BilmBlog500

My nephew tweeted a link to a New York Magazine article explaining why Bernie Sanders is a Bad Thing.  The very liberal NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has a column with similar arguments in the Jan 18 New York Times.  And on one level, I agree with both. Sanders is too bombastically left wing to have any chance of winning. There is just one problem. Hillary's problem putting Bernie away is indicative of the essential problem with Hillary.  She will lose to any Republican who runs, because the closer we get to an actual election the more there will be way too may people who decide they just don't want to have Hillary and all the Clinton baggage in the White House, just like people are doing in the early primary states.  I fear the people complaining about Bernie Sanders don't understand that the alternative is as unelectable, in part because they are part of the establishment, like Hillary has been part of the establishment, and they just don't understand how littl...

I'm 51.  Since Glenn Frey was my age, I believe I've been to only two concerts.  Don Henley at Radio City Music Hall in 2000, and Don Henley at the Beacon Theatre just a few months ago. Henley was, Henley is, "my" Eagle.  I think Hotel California, with lead vocals by Henley, is the best Eagles song.  If I walk into a store and hear New Kid in Town playing on the radio, I'll walk in and walk out.  If I hear Hotel California, I'll linger, wait, hold off until the final notes have played, as Glenn Frey's final notes played today. I wouldn't have Henley if I didn't have The Eagles.  Henley and I wouldn't have The Eagles if it weren't for Glenn Frey.  Henley far surpassed Frey as a solo artist, but I wouldn't have purchased Henley's album I Can't Stand Still if it weren't for The Eagles, for Frey.  I wouldn't have my Dirty Laundry, down at the Sunset Grill, while Building the Perfect Beast for The Boys of Summer during the En...

One of the things I hate about politics, politicians, and the people who support them is the complete inconsistency of their morality -- i.e., things that are 100% acceptable and which should, must, have to be totally overlooked when your guy does it are 100% wrong and heinous and awful when the other guy does it. A quick example of this:  Could you imagine how the right wing propaganda machine would be humming if a major Democratic figure had been caught outright lying about the funding of their campaign, if some sob story about sacrificing all to run for office turned out to be "Goldman Sachs gave me a loan, and after I knew I'd be getting the loan, I put all my own money into the campaign." That's what Ted Cruz did , and the story's gotten surprisingly little traction. And much as I don't like Ted Cruz, I think everyone should consider him a natural-born citizen eligible to be President of the United State. But at the same time, much as I don't like Don...

I'm always excited to be going to Balticon. My first convention as an agent was the Balticon where Elizabeth Moon was presented with the Compton Crook Award for Sheepfarmer's Daughter, and taking things full circle this year, E. L. Tettensor was a finalist this year for her debut novel Darkwalker. Here's where you'll find me this weekend: Friday May 22, 17:00 5pm A Glimpse Behind the Curtain - The Business Side of Writing (Salon C) there's a lot of ground to cover in a panel like this, which will be a rich reward for people who can get to Balticon early in its run. Saturday May 23 17:00 5pm Beyond Creative Commons (Tack) the program book says this is a panel about moving from free pod-casting to selling your audios.  I hope I'm supposed to be the moderator, since I may have more questions than answers. Saturday May 23 20:00 8pm Tales From the Slush Pile (Tack) My iPad has lots of bad queries ready to be read!  Learn what not to do, so you can do it right yoursel...

So Hachette was having a cocktail reception this afternoon for literary agents to show off their beautiful new open plan offices. To which I RSVPed on December 15. Now, I'm curious as I walk up what kind of security thing they'll have, because having dozens or hundreds of agents waiting in line for their building passes would be kind of silly. So they have this check-in desk with a little Hachette sign and people holding scads of pre-printed bar-coded building passes.  And we're told that these are under the agency names, and I say I'm there from JABberwocky, and like half the people on line, I'm told "we don't have your badge; you'll have to check in with the main desk" where you need to get a nice individual photo guest barcoded badge. And I just didn't feel like it. Did they have the badge under my name even though I was told twice it should be under the agency's name?  The email signature on my RSVP did just have my name on it and not t...

