Cary Grant sings FCC regulations. (via Waxy)

The Independent: “There is something practically Shakespearean about the way in which this pitiless debunker of pompous, self-regarding old men became one himself, a process that was as much visual as behavioural. As Leader’s lavish photo-spreads confirm, late-period Amis – pop-eyed, wattled and damson-faced – bore an uncanny resemblance to his old sparring partner Evelyn Waugh. Reading the excerpts from for-God’s-sake letters lamenting the editorial treatment doled out to ‘a writer of my generation’, eavesdropping on the mid-morning gin-swiller whose defence was ‘Look, I’m Kingsley Amis, you see, and I can drink whenever I want,’ you wonder whether Waugh didn’t have the last laugh.”

CNN: “The 31-year-old CEO drinks eight espressos a day and possesses a work ethic that’s famous around Silicon Valley. He often arrives in the office by six and is still there 12 or even 18 hours later.”

Susan Hill claims that she received an email from a broadsheet books editor blacklisting any books she writes from getting coverage. More from This Space, Scott Pack, and The Guardian Book Blog.

Publishers Weekly: “After the book was condemned by booksellers (many of whom said they would donate proceeds to the victims’ families), media critics and even pundits from Fox News, News Corp. announced in a terse statement that the book and TV special have been dropped. Murdoch said: ‘I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.'”

The big question: Is Judith Regan truly sorry?

Michael Richards implodes.

Your Faithful Correspondent is busy making casseroles and sweet potato pies and doing many other things for Thanksgiving. So posting will be light. But a Thanksgiving-themed Segundo podcast should be up on Wednesday featuring a very funny woman. More to come.

The complaint is not yet available online. Current activity shows that Aldred (aka Millenia Black) & Penguin Group have entered into a stipulation, giving Penguin Group through December 1, 2006 to answer the complaint. Penguin may be buying time in order to settle the suit (thereby avoiding the hours of attorney time it will cost to answer the complaint) before December 1, thus causing plaintiff Aldred to dismiss the case. I will check back in December.

Does anyone know what this is? The video attracted notice a year ago. But is it staged or real? An independent film project gone awry? Or is it real torture? Could it be unedited takes for this training video? There’s scant information from the two short video clips.

…Steve Ballmer’s Monkey Dance. It places everything into perspective.

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be reading at Writers With Drinks on December 9, 2006 January 20, 2007 at The Make-Out Room. I’m honored to be included with such fine company as Lolly Winston, Stephen Elliott, Indigo Moor, Laura Moriarty and Kevin Avery. If you’re in San Francisco, do come on by and join the fun!

[UPDATE: There’s been a change in plans. I’ll be appearing at the January 20, 2007 Writers With Drinks instead. Apologies for any inconvenience.]

I was sitting in my sparsely furnished apartment, trying to contemplate how I could make more money. I had just let a 21 year-old intern out the door, releasing this little boy only after he sobbed something to me about how his mother would be disappointed in him if she were still alive. I suppose you’re never too young to learn.

The kid had thought himself a social climber and, seeing as how he had nice abs and seeing as how he’d intimated to me that his thrusting was competent (funny how these boys always overstate these things), I figured a passable lay wasn’t a bad way to pass the hours. There’d always be tomorrow’s steady revenue steam at Sturgeon Books, of meetings where I’d cause my underpaid minions to cry and where all of us would plot how we could best appeal to the lowest common denominator. The book business was all about the dinero. And we were prepared to dupe the public by any means necessary.

Conviction was on my mind. Conviction and cash. Cash was the great human equalizer. I had Matt Drudge on speed-dial.

I had watched Tom Cruise jump on Oprah’s couch and I was convinced he was a killer. I was convinced that he would do something dangerous. But we couldn’t get him to write a book speculating upon how he would chop Katie Holmes with an axe. Further, he had not been tried for murder.

We needed a crook. We needed a sale. We needed another bloodbath.

So we called Robert Blake. And we knew that if we gave him a pistol and a pen, he might be counted upon to write a bestsetlling book on how he might have killed his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakely.

