Category / Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

by Edward Champion

Rapid Roundup

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • For those who concern themselves with those “When it’s done” exhalations emerging from certain software developers who lack foresight (much less the ability to back up their ambitions), consider the case of Duke Nukem Forever, a game that has been promised for some time. Alas, there have been a good deal of other things that have happened since the initial press release announcment. The real question is whether the game will be released before George Boussard’s ardent disciples check into rest homes — that is, assuming that they retain any keyboard-and-mouse dexterity with which to frag their opponents.
  • Pat Walsh suggests that those who purchase DVD box sets of television are evangelical fools, considering that they can TiVo these episodes. It remains to be seen whether a certain man who has revealed his own television-related nocturnal emissions will have anything to add to the matter. But I will say that my own strange stash of box sets (among the titles are Twin Peaks, The Prisoner, the Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus, all of the so-called “definitive editions” of The Twilight Zone, and, perhaps most egregiously, Scooby Doo) have been acquired in the heat of cultural obsession. But then I have neither TiVo nor basic cable in my home and my television, for the most part, remains off. Inevitably, however, one’s mind must downshift from time to time. I fully confess that my own eight-cylinder engine stalls every now and then. And under such circumstances, I can think of no greater way to recontextualize the world than pondering the strange relationship between Fred and Daphne or ruminating upon the amount of THC contained within a Scooby snack.
  • Finn Harvor engages Laura Miller on her decsion not to participate in the Times contemporary fiction contretemps and begins a series of meditations on the publishing industry.
  • Barbara Epstein, the founder of the New York Review of Books, has passed on. Hurree Babu has more. (via Books Inq.)
  • Miss Snark declares John Updike the nitwit of the day after parsing this interview with Patti Thorn (conducted a few hours after Updike’s BEA speech). More from Bella Stander. The forthcoming Segundo interview with Updike, in which it is put forth to Mr. Updike that there is room for both print and digital, approaches this and many other topics in a decidedly less fawning manner than Ms. Thorn’s.
  • Philip Hensher remarks upon the differences between American and Anglo vernacular and suggests that both sides have much to learn. (via Booksurfer)
  • Some info on that red card-happy ref from yesterday’s game between the U.S. and Italy. Apparently, this joker Jorge Larrionda was suspended because of past irregularities. Perhaps not coincidentally, the surname “Larrionda” was briefly considered as a nom de guerre by the now dead Gaetano “Tommy Brown” Lucchese shortly before becoming the underboss of Gaetano Reina. Lucchese (who was often referred to by terrified underlings as “the Big Cheese,” which is where the term originated from) was an amateur historian and had more than a passing interest in the War of the Triple Alliance. Coincidence?
by Edward Champion

A Roundup from Mr. Beleaguered

This week has been trying to kick my ass, since much of it has involved getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to do work. Some of it relates to this site (and specifically The Bat Segundo Show #50, which is shaping up to be a stellar podcast that, trust me on this, you won’t want to miss). Some of it does not. But what this means essentially is yet another roundup instead of a post proper.

  • Paul Constant offers a belated BEA report, bemoaning its commercialism and confessing that the only reason he came was for “books and free shit.” There’s just one problem with Constant’s griping: he comes off as an asocial sourpuss who seems wholly incapable of mischief. If I ever got the chance to meet Pat Buchanan, I would have had considerable more fun with him than Constant did, asking him if his views on “traditional roles” for women might have something to do with the one and only “traditional” sexual position he had tried with his wife. But that’s just me.
  • Moleskinerie has launched a second Wandering Moleskine Project, whereby several notebooks will be sent around the world, filled up and then scanned for the masturbatory pleasure of Moleskine junkies like me. I have an erection just thinking about it.
  • Bad enough that J.K. Rowling has been named by a The Book magazine poll as “the greatest living British writer,” but it seems that five Scots have sullied the list of twenty. It’s not that the Scots in question are bad writers. But the Scotch pentad insists that the twenty duke it out properly for “greatest” status with a haggis-eating contest.
  • Here are Michiko’s last five fiction reviews: Hated it, hated it, okay, hated it, and okay. Meanwhile, Michiko’s been giving great raves to nonfiction books, even the An Inconvenient Truth book tie-in. I’m all for a discerning critical eye, but if Michiko hates fiction so much, why does she continue to review it?
  • We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver confess that she was jealous of her partner’s uncanny success in publishing.
  • Borders has axed 90 corporate positions. Is this another telltale sign of a corporation opening too many stores while not having the dinero to do so? Borders spokesperson Anne Roman says that it has something to do with re-evaluating its five-year plan. Which makes me wonder whether Borders is styling their business strategy along certain historical parallels, given its egregious history.
  • A bill is about to be signed by Bush will raise the indecency fine from $32,500 to $325,000 per incident on television and radio. The disturbing thing about this bill is that this applies to “obscene, indecent, or profane material” and the bill, to my speed-reading eye, is based on complaints received by the FCC alleging that a broadcast contains “obscene” material. Since “obscene” is an entirely subjective term, instead of railing against nipples (which I happen to find far from obscene myself), I hope that the moralists in our nation will see fit to lodge their complaints about the real obscene elements: the miasmic advertising, the spineless and sycophantic questions asked by the White House Press Corps, the reality TV shows, and the vacuous celebrity interviews which ensure that television, for the most part, remains a dull and soulless medium.