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R.I.P., Sunday Magazines

Or color supplement, or rotogravure, or pictorial weekly. Whatever you call it, if newspapers are the endangered rhinos of the media world, then the Sunday magazines are the white rhinos.

The Chicago Tribune this past Sunday announced they were discontinuing the separate Sunday magazine. It was a little shocking, because isn’t that what Sunday papers were for–longer, more involved, more thoughtful pieces? But after the news sunk in, I guess it made sense. The magazine recently had slimmed down to one cover article, a recipe, a couple columns, and the crossword. Thankfully, Rick Kogan’s column will be included elsewhere in the paper on Sunday. He’s a civic treasure. They ought to siphon out his brain and put it in a robot, so people can remember everything that makes this city great (not excluding Rick Kogan robots, either).

I have a sentimental attachment to the Trib Magazine Section. It was where I had my first story printed. Back in 1990, they carried “Jerry’s Last Fare,” which actually was also the first of many annual Christmas stories that I write for my wife. Of course it was a little sentimental, but it was the holidays, deal with it. I was ecstatic that they were going to print it. Households all over the Midwest (how many? A million? Or close to it back then?) would have a story of mine sitting around their house in the week before the holiday, kicking around the coffee table, maybe picked up by two, three, five secondary readers! If I remember correctly, we were headed out of town to my in-laws in Michigan on the Saturday morning, and so we bought a few at Jewel, then bought up a lot of copies when we got to the west side of the state. We bought the copies that my proud father-in-law hadn’t gotten yet. I still have a lot of yellowing copies somewhere. Like a lot of other things, you never forget your first paid story.

I’m sad to see it go, but frankly the Sunday Trib has less and less to read every week. It’s not just because they’re jettisoning too many writers–they’ve also let the morons from Red Eye choose the content. While market research will tell them to print snappy, trendy factoids to attract the hip set, common sense would tell them Sunday papers aren’t meant for skimming–they’re meant to be read over coffee and sweet rolls. We only get the Sunday Trib out of habit now, and give almost all our attention to the Sunday NY Times.

On the other hand, maybe in the back of my mind, I feel like subsidizing the Sunday paper. It’s a pity move, that’s for sure, and they don’t deserve it because the Trib has fired many excellent writers and editors (some of whom are good friends of mine) while protecting their middle-management ranks and dumbing down the paper tremendously.

But in Detroit, where my mom lives, they’ve stopped home delivery except three days a week. She told me sadly, earlier this year, “It’s awful lonely in the morning if the paper doesn’t come.” Maybe I’m still betting against a future like that for other places.

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What’s the Opposite of “Bushy Tailed”?

Today will not be a very productive day, on the writing front. One reason is that I only got about 4 hours sleep last night. There’s no good reason for the insomnia–it was a busy enough weekend with lots of physical exertion that I should’ve slept all night. But at 3AM, I woke up with a bunch of little details for the week in my head, not even pressing ones, and they managed to keep my head revving all night. This went on to a soundtrack of Yes’ “Close to the Edge”. These sleepless periods always come with a song that won’t stop looping, and when I’m lucky, it’s not a song I hate (when I’m not lucky, it could be anything from Sting to The Buggles, which Number One Son keeps talking about for some reason). In this as in so many ways, I hope I’m not turning into my mother, who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in 30 years.

I also agreed to go downtown today to speak to a writing class at Columbia College about humor. I hope I can convince them that I know what I’m talking about, b/c I have a hard enough time with editors. My main goal will be to scare them into making hundreds of revisions–either scare them straight or scare them straight out of the profession. I wanted to be able to show them the first marked-up pages I ever wrote for Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, which some interviewers and critics said was such a slam dunk that anyone could’ve written it. Those slam-dunk pages, of course, were rewritten 20 times before publication. But unfortunately I can’t find those files anywhere. I have other examples to show, but I really wanted those first entries b/c they looked like redacted CIA documents. Just want to be able to beat it into their head to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. But I’ll probably be lucky to get them to turn off their Facebook pages.

