Saturday morning

Saturday turns out to be a day to catch up.

Item: James Wolcott makes a graceful tribute to Samuel Johnson on his Vanity Fair blog, bringing a blush to my pallid cheeks in the process.

Item: Language Log linked to a Daily Telegraph article that attempts to identify the twenty worst sentences in Dan Brown’s oeuvre. It couldn't have been an easy task.

Item: If you were wondering just how America’s newspapers came to the brink of destruction, and what they might yet do in an attempt to pull back from that brink, have a look at Part 1 and Part 2 of Bill Wyman’s analysis. It was published a month ago, and I have only just gotten to it. It all rings depressingly true.

Item: Time follows its cover story on Glenn Beck with an article, “The secrets inside your dog’s mind.”

Sorry. Too easy. Moving on.

Item: Elizabeth Large asks readers of Dining@Large what people 35 and older look for in a bar’s happy hour. “A clean glass for my Metamucil,” one reader suggested. Having gone with Kathleen to the Best of Baltimore reception* on Wednesday, for a few bursts of shouted conversation amid the ear-splitting music and a lengthy period of meditation waiting — vainly — to see if a bartender would arrive within fifteen feet of me, I find resonance in her topic. If you do, too, go over there and add your comments.

Item: That’s how the day goes; I didn’t get this finished until Saturday afternoon.



*Thanks, guys, for the award. I was touched. And that missing hyphen in the headline — no biggie.