[BID ON THE BOOK HERE. SERIOUSLY. IT'S FOR CHARITY.]

Realize: this is the best copy of this book in existence. Period. Bar none. And at a ceremony when the books and authors being honored have the sales of their books disproportionately inverted by their quality, it only seemed appropriate to get everybody in on The Big Joke of the evening: that more people would read Sarah Palin's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Bullshit than any of the nominees' and winners' books, combined.

We offered the book up to some of our favorite literature and media luminaries that were in the house that evening. Dave Eggers—that asshole!—was very nice about refusing to sign our book, probably because it wasn't for his 826 charity. But he was kind. How's that for an endorsement?

Not good enough? What about super awesome sleepy Columbia MFA graduate and Freaks and Geeks actor James Franco signing our book?

Yes, this man signed our book. Okay, Jim. Maybe you made our photographer cry. But you did this one for the children. You're okay, today. Also, the nerds at Slate think you're The Sexiest Man With A Pulse, for what it's worth (read: the most ostentatious pillow talk ever). Congrats. But what if an awesome hunky dreamy movie star with an MFA from Columbia isn't enough reason to spend lots of money on a book people drew on?

Maybe 2009 National Book Award winner Colum McCann signing this bad boy is! YES THAT IS COLUM MCCANN SIGNING THE PALIN BOOK. This took a lot—a lot—of convincing. Charity, huh? But it's Sarah Palin's book! Sarah Palin! I can't put my name on anything of hers! Are you sure this is for charity? What charity?!

Funny you should ask, Mr. McCann. I've picked a charity so great, you can't even say their name out loud without feeling awful for never having done something for them until now: Save The Children. Yeah, you're gonna stiff these guys?

They've done great work bringing literacy programs to kids in need across the country, among other great things they've done for kids that otherwise don't get things done for them that should be. If I were running these programs, I would have them all reading Gawker Weekends and Calvin and Hobbes, because that's what I grew up on, but I'm not, and these people are, and we're all better off. You don't have to buy the book to give a buck. Oh, and if you complain about the charity I picked, I'll come to your house and personally beat you with an unsigned copy of Ms. Palin's 2010 NBA Fiction Winner. But yes, people actually signed this thing.

You want proof?

2009 NBA Fiction Prize winner Collum McCann (fourth page, center) really, actually did take this much convincing. He wrote: "'For we must love this poor earth, for we have not seen another...' Go Obama!" Awesome.

Ricky Van Veen and Neel Shah marvel at how incredibly awesome this book is, while Jessica Coen is laughing to herself imagining Sarah Palin read her fabulous, fierce nugget of wisdom.

Here's the guy who I thought was Toph Eggers, right. I got everyone's name wrong that night. At one point I think I remember identifying Keith Waldrop as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Jeff Bercovici signed the book as Dave Eggers, since Dave Eggers doesn't care about Saving The Children so much as making them read George Saunders or whatever.

Here're the first two pages:

And here're the second two:

And here's the full list of who we know we got:

2009 NBA Fiction Winner, Let The Great World Spin author Colum McCann.

Spider Man 2 actor and recent Columbia MFA graduate James Franco wrote (third page, top-right): "FUCK YEAH!" with a strange vampire-smiley face.

2008 NBA Fiction Finalist Salvatore Scibona (second page, middle-right) gave her "hugs."

2008 NBA Fiction Finalist Rachel Kushner (second page, bottom-left) offers her insight on context clues regarding snowmobiles.

I Was Told There Would Be Cake author by night and Random House book publicist by day Sloane Crosley offered her encouragement "storming the castle." True story: Sloane had no idea what she was signing.

The Seymore Hersh of the Sunday Styles, New York Times writer Allen Salkin took up the entire bottom-third of the fourth page ensuring that I wasn't conning him. He also drew a fairly accurate drawing of himself.

Dave Eggers! As performed/signed by former Portfolio and current Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici (fourth page, top-right).

Columnist Katie Bakes tried to start a #hashtag, while the New York Observer's publishing beat gangsta Leon Neyfakh wrote...something.

Vice and New York Press writer Jamie Peck (second-page, bottom-right, I think) talked to her about wolves. Someone who isn't Vice writer Jamie Peck, apparently, talked to her about wolves. Claim your identity here!

College Humor founder Ricky Van Veen gave Sarah a big CHILL, BABY, CHILL while Former Radar, Gawker, and Page Six writer Neel Shah got tactful.

The Awl writer Alex Balk.

Flavorwire's Kelsey Keith had more sage advice for Palin's future career aspirations.

Cartoonist Laurie Sandell drew a woman holding a smoking gun on the third page. Get it?

Gawker Past and Present: Media Overlord Nick Denton and current Gawker Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Snyder both thanked her for pageviews—heh—while founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers wished her luck, and Gawker J²-era/New York Magazine editor Jessica Coen gave her hair tips.

