The Artwork of Nicholas Jones

Pretty groovy stuff.

The Leaf

There's a story about photo detectives in the New York Times that's an interesting read.

From the story:

“The Leaf,” [pictured above] originally thought to have been made around 1839 or later, has become the talk of the photo-historical world. The speculation about its origins became so intense that Sotheby’s and the print’s owners decided earlier this month to postpone its auction, so that researchers could begin delving into whether the image may be, in fact, one of the oldest photographic images in existence, dating to the 1790s.

How Sportswriting Lost Its Game

The Utne Reader laments that sportswriting isn't what it used to be.

From the story:

Does sports journalism suck? In terms of urgency, the question is less national defense and more spilled milk, but I do feel like weeping whenever I peruse ESPN.com, fending off the bilge and looking for a piece that tackles an actual ethical or social issue. Or just tells a good story. Sportswriters don’t deny me this material outright.

Quote of the Week

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
- Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

Friday's Poem

Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty":

Darwin's Archives

The Guardian relays to readers that 90,000 pages of Charles Darwin's archives are available for perusal. You can do that here. Some pretty great stuff to gander at, including...

1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, and Descent of Man.
All editions of Origin of the Species.
Beagle Diary
Field notebooks.
Journal.
Transmutation notebooks.
Darwin's autobiography.

Your intelligence of all things Darwin will certainly, well, evolve.

Amsterdam

World Book Capital 2008.

If Horton Lived in My Neighborhood

A funny McSweeney's bit by Wendi Aarons.

What Did Neanderthal Speech Sound Like?

The New Scientist finds out - complete with audio!

A Brief History of the Ampersand

My favorite grammatical symbol discussed, warmly, at Adobe.

A New Dawn at the Library of Congress

Book Patrol has the details about the new "Library of Congress Experience."

Happy Tax Day!

But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy (1789)

For fun today, why not learn about Benjamin Franklin, the scientist, inventor, statesman, printer, philosopher, musician, economist? Good man, he is! Learn about him here and here.

My Writing in Venuszine

I recently interviewed a great local artist, Diem Chau, for Venuszine. You can read the story here.

What Happens When A Few Groovy Artists Come Up with a Blog?

You get this. And, of course, there's this site, my favorite spot for all things illustrative.

I Am a Miserable Slacker

I've only had one book e-published. I have 199,999 more books to write to catch up to this guy.

The Age of Kings

Colin Murphy has a story on the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest doings. What are they doing?

From the story:

The Royal Shakespeare Company has staged the whole of Shakespeare’s History Cycle in the bard’s birthplace – over weekends a company of 34 actors perform 264 roles in eight plays across 72 hours.

A TNR Debate: "The Ten-Cent Plague"

In the New Republic, there's a fun debate between Douglas Wolk, the author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, and David Hajdu, music critic for The New Republic and author of the new book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. They discuss Hajdu's book, the potentially malevolent effects of lurid horror comics on '50s teenagers, and the current state of the art form all with a fun slideshow highlighting those lurid horror comic covers!

Of Blurbatology

“The covers of this book are too far apart.” -- from a review by Ambrose Bierce (pictured above).

Critical Mass asks, "Does anyone really care about the blurbs on the back of a book?".

Quote of the Week

When books are burned in the end people will be burned too.
- Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856)

Off for a Few Days...

So posts will be few and far between. Fear not, I'll return next week after a brief time off to spend time in my old hometown - Olympia, WA. Have fun out there.

Friday's Poem

"Birches," by Robert Frost:

Classic Penguin Book Covers

Peruse some groovy old Penguin book covers here and here.

Is This Photo Emily Dickinson?

If it is, it's only the second known photograph of the famed poet. Interestingly, it was purchased on Ebay. What's more, the buyer went to have the photo authenticated by professionals. His tale, How I Met and Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: An Adventure on eBay, can be found here.

A Fine Excess

The New York Times has a story, and accompanying slideshow, about a new exhibit being shown at Atlanta's Emory University.

The collection? The most important collection of poetry in the world - the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. From the story:

Mr. Danowski, an American-born fine arts dealer and collector who now splits his time between Britain and South Africa, stockpiled more than 75,000 rare books, posters, periodicals and recordings; the collection comprises a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century.

I think we need to repeat that again, a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century.

Some of the highlights:
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," first edition.
Sylvia Plath's "Ariel," review copy with handwritten notes within by Anne Sexton.
Hart Crane's "The Bridge," of which there are only 25 known copies.

