If you have written a post begging your readership to nominate you for the Bloggies, then please do us all a favor. Stop blogging. You’re part of the problem.

Because blogging isn’t a popularity contest. If you are not offending at least one reader or writing something that causes your readership to think, if you are not taking advantage of this alternative medium to do something worthwhile and different, the things that other mediums can’t do because they need advertising and readers, then I hope you’ll spend the rest of your days without an Internet connection working at a small-town newspaper banging out a weekly gardening column that offends no one.

I’ve been blogging in some form or another for the past seven years. Maybe more. So I’ve seen all five years of the Bloggies nonsense. Will someone please tell me just what exactly these awards have done to further humankind? Have they expanded blogging in any way? Have they provoked meaningful discussion? No. The Bloggies is nothing less than a big SXSW circlejerk, the online equivalent of a UHF fishing show that you’ve watched for the hundredth time. The same fishermen, growing older and specializing in catching the same fish, using the same techniques, saying the same things. Let’s look at the names. Jeffrey Zeldman. Evan Williams. Jason Kottke. Nothing against them, but yawn.

If you’re a person into blogging to win hits and influence people instead of saying no to constantly checking your Technorati rating or your stats, then I wonder how you can ever find pleasure in the form. Blogging as a stepping stone to a career? Helpful, yes, but hardly the cure-all answer. Why not just focus on realistic goals that lead you straight to the career instead of sneaking in posts during your day job? If you want to be a journalist, get a job on a paper. If you want a book deal, write a book and carefully market it. If you want to be a legitimate pundit, go to grad school and “publish or perish” in journals. But don’t automatically assume that your blog gives you immediate credentials. And don’t think that it entitles to anything. As we all learned back during the 2004 political convention coverage, it was the bloggers who proved to be the laziest reporters of the bunch, offering reports about as substantial as a Field & Stream cover story. Of course, if you do want to practice journalism through a blog, then stop railing against the mainstream media about how superior you are and do the fucking legwork. Back up your shit, yo. Make phone calls, talk to people, get multiple sides of the story. That’s what you can do in this medium that the big papers can’t.

For god’s sake, stop encouraging crap like the Bloggies, which is nothing less than a bunch of insular nonsense motivated by charisma rather than content. I should point out that the only person who had the balls to turn down a Bloggies award was Noah Grey. He recognized the hypocrisy and rejected it. (And long before those able pups Trotted into filthy lucre, Noah Grey laid down the framework for gradual evoloution of the software which guided this medium through Greymatter. The man understood community.)

So in conclusion: Fuck the Bloggies. Fuck it hard.

This has been a public service announcement.

The cat is out of the bag. This post marks the end of Return of the Reluctant.

If you’ve been paying attention to Publisher’s Lunch, I’m happy to report that I’ve received a $750,000 advance for my debut novel, Blog Days. Apparently, the name “Return of the Reluctant” now means something beyond the blogosphere. My name is being susurrated at cocktail parties. I’m getting more blowjob offers from random strangers than ever before. Hell, even Christopher Hitchens wants to blow me, but then he didn’t bother to check my political dossier and he’s in desperate need of attention. But it’s the thought that counts. And of course, a gentleman never kisses and tells. If I had been hired by Nick Denton right now, then I would definitely inform him to go summer where the sun don’t shine. (In fact, just for the hell of it, because financial emancipation unfurls the opportunity for a certain truth, I will. You heard me, Denton! Summer!)

Anyway, after the success of my groundbreaking essay “After Blog Life,” it has been decided by certain big names that what the world really needs is a salable and poorly plotted novel about a 31 year old prematurely balding, San Francisco-based litblogger trying to figure out what to do with his life, but finding a TV movie-friendly existential direction through the plot device of a man named Cat Stigmata and several podcasts produced for a better tomorrow. The marketing people have asked me to gain weight and develop perky man-boobs for my bookstore appearances, while also making tedious references to sodomy throughout the text. Because, you know, that’s the cute and hip thing to do. Normally, I wouldn’t do this. But hell why argue with hype when there’s so much cash on the table? The good news is that, despite my criticisms of Sam Tanenhaus, the New York Times has been effectively “bought.” They’ll be covering me with at least six articles during the week the novel comes out.

If you people hadn’t enjoyed my site so much, none of this would have happened. Of course, Return of the Reluctant will continue in another form. Two women, whom I understand are both Amish and nymphomaniacs, plan to take over the site while I spend my free time blowing spitballs at the people standing in the unemployment line. In fact, I may even take some of the $750,000 and form spitballs from these George Washingtons.

But before I officially retire from blogging and become an overpaid hack (Tito Perez and Scott Esposito have accepted the positions of personal assistant and part-time pamperer, respectively), let me offer you an excerpt from one of the chapters, all in the interest of filling up the coffers:

Excerpt

Newtonette emailed me today. She said that she’d meet me in New York and discuss what percentages of the “litblogosphere” we owned. So that’s what all this “web log” business boiled down to! That’s why Mink Sorvo and Leela Lulumi were such good friends with her. In the end, it didn’t boil down to Technorati ratings or the emails you answered from attention-starved writers. It came down to brass balls and the deals brokered in Brooklyn dives.