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Free of the Torture of Christopher Buckley

I’ve always tried to be generous with Christopher Buckley. Though I don’t know him, he apparently was insightful enough 15 years ago to assert that I was obviously a conservative if I wrote Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. I cut him some slack, probably out of professional courtesy/envy. I can’t think of anyone else who gets paid to write satirical novels on a regular basis (though I’ve only managed to finish one of them), so slagging him might collapse the whole genre. And many of his articles are funny, though not as funny as he seems to think.

But something he wrote for The Daily Beast yesterday takes him off the protected list. On the subject of the released torture memos, he upbraids many commentators for getting “sanctimonious” about the fact that the US tortured its prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Gharaib. For those of us who are appalled that our government engages in torture, he takes pains to remind us that:

It is, yes, good that the U.S.A. is not doing this anymore, but let’s not get too sanctimonious about how awful it was that we indulged in these techniques after watching nearly 3000 innocent Americans endure god-awful deaths at the hands of religious fanatics who would happily have detonated a nuclear bomb if they had gotten their mitts on one. And let us move on. There is pressing business. (Are you listening, ACLU? Hel-lo?)

The operative question becomes: What do we do now with captive bad guys who possess information that could prevent another 9/11? We may have moved on. They, assuredly, have not.

If he thinks the “captive bad guys” are fleshy repositories about Islamic doomsday plans (especially after being in custody for 6 years), then Buckley’s not as smart as he thinks. (The question of what to do with the men themselves is certainly thorny, now that they will either be tortured more in their home countries or set loose on the streets, living testimony that America is some kind of devil.) If he thinks it’s “sanctimonious” to want to hold people accountable for giving the order to torture, then he’s a suck-up to power.

And since elsewhere in the article he makes joking comparisons between the now-open torture techniques and his rough handling from the senior boys at boarding school, then he’s a turd, pure and simple.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, I remember telling people that we should take every one of those filthy desert barbarians and remove them to places where they could be tortured until they gave up every name in their rolodexes. And if they died in the meantime, small loss. And I bet a lot of other Americans were screaming the same thing. But I’m not a leader. This country would be in ridiculous shape if I were even given an honorary mayorship for the day. But there are smarter, saner heads than mine in Washington. Some were in leadership positions 7-8 years ago. We need to find out who overruled them and made torture our policy against our enemies.

I’m not being naive. I’m aware this country has engaged in secretive torture (and worse) during my lifetime. And at the risk of sounding cynical or paranoid, nothing will ever be done about that. But during this decade, torture has been used as an official tool in the “war on terror,” and I want it investigated, repudiated, degraded, eliminated. Not to have a witch hunt for lower-level ops, but to get to the highest levels, the ones who told the agents in the field, impressed with their machismo in the face of moral uncertainty, to “take the gloves off.” Because when the higher-ups sanctioned torture, they did it in my name as a citizen.

I was ecstatic on the day that Illinois set a moratorium on the death penalty because I didn’t want the state killing people in my name. Regardless of whether it was an effective deterrent for criminals (it isn’t), or whether victims’ families need “closure”, I don’t want Illinois as a policy killing people in my name. It’s too bad it wasn’t done legislatively, but I’ll take it anyway I can.

Sure, people will make political hay out of the torture memos, but such is life. You can get as realpolitik as you want here, but you’re still faced with the question: What’s the right thing to do? If you cast the whole struggle as a battle of civilization vs. barbarism, where did we land? Do you want to look your kid in the eye–or your mother, or John Wayne, or Abe Lincoln–and say, “Yes, some fanatic medievalists hate America, and blew up innocent citizens, so in response we gathered up a bunch of people on the battlefield in that part of the world and tortured them repeatedly over years until they told us some stuff that may or may not be accurate, just to stop the pain, though it wasn’t really torture, more like hazing, really–and it was the right thing to do. We’re all safer now. And they had it coming to them anyway. So let’s move on.”

