A LETTER I WROTE TO THE A&E TELEVISION NETWORK


ABOUT GROWING UP GOTTI
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I can?t help but feel the show ? Growing Up Gotti ? is an enormous error in judgment on the part of your television network and the show?s sponsors. I am so incensed that I feel compelled to organize a boycott of the sponsor?s products and your network in general. This is a shame as A&E has been a mainstay in my life for many years. Below is a copy of an email that I have been sending to various media outlets and personalities around the country :

Hi Folks

I don't know if you are aware of the A&E show that aired a couple nights ago entitled " Growing Up Gotti ". Myself and a number of other people are outraged at the premise of this show. Forget the fact it is so called " reality TV ", most thinking people have come to terms with the drivel now clogging up the nation's ( if not the world's ) airwaves. This particular show has a more insidious quality. Everything, including it's raison d'etre are a direct result of the proceeds of crime. It is not too much of a stretch to say that every part of this show is soaked with the blood of innocent and maybe not so innocent people. Victoria Gotti may have a career in her own right but she is a mafia princess and always will be. Sure the money that represents her current wealth and opulent lifestyle is long since laundered but try telling that to the survivors of her father's victims.

John Gotti should be disdained for what he represented, not idolized. There is a disconnect in logic with the hard working American dream and the legendary idolization of those who would take it away using fear and intimidation. All of this is fresh in my mind because of a book I have just completed about a run in with this type of scum a dozen years ago. They tried to take our businesses away from us by force. We fought them off with guns and ball bats. It wasn't pretty nor did it contain any of the elements of glamour that the contemporary sterilization of these types of criminal actions receives in entertainment vehicles such as TV and movies. Bones were broken, bullets flew, people died and lives were destroyed, that's the reality. Not some mafia princess flitting around in an opulent lifestyle supplied by the laundered proceeds of these activities.

I can't help but think that shows like this perpetrate an enormous societal injustice. A glamorous depiction of a lifestyle with the accompanying celebrity completely born of crime. Give your heads a shake people. Boycott the show and the advertiser's products. It is the only power we have to correct this enormous error of judgment. Some of us haven't forgotten that John Gotti killed people.

To that end I am trying to organize a boycott and petition.

NOW WHAT IS THIS IN AID OF?

Well, you see I just wrote a book. It chronicles the other side of mob life. The perspective of being on the receiving end of the actions of these parasites. Based on a true story I was right in the middle of a conflict with these scum. When I hear people use terms like "mob aristocracy" or "Mafia royalty" I cringe. This is the next step of the sterilization of the criminal way of life. The glamorization of the insidious. My book Entitled: SON OF THE TOWN CLOWN is due for Fall 2004 release.

OUR SITE GUIDELINES ARE LOOSE FOR A REASON - SOMETIMES YOU RECEIVE A SUBMISSION THAT IS SO GOOD, YOU SIMPLY CAN'T TURN IT DOWN


A LETTER TO SHOOTER
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I don?t know when I finally realized I didn?t have the necessary talent to make it in the music world. The realization didn?t come as an epiphany or a moment of enlightenment, instead coming through a series of minor disappointments and setbacks over an extended period of my early music career.

Sure, there was the audition I made my way to at age 21 in the big city. A classic scenario really, farm boy wannabe musician, best bass player in the county, answers a public audition call posted on the bulletin board in a music store only to find out there sure are a lot of good bass players in the big city. Or the constant compromising of one?s dreams and aspirations. Fame, fortune, any degree of measurable success really, always remaining elusive, out of my grasp. The revolving door of band members, the never quite getting our act together, always seeming to land us on some puny little stage in some dingy, smoke filled bar playing mostly cover tunes for beer money in front of a semi-hostile audience. Simply a music career that never seemed able to get off the ground.

Still, through all of this, the countless hours of basement practise, failures and setbacks I still stuck with my music. Nothing enriches the soul or reaches to the very core of one?s being the way a few well laid down guitar riffs do??.when all is said and done I remained in the game for the love of music. Remained long enough to wake up one day to find myself in my late 30?s playing in another basement band with a group of buddies, all in the same circumstance.

