There is, naturally, a slight pang of guilt in that the author will lose the royalty that they might have received from the publisher, and I do think about that, but it is overwhelmed by the weird thrill I feel at imagining who else has owned this – who else read these words, on this page. Did anyone else get to the lines:

…I’d write “Anna” in the air – backward and right to left – so that the person I was speaking to could see, and when I was on the phone I’d dial the numbers – 2, 6, 6, 2 – so the person could hear what I couldn’t, myself, say.

…and feel the same odd little rush that I did? Maybe the rush originated from those shared moments, aligned in time around these magical objects – as if each copy of every book is a little Horcrux unto itself.

Or is it really just some internal sleight-of-hand dazzling our innate yearning for personal connections, sparked by a unique turn of the phrase that seems special and magical and all of those things that make for good storytelling?

~

[NOTE: Apologies to Jonathan Safran Foer for buying my copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on the cheap. If anyone is on the fence about this book, follow the link and buy a (new) copy...]

“Modern sports fans, who spend more and more of their free time consuming sports, ultimately want nothing more than to get away from the stuff. We’d rather watch sports than play sports; we’d rather watch sports on TV than watch sports in person; we’d rather play video-game sports than watch sports in any form. We’d rather follow fantasy teams than real teams. If there were a podcast about dead baseball announcers imagining pie in hell, we’d never listen, but we’d faithfully read some guy’s blog summary.”

I added it to my Instapaper account for a re-read when I got to the “Michael Vick has never been at war with Eastasia” line. Wow.

… He would have 31 in his career; enough to tie him with Joe Montana, but still trailing Elway (34), Johnny Unitas (34), Peyton Manning (35) and Dan Marino (36). As it stands, the Arizona win was Favre’s 30th comeback victory.

And here, for example, is a bit of Marino greatness. The infamous ‘fake spike’ that sent the Jet’s organization into a funk and Pete Carroll running back to college.

My feelings on the movie are best echoed by this orgasmic review of the said-fancy disc by Adam Tyner of DVDTalk:

“So, somewhere in the middle of Scott Pilgrim’s second date with the very literal girl-of-his-dreams, one of her ex-boyfriends suddenly crashes through the ceiling. Within a minute or two, this guy breaks out into a Bollywood dance number, continues his shoulder-jiggling dance routine mid-air, spawns a gaggle of winged, fanged demon-hipster-chicks, and flings a barrage of fireballs Scott’s way. ‘Course, everyone knows that Scott Pilgrim is the best fighter in the province, so he air-juggles Ramona’s ex Street Fighter-style until he bursts into a couple bucks in coins. Scott isn’t concerned so much about the fact that a levitating, demon-summoning, pyrokinetic Indian kid had tried to kill him before exploding into pocket change; no, he’s just miffed that the guy didn’t leave enough for bus fare back home…(fast forward)…In other words, it’s pretty much the best thing ever.”

“Tea Party types mistakenly believe reasonable and progressive Americans disrespect them for their anti-government rhetoric. That’s untrue. Despite its use in attack ads, there is no such thing as an “anti-jobs” candidate. Everyone wants less spending, reduced deficits and decreased government control of everyday life … So it’s not that many of us don’t want what the Tea Party wants; it’s that we don’t believe the Tea Party genuinely wants those things”

From of Abe Sauer at THE AWL.

“Keep in mind, O’Reilly may pull just over 3 million viewers a show, but Prairie Home Companion bests that by a million. Even Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me has as many listeners as Bill has viewers. Recently, O’Reilly’s audience surged to over 4 million following the hissy fit on “The View.” That’s a regular week for Car Talk, listened to and loved by 4.4 million. Even gratingly twee This American Life (1.7 million) pulls just about the same numbers as Fox News superstar Glenn Beck.”

“I don’t give a shit if people want to call it Art. I am an eye-man, and I look and look…And if I see something I find interesting, whether in a theme park, or a museum, then it has value for me. High, low, one stop up, one stop down…Is there a lift that takes one from kitsch to art?”

via Giles Revell

I have a HU-hu-huge stack of unread magazines, articles, books laying about, and when I finally made it thru the Spring issue of UK art-mag ELEPHANT, that quote from Wim Delvoye (he of CLOACA and x-ray erotica fame) resonated. Great magazine, btw. Anything that brings you Giles Revell and Zak Smith in one gulp can’t be too bad for you…

//
www.elephantmag.com
www.wimdelvoye.be
www.gilesrevell.com
www.zaxart.com

Dinner With Henry (1979)

“Yeah. OK. I wrote mean things about Sarah Palin on Twitter. And not because I’m political. But because it’s fun. I do think she’s Hitler. But that’s not why I do it. I do it because it’s fun. But I let myself have fun at her expense, because she’s Hitler. Her being Hitler allows me in my head to say mean things about her, but that’s not the reason. The reason is because it’s just fun. Because she’s just an amazing, beautiful perfect villain. She’s just crystalline. She says things that are at perfect right angles to truth and reason, and that blows me away. It’s poetry when that woman speaks. And I’m sexually attracted to her boobs. She’s sexually attractive, to me. But I do think she’s terribly dangerous, and I do think she could really Hitler up the place. And by the way, once, I wrote on Twitter that she’s the new Hitler, and I got this immediate — like, immediate — email on the same device, from somebody that I kinda, whatever, I don’t want to say who, who said, ‘You gotta take that down. You can’t compare a person in the public eye to someone who killed six million Jews.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not saying that she’s that Hitler. She’s the early Hitler, when he was building power. I don’t know how many Jews he was going to kill. But I know that she’s building power the same way. Hitler was voted into office through this weird, like he took a bunch of seats, and he got this party going, and he just started intimidating people, and that’s exactly what she’s doing. Again. I don’t care. I’m not political, but why not? Fuck it. If Hitler was running, I’d say ‘Hey, fucking losers, suck my dick, Hitler!’ And I wouldn’t feel like, oh, that’s not that nice. Fuck ‘em. He’s Hitler.”

And I just know I’m going to have to suffer through another idiotic campaign listening to that dimwit, while less-crafty dimwits around me talk about her like she’s not the dark-love-spawn of Eugene McCarthy and Ann Coulter (who actually is nearly 74 years old. Lotta work done there.). There. Thank you, Louis CK, for being dickish where I fear to tread.

Whoa.