Dear lord! Check out the second-to-last ever Peanuts strip: Peppermint Patty alone in the rain wanting to play football only to realize that everyone has gone home! (Via Mike Lynch Cartoons). Click the thumbnail above to read it!
Drawn by a dying cartoonist! I can’t say it enough: Peanuts was a miracle. “You should go home, sir. It’s getting dark.” Good God! Anyway, the next volume of The Complete Peanuts will be out soon. Kevin, John Reynolds, Terry Jinn — let us all buy this. Edited to add: And Porter! Porter, I associate you with Bloom County first, and now that I articulate that I have no idea [...]
Carlos Zambrano’s doctors say his arm cramps are simply a result of low potassium levels. Now I love baseball, but could we please have some REAL injuries? “Low potassium levels” is about as weak as Josh Beckett being benched because of a blister on his finger. In football people have their shins split in half.
Separate point: Classic/smarty-pants books should NOT have essays by professors as introductions. They’re boring and stodgy and alienating. They also tend to contain massive spoilers. If you want those essays at all (to give the book context, to explain its impact) then put it at the end as an epilogue. I’m reading Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here and then smarty pants intro [...]
I would like to borrow from one of you people these books: The Golden Compass and Love in the Time of Cholrea. Either that or I need to find a branch of the library near my house. The only library near my work, ironically, is the big famous Fifth Avenue library with the lions out front — which does not let you take out books!
I finished Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It’s pretty damn good, if a bit ponderous. Coen Brothers movies remind me of her stories — everything is creepy and eccentric and slow. Also, they all start with quirky, funny character descriptions — but then somehow [...]
It took me like three months to read David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, which was okay. But I tore through Miranda July’s short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You in one-and-a-half days. Here’s the first story from it, try the first three paragraphs and see if you’re hooked:
It’s okay if you don’t.
I’m reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, and I love it! One chapter each on various underground indie bands of the 1980s — from Black Flag to Dinosaur, Jr. As Porter says, it’s candy for almost-music-nerds. Learn about the bands you’ve heard of, but never really heard. Enjoy these samples I’ve dug up:
Uber-dude anger: Black Flag, “Rise Above”
Likeable marxists: The Minutemen, “This Ain’t No Picnic”
Tape loop muscianship: Misson Of Burma, “Academy Fight Song”
[...]
In my car on the V train, heading into Rockefeller Center, people were reading the following books:
- Cathedral by Raymond Carver
- The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
- The Diary of Peter Ginz
- Love and War by John Jakes
- Acres of Diamonds: The Russell Conwell Story by Gregory A. Dixon and Russell H. Conwell
Pretty literate group overall. It’s fun to do this but I’m probably going to stop. It’s hard to identify what everyone’s reading without lurking. To identify The Naked Civil Servant, I had to stand right next to the girl reading it. Right as I was thinking “I bet I should not be doing this,” some older guy by the door [...]
Today on the subway in, I saw people reading the following books:
- One Man’s Meat by E.B. White
- Baby Laughs by Jenny McCarthy (why?)
- V for Vendetta by Alan Moore/David Lloyd
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- Miles by Miles Davis
If I remember I’ll take more careful note tomorrow. I remember a few weeks ago, right after the last Harry Potter book came out, I saw FIVE different people reading that book on one subway car. Amazing.
Ok, I’ve cleaned out another two shelves worth of books. If you want any and are someone that I run into, claim dibs. Basically, I’m getting rid of books that I’ll either never read again (Lonely Planet: Antarctica) or that I can easily get again (Gulliver’s Travels).
My neighbor snatched the PKDs already. “What?” think my beleaguered friends. “We had to hear you talk about PKD for a year and now you’re just getting rid of those books?” Well, yeah. I’ve decided that my bookshelf is primarily for what I WANT to read, not what I’ve already read.
Check ‘em out!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/williebhines/sets/72157600651831985/
- The Onion’s AV club lists the 10 most wonderfully weird moments in Fantastic Four comics. A great list — and I’m pleased to see that all but one are from either the original Jack Kirby run or the 1980s John Byrne run. Kevin and I think they missed one, though: the issue where the Sub-Mariner traps the FF by disguising himself as a movie producer and luring them to a trap-filled Hollywood set!
- Fantastic quote from the Justice League Unlimited cartoon: The Question tells Lex Luthor “Although my distaste for you as a human being is Brobdingnagian, what I’m about to do isn’t personal.” That is bad-ass that they said Brobdingnagian. Even better than when Batman [...]
Kurt Vonnegut died today. Everyone is sad, which is nice. I’m amazed at his ability to connect with so many people. I feel like when I was in high school, everyone — EVERYONE — loved Catcher in the Rye, 1984 and a Vonnegut book of his/her choice. Is that right? I loved when that “sunscreen” graduation speech got passed around a few years ago, everyone just ASSUMED it was Vonnegut — the Internet collectively decided that it sounded like him and so therefore it was. We liked him.
My favorite book of his was Slapstick, which apparently was a terrible one. It featured twins who were mentally retarded when separate, but brilliant when together. They become president on the platform [...]
Archives
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
Recent Comments