privileges for this four-hour period. I can’t let you use the bathroom again.” Then I consult my watch so I can tell the lady when the next four-hour period starts.

Some customers stride so confidently down the stairs above the head of the Bathroom Monitor, swollen with piss or shit, expecting to use the bathroom without waiting, their boots or high heels making a loud noise on the wooden floor. Then they see there’s a line and it’s like the wind is knocked out of them for a moment. Then they get in line.

But what the Bathroom Monitor disapproves of is when these customers act like they are just browsing in the mass market, artless novels section of the bookstore, which happens to be where the line for the bathroom forms, and then act like, “Oh, since we‘re here, we might as well go, but we really don’t have to go as much as the people already in line.” The Bathroom Monitor finds this attitude to be disingenuous.

I have been the Bathroom Monitor for a long time. I don’t think anyone has had sex in the bathroom while I’ve been the Bathroom Monitor, but, as I said, my main job is to report when fights break out. There is certainly room for sex in the bathroom.

Bathroom policy at Sarah’s bookstore is rather laisaire faire. So maybe there has been sex in there, but I must have missed it. Anyway, that isn’t the reason I’ve been stationed here, in the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped leather seat that, despite the rip, testifies to the importance of the Bathroom Monitor.

Sometimes customers sit on the wooden, round-backed chair next to the Bathroom Monitor after they’ve come out of the bathroom. They’re joyous at having relieved themselves. If the Bathroom Monitor is unlucky, they talk on their cellphones. On the way into the bathroom, when they are swollen with piss and shit, the bookstore customers, even the Jerseys, usually are quite respectful of the Bathroom Monitor. But after they have relieved themselves, it is a different story. They don’t care that I’m pretending to work right next to them. They don’t care that I am the Bathroom Monitor.

Labor Relations As They Concern The Bathroom Monitor --

Labor’s Position: The Bathroom Monitor’s union rejects language to include, as an austerity measure, in the new contract, an addition to the job description of the Bathroom Monitor that says he must distribute toilet paper to the people in line.

If the union is asked to increase the tasks assigned to the Bathroom Monitor such as handing out toilet paper, the union will be forced to take action to defend its members’ interests, which will include, but not be limited to, work actions, slow downs, work stoppages and if worst comes to worst and we continue to face a stalemate at the negotiating table, we reserve the right, and there is little doubt that the National Labor Relations Board will back us up, to reassign the Bathroom Monitor away from his seat on the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped leather seat, to sit on the toilet, thus shutting down the bathroom for customers entirely.

Management’s position, Sarah’s position, is that these people, many of whom don’t even buy anything in the store, use way too much toilet paper. Management sometimes comes across big, softball-sized wads of toilet paper and this practice must be stamped out. Since we are paying the Bathroom Monitor to just sit there and report outbreaks of violence, why shouldn’t we also task him with the job of handing out toilet paper?


The Bathroom Monitor’s Response to Periods When The Bathroom Is Closed For Repairs

I am the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor reports to his work station, to the wooden, round-backed chair with the ripped, leather seat under the stairs and he finds that the bathroom is closed for repairs, it forces him to question the usefulness of his existence.

When customers ask me about the reason for the closure, I tell them that it is because the wrens and the chickadees have again started to dominate the soundtrack of birds that Sarah has installed in the bathroom. Sarah insists that, and the Bathroom Monitor concurs, no one species should dominate the bathroom’s soundtrack. That would be as unfair as saying that the Jerseys didn’t have to wait in the same line as the other customers just because they are double-parked or using those dodgy parking spaces under the Williamsburg Bridge.


Baby Drops Rattle Right On Bathroom Monitor’s Noggin

I am the Bathroom Monitor. The Bathroom Monitor likes the way his work station, the wooden, round backed chair with the ripped leather seat, is tucked under the stairs, making a slight nook for his, not exactly privacy, but a tiny bit of seclusion as he pretends to work in the sometimes crowded bookstore.

The downside of this location is that when people drop things on the stairs, they sometimes bounce once or twice and fall through the spaces between the stairs and bop the Bathroom Monitor right on his noggin.

