tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84826972011-04-21T23:28:47.623-04:00"I staggered up the hill, greeted by birds, and looked at all the sleeping huddled figures on the floor. Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?" Jack Kerouac, Dharma BumsJason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.comBlogger841100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-79835613910214357462007-01-16T11:43:00.000-05:002007-05-22T15:55:29.469-04:00

This site has moved to jasonboog.com.Click here to see Jason Boog's resume.No more monkeying around with sprawling web addresses. This URL is short and sweet.Go check out the new site every Tuesday for new, improved content and spiffy spaceship graphics.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-5320190838871695272006-12-14T14:29:00.000-05:002006-12-14T14:34:10.488-05:00

The Black and White reading is coming back. If you are in New York, come out and tell a story.I just finished interviewing Chris Eaton, the novelist and lead singer for Rock Plaza Central. He just wrote a whole album about mechanical horses that don't know they are mechanical horses. You will be singing these songs in the shower. Dig it...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1163874212588466332006-11-18T13:18:00.000-05:002006-11-18T13:26:45.063-05:00

Where have I been?Where have YOU been?I interviewed novelist and spoken word storyteller Heather O'Neill over at The Publishing Spot.My buddy Steve passes along this wonderful, wonderful video clip.That is all...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1162258462101648952006-10-30T20:28:00.000-05:002006-10-30T21:30:53.783-05:00

My brother Jeff had a rough month, but he's getting better. I wish I could give him a hug, but here I am, hundreds of miles away.Last night at Black and White, the best storytelling reading in New York City, the whole bar chimed in to send Jeff a very special get-well video.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1160838479122588252006-10-14T11:04:00.000-04:002006-10-14T11:07:59.136-04:00

Next week I'll be reading (and singing) a short selection straight from my Beatnik-imitating, adverb-abusing, woozy high school diaries. If you are in New York City and want to meet some great web writers, come check it out:"Every month The WYSIWYG TALENT SHOW brings you readings and performances from some of the blogosphere's best and funniest writers, musicians, comedians and performance

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1159980427379918262006-10-04T07:07:00.000-04:002006-10-04T12:49:05.323-04:00

This week I'm interviewing former Peace Corps volunteer and novelist Tony D'Souza over at The Publishing Spot. We talk about everything from MFA's to his piece in the New Yorker. Dig it.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1159391219678105022006-09-27T17:00:00.000-04:002006-09-27T17:06:59.690-04:00

I know, I know, this blog has grown useless lately. But you can read me every day at The Publishing Spot and Judicial Reports.And no matter what you say, I have a brand spanking new Flickr Account.So don't hit me!

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1157551413570237052006-09-06T09:58:00.001-04:002006-09-06T10:15:29.276-04:00

I have been a very bad post-er lately. Here's what I was doing while I was gone:Interviewing Christa Faust and Snakes on a Plane!Making a new Flickr account!Watching cheesy movies!

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1153836396243320582006-07-25T10:03:00.000-04:002006-07-27T12:18:01.960-04:00

After finishing my videoblogged interview with pulp fiction lover Paul Malmont, I went looking for hardboiled radio recordings-- chasing the shows that took pulp fiction to the airwaves.I posed the question over at Rara-Avis, the best hardboiled group on the web. They sent back over twenty responses, but there were four clear favorites. For your weekend pleasure, I put together a list with links

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1152650574544328482006-07-11T16:42:00.000-04:002006-07-11T16:42:54.560-04:00

I'm getting better at this, I promise...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1152562388478757892006-07-10T16:11:00.000-04:002006-07-10T16:13:23.716-04:00

An experiment straight from The Publishing Spot...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1150685369149297072006-06-18T22:45:00.000-04:002006-06-18T22:50:11.303-04:00

My buddy Andy V built and burnt his chopper a few years ago, and the story has become a legend in my head...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1149796478141538162006-06-08T08:37:00.000-04:002006-06-08T16:03:32.570-04:00

Dig this YouTubed version of part of my WYSIWYG Talent Show story...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1148505544294570612006-05-24T17:04:00.000-04:002006-05-24T17:19:04.840-04:00

Very very very busy week, but vacation coming. I can smell the beach from here, baby. To summarize, ever so briefly: WYSIWYG is a wonderful thing. Michael McColly is over at The Publishing Spot this week. And, most importantly, if you like zombie chicken hearts, you must listen to this amazing half-hour anthology from the 1937 Lights Out! radio drama, right now.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1147833427076622522006-05-16T22:15:00.000-04:002006-05-16T22:38:48.583-04:00