If that’s how Buckley thinks, then I should be grateful he was honest. Now I don’t have to feel obliged to read any more of his dry satires of Washington. He always seemed too comfortable with the bullshit he was ostensibly making fun of, now we know why. (I’ve always been suspicious ever since I saw a blurb from him on someone’s novel–possibly one by Stephen Fry– praising it as “Trenchantly, tootingly funny.” For that, he deserves a punch in the kiwis and a week chained to Carlos Mencia.)

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A Poem for Mark Fidrych

Up today at BARDBALL.COM:

The Wings of the Bird

Every kid thinks that he
Could mow down the heart of the Yankees order
If given the chance,
And someday everybody gets that chance,

And it’s good luck to talk to the ball,
And cheers are love that never dies,
And the world would love you if you showed them who you really are,
And magic can happen at any time.

That kid never dies.
That kid was the Bird.

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Burying the Cubs Curses

“Cremating the Curse”, which happened Sunday out in Schaumburg, was one of the stranger events I’ve ever taken part in. Part fan convention, part book signing, part reading, part funeral/wake. Nearly 1000 people showed up, according to one person, which will be a boost to both book sales of Cubbie Blues and Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities (who received a portion of the door and do get a portion of book proceeds).

The event, which was hosted by Tom Dreesen, was meant to lay to rest all the curses that have plagued the Cubs through the last century. So speakers gave quick eulogies for things like the billy goat and the black cat and Steve Bartman. The speakers were all contributors to the Cubbie Blues book, including Rick Kaempfer, Mary Beth Hoerner, Julia Borcherts, and Bill Hillman. Then the items or totems we brought along for the curses were laid to rest in a Cubs-style coffin, carted off by pall bearers (including a few former major leaguers and Ronnie Woo-Woo (who frankly always unnerves me)) and placed in a hearse. From there, they were taken away to be cremated. Later, they will be placed in a Cubs funeral urn and auctioned off for the Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities.

I’ve posted some pictures to my Facebook page to give you an idea of what was going on. It all took place inside a real funeral home, if that’s not obvious, and the Cubs casket is a real deal. You can buy one for yourself, if you are so inclined. I think the coolest thing of the day was the appearance of “Mr. Ivy,” dressed as a portion of the outfield wall. He stood about 10 feet tall on four-legged stilts, and…..well, just check out the pictures. I think he’ll be in a lot of highlight reels this year.

There are also some pictures at the Facebook page here.

For the record, the following is what I said as I eulogized and laid to rest the curse put on the Cubs by Illinois First Lady (Macbeth):

This curse I am laying to rest has not been retold charmingly in folklore. It will not be repeated on ESPN highlight reels. It will not have cute T-shirts printed up, if only because the language and photo would be so unappealing.

This curse I am laying to rest was hidden in transcripts of federal wiretaps of our former governor, as he walked around in the sunshine and rainbows of his last days in office. We know the corporate Cub apparatchiks were looking for state funding to preserve Wrigley Field. We know that Sam Zell said he was interested in tearing the place down and erecting a stadium along the lines of Coors Field in Denver. We know that the governor offered to get state money to preserve Wrigley Field— if the Tribune leaned on their editorial board not to be so nasty.

All caught on tape. All repugnant. All a violation of governance and public finance and freedom of the press. And who chimes in to make it all worse? Who makes it a real Cubs Curse? Illinois’s own first lady—Lady Macbeth, that is, as written by David Mamet, Dick Mell’s cute and cursin’ daughter, the Rasputin of Ravenswood Manor, Patti “Potty Mouth” Blagojevich.

It wasn’t enough that the Cubs’ playing field was being used in a chess game among soulless power brokers. It wasn’t enough that a worst case scenario of Tribune ownership and government intervention was being discussed. No, Patti had to scream in the background of one of her desperate husband’s phone calls and let loose a vile, “Hold up that fricking Cubs manure…Fudge them!”

