by Edward Champion

Thou Art Mortal

Some considerations of aging, mortality, and grief.

They drop. One by one. Not like flies. No, these vital spirits soared so high above the earth that it is tragically inconceivable when you learn that they are gone. Permanently. And as they disappear, their flesh rotting ignobly inside the cinnabar chambers of the dead and the veracity of their former vivacity powering mighty metropolises you didn’t know they constructed inside your mind, you are reminded of how increasingly invisible and vulnerable you are. You are not dead like them. Not yet at least. But you will be dead sooner than you think. You are not quite forgotten although the texts and the calls and the emails and the social invites attenuate as you become a more exclusive and less desirable prospect with age. It is harder to plant new hitches with the other mischief-makers. You know the ebullient minds are out there, but they have become lost in the insufferable noise of who’s the best. It’s not who is the best. It’s who feels and thinks the most. It’s who has the stones to be completely truthful, though gently and lovingly so. It’s who does the most solids without consideration of reciprocity. And as your truth burgeons into one of complexity and nuance as you rack up more life experience than even the most exactingly tabulating mind can track, the quest for who remains among your ilk grows harder.

You feel more disposable somehow, but more giving. More loving. More present. And you wish that this feeling had been actualized much earlier in your life, even though it was always there and it only required the secret sad ingredient of loss to bake the ironclad bonds that endure.

You wished that you could have tamed whatever solipsistic beasts had roared before they buckled out of the gate. You’ve seen how others succumbed to late age narcissism you didn’t quite possess. And now you know, as the minutes become evermore precious, that they did so because they had no other way of coping or behaving. We all delude ourselves in one way or another. Most of the time, it’s that constant navelgazing, that incessant self-interrogation and self-immolation that backfires upon you years later like some aging car incapable of passing the yearly smog check.

But the self is overrated. Nobody cares about the preening anxieties and the careening fears that keep you stirring in a cold sweat beyond midnight. Even when you express these to others in the clearest and most vulnerable and most mindful terms, they simply won’t perceive it or practice it the way you do. But that also goes for loving and giving and being present. Nobody sees the world the way you do. Maybe centuries from now, some genius will crack the social code so that there isn’t so much of a divide. That is, if the robots, who are now honing martial arts skills, don’t destroy us first.

But sometimes you get lucky and you meet a soul of limitless depth who is on a similar journey. If you’re really lucky, they stick with you for life.

But what if they don’t make it while your engine still has a good deal of mileage? What if you’re minding your own business, dipping your morning spoon into a granola bed shrouded with yogurt, and you get the text that they passed? Then what? Well, unspeakable grief for a start. And the sense that your world is becoming much smaller soon after.

Before fifty, these alerts happened every once in a while and it made you sad. But what if two people you know drop dead on the same day? That had never happened to me until yesterday. And I was ill-equipped to contend with all the sorrow and the feelings of unbearable loss that mopped up every last ounce of my usually robust and exuberant energy and that caused me to sleep for an obscene number of hours. I put up a good front, as I always do, when I entered into the world. But, oh, I was crying behind closed doors. Remembering a wonderful evening with my now dead ex, one of the first women to call me sexy and truly mean it, as the two of us fooled around to She Wants Revenge’s first album playing on repeat and watched the sun rise and talked about how awesome Emma Goldman was. And I recalled how smart and witty and beautiful she was. I remembered her full punkish splendor. Perhaps that memory will die with me. That’s the other great tragedy. So much human experience lost to time.

What’s happened with me is that I have grown angrier and less tolerant of those who eschew compassion and empathy. Of those who are conveniently selective towards those outside their myopic sphere, almost always out of spite and bitterness and almost always functioning with that supercilious streak that often walks hand in hand with stupidity.

Technology has given us the power to connect with each other, to find our fellow weirdos, and yet I feel that most people understand each other with less acumen than they did before the invention of Netscape Navigator.

It’s strange to me that the most expensive human rituals are weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs. What of everything in between? Life should be defined by more than coming of age, death, and who we decided to marry. This is stuff for the census takers, not for the celebration of life.

Human beings are more than mere insects. And the loss of someone you know is hardly on the level of a fly being swatted.

We only start to understand mortality when we’re in our last decades. Herman Melville once called mortal greatness a disease. And when even the great 19th century Bard of New York is uneasy about this state of affairs, you have to wonder on some level if you’re as crazy as Ahab to care and feel so much about the friends, family, and lovers you lose. Well, I’d rather be sick with sorrow than to feel nothing at all.

by Edward Champion

The Fleeting Horrors of Getting Robbed

I was robbed in New Orleans on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday. And while the experience has unleashed horrors, it has also reaffirmed just how strong I am.

I went on vacation to New Orleans — an attempt to celebrate my fiftieth birthday that ended in the worst way imaginable. I was robbed of my phone and my wallet. As I joked later with a congenial neighbor who asked me how my vacation went, New Orleans is somehow more of a den of criminal mayhem than even the roughest parts of Brooklyn, where I once lived when I was homeless. I have never been robbed in my seventeen years of living in New York. By contrast, when I went to the New Orleans Police Department to file a report, the officer there pointed to a thick pile of pamphlets that were on the front desk. Indeed, the only literature that the police had on the high counter in the vestibule was information on what to do after getting fleeced. Such is the admittedly impressive ubiquity of thieves in New Orleans. Shortly after it happened, when I emerged from the Airbnb desperately trying to flag someone with a phone at four in the morning, the only person who would help me was — you guessed it — another poor bastard who had just been rumbled. Given what happened to me and the inherent cruelty that lurks beneath many of those sweet-sounding Southern voices, I do not plan on setting foot in the Big Easy again. It is a hopelessly seductive city, but it is also a dangerous one populated by a sizable contingency of deep-dish long game grifters. Sloppy thugs whose efforts are designed to make you think that they’ve taken everything, but who make a lot of mistakes along the way. (I’m still baffled as to why these unremarkable “high rollers” who blow so much stolen money choose to eat at such a shitty place as McDonald’s rather than a nice restaurant. But I suppose that if you become a criminal, you often do so because you have neither taste nor imagination.) And despite the fact that I stayed largely equanimous throughout all this, the first three days after the robbery have been among the most hellish of my life. Reporting and reclaiming everything without money, credit card, or a phone required a herculean focus and drive, which are qualities that I apparently have. But, hey, on the bright side, I rode a mechanical bull for the first time in my life — the video, of course, captured by one of the two criminals — and I was surprised by how long I was able to hang on. I’m sure there’s a metaphor there for how I handled what transpired soon after.

