WE DON'T NEED TO SHOW YOU NO STINKIN' BADGES!

I recently received a fan letter from a devoted reader, part of which reads as follows:

Dear 200motels, you stink. Plus which, you don’t know shit. How come you waste everybody’s time with your nonsense when all you are doing is taking up bandwidth that could be used by a serious, informed American?

If you were any good you would be in Vanity Fair Magazine instead of skulking around the Portosans behind the fish stalls at the Fulton Street Fish Market exposing yourself to nuns and adolescent schoolgirls. You and I both know that no editor will touch your garbage, so fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Signed, L. Maric?n.

Dear Mr. Maricón,
Thank you for your thoughtful letter of support. It’s true, I stink, but it’s a conscious strategy to get a seat on the subway. Actually, this woman complimented me on my fragrance. “What have you got on?” she asked.

I said, “I got a hard-on, but I didn’t know you could smell it.”
Actually, being repulsive, redundant and unpalatable to the literary establishment puts me in good company. Leo Tolstoy had to spend his own money to get “War and Peace” into print, as did Marcel Proust for “A la recherche du temps perdu” Fortunately for these guys, they had a few rubles to take a flyer on something they believed in. What about all the poor suckers throughout history who had something cool to share with the world, but who were kicked out on the street by an idiot editor and didn’t have the coin to see their stuff through to publication? Lost forever.

Editors don’t know shit, or they would be writers. That’s especially true of New York, where the least betrayal of artistic inspiration is the kiss of death in a market that intentionally dumbs down the environment to give a chance to all the mediocre talents bursting with ambition. You think I’m kidding? Tina Brown’s book is yet another rehash of Princess Diana, who was stale copy even when she was alive. Vanity Fair is full of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Brittany Spears and neo-conservatives. Not exactly the spearhead of the avant-garde, y’know what I mean?

Let’s say for the sake of argument that 90% of my stuff stinks, I’m not arguing. That means I hit with one out of ten. That means that after wasting people’s time nine times, I have the elements of one good piece.

OK, I made people suffer ten times, but I’ve got one thing that might end up as something unique and different. Writing is the same as stand-up comedy. It’s a bitch to put together 10 strong minutes of stand-up, but at the end you’ve got something to go coast-to-coast and maybe make it to Jay Leno. After that the movies. No way I’m going to get discouraged, no matter how many suckers tell me to go kill myself. I’m not going to give it up.

How do you get to be an editor in New York? Graduate college and get a journalistic job, which immediately turns you into processed cheese. After a few corporate episodes you get promoted to editor.
I don’t have anything against this system, but it has nothing to do with me. I used to resent it, because since people are loathe to work with anybody who knows more that they do, I got shut out for knowing too much.

But now, with the internet and blog technology, I can take my case directly to the public. And, as in stand-up comedy, I don’t care if a few tomatoes get thrown at me, because I can come up with more ideas than the audience can come up with tomatoes.

In the Humphrey Bogart movie “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” the gold miners get ambushed by some Mexican bandidos. The leader of the bandits tries to sucker the white guys by telling them he’s a sheriff. When Bogart tells them to show their badges, the Mexican becomes enraged and screams, “We don’t need to show you no stinkin’ badges!” and starts shooting.

I got the same thing to say to you, Maricón, I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ editors.

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Posted on 11/8/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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