We had all played in Rock bands of one form or another most of our adult lives. As we got older and had children with households to be responsible for we became part timers. Jamming occasionally, playing the odd wedding ( sometimes the weddings were very odd ) or company Christmas parties etc., all of us barely keeping up our chops. We were in it purely for the love of it, having long forgotten any thought of being full timers or making a career out of it.

But this story is not about me or my other musician wannabe friends?.it is about how we came to play in a band briefly with one of the best rock and roll guitarists in the world.

To pick up the odd gig we had a permanent flyer posted on the bulletin board of the local music store. From this flyer one day we were approached by the organizers of the local Bluesfest to do a one hour set at the annual weekend event they held every summer. They were looking for more local content and we fit the bill nicely. The event was 6 months away so we had plenty of time to prepare but almost immediately a dark cloud appeared on the horizon....our Guitarist who held a day job as a banker got transferred out of town......like really out of town to the other side of the country. So we put out the word we were looking for a new guitarist.

I don't know if you have ever gone through the audition process but it can be comical and painful at the same time. Dreamers, jokers and losers all seem to answer this call to fame. We were simply looking for a rock and roll guitarist capable of playing some blues classics with us for this one hour set and possibly another jamming buddy to join us on our path to music oblivion.

What we got instead were a couple of teenagers who had never heard of Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, some heavy handed heavy metal aficionados...I kid you not, a demented ukulele player who thought the Tiny Tim thing was ready for a revival and a few other wannabe chuckleheads, worse wannabes than us....not one suitable guitarist for our needs.
We had given up hope, were almost at the point of telling the Bluesfest organizers that we had to pull out and then Shooter walked in to audition.

From the minute he opened his guitar case to pull out his traditional sunburst US Custom Strat. we were impressed, when he began to play we were awed. He looked the part as well. Think of a man from another era, tall and thin with long middle of the back length, greying hair and you have Shooter. He was a hippie guitar player displaced in time, sent by the music gods to make us a much better band......or so we thought.

Underneath his fluid playing style and his seemingly unlimited supply of talent lay a deep, dark secret. The man was losing a life long battle with inner demons. His mental health always so painfully fragile. Though one of the most talented of his generation he had worn out his welcome in Southern California, with one too many recording sessions disrupted, one too many gigs gone bad, one too many concert no shows?..all as a result of his inability to hold it together....he made his way back to his native Canada and to deeper obscurity within the music industry?.eventually to find us in our basement.

His music career credits were impressive though somewhat vague. He bandied about suggestions he had done stints with The Band and Big Brother and the Holding Company as well as recounting numerous recording sessions with a host of other successful Southern California bands of the 60?s era. Contentions we merely took at face value as his playing ability spoke for his authenticity.

Impostor or not he certainly had accomplishments with the accompanying chops, above and beyond anything any of us had ever achieved.
With his help we put our set together. We had become " plunk-alongs ", an old music industry term for those who were just trying to keep up with a much more talented band member. His wealth of experience and seemingly limitless repertoire gave us ample material for our set. No sign of his mental problems apparent while we prepared, practising 3 times a week....... until the Summer, weekend festival was upon us.

When the big day arrived we walked out onto the massive stage and introduced ourselves as Greyrock...a name we had chosen just for this event and that seemed to fit the fact all of us were sporting varying amounts of grey hair . Our opening number was an up tempo " Got my Mojo Working " and it seemed to be going well, next we hit them with " Flip Flop and Fly " and then some classic 12 bar blues in " My Momma Left Me Here" then a bastardized version of B.B. King's " The Thrill is Gone" ...followed by the Powder Blues Band's " Hear that Guitar Ring" with James Cotton's version of " Rocket 88" next, even threw in " We Gotta get out of this Place " by the Animals as our closing number.

It went very well and the crowd gave us the obligatory call for an encore. At this point it was more a polite gesture on their part....everyone who played this event was asked back for an encore....no one could have known what Shooter had in store for them.

