Witness no more: Cleveland’s not so happy about LeBron leaving for Miami, so the mural is coming down. Here’s a pic of it in more hopeful times:
Unrequired Reading: July 9, 2010
Maybe next week’s Unrequired Reading will be an hour-long special on ESPN, but for now, all you get is this silly-ass blog.
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What It Is: 7/5/10
What I’m reading: Once I was done reading financial filings, press releases and analyst reports for my Top Companies ish, I was able to kick back, relax and celebrate the July 4th weekend by re-reading Heart of Darkness!
What I’m listening to: Night Work
What I’m watching: Jaws, The Sixth Sense, a documentary about plate lunch diners in southern Louisiana, and some Yankees baseball.
What I’m drinking: No. 209 & Q-Tonic, after an aborted attempt at making a G&T out of Ransom, an Old Tom (malted) gin. Blech.
What Rufus & Otis are up to: Well, Ru didn’t have a good weekend. He’s terrified of fireworks (and thunder, but we haven’t had that in a while), so he spent much of Saturday and Sunday nights curled up in the back corner of my home office. On Sunday, a late-day walk home from a neighbor’s party left him with a little blister on a front paw-pad, so he’s limping all over the place today. I bandaged it up, but that just makes him look more pathetic. Otis, on the other hand, got to take a solo trip to the Ridgewood dog park on Friday, where he met The Big Dog. He had an okay time, but consecutive days with “chasing squeaky tennis ball” sessions left him with a little tear on his carpal pad (the paw pad further up on the “wrist”, which they use for braking). I’m just a bad dogfather, I know.
Where I’m going: Portland, OR next week for the annual meeting of the wonderfully named Controlled Release Society (get yer mind outta the gutter; there’s nothing tantric about it).
What I’m happy about: I managed to finish that July/August issue in time and managed to squeeze a 30 Rock joke into my editorial (how an earlier feature went over about as well as NBC’s Salute to Fireworks). And getting out to see my pals John & Liz for a July 3rd party. And being rewarded for a 40-minute traffic jam on the way home on the NYThruway that evening; it turned out to have been caused by a bus fire. By the time we passed it, the bus had been so thoroughly scorched that its entire skin was gone. I haven’t seen any news items on it, so it’s likely no one was hurt; that means I’m allowed to consider it awesome.
What I’m sad about: The sight of a limping dog; Sia’s decision to cover Madonna’s Oh Father instead of its Like a Prayer companion song, Dear Jessie; my 68-year-old, somewhat-invalid neighbor’s accident that left her Saturn SUV rolling down the hill in the woods behind her house on Saturday morning. (She had gotten out of the car to move her walker, but left it in drive. She wasn’t hurt, and the Saturnstopped after 25 or 30 feet when it ran into a fallen tree.)
What I’m worried about: Today’s trip to the endodontist, in which I get to cap off 6 months of heavy duty work-stress by getting assessed for a root canal. Go, me!
What I’m pondering: Whether I should let my Sports Illustrated subscription lapse. I got a few renewal forms in the last month or two, and it occurred to me that I barely get around to reading SI or the ESPN mag nowadays. I still dig sports, but I’m more likely to read New York, Monocle, or the Paris Review when I’m in my, um, favorite reading location.
Unrequired Reading: July 2, 2010
I not only managed to wrap the Top Companies ish by the deadline, I also managed to get you a full dose of Unrequired Reading this week! Now get to reading!
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What It Is: 6/28/10
What I’m reading: Imperial Bedrooms
What I’m listening to: We Are Born
What I’m watching: 44 Inch Chest (it’s no Sexy Beast), Michael Jackson: This is It, and Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. The MJ pic was okay, but that Rush documentary was A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Go grab the DVD on Netflix. NownowNOW!
What I’m drinking: DH Krahn’s & Q-Tonic.
What I’m smoking: I had an Arturo Fuente Single Chateau during our company picnic on Friday (I had to get work done and showed up around 4 hours late, but I still got to spend 2-3 hours at the picnic). It was the first cigar I smoked in years and, boy, was it good.
What Rufus & Otis are up to: The usual: discovering a snake, charging a deer, and otherwise just trying to stay cool.
Where I’m going: A couple of July 4th weekend parties.
What I’m happy about: The end of my big-ass Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma issue is in sight! Only 3 more profiles to write, after which I’ve gotta lay out all the pages, but it’s actually coming together! I think I’ll actually be able to finish it by Thursday! Whew!
What I’m sad about: The state of the pharma industry.
What I’m worried about: What effect the above is going to have on my livelihood in the next few years.
What I’m pondering: Why Rush isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That’s a goddamned embarrassment.
Unrequired Reading: June 25, 2010
One more week to go on my crazy work-schedule, and then I can lapse into a 3-day coma! Till then, have some Unrequired Reading!
