Motivational Poster of the Day
Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book
GREENWOOD, IN—Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there’s more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book.
Yes, the whole thing.
“It was great,” said the peculiar Indiana native, who, despite owning a television set and having an active social life, read every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. “Especially the way things came together for Scout in the end. Very good.”
Meyer, who never once jumped ahead to see what would happen and avoided skimming large passages of text in search of pictures, first began his oddball feat a week ago. Three days later, the eccentric Midwesterner was still at it, completing chapter after chapter, seemingly of his own free will.
“The whole thing was really engrossing,” said Meyer, referring not to a movie, video game, or competitive sports match, but rather a full-length, 288-page novel filled entirely with words. “There were days when I had a hard time putting it down.”
Even more bizarre, Meyer is believed to have done most of his reading during his spare time—time when the outwardly healthy and stable resident could have literally been doing anything else, be it aimlessly surfing the Internet, taking a nap, or simply just staring at his bedroom wall.
“It’d be nice to read it again at some point,” Meyer continued, as if that were a perfectly natural thing to say.
While it’s difficult to imagine what compelled Meyer to read more than just the back cover of To Kill a Mockingbird, friends and family members claim the strange behavior goes all the way back to his childhood.
“I remember when Phil was a little kid, instead of picking up a book, getting bored, and then throwing it at his sister, he’d actually sit down and read the whole thing,” said mother Susan Meyer, who declared she has long given up trying to explain her son’s unusual hobby. “At the time, we thought it was just a phase he was going through. I guess we were wrong.”
Camille Paglia Is The Best Essayist in America
clipped from Ms. Paglia’s latest column at Salon.com
(and her latest book BREAK BLOW BURN is amazing)
Sex, of course, remains a hotly contested issue within feminism itself. I have defended pornography and supported the decriminalization of prostitution, positions that I still maintain. (I hope that the valiant women staffers of the Emperors’ Club, Eliot Spitzer’s hypnotic Xanadu, don’t suffer in any way.) However, I am very concerned by a degeneration of erotic images in American media. It isn’t their mammoth proliferation that disturbs me (as it does many other feminists); it’s their antiseptic quality in this era of Botox and plasticized Barbie boobs. American sex is all flash and no sizzle.
One could see it in the banal pack of glamazon young actresses on the red carpet at the Oscars — with their parched, stylist-honed outfits, their bony Pilates arms, their immobilized faces and simpering smirks, and their vapid, perky voices. All of them were upstaged in an instant by Marion Cotillard, the best actress winner whose French sensuality and sparkling vitality simply leapt off the TV screen. In France, there’s still a mystique about female sexuality, a quiet magnetism that has been completely lost in the U.S., where at least our major movie stars once had it.
But even the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which used to be a luscious winter extravaganza of sinuous tigresses or golden California gals lolling in sultry, exotic locales, has now become utterly boring and flat. The artistry, charm and provocation are gone; all that’s left is empty, mechanical attitudinizing. Yet another cultural landmark down the tubes. If you want to see what a collapse has occurred in America’s imagery of sex, check out this 1961 Life magazine cover starring my pagan goddess of that era, Elizabeth Taylor. She is regally presiding with her gleaming Oscar for “Butterfield 8,” where she played a glossy Manhattan call girl. Now that’s a woman!
By the time we got to college in the 1960s, my baby-boom generation had access to a huge range of exciting female personae — from the splendiferous Diana Rigg doing karate chops in leather jumpsuits in “The Avengers” to the mercurial Edie Sedgwick setting off her elfin youthquake as an Andy Warhol superstar. Speaking of Edie, I found this “diaporama” tribute to her on YouTube, set to a song composed and sung by Étienne Daho. That led in turn to another video, where Daho does a deliciously relaxed duet on French TV with Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of the legendary Serge Gainsbourg and that British crumpet, Jane Birkin).
Here’s natural, invigorating French womanliness on display again in the supply expressive Gainsbourg. And despite the intermittent corniness of French pop, what an affectingly simple and evocative performance — a mature man and a sophisticated young woman exchanging meaningful glances and exploring a palette of authentic emotions. With the death of the vaudeville-derived variety format, we never get that on American TV anymore, except from aging country singers, who have become increasingly pat and formulaic in their stagecraft over the past 20 years.
