Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Don't Want No Mexican Radio
But what about Y.P.R. Radio? Glad you asked!
Y.P.R. will have a guest appearance TONIGHT (!) on the Joey Reynolds Show on WOR-710 in the New York area, a most underrated radio program if there ever was one.
What's that you say? You don't live in New York? No problem! They offer live streaming on the InterWeb
here.
We'll be taping around 10:40pm. His show begins at midnight, so I should have a sense of when we'll air presently.
Labels: books, radio, Underrated, YPR
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Some Press For Underrated
Our "
Five Most Underrated Simpsons Characters" article is up on Cracked.com. Pay special attention to the comments. We're getting hammered by Cracked's 15 year-old readership. When you read at a 4th grade level, I guess it's difficult to understand a decently crafted argument for something.
Also, we had a brief review/shout-out in
the Orgeonian yesterday:
The waggish satirists from the Web site Yankee Pot Roast have cobbled together a book -- "Underrated: The Yankee Pot Roast Book of Awesome Underappreciated Stuff" (Citadel Press, $12.95, 204 pages). Authors Geoff Wolinetz, Nick Jezarian and Josh Abraham throw down their opinions on the rate-worthiness of everything from George Harrison (underrated) to Paul McCartney (not underrated).
Among the underrated are movies such as "Grosse Pointe Blank" (hear, hear!) and "Gung Ho!"; the TV shows "Good Times," "Futurama" and "Deadwood"; Diet Dr. Pepper; singer Donovan; and our own state, Oregon. Why are we underrated? The authors' examples of our awesomeness include: no sales tax; vote-by-mail; Matt Groening (of both "Simpsons" and "Futurama" fame); Steve Prefontaine; Nike; Wieden + Kennedy; bountiful brewpubs; and designating the hazelnut the state nut ("Who has a state nut? Nobody else. Oregon makes its own rules"). On behalf of the entire state, let me just say, gee thanks, Yankee Pot Roast!
That's not the first time that I've been called waggish, and since I'm slightly aroused, hopefully not the last.
[Update 1:54pm: the Cracked article has made the
Digg homepage.]
Labels: books, Cracked, The Oregonian, Underrated, YPR
Monday, August 11, 2008
Discussion And Signing Tonight!
Don't forget everyone: the Y.P.R. authors three will be at the Time Warner Center
Border's signing copies of our runaway smash, "Underrated: The Yankee Pot Roast Book of Awesome Underappreciated Stuff." The information is below. Hope to see you all there:
Monday, August 11, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Borders
Time Warner Center
10 Columbus Circle
New York, N.Y.
Labels: books, Underrated, YPR
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Another Blog To Ignore
We've set up a blog for the
Underrated website. We'll be blogging on the fly, on a reasonably daily basis, about stuff that doesn't appear in the book.
Check the blog
here.
Labels: Underrated, YPR
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Book Site! She is Up!
You know what's underrated? This
site.
Labels: books, Underrated, YPR
Friday, June 13, 2008
Checking In
Did you miss me? I assume no.
I was in Marco Island for a few days for a vendor conference. It was a fun, yet informative time. And really, what's better than fun and information all rolled into one? Sexual intercourse? Perhaps. But nothing else.
I'll be getting on a more regular publishing schedule as the book release date approaches and we have events scheduled around that. There will be a launch party. We're finalizing the date, but mark your calendar as July 8 for now. I'll let you know if this changes.
Labels: books, Underrated, YPR
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Happy Birthday To Bea
Someone special is celebrating her special day!
Beatrice Arthur, acerbic counter-culture icon and Patron Saint of
Yankee Pot Roast, is 86 years young today.
On a related topic, does Willard Scott still go from town to say happy birthday to people that have turned 100? Does he still say "years young?" Does he still wear his ridiculous toupee? Does he love the fact that he played Mr. Poole, affable husband to Hogan family next door neighbor Mrs. Poole (ably portrayed by Edie McClurg)?
Just wondering.
Labels: Bea Arthur, Happy Birthday, YPR
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
What's New, Pussycat?
Because I'm horrible at self-promotion, I figured I'd take a quick opportunity to update you as to the book and the status of
YPR,(which you should all go and read post-haste).
The book: Man, this thing is really starting to roll. The official release date is June 24th. The advance buzz around it are starting to roll in and it's nothing but positive. The idea itself engenders so much debate over what is and isn't Underrated that I almost love bringing it up, because it means that I don't really have to talk to anyone for an evening. They sit and argue amongst themselves. The blurbs that our readers have given us are nothing short of amazing and I thank them for their gracious and kind words.
YPR: Have you been visiting our lovely online destination at all recently? If you have not, you've been missing out. The last few weeks of YPR have been among the best of the last 5 years. We're getting more amazing submissions than ever and it really shows in the online product. We've upgraded in quality from "shitty" to "mediocre." Another 5 years and we might approach "passable." In any event, swing by sometime. First drink is on us.
