Cannabis Plants As High As Christmas Trees
In Brooklyn, Cannabis Plants Once Grew As High As Christmas Trees
 Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images |
Ben Gocker, a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library, recently uncovered an intriguing chapter in the borough’s not-too-distant past. In the early fifties, Cannabis sativa plants apparently grew tall enough to hang ornaments on for the holidays. They grew in empty lots from Avenue X to the banks of the Newton Creek as well as around the Gowanus Canal. Of course, the fifties was a more innocent time. Many residents didn’t realize what was growing in their own backyards. In their attempt to wipe out the native green, officials warned residents, “If you spot these leaves in your back yard, growing in a tall, erect stalk, you have a budding marijuana crop on tap and the Sanitation Department would like to know about it.” In the summer of 1951, sanitation workers dug up and incinerated 41,000 pounds of marijuana from 274 lots around New York.
Rodrigo Corral to FSG
Rodrigo Corral Appointed Creative Director of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This just in: star graphic designer Rodrigo Corral has been appointed creative director of Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), according to a statement issued today by president and publisherJonathan Galassi. Corral is no stranger to FSG, having worked in the company’s art department from 1996 to 2000 after graduating from the School of Visual Arts. He begins in his new post early next month and will continue to run Rodrigo Corral Design, the nine-year-old studio behind such memorable book covers as those for James FreyA Million Little Pieces, a shelf of Chuck Palahniuk novels, Debbie Millman‘s smashing How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, and Jay-Z‘s recent memoir-cum-lyrical codex, Decoded, for which Corral dispensed with the glamour shot and featured one of Andy Warhol‘s Rorschach paintings.
King James Bible Near Death?
Will the King James Bible Survive?
by Timothy Beal
Author, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Bible‘
Four hundred years since the King’s Printer published the first edition in 1611, the King James Version Bible continues to reign supreme. Not only is it by far the bestselling translation of all time, with more than 5 billion copies sold, it is the very icon of Bibleness, the Book of books, the premier image of the printed and bound Word. Indeed, many assume it’s the only Bible. “I’ve never read the Bible,” people tell me. “I just can’t stand all those thees and thous,” despite the fact that no modern translations have them. And whether anyone ever seriously said, “If it was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for me,” many think so. No wonder those behind the evangelical New International Version and the Catholic New American Bible translations decided to launch their highly publicized major revisions this year: They’re hoping to catch a draft off the seeming timelessness of the King of Bibles.
The King James Bible’s 400th may well be its biggest birthday ever, but also its most poignant. For its end draws nigh. Sure, it’ll hang around for a while, mostly in hotels and old folks homes. But it’s not long for this world, at least in any form we’d recognize from the bookish years of its youth.
REDCAT INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL
OHWOW
from The NY Times Asked & Answered
Asked & Answered | OHWOW
photo by Curtis Buchanan – From left: Al Moran and Aaron Bondaroff.
Downtown is a state of mind for the art impresarios Aaron Bondaroff and Al Moran, whether they’re selling Statue of Liberty figurines by Kembra Pfahler at a pop-up shop in Athens, Greece, or recreating the Ludlow Street watering hole Max Fish at a bar in Miami (bar staff included). After descending upon Los Angeles last year with a one-night-only Halloween Neckface show that drew 5,000 people, this weekend the two introduced the new L.A. home of their OHWOW gallery. Opening Saturday in a 4,000-square-foot, ivy-covered former Laundromat on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, OHWOW presented “Noblesse Oblige,” the first L.A. exhibition from Scott Campbell, who is as well known for the work he’s inked into the flesh of Marc Jacobs, Terry Richardson and others as he is for the intricate 3-D pieces he cuts into sheets of United States currency. “Noblesse Oblige” — an ironic battle cry for Campbell’s backwoods Louisiana kin and a phrase he has tattooed on his neck — also finds the artist working with neon, etching onto 24-karat gold plates, and drawing on the insides of ostrich eggs. We caught up with Bondaroff and Moran in the Rafael de Cardenas-designed space to discuss the bigger picture.
