Fame or Something Like It

I wasn't prepared to be famous for 24 hours, but now that my weblog traffic has subsided to normal levels, I can relate some of the experience. The rest has to be filtered through therapy first.

For anyone wondering how I became a television personality as well-known for a day as the Virgin Mary grilled cheese, my friend Matt Haughey has digitized the interview on the Today Show where I talk about BenedictXVI.Com.

After the Today Show, I began receiving calls from TV producers. Almost to a person, they were fast-talking, Type A females who sounded like Angelina Jolie on Life or Something Like It before she learned you don't have to become Stockard Channing to be truly happy. One even berated her assistant while talking to me, effortlessly switching the tone of her voice from sweet to "that better be a double shot espresso or you're on the next bus to Topeka."

These women are relentless; they will not take no for an answer. My friend Jonathan Bourne has produced several talk shows, and he said I could have gotten some free swag from the programs by playing hard to get.

I caved too quickly for even a single coffee mug -- one flattering remark about my hair and I was asking where to show up. I had to disconnect my phone that afternoon, afraid of what else I'd agree to do.

I've saved a voicemail message from Maryam Ayromlou, the MSNBC producer who asked me to appear on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

This isn't the recording of Ayromlou I wish I had. I love Olbermann's show, but a few hours after agreeing to be on it, I called her to chicken out.

"I've spent money," Ayromlou responded, referring to the en-route Orlando TV crew and a conference room booking for the remote. In the nicest way possible, over a several-minute call, she gave me the impression that if I backed out, there would be no place on Earth I could hide from her. I've never been more frightened of a person in my life.

I appeared on Countdown as planned.

Domains · Television · 2005/04/24 · 12 COMMENTS · Link

Supporting Modest Needs

A funny thing happened today: Modest Needs received more than five times the normal donations from people coming from BenedictXVI.Com.

I'd like to think it has something to do with my understated good looks, which were revealed to me in an e-mail from a Today Show viewer this morning. But I suspect that people are simply gratified that I am not a pornographer.

I will never be a pornographer, so please keep helping Modest Needs.

I sent an e-mail to Pope Benedict XVI's new e-mail address today asking if the church wants the domain. I am concerned that my "Subject: Free Domains" email might not get through the Holy See's spam filters.

While I am waiting to hear from the Vatican (which has to be the strangest phrase I have ever written in my life), I am donating the pope domains and my site's ad revenue from this crazy week to Modest Needs. I'm working together with founder Keith Taylor to host them. His unique one-emergency, one-family-at-a-time charity has helped 1,500 individuals and families since its launch in 2002.

Thanks, everyone. And to answer the questions from Tina in Fort Myers, Florida: 1. Clubman Art-Rim glasses. 2. Yes that is my real hair. 3. No I will not send you a lock of it because it would be a great color for your guest bedroom.

Domains · 2005/04/21 · 50 COMMENTS · Link

Holy See, Holy Do

I'm getting a lot of comments like this one by Concerned Canadian:

I think it would be in your best interest to use this site to better humanity. Use it to donate to some sort of Catholic charity, or use it to write about the history of the Catholic church. Cashing in on it would be very typical, and if you have any personality at all, you won't want your 15 minutes of Internet media fame to be seen as typical.

I haven't decided what to do with the benedictxvi.com domain -- my goal was to keep it away from pornographers, not grab a domain for some kind of papal superstore.

But now that my weblog has 120,000 new readers, just counting yesterday, I'm using the opportunity to promote ModestNeeds.org, an organization that's like a charitable eBay: They match up donors with people who have short-term, under-$1,000 emergencies (such as repairs to the family's only car), helping them get out of the crisis.

SmartMobs describes how the charity got started in 2002:

The founder Keith Taylor began Modest Needs by giving 10 percent of his $350 a month earnings as a way to return a no-strings kindness paid to him when he most needed it. He told me, "Those who need help can always ask for it at Modest Needs, absolutely for free. How much money we raise matters less -- to me, anyway -- than simply providing a vehicle for human kindness."

Here's the latest donation-to-expenses report on Modest Needs from GuideStar and the charity's full financial statistics, for people who want to research the group before contributing.

Domains · 2005/04/21 · 65 COMMENTS · Link

People of Poland: Nie Rozumie

The pope has to be multilingual -- upon his selection, Pope John Paul II wowed the crowd at St. Peter's Square by addressing them in fluent Italian.

Apparently, popesquatters have to be multilingual too. My weblog has been overrun by discussions in Polish. I don't know what they are saying, but I've been told that it's bad. I can handle that, as long as you lay off my matka.

I've created this weblog entry as a place to hold all of the comments in languages I do not understand (i.e. everything but English and a little Esperanto).

To my new friends in Poland, I've looked over a phrasebook to cross the language barrier as best I can:

Kocham cie. Kochasz mnie? Sto lat niech zyje nam!

If someone could translate "buy my books" into Polish, I would appreciate it.

Update: kup moje ksiazki!

Domains · 2005/04/20 · 253 COMMENTS · Link

Habemus Domini!

"A spokesperson for the US Conference of Bishops declined to speculate on whether the Vatican would ask Cadenhead to transfer ownership of BenedictXVI.com and the other potential papal name addresses he controls. Messages left with the Vatican's embassy in Washington were not returned."

When I registered six domain names at the end of a 14-hour writing day earlier this month, I didn't realize that my actions would reach all the way up to the Vatican. I figured that some idiot was going to do it, so the idiot might as well be me.

I've received an offer from a gambling site. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea, ecclesiastically speaking, but I should contact Bill Bennett to make sure.

