My new business cards!

(591 words)

Two weeks after reading a convincing story about the irrelevance of business cards and what do I do?

I go out and spend $168.89 on new business cards.

I suppose that means I should have in the space where the rest of the stodgy traditionalists list the occupation put “CHIEF BONEHEAD.”

I earn the sobriquet because I had printed, not one, but two distinct brands. One for “Use All The Crayons!” And one for my exciting new lawn care business I’m starting.

I’m lying about the lawn care business. I have no intention in doing anything so respectable. I just put that in there cause I know the prospect will turn my wife on. That’s what being married to a guy like me for nearly 20 years will do.

I figure I need “Crayons!” because I think uniformity is important. I make most of my speaking pitches these days by the USPS — and talk about embracing bygone irrelevance — and I think it makes a spiffier impression if the envelope, letter and business card all match.

As I recently wrote, I believe email has become our most tedious form of communication. A letter like mine, I think, really stands out.

And if the recipient finds its content disagreeable, he or she can at least ball it up and throw it at a sassy insubordinate and I’ll have done my part to make at least one dreary office more colorful.

But I felt I needed a primary business card, one that I could use to showcase www.ChrisRodell.com and all I’m doing in addition to “Crayons!”

I was for days vexed about what to call myself.

Just what the hell is it I do?

I could have gone for the obvious: WRITER. But, my goodness, that’s as boring as it is vague. James Patterson’s a writer, but so is the guy who composes the dense legalese the FDA says must accompany the lucrative drug ads that turn vast sections of popular magazines into literary wastelands.

I’m an AUTHOR, sure, but that sounds pretentious and doesn’t begin to explain all I do.

I do PUBLIC SPEAKING, but that’s like a spring branch tributary to the river of writing.

Putting BLOGGER would make sense because I do so much of it, but who in their right mind would brag about being a blogger, much less try to impress potential business associates with the title?

Listing MANURE COMPOSTER has more cache.

I toyed with the combo option: WRITER/SPEAKER/HUMORIST. But it’s like when you drive down a country road and see a home with a sign out front that says it’s both a Hair Salon and Bait Shop.

You wonder if the proprietor has enough hand sanitizer to go straight from one job to the other.

In the end, I threw caution to the wind and went for risqué.

It’s a term I coined in 2011 and immediately abandoned. I just saw no use for it.

But the term continued to percolate and I on a whim decided to use it on the back of the crayons book in the bio.

People began to use it in their introductions for me and it always gets a big laugh.

I figured it’s the perfect ice-breaker term to spark curiosity that might lead people to my website.

So, now it’s official. Ladies and gentleman, I am now and forever more a …

PROSEtitute!

And now I have the business card to prove it.

I just have to hope the relevancy of the title out-endures the actual business card.

Related …

How I became a PROSEtitute

Goin’ postal over USPS decline

“You’ve Got (Junk) Mail!” An investigation into OUR emails

Defying branding conventions

The story of Palm Features

Greensburg B&N book signing Friday w/ all my Inverted Jennys!

(727 words)

Pack up the sleeping bags, the inflatable air mattresses and your long john jammies. Temperatures are expected to dip below freezing tonight and that cement sidewalk can chill your bones.

What’s the occasion?

I’m signing books Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble!

What? You were expecting Springsteen tickets?

Other writers may post Facebook notes politely asking friends to share news of their book signings and maybe make time to stop by.

That’s not good enough for me.

I want riots, stampedes, hysterical teens dancing on flaming couches.

And what do I intend to do to warrant such newsworthy commotion?

I promise to wear all those crazy rubber band bracelets my daughters have made for me the past three months.

And nothing else!

Fear not. The girls are so industrious with their looms not a speck of flesh will be exposed. I’ll look like a rainbow-colored Michelin Man. You can toss me off the roof and I won’t stop bouncing until I’m clear past the Red Lobster.

Any other reason why anyone should show up?

Yes! The store has about 30 collector’s edition copies of what will go down in history as the “Inverted Jenny” of “Use All The Crayons!”

The Inverted Jenny is the famous 1918 postage stamp that featured an upside down airplane. The image represents the most famous mistake in stamp history. One mint-conditioned rarity in 2007 was auctioned for $977,500 or about what every single Forever Stamp today would need to sell for the USPS to turn a profit.

As I’ve mentioned, the book’s done so well that the publishing entity gave it a second print makeover and is lavishing it with more than $4,000 worth of marketing and promotional oomph. It’s being entered in award contests and presented to top book buyers who’ll decide if it’s worthy of national distribution.

The biggest change is apparent on the back cover bio that hypes all the magazines for whom I’ve written. All the changes turned out to be very painstaking. That’s why I was so deflated when they sent me for approval the very first copy of what the “new” book.

See, I’d added two lines. The first line immediately after the listed magazines is: “He’ll write for anyone who pays him.”

Somehow the key second line was not there. That line is: “He is a PROSEtitute.”

I was crestfallen because the first doesn’t work without the second. Without the punchline, the first line makes me look like a money-grubbing hack, which I most definitely am not, even though my wife, I’m sure, wishes I were.

