Calling all space needlers! This Saturday, June 19th 2010, I will present a special reprise infotainment performance of HELP! A BEAR IS EATING ME! to visitors of Seattle’s Crypticon! If you’re in the area, please come join me at the merciless hour of eleven AM, when a very special guest and I will expose you to poignant and disemboweling truths about these special animals.
It was my pleasure to assist in the fact-checking on Garrett Cook’s article about the mildly bear-themed film SLASHED DREAMS. Have you been wondering if you should rent this? Did you fear you were missing out? Let Garrett Cook — author of JIMMY PLUSH, BEAR DETECTIVE — put your mind at ease.
Death Bear is a superhero of the mourning process. He comes silently, like cancer, to take away the stubborn little things that memories cling to. Also, he’s a bear. (Although, I heard a rumor that he is really Darth Vader, trying to atone for his past misdeeds, starting over in an awkward but sincere fashion. Who can be sure? I don’t know, but I’d love to ask him.)
Death Bear is just one of New York City’s many bears worth visiting. I’ll be there this April 15-19, doing “promotion”, seeing friends, researching a biographical project and riding my bicycle like the bicycle-obsessed freak I am. My plan is to remain cheerful. We’ll see what happens.
However, Brooklynites don’t have to wait until April, because Death Bear is making house calls this weekend! Text him at 347-742-2293 for an appointment. Act now, before you cheer up!
Unsure? Take this surprisingly educational quiz and find out! I was told “one hour, twenty minutes” — but then again, I am a professional. Can you do better? Maybe you can even make it to a hospital!
(Courtesy of The Oatmeal.)
“In a city ridden with prostitute furries, cannibal cops and warehouse-sized mob bosses, I’ve got my work cut out for me. My name is Jimmy Plush. I’m a private detective. I’m also a teddy bear.
It all started when the original Jimmy Plush entered my life, offering to take my gambling debts away if I agreed to switch bodies with him. But I didn’t know that being a three-foot-high plush toy would be such a living hell, especially now that everyone in town wants a piece of me. All I’ve gotten out of this deal is a faithful Chinese chauffeur, a custom teddybear .45, and a girlfriend who won’t take off the fox suit she turns tricks in.
Now I’ve got to keep this town clean and try to track down the real Jimmy Plush without losing my stuffing for good. Only one thing is for sure: Life is hard when you’re soft.”
Jimmy Plush, Bear Detective by Garrett Cook is an homage in satire to 1950’s hard-boiled pulp, starring and narrated by the aforementioned tough-guy teddy bear. Armed, bitter and adorable Jimmy Plush shoots, kicks and wisecracks his way across a brutal toyscape of junkies, furries, dames, thugs, unicorns and kung-fu kewpie dolls, in his quest for revenge upon the bear that stole his body.
Eraserhead Press is releasing an anthology of Garrett’s Jimmy Plush stories this October at the second annual BizarroCon — we will toast it with a special batch of Jimmy Plush Bear Beer, brewed by EHP publisher Rose O’Keefe! — but a special limited-edition of the book is available at Garrett Cook’s website. Autographed by the author, this special edition includes a bonus Jimmy Plush story and a raffle ticket to win your own cuddly but deadly Jimmy Plush doll. Check it out!
“I am a bear. Life is boring. Let me go eat some men …”
If you are the sort of person who likes websites full of funny, sad, adorable stories about bears and people — and we both know you are — then you ought to take a browse around Bear Parade, a lovely site dreamed up by Gene Morgan, Tao Lin and I think maybe some other people — it’s hard to be sure — hosting a large set of nicely-designed online chapbooks known as “the Bear Parade series.” Are they books? Are they e-books? I-books? Interbooks? I’m just not sure, but I like them anyway.
The link above will take you to a small fragment of Mazie Lousie Montgomery’s Compassionate Moose, the tenth book in the series and my personal favorite, largely due to its high bear content.
Raaar.
Bear-Proof Can Is Pop-Top Picnic for a Crafty Thief
A smart bear regularly defeats a complex device, meant to protect campers’ food, that even some people can’t open. Surprised? Hardly. Every night bears creep into my house and use my laptop to purchase canned salmon online, and I still can’t even catch them in the act. They are clever and sneaky.
Even in urban areas, it’s always a good idea to suspend your food from a rope in a tall tree at night. This won’t actually thwart bears, but it will keep them occupied and off the streets.
Look at that face! This is Karen, a spunky six-year-old orphan amputee with cancer, emphysema and bovine spongiform encephalopathy whose future is in your hands.
Karen will be dead soon, of multiple wasting diseases. But before she dies she has a dream: to win the coveted Golden Staffie award, by selling more copies of HELP! A BEAR IS EATING ME! in February than her co-workers can sell copies of so-called Best Sellers written by hacks like Jonathan “Douche” Franzen and that hussy Zadie Smith.
You see, after Karen’s parents were thrown in prison for stealing cigarettes, her evil guardians from Health & Human Services sold her into bondage — specifically, to the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Union Square, NYC. Her life in the fourth-floor fiction section is one of unending toil and drudgery: shelving, mopping, ringing-up, explaining magic realism to people from New Jersey. It’s a hard life. But Karen doesn’t complain! This little girl’s got spunk like rats have rabies.
How can you help this poor waif realize her dreams of slumdog millionairess-dom and slip the shackles of her cruel bondage? I’m glad you asked. You can help her to win this month’s staff sales award. It’s easy — all you have to do is purchase a copy of HELP! A BEAR IS EATING ME! from her store — today, now, this minute! Yesterday, even. (more…)
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