Lena Dunham wrote a personal essay called "A Box of Puppies" that appears in The New Yorker this week. It's worth the read if you like Lena Dunham's writing and/or puppies.
Peep this essay from Justin Halpern, the creator of Shit My Dad Says (canceled) and writer on How to Be a Gentleman (canceled), for the perspective of someone who's made it from Twitter into the glitzy, glory-filled world of TV writing but hasn't hit on a show with staying power. It paints a good picture of the writers' room on a show everyone knows is going to be cancelled:
“Where does it go in the second act?” one of the senior writers asked, as we were trying to outline the next episode.
“What if in the second act, he turns to the girl he’s with and he’s like, [...]
About this time last year, you were likely getting excited for the next season of Bored to Death, which we've since learned was its last. Well, the writing of Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death's creator, not the Bored to Death character) might be the best way to fill this autumnal void. Ames is a novelist by trade – most notably of The Extra Man, which eventually got turned into a movie a couple years ago – but arguably he's better known as a personal essayist. Ames, not unlike the Jonathan Ames character on Bored to Death, is a fairly normal person who likes to put himself in uncomfortable and/or perverse situations, [...]
Oh, just your weekly reminder that Louis C.K. is fantastic, in the form of an essay about how "the next Steve Jobs will be a chick." Given his appreciation for ladies' talents at listening, toothbrushing, and being fun to hang out with, it's kind of amazing that Louis doesn't have ninety women trailing him every time he leaves the house. I mean, how long will it take for someone to start photoshopping quotes from this article onto soulful pictures of Louis C.K.'s face? Am I gonna have to do this myself? Because I will.
This week's New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs is a very funny piece by SNL's Simon Rich about how Genesis might've gone if God was dating someone. Women be stoppin' omniscient entities from creatin' majestic universes, and all that.
Ricky Gervais' admission that Twitter is actually pretty cool after all (welcome to 2011, RG) quickly morphs into a meditation on the meaning of art, criticism and creative play. Give it a read if you're trying to put off doing something creative.
