Articles Archive for September 2010
Some quick updates on readings and shizz: I’ll be doing a reading/Q&A/signing in Boston on Thursday, October 28 at 7pm at the Barnes & Noble at Boston University. Yes, my alma mater is Boston College, but I’m pretty sure the publicist people think I went to Boston University, and they were so pumped when they got me this reading that I didn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise, as they are just wonderful people, real sweethearts.
October 28 also happens to be Game Two of the World Series, so after I read to you, you ask me personal (like, really personal) questions, and I sign your books, we’ll head to a nearby TBD bar to watch the Phillies drop-kick whatever chump comes out of the AL this year. On a side note, this should be a fun weekend for me, as I’ll also be in Beantown to tailgate for the BC-Clemson game (read: to get ticketed for public urination) and be the creepy old dude at my old college bar, MaryAnn’s. Can’t wait.
Then, there’s the biggie: a reading/Q&A/signing in NYC, my adopted hometown and my muse/whore, on Monday, November 22 at 7pm at McNally Jackson in Soho. Yes, that venerable NYC institution that has hosted the likes of Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer and, you know, other big writers and whatnot (I more or less stick to books about serial killers) is willfully and legitimately inviting me and you all to burn the mother effing house down (not literally, please). I expect all of you, no matter where you live, to come to this one, as we plan on having all sorts of special guests and surprises.* Besides, what the hell are you doing on the Monday night of Thanksgiving week anyway? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
[* There will be no special guests or surprises.**]
[** Seriously, so don’t get your hopes up or anything – just a grown-ass man reading you a story and sweating while answering your questions. But there will likely be beers after this one, as well.]
Finally, on the checklist is still Denver and Seattle, but those will likely be in early 2011 (please check the blog, be my friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for updates). It also appears that I’ll be in London from about November 24 until November 28. I don’t know if I have enough juice in the UK to have even an informal get-together, but, eff it – if there’s any way I can write this trip off as a promotional/business expense, I’m all for it. Drop me a line if you’ll be in foggy London town around this time and if there are enough people, perhaps we can have a little happy hour.
Boston
Thursday, October 28 at 7pm
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Boston University
660 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215
New York City
Monday, November 22 at 7pm
McNally Jackson
52 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
Hope you can make it out!
October 28 also happens to be Game Two of the World Series, so after I read to you, you ask me personal (like, really personal) questions, and I sign your books, we’ll head to a nearby TBD bar to watch the Phillies drop-kick whatever chump comes out of the AL this year. On a side note, this should be a fun weekend for me, as I’ll also be in Beantown to tailgate for the BC-Clemson game (read: to get ticketed for public urination) and be the creepy old dude at my old college bar, MaryAnn’s. Can’t wait.
Then, there’s the biggie: a reading/Q&A/signing in NYC, my adopted hometown and my muse/whore, on Monday, November 22 at 7pm at McNally Jackson in Soho. Yes, that venerable NYC institution that has hosted the likes of Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer and, you know, other big writers and whatnot (I more or less stick to books about serial killers) is willfully and legitimately inviting me and you all to burn the mother effing house down (not literally, please). I expect all of you, no matter where you live, to come to this one, as we plan on having all sorts of special guests and surprises.* Besides, what the hell are you doing on the Monday night of Thanksgiving week anyway? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
[* There will be no special guests or surprises.**]
[** Seriously, so don’t get your hopes up or anything – just a grown-ass man reading you a story and sweating while answering your questions. But there will likely be beers after this one, as well.]
Finally, on the checklist is still Denver and Seattle, but those will likely be in early 2011 (please check the blog, be my friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for updates). It also appears that I’ll be in London from about November 24 until November 28. I don’t know if I have enough juice in the UK to have even an informal get-together, but, eff it – if there’s any way I can write this trip off as a promotional/business expense, I’m all for it. Drop me a line if you’ll be in foggy London town around this time and if there are enough people, perhaps we can have a little happy hour.
Boston
Thursday, October 28 at 7pm
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Boston University
660 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215
New York City
Monday, November 22 at 7pm
McNally Jackson
52 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
Hope you can make it out!
From Ted in South Boston:
Dude, you gotta stop backdating your posts.
Here’s why: I went to take a shit at work today. I saw that (sadly) there were no new Mulgrew posts recently (aside, of course, from “buy my book!” posts I see once a month [though the book was fucking hilarious, by the way]). So, instead, I clicked on a random month from 2005 and read about you sending your buddies Random Hurtful Emails. However, as I’m about to leave work, my buddy Tom (who you quoted on your site a couple years ago, the one who was “scouring the obituaries” for you) asked me if I had read your backdated posts, and sent me your newest one, “week in reviews”. Well, I just read it, and it was fantastic. But by backdating it, you essentially ruined what could have been a perfectly good 4:45pm handicapped stall laugh filled poop fest.
