Jambalaya

2012-01-25T15:10:00.001-08:00

Tales of an Old Limo Driver

" . . . Yeah, he's a good actor. And he had a fistfight with Edward G. Robinson in the backlot of the old MGM studio."

2012-01-23T19:15:00.001-08:00

"How I long for a reliable companion" -- Eli Sisters

The expert

2012-01-23T12:47:00.000-08:00

Overheard out in the world, a woman educating three others:

"We all go out in the world as representatives of ourselves. There is just so much artifice. That's why it is so good to see you guys. You're life. Living. You're lavender. Lavender chocolate. A big piece of lavender chocolate."

Seen at the bar

2012-01-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

An older, balding, bespectacled man in a police jacket. Were it an MI-5 jacket he could be straight from a Le Carre novel -- the middle-aged, middle class part of the security apparatus. Behind the bar, he picked up each of the very many bottles and swirled it, then held a flashlight to the bottom, shining the light through so the bottle glowed. Looking for cracks? Worms? Sediment? Fingerprints? In any case, a job for the police.

2012-01-20T19:42:00.001-08:00

"He was an unattractive creature with his clothes on; in the nude I thought he looked something like a goat." -- Patrick deWitt

2012-01-18T17:18:00.001-08:00

LA Times headline of the day:

Woman Who Offered Sex For McNuggets Was Hungry

2012-01-14T10:40:00.001-08:00

Favorite recent sentence from a newspaper:

"In theory, nothing is sacred."

-- Anthony Tommasini on the less-operatic " Porgy and Bess"

2011 Reading List

2012-01-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Most recently read first:

Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World -- Richard Rhodes

House of Holes -- Nicholson Baker

Backwards Ran Sentences : The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker -- Wolcott Gibbs

The Master and Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov

Wolf Hall -- Hilary Mantel

Train Dreams -- Denis Johnson

Assumption -- Percival Everett

The Face of Trespass -- Ruth Rendell

Pictures at a Revolution -- Mark Harris

The Score -- Richard Stark

The Stars My Destination -- Alfred Bester

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 -- Alistair Horne

The Sleepwalkers -- Paul Grossman

On The Road -- Jack Kerouac

Thy Neighbor's Wife -- Gay Talese

Varieties of Disturbance -- Lydia Davis

Comedy in a Minor Key -- Hans Keilson

Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure -- Craig Robinson

Outsider in Amsterdam -- Janwilliam van de Wetering

My Animal Life -- Maggie Gee

The Moonstone -- Wilkie Collins

Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence -- Bill James

A Meaningful Life -- L.J. Davis

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage -- Richard Holmes

Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960 -- William Boyd

Embassytown -- China Mieville

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews -- Geoff Dyer

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government -- David K. Johnson

Just Kids -- Patti Smith

Started Early, Took My Dog -- Kate Atkinson

Memento Mori -- Muriel Spark

Half a Life -- Darin Strauss

Three Men in a Boat -- Jerome K. Jerome

Toward You -- Jim Krusoe

The Arabs: A History -- Eugene Rogan

Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry -- David Orr

Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence -- Geoff Dyer

Bossypants -- Tina Fey

The Buenos Aires Quintet -- Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Funeral for a Dog -- Thomas Pletzinger

Ecstasy -- Mike Leigh

Season's Greetings -- Alan Ayckbourne

Mary Broome -- Allan Monkhouse

Heads You Lose -- Lisa Lutz and David Hayward

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe -- Charles Yu

Lidless -- Frances Ca-Chu Cowhig

A Lesson in Narrative Time -- Jody Bolz

Savages -- Don Winslow

Fen -- Caryl Churchill

Saul Bellow: Letters -- Saul Bellow

The Children's Hour -- Lillian Hellman

Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte -- Maureen Adams

In a True Light -- John Harvey

She Was My Brother -- Julie Jensen

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto -- Chuck Klosterman

Vampire Boy -- Carlos Trillo & Eduardo Risso

Life -- Keith Richards

Revolution: The Year I Fell In Love and Went to Join the War -- Deb Olin Unferth

The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics -- Walter Mondale and David Hage

The Providence Journal on Babe Ruth

2011-12-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

in 1914, playing for the Providence Grays:

"Babe Ruth seems to have gotten in on the ground floor with the fans as a result of his baffling southpaw pitching and his ability to give the horsehide vigorous punishment with the wagon tongue."

