IPOD
RADIO
Dan Kennedy author of Loser Goes First
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jun 10, 2004
Ever feel bad about yourself? We’ve all made mistakes and we’ve all had regrets. When it’s time to feel better about your shitty life the best way is to find other people who have done stupider things.
Dan Kennedy’s life has been filled with goals that have accomplished nothing and failed miserably. He had nothing to do but write a book about it called Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation.
When he was in junior high he wanted to be a rock star but he found it was really boring to play an instrument, next was acting but being an extra in Sleepless in Seattle never really led to anything so it wasn’t until he discovered that he was good at entertaining people by telling them about his life, that things slowly began to work out for him. But what a ride it was!
Check out the website for Loser Goes First
Daniel Robert Epstein: The book is really funny, I laughed out loud a few times. What lead up to it?
Dan Kennedy: Doing everything and failing miserably at all of it. I just kind of realized that writing was the one thing that I was arriving at in a natural way. Like everything else I’d attempted, I always had this big plan, like this is how I’ll get famous or this is how I’ll get rich [laughs]. I just realized that writing was the one thing that I was doing without all of that stuff in the forefront of my mind. It was the one honest and natural thing that was happening
DRE:
Some of the material is older; did you keep a journal of everything that’s ever happened to you?
DK:
It was mostly things I would write to my friends. Any sort of record I had was just stories I was in the habit of telling friends whenever we got together.
DRE:
We’re your friends more successful than you?
DK:
Oh yeah, it’s completely sad. Even the most desperate of my friends were like, “wow I’m so desperate, I write desperate music which is now getting a following.” I’d be like, “oh, wow that’s cool, I’m so desperate I’m just fucking lost between the cracks.”
DRE:
Did you ever think your writing would become so popular?
DK:
No, I started tracing it back to when I would hide in the corner of the detention hall and make it this comedic satirical essay on the teacher who punished me. To me, that was writing. It only took me 34 years to put that together.
DRE:
Is there anyone you read that made you feel better about yourself?
DK:
I remember when I read [David Sedaris] Barrel Fever I went, “Okay cool, it’s like we’re going to be all right,”
DRE:
Is there any one story that makes you wince the most?
DK:
Yeah. It’s weird though, I was talking with Jerry Stahl at the time I was writing this book and he told me that when he finished “Permanent Midnight” he relapsed.
DRE:
Wow!
DK:
When I got to the end of “Loser Goes First,” I just had this huge thing where I was like, “Oh my god I’m helpless, there’s no hope.” I had just got done writing an entire book about everything that hadn’t worked out and I realized, “Oh, God I’m stuck in that life.” I was suddenly this 34 year old finishing a book that made me feel like a 22-year old marginalized loser all over again. It was kind of really my own little pathetic relapse.
DRE:
What do the people who work for you think of you?
DK:
I don’t know how all of that works, I really don’t. Life right now is extremely strange to me people will come to my office and ask for career advice and I think, “oh my god did you read my book, run away while you can get away from me, what if it’s contagious?”
DRE:
[laughs] How did you start to get noticed?
DK:
I’d lost the dot com job like the rest of America and I just I found myself in my apartment in New York. The last of my paycheck was spent on groceries and I was holed up in my apartment. I started writing these letters to McSweeneys, it was the only thing that was really keeping me sane during the day. I was done writing to friends and family about yet another thing not working out. It was like, “God this is getting pathetic now that I’m this old.” it was embarrassing the volume of stuff that I would send to them, like this completely pathetic man sending them like 50 pieces a week.
I definitely remember thinking these guys are just going to mark my address as spam because it’s weird how much stuff I’m sending them but it kind of worked the other way and they started running things.
One thing leads to another; I think I met Jerry Stahl just by both of us being on the same bill at a gig in New York one time.
DRE:
Did you really stare at that Cheryl Tiegs poster the whole trip?
DK:
My friend John did yeah [laughs].
