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 –

Sam -Sam Beckett Takes Literary New York by Storm-Storm

“And here’s this super cool, tattooed, 3 percent body fat guy who wants to be your friend and talk about books” – NY Times, May 18, 2011 – profile of literary sensation Jon-Jon Goulian


Wylie said he’d give me one more chance. I don’t want the shots. The skirts aren’t so bad, I just hope no one from my cell in the French Resistence sees me in this get-up. There’s no point in going on, in going on to the tattoo shop. Yet I must, I must go on to the tattoo shop.

Super-cool, me, Sam Beckett, sorry, Sam-Sam, well, New York City is the place where, no, no, the Lou Reed line Wylie told me to use is “I wish I was handsome and straight.” Is that from “Walk on the Wild Side” or did I pick it up when I was wearing trousers, maybe, at the Durr mantelpiece in Dresden when Sam-Sam was so much older, I’m younger than that now. Wylie said to only use that one on geezers. Also told me my Geezer Ingenue schtick would be too subtle, go with Sam-Sam.

Lady Gaga still hasn’t friended me. Good picture of Lila kissing me in the Times. Note to self: more kisses received when you actually buy the author’s book at readings. Goren Whine, still chilly. Was it the joke about his skinny tie, flabby little tummy? All these publications with Paris or New York in the title, no wonder Sam-Sam gets muddled. Or maybe it was the E. If this plan of Wylie’s to finally get me over the top works, my next project is going to be making some drone-y, repetitive music to go with that E stuff.

Went to Suzanne Dottino’s Sunday night fiction series last night at KGB. Wylie says that Sunday nights there, for Sam-Sam, between the end of the reading and the start of Chris Jacobsen’s movie series is like the era between the invention of the pill and the onset of Aids for the straights. Whatever that means. Do know there were only three New Yorker writers there so all that verbal diarrhea and spasmodic dancing in the corner under the pictures of the Ukrainian nationalists was wasted. Wylie says you have to have at least five for a dickwad or some other Yiddish word that means, more or less, quorum.

Bit where somebody asks me what I’ve been up to and I use the hand signals Wylie showed me, up and down motion for masturbation, which is apparently endlessly fascinating to these Yanks, and the pen in the hand motion that describes all the writing Joyce has been doing for me. Trouble is, when I do the pen in hand motion, am always handed the check.

Wylie keeps pushing me to use steroids, to take the shots, to tackle my percentage of body fat problem. Says it’s OK, because the readers are all on the stuff, too. I dunno. Maybe this Sam-Sam routine is my last shot. I’m down with the skirts and heels, even these annoying sunglasses that make me look like a matron from Boca Raton, but Sam - Sam draws the line at these shots in the ass .Wylie says all the other writers who started out with the name Samuel used them to break through. Ask Lipsyte when he friends me back. When I was just Sam Beckett, I hung out with Lance Armstrong, you know when the Tour de France meant just a bike race, not our underground railway stations to outrun the Gestapo. Lance - Lance, sorry, Armstrong told me he wished he hadn’t used the stuff, gave him a big boil on the butt. Does Lady Gaga use? Did Sam - Sam Johnson?