Tim Burgess

During Judge Eugene Fairs investiture to the state Court of Appeals on Friday, he said the Boy Scouts pledge fits what he must do as a judge.

We made this pledge and I have always remembered it … that says I will do my best to do my duty, and thats what I promise, said Fair, an Eagle Scout.

Senior US District Judge William H. Barbour Jr. administered the oath of office to Fair before a crowd of family and friends, judges and lawyers who packed the Court of Appeals Courtroom in Jackson.

Melissa Fair Wellons, MD, of Birmingham, one of Fairs two daughters, held the Bible during the oath. His wife, Dr. Estella Galloway Fair, assisted with the enrobing.

Fair, nephew of the late Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Stokes V. Robertson Jr., put on one of his uncles old robes after he took the oath. As he adjusted the snaps on the garment, he quipped, You got your moneys worth when you paid for these robes.

Justice Robertson retired from the court in 1982.

Gov. Haley Barbour appointed Fair, 65, of Hattiesburg to the District 5, Place 1 seat on the Court of Appeals.

Fair replaced Judge William H. Myers of Ocean Springs, who retired Dec. 31, after serving for 11 1 1/82 years.

Fairs appointment is for one year. A special election will be held in November in the Court of Appeals district which includes Forrest, George, Greene, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Lamar, Pearl River, Perry, Stone and parts of Wayne counties.

For the past five years, Fair served as a chancellor on the 10th Chancery Court, which includes Forrest, Lamar, Marion, Pearl River and Perry counties.

Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. said chancery experience will be an asset to the Court of Appeals, which decides a large volume of appeals from chancery courts as well as criminal appeals.

He is right where he needs to be at this time as a part of history, Waller said. This court more than likely will have an impact on the average citizen from the standpoint of adjudicating the child support needs of a single mother, of compensation for an injured worker, justice for a victim of a crime, or redress for an egregious wrong.

Before calling him to the bench to take his seat with the other members of the court, Court of Appeals Chief Judge L. Joseph Lee said, Ladies and gentlemen, can you think of a better name for a judge to have than Fair? We are all envious. It has been said and I have heard it numerous times that the Court of Appeals is a fair court. Now its official.

Fair grew up in Louisville. He earned a bachelors degree from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

He helped pay his way through college with freelance writing for newspapers.

He practiced law in Hattiesburg from October 1972 to December 2006. He ran unsuccessfully for election to the Supreme Court in 1988, and for the Court of Appeals in 1994. The 1994 race was for Position 1, District 5, the same position to which he has been appointed.

After writing about ways to earn an extra $500 for the holidays, we heard from a lot of skeptics. Commenters noted how hard or even impossible it can be to find a paying side-gig; some argued that any activity would pay so poorly that it would not be worth the extra time and stress.

[In Pictures:10 Ways to Save on Food Costs]

To counter that pessimism, we spoke with another successful side-hustler, Tara Heuser, a Washington-based office worker, freelance writer, and pet sitter. She first launched her pet-sitting business after getting laid off from a job at a custom framing company. After living off of unemployment for 14 months while hostessing at a restaurant part-time, she posted an ad for her pet-sitting services on Craigslist.

Heuser, 33, graduated from college with an art history degree, and she says her dream job would be to write about art full-time. For now, shes juggling her new full-time office job along with pet-sitting and freelance writing to generate enough income make ends meet. We spoke with Heuser about just how she does it. Excerpts:

How did you get started as a pet sitter?

I had some experience watching a friends two cats and my little business grew from there… Getting laid off from my framing job is definitely what prompted me to start pet-sitting. I like dogs and cats and figured it would be an easy money-making job. This job was definitely more enjoyable than hostessing and required less work. It was an easy money-making gig and easy to get referrals.

Do you earn a solid side-income from it?

The pet-sitting jobs definitely offered more flexibility than hostessing, since I had the power to accept or decline, and I made more money. I only got paid $13.50 per hour hostessing and didnt work that many hours a week when I was also working a full-time job. I now charge $55 to $65 per night for pet-sitting. When I got my current job, working as a publications and exhibits coordinator for an association, I kept the pet-sitting gig because I still dont make much money. Most pet-sitting jobs are on the weekends and I have weekends off with my office job, which is 9 to 5.

