Boycott Pikes Perk?

While The Toilet Paper fully respects the rights of businesses to decline to carry our paper, Pikes Perk Coffee and its owner Rick have given us cause to bring a few things about their business to our readers’ attention:

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April 27, 2005

Harper’s article on New Life Church

I just got done reading a photocopy of the current Harper’s article on New Life Church (all the copies of Harper’s “mysteriously” disappeared from the newsstands when it came out last week). It’s neither as scathing nor as revealing as I thought it would be. While the idea of our freedom-loving, hometown megachurch using a hierarchical organizational structure that includes super-secretive (yes, in terrrorist parlance) “cells” is downright ironical, it’s not anything earth- shattering and he doesn’t even bother to talk to anyone outside the local Christian culture, leaving anyone further abroad with yet another pre-scripted impression of Colorado Springs as, duh, suburban Christian monocultural strip-mall sprawl. Yes … and? Jeff Sharlet contacted me before he came out to do the story a number of months ago but I never heard back from him after I told him I wasn’t directly involved with New Life. Too bad. Had he offered a broader look at the culture/city or done some actual investigation into the kinds of money New Life raises and the ways it flexes its political muscle with that money despite the fact that, like Hocus on the Family, it doesn’t pay taxes … well, then he might’ve gotten my attention.

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April 27, 2005

Black Baptist Preacher for Gays in Westword

Here’s a link to a great article by Laura Bond at Westword in Denver about the Reverend Benjamin Reynolds at Emmanuel Baptist Church here in Colorado Springs and his unexplained fight to be inclusive of gays in a black Baptist church here in Chrtistianton. Again, it’s more that you never hear about from the local media.

http://www.westword.com/issues/2005-04-14/feature.html

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April 27, 2005

Here’s a link that won’t dissappoint

http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com/

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April 26, 2005

CS Independent Interim Publisher Fran Zankowski Shows At Our Party

Perhaps he’s just “keeping his enemy close,” but Colorado Springs Independent interim publisher Fran Zankowski showed up to our party on Friday night. The gossip that I’ve gotten is that Zankowski and co. in the ad sales department at the Independent actually think The Toilet Paper is trying to compete with The Independent! If by “compete” they mean “solicit some of the same advertisers because we live in a cultural parking lot,” then I guess we are “competing”. If by compete they mean “trying to bury them,” then they’re obviously even more insecure than I’d previously thought. The CS Indy already has a corner on the boring “here’s what’s going on this week” market, so I’ve felt from the beginning that we were merely filling a niche for those in Colorado Springs who are bored with the old-guard liberal format of the weekly. So what? When I left the my post at the Indy in June, 2004, it was made perfectly clear to me by both Publisher John Weiss and Editor Cara DeGazette that the Indy would be “growing older” with their demographic of 35-55 yr. old readers. Now, apparently, they want to revert to being the “hip” paper…[redacted]…In any case, for the Independent to now consider The Toilet Paper a threat is a joke. My guess is that ouir limited success has shown the Indy its aging face and the likelihood that another weekly could, at any time, come in here and bury them. Nevertheless, chasing after what you aren’t is almost always a bad idea, so maybe the Indy should acknowledge the fact that they weren’t interested in what we had in the first place and just keep on pretending like we don’t exist.

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April 26, 2005

Noel’s Appearance at New Life

At the invitation of Associate Pastor Rob Brendle, I went to “The Tent” at New Life Church on Saturday and stood before the 700-strong masses to proclaim the word of The Toilet Paper. This was my second visit, and, like last time (during their Easter production of The Thorn when the tent wasn’t even at half capacity), I got a surprisingly hearty round of applause when I said the only reason Rob and I were standing on the stage together is because of the First Amendment. After Rob made sure to point out that I’m not a Christian and that he doesn’t endorse the paper, we read some of the entries from the Soul Search column in TP #6. I said I wasn’t interested in all of us holding hands and singing kumbaya, but that I thought it was important for evangelicals and nons to figure out how to disagree with intelligence before the civic beliefs we do share get subsumed in the widening chasm between between increasingly bitter ideological foes. Lots of the interested faithful (including lots of young men in starched ‘n’ striped button down shirts, artificially distressed jeans and shiny black loafers — a totally euro-gay look that seems to be part of the culture!) came up to congratulate us afterward. I honestly don’t know if it’s all an exercise in bullshittery or what. Lots of people think the New Lifers are fascistic fundamentalists and that I’m stupid to even engage. Nevertheless, Marina and I had dinner with Rob, his wife Mauri and his sidekick Jared afterward, and I have to say that talking about deeply-held differences is far more interesting, and possibly more productive, than a couple of choir members congratulating each other on their shared beliefs. Rob asked me why, for example, I’m so adamant about addressing queer issues when I’m straight, which launched us into a long discussion about my gay parents and my belief that the children of the gay community, ultimately, will tip the scales in the queer civil rights movement and the gay marriage debate because people in all communities will eventually be touched by the apalling normality of our families (i.e. we’re just as weird and fucked up as the straights are, except its easier for the government to haul us away!). And some day a preacher not unlike Rob Brendle will stand up for the right of gays to enjoy, at the very least, civil unions. The rest of them will be standing on the side of bigotry.

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April 26, 2005

Hollow Blog: Apology for long absentia

Hello handful of blog readers. The Toilet Paper has grown so fucking fast I haven’t had time to post recently. Because of some major changes to the site, we also haven’t been able to post issue #6 in a timely fashion. Sorry. This is all going to change next month. Anyhow, we’re 6 months old now and about to upgrade the site to fix the frames problem so people can find us more easily through google search. We’re also about to put forums up so everyone can haggle about Soul Search and whatever.

In the mean time, I’ll be posting more regular gossip to the blog.

Noel

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April 10, 2005

#6 and Holy Shit

I just finished reading the interview with Daniel Johnston and I was shaking by the end of it. Anyone who has followed his music knows his muse, Laurie, and Daniel says that she was at SXSW in Austin, on stage and answering questions. What the hell? Is she still married to the undertaker? Did Daniel really meet her at a party later and discuss all of the songs about her? Is this just a hallucination? This is the biggest thing that’s happened in the Rejected Unknown mythos maybe ever, and a TP exclusive!

Noel, you’re gonna run through my list of heros and have to start doing less interesting interviews soon.

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