Paul Smalera

So, you're in New York City, you're walking to work, thinking, "Damnit, I am so sick of that secretary who always answers the phone in the exact same fake chipper monotonous voice, I am just gonna…", but ho, what's this on the sidewalk? A crisp new Benjamin Franklin!  

Friend, call out of work today, before you do harm to yourself or others, and heed my advice for a manifestly decent day of eating, seeing and doing. $100 A Day Winners - Gridskipper

That is all. 

This is funny, in a tragic sort of way. I exert much energy daily to get my name and ideas in front of editors who might be interested in taking a chance on me and allowing me to write for them. This is hard. I only recently remembered that I have been rejected before. In college, for about two months, I had a weekly column in the independent student paper The Hatchet. (Get it? George Washington? Cherry Tree? Hatchet? Haw Haw. But seriously it wasn’t an awful paper.)

My problem, in writing this column, was that I was living far off campus, taking a full courseload, working almost full time (at a real job in web development, not one where I could study), and if I recall, moving to a new apartment. Full plate, anyone? While I tried my best to creative, I never gave myself the chance to be alone with my ideas. I just banged em out and hit send.

And, if I may be so indelicate, I never really had the support of the staff (being an outside commuter who knew no one and was never in the office.) That said, they gave me a shot, but just didn’t like what I had to say; they’re not to blame. After 3 or 4 tongue in cheek columns like the one below, I wrote 800 words (I still remember) about a guy named Ron Howard (not Opie), a GW administrator who had recently died. He was a really amazing guy who very few students knew about, since his role was working with alumni. Unfortunately, the remembrance didn’t go so well– the column was dropped, and it never ran. Oh well. Life goes on. Still, picking up that first issue, opening to page two and seeing my name and headshot–what a rush.

Column - Cola Wars come to campus - Opinions (September 18, 2000)

by Paul Smalera

When will Coca-Cola’s tyranny over GW end? All I see these days is the red cup glaring like a communist banner. There seems to be some revisionist history at work: a year ago, it was the faux-iced over Pepsi cup - albeit in a cooler blue - that dominated the GW landscape. Yet today, it seems that Pepsi cup never existed. I wonder if there are any photos of Pepsi cup-wielding students in the administration’s glossy publications. Have they been airbrushed to reflect our school’s new contract?

Don’t get me wrong; I think the Coke-Pepsi battles were great. Every candidate had to declare whether they were pro-Coke or anti-Coke. Some Student Association candidates ran their entire campaigns on the theme (and if elected, I promise to bomb Pepsi back into the Stone Age), but now that the war is over, what do we do?

If this were post-WWII America, the answer would be easy: build houses and breed like rabbits. But we are an urban college - no room for houses. And I doubt anyone wants to breed like rabbits around here, which is a good thing. Instead, we worry about other things like education and quality of life. Though cola still weighs heavily on my mind.

To keep our future SA candidates busy, I challenge them to run on a pro-Pepsi platform in the coming election. You know the SA wonks are already gearing up for the next one even though it’s in April; they live for this stuff.

Maybe it’s unrealistic to think GW will tear up its Coke contract after one year, but there is good reason to do so. Why not spend some cash on our own soda fountains and have Coke and Pepsi next to each other? Safeway sells Coke and Pepsi, and sometimes RC Cola, too! So why can’t the MC Store - or whatever they call it this week - sell Coke and Pepsi, too? It’s a buyer’s market, people!

Besides, can you imagine the Zen-like oneness that will follow from seeing the red and blue Coke and Pepsi logos side by side? It would be like seeing the sun and moon in the same sky every day! Perhaps in the era of two-party systems, of Democrats and Republicans, of Macs and PCs, of Coke and Pepsi, we also need a third party, to round out the choices. Maybe we need the Green Party, Linux, and yes, maybe we even need Royal Crown Cola.

Is there anything wrong with a little choice in our beverage selections? Truth be told, I usually head over to Au Bon Pain and buy an Orangina or an iced tea. I don’t even really like soda. But if I do decide on an icy, carbonated beverage, is it so wrong for me to walk to a soda fountain and pick the soft drink I prefer? I think not!

I wonder, too, what GW gains from signing one contract with a specific distributor rather than purchasing any brand it chooses at any time? Who is really benefiting from this arrangement? Surely not the students whose choices are limited by the decision to stock only one brand.

The cola companies and distributors are the ones who benefit. But no longer will we let them dictate our drink of choice. Let�s show them that we will drink whatever we damn well please and we will drink it wherever we want. Coke drinkers next to Pepsi drinkers next to RC Cola drinkers, all singing a happy song: Cola �round the world, baby, cola where I want to. Throw Surge in there, too - what the hell, I’m feeling generous.

Forget the Pepsi challenge I issued to any SA candidate this spring. Here’s a better idea: the unified cola ticket. Lets have a little more cola unity and a little less cola divisiveness.

This is a piece that was intended for Slate, in response to Sarah Hepola’s piece, linked below. After sitting on it for too long, it was no longer timely enough to pitch (nor, let’s face it, would it likely be accepted) so I’m posting it here. Enjoy.

Why even though I’m late to the party, I’m starting a blog. Again.