He went to the book fair at our school and his mom, gave him a ten dollar bill and said get whatever you want and he got this Cheryl Teigs poster and an issue of Dynamite Magazine. She was just enraged and I remember standing there while they were in their argument totally thinking, “Why is she enraged, he got two things from the book fair. A poster of Cheryl Teigs and this magazine. I don’t understand what the problem is.” Obviously he was supposed to get a book for the long drive to Phoenix [laughs] and then she was like, “I hope you like staring at her in the back of the station wagon for the whole drive” and we were both like, “Yeah! What doesn’t she get about how a poster works?”
DRE:
[laughs] Why was Jerry Stahl prompted to call you "The hipster Proust of youthful loserdom?"
DK:
It was like, “hey do you want to give a quote to the book?” and he was like, “yeah sure how about this?” and wrote out this thing.
DRE:
Were you ever worried about people thinking that you were a narcissist?
DK:
I think the truth of the matter is I don’t really give a damn. I don’t really think about what are people going to think which sounds amazingly confident, but it’s more like a mild blackout or amnesia. I just don’t really get around to going, “wow will people think this book is this, will people think this book is that?” I will say that I thought the one pre-conceived thing I had going to this is that once I finish this book I thought the only person who was going to like it is the one bitter 45 year old webmaster who’s just like pissed that he’s never gotten a shot at something. That’s going to be my reader so it will sell one copy and that will be that.
It says in the contract that I don’t have to give back the advance. After it came out the only people who hate this book are a couple of shut-ins that have taken the time to send me a note that just goes, “you suck.” On the other hand I get like fifty emails a day from the weirdest, most mainstream people going, “This is so funny and I’m so glad you put this out it makes me feel so better about my life.”
DRE:
That picture of you on the back flap looks like you woke up and took it yourself.
DK:
That’s what it was. They were pressing me for an author photograph, which is the one thing that made me feel very narcissistic. I’m writing a book about what a loser I feel like and now I’m just going to schedule myself a $5,000 portrait sitting in New York. I thought “Here’s a camera and before I finish making this pot of coffee my author photo is done. It should be back from the drug store in about an hour.”
DRE:
[laughs] How did you get hooked up with Crown?
DK:
[laughs] I started doing these gigs around town, they’re kind of like spoken word reading sort of comedy. Like a kinder gentler Henry Rollins or something and more and more people just started coming out. This guy came up to me afterwards and said you know you really have to meet this agent and I was like, okay. You know I met this agent and she was like, “yeah you should totally put this into a book and blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “sweet, I can get some food that way.” I got food at Random House
DRE:
[laughs] It’s all little sandwiches right?
DK:
I was like if I’m going to sign a contract I need bagels cut in half [laughs]
DRE:
Why didn’t you write that your life got pretty good?
DK:
Well the fact of the matter is it’s not this picture perfect thing of I went and did the gig and the next thing I know I was putting out a book. I think it was two and a half years after that night that things actually started happening and that time was hard. I went out and credit carded a bunch of food and some shirts and now they’re telling me that this isn’t going to happen for like eight months so I was right back to freelancing at the same marketing agency that I was at in chapter four.
DRE:
How was the book tour?
DK:
It was great and I’d never really done anything like that. In New York I know what neighborhoods I can get like a big crowd in. I wouldn’t feel too great playing anywhere west of probably 3rd Avenue. So it was a little weird to go to the airport and go 3,000 miles west of Third Avenue.
In Portland there were lots and lots of people and Seattle too. It’s kind of interesting you get to know cities’ reading habits.
DRE:
How about the book?
DK:
I found the photograph on one of those stock photo websites and I thought it spoke volumes. Here’s this kid that’s got it together enough to make a rocket ship. He obviously has bigger aspirations than the suburbs but I think it’s clear to everybody he ain’t gonna be on the moon anytime soon [laughs].
DRE:
[laughs] Yeah, that rocket’s not going anywhere
How about the job you have now, how’d you end up with that?
DK:
Just totally strange luck. I used to do a lot of freelance for these guys and pretty much the same day I sent off the finished manuscript I got a call from a friend here and he said, “hey why don’t you come over here and basically do the advertising and stuff that you learned how to do in ad agencies? But like kind of combine that with music and be a creative director.” I went, “Cool, you guys have food over there, right?”