Oh, and me, lending to this the extent of my own profound, political insight.

We also got Gawker's Altarcations writer Phyllis Nefler. and some guy who looks like Dave Eggers brother, who turned out not to be Dave Eggers' brother after I thought he was Dave Eggers' brother. His name is Alec Friedman.

[Alas, because we were drunk, there may be signatures in here we missed. Seriously! If you see your John Hancock—heh: cock—please email me with it. It's for charity. You don't want children growing up to one day actually think that was funny, do you? Right. Neither do I.]

The book's sanctity has been preserved by only having been signed on the night of the 2009 National Book Awards, by attendees of the ceremony. That said, if you win it and want to have anybody else in the Gawker Media offices sign it, sure, fuckit, I'll get them to sign. Hell, we know people who are experts on books that are imaginary that are supposed to be real, and I bet we could get them to sign if that's what you wanted. Or I could eat the book, or I could drop-kick it, or I could detonate it with whatever fireworks you send us, or I could read it, but who's that awful? Not you, potential charity-giver. Anyway. You could do any of those things, or none of them, and just keep it as one of the most awesome literary collectibles ever. You know? You know.

Because one day, you can show this to your children's children, and tell them: I bought this so you could see how happy the people were before it was like this. Now that James Franco is the new Daniel Mendelsohn, and every book published is full of shit, and they all come from blogs, and they're the only things that sell, and they are read on calculators, there was this. There was this night. There were these drunk people signing Frau Palin's book.

And then you can blame it on this guy:

But seriously, it's for charity. Buy the goddamn book. Now. Please. Our auction is here.

[Photographs via Gawker Party Crash photog Mo Pitz.]

Not exaggerating. Martha Stewart got asked by CNN why Sarah Palin's polarizing. Martha calls her "boring," "confused," "a dangerous person," and a "real problem." The best is when Martha throws down on a patronizing "good for her" when told about her book sales and then, after, "I wouldn't watch her if you pay me." SHOTS FIRED!

And then there's this wonderful clip. Palin dipped out of a signing early, and got booed by her fans, who were pissed that they didn't get their books signed. It goes without saying that Palin's fans sound just as patently insane hating her as they do loving her, but hey, you can't put lipstick on an neglectful idol, or whatever. Or you can, but, she's still gonna stiff you for a book signature.

This sounds like the worst book tour ever.

...As opposed to former New York Times $25 and Under food writer Peter Meehan and Momofuku Cookbook chef David Chang's book tour. Which goes something like this:

WHY was somebody calling me? Didn't they know I was still DRUNK from the night before? It was 5:00 a.m. Tosi explained to me what was going on. I had to get to Ssam Bar to pick up her and Gabe, a cook who'd be coming down to help us, and head to LGA. I was fucked up. Tosi wanted to kill me. I was literally falling over in a drunken stupor like Dudley Moore in Arthur. My life had two-day hangover written all over it. Arrive at airport at 5:50 for a 6:30 am flight and magically got on. For some reason, the flight got delayed for four hours... but it was all news to me: I pilled myself out, so I came to on the runway in Memphis.

See, Sarah Palin! If you're gonna do the book tour of a dangerous person who doesn't give a shit about pissing people off, there's a right way, and a wrong way. As far as signing books goes, if you ever need help, don't be afraid to ask. We might know a thing or two about it to help you on your way.

[Photo by Shealah Craighead, via the Going Rogue Facebook Group.]

So: we got teased yesterday and this morning with two great pieces on Glenn Beck talking in his strange, voodoo-esque language on whatever way he plans to molest and exploit the minds of whoever will lend him an open ear to aim his ideological piss into. The first was the aforementioned Politico note, which quoted Beck teasing his big ideas on his show. But this was fun! Remember that scary 9/12 Project that was presumed to have gone away because only crazy people listened to crazy people and hey, there can't be that many crazy people who are that organized. We call those cults, and there are lots of them, sure. But they don't represent any kind of frightening majority. Because crazy people need crazy leaders with power and a platform and there aren't really any of those out there as completely insane as the 9/12ers are, right?

Christine Drawdy, a Florida event promoter involved in the tea party and 9/12 movements who is listed as the travel coordinator for the 2010 march, said the permit for the march is in the name of The 9.12 Project's administrator, Yvonne Donnelly. Though Drawdy stressed that Beck "is not the leader of" the 912 movement, she added "all he has to do is say something, and they'll jump."

And by 'jump,' she means, kill people.

Brian Stetler at the New York Times also talked to Beck before today. Stetler's a sizable dude, not someone I imagine can be easily intimidated, nice as he is. Really, he could probably bounce a guy Glenn Beck's size easily.

That said, I imagine he'll be sleeping in the fetal position tonight:

"We'll be looking for ways to get people involved in politics," [Beck] said. "I hear people saying, ‘O.K., now what?' They're calling their representative, but it's time to get more proactive."

