Originally posted January 27th, 2013
By Michael Konik
Books are far too long, right? Who has time for 300-pages of blabbering on about nothing? Do you know how many tweets you can read in the amount of time it takes to slog through one stupid novel?
A lot. And they’re usually way funnier. And unlike books they’ve got hashtags, like #betterthanactuallyreading.
Still, in their own weird way books can still be useful. Especially if they’re short. Especially if they’re short and they answer some niggling question you’ve been having, a question maybe you couldn’t answer to your satisfaction just by searching the Web.
We’ve published several of the old-fashioned boring kind of books. No one is interested in that. So now we’re pledging to get with the times and start publishing modern fun kind of books. Very short books. You don’t have to download them, or pay for them or anything. You can just read . . . → Read More: Very Short Books
Originally posted December 26th, 2012
By Michael Konik
We like our humor dark. We like our writers smart. So we’re fans of Heidi Julavits. With her husband Ben Marcus, himself another excellent writer, Julavits edits the literary-minded magazine and Website “The Believer,” where she’s published several sensational manifestos and mordantly funny stories. Among some of her brave stances: a call for the elimination of snarkiness from book reviews. Imagine that!
Originally posted December 16th, 2012
By Michael Konik
In the days preceding the publication of Michael Konik’s eighth book, a darkly satirical novel called “Becoming Bobby,” writer and Vegas Lit Managing Editor Arnold Snyder interviewed the author. Much was revealed about the creative process and Konik’s motivations for writing a book so drastically different than his previously published work. The interview originally appeared at Write-aholic.
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Michael Konik is one of those renaissance men who’s been everywhere, done everything, and somehow keeps finding new ways to make us normals envious of his talents. He’s been an actor, an improv standup comedian, a TV commentator, a jazz musician, a magazine columnist, author of seven nonfiction books (including one of the most acclaimed books of gambling stories in print, The Man With the $100,000 Breasts) and now we get his first novel, Becoming Bobby.
Originally posted October 7th, 2012
By Michael Konik
He had a name that you might call Dickensian, except Barry Commoner, who died this week at 95, was anything but his nomenclature. A man of the people, yes. Common, no.
Barry Commoner was uncommon.
Today, millions of Earth’s inhabitants believe that overpopulation, increased affluence, and advanced technology are the root causes of environmental degradation. Back in 1971, when Commoner published his catalytic book, “The Closing Circle: Man, Nature, and Technology,” his ideas were considered radical, annoying, and revolutionary. Gasoline at the time cost 36-cents per gallon. Automobiles cost around $2,500. The phrases “peak oil” and “Middle Eastern jihadi” had not entered the lexicon. Many conservatives – those who liked things just the way they were – couldn’t understand why anyone would want to disrupt a fossil fuel energy model that seemed to provide human beings with a “better” . . . → Read More: In Praise of Barry Commoner
Originally posted August 5th, 2012
By Michael Konik
I was young like you once. Don’t laugh. It seems impossible, I know. An old codger like me of 77! You probably can’t picture when I was only 47 and healthy, with all my own teeth and a libido that didn’t yet require boner pills.
Sure, that was three decades ago, and I look a lot different, what with the thinning hair, sloping shoulders, and cute little pot belly. But my memory is still sharp, even with all the weed I smoked. I remember perfectly what we were like 30 years ago, back in ’12, and I’m glad your professor asked you to do this project. I’m glad you’re talking to the older generation. Folks like me know what America was like back then, back in the time of Obama. The USA was different.
Originally posted April 10th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Thanks to the book leave of Los Angeles Times columnist Hector Tobar, readers have been treated to a remarkable upgrade: the occasional piece by investigative reporter cum essayist Gale Holland. Whether musing on lottery hangover or Santa Ana winds, she’s simulatenously poetic and precise, with the rhythm and grace of a serious writer. The smart move would be to give her a permanent home on Page 2.