Three points of interest, my friends... Number one, I accidentally stumbled upon The Best Phrase Ever. Number two, TravelGoat now has a Magical Safari Button where you can travel around New York City following the same bumbling path that I did; following me from Neil Diamond to Drunken Republicans to Iggy Pop with GoogleMaps. Number three, I'm talking science and politics with a DailyKos

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1147204659591429282006-05-09T15:32:00.000-04:002006-05-09T15:57:39.840-04:00

This week I asked Nick Mamatas (the H.P. Lovecraft and Jack Kerouac mixer-upper) to recommend a couple foundational literary horror writers. He gave me enough links to play with all week: "Hmm, probably just from reading widely and avoiding Stephen King's books until later in life. Once you pull him and his peculiar mix of supernaturalist soap opera and thriller out of horror, you have a lot

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1146259306841512012006-04-28T17:09:00.000-04:002006-04-28T17:25:15.866-04:00

Is there anybody out there?I know I don't post very often over here, but you should spend more time at my other site. Why, just this week I wrote lots and lots about Peace Corps writers. Are you still there? I'll tell you what... We've been at war for awhile now and I'm not in Peace Corps anymore. That shift has crept into my stories lately. A couple years ago, I told this story about war

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1145562690885965452006-04-20T15:49:00.000-04:002006-04-20T15:54:26.603-04:00

Today is my birthday, and I'm going to rob a post from The Publishing Spot. I know, I know, all my loyal readers are wondering what they could possibly get me for my birthday--weighing Fed-Ex options to ship lavish presents.I'm going to make it simple. If you would like to celebrate, simply read My Version of the Chinese Gangster Story. If you like it, add your own episode. I will be a very,

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1145311271356963722006-04-17T16:10:00.000-04:002006-04-17T18:01:11.436-04:00

I just got done writing about David Siftry's essay about the Magic Middle, the 150,000+ writers floating around the Internet who have at least 20 links to their site from other writers. "These are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing," he writes, but I'll tell you what, sitting over here in the Low Low

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1144786251235528812006-04-11T16:02:00.000-04:002006-04-11T16:10:51.246-04:00

I am an Idiot. Turns out that "The Euchre Report" wuz part of a sprawling McSweeneys-published, Midwestern-influenced version of the Chinese Gangster Story, and I didn't bother to do the stinking research necessary to figure that out.Click here for more Euchre Reporting Action...

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1144776546781303022006-04-11T13:18:00.000-04:002006-04-11T13:34:58.610-04:00

Yesterday, Stephen Elliott posted a dark story by Susan Steinberg called "The Euchre Report," and it all made me think..."At one point Dave was sitting a few feet from the table, watching our game. Then he started telling us some pretty bleak stories about his junior high years. Something about a dark hallway. A locker. A switchblade. And it got really serious And then we got to talking about 9/

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1144073944094865002006-04-03T09:51:00.000-04:002006-04-03T12:45:07.850-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the amazing mass-written Chinese Gangster Story. It's an episodic adventure story written by competing authors, like a story narrated by a bar full of brawling writers. Before being boingboinged, that story had 1.7 million page views and 21,000 different episodes. I love the idea of having a space that produces a story, rather than a boring old space where you

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1143583468297849012006-03-28T17:01:00.000-05:002006-03-28T17:05:51.786-05:00

As I wrote over at ThePublishingSpot, Stanislaw Lem has died. Ever since I read his novel Fiasco, I fell in love with his Borges-laced blend of science fiction. Every story was lovingly crafted, and it seemed like Lem had created a new set of encyclopedias alongside his skinny books. The Andrei Tarkovsky version of Lem's Solaris was the slowest and most uncanny movie I ever loved, and the

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1143311918058931792006-03-25T13:23:00.000-05:002006-03-25T13:38:38.096-05:00

I'm back with some breaking news, riding the crest of the Internet news wave on the Jason Boog Show Longboard. Get this: Ben Domenech resigned over at Washington Post! You heard it here first! Pow!My other blogging gig, my day job, and the whole web pressure to publish publish publish has delayed my Chinese Gangster Story. In the meantime, check out what I wrote about this Evil Blogging

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1142978008027074752006-03-21T16:36:00.001-05:002006-03-21T16:53:28.030-05:00