Pulverizing Bloggers
snagged from Folio
Glamour Fires Male Blogger After Readers ‘Pulverize’ Him
Reaction forces serial-dater’s removal.
03/11/2008
Glamour has fired its controversial “Man Needs a Date” blogger after the site was inundated with comments from outraged readers.
In a note posted on Glamour.com, the magazine explained its rationale for removing the blogger, Mike Cherico, from the site: “Our ultimate goal here is to open a productive conversation about men, sex, love and dating; clearly, that can’t happen when the majority of readers would like to pulverize the blogger.”
The latest swath of vitriol for the Los Angeles-based Cherico—a high school English teacher who had blogged as a sort of “serial-dater” for Glamour since 2007—seemed to stem from a post he wrote about a date, in which he says he left a woman who appeared to have a cold sore. The woman launched a blog to counter Cherico’s version of the date, which was then linked to his post in the comments section.
Her 3,000-plus word post was eventually taken down, but not before the floodgates opened.
“It will be a truly disappointing decision if Mike still remains as a blogger,” one of the 200-plus commenters wrote. “I truly and sincerely expected higher standards from this magazine.”
“I realize that this punk is driving HUGE site hits, which equates to $$$, but at some point Conde Naste [sic] has to operate with integrity,” wrote another. “At least I hope so.”
Another summed up the call for Cherico’s removal this way: “How can a magazine that promotes self-confidence and health in women keep this toxic person employed?”
The dust-up generated reaction overseas, where a British blogger wondered if Cherico is the “most hated blogger in the U.S.A.”
For its part, Glamour says it will replace Cherico with a new blogger “soon.”
Taking art to the streets of L.A. County
New program allots 1% of new buildings’ costs to paintings, sculptures. In South L.A., employees and clients take notice.
The new Los Angeles County Administration Building rises four stories above Vermont Avenue, between 83rd and 84th streets, its clean lines and green-glass front striking a contrast with the auto body shops and parking lots nearby.
But something else also sets the county social services hub apart from the squat concrete structures around it: tile murals inside and outside the building, glazed with digitally manipulated photographs of oak trees to soften the bustle of South Los Angeles.
Completed this December, the building is the first developed under the Civic Art Program, which allots 1% of new county buildings’ construction and design costs for art.
Betty Frazer, waiting in line for homeless assistance in advance of her pending eviction, said the wall-sized mural in the lobby, which depicts a fence threading across rolling hills and alongside majestic oaks, gave her a “sense of beauty.”
“It makes it look peaceful,” said Frazer, 44, of South Los Angeles, “even though it may not be. You come here and it’s a headache.”
Now We Know What She Was Growing On That Farm in Kansas (and it wasn’t just her coconuts!)
from Newsday.com
Mary Ann of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ caught with marijuana
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
6:30 PM EDT, March 11, 2008
DRIGGS, Idaho
Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island,” is serving six months’ unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.
She was sentenced Feb. 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.
Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts — driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance — were dropped.
On Oct. 18, Teton County sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff’s office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she’d just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana.
The 69-year-old Wells, founder of the Idaho Film and Television Institute and organizer of the region’s annual family movie festival called the Spud Fest, then failed a sobriety test.
Wells’ lawyer, Ron Swafford, said that a friend of Wells’ testified that he’d left a small amount of marijuana in the vehicle after using it that day, and that Wells was unaware of it. Swafford also said several witnesses were prepared to testify that Wells had very little to drink at the party and was not intoxicated when she left. He said she was swerving on the road because she was trying to find the heater controls in her new car.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
Win a Free Book on Loaded Questions Blog
This blog offers original interviews with some of the most talented authors in a multitude of different fiction and nonfiction genres as well as discussions about upcoming books. She’s also running a contest to win a copy of Catherine Delors’ Mistress of The Revolution – sign up now.
Rubber Johnny
One of the freakier short films from Director Chris Cunningham for Aphex Twin
This is how I learned to wee wee, too!
Now Everyone Will Know If You’re Really A Dog
found on Drudge
Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Make Anonymous Internet Posting Illegal
By Kellie Wilson
Photograph by Sabin Corneliu Buraga
Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.
