We have been watching with interest an item for sale on Amazon.com. This crystal gavel from Godinger seems normal enough, in fact it seems downright blasé, like a Hummel figurine or commerative plate. But if you read the product reviews, you will notice something interesting about the properties of said gavel. Apparently it has all sorts of issues (and magical powers,). Sex, Death, Bronson Pinchot, the gavel has seen it all. Read every review. They are all worth it.
We at HFR applaud this adaptation of the commercial to the creative. With the economy teetering and book publishing tottering, it seems time for some DIY spirit to come to the writing world. So many think that being a writer has to do with fame. Really it is about the work, making something from words that didn’t exist before, whatever the format or style. The possibilities abound. If you are looking for more examples of extraordinary work in a mundane frame, make sure you check out the Best of Craigslist. In the meantime, visit the site and see and leave your own review. And read the others. Then see what you might be inspired to do that is similar. Writers write. All over. Please let us know here at HFR what you’ve done. We’ll be thinking on our own, and also keeping an eye on the gavel. According to the tags, it looks like this has been going on for about a week. We hope it keeps going (not that we contributed or anything).
3 comments:
The crystal gavel is all up in your collective grille. As in ye old phoenix renaissance faire grille. It saved me from the monkeys who swarmed me because of an excess of Drakkar Noir. It can also save you.
The funny thing U-Phocs (our industry term for viewers of our various ad campaigns, letter bombings over college campusi) don't know is all our editors are getting PAID handsomely while we yield the Crystal Gavel with our partner, Amazon. This is THE magazine for anyone in "writing" now.
Basically, a bus leaves C. Gavel and heads to Harper, Picador, Ravenna, Cocked Head, etc. It takes maybe 14 minutes and grappling in a closet—deal done. Movies, character rights, apple slices shaped as French fries, all that.
Back before Luvox, when O’Connor owned way too many peacocks, it used to be this way with Iowa, that tired, tired, tired “workshop.” Great term, D-iowa. U build birdhouses while hanging out dating mayonnaise, nice workshop.
(D implies death, or pizza delivery.)
Wait. Wait. Iowa. Wow, that was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooog yawn.
Dead as email. (Email has been dead for a long while, I guess you know. Unless you are old and irrelevant.)
Anyway.
Look.
This paradigm has shifted like a marshy graveyard. Goodbye sleeping with the poetry editor of whatever Ivy. Crystal Gavel is sponsored (details later—a major shoe company—a certain fiction editor is about to run the Boston Marathon, oddly fast for an editor of fiction). We have funds and buzz and a general sense of not only supporting our writers, but supporting them with black tar heroin and ice sculptures of ice sculptures.
(We were the first to recognize ice sculptures of ice sculpture as valid art form, and have it all copyrighted, etc, so fuck + off.)
My point is we value the artist.
Please submit. And I don’t want to let the opossum out of the coffin here, but we have LITERARY PRIZE of great monetary value, literary value, uh, intangible value (like a mistress or oily coffee) coming very soon.
Look Out!!!
seanlovelace.com
In 1981, while touring in support of Black Sabbath's Mob Rules album, Ronnie James Dio wore a crystal gavel just like this one around his neck, an attempted improvement over the cross Ozzy Osbourne wore in the previous incarnation of the band.
In his own band, post-Sabbath, Dio had an extravagant stage show including a fire-breathing dragon, an evil wizard who cast spells from an obsidian tower, and an army of evil Hobbits who opened the second encore with an a capella version of "Holy Diver." In the middle of an outdoor performance during the "Sacred Heart" tour, Dio fell to his knees during the guitar solo to "We Rock." He kissed his tiny gavel and when he held it up to the sky, it was struck by lightning. A lesser mortal would have been blown to bits, or at least given a mild headache, but that bolt of lightning, funneled through that crystal gavel, just made Dio rock harder.
This gavel will make you rock too.
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