Kinda sad to read about Marilyn Chambers dying so young.

And also Mark “Bird” Fidrych, whose brief career in baseball made him a household name. The guy was just 4 months younger than me.

And yes, Phil Spector was found guilty in his second trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson. It’s a tragedy on so many levels. But now that it’s settled, there’s probably 100 guys running around in Hollywood trying to put a movie package together. I predict Nicolas Cage and Reese Witherspoon, Oliver Stone to direct? Or, if budget’s an issue, that pale guy from Twilight and Jessica Simpson, directed by Uwe Boll.

Thinking about a new phone? (E@L?) Over at All Things Digital, the WSJ’s tech guru Walter Mossberg serves up a round-up of the major smart phone operating systems as well as his view of their pros and cons. Spoiler – he really likes the Palm Pre.

Via Lifehacker, 50 Side Businesses You Can Start on Your Own. Since I’m gonna be out of work soon, maybe I could start all 50? You’d think there would be a strong demand for this one in HK:

Proofreading Have strong English skills and exceptional grammar? You may have opportunities to work as a proofreader from home. Advertising for this can be difficult – seek out those who might actually be able to use your services and advertise directly to them.

Also over at Lifehacker, Michael Ruhlman on Freeing Yourself From Recipes, an interview to promote his forthcoming book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. I’m a huge believer in this – I watch the cooking shows on TV to learn techniques, not recipes. If you know what goes together and what doesn’t, it’s easy to DIY.

I’ve encountered this one in several spots, Boing Boing’s got a link to the accompanying YouTube video. A Texas lawmaker suggests to a Chinese American … “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” You and your citizens? The guy gives her a more polite answer than she deserves. Anyone shocked that said lawmaker is a Republican?

Also, via Boing Boing, this link to an amazing photo gallery containing the work of Peter Funch. (Unfortunately it looks like the publicity from Boing Boing has flooded this guy’s server.) Basically he takes shots from the same location every day for two weeks and then uses Photoshop to composite them into single images, with results like this:

Last for now, via Never Get Out of the Boat, information on the next CSI spinoff starring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – CSI:CSN&Y.

“HIGH NOON AT HIPPIE HIGH” – After a local high school’s cafeteria food is spiked with some bad acid, the gang goes undercover as teachers trying to get to the source. Things go from bad to worse when they discover that they have to actually try and teach their children. You see, teaching children is a lot easier to just sing about when your gacked out on blow in a Hollywood hottub than to actually have to do it in real life. (Guest starring: Morgan Freeman)

There’s a profile on Mike Nichols in the NY Times, because of an upcoming MOMA retrospective of his films, which include:

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
The Graduate
Catch-22
Carnal Knowledge
Silkwood
The Birdcage
Charlie Wilson’s War

Now I’m old enough to have known Nichols first via his comedy albums, when he was part of a duo with Elaine May (and those albums still hold up well).

Anyway, I’m reading the profile and I get to this bit ….

He wakes up every morning in his Fifth Avenue apartment, collects himself and, wearing a wig and paste-on eyebrows, plays a character called Mike Nichols.

He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky, the son of a White Russian doctor who emigrated to Berlin after the Russian revolution, and he arrived in New York in 1939, at the age of 7, permanently hairless (a reaction to whooping cough vaccine) and with almost no English

And I thought maybe he was putting the writer on. I never came across any mention of this before and there is no mention of it in his Wikipedia entry, but Google turned up a bio on a blog from several years ago that would seem to confirm this.

But then here comes the bit that stopped me in my tracks.

“I’ll tell you the most extreme example of immigrant’s ear in all of Western civilization. My grandfather, Gustav Landauer, was quite a well-known writer in Germany. He was also very political, and he was part of the two-week provisional Weimar government after the kaiser fell. When the government fell, he was taken to the police station and beaten to death. His best friend, who was also in the government, escaped, made his way to Sante Fe, changed his name to B. Traven and wrote ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.’ That’s the ur-immigrant story.”

I read several of the books attributed to B. Traven many years ago and, like so many others, marveled at how he managed to hide his identity for his entire life. There’s the tale of his agent, who showed up for the filming of Sierra Madre, and how John Huston was convinced the agent was really him. I’m also relatively sure that the writer in Bolano’s 2666 is based on Traven, or rather the mystery of Traven. Mike Nichols knows who B. Traven was? And Charles McGrath, the writer of the NY Times profile, doesn’t follow up on this?

Or is it just a put-on?

“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”