Management Tips From A Master

Tina Fey on staying skinny during her Saturday Night Live years:

"I regularly ate health food cookies so disgusting that when I enthusiastically gave one to Rachel Dratch she drew a picture of a rabbit and broke the cookie into a trail of tiny pieces coming out of the rabbit's butt."

More in Bossypants.

With Sam B., It's a Guarantee

Sample from I Know I Am, But What Are You, by The Daily Show's Samantha Bee: "Are you seriously expecting me to jump off this bridge and restrain an erect dolphin?"

One more, describing the type of call she had to make to 90 year-old patients when she worked at a doctor's office that specialized in ED:

"Hello, Mr. Jacobsen, it's Samantha from the men's clinic."

"HEL-LO?"

"It's SAMANTHA. From the MEN'S CLINIC."

"WHAT IS THIS?"

"SAMANTHA!!!! MEN'S CLINIC."

"WHA-A-AT?"

"CLI-NIC!!!! PENIS CLINIC!!!! YOUR PENIS!!!!"

"APPLE?!"

Pitch-Perfection

Tapping right into the impotent rage-driven psyche of every 8th grader ever, Josh Lieb's I Am A Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President serves up 300 brisk pages of hilarious middle school politicking. Oliver Watson Junior suffers a daily 400 blows, all while plotting his grand design.

I guess this could be considered a children's book, but it's way funnier (and less immediately familiar and painful) if you're an adult. Click through for a description, but basically Lieb had me at the title.

Inspiration

John Joseph's autobiography. This man, frontman for the Cro-Mags in the 80s, grew up in foster homes and on the streets of New York when junkies and gangs ruled. This is a fantastic story of overcoming horrible circumstances. 

Revelations: Dave Mustaine used to be an asshole (big shock), Annie Lennox' first husband was a Hare Krsna, and the Bad Brains were the best punk band going. No surprise there at all.

A great read. Get it.

Anything Neal Stephenson Has Ever Written, Done, Thought, Uttered, or Noted Might Be Acceptable with a Slight Tilt of His Head

If you haven't read Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, or In the Beginning ...was a Command Line, then we could be better friends if you'd just get off your ass and get to the library.

If you haven't read The Baroque Cycle, well, don't worry, I haven't finished it either.

That's about to change, though, because this article at Wired about author Neal Stephenson is one of those peeks into a celebrity's life and persona that force you to stop and say, "Ah, dammit, that guy really is as cool as he seems." His new book takes place in a brand new world, with its own history, its own language, its on socio-political turmoil into which its characters are thrust (and thus, vicariously, are we). I don't know about you, but this sounds to me like it could possibly maybe be perhaps ohgodi'mafraidtotypethis...

... you know, Neal Stephenson's Dune.

And if that's true, my inner geek has died and gone to heaven. Like the theatre nerd inside me did when he heard that Burton and Depp had teamed up to do Sweeney Todd. Like the comic book loser inside me did when Mike Mignola took on the steam-punk Batman story "Gotham by Gaslight".

The skinny is that yes, Stephenson is a sci-fi writer. He gets long-winded and his action is laced with subtle but ever-present philosophical suggestions. But he is amazing at what he does, and this is one of those rare times in popular culture where a talented person has worked their way into enough real-time success that they can do exactly what it is that they're so good at - and in its fullest form.

Catch up on the Neal if you don't know him already. I'll meet you at the library over lunch.

Perspective, Hope

I'm just getting around to readying Who Hates Whom by Bob Harris. I wish I hadn't waited so long. It's a quick read about conflicts around the world, and Mr. Harris (who also wrote a book about his stint on Jeopardy! called Prisoner of Trebekistan) has a great sense of humor that keeps you from falling into despair. Here's a description of the map he draws of the Middle East:

What Israel's Opponents See:

Shaded areas represent Israeli-occupations or recent airstrikes (everything besides Israel is shaded).

What Israel's Supporters See:

Israel: "Teeny Island of Democracy"
All Other Countries: "Countries Not Exactly Psyched About Israel"
Water: "Open Water - Probably Will Not Attack Israel, But Who Knows?"

Little Brother

I haven't read this yet, but I can recommend it on the strength of everything it represents. It's the first book released under a Creative Commons License to make the New York Times bestseller list. The CCL means you can read it for free. It's a story of teen hackers vs. the Department of Homeland Security. And people like Neil Gaiman are raving about it.

I plan to chew through this on vacation.

Update: I read this in a day. It's outstanding and important.

Super props to Tim at Bar-Toons for the heads-up.

Freddy and Fredericka

I'm about halfway through this, and repeatedly having that great sensation of "I can't believe how good this is."

The quasi-fictional Prince and Princess of Wales are banished to America. Hilarity ensues.

