To the Members of the WGA

To the members of the WGA who “went on strike this morning,”:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i00627c6566fe8f5ff527d3b378ec4fbd

I was just reading about you guys in “_The New York Observer_”:http://www.observer.com/2007/waiting-texty. David Kalstein, a writer on NBC’s _Bionic Woman_ was saying that he plans “to chill the fuck out for a bit.” Oscar-nominated writer-director Richard LaGravenese mulled over whether he’d finally write that play he always wanted to write.

I’ve got another idea: how about writing for _Heeb_? Come on, you weren’t planning on making any money during this time anyway. Now you can write about that time that you walked into Mel Gibson’s trailer and caught him jerking off to a photo of Sophie Tucker.

I’m pasting our submission guidelines below. If enough of you respond, who knows, maybe we’ll do a Hollywood-themed issue?

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_HEEB_ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

_Heeb_ Magazine is looking for idea-driven features. Because we’re a quarterly publication, stories should aspire to be “momentous,” rather than “timely.” Don’t send us a 4,000-word analysis of the latest ripple in the Middle East. There will probably be five more before our next issue hits newsstands three to four months from now. We’re also looking for feature-length interviews with the best of the best—hot, hot heebs like Jeremy Piven Sarah Silverman and Zach Braff, American icons like the Beastie Boys, John Waters and Perry Farrell, and smarty-pants intellectuals like Cornel West, Naomi Wolf and Tony Kushner. As we’ve stated before, _Heeb_ is interested in the inadvertently Jewish, the tangentially Jewish, the Jew-askew. It is obvious what is Jewish about pastrami, klezmer and neurotic families. It’s much more interesting to uncover what’s Jewish about belly dancing, Diamanda Galas and The Passion of the Christ. The latter is what we’re looking for. We’re especially fond of the irreverent, the well researched, and the shockingly original.

In addition:

A _Heeb_ story should have a sense of humor. There are lots of different types of humor (from absurdist to zany), and _Heeb_ is a place for all of them.

A _Heeb_ story should not be iconoclastic for the sake of iconoclasm. We don’t believe that shock value is inherently interesting or worthwhile. If you’re challenging a sacred cow, you should have a motive besides wanting to hear it “moo.”

But most of all, a _Heeb_ story should be something you’d find in _Heeb_. We’re glad that you’ve heard of _Heeb_ and are delighted that you think our magazine was made for out-of-work writers like you; but before you send us a submission that would be abso-smurf-ly perfect for us, perhaps you should go back and re-read a couple of issues (this takes no more than thirty minutes; five if you skip the pictures). Having done that, ask yourself, “Where in the magazine would my idea fit?” If you can’t answer that question, don’t expect us to be able to. If you can, then let us know.

Unfortunately, at this time we pay very little. Excruciatingly little. We are working every day to make payment less painful, but in the meantime please understand that we’re a small, independent magazine. If _Heeb_ were a Christian publication, we’d tell you your efforts would be repaid in the afterlife. But since we’re not, we’re hoping you’ll be satisfied with a drink ticket at the release party and the knowledge that you can become part of the world’s most notorious Hebrew school project gone awry.

Send submissions to [email protected]_. Thanks.

What do you think?