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I'm pleased to announce that N&R business reporter Michelle Jarboe is going to be live-blogging the release of the new Harry Potter novel right here, on Friday.

She's pretending she's not tingling with excitement at it, but I can tell.

In the meantime, enjoy "Welcome Back, Potter" -- the viral video that proves He Who Must Not Be Named is one thing, but dealing with the Sweat Hogs is another...

Up Your Nose with a Phoenix Feather!

Looks like Hunter S. Thompson's first novel, The Rum Diary, really is coming to the Big Screen.

The semi-autobiographical novel, published after Thompson became famous as a journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, concerns his early days as a reporter in Puerto Rico.

Johnny Depp is reportedly playing Thompson, a role he lived with Thompson to perfect in Terry Gilliam's film version of Fear and Loathing.

George Harrison proposed to her the first day he met her.

After they were married, he wrote "Something" for her.

Though she was married to his best friend, Eric Clapton fell in love with her -- a love-triangle drama that inspired "Layla" and led him to become a junkie.

Later, after the two were married, she was the woman in Clapton's "Wonderful, Tonight."

Who is this modern musical Mata Hari?

She's Pattie Boyd and she's releasing a tell-all autobiography, Wonderful Today, on August 23.

As part of the promotion England's Daily Mail has run a two-part excerpt from the book.

Among the book's many strange revelations:

1) Apparently Harrison returned from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in India in 1968 he was obsessed with becoming a Krishna figure, "a spiritual beings with lots of concubines." After telling his wife this he began bedding just about anything that would wriggle, including one of Clapton's ex-girlfriends and Ringo's wife.

2) Clapton was living with Boyd's younger sister when he first professed his love for her in an anonymous letter.

3) Clatpon was apparently quite the ladies man, but couldn't get Boyd out of her knickers until he played a pre-release version of "Layla" for her. Even then, she slept with him but wouldn't leave her husband. He threatened to become a junkie if she wouldn't be his -- when she said no, that's just what he did.

4) Clapton was fond of writing her love letters on the pages of books, including John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" and a book of Scottish ballads.

5) Harrison was often busy shagging his friends' ex-girlfriends and wives, but he didn't take his best friend's advances toward his wife lying down. This is how Boyd describes a bizarre confrontation between the two which eerily presaged the alleged "dance off" between an estranged Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears years later:

"One evening the actor John Hurt was with us. Eric was due to come over too and George decided to have it out with him. John wanted to make himself scarce but George insisted he stay.

That whole period was insane."

Clearly.

Boyd doesn't leave anyone looking like an angel -- including herself. She confesses to drug and alcohol abuse, adultery and (maybe, it's hard to tell) a brief affair with Ron Wood of the Faces and later the Rolling Stones.

The descriptions of people with way too much money, way too many drugs and way too few inhibitions are a little jarring, even to those of us sort of dulled to that sort of thing by modern celebrity gossip. There's a different sort of edge to it because we're not talking about people who we aren't sure whether we'll care about in five years -- we're talking about rock legends, here.

And you thought right wing Christian groups hated Harry Potter because of the evil, ungodly magic.

Foolish muggles.

According to Reuters:

"Speaking at Carnegie Hall on Friday night in her first U.S. tour in seven years, Rowling confirmed what some fans had always suspected -- that she "always thought Dumbledore was gay," reported entertainment Web site E! Online."

Further, she said Dumbledore had once been in love with the evil wizard Grindlevald.

How are Potter fans reacting? Well...

"The audience reportedly fell silent after the admission -- then erupted into applause.

"This is even more awesome because it adds another layer to Dumbledore's character, which is already so rich and complicated. I hope he got over Grindlevald (sic) and fell in love again," wrote Amanda."

As a writer, I love this part:

"Rowling said she had read through a script for the movie adaptation of the sixth book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling "Dumbledore is gay" over it."

Last week J.K. Rowling outed top wizard Albus Dumbledore (of Harry Potter fame) as gay -- well after the last book of the series had gone to press.

There are some who are claiming they knew all along, or at least that the signs were there for those who were looking. Ed Cone pointed to a Metafilter comment thread in which someone said:

"He was a stylish 150-year-old-ish bachelor. You do the math."

If we're going to accept that a character's creator can out a character after all of the canonical work dealing with that character has been produced then I think there are some characters out there who are at least as likely as Dumbledore for a little homosexual retroactive continuity...

(WARNING: Comedic homosexual stereotypes ahead. Satirical. Not to be confused with actual homophobia.)

Less than a week after J.K. Rowling's outing of the Harry Potter series' master wizard Albus Dumbledore more than 7,000 novelty t-shirts have been sold celebrating the occasion.

Above (from left to right): The "I Always Knew" Dumbledore Pride t-shirt and the more pithy "Wizards are Gay."

You can get them here.

