Internet Battle Raises Questions About the First Amendment
By ADAM LIPTAK

The beauty queen and the cad both have Web sites.

Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999 and again in 2001, uses her site to promote what she calls her "platform of character education."

"She is founder of Say Nay Today and the Sobriety Society," the site says, "and her article `ABC's of Abstinence' was featured in Teen magazine."

Tucker Max's site promotes something like the opposite of character education. It contains a form through which women can apply for a date with him, pictures of his former girlfriends and reports on what Mr. Max calls his "belligerence and debauchery."

Until a Florida judge issued an unusual order last month, Mr. Max's site also contained a long account of his relationship with Ms. Johnson, whom he portrayed, according to court papers, as vapid, promiscuous and an unlikely candidate for membership in the Sobriety Society.

The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson's, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints.

Ms. Johnson's lawsuit also highlights some shifting legal distinctions in the Internet era, between private matters and public ones and between speech and property.
Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use "Katy" on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson's last name, full name or the words "Miss Vermont."

The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from "disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by" Ms. Johnson. That prohibition is not limited to his Web site. Finally, Judge Lewis ordered Mr. Max to sever the virtual remains of his relationship with Ms. Johnson. He is no longer allowed to link to her Web site.

The page of Mr. Max's site that used to contain his rambling memoir now has only a reference to the court order.

Ms. Johnson did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. In her lawsuit, Ms. Johnson maintained that Mr. Max had invaded her privacy by publishing accurate information about her and had used her name and picture for commercial purposes.

Her lawyer, Michael I. Santucci of Fort Lauderdale, declined to be interviewed. He has asked Judge Lewis to seal the court file in the case, a request on which she has not yet ruled, and to prohibit Mr. Max from talking about the suit, a request she has rejected.

Mr. Santucci did provide a copy of a news release he issued after the order was issued.

"This victory should send a clear message to all parasitic smut peddlers who live off the good names of others," he said in the release, which also noted that Ms. Johnson "emphatically denies the story contained on Tucker Max's Web site."

Mr. Santucci did not respond to an e-mail message asking whether his issuing a news release was at odds with his request to seal the court file on privacy grounds.

John C. Carey, a lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in Miami, recently agreed to represent Mr. Max. Mr. Carey said he would soon ask Judge Lewis to withdraw her order and dismiss the case.

"Katy Johnson holds herself out publicly, for her own commercial gain, as a champion of abstinence and a woman of virtue," Mr. Carey said. "The public has a legitimate interest in knowing whether or not her own behavior is consistent with the virtuous image that she publicly seeks to promote."

Through his lawyer and his publicity agent, Mr. Max declined to be interviewed.

Ms. Johnson's site is www.katyjohnson.com. Mr. Max's is www.tuckermax.com. Both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Max sell T-shirts and the books they have written on their sites. Ms. Johnson's book is "True Beauty: A Sunny Face Means a Happy Heart." Mr. Max's is "The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines."

That the sites are also used to make money should make no difference in whether Mr. Max may be forbidden to write about Ms. Johnson, said Gregg D. Thomas, an expert in First Amendment law at Holland & Knight in Tampa, Fla.

"This is clearly a suppression of free speech," Mr. Thomas said of Judge Lewis's order.

Prior restraints based on invasion of privacy are unusual.

"It has happened perishingly rarely," said Diane L. Zimmerman, a law professor at New York University and an expert in First Amendment and privacy law. "When it has happened it has generated enormous controversy."

Professor Zimmerman noted the example of "Titicut Follies," a documentary about patients in a mental hospital that was banned on privacy grounds in 1969 by Massachusetts's highest court. A judge lifted the ban in 1991.

The prohibition on linking to Ms. Johnson's site is "kooky," said Susan P. Crawford, who teaches Internet law at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

"To block the ability to link," Professor Crawford said, "is in effect to say her site is her own private property."

While a prior restraint may not be warranted, legal experts said, Ms. Johnson's invasion-of-privacy claim, so long as it seeks only money, may be justified.

But that, too, raises difficult issues, Professor Zimmerman said.

"If you're telling people they can't talk about something like this," she said of Mr. Max's memoir, "you're also telling them they can't talk about their own lives."


***

The Miss Vermont Story
by Tucker Max

Reprinted without permission in its entirety, until justiuce prevails and it is returned to its rightful place on Mr. Max's site.

This is the complete and unabridged story of my relationship with Katy Johnson, known to my friends and her fans as Miss Vermont. I normally don't like writing about the specific details of relationships or hook-ups for many reasons, but this is an exception. After putting up the giant hypocrisy that is her webpage, she has to be ready for what I write.

I must prepare you, in advance, for what you are about to read...it is as ridiculous and surreal as anything I have have ever written, and possibly anything you have ever read. This relationship was outlandish even by Tucker Max standards. You may not believe some of what is written here. To that, I can only tell you that I have several witnesses to most of the events here, and the wedding was, well, a wedding, so there were hundreds of people there.

Furthermore, this is a long story, because I didn't want to leave out any of the details, lest the story seem forced or less amazing that it really was.

And to Katy: Even though you haven't responded to the email I sent you, I know you check this site every few weeks. You are welcome to email me with corrections or additions to the story. If I got something wrong or left something out, please let me know and I'll be happy to change it. In fact, I'll go farther. If you want to write your own version of our relationship, I swear to my god, that I will post it, COMPLETELY UNABRIDGED, right next to mine. This is your opportunity to rebut anything I say here.
_____________________

The summer after law school graduation, I moved to Boca Raton, Florida and took a job managing my father's restaurants. I wasn't really expecting to meet a girl I would like, as the general intellectual level of South Florida is somewhere above "functionally retarded." After I had been in Boca about two months, I hadn't really had any sort of relationship other than emotionally uninvolved sex with morally suspicious girls, and I eventually resigned myself to vacant sex with the vapid idiots that infest South Florida.

One day I was at my gym, The Athletic Club of Boca Raton. It is a massive airplane hanger of a building; a gym, health club, spa, lounge and restaurant rolled into one. Basically, it's the type of place where guttural grunts and flexing underneath tight shiny shirts passes for foreplay. Welcome to Florida. For several years it's been the "in" place to workout in Boca, one of the primest meat markets in a town full of butcher shops. I usually tried to avoid peak hours and the throngs of scantily clad gold-digging whores positioning themselves for fifth husbands. Don't mistake me--staring at dozens of immense fake breasts spilling out of sports bras is fun for a while, but it gets old quick, especially when those breasts are attached to faces that tell the story vacant personalities do not. These women have circled the drain a few times, and no manner of plastic surgery or trips to the spa can hide that despair that years of whorish behavior and emotional prostitution leaves in the eyes.

I was in the free weight section of the gym, and one girl kept catching my eye, more for what she wasn't showing rather than what she was. She had a navy blue hat on, pulled tight over her face, a loose fitting white cotton T-shirt, and green basketball shorts. Not the standard Boca female gym outfit. Staring at her between sets, I realized that she was very attractive. By trying to hide that attractiveness, she became even better looking. The logo on her shorts said, "Vermont Law," which gave me the perfect in. My law degree would finally get some good use.

I approached her as she paused between sets, and asked if she had attended law school at Vermont. She told me she didn't, that she went to undergrad there, but that she was attending Stetson for law school. I told her I just graduated from law school at Duke, and the look on her face told me all I needed to know. It was about 7:30, she was obviously into me, so I decided throw my hat in the ring:

"So, what are you doing tonight?"

She lowered her head slightly and brushed her hair behind her ear, "Nothing."

"You hungry? Want to get something to eat?"

She looked up at me, her eyes bright, and said in an earnest, non-seductive way, "I am always hungry."

I swear to god these exact words came out of her mouth. I told her to meet me at Max's Grille at around 8:30. She agreed and I left. By the time I got to the restaurant, I had forgotten her name. Great. My family owns the restaurant (in case you hadn't gotten that from the "Max" in "Max's Grille"), so I got one of the managers to stand by the door with me until she came in. He introduced himself to her, she gave him her name right back, "Hi, I'm Katy Johnson." I'm sneaky.

I'll be honest: She looked amazing. You've seen her webpage by now, but it doesn't do her justice; she really is better looking in person. She wore a peach colored dress that might as well have been painted on her almost perfectly shaped body, full breasts taut against the upper lip of the dress, cleavage everywhere...I was excited. I have charmed my share of women, but I wish I had recorded my conversation that night. Anyone who has ever played sports knows the feeling of "being in the zone." It's when you have one of those transcendental games, where everything works, when you see the entire court, you are three steps ahead of everyone else, the game slows down while you keep going at full speed, everything you throw up goes in, and when you miss, the rebound comes right back at you.

I was having one of those nights. I was beyond good or bad; I was simply operating at a different level from everyone else. I was MJ in the Finals. The conversation was great; I was hitting all her buttons in exactly the right way. One of the specific things I remember us talking about was that she was Miss Vermont, twice, and that she hadn't finished in the top ten in either the Miss America or the Miss USA pageant, and that she was very upset by this, because she had all sorts of endorsement and movie deals set up if she had only finished in the top ten in either, and now she didn't know what she was going to do with her life, as she was finished with pageants, which had been her entire meaning the past few years. She had even moved to Vermont and transferred to the University of Vermont during undergrad in order to establish residency there so she could be sure and win a state pageant, because she was unsure that she could win either of the Miss Florida titles. My comment up upon hearing this story, "Those judges were obviously idiots." She turned to me, placed her hand upon my arm, tilted her head, and said "Really?" I just looked at her, with a controlled smirk on my face, and didn't say anything.