DRE:
How’s the food different?
DK:
Tiny muffins cut in half.
DRE:
But what do you do exactly?
DK:
It’s basically advertising.
DRE:
Have you done anything like innovative that we might have seen or anything like that?
DK:
I’ve done so many innovative things.
DRE:
[laughs] That’s a big no.
DK:
I was going to start some big huge advertising sort of theory quote and then I just decided, Oh god. But the long and short of it is you’ve been to a concert or watched MTV you’ve seen what it is we do here.
DRE:
And what kind of music are you into now?
DK:
I like the new Frank Black record a lot and the latest Joe Strummer. Kill Hannah is really cool.
DRE:
Do you have a girlfriend?
DK:
Yeah I can’t believe it.
DRE:
How did you meet her?
DK:
I met her on a rooftop in Brooklyn on July 4th four years ago.
DRE:
Oh, you’ve been together a long time.
DK:
I have no idea what to do. I’ve been like a six-month to one year guy my whole life.
DRE:
Does she think that you’re less of a loser than you think that you are?
DK:
Yeah she seems to see something that’s not there.
DRE:
What kind of girls are you attracted to?
DK:
Are you guys going to do the “Win a Date with Dan K Contest?”
That’d be so cool. I’m attracted to girls who names are Maria, who has blonde hair and who seems to think that I have some potential.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Ever feel bad about yourself? We’ve all made mistakes and we’ve all had regrets. When it’s time to feel better about your shitty life the best way is to find other people who have done stupider things.
Dan Kennedy’s life has been filled with goals that have accomplished nothing and failed miserably. He had nothing to do but write a book about it called Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation.
When he was in junior high he wanted to be a rock star but he found it was really boring to play an instrument, next was acting but being an extra in Sleepless in Seattle never really led to anything so it wasn’t until he discovered that he was good at entertaining people by telling them about his life, that things slowly began to work out for him. But what a ride it was!
Check out the website for Loser Goes First
Daniel Robert Epstein: The book is really funny, I laughed out loud a few times. What lead up to it?
Dan Kennedy: Doing everything and failing miserably at all of it. I just kind of realized that writing was the one thing that I was arriving at in a natural way. Like everything else I’d attempted, I always had this big plan, like this is how I’ll get famous or this is how I’ll get rich [laughs]. I just realized that writing was the one thing that I was doing without all of that stuff in the forefront of my mind. It was the one honest and natural thing that was happening
DRE:
Some of the material is older; did you keep a journal of everything that’s ever happened to you?
DK:
It was mostly things I would write to my friends. Any sort of record I had was just stories I was in the habit of telling friends whenever we got together.
DRE:
We’re your friends more successful than you?
DK:
Oh yeah, it’s completely sad. Even the most desperate of my friends were like, “wow I’m so desperate, I write desperate music which is now getting a following.” I’d be like, “oh, wow that’s cool, I’m so desperate I’m just fucking lost between the cracks.”
DRE:
Did you ever think your writing would become so popular?
DK:
No, I started tracing it back to when I would hide in the corner of the detention hall and make it this comedic satirical essay on the teacher who punished me. To me, that was writing. It only took me 34 years to put that together.
DRE:
Is there anyone you read that made you feel better about yourself?
DK:
I remember when I read [David Sedaris] Barrel Fever I went, “Okay cool, it’s like we’re going to be all right,”
DRE:
Is there any one story that makes you wince the most?
DK:
Yeah. It’s weird though, I was talking with Jerry Stahl at the time I was writing this book and he told me that when he finished “Permanent Midnight” he relapsed.
DRE:
Wow!
DK:
When I got to the end of “Loser Goes First,” I just had this huge thing where I was like, “Oh my god I’m helpless, there’s no hope.” I had just got done writing an entire book about everything that hadn’t worked out and I realized, “Oh, God I’m stuck in that life.” I was suddenly this 34 year old finishing a book that made me feel like a 22-year old marginalized loser all over again. It was kind of really my own little pathetic relapse.
DRE:
What do the people who work for you think of you?
