Thank you, Making Light

For this link from Bookslut:

Poets read their work on Minneapolis-St. Paul buses during rush hour yesterday, apparently on the theory that if there’s one thing that public transportation needs, it’s crazy people ranting loudly about things that make little to no sense. […] Who sponsored this program? A car dealership? A bicycling group? The Society to Make Sure Nobody Ever Gets on Another Fucking Bus Ever Again?

and this marvelous comment:

EXCUSE ME, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

I AM SORRY TO INTERRUPT YOUR DAY

MY NAME IS JOSH, AND I HAVE BEEN AN UNPAID POET FOR NINE MONTHS

I DO NOT TAKE DRUGS, OR SELF PUBLISH

I HAVE THREE SMALL ANTHOLOGIES TO SUPPORT

ANY DONATIONS NO MATTER HOW SMALL WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED AND MAY EE CUMMINGS BLESS YOU ALL

Notes from the infield

The NYT, on the minor league game in which Roger Clemens played with his son:

The most poignant father-son moment was also the most genuine. In the top of the third inning, Koby Clemens walked solemnly toward the mound at Applebee's Park. His father braced for words of advice about the next hitter. "One more strikeout," Koby Clemens said, "and everybody in the stadium gets wiper fluid."

James Wood, pro and contra

OK, so we like James Wood around here. I am probably one of the very few people in my current profession who rushed out to buy his first book. And I mostly like reading him in The New Republic. But there are definitely some sticking points in the James Wood reading experience.

So, the examples I promised some time ago:

James Wood good: Berating Harold Bloom.

Bloom, in his late pomp, only orates, and so his critical writing now has the flavor of perpetual conclusion, as if each sentence were the slightly unnecessary, slightly rhetorically inflated terminus of its successor. And yet, dispiritingly, this convoy of eternal conclusions stretches out over desert pages!

The review is much more than snark: Wood creates an interesting link between Bloom's disdain for the New Testament and his theories of the "anxiety of influence," in which successor authors struggle with and "misread" their predecessors (in this case, the Hebrew Bible).

James Wood bad: Getting overly serious about Stephen Colbert; if you publish a famous takedown of George Steiner for being too apocalyptic, you've got to lighten up yourself some time.

It is time--it is always time--for some literary criticism.

No, no it is not.

If I had been drinking Diet Coke, I would have snorted it out my nose

The Poor Man annotates the PBS daily program schedule. (Of course from his archives; I am seriously considering changing my tagline to "More than a day late and a dollar short").

12:00 AM - NOW with Bill Moyers Our civil liberties are vanishing, our unelected president is beating the drums of war, and kids these days with their rap music. When will it all end, because it’s late and I’m tired? Bill Moyers hosts a round table discussion with Gloria Steinem, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz, and five other people who find events after 1973 seem to just blur together, and probably weren’t all that important anyway.

...

1:30 AM - Living Lifefully Well! Why can’t healthy people just calm the hell down about it? Good, you’re healthy, and full of vim and vigor. It’s two o’clock in the fucking morning. Relax, and stop bouncing all over the place. You’re going to give me a heart attack.

...

4:00 AM - Woozle Toozle Too Incomprehensible rubbish about a pirate captain and a dragon who sing awful songs about God knows what. When you let your kids get up at 4:00 AM, you have no right to complain. You are a terrible parent.

...

8:30 AM – Tai Chi for Fitness Some guy in a beard prances around. You might think he’s doing Tai Chi, but if you look closely, you can see he’s flailing around at normal speed and they broadcast it in slow motion. Feel cheated? You shoulda pledged.

9:00 AM - Exercise in Motion Like first period gym class in high school, except everyone’s like 40. So it’s like first period gym class on “The OC”. Rimshot. Lots of jumping jacks and sit up. Always remember to stretch! I’ve got $50 says no one watching this show gets up off the couch for five seconds. Useless.

10:00 AM – Get Off Your Dead Puckered Ass, Fatso!

...

11:30 AM – Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood It’s all fake. I think I was in second grade when I realized that his “neighborhood” was just a model, and that there were no neighbors. And if all that is fake, all a great big lie, what are the chances that he really liked me “just the way I am”? Not very good, if he’s like everyone else. And the Neighborhood of Make-Believe? Try: “The Neighborhood of Make-Believe It’s The Seventies And I Can Get Away With This Haircut and This Cordoroy Tasseled Vest”.

...

3:30 PM – Clifford the Big Red Dog The people who drew He-Man make fun of this cartoon. What are there, seven frames of animation a minute? Is it being drawn in real time? I know this is PBS, but really.

...

6:00 PM - Super Boring Business Hour Today a lot of boring things happened and now you’re out of work. Remember how we said you should mortgage your house to buy AOL stock? Good times, good times.

7:00 PM - News Hour With Jim Lehrer Peter Jennings whips through this same stuff in half an hour. What’s Jim’s problem? Everyone take notes, because this is what socialism’s like.

8:00 PM – Antiques Roadshow This is porn for the middle aged. This and the real estate channel are like porn with crack on top as far as they’re concerned. “Oh, can you believe how much they want for that?” “Oh, I’d like to have one of those!” And then they scrape around the attic, and wonder aloud if their old Ricky Nelson records might be worth something. I don’t want to get old.