AS PREVIOUSLY NOTED ON TWITTER, whichever one of you internet users clued George RR Martin to the fact that I am/was reading GAME OF THRONES… THANKS.*

NOW I FEEL like I have George RR Martin staring at me as I read. (An illusion: it’s actually just some guy here in the internet cafe wearing a big fake Santa beard).

BUT THESE ARE BRILLIANTLY ADDICTIVE BOOKS, and I owe it all to the twitter recommendation of Mr. Matt Robinson.

WHICH IS WHY I HAVE NOT READ MR MATT ROBINSON’S NEW SCREENPLAY YET. I’m sorry, Matt, but you have only yourself to blame. And Peter Dinklage, of course. ALWAYS PETER DINKLAGE.

That is all.

*BE WARNED BEFORE YOU FOLLOW THAT LINK. George RR Martin uses livejournal, apparently because he is blogging from MEDIEVAL TIMES.

SOON, I SHALL BE RETURNING to good old Internetless Hills, MA, where the women are strong, the men are designing websites, the radio is public, and Leonard Nimoy’s nude photography is on PERPETUAL EXHIBIT.

BUT BEFORE I HAVE EVEN ARRIVED, some news has developed up in the Pioneer Valley.

THOUGH I AM ANGERED by the region’s refusal to FREEZE COMPLETELY IN TIME until I get back, I am nonetheless happy for the following developments.

DEVELOPMENT A)

THE BILL DWIGHT SHOW is back.

BILL DWIGHT, as you likely do not know, is a former Northampton City Council-Person and, in the words of his patron and mentor Ms. Rachel Maddow, the world’s oldest functioning video store clerk. And until recently, he and Jaz Tupelo hosted a morning radio talking-hour of important local issues, corn reports, and endless in jokes that I found so delightful that I would often drive down from my mountain retreat just to visit them and/or forcibly take over the show on one of Bill’s many, many vacations.

THEY WENT AWAY for a while, parting with their radio station for reasons that are still opaque. I don’t want to get into it, but it seems that they all parted ways over the kind of passionate, personal, but ultimately short-sighted dispute that is typical of small towns. And also large towns. And major world governments. All around: a shame, I say.

BUT NOW THEY HAVE RETURNED, using the internet, and I am glad to have them back. Please give Bill and Jaz your INTERNET EAR.

AND DON’T FORGET their ardent supporter and long time friend of this imitation blog: BILL SCHER.

DEVELOPMENT B)

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, it was Rachel Maddow, a VALLEY-DWELLER and Northampton’s former morning DJ, who first discovered Dwight.

(INDEED, she is his first guest of the revived NON-RADIO SHOW).

AND NOW IT IS VIA BILL’S new site that I discover this video of her speech to the graduated women of SMITH COLLEGE last Sunday. It is a wonderful argument AGAINST PERSONAL TRIUMPH, and not surprisingly, it is very PRO-ALCOHOL. I encourage you to start watching it and then continue until it is finished.

DEVELOPMENT C)

IN OTHER NORTHAMPTON NON-VISUAL BROADCASTING NEWS, the current voice of the Valley’s radio morning, MISTER MONTE BELMONTE, has joined TWITTER, an internet service. PLEASE FOLLOW HIM.

DEVELOPMENT D)

SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE DISCOVERED via television yesterday that I am appearing all this week on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE. I provide a “life-line” called “ASK THE EXPERT.”

APPARENTLY, they did not realize I am only a FAKE EXPERT ON FAKE KNOWLEDGE when they invited me to do this, and as a result, A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO BE MILLIONAIRES ARE NOW ONLY THOUSANDAIRES. Those of you who saw my terrible Orthocenter/Anacostia River one-two punch of dumbness yesterday know what I am talking about.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS? I had no idea either, until the Springfield Republican informed me that one of the people I advised is a teacher at Westfield State College, which, as the name implies, is in a field and in WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS.

GO WESTY!

I HAVE NO MEMORY if I this Professor Philip Ettman is one of the people I helped or hindered over the course of the week. But you can watch at 12:30PM EST today and every day this week to find out, and also to watch me wear a different outfit for each show, even though we shot them all in one day.

FINALLY)

I DO NOT KNOW WHY the comments no longer seem to be accepting your original submissions of words on this site, and instead only listing trackbacks and pingbacks and other internet terms I do not understand. I WILL TRY TO PUSH SOME BUTTONS AND MAKE THAT DIFFERENT. But for now, I say: THANK YOU FOR AT LEAST READING, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE ROBBED YOU OF YOUR ABILITY TO SAY “MEH” TO  ME. I am grateful.