Great story from Salon.com about J.K. Rowling suing a fan who's putting together a Harry Potter reference book.

The type of book that's being discussed is clearly a reference work -- the type we all used when trying to write term papers on the work of authors like Ernest Hemingway, Proust or William Faulkner. Rowling's suggestion that this is someone profiting off of her work not only demonstrates a startling misunderstanding of Fair Use but also comes off as fairly ridiculous from a woman who's made more money off a children's book series than any modern author.

From the story, about the book springing from a popular fan web site:

["The Harry Potter Lexicon] is a comprehensive reference work covering all that happens in J.K. Rowling's series -- to quote its Wikipedia entry (everything related to Potter is on WP), the Lexicon lists "characters, places, creatures, spells, potions and magical devices," and it introduced one of the first timelines of all events that occur in the Harry Potter universe.

Thanks to such acclaim, Vander Ark recently landed a publishing contract with RDR Books to put out a printed version of the online lexicon. His book was to have gone on sale this fall."

That Rowling herself found it a great scholarly resource but objects to the author being paid for print copies that display his work in creating it is really galling.

One of my favorite writers, Susannah Breslin, has an interview at her blog with Peter S. Conrad, a cartoonist who recently turned the stories of sex workers into comic strips.

The work is great - sad, funny, insightful.

Ditto the interview.

But neither is safe for work.

You've been warned.

I've been meaning to get hold of Steve Martin's memoir Born Standing Up for a few weeks now.

A recent excerpt in Smithsonian magazine has made me resolve to go get it this weekend. From the excerpt, in which Martin begins to craft his own style of comedy by abandoning convention:

"What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.

Now that I had assigned myself to an act without jokes, I gave myself a rule. Never let them know I was bombing: this is funny, you just haven't gotten it yet. If I wasn't offering punch lines, I'd never be standing there with egg on my face. It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing. I would move through my act without pausing for the laugh, as though everything were an aside. Eventually, I thought, the laughs would be playing catch-up to what I was doing. Everything would be either delivered in passing, or the opposite, an elaborate presentation that climaxed in pointlessness. Another rule was to make the audience believe that I thought I was fantastic, that my confidence could not be shattered. They had to believe that I didn't care if they laughed at all and that this act was going on with or without them."

Arthur C. Clarke, author of 100 books including the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, died in Sri Lanka yesterday at age 90.

Some good obits out there -- though the NYT headline looks as though it was written by Yoda.

This one highlights Clarke's qualified skepticism and deeply held atheism. From the piece:

Clarke certainly believed in extraterrestrial, intelligent life. "They might land tomorrow on the White House lawn," he told McAleer. But he did not believe in UFOs, which he said could be reasonably explained.

Nor did he believe in God. He was an unapologetic atheist with no patience for organized religion, which he blamed for many of society's ills. "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion," he wrote in a 1999 essay.

Wired magazine writes that Clarke told them what he wanted as his epitaph in a 1993 interview:

"I've often quoted it," he said."'He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.'"

LONDON, England (AP) -- British writer and self-styled dandy Sebastian Horsley was denied entry to the United States after arriving to promote his memoir of sex, drugs and flamboyant fashion.
Horsley

Sebastian Horsley was deemed "not admissible" by U.S. customs agents.

Horsley said he was questioned for eight hours Tuesday by border officials at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey before being denied entry on grounds of "moral turpitude."

The 45-year-old author was traveling to New York for the U.S. launch of "Dandy in the Underworld," his account of a life dedicated to sex, drugs and finely tailored clothes.

"I was dressed flamboyantly -- top hat, long velvet coat, gloves," Horsley said. "My one concession to American sensibilities was to remove my nail polish. I thought that would get me through."

Full story here.

----

You've got to scratch your head at a country that treats The Rolling Stones like royalty and lets them tour coast to coast but deports this weird little twist, whose only drug conviction (discharged) happened 25 years ago, because he writes about drugs and hilariously expensive clothes.

Not having to actually tour the U.S. AND getting a ton of free press over this sort of thing? I'm sure Horsley is laughing all the way to the bank.

Also -- I love that this guy's Wikipedia entry begins thusly:

"Sebastian Horsley (born 1962) is a London writer and artist best known for wearing a stovepipe hat."

When punk came to California, photographer Jenny Lens was ready for it -- and she caught all of its luminaries, losers and laugh-riots when punk exploded there in the late 70s.

Rolling Stone has a great preview of her first book, Punk Pioneers: When Punk Was Fun, which is out next month. Some of my favorite shots:

Debbie Harry of Blondie at the Whisky in LA, 1977.

Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick mugs for the camera while bassist Tom Petersson smooches a young (and adorable) Joan Jett backstage in Santa Monica in 1977.

Lorna Doom of The Germs at a photo shoot in 1977.

Joey Ramone wants the airwaves (and the robots) in Little Tokyo in 1977.