Thanks for nothing.
Ted
(The random hurtful emails post was funny, don’t get me wrong)
(Maybe I’ll donate $10 to ya for that “Thanks for nothing” line, do you still have that paypal thing on your site?)
First, thank you, Ted. This is a good example of a complaint email: say your piece, explain yourself, then offer to give me $10 (although I told Ted to instead buy another copy of the book, perhaps as a gift, because we gotta move those units if we want to write/read another one). This should really be used a model for complaining to me about me going forward.
(Also, man, those random hurtful emails were a lot of fun. Although it’s a sign of the times that instead of referencing bad things that happened to friends in their childhoods, if I were to send them now they’d be more along the lines of, “Bro, do you remember when you dropped like $12,000 on that engagement ring and then realized your fiancée was not ‘the one’ and broke it off but she was really pissed and kept the ring and you were pretty much beat for that cash?” or “Dude, remember when your son was born and he had four fingers?”)
Second, yes, guilty as charged: I sometimes backdate the shit out of posts (I’m probably backdating this one!) (Author’s Note: I did, but by only three days). Why? Well, two reasons, really:
1a) The problem that I have had with posting for the past, you know, year-plus is that while I’m not short on material, I often have trouble finishing posts. I’ll start writing one, think to myself, “Yeah, this will work, but let me change some things…”, then something else will come up, then I’ll go back to the post but think it needs more work, then I’ll get another idea and start a new, different post, repeat repeat repeat. So when I’m backdating the post, I’m actually entering them at a date when I started writing them.
Part of the reason I have trouble finishing posts is also related to…
1b) I have become a more conscientious “writer.” The reason why blogging works/worked for me is because you can just write some shit up and let it fly, putting it up there without thinking twice. But then writing a book and also my normal job changed all that, the former because (though I tried my best not to) you actually have to proof and think and rewrite when writing a book, and the latter because I spend most of my day figuring out how to convey “We’re #1!” in the most convincing and concise way possible, often spending hours pouring over/re-writing single paragraphs.
These two things have led me to develop some bad habits, namely being much more careful about my writing (I know, it sucks). The result is that, almost involuntarily, it’s harder for me to just let shit fly here, so much so that I’ve thought about altering my approach to blogging and treating this as more of a Tumblr blog, wherein you write short posts very often and just get in and get the fuck out. However, I’m verbose, and that’s it. So we’re all gonna have to deal with it.
2) Believe it or not, there are some people who, when they discover the site, like to go back and take a month or two out of their work schedule and read all 1.6 million words (give or take a few). So in addition to dating the posts to when I started writing them, it also gives a nice, pretty, complete picture of the site as a whole if I have a few posts backdated to fill in time gaps. Does that make sense? Either way, let’s just move on.
Generally speaking, to give you an idea, I have seven posts that I have started but not finished since the beginning of August. Seven! Some of these I won’t get to, but others, I will finish and I will backdate. So since I’m not going to give up the backdating anytime soon (I mean, seven posts!), I would recommend that you check the last two months of stuff for new material, and I promise that if I backdate a couple in a row, I will put a “new” post up directing you to them. Otherwise, as for the lack of regular posting in general, follow me on Facebook! And on Twitter! No, you won’t get any 3000 word discourses on the appropriate way to go about microwaving and then masturbating with a raw chicken breast to most closely simulate P to V intercourse, but I at least update those daily.
And in the meantime, thank you for your continued patronage and understanding. If you have any complaints, please use Ted’s model and send an email to jason@jasonmulgrew.com (bonus points if the reason behind your complaint is an unhappy bowel movement experience – that’s always going to get your printed).
Dude, you gotta stop backdating your posts.
Here’s why: I went to take a shit at work today. I saw that (sadly) there were no new Mulgrew posts recently (aside, of course, from “buy my book!” posts I see once a month [though the book was fucking hilarious, by the way]). So, instead, I clicked on a random month from 2005 and read about you sending your buddies Random Hurtful Emails. However, as I’m about to leave work, my buddy Tom (who you quoted on your site a couple years ago, the one who was “scouring the obituaries” for you) asked me if I had read your backdated posts, and sent me your newest one, “week in reviews”. Well, I just read it, and it was fantastic. But by backdating it, you essentially ruined what could have been a perfectly good 4:45pm handicapped stall laugh filled poop fest.
Thanks for nothing.
Ted
(The random hurtful emails post was funny, don’t get me wrong)
(Maybe I’ll donate $10 to ya for that “Thanks for nothing” line, do you still have that paypal thing on your site?)
