Black Is The New Blood

This is probably not a good theme for your restaurant. The restaurant owner is quoted saying that he “wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people’s minds.”

Asking The Wrong Questions reviews the new Mark Danielewski (registration required).

Conversational Reading has a new Quarterly Conversation up. Among the many goodies are a Murakami roundtable and an interview with Zak Smith.

Ed Champion’s Return Of The Reluctant asks a question that has long been on my lips….Is David Foster Wallace Washed Up? He also links to a new Vollmann interview, as well an article on what Sid Meier’s Civ can do to you (believe me, I KNOW).

Via The Guardian:  The Domeday Book goes online.

Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day seems to be growing. Originally listed on Amazon at 996 pages, it is now listed at 1,040.

Been dealing with death…..hard as hell.  As pithy as that sounds, I don’t mean to make kight. In the last week I’ve cried, bawled like a fucking baby, had tears running down my face for hours at a time.

I’m all cried out.

Today, at work, a co-worker put her arm around me, and asked if I was ok.

Yeah, I think so. [When the end of time comes, I will love you for that]

Please forgive me for avoiding your emails. I’ll talk to you soon…

There was a funeral…the first time I stepped in a church in 20 years. And I spoke for about 20 minutes in front of a few hundred people. It was very emotional and I think it’s going to take me a long time to get over this.

I’ve publicly stated, many times, that I wouldn’t make it to 40. I still have about six months for that. Tonight, I wrote a Eulogy for someone who died way too young.

In another week, I will have outlived you. And I can’t even begin to tell you just how  that breaks my heart.

I search for words, but have none.

Tonight, I cry.

My primary email is down, and Charter is no help at this time of night. If you’ve sent me anything in the last 24 hours, I didn’t get it. So send to the address at this page, which is working fine.

Best American Band right now? Debate in comments.

So where would you expect to see video of Thomas Pynchon these days? Youtube, of course. I’ve tried for hours to get Youtube embeded into Wordpress properly, but to no avail, so you’ll hust have to follow the links.

Here’s Pynchon, nearly ambushed by CNN, from around the time of the release of Mason & Dixon

Also, The Modern Word posts a purported excerpt from Pynchon’s forthcoming Against The Day.

So, Penguin is going to release a Deluxe Edition of Gravity’s Rainbow before Against The Day comes out. Well, this has been on the net for a while. Now, it is coming to print.

“Crudely Drawn” by The Drams.

This new release flew completely past my radar.

It’s a logical extension to future Poet-Laureate Brent Best’s songwriting. Tone down Slobberbone’s country influences, crank the guitars way the fuck up, add soaring vocals, and some cool-as-shit piano. Go see them live, and be sure to tip your bartenders.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the failure of traditional media outlets…Mainly their failure to get it right. I watch a lot of MSNBC, and, to their credit, they understand blogs. They understand that bloggers are often better sources of information than the traditional media outlets. For a good example, see Blogabouttown’s timeline of how the Thomas Pynchon story broke. It took a week for a few media outlets to catch up. Several weeks for others.

So, now it seems they are poised to hijack content, and drive it to their advertiser supported sites (no advertisements here, by the way). Ed Champion reports on this very subject.