The Princess is savantly--and only savantly--brilliant:

"The next time we're chased by the police, we should run toward them. Let's say we're going at the speed of light, and they're going at the speed of light. If we run toward them, when we pass them we'll be moving apart at twice the speed of light. What better way to get away from someone?"

Game of My Life

Our man in St. Louis, who covers the Cards, is publishing a book! Matthew has long known how to program the perfect jukebox playlist and hold forth on the finer points of whiskeys great and small. But his day job involves telling true tales, and he describes the nature of competition as well as anyone.

Go, catch!

The Shroud of the Thwacker

A spoof of the historical crime novel by Chris Elliott (yes, that Chris Elliott).

This is probably the funniest thing I've read since Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. I had to read it in sections because I would laugh too hard to keep going.

Very smart, dense, satire. It pulls no punches. Here's an example. Inscribed on the version of the Statue of Liberty at the time of the novel, in the late 1800s:

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses from no further south than Spain and no further east than Russia (unless they're good with railroads).

Care Packages from Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk -- author of Fight Club and many, many more fantastic novels is quietly infamous for responding to fan mail with care packages filled with all sorts of weird, fun, and wild things. It's something he's done for years, but I find it cool that even after all the success and accolades, it's something he still does personally.

While not every letter sent his way gets this kind of treatment anymore (a result of the sheer number he receives and perhaps the growing knowledge of this particular habit of responding) -- all reports still say that he assembles, packs, and ships each of these boxes by hand.

There are several photosets floating around flickr depicting the rewards.

Asshole Lit

One of the nice things about living in Brooklyn is that there's a culture of reading here. I don't mean a snobby, exclusive culture; I mean people read here, so much so that there's a sidewalk trade in used books. So much so that people occasionally just leave a pile or box of books on the stoop when they move, because as my strong-backed college friends can tell you, books are a pain in the ass to hump.

Some street folk actually have a trade in third-hand texts, which they'll spread out on the sidewalk or on a sideways-turned cart.

Anyway, I was delighted to find a copy of A.L. Kennedy's Paradise on a stoop a couple of weeks ago (Free book! Yay!). Kennedy is a Scottish writer, and the Scots can do a couple of things remarkably well. Two of these are drink and write. Paradise is a portrait of someone who does both, and although it falls into the category of drunk lit, best exemplified by Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes (see also Ironweed), both of those can also be qualified as asshole lit.

Ex and Kennedy's characters are assholes, and not the lovable kind. They are of the destructive kind, and you're stuck with them because they're the protagonists. David Gates has done this type of thing too. The skill here is not in making these character lovable, but in painting the portrait without flinching. Most of us want to be loved, and it takes some steel to create characters and art that repulses, without doing so just to shock. These aren't out-and-out gross-out contests, competing for the most public vomiting or horrible treatment of would-be friends. They also aren't assholes of the purposeful contrarian sort. They're pictures of what can happen when the rebellion goes too far; sure, making a beast of yourself gets rid of the pain of being human, but then you're a beast, too.

Free Comic Book Day

It's been around for a long time, but it's still going strong -- today, just like every first Saturday in May you can go into any comic book store and get free comic books -- including titles from frontline publishers like Dark Horse, DC, Marvel, IDW, and Image.

Granted, no one's gonna hand you a copy of Detective Comics #27, but from Anime to Spiderman, there's lots of great stuff to choose from.

So go get 'em!

Please Don't Let This Suck

The finished product is still a long way off, and it's a very different kind of story from the last Chuck Palahniuk book to be made into a film -- but I'm already really excited about the possibilities for the upcoming movie version of Choke.

Also if you haven't had a chance to check out the book -- it's well worth it.

Enjoy!

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

Kurt Vonnegut definitley doesn't suck. But as said many times before, his passing absolutley does.

Here's a little sampling of why.

The Literature Map

While the interface looks suspiciously familiar, I kinda dig the thought behind this thing:

Type in the name an author, hit enter, and watch as an ever-growing matrix of similar authors opens up in front of you. On the one hand it gives you the opportunity to see how your idea of what authors are related stacks up against those who have contributed to the site, but at the same time there's always the chance that one of the names that pops up is one you haven't yet had the chance to explore.

Kinda like a Pandora for books, when you think about it.

Enjoy!

Honoring the Worthy

By now you probably know that Kurt Vonnegut has died. Sometimes when someone dies we say "a little light has gone out in the world." Mr. Vonnegut was a great shining beacon. To me, he represented hope, and the type of person who makes the world better by the way he lives. The very definition of humanism.

I can't say much that won't be said for the next week or so, and it's not like this was unexpected--I remember reading his stuff in college, and he was marvelling that he hadn't died already then--but he was my favorite author, and never failed to make me laugh and think at the same time. I think I've read Breakfast of Champions four times.

What a great human being.