Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelfh (Free subscription) | 24/11/2009
My apologies to those who missed me. I was away, doing my best impersonation of George Plimpton, as an embed at Yankees Fantasy Camp, an experience I will be blogging about here in the near future. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Fantasy Camp offers regular Joes the opportunity to be little boys again — squared. [...]
Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 23/11/2009
The Paris Review announced earlier this month that Philip Gourevitch, editor of the magazine for the past five years, will step down. I only today got around to visiting the website to read the Nov. 6 press release, and it is full of praise for Gourevitch and what he has accomplished during his tenure. What I find very interesting is that he is described as a worthy successor to George Plimpton, the...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
If there is one book that sums up the maelstrom of superficiality, white-hot ambition and old-world/new-wave glamour of Andy Warhol's New York years it is former Interview editor Bob Colacello's awesome Holy Terror:
TAMPA BAY ROWDIES APPRECIATION BLOG (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
The late author George Plimpton, guesting for the Rowdies indoor 1979. Thanks to Andy Northern.
Jacket Copy (Free subscription) | 07/11/2009
Philip Gourevitch will leave his position as editor of the Paris Review in April, the magazine announced today. Gourevitch, a former New Yorker staff writer who won the L.A. Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for...
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (Free subscription) | 01/11/2009
For the Sake of the Light: New and Selected Poems. Tom Sexton. (University of Alaska Press PO BOX 756240) $23. I reviewed a previous collection from Tom sexton (Clock With No Hands), a poetry collection that dealt with his childhood in Lowell, Mass. Well Sexton is not only a topnotch urban poet, but he is an accomplished nature poet as well. And if you look at a dramatic sky, and see it as only
The Daily Beast (Free subscription) | 29/10/2009
On the 35th anniversary of her dad's legendary fight, Khaliah Ali travels to the Congo, seeing that humanitarian conditions have worsened. Thirty-five years ago, on Oct. 30, 1974, Muhammad Ali regained his title as "the world's greatest" boxer at the...
We're all fine here (Free subscription) | 24/10/2009
It should not be news to anybody that I have become a big Jonathan Coulton fan. A while back I was listening to his song A Talk with George again and decided to finally figure out what the song was about. I liked the tune, and the lyrics seemed to describe somebody like Forrest Gump without the mental handicaps (popping in and out of historical events in a way that could have happened but seems rather...
kenneth in the (212) (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
Photographer Christophe von Hohenberg revisited a seminal moment of the late '80s on Thursday during a signing and Q&A at Clic Gallery for his 2006 book, "Andy Warhol: The Day the Factory Died," that chronicled the artist's memorial back in 1987. Von Hohenberg says he was actually hired by Vanity Fair to "photograph who was wearing miniskirts at Andy's memorial." As it happened,...
49 Writers (Free subscription) | 15/10/2009
This month's 49 Writers featured author John Morgan admits to being "seduced by iambics" while exploring the "cheater sonnet." Maybe we should coin a phrase: Alaskan sonnet? Last month around the equinox, Anchorage poet Tom Sexton drove up to Fairbanks for a reading. His latest book For the Sake of the Light: New and Selected Poems was recently published by the University of Alaska...
JeyamArticle (Free subscription) | 14/10/2009
It wasn't that long ago that a trip to the corner video shop was the most convenient way to get a movie. The next generation it seems will be getting their movies from movie downloads, avoiding any trips to the store. Following is a list of a few movies that you can get using a movie download site.
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Review of BEFALLEN by K. Alma Peterson, 2009, 21 pages, Propaganda Press ($7 plus $2 shipping) to Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139, USABy Barbara BialickBEFALLEN, by K. Alma Peterson, has some interesting lines—“little soldier of spring in tree bark fatigues” ; “I wasn’t meant to be in a family but there I was”; “Caught mid-swoon at dusk...
Clive Davis (Free subscription) | 29/09/2009
A friend of mine accused me of having a terminal attack of the cutes when I ran those "She, we" , "Us, them" headers at the weekend. Well, it was supposed to be playful reference to the late, great George Plimpton's anecdote about Muhammad Ali, Harvard and the shortest poem in the English language. Here's Mr P in person. Unless my memory is playing tricks, the clip comes from that...
The Morning News (Free subscription) | 29/09/2009
Weekday articles from The Morning News
composite drawlings (Free subscription) | 25/09/2009
Go away. Why are you still here? Do you not understand the concept of "exit"? Are you really that thick? Or is it just that you are cruel and insensitive, wanting to torment a pitiable hermit who only seeks solitude? Oh, you aren't deliberately heartless, after all. You only came here because you heard I could give you something rare and exceptional. Well, you're not going to get one of my...
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