A Sentence Served in Verse

04Jun08

Whose woods these are? Twenty-eight teens will soon know, though it's not like they didn't before. Like the time when they broke into Robert Frost's historic house and littered it with beer stains and bong water. It was a party! But they were caught and now are being sent to a poetry class on Frost at Middlebury College. A class like the one kids who drink in lesser-known woods actually pay for, only maybe better considering a prolific Frost biographer will teach it. The prosecutor rationalizes the punishment:

 

 

I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people’s property in the future and would also learn something from the experience.

 

Robert Frost, sir, was a swinger of birch trees. He'd like to think some boy's been swinging on them. Surely, he would understand this is the modern-day equivalent.

 

Though wasn't he like a surly old bastard that commited all his kids to mental institutions? Oh. Ha! Writers.

 

Failed taxonomy.

03Jun08
Failed taxonomy.

Secret Memoir May Be by Madonna "Herself"

03Jun08

Or more likely her ghostwriter. Galleycat now says:

 

Someone who knows all of M's staff" says "They were saying some big new project is happening in mid-July for M... I wouldn't be surprised if it's M's book WRITTEN BY HERSELF... Melissa was just the last straw... after that she decided to go ahead and do her own after that and get all the money/PR herself. If she worked on [it] in England it could have been kept quiet here. This is just my guess of course... but who else justifies at 350,000 first printing????

 

Oh, I see, a question mark for every zero!

 

Read related: Page Secrets!

Summer Camp

02Jun08

Every summer my friends went to camp. My "Jewish friends" as my mother called them. And they were. Jewish. I just didn't have any other friends so I never understood the distinction. They came back with ankle bracelets and tans, mix tapes and new slang. T-shirts I would never have. Jokes I would never get. And just a hint of a New York accent.

Only parents who don't love their children" my mom pathologized when I questioned my campless existence, "send their kids to camp.

The next summer when I went to camp, I camp prepared. M&Ms and blank tapes. A little fan and a lot of film. I was ready. For arts, for crafts, for someone to get her period. And I guess I got it. Not my period! (next summer) but enough of a memory to understand camp: The flagpole. The bell. The lake. The promiscuous 11 year olds who brought vodka in their suitcases and boys in the woods while I ate my M&Ms and shaved the bottom halves of my legs.

Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies is straight-up nostalgia for those chlorine-filled days and vodka-gagging nights. It includes tall tales from Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake), Rachael Sklar (Eat the Press), and some others writers I should probably know but don't. Radar focuses on one chapter — 20 Acts of Violence That Say I Love You — to examine the intersection of creativity and violence (great corner!).

The boys' bunk was like a peewee Abu Ghraib, where torture was standard behavior. . . . In the words of one, 'To be on the wrong end of a rat tail or an atomic wedgie meant that the counselor noticed you — that in a perverse way, you had arrived.'"

Arrived like at a truck stop. Where boys would wait till the victim was asleep and shine a flashlight on either side of his head. Yell "TRUCK" to wake him. He would freak out, thinking he was in the middle of the highway.

Love like that, but worse.

Kirk Cameron's Still Growin'

02Jun08
Jacket Copy, LA Times
02Jun08

Of all the factors that attract people to novels, rhythm is the most important. Novels where the rhythm is disrupted are read by some people for a long time, or many people for a short time, but not read by many people for a long time

Haruki Murakami

Boy Meets Girl, Writes Book, Loses Mind

02Jun08
The Norwegian film you've been waiting for! Out now.

Who Will Sell Our Hair When We're Gone

02Jun08

Probably no one, but Jane Austen's hair is about to go for £5,000 at auction. The whisp of hair is woven into a weeping willow and sealed in a locket. And they think it's real! "Hairwork," according to the auctioneer, "became prominent in England from the early 1800s and flourished in the Victorian era." The hair was generally preserved in lockets and brooches. It is well documented, as it should be, that Jane's sister clipped a lock of her dead sister's hair before her coffin was closed. Awww. A lock for her locket.

02Jun08

Page Secrets!

02Jun08

There's some hush-hush "pop-culture" memoir with a huge first printing (350k) that's being glued together as I write. You will find it stacked high in gratuitous bookstore displays on July 15 and not a minute sooner because it's embargoed. This is just an insidery term for threatening stores tempted to sell the book before its on-sale date and creating Harry Potter-like excitement. And lines. It's really the only power publishing has left to wield.

 

Speculators suggest it's a tell-all by Madonna's ex-nanny; that sounds like something people buy!