Via the supersite BoingBoing, delivered to them by one of my favorite sites, The Institute for the Future, and finally copped from ThePublishingSpot, I offer you this amazing bit of Chinese mass fiction. It's an episodic gangster story written by competing authors, like a story narrated by a bar full of brawling writers.Check it out:"In the following, there is the translation of the beginning of

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1142616847340654512006-03-17T12:02:00.001-05:002006-03-17T12:40:56.920-05:00

It's Saint Patrick's Day: my parent's anniversary, the botched beginning of Spring in New York, and most importantly, the farewell party for my buddy Dan Bell is at my house tonight. If you are in New York, give me a call. I don't feel like like writing anything fancy, go play with these people instead...Monkeys who talk like you want them to talk!Doctor Who fan fiction madness!An essay that

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1142288133926557742006-03-13T17:03:00.000-05:002006-03-14T16:38:34.253-05:00

As much as I hate to double-post with ThePublishingSpot, I'm tired. The blogging academic Harry Heuser dropped me a line today. His sprawling website digs through forgotten archives of old time radio dramas, turning up unexpected gems that shimmer in the 21st century light--like a voodoo melodrama interupted by news reports of the Pearl Harbor attack.I've been trying to figure out how to get

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1141760393403072742006-03-07T12:56:00.000-05:002006-03-07T15:38:06.390-05:00

Over the last couple months, I've listened to hundreds of old radio shows, chasing pulpy stories by writers like Cornell Woolrich and Robert Sheckley. I was destined to be a radio show writer like them, but cruel fate handed me this blog instead.Recently, I've obsessed over old episodes of I Was a Communist for the FBI. This show juiced up the adventures of Matthew Cvetic, an undercover agent

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1141425133703572512006-03-03T17:18:00.000-05:002006-03-03T17:32:13.753-05:00

I recently hooked up this blog to a sitemeter, and it has given me the most awful inferiority complex. I'm haunted by this nagging sense that this is no way to make a career. After reading piles and piles of Cornell Woolrich stories, it dawned on me that blogging is just like pulp fiction in the 30's and 40's--a fast, cheap, dirty, talent-sapping and self-destructive cycle that drove writers to

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1141237105595320472006-03-01T12:57:00.000-05:002006-03-01T13:26:14.153-05:00

After hearing the Polyphonic Spree song called "Light and Day/Reach for the Sun" in the movie Murderball this weekend, I went and read this review by Rob Mitchum at Pitchfork.com: "The Polyphonic Spree never directly lift up their myriad voices for God (except in an ancient Egyptian Sun/Ra worship sense), yet I can't help but think of their 20+ members as the direct offspring of the Jesus Christ

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1140731225253549672006-02-23T16:28:00.000-05:002006-02-23T16:47:05.343-05:00

A couple of years ago, I met Arturo Vega, the longtime collaborator and artist for the punk rock superheroes, the Ramones. Now, Arturo runs Ramones World on the Internet, makes art, and climbs mountains. One of my happiest New York memories was back in 2003 when Arturo invited me over to his house for a party in Joey Ramone's honor. I just finished an audio story about that funny day, and

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1140544954560289322006-02-21T12:51:00.000-05:002006-02-21T13:02:34.646-05:00

I used to rollerskate around my kitchen with my superhero-colored bathrobe flapping, singing Neil Diamond's song, "I Am, I Said" at the top of my lungs. Is it a coincidence that I ended up in New York City and writing a story about The Neil Diamond Disease?After a weekend spent with the Essential Neil Diamond, I just posted a brand new piece at the Travel Goat storytelling archive: "Can you

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1140117808039671382006-02-16T14:10:00.000-05:002006-02-20T23:10:52.963-05:00

Somebody yelled at me last week for quoting Vladimir Nabokov. I think they thought that I was quoting Nabokov because too many people quote Nabokov and seceretly mean, "I'm quoting Nabakov because I want you to see that I'm a smarty-pants."But what if I was quoting Nabakov in a way that meant "I read this Nabakov quote last night this made me laugh, and incidentally, I had forgotten that he

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1139863671640400242006-02-13T15:30:00.000-05:002006-02-13T15:59:15.893-05:00