TRAILER: The Final Testament Of The Holy Bible
Owsley “Bear” Stanley Gone
What Makes A Legend?: Owsley Stanley AKA Bear
Classic Track: “Alice D. Millionaire”
Early band benefactor, sound system designer, supplier of psychedelic substances, and co-designer of good ol’ Stealie (at right), the Grateful Dead wrote “Alice D. Millionaire,” when 1967 newspaper headlines screamed the “LSD Millionaire” had been busted in his East Bay lab. Born Augustus Owsley Stanley III, grandson of a Kentucky senator and known to all as Bear, “The Artisan of Acid” died last Sunday in Queensland, Australia. He’d been living as a naturalized citizen there since 1996 as part of an effort to escape the ill effects of global warming on the Northern Hemisphere.
Career Highs: Monterey Purple, White Lightening, Blue Cheer were just some of what the underground chemist served up to the world’s biggest rock stars. Jimi Hendrix was said to have taken the Owsley Purple on the night of his fiery appearance at Monterey Pop; Brian Jones and Pete Townshend also famously turned on that weekend. Present at the Acid Tests in late 1965 and early 1966, Bear was forever aligned with the Grateful Dead. Not only did he and his friend Bob Thomas design their lightening bolt skull logo, he was the architect of their sound system, a musician-friendly, superior set-up that revolutionized rock music.
The 10 Best American Poems
The 10 best American poems
The list could go on and on, but these are the poems that seem to me to have left the deepest mark on US literature – and me
For whatever reason, I woke up today with a list of the 10 greatest American poems in my head that had been accumulating through the night. Every list is subjective, and of course the use of “greatest” even more so – but these are not just “favorite” poems. I’ve been thinking about American poetry – and teaching it to university students – for nearly 40 years, and these are the 10 poems that, in my own reading life, have seemed the most durable; poems that shifted the course of poetry in the United States, as well as poems that I look forward to teaching every year because they represent something indelible. The list could go on and on, of course. I deeply regret leaving off Roethke’s “The Lost Son”, Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” and “The Asphodel, that Greeny Flower” by William Carlos Williams. But I guess I just sneaked them onto the list, didn’t I?
1. “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
Whitman reinvents American poetry in this peerless self-performance, finding cadences that seem utterly his own yet somehow keyed to the energy and rhythms of a young nation waking to its own voice and vision. He calls to every poet after him, such as Ezra Pound, who notes in “A Pact” that Whitman “broke the new wood.”
2. “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens
Stevens’s sumptuous, glittering language takes blank verse and reinvents it. This poem raises to a sublime level what Stevens once called a war “between the mind and sky.” The poem celebrates the “blessed rage for order” at the heart of all creative work.
3. “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson
A perfect poem, and one of Dickinson’s most compressed and chilling attempts to come to terms with mortality. Once read, it stays in the head forever, in part because of the ballad stanza, so weirdly fresh in her capable hands.
4. “Directive” by Robert Frost
This surprising late poem concentrates Frost’s lifetime of thinking and working as a poet. “Drink and be whole beyond confusion,” he says at the end, mapping out the inner life of any reader. It is blank verse cast in Frost’s trademark craggy voice, and it might be considered a local response to Eliot’s more cosmopolitan “The Waste Land.”
SALON: James Frey Does Jesus
James Frey does Jesus
If the faux-memoirist thinks he’ll offend anyone by depicting Christ as a whoring drunk, he’ll be disappointed
BY LAURA MILLER
Salon
Apparently James Frey has a tiny man in his head, like some kind of internalized boss, who barks, “You haven’t enraged anyone lately!” and starts cracking the whip whenever things slow down. This week, we learned that Frey will deliver a book he discussed in an interview with the Rumpus back in 2008, “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” which will depict the return of Jesus Christ as a drunk who consorts with hookers and canoodles with other men. The book will be published in a limited edition by an art gallery and self-published by Frey “online,” which presumably means in e-book format. This event will take place on April 22, Good Friday.
I know! Shocking, right? Frey says that he expects to “get blasted” for this. The press has happily joined him in rubbing its hands together over the prospect, deploying words like “controversial” and “firestorm” in stories that Frey promptly posts to his website. “I tried to write a radical book. I’m releasing it in a radical way,” Frey told the New York Post. So it’s possible his Christ might be a skateboarder, too.