I was new to this “web log” business. So I agreed to the terms. So long as I didn’t venture into New York, so long as I stayed on my side of the United States, Newtonette and I wouldn’t scuffle. There would be no Farrar, Strauss and Giroux building destroyed. There would be no Peck-Crouch style brawl captured by the New York Daily News. Newtonette injected a microscopic pellet into my neck and told me that the pellete would explode, releasing poison into my bloodstream if I didn’t leave New York within 24 hours. So I caught the next plane out of Kennedy and I fell asleep watching an in-flight movie of Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark.

I woke up when the plane landed in SFO and my mind was racing. I was still suspicius about Mink Sorvo. The man was everywhere, although I didn’t pay attention to what Steve Peanutsize and Justine Extra-Crispy said about him. What Newtonette didn’t know was tht I had formed a pact with Extra-Crispy: a complex agreement that made the Stalin-Hitler Pact look like an eight year old’s party invitation.

I caught on really quick. You betrayed your colleagues or you got yourself sodomized.

I’m pleased to announce that our Young, Roving Correspondent will be talking with the five nominees for this quarter’s round of LBC goodness. The podcasts will first be released in five installments at the LBC site and will then be edited into two or three Segundo shows. More information about what the LBC is up to this quarter can be found here.

But in this case it’s the all-important Whitbread. This week’s winners:

Novel: Ali Smith, The Accidental
First Novel: Tash Aw, The Harmony Silk Factory
Poetry: Christopher Logue, Cold Calls
Children’s Book: Kate Thompson, The New Policeman
Biography: Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master

We’re still working on Segundo #17. Yes, we made a pledge to you yesterday and we broke it (hanging heads down low). But there were some unexpected ambient noise issues and since we are quite anal about tweaking audio and we don’t like the nice people who appear on the show sounding as if they’re talking into a tin can, the attention was needed. However, last night, we slept about six hours, which was more zees than we’ve had in some weeks (at least in one sitting). And it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Bear with us. We’re dancing as fast as we can.

Okay, the holidays have made us extremely lazy and we really have very little to say that might be construed as witty and/or urbane. Like our homeboy Golden Rule Jones, we suspect we’ve gone over the deep end and, if it keeps up like this, we may start consorting with top ten kvetchers who know their stuff and aren’t afraid to flaunt it. Perhaps all this was because the coffeehouse was inordinately packed yesterday and we grew slightly claustrophobic typing meaningless nonsense into our laptop on a small round table. And instead of concentrating upon the work at hand, we then started writing about the attractive young lady who was sitting near us. The text became Byronic and slightly provocative. (I’m sure you’ve experienced this.) This was when we had to stop writing, and we deleted the file and slammed the laptop shut. The streams of consciousness were crossed, so to speak. We then stared into our warm cup of green tea and imagined that we could detect its soothing smell (reminiscent of haiku) permeating from just outside, followed by a veritable tsunami of green tea flooding through the coffeehouse and soaking the sartorial garb of all, some of the folks producing rubber ducks and toy boats instead of being offended by the destruction, all this of course being personified in torrential size and undulations by our harmless thoughts. The laptop was then packed. And we proceeded to lie for a long while. Not bored. Just perplexed. Slightly fatigued. What was it that was turning us into such lazy asses? Then we dumped audio, did dishes, responded to a few emails that looked interesting, and began trying to prod the indolent individual who was probably reacting this way.

The point of all this:

1. We’re not going to bed tonight until we give you a new podcast. The conversation involves hypothesizing about violence.

2. The LBC is dormant, but will reawaken on January 15 with the new set of nominees and the winner. We have something extremely ambitious and special planned, which will be cross-posted here. As does the incredible Dan Wickett.

3. Because of our general inability to concentrate, posting will be light until we recover. Unless of course we are pushed over the edge (likely) by some ungodly literary topic. Should you wish to serve as a momentary muse, emails, of course, are welcome.

Janet Maslin, The New York Times: “‘Dog Days’ manages to be doubly conventional: it follows both an old-fashioned love-betrayal-redemption arc and the newer, bitchier nanny-Prada chick-lit motif. Melanie is a myopic and self-interested heroine by the standards of either genre. The reader will learn about Melanie’s expensive shoes, Melanie’s drinking, Melanie’s buying of groceries at drugstores, Melanie’s playing with sushi and Melanie’s first shirt with French cuffs. Then there are Melanie’s descriptions of cellphone noises, the Delta shuttle terminal and Washington’s byzantine parking laws. Throughout all this, the ‘Berry’ – a word used as both a noun and a verb – is never more than a pesty ping away.”

USA Today: “The novel has a stripped-down story line and limited character development. The plot is predictable and matter-of-fact. But it does have a blunt, albeit tawdry, honesty.”

Publishers Weekly: “Fans of Wonkette’s wit will find themselves better served by her blog.”

The Book Standard: “[R]eaders hoping for some real-life dirt (or at least a salacious facsimile) will be dealt nothing more than lightweight fluff and throwaway farce.”

Okay, so I’m deliberately discounting the fact that I finished up the two last-minute LBC reads over the long weekend. (You’ll unearth the results of that very soon.)