-- from "Babe" by Robert Creamer

2011-12-16T18:54:00.001-08:00

"Ham, ham, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, ham, ham HAW!"

Nicholson Baker, "House of Holes"

Wolcott Gibbs on Thomas Dewey

2011-12-08T16:35:00.000-08:00

"Dewey, whose indifference to money is such that he can remember offhand how much he was making at any given day in his life . . . ."

[Dewey, District Attorney at the time, responded to Gibbs' criticism by having Gibbs' bank account impounded.]

from "Backwards Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs"

2011-12-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

is it me, or the universe?

2011-11-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

Philip K. Dick's daughter on the arrogant component of her father's mystical experience:

"Wouldn't you have gone to the doctor? I'd have thought something was wrong with me."

On Irony Highway

2011-11-20T12:11:00.001-08:00

Truck stopped, out of gas, on freeway off-ramp, with logo: West Coast Logistics, Inc.

2011-11-14T16:55:00.001-08:00

"There are hardly five critics in America, and several of them are asleep." -- Herman Melville

(cited by Sam Allingham at The Millions)

2011-11-01T17:11:00.001-07:00

Where are the sexy policemen, nurses & firemen the rest of the year when you really need them?

-- Sarah Silverman.

"oh, that's right . . ."

2011-10-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

Grant Brisbee on Game 5 of 2011 World Series:

Let's say there's a guy with some known quirks and flaws. For La Russa, it's compulsive bullpenning and small ball. For the analogy, say it's a guy who is scared of spiders. Doesn't like spiders. Can't deal with spiders. Most of the time, no one cares too much. It's caused some embarrassment here and there, but that's about it.

Then one day, our arachnophobe is making a delivery to the Sistine Chapel while it's being restored, and he sees a spider, and he freaks out and jumps back right into the scaffolding, and the workers restoring the Sistine Chapel tumble down screaming, but not before someone, desperately grabbing at the air, knocks a can of paint up and it splatters all over The Last Judgment, and the scaffolding crashes into a heap with people flying everywhere, with the screaming, oh god, the screaming, and stained glass windows are shattering, and there are also banana cream pies flying everywhere because, oh, that's right, the guy who was scared of spiders was delivering banana cream pies at the time.

That was Game 5. It was the perfect storm to magnify Tony La Russa's strategic quirks. With two straight wins, everyone will forget about this. Without those wins, they're the story of the World Series.

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/10/25/2512429/2011-world-series-tony-la-russa-decisions-genius

2011-10-21T21:46:00.001-07:00

Richard Stark: Simple and pure.

"Be right back honey." She twisted the last word like a knife.

2011-10-16T05:35:00.001-07:00

Bad dreams.

Bad dream tonight, but a bad dream with some really cute baby chicks thrown in.

2011-10-13T21:34:00.001-07:00

Favorite lyric from the band Andrew Jackson Jihad:

"Angels are hating on you."

2011-10-11T21:15:00.001-07:00

One good thing about having a Mormon President: we'd have a First Lady, and a Second Lady, and a Third . . . .

2011-09-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

"I wish I had more fun in college. Today's students are more lighthearted, which should stand them in good stead when they are unemployed."

Walter Mondale on the life of the college student today.

Robert Benchley says . . .

2011-09-19T09:20:00.001-07:00

"If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natual laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from."

OTSOG

2011-09-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled that you put it in footnotes, because every generous footnote now is a blow to reclaim footnotes from the judgment of an ill-informed audience that believes that David Foster Wallace invented them and therefore no one else gets to use them. This in a world where Nicholson Baker plainly invented the footnote!

Jonathan Lethem, to Geoff Dyer in BOMB Magazine #117, temporarily online: http://bombsite.com/issues/117/articles/5988

But also

2011-09-05T11:28:00.001-07:00

His tongue was a more potent weapon than his penis, or so it seemed to be during this period of his life . . . his tongue was always capable of thrusting, curling and whirling its way into her good graces; and as his mouth was upon her he was conscious not only of the luxuriance of her loins but also that he was making a literary connection with Henry Miller.

