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Damien Cole's wistful RIP to simpleton got us thinking:
I blame myself.
--Damien Cole
dcole@voicenet.com.au
At first, Damien's reaction struck us as extreme. Why should a loyal simpleton reader
feel responsible for the death of his favorite publication?
But on second thought, maybe it
really is the readers' fault... Could it be that simpleton's demographic just wasn't
Special enough to pull in those big ad dollars? Here's a list, by proxy, of some of
the major hit-generators among simpleton's readers. You decide:
users.phillynews.com
ss2.netimage.com
waner-lambert.com
PENNE.NAPLES.NAVY.MIL
ken.culinary.net
proxy2.us.dell.com
gateway-le0.Cyanamid.COM
starship.nbsi.com
NS4.DALLASCOWBOYS.COM
loser.suck.com
lrx-ar3-12.ix.netcom.com
ns1.bertelsmanncis.com
cable=3a5.customer.tv.be
UN004-02-GOSHEN.EDU
aaron.gcc.edu
portal.east.saic.com
www.mpsh2.com
ntserver1.hereford.ac.uk
bastion.cbc.ca
hdp.texascommerce.com
unknown-46-4.chiron.com
lob.ne.mediaone.net
onramp.cinesite.com
gate1.lci.net
daruma.reef.com
nd110108.global.medtronic.COM
mfd2-11.dmv.com
bbn-cache-2.cisco.com
put-79-55.Reshall.Berkeley.EDU
pe28.CS.Arizona.EDU
mailhost.southport.mernet.org.uk
station159.equitrac.com
naugabutt.lcs.mit.edu
bos-arh-01.fmrco.com
proxy1.cabletron.com
delta-air.com
brian.bway.net
firewall.cna.com
146-003.CHS.du.edu
tom.asizip.com
gauntlet.ObjecTime.com
gate.twi.com
gateway.themutualgroup.com
internet.frankel.com
SMI-41.Stanford.EDU
With frequent readers representing Fidelity Investments, MIT, Stanford, Delta Airlines,
Bertelsmann Gesellschaft, American Cyanamid and of course, The
Dallas Cowboys, we would seem to have been a dream demographic.
Where were all these people when I was trying to sell an ad?
Maybe the problem was with the writers.
Herewith, a tribute to our contributors,
without whom simpleton would have been a little less simple:
The simpleton writing staff
Freelance journalist by day, masked crimefighter by night,
Chris Bray may be better
known by his Suck alias Ambrose Beers. His
proposals for anti-advertising shook
Madison avenue to its foundations. We regret that simpleton died while another of
Chris' masterpieces was in the pipeline.
Cameron Geiser is not a writer, but he played
one at simpleton. And played it well. His
disquisitions on the
fall of the Roman Empire and on the
Age of Adventure met with such
public acclaim that he was named simpleton's editor at large for stories on fallen
empires - a position whose importance can be overestimated only with great effort.
Mr. Eric Hubler, simpleton's Brooklyn
bureau chief, brought tears to the eyes of millions
with his
Dickensian ruminations
on class. He is currently working on a biography of
the guy from the Crazy Eddie commercials. The "U" in his last name should have an umlaut.
Three inches shorter than the fabled General Tom Thumb,
"Wallace D. Fard" left the
itinerant life of the circus for semi-permanent employment as cup-bearer to the gods at
simpleton. He was later promoted to the position of simpleton contributor, in which
capacity he discovered the
lost works of Basho,
explicated Stephen King's secrets
of success, and
crafted simpleton's first bona
fide hit, Sesame Street Tabloid.
Josh Ozersky is one of simpleton's oldest
friends. Thinking back on how Josh,
dressed in his pantaloons and Little Lord Fauntleroy collar, used to endure the
taunts of his schoolmates, I'm proud to note that he
has gone on to produce masterful considerations of
Falco's death,
TV Guide's genius, and the
self-immolation of J. Garofalo.
As "Cyril A. Nignew," Josh
exposed the sordid underbelly of
Kiddy Porn on the web, and helped launch a congressional
investigation into cyberobscenity.