In the meantime:

Book #1: Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. Vincent disguises herself as a man, infiltrating male support groups, strip clubs, bowling alleys and monasteries (!) to try and understand masculinity. Now admittedly this is the kind of quasi-anthropological stunt that I’m interested in, particularly since I’m very interested in gender perceptions (likely due to being situated in San Francisco and counting a transgender individual as a friend, but that’s another story). But Black Like Me this ain’t. Vincent’s conclusions are neither terribly groundbreaking, nor are they entirely persuasive. She’s at her best when she’s investigating love and sex, but when it comes to supposed “earth-shattering” conclusions that men enjoy the cruel power of Glengarry Glen Ross-style balls-busting vocations and are capable of being emotionally sensitive too, this isn’t really news at all (and it actually doesn’t tell the whole story of masculinity). And it stops short of the kind of penetrating insight that I had hoped for. Vincent hints at a major emotional divide that separates the two genders, a folkway concerning the expression of sentimentality that seems to lock current gender roles in place, but she fails to offer a constructive analysis of why this exists — all this despite a philosophical background. In the end, Self-Made Man comes across as an entertaining stunt, but hardly the kind of soul-searching implied by the title.

Soft Skull’s Richard Nash has won a well-earned prize: the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing.

It’s 3:00 PM, the first day of the year 2006. And I have already observed the following:

1. At my neighborhood cafe, a man and a woman break out into a fight. The man shrieks that he’s a peace-loving person, but he’s getting a “bad vibe” and this is somehow motivating the violence. Peace for this gentleman essentially means screaming at the top of his lungs something about doing time for 14 years and about how the woman, whom he claims is his sister, won’t speak to him. He is also overturning random objects outside, apparently to further what he describes as “peaceful intent.” The woman, who claims she has not invited any of this on, proceeds to continuously egg on this disturbed gentleman with cutting insults, walking to the doorway separating the Haight Street nomads from the neighborhood dwellers ensconced inside and continuously chiding him, letting loose all manner of violence to this guy’s face (punches, slaps, the like). The following cycle occurs about three times: After a short burst of this pugilism, the woman then says, to the great bafflement of workers and the customers who have not fled the premises (apparently, just me by round three) that she claims she has done nothing. This after she has proceeded to bust the man’s chops. And then the man enters the doorway. Various people (including me) separate the two from inflicting further physical violence on each other, which is not as easy as it looks because these two are quite determined to hate, this enmity being established, strangely enough, as a peaceful demeanor. The woman leaves only because she is asked to by the establishment. And by the end of this all, I am the only customer who remains. Although the coffeehouse fills up to capacity again within twenty minutes.

2. While on a daily walking constitutional (a New Year’s resolution of sorts), I observe a car, traveling at what appears to be a stellar velocity (at least 45 mph) down Oak, attempting to brake before a red light and completely losing control, weaving in a dangerous curlicue onto the sidewalk before the light, just missing a pedestrian trying to fire up a smoke (with the pedestrian completely unaware of this caroming vehicle until the inevitable CRASH! tinkle reverberates across some six square blocks) and collide into a parked black Saab. I freeze for ten seconds. It seems like something out of a movie. But after this ten second period has passed, I run across the street to make sure nobody’s hurt. Amazingly, despite the car’s bisected Gaussian curve into what might have been a house had not the Saab been there, not so much as a soul is injured. A crowd of fifteen or twenty have congregated around the crash. Cell phones have been whipped out. There are impassioned pleas to 911. And I don’t think the smoker guy realizes he could have been killed or that the driver and passenger of the car knows how lucky they are to be alive. The authorities have been called. A svelte jogger who is easily half my weight and I pick up abandoned newspapers and attempt to staunch the gas, oil and greenish fluids that are now oozing their way into the gutter marked “WARNING: THIS FLOWS INTO NATURAL WATERS,” and I begin to imagine the sea life and fish that might be harmed or killed because of this driver’s failure to proceed down Oak Street at a safe velocity and/or keep tires aligned. In fact, the driver and passenger of this car seem generally amused by this all. They seem ripe and ready to laugh over the transformation of their vehicle into toxic detrius and perhaps slap the officer writing up the collision report some high fives. I am unable to find the owner of the parked Saab in the crowd. But I don’t think s/he’ll be so amused or conclude that this is the best time to apply a Louisville slugger to a piñata. When it is clear that everyone is all right and that there are plenty of witnesses to the accident, I take my leave.

It is said that things happen in threes (although I have never known a shady usurer to be audited three times in a row). While I neither believe in a god nor am particularly superstitious, there is a small part of me obsessed with patterns that wants to believe that Terrible Incident #3 will occur if I leave the house again. Even though every rational fiber in my being knows that this is wrong. There is a groping here for some kind of meaning or order. Never mind that this is probably all coincidence, that these things happen all the time, irrespective of my existence or where I wander, and that these two terrible things just happened to happen as I walked by. It could have been five terrible things or none at all. But while I am glad that there was no loss of life in either incident, I’m still asking myself why there’s some compunction inside me that believes that (don’t laugh) I am partially responsible. I’m thirty-one. Didn’t I shed these scutes a while back? Is it guilt? Is it some residue of agnosticism that I packed away decades ago? Is it a simple desire to ascribe meaning to everything? Or is it my imagination getting the better of me? Do I want to be persecuted? Is that what this is all about? Do I feel too much for the world around me?

