More books I've read in 2009

Despite what my sister the literary snob will tell you I do still read and enjoy books. I just haven't had a s much time to read since I changed jobs. (I used to do most of my reading at work, on company time.) And now I have even less reading time since I've started working out during the free time I have.
But I do still read and here are a few books I've finished recently.
ICON: A HEROES WELCOME Back in the early 90's Milestone became the first all-black comics publisher. I liked some of their stuff -- like Static -- but I loved Icon. He had a lot in common with Superman, I guess, he was from another planet and all. But he was also a shapeshifter and when he landed on earth in the 1840's to a family of slaves, he altered his appearance to look like his adoptive parents. Now he's a wealthy lawyer. A poor girl named Raquel convinces him he needs to use his powers to help people -- and also take her on as his sidekick, which he does. Thus was born Icon and Rocket. I remember trying to convince people to give these comics a try back on those early internet forums and people always assumed I was black cuz I read these comics, despite the fact that I've been caucasian all my life. I just love great comics.
I wanted to see if Icon was as great as I remembered, and I'm happy to report it holds up very well. As usual my favorite part of the series is not about the superheroics but about the relationship between the characters, specifically Icon and Rocket, and how they help each other grow. Icon gets her to see how much growing up she has to do and she shows him that his conservative views about the world are not how things are in her reality. Dwayne McDuffie is one of the best writers in comics today and I'll pick up anything he writes. Even this early in his career he was a master at getting you to empathize with and relate to his characters. This is the page right after Raquel tells her boyfriend -- the inaptly named Noble --- that she's pregnant, and he says "How do you know it's mine?"
I read Dai Sijie's "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" a couple years ago and loved it. It was such a powerful look at how important books are, and why people willingly risk their lives and their freedom to read them. It was also a love story with an unexpected twist.
I had high hopes for this one by the same author but I only liked it. A Freud-obsessed young Chinese man who has been living in Paris returns to China to try to get the girl he's a had a crush on since college out of jail. Her name is -- no kidding -- Volcano of the Old Moon, and she got in trouble for selling a photograph to a western media outlet. A bribe to the judge doesn't work -- he wants a virgin, and Muo sets out to find one, but there aren't many and he travels around interpreting dreams to finance his search. This was a satire on Chinese justice (if you can call it that) and since I don't know much about China and I found the main character hard to relate to, I didn't love this book.


I always have high hopes for a new Russell Hoban book, even though "Linger Awhile" didn't do much for me. Neither did "My Tango With Barbara Strozzi". A woman with some major issues -- most pressing an abusive ex-boyfriend -- tries to begin a relationship with a writer, but she keeps breaking up with him to return to her creepy old art professor, and even though the two are together again at the end, I have no reason to believe that they will be for long. As usual, plenty of great asides about art, literature and music make this book worthwhile even though the narrative is a disappointment.

Bare feet and black oaks

Everything reminds me of something else.

I wanted to write about my first concert, Black Oak Arkansas at Charleston County Hall in the Summer of '72. Then I remembered that it wasn't actually my first concert, that distinction belongs to B.J. Thomas, whom I saw with my Dad at a high school auditorium in Wilmington, North Carolina. I don't remember much about it, other than being shocked at one point when Thomas took off his jacket and said "All right, time to raise a little hell."

So, thinking about the first concert I went to sans parent got me to thinking about WCSC radio and their brief trip underground. Back in those days of course there was no FM -- much less XM or Sirius -- your choice was between staticky Top 40 and staticky country and western. WCSC was a top 40 station, never as popular as the other top 40 station WTMA. And for a while in an attempt to lure listeners they did what they called "going underground". When the sun went down, they put away the Osmonds and Jackson 5 records and started playing Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep. Still staticky of course. I think I may have been the only person in Charleston who listened to this underground AM station, and I say that because before the Black Oak Arkansas concert they gave away a BOA picture -- no free tickets, no other cool swag, just a picture. All you had to do was answer the question "How many guys are in the band Black Oak Arkansas?" I had seen a picture of them somewhere and I ran to the phone, called, got through and said, "Six."

And the DJ said, "That's the correct answer, but it's not the answer I'm looking for." So I hung up, sat down and tried to figure out how the hell that was possible. It took me a couple minutes but I eventually remembered that earlier the DJ had said something on the air about there being "twice as many as a trio" in the band in question. So I called back, got through (probably woke the guy up) and said "Twice as many as a trio." And he said, "You win."

