February is always the shortest month––even when it's a Leap Year like 2012.
But not this year. This year I promise to pack so much interesting, weird stuff into February that it will seem like the LONGEST month on the calendar!
I am putting together THREE CHALLENGES––one of them begins today––and at the end of the whole thing (you must complete ALL THREE) some lucky person is going to win something really unique and bizarre:
A DISGUSTING SKYPE LUNCH WITH ME
Now, I know that sounds kinda ho-hum, but believe me, it will be anything but.
Firstly, I will provide you with the lunch. I will give you a bunch of options (I know there are Vegans, Veggies, Gluten Frees, Atkins, Low Carbs, Fruitarians, Pescetarians, Hardcore Carnivores) that you can choose from and that choice will be delivered to your door.
Secondly, I will eat something disgusting, something worthy of Andrew Zimmern - and there will be Chocolate Covered Ants for dessert!
Thirdly, we will toast to your CHALLENGE prowess and your health and to the health of all the people who tried and failed to win this special lunch.
Fourthly, we will video the Chocolate Covered Ant eating (you may choose not to be on camera for this) and post it to youtube so that everyone can make fun of me.
Not so ho hum now, is it? Oh, you naysayers, be quiet! (I'll deal with you later)
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So let me lay out the design of the first Challenge and tell you what the MAGIC NUMBER and the MAGIC WORD is!
CHALLENGE #1:
THE SERPENT'S STORM REVIEW
I am looking for at least 77 reviews of Serpent's Storm by 2/17/12 - each review must contain the word CHICKEN in it––now don't be cross, you guys gave me the MAGIC NUMBER and the MAGIC WORD––and it must contain a way to contact you: either your twitter ID, your email, your blog site or your FACEBOOK name.
If I get 77 reviews (distributed among the qualifying sites I will list below) then I will choose the review I think most creatively uses the MAGIC WORD (chicken) and that first challenge winner gets to pick (between two choices) the YOUTUBE video song I will embarrassingly sing for the world.
The two choices are: Wind Beneath My Wings & I Love You Period
How does that sound?
Remember, this is only the FIRST CHALLENGE. And you have to complete it if you want to be in the running to win the SKYPE DISGUSTING LUNCH!!
I will announce the SECOND CHALLENGE on 2/16/12 - be ready!
BELOW ARE THE QUALIFYING SITES & the review must be made between today and 2/17/11*:
AMAZON US
AMAZON CA
AMAZON UK
AMAZON DE
BARNES AND NOBLE
ITUNES
*if you already reviewed the book on any of these sites prior to 1/31 then email Benson Entertainment (bensonentertainment@hotmail.com) with the subject line "CHICKEN 77" - include proof of your review (a cut and past copy will suffice) and a paragraph explaining why you love, hate or feel mediocre toward CHICKEN & I will add you to the contest!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Netflix recommended this documentary to me. The algorithms tonight couldn't have been more prescient.
The idea that art is art, outside of self and taste and worth. That is the question I am grappling with tonight. Intellectually, I believe that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of something I've created. In practice, of course, that's not a truth. I am just as human as anyone else, stymied by negativity.
Then I watch this goddamned documentary 'Scott Walker: 30 Century Man' and am confronted with a man who seems to walk the walk and not just talk the talk (like me). To just create, to just wholly and utterly give birth to what is inside of you, and not disown it or vilify it or praise it, but let it go, unjudged. To be pleased with the process, alone, and unfettered by what anyone thinks...this is the ultimate goal.
Like in Buddhism there is the notion of transcending self.
In art it is the notion of transcending judgement...your own or anyone else's.
Now go create and damn the consequences!
The idea that art is art, outside of self and taste and worth. That is the question I am grappling with tonight. Intellectually, I believe that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of something I've created. In practice, of course, that's not a truth. I am just as human as anyone else, stymied by negativity.
Then I watch this goddamned documentary 'Scott Walker: 30 Century Man' and am confronted with a man who seems to walk the walk and not just talk the talk (like me). To just create, to just wholly and utterly give birth to what is inside of you, and not disown it or vilify it or praise it, but let it go, unjudged. To be pleased with the process, alone, and unfettered by what anyone thinks...this is the ultimate goal.
Like in Buddhism there is the notion of transcending self.
In art it is the notion of transcending judgement...your own or anyone else's.
Now go create and damn the consequences!
Saturday, January 14, 2012
DRIVING THE BUGGY
I was introduced to something last night that, at first, I thought was a joke. I was having dinner with my friends Colleen, Anton, and Maureen, and over the largest bowl of guacamole I'd ever encountered in all my thirty-five years, I was introduced to the romance sub-genre 'The Bonnet Ripper'.