The fact that any thinking person with even the slightest ethical compunction can’t be completely at ease with the idea of people who are alone on Xmas, possibly starving, or that people are being tortured in inhuman ways in order to loosen lips for this so-called “war on terrorism,” or wars that are called “conflicts” are permitted to go on with great loss of life and no exit strategy and no end in sight. And people are dying and they don’t really have to. And how can anyone really sit back and watch an episode of My Name is Earl while all this is going on? How can anyone bitch about something as picayune as the co-worker accidentally swiping the wrong brown bag in the fridge and remain completely ignorant about the current political situation?

The gist I’m getting at here: How can any of us completely turn our backs on this stuff? Whether local incidents of violence or faraway ones? I understand the need to avoid unnecessary conflicts or volatile scenarios, but what the hell is it in the damn atmosphere that causes people to remain so blissfully unaware and unassuming, walking (as I saw people walk past both Terrible Incident #1 and Terrible Incident #2) as if it involved two people whispering or a stick falling to the ground? A mere pittance! Not even so much as a head turn or an “Is everything alright?” Are people so scared shitless of the world around them? Are they so unwillingly to accept the reality that this cannot be a zero risk world? It seems that combatting the risks themselves has taken on cartoonish proportions: melodramatic Amber Alerts (aka The Kids Who Cried Wolf; see here) and the stripping of civil liberties without public debate. But is it possible that basic human decency, that kind of nascent concern for one’s fellow beings, has been occluded by the current atmosphere that insists that the largely unseen DOJ/NSA entities (whose scope of authority and invasions into privacy we can really only speculate upon) will somehow take care of this mess? The same “Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” mentality that provokes people to look the other way at the dangers of Hubbert’s Peak or a car accident? If that’s the case, frankly the willfully ignorant, those who would sacrifice all passion and integrity in this social contract quid pro quo scam the boys at 1600 Penn have got going on right now, strike me as the wussiest scoundrels I’ve seen since Richard Nixon.

Mike Ditka and the Grabowskis (via MeFi)

• My boy S-Espozie has a new edition of the Quarterly Conversation up. There’s also an interview with E-Falco. Check this shit out, yo.
• Ron Hogan talks with Joe Bob Briggs.
• Tom Piazza at TM and MN.
• Giles Coren: winner of the Bad Sex Award.
• Note to journalists: Does Anne Rice’s Jesus conversion require six billion profiles?
• Marilynne Robinson: popping that Grawemyer cherry.
• Sedaris to address Princeton undergrads.
• And someone needs to tell Mayra Montero that “erotic” is a good thing. People are coming to you, Mayra, for the hot sex and you’re complaining?

Disappearing into hole again. Visit the folks on the right.

We’re going dark for a while. It’s for our own good and yours.

Author: Octavia Butler

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Unknown. We can’t find him this week.

Subjects Discussed: Anne Rice, the advantages of writing vampire novels, research, the ambiguities of “persistently repulsive” material, Fledgling as ripping vampire yarn and multilayered quest story, setting vampire rules, naming character names, the influence of the state of Washington upon atmosphere, Butler’s editorial relationship with Seven Stories, Warner vs. Seven Stories, on being categorized as a science fiction author, auctorial labels, Butler’s three primary audiences, Dorothy Allison, the influence of criticism, fiction as prophecy, Bush and global warming, education, Margaret Atwood, why Butler dislikes Survivor, the Parable books, why this is the first book in seven years, on writing a “continuous first draft,” Butler’s working methods, typewriters, technology, Alfred Hitchcock, cell phones, how Butler’s computer is set up, T.C. Boyle, on being a baby boomer, being “comfortably asocial,” inner introverts, polyamory, sexuality, the science aspect of science fiction, and science fiction vs. fantasy.

Congrats to Mark, Pinky (so “out there,” apparently), and Lee Goldberg for mentions in this extremely strange L.A. Times article.

I have been informed that the Goldberg Brothers have taken Pinky’s Paperhaus by storm!

The fundamental difference between Las Vegas and Reno is that, in Vegas, people disguise their loneliness through lust. In Reno, people are merely lonely. Which itself is a sad thing. But at least Reno’s rudimentary loneliness is a pure form. It isn’t an emotion occluded by the most ridiculous (yet invisible to the participants) of masks, with all of this blunt kabuki theatre aided and abetted by the casinos’ perplexing labyrinths, atavistic pit bosses and false incentives. (Sign up for the One Card and you’ll get comped! Maybe. But only after you’ve fed the casinos with about two hundred hard-earned American dollars without any cash return.)

