Feeding the Crowds
Treat an audience to a sidesplitting speech or an unforgettable team-building event.

Flavors for Films
Access material on which you can base an entertaining short film.

Spilling Your Guts
Tell us about your foibles and reap rewards.

How Spilled Soup Was Cooked Up

In 1993, self-described bumbler Ed Mauss launched a newsletter called the Hard Luck Gazette as a means of uniting clods of the world and encouraging otherwise circumspect folks to share their foibles.

The Gazette presented hilarious brief accounts of people from all walks of life -- people one with the fact that none of us is immune to minor calamities, so why not laugh about them instead of hide them?

"It was a sort of a self-deprecation club and a celebration of our humanity -- the fact that all of us, if otherwise intelligent, have occasion to bumble or to be bumbled upon," says Ed.

Through uncommonly good fortune, the Arizona Republic featured the Gazette on the cover of its lifestyle section. That led to similar articles in the Long Beach Press Telegram, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the National Enquirer, New Choices Magazine and the Orange County Register, which had its piece picked up by the Associated Press wire services. In radio land, the Osgood Files profiled this homespun publication on one of its segments and myriad radio stations around the world interviewed Ed live on air.

At the height of its success, the Gazette had hundreds of subscribers across the United States. But just as it was taking flight, Ed learned that having children biologically would be a challenge. "My wife and I embarked upon a journey to adopt, and I knew I would again muddle through -- this time on on the road to parenthood," reflects Ed.

Obtaining two children ('95 and '97), and helping to care for them, tapped most of Ed's time and energy. Sustaining the Gazette was an unreasonable burden, so he suspended publication in 1997.

As the babies sprouted into kidlets, their maintenance taxed Ed less and less -- at least physically. So he eeked out some spare time and leveraged the internet to publish the stories he collected as Spilled Soup. And he continues to collect stories with the re-launch of the Hard Luck Gazette as a blog.

He'll keep on muddling as long as there are other muddlers out there. "Whether or not you agree with his policies, you have to admit George W. Bush! is a beacon of excellence among muddlers," Ed points out.

Broth and Stock
Find out how Spilled Soup was cooked up.

Soup du Jour
Read press releases and news media coverage.

Sharing Our Portions
Learn why 10% of net profits are devoted to promoting adoption.

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