DK:
I don’t know how all of that works, I really don’t. Life right now is extremely strange to me people will come to my office and ask for career advice and I think, “oh my god did you read my book, run away while you can get away from me, what if it’s contagious?”
DRE:
[laughs] How did you start to get noticed?
DK:
I’d lost the dot com job like the rest of America and I just I found myself in my apartment in New York. The last of my paycheck was spent on groceries and I was holed up in my apartment. I started writing these letters to McSweeneys, it was the only thing that was really keeping me sane during the day. I was done writing to friends and family about yet another thing not working out. It was like, “God this is getting pathetic now that I’m this old.” it was embarrassing the volume of stuff that I would send to them, like this completely pathetic man sending them like 50 pieces a week.
I definitely remember thinking these guys are just going to mark my address as spam because it’s weird how much stuff I’m sending them but it kind of worked the other way and they started running things.
One thing leads to another; I think I met Jerry Stahl just by both of us being on the same bill at a gig in New York one time.
I definitely remember thinking these guys are just going to mark my address as spam because it’s weird how much stuff I’m sending them but it kind of worked the other way and they started running things.
One thing leads to another; I think I met Jerry Stahl just by both of us being on the same bill at a gig in New York one time.
DRE:
Did you really stare at that Cheryl Tiegs poster the whole trip?
DK:
My friend John did yeah [laughs].
He went to the book fair at our school and his mom, gave him a ten dollar bill and said get whatever you want and he got this Cheryl Teigs poster and an issue of Dynamite Magazine. She was just enraged and I remember standing there while they were in their argument totally thinking, “Why is she enraged, he got two things from the book fair. A poster of Cheryl Teigs and this magazine. I don’t understand what the problem is.” Obviously he was supposed to get a book for the long drive to Phoenix [laughs] and then she was like, “I hope you like staring at her in the back of the station wagon for the whole drive” and we were both like, “Yeah! What doesn’t she get about how a poster works?”
He went to the book fair at our school and his mom, gave him a ten dollar bill and said get whatever you want and he got this Cheryl Teigs poster and an issue of Dynamite Magazine. She was just enraged and I remember standing there while they were in their argument totally thinking, “Why is she enraged, he got two things from the book fair. A poster of Cheryl Teigs and this magazine. I don’t understand what the problem is.” Obviously he was supposed to get a book for the long drive to Phoenix [laughs] and then she was like, “I hope you like staring at her in the back of the station wagon for the whole drive” and we were both like, “Yeah! What doesn’t she get about how a poster works?”
DRE:
[laughs] Why was Jerry Stahl prompted to call you "The hipster Proust of youthful loserdom?"
DK:
It was like, “hey do you want to give a quote to the book?” and he was like, “yeah sure how about this?” and wrote out this thing.
DRE:
Were you ever worried about people thinking that you were a narcissist?
DK:
I think the truth of the matter is I don’t really give a damn. I don’t really think about what are people going to think which sounds amazingly confident, but it’s more like a mild blackout or amnesia. I just don’t really get around to going, “wow will people think this book is this, will people think this book is that?” I will say that I thought the one pre-conceived thing I had going to this is that once I finish this book I thought the only person who was going to like it is the one bitter 45 year old webmaster who’s just like pissed that he’s never gotten a shot at something. That’s going to be my reader so it will sell one copy and that will be that.
It says in the contract that I don’t have to give back the advance. After it came out the only people who hate this book are a couple of shut-ins that have taken the time to send me a note that just goes, “you suck.” On the other hand I get like fifty emails a day from the weirdest, most mainstream people going, “This is so funny and I’m so glad you put this out it makes me feel so better about my life.”
It says in the contract that I don’t have to give back the advance. After it came out the only people who hate this book are a couple of shut-ins that have taken the time to send me a note that just goes, “you suck.” On the other hand I get like fifty emails a day from the weirdest, most mainstream people going, “This is so funny and I’m so glad you put this out it makes me feel so better about my life.”
DRE:
That picture of you on the back flap looks like you woke up and took it yourself.
