Month / June 2008

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • While real gamers blow shit up in a first-person shooter that taps serious system resources or carjack hapless NPCs in Grand Theft Auto 4, Steven Spielberg has decided to offer the world a bunch of cutesy goddam animals for a video game he has “created,” which also appears to be something of a Jenga ripoff. If you ask me, this ridiculous game looks as fun as watching a Care Bears DVD through the shaky fog of a Saturday morning hangover. I’d beseech a dentist to perform a root canal on me rather than play a cowardly and ridiculous video game called Boom Blox.
  • I have not yet seen the Lost season finale because I cannot stream the damn episode through the ABC website through a wi-fi connection. Now this is something that I can do with NBC’s The Office website, which doesn’t have a ridiculous interface that loads within your browser window. And I can’t download a torrent until I have DSL. The moral of the story? Learn to design a website right. Also, don’t move while a “major television event” has aired and everybody and his mother wants to ask you what you thought about it.
  • Wendy Cope would like to take your poet laureate plaudit and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Never mind that this would make Cope the first female poet laureate in the UK. She don’t want it! Here is a list of honors that Wendy Cope does desire: professional dominatrix, leader of a world empire, short-order cook, and five-star general. But don’t make her a poet laureate! Just don’t! Cope will kick your ass if you even dare let loose the “luh” from your lips!
  • Here’s a helpful hint to publishing executives: if you say you’re “at the tipping point,” a term that very few outside of burnouts in the marketing department take seriously, then chances are that you don’t know what you’re talking about. What is a tipping point these days but a confession that you don’t really have a business plan and you never really had one to begin with?
  • So McSweeney’s is now applying its twee bullshit to poetry. I’m with Shane. I don’t give a damn either. But this stunt just makes them look silly.
  • Jeff VanderMeer has uncovered a science fiction tribute to the infamous game that comes with Windows. Or he has something of possible substance to say.
  • Now wait a minute. It’s Bill Clinton who’s calling other people “sleazy,” “dishonest,” “slimy” and a “scumbag?”
  • Paul DiFilippo on J.G. Ballard.
  • Another reason to love Peter Greenaway: the man wants to project genitalia onto “The Last Supper” in an effort to link “8,000 years of art and 112 years of cinema.” Greenaway also has plans to have cows take a dump upon the Mona Lisa in an effort to unite “8,000 years of art and two years of agriculture.”
  • Ian McEwan unveiled an excerpt of his unfinished novel at the Hay literary festival, only to discover that he had unintentionally taken a bit from Douglas Adams.
  • Who the hell do you think you are, Julie Buff? Waiting around for an editor? Yeah, it sucks. But you keep writing material and you keep sending things in. Do you know how many emails I’ve sent in the last month to editors that have gone unanswered? Probably around twenty. Do you think I let this stop me? So I feel your pain. But if you want to be a writer, you sit on your ass and write. You produce and you keep sending things out. If you don’t want to wait six months, then you send a note to the editor that you’re submitting the piece elsewhere. And you keep on doing this until you get published on a regular basis, or on some level that you feel is acceptable. And you don’t let anybody stop you. (via Slushpile)
  • And, sweet Jesus, Sissy Spacek recorded a song protesting John and Yoko’s Two Virgins cover. Really, celebrities, if you’re going to record any protest songs along these lines, direct your energies to vapid musicians like Sting and Michael Bolton. These are the people you should sing about. These are the people who should be banned from every known recording studio in the world. (via Hey Dullblog)
by Edward Champion

A Slightly More Pellucid Roundup

  • I have been apprised that the DSL man is coming tomorrow. The current roundup malaise, which is ever so slight, involves a great deal of my possessions in disarray. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to apply more wit, even though the shaky connection may very well result in an inadvertent capitulation of what I am trying to type.
  • I see that the Chicago Tribune has shown some good sense by employing one Lizzie Skurnick to limn S.E. Hinton’s oeuvre, sans Michiko’s ungainly verb, while another Lizzie, who answers to the title of books editor, interviews Ms. Hinton as well. However, one very important question has been elided from Ms. Taylor’s queries: What does Ms. Hinton think of Brian Atene’s performance?
  • A number of bloggers are now tackling Anne of Green Gables. I had no idea that an annotated version existed!
  • Pinky tempts with this picture of Michael Silverblatt. There are important questions here: Was there audio? What occurred during the inevitable conversation? I understand that there have been many run-ins between a certain Silverblatt impersonator by the name of Tod Goldberg and Mr. Silverblatt himself, but none have been memorialized in audio form. The least one demands from such a meeting of the minds is documentary evidence. Future scholars must know just how much the KCRW vernacular infringes upon the real-life Silverblatt. And if Ms. Kellogg reneged on this historical obligation (as did Mr. Fox with his BEA videos?), then a gross journalistic injustice has almost certainly been committed.
  • Are BBC stars being paid too much? In the interests of self-preservation, leave it to BBC News to set the record straight. “You recently got married. When did you get married?” “Do you think it’s better than the last series?” That’s right! Such penetrating journalistic insight can be yours for £6 million/year. For the price of Jonathan Ross’s three-year salary, you could feed a great number of homeless people. I would contend that if you were to remove Jonathan Ross from television, the chances are almost certain that very few would notice his absence. Six million sandwiches in one year would make a bigger impact on the landscape than a year’s worth of Jonathan Ross’s insipid questions.
  • Bob Hoover contends that there’s nothing to get excited about at BEA this year. He suggests that there isn’t a single buzz book — “no frontrunner for the eagerly anticipated novel or sensational memoir.” I must presume that Bob Hoover is no fan of Bolano.
  • Word has at long last leaked out about David Ulin’s clones. In fact, there are at least six Ulins that I know of. One was actually in Brooklyn over the weekend, helping me move. Another was at a Burbank studio, serving on the panel for the prospective reality television pilot “America’s Next Book Critic.” This leaves two more Ulins that have yet to be accounted for, although a few embarrassing photos have been uploaded to Flickr. What I do know is that Ronald D. Moore was so inspired by the many Ulins that a pivotal storyline in Battlestar Galactica‘s fourth season was drawn from these developments.
  • Writers suggest books to various presidential candidates. (via Maud)
  • YA authors are now demanding seven figure advances. There are even a few unreported requests for manservants, underground seraglios, helper monkeys, football stadium-sized swimming pools for the summer, and only the finest cocaine. These YA authors are not only determined to become very rich, but they hope to flaunt their avarice with all the eclat of a sportscar driving through Detroit. (via Gwenda)