The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.
Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.
If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.
Representative Couch says he filed the bill in hopes of cutting down on online bullying. He says that has especially been a problem in his Eastern Kentucky district.
Action News 36 asked people what they thought about the bill.
Some said they felt it was a violation of First Amendment rights. Others say it is a good tool toward eliminating online harassment.
Represntative Couch says enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge.
Recommendations from BookSense
snippped from Shelf Awareness newsletter
Book Sense: May We Recommend
From last week’s Book Sense bestseller lists, available at BookSense.com, here are the recommended titles, which are also Book Sense Picks:
Hardcover
Ice Trap: A Novel of Suspense by Kitty Sewell (Touchstone, $24.95). “Meet Dafydd Woodruff, a successful doctor in Wales. Dafydd’s life is going along quite well until he receives a letter from a 13-year-old girl from northern Canada, where years ago he worked as a doctor in a small town. In the letter, she claims he is her father, and Dafydd returns to the town to try to discover the truth. The twist and turns–and final outcome–will keep you reading this suspenseful first novel well into the night.”–Sue Richardson, Maine Coast Book Shop, Damariscotta, Me.
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (Dutton, $24.95). “This is a carefully documented and intelligently reasoned response to today’s skeptics. The Reason for God is remarkable in its breadth. It challenges the intellectual mind and satisfies the searching soul.”–Jan Owens, Millrace Books, Farmington, Conn.
Paperback
A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants by Jaed Coffin (Da Capo, $16). “This is a wonderful memoir from a young Thai-American about his choice to spend time being a monk in Thailand. Cultural details enhance this everyman’s story, which is more timely than ever in a world where more and more multiethnic people are trying to find their identities.”–Syrinda Sharpe, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.
For Ages 9 to 12
Kiki Strike: The Empress’ Tomb by Kirsten Miller (Bloomsbury, $16.95). “This sequel to Inside the Shadow City features the original Irregulars–six teenage girls. Oona’s family conflict may break up the group, and art thieves, animal rescue, and humans appear in this novel, too. The Irregulars can handle any situation admirably . . . and kick butt as needed.”–Andrea Vuleta, Mrs. Nelson’s Toy & Book Shop, La Verne, Calif.
[Many thanks to Book Sense and the ABA!]
Avoid Inappropriate Nuzzling – How to Give A Great Man Hug
for Angry Bill
“The Wolfman” by Nicholas Pekearo
from the AP
Novel by Slain NYPD Volunteer Published
Sunday, March 9, 2008 2:00 PM
NEW YORK — A volunteer police officer shot dead by a gunman on a rampage in Greenwich Village last year will have his first novel published posthumously this spring.
Nicholas Pekearo’s “The Wolfman” is due out May 13 from Tor Books.
The New York-based publisher was working with Pekearo when he and fellow auxiliary officer Eugene Marshalik were killed while on patrol on March 14, 2007. The gunman, David Garvin, fatally shot a pizza parlor bartender before leading the volunteer officers on a chase. Garvin was ultimately shot and killed by full-time police.
Pekearo’s novel centers on a werewolf trying to do right in difficult times. Pekearo’s editor, Eric Raab, says he had hoped it would blossom into a series.
© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Poetry Is Still Cool
from the New York Times
Formalities
Back in the 20th century, when such things seemed to matter, poets argued about the virtue of meter and rhyme. Occasionally the debate produced insights of lasting consequence, like Robert Frost’s snarky metaphor for free verse (“playing tennis with the net down”) and Charles Wright’s brilliant response: “the high wire act without the net.” But the debate was perpetuated more often by tribal loyalties than by artistic necessity. An argument that forecloses possibilities for art — that says X is good because Y is bad — can rarely be trusted.
Mary Jo Salter came of age as a poet in the 1970s when two tribes, the Language poets and the New Formalists, were sparring. The Language poets (named after a magazine called Language) represented a new surge of experimental writing, while the New Formalists (with whom Salter was associated) wanted to resist the influence of modernism, re-energizing poetry’s relationship not only to traditional form but to narrative. Like Salter, many of the New Formalists modeled their work on a strategically narrowed version of Elizabeth Bishop, a poet who wrote both free and formal verse with homespun virtuosity. But while Bishop continues to be read, the polemics associated with both the New Formalism and Language poetry feel dated, part of the niggling history of taste rather than the grand history of art.
