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February 05
February 23, 2005
I have been to Central Park five times in the last two weeks–as much as in the past two years. I have rendezvous-ed with distant friends, presumed or perhaps wished dead, from seemingly previous lives; met their spouses, children, and pets. The walkways in the park have been as crowded as I have ever seen them, including in the summer during concerts and political marches meant to give gays the feeling that they are here and the rest of us should be getting used to it. Elsewhere in the city, the sidewalks are echoing with the words “brilliant,” “saffron,” “nylon,” and “stupid.” Also, “total waste of money” is heard a lot, but that’s just me mumbling to myself. I have run out of room to write anym
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February 22, 2005
And if Brian Nemeth changes the name of his column again I’ll just take suggestions from the Peanut Gallery as to what it should be called.
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February 21, 2005
It’s been a really rough year for my grandma. After four knee surgeries in the past 6 months, she had a massive heart attack yesterday morning and the doctors didn’t expect her to live through the night. But she did and she’s doing really well considering.
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February 20, 2005
I’m bustin’ & moanin’ and the computer is groanin’. Until then, check the archives for February 2005
Cheers,
pfef
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February 20, 2005
Again, apologies for the delay in getting issue #4 up on the web. Lack of time and funds is always a problem. It’ll be up soon.
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February 20, 2005
Though I didn’t hear it, we were briefly featured on KRCC, the local NPR station last night in a piece about local mircomedia. You can catch it again on Thurs.at 7 p.m.
Here’s the transcript of the piece and you can go to krcc.org to read or hear the full story.
[sound of clothes drier]
WHITNEY: The last paper we’re going to look at is also the newest on the block. And of all the small offices that we visited, its is easily the smallest.
NOEL BLACK: Watch your head.
WHITNEY: Noel Black works in a little space next to the clothes dryer in the basement of his house in Colorado Springs.
BLACK: It is five-and-a-half feet by nine feet. Between the joists, it’s about six-foot-six. At the joists it’s about five-ten.
WHITNEY: And how tall are you?
BLACK: Six-foot. So I stand between the joists.
WHITNEY: Once a month since last November, Black has been putting out something he calls The Toilet Paper.
BLACK: The Toilet Paper is a variety show in print. It’s my dream of being a writer on Saturday Night Live, except it’s in print form and here in Colorado Springs [laughs].
WHITNEY: The Toilet Paper makes no pretenses at being serious journalism. But, Black, who’s thirty-two, says serious journalism isn’t the only way to convey what’s true, and it doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially people his age and younger.
BLACK: It’s meant to be a quick read, it’s very ADD, which most of us in my generation are. And yet it’s meant to be pointed and witty and smart. And I think that that’s something that is lacking in so much of the so-called serious journalism world, where a lot of the culture is built around the belief that journalism is objective and non-partisan and just reporting the facts, which I think is a crock. And I think what’s appealing about something like The Toilet Paper is that it’s not pretending to be objective, but it’s also being open-minded.
WHITNEY: Black grew up in Colorado Springs. His parents were gay, and he says he feels an obligation to fight for his part of the community, and against the city’s pervasive evangelicalism.
So in the last issue, The Toilet Paper did a ballistics test on the New Testaments the International Bible Society distributed with the Sunday Gazette back in November. He wrote a story full of fake quotes about how the society was pushing the texts as body armor for soldiers in Iraq.
A block headline proclaims that “Tests show Bibles don’t actually save.” On the other hand, Black is looking to hire a columnist to represent the evangelical point of view. Seriously.
BLACK: If you’re going to at least spark the interest of people, bring them to a paper like The Toilet Paper, you’d better be actively seeking out some voices from the other side of tracks. And in this case, I think having an evangelical Christian conservative person, in whatever format it ends up being, is going to be a huge asset for the paper. It could something sort of mututally humorous and jokey. Or it could end up being a serious kind of dialog. I hope it’s something that at least gets people who wouldn’t necessarily read the paper to read it.
WHITNEY: Black prints five thousand Toilet Papers a month, and says so far he hasn’t lost any money doing it. Advertising primarily from record stores and bars is keeping him afloat. Black says he’s not sure how long that will hold out, but he’s determined to keep putting the paper out for at least a year, in part to show up the people who told him it would never work.
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February 15, 2005
I got hit by a taxicab on my way to work this morning. I was pedaling south on 7th Avenue through Times Square and the motherfucker cut me off–apparently his left turn was more valuable than either my pride or right hip. (THE NEXT TWO EVENTS OCCURRED SIMULTANEOUSLY, but there’s no way to SHOW that in writing is there?–you just have to SAY it: [FUCK!]) I slammed into the driver’s side back door so hard with my hip that it dented the whole panel quite severely–someone’s gonna have to pay for that. At the top of my lungs I yelled “MOTHERFUCKER!”–an important part of my day–as some commuters on the corner, only a few feet from me and eye to eye, made noises that can only be described as “oof” and “Oh fuck!” I escaped unscathed save for a tingling pinkie, but a lot of things could have caused that.
For some reason, this makes me think of how I “let” Noel’s dad’s bike get stolen from the train station in Evanston. Talk about insult to injury; not only is the man dying but his son has to explain (because he was ASKING) that his favorite mechanical possession got nicked ’cause his son’s dipshit friend couldn’t bother to invest in a lock whose main ingredient was something stronger than vinyl-coated string.
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February 12, 2005
Perhaps next week. I’ll fine out and keep you posted
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February 12, 2005
Perhaps next week. I’ll fine out and keep you posted
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February 11, 2005
Western Skies, the new news program at KRCC, will feature the Toilet Paper in a program about local micro-media at 4 p.m. on Sat., Feb. 12. You can stream it from the web at www.krcc.org
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