In honor of the nearly universal rejection my Second Life reporting (and also in honor of the army of people scrambling to repair more high profile reputations), I give you two stories that may or may not make you feel better...Behold: an Exclusive Interview with publishing guru, Rex Hammock and an Audio Adventure Story about my first, ill-fated attempt to cover a press conference..."Wearing my

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1139424612865770992006-02-08T13:36:00.000-05:002006-02-09T12:43:13.853-05:00

Continuing with "Jason Boog Is Going To Publish Whether You Like It or Not Week," here's a story I worked hard on last month--to no avail. Even though my editor killed the story, I wanted to run the story on ThePublishingSpot, just to see what people thought.If you read it, I will publish another installment next week. If you don't don't read it, I will never mention this again. Dig it:"My

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1139241587924217992006-02-06T10:44:00.000-05:002006-02-06T11:11:13.330-05:00

What are you doing here? There is nothing to see here.Go to The Publishing Spot and read this two-day interview with my writing hero, Jeff VanderMeer. It's much more interesting than anything I have to offer, I promise.What did I tell you? What are you still doing here? Aggggghhhhh.While the blogging action has been plenty time-consuming lately, I've been repeatedly shut down in my recent

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1138749193441995942006-01-31T18:00:00.000-05:002006-01-31T18:13:13.473-05:00

In honor of the State of the Union Address, in honor of the strangeness of a world where newspapers can write about the contents of the State of the Union Address before said speech is actually delivered, in honor of a political system where political parties can wine and dine me, and in honor of the fact that I cringed when I imagined the 2006 State of the Union Address when I attended the 2004

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1138382532754707922006-01-27T11:36:00.000-05:002006-01-28T16:56:44.900-05:00

Almost three years ago, I met Ethan Minsker and Bryan Middleton during an accidental visit to Black & White in the East Village. I was just another kid from the Midwest, lost in the big city. After a couple whiskeys, they had convinced me to join the Antagonists and tell this tall tale about Iggy Pop, bad dreams, and burning coincidences. Today, I'm resurrecting my Iggy Pop story on Travel

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1138127430013717132006-01-24T12:40:00.000-05:002006-01-24T13:46:30.666-05:00

It's been a funny week. As part of my new relationship with Know More Media, I have this crazy flash ad blinking "The Jason Boog Show" over and over on The Publishing Spot. Then, today, they published My Very First Press Release. Writing is such a funny business. I need readers to survive, and I am so grateful that more people are coming to visit. If you stick with me, I promise to take you

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1137992321038221532006-01-22T23:44:00.000-05:002006-01-22T23:58:41.073-05:00

A couple years ago, I wrote a story about rats in Union Square Park. When it finally got published, I think the story lost some of the ragged, mad feeling it had when I read the story out loud.Hoping to reclaim a bit of that broken radio feeling, I just recorded a short audio version of the story at Travel Goat, the New York City podcast archive. Check it out... One summer night on a

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1137772565876074212006-01-20T10:27:00.000-05:002006-01-20T10:56:05.946-05:00

Sometimes, I find a writer that writes such spooky, pretty stories that I want to call my friend Amy Hayes and show her too. It's been a few years since Amy died, and I still Google her name every once in awhile, just checking if she has mysteriously transubstantiated on the Internet. Because if anybody can mysteriously transubstantiate on the Internet, Amy can.So today, I found "The Faery

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1137537923256695042006-01-17T17:18:00.000-05:002006-01-17T17:45:23.310-05:00

While I read Matt Zoller Seitz's movie column in the New York Press every week, I had no idea he had a blog. Even more to my surprise, Seitz blogged about his obsessive reporting quest to find out more about Brian DePalma's upcoming version of The Black Dahlia. Turns out DePalma has shot a movie version of James Ellroy's twisted and excessively obsessive novel that inspired three more books

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1137350898832671372006-01-15T12:57:00.000-05:002006-01-15T13:48:18.886-05:00

There are three main reasons why I’ve obsessed over the novels of Paul Auster for the last ten years: he blends the twisty genius of Borges with the American novel, he wrote the Definitive Literary Private Detective Novel, and finally, his stories make me feel like the two of us are sitting in a coffee shop and hashing out the universe.In honor of Paul Auster’s new book, The Brooklyn Follies, I

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1137086571363801232006-01-12T11:54:00.000-05:002006-01-12T12:23:32.096-05:00