Right. So. What was Beck's big plan? He unveiled it today, starting with his website, which is the image you see at the top of this post. One more thing before we get there, though. This video, taken at a Borders yesterday, of Beck teasing out The Plan.

"We're gonna be asking of you some big things." Funny, I've been told the same thing by my bosses, but the first thought that went through my head never involved any kind of civil war and/or revolution.

But hey, Beck: he's just passionate! No way could this entire rollout involve the guy cashing in.

No way could all of this buzz, this entire thing, all of this talk about "community organizing"—taking The Dirty Word of President Barack Obama's past and platform, and putting it to their own new, awesome, terrible uses—no way could Beck be leading his flock into spending some cash.

Funny, then, that they found out that The Plan was for them to spend more money on Glenn Beck, The Brand. Observe his two key points from the manifesto written on his website:

- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.

Kinda sounds like a cross between Avon and the Left Behind series, right? Except with scarier salespeople who have drier hands.

Yeah, Glenn Beck's got a plan: for the next 100 years, he's gonna keep writing books and making TV shows, and his fans are going to keep buying into both of them. It's kind of genius. His entire multimedia empire is predicated on one, long, 100-year plot arc: that the main character will make viewers'/listeners'/readers' lives better so long as they're with him every step of the way. The man will make references to revolution, to change, to bringing everything back to a fundamental state. The beautiful irony he has to see and embrace—in order for this to have worked as long as it has—is that the only real movement he'll be making is into better cars and larger houses. The kinds that are far away from the rabid zombies who salivate at every vague allusion to blood and violence Mama Bird spits out like discarded pieces of chewing gum for them to suck every last grain of sweet flavor out of. The kind, if provoked, and unleashed, are as much as a threat to anybody as they are to him. A "random act of violence" is never really that random, is it? Especially when the word "radical" gets thrown around over, and over, and over.

More than anything, this guy is a threat to the proliferation of rational thought. Beck knows that there're people in the world who listen to this kind of nonsense without processing it any way but through their emotions, because they're tired, hungry, scared, or angry, and maybe, sometimes, rightfully so. Then again, so are most of us! But when you have an asshole like Beck running the con, one thing leads to another, and shit like this happens. Believe me, nothing would bring me more joy than to watch Glenn Beck get the Downfall-meme treatment after his empire of exploitative bullshit comes crumbling down under the weight of the inevitable rise of the truth: that this man is a crook, a fraud, a shyster, and a very skilled, sophisticated con artist. But who wants it to get that far?

Glenn Beck does have one up on Hitler in terms of likability: a decent Kermit impersonation. I'm pretty sure nobody with such an affection for Muppets can possibly be capable of anything too terrible.

Then again, evil, as we're all aware, is a scary, subversive force, and comes in all forms, at all times, with little to no discretion. Beware.

[Top image via Glenn Beck's website. Bottom image via Bert Is Evil.]

Speakeasy reports that the Regretsy mastermind is April Winchell, well-known comedic human. Notably, her new book publishers admit:

"We're not going to use everything from the Web site," said Jill Schwartzman, the purchasing editor at Random House. "The ones we're going to pick are the ones that work for a book-reading audience."

So read everything on Regretsy.com for free, or buy the book and read less, for a fee. Just mail April Winchell a check and continue to read her website!

"Look up, see that?" An editor at Reagan Arthur drunkenly smiled during the boozy, Bat Mitzvah-y after party held on the balcony overlooking the ballroom of the Cipriani Wall Street, and woozily pointed up to a perch some 25-feet above the dance floor. "See where the DJ is?" We stared above us. "Next year, it's not going to be a DJ. It's gonna be a Kindle." Brilliantly wasted drunkspeak that it was, she had a point. And she couldn't have been the only one thinking it.

Just like film, TV, and music, everything's going digital, and some of the people in that room might be scared shitless that their product's going the way of the buffalo. Hence, the hysterical irony of Google sponsoring the party. The guys hoarding — and then giving away for free — the beautiful words that should cost money to buy, those fucking guys who call it "content" and are mainlining it into concentration camps of data, those were the guys holding the party.

Every year, media industries have their traditional back-patting ceremonies where they heap upon their products awards saluting their best and brightest. Cynics see it as a way to drive sales to products that need it (see: The Oscars, The Tonys, etc). The pompous, starfucky nonsense put in plain view at awards for film, TV, and music doesn't stick, here, and it shouldn't since basically everyone in the room more or less knows each other. The dance floor's raging and you get the feeling that people are genuinely humbled by winning. Truly, it's nice. And the general consensus was that it was a fun, fun party. That always helps.

Mo and I showed up to Cipriani's Wall Street ballroom around our invite's stated start time of 10pm, along with all the rest of the media folk there to get fucked up on the cheap. We were turned away immediately: The ceremony's running long, it'll be another half an hour 'til the after-party. We stood outside with a bunch of publishing assistants while I decided whether to put on my tie, which was rolled up in my pocket. "There're people in tuxes in there, goddamnit" Mo warned me. The invite said "festive attire." I decided to put my tie on. "You look like a Young Republican," Mo warned me.

