"Good night, Mr. Bronson! Sleep tight!"

A commenter posted this clip on Jezebel today and while I've never really gotten into YouTube and think Jezebel, unfortunately, might be past its expiration date, this '70s Japanese commercial Charles Bronson did for the cologne, Mandom, might be the apotheosis of nut-studded cheeseball goodness:

I happen to be reading (and for the most part, enjoying) Jon Krakauer's...

...Into Thin Air, so I was pleased to discover that Chris Elliott has spoofed ITA and other outdoor adventure tomes with his new "novel", Into Hot Air. He elaborates in an interview with the Seattle Times' Mark Rahner:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2004028288_chriselliott25.html

Is it January 1st yet?

Just checking.

Disparateness:

1) I wrote "Fifty Questions for God" during the summer of 2003, when I was incredibly sick and it seemed as if I'd fallen out of time. It was originally published in the literary journal, The Kitchen Sink, in June 2005 and I posted it last week, in a slightly tweaked form, on The Nervous Breakdown:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/11/fifty-questions.html

2) About once or twice a week, someone lands on this blog after Googling "CFIDS". It's worth noting that in recent months, my mom (who has an acute form of fibromyalgia) and I have benefited from taking coenzyme q10 once daily. We're still symptomatic to the degree that we usually are, but we're able to do more within the course of the day. Detailed info on coenzyme q10 from the Mayo Clinic:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coenzyme-q10/NS_patient-coenzymeq10

And because I had to explain CFIDS again this week to someone who really ought to know better by now, how about a refresher course from the Centers for Disease Control?

http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfssymptoms.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfsbasicfacts.htm

And from the CFIDS Association of America?

http://www.cfids.org/about-cfids/fact-sheet.asp

3) As everyone with an intact cerebellum knows, Mr. Alexie deservedly won the National Book Award last week. I raise my iced single soy mocha in cheer! Extra baklava forthcoming.

4) And this morning I discovered one of the more prescient quotes in recorded human history:

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer."--Mark Twain

New York update:

As some of you know, I received extremely good news the third week of August, just as I was getting ready to move.

The truncated version is that within a week of one another, an agent at Linda Chester read one of my short stories, Googled me, read more of my work, discovered I'm writing a novel, asked me to send the first two chapters, then an agent at Levine Greenberg read one of my essays and did the exact same thing. I explained to my Esquire editor that I would need time to focus on my book and he sweetly replied, "We're like Motel Six. We'll keep the light on for you."

All meetings in New York last week went extremely well. I'm not being cryptic, but there is so much left to do and this isn't the forum in which to discuss it. As I've told TJ, Eric, and my mom, as I hard as I think this is going to be, it's going to be harder. I feel ready, though.

(Shhh, don't tell anyone: the bunnies write every word.)

Knowing one's place on the food chain and very old as opposed to recently dead bodies:

1) I watched an interview with Senator Joe Biden earlier today and while I generally like him, I couldn't help but notice he imbues each of his words with quasi-weighty melodramatic undertones. It's like he's Blake Carrington's heretofore undiscovered younger brother, Buck, and he's returned to to Denver to claim his rightful place in the clan. You can almost hear him intoning, "Damn it, Alexis, don't talk to me like I'm a ranch hand!" He insisted during the course of the tete a tete that he will be the nominee and that he won't accept the Vice President slot, but that, of course, is crap because almost no one besides his mom and eight other people views him as presidential and being one lodged piece of Beef Wellinton away from the top spot is better than playing craps with Harry Reid and Chris Dodd for the the rest of one's life.

2) From a scientific standpoint, the new pictures of the unmasked King Tut are fascinating. But they have been all the fuck over the news for the past 24 hours and while none of us would be okay with viewing photos of someone's neighbor lying in the morgue, we seem to be fine with looking at the Boy King's mottled flesh over our phad see ew and spring rolls because, after all, he's been dead a really long time. I feel like I missed a meeting on this one.

[I get on a plane in eight hours. Yippee!]

Because tales of coitus-induced seizures never grow old:

I resurrected a short essay first published on The Black Table for The Nervous Breakdown. Originally called, "Seizure Sex", now in its slightly different form, it's titled "Halloween, 1993":

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/10/halloween-1993.html

"I'm not going to be happy until every human being on the planet has read something I've written"

Two years ago I interviewed Sherman Alexie for the second time. The interview was going to be a centerpiece of a theme issue for a magazine that I had written for a number of times before. The editors decided to scrap said theme and the interview hung in limbo for nine months before the managing editor killed it.

I've interviewed dozens of individuals from Wanda Sykes to Ron Jeremy and Alexie remains among my favorites, both because his art impacts my life and because he is boundlessly intelligent. He sends my mom the sweetest thank you notes when she sends him baklava, plus, he is the only person who's ever had the balls to write her and say, "Could you please send more?"

Alexie's new book, the autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, was just nominated for a National Book Award. What follows is the introduction to and an excerpt from the interview that never ran. It went up this morning on the literary site I write for, The Nervous Breakdown:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/litsa_dremousis/2007/10/by-litsa-drem-1.html

Pop culture mysteries from the past 24 hours:

1) Why does each vocalist--male or female--featured on the soundtrack to any given episode of Grey's Anatomy sound like Dave Matthews with an estrogen patch?

