The Huffington Post, which has been a colossal misfire since its inception, has provided at least one colossal service: it proves just how humorless and bombastic David Mamet can be.

In related news, pugilistic critic John Simon has been fired from New York Magazine.

Tito quizzes his audience on one of the most seminal questions of our time: Happy Baby or Road House?

Maud points to this Daily Kos item. The rumor is that orders for Tim Schilke’s Growing Up Red: Outting Red America from the Inside are being canceled by the Ingram Book Group, a wholesaler that ships books for Barnes & Noble out of Tennessee.

Unfortunately, the Daily Kos didn’t consider actually calling Ingram, the Nashville based wholesaler in question. So what we have right now is an unconfirmed rumor. Being here on the West Coast, I caught wind of this news item after business hours, but I did track down the appropriate number. I spoke to a very nice Ingram employee who wished to remain anonymous. But he said that he was very aware of the title, but declined to provide information. He believed that he might have seen the title on a shipping circular, but couldn’t quite remember.

If orders for Growing Up Red are being cancelled, my hope is to determine the precise reasons why and see what the horse’s mouth has to say. But to get the true story on this, we’re going to have to do some work. If anybody reading this has actually tried to order this book from a Barnes & Noble in a red state, I would appreciate it if someone emailed me the precise store you tried to buy the book from, so that I can contact them and speak to the store’s manager.

Michael Medved apparently has no grasp on reality. The snide little man lost it on a radio show when confronted with these facts: (1) Bush supports the privatization of social security; and (2) Chris Chocola is a Congressman. When unable to present any kind of argument whatsoever, Medved reportedly called Hans Reimer “a liar,” even when Reimer had the facts at his disposal.

Hopefully, this will put an end to the mystifying notion of Medved being taken seriously as a critic and commentator. But I suspect not. Medved represents the uninformed and moralistic yokel given a bullhorn — in other words, a doofus for the doofuses to latch onto. Talk radio is not about intellectual discussions, but hollow pyrotechnics designed to foster the illusion of such.

Writer and activist Tristan Egolf has died at 33. The death is an apparent suicide, but police are investigating. Egolf was the writer of two novels, Lord of the Barnyard and Skirt and the Fiddle. Another one, Corn Wolf, a novel about a werwolf in Amish country, will be published next year. Egolf had his first novel published after 70 rejections and was initially discovered as a street musician in Paris. Further, Egolf was the head of the “Smoketown Six,” a group of men who were arrested when protesting against George Bush.

I haven’t read any of Egolf’s work, but if he was as promising as several folks have made him out to be, I plan on taking him up.