It is frankly a miracle that I made it back to Brooklyn alive. After I got rolled, I felt humility and gratitude far more than indignation, although I did feel deeply furious once I was safely ensconced in my Brooklyn apartment. And I did end up puking my guts out the morning after I returned. Such was my nausea and anxiety. Part of what helped me stay calm — indeed, so calm that a friend who knows me very well commended me on how well I was handling this nightmare — was writing a fictitious version of what happened to me on my laptop. Writing has always helped me grapple with the unsettling truths and the unshakable pains of existence. And this experience was no exception. It was a miracle that I somehow made it onto the flight back home without an ID and that I was resourceful enough to prove my identity in an indisputable manner. But then I did have the good fortune of being a highly memorable and eccentric fellow who is not easy to forget or impersonate. All that lexical wattage in my noggin that powers the way I speak and write turned out to keep me bright and cheerful at the darkest moments. And for what it’s worth, the TSA officials at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were incredibly kind and professional and made the process smoother than I ever anticipated. (I cracked jokes to keep the process as stress-free as possible and, deploying wit as a method to stay calm and respectful, I somehow managed to crack up a stern tight-lipped TSA officer who looked as if he had not laughed in years.) In fact, the TSA part was the least of my worries. I had hoped to get back to Brooklyn as fast as possible and make more phone calls and lock as many accounts as I could. I had spent Sunday afternoon holed up in a cafe with a borrowed phone trying to cancel all the cards and report them as stolen. I had walked five miles in scorching Louisiana heat to the nearest official retailer for my cell phone provider to issue a replacement phone. There was very little I could do without my phone or my wallet. But by some miracle of foresight, I did have my laptop on me, on its last legs but an invaluable tool that allowed me to report the criminals to the authorities, contact the banks that didn’t have two-factor authentication (the criminals, of course, had changed all my passwords; I have changed each and every password with a new complex system that rivals a DNA structural chart), and abate a great deal of their avaricious rampage. They were still using one of my credit cards when I was on the phone with the bank, somehow racking up $500 charges at Target and lifting cash from any ATM that would still accept the card.

But I ended up spending twelve hours traveling home due to constant flight delays. And since I only had three dollars in my pocket (leftover from two extremely kind ladies who gave me bus fare to get to the airport), that meant that I wasn’t able to eat much during that time. An incredibly kind woman who worked at the airport gave me a big glass of water. When I asked the people at Delta if I could have a meal voucher given the delay and the fact that I had been fleeced and had nothing, this was denied. They rolled out some snack boxes to “apologize” for the delay to all passengers with a hideously and grimly hilarious corporate slogan on a placard: “Here’s a little something from us.” One of those slogans designed to reframe a colossal fuckup as a “little problem” for which they could provide “a little something” that was completely disproportionate to the wrong. You have to admire savvy marketing people for the way they manipulate our world. It truly takes a stone-cold disposition and an unwavering fealty to capitalism to lie through your teeth like that.

Given the way my stomach was rumbling and how hangry I was (but couldn’t dare express any anger, lest TSA eject me from my hard-won place in line at the airport), I asked if I could have a second box. A woman boomed, “One box for one customer! If we gave you a box, then we’d have to give everybody a box.” Under any other circumstance, I would have agreed with this. But this was hardly a level playing field. Everybody else had access to their phones and money. I didn’t. I watched all the people around me eating and drinking with an increasingly ravenous envy. I had made the mistake of believing that these people who toiled for Delta, often thanklessly, might show a sliver of compassion for a guy who had been robbed. But no. I whispered thank you, returned to my seat at the gate sullen and hungry and very much alone, with only a ragtag laptop with a twitchy display as my means of communicating with people in New York who were looking out for me and trying to work matters on their end. Shortly after observing this colloquy, an extremely kind Canadian bought me a chicken sandwich. And I’m telling you. It was the best fucking chicken sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. I remain a fervent champion of Canadian kindness. That dude did what no other American could do. (I made an effusive effort to get this guy’s name, email, and Instagram. But Canadians are often self-effacing and this very good fellow with the goofy baseball cap and that mellifluous Canadian “Eh?” abjured any effort on my end to recompense. In my case, the kind act provided a much needed salve that allowed me to stay calm for the remainder of my long journey home. I ended up reading 100 pages of a thick book about the Holocaust on the plane home. It seemed appropriate. Even in despair, I enrich myself, often with dollops of irony.)

And because I am still alive, I greatly count my blessings. Because it could have been so much worse. There was a point in which the two assailants, whom I stupidly and optimistically invited into the AirBNB that I was staying at and whom I should have sized up but somehow didn’t (even the smartest men can be easily fooled by the ribald flaunting of the feminine form), looked into a spare capacious closet. And I now understand with a certain chill in my spine that this was likely their backup plan: to bludgeon me if I discovered that they had pilfered my phone and wallet. The assailants were two women and, yes, they kept me distracted in ways I don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly, but that any man who is attracted to women is fully aware of. And that’s the truly shameful thing. Despite my theatrical presence and my boisterous writing style, I’m actually a quiet, peaceful, deeply mindful, and sensitive man, particularly when it comes to the ladies. Anyone who has dated me knows this. But of course they kept plying me with liquor, sizing up how much I was spending on everybody so that they would know if I was a dependable roll. And because I have significantly cut down on my drinking in recent years, it went straight to my head. By the time they had stolen everything off my back, except for my NYPL and BPL library cards, which they ignominiously tossed onto the floor under a towel in the living room — the final fuck you from two illiterate and ultimately undistinguished thugs — I was too incapacitated to do anything about it.

I decided to sleep it off, figuring that what I had experienced — which was something between Wild Things and Spring Breakers — had been some ridiculous nightmare that I had fantasized. But, no, I woke up sometime in the afternoon and realized that this was very fucking real. And that’s when I headed to a cafe with my laptop, where two incredibly kind young ladies gave me busfare and a cup of water, allowed me to borrow their phone, and let me set there for many hours to undo as much damage as I could.