Drawn from his wealth of experience he had explained to us previously that while playing a Bluesfest you are obliged to play a mix of classic blues numbers with blues style tempo at the same time limiting your up tempo numbers as it was after all a Bluesfest and not a rock and roll fest........but all bets are off for the encore...in his words " For an encore you hit them over the head with your best up tempo number "
We had practised Chuck Berry's " Oh Carol ? at Shooter's insistence as an encore number. To us it was a joke being so presumptuous as to expect an encore request.......as it was not something that happened to us a lot prior to his arrival..... if you can imagine.

As we jumped into it Shooter became transformed, his accomplished musicianship had now been unleashed and by transformed I mean for those brief few moments I didn?t recognize the person standing 6 feet away from me on that massive stage, he laid down guitar licks I didn't know were possible. If the man did in fact host inner demons they were now controlling his mind and his fingers manifesting themselves to masterfully blast out a tune I would imagine he had practised for over 30 years.

The audience stared at the stage in stunned silence but not just the paying Bluesfest patrons, the beer servers, the stage crew, the other musicians?everyone who bore witness to this phenomena stood motionless as if in suspended animation. Taking in every note, every riff, every change up, every modulation, knowing somehow they were witnessing magic of some sort.. I can honestly say that it was the best rock and roll guitar performance I have ever seen.

For dramatic effect as we hit the last note of the song in a surprisingly tight finish he threw his guitar down on the stage floor and walked off....the crowd went wild...so wild in fact that they were standing on their chairs demanding another encore but it was not to be. Shooter had just kept on walking?..out of the open air concert area, out onto the street to his car and then drove home.

I quickly made a joke to the audience " he has an appointment with his parole officer " as we packed up our gear to head off the stage.

We didn't know it at the time but he had kept his marbles together just long enough to finish that one song. I phoned his house later that evening and his girlfriend told me he was in bed weeping and had been for 4 hours. This sounded serious...she went on to explain he had suffered another one of his "breakdowns". It turned out that this was the last time we would ever play as a band with Shooter.

He had given me the highlight of my musical career if you can call my now semi serious, part time approach to music a career.

The Bluesfest organizers had tape rolling throughout the entire concert, with our final number recorded they have used the sound bite from the last 30 seconds with Shooter's fantastic guitar playing and the wild applause from the crowd in their radio adds for the event for years now. Re-affirming my contention that it was the best rock and roll guitar performance any of us, organizers and participants alike, had ever witnessed........

In the following years we lost track of Shooter but every Summer as the Bluesfest organizers geared up for yet another annual weekend concert our sound bite was played in advertisements over and over on the local radio in the weeks leading up to the event. For me it was the pinnacle of my career as a musician.

The countless times I?ve heard that sound bite a feeling of satisfaction wells up inside me, satisfaction so deep it is a justification or the validation of a life spent as an aspiring musician. It?s funny, that?s all it took, playing along in one masterfully executed rock and roll song with a fine musician. No song credits, no monetary rewards, no real recognition of any kind but somehow that one experience made it all worthwhile?..a reward for me far greater than any of the aforementioned, solidifying my lifelong love of playing music.

I wonder where Shooter is today and I hope he has finally made peace with his inner demons. If you are out there Shooter all I can say to you is thank you ?. for the experience of a lifetime.
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Author?s Note: The name Shooter is analogous and has been changed to protect the privacy of a man I truly hope finds his inner peace.

SUBMITTED BY: Gomedome

A SITE FOR UNKNOWN AUTHORS OF FICTION AND HORROR
HAVING AN UNKNOWN ENTITY SITTING ON YOUR CHEST

I have told it many times over the years, at parties, to friends, online and to any one else who would listen. It is a true story....every word of it... I swear.

Back many years ago my brother and I found ourselves living in the same city and decided to be roomies to save on costs. Neither of us having much money we were looking for a cheap 2 bedroom apartment to rent. After scouring the listings in the local newspaper we came across a place that was too cheap to be believed. Two bedroom apartments started at around $ 350.00 per month back then ( ya it was a long, long time ago ), this place was going for $ 225.00. We couldn't believe our luck and then we saw the place. What a dump, it was the top floor of a converted ancient and very dilapidated house. Still, it offered the chance to save a few bucks so we spoke with the landlord about taking it.

