The Reverse Cowgirl lives again.
Year / 2006
Live Oscar Blog
It’s in the works, but I’m in the process of assembling a live Oscar blog, URL soon to be announced, for this Sunday. More information as it happens tomorrow, but at the present time, we’ve got some very talented and funny people involved with this thing — individuals who might just put this crazed Academy Awards thing into perspective. And they’ll be providing some very funny commentary in real time as the ceremonies happen.
More to come.
The New York Times: Yesterday’s News Today
It’s become something between a disgrace and a joke between Tayari and me over whether the New York Times would even recognize Octavia Butler’s passing, but it looks like the Gray Lady has finally come around to publishing their obituary — four days after everyone else. What did it take? Endless editorial meetings to get the news out?
Roundup
- Mountain Goats meets Lethem and Moody.
- Becoming Jane: the next Shakespeare in Love?
- The Onion: “I can write 600 words about anything.”
- Elisabeth Bumiller is taking a leave of absence from the New York Times to write a Condoleeza Rice bio. The working title: Betrayal is Easy, It’s the Legs That Take Work.
- Actor Louis Zorich thinks Chekhov has more humanity than Shakespeare. After all, there’s more heart in saying “nuclear wessels” than “If music be the food of love, play on.”
- The latest ridiculous deal: Alan Greenspan’s memoir for $7 million. The hell of it is that it’s all riding on a ten-page proposal. For that kind of advance, you’d think Greenspan would extend the proposal by at least twenty pages. If I were publishing the memoir, I’d demand details! Perhaps a chapter devoted to a spry young Greenspan shacking it up with Ayn Rand for a night of wild animalistic sex. That’s what people buy memoirs for.
- When a teenager has a “porn problem,” he’s taken aside by his parents for a stern but frank talk about sexuality. Alas, Google is no teenager. It’s a major company — indeed, one might argue, an orphan. So instead of the talk, some folks are suing them.
- I believe this was reported first at Maud’s, but the New York Public Library is purchasing William S. Burroughs’ archive. Among the acquisitions: An aborted attempt at a novel called Naked Lunch II: Naked Dinner. Of course, all those large plastic bags filled with randomly snipped text are going to be a bitch and a half for all those unpaid interns to log.
- Centuries later, folks are still arguing over how Shakespeare died. Some say a tumor over the left eye. Some say that the Bard suffered a delayed midlife crisis and attempted to shadow fence himself, with unfortunate mortal consequences. The more eccentric experts, however, suggest that Shakespare actually didn’t die at all and that his body was frozen in a primitive form of cryogenics. This last possibility was apparently where Walt Disney got the idea from.
- People are taking Atwood’s signing device pretty damn seriously.
- A paean to great sportswriting.
- Transcript of Arthur Miller grilled during the McCarthy era.
- RIP Linda Smith.
- The Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville will be getting the Book TV treatment.
- La Haggis has a rememberance of Frederick Busch.
- Can you dig it?
How Do They Sleep at Night?
It’s been kept under the table for a while, but the elderly are having major problems adjusting to their post-Katrina displacement. For those who haven’t died from the stress, many are facing severe cognitiive attrition without recovery (“Once it’s gone, it’s gone”). Or they’re severely disoriented and confused because they were too frail to move. NPR covered the story this morning and it’s a heartbreaking segment, particularly the woman who carries her recently deceased husband’s photo in a brown bag. Of course, if this were any other country, there would be enough money earmarked to help these people adjust. But this being the United States, profligacy knows no limits. Heck of a job.