The encore last night was "No Children" and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton." So, cool, I can die happy now. And during the latter of these John D. did call out to the audience during an instrumental break, "Come on, show me those horns!" and I didn�t mind it, I realized while I was driving home, the same way I did Wayne C.�s act the last time I saw the Flaming Lips, and why was that? Maybe this is just a function of arena size, the smaller ones like seminar rooms and the large ones like lecture halls, but with Wayne and the Lips there was the sense that he was showing and teaching us the right way to rock, that we needed this from him � and also, and this is less there-was-a-sense because he really did seem impatient, that our failing to pay tribute to him by means of the gestures and shouts he preferred was interfering with his enjoyment of the song; as though he felt we owed him that. He who is owed and those who owe him. Whereas John on the other hand made his request in such a way that it was a favor we could do, which reminded us the audience that the power balance swung both ways? Something like that. I had such a lovely time with Mrs. Roboto and Judy and their menfolk, am excited that it looks like I�m becoming pals with those broads. Mr. Mrs. Roboto reminds me of Matt P. A girl in the bathroom at the Tractor was way less than charitable about my newly shortened bangs, but I could have made a remark or two about her dye job and anyway I was having a grand old time so I just kept on truckin�. The show ended so early, barely after midnight, that also while I was driving home it occurred to me that there might have been some kind of double-secret super-encore only for the real fans who didn�t run home to bed. I hope not.

I thought the most recent New Yorker (October 6 issue) was about the lousiest one ever. If this is supposed to exalt the writing life then I will see you in cosmetology school. To me all the articles seemed to run together into the literary equivalent of white noise, I felt like I was back at one of those grad-student cocktail parties from hell having my cerebrum gang-raped � but clumsily! � into oblivion. Jesus. To the Editor:

