I am having fun in Wisconsin. Or am I? You make the call.

One would think that flying out 2,000 miles would have been good for at least a little more than hello. However, having a Y chormosome and somehow being in attendance at Laura Lippman‘s bachelorette party (along with other men), I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances. Upon entering the party, several ellipitical layers of people were seated and standing around a circle of couches. I was, I suppose, an unexpected mosquito planting himself on the outer epidermis, with Ms. Lippman herself protected by a group of loyal queen bees quaffing swank beverages.

Undaunted, I wrote a note to Ms. Lippman, expressing my congratulations, with at least one adept witticism and the hope that I might engage in a brief chit-chat of no more than two minutes. The note was conveyed from one hand to another to another, and eventually Ms. Lippman read the note and cocked her head left and right for this mysterious “Ed Champion.” I offered a broad smile and an inaccurate though heartfelt form of semaphore. But this, however, was not enough. Ms. Lippman soon became deeply embroiled in a conversation that caused her to raise her forehad in excitement. And very soon, I was contriving a strategy with a few mystery authors on how to deliver ourselves into the inner circle.

I gave up rather quickly on this exercise. I was not, after all, at a cotillion dance. And the mystery writers abandoned me without notice. And not long after, the snappy dirty martini I had imbibed had reached the micturition phase. I fled to the restroom and, while waiting in line, the one and only Laura Lippman and friend had reached a similar stage. And I was able to throw myself forward and make Ms. Lippman’s acquaintance, while considering the vagaries of her bladder. Upon our respective descents from the bathroom, there then began a rather fey descant and pretty soon I was being steered into the inner circle, where I was being urged to meet everybody, heaven knows why.

I am not a person to boast, but I could not let this fast-track delivery into the inner circle go unobserved by the mystery authors who had abandoned me without notice. But I decided instead to take the high road that evening, thinking of the disreputable long-term path I could follow in the morning by mentioning all this on my blog.

But let this tale serve as a parable. The public restroom cannot be underestimated. Indeed, one might declare it the great social equalizer.

Sarah Weinman stars in a Miller Lite commercial.

There was a needless post here that has since been removed.

While working on something tonight, some synaptic associative charge kicked in and I recalled a commentator named Wayne Shannon. The name probably means nothing to you if you didn’t grow up in the Bay Area twenty some odd years ago, but Shannon was a smug, wry, and roly-poly guy in his late forties with a graying moptop who appeared frequently on KRON Evening News in the 1980s, offering commentaries at the tail end of the program laced with acid barbs that questioned everything and everybody. Shannon was one of those bear-like guys that local television stations tended to employ. A guy who employed common sense arguments to mock the many things in life. Including, as I recall, Jim and Tammy Bakker.

I don’t know if Shannon was all that witty of a commentator, but his exuberance had, for whatever reason, made an impression upon my brain. And I tried Googling him to see if he was still around, only to find almost no traces of his existence. Not a single person had cobbled together old videotapes. Not a single person remembered him. It was as if he had never existed.

I had hoped that Google would permit me to corroborate my memories. Here was a guy who, even if he was a minor television personality, likely entertained millions of people not more than twenty years ago and not a single one of these people thought to memorialize him. For all I know, I might be the first person to remark upon his existence.

And it occurred to me that the Internet is not all that great of a resource after all. Perhaps there really is a need for us to chronicle our cultural minutiae. After all, if the newspapers are giong to hide behind paywalls, allowing articles to disappear within weeks, then it might just be up to us to recall what they had to say. But is our commentary really a reliable record? Is our subjective viewpoint really presenting the situation well? Should we not be writing up more objective reports?

Another thing that’s troubling me: Why should I be using Google to confirm my memories? Why should I believe it to be the ultimate oracle when I could call KRON up and see if I could obtain some videotapes or ask what became of Shannon? When I can go back and search through old microfilms?

