BobHarris.com - One fine day

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Blogs and news

One fine day

Tag it now -

Wednesday, 10 November 2004

Just sharing...

Computer problems. The "delete" key on this machine literally flew off in the middle of typing, skittering across the table and hurling itself in despair on the floor.

Apparently I make entirely too many mistakes.

This should surprise absolutely no one.

So, off to the Apple store, which in Los Angeles is in a precious little outdoor mall called The Grove despite a rather notable lack of trees. Imagine your own local shopping mall suddenly re-named "The Rain Forest," and you get the effect.

Still, nobody notices. Angelenos seem to be able to surf quite comfortably in flowing bullshit, every bit as much as the red states. Ours just has a designer fragrance.

The parking garage, by the way, has a concierge desk. Just in case you forgot you were in L.A.

My computer repaired, thus enabling countless more mistakes on my part, I head out, passing the huge stadium-style multiplex theatre in the process of putting up velvet ropes and floodlights for a once-in-a-lifetime Special Event, if not a World Premiere. Sure enough: something called Seed Of Chucky.

Surely a fine piece of cinema.

Driving back up Wilshire, shortly after being almost run off the road by an SUV, I pass...

A dead body.

Honest. A dead body. Face up, in a little grassy bit along the roadside. Cops. White sheet. Police tape. Just like an episode of CSI, without all the perfect cheekbones.

No idea what happened. But there was another guy on the ground, apparently wounded although I didn't rubberneck long enough to be sure. No ambulances yet. I think the cops may have just shot him.

So, after a bunch of other work-related stuff, I finally get home to settle in and look at this site and the world around me. I learn:

There were tanks -- tanks! -- at the protest outside the Federal Building on Wilshire last night.

Possibly innocently, I suppose (because tanks just show up randomly all the time, like at weddings and swim meets and pee wee softball games, who-ee you can hardly get in for all the tanks), but in any case for which nobody has yet found any official explanation. There might be one. I hope it's good.

And Bush has appointed Enron, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib as our new Attorney General.

OK, I am officially crabby now. I will resume posting shortly on several things already under discussion here.

Right now I need a pudu.