Category Archives: Lauren

April 05, 2011   Lauren   about us, Lauren, selling, What's New at DGLM  
22

The latest from DGLM

So what’s the scoop since we last updated you on happenings Chez DGLM?  The weather did not really improve, I’m afraid to report, though there were a couple quite nice days in the middle there, including a Friday so beautiful that the next day’s dreary weather seemed a massive insult.  The storm clouds are currently gathering, so we’ll just have to look forward to the flowers in May that these showers are supposedly bringing us.  In non-weather news, a few other developments:  Jane got an incredibly gorgeous and adorable new dog, Gilli.  Jim entered a contest to guess the outcome of the Tournament of Books, rode high atop the chart for a while, and then crashed out spectacularly at the last minute.  Better luck next time, Jim!  And I moved in to a new apartment and am currently contemplating just how to organize my books on my bookcases—I’m thinking new home means new rationale—but I still don’t have a library with rolling ladders.

In deal news, we’ve had a pretty productive month around these parts!

Jane started us off with a new Jacqueline Carey trilogy, beginning with Siren Summer, in which Daisy Johanssen, who may or may not be the devil’s spawn, is charged with the responsibility of liaising between the small Midwestern resort town of Pemkowet and the hidden community of eldritch folk and their reclusive demigoddess who also live there.  Anne Sowards at Berkley/Ace bought World English rights to the trilogy.

Then Trish Todd at S&S bought Molly Wizenberg’s next memoir from Michael.  Delancey, by the originator of the award-winning, popular blog Orangette and author of A Homemade Life, will be about a very young marriage, the difficult birth of a wildly successful restaurant, trust, faith, and what we do for the people we love

Jane also sold Carter Oosterhouse with Chris Peterson’s Carter’s Way to Lara Asher at Globe Pequot.  HGTV personality Carter will help homeowners find the ideal design for their homes and instill in readers his “you can do it” approach to design and home improvement.

Daniel Marks’s YA debut Velveteen, about a serial killer’s victim’s attempts to get revenge from Purgatory, spinning her new world into chaos, was sold by Jim McCarthy to Krista Marino at Delacorte.  Think Jennifer’s Body meets Beetlejuice.

Jim also sold the delightful Twig Terrariums by Michelle Inciarrano and Katy Maslow to Deborah Aaronson at Abrams—the book will be an instructional guide to building your own whimsical terrariums.  Check them out here.

Abby Zidle at Pocket bought from Jane the next two as-yet-untitled books in Anne Stuart writing as Kristina Douglas’s The Fallen series, which began with Raziel in January.

Another from Jane—this time William G. Hyland’s Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson, the first and only biography of the distinguished scholar Dumas Malone who spent nearly forty years researching and writing the definitive biography of Thomas Jefferson—went to Elizabeth Demers at Potomac Books.

Then Stacey placed baker Abigail Johnson Dodge’s next cookbook, No Fork Desserts, with Carolyn Mandarano at Taunton.  It will offer 75 delicious recipes for desserts that can be eaten utensil-free.

And Jane wrapped it all up nicely with actor and author Michael Tucker’s debut novel, which she sold to Stephanie Gorton at Overlook.  Like Life is about love and loss between soulmates Herbie and Annie, set among a diverse cast of characters that support the couple with humor and guidance.

What about you?  Any big life changes?  Monumental decisions?  Fabulous victories or crushing defeats?  And has spring sprung yet near you?  If so, could you put in a good word for us?

April 01, 2011   Lauren   Lauren, reading, writing  
5

No foolin’

I thought about coming up with some kind of elaborate April Fool’s joke for you, but it only took me about 15 seconds to realize that I’m not that sort of clever. Instead, I’ll provide you with some serious yet entertaining advice from the genius of Kurt Vonnegut, via blogger Derek Sivers, via Galleycat. I was fascinated by these charts and explanations for two reasons.