(Maybe the reason I was the only person who listened to this station was because they made you jump through hoops to win a crappy unframed picture.)

Anyway, that was not the only piece of BOA memorabilia I owned. I read in either Circus or Creem magazine that if you wrote to the Oaks they would send you the deed to one square inch of land in Arkansas, which I of course did. And that was when I learned that being a landowner did not impress the ninth-grade ladies.

So, I went to see Black Oak Arkansas at County Hall, which led to a fight with my father cuz I wanted to go barefoot like my friends Bruce and Buddy; he wanted me to wear shoes. He drove us to the show and I had a great idea. He was going to pick us up too by which time it would be too dark to see my feet, so I shoved my shoes up under the back seat intending to retrive them on the ride home and be properly shod by the time we crossed our threshold.

How was the show? Eye-opening. In my neck of the woods, over the ear was still considered long hair. These guys had long-flowing manes that they swung around like nothing I'd ever seen before. They also played things I'd never thought of as musical instruments -- like washboards.

Tom Waits's voice has been described as sounding like "(H)ow you'd sound if you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes and swallowed a pack of razor blades. . . . Late at night. After not sleeping for three days." And if you screamed at the top of your lungs with a voice like that you'd sound like Jim Mangrum, BOA's lead singer. I honestly don't know if I liked the concert or not. But I do think now that these guys don't get near the credit they deserve. They basically invented southern rock and paved the way for Skynyrd and everybody else. (Don't even talk about Gram Parsons or Poco or the Eagles that's not southern rock; that's Southern California rock.)

And of course my Dad was a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. I should have wornm shoes cuz I stepped on a lit cigarette and blistered my foot. Then when I got back in the and reached up under the seat my shoes were gone. He'd taken them out of course. My punishment -- besides the burnt foot -- was that I was not allowed to go to the next concert which just happened to be the greatest concert ever in Charleston. I'll tell you about that some other time.

Cleaning out my cell phone camera

Here's something I'd never seen before today -- a man steam cleaning a telephone pole:

Whenever my co-worker Dallas has to work and I don't I love to torment him by sending him pictures of me drinking beer at the beach.

He's off next week but no chance of retaliation. He's not smart enough to take a picture with his camera, much less send it to me.

As I've mentioned before it has somehow become a tradition at family gatherings to take a picture of me with my niece Emily even if no other pictures are taken. This is from lunch on Tuesday, with Emily, my mom and my sister.

My sister spent the whole lunch taunting me for not reading much lately, but when I saw this picture and said I looked like Poopdeck Pappy, she did not know who he was. Now what literate person in America does not recognize Popeye's father?

Quote from today's NY Times

"These people are not seeking a revolution. We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world."
ALI REZA, a young actor who watched a long river of protesters march silently in Tehran.

I know how you feel, Ali. That's how I felt all during the Bush years.

Imagine all the possibilities

Art (Continued)

Now we've actually come to the end of the art section of my book collection and you would think that we'd be venturing into autobiography, but we're not -- not yet anyway; there's still a lot of art books left to look at. Howzat? Well, I actually have four book collections -- I have my regular books, I have autographed books, I have almost an entire bookcase of unread books, and I have books that won't fit on any of my shelves except this one (picture missing cuz Kim took the camera to Florida)

my topless bookshelf and that's where I keep the -- what else?-- oversized collection.
So let's look first at autographed art books.In my day , kids usually start off reading DC comics -- Superman, Batman, Flash, those guys -- and then when they got a little older they graduated to the more mature (or at least somewhat less hokey) Marvel comics group -- Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, those guys. Of course I did it just the opposite. I started out reading Marvel and I read very little other than Marvel until I became an adult and started discovering how much I had missed by turning my nose up at DC Comics. One of the things I missed was the art of Nick Cardy, who is probably most famous for his work on Aquaman and Teen Titans (his Wonder Girl was so sexy it's amazing she made it past the Comics Code Authority). And actually now that I think about it, I didn't really miss out on all of Mr. Cardy. Some of those early 70's DC covers were so compelling and so beautiful I just had to buy them and hope Stan Lee didn't see me doing so. And those covers were all by Nick Cardy -- well, Nick Cardy or Neal Adams, damn, maybe I liked DC more than I thought. Covers like these:

This book has lots of Cardy's comic art, but also movie posters and book covers and some fine art too. He's a talented artist -- and a nice guy, too. He signed my book for me at the 2002 Heroes Convention in Charlotte.