Do you do anything else to earn more money on the side?

I also write articles for a DC-based website called The Pink Line Project, another part-time gig. This is what I would love to do all the time. I enjoy writing and love art. I write articles on art gallery openings around the city, promoting emerging artists and small galleries. I only write one to two articles per month and get paid $50 per article, but it is my favorite job by far.

What are your future plans for your side gigs?

I do plan on expanding my two part-time jobs as much as possible. I now have six pet-sitting clients. My current job is pretty boring. I sit in a cube all day and stare at the computer. I dont really like the idea of having an office job for the rest of my working career. Eventually I would like to go to grad school and get a masters in creative writing and possibly get a job working for a magazine or doing freelance writing, but since I dont make much money now, that poses a problem.

Looking for more side-gig ideas? Check out 10 Ways to Start Earning Extra Money Now

Twitter: @alphaconsumer

She just can’t help herself. Within five minutes of meeting her, Bebang Siy will make you laugh. She’ll take her pretty, fair-skinned features and contort them into a rubber face worthy of a slapstick comedian. She then sizes you up and spit out a perfectly-timed zinger. In machine-gun Filipino, she’ll make you laugh out loud—you won’t be able to help yourself.

That’s Bebang, being spontaneous in person. Wait till you read her.  She just might be the funniest Filipino writer at the moment. The pieces in her book, “It’s a Mens World,” tackle everything: from the meaningful timing of a girl’s first menstruation (the “mens” in the title) to the semiotics of dating; from the origin of nicknames to classroom friendships. But wait, her writing isn’t just humorous—it’s also serious because it’ll make you think.

There’s a reason the 32-year-old Bebang was chosen by the Philippine Daily Inquirer as one of the country’s 26 young people to watch. She’s often been compared to the popular pseudonymous best-selling phenomenon Bob Ong—but with ovaries.

But getting to be funny was not always easy for Bebang. Before she learned to make other people laugh out loud, she lived a quiet life, looking around and taking note of a world that seemed to be anything but humorous.

Beverly Wico Siy was born on December 10, 1979 in Quirino, Manila to Roberto Siy and Resurreccion Wico, the eldest of five daughters. Her father was Chinese, a longtime smoker and drinker who managed a rice store and was part of a jueteng racket. He died from a heart attack when Bebang was 15. Her parents had met when her mother Resurreccion was working as a waitress.  Her mother had worked many jobs previously: she peddled fruits and Christmas dÃcor and even delivered lunch to a gambling joint.

After her parents separated when she was very young, Bebang and her sisters became the object of a tug-of-war between them. In her book, Bebang recounts how her father essentially “kidnapped” them and so she wound up living in Ermita with him until his death. She then moved in with her mom, which explains why she went to three different elementary schools in Ermita, Parañaque and Malate before going to high school at the Philippine Christian University Union High School.

Not surprisingly, given all the turmoil in her young life, Bebang was a very quiet child.  Later, she became the class clown. “Maybe it was because of my awkward years,” she explains. “I didn’t know how to face them.” As she entered her teens Bebang became very talkative. In high school and among classmates she had known since grade school, she made a lot of friends.  “I made a lot of jokes because I wasn’t very comfortable with myself at the time. I was very skinny and sweated a lot. I had big teeth. I looked weird, so I did a lot of pang-aalaska (making fun of other people) so their attention wouldn’t be on me.” It was also in high school that she began writing, though in English originally. She would switch to Filipino in college.

In 1996, Bebang was admitted to the University of the Philippines in Diliman but had to choose a non-quota course to get in. Bizarrely enough, she originally wrote down geodetic engineering as her first choice because she thought her math skills would make her well suited for it. She was quite proficient in math as well as English. BA Malikhaing Pagsulat (Creative Writing) was her third choice. By the time she found herself standing in front of the UP admissions office, Bebang had crossed out her first and second choices, tossed a coin and enrolled in Malikhaing Pagsulat.