She may have been invoking Serbian black magic; sorcery is one explanation for how her husband had until then managed to stay one step ahead of the law. If so, that magic had obviously passed its “sell by” date. So, not only did she curse the Cubs with magic, it was also faulty, expired, curdled magic.

And these people were supposed to be Cubs fans. North-side born and bred. Cub fans from the cradle. Occupying the halls, doorways and phone booths of the highest office in the state. The betrayal was enormous, because it was so close to home. And the curse, uttered after its fresh date, by a hopeless third-rate wheeler-dealer with a bad haircut? Such an unstable abomination can be lifted only by burning. But who to burn? It might be pleasant to think we could resurrect the Spanish Inquisition in Springfield. But since corruption is not a capital crime in Illinois, but only a gentleman’s pastime, in order to lay this curse to rest, we’ll have to burn Patti Blagojevich in effigy.

Begone, thou corrupt crone. Begone, thou house-peddling harridan. Begone, thou greedy gone-to-seed gorgon.

“Fudge the Cubs”? Patti, you’d best hope that your hubby gets sentenced to a prison full of Sox fans. That shouldn’t be too hard.

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“Cremating the Curse”

Just a quick note to tell any Cub fans out there that on Sunday afternoon, I’ll be participating in a very strange ceremony at a funeral home in Schaumburg. (Yep, that’s first time I’ve ever typed THAT!) We’ll be having a wake/eulogy/exorcism for all the curses that have afflicted the Cubs over the years: Merkle, Billy goat, black cat, Bartman. Mine is a super-secret new curse, but I’ll give you a hint: It was uttered by the former first lady of a certain corrupt Midwestern state, whose husband was just indicted with a sledgehammer yesterday.

The ceremony will be held with a book signing of Cubbie Blues, the anthology I helped with last year. It looks to be a very good time, and part of the proceeds of the book sales will go to Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities. There will be a whole lot more going on, so check out the details at the publisher’s website, and come on out if you can.

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More Spelling Bee Vocab Words

Work these into your conversations this weekend. IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER!!

turgescent – becoming swollen, distended or inflated

sesquipedalian – characterized by the use of long words

percipience – capacity to sense or come to know or recognize mentally, esp. something that is hidden or obscure

insurrecto – a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government

pecksniffian – hypocritically devout; displaying high-mindedness with intent to impress

nugacious – trifling, trivial

sanguivorous – feeding on blood

exaugural – occuring at the close of a term of office

deglutition – the act or process of swallowing

ramage – the boughs or branches of a tree

(And out of all those words, the only one that was accepted by the WordPress spell checker was percipience. Go figure. If you have percipience, you probably already have.)

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Have Your Book and Eat It, Too

The reading for Mark Caro’s book The Foie Gras Wars went very well last night. He sold a lot of books, and his girls were very cute in their demand for the spotlight and the microphone. But the biggest surprise was the cake below, which his parents had made and brought to his reception after. This should be the standard, I think, for what all book signing cakes should be held to. This picture might not show it, but the cake was about 4 inches high, layered with chocolate, fudge and bananas (and thankfully no meat or organ products). Congrats to Mark, and our waistlines.


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Book Signing: Mark Caro

A couple of years ago, my friend and Trib writer Mark Caro found himself covering an odd spat among Chicago celebrity chefs. One chef (high-strung, combative, perfectionist, and a sucker for publicity) made it known through Mark that he had decided not to serve foie gras at his eponymous groggery. He stated further (okay, no need to be coy, it was Charlie Trotter) that he would like to eat the prepared liver of chef Rick Tramonto “as a little treat.”

