Print Media! Podcasts!

The Goldstein

1. Dan(ager) left behind a copy of the premiere issue of Guilt & Pleasure at the office. Many distinguished contributors grace the masthead, including broadcaster Jonathan Goldstein (host of CBC Radio's Wiretap and droll contributor to This American Life), cartoonist Ben Katchor, and writer Nathaniel Deutsch. The publication evolved from a salon in Toronto on modern Judaism and Jews to the journal on (vaguely) the post-assimilationist return to Judaism and Jewish culture, secular and religious. File next to Jewsrock, Jewlicious and Heeb Magazine. It's often easy to lose sight of the true meaning of the season, to get caught up in the holiday hubub and demands, that one is tempted to skip the double-bills and Chinese food altogether. Well, that may be fine for some, but as for me, I'll be seeing The Producers and King Kong this weekend.

2. Having some serious problems sleeping, a state I believe to be directly attributed to a potent strain of marijuana, and deciding that upon hearing CBC Radio 1 hostess Sheilagh Rogers' voice that it was necessary for me to leave the apartment today, I made my sleepy way off to the office, arriving to find a large stack of the first issue of Bang Bang, a French-language publication, its cover adorned by psych-wavers We Are Wolves. I've only thumbed through it, so I've got little else to say, though I must issue a dire warning to any publication that chooses to highlight a Lagwagon interview.

3. Journalist, actor, DJ, musician (remember Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?, We Are Molules, The Hot Pockets?!?!?!?!?) and my personal nemesis Adam Gollner has inked a book-deal with Scribners' & Sons to publish his book The Fruit Hunters. According to Publisher's Weekly, "the book will combine travel, horticulture and business in its look at a variety of people passionate about fruit, not only genetically modified supermarket fruit, but small, unique types one has to travel far afield to get, cultivated by often-fanatic naturalists eager to preserve endangered varieties and invent new ones." I'll begrudgingly congratulate him on that.

4. The Mile End's favourite Freudian, Andrew Rose has been busting his ass getting all of the year end Pop Montreal Podcasts together. So, do yourself a favour, and check 'em out at Pop Montreal or the mass is secretly obsessed with nipple dream. "Jung was a tool."

5. Patrick Watson has signed some sort of "record deal" - an antiquated arrangement of some sort that old timers might recall as being quite prevalent in the last century, details will be floating about soon, I assume.