I've had girls melt on me before, but had never actually seen it as graphically and completely at that moment.

So let's see...beautiful girl, been judged on her beauty all her life, depressed about being rejected from her life goal, completely lost her focus...does anyone else see where this is going? After dinner, we adjourned to a bar next-door called Gigi's and got some cocktails. We were sitting on the couches in the back, when she said to me, "I can't believe I'm doing this. I never drink this much." This was going to become an on-going theme in our relationship. I said nothing, because in this case, the best offense is no offense. She was searching for validation, and the best thing to do was not to offer it, but rather to make her work for it. Barely half-way into the drink, she said, "Tucker...do you find me attractive?" With this, she literally put her leg over mine and sort of halfway climbed on top of me, pushing her breasts in my face, "Do you think I'm hot?"

The next thing I knew, we were out in the middle of Mizner Park (the outdoor piazza where Max's Grille and Gigi's are located), kissing in the middle of the grassy median. It was really starting to get out of hand; I was pushing her dress up, she was undoing my belt, and we were quickly moving towards passionate humping. The only problem: It was Tuesday at 12:30, and though the park was empty, I really didn't want to get caught having sex under a gazebo right in front of my parent's restaurant. I begin telling her that we have to relax, that we can't do this here. Predictably, she thought I was playing hard to get; of course this only made her want me more.

In response, she desperately intensified her attack on my loins, slipping a hand down my pants, and bringing one of my hands up to her now-exposed left breast. I desperately tried to formulate a plan about where we could fuck. My apartment was a no-go (for reasons too long to explain here). She lived with her parents, so that was a definite no-go. Remembering that she drove, I asked, "Where did you park?" She pointed right behind us, and sitting there on the curb, not twenty yards away, was the solution:

A white Ford Explorer.

Without the third-row seat.

I did my best this one time to try and make my move romantic: "Have you ever hooked up in your car?" Hey--that's romantic for me, alright? She smiled, so I grabbed her arm, and we half-sprinted toward the car.

I have hooked up with enough girls to be able to make an educated comparison, and let me just tell you--I have rarely seen anyone so eager and enthusiastic about sex. Our clothes were off, in the back of a Ford Explorer, where there is not much room to spare, in less than 30 seconds. About a second after that she mounted me, and...I doubt I have to go into detail. If you've done something like this before, you can fill in the blanks. But just to be clear, yes, I inserted my penis into her vagina and we had sexual intercourse. When we were finished, she said to me, "You have a lot of experience, don't you?" We eventually exchanged numbers and said goodbye.

The next day, around 11am, I got a hysterical message from Katy. She was distraught, nearly crying. I couldn't understand her message, so I called her, fully expecting the worst. Apparently, that morning her mother was looking in Katy's car for something, found my boxer-briefs on the floor, which I, in my post-coital stupor, had unwittingly left in her car. Katy's mom completely flipped out. Stormed into Katy's room, woke her up, called her a whore, a tramp, etc. Katy, to her credit, kept her cool, and told her mother that they were her workout underwear, and that she wore them under her shorts the day before at the gym and just forgot to being them in the house. It was only after her mom bought the story that Katy called me in hysterics. Go figure.

For our second date, I invited her to my place and cooked for her. I forget what I made; I think it was Miso glazed Chilean sea bass and Asian baby vegetables. I orchestrated it, as per standard Tucker Max procedure at the time, so that she would arrive as I was in the middle of preparing and cooking the meal. This is a money move, because it allows me to showcase my cooking talents while the girl sits in the kitchen drinking wine and watching me cook. She was more blown away than most girls and, after a large glass of Mer de Soleil Chardonnay, came over to where I was standing, at the stove searing the fish, pulled my pants down, and went down on me right there in the kitchen. The fish burned, but whatever. She still ate well.

We saw each other somewhat consistently over the next few weeks. It was a relationship defined very much by sex. After our first two dates, it shouldn't be difficult to see why. She could not get enough of me, especially sexually, and I was a big fan of her always eager body. Contrary to what it may seem like from the story thus far, she was very inexperienced with sex. With me, she was experiencing a whole new world. For example, consider these VERBATIM quotes:

"I didn't know what sex was before you,"

"You're like a disease. A Tucker sex disease."

"You infiltrate me and my body craves you. You're an addiction."

She loved sex with me because I was apparently much better than anyone she had ever been with. She claimed that she had been with only 2 guys before me, and given the facts I observed over the next few weeks, I believed her. It has nothing to do with her outward persona--please. Fucking me in the back of a Ford Explorer five hours after meeting me demolished any ability for me to take her abstinence and chastity bit seriously. But there were numerous other things that pointed to her inexperience. She was very schizophrenic about sex. One day, she'd want to fuck every minute of every hour, not caring if we ate or slept. Two days later, she wouldn't come home with me after a date. It was like she couldn't resolve the battle in her consciousness, and vacillated between sides.

Most tellingly, she just didn't have sex like she knew what she was doing. There is a difference between an inexperienced girl reacting to her first real sexual encounters and an experienced woman acting inexperienced. I've been with both, and she was quite obviously the former.

For instance, after a few days of intense sexual activity, Katy was having problems with soreness and was waking up with nausea. I told her to go to a gynecologist, something that, much to my shock, she had never done before. A few days later she called me and left this message, "Tucker, I just got back from the ob/gyn and we need to talk."

Now tell me--what would you have done after that message? I freaked, and was busy orchestrating a complicated plan to throw her down the stairs when I finally got her on the phone. No, she wasn't pregnant, but, and again I am quoting, "My ob/gyn said the soreness is because of you. He said you need to be gentler with my pussy."

The next time we had sex I was less selfish and much gentler, and I guess it worked well, because she came so violently she almost passed out. When she regained her composure, she said:

"Jesus Christ, you are amazing. Where did you learn to fuck like that?"

"Home schooling."

I had a wedding coming up in a few weeks, and I decided to invite her to go with me. My thought process was simple: She is hot, and is always pretty entertaining, both for my friends and myself. Plus, my friends had seen her old website, and wanted to meet her. The groom even wanted one of her action figures as his wedding gift, but she didn't have any. She agreed to go, and we decided to drive to the wedding, which was in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Why drive instead of fly? She wanted to have sex in every state along the way. The trip was rather uneventful, except that we forgot to have sex in South Carolina. Sadly enough, the sex wasn't the highlight of the drive; it was this quote by Katy, "When I moved to law school, my mother was afraid I was going to starve. But then I had a pageant coming up, so she hoped I did starve." With a childhood like that, it's no wonder she's the way she is.

We got to the Outer Banks and the groom, my friend we will call "GoldenBoy," rented a bunch of massive, 6 bedroom houses on the beach for all of his friends. The pre-party had already started at his house, and when I got there I introduced her to everyone and started drinking. I pretty much ignored Katy and let all of GoldenBoy's friends from college throw game at her. Of course, by ignoring her, I only made her want me more. Women are funny.

Later that night, the ones who had made it in, me, Hate, BrownHole, JonBenet and ECredit were all collected at our house bullshitting before bed. Katy was already asleep. At one point, BrownHole got up to get a glass of water for himself and one for JonBenet, but on the trip back from the kitchen he accidentally spilled some water on JonBenet. When sober, JonBenet is a great guy, and everyone loves him. When drunk, he becomes demonic. This particular night, getting water spilled on him set him off, so he flipped a table over, grabbed the glass out of BrownHole's hands and fired it against the floor, the glass shattering all over the house. I busted out laughing and then went and woke up Katy for sex.

The next day at breakfast was when my friends got their first indication that Katy might be a little "different." PWJ had come in at like 3am (he got so drunk in the airport bar that they wouldn't allow him on his first flight, or the next one) and we were recounting JonBenet's little spat with the glass, when Katy, confused as to whether the glass shattered or not, said to everyone at the table, "Did it broke?" No one was sure what to say, and I just laughed and then ignored her. They got an even better indication of what she was like when PWJ asked what she read. The conversation went like this:

PWJ "I actually kinda like the Harry Potter books."

Katy "I do too! Don't you just wish they were real?!? I wish I could play Quiddich and meet Hermione and everyone!! It's just so . . . MAGICAL!!!!"

She was being serious.

PWJ "Uhhh, I guess...so what else do you read? Lot's of magazines probably?"

Katy "I don't read magazines; I just look at the pictures."

Later that day, she went for a walk on the beach with JonBenet and BrownHole. JonBenet came back early from the walk, erupting with laughter. He said that he was talking to Katy about me, and just blurted out, "Be nice to him, he has a big heart." He then continued to us, "I don't know where that came from? You are the biggest fucking jerk I know, hmm." I asked him where she was, and he told us she was still walking on the beach with BrownHole. At this information, the entire group broke down laughing.

Some background info, that later becomes very important: While in law school, BrownHole made his living eating my leftovers. Seriously. In the three years at Duke, he hooked up with at least three girls after I was through with them, and tried to get with just about every other one I was dating, most of the time even when I was seeing them. This never bothered me, because either I didn't really care about the girl, or if I did, I knew he had no ability to take a girl from me that I cared about.