I've been winnowing down my comic book collection lately. Most of the stuff I'm keeping is because of the creators -- writer or artists and sometimes (though rarely) a great writer-artist team. There are very few characters that I'll keep no matter what. Mike Allred's Madman is probably at the top of the list, Baron and Rude's Nexus is way up there and so is Paul Chadwick's Concrete. Concrete is the most intelligent, thoughtful, philosophical comic I've ever read. Former speech writer Ron Lithgow is imprisoned in concrete as part of an alien experiment, but the stories are about his interactions with people, especially with his assistant Larry and Maureen Vonnegut who was assigned to study him and with whom Lithgow is in love. Mister Chadwick is not prolific, but when he puts out a new Concrete book it's always worth waiting for. The last one "The Human Dilemma" really took me by surprise and I can't wait to see what happens next --- although I'll have to since as I said he's not prolific. I've never met Mister Chadwick though I hope to meet him someday. I bought this book directly from him by mail.

More soon.

More books I've read in 2009

For a while when I was trying to figure out how to get published in Fantasy and Science Fiction I used to review every story in every issue. Here is my review of a Paul DiFilippo story from the February 2000 issue:
Stink Lines by Paul DiFilippo. A wonderful tribute to the good duck artist. An inventor named Gyro Gearloose creates a fog that makes word balloons, speed lines – and less popularly – readable thought balloons. A living comic book. It’s supposed to be confined to the Barksian amusement park Duckburg but is loosed upon the outside world. Gearloose – with help from his assistant L’il Bulb – eventually figures out a way to solve the problem while creating a much bigger one. A love story – all this was to impress a girl named Ginger Barks – that is laugh-out loud funny. A+
And most other stories I've read by Filippo got similar raves. So why was I reluctant to read Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct? Because I just don't believe there's anybody who can fill Alan Moore's shoes. So I had to wait a suitable length of time till I could be sure I was judging it on its own strengths and weaknesses and not comparing it (much) to Moore. DiFilippo's Top Ten is more lighthearted than . . . uh, that other guy's. The plot is incomprehensible --- something about robots gaining access to some cosmic time-stream mcGuffin, but the fun is in picking out background characters -- everybody from Snoopy to Tintin to Wonder Woman shows up in Neopolis. As it turned out I had no problem with the writer. DiFilippo was a worthy successor to what's his name, but I did have an unexpected problem with the art. Jerry Ordway's workmanlike art was just no match for the memory of Gene Ha and Zander Cannon.As you may recalll, I didn't love Tom Robbins's new book "B is For Beer" but I loved it enough to want to read more Robbins. So I picked this one up. I swear I think when Tom Robbins decides it's time to write a book he just sits down and starts talking to himself with a keyboard about whatever it is that's on his mind -- in this case what was on his mind was tanukis, tightrope walkers, soldiers missing in action -- and of course sex and religion. And that's a good thing, cuz it is always a joy to follow Robbins's mind as it meanders.

More Art books

Theodore Geisel had a long career writing and illustrating for humor magazines in the 20's and 30's long before he became Dr. Seuss. This collection of pieces is fascinating to me cuz it's interested to see how the good doctor's ideas developed over time. (For example, that animal pulling the plow -- sorry, plough -- on the cover looks a whole lot like the title character in my favorite Seussian epic "Horton Hatches The Egg". ) There are essays here, educational charts, tons of cartoons. Not all of it is polished or politically correct, but all of it is interesting -- and still funny after all these years.
Not many people can say they invented a genre -- Siegel and Shuster, Jimmie Rodgers are all I can think of offhand. Oh, and Reed Waller, whose groundbreaking "Omaha the Cat Dancer" introduced the world to a soap opera with hardcore sex and all the characters are members of the animal kingdom. A bunch of books sprung up to imitate this original. I believe the genre is called "Furries" but I've never been interested in any of the copycats. The original is amazing though. (And there will be more about Omaha when we get to the graphic novel section.)

BTW, one reason I've undertaken this project is to straemline my collection some. I'm taking them all off the shelves and revisiting each and every one of them. Some of them I realize have served their purpose here and can go live somewhere else for a while. Such was the case with the book "How to Draw Caricatures."
Caricaturing is one of many things I'm interested in, but this book doesn't hold much appeal to me, as I don't like the artist's style very much. So I let it go.