I have managed to secure my online presence. I am who I say I am on Mastodon, YouTube, and Instagram. And even though the criminals changed the passwords on my two TikTok accounts (as well as the Gmail accounts that I had set up), I got those back too. That’s how thorough they were, although they weren’t nearly as thorough as they thought. My hope is to get back to my daily creative routine of writing five fresh new pages every day for my audio drama and performing TikTok ablutions in between all the feverish logging of all the funny characters chattering in my head. I’m nearly back to normal. But it wasn’t easy to get here. Because without a phone, you are essentially fucked in 2024. While I was awaiting the delivery of my replacement phone, the criminals still managed to rack up charges on one of my cards long after I had reported it stolen. It turns out that two-factor authentication, which is intended to “secure” us, is the very thing that allows all this criminal theft to flourish. The criminals didn’t find everything, although it angers me that they had access to so much of my personal information.

And while my spirits remain intact, I can’t gainsay that there wasn’t a little emotional damage. I am now reticent to go on vacation or to date and will probably not be doing any of those things for a good long goddamned while. While I have been humbled by the kindness of many strangers, I’m not so sure how much I can trust people right now. Although one of my dear friends picked me up at La Guardia with a gyro, a pack of cigarettes (yes, I’ve quit for long periods this year, but cut me some slack given the circumstances; I will get off these evil addictive sticks again) and beverages and she gave me a big smile and a hug. And I cried with great joy as I hugged her. I was so happy to be back in New York. I was so happy to see my dear friend. The other thing I have had to combat is certain obsessive enemies of mine who delighted in my misfortune and who sent me very cruel messages in which they rubbed it in. Which I would never send to my worst enemy. Additionally, the silence of certain “friends” in relation to this incident speaks volumes about how little they actually care for me. And I’m now going to significantly raise my standards on who I let into my life. I am such a loyal friend that, had the roles been reversed, I would have done what my dear friend did at La Guardia: offered the shirt off my back and served up a nonstop soiree of jokes as a reminder for why life is so beautiful.

The biggest horror I feel is having to reconcile my natural optimism and exuberance with a deeply unsettling takeaway that the world is far crueler than I’ve understood it to be. I really don’t want to transform into a cynic. A bleak-humored grump at times, sure, but not a cynic. But as someone who has historically had trust issues, well, this terrible incident has only exacerbated a feeling I don’t want to hold that you can’t really trust anyone. The one thing that prevents me from sliding into antisocial nihilism is knowing that these criminals have nothing but terror, rampant consumerism, bloodthirsty lucre, and the thrill of betrayal to offer the world. These criminals are vacuous shells: little more than empty-headed, unfeeling, and dishonorable fuckheads. And I know karma and the law will get them in the end. Because I am far more than they are or ever could be. I make. I create. I give. I live. I love. I write. I have my art and my wit and my lexical ninja moves and my audio chops. At fifty, my eyes still dance with endless felicity and limitless curiosity. And I’m strong enough now that nobody can break that. Not fascists. Not thieves. Not talentless assholes in the literary and tech worlds who have openly lied about me, spread false rumors, and created an image of me that fewer people believe these days. These assholes will never have any of that. Talent and commitment and creative drive cannot be stolen or bought. Being a kind and decent person has no cash value. If anything, being so thoroughly robbed like this has only redoubled my commitment to being kind and giving. So I’m out a few hundred dollars for the phone. Big deal. The life I live is eminently more richer and a lot more fun than that of a predictable thug. You can’t place a cash value on being sui generis, which, if you’ll allow me a modest flex of my ego, I certainly am. And they’ll never have that. That was evident in the melancholy look that one of the two women gave me when I asked her what her passions were. She had nothing. Zilch. Just a beady rapacious look that reminded me of the way that Dr. Sam Loomis described Michael Myers. She had nothing other than hurting other people even as she pretended that she was looking after them. Not unlike Annie Wilkes, Stephen King’s frighteningly memorable creation. And if you practice that level of deceit and dishonesty, well then your world is very small indeed. The two women thought I hadn’t seen what they did before. But I’ve been around the block. And I’ve seen their “performance” executed before with love and ardent passion and inclusion. You can’t be a truly free spirit if you don’t have those vital human qualities.

I am a cathedral built from robust alabaster and designed by an extremely quirky architect. These criminals are nothing more than ramshackle hovels easily blown over by a modest gust. Sure, I may have lost my phone and wallet. But these were easily replaceable: mere mechanisms to negotiate our world. But, for the criminal, there’s nothing else beyond thieving and ennui between jobs. That’s all the criminal understands. And when the two women who rolled me turn fifty, if they’re not in prison by then, then the void of their vapid lives will catch up to them and they’ll have nothing when they get to be my age. Sure, I made a huge mistake. But at the end of the day, they could not break me. The beauty of existence is learning how to grow with humility and wonder and grace, even when the worst thing happens to you. It’s a process that never stops. And if you’re doing life right, then you may just summon a few unexpected catches from the rough and tumble curveballs that the universe throws at you. And that’s when you give back. So others can thrive with the same fearless and indefatigable gusto. So that all of us can be here for each other in the best way possible.

by Edward Champion

Ritchie Torres, AIPAC’s Most Dutiful Rentboy

Flush with AIPAC money, the corrupt Representative of the poorest congressional district in the United States cares more about Israel than his own constituents, which he now regularly belittles and insults by twisting objective reality and blocking them on X.

Of all the venal and easily purchased members of Congress who take AIPAC money in the manner of an eager head-bobbing whore pretzeling his position to show the money men just how limber and rentable he truly is (even at the expense of listening to constituents, a basic duty of any sitting Representative), Ritchie Torres is my personal favorite. He is such a preposterous cartoon of a man — a smug and treacherous scumbag who blocks anyone on X rightly calling him out on his bullshit — that you almost get the sense that he’s cozying up with the genocide-friendly financiers so that he can pluck some Zionist diplomatic position from the horrific jaws of a potential second Trump administration.

Ritchie Torres is a truly impressive specimen. Because just when you think Torres couldn’t become any more of a self-serving tosspot, he descends into self-parody, complete with anti-Semitic “Jewish mother” tropes that bristle with the telltale timbre of casual misogyny:

Yes, that’s right. This was how Torres was spending Juneteeneth on social media. And while Torres was happy to serve up predictable and phoned in platitudes about Juneteenth, Torres, living up to his present status among progressives as a corrupt and unprincipled coward without political credibility, remained silent about Mayor Eric Adams denying Black Lives Matters’s Hawk Newsome a permit (one that two city employees had promised Hawthorne would go through) to celebrate Juneteenth in the South Bronx on the corner of 163rd Street and Sheridan Avenue — not far from Torres’s own district (the 15th). Which is truly something. Ritchie Torres cares more about Israel than his own borough, much less his own congressional district, which is the poorest one in the United States.