The day dragged by as we nursed Coronas and watched James Bond films. Our favorite was "Gold Finger" because of the scene where Sean Connery is with some girl at the pool, and when some other agent comes along to talk to him, Sean smacks her on the ass, and tells her to "...run along now. Man talk." JonBenet bet me I wouldn't do this to Katy at the reception. I'm sorry, did you just call out Tucker Max? About disrespecting a whore? My friends know how to push my buttons, so fasten your seatbelts folks, good times are ahead...

Katy eventually came back to the house, and my friends quizzed her about her conversation with BrownHole, laughing the whole time, as Katy recounted the wonderful conversation she had with him, and what a good listener he was, etc. Eventually PWJ had enough and let her in on the secret,

"Katy, [BrownHole] is trying to hook up with you."

"No, he's being so nice."

Isn't blind naiveté charming? Like the idiots we were, we got so caught up in beer and Bond that before we realized, it was 5pm and the ceremony had already started. We threw on our clothes and got there just in time to see them take their vows. Like a bunch of assholes, we walked right in and sat in the pews, ignoring the people standing in the back of the church. Our entrance was made even more distracting by Miss Vermont's ensemble. She wore a red dress. Not only a red dress, a short, skin tight, strapless red dress. With sequins. And a push up bra. I heard one wedding guest whisper something about "the girl with the boobs." It made me proud. Not many people realize that "Here Comes the Bride" is taken from a Wagner opera involving a prostitute, but it was appropriate for Miss Vermont. PWJ had actually made it on time because he was playing guitar in the wedding, and was so distracted by our entrance that he forgot the music to "Canon in D" halfway into it. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to my life.

After disrupting the wedding, it was time to ruin the reception. The reception was at a bed and breakfast that was only accessible via a long dirt road, so most people parked their cars at a gas station and took a van that was rented to shuttle people back and forth. Katy and I instead drove her Explorer there, and thus got a nice early start on the drinking. Katy is an utterly unaccomplished drinker, her skill akin to that of a 17 year old high school girl. Well, as soon as we got there, she followed my lead and got a martini.

Tucker "What are you doing? You can't handle your liquor. Be careful."

Katy "I'm fine. I can do it. Don't worry."

File this under "Obvious Foreshadowing."

Everyone poured into the reception area, and once the crowd was large enough, it was time to settle the bet. I was in a group with JonBenet, PWJ, ECredit and Hate. Katy came up and started talking to the group. After about ten minutes, JonBenet and I exchanged glances, I slapped her on the ass, and said: "Run along baby. It's time for Man-Talk." Thankfully, my friends held it together. She gave a slightly hurt look, an "OK," and walked off. They all immediately broke down laughing. I took my deserving place as King of the Reception! It may have been GoldenBoy's wedding, but I had won the crown!

For a while. Though it was funny at the time, this one act set off a remarkable chain reaction, catapulting Katy out of the "random whore" category and into the "remarkable whore" category, and leading all the way to this story. Here is how: After such a curt brush off by me, Katy, presumably to make me jealous, started talking to GoldenBoy's friends, the same ones that she was talking to the night before. They had no idea she was such a novice drinker, and fed her about 3 cosmopolitans over the next hour or so. I wasn't paying much attention, until she wandered over to where I was and said: "Is Man-Talk over?"

Oh Great Holy Jesus. Her speech was slurred to a degree that would make a dock worker blush. I just shook my head in a "I can't believe this is happening" sort of way, and turned away from her. Three minutes later, I hear a giant crash behind me, and turn to find Katy wobbling around, staring at a smashed martini glass at her feet. Someone behind me, I think it was JonBenet, said, "I guess it did broke."

It was 7pm. Dinner wasn't until 8:30.

All of GoldenBoy's friends quickly helped her clean up. I grabbed some chunky college girl that PWJ had been hitting on, who had a room at the bed and breakfast, and told her, "You need to look after her. She is already shit faced. Take her to your room and put her to bed." Then I refilled my drink and walked to a separate part of the party. I had to leave, because I was pissed at her and at myself.

Additional back story: When I asked GoldenBoy if I could bring Miss Vermont to his wedding, he and his fiance said it was fine with them, but GoldenBoy, knowing me as well as he does, solicited a promise from me: "Tucker, this is my wedding. You can't bring one of your typical 'girlfriends' and dump her in the middle of it because you get bored with her. She is welcome to come, but no scenes, okay?" I agreed and gave him my solemn promise on this. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Hey you're Tucker Max. If he can't take a joke, fuck him, right?" Normally, I would agree, but this is a different situation. GoldenBoy is one of my best friends on earth, and I am extraordinarily loyal to my friends, so I was genuinely distressed about this development. Of course, I was the main reason for the impending disaster, but still, I was upset about it.

After about an hour, I went up to check on Katy. She was laying on the girl's bed, barely awake, muttering the same thing over and over: "I never drink. I shouldn't have done this. I never drink. I just wanted Tucker to like me. I never drink like this." Oh man. This was just not going well. By this point, I have started to approach Shit-Housed, and am upset about breaking my promise to GoldenBoy. Burying these "emotions" in alcohol is my only way of dealing with it.

We all eventually sit down to dinner, with Katy still passed out upstairs. GoldenBoy and his wife have seated me at a table at the back of the room. It is quite obviously the "drunk, boisterous and embarrassing friends" table. The table is, along with me and a vacant spot for Miss Vermont, a very interesting cast of characters. GoldenBoy's high school friend, we'll call him "TheShepard," was across the table from me. He is a 6'4" huge Irish Catholic guy that can drink like, well, an Irish Catholic, and has repeatedly been arrested for breaking every type of law related to drinking, including public intoxication, underage consumption, disturbing the peace, bar fighting etc. TheShepard's sister, we'll call her PornStar, a hot redhead who can drink almost as much as TheShepard, was on my other side, and the rest of the table was a motley crue of misfits and heavy drinkers. Strangely, I was the only one of the law school friends there. I guess the bride and groom wanted to avoid the destructive synergy that occurs when you get more than one of us together.

PornStar is loving me. With a hot girl paying attention to me, and gallons of vodka coursing through my veins, I am hitting on all the Tucker Max cylinders. I have the table in tears laughing, telling them the standard TMax stories, making fun of my passed out date, etc. PornStar came to the wedding dateless and had some very obvious "fuck me" eyes fixed on me. She was leaning towards me, seductively whispering something in my ear and concurrently giving me a glimpse down her sundress, a nice choice that was also without a bra under it, when all of the sudden, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

HOLY DRUNKEN WHORE, BATMAN--IT'S MISS VERMONT!

"Hi."

She was putting on her best obsequious, I'm-sorry-puppy-dog eyes. It was not working, because she was obviously still drunk.

Me "What are you doing up? Are you OK?"

Katy "Yeah. I'm sorry. I never drink."

"Well who would have guessed? People often pass out at wedding receptions...at 7pm."

"Sorry. I felt better, and I wanted-ted to come see you." She actually said, 'wanted-ted.'

"Are you still drunk? Oh fuck. Just go back to bed please. I'll wake you up when we leave."

She stayed. It actually made for a funny rest of the dinner, as PornStar glared at her, TheShepard quizzed her about her pageant life for the amusement of the table, and I sat back and watched it all. After dinner, all hell really broke loose.

The next few hours are somewhat hazy in my memory, but for some reason or another Katy and I got into a huge fight. This culminated in her coming up to PWJ, asking him for a hug, and then whispering in his ear "God, your heart is beating so fast." Her self-esteem wasn't helped any when PWJ just walked away, shaking his head. In the meantime, I was drowning my sorrows by becoming even drunker.

Little did I know, Goldenboy was pretty much unaware of the Miss Vermont theatrics, as the entire Duke Law crew was putting on such a show that my drama was pushed off stage. And believe me, it takes something special to do that. One of the older female guests brought a small dog to the wedding, and ECredit got the dog drunk. It was wobbling around, [it was] barking all slurred. Hate was dancing with old women, throwing them around the reception tent like it was an audition for a Gap swing dance commercial. PWJ was hooking up with a college freshman in her room in the bed and breakfast while her father was quizzing GoldenBoy about her whereabouts. But alas for PWJ, this little amorous adventure was broken up by her vomiting on his foot.

When Miss Vermont decided to have another drink just to piss me off, around 11pm, I just left. I took the keys to her Explorer and drove back to the beach house, where the post party was going to be. I didn't know this at the time, but PWJ and Brownhole had to convince her not to call the cops and report her vehicle stolen. Nice touch, Katy.

I got to the beach house, cracked a beer, and waited. And waited. And waited. Where the fuck was everyone? When people finally started pouring in, the reason for everyone's tardiness was conferred to me: Hate had crashed the van that was supposed to shuttle everyone from the bed and breakfast to their cars. Apparently, the parents had got together, and picked the person they thought most sober to drive the shuttle van. Somehow, much to the dismay of the Duke Law crowd, they picked Hate, mistaking his brooding scowl of a face for soberness, instead of the pent up drunken rage that it is. He hit the accelerator and immediately drove the van into a ditch filled with mud. It stuck. With the bride, groom, and both sets of parents in the van. When they couldn't get it out of the mud (by this time everyone other than Miss Vermont, who stayed in the van, was coated in mud), they simply walked.

