Episode 92 — Patrick Wensink

Summary: Patrick Wensink is today's guest. His latest novel, BROKEN PIANO FOR PRESIDENT, is now available from Lazy Fascist Press. It recently incited an unusually kind cease-and-desist letter from Jack Daniel's, Inc. Publishers Weekly calls it "[A] psychedelic trip of a novel." And the Louisville Courier-Journal describes it as "A D.I.Y. Frankenstein's monster that uses parts pulled off Kurt Vonnegut and David Cronenberg, drunkenly stitched together while a Stooges bootleg plays at 110 decibels." Topics of conversation include: cease-and-desist letters, Jack Daniel's, law, trademark, copyright, publicity, Boing-Boing, Forbes, Esquire, NPR,Weekend Edition, Yahoo News, serendipity, Amazon rankings, bestsellers, 15 minutes of fame, Everything Was Great Until It Sucked, Christy Susman, Ohio, small town, Midwestern childhood boredom, creating your own fun, Guided by Voices, Dayton, football, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Catholicism, climate change, humor, cutting shit out of your book, highbrow vs. lowbrow, Stephen King, education, music writing, journalism, hate reactions, Portland Oregon, Louisville Kentucky, cost of living, stay-at-home fatherhood, readings, improv, bombing, hip grandmas, tweeting at famous people, and Jenna Jameson's asshole. Monologue topics: publicity, marketing, accidents, tidal waves, and subtler forces operating somewhere beyond the level of human endeavor.