our 89th weekly open mike
Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
7/18/2026
Anything goes: 7/18/2026
21 responses to “Anything goes: 7/18/2026”
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American war crimes all over the place.
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If it doesn’t make the news, it didn’t happen.
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So I actually engaged Colin Upton on adapting one of your bus tales. He was open to it. And then I thought to myself, I’m a huge asshole. Here I am petitioning Doug’s work, like it’s my own. I have no idea whether Doug would like to have his work in any form other than the written word. Most of all, Doug should have complete control what and when things happen to his work before anything goes in motion. I overstepped.
My stupidity is somewhat akin to the aquistion of art by AI. HEY! It’ll be great let’s do it! No consideration to the creator of the work much less compensation.-
C’mon, you can do anything with it, you know Doug…
(unless you do some Ai bs, even then he probably doesn’t care)-
You’re likely correct, but I’d rather error on askling permission then asking forgivness. A part of this does stem from creators having their work acquired by AI en masse.
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Anything by me & Colin Upton would make me mentally orgasm.
An AI interpretation would be far less pleasant. If it happened, I’d roll my eyes, make raspberries, call whoever did it vile names, whatever, but I probably wouldn’t call a lawyer. Fuck lawyers.
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Doug doesn’t object. Sounds cool as ice cream. You’re not a huge asshole, or even mid-sized — pleaze have no regrets, and probably thank you.
Of course, I’m clueless how to make such a collaboration happen, or what story might be adaptable. Did you have one in mind?
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I was thinking, “This is where you get off” would be a good story to illustrate
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Yeah, that one seems like illustrations would enhance it, but…
After the first blush of “That’s a cool idea,” I have my doubts this afternoon. A successful artist like Colin Upton is gonna want a paycheck, royalties, something, but I can’t bring a worthwhile payment to the table. Saying “by Doug Holland” guarantees maybe half a dozen copies sold, and my stories are so-so at best.
I’m in a bad mood this afternoon, sorry, but even disregarding that, just realistically, I can’t imagine why a collaboration with me would interest Mr Upton (or anyone, really).
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Maybe not, maybe it won’t come of anything. I’m still working it.
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sorry that the last bit of that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo-
Oh my golly, this should’ve been the theme song at the family reunion over the weekend. Just the smile and kick in the pants I needed…
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Kelly’s Heroes, right?
Excellent, but I gotta go down into my hole… (:
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It’s being reported that Jim Goad has died.
I know most zine people despise the turn (or was it always there?) his politics took, but there was no better writer in what was nebulously referred to as “the underground,” frankly. Vicious and funny and honest. Impossible to think of a post-internet writer matching his talents.
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Mr Goad had his shortcomings, as do we all, and more than most. The man could write, though. Early issues of Answer Me! were awesome, at least in my age-addled memory, though at this point all the specifics have faded from my recollection. I am sincerely saddened that he’s become an inanimate mass at room temperature.
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Yeah. Even Goad’s worst and most fucked up pieces were still incredibly well-written. “Shit Magnet” was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I still read it at least twice, just because his writing could be so dazzling and tickled my brain with how they were composed. I’m not clever enough to turn this phrase, but I think he wrote more books I have no interest in reading than any other writer whose work I admire.
A few years ago, I saw he was on a livestream, just at random. Weird. And for the next 5 hours, a group of Nazi/alt-right streamers including Nick Fuentes made fun of him and called him a pathetic boomer, it was like 7 people heckling him at once. I can’t remember exactly the circumstances that lead to it, but he was there to defend the veracity of an alt-right female streamer who claimed she was raped, because he’d seen the police report, but the main subject was just a bunch of kids making fun of him, and Jim either unaware of what their references meant or kind of feebly stabbing back. I could not imagine a greater waste of time, but he wouldn’t fucking hang up, I think he waited them out until host ended the stream because the audience dwindled and nobody was donating any money in the chat (that’s how those things work, more or less).
I don’t know if that’s how he spent his last 10 years (probably not, given how long ago he seems to have died, nobody seems to have noticed his absence online so it probably wasn’t frequent). He had a gigantic talent and applied much of it to finding up creative insults for Spike Lee.
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Interesting, I don’t know who this guy is or what the site is about but he ends his obituary by referencing what sounds like the same livestream:
> I remember stumbling across a livestream in which Goad was exchanging insults with a group of younger online provocateurs. None of them found him shocking or outrageous. To them, he was just a lame old man. Depend on transgression and you will inevitably end up being transgressed against.
Goad would destroy him for that last sentence but that’s an accurate account, if we watched the same thing.
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Wikipedia says he’s been dead for a month. I hope his corpse was discovered rotten and infested with worms, perhaps partially eaten by a neighbor’s dog, but only because that’s what Mr Goad would’ve wanted.
You and I and everyone from our time are all lame old men, except any females among us, who are lame old ladies.
That obit was from The Critic, a UK publication I’ve read irregularly.
Hey, speaking of the greats and old-timers, do you (or anyone) know whateverhappened to Mike Hoy after he padlocked and sold Loompanics?
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Oh sorry! Forgot to post the link to where I read that, didn’t mean to lead you on a scavenger hunt.
I hadn’t thought about Mike Hoy in a long time (being somewhat at arm’s length I often mixed him up with Adam Parfrey in my head). I’ve got no info, but he really seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
It’s odd to see that whole era dismissed (ANSWER Me! with it) as some brief fashion for pointless transgression. I think he was pretty fucked up but Goad at least would tell you he was interested in (capital letters) The Truth, and he made a pretty convincing argument in Shit Magnet that far from a grifter he almost always made the wrong move when it came to commercial matters and his own fame/financial wellbeing.
Despite the title and subtitle, the Spin magazine piece on Goad while he was awaiting trial is still probably the best thing written about him, including those things written by him (next to an ad for Newport non-menthols):
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Newport non-menthols, man, that’s my smokes. And I’d already read the piece from The Critic. (:
Thanks for the Spin link, pretty good but jeez it’s a battle using Google Books to read it, at least on my laptop. Once it’s blown up big enough to read, all the text is blurry. Thought it said somewhere in there that Debbie had an IQ of 80, but she comes off as intelligent to me. Anyway, I can’t find that line in Google’s difficult interface, so maybe I imagined it.
Mostly, my patience for assholes wanes, even if Jim could write swell. I’m happy to be less of a writer & less of an asshole.
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> I’m not clever enough to turn this phrase, but I think he wrote more books I have no interest in reading than any other writer whose work I admire.
Quite cleverly turned, in my opinion.
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