November 11, 2010 - Veterans Day

The United States government has declared that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling.



Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda will be released on November 16th. On the to-read list.



Irish Dry Stout 3.70% ABV . This is a real good brew. I prefer a little more kick, but the flavors and freshness make this a winner. Made by Victory Brewing Company in Pennsylvania.



Blue Point Toxic Sludge :Black IPA / Cascadian Dark Ale | 7.00% ABV.

Blue Point will donate 100% of net proceeds from Toxic Sludge to Delaware-based Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research to fund their Spreading Our Wings Campaign and long term efforts to build a Wildlife Response Annex.

I toast the Blue Point Brewery for such a great idea. Ironic, that the initials for the Brewery = BP.



Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21, The Paris Review.
Interviewed by George Plimpton
INTERVIEWER
Well, perhaps it would be better put this way: Graham Greene said that a ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system. You yourself have said, I believe, that great writing comes out of a sense of injustice. Do you consider it important that a novelist be dominated in this way—by some such compelling sense?
HEMINGWAY
Mr. Greene has a facility for making statements that I do not possess. It would be impossible for me to make generalizations about a shelf of novels or a wisp of snipe or a gaggle of geese. I’ll try a generalization though. A writer without a sense of justice and of injustice would be better off editing the yearbook of a school for exceptional children than writing novels. Another generalization. You see; they are not so difficult when they are sufficiently obvious. The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.

October 24, 2010

"Shatneresque" as an answer in yesterday's NYT crossword led me to my personal library which has the above book. The original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever" by Harlan Ellison.



Here's Harlan Ellison explaining why his version and especially his ending was best.



Keith Richards autobiography Life comes out this week. CBS Sunday Morning did a nice piece on the roll-out of the book. Here is Keith Richards on Snorting Dad's Ashes. Book is on the must-read list.



The The Paris Review’s author interview series is now on-line. I always loved the one they did with Don DeLillo.
"Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking."



A re-boot of Holmes in modern times will debut tonight: Sherlock. Opening episode is A Study in Pink, in contrast to A Study in Scarlet. Wonder if Mormons and RACHE come into play.



Today’s quote of the day in The Big Picture Blog is too good not to share:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks], will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -Thomas Jefferson

Here's another:
"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."