In addition to the potential for injury, these things striking the Bathroom Monitor on his noggin tend to undermine the authority of the Bathroom Monitor. When the Bathroom Monitor has been hit by a dropped rattle, a cell phone, or anything else that has fallen through the stairs, it makes it hard to maintain the serious, dignified demeanor that is needed to oversee the bathroom line.

The Bathroom Monitor’s gravitas, his moral authority is all he has to do his job. Remember that the half-broken computer Sarah gave him really suggests very little clout at all. The Bathroom Monitor is not armed, nor is he equipped with a uniform. Hence, his serious demeanor is all he has. When a baby’s rattle bops him right on his noggin, it can take many flushes for the Bathroom Monitor to regain his authority.

Bernard Henri-Levy, Other French Public Intellectuals to Accept Texas-Atlantic Bid

Paris, France – Dallas, Texas: Sept. 25, 2006: In a joint announcement, the French Cultural Ministry and LBO firm Texas Atlantic Group said the U.S. buyout group will lead a consortium of investors in a deal that will take France’s five most prominent public intellectuals private.
The cash and stock transaction, valued at 2 billion euros or $2.4 billion in real money, will close in early 2007.
The deal’s targets, besides Levy, are, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Baudrillard, Somebody and Somebody.
David Bonkerman, founder of Texas Atlantic Group, said he and the other investors will combine the intellectual property assets of the five thinkers in a new company to be called Engage S.A. It will be based in Woodlands, Texas, an office park outside Houston.
The other investors, all buyout firms, are the Paul Blackburn Group, Silver Stream Partners, the TGIF Group and Slash and Burn Capital.
Bonkerman said that in addition to increasing returns from the print content output of the five intellectuals, the buyout group will launch a paid content web site, Engage.com, to monetize the intellectuals’ output on the Web.
“The new financial structure will mean that we will no longer be subject to quarterly pressure to publish in newspapers and journals and to appear on French book TV shows,” Levy said.
Cross-marketing will be another strategic plank in the newly privativeized group’s operations, Bonkerman said.
One of Engage’s first products will be a co-branded line of perfume to be endorsed by Levy and his wife, the lissome French model, actress, singer, and scent designer Arielle Dombasie.
“Under the current structure,” Levy said, “We are not being compensated properly for the steady flow of quips and pensees that we produce under enormous pressure.” He added that early plans call for some of the group’s output to be used as the underpinning of high-yield bonds that can be monetized in the CDO and other markets.
Bonkerman said the consortium plans for Engage to do more translations and look for spin-offs in non-print outlets such as bobble-head dolls of the five principals, Nascar hood ad placements, and more side deals like Levy’s appearance in the Grand Theft Auto video game.
The Texas Atlantic executive also said that in addition to exposing the five intellectuals to new audiences in North America, there may be opportunities, as Bonkerman put it, “to give Snoop Dog a Parisian spin.”
In addition, Engage plans to inject $500 million to speed up final coding, marketing and distribution of Baudrillard’s long-awaited video game based on the events of May 1968 in the capital.
“Sur le paves, le plage” or under the paving stones, the beach, the multi- title has been eagerly awaited by Euro-zone gamers.
Also in the works is a possible distribution deal with Wal Mart of Engage brand T-shirts, key chains and cheese graters.
But one prominent hedge fund manager said he wouldn’t touch the deal. “This is just a setup for a recap in which Texas Atlantic and their partners will add even more debt and leverage to these intellectuals to the point where they will no longer have the leisure time to sit around cafes and write their pamphlets on notebooks with thick, graph lined pages. TAG will kill the goose that writes the opinion pieces for Liberation and Le Figaro. Our fund is emphatically not interested in the bonds, the equity (if Engage returns to the public markets) or the bobble head dolls this deal will create.”


Counter-offer Emerges for Engage


A group consisting of Gaz de France, Bank Paribas, the Damone foods group, and Airbus said late yesterday, they will make an offer for the five French public intellectuals at the center of a buyout bid by a consortium of American LBO firms lead by Texas Atlantic Group. The group said they will add singer Johnny Halliday and the rights to Serge Gainsbourg’s recordings into the package in what they call a non-commercial attempt to safeguard France’s cultural hegemony.


“These writers and artists are like our Elgin marbles and we are not going to let a bunch of Texas LBO cowboys trample upon the rights of the French people to secure permanent access to this uniquely French cultural product. The output of these thinkers and artists is as uniquely French as the books to be found on the Seine’s quays with cream colored covers, no art, and titles running from the bottom to the top of the spine.”

