for 24 January 2001. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Dear Polly,

Assuming that you heard of plastic.com from a news release, were you angry that Joey didn't invite you along — that you aren't "one of the smartest"?

Sam Sachdeva
<crumb@ix.netcom.com>

Dear Sam,

My older sister was valedictorian of her class in high school, and I had a teacher who liked to say that between me, my older sister, and my older brother, my older brother was clearly the smartest. My father was a professor of Economics, and he used to tell us my mom was a lot smarter than him. So, um, I'm pretty comfortable with not being one of the smartest. It was not my job, in my family, to be smart. It was my job to be funny, and fun, and easy-going.

Which is why I'm such a bitter jerk.

That makes no sense. But you know, it was never my job to make sense.

Polly

Dear Polly,

Rarely do I get one (much less two) references in Filler that send me down the dewy paths of memory lane, but you accomplished it this week. As much as I have tried to block it out, the profane tot featured in Filler took me back to my formative years in rural Alabama while also recalling an ex-girlfriend who once spent an evening high as a kite reading penthouse forum to a friend of hers while wearing false teeth. (Ih thoopht thif woulb neber haphfen do mee....) Is there a point to all this? Sadly, no. But thanks for making me recall not one but two really horrific times in my life!

P.S. Is Joey going to stop pimping Plastic on Suck anytime soon?

Your pal,

Gabriel Shelnutt
<gabrielsloan@hotmail.com>

Your exgirlfriend sounds great. Why did you two break up again? I can't remember.

Joey IS a pimp. Why else do you think he owns that baby blue tuxedo?

Polly

Lauded Lady Polly,

Your article today was brilliant in its exposition of the fundamental rule of polite polity: it is boring! A great thought or two nourishes the soul and warms the heart, but too much profundity, like too many sweets, leaves ya cloyed and puking at the kerb.

Nature though, abhors having too much in one place, just as she abhors a vacuum. If a community becomes sufficiently deep for sufficiently long, some of its participants will mutate into very intelligent idiots. Soon people are debating the literary merits of 'Stick your dick in a Coke', vs 'Put your penis in a Pepsi', and balance is restored.

This can be illustrated by Suck itself. The first couple days of the week we see brilliant, profound and incisive articles on the affairs of the day. If, on Wednesday, we faced yet another article on the failure of US foreign policy, most folks would get bored and wander off. Instead we have your demi-ego, a bong, a giant rabbit, and a a weeks' dose of bitterness. By assenting to idiocy, you redeem not only yourself, but those about you who dare not assume the role themselves.

I could elucidate further, but overwhelmed by my own genius, my thoughts turn to what work of scatology I can perform today. Perhaps a photo spread for my new Coke campaign...

James Mitchell
<jmitchel@jmitchel.com>

Ah yes. Polly: She's stupid, so you don't have to be.

Nine-inch blue-vein thumpers prefer Squirt.

Charismatic and dexterous, but not all that smart,

Polly

i guess i've never wondered about who ELSE is reading your writing. i went to *plastic.com* and read what some people had to say about this week's Filler. the whole thing is sort of nauseating. i'm not sure if i'll be able to read your columns anymore, and im genuinely, slightly, saddened by that. well, maybe i could still read it — but it would become an act of half-assed asceticism at that point.

how do you do it?

Joseph Kosnow
<Joseph_Kosnow@umit.maine.edu>

I know it's depressing to see that you're not the only person on the planet. I had a theory, when I was little, that maybe the whole world was around just for my benefit. You know, everyone was just "acting", and the whole deal was set up just to test me, to see if I'd make the right decisions. Would I choose the path of righteousness, or stray over to the dark side of the Force? I was raised Catholic, remember.

Imagine my disappointment when I concluded not only that the world wasn't formed and maintained for my benefit, but that I wasn't the only one who'd had this notion. In fact, the vast majority of people had had it at one point or another.

Since then I've been writing from my perspective and assuming that everyone shares it. When I realize the extent to which everyone shares it, it's pretty nauseating, and I'm slightly saddened by it. Then, eventually, I get over it. You will, too. After all, what act isn't somewhat half-assed, in this world, when you think about it?

See, you agree with that, don't you? You are not alone.

Sad, isn't it?

I guess you can choose to stop reading Filler, since the other people who read Filler aren't nearly as special as you would like to think you are, but then, this kind of thinking can really make you isolated and alienated and disconnected from the world on principle. Principles that keep you in your superior bubble can't be good principles, can they? I mean, look what they did to me.

Unprincipled and inferior, but no longer nauseated,

Polly

Ah Polly,

I started reading your columns back in '97 and I still find you the most relevant. You speak in the same voice I do. It's so Good to hear. Keep it alive. Remember, it takes a pierced tongue and a sweet heart...

