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The Village Voice has one-upped the viral audio clips of Barack Obama reading hilariously out-of-character phrases from his books.

Their entry: Bill O'Reilly reading passages from his creepy, hilariously bad thriller novel Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder.

The Voice writes that the 1998 book is "about an O'Reilly-esque TV journalist who is trained by an Irish Republican Army terrorist to kill the people who deserve it the most: the broadcast news bastards who interfered with the O'Reilly character's career. It's personal on the political level, too -- his victims include a powerful 'bitch' named Hillary and a fat 'slob' named Martin Moore."

Some are shocked that O'Reilly -- a self-styled moral arbiter who has criticized the coarse language, sex and violence in movies, on television and in pop music -- produced a novel full of coarse language, sex, violence and sexual violence.

Those people have got to be kidding, right?

Anyway -- the audio clips are pretty priceless. They include (among many others) O'Reilly voicing a crack dealer who says to his underage girlfriends:

"Say baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up."

"Off with those pants."

It has been said, and I have to agree, that it will probably be a matter of hours before we're seeing dance remixes of this stuff in the wild.

Best news item I read all weekend: Steve Martin is financing an off-campus production of one of his plays because some parents at the Oregon high school where it was being staged have thrown a nutty about its "adult content."

The play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, is about an imaginary meeting between Einstein and Picasso at a bar in Paris as both men are on the verge of great achievements in art and science.

Martin explained his reasoning in this letter to the La Grande observer.

Choice bits from the letter:

"I have heard that some in your community have characterized the play as “people drinking in bars, and treating women as sex objects.” With apologies to William Shakespeare, this is like calling Hamlet a play about a castle."

I predict that the experience will not be damaging, but meaningful.

Mr. Martin -- you have officially made up for those Pink Panther re-makes.

In celebration, I offer this banjo breakdown with the Muppets.

In case you missed it: Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods) appeared on The Colbert Report last night to promote his new children's book, The Graveyard Book.

The book's out tomorrow, and I may now have to read it. You should too.

In an upcoming interview with USA Weekend Stephen King talks good writers and bad writers -- and doesn't shy away from naming names.

On Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Twilight author Stephanie Meyer:

"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. ... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."

King goes on to make a point about the Twilight books that, while I've only read enough excerpts to make me decide against the books, seems spot on:

"...it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet."

I'd feel less confident in agreeing with that statement if grown women I know hadn't read the books and told me they see it much the same way. One friend described the books as reading like "bad Internet fan fiction." But with poorly-fleshed out ORIGINAL characters.

King goes on to praise Jodi Picoult, say Dean Koontz can both write like hell and be awful and, maybe most satisfactorily to me, say that while James Patterson is very, very successful he's a terrible writer.

Patterson's stuff is so awful it makes me angry. It's so awful I finally sat down to begin writing a pop novel instead of just saying: "I could do better than this!"

I'm sort of agnostic on whether I think writers should savage each other in print. They shouldn't make a sport of it, certainly -- but when someone asks your opinion I don't see the harm in telling them what you honestly think.

King has himself written some terrific stuff and some terrible crap. Any writer who writes long enough is going to have to admit to that. But I think he's reached a stature as both a writer and a popular success as a writer that he can speak with some authority about talent, success and if and when one has anything to do with the other.

King's latest collection, Stephen King Goes to the Movies, includes works that have been adapted into popular films including The Shawshank Redemption, 1408, Children of the Corn and Hearts in Atlantis.

Writer/director Michael Crichton, best known as the author of "Jurassic Park," has died of cancer at age 66.

Crichton wrote best-sellers that blended science, adventure and social commentary. Some of his best known novels became hit films, including "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "Rising Sun" and "Disclosure."

He was also the director of such movies as "The Great Train Robbery" and "Westworld" and the co-creator of the long-running hit TV drama "ER."

Everything about the man seemed to be outsized -- he stood 6'9'', was married 5 times, wrote his first best-seller ("The Andromeda Strain") while completing his studies at Harvard Medical School.

He was also a foe of the theory of global warming and a critic of the American media.

He was like a character from one of his own novels -- large, fascinating and somehow not quite believable.

Gregory McDonald died.

I've only ever read his Fletch novels. But they - especially the first two - are some of the wittiest American detective fiction. I felt like the movies really didn't do them justice.