The statement of the competing consortium went on to say, “As the heirs of the patronomie that has produced Montaigne, Collette, Renan, Racine, and MC Solaar, we will not allow this important sector of our culture to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”



Brussels turns thumbs down on French bid to stop LBO of Engage Thinkers –

The court of the First Instance of the Second Compote, the European Union’s anti-trust arbitrator, said today that a French-sponsored, counter-offer for Engage was invalid because of the involvement of the French government in putting the offer together.
“We must protect the free flow of capital among the nations of the European Union and even, regrettably, to the Americans. Even if this means Serge Gainsbourg’s oeuvre will be administered out of some dank office park in Texas, we still must enforce E.U. regulations and allow the Texas Atlantic bid to proceed.”

Nadal Announces his Retirement, Cites Frequent Rain Delays

Barcelona, Spain (August 26, 2009) –Tennis star Rafael Nadal, five-time Grand Slam winner, and winner of an Olympic gold medal this month, said today that, effective immediately, he is retiring from pro tennis.
Nadal, who just this summer took over the No. 1 ranking from Roger Federer, said he was quitting because “I have reached an age where my work day should not depend on the weather.” The 22- year-old star, known for his viscous, lefty forehand and displays of pique when having to sit out the frequent rain delays on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour, said he was looking forward to working indoors, perhaps in the family glass and windows business, in his home of Mallorca.
Keith Wiberforce, Nadal’s agent at the IMG Group, said that the star had considered options other than a complete retirement, but was unable to come up with an acceptable compromise that would keep him in the game and yet not expose him to rain delays.
“We looked at trying to limit Rafa’s season to the late fall and winter segment of the tour, which is mainly contested on indoor courts, but in the final analysis, the indoor events just don’t constitute a big enough percentage of pro tennis to make this approach feasible.”
Wilberforce noted that despite plans for a retractable roof at Wimbledon and the existence of one at the Australian Open, there were no plans to do anything to prevent rain delays at the other two Grand Slam tournaments, the French and U.S. Opens.
And at the level of important events just below the Grand Slams, the 10 Masters Series events,
only three are either indoors or equipped with a roof that would preclude rain delays.
A last ditch effort to secure Nadal’s participation in the indoor Master Series events in Paris and Barcelona, failed.
In a far-ranging press conference to announce his retirement, Nadal also said he felt that having turned 22, he is too old to go to work in shorts. In fact, he explained that his signature “pirate” pants, the three-quarter length trousers, which Nadal alone among tennis pros wore, were a response to jibes from his friends back in Mallorca about how silly it is for grown man to have to earn a living wearing shorts.
“The fellows I went to school with will now have one less thing to taunt me about on Friday and Saturday nights when we hit the bars in Manacor,” he said.
Nadal also revealed that he could hardly enjoy winning his first gold medal in Beijing because the skies were overcast for much of the time and he was worried it might rain.
“They told me it was pollution, but I don’t know. I think it was rain in the air that I smelled and it ruined yet another tournament win for me.
I’m happy to have endured this weather to win a gold medal for my country, but it stresses me out way too much to continue to put myself through this agita week after week on the circuit just for individual glory. I’d rather fiddle with the spreadsheets in the office of our family business. I look forward to the day I can yell my well-known cry of “Vamos” when I balance our monthly accounts instead of when I beat another hapless young millionaire having to compete in shorts under the constant threat of rain stopping play.”
Roger Federer, whom Nadal replaced as the world No. 1, said he could understand Nadal’s decision. “A rain delay can totally change the momentum of a match. As the two leading players, it usually works to Rafa’s and my disadvantage.”
The Swiss star added, “We’re well-paid, but between the constant travel, the pressure to perform and the frequent rain delays, the tour can be a grind even for top-ranked players like Rafa and me.”

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Drunk Nympho Group’s Pact with Chronic Rectal Itch Sufferers’ Association: Post-Merger Integration Issues

At first, I thought the merger of the drunk nymphos group with the Chronic Rectal Itch Sufferers’ Association (CRISA) would work. I thought it would create a stronger association, one that would serve members of both groups better.