BTW, this should be the end of the art section but it's not. I'll explain why next time.

More book stuff

Continuing my look at the stuff on my bookshelves, starting with the ART category:

This book has close-ups of famous fannies from the world of art. You're supposed to see if you can identify them and they have reproductions of the paintings in the back of the book. I couldn't identify any of them, but it's fun anyway. I would love to have the Scottish edition of this book because in Scotland it's got a much better title:When it comes to cheesecake Gil Elvgren is the man. He somehow mastered the art of combining the wholesome with the erotic. His girls are always getting their skirts lifted by wind or machinery or something, and they all look shocked and delighted.


(If that puppy had pulled just a tad harder this picture might have made it in "The Arse in Art.")

After all those posteriors and pin-ups I'm starting to feel a little lowbrow. Thank goodness our next book is from a genuine fine artist:Although Gustav enjoyed a shapely rear as much as anybody.
His most famous painting is "The Kiss." I gave a copy of this work to my wife early on in our relationship and it still hangs in our bedroom.
More later.

Happy birthday to my second favorite baseball player of all time -- Kirk Gibson, still the only man to have ever wrapped up an entire World Series with one swing of a bat -- stomach virus and injuries to both legs notwithstanding.If God and the devil ever play a baseball game to see who gets my soul and I get to pick the player who bats to settle where I will spend eternity, this is the guy I want.

Literature Matters

I've been Spring cleaning and getting organized a little better lately. I've put a lot of comics and stuff up on eBay and a lot of books up on Swaptree. I'm going through the books I want to keep and deciding why I want to keep them. If I don't have a good reason I'll swap it. My books are organized by subject matter. We'll start with ART:Certainly there was never any doubt I was going to keep this one. These tame-by-today's-standards cartoons remind me so much of sneaking peeks at my Dad's collection of True Magazines when I was a kid. And Dan DeCarlo was the definitive Archie cartoonist. He created Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats. And the fact that a lot of the girls in these toons look like Veronica and Betty and others I've been crushing on since prepubesence makes this a must-have. In fact, there's a volume 2 I've been on the lookout for. If you see it at a reasonable price let me know.
Bookplates are one of those old-fashioned things that I just love. This book has the bookplates of famous people -- everybody from Harpo Marx to Herbert Hoover.
Sigmund Freud had a picture of a nude dude on his book plate. Hmmm, I wonder what that signifies.
Jack London's bookplate could be in honor of "The Call of the Wild" or "The Sea Wolf" or even "White Fang":Evidently Harry Houdini is the only guy arrogant enough to have a picture of himself on his own bookplates.My favorite -- probably because I'm such an Aubrey Beardsley fan -- is this one he designed for John O'Fallon Miller:More tomorrow.

More Books I've Read in 2009

A new book from Tom Robbins is always cause for celebration. I can honestly say that his works -- notably "Jitterbug Perfume" and "Still Life With Woodpecker" changed my way of thinking on a what-looks-like-permanent basis. So, that is why it pains me to say that "B is For Beer" did not do it for me. I applaud him for trying something different --- in this case a grown-up book for kids -- but kids are not Robbins's natural audience, and a lot of his trademark digressions -- usually the best parts of his books -- came off as kind of cutesy and therefore annoying. There were several clever turns of phrase, and if you know nothing of beer history or how the alcoholic elixir is created, you can learn a thing or two. Otherwise, you'd be better off rereading "Jitterbug."

End of an era?

There are several contests that I enter on a regular basis -- NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle, the Car Talk Puzzler, and Games World of Puzzles contests chief among them. I've won the runner-up prize at World of Puzzles a couple of times and have the t-shirts to prove it, but as yet no big money. (And actually the money's not as big as it used to be; for years the prize was 1,000 dollars -- a few years ago they halved it to 500.) Anyway, I went to go pick the new issue of World of Puzzles and for the first time ever there was no contest. No explanation, no announcements, but I have a feeling that this is another sign of Big Trouble in Magazine Land, and there will be no more contests in GWoP. Which means my last chance is for last month's contest -- The Jigsaw Crossword Contest, which ends Monday, June 1st. Wish me luck.