A year later, through some silly aldermanic shenanigans, Chicago had the distinction of being the first city in the world to ban the sale of foie gras in restaurants. Restauranteurs dared city health inspectors to prevent them from serving it. The city’s top hot dog chef (and no fool about publicity, either) managed to become the first chef to be fined for serving his foie gras “dog”. Suddenly, Mark had a front row seat to the emotional battle over the fattened goose liver. And so, he decided to write a book about it.

“Foie Gras Wars” is now in the stores. Mark will be signing some Thursday night at 7 pm at the Borders at Clark and Diversey. Come on out and support him. (For a good article on the book, check out this from the New York Post.)

I’ve had the chance to read some chapters over the past two years. It’s a very entertaining and even-handed story, one that presents many facts and viewpoints but avoids easy answers. Mark even threw himself into the coverage by attending a goose liver weekend at a farm in France, where he learned the issue from the “inside out”, as it were. Once he had his research done, he told me he’d really learned a lot about food choices and this little delicacy, and that his cholesterol had gone through the roof.

In these economic times, macaroni and cheese might be on more people’s minds than foie gras, but keep an eye out for this book and pick up a copy. It’s a fascinating look into politics, money, class, the artisanal food movement, and our relationship to nature and what we put in our bodies.

UPDATE: Here’s a good article about Mark in the Chicago Reader. He’ll also be signing at the B&N in Old Orchard in Skokie next Thursday.

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Book Signing: Bryan Gruley

Next week mystery lovers in Chicago will get two chances to meet and greet Bryan Gruley, who has penned a marvelous new book, Starvation Lake, out now from Simon & Schuster. I urge everyone to come out and support Bryan, the Chicago bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and an altogether mensch-y type of guy.

On Sunday, March 8 at 2 pm, he’ll be at Centuries and Sleuths, the redoubtable independent mystery bookstore in Forest Park. On Tuesday, March 10 at 7, he’ll be at the Borders at Clark and Diversey in the city. You can find other dates on his tour, plus interviews and all that stuff, at Bryan’s webpage here.

For an even more awesome experience, go to Bryan’s website, StarvationLake.com. It will give you a good feel for the setting of the book, a northern Michigan town where hockey is a religion and a murdered high school rink coach is a sign of deep rot among the people. It’s a really slick site, the kind of web marketing that writers need to do now to get attention. So please do pay attention, and support this book. It will free Bryan up for more daytime drinking with the rest of us professionals.

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Pitchers and Catchers

Okay, I’ll give in. Our coldest snowiest winter in memory is probably over, and birdies and buds will soon appear, which brings warmth to even the iciest soul. And there’s always this….

LIFE IS GOOD

Winter’s been raw as a campout in Banff.
Your new basement walls are moldy and damp.
Your drapes caught fire from a knocked over lamp—

Relax!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

Your check-writing hand’s developed a cramp,
Your bills are all due and you ain’t got a stamp,
Creditors cling to your neck like a clamp—

Smile!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

Your yard now faces a new freeway ramp.
Your son’s engaged to a gold-digging tramp.
Your “guitar hero” neighbor’s just bought a new amp—

Life is good!
Pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp.

I posted this yesterday on Bardball even though it’s a rerun from 2008, because it’s factually true, because I like it, and because I run the site. When the baseball season really begins, we’ll be posting more poems there. And the big news is, we’re in the works to create a podcast of material, for all you folks too busy to read. So don’t forget us in the coming weeks.

Baseball Prospectus just picked the Cubs to finish first in their division, and the White Sox last, so there should be a lot of emotion running through the Windy City this summer.

On the other hand, what does the Prospectus’ Nate Silver know? Did he predict all 50 states in last year’s election? No? Only 49? Then he better go home and tweak his algorithm, as the girls at U of C probably told him a time or two.

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Psychic Satire

I got an email last week from a fan of my “Politically Correct” books, asking me about my Washington Insider parody of “Puss ‘N Boots.” Julie S wrote:

Do you not see any similarities between President Elect Obama’s campaign and your retelling of Puss N’ Boots? So interesting since you wrote it before his Senate run and you are from Chicago. What do you think?

