Linko! XXV

“Chicago is not the ideal place to go when you’ve recently lost your mind and plan to curl up in the bottom of a bottle and wait for the feeling of having your insides ripped repeatedly from your body to subside. There are at least half a dozen North American cities better suited to such a pursuit.”

* That's from Ron Currie, Jr.'s new book Everything Matters! Well, new may not be the right word. It came out in the summer, but I've been way behind on all kinds of reading of late. Currie's God Is Dead was the best book I read all last year, so I'm pumped for the new one. I hope to catch up this weekend. Anyway, that quote (which came from this NY Times review) weirdly hit home for me this week for tons of reasons, so I thought I'd share.

Oh yeah, and Chicago lost the Olympics. I guess giant Jesus will always trump flying robots and Jedi presidents. I'm not too bummed really. I mean...is anyone honestly expecting me to live to 2016?

* Anywho, one of the books I'm most excited about finally getting to this week is Jasper Dash And The Flame-Pits of Deleware by my favorite children's/YA author M.T. Anderson. It's the third book in his series of satirical takes on series like the Hardy Boys. They're super fucking hilarious and oddly touching and I'm sure I'll post about them when I finish the new volume. For now, read this PW article about an event Anderson and Neil Gaiman spoke at.

* Speaking of great children's books, Tom linked to this post about some new stamps based on Nicolas – the main character of René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé's totally adorable series of novels. I used to read them in The Strand on rainy days in Manhattan. Sigh.

* This "Sesame Street" parody of "Mad Men" is pretty awesome for the closing line alone, but the rest is really good too. (Via here, though you should also check out what the producers had to say):

* I don't know about everyone else, but I think the Seth Rogan "Green Hornet" movie might end up being kind of dope. And I thought that before Michel Gondry was directing and before I saw these slick-looking photos of Seth Rogan in costume. But most of the time I see stories like this one about an on-set bomb scare where the reporter makes the "let's hope the film's not a bomb" joke, and fan message boards seem to be even more disparaging. Why all the hate, haters?

* I'm not 100% on what all the technical jargon Cory Doctorow throws out in this io9 interview means in terms of the future of print books, but hey...new Cory Doctorow novel coming. Rad.

* It's not going to get funnier than the above picture, but overall this blog of '80s laser portraits was pretty damn great top to bottom.

* My friend Jill linked to this ridiculous web comic about how to prepare your pets for war. It looks like there's more on the site worth a laugh.

* Warmoth has a friend who's micro-blogging, and it seems like a hoot so far. Go ahead and click through. You can read the whole blog in like ten minutes.

* Finally, I'm not even sure what to make of this.