Natalie Word

Natalie Word is my latest magazine I'm publishing. Yes, that's right, I NEVER learn. However I'm publshing Natalie Word on the Lulu publishing site, which is print on demand, so it's not like it's costing me a ton of dough, basically I just have to pay for the ones I send out to my comp list.

The first issue was a celebration of the 40th anniversary of 1969. I wrote about such 1969 happenings as: Woodstock, Altamont, the first man on the moon, Ted Kennedy drunkenly driving into a pond and leaving a girl for dead and I made a cheeseburger. I bought a lot of vintage magazines and items from ebay and they're all used for art within the articles. I also scanned in old ads from 1969 magazines I bought and scattered them throughout. You can buy the print issue or you can download a pdf of the inside of the magazine for a buck. Yes, one stinking dollar and you can get a high quality pdf, easily read and opened on your computer. Interested? Well, just go here and download away, Natalie Word, issue number one.

For the second issue I've created the world's first "mashup magazine." Basically what I've done is taken pages and ads from magazines, scanned them in Photoshop and then stripped the type out and wrote my own captions and stories. The New York Observer wrote a story about this issue and you can find that on the News page. You can download Natalie Word number 2 for just 99 cents! Just click here.

The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck

The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck came out in July of 2008. It's a collection of true-life stories that have happened in my somewhat weird life. The copy on the back cover of the book (above) pretty much sums it all up. Joe Freedman designed the book and it was his idea to include two flip book movies at the bottom of the pages and it is a really cool extra for the book. One of them is me drinking a beer and another I'm sleeping and dreaming on a park bench.

You can read more about it and you can buy all the copies of this you want at my Lulu storefront, which you can find by clicking on this link—The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.

The book got some decent internet attention that you can see in the news section and got a nice review by Phil Luciano in the Peoria Journal Star, thanks again Phil! I was also interviewed on the Markley and Luciano show on WMBD radio and yes, Phil Luciano has stock in the book. Just kidding!

I also filmed some spots for YouTube (filmed and directed by Luna Hirai) and I've posted one of them below, you can watch the rest of them here—Fire Truck film clips. Enjoy!

99 Beers Off The Wall

99 Beers Off The Wall is a book I wrote and my friend Joe Freedman designed. It came out in 2002 and basically it's a one-man bar guide and travelogue of a writer (me) attempting to go to 99 bars and drink 99 beers during my seven day vacation from my night job.

The idea came to me while looking at a Zagat's guide book and realizing that everything in quotes in their reviews has been sent in by a third party and none of it is fact-checked. So people could (and probably do) send in glowing remarks about their own bars and no one knows. They get a good review and post it in their window, that's a free ad for the Zagat's guide and they sell a ton of their stupid guide books. And that pissed me off. Not that the Zagat's people were pulling a scam, but that I didn't think of it first!

Anyway, I had written bar reviews for Time Out New York and for citysearch.com, so I had experience writing bar reviews. My idea was to be a one-man bar reviewer for seven days  and then write the reviews. And sandwiched in between the reviews is a running travelogue of my drunken adventures running around Manhattan in somewhat of a stupor.

It was tough to get press for the book, as a lot of people told me it glorifies drinking and I talked unashamedly about doing drugs in the past, but I did get write-ups in the New York Press, the Peoria Journal Star (thanks Phil Luciano!) and on several booze related websites, that have all sunk since the book came out.

It's out of print, but I still have about 100 copies, which I'll sell about 90 of them. Send me an email at: fishwrap@earthlink.net and I'll tell you how you can order one, if I haven't sold out of them already. Cheers!

fishwrap magazine

I started the magazine, fishwrap, a couple months after moving to New York in the summer of 1993 to pursue a full time writing career. I had had some interviews that didn't go too well, so I thought it would be a good idea to publish a magazine that made fun of and mocked the entire industry I was trying to get a job with. I've always said that fishwrap was me biting the hand that refused to feed me.

It started out as a twelve page, black and white fanzine that ridiculed the world of mainstream media. I then mailed it to the very people I was making fun of. Some writers and editors got it and some didn't. Fishwrap got its first piece of press in a November '94 issue of Sassy. I really made fun of Sassy and they thought it was hilarious and made us the "zine of the month." That resulted in a lot of teenaged girls subscribing and fishwrap got a distribution deal with BigTop publishing (thanks Tom and LN!) I was back in the magazine business! And losing money as always.

To fund my fishwrap habit, I got a night job at a printing place and the owner generously let me output the film for the magazine for free (thanks Joe!)

The magazine got a cult following and in addition to Sassy, fishwrap was written about in Spin magazine, Men's Journal, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, New York Press, Peoria Journal Star, New York Daily News and the New York Post among others.