But Torres’s remarkable hubris has only grown ever since cashing AIPAC checks and selling out at dimebag levels became part of his regular routine. As Marisa Kabas has cogently unpacked, Torres, who is not Jewish, is policing exactly what being a “good Jew” is:

Imagine having the gall to be a non-Jew and tell a Jewish organization that they are not worthy of representing Jewish interests. Imagine thinking that steadfastly supporting the state of Israel gives you authority over people who are part of the religion for which the state was founded. Imagine being a member of Congress and using your position to demean Jews in service of ousting your own Democratic colleague.

The Democratic colleague that Kabas is referring to is Representative Jamaal Bowman, who has continued to remain unequivocally against AIPAC and Israel’s policies, despite AIPAC putting up a colossal $2 million to attack Bowman and prop up a pro-Israel candidate that even the right-leaning Politico had to confess was “the Cher of Westchester County.”

Torres attacked The New Republic‘s Talia Jane for an October 7, 2023 tweet in which Jane, trying, like many of us, to wrap their head around the immediate aftermath of the October attacks, had posted, “State oppression vs rebellion against state repression,” and falsely insinuated that The New Republic had promulgated these views and put Jane’s reporter status in mock air quotes. But he didn’t stop there in his tone policing. Torres blasted the far left for “falsely accusing George Latimer [Bowman’s AIPAC-financed challenger] of racism.” Never mind that Politco — which is about as far from a fringe-left outlet as you can get — reported on how Bowman accused Latimer of sending mailers that had darkened Bowman’s skin. (Back in 2022, The New York Post — clearly a bastion for Marxism under News Corp — reported on similar racist efforts made by then Bowman challenger Vedat Gashi.)

When Netanyahu released a video attacking the Biden Administration, Torres suggested that anyone who criticized this tyrant was somehow emboldening Hamas. (Never mind that a Gallup poll last month pointed out that only 36% of Americans approved of Israel’s actions against Gaza. If we look through the ridiculous and disingenuous Overton window opened by Torres, we would have to risibly infer that a good 55% of Americans who oppose Israel’s actions are somehow stumping for Hamas.)

The convenient manner in which Torres twists the facts like this has caused many of his constituents to rightly call him out. Since they have been ignobly blocked by Torres on Twitter, many of Torres’s critics have attempted to call him out in person. Sometime in March, some enterprising people with a camera confronted Torres, asking, “As a citizen who pays my tax dollars, okay, I’m wondering why you are in favor of sending our tax dollars to starve children to death.”

“Well, that’s a lie,” responded Torres. (The liar here is Torres. Here’s a Human Rights Watch report documenting the starving children in Gaza.)

After the people behind the camera pointed out that this was not a lie, Torres responded, “If you have an issue with me, you should run against me.”

“How is it a lie?” asked the man behind the camera. “Are you saying there are no children starving in Gaza?”

Instead of answering this question, Torres said, “I think Hamas started the war, which led to starvation.”

When the man behind the camera calmly and reasonably tried to ask another question, Torres interrupted him and snarled, “That’s a terrorist organization that you support.”

The man said that he did not support Hamas. Then Torres accused the man of lobbying for them, which the man also denied. Then Torres said, “You’re a disgrace.”

And in these collective moments, we see the feeble and pathetic toolkit of a fact-denying attack dog who has seen his coffers fatten by way of AIPAC. If you are against Israel’s actions, you are somehow for Hamas. If you criticize Torres on facts, you are somehow lobbying for Hamas. And if you question Torres using objective examples obtained from reality, Torres resorts to insults and false accusations.

In short, this kind of contemptible behavior (which resembles any number of efforts by activists with cameras to confront Republicans) clearly evinces that Ritchie Torres is not a man who is fit to serve his constituents, much less the American people. He is more of a thin-skinned and not very bright AIPAC rentboy than a “Congressional Representative.”

[6/20/24 4:00 PM UPDATE: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Ms. Jane’s pronouns. This has been corrected. I regret the error and offer my most fulsome apologies to Ms. Jane for my oversight.]

by Edward Champion

RIP Roger Corman (1926-2024)

Roger Corman was one of the most important people in the motion picture industry. Far more than a genre and exploitation filmmaker, he opened up American theatres to world cinema and gave many top-tier talents their first chance to sit in the directing chair. (This article also includes my audio interview with Corman back in 2011.)

It is difficult to overstate just how much of an impact Roger Corman had on American culture. But he was a legend and an absolutely vital filmmaking figure. In addition to being a solid genre director (The Intruder, a trenchant examination of political demagoguery written by Charles Beaumont and starring William Shatner and the only movie he lost money on, remains his best film and still packs a wallop today), he had a remarkable knack for spotting talent. He gave James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Paul Bartel, Joe Dante, Peter Bogdonavich, and Francis Ford Coppola (and so many more) their first shots, often enlisting them to direct their feature film debut. But the deal was that you had to do this with a paucity of money. (In fact, Corman was so cheap that Joe Dante’s The Howling has a funny inside joke in which Corman plays a man in a phone booth scrounging around for change.) This became known as the “Roger Corman film school.” One can see his great influence today in A24 — the fearlessly indie studio that has offered similar opportunities for a new generation of filmmakers.

But Corman was also an instinctive rebel. Behind that irresistible smile and calm voice was a goofball and a natural provocateur. In 2011, much to my amazement, I somehow got the opportunity to speak with Corman in person. While I greatly admired and respected Corman, his eyes beamed with mischief and he made several attempts to stifle laughter as I started asking him provocative questions about certain controversies in his career. He answered all my questions with grace and wit and the two of us got along very well. Partly because he quickly sussed out that I was a fellow rabble-rouser. I’m still amazed at my chutzpah from thirteen years ago, but it did result in a fun and memorable conversation, which I have reposted below. Corman soon followed me on Twitter and he would send me a direct message every now and then, telling me that he had enjoyed an essay I had written. Which was incredibly humbling, surprising, and tremendously kind. Had I somehow passed the Corman test? I guess maybe I did. But I learned later that he did this with a lot of people: those quiet little messages of support. Keep going. Keep making stuff.

