Off to Florida...

for my father's 60th birthday. No blogging until Sunday.

Anatomy of a Clerk:

My friend Josh is doing his PhD at Cornell on the history of video stores and the retailization of motion pictures. He's collecting oral histories of anyone who worked at or owned a video store between 1975 and 1990. If you fit this bill, why not help him out? Only takes a minute.

We are now entering day 2...

Of Kevin's Day Off with the Simpsons, 22 episodes on DVD all with directors commentary. This is as self-indulgant as it gets.

Monday Yawning:

Jeez, what a weekend.

Saturday I was a panelist at Mills College as part of their MFA Professional Survival Day. Spent the day talking about how publishing works and how being a professional writer usually involves more networking than selling plumbing supplies. Much chatting, many business cards exchanged. Got home from Oakland about 5:30.

Sunday Jon from Central Booking and I took the train out to Concord and spent the afternoon recording with Eric Rice of Slackstreet for a syndicated radio program we've got in development. Left at 9:30, got back at 5.

All great stuff to be sure. I love my work but that was not a weekend. I think I'm taking a personal day today.

Teddy Terrible:

Bad Taste Bears, the cutest little perverted figurines you've ever seen. My friend Eli got me one of these for Hanukah, a bear with his bleeding heart in his hand and a big innocent smile on his face.

Divine Graphite:

Man, these pencils are cool (via Boing Boing).

A Bestseller in 1 easy semester:

After a lively exchange from my last post, reader Matt Kirkpatrick sent me this story on how attendence in creative writing classes, of both the savory and not so variety, is on the rise. Interesting stuff.

Patchett Power!

Novelist Ann Patchett was on City Arts and Lectures (no archiving on their site for some inexplicable reason) last night and was fantastic. It's such a relief to hear a writer talk about "the craft", how she's never wanted to be anything but a writer, and yet wear it so lightly. I'm beginning to think there is nothing worse than a self-important writer with no sense of humor.

My favorite part? Someone asked her the old standard "I want to be a writer. Do you have any advice?" Most writers will equivocate when asked this for fear of alienating their readers and sounding like a snot. Patchett did not and answered perfectly with this story. I paraphrase...

"Everytime I go to a cocktail party, at least one person says something like this...'I'm a neurosurgeon but I'm thinking about writing a novel. So I'm going to take Tuesdays off and write a novel. To which I answer 'What a coincidence. I'm going to take Tuesdays off to practise neurosurgery!"

Writing is work and study. Years of it. It doesn't mean everybody doesn't have the right to try. It just means that "writing" and "operating a word processor" are two very different things.

I'm sold. Now I have no excuse for not reading Bel Canto which Suzan's sister Anne Marie recommended to me last fall has been sitting on my shelf for like 6 months now.

A Bigger Deal Than We Thought:

Maybe because acquisitions, particularly in the web world, are rare these days but Google buys Pyra is all over the news. Megnut has an excellent listing of articles if you're curious.

Late but Noting:

Everybody probably knows by now that Pyra Labs, the makers of Blogger, has been acquired by Google. My friend Evan Williams, one of Pyra's founders, has naturally been on the firing line throughout Blogland about his decision and I'm sure has been called a sell-out more than once. Though the debates I've read have been mostly positive.

Nobody's really asking for my opinion and, although Ev has explained his grand vision of what Blogger can do on more than one occassion, It's still to cosmic for me to comprehend. Nonetheless, I have been at the helm of an independent web project for the last four years (albeit a much smaller one) and know precisely what it's like to carry one around on your back--even with partners, even with friends--as your full time job. Eventually you hit a glass ceiling as to what you can do on the strength of your own labor. The desire to find a large benefactor with deep pockets is powerful, as is the urge to keep going at it alone and not have to follow anyone's vision but yours.

I don't know how what will become of Blogger or Google or Ev or Jason or the others at Pyra I haven't met. But I do know this sort of decision is a natural evolution of something like Blogger, not Ev having a lapse in integrity. He's worked his ass off and deserves to see Blogger leave the nest and not require his constant care. He deserves paid vacations and adequate resources for a tool that over a 1 million people use. That doesn't sound like selling out to me. It sounds like level-headed analysis and the belief that both you and your project deserve a life beyond each other.

Good for you, Ev.