So I had to go back and check the story, since I wrote it so long ago. Wow! There on page 57 of Once Upon A More Enlightened Time was the sentence:

Their optimistically simple campaign slogan–“It’s Time for a Change”–seemed to strike a chord with the optimistically simple voters.

Should I send this to my buddy at the Center for Free Inquiry-Los Angeles, who conducts all sorts of tests for people who claim psychic talents? Hardly. This was written in 1994, when Obama had only just graduated law school and was a junior lawyer in Chicago. No, it just looks like simplistic slogans don’t change much through the years. (And with a natural talent for inspiring yet vague slogans, it looks like I neglected a career that would’ve been far more lucrative.)

Although I can’t tell from the writer’s email, I think she’s angling for me to say Obama is as shallow and opportunistic as the young cat owner in “Puss N Boots”, who just keeps his mouth shut and lets surrogates drop slanders about his opponent and allows the system elevate him at the other’s expense. If this isn’t the case, I apologize, but more than 3/4 of the fan mail I ever get comes from the Right or the Extreme Right, who think they have found a kindred spirit in me. My characterization of Puss ‘N Boots as the schemer and media manipulator behind the throne was an amalgam of many real politicos, including Lee Atwater, Dick Morris, and James Carville.

And the shallow, opportunistic young master? While there are no jokes about bed spelling or deer-in-the-headlights expressions, I modeled him after J. Danforth Quayle.

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Merry Christmas to All, and to All, a Strong Back

From the snowy north side of Chicago, I’d like to wish all readers, visitors, friends, family, expats, nonpats, and spangleprats a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hannnnnukkkkkkkah (sp?), and glorious new year.

Every year around this time, I write my wife a new Christmas story (at least, when I come up with a decent idea), some of which I like to share with people. I have a nice one this time, but she gets to see it first, of course, so no posting of that right now.

Last year I posted the heart-warming story of kindly old Mr. Dickens trying to buy a hairbrush at a mega-box-store during the holidays, which you can read by clicking here.

And if you’d like to read the excerpt of my book Recut Madness that rewrites “Miracle on 34th Street” and places the story at Guantanamo Bay (no, really, it’s very festive, in a grim way), click here.

Looking through my files today, I found something that I don’t even remember writing, but I think it’s pretty funny. It resurrects a couple of old, shallow characters, The Marketeers, that my sometime-writing partner and I have had fun with over the years. In this story, our media creative team has a brainstorming session about how to connect one of their client’s products with the holiday season. I’ve never worked in the ad business, so this little portrait of ego, short attention spans, mammon and creativity is not AT ALL what the ad business is all about, as far as I know. AT ALL. And even if it were, as one character says in the story, “There’s no such thing as a bad idea.”

Please enjoy this story by clicking HERE. And I hope you enjoy whatever end-of-year activities strike your fancy.

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I’d Welcome a Stalker, but Only If He/She Can Do Yardwork

A headline at Huffington Post this morning got me very excited. I always get excited to discover things about me that are going on behind my back:

GN’R Album…Osment’s Bad B’way Debut…Garner’s Stalker….Affleck in Congo….

Wow, really? I’ve got a stalker? That’s so flattering (maybe I’ve been extra lonely lately).

But after clicking through, I realize that it’s really that camera-hound JENNIFER GARNER who’s got the stalking problem. Can she ever get enough attention? She says she’s reached her limit and had to file a restraining order, but I wonder about that. The limit, I mean.

