Disambiguations™ for April 1, 2010

I. The mysterious-yet-friendly Twenty % Tippers, whose travails have appeared in Ye New-York Ghost, get some love from Pop Dose.

Eventually, I talked to Ken Sorkin, the band’s founder, impresario, and short-story writer. The Tippers were not some odd hoax put together by McSweeney’s interns, but rather a band that had played in bars in New York in the early 1990s. “I put the band together because I wanted to get these songs realized,” he says. “But I knew that no one would want to see a band that they’d never heard of, so we wanted to create a mailing list as soon as possible.” In those pre-Internet days, that meant putting up fliers around Manhattan and setting up a telephone hot line (646-335-3390). Those who signed up received notices about upcoming dates and one of Sorkin’s short stories telling of the fictional alternative life of the band and its members.

Visit the Tippers website for more...

II. I need one of these? So do you? The Inspiratron!



(At A Journey Round My Skull)

Disambiguations for Summer 2009

I. At last: A new New-York Ghost! Yes...it is the summer issue...Jen Snow told me she read it on her iPhone. Features a lengthy narrative and some jaw-droppingly great Jing Wei art.

II. From Jenny D—a nice bit of nomen-omening (NYT):

Air-conditioner sales at J. Eis & Sons on the Lower East Side are down almost 50 percent.

“It’s just not that hot,” said Lenny Eis (pronounced ice), the owner.

III. I'm at a library and I just peered around a desk at the room beyond a set of French doors—except it was a mirror, and the dude in the gray shirt was me. It's like an H.P. Lovecraft story!

IV. Disambiguation (did you notice I changed the name of this blog??) is taking a break till late August! "Keep cool."

xoxo,
Gossip Ed

"Madeleine and Mac"

Read the latest chapter in James Browning's ongoing memoir by subscribing to the New-York Ghost. In this installment: The connection between the world's most beautiful woman with the world's ugliest man.

Table-Talk for New Year's Eve 2008

I. Happy new year!

II. At the New Yorker's Book Bench blog, PD has been dubbed "2008’s Best Novel About Doing Battle with Microsoft Word and Losing"! Heyyy—I'll take it!

An eeriely prescient tale of layoffs; think “Alien” set in an office, where computers are stealthily self-destructing and people keep disappearing from their cubicles, leaving vast empty warrens of corporate debris. Did I mention that it’s deeply, bitterly funny?

(Thanks to Levi for the tip.)

III. At Moving Image Source, assorted cinéastes weigh in on their favorite moving-image moments of the year. Here's a tidbit by Dzyd David "Shadowplay" Cairns:

I attended a rare screening of Sidney Lumet's Tennessee Williams adaptation Blood Kin and was most impressed by a shot where a giant plastic cow was wheeled past James Coburn. It made me feel alive in a special way. The combination of elements—Coburn and cow—something about it was just so right, and so bold.

(Here is Part 2.)

IV. Happy new year, again! Thank you for reading this blog! (AND a big thanks to everyone who read PD, or reviewed it or blogged it or end-of-year-listed it, or came out to see me read, or sent in PD sightings.....)

And that's...



(Via VSL. See more "The End" cards here.)

Weekend Table-Talk for May 23–25, 2008

I. That title is to fool myself into not blogging this weekend!

II. Via Sarah, an article on fellow Buffalo native Lawrence Block—author of the Scudder and Rhodenbarr (and Keller and Chip Harrison!) novels (among others), screenwriter for Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights, and one of many good reasons to read the Hard Case Crime line.

III. The Morning News hails The New-York Ghost for "Online Excellence"?!:

"By offering each issue through email only, what the Ghost has managed to do—unlike many of its web compatriots—is turn the expectation of content into the thrill of finding a new issue in your inbox."

IV. The Daily Mail says of Personal Days: “Having a character called ‘K’ acknowledges the Kafkaesque nature of the book–but it’s a lot more fun than Franz ever was.”