“You’re starting a blog? A blog? Now? Why now?” That’s what I hear in my head when I think about starting a blog in 2006. It feels to me something more like deciding to start a car manufacturing company, or a new bank, from scratch. Why bother? The big guns are doing the job better than I ever will, with better writing and expertly written coverage of the topics I’m interested in. And I don’t consider myself competition– more like a fly on a rhinocerous.

The blog world is not what is was in 2000, or even 2003. It’s cliche but truthful to say that things move fast online, and most of today’s popular blogs are mature websites with established writers at their helms. The cutting edge days of blogging are officially over when the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post all have bloggers on the front pages of their websites.

I should clarify what I mean by blog. If I wanted to write an online journal and tell all my friends what I did today, and how rad the new Dresden Dolls album is, and how Taylor totally got into a fight with his girlfriend right in front of everyone at the arcade, well, look. That may be a blog, but it’s not the kind of blog I’m talking about. I’m talking about blogs that are carefully written, are edited or at least self-edited and have some central conceit to them. Also, I mean blogs that are read by people who are interested in the topic without necessarily knowing, dating, previously dating, going to school with or working at the Dairy Queen with the author(s) of the blog.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of blogs that fit my criteria, and they are heavily trafficked and updated daily. These blogs have thousands of readers. make a profit on advertising, bring muscle to political causes, shine lights on trees that the media can’t see for the forest. I don’t want to be the next Kos, the followup to Talking Points Memo, or the New Wonkette.
But I do want to write, in depth, about different topics that hold my interest. And for a young writer starting out, as I have recently learned, there is no better arena to be heard in than the blogosphere.

The goals for my blog should explain why I feel the need to start one. Like Sarah Hepola, who wrote the Slate essay that inspires this one, I am a freelance writer, except I have zero bylines to my credit. That’s right, I’m “just starting out.” I know, it’s precious.

For readers who are wondering how a writer without any credits to his name gets one, the answer is something like getting to Carnegie Hall, whatever that is (kidding): practice. Every day, knowing that the food reviews, music writing and other story ideas I’m working on will probably never be published, I pick up the pen (or sit at the keyboard) and write drafts. Then, I write pitches, trying to sell my ideas to editors. Although I’ve only been at it for for a few months, I’ve come up with a few pieces that I love, that I would pay to have published.

If I were an editor, I ask myself, would I go with the known quantity, or the unknown? Would I trust that the undiscovered band an unknown writer is pitching 800 words to me about is really that great, if I have no idea what his other tastes are? Would I listen to a restaurant review from a freelancer with whom I’ve never eaten lunch? While the pessimist in me wants to answer all these questions in the negative, a solid maybe is actually closer to the truth. Editors seek out and publish new writers all the time, but things really have to line up right for that to happen; it takes more than a hunch.

Maybe the most important factor in an editor’s decsion to offer a new writer a chance to write a story for him or her is having at least a guess at what the finished product will look like. For writers with articles to their credit, it’s easy to see that they have what it takes. For me though, right now, the best bet is to keep running this blog.

So what if every news media outlet in the tri-state area has already covered the re-opening of the Shake Shack, a new but already institutionalized part of any New York City eater’s pantheon of burger joints? [Note: This essay has been in cold-storage, written before the Shack's recent troubles.]

When I write about it at my blog, and file it under food reviews, I’ll write it as if The New York Times itself called me and asked if could cover for Frank Bruni this week.

When I put down a thousand words about the amazing band I’ve seen twice now, the one that sounds like James Brown, Franz Ferdinand and Willie Nelson got thrown into a remix machine, it won’t matter that they aren’t signed to a major label, or any label at all.

What will matter is if I do a good job writing the story, and if eventually, I can point to this blog, much like a writer can point to their clips folder, to convince an editor that I am capable of writing the story they need today.

I once had a blog, from July 2003 to February 2004. I haven’t looked at the archives since then, but I remember calling it the Wealthy Industrialist’s Quarterly once I tired of the original name, Hipster Cowgirls. And I used it for anything, like an online corkboard. I tacked up excerpts of short stories, observations about my life in Washington, DC, reviews of movies, and music and bands.

I had categories called beauty, politic and historical, and I have no idea what they contain, and no desire to poke through the old pages, saved on my laptop, to find out. Perhaps the reason so many people start, and then stop blogging isn’t writing too much, or writing merely to post and keep your blogdex ranking high, but not being sure what to write about in the first place.

I know what I want this blog to be. Let’s see what happens, let’s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

“The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel [blog?], without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” - Henry James

Here are some fun facts about August 16th.

• The New York Yankees broke ground on their new stadium, 2006.
• Kathie Lee Gifford announces to Regis and the world her retirement from Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, to surely pursue her justly deserved international fame and stardom, 2000.
• Kathie Lee, Frank Gifford, Madonna, Charles Bukowski, Robert Culp and Menachim Begin, in embryo form, all learn of my impending birth, and its predetermined date of August 16th. They adjust their fetal development accordingly, so that in the future, they may share my birthday, (various).
• Elvis Presley, learning of my impending arrival, chooses August 16th to hemorrhage on the toilet and die, knowing the world is only big enough for one of us to exist at once, 1977.
• Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ Manager, fires Pete Best, their first drummer, expecting to replace him with me, only to learn that I have not yet been born, 1963.
• Taco Shack, formerly a taco shack providing tasty and nutritious pan-Mexcian food on Avenue B, is set to re-open in storefront on 3rd street, around the corner, 2006

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