Hillary Introduces Last Minute Ventriloquist Act to Woo Voters; Not Enough Dinero in Campaign Funds for Dummy
Bush Vows to Keep Human Costs Out of Gaze
Here’s the full set of photos.
Chancellor Angela Merkel Announces New “License to Kill Leftists” Program
Learning from Previous Disaster, Bush Ditches Guitar for Two Girls
Hillary More Concerned with Camera Profile Than Potential Voter; Father Pleads for Return of Stunned Infant
Dubya Begins “Presidential Book Club” with Vanity Press Title; Washington Insiders Remain Skeptical
Pelosi Becomes Speaker; Issues OK for Comedians to Make Fun of Liberals Again
Sony’s Ken Kutaragi Promises to Bankrupt American Families With Needlessly Expensive Xmas Gift
Daughter Loses Promised Pony for Xmas, Something About Dad Losing His Job
Katherine Harris Considers “Getting Nelson’s Little Dog Too” During Florida Senate Debate
Lacking Knife, Bush Attempts to Carve Jack O’Lantern With Idiotic Stare
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Police Confuses Alec Baldwin With Younger Brother Stephen, Alec Uses Glengarry Speech to Pass Line Without Success
Bush Reveals Margin of Difference Between Iraq Deaths Caused By His Administration and Deaths from Darfur Massacre
Prime Minister Android Halts One Year Before Projected Shutdown
White House Launches “A Tree Grows in Baghdad” Campaign to Raise Spirits Before Midterm Elections
Chertoff Uses Incomprehensible Charts to Justify “Outdated” Status of the Fourth Amendment
Solider, Eager to “Use Up Remaining Minutes,” Ignores Chopper Filled with Yahoos Heading to Bomb Village
Tony Blair Continues Long Legacy of Supporting Roles
The Situation in Cuba
Meterologists Reduced to “Laughing and Pointing” at Weather, Hoping Global Warming Will Go Away
The Exact Moment Floyd Landis’s Life Started Cycling Downhill
Al-Maliki Reacquaints Bush with Handshake to Prevent Further Backrub Mishaps
After 742nd Attempt, Bush Yields Baby Smile After Sneaking Paxil Into Bottle
McCartney Declares Himself “Needed & Fed” at 64, Demands an End to Sgt. Pepper Jokes
Scott McClellan Fired by Bush; Told He Wasn’t Enough of a Slimy Liar; Replaced by Unemployed Sock Puppet
RELATED: Vanity Fair profile: “In McClellan’s case, almost all of his sentences are dead on arrival. Even the pre-written sentences (most every briefing begins with a statement about the president’s schedule or the plausibly positive developments at hand—we’ve turned the corner in Iraq, etc.) are so bald and flat-footed that they become a kind of insult—he doesn’t disguise the bull.”
Pope Benedict Unveils New Palpatine Look to Lure Youths to Catholicism
Bush, Facing Record Low Approval Ratings, Stands Under Chandelier, Hoping Bulbs Will Give Him “Idea”
Rumsfeld Reveals Prototype for Forthcoming Mandatory Salute to U.S. President
Singer Michael Feinstein Has Cardiac Arrest While Selling Soul During Valentine’s Day Dinner Fundraiser
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