The reason for the delay? The explanation I got was that Gore Vidal gave a "sad, rambling, 20-minute speech." His opening salvo: "'Most Presidents fear assassination. It is my impression I shall vanish from your view because I have been fired,' said Roosevelt." It's bad enough that your industry's fighting for its life. Letting your keynote speaker deliver an unintentionally sad requiem couldn't have been the best move.

We were let in to bum-rush the party just as host Andy Borowitz introduced the final award: the prize for the year's Best Fiction Book. I'd been having a cigarette with a guy who'd introduced himself as a member of James Franco's Columbia MFA class before we walked in. "$20 on McCann," I thought to myself, except, I said it out loud. Whoops. Sure enough, Colum McCann's book Let the Great World Spin, won. Someone knocked over a chair standing up applauding for him. Franco's classmate laughed at me. "What?" I looked at him. "It's the only book anybody's heard of." How could McCann's book not have won?

But maybe that's why my woozy, wobbly-footed editor friend was smiling when she stared up at the DJ and made her draconian prediction of a Kindle telling us how to dance instead of the Jersey DJ bumping Top 40 hits all night. Because there's still some esprit de corps amongst book authors, because they still care, because there's still a reason to get crunk. Books might be fucked, but at least they're worth saving. It's not all bad.

Mo and I got drunk and took pictures. We also got people to sign a magical book for charity, which you'll learn about later. In the mean time: here's who we saw. All of these people are drunk.

This fucking guy. James Franco was surrounded by a gaggle of women all night, and yes, he was awake. He was kind enough when we approached him, he even helped us with out secret project for the evening. But as I turned the corner, he started asking questions of Mo: Who was that? Who're you from? Mo sheepishly told him. And Franco, who Mo has swooned over since Freaks and Geeks, told her to fuckoff. Mo was sad, James Franco.
Matt Berninger, lead singer of The National, will not fuck you over. At least this month. He's Mr. November. And he was also totally shocked when I recognized him. So was I! But also: elated! Someone whose shit I knew comprehensively! Him and his wife Carin Besser, who—the more you know!—among other places has written for the New Yorker, were ridiculously nice. And showed up right before the party started, probably for the booze. But seriously: The National! This picture is awesome.
2009 National Book Award Fiction winner Colum McCann was all smiles. He took the subway to the ceremony. He can now pay for his cab ride back home with the giant piece of gelt around his neck.
And Then We Came To The Bar. Gawker Status Galley author Joshua Ferris was a very nice person. This is how Scott Rudin taught him how to hold champers: two at a time, while you crush the competition into the next dimension with your other hand.
Dave Eggers not only didn't want to pose for a picture, but he didn't want to contribute to the Gawker Charity Book Project! Asshole! [Actually, he was nice about saying no. But still: Asshole!] Probably because it wasn't for his own set of nonprofit kids' reading centers, 826. Gotta admire him for sticking to his guns, though. The man knows a dollah holla, amirite? BUT!
Heh, we did get little brother Toph "I May Have Had Sex With Julia Allison" Eggers, too. Note the flames in the background indicating the convergence of supernatural forces as Toph Eggers signs a piece of Gawker Media, LLC property. Did we tell him where we were from? No. Did we tell him Dave signed the book? Maybe. But is it for a good cause? Hell yeah! (For the record, Jeff Bercovici signed it as Dave). You've got to be kidding me. I've been informed via email that this isn't Dave Eggers' brother. I'm now going to find whoever told me it was and punch them in the face. For the children. Apparently, it's this guy, Alec Friedman. #GonnaGoCryNow.
Left to right: Jonathan Lethem's assistant Fred, who's first name I finally remembered but who's last name I still can't! Center is R.K. Ghansah, and to her right: James Franco's aforementioned MFA classmate, the very affable Mr. Mike Spies. Names! We didn't get 'em. Party reporting is hard work, people, especially when there's drink to be drank. But let me assure you all of these people are very nice despite how badly I totally screwed the pooch on IDing them.
Sloane Crosley was told there would be booze. Instead she got New York's Boris Kachka. Eh? [*Makes scales with hands*.]
The Seymour Hersh of the Styles Section, Allen Salkin, with rum scion Jeffrey Zarnow. Salkin made me promise I wouldn't talk any shit and that we'd have an armistice for this one night, so long as he did me a solid. And he did! Stickin' to my word here, Allen. Allen was very nice and didn't punch me in the face and he was not celebrating any made-up bullshit holidays that evening.
Former Gawker Intern turned Page Six reporter Neel Shah with Vice's executive editor (or however they title their employees over there: "King Kong BigDick of Editorial," etc) Chris Cechin. Where are the drugs, Chris? I asked him. He didn't know. I believed him.
Founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers, with friend.
Neel Shah, New York Magazine's Magical Princess of Online Domination, former Gawker editor Jessica Coen, the pixilated Alex Balk, and former BlackBook EIC and Maxim editor Steve Garbarino. Balk told me he'd "rape (my) kittens" or something if I didn't obstruct his face. I believed him.
College Humor's Ricky Van Veen thinks you should look at some funny shit going down....
....which was New York magazine busybody Chris Wilson and former BlackBook/Maxim editor Steve Garbarino getting kicked out by Cipriani security for smoking inside. Whoops! I was later informed: This is how Chris finds out that the sun is down. By the way, this is my new favorite Party Exit Strategy: just light up in the middle of the room until you're forced to leave, and be like, What? I though that shit was cool here? Y'all are lame. Peace. Brilliant!
Daily Finance media reporter Jeff Bercovici lends his signature to a very special book, with Jamie Peck, who recently wrote about this crazyass fairy convention for VICE. Jamie also writes for the New York Press, The L, Suicidegirls, and a bunch of other badass indie fuck you and The Pope rock places like those. Her writing resume is basically like, if you're a dude and you live in New York and you have a blogger fetish—which is kind of really fucked up, like, really—than Jamie Peck is definitely your "Dream Weaver Moment" girl. And I also feel like an asshole for forgetting her name. But hey, look, Jeff Bercovici, who writes about the media, is signing a book.
Bonnie Jo Campbell, who was nominated with Colum McCann for the Fiction Prize for her book American Salvage, didn't win. But seriously, no joke: does that not look like someone who's legitimately happy to be there?
Gawker Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Snyder, in the default. "You clean up well!" He exclaimed. Jesus, man, thanks for the supreme vote of confidence. These people who manage writers, they think we have an existential crisis every time we try to put pants in the morning. It's unreal. WE KNOW HOW TO PUT ON PANTS.
Blogger/columnist extraordinaire, Katie Bakes, with the New York Observer's Status Galley Gangsta Leon Neyfakh.
The Mark of the Beast isn't 666. It's this guy's signature. He might not be drunk.
James Franco, you dick. You made Mo sad. She's not even part-time. Asswizzard! Mo was going to cry, but not because she was drunk, even though she was.
I try on the future of literature: Facebook! UGHHH. Seriously people, if you let books die out, you'll have to live with the proliferation of writing at this level.