I didn't pick up on the fact that he had been having a lot of trouble keeping tenants in this unit, I guess I was only looking at the savings. So we moved in. After a long day of hauling our junk furniture up a flght of stairs we were both exhausted and slept like babies the first night in our new digs. Little did I know it would be the last decent night's sleep I would have in this place. The trouble started the second night. The place was haunted I tell ya.

Very early in the morning I felt strangely uncomfortable, something had disturbed my sleep but I knew not what. Glancing at the alarm clock it read 3:43 AM. I struggled to fall back to sleep. Thinking nothing of it, I got up rather early the next morning, a Sunday and helped my brother finish all of the things that need finishing when you have just moved in. That day, though another long and tiring one was uneventful.

I had to be at work for 7:30AM the next day and a good night's sleep was important. In the wee hours of the morning I was awoken again, glancing at the clock one more time it read 3:43AM. This time the place was freezing, unusual as it was mid summer and a foul odour pervaded the air. I was having trouble breathing as if there was a weight on my chest. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. Again no sleep was forthcoming the last few hours I lay in bed. Pulling myself out of bed I dragged my sorry body to work that day.

The next night again I was awoken but this time by footsteps coming down the hallway. Looking at the clock it was 3:43AM. I thought my brother was walking around in the dark but as I became more aware of my surroundings I could hear him snoring in the next room. Suddenly I felt an enormous weight on my chest as if someone had jumped on me. I tried to scream but felt a cold, clammy hand covering my mouth. The air was frigid and as foul as it was the night before. Just as suddenly as the weight had come onto my chest it dissapeared, footsteps quickly retreating down the hallway and then a door slamming at the end of the hall.

I jumped out of bed and ran into the next room to wake my brother up. He suggested I was crazy as he had not experienced anything of what I had. Going back to my bed sleep was impossible, if you can imagine. I dragged myself out of bed a few hours later, on to work, I made it through another very tired day.

The next night, as tired as I was sleep was out of the question. In speaking with my brother about it he had agreed to keep a lookout for the " entity " as we had begun calling it. I could hear him snoring in the next room. Great lookout bros.... I feel better now. About 3:00AM I walked into his room and woke him up. It was warm and humid in the apartment, no sign of the entity. He told me to get lost, still after being awoken he was struggling with a restless sleep. I went back to my bed and waited. Deciding I didn't want to experience the weight on my chest again I laid on my side with my eyes riveted to the clock. I watched it as the numbers flipped 3:41AM.....3:42AM.....3:43AM and then a rush of freezing cold air, the footsteps coming down the hall, the foul odour, then something pushed me onto my back. I managed to let out a scream just as the cold, clammy hand covered my mouth.

My scream was enough to roust my brother out of bed. He ran into my room and turned on the light. At the same instant the hand was removed from my mouth as the weight left my chest. The entity pushed my brother up against the wall, knocking over a lamp and retreated down the hall. We could hear the footsteps and then the door at the end of the hall slammed ....but there was nothing there. Nothing at all. At least nothing we could see but both of us had just experienced something. Of that we were certain. I phoned my girlfriend and told her that she was going to have two guests sleeping on her floor. Hurriedly we dressed and ran out of the apartment. It was still extremely cold inside. Once outside it was alarmingly different than the coolness of the apartment. It was hot and humid. One of those warm sticky nights but why so cold in our old, rundown apartment, which did not have air conditioning?

We never slept there again. A few days later I approached the landlord and informed him that we were leaving. His look of resignation made me suspicious so I asked him what was up. It seems this was not a new occurance. Other tenants had left inexplicably as well. Hence the bargain on the rent. We found another place a few days later and slugged all of our stuff out of that apartment.

Now I was a believer in ghosts. I had witnessed it with my own eyes, ears and sense of smell. No one could tell me that ghosts didn't exist. My brother as well. He had been pushed against a wall by an invisible force. Over the next few months in telling people about it I realized that everyone thought I was crazy. I tempered the telling of the story a bit so as not to sound so unbelievable.

