January 17, 2003

Today is the day to take the plastic off the cheese before you eat it.

Welcome, today, three very special young men introduced to the proprietress of this site by one Miss L.Ro. What do you need to know about them? Well, they're all wonderful writers, and to prove it, they've got a new website out, called Black Table. Plus, I can personally attest, they're magnificent hosts, although I do say that I think that they should get out and about more often, because I have a feeling that they don't 'let loose' nearly as mcuh as they should. So, today, welcome the Black Table guys and just try not to get caught up on their tornado of fun hipness. They remind me of my friends The Strokes. They will save rock and roll, or at least, be cooler than you.

The A.J. Daulerio, Eric Gillin and Will Leitch Black Table Interview: Just Under Twenty Questions

So, why the name "Black Table," why now, and why should we read it?
Eric Gillin: I guess I can field the name part of the question, since I came up with it. Back when I was in college, I needed a coffee table, so I built one myself from scrapwood and painted it black. Everyone I knew hung around this table, drinking and smoking and arguing and being young intellectuals. So, kind of in the spirit of Dorothy Parker's Algonquin Table, I went with Black Table. Plus, it's not so hard to remember.

Why now? It's about time -- I've been talking about launching a new site ever since we closed the doors to IssuePaper, a site I created about politics, in August 2000. Honestly, there really aren't a whole lot of places for young journalists to showcase their talents. And there aren't any major publications that look at everything from a young person's perspective, politically and socially. We just hope to look at things with fresh eyes, do things in new and unusual ways and get people excited to check one Web site every single day.

Readers should check out TBT because it's updated daily. (We have a special Super Bowl Week extravaganza set up for next week.) And because I'm putting in hours of work each night, slaving until dusk, just to make sure readers have something new to read. You ungrateful fucks.

Hollywood-types pitch movie ideas with descriptions such as "It's like 'The Ya Ya Sisterhood' meets 'Death Wish IV'" or "It's 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure' meets 'The Naked Lunch.'" How would you describe Black Table, in this manner, involving movies, websites, or what have you?
A.J. Daulerio: Well, personally, I always envisioned the BT being a combination of "American Beauty," Pete Rose, and The Strokes. You know: Heart, Hustle, and Hipster. We bring "life" to the web content arena like Sam Rockwell brought "life" to "The Green Mile."

Will Leitch: Daulerio sucks. He knows I believe the aforementioned triumvirate to be cultural phenomenona that are full of hot gas, and that I can't figure out why intelligent people -- or even people who are able to walk upright -- would admire any of them. He also knows that Sam Rockwell is the only thing that brought any life to "The Green Mile". In other words, Daulerio's being a dick right now. Fine. Pile on Leitch. Have a good chuckle at his expense. Everybody laugh and point. Assholes.

You have some interesting links on the sidebar of your site. Who picks them, and for what reason are they chosen?
WL: I will confess; I am not sure where those come from. There's a man named Guillermo who sends me random emails from a "namblaman23@gowildcats.com" address, but those aren't typically the links we like to use, lest we end up going the route of mid-80s culinary villain Jeffrey Jones, who, I might add, was both touching and soothing in the Oscar-winning "Amadeus". Not to put too fine a point on it, however, but I will say that somewhere between 80 to 85 percent of my work time is spent playing that game where you try to avoid being anally raped by French indigent peoples. Up to that point, that had been a game I had only played in my mind. To have it played out on such a dramatic, euphoric stage ... well, I'll just say it's a dream made thrillingly real, like that one where I'm being chased by the snake in a vest.

EG: The links are sent in by friends, mostly, but we really hope that readers start submitting links and stories and ideas, too. I actually tend to pick them, choosing the ones that are just so far out there, like the women and catfish link, or simply too fun to miss out on, like the rape or be killed game.

One of the primary destinations in New York City lately is Camp Bowery. Please explain to our readers what Camp Bowery is, and what a guest there can expect.
EG: Ah, the legendary Camp Bowery in downtown NYC. That's the magical realm where A.J. and I live and where Will hangs out regularly. Basically, all of our writer/artist/delinquent friends come by and party nearly every night until really late. Guests can expect loads of booze and a hot meal. I like to get drunk and cook. It's just insanity. There's really no off switch with Camp Bowery and that energy certainly fuels TBT.

