for 13 August 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

I have a word for you.
Actually, two words:
conceptual art. It's
expensive, it's impressive,
and there's no there there.
Plant a field of wheat. Think
about it. Harvest it. Repeat.
It's art. And you don't even
get to keep the wheat.

It's been there for a decade
or so, but nobody's tapped
the e-geek market to fund it.
Even Billy the G buys
reproduction rights to
things. For this, there are
no reproduction rights. It
happens, then it's a memory.
It's the future, baby. My
people will call your people.

Alan Kornheiser

<askornheiser@prodigy.net>

The problem with conceptual
art, from a marketing
perspective at least, is that
it has little nostalgic or
ironic value. As such, I
think it would be a hard sell
even to those who are looking
to divest themselves of their
money in the most efficient
manner. This is why most
conceptual artists who have
attempted to sell their art
via eBay — i.e., those
selling their souls or cans
of Coke or any other kind of
meta-transaction — haven't
been particularly successful.
On the other hand, there are
probably some who would argue
that all the dot coms with no
profits, scant revenues, and
11-digit market caps are the
greatest pieces of conceptual
art ever perpetrated.

Huck

You sound an awful (!) lot
like Ian Shoales.

Hmm.

Danny
<dannybaptista@home.com>

I'm not sure I understand
you. Are you saying I sound
like Ian Shoales only when
he's awful?

Huck

St. Huck,

Great article on eBay! BTW,
the link at the end to your
email and the bid link are
fucked up. Check 'em out.

Wisdom
<James.Wisdom@gecapital.com>

Well, at least that gives me
a decent rationale for why
I've gotten so few bids on my
brilliant idea.

Thanks,

Huck

Another brilliant column. The
eBay craze is the logical
extension of that first and
foremost Internet craze:
porn. What adult sites did to
the way we buy make-believe
sex, eBay does to the way we
buy everything else. If a man
consumes something on the
Internet and nobody is there
to hear it, does it make a
noise?

<ftoro@mistral.co.uk>

You know, there is an adult
section of eBay, but since
you have to fork over your
credit card to access it,
I've never seen what is
actually for sale there. I
like to think Silicon Valley
turbo-bachelors like Larry
Ellison and Paul Allen are
bidding against each other
for the services of the
world's most coveted
hookers.

Huck

I read today's Hit & Run
— not my usual MO, but
I'm bored. It started out
with a piece on Woodstock '99
and, like everyone else, did
the "oh, the humanity"
routine on the seemingly
senseless rioting that
occurred on Sunday night. And
just like others, you accused
me and everyone else who was
there of being a spoiled brat
with nothing better to do
than act out the aggression
of DMX and Korn because I
have no original thoughts.

Perhaps I am spoiled into
thinking that forbidding any
outside eating or drinking
items and then charging $4
for a 16-ounce bottle of
water and $12 for a horrible
veggie burrito and $15 for
something resembling food is
nothing more than extortion.
We were told we would have
showers and that security
would keep out gate-crashers,
all of which proved to be
lies. And about the fires
— let's not forget it was
an antiviolence group that
handed out the candles that
ultimately fueled the fires.

Say what you want about the
people involved in the
looting and rioting, but as
far as I'm concerned, I hope
the promoters and Ogden
Entertainment (who fixed the
prices on food) lost money
— a lot of money — on
this ordeal.

Robert Lee
<RLee@t-c-n.com>

Well, I was making a joke
about all of the moaning and
groaning adults are doing
about today's kids. But if
your letter is any
indication, you really are a
bunch of pampered little
twerps.

Your pal,

Bartel

Boy, that really fucking
blew.

I've only been reading for a
week (found a link at the now
mysteriously defunct Mr. Show
site) and I enjoyed your last
Hit and Run, but today's sucked
cat balls.

No doubt by now you are
thinking of inane "jokes"
about my nick and my grammar,
but that doesn't really
bother me. What bothers me is
that you felt the necessity
to bore us with bullshit
about that fucking wannabe
Woodstock (I don't even
remember what was in the
fucking middle) and that crap
about the America Online
book. The funny thing is,
that book will probably make
it to the top of the fucking
charts because Americans are
stupid and buy cheap, gimmicky
things to amuse themselves.

Why don't you do a fucking
useful rant, like on how
television is the mind killer
(as opposed to fear), how
corporate America kills this
country, or how stupid people
get ahead in life while I eke
out my miserable existence.

I haven't bothered with the
archives yet, so if someone
has done a rant on the past,
maybe I'll dig for it.

I'd like your columns if I
found them funny, but making
light of stupid people's
actions just seems like
you're trying for a laugh.

Have a nice fucking day,

senornacho
<senornacho@geocities.com>

Hey, why don't you write a
really useful rant for us on
one of those fascinating,
timely subjects you just
suggested? Someone with your
grasp of the important events
and issues shaping our world
today, and with your writing
talent, really should do more
than get by. You should be
swimming in money from
high-profile, freelance-
writing gigs, man! Get on the
ball!

Just, uh, be sure not to
forget that self-addressed
stamped envelope, OK?

Supportively,

Sucksters

Sucksters,

My first-ever visit to your
page uncovered both your
write-up on Woodstock '99 and
its link to Holly Martin's
brilliant "It Takes a Village
of the Damned" from 18 May
1999. I'm 28, and every time I
hear the term Generation X, I
want to both puke and punch a
baby-boomer media-hack in the
fat, white gut.

Think about those
impressionable young (-er
than me) kids who hear all
the bad things about their
generation in the
thoughtless, baby-boomer
controlled media and don't
know any better than to
believe it! Then stuff
100,000 of them into a hot
cinder of a field for three
days of terrible music and
charge them $10 a pop for a
veggie burrito. Gosh, who
would've thought there'd be
trouble?

You guys should save up your
dimes and buy CBS or
something so this kind of
reporting can get the wider
audience it deserves.

Anyway, nice damn job.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

AllenRendel
<arendel@robi.org>

Poor babies — they had no
choice but to shove random
women into the port-a-potties
and molest them!

The Shit

"Gary's Trajectory," A Wanderer in the Perfect City, Lawrence Weschler, Hungry Mind Press, 1998 The Parallax View, Alan J. Pakula, Paramount Pictures DVD, 1974 Rogues to Riches: The Trouble with Wall Street, Murray Teigh Bloom, Putnam,1971 Actual Air, David Berman, Open City Books, 1999 Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Peter Hall and Michael Bierut, editors, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998 Canary-wing parrots, Dolores Street, San Francisco Super Shitty to the Max, Hellacopters, Man's Ruin Records, 1998 Request magazine (any issue after June 1999) On the Road to Vietnam, Bob Hope, Cadet 4046 vinyl, 1964 The Flying Ballerina, Drums and Tuba, TEC Tones, 1998 Dino, Nick Tosches, Delta Alpha Publishing, 1999 The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Big Red soda