September 17, 2004

Today is the day to get ready for this jelly.

Todayís interviewee (who, phonetically, is pronounced Kor-ee See-ka, for crying out loud), is the former editor of Gawker and now has entrenched himself as a staff member of Gawker media, which gives him time to write for little publications like the New York Times and such. If you are my parents, you will read this interview and wonder why such a smart young man needs to use such profanity, yet at the same time marvel at his roots. Everyone else: just enjoy.

The Choire Sicha Interview: A Little Under Twenty Questions

Where did you spend your summer, and what do you have planned for this fall?
Thereís a very sad and very short Neko Case song called Andy. Itís about the end of summer and the end of love. You should listen to it. Iíd make you an mp3, but Ms. Case hates mp3s apparently and you just donít want to piss off the queen of alt country. Especially because she works so much with Dan Bejar, in their capacity as superfriends in the Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers. Dan Bejar is one of the greatest geniuses of our times ñ his new album is here .

And so because I respect him so much I must extend respect to the brilliant Ms. Case as well.

Right. Well, Claire, honestly I work too much, though that's pretty much a well-known fact. There are two very boring and overly psychological reasons for this, one of which is that I woke up at the age of 31 and realized I was going to die poor and alone, the other of which Iím not going to tell you.

With regard to the first reason, well, of course, we all die alone, not much fucking good working is going to do about that, unless you work with people who all agree to die at the exact same moment as you. And good luck finding such a place to work.

I guess you could all die in a crashing elevator together maybe.

What I was thinking in the shower this morning was this: the actual range of temperature between the seasons is actually quite miniscule ñ a variation of maybe 100 degrees? When one starts thinking of the infinite range of temperature, the seasons seem like a minor thing to quibble about. And yet we are such finely-tuned tepid creatures that this tiny amount of heat and cold causes us great distress.

So why do I really care about summer and winter?

You covered part of the Republican National Convention. Did it live up to its promises of hoopla and mayhem, or was it a letdown?
Iíll tell you the best thing about writing for the New York Observer, for which I did a tiny bit of Convention work. (Everyone else in the city of New York was working for Maer Roshan on the New York mag convention issue. Seriously, EVERYone.)

On the NY Observerís website ñ which probably gets more readers than the print version, and I have no data whatsoever to base that on, Iím making up a fact here but I think it may be true, just given the permanent link to the site from Drudge ñ they list an email address for the author of each piece, which is delivered to the domain observer.com.

Once upon a time someone at the Observer would collect these emails and send them to the writers in a batch -- but no more. My Observer mailbox has bounced email for the last four months. Some nights I roll about on my dirty sheets and wonder what unread emails wait for me there that I shall never see. Iíll tell you, it HAUNTS ME in kind of a happy way ñ like knowing someone who you donít recognize is talking about you across a room but you canít hear them.

Back when I used to have those emails forwarded to me, some of them were terribly unpleasant or angry or even mean. (I know!)

My least favorite email was from the writer Ben Marcus, who is married to Heidi Julavits. He was upset that I thought it was okay to describe him as ugly. But, as I replied to him quite clearly, I thought he was actually really hot, but the description of what I thought was hot obviously repulsed him. Anyway he never wrote me back after I explained this. I apologized for my objectification too, which I guess he missed the first time around. I donít think we understood each other very well, which is always too bad.

Actually, that was my second least favorite email. My least favorite was from the writer Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon. She made presumptions about who I was that were not based on observable fact because she had, in fact, never met me.

Then we had a nice chat.

The Republican National Convention, by observable fact, was a dreadful atrocity perpetrated on each of us in New York City in our capacities as residents, taxpayers, people, and animals. My personal opinion is that I hope everyone who got arrested by being trapped in orange nets by the police sues the Bloomberg administration into oblivion.

You work for Nick Denton, freelance, keep a blog and probably do twenty other things I donít know of. Is there anything that youíd like to do that you donít have time for?
Iím glad you asked this question, because now I realize I never have thought of my life with regard to things Iíd like to do and donít have time for. Who does that? Do people sit at their desks with their head in their hands, thinking, if only I werenít stamping these insurance papers Iíd have time to write that book? So go home and write it, bitch. Ask Hubert Selby, Jr. about that.

