Dave Cullen: Writing

The stench of network news

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 04:29:06 GMT

OK, maybe I get the situation after all.

For years, I've been flumoxed about the pathetic state of network news: not what's wrong with it, but why the net execs don't get what's wrong with it.

They are well aware that something is wrong. Ratings have declined rapidly for several years, and the story is monumentally worse demographically. The average age for the nightly network newscasts is now something like 60, which barely even seems possible. (Median age of 60 would be bad enough, but average? That means for every 20 year-old watching, there are three 80 year-olds, or six 70 year-olds. Unbelievable. The number of young adults watching is trending toward zero.

That's a huge problem for the nets now--because advertisers don't pay much for old folks--and a life or death problem for them in the medium run, because as Les Moonves admitted in so many words last night on Charlie Rose, those viewers are going to be dying off, and if we don't attract some young ones, it's over.

That viewing pattern seems pretty obvious: old people who grew up with decent news shows established a lifelong habit and many continue. Younger people with other options who tune in are repulsed by what they see and choose not to watch.

So what's the problem with the shows? It seems so freaking obvious, yet they've tried a million different fixes and they never seem to address the obvious one: they're shitty storytellers. I mean, really shitty. I only check in occasionally these days--like yes, I did check Katie Couric out, and she was fine, better than fine, actually, I think she's really good. And they tried to change the show surrounding her, making it magaziney, more feature pieces and all that, but that didn't do diddly, because it's these same retched cliche-ridden pieces that tell us almost nothing, but in a magazine format. And it really doesn't matter how wonderful Katie is introducing all this crap; at some point we still have to watch the crap, and why would we?

The correspondents just seem to rely on all the same tired lines night after night, stringing together lame conventional wisdom and expressing it with a string of cliches, but worst of all, they try so hard to make it cute, or sometimes to make it cool, or sometimes funny--none of which 90% of them have any talent at. And most nauseating of all, they feel this perpetual need to tie every freaking story up with a little bow: a final line or series of lines that "puts it all in perspective," or some such twaddle, like ". . . in one small town, they are learning never to forget -- but sometimes not to remember either" or some horrible reach to sound profound or something.

For me, the defining moment of modern news was--I hate to say this, but it really was 9/11. But not in the sense that it was a watershed event or it was so important that it changed our world or blah blah blah with that nonsense. I mean that for about 24 hours, they QUIT trying to be so damn profound or cute or . . . over-produced, I guess. There was no title to the tragedy yet, and no theme music. Those are obvious hallmarks, but those are just the symptoms. What was really different, was that nobody tried to do these damn packed "stories"--they just said what the hell was happening. It was wonderful. They stopped doing the gross shit they normally do and just spoke candidly about what was happening, what they had learned, what they were finding out. No wannabee-profound bows at the end, just stripped away to no nonsense reporting. And to my utter amazement, they were really good at it.

I actually dreamed, briefly, that they would both notice the difference, and notice that it was actually much better than when they were trying to hard--or when they just didn't have the time to package it.

For a long time I thought the problem was that they were just pretty shitty storytellers, and I couldn't get why the editors or execs or whomever could not see that. (Although I wonder how much of the problem is that the "anchors" got way too much power. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were all made the top editors of their shows, as well. That's almost always a problem. If the people writing or creating are the same people editing--I think that fails to grasp the concept of what an editor is: someone standing a few steps outside the creation-process, who can more objectively assess, and tell you when it's not working.)

But still, why couldn't someone--say, Les Moonves--not see the problem of shitty storytelling and just tell them.

And then I saw him on Charlie Rose, addressing it, and saying off-handedly once again that the key to the news is just like sports or fiction or movies or whatever: great storytelling. And it dawned on me suddenly that he gets that, but maybe doesn't get that they're trying too hard. Maybe the format of three-minutes of spoken word is hard to tell much of a story, and/or the correspondents aren't that good at it, and they're trying to tell a beginning middle and end to something without the space to do that, and so they are getting these incredibly hokey attempts. They're OVERtelling it. They're trying to end every freaking piece with some brilliant capper line like it's the great american novel--and by the way, not noticing that most great novels don't end with thundering profundity lines--and they're screwing up by pushing the storytelling thing too hard and just producing really shitty ones.

Maybe someone just needs to tell them, "Look. It doesn't need to be clever. It doesn't need to be cute. It doesn't need a bunch of yucks--and by the way, you're not actually a comedian. It doesn't need to be revelatory every time. Just let it be what it is, tell it like it is, don't try to make it intense or dramatic or solemn or A Lesson. Just tell the freaking story naturally. Quit trying to jazz everything up."

I get the sense that they have gotten the message that it's about great storytelling, so they're overtelling every story, the first instinct to really bad writing. Somebody please tell them to stop.

Watching Brokeback Mountain -- just about perfect

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:20:14 GMT

Watched Brokeback Mountain last night. Wow. Just about perfect.

Every bit as moving as the short story, and then some. They really fleshed out the characters, and I empathized with them more strongly. Enough that I'm not angry at Ennis anymore. I totally understand why he did it. How he thought he had to.

The problem with preconceptions is that it was hard not to sit there in the first half hour thinking, "Heath Ledger is doing fine, but 'a revelation'? Not quite getting that." (And there was plenty of quiet time to think.) But by the end I had forgotten all about that, and I was just in awe.

And Jake. Jake was just a joy to behold, every moment he was on screen. He really was. And that was his job--that was his character. And what a wonderful character to light up this movie. Would have been so much darker and flatter without him.

The women were great, too, and I'm so glad their characters were fleshed out. The book focuses on two lives ruined, but you get a powerful sense here of it tearing up all four. And to a lesser extent, hurting the daughters as well. Michelle Williams, in particular, is heartbreaking.

Oh, God, speaking of heartbreaking. My favorite scene in the book, hands down, was the reunion on the landing after four years--where they were so overcome with seeing each other, they grabbed each other and kissed passionately in broad daylight.

It was just as powerful on film, but topped by several others. I guess that says something extraordinary right there. The far-and-away best scene of one of the most beloved stories I have ever read, was bested about three times in the film. Would hardly have thought that possible.

