 The EA Featured Reviewer for 1/6/02 | |
Hello everyone, this is Mrs. Norman Maine. For this weeks interview, I needed to leave my busy schedule high in the Beverly Hills and jet off to the wilds of Texas where I landed in Houston, in order to interview Laurence Simon, better known to the denizens of EA and Epinions as File13. Mr. Simon, a shining light in the telecommunications industry of the greater Houston area, suggested that we meet at a convenient bistro downtown. My limo driver had some difficulties with this task, however, as every street in the downtown area seemed to be under permanent construction. Eventually I just had him double park and circle the block while I picked my way through the potholes to the interview. The beaded hem of my dress was somewhat the worse for where – thank heavens for dry cleaning.
MNM: You've chosen, for an online identity, that of a household convenience that most of us avoid. Is there a story behind that?
F13: Growing up (if you could say that I've ever finished growing up), I was a D&D addict. When I wasn't kicking a soccer ball around or watching TV, I was tossing dice and looking up all sorts of pointless things to make my mini-max RPG existence that much more pointless and empty, now that I look back on it. One of the useful resources for D&D back then was Dragon Magazine, and every few issues there'd be an enclosed module or game. One of the games made by Tom Wham was "File 13" which was about the development process of making games... a game about making games, really. If you rolled the dice right, you got your game published. Roll the dice wrong and your game ends up in File 13.
MNM: And the bureaucrat attacks for 2d4 HP of damage…
F13: After that, I labeled my trash cans in college File 13 and used that term quite a bit. On my Windows desktop, the Recycle Bin is always Registry-hacked to say File 13. When I went through online nicknames for IRC, I never could settle on a name. BayouD, Carbon14, DivideBy0... etc. Eventually, I settled on File13.
To me, it's a place where good ideas get thrown to rot and eventually be discarded. I figure for all of man's brilliant achievements, whether in medicine, technology, art, or literature, there's a hundred thousand times more ideas that are just plain worthless or dumb or pulled out of someone's ass. Like Microsoft Bob, for instance. I've had my share of dumb ideas, so why not point the spotlight at the waste bin that is my mind and have some fun digging through it.
MNM: Microsoft Bob was Melinda’s idea. I tried to get that woman to take up tap, but she would insist on immersing herself in technology…
F13: Some people think that the 13 had something to do with the channel of the station I used to work for. To that, I say feh. When I think 13, I think naked people running in shaving cream, not a tv channel.
Top it all off with the fact that I absolutely hate my given name, can't think of a better one or don't want to bother with the bureaucratic annoyance/incompetence of having to change it, and I could name myself after a can opener and still be grouchy about it.
MNM: Well, at least you didn’t choose ‘Rubbermaid’ – that would really give people the wrong impression. A visit to your home page reveals you as an idiosyncratic individual with lots of opinions. Is this a new facet of your personality or an outgrowth of previous ideas and trends?
F13: Which personality are you talking about? (I'll make the many-headed hydra reference later, okay?)
Idiosyncratic... a nice way of saying "what the fuck is this guy smoking" or "I like some of what he writes, but he just goes to far and pisses me off at the wrong moments." I'm a bitchy pain in the ass, I'm good at being a bitchy pain in the ass, so I accentuate the positive about my negative gloomy pessimistic view on life and try to make it funny. Three steps ahead of the guys with butterfly nets, but only two steps ahead of the bill collectors... that's my life.
I was raised on Monty Python, Mel Brooks' 2000 year old man, Woody Allen movies, George Carlin comedy albums, and all sorts of other strange things. I thought that the Beatles were a parody of the Rutles! I was a dweeby, geeky, nerdy, ugly little runt of a kid that never fit in. Disgustingly test-smart, but held back and reined in and prevented from skipping grades for social reasons. Like, what the fuck... I never fit in with people my age, so why should it be any different if I'm a pointdexter of 12 in college? Better to be abused and beaten by adults... you can call the cops on those assholes instead of relying on teachers and school managers when it's just kid-on-kid harassment. I was robbed of my potential! (You'll hear lots of bitching, whining and moaning about other people screwing me over like it's not my fault all along... deal with it)
MNM: This sounds awfully familiar… I also have made one of my mottos in life “If I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away.”
F13: I was also raised without religion and no answers to "what happens when we die?" that can keep you from going absolutely bugfuck nuts at night... a tribe of lapsed Jews doomed never to fit in *anywhere* and always the outsiders.
That discomfort with fitting in can be an advantage in seeing things from an outsider's viewpoint. I may not see things any clearer out here, but then at least I'm out here out of the firing line. I don't have the shackles and blinders of truly content and happy people, and that gives me a view of life I think is unique and, well, fucking twisted. Nyah nyah.