The first is that the craft of storytelling is a bit beyond me. I’m not a writer (as you may have noticed) and have zero aspiration to be one, but I’m really interested in process nonetheless. I can understand how one decides to write a story and even how inspiration works (in as much as anyone understands that), and I get the mechanics of working toward publication (fortunately for my clients!), but I really can’t comprehend what happens in between. How do a series of disparate scenes become a narrative? How does a person who does not exist and never has and never will seem to come to life on the page? How does one even sit down and type for as long as it would take to complete a novel, even the world’s worst novel, without churning out non-sequiturs or a slightly more polished version of what a monkey at a typewriter would produce? I do believe I edit well, and I can certainly identify when something isn’t working and sometimes where I think its gone wrong and sometimes but not always what would make it go right, but I know I couldn’t make it work from scratch. These charts make so much sense now that I’m looking at them—they’re rather obvious in retrospect—but to be able to do that is nearly miraculous as far as I’m concerned. Even a bad novel is a pretty significant achievement, in my mind. And the great ones? Mindboggling.

The second thing that interested me here is the way that Vonnegut explains not just how stories work, but why. I’ve always been drawn to stories that don’t replicate these sorts of patterns. I love bleak endings and anti-heroes and books that leave you with a sense of dread at the mundane nature of human existence. Happy endings are nice, and I’m not opposed to them in the right kind of novel, but I often find myself thinking about what happens after the end of a story and assuming things settle back down into that perfectly fine line halfway between misery and ecstasy in fairly short order. I’m just a cheery person that way! But rather than object to what Vonnegut’s charting here, the explanation of how life frustrates because it doesn’t deviate much from that middle road is pretty illuminating to me. I tend to assume big ups and downs aren’t likely, and thus tend not to fear big things. Really, how likely is it that something unusually terrible will happen to me of all people? It’s kind of comforting. (In turn, common but fairly harmless things like bats fill me with terror. Less comforting, that.) And yet the sense of dread in the stories I love does stem from the same sort of thinking that does the sense of joy in the stories Vonnegut charts here. There’s dread at mundane existence, at the way things are likely to just go on as they are, that the major happinesses aren’t on the horizon. Maybe some day your prince will come, but it’ll probably turn out he snores and has been disinherited from the throne. The bleakest of books are just performing the flip side of the equation, rather than deviating from the rule Vonnegut sets up here.

So which kind of writer are you? Do questions of craft enter your mind at all, or do you let your muse do the writing? Would you/have you used charts like this to plot your stories? And do they conform to this question of expectation v. reality, or go in a completely different direction that would require a different chart entirely?

March 25, 2011   Lauren   book fairs, fun, Lauren  
0

Laughing through the pain

With last-minute pre-Bologna Book Fair requests flooding my inbox and the London Book Fair looming in so few weeks I can hardly comprehend it, I barely have time to think this week, let alone try to find something interesting to say on the blog today. So it was with a great sigh of relief that I came across two chuckle-worthy pieces on publishing.

If you’re having as stressful a week as I am, take a deep breath and give yourself a moment to laugh along with this faux edit letter at McSweeney’s by Jay Dyckman and this Summer Book Roundup from the delightfully named A Shout Out to My Pepys. Do you think anyone will notice if I just copy and paste that second one into my London highlight list? Other than Justin, Katie, Katie, Justin, and Justin, of course.

March 18, 2011   Lauren   adaptation, characters, fun, Lauren, opinion  
12

Playing a part

Apparently a storm is a-brewing among fans of the Hunger Games trilogy:  an actress whose name means nothing to me has been cast to play Katniss Everdeen, and apparently she is all wrong for the part according to a vocal section of the audience.  Now before I get too far into this, I must confess that I’ve only read book one so far, so pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease, I beg you, don’t spoil the rest of the trilogy in the comments.  It’s miraculous that I don’t already know what happens, and I know I’m years behind on this one, but still, please indulge me.  Thanks!

This is really just an excuse for me to talk about characters again.  Not long ago, I mentioned character names and how they affect my reading, but film adaptations can have an even more significant impact.  I almost always read books before seeing movies—if I know I want to see the movie, I’ll usually read the book even if for some reason the book had never interested me—but I’ve found that the actor will often erase my pre-existing impression of the character, for better or worse.  I love Scott Spencer’s Waking the Dead, both book and film, but I think I love Fielding Pierce more because I love Billy Crudup and his portrayal of him.  Would I be quite so stubborn about Little Women if I wasn’t completely convinced that Christian Bale was a better catch than Gabriel Byrne?  (OK, maybe not in real life since Byrne seems lovely and Bale a touch ragey.  But young me found Byrne unforgivably old and Bale indisputably adorable.)  And I’ve never really forgiven Kirsten Dunst, who I had previously loved, for playing Amy.  On the flip side, my affection for the stars of The Outsiders because of their roles in that film is totally disproportionate to their subsequent careers.  It doesn’t really matter what career heights Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell might’ve failed to reach later on, nor that they’re largely better known for other things—I just can’t hold anything against them.