Despite a management snafu that left my building without heat for 5 days, without hot water for 6 days, and without stove gas for 7 days, I am still kicking.I feel like Charles Kinbote in his Pale Fire commentary (which I am re-reading like a kid in a candy store this week, but don't have with me to verify the exact quote that follows; which is appropriate for a blog post about a fictional

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1136926046213583702006-01-10T15:32:00.000-05:002006-01-10T15:48:56.016-05:00

I just took on a contract blog gig with Know More Media, I'm now handling The Publishing Spot. Metaphysical musings and Neil Diamond puns abound. Look out, baby..."If you are reading this, most likely you want to get published. The funny thing is, I want to get published too. Starting right now, we're going to work together and get published.Welcome to Publishing Spot, a writing resource built

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1136525419097776302006-01-05T23:44:00.000-05:002006-01-06T16:00:49.453-05:00

I just published an appreciation of the late, great Robert Sheckley on the Ellen Datlow/SCI FICTION Project. You could spend a week reading all the 300 stories they keep stored over there...I heard my first Robert Sheckley story on the old-time radio drama, X Minus One. Even though it was recorded twenty-five years before I was born, Sheckley’s exuberant adjectives, alliterative phrases and

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1136424780818550792006-01-04T20:24:00.000-05:002006-01-04T23:17:54.250-05:00

Today, after a long, long, long afternoon of botched writing attempts, I thought, as I usually do when I feel like a failure, about the melancholy life of Cornell Woolrich-- the world’s most underappreciated pulp fiction master. I've been reading Woolrich's paranoid thrillers for most of my adult life. A couple years ago, I even interviewed Woolrich’s biographer Francis M. Nevins for a

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1136224238168149142006-01-02T12:35:00.000-05:002006-01-02T12:55:38.273-05:00

For my first, sheepish New Year’s post, I’m going to remind everybody of something important that happened last mixed-up year... The movie version of the videogame Doom was a landmark moment in human consciousness. For the last eight years or something like that, millions of kids have steered space Marines around bombed-out space stations in this first-person shooter game. The Doom screen scaled

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1135879802012914842005-12-29T12:45:00.000-05:002005-12-29T17:11:28.146-05:00

Last night I watched the obscene, titillating, reality-warping, meta-journalistic, stunning, and horrible, in every sense of the word horrible, movie, Cannibal Holocaust--all by myself. Like a moth repeatedly burned by the lightbulb of 1970’s Italian horror cinema, that insane experience drove me to frantically parse the Google Blog Search results for Cannibal Holocaust last night, just so I

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1135207468125266832005-12-21T17:55:00.000-05:002005-12-21T18:46:37.316-05:00

Like that time when Jack Kerouac took up a collection to buy cheap wine and everybody sat around listening to poems read by unknown beatniks, this is your chance to plunk down beside a Really Good Idea.This is Travel Goat-, the technology that our hip kids will use navigate cities in the brave and stirring future. Despite the fact that I am one of the featured writer-types on the site, I do

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134933828646280972005-12-18T14:06:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:23:48.710-05:00

I’ve spent the weekend thinking about Lt. Colonel David Grossman and his killology theory. Wired had an article about it on Friday, but I can’t get my laptop to load the stupid thing. Point is, I think people like Grossman could throttle this fledgling, wonderful medium with some Comics Code-esque government regulation. There are much more sophisticated people writing and thinking about

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134666110506041622005-12-15T11:32:00.000-05:002005-12-15T12:01:50.573-05:00

I’ve never read a single word that Jeff VanderMeer has written in his dusty old "books." Nevertheless, I’ve been lurking around his blog the last couple works enjoying genius posts like this and, much more importantly, THIS.Yesterday, I read VanderMeer’s Book List with mounting excitement, cheering as he ticked off my favorite books by Paul Auster, Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt, Nabokov, Cormac

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134502605912508362005-12-13T14:17:00.000-05:002005-12-13T14:36:45.976-05:00

My buddy Corynne Steindler just took an editor spot at Jossip. It's crazy living in New York City where you can actually meet the people that write in these slick voices. Writing is just a bunch of regular people that write glamorously. Even sitting out here knee deep in Starving Writer Land, I can never keep that separation straight. Coincidentally, I missed Corynne’s party last weekend.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134500405902292202005-12-13T13:57:00.000-05:002005-12-13T16:55:08.480-05:00