This only came about because I was regaling them with the details of my bizarre train trip across America and how I had seen a number of Mennonite women on the train reading what looked like romance novels.
That's when someone, I forget who, chimed in: Bonnet Rippers!
It looks as if the 'Bodice Ripper' has been co-opted by the religious set. I thought TWILIGHT was the penultimate of all the no kissing, no sex until marriage literature, but apparently I was wrong. It seems that the Amish and Mennonite Bonnet Rippers have all the angst and overheated emotion of the Harlequin universe, but without any of the sex. Totally trumping Twilight - cause they made with the disastrous sexy sex, ya know.
I, for one, am very curious to read one of these books because there is only so much 'throbbing member' action a person can take before they start to feel kind of pervy. I know this for fact because when I was thirteen years old I read one hundred Harlequin Romance books in two very short weeks.
This was the summer my family moved from Orlando, FL to Los Angeles, CA. It took my sister, mother and me two weeks to do it. (We took our time, stopping at all the roadside attractions like we were - unintentionally - retracing Lolita and Humbert Humbert's path across America.) Along the way, we made a pit stop in Huntsville, AL to see my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
That's when I discovered my Aunt Carolyn belonged to the Harlequin Romance Book of The Month Club. Always a voracious reader (of anything I could get my hands on) and my Aunt Carolyn knew this, giving me a black garbage bag full of Harlequin romances to read along the trip. There had to have been over a hundred of those suckers straining to get out of their plastic bag prison and I obliged them all by reading every one of'em.
As we drove across the country, I would read two or three of the books in a sitting, depositing them in the drawers of the motels we stayed in at night - kinda like soft core pornographic Gideon Bibles. It was a strange time in my life...REM's Out Of Time playing through the headphones of the boom box I'd brought with me, the words 'throbbing manhood' swimming on the pages of the books in front of me.
A very odd time, indeed.
I don't know how all of this really ties into Bonnet Ripping, I guess it does somehow because it definitely got the synapses in my brain all fired up.
Heck, the next time you see me I may be wearing a bonnet. I hear those Amish men are pretty amazing at 'driving the buggy'.
Wink, wink.
This only came about because I was regaling them with the details of my bizarre train trip across America and how I had seen a number of Mennonite women on the train reading what looked like romance novels.
That's when someone, I forget who, chimed in: Bonnet Rippers!
It looks as if the 'Bodice Ripper' has been co-opted by the religious set. I thought TWILIGHT was the penultimate of all the no kissing, no sex until marriage literature, but apparently I was wrong. It seems that the Amish and Mennonite Bonnet Rippers have all the angst and overheated emotion of the Harlequin universe, but without any of the sex. Totally trumping Twilight - cause they made with the disastrous sexy sex, ya know.
I, for one, am very curious to read one of these books because there is only so much 'throbbing member' action a person can take before they start to feel kind of pervy. I know this for fact because when I was thirteen years old I read one hundred Harlequin Romance books in two very short weeks.
This was the summer my family moved from Orlando, FL to Los Angeles, CA. It took my sister, mother and me two weeks to do it. (We took our time, stopping at all the roadside attractions like we were - unintentionally - retracing Lolita and Humbert Humbert's path across America.) Along the way, we made a pit stop in Huntsville, AL to see my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
That's when I discovered my Aunt Carolyn belonged to the Harlequin Romance Book of The Month Club. Always a voracious reader (of anything I could get my hands on) and my Aunt Carolyn knew this, giving me a black garbage bag full of Harlequin romances to read along the trip. There had to have been over a hundred of those suckers straining to get out of their plastic bag prison and I obliged them all by reading every one of'em.
As we drove across the country, I would read two or three of the books in a sitting, depositing them in the drawers of the motels we stayed in at night - kinda like soft core pornographic Gideon Bibles. It was a strange time in my life...REM's Out Of Time playing through the headphones of the boom box I'd brought with me, the words 'throbbing manhood' swimming on the pages of the books in front of me.
A very odd time, indeed.
I don't know how all of this really ties into Bonnet Ripping, I guess it does somehow because it definitely got the synapses in my brain all fired up.
Heck, the next time you see me I may be wearing a bonnet. I hear those Amish men are pretty amazing at 'driving the buggy'.