Nonetheless, everyone got to the house safely, and the real partying started. Katy was thankfully nowhere to be found, she had apparently passed out again, and BrownHole had taken her to the other house to put her to bed. PWJ came up to me and pulled me aside, "Hey man, wer frenz and stuff, an' dat gurl wanz me." He was pointing to PornStar, who was talking to her brother in the kitchen. "Ya gotta help me. She says she wont hook up wit'her brother around. Hook me up." I had already let one friend down that night and I was going to make it up by helping my other friend sleep with a girl I wanted to sleep with. I grabbed two bottles of Moet champagne, thrust one under TheShepard's nose, and said, "Let's see just how Irish you really are, tough guy. You're not the only one at this party who can drink."

I blacked out an hour and a half later.

[Side note: I have been told that I was spotted on the porch singing Irish drinking songs with TheShepard, making up my own words about all women being drunk whores and fornicators and what not. I was also told that I tried to tackle a mailbox on the walk back to my house. PWJ got the better end of this deal. [deleted] He can tell you the details from that story. It is very good, and involves hot tubs, bathrooms, and TheShepard's bed, but is not centered on Tucker Max, so it will have to be told elsewhere.]

The next day, I woke up in my bed.

My head felt like it had been run over. I was laying with my face over the side of the bed, and there were at least six towels laying on the floor under my face. As I rolled around the bed trying to regain consciousness and use of my limbs, I realized two things:

1. The room stunk. Bad.

2. There was vomit all over me.

I came out of my room, and found ECredit and Hate. Upon seeing me, they started laughing and shaking their heads.

Me "Dude, man...Did last night happen?"

ECredit "You missed the best part. After you came home and passed out, you started throwing up all over the bedroom, and Miss Vermont was running around the house yelling, 'Tucker is died! Tucker is died!'"

Hate "Does that girl know how to conjugate her verbs?"

Me [Laughing hysterically] "What did you do?"

Hate "I just yelled at her to roll you on your stomach and leave you alone. You do this all the time, you'd be fine."

Katy found me and started yapping at me about something. I just ignored her, took a shower, packed my shit, crawled in the back of the Explorer and went to sleep, awaiting the 16 hour drive home. [Another side note, especially if you are feeling sorry for Katy at this point: I did not find out about this until about a year later, but after she had her little hysterical fit about me dying, she went upstairs to BrownHole's room, crawled into bed, and hooked up with him. He swears he didn't sleep with her, but I have my doubts, considering that she is a shameless slut. This is almost forgivable. The next day as we were leaving, she left an autographed 8x10 pageant picture in the sunroof of his car. Then, she called him a couple of times over the next few weeks, sometimes for advice about me, sometimes just to talk. She told him that she got his number from my cell phone when I wasn't looking. She tried to get Brownhole to fly her up to DC, but he wouldn't do it. His only goal is to follow me as much as possible, not to fall in love with them.] We pulled out, and I fell back asleep.

I was jarred awake not 30 minutes later as we got pulled over and got a ticket. The violation: going 70 in a 45. Katy wanted to get home. I drifted in and out of consciousness over the next ten hours. As we drove into South Carolina, I reminded her of two facts: The South Carolina State Police make their living with speed traps on Interstates, and we hadn't sex in that state yet. She ignored me, so I went back to sleep. I was awaken 30 minutes later by her hysterical sobbing. We got pulled over again, this time for going 95 in a 65. I told her to stop crying, that State Police don't fall for that shit.

"SHUT UP--THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! MY PARENTS ARE GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THESE TICKETS!! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!?!? THEY ARE GOING TO KNOW I WENT TO NORTH CAROLINA"

"When are we going to fuck? We're almost out of South Carolina."

"SHUT UP YOU ASSHOLE!!"

I didn't call her or anything over the next week, and just figured I had burned down another relationship, when she called me one day at work. She apologized for her actions at the wedding, and asked if she could see me again, that she had something for me. I told her to come by the restaurant, that I would see her. I alerted my staff that a crazy woman was coming and to possibly be ready to call the cops. She showed up in a skin tight white tank top, breasts thrust forward in a super miracle bra. Her yellow tennis skirt was nicely cut about five inches below her crotch. Her demure smile and Fuck Me eyes foretold the most dangerous and irresistible kind of seduction: sexual.

"Hey." She stood right next to me, placed her hand on my arm, her breasts ever so slightly brushing against me, "I'm sorry. I brought you something."

She handed me a framed picture that almost put me into shock. Let me attempt a description of this thing: A silver frame around a 5x7 picture of Katy and I at the wedding reception, me in my suit and her in her red dress, minutes after we arrived and before our first drink. Across the top of the picture, painted in white sparkle paint, are the words, "Alpha Male." There are little yellow streamers painted down the side. On the back, in silver paint, is this paragraph, "Tucker, Thank you so much for taking me to the wedding! You are the best! Love, Katy." I was completely befuddled. I had no idea how to react to this. I still don't.

This girl was either the stupidest female I had ever come across, or the shrewdest, most conniving person on earth. I couldn't figure out which.

\We started seeing each other again, sort of. Katy tried to say it was purely as friends, but we were fucking again after about three days. This continued, in a weird sort of dysfunctional dance, for a few weeks. One day I even took her to a gun range. She had never shot a gun before, and so I taught her the basic Weaver Stance and A-frame Stance, how to load, fire and clear a pistol, etc. She was fascinated, and loved it so much she started going on her own, and eventually bought her own pistol.

One night two friends of mine were in town on their honeymoon, and I brought them to my restaurant for dinner. I also invited two really hot female friends of mine (both of whom were married at the time), and Katy. I had to work most of the time, but they all sat together and had a great time, with me coming over to the table at various times to inject that special Tucker magic that always makes social situations that much more fun and interesting. At some point during the night, Katy, after a few drinks I'm sure, decided that she just had to taste me, pulls me off the floor (I was the floor manager at Max's Grille at the time) and into a bathroom stall, where she proceeds to pull down my pants and eat my member for dinner. As much as I was trying to ignore it, there seemed to be an increase in traffic in the bathroom, but whatever, I'm getting my dick sucked by Miss Vermont in the bathroom, they can wait to take a dump. We leave the bathroom, and back to our various posts. [Side note: I got in A LOT of trouble for that. A couple of the gay waiters told the general manager, who told my dad, and well, though my dad thought it was funny, he still got mad at me.]

Even though she was probably not going to last a long time, an event that night was what sealed Miss Vermont's doom. Giving me head in the bathroom got her some cool points, but she lost them all and then some when, talking to my two married female friends, she said, "I hope I look like you when I'm your age." At the time, Katy was 23. My two friends were 25 and 27, respectively, and both were, and still are, MUCH hotter than Katy. Tucker is a lot of things, and a drunk incident notwithstanding, loyal might be the biggest one. These two women are two of my best friends in the world, and to piss them off is the quickest way to get on my bad side. Karen's quote, "Who the fuck does she think she is? And HELLO--she's not looking so great herself. I guess pageants make your face a little leathery. Tucker, you can't fuck her anymore, I don't like her."

If they don't like a girl I am dating, she's out. I started ignoring Katy more and more, and then I met another girl (incidentally, it was Joanne Romanovich, the girl that eventually became one of the three or four defining relationships of my life, for reasons that will not be explored here, but just to let you know, the beginning of my upcoming novel revolves around her and my relationship with her). I was preparing to go to a wedding in Akron, Ohio (the one where I hooked up with the MILF), making it easy to ignore her.

After a few days of ignoring Katy and not returning calls, I thought Katy had finally got the picture.

I was wrong.

I left my apartment to go to the airport, and saw something under my windshield. At first, I thought it was a leaflet for a local band or church, but as I approached the car, I realized it was MUCH too big for that. I unfolded it, and realized it was a bullet-hole-riddled gun range target, the same one Miss Vermont had shot up while we were at the range. At first I was frightened for my life. Then I realized a note was written on the back. I'll transcribe it here until I actually scan it in:

"Thank you very much for taking me to shoot a gun! I had a mind-blowing experience! I hope you have a safe trip and have a really fun time at the wedding! I'm sure it won't be quite as eventful as the last one...(or at least you hope not!)

It is too bad that things are not better between us. Things were so perfect the first 29 days. Now all we do is fight and are mean to each other. You taught me so much and you have made me a much happier and more productive person! My gossip is a lot more juicer because of you!

I wish we were better together, so I guess it's goodbye. I don't want to make you mad anymore.

Katy"

Oh Jesus, what have I done?

Not only did I teach her how to shoot, I once had a conversation with this girl after watching a war movie about why the ambushes in the movie were technically incorrect and how to set up a good one, AND I described to her, in accurate detail, how to recon and snipe in a urban environment, another area that the movie was weak on.

I drove to the airport looking over my shoulder the whole way, fully expecting a hail of gunfire to break out at any moment. I must have circled the parking lot at the Fort Lauderdale airport 10 times trying to see if anyone was following me. After a week free of any sort of sniper attempts, I let my guard down. It was then I answered my phone without checking the caller ID, and lo and behold, it's Miss AK-47. She was just as happy and jovial as ever, and asked advice on how we could get back together. I swear to my god she asked me this.