WL: To be fair, I serve mostly as the Kato Kaelin of Camp Bowery. I don't live there, but I show up, eat your food, sleep on the couch, run errands and provide assistance when you need to slash up that slutty whore who has been fucking all your friends and parading around town -- wearing shit that you bought her -- like you're some sort of goddamned chump. Man, fuck that shit. That said, Camp Bowery (to be spoken in nasally, high-pitched Timothy "Speed" Levitch voice)...

finds all that is gorgeous and fleeting in this extravagantly dispoised rotating orb we ... call ... Earth and flings it gloriously through the nether like the flight of a newborn eagle, laughing, streaking forward and backward simultaneously, ecstatic in its embryonic translucence, full of life, life, life, what do we call life, what is this life, where is the question, why is the answer, Camp Bowery, Camp Bowery, why hasn't thou forsaken me, why do you let me suckle from your teat of dripping, gelatinous glory, but suckle I do, suckle I will, suckle I shall, from your welcoming and vaguely sinister teat, I shall, suckle I am. What is this love?

AJD: Coincidentally, Camp Bowery is part "Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and "Death Wish IV". But with more sandwiches.

You gentlemen are friends as well as editors. If you were to align yourselves as the Beatles, which ones do you think would be which? Who do you think is the Ringo, or the Paul, or even the Stu Sutcliff or Pete Best and so on?
WL: This question is just asking for trouble. All right. Gillin is clearly Jimmy Page, dishing out the dope guitar licks that we all mime pathetically, naked, in the mirror at night, when the demons come. Me, I'm George, bowing toward Mecca to show my eternal devotion to my great lord Allah Buddah. And Daulerio? Daulerio is Courtney Love, most definitely, ever eager to fuck us all for even the tiniest sliver of heroin. The bitch.

AJD: Well, I don't think of us as The Beatles. I think of us as The Strokes. Love those boys.

WL: Dick.

You guys are alumni of a past publication, the great Ironminds. Do you intend for Black Table to have any similarities to Ironminds? To studiously avoid any particular similarities?
WL: I'll take this one, because for about two years, Ironminds was my every breathing moment, my lighthouse across the river, my adulterous vixen, my obscure object of desire, my unbearable lightness of being. Ironminds was once something unique, a bunch of kids desperate to create, to make some noise, to be heard. Ironminds is the reason I left the Midwest for New York, the reason I got this pretentious notion that I had something to say, the reason I ever tried to do anything, really. Then the whole dot-com tsunami got a hold of it, got a hold of me, and we compromised, and our heads became inflamed and engorged, and we were ready to become the new, smarter MTV, with (editor) Andy Wang as Martha Quinn and me as his ever-loyal John Norris. But then it all crashed, obviously We remained such soldiers, even after the money was gone, even after the bowels had definitively been passed, and we remained convinced that if people could just see, everything would turn out OK. But Martha Quinn turned into Anna Nicole Smith, deranged with delusional power, and John Norris got laid off but kept working for free for that elusive promise of a Justin Timberlake interview. It amuses me when people speak of Ironminds with awe, because it never seemed that way to us at the time. We were just maniacs, caring too much, losing all perspective, to the point where we were turning against each other at the end (ultimately, I was fired for personal reasons from Ironminds, the site I had slaved over and dominated my every waking thought for far too long). Ironminds is that girlfriend who, two weeks after she left you, got hit by a train. You know she wasn't thinking about you when she died, but that doesn't mean you don't miss her desperately, and wonder, against hope, if she at least thought of you fondly, and if others speak of her in the same hushed tones you do. Black Table is very, very different than Ironminds; it's far more similar to Issue Paper, an Ironminds offshoot, also started by Eric, which had considerably larger balls and, notably, a lack of devotion to daytrading. It's about real work.

EG: I'm going to pass on this question, since I probably wrote the least for Ironminds and cared the least about what that site hoped to do. Strange as this seems, I don't really look at what other indie publishers are doing, so any similarities are coincidental.

In regards to your "Hot and Not" list, how do you compile them? Do you have methods for keeping your finger on the pulse of American culture?
WL: It's rather simple, actually. Daulerio will call me and say, "Last night, I had a rather inspired bout of fisting and analingus with your uncle." I'll pause and genuflect. His tales typically remind me of how much I hated Naomi from "Joe Millionaire," and once I've channeled that rage into a coherent narrative, the names just pop forward from unnamed depths. And let's face it: Cargo pants are so out, particularly when compared to a young up-and-comer like Lynching, which had such a charming, effusive cameo in that very special episode of Veronica's Closet. Watch out for that kid. Loads of talent there.

AJD: Yeah, that's how it works. And then we make a sandwich or something.

What's it like to work with the often-heard, but little-seen Johan More?
EG: Wonderful. He never misses a deadline. Then again, we've never given him one.