I've always said what's on my mind, and usually there's quite a lot in there. So, I have all these thoughts and ideas and opinions... most of them I figure are helpful and useful, but I get into this habit of packaging and dressing them up in the most obnoxious and belligerent ways possible. It may just be a role or character I play in the guise of this "file13" person, and it may just be all of my inner demons coming out fully armed and looking for blood. The truth is, I don't quite care which way is the truth, and I'm not concerned what people think either. Take it as you will and keep reading, eh.
The web gives the opportunity for extremely egotistical and opinionated people such as myself to collect, compose, and publish my thoughts in a manner that is accessible to the entire planet, but the odds are only two or three people a day might happen to wander by. Delusions of grandeur on a global scale. Watch me, Mommy! Look at what I can do!
MNM: With all the globe from which to choose, what made you choose Houston as home?
F13: Home? What's home?
I went to Rice University and never left this hellhole of a city after I got an internship at the PBS station here. I think it had to do with the climate and never wanting to experience a midwest winter ever again. I think New England and Boston are ugly, funereal towns with way too much stone. California is just plain nuts. Go west, and you get Spanish-Mexican influence. Icky. I'd never truly appreciate any laid-back small town life aspects of a small town, or party it up in a party town like New Orleans.
Houston is an awful town for the television business... every affiliate is a cash-cow for the ownership and they don't give a rat's ass about this city or the state. Just send bags of profits back and quit your whining is the order of the day... cut three jobs down here to pay for an anchor's mad-money in New York or LA. (Don't believe me? NBC is going to cut 2,000 jobs to boost profits and help defray the sheer madness and extravagance of Katie Couric's raise.)
Houston is a powderkeg racially, ready to explode. Whites, blacks, and browns in an equal mix, none of them with a clear agenda of where to take this city. It lacks identity, culture, and cohesion. Pollution is so bad, as Douglas Adams would say if you want a breath of fresh air you need to go stick your head in a building. Traffic is actually worse than LA here, and public transport is for the most part nonexistent. They are building a rail line between two places nobody will ever go between here, tearing up streets people used too much back when they had all their lanes unmolested. Enron failing and wiping out jobs is the least of this city's problems.
MNM: I noticed the streets…
F13: And yet, the food's pretty good here. I guess I'm just too lazy and settled in to go anywhere else. And yet, I've lived in 10 different places here in 10 years out of college. Lots of lost deposits, but then I don't have to do any deep-cleaning. Go figure.
All this city needs is one of those 2001 monoliths to show up, teach these people how to be human again, and maybe... just maybe it won't burn down in riots and Republican plundering.
Where should I be? In the Borscht Belt Catskills... circa 1940. The rare times I don't have recurring nightmares about my long-gone work, I dream of being in Sid Caesar's dream team of writers.
MNM: A tumler! Are you still working in broadcasting? What do you most and least enjoy about it?
F13: Not working at all, actually. Told KTRK to take my job and shove it after the Chief Engineer there tried to pin some bullshit support screw-up by someone else on me. They've had a pretty lousy time of it since I left from what I hear, going through IT guys like fuses when the real problem's the mis-managerial circuitry, but that's their problem. Polluted water under an unsafe bridge in my book.
The worst about it is the fact that it's all lies. Nothing you see on the screen is real. It's all illusion. It's all promotions and lead-in and hype and repackaging and tricks with very little actual content. Most of the anchors and reporters are either clueless or prima-donna assholes, just ripping from the wires and reading or restating the obvious like some sports
announcer live while standing where the event had happened sixteen hours ago.
MNM: This is why I get my news from The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and the BBC.
F13: The few that are genuine, untainted souls still aren't people you'd trust to gather up and vomit out all your information between commercials. Behind the scenes, the executives and managers wouldn't last a single day in any real business with their utter lack of business skills or flawed decision-making apparatus, shadowed and concealed by the lie that making a massive profit by the nature of the industry means you're a good manager/executive. When they cry about losing money, they're still getting 40% to 50% profit in the major local stations. Show me a business in hard times that makes that kind of money, and I'd wonder if they were a front for prostitution, drugs, or gambling.
They get free aerial bandwidth for pretending to serve the public trust, and then pollute it like any other industrial megalithic monopoly and suck the profit out of it and the poor souls that have foolishly entered into compacts with their satanic and thieving evilness. Why does Houston need six independently owned-and-run Doppler weather radars... what a waste of resources... keep two or three going and send the rest to parts of the globe that need them and lose 10,000 people or more from poor weather forecasting!