ATTN: God Does Not Hate Women
New Bible Draws Critics Of Gender-Neutral Language
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the old translation of the world’s most popular Bible, John the Evangelist declares: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.” Make that “brother or sister” in a new translation that includes more gender-neutral language and is drawing criticism from some conservatives who argue the changes can alter the theological message.
The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains “He” and “the Father.” But it does aim to avoid using “he” or “him” as the default reference to an unspecified person.
The NIV Bible is used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The translation comes from an independent group of biblical scholars that has been meeting yearly since 1965 to discuss advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English usage.
Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church.
Little Girl
Mixed Martial Arts Rally in Midtown Manhattan
Kapow! Mixed Martial Artists to Rally in Midtown for Legialization
By David Freedlander
March 16, 2011 | 9:54 a.m.
Over 1,000 fans of Mixed Martial Arts are expected to rally today in front of Radio City to call on lawmakers to legalize the sport in New York State.
A study commissioned by Ultimate Fighting Championship, an MMA sports association and production company, found that regulating the sport would generate $23 million in economic activity.
Proponents of keeping the sport illegal say that it borders on the barbaric because the aim is to disable or maim your opponent. MMA is outlawed in only a handful of states other than New York, including Connecticut, Vermont and West Virginia.
Today’s rally is part of a promotion about an upcoming bout between Shogun Rua and Jon Jones
UKG: James Frey Ignores Publishing Houses
James Frey ignores publishing houses to release new book through art gallery
Bad boy of American letters prints just 10,000 copies of his latest work, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, in time for Easter
These are tough times for the publishing industry, so writers are increasingly turning to unconventional ways to market their work.
There is the horror story printed on toilet paper, the novel composed of 2,000 tattoos etched on volunteers’ skin, the unbound book in a box that can be shuffled and read in any order, and of course the numerous collaborative Wikinovels.
Now the bad boy of American letters, James Frey, has jumped on the bandwagon with the announcement that his next book will be published by an art gallery. Just 10,000 copies will be printed on paper, with an additional collectors’ edition of 1,000 signed volumes.
Frey’s original manuscript will be printed on canvas and displayed by the publisher, the Gagosian gallery in New York, alongside new artworks by several top American artists to illustrate it. They include Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Phillips and Terry Richardson.
New Justice Coming
SMEAR Being Tagged By The Man
Graffiti artist’s past is tagging behind him
Cristian Gheorghiu scrawled ragged images and his nickname, ‘Smear,’ on L.A.’s lampposts, walls and riverbeds. Now that his gallery career is taking off, an injunction is threatening to bar him from profiting from art bearing his telltale ‘tag.’
Graffiti artist Cristian Gheorghiu, emblazoned with his street nickname “Smear,” in his East Hollywood garage studio. Gheorghiu is gaining acclaim as an artist and is trying to make amends for his past mistakes. (Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times / February 25, 2011)
For years Cristian Gheorghiu craved the thrill of the chase. Spray-paint can in hand, he lived on the edge, always a step ahead of the law.
His canvas was L.A.’s lampposts, brick walls and concrete riverbeds where he scrawled ragged images and his own nickname, “Smear” — probably thousands of times.
The graffiti made him a subculture sensation. Fans compared his art to that of another graffiti artist, the critically acclaimedJean-Michel Basquiat.
But just as the East Hollywood graffiti artist’s career was taking off, his past has threatened to overtake him.
First came jail and a whopping fine. Now, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is seeking a one-of-a-kind court injunction to bar Gheorghiu from profiting from art bearing his telltale “tag.”
LAT: James Frey’s hipster Jesus
James Frey’s hipster Jesus
A drinking, pot-smoking bisexual Messiah who lives in the Bronx? That’s the setup for the upcoming James Frey book, “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” his version of the second coming.
Reuters reports, “‘The Final Testament of the Holy Bible’ tells the story of a second coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah to millions of Christians but just plain Ben Jones to family and friends. Ben, whose real name is Zion Avrohom, is a hard-drinking man who lives in a dirty apartment in the Bronx, New York. He smokes dope and has sex with women and men.”