That is all.

UPDATING:

AS I CONTINUE TO READ THE INTERNET, it occurs to me that Maddow’s point echoes that of Solzhenitsyn’s, although with better jokes:

“If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism,” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, address to Harvard, 1978.

QUOTE courtesy Andrew Sullivan.

AND ALSO, still have not found a way to fix the comments section.

I FOUND THIS VIA SLATE who found it via Itzkoff at the New York Times.

AND I CONFESS I FOUND IT PRETTY ADORABLE:

I ESPECIALLY LIKED THE HAPPY FLIRTING between L Gaga and B Springstein. The obvious, sincere delight in their eyes is an especially nice contrast to the dead-doll-eye stare of  E John, and D Harry, and the ravey, 5-hour-energy-drink-lunatic-gaze of the Speedo Men’s Chorus who comes in at the end.

I CONFESS THAT I WAS MAINLY SCARED OF MS. GAGA before, because I did not understand if she was just a callous carny barker or what, and my trepidation about her seemed to separate me out, alone from the pop cultural pack, so that I could be murdered.

BUT IT’S PRETTY CLEAR she just really loves music, spectacle, and singing; and when she sings the “Just a small town girl…” line, it clearly shrieks with meaning to her. I feel like I never heard that song before she sang that one line.*

THE POINT IS, LADY GAGA SOMEHOW MAKES JOURNEY LYRICS INTO POETRY, and Sting made Shakespeare into food court music. So, ADVANTAGE: GAGA.

BUT SERIOUSLY, DAVE ITZKOFF? No link for Shirley Bassey?

THAT IS ALL.

*BUT OF COURSE I have heard that song before. Many times. Usually while ordering pizza.

I SAW THIS CLIP OF TARANTINO’S CLAPPER, Geraldine Brezca, first via Sullivan, who found it via Laughing Squid, who explains:

“Typically when a scene number is called the clapboard operator will follow the English alphabet, and each film set will have their own variation such as using names in alphabetic order, or the International Radio Operator Alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Not Brezca.”

SO I AM SORRY TO RECYCLE, but I found this montage to be an automatic happiness install, and I wished to share it with you, the 2 or 3 internet users who have not already seen it.

FOR ALL OF THE SURPRISING PLEASURES of my accidental half-career as on-screen “TALENT,” I think the most surprising and the most pleasurable was the new experience of being on-set: the instant, summer-camp-style frienships that make you want to make bracelets for everyone; the surreal accumulation of highly esoteric skills, from putting tape on the floor to moving the camera to pretending to smile; the weary giddiness of impossibly late nights and pervasive self-doubt, punctuated by the exhilaration of watching someone, on-camera or off, really do their jobs well.

IT IS, I THINK, the perfect petri dish for the fungal growth of IN-JOKES, and as you watch this clip, you see how a running joke breaks bad moods and creates a storyline across long, disconnected hours, and remind everyone not only WHY they are there, but THAT they are there.

THE POINT IS, I think Geradline Brezca is a MAD GENIUS if only because, in the long history of comedy, she came up with a new rim-shot, as in:

“AU REVOIR, SIXTY SIX FUCKERS”… <CLAP!>

Which is to say:

THAT IS ALL

LAST WEEK, YOU MAY RECALL, my post regarding Blade Runner guns and heartwarming letters among and between Adam Savage, Philip K. Dick, and Jeff Walker, was PUNISHED by your kind curiosity, causing this imitation blog to FREQUENTLY FAIL TO IMITATE A BLOG.

I AM NOW PREPARED TO TEST NEW INTERNET TECHNOLOGY that, if all is well, should allow me to actually link to this imitation blog from time to time, and allow you, the HIVE MIND, to swarm all over this amazing, if belated, clip of….

TED LEO AND HIS PHARMACISTS

PLEASE ALERT ME IF YOU CANNOT SEE THIS MESSAGE the moment that you do not see it.

MEANWHILE, MY MANY THANKS AND HELLOS go to the lovely folks in the comments section of March 4, especially Ms. Rachel Walker, who claims to be the daughter of Jeff Walker.

AND I HAVE NO REASON TO DISBELIEVE HER!

THAT IS ALL.