First, thank you, Ted. This is a good example of a complaint email: say your piece, explain yourself, then offer to give me $10 (although I told Ted to instead buy another copy of the book, perhaps as a gift, because we gotta move those units if we want to write/read another one). This should really be used a model for complaining to me about me going forward.
(Also, man, those random hurtful emails were a lot of fun. Although it’s a sign of the times that instead of referencing bad things that happened to friends in their childhoods, if I were to send them now they’d be more along the lines of, “Bro, do you remember when you dropped like $12,000 on that engagement ring and then realized your fiancée was not ‘the one’ and broke it off but she was really pissed and kept the ring and you were pretty much beat for that cash?” or “Dude, remember when your son was born and he had four fingers?”)
Second, yes, guilty as charged: I sometimes backdate the shit out of posts (I’m probably backdating this one!) (Author’s Note: I did, but by only three days). Why? Well, two reasons, really:
1a) The problem that I have had with posting for the past, you know, year-plus is that while I’m not short on material, I often have trouble finishing posts. I’ll start writing one, think to myself, “Yeah, this will work, but let me change some things…”, then something else will come up, then I’ll go back to the post but think it needs more work, then I’ll get another idea and start a new, different post, repeat repeat repeat. So when I’m backdating the post, I’m actually entering them at a date when I started writing them.
Part of the reason I have trouble finishing posts is also related to…
1b) I have become a more conscientious “writer.” The reason why blogging works/worked for me is because you can just write some shit up and let it fly, putting it up there without thinking twice. But then writing a book and also my normal job changed all that, the former because (though I tried my best not to) you actually have to proof and think and rewrite when writing a book, and the latter because I spend most of my day figuring out how to convey “We’re #1!” in the most convincing and concise way possible, often spending hours pouring over/re-writing single paragraphs.
These two things have led me to develop some bad habits, namely being much more careful about my writing (I know, it sucks). The result is that, almost involuntarily, it’s harder for me to just let shit fly here, so much so that I’ve thought about altering my approach to blogging and treating this as more of a Tumblr blog, wherein you write short posts very often and just get in and get the fuck out. However, I’m verbose, and that’s it. So we’re all gonna have to deal with it.
2) Believe it or not, there are some people who, when they discover the site, like to go back and take a month or two out of their work schedule and read all 1.6 million words (give or take a few). So in addition to dating the posts to when I started writing them, it also gives a nice, pretty, complete picture of the site as a whole if I have a few posts backdated to fill in time gaps. Does that make sense? Either way, let’s just move on.
Generally speaking, to give you an idea, I have seven posts that I have started but not finished since the beginning of August. Seven! Some of these I won’t get to, but others, I will finish and I will backdate. So since I’m not going to give up the backdating anytime soon (I mean, seven posts!), I would recommend that you check the last two months of stuff for new material, and I promise that if I backdate a couple in a row, I will put a “new” post up directing you to them. Otherwise, as for the lack of regular posting in general, follow me on Facebook! And on Twitter! No, you won’t get any 3000 word discourses on the appropriate way to go about microwaving and then masturbating with a raw chicken breast to most closely simulate P to V intercourse, but I at least update those daily.
And in the meantime, thank you for your continued patronage and understanding. If you have any complaints, please use Ted’s model and send an email to jason@jasonmulgrew.com (bonus points if the reason behind your complaint is an unhappy bowel movement experience – that’s always going to get your printed).
I have two events to tell you about, friends.
The first is that I’ll be doing a reading/signing/drinking session in Washington, DC on Saturday, September 18 starting at 6pm at The Brickskeller in Dupont. Ten things to note:
1) I haven’t been to DC since 2001.
2) This bar supposedly has about 1000 beers.
3) The bar opens at 6pm, and we’re meeting right at 6pm, just as they open those doors.
4) At that point, I’ll be out for the night.
5) 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = I don’t intend to walk out without aid.
6) If I’ve learned anything from my Midwest trip, it’s that not all bars are conducive to actual readings.
7) If I can’t actually read you a story, I will happily still accept your free drinks, answer your questions, sign your books, tell you awful secrets about my family (that are not in the book), and more or less rabble-rouse with you.
8) Please bring your friends.
9) There will be no copies of the book for sale at the bar, so get yours now.
10) I have a 10am train reservation on that Sunday so that I can be back in NYC by 1pm the next day to watch the Eagles game with my friends. Your challenge: make me miss that train.
Looking forward to it, and hope all of you in the DC area can make it.
Washington, DC
Saturday, September 18 at 6pm
The Brickskeller
1523 22nd St NW
Washington, DC 20037
(If you want to RSVP for the DC event on Facebook, you can do so here.)
