Originally published in December of 2003 in Midnight Mind Number Six.
A NOTE ON MIDNIGHT MIND MAGAZINE GROWING AS A BUSINESS:
I have a confession to make — I am a horrible businessman. The only subject I fared worse in than math in high school was my business administration class taught by a lazy and funny teacher named Mr. Nedervelt. “Ned”, as we all called him, instructed a course in business administration that was meant to be a workshop in learning the downfalls and successes of running your own business. This was to be accomplished by a series of worksheets based on a business plan that you established early in the semester.
My plan was for a grand pub-like bar called The Bomb Shelter, that would serve my favorite foods, favorite drinks, show my favorite shows and movies on the tvs and basically substituted any need for a home. Ned, rightly so, saw this as a thinly veiled place for my friends to hang out and thought the basketball court as a waste of space and suggested that the indoor skateboard ramp would drive away the type of customers who could keep the place in business.
He was right, but I still stand by the idea that you shouldn’t spend time in a place where your friends couldn’t hang out, regardless of P&L statements and the like.
And while this would seem an obvious indication that I should not go into business, this has never stopped me. I started my first business, Left Field Cards & Comics, before I was able to drive. This business would have made money as there was tremendous money to be made in cardboard squares with pictures of baseball players on them, had I not wanted to keep the best cards for myself. I saw this as a sound investment until I went to sell my collection at a card shop that had recently, due to the bottoming out of baseball cards, become a jewelry shop.
My second business was a DJ service that myself and a friend started in high school. The idea here was to make enough money to be able to buy a cool car — perhaps a late 60s Mustang fastback. Again, if it weren’t for the fact that we had to buy hundreds of CDs that we hated, it is possible we would have made money.
And while this plan, and many other busted plans of great wealth before it, may lead one to believe I would shy away from being in business with myself, a seemingly horrible business mind, it has only seemed to make me more determined. I have fought life in the “real world” of career paths — only seeing short stints at full time jobs as a form of corporate sponsorship for whatever project I am currently working on: An advertising agency paid for the production of the first three issues of this magazine, and donated many supplies (though I doubt it knows it) to the cause.
This seems to be how the creative world works — take a job, tolerate the job, work outside of the job as your form of living.
A NOTE ABOUT THE 2003 TOUR: I used to joke, and it became something of a motto around Midnight Mind Magazine, that this was all to keep from falling asleep in front of the tv at night. This implied Midnight Mind was simply a hobby. It isn’t, of course. It has become a life. An ex-girlfriend once told me I was more than the magazine I put out. I am starting to think it is the other way around.
This issue comes hot on the heels of our first national tour, THE AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS tour. It was smelly, long, tiring, and generally the best time of my life. We hit 10 cities in 5 weeks, read with tons of writers, met countless others, drank beer, stopped at Taco Bell at least ten times, spent around $400 in gas and had the pleasure of sleeping in a bed with a dog named Bailey, a questionable huge yellow lab with the misguided idea he is a lap dog.
This tour was made possible in what otherwise might have been seen as a bad business expense — the purchase of a 1970 camper that we quickly converted into a mobile lounge — again, it seemed, I was creating a place for my friends to hang out.
The other and completely unrelated but equally seemingly dumb business move was, as we got bigger and bigger, to stick to our original plan. No color spreads, nothing resembling fluff, just good writing — gallons of it. So much writing that you might be tricked into thinking a magazine is actually something that you read, not flip through while on the john like so many other publications out there.
This was a grand and seemingly impossible idea. Certainly a magazine like this cannot last in the mainstream. It will remain small. It will not thrive. It will not maintain. But, one thing we here at this magazine possess, to crib a phrase from the late great Steve Prefontaine, is the ability to endure more setbacks and hardship that anyone else we know. We will carry on. We will continue. We will not fade like stain.
At an event last April in Quimbys, in Chicago, along with Clamor magazine and Venus Zine, we were asked what the future holds for the magazine, and aside from the plans of the national tour, the question was not an easy one to answer. I constantly battle with the fact that we could be more than we are if we gave a little bit of our original vision up. We could print on cheaper paper and make the magazine staple bound and not so book-like. This would certainly help us print more and get bigger and drop the cover cost, which we know the reader would enjoy. But what would this do to Midnight Mind Magazine in the long range — the marathon if you will? It would destroy what we wanted, and, again, why work on something you won’t be happy with in the end?
This issue then, follows the form of our previous issues, as will the next and the one after that. If, for some reason, we are offered a large sum of money or a house in the Hamptons to change the magazine, we might reconsider. After all, the Hamptons are beautiful. But, generally we are staying the course. And this has helped us. We have grown.
A NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE SPECIFICALLY: For the first time since this magazine’s inception, we have had a guest editor. Ben Sevier, a wonderful and modest fellow making his way up through the established publishing ranks got down to business and edited the fiction section of this magazine — OUTERBOROUGHS. And it is brilliant and we thank him for it. He is a beautiful man although he would blush and continue to eat his Subway sandwich w/o a word if you were to say this to him. It is shocking to find out he is originally from California.
The OUTERBOROUGHS section (which was initially intended to be a book separate from Midnight Mind until things shifted and suddenly it became clear that the manuscript would make a great issue of Midnight Mind Magazine) is two years in the making. We hope you like it.
And, in this issue, we sharpened our people skills and added interviews. For the first time as editor, I put pen to paper and sucked it in and did some interviews for the magazine.
A NOTE ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: Forget the photo above. You never saw it. That is all we will comment about it.
A NOTE ABOUT THE MAGNUM PI PIECE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THIS ISSUE: We are happy to have it. We held it for over a year, always thinking we wanted to use it somewhere. But where? SO — we made space for it. Because it is that interesting, damn it. It is. We love it. We just hope Rick doesn’t get too mad at us. We like Rick.
A NOTE ABOUT THESE NOTES: They were intended to be witty and insightful. Please disregard them.
