clap clap blog: we have moved


Thursday, March 23, 2006


Gunning for the Santino slot

TRANSCRIPT OF MY AUDITION TAPE FOR THAT ROLLING STONE/MTV REALITY SHOW THING

[sits down in swively chair in front of computer] Um, hi, my name's Mike, and I'm applying for this reality show thing. I'm a writer, I've been one for a while, I used to write like stories and plays and things but now I mostly just do non-fiction, mainly music writing, though a little bit of everything really, and ideally I'd like to be a food critic ha ha ha. I love eating.

I've written for a bunch of places, my college paper and then the Interboro Rock Tribune and Farenheit in San Diego and now this paper in Athens, GA called Flagpole. But the thing you really need to know about me is my blog. It's called clap clap blog, and it's linked, like, everywhere. I'm fucking famous on the internet. On the internet they call me Eppy, because it's all about, like, throwing off your old identity and forging a new one. See, here's a picture of me at a blogger brunch. That shit was like the conference at Yalta. Fucking high-powered, man. Wave of the fucking future. Except that nothing, you know, got done. But that's just how we work, you know? We don't sit around and talk about ideas, or, like, our personal lives or anything, like we're friends or whatever. We talk business, because you gotta get that hustle on if you're gonna get shit done. And man, lemme tell you, we are gonna get shit done. Fucking print now is all like the fucking Pennysaver now or something, a total joke. They don't know what's up. They're not telling me shit I don't already know.

[visible edit]

I mean, except for Rolling Stone. That's the one exception, you know? It's still leading the way. I would love to work for that place.

[visible edit]

I guess as a writer I really think of myself as a public intellectual, you know? Not like one of those pretentious ones but a populist one that swears a lot but still talks about ideas or whatever. I like journalism and all, but I think of it as really one tool in my bag. That's why I like writing on the internet so much, you know? It really lets me produce like a personal canon.

I'm interested in making connections across genres, from music to fiction to television to food to whatever. Aesthetics and like that. My chosen subject is pop as it exists in the world. I want to show how pop as a model can be productive. I want to bring about the new world order, or I guess just encourage what's already on its way to reach full fruition. This is the fucking way things are going, and, like...

[falls off chair]

[visible edit]

Um, what else. I'm not really good at living...with people, one time I was living with these girls and one of them kept leaving the phone in her room so I pissed on her pillow and turned it over and I don't think she ever knew. Um...I like my personal space and my personal time. But, you know, once I'm social I'm tons of fun. I have a kind of offensive sense of humor but I think people know I'm, like, kidding, because I'm such a nice guy. They say I'm very sweet. You can tell I'm nice because my hair's poofy, see? [grabs hair] I get along really well with girls, but I have a hard time putting up with people who are, um, stupider than me, or pretentious, or rude. But I'm really open-minded.

Uh, yeah, I live in Brooklyn. Broooooooklyn! I hang out in the Lower East Side a lot. I've never had like a traumatic addiction or anything but I can pretend to. "Oh, sorry guys, I gotta go to a NA meeting." "Oh man, I am having a really hard time not doing addictive drugs right now." "Boy, you guys sure are lucky I'm clean now, because I would totally be stealing your shit and selling it for drugs. I would probably be smashing things because I would be so crazy." See, that was a little sample of that offensive humor I was talking about, ha ha ha.

So yeah, that's me. I would like to work for Rolling Stone because they still publish long pieces and I could finally get my whole philosophy of life into the public consciousness, because it's going to take like 20,000 words. We can do a multi-parter or something. Um...I guess that's it. Hope you pick me!

[shot of subway train]

[shot of me typing]

[shot of my belly]