After a week of interviews with Internet luminaries J.D. Lasica and Lucas Gonze, I put together a Publish article analyzing two web memes: Darknets and the LightnetHere is my story.In addition, Lucas Gonze suggested that I post my interview questions on an open thread on a blog—an open-source conversation about the story. So, read the story, grab some Star Wars metaphors ("Lucas, I am your

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134446690519572872005-12-12T22:59:00.000-05:002005-12-13T15:30:41.086-05:00

Google had already swallowed my life. Freelance journalists depend on that crazy program. We all have stories squirreled away just like lonely and elderly people squirrel away newspapers. Somewhere in our ratty brains, all of us writers hoard stacks of impossible stories that we found on Google.Sitting around for two months of desperate unemployment last winter, I Googled enough wasted stories to

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1134013247298630532005-12-07T22:23:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:27:10.636-05:00

I used to play war behind my house with my GI Joe action figures. I would leap from rock to rock on the landscaped trail my parents built to decorate our farmhouse—I dashed quickly for battle scenes and slowly for dialogue. I was the narrator, good soldiers, bad soldiers, vehicles, weapons and sound effects all rolled into one. One day I tripped while playing a particularly violent campaign

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1133450922615293742005-12-01T10:18:00.000-05:002005-12-01T10:28:42.663-05:00

I just moved out of my apartment, but I slept in empty room one more time last night. Then, I woke up way too early to move my bed and mop the floor for the new guy. In classic Jason Boog form, I forgot to save some scrubby clothes at home when I moved last night, and at the same time, brilliantly decided to wear the smart-looking tan pants that I bought yesterday to work. So, a half hour

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1133293448207765892005-11-29T14:43:00.000-05:002005-11-30T11:57:05.273-05:00

I have drafted a very strange and terrible new 50,000 word novel-type thing.

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1133218887324324452005-11-28T17:50:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:28:23.436-05:00

Driving home from Christmas parties when I was a kid, I'd always stare out the back window of my parents' station wagon, and for a couple years, I could almost see Santa Claus flying around in the cold midnight sky, instead of airplanes or blinking radio tower lights. A few years later, I'd lie in the grass in summer hoping that aliens would whoosh me up to that wonderful sky. Now, I'm posting

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1132670877939459332005-11-22T09:41:00.000-05:002005-11-22T09:47:57.953-05:00

Like a snowball rolling down a profits graph, a series of big-name Internet and television deals generated lots of buzz this month. Even though my TV is run through rabbit-ears, I wrote a story about it for Publish.com...November 2005 may have been the month when the major broadcast networks finally "got" the Internet.On November 7th, both CBS and NBC cut deals with digital television providers

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1132607327442738552005-11-21T16:02:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:30:03.496-05:00

Here’s another excerpt from my nebulous novel…On my roof in Brooklyn one August, I watched the sun sink behind the Manhattan skyscraper low behind me, the moon rising in front of me, so big that I could hold up a 50-cent piece and not block out the whole thing. Staring at the Mars-colored moon, I could see craters and dust on that big pink rock, so big that I could almost see the thing getting

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1131723221556756342005-11-11T10:25:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:32:02.663-05:00

Here’s another excerpt from my nebulous novel…One time I saw the most amazing thing outside of my crappy clerk bookstore job in the middle of winter: a pool of nicotine yellow water and cigarette butts had frozen overnight in the giant green ashtray out front; and stuck in the middle of the ice, perfect as a wooly mammoth in a glacier, was a shredded up love letter floating in space in a filthy

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1131576845901827192005-11-09T17:45:00.000-05:002005-11-10T12:29:20.933-05:00

Because it's National Novel Writing Month I'm writing a novel about a high school teacher who survives a school shooting, moves to New York to become a magazine writer, and uncovers a grand conspiracy lurking behind a popular brand of military-themed toys. You know you want to read about that, right? Right? Right?It begins like this:Scribbling quotes in my notebook, I licked the hole in my

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1131131812946520802005-11-04T14:14:00.000-05:002005-11-04T14:23:39.896-05:00

I just finished a story for Publish.com about librarians and the brand-new virtual world. God bless librarians...When students research term papers via Google and bloggers reiterate facts about every imaginable topic, they are stealing work from us, say some librarians.So at the Internet Librarian conference last week, over 100 library professionals speculated about how to survive in a world of

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1131048710006594352005-11-03T15:02:00.000-05:002005-12-18T14:32:54.133-05:00