It can best be described as a stunning piece of experimental metafiction. What if a rote, ghost-written political memoir by a second-place vice presidential candidate was penned by a Faulknerian unreliable narrator? It's like The Turn of the Screw, only the ghost is Steve Schmidt. Our protagonist, "Sarah Palin," deliberately withholds and exaggerates, even dropping into italicized internal monologue to signify that a real whooper's on the way.

Palin's grasp of American dialect is more S.E. Hinton than Twain, of course (while occasionally stunning in its experimental ambition, it is her first published work). But what it occasionally lacks in conversational verisimilitude ("a big darn deal"?) it usually makes up for in unexpected humor. Here she is describing the moment when "Sarah Palin" first learns that she's "pregnant" with the mysterious talisman "Trig":

Slowly a pink image materialized on the stick. Holy geez!

"Trig" inspires this delightfully batty biblical allusion:

Yes Lord, I thought. My name is Sarah, but my husband isn't Abraham. His name is Todd!

Did Todd offer Sarah to the Pharaoh and come away with rewards and riches? When Todd asked for another son, did Sarah offer him her handmaiden, Meg Stapleton? So many questions!

Every so often, the tone abruptly (and cleverly) switches to a savage parody of the pretentious poetics that the sort of person who'd attempt them would call "high-falutin.'" Kakutani highlights a winner from the first page (didn't finish before your deadline, Michiko?)

I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier.

Exposing the useless charade of an loser would-be Veep expounding on history and foreign policy (as if anyone cared! as if we believed they came up with their insights on their own!) Going Rogue presents a 15-year-old high school basketball team captain's thoughts on the Iran Hostage Crisis, and what it revealed about leadership:

I had followed the Iran hostage crisis and remember wondering why President Jimmy Carter didn't act more decisively. From my high schooler's perspective, I thought the question was, Why did he allow America to be humiliated and pushed around? The new president being sworn in radiated confidence and optimism. The enemies of freedom took notice. In years to come people would ask, What did he have that Carter didn't? To me the answer was obvious. He had a steel spine.

She uses the Dan Rathermism "high on the hog" and complains of being called a demeaning term for the lower classes that she wears with pride:

"My family was made to look like a herd of hillbillies who had come to the big city and started living high on the hog, and that hurt me for them."

"And that hurt me for them." Brilliant.

In this bravura passage, "Palin" complains that a fat man told her to eat well.

