Lawrence Tierney Is Dead, Alas…

…because if he were still with us, the headstrong and tempermental actor would be perfectly suited for The Outbursts of Everett True. The comic strip’s nearly a century old, but it runs on a simple premise that could just as easily catch on with audiences today:

“In the first panel, Everett is subjected to one of the many common annoyances, indignations, and outrages that are foisted upon each of us daily. In the second, he beats someone up.”

Some bits, like revenge against rude hotel clerks (click on the drawing above for a full-size version) or people who cut in line, are just as fresh in 2005 as they were in 1906. A handful of other gags aren’t quite as successful, and the strip isn’t immune to the racist caricaturing of the early 20th century, but I swear, you could take this into a pitch meeting at Comedy Central today and walk out with a pilot development deal. After all, isn’t this pretty much how the majority of American stand-up comedy works, with the physical violence weakly replaced by verbal abuse from a distance?

29 August 2005 | uncategorized |

Here Comes the Weekend

• Two months ago, I made note of the lengthy review Amazon had given Mackenzie Bezos’ The Testing of Luther Albright. Since then, the first-time novelist’s gotten some excellent notices, from folks like Kate Bolick of NYTBR, that don’t even mention her family connection to Amazon. The hometown paper isn’t so genteel: Seattle Post-Intelligence book man John Marshall gets her talking about that and her background in Princeton’s creative writing program…I’m going to have to see if Jennifer Weiner can give me some good gossip on that front!

• Roxana Robinson wrote about “women’s fiction” in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, but the way she described romances and thrillers along the way rankled M. J. Rose, who made the case for genre fiction, aiming to refute the idea that “thrillers are every bit as shallow as romances: They’re just as simplistic, just as formulaic and, just as often, poorly written.” I think the key there is “just as often,” which isn’t the same as “always.” And, I think, it’s time to let out the dirty little secret: so-called literary fiction can be just as simplistic, formulaic, and poorly written, too. I should know–I’m judging some for the Litblog Co-op this week!

26 August 2005 | uncategorized |