There I go being a pinko commie socialist anti-imperialist again. I'd better repress a few minorities and play with my technological marvels to remember it's better to be the dog that eats instead of the dog that gets eaten.
Ah. Much better.
What did I enjoy about it? It's nuts, rarely makes sense, but every now and then you can do something that actually defies all corporate mandates for profit, federal regulations against innovation, and the blatant stupidity of the peter-principle managers and do something good now and then for the people on the other end of the signal. The power of taking information and sending it to others so they can use it to make their lives that much better or more meaningful is priceless.
Too bad that role's being served by the web these day. Goodbye yellow brick road, I say. Take away the broadcasters' licenses and auction the spectrum out just like drilling space in Alaska.
MNM: I’m sure the plans are in the works, given the current administration…
F13: I've been studying my ass off for this MCSE. I'm going to kick those seven tests' asses, get the certificate, and have myself a real job with a real company with real issues soon enough.
(I'd do it all again in a heartbeat... just like a drug addict, I'm hooked on the pain.)
MNM: You’re currently using your webcam on EA in your signature. Is your webcam a natural extension of your broadcasting work?
F13:Nothing about me is natural! Nothing about any of us is natural, certainly not Pamela Anderson Lee! We're all products, marketing concepts, and packages to be sold! Everything's contrived and planned and for profit!
What? Oh, the question. Nope. It's a silly little toy. I just like showing off that there ain't now snow on my pretty little garden-spot patio here while most of y'all freeze your asses off. Nyah nyah.
A lot of my web work is based on showing off all sorts of little things you can do with toys and tricks and then trying to convince people who have absolutely no idea how to do this stuff that they can do it. It's just an IMG tag inside a link with standard freeware software and a cheapo camera. No parlor tricks... no legerdemain.
Life is all about learning, so somebody's gotta learn ya. I figure teaching one way or another is fun, I enjoy seeing that flash of recognition and spark when somebody gets a concept and no longer has to do the same manual operation over and over again. Use that computer as a tool... leverage your mind and thoughts. Let it do the grunt work. Let it sweat electricity and data. It pisses me off that people say that they're technologically stupid or a computer dummy. Whine whine whine... did the firefighters on 9/11 whine all the way up the stairs? Buck up and learn, you monkeys. Evolution's calling and you're going to be left behind on the trees.
In the end, it's pointless to try to teach those that don't want to learn. Better to stand behind them, step them through the process over their shoulder, and not worry that 10 minutes later they'll call for more help. (By then, I'll want to stand behind 'em, peek down their shirt, and check out their jugs again)
MNM: Unless they’re male… You seem to enjoy writing rants on various subjects. What was your favorite?
F13:Some would say that the "Only a crazy person picks a fight with someone that's nuts" rant that got spammed around the world should be my favorite. That someone, sadly, is a clueless bonehead. Despite the exhortation, it had nothing to do with me. The true me. It was a mimic of Dennis Miller's rants, and a bad one at that. More Carlin than Miller.
My soul is in the ones about stuff I'm going through or things straight from the heart, or things I worry about or dream up when farting my garlic-farts and stuffing the cats under the blankets to torture them. "The In-Laws" wasn't a rant, but it sure was from the heart. "Beware of the Blanket Monster" was another. Even "Completely Clueless" ... just a silly, sweet little short concept about living in a board game universe. The stuff I put up at EA, THAT'S the self-portrait of the wacko behind the curtain.
So back to the ranting. Where does it come from? Why do I do it? Well, the ranting comes from:
- Suffering from getting suckered by advertising lies
- Wishing the pain of my tornado of torment and self-loathing upon those that sparked it
- Writing scathing, sour-searing product reviews about those bad products
- Kicking companies that think they can market them with lies and hype in the proverbial nuts
If I have to resort to hyperbole, so be it. If somebody didn't buy a product because of something I warned them about, because they've looked at it and laughed at it or joined me in mocking it into the sheer worthless piece of crap it actually is, I've won. I'm on top of the steps, holding my hands up in victory, that Rocky theme music playing, and a pigeon's about to crap on my head. But I won't notice, because I've won.
Okay, I'm a vengeful, vindictive shallow little shit. Bleah.
Winning isn't everything... it's also a public service. It's like serving in the army in Israel... ya gotta do it. To me, America's equivalent is whining. We whine about too much, and then we put flags all over everything.
MNM: I just wear them. What do you enjoy most about EA?
F13: I see myself as a many-headed hydra with any number of heads firmly stuck in the sand or up its ass or spitting at each other for the sheer dumb luck of it. I can be any one my selves and still fit in somehow, someway. Some can appreciate one head of the hydra, and some like another head of the hydra. One's biting your arm and yet another is telling you jokes and a third one is... well, we don't talk about the gay head. We all got our latencies, right?