He then launched into a discussion of nutrition physiology, holding forth on the importance of carbohydrates to cognitive connections and blah-blah-blah. As he lectured, I took in his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along.

I interrupted his lecture. "Steve, you know what I really need? Half an hour to go for a run in these beautiful cities we're visiting. Also, seeing my kids does wonders for my soul."

He barreled on as if I hadn't spoken. "Headquarters is flying in a nutritionist, and for three days you're going to be on a diet balanced in carbohydrates and nitrates and —"

I'm a forty-four year old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I really don't know you yet. But you've told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people not to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be and we're still losing. Now you're going to tell me what to eat?

A fat smoker told "Sarah Palin" to eat a balanced diet and that made her mad. We cannot recommend this book highly enough. And you can get it for free!

Page scans via Celtic Diva, Wonkette.

Oh, and PS: It turns out that Sarah Palin talks like that because of Government Socialism. Seriously! Alaska's Mat-Stu valley region was populated by upper midwestern farmers relocated to Alaska as part of a New Deal agricultural program. This was basically exactly the sort of thing Stalin would do, and though most of those 200 Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan families who were resettled in Alaska to farm hated it immensely and eventually left, they left behind a legacy of talking like a goober. (Palin also has a western influence in her accent, because her family is from Idaho. And also, obviously, she talks like even more of a goober when she is on television trying to prove that she is as much of a reactionary moron as the reactionary morons she is trying to appeal to. We all know Real Americans don't fully pronounce the suffixes of present participles, etc. etc..)

In an interview on Sunday, the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, said that the book, "Fly by Wire," by William Langewiesche, "greatly overstates how much it mattered" that the plane he landed in the river, an Airbus A320, featured an automated cockpit.

Put that in your rudder stick and jerk it, nerd! Just because William Langewiesche is a former professional airline pilot and a notably painstaking research-driven award-winning writer, he may think he "knows" things, such as the extent to which automated airline technology in the Airbus contributed to its safe crash landing in the icy Hudson.

Know this, Langewiesche: Character. It resides in the breast of a man by the name of Sully. And in his balls, which didn't fall off as his crippled plane plunged inexorably downward towards watery doom. Can you say the same? We didn't think so. You want to talk about books? Sully knows about books.

What a guy! (Sully).
[Pic: Getty]

The AP got a copy of Goin' Rogue, Also: Modern Warfare 2 and they totally read it even, which is probably more than Sarah can say.

"... [S]he says that most of her legal bills were generated defending what she called frivolous ethics complaints, but she reveals that about one-tenth of the $500,000 was a bill she received to pay for the McCain campaign vetting her for the VP nod.

She said when she asked the McCain campaign if it would help her financially, she was told McCain's camp would have paid all the bills if he'd won; since he lost, the vetting legal bills were her responsibility."

You may be shocked to learn that this is not a thing that happens, ever, "billing" someone for their own "vetting." The McCain campaign paid for its own vetting. Maybe Sarah Palin paid her own lawyer for lawyering work during that process? In that case, her lawyer would've been billing her for his services, to her, and that is not a thing John McCain made her pay for.

And the other thing, where the McCain campaign did not pay her legal bills for her own legal problems related to Troopergate and other ethics investigations? In addition to not being his responsibility, the McCain campaign thought it would probably violate the law to pay her legal bills with campaign money.

(Oh, Sarah Palin Facebooked about this:

As you probably have heard, the AP snagged a copy of my memoir, 'Going Rogue,' before its Tuesday release. And as is expected, the AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book.

To be fair, the AP originally reported that McCain handed her a $500,000 bill. The real price on the imaginary bill that Palin made up for her book of lies and hate was $50,000. So she is totally right.)

And whereas Laura Ling's book proposal sounds like, excuse us, some craptastic "Sisters are so wonderful" Barnes & Noble checkout line gift special pegged to the fact that her sister works for Oprah, Euna Lee's book will actually focus on her insane (but heartwarming) North Korean imprisonment. Which was big news, you may recall!

Keith Kelly says Lee got "a six-figure deal to write her memoir of the imprisonment, tentatively entitled, 'The World Is Bigger Now: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Freedom,'" while the Lings are still "shopping" theirs. Burn notice! The lesson here is, if you ever find yourself caught up in a dramatic case of international crime/ kidnapping, write your book about that rather than trying to use it as a peg for your thoughts on The Meaning of Love, because you are not as interesting as your circumstances, no matter what Oprah says.
[Pic: Getty]

Not to be too reductive, but Douglas Rogers is from Zimbabwe and he's white. His parents are the owners of a backpacker lodge popular with tourists and found themselves swept up in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's plans to reclaim white-owned land. He returned and saw the chaos that ensued. As his synopsis puts it:

On returning to the country of his birth, Douglas finds his once orderly and progressive home transformed into something resembling a Marx Brothers romp crossed with Heart of Darkness: Pot has supplanted maize in the fields; hookers have replaced college kids as guests; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar. Beyond the farm gates, meanwhile, rogue politicians, witch doctors, and armed war veterans loyal to President Mugabe circle like hungry lions.

