Roundup

  • Desperate dental measures for desperate freelancers. (via The Publishing Spot)
  • Sometimes, you just need to go for a stroll. Christ, I miss California. (via Smart Bitches)
  • The “This I Believe” segments on NPR really make me want to hit something. These so-called “essayists” are needlessly calm and the worldviews expressed generally involve some unhelpful “common sense” you can all too easily obtain from a bland bookkeeper who has neither smiled nor walked on the wild side once in the past twelve years. So why do I listen to NPR? Well, I keep hoping that some crazy bastard will emerge, screaming “We’ve going to blow shit up in Torremolinos!” and then proceed to deliver an enthusiastic, profanity-laced lecture on Borges, with a digression into the history of the graham cracker, with a mariachi band forcing the staid hosts to dance and speak in an inflection that isn’t that sedate, okay-I’ll-have-my-Valium-now NPR issue voice. Why doesn’t anyone on NPR get excited?
  • Who knew that Scandinavian radio had such a history?
  • Todd McFarlane and Josh Olson promise a revisionist Oz film. The new movie, tentatively entitled Tits and Toto, will involve Dorothy pimping her way down the Yellow Brick Road, schtupping everything she sees. Look for a ten-minute water sports scene involving the Cowardly Lion, where he runs into the forest after being asked to urinate upon Dorothy’s bare bottom. And instead of an oil can, the Tin Man will, thanks to the magic of bukkake, will be unlocked from his rust. Fun for the whole family! Do you think they’ll show it every year on television?
  • Grace Paley has died. Maud has a tribute.
  • Also, RIP Magdalen Nabb.
  • Scott Timberg on Ross Macdonald. (via Sarah)
  • One in four Americans did not read last year.
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3 Comments

  1. Interesting that 1/4 of Americans didn’t read but America purportedly has a 30% illiteracy rate. Who are these 5% of illiterate Americans that are reading books?

  2. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute is a wonderful book and Grace Paley was a great writer. I hope she had a safe trip down through the black hole. I wonder how long some writer for the New Yorker will tell us what a horrible writer she was and how we shouldn’t bother to read any of her books because while she was alive she was rich and famous.

  3. “An enthusiastic, profanity-laced lecture on Writer XXXXX.”

    I know you have enough friends and writers to fill up an entire show like that. Pick a writer and some profanity spewing, enthusiastic guests, pour some scotch, and turn on the microphone, I would buy that for a dollar.

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