DK:
That’s what it was. They were pressing me for an author photograph, which is the one thing that made me feel very narcissistic. I’m writing a book about what a loser I feel like and now I’m just going to schedule myself a $5,000 portrait sitting in New York. I thought “Here’s a camera and before I finish making this pot of coffee my author photo is done. It should be back from the drug store in about an hour.”
DRE:
[laughs] How did you get hooked up with Crown?
DK:
[laughs] I started doing these gigs around town, they’re kind of like spoken word reading sort of comedy. Like a kinder gentler Henry Rollins or something and more and more people just started coming out. This guy came up to me afterwards and said you know you really have to meet this agent and I was like, okay. You know I met this agent and she was like, “yeah you should totally put this into a book and blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “sweet, I can get some food that way.” I got food at Random House
DRE:
[laughs] It’s all little sandwiches right?
DK:
I was like if I’m going to sign a contract I need bagels cut in half [laughs]
DRE:
Why didn’t you write that your life got pretty good?
DK:
Well the fact of the matter is it’s not this picture perfect thing of I went and did the gig and the next thing I know I was putting out a book. I think it was two and a half years after that night that things actually started happening and that time was hard. I went out and credit carded a bunch of food and some shirts and now they’re telling me that this isn’t going to happen for like eight months so I was right back to freelancing at the same marketing agency that I was at in chapter four.
DRE:
How was the book tour?
DK:
It was great and I’d never really done anything like that. In New York I know what neighborhoods I can get like a big crowd in. I wouldn’t feel too great playing anywhere west of probably 3rd Avenue. So it was a little weird to go to the airport and go 3,000 miles west of Third Avenue.
In Portland there were lots and lots of people and Seattle too. It’s kind of interesting you get to know cities’ reading habits.
In Portland there were lots and lots of people and Seattle too. It’s kind of interesting you get to know cities’ reading habits.
DRE:
How about the book?
DK:
I found the photograph on one of those stock photo websites and I thought it spoke volumes. Here’s this kid that’s got it together enough to make a rocket ship. He obviously has bigger aspirations than the suburbs but I think it’s clear to everybody he ain’t gonna be on the moon anytime soon [laughs].
DRE:
[laughs] Yeah, that rocket’s not going anywhere
How about the job you have now, how’d you end up with that?
How about the job you have now, how’d you end up with that?
DK:
Just totally strange luck. I used to do a lot of freelance for these guys and pretty much the same day I sent off the finished manuscript I got a call from a friend here and he said, “hey why don’t you come over here and basically do the advertising and stuff that you learned how to do in ad agencies? But like kind of combine that with music and be a creative director.” I went, “Cool, you guys have food over there, right?”
DRE:
How’s the food different?
DK:
Tiny muffins cut in half.
DRE:
But what do you do exactly?
DK:
It’s basically advertising.
DRE:
Have you done anything like innovative that we might have seen or anything like that?
DK:
I’ve done so many innovative things.
DRE:
[laughs] That’s a big no.
DK:
I was going to start some big huge advertising sort of theory quote and then I just decided, Oh god. But the long and short of it is you’ve been to a concert or watched MTV you’ve seen what it is we do here.
DRE:
And what kind of music are you into now?
DK:
I like the new Frank Black record a lot and the latest Joe Strummer. Kill Hannah is really cool.
DRE:
Do you have a girlfriend?
DK:
Yeah I can’t believe it.
DRE:
How did you meet her?
DK:
I met her on a rooftop in Brooklyn on July 4th four years ago.
DRE:
Oh, you’ve been together a long time.
DK:
I have no idea what to do. I’ve been like a six-month to one year guy my whole life.
DRE:
Does she think that you’re less of a loser than you think that you are?
DK:
Yeah she seems to see something that’s not there.
DRE:
What kind of girls are you attracted to?
DK:
Are you guys going to do the “Win a Date with Dan K Contest?”
That’d be so cool. I’m attracted to girls who names are Maria, who has blonde hair and who seems to think that I have some potential.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
That’d be so cool. I’m attracted to girls who names are Maria, who has blonde hair and who seems to think that I have some potential.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