My quote, "You want advice? Go find a really good psychotherapist, and get help, because you are fucked up."

She hung up and I haven't heard from her since.

Copyright 2002-3, Tucker Max. All rights reserved.

***

Well, at least until she sued him.

In the interest of equal time, I tried linking to some images from Ms. Johnson's site. She's a cartoonist. But they're in Flash, and I have no idea how. Anyway, guys who respect sex are hot, guys who expect sex are not. And so on.

Oh, wait, I figured it out:



But you don't get the valuable lesson.

I tried sitting through the flash intoduction on the site. Then I got bored and got something to eat. When I came back, the intro was still going. Jesus.

Here's her picture:




I wish every children's book author dressed like that.

"I'm the President of the United States! I'm not going to run and hide like some coward! Leave that to that fat pussy, Bill Clinton!" (Part II)

A minute-by-minute account of the great man's scurrying on the day of infamy, focussing mainly of why in God's ame did Bush continue with his kindergarden press conference, when he and his staff had known of the September 11 attacks before they had even arrived at the school. It is far too link-heavy (i.e. documented) for my to fully plagarize here. So go read it.

My favorite quote, for modbid reasons: If air traffic controllers believed Flight 11 had been hijacked at 8:13, NORAD should have been informed immediately, so military planes could be scrambled to investigate. However, NORAD and the FAA both claimed NORAD was not informed until 8:40 - 27 minutes later. Indeed, before contacting NORAD, Boston air traffic controllers watched Flight 11 make an unexpected 100-degree turn and head south toward New York City , told other controllers of the hijacking at 8:25, continued to hear highly suspicious dialogue from the cockpit (such as, "Nobody move, please, we are going back to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves"), and even asked the pilots of Flight 175 to scan the skies for the errant plane.

Hard to imagine why nobody saw this coming.

The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me

For those with a morbid interest in the pre-good writing of myself and others, I reccomend a visit to TheSpaceMonkey.com, which includes tear sheets and audio archives from a decade ago, when yours truly was an editorial page writer for Washington State University's daily newspaper, the Evergreen.

The site is maintained by John Cain, a college-era crony of Brian Gunn and myself, and a gifted, though recently dormant, writer in his own right. Gunn recently tracked Cain down. To John's credit, he took the hint, and has stopped running from his past, and now embraces it.

While a lot of the stuff I wrote "back in the day" makes me cringe, I don't mind seeing it posted. Like most colledge editorial writers, I took myself way too seriously, and wrote far too many essays on the great events of my times, including North Korea's nuclear potential or Bill Clinton's sleaziness (prescient little fucker, wasn't I?). Naturally, I was at my best when obsessing over Barney the dinosaur, talking smack about people I didn't like, or just engaging in general impishness.

I'm pretty sure while I wrote for it, the Evergreen was unique, and will likely remain unique, as an example of Lampoon-style smart-assery, done subversively in a college paper. Not just because of me, of course. It was edited by David Drake, currently an instructor ar WSU, with whom I had collaborated on a literary magazine which had been shut down by the school before we put out an issue. Long story, maybe to be told later.

I'll occasionally pick up the UW Daily, and while it seems like they'll have the occasional whacky columnist, there's nothing compared to Drake's two semesters of insanity. Even the stuff I didn't like, was notable as being something you wouldn't find in a college newspaper. Not even if they have a special section devoted to that.

Reading the whole semester I was in, it's pretty clear that the serious columns on welfare reform and nuclear disarmament were the odd men out. I wonder if when the literary magazine was shut down, Drake and I shouldn't have warned the administration we would instead take over the Evergreen, and molding itno our own twisted image and likeness. The Evergreen Opinions section probably ended up being more interesting than the lit mag could have been, since a magazine would have most likely channeled our full pretentions, whereas with the Green, we were free to punk out the establishment. I don't have time for more right now, but maybe a full memoir is called for.

A couple years ago, I was riding the bus, and this guy recognised me and asked if I had written for the Evergreen. I confirmed, and he said we were a bunch of idiots. I smiled cheerfully and said, "Yeah." That was it. I just smiled vacantly, and he kept avoiding my gaze. I have a feeling the rest of the bus ride was more awkward for him than me.

Sherman Alexie Equal Time

If only to demonstrate that I'm not the bitter piker my rants against Sherman Alexie make me out to be, here's a dubiously-sourced n anecdote which is entirely to the man's credit:

...Sherman Alexie mentioned showing his film The Business of Fancydancing at a number of gay-themed film fests around the country and said that he was hit on by an incredibly famous movie star. He declined mentioning the name of said star since he sues everyone who says he's gay (Big Hint). He also indicated that said star was much shorter than he (Big Hint). His pick up line was, reportedly, "I've never done it with an Indian before."

Getting cruised by the top guns! Go Sherman!

Well, I just spent my $50 to save Fantagraphics.

There is a bright spot to this sorry situation, in the sense of Swift's A Modest Proposal. At Ain't It Cool News, where this first went public, the subhumans who post on the message boards there are currently debating whether or not it is right to put money in the pocket of Fantagraphics co-owner Gary Groth, who hates super hero comics, and whom they've somehow convinced themselves is a convicted child molester. Needless to say, Gary is not a convicted child molester. To quote R. Fiore on the Fantagraphics message board, those posts on AICN demonstrate "how utterly vile human beings can be and how poorly they can spell in the process..."

From this week's Stranger:

Dept. of Humility: Sherman Alexie, who writes for the New Yorker and also contributes to this newspaper, will not accept an honorary PhD from the University of Washington when he delivers the keynote address this year. It would be an insult to those "who work their asses off" for doctorate degrees, he says. "I don't feel like I've earned it."

The humble Shermal Alexie had no problem accepting a degree from Washington State University, despite the degree being awarded though a waiver exempting Alexie from having to earn his final credits.

A little perspective on the humber Mr. Alexie: Sherm was awarded a BA from Washington State University, despite being 3 credits short of requirements. He justified dropping out at the the time by saying he didn't want to take "the white man's history class," which, ironically, would have been taught by a black woman (I suspect the real reason was that his two-book contract with Atlantic Press made finishing his degree at a land grant college seem a little superfluous, a reaosn that would be entirely to his credit). After receiving the waiver, he now tells people he graduated. Which is just sad. I actually earned my degree at WSU, and I don't brag about it. It's a state school. In Washington state, it's not even a decent second choice. This is a school whose most well-known, respected professor remains the late Grover Krantz, an expert on Bigfoot.

I'm the President of the United States! I'm not going to run and hide like some coward! Leave that to that fat pussy, Bill Clinton!

9/11 film makes hero of Bush

TV movie, made with White House help, gives revised account of President's day

By DOUG SAUNDERS

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!"

His Secret Service chief seems taken aback. "But Mr. President . . ."

The President brusquely interrupts him. "Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!"

Was this George W. Bush's moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage.

The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour TV movie to be broadcast this September, are as close as you can get to an official White House account of its activities at the outset of the war on terrorism.

Written and produced by a White House insider with the close co-operation of Mr. Bush and his top officials, The Big Dance represents an unusually close merger of Washington's ambitions and Hollywood's movie machinery.

A copy of the script obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals a prime-time drama starring a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff addresses to colleagues.

That the whole thing was filmed in Canada and is eligible for financial aid from Canadian taxpayers, and that its loyal Republican writer-producer is a Canadian citizen best known for his adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, are ironies that will be lost on most of its American viewers when it airs on the Showtime network this fall.

While the film is intended for U.S. viewers, it is produced in collaboration with Toronto-based Dufferin Gate Productions in order to take advantage of Canadian government incentives. It is eligible for the federal Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit, the Ontario Film and Television Production Services Tax Credit and a federal tax-shelter program, which together could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in Canadian government cheques being sent to the producers.

Lionel Chetwynd, the film's creator, sees nothing untoward about his role as the semi-official White House apologist in Hollywood. For him, having a well-connected Republican create the movie was a way to get the official message around what he sees as an entertainment industry packed with liberals and Democrats.

"A feeding frenzy had started to develop around this story, and a lot of people who wanted to do this story had a very clear political agenda, very clear," Mr. Chetwynd said in an interview from his Los Angeles home yesterday.

"My own view of the administration is somewhat more sympathetic than, say, Alec Baldwin's. . . . In fact, I'm technically a member of the administration [Mr. Chetwynd sits on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities], so I let it be known that I was also interested in doing it. I threw myself on the mercies of my friend Karl Rove."

Mr. Rove is the President's chief political adviser, so this was not a typical Hollywood pitch. But then, Mr. Chetwynd is not a typical Hollywood writer-producer: He is founder of the Wednesday Morning Club, an organization for the movie colony's relatively small band of Republicans, and he led the White House's efforts to enlist Hollywood's support after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Chetwynd's script is based on lengthy interviews with Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, top aide Andy Card, retiring White House press aide Ari Fleischer, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Republican officials in the White House and the Pentagon. He says every scene and line of dialogue was described to him by an insider or taken from credible reports.

Yet compared with other journalistic accounts of the period, the movie is clearly an effort to reconstruct Mr. Bush as a determined and principled military leader. The public image of Mr. Bush -- who avoided military service in Vietnam and who has often been derided as a doe-eyed naif on satirical TV shows -- is a key concern to White House communications officials, many of them friends of Mr. Chetwynd.

