Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Great Literary Hustlers

New York Magazine - which I never read - has a phenomenal article entitled "Who Is JT Leroy? The True Identity of a Great Literary Hustler". If you have even a passing interest in JT's work this article is unmissable.

There's also a nice piece called "Why Intelligent Design Has To Be Stopped" that cites some of the scary religion-poll numbers I like to drop in conversation with rational adults (though not my favorite stat, that 1 in 5 Americans believe that the world will end in their lifetime).

In other 'read this now' news, I raced through these ages ago but never reported them here... (everything on this blog is on like a 2-week delay). 'SportsGuy', who writes for ESPN's Page 2, is the only thing that ESPN has going for it. He's brilliant. He recently started this (irregular?) feature called "Curious Guy." Here's how he described it:
"Welcome to a new feature called "Curious Guy," where I e-mail questions to somebody who's successful -- whether it's the GM of a baseball team, an author, a creator of a TV show, another columnist or whomever -- and we just start trading e-mails for an entire day. As with many of the new features I start up, you may never see this one again, or you might keep seeing it. I don't know. Let's see how this one works out."

So far Sports Guy has done only 2 of these, but I couldn't really have been more awed by who he chose, or more excited to read them. Bill Simmons has the best job in the world.

Curious Guy 1: Josh Schwartz
Curious Guy 2: Chuck Klosterman


Actually, I think Sasha Frere-Jones might have the best job ever. His latest "Pop Note" column is about the Swede-pop comeback of Robyn. When she couldn't get a major to bring her back, she started her own label.

Past Robyn news here (and, peripherally, here)

Konichiwa, Bitches.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Dave

Curious guy, indeed. I bet if I watched the O.C. I would've really appreciated that. Bill Simmons was made for the internet, wasn't he? Technology of all kinds. He's not substantial enough for a newspaper or a magazine, but he's funny enough and obsessive enough to comment on anything having to do with pop-culture. How can the man watch that much television? TiVo I guess.