Michael Chabon's Ebay Purchase

I find it really cool to exchange e-mails with writers! "What? Some "writing" from a great published author just for me!?!" It was very thrilling exchanging e-mails with Michael Chabon years before he won the Pulitzer for "The Amaziing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" I was writing him to compliment him on his book "Wonder Boys" and to congratulate him on it becoming an upcoming movie, which I had just that day found out about. (And what a movie it turned out to be!) What was weird, and I just now remember doing it, was that I used his e-mail address in a search on ebay and found things he was bidding on! (Creepy I know! I don't know if you can still do that on ebay! Let's hope not! Wouldn't want you to see the comics I bid on!) An old Strat-O-Matic baseball game now resides in the Chabon household. (He's married to Ayelet Waldman, a fine writer herself!) Next time you're in Iowa City Michael, bring it along! I challenge thee!

Pharmacy Humor

Had to make a 4 AM run to Walgreens for Preparation H suppositories (for me), condoms (for me also, ahem!), and some Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.

Told my girlfriend I was going to tell the clerk how embarrassed we were with our purchases that we got up and came at 4 am. (While actually 4 AM to us is like 7 PM for normal folk). She said the clerk won't care but I tried it out anyway:

Laid the items out and said, a little slowly, "We are so embarrassed......at buying such.......expensive high fat Ice Cream...that we got up and came at 4 in the morning!"

Not a smile. nothing. sigh.....

Hey, I laughed in the parking lot and I'm my most favorite and most important audience so that's all that matters, I cracked myself up.

So there.

Chunky Monkey if you're wondering.

Freak Injury

Not feeling like stopping at the store on the way home for some toilet paper, I asked my girlfriend if i could take a roll of hers home. Seeing as how we're on a TP Exchange program and I'm a few rolls behind, she had no viable reason to deny me although she did agree with a certain air of superiority. (Obviously she must think I'm wasteful with the TP. Hey! Your toilet jams up too easily!)

When 9 am rolled around and it was time to head to my house and my bed (we're both night people, working those late night hours) she was sound asleep and I could not find a plastic sack or anything resembling a bag to "hide" the one roll of toilet paper in. Frankly, I didn't want to walk to the car carrying a roll of toilet paper. (It just doesn't seem right.) I figured that stressful planning and diagramming out how to hide one roll of toilet paper from prying neighborly eyes would prove difficult and cut into my sleep I decided to stuff the roll down into my coat. It did look fairly natural if one stooped over a bit, kept your hands in front of your abdomen, and allowed for others thinking you were surely putting on a few pounds. Slipping on my shoes, I found I had a problem with the left one and was required to bend all the way over to get the shoe over my heel. It was indeed awkward as the toilet paper had shifted now towards my left side. (One would have to allow now for others thinking that your tumor was surely growing.) I had to reach, stretch, contort and uncomfortably work over and around the toilet paper in my coat but did finally succeed in reaching my shoe with my left hand and at the exact moment of satisfaction of getting your shoe comfortably over your heel, I pulled a muscle in my side which still hurts today.

Lesson: Always put your shoes on BEFORE abducting a roll of Charmin.

Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King

Years ago, Stewart O'Nan wrote a short novel called "Dear Stephen King" about a woman on death row relating her killing spree in letters to, you guessed it, the King of Horror. King's lawyers quickly put the kabosh on the title and it was published as "The Speed Queen" with a dedication inscribed "to my dear Stephen King".

Apparently they've made up (or hell, maybe King's lawyers handled it and he wasn't even aware of it) and even went to some ball games together last year! Both are ardent Red Sox fans and sure picked the right time to collaborate on a book about the amazing season the Sox had last year. If you saw King in the stands during the playoffs and world series, you couldn't help but notice the notepad and pen. (I hope working on the book didn't spoil the 86 year wait!) O'Nan was a little more hard to see unless you were there for batting practice. Large net in hand, he stood above the Green Monster (sacriligous that one can now do so!) snagging deep flies during pre-game warmups. No one really knew who it was and he was dubbed "Netman". One thinks that if King had been up there, he might have been recognized........

I'm sure it's a good read! Published last December.