I never said I joined the Hot Chicks Drunk Nymphos Group (HCDNG), for any but the basest motives. I also never complained that those of us that are symptom-free had to pay annual dues three times as high as the symptom-manifesting members.

At least I never complained until after the merger. That was when things really started to go South. Now I’m thinking of quitting, retention bonus or no retention bonus.

I should never have been singled out, post-merger, it never happened pre-merger, because I was fraternizing with members of our group outside the meetings. That was why those of us without symptoms joined the group in the first place. Of course, we were all men, duh!

Luckily, we were able to vote down the motion that the merged group start to advertise and to open its membership to new non-sufferers.

If word of the existence of the organization were to be circulated, naturally there would be hordes of non-sufferers clamoring to join the group for the same reason I did.

Membership in the former HCDNG, now joined with the CRISA, would inevitably be seen by some men as a way to meet and seduce women who were “easy” because of their double diagnosis, or more, of these illnesses.

Heck, as any man in the HCDNG group, ie, non-suffering members from the maladies, can tell you, it worked great until the merger ruined things.

Maybe it was some kind of hysterical, cross-pollination that lead to the conditions starting to overlap. It didn’t happen when the Agoraphobics with Shoplifting Problems group merged with the Psoriasis Remediation Association. But the symptoms of our two groups have mixed. Or, I should say the chronic rectal itch symptoms spread to our drunk nympho members.

Not to all, but to most of them. Oddly, I haven’t heard of any members of the chronic rectal itch group who have begun to have problems with drunkenness and promiscuity.

And that’s what has led to the deplorable situation we find ourselves in today.

I don’t speak merely from a selfish point of view when I say that it is a shame that so many of the former HCDNG members, already suffering from the combined illnesses of alcoholism and nymphomania, have now become afflicted with chronic rectal itch.

It used to be so easy to seduce these women. But now, yes, you can still get them drunk. They are still more than willing to act out the sexual propensities of their illnesses, but what good is it since they are constantly scratching their asses?

I have tried to adopt my sexual habits to the post-merger situation. After all, if you have a hot chick, drunk nympho woman and you are about have sex with her, it may seem that the constant scratching of her ass could be overlooked. if not during coitus, at least if she was blowing you.

But this have proven not to be the case. It can be hard for clinicians and other health workers new to chronic rectal itch to understand the severity of the condition.

You might think that the S&M-oriented, non-manifesting members of our former group have an advantage in the post-merger world. After all, half the time they have their women tied up. But to think that this might overcome the problem of trying to “do’ the women while they are scratching their asses feverishly, is to underestimate the hold chronic rectal itch has on its sufferers.

Pain and the customary restraints were all well and good in the pre-merger days for the drunk nympho women. But, post-merger, the accouterments of S&M, by the way, I am a veritable flower child by comparison, combined with the ravages of chronic rectal itch, put the men from the former drunk nymphos group out of sorts to the point where nobody is having any sex.

Some of us are still paying triple dues to not get our rocks off with our fellow members of the merged organization. There is a distinct lack of concern about our problem on the part of the chronic rectal itch members who haven’t been afflicted with alcholism and nymphomania. All they care about is how great it is we can now get cheaper rates at hotels for banquet rooms and personal accommodations.

For how long can the board of the merged organization expect us, the non-manifesting members of the former HCDNG, to continue our financial support when the group no longer serves its purpose.

Sadly, the effect of CRI on the recovery rates of former HCDNG members hasn’t been encouraging for future fund-raising.

Given this deplorable state of affairs, I have decided to hope for a cure, suspend my membership, and look for other groups that would provide a similar outlet.



Writers of Juvenile Erotica Association To Merge with National Book Critics’ Circle :

New York, New York: In a bid to buttress their waning influence in the face of better known book award programs such as the National Book Awards, the NYPL Literary Young Lions Award, the Bakeless Prize, the Tender Cornhole Violators Citation and Best Reading Awards of the National Association of Beauticians and Hair Colorists, the NBCC said today that they will merge with the Writers of Juvenile Erotica Association.

Special Rate for Clergy:

Obit: Brent Shearer 1951 – 2050

15 August 2050 – Agence France Presse – Nice, France -- Brent Shearer, the American writer, died yesterday in Cap Blabo, France after a brief, but deadly illness.