MNM: When I think of gay and head together, I get certain images that I don’t think you really had in mind…
F13: Back to the subject at hand. (or head) I have yet to figure out who is at the center of my web of personalities, but apparently some others have him dead to rights and don't mind him at all. But yet, I somehow belong. You don't realize how long I've tried to find that place... whether it exists or not, that one place where I fit in for whatever traits I have that keep me from fitting in elsewhere. I can take my foot out of my mouth long enough to wipe my feet on the doormat, wander in, and just be me, whoever the hell I am.
The support for losing the weight... the suggestions for movies to buy... the political arguments and discussions on topics I'm too lazy to form anything but smart-assed or from-the-hip psycho reactions about... it's the stuff that got boiled down from the crucible of Epinions into the real good quality shit. Just razorblade it into a line and snort it all up.
MNM: You no longer write for Epinions. Is this due to the events surrounding the EBD or some other reason?
F13: Nope. I felt that Epinions had taken on the role of a publisher and did nothing to curtail rampant abuse of honest, hardworking users on the site. You know who they are, you know what they do, how the gang up to inflate their worth, and you know what little they contribute to the consumer's experience. Use the web of trust, use the web of trust Epinions would chant. Bah. So I had a little fun and started an anti-slimeball and abuser campaign, laughed as I got NR-ed into oblivion by cowardly vengeful weenies, and then walked away when the pie-fight was over.
So, I walked away from WrittenByMe, too? Well, that was just a case of the site failing to follow through on its promised and terms of service. I decided to protect my material by pulling it all down and patiently looking for a new venue for it.
MNM: You write exceedingly well. Do you have any thoughts of writing professionally?
F13: Yeah, just like sexual fantasies, murderous rampages, and suicide plans... all the time. Whether it be technical writing in a teaching role, short stories, screenplays, or even stenciling in "SLOW LANE" on the street, it's in my blood and my kidneys can't work fast enough to get it out of there.
My agents, one after another, have each sucked worse than the previous ones. I don't think they know what "agent" means. Know any good agents? They can have 50% ... that's right. Just sell the stuff, I'll write more. Rob me blind, just leave enough for the fondue ingredients and car payments. I don't care if I am getting the short end of the stick as long as I am getting stick, eh.
MNM: Unfortunately, my agent only represents fabulous musical comedy stars of the stage and screen. I can ask around, though…
F13:I can write, but I can't self-edit for shit. I'm at 6 pages already here and can't begin to cut this down. Help! Agent, get me an editor!
I wonder if I'm going to be like one of those dead guys I'd read about in English class that never got discovered until they went nuts, got drunk, went mad, and died. I'd prefer to profit from my labors of the imagination and explorations of the not-quite-human condition, but in 100 years who's going to give a crap, eh?
MNM: Do you have favorite EA or Epinions writers? Why or why not?
F13: Oh, right... I'm going to get so much hatemail from people saying that I didn't mention them or thank them or blah blah blah.
Curtis Edmonds & Grouch are two of the apostles in my testament for movie reviews. My wife and I got a DVD player recently, we need good movies to watch over and over again, and what these guys say, goes. 32-bit gospel in my universe.
But Epinions? Nay! I just read what they say where or on their own sites. If I need other advice, I usually ask it directly, post on EA or on Roundtable, or make it up myself and offer it freely. Then other people try it, report back that my advice to myself is full of it, and I can try something else without doing grievous harm to myself. Voila!
MNM: What advice do you offer to those just beginning their EA/Epinions writing careers?
F13: At this level, EA and Epinions are not careers. It's all a hobby and recognize it for that. Take what you can out of it, give only that which you can afford to give to it, and live your life in spite of it.
If you're serious about writing, go to the Writer's Guild, get an agent, and don't quit your day job. Be prepared to be forced to move to New York or LA despite the fact that writing is all text and you technically could live anywhere on the planet (or off-planet) and still be a writer.
What a stupid, wasteful, anachronistic society we live in, eh?
MNM: What should the next career move of an ever youthful, but underemployed musical comedy star be?
F13: Bartender. Sing while you serve drinks and show a little leg.
MNM: I make a mean sloe gin fizz.
At that point, my limo driver, having already gotten two traffic tickets for illegal left turns, began to honk furiously outside the window. I bade a fond adieu to File13 and headed back home for more of my fabulous career. I will, however, be returning shortly to middle American when I head to Arkansas to talk to everyone’s favorite Fort Smith mom, frazzledspice, in the next MNM interview.
__________________ MNM, coming to you live from Chateau Maine, high in the Hollywood Hills.
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When Poe ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
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