More Books I've Read in 2009

It's been a while since I posted one of these literary updates. I guess all you MBIRI2009 fans are thinking I've forgotten how to read. But such is not the case. I unfortunately have limited free time and I spend much of that now working out and reading fitness magazines and blogs. And then foam-rolling to recover from my workouts -- oh, and eating several times a day and shopping a couple times a day. But I still make time to read. I read these two books a while back.
And I liked them both, but I don't remember enough particulars about either to blog much about. This is the book that I'm reading in the bathroom.
And I gotta tell the back cover irks me every time I pick it up. Particularly this sentence: "Whilst grateful for the success he has endured, on the whole he (Dolenz) would rather have been a physician." What irks me about this sentence? Well, besides the attitude and the ego, there's the word "whilst". What kind of archaic, crepuscular word is "whilst"? I don't think I've ever seen anyone other Dolenz and some of the more florid Victorians use that word non-ironically. Then there's the word "endured". You endured your success, Mickey? Somehow managed to survive the money, the parties and the groupies? What a testament to the human spirit. Anybody who got rich and famous with no more than that thimbleful of talent you possess should be more grateful for that success. And whilst millions of music-lovers might wish you had become a physician instead, it's most unbecoming of you to cry about how tough it's been enduring your good fortune.
And just yesterday I finished this book:Here's it the copyright and library info that irks me, specifically this classification: "1. Graphic novels -- Switzerland -- translated into English"
Why does that tick me off? Because it's not a novel, graphic or otherwise, it's a memoir. Literary snobs have been reluctant to admit that comics can be literary and now that they have no choice they have forgotten the distinction between fiction and non-fiction and call everything with pictures a graphic "novel."
The boook itself I enjoyed very much, about a young man coming to grips with his lover's (and his lover's child's) HIV. The only thing that took a little getting used to was the fact that he drew the young lady in question's eyes so big even a manga editor would say, "Whoa, that's just not right."

Cool Things Other People Said

(Thanks to my brother John for suggesting the title of this post).

Every month Esquire Magazine publishes a feature where famous and sometimes not-so-famous people talk about what they've learned during their lifetime on earth. I always enjoy this feature, but the only time I ever cut one out and hung it on my bulletin board was Alice Cooper. Among his words of wisdom are these two I highlighted:

Never be late. When you're late, what you're saying is that your time is more important than the other person's time. That's pretty egotistical.

You have to treat your wife like you treated her first you first met her and were trying to get her in bed.

Music Matters

My love affair with music took a back burner as my hearing deteriorated, but it's been rekindled as I've been striving toward fitness. My criteria for judging it has changed however. I used to be a total lyric man, caring not a whit for beat or melody. (When the kids were young we used to play the "humming game" where you took turns humming a song and competing to see who could name it first. I reeked at this game -- not only couldn't guess a lyricless tune but lacked the rhythm to even hum one of my own favorites.) Now I judge songs by how good they are to work out to. So I guess you could say I'm not more concerned about beat and melody, but lyrics are still important -- they have to be positive if not inspirational. I can't work out to a track with a downbeat message. "Check Yes, Juliet" by We the Kings is a hard rocking anthem about young love that is great to work out with. Their followup "Skyway Avenue" has a similar sound but lyrics with suicidal imagery. Not very sweat-inspiring. For me anyway.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying if you too are looking for good workout music, you should download the free song of the week from I-Tunes. It's "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" by Ida Maria. Great beat and inspirational lyrics. (Well, if you're like most people and your main reason for working out is to look good naked. )

BTW, I've already bought more brand new CDs this year than last. Last year I bought a grand total of one -- "All Rebel Rockers" from Michael Franti and Spearhead. This year I've purchased "Middle Cyclone" from Neko Case and "The '59 Sound" from The Gaslight Anthem. I liked what I'd heard from Neko's CD -- particularly "People Got a Lot of Nerve" and "This Tornado Loves You" but I decided to buy the CD because of the last track -- "Marais la Nuit" which is 31 minutes and 39 seconds of frogs croaking. I'm always looking for some new white noise to mask my tinitus when I go to sleep and right now I'm enjoying frogs more than waves and waterfalls, and for some reason you couldn't download just this track; it was only available on the album.
Gaslight Anthem I've written about before, but I just love these guys. I don't think I've been this excited about a band since I first heard the Ramones. I was introduced to them and the title track to their new album on one of the music blogs I read, loved it, downloaded another ("Great Expectations" which manages to reference both Charles Dickens and Bob Seger -- and actually "The '59 Sound" references Dickens too, now that I think about it; I'm starting to gain new insight into why I love this band), loved it, downloaded "Here's Looking at You, Kid", which is way too slow to cut it as a workout song but it's one of my favorites nonetheless. The line "Tell her it's all right" blows me away every single time I hear it in context. When it turned out that I liked "Old White Lincoln" just as much as the three previous downloads I figured I might as get the whole album. Good decision. These guys rock -- I mean, real rock, like hip-hop never infiltrated the artform.

