This would be me attempting to post a photo I Instagrammed from the iPad. Carry on. (It’s a cat!)

You must hold the reigns tighter than you have ever held them before but let the chariot head over the cliff top. The abyss is calling.

Clutch at straws. Build castles on clay. Let the quick sand tell you lies. Take the scenic route. Be there on time. Use two drummers if need be. Fill out forms. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Midweeks and predictions. Fall, spin, turn and dive. Sign cheques. Solicitor doing deals with “Hits” and “Now”. Sleep at night. Black to white. Highest new entry. Good to bad. Fast forward. Top of the Pops. Re-read this book, whatever it takes. No, don’t. You already know all there is to know. Faster. Faster. Faster. Give everything. Just give everything. This is the beautiful end.

I just finished The Manual and everything is clear.

A public service announcement from nickparish.net

“Nothing like the Apollo missions has been seen since, and some believe nothing ever will be.

Leading spacecraft expert Professor Andre Balogh, from Imperial College London, argues that the level of commitment and risk required to get astronauts to the Moon and back in 1969 would simply not be possible today.

He told the Press Association: ‘It was carried out in a technically brilliant way with risks taken … that would be inconceivable in the risk-averse world of today.

‘The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date. And it was carried out successfully, against the backdrop of a difficult political situation in the USA, caused in large part by the worsening of the human and financial cost of the Vietnam war.’”

Hey, know what’d be great? Let’s put some company logos on some protective masks to cash in on this swine flu hysteria! Go SWINE! It’s VIRAL!

Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:10:52 -0400
Subject: The Hottest New Viral Marketing Idea: Go SWINE

The Hottest New Viral Marketing Idea: Go SWINE

GoGORILLA Media is excited to offer advertisers an opportunity to contribute to consumers’ health while at the same time getting their message across in a lively, fun and sure-to-be-talked-about way.

With local drugstores already running out of protective face masks, branded face masks with your 1-color logo on them will be a welcome giveaway, no matter which demographic you are trying to reach.

Brand ambassadors will be handing out your branded face masks to tens of thousands of commuters in major markets across the nation and spread the word about your brand at the same time.

Don’t miss out on the buzz and excitement created by this new form of ‘viral’ marketing!

For more information, please contact your GoGORILLA sales rep today at 212-925-2420.

GoGORILLA Media
116 W. Houston St., 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212-925-2420
www.gogorillamedia.com

Yeah, no. (Four hours later!)

Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:50:34 -0400
Subject: Apology Letter

Dear Client,

I would like to apologize for the insensitive email that some of you might have received this morning. In hindsight, the concept was not as clever as I had originally thought. I did not intend for it to make light of the recent Swine Flu outbreak and regret any anguish we caused you.

I want to take personal responsibility for this ‘stunt’ and let you know that the fine staff of GoGORILLA Media had absolutely nothing to do with this email.

If you would like to discuss with me further, I can be reached at 646.861.9060.

Sincerely,

Alan Wolan
CEO
GoGORILLA Media

Sheesh.

It was so staggering, actions were forced.

The note, laden in artistic pronouncements and full-of-itselfness, begged for an extension; a dramatic reading was considered, but it turned out only a full video could to the thing justice. After all, a 1500-word yearly update email sent to dozens of people deserves the highest degree of satire you can muster.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m an earnest man. But even sincerity, in extreme, is funny as hell. (Viz. Kenneth on 30 Rock.)

Who was the sender? An unknown personage, but clearly a modern-day Benjamin Franklin, part writer, part political organizer, all full of Brooklyn potential and privilege and so indicative of our generation’s rampaging self-importance.

We christened him Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov; this is his yearly update, verbatim, brought to life as best we could.

A Letter From Brooklyn from Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov on Vimeo.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Friends,

I’m writing you with the warmest wishes on this, just another winter’s day in New York. I figured this was as good a time as any to write, in the shadow of the depression, in the afterglow of yes we can, and in what has become a season of creative stimulus, though it be a global winter of our discontent. To write you, not with a plea for your protest or your donation or your time for this or that campaign, no—to write you just to say hello. It has, as it always has, been too long.

I’m writing these words to you in my new home, an ancient apartment in my ancestral homeland of Brooklyn, New York—Prospect-Lefferts, to be precise—where you can find me most nights, at the end of long days, at my typewriter or notebook, or in the streets organizing amid the crisis.

Soon you will find me in other places, places like Guatemala, where I will live as an expat writer; like Israel and Palestine, where I hope to put in some work amid the wreckage with human rights organizations on the ground; like Eastern Europe, where, somewhere in the ashes, I hope to unearth some roots. All while working to finish my novel before I hit grad school in the fall, which will be either here in NYC or in Berkeley.