Pretty amazing stuff. So amazing, I shall write a haiku about it...

Oh, that Danowski
Collecting fine poetry
I wish I was rich.

How "Slaughterhouse Five" Was Born

Steve Almond, on Slate, reveals the seeds of a modern masterpiece.

The Lessons of Likeness

The American Scholar has published a lecture written by Allan Gurganus and delivered as part of the "American Pictures" program sponsored by Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery ant the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The lecture is entitled The Lessons of Likeness: Being a True History of Thomas Eakins' Portrait of Walt Whitman (with an added three-precent of narrative speculation).

Comic Book Tattoo

With me being a fan of Tori Amos AND comic books, I can't help but be a little more than intrigued about Comic Book Tattoo, a nearly 500-page deluxe-packaged anthology featuring some of comics’ brightest talents all of whom turn in new work inspired by the music of Tori Amos.

Jon's Book Reviews on Bookslut

I've started writing reviews for the great Bookslut website. A couple of them have been posted in their April edition.



Metro Stop Paris is an enlightening book about Parisian history. Having just visited Paris for the first time I found it rather riveting. Each chapter tells a different tale of Parisian history so, perhaps, you're not interested in learning about the life of St. Vincent de Paul or you're not interested in knowing the philosophic discussions of John-Paul Sartre. Never fear, the next chapter will probably offer you some little tasty nugget, like how Oscar Wilde is tied to the infamous Dreyfus Affair or about the relationship Anais Nin had with a psychotherapist.



The Secret History of the English Language is an interesting, fun (as fun as a book about applied epistemology can be), though a bit maddening, book about the English language. What we think are the origins of the language is nothing but hogwash, or so says the author, the delightful M.J. Harper.

Pulp of the Day

I found a fun new site. Each day they present a book cover from those heady days of pulp fiction. The thrills! The chills! The tawdry innocence! Pulp of the Day!

Look Who Is On USA Today's Groovy Blog

Wow! Me. Thanks, Whitney!

Science Fiction + Poetry = Science Fiction Poetry!

What exactly IS science fiction poetry? Suzette Haden Elgin discusses it in a short essay, "About Science Fiction Poetry," here.

A sample excerpt of a science fiction poem, for your edification:

There is a bacterium the color of melted butter,
under the microscope,
stunned and limp in the maw of a great blue molecule
that can only be sicced upon it by prescription.
I look at the gory photograph by chance,
as it caught my attention
— I was just passing by — I feel compassion.
(I am reminded, eyeless though it is, of the baby seals.)
What plaints it raises, and to what power, I will never know;
but I cannot keep from thinking: "Poor little thing!"

Want more science fiction poetry? Or, perhaps, you're writing science fiction poetry yourself? If so, join the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

The Perfect Library

The Telegraph has done it. They've come up with the perfect collection of 110 books that every library should have. How many of the Telegraph's books are on your shelves?

2008 Pulitzer Prizes Announced

Congratulations are in order for The Washington Post. They just won six Pulitzer Prizes. For fiction, the winner was Junot Diaz and his wondrous novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Fine and Mellow

Just because it's Billie Holiday's birthday today, I'll post this, one of the most famous jazz performances in TV history:

The Lie, by T.C. Boyle

T.C. Boyle's latest short story is available to read in the most recent New Yorker. Enjoy!

63 Must Have Grunge Fonts

Just in case you must have grunge fonts.

The Mike Wallace Interview

The Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas at Austin, has released all sorts of wonderful old interviews done by Mike Wallace in the 1950s, before his "60 Minutes" fame. You can watch and read transcripts of interviews Wallace did with Frank Lloyd Wright, Gloria Swanson, Steve Allen, Bob Feller, Dagmar, Margaret Sanger, Pearl Buck and more. It's pretty awesome.

Quote of the Week

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
- Samuel Johnson

Friday's Poem

Rumi's "Stars on a Dark Night":

The End of the Line

Jon Henley, in the Guardian, writes about the possible demise of the mighty semicolon.

From the headline:

An unlikely row has erupted in France over suggestions that the semicolon's days are numbered; worse, the growing influence of English is apparently to blame. Jon Henley reports on the uncertain fate of this most subtle and misused of punctuation marks. Aida Edemariam discovers which writers love it - and which would be glad to see it disappear.

Me - I love the semicolon. One of the best grammatical marks ever(!), right up there with the &.

