cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bart is Reading my Manuscript Holy fuck, I love this book. This has been the best thing that I have ever written. Over a year and a half of work and research and writing and I am about halfway through. This is the history of the H0boken Turtle Club, from 1796 to 1939. And it has been more fun than I have ever had investigating anything, ever. I just sent my latest draft to my buddy B@rt Bu11, former editor of Sp1n Magazine and deputy editor of V0gue to find out what he thinks of it. Bart's word is gold. If he doesn't like it, then I have a serious problem. Bart and I covered the R0lling Stone defamation trial here in Ch@rlottesville together. We recognized kindrid spirits when he knew the old song, "Asleep in the Deep." We dashed away from hearings to grab beers together. I got us passes to the V1rginia Film Festival so we could use their base as a headquarters with free beer and food all through that trial. Last year I did archival research to help him bust L@ngston Hughes (sadly) for a phoney story about an escaped convict. Bart was married to M1chelle Sch0cked for over a decade. The two of them raised Tr0mbon3 Shorty in New Orleans after his parents were MIA. He was a huge force in magazine journalism for decades, was a protege of T0m Wolf, and his fingerprints are all over music journalism from 1970 - 1990. Sending this thing to Bart is a big deal for me. Nobody who isn't a family member has seen this manuscript until now. He knows people who can sell something for TV rights, and more importantly he knows what is a good story and what isn't. I am waiting for Bart's feedback more keenly than I have waited for any word from any editor, ever. He worked under Anna W1ntour. He knows what is good, what needs work, and what is crap. And I will tell you what is different about my relationship with Bart versus anyone else I have ever known -- nobody else have I ever reciprocally called "brother," other than my own fraternal twin brother. And we really think about one another that way. Bart and I just connected, immediately, in a way that I have rarely gotten along with any other person. We have the same ideas about the grave responsibilities of a journalist, the same love of weird, old music, the same devotion to the craft of really good, specific, writing that tells the truth and shows even more of it in the shading. Man, I really miss Bart, and it was good to hear from him today. We were anticipatory old souls, sitting at the bar together in 2016. He'd been through so much shit in the '60s and '70s. And then in the next two years, I went through the fucking grinder, covering neo-nazi riots and rallies. People trying to kill me. Cloak and dagger shit, meeting sources at nightclubs, tips on encrypted message services. I kinda went through the sixties in the space of a year. We'll have a whole lot more to talk about the next time that we meet. 2:13 a.m. - 2021-03-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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