The second night they get together out on Brokeback was . . . well, like nothing I've ever seen before, but only in the sense that I've never seen it with men. Picture one of the all-time great romantic moments on film, and then imagine it finally challenged by something just as beautiful, complex and tender with two men. Finally. First time ever ever ever I didn't have to imagine a stand-in for the woman up there.

It was just amazing. They had "gotten together" in a late-night drunken situation that Ennis was completely unable to deal with in the morning. Or the next evening. He tells Jake he's not queer, that it was a one-time thing and that's that. But he can't stick to it. When he comes into the tent, he's completely at war inside. Trying desperately not to do it, but his heart begging him to finally accept what it feels. It is so hard for him, his struggle is so palpable, and Jack is so perfect with him. God me balling again just remembering.

And their last climactic scene together and what comes after: that is just so intense, slammed me in the skull so hard so many ways one after the other after the other.

Just devastating.

And I'm not going to say a whole lot here, but I do believe Heath's finest moment comes when Ennis visits Jacks parents and gets some news from his mom. What he doesn't say. What he works so hard to hide. God. That poor, poor man. How can you possibly blame that guy?

---

So a strange thing happened to me after the film, while Ang Lee was interviewed onstage. (Streaming video and a news story on it here -- Thanks Mark. And FYI, Annie left early from the book signing, so I missed here. Didn't talk to her or Ang. Damn. But they sat across the aisle from us, and during the credits I got a chance to at least walk over and thank Larry and Diana for doing such an amazing job. They really fleshed this incredible story out.)

So the interview was great. To listen to him is to know you are in the presence of a true artist, whatever you think of this particular film. (Or The Hulk.) Late in the discussion, the Denver Post critic brought up they gay question a couple times, dealing with the gay issue, the gay this the gay that. It was oddly jarring for me. So weird to hear it called a gay film or a gay love story or gay anything. For the last two hours, I had just been lost in an exquisite love story.

I know, I know, I have scoffed right here about people saying it's not a gay film: What! It's two men in love having sex. That's called gay. The entire story revolves around the forbiddenness of their love--because it's gay--the whole tragedy is centered on the problem of the men being gay.

Yeah, I have said all that. And it's all true. In that sense, it is a gay film, in two distinct and crucial ways. But I'm now seeing the other point of view, too. It's also an aching love story between two people who just happen to be gay.

The other great romantic movie of the decade--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--was also a gripping love story of two people fighting desperately both for and against their problematic love for each other. But it wasn't a film about a memory-erasing device was it? That was just the vehicle, the problem to present for these two people to fight madly for the love being ripped away from them.

Exactly the same thing here.

All I know is, that in spite of knowing full well for the two-plus hours that it was the revulsion of homosexuality that was driving these two tragic lovers apart, I truly forgot about it being a gay thing. The love story was just too intense. It didn't matter what was driving these two guys apart, it was just about the intensity of the love between these two guys.

So I was literally startled to hear her using the gay word while I was still basking in that afterglow. Maybe because the concept of "gay love" is offensive to some part of me that is sick of hearing it distinguished from "love." It's exactly the same. For two hours I had not been watching gay love, I had just been watching love.

It didn't feel like a gay film. It just felt like home.

---

Update:

You guys kept adding so many comments (thousands), that long after this post, we started a whole Brokeback Mountain Discussion Forum.

And for links to everything imaginable, see our Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide.

Salon included me in their classics

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:38:35 GMT

This is kind of cool. Salon is celebrating its tenth and anniversary and every day the past week they have been highlighting their top stories from a single year.

I did most of my work for them in 1999 and 2000, and two of my stories made the list each year. The lists for 1999 & 2000.

From 1999, they picked two of my Columbine stories:

”I smell like the presence of Satan”
Is Littleton's evangelical subculture a solution to the youth alienation that played a role in the Columbine killings, or a reflection of it?
By Dave Cullen

Inside the Columbine High investigation
Everything you know about the Littleton killings is wrong. But the truth may be scarier than the myths.
By Dave Cullen

And in 2000 they featured, this two-part series on one of the last bastions of blatant discrimination toward gays in America. (I hate to call it a "gays in the military" story, even though it technically is, because that has phrase has like the mind-numbingly tired politico piece I specifically wanted to avoid):

Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t fall in love, Part I of II
A rare peek inside the lives of gay military officers, a world filled with staggering sacrifice, loneliness and glass ceilings.
By Dave Cullen

A heartbreaking decision, Part II
Gay officers must choose between personal happiness and the careers they've spent years building.
By Dave Cullen

13 days till I meet Ang and Annie

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:00:14 GMT

Ahhhhhhhhh. Thirteen days till I see Brokeback Mountain. It's closing the Denver Film Fest Nov. 19.

Ang is receiving the Mayor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, award, and will be interviewed onstage afterward. That will be very cool. (Especially since I think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is one of the few true artistic masterpieces of the last decade in film.)

Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana are also coming. Even better.

But the best part: Ang and Annie are attending a smallish cocktail party fundraiser before the film, and a very kind and generous friend was nice enough to buy me a very expensive ticket.

Can hardly believe it. CAN NOT wait!

Capote

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 06:05:34 GMT

I swore off blogging for a bit to stay focused, but this I need to talk about.

Just saw Capote. Extraordinary. Especially for a writer. What a gift to get such a glimpse at his process. But . . .

Huge but. But what a cynical take on him. I just don't buy it. He got all those people to open up to him by faking empathy? When he was truly just cold blooded, calculating and entirely manipulative? I guess there are con artists that good out there. I just found it way too hard to swallow.

Now I totally buy that he manipulated people. And that he was routinely conflicted: horrified and saddened, while at the same time at work--he could spot great potential for his own gain at the same moment he experienced great sorrow for them.

But this film showed only half of that equation, hence very little internal conflict. He cared only about himself in this version. Monstrous megalomaniac.

I wrote down CYNICAL! on my note paper about 20 minutes into it. Later I replaced it with cruel. Eventually, comical. Mommy Dearest level ludicrous when he whined that they were torturing him by keeping his alleged friend the killer alive.

