Double Bill of the Week

SET-UP: The object is set before the mind, either in reality, as in sketching (before a landscape or teacup or old face) or is set in the memory wherein it becomes the sketching from memory of a definite image-object.

PROCEDURE: Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, bowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.

METHOD: No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas--but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between out-blown phrases) - "measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech" - "divisions of the sounds we hear" - time and how to note it down." (William Carlos Williams)

SCOPING: Not "selectivity" of expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement, like a fist coming down on a table with each complete utterance, bang! (the space dash) - Blow as deep as you want - write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning - excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.

LAG IN PROCEDURE: No pause to think of proper word but the infantile pileup of scatological buildup words till satisfaction is gained, which will turn out to be a great appending rhythm to a thought and be in accordance with Great Law of timing.

TIMING: Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time - Shakespearean stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue - no revisions (except obvious rational mistakes, such as names or calculated insertions in act of not writing but inserting).

CENTER OF INTEREST: Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in a sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion - Do not afterthink except for poetic or P.S. reasons. Never afterthink to "improve" or defray impressions, as, the best writing is always the most painful personal wrung-out tossed from cradle warm protective mind - tap from yourself the sound of yourself, blow! - now! - your way is your only way - "good" - or "bad" - always honest, ("ludicrous"), spontaneous, "confessional" interesting, because not "crafted."Craft is craft.

STRUCTURE OF WORK: Modern bizarre structures (science fiction, etc.) arise from language being dead, "different" themes give illusion of "new" life. Follow roughly outlines in outfanning movement over subject, as rive rock, so mindflow over jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arrive at sharp-necessitating "ending" and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle - Night is The End.

MENTAL STATE: If possible write "without consciousness" in semi-trance (as Yeats' later "trance writing") allowing subconscious to admit in own uninhibited interesting necessary and so "modern" language what conscious art would censor, and write excitedly, swiftly, with writing-or-typing-cramps, in accordance (as from center to periphery) with laws of orgasm, Reich's "beclouding of consciousness." Come from within, out.

Politically Correct Cartoon of the Week

Happy New Year
Planet Earth
A small announcement about a big achievement
by Jim Channon

In all the major dimensions of life and culture our great planet earth has finally become the home to one grand civilization. It has been six million years since a human like being stood up in a tree and searched about for a solution to his imminent future. In this long long search for answers we have finally gotten to a place where everything can be known by almost everybody, where every resource can be shared by almost everybody, and where the best of all we have discovered is available to all. It is time to reset our global calendars to year one. We are one planet!

There are no longer any serious number of lost tribes out there. There is a five-story mall in Borneo. People in the back woods of the world can listen to symphonies as if they were located in the front row of the orchestra pit. This doesn't mean life as we know it is any better than it's ever been, but it does mean we are connected.

There are not a handful of people alive that don't know we are a planet full of people that are in contact. Never have boundaries been so superficial. Never has there been a global conscience so quick to respond to events of the day. Never has there been a time when all that we have discovered is so available to all that are alive. In the name of humanity, let's take a moment to notice where we have come.

Conflict on a global basis is reduced to what might be considered petty crime. There may be one or two empires left out there but their behavior only reminds us more of how obsolete they are and vulnerable now to this new climate of world public opinion. There is big work to do yet, and yet the gift of a great challenge is always what raises us to our best selves. But we can do it as one people of a place now like one sweet homeland. What used to take months in travel can now be had by lunch and without any real effort. The Earth is perceptible to many now as a felt orb they can feel as they move over or under her. Cultural delights are available in motion and sound in our bedrooms but can take us to the peculiar delicacies found only after arduous travel in times gone by. We know ourselves as a civilization both inside and out. In a lifetime each person can now know what there is to know about life in this world, not just a small slice of it. To what end?

Just because there may be such a thing as paradise somewhere in the grand universe shall we then be forced to wait for that alleged wonder and not imagine we can generate that or a similar state of excellence right here right now? Happily it is your choice. By and large you will create the life you will experience just by the nature of your thoughts. Toil has given way to labor and labor to work and work to craft and craft to art and if you are not arting, well, maybe you should adjust things a bit. At least manage some of each of these things as you pass through.

You might consider that paradise could be found inside a simple feeling. It could be made in a moment with a dear friend or pet. It could be created at the end of a grand work of love. It might be spread lavishly at the social affair of your making. Yes, and ever punctuated with music and laughter. It's not so magic or unattainable. But, unless appreciated, it is destined to fall beside your notice.

