Newsday.com heaps more fuel on the anti-geek fire by promoting Sci-Fi Baby Names, a book advertising "500 Out-of-this-World Baby Names from Anakin to Zardoz," with explanations as to each one's origin, character, and a trademark quote.Prospective parents of the Comicon crowd, as a fellow cosplay fetishist, I beseech you: Unless you're planning on giving your kid double their required amount of lunch money every day until they graduate, and are then willing to shell out good money for a mail order bride/groom/lovedoll, do not name your children after sci-fi characters. It's not only cruel, it's impractical. Do you know how hard it's going to be to find monogrammed paraphernalia that features the name Zardoz?
Killer Lineup of Upcoming Book Releases
According to E! Online, "a literary agent working on behalf of Ron Goldman's family said Monday that she has found a publisher for O.J. Simpson's once scuttled hypothetical memoir, If I Did It, which contains passages describing how the ex-NFL star would have gone about killing Goldman and his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, if he had been the oneto commit the double murder."
In semi-related-depending-on-how-you-vote news, The Washington Post reports some secondhand information overheard at a hunting lodge: Karl Rove plans to write books after he leaves the White House 18 months from now.Them Vs. Them
Via Publisher's Weekly: The NBCC announced today that it is launching a new project tied to its blog, Critical Mass. Critics will take turns blogging about NBCC Award winners and finalists, with the goal of reintroducing readers to the hundreds of authors who have been nominated for or won the literary prize. Some of the pairings include Charles Baxter on William T. Vollmann, David Orr on Elizabeth Bishop, Lev Grossman on Richard Hofstader, and Joshua Ferris on Don DeLillo. The focus of each post will be a discussion of a winning book or nominee. Other posts will feature review roundups, reminiscences of award winners by friends and former students, group discussions, and excerpts from books. The first post appears today.
A Glimpse Into the Advertising of 2037: Expect Thom Yorke Flying Virgin America and Eric Schlosser Eating Big Macs
Today's last news bit is a sad lament care of David Pescovitz over at BoingBoing:
"Two of my patron saints as pitchmen. At left, Timothy Leary's 1993 print ad for The Gap. A copy is currently up for auction on eBay. At right, a still from the William S. Burroughs TV commercial for Nike from 1994. View the blipvert on YouTube."