Last night’s Gary Benchley party for recently, author-ially outed Paul Ford was a complete success. Thank you to everyone who was able to make it. And thank you also to Spike Hill in Williamsburg for accommodating us and reminding everyone in attendance why we didn’t hold the thing at Galapagos, beautiful shallow reflecting pond and all.

Thank you also to Maureen Flaherty for providing the awesome “I Am Gary Benchley” T-shirts. And for giving me one half-price. Paul is indeed lucky to have people like you on his side, as opposed to me and Rosecrans, who could be spotted diving the dumpsters outside Planet Thai. There was a triple-dog-dare, in case anybody’s wondering. Namaste.

Remember: The Gary Benchley book contest is still roaring ahead right here. So watch that space and the headlines every day for your chance to win a copy of Paul’s hilarious new book, Gary Benchley Rock Star, which, sure, you could read parts of here, but you won’t get the full story. Trust us.


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You love Pasha Malla because he makes you laugh and cry at the same time, I love Pasha Malla because I like watching people laugh and cry at the same time. (We all have our foibles.) You’ll be seeing a lot more of his work around here, now that he’s officially changed his name to “Dr. Pasha Malla, TMN Contributing Writer.” The “Dr.” part was our idea, because we now make fake I.D.s too.

But all of his ideas are better than ours, and you should read all of his much better ideas here.

Also, in his recent interview with musician Elliott Sharp Patrick Ambrose (another new staff addition!) elicited the following response, which I keep reading over and over:

PA: A couple of years ago some academic postmodernists assembled at the University of Chicago and declared themselves irrelevant.

ES: That’s very good. I hope they all committed suicide afterward.

If you haven’t read the whole interview yet, please do, and check out the rest of Patrick’s TMN work. Seriously? Suicide? Deconstruction? Must I ask these questions?

Since four (five) years of college didn’t teach me how to deconstruct: Yes, I must still ask these questions.