How to earn an immediate spot in my RSS reader/heart
1. Give me the rebel. "Wow! Am I fucked up. I got no motorcycle I got no girl. HONEY, shit writting in capitals doesn't seem to help either."
2. Give me classic Steve Martin.
3. E.B. White trying (and failing) to defend his use of "Chinaman" is interesting. But give me, in the same 1946 letter, something only a New Yorker geek would love — a "Block That Metaphor" reference.
4. Give me Marlon Brando sending a telegram to Michael Jackson on opening night of The Jacksons' 1984 tour. "THINKING ABOUT YOU THIS EVENING PLEASE TRY NOT TO MAKE AN ASS OF YOURSELF AND PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T FALL IN THE ORCHESTRA PIT. MARLON"
5. Give me children's author William Steig trying to get out of giving a Caldecott acceptance speech. "I would almost rather die than have to formally address a group of people larger than two in number," Steig writes at one point. At another, he says, "I've told this to many people, but no one believes me & I feel like a character in a Kafka novel."
Then give me Steig's subsequently fine speech. Amid his grafs: "Art, including juvenile literature, has the power to make any spot on earth the living center of the universe, and unlike science, which often gives us the illusion of understanding things we really do not understand, it helps us to know life in a way that still keeps before us the mystery of things. It enhances the sense of wonder. And wonder is respect for life. Art also stimulates the adventurousness and the playfulness that keep us moving in a lively way and that lead us to useful discovery."