Maybe he really was as cold blooded as the killers. But I found that aspect of it exceptionally unconvincing.

And just about everything else about the film pitch perfect. Unfortunately, that was the central conceit.

So I still admire it greatly, with one gigantic reservation.

Mark it a deeply flawed masterpiece.

---

Note: I don't fault Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, by the way, which was stunning. (And everyone else in the film was exceptional, too.) Unless they left the other half on the editing floor it was clearly written that way and directed that way. Not his decision, it would appear.

Joan Didion. A treasure

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:36:41 GMT

I hope you caught Joan Didion on Charlie Rose last night.

I could not even hope to capture this woman.

I still have not gotten to any of her work, except Regarding Henry, for some reason, which moved me very deeply, brought to the surface all the things I loved about my late mentor, Lucia Berlin.

Just an extraordinary person to listen to.

Here's the Pub Weekly review of her book, The Year of Magical Thinking. (courtesy of Amazon):

Starred Review. Many will greet this taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief as a long-awaited return to the terrain of Didion's venerated, increasingly rare personal essays. The author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and 11 other works chronicles the year following the death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, from a massive heart attack on December 30, 2003, while the couple's only daughter, Quintana, lay unconscious in a nearby hospital suffering from pneumonia and septic shock. Dunne and Didion had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years, and Dunne's death propelled Didion into a state she calls "magical thinking." "We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss," she writes. "We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes." Didion's mourning follows a traditional arc—she describes just how precisely it cleaves to the medical descriptions of grief—but her elegant rendition of its stages leads to hard-won insight, particularly into the aftereffects of marriage. "Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age." In a sense, all of Didion's fiction, with its themes of loss and bereavement, served as preparation for the writing of this memoir, and there is occasionally a curious hint of repetition, despite the immediacy and intimacy of the subject matter. Still, this is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gave me a bit of new/renewed understanding about all those poor Columbine victims I'm dealing with all the time. Good to remember.

What a great magazine

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 04:40:49 GMT

Don't you just love the Times Magazine?

I have subscriptions to about six different magazines and I can't even bring myself to flip through them most months. (A friend picked a copy of Vanity Fair off the coffee table last week and sniffed all the perfume ads. That's the most anyone has gotten out of it in awhile.)

But the Times--as dry as I find the newspaper (with brilliant exceptions here and there), that magazine has some incredible writing week in, week out.

And interesting stories. Yesterday afternoon and this morning, I lolled my way through the wonderful Chasing Ground, and just got started on just got started on Meet the Life Hackers, which may end up being even more relevant to my life.

Rather than try to resummarize, I'll just give you the teasers directly from the (online) magazine:

Chasing Ground:

Whether or not there's a real-estate bubble hardly matters for a large company like Toll Brothers. The mega-developer is hungrily buying up land for its market-tested luxury homes and transforming the landscape of America's haves.

Meet the Life Hackers:

Can anyone find a way to make your constantly beeping and dinging computer leave you alone and let you work? Inside the nascent field of interruption science.

The upside of covering Columbine

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 06:16:06 GMT

I was just directed to this interesting site called The Trenchcoat Chronicles (tag line, "Poking society in the eye with a sharp pointy stick") and oddly enough, the latest post was about Columbine.

One of those whacked out readers writing to him praising the killers. Ugh.

I just had a brief email exchange with the author of the site, and he lamented that "unfortunately guys like that are an everyday occurence at my site." Double ugh.

Luckily they're not around here, for whatever reason. I've had a few, but rarely.

What I do get--as I pointed out to him, and realized I was way overdue in mentioning here--is a whole lot of high school and college kids emailing me asking for help with their reports. Usually about one a week. From the weirdest places in the world.

It's a minor hassle responding to them all, but there's also nothing in this world that makes me quite as happy. (And luckily, I got tired enough of repeating myself a few years back that I created The Columbine Almanac, which I can usually direct them to, and which I use all the time myself, to find the evidence I need as I write.

One girl actually entered a school contest and advanced up to the state level (in Oregon, if I remember), and her family flew her out here to interview me and Frank DeAngelis, though I was unfortunately out of town that week and had to do mine by phone. She asked great questions, though. (Much better than most journos I know. Seriously. Sadly.)

I wince sometimes when I get these requests, but always makes me smile, too.

Everyone should have one

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 03:16:41 GMT

Ahhhhhhhh.

Research assistant.

How did I get along this long without one?

I hired two a few weeks back, but one got very sick and has been out for weeks, the local one had some previous committments. Well, the local guy was back today, and we've been working nearly the entire day and we knocked out a heck of a lot of stuff. Most of the way organized now, and he's checking into all sorts of research for me.

What was I thinking in not doing this sooner?

Just about saved my life. Can't wait to have them both cracking.

Trey Parker is adorable!

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 18:43:49 GMT

Just freaking adorable.

(OK, one quickie daytime post. This just lit me up. Gotta get it out.)

My apologies for starting with that somewhat shallow and immature sentiment instead of something serious, but after 20 minutes with these guys, and all the hilarious, enlightening and above all inspiring things they had to say, the honest truth is, that is the one irresistible thought bouncing round my brain right now.

God. These two are a freaking riot.

Oh. Context. They were on Charlie Rose last night. Sort of a mindfuck right there, Charlie & The South Park Boys, which they commented on, of course: now we've won and Emmy, we've done charlie rose, how do you stay punk after that? heeheehee.

(Of course it makes sense as well, Charlie loves to have influential people from any realm of culture, though he does tend to lag nearly as far behind as Time magazine, and it has taken him nine years to get these pop culture titans. But still. The contrast is quite amusing. Also amusing that Charlie pointed out he had been a character on both South Park and The Simpsons.)

Hennyway, just watching while I had a bite. Usually use Charlie as radio, but these two were just too delightful to look away. Even as talking heads, they're fun to watch.

And delightful is not a word I'm too comfortable using out loud too often, but sometimes a slightly uncomfortable word just fits.