Salter’s latest collection, “A Phone Call to the Future,” offers severely winnowed selections from her previous five books along with an ample collection of new poems. What she has omitted is as revealing as what remains. While her first book, “Henry Purcell in Japan,” is introduced here with a poised villanelle about King Lear’s daughters, it once began with a poem far more suggestive of Salter’s sensibility — a sensibility repulsed by gory images of the dead Jesus in a Catholic church, preferring to dwell in an aesthetic realm of pure spirit: “His wounds look fresh, but it’s not this sight / that shocks me so much as His man-made skin: / He’s waxen, slick as a mannequin.”
This poem, “For an Italian Cousin,” is cast in envelope rhyme (abba), the form that Tennyson, most elegant of English poets, employed in his long elegy “In Memoriam.” Reading the elegy, Verlaine said that Tennyson had a lot of reminiscences when he should have been brokenhearted. Salter’s elegance feels similarly motivated by a distaste for the unseemly.
But what makes Salter worth reading — what makes her stand apart from the merely polemical elegance of the New Formalism — is that she herself is appalled by this distaste. While many of her poems are burdened by a need to dispense wisdom (“love dooms us to earn / love once we can speak of it”), her best are driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable. Her second collection, “Unfinished Painting,” includes “Elegies for Etsuko,” a long poem about a friend who committed suicide.
And now love’s pain, your curse,
is all I have. Forgive me … What worse
punishment for suicide
than having died?
Here, the blunt rhyme between “suicide” and “died” makes the poem’s confrontation with mortality feel witheringly unavoidable. Rather than dispensing wisdom, Salter asks eviscerating questions.
[ click to view full article in the New York Times ]
Mr. Disturbed Will Take Care of These Two
from Creative Loafing Atlanta
Two Park Vista High School girls who admitted they swiped money off the table of a Girl Scout selling cookies at a supermarket in Boynton Beach, Fla., in January told WPBF-TV later that they had no remorse. Said one (on camera): “We went through all that effort to get [the money]. We got all these charges [against us], and we had to give the money back. I’m kind of pissed.” Added the other, “I’m not sorry. I’m just pissed that I got caught.” The victim’s mother said the girls returned to the supermarket the next day and taunted the little girl.
Mr. Disturbed likes Girl Scout Cookies. He’ll handle this.
Lawyers Using Wiretaps Say It Isn’t So!
from the Washington Post
Hollywood’s Bugged Over Wiretaps
LOS ANGELES, March 6 — “It’s the star-studded list Hollywood‘s been waiting for,” gushed the trade paper Variety as opening arguments began Thursday in the criminal wiretapping and racketeering trial against Anthony Pellicano, the fallen Gumshoe to the Stars.
The list of 127 potential witnesses includes stars Sylvester Stallone, Chris Rock and Garry Shandling, Paramount head honcho Brad Grey, chief of Universal Studios Ron Meyer, former super-agent Michael Ovitz and the celebrity lawyer Bert Fields.
The government charges that Pellicano, 63, used his listening devices to gain an edge for his rich clients as they faced ugly child-custody battles, messy divorces and lawsuits. His fees began with a non-refundable $25,000 retainer. According to court documents, hedge fund manager Adam Sender paid Pellicano $500,000 during his legal struggles with movie producer and Nevada gubernatorial candidate Aaron Russo. “And what did he get for that?” the prosecutor asked. “Wiretaps.”
The Pellicano case has been hyped for years, ever since the FBI busted into the private detective’s Sunset Boulevard offices in November 2002 and seized a trove of evidence, including $200,000 in cash and two hand grenades.
Pellicano has long been described as the ultimate fixer, the shamus with a whiff of wiseguy connections who did the dirty work of getting his clients out of jams (and out of the press), who had the reputation of getting what other dicks could not — what prosecutors called “the gold standard” for confidential, inside information that could only be gotten with illegal wiretaps.
