Do you ever go til almost 5 o’clock before you realize you cut yourself shaving that morning and there’s still dried blood on your chin?

What are you? 14?

James Frey, the author who made up a story and called it a memoir, the Oprah-endorsed A Million Little Pieces, is getting hit with a bunch of lawsuits. My favorite is this one:

In a federal class-action suit, readers said the book was a waste of time and they should be reimbursed for the cost of the tome and the hours they spent reading it.

Any other readers of Dave Barry’s Big Trouble or Ben Elton’s Stark want to join simliar class-action suits that I’ll be leading? Too bad I can’t sue all those Victorian novelists I had to read for my degree.

Maybe I can sue my professors for wasting my time… hmm…

UPDATE: Since Katherine at Nashville is Talking linked here and people might actually read something I wrote, I feel obliged to add Stephen Fry’s Making History to my list of books I’d like to sue over. The difference between Fry (not Frey) and Elton and Barry is that Fry had actually written hilarious, literate novels prior to MH. So I cut him some slack. Elton is just a pinhead, evidently. And Barry’s novel Big Trouble is so terrible that I held onto my copy to re-read and give to others so we’ll feel better about our writing.

I’ve been in job limbo since December. I thought then that the answer to my seemingly constant money woes and stress about freelance work was to bite the bullet and look for a regular 9 to 5 job. Or 8 to 5 as it were. But, oh God, the prospect of spending 9 hours a day in an office… (continue reading…)

So there’s a billion churches in town and so many have huge congregations that you’ll often run across some sort of traffic commandant stopping cars on a major road so that church-goers can exit their parking lot. Usually, the commandant looks to be a member of the congregation himself only in an orange or yellow vest. I’ve actually often wondered who these brave souls are who’ll stand in the middle of Franklin or Hillsboro Road with no real traffic-directing authority just hoping that drivers obey their hand signals.

But today I was driving past the Mormon sanctuary or celebrity center or whatever it’s called in my neighborhood and they’ve got two rent-a-cops directing traffic and carrying side-arms. Am I alone in thinking that on a Sunday afternoon a Glock isn’t really necessary to direct traffic in front of a church? (Temple… whatever…)

I mean, at first I assumed they were actual police and I understood they would be packing. But as I drove past, I noticed this weird Star Trek-esque logo on their sleeves. I don’t know, maybe it’s the Mormon 5-0. Whatever. Just took me by surprise.

James Lipton recites Kevin Federline’s “Popozao.”

Nick Cave wrote a movie, a western called “The Proposition,” screened at Sundance.

I remember distinctly a moment when reading his novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel–a horribly gothic, bleak, terrifying book. I was sitting in the train station in Boston waiting to travel to Providence to see my brother at college. I ran across some awful passage in the book and felt my face contort. I looked up and saw someone across the way reading and making a similar face. I thought, I’ve only previously had this sort of reaction to something gross in a novel when reading Stephen Fry’s The Hippopotamus. A moment later, the guy across the way raised up the book that he was reading and it was The Hippopotamus.

I don’t know what exactly that tells you except that Fry’s description of man-beast sex is probably universally disturbing. And that Cave’s novel is equally so. Though I don’t recall any human-equine carnal relations.

I’m sure at the time, I thought And the Ass… was a good book. I groped for some reason to like it, like I did with many of the books I used to read and music I used to listen to. But I don’t have any desire to read it again and that tells you everything you need to know.

Hilariously, before selecting a Bad Seeds song for the title of this post, I did an Amazon search on Cave’s first band, The Birthday Party, to see if I could remember some of their lyrics from the song titles. I ran across one of those priceless Amazon reviews. The opening sentence was pretty hilarious:

Hearing that this was Nick Lowe’s other band, I knew I was in for a treat! Boy was I ever. Having abandoned the cold suit-and-tie affair for a sound that may appeal to the younger generation a bit more, he takes on a much scarier approach here.

I wondered for a moment before continuing whether he was being serious or not. But he gives up the ghost in the next paragraph. Still, an excellent review.

Well, this has got to be the weirdest search I’ve ever turned up on: “Who will produce for Shania Twain after husband Mutt Lange dies?”

I saw this clip on TV a couple of days ago and could not stop laughing.

I don’t watch awards shows. They are stupid. But inevitably, I miss some fantastic moments and have to play catch up the next few days. Thank God for the internet.

To wit…

Oh to be that gay man’s right hand. Well, in this moment.

As we’re a mere three hours away from the kickoff between the Pittsburg Steelers and Denver Broncos, I guess I must post on the game last week or not comment at all.

I don’t know what it is that makes me dislike Huckleberry Manning so much, but I can’t stand him or his silly white-uniformed Colts. And I’ve always loved the Steelers colors and their kick-ass nonsensical symbol. How gay is that? What are those stars, the three rivers? I don’t know. All I know is that when I was a boy and didn’t know crap about football, I liked the Steelers and last year when Roethlisberger started tearing up the gridiron, I found myself rooting for them again. So last week, despite the odds, I was hoping for the Steelers to pull off a victory and what an incredible final 5 minutes of play it was. Fumbles, missed kicks, bad calls–it had it all. So I’ll be watching the game this afternoon and hoping the Steelers stick it to those horsey-emblemmed nancy-boys.