TWO ZINE FESTS: A SWAN SONG FOR DAILY TYPEWRITING. June 28 - July 31. In progress. I plan to fly to Philly for Zine Fest 2005. To meet LitVision Press publisher Pat Simonelli. To read from Bukowski Never Did This and hold a workshop on self-publishing in pamphlets and on the Internet. Give away Underground Writer Makes Good. In Deconstructing Harry, Woody Allen went to his alma mater to be honored with his kidnapped son, a black hooker, and a dead man. Characters, real and imagined, appeared in the present, from his past. Some of them were angry at what he had written, about them. They called him names like "self-hating Jew." He was an atheist. We are alone in the universe, a black hole of random quarks. I screen the Jim Gabour film Demo, where Duke Bardwell tries to help Butch Hornsby get his shit together to make a demo tape so he can make it big in Nashville. Will Old Folks's appearance at Philly Zine Fest 2005 lead to a publishing contract with a commercial publisher? A national tour? Spin-off merchandise? The money is in the paraphernalia, Jimmy Buffett says. T-shirts. Coffee mugs. Funeral home fans.
In Wild Guitar, Bud Eagle's manager got the fan club presidents to
push eagle feathers, as an article of merchandise the fans all had to have. One of
the Bud Eagle Fan Club presidents objected that they were really buzzard feathers.
The manager said, "Payola, buzzola...just call it ola--that's my business."
Old Folks thought about a day-glo orange Velcro skindiver watchband, worn as a bracelet,
but there were so many colored bracelets out there. There were even orange ones.
Camo? It wasn't easy being a cult writer. I sign up for a booth at Zine-A-Polooza
2005 - July 31st 2005 in Atlanta and change the name of PHILLY ZINE FEST 2005, the
working title, to TWO ZINE FESTS. Once is a fluke. Twice is a pattern. I decide to
stop posting books to The Daily Bulletin, daily, as I write them, and write
a proper book. UNDERGROUND WRITER. A memoir. I give TWO ZINE FESTS the subtitle A
SWAN SONG FOR DAILY TYPEWRITING. By analogy with A Love Song for Bobby Long.
You have to kill your darlings. Daily typewriting got me where it got me, but it
can't take me any further. It's time to move on. We can get too comfortable in our
niche. Daily typewriting is like a tapeworm, killing the host. Think of UNDERGROUND
WRITER as like when Lee Child got sacked, and blacklisted, he used the time he had
from his separation package to write The Killing Floor. I have time to make
a fresh start or time to keep doing something that isn't working, to stay the course
when the course leads to a cliff, or a train wreck. What do I need with a doctorate
in vernacular writing. I proved my point.