The Rescue of John Steinbeck

Where's the literary love for John Steinbeck? Seriously. Come on literary establishment, he was the bomb! Robert Gottlieb, in the New York Review of Books takes a look at Steinbeck forty years after his death. To note, Of Mice and Men is my favorite book, and I've enjoyed all sorts of other Steinbeck tales (from The Pearl to Travels with Charley to Cannery Row) and I also have a nice collection of Steinbeck first editions, including a first edition of his first novel, Cup of Gold so, yeah, I appreciate the guy.

From the story:

So if all of Steinbeck is in print forty years after his death (in 1968), and despite the force-feeding of hundreds of thousands of school kids with his work—and official canonization by the Library of America—why is he so decisively off the literary map? Other than Brad Leithauser, who in 1989 published a perceptive fiftieth-anniversary homage to The Grapes of Wrath, who in America considers him seriously today, apart from a handful of Steinbeck academics and some local enthusiasts in Monterey?

Nor is dismissal of his work by the literary establishment anything new. When to everyone's surprise, including his own, he won the 1962 Nobel Prize, the reaction was startlingly hostile. "Without detracting in the least from Mr. Steinbeck's accomplishments," ran a New York Times editorial, "we think it interesting that the laurel was not awarded to a writer ...whose significance, influence and sheer body of work had already made a more profound impression on the literature of our age." And on the eve of the award ceremony in Stockholm, Arthur Mizener, again in the Times, questioned why the Nobel committee would reward a writer whose "limited talent is, in his best books, watered down by tenth-rate philosophizing." It's a question difficult to answer. (Steinbeck himself had doubts. When asked by a reporter whether he believed he deserved the prize, he responded, "Frankly, no.")

Most Collectible Authors

Who, according to AbeBooks, are the most collectible authors these days? Some of the entries (J.K. Rowling, Stephen King) aren't all that surprising, but some of the top writers just might surprise you (Winston Churchill, Tasha Tudor). They list 25 of the top authors on AbeBooks in 2007 (based on sales of books priced over $500).

Our Collective Recent History, Online

Kottke has compiled a small list of magazines that have opened up their respective archives online. Care to look at a Time Magazine from 1976? A Sports Illustrated issue published in October 1958? The Washington Post from 1894? You can.

HITTING ONE OUT OF THE PARK: THE RHUBARB AUDITIONS

I wrote this story recently about the auditions for Rhubarb. Rhubarb, if you're unclear, is the mascot of our local AAA minor league team, the Tacoma Rainiers. I thought it appropriate to post it here in honor of baseball season starting up again. The Rainiers begin their season tomorrow. Come check out a game at Cheney Stadium some time this year. It's great fun (MUCH cheaper than going to a Mariner game) and now, when you're there enjoying the game, you'll know who's under the reindeer head...



He walked in with Pez in his pockets and a smile on his face. "I can't go anywhere without my Pez." He was Payton Foutz, a 20-year-old from Tacoma's South Hill. The smile was because he was about to do something he always wanted to do - tryout to be a mascot, and not just any mascot, Rhubarb, the mascot for the AAA Tacoma Rainiers baseball team. He sat in front of a gauntlet of Tacoma Rainiers employees. "I'm really nervous," he said, baseball hat sitting askew atop his head.

"There's nothing to be nervous about," said Rebecca King, Executive Vice President.

Of course there was plenty to be nervous about if you were Foutz. First off, he was about to embark on an adventure, an adventure replete with oodles of baseball games, oodles of ogling fans young and old and oodles of public appearances. If he was chosen, he'd have to attend 70-plus baseball games and 100-plus public appearances, from senior centers to day camps, charity events to local parades. Second off, he was sitting in front of some big names within the Rainiers organization, people like Team President Aaron Artman and Josie Wilkes, Director of Marketing and Community Development, who would be, for no better term, Rhubarb's handler.

Also there - Tony Canepa - who demands much from a mascot. Why? Because he's been a mascot, twice in fact. All the way from Dallas, Texas (he is a creative director with Shlegel Sports, owners of the Rainiers), he was there to put the candidates, more than a half dozen, through the paces of being a real honest-to-goodness baseball-loving mascot. He had been the UNLV Runnin' Rebel during his college days. Then, for the Las Vegas 51s, a minor league team for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was Cosmo, a survivor of a spaceship crash who spent time at Area 51 and was a baseball phenom on his home planet of Koufaxia, or so says his biographical sketch on the team website.