Gay Talese, describing a college-aged Al Goldstein.

2011-09-04T14:12:00.001-07:00

Telephone conversation overheard on line in a museum:
Do you have those little signs that you put on cheeses?

Found Surrealism

2011-08-30T11:26:00.001-07:00

"A small, rotund figure with a delicate stomach and said to live on Evian water, Blachette was known as the "king of alfalfa"."

Concise Lyric of the Day

2011-08-29T22:40:00.001-07:00

She's got one magic trick. One and that's it.

A big "if"

2011-08-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A giant South American rodent weighing at least 100 pounds (45 kgs) was spotted at a waste-water treatment facility in California recently before disappearing in the brush, according to a wildlife official.

The animal, which was identified as a capybara, is the world's largest rodent and feeds on vegetation.

"If you think a giant guinea pig is cute, then you probably would like it," said Todd Tognazzini, of the California Department of Fish and Game.

http://news.yahoo.com/giant-south-american-rodent-spotted-california-015314303.html

2011-08-13T21:26:00.001-07:00

Guy next to me at the bar reading texts from someone called Pookie Pookie.

Crack action on the part of the police

2011-08-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

from L.A. Times:

Beverly Hills police blew up an aspiring screenwriter's laptop and script when investigating a suspicious package Thursday morning on Rodeo Drive.
The screenwriter, who was not identified, apparently left his briefcase -- with the computer and script inside -- unattended at a talent agency office.

Beverly Hills Police Lt. Tony Lee said police, not knowing what was inside the briefcase, detonated it as safety precaution.

Lee said the owner was distraught when he learned what happened to briefcase.

The case was found near the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard.
Several streets were closed and nearby businesses were being evacuated, causing traffic jams in the area.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/beverly-hills-police-blow-up-screenwriters-laptop-script.html

[Admittedly, there may be more to the story]

Crack thinking on the part of the police

2011-08-07T20:50:00.003-07:00

A woman is found dead in the courtyard of a house, naked, hands and feet bound, and she'd been hanging from a second floor balcony, noose around neck. Three days earlier a 6 year-old boy was found dead in the house. Roy Frank of the San Diego sheriff's homicide unit: "The case is certainly suspicious."

from People magazine

2011-08-07T20:50:00.001-07:00

They are pretty good looking girls who can play softball

2011-08-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

2011-07-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

"Hey, come on," said Lowell. He never knew how to react to aggression. He was always kind of stunned by it.

"I hate it when you sit in a chair like that," said his wife.

from A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis.

Don't get me down

2011-07-16T10:22:00.001-07:00

Samuel Johnson on Richard Savage:

Those are no proper Judges of his Conduct who have slumber'd away their Time on the Down of Plenty

Free historic sounds

2011-07-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Link to Library of Congress "National Jukebox" -- http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

Noir Dialogue

2011-07-08T23:35:00.001-07:00

Lee Marvin: Hey, that's a nice perfume.

Gloria Grahame: It's something new. It attracts mosquitos and repels men.

"The Big Heat"

2011-06-29T20:32:00.001-07:00

Heard at the bar:

"I used to date a girl from South Africa, so I know all about that. I know all about that stuff."

2011-06-15T21:17:00.001-07:00

Don't the brakeman look good flagging down the Double E?

2011-06-12T13:08:00.001-07:00

The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. . . . There is something that seems to speak to the deeps in me in the beaming smile of my hostess and the furtive whisper of my host, as he plucks at my elbow and says "Let's get out of here and go and have a whiskey and soda in the gun room."

P.G.Wodehouse, "The Code of the Woosters"

2011-06-05T10:46:00.001-07:00

Patti Smith on Andy Warhol:

I hated the soup and felt little for the can.

2011-05-26T21:13:00.001-07:00

At the next table in the restaurant:

"I was in my bathing suit pregnant. Who says that to someone who's pregnant?"

2011-05-18T11:59:00.001-07:00

I yearn for the good old days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought of them with a hatchet and a bow and arrows.