They are so giddy! That's the best part of watching them: not even the way they crack me up--though they do--but the way they crack themselves up. They talk about how the show is such a grind, not fun at all--hmmmm, sort of like writing, much of the time--but unintended inspiration here is, their LIVES are so much fun. Not by design, I'm sure, they just enjoy the hell out of existence.

That or they just popped a couple amyl nitrate capsules before they went on.

And not just laughter, their faces are just so damn expressive, particularly Trey. (And how did I overlook how handsome he was before? Great. Why does it always have to be the straight one. At least I think he's straight.)

I had to pause the Tivo right now to grab my laptop and type this on the couch, because Charlie has just asked Trey if he's a libertarian, and after a quick duck and Charlie's insistence, Trey is literally biting his lower lip trying to bring himself to -- presumably, I'm in freeze-frame anticipating his answer -- admit it.

OK, unfroze. In his best Newhart stutter, "It's, it's possible."

Heeheehee.

Just too freaking adorable for words.

---

OK, I really wanted to end on that note. But then . . .

Charlie--and here's why we love him--plays along wonderfully for most of the exchange, but doesn't let him duck, and at the end, asks Matt Stone, incredulously the exact question running through every audience member's mind, but that nobody else in the business but he and Oprah and maybe Katie Couric would actually spit out: "Why is he embarrassed by this?"

Matt laughs, Trey says, "I'm not embarrassed at all, it's just a difficult question."

Charlie is still more incredulous. "Why is it difficult!"

"Because it's it's . . .

"It's like saying are you . . .?"

Charlie loses the balls to finish that one.

First awkward pause of the interview. Finally, from Trey:

"It's like are you gay? It's like . . . a little."

He explodes with laughter. His face totally contorted in laughter.

{Editor's note: Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! He's joking I'm sure--almost sure--but yea anyway for the tiny little idea of opening. Wait, he's not through yet:}

Raising his arms, palms up, like his eyebrows, "On a Friday night, maybe." Suddenly quiet, faux serious. "No chick around . . . sure."

Lots of laughs all around. And then a more serious explanation. And yet another thing I have in common with them. Ahhhhhh. Too bad it's just the odd Friday night.

But who knows, maybe Matt will drag him to check out our latest gaybar, won't be many chicks around there. And it just happens to be a Friday night spot. Hmmmmm.

Bigger hmmm. I seem to have just blogged through the rest of my lunch break. Can't even watch the rest of the interview. (But something to look forward to at 4 p.m. snack.)

Nice to have something to be proud of from Colorado. Eager to get back to writing to be the next thing.

The best stories on Capote buried here

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 04:48:46 GMT

In honor of--or rather in order to market--the new Capote film, The New York Times is running something called "A Sponsored Archive," with free links to some of its most important pieces published about him over the years.

(Normally, they charge for archive stories.)

Can't wait for the film. In Cold Blood has been in my top five books ever since I read it about five years ago. And I do hope to knock it off its pedestal one day. Eager to see Hollywood's take on the ghastly compromises he made to create it.

(And as a bonus for visiting the site, you might get to see it much earlier. If you live in Denver, just clicking on it will generate an invite to a free preview screening this Thursday. I assume similar previews are set in other cities.

I am still wading through the archives, but the two richest pieces I found so far are A Book in a New Form Earns $2-Million for Truman Capote, published two weeks before the book, and The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel, an interview by George Plimpton. The intro to the latter:

"In Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity - nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote, presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discussed the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel. . .

---

Note: Had to break my weekday silence to let you know about the free tix, and cause it's nearly 11 p.m. and I'm done working for the day. So one more in a sec, since I'm here.

Update:

Trailer for Capote. And great story in the Times: Answered Prayers: How 'Capote' Came Together.

Synopsis from RT:

In November, 1959, Truman Capote ( Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and a favorite figure in what is soon to be known as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Times. It tells of the murders of four members of a well-known farm family—the Clutters—in Holcomb, Kansas. Similar stories appear in newspapers almost every day, but something about this one catches Capote's eye. It presents an opportunity, he believes, to test his long-held theory that, in the hands of the right writer, non-fiction can be compelling as fiction. What impact have the murders had on that tiny town on the wind-swept plains? With that as his subject—for his purpose, it does not matter if the murderers are never caught—he convinces The New Yorker magazine to give him an assignment and he sets out for Kansas. Accompanying him is a friend from his Alabama childhood: Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who within a few months will win a Pulitzer Prize and achieve fame of her own as the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Though his childlike voice, fey mannerisms and unconventional clothes arouse initial hostility in a part of the country that still thinks of itself as part of the Old West, Capote quickly wins the trust of the locals, most notably Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who is leading the hunt for the killers. Caught in Las Vegas, the killers—Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino)—are returned to Kansas, where they are tried, convicted and sentenced to die. Capote visits them in jail. As he gets to know them, he realizes that what he had thought would be a magazine article has grown into a book, a book that could rank with the greatest in modern literature. His subject is now as profound as any an American writer has ever tackled. It is nothing less than the collision of two Americas: the safe, protected country the Clutters knew and the rootless, amoral country inhabited by their killers. Hidden behind Capote's often frivolous façade is a writer of towering ambition. But even he wonders if he can write the book—the great book—he believes destiny has handed him. "Sometimes, when I think how good it could be," he writes a friend, "I can hardly breathe."

NOTICE: See you on the weekends

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 17:17:40 GMT

Hey. You might have noticed I'm rarely here during the week these days.

Yes, by design. Trying to keep my focus entirely on my book during the week. Hence the big one-day bursts on Saturdays and Sundays. So look for me then. (Or on Mondays when you get back to trolling the web at the office, while your boss is away. heeheehee.)

OK, better try that bigger:

LOOK FOR ME MOSTLY ON THE WEEKENDS UNTIL THIS BOOK IS DONE!

Occasionally I may stop by in an evening, if I've had a great day and deserve an indulgence, or maybe once in awhile for a quickie. (Like just now. I figured since I was here to let you know this, I could pound out a quick reaction to the Housewives.)

But hopefully you'll see a lot of self-control.

See you Saturday.

Faulkner rules!