Thanks,

Brad Beacom
<jesterpb@speakeasy.net>

The most relevant? Of the ass monkeys?

I speak in the same voice as you do, huh? Well, then I'm even less original than I thought. I feel sick...

You're right about one thing, though. It does take a sweetheart. One with a firm ass who'll cook my hamburger medium well and have it ready in time to watch the Golden Globes.

Ass monkey, that funky monkey,

Polly

40th Street —

You missed two of the best examples of writer-as-superhero thus far, and the two most successful. The box office failure of Naked Lunch notwithstanding, William S. Burroughs completely solidified his position as the real-life Doctor Strange, and managed to get on-screen with Christian Slater to prove it. In addition, Hunter S. Thompson as Captain Excess has been a consistently hot seller, though I have no idea what the box-office was on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (with the oddly-yet-compellingly cast Johnny Depp). These two worthies sell at least as well as the Incredible Hulk, and no one's killed him off yet.

Yrs,

Michael Treece
<nonwhiz@earthlink.net>

Hi, Mike.

You know, I had some complex argument all worked out why Thompson didn't qualify, but I'll be damned if I can remember it now. Depp, Murray and a cartoon by Trudeau is a better start down the road to cultural iconhood than almost anyone could ask for, not to mention the first-person implications of gonzo journalism. I wonder if the stomping by the Hell's Angels will one day be re-worked into a secret origin?

Best,

40th Street Black

Great piece... Now write an equally compelling denouncement of the ubiquitous use of narration in movies these days. It's like all screen writers have forgotten how to plunge the audience into the heart of a drama without painfully delivering a "history-up-to-this-point" exposition, and without jarring a popcorn-engrossed audience with the voice of omniscience at all the wrong moments. American Beauty took the gold for just such a frying-pan-to-the-head model of epic storytelling. Yeck with a guttural extended "ck" is my scientific analysis of that tired mode. I actually enjoyed the mainstream Cast Away simply because I didn't have to hear the watered down lessons learned by some in-the-ether protagonist. Believe me, there's got to be like a 75% narration rate in movies these days. It's even worse in films like Fight Club which employed odd cuts and jarring angles to convey the psychological state and then peppered it with Edward Norton's retrospective commentary throughout. Now I confuse it with Keeping The Faith. Please, I'd even watch The Phantom Of Liberty every night for a month straight if just one decent media rag like yours would stand up and assail this affront to the magic of filmmaking.

Best,

Lindsay Howerton
<lindsay@cstone.net>

Hi, Lindsay.

I'll give it a shot; that annoys me, too. I blame the influence of movie trailers.

The difference between Fight Club and Keeping the Faith is that in Fight Club, Brad Pitt's ass-kicking alpha male charisma machine was a figment of Ed Norton's imagination, while in Keeping the Faith Ben Stiller's sexy genius superstar rabbi was a figment of Stiller's agent's. Plus Keeping the Faith is the only non-Drew Barrymore movie I've seen on an airplane for three years.

40th Street Black

You mention Stephen King, but omit any reference to "In the Mouth of Madness". Surely the Sutter Cane character represents an alternate vision of King's comic-book future: that of the super-villian.

Michael X. Heyeck
<mike@itavera.com>

Hi, Mike.

Thanks for reading the piece.

You're right about King doing that. I think an interesting piece could be written on how King uses autobiographical elements in his own work. It might be particularly interesting if you agree with the argument made against his body of work, that he's written too many books instead of fine-tuning the best manuscripts. I would imagine — not having read the majority of King's books — that the conjectural versions of himself that seep into the work are often contradictory and perhaps even raw in a way that more guarded, less prolific artists tend to mask.

Best,

40th Street Black

There was one more film you forgot to mention in your article on writer as hero. The 1982 film Hammett, directed by Wim Wenders and starring Frederick Forrest as Dashiell Hammett, living out one of his novels before he became famous. It fits into the main points of your article quite well.

Respectfully yours,

Steve Gattuso
<doodles8@pacbell.net>

Hi, Steve.

That does sound perfect, thank you. I was perfectly ignorant of the film you mention. Come to think of it, Peter Falk is playing himself in the angel movies, isn't he?

Was Hammet the one that received the cable movie doomed-romance treatment a year or so ago? I have this Dermot Mulroney/D.B. Sweeney confusion thing where Chandler and Hammet are concerned.

Best,

40th Street Black

The Shit

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It, by Eugen Sandow

Bamboozled, A Spectacular New Film by Mr. Spike Lee

G. Beato's all-new Soundbitten

William Demarest, Sultan of Snarl, in The Lady Eve (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

George Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire, directed by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler

1995

Bobby Darin, Darin at the Copa (Atlantic)

Shinji-San in the floating world of indeterminate duration, by Peter Richardson

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1996, Merge)

45, by Bill Drummond

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Singing in the Rain (ASV)

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.