Shearer was known for being the first married man to successfully collect alimony from his unmarried, ex-mistress. The case, which took a circuitous, seven-year route through the court system, was decided in his favor in 2011.

Shearer said at the time, “The main thing I did right was to wait until she took that job at the hedge fund to file.” This filing date was, of course, before the backlash of ’09 against the sovereign wealth funds and other hedge fund-related market manipulators.

Also in Shearer’s favor was the fact that despite having been moved to write dozens of poems about his lover, one Heike Stumbrucker, he was never successful in his 13-year campaign to be admitted to Grace Schulman’s master class in poetry at New York’s 92nd St. Y.

In an interview with the New York Times, immediately after the verdict was announced in 2011, Shearer said, “The aesthetic angle was the icing on the cake for our argument. I’m not surprised that the jury found her liable for a financial settlement, because for a professional writer like myself to not, at the least, profit from a love affair by gaining marketable aesthetic product was a strong argument that my rights had been trampled upon by the defendant.”

Legal scholars said the significance of Shearer’s victory was that it opened up the playing field of American jurisprudence to legal solutions for nearly all areas of personal and sexual relationships. Sexual contact, in and of itself, became actionable in the wake of Shearer v. Strumbrucker in ways that strict constructionalists of the 20th Century could never have foreseen, said Some Legal Scholar.
It was a 4-to-3 decision by New York State Supreme Court. The minority members of the seven-judge panel wrote a dissenting opinion that said Shearer was lucky to have gotten in Strumbucker's pants in the first place.

However, the majority of four judges ruled that Strumbucker was obliged to pay $10 million damages for mental pain and suffering despite the fact that she was much better looking, smarter in general terms and in a decision that Shearer had his own lawyers appeal, despite the fact that the jury awarded him $10 million, was a better writer even though she abandoned that trade long ago.

Shearer had invested $5 million in pursing that aspect of the case. His 13th appeal of the “who was the better writer” secondary judgment has been voided by his death.

Dublin’s Shame: Yanks Denied Dole!

For all the ink spilled about Ireland’s E85 billion bailout, no commentator has concerned herself with one class of victim, the dozens of unemployed Irish-Americans who acquired Irish passports in recent years expecting to take advantage of your European-style social benefits.


When I picked up my Irish passport two years ago at the consulate on Park Avenue here in New York, (might new, cheaper digs be in order?) as the lady slipped me the passport under the glass divider, I asked her where I should go to apply for the dole. She thought I was joking, but I wasn‘t.


Now it appears unlikely that Ireland’s new economic “supervisors,” the IMF and the EU, will honor the implicit commitment Ireland made to us new citizens, for we are citizens, to let us go on the dole or as you call it in some circumstances, to collect job seeker's allowance.


For centuries, we in America, have absorbed literally millions of Irish people of many generations. Now, at the time of our significant need, we, a mere dozen or so individuals probably, hardly anything compared to the migration westward across the Atlantic, had hoped to reverse the process, had wanted to make a small drawdown on the economic capital accumulated during the Celtic Tiger years.


I think it is fair to say that without the U.S. absorbing so many generations of talented Irish people, the Celtic Tiger years might not have happened.


Perhaps I should have done it sooner, but I thought it only fair to use up my American unemployment payments first. Am I to be penalized for having the honesty to not try to get two countries’ job seeker’s allowances at the same time, merely because economic conditions in Ireland have deteriorated in the meanwhile?


With the unemployment rate at about 10 percent here, and I know it is high in Ireland as well, I think we Irish Americans who have gone to the trouble and expense of acquiring the red booklet should be allowed to get job seeker’s allowance in the country of our ancestors’ birth. Better than paying it out to resident Poles or Africans, I should think.


But based on my initial inquiries, that is apparently not the case. This flawed decision to not allow me and my compatriots to go on the dole in Ireland ignores the role our country, America, has played in accepting your wandering waterfowl or whatever it is.


If this decision, imposed by non-Irish administrators, is allowed to stand and we few citizen-Yanks are not allowed to collect job seeker’s allowance, it will be a sad moment in relations between our countries.


The fact that the new budget cuts job seeker’s allowance is not my objection. I think we Yanks who seek to go on the dole should share the austerity the nation as a whole will be going through. We may not have been citizens for as long as some, but if you would just let us collect, we would be patriotic and not complain about a slight reduction from your hardly princely sum of $236 per week.