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:52:31 GMT

That title feels a bit silly to me now, but I could imagine no other heading when I first envisioned this post two months ago, so I couldn't forgive myself if I committed it now.

Sorry for the delay. So busy.

But I did what Oprah told me this summer, and picked up my beautiful little boxed set of three Faulkners.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions on the order to approach them. I decided Oprah's handlers prolly knew what they were doing by leading me into As I Lay Dying out of written sequence, and plunged in there.

Wow.

For about 60 pages, I was annoyed and perplexed. This shit was really confusing, and to what end? Not an insight anywhere in sight, a group of--I'm sorry, but illiterate southern prairiebillies from half a century ago with no original thoughts on their existence, and absolutely no connection whatsoever to my life.

That was embarrassing to admit. Sorry about the bigoted part. Didn't like feeling those things about "dumb southerners," wasn't ready to admit it at the time, but yes, those thoughts were in there, despite having lived a good chunk of my life in the south and finding just as many intelligent people there as I have in the north, east and west (all of which I have lived in.)

Then, somewhere around page 60 I started to get the hang of how to read him--chiefly, that when it suddenly made no sense, that was OK; don't get so damn frazzled that you have to know everything every moment; just read on, and all will be revealed in time, and luckily almost always within a few pages. That ability--and my new-found willingness--to just ride out the confusion and uncertainty actually started to feel exhilarating.

So he stopped being such a royal pain in the ass relatively quickly, but I was still wondering what the payoff was supposed to be.

The exact moment, I don't remember. Really dawned on me gradually. And I'm not even going to try to recount it here. But these people had SO much to enlighten me with. They were uneducated, and a few of them were freaking stupid to boot, but most of them . . . man.

I was just overwhelmed by the insights these people had buried inside them. And the way Faulkner told his story. And the way the story kept twisting and twisting and twisting again. Not the plot, the . . . hmmmmm. Words are failing me. The revelations? Of both style and content, I guess, they way they were woven so intricately and perfectly together.

Every ten pages or so I just gasped, and though, Wow, this alone makes this book extraordinary. And then ten pages later . . .

Faulkner rules!

yet another love/hate relationship

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:23:32 GMT

You guys are so great sending me all the emails, but you really should consider putting them into the comments, so everyone can share. (They're a lot more insightful than the comments crap I read on most blogs.)

Bill, who will otherwise remain anonymous since I didn't ask permission just responded, in part, to my message about Faulkner, a ways back, that I am so delinquent in following up on. He writes:

My favorite quote from As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren says,

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter."

You writers have a love/hate relationship with words.....

Hahaha. Never thought about that. Even when I read that passage. Loved the hell out of that passage as well, but never noticed the contradiction. Or at least the paradox.

Then I was about to accuse Bill of forcing the other Bill's demons onto me, when I realized I share that love/hate relationship exactly. Why do I think I responded so strongly to the scene?

Ahhhhhhh. The things we will never see in our own reflection. Thanks for pointing that one out. Now what the hell am I going to do with it?

Writing my way out

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:09:03 GMT

If in doubt, write.

Feeling so damn grumpy I felt the need to write about it this morning and what do you know. Not exactly tranquility, but a whole lot better.

Lunch helped too, but I needed a small taste of accomplishment first. And contentment.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Praise God for google. Again.

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:31:40 GMT

Perhaps you noticed my failure to misspell a single word in my last post.

If you've been here before, you may well think me retarded. I can spell moderately well when I concentrate, which is not even rarely on a first past--I'm stunned by the typos I know perfectly well how to spell on even a quick proof.

But I made a decision way back when I started this blog, that it was a freedom zone where I didn't have to feel weighted down by editing or even copy-editing. I make look like a dumbass, but I was free to just run with my thoughts, without all the psychic weight that crap bears down on me.

(Really. You'd be surprised. When you write for a living, all the overhead can grow wearisome. At least to some of us.)

And yes, pasting it into Word, spellchecking and pasting back was too much of a bother. At least with the added wrinkle that Word's embedded formatting screwed everything up over here, so I'd have to paste to word, spellcheck, past to Wordpad, paste back here, switch to source-code mode, remove the small-font command even Wordpad added at the start and end, switch back to WYSIWYG mode, and then proceed as usual. Yes, that was too much trouble for every post. See how long you'd keep it up.

Of course a decent blog tool would take care of most of that with a spellcheck, but I don't use a decent tool, I use Radio Userland, which I'm stuck with as long as I stick with Salon.

(I do have an escape strategy in mind, but not till I get myself an intern, which I was hoping would have happened by now.)

Hennyway. That was the corner I was painted into.

Until this morning.

A few weeks ago I got a new computer, and as I got around to downloading the Google toolbar Monday, I noticed a new feature. Spellcheck for web forms.

I no longer have to wait for Userland to add the most basic, obvious tool to this annoying little window I type into. Google has finally invented a universal one for any web window I might have open.

(In retrospect, I'm betting someone else invented this a long time ago, but nobody that brought it to my attention. Microsoft certainly didn't build one into their browser, unless they've been keeping it a secret.)

So now, assuming I remember to actually hit the button, these entries will be cleansed.

Thanks, Google. I love you even more.

I also love the idea of GoogleTalk, which I discovered at the same time, though I've yet to see it in operation, because for now it only works with other people set up on gmail (their extraordinary and yes, free email service).

But supposedly it will provide me free phone service over the web. I tried Yahoo's version once, and it was free, though it kept cutting off the first word of everything the guy it said. I sure as hell talk a lot, though, and mostly with my friends who are mostly scattered all over creation, so I sure could use a free service. Especially for my friend in Rome, who always needs a good deal of encouragement, and provides the same in return.

Just wish I had bought a little bit of your stock. (Which could also be stated as: I wish I had had a little money to buy your stock with when I thought it was still cheap under $100.)

(If you haven't been following, it broke $300 a few days ago. But I did manage to sock a small bit of money into a China fund that's been doing quite nicely.)

grumpy days are here again

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:19:22 GMT

And I was sure this one had such promise.