Interesting quotes I found while blog-surfing

"My Grandparent’s generation used to call the Republicans the cocktail party because they were the party of the wealthy, for the wealthy. They still are, they just have better PR."

Living in a post-print world

I got a call from Jeff Remz yesterday. He's the editor of Country Standard Time, the music magazine for which I have plied my pen for the past thirteen years or so. He was calling to tell me that he was folding the magazine as of the current issue. I should have seen it coming. After all, just a few minutes prior to his call, I had read that Blender and Maxim magazines were both going under. There are staff cuts and forced furloughs at the New York Times and Washington Post. Now that I think about it, print publications are dying off faster that a boozer's brain cells. Fantasy and Science Fiction, for which I have also written for the past few years, recently went from monthly to bi-monthly, US News and World Report went from a weekly to a monthly. Even Playboy is not immune to the tide threatening to engulf all printed periodicals. Hef's magazine will no longer publish an August issue. (A great loss, if you ask me, as Miss August was invariably my favorite playmate.) A quick internet search shows that in the last few months Cosmo Girl, Men's Lifestyle, Domino, Genre, Playgirl, Country Home and Wondertime have all ceased publication or gone online only. 525 magazines folded in 2008 and more than 50 already this year.
That makes me sad. I love paper. I still subscribe to or read most issues of several magazines, including Rolling Stone, The Sporting News, TV Guide, Harper's, Games, Smithsonian and a few more. I hope they continue to publish but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they joined the others in the magazine mausoleum. Now, I don't think we're going to be living in a magazineless world any time soon. People and US are healthy enough to ensure that people will be reading them at the gym and pissing me off in the process for years to come.
But I don't think kids today will ever look forward to updates on a website anywhere near as much as I looked forward to the new issue of my favorite periodical. All my life I've done this. I grew up in a world where Time and Life were always around. When I was a little kid I had a subscription to Highlights and I loved finding the hidden pictures and learning about manners with Goofus and Gallant. Shortly after that I discovered 16 magazine and devoured every issue, learning what the Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders were up to. After that it was Mad and Cracked. All of the Marvel comics from Avengers to X-Men. Then National Lampoon and High Times and Modern Man in high school and college. (I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that in the tenth grade I had a subscription to Rona Barrett's Gossip magazine.) And there's a long list of magazines I've loved as an adult too. The late, lamented Spy for one. Comics Buyers Guide, The New Yorker, Found, FHM, Mental Floss, Vegetarian Times, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, the Modern Drunkard and many more. Some still publishing, others gone forever.
I don't know what to say about this or what to think. I know everything changes, and just like everybody else I'm spending more time browsing around online than I am with a book or a magazine in my lap, so maybe it's partly my own fault.
Maybe it's better if you don't know what you've got till it's gone. That way you don't have to watch it die slowly before your eyes.

On a a day like today, Global Warming sounds like an ideal we should be all be working to accomplish, but Emily Deschanel (in character evidently, as Doctor Temperance Brennan) makes a compelling -- and funny -- case against it:

Oooh, you're a holiday, such a holiday.

Wednesday, March 4th is National Grammar Day. If you're looking for a way to celebrate you could buy a T-shirt:

Or you could go and listen to the Rock and Roll Bad Grammar Hall of Fame.

http://www.playlist.com/playlist/11642599691/standalone

(By the way, I definitely think the Doors belong at the top of this list, but I think they picked the wrong song. True, "Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I" (from "Touch Me") is an egregious grammatical sin, but I find "If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar" (from "L.A. Woman") much more painful to the ear.)

If you want to get me a present, then remember that apostrophes are for contractions and possessives but Never ever for plurals.

And don't ever call Jim Morrison a poet.