Cormac McCarthy has signed a two-novel deal with his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “We don’t know anything about them,” Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, said. “But two new novels by Cormac McCarthy is good enough for us.” Knopf has published Mr. McCarthy’s work since his breakout novel, “All the Pretty Horses,” in 1992. “The Road,” which was published last year and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was selected for Ms. Winfrey’s book club earlier this year and has sold about 225,000 copies in hardcover, according to the publisher. And there are 1.1 million paperback copies in print.

Over the last year, I've found obsessive listening far more rewarding than brief attention to the latest latest. Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, and now Dead Moon all have a few things in common- each aims for the gutcords and heartstrings, with occasional nods to the funnybone. I wish I had a list of great new bands I could deliver but, well, checking it out and checking it out and checking it out salves curiosity but don't always do much for that needy and extremely demanding visceral voice crying out for some touch in the late night dark. I really like the new Demon's Claws record, but I can't imagine putting it on in the wee hours and settling in for the big eye-close. That new Final Solutions sounds purty dandy after one listening but it ain't getting the push when the alligators need feeding. It's a gas downloading but I can imagine buying 200 bucks worth of Dead Moon vinyl and lying down on the couch to die.

Seeking it all out is wonderful, but like the mad bomber Daryl Lamonica, sometimes you gotta go deep. After hearing Lucas deliver an unsolicited and note-perfect, "I'm pissed off, pissed off pissed off, it's just the way I am," I gotta believe the benefits fall forward.

Your next tattoo...

Bunch of things to cover:

Tuna, I'll be in NY August 7-10.

I bought an original, unplayed copy of T. Rex's The Slider, and it's so fucking good. Fuck Steve Jobs and digital music. Nothing comes close to the original.

I need to buy some wedding presents this week. Send on suggestions.

Redshark, where the hell are you?

Pick my next tattoo...

I ain’t no literary historian, but I’m guessing we have the boomers to blame for the disappointment memoir. Let’s see, if your lollypop-eyed expectations include changing the world into a love playground filled with Maslowian self-fulfillment, you might end up with failed hopes. Who could have imagined that? Now, we get seemingly endless middle-age where-did-it-all-go-wrong confessions, and if my eyes rolled any harder, they’d be in my ass.

Tim O’Brien, a man who delivered one masterpiece (The Things They Carried) and two other first-rate novels (Going After Cacciato and In the Lake by the Woods), has written his Big Chill book, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. July, July recounts a 30th reunion (what else? - it even includes a memorial service for fallen compadres) that focuses on ten classmates and how badly they perceive they’ve screwed up their lives. O’Brien alternates chapters from the reunion with those that tell the ten individual stories, so we can see the dashed hopes, the crumbling marriages, the dark secrets, etc. Marriage gets hit particularly hard, as even so-called perfect husbands get cheated on and verbally abused for failing to sustain perfect and abiding passion. Commitment isn’t easy for these folks- nobody told them it requires sacrifice- and boredom. There doesn’t appear to be any middle ground for these people between cynicism and despair. They are either defeated by their perceived failures or else the shell has hardened to allow only the jaded quip to exit those pouty mouths. That raises another problem- what comes out of those mouths rarely sounds like what comes out of the mouths of people I’ve encountered outside the printed page. The comebacks are too fast and too glib. We get no ordinary conversation about nothing, the kind you would expect to dominate a reunion in which people are getting to know one another again until the booze kicks in. It’s as if everyone is trying to one-up each other in the world-weariness competition by delivering only the sardonic jibe. So much of the conversation calls attention to itself by its spunk or its folksiness or its homespun “wisdom.” People just don’t talk like that, especially when they’re plastered or frying on acid, as two characters are near the end. And still they have a quip-off, no matter how many ellipses O’Brien employs to indicate normal, stuttering human speech.

I’m being harsh, because there is some psychological insight and some fine writing, but I simply don’t recognize these people. If they are genuine representatives of this generation, you just want to slap ‘em or shake your head. If not, well, O’Brien ain’t going for fantasy. It’s amazing with this guy, because he’s masterful when writing about Vietman, but he has produced two of the worst novels I’ve read (Tomcat in Love, The Nuclear Age), when he steps outside that arena. July, July is much better than those two, but it’s a long way from The Things They Carried. Comparing novels from a writer is never fair, so let’s just hope he either hangs out with more folks who didn’t believe in revolution in 1968, or else he lets folks talk like folks in the next one. Of course, there's always Vietnam...

The second best movie of the decade (after Hustle & Flow) is called Dreamland (2006) and concerns two young girls in a New Mexican trailer park. Since I'm an authority on the wants and needs of young women, and have a decent ear and sound BS meter when it comes to hack work, I cant believe how good this movie is. The plot is hokey but the dialog these kids hit is first rate. The girls are hot but of a different sort, and I hope the two leads go on to do better work, but it's likely they'll be humping an oiled exercise ball in the August issue of Maxim. This is not the OC nor is it your mother's TV movie of the week. It's the best movie I've seen about young people making a go of things since...I can't even finish that thought; I don't think another movie comes close.

Off to Tahoe, I leave you with the words of E.M. Cioran-

"Once I forget I have a body, I believe in freedom, but I immediately abandon such belief when my body calls me back to order and imposes its miseries and its whims."

"If a government decreed in midsummer that vacations were to be indefinitely extended and that, on pain of death, no one was to leave the paradise in which he was sojourning, mass suicides would follow, and unprecedented carnage."