Month / May 2008
The Been Caught Stealin’ Wi-Fi Roundup
- Thanks to some technical trickery, I am now stealing wi-fi on my relocated desktop computer. This casual pilfering should last only a few days, and I have tried to keep this bandwidth theft to a minimum. Which means that email is spotty these days. (I should also point out that I am not really answering email because of this thing called settling in.) But now that we’re all here (or, rather, some of us are here; many are at BEA), let’s get down to business.
- Here is what I am apparently missing in Los Angeles: A booth where you can get your teeth whitened for $99. Dozens of dinosaur finger puppets. Sherman Alexie exclaiming, “Holy motherfuck! That’s Judy motherfucking Blume!” Faux surprise over the Scott McClellan book. Prince a reader? Litbloggers at BEA and not one of them is typing. The Rapture is Coming! Intriguing Germans with ridiculously named websites. A Mac in tow but no posts to show. A partnership between Amazon and S&S. Neil Gaiman stalkers. A women sprawled out on the floor before a taco run. Well, so far, it doesn’t seem all that different from a sunny afternoon in New York. But here’s Callie with no doubt the first of several reports! I hold out faith that prodigious reporting will expand beyond the established quirky details.
- Marc Weingarten writes about McSweeney’s, discovering Yannick Murphy and other fine authors two years after everybody else has. For his next piece, Mr. Weingarten will be writing about this really cool new band, LCD Soundsystem!
- Jeff points to a bookstore trick now becoming a more increasingly common practice: more bookstores are returning books 90 days before the tab is due.
- There is little left to mine, Mr. Sedaris. Please draw your attentions outward and evolve as a writer so that your humor can once again flourish. (via Quill & Quire
- Nicholson Baker reviewing in the NYTBR? Has hell frozen over? (Richard Russo and Marisha Pessl are in there too, making me wonder if Dwight Garner is turning the joint into a literary answer to those periodic Battle of the Network Stars specials that once aired on ABC. As it so happens, two of these reviews are quite good. You can probably guess which of the three is written with abject narcissism, instead of insight in mind.
- Anthony Lane on Sex and the City. The last paragraph in particular is dead on. (via The Old Hag)
- Maud wants to say just one word. Are you listening?
- The Reading and Book Buying Habits of Americans. (via Mark Athitakis, who has a few conclusions)
Amateur Hour at Studio 360
Kurt Andersen has offered the uncut version of his conversation with Harlan Ellison. But what is particularly astonishing is just how much of an ignoramus Andersen comes across as. He constantly interrupts Ellison. At around the 26:30 mark, Andersen cannot get Dreams with Sharp Teeth director Erik Nelson’s name right and must utter the intro again. An embarrassing suggestion that Ellison wrote “Paladin of the Lost Hour” for the original Twilight Zone is there. In short, Studio 360 is a program that is made almost entirely in the editing room and certainly not from the conversation itself. And if this uncut interview serves as a representative rough version of what the editors have to play with, then I wonder just how much Andersen is relying on his editors to salvage the show and make it sound “professional.”
For the record, while there is some editing on The Bat Segundo Show (mostly to boost levels, remove coughs and popped plosives, make people sound a bit sexier, and the like), what you hear on these shows is 98% of the conversation. If I make a referential mistake, I leave it in. If there’s a strange tangent, I leave it in. If a guest and I get kicked out or something strange happens because of a third party, I leave it in. But I compensate for these fallacies by actually knowing the material: reading the book in full, wading through other interviews to ensure that I don’t ask the same questions, making sure I pronounce the author’s name, the book’s title, and the book’s characters correctly (although there have been a few minor slip-ups; nobody’s perfect). I’m determined to get as much of this right in my conversation because it means less editing time for me. And I only have so much time to commit. Perhaps this “one take” sensibility comes from my theatrical background. But apparently Andersen (or his writers) cannot do this.
Just think of all the man-hours that have been expended towards correct Andersen’s mistakes. Consider the labor costs that might have been avoided had Andersen actually bothered to pay attention to his goddam subject.
But what do I know? I’m just some hapless podcaster.
(Incidentally, at the 30 minute mark, it’s also quite funny to hear Harlan Ellison skewer Andersen’s stereotypical remarks about Los Angeles.)
Instinct is a Remarkable Thing
Some fascinating reading in the meantime: the adaptive social behavior of stray dogs in Moscow. As the economy and social makeup of Moscow has changed, the dogs’ behavior has changed. (via MeFi)