(Aside: Wayne Shannon did exist. I did not hallucinate him. He left KRON in 1988 when news director Herb Dudnick became tired of his essays and he tried to negotiate a new deal unsuccessfully. Perhaps he pissed too many people off. He resurfaced on CNBC, but how long he lasted, who can say?)

And here again, I find myself needing to confirm my memory against something. Even a few fleeting facts that still don’t tell the whole story.

A few years ago, I had a short-lived blog called Raising Caen, in which I read Herb Caen’s old columns, starting from 1938, and tried to see if there was any trace of any of the people or places he referenced online. No surprise. Most of them had disappeared. Major stores such as the Martha Washington Candy Shop chain, remembered fondly for its vanilla butter cream coated with dark chocolate, were unmemorialized. (More references can be found here.)

The point of all this is that, if you run a blog, you have a duty to remain curious about all sorts of things. You have a duty to present some element or representation of the truth that others might be able to jump off from or that, at least, permits them to read between the lines. A subject like Wayne Shannon may have seemed banal twenty years ago, but today, as I ponder if the man’s alive or dead and contemplate whether my own favorable response to him might have influenced me in some way, I would have been grateful for some online mention. Now it appears I’ll have to do some considerable footwork.

Is this journalism? Not exactly. But bloggers are, in their own strange way, keeping historical records. While I might go to the library to look up Wayne Shannon, I’m guessing that the general public would remain lazy about this. Perhaps, more than we realize, it’s up to us to do a better job.

[2008 UPDATE: You can now listen to a podcast interview with Wayne Shannon.]

[2012 UPDATE: Wayne Shannon has passed away. Here are my memories of befriending him, and here is a 21 clip video salute.]

Words to consider.

USA Today: “A rare copy of Danish philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard’s famed book, Either/Or, will be sold at auction later this year, a Copenhagen auction house said Tuesday.”

New York Times: “When filming of ‘Tennessee’ was pushed back indefinitely, she began a regimen of exercise and healthy diet to loose the weight. ‘People think it’s impossible to lose this much weight, but it’s not,’ she said. ‘Everyone can do it; you just have to be really disciplined and want it.’ She’s now working on a weight loss book and DVD.”

Tricia Sullivan, the author of the fascinating and underrated novel Maul (which I read a year and a half ago in its UK edition and which Night Shade Books, bless its heart, picked up for American release), has a LiveJournal.

Well, if this is the kind of goodness that inspires people, then I’m supremely honored and astonished to be your muse, Patricia. (Thanks for the tip, Lauren!)

While we’re on the subject of blog importance, however inflated, I agree in the main with Lauren Beckham Falcone’s article. Blogs provide fresh and original voices online, but it takes something truly special and distinguished to connect a blogger-turned-author with a broader readership. I think Ana Marie Cox’s book tanked because there simply wasn’t a market for Animal House-style political satire. It was the book, stupid.

But I also believe Cox’s hype kinda killed it. Nobody cared about how cute or charismatic Cox was (just as they didn’t when Jay McInerney was thrown all the publicity money for The Good Life, which also tanked). And the book didn’t sell, despite Cox receiving something in the range of five New York Times articles (along with ancillary media attention that most authors would kill for) during the week the book was released.

But, more simply put, this was not a book that interested people outside of Washington and New York wonks.

What matters most of all is voice, and whether a voice can connect to a significant readership.
I find it curious that Pamela Ribon’s success was unnoted (and, as she told me recently, is generally unobserved). Her first novel, Why Girls Are Weird, sold because she was able to communicate topics to people in a fresh and interesting way. Her blog helped, but ultimately it was about the book connecting with an audience.

This doesn’t suggest that writing books should be entirely about connecting with mainstream audiences and, of course, all this is idle conjecture on a Sunday afternoon. I’m certainly no marketing expert. But I should point out that, for publishers who believe that quirky voices don’t sell or connect with an audience, Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions hit #13 this week on the New York Times bestselling list — observed yesterday by John Freeman.

It all boils down to this:

1) Write book that connects with audience
2) ?
3) PROFIT!

[Video.] [Summary.] Sad.