That was the way Corman rolled. If he spotted that you had something, he would keep tabs on you. He seemed to detect creative possibilities in the unlikeliest people. He believed so much in the late great character actor Dick Miller that he gave Miller the only lead role in his career with a greatly enjoyable send-up of Beat culture called A Bucket of Blood. In 1967, he leaned in hard on LSD and the hippie movement with The Trip.

You see, Corman had his finger firmly on the pulse of American culture right up until the end of his life. While corporate bean counters looked the other way, Corman leaned in. When I talked with him in 2011, he had not only gone to Zuccotti Park to listen to the brave kids who were camping out for weeks to fight corporate America, but he had also offered a generous donation.

Additionally, Corman set up distribution channels for art house and foreign films through New World Pictures in the 1970s. He would make money with the exploitation pictures and use the profits to ensure that world cinema got its proper due. If it had not been for Corman, Americans may not have been introduced to the likes of Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa’s wildest movies. (It was New World that got Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala into American theatres.)

Rest in power, Roger Corman. You were one of the great ones.

* * *

Roger Corman appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #416. In addition to directing some of the most memorable and entertaining drive-in movies of the 20th century (among many other accomplishments), he is most recently the subject of a new documentary called Corman’s World, which is now playing film festivals and is set for release on December 16.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Not of this earth.

Guest: Roger Corman

Subjects Discussed: Corman’s infamous cost-cutting measures, unusual marriage proposals, bloated corporations, Occupy Wall Street, comparisons between Zuccotti Park and 1960s protests, keeping tabs on pop culture, not giving stars and directors a few bucks to stay around, Easy Rider, the philosophy behind the Corman university, picking people on instinct and the qualities that Corman looks for in a potential talent, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, directors who move up the ladder, The Intruder, why Corman didn’t make explicit socially conscious films after 1962, financing pictures with your own money, the financial risks of being ahead of the curve, looking for subtext in the nurses movies, the sanctimony of Stanley Kramer, Peter Biskind’s “one for me, one for them” idea, simultaneous exploitation and empowerment, the minimum amount of intelligence that an exploitation film has to contain, throwing calculated failures into a production slate, distributing Bergman and Fellini through New World, why Corman believes it was impossible to produce and distribute independent art house movies in the United States in the 1960s and the 1970s, the importance of film subsidies, why Corman gave up directing, Von Richthofen and Brown, the allure of Galway Bay, getting bored while attempting to take time off, the beginnings of New World, the many breasts in Corman’s films, Annabelle Gurwitch’s “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bimbo,” targeted incidental nudity opportunities, enforcing nudity clauses in contracts, questioning why actresses can’t be sexy without taking their tops off, Rosario Dawson, the undervalued nature of contemporary films, and Corman’s thoughts on how future filmmakers can be successful.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I have to get into your eccentric temperament right from the get-go. There is a moment in this documentary where your wife Julie confesses that you proposed to her. And she said yes. Then you disappeared for a week into the Philippines. And she tried to get in touch with you and finally did get in touch with you and asked, “Well, is the marriage still on?” And you said, “Oh yes, of course.” Your justification was, well, you didn’t want to pay the expense of long-distance telephone. I told this story to my partner and I thought it was amusing. But she was absolutely horrified by this. And this leads me to ask if the notorious reputation you have for aggressive cost-cutting, perhaps one of the finest cost-cutters in the history of cinema — well, how much does this lead into your personal life? And your private life? I mean, surely, when you’re talking about sweethearts and fiancées, you can afford to spend at least a buck or something. I mean, come on!

Corman: Well, that story is possibly true. But the fact of the matter is I’d been in the jungle. At that time, there were no phones. So that was the real reason for the call.

Correspondent: That was the real reason. But this does raise an interesting question. I mean, under what circumstances will you, in fact, pay the regrettable cost of maintaining a relationship like this? Whether it be professional or private.

Corman: Well, I would have to divide that into two answers. Privately, and particularly with my wife and children, I’m much more liberal in spending than I’d ever been on films. On films, I really watch every penny.

Correspondent: Yes. But are there any circumstances you’ve regretted? Either spending extra money or not spending the dollar? Or not spending the dime so to speak?

Corman: I don’t think I regret any overspending. I think, once or twice, I should have let pictures go a little longer and spent a little bit more. These were pictures that were coming in on budget and on schedule. I might have added a couple of extra days to the shooting schedule. But I felt this was a fifteen day schedule. This is the thirteenth day. I have to make a decision. We’re going to shoot it in fifteen days. In retrospect, had I gone to sixteen or seventeen, the additional quality — for lack of a better word — might have been greater than the expenditure.

Correspondent: Well, what’s the cost-benefit analysis for this quality to spending ratio that you’ve devised over the years? Is it largely instinctual? Is it largely looking aggressively at the books? What of this?

Corman: It’s a combination of all of the above, plus just the calculation. I’m always looking for the greatest quality. I’ve done pictures — The Little Shop of Horrors — in two and a half days. I did that with very little money. But I did the best possible job I could do with the amount of money. So I’m looking for the highest possible quality. But since I back my pictures with my own money, which is something you’re never supposed to do, I have to be certain — well, I shouldn’t say certain. I have to have a reasonable guess that I’m going to come out of this one okay.

Correspondent: Do you think that such brutal, Spartan-like tendencies might be applied to, oh say, balancing the federal budget? Or perhaps creating a more efficient Department of Defense? Do you have any ideas on this?

Corman: Well, I believe that it isn’t just the federal government. I believe large corporations or the Department of Defense, which of course is part of the federal budget — I think there’s a certain inherent waste in any large organization, whether it’s public or private. I think they all could be streamlined or — let me put it this way, I think they all should be streamlined. But I question whether it can be done. Because the bureaucracies are in place. And it’s very, very difficult to move.

Correspondent: It’s difficult, I suppose, not just in motion pictures, but for everybody right now. Do you have any thoughts on the present Occupy Wall Street movement that’s been going on in this city while you’ve been here?

Corman: Weirdly enough, I was at the Occupy Wall Street meeting — or sit-in. Whatever you want to call it.

Correspondent: You went to Zuccotti Park?

Corman: Yeah. Just about an hour ago.

Correspondent: Really?

Corman: I donated a little money and they had a couple of pictures taken of me there. Which they said they wanted to use in some way. And I told them I was totally in support of what they’re doing.

Correspondent: I’m surprised you weren’t down there with a movie camera getting master shots for a later production based on Zuccotti Park or something like this. There should be an Occupy Wall Street movie. Is there some possible narrative? Some bucks in this?

