This looks like something you should read — me, too, I guess. Written by Walter Benn Michaels, reviewed by Chris Lehman. A take on, among other things, how both the right and the left have dismissed the issue of economic equality. More or less.

“What American liberals want is for our conservatives to be racist … We want a fictional George Bush who doesn’t care about black people rather than the George Bush we’ve actually got, who doesn’t care about poor people.”

[Others of us just want some conservatives to go away.]

But I’m tired today, and this looks like more fun.

So Viagara’s boastful warnings of hopeful side effects, it turns out, are modest! Good Lord, one whole week with no sign of collapse. Nothing left but to amputate.

Very Obvious List, today (yesterday?), points you to Sarah Silverman’s new show. Hellooo — read it in the Times last week. We’re not buried in sand out here.

Kelly Van Blokland — they are at this exact moment on KMHD playing a song we played in either Marching or Jazz band and it’s driving me nuts that I can’t name it. Turn your radio on, quick! — What is it?  Must have been jazz band because I see myself playing chords. Call me, I’ll sing it to you. Ha … ha, ha, ha that just cracked me up.

None of you write me enough. La formica e malata. Mangiata trop insalata.

Go and multiply.

If Eric Slater emailed you five times a day, you’d never be unhappy. Ever. Just saying. Send me an email and I’ll ask him to put you on his list, you’ll see. He should charge money.

Remember Very Short List? If you signed up yesterday like I suggested, you saw them in your inbox today plugging Infamous as the better Capote film. Then you said to yourself, “Duh! They should call it Very Obvious List.”

I feel like I already linked to this, New York Magazine’s Norman Mailer All-Time Enemies List. If I did, who cares, it’s beautiful. I could read it every day. I will. I do! I don’t think there’s enough good, old-fashioned cold cocking anymore. Every once in awhile you need a drink in the face, or a sucker punch … it cleans the blood, it’s good for the soul.

The best Mailer enemy is Gore Vidal –

Crime: Comparing The Prisoner of Sex to “three days of menstrual flow” and Mailer to Charles Manson.

Action Taken: Head-butting him in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, then telling him, on-air, that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him. Six years later, he threw a drink at Vidal — and punched him — at a Lally Weymouth soiree.

Blowback: Still on the floor, Vidal said, “words fail Norman Mailer yet again.” Days later, Vidal went on Cavett’s show to assert that Mailer had — literally — stabbed his second wife in the back.

By the way, I got through Palimpsest. Hmm, I shouldn’t put it like that. I did roll my eyes every page, but kept turning them nonetheless. Gore gives himself all the good lines — his perogative, it’s his book — and the grumbling lines of his enemies serve him a little too well. (Vidal quotes Mailer, for instance, as saying he didn’t like him – Vidal – because he’s “too damn successful.”) But in the end he’s got a good story and he doesn’t hold back.

A. has adopted a very formal tone in his emails to me. He says things like, “That’s encouraging, what Jane expressed.” I suppose it’s serious business running a company and calls for big formal words.

That’s all I have. Get out there and punch someone!

One day I hope they’ll put out a collection of Benjamin Schwarz‘s reviews. I rarely read the books he trots out, but relish the crisp wispy writing he wraps them up in. (Yes, I know “crisp” and “wispy” don’t work, but I like them, they sound good.)

Take this, for example, from his review of three new works on Cary Grant. (This is Schwarz speaking, not quotes from the books):

“That same year … he also made The Awful Truth — and seemingly from nowhere the Cary Grant persona gloriously appeared, fully formed. All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke … the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements — the cocked head, the double takes. …”

Who needs the books?

Oh, Richard Clarke is guest-blogging at Powells this week. That’s all I have to say about that.

Existentialism: Downer? or fun.

Nude pics and sex stories: More of them? or less.

Hangmen: Meanie-pies? or Guys Just Doing Their Job.

You: Working? or Searching for your name on my blog.

This looks interesting if you’re wondering what to get me for President’s Day. Good coffee table fare.

Very Short List sent me the note. I’m not quite sure what they’re all about yet, but you can subscribe and you’ll get emails once in awhile purportedly telling you about cool things no one else knows. That is unless everyone subscribes. Then it’s a very long list, and not as cool, so how about just a quarter of you subscribe to not screw it up. And then only tell one friend, not two, and instruct them to do the same. I’ll let you work it out among yourselves.

The Times ran the most interesting profile of the cartoonists Crumb in Sunday Styles. You might know them from The New Yorker, though there are books and other stuff, too. They live in a little village in France and she has a lover. Mr. Crumb is happy about it because the lover is handy around the house and a good conversationlist. Were I in New York for Valentine’s Day, I’d go to the 42nd Street library and hear Mr. Crumb interview Mrs. Crumb and eyeball said lover who will be there as well.

Since I won’t be in New York I’ll find something else to do.

Right now I’ve got SPAM to read and a spider to squish. Very busy.

… Dammit. Up and out the door in 15 minutes today — portable breakfasts and all — because A.’s clock was an hour back. How the hell … ? So I’m sluggish and crabby and haven’t bothered to look in a mirror, writing the whole thing off. Maybe I can fix up some before the after-school hall-wait with the parents who get up on time and shower.

Drove the 30 minutes in on everyone’s tail and with a headlight out like an obnoxious, leering wink. Sorry 99W commuters. I’ll get it fixed, maybe, this weekend and I’ll get up earlier tomorrow so I won’t have to get quite so close to you.

I have work to do now. More later … get some leggings while you wait.

That’s a sad sigh, Art Buchwald is gone. Though you couldn’t have asked for a better exit — he turned a few weeks’ prognosis in a hospice to a year of receiving the best and brightest at his bedside salon. Plus he wrote and published a book. You should buy it.

If you’re not sure, read a few of his columns first — a crisp, brilliant wit.

Back to your doughnuts.