- Hey hey, ho ho, Cornholio has got to go. (via Tod Goldberg)
- Led Zeppelin reuniting? Okay, who needs the alimony money?
- RIP Joe Zawinul.
- Dear Comics Industry: Please Grow Up.
- Now here’s a way to merge Rosh Hashanah with Moleskine.
- As widely reported, the New York Post will be running more book reviews.
- 1 in 3 Americans still believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11. Then again, 1 in 3 Americans also believe that the Bible should be taken literally.
- Christ, you two, get a room.
- A Curious Singularity has started a roundtable discussion of Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father.” (via Matthew Tiffany)
- Is Steven Pinker “the cognitive philosopher of our generation?”
- If this MySpace page is to be believed, Wal-Mart is now asking mothers to check in their babies. Presumably, Wal-Mart has found a legitimate way to sell random babies on the open market?
- I’m no fan of Kathy Griffin, but I don’t see why these remarks needed to be censored. Indeed, the joke’s more tepid than John Lennon claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Will we see Kathy Griffin product burnings? And are we in 2007 or 1966?
- And speaking of which, here’s Jonathan Lethem on the Fifth Beatle.
- An interview with the co-creator of The Bionic Woman. (via Quiddity)
- So what do you do after a Coney Island career running around as the eponymous target in the “Shoot the Freak” booth? You go to law school.
- Only the New Yorker would find a way to get Baudrillard and Facebook in the same paragraph.
- Where are the men on TV? Anglling for your job, Rebecca, in a new reality TV show called Who Wants to Be a 3,000 Word Columnist? Stag club only, I’m afraid.
- “Ask Yahoo! is teaming up with Yahoo! Answers to bring you Ask Mike.” No, this is not what anyone asked for. When I sent in my question to Ask Yahoo!, I damn well expected Yahoo! to answer it! And now you’re telling me that some lesser being named “Mike” is the guy responsible? Who the hell is Mike? And what can Mike offer that Yahoo cannot? Are you now outsourcing?
Roundup
– September 12, 2007Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
It’s a wonder Zep has been able to resist this long. This time around, though, if Page performs while sitting in a chair, it will be due to rheumatism, and not the previous night’s epic round of pharmacological abuse.
Lennon’s claim was more culture critique than self-glorification, wasn’t it? That’s how I’ve always interpreted it.