I have a terribly low vision of my life. Left to my own devices, I will lie down and have a cigarette. For hours. (I know, Claire, stop judging: smoke in bed, wake up dead.) And so these things, well perhaps there are things that Iíd like to do, and I am quite capable of making time for them ñ but they all involve doing things that I donít have the skill to do. Like Iíd very much like to draw in charcoal incredibly realistically and with invention, like the work of Dominic McGill.

But I just canít draw, no matter how frequently I do not try to learn.

For some reason writing for a newspaper seems to me the best thing on earth, and I have no idea why I think such a stupid thing. I guess there are just people who are messed up like that. Right now Iím allowed to do that, and I canít imagine that privilege will last for very long.

Youíre now the editorial director of Gawker media: what exactly does that entail?
Here is an email that I just sent to a staff writer who will remain nameless. (Or rename mainless!)

ìbut in general house style is that on the first introduction of an acronym, it's spelled out. DON'T MAKE ME PULL OUT THE STYLE GUIDE AND BEAT YOU.î

I was lying. I havenít written the style guide yet. But now Iím going to, just so I can beat our writers with something.

Right now my job primarily involves not working at home, but instead working in the home of our publisher Nick Denton, where I am denied my 3 p.m. nap. This is a real pisser, and every day I contemplate quitting over this. The best thing about writing Gawker.com was the 8-post-nap. You get up, post 8 items, and go back to bed for an hour or two. I loved that part.

Were you hoping this was going to be a funny interview? Because honestly, Iím mostly doing this to entertain myself at this point. My boyfriend is out of town, itís quite late, and I skipped dinner. Iím having a seltzer and pomegranate juice cocktail! I so hate to drink virgin cocktails alone.

Perhaps Iíll go back in and insert some jokes. If itís not funny at all ever, then I didnít go back and insert jokes. Funny is over-rated, by the way.

Funny is easy. Puking up dinner is hard. (At first. It gets easier.)

What goals do you have as a writer that have yet to be met?
I donít like people who talk about writer-hood. Take this, for instance: ìOf course, a writer is never truly on vacation. The printing presses of the unconscious still pump out a nonstop edition even as one's attention is arrested by the sight of migrating ducks, darting-green dragonflies, dolphins at play.î

That was written by James Wolcott on his blog. Mr. Wolcott is a writer for Vanity Fair. I donít know Mr. Wolcottís work as well as I should, and I believe there is a book of his on the market that I should read promptly. And I will! Pinkie swear! But those two sentences make me crazy!

I have a HUGE aversion to people referring to themselves as artists or writers.

I have an ex-lover, who is now in prison so he canít defend himself (isnít that what they call ìruined reputationî in libel law? Some phrase like that ñ in any event, he is libel-proof, he canít be slandered, because apparently he has offended society, and really just donít get me started on THAT legal construct).

Starting over: I have an ex-lover, who, unrelated to my specific complaint, is now in prison, who used to often make the case that artists were different from other people. I found this viewpoint hugely offensive. There is no artistic character. There is no such thing as an ìartistic personality.î This is a huge load of crap which people (ìartistsî) use as an excuse to behave badly and make people who arenít working artists feel poorly about themselves.

Besides: we donít need excuses to behave badly.

Everyoneís a fucking artist! Everyone is the same! There is no temperament, there is no specific sign of artist-hood, writersí brains do not work differently than ìnormalî people, and anyone who tells you so is trying to steal your soul and puff themselves up at your expense.

Goals? Right now, an editor friend is arranging a lunch, at my request, with a real writer so I can ask her to tell me how to interview people. (That was an outrageously bad sentence. Perhaps I could find someone to have lunch with to teach me about sentences.) So, I mean: my goal right now is to learn how to interview people.

In general my model of interviewing is to display how stupid I am, ask accidentally offensive questions, and generally mumble and stare blankly, and also to forget to ask the questions that might give me the answers I wanted.

