Been busy at the Alpine hacienda the last week or so, and I’ve been remiss in posting lately. Schemes gang agley and all that. So here’s one of those omnibus posts everyone likes.

Wonderful to see so much of Emily the last day or two! Thx Thanks for that unmistakable verve!

As Emily reported, David Remnick will write a book on Barack Obama. It will be his first book that isn’t a compilation or an edited work since he took over as New Yorker editor in 1998. That is a big deal. And, of course, good news!

How very nice to see an abstract cover on the magazine’s big year-ender.

David Fincher’s newest movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on an unlikely F. Scott Fitzgerald story, appears to be a stunner. On the subject of making movies of Fitzgerald stories, has anyone considered adapting “The Jelly-Bean”? On a road trip many, many years ago, I listened to Dylan Baker marvelously reproduce the lazy Southern rhythms of the story (it’s set in Georgia), and I think it might work on the big screen. It’s nothing like The Great Gatsby, which apparently is also true of Button. Anyone agree or disagree, or have other candidates?

Oh, and how do people feel about the new adaptation of Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road? I don’t think I could bring myself to watch such depressing material, honestly. I had the same problem with Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal; the book was excellent, but I was not able to finish the movie.

I wanted to mention a swell new blog, “Daily Routines,” an ongoing compilation of passages from writers discussing their daily routines. It cites The New Yorker about as much as any other source. I am a sucker for this sort of thing, interviews with artists, honest discourse on the process….

Sigh. I suspect (fear) that “The Transition” podcast is so named because they’ll be putting the “Campaign Trail” in hiatus until there is an actual, you know, campaign under way. I trust that Ryan Lizza will be able to find plenty to occupy him in Obama’s first year.

I’ve recently taken up cooking. (Until now I have always been strictly a microwave chef.) So when is The New Yorker going to come out with a cookbook, anyway?