I had no idea Larry David was in the new Woody Allen movie. That just seems so weird. I wonder if Woody didn't feel like acting this time around so he had Larry stand in? Are there any other performers like this that seem almost exactly the same? To a certain extent Al Pacino and Andy Garcia are like this. Except Garcia hasn't done anything notable in years and Pacino's have only been notable for their awfulness.
Whatever Works comes out June 19

This short story from David Foster Wallace is perfect for those of you who'd like to read more of DFW's work, but never will because it's too long. It clocks in at just around 1100 words, half of which seem to be, but aren't, in the last sentence.

And here's a bonus Stephen King story called Rest Stop that I haven't gotten to yet.

What Went Wrong is a new short story by Tim O'Brien, the sequel to July '69, and appears in his new book, July, July.

In the end, it doesn't matter if Lil Wayne can rock or not what matters is that you remember it's ALL his fault.

He's great, I just don't know how long he'll last, and there's whispers he's hurting already this year.

Continuing the series of maintaining blogs for some of the authors I enjoy (Michael Lewis and Part 1 of Chuck Klosterman) because they won't maintain them themselves, here's another round of Chuck Klosterman on the internet.

Chuck Klosterman's favorable and effusive review of Benji Hughes' A Love Extreme:

Even after nearly three decades of MTV, we still tend to see musicians with our ears, which (I can only assume) is what the musicians would want.

Last week, Klosterman was on The BS Report with Bill Simmons (who calls Klosterman 'Close-terman' can we figure out if that's how it's supposed to be pronounced?) for 2 sessions. In the first they discussed the merits of pro sports (Simmons) vs college sports (Klosterman) and the second where they discussed newspapers, popularity and tenure.

Klosterman echoed David Carr's thoughts that newspapers should have been charging on the web since the beginning and colluding to do so now is one way to save them. He also pointed out Simmons' hypocrisy in criticizing sports columnists who have been where they are for ages. Simmons suggested that a lot of the best younger writers were leaving newspapers to go to the tubes, while Klosterman suggested that these guys might not be the best because internet is a popularity contest, judged by how much attention you can draw to yourself as opposed to how good you are.

Most interesting to me was a point Klosterman made a couple times that popularity begets popularity and the bigger websites are only going to keep getting bigger (though, wee Unlikely Words will soldier on!).

Lastly, spoke at the Highline Ballroom last night with all-girl Mötley Crüe cover band, Girls Girls Girls. I'll assume the evening went well and post a review if I see one.

Since my favorite authors refuse to have blogs of their own, I will do it for them. Here's an article by Chuck Klosterman about Obama's brother-in-law Craig Robinson a college basketball coach in Oregon. The famous campaign story of Michele making (NBA alumni) Craig let Obama play basketball with him and his friends is retold and analyzed from a different light.

Here's Klosterman on The B.S. Report podcast. Haven't listened yet, but I imagine it will be good.

And you know what else? Someone needs to come up with an Alltop channel that features all the articles by all the good authors who refuse to have blogs. I'm thinking Michael Lewis, Michael Pollan, Klosterman, maybe Susan Orlean if it's about origami or orchids, maybe Krakauer, Gladwell because he never updates his site. There's others. Who am I missing?

Or, more likely, clumsy HTML. If you go to Esquire.com, at the bottom right of the page, next to the Hearst Men's Network, is a link to "Being Green". However, if you click on the link, you get a "404 - Object not found!" error, which is awesome and ironic in the same way that www.sarahpalin.com used to say something about intentionally blank" (not anymore, alas, the Election Time Capsule link rot has begun).

After some Googling, I found the "Being Green" website and it's linked here for your reference. Seems they do have a commitment to the environment after all.

Esquire seems to be cycling through a bottomless pit of "What I've Learned" features. Despite that they seem to be written to be SEO linkbait, I like short articles with small paraghraphs. I liked this one with Chuck Klosterman.

I'm not sure where or when I got the link to this (I'm just starting to clean out some old links), but it's a gracious and fascinating profile of Harold T. P. Hayes, editor of Esquire. Published in January 2007 - in Vanity Fair, no less - this article is fitting now as Esquire rounds out its 75th anniversary. The article is heavy on the stories from the 60s and includes Hayes' successful battle for power with Clay Felker, the mastermind behind New York Magazine. Check it out.