V. I gotta go return a library book!



UPDATE (Via Weekend Stubble): Contra Heinlein!

New BELIEVER!

Yes! The May issue. Richard Price.....Nick Hornby.....Dzyd Alex on Yucca Mountain...David Cross interviewed twice...Dzyd Sarah on illness and its metaphors...Lisa Levy on Elizabeth Hardwick...apocalyptic cults...The Office's Mindy Kaling on "Sedaratives" duty...and much more! Pick it up today, then subscribe! (Then pre-order Personal Days! Am feeling particularly shameless today!)

As a reward, you will receive a free copy of the latest New-York Ghost, featuring a Sebaldian tour-de-force by mysterious cineaste Sophia Giardina.

He means the 'Ghost'?

A pilcrow is one of these: ¶. I didn’t know that. The little printer’s mark is unvoiced but eloquent, sundering streams of prose, heralding new paragraphs or staking out subclauses. It crops up often in legal and academic documents, but in fiction you would only expect to see one as an avant-garde manoeuvre, pegged into a page by an author who wanted to interrupt a conventional illusion, to alert the reader to something imposed or artificial. I suspect McSweeney’s uses them a lot. —Keith Miller, "The Clever Nostalgia of Adam Mars-Jones," TLS, March 26, 2008

UPDATE: Saki Knafo, aka the greatest journalist in the world, found this punctuational free-for-all in an AP story. Here Shaquille O'Neal appears to be visualizing his words in cartoon bubbles:

Of Riley's comments, O'Neal said colorfully, "I don't [care] how he interpreted it."

Reminded that reporters couldn't use the quote because of the expletive, he said, "Sure you can. You can quote me, brother. You can put an 's,' then the tic-tac-toe, the 'at' sign and then the other symbols."

Right garde

There's a new New-York Ghost; is it avant-garde yet?

Movie's Start

Just in time for the Oscars, The New-York Ghost's film issue is out, and I can say that it's great and not sound totally immodest because—well, I didn't edit it!

It's the handiwork of B. Kite, and he got some wonderful stuff from writers who are generally not asked to write "year end" film survey things—including Luc Sante, Victoria Nelson, Toni Schlesinger, and Mr. Shadowplay himself, David Cairns.

Up in the old hotel

The New Yorker has a nice piece this week on Tesla, the New Yorker Hotel, and Samantha Hunt's forthcoming novel, The Invention of Everything Else.

But Ghost readers read about Hunt's obsession with the Tesla/New Yorker Hotel connection way back in issue #4 (Oct. 2006)—a first-hand account of the mysteries underneath the building...by Samantha Hunt herself!

Isn't it time you subscribed to the Ghost? Visit the site for more information.

What!

Some residual New-York Ghost drama—first from Mediabistro, then from Time Out. (Levi also has a rather hilarious post.)

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Ange Mlinko has a terrific piece on Ashbery in The Nation. Her favorite title: "Yes, Dr. Grenzmer, How May I Be of Assistance to You? What! You Say the Patient Has Escaped?" (I, too, like long titles.)

Extract from my memoir

Wanted vaguely to go to this Sebald panel at the Mercantile, then of course forgot about it until now, but luckily Selfdivider was there.

Incidentally (oh man he's going to talk about Keeler again RUN FOR YOUR LIVES) joining the Mercantile helped immensely during my early induction into the world of Harry Stephen Keeler; they've got a wonderful collection of his work. I don't even know if I read all of them; at least a dozen, though. A recently unearthed datebook includes my noting of the Merc's hours! How many times did I stop by, before work, in order to return a Keeler due on that day, and sit and furiously read the last 20 or 30 pages before handing it over? Well, maybe twice.

UPDATE: As I suspected, I already blogged about my Mercantile/Keeler days! (Cue: Pixies, "Where Is My Mind?")

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A new New-York Ghost is out.