Been grumpy all week, but went to bed early last night, and woke up rested and refreshed. 6:20 a.m., my early post-dawn wake-up, typically followed by a quick pee, another two hours of sleep and I'm good to go.

Typically. Not today.

Rested and refreshed for 6:20, not at all ready for the day.

Thought I would brush it off quickly, but it's a bit past noon and haven't shaken the grumpiness for a moment. I can feel the scowl on my face this very minute, and I really resent it there. Which induces a nasty little self-perpetuating problem. Especially since it keeps screaming, You're not going to write shit in this mood! and that can easily grumpify me on the best of mornings.

Never did get back to sleep. I guess that's the problem.

One slightly short night of sleep doesn't seem to explain it all though.

So many nagging little things to take care of. (I got the damn groceries last night, thought that was going to help.

Maybe I'll be eating better now. My back is almost healed again, and it finally rained a little last night, so maybe my allergies would start waning. Those were supposed to help.

I think the back injury--and the pulled muscles before it--may be to blame. Barely been to the gym or onto the bike at all the past two months. Latest setback was a scary fall on the stairs early last week. Hit my back hard, couldn't even get up at first. Could barely walk the next day.

(The spill was coincidental to today's CT scan, though the impact of the fall may well go back to the same cause: busted vertebra 20 years ago.)

So I've been icing it, wolfing down anti-inflammatories and resting it.

Maybe a little too much rest. Need to tote that bike down the stairs this afternoon and take a good long ride along the river.

That always lifts my spirit immediately. And slowly restarts the process of keeping my heart happy. The physical one this time, not the metaphorical.

A Columbine no-brainer?

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:46:36 GMT

I always wanted to attend a supreme court hearing.

Fascinating. Not the U.S. court I slipped into, but the Colorado court. Presumably less distinguished jurors, but the same process.

And a very important issue--for a couple reasons, it turns out--at least two of them very dear to my heart. A third one two, as it turned out, being argued from the other side. (But not so well, I think.)

The issue was the Columbine killers' writings and recordings, particularly the two most crucial chunks of evidence in the case, which are still being withheld more than six years later: Eric Harris' journal, and The Basement Tapes.

So much to say, and I will, hopefully later today. Got to run to get a CT scan, though. Finally getting my old injury checked out, and they need to do an extra series.

More soon.

AP story here. (And advance story on it from yesterday here.)

dell had its day?

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:35:42 GMT

slate has an intriguing cover story today titled Is Dell Dying?

prophetic timing for me, since i've been cursing the once beloved company all week.

i just set up the new studio to write my book. i'm hiring a research assistant, so i bought a new desktop, and a 20-inch widescreen monitor, and finally opend the consulting laptop purchased a few months back. i ordered all three separately, all three from dell. guess how many of them worked? guess how many hours i spent with outrageously bad customer "support" on each?

admitedly, both pcs were from the dell outlet store, i.e., refurbished. but the story on those--according to many distant articles in pc mag over the years, and my own experience, was that those were even more secure than a new dell model. most had been returned within the 30-day guarantee period, and regardless, they had undergone a few weeks of real-world testing. and problems discovered would surely be repaired and not shipped out faulty again, because dell was hypersensitive to its quality ratings.

but in the arduous process of tech support on both pcs, i discovered that the problem in each had been discovered by the previous owner. dell also has a shitty tracking system for these refurbished models. in each case the supporter insisted i had already called about the product, giving me dates before my order. i soon figured out that these were the previous owners--particularly when different addresses and phone numbers were on file for my units--and that in fact, the desktop had had a faulty hard drive that prevented even an initial bootup, and the laptop had a screen so crappy you could barely make anything out.

how could either of these problems even get past the initial quality screen? if a pc won't even boot up, they're not going to catch that? if the laptop had even been started, and a person looked at the screen for two seconds to see if it was operational would have realized something was very wrong. i can see some problems getting past a quality screening, but either of these are unforgivable.

far worse, though, that another customer identified them, altered dell, who had record of each in their system, yet when the company recieved them back, just boxed them back up and shipped them out to me.

and supposedly the outlet store performs a second screening of every product, meaning again this step on the assembly line was skipped. no one turned either machine on for a routine check. no process was in place to correct even known problems, much less unknown ones.

those are signs of severe quality control problems.

but then the real nightmare started. the "support."

About that absence

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 03:05:23 GMT

Suddenly i'm so happy. Meaning, of coure, that i'm wriiting again. Wildly.

Not for a few days, actually, because I just rented a studio down the hall as my writing studio, and you wouldn't believe all the work getting it together. But loving that, too. Should have done this ages ago. Don't write in your apartment. Not if you don't have to. I was just so scared of being poor again, didn't want to risk spending any of the money I had made. But I earned it and I needed this, and man does it feel great.

Got a little wireless network now, which is too cool, running from my apartment to my studio, though for the moment it's mostly just letting me do all my web stuff on my laptop from the couch. This, for instance.

I'm not allowed to actually use it in the studio, except for book research and then only by getting up and doing it from the other PC at the other table. No web allowed at my writing desk. No web play anywhere in the studio. No TV. My two favorite activities in the world, it would seem--if you gauge by time occupied--and who would of guessed how liberating it would feel to be free of them.

Not entirely, of course, just in my work space. None of that distraction pollution. And since I've been spending nearly every waking moment down in that office--or moving into it--so far there's benn little time for my old little buddies.

Great research trip to Boston of all places for a Columbine book, great interviews, loads and loads of developments. It's just gushing out, now. Very exciting.

And then sometimes . . .

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 03:04:12 GMT

And then sometimes . . .

Just when you thought no TV creator would ever come close to getting a finale right.

Six Feet Under. Wow. Is it too late to take back all the whining about Nate--not killing him off, keeping him around; heeheehee--and all the other annoying whining depressing freaks on that show? All worth it now.

If you're just joinig the discussionn, I was too poor for HBO until this season, so I've only known this family about four months, starting with a marathon of last season, and then this summer's installments one week at a time.

Enough to get invested. These people.That ending. Just got to it. Got home from two and a half weeks on the road late last Monday, and I've been doling the final three episodes out over that period. Was thinking I might just take in half of the finale over dinner and get back to work quickly, but there was no way I was pulling myself away from that.

