Goodbye Jerry and Rocky

paperhaus November 18th, 2008

Jerry Yang is out as CEO of Yahoo. In his goodbye e-mail to all of Yahoo, he proves the concerns about the literacy of the dot-com generation are valid. “i” he types, over and over again:

i will be participating in the search for my successor, and i will continue as ceo until the board selects a new ceo. once a successor is named, i will return to my previous role as chief yahoo and continue to serve as a director on the board.

Ow, the lack of caps hurts. This is not an adolescent typing on a cell phone but the head of a multimillion dollar tech company perfectly capable of spouting CEO speak. Later in the memo:

i strongly believe that having transformed our platform and better aligned costs and revenues, we have a unique window for the right ceo to take ownership over the next wave of mission-critical decisions facing the company.

Unfortunately, he’s a lot less capabale of using the shift key. May he find a place where his crazy capz-free-stylz are appreciated.

I always appreciated the style of Rocky Gardiner, the person who wrote the LA Weekly horoscopes. They  were lighthearted, popculture-y and short, about as good as you can get for horoscopes. Before today I knew nothing about Gardiner — couldn’t have told you her gender, even — but I am sorry to learn that she died on Halloween at age 70. May she find a welcoming and witty place in the firmament.

In the LA Times: poet Douglas Kearney

paperhaus November 12th, 2008

LA-based poet Douglas Kearney does some pretty cool work. And he just got a Whiting Award, which, at $50,000, is also pretty cool. OK, those are both understatements. I write far more articulately about him in this feature in today’s LA Times.

Something I did write for the LA Times

paperhaus November 10th, 2008

A review of The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford in the 11/9 paper. Here’s how it starts.

The collection “The Drowned Life” raises a banner to salute the power of the imagination. Jeffrey Ford doesn’t just invent one world with its own rules, creatures and imagery — he creates dozens in 16 dreamlike stories, which move between science fiction, fantasy and (mostly) normal backyards.

Some shit isn’t appropriate for the LA Times

paperhaus November 7th, 2008

Mainstream media is catching on to the power of blogging in many ways, but one thing they haven’t embraced is prolific profanity. At the LA Times book blog Jacket Copy, I don’t write FUCK or SHIT or any variants thereof.

Which is perhaps why I am inordinately tickled by cursebird. It’s a site that captures all the profanity-laced tweets from twitter and spools them out as fast as they happen. Some tweets are simple, yet obscure — “this shit is taking entirely too long” says what it means, but leaves you wondering exactly what shit — could it be a line at a store, a bus home, a breakup? So many possibilities. Others are far more specific: “thank fucking gawd. sarah palin didn’t know that africa was a continent or who was in the nafta agreement http://tr.im/w9r jesus.”

There is appreciative — “Listening to ‘Death Letter’ from Son House’s Original Delta Blues. Un-bloody-believably utterly bastard brilliant.” There is oversharing: “Can I ever have a phone call w/Brad where I a) don’t have to explain the fucking obvious b) aren’t accused of being a bitch c) don’t cry.” (Does Brad follow her, you think?)

I like these tweets that imply a bigger story. “Spent the afternoon buying shitty old bikes from a city warehouse, to be welded to a giant pineapple.” Was the curseword necessary? Probably not. Do I want to know more about the giant pineapple and its welded broken bikes? I kinda do.

But then there’s this (about manga): “I fucking hate Hidan for killing Asuma but I can’t help but like how foul-mouthed he is.” It’s a loop of profanity — the cursing fan, the foul-mouthed character, the cursebird watching it all.

Congratulations President Obama

paperhaus November 5th, 2008

Every state where I have lived for a year or more — Florida, Rhode Island, Virginia, New Hampshire, California, New York and Pennsylvania — helped to make Barack Obama President. I couldn’t be happier if I’d voted in each in and every one.

This should be a picture of Etgar Keret

paperhaus November 3rd, 2008

On Thursday night I went to see Ben Ehrenriech and Etgar Keret at the LA Public Library’s ALOUD series. They were in conversation with the topic, “Is reality overrated”? Easy to answer in a month when stock markets around the world have tanked, yadda yadda. Surreality, it was easily agreed, is much better.

“The times are very difficult to live in, but easy to write about.” That was Keret. I think he was quoting, or paraphrasing someone. But he said many insightful and funny things of his own. Describing overly-perfect art versus messy genius, he described Bob Dylan’s voice as that of “a choking crow” — but you’d still rather hear it than an American Idol contestant’s pitch-perfect cover.

Someone asked Keret a question that I sounded pretty dumb: since he’d written about suicide (his story “Kneller’s Happy Campers” was the basis for the film Wristcutters), did he have any personal experience with it? Geez, I thought, fiction means it’s made up. But I was wrong.

“My best friend killed himself during Army service,” Keret said. People who know his biography have probably heard this before, but it was news to me. They’d stay up late nights talking about life and whether it was worth living, then his friend decided it wasn’t. “Writing for me,” Keret said, “is the answer for why I’m living.”

I did take pictures. But I can’t find the cable that connects my camera to my computer.

Instead of Etgar Keret and Ben Ehrenreich, I’ve got a picture above of an orchid in my father’s Florida greenhouse. I can never remember which is what — this one might be a paphiopedalum. If it isn’t, it’s a good word, anwyay: Paphiopedalum.

Good words. Reasons for living.

All the pronouns fit to misuse

paperhaus October 30th, 2008

From the front page of the NY Times, right now:

Magazine Preview
The Affluencer
By SUSAN DOMINUS
Lauren Zalaznick, the head of the Bravo network, has taken her own elite, urban, downtown sensibilities and brought it into America’s living rooms.

I guess it’s ok to say that Bravo is an it.

But sensibilities — no matter how elite, urban or downtown they might be — are not it at all.

Sherman Alexie on Colbert: too cool

paperhaus October 30th, 2008

Please, Mr. Broderick

paperhaus October 29th, 2008

Say yes to the nice Twist & Shout people. Friday, the Village Halloween Parade, you and Cameron and that skinny girlfriend and a really beautiful car. Or really, just you.

Shake it up for Bueller.

White supremacists in white tuxedos?

paperhaus October 28th, 2008

I liked it better when those crazy Klansmen stumbled around in pointy-hatted sheets, so you could easily identify them.

Although I suppose there aren’t that many shaved head, gun-toting racists in white tuxedos with assassination on their minds. Other than these two.

At least, I certainly hope not.

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