Since I’m still in NYC doing book stuff — and we’ve got reviews coming up in two more major NY papers in the next few weeks (fingers crossed they like Prisoner of Trebekistan as much as the Wall Street Journal) — I’m reposting a favorite pudu-like creature, the Mouse Deer.

I took the below picture just minutes before a cloudburst near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Look how big he is compared to those mushroomy plant thingies he’s standing near.  He’s teeny.  And actually, I should mention that this is a Lesser Mouse Deer.  But don’t say anything.  He probably has enough self-esteem troubles as it is.

Incidentally, the mouse deer is neither a deer nor a mouse.

If that seems confusing, consider the woodpecker.

(And if that amuses you, it’s one of about 800 jokes squeezed into Trebekistan, which also tells the story of how winning (and losing) on Jeopardy! ultimately led me to get lost in Malaysia and take this here pic, among other things.  For more, just poke around Trebekistan.com.)

As long as I’m on the east coast, I’ve just been invited to read from and sign Prisoner of Trebekistan at the Yale bookstore at 3 pm next Wednesday, October 11th.  This will be followed at 4 pm by what I take to be a private event, a Master’s Tea (which I take to be some sort of James Liptonish chat for the benefit of students) over on the campus itself.

Some guys at the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest humor magazine, are apparently behind this.  I’m grateful for the invitation.  Very cool.

More to come.

In NYC for both personal and book stuff, which are merging in interesting ways.  If you’ve read the book, this trip is almost a post-script by itself.

My sister is doing well enough now that she’s arriving tomorrow for her first-ever visit to New York, and I’ll be showing her around for a few days.  I’ll also probably visit with perhaps half a dozen characters in the book — the Luxembourgian Prince, the guy who makes paper explode in flame with his mind, the professor who beat me so badly that it was shown on airlines as in-flight entertainment, etc.  The whole thing culminates in a J!-related
visit to Radio City Music Hall in the company of a bunch of publishing people who
made the book possible.

Three bits of my life are converging at once. 
It’s pretty damned wonderful.  I am grateful to a whole bunch of people.

This was a nice surprise today, with the bottom line being:

I’m struck, however, by the sheer volume of plain errors in most reviews so far.  People who actually buy and read the book will recognize several in the Daily News piece, even though it’s only five sentences long.  (And I’m not objecting to being called a "struggling nobody."  Absolutely.  Aren’t we all?  Including lots of rich and famous people I can think of.  And some presidents.)

I don’t fault the reviewers.  This may just be a function of how book reviewing is done — apparently in considerable quantity, by reviewers who are deluged by a never-ending stream of incoming books.  I imagine Lucille Ball working the infamous assembly line of chocolates in the classic "I Love Lucy" episode, only with entire books to deal with instead of desserts.

Seriously, could you do that job well for very long?  I couldn’t.

This explains why Entertainment Weekly briefly alleged (until they graciously printed a retraction this week) that I’ve won "hundreds of thousands" in untelevised back-alley trivia competitions, and why the Daily News now ambiguously implies I won 13 times on the show, which is of course false.  Lucy is just shoving the whole of Prisoner of Trebekistan down her blouse, trying to keep up.

And that’s one visual I probably won’t be revisiting.

On the left, Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston forced to resign after covering up sexual advances on minors in the priesthood.

On the right, Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, whose resignation is being called for across the political spectrum after covering up sexual advances on minors in the Congress.

Wow.

Via TMW via ATR via Frameshop.