Douglas currently lives in Brooklyn and writes regularly for Travel & Leisure, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, and once attempted to explain cricket to me over beers. Damian, who also lives in Brooklyn, has the novels Stretch 29 and The Chancers and the BBC comedy series Massive.

from The Last Resort...

And we ate like kings. There was more than marijuana growing in those former flower beds. I discovered now why my parents looked so healthy. There was a famine looming in Zimbabwe in early 2005, but if you could eat avocados you'd never go hungry in this neck of the woods. Every few days, scores of young black traders would make their way down from the orchards in the surrounding mountain valleys with huge burlap sacks filled with bananas, oranges, lemons, pawpaws, mangos, and avocados.

Mostly avocados: smooth green oval- shaped gems the size of baseballs. The traders would wait at the bottom of Christmas Pass for transport to Harare, 180 miles to the west, where they hoped to sell the fruit at market, but there was no fuel, and the buses weren't running. Instead, they'd just sit for days, sleeping by the roadside, while their crop rotted away in the sun. My father was outraged with this state of affairs. These were innovative, hardworking young entrepreneurs, trying to make a living. People were starving in Zimbabwe, yet here mountains of food rotted away. The state couldn't even get buses to work. My parents had already begun growing most of their own vegetables, but now they started buying what they didn't grow from these informal traders, and it helped account for their excellent health. They ate fruit salads every morning, drank fresh- squeezed lemonade during the day instead of Coke or cordials, and cooked elaborate meals at night from recipes they got watching the Naked Chef, Nigella Lawson, and Anthony Bourdain on their new satellite TV.

I told them I never ate half so well back in Brooklyn, and we decided one night they needed a Food Network show of their own, with a cookbook tie- in. We came up with a title. It would be called Recipes for Disaster: Adventures in the Kitchen of a Failed State. In it they would be filmed buying produce from those informal traders on the road, asking them about their lives, how they got those heavy bags down the mountain. Did they own the orchards or steal the fruit? My parents would also have to be filmed buying food from the new farmers in the valley who were trying to make a go of it. "Oh, Christ," said Mom. "Will I have to jump up and down chanting ZANU- PF slogans in exchange for a maize cob?"
My father loved the idea.

"Yes, Rosalind, I can see you doing that. And just think of the appeal to a Western audience: ethnic dancing and an organic maize cob. These buggers have no fertilizer."

Another episode, we decided, would be dedicated to the miracle of Zimbabwean cheese. My father had discovered that due to a shortage of one vital ingredient (or perhaps the loss of skilled staff), the usually tasteless Gouda that the state Dairy Marketing Board manufactured had now turned into a delectably rich and creamy Brie- as tasty as anything you might find in Provence. He bought several wheels of it at a time at the DMB ware house in Mutare, worried that they might discover and correct their mistake and it would go back to tasting awful. Finally, we decided that each episode would show them cooking up some masterpiece on that gas stove by candlelight on the kitchen floor during a power outage.

"We need more atmosphere," I told them. "A sense of place."

"I know," said my mother, warming to the theme. "We could fire up the generator and eat each meal in front of the TV, watching a speech by Mugabe ranting about us ‘white imperialist running dogs of capitalism,' or the ‘homosexual government of Tony Blair.'"

We burst out laughing.

"You know what?" Dad guffawed. "It could work. I reckon that Anthony Bourdain chap would come out here and present it. He goes to some really wacky places." My mom's eyes lit up at the thought of the dashing Kitchen Confidential star coming out to visit them.

You can find more information on The Last Resort, on Douglas' site, including where to buy it. If you're an author or a book publicist and you want to participate in the Gawker Book Club, send me an email.

Quote on this breaking news, directly from Sheila: "I look forward to once again having a reason to sit in a coffeeshop for hours and hours with my laptop." Yea!

Scientology refugee Marc Headley has written a book called Blown For Good—featuring a dramatic, action-scene-type cover—detailing his 15 years of work inside Scientology. The Village Voice interviewed him about his 1990 "auditing" session performed by Days of Thunder-era Tom Cruise himself.

"You do a lot of things with a book and a bottle," Headley says. "It's known as the book-and-bottle routine." Cruise, he says, would instruct Headley to speak to a book, telling it to stand up, or to sit down, or otherwise to move somewhere.

"You do the same with the bottle. You talk to it. You do it with an ashtray too," he says. "You tell the ashtray, 'Sit in that chair.' Then you actually go over and put the ashtray on the chair. Then you tell the ashtray, 'Thank you.' Then you do the same thing with the bottle, and the book. And you do this for hours and hours."

