It’s My Two Cents: Dunham, Jillette, Litbloggers, King, Sabotage, Shortz

It’s Christmas, which means people might be reading this or might not. Or perhaps you’re Jewish, Asian, African, or my favorite, Depressed..I love this quote by Carroll Dunham: “In the contemporary context, there appears to be a divergence between “sincere” abstraction and “ironic” or even “bitchy” abstraction, although frequently, and paradoxically, the latter feels emotionally deep and on target, and the former seems full of shit”…

Penn Jillette‘s genius-as-autodidact act gets on my nerves something fierce…Malena Morling should be a much more famous poet than she is now…Listen to “Do Ya” by the Move on Theraflu, and you may actually end up forgiving Jeff Lynne for the Traveling Wilburys…Sorta feel turned off by literary bloggers who have to keep the arch act on all the time, especially when some obviously think it leads directly book deals. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always admired Jessa Crispin, aka the Bookslut, for not taking the book bait…Activia shakes are kind of addictive…Thank god for Calmol 4…The more I visit Chicago, the more addicted to it I become…Larry King sure didn’t like Spy Magazine back in the day…It’s going to be 2010 soon, and I just logged into my MySpace page…

There’s no shame in a man who gets his hair colored, as long as he lets the gray grow back in and not “do his roots,” as the girls say…I do wish the Eagles would win the Super Bowl. Someday…I’ve had an aversion to the smell of melting cheddar cheese since I was a little boy…Will someone please tell me which Stephen King novel to read, if I am to read just one?…I forgot that Kim Basinger “sings” on Prince’s soundtrack for the first Batman movie…

The overall feeling I get reading Second City Unscripted is a fascination over the logistics of putting on a show, not so much what was in the show…Peter Monaco, a former colleague at The College of Saint Rose, once told his class that “rap is in its big hair phase”…God bless the people who invented electronic delivery of letters of recommendation…I hear that Ithaca, NY, has the most restaurants per square mile of any other city…David Lehman’s The Daily Mirror still makes me smile…

I guess I am not the only one who wondered if J.J. Abrams’ inclusion of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” is an homage to William Shatner’s infamous mispronunciations of that word…The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s newish website design looks like it’s straight from a WordPress template…The sound of NPR puzzle master Will Shortz‘s voice makes me want to punch a wall. I guess that means I hate puzzles…I miss indie movies of the mid-90s…See you on New Year’s Day…

Daniel Nester‘s latest book is How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of mostly humorous nonfiction, which is out now. He teaches at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. Photo by Joe Putrock.