Why the potential closing of the Friendly’s chain might put a damper on Nicholson Baker’s output. (It’s where he does his rewriting.)

Here’s the answer, staring us right in the face.

(No wonder he’s resistant to further cuts!)

This infographic shows who is most likely to buy the iPhone 5,  now expected to be released on October 5, and why. I looked hard and couldn’t find my picture in there. (I’ll definitely be upgrading.) Given that I have a 3G (yikes!) and corresponding account, I’m wondering if I have the grandfathered-in unlimited data plan. Hope so.

Is this a music video or a commercial? (Cue the Razzles commercial:  “Is it a candy or a gum?”) Both. (Like Razzles, because if you swallowed them, they had better not be purely gum.) But either way, I love this because it’s fun. With this spot — a promo for season two of a not-terribly-inspired HBO “comedy” — they’re turning Luis Guzman, an actor I’ve always enjoyed, into a cult celebrity. If only the show were ever this clever. But I’m glad to have this.

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate in Massachusetts.

Kind of like stumbling across Bigfoot out in the wild, here’s a photo of an actual comics rack — with new comics in it! — in situ at Nau’s  Pharmacy in Austin, Texas. A big thanks to Doug Hackney for sending this along and helping us to keep the dream alive.

Note: Those top three comics are the new FF series. Highly recommended! Doug added that he was having a vanilla malt; my recommendation was that he try those comics.

Think someone loves their cat, and their Doctor, a bit too much?

Two or three nights a week, my thankless evening assignment is correcting kids’ homework before they turn it in the next day. The other nights, it’s my wife’s task. How she handles it I don’t know, although based on some of the texts she sends me, I think I would categorize it as “hysteria.” My approach is more varied:  thoughtful reasoning, subtle influence, quiet demands, trickery, or screaming and yelling.

Some recent examples:

• To get my 9-year-old, Dietrich, to improve at least part of his handwriting, I started calling him “Dietrina.” Because that’s what his handwritten name looked like on the top of each page. He didn’t like that. Now at least his name is legible. (How to keep the letter “a” distinct from the number “9” is a separate challenge.)
• To instill? in my daughter Emma’s? homework? the idea of where question marks go? and don’t go? when you’re talking? or writing? I started talking the way I hear her and her friends talk:  in a manner in which every phrase or pause merits a question mark. This was not a hit. But it did shepherd in a greater attention to  punctuation.
• Still with the 13-year-old, who is now doing simple algebra, a.k.a. algebra that I can still follow somewhat, we were at loggerheads over which of us had correctly reduced the equation; she argued for her result, which to me looked flat-out wrong. My rule of thumb in life is this:  Only argue a point of fact when you’re sure; this, more than anything, has allowed me to appear to be right more often than not. (This has frustrated my wife for, oh, 28 years now.) Since I wasn’t sure, I proposed this:  that Emma and I would each write down our answers on her homework, unattributed, and we’d let the teacher settle it. I now owe that teacher five bucks.
• Dietrich doesn’t want to draw things. I’m with him:  Why should nine-year-olds be expected to draw pictures that show a math problem when they’ve already solved them? To him it seems stupid, and I agree. But to me that’s immaterial:  the homework clearly states that one should solve the problem and then represent that solution with a drawing. We went around and around on this again town (actually, probably just one around; I’m not one for going around and around) until finally I resorted to Tactic #4, threatening, which if left unchecked leads inexorably to Tactic #4a, screaming and yelling. He obliged by providing a drawing to accompany each problem… except one. He just wouldn’t do the one. I recognized the face-saving effort in that, and inwardly applauded it (mark of character? independent thinker! bold future leader?) before resorting to Tactic #4a.

At some point in all this, my daughter said the wrong thing. Here is what is known to me as the wrong thing:  complaining. Some people have earned their right to complain — the people with no fresh drinking water; the people in Lagos, Nigeria who live in the bottom of a pit in the world’s largest garbage dump; the people with missing limbs and PTSD; the long-term unemployed — you get the point. Complaining about homework, especially homework in our suburban public school system, where it might total 30 minutes an evening, gets you nowhere. So when Emma complained about “all this homework,” which involved writing a one-page letter theoretically addressed to the Colonial English court in support of the redcoat side of the Boston Massacre, I tried Tactic #1, thoughtful reasoning. The gist of my argument (and yes, it is square, dull, and plodding, and yes, I have descended into Babbittry  — but hey, I don’t know if Sinclair Lewis ever had to raise children who didn’t want to do their homework):

Me: “You go to school only 180 days a year. In Japan, they go 210 days, in South Korea it’s 220, and in China it’s 250. You’ve got no reason to complain.  They’re competing with us, and they’re winning.”

Her, tearfully:  “Why are they competing with me? Why don’t they just leave me alone? I didn’t do anything to them!”

That was hard to argue with. So I made my way back to Tactic #3:  subtle demands.

So how was that 24-hour-long Mike Daisey show anyway?

Judging from this (written by my pal Mead Hunter!), pretty good.

Who knew I could be so prescient? On Friday, I entitled a post about Netflix “Notflix” — and now it’s true. I just got an email from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Here’s the summary:  By way of course correction from their 60% price increase, they’re changing the name of the DVD service to Qwikster.

Wow. Thanks for letting me know.  I feel so much better now. Here’s the  way Reed says this will work:

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

Wow. I feel so much better now. Now that there are two separate line items, and two separate names, I wouldn’t at all mind paying 60% more. Neither, I’m sure, will the estimated one million people who’ve recently quit your service or downgraded their accounts. Because now you have two names. Sure, we’ll be paying 60% more, but we will be getting 200% as many names.

Hats off to whoever wrote this line for Reed:  “There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!).” Having had to find ways myself now and then to dress up bad news as good, I commend you for the attempt, whoever you are. Yay! No pricing changes (which implies “no further increases”), except, waitaminnit, that means you won’t be undoing that 60% price increase. Well, at least we get to keep the 200% of names. And, actually, you did save me some money — because my account is still canceled.