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As promised, a couple of pix from Saturday’s trip to Providence. We went to Colt State Park and walked out by Narragansett Bay. The weather was beautiful (for the season).

Here are a couple of the water. I sorta like the “big empty” look of the sky, but you guys know that I’m crazy.

I hope there’s a statue of me someday, and that it shows me wearing a suit. This one’s of John H. Chafee, who helped the state acquire the Colt Park land during his tenure as RI’s governor in the ’60s.

This one’s of Paul, me, and the official VM girlfriend.

When I was a wee Virtual Memoirist in my grad school days in Annapolis, I used to read the Paris Review‘s Writers at Work interviews all the time. Borrowed a bunch of the collected volumes from the public libraries, and abused the photocopier at the MD DOT — where I taught GED skills to highway workers — to make copies of the best ones.

Now, the magazine is posting a whole ton of these great interviews on its site. For some bizarre reason (probably legal), they’re calling it the “DNA of Literature,” rather than “Writers At Work.”

Also, I’m not sure why certain of them haven’t been PDF’d (you really need to read the Faulkner one).

Today marks two years since I started Virtual Memories! (It wasn’t a very auspicious first post, I amdit).

The occasion really warrants a redesign of the blog (and the inclusion of some additional resources/side sites); maybe I can get to that sometime soon.

Meanwhile, you’ll have to content yourselves with my ramblings and occasional guest-posts. I’m always looking for more of those, with the intent of turning this thing into a little more of a magazine than a personal rant-fest. If my general plans for the rest of the year work out, I’ll have a bunch more time to work on that [twirls moustache, cackles hideously].

Off to Providence, RI on a day-trip. The official VM girlfriend gets to meet my buddies Paul & Deb. If I get any good photos from there, you’ll be the first to know.

My first trip up there, they took me out to see HP Lovecraft’s grave. I was hoping that the experience would confer some sorta funky powers on me, but Paul sez that it only gives you the ability to awe attendees at horror-cons. Oh, well.

I have a new favorite drink, largely because of the insanely funny commercial.

The official VM girlfriend and I simply call the stuff “ROY! ROY-ROY-ROY!”

Jeff Larkin offers the top 10 ass-kickings delivered by Chris Hitchens in 2004, including

6) On John Kerry:
“I heard that people were sending the checks to the $10,000-a-plate dinner, or whatever it was–they were sending the check, they wouldn’t come to the dinner. That’s too much. ‘I’ll pay you not to have me to dinner with the nominee.’ That may be a rumor, but it did appear in the NY Times fairly authoritatively, and it seems somehow horribly true. Also it seems to me astonishing that the test of a Democratic liberal now is to be gung ho, or have been gung ho, about Vietnam. Of all wars. And then, did he think Mr. John O’Neil had died? Did he sort of check? Because the last time he tried this, it’s agreed by all that John O’Neil gave him a pretty good run for his money back in the seventies. Whatever you think about the merits of the case.”

Enjoy.

Jennifer Weiner explains how to submit a Talk of the Town piece to the New Yorker.

Step eight: Paranoia. Decide that Talk of the Town assistant is twenty-two-year-old Brown graduate with size zero leather miniskirt and degree in semiotics who automatically shuns any book or short story with actual plot and unambiguous ending. Imagine Talk of the Town assistant as mean-faced girl from freshman year of college who corrected your pronunciation of “heinous” in front of a room full of classmates, including guy on whom you had a crush.

Get oil heat.

This is some of who we are.

I’m so glad that the new biopic about Christopher Hitchens is coming out in February.

I’m not sure about the casting, though . . .