Corman: Well, it’s the kind of thing I did before in the 1960s, with the various protest meetings and anti-Vietnam demonstrations. I was there with cameras. And we did use the footage. And this one at the moment isn’t quite that big. If it grows, however, that will be a different thing.

Correspondent: Well, did you see it at Times Square on Saturday? It was actually 15,000 people. And it was pretty aggressive with the cops arresting people. 88 people that day too.

Corman: We came in on Saturday.

Correspondent: Oh, I see.

Corman: And actually I saw opposite ends of New York. I came in, went straight to the opera, went straight from the opera to Comic Con to sign autographs. So I figured if I went from New York to the opera to Comic Con, I saw various aspects of New York.

Correspondent: Well, this leads me to ask you about how you collect your ideas or how you maintain your attentions as to what’s going on in contemporary society. It seems to me that going down to Zuccotti Park, you’re still very much interested in finding out what the present concerns are. I mean, how often do you do this now in your daily life? Just to keep tabs. How do you know, for example, that Hell’s Angels or LSD or Zuccotti Park might be a salable idea?

Corman: These are just aspects of pop culture that come to the surface. And I’ve been involved in all the previous ones. Or most of them, one way or another. And the Occupy Wall Street movement is new. And I went just to see what it was like. And it was strange. There’s a real similarity to the 1960s here. And I don’t know if the young people of today know that what they’re doing, the signs they have, the music they had playing, the discussions — it brought me right back to 1968.

Correspondent: Do you see any differences by chance?

Corman: I saw very little differences. I did notice this. The police were not antagonistic. They were standing there. But I didn’t see any of them make any harmful moves. Where in the ’60s, I did see police make harmful moves. Maybe they’ve learned something over the years.

The Bat Segundo Show #416: Roger Corman (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

Ryan Wild: Mastodon Fascist, Tendentious Universeodon Admin, and Enemy of the Fourth Estate

Mastodon may seem like a cozy and thoughtful alternative to toxic wastelands like X and BlueSky, but some of the instance admins — such as Universeodon’s Ryan Wild — are recruiting alt-right moderators and practicing covert censorship of progressive political viewpoints.

Ryan Wild is a wildly arrogant and deeply manipulative despot who lives in Swindon — a town in England’s Wiltshire district. He operates out of the Highworth borough, which voted for Conservative Vijay Kumar Manro as Borough Councillor in the last election. Wild, who has the husky well-fed mien of a man who has never known a day without a hot meal, will turn twenty-six next month. Like any garden-variety huckster, Wild is an “entrepreneur” who wants you to buy into his dubious hosting services and support his Mastodon instance Universeodon or his other instance Mastodon App UK, which was home to British cultural treasure Stephen Fry until Fry stopped posting sometime last year. (For those not in the know, “instances” are servers that are interconnected with each other on Mastodon. When I was on Wild’s instance, I did chip into his Ko-fi account and had planned to chip in more. Because I’m always happy to pay the people who keep the lights on. This effectively placed me within only 2.7% of the active users on Universeodon.)

But don’t think for a second that Wild has your best interests at heart. He is fundamentally opposed to any creator — especially journalists — who point out the iniquities and injustice carried out by the ruling class. Particularly if you are critical of Israel or people in power. On October 11, 2021, when Google offered free security keys for elected officials and journalists (historically speaking, both of these classes have faced significant harassment and, with heightened extremism in the United States, this has only escalated) to provide better security to elected officials and journalists, Wild had zero sympathy and called such protection “a huge waste of money.” He is also an avowed Brexit supporter and has also claimed that Hitler “should have been in power” because he was “legally voted in,” a colossal misreading of history that came laced with Wild significantly understating Hitler’s evil by saying “what he did was wrong yes.” Which is a bit like suggesting that the flooding that ravaged China in July 1931 and killed four million people was “just a tiny little rainstorm.” (Never mind that Hitler was defeated by Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 Weimar Republic presidential election and that, as any high school graduate should know, Hitler manipulated his way into the Chancellor seat, taking only a few months after that to suspend civil liberties for all Germans and become dictator.)

(Mr. Wild did not return multiple requests for comment on this story over the course of five days. I emailed him at every address that was publicly listed for him and his business ventures. Then he blocked my main email address when I sent him a followup message — this when I was nothing but polite and respectful in my correspondence. (An email sent from another account went through.) Just before the deadline I gave him to reply to my questions was about to pass (and I would have been happy to grant him an extension to answer if he had simply asked), Wild claimed that he was sick. If he is indeed sick, I truly do wish Mr. Wild a healthy recovery. This still doesn’t explain why he blocked my email address before he was sick. After this article was published, in a futile attempt to discredit my good faith efforts to get him on the record, Wild claimed that his Mastodon UK email was not working. But I also contacted Wild at the very Atlas Media Group email address he cites in his post.)

In short, this diminutive businessman — this bright vanilla chunk of ice cream scooped ignominiously onto a slice of pumpkin pie — has no problem covertly upholding right-wing sentiments and shutting down left-wing ones when he’s not preventing users from accessing vital news. He has blocked numerous journalists from being seen by users on his instance. And if, heaven forfend, you make a mocking post against the rich, as one trans woman did, Wild will close your account faster than Anthony Comstock opposing the suffragettes in the late nineteenth century.

Wild risibly and falsely claims on the Universeodon about page, “From exploring the universe, to exploring the world we all share – everyone is welcome here.”

This, of course, is a lie.

To a great degree, one can sympathize with Wild and any other instance admin on Mastodon. Admins are usually hosting servers on their own dime, often at a loss, and, as X (previously known as Twitter) increasingly hardens into a toxic wasteland under Elon Musk, these admins are being besieged by thousands of new users. If an instance does have a moderation team, it usually consists of unpaid volunteers, who may tender false flags at the end of a long and exhausting day. But as the Fedeiverse — the collective network of instances connected to each other — burgeons into what many declare to be a calmer and more viable open source alternative to BlueSky, Threads, and X, it’s important to consider how certain biases from admins are contributing to a form of fascism rather than democracy, where viewpoints from the marginalized or those who don’t fit so neatly into an affluent Caucasian neoliberal box often struggle to have their vital voices heard. And, in Wild’s case, his clearly tendentious biases and elastic approach to moderation has resulted in a form of odious muzzling that is no different from the way that the Nazis demonized Black music that had flourished so beautifully in Berlin before 1933 or the way that, more recently, the Taliban has silenced Afghan journalists. If one of the most awe-inspiring realizations of the Internet is being exposed to marginalized voices and realizing that we all have far more in common than we know, then Mastodon — at least under the sloppy and corrupt hands of admins like Ryan Wild — is far from the great ideal that its most prominent boosters insist that it is.

