A Few Gems

It’s been a busy few days, here at blog.chirls.com. I’m gonna have to give my personal assistant, Missy, a break pretty soon to give her fingers a chance to stop bleeding. But for now, we’re just too durn fulla ass-whoopin’ content to stop. So here are a few noteworthy goodies that popped up today.

Mark had a couple of major bylines over at the New York Times this week, in Education and Circuits. Between that and the narrow win the Marlins managed to fart out, maybe we’ll get a smile and a round of Jameson out of that ornery bastard. Thanks, pal. Where we would be without you to let us in on what’s happening on the web?

A nice little quote in Tony Lane’s review of “Sylvia” in the New Yorker (or is it the New York_er_?):

“the whole point of student jazz, then as now, is that it should sound like two cats beating up a goose.”

What a kickass magazine. The whole Making Movies issue (3/20/2003) was brilliant. I’m still not going to see “Sylvia.”

A package came from Amazon.com today:

• Directing Actors by Judith Weston. Something I could use a little help with.

• The Underpants, a play by Carl Sternheim, adaptation by Steve Martin. I saw this one a year or two ago. Brilliant.

• Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart. Smartest and funniest man on TV right now. Let’s see if he can write too. I already read about a third of the way through this one while I was dozing through tonight’s long and boring Yankee [sic] game. So far, mostly hilarious.

• The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin. The big man’s new novel. Haven’t heard much about it. But Shopgirl was great (let’s hope they don’t screw up the movie), and Steve-o can do no wrong. (If he doesn’t already hate me – I’m pretty sure he does – he will if he ever finds out I called him Steve-o.)

I just finished Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Effin’ great. Ditto for Straight Man. I’m quite the reader these days. I rule.

Okay, it’s 3am, and I have to be up for work soon. The things I do to entertain you freakin’ people.