Maybe you'd like to see what Riley Breckenridge, drummer of Thrice and 3hree Things columnist, does when he's not hitting things with sticks and being snarky online. Well, he publishes his work on FlipCollective.com, a collaborative site where weekly, each FlipCollective writer's work gets edited by a
fellow FlipCollective member and published. “As they learn from one another, the
writers improve. Along the way, you, the reader, are provided with an
Internet oddity: content that has actually been edited,” the site says.
The e-Book Machine Wash Warm has “Sixty Feet, Six Inches,” by Breckenridge, but that's only one story out of eight. There's also an audiobook, featuring each writer reading his or her piece. The best part? It costs all of $1. You can buy it here.
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While we can't post an excerpt of Breckenridge's story here (it will appear on Flipcollective soon enough), we direct you to his other non-3hree Things writing, which is, as you'd expect, really, really funny. Here's an excerpt of “The Unbearable Lameness of Being,” about cotillion class the Thrice drummer had to attend as a young 'un.
Cotillion's worthlessness didn't end there though. Between sessions of
stumbling through the cha-cha and battling an adolescent case of butt
butter, we were taught manners, another “skill” I've retained very
little of. I still can't tell you which fork is for salad and which is
for the entrée. And my lessons on how to be a “gentleman” (opening the
door for a lady, pulling your date's chair out for her and waiting until
she sits down, etc.) haven't been as beneficial as my parents (or my
girlfriend's parents) had probably hoped. More often than not, when I've
held a door open for a woman, it's been a thankless gesture or been
received with a glare, as if I've insulted them or treated them as
inferior by being courteous**. And, mind you, the last time I got my ass
kicked, it happened after I held the door open for my friend's
girlfriend's friend, got called a “faggot” by a drunk steakhead in a Del
Taco parking lot, stood up for myself, got sucker punched by the
steakhead's friend, and woke up in the back of an ambulance on my way to
the hospital for extensive brain testing (with no health insurance at
the time). Thanks, cotillion!
