Jonathan Safran Foer, Desperate for Attention, Begins Eating Meat

jsf.jpgThis morning, a visibly frustrated Jonathan Safran Foer cooked himself some sausage and bacon for breakfast, vowing to the world that he would begin eating meat. “They’ve been making fun of me for the past few years for being young and successful,” said Foer, whose growling stomach was clearly not digesting the sudden carnivorous eating habits very well. “I want to show those bastards that I mean serious business.”

Foer’s wife, Nicole Krauss, revealed to reporters that she didn’t see this coming.

“I certainly didn’t expect him to turn to pork right before passover,” said Krauss, who was quite adamantly against eating meat. Krauss, however, did confess that Oprah had made the right move bringing baby-in-a-spit narratives to surburban audiences. Staffers from the Wall Street Journal plan to have Krauss take a polygraph test.

When a journalist remained unconvinced of Foer’s meat-eating habits, Foer grabbed an expensive-looking knife, proceeded to slice his wrist open and began supping of his own blood.

“You see! You can call me Jonny “Hard Core” Foer from now on, you little prick!”

The journalist then apologized. He worked for the New York Sun.

Does Daniel Mendelsohn Spend All His Spare Time on Technorati?

I intended to link to this earlier, but it seems that Daniel Mendelsohn has a new hobby: responding at length to anyone who invokes his name. A post on Barking Kitten caused Mendelsohn to take offense to Ms. Kitten’s use of a commonplace expletive expressing the frustrating divide between print and online critics. Barking Kitten followed up with another post, hoping that the conversation doesn’t “devolve into a flame war,” with Mendelsohn cheerily announcing that he’s happy to “debate this point in a serious medium, and at length.” Mendelsohn has remained silent. Perhaps he still doesn’t view the Internet as a serious medium because some of us use Dell laptops. (For the record, Mr. Mendelsohn, my laptop is a Toshiba. So hopefully this disqualifies me from any misinterpreted broad brushes. I’m game, as time permits, to discuss “the novel as a genre that has reached its end.” And isn’t the novel a medium and not a genre?)

The Death of Coney Island

Richard Grayson alerts me to the Coney Island Reporter, a blog chronicling Coney Island’s unfortunate corporatization. It appears that, last week, there was a protest by many residents hoping to save Coney Island from plans to turn it into a Vegas-style attraction. Alas, Astroland is still set to close.

If you never got a chance to see Coney Island, this summer will be your last chance to see it with “Shoot the Freak” and its many attractions still intact. I experienced this Coney Island last August and I was very much charmed by it. It saddens me in the extreme to know that it’s being gutted for unsavory glitz. This summer, I’m planning to make several trips to Coney Island, offering intricate reports on these pages. If Coney Island, as we currently know it, will not survive, then at least it can be memorialized.

Looks Like Rudy Rucker Wasn’t That Far Off

I somehow missed it, but Justin TV is a 24-hour vlog, very similar to what Rudy Rucker included in his most recent novel, Mathematicians in Love. Audio and video of one man’s life. It even got written up in the Chron, with fulminating quotes from Andrew Keen. I couldn’t possibly imagine undergoing such 24-7 public exposure. For example, if Justin gets laid or takes a shower, does he still keep the camera on?