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It's 0432 and I haven't slept. This is almost entirely my fault for the luxurious and gin-fueled nap I had too late in the day.

So of course I've been Wikipeding. I was looking at information about actors, because I remembered hyniof pointing out years ago that David Lynch cast the antagonists from West Side Story as antagonists in Twin Peaks, and sure enough it's Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn.

This reminded me of Amber Tamblyn, and of a "literary magazine" I saw at the B&N recently. Don't remember the name of the thing, but it was very glossy and hip. It billed itself as some kind of "community project" and the front matter was touchy-feely and sweet in a way that reminded me of eTarded ravers.

And among its writers was Ms. Tamblyn, who also considers herself a poet. She's not.

Also, the magazine had a picture of an anonymous pretty girl on the cover, which isn't typical for literary magazines. For a moment I thought about submitting a William Carlos Williams poem and seeing if they noticed, but snark is a lot of work sometimes so I just had a Fatburger and went home.

I also read a lot of pages about Tolkien stuff on the Wikipedia and was too tired to correct typos. This reminds me that back in the day when I was an L.A. music lizard, Exene of X had this husband post John who was a poet or something. He'd show up at clubs and I think I saw him read, not sure. He was sort of annoying but mildly, and he had an unforgettably Scandihoovian name. And then I forgot all about the guy until he popped up as Aragorn in the film version of The Lord of the Rings and suddenly that weird Viggo poet person from the club scene was the object of 15-year-old-girl lust and mountains of slashfic. Now that's just plain strange.

Similarly it's weird when I hear Gary Calamar on the radio because he managed this band who were friends of mine in my early 20s and kinda hung out with us and had been the manager of the Licorice Pizza record store where they'd all worked. So he was Gary, that nice guy who was always doing something or other musical, and now he's some kind of media presence. I bet he'd write better poetry than Amber or Viggo, too.

Maybe I should try sleeping again! Let's see how that works.

Hello from Amazon.com.

We are pleased to report that the following item will ship
sooner than expected:

Thomas Pynchon "Untitled Thomas Pynchon" [Hardcover]

Availability: This title will be released on November 21, 2006.

One of my dad's former students and a family friend is Marti Leimbach. She has been a successful novelist since the MFA program, with one of those kaboom debuts. Her first novel was Dying Young, which was not only a very good book but was made into a movie, causing fame and money, etc. (The book is way better than the movie for anyone who only knows the latter.)

Looks like she's going to make another big dent with her newest, Daniel Isn't Talking. It's really great to see Dad's friends and students doing so well. Thirteen years after his death, you can see the effect of teaching and mentoring continue.

ENTIRE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT TAKEN IN BY SOCK PUPPET

I've seen people beg for money, lie, and make outrageous claims of things like HIV infection before and get away with it. On internet forums. And not for very long.

Apparently you can take this act big-time if you're a couple of aging hipsters who want to get into the "music world" and meet famous people.

These people should be given scrofula and then sent to live in Pahrump, NV in a trailer for life.