This so-called style was referred to as ìaggressiveî by a television celebrity. I thought that was putting it in a quite flattering light ñ for some unknown reason, this person spied intentionality behind what I was doing.

This person probably thinks cats are telepaths too.

To many of us, getting paid to blog sounds like a dream job. Was there any downside to working from home, collecting gossip, being sarcastic online?
There really isnít much to complain about in this sort of work. Itís sort of a class in libel law 101 on the fly, and typos donít go unremarked upon, and everyone has an opinion about opinions, and the more strenuous the opinion, the more strenuous the response. So thereís a lot of furor in the air sometimes, which is weird ñ because youíre eating cheese and cherry blintzes in your living room in your underwear and you're like, what's going on?

And then you unknowingly publish something you think is mildly funny but itís actually a big deal and next thing you know Fox News Channel has gotten a hold of your cell phone number and you throw your cell phone across the room to get them to stop talking to you and then you donít have a cell phone any more.

So yeah itís a weird joblet. You may be surprised to learn that there are people who cannot blog well. It is, I have found, a skill. I did not know that until I began hiring webloggers. Yes: there are people who cannot blog.

Of course, there are people who cannot touch their tongue to their noses, and they get through life just fine.

Youíve written for the New York Times, New York Post and several others. When you become a high profile writer, do you still pitch to these places or do they come to you?
Iíll make sure I let you know should I somehow become a high-profile writer, or, really, a writer at all. Right now I think of myself as a janitor who gets paid to write. (Rock!)

Iím a shitty pitcher. The things Iím interested in arenít really, likeÖ newsworthy. There are two or three stories that Iím totally obsessed with right now that I donít really have a venue to write them in. Theyíre very small stories, mostly about Korean women who run delis in Brooklyn and their relationships with their vendors, and a woman named Nancy who drives a taxi on far Long Island and stuff like that. Iíd like to write aboutÖ yeesh. How? I guess Iíd like to write a Trailer Park Talk of the Town.

Actually, janitor is one of the few jobs I havenít had. Perhaps I will think of myself as a barrista, or a counterman.

To be quite frank, which is really my goal here in all this mess, the Times carries a weight that I think sometimes that no institution should have ñ particularly the Friday art reviews, the criticism of Ben Brantley and Michiko Kakutani, and the Sunday book review. Visual artists live and die by Roberta Smithís reviews in the Times ñ Iíve always wanted to ask her what she thinks of her (quite possibly unwanted) power. And yet, criticism is about deciding what is effective, what is right, what is moving, what is innovative, and as readers we have a responsibility to acknowledge the subjectivity of those sorts of evaluations. So in a sense, we give that power to the Times, and to critics, which isnít fair of us either.

So no I donít pitch very often because I have a hard time expressing what Iím trying to say. I should just write the stupid things and send them in, I guess.

But I wonít.

How did Gawker Media come to sponsor a blog for John Watersí newest movie?
I donít really know what my job is besides working with writers, but at least I know my job isnít business development. Thatís my co-worker Gabyís department, and sheís a biz whiz genius, and I bow to her.

Me, I like me some John Waters movies. Iím thinking today that Polyester is my favorite ñ Edith Massey is just amazing in it. And God, I wish I lived in Connecticut!

I imagine that a lot of people must think they have your real-life personality pegged based on what theyíve read of yours. Is your everyday personality different from what we saw on Gawker or see on your blog?
Well, I think, at Gawker, that people were certainly far more interested in Paris Hiltonís vagina than in me personally. I just tried to connect people with their interests and stay out of the way.

As for me, I have two private personalities ñ one is very hyperactive and probably a little infantile and passive-aggressive, and the other is rather maudlin ñ maudlin like Iíll spend a night on the floor listening to Tindersticks. So I donít really have an everyday personality.

I do have an everyday pair of jeans though ñ both of my personalities wear pretty much whateverís nearest on the floor when they wake up.

I shouldnít joke about multiple personalities. One of my aunts professes to have multiple personalities. Once this aunt was driving my mother to the airport, and the aunt announced that sheíd switched to one of her pre-teen personalities. Of course, this personality didnít know how to drive.

Bad news, eh?

