Category: Odds & Endz

• Have you seen (or signed) the Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives? (via New Media Musings)
• Truthdig.com is excerpting Gore Vidal’s new momoir Point to Point Navigation. Gore Vidal may be the most European sounding name on an American writer in history.
• Salon asks “What is real and what ain’t in the Borat movie?”
• Two of my heroes (Jeff Chang and DJ Shadow) chat it up the lastest issue of The Believer.
• A nice assessment of why we love to hate Paris Hilton (via AL Daily)
• Variety’s new blog The Knife focuses on restaurants favored by the entertainment industry (via LA Observed)

• KCRW’s Left, Right and Center has a good roundup of what Tuesday’s election will mean for the next 2 years.
• Vietnam Veteran Ron Kovic contributed an essay to Truthdig in honor of Veteran’s Day.
• Are we ready for something called Web 3.0? I would say no.
• The new trailer for The Simpsons Movie isn’t very good.
• My old friend Carolyn Kellogg is in graduate school for her MFA and blogging like a champ. If books, journalism and local culture are your thing, read her.

• The NYT political blog has a list of of laments about the election from the readers of conservative blog Little Green Footballs. LGF of course is having none of it.
• Jewschool post on rioting during Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade. Had anyone heard about this?
• Renowned short story author Alice Munro says she will be retiring from writing after the publiciation of her two new collections (via Bookdwarf).
• The Oakland A’s have all but said out loud that they will be leaving Oakland and moving further down Highway 880 to Freemont. What sad news for the city of Oakland.
• Similepedia: “is a new wiki site that helps a literature-loving community collect, categorize and comment on similes from prose, poetry, essays and other works.” It’s a niche but a good one.

• I’m participating in NaBloWriMo which means I need to post here everyday in November. There are worse tasks.
• Novelist William Styron is dead at 81 (via AL Daily).
• Apparently nothing is beyond the pale of advertising because GM is now using images of Sept. 11 to sell trucks (via Andre Torrez).
• Garrison Keillor has opened an independent bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota where several independents have folded in recent years. The local paper wonders if it’ll succeed because of Keillor’s star power or because of it (via Arts Journal).
• In related book news, The NYT reports that books are increasingly being sold as lifestyle items alongside clothes and housewares to fight off a downward trend in sales (via Arts Journal)

• The Ballot is an online voter guide creation tool built by the League of Young Voters. I’m not exactly sure how it works in execution (you can create your own voter guide, but if you’re not in complete agreement with the leauge, what happens? How do you create blocks with 50 seperate guides for the same election?) but I like the concept (via Eddie Codel).
• Having been a fan of CNET since the late 90s when they turned me down for four separate jobs, I’m hyper-curious about this article regarding their recent missteps. Since they seen to be on an acquisition tear (Consumating, Chow, Webshots, and TV.com in the last two years), I don’t quite see it (via New Media Musings).
• The Village Voice looks at the evolution of downtown New York through the morphing of print zines to cyber culture. Interesting premise (via Tigerbeat).
• Roger Ebert’s been recouping from heart surgery since July but, as he writes here, he’s well on the way to recovery.
• The Hold Steady, my new favorite band, yaps it at the Onion AV Club.

• What exactly will happen at a conference about Jews and food? I’m picturing a lot of buffet stampedes (via Jewschool).
• Filed under copywright gone horribly amuck, Matt Haughey couldn’t get the plans to his own house without written permission from the architect because of “copywright restrictions.”
• The Guardian UK asks “Why do some books by contemporary authors get assigned in school classrooms and others do not?” (via TEV)
• Kongregate is looking to become the Youtube of games, by creating a market place for folks to develop games and others to play them. Neat idea (via TechCrunch).
• I would friggin love a pair of Space Invaders cufflinks (via BoingBoing)

When I travel, I love to catch up on magazine reading. But a pile of 9-15 magazines is both heavy and impractical since I can’t shed then if I want to save articles. So I came up with this idea to cut out the articles I wanted to read using an Xacto knife, papercliping then together then sticking them in a manilla folder. Light, compact and easy to ditch when done reading. Worked like a charm.

Here’s what I read.

• Creative Nonfiction had a great interview with Kathryn Harrison whose controversial 19976 memoir The Kiss about an incestuous relationship with her father brought her to prominence. Harrison has been on a tear since then writing six novels, four memoirs and a biography in the last 15 years. I don’t think I’ll ever match that rate of productivity but one can dream.
• My friend Jennifer Egan was on the cover of last month’s issue of Poets & Writers. She’s got a new novel out, her third, called The Keep, which I just started reading.
• My friend Adam Mansback has a great article in the same issue about putting together an anthology with his friend and fellow writer T Cooper. T he book is called A Fictional History of the United States WIth Huge Chunks Missing which sounds great and I will buying right quick.
• Great piece in the Columbia Journalism Review about why editors steer reporters away from “depressing stories.”
• A rather sobering book review by Larry McMurtry about the history of “ethnic cleansing” in Texas. McMurtry takes issue with the author’s characterization that the Texas Ranger were largely a band of thugs deputized to toss Indians and Mexicans out of the state. The way McMurtry makes his argument though, will shock you.
• From the same issue, a profile of Dick Cheney by Joan Didion which is as cooly lethal as being poisoned in your sleep. Didion paints Cheney as an opportunistic, intellectual lightweight so insecure of his own abilities that his career amounts to little more than grabs at the nearest stockpile of power. If you’re even a bit liberal leaning, it’s like catnip.

• “It’s hard out here for a Managing Editor” doesn’t have the same zing as “It’s hard out here for a pimp” but that’s what this New York Magazine profile of NYT big man Bill Keller seems to be saying. Youch (via Eat the Press).
• Harvard University is ending Early Action (students can apply early in a non-binding fashion) admissions saying it favors the wealthy who don’t to compare financial aid packages in their decisions. I never thought of it that way (only 4 colleges offer EA Admissions and I didn’t apply to any of them) but they’re probably right.
• Time magazine reports on what we suspected all through junior high. That homework might not be making kids better people after all.
• Daddy Types is a weblog for new dads. I can imagine myself being a father someday since the moms have themselves covered.
• Great episode of Sound Opinions about guilty pleasures, even though I object to the concept. I apologize for nothing I enjoy. Even elf kicking.
• Listen to this piece from On The Media about the culture of Star Trek. I know nothing about the trek and found it fascinating