And appreciation for this six million year journey of the ever-curious human animal is the task of this writing. There will be other moments to celebrate in time but this time of the final joining of all people is so auspicious to me that I give it all the voice I can craft from my many years of reflecting on what is so.

Happy new Year
Jim Channon
Hawaii Nei
2005

The Brain Monologues

Dear Michael:
Sometimes I get so depressed over the election results, I can't stand it. I keep hearing credible evidence of voter fraud but nothing ever happens. Where's a Woodward or Bernstein when you need him? Seriously, I can't stand not doing anything. I did all I could but they still stole it. I really appreciate you churning out your weekly column but I want to do more. Do you hear of anything, anything at all, about getting the bastards that did this?
- Lynette -

You can't change the world but you can change your response to it. Change your response to the world by being a better person. A world full of better people is a better world. 

What do better people do? You've met them. People you've liked, who got you to talk, elicited responses, showed genuine interest- part of the behavior one would expect from a priest or rabbi or psychiatrist. People with charm, people with humor, friendly people who, far from meaning you harm, actually mean you good. People who don't judge but accept you for what you are, like a good parent. If parents treated everybody they met with a little bit of the love they felt for their children, believe me, the world would be a better place. People who aren't afraid to lower their barriers, to be a bit defenseless, people who open up, let you in, who aren't trying to take advantage. This kind of behavior is a magnet. Let down your barriers.

If you have no enemies, there's no conquest except for it's own sake. There can be no pre-emption, no defensive stature whatever against people who aren't your enemies. If we had no enemies, a department of defense would be an anachronism. Defense against what? Friends? When was the last time someone attacked the Amish?

Can I argue for feeling defenseless? You bet I can. Every defense against the bad also keeps out the good. Every wall that protects from an enemy also separates a Romeo and Juliet. This ain't no hippie dippy dream of a planet populated by people in robes who share all the food at enormous banquet tables but simply a way you can live your personal life in microcosm of the way you'd like all of reality to behave. 

Accept the whole planet can't work this way. You can't free everybody but there can be individual pockets of freedom, pockets as small as you and your friends, like al-Qaeda, pocket cells of freedom, only loosely related through an internal philosophy of behavior but the diametric opposite of al-Qaeda, a devotion to doing as little harm as possible instead of as much.

How does this translate into a practical way of dealing with reality? It demands the hardest thing in the world, practicing what you preach. Parents who've tried to prevent their children from picking up on their own bad habits know what I'm talking about. 

There's a scene in the holiday perennial Quo Vadis where a Roman has fallen in love with a Christian who pleads for him to free his slaves. He also visits a Roman friend who cordially offers him some slave girls for his pleasure. What a dilemma! Does he free the slaves before or after taking his pleasure? Slavery has its attractions, but only if you're a Roman.

WalMart shoppers are faced with the same choice. Do they express their displeasure at slavery before or after shopping at a store with the cheapest prices but where 60% of the merchandise is created through slave labor in China? WalMart donates to Bush. Slavery has its attractions, but only if you're a Republican.

Like I said, it's harder than it looks. If you don't believe in slavery, you don't fuck the nubile slave girl and you don't shop at WalMart. Skip Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, forget Fruit of the Loom, say no to amazon.com, yes to Barnesandnoble.com, no to Coors, no to Circuit City and yes to Price Club, skip the Marriott or the Holiday Inn (76 and 73 percent to the GOP respectively), and stay at the lib-friendly Hyatt. Skip Yahoo.com (58 percent to the GOP) and head over to Google, which gave 100 percent of their donations to the Dems. Toss American and Continental, fly JetBlue. Join NetFlix. Screw Repub-lovin' Wal-Mart and K-Mart and head over to Bed Bath & Beyond, which gave 93 percent to the Dems. Yes to Starbucks, who gave all to Dems, no to Folgers just because it tastes like shit.

Think about the people you admire. They're people who stand up for what they believe. Do it in even the smallest way and you will feel better about yourself. You've got to wean yourself from evil. If you're against pollution, you might not be able to get the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Protocols but you sure as hell can throw that napkin into a trashcan instead of the street, even if no one's looking, even if the gutter is already full of garbage. You can look at the shit in the world and feel a sense of pride over that fact that at least you didn't ADD to it. The world is a recipe you can only make tastier. Add a little fearless. Add a little bold. Add a little compassion. Add a little trust. Add a little smart. Join my Witless Protection Program. Learn to laugh at things that aren't funny. Like this...