After Foutz donned the outfit - fuzzy arms, a giant nose, mesmerizing blue eyes, a big rack of reindeer antlers, a jersey with the word Rhubarb emblazoned on the back - Canepa shouts out commands and Foutz has to do what Canepa says, in costume, without the ability to speak. "You're happy!" Foutz hops up and down in fits of joy. "You're embarrassed!" He furtively kicks the ground with his sneakers. "You're hassled by a drunk guy." He raises his big furry arms saying, without talking, "Hey, bud. Be cool." He wags his head seductively with a come hither look (difficult to do when the reindeer head's only emotion is euphoria) when he's asked to woo the ladies. "You're ecstatic," Canepa yells. "They just hit a home run!" Foutz jumps up and down like mad, the antlers scraping the ceiling of the small conference room where the auditions were held.



The mascot job is not a walk in the ballpark. Far from it. Getting paid $50 to $75 per appearance, Rhubarb has to be "on" all the time come that first pitch. There is dancing on dugouts to be done. There are inebriated baseball fans in the bleachers to contend with. There are preschools girls to hug. There are the middle school boys with baseballs they want autographed, all the more difficult when one is wearing reindeer "hooves."

"Man, I'm sweating," Foutz says, removing the reindeer head, breathing heavily before he has to do a dance routine in front of everyone. "You might need some Frebreze in here," he says, pointing to the inside of the head. "It's HOT in there."

Hot, Rhubarb is. He's down right popular. "He is a busy, busy reindeer," says Wilkes. "We get asked all sorts of questions," she says as Foutz grabs a water and guzzles it. "We get asked if he's a moose. He's NOT a moose. Rhubarb gets his feelings hurt when he's asked if he's a moose. And, no, he's not an elk!" Wilkes gets visibly upset when folks ask her if he's an elk. "We also get asked if he know Rudolph. We say they're cousins."

"They need to be able to shake it," Rebecca King says before turning on a CD of disco funk. "We had a Power Ranger who was going to audition for us. He was in a Michael Jackson video!...He got in a car accident though." And so it's Foutz, in costume again, with music blaring, that he begins to shake it.

How does one define good dancing when one is watching someone dance in an enormous reindeer outfit? Is it the "Saturday Night Fever" impersonations that herald a good dance sequence? Perhaps it's the moves taken from a scene in "Pulp Fiction" that says, yes, he's got what it takes. Maybe it's when a reindeer tries breakdancing. Whatever the case may be, the small audience howls with laughter and, hearing that laughter, Foutz dances even more feverishly. He's a certifiable hit.

"It is HOT in there," he repeats, beat tired but smiling. Foutz is a Clover Park Technical College graduate and an Eagle Scout who knows sign language. He plays a mean saxophone, is into skateboarding and has a tattoo of a blue ribbon in support of his mother who is battling rectal cancer. Soon after he strutted his stuff, and performed an inspired high jump, he was offered the job for the season. Geoff Corkum, the Rainiers' Director of Media Development said, "After a few more participants in the afternoon, it was evident that Payton was the man."

"This is my dream job," he said, chewing on those Pez candies, hair matted with reindeer sweat. The dream is now realized. After some work on technique and skills needed to be a great mascot, he'll be out on that field, night after night, delighting in being Rhubarb, dancing a jig, putting voodoo hexes on opposing pitchers, giving high fives to kids who some day might not want to be a centerfielder or a star catcher. No, they just might want to be Payton Foutz.

Happy National Poetry Month

Have you been celebrating?

If not, it's time to read poetry daily, every day, once a day.

Too much reading...You want to write a poem? Well done!

Or do you want to hear a poem being recited? The Library of Congress has got your back.

What Makes Annie Shoot?

This is a question the New York Observer ponders.

Where Will Magazines Be in Ten Years?

This is a question the New York Observer ponders.

Jon's Contributions in a Book

Today is the day that McSweeney's new book of humor, The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes hits the shelves and I have a contribution in it! So, go to the library and check it out. Better yet, buy it at your favorite independent bookseller. It's already garnered some favorable reviews so what are you waiting for? Read the book and guffaw. Do lots of guffawing.

Bookmark This Site about Bookshelves

Every day, a groovy new bookshelf design.

This is News!

Guys like to look at good looking women who are barely clothed! It's true!

This, from a report found on MinOnline, highlighting what were the top sellers in a few magazines last year based on their covers. Interesting: Angelina Jolie was a hot-seller! John Edwards, not so much.