Regardless, Pellicano appeared in court looking less like Robert Mitchum and more like Wilford Brimley in tennis shoes and a green windbreaker as he served as his own attorney, a role that required him, when addressing the jury during his opening statement, to speak of himself in the third person: “Mr. Pellicano was a very demanding boss and very secretive about what he did and why he did it.” As Pellicano himself put it, “His clients loved him when they needed him.” And then, he suggested, they turned on him.
The Angriest Frey Fan, Round #2
Well, when we last left off with Bill, he was asking to be removed from the James Frey mailing list. Unfortunately, the only e-mail that Bill provided wasn’t in the database, so the e-mail list guy kindly wrote Bill and asked if he might have signed up under another address blah blah.
Here was Bill’s response, which while not quite so lyrical as his last missive, is still a comforting continuation of the brashly original style established in his astonishing debut…
From: Bill <bill>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008
To: JAMES FREY Blog <blog@BigJimIndustries.com>
Subject: RE: Pre-Order James Frey’s new novel BRIGHT SHINY MORNING
Bless you for the prompt reply. May your penis grow to 1,000 inches or your vag be tighter than a white man’s ass on his first day in Federal Prison – whatever the case may be. On point, yes, my return email is as follows:
By way, is that fucking lying cunt dead yet? If not, there is no God.
Rev. Dr. Bill
[ and then he left his phone number ]
Ahem – no one will be calling, Bill.
The Latest from America’s Greatest Living Director
from the New York Times
On Ramps and Off, Free-Falling Through Time
Gabe Nevins as Alex in the 2007 film “Paranoid Park,” directed by Gus Van Sant. photo by Scott Green/IFC Films
Paranoid Park is a swooping skateboarding free zone where young men learn to fly. It’s also the title of Gus Van Sant’s most recent film, a haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy who, after being suddenly caught in midflight, falls to earth. Like most of Mr. Van Sant’s films “Paranoid Park” is about bodies at rest and in motion, and about longing, beauty, youth and death, and as such as much about the artist as his subject. It is a modestly scaled triumph without a false or wasted moment.
One of the most important and critically marginalized American filmmakers working in the commercial mainstream, Mr. Van Sant has traveled from down-and-out independent to Hollywood hire to aesthetic iconoclast, a trajectory that holds its own fascination and mysteries. The Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr has been instrumental in Mr. Van Sant’s recent artistic renaissance — evident in his newfound love of hypnotically long and gliding camera moves — though his tenure in the mainstream has left its mark too, as demonstrated by his rejection of straight narrative. As in three-act, character-driven, commercially honed narrative in which boys will be boys of a certain type and girls will be girls right alongside them.
The boy in “Paranoid Park,” Alex (the newcomer Gabe Nevins), lives and skates in Portland, Ore., where one evening he is implicated in the brutal death of a security guard. In adapting the young-adult novel by Blake Nelson, Mr. Van Sant has retained much of the story — a man dies, Alex writes it all down — but has reshuffled the original’s chain of events to create an elliptical narrative that continually folds back on itself. Shortly after the film opens, you see Alex writing the words Paranoid Park in a notebook, a gesture that appears to set off a flurry of seemingly disconnected visuals — boys leaping through the air in slow motion, clouds racing across the sky in fast — that piece together only later.
The book on L.A.’s indie spirit
Author Josh Kun read his book at Skylight Books last year.Robert Lachman, Los Angeles Times
Writers offer chapter and verse about their favorite independent bookstores in Southern California.
What is it we love about a good bookstore? The selection? The intelligence of the sales people? The ambience? It’s those things, but I think it’s something else: I think a great bookstore is a place where you feel you can go to find your tribe, to be around people who make them feel, well, less alone.
They’re looking for their kin. The same is true with book lovers. We want to find our corner bar equivalent, a place where, if everyone doesn’t exactly know our name, at least they recognize and accept our particular obsession.
Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City might be vying for the title of smallest bookstore in the world, but what it lacks in space it makes up for with its passionate staff. Led by owner Julie von Zerneck, the team, including head buyer Lucia Silva, make thoughtful selections from the new and keep a strong collection of the old on hand, so that whenever you’re in need, there’s something there to grab your interest. It may not be the broadest selection in town, but the collection is wonderfully edited, and all the staff members love to talk books. The store is a little like the home library you wish you had filled with people who are as obsessed with books and reading as you are.