************
The second event is a sort of mini-reading here in NYC, which will take place this Saturday, September 11 at 6pm at KGB Bar in the East Village. I say “mini-reading” because it’s an event that’s part of Lit Crawl, which is more or less a pub crawl with literature (yes!). The event will be hosted by the hilarious and wonderful Neal Pollack (author of the recently-released STRETCH and reading with me will be the hilarious and delightful Rachel Shukert (author of the recently-released EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE GREAT, which, no, is not the opposite of my memoir).
What’s interesting is that in addition to Neal MCing and Rachel and I reading, there will be lit trivia and prizes. What’s more interesting is that there will be a “girls vs. boys” theme, whereby Rachel will team up with the girls finalist team and I will team up for the boys finalist team for the final round of questions (although not everyone is required to do the trivia, of course). What’s even more interesting is that I was a history major and almost exclusively read books about serial killers, and so couldn’t tell you basic facts of literature like who wrote MADAME BOVARY or name any character in any Charles Dickens novel outside of A CHRISTMAS CAROL or, I don’t know, whatever people should know about literature. So if you come to this event and find me on your team, please, don’t listen to a word I say.
[I should also note that this is a short event – about 45 minutes – and I finally (finally!) have a date set for an “official” NYC reading that I’ll announce soon that will feature a longer reading, Q&A, signing and drinks after. So while I want you to come to both, if you had to pick one to take in all that is me, you should probably come to the longer event. That being said, at KGB I’m still going to get drunk off vodka, read you a story full of cuss words, and, as mentioned, try to sabotage your trivia team (and you get to hear Neal and Rachel, who are way, way better than me), so come on out.]
For more information, you can check out the event description on the Lit Crawl site here.
NYC
Saturday, September 11 at 6pm
KGB Bar
85 E 4th St
New York, NY 10003
The first is that I’ll be doing a reading/signing/drinking session in Washington, DC on Saturday, September 18 starting at 6pm at The Brickskeller in Dupont. Ten things to note:
1) I haven’t been to DC since 2001.
2) This bar supposedly has about 1000 beers.
3) The bar opens at 6pm, and we’re meeting right at 6pm, just as they open those doors.
4) At that point, I’ll be out for the night.
5) 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = I don’t intend to walk out without aid.
6) If I’ve learned anything from my Midwest trip, it’s that not all bars are conducive to actual readings.
7) If I can’t actually read you a story, I will happily still accept your free drinks, answer your questions, sign your books, tell you awful secrets about my family (that are not in the book), and more or less rabble-rouse with you.
8) Please bring your friends.
9) There will be no copies of the book for sale at the bar, so get yours now.
10) I have a 10am train reservation on that Sunday so that I can be back in NYC by 1pm the next day to watch the Eagles game with my friends. Your challenge: make me miss that train.
Looking forward to it, and hope all of you in the DC area can make it.
Washington, DC
Saturday, September 18 at 6pm
The Brickskeller
1523 22nd St NW
Washington, DC 20037
(If you want to RSVP for the DC event on Facebook, you can do so here.)
************
The second event is a sort of mini-reading here in NYC, which will take place this Saturday, September 11 at 6pm at KGB Bar in the East Village. I say “mini-reading” because it’s an event that’s part of Lit Crawl, which is more or less a pub crawl with literature (yes!). The event will be hosted by the hilarious and wonderful Neal Pollack (author of the recently-released STRETCH and reading with me will be the hilarious and delightful Rachel Shukert (author of the recently-released EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE GREAT, which, no, is not the opposite of my memoir).
What’s interesting is that in addition to Neal MCing and Rachel and I reading, there will be lit trivia and prizes. What’s more interesting is that there will be a “girls vs. boys” theme, whereby Rachel will team up with the girls finalist team and I will team up for the boys finalist team for the final round of questions (although not everyone is required to do the trivia, of course). What’s even more interesting is that I was a history major and almost exclusively read books about serial killers, and so couldn’t tell you basic facts of literature like who wrote MADAME BOVARY or name any character in any Charles Dickens novel outside of A CHRISTMAS CAROL or, I don’t know, whatever people should know about literature. So if you come to this event and find me on your team, please, don’t listen to a word I say.
[I should also note that this is a short event – about 45 minutes – and I finally (finally!) have a date set for an “official” NYC reading that I’ll announce soon that will feature a longer reading, Q&A, signing and drinks after. So while I want you to come to both, if you had to pick one to take in all that is me, you should probably come to the longer event. That being said, at KGB I’m still going to get drunk off vodka, read you a story full of cuss words, and, as mentioned, try to sabotage your trivia team (and you get to hear Neal and Rachel, who are way, way better than me), so come on out.]
For more information, you can check out the event description on the Lit Crawl site here.
NYC
Saturday, September 11 at 6pm
KGB Bar
85 E 4th St
New York, NY 10003