But then you get all these blog-people who write books with some of their blog contents in them, so I don’t know that it does them that much damage in the long run, especially if they sell well…
Yeah, I wouldn’t sweat it too much. In addition to a general interest group, Sampiro has a ready market that would eat his stuff alive. There is a massive regional market in Southern writers, and legions of people down here who read Southern writers almost exclusively…or at least in the majority. These people would be pawning their great-great-grandma’s cast iron skillet for a chance to buy Sampiro’s work.
Granted, I think Sampiro has everything it takes to become a national literary icon, but appealing to the burgeoning Southern writer’s market can be nothing but a good thing.
I was up way too early as a result of a sleeping schedule gone out of whack, and Sampiro, my man, you had me howling. Especially at the part about the horror of your grandmother’s behind. And the Weeble aunt.
I’d say check with a literary agent type person, or a lawyer who knows something about publishing laws, and see what they say. Can’t hurt. 
Same here. All my IRL friends are now lurking and watching this thread.
I’ve thought about this but I’m not really worried. For one thing, there are only two or three of these that I’d probably send in anyway (the ghost story, Grandmother in the window and maybe Potato Head), and even those will need to be reworked. (The others I’d probably cannibalize for parts but not use in the format.) I see this as “marketing research” in a way because, while I know that my friends (most of whom are like me or like Ogre- southerners without southern accents who came of age post TV and just generally don’t fit the stereotypes) have enjoyed these over the years this thread is one of the first indications that there’s a wider interested audience. (I don’t mind being labelled a “southern author” half as much as a “gay author”, which can be a kiss of death.)
And you’ve never even met my mother’s family (including Papa Mustang, who on his deathbed in our house, lamenting for the testicles he lost at 87, began a series of reminiscences to me, his 12 year old grandson, that really wasn’t approved for audiences under 17 [including why he didn’t like French whores in WW1 and the real story of how he got the nickname Mustang and not the “approved for all ages” version he usually told), or had more than a casual glimpse into her marriage (an extremely complex affair- she never once cried [publicly] during his death and funeral even though she’d suddenly been left as half of some small dualistic cult in her mind [what’s left for Ahura Mazda Blanche now that the Mainyu Garland, Jr. is dead?] and she avoided this by willfully obsessing over tiny details [including a cowlick on my father’s head that only she could see that she spent almost an hour getting out while discussing totally non-corpse related matters with other viewers]- my father’s death and funeral and my high school principal who said the wrong thing at the wrong time to a woman who wasn’t known for her impressive self control just afterwards [opening the Chamber of Horrors] could easily run 30 pages, and would be immediately followed [chronologically] by the tale of Kitty’s immolation and Carrie coming to live with us, and of course every story has 20 sidestories-
I’d actually once considered doing a website of hyperlinked family stories so that the hyperlink could take the place of “that’s another story”, but I’ll save that for when I have more time.)
Anyway, there’s tons of stuff that I haven’t even begun to mine so I’m not worried. What’s strange to me is that I’ve always felt that I had the most boring life on Earth (I’ve never been overseas [or even to Mexico], I’ve never had money or engaged in spy work or been on a first name basis with a mover or a shaker, etc.) but others like the tales. It’s cool when others find it remotely interesting.
So you are going to look into publishing? Please.
Good point. Another good reason he should go for the Pulitzer.
I’m not going to go back in the thread and search for this post, but the one in which your sister, Sampiro, suggested that God sent hurricanes to punish gay people got me thinking. What does she think of the Fred Phelps folks? She doesn’t sound too far removed from their way of thinking.
Here’s something to mention to her: the boy scouts have decided to not let gay scouts join up, and what happens? Several are electrocuted in the last couple of weeks. What’s her theory about God, gays, and boy scouts?
Sampiro you may never have, to paraphrase, “been anywhere or done anything” but my friend you have lived a rich and colorful life that would make people who have “been everywhere and done everything” jealous. You didn’t need to go anywhere, it was all right where you were. This stuff is gold.
I seriously doubt that Kathy has ever heard of Fred Phelps. If she has she’d probably fall behind Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in denouncing him as a first order nut, especially now that he’s taken to boycotting the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.
Southerners can be hard to explain folk when it comes to their views on people of other races, orientations, etc… As I said in one thread, manners uber Alles is the law of the land, especially of the rural South ethos of the pre-modern era in which both she and I grew up. (In many ways my siblings and I grew up in the end of the Old South paradigm, in one of the pockets that survived long after Rosa Parks due to geographic isolation and the geriatric average age.) While Kathy may use the words “fag” interchangably with “gay” when she’s in private (including with me, because she doesn’t know not to) she would never use it in mixed company. She also sees what she believes rather than the other way around: she loved the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, for example, but doesn’t understand how anybody can see lesbianism in it, or the fussy old Miata driving pharmacist who makes Liberace look like Robert Mitchum and calls men “honey” can’t possibly be gay because he gought in the Korean War, was married once and has kids and grandkids. If she knowingly was addressing an openly gay couple, she’d be perfectly civil to them, then talk about “the two fags I met today” later on. (She’s a huge fan of Christopher Lowell, incidentally- “he’s faggier than a tuna melt on a strawberry crumpet but he shore can decorate!” and even watched QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY until Carson made one too many jokes about a straight guy’s butt.)