Not unlike Elon Musk suspending numerous journalist accounts in December 2022, Wild is so fundamentally opposed to the noble efforts of the Fourth Estate that he has invented reasons to block journalists on his instance. He has claimed, without a shred of evidence, that newsie.social — an instance in which journalists valiantly report from all corners of the globe — supports “transphobic content.” (In fact, the newsie.social rules make clear that transphobia is explicitly prohibited.) So this means that anyone with a Mastodon account on his instance cannot access invaluable posts from the likes of ProPublica, which rightfully won a Pulitzer Prize last week for its valiant coverage of the Supreme Court. As William Maggos noted in the same thread, this was clearly a pretext to silence “commentary against the Israel govt.” (Requests for comment from newsie.social were not returned.)

Back in February, Jeffrey Phillips Freeman — who runs an instance devoted to the Assn for Computing Machinery — complained to Wild that his instance was wrongly included on what he deemed a “notoriously abusive” block list. Even when pointing to examples of how he had blocked racists, Freeman was gaslighted without full context. (Freeman was kind enough to return my request for comment and informed me that the meetings he had with fellow Fediverse boosters were quiet but that “bad actors” were a problem. I pressed him on a hypothetical, asking him what he would do if, say, J.K. Rowling created a new account on his instance and started posting TERF content, but he did not reply.)

But bad actors — in addition to disrupting thoughtful and civil meetings hoping to actualize a tech utopia dream — do become instance admins. And bad actors very often recruit other bad actors, as Wild did when — as Alan Jenkins pointed out on November 16, 2022 — he recruited a moderator named @lyicx, who used words and terms associated with the alt-right. (When called out on this in a followup thread, @lycix hurled abuse at Jenkins.) Ryan Wild is almost certainly operating his instance with the intent of propping up voices he agrees with and gagging any rules-abiding user he personally disagrees with.

A detailed examination of Wild’s Twitter feed reveals Wild to be a shady right-winger who cloaks his Tory loyalism behind centrist “common sense” claptrap and who appears to be thoroughly opposed to the vital practice of critical thinking. In a January 21, 2017 tweet, Wild claimed that criticism of Trump and Brexit was invalid until the policies were enabled. In other words, Wild declared that policies enacted on xenophobia should not be questioned until they “actually [did] something worthy of critique.” Likewise, on January 21, 2017, he believed that Trump should not be judged as President until he had been office. Never mind that the perspicacious Naomi Klein has written an invaluable book, No is Not Enough, that offered smart reasons why Trump and his cronies should be judged before his disastrous administration had started. To offer some defense for Wild, on September 8, 2019, Wild expressed some mild concern for policies that are “treasonous” and once compared Conservatives to “petty little children who haven’t gotten [sic] their own way.” But he also once described the Labour Party as possessing “shite leadership.” Yet on March 14, 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Wild expressed far too much faith in Boris Johnson’s abilities to contend with it. The portrait that Wild has presented of himself is that of a company man who lacks the spine or the moral conviction to criticize governmental policies and who resents anyone who does.

Wild is able to get away with his censorship on the sly because, while he’s been ardently and rightly opposed to transphobia in other contexts, he has, like any spineless and well-trained neoliberal, learned to pay shrewd and performative lip service to humanism, even as he covertly suspends accounts that are critical of Israel — even when these accounts abide by his rules. It’s one thing to claim to be for LGBTQIA rights. It’s another thing altogether to muzzle the very LGBTQIA voices that you profess to be “for” — because you are fundamentally uncomfortable with the perspectives they have to offer. (This has also been a problem among Black users of Mastodon as well. Black users are theoretically “welcomed” by the largely white admins, only to have their accounts suspended without warning. Or, as the user Ra’il IK quipped on X last November, “Welcome to the ‘I am Black and suspended by Mastodon with no warning and no process’ club!!!!!!!”) Ryan Wild is, in short, the walking and talking embodiment of George Orwell’s “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” line. One can logically infer that, as far as Wild is concerned, criticizing the rich or those who launch unprovoked attacks into territory populated by marginalized starving people makes one a lesser “animal.” And, sure, Wild is all too happy to rightfully protest web hosts that claim perpetual commercial rights over all hosted content (well, not so much a protest, as an opportunity for him to pimp his far from “Superior” goods), while simultaneously succumbing to similar tyrannical proclivities himself. If you are a writer like me, it is an act of thuggish and shameful dehumanization to have one’s work deleted or “suspended” without warning. Especially since I would have been more than happy to address any concerns and strike a mutually agreeable resolution, had I been given the heads up.

I greatly enjoyed my time on Mastodon. Numerous journalists and writers became mutuals. Despite the fact that I am a pugnacious (and some would say obnoxious) middle-aged punk, I didn’t get into too many fights — in large part because the user base (including myself) wanted to create a more thoughtful alternative to the mephitic online hellscapes of X and BlueSky. And I learned so much from everyone. People helpfully offered corrections when I was conducting what used to be known as “live tweeting” on Mastodon in relation to unfolding events, which I was happy to amend. And you know what? The user who initially expressed umbrage with my minor mistake and I became mutuals. But because Ryan Wild is so fundamentally opposed to the democratic possibilities of the delightful discussions which spring from people with other viewpoints, this man suspended my account on Tuesday afternoon under flimsy pretext and without warning and has proven indifferent and unresponsive to my efforts to resolve what I had hoped was simply a colossal misunderstanding. With Wild’s inexplicable ban of my main email address, this now appears to be a deliberate effort to target and silence me because of my progressive politics and the fact that I am not shy about speaking out against bad actors in prominent positions of power. And if you’re setting up a new Mastodon account, I would highly advise you to not use Universeodon. If you’re on Universeodon right now, I strongly urge you to switch to another instance before Wild shuts you down too. (Here’s a helpful guide on how to switch Mastodon instances.)

