We had a fun side gig a
few years back: writing event listings and short
features for an online Houston city guide.
Because Connie had recently published her New Age
parody, Cosmic Relief, and
Ron was teaching meditation classes around town,
we were chosen to cover the Bayou City's new age
/ metaphysical beat. In the beginning we mainly
wrote about events taking place at the city's
various metaphysical and spiritual bookstores and
learning centers. As time went on, however, we
were allowed to sully the image of other venues
as well, including the Children's Museum of
Houston and the Goethe Institut. We also wrote
features on major shows and events such as Cirque
du Soleil, the Houston International Festival (as
it was called back then), and a certain major dog
show. It was the latter that landed us (and,
apparently, the city guide editors) in a bit of
doo-doo...and after that the assignments stopped
coming. Eventually the online city guide was sold
by its parent company and continued life under
another name. And we continued life as
ghostwriters, editors and book designers.
But the online city
guide thing was fun while it lasted, and we
wouldn't mind a side gig like this again. We
saved a few of our old write-ups, so here, for
old times' sake, are links to some of our
favorites. Some are PDFs of actual web page
printouts, and the rest are PDFs (from formatted
Word docs) of the text we submitted. The latter
were, for the most part, published pretty much
intact.
The
Jade Buddha Temple
in West Houston (Buddhist venue description)
Yellow
Brick Road (new age
venue description)
The
Mad Potter
(do-it-yourself pottery center)
The
Self-Expression Center
(coaching center for public speaking,
presentation, acting, etc.)
The
Art Car Parade
The
Children's Museum of Houston
(various event listings)
The
Goethe Institut (German
cultural event listings, including a writeup of a
German experimental film festival (think Mike
Myers in the old old SNL sketch,
"Sprockets."))
The
Astro World Series of Dog Shows —
Somewhat to our surprise, this write-up was
published on the city guide website almost
exactly as we submitted it, with only a couple of
the sub-heads changed. The editors, no fans of
the purebred dog trade, were delighted — for
a while. Alas, a few dog breeders got a bit huffy
and lambasted the city guide, and the controversy
was picked up by the Houston Chronicle.
Those in charge at the city guide were quoted in
the Chronicle article as
saying that the piece did not reflect the
opinions of the guide. They went on to explain
that the freelance writers (us) were solely
responsible for the poop on the sidewalk (so to
speak). The Nazi references were promptly
removed, as were we from the guide's roster of
freelancers.
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