I’d be perfectly happy if someone–whoever makes Febreze, or Lysol even–would bottle that scent. I could think of worse things than the smell of an old library (though I may be in the minority there). And if someone ever managed to bottle “Eau de Benchley Roundup“… I could practically swoon just thinking of it.

“People ask me, “Don’t you ever run out of ideas?” In the first place I don’t use ideas. Every time I have an idea it’s too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven’t run out of curiosity.”

I answered that I hadn’t, but that I’d once been subjected to the movie, because someone at my last place of employment apparently thought it was so deep and insightful, we should all be subjected to it. Normally, I would never take the movie over the book; this is one time I gladly made an exception. Hell, it’s bad enough I’ll never get those 90 minutes of my life back.

You would think that I’d just told Billy Graham that I thought the Bible was crap. (more…)

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. My favorite kitchen table, in fact, was wood-grained formica surrounded by inexpensive wooden chairs (whose thin seats had the effect of amplifying my grandfather’s flatulence roughly to that of a steam whistle), and sat in my grandmother’s kitchen. The tabletop saw its share of Legos and Parcheesi games, to say nothing of countless meals; under the table was just as good, serving as hiding place and makeshift radio station (with me as the “announcer,” reading from the funnies or anything else that happened to be laying around).

On second thought, I take back that “for whatever reason” back in the first paragraph. I think that’s all the reason I need.

Flying to America: 45 More Stories, by Donald Barthelme, lands with a meaty thump between those extremes. While it’s not the best of his output by any means–and I’ll leave the debate over the merits of specific works to others who are more inclined than myself to take it up–it’s still a worthy addition to the artist’s body of work. (more…)

For quite a while now, I’ve always pegged the start of summer to a single auspicious occasion. The bloom of a particular flower, perhaps, or the song of some bird? Oh, no, that’s far too pedestrian. The only thing that will do (for me, anyway) is the first warm day that I hear “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy on the radio.

And it has to be the radio. No CD’s or MP3’s. That would be cheating, since I own “Dedication” on disc, and ripped the song to MP3 long ago. So it has to be the radio. It’s a bit of a crap shoot–sort of like figuring out springtime by a groundhog, for instance–but when you get those goosebumps when Phil Lynott sings… That is a summer day, and a damn good one, at that.

War and peace similarly stalk the pages of Armageddon in Retrospect. At its most effective–as in the photostat of a letter that Vonnegut wrote to his family at war’s end–it’s a snapshot of the fury and futility of war. (more…)

As someone who goes bald (voluntarily) from time to time, I find the HeadBlade to be a pretty handy little item. Traditionally, a straight razor is supposed to give the best shave, but to be honest, the prospect of using one gives me the willies; I think my head would end up looking like a well-marbled New York strip steak, which wouldn’t be a good thing. That’s where the HeadBlade comes in. There are two designs: the Classic, which uses standard 2-blade Atra cartridges, and the Sport, which uses a triple blade, and comes with a set of little wheels (somewhere there’s an awful lot of Matchbox cars on little tiny cinderblocks). It’s thoughtfully designed, a hell of a lot easier to use than a conventional razor when you’re trying to de-fuzz your dome. (more…)