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May 15, 2007
05152007
* So, yeah, BC gets sent out to publishers today. Yikes.
* Too Late For Smiling is still coming along in the script stage. I'm about a quarter through it now, give or take. It's slow to write, due to all of the research I'm doing on it, but it's coming out very well.
* I think comparing it to Black Chamber would be like comparing 'Check Your Head' to 'License to Ill'. I don't have a 'Paul's Boutique' yet, unless BC is it, and The Believer was 'Ill'.
* I had a friend back in junior high who thought the name of the album was 'Three Communication'. Ha ha.
* Picked up a couple of nice items at Borders today: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's 'Our Love is Here to Stay' and Michael Chabon's 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union'.
* I'm studying female jazz vocalists for 'Smiling'. Not their lives or anything, but just the ambiance. I want that whenever that character comes onto the page that the reader 'hears' it, y'know?
* I picked up their last copy of 'Yiddish'. Apparently they got undershipped, which I don't understand, really. Sure, 'The Final Solution' and 'Summerland' were...disappointing (actually, I downright disliked 'Summerland' and couldn't finish it, but I think that had more to do with Chabon not being cut out for writing YA), but this is his first real novel since 'Kavalier and Clay'. I'd heard there were internal rumblings at Harper Collins that the book may not sell to expectations and that jobs were on the line. Chabon seems to be unable to escape the metafictional trap he set for himself by creating the Grady Tripp character in 'Wonder Boys'.
* I didn't care much overall for Lethem's latest. I finished it up last week, and...yeah. Again, maybe I'm just not the target demo, or maybe I'm just not smart and hip enough to catch all of the nods and winks. It read well enough, the characters were for the most part believable enough. When I was done, I was like, "Oh, it's a fucking romantic comedy. Damn." Then I read the jacket (I try not to read those before reading the book) and saw that it was a 'send-up' of romantic comedies. Satire? Really? It just felt like a post-ironic romantic comedy with a kangaroo in it, which I suppose is fine enough, but just not the type of book I actively seek out.
* This Fitzgerald/Armstrong album's GREAT!
* I'm moving in a month. Ugh. Meesa hate moving.
* I mean, I've got A LOT of stuff. I'm going to get rid of a lot of it, but even after that, I've got hundreds of books and thousands of comics. I'm probably going to put the furniture I'm getting rid of up on Craigslist to just give away. If anyone here needs or knows someone who would need a couch, loveseat, chair, or china cabinet, lemme know. All for free, I just need them picked up.
Posted by Schamberger at May 15, 2007 11:55 AM