-- Jerome K. Jerome

2011-05-09T21:06:00.001-07:00

Geoff Dyer Suffering

2011-04-27T21:14:00.001-07:00

"Writers suffer more from the flu than other people and I suffer more from the flu than other writers."

"Life is bearable even when it is unbearable: that is what is so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it."

from "Out of Sheer Rage"

Annals of the Law

2011-04-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Appellant contends that three characteristics of the will undermine the conclusion that the document is testamentary. First, he asserts that the title "Last Will Etc. or What?" creates an ambiguity and implies that the decedent was unaware of what he was writing.

Estate of Williams (2007)155 Cal.App.4th 197, 212.

2011-04-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

And --

Most people don't want what they want

2011-04-23T11:55:00.001-07:00

More Dyer

How can you know anything about literature if all you've done is read books?

Geoff Dyer and Deconstruction

2011-04-23T11:53:00.001-07:00

In the end it took a whole box of matches and some risk of personal injury before I succeeded on deconstructing it.

2011-04-19T13:15:00.001-07:00

"As if salaciously self-serving isn't the very soul of American noir."

-- Joyce Carol Oates, responding to James Ellroy's self-criticism regarding "My Dark Places."

Justice Breyer, playing the little old man

2011-04-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

"I had to have a tweeting thing because I was very interested in the Iranian revolution, remember when they just had this uprising a little over a year ago. … I sat there fascinated because you could look through the tweeting and see what was going on. The only way you could do that was go through the tweet or the tweeter."

from Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2290726/

Unpromising Beginning to Humorous Story

2011-04-17T14:57:00.001-07:00

"Let me describe some funny situations in which one of my readers acted as an Empirical Reader rather than a Model Reader."

Umberto Eco, Confessions of a Young Novelist

2011-04-10T15:15:00.001-07:00

"It's almost two years. What is it, April. April, May, June, July. In three
months it will be two years. If I propose, it'll be another year until. It'll be a year 'til I propose. Then a year after that. So that'll be okay."

2011-04-10T09:52:00.001-07:00

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I'll stop.

2011-03-31T22:19:00.001-07:00

All future and no past -- Opening Day.

The Baseball Project

2011-02-18T18:43:00.001-08:00

"Normally, when someone says trust me, I find it hard to trust him anymore, and this is doubly true for when it is myself who is saying it"

Charles Yu, from

Fashion advice

2011-02-17T18:08:00.001-08:00

http://thefeministfashionista.wordpress.com/?ref=spelling

password: roadrunners (or perhaps roadrunner)

ceaselessly forward

2011-02-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

Great NES style game:

http://greatgatsbygame.com/

2011-02-15T19:37:00.001-08:00

Bar talk:

"John Travolta is gay."

"You don't believe what you read in the National Enquirer, do you?"

"My brother in law knows him, and -- "

"Your brother in law?"

"My wife's brother"

"Wait, no."

"My wife's . . . brother."

"You mean your wife's husband."

"My wife's brother. My wife's husband --"

"No, your wife's husband."

"His wife's husband is him."

"What? -- Never mind."

2011-02-06T12:51:00.001-08:00

Mickey Mantle answers a questionnaire:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/mickey-mantles-outstanding-experience.html?m=1

2011-02-04T22:12:00.001-08:00

Bartender: What'll it be?

Patron: Appletini.

Bartender: Don't say that. Apple martini. It's an apple martini. Don't say Appletini.

I know some people like that

2011-02-01T14:45:00.001-08:00

Adventures in live public radio pitchdrives:

"This is a station that is not afraid to shy away from the emotional."

2011-01-26T20:06:00.001-08:00

Low Anthem:

Opening instrumentation. Hammond organ, clarinet, saw, standing bass.

2011-01-18T21:33:00.001-08:00

Song of the Day:

Change of Time -- Josh Ritter

2011-01-16T10:35:00.001-08:00

Overheard outside my door, MLK weekend:

Now I'm glad you you didn't invite me because I probably would have hit the nigga.

More from "Million Dollar Legs"

2011-01-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Minister: I've brought you an ultimatum.

President of Klopstokia (WC Fields): I don't want any. I'm full. I've just had goat stuffed with eels.

