Press

Check it out: there’s an article about Cringe on page 14 of this week’s Time Out New York (the King Kong double issue with Jack Black on the cover), in the “Out There” section. The publicity is awesome, although it was unfortunate that the night the TONY reporter and photographer came out was our smallest Cringe yet—only 20 people or so, since they’re usually packed, sometimes standing room only—but we had some really good readers that night, so it worked out fine. Also not sure where Liz is getting that our material is limited, because I’ve got people lined up for the next one who’ve never read before, plus there’s a box in my closet in my parents’ house filled to the brim with every note anyone ever labeled TOP SECRET and slipped into my locker from sixth grade on, just waiting to be brought back to New York when I go home next week for Christmas.

We’re taking January off, so the next Cringe is Wednesday, February 1, 2006. For info, email me.

Here’s the article itself, and here's a scan, courtesy of Martin.

Fan fic

Yesterday I received several emails from some kindly strangers letting me know that someone was plagiarizing my writing on their website. I’ve had this happen before, and aside from being annoying and frustrating, it’s mostly just confusing to me. Why would you steal from a personal website and then put it on YOUR suddenly no longer personal website? It’s not like we’re getting graded on the internet.

This instance is extra twisted, though. This girl didn’t just try to pass off my writing as her own; she actually took the past four years of my life, rearranged them into a new sequence, changed some names (but, inexplicably, kept some, including MY OWN in a few instances), and then turned it into some fake fucked-up love story beginning with an inheritance from a cold grandmother straight out of a Jackie Collins novel, and, currently, having her finally finding undying 19 year old love with some fake guy she’s been fake in love with all her fake life.

I read through the whole fake saga, mostly because I was too horrified with disbelief to stop, and there are some posts that aren’t my writing, so they have to be someone else’s, because there’s no way I believe that this girl could even spell her own fake name. She didn’t even bother changing all the fonts in the stolen posts to be uniform, or changing the British spelling of “pyjamas” in one. She also stole this woman’s writing, as well as PICTURES OF HER DOG.

This is beyond pathetic and creepy; it’s just mind-boggling. This is like when I was in seventh grade, and spent a weekend at my grandma’s house, where there was nothing to do but watch the made for TV movie “Treasure Island” starring Christian Bale, and then I spent the rest of the weekend filling a notebook with my own slightly-modified version, one that involved me being a ship captain’s daughter who was captured alongside Jim/Christian Bale, and at first we really DID NOT GET ALONG, let me tell you, what with me being from such a higher station in life and him being a lowly cabin boy, but then once we escaped from the pirates and were alone in a cave and started kissing, things really took off, and I felt pretty confident just abandoning Robert Louis Stevenson’s plot altogether. Basically I was writing fan fiction, in 1990, back before I knew it existed. And basically this is what this girl just did with my life, which is way more disturbing than an entire spiral notebook full of bad pirate dialogue and detailed love scenes written by someone who had not yet had her first kiss.

So, in conclusion: way to be as lame as I was at age twelve, Person Allegedly Named Lizzie But I Am Not Buying That That’s Your Real Name For One Minute. Also, good luck with your dream of becoming a pastry chef in Aspen, Colorado, home to one of your deceased rich grandmother’s three mansions.

*Note to any future plagiarizers who are considering lifting that story about me ripping of Treasure Island: in your version, please make me a clear-skinned twelve year old who didn’t have to wear braces and whose mom would buy her Guess jeans. Also please change my name to Alexandria, or Princess Daisy, or maybe Jasmine Electra DuPont.