Posting may be a little bit erratic today, as I’m trying to type up about 3 billion pages of notes from the South by Southwest Interactive Media Conference I attended last week. More on that later, but in the meantime, you may want to check out this awesome interview with PETA’s irreverent VP Dan Mathews, who’s about to embark on a nationwide tour in support of the paperback release of his book, Committed. Check the calendar on his myspace page if you want to catch one of his upcoming booksignings.

… Well, a number of dates. Dan Mathews' last cross-country book tour was such a big hit that he’s doing a whole new one. Sometimes I wonder whether the guy doesn’t enjoy sitting around the office and going to endless meetings as much as the rest of us do. There was a nice little piece about Dan in The Windy City Times last week, and another great one in the latest issue of Ocean Drive magazine, which, annoyingly, I can’t link to because they didn’t put it up on their website. I’m not sure I fully understand how people “read” stuff these days if it’s not on the Internet, but they presumably have some kind of system.

Anyway, here’s the schedule for Dan’s book tour in case you live in one of these cities, and even if you don’t, you can order a copy of Committed here. It’s a very funny piece of literature. And it’s got some good stuff in there about animals.

Tuesday, July 24
Atlanta
Borders Atlanta-Buckhead
3637 Peachtree Rd NE
Atlanta, GA 30319
7:30 PM

Wednesday, July 25
Nashville
Davis Kidd Booksellers
The Mall at Green Hills
2121 Green Hills Village Drive
Ste 281
Nashville, TN 37215
6:00 PM

Monday, July 30
Pittsburgh
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
2705 E. Carson Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
7:00 pm

Wednesday, August 1
Detroit
Borders
34300 Woodward
Birmingham, MI 48009
7:00 PM

Thursday, August 2
Austin
BookPeople
603 N. Lamar
Austin, TX 78703
7:00 PM

Friday, August 3
Hastings
1306 W. Davis St.
Conroe, TX 77304
7:00 pm

Tuesday, August 7
Tampa
Barnes & Noble
11802 N. Dale Mabry Highway
Tampa, FL 33618
7:00 PM

Thursday, August 9
Orlando
Borders
600 North Orlando Ave
Winter Park, FL 32789
7:00 PM

Monday, August 13
Minneapolis
Magers & Quinn
3038 Hennepin Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
7:30 p.m.

Monday, August 27
St. Louis
Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid
St. Louis, MO 63108
7:00 p.m.

“What is a heterosexual meat eater like me doing in a place like this?” asked James Carville, in his own living room last night. “Well, like everything else, you can blame it on Bill.”

Remember the party that political powerhouses James Carville and Mary Matalin were gonna throw for PETA VP Dan Mathews? To make a long story short, after hitting it off with Dan at a dinner for Bill Clinton recently, Carville and Matalin decided to host a party to launch Dan’s awesome new book, Committed: A Rabble-Rouser’s Memoir. Well, the party was last night and it sounds like it was a blast.

The soiree attracted Capitol Hill folk from both ends of the political spectrum, including Democratic big wig Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Bush speech writer John McConnell, a gaggle of gay Washington scenesters, and even well-known Friend of Bill, Steve Bing, who flew in from Los Angeles just for the event. After introductions by Matalin and Carville, Dan got things started by saying, “Although PETA is a nonpartisan organization, we are hardcore party animals.” And in typical Dan Mathews style he made sure the cocktails at the vegan dinner party were made with Beefeater. Love it.

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail, huh Dan?

James Carville and Mary Matalin

My roommate is big into political documentaries at the moment, and this weekend he rented a '93 documentary about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, called "War Room", which I found myself mesmerized by. Two things really struck me about the film: The first were the similarities between the unorthodox way that campaign was run and the way things work here at PETA—the "no bad ideas" brainstorming sessions, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering for positive media coverage, and the quirky stunts to draw attention to an important issue (Clinton supporters even had a guy in a chicken suit sneak into the republican convention with a sign reading "Poultry Workers for Bush" on one side to fool security and "Chicken Bush Won't Debate" on the other for the TV cameras).

Dan Mathews

The second thing that really stood out about the movie was the sheer force of personality of James Carville, who brilliantly engineered Clinton's landslide victory over George Bush Part 1 in '92. There's a PETA connection here, too, since James and his wife Mary Matalin—a force to be reckoned with on the other side of the aisle—who met PETA VP Dan Mathews at a recent event in Las Vegas, are going to be hosting a party for Dan's new book, Committed, at their home in Virginia this Thursday. When asked what inspired them to help promote the book, Mary Matalin answered, "Good man, good book, good cause. Let's party!" Couldn't have said it better myself.

You can read more about the story here.

Dan Mathews' book, Committed: A Rabble Rouser's Memoir, is finally out, and it kicked off with a great piece in USA Today this morning. Our Dan has been working a very long time on this book, so it's really gratifying to see it get such a great reception all over the place. This thing is seriously gonna be huge. Plus, all the good reviews mean that the guy is just a pleasure to be around at the office—provided it's after 10 a.m. and you've had a cup of coffee or two to help you deal with all the optimism and general cheeriness emanating from his person. You can read Dan's USA Today interview here, but this was my favorite little bit:

Q: Your press material calls PETA "one of the most enduring, powerful and annoying pressure groups in the world." I suspect you like the world annoying.

A: When you're a pressure group and you want to be popular, you're bound to fail. But we're taking on corporations, and our currency is being annoying.

It ain't easy annoying the hell out of nasty corporations, but someone's gotta do it, and Dan Mathews is a natural. If you want to hear him talk about his experiences in person, he's going on a book tour next week, and you can check his MySpace page for dates and locations. And if you do run into him at one of his booksignings, be sure to make him tell you the story about the priest costume.