What do you get when you mix up Monte Reel's article about President Bush in Argentina, the impending election, and the Guatemala thoughts from earlier this week? You get this excerpt from my nebulous novel…The Sunday before the RNC convention began in 2004, I met my friends Richard and Brian to go to the huge United for Peace and Justice protest march. We marched for almost 20 blocks, up from

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1130862666550140602005-11-01T11:20:00.000-05:002005-11-01T12:11:04.033-05:00

When I read this Washington Post story by Steve Hendrix, I could almost taste Guatemalan air again. So I wanted to write along with him... I was out there two years, and words are not enough-- you need a pile of Technicolored bells and whistles and whatnots to show new people Guatemala. I'd show the whole thing with a movie camera hung from a helicopter filming speck of white speeding down a

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1130775013289645242005-10-31T11:00:00.000-05:002005-10-31T11:10:14.456-05:00

After reading this Sunday Times article via Boing Boing about 240-acre secret bases underneath England built to protect rich people from nuclear attacks, I stood up in the middle of work and ran out the door.I ran and ran, so fast that the businesspeople on Broadway, past the City Hall skyscrapers, accross the Brooklyn Bridge ; I ran and ran, all the way home. Inside my apartment, I built a

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1130513354293688272005-10-28T11:25:00.000-04:002005-11-01T12:15:38.800-05:00

I just interviewed Shel Israel about the new book he's writing with Robert Scoble, it's up at Publish.com right now...Blogs have long been popular for allowing millions of independent pundits to gain popularity by criticizing mainstream media and corporate PR.And usually, when corporations use blogging to promote a product or themselves, the blogosphere responds harshly.Despite this backlash (or

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1130435152006549032005-10-27T13:30:00.000-04:002005-12-18T14:35:24.840-05:00

Here’s another excerpt from my nebulous novel…Riding in the New York subway the one night, I saw a row of posters for the Children’s Place clothing line along the ceiling of my train. That overpriced kids clothing line went digging through the garage sale clothes from the Midwest, mimicking the cheap-bin styles from my hometown in smug pastiche. They stole the purple moony tie-died sweatshirt

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1130257561199166662005-10-25T12:19:00.000-04:002005-11-01T12:22:47.386-05:00

A cross between a naked emperor and a teenager with an obviously fake ID, the movie Doom collapsed because it pretended to be an old-fashioned space thriller instead of a groundbreaking cinematic interpretation of a videogame. Still, in the climactic scene, the director abandoned the inept plot, broke away from the standard third-person omniscient camera view, and suspended the laws of

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129932309706888992005-10-21T17:58:00.000-04:002005-11-01T12:26:59.603-05:00

Everybody is panning the movie Doom, but I don’t buy it—this is a landmark moment in human consciousness. For the last eight years or something like that, millions of kids have steered space Marines around bombed-out space stations in this first-person shooter game. The Doom screen scaled the videogame world to fit between your own two eyeballs, changing the way we imagine things forever. In

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129581793928417522005-10-17T16:38:00.000-04:002005-11-01T12:29:24.743-05:00

I just got my first sort-of scoop in virtual journalism at Publish.com, interviewing Wagner James Au from Second Life--the guy with the craziest writing gig going...From USA Today to the BBC, journalists are paying more attention to virtual communities—writing about computer-simulated marriages, multimillion-dollar economies based on imaginary goods, and the countless hours that millions of users

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129574012737305072005-10-17T14:31:00.000-04:002005-10-17T14:33:32.736-04:00

Here's a story I wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review, click below to read the rest...If letters to the editor are like a home-cooked meal, then Capitol Advantage, the country's largest e-mail lobbying firm, is the McDonald's of grassroots public opinion: massive, mechanized, and a little synthetic.The company guides e-mail missiles for over 1,300 clients, from the ACLU to the NRA. "We're

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129154371017196882005-10-12T17:58:00.000-04:002005-10-17T14:26:52.556-04:00

Here's my most recent Newsday story, rescued from un-archived oblivion, just follow the link...Earlier this year, Officer Jackie O'Keefe resolved a domestic-violence case using nothing more than a flip-top cellular phone. During the investigation, O'Keefe questioned a battered Chinese immigrant using a portable phone that connected her to interpreters in more than 150 languages - a powerful tool

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129154282196768832005-10-12T17:55:00.000-04:002005-10-12T17:58:02.196-04:00