What did the New York Press have against you in naming you one of New Yorkís ì50 Most Loathsome New Yorkersî?
I think now that this is how the New York Press says ìI want to touch your penis.î OrÖ perhaps itís how the New York Press says ìI hate you.î Itís a mystery. Certainly the naming of me to the list was far outsized for any actual status I would occupy in the actual city of New York. As for my level of loathsomeness, I suppose they would know better than I, because who that is loathsome knows it? Or else how would Karl Rove get out of bed in the morning?

When and why did you originally move to New York?
I arrived in Port Authority on a Greyhound bus. Two men said theyíd help me with my luggage, and I said, AH HA! IíVE HEARD ABOUT THIS! And I didnít let them. I went downtown and met Dale Peck through a mutual friend. Dale was living in England at the time, and he needed a roommate and I was bored in CaliforniaÖ sort of. So I rented a room from him that was so small (HOW SMALL WAS IT? IT WAS SO SMALLÖ) that I had to fold up the single-size futon frame to open or close the door.

And then he went back to London and left me in this house with a bunch of alcoholics who painted houses for a living and I was working as a psychiatric researcher at Kings County Hospital. Weird.

Apropos of nothing, nothing at all, I switched brands of cigarettes today, to Newports. The idea being that since these menthols are disgusting, I would smoke less. Itís only barely working.

If you had to live anyplace else, where would it be?
Isnít this interview going on a bit long, Claire? Would you SHUT UP ALREADY?

As a matter of fact, I do now live part-time somewhere else. It is an undisclosed location in the 631 area code ñ easily accessible to Manhattan. I like to bop back and forth. I like that too much.

I donít really think I live anywhere. Iíve never owned a car, I donít have credit cards. Iíve lived in New York for 11 years now? And Iíve never had a lease. I get a bitÖ agoraphobic? Is that the word? About leaving Manhattan. I feel safe on this island and I feel less safe when I think about leaving it. Iím afraid this tendency may grow, Iíll be Manhattan-bound. Perhaps my safety zone will shrink and Iíll be unable to leave Ciao For Now, the cafÈ on 12th Street where the East Village homosexual elite meets and greets.

Iíll stop torturing you about your Evanston roots after this, but is there anything particular about your attitude or mindset that is distinctively Midwestern?
How close do you think most of us came to killing ourselves in high school? I think many of us came a lot closer than our parents would like to think. When I look back on high school in Evanston (which is the suburb directly north of Chicago, for the uninitiated), it makes me nervous all over again.

I remember this one party ñ I had moved to LA after high school, which is where Iíd come from right before high school, well, outside of LA ñ and about six months after graduation I was visiting back in Chicago.

Somehow I found out that a bunch of kids from my class were having a party at one of those big fancy houses towards Lake Michigan. These houses, honestly, were the biggest Iíd ever seen ñ I used to love going to visit friends in high school and Iíd get lost in their homes. Their pantries had pantries! And all the wood paneling was old and beautiful and dark, and they had stairways ñ often two sets of stairways. They had maidís rooms which they converted to craft rooms! I thought these people were very rich but actually they were probably middle-class.

Jim Romenesko, the premiere media blogger, lives in Evanston by the way ñ EXACTLY on the corner where I had my first apartment for a couple months after high school. Funny!

So: I went to this party and I walked through it like a ghost. I walked up to Tim Herbert, whoíd been a pretty good friend in high school ñ we all thought he was going to be the next David Letterman, he was SO funny ñ and asked him for a light and he lit my cigarette and just walked away without seeing me. It was like high school, that long nightmare was over, and I was invisible and free.

Maybe 10 years later I was driving through Evanston on my way to Chicago from Minneapolis and I parked in front of my motherís old house there and had a good cry, and I have no idea why.

My mother sold our house to an East Asian couple when we left, as a way to say fuck you to the whitest neighborhood Iíve ever seen. That cracks me up.

If you had to firmly lodge yourself in the art world, the literary world or the media/journalism world, where would you make your home?
If thereís a literary world, please donít make me get on a spaceship to go live on it. Is it like the universeís penal colony? Is Flash Gordon there, writing a memoir?