He was also a writer/editor at the Boston Globe for many years, which gave cynical reporter/accidental detective Fletch a great authenticity. You heard those conversations in newsrooms, you had those thoughts yourself while on a story.

Damn shame.

Cartoonist Scott McCloud, author of groundbreaking educational books like Understanding Comics and Making Comics, has put together a little comic explaining Google's new open-source web browser, Chrome.

And when I say "little" I mean 38 pages.

But it is actually fascinating and now I can't wait to start using it.

So, you know, its done its job.

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.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling gave the commencement speech at Harvard last week.

Here's what she said.

From the speech:

"I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

...Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

The trailer for Gonzo, the new Hunter Thompson documentary out next month, is up now.

It's narrated by Johnny Depp and looks as though it has a deep bench of political figures (Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern), celebrities and writers (Tom Wolfe, Jann Wenner, Tim Crouse).

Some great historical footage I'd never seen, too. Looks good.

There are many, many reasons I wish Hunter Thompson hadn't killed himself.

But this campaign is yet another one.

He went out with things looking mighty dark politically -- his prediction John Kerry would oust George W. Bush in the last election was essentially wishful thinking.

God, how he would have loved seeing a black man and a white woman duke it out for the democratic nomination -- and how he would have loved mocking the disaster it's become.

The longer this thing goes the more maddening it is -- and the more I regret that we'll never get his take on it.

Great, strange Chuck Klosterman essay in this month's Esquire about Norman Mailer, the demise of boxing, fight or flight and, to my great delight, my pet theory that people are rude (and have been getting ruder for decades) because they're sure you won't punch them.

From the piece:

"It is impossible to deny that the culture is coarsening. Everyone concedes this -- even the people who are happy about it. It is now acceptable to say almost anything, about almost anyone, in a public space, and for no reason whatsoever. There is no line to step over, because such lines no longer exist. And I think those boundaries disappeared the moment people really, truly lost the fear of getting punched in the face. Americans have understood this intellectually for decades, but I don't think we accepted it in totality until now. Adults are now so insulated by technology (and so protected by modernity) that the possibility of a physical consequence for any action is a psychological nonfactor. We have removed interpersonal fear from day-to-day behavior. Today, boxers are the only people who get hit for fucking up."

People always think I'm crazy when I say this, but it has always seemed wrong to me that all sorts of behaviors that once would have been thought to be inexcusably rude have become almost commonplace in the society but it has become unthinkable that you would hit someone for any reason. As someone once said, civilized men are coarser than barbarians because they know they can be rude without having their heads split open, as a general thing.

Even recreational boxing -- when I used to box, it was like telling people I enjoyed rape and murder as hobbies. Boxing (and maybe wrestling) are the human sport urge to physically excel and dominate stripped of its dressings - no balls, no goals, no pretty uniforms. Just two people deciding which is physically superior. And for some reason the very idea of that scares the hell out of a lot of people these days.

Reader Jim Vanner sent me a link to this Q&A with historian David McCullough from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

McCullough is the author of some of my favorite historical biographies, and in this Q&A he talks about the John Adams miniseries HBO has created around his bestselling biography.

McCullough has had really good experiences with HBO so far -- they produced the excellent Truman, based on his Pultizer-prize winning biography of Harry S. Truman. He has high praise for what they've done with John Adams as well.

The author says of the min-series' gritty realism:

"It's going to be the 18th century -- and particularly, of course, the 18th century in this country -- as Americans have never seen it before. It's not a costume pageant; it's the way life was. You are going to see people with bad teeth and dirt under their fingernails. You are going to see a man tarred and feathered and it's going to be hard to watch, it's so awful. It wasn't just a sort of high school prank. Tar-and-feathering was torture. People died from it. You are going to experience the horror of smallpox and of someone having a leg amputated without anesthetics. It's very real and entirely in keeping with the way it was."

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.

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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."

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.'"

It's a wonderful day for free comics.

First Mr. Wonderful free from the New York Times, now Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, the Authority, NEXTWAVE) and Paul Duffield launch FreakAngels, a free ongoing weekly online comic.

Check out the first episode here.

Score!

The New York Times has the full run of the Mr. Wonderful cartoon by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Eightball) for free download as PDFs.

If you haven't read any Clowes, go check this out for free. If you have, thank the Times for giving us this great stuff for free.

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.