Pour, Baby, Pour

David Benjamin, author of The Joy of Sumo and The Last Kid Picked (and other sure-to-be-discovered novels) and his better half, Junko Yoshida, E-in-C of EETimes print, made an overnight pit-stop here on their way from NewYorstraliapanadarisconsin. Benji was unusually quiet (Benji is NEVER quiet), but we assumed it was the globe trotting. Turns out, it was a touch of food poisoning from some old sushi. One wonders whether the same gurgly stomach and disquieting mood lingers after revealing in his weekly screed that a friend of a friend's daughter, "age 19, up and decided to write a book, went ahead and wrote it, and got published the first time out, just as easy as pissing down his leg." Now I know how food poisoning feels! Benji, who just finished the first edit of The Fenwick Wonder Boys, "believes that when one writer succeeds, even an upstart who's never paid his dues and has no idea of the real ordeal of writing and isn't even old enough to drink much less drink himself to death like Somerset Maugham or F. Scott Fitzgerald, all writers succeed." To Benji: please pass the bourbon, don't bother rinsing out the glass, and keep pouring til I have to take a piss.