If you lived in Northern California and remember the UHF programming of the 1960s through the 1980s, this site has done an admirable job chronicling the various ways that UHF stations aired movies during that time (complete with fantastic hosts such as Bob Wilkins and cheesy jokes galore). If you were too young or you weren’t growing up in the area, let’s just say that you missed out an a very important cultural indoctrination process. I’d venture to say that I wouldn’t hold nearly as much regard for Godzilla or horror exploitation films had I not seen them through these conduits.
Month / June 2005
Round Robin
- In light of the assaults on eminent domain and flag burning (and with the frightening prospect of Justice Rehnquist resigning looming in the air), there’s at least some good news on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting/PBS budget cuts. Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted by a 284-140 vote to rescind the $100 million cutback. And that’s really what current politics is about these days: finding scant hope in small victories while the fiber and sanctity of this nation is gutted. So bust out the party poppers while the apocalypse ravages across the heartland.
- The so-called “Pope” has published a book that urges all non-believing Europeans to live as though God exists. If that fails, then there’s always putting on a tin hat and looking for crop circles in the hinterland.
- It looks like Limbaugh and Noonan are running away from the Klein book. Their latest amusing claim is that The Truth About Hilary was “written and published by a bunch of left-wingers.” Well, that’s pretty interesting, given that Sentinel, the publisher of the book, describes itself on its webpage as “a dedicated conservative imprint within Penguin Group (USA) Inc. It has a mandate to publish a wide variety of right-of-center books on subjects like politics, history, public policy, culture, religion and international relations.”
- Cynthia Ozick talks with the Melbourne Age.
- The Connection continues its series of writers talking about other writers who have influenced them. The latest audio installment is Russell Banks talking about Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
- Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell is on a book tour for his new novel, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way.
- So can James Frey follow up the intensity of A Million Little Pieces with his new memoir? Mike Thomas of the Chicago Sun-Times talks with Frey and learns that Frey’s life is “sort of surreally magnificent.”
- James McManus has been tapped to write a poker column for the New York Times. Executive editor Bill Keller says that McManus’ column will be “a literate combination of the drama, strategy, psychology and color of card play that should interest both serious players and the simply curious.” This from a guy whose idea of literacy is questionable at best.
Watered Down Knowledge, The Slim-Fast Book Diet: What a Concept!
For the last 12 years, the wax has accumulated in my ears, preventing me from comprehending any book more than 200 pages. Brain cells have been lost thanks to an unfortunate experience with hallucinogenics that occurred during my midlife crisis. And I no longer have any patience for a reading experience that lasts longer than 45 minutes. Since the Times is so gutless when it comes to printing four letter words (yet strangely fixated on sodomy and other carnal activities of the genteel), and since it harbors an illusion that it is a family newspaper, I’ll merely connote a small nugget, if you will, published by Harry G. Frankfurt. It shines like the bottom of a clean unsoiled toilet for readers too indolent and too inveterate to read a book of normal length. It represents, in two words, the future.
Two books stare at me at my bookshelf. One is so large that I cower behind my four-poster bed, hoping that the episodes of Lost I TiVoed will get me through this cold and lonely night. The book is thick and large. And I haven’t seen anything like it in my life. Never mind that its author, N.A.M. Rodger, spent several years of his life becoming an authoritative expert on naval history or that the book in question contains about a hundred pages of maps and other valuable resources to aid and abet the truly obsessed nautical man. For I am neither a nautical man nor an intellectual. However, I do manage to sound pompous and authoritative enough to maintain my regular gig at the Times. Bombast and bluster should count for something, no?
Consider the skim book, which resembles a Slim Jim in makeup and nutritional value, the one that is short enough to give you the basic information yet without scholarship or that pivotal additional context. These things are lovely, no? You can read it one in a few hours, go to a cocktail party, and talk as if you’re an expert on Waterloo! These fantastically thin books, influenced by the abridged grandeur of Cliff and SparkNotes, are devoid of footnotes and are, for the most part, useless in an academic environment. But doesn’t it feel good, dear reader, to allow such colossal hubris to go to your head and to think that being knowledgable means barely retaining the basics?
I call for a new age of thin books, whereby people learn less and scholarship is spruned rather than stomached! Bring me 50 page volumes that give me everything I need to know about the rise and fall of Genghis Khan! Better yet, why not one-page volumes contained in an expensive spine? I offer the ideal biography of Napoleon:
COVER
TITLE PAGE: Napoleon: A Biography
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: “Napoleon was short. THE END.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR PAGE
Is this not the most ideal reading experience one can have? Does not the salient fact that Napoleon was a short man stick out? Publishers and authors alike can rest easy that they are saving the marketplace! Prices for books will go down. Authors will be able to publish 300 books a year. And those pivotal sound bytes of knowledge will soar!
I can imagine the book clubs discussing the whole of a book contained within one sentence. The conversations will last no more than five minutes, discussing Napoleon’s short stature, and then everyone can, at long last, get blitzed on the merlot. What a joyous epoch of knowledge lies ahead of us!
So bring on this new age of slim books. Dismantle the history graduate programs and the other pedantic forms of education that rarely pay off. The time has come, at long last, to put the Robert Caros and the William T. Vollmanns out of work and let the silent vox populi scream out their malformed thoughts from the highest summit.
Condi’s Teeth Continue Steady Transmutation to Pure Evil; Well On Their Way to Palpantine Proportions
Morning Linkage
I’m trying my best to post lengthy entries (and reply to the email backlog), but other obligations have kept me firmly bogged. In the meantime, here’s some morning linkage:
- David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College a few weeks ago. (via Scott Esposito, who has returned from Spain and has somehow managed to get the keys back from Dan Wickett)
- A whole-hearted congratulations to M.A.O. for being selected one of Time‘s 50 Coolest Websites.
- Ron Hogan has a modest proposal. Even though his idea doesn’t involve cannibalism, I did manage to cough up a few shellacs. Have you?
- I don’t know what’s stranger: the idea of six good reads to the sound of rain or the fact that this high-concept article came from the Tuscon Citizen. Riddle me this: when did Arizona journalists become cummulus experts?
- Tempo has announced the 50 best magazines for 2005. It’s safe to say that Beads Today and Anal Angels didn’t make the list.
- CNN explores Maine’s literary heritage, but one has to wonder why Stephen King gets more paragraphs than Longfellow.
- A new version of Sling Blade will be released to DVD. It’s 22 minutes longer. Remarkably, 19 of these minutes are composed of medium shots of Billy Bob Thornton saying “M’hmmm. Yup.” But there is now a three-minute monologue of Karl Childers extolling the virtues of “taters.”
- Yes, indeedy. Michel Houellebecq is a badass. (via Maud)
- And this compelling public access show may get me to rescind my eight year self-imposed ban on cable television. Here in San Francisco, we have a show called “Fantasy Bedtime Hour” that involves two nude women reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s 1977 novel, Lord Foul’s Bane, and other strange speculative fiction titles. I’ve always been a sucker for a nude woman reading to me in bed. I’ve also been a licker too. But then that’s probably TMI.