Did you know that Uber drivers get to rank you, just like you get to rank them? And when you summon an Uber, drivers can decide not to pick you up based on your passenger rating? In theory, ratings and reviews are always a good thing, but I'm not always sure. Generally, I've had good rides with Uber, but when I took an Uber from my hotel to LAX a few weeks ago, it wasn't a very good ride at all.  The driver decided to park across the street from my hotel rather than in the hotel's carport, even though we needed to make an easy right turn out of the carport, there was no obstacle to turning into the carport, and no obstacle in the carport.  The driver didn't offer to help wheel my luggage across the street to his car, which would be a nice thing to do if you're deciding to park across the street for no reason.  Then when we ran into traffic and the "10" looked really really backed up, the driver had little awareness of the alternate routes.  When we got...

I am extremely happy that the Washington Nationals got drummed out of the NL playoffs early, and for as long as Stephen Strasburg is playing baseball, I want for them never to advance to the World Series. Stephen Strasburg himself?  If he goes to another team in a trade or free agency, he can win all the World Series rings he wants.  Just none with the Nationals. Why? So two years ago, the Nationals has Stephen Strasburg on an innings limit because he was recoving from Tommy John surgery, and when the Nationals advanced to the playoffs, they refused to let Stephen Strasburg pitch because of this innings limit.  This was a controversial decision, and a decision that I disagreed with strenuously. It's not that I am opposed to any innings limits for pitchers.  My 16-year-old nephew has been playing a lot of baseball in both spring and fall leagues from Little League on.  I've never noticed my brother to be one of those fathers who wants for his son to win at all co...

This fall season marks both my 50th birthday and the 20th anniversary of establishing JABberwocky Literary Agency.  To celebrate, I screened a film at the Museum of the Moving Image for a select group from virtually all phases of my life.  I didn't name the film in the invitation, though the invitations included references to enough of the catch phrases immortalized by the film that it wasn't exactly a state secret. Here, slightly edited, are the program notes I prepared: ---------------------------------------- When Jerry Maguire opened on Dec. 13, 1996, I sat down to see it projected (in 35mm, on part of the screen) on the Imax at the Loews Lincoln Square. I was expecting to like it. I didn’t realize that I was about as close to my autobiography as Hollywood is likely to get. The “expecting to like” is easy; it was Tom Cruise in a Cameron Crowe movie, with a decent coming attraction. Tom Cruise and I have very special relationship.  Top Gun is extra special to me. ...

I am a big fan of The Middle, which I think is an under-rated and under-appreciated part of ABC's Wednesday comedy line-up. But as much as I enjoyed the episode that aired on October 1, I was also kind of down on it, because the main story-line deals with college admissions and financial aid in a way that perpetuates the worst kind of thinking, the kind of thinking that keeps people in the middle down rather than helping them up. Basic premise of the show:  working class family with two parents who work hard and never get ahead, with three kids to feed and a house and a mortgage and bills.  The middle kid is Sue, who's surrounded by two brothers and who is a font of sometimes misplaced enthusiasm.  She's tried out for every club or sport in the school, usually to very bad results, but she's slowly been getting her act a little more together, starting to find boys and a little more common sense and a little more assertiveness in the right places. In this episode, Sue ann...

For over 30 years, I have been a devout reader of Variety. Now, I hate the actual printed magazine.  It doesn't take long to read, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes in a good week.  And this quick read comes in the form of an oversize magazine printed on heavy coated white paper.   Who wants to go around on the subway holding a heavy, oversized magazine that doesn't take very long to read and which requires lots and lots of page turns?  The magazine is as annoying as it is informative. However, the printed magazine is now only a small portion of the total content Variety offers.  Every week there are dozens of articles and reviews and columnists to be found on the magazine's website that aren't to be found in the weekly magazine. There is no paywall on the website.  The owner of Variety has made a business decision not to charge for its content. I prefer content like this in print. There are week-long stretches when I have plenty of time to sit at my computer...