And I knew right there and then that I could kill two birds with one stone. I raced to the street and saw my faithful intern. He was fishing in his pockets for his Metrocard, staring gloomily into the Manhattan rain for the next bus back to Queens. I told him to come back to my apartment for a proposition. There was initially some confusion. He had mentioned something about tendering his resignation that morning. But when I whispered him in peremptory terms, “This will really help your career,” his ears pricked up. And I observed that he had an erection. Okay, maybe I could kill three birds with one stone.

I told the intern to wait in the living room and called my attorney. Before ten o’clock, he had drafted an airtight release and faxed it over to me. The intern asked to read it and I told him not to worry.

“Do you know who William Tell is?” I asked.

The intern said no.

“Do you know who William Burroughs is?” I asked.

The intern shook his head.

“What’s your name anyway?”

“William,” he said.

“Well, William, how would you like to join a long list of cultural luminaries.”

I gave him an apple from my fruit bowl.

“Is this for me to eat?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “You’re going to meet with a Mr. Robert Blake in Los Angeles. And you’re going to do everything he says. It’s going to involve a pistol, but we’re going to make publishing history.”

I asked William if he had any family or friends. He told me that he didn’t, outside of a brother in Wichita who he was no longer on speaking terms with. He had only starting working at Sturgeon Books two weeks ago and he knew nobody, save the guy at the deli who made him affordable sandwiches.

William was the perfect man for this great moment in Sturgeon Books history. A man wholly without connections, a man who Robert could tinker with.

We got him on the first flight out of LaGuardia to LAX.

Six weeks later, Robert banged out If I Killed Bonnie, I Killed William Too, one of the most eloquent pieces of writing I believe we’ve ever printed at Sturgeon Books. We had even included color photographs of William’s bloody head, complete with little flecks of bone embedded in Robert’s kitchen wall. Really sensational stuff! I’m pleased to report that William was smiling all the way to the end.

There won’t be any wrongful death actions. My lawyer saw to that.

And while Robert has settled into a deeper depression over this experiment of ours, the good news is that Sturgeon Books stands to make a mint.

Conviction. It’s a great way to do business.

Word Games. Amcorrea, you’re next on my list for having the temerity to point me to this terrible distraction!

David Hiller: “Don also held the strategic ground in the center of the court better than anybody. We once collided as we both moved there, and I couldn’t play for a week. Don moved well, certainly for a guy in his 60s. As he said, ‘I’m quick, not fast.'”

…I present “The Devil and Miss Regan” by Judith Newman as Exhibit A.

Scientific American: “When money is on the brain, people become disinclined to ask for help when faced with a difficult or even an impossible puzzle….People who think, even subconsciously, about money are also less helpful than others, the researchers say. After witnessing a pre-arranged accident in which someone walking through the testing area dropped a box of pencils, money-primed participants picked up fewer of the fallen pencils than the other subjects did.”

Forget OJ’s prognostication. Mr. Levi Asher tells the world how he would have carried out the murders. Memo to FOX: if you replaced OJ with random individuals explaining how they would carry out a twin murder, then I think it would probably be a lot more interesting.

I’m waiting for it. Looks like I’m about five minutes ahead of the National Book Foundation site.

HOLY SHIT! Richard Powers has taken the fiction award for The Echo Maker! Hurray!

Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthern

In lieu of the monthly newsletter, I’m relying upon my inside source, who is providing me with the National Book Award winners as they happen.

So far, M.T. Anderson has won the Young People’s Literature Award for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party.

The Internet is 1% porn.

AV Club: “Well, I haven’t really done much of anything today. I got up at 10:30, tried to do a little writing, but really didn’t do anything. I went running, then I had to buy a Syd Barrett Pink Floyd record for something I’m working on, so I walked to the store and bought that. Then I came back here and I’ve been watching an NFL Films documentary on Lawrence Taylor. That’s basically been my day. Not too strenuous.”

From The Onion A.V. Club:

MP: I never knew who Nick Drake was until the Garden State soundtrack, and then I got his greatest hits, and I really like it. It’s really restful and thoughtful, something so pure about his sound. It’s good for when you’re walking around New York listening to your iPod—nice to listen to instead of all the craziness happening around you. I don’t know anything about him, though.

The A.V. Club: He was a reclusive, depressive guy who died very young from a drug overdose.

MP: Really? You’re kidding. He sounds so put-together.

Happy seventh birthday, Ghost in the Machine.