2011-01-11T22:02:00.001-08:00

I hate to make fun of anyone's passions. The struggles from which they proceed are always real even when their manifestations are ridiculous.

Saul Bellow -- Letter to Melvn Tumin 1942

Million Dollar Legs

2011-01-10T00:05:00.001-08:00

President of Klopstokia (WC Fields): Take this message to my Privy Counselor.

Major Domo: Right away. Where is he?

President: Now where would a Privy Counselor be?

Life in the Senate

2011-01-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

"The procedural exchanges grew so dense that at one point we were voting on the following: a motion to table a motion to reconsider a vote to table an appeal of a ruling that a point of order was not in order against a motion to table another point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up the resolution."

from "The Good Fight" by Walter F. Mondale, with David Hage.

Favorite Book

2011-01-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

The candidates for chairman of the Republican National Committee are a literate bunch. And when asked to name their favorite book, their answers were revealing, to say the least.

Maria Cino's favorite is the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Reince Priebus named The Reagan Diaries as his first choice. And current RNC Chairman Michael Steele's favorite is War and Peace.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," Steele recited -- which is actually a line from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

But the real highlight of the exchange came when Ann Wagner responded to the question, saying, "Probably my kitchen table." What was she referring to exactly? Her favorite bar, apparently, which she thought she was being asked. Her favorite book, though, is George W. Bush's new memoir, Decision Points.

from Talking Points Memo: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/ann-wagner-names-favorite-bar-not-book-at-rnc-chair-debate.php

2010 Jambalaya Winners

2010-12-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

The most interesting books I read for the first time in 2010 (in order of reading) (and always subject to change):

I Am Not Sidney Poitier -- Percival Everett

The Spare Room -- Helen Gardner

The Spellmans Strike Again -- Lisa Lutz

Summertime -- J.M. Coetzee

The Way We Live Now -- Anthony Trollope

The Age of Wonder -- Richard Holmes

A Visit From the Goon Squad -- Jennifer Egan

When Will There Be Good News? -- Kate Atkinson

How to Live: or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer -- Sarah Bakewell

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- Junot Diaz

Honorable Mention

The Innocence of Father Brown -- G.K. Chesterton

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them -- Elif Batuman

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It -- Geoff Dyer

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -- David Mitchell

After Claude -- Iris Owens

The Gentlemen's Hour -- Don Winslow

2010 Reading List

2010-12-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

in reverse order of reading:

The Gentlemen's Hour -- Don Winslow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- Junot Diaz

After Claude -- Iris Owens

Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter -- Antonia Fraser

Indian Country Noir -- Sarah Cortez (ed.) & Liz Martinez (ed.)

The Big Boom -- Dominic Stansberry

Hint Fiction -- Robert Swartwood (ed.)

Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers -- Alasdair Gray

How to Live: or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer -- Sarah Bakewell

Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon

The Blue Hammer -- Ross MacDonald

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -- David Mitchell

Djibouti -- Elmore Leonard

Gulliver's Travels -- Jonathan Swift

When Will There Be Good News? -- Kate Atkinson

The Finkler Question -- Howard Jacobson

My Driver -- Maggie Gee

Packing For Mars -- Mary Roach

Baked -- Mark Haskell Smith

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World -- Jack Weatherford

A Visit From the Goon Squad -- Jennifer Egan

Halls of Fame: Essays -- John D'Agata

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest -- Steig Larsson

Skylark -- Dezso Kosztolanyi

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It -- Geoff Dyer

All That Follows -- Jim Crace

The Girl Who Played With Fire -- Stieg Larsson

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them -- Elif Batuman

Joey's Case -- K.C. Constantine

The Age of Wonder -- Richard Holmes

How To Sell -- Clancy Martin

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle

The Executor -- Jesse Kellerman

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- Stieg Larsson

The Way We Live Now -- Anthony Trollope

Summertime -- J.M. Coetzee

Reporting At Wit's End -- St. Clair McKelway

The Ask -- Sam Lipsyte

The Spellmans Strike Again -- Lisa Lutz

Life Itself -- Elaine Dundy

The Chalk Circle Man -- Fred Vargas

The Southpaw -- Mark Harris

Dark Star Safari -- Paul Theroux

The Spare Room -- Helen Gardner

The Water's Edge -- Karin Fossum

The Innocence of Father Brown -- G.K. Chesterton

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle

Risk -- Colin Harrison

The Hot Rock -- Donald E. Westlake

I Am Not Sidney Poitier -- Percival Everett

The Ticking Is The Bomb -- Nick Flynn

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary -- M.R. James

Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' -- David Bianculli

The Three of Us: A Family Story -- Julia Blackburn

The Original of Laura -- Vladimir Nabokov

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much -- Allison Hoover Bartlett