More bad news for most of us this week, with a federal judge ruling that Detroit can go into bankruptcy and cut pensions, Illinois legislators voting on a bill to cut pensions there, another judge ruling that employers can force employees to arbitrate and not have an option of class action suits. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship to public employee unions.  While I believe very strongly in the right to form a union and collectively bargain, public employee unions have much better luck gaming the system by making contributions to the politicians who then determine how much money to give the union workers.  In the private sector, an independent labor union can't game the system, at least not this way.  In the private sector too often the interests of my representative are more aligned with the unions than the public purse. But that said, the attack on benefits that were won in negotiations reflects a distressing tendency in public life these days, which is to solve yo...

After the gun shootings at the theatre in Aurora or the school in Connecticut, those of us who favor gun control were told that the problem was, in fact, gun control.  If there had been people in the theatre or teachers/security guards in the school who had guns, then somebody would have stopped the shooter and it would have been so much better for everyone. This week's shooting took place on a government military installation, and 12 people died. It might have been worse.  The gunman had to "settle" for buying a handgun when Virginia state law didn't allow him to buy something more powerful. From what I've read, the shooting spree might have been extended when the gunman was able to take a gun from one of his victims. I'm not sure how to square this with the whole idea that gun control costs lives, and that having more people with more guns saves them. I will certainly be told that the problem isn't with gun laws or the lack of gun laws.  The problem will...

So New For 2013, as the main draw of the US Open tennis begins Monday, they have announced that this year everyone will get to be wanded and go through a magnetometer. Why? For the past ten years, you've only been able to bring in one small bag, and that one small bag has been hand-inspected as you go in.  There's no way that the Boston Marathon scenario could repeat at the US Open as it has been run, security wise, for the past decade. Adding a magnetometer adds no additional security. None. Nada. Zilch. Of course, it is a nice make-work program, because now the company that provides the security forces for the US Open gets to hire more people!  Most of these people are temps of some or another sort, and I am sure the contractor that provides this service for the Open makes a nice additional profit. Of course, it is a nice make-work program for the people who make wands and magnetometers. Of course it makes everyone feel so much more secure.  Even though it doesn't add a...

We change, you know. We think the things we're doing will always be the things we're doing, but we change. Sometimes even the things that don't seem to be changing, change.  As an example, I've been a literary agent for over 25 years, but the job description within the job has changed multiple times.  I've had the same job, two employers (one of them being myself), and probably close to half a dozen job descriptions. But for me, there's one thing that hasn't, and that's going to the movies. And the earliest movie that I can place seeing at a particular theatre dates back to when I was five.  We saw Airport at Radio City Music Hall.  Would my younger brother had been with a baby sitter?  It's hard even to think about. And since my parents didn't believe in film ratings and took us to everything...  Deliverance at the Plaza Cinema, or stopping for Godfather, which I think we might have done as a side trip returning from visiting family in upstate N...

A week back, Thomas Friedman, the distinguished author and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column approving of the NSA's surveillance and monitoring of metadata of email and phone calls for pretty much everyone. His argument:  I like civil liberties, civil liberties will take it on the chin even more than they are now if we have another 9-11 style attack.  So the government should do all that is can to prevent another such attack, and if that's what the surveillance is doing, I'm in favor of it.  Also, that this has been going on for two American presidencies now. What an idiot! OK, I mean, Thomas Friedman isn't an idiot, and there's a certain soothing logic to his column which reflects an opinion that's apparently shared by a lot of my fellow Americans. But it's wrong, it's misguided, and quite obviously so. It took me several days of mulling over Thomas Friedman's soothing article to zone in on the basic fallacy, but once you do, it'...

