Friday, I finished The Well and the Mine, by Gin Phillips. It was a beautiful bit of Southern fiction, the kind I used to aspire to write, but gave up for comedy and angry satire — because, as much as I love her voice, I know it’s not my voice. The characters in it — the Moore family — were, as they say, something else, and I really didn’t want the book to end. Extra bonus is that my copy is signed. I met Gin at SIBA a few weeks back and she had one of those great stories: Her book was published by a small house and then picked up by Penguin/Riverhead.
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Author: kenwheaton
Monkey yodeling!
I think they should consider giving Leno’s 10 p.m. slot to the comedic genius of Craig Ferguson. Sent in by Dead Serious, who’s got video of a monkey riding a motorcycle.
Obama Should Decline the Peace Prize
The Nobel peace committee is a long-standing politicized joke. Witness the award to Jimmy Carter, whose sucking up to dictators while in office and complete bungling of the Iran hostage crisis likely set the entire tone for the relationship between the U.S. and tinpots and terrorist groups for the next 30 years.
Building houses for the poor and writing volumes of poetry does not make up for that.
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Boudin, Baby. Boudin
Sure, at first glance, a box of boudin may look like a carton full of soft-boiled geriatric, uh, weinies. But I promise you won’t put anything tastier in your mouth. (I’m talking about the boudin, you perv.) Continue reading “Boudin, Baby. Boudin”
All Hail Pomplamoose
Before everyone else jumps on the Pomplamoose bandwagon, let me just say that Susan has been listening to this on repeat since Saturday (hey, days count in the world of claiming to be so cool it hurts). And me? I can’t stand Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” Hate that song. HATE. IT. But this cover, I’ve watched more than once. Our office Millennial/Music geek said he heard them on WFMU this weekend. And now the blogosphere — even Instapundit — is taking notice!
Some label should sign Pomplamoose immediately — and then we can accuse them of selling out!
That’s One Way to Boost School Spirit
Never Expect Integrity from Writers
Writers, painters, actors and other “artists” get entirely too much slack for bad behavior. Ezra Pound is forgiven for being a Nazi sympathizer. Frida Kahlo was a devout Stalinist. And all sorts of current idiots who’ve apparently never picked up a biography get a hard-on for Mao or Che Guevara.
But at the end of the day, those are little more than crimes of the brain — muddle-headed thinking resulting from fashionable trends, contrarian politics, rebellious posturing, lack of moral compass and, sometimes, actual mental illness. People are allowed to think what they want, even when it’s wrong. Hell, I even hear wild stories about actors who find work despite NOT having voted for Obama.
Roman Polanski, on the other hand, drugged a 13-year-old girl and raped her. He gave her booze, fed her drugs and, despite her crying and saying no over and over, he raped her vaginally as well as anally. Continue reading “Never Expect Integrity from Writers”
The First Reading . . . and Your First Taste of the Book
Of course, that means it’s a chance for publishing companies and authors to get out there and cajole, beg and plead for their books to be considered. And I think we all know it goes without saying that I’m not the type to shun publicity and a chance to sell himself or his work. I signed a couple of boxes worth of uncorrected advance reviewer copies of The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival and even learned that Kensington had a poster printed up for the trade-show floor. A POSTER!
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Friday Night Frights: The Terror of Public Reading
Friday night, in Greenville, S.C., I’ll be doing the first public reading from The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival. So if you see me this week and I’m looking a bit green with terror and I keep running off to the bathroom, it’s not that I’m pregnant, it’s just that good old fear of public speaking.
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WTF? Cooking With Christopher Walken?
I’m assuming this is ancient interwebs history, but … really? These pears … look … very nice.
KEN WHEATON 