Wink, wink.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Triangle Tara Thanks You: Addendum
Triangle Tara wanted to take a moment to send a special thanks to Theresa Grammer who has built the beautiful fundraiser site for her every year and personally puts in a lot of time and effort to help Tara spread the word!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
TRIANGLE TARA THANKS YOU AND I THANK YOU
You guys are amazing! You helped Triangle Tara raise $1000 for the Los Angeles Food Bank - plus that's not even counting the donations some of you made to the food bank in order to be registered for the Doll and Surprise Gift drawing!*
Triangle Tara and I send you big love and hugs for making this happen. You rawk!
Thank you for your order!
Visa
*PS: The Surprise Gift was the actual Justin Bieber T-Shirt (signed) I wore and took about a million pictures in for that Scavenger Hunt Misha Collins put on!
Triangle Tara and I send you big love and hugs for making this happen. You rawk!
Los Angeles Regional Foodbank Customer Receipt/Purchase Confirmation
To Amber Benson
| Order Information |
| Merchant: | Los Angeles Regional Foodbank |
| Description: | Donation to LAFoodBank.org |
|
|
|
Billing Information
Amber Benson N/A Sherman Oaks, CA 91403 US bensonentertainment@hotmail.com |
Shipping Information
N/A |
|
Visa
*PS: The Surprise Gift was the actual Justin Bieber T-Shirt (signed) I wore and took about a million pictures in for that Scavenger Hunt Misha Collins put on!
Monday, January 9, 2012
Solitary vs Interconnected
Wow, that last post really seemed to have touched a nerve - my own included.
Why are relationships so hard to make work? Just look at the comments section in that last post and you will see why. So many varied reasons, so many individual stories of heartache and triumph...it blew my mind.
Of course, how can that question not touch a raw nerve? Relationships are what define us. Without the input of other people we have very little framework outside of ourselves to figure out who we are. For example, I spend a lot of time creating things, but without other people to read and see what I make, the effort of creating falls a little flat.
Yes, even if I lived in a vacuum, I would still be moved to write and make stuff, but the thrill of having someone else experience my creation is like nothing else out there...okay, it's probably on par with falling in love, but that happens so, so, so infrequently (like once every trillion years) that I gotta rely on creating stuff to get my jollies off.
But whether it's being creative or falling in love, the common denominator is 'being experienced'. When someone experiences us through our work or through falling in love with us, it's like we become immortal for that moment. We don't just exist in our own heads, we exist in the minds of the people we have touched.
It's like being on your computer vs. being on your computer that's connected to the Internet.
I like the idea of being connected, of knowing that as I write this, there will be people out there who will read my words and be affected by them. Negatively or positively, I can't control...just that the act of 'being experienced' is enough.
Why are relationships so hard to make work? Just look at the comments section in that last post and you will see why. So many varied reasons, so many individual stories of heartache and triumph...it blew my mind.
Of course, how can that question not touch a raw nerve? Relationships are what define us. Without the input of other people we have very little framework outside of ourselves to figure out who we are. For example, I spend a lot of time creating things, but without other people to read and see what I make, the effort of creating falls a little flat.
Yes, even if I lived in a vacuum, I would still be moved to write and make stuff, but the thrill of having someone else experience my creation is like nothing else out there...okay, it's probably on par with falling in love, but that happens so, so, so infrequently (like once every trillion years) that I gotta rely on creating stuff to get my jollies off.
But whether it's being creative or falling in love, the common denominator is 'being experienced'. When someone experiences us through our work or through falling in love with us, it's like we become immortal for that moment. We don't just exist in our own heads, we exist in the minds of the people we have touched.
It's like being on your computer vs. being on your computer that's connected to the Internet.
I like the idea of being connected, of knowing that as I write this, there will be people out there who will read my words and be affected by them. Negatively or positively, I can't control...just that the act of 'being experienced' is enough.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Why Are Relationships So Hard?
Why are relationships so hard? You like someone, they like you...so why doesn't it work. The whole thing should be easy - what with biological imperatives and the like - but instead this is one of the most complicated and prescient questions out there. It crosses gender, social, economic, religious lines and is applicable to pretty much everyone on the planet. Sure there are still arranged marriages and other situations where people are forced to be together, where they have no say in whether they work as a couple or not, but those examples are getting to be few and far between as the Western notion of picking your own partner becomes standard practice all over the world.
If I had an answer for this question - even a semi-plausible one that sounded kinda good - I would share it with you. But I am as in the dark about this as everyone else.
What do you think? It's not an essay question. No one is being graded. I'm just curious.
If I had an answer for this question - even a semi-plausible one that sounded kinda good - I would share it with you. But I am as in the dark about this as everyone else.
What do you think? It's not an essay question. No one is being graded. I'm just curious.
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