A new children's book will try to help parents explain their cosmetic surgery procedures to kids. The book, written by Flordia plastic surgeon Michael Salzhauer, is featured in this week's Newsweek.

From the article:

"My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

The text doesn't mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally show Mom's breasts to be fuller and higher. "I tried to skirt that issue in the text itself," says Salzhauer. "The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."

Last week columnist Jeri Rowe stopped me in the newsroom with a huge grin on his face.

"I've got something for you," he said. "It's for the blog, but I'm going to need it back."

"Okay," I said.

"No, really," he said. "I'm going to need it back."

"Fair enough," I said, a little curious now.

That's when he hit me with this -- an advanced copy of Chuck Palahniuk's new novel, Snuff.

Jeri needn't have worried: I finished it in one night.

Audiobooks are great for long drives or trips to the gym, but I usually prefer reading a book to listening to it.

That said -- I'll take a David Sedaris audiobook any day. A lot of people became familiar Sedaris, who was raised in Raleigh, through his readings of his stories and essays on NPR. His delivery can make a good story great.

His new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, is available here as a completely DRM free MP3 download for about what you'd pay for the print version. I think it's a steal.

Bought David Sedaris' new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, over the weekend.

I've been reading a chapter or two a night, stretching it out. But it's tempting to finish the whole thing in one sitting. Good stuff.

Even some of the stuff I've read previously in magazines -- "Brother, Can You Spare a Tie?" for instance -- has been reworked and melded with other things for publication in the book, almost always for the better.

Go pick it up - or get the audio version, because hearing Sedaris perform his own stuff is great.

As we all wait for The Dark Knight (I've already got my tickets for the midnight showing Thursday), Scientific American does an interview with E. Paul Zehr, who has just released a book called Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero.

Zehr, an associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and martial artist, says Batman could theoretically exist -- but not for long.

From the interview:

Wouldn't fighting Gotham's thugs every night take its toll?
The biggest unreal part of the way Batman's portrayed is the nature of his injuries. Most of the time, in the comics and in the movies, even when he wins, he usually winds up taking a pretty good beating. There's a real failure to show the cumulative effect of that. The next day he's shown out there doing the same thing again. He'd likely be quite tired and injured.

Is there any indication in the comics of how long Batman's career lasts?
The comics are really vague on this, of course. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, he deliberately shows an aging Batman coming back after he's retired, and he highlights him being tired and weaker. Somewhere around age 50 to 55, he should probably retire. His performance is going down. He's always facing younger adversaries. That is well at the end of when he's going to be able to defend himself and be able to not have to deal that lethal force. This was actually shown in an animated series called Batman Beyond.

Oh right. It's the future; Batman is old and he trains a kid to replace him.
You're familiar with that one? What we learn is that Batman, when he was older but before he retired, actually picked up a gun against a thug because he had to. His skills had let him down so that he wasn't able to defend himself without harming another person. So that's when he decided to retire.

How would all those beat-downs have affected his longevity?
Keeping in mind that being Batman means never losing: If you look at consecutive events where professional fighters have to defend their titles—Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Ultimate Fighters—the longest period you're going to find is about two to three years. That dovetails nicely with the average career for NFL running backs. It's about three years. (That's the statistic I got from the NFL Players Association Web site.) The point is, it's not very long. It's really hard to become Batman in the first place, and it's hard to maintain it when you get there.

I've noticed this happening a lot lately, where authors (or agents) have videos trailers put together for books. It's interesting, because typically books don't have a lot of visuals other than the cover art nor any audio, so everything has to be done from scratch more or less. Here is a recent one for Brooke Taylor's book, "Undone," that I am waiting for.

You can go to YouTube and search for book trailer if you are curious to see how others are doing it, too.

It's also interesting because it goes to how much the Internet has changed book promotions, at least in my experience. Most authors have Web sites now (which tend to get more polished as they start selling), and many of them post first chapters, which I love. (Much better than reading the first few pages of a book in a bookstore, which is what I tend to do when deciding.)

You can also find a lot of authors on Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, Shelfari, LibraryThing, just about anywhere people who read congregate. I've friended some of my favorite authors, and on Livejournal, I've even had dialogues with three of them on numerous occasions, about books, world events, Doctor Who, you name it. I think that's one things fans really like -- accessibility -- knowing that if you post a comment telling them what you thought of their latest book, you know they've read it, and they've often replied. And stuff like that will keep me loyal and buying their books, even through a sophomore slump or dry spell, to authors like Shanna Swendson, Vicki Pettersson and Joel Rosenberg.

And one of my more recent sources of finding new books to buy are blogs -- two in particular have led to many purchases on Amazon that I can ill-afford: "Pub Rants," a fun, informative blog by a literary agent whose clients I really like, and "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books," which is pretty much just what it sounds like.