City of Legends

I hate dealing with press releases about my work or my books and CDs. My reasons are manifold. Including one related to that last sentence.

1) I hate being involved in my own promotion. The "champion" in me can only really engage all the gears if I am doing what I am doing for someone else (see "Muse"). Thus I have to struggle to not feel guilty.

2) Press releases invariably have to be ineloquent. Thus, words like "manifold", "ineloquent" and even "thus" are stripped from my considerable vocabulary.

3) I can’t read editors’ and publishers’ minds. If I am writing a poem to woo a woman and I see a change in her expression on a key concept, expression or word, I can adapt. I get little feedback from editors. The last press release that was put out under my approval, the local newspaper ran sections of it verbatim under the "People You Know" column, along with news of someone getting a new title at a local fast food restaurant. Hey, at least they used it, and in a timely fashion. I have seen them print press releases, verbatim, for events at the local Barnes and Noble a week after the event they were to be advertising..

4) Once it is out there, it is beyond your control. That is actually a good argument for paid advertising, for marketing. At least there you control the message when you are paying for dinner. Think of it like hiring a hooker, you can be pretty sure if you pay the money you have a sure thing on your hands.

5) Given the choice between being the pimp and being the prostitute, I’d rather kill myself, as I am too much the romantic to survive, emotionally, being the latter, and being the former would invoke my self-destruction clause under the Nosferatu’s Dream. I hate feeling like I am pimping myself every time I give a quote or an interview. Why can’t reporters do their own legwork and actually read a poem or two? Recent studies have shown that many of the quotes in movie advertisements were actually written by the movie studios, then given to the magazines and newspapers, who in a lazy effort to save time and reporter salaries, just reprint the studio fluff.

6) Press releases rarely get you laid. Let’s be honest and earnest. I like stuff that gets women riled up in a good way.

7) There are people much better than me at editing a press release. I’m secure in my poet. I know Larry Jaffe wasn’t kidding when he called me "the greatest living poet" a few years ago. I have the quotes. As a poet, I’m a "master", a "living legend", the "catalyst poet of the digital renaissance" and "the god of sex" (oops, that last one wasn’t about my poetry). As a press release editor I am some guy who doesn’t want to be bothered by it all, but too cheap and controlling to farm it all out and sit back and let others run with it.

I am staring at the first draft of the press release about the book and CD release party on the 14th of this month, knowing it needs to go out to the Daily Athenaeum, The Dominion Post, the Times-West Virginian, Graffiti and the local radio stations (who won’t read it anyway). And I am loathing seeing the final draft, loathing waiting to see if it appears in any of the local outlets, loathing the time I am spending writing about how much I loathe spending time thinking about how I loathe being involved with the publicity process.

I think I have issues with self-promotion. Which, if you are going to have issues with something, beats the living hell out of most aversions.

Living for now in a town with a university (WVU) known more for the destructive and anti-social behaviour of the children who attend there than any real accomplishments makes one take pause regarding the entire college system in the US.

At one time, University was a place for the elite and accomplished. Now it is an almost essential survival tool, as more and more employers consider a 4-year degree the equivalent of a high school diploma thirty years ago, and parents are forced to second-mortgage their house so junior, who really has no interest in 11th century European political movements, must now spend 4 years in a strange city competing for the right to come home and work as a trailer salesman.

C.S. Lewis was right about the democritization of society, including our educational institutions: They are no longer places of excellence, but strident mediocrity (look at our current political leaders if you want more proof of the Salieri Effect, the destruction of excellence and genius in the name of paranoid underachievement).

The first weekend with the students in town this year produced the usual rash of emergency calls (and probably, quite a few incidents that were quickly swept under the rug by the school, they seem particularly good at covering up rapes in colleges nowadays) but this latest fad of starting fires, which included last year’s post-game burning of people’s cars for no other reason than they just happened to be parked on a street where the morons with the Bic lighter happened to be, seems to be a throwback to almost primitive knuckle-dragging. Regardless of whether or not this violence and property destruction is fueled by the easy access to alcohol on campus (the majority of students are underage for drinking, but the local papers seem intent on focusing bar and beer ads on students as, after all, we are talking responsibility not to the community, but to advertising revenues as the defining force in modern Journalism) or just the fact that the notion of "best and brightest" does not seem to apply to admission standards at most universities anymore, which are run as for-profit corporations, where often the administration’s #1 job is fundraising, not standards-raising, it is a sad commentary on the quality of people in general, not just the specific students who cannot seem to make the distinction between "party" and "vandalism".

Don’t even get me started on the subculture that celebrates drunken date rape as a rite of male passage. You don’t want to hear that. I hope the Daily Athenaeum (The DA is the student newspaper at West Virginia University) takes a stand in this area and at least shows an allegience to higher principles than revnues from bars and endless "editorials" about the upcoming football season. (Idea for new Coors ad: "I like…burning peoples’ cars…thowin’ up in bars…and twins!")

This endeth the sermon. (Yes, it is noted with no irony that I am an ordained minister.)

On a brighter note, sat with Tag at Books A Million yesterday and we discussed his upcoming book, his trip to New York, and the preliminary work I am doing towards my next book.

Also noted: No sound out of Maggie in several days, wonder how she’s doing…I miss her.

Haven’t checked email yet this morning, hope it is good stuff and not just the recent rash of spam.