WL: I know people think I'm kidding, but seriously; I really can't get Johan to return any of my emails. The guy shows up on my mailing list, stirs the shitstorm and then just ignores me. It's quite irritating. That said, I'm an unabashed fan. He makes me wish I could write poetry. If Black Table's lone purpose is to introduce Johan to the world, I'll feel like we've done our duty.

Will, You're a world-famous columnist. Why is it entitled "Life as a Loser"? What would you say is the quintessential column you've written that sums up your topics and style?
Life as a Loser was inspired by the curiosity of my friend Chris Bergeron. She worked with me in St. Louis -- and remains one of my closest friends -- and she couldn't help but wonder why I carried myself with such a hangdog, woe-is-me look all the time. The reason, of course, was because my ex-fiancee had left me on national television a year earlier with no warning, gutting me, really. I realized that carrying this load was breaking me, and that, when I really sat back and looked at it, the whole fiasco was actually quite amusing. So one night I decided to sit down and tell the story. I wrote it in about 20 minutes of a feverish rush, and since I'd been writing movie reviews for Impression Magazine, which later became Ironminds, I decided to see if they'd run it. Not surprisingly, they absolutely loved seeing my intestines splattered across Microsoft Word, so we figured we'd just make it into a series and see how long it could last. That was almost four years ago. I've changed immeasurably since then, but that completely impotent anger, fear and sense of impending dread has never left, and I think it carries the column still today. That first one, which I've since rewritten into something more appropriately literary, pretty much sums it up. Whenever I screw up in life, which is often, I can tell myself I can spin it into something comically paranoid later, and, to be honest, that's pretty much how I've lived my life since, for better or worse.

Eric, Tell us about the work you've done for Glamour magazine.
Ah, busted. They used me as a male model in the September 2002 issue, not because I was a particularly good-looking guy, but as one of those "regular guy tells you his turn offs" stories. My turn off was when a girl yanks on her underpants and tits all night because she's dressed like a slut and keeps falling out of her clothes. Of course, they made this seem nicer in print. My dad was proud.

A.J., this is well-worn territory for you, but one of my favorite topics. Tell is about your love of liverwurst, and what it's done to you.
I LOVE liverwurst. Yet, for some reason when I eat too much of it--and I always eat too much of it--I get an extremely painful gout flare up. You can usually tell when I've eaten liverwurst because I'm limping around and crashing into things. But, it just tastes so good that it's well worth the temporary pain and humiliation.

Will, you are the sole Midwesterner working with Northerners, or "Northeasterners," as Eric would clarify. How is it, applying your Midwest common sense to their high falutin' big city ways?
It's funny. The way I perceive myself and the way Gillin and Daulerio perceive me couldn't be more different if one was a large black penis and the other a drooling, delirous lapping puppy. I am certain there are times that I will make what I consider an astute, observant comment, and all they'll take from it is, "Jesus, listen to that hick accent. What a cousin fucker." I'm fortunate, though; what I took most from my 22 years in our nation's heartland -- and it is a mistake to speak of it in the past tense; it's the marrow of my bones -- was an intense, perpetually unquenched work ethic. That's something these guys have in spades. Sure, there are times I feel the need to remind them that the country continues on west of Philadelphia, but the mindset? We're definitely on the same page. We're all out to conquer the world. Who isn't? Now, if I could only convince them of the virtues of biscuits and gravy...

Eric, listen, I know just about nothing regarding economics or the stock market. You, however, write for The Street. Is there anything basic I should know about the market so that I can talk about it in public without sounding like a moron? Or, in this current climate, is ignorance bliss?
Ignorance certainly isn't bliss, but the media usually do such a rotten job of explaining what's going on that ignorance is the only option they have. All you need to know about the market is that it is made needlessly complicated by companies and businesses that profit off of rampant ignorance. Sometimes, when I talk to someone who just lost a lot of money in the market, they beat themselves up so badly, I feel like Robin Williams in "Good Will Hunting." "It's not your fault," I'll keep saying as they break down and sob. Money is complicated, but people feel like they should automatically know all about it because it's so essential to staying alive. Well, eating food is essential to staying alive, but not everyone can cook. Same with money.

A.J., you wrote a good piece regarding the glossies' fascination of 'It Girls.' If you could choose, who would be today's "It" girls and boys, regardless of looks, talent or high public profile?
"It" girls: Well that Selma Blair really impressed me in "Storytelling". For an actress to pull off having dirty sex with a Cerebal Palsy kid and a giant black man so convincingly is just amazing. I think she should be officially enshrined in the "It" girl Hall of Fame.

