Monday grab-bag, or My new sweet style

...what if I wrote my next novel like this?...Actually the followup to Personal Days has been written, by the inimitable Deb Olin Unferth. It's called Vacation....If I were a saxophonist who played on the street for money, I'd learn "Careless Whisper"...The place name "Multnomah County" gives me the heebie-jeebies...Heffernan: "In his vertiginous free time, he crash-diets, cheats at kickboxing and persuades people to give him money"...Finally finished watching a movie—My Blueberry Nights—is it just me or does some of it feel quite Blockian? Some of the dialogue (esp. between Jude Law and Norah Jones)? And the AA stuff...I'm on the fence about it over all, well, no, let's say I liked it...why not...I used to be a film critic!...The soundtrack should've had Prefab Sprout's "Blueberry Pies"—the lyrics are even almost appropriate: "So if I come begging with take me back eyes/All you have to tell me/All you have to tell me are blueberry, blueberry pies"....WHATEVER!!!......Speaking of food: Korean food....Also in the NYT, a Q&A with American Teen director Nanette Burstein, talking about "her own intense high school experience two decades ago in Buffalo"...ummm....yes...she and yr correspondent were classmates!...Did someone say Buffalo? Yes: The Stubblemeister did, with a tip for Dizzyheads....

Dizzies Newsfeeds for December 2

"Things happen to me with accents on 'em!": Dizzyhead Hua in the N.Y. Sun on the delightful-sounding All About H. Hatterr...Selfdivider with another great post, this one on Percival Lowell, Theodore Roosevelt, and King Kojong...The Stubblemeister has a great NYTBR piece on the story behind the placement of cigarette ads in paperbacks (from A.E. Van Vogt to The Bluest Eye; oddly, the title bar on my browser says, simply, "Essay about Cigarette Advertisements in Paperback Books"!); as a bonus, he fills his blog with a wealth of related links, and Levi picks up the scent, chasing down the possible meaning behind a pseudonym used by a book reviewer tapped by the industry to write a positive review of Smoking and Society: Toward a More Balanced Assessment, and finally pointing us Luc Sante–ward..now that's what I call Dizzyhead synergy!...Snowing in New York, time for the Psychic Envelopes' "Winter Losses" (what happened to "Indian Summer"?!)...Over at Erasing, the Batman–Proust connection...Finally saw that Gossip Girl episode Hua was blogging about, wow, in some ways the best one yet?...(More Gossip Girl stuff in today's Times: "Not that we’re obsessed or anything”)...Gotta get my hair cut...xoxo...You know you love me....GOSSIP ED....wha....

The year 1988 was kind of a blur for me

Hot of the presses—in the Times, Dizzies Team Member Hua (has the blog stopped?!) listens to Top Shelf 8/8/88, a hip-hop CD of dubious provenance.

Afrika Baby Bam of the Jungle Brothers, who contributed the track “Back in the Jungle,” which he said was recorded in 2003, dismissed concerns about the authenticity of the project. “We still remember the culture and tradition,” he said. “How much more do you need, outside of the actual date, to make a record as authentic as you would have made on Aug. 8, 1988?”

Other Dizzies Newsfeeds™: Vocabulary via Edmund Gosse via Levi: jobation is "a lengthy and tedious rebuke"...quinduncs are "gossips or busybodies"...Levi's also got some delightful posts on Ring Lardner and Proust via Powell...Am excited for these 145 short-shorts from McSweeney's, three books by Dave Eggers, Deb Olin Unferth, and (Psychic E. singer!) Sarah Manguso....I don't play a lot of video/computer games, but this Fancy Pants adventure is simple and cheering...A new New-York Ghost is out, the nearly one-year-anniversary edition...How long will it last?!...Press release/reminder, I'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow—here is the official listing...it's at "Mainstage (Borough Hall Plaza)":

5:00 p.m. EVERYONE'S A (FORMER) CRITIC.
Three music and arts critics known for their humor discuss what it means to be a critic and the art of writing beyond the review. Featuring popular essayist, memoirist, critic and soon-to-be novelist Chuck Klosterman, Rolling Stone music critic and new memoirist Rob Sheffield, and Believer editor and former Village Voice editor/critic Ed Park whose comic novel Personal Days will be released in 2008.