A child prodigy, David Pellicane composed his first symphony at age six. Lauded as a
genius since infancy, he has nonetheless found time to grace simpleton with witty
appreciations of Emily Dickinson
and Sylvia Plath,
along with a scholarly thesis on
Inertia. David's maiden effort,
Alone With My Email, is the
only simpleton essay which
has been picked up for reprint in an anthology. Seriously.
Astute or easily offended readers will note that the simpleton contributors list is a
men-only club. This was not intentional. Indeed, we made efforts to recruit at least
two women to the simpleton writing staff:
Heather Timmons, Real Estate reporter for
American Banker knows more about mortgages
than Jim Palmer and Phil Rizzuto combined. She had a standing
offer to be simpleton's New York correspondent. We even gave her a juicy assignment: to
spread three rumors and then keep track of their progress. The rumors were:
a) That Rupert
Murdoch had again been ordered to divest the New York Post, and was fending off a
takeover bid by David Geffen, out of fear that Geffen would introduce a "gay agenda" into
the paper's coverage;
b) That one-time Post owner and Open Air New York
publisher Abe
Hirschfield was planning to debut a new afternoon paper entitled Just For Us, designed
to counter the "anti-Jewish bias of New York's media establishment";
3) That Mayor Giuliani
had deployed Swiss-guard style footmen, with epaulets, swords and tri-cornered hats,
at Gracie Mansion and City Hall - the idea being to give the city
a more "Romanesque/Vatican City feel."
This assignment even had an ass-covering anthropological purpose - to determine
whether anti-Gay,
anti-Semitic or anti-Italian slander would prove most durable. Unfortunately,
Heather was less than intrigued by the
simpleton pay scale, and the New York bureau chief offer is hereby rescinded in
perpetuity.
Eileen Noonkester provided the
concept and several of the jokes for our story on
Star Wars
Monopoly. She was set to write us a My Conversations With Angels-style story in
the voice of a Wisconsin farm wife who
was visited by elves, but I insisted the story would be better if she were visited by
mystical midgets instead. We never settled on a concept, but I look forward to
working Eileen's genius into a reborn simpleton, if such a thing ever comes into being.
Friends of the Cause
The following deserve special thanks:
Sam Lipsyte is an editor at
FEED. His early writeup of simpleton led to our
first appreciable hit count, and
to my regular writing gig at FEED, which pays. Sam is a great editor to work with.
Kate Eryn's impassioned,
spontaneous testimonials kept simpleton humming through many
lean weeks.
Carl Steadman provided the simpletonians
mailing list, and since no web site is complete without a special thank you to Carl,
this is simpleton's.
Alan Kornheiser's reputation precedes him,
but it would be churlish not to thank him one more time.
Bruce Keilin and
Henry Lyne
provided crucial technical assistance in our darkest hours.
It's no exaggeration to say that simpleton would have been but a shadow of itself if not
for the contributions of Chris_k2
and Deathbeast, both
of whom seem to have vanished back
into the ether whence they came. Wherever you are, gentlemen,
America salutes you.
Clarification
The spam on "funny" English usages reprinted in the
January 21 edition of Reader Mail
contained material lifted from Richard Lederer's 1989 book Crazy English :
A Hilarious Exploration of the Foibles, Quirks and Outright Lunacies of the English
Language. Mr. Lederer, who is also the author
of Anguished English, Fractured English, Adventures of a Verbivore,
Get Thee to a Punnery and many other books, informs me that the funny usage
essay can be read in its entirety at his Verbivore
web site, and he has been gracious enough to allow continued reproduction of his work in
exchange for attribution. A revised edition of Mr. Lederer's book will be printed in
July, and you can
pre-order
it now, at 20% off the cover price.
There must be other thanks I haven't given given, and other apologies I should have
tendered, and they may be forthcoming at some later date. Cowards die many times before
their deaths, and I've always been a big fraidy cat, so consider the death of simpleton
to be just one of many. Keep it simple, stupid.
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![[simpleton]](img/thesimp.gif)