Before I leave this March on the latest road where solitude meets solidarity, I would love to see you again, if you are around to be seen, and catch up on the life we’ve each of us lived since the last time we sat down together. And if you are not in the vicinity of NYC or Boston and you have a minute, write me back and let me know how you’ve been, where you’ve been, where you’re going, what moves you or excites you these days. Looking forward to sharing stories, stanzas, tunes, ideas, and whatever it is we are doing.

To those of you I haven’t spoken to in a while and are wondering where I’ve been all this time, I’ve been trying my hand at this and that. I’ve been a freelance journalist. I’ve been a photojournalist. I’ve been an organizer. I worked on what they call The Campaign for a minute (yes, that one). I was a human rights observer in rebel territory in Mexico, working and translating for three delegations to Chiapas and Oaxaca with Solidarity Without Borders.

I have also been other places this year. For instance, I have been to the abyss and back. I was a lucky man—not everyone we know made it back. One year ago this month, I faced off with death in a New York City subway station. Death lost, and I lived to tell the tale (a hell of a tale if you ever want to hear it). My mother went on to win her own bout with breast cancer. For me and my family, it was a year of victory for life over death—and, as it was for the rest of America, for change over stasis.

What followed this encounter was a personal renaissance, a revival of the writer, artist, and musician in me. I wrote every day. I wrote, not just with ink, but with the rest of me, a new story. I learned to see with new eyes. I started to take lots of pictures. I learned to listen with new ears. I picked up my fiddle and started playing again with the bands. And I learned, once again, that it was not just the world, writ large, that needed remaking—it was the stuff of everyday life.

And it was a long time coming, as Sam Cooke would say, but a change did come to the life of this country, one so unaccustomed to change so profound. Neither November 4 nor January 20 changed everything—hardly—but they surely changed the air, the climate, the horizon. And these things, in turn, change how we walk, how we talk, how we feel. The Bush years were eight long, hard, angry years of our youth. The world was on fire. I fought fire with fire. This fire burned me out. But now there was the promise of something else. Something else that was elected, inaugurated this year—not in one man so much as in the people.

And now, in spite of my eternal skepticism, I find myself filled with what Antonio Gramsci called “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.”

So here I am, once again, a starving artist in these brother-can-you-spare-a-dime times, emerging from years of writer’s block, honing my fiction and poetry while tutoring and freelancing to support myself and send myself to more places. I’ve rededicated myself to the work of writing this novel, the third, the one that’s been waiting for me to write it all these years. It’s a story of many stories—New York stories, of course—told from the perspective of an aging tenement building on the eve of its demolition. Some of you are in it (under other names, of course).

This month I will be breaking out of this fortress of solitude so that I can see each of you before we set out on other roads. Let me know when and where you can be found. I’d also like to invite you to the following events:

1. An epic Brooklyn birthday party/benefit party/live show/reading on Thursday, March 5, celebrating my 24th year in this world – as well as our imminent departure for points south and points east.
2. Appearances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and at Bar 13 – also the first week of March.
3. Live show with my string band at The Annex on the Lower East Side (date and time TBA). Also coming soon: Open Jam with two ex-members of Shadowbox!

Hope to see you there, or here, or anywhere. I know I’m no good at keeping in touch, I’m working on it, but in the meantime, know that I carry your friendship and share your fire wherever I go. Be in touch.

Love,
Eric

PS: Many of you have asked me to see my work. The novel remains under wraps. But linked here you can find a few articles and photos, and if you want to see more, let me know and it’s yours. Others have asked for book and music recommendations, so here, too, is a brief list of what I’ve been reading and tuning into.

PPS: I want to give a shoutout to those greatest of writers and musicians who have left us this past year: Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, John Updike, George Carlin, Utah Phillips – and our dear, dear friend, Clarel Antoine.

Poems and short stories: On request. Just ask if you want to see them.