Here's a story I wrote for Newsday in May, I'm saving it from un-archived oblivion, just follow the link below...A crowd of 50 Ecuadoran immigrants gathered inside the offices of Delgado Travel in Jackson Heights one recent day, watching the political situation in their homeland unravel on jumbo television screens. The crowds had gathered last month at the travel agency, a nerve center for the

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129153594038343942005-10-12T17:44:00.000-04:002005-10-12T17:46:34.036-04:00

Here's my latest Publish.com story, follow the link for more...Venerable arts and politics Web magazine Salon.com neared its tenth anniversary this year with a big problem—the site hadn't been redesigned in five years. Web readers worship innovation like a cult, and that kind of lapse can get a publication excommunicated.So last week Salon.com redeemed itself with an under-publicized and

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1129153421872143342005-10-12T17:40:00.000-04:002005-10-12T17:43:41.873-04:00

Here's something new I wrote for Publish.com, click the link to read the rest...The future of digital libraries seemed to ride on a single lawsuit last week, as the New York-based Authors Guild went to war against search king and Internet superpower Google.Led by three Authors Guild members, the complaint seeks unspecified damages and a permanent injunction to shut down Google Print—a fledgling

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1109200790921631862005-02-23T18:18:00.000-05:002005-02-23T18:19:50.926-05:00

While crisscrossing Guatemala on chicken bus, I met a skinny old man named Don Garcia. He shuffled down the bus aisle, stooped crooked by old age and other ailments. His two lacquered walking-sticks clattered when he plopped down in the seat beside me. I think this life-long bachelor felt a little bit lonely, but he was mostly fascinated to meet a gringo traveling far from any of the tourist

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1100901396176064142004-11-19T16:54:00.000-05:002004-11-19T16:56:36.176-05:00

Last summer, my Russian partner and I went to the military recruiting station so we could drum up a couple statistics for our story. This fresh-faced kid in a lumpy bulletproof vest took us up to the top of the building and we met an honest-to-god colonel with stars and such on his shoulder straps. Our interview lasted about 30 seconds, and it was so rudimentary that I translated all by myself:

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1097531989575973062004-10-11T17:56:00.000-04:002004-10-11T17:59:49.576-04:00

By Jason Boog How to Make Recycled Paper I shredded paper snowflakes into a bucket of water: Guatemalan newspapers, Peace Corps newsletters, embassy safety bulletins and the Catholic magazines that my mother mailed me each month in care packages. Then I stuck a bean grinder into the word-soup, twisting the plastic knob until the bucket filled up with purplish pulp. I was all alone outside a

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1096424494064383722004-09-28T22:17:00.000-04:002004-11-19T17:50:45.726-05:00

By Jason Boog In Times Square, the hordes of shuffling tourists, businesspeople, and vendors beg the lazy journalist to make zombie metaphors. Ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger mugged the GOP convention podium, mocking the “economic girlie-men” Democrats– the political scene begs the lazy journalist to make movie metaphors. Therefore, there was no better place for the lazy journalist to stick

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1096222345378503182004-09-26T14:11:00.000-04:002004-10-01T16:13:49.633-04:00

By Jason Boog Clusters of chattering Russian school kids moonwalked into the movie theater, back-peddling to get a better view of lonely American me outside. I’m living in Rostov, Russia, spending Fourth of July weekend a thousand miles south of Moscow or American tourists. To celebrate, I invited my friend Alyia Medvedeva to the movies. She’s a fluttery English professor with a strange

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1096221799086986082004-09-26T14:00:00.000-04:002004-11-19T17:49:29.430-05:00

How I Lost My Star Wars Pillow Almost two years ago, I hustled 15 sick Guatemalans down a skinny city sidewalk to the hospital. The village bus dropped us off around sunset, that awful hour when vendors dismantle their vegetable booths, villagers ride rusty trucks back up the mountain and oblivious rich kids zip past on motor scooters. In all the commotion, I didn’t even notice when my Star

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8482697.post-1096217678028430852004-09-26T13:33:00.000-04:002004-11-19T17:51:24.120-05:00

Originally published in The Revealer Part 5 of the "What God Gap?" Series Pt. 507 September 2004 www.therevealer.org By Jason Boog After reading 30-pages of pre-packaged speeches inside the press palace that the Republicans built near Madison Square Garden, I’d learned too much about the Convention's “People of Compassion” theme for the day. So I left. I shoved my way down 34th St. in the

Jason Booghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17842922436113020380noreply@blogger.com0