Dear readers:

You may have noticed that I am posting less frequently lately. This is because I am hard at work finishing my parody of "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe," coming out this Fall. And also, polishing some comic novels that will come out starting next Spring, if not sooner. And also, preparing to run a fundraising drive for the Yale Record, and playing my guitar, and today, having a head cold.



I think it's time for this site to be more than just a weblog, and so I'm considering a total redesign with an emphasis much more on humor from my archives than not-funny-as-much-as-irritated hot-off-the-brain commentary (though I suspect I'll always do that). Along with some magazine pieces, probably 75 humor columns from 1987-1997 (some of them quite juvenile, I'm sure, because I WAS a juvenile when I wrote them), I've got whole parodies of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Review of Books that never saw the light of day. I don't know how funny they still are, but perhaps people would be interested. Good idea? Bad idea? Any opinions?



By the way, I was gratified to hear the terrorist video spoof I "broke" on this site has been downloaded 75,000+ times. Lo! Feel the power of the 'Net.

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Friend Mollie Wilson pointed me to this Talk of the Town mini-profile of the guys behind the website CollegeHumor.com, or as I like to call it, www.what-I'd-be-doing-if-I'd-been-born-in-ten-years-later.com. Though it's marred by a slightly snarky tone, any article that mentions The Yale Record can't be all bad.



Speaking of funny films on the outer edge of good taste, check out this terrorist video spoof produced by a Chicago comedy troupe. Ballsy and great (but you need Windows Media Player).

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Friend Mollie Wilson pointed me to this Talk of the Town mini-profile of the guys behind the website CollegeHumor.com, or as I like to call it, www.what-I'd-be-doing-if-I'd-been-born-ten-years-later.com. Though it's marred by a slightly snarky tone, any article that mentions The Yale Record can't be all bad.



Speaking of funny films on the outer edge of good taste, check out this terrorist video spoof produced by a Chicago comedy troupe. Ballsy and great (but you need Windows Media Player).

Read this article…

A new book claiming that Sirhan Sirhan was a Manchurian Candidate-style hypnotized patsy is getting some attention. This theory (Sirhan is hypnotized, comes in shooting wildly to distract from the real shooter standing behind RFK) has been around forever. When put with the forensic evidence--too many shots, different calibers, and the fatal shot coming from a place Sirhan wasn't--one thing is clear: whatever happened, it wasn't the official version.



I know some of you get tired of my harping on the assassinations, but they're a very clear example of how governments message reality to their own ends. They're also a clear example of what our government really cares about, which apparently isn't finding out the truth when our democratic process is manipulated by violence. Who killed RFK, and why, isn't vitally important anymore--but the fact that we still don't know, and can't trust the people in charge of finding out to be passionate and objective and go wherever the truth may lead--is. Is it any wonder that our national dreams--"The West Wing," "CSI"--are now ones of high competence and clear integrity?



Last night, I watched the first half of Ken Burns' new documentary on Jack Johnson. Excellent, just excellent.



Parody lovers will be dismayed to hear that Ellis Weiner's Dick and Jane spoof is being sued. I haven't read the book, but I cannot imagine how it could injure the sales of the original. And it's clearly marked, with a prominent disclaimer, so it can't be mistaken for the original, either. Seems like silly lawyer games to me. Here's a snip straight from the Times article: "Earlier this month, when Pearson filed the suit, its lawyer, Stephen W. Feingold, wrote to the plaintiffs offering to discuss a settlement and saying that it had initially 'decided not to sue over a title it thought would not be commercially successful.'" Well, that's a giveaway. It's either fair use or its not--commercial success has no bearing on whether it's protected. Just shooting from the hip.

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Read this speech and tell me that Martin Luther King was not the greatest American of the 20th Century. It's long, but worth it. (And no, it's not "I Have a Dream.")

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David Trumbull of the Robert Benchley Society alerted me to two Benchley shorts that are available for viewing at Turner Classic Movies' website. As someone with a greater committment to eating than to silver-screen history, I preferred "How to Eat" over "David O. Selznick: Your New Producer." But Benchley fans should check out both.

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Getting over a cold so I'm checking in quickly before going back to bed. Recently I found something interesting that I wanted to pass on: this site about legendary nightclub comic Brother Theodore, who performed in Greenwich Village's 13th Street Theatre for decades. Though I--like everybody--saw the posters and stickers all around downtown, I never went to look. Now he's dead, and much happier no doubt. For fans of outre comedy, check it out. "The best thing is not to be born...but who is as lucky as that? Not one in millions and millions of people..."



You can hear some Brother Theodore in this edition of WNYC's "The No Show," archived here.

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The New York Times reports that comics pioneer Will Eisner, creator of "The Spirit," has died at the age of 87. I've always meant to read Eisner's graphic novel "A Contract With God." One of the most difficult things about getting older, dear reader, is the daily dropping away of your (by which I mean of course, my) home culture. Slowly, death by death, the world you came into and came to know shifts to a new one filled with strangers. The new world may be better, but it always FEELS worse, as the people you admire or who created the framework for your thoughts pass away.



But we must always remain flexible!



Speaking of comics, I received "In the Shadow of No Towers" for Xmas. I talked with Art Spiegelman about it a bit when it was being serialized in Der Zeit (I think that was the place). An initial scan suggests that it is a fantastic piece of work--but I must admit that 9/11 still shakes me enough to make me apprehensive about reading it.



Another thing that came into our house as the result of Xmas--given to my wife by her excruciatingly thoughtful husband--are some collections of Mike Mignola's "Hellboy." Really, really enjoyable work. His use of folklore as fodder for stories is a brilliant move, and he does it exceedingly well. The movie just scratches the surface...

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