Posted on by Gil

What It Is: 9/15/08

What I’m reading: The Long Goodbye, which I haven’t read since 1992. I gotta read more of Chandler’s stuff. For some reason, 9 of his novels are available for the Kindle. So . . . any suggestions? (Also, The Last Musketeer, by Jason, and still with Montaigne’s essays. . .)

What I’m listening to: Beck’s Modern Guilt. And REM’s “Ignoreland,” which shuffled up recently on my iPod and will probably be in heavy rotation through the election.

What I’m watching: Your mom. There. I’ve said it. (Amy had a pretty busy week, so we didn’t get around to finishing up the last season of The Wire. Two episodes left!)

What I’m drinking: Red Stripe! Hooray beer!

What Rufus is up to: Accidentally showing up at a greyhound meet & greet! The admin of the Greyhound Friends NJ list dropped our e-mail by accident, so we didn’t know that our local pet store was hosting an event on Saturday. Coincidentally, we took Rufus up there to buy his pet food (we could’ve done it without him, but he loves going to the store), and discovered 4 or 5 greyhounds & owners in the parking-lot. Rufus, of course, was very happy to make some new friends.

Where I’m going: To the GFNJ Annual Fall Picnic/Greyhound Planet Day on Sunday in Bridgewater, NJ! My pal/co-worker Jason & his wife are picking up their grey at the picnic, so we’ll find out if their girl gets along with Rufus before we set up a playdate.

What I’m happy about: Having a quiet weekend, between pretty busy weeks.

What I’m sad about: David Foster Wallace’s suicide, even though I hadn’t read a book of his in around 10 years. (I suppose this title is a bit ironic now.) Here’s a terrific appreciation of/meditation on DFW by David Gates. Gates & I talked about Wallace in our first conversation, c. 1996, when I called him through the Newsweek switchboard because I was bored at my office and thought maybe he’d be around and willing to shoot the breeze. He was. (UPDATE: Gates suggests I/we read Laura Miller’s DFW piece on Salon.) (UPDATE 2: Michael Bierut has a good post on DFW viewed through a design/marketing lens.)

What I’m pondering: How SiteMeter made so many poor decisions when it “upgraded” this weekend.

2 Replies to “What It Is: 9/15/08”

  1. Couldn’t believe the news about DFW but as soon as I saw he had died, my first thought was that it had been a suicide. I didn’t much like him as a personality, nor did I ever finish reading anything he had written (people told me *MY* style was too dense?)–not even one of his short stories in Conjunctions–but I could see he was exceptionally talented, perhaps a genius in his own right. I now wonder what the problem was … he had everything (from where I sit) a literary writer could hope for … a good job, critically acclaimed books, a publisher, and, as far as I know, a solid marriage. I suppose there will be a book about the author in a few years or so, and we’ll all find out.

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