The calm before the (shit)storm

I sit here a little frightened, having just got off the phone with a major newswire service. They're going to run a story about Poop Culture [1] in the next couple days, they tell me -- a 150-word announcement going directly to over eight hundred media outlets about who I am, what the book is about, and how they can contact me/interview me/make me famous. Yesterday I was invited to speak at a 500-person auditorium at a university in Baltimore in late April. In early May, I'm going to have an official Poop Culture release party here in Brooklyn, and a week after that, I'm going to do a thing in a theater in Philly with a comedian friend of mine.

These are rumblings that portend bigger things. I've read enough stories on this site to know how it works: I feel things churning, the nervous shifting, the sudden stabs of warning, but I'll think that I can handle it; and then suddenly my book will explode all over the literary scene.

Poop Culture comes out in about three weeks. You can preorder it on Amazon now [2], or you can wait to find it at a store near you (assuming there's an indie bookstore or a Barnes and Noble "Superstore," whatever that means, near you -- regular B&N's aren't carrying it. Yet.). Advance copies will be going out to reviewers soon, and one day in the very near future a box will arrive and I'll finally hold in my hand the product of years' worth of exertion and breath in what I sure hope will be only that new book smell and nothing else along with it.

Some key dates:

April 15 (?). Poop Culture hits the stores.
April 30. I speak at the Brown Center (seriously!) at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Much more info to come.
May 8. Poop Culture release party at Galapagos in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Featuring comedians, musicians, short films, and yours truly! Confirmed performers include Bobby Tisdale [3], Gabe and Jenny [4], Stuckey and Murray [5], and Gregg Gethard [6], with more to come.
May 19 (?). A night of poop culture and poop humor in Philly, with Gregg Gethard and friends.

More to come? I hope so.

Finally, I've posted the video from my lecture at the University of Iowa a few weeks ago. Bad lighting, not the best recording, a few technical difficulties, and sometimes it's hard to read the projection there on Youtube. But if you're interested in my thoughts on poop and the mass media, here they are.

Part I:

Part II:

All the events I listed above, by the way, will be open to the public -- I encourage all PoopReporters to come. I'm kinda freaked out by everything that is suddenly happening, so it will be nice for me if I can meet some familiar folks along the way. Also, if you know people at any universities or bookstores or anywhere else that might enjoy a lecture on the intellectual aspects of poop humor, start working the phones!