"Some Tears May Be Crocodile, But My Salt Is True."

This is not an endorsement, I'm just getting it on record now: John Edwards will be our next president. Barack will be his vice. Hillary will meet the resurfaced ghost of Bill's still-barnacled presidency and fall short. Also, neither McCain nor Giuliani will survive the brutal scrutiny, and some lesser known third will emerge to be stomped by the Edwards juggernaut.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Only four days left until the launch party and I am feeling a lot of stress about how much, and what variety, of cheese I need to get. One huge Costco block? Twenty different little pretentious ones? Weepy, smelly French stuff that needs to be eaten with a spoon? A patriotic clump of orange chedder? I have promised so many people that the main reason to come at all is the variety and breadth of fromage that will be offered, that I fear there is no way I can actually deliver.

Unless I stand up and read something from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. Or maybe some Blake.

http://www.gocitykids.com/calendar/?area=199&month=4&day=13

A whole new marketing demographic I hadn't considered...




Don't be such a Stan...send yours in...

                                            THE MOVIE SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, LimeWire, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't skip songs and lie and try to pretend you're cool... its rather interesting!


Opening Credits: Shell Shock-Stewart Dempster (sounds better than it really is)

Waking Up: Sneaky Pete- Bull Moose Jackson (it's going to be an interesting day...one that might end in jail)

First Day of School: Ska-culation- Jackie Mittoo and The Soul Brothers (guaranteed to be THE coolest kid in class)

Losing Your Virginity: Reeling And Rocking- Johnny Hodges (how utterly perfect, from title to licks)

Falling In Love: When Johnny Comes Marching Home-Don Patterson and Booker Ervin (as long as it's not falling in love with Johnny)

Fight Song: Psalm-Roxy Music (hmmm....likely the worst possible choice...at least if you want to win the fight)

Breaking Up: Sands-Dizzy Reece

Life: Honest I Do-Jimmy Reed (pretty great as a personal philosophy)

Mental Breakdown: Taylor Made-Bernie Leighton (Well, maybe a very slight breakdown)

Driving: Hey Mr. Rain-Velvet Underground (If you're driving in Seattle)

Getting Back Together: On The Bean-Coleman Hawkins

Wedding: Buzz Me Babe-Slim Harpo (portends a successful union)

Final Battle: Eclipse-Eric Dolphy (yes, sir)

Death Scene: Daybreak In Dixie-The Stanley Brothers (possibly not the most perfect choice)

End Credits: Whirling Hall Of Knives-Butthole Surfers (without question THE perfect choice)

So three days after I made a random post about my hero Pat Swayze, who for some reason just sort of popped into my head after a long time of not being there, I pick up a copy of The Onion, possibly the greatest newspaper in the world, and they have a big article about Patrick, even referring to him repeatedly as "The Swayze". Now, I have to say, this came as quite a shock. Stan Smith has been calling Pat "The Swayze" for years now, and even considered patenting the phrase, like Pat Riley did with "Threepeat". (Onion Lawyers: feel free to check dated/notarized early GNF drafts in the Time Warner vaults). Anyway, it got me thinking about this thing I read once and only half-understood. It was a theory by cognitive scientist Richard Dawkins that there are these things called "memes" which are almost living ideas that pass through the human herd. We think we have ideas independently, but, in reality, we are picking up on information subconsciously that floats from person to person, like the tiny electrical charges that float from ant antennae to ant antennae. In other words, maybe the guy at The Onion happened to read the same entirely unrelated four books, four articles, and listen to the same four songs that made The Swayze pop into his head as it did mine.

When I was in college, I had a dream about a movie where there was really no plot, just a camera following one person for a brief period of time. That person would bump into someone else on the sidewalk, or see a friend in a drugstore, and the camera would just start following the friend, as if there were no real narrator. Just when you got used to one person, it would jump to the next. I woke up and immediately jotted down 20 pages of script treatment. The concept was that the movie would tell two dozen stories, each maybe only a few minutes long, and the focus would change as the characters happened to interact with one another randomly. I was all set to shoot a short 16mm film the next semester. So imagine my surprise when I went to the movies with some friends a few weeks later and saw the exact same movie as I had dreamed about. It was called Slacker. It was as if the guy had stolen my treatment and filmed it for himself. It wasn't a little like my idea, it was exactly like my idea. I tried to explain this after the movie and those friends were all like, "Yeah, sure, let's go get take-out". I showed my treatment to a number of other people, who all just shrugged. In the end, I threw the treatment away and came up with a new idea, but I still haven't forgotten the shock of that level of coincidence. Maybe it was a meme. Maybe Richard Linklatter snuck into my dorm and I can sue him for royalties. Maybe even now, as I try to finish this too-long post off, some kid in China is typing the exact same words. Except it's probably in Mandarin. Or Cantonese. In which case, it will seem entirely different.

Also, Harry Potter was my idea too.

Yes, today is the day. Going Nowhere Faster is officially on sale. No more searching frantically online for pirated Shanghai versions. No more waiting in long lines overnight in the freezing cold outside your local Best Buy. No more hacking into the Time/Warner computer for encrypted paragraphs. Now you can casually walk down to your local mom&pop bookseller and plunk down your mom or pop's credit card and buy 14 copies. Easy as pie.

When I first started writing GNF, my intent was to use a pseudonym instead of my real name. I was going to start going by EASY A. PYE..... I thought it was funny, but no one else did.

Stan Smith will soon begin reviewing books and cds on this site. If your band has a disc out, or you've just written something, send it to the contact address under the AUTHOR tab and Stan will get to it as soon as he can.

All books/music will be numerically graded using Stan's own rating system. This system has been perfected over years of trial and error:

10-Astonishingly good. Loved it. Learned from it. Will play/read it many,
many more times over many, many more years.
9- Pretty damn great. A number of truly fine songs/chapters with few, if any,
misses.
8- Has style and numerous excellent qualities. There were a few significant
glitches, but the positives far outweighed them.
7- A variety of solid stuff that made me want to like it more than I
really did. Needs some direction. Endearingly flawed.
6- I liked some of it okay. At least four or five good songs/sentences. Still, a
lot of it was tiresome.
5- As mediocre as a five-disc live Clapton set. Made me sleepy and suddenly nostalgic for Ogden Nash.
4- Needed a major infusion of balls of almost any variety. Pointedly off.
3- Listened to/read the entire thing and genuinely wished I didn't.
Frisbee'd it into traffic on the way to work. The next day it was still there.
2- Two speaks for itself.
1- The Absolute Worst Disc Ever Burned/Book Ever Written. Likely to be rife with Billy
Joel, or possibly just static. Threw this into the ocean, and it washed immediately back.
A sea turtle ate it and it gave him the runs for a month.