Vanity Fair: “Stay with me. I’ve been doing the hard thinking for you. The three-letter “job,” with its can-do implications, also makes the term especially American. Perhaps forgotten as the London of Jack the Ripper receded into the past, the idea of an oral swiftie was re-exported to Europe and far beyond by a massive arrival of American soldiers. For these hearty guys, as many a French and English and German and Italian madam has testified, the blowjob was the beau ideal. It was a good and simple idea in itself. It was valued—not always correctly—as an insurance against the pox. And—this is my speculation—it put the occupied and the allied populations in their place.”
Year / 2006
Truer Words Were Never Spoken: Wait Until Midterms, Pal
ABC News: “‘We were hoping to get over 50 percent, but that didn’t happen today,’ said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., one of the amendment’s supporters. ‘Eventually, Congress is going to have to catch up to the wisdom of the American people or the American people will change Congress for the better.'”
Because If It’s Web ANYTHING, the Times Gets Its Panties in a Bunch
New York Times Corrections: “An article in Business Day yesterday about the introduction of an online spreadsheet program by Google misstated the name of a company acquired by Google that created a Web-based word-processing program. It is Upstartle, not Upstart.”
Golden Spinach Collections?
I don’t care about how this revelation will be perceived by my readership, but I will confess that I was a huge fan of the Paramount Popeye cartoons growing up. It was Popeye who introduced me to the glories of spinach. It was Popeye who suggested to me that, even without spinach, it was okay to be a bit of a quirky bumbler. Of course, I was never really a fan of corncob pipes. But before Hemingway and Henry Miller, at the impressionable age of five, Popeye was my rather strange model for manhood. While it is true that there was only one instance where Popeye acted as a bullfighter (and required spinach to put the bull in his place), the point is that he didn’t have to put up any false machismo to work himself up. Really, it was the pesky Bluto figure who caused Popeye to eat his spinach. And Bluto, as we all know, was an extenuating circumstance.
In any event, none of this detracts from this fabulous news, uncovered by Something Old, Something New that the Popeye cartoons have been procured by Warner — i.e., the studio that put out those impressive Golden Collection DVD sets for its Looney Tunes that have had this grown adult reverting back to a five year old to nurse off occasional hangovers. No less a treatment, it seems, will be reserved for Popeye, as Warner is reportedly starting “work immediately on preservation and restoration activities.” Well, blow me down!
Roundup
- n+1 offers this online offering from Issue 4 on Gilbert Sorrentino, commenting on the grand irony that many of us learned the news while lost miasmically in the BEA glitz. (via the Rake)
- Jessa Crispin talks with Jennifer Howard and investigates the current rise of NYTBR-bashing. I’m glad that somebody has looked into this because, as Jessa quite rightly observes, it seems that Tanenhaus is more concerned with attracting attention through sloppily penned contrarian reviews rather than putting out a quality literary publication. Incidentally, I have put in interview requests to talk with both Rachel Donadio and Dwight Garner (since Tanenhaus refuses to talk with me), both senior editors of the NYTBR, and give them a chance to respond to the many criticisms that have leveled the Times‘ way. But both seem to be regularly “unavailable.” The hilarious thing is that I’ve had greater luck (and certainly spent far less time) booking Dave Barry, Bret Easton Ellis and William T. Vollmann for Segundo). If such self-importance and diffidence among the NYTBR is the norm, and if the NYTBR‘s top brass lacks the maturity or the courage to have a respectful disagreement, then it’s small wonder why the NYTBR is becoming the laughing stock of the literati.
- Gwenda Bond points to this incredible story of a Pablo Neruda reading being rediscovered on tape, with the audio described as “very clear.” The tape is being remastered and is, for decorum’s sake, well out of my hands. The last thing the literary world needs right now is an Adolescent Audio Experiment involving Neruda. But then again…
- The Scotsman profiles A.L. Kennedy’s solo show, appearing at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hopefully, certain Fringe attendees might offer us a report.
- Heidi Benson reports on the California Book Awards, which I’m regrettably going to miss. But it’s this Thursday at the Commonwealth Club for anyone who’s interested.
- As Mark Thwaite observes, the Guardian is late to the Sorrentino obit party. But its sleight pales in comparison to the Gray Lady’s almost total disregard.
- Another day, another awards ceremony. Ian McEwan and Sue Prideaux have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes. Given the way the Brits hand out awards these days, in ten years, I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single writer who hasn’t garnered an accolade.
- Lee Goldberg on why JMS’s POD success is more of a fluke than a revolution.
- And this is the theatre geek in me talking, but a new Broadway run of Simon Gray’s excellent play Butley debuts on October 26. In an extremely interesting casting move, Nathan Lane is playing the titular character, presumably tapping into the same viscera that gave us Sheridan Whiteside a few years back.