The British newspaper The Guardian found out that the US has very likely been receiving details  of every phone call most of us make -- who we called, when we called them, how long we spoke. Where are all of those constitution lovers who are so fond of my 2nd amendment rights to start using those guns to fight against this colossal infringement of our 4th amendment rights? I'm bothered not just by the blatant violation of privacy rights but by the idiocy of this and of everyone who defends this. Let's take a specific scenario, where the government knows that some particular person is a terrorist.  Well, the government has always had the ability to go to a judge and get a warrant and find out who is calling this person and who this person calls, and even to listen in on the phone calls. Some of these abilities are impaired by the switch from land lines to cell phones.  The calls no longer go through particular switching stations for particular phone lines in particular pl...

Since I still have a land line it is susceptible to getting calls from polling companies. I kind of like this.  It is occasionally interesting because you can tell who's paying for the poll by the kinds of questions being asked and the way they are being phrased.  And who doesn't want to be asked their opinion. But I've got to take a few minutes to complain in public about a call I got yesterday. I was sitting around watching tennis from Roland Garros, so I figured I could watch tennis and be polled at the same time.  And the person taking the poll assures me it's just a few questions and won't go on for very long at all. It turns out to be a poll on the NYC mayor's race.  I'm asked multiple times to choose whom I would vote for today, which I refuse to do.  There are two or three candidates I am strongly considering and a few I am strongly not, and I don't want to pick a side now when there haven't been any debates and the contest not yet fully in s...

I don't agree with Rand Paul on much, but I'd be remiss not to thank him for doing a little battle against the never-ending war against "Al Qaeda" we are fighting with drones.  I put "Al Qaeda" in quotes because it deserves to be.  The entity that attacked us on 9/11 is pretty much out of business.  The other organizations that call themselves Al Qaeda this or that are not Al Qaeda, no more than someone else can call themselves a Bilmes or a Joshua or a Joshua Bilmes and not be me.  And even though I am not in favor of any of these organizations attacking us or for that matter attacking other people, including other Muslims, which they do as or more often as attacking us, I am in favor of the rule of law.  Targeted assassinations against targets determined behind closed doors under a program with no oversight, no accountability, no nothing, with the administration not even willing to entirely preclude carrying out attacks like this as opposed to arrest and t...

I just feel like ranting about a thing or two today: The Keystone Pipeline.  I'm a leftie, you read the blog and you know that, I believe in climate change, I believe in not running the AC 24/7 during the summer or leaving store doors open to hot streets while running the AC at 72 degrees in the summer, I believe in rapid transit over cars.  But I'm not a crazy leftie, I do all those wonderful things and then like to fly in business class to London Book Fair so I can have a good healthy carbon footprint just like everyone else.  The environmentalists shouldn't be fighting the Keystone Pipeline like it is the end of the planet.  Yes, the arguments in favor of the pipeline are almost certainly a lot of hooey with regard to the jobs created.  But stopping the pipeline isn't going to stop anything else.  The oil locked in the Canadian tar sands is coming out no matter what, it is getting to market one way or the other, it's happening.  Did you ever see t...

Once upon a time I used to take a free weekend afternoon and do a grand circuit of Manhattan bookstores, up 2nd Ave. maybe stopping at Black Orchid mystery store if it was open, two Barnes & Nobles on E. 86th St., thru Central Park, 2 B&Ns on Broadway on the Upper West Side, then the Borders on Columbus Circle and the Borders on Park Ave. That was a long time ago! Now, it's been months and months and months since I've been to the mega-B&N on E. 86th that replaced two smaller and inadequate locations.  But I needed to buy three books by a couple published authors who are talking to us, I decided to buy them the old-fashioned way, the B&N was supposed to have all three. So up 2nd Avenue I went, for the first time in ages. Sadly, the United Artists Gemini at 2nd Ave. and 64th St. closed quietly in the fall, there's a "for lease" sign touting the "unique footprint" for retail.  According to Cinema Treasures, the theatre opened as the Columbia...