Excellent. Video here. (Via Journalista.)

If that's not enough, there's always the brilliant "Spewey" episode of Get A Life.

Powell's City of Books, 7:30 pm

Tomorrow night at the Ace Hotel, a McSweeney's posse rolls into town to celebrate the release of Deb Olin Unferth's debut novel Vacation. McSweeney's publisher Eli Horowitz, writer/editor Paul Collins, and Arkansas author John Brandon will all be in attendance. The night also promises music from the Chris Funk/Laura Veirs teamup Two Beers, and all the drunken book-talk and sophisticated eyewear anyone could want.

Wed Oct 1, 1022 SW Stark, 8 pm

I would love to schmooze with a McSweeney's crew (and see how my own eyewear chalks up) but tomorrow I'm going on a little vacation of my own. Why am I sharing this? To explain why our books calendar is already so fantastically up-to-date. There are some great readings coming up in the next few weeks, including Sarah Vowell and Art Spiegelman. Click here for more details.

I want a president who can make us proud as Americans. How great would it be after 7 and a half years to have an articulate leader, an eloquent speaker, one who is not only willing to talk, but to listen? I believe Obama will be that kind of president. Plus, he has a sense of humor. He has two young daughters and a working wife. He's smart. And let's not forget the magic. Nothing wrong with having the ability to connect with people around the world --young, old, and in-between.

In some ways an election is like life - a lot of muck comes your way. It's hard sometimes to slog through it. It's exhausting. It can be scary. You can feel like you're drowning in it. You've got to work hard to pull yourself up and out of it, then to rise above it. We need a leader who can help us do that. That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama.

The second post is by the estimable John Green, author of An Abundance of Katherines:

The anti-intellectualism that has become the hallmark of religious conservatism in contemporary Christianity (and many other religions) will only set us back--not only economically and politically but also spiritually. We must invest in science; we must teach our children the scientific method; we must share with them the myriad discoveries that scientific method has brought us. And we must do all of these things in classrooms that are in the business of teaching children how to learn, and not in the business of teaching that faith in God is incompatible with the intellectual rigor and creative innovation that have been the glory of our nation's past. Christianity loses in that bargain, and so, too, does America.

Took 'em a while, but Wordstock just rolled out a shiny new website with information about the 2008 festival, Nov. 8-9 at the Convention Center.

The author lineup strikes me as much more exciting than last year's (about which I can remember absolutely nothing except that I think Adrian Tomine was there). John Hodgman, William Kittredge, Aimee Bender, Mark Sarvas, Gina Ochsner, Susan "Dragon's Milk" Fletcher, Molly Glass, Anne Packer, Alison Bechdel, Linda Barry, and more more more.

The site is still kinda buggy, but they're working on it. (Don't get confused: The blog is new but some of its content rolled over from the old website, which means old posts have new entry dates.)

Man o' man, there are a lot of great readings coming up.

Tonight: Paul Auster reads from Man in the Dark at Powell's, 7:30 pm

Tomorrow: Live Wire is dedicating this month's show to State by State, the essay collection that's the subject of the newest Powell's Out of the Book film. Lydia Millet, Carrie Brownstein, Daphne Beal, and Sean Wilsey will all be appearing. Read more about the project here, and win tickets here to the Tuesday screening of the film (all you have to do is explain why your state of birth qualifies YOU for the vice presidency).

Sunday: Chuck Klosterman reads from his first novel, Downtown Owl; Powell's, 7:30 pm. Erik Henriksen interviewed Klosterman for his review; read it here.

Monday: Irvine Welsh is at Powell's, 7:30 pm, reading from his new novel Crime (Courtney liked it); and Powell's is screening the State by State film at the Bagdad, 7 pm, $5

As always, get yer book listings here.

By David Foster Wallace, from a work in progress.

"The Compliance Branch," from Harper's, February 2008.

It's the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There's a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today's power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner... until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer's scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi's moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does--Federer's still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball's heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there's no time to turn his body around, and Agassi's following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side... and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball's past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi's side, a winner--Federer's still dancing backward as it lands. And there's that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man's headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), "How do you hit a winner from that position?" And he's right: given Agassi's position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of The Matrix. I don't know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.

David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer: Federer as Religious Experience, from The New York Times, August 20, 2006.