“The Final Testament of the Holy Bible” will be published by Gagosian Gallery, an art gallery making an unusual move into publishing. Although an unusual move, this fits Frey’s trajectory. He has been moving away from traditional publishing — he’s started what New York magazine calls a “fiction factory,” recruiting ambitious creative-writing students out of graduate school to co-author books with his company, Full Fathom Five. His company was behind the book and movie “I Am Number Four.”
And Frey, a former Angeleno who now lives in New York, has been keeping company with artists and gallerists. He has published texts for catalogs with Richard Prince, Damien Hirst and others. Cover art for “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible” is by Gregory Crewdson — see it after the jump.
Artists Dan Colen, Richard Phillips, Richard Prince, Terry Richardson and Ed Ruscha are creating works in response to the book, which will be exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery on April 20 — along with Frey’s original manuscript printed on canvas. “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible” will officially be released April 22, Good Friday. For those who don’t get the signed collector’s edition (there will be 1,000), or the Crewdson cover in its leatherette slipcase (there will be 10,000), it will be available as an e-book too.
Israeli B-Lister VS. Viperus Siliconus
Serpiente muerde implante de silicona de una modelo Video TerraTV
A busty model and an angry snake together for a photo shoot – what could possibly go wrong?
Orit Fox‘s attempt at seductive posing with a massive boa took a bizarre turn when the snake bit one of the Israeli B-Lister’s surgically enhanced breasts in the middle of a shoot for a Tel Aviv radio station, ABC of Spain reported.
All was going well for the silicone-addicted Fox until she tried to ramp up the sex factor by licking the snake. The move proved costly as she loosened her grip on the reptile, which went straight for the model’s left breast implant and latched onto it for several seconds before being pulled off by an assistant.
‘The author is a “narcissist” and a “megalomaniac.”‘
Author James Frey Brings a God Complex to the Bronx
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
By Julia Furlan : WNYC Culture Producer
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Frey’s novel, with designs by Gregory Crewdson (Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)
If you’re going to take on books, you might as well start with the good book. At least that’s what New York-based author James Frey is doing with his latest novel “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.” What’s more innovative than the novel’s Bronx-living messiah character, who smokes pot and has sex with prostitutes, is that Frey appears to be side-stepping the publishing industry.
Eleven thousand hard copies of the book will be published by the Gagosian Art Gallery, with cover art designed by the gallery’s artists and an exhibit where five artists produce work in response to the book. Frey is self-publishing the book online as well, which is a departure for a best-selling author—even if the best-seller in question happens to be Frey’s 2006 book “A Million Little Pieces,” which was debunked as a fabricated memoir.
Culture writer and host of “The Bat Segundo Show” podcast Ed Champion is no Frey fan. He says that the author is a “narcissist” and a “megalomaniac.” But Champion does feel that Frey is onto something. “The book as a beautiful physical object is really the way for the physical book to survive as the e-book becomes more of a dominant part of the book market,” he said.
THR: James Frey to Write Modern-Day Holy Bible
James Frey to Write Modern-Day Holy Bible
The controversial author’s newest tome imagines a Messiah as if he were living in NYC today.
James Frey — who was infamously yelled at by Oprah Winfrey for his mock-memoir A Million Little Pieces — is writing a modern-day Bible.
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible imagines a Messiah as if he were alive in New York City today.
Gagosian Gallery will publish a limited release of just 10,000 slipcased leatherette copies and 1,000 signed and numbered collector’s editions, USA Today reports. It will be released on Good Friday, April 22.
Writes the publisher in a statement: “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible is the story of Ben Zion Avrohom, also known as Ben Jones, also known as the Messiah, also known as the Lord God. Though he is the Messiah, Ben is not the man to whom Christians have prayed for the past two thousand years.”
Zombie Boy In Paris
Terry Richardson’s Diary
- March 4, 2011
Zombie Boy in Paris before the Thierry Mugler show.