What I’ve been reading lately:

Novels:
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The Savage Detectives & 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Indignation by Philip Roth
Rereading: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Poetry:
The People Yes by Carl Sandburg
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Writings by Langston Hughes
Las Palabras Andantes by Eduardo Galeano
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish
The School Among the Ruins by Adrienne Rich

Nonfiction:
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg ed. Berman & Berger
Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing ed. Shatz
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
The Family of Man (Photography) ed. Edward Steichen

What I’ve been listening to lately:

Avett Brothers, Emotionalism
Bread and Roses, Deep River Day
Blue Scholars, Blue Scholars
Classic Bluegrass (Smithsonian Folkways)
Calle 13, Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo
The Clash, Live at Shea Stadium
Gil Scott Heron, Evolution and Flashback
Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta
Immortal Technique, The Third World
John Coltrane, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
Manu Chao, La Radiolina
MIA, Kala & Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack
Mischief Brew, Smash the Windows
Nas, Untitled
New Yiddish Chorale, In Love and In Struggle
Nina Simone, Feeling Good
Notorious BIG, Life After Death
Old Crow Medicine Show, OCMS
Paul Robeson, Songs of Free Men
Peter Tosh, The Ultimate Peter Tosh
Ratatat, LP3 & Remixes
Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls
Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend
Santogold, Santogold
This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, Front Seat Solidarity
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Utah Phillips, We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years
Wolfe Tones, At Their Very Best: Live
Woody Guthrie, The Asch Recordings

Don’t force or stare, just relax…you will succeed.

If emerging web video platforms are sports teams Brad Neely is Super Deluxe‘s franchise player. Neely’s been rolling with his twisted brand of hilarity for some time, but now that he’s at the Turner-sponsored spot thousands are braying for Babycakes and the Professor Brothers. Here are the interview bits I didn’t use when I talked to Neely recently for Creativity. Check out more of his work at his Creased Comics site and at his Super Deluxe site. Look for the rest of the interview and a few morsels of Neely’s funniest after the break.

Hey Brad, how’s it going with Super Deluxe?

BN: It’s been really fun so far. Iím turning in a great deal of work, both Babycakes and Professor Brothers and a lot of one shots as well, they’ll be just characters that you never see again, some holiday things. But the core will be Babycakes and the Professor Brothers.

At what point did you take the comics you were making and put voices and animation along? Had you always been doing that?

BN: No, I hadn’t. A few years ago I did “Wizard People, Dear Readers,” which was an unauthorized alternate audio that’s synched with the first Harry Potter movie. I toured around with that and got shut down by Warner Brothers and I had such a good time doing that, it was my first time to be really close to film in a weird way, but it got me to thinking about how to continue to make things on my own terms with my own brand of comedy. So making the pictures sort of cartoons was an easy thing that I could do all by myself.

Where did the character Babycakes come from? I saw one of your comics with a Babycakes-esque guy.

BN: I’m always drawn to the giant, hairless bald person, I don’t know why. Babycakes, whenever, I’d done the George Washington cartoon on YouTube and the Super Deluxe people came to me and asked me if I had anything else to work on, and I just kind of rummaged around a lot of notes and Babycakes and the Professor Brothers just kind of evolved out of that. There are certain types of jokes that I want to be able to tell and certain tones and songs and fantasies and nightmares and prophecies and dances and all that kind of stuff and you make characters that will bring those out.

How did the relationship with Super Deluxe start?

BN: It’s the magic of the Internet. I had the GW cartoon on YouTube and a lot of people were passing it around, I guess at the exact moment Super Deluxe were looking for exactly me. With the Internet it’s pretty easy to call somebody up or give them an email, and theyíre such nice people it was impossible to say no.

Were you mulling other ways to gain exposure for your work?

BN: Yeah, I was in the middle of writing a book, which I’m still in the process of, and making the little cartoons was a fun thing, but I wasnít focusing on it, I was really just trying to, when I wasn’t ringing people up I was finishing my book. But Super Deluxe is a great place where I think it is totally different, characters and jokes and creative voices can thrive without the usual formulas; itís a strange new arena where a joke can live by itself.

But with YouTube you can have thousands see your stuff, really any video site gives you huge exposure. What made you sign on with these guys, get with them and have them be your vehicle?

BN: Having done a lot of work live I like the direct connection with an audience. And it seems like with a broadband network like super deluxe it makes a direct link between the creator and the audience. That’s scary as hell, but it’s super fun. Imagine if there was a real time public comment post at the bottom of the screen during “Saturday Night Live.” It’s really super neat. The challenge, I guess, would be keeping people’s attention and making them laugh over and over but not pandering to those comments. That was a draw for me definitely, that it seemed sort of like being on stage.

So youíve served them up a lot content already and theyíre just rolling it out as they see fit?

BN: Yeah, yeah, and I’m continuing to make content for them, so I have a little schedule, do little cartoons and turn them in.

Whatís your day to day like? Have you had a day job lately?

BN: No, no, Super Deluxe is my day job. I have a little process of writing, and writing and writing and a lot of notes, and then so many drawings, and then just lining them up and doing some recordings and if I do a song, that take a little longer, to get the music all made, and recording the voices. It’s fun.