Labels: books, YPR
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
YPR On NPR?
I found it pretty shocking myself, but a YPR list made it on to the open of
Car Talk on NPR on Saturday. This is interesting, if only for the fact that only one of the three YPR editors owns a car and none of the three are smart enough to be listening to NPR. They botched the author's name a little bit, which kind of sucks for him. This is actually the list that appears in the
The Best American Non-Required Reading 2007.
You can hear the clip
here.
The original list as published on YPR can be read
here.
Labels: Car Talk, NPR, YPR
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
2007, Y.P.R Style
If you read just one thing that keeps you from doing all of the work to which you came back after your long holiday, it should be the annual
Y.P.R wrap-up of the year that was around those parts.
Labels: YPR
Friday, December 21, 2007
Vacation Is Awesome
I'm writing to you from sunny Miami, FL, where I arrived Thursday morning at 2 A.M. thanks to an almost three hour delayed flight out of Newark. Very, very solid stuff.
Anyway, today we work our way toward the Port of Miami, where we'll be boarding a cruise ship for a little 3 day swing through the Islands of the Bahamas. Long time readers of this blog will remember my adventures there in early July. I'm looking forward to it because I'm coming back to a shitstorm at work on Wednesday.
We get back in New York on Monday night. On Tuesday, the Jews own the city, so we'll do what we always do: eat Chinese food, see a movie and then fall asleep before 10.
While I'm gone, please work your way over to
Yankee Pot Roast. We've got some outstanding holiday-related fiction this week and next, before we take our year end hiatus, to reflect on another year of ugly, confrontational shouting matches.
Labels: cruise ships, vacation, YPR
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Book Update
It's starting to get exciting around these parts. Nick, Josh and I met tonight and reviewed the copyedited version of our manuscript. There'll be one last review of the product, but this is essentially our last chance to make any kind of significant changes. That said, it's pretty much nailed down. We're making a few changes, but most of the red ink is about grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Also, we got some samples of the cover! I'm not at liberty to share them just yet, but suffice it to say that they came out much better than I was anticipating.
Labels: books, YPR
Monday, December 3, 2007
Top O' The World, Ma!
YPR was linked in the New York Times'
Laugh Lines blog over the weekend.
See the quick blurb
here.
It has been duly added to the "Wolinetz, Elsewhere" section in the right rail.
Labels: YPR
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Update On The Book That Is Actually Getting Published
Good news, everyone!
We've finished the final manuscript edit and have submitted it back to the publisher, as of roughly three minutes ago.
Labels: books, YPR
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Nano, Nano
It's that time of year again: time to sign up for a novel writing contest that I'll ignore until the last minute, then not finish while complaining that I never write anything anymore.
Anyway, it's called
NaNoWriMo, and it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal: write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days or less. The prize: knocking something off of your "One Day" list (as in "One Day, I'll write a novel ..."), a proud sense of accomplishment and a hastily-written and sloppily-edited novel.
I, myself, have reaped two benefits from this exercise. In 2002, I "won," completing
Frank Black (a novel of 53,000+ words) in 17 writing days (26 overall). NaNoWriMo was also the impetus for Nick, Josh and myself to start
YPR, after rejections started piling up and we needed a place to publish our own material. These days, YPR is a thriving example of how mediocrity can succeed on the InterWeb.
So come on, America. Get writing!
Labels: NaNoWriMo, YPR
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Book Update
Figured it was time for one of these. We're about done with the manuscript here, which is a huge relief. We're going to hand it in in the next couple of days, while we also work on the back end to refine it and add some additional material. We've also been brainstorming cover ideas and have a couple of really solid possibilities.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the manuscript is coming together. There are a ton of essays in there right now (almost 80 different topics: movies, people, albums, books), so there's something for eveyone.
More as it develops. In the meantime, we've gotten
the site back to publishing daily again, after being pretty sporadic over the last couple of months while we knocked out the manuscript. And the print effort is back on. I'm in the process of gathering all ye rosebuds while I may (or something like that).
Check it all out if you get a moment.
Labels: books, YPR
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Self-Promotion is the Best Kind of Promotion
The last few days have been quiet around here for a reason: I'm working diligently on the first Y.P.R. book with my compadres. The manuscript is due to the publisher a week from Monday, so we're working pretty hard on getting it all lined up. As soon as is humanly possible, I'll give all of the pertinent details to my adoring fan base (read: the both of you).
I'll keep this blog loaded down with information as the book publishing process progresses. In the interim, you'll have to settle for what the blog normally consists of: links to articles about Connie Chung and rabid anti-Danish (the people, not the pastry) invective.
Labels: books, Connie Chung, YPR