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UPDATE: Dizzyhead Hua returns to the fold—watch this space for his live-blogging of the next episode of Gossip Girl!

Your cover's blown

Saki Knafo reports on The New-York Ghost:

Although Mr. Park had originally envisioned The Ghost as an homage to historical New York gazettes, the newsletter became less about the city and more about whatever Mr. Park found amusing. For example, he started a feature called “Ask the Yes Man” in which readers sent in questions to which the response was invariably “Yes.” Yes was the response, too, when a reporter recently requested an interview, having overheard someone leak Mr. Park’s identity at a party.

—"The Wizard of Whimsy," NYT

You're not here

Hot off the wires: Our man Devin on the new Todd Haynes film (in the Guardian):

Maybe the happiest thing to say about I'm Not There is that it is bold enough to be a mess, and self-indulgent enough to embody the worst tendencies of its subject. That is, it's a failure of the kind that Dylan himself is uniquely prone to committing. —"Bob Dylan #12 and 35 (and 47, and 66...)"

Speaking of which—the latest New-York Ghost features an interview with Haynes himself. It's not too late to subscribe!

Late-day post

New Believer is out—the incredible visual issue! Sheila Heti interviews Dave Hickey...Claudine Ko talks to Ai Weiwei...temporary tattoos...Paul Collins...Alexander Provan on Las Vegas carpetry and Dizzyhead Fhyll on Eileen Chang...the first review I've read of Alexander Theroux's massive new novel Laura Warholic....plus more Dave Hickey...and more more more, it's really good!

And the new New-York Ghost is out—the incredible letters issue!

Dizzies Newsfeeds for HALLOWEEN!

Quick links — Dizzyhead Celebrity Talking Head Matt Singer on some childhood webwork, starring your favorite neighborhood arachno-humanoid...Halloween issue of The New-York Ghost is still on (virtual) newsstands...the folks at the admirable PDF literary magazine Essays & Fictions have also included the super-rare debut number of the Ghost in their new (second) issue (got that?)...speaking of Halloween, check out...Thought for memoir: The Internet is good for funny lists—this is the Onion AV Club's take on the most ridiculous monster-movie menaces...Over at I've Been Reading at Lately, Levi's been musing on ghosts and ghost stories (with a bonus: some sporadic lively discussion with Jenny D!)...

Unexpected honesty

Over at the NYRB blog, some likes/dislikes, minus the dislikes:

"Silence, the company of friends, unexpected honesty, reading, going to the pictures, dreams..."

Who is the author?

(Via Levi, who has tons of Halloween posts up at his blog.)

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New creepy New-York Ghost is out, featuring seasonally appropriate work from Erica Lee, Derek McCormack, and Aimee Kelley.

The football is always pulled away

"Just before he was put on the respirator, Vernon Bellecourt [opponent of 'Indian' sports mascots] joked that the CIA had finally gotten him, his brother said"...Levi's been reading Edmund Wilson lately...Dizzyhead straw poll: Who's your favorite "EW"—Edmund Wilson, Evelyn Waugh, or Edith Wharton?...A tiny New-York Ghost emerged last week, with an Aimee Kelley poem and thoughts on "Hotel California"...Scott Esposito looks at Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading..."Good Grief!" is such a strange phrase...I wonder when Charles Schulz said this—a bleak poke at Garrison Keillor's Wobegon?: “All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away.”

"Everything is business"

Dizzyhead Jorge asks, "Why is Motoko Rich always the bearer of bad news?"

Also: The New-York Ghost stubbornly resists misguided new punctuational trends...and Paul Hornschemeier (The Three Paradoxes) visualizes Ted Kooser's "The Giant Slide" over at the Poetry Foundation.

Or, 'What Are We Doing With Our Lives?'

The New-York Ghost turns the big "one"! Adrian's photo is rather apropos, no? I think it should be the Ghost's new motto.

(Check out A.K.'s special Ghost gallery here.)