Unholy Uproar
from The New York Post’s Page Six
Novel faces unholy uproar
Controversial author James Frey is set to ignite another firestorm with his new book, “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” in which the second coming of Christ takes place in The Bronx projects — but the Messiah turns out to be a former alcoholic who impregnates a prostitute.
Frey — who was famously ripped apart on TV by Oprah Winfrey and ostracized by the literary community over his partly fabricated memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” — has sidestepped traditional publishers and teamed up with gallery owner Larry Gagosian, who will publish just 11,000 copies in the US while Frey will self-publish online.
His Messiah, Ben Jones, starts off as a lonely alcoholic bachelor living in a filthy apartment. He survives a horrific work accident, but strange things then happen that lead to him being recognized as the Messiah. Ben also smokes pot, has sex with a prostitute and makes out with men.
Ben tells followers that the Bible is “antiquated,” saying, “The Bible was written 2,000 years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now . . . those books are dead.”
Of religion, he says, “Faith is what you use to oppress, to justify, to judge in the name of God . . . a means to rationalize more evil in this world than anything in history. If there were a devil, faith would be his greatest invention.” The novel will be released for maximum impact in the US on Good Friday.
[ click to continue reading at NYPost.com ]
Also covered in…
HUFFINGTON POST – “James Frey To Spark Controversy With New Book “The Final Testament Of The Holy Bible”
DAILY INDIA – “Fictitious Messiah portrayed as alcoholic who impregnates prostitute”
MEDIA BISTRO – “James Frey To Self-Publish ‘Radical Book’ About the Messiah”
BLACKBOOK – “James Frey Teams Up With Gagosian to Publish Book About Drunk Jesus”
JESUS NEEDS NEW PR – “Author James Frey to publish NEWER New Testament about drunk sleazy ‘Jesus’
NEW YORK MAGAZINE – “Larry Gagosian Will Publish James Frey’s Book About Jesus“”
ARTINFO – “XXX Jesus Reborn in James Frey’s Gagosian Book”
THE DEACON’S BENCH – “Just in time for Easter, James Frey’s new book about an alcoholic Messiah”
INTERVIEW – “Gagosian to Publish James Frey’s Jesus Book”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY – “James Frey’s controversial Messiah”
NEW YORK TIMES – “Nontraditional Route For James Frey Book”
BOOKTOPIA BLOG – “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey”
REUTERS/MSNBC/VANCOUVER SUN – “James Frey takes on God, publishing with new book”
LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR (NE) – “Meet the year’s most controversial book.”
REFINERY 29 – “James Frey’s New Book Is About A Pot-Smoking, Bisexual Jesus Living In The Bronx”
NEW YORK PRESS – “The Third and Final Edition of the Bible, By James Frey”
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD – “‘Bad boy’ takes on Jesus for Easter“
The World Largest Gummi Bears (12,600 calories)
USA Today: “James Frey pens modern day ‘Holy Bible'”
James Frey pens modern day ‘Holy Bible’
By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY
Just in: James Frey, controversial author of A Million Little Pieces, has penned a new work, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.
Gagosian Gallery has announced the book will have have a limited U.S. print run of 10,000 slipcased leatherette copies, as well as 1,000 collector’s editions signed and numbered by the author. The book will be released on Good Friday, April 22.
According to the publishers, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible is “the story of Ben Zion Avrohom, also known as Ben Jones, also known as the Messiah, also known as the Lord God. Though he is the Messiah, Ben is not the man to whom Christians have prayed for the past two thousand years.”
Frey said in a 2008 interview the book is his “idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today.”
James Frey On The Bowery
Terry Richardson’s Diary
- March 13, 2011
James Frey on The Bowery.
“But one person in particular stood out on this evening…”
Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, Their Own Best Creations
Lee Clower for The New York Times
Rachel Feinstein and John Currin defy others’ expectations of how artists should look and live. More Photos »
By DAVID COLMAN
Sprucely dressed waiters tangoed through the crowded space offering Champagne to the artists Brice and Helen Marden; the New Museum director Lisa Phillips; Cynthia Rowley and her husband, the art dealer Bill Powers; Amanda Brooks, the new fashion director of Barneys, and her husband, the artist Christopher Brooks; the painter Francesco Clemente and his wife Alba; Salman Rushdie; and the director Sofia Coppola. Off in a corner, Marc Jacobs and his ex-boyfriend Lorenzo Martone (the latter dressed in knee-high wooly boots) appraised a room of mirrors hand-painted with ghostly landscapes.