Anyway, this Vegas lust I’m talking about takes on many forms: lust for cash, lust for the human body (whether through disparate carnalities directed towards one’s partner or the endless reminders of the flesh that are de rigueur for the Strip), lust for what America considers sinful behavior. The latter type is particularly interesting. When one considers the entire spectrum of human history, the aberrations themselves don’t stray all that far from the natural course of deviant human behavior. From the savage conversations I overheard at various craps tables, it seems to me that there is a barely withheld desire to throw off shackles and race pell-mell into debauchery. It is there in their rude treatment of the cocktail waitresses. I observed one man who did not tip a waitress once, even when he was $200 ahead, and who regularly asked the waitress, “Get me another Coor’s, you cunt.” It is there in how easily amused many of these gamblers appear to be by throwbacks to a more liberated time. I played one slot machine called “Fortune Cookie,” which featured a racist Asian chef caricature who, of course, mispronounced English and grunted all sets of two-letter words (such as “Po Po”) with a brio designed to attract the type of person who probably pulled the wings off of a buterfly as a child. I was quite amazed by this, but I was perhaps more perplexed by how the large man standing behind me thought this was the funniest thing he’d seen since American Pie. I then immediately abdicated the machine to him.

It seems to me that the United States, being a fairly hilarious mess of contradictions, is still governed four centuries later by some offshoot of the initial Puritanical impetus that got us all here in the first place. Perhaps Vegas serves as a wakeup call that Americans aren’t nearly as civilized as they pretend to think they are. I should point out that we were one of the last nations to give up slavery and that we regularly fail to provide our citizens with the kind of welfare and socialized medicine common in other nations. Perhaps people come here because this apparent “deviance” is not only discouraged within their native environments, but somehow tied into a residential home’s property value. Will a stigma against an atheist neighbor who likes to hold wild orgies at his split-level hacienda take off about ten thousand bucks from an assessment? You tell me. But I truly believe that Vegas serves as a refuge for those not permitted to be dissolute in their native environments.

The signs in Vegas are more grammatically correct (and decidedly brighter) than Reno, but at the expense of giving the many thousands who daily roll through this libertariantropolis a false sense of entitlement. Only in Vegas could Carrot Top find a steady income. Only in Vegas would the Bellagio’s bombastic founts be considered a thing of beauty to be observed across a eight-lane thoroughway rather than accepted as the living cartoon this aquatic monstrosity truly is. Only in Vegas will you find Hispanic day laborers employed through the dissemination of pamphlets and other literature, all of it advertising questionable strip clubs and the like. The day laborers snap their fingers as you walk along Las Vegas Blvd. and they appear to be there 24/7. (I was accosted by a few around 2 AM.) They are some of the hardest workers to be found on the Strip.

One feels dizzy, nay completely disoriented, in the hopeless mesh of casinos at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Blvd. One does not so much walk back to one’s hotel room, but engage in a mini-Bataan Death March through sounds and crowds that show no sign of abating. The hotel room is the only refuge. Wild sights and cries can be found at all hours. I watched a long-haired shirtless man walk along the strip in forty-degree weather. He was without shoes. Whether he was hoping for a literal metaphor that expressed very clearly how he had lost his shirt, I cannot say. He walked with considerable celerity.

Personally, I answered a wolf call from across the street in Las Vegas Blvd. and I shamelessly danced to the Go Gos while walking past the Tropicana. Now these are things I would likely do on any happening evening. But then I am considered to be something of a Macadamia nut amongst peers.

If I have learned anything from watching people in Vegas, it is this: Perhaps some of our folkways need to be reassessed so that, every so often, people can answer a wolf call without fear of social retribution. If Vegas can help us affect this goal amongst the population at large, serving almost as an urban halfway house between those who would refrain from fun (for whom I genuinely weep) and those who have learned to embrace their inner goofball, then I fully support its continued existence, however ridiculous its makeup.

1. The people in Riverside gather together for an annual ceremony that essentially involves some random guy hitting a light switch. That and a few fireworks. Was actually quieted by a suburban mother when I mentioned that the North Pole had recently signed GATT and had been employing elves as slave labor. Her two year old scion, who could not have been cognizant enough to understand me, was apparently risking being “corrupted” in her words. Sometimes I have a big mouth.

2. Never underestimate the incredible devices that can be found at Toys R Us. Recent acquisition (nothing purchased on Buy Nothing Day, mind you): a Jeopardy machine that includes three remote buzzers. Ideal for lying on a setee in a lazy position and trying to remember the capital of Kazakhstan. The machine’s cmphasis on literature questions has frustrated certain family members, who have proclaimed an unfair bias in my favor. Although I have not been answering every question in an effort to keep things fair. Total cost of machine: $5.00.

3. Also never underestimate the books that can be found in used bookstores. For a mere $6.00, a mint copy of Terry Southern’s Candy — one of the few novels of his I haven’t yet read.

4. I am astonished at the amount of driving that is done down here. I’m used to walking places.

5. Walk the Line: Enjoyable biopic, largely because of the way Cash’s music exists as a character between silent moments. Joaquin Phoenix, whom I have never really been a big fan of, finds a good balance between finding his own take on Cash and remaining tortured without another over-the-top Gladiator-style performance. Even if they diluted the inmates’ wild roars during the At Folsom Prison sequence, Joe Bob says check it out.