It seems that with the rise of the blog came the dawn of Acceptable Male Gossiping: men commenting on pop culture without looking like Cindy Adams. Do you agree, or have all those Vh1 commenty shows just given gossip a new name and look? This actually is an interesting theory, one which I havenít thought of before. Iíve never really seen those VH1 shows, though Iíve appeared on a couple.

The last time VH1 called me for a show I hauled my ass out of bed to the Dark Tower of Viacom and checked in with security. They didnít have a security pass waiting for me, so I left. They called me on my cell, but by that time I was down the block already and didnít feel like walking back. Havenít been back since.

Iím not sure if there is anything more useless to the world than spouting recycled celebrity gossip in a blacked-out hotel room in a one-hour slot between Lloyd Grove and Joan Rivers.

Also, people often seem to think one gets paid for being on clip shows? That is not the case.

And anyway, I shouldnít be on those sorts of shows ñ I can never remember which celebrity fucked which other celebrity.

But youíre right ñ straight men gossip now, and follow gossip. Gawkerís readership is exactly 50/50 gender-wise. And theyíre not all ëmos, believe me.

I had a working theory about the corporate plans to en-woman men ñ witness Cargo, the menís shopping magazine, witness the changes in GQ and Details. Retailers are understandably excited now that men think theyíre fat in a similar way that women think theyíre fat.

If only men menstruated, they could make a killing off masculine hygiene products. Maybe theyíll make that happen soon! I wouldnít mind having a period.

You have a semi infamous roommate. Do you have to defend him a lot?
Feh. Defend Dale? Weíve lived together quite communistically for a very long time now, and I think part of that is allowing each other to have our own idiocies. Dale is incredibly loyal and giving and is very conscientious about letting me be an asshole and make mistakes. And I let him do his things. We agree on a lot of things, but we certainly have major differences in opinion on cultural stuff.

Although we both HATED the season finale of Six Feet Under. Truly.

Iíd like someday for us to have a big house, or two sort of our own compound, and weíd have wings for our lovers. Weíve always wanted to get adjacent apartments and semi-join them ñ enough space for me to work with my increasingly loud music as I deafen and for him to watch the endless episodes of Friends which he Tivos.

If you had to punch one media person in the face, who would it be?
There are people in this industry who lose perspective. Itís easy ñ one tends in New York City to believe oneís own hype, I suppose, and then people become monsters, hopefully just temporarily. I know a legger from a gossip columnist here in town who I nearly developed a major aversion to ñ now I like him very much. But young, hungry people move to New York, inexperienced with personal or professional tragedy, and they believe that the gossip industry is a useful thing. So I met this young man and he was so objectionable and so full of his minor power ñ and these are the most dangerous sort of people. They make excuses and cut corners and often they burn out of Manhattan ñ but quite often they stay and succeed.

Also they make you feel old.

Also if there were no gossip, we would all get through our days just fine.

And also: the ways in which things wind their way into print, either for gossip or for media reporting, are muddied and complicated. There are things that are printed and not printed, and reasons behind that, personal reasons: favors, biases, grudges, ambitions.

At a certain level of involvement, you can read a sort of self-referential language in media and gossip reporting: you know why X event is covered the way it is and why Y person is slammed or lauded.

There are many, many trustworthy reporters in this industry, including among the gossip folks, who all work very VERY hard. There is only one I trust completely, David Carr, media dude of the NY Times, because he understands the sanctity of print, the weight of published words, in a way that I havenít seen in anyone ever. I feel almost like it tortures him.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I think Greg Lindsay is one of the most rash and therefore most entertaining reporters. He doesnít give a shit how he treats subjects and this often makes for an amazing read.

There is Phoebe Eaton, who combines the spice of Greg Lindsay with a bit more caution and respect.

Hey, Johnny Ramone just died. He had prostate cancer for five years. Poor Johnny. That sucks. What can you say thatís eloquent about death? It sucks ñ at least for us. Itís probably fine for Johnny now.

How does it feel to be the 106th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
I have greatly enjoyed many of your interviews in the past. I think perhaps I have enjoyed mine the least of all.

There are more interviews here.