by Joe Wallace

One of my favorite bands of the 90s was a Japanese girl-group called Cibo Matto. The name of the band is Italian for “food madness”, and the group’s earliest songs were definitely food-centric, especially on the track Beef Jerky.

What does this have to do with freelance portfolios?

Every editor has their own strange little hiccups. Personality quirks. Some call them “defects”.

Mine is that whenever I get replies to my latest call for writers or when I browse online portfolios looking for someone to offer some writing work to, I hear a lot of Cibo Matto.

That is to say, I hear a lot of this one line from Beef Jerky. If I’m reading a resume or an online freelance portfolio and I run across material that seems needlessly self-aggrandizing, or  completely (and cluelessly) irrelevant, I hear the line from Beef Jerky where the lead singer is screaming, “Who cares? I don’t care! A horse’s ass is better than yours!”

This happens–I kid you not–EVERY SINGLE TIME. Continue reading Freelance Portfolio Mistakes and Cibo Matto →