You may recognize The Captain's Log as the little news items on the front page that I never, ever update. Well, it's time that changed. With the book coming out in the spring, I'm going to use this feature more often to keep you up to date and excited about all the things that (I hope) will happen as PoopReport gets slightly famouser -- interviews I'm conducting, schwag I'm creating, and every other way I slowly sell out this site in order to make a few bucks. I'm not writing this to stroke my own ego, but rather to make sure that all you regulars know what's happening as things begin to get really interesting. Oh, and to stroke my own ego.
So let's start with some news about the book. Offically titled Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product, it is slated to hit the stores April, 2007. According to Adam, my editor at Feral House, the distributor will begin pimping it in the next month or two. It will be around 280 pages, a 6x9 trade paperback, and will retail for $15.95. A bargain!
Perhaps most spectacularly, the foreword is written by an actual celebrity: Paul Provenza, the actor and comedian who directed The Aristocrats. Why him? Because his next movie is one near and dear to every PoopReporter's heart: an adaptation of the famous kids' book Everybody Poops.
In Journal of Ass Production news: I placed the order with the printer yesterday. As I mentioned on my stupid little MySpace blog, it's always terrifying to plunk down multiple hundreds of dollars, no matter what it's for. Even though I have confidence that I'll sell enough to earn back my investment -- plus a couple hundred more that I can invest back in the site and/or use to buy crack whores -- it's still a lot of money. But it's a great piece of reading -- you should buy one.
"Crack whores," by the way, is a pun.
In not-Dave news: Someone from SpikeTV contacted The Big Wiper with some questions about his Death of Elvis article for a quiz show they're doing. Hopefully he'll get credit when the show goes on the air.
Finally: I did an interview last week with Angie's List Magazine, circulation 500,000 (or so they tell me). The reporter and I spent an hour talking about toilets -- about their history, about their future, and about their true purpose. This is one of the main points of the book: that the toilet was created in the 1700s and 1800s not as a tool for sanitation, but, as my research has shown, as a means for wealthy Victorians to separate themselves from the stinking masses. (I'll talk more about this in a future Captain's Log.) Anyway, I must have impressed her -- she told me they're sending out a photographer to take a picture of me for the article! She asked me for ideas as to where we might take the picture; I suggested the CBGBs bathroom. We may also do me sitting on a toilet on the lawn in the middle of Central Park. Anybody have any other ideas?