BANANA GRABBERS DOT COM

This won’t exactly pump you up.  But I love it as a piece of nerdy funk.

(via The700Level)

Remember that movie poster quiz I posted a while back? Well, like anything having to do with blockbuster movies, there’s a sequel. And the photo above is right — this one is tougher. I scored 31/46 on the first quiz. This one? 14/68. I wish you much better luck.

I didn’t attempt — and won’t attempt — to write anything resembling a remembrance or obituary for David Foster Wallace. Far too many talented and thoughtful writers have done better than I.

I did, however, want to let everyone know that the Writers House is having a celebration tonight (Tuesday) at 5:30 of David’s life and work. It should be a great evening, with Writers House community members reading portions of David’s work, as well as work inspired by DFW.

I’ll be reading during the early part of the program — an excerpt from David’s remarkable commencement address at Kenyon in 2005. You can read the unedited speech here, or a cleaned up version that ran in The Wall Street Journal here.

If you have the time, I hope you’ll attend. Should be a wonderful program. I’ll be spending the rest of the night — as well as some of the morning, I’m sure — figuring how to cram this into my five minutes at the podium. If you can’t attend, I hope you’ll at least read the speech, which is remarkable for not only its writing, but its bold and selfless humanity.

If you like angry poets — and honestly, who doesn’t like angry poets? — I suggest reading about the following saga:

Three gentlemen at For Godot posted the new publication Issue 1.  It was quite a grand publication — 3,785 pages, featuring over 3,000 poets.  When a bunch of narcissistic poets received Google Alerts the next day, they wandered over to the web site to find out why they were listed amongst this new publication’s contributors.  None of them had submitted to this mysterious and gigantic online magazine.

As they later found out, thanks to clarifications from the creators themselves, their “contributions” had been computer generated.  The publication itself is quite brilliant; the laughter comes in the ensuing chaos, where poets freak out about their reputation being tarnished, as if anyone other than the included poets would bother reading this massive PDF.

If you’d like to dive into the fun, I suggest you do the following:

– read the above link, the initial release of Issue 1
– read this post at Ron Silliman’s blog, which encouraged enraged poets to call the number listed with the domain, which of course led to a few angry and/or curious poets calling the creator’s parents; also, be sure to read the comments on this post
– read the first post about this at Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog; also, be sure to read the comments on this post (pretty much a rule for all of the links I will include)
– read a note of clarification at For Godot
– read a similar note of clarification at Harriet
– for a change of pace, read a rather sane and calm take from Amy King
– finally, if you don’t think it’s gone far enough, read this draft of a cease and desist letter

Has this been milked dry?  I hope not.  Somewhere, there’s an included poet not yet aware of this.  Chances are, he or she will be angry about it.

Last night was, quite simply, awesome. Rather than write about it, I’ll let others do the talking. Here are some columns by Bill Conlin, Phil Sheridan and Bob Ford. Elsewhere, D-Mac has a great post about the game.

If you’d like to see the moment captured above (via Philly.com), I suggest looking below the jump for video (sync’d up with local audio) of last night’s big shot (via The Fightins).

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Allow me to take a moment to wish BANANA GRABBERS DOT COM a happy first birthday.

While the nifty double play that ended yesterday’s division clinching win was quite memorable, I think the moment that will stick with me from the day came about a half-hour later. Rachael and I were on our way to a concert, and leg one involved a trip on the Broad Street Line. Phils fans were still traveling home, and one car in particular was enjoying the ride home. When the doors opened, the car erupted. While you’ll often see post-game cars chanting or clapping or wooing, this car was giving ovations to each departing fan. Some actually stepped out, and rather than darting up the steps, turned around and soaked it in. I couldn’t blame them.

A tip of my blog’s hat to Jamie-Lee Josselyn, who traveled to Cherry Hill, NJ this weekend and feasted on a one-pound cheeseburger. Not satisfied with the mere combination of meat, bun and cheese, the Jossinator topped it with lettuce and mushrooms — and a ketchup smiley face.

I was honored to be in attendance for this fantastic feast feat. If you’d like to see photos of the carnage, click on the photo above, or here.

It seems the spambots have finally discovered this blog.  Starting to get hammered.  Any WordPress users out there?  What’s the best filter out there these days?