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« Carmel Has Gone to the Dogs | Main | Margi Young 1 »

May 10, 2006

Elsewhere

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* Was Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Press Correspondent's dinner last week brilliantly funny or just plain obnoxious? You decide.

* Tyler Cowen lists the top five lies of economists.

* Long ago I raved about Patrick Allitt's lecture series for the Teaching Company entitled "American Religious History." It's a cruise through American history from an unexpectedly enlightening point of view; Allitt himself is a wonderfully clear, upbeat, and helpful guide. I notice that the series is now on sale for a very good price.

* While Republicans do their best to make LBJ look like a skinflint, Australia's budget has been in surplus for 9 of the last 10 years.

* Who were the book packagers behind the Kaavya Viswanathan fiasco anyway? Thanks to Prairie Mary, who sent along a link to this good NY Observer article about Alloy Entertainment.

* Mary herself wonders how anyone can think of cats as "cute." As you might expect, Mary's posting is anything but an example of the usual catblogging.

* Steve recommends Nicholas Wade's new book.

* So, Townes Van Zandt ... That weird Michael Blowhard sure loves his music. But how can I be certain whether I really want to commit hard-earned bucks to sampling his work? YouTube to the rescue:

* Jonathan reveals the grimy truth about keyboards.

* Geeks, eh? (NSFW)

Best,

Michael Blowhard

posted by Michael at May 10, 2006




Comments

You rival Jason Kottke as King of Linkage.

Thank you for that Townes Van Zandt link. So good. So very, very good...

Posted by: communicatrix on May 10, 2006 12:17 PM



Thanks, MB. Yes, I am the geek who is posting about his keyboard while other geeks dress up in weird costumes and have wild sex with porn models.
;)

Posted by: Jonathan on May 10, 2006 02:16 PM



I got through half of the NY Observer story about Alloy Entertainment and Kaavya Viswanathan when I just stopped. The whole brouhaha is totally insignificant to me. I don't write YA fiction, nor do I read YA fiction. So why waste my time reading about it? Instead, I clicked on the lizard alien porn link. Great stuff. Makes me want to become an artist. You know, the serious kind.

Posted by: Cody on May 10, 2006 08:54 PM



Colbert was extreme and right out there on the very edge -- maybe. If someone lives in a bubble and does NOT want to know, it takes a sledgehammer to get a message through to him. Something must be slooooowly sloooooowly working -- the ship of state is turning in the water very sloooooowly. While this Colbert routine was loading, the radio was playing a speech by Dan Rather about how the media people in this country ought to have spine transplants, how they have fallen VERY short this time around. It made for a strange juxtaposition.

But my political attention is riveted on the article in this month's Vanity Fair about the change in Dick Cheney's personality since his heart attacks. It is exactly the change that happened in Bob Scriver when he had a heart attack in early 1970. He seemed the same, but he was quite different. We were all shadows to him somehow. He became stubborn, paranoid, irascible -- by the end of the year I was desperate and almost relieved when he divorced me. He continued in this way, more so all the time, until he died, aged 84. The terrifying part of it was that after I left everyone accepted this Darth Vader persona because they assumed it was part of an artist's normal temperament. A stroke at age 74 destroyed his ability to create the kind of work he had done earlier and NO ONE NOTICED. They were using him as a brand, not a person. Now I'm looking at Cheney very closely and recognizing what I see.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: Mary Scriver on May 10, 2006 11:07 PM






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