Author: Gil

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Because that’s the way God wants it?

I have an editorial advisory board at my day job. I hit the members up for article topics, send them “Ask the Board” questions and otherwise kibbitz about the direction of the magazine. It’s a non-paying gig, but it carries some sort of esteem, I guess.

Since we’re coming to the end of the year, I just e-mailed all 30 members and asked them to update their job titles and companies and confirm that they want to stay on the board. And that’s when I noticed something odd: There’s only one woman on my advisory board.

I’m no fan of political-correctness or quotas, but I have to admit that I’m a little embarrassed by this fact.

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What It Is: 10/27/08

What I’m reading: A whole ton of magazines that have piled up, including the recent issues of Monocle, New York, Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and Fantastic Man. Not Montaigne, which is why there’s no Monday Morning Montaigne this week. Sorry. I know you were looking forward to it.

What I’m listening to: The Four Tops’ Definitive Colection, La Radiolina by Manu Chao, and Underworld’s Oblivion with Bells.

What I’m watching: NOT THIS! AAIEE! (We did watch Casino Royale, which sucked)

What I’m drinking: Stella Artois . . . and my first G&T since Sept. 26! It was eh!

What Rufus is up to: Convincing more of my coworkers to adopt retired racing greyhounds! Another trek up to Wawayanda state park! Developing some sort of fatty tumor on the “elbow” of his left foreleg! (probably not serious, but I’ll take him down to the vet this week to check)

Where I’m going: Maybe to the Cowboys/Giants game next Sunday!

What I’m happy about: One of my mom’s pals, whom I haven’t seen since I was around 13, recognized me and called me over while I was out walking Rufus. We had a nice chat. Okay, actually, I’m not happy about this so much as I am weirded out. I mean, one of mom’s friends didn’t know who I was last month when I actually told her my name (despite the fact that I wrote her daughter’s college application essay), until I said, “Miriam’s son,” so the fact that I was identified this one — whom I haven’t seen since around 1984 when I was part of the Dungeons & Dragons gang that played in her basement — is frankly bizarre.

What I’m sad about: Fantastic Man doesn’t put its articles online. Otherwise, I’d link to some neat interviews with Fergus Henderson and Tyler Brule, as well as a funny piece on Karl Lagerfeld’s mysterious Chanel menswear line.

What I’m pondering: I find most “acclaimed” contemporary novels start out strong but get mighty dull. Is that a sign that these writers blow their creative load early on, or that my attention span is for crap?

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Jamie was a common name for a guy . . . in the 19th century

For some reason, I thought this card would be in black and white:

How long has Jamie been in the big leagues? To quote ESPN columnist Buster Olney,

The folks at the Elias Sports Bureau answered this question: Who are the youngest and oldest hitters he has faced? Tony Perez, born on May 14, 1942, is the oldest, and Justin Upton, born on Aug. 25, 1987, is the youngest. That’s a gap of 45 years, which is almost incomprehensible.

I saw Jamie pitch in Seattle in 2001. He was only 38; when the radar gun showed one of his pitches at 78 mph, fans started shouting, “Drug test him!”

Congrats on making your first World Series appearance, Moyer! Go Phils!

Update: Looks like Jamie might get some post-Series endorsements for Depends.

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F*** You, You Whining F***: 10/25/08

I suppose a disproportionate number of these F*** You posts are going to come from the literary world. I just have a great deal of pissed-off with regards to people who think book publishing could be a utopian wonderworld if publishers would just stop caring about making money. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of money gets wasted and big publishers are hemmed in by a blockbuster mentality, but that said . . . well, let’s just leave it to the David Ulin, book editor at the L.A. Times:

What’s more likely [than mid-list authors getting low-balled in favor of hype-driven Big Deals], I think, is that publishers will scale back some of their higher-end advances, especially in regard to certain risky properties: books blown out of magazine stories, over-hyped first novels, multi-platform “synergies.” At least, I hope that’s what happens, because one of the worst trends in publishing — in culture in general — over the last decade or so has been its air of desperate frenzy, which far more than falling numbers tells you that an industry is in decline.

That is, faced with hard times and a declining global economy, book publishers are going to abandon their quick-hit strategy, and start promoting “serious” literary midlist authors whose books could take decades to catch on (if they ever do). Oh, and they won’t do this because it would make any sense to their management and ownership per se, but because that’s what I want to happen.

And this will work why? Oh, because our global economic tumult will make us all crave “serious” literature!

This, of course, may be the silver lining to our current economic contraction: No more will publishers or writers have time or money for ephemera. During the Great Depression, even popular literature got serious: The 1930s saw the birth of noir. As the money dries up, so too, one hopes, does the gadabout nature of literary culture, the breathless gossip, all the endless hue and cry.

I just hope they don’t let him review business and finance books.

Bonus: the writer refers to the “ridiculous (and ongoing) print-versus-Web non-controversy” despite the fact that he works at a newspaper that’s collapsing . . . because all of its readers have left for the Web!

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There’s nothing wrong with you that I can’t fix. With my stats.

Possibly the greatest basketball-to-comics non sequitur ever, courtesy of ESPN’s NBA preview article on Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey:

Morey grew up reading Bill James’ Baseball Abstract and later worked for the stats guru, but his geekier tendencies might actually have more to do with his boyhood love of comic book anti-heroes who cut against the grain, figures like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. “In a league in which 30 teams are competing for one prize, you have to differentiate yourself somehow,” Morey says. “We chose analytics.”

What’s great is that this article is all about using calm, cool reasoning and “analytics” to explain the decision to trade for Ron Artest!

Bonus: Did I mention that the annual Virtual Memories NBA Preview will be posted on Tuesday morning, just in time for the debut of the 2008-2009 season? I just did!