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King

Now for a collaborative sequel to "The Speed Queen"?

Articles of War by Nick Arvin

About a year ago I discovered a fan letter in the back of a ten year old issue of Cerebus, the most successful self-published comic book ever!, by one "Nick Arvin".

Having a story collection called "In the Electric Eden" by a Nick Arvin, I quickly deduced that perhaps I had discovered said Nick Arvin's first published writing! To the Internet, Batman!

Found a website for him, his e-mail address and to make a long story short, yes, it was him!

Nick Arvin must have kept me on a mailing list, and yesterday I recieved this concerning his first novel!

From: nick@stanfordalumni.org(Nicholas�Arvin) Date: Wed, Feb 16, 2005, 8:29pm (CST-1) To: nick@stanfordalumni.org (Nicholas Arvin) Subject: Articles of War

Dear friends,
Just a note to let you know that my first novel, "Articles of War," is now available. It has already received great reviews and attention in O: The Oprah Magazine, Interview Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Rocky Mountain News, and The Detroit Free Press, with more to come. You can find links to most of the reviews on my website at nickarvin.com. Also, I'll be signing and reading from the book in a few cities:

February 23: Denver, Colorado
Tattered Cover, Cherry Creek Store/7:30pm

February 24: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Shaman Drum/7:00pm

February 28: Iowa City, Iowa
Prairie Lights/8:00pm

March 9: Boulder, Colorado
Boulder Bookstore/7:30pm

Come and say hi if you can!
Yours,
Nick Arvin



So there ya have it. Sight unseen, I know the book will be a good one and I can't help but think he would be nice to meet and hear read from his work....

New Book Day!

In The Walled City by Stewart O'Nan. A story collection. Have read his first two novels: Snow Angels and Names of the Dead and simply loved them. Of course, perpetually behind as I am, he has 5 more novels sitting on my shelves. (See next post for a thought on one of those...)

A bit of a chore finishing Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks (what's sad is I own the next 7 or 8 science fiction books by him!). He also writes straight fiction which I love but this sort of dragged at the end. Could only seemingly read 20 pages a day the last five days of it! (The tunnels, the trains, the Mind.....zzzzzzzz, snort!) I would have loved this book 15 or so years ago. In fact, science fiction like this (mostly by Robert Silverberg) is what made me a reader back in the 80's in my formative years. But now that I'm older, and such a fan, freak, and reader of contemporary fiction, this sort of thing just doesn't seem to work for me.

On to the O'Nan! Ah! Back to the real (fictional but gloomy!) world. (O'Nan's a bit dark.)

New Book Day is a chore for me. It probably takes me an hour to decide what to read next. (The phrase "New Book Day" was coined by an ex-girlfriend who would walk into bedroom only to find me scanning over 40 or so books on the waterbed!) Pretty stupid, I know. If I would read that hour I could read 35 more books a year! That's appalling to think about considering I only read 50-70 books a year and my to read pile grows every year by probably 100 books or so. My To-Read-Pile is not a pile actually. It is stacks and stacks, shelves and shelves. I just love so many authors and love to try new authors also.

Anyway:

Stewart O'Nan! Highly recommended!

Holy Crap, Coolio, Shane's a Blogger!!

I hereby copyright the phrase:

Holy Crap, Coolio!

Ok, so I'm a blogger. Big schmeal right!?! (I can't even e-mail my brother and I'm doing this!?!)

What you'll find on this blog:

Thoughts on movies, books, Prince, all the things that get my blood pumpin'! And maybe, just maybe, some insights into my life. And maybe some creative typin' also. (rambling fiction that is)

My "Magnolia" Frog

Philip Seymour Hoffman gazed dumbfounded at the pool as objects plummeted into it, splashing, bouncing nearby, slamming into the ground, twisting and writhing on the ground.

"Why are there frogs falling from the sky?"

Recently I purchased (via Ebay) a rubber frog used in the filming of "Magnolia". A big old lifesize bullfrog now sits on top of the tv gathering dust. Was I nuts for paying $25 for it or should I purchase more? With my income tax check coming I figure I can just put the George Bush Child Tax Credit towards about 20 more frogs!

Well, it's a thought.