While Mr. Chetwynd says he principally wanted to tell a good story, the movie's mission gives it a distinctly different tint from other such accounts.

The scene aboard Air Force One is offered in several other accounts -- but most of them present Mr. Bush as worried as he asks to go home. An account published by the British Daily Telegraph has him saying: "I'm not going to do it [appear on TV] from an Air Force base. Not while folks are under the rubble. I'm coming home."

Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter, recounts a line similar to Mr. Chetwynd's in his book Bush At War: "We need to get back to Washington. We don't need some tinhorn terrorist to scare us off. The American people want to know where their President is." But it is a complaint, not an order.

In accounts such as Mr. Woodward's, Mr. Bush seems uncertain, and spends a lot of time approving proposals from his aides. In this movie, Mr. Bush delivers long, stirring speeches that immediately become policy.

Mr. Chetwynd said that he did not write such scenes principally to bolster the image of Mr. Bush, but that the image was a concern.

"The belittling of the President really irritated me, but I didn't start out on a crusade," he said. "I wanted to show . . . how he was able in that moment to grab hold of things as a leader in those critical days."

An important announcement from my former employers.

Fantagraphics Books Needs Your Help!

Buy Books! Keep Us Alive!

To Comics Lovers Throughout the World:

Fantagraphics Books has just celebrated its 27th year publishing many of the finest cartoonists from all over the world as well as our flagship publication, the magazine people love to hate, The Comics Journal. We are proud of our long-term commitment to comics as an art form and our dogged determination to push excellence down everybody's throats. This is all very well and good but it doesn't mean much in the face of brute economics - and it's the wall of brute economics that we've just hit, hard.

Due to two major financial obstacles over the last two years, we're hard against it.

Our former and now bankrupt book trade distributor went out of business owing us over $70,000 - which we will never see. (To add insult to injury, we learned that the owner is selling copies of our books that he should've returned on e-bay!) This unexpected shortfall necessitated taking out a couple loans which have now come due. In late 2001, our line was picked up by the W.W. NORTON COMPANY, who took over our bookstore distribution, and has done a magnificent job of providing us unprecedented access to the bookstore market. Inexperience with the book trade resulted in our erring on the side of overprinting our books too heavily throughout 2002, so that our anticipated profit is in fact sitting in our warehouse in the form of books. Loans must be paid in cash, not books. The only way to get out of this hole we've dug ourselves into is to sell those books. Which is where, we hope, you come in.

Over the last few weeks, we've worked to fix our in-house problems (which included, most painfully, laying off several fine and long-term employees). We have put in place a system of checks and balances by which we will watch our inventory growth scrupulously. But, we have a debt to pay down and wolves at the door. It's so severe that this month we envisaged shutting down our active publishing, seeking outside investors, or similarly odious measures. (Fantagraphics continues to be owned 100% by Messrs. Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. We'd like it to remain that way.)

If you've respected what Fantagraphics stands for and what we've done for the medium, if you've enjoyed our books, and if you want to insure that this proud tradition continues into this new and ominous century, we're asking you to help us now in our especial hour of need by buying some books. Put simply, we need to raise about $80,000 above our usual sales over the next month, and the only way to do that is to convert books into cash.

We've spent the last quarter century trying hard to produce the best comics the world has ever seen. You've rewarded us over the years with your loyal patronage, your moral support, your praise, your intelligent and honest feedback, all of which are more than we could ever have hoped for. We know we have tens of thousands of loyal readers: if even a fraction of you come forward and order two or three books that you've been meaning to buy, we'll be over this hump. We've published some some of the best books ever over the last year -Gene Deitch's (yes, that Gene Deitch!) THE CAT ON A HOT THIN GROOVE; B. KRIGSTEIN, Greg Sadowski's definitive biography of the pioneering artist from the '50s; the magnificent FRANK collection; and the third volume of the extraordinary KRAZY KAT series. Our publishing plans for 2003 include a huge coffee table book by Will Elder (WILL ELDER: MAD PLAYBOY OF ART); KRIGSTEIN COMICS, a 240 page follow-up collection of Krigstein's best comics from the '50s, and new collections and graphic novels by Gilbert Hernandez, Jason, Dave Cooper, Robert Crumb, A.B. Frost, Bill Griffith, Gary Panter...

We already sell books by mail, so, as clichéd as it sounds, we really do have operators standing by. You can view out catalogue online. You can order by calling our 800 number or on-line at our web site (all ordering information below.)

If this was a standard pitch, we'd offer you some extra incentive - a discount or free books or knicknacks or whatnot. But, it's not. We're asking those of you who believe we've contributed something worthwhile and meaningful to help us continue to do so, that's all. We need the full retail value of our books. But we can offer something that won't cost us any money: anyone (individually or collectively) who buys $500 worth of books from us will get a personal phone call from Gary Groth thanking you for saving Fantagraphics' ass. Think how much fun this could be at a party!

via FAX: 206-524-2104
via mail: Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115
Secure Internet Orders: http://www.fantagraphics.com
phone: 206-524-1967 or 800-657-1100

28 characters that should strike fear into the heart of every man, woman and child in this country: U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr.

Yeah, a week after release, here's my review of the Matrix: Reloaded. Or is it two week? Whatever.

I was never as taken with the original film as one would expect of an overweight comic book geek. So sue me. But, for whatever reason, I was really looking forward to the sequel. So, I saw it in the morning the day after it opened.

The first hour was so stupid, my eyes were watering from laughing. If people had any sense, this movie would be a legend for the way the fillmmakers have totally bought into their own manufactured publicity. It's a colossal embarassment, along the lines of the last couple Star Wars movies. I enjoyed it immensely.

The low/hiugh point was the so-called "Burly Brawl," in which Keanu Reeves fights hundreds of Hugo Weavings. Based on the pre-release publicity, the producers clearly thought they had acheived an apex of ass-kicking fight filmmaking. What they got was a cartoon. If I thought it was meant to be Tom and Jerry beating each other up, it would have been very entertaining. But it was something better: a colossal misfire. A pointless exhibition of digital effects, constructed without any sense or logic. Don't they realize that having multiple images of the same actor will never be anything but silly? Apparently not. God bless 'em.

Basically, once the talky first hour was over and the movie shifted into a plotless, hour-long fight, I was happy. Explosions good. Talk bad.

A few questions: Why was Commander Link filling out paperwork? How can a massive car chase and gunfight on a freeway involving men in black suits, super-humans in vinyl, and freaking ghosts not attract attention? Why was Monica Bellucci only in the movie for ten minutes? Why, of God, why?

I've been following internet discussion of the movie, and everything seems to think there's a lot more going on than there actually was. Guys, not only is there no spoon, there is no plot, no acting and no internal logic. I've read the same books as the Warshowski Brothers, and I know where this is all going. It's not worth bending your head into a pretzel trying to figure it all out.

I ended up watching the "Animatrix" cartoons after seeing the film, and thought they were head and shoulders better than the movies. It's a good thing I didn't see them before seeing Reloaded; I would have been really disappointed. Those movies are all really cool. Except for the last one, which features that annoying kid who kisses Neo's ass right when he lands in Zion. That short disturbingly offeres suicide as a solution to teen angst. Which I guess is a daring stance, but still made me uncomfortable.

In conclusion, I think the Matrix films need to focus on the French characters.

The end.

Fifty Reasons to Reject the Matrix

Genius. Just genius.

8. Reloaded Ridiculousness, 2: I'm not joking; you'll literally feel your I.Q. drop watching this rubbish. For instance, the evil Matrix creates two new enemies for Neo, called the Twins. Their first priority is to blend discreetly into the simulated world of the Matrix, to walk among the people unnoticed. So of course the Matrix made them huge albino men with bleach-white dreadlocks who occasionally transform into shrieking wraiths. "What's that, honey?" "Oh, nothing. It just looks like a simple Kung-Fu Swedish Rastafarian Helldemon. I'm sure there's no need to question our fragile, sheltered grasp of 'reality' as we know it."

12. The Matrix: Reconsidered, 4: You've worked as a policeman your whole life, protecting the innocent, enforcing the law. You retire with honors, then take a job as a security guard, working the metal detector on the ground floor of a skyscraper in order to help pay for your wife's arthritis medication. You're sitting there, on a slow day, reading your newspaper, when a girl walks in wearing a trenchcoat. She issues no demands, no warnings, no "freeze" or "drop your gun." She just tears you in half with a spray of machine-gun fire, then does cartwheels along the walls while killing all your friends. Somewhere, faintly, you can hear a theater audience cheering.

15. The Matrix: Reconsidered, 7: You are a hard-working single mother, making ends meet by doing time as a secretary in an office building during the day, a drug-store clerk in the evenings. You are on the office phone with the babysitter one quiet Wednesday afternoon, telling her how to calm little Dakota down, to get her to stop crying her eyes out asking why Mommy is never home, telling her that you'll be there soon, honey. A split-second later your head is severed by a shattered helicopter rotor blade, the skull bouncing off a nearby wall, leaving a spray of arterial blood on a motivational poster. Your eyes bulge wide, your brain inside remaining alive just long enough to recognize the horror of your fate. Aviation fuel splashes in through the shattered windows and ignites, incinerating mothers, husbands, fathers, best friends. And somewhere, a theater full of young, chubby males cheers because Trinity made it out before the crash.

