Exhibit 1.2.16

Thesis Defense

(Look, I've been sick and grading and writing and watching Castle. No excuses. In return for you not saying anything, I thought I'd offer you this picture of Thesis Defense. It's funnier than anything else I could think of. Also, I plan on writing a Royals preview this weekend so look out for that).




Yes, we made our own t-shirt uniforms. No, no other teams have these. Yes, I put mine on a pillow and hug it while falling asleep.

Other things of interest:

* The font is Futura Bold. We spend a lot of time telling people that.

* My number is 4. Alex Gordon's number. Like Alex, I've spent the spring working on my game in the hopes of turning my career around. Unlike Alex, I'm not actually going to do it.

* I cropped off my legs though you can get a general sense of their color by looking at the white on my shorts. Those aren't stripes, those are view strips.

* Or maybe you don't know which one I am. In that case, assume I'm the one who looks like Running Scared-era Billy Crystal.

* Yes, I'm drinking a Guinness. I don't know what it is about strenuous activity, but all I want to do afterward--once the vertigo has slowed--is drink the thickest beer I can find. Usually it's a Boddington's.

* You'd think this would cause me to realize that there aren't any good British basketball players and that this might be a sign, but no, it does not make me realize that.

* It does make me hum "Live Forever" and want to smoke, however.

* We've got a week off for spring break and playoffs start Tuesday night. Between now and then I'm going to work on my shot and font selection.

Exhibit 27.3

On Editing a Novel #20

CHOOSING A FONT FOR YOUR NOVEL. This is the single most important thing you will do as a writer. It and it alone will determine your publishing success. Think back to the last time you were in a bookstore. How did you choose which book to buy? You flipped to the back and read the colophon didn't you? Of course you did. According to research, the origin of a book's font is the first thing book consumers check when undertaking a potential literature purchase. Take a look at this quote:

With a sudden upwelling of reverence, Robert Langdon fell to his knees.

Terrible, terrible writing, right? Wrong. Terrible, terrible font. Now let's see it as it appeared in print:

With a sudden upwelling of reverence, Robert Langdon fell to his knees.

And that book became The Da Vinci Code.

So what font should you choose? It depends, depends solely on your genre. Follow these guidelines and you should be fine.

Times New Roman-->Non-Fiction

Lucida Blackletter-->Elf Fantasy

Trebuchet-->Internet Thriller

Papyrus-->Egyptian

Lucida Calligraphy-->Jane Austen Rewrite

Courier-->Beatnik

Georgia-->Jonathan Safran Foer

Webdings-->Mystery

Exhibit 12.24

I recently began writing in a new font, if not permanently then at least for this current thing I'm doing. As this current thing I'm doing is going to take a while, it looks like I'm stuck with...wait for it...

Bolded Courier New

Sigh. I know. If it helps, I'm thinking about losing the bold. Embarrassingly, I actually hadn't planned on bolding the font, but I forgot to turn it off after I typed the title. As the title was all I could manage that first day--well, I guess I also hit enter a few times and possibly typed my name before watching Project Runway or whatever it is you think I do with my time--by the time I came back the next day I'd forgotten and just started typing away. It's not quite as bad as it sounds since, as Wikipedia tells me, Courier is a monospaced font and the bolding darkens the words without making them take up more space on the page.

Still, I feel a little bit like one of those old writers who bregudingly switched to computers in the 1980s and ever since has tried whatever they could to replicate the typewriter experience. Are there writers like that? I imagine Delillo is like that. So, yeah, I feel like Delillo if Delillo wrote crap and didn't know how to properly capitilize his own name.

So why the switch? I have no idea. I used to write in Garamond which is what 99% of you are probably seeing when you read this blog.

(Hold on, let me do the math here:

4 readers + 1 spambot + me X .99 = # > # of Boxcar Children)

I still like Garamond--though I'm a bit jealous of Mac users who have Hoeffler Text--and all of my final drafts will probably end up in it one way or the other, but I guess I was tired of writing something and having it look finished so early in the process. The great thing about Courier is that it looks so horrible it's like evil is chasing your words down the page as you type and if you stop it's going to get you. So there's that.