She would last for only one semester, though, before she had to leave UP—at least for a while.  Because of her financial difficulties, Bebang had taken out a student loan to attend UP but found that she could not pay it back. Hiding became an option. “I was so scared, having that debt,” she says. Like her mother, she took on an assortment of odd jobs. She worked as a sales clerk at a pawnshop, a sales staff at a clothing store and found herself in direct selling for Avon and later, Sara Lee.

It was when Bebang gave birth to son Sean Elijah—“EJ” for short—in 1999, that everything changed. “I realized that if I really wanted him to have a future, I should not be in this kind of job.” Plus she had promised her father at his funeral that she would finish college. This shifted her direction to an upwards trajectory. (Today, the single mom dotes on 13-year-old EJ.) Working as a nurse enabled her to save up and re-enroll at UP.

She discovered she loved it there. “Sobrang bagay ako dun,” Bebang gushes. She would graduate cum laude. “I realized that finishing (college) with honors isn’t about being smart but because people enjoyed their courses.”

Her job history includes working for an NGO called Creative Collective Center, Inc., freelance writing and teaching English to Korean students and Filipino at the University of Santo Tomas. She’s been working for two years now at the Filipinas Copyright Licensing Society, Inc., or FILCOLS, a group of writers and publishers who banded together to protect the copyrights of Filipino writers.

In the meantime, Bebang stayed busy as a writer, getting involved in several writing projects for different publishers. She even wrote an erotic short novel in 2006 called “Mingaw.” She laughs, “Sobrang bold siya (it’s really raunchy).

The material in “It’s a Mens World” started out as part of a different book project and was submitted to writer Vim Nadera’s class when Bebang began working towards her Masters in English Literature at UP.  It was Nadera who told Bebang that her book-length manuscript was ready for publication so she should go find herself  a publisher.

With the encouragement of fellow writer and FILCOLS colleague Abdon “Jun” Balde, Jr., Bebang thought of approaching Anvil Publishing, but discovered that its forthcoming publishing schedule was full. A chance encounter with Anvil’s Publishing Manager Karina Bolasco revealed that one of Anvil’s writers had failed to deliver a manuscript on time. And so Bebang took the slot. “I was very, very lucky.”

“It’s a Mens World” came out in September and since then, Bebang has been hustling to sell the book. “I beg my friends, ‘sige na, bumili na kayo,’ and they do and find it funny.” The book has done well and its author is now sought after as a speaker, thanks to her offbeat humor and sparkling repartee. There’s a second book in the works, tentatively titled “It’s Raining Mens,” all about the men in Bebang’s life, a self-admitted experiment in that it mixes fiction and nonfiction.

A Great portion of Bebang’s humor is laced with reflection. Much of this comes from her background growing up poor—or worse. “We didn’t have a lot of money for the usual luxuries that other children enjoy,” she recalls.  “Our toys were hand-me-downs and we rarely had new clothes.”

The half-Chinese Bebang also grew up surrounded by Chinese conventions. All of these figure in the mix that is her book.

This process of growing up Pinoy informs Bebang’s work, as does the observational humor that one quickly realizes is part of her everyday attitude. “People laugh when you are very straightforward. I don’t know why. I don’t find it really funny but people laugh when I talk about things that are very honest. It’s like Kris Aquino because she says everything that’s on her mind. That’s when what I say becomes funny.”

Bebang adds that she derives a lot of her humor from her family. “When you meet them, you’ll see that I’m the tamest among them, especially my mother. My mother is a very strong and funny person without her knowing it or her intending it to be.”  Bebang then launches into a ridiculous but inevitably true story about her mom that ends with a killer punch line from her mom. Yes, she is very much her mother’s daughter.

People may expect Bebang to be funny all the time, but she gets pretty serious as well. It bugs her when people don’t fight for their rights. She gets passionate in her avowed mission to protect Filipino writers from being abused. Like other celebrities in the limelight, she finds that being energetic and on all the time can get tiring. After a reading, a talk or a hosting job, she also gets wiped out. “I can hardly talk afterwards. I get tired making people laugh, too.”