As you probably know, PETA VP Dan Mathews has a book coming out next month: Committed: A Rabble Rouser’s Memoir. Both Dan and the book have been getting some great endorsements lately, and these are a few of my favorites:

“I’d marry him if he wasn’t a fag.” -Chrissie Hynde

"If you read one book this year (like me), this is it.” -Tommy Lee

“Outrageous and inspiring. Makes me want to get arrested again.” -Andy Dick

P.S. For anyone who may have been offended by Chrissie Hynde's comment, which is technically a misuse of the subjunctive mood, there are some great resources here.

One of the recent perks of being a PETA employee is access to advance chapters of the new book by PETA's globe-trotting VP, Dan Mathews. The book, entitled Committed: A Rabble-Rouser's Memoir, doesn't come out until April, but I've been enjoying the hell out of the little bits and pieces I've been able to coerce Dan into sending me. Here's an excerpt from his account of the inaugural tour of our vegetarian mascot, Chris P. Carrot:

With my feet in his clunky, white shoes, Mr. Carrot stands over seven feet tall. ... He holds a poster that reads “Eat Your Veggies-Not Your Friends” (we thought of going with “Eat Me” but thought again). Completing the ensemble is a pair of fluorescent orange panty hose, which, sadly, wouldn’t stretch to the top of my lanky legs. As PETA's campaigns chief, I don’t ask anybody to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. Since I cooked up this junket, it was my duty to give the flame-colored mascot a test drive in order to work out the kinks for future carrots. My comrade was recently hired campaigner Tracy Reiman, a chipper gal from Georgia, who I was training. On her first business trip, she had to rise at dawn to help her new boss morph into a reject from the land of H.R. Pufnstuf. Tracy also became the carrot’s official spokesperson; the voice I had developed for Chris P. Carrot, a hybrid of John Wayne and Pee Wee Herman, triggered panic-stricken shrieks and projectile tears from second graders, so we decided on the spot that the carrot should be mute. …

Our initial goal was simply to score equal time to tax funded talks in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture beguiles a captive audience of kids about how meat and milk is produced, using carefree materials such as the “Peace & Plenty Farm" coloring book. ... Students are not informed that the animals are kept in such cramped conditions that factory farmers routinely cut off their horns, slice off their beaks, and grind down their teeth to keep them from mutilating each other. When schools refused our offer of a more realistic classroom presentation, we announced that we’d bring the news to kids just off campus, courtesy of PETA’s zany decoy, Chris P. Carrot, whose blazing orange leaflets contained all the grim facts that were omitted from meat trade handouts. The story exploded throughout Cattle Country.

For many years I pushed campaigns which appealed to people’s intellect and compassion. But as cable TV and the Internet helped mold an escapist society hungrier for entertainment than education, serious topics began taking a backseat to scandal and sensation, and we at PETA had to dream up flashier ways to vie for people’s attention. … Although I lament the loss of serious public discourse, I’ve easily adjusted to the new rules because I am, at heart, a very silly person.

As a chubby adolescent too bashful to undress in the locker room, I couldn’t have predicted that I’d spearhead a campaign called “We’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur,” be hauled to jail nude on three continents. Or that I’d conduct business at a skinny-dipping party at the Playboy Mansion. Or that I’d impersonate a priest to crash a fashion show in Milan, don a cow costume to storm a cattleman’s convention in Denver, and argue whether Jesus was a vegetarian in the solemn office of the Archbishop of Turin. I’ve picked up the phone to get an angry earful from Madonna when I spoke out against her bullfighting-themed music videos. I’ve also picked up the phone to hear Sir Paul McCartney insist we take the rest of the day off when we successfully pressured McDonald’s to stop buying meat from slaughterhouses that fail USDA inspection.

There's a pretty fun series of interviews with Dan that's been making the rounds, which you can check out here. For what it's worth, our Legal Department wants me to warn you that (in no particular order) you will explode, your eyes will pop out, and your brain will boil in your head if you watch this, since it may have been put up on YouTube without permission. Enjoy!

I’ve talked before about my friend Dan Mathews, PETA’s fancypants VP, who spends his life jetting around the world getting celebs on board with our campaigns, disrupting fashion shows, and sometimes ending up in the slammer. Every time Dan gets home from a trip, he has another amazing story to tell.

One of Dan's best qualities is that no matter how serious the issue is that he’s working on, he never lets it get him down. He always finds a way to have fun and make our campaigns accessible to everyone. Dan once told me that the way he’s been able to keep working at his crazy pace for so many years is that his first thought when he wakes up every morning is not about work or politics or animal rights or anything like that—it's “How can I have fun today?” That's some pretty solid advice for anyone, and something I should probably try and remember next time I throw my alarm clock across the room at 6:30 a.m. (I'm not quite the morning person Dan Mathews is).

Anyway, the reason for this whole love fest is that Dan just finished writing his first book, Committed: A Rabble Rouser’s Memoir. The book isn’t out until April, but the buzz is already starting, as the crazy stories in it are starting to get leaked. I just saw this one about Chrissie Hynde getting arrested for protesting The Gap right after the company offered her $100,000 to use one of her songs in a commercial and Pam Anderson shooting this ad ... while she was six months pregnant:

Don’t think she looks six months pregnant? During the shoot, Pam told Dan, "Don’t worry. Nowadays, they can airbrush out a baby as easily as a birthmark." Priceless. The book is out April 17, and I'm actually really looking forward to it. If you're interested, you can pre-order that bad boy here.