On Tucker Max

Maybe you've read some of the, ahem, literature written by Tucker Max. He's a relatively unattractive Duke Law graduate who went on to have lots of sex with women, get obscenely drunk, and then publish a book or two. One of those books, called I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was made into a movie that manages to make it onto every single "Worst Movies of All Time" list that I've ever read (which is more than five but less than fifteen, for perspective).

The book was funny. It was crude. But the last story offended me beyond words. I can't explain why, but I felt a sort of repulsion I've never felt before.

[I read his book during college. I lent Mr. Johnson the book to take on vacation with him. He ended up giving to some man he met on the beach, so he bought me a new copy. Whenever I think about Tucker Max, I think of Mr. Johnson on a beach somewhere giving some dude a book and then I wonder where the book is now. It makes me laugh every time.]

The problem with his incessant douchebaggery? He's intelligent. That gives him a leg up on the general population, so to speak.

So, what do I do when I see that he's accepting applications for a research assistant?
First, flashback to Charlie Sheen's intern contest. I entered as a joke and made it to round 3.
Second, apply.
Here's the full posting. I do not anticipate making it to the next round, but my slight success (top 250 out of 80,000 ain't bad, baby) with the Sheen thing compelled me. Why not?

Research assistant gig with Tucker Max

JANUARY 10, 2012

I just signed on to do a major book project, something unlike anything else I have ever written. I need to hire a research assistant to help me with it. Anyone can apply for the job–I don’t care about your resume or educational background, I only care about finding the most effective person for the job. If you are interested, read this entire post, then follow the instructions at the bottom to start the process.

Requirements for the gig:

-You can live anywhere in the world

-English must be your native language

-You must have constant and reliable computer and internet access

-Must be very intelligent, hard working, organized, and industrious

-You must be able to start by Feb 1st, and must be able to commit to the project until at least August 1st. The majority of the high time-commitment work will be between March 1st and June 1st.

-You must have a flexible enough schedule that you can adjust to varying time requirements. I estimate that the job will average 5-10 hours of work per week for 6 months, with some weeks having no work, while a few others may require 40+ hours of work.
-This is not intended to be a full time job, and the work can be done around a conventional, 9-5 schedule.

The primary tasks the gig will entail:-Transcribing audio and video taped interviews into text. This will be the primary responsibility and take the majority of the time. I estimate about 40-50 hours of total tape will need to be transcribed.
-Researching, collecting and organizing information (mainly biographical information about famous people). All research can be done from a computer using public, internet accessible sources.
-Other “assistant” type tasks, for example: scheduling travel, finding and vetting various freelancers (camera operators, designers, etc), or setting interview appointments.

What the job will NOT entail:-Partying with me, hanging out with me, or having sex with me.
-Meeting me in person is not even required to do the job, and may never happen.

Reasons to do the gig:

-It IS a paid job. It does not pay a huge amount, and the pay will depend on several factors, mainly whether or not one person can handle this project, or if I have to divide the work between multiple people. If selected, you can expect at least a few hundred, and at most a few thousand dollars in payment.

-It is definitely something you will be able to put on your resume or CV and use to get other gigs/jobs.

-It will be pretty cool and interesting work. The audio tapes you will transcribe will be interviews with interesting and famous people, and the research will not be boring.

-This is a one-off gig, NOT a full-time, long-term job. But, it could lead to a full-time assistant job with me, if that arrangement makes sense for both of us. My current assistant is moving up and co-founding a start-up, and I will need to replace him at some point this year.

-You will learn a lot of skills you can leverage into other areas, and make connections you can use to advance your life and career. My four previous assistants all started working for me on on one-off projects like this, went into full time employment, then moved on to do awesome shit after working with me; Ryan Holiday became the marketing director for American Apparel and is now writing a book,Charlie Hoehn has worked for Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Seth Godin and wrote his own book, Ian Claudius is working on a new publishing start-up, and Jeff Waldman did this cool project with Kickstarter.

Reasons NOT to do the gig:

-If you think this is how you can get to drink and party with Tucker Max

-If you think you can skate through this without actually doing much and then brag to your friends you worked with Tucker Max
-If you think this will make you Tucker Max’s best friend for life because you are just so similar to him and wouldn’t that be fun lol?!?!

HOW TO APPLY FOR THE RESEARCH ASSISTANT GIG:

Because I am screening remotely and not meeting people in person for this job, this will be a three stage application process. The first step is very simple and easy, and will test whether or not you can follow instructions, which will be crucial in these tasks. If you want to apply for the job, do these things:

1. Before 5pm EST on January 24th, January 20th send an email to this email address: tuckermaxassistant@gmail.com [I had to change the end date due to a massive flood of initial applications]

2. The subject line must read “Tucker Max Research Assistant Gig”

3. In the email, put four things: 1. your full name, 2. how old you are, 3. where you live, and 4. what the third largest magazine in the US is, by circulation

4. Attach a picture of Jason Williams to the email (not the basketball player). It must be either a gif or a jpg, and cannot be larger than 1 megabyte (1MB).

5. Do ONLY those tasks. Nothing else should be in the email.

If you follow all the tasks correctly, you will receive a response to your email, no later than January 24th, with a longer application and more instructions. If you get no response, it means you got something wrong.