Kindle is the Most Gifted Item Ever on Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon’s history. On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. The Kindle Store now includes over 390,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases.
“We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading!”

On Amazon’s peak day, Dec. 14, 2009, customers ordered over 9.5 million items worldwide, which is a record-breaking 110 items per second.

Amazon Worldwide 2009 Holiday Facts

‘Inside Out’ By Barbara Benjamin Marcus

As the pop culture world turns and the season two premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race is upon us, it seemed the perfect time to spotlight Inside Out, an eye-popping coffee table-sized volume about drag queens. Author and photographer Barbara Benjamin Marcus’ book features images of and interviews with forty drag queens from places including Los Angeles, New York, Key West and Provincetown.

What’s unusual about Inside Out is that the subjects with names like Krystal Klear, Kitty Twisted, Sister Dixie Wrecked, Brandy Warhol, Momma, Mama and a few dozen other memorable monikers allowed Marcus to shoot them both in drag and out of drag (a rarity). They really let their hair down, right down to the false eyelashes.

As Marcus’ bold pictures of the queens in drag make clear and there are color photos on every page no one does make-up quite as fabulously as a drag queen. The unvarnished flip side, in pictures and in the subjects’ own words, offers a rarely seen glimpse into the queens behind the mask. Out of the closet, and out of the clothes in the closet, these queens are raw and compelling, and the book treats them with great respect.

Barbara Marcus started taking photographs in the 1970s with a camera she got from her then-husband Robert Duvall during the filming of Godfather II. Her first picture, her bio says, was of a solitary snow-covered chair in Lake Tahoe. Drag queens work the camera a lot better, and Marcus’ eye is insightful in capturing their personality and style. She got interested in photographing them during a decade spent living in Key West.

Information on the author also notes that she had an early career as a TV announcer for the Jackie Gleason Show, and as a Goldwyn Girl publicizing films including Guys and Dolls with Sinatra and Brando. Marcus learned early on how to balance a public face with what she describes as her quiet private personality, something that no doubt helped her deftly navigate the divide between her subjects’ drag queen personas and real life stories.

As revealed in Inside Out (www.insideoutthebook.com), it’s a journey worth taking with her.

I’m Dying Up Here – William Knoedelseder (Public Affairs)

When the Tonight Show moved its base of operations from New York to Los Angeles in 1972, the world of comedy was completely upended. Instead of working out their routines at NY nightclubs, any up-and-coming comedian worth his salt had to relocate to LA as well. Why? Because, in those days the Tonight Show was considered an unavoidable rite-of-passage for any comic who aspired to bigger things like Vegas, record albums or TV and movie stardom. The stars who received Johnny Carson’s nod of approval, were often invited back and would eventually become household names in their own right. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams and others would all be beneficiaries of the move in years to come.

In order to get ‘discovered’, these comics needed a platform to woodshed their material and to get in the field-of-view of the show’s cadre of talent scouts.

Enter the Comedy Store.

As a reporter for the Comedy Beat of the prodigious Los Angeles Times, Bill Knoedelseder had a ringside seat for the development of the LA comedy scene emerging at the Sunset Strip nightery as well as it’s Melrose counterpart, Budd Friedman’s Improv. Between the two clubs passed nearly all of the renowned comedians of the 70s thru 90s. Richard Pryor, Jimmie Walker, Leno, Williams, Andy Kaufman, Sam Kinison, Richard Lewis, Elayne Boosler and dozens more all worked out at the club in it’s heyday.

Trouble was, the club’s legendary owner, Mitzi Shore (yes, Pauly’s mom) never believed in paying the talent. “It’s a showcase room,” Shore would insist, not a place for comedians to earn a living. Eventually, Shore’s policy would blow up in her face as the comics formed their own ‘union’ and tried to boycott the club in an effort to gain at least a meager stipend from the dictatorial Shore.

It is, in fact, the story of the Comedy Store and it’s remuneration policy that takes up the bulk of Knoedelseder’s book. Nearly every detail of the strike is outlined here including the suicidal death of despondent comedian Steve Lubetkin, who jumped off the roof of the Hyatt Hotel next door to the club in a fit of depression.

All in all, Knoedelseder’s account of the LA comedy scene of the era is as complete as one could ever expect from a book on the subject. The fact that there is not much humor in a book about comedy is a bit lacking, but perhaps given the psychological profile often associated with comedians, not such a surprise.

Copenhagen, and After

Tim Flannery A word cloud of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks to the UN Climate Change Conference (Wordle/ecopolitology.org) On April 5, 2009, Denmark got a new Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. He was the third Danish Prime Minister in a row to bear that surname, replacing Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had been named the new Secretary-General of NATO. A capable local politician in his forties, Lars Rasmussen had, in contrast to his predecessor, almost no experience in international politics.

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Copenhagen, and After

Obama: One-Eighth of a Presidency

Michael Tomasky Thursday morning—Christmas Eve, that is, just after 7 a.m.—the United States Senate did something it’s never done and passed a bill that aims for broad reforms of America’s private health-insurers (it also delivers them 30 million new customers over the next decade, a bone of contention on the left). Potential snags exist, to be sure, but in all likelihood Barack Obama will become the first president, out of eight who’ve tried, to pass large-scale health reform. His presidency is either one-quarter or one-eighth over.

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Obama: One-Eighth of a Presidency

Living With Music: A Playlist by Jason Bitner

Jason Bitner is the co-creator of Found magazine and the editor of “Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves.” In this article for the New York Times ‘Paper Cuts’ he has assembled his ‘pre-date’ mixtape made up of a number of songs that pertain to writing, books and literature.

Some of his picks are clever as he references everything from the Beatles (“paperback Writer”) to the Talking Heads (“The Book I Read”) to Sonic Youth (“The Empty Page”) as well as some lesser known indy bands like Battles and One Ring Zero. Amusing reading nonetheless.

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Living With Music: A Playlist by Jason Bitner

The Trial of Liu Xiaobo: A Citizens’ Manifesto and a Chinese Crackdown

Perry Link Liu Xiaobo One year ago, the Chinese literary critic and political commentator Liu Xiaobo was taken away from his home in Beijing by the Chinese police, who held him without charge for six months, then placed him under formal arrest for six more months, on the ominous charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” Now, his case has been sent from the police to the state prosecutor’s office, and from there to a court, where his trial is expected to begin on Wednesday. The Chinese government has done what it can to keep the case out of sight, both at home and abroad

Original post:
The Trial of Liu Xiaobo: A Citizens’ Manifesto and a Chinese Crackdown

New For the Holidays!

New for the holidays. Something for everyone on your stocking stuffer list! Thanks to everyone for a great year. See you in 2010!

Bolivia’s Parched Future

Alma Guillermoprieto Women smashing rocks in search of silver, Potosí, Bolivia, 1991 (Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos) For whatever reason—global warming seems to be one—Bolivia’s Chacaltaya glacier, whose runoff provided water for the contiguous cities of La Paz and El Alto for centuries, is now gone .

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Bolivia’s Parched Future

Book Review Podcast: Biographies of Patricia Highsmith and Paul McCartney

This week: Joan Schenkar, biographer of the novelist Patricia Highsmith; the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega on Paul McCartney; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news.

Originally posted here:
Book Review Podcast: Biographies of Patricia Highsmith and Paul McCartney

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