"It" boys: Well, probably Jim Cooke, who did a bulk of the design and art for the BT. What that kid can do with a pencil is amazing. He draws pretty well too.

Will, you wrote a glowing review of Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity. There are some who claim that all young contemporary writing, including online magazines such as yours, are all influenced by Eggers and his work. Do you think this is true, that his is an all-saturating influence, or it's not as easily boiled down as all that?
I remember when A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius had just come out. People were convinced this was the dawn of some sort of new age, a spring from which countless unheard young voices would infinitely flow. (Hell, the book was so good, its reputation got me an agent.) And I think McSweeney's could have been that. Lord, how great it was. But, like everything that was once pure and unabashed, something was lost in the translation. Eggers was caught up in the aftermath and inevitable backlash his book inspired, and, frankly, the whole enterprise made a rather fatal mistake of wrapping up too much of its "Look, we have other writers other than Dave" cache with a guy like Neal Pollack, who may have played too much into the whole "Look how ironic we are!" shtick that Eggers was trying to get out from under. And, at a certain point, it became clear that Eggers had bigger fish to fry than just McSweeney's. Eggers is a singularly talented writer, capable of just dashing off stuff of which most of us can only dream. But he is not a publisher. I look forward to the moment when he accepts that, and he leaves everything else behind him and just concentrates on writing the best fucking books out there. But, as I often said when people compared me to Eggers, which was both immensely flattering and humbling at once -- I'm no hack, but Eggers can do shit that I'll never be able to even approach -- Dave Eggers did not invent comedy, or confessional writing. (To be fair, I said this mainly as a way of inflating non-existent self-importance, while also under the influence of many drugs.) People have created a situation where anything written by someone under 40 that might be slightly self-referential is Eggers-esque, and I don't think that's fair to him, or any of the rest of us. The guy does his thing. He's incredible at it. But let's not put anything in this little box just because times are tough for young writers right now. People are too cynical sometimes. We're all on the same team here.

What have you written thus far that you're proudest of, be it a column, essay, story, etc?
AJD: Oh, the soon to be unveiled Soapy Dick Pill spot. Once that turd-faced editor at the Lost Brain stops humping his girlfriend and gets his shit together. Hear that, Brandon? Get it together, you douche!

EG: Before this, it was launching IssuePaper.com and driving cross country with explosives so we could get an interview with Hunter S. Thompson. Not only did I write more than 50 stories in a month for the site, but that's how Will and I became close friends. Right now, it's just getting TBT going. I spent years and years talking out of my ass about what I hoped to do on the Web. I had all these theories about what happens when you work hard and encourage others to really push the envelope. I really do believe that there's a vacuum out there in terms of content and that a million bored people at work are looking for a place to go. And getting the chance to test that, well, I haven't been this excited since I saw the commercial for Fox's "Man v. Beast" and all those midgets were pulling a plane.

WL: My work for Issue Paper, mostly written in the passenger seat of a Pontiac Grand Prix, is the most inspired work I've ever done. It was just Eric and me, driving across the country, pushing each other to be better, questioning ourselves, never stopping working. It was breaktaking. I did stuff I didn't know I was capable of, simply because I had no choice; if I didn't write something worthwhile, it would look pallid and limp compared to Gillin's stuff, right next to me on the page. Honestly, that's something you don't forget easily, and it's the No. 1 main reason I'm ecstatic about Black Table. I want to tap into that again. There's plenty left in the well, on all sides.

Predictions for the Superbowl?
WL: I like the Raiders over the Eagles, though, deep down, I still believe commissioner Paul Tagliabue will make lay down some sort of edict awarding the championship to my beloved Arizona Cardinals, because I and the other four Cardinals fans have suffered enough, thank you.

AJD: For fear of jinxing anything, I will refrain from answering this question. (Note: Daulerio is an Eagles fan)

How does it feel to be the 39th, 40th and 41st people interviewed for Zulkey.com?
EG: Pretty much the same feeling I felt when I found out I was the 57th person to have sex with my last girlfriend. On one hand, you're really happy that you're getting the opportunity to hump someone, but on the other hand, you don't feel all that special not being number one. Plus, I give really crappy interview and I bet you've had loads that were longer and harder. I need a good long cry now.

WL: It feels like ... hey, do I have something stuck in my teeth? Could you take a look? Is that celery? Wait ... you know, you're right. I think it might be a plunger. What's that? How did that get in there? You know ... it's a long story. I don't think I'm up for going into it here. Well, is that all? Are we done? Can I go now?

AJD: What number am I? If I'm 39, I feel great. If I'm 40, I feel not-so-good. If I'm 41, I feel, well, raped.