Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Mandated Legal Settlement Post


There. Happy?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm...

That's a good shot of Stephanie J in the driver's seat.

NR

Anonymous said...

An article about Casey that I don't think even he knows about:

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

October 13, 2006 Friday

SECTION: THE GLOBE REVIEW 7; STAYING IN: WEB; Pg. R33

HEADLINE: Bankrupt? Desperate? Blog for sympathy

BYLINE: Ivor Tossell


The blog called I Am Facing Foreclosure (www.iamfacingforeclosure.com) is too good to be true. Unless, I suppose, you're the 24-year-old blogger who says he's more than $2-million (U.S.) in debt after making a series of dodgy real-estate investments and, eponymously, is facing foreclosure. But then, one man's nightmare is another man's great read.

By his own account, the blogger, one Casey Serin, got into this muddle by lying to banks to secure easy loans, which he used to purchase eight properties in four different states. His plan was to fix them up and flip them, but he got in over his head. The logistics were too much, sales never went through, and by the beginning of September, he was facing more than $15,000 a month in mortgage bills - and had no job to fall back on. So he started a blog.

And what a blog it is. You would expect it to be a blog about real estate. But as any television writer will tell you, it doesn't matter where you set a show, be it a hospital or a submarine, they're just props: All that matters is the drama. And "I am facing foreclosure" delivers in spades.

By turns contrite, clear-eyed and apparently nuts, Serin makes confessional blog posts with titles like "I am 2.2 Million Dollars in Debt" (a scanned financial statement is attached), and "Yes! I Lied on my Loans!"; each one unfolds the story a little further. Desperate to avoid giving his houses to the bank, getting a day job and declaring the bankruptcy he so richly deserves, Serin floats a string of hopeful plans to recoup his cash: He'll go into wholesaling! He'll raffle off one of his properties! Then - and this is the best part - he plaintively asks for readers' advice: "Do you like my wholesaling idea? Or do you have something else I can do quickly?"

And so, like contestants before a dunk tank, readers line up in the comments section to take a shot. Post after post, they come by the hundreds. They tell him he's nuts not to get a job, that the boom is over, that he's going to jail. Others offer up cockamamie schemes of their own or their own surefire tactics. Still others offer motherly concern: He's brave to come clean, and there's nothing immoral about defrauding a bank in the first place. If we're not armchair investors, we're armchair parents.

But between them, you can hear the clucking of tongues for miles, smell the self-satisfaction of thousands of readers - all mildly disgruntled with something in their own lives - revelling in how much worse it could be. What a salve for liberal sensibilities: A tale of woe that can safely be blamed on the victim. Not only that, but a victim who's asking for it! If this story weren't true, it would make for good fiction. And it still might: For one thing, this is the Internet. For another, when an author confesses to being a liar, and then lies in his confessional - "Yes! I Lied on my Loans!" was a shocker for regular readers, let me tell you - the rest of the confessional falls under a suspect light.

At the end of the day, this is an exercise in what makes a good blog. Forget slices of life: Like reality TV, this is great fiction. It has a strong, pathetic anti-hero, a narrative through-line, a cast of motley characters in the comments section, and a sense of something real at stake in the story's outcome. Will he dig his way out? Will he resort to employment? Will he get hauled off to jail? What happens next?

It's a funny counterpoint to poor Dustin Diamond, another on-line wash-up who you might remember as Screech from the after-school sitcom Saved By The Bell. Diamond, it seems, got into some real-estate trouble of his own, and wound up selling T-shirts on-line (www.getdshirts.com) to forestall his own foreclosure. But the site was static; it wasn't a blog, and the narrative didn't advance. It just sat there, a desperate plea from a former child star - one who didn't realize that pleas for sympathy are so 20th century. We live in a post-James Frey world, and we demand confession and catharsis. At last report, Diamond is currently starring in the porn film Saved By The Smell. In the meantime, Serin has leveraged his problem into a narrative, and that has won him a degree of Internet fame. His story, in the end, was his one marketable asset. Internet fame doesn't convert to cash, though it can sometimes be traded in for a book deal. Pitch it as a tell-all, riches-to-rags-to-happiness tale, combined with practical hints on how to avoid his fate. Add a dollop of morality, suggest parents buy it for their children, sell a newsletter, do some motivational speaking. That's my advice, anyway. Run with it, Casey.

Anonymous said...

Sweet.

Can you find one in medium fern green? Tan soft top... little skullhead hanging from the rear-view mirror?

Anonymous said...

Whose skull is it, Stephanie?

-jbjbj

Anonymous said...

Hmm... Your guess is as good as mine. It's a pretty tiny skull--so it could be Casey's.

Anonymous said...

That Globe & Mail writer gets what is wrong (and right) about Casey's site that he sure doesn't...

The commentary drives readership. Without the "negative haters" it's nothing more than Casey finding excuses to why he is in this mess and how he KNOWS somebody will bail him out (Case, yeah sure it's gonna happen - YOU CAN DO IT!...NOT).

Anonymous said...

@Dolph

Very true. If it were just the content created by Casey, the blog would suck hideously. It's the commentary indeed that makes it interesting.

And I agree wholeheartedly about the underlying goal of securing compassion and assistance--that's exactly what Casey's had in mind since the beginning.

Anonymous said...

>>smell the self-satisfaction of thousands of readers - all mildly disgruntled with something in their own lives - revelling in how much worse it could be<<

Hey, I'll admiyt to beign self-satified... but disgruntled? Nope. Life is good. It's all good (and I don't mean that in a Casey way - it is actually all good).

Anonymous said...

>>At last report, Diamond is currently starring in the porn film Saved By The Smell<<

Ah, perhaps Casey can kill two birds with one stone by recording his jail "dates" and selling them to pay back every dirty penny

Rob Dawg said...

Ah, perhaps Casey can kill two birds with one stone by recording his jail "dates" and selling them to pay back every dirty penny

Unfortunately the typical looser deal in the adult film industry is "points in the back end." [ducks]

Anonymous said...

OMG that is so hot.....

good job rob.....OH yah..that is better than 5 minutes in the closet with alyssa millano.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, why did you guys have to bring up that Screech porn. I recently saw part of it and I'm still emotionally scarred.

Anonymous said...

@ Say No to Screech

Well, I understand your emotional scarring; however this image of a stompy little Jeep should help you overcome your trauma. I know it soothes me.