Thinking out loud, I'm trying to figure out what I might ask for, should Pope Benedict's people get with my people (a hastily convened College of Cardinals that includes my grandmother Rita and my in-laws, fellow Catholics whose commitment to our faith was demonstrated by their nine children).

Here are some things I would like. Please do not call them demands:

• I. Three days, two nights at the Vatican hotel they built for the conclave.
• II. One of those hats.
• III. Complete absolution, no questions asked, for the third week of March 1987.
• IV. A back-cover blurb from the Pope for the next edition of Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition. But only if he uses the book to create his own weblog.
• V. World peace.

Domains · 2005/04/20 · 53 COMMENTS · Link

A Pope is a Pope is a Pope

The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church will lock themselves into the Sistine Chapel in around 15 minutes and stay there until they've chosen a new pope.

When a candidate receives at least 77 votes, a two-thirds majority of cardinals, he'll be asked, "do you accept your canonical election as supreme pontiff?" If he replies "accepto," he becomes the pope and can immediately choose a new name.

As I understand the process, he can select anything -- Pope P. Diddy I, Pope Atrios I, and Pope Jurassic Park IV are not out of the question -- or simply keep his own first name. But for 15 centuries the new pope, like rappers, bloggers, and actors, has adopted a nom de pontiff.

In most cases, the name is chosen to give props to a past pope, as John Paul II did for John Paul I.

My money's on one of these six names:

• Benedict XVI
• Clement XV
• Innocent XIV
• Leo XIV
• Paul VII
• Pius XIII

I mean this literally. I registered all six of these as dot-com domain names earlier this month, which I feared was tacky -- to say nothing of soul-imperiling -- until I read about the vacant papal see stamp. Clearly I'm not the only baptized Catholic who gets geeked about this process.

I don't think there's any speculative potential in these domains, but I couldn't resist the chance to have some skin in the game. Someone else already has JohnPaulIII.Com and JohnXXIV.Com, but otherwise I put a chip down on every name of the past three centuries.

A Hungarian web site caught me doing this, accusing me of legöbb spekuláns a pápa.

I don't expect we'll get another John Paul -- the Italian saying "always follow a fat pope with a skinny pope" refers to cardinals' desire not to go too far in one direction. But I'm concerned about John.

The Irish betting site Paddy Power has Benedict as a 3-to-1 favorite, trailed by John Paul at 4-to-1, Pius at 6-to-1, and Peter at 8-to-1.

The last choice would lend itself to rapturous excitement among end-times believers -- there's a long belief that the last pope will call himself Peter II.

Update: A few news reports suggest that I might have popesquatted BenedictXVI.Com to sell it to pornographers. For the love of God, people, that's not going to happen. I will be running any plans I have for this domain by my own Catholic doctrinal enforcer, my never-miss-a-Sunday grandmother Rita.

Update to the Update: Florida Man Secured BenedictXVI.com Weeks Ago, Washington Post

Update III: Habemus Domini!

Domains · 2005/04/18 · 607 COMMENTS · Link

Brian Buck, 1971-2005

For the last several years, I've read Brian Buck's weblog and marvelled at the energy and optimism he mustered during a fight with osteosarcoma that began nearly five years ago.

Buck died April 7 at age 33.

His whole site's worth a read, but here are a few of my favorite entries:

• Aug. 5, 2004: "I'm a sucker for that Dylan-esque sound with the sky high organs and the lyrics about driving and dreaming about some girl."
• Jan. 9, 2004: "I took this photo about an hour after the fog had lifted from the valley."
• Jan. 8, 2004: "This was one of those beautiful April snowstorms."
• Feb. 23, 2003: "I am still learning the language of mourning."
• Sept. 18, 2002: "It is scary, some might say stupid, to let it all hang out and tell the world about your vulnerabilities."
• June 10, 2002: "What I was really fighting for was a return to normalcy."

He wrote often about his illness, both in personal and pragmatic terms. Advice from a January 22, 2003 entry in particular ought to be shared, as people spread this sad news:

Dave: "$400 a month -- I asked what it would cost if I didn't have insurance. $400 per month. And that's just one drug."

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Chemotherapy can cost up to, and sometimes even over, $25,000 a week.

If you don't have good private health insurance, you are not going to be seen by anyone but the complete bottom of the barrel MDs. And this won't be at a nice facility, it will be at the shitty hospital in town, you know, the one on the 5 o'clock news where people die all the time of simple, treatable diseases like bronchitis.

My friend's husband died of lymphoma because the crappy HMO he was being "treated" in completly screwed up. They claimed to not know what was wrong with him. When he finally paid out of his own pocket to see a doctor at Sloan Kettering, he was Stage IV, it was too late, and he died.

Then factor in you are not working. If you do not have disability pay, forget about getting paid for a long, long time.

If you are the main earner in the house, count on being financially ruined without a disability policy. Count on cutting corners on your treatment since you don't have any more money and are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

This is scary as hell! Trust me, I was a figure of health before I was diagnosed with bone cancer: never got sick, had a decent weight, exercised semi-regularly, ate healthy, and I was only 29 years old in the prime of my life. And like Dave, before any of this happened to me, I was completely clueless.

Fact is, cancer and most diseases do not discriminate. Rich, poor, black, white, fat, skinny, healthy, sickly -- it does not matter and it could happen to anybody, anytime.

It was never my intention to get cancer. But here I am. And so far I have been extremely lucky to have excellent health and disability coverage. I am 100 percent sure that I would be dead already if I had worse insurance.

If you don't believe me, and want to research this further, begin reading with this Google search. It will open your eyes.

2005/04/17 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

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