While I Was Out

Yeah, I know, long time no blog. Okay, so what’s been going on?

Well, firstly, Syracuse played the best game it has played in at least a decade (that is not hyperbole, alas), blowing out #11 West Virginia 49-23 at the Dome. (We suspect they did so well because we did not go to the game.) I wonder how many couches were set alight in Morgantown.

Secondly, the Colonial Little Theater in Johnstown, NY, will be performing a staged reading of my play Takeoffs and Landings (link is a PDF) on November 11 and 12, s part of their New Play Festival. You may recall that this was the same company that performed my Christmas play Past & Present Tense in 2009.

Thirdly, Dr. Joe and I have a new book out, called Getting Business: Opportunities for Commercial Printers and Their Clients in the New Communications Arena. It’s a series of made-up case studies (the best kind!) of a cross-section of businesses and their ideal marketing and promotion strategies. It was a lot of fun to write—and we have received a lot of good feedback on it. We are working on a “generic” version that is designed for companies outside the printing industry. Dr. Joe wants to use the book to get more speaking gigs. I’d rather get more writing gigs, since I far prefer writing to speaking, and it has the added advantage of avoiding all the aggravation of traveling.

Speaking of travel, fourthly, I have continued racking up the frequent flyer miles, grudgingly, thanks to a trip to Nice, France, earlier this month for a Pira International event. Nice was rather pleasant, and I can see how one could easily adapt to that Mediterranean lifestyle. However, the fact that 99% of the population smokes like crazy meant that you really can’t go anywhere without being engulfed in billows of cigarette smoke. I think I came back with black lung. Next week, I head to New Orleans for CSICON, a science and reason conference, which should provide some good and highly welcome non-printing-industry networking opportunities (as well as a chance to meet in person of the my grad school classmates). I sincerely hope that is the end of the traveling for a while. Although, given Southwest’s intense love for kicking people off planes, there is a good chance I may not make it out of Albany. (Memo to Southwest: I’d much prefer the lesbians to the screaming children.)

Fifthly, my favorite contemporary author, Haruki Murakami, has a new novel coming out on Tuesday. Interestingly, the publisher produced a “trailer” for it. This week’s New York Times Magazine has a good story about Murakami.My weekend plans involve rereading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, easily his masterpiece up to this point.

Sixthly, Last week, I got a welcome surprise in my mailbox: Magnet magazine is back in print, after a three-year-hiatus. I never did like their Web site much.

Anyway, that’s all the news for now.

Btw, two excellent new albums on heavy iPod/CD rotation: They Might Be Giants’ Join Us, and Fountains of Wayne’s Sky Full of Holes.