This weekend I traveled to my elder sister’s house for a pig roast. The reason for this event is that my younger sister will be getting married next month and the two soon to be joined families were getting together to celebrate. It was to be a day of food, family and binge drinking. Unfortunately, I had to close the day before the big gala, which meant I would get home after midnight only to get up seven hours later so I could drive five hours to southern Wisconsin. It wasn’t exactly one of my better ideas, but I didn’t have many options.

Now I’m sure you might be wondering why Anna doesn’t drive and it is a pretty simple answer, she doesn’t. You see we have this rule (Well, it’s her rule which means it is my rule) that she drives when we go visit her family, and I drive when we visit mine. This leads to some disparity in the hours logged behind the wheel for a few reasons. First, her family only lives two hours away in Brainerd, MN. None of my relatives are any closer then five hours away. Second, she doesn’t drive during inclement weather be it rain, sleet or the evening.

Perhaps you might have caught as to how these rules might limit the potential to fairly allocate our drive time. You would have caught this because I informed you about the issue beforehand. Basically, unless it is a sunny day while we are driving to Brainerd, Anna isn’t driving. It doesn’t matter if I only got a few hours of sleep or if I have had an appendage lopped off, the driving is all on me.

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Allow me for a moment, if you will, to wax rhapsodic about one of my favorite literary organizations, that being McSweeney’s. Every quarter McSweeney’s publishes their Quarterly Concerns, which is not only one of the coolest literary magazines imaginable, and the design of the magazine is often as amazing and fascinating as the works contained within it. McSweeney’s also publishes books from obscure and long forgotten authors, as well as works from widely read and respected modern authors, often times selling these works for ridiculously cheap prices (it is not uncommon that once a month a book be reduced to $.01) and often times donating much or all of the proceeds to various charities. McSweeney’s is an organization devoted to the advancement of art and literature and I am proud to give my money to such an esteemed organization.

Several years ago Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity fame) teamed up with several other writers to produce a new semi-monthly magazine from McSweeney’s entitled The Believer. It was filled with reviews and stories and original works and Amy Sedaris giving sex advice by proxy, everything one would want from a literary magazine. The Believer also accomplished two very important things, at least in my little corner of the world. The April ‘06 issue contained an interview with Paul Giamatti that was so fascinating and enjoyable I can safely call it the best interview I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The Etgar Keret interview in the same issue isn’t half bad either. But that was just the beginning, as later I would read their September ‘06 issue, simply referred to as the games issue. The issue was so captivating I have no qualms in naming it the best issue of any magazine I have ever read. Thus knocking off the July of ‘84 issue of Ranger Rick, a feat I previously deemed impossible. (more…)