Hi everybody!

There's been so much action over the last few days that I don't know where to begin and I don't know if I'll remember it all. Fortunately for me, no one reads this. The other day I got to thinking: what's the real difference between writing a blog that no one reads and walking down the street talking to myself? I was distressed that I couldn't come up with anything, so I called myself a whore and ran away.

Amazingly, I'm actually progressing on my latest effort to fool the publishing world into giving me money for the blithering drivel that I manage to smear all over the page (or screen, I guess, I haven't "written" anything in ten years).

Hey, my good friend Sarah Palin is running for Vice President! Did you guys see her speech the other night? She was so awesome! She was so good that I nearly died from hypertension listening to it and started throwing things at my television in complete glee. And I also love how she let her grandfather speak last night. Even though he seems a little confused and disoriented, that's probably just dementia.

Also, my good friend Sara Benincasa and her good friend Diana Saez are doing some deliciously hysterical Palin spoofing. You should all get out on YouTube and watch them. Start here and watch all six of them.

OK, all done for now.

Labels: John McCain, politics, Sarah Palin, writing

That has nothing to do with the content of the post here. I just thought of that old Chris Rock routine and started laughing. And there you go.

I'm trying my damnedest to work on another project right now that I'm trying to get out the door by the end of the month, so posting my get sparse around these parts over the next couple of weeks. I really wish that I was the kind of writer that could churn out 1500 words on this blog, and then turn around and knock out a chapter or two, but I can't seem to do that these days. Either my fingers don't work or my brain is broken, but both of those options leaves me out of luck.

In any event, the reading/signing on Monday went swimmingly. We had a nice turnout, and a good bit of banter in front of a mildly entertained audience. This far exceeded my expectations, which had us engaged in a stony, awkward silence with three or four disinterested observers.

Upcoming events/appearances include:

a guest spot on the Joey Reynolds Show

a guest appearance at Cracked Online

a guest appearance at Comedy Central's Indecision 2008

I'll be sure to post links as they become available.

Labels: books, Chris Rock, Underrated, writing

Every once in a while, I read something that makes me realize what an inferior writer I am and how writing can really hit me on a very visceral level.

This was written by John Updike in the New Yorker about Ted Williams last home run (in his last at bat):

"Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs - hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters."

Thanks, Joe P.

Labels: writing