2) How many of Satan's loads did Dane Cook have to swallow before he got booked into Seattle's massive Key Arena for his upcoming show?

3) Aaron Sorkin is one of the most astute writers in any medium, so why did no one associated with the marketing of his new play, The Farnsworth Invention, kill the um-yeah-no-shit tag line featured in its ads, "The turning point of the 20th century wasn't on television. It was television."?

4) Might we all agree that Carrie Fisher's guest star appearance last night on Tina Fey's wickedly brilliant 30 Rock indicates the possibility of a wise and loving God or universe? (This isn't a "mystery" so much as a question underscoring the potential commonality of all sentient beings.)

"If goodness is assured an ultimate victory over evil, we are in a comedy, and I must say it is an ugly farce...

...considering how we suffer in the course of the contest."

Norman Mailer is interviewed by Michael Lennon in New York Magazine regarding their new book, On God:

http://nymag.com/news/features/38961/

Insightful comments my father made recently that touch, in part, on smoking

1) "Being a writer is like being a smoker. Deep down, you either are or you're not. And either way, you know it."

2) "I like that people in this neighborhood [Capitol Hill, where I recently moved] are unapologetic about smoking. You don't see them crouched and sheepish about it."

[Note: Dad quit smoking in 1974. Safe bet, however, that his version of an afterlife includes Kents.]

I wonder who the dead woman was and why no one claimed her:

From Reuters via Yahoo!:

Notorious Dr. Crippen wrongly hanged, scientists say

Excerpt:

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - It was sensational stuff that riveted a nation: A mild-mannered American doctor poisons then dismembers his unfaithful wife, flees England in disguise with his mistress -- and is caught, tried and hanged.

The problem is that the poisoned corpse that sent Dr Hawley Crippen to the gallows in London in 1910 was not that of his wife, according to new evidence found by U.S. researchers.

A team led by John Trestrail, head of the regional poison centre in Grand Rapids, Michigan, took mitochondrial DNA -- genetic material passed on through the mother -- from a tissue sample from the corpse kept in a London museum.

They then compared it with samples from three of Cora Crippen's female descendants, found after a 7-year search.

"That body was not Cora Crippen's," said David Foran, a forensic biologist at Michigan State University. "We don't know who that body was or how it got there."

More:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/sc_nm/science_crippen_dc

"Do you mind changing it? I don't think the Seattle Channel is jizz-friendly"--a producer with A Guide to Visitors

The producers of the Seattle-based story-telling salon, A Guide to Visitors, are among the smartest and funniest individuals I've worked with in the arts. So when they asked me to resurrect a story I'd told onstage last year at the Rendezvous, only this time for the Seattle Channel, I said, "Yea!" even though I was still living out of boxes and had scant few clean shirts.

The show has aired a few times (Channel 21, if you're local) and it's archived online now:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/AGuideToVisitors/

Or if you are jizz-friendly, you can read the original version I wrote for the Black Table three years ago:

http://blacktable.com/waxing041111.htm

Yes, basically:

I had coffee with a new friend this morning and as we were leaving Top Pot, I noticed she was carrying a Believer tote.

"I've written for The Believer," I said.

She replied, "Yeah, I subscribed awhile ago and they sent this bag, but not the actual magazine. I hear they're like that."

"The inside-the-Beltway problem is a type of tunnel vision and a sense of narrow possibilities. It's also a fear of ..."

"...not being Serious with a capital S...In other words, it's much harder to damage your career by consistently supporting war and cruelty than by consistently supporting peace and love. The default position is 'bombs away.' The problem with the outside-the-Beltway mentality is an ignorance of what the actual human pressures and incentives are inside the Beltway, why politicians and pundits behave the way they do, and why that is not necessarily entirely attributable to their moral depravity."

Radar has a new interview with one of my very favorite writers, the ceaselessly compelling Hendrik Hertzberg:

http://radaronline.com/features/2007/10/hendrik_hertzberg_the_new_yorker_charles_kaiser_1.php

And to everyone who has a ball sack:

This appears self-evident, but in case it's not:

Your testes and/or penis will not become disabled if you apologize without someone first drawing you a schematic illustrating why, perchance, an apology might be in order.

[The vaginal cabal does fucked up stuff, too. So not the point right now.]

I'm doing outdoors stuff! (Sort of):

Very much looking forward to ReAct's staged reading of one of my favorite plays, the climbing-based drama, K2, tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. at Elliot Bay Book Company.

Details:

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/events/sep07/react1.jsp

I was born at 10:47 p.m.:

"I came into the world at ten o'clock at night, and I've often thought that was the reason I turned into such a nocturnal creature. When the sun sets, honey, I feel more, oh, alert. More alive. By midnight, I feel fantastic. Even when I was a little girl, my father would shake his head and say, 'Let's just hope you get a job where you work nights.' Little did he know what was in store for me. It takes talent to live at night."--Ava Gardner, from Ava: My Story

Disconcerting:

When you're reading Heather Lewis' Notice--in many ways is a direct descendant of The Story of O in that it induces arousal and nausea in equal measure--and you can't get Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" out of your head.

We're turning in early tonight.

Dear news directors:

I understand that news is a business and that you report to someone who eventually has to report to shareholders, but have you considered the possibility that a significant portion of the viewing public does not give a shit about O.J. Simpson's "latest mess"?