The Gentlemen's Hour -- Don Winslow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- Junot Diaz

After Claude -- Iris Owens

Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter -- Antonia Fraser

Indian Country Noir -- Sarah Cortez (ed.) & Liz Martinez (ed.)

The Big Boom -- Dominic Stansberry

Hint Fiction -- Robert Swartwood (ed.)

Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers -- Alasdair Gray

How to Live: or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer -- Sarah Bakewell

Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon

The Blue Hammer -- Ross MacDonald

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -- David Mitchell

Djibouti -- Elmore Leonard

Gulliver's Travels -- Jonathan Swift

When Will There Be Good News? -- Kate Atkinson

The Finkler Question -- Howard Jacobson

My Driver -- Maggie Gee

Packing For Mars -- Mary Roach

Baked -- Mark Haskell Smith

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World -- Jack Weatherford

A Visit From the Goon Squad -- Jennifer Egan

Halls of Fame: Essays -- John D'Agata

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest -- Steig Larsson

Skylark -- Dezso Kosztolanyi

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It -- Geoff Dyer

All That Follows -- Jim Crace

The Girl Who Played With Fire -- Stieg Larsson

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them -- Elif Batuman

Joey's Case -- K.C. Constantine

The Age of Wonder -- Richard Holmes

How To Sell -- Clancy Martin

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle

The Executor -- Jesse Kellerman

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- Stieg Larsson

The Way We Live Now -- Anthony Trollope

Summertime -- J.M. Coetzee

Reporting At Wit's End -- St. Clair McKelway

The Ask -- Sam Lipsyte

The Spellmans Strike Again -- Lisa Lutz

Life Itself -- Elaine Dundy

The Chalk Circle Man -- Fred Vargas

The Southpaw -- Mark Harris

Dark Star Safari -- Paul Theroux

The Spare Room -- Helen Gardner

The Water's Edge -- Karin Fossum

The Innocence of Father Brown -- G.K. Chesterton

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle

Risk -- Colin Harrison

The Hot Rock -- Donald E. Westlake

I Am Not Sidney Poitier -- Percival Everett

The Ticking Is The Bomb -- Nick Flynn

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary -- M.R. James

Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' -- David Bianculli

The Three of Us: A Family Story -- Julia Blackburn

The Original of Laura -- Vladimir Nabokov

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much -- Allison Hoover Bartlett

2010-12-29T18:47:00.001-08:00

Four people in their twenties headed up the steps to the gym:

Woman #1: Well? Women's socks -- would they fit you?

Man #1: I don't know, but they're awesome.

2010-12-23T18:07:00.001-08:00

"Your room is paid up until the twenty-second of September. . . Is everything satisfactory?"

"It depends," I said haughtily, "on what you're satisfying."

Iris Owens

Inspired Insult

2010-12-21T12:47:00.001-08:00

"If looks could kill," I told him in between chews, "you'd soon find out that yours couldn't."

-- "After Claude" by Iris Owens

Law and Superheroes

2010-12-20T12:21:00.001-08:00

http://lawandthemultiverse.com/

Questions we have all asked, answered.

Badly Drawn Boy at the Troubadour

2010-12-16T22:47:00.001-08:00

Badly Drawn Boy had a difficult last show of the tour at the Troubadour in LA on Thursday Dec. 16. He was extremely unhappy about the sound. He was extremely unhappy when voices from the crowd offered encouragement telling him it sounded good from the audience. ("Yeah but I'm up here.") He was unhappy when audience members strated heckling him about his behavior. ("Fuck you" "Stupid LA twats" "Cunts"). When an audience member said it was ok that it was late. ( "You are talking nonsense".)

