It’s a few days late, but let’s mark it anyway: Pictured (by the Lagrange News, no less) above is Mark the Shark, celebrating the New Year with the traditional polar bear swim held at his lake house in Lagrange County, Indiana. I didn’t go this year, for the first time in ages (slightly hungover, only slightly). Glad he’s still manipulating the media in his evil way.

More evidence, if I needed any more, that journalism is a sucker’s game: Just got back from my first Writing for Television class. Our first assignment is to start a clip file of newspaper stories we can use for narratives. Yes, that’s right: We’ve been ordered to find our raw material, and then rip it from the headlines.

This came after she sketched out the pros and cons of being a TV writer, and one of the pros was: Lots of money. “As a journalist, I’ve long suspected we were the poorly compensated legmen for ‘Law & Order,'” I said after class. “Nice to have it confirmed.” She took the joke well, I’m relieved to say.

Jon Carroll, as usual, makes a 600-word casual on shopping something you want to read all the way to the end:

The in-store music is suddenly familiar. An electric organ. Good Lord, that’s the long middle section of “Light My Fire.” The Lizard King is not dead; he is merely in the stomach remedies section.

Oliver Stone, back in his “I can take drugs and make movies anyway” phase, turned the story of the Doors into an epic of self-destruction. Now it’s just Lawrence Welk for daytime shoppers. I’d love to take your LSD, sir, but I need to buy a package of Bean-O.

What I said about how lots of amateur bloggers write better than lots of highly paid op-ed columnists? I was talking about The Poor Man. Among others.

…physician, heal thyself. NYT story; requires registration.

I had a big entry written about this WashPost piece on the popular/literary divide, but Alan logged me out and the whole thing went down the memory hole, dammit.

Anyway, read and respond. I have to go; more later, but this now: If Stephen King wants to lump Elmore Leonard and Tom Clancy in the same sentence, he’s a stone jive-ass and I take back every good thing I said about “Misery.” If not, we can talk.

Also, Elmore Leonard should get a National Book Award before he dies. But y’all go read.

Two cops see a strange sight in the skies over Huntington. Money quote: “It wasn’t any kind of flying machine that I can think of,” Olinger told The Herald-Press. “And it’s not like a ’50s flying saucer. It was that big, but it didn’t have a hump in the middle.”

Yes, the ’50s model flying saucers did have that hump, didn’t they?

Amy asked what I’m taking this term. I’m not sure yet, but I will say this: I’m shopping. That is, I’m going to a bunch of classes the first couple weeks, and then I’ll drop the ones that don’t engage me. I didn’t shop enough last term, carefully selecting everything from the catalog ahead of time. My advisor implied this is one of the issues that alienate students from teachers — teachers resent being treated like sweaters at the Gap, and hate the drop/add chaos at the beginning of the term — but too bad. This is my last term, and I’m not wasting any of it.

Today I went to a 400-level poli sci class, the name of which I forget, but it’s something about how special-interest groups pressure the political process, which might be helpful for my new-media study plan. Undecided. Then I ducked into a 200-level creative writing class on impulse and loved it — it’s a lock, I think. The afternoon was a small lecture class on Russian picaresque fiction. Undecided. Tomorrow: Back-to-back public-policy seminars in “networked society” and “changing economics of knowledge.” Friday: Writing for Television. (Why? Why? WHY?! Because I liked screenwriting so much, that’s why.) Mondays are the second part of the screenwriting class, in which we rewrite the screenplay we worked so hard on first term.

Whatever I choose, it’ll be the wrong thing. One of the fellows took a class on medicine and society last term that was fascinating to hear about even second-hand. And someone came to the meeting tonight raving about a comp lit class combining romanticism and Buddhism — the first 10 minutes of the class, the prof had everyone eat an orange in silence.

I just checked the catalog. It conflicts with my poli sci class. More shopping ahead, I think.

Why so much writing? Because I’m a writer, and one of the best things a writer can do to improve is to try new forms. I’ve been so depressed and rut-bound the last few years that I’d forgotten this, and one of the truly wonderful discoveries about the first term was how much I enjoyed doing so. All bitching about the size of the job notwithstanding, I was delighted to actually finish thing, as flawed as it was.

On the subject of shopping, I just bought a down parka suitable for polar expeditions on eBay, at about 66 percent off retail. It’s 8 degrees as I write this; it may be the bargain of the day.

A mild illness overtook my holiday-sapped body yesterday, a mid-level queasiness that stopped short of vomiting but kept me pinned to the couch for most of the day. Bad news: I had no good books to read. Good news: “Lolita,” the Kubrick version, was on TV. I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen it all the way through, and my opinion has now come full-circle: It’s a movie with some wonderful moments that, ultimately, fails. All movie versions of “Lolita” will fail, because even a movie using a barely legal actress in the title role will never be able to portray the simplest, most basic thread of the narrative — the seduction and corruption of a 12-year-old girl by a sleazy European. It’s a nasty business, and movies shrink from nasty, or at least that type of nasty. The other layers of the book are, I figure, just way beyond the screen. There’s a reason people say, “The book was better.”

Also: Kill “Sex and the City” now. Now, I say, and spare us any future reference by Sarah Jessica Parker to “my new favorite website, Google dot com.” Does anyone on the writing staff actually use Google? And if so, have they ever heard any human being refer to it as “Google dot com?” Didn’t think so. (Someone’s probably trying to get in on the IPO.) Plus, the girls are all looking like what they are, at least on HBO — middle-age babes who’ve been sleeping around too long. Poor Kim Cattrall. Stop her now.

Looking for something good to read? You could do worse than Richard Cohen on Grover Norquist’s comparison of the estate tax to the Holocaust. (Yes, really.)

Me, I’m off to class

At the North American International Auto Show, it’s not the supercool Hollywood-style display spaces all over Cobo Hall.

It’s not the free swag — tote bags, food, alcohol — that makes you feel like such a piggie at the trough.

It’s not the calla lilies and lucky bamboo, set in a line of perfectly plain crystal vases, each of which leans at about a 30-degree angle, artfully illuminated by a pinpoint halogen spot.

It’s not the daiquiris they’re pouring at the Mini Cooper booth, where you can make a little postcard of yourself driving one.

It’s not the computerized fountain at the Jeep display, where JEEP CHEROKEE 4X4 is written in falling water.

It’s not the Mexican bean-dip thing they had going on there, either.

Nor is it the open bar at the Jaguar / Range Rover space.

It’s not the chrome cutaway engines and floor models that are dusted, like, every 30 seconds, all of which somehow leads to the illusion that new cars can stay new forever and engines need not be fouled with stuff like gasoline and oil.

It’s not the plasma-screen video over at Mercedes, and at Audi, and at pretty much everywhere else, too.

It’s not that having a press credential lets you do all this stuff before the crowds arrive next week, and it all gets shoulder-to-shoulder.

It’s just that the cars look so, so cool.