1. You know what that Cynthia Gorney piece on the Chicken Soup books reminded me of? Frank Gilbreth, in "Cheaper By The Dozen," attempting to ride herd on his family�s dinner conversations in order to maximize each member�s average enjoyment of it and edification by it. As his children tell it, he�d stamp out rogue exchanges among them by bellowing, "Not of general interest!" Dear Editor, that is what I am bellowing.
2. I can�t count how many times my eyes glazed over while I was reading Jonathan Franzen�s lengthy profile of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In fact, they glazed over yet again even as I read on my laptop screen, Jonathan Franzen�s lengthy profile of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. And I am betting yours did too. Whose bright idea was this? I read with horrified glee the section late in the piece where, under the guise of sketching Hastert�s son, Franzen takes pains to show readers via his helpful annotations that he is seriously down with the Mekons. And how he stops the profile in its tracks to point out with actual parentheses that his familiarity � reader: Jonathan Franzen�s familiarity � extends to the Waco Brothers? I swear my head almost exploded. Once night when I was reading "The Corrections," I think it might have been the night the Somerset came over and got boozily territorial with me, I fell asleep and what I dreamed was the plot and the characters of the book but as they might have been imagined by Bil Keane, and I was in the dream myself as a squat chubby baby version of myself and so was Franzen. When I woke up, the dream tickled me and in a way I felt that the random quirk of my subconscious by which it had been generated had led me to similarly accidental insight about Franzen. Ever since then that�s how I picture him, as a squat chubby baby version of the himself that�s on the book jacket, kind of like Bob�s Big Boy with glasses and five-o�clock shadow and a black leather downtown jacket. Or one of the Katzenjammer Kids � his name would have been Franzi, rhymes with "Fonzie." And the Hastert article is exactly, precisely the article that Franzi would have written.
3. I am potentially interested in reading a personal essay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. However, I am not potentially interested in reading any essay that begins, "I never imagined that, nine months after I had completed secondary school, my first story would be published in the most interesting and demanding literary publication of the time" and goes on to note that it merited an introductory note by "the most lucid Columbian critic of the time, and the one who was most alert to the appearance of new trends." This writing is sloppy and clich�-ridden, Nobel Prize be damned, and could as well be the beginning of the college application of some na�ve and callow suburban doctor�s kid, the lack of self-reflection is kind of creepy. (While we are on the subject, Editor, how do you suppose Nell Freudenberger�s college application essay began?)
4. Please don�t let Joan Acocella write about books or literature. It�s embarrassing to all of us. Please consider publishing a short story by an author brave enough not to be afraid of dialogue and skilled enough to make it serve the plot.
5. The review essay on the 15th Chicago Manual is uncharacteristically bad Menand. He�s phoning it in. I have a suspicion that in his introduction, for which he daringly employs the second-person singular for five long virtuosic paragraphs, he isn�t quite sure himself whether he means to be talking about No-Doz or cocaine On the one hand, he�s talking about staying up all night to write a paper. On the other hand, the substance in question is one that must be "scored" � you can buy No-Doz in a drugstore � and it is spoken of in terms of an "emergency supply" � which is redundant because a supply of No-Doz de facto addresses an emergency; "emergency supply" implies the presence of a regular supply. The five long virtuosic paragraphs are set in 1983, which you have to admit sounds about right for coke having added life. Menand�s daring and originality manifest further in his making the "you" of the introduction a spoiled and ungrateful rich kid taking a course on "Gender and Transgression in European Modernity," in � sit down � impugning Microsoft Word; and in his assertion that "correct citation� is a moving target." I think that everyone who cares, everyone to whom the topic is of general interest, already knows that correct citation is a moving target. Then again, I count myself among that proud militia and I was alternately irritated � and is this the word Menand meant to use when he wrote instead "the aggravating business of citing a Web page"? � and bored out of my mind by this article, which was to the review essay what Ripley�s Believe It Or Not is to science journalism. I did like the Franzi-like part where he gets personal and carps, "Contrary to the assumption informing this practice, 'doctor' is not the higher-status term; virtually all professors are doctors, but by no means are all doctors professors." Transmission received at zero distortion, Professor Menand.
6. Anthony Lane on Peter Dinklage: "I remember Dinklage from that tremendous, once-and-for-all scene in Tom DiCillo�s 'Oblivion,' back in 1995�" OK, (a) well, of bloody course he does. What, most people remember Dinklage from his astounding Vanya at the New Haven Schubert? The "I remember" suggests that Lane believes his experience to have been remarkable or himself to be remarkable for going out on a limb with this generous judgment. But is there anything memorable about "Oblivion," I mean memorable to those of us who are not film-school geeks, except Dinklage in that scene? And how does Lane not know this? Remarkable! (Editor, really, just between us: is there anyone actually *editing* the magazine these days? Your secret�s safe with me.) And (b), what about that "back in 1995"? 1995 wasn�t so long ago. Am I the only one who suspects that Lane likes to remind us, from time to time in ways like this, how young he is, what a wunderkind? Remember his review of "Halloween: H20" in which he would not shut up about the fact that he was too young to get into the theater when the first one came out. And don�t get me wrong, dude is clearly a critical force to be reckoned with, and god knows he�s blown a lot of vivacity, Editor, into your crusty fusty smarty organ. But how can I put this�? I think I was onto something with "blown," and that�s that if one is allowed to rely too much on what is often called, by those whom it takes by surprise, "literary pyrotechnics," sooner or later one ends up engaged only in the written equivalent of lighting farts. For instance, an aside in the same review: "one of the few triumphant uses of cereal in recent memory." To this I say, What the fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Are we to muse on the scant other triumphant cinematic uses of cereal in recent memory? Are we to contrast the many untriumphant uses of cereal? Are we to think "back" to the dark ages of eight years ago and wonder whether cereal used to get a better rap? No, we are supposed to do none of the above, we are supposed to sit at our tables and hold our magazines and shake our heads in appreciation of Lane�s vivacity. I will grant you, this worked for a few years. But now we readers are starting to smell something.

My PC has been rejecting the switchbox for a few days and yesterday it kept crashing and it occurred to me to wonder what I�d do if it did die and I lost access to my database of resumes and cover letters. I panicked and spent a tedious yet anxious few hours moving files from PC to floppy to laptop � reboot PC, reboot again if necessary, lather rinse repeat. Then I decided to keep a list of all the sites that live in the various nooks and crannies of my IE Favorites folder, and it was then that I had a eureka moment about blogs. I am retarded! I never got it before that the list of links on the blog�s homepage is not primarily meant as a service to others � no indeed, it is a convenience for yourself. I had folders and subfolders that I�d forgotten all about, there were sites I�d liked a lot and somehow got out of the habit of checking so then I�d forgotten about them too. (I confess it�s not rocket science here. Three of my folders are called Boyfriends, Cheese, and I Want It.) I�d love never to forget like that. If this were a blog I�d have to have linked, in the first paragraph, to an article about genius Davis. And to whichever of the New Yorker articles I was slagging on are online. To an IMdb listing for "Oblivion"? To a picture of Bob�s Big Boy?

I made the season�s first pot roast today. I believe that the Coen brothers� integrity is no match for the fearsome mass-market vampirism of Brian Grazer, and therefore my current plan is to take a pass on the new movie. And why is Catherine Zeta-Jones� wardrobe, in the previews I�ve seen, so ugly? Those colors, those suits. Ah, the eternal questions.

Too stubborn to delete, too enervated to edit. Posting as is, and that's goodnight.