Stupid Answers of the Week

Can you think of a euphemism that sounds dirty but isn't? (example: Firing the Attorney General)

Hoisted up on his own petard. 
The two cheerleaders shared my Almond Joy while I ate their Mounds. 
The Marines beat off stiff resistance in Fallujah. 
She had her cavity filled by the dentist and now, after all that drilling, she's feeling much better. 
Bush agreed to the invasion spearheaded by Rummy that Colin rejected.
- RSJ - 

Raising the Titanic 
Loading the dishwasher 
Ordering lunch 
Lowering the Boom 
Reformatting the hard drive 
The harder task is to find euphemisms that don't sound remotely sexy:
Voting Nader 
Watching Dr. Phil 
-John Irvine - 

Licking the cake batter out of your mixing bowl. 
Waxing the surfboard. 
Driving up to your service window. 
Taking you to the podiatrist. 
Wallowing in your pity. 
Eating in your corner booth. 
Ordering scrambled eggs. 
- Jimmy Yellen - 

Checking under the hood
- Patricia Miller - 

Negotiating with myself! 
- Perry L. Adler - 

The senator tried to ram the bill through Congress. 
Devils Island was the most notorious penal colony. 
Ogden Nash was a most cunning linguist. 
Warning: slippery when wet.
- Rita Bert - 

blowing hot and cold
- palantir -

Backing up the database 
Adjusting the valves
Leaning into the wind
Expediting the next load 
Raising the dealer 
Spanking the puppy
- Harry Houck - 

Just in case you didn't know, The Foremen have a song Firing The Surgeon General. One of my favorites, considering how much I like Roy Zimmerman. 
- TTFN, Baron Dave -
 

Stupid Question of the Week

Ask me absolutely any question and I will answer it.

Send your questions to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Irony of the Week

 If Fallujah had been destroyed by a tsunami instead of U.S. forces, the whole world would be rallying to help. Song of the Week

The Damnation Song
(Sung to the tune of God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen) 

God damn you homosexuals! 
How dare you act so gay! 
We think about you day and night 
And what you do and say,
And where you put your penises - 
Thank God, we're not that way! 
We do not like the things you do in bed - 
You do in bed -
We don't like those things, so you can never wed! 

From Republican Christmas Carols by Richard Nathan

God damn ye fairy gentlemen
Please do not keep in touch
It makes us sick to think about
the body parts you clutch
Except for all the lesbians
we like to watch so much
You can all go right to San Francisco Bay
without delay
And you're sure to have a Queer Eye Christmas Day

addendum by me

Iraqi Bloggers

www.baghdadgirl.blogspot.com
www.iraqthemodel.blogspot.com
www.astarfrommosul.blogspot.com
www.rosebaghdad.blogspot.com ("Diary From Baghdad")
www.iraqidoctor.blogspot.com ("Iraqi Humanity")
www.healingiraq.comwww.riverbendblog.blogspot.com("Baghdad Burning")
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com ("The Mesopotamian") 

Don't Take My Word For It

"Well, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days."
- Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure Of The Dying Detective by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
- William Blake -

"There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."
- Marshall McLuhan -

    "Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan next week with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack.     "The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed.
    "'This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people,' said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California. 'The Iraq war took away my son's life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq,' she added in a statement released by the families."
- U.S. Families of Dead Raise 600,000 Dollars for Fallujah Refugees -

    "America's pharmaceutical industry is putting out an advisory about the latest potential threat to its health: Michael Moore.
    "Moore, the filmmaker whose targets have included General Motors (Roger & Me), the gun lobby (the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine) and President Bush (Fahrenheit 9/11) has now set his sights on the healthcare industry, including insurance companies, HMOs, the Food and Drug Administration and drug companies.
    "At least six of the nation's largest firms have already issued internal notices to their workforces, preparing them for potential ambushes.
    "'We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you'll know who it is,' said Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development."
- Elaine Dutka: Giving them a sick feeling -

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
- Seneca -

"What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork to my lunch?"
- W.C. Fields -

"I write to discover what I know."
- Flannery O'Connor -

    "According to the records, Zaggam and Merida were on guard duty May 11 in a tower on the perimeter of an Army camp near Tikrit in northern Iraq. About 10:30 p.m., Merida shot Zaggam repeatedly with his M-4 carbine.
    "The 'gay panic' motive was the third that Merida offered. He first told investigators that Zaggam demanded money at gunpoint. Later, he said he killed Zaggam because the boy forced him to have sex.
    "Interviewed a third time by skeptical investigators, Merida said he got angry after the two had consensual sex. When the boy went to the latrine, Merida began to craft an excuse for killing him."
- Jay Price: Guardsman killed Iraqi after sex -