Her religious views are religious, simplistic, and as often as not echo whichever of the televangelists she last heard speak. Whenever I’ve forced her to defend or think them out she’s wavered a bit and admitted she couldn’t (she’s highly intelligent but anti-intellectual), which basically makes the type of person who waves flags and helps dictators to their seat and then wonders how in the world all those Kurds got gassed when he seemed such a nice guy. But she’s not a bad person. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but…
How she’ll react when she learns I’m gay will be interesting. OT1H, gays are evil and the Bible speaks loudly against them and they tried to rape angels in Sodom (we had a pretty big argument about that one a while back) and yadda yadda, and OTOH I’m her youngest and favorite brother and she loves me and I love her and she has no children or close friends and a husband with an aneurysm so she even with 1/4 of our Grandmother’s genes running around in there somewhere she might still be reluctant to pour gas on a tire, strike a match and throw it under the bridge. My mother semi-came around (which means that to date she’s had at least four “suicide attempts” over it, one of which just made me say “fine, whatever… I’d use the 9 mm if I were you, that .22’s just gonna piss you off good” and leave [and of course the next day she was fine] but now doesn’t mention it). I’m pretty sure that my sister’s first reaction will be to offer to pay to send me to Ex-Gay Therapy for as long as it takes (I wonder if I could convince her to send me to one in Europe… “This one’s not working Kathy, but I’ve heard of one in Rome that’s great… oops, I relapsed, how about the one in London?”) but I hope we’ll eventually have a normal honest brother-sister relationship and she’ll just consider it something Mama caused along with Daddy’s death. Of course I also hope to one day feel my bare legs intertwined with those of a smitten Orlando Bloom clone and the odds probably aren’t that much less for one than for the other.
A picture of the two portable dogs mentioned in this, btw: PIC
From L2R: Marty (who wasn’t quite as fat then), me (whose teeth aren’t quite as yellow as that lighting would imply) and Ollie (who was a baby but is now an absurdly long [2 feet, 11 inches from tip of nose to tip of tail] little terrier conglameration).
Sampiro, it says I don’t have permission to access the picture.
Okay, try this again: LINK- you can click on the picture.
Thanks! Those are some adorable dogs.
Hey, Sampiro’s adorable too.
I hate to say this, Sampiro, but do you ever feel that you are giving away too much of your real life here? You’re going to be famous, you know.
Nah, this is great. Once he’s published tome after tome of Southern Goodness, and has become rich and famous, we’ll still be able to say, “Hey, I knew Sampiro back when he was just a Doper!”.
Max 
Oh please, please tell them. I could even help you out on the Romanov one, if anyone needs the history of the dynasty.
It’s a very long story, but the synopsis: there was a NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA exhibit (this one to be precise, a huge thing with 14 large rooms that held everything from their coronation carriage, tons of their gowns and uniforms and portraits, their original correspondence, priestly robes and icons and even bloodspotted wallpaper from the basement room where they died) in, of all places, Mobile Alabama a few years ago. I spent the night at my sister’s in order to travel over and see it the next day, having no idea that my sister (who has no interest in history that doesn’t involve family members, rebel ells, or the overlap thereof, and who hadn’t a clue who the Romanovs were) was going to invite herself along. There was an embarassing mixup with a bathroom, an error flawed introduction by Donald Sutherland, an odd mix of people there (median age 84, at least of the straight ones) and the added responsibility of educating my sister in Russian history from Vladimir of Kiev to Vladimir Putin as we went along. It’s a very long story, but some selected soundbytes:
Kathy [after I’d corrected about the third major historical error in the Donald Sutherland recorded narration, this one a whopper claiming Queen Victoria was a daughter in law of King Christian of Denmark or something similar]: Well thank God we got that straightened out. Why don’t you just see can’t you tape over these things… ‘Hi folks, y’all just ignore Donald Sutherland. He blew his mind on drugs straining to come up with weirdass hippie names like Kiefer and doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Now this here is what really happened… Ol’ Queen Vicky was born in Anglund…"
Me [after I’ve tried explaining patronymic naming to her upon her request]: So, if you were in Russia, they would call you Ekaterina Stepanovna Sampirova.
Kathy: They would call me “Kathy” or “Mrs. Anderson” or I’d take my rich happy American ass home.
Kathy [having shuddered at a lifesized color portrait of Rasputin {who she’s convinced is a devil worshipper because he had healing powers and…well… look at him} and after I’ve described his showdown with the cross-dressing gay Prince Yussupov]: So a devil worshipper versus a queer… who the hell would you root for? I think I might actually have to go with the queer… [her lengthy justification followed]
Me [correcting signage that says Vladimir of Kiev married the Byzantine Empress Anna, daughter of Basil II]: Anna was the sister of Basil the second. Basil had no children, in fact he was a well known celibate.
Kathy: You know that really big thing you live about a block away from in Tuscaloosa [I was in grad-school at the time]- it’s called a foot-ball sta-di-um. They hold these games there that have players from that same college you go to… Can you name just one player on that college football team? Just one? I’ll give you $100 if you can name one player on that football team…
Me:… um… Henry?
Kathy: That’s what I thought. You can’t name one football player who’s played a block away from you in front of 80,000 people, but you can tell me that some Russian guy who died a thousand years ago wasn’t gettin’ any.
Me: He was more Greek actually, though he lived in what’s now Turkey.
Kathy: Oh, well that makes all the difference in the world. I rescind the observation.
In any case, she became very emotionally invested in the exhibit and was in tears by the end. (The exhibit was arranged in chronological order and she honestly didn’t know what happened to the Romanovs until the final room.)
It’s a very long story (went about 40 pages on e-mail tellings, but that’s with a lot of stuff about the Romanovs thrown in as well as a sideplot about Kathy’s self-appointed lifeserf and how she got rid of him after the exhibit).
The title of the tale, incidentally, was “SUNDAY IN THE KREMLIN WITH KATHY, or, 'Those Romanovs were some pretty Sonsuvoviches.”
Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone here would mind reading 40 more pages of your stories.