Powell's Books just released the third film in their Out of the Book series; this time around, they're focusing on an essay collection called State by State, edited by Sean Wilsey and Matt Weiland. The book is based on the WPA-funded state guides of the '30s and features 50 authors writing about each of the 50 states: Alexander Payne on Nebraska, SE Hinton on Oklahoma, Jonathan Franzen on New York, Susan Choi on Indiana, Joe Sacco on Home Sweet Home... it's a great collection, and the movie is predictably charming, full of candid author interviews and readings. (I write about the book and the film in this week's paper.)

I've got a copy of the book and a pair of tickets to Monday's Out of the Book screening at the Bagdad for the commenter that provides the best reason why their state of birth qualifies them for the vice presidency.

Deadline: Friday Sept 19, 3 pm.

Harpers has made their entire archive of David Foster Wallace's work for the magazine available online.

Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer was handpicked by Douglas Adams' widow to write the sixth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Does this seem profoundly unnecessary to anyone else? From the Guardian:

Colfer, who has been a fan of Hitchhiker since his schooldays, said being given the opportunity to continue the series was "like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice". "For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world," he added. "It is a gift from the gods. So, thank you Thor and Odin."

The book will "make no claims for Eoin being Douglas", according to Prior. "It's not Eoin Colfer writing as Douglas Adams, as was the case with Sebastian Faulks," she said, pointing to Penguin's successful publication of Faulks's new James Bond novel Devil May Care earlier this year. "It's absolutely about him being himself - Eoin the author, but with the cast of Hitchhiker."

MTV's Splash Page has a 6-page preview of the forthcoming Jonathan Ames'-penned graphic novel The Alcoholic (hitting stores Sept 24), as well as an interview in which Ames explains that he was inspired to try his hand at writing comics by Brian K Vaughan's Y: The Last Man.

Oprah is scheduled to announce her new book club pick on Friday. Speculation abounds. I bet it's David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (better that than the other "think like a dog" book that's been suggested, the Starbucks-approved The Art of Racing in the Rain). Sawtelle is a contemporary retelling of Hamlet, with dogs, and is far better than that glib summation might make it sound.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: A lot of this is gonna get cut out, right?

CHARLIE ROSE: Perhaps. But I'll make the deicsion as to what's cut out.

David Foster Wallace on Charlie Rose, March 27, 1997.

1990s moviegoers who have sat clutching their heads in both awe and disappointment at movies like Twister and Volcano and The Lost World can thank James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day for inaugurating what's become this decade's special new genre of big-budget film: Special Effects Porn. "Porn" because, if you substitute F/X for intercourse, the parallels between the two genres become so obvious they're eerie. Just like hard-core cheapies, movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park aren't really "movies" in the standard sense at all. What they really are is half a dozen or so isolated, spectacular scenes--scenes comprising maybe twenty or thirty minutes of riveting, sensuous payoff--strung together via another sixty to ninety minutes of flat, dead, and often hilariously insipid narrative.

David Foster Wallace on Terminator 2: Judgment Day: F/X Porn, from Waterstone's Magazine, Winter/Spring 1998.

It's hard to get good answers to why Young Voters are so uninterested in politics. This is probably because it's next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he's not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry; the fact of the feeling's enough. Surely one reason, though, is that politics is not cool. Or say rather that cool, interesting, alive people do not seem to be the ones who are drawn to the Political Process. Think back to the sort of kids in high school or college who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game. The kind of kids other kids would want to beat up if it didn't seem so pointless and dull. And now consider some of 2000's adult versions of these very same kids: Al Gore, best described by CNN sound tech Mark A. as "amazingly lifelike"; Steve Forbes, with his wet forehead and loony giggle; G.W. Bush's patrician smirk and mangled cant; even Clinton himself with his big red fake-friendly face and "I feel your pain." Men who aren't enough like human beings even to dislike--what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is so often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us in ways that are hard even to name, much less to talk about. It's way easier to roll your eyes and not give a shit. You probably don't want to hear about all this, even.

David Foster Wallace on John McCain: The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub: Seven Days in the Life of the Late, Great John McCain, from Rolling Stone, April 13, 2000.

Since it's from waaay back in 2000, after reading the online version of that story, you should probably go here for a pretty important update on Wallace's feelings about McCain, and then, ideally, here, for the full, unedited version of the piece.

Earlier this evening I was at a friend's house, playing both The Force Unleashed and a drinking game based on the number of exceedingly graphic deaths in Rambo, when two old friends sent me emails and another texted me. All three messages informed me that David Foster Wallace hanged himself on Friday night.