Indeed, no matter how proud I am to be a fairly newly minted Irish citizen, I am an American, too. We are known for our “can-do” spirit. Your job seeker’s allowance is only $236 a week. Even New York State unemployment payments are more than that and New York is less generous than New Jersey or Connecticut. I’d put my position to your head man over there, your Taoiseach, just don’t make me pronounce that word, if I get the opportunity.


If in recent years, Irish society has opened up to a broader spectrum of immigrants, as I’ve read, I wonder if it is really wise to use the country’s economic troubles as a reason to turn away us few Irish Americans who may choose to immigrate for the economic opportunity of going on the dole and who are already citizens.


No, it’s a sad business entirely if Ireland turns down us well-meaning, if impoverished, Americans who are willing to come to your country with our red booklets.


Some of the “coffin” ships of the 19th Century, the ones that left from Cobh harbor, had as their last sight of land, my family’s farm on Mutton’s Head, Country Cork. Your country’s emigrants would crowd the ships’ rails for a last look at their country and see our farm.


How disappointed my ancestors would be, some of them, anyway, to learn that the tit of the Irish government is off limits to their admittedly neer do well descendents.


I think Ireland evades its responsibility to its American cousins, holders of Irish passports, when it acquiesces to the decision to deny us job seeker’s allowances in the land of our patrimony and our, well, not matrimony, though if there are any single Irish women of a certain age interested in supporting a Yank like me, I’ll instruct this publication to include my email with my name.


Again, I know this is a difficult time for Ireland. But under any government, Fine Gael or Finna Fail, I think the National Republic must look beyond its current economic malaise, and take its direction from such worthy Irish and Irish American leaders as Collins, DeValera and Kennedy and let us few Yanks that need it, collect job seeker’s allowance. What better way to exercise a bit of financial independence from the IMF and the EU?


To paraphrase James Joyce:


Honor please my booklet red.

Pay me Euros

till I’m dead.

From Brussels and DC take no cue

Support a Yank

Who looks like you.

Shearer Audience Services To Hike Prices

"Bookstores, including some of the most prominent around the country, have begun selling tickets or requiring a book purchase of customers who attend author readings and signings." NYT, June 22, 2011

New York, New York (July 10, 2011) -- Brent Shearer, CEO of Shearer Audience Services (SAS, Nasdaq) said today that in response to the imminent imposition of fees for attending readings at New York City bookstores, SAS will be forced in September to increase its charge for having him or other staffers attend readings.

Over the past three years, SAS has established itself as the premire provider of professional audience members for New York City readings, book parties, book signings and other author events. By common consensus, and as noted in frequent media citations (New York Times, Publisher's Weekly, the Social Calendar), readers, event organizers and writers in New York have come together in support of the company's position that it isn't an "official" reading if there is no SAS presence.

Shearer said, "In light of statements by independent bookstores that they will start to charge fees for author events, and because my plan of going to a ton of readings and picking up women at them has not worked out, SAS must reluctantly increase its fee structure from its current level of just scarfing up whatever free food and drink is on offer, to a minimum "appearance" fee of $100 per reading or other author event." The increase will be effective September 15, 2011.

Shearer continued, "We have contacted a number of publishers who have said they will contribute to this charge in conjunction with a payment by the host bookstore or bar to ensure SAS's continued participation at author events. While we can provide some guidance and templates, currently SAS will leave negotiation of the exact percentages of the fee split between publishers and host venues to these entities."

In addition, Shearer said he will begin directly charging authors for SAS presence at their events. Authors can choose from the following options. Basic package, $50 from author, not to offset payments by publishers and host venues, consists of rapt attention, front row seating if needed to give the appearance of the event not being sparsely attended, and one "non-insulting" question during the question and answer period.

First class packages include the above with the "non-insulting" question upgraded to a flattering reference to positive reviews or other author-planted observations masquerading as a question.

Shearer said SAS and its consultants are also designing "bespoke" packages, which will allow authors, publishers and venue owners to request specific outfits, accents and multiple, open-ended questions for the author to respond to. SAS representatives, under the bespoke option, will show up with an armful of the author's older books and will speak publically, when appropriate, about his or her desire to get them all signed.