I could have gone through an entire box of kleenex but I just let them trickle down onto my chest.

I'm so grateful Alan Ball actually granted us some peace. We needed it with these people. And that closing montage. Extraordinary.

On paper I think I might have winced. You're supposed to resist all the trite little endings where every little storyline is wrapped up with a nice little bow, right? That's been the rule ever since I've been writing. Rules, rules rules. How we let them rule us. hehehe.

It didn't feel like it was really wrapping them up so much, it felt much more about the exhilaration of how much road she still had ahead of her. That they all did. But her in particular. I'm so glad they closed with Clare. For the longest time she drove me nuts, but over the past season she's slowly drifted toward the emotional center of it all for me. Because she was so unrealized?

But she will be. And she has no idea. Driving down that bleak lonely highway, and she has no idea what's ahead of her, how she will deal with it how long it will last. Eighty more years. God. An entire lifetime ahead of her.

These people all feel so tragic sometimes, because they can't get over seeing themselves that way. They see it all so hopeless. Locked into so damn many cages, they can't begin to figure out how they could dig themselves out of them.

And yet they will. And it will be glorious.

Thank you Alan.

I want to go write, now.

I have a question for you

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:46:37 GMT

I've been on quite the reading binge this summer.

Just goobled up Nicholas and Alexandra, all 571 pages, in eight days. The old dave might have spent six months or a year on that.

I'm still in the middle of The Genius Factory, but I had this urge to sink my teeth into something meatier. So I started Infinite Jest, which is 981 freaking pages before footnotes, which didn't necessarily intimidate me, though I'm 43 pages in and it's depressing the hell out of me.

Could be just that I was depressed early this week. Could be it. Intermittendly loving it and getting dragged down by it. Wasn't sure why for awhile, then I realized how incredibly detached it feels. Distant from its characters. He doesn't seem to really care about them.

Which thought immediately sent me scurring for Chekov, though he seems to have escaped from his post--peeking with his little monocle through the latticework of my bookend just above my writing table. I only have the one book of shorts by him in the house. (Which isn't actually a house, of course.)

But then today I was roaming the bookstore--Tattered Cover, one of Denver's few manmade treasures--and spotted Oprah's summer book selection. Three Faulkner classics, all the wonderful Vintage editions, packaged into a beautiful slipcase. On sale for 22 bucks. How could I refuse?

Especially since, as I will admit here and now, I made it out of not just high school, but grad school, in English, without ever laying eyes on a sentence of his. (Not that he wasn't required. I had this authority problem for awhile. Couldn't read anything assigned. Also became a game to see how high I could score just faking it from class discussions. Not in grad school, of course. But it was too late.)

So here is the question for you:

Where to start?

Three books in the set.

Chronologically (in order of his writing):

The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Light in August

Yet Oprah has assigned them in this order:

As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury
Light in August

She just flipped the first two. Because Dying is easier to work your way in, maybe? Not a bad reason, if that's it.

Or should I stick with Infinite Jest awhile?

I really do feel Faulkner calling me, though, which usually indicates the road to proceed. Hopefully I'll manage to get back to Jest. Perhaps to catch my breath with something exceptionally modern, after one or two of these Faulkners.

Ever since I finished The Sheltering Sky--in May, feels like an eternity ago now in reading time--I've been thirsting for another novel that will completely rock my world. Don't seem to appear every day, those worldrockers. (The link in this case is to my blog entry on it, though I was way too lazy and/or intimidated to try to capture any of the rocking.)

Nicholas and Alexandra was one great piece of meat, and wonderful writing, though the author was often an incredible jackass. Got way too close to his material, or something. Just really strange to read 500+ pages of indictment of those two ghastly people--He merely pathetic, she despicable--only to have him jumping in incessantly to apologize for them. What!

That's one book that never should have been written by a hardcore monarchist. (Whether he cops to it or not, he worships the ground royals walk on. Clearly, he feels his/our inferiority deeply.) Almost comical in that regard, but infuritating.

Still, I had a wonderful time with it, screaming back at him in the margins with my little blue pen.

And hey, I guess getting angry at a book is OK. Lot of good there. As long as I can respect it.

OK, so I'm still waiting for my answer. Seriously. Comments, people, or email me. This is a real dilemma for me, and I want to get started on this Faulkner guy like . . . now, actually. So which should it be? Order please, and a reason. Thank you.

Dirt is a magazine you never heard of

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:18:45 GMT

Because you don't live in Boulder.

But I used to and I met one of my best friends there, in grad school, which apparently took quite a while to germinate for us.

(Eight?) years later, he has his first novel out, Girls For Breakfast, which you might have seen me shamelessly hawking here.

But the Dirt people--Jennie Dorris, specifically--loved the novel and were nice enough to put him on their cover this week. And they included him on the inside, too--pretty funny interview.

(He also got a great review in Publisher's Weekly recently, by the way, and a string of newspapers pubs around the country, which I've been too lazy to get around to posting.)

hennyway. You'll prolly be wanting a sample from the interview. OK:

d: You mentioned answering phones. Are you talking about doing temp work?
DY: I temped for five and a half years. My specialty was reception work. I would get those one-day-a-week-for-six-months reception jobs. The first year or two, I would befriend people, and everyone thought I was a rock star - I was a cool guy that writes. By the time I was 29, I was the creepy old guy that writes stories at night.

d: A lot of the issues in the book revolve around growing up Korean American. Did the gawking in your hometown of Avon, Conn., continue in white-bread Boulder?
DY: It was old hat by the time I got there - I've always been an 'Asian sighting' wherever I go.
d: Did you enjoy being Boulder's only Asian?
DY: Actually, when I was there my hair was about 30 inches long, and because it's so sunny out there, I used to be tan. So I'd hang out at the Catacombs, and at least once a week some guy would come up and ask me what tribe I was in.
d: And what tribe were you in?
DY: I used to tell everyone that I was an Apache.

d: So you have a novel from Random House and two official interviews under your belt. Is your life completely different?
DY: My life hasn't changed at all. It's a weird thing, my life is no different than it was two years ago. And two years ago I was an abject failure.
d: So, with four rejected novels it must have taken a lot of perseverance to keep on writing. Did you have any mantras to keep you going?
DY: From ages 25 to 30, every birthday and every New Year's Eve, I would say to myself, "This is the year I'm going to write and sell a novel." Every year I thought more and more that I should start wishing for something I could get, like a pizza coupon.

