First and foremost, you gotta go to Bo Bartlett's site and check out his work. He is a phenomenal artist, and while he's not a native son of The City of Brotherly Love, he did study at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, was Andrew Wyeth's protege and neighbor in Chadds Ford, PA, and Bo is just an all-around nice guy.
This picture is his painting, "Goddess," lifted off his site, and I hope I don't get hit with a DMCA take-down notice, because this is the best. painting. ever. I also love this one and this one. I love Bo. A lot.
Hokay, so now that I've hopefully sung enough praises of Bo that I won't get slapped down by his lawyers, I'm going to give you some background on why I fight the DJ and how it all started.
Once upon a time, I was a commenter at Jezebel, and I used to lurk Wonkette. Megan Carpentier [Ed. - Ugh. Air America went under this afternoon. Shit.] used to post as the Anonymous Lobbyist until Gawker (Nick Denton's blog
She wrote for Jezebel and Wonkette, and did a damn fine job (warning, graphic pictures of real life), and then she was unceremoniously fired. A bunch of Wonkette commenters (Homofacist's Army) went on strike (three years ago), and we and Megan moved to Cynics' Party (don't bother clicking unless you want to see dead air space).
There's a lot of disagreement over whether the commenters make the blog, or whether the posts make the blog, and I'd say it's both. Many times commenters are taken for granted, and often (at least in the Gawker universe) commenters say, "Fuck you!" and leave for other sites.
Things at Cynics' Party were good. Good stuff started happening for Megan, and people got busy, which is good. No one at Cynics' Party was being paid. The posts slowed down to a painful drip, but people gotta eat, right?
So, Cynics' Party started to blow up or break down or whatever, and Nojo, tech maven extraordinaire, kept CP up and running (for free!) while keeping his day job, and an interesting thing happened at Cynics' Party -- we commenters became a community. Threadjacks were not only allowed but encouraged, and some of us have met in real life. FSM knows I wouldn't still be here if it weren't for the love, support and encouragement I've received from that online community.
So, yeah -- Cynics' Party started to blow up in a bad way (comments were disappearing, all manner of weirdness was happening), and two of the original bloggers (not Megan), came back after a long winter's nap and started acting all insane. They didn't want any more threadjacks, they wanted to shake up the blogger line up, and they posted the dumbest podcast I've ever heard.
Soooo, there was this big fight, and another commenter exodus ensued mainly because the site sucked ass in the sense that the mechanics of it were all dicked up, and we had evolved into something more than just a blog, and all that was about to change thanks to our absentee overlords (not Megan).
Sooooooo, off we went to Stinque, which is where we now reside. Stinque is *awesome*, and, as one commenter put it, "This entire blog is a threadjack." And it's true. And some of the smartest, kindest most wonderful people comment there. We're a bunch of disaffected progressives (we have a token Libertarian), and well, our progressiveness falls along a spectrum. I'm kind of like "Eat the rich," but most of the commenters are more sane. Most.
I write all that to say that one night I couldn't sleep. I went to the pharmacy at 3 AM to get some Lunesta, and some dude tried to pick me up at 3 AM outside the CVS while I was smoking and drinking a Coke, waiting for my prescription to be filled. Our conversation went a little like this:
Dude: Want some gum?
Me: Sure. Thanks.
Dude: What are you doing out here.
Me: I'm getting a prescription filled. You are soo fucked up!
Dude: Do I look that bad?
Me: Uh. Yeah.
Dude: Wanna party?
Me: I'm getting antibiotics.
Dude: Oh. Wanna party?
Me: I'm contagious.
Dude: Let's party.
Me: Dude, you are truly fucked up. Are you even good to drive? You need to go the hell home. Thanks for the gum.
When I got home and waited for the Lunesta to kick in, I wrote a series of comments at Cynics' Party about fighting the DJ. Those comments are now lost thanks to Cynics' Party blowing up and eating comments and other manners of weirdness, but RomeGirl (who has the Best. Travel Blog. Ever. And buy her book!) suggested that I start a blog and make each comment a post, so I did.
There was something beautiful and poetic about how I told the story the first time (drugs'll do that to you if you're lucky), and I know I won't be able to recapture that thing that compelled me to write the story in the first place. The conditions are different, and time has elapsed. But I'll try.
No comments:
Post a Comment