—
Marisa Silver
[ click to read more in the LA Times ]
Because Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Don Cheadle, Jamie Foxx, Terence Howard and Denzel and Mos Def Weren’t Available
Race row as actor Robert Downey Jr ‘blacks up’ for new film
Last updated at 17:38pm on 7th March 2008 
Comments
Actor Robert Downey Jr has in the past been applauded for his edgy roles. But his latest may be a step too far – as the actor dons make-up to play a rather convincing looking black man in a new Hollywood film starring comic actor Ben Stiller.
In a still from film Tropic Thunder, Downey Jnr is sandwiched between Ben Stiller, and a blonde Jack Black.
Scroll down for more…
Controversial: Actor Robert Downey Jr is virtually unrecognisble seen here sandwiched between actors Jack Black, left, and Ben Stiller, in an image from new film Tropic Thunder in which he wore a wig and make-up to look like a black man
With his afro hair and brown skin, he is virtually unrecognisable as the 42-year-old star of stage and screen.
Downey Jr plays a worthy Oscar-winning actor taking on a role originally written for a black actor, and rather than re-write the part, he goes method.
Clearing anticipating a backlash, Downey Jr told a US magazine: “If it’s done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago. If you don’t do it right, we’re going to hell.”
The National Book Critics Circle Awards
Every year the NBCC presents awards for the finest books and reviews published in English. Below are the 2006 winners. Also avalable: The 2007 NBCC Finalists, as well as submission guidelines, all current and past winners and finalists, >,and a detailed description of how we select titles for the awards.
For more information about the 2006 awards, see our blog series, “The 2006 NBCC Finalists – 30 Books in 30 Days,” for links to reviews and more information, as well as board commentary on each title chosen as a finalst, and online videos of the 2006 NBCC Finalist Readings and Awards Ceremony.
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Lawrence Weschler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences (McSweeney’s). 
[ click to view the National Book Critics Circle website ]
On your knees, abruti!
French women ‘are the sexual predators now’
By Henry Samuel in Paris
in Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 5:25pm GMT 07/03/2008
French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men “has no interest in sex”, according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation’s love lives. Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government.
“Are women just like men?” asked Le Nouvel Observateur yesterday, which released extracts of the Study on Sexuality in France, a 600-page tome that brings together 12,000 in-depth interviews with people of all ages conducted during 2005-06.
One of the biggest changes in recent years, according to the report, was that male and female sexual behaviour had become increasingly similar.
The proportion of French women who claim to have had only one partner has dropped from 68 per cent in 1970, to 43 per cent in 1992 and 34 per cent in 2006. A woman’s average number of partners has risen from under two in 1970 to over five today, while a man’s has remained the same for four decades, almost 13.
French women’s first experience of sex is now almost as early as that of the opposite sex: in 1950 there was a two-year difference, but the gap has narrowed to four months, to around 17 and a half. Meanwhile, more women remain sexually active for longer than previously: nine-out-of-10 women over 50 are sexually active today, compared to just 50 per cent of that age group in 1970.
“The good old dichotomy (male predators, females patiently awaiting the warrior’s return in front of the cave entrance) is in big trouble”, said Le Nouvel Observateur.
The Angriest Frey Fan
Thanks to everyone on the mailing list who responded so positively yesterday. The words were kind and the clicks were fruitful – you managed to push Bright Shiny Morning‘s Amazon ranking from the mid 15,000s all the way to #277. Again (and again and again) – thank you.
Alas, not all of you were so gracious – especially Bill here, who is the winner whether he likes it or not of an autographed copy of Bright Shiny Morning for this most meticulously rendered rant…
From: Bill <bill>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 28
To: JAMES FREY <blog@bigjimindustries.com>
Subject: RE: Pre-Order James Frey’s new novel BRIGHT SHINY MORNING
FUCK BIG JIM UP THE ASS!! I hope he get’s ass cancer, that lying fuck. I want him to die in front of his mother, wife, and children. Don’t sent me his nonsense ever aging. Is that pussy fuck dead yet? I hope to God that he is….the fucking cunt pussy-ass!!!!
Bill
Thanks, Bill – book’s in the mail.