That's pretty much what he's like in person, too. She did a good job of capturing him.

And if you found that even mildly amusing, you're going to really enjoy the tone of the novel.

Hey. If you read the interview, the pix from various stages of his life are pretty funny, but click here, to see the cover for an idea of what he looks like now. Very different. (It's an artist's rendering, but nails him.)

We have an unknown distance yet to run

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:20:32 GMT

Man, I love this American Experience. I know it sounds dull. Just showing on PBS is enough of a taint. I tend to put off watching them for weeks at a time, till my tivo entries dwindle down and there's nothing left, and then . . .

They tend to amaze me.

Just finished Kinsey yesterday, which was infinitely better than last year's film, and actually more entertaining.

Today, just whizzed through Lost in the Grand Canyon. Didn't actually watch it, because my tivo grabbed it from a strange station with no picture. Can you imagine a film more deserving of pictures than an exploration of the Grand Canyon. But it was still enthralling as radio.

Fascinating story of John Wesley Powell, who led the first group to explore it.

I didn't even know it was first touched by white people so recently (1869). I've actually stood at the last place any whiteguy had ever been to till then, at the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. (At that time, the Green and Grand.) Man. None of us had ever gone there before.

Does give me pause.

As then there's this quote from Powell -- hmmmmm. I'm going to give you a taste of where they were at in the journey from the transcript, ending with his quote that has been haunting all afternoon:

On July 21st, the 59th day of the journey, they passed the point where the Green River merged with the Grand. They were now on the Colorado. From here on, there was no way out -- no settlements, no chance to re-supply, nothing, until the end of the canyons, hundreds of miles downstream. The rapids were bigger and more perilous than ever.

"We have run 13 miles today in which we passed 35 rapids," wrote Bradley. "The constant banging on the rocks has begun to tell sadly on the boats. They are growing old faster, if possible, than we are."

They patched the boats with pine pitch, but could do nothing about the rot and mold that had, by now, destroyed most of their food.

Michael Ghiglieri: The rations were dwindling, they were on half rations and then they were on less than half rations, and mostly this meant eating dough balls of flour. And the prospect of actually starving to death was real.

Narrator: "The sun is so hot we can scarcely endure it, "wrote Bradley. "It heats the canyon walls like an oven. A walk out to civilization would be almost certain death."

Michael Ghiglieri: Every single day was a little worse than the day before. And, of course, they didn't know where they were. So, they didn't even know how bad it would get.

Narrator: By the middle of August, they were more than a mile deep in the earth. It was brutally hot, no game to hunt, no fish in the muddy river. This was the Grand Canyon. Barely ten days of rations remained. Even Powell was starting to worry.

John Wesley Powell (v.o.): We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not. The great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above. We are but pygmies, lost among the boulders.

A slightly different version of it closes out the show:

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not. With some eagerness and some misgiving we enter the canyon below.

Different idea, just as important, equally powerful.

On an ordinary day, the lost in insignificance idea would shake me harder. It hits you hard when it hits you out there in the Rockies. But I've felt that one many times already, and to the degree you can, I've begun to understand it.

But it's the other one that's been on my mind all afternoon. ". . . with some eagerness and some misgiving, we enter . . ."

Wow. Haven't done enough of that in awhile. (Oh course virtually my entire family would roll their dozens of eyes simultaneously at that, and say I've done way too much of it, but that's a whole nother problem. The source of one of the great sorrows of my life, actually, but another time. ) But it's scary, this writing, sometimes. The misgivings just grow and grow and grow over time. And I definitely don't know the distance yet to run, or the obstacles still to explore. I guess that's what makes it an adventure.

OK, plunging back in right now.

If I'm good, maybe you won't see me for a little while.

Calling a dufus a dufus

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 01:06:12 GMT

Just watching Matt Tiabbi, author of Spanking the Donkey, interviewd on The Daily Show.

Liked the guy immediately, then he told a little anecdote about his time covering John Kerry's campaign that ended like this: "So I have to give him credit for that, as much of a dufus as he is."

Nice! From that moment on, I was in full swoon.

This from an obvious leftie. The good kind, willing to tell the truth. No BS. The Dems nominated a dufus again. Twice in a row. (What is wrong with you people, by the way?)

Sure, I voted for him, and I'll bet Tiabbi did too, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend the guy had the slightest clue how to relate to (fellow?) human beings.

Ahhhhhh. It's an old story. But he didn't harp on it--as I am; whoops--just rolled off his tongue. Every moment of the interview felt honest.

And when Jon pointed out that journalists come off uglier than the politicians, I knew this guy could see clearly through the crap.

(Please don't tell anybody I often slither through that unspeakable profession ("profession.") Let's just keep that our little secret.)

---

Now then. I'd love to read Tiabbi's book, except for pet peeve #37, gifted writers who also work as reporters but are too lazy to actually write their book and instead just select a bunch of columns for their publisher to slap between two covers.

Come on. I would love to read your book, Matt, but first you have to write a book.

That mini format is lame enough for daily or weekly publications, who the hell wants to read it in a book? The whole point of diving into a book is that you can sink your teeth into something deeper, longer in narrative arc, not just in number of pages. A freaking storyline would be nice. Even a modest attempt.

So maybe I'll check it out at the bookstore, read a couple of the columns, hopefully generate a handful of gleeful smiles. And wait for him to actually write a book.

(Or maybe, just maybe he'll surprise the hell out of me and somehow transcend the form, but hard to see how that's actually possible. Will let you know if I was wrong.)

Meanwhile, looking forward to looking for his byline. He writes for The NY Press, Rolling Stone and The Nation, none of them a regular read for me, but maybe I'll start looking.