SIZE IS IMPORTANT

Dear [sic],
My name is Elizabeth Lavis, graduate of St. Bonaventure University (class 2001). I majored in Journalism/Mass Communication and minored in Political Science. I was the Associate Editor of the Buffalo Gazette for about 8 months after college and have free-lanced in various newspapers/magazines in Buffalo and the surrounding area. Basically I am looking for more experience in my field and would be interested in doing writing, editing and layout for your publication. I would be happy to submit a resume detailing my experience if needed. Additionally, I would be happy to meet in person to discuss the possibility of working for your publication.

Elizabeth Lavis

Dear Elizabeth,
Send a photo of your college-educated snapper to sic@buffalobeast.com. Jpegs are best. Pay close attention to lighting and pixel size. Thank you.

 

NO, HE IS AN ARTIST

Dear Beast,
The Bar-Dak key couldn't be more accurate. The only jeer I have is that you blocked out the bar revue under Liar's and Queen City lounge..... and I am sure those revues were as funny as the rest. If your going to block the revue atleast block it with something good to look at, like a nice set of breasts, not an asshole.

Blizak Jizak

Dear Blizak,
Tom Sartori isn't an asshole. He's Buffalo's best solo artist, two years running. Don't you read the newspapers?

 

SEE DICK WRITE

Hey,
nice start guys, all of you are just what we need, hang in there and as soon as I get organized I am at your service.

Steve, or "Dick" (my alter ego)

Dear Dick or Steve,
Whose service do we get once you're organized? Dick's, or Steve's? Whoever we get, we'll take him! U sound like R kind of guy! Not that we don't appreciate it, but can't a guy get some decent hate mail in this town? What do we have to do, fuck an altar boy in a confessional? Oh, wait--that gig's taken!

 

WHITE WOMEN DIG US

Dear Beast.
I read your publication for the first time last night. I thought I was the only one who: did not deify Jamie Moses, continues to be appalled at the decimation of the incredibly priceless waterfront of a "great lake" by a highway (wouldn't it be nice if city children could actually swim in the lake?), at the ( Hannah Arendt defined evil as "a lack of imagination") lunar landscape designed to inhibit human interaction of the so-called North Campus, believes that The Mohawk and The Pink are the only bars in Buffalo with soul (I'm regrettably not familiar with east side establishments, being a white woman of a certain age), can't bear the ineptitude of the old boy's club of the Masiello administration, etc. Having come to regard myself as a hopelessly misanthropic cynic prone to choosing books over company I was so gratified to read your paper.

But I love Buffalo. Tried living in the northwest. Seattle is way too mellow, and the northeast, there are hardly any native Vermonters left, having been dispossessed by wealthy Bostonians. I came back. I love the people here. We know we're screwed and there's some sort of psychoanalytically complex reason why we enjoy it. Being Irish Catholic helps me approximate understanding and tolerance of the Buffalo psyche. One thing is for sure. It is perverse, and certain cultures thrive on perversity. Anyway, welcome, truly welcome to the fray.

sh

Dear sh,
Boing-g-g! We've got major wood! You could house a pack of Sherpas in this tent! Mount Everest, here we come!

 

OUR ASSHOLES ARE BETTER THAN YOURS

Hey, [sic],
Holy jesus mother of god, you bastards are fucking hilarious. You MUST do a prank about the Sabres...the entire goddamn town is scared shitless that the team will be leaving town now that the Rigases have fucked Adelphia dry, so the timing would be perfect. In addition, the prank would play perfectly into Buffalonians' need for paranoia as well as self-pity. Oh, please, I implore you...fuck with these people some more. Buffalo's a great town filled with provincial assholes (as I can see you're already finding), so any more pranks that play on those traits would be most welcomed.

A pseudo-realistic prank that would have the Sabres moving to Rochester, Toronto, or even to Darien Lake would be believed here (these fucks really are paranoid...you have a lot of material to play with). You could maybe play the parts of the potential ownership team. Make up some fake rich assholes and borrow some decent suits (you fucking slackers). It would be grand. I don't know why you sent us this rag of yours, but I love it. Keep it coming, and if you guys ever need any help, any help at all, I would wipe your asses and sweep your floors without pay for the chance to work with a bunch of spiteful, bitter dickheads like you!

Lovingly,
Fabio Escobar, Amherst

Dear Fabio,
We're working on a Sabres prank, believe us, but the problem is, the team itself is setting comedy standards that we're frankly intimidated by. Thank God for the Bills, huh? Go Drew!

One thing, though. Is a provincial asshole worse than a Manhattan asshole? We don't think so. We'll take Buffalo's assholes any day of the week. Assholes in this town talk about hockey. Assholes in New York talk about their book deals. It's no contest. Buffalo has the best assholes in America!

 

ANAIS NINCOMPOOP

To the Editors, I'm writing to ask if you'd be interested in running a parody piece ("France Inaugurates First 'Museum of Collaboration'). I could provide (bogus) photographs, etc. along with the copy. Needless to say, I'm not asking for any compensation: it's the internet, after all.

Sincerely,
Alma Marceau
Author of "Lofting," a novel: wit; urbanity; filth.
http://www.studioloplop.com/

Dear Alma,
We admit it; we're impressed. You actually had us going for a while. Your resume, posted on the web, was a masterpiece of bullshit: nobody, we thought, could be this funny. A modern-day wannabe Anais Nin, authoress of what reviewers call "erudite erotic literature" (one reviewer even apparently called you the "Melville of the money shot"), who in her youth studied at a series of improbable, nonexistent academic institutions, each of which challenged our mental archive of pretentious literary allusions more than the last... Seriously, high school at the "Errico Malatesta Preparatory Academy" in Salt Lake City, Utah? Doctoral study in "fungal systematics" at "Svevo University, Trieste?" A Ph.D. thesis entitled ""On the Genealogy of Morels: The Evolution and Classification of the Ascomycetes, with Special Attention to the Genus Morchella?" Are you shitting us? Post-graduate work at the "Institute of Fern Relations" in Berne? Get outta here, you nut!

Then there's your actual erotic literary work, which you describe in an interview with yourself [!] from your "compound" in Costa Rica:

"I think that plausibility in erotica depends on the same sorts of things that impart plausibility to any other sort of story. Are the characters consistent in action? (I mean, unless experiencing a psychotic break or under duress.) Is there continuity to their logic of ratiocination? Do their emotional reactions jibe with their personalities? What I want from erotica isn't a Freudian analysis of causation, but a story that unfolds in believable ways, that's populated by human beings whose ways of being in the world are recognizable to me."

Your book, "Lofting," appears to be on sale on amazon.com, which means that someone is buying all of this at face value. If your whole personality is a joke--and we're pretty sure that, far from being a sinewy Euro sex-goddess, you're really a frustrated fat male professor in some place like Cleveland--then you're a genius, and we salute you.

Unfortunately, no one in Buffalo would give a shit about a parody of a "French Collaboration museum." Even we wouldn't. Write something about the Bills, and we'll take it. We're in America now--why do you think we left Europe in the first place?

However, if this is not a joke, and you're really who you say you are, you make us sick; fuck off. As for your article, try "the Onion." They ran out of material four years ago.