6. Thanksgiving food loses its appeal after precisely 62 hours. It never lasts the full three day test. Doesn’t mean it isn’t tasty all the time until then.

7. I have managed to read about 250 pages. Which means, I suppose, that I’m taking this vacation thing somewhat seriously.

8. Also don’t underestimate the Santa Ana Winds.

9. I played tennis for the first time in three years and am seriously considering this as a sport I might be able to take up (read: something I can likely sweat severely over while retaining that sense of having shed calories and meeting an appropriate level of physical exertion which causes my arms and legs to be quite fantastically sore). It was worth it to run after the ball — in large part, because there was always a chance that I could do something even when running dramatically from one side of the court to the other. I didn’t hit the balls over the wall as many times as I expected to and I even managed to effect a little spin upon my returns. The thing that worries me about taking up tennis in San Francisco is that there are probably a good deal of tennis players who will trounce me even if they play easy with me. Perhaps tennis lessons are in order.

10. Suppose I should sleep.

• Chapters Bookstore is in trouble and the Happy Booker (and several authors) are on the case.
• There’s apparently another book named White Teeth.
• Harry Potter? Notable Book of the Year? No Brownie for You, Tanenhaus!
• Looks like someone is fucked existentially. Somehow, this makes perfect sense to me right now.
• Wrong on multiple levels. Stop encouraging the woman’s ego! Please.

• I am a bit thrown back by the question: “Smoking or nonsmoking.”
• The Cal-Neva casino has the following message on its marquee: “Dog and draft: $1.50.” I am a bit bemused by the fact that there are no articles whatsoever before these two nouns. However, another sign did in fact refer to “A Bud.” What this suggests to me is that if a beer has a brand name, it is worth referring to by an indefinite article.
• My notes are all packed away, but I believe the historical shrine in front of the County Courthouse reads: “Before the white man came,” as if to suggest that it is the white man who, above all, matters here. The only other memorial is one devoted to World War II.
• I highly suggest that you order a chicken Caesar salad in a steakhouse. It throws the staff off a bit. In fact, the steakhouse menus are devoid of vegetables altogether — outside of potatos.
• And speaking of restaurants, I attempted to dine at the Circus Circus steakhouse without success. Despite the fact that there was no customers there to speak of, the maitre’d said that I couldn’t dine at his establishment. Because there was a very strict dress code and I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. He intimated to me that all shirts must have sleeves. I pointed out that mine did, but that they were in fact shorter. But they were sleeves nonetheless. I then pointed out to him the steakhouse’s barren environs and asked him if anyone would really care if I, a short-sleeved shirt man, dined at his establishment. The maitre’d in turn said that if he made an exception for me, he’d have to make an exception for everyone. I pointed out again that, at the present time, there were hardly great throngs of people trying to barge their way through the doors. He still refused. So I ended up supping at the adjacent Americana Cafe, which was similarly barren and had a staff-to-customer ratio of 19 to 1.
• A Circus Circus security guard called me “a highly disturbed man” because I wore my Cabinet of Dr. Caligari tee-shirt. I pointed out to him that it was a high watermark in German Expressionist cinema and a good flick to boot. The guard says he’s seen the film, but insinuates that it is not an experience he wants to repeat again.
• There is a theatre in the Downtown Reno area! Just south of the Truckee River on Virginia Street. Recent offerings included Mamet and Albee. So don’t diss Reno for being without culture.
• The one phenomenon that I am unfamiliar with is the large boorish man with the not unattractive, skinny and dutiful wife/significant other. I saw about six such couples in various restaurants and I wondered what the women were doing with such louts. (Louts being defined not as anything stereotypical, but we’re talking men who publicly disparage their wives/SOs, burp audibly, stuff a napkin underneath their necks (instead of placing it in their laps), and force their wives/SOs to do all their work, such as paying the bill and flagging down the waiter, while they sit burping and stuffing their faces without abatement.) I call a few friends about this and they remind me (Mr. Boho) that some people marry for money rather than love, and willingly hope to coast by on their looks. Sometimes my optimism gets in the way of reality.
• When an artist records a mainstream pop hit, I wonder whether he’s really proud of the fact that it’s being played at a casino while people are losing money.
• So many sad people.
• I’m the only person who dances on the Circus Circus shuttle while the cheesy music plays up. Some kids join in with me and we all start laughing. One asks to buy her an ice cream cone. Since I’m essentially killing time and it’s better than supporting the Casino Development Fund with another terrible, money-losing round of blackjack, I oblige.
• Why are so many kids unsupervised at 2 AM?
• Who was the person who decided that the pawn shops on Virginia Street belong on the east side (with the exception of Harrah’s) and the big casinos belong on the west? Perhaps the idea here is that “going west” involves hope. If the zoning people intended this as a joke, they are truly sick-hearted people.
• I can’t even fling the Circus Circus chickens right. Meanwhile, ace parabolic calculators, who are half my age, wander off with large stuffed animals.
• There is very little concern for pedestrians in this town. I wonder if the pedestrian has the right of way in Nevada. I am nearly run over three times — two times by large sports utility vehicles.
• Nothing beats cruising down Virginia Street in a Mustang. Then again, living in an urban center and not owning a car, driving is very much a novelty to me. Although if you play my kind of music, cowboys will look over at you as if they are ready to kill you. Apparently, it’s a provincial offense to blast LCD Soundsystem along their turf. Fortunately, I was able to talk myself out of a potential Duel situation by flashing them a smile and the thumbs-up sign.
• Gotta go. My laptop battery’s just about shot. Happy Turkey Day, one and all.

