Press Release from 20th Century Fox:

WHAT: Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson and Rachel Bilson will appear at Egypt’s Great Sphinx … in front of Las Vegas’ LUXOR Hotel and Casino, where they’ll launch the world premiere of the new trailer for the motion picture event, JUMPER. The one-of-a-kind movie promotion unspools on December 7 at midnight. (The film’s trailer and movie poster feature Christensen atop the Egyptian monument.)

[emphasis mine]

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I am today just coming back from a week in Jamaica (I am posting this from the airport in Montego Bay.) My first trip to Jamaica, in fact to any Carribean island. And purely thanks to other people who suggested the place and booked the whole thing, I stayed on the south coast of the island, at Treasure Beach, a place which is just beginning to be discovered. It is important, when you are a certain kind of traveler—one who likes, say, hot water, people who are used to dealing with clueless travelers, and someone who can sell you sunscreen if you forgot it—to not stay in a place that is yet ‘undiscovered.’ Undiscovered is beautiful. Undiscovered is unspoiled. Undiscovered is often inexpensive. Undiscovered is also likely to leave you standing outside the place you planned to stay only to discover that it is off season, closed and they didn’t take credit cards. When I was 29, I was intrepid. I am not so much anymore. But Treasure Beach is, in fact, discovered, but not yet actually built up. Which means that the place where we stayed could sell us sunscreen, and really really good pina coladas (a drink I had hitherto disdained) but that otherwise we were just in a Jamaican town without much industry intent on fleecing us.

I intended to attack where we were like Anthony Bourdain in No Reservations. Read More »

Via the fabulous Jon Carroll, I have learned of UX, and their civilization-maintenance program, known as the Untergunther. The UX is a group of people in Paris who do things like setting up a movie theatre and bistro under the Seine, or sneak into public buildings and fix things. Read the article. I’ll wait.

Isn’t that fabulous? And so very French. Vive le Resistance! Réparez l’horloge! I’m having such fun imagining people breaking in to fix things. The clock over the arch at the Children’s Zoo in Central Park was broken for decades–what fun to think of a highly trained cadre of stealth clockmakers, arriving in the night to take care of the things the municipality hasn’t/can’t/won’t do itself, rather like the Cobbler’s Elves.  So think: what are some projects the Municipal Elves could take on in your town?

In other news: you all know that I am deeply interested in, and a big supporter of, our beleaguered, underfunded public schools. So when I learned that some schools are considering phasing out the past tense, I was concerned, both as a parent and a writer. What we need, I think, is the equivalent of all those musicians who get together to hold hugely popular concerts for music in public schools. Many of my fellow Brains play music; I could dig out my dulcimer. We could save the Past! Or we can just turn the page.

Go here. Endure the commercial. Then watch the sportscast. Wait one minute and thirty seconds.