WHAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD IS TRUE: I portray the voice of the Father and Other Father in the forthcoming movie “Coraline”

I TOOK THIS JOB primarily so that I might sit for hours in a very small room with director Henry Selick, and increase my excuses for having dinner with Neil Gaiman from time to time.

BECAUSE I LIKE HANGING OUT WITH GENIUSES

ONLY NOW, however, two years after I sat in that tiny room, do I realize that THEY ACTUALLY MADE A MOVIE, and it is beautiful and creepy and brilliant.

THAT IS VERY FINE LUCK for me, and also FOR YOU. It opens on February 6. As Bruce Campbell used to say, if you like things that are good, and you want to see more good things in the future, vote with your wallet and buy a ticket.

IT WORKED FOR PAUL BLART: MALL COP!

That is all.

I TEMPORARILY INTERRUPT this long, sustained silence on this imitation blog to say:

BRUCE CAMPBELL

BRUCE CAMPBELL

BRUCE CAMPBELL

NOW THAT I’VE GOT your search engine’s attention, let me point out that:

IT IS TRUE that I once was Bruce Campbell’s literary agent, and in that capacity it was my job to occasionally…

A) ACCOMPANY Bruce to horror movie conventions;

B) TAKE HIM TO RESTAURANTS, including the old-old Shopsin’s, in order to eat for free;

and C) CON MY FRIEND and colleague John Sellers into running a regular feature on Bruce in the pages of TIME OUT NEW YORK, a weekly magazine devoted to stopping time here in New York City.

(I ALSO SOLD Bruce’s first book, though given the advance I got for it, “SOLD” is a kind word. Luckily, Bruce was always kind, and he also made up it all up in royalties and awesomeness.)

NOW SELLERS HAS DUG UP the entire archive of BRUCE CAMPBELL WATCH ‘98, documenting its brief-but-bright, mayfly like life in print, and including…

THIS PHOTO OF BRUCE, who very gamely dropped by the TONY office’s after our Shopsin’s lunch to trash Sellers’s desk and, as you can see, visably disapprove of his portable CD player, once again proving that:

BRUCE CAMPBELL SAW THE DEATH OF HARD MEDIA coming from a mile away.

That is all.

(POST SCRIPT) if you look closely, you will also see The Big Brett Martin looking uncharacteristically ungrumpy. You will also see John Sellers making a joke about “Nick Freno, Licensed Teacher.” RIP Mitch Mullany.

REES rests.

That is all.

THANK YOU EUROPE for not claiming copyright on this American song, which is now in the public domain, as performed at a historic civic event on the steps of a publicly owned memorial…

(AND THANK YOU, ABK from the comments, for bringing it to my attention)

YESTERDAY ON WNYC, our local public radio station, a woman called the Brian Lehrer show to say that she supported Obama, but she did not feel comfortable with the idea of America throwing itself a big party.

I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE LIKE AN ANGRY FOX NEWS HOST than when I was listening to that call. If you can’t celebrate America today, when can you?

EVEN IF YOU IGNORE the generations’ worth of work and suffering that made this historically unprecedented moment possible…

EVEN IF YOU IGNORE the sheer, humbling, novelistic beauty of the electorate making arguably the most implausible choice available to it, at arguably the most critical time…

AND EVEN IF YOU IGNORE that this choice was the ONE WE WANTED, the caller and I, and even if it had gone the other way…

EVEN PETE SEEGER knows (having said so on the same radio station this morning) that there is still enough to feel proud of in a peaceful transition of power. There is enough to be glad of in the power of our vote, and what potential is contained within that power, even in the bleakest, most imperfect times, so long as we keep faith with it.

AND FRANKLY, if Pete Seeger–em-er eff-ing PETE SEEGER, who never stopped singing for his land–feels that the day is worth celebrating, then I, at least, will sing along.

That is all.

AS YOU’LL SEE BELOW, HBO is claiming copyright on Pete Seeger singing “This Land is Your Land.”

I LIKE HBO A LOT, but, and I loathe internet slang, but sometimes even I am forced to write:

SRSLY?

That is all.