The connections, vol. XXVI

At "Weekend Update," he said he was "doing a specific experiment, where I was trying to strip all cleverness from the joke and try to make it as blunt as possible." He added, "I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punchline were identical."

—Norm Macdonald in the New York Times today

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a “good writer.” Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn’t mean I always write well. And, by a wide margin, I’ve never felt less self- consciously preoccupied with language than I did when I was writing Freedom. Over and over again, as I was producing chapters, I said to myself, “This feels nothing like the writing I did for twenty years—this just feels transparent.” … I was admittedly somewhat conscious that this was a good sign—that it might mean that I was doing something different, pressing language more completely into the service of providing transparent access to the stories I was telling and to the characters in those stories. But it still felt like a leap into the void.

—Jonathan Franzen in The Paris Review

Dyer maker

The personal mark

Presented with the total on the LCD screen, I swiped my credit card and crafted my new signature in the big, loopy letters I thought might attract a little attention. Instead of ‘‘Alex Kuczynski,’’ I wrote ‘‘Snooki’’ with a heart over the ‘‘i.’’ [...]

I went bolder. Buying baby wipes and ointment at the drugstore chain CVS, I signed, very legibly, ‘‘Cher.’’ Another day, ‘‘Kim Jong-il.’’ I thought signing the name of a North Korean dictator — whose name clearly didn’t jibe with my Caucasian features — would stir some sign of life in the checkout clerk. Nothing. [...]

The philosophical idea of the personal mark has evaporated.

—Alex Kuczynski, "Identity Crisis," NYT, 10/3/10

*

On still other important documents, a single official’s name is signed in such radically different ways that some appear to be forgeries. Additional problems have emerged when multiple banks have all argued that they have the right to foreclose on the same property, a result of a murky trail of documentation and ownership. —"Flawed Bank Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis," NYT, one day later (10/4/10)

The Connections: Footwear

Has anyone written a piece musing on the shoe thrower and the shoe bomber?

The Connections: Separated at....Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! (Olympics Edition)

From Dzyd Sarah's comment on an earlier post: "Need I point out once more M[ichael] P[helps]'s startling resemblance to a certain Howard Phillips Lovecraft??"

Not sure that I totally see it, but...sort of? (And "Phelps"/"Phillips"—that's close enough, right?)
































Guy Trebay's recent NYT piece hilariously referred to Phelps as the "Baltimore merman," which jogged something in the EP thought-box..........




"They were very fond of the water, and swam a great deal in both river and harbour. Swimming races out to Devil Reef were very common, and everyone in sight seemed well able to share in this arduous sport...." —H.P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

The Connections: Facial Hair Edition

From today's NYT:

BELGRADE, Serbia — The infamous fugitive, long charged with war crimes, was not in a distant monastery or a dark cave when caught at last, but living in Serbia’s capital. Nor was Radovan Karadzic lurking inconspicuously, but instead giving public lectures on alternative medicine before audiences of hundreds.

He was hiding behind an enormous beard, white ponytailed hair topped with an odd black tuft, and a new life so at odds with his myth as to deflect suspicion.

From yesterday's NYT:

LOS ANGELES — Jay Leno was the surprise guest at the announcement of his own departure date from NBC when he turned up in disguise on Monday to ask the first few (joking) questions at a news conference here with the co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment, Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff.

[...] Mr. Leno put on a bald cap, fake goatee (which only partly disguised his famous chin) and glasses and easily slid among the real reporters to ask the two NBC executives about his own future.

“When is Leno’s last show?” the unnamed reporter asked.