I put a Jackson on the blackjack table. It is a $3 table, but I play $5 hands so as not to be completely declasse. There’s only one other player at the table – a guy to my right. He’s polishing down Corona Number 12 and he is quick to announce this to me, although his speech is very slurred. His large meaty hands paw a tower of $25 coins. He wears a baseball cap and the brim covers the top third of his head. It appears that the cap has been set at the tightest possible notch in the back. And since his eyebrows are very dark and bushy, and since he is very inebriated and he seems to be undulating, the man looks like an extreme closeup of Robin Williams wearing a pith helmet.

The dealer is letting loose terrible coughs – like some archetype out of a Doestoevsky novel. She’s about 40, with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Her name tag indicates that she’s from California. She’s clearly in some serious kind of pain. Her hands shake as she deals the cards (or, rather, as she throws them to some close proximity, which is often dangerously close to the cards firing off over the table’s edge). Her eyes grow quite large when she talks with ardor and when she gets the sense that someone is actively listening to her. But otherwise, from what I can tell, between the coughs and the people who’ve treated her like dirt, she’s in a difficult spot. Every hand, there’s at least several hard hacks of phlegm from the dealer. It sounds as if no amount of internal bellowing can loosen these suckers.

The other player takes no notice of this. But he does check out a cocktail waitress’s ass.

“That’s some cough you have there,” I say. “Is it because you’re subjected to all the second-hand smoke?”

“I don’t know what it is exactly. Every time I come in, there’s something hot, dry. Don’t know what it is.”

The other player fires up a Winston. I catch the dealer’s face momentarily drop. I wonder why they haven’t put her on a nonsmoking table. But then pit bosses are hardly the world’s most sympathetic figures.

“It’s also the desert air,” she says. “This is the second major thing I’ve had since I moved up here.”

“How many hours do you work?”

“Forty, fifty this week.”

“Eight hour shifts?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you ever see the outside during an eight hour shift?”

“No. But maybe I’ll go into the spa room. That might help.”

“Maybe you should try resting. Breathing oxygen instead of taking in this contained atmosphere. If it’s bothering you. Don’t they pump in oxygen into casinos?”

“That’s only in the movies. If they pumped oxygen into the casino, then you’d have the cabin effect.”

The other player asks where the restroom is. The dealer tells him. He leaves the table and never returns, leaving about $500 in chips. I wonder if the casino will confiscate this.

The dealer at the adjacent table, who has no immediate customers (it’s a $10 table and the clientele right now is thin and ass-poor) and who has been listening to this conversation, asks, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m following you.”

“I don’t know how,” she giggles. And it’s the kind of giggle you hear from someone when they are not in the greatest of existential spots. The kind of giggle that is a person’s last attempt at joy, an effort to play down a miserable situation of colossal proportions. I hear many of the vagrants in my neighborhood giggle like this.

“Everybody would be too happy,” she says. “You’d have dealers laughing.”

“But if everyone were happy, they’d be more inclined to gamble. And this would be good for the casino and good for the dealers.”

“One lady said that I shouldn’t show up.” Giggle. “But of course that was a joke.”

I’m amazed that the $20 has lasted this long. I know that I’ll eventually lose it. But for the moment, I score a blackjack and tip the dealer my winnings.

“You know, I used to live in Sacramento. And during the summer, the pollen in the air sometimes made it difficult for me to breathe. But when I moved to San Francisco, the ocean air really helped me. And I breathe a lot better.”

The dealer tells me that she grew up in coastal California towns too. But she says that she spent most of the time partying.

“My friend tells me that you can die of this. Coughing and breathing.”

The pit boss, resembling a former football player in an ill-designed suit during a halftime show, approaches with a martinet-eyed woman with a clipboard. The dealer coughs and coughs. And when the hacking has abated, she then apologizes to the pit boss for not placing a silver dollar between a certain increment of chips. They don’t say anything or look at the dealer. Their eyes are fixed only upon the casino’s booty. They leave. But a beefy security guard in a short-sleeved white shirt crosses his arms and looks at me. I wonder if any of the surveillance has picked up our conversation. It doesn’t help that I’ve won the last five hands.

I don’t want to get the dealer in trouble. So I stop talking with her and deliberately blow a hand where the two cards add up only to 12 and the dealer’s face card is a King.

The guard leaves, satisfied after the dealer has confiscated my $5 chip.

She coughs again. It sounds very close to bronchitis.

“Have you seen a doctor?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. Just the other day. And he said that there are these great yellow goo trapped in my lungs.”

“Can you feel the phlegm when you breathe?”

“Oh yeah. And it just won’t come out.”

