“Kerouac taped together twelve-foot-long sheets of drawing paper, trimmed at the left margin so they would fit into his typewriter, and fed them into his machine as a continuous roll. Holmes visited his apartment while this version of On The Road was in progress and was amazed at the thundering sound of Jack’s typewriter racing [...]

From a profile on Barry Michaels, the Hollywood therapist who treats screenwriters, actors and movie execs: “By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. ‘They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,’ he says. ‘Often [...]

My second article for Smashing Magazine is up: Enjoy a ponderous dive into the topic of clichés and idea generation.

My typography article is up at Smashing Magazine. Enjoy a wholehearted delve into font nerdiness. In response to yesterday’s Julius Peppers post, reader MM passes on this compendium of outlandish college basketball names. Sample fun fact: LaceDarius Dunn has a brother named DaVarious. I liked the politically-correct impulse to put a non-black guy in there– hence, [...]

Film director Elia Kazan, from an unpublished letter to Tennesse Williams. Kazan is asking Williams to add a speech in praise of bohemianism to his liberal-leaning script for “Camino Real”: A dying race call them what you will: romantics, eccentrics, rebels, Bohemians, freaks, harum-scarum, bob-tail, Punchinellos, odd-ducks, the out-of-steps, the queers, double-gated, lechers, secret livers, [...]

This is what happens when you have a portfolio site that’s your own name (as in danmayer.com): That’s us Dans: always loving each others’ shit, man.

Looking over the search engine terms that people have used to find this blog, it’s come to my attention that there’s something called Mock Duck Hot Springs. Before you get too excited, I should clarify this exotic refuge exists only within the virtual reality of something called Rohan: Blood Feud, one of these massively popular, [...]

From David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to graduates of Kenyon College in 2005: “Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. [...]

During my just-finished vacation to Poland (described in last post), I had an interesting conversation with a musician/composer guy about a manuscript he’s just finished writing for a novel. His main take was that it had been really fun to write because it provided him with a break from the tasks that he considers his [...]

Hooray for those who have invented nothing! Hooray for those who destroy nothing! But who in awe give themselves up to the essence of things. Ignoring surfaces, but possessed by the rhythm of things Heedlesss of taming, but playing the game of the world. – Aimé Césare