But one person in particular stood out on this evening: a tall ginger-haired beauty dressed in a figure-flattering ivory velvet Marc Jacobs dress, chatting with Ms. Coppola, hugging Mr. Martone, keeping an eye on three frisky young children who hovered nearby, and occasionally joking with a blue-suited bespectacled man who cast an amused eye over the gathering.
Even if you hadn’t known it was Rachel Feinstein, the sculptor who had created this fantastical art installation, you probably would have figured out rather quickly — from the way people gravitated toward her and the way she glided confidently around the room — that she was the star of the evening. And the dark-suited man at her side, the one chatting with James Frey? That was John Currin, the husband of Ms. Feinstein and the father of their three children — and arguably the most provocative and successful painter of his generation.
Pompeii Zombies In Plaster
When the Dead Arise and Head to Times Square
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
There is a lot of traffic these days in well-preserved bodies, human and otherwise. They are sliced and pickled for artistic effect or uncannily dissected and plasticized, with every blood vessel visible. They have toured the world, wrapped and mummified in the manner of ancient Egypt, or have been displayed, more modestly preserved by the dry desert sands of the Silk Road. And there are many, many more mummies yet to come.
Why this onslaught of the almost-living dead in museums? Are we latter-day Ezekiels seeking prophetic messages from ancient skeletal remnants? Has the technology used to prepare the dead for world travel suddenly advanced? Or has the need for income by the overseers of mummies suddenly increased?
Perhaps all are true. But “Pompeii the Exhibit: Life and Death in the Shadow of Vesuvius,” which opens on Friday at Discovery Times Square, is unusual because its dead bodies are not really dead, and they are not really bodies.
From Bill @ Exhibition A
Art Out Of Words
Glenn Ligon: Art Out of Words
The New York Conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, whose paintings, prints and drawings use phrases written or uttered by famous personalities, has a new midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
You Smell, Sir
This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You
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Although bookstore workers love their customers, or are at least morally obligated to, sometimes the love is so great it turns murderous. Ever tried to finish all-you-can-eat coconut shrimp? That’s the love we’re dealing with here. Although your narrator worked at a used bookstore just outside of the city more than a decade ago, he shut his eyes tight, remembered three years of Fat Slice Pizza, and relived some moments of quiet desperation.
You Stole All Our Bukowski
It’s hard to keep Bukowski on the shelf when he keeps getting stuffed in the pants of street punks when no one is looking (but we are looking!). Although punks love him (he’s so easy to read) so does the staff (Hank worked a menial job for years, drank an eternity, and stillended up famous). He provides hope for apprentice alcoholics who are going to start writing sometime tomorrow or Thursday for sure. If you do steal him, please sell him back to us when you’re finished.
You’re Spending Too Much Time in the Erotica Section
Huh, and you’re totally and creepily not moving.
You Camp Out in the Self-Help Section
What is it about the self-help section that attracts people who take off their shoes and eat fruit salad right in the stacks? Or what is it that doesn’t attract them, amirite? Though we don’t mind you blocking the aisle, making your little piles of books and scribbling action items in your notepads (this means we can avoid the section), at least tidy up when you’re finished for the night. This goes for everyone in the spiritualism section, too. See you all tomorrow.
You’re Asleep
You know that’s weird, right? Barnes & Noble may have the square footage to stock recliners, but used bookstores don’t. Used bookstores use their space to sell books. Ever notice how much empty air a superbookstore contains that could be going to books? Of course you don’t, because you’re asleep on our footstool.
You Were Our Favorite English Professor
Oh look, it’s the bastard who inspired us to skip a useful degree for one in contemporary American fiction, here to again dash through the store with a comely grad student in tow and witness, once again, how well we are doing with our crack alphabetization. Looking for Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex? Try the Ds. College!