• Disney has paid Clive Woodall $1 million to film One for Sorrow. Unfortunately, Disney has revealed a company policy whereby that are only allowed to pay seven figures to a supermarket manager once every thirty years. (This is for tax purposes.) So aspiring writers working at supermarkets will have to consider other studios.
• You have to admire the ethical devotion of the Limestone County School Board. After all, those Alabamans, who are clearly morally superior to the rest of us, have gone out of their way to keep a novel depicting “realistic life” off of school library shelves. The book is Chris Crutcher‘s Whale Talk. An excerpt reads: “The facts. I’m black. And Japanese. And white. Politically correct would be African-American, Japanese-American and what? Northern European-American? God, by the time I wrote all that down on a job application the position would be filled. Besides, I’ve never been to Africa, never been to Japan and don’t even know which countries make up Northern Europe. Plus, I know next to nothing about the individuals who contributed all that exotic DNA, so it’s hard to carve out a cultural identity in my mind. So: Mixed. Blended. Pureed. Potpourri.” Could it be that the Key Lime Pie Imperial Wizards have a problem with “realistic” diversity?
• I might be alone in my excitement here, but He-Man has come to DVD.
• “The most unnatural thing for a novelist is to talk about their [sic] work, really. And certainly about themselves.” What planet is Emma Richler living on?
• A cookbook catering to book clubs is out. The cookbook will include the proper dishes to serve when book club members are on the verge of strangling each other and an appetizer that will help settle the stomach when only one arty dude shows up among a coterie of thirtysomething women.
• Sam Weller has written a new Ray Bradbury biography entitled The Bradbury Chornicles. No word yet on whether Bradbury will go as apeshit over Weller’s title as he did over Fahrenheit 9/11. Odds: 10 to 1 that Weller will be physically assaulted by an 82 year old writer before the summer.
• And believe it or not, Rushdie was able to speak for one hour without threatening a journalist. Too bad that his idea of deep thought is “In order to defeat the enemy that needs to be defeated, we must not stop being what we are.”

OGIC has undertaken a massive summary of the movie quote game. The most cited film was Casablanca. Tied for second were Dr. Strangelove and The Big Lebowski (further proof that Lebowski is now indelibly quilted into the cultural fabric).

However, I’m really curious about the films that were only quoted once: the fun little gems and cult movies that remained in everyone’s subconscious.

(For what it’s worth, Quote #6 would have probably been “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kickass, and I’m all out of bubblegum” from They Live, “Let’s order sushi and not pay” from Repo Man, “Oh Mr. Travis! Try not to die like a dog!” from O Lucky Man!, “You say to yourself ‘How hot can it get?’ And then in Acupulco, you find out.” from Out of the Past, or “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” from Night of the Living Dead.)

Hell yes! He’s back with the Hag. Which means that Top Jimmy as a feature here is, presumably, no more. My diabolical plans actually worked this time.

Mark has weighed in on the spate of Foer bashing. Of course, anyone who bashes Foer at this point, whether with blunt objects or swizzle sticks, is beating a dead horse. I succombed to it only because the idea of someone as incompetent as Deborah Solomon talking with Foer reminded me of a weekend I once spent at a Days Inn with a venemous journalist who insisted on calling me “Johnny from SF.” She insisted on abbreviating my hometown and didn’t offer an explanation. Needless to say, the weekend fling didn’t pan out, Solomon’s article hit close to home, and, after penning the post, I was reduced to chronic weeping for the next three days. These are some of the unfortunate things that happen behind the scenes here at Return of the Reluctant. I wish I could tell you more about the blood, sweat and tears. But that might be as unfortunately earnest as Foer’s emails were to Solomon.

However, I’m troubled by Mark’s suggestion that making fun of literary figures involves bitterness or his further insinuation that certain people are off limits. Particularly in an age when television that people pay for is being seriously considered as “indecent” and people are being placed on no-fly lists simply because they venture an opinion. I should remind Mark that taking the piss out of someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you despise them. Any good humorist knows this. Beyond this, appreciation or condemnation of another person’s contributions to letters is hardly a black-and-white issue. (To offer a personal example, while I’m not exactly a fan of Dave Eggers’ writing or the way he exploits his volunteers, I nevertheless commend what he’s done with 826 Valencia and have been nothing less than nuts about the comics issue of McSweeney’s, along with the two Chabon-edited anthologies.)

Like any redblooded American, I too read and enjoyed Everything is Illuminated. Even saw the guy when he came out to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books years ago. Seemed nice enough. He was mobbed by youngsters who couldn’t scrape up the dough for the hardcover. And when Foer replied on these pages that he had given his PEN money to people who needed it, I was quick to commend him. As was Poets & Writers.

But there’s a fundamental difference between a writer’s life and the work he puts out. At issue here was Foer’s behavior, which seemed out of step with the privileged life he led that many of us writing in the skids dream about. Not his books.

If Philip Roth had decided to do something as manic and desperate, then, as much as I love Roth’s books and as crazy as I am about The Plot Against America, I would have mocked him to the high heavens. Not because I have anything personal against Roth, but because it helps to communicate to the world that writers are hardly the flawless beacons that the press and the literary community (including the litblogs) make them out to be. Truth be told, the publishing industry is nuts. That can’t be stated enough. In Foer’s case, they have given a young man ridiculous sums of money in the hope that he’ll become an instant literary superstar and, like J.T. Leroy, speak to the next generation of readers and hopefully sell boatloads of books.

I don’t envy Foer’s position or the pressure he has with this new book at all. If anything good came out of all this, it was a greater understanding that Foer’s just as fucked up as the rest of us. Raw talent often is.

But Foer’s also a smart guy. And anyone even remotely familiar with the Sunday New York Times, who has even leafed through the magazine at some point, is aware of Solomon’s tactics. He did something foolish and let himself get set up. And 150 e-mails to a reporter (many of them thousands of words) is, even from a twentysomething, a tad obsessive.

Further, there’s a fundamental difference between mocking and outright loathing. I don’t think that any of the people out there actually hate Foer or that he is being “punished,” as Mark puts it. Foer is not Raskolnikov. People are reacting the same way that they responded to Gerald Ford when he said that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. For Christ’s sake, we did the same thing to Franzen.

But for what it’s worth, I’m rooting for him too.

Jonathan Ames writes that he will be performing at the Fez under Time Cafe, which will be closing down soon. The Fez is where many of Ames shows went down. On March 11, with the doors opening at 8PM and a cover charge somewhere between $14.99 and $15.01, Ames will rock the house with others at 380 Lafayette Street (@ Great Jones), New York, NY 10003. You can call 212.533.7000 for reservations.

No word yet on whether Ames will lather himself up for this performance.

Ames’ tale, “The Story of the Hairy Call,” has been turned into a movie.

And Ames has edited a new book called Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transexual Memoirs, to be published April 12 by Vintage.

Because we like Jonathan Ames, we will continue to report any and all Jonathan Ames-related news (true or false) that comes our way. So if you have any Jonathan Ames information, please feel free to send them the usual route and we will post all half-truths, deviant lies, and Ames anecdotes you heard from a friend of a friend of a friend on these pages. We feel it’s our civic duty to unfurl rampant misinformation, as this is the only proper way to call attention to one of those most candid writers of our time.