Arts Interns, Heat Maps, and the Dan Brown Substitution Project
In the context of another conversation, co-worker just observed that “when you get on a plane, there will still be fifteen people reading the fucking Da Vinci Code.”
He’s right. It’s a scourge. And an opportunity: Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to you The Dan Brown Substitution Project. The program: (1) Always carry a few Quality Titles by Quality Authors ready to give away; (2) When you see someone reading The Fucking Da Vinci Code, rip the book from his or her hands and replace it with a Quality Title by a Quality Author; (3) Run for your life.
But what should those Quality Titles be? Something awesome, something with hooks, something to convince him or her that there is more to the reading life than Dan “I-can’t-believe-people-actually-fell-for-this-shit” Brown.
Also: Check out the Dan Brown heat map, courtesy of textmap.com. (A heat map being “the relative interest in an entity at every locale in the United States. We have developed a geographic model of news influence which enables us to gauge the relative amount of exposure a given entity has received as a function of location.”) And the Arnold Schwarzenegger heat map. And Ernest Hemingway. And Jimmy Buffett. (Though the Queen Latifah heat map looks a little suspicious.
Also II: Annie Wagner and I are currently accepting applications for interns who are good-humored, reliable, and available on Tuesday afternoons: annie@thestranger.com and brendan@thestranger.com.
You're SUPPOSED to read thoroughly mindless shit on airplanes. Who can concentrate on anything substantive when there's like 20 molecules of oxygen, all tainted with the pathogens of 200 strangers, circulating in the overheated air and a six-week old with an ear infection giving voice to her discontent immediately behind you? Not to mention the whole jesus-what-was-that-noise-are-we-crashing business.