BC alum makes it big in the world of blogs

Jason Mulgrew, BC '01, became what he calls an "Internet quasi-celebrity" after he was named one of People Magazine's 50 Hottest Bachelors in 2001 on the strength of his Weblog, JasonMulgrew.com. Started on Blogspot.com in 2002 before quickly moving to its current domain, Mulgrew's blog details his social exploits, many of them centered around his seemingly insatiable thirst for drink, with no shortage of self-deprecation - or vulgarity. (Almost no complete sentence from his site could be quoted in this space.) Mulgrew completed an interview with The Heights last week via e-mail, and he spoke of his adventures at Boston College, his upcoming book, and why he still hates BC athletes.

The Heights: How did you end up with this blog? It started out at Blogspot.com. At what point did you get your own Web site?

Jason Mulgrew: I started the blog because I thought I wanted to do stand-up. But then I learned two things rather quickly about stand-up: It is hard and scary. It was much easier to sit at my desk and write stories than it was to get up in front of people and sweat and stammer through some jokes. And yet I imagined the blog as a repository (depository?) for stand-up material, which I'd eventually try out one day. After two weeks of writing the blog, I sent it to some friends, who sent it to their friends, etc. That was pretty much that - my stand-up career was mercifully over before it began.

TH: Did you write much while at BC? What was your major?

JM: Lord, no. Well, a little. I was a history major, so my writing was restricted to papers about Tudor England written between the hours of 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. I did take some writing classes senior year when I was in full-on "go to class smelling like Mary Ann's" mode: first semester with Andrea DeFusco and second semester with Steve Almond. If I'm not mistaken, I took both pass/fail because I was pretty confident I would tank those classes (and in Almond's case, I was right: he said he would've given me a C- if I hadn't taken it pass/fail).

TH: How many hits does your blog get per day, week, month, or whatever interval you measure it in? Did it spread solely by word of mouth from your friends? Did your hits jump way up after you were one of People's 50 Most Eligible Bachelors?

JM: C'mon - asking someone with a blog about hits is like asking a woman how much she weighs or how many people she's slept with (my ex-wife had the same answer to both questions: way more than me).

It spread by word of mouth, my friends passed it on, then their friends, etc. - I was contacted by an agent because some of his clients were reading it, and the people at People contacted me because they were reading it.

There was a jump in traffic after the People thing came out, but the site was already in seven figures in terms of hits per month prior to the issue. Fortunately, people have kept coming back and the site has more traffic than ever, which goes to show you: Never underestimated how bored people are at work.

Also, it was People's 50 "hottest bachelors," not "most eligible." Just want to clear that up. And I don't have an ex-wife. I just said that to impress you.

TH: Who exactly is Site Guy Brendan?

JM: A buddy of mine, Brendan Caffrey, also a BC grad, who handles the tech aspects of my site in exchange for beer when I come up to Boston. It's a pretty good arrangement we have going: He gets to field calls from me hysterical at 4 a.m. on Tuesday nights when I'm having trouble posting a picture, I buy him three Miller Lites at a bar in Southie every two months. So everybody wins.

TH: You've mentioned that you got kicked out of housing twice at BC. How did that happen? Did Boston College Police Department know your name by the time you graduated?

JM: Oh dear - you're entering a world of pain on this one. In my junior year, we lived off-campus on the 1700 block of Commonwealth Avenue - top floor apartment.

Long story short, one night we had a major party and the next morning, our landlord, the police, a plumber, and a health inspector showed up at our door, each for a particular reason: the landlord because her building was in shambles; the police because the landlord requested they show up; the plumber because one of my roommates had had an "accident" just before the party and flushed his boxers down the toilet, fatally wounding the building's plumbing system (during the party we had to pee off our deck - don't know what the ladies did and don't want to know); and the health inspector because we had hung a giant bloody bedsheet out the front of the building.

Another long story short: during the course of the party, one of my roommates took the porcelain top off the toilet tank and smashed it on the ground. He later cut his foot open on a jagged piece of porcelain and bled everywhere. We used his bedsheet to sop up the blood that covered the apartment and then decided to hang the sheet outside from the windows of the building, you know, to ward off danger - we were big into Shamanism at this time, apparently. At about 6 a.m., the roommate who cut his foot was taken to the hospital for stitches and he was later fine. I'm not a doctor, but I think the fact that he didn't have rabies is a miracle, because walking around with an open wound on your foot while drunk on a floor covered in crud, beer and toilet water ... nasty.

Shockingly, the landlord, "po-po," plumber, and health inspector left that day without arresting or punching us, so naturally we had another party that night to celebrate. The next morning, I opened the door and was handed an eviction notice, which prompted an emergency roommate meeting at IHOP during which we decided that bacon is the supreme breakfast meat. The day after that, we received a letter stating that the landlord was suing us for $26,000 in damages. The eviction we were less concerned about, because this was all in August and we'd soon be moving back on campus. But the $26,000 ... well, that's a lot of money.