18. The Matrix: Reconsidered, 10: It's the film's climactic battle between Agent Smith and Neo. It begins with Agent Smith walking down the subway platform toward Neo. Neo's friends tell him to run. But no; he stands and fights. They fight for what seems like an hour, back and forth, an epic battle of good and evil. Neo takes a beating, comes back, finds his courage, becomes The One. He goes toe-to-toe with the baddest of the bad. After this long, choreographed, pivotal moment of the film, Agent Smith is left... walking down the subway platform toward Neo. Neo's friends tell him to run. He runs. Excuse me, ticket lady? I'd like a refund of the last fifteen minutes of my life. It would be like if at the end of Rocky, after sitting through the whole film, the main character just lost the fight anyway.

37. This is your brain...: Speaking of which, does no one else have the problem with the blatant pro-drug message in these films? The idea that you can be transported to a magical wonderland where you have supernatural powers simply by inserting a needle into your skull? Is it any coincidence that "jacking" (injecting heroin directly into the brain using a nine-inch long skull needle) became all the rage with our teenagers after this film?

Actually, it isn't as funny the second time, but whatever. Be sure to read their forum, if only to laugh at the dirt-stupid clods who don't get the joke.

Casting Call of the Day

a 16mm no payin' you Feature film seeks actors, photography to begin in early summer.

(2) female early twenties (if you're actually older that's cool but look early twenties otherwise don't bother) for trashy girl fast runners/think- must look street and have wit. one of the women will be nude here and there. don't be afraid this isn't a porno (unless you want it to be) the skinscenes will tasteful/erotic and reveal character+ there's only a couple. no big master shot with the male humping away ok.

(2) male characters who are best friends (or where).think junior varsity not hugo boss.late twenties(if you're actually younger fuck off). they're kind pals without a clue.

i'm looking for talented film actors with hints of subtlety (Ian Holm in Alien) or just hard actors who can be consistent (hard house). this is a serious project with a great DP who'll make you pretty and a editor who's a film professor.


Email me if you're interested.
auditions are on-going.

johnny6packk@yahoo.com

Upon arrival I met with victim John Randolph who stated someone entered his residence through a unlocked back door, and stole four bags of marijuana, a 22 cap pistol, a rope necklace and 30 dollars in change all of which belonged to the victim he stated. I asked a second time what was stole to make sure I heard him right and again he told me four bags of marijuana was stolen along with the other items.

Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.

Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.

The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.

The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.

Phillips said the results showed that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that.

"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."
___

The monkeys' output can be found at www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/

Real Male Bonding
An actual conversation with the editor of my movie. Yes, he is named Hans.

Hans: How did your date go?

David: Fine.

Hans: No, really, how did it go?

David: It went fine.

Hans: Seriously man, I really want you to be happy.

David: Huh?

Hans: I really want things to go well for you. I really want you to be happy.

David: Um, okay.

Update: I've disabled the profanity filter on the tag board. Swear away.

Yes, But Where Are the Saddam Look-Alikes?



by Siddharth Varadarajan

Ever since the fall of Baghdad, everyone's been asking where's Saddam and where are the weapons of mass destruction he allegedly had. Fair enough. But the question that intrigues me the most is this: Where on earth are his famed look-alikes? If Saddam is dead, did they all, to the last man, die with him? And if he's slipped out of the country -- to Syria, Belarus, wherever -- did he manage to take each and every one of his replicas with him? Are there, even as we speak, a dozen Saddams sadly sipping vodka (doubles, no doubt) in some seedy bar in Minsk or Vitebsk?

From the first day, Iraqi television began broadcasting footage of a defiant Saddam untouched by the US `decapitation strike' against him, the American and British media have been telling us not to trust our own eyes. Even though you think you're seeing Saddam, reporters told us breathlessly, you can't be sure because the Iraqi leader is known to use a series of body doubles for his public appearances. This claim was often simply asserted as fact, or at best sourced to "Iraqi exiles" and "Western intelligence agencies".

To tell you the truth, I was always a bit skeptical about this explanation. First of all, in the 38 years I've been around on this planet, I've yet to see any human being with an exact body double, let alone several such human replicas so perfect in every manner as Saddam's were said to be.

And then there was the administrative aspect which bothered me. Was there a special department of the Iraqi government which kept track of the look-alikes, graded them according to quality and reliability, and decided whether Saddam 1, 4 or 8 should be used for such and such appearance? Finally, what would happen if one of the look-alikes - or his handlers - were to assert that the real Saddam was actually an impostor and order his summary execution? Was there a procedure laid down conclusively to identify the real McCoy? DNA tests, blood groups, perhaps a conveniently inflicted scar on the derriere?

On my part, I'm willing to bet that the failure of the US occupiers to locate and capture even one of the alleged Saddam doubles strongly suggests the Iraqi leader never had any. I reckon the story about body doubles is a classic psy-op, a theory probably floated by the Pentagon's erstwhile Office of Strategic Influence in order to demoralize and disorient the enemy. I don't know who or how this bit of information warfare was first foisted on the media but once it was out there, there was no shortage of journalists and editors gullible enough to retail an obviously suspect, nonfalsifiable theory.

But the psy-ops didn't end there. Throughout the war, the Pentagon used the media to spread disinformation about the course of the fighting, inventing civilian uprisings where there were none (Basra), chemical weapons factories where there were none (near Najaf), Iraqi anti-aircraft fire falling back onto earth to kill civilians (rather than US missiles being responsible), and bizarre claims about Iraqi soldiers "pushing women and children on to the street" and firing at "coalition forces" from behind these "human shields." Though the last claim has by now entered war lore, there is not even one credible eyewitness account from an embedded journalist to substantiate this charge, let alone establish that this was a widespread, pervasive Iraqi tactic. What the claim did, however, was to shift the blame for civilian deaths away from the invading army and on to the defenders.

The most impressive psy-op of the war, however, occurred on its last day, when US soldiers toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdous Square, Baghdad. The square is right opposite the Palestine Hotel where foreign journalists were staying. All US TV stations showed carefully framed, close-up footage of what seemed like a largish crowd toppling the statue with the assistance of a US army vehicle. The footage was shown live for hours, repeatedly broadcast throughout the day, especially by CNN and BBC, and cited by US leaders as proof of the 'legitimacy' of the war.

While most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam, they had been reluctant to perform in large numbers for the invading army. With the blood of 2,000 Iraqi civilians and 10,000 soldiers on their hands, Bush and Rumsfeld needed cathartic footage of the oppressed masses surging forward towards freedom. The Firdous Square statue toppling was conceived for this purpose and executed brilliantly.

Had TV cameras shown a long shot of Firdous Square, the impression the toppling would have created would be very different. There is a long shot posted on the web (http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55384&group=webcast) which shows a largely empty square cordoned off by US tanks. Small clusters of Iraqis outside the square can be seen watching the toppling of the statue, as silent spectators rather than active participants.

Now, the question is, who were the few dozen Iraqis trying to bring the statue down? Obviously people the Americans trusted because the footage clearly shows some two dozen boisterous men clambering on top of the US army vehicle and charging at the statue. Remember, this was barely ten days after the suicide attack in central Iraq which claimed the lives of four US soldiers and a few days after nervous, trigger happy marines had mowed down a whole family when their car didn't slow down at a checkpost.

But even if the statue topplers were men the Americans could trust, who were they? Photographs doing the rounds on the Net strongly suggest they were members of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress militia who had been flown into Nasiriya on April 6. One INC man in uniform shown with Chalabi at Nasiriya reappears in civilian clothes in a Reuters photograph from Baghdad on April 9, the day the statue is toppled, celebrating the entry of US soldiers. Readers can view and compare the two photographs at the same website mentioned above.

The only explanation for the coincidence is that like Saddam, the Chalabi supporter also has a body double. Wily aren't they, these Iraqis?

Siddharth Varadarajan is the Deputy Chief of National Bureau of The Times of India.
Email: svaradarajan@indiatimes.com

Copyright 2003 Times Internet Limited

Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 by the Times of India

Ouch: More than a few of Shakespeare's plays have never been documented on film in any meaningful way. In spite of rumors, it now looks like Martin Scorsese's biopic of Dean Martin will never happen. Sergio Leone had plans to shoot a mammoth restaging of the siege of Stalingrad, but he died before he could fulfill those plans. Someone did manage to make The Lizzie McGuire Movie, however.

"Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, the commercial's director, kept puffing out his cheeks and whinneying, a note of deranged despair twitching at the corners of his mouth. Asked how long he had been working on the commercial, he gave a high-pitched giggle and replied: 'Five years? Or is it eight?' It felt that long."

Holy shit. This is one of the most amazing commercials I have ever seen. All shot in one take. Well worth the download and the watch.

Lights! Camera! Retake!
(Filed: 13/04/2003)

The Honda Accord campaign launched last week looks certain to become an advertising legend. Quentin Letts goes behind the scenes

Six hundred and six takes it took, and if they had been forced to do a 607th it is probable, if not downright certain, that one of the film crew would have snapped and gone mad.

On the first 605 occasions something small, usually infuriatingly minute, went just slightly awry and the whole delicate arrangement was wrecked. A drop too much oil there, or here maybe one ball-bearing too many giving a fraction too much impetus to the movement. Whirr, creak, crash, the entire, card-house of consequences was a write-off and they had to start again.