Wallace is (was? is), most likely, my favorite writer. The first time I read Infinite Jest it was a life-changing experience, and the second time was better; that's not to mention Consider the Lobster (which I clumsily wrote about for the Mercury here) and Oblivion (ditto) and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and The Broom of the System and Girl with Curious Hair and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I never managed to make it through Everything and More.

I'm still stunned by this news, and even if I wasn't, like I could come up with a fitting thing to say about it anyway. For those interested, obits from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times are here and here, while a roundup of obits can be found at the Wallace fansite The Howling Fantods. For some inexplicable reason, I feel like I should link to this, too.

Anyone know?

I found this, but it doesn't answer my burning question.

All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is the comic that finally convinced me that Frank Miller--the legendary creator behind such remarkable stuff as The Dark Knight, 300, and Sin City--is now totally, utterly, and pathetically creatively bankrupt. It's a terrible, terrible book, one that reads less like something Miller wrote and more like a really mean parody of his earlier work. I honestly cannot stress just how fucking awful and depressing this comic is, but I dare you to read it. (The panel above is a pretty great representation of the unintentional hilarity the book has to offer. Just for a little bit of context, the weeping Robin just saw his parents get graphically killed like two pages earlier in that issue.)

That said, at least something entertaining is coming from the book. While the PG-13-level All-Star Batman oh-so-cleverly blacks out certain words whenever characters swear, Miller not only writes those words into the script, but the full text also goes all the way through the lettering and printing stages. Only problem? In the most recent issue, the censorious black bars weren't printed darkly enough, making the words behind them legible. So if you've ever wanted to see Batgirl say "fucking," or hear her referred to as a "little cunt" or a "fucking little piece of jailbait ass," here's your chance.

Keep up the good work, Frank.

Scans of the offending issue (which DC is frantically trying to recall) and more info: CBR and The Beat.

KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION
Judge: A.M. Homes

K.B. Dixon of Portland, The Sum of His Syndromes (Inkwater Press)

Molly Gloss of Portland, The Hearts of Horses (Houghton Mifflin)

Ehud Havazelet of Corvallis, Bearing the Body (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Lee Montgomery of Portland, Whose World is This (University of Iowa Press)

Willy Vlautin of Scappoose, The Motel Life (Harper Perennial)

Finalists for drama, poetry, non-fiction and more here. I loved Motel Life; that's where my money's at.

Tonight at Powell's, the author of In Heaven Everything is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers. Peter Ivers was the host of an early '80s TV show called New Wave Theater, and Josh Frank convincingly demonstrates in his book that Ivers was a key figure in the late-'70s/early-'80s punk and comedy scenes. He was murdered in 1983; the murder was never solved, but the case was reopened after Frank began researching Ivers' life. Read my review of the book here; I will post my lackadaisically edited interview with Frank after the jump; go to Frank's reading tonight. He told me he'd be bringing clips from New Wave Theater, which featured performers like Black Flag and Fear as well as appearances from comedian friends of Ivers (Chevy Chase, John Belushi, etc).

Josh Frank, Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, 7:30 pm

Excalibur Comics (2444 SE Hawthorne) is once again having their big 50 percent off sale. The sale starts today and runs through Monday, September 1.

I've hit more than my fair share of these since I moved to Portland six years ago, and I have yet to be disappointed with what I've ended up tracking down. This is an excellent opportunity to go and pick up a ton of back issues on the cheap. Do not waste it.

Also tonight, Shawn Granton (editor of The Zinesters Guide to Portland and Erica Schreiner (The Way Things Used to Be author) kick off the Multnomah County Library's fourth annual Zinesters Talking series, which will continue every Tuesday through September 30 at various library branches. Tonight's is at the Central Library in the US Bank room, 6:30-7:45 pm.

As ever, more literary haps in our book listings.

Today in ye olde Wall Street Journal, Warner Bros. announced their plans for their upcoming slate of superhero films flicks that might as well print money. Warner Bros. has been fantastically slow and unreliable with their big screen adaptations of DC Comics properties, something that's been even more obvious since Marvel heroes have been rockin' Hollywood for the better part of a decade. Seriously, Marvel's had three Spider-Mans, three X-Mens, one Iron Man, and a couple of sequels for films for movies nobody even wanted a sequel to, like Hulk and Fantastic Four. (They've also thrown in an Elektra, Daredevil, and Ghost Rider, just for good measure.) Meanwhile, DC has had Christopher Nolan's two great Batman flicks, and other than that, uh... Superman Returns, which no one gave two shits about, and... ah... Catwoman. (CLICK IF YOU DARE.)