"At least I'm being honest. You could at least applaud me for that."

"It's like being in a roomful of fucking lions or something.
No one should have to go through what I'm going through up here."

"Nobody cares as much as me about this."

"Just don't react to anything I say up here."

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2010/12/badly_drawn_boy_at_the_troubad.php

It was a marvelous Ricky Gervais / Russell Brand performance. (And he made it through to the end, and was convincingly contrite about it all.)

Corrections of the Year, etc.

2010-12-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.regrettheerror.com/2010/12/08/crunks-2010-the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections/

A sample, perhaps familiar:

"This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men."

Mel Brooks on Leslie Nielsen

2010-12-07T22:06:00.001-08:00

I liked him very much. He was lovely, and he'd do anything, and he was funny, and he was just great, and you'd never take him for a Canadian.

2000 Year Old Jokes

2010-12-07T20:32:00.001-08:00

Carl Reiner: Of all your girlfriends, who was your favorite?
Mel Brooks: Shirley.
Reiner: And what was so special about Shirley?
Brooks: Her friend Lila.

2010-12-03T22:12:00.001-08:00

I was not alarmed. There were only four and I always feel safe with women. Men sometimes punch each other for no good reason but petty theft is my worst experience of women.

from "Old Men in Love"

2010-12-02T22:57:00.001-08:00

Several minutes passed before I saw she has finally moved out, helped by a systematic partner or partners who own or have hired a van. . . . I wandered from room to room in a kind of daze, wondering what to tell the police. My fondness for young things could lead to difficulties if Niki is under the age of consent. What is the age of consent? (Memo: find out.)

from "Old Men in Love"

Pynchon being Pynchonesque

2010-11-25T10:21:00.001-08:00

Favorite fake law firm name:

Salitieri, Poore, Nash, De Brutus, and Short

GR p. 591

Surprise party

2010-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Recipe for successful surprise party: invite only people that the guest of honor does not know.

Jokes

2010-11-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

1.     Movie Review

Man #1:   I'm here to recommend to you the movie "127 Hours."

Me: Oh, I hear James Franco is totally disarming in that.

2.    Fish and Chips

Man originally from Chester, England:

I will say that last year I went back to Chester and was very disturbing to see that my favorite chip shop, which had been there for years and years, was gone.

Man #1:

And you are telling us this because . . .?

Me:

You don't understand. He went back to his old hometown, and his old neighborhood. And on the block where he used to go, to his favorite chip shop, where he used to eat and hang out, looking forward to it, he discovered the chips were off the old block.

from Gravity's Rainbow

2010-11-15T21:48:00.001-08:00

Rain drips, soaking into the floor, and Slothrup perceives that he is losing his mind. If there is something comforting -- religious, if you want -- about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many if us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrup feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoia part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky.

Overheard Behind a Lawyer's Door

2010-11-09T17:36:00.001-08:00

"We don't write checks! We get checks."

Bringing People Together Through Violence Against Others

2010-11-07T19:28:00.001-08:00

I need you to beat someone up for me.

from Gravity's Rainbow

2010-11-07T01:31:00.001-07:00

Nice sentence:
Trudi, the blonde, and Magda, the sultry Bavarian, have spent the day looting a stash of Wagnerian opera costumes.

Why She's So Good at Her Job of Recommending What Books to Make Movies Of

2010-11-04T21:28:00.001-07:00

Patrons at the bar:

A.   She does coverage of manuscripts.

B.    Is she a literary person?

A.    I wouldn't say she is a literary person. I'd say I have more of a literary background than she does. admiringly: But she reads much faster than I do.

A.    It's exactly like forcing yourself to go to the gym, getting yourself to read.
I can read scripts, but not a book. She can do it.

The Bar Where The Bartenders Have Problems

2010-11-04T20:57:00.001-07:00

Bartender reading e-mail:

"You keep saying how much your life sucks. How do you think that makes me feel as the man in your life?"

Later, not reading:

I'm a such a perfectionist and, it's so, stupid!

Later:

It's bad, his business is doing so well he makes so much more money than
me.

Self Portrait

2010-11-04T13:12:00.001-07:00