Honda's latest television advertisement, a two-minute film called "Cog", is like a fine-lubricated line of dominoes. It begins with a transmission bearing which rolls into a synchro hub which in turn rolls into a gear wheel cog and plummets off a table on to a camshaft and pulley wheel. All the parts are from the new Honda Accord - £16,495 to you, guv'nor, or £6 million if you want to pay for the advertising campaign. And what an amazing ad campaign it is, too.

Back on Cog, things are still moving, in a what-happened-next manner redolent of "there was an old woman who swallowed a fly". With a ting and a ding of metal on metal, a thud of contact and the occasional thwock, plop and extended scraping sound, the viewer watches as individual, stripped-down parts of car roll into one another and set off more reactions.

Three valve stems roll down a sloped bonnet. An exhaust box is pushed with just enough energy into a rear suspension link which nudges a transmission selector arm which releases the brake pedal loaded with a small rubber brake grommit. Catapult! Boing! On goes the beautiful dance, everything intricately balanced and poised. Nothing must be even a sixteenth of an inch off course or the momentum will be lost.

At one point three tyres, amazingly, roll uphill. They do so because inside they have been weighted with bolts and screws which have been positioned with fingertip care so that the slightest kiss of kinetic energy pushes them over, onward and, yes, upward. During the pre-shoot set-ups, film assistants had to tiptoe round the set so as not to disturb the feather-sensitive superstructure of the arranged metalwork. The slightest tremor of an ill-judged hand could have undone hours of work.

Utter silence, a check that the lighting is just right, and "action!". Scores of grown men hold their breath as the cameras roll. An oil can is tipped and glugs just enough of its contents on to a shelf that has been weighted with a Honda flywheel. Some valve springs roll into the oil and are slowed to a pace perfect to make them drop into a cylinder head assembly.

If all these technical names are confusing, that is partly the point. The advertisement was designed to show motorists all the fiddly little bits of engineering that go into the modern Honda. The result, in this film at least, is something approaching mechanical perfection and a bewitching aesthetic. As car adverts go, it certainly beats the "Nicole! Papa!" school of commercial.

If nothing else, Cog is a welcome departure from the generality of car advertisements that feature winding-road landcapes, empty highways and clear blue skies. The absence of people from the commercial at least saved Honda having to make any regional alterations.

It will be able to be shown everywhere from Japan to South America, Finland to the Maldives, without any more alteration than perhaps a change of the closing voiceover, currently delivered by laid-back Garrison Keillor, the American author, who announces: "Isn't it nice when things just work?"

Cog looks certain to become an advertising legend and part of its allure is the seemingly effortless way the relay of parts slide and touch and roll with such apparent ease. The reality of the film's production was slightly different. It was, by most measures of human patience, a nightmare.

Filming was done over four near-sleepless days in a Paris studio, after one month of script approval, two months of concept drawings and a further four months of development and testing. One of the more surprising things about the ad is that it was not a cheat. Although it would have been much easier to fiddle the chain of events by using computer graphics, the seesaw and shunt of events really did happen, and in one, clean take.

The bigshots at Honda's world headquarters in Japan, when shown Cog for the first time, replied that yes, it was very clever, and how impressive trick photography was these days. When told that it was all real, they were astonished.

One of the more striking moments in the film is when a lone windscreen wiper blade helicopters through the air, suspended from a line of metal twine. "That was the first and last time it worked properly," recalls Tony Davidson, of the London-based advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy. "I wanted it to look like ballet."

After that, a few yards and several ingenious connections down the assembly line, another pair of windscreen wiper blades is squirted by an activated washer jet. Because Honda wipers have automatic sensors that can detect water, they start a crablike crawl across the floor. It is as though they have come to life.

As take 300 led to 400 which led to 500, a certain madness settled on the crew. Rob Steiner, the agency producer, started talking about "our friends, the parts", but in the slightly menacing tone of a primary school teacher discussing her charges at the end of a trying day. Some workers on the film went whole days without sleep and had to be asked to stay away from the more delicate parts of the assembly. Others started to have bad dreams about throttle activator shafts and bonnet release cables.

When things were going wrong - a tyre that kept trundling off to the left, or a rocker shaft that kept toppling over like a tipsy cyclist - the production lads on the shoot would start grumbling that "the parts are being very moody today".

Commercial makers are often accustomed to working with human prima donnas but no Hollywood starlet, no footballing prodigy or showbiz celeb, was ever as troublesome and unpredictable as the con rods and pulley wheels and solenoids that Davidson, Steiner and Co had to work with.

Towards the end of the production, Olivier Coulhon, the first assistant director, had spent so many hours in the darkened studio that his skin had turned a luminous green and his eyes had sunk deep into his Gallic cheeks.

Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, the commercial's director, kept puffing out his cheeks and whinneying, a note of deranged despair twitching at the corners of his mouth. Asked how long he had been working on the commercial, he gave a high-pitched giggle and replied: "Five years? Or is it eight?" It felt that long.

Two hand-made pre-production Accords - there were only six in existence in the entire world - were needed for the exercise, one of them being ripped apart and cannibalised to the considerable distress of Honda engineers. By the end of the months-long production, the film had used so many spare parts that two articulated lorries were required to take them away.

The idea for the advert derived partly from the old children's game Mouse Trap, and from the wacky engineering of Caractacus Potts's breakfast-making machine in the Sixties film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The corporate suits at Honda liked the idea immediately, despite the high costs of production and the fact that it was more than twice as long, and therefore twice as pricey, as normal car ads.

The two-minute version of the ad ran for the first time last Sunday during the Brazilian Grand Prix, and brought pubgoers across the nation to a wide-eyed speechlessness after the Manchester United v Real Madrid game on Tuesday night.

"It was a painstaking process, a tough experience," says Honda's communications manager Matt Coombe, recalling the making of Cog. Some of the original ideas, such as one stunt involving an airbag, had to be dropped owing to a shortage of new Accord parts or simply because they were too hard to set up. And on some takes the process would go perfectly until agonisingly close to the end.

"It was like watching a brilliant footballer weaving his way the whole way through a defending team's players, and then shooting wide right at the end," says Tony Davidson. The crew resorted to placing bets on which part of the sequence would go wrong. Invariably it was the windscreen wipers.

When the final, 606th take eventually succeeded, there was a stunned silence around the Paris studio. Then, like shipwrecked mariners finally realising that their ordeal was at an end, the team broke into a careworn chorus of increasingly defiant cheers and hurrahs.

Champagne bottles popped. The cylinder liner had brushed its nose affectionately against the rocker shaft and the gear wheel cog for the last time. The interior grab handles and the suspension spring coils had done their bit. A classic was complete. Cog was in the can.

Courtesy of Rob's Amazing Poem Generator:

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Sonic erection.

I've replaced the shout outs on each entry, which nobody was using, and which I couldn't master the code for, with a tag board. Please speak your mind. Unfortunately, it filters profanity. Which sucks. Or should I say, which sucks my dick. Filter that, cretins.

Casting call update. Sixty resumes, 54 actors, 31 women, 23 men, 8 megabytes, three photogaphers, two hookers, one motivational speaker, and a monkey named Sissy.

Okay, I'm joking about the hookers. But everything else is Jesus' truth.

I've posted it everywhere else, might as well do so here:

USE ONCE & DESTROY FILMS is gearing up for a couple shorts to be shot in June and July of this year. The main one is "The Pickup," based on the short cartoon story by Mary Fleener and Pat Moriarty, and produced by Derick Avitt, Hans Eric Hollstein and David Miller.

Black and white, ten minutes long, The Pickup will be sort of a screwball comedy, told in the style of early French New Wave. Requires comic timing and slapstick skills, or at least the willingness to submerge your dignity while learning the slapstick and pratfalls. No pay, but the two leads get to perform a dance number.

We can also use personnel in capacities other than acting (grips, ADs, set photographers, slave labor, etc), so if you're interested, by all means, drop us a line. Please pass this on to anyone else you think may be interested.

Please email headshots and resumes to ThePickup@comcast.net, or mail them to:

The Pickup
4710 Aurora Avenue North #101
Seattle, WA 98103

Once we sort through the resumes, we'll be in touch about auditions, rehearsals, scheduling and the like. Feel free to email with any questions.

-----------------------
The roles available for "The Pickup" are as follows:

LEAD:

Mary - Female 20's to 30's. Beautiful yet desperate, with an inclination to dance.
The Pickup - Male 20's to 40's. Dirty yet charismatic, with an inclination to dance.

SECONDARY:

Susan - Female 20's to 30's. Mary's friend. Serious, yet fun. Or fun, yet serious.
"Man" - male 30's to 40's. Gruff yet kittenish. Sort of hard to explain without giving away the plot. Okay, so he comes home and finds a couple of strangers in his bed, and reacts in a way that is gruff yet kittenish. Like I said, hard to explain.
John - Male. Mary's ex. Voice only.

EXTRAS:

Mary's co-workers - Five or six women of all ages
Club-goers - Tons of extras of all ages and types needed for a club scene. Considerable attention will be paid to the roles and activities in this club. About 2/3rds of these will be featured extras, with a specific task to perform. This won't be just sitting in the background pretending to talk - you'll all have something to do.