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
- Dale Carnegie -

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams -

"Everything comes to pass, nothing comes to stay."
- Matthew Flickstein: Journey To The Center -

"This is the danger of a dumbed-down population, of an education system being gutted even as the defense budget surpasses those of all industrialized nations, combined. This is what happens when drones are created, unthinking and unenlightened, devoid of analytical and logical thought, conditioned to believe anything and everything told them by a government for years acting as The Evil Empire. This is what happens to Empires whose people no longer are capable of rational thought, whose brain lacks the precepts to think on their own. This is what happens when a population fails to question authority, seek accountability or hold leaders responsible. This is what happens without protest, dissent and debate. This is what happens in the absence of bravery and selflessness.Is it so hard to imagine our government and our leaders as liars, criminals and terrorists? Is it so hard to imagine that we are being led into a moral abyss whose black hole is eroding the humanity naturally endowed to us? Is it so hard to see past the lies, the deceit, the propaganda, the exploitation of our psychology, the obvious criminal elements running the government? Is it so hard to question authority, to seek accountability, to return power to the People? Is it so hard to escape the clouds of 9/11 and see, if only for a second, the incredible amount of coincidences and growing evidence pointing to complicit criminality within the Bush Administration and the neocons in the death of 3000 humans?"
- Manuel Valenzuela: The Rise of the Amerikan Nazis -

    "Instead of Dems apologizing and sucking up to Republicanazis, we need to stand up to the bullies like Chase did. We need more national celebrities to call Bush a dumb fuck. Some people say Bush is not so dumb, that he may not read books or position papers or even the Cliff Notes his staff prepares, but he does run campaigns that win, even if he cheats.
    "That's not the point. The point is Bush doesn't deserve respect. He's not in the White House legitimately - even if you don't think he cheated in 2004, which he did, there is the more widely acknowledged cheating to take the White House in 2000. He shouldn't have even been in the position to run in 2004. Calling him a dumb fuck is reminding people that Bush is illegitimate. He's a presidential bastard, besides being a dumb fuck. I don't care if you think I'm unpatriotic for defending Chase and calling Bush a dumb fuck myself.
    "I'm not interested in being patriotic to a country whose leaders are taking us down a road to fascism. I'm interested in seeking truth, in being set free, in honesty, in the purity of the moment. I'm interested in the future of the entire planet, not just my own country. I'm interested in being patriotic and true to the planet, and to my creator and the creative forces that run through me."
- Jackson Thoreau: In Defense of Chevy Chase's Right to Call Bush a Dumb Fuck -

"Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money."
- Arthur Miller -

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second." 
- Robert Frost -

"A North Texas soldier who will deploy to Iraq early next year is furious that he recently lost custody of his son because of his military obligations. John Wertz must comply with a court order and deliver his 9-year-old son to his ex-wife three days after Christmas. 'This is a big slap in the face,' he said. 'I'm defending the country, and right behind my back, they're taking things from me.'"
- GI Bound for Iraq loses Custody Fight -

"That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false."
- Paul Valery -

"Being a persecuted minority of 90% of the population is never easy. Especially when the remaining 10% willfully refuse to not be polite enough to act exactly like we tell them to act. As a Christian, when someone smiles, waves and doesn't greet me with the exact words I demand, sometimes I feel like beating them to a bloody blob of Christ-hating hamburger meat."
- Laura Bush -

"Sam Walton's real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty. He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real market. The only problem with the business model is that it really needs to create more poverty to grow." 
- Al Zack: retired vice-president for strategic programs for the United Food and Commercial Workers, quoted in Down and Out in Discount America by Liza Featherstone -

"Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there."
- E. H. Gombrich -

    "It should be against the law to break the law. Unfortunately, it is not. In early 21st-century America, a dirty little secret still exists among public officials, politicians, judges, prosecutors, and the police. The government - federal, state, and local - is not bound to obey its own laws. I know this sounds crazy, but too many cases prove it true. It should be a matter of grave concern for every American who prizes personal liberty.
    "When I became a judge in New Jersey, I had impeccable conservative Republican law-and-order credentials. When I left eight years later, I was a born-again individualist, after witnessing first-hand how the criminal justice system works to subvert and shred the Constitution. You think you've got rights that are guaranteed? Well, think again.
    "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, particularly when it comes to the American criminal justice system. Nowhere else does the state have greater raw power over an individuals life, liberty, and property. And nowhere else are our constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms under such a relentless, subtle, and ultimately devastating attack."
- Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: How the Government Breaks the Law -