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What It Is: 6/21/10
What I’m reading: Imperial Bedrooms
What I’m listening to: Walking Wounded
What I’m watching: Honeymoon in Vegas, Boondocks, and the end of the NBA finals. And then I watched these highlights from Ron Artest’s postgame press conference, which is one of the most joyous things I’ve ever seen:
(The full-length version is here, but I couldn’t get the embed to load properly. Grr.)
What I’m drinking: North Shore #6 & Q-Tonic
What Rufus & Otis are up to: Discovering a turtle, re-enacting Kung-Fu Hustle, and lounging around.
Where I’m going: Nowhere. Except for a visit or two to my office, I likely won’t leave the house much in the next two weeks, except for dog-walks and lunch-breaks.
What I’m happy about: Taking a break from Saturday’s work and going to the NJ Comics Expo (it was about 15 minutes from my home), where I met some older cartoonists and editors and saw a bazillion comics from my youth, now 50-cent fodder in longboxes. Oh, and I saw the Batmobile. I also met Irwin Hasen, the guy who created Wildcat and co-created Dondi, whose solid-black eyes made him the Antichrist of Little Orphan Annie’s world. Mr. Hasen looks about as 91 as he is.
What I’m sad about: How I basically give up the month of June every year. But that’s the job, and it’s preferable to the alternative.
What I’m worried about: Top Companies issue. I’m one profile off-schedule already.
What I’m pondering: Why I downloaded Imperial Bedrooms onto my Kindle. I mean, sure, it was only $9.99, but am I really that interested in how Bret Easton Ellis treats middle age for a bunch of rich Angelenos? Maybe I just need some mental decompression for the next week or so, while I’m writing around 2,000 words a day of pharma company profiles.
Also, I was catching up on past issues of Interview this weekend, and it struck me that there’s just about nobody who would be The Great Get nowadays, that interview subject whom no one else could reach. I mean, sure, there’s Thomas Pynchon, but how many people really care about his writing nowadays? So, I guess I’m wondering, is there one interview that you’d hear about and say, “Wow! I can’t believe they got [x] to sit down for an interview!”?
Unrequired Reading: June 18, 2010
I’m crazy-stressed with work (you’d laugh if you saw the work-calendar I put together for this month), but here’s some Unrequired Reading action for you, dear readers!
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You, Sir, Are Bad-Ass: Peshawar Edition
Gary Brooks Faulkner: the anti-John Walker Lindh.
What It Is: 6/14/10
What I’m reading: Less Than Zero
What I’m listening to: The Singular Adventures of the Style Council
What I’m watching: I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale. Because when you only made 5 movies before your death, and the weakest one was The Conversation, you deserve a documentary. The other four? Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and the first two Godfather movies. Wonderful documentary, albeit too brief at 40 minutes. Bizarrely, Israel Horowitz looked younger than just about every other interview subject, esp. Al Pacino, who seems to be heading toward the Phil Spector level of odd looks. Also, we watched the deleted scenes from In The Loop, after I stumbled across this totally NSFW montage of great Malcolm Tucker moments from the movie:
Most of the deleted scenes warranted cutting, but there are one or two that would’ve made the movie even more awesome. I admit that Jamie “The Crossest Man In Scotland” McDonald’s great monologue about There Will Be Blood is tremendous, but it would’ve just eaten up too much screentime.
What I’m drinking: North Shore #6 & Q-Tonic
What Rufus & Otis are up to: 
Handling a couple of days without their dad while I was at a press event in Chicago (and Madison, with a stop in Milwaukee on the way home). Also, Otis demonstrated his complete disregard for my authority when I took him to a kiddie-park and threw a squeaky tennis-ball about 50 feet away. He chased it down, caught it on a bounce, and proceeded to run all over the park, squeaking and leaping. Not once did he listen to me when I called his name. Eventually, he settled down and chomped on the ball while Rufus & I watched. A day later, he and Rufus did a bang-up job as ambassadogs at our local farmers’ market.
Where I’m going: Nowhere! I mean it!
What I’m happy about: That I stayed in the same hotel in Chicago as Common and Kanye West last week. Also, that my room had a Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin
What I’m sad about: That Zeppelin speaker is $600.
What I’m worried about: As ever, getting the Top Companies issue done in time.
What I’m pondering: Why Less Than Zero was a success. I’m about halfway through, and it’s a remarkably flat piece of writing. I mean, I get that that’s the point, that 18-year-old rich kids in L.A. led flat lives in the 1980s, and I enjoy some of the time-capsule aspects of it, but it’s simply not a very interesting narrative and the prose itself is artless. Maybe it gets better in the second half. Or maybe our literary standards were just as shitty 25 years ago as they are now. Maybe I’ll find out when I read that sequel.