To the rest of you Bills – please feel free to place your ravings on the message board.
The man who ruined the novel
Alain Robbe-Grillet turned the masses against inventive fiction. Now that he’s dead, will experimental writing make a comeback?
By Stephen Marche in Salon
March 6, 2008 | I should have felt grief at the news of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s death last week. Instead I recognized in myself only confusing relief. He was a great champion for the innovative novel, so in a way I owe him: I’m a novelist, and while I would be loath to call myself avant-garde, my first book did have 
marginalia all the way through and my second was a literary anthology of an invented country. But the truth is, Robbe-Grillet was a disaster for innovative novels. After him, literary innovation, experiment with form or anything mildly unconventional came to be seen as pretentious and dry, the proper domain of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys and nobody else.
He was probably the most famous novelist in history who never wrote a famous novel, which may be why his obituary writers barely mentioned his fiction. Appropriately, his most celebrated work, the film “Last Year at Marienbad,” was inspired by somebody else’s novel, Argentine writer Adolpho Bioy Casares’ “The Invention of Morel” — in South America, postwar fiction combined innovation with pleasure in ways that escaped Europe and America.
The “new novel” or “nouveau roman,” as Robbe-Grillet defined and explained it in his famous 1963 essay, was high art at its unpalatably highest. It applied rules and regulations, opposed subjectivity and tried to dissolve plot and character into description. The approach was perceived, he admitted, as “difficult to read, addressed only to specialists.” The “art novel” became the preserve of high priests. Many novelists you’ve probably never heard of were deeply influenced by Robbe-Grillet. Even more damaging, though, was the effect his radicalization and elitism had on readers in the English-speaking world: They took a look at the future of the novel according to Robbe-Grillet and walked in the opposite direction.
From our perspective, in 2008, Robbe-Grillet’s essays on the new novel don’t seem so much wrong as silly. It’s not that his tenets are false but that tenets in general seem faintly ludicrous. We haven’t rejected the philosophical basis of his novels but the notion of having a philosophical basis at all. Now more than ever, what could be more antiquated than the avant-garde? The trend toward 19th century modes in fiction is peaking, or perhaps has already peaked. “Atonement” may turn out to be the high-water mark, a novel that owes more to Sir Walter Scott than to Ridley Scott. Bookstores are drowning in an ocean of coming-of-age novels and short story collections — fiction produced with about as much originality as the schedules to tax returns, with as much flair as junior high school book reports. Every time I receive a copy of a new novel about growing up Russian or growing up Portuguese or growing up whatever, I have the same desperate thought: Can’t we all agree we’ve written this book before and that we don’t have to write it again?
The Man Who Ruined The Short Story
snipped from GalleyCat @ MediaBistro
The Short Story’s Doing Fine. Deal With It.
Last week’s video clip with Story Prize director Larry Dark apparently touched a nerve with one or more frustrated writers—it’s hard to tell just how many because all the bitter, bitter emails came through the anonymous tipline. Anyway, all the messages ran roughly the same, culminating in this assertion:
“Maybe artistically, it’s still ok, but commerically the short story is DEAD. That’s D-E-A-D. Who ever heard of a short story writer as a valid career? Sorry, not in THIS time period.”
Quick, somebody tell Alice Munro she doesn’t have a valid career. She’s up in Canada; you can swing by George Saunders‘s house on the way and break the news to him as well. I’ll stay here in New York and let Amy Hempel and Deborah Eisenberg know it’s time for them to move on.
I can see the whiny, no-doubt-anonymous objection now: “Yeah, but if those last four weren’t creative writing professors…” But if we started saying you couldn’t be “successful” as a writer unless all you did to make money was write—well, let’s just say the ranks of successful writers would be a lot less interesting.
(UPDATE: Yep, that very complaint came in barely 75 minutes after this post went live, adding, “If you do not have an MFA and therefore pander to academia, you are an OUTSIDER. Just FYI.” Note to anonymous outsiders: Perhaps the reason your stories aren’t getting published isn’t that the literary world is artistically bankrupt. Just FYI.)
The man who ruined the Beatles
check this frustrated (see above) distortion pedal-on-11 bootleg gem from Lennon’s Imagine sessions (play below)…
“I was the first gift you ever gave to your mummy.”