In early audience reaction tests, this example seems to inspire purchases of multiple volumes. As a result, authors, publishers and bookstores get more bang for their promotional buck since SAS presence helps sell more than the new book, which presumably is the one being read from. We encourage authors and publicists to suggest other approaches for our bespoke program.

Shearer, the eminence griese of the downtown readings scene, also addressed related topics such as the recently announced plan by Word Bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to pay all audience members to attend readings if they pass a "front-door literacy test." The readings company head sidestepped the controversy sparked by advocates for the illiterate who have protested that the Word bookstore plan is discriminatory.

"I don't object to plans by one of SAS's favorite client bookstores to pay a small fee to literate customers for attending readings. But I don't think you can compare the contribution of these amateur readings attendees with the service provided by myself and my staff members," Shearer said.

"For instance, SAS professional readings attendees never ask suck-up questions, unless an author has purchased at least the "basic" package, during the questions and answers session. Hence, the professional readings attendee never asks about what the authors' influences have been, when they write, or what direction they face in while writing. Unlike amateur readings attendees, SAS representatives never shy away from sitting in the front row. Hence, the title of Shearer's best-selling memoir of the formative years of SAS, "In the Front Row, On the Dole." (Shearer used unemployment payments to fund the company's early years.)

The SAS head continued, "With our objective take on the author and his or her work, we act as a much-needed counterweight to the sycophancy and ass-kissing that often characterize readings unless the author has paid for at least our basic package or we have been retained by the publisher and the host venue."

"In the case of there being no payment by any participant in an author event, you can be sure that if a SAS professional reading attendee asks a question after an author's presentation, it will be brief, to the point, and will challenge any authorial blow-hardedness such as the multiple mentions by an author who read at the McNally Jackson bookstore last month of the "six languages I speak."

Shearer also criticized nascent industry plans to base the amount of admission fees on how good-looking the author is.

"I know that Jonathan Lethem is cute, but SAS's heroic level of participation in his "Chronic City," reading tour, which resulted in, among other kudos, the presentation of Lethem's own reading copy of "Chronic City" to Shearer (see inthefrontrowonthedole.blogspot.com), was not based on the author's good looks, but on the literary merit and ease of bike access to the venues. Plans to take the author's appearance into account in admissions pricing can only lead to a undesirable "MTV-ization" of the author events segment of the book publishing industry.

Shearer commented on SAS's much reported exclusive deal with the KGB bar to be the official professional readings attendee at the bar's many author events. "The fee I negotiated with the KGB bar owner has been consistently mis-stated in press accounts. As NYC's leading literary bar, KGB management brought leverage to the deal-making process that no other venue could. But I still charged Denis much more than has been reported. Just as an example in the free drinks section of the contract between SAS and KGB , observers should note that the beverages that SAS personnel can drink free include those $18 double Kailuas, not just the bar's inexpensive Russian beers."

To sum up, Shearer promised the various stakeholders in the author event industry, readers, authors, publishers, bookstore owners and Lou, the KGB bartender, that they can rest assured that SAS will continue to lead in innovation and in nurturing the most profitable business models for the author event segment of the hard-copy publishing industry.

SAS in talks for pact w/ Amazon in internet bookselling industry first

New York, New York (July 22, 2011) Shearer Audience Services, (SAS, Nasdaq) said today it is in discussions with Amazon's bookselling division to provide professional audience members at the internet book sellers' author events. Author events, long the exclusive marketing tool of bricks and mortar book sellers, have become the latest flashpoint in the war between internet book sellers and book stores with a physical location.
SAS CEO Brent Shearer said the company will still serve chain and independent bookstores as source of professional readings attendees; denies charges that company pact with Amazon betrays former customer base.







Leading Author Brando Skyhorse Says SAS "Nothing More than a protection racket," refuses to pay SAS fee calls Shearer a small time influence peddler and a crook.


Amazon Buys SAS for $14.3 million


Assoc. of Independent Bookstores to Form audience services arm, their release starts with a denial that their decision to launch an audience services division has any connection to the recent purchase of industry leading audiences services company SAS by Amazon.

To David Sickman: remember the main reason for the launch of NY Tennis is to help me to get a full time job in tennis, in editorial , in whatever –