Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.
Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).
« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »
Years ago, I lived in Santa Monica near Harry Shearer. That was before his big success on The Simpsons and in the movies (This is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration). Back then, he was something of a cult comedian, with a brilliant Sunday-morning radio program, Le Show, on the NPR outlet KCRW.
Le Show was still on the air when I moved to New Orleans (still is), and in a weird coincidence, Shearer moved to New Orleans a few years after I did, buying a house near mine. I saw him around the neighborhood a few times (once at Mardi Gras), but never met him.
After Katrina, he became a public advocate for the city, mostly in his blog on the Huffington Post. Earlier this year, he also published a very funny novel, Not Enough Indians, about a destitute upstate New York town that discovers its Native American roots when casino money comes to town.
Chris Rose had a great interview with Shearer in today's Times-Picayune, touching on matters comic, tragic, and caustic. A few excerpts:
Shearer: It is the nature of the personal transactions that I experience here. The day-to-day is what I cherish here, the simple act of walking to the corner store to buy a newspaper and the conversations that you have or simply overhear....
Rose: Where are we? How are we doing? How's it going?Shearer: Not as far along as we should be but farther along than we have any right to be when you consider the people who are in charge.
Rose: Speaking of that: It's 10 o'clock, do you know where your mayor is?
Shearer: I don't know where he is any time of day or night. I don't think anybody does and I've come to think that might be a blessing. Seriously, it's like this: Leadership would be great. Lack of leadership is not great, but we can deal with it. But the illusion of leadership would be the most dangerous thing of all.
Rose: And what you're saying is that we're not suffering from that.
Shearer: Exactly.
Exactly.
Great interview; read it all here.
James Brown: May 3, 1933 - Dec. 25, 2006
From the Soul Train Starfest Christmas Album:
Got a video camera? Tropicana Orange Juice is offering $10,000 for "the best take on a quintessential Portland morning." Films should be under 2 minutes, and be submitted by Jan. 24. The details:
Tropicana will reveal three contest finalists at a breakfast event during the 2007 Portland International Film Festival on February 16, 2007. Three finalists will receive a $2,000 prize as well as a year's supply of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Fellow Portlanders will then vote online to help determine the grand prize winner, who will be awarded an additional $10,000 prize.
The fine print is here.
Meanwhile, a prominent PDXer had a particularly bad take on "a quintessential Portland morning":
Director Gus Van Sant was arrested early yesterday morning on a drunk driving charge in Oregon, The Smoking Gun has learned. Van Sant, 54, was popped at 1:40 AM by Portland cops and booked into the Multnomah County jail, where the below mug shot was snapped.
According to a police spokesman, Van Sant was stopped at a traffic light when cops noticed his 2006 Porsche Cayenne's headlights were off. Van Sant was then pulled over and officers detected "glassy eyes, slurred speech, and the smell of alcohol," said Sgt. Brian Schmautz. The famed director failed field sobriety tests and blew a .19 on a Breathalyzer (more than twice the state's legal limit of .08).
And you know there has to be a Nick Nolte-worthy mugshot:
Not exactly the picture of a Tropicana orange juice-fresh morning, but maybe Gus was drinking screwdrivers...
Today's installment of one of my favorite cartoons, Dan Piraro's Bizarro, took on the hot and steamy world of English majors...
What happens when the stick of dynamite wakes up the cat?
(More Piraro weirdness can be found in his tome Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro.)
Loren Steffy, the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, has written (rather bravely) about his employer's plan to have Chron employees give blood--not for any charitable purpose, but to keep health care costs down:
Giving blood to stave off higher premiums is just one more indignity in the modern workplace. We can't get a job without handing over a cup of our urine to a prospective employer. Now, as my colleague Brett Brune reported earlier this week, at least one local employer is using urine to test for nicotine usage, too. Our pee, it seems, is mightier than our word.
Under the guise of "wellness," a little more of our private identity falls away, consumed by an ever more intrusive public domain. It may make us healthier, but we pay the price as surely as if we'd posted our Social Security number on the front door.