From 1993 to 2000, I put out about 15 issues of fishwrap and was so burned out and low on dough that I ceased publication and took a nap for about a year.

Elvis Presley is a Wormfeast

Elvis Presley is a Wormfeast is a book I wrote in 1991 while still publising POP magazine. My thinking was, "Hey, while I'm losing money on a magazine, I should throw some away on a book!" Basically the book was a celebration of the death of Elvis and how Elvis' persona and career had gotten much bigger after he died. It's a pretty silly book and in retrospect a tad embarassing, but it did generate some press. Bill Bell (another New York contact I had met) was a book reviewer for the New York Daily News and he reviewed it and called it, "weird fun," which could also be used to describe my life. One big break for the book was that Kurt Loder featured it on "The Week in Rock," on MTV and it was repeated about 10 times over a weekend and I sold a lot of books through that. I also got a lot of death threats from Memphis, Tennessee, the most frightening one being a nail in an envelope and nothing else. Needless to say, I haven't been back to Memphis, since. Thanks to the MTV plug, I broke even on the project and maybe even made a few bucks.

The book is out of print, although old copies still show up on Amazon, eBay and if you Google it, you'll find mentions of it on the internet. As Elvis would say, "Thank ya. Thank ya very much!"

POP Magazine

POP magazine (originally titled People of Peoria) was my idea of a local magazine for Peoria, Illinois when I still lived there. My idea was to combine two parts People magazine, one part Mad magazine, one part National Lampoon and a dash of Creem magazine. Then I added in some local writers (including myself), artists and photographers and POP magazine was born.

The first issue came out in the fall of 1989 and the cover story was on morning radio in Peoria, written by yours truly. This meant the first issue would get major coverage on every station (I was slowly learning to become the media whore that I am today) and it sold out. We even had some ads, but not many. The magazine had distribution through the Illinois News Service and we were the top selling magazine locally. Unfortunately the advertising community didn't understand cover stories on WIllie York, a homeless man who survived on road killl, marijuana and cheap wine, a local biker gang and features and columns that included stories on strippers, punk rock bands and a teenager who "nuked"  different items in her microwave (hi Megan!)

POP got some decent press, first locally in the Peoria Journal Star and on the local news and radio stations. By this time I had been back to New York and had a contact with a writer named Mark Blackwell (thanks for the introduction, Susie!) who put POP on a page in Spin magazine. From that came a front page story in the metro section of the Chicago Tribune (thanks Wes Smith) and a full page feature in Advertising Age magazine (which was ironic considering the magazine's advertising woes.)

So while the magazine was popular it was bleeding money (the money I had made off the Idiot Trivia game) and after three fun-filled years and about 15 issues I had to cease production because I was broke and no ads were forthcoming. I always tell people publishing and editiing POP was like going to magazine college, so I don't view the money I lost wasted, more like I paid for an edcuation in writing, editing and handling a staff of writers, photographers and artists who were all a little, well, let's just say eccentric. And myself being one of the more eccentric, after the magazine folded I cashed in my pension fund at work and moved out here to New York and I've been here ever since. And so far I'm living happily ever after.

Trivial Trivia—The Idiot Edition

Trivial Trivia—The Idiot Edition is a game I conceived and created with a friend of mine, Greg Owens in 1986 back when I lived in Peoria, Illinois. I thought of the idea and wrote the questions and Greg designed the package. Basically what it was, was a goof on the Trivial Pursuit game, which was huge at the time. I decided it was time to come up with a game that even idiot's could play and enjoy, hence, Trivial Trivia—The Idiot Edition. Some of the questions were: What is Burt Reynold's first name? How many members were in the original Jackson 5?  Who is buried in Grant's Tomb? I'm sure you catch the drift of the game, if not, how did you turn your computer on?

We came out with the game, got on a local radio show, then did more local radio shows, which led to being in the local paper, which led to being on the local news, which led to a neighboring city writing a feature story, which led to a U.P.I. national story on the wires which caused everything to go nuts. After the U.P.I. put the story out nationally about a couple of wise-asses from Peoria, Illinois who had made a satirical Trivial Pursuit game, it was printed up in newspapers across the country, we did hundreds of radio interviews, (I soon learned that every city has a morning "zoo" show and got really tired of talking to those buffoons fast!), the game was mentioned on Good Morning America and the Today Show called and asked us if we'd like to be guests on the show. Of course we said, "Yes!" So we got flown out to New York (I had never been to New York and little did I know that 7 years later I'd move out here) and we were interviewed by Jane Pauley, who was really nice, by the way. After the Today show interview, K Mart and Osco Drugs stocked the game and when all was said and done we had sold over 100,000 games and made a nice chunk of change. The game has long been out of print, however I still have about twenty of them that my family will sell on eBay after I die. You can buy one then.