I’m wondering if she even did see a doctor. Surely, he would have prescribed an inhaler or suggested that the harmful casino environment should be avoided until the phlegm clears up. Or perhaps she’s overlooking telling me a detail like this because she really needs the cash.

“I’ve been thinking about a plan,” says the dealer in a quieter voice. “Saving up cash, getting away from this town.”

My last five dollar chip is swallowed up.

“Well, that’s it for me, I’m afraid. Please take care of yourself.”

Just as I’m about to get up from my chair, she puts her arm down on the table to get my eye contact.

“Thank you for being a nice person.”

Richard Grayson alerts me to current predicament faced by the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Under Louisiana State Legislature HB156, a cost-cutting measure hoping to balance funds after the impact of Katrina, NOCCA, one of the most pivotal educational institutions for the arts, will be left hung out to dry. The legislative session ends on Monday. So get your phone calls and emails sent off to the following people and urge them to reconsider this bill:

Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
(866) 366-1121,
fax (225) 342-7099
email through www.gov.state.la.us

Diana Bajoie
websen@legis.state.la.us
(504) 568-7760

Francis C. Heitmeier
heitmeirf@legis.state.la.us
(504) 361-6014

The Goldberg brothers, hot on the heels of their Dean Koontz exposes, have taken over Beatrice’s confines this week. The idea of a pair of brothers taking over the litblogosphere appeals to our nihilistic sensibilities. So we may very well promote all future Goldberg Bros. appearances with half the zeal that we reserve for Jonathan Ames. Simply because we really like the sentence, “My Monk is recognizeable as the TV character but, in some ways, he’s my own Monk.” If only we had our own Monk to play with, to mould, and to otherwise do naughty things to, we’d be just as jocose. Oh well. There’s always Monk/The O.C. slash fan fiction for us. And the hell of it is that we’re neither Catholic nor OCD.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “A 33-year-old Grafton woman was fighting for her life Thursday night after she drank concentrated drain cleaner given to her by a man who then videotaped her violent vomiting for his sexual gratification, Milwaukee police said.”

Years in the making, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (which takes place over the course of 1,000 years) finally gets a trailer. The visuals are stunning. (via Ghost in the Machine)

Mr. Wilson (if indeed such a Jared come lately can even be called “mister”) has suggested that I am obsessed with bodily fluids. He alludes to an incident that once occurred at my Missolonghi pied-a-tierre regarding a woman with a tattoo of a dagger in a particularly sensitive anatomical region. Understand that I was not the one in the bedroom who embarassingly asked for a user’s manual, nor was I the one who propositioned the tattooed stranger at a watering hole located on the edge of the Gulf of Patras. If Wilson wants to evade the issue here (namely, the poor quality of his novels), rather than address my wholly legitimate concerns about his continued assaults on the written word, then it’s only fitting that he should throw the arc, as it were, upon bodily fluids, a pivotal element of Wilson’s unpardonable disgrace.

Allow me to quote you a stanza from Wilson’s abominable poem “She Stabbed Me in the Heart, She Kicked Me in the Ass” (inexplicably published in The Paris Review #121, where George Plimpton took momentary leave of his fine sensibilities):

In the shade of the glade, her boob had a blade
But the real brain bared was my own
If she stopped with her mouth, and her body swayed south
Then my nightstick might harden to stone

That such doggerel, with its childish rhyming scheme, its crude metaphors (“nightstick,” the “brain bared” ) and the preposterous allusion to the unnamed woman’s body swaying south, would hold any regard among today’s MFAs is yet another telling indicator that the apocalypse is upon us and that Jared Wilson is one of its chief instigators.

I know that my critics have taken me to task about the incident involving the tatooed B-girl (who spoke not a word of French!) and have assumed that my riff with Mr. Wilson stemmed from this unfortunate incident. Regardless of this calumny, my ultimate concern here is over Mr. Wilson’s skills as a novelist. I trust that this puts the matter at rest.

BusinessWeek: “The company said it could be forced into bankruptcy protection if a new credit agreement with lenders doesn’t become effective…..Antioco said Dallas-based Blockbuster might sell some game stores, but he stood by the decision to cut late fees, which accounted for 13 percent of Blockbuster’s revenue a year ago.”

Good riddance.

When I first met Jared Wilson, I knew instantly that I was in the presence of a small rodent who can’t refrain from burrowing into a skull he can never hope to penetrate. One encounters such muskrats, of course, on an everyday basis. But never ones quite like Mr. Wilson, who, not coincidentally I think, shares the unfortunate name of the most boring character (indeed, the one who deserves all vengeance wreaked by the young Dennis) ever created for the Sunday comics page.

Far from a mere bag of bones, Mr. Wilson is a walking accident who has clutched to the sad illusion that he is some kind of seminal artist. Unfortunately, when one writes Wilson’s novels — the kind of books that have the appeal of unwiped semen stains in a taxi cab seat — one wonders if Wilson subconsciously had a different sort of seminal in mind.

An epicurean with a solid literary instinct might sustain an ardent hope that parvenus of Jared Wilson would expire gracefully from the world of letters. But so long as the four steady notes of Wilson’s out-of-tune Fender guitar find favor with the charnel houses of the publishing industry, even the basest of literary arts is doomed.