- Lev Grossman has made an astonishing discovery! Check this shit out, yo! People are actually using the Web to create comics! And they’ve been doing since the late 1990s! I mean, who knew? Next thing you know, people will be using the Web to keep track of literary news. Of course, I maintain high hope for this medium. You folks are thinking small-time with text and images. But what if someone actually started posting audio and video onto this Internet thing? (via Heidi McDonald)
- Speaking of comics, here’s a list of this year’s Reuben nominees.
- Marlon Brando’s estate is suing over a chair. They had planned to sue over a sofa and an armoire, but they figured that they’d start with basic seating units and work their way up.
- NBC Universal and FOX are planning to start a rival to YouTube. The new portal, called FuckYouTube, will force users to fill out a ten-page questionnaire revealing their income, sexual preference, and purchasing habits to these benevolent corporate overlords, who promise that they will do nothing whatsoever with this personal information. Then, and only then, will users be able to watch episodes of 24 and The Office without fear of litigious attorneys. Of course, there will be a thirty-second commercial for every minute of video. And it’s probably much easier to TiVo these shows without these requirements. But this is the Internet, dammit, and you are all guilty until proven guilty.
- Sam Lipsyte didn’t finish Against the Day, but that didn’t stop him from picking it over Alentejo Blue!
- Scott Esposito gets to the bottom of Cees Nooteboom! (And, yes, Mr. Esposito is also worthy of an exclamation mark! As is this parenthetical aside!)
- Great jumping George! Airplane reading!
- You know, if you’re sort of halfway into the BDSM thing and you’re too scared to go all the way, perhaps these chain link scarves are for you.
- Sarah Hopkins has a cracker of a story. And, by cracker, we’re not talking some saltine that will crumble into your hands or those little fish crackers you pour into your chowder. We’re talking a veritable Aussie expression.
- Peter David betrayed Charlie Anders! This is terrible! Call the police!
Month / March 2007
Roundup, Part Two
- PW reports that booksellers are “hot for Gore.” It’s quite a phenomenon, really, Gore’s post-2000 election life. At every book signing, booksellers are throwing their bras and panties at Al Gore’s feet (but only when Tipper isn’t around). Al Gore has been asked to sign breasts and pierce pudenda. And the general feeling in the air is that Al Gore is the former presidential candidate to schtupp, if at all possible. Al Gore is the Neil Diamond of the book world. And remember, folks, you heard it from PW first. It’s up in the air whether or not costermongers and accountants will follow suit or, indeed, take off their respective uniforms.
- Dan Wickett has the skinny on the Ann Arbor Book Festival Writers’ Conference.
- The creation of a bookstore window display. (via Levi)
- Interesting submission stats from Miss Snark. I remember reading an interview long ago (we’re talking pre-Internet) with Richard Ford in which he spent an entire day perfecting his query letter for A Piece of My Heart. Some things really never change. (via The Publishing Spot)
- Tangerine Houdini!
- Part three to come. It’s one of those days.
Roundup, Part One
- Variety reports that the film adaptation of Revolutionary Road is all systems go. But it comes with a price. Sam Mendes’ nepotism aside, Kate Winslet makes sense as April, but Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler? Good Christ, Richard Yates must be spinning in his grave. Yates’ fiction was written with great subtlety and, while Leo is perfectly acceptable in melodramatic roles, even accounting for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, I simply can’t see him conveying the careful behavioral nuances of being stalled at thirty.
- Even if an author is Jane Austen has been deemed “too unattractive.” (via Books, Inq.)
- Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing fiction.
- Bruce Lee’s one inch punch explained.
- “An idle man is a dangerous man.” (via Happy Antipodean)
- For copyright and intellectual property fiends, the UK’s Court of Appeals has offered an interesting ruling in relation to video games. General ideas and structures behind games and programs can be absconded, so long as the source code and graphics are not.
- Another roundup later.
And Print People Think Bloggers Have Conflicts of Interest
It’s a mess at the Los Angeles Times right now. A plan to have Hollywood producer Brian Grazer guest-edit the Sunday Current section has gone awry — in part because editor Andres Martinez was having an affair with Grazer’s publicist, Kelly Mullens. Martinez has since resigned in protest through a post on the LAT Opinion blog because the Grazer-edited section, an ill-conceived and desperate idea if ever there was one, had been canceled. Nikki Finke has more. That such a plan was seriously considered, with L.A. Times publisher David Hiller apparently in the know about the Martinez-Mullens affair, is an astonishing conflict of interest. Oh well, at least Martinez had bitter words to say about the planned merger of the Opinion section and the LATBR. Even so, whatever Martinez’s talents or convictions, this is embarrassing for all parties.
I Saw This Coming
Editor and Publisher: “The mystery creator of the Orwellian YouTube ad against Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic operative who worked for a digital consulting firm with ties to rival Sen. Barack Obama. Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that he was the creator of the video, which portrayed Clinton as a Big Brother figure and urged support for Obama’s presidential campaign.”