This was supposed " to get your intention over to the bottle...to rehabilitate your ability to control things." Well then. Tom Cruise can control books and bottles with his mind and don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Headley also says that there are only about 10,000 Scientologists in the whole world. They could be whupped by the Unitarians!
[Village Voice. Pic by Richard Blakeley]

All your knick-knacks with deep personal meaning and your special desk and your crazy exercise habits and your office location in gentrifying urban wasteland? Fine, fine. Until it gets cataloged in a newspaper, which kills its magic and makes you look like a twee, stereotypically unbearable Brooklyn Literary Person.

A treadmill is jammed up against [Lethem's 'talismanic' desk]. He explains the jerry-rigged system: a wireless keyboard and a giant computer-font setting allow him to walk and work simultaneously.

Apparently that's just what it takes to maintain his "youthful nerd-chic vibe belying his age (45)" in his "communal artists' workspace by the Gowanus Canal" while wearing his brown glasses and matching brown corduroys. It all just looks bad in print. Keep your door locked, Lethem. Then treadmill to your heart's content!

Try Super Squats too.

It was an odd pairing, the shameless blog-and-video fameball, with a contributor to the famed Eggers line of elaborately precious and self-consciously-old-fashioned written products. But then, judging from the Twitter account Allison, 28, set up for young Eggers, 26ish, there were mutual benefits to the relationship. Toph, reportedly developing a feature film, was determined to make Allison school him in the tricky art of internet self promotion:

Allison, meanwhile, got the high drama of a tantalizingly secret relationship with the mysterious "TK" to write up for her various revenue-generating "lifecasting" endeavors.

More surprising than the pairing was how it ended: At Allison's behest. We hear that Toph had an ex-girlfriend who wasn't ex- enough. With the breakup and its slow leak into public view, Allison is feeling "teary" and old and "the world would be a much better place if we were all more honest."

Hard to imagine this fairy tale romance went awry, given how sweetly it started:

Awwwwww.

(Top pics: NonSociety, Facebook)

That's according to Peter Norvig (pictured), Google's director of research, former Google director of search quality and former head of the Computational Sciences division at the NASA Ames research center. Here's what Norvig tells Peter Seibel in a Q&A in the new book Coders at Work (emphasis added):

One of the interesting things we've found, when trying to predict how well somebody we've hired is going to perform when we evaluate them a year or two later, is one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews. We rank people from one to four, and if you got a one on one of your interviews, that was a really good indicator of success.

Small suggestion: Maybe Google can take these genius employees and have them, hmmm, we dunno, debug the frickin' broken interview process. Those who demanded they be hired should probably also be enlisted in the debugging effort. Writes Norvig:

Ninety-nine percent of the people who got a one in one of their interviews we didn't hire. But the rest of them, in order for us to hire them somebody else had to be so passionate that they pounded on the table and said, "I have to hire this person because I see something in him..."

Unfortunately, Google's had already done most of its hiring/rejecting and is now has been in layoff mode for much of this year. But, hey, there's always the next bubble.

UPDATE: A Goolge spokesperson disputed that the company was "in layoff mode," as we wrote, and stated: "To the contrary, we have been very explicit... that we are stepping our rate of hiring." Indeed, CEO Eric Schmidt stated in a discussion of Q3 results that "we're going to invest in people. We're already stepping up our hiring." That's in contrast to earlier this year, when Google had three rounds of layoffs from January through the end of March.

(Pic: Norvig, by Mathieu Thouvenin)

But that is probably not all of it, as that financial disclosure only covers the period before she suddenly resigned as governor of the Alaska.

Still: a lot of money!

What is weirder, though, in her financial disclosure: last April Sarah Palin created a company called "Pie Spy." No one knows what this company does. Just that it is called "Pie Spy," and it is a "marketing" company. And:

It is listed with a North American Industry Classification System code corresponding to companies that provide services to the elderly or to people with disabilities.

But no one will say anything about this "Pie Spy" company that markets secret pies to crippled old people! What does it mean?

The novelist created the HBO series Bored to Death, starring Jonathan Schwartzman, but had nowhere to watch it the Sunday before last because he didn't own a TV. Insert your own "precious Brooklyn author eschews television" joke here if you like, but Ames insisted on Twitter he's "just very bad at shopping" and, in any case, had frantic fun watching his own show on other people's televisions for two weeks. Or at least that's how things seemed from his tweets.

And then HBO, where because they got tired, worried or charmed by Ames' Twitter begging, finally just bought him a set. Which, frankly is almost too perfect; we wouldn't put it past the network to set up the whole escapade as a publicity stunt targeted at the show's hipster target audience.

It's some comfort, then, that Ames has used Twitter as a cashless flea market before, offering free foreign editions of his books at a Carroll Gardens bar. That experiment didn't seem to go as well: One of us happened to drop by that night and Ames was there, but not one had yet come looking for his very pretty books. Apparently there are some giveaways even Twitter can't facilitate. Sorry, book lovers.

(Pic by mtkr on Flickr)