is a blog by Brendan
“As I’ve said to friends, we can’t expect to tell our fans ‘see you in court’ and then ‘see you at Massey Hall next fall’–we have to choose one, and I choose the latter. This current litigious atmosphere is simply a product of the record business trying to prop up a dying, obsolete business model.”
It’s so great to know that BNL gets it.
“The fingerprints of zombies are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.”
Sumana takes the old disappearing sock meme and makes it funny and touching. That’s skill, gentlemen–skill like we’ve not seen. Not since Morocco. Haskins! Initiate the Marianas Contingency! Good God, man, there’s no time to lose!
Over a year after I posted it and expected it to blow up, the video Lisa and I made of Master Chief breakdancing is the second result on Yahoo’s video search for breakdancing, and is currently by far my biggest referral. It’s also the first thing to use more bandwidth than the kids on MySpace and Xanga who use old mp3s I host as the autoload music for their pages. Don’t do this, kids.
I only found out by way of Jon and Amanda that my second cousin Dawn blogs. Her writing is frank, observant, self-deprecating and frequently caustic. It’s also really, really funny:
“Does this say something about my friend group?
I lost my virginity in room 116 of the Economy Inn in Danville, KY. Centre College students called it the pink hotel, in reference to the color of the neon lights decorating its roof. Oh, and immediately after the completion of the act my loving then-boyfriend (also a virgin) looked at me and said, ‘You know, that was alright, but I’m definitely glad I didn’t wait to get married.’
After taking Heather’s virginity, her boyfriend said, ‘Well, you had to pay for your dinner somehow.’
An anonymous friend lost her virginity to her 31-year-old manager at the Honey-Baked Ham store.
Katherine lost her virginity to a boy nick-named ‘Soup Can’. She cried the whole time.
My personal consolation is that the Pink Hotel has since been bull-dozed to the ground.”
She and I went to Centre together, and we were always friendly, but also a few degrees of network-separation apart. If you read this, Dawn, I’d like to state that I officially regret not hanging out with you more.
Caitlan has the opportunity to prove my Oxford predictions right, and Sumana is entering the prestigious Fog Creek Software Management Training Program. I put a lot of effort into finding and cultivating friendships with extraordinary people, and then I’m still surprised when they do such extraordinary things! Not that I found Caitlan, I suppose; I just watched her find herself.
Via Kevan comes a 1978 speech by Philip K. Dick about science fiction, solipsism, Gnosticism and Disneyland that everybody else has probably read before. Regardless, it offered me the best answer to the question “why write?” I’ve ever encountered:
“What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?”
David Flora requested restaurant recommendations of me for a nice, sit-down, dress-up dinner with his family. Lisa had already plugged the Mayan Gypsy, which I could only second, but I tagged in a few of the other places Maria and I have come to regard with naked hunger in the past couple years. I’ve never done a broad-spectrum restaurant writeup before, so I’m stealing my letter back; if you are in Louisville looking for great food, these places will not do you wrong.
The Gypsy has my highest recommendation, especially the dish which is either called the “Tierra y Mar” or the “Beef and Shrimp Diablo,” depending on the day, with the beef cooked medium rare. It is god-food. Be sure to order the fried plantains, and Maria recommends the sangria if you’re drinking.
I also had some fantastic food (baked provolone, fresh bread and a steak) at Palermo on Bardstown, which is one of Evan’s favorite restaurants–you may want to ask him about it, since I’ve only been there once. Lilly’s, also on Bardstown, is fantastic, but dinner there will cost you a shit ton (lunch is more affordable). Palermo is Argentinian, I think, with a lot of spicy pasta; Lilly’s is a kind of combination of French and Kentuckian (eg duck spring rolls and chicken pot pie).
If you want something simple like really good barbecue, the best onion rings in the world and microbrewed beer, there’s the Bluegrass Brewing Company (BBC) on Fourth Street–did you go with us last time you were in town? I can also recommend Third Avenue Cafe in Old Louisville, which has imaginative sandwiches and sweet potato french fries, Trivial Pursuit cards on the tables, and Elvis.
My personal favorite restaurant in Louisville is North End Cafe on Frankfort, which has a little of everything; its specialty is tapas (Spanish-style appetizers), of which you can get three or four and make a meal for three people–the baby back ribs are amazing. They also have salmon, half a roast chicken, cheeseburgers, etc.
Oh, and you know about Lynn’s Paradise Cafe on Barret, right? It’s… different. Breakfast is their specialty, as is being very brightly colored. Maybe not the place for a nice dinner, but atmospheric and fun.
You’ll definitely want to make a reservation ahead of time at any of these except maybe BBC and Third Avenue, and maybe there too, for a Friday. Also, next time you’re in town alone and want to try something farther afield, remind me and Maria to take you to Saffron’s, Safier, Maido, Le Relais or Ramsi’s Cafe on the World (have you been to Ramsi’s? Everybody’s been to Ramsi’s…).
I have totally been served. Diane Duane, who evidently reads her referral logs with as much care as I do, wrote me an email confirming the corrections Wheeler offered the other day to my entry about her entry:
Dear Brendan,
Thanks for the mention. :)
BTW, I’ve known about Lulu.com for a long time: I used their pricing model to come up with the range of prices mentioned. Obviously there’s nothing particularly new about the concept…except, maybe, not giving up on a situation that common publishing wisdom has routinely up until now dismissed as a lost cause. But much has changed: so we’ll see what happens.
My main point was that, for the size of book in question, POD is still kinda pricey, and I wanted to see if there was any interest among the readership before I started serious thinking / work on the project. Fortunately it looks like there’s a fair amount of interest: now all I have to do is (a) consider my schedule and (b) convince my agent. ;)
Best! D.
Diane Duane wrote me an email!
Diane Duane wrote me an email!
Diane Duane, once one of my favorite YA authors, wants to write a third book in a series that has many fans, but didn’t sell well enough to merit her publisher’s interest. She’s putting out feelers to determine whether that small but fervent audience would pay $20-$25 for a paperback copy; if so, she’ll finish writing it and self-publish. I’ve already seen her plugged by Neil Gaiman, Copyfight and who knows where else. Alan Wexelblat (in the latter) lauded her for “experiments in new business models.”
Except it’s not a new business model at all. Webcomics and indie RPGs, to name just the two that I know of, have built industries out of nothing via self-publishing and print-on-demand. It’s not about vanity anymore–it’s the members of Blank Label putting out their own collections, cheap, with unheard-of profit margins; it’s Dogs in the Vineyard still selling two copies a day after a year and a half, which is more than most big-press authors can say after their first three months. The only thing new about Duane’s idea is that she’s got offline name recognition going into the thing. And, well, it’s new to her.
I wonder if some kind soul is going to inform her of the existence of Lulu?