The inevitable christening of Bebang as a distaff Bob Ong makes her blush as she’s flattered by the comparisons but worries that it might insult Bob Ong. “I feel embarrassed that I’m being compared to him because I think our writing is quite different. And he inspires me. When I read his first book, I said I could write something like this but from the point of view of a girl. This guy can’t write about menstruation because he’s not a girl. I was also inspired because his language is very conversational. Reading his book was just like talking to a friend.”

Another writer told her that there hasn’t been another female writer as funny as her, save perhaps for Jessica Zafra, who writes in English. “Maybe it’s because a big part of what makes Bob Ong funny is the language and the tone. I think that it’s the same thing that charmed my audience, the language, the tone and my being a woman, my sexuality,” Bebang says. “Walang babaeng ganito kabalahura (there’s isn’t another woman so outrageous). Sobrang candid siya at nasa wikang Filipino.”

What makes Bebang’s writing so potent is the razor-sharp truth as well as its perfectly timed punch lines. It’s the Filipino laughing and thinking at the same time, much like the writer.  “We Filipinos cope in a very unique manner,” Bebang Siy says. “That’s what is funny. It’s also what makes us strong.”

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Was this the kind of job or path you saw yourself on when you were interning at Esquire?
Oh God, I have no idea. No. The answer is no.

You completely had no idea back then?
No, I mean sort of. I had no idea about anything when I started as an intern because I just saw myself in some cool office at a desk, my hands sorta of just da da da da typing and being a writer somehow. Although, I figured out that working at magazines doesnt mean youre a writer. And I had no idea — I still dont know what I want to write about. So, yeah, Esquire lead to actual jobs at magazines, which lead to website writing, which is what I decided is what I liked much better, which lead to — I mean, each year is a different thing I didnt even imagine existed.

How many things are you writing on the website, as opposed to editing other peoples work?
I dont know, its hard to say. I guess I write about 10 posts a day, but some of them are really, really short. Im writing a lot less than I used to, because I got really tired of not having anything to say. And I would rather say nothing than that. And I like editing. I edit in the mornings and in the evenings, and then during work hours Im usually just writing or looking for things to find.

Do you have time to work on other things outside of The Hairpin?
Im having trouble balancing freelance writing, which I want to do more of because I got kind of a taste of it and was like Oh yeah, not everything is all mine! People read stuff! I did a little freelancing for Elle and Glamour, and I have a piece thats theoretically coming out in Maxim later, and Im working on a piece for The New York Times Magazine, if I dont totally fuck it up and have them kill it, and its going to be pretty long. Im doing that.

Whats been your favorite sponsored post on The Awl so far?
Skinny Cow! Skinny Cow beat me at my own game. They were like, We want to do a sponsored post. Give us some ideas. We were doing a bra awareness thing; they wanted two boob-related posts, and they thought that, because we have this one woman who writes about the 17th century — they said, We like this. What about she writes about the history of bras in the 17th century. And I was like, Thats amazing. And she just knocked it out of the park, and it was one of our biggest stories, and they had their little branding in the corner, so they looked awesome. And they did another one where they just wanted her to gather images of bras in art. So it was just this huge gallery of cool art. It was so good, it just came together, and it was their idea, so I had nothing to do with it.

The Awl sites have done sponsored posts really well in terms of making the appeasement to the advertiser while doing something fun.
Yeah, its really a cool way to advertise I think. Because — well, really I have to say this, but — if I were a reader and I saw Skinny Cow did these things, Id think that they were cool and really straightforward. I would buy your product, because someone on your team came here and thought that we were a good fit, and I appreciate it.

So who do you like on Tumblr these days?
Theres a blog called Awl Commentators, which is like holding a mirror up to a mirror. They just find funny things. They create weird little layers of inside jokes from the two-site zone. It made me feel really cool when I found it. I was like Oh my God, theres these people talking about talking about it! Because they do stuff with Hairpin comments sometimes too. I always follow The Daily What. Hes a friend of mine, or an acquaintance of mine. I always say that aloud. I realize I want to brag about knowing him. Bobby Finger is hilarious. I like Best Roof Talk Ever. Erie Basin has the prettiest vintage jewelry. Yo Is This Racist is very good, very hilarious.

