The Writer's Life 5/15 - Trolling

Here's what I found interesting in Sunday's NY Post: In an article under the caption "Everything Is a Lie," Maureen Callahan blasts celebrities adept at trolling, which she defines as nasty posts in online communities designed to attract interest. Among the offenders is Gwyneth Paltrow, whose website is hawking a $1500 golden dildo and a $13 organic lube made from yams. Callahan also excoriates Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne, Beyonce, Obama aide Ben Rhodes and the Kardashians, who she dubs the "Ground Zero" of the offense. She laments that the the White House's next resident may be Trump, one of the biggest trollers of all... Paul Sperry takes nation-building to task in his article. Nearly $113 billion has been spent in Afghanistan -- with virtually nothing to show for it. Security is so dicey, the roads so unsafe, that Americans have to take a helicopter to the airport... Kyle Smith offers a telling play on words in his op-ed piece, changing the term Orwellian, which describes the language used by Big Brother in 1984, to O'Wellian, deriding the President's penchant for euphemisms describing criminals... And a blurb informs of an anti-Clinton website: Won't Vote Hillary. which has received 65,000 pledges from Democrats.

Last night MeTV, channel 33 on Cablevision in NYC, ran another gem on its Svengoolie program -- The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). It was directed by the late Jack Arnold, who had a fantastic run in Tinseltown. IMDb lists 85 credits under his name, which does not include the multiple stints he put in behind the camera on popular TV shows during the second half of his career. Among his other silver screen winners are: It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), its sequel Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955), and one of the most infamous exploitation films of its time, High School Confidential (1958). I saw all but the last at Saturday afternoon matinees at the Benson theater. I just added the latter to my Netflix list. The Incredible Shrinking Man was written by the late Richard Matheson, adapted from his own novel, The Shrinking Man. Matheson wrote 16 episodes of The Twilight Zone, including one of the most famous, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, and more than 25 novels, scores of short stories, and loads of other TV movies and series episodes. A shout out to these two fabulous artists.

After four straight sessions of good luck, the floating book shop had a tough go of it today in Park Slope. It was more like mid November than mid May, unusually cool, dreary and blustery. My thanks to the gentleman who bought the Michael Crichton thriller, Airframe, the only sale of the day.

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