In an age where you can't count on a bank or a shoe store to keep your credit card information secure, how are we supposed to feel confident that an insurance company won't release medical data? Or lose it? Or sell it? Or simply use it against us?
The Chron (which is owned by Hearst, a corporation for which I once worked) claims that this sort of pre-screening can detect early symptoms of major medical problems (and, not so incidentally, keep costs down), but I have to agree with Loren Steffy: it seems a major invasion of privacy.
Back when I worked for Hearst, I swore I'd never pee in a cup for any potential employer, but that idealism seems quaint these days--there are people in the workforce today who have probably never not peed in a cup as a matter of course in employment, even for a temporary McJob. Still, I have to agree with Steffy's conclusion:
Despite all of this, I am among the lucky ones. As I wrestle with the idea of turning over blood samples to fend off a premium hike, millions of others don't even have the option....
It's a reminder that the health care system in this, the most prosperous country on Earth, has become a bureaucratic patchwork that Dr. Frankenstein would envy.
So we give our blood, surrender our urine and fill out questionnaires in a vain attempt to deny the unavoidable truth: The system is failing us all.
Here's a piece I wrote for PBS on the new phenomenon of online short-film festivals: Cannes meets YouTube.
I don't think sitting in front of a computer and watching movies will ever take the place of a traditional film festival, but it's rather wonderful that technology has now advanced to the point where a person who lives in a place where he/she would never be able to see short films now has the same access as a New Yorker or an Angeleno. And it's great for young filmmakers trying to get their work seen, who are no longer hamstrung by time and space.
(PBS' Independent Lens is broadcasting its annual short-film festival on Dec. 27, but Lens' own online festival can be viewed here. My favorite of the selections was Iris Rose Ichishita's documentary "Homeless Karaoke," about a unique social outlet located in the midst of L.A.'s Skid Row. Funny and strange.)
For about 10 days last month, the most frequently-searched-for terms on this blog were "judith regan" and "judith regan email." Seemed that a lot of people wanted to talk to the would-be publisher of O.J. Simpson's wink-wink tell-all If I Did It.
Headlined on the Drudge Report tonight (the link is unlikely to last):
PUBLISHING GURU JUDITH REGAN LET GO FROM MURDOCH EMPIRE... Judith Regan's employment with Harpercollins has been terminated effective immediately, sources tell DRUDGE REPORT... Regan publishing program and staff will continue as part of the Harpercollins general books group... The OJ fiasco is not the main reason for terminating the world's most successful publisher, sources explain. "Many factors led to this decision," says an insider. The force behind smash bestsellers by Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Sean Hannity and others could not be reached for comment late Friday... Word of the firing came as Murdoch's NEWS CORP. was holding its Christmas party...
Regan's stable of high-profile "writers" has made pots of gold for Murdoch, so it'll be interesting to see if the company tries to spin it in any non-O.J. direction.
In any case: Merry Christmas, Judith Regan!
Edited to add further details and confirmation from the AP:
O.J. Simpson's would-be publisher, Judith Regan, was fired Friday, her sensational, scandalous tenure at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ending with the tersest of announcements.
"Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. "The Regan publishing program and staff will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group."
Regan's firing comes less than a month after Murdoch's cancellation of Simpson's hypothetical murder confession, "If I Did It," a planned book and Fox television interview that was greeted with instant and near-universal disgust when announced.
Regret the Error has published its list of the year's most eyebrow-raising journalistic corrections. Like this:
AN item on 2 August last year “Telly Teri’s Romps in Van” stated that actress Teri Hatcher had sex romps in her VW camper van at her home.
Although published in good faith, we now accept that the article was totally incorrect and we apologise to Ms Hatcher for the embarrassment caused.
And this one, from The Oregonian:
A headline on Page One on Saturday should have made clear that Oregon Health & Science University will be studying the effects of meth, not cooking it.
But the typo of the year has to go to the Ottawa Citizen:
Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.
Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".