Actually, I did have some weird goings on with a fan about 10 years ago. When my book Apocalypse Wow! came out in 1997, I expected to get a little hate mail or extra arguments on radio shows because of my mockery of religious millennial thinking. A little bit came, but (unfortunately for sales) not much. What did come in the mail, at roughly two-week intervals, were manila envelopes from a fan who read the book and realized that it was Destiny that she and I be together. My own marriage notwithstanding, this woman said that our union (probably more sexual than, say, intellectual) would bring about a new era of peace, growth and devil-worship. The notes got kind of scary and overwrought, and included things like pages torn out of bridal magazines and size charts for wedding rings. All around the envelope were the kind of angular printing and crystal-ball drawings that you might expect in your basic Breakfast Club.

Thankfully the letters were sent to my publisher, so the woman (whose name currently escapes me, though I could look it up, b/c I saved the envelopes, naturally) never figured out my address. Things devolved from spooky to pathetic after eight or nine envelopes, however. She said she wanted to come to Chicago and find me, but couldn’t raise the bus fare from Cleveland. She was also trying to find money for dental work, which was hard because she’d been out of work so long. (Really, what kind of dowry is that to attract a harbinger of the devil’s reign? Hmphh.) So our little one-way obsession was ended with no closure. I hope she found the money for that dental work, and also another fella with whom to herald the coming of the anti-Christ. I was obviously a false prophet.

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Page Proofs Are In

Some months ago, a friend told me about a reading series in Wrigleyville called the Lovable Losers Literary Revue. Looking to expand the audience for Bardball, I went to one of the readings and got friendly with the organizer, Don Evans. He asked me to do a reading. Cool, I did one in September. He wanted to include my stuff in an anthology he was putting together with a local publisher. Fine, great. I was just looking for exposure, to be honest, and didn’t know what to expect from the project, if anything.

Last Friday, I got an email from Don, containing the pdf file of the page proofs for that anthology, Cubbie Blues. And I have to say, I got an electric charge of excitement from them. For one thing, the book looks very good, with terrific illustrations, from Tim Souers of Cubby-Blue and Margie Lawrence, among others.

For another, I’m with some very good company. Big name writers like Rick Kogan, Jonathan Eig (perzunalfrenofmine), Stu Shea (alzoperzunalfrenofmine), WXRT’s Lin Brehmer, Don DeGrazia, Scott Simon. Also writers I don’t know yet, but hope to meet in the future. It’s a fun grab bag of people united by an enduring love for the Cubs, and therefore attuned to the futility of hope and human existence.

But mainly, it’s incredibly exhilarating to receive a copy of nice clean pages, all laid out with printers crop marks, and realize that this is the last stage before the book actually making it into people’s hands. Privileged information, “eyes only,” a secret stash between me and the other writers, the editor and the publisher. It’s like having a good poker hand, and the feeling of anticipation before laying the cards down. I get to enjoy it all to myself (sort of) until signing off on it. (That’s another feeling entirely, as it goes to press, mostly a flickering hope with a heaping helping of dread, and the urge to start reading the Jobs section.)

This also gives me the chance to put on my editor’s cap, albeit in a small way. I won’t change any copy, since it’s already gone through other people’s hands. Besides, it’s an anthology, and Don has already done the heavy lifting of soliciting and stroking the writers, and psychological surgery of getting them to agree to changes. I only have to check for style and punctuation. It sounds nerdy, but I like doing it. I like to help make the thing perfect, or as close as we can come. One error I already found in the MS was a little thing, a hyphen inserted where an em-dash was clearly needed. Minor? Not really. With an em-dash, the sentence reads “hard job for which I have no stomach–finding readers.” A hyphen creates the adjective “stomach-finding”, which has a lot of grisly resonance at Halloween time.

My first publishing job was working on journals for a professional association of real estate appraisers. It was less exciting than it sounds, if you can believe that. My boss there was a great editor, though, and his boss was even better. They taught me a lot about clear writing, clear punctuation, clear structure–because when you need to edit an article about how to calculate the market value of an empty slaughterhouse, you need to find some way to make it read well. And that’s the feeling I get when I receive page proofs. I’m just disappointed it’s a pdf file and not paper. I’ve got a lot of big fat blue pencils just dying of loneliness.