Originally posted June 15th, 2011
By Michael Konik
For writers serious and otherwise, Paris has always been a muse, the aesthetically inspiring place-feeling-energy that sends men and women of letters to their journal (or typewriter or, more likely these days, their keypad). We all have something to say about the world’s most beautfiul city — or at least we feel as though we ought to have something to say. It requires some measure of humility and equanimity to admit that everything one wishes one might write about Paris has indeed already be written. Much of it by a man named Gopnik.
Read his book Paris to the Moon. Then go there yourself.
Then see what’s left to be said. Which is not much.
Then read the book again and be glad that writers as great as Monsiuer Gopnik share their insights and poetry with the world.
Originally posted September 12th, 2010
By Michael Konik
I’ve been doing it all wrong, trying to get folks to talk about and desire my quirky, difficult-to-categorize books, trying to get the media’s attention.
Recent events have demonstrated the truth about how things really work. I’ve got a new book out in 4 weeks about marijuana. It’s called “Reefer Gladness,” and I want everyone to buy it and, more important, read and think about it. So, hey!, hello! Everyone! Check it out:
For Immediate Release: Author Michael Konik Pledges to Use DEA Chief’s Official Photo as Custom Toilet Paper; Says He “Won’t Stop Wiping” Until Pot is Legalized.
Friends and confidantes worry that my “irresponsible” actions could bring harm to marijuana activists working to pass the historic Proposition 19 referendum. They say there will be repercussions. But you know what? Heroes don’t worry about repercussions; they do what’s right, because, you know, it’s right.
Originally posted August 22nd, 2010
By Michael Konik
Most of the people I’ve not met who recognize my name “know” me as a book writer, or as that guy who used to be on television blabbering about poker. A smaller subset might know me as the producer and proprietor of jazz records, or even as a former jazz vocalist.
Those are all cool associations. But none of them fully address what it is I really aspire to be.
For a several years I’ve had a secret. In a few weeks it will be completely out, a matter of the cultural record, and I’ll no longer be able to hide the truth: What I enjoy doing most is writing lyrics to music.
It comes naturally and easily to me, with none of the labor or anxiety one associates with the blocked and tortured artist. I don’t mean that writing lyrics is easy, exactly. I mean that composing . . . → Read More: A Secret I’ve Been Keeping
Originally posted July 31st, 2010
By Michael Konik
My new book, coming out in a couple of months, is about marijuana. Fans of my gambling and golf and dog books have been wondering what gives. Why this?
Aside from not wanting to repeat myself, I sought a subject that’s moving to the forefront of our ongoing cultural conversation, a subject about which people feel strongly, even if they’re not sure why. And I wanted a subject about which I could add something new to the dialogue.
For nearly 40 years I assiduously abstained from marijuana. I believed the lies. I was frightened. Then I decided to see for myself what everyone was so concerned about.
What I discovered was a plant that seemed in many ways to be Nature’s gift to the human brain. It had many powerful effects on me, but I was struck by the main one: Cannabis made me feel better. . . . → Read More: Why I Wrote “Reefer Gladness”
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Were you aware that bottled water is “bad for the environment,” “bad for public water sources,” and “bad for your wallet”?
Neither were we! It’s pretty funny to think of something so obviously good – so amazing, when you think about it – as inherently evil, or something. Bottled water…
The commonly understood reason why terrorists wish to kill and maim Americans is because they hate our freedoms. That’s what’s behind all the civilian violence: they hate our freedoms. You can go ahead and enumerate all the freedoms the terrorists hate, but it doesn’t really matter which ones –freedom to…
The whole world is worried about North Korea. We’re not. We think locally. The area around which we can walk or ride our bike is our concern. We’re civic-minded that way.
Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. We walk on its sidewalks almost every day, often to access the subway, which serves…
Certain simple ideas have the power to transform humanity (for the better). Creating an organic community garden is one of those life-changing concepts. The forward-thinking nonprofit, EnrichLA, builds gardens at schools, using students, parents, and community volunteers to construct irrigated planting beds, trees, flowers, and vegetables. In the tradition of Habitat for Humanity, it all happens [...]