But with February's Watchmen on the way and an inevitable third Batman, it looks like Warner Bros. is finally starting to get their act together. The short version: "We have been developing every DC character that we own," says Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov. (Note: Time Warner owns the entirety of DC Comics.) Copying Marvel's tactic of rebooting Hulk with The Incredible Hulk, Warner Bros. is starting over with Superman by pretending Superman Returns never happened; they're also shelving plans for Justice League and Superman vs. Batman movies, instead adopting Marvel's tactic of setting up separate films for major characters--with plans to bring the characters together in a team-up movie years down the road.

Unlike Marvel, it sounds like DC is is intent on making everything as dark as possible, hoping to latch onto the success of The Dark Knight:

Like the recent Batman sequel--which has become the highest-grossing film of the year thus far--Mr. Robinov wants his next pack of superhero movies to be bathed in the same brooding tone as The Dark Knight. Creatively, he sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.' DC properties. "We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it," he says. That goes for the company's Superman franchise as well.

We'll see how that works. Yeah, Watchmen should be pitch fucking black in terms of tone, but honestly, one of the biggest problems with Superman Returns was that it just wasn't that much fun to watch--or not nearly as fun as Superman should be, anyway. Either way, it's good to hear that Warner Bros. might be getting their head in the game when it comes to comic book movies: This trend of mega-popular superhero flicks can only last so long, and hopefully Warner Bros. can bring out some more good stuff before everything inevitably goes all Batman and Robin. Speaking of which:

Or there's the short version.

Okay, that headline's kind of jerky. I mean, obviously, McG knows how to string some letters together. For proof, just look at his name!

Anyway, the hot news from the set of McG's new Terminator flick is that he's getting all Pulitzer on some asses:

"I gave all the actors The Road to read to get their heads right bout this sort of existential detachment that living in a post apocalyptic world would bring," McG revealed. "We're in a very large post apocalyptic environment. The bombs have gone off and there's very little left. People are wandering through lonely landscapes. We want to capture that by way of David Lean photographic expanses, so you think you're looking at Lawrence of Arabia."

Whoa, whoa, McG! Name-droppin' Cormac McCarthy and David Lean in the same interview? And here I just thought you were just making a watered-down PG-13 Terminator retread.

More at MTV; via io9.

• John Green's great YA coming-of-age novel An Abundance of Katherines came out in paperback yesterday. This is noteworthy for two reasons: 1. John Green is a smart, funny, quirky writer and if you haven't read Katherines--and enjoy reliving your own teen angst, which OMG I do--it's worth checking out. (Also recommended, though less effusively: his Looking for Alaska.) 2. The book is selling for only $3.99. Green explains his rationale for the low price on his blog--it has a lot to do with building some buzz for the October release of his next book. And it's working! more affordable paperbacks, please.

• Speaking of marginalized genre fiction, Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union won the Hugo for best science fiction novel last weekend, prompting an interesting conversation over at io9: Analee Newitz first posted expressing disappointment that Chabon won the award ("Certainly it's a brilliant novel, and is undoubtedly a work of SF-ish alternate history, but it felt a little wrong to me that the award went to somebody who writes mainstream literary fiction that merely borrows a few tropes from SF."), then later, in a really admirable display of internet maturity, reconsidered her opinion after numerous commentors pointed out that not only does the book do more than borrow a few tropes (it changes a single historical variable and proceeds to develop an alternate history from that point, planting it square in the realm of sci-fi), but insisting that Chabon isn't "sci-fi enough" for the award only serves to reinforce the ghettoization of genre fiction. Phew.

• Just in time for the Friday installment of Fine Lines, Mercury freelancer Kiala Kazebee sent me an email full of her very own lol blumes: "Is joo there ceiling cat? It is can be me, Mahgahrit." "ZOMG! Teh Tiggger Eyez." "Oh hai. I's Sally J Freedman. I's busy starring as mahself." "Oh noes! Deenie's cut off all her hair and put it in mah bukket." Image courtesy of her husband Dane.

• According to the Times, 900,000 copies of Alan Moore's Watchmen have been printed since the trailer for the upcoming film was released in July. Compare that to the 100,000 copies sold last year.

• Today is Julia Child's birthday! What an excellent excuse to pick up a copy of her charming autobiography, My Life in France.

• "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7..." San Jose State announced the winner of their annual bad writing contest, which awards $250 for the "worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel." (via)

• And tonight in town, Tape Op editor Larry Crane reads at the downtown Powell's, 7:30 pm. Read Ezra's interview with Crane here.

Happy summer reading.