One Day by Michel Gondry
If Marilyn Had Been Raised on BGH…
from the Village Voice
MICHAEL MUSTO as LINDSAY LOHAN as MARILYN MONROE
. . . in ‘The Ultimate Re-Vamping’
by Michael Musto
March 4th, 2008 12:00 AM
Heath Ledger died in the nude, but most of today’s young female stars live in the nude, albeit while teetering on the precipice of oblivion and trying to join him there. Whereas yesterday’s sexpot Jane Fonda had to apologize just for saying the word cunt, most of these refreshingly shameless bimbettes are only sorry when you can’t see theirs, even if the exposed pubes give the lie to their natural blondeness.
Making the world their gynecologist in the tradition of sex bombs from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, the Britneys and Parises have never been able to resist the chance to do intimate sex tapes that accidentally leak out to the entire populace or to create panty-less car-exiting shots that paparazzi just happen to catch from smack up-close between the kneecaps. Flaunting what they’ve got and pretending it’s an accident, the tartlets have long turned spreading their legs into career moves, using their fertile crescents as cash registers, even while making us believe they’re really just “singing,” “acting,” or “promoting my perfume.” They’re wily about their guilelessness and clever about their clotheslessness. Beating Paris at her own game, Britney even had a completely naked head for a while! Of course it all started with Marilyn, and Lindsay Lohan—or at least her publicist—seems to have gotten that memo. In lieu of community service, Lindsay recently paid some boobalicious homage to Marilyn’s famous Bert Stern spread, titting it up in New York magazine with a string of pearls, swatches of chiffon, and some colorful fake flowers, all helping to shine spotlights on her very real dumplings flapping around like they probably did in the rehab bathroom. Some dummo actually thought this would be a good move for the career-challenged-at-21 starlet—and honey, it was!
ForeWord Magazine Indy Book of the Year Finalists
FOREWORD BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
ForeWord Magazine announces the finalists in the tenth annual Book of the Year Awards. These books represent some of the best work coming from today’s independent press community.
Nearly 1,600 books were entered in 61 categories. These were narrowed to 658 finalists, from 350 publishers.
The winners will be determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers, selected from our readership. ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards program was designed to discover distinctive books across a number of genres.
Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners, as well as Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced at a special program at BookExpo America at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on May 29. The winners of the two Editor’s Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each. The ceremony is open to all BEA attendees.
Van Gogh Used to Dip Sunglasses in Chocolate, Too
from MediaBistro
Lest you think that New York‘s “Best of New York” issue is worthy of your attention for its cover(s) alone, we thought we’d highlight some of the magazine’s design-related picks (that said, it’s also worth picking up a hard copy, as the “Best of” feature is strewn with some excellent photos by Jamie Chung, including the above one of a pair of chocolate-dipped spectacles). But onto the best of the Big Apple…In the “home and help” section, the magazine chooses chairs for design obsessives ranging from “the modernist” (CB2‘s Hippie Arm Chair) and “the chic parent” (Lisa Albin‘s Mod Rocker for kids) to “the classicist” (the cane-seated Carimate designed by Vico Magistretti) and “the innkeeper” (Anthropologie‘s painted wood Madeline chair). Some retail newcomers are singled out as worthy destinations for those shopping for contemporary home furnishings (Soha Style in Harlem), mid-century modern wares (Brooklyn’s GalleryQB), and lighting (the new Tom Dixon shop-in-shop at ABC Carpet & Home). Taking home the honors for Best Shoestring Architect is Thread Collective, the “five-member architecture-and-design collective that specializes in stretching puny spaces on the cheap,” while Creative Signs and Awnings is your best Gotham source for Oddball Decor (it’s where Bruce Nauman gets his neon signs made).
Best Room in a Major Museum goes to MoMA‘s Jackson Pollock gallery, while the Best Alernative Art Space honor is bestowed upon Participant Inc. Perhaps most exciting is the designation of gallerist and UnBeige founder Jen Bekman‘s art-for-everyone portal, 20×200.com, as Best Starter Art Collection. She describes the site, which offers limited edition artworks at prices ranging from $20 to $2,000, as “a gateway drug to the art world.”