New York's all right, if you like saxophones

There are a lot of writers in the world. Many of these writers have found their way onto the web. Now, theoretically, the web, like a meeting of the Beaverton, OR Chamber of Commerce (which a $500-an-hour business consultant once straight-facedly urged me to join, but that's a story for another time, such as, say, never), renders time and space meaningless. The postings of a solitary Inuit on an ice floe in the Bering Strait, with only the humming of his satellite uplink rig to keep him company, are as accessible and-- assuming they have the requisite literary merit-- as important as the online scribblings of the Prada-clad Bryn Mawr girl cowering under Tina Brown's desk.

So why is everyone who anyone reads still in New York? It's not like starving artists are holing up there for the cheap rent and balmy climate. Nonetheless, when I go down the list of my favorite blogs and webmags, it's New York, New York, New York, L.A., and New York, with a few Portlands thrown in that I probably never would have known about if I didn't live here myself. Granted, the Baghdad Blogger did just get a movie deal, but the NYC lock on the DIY online publishing world seems so complete that I think I can be forgiven for wondering, in my idle moments, whether Salam Pax was actually holed up behind a dumpster in Williamsburg the whole time, watching CNN on a 5" black-and-white TV powered by 4 D-cells.

So, what's the deal? Are all of us who don't live in the City just a bunch of dirt-munching inbred provincials who can't tear ourselves away from shoat-buggering for long enough to form a coherent sentence? Is something more sinister afoot, a conspiracy to silence the yammerings of the unwashed denizens of flyover country? Or did everybody cool just move to New York without telling me? If so, it wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened. Hey, guys, wait up! Um, guys?

Whatever it is, it's making me feel dumb as a box of hammers. It's also making me feel like someone, somewhere, has decided that the opinions of people who don't have a spare $10,000 in the bank for first-and-last, plus deposit and fees, don't count. I'm a reconstructed Maoist right now, but I can unreconstruct pretty damn quickly if the occasion warrants, and it just might.

Where you been

Where have I been? I've been making this magazine. Check it out. Write for it. Submit an audio piece, cause we don't have any yet (check the submit page to find out what that's all about).

So there. Now I have to retire before the sun's rays cause me to crumble into the dust of aeons like Christopher Lee in those old Hammer flicks. I haven't been up during the daylight hours in months. Like I need to get any paler.