This pushed back the book’s re-release by about two weeks.

But the Greensburg Barnes & Noble sells so many copies of the book -- and the fact leaves me overjoyed -- an order for 30 snuck in between corrections.

Thus, my Inverted Jenny.

I’m not saying it’ll be worth $977,500 in year 2108, but there’s a chance it’ll be worth maybe double what 24 used copies are right now being offered for on Amazon.

So that means one day the books could be worth two pennies!

The book has come so far in just one year -- and thank you one and all for helping make that happen.

Just last year I was actually including in promotional material the line, “I can’t promise you’ll enjoy “Use All The Crayons!” but we’re pretty sure it won’t make your head hurt!”

Now, thanks to so many of you, I simply tell people that everyone loves my book.

Saying so used to make me uncomfortable, as it sounds so conceited. No more.

Now I know I’m merely telling the truth.

So everybody, one and all, please stop by and buy a book for a friend. They’ll love it, I swear. Or maybe stop by and say hello.

And I have one additional request: Everyone bring along at least one nimble friend named Jenny so I can stand them all on their heads.

I’ll post the picture on my website over the caption, “Chris Rodell and all his inverted Jennys!”

It promises to be another triumph for what was one of the world’s most rejected books and further evidence that with a good idea and the support of friends and loved ones it’s still possible to turn the book industry on its head.

Related . . .

Bar book signing!

Arnold Palmer NOT attending my book signing

How I became a PROSEtitute

Mom’s coming to my Lebo book signing!

How I became a PROSEtitute

I just determined the proper name for my pseudo-occupation; I turn words into stories and sell them to anyone who says they’ll pay me.

I am a prosetitute.

Understand, prosetitution involves actual paying gigs and not this pointless blog, which involves giving my stuff away for free and I haven’t thought of a nifty word for that yet.

Maybe auth-whore.

But consider this the part where we’ve already concluded our illicit transaction. You’ve maybe read something of mine and want to find out more about me, what I’m really like, if I like what I do and if I ever dreamed of being something other than a prosetitute.

Me, I’m getting dressed on the side of the bed. I’m putting my bra and panties back on -- and that part’s true. I like to write wearing frilly women’s undergarments.

Heck, I like to garden in women’s undergarments, but I’ll save that story for later.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve only had three real jobs my entire adult life and one of them was at the Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut cook might have been the job at which I most excelled. Truly, I just kicked ass. I was a very good worker, fun to be around, good with the customers. I could handle the chaotic Friday dinner rush all by myself.

The managers wanted me to make a career out of Pizza Hut and said it would be stable and fun. I was in college back then and confident I’d find those things in a writing career.

It was my first step in becoming a prosetitute.

True story: I was a skilled general assignment reporter at the Nashville Banner relied upon for stylish front page features when I decided to quit the paper because I was making too little money. My idea of a splurge back then was getting a pizza with pepperoni and sausage.

So I decided to quit. Surprised everyone. In fact, I told the top editor of my decision the very moment she’d summoned me into her office to offer me a promotion.

But I’d already made up my mind. The money wasn’t much better and while I loved it in Nashville I wanted to return to Pittsburgh. I could live at home and have Dad pay for all the pizzas.

I eventually got a job at the local paper. That didn’t work out as well. When I went in to quit there, they didn’t offer me any promotions. They threw a party.

By then my wild ways had set in and it was becoming clear I was destined toward a life of prosetitution.

Still, well meaning people held occupational interventions to stave off what was looking more and more inevitable.

A bunch of us used to have lively lunches presided over by a late, beloved local attorney. He was one of the best men I’ve ever known.

I helped an employed newspaper friend write the front page obit when he died. I contributed the recollection that he was the only man I’d ever met who could quote both William Shakespeare and Fred Sanford in the same conversation and have them both make marvelous sense.

One day he took me aside to ask if I wanted to become an attorney and work for him. He said he’d pay for the education.

Looking back, it was coming from this monumental gent the most flattering offer anyone’s ever made to me.

But I had no interest in practicing law. As Arnold Palmer once said, “Some people wanted me to become an attorney, but I didn’t like office work and I’m too nice a guy.”

The National Enquirer offered me a full-time job. But that would have been a career decision. I didn’t want to move to Florida and spend my advancing years writing about things like Lady Gaga’s carnal preferences.

I was becoming a prosetitute.

One of the strangest offers ever extended to me was from a top editor at Glamour. We’d never met. He called me out of the blue and said a colleague recommended me to become a Glamour senior editor.

I thought about it and said I couldn’t imagine a time when any of those three words -- “Glamour . . . senior . . . editor” -- would ever apply to me individually or strung together.

That was it. I’d turned my back on what literally was a glamour job in New York City.

I knew then I was a prosetitute and a prosetitute was all I’d ever be.

Yeah, you might wonder what’ll happen as I grow older and my charms begin to fade.

Well, don’t worry about me.

Prosetitution is something you can always do in the dark.

The screen illuminates even when the prosetitute no longer does.