How do you find new talent or new writers that you really like?
They just write in. Its amazing and theyre hilarious and its great. Or where Im friends with people, and I think theyre really talented and cool and I bug them about what would be the right fir or them. Like, I knew that Jolie Kerr was obsessed with cleaning and had funny things to recommend. And she loves cooking and stuff. And Im not trying to take credit for her cleaning column, but I think if you go back into the emails that we were exchanging six months ago, it would be like, Jolie, oh my god, you should write a cleaning column. And she was like, Oh my god, I want to write a cleaning column! [Update: Wait, no, it happened because of Tyler Coates, and I wasnt actually involved at all!] I dont really solicit as much as I know people who are talented, and I want to smush them into the right fit.

Why does a submission get rejected from The Hairpin?
It would be something that was way too navel-gazey — you know, Let me tell you about the time I spilled coffee on myself in front of a hot guy. Or, I found my childhood diary, can I transcribe it for you?

Any big plans for the site?
Yes and no. We want to get bigger. Its basically where I wanted it to be now. So the next step is to come up with a cool new concept and try to get there, which I dont know what it is yet. I dont know what the next level is, because I dont think were going to increase posting rate, we just want more features, maybe higher quality stuff and also maybe …

Slideshows?
Yeah, no. More sponsored giant things. And we want to do programs where we have a topic, and you get a lot of people to write about it, and then run it all as a package — instead of heres my one story about this, well get 10 stories about that for a week.

How did you feel about the Observers Meet the Mollys piece awhile back, where you were mentioned?
Oh, it was so stupid. I mean, it was really funny and its flattering to have anyone thinking about you and typing your name anywhere at all. But that was straight up the stupidest thing. I mean it was funny, which is fine … It was an article about three women with the same name and how that was sort of interesting, and then to demonstrate that it was like a cool premise, they took another woman with a different name and just said that she was one of them. And not only that, Choire had already written about it, except just about Mollys.

I found that whole thing very puzzling.
And they didnt even ask me to comment. They had all the Mollys though. So then I wrote immediately to Daniel DAddario, the dude who wrote it, and I was like, Oh really, the Molliest of Mollys doesnt get asked to comment on your stupid article. And he was like, Fair point, do you have anything to say? And I was like, No.

Makes sense. Anything else you want to address?
Did you want to talk about the Chris Evans thing?

Not really. Did you?
No.

EDITH LIKES: The Brooklyn Inn, NYC

Contently, a New York City-based startup that runs an online marketplace for freelance writing and editing work, has closed a $2 million Series A round led by Lightbank. Lightbank is run by Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, the first two angel investors in Groupon. Both serve on Groupons board, Mr. Lefkofsky as executive chairman.

The round also includes investments from ff Venture Capital, Consigliere Brand Capital, Behance founder Scott Belsky and Hubspot founder Dharmesh Shah. Contently, which went through the TechStars program this summer, previously raised a $335,000 debt round that has now converted to equity.

Screenshot: Songspin.FM Home Page

Songspin.FM launched in September with a minimum viable product and one can see the emphasis on simplicity in the current version.

The home page features eight channels from Electronic to Country. Clicking through leads to one flow of tracks via SoundCloud along with, in some cases, artist bio, tour info and photos. A track download link leads to an Amazon sale as well as a ringtone option. Free accounts allow listeners to save tracks they like.

Its really that simple and I think theyre off to a good start. The choice of music is pretty interesting and, I assume, reflective of their emerging editorial process of hunting the internet for the best music from a wide variety of sources and pulling it all together in one place.

At least some of the site development seems automated. For example, photos of Beyonce included a couple of other black female artists as well. But part of being a minimum viable product is the process of discovering what makes a product good enough and Songspin.FM seems well along the way in figuring that out.

To have your music included, upload tracks to SoundCloud and then email: bands@songspin.fm.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at All World Dance and This Business of Blogging. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.