November 2008
10 posts
Sidewalk Shakespeares
The Monitor has my story on Marcus Young and his “sidewalk stanzas,” which I reported from St. Paul. There are two more pieces coming out of that trip – four in all, spanning the gamut from environmental science to theater. Meanwhile, over at the VQR, I wrote about the new Bond flick. Crush of assignments from the Monitor and elsewhere on the horizon; it’ll take a bit of work to...
Play it again, Sam.
The Monitor has my (long-ish) story today on re-use associations across the country – and the spike in recycled building material sales. ‘Cause, you know, we’re all poor and getting even more poor and need cheaper things to make our cheap homes look nicer. Strange to write this thing, because it required so much damn number crunching, and I failed almost every single math class I ever...
In the circle.
This morning, I found out that I was named as a finalist for the 2008 Virginia Quarterly Young Reviewers award. The contest was only open to folks under 30; my essay was on “The Lazarus Project,” by Aleksander Hemon; among the prizes is membership in the National Book Critics Circle. I’ll probably post the essay online in the next few weeks. In the meantime, congratulations...
Not a rat.
Over at Jossip, dudes are all like, “Oh, shit, how’d the Monitor keep this stuff secret for so long?” One answer: yeah, we all had a pretty idea we were going online-only, but we didn’t know when. Also, it’s true that potential leakers have a big incentive to keep the secret: gets traced back to you, and you’re f-ed.
K.I.S.S.
My favorite middle school teacher, Mr. Bliss, once got up in front of the class, and wrote, “Keep it simple stupid” in big letters across the white board. I never forgot it. Here’s my Monitor story on some seriously kissed-off novels.
