Mythologies

...speaking of The Believer—interviews editor Ross Simonini is one half of NewVillager, and this NewVideo (for their song "RichDoors") is not only a lot of fun—"an IntegratedEvent in ten parts depicting the NewVillagerMythology"—but also features, around the 1:15 mark, our outgoing mg. ed., Andrew Leland! (And just found this, HTMLGiant likes it, too!)(And here's more on the video, at IFC News.)



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Everyone knows about this already: the latest McSweeney's is a box (painted like a head) full of good stuff: a shard of Michael Chabon's abandoned, post–Mysteries of Pittsburgh novel, Fountain City, replete with annotations; a long and funny piece by (Blvr. columnist) Jack Pendarvis, "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree"; a "standard" issue of McSwy's; a screenplay; a regular play; a short illustrated story...also a fun surprise by Angela Petrella and her sister. Also the box is great for putting other stuff (pamphlets!) in...



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An antipodean bookseller talks about McSweeney's/Blvr./etc.

The whole monkey thing

At Paper Cuts, Michael Chabon meets Yuen Wo-Ping:

The biggest bump came when he suddenly said that he doesn’t want there to be a monkey, that the character of Dr. Ha can’t “turn into” a monkey, no monkey, the whole monkey thing is very, very bad. Why? Because — I don’t really get it, but — because of “Iron Monkey.” Because more monkeys will detract from that film, or he has some special relationship with that film and its monkey (even though I can’t remember an actual monkey in that film) — I don’t know.

Dizzies News Service

1. Dzyd Ben reports (in Los Angeles magazine) on a fatality at immigrant detention:

Until 1996, immigration law used a telling term to refer to noncitizens who can be legally denied residency in the United States. They were not only excluded, although they were that, too; they were “excludable.” The idea still prevails. They provide an opportunity for exclusion, for the nation to define itself by what it is not. Victoria Arellano was almost perfectly unwanted: not just a Latina, but an immigrant; not just an immigrant, but illegal; not just gay, but transgender; not just transgender, but infected with HIV—and an addict to boot. She did not merely slip through the cracks of the system. The system, cracks and all, was built with her in mind.

2. Michael Chabon at the DNC? Listen at the NYRB site...

3. Real buffalo in New York State. (Via Dzyd Susan)

4. Ten minutes of dissolute stumbling, fake Chinese accents, and tap dancing? Sure! James Cagney, "Shanghai Lil," Footlight Parade (Via Dzyd Brent)



5. And the PD reviews keep coming...This perceptive one is from (irony!) the L.A. Weekly. Here's some of it:

[A] battle cry rings between the lines of Personal Days: an angry defense of language against its murder at corporate hands. Park performs riotous burlesques with e-mail misspellings and corporate clichés; his characters hear double-entendres in computer error messages ("You are almost out of memory") and invent new words like "deprotion," for "a promotion that shares most of the hallmarks of a demotion." The novel may even remind you of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

Heyyy—I'll take it!