Less than a year later and completely by chance I was at a house party telling my story to a few friends and new aquaintances.

A gentleman I had just met asked me " What time did you say that was ? "

" 3:43AM " I replied.

" And where did you say that house was located ?"

I expected him to tell me about some grizzly murders committed on that street so many years ago or something of that nature. We all have the stereotypes in our minds. Instead he informed me that he was a city engineer.

" At 3:40 AM every day an effluent flow is released from one of the sewage reservoirs to the main treatment facility. It is an automated, timed release so it happens precisely at that time every morning. I asked you where the house was located because some of those old houses do not have proper flow back check valves in their drainage. Or the state of the decrepit house you describe could suggest the check valve is rotted away. The effluent flow is released at 3:40AM but would take a few minutes to work it's way to that neighborhood. It is like a sludge. It forms a huge vacuum suction as it moves along through the drainage system. That vacuum would form enough pressure to drive the cold and extremely foul sewage air and gasses from deep underground. If there is no check valve in place, that cold air would drive up through the old house displacing the much lighter warm air. Doors slamming, floorboards creaking and things getting knocked around would all be the natural result of that massive air displacement. "

" What about the cold, clammy hand on my face? "

" I can't answer that one other than to say who knows what is in that contaminated sewage air ? It could be something as simple as an alergic reaction, or the debilitating effects of poisonous gasses, who knows ? "

Well I knew. I knew I had just made a fool of myself with these ghost stories for the past several months. Not to mention the crucifix, wooden stake, holy water, silver bullets and the bible I had been carrying around with me since then.

BUILDING SITE TRAFFIC WITH FREE STUFF
Not that I would know anything about building website traffic as I have never done it before. But, and this is a very big BUT...I do know how to sell stuff, so giving it away should be easier right?

Ultimately I want to sell my novels. I will achieve this goal eventually with a great deal of success. How can I be so certain you ask? Well as I mentioned I do know how to sell stuff. Over 800 pre-orders for a book that isn't even published yet and counting. But back to the free stuff. So far in the day I have been at this I am offering a free novelette ( under 20,000 words ) for anyone willing to receive it as a Word file. I also have added a link for free web counters. Over time I will add links to free downloads and other goodies.

So the plan is to build site traffic all the while mentioning my book " SON OF THE TOWN CLOWN " you see it's a soft sell. And it will sell books eventually. Your thoughts on this ?

A FREE OFFER WITH THE CATCH FRONT AND CENTER
YEAH THIS IS A FREE OFFER WITH A CATCH BUT LET ME START WITH WHAT EXACTLY THAT CATCH IS. I have a book coming out in a few months and I want to sell it to as many people as possible. It is entitled
"SON OF THE TOWN CLOWN" based on a true story about how a bunch of us laid a beating on some mobsters that tried to steal our small businesses from us. It's a great story but why would anyone buy a novel by an unknown, first time author? So here's what I am proposing. I have a novellete entitled "THE ADVENTURES OF SPOONS McGOON" It is the first part of a 5 parter but complete in itself as a story. I will send it to you as a word file for free. No catch, you just read it and see what my stories are like and if you like it I hope you will buy my book when it comes out. Howzat for a deal? All you have to do is send me an email: spoonsmacgoon@yahoo.com

Press Release
WHAT GREAT ENTERTAINMENT

SON OF THE TOWN CLOWN, a novel based on a true story,takes the reader on a rip roaring adventure in a struggle against organized crime. Tragic, fun and funny all rolled into one action packed saga. Violence, course language

THE ADVENTURES OF SPOONS McGOON, the story of a hero with a twist. Forget all of the timeworn cliches of the strong, silent type. Spoons is a big mouthed, unconventional wise guy charging through a life of adventure. Violence, course language

THE CANNIBAS KINGS, Did your mother ever tell you that crime doesn't pay ? The sad truth is that for some it pays quite well. This Crime thriller chronicles the decline of the Tobbaco industry in conjunction with the rise of the marijuana cultivation industry. Violence, course language.

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