General Manuel Noriega loves you
McSweeny’s has an amusing site in which quotations from Dubs are altered so that any reference to God is replaced by a famous name found in Trivial Pursuit.
I should point out that I found this via the most random internet related event that has ever happened to me; I found a truly bizarre confluence of web pages.
I googled “America the Book” in hopes of finding why the Open Letter to Sean Penn was not in my edition, but was in the edition I saw at Vromann’s last month. I ended up at Comedy Central’s site where I noticed that Jon Stewart et al. will be reading from their book at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on January 13. All proceeds from this ticketed event will go to 826nyc.org, a “nonprofit writing center designed to help students ages 6-18 develop their writing skills.”
But, that begged a certain question; what is the significance of “826”. It’s not their address. I looked around on the site, but didn’t see any explanation.
Several hours later I was looking at mertner.com where Allan posted some useful advice on multiblogging with wordpress that I’m using here. Another user of the site, Morten, linked to Joel Spolsky’s Joel on Software. A pretty interesting read. Anyway, in his about page, Joel paraphrases something from Timothy McSweeney’s mcsweenys.net, the provenance of the above article. And what else do I find there but a faq about 826NYC.net.
To quote Keanu Reeves: “whoa”.
That’s the long of it. The short of it is that I still don’t know why my copy of America the Book doesn’t have the letter to Sean Penn in it nor what “826” means.
So you’re telling me that a FAQ on 826NYC.net does not include the question, “What does 826 represent?”. Oh boy, and I used to think Fox News was good at leaving out important information…
Any idea where I can read a copy of this open letter to sean penn? I saw it in an early edition of the book as well, and would like to read it again.
d low, No clue. Maybe see if a library near you has a copy.
Well, 826 valencia was the original, so that one may well have been named for its street address in san fran. Now that I look at its site, that seems um, quite plausible, considering it says:
Visit us:
826 Valencia St. SF, CA 94110
Which sounds like an address to me.
Ah McSweeney’s, such delightful people…
826NYC’s completely revamped their website since I last saw it. As you point out, they now have a much better “About” section. I’d like to think it’s because of this very post.
I think I’ve been to McSweeney’s twice. I tend to think it’ll stay that way.
(And apologies for the typos. Seems McSweeney must get a lot of it; he has both domains.)