Last year, I had selected Wild’s instance at random. George Takei — a man whom I have admired and respected since watching Star Trek reruns as a kid — was on Universeodon. (Years ago, I once received an incredibly kind email from him, to which I naturally shouted “Oh my!” with great enthusiasm. So Takei is forever brokered in as one of the Cool Cats.) I figured that any instance that was good enough for this national treasure was good enough for me.

But my random decision turned out to be a tremendous mistake.

On Tuesday afternoon, as I was trying to report on a Zionist extremist who drove his car into peaceful Columbia protesters, I was shocked to learn that my Universeodon account was suspended. Now I’m no stranger to this elastic approach to moderation. After I had reached more than 40,000 followers on TikTok for my mix of leftist politics and surreal comedy, the moderators there invented excuses to ban me, siding with the right-wingers who mass-reported me — much as Wild did to me on Universeodon. While I always abide by the rules of any social media platform I join and stand firmly against harassment, Wild had to go all the way back to January to invent an excuse to ban me. I had merely documented a vicious cyberbullying and harassing campaign against me on BlueSky (with screenshots and receipts). But Wild claimed that these posts, which were simply expressing disbelief that some unhinged tech person would libel me with lies for 96 posts within an eleven hour period — violated the rules on his instance and that I was the one somehow harassing people while documenting a very flagrant and coordinated harassment campaign against me that carried on long after I had deleted my BlueSky account. This was classic and predictable gaslighting against political opponents, in other words.

But if Wild is going to go back in time, then I suppose I should do the same with him. Nothing that I posted on his instance was even remotely close to the unhinged teenage angst he expressed on September 23, 2014: “You wounder why I get pissed off then you go ahead and act like a world class dickhead. Fuck you.”

My account — which was largely concerned with books, culture, politics, news, and reposts of goofy TikToks — remained fairly consistent throughout my run on Universeodon. The only thing that changed was that I was more vocal in my criticism of Israel in the last month. I challenged the propagandist Steve Herman (who, ironically, was one of the “journalists” banned by Musk on Twitter), who claimed that Columbia protesters were terrorizing Jewish students. But Herman is such a sloppy “journalist” that he refused to corroborate the provenance of the video he cited — even when he hadn’t been to Columbia (I had and reported on it via TikTok after talking with dozens of people (most declined to appear on camera, for understandable reasons), none of whom had seen any violent protesters). I directed Herman to the dubious source of said video and noted how nobody had looked into who was shouting and observed that the audio did not match the “transcript.” Unlike Herman, I did my best to ensure that the information I posted was correct.

Now I had contended with Wild’s love for defending authoritarian maniacs last September, when I posted a clearly satirical post against Elon Musk, protesting Musk’s anti-Semitism in particular and pointing out that Musk was so clumsy that there was a good chance that he could accidentally set himself on fire. But Wild, who has no sense of humor and who appears to have a dog whistle against anyone who protests racism or denigration of a particular group, fired a warning to me and refused to keep my post up. Fair enough. It’s his instance.

But he then claimed that details about George Mitchell that I posted — which were reported and sourced in Josh Ruebner’s excellent book Shattered Hopes — constituted “misinformation.” Regrettably, I cannot access my original post due to Wild’s gleeful zeal in scrubbing posts (with the additional advantage of removing evidence that makes him accountable), but I was able to find my response to him:

But by suspending my account and refusing to give me the benefit of the doubt, Wild was effectively deplatforming the modest but robust presence I had built on Mastodon.

In other words, Ryan Wild is very keen on cracking down on nearly anyone who conducts journalism and who points out social injustice. He is a Mastodon fascist. And I’d like to qualify that by citing Lawrence Britt’s 2003 article in Free Inquiry in which he identified up fourteen characteristics of fascism. Wild certainly seems keen on powerful and continuing nationalism with his low tolerance for anyone critical of the government and his apparent love for Brexit and Boris Johnson. In blocking journalists and those critical of Israel, he certainly has a disdain for the recognition of human rights. He’s certainly for a highly controlled instance and, much like Truth Social, he has recruited alt-right moderators to offer the illusion of free speech. And he obviously has a priapic zest for corporate power and the rich, as well as a disdain for journalists (and thus the intellectual pursuit of the real truth). And in my attempt to get answers from Wild, he has expressed a colossal arrogance towards me.

The upshot is that, if you’re going to choose a Mastodon instance, you now need to deeply research the admin and the moderators of that instance to ensure that they aren’t twisting the rules to silence your viewpoint — especially if you are not white and affluent.

Ryan Wild’s clear corruption betrays the utopian potential of the Fediverse, which is certainly not going to flourish very well with compromised moderation on Universeodon, Mastodon UK, and other instances that are covertly censoring certain political voices and perspectives.

5/11/24 4:00 PM UPDATE: Wild sent me an email after this article dropped. Unable to rebut any of the claims in this article, he has instead falsely claimed that I am doxxing him. All information about Wild in this article was pulled from public information that is easily Googleable within thirty seconds. To be clear, I am firmly against doxxing. I have never doxxed anyone. Mr. Wild is still invited to tender a response to this piece to correct any “misinformation,” but he seems more content to spread misinformation of his own:

5/12/24 2:00 AM UPDATE: I arrived home from a very fun Saturday night out to discover more gaslighting from Mr. Wild, including a libelous claim that I am a “stalker,” as seen below:

Mr. Wild was contacted in advance of this article at two email addresses (including his email at Atlas Media Group, which was not part of an “email system breaking’) with a request for comment. He chose not to reply. He was informed of many of the claims in this piece in advance of publication. He has yet to refute or rebut any of the allegations expressed in this story. And he continues to promulgate the outright lie that I have doxxed him.

To demonstrate that Wild’s location is public information, the Atlas Media Group website lists Ryan Wild as being in Swindon. His Keybase page lists him as living in Swindon. I have not doxxed him. Wild has been quite transparent about where he lives. I have included screenshots below:

Concerning Mr. Wild’s birthday, this too is public information. Like any human being, Mr. Wild has tweeted repeatedly that his birthday is June 6th. If Mr. Wild did not want anyone to know what his birthday is, then he should have said nothing. But given how much Mr. Wild has publicized his own birthday (indeed far more than I have), this cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called doxxing.

Once again, if Mr. Wild would like to rebut the claims in this piece, then I will be more than happy to append his remarks to this article.

I have also updated the main article to include Wild’s claims that his email was not working. Again, Mr. Wild was contacted in advance of this story’s publication through the very same backup email address (i.e., the working email) he cites in his post.