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New for September Yeah, I skipped August - like psychotherapists and Germans, I figured I could take the month off. And besides, what could possibly happen in August, right? Actually, it's been a busy summer, even before I spent the last few days obsessively channel-surfing between CNN and MSNBC and NoLa.com. (Speaking of which, agencies raising hurricane relief funds can be found here; also, from Sept. 2 through season's end, baseballprospectus.com will kicking in $10 to the American Red Cross from each new subscription.) I've been working on an intriguing new Baseball Prospectus book project that should be wrapping up soon, and is on pace to hit shelves next spring. And there's a top-secret trivia project in the works as well - I can't reveal details at the moment, but in the meantime you can entertain yourself with the last secret project. In the category of things that I can reveal, my byline assault on the soon-to-be-part-of-a-metastasizing-publishing-empire Village Voice continued, with a report on how New York State legislators handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate subsidies without public notice - or, in many cases, without even reading the bills themselves. Over at BP.com (subscribers-only - did I mention the $10 hurricane relief deal for new subscribers?) I took a peek at Oakland A's co-owner Lew Wolff's claims that he can build a new stadium with private money - so long, of course, as he gets free land and tax breaks to go along with it. (You can get a freebie taste of my analysis at fieldofschemes.com.) Finally, my wrap-up of New York's Jets stadium debacle, and in particular the odd lessons the New York media seemed to draw from it, is currently at the printer and should emerge in the September/October issue of Extra! Oh, and the Giuliani book is finally on shelves! There are great essays by the likes of Jim Dwyer, Charles Bagli, Luc Sante - and, oh yeah, me - so buy it now, and then read it ostentatiously in public. As for what September and beyond hold, there's yet another book anthology in the works (no pub date yet on that one, but stay tuned), I have another Baseball Prospectus chat scheduled for September 13, and there's the usual assemblage of half-baked ideas that will no doubt find some oven or another in which to come to, uh, fruition. (Damn, drove right off the end of the metaphor.) Plus: barbecue! See you in October, which with any luck will come with fewer global-warming-spawned catastrophes. Recommended: The excellent song samples from the new Freakwater album; ditto from the new Waco Brothers album; Yo La Tengo's Battery Park Fourth of July show and subsequent Ira Kaplan story about his squirrel stalker; Greg LeRoy's hot new book on corporate subsidies, The Great American Jobs Scam; and, belatedly, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, which is a couple of years old but I'm just getting around to reading now - and which seems newly relevant in any case, given, you know, stuff. Also, for those interested or just extremely foolhardy, thanks to the wonder of the Internet you can now snoop on what I'm listening to at this very second. It's better than a soda machine! |
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