"Things are not what they seem; Nor are they otherwise."
- Lankavatara Sutra -

"Undersecretary of State John Bolton is perhaps best known for his soulful rendition of the Percy Sledge classic, When a Man Loves a Woman."
- Jeff Crook: Strangely Believable but Untrue Facts -

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."
- Albert Schweitzer -

    "Despite unhappy holidays, nearly all of us who served in WWII were proud, determined and properly armed and equipped to help defeat would-be world conquerors Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan.
    "At age 80, I'd gladly volunteer for such highly moral duty again. But if I were eligible for service in Iraq, I would do all I could to avoid it. I would have done the same during the Vietnam War, as many of the politically connected did.
   "'Support Our Troops' is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution."
- Al Neuharth, USA TODAY Founder: They can only dream of holidays at home
-

"A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as 'torture' and a June 2004 'Urgent Report' to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up."
- Bush Approved Torture Techniques -

"A new United Nations report finds Israeli policies in the wake of the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Intifada have caused serious economic hardship for the people of Bethlehem. The report, Costs of Conflict: The Changing Face of Bethlehem, has determined Bethlehem residents live in almost complete isolation of their Jerusalemite and West Bank neighbours, quarantined off by a series of roadblocks, checkpoints, illegal Jewish settlements and stretches of concrete blocks put in place by Israeli occupation forces over the course of the last four years."
- Laila El-Haddad: UN: Bethlehem in economic isolation -

"Israeli former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu has been detained trying to enter Bethlehem in the West Bank in defiance of a travel ban. Vanunu, a Christian convert, had wanted to pray at the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve, police said. Vanunu was released in April after 18 years in jail for disclosing details of Israel's nuclear weapons programme. Israel insists Vanunu still poses a security threat and he is banned from the West Bank and Gaza Strip."- Vanunu held over Bethlehem trip -

    "Do I have a line in the sand? OK, I do. I resent, and I hereby protest, money in the defense budget going for war crimes, which, as stipulated in a 1996 law for which Republicans voted, could put the commander in chief in the death cell.     "What war crimes? In Iraq they're happening every day. In the recent glorious conquest of Fallouja, for instance, irked at the reports of casualties from Fallouja General Hospital, the U.S. military shut 'the propaganda weapon' down. U.S. soldiers tied up the medical staff and patients.
    "Now, the Geneva Convention states: 'Fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the medical service may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict.' So put Bush and the Defense secretary he recently declared to be a sensitive and wonderful human being on trial for their lives."
- Alexander Cockburn: Balancing Your Moral Outrage Budget -

"Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold." 
- Thomas Hobbes -

"When we're through this cursed war,
All started by a sneaking gouger,
making slaves of men
Then let all the people rise,
and stand together in brave, kind Humanity.
Most wars are made by small stupid
selfish bossing groups
while the people have no say.
But there'll come a day
Hip hip Hooray
when they'll smash all dictators to the wall."
- Charles Edward Ives: They Are There -

"Massacre is not a family value."
- Anne T. Christ -

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not."
- Thomas H. Huxley -

"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made."
- Otto von Bismarck -

"A child needs love the most when he least deserves it."
- Anon -

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."
- Elbert Hubbard -

"Of those who say nothing, few are silent."
- Thomas Neill -

Everything Else

If I were to make a bad joke about the deaths of more than 50,000 people, should I spell it Tsunami Tsoday, Tsunami Tsuday, or Tsunami Tsueday?

What happens when Indonesian food attacks American food? The Humane Society steps in.

Listen to John Lennon singing Happy Christmas (War is Over), George Harrison singing Give me Love (Give me Peace on Earth) and Eva Cassidy singing Lennon's Imagine.

Publisher's Weekly selected Larry Grobel's The Art of the Interview: Lessons From a Master of the Craft (3 Rivers Press) as one of their 50 best nonfiction books of the year. The only paperback original (besides the committee written 9/11 Commission Report). "Thoroughly entertaining - the equivalent of a master class on one of the toughest jobs in journalism," they said. All of Larry's books are phenomenal. Check him out here.