Portland (x2)

Today I am in Portland. I took the train down here. It was an eight hour ride and we got to look at the ocean.

I read Ray Carver and listened to a tribute to Alice Munro.

In Portland, we've already been to Powell's. I might go there everyday.

See you in Vancouver for the A Very Sad Mag Family Holiday Party (make sure to RSVP!). We have delicious beer from Phillips to boot!

Remember the Good Times

A new poll shows that 44% of voters would rather have George W. Bush as president than Barack Obama. Because remember how great was? We had so much fun!

via The Awl

The Tiger Woods Critical Reading Group

It's funny when you reach back out to the world outside your school life (it's nice to know it's still here) and realize that the big news these days is Tiger Woods's "transgressions."

Writers at the Globe and Mail and the CBC have exhausted all the gossip so now they've both analyzed Woods's PR crisis management strategies.

Let's read and compare in the morning.

• Tiger Woods's word team chooses carefully (Russell Smith, Globe and Mail)
• Tiger Woods needs new PR strategy (Malcolm Kelly, CBC Sports)

A Christmas Miracle

NYMag got word from a reviewer at the The Vertex that MacGruber might be the best SNL movie since Wayne's World:

You might not believe me when I tell you this, but there’s no doubt: 'MacGruber' was amazing.

A bold statement but I buy it. After all, could a movie with Bill Hader, Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig possibly bomb? The answer is no. End of story. I'm excited.

Macgruber. April 2010.


The Vertex review

Jing! Jing!

This will never get old

From the "REALLY?!" files

And the sad thing is, I really liked Jay Baruchel.

Movie Trailer of the Day: First official teaser trailer for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Jon Turteltaub’s live-action reimagining of Disney’s Fantasia.

The film, which is essentially a front for a two-hour long home movie of Nicolas Cage making unwanted advances of a sexual nature toward your childhood, will hit theaters July 16, 2010.

via The Daily What

Can it be?

This blog has been abandoned for almost a month?

Well, I'm back for a short while since my masters program has loosened its death grip and decided to give me a little break. It'll take me a while to get back into the swing of things but I'm excited to see what's happening on the inter-tubes lately.

Offline, I have an exciting stack of books to read. It's ambitious winter-reading book-list time. Here's what's on deck this year:

• Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons)
• Candide (Voltaire)
• The Progress of Love (Alice Munro)
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Raymond Carver)
• The New Kings of Nonfiction (Ira Glass, ed)
• Black Dogs (Ian McEwan)
• Happiness (Will Ferguson)
• I Like You (Amy Sedaris)
  

Plus there's a huge stack of New Yorker magazines by my bed that are calling my name. One day everything will calm down and I will have time to read, right?

I also want to recommend BIGFOOT: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu. I'm not sure how to describe this book by Toronto author and illustrator Roumieu except to call it the most satisfyingly cruel and unapologetic adult picture book you've ever read. And if you're doing last-minute Christmas shopping just pick up copies of BIGFOOT for everyone you know. It's a crowdpleaser.

Here's a sneak peek:



[click photo for large size]

Miscellany

Hi, I missed you. Here's what's on my mind:

Annie and Grace for Vogue (I swear, if they put Grace Coddington's stamp on every cover of Vogue from now on, sales would sky rocket. Woman is a Genius.)

Thanks, Brandon

School reading:
"James Frey's Morning After" - a great article from Vanity Fair, June 2008

Essential viewing on the future of e-books by Michael Tamblyn (inspirational, smart, thought-provoking [insert more cliches here, I dare you--they will all hold true])


Q: Illogical sentence? "A very good article about Megan Fox with quotes from the actress that are intelligible."
A: No. I liked this NYT Sunday Magazine cover story very much. "The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox"

You know how I got sucked into the Frank Bruni hype machine in the summer? Well, turns out Born Round is very good indeed.

Also, Amy Adams is lovely. See: Junebug.

Pop-culture-conversation starter: "An Uncanny Similarity between Mad Men and the Office"
via The Daily What

Findings from Torrington, AB's World Famous Gopher Hole:


Literally:

The New Black

Tracy Morgan doesn't hold back. On an interview with Terry Gross that has been making the rounds, Tracy Morgan speaks candidly about his childhood, getting out of the ghetto, and his experiences as an actor on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock.

He's charming, he's real, he's effusive. It makes for a very good interview.

Morgan is promoting his memoir I am the New Black (Random House).

Transcript here

Audio here

Soul-Stirring Reading

I was up really, really late last week reading Ian Brown's series for the Globe and Mail called The Boy in the Moon. The report is an intimate and raw account about his family's struggle to care for and understand his son Walker, who was born with a rare genetic disorder.

I know you will love it and it will move you.

Ian Brown's book based on the G&M series was published by Random House Canada this fall. A preview here:

Ryan!

Today, we welcome good friend, pasta maker, promising butcher, and future architect Ryan McClanaghan into the blogospheres.

Here he is, just 30 minutes old: ryanmcclan.tumblr.com

NEW MICHAEL CHABON!!!

I'm three months late, so what?

Here is Manhood for Amateurs

via New York Review of Books

Blockbuster Book Trailer

Not too long ago, nobody knew Quirk Books. Now, with the smash success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, they are publishers to watch. Currently, Quirk is pulling out all the stops for the follow-up book Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters with this fantastic book trailer.

Authors, beware: Your publisher may not hire actors and put them in costume and actually light them properly.



via HuffPo

Braggart Alert

I was doing a little bit of cleaning around my house and found a print-out of Bruce Handy's article from the September issue of Vanity Fair. Know what's it's called? "Don and Betty's Paradise Lost."

A year ago I wrote a paper about Mad Men and Milton.

I'm just sayin'...*


*that I'm brilliant and prophetic.