I recall, initially, being opposed to Brad Pitt’s casting in Fight Club, but I have no quibble with it having seen the performance.  Jimmy Fallon taking a role in Fever Pitch made it clear to me that I shouldn’t bother to see it—though, I did, on TV, at a desperate moment, which corroborated that impression—but he can’t be entirely to blame, since I’m pretty sure that movie was made simply upon the realization that the pun in the title would work for baseball as well as soccer.  (Colin Firth in that role I can’t object to, because one simply cannot object to Colin Firth.)  And while I’m not all that passionate about The Scarlet Letter as a novel, I’m pretty confident that Demi Moore ought not to be Hester Prynne.

Since I was having trouble coming up with any casting choices that really raised my hackles as Lawrence does other Hunger Games fans, I polled some of the folks here.  Jim was not at all pleased with the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island—a choice so horrible that it made him subconsciously replace the “u” in shutter with an “i” when he IM’d me his choice.  Rachel’s not entirely down with the Harry Potter crew, though while she was particularly annoyed about Daniel Radcliffe, he has grown on her: “He looks Harry-er than he used to.”  John takes issue with Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, “if only because of the haircut.”

What do you think?  Hunger Games fans think they should have gone another way?  Who would you rather have?  Or are you pro-Lawrence?  And who really just ruined a movie for you—or conversely, caught you pleasantly by surprise?  Has anyone ever cast exactly who you would’ve chosen?  And finally, and maybe most intriguingly, if you’re an author, have you already picked out the actor or actress you’d like to play your protagonist?

March 08, 2011   Lauren   advice, digital publishing, future of publishing, Lauren, opinion, self-publishing  
6

She speaks the truth

If you’re the type to read publishing news, and you no doubt are if you’re here, then I’m sure you’ve heard all about Amanda Hocking’s phenomenal success as a self-published author.  She’s a 26-year-old millionaire, in fact, which I can’t say I don’t envy.

Much has been said about this by anyone remotely interested in publishing, and now Amanda herself has weighed in with an honest and surprisingly objective look at the realities of publishing and self-publishing that give a hint as to the sort of business savvy that has made this work for her.  I think Amanda’s words speak for themselves on so many of the topics at hand here, so I’ll just pick out the thing I think is most important for people to keep in mind, but I’d encourage you to hop over to her blog to read it in full:

Everybody seems really excited about what I’m doing and how I’ve been so successful, and from what I’ve been able to understand, it’s because a lot of people think that they can replicate my success and what I’ve done. And while I do think I will not be the only one to do this – others will be as successful as I’ve been, some even more so – I don’t think it will happen that often.

Traditional publishing and indie publishing aren’t all that different, and I don’t think people realize that. Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren’t. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it’s harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

As an agency, we’re pretty bullish about the digital future of publishing (even if many of us are also really, really, really attached to books as objects and unwilling to believe we could ever abandon them entirely in favor of our Kindles).  We work with some wonderful authors who keep pushing out the edge of the digital frontier.  We also talk about where things are headed and how to help our clients in this transition on a near daily basis, and we’ve been putting in the work to make sure that whatever happens, our authors won’t get left behind in the dust.

But that said, it’s a mistake, as it always has been, to think that self-publishing is as simple as bypassing the gatekeepers who wouldn’t know a good book from a hole in the ground to go straight to the masses of consumers.  Certainly amazing books are missed by the traditional publishing industry for myriad reasons—some of them simply human, others institutional flaws—and don’t think that agents and editors, who go to bat daily for books that won’t always make it on the shelves, aren’t keenly aware of that.  But publishing a book isn’t a one man job, however simple the upload tools might make it seem.  Editing, copyediting, cover design, marketing, distribution, and many more issues exist beyond the writing of the book (no easy task!) that need time and care and energy and experience.  Self-publishing is easier than ever before from a technical sense, but succeeding at it, like succeeding at just about anything in life, takes a tremendous amount of hard work, a willingness to get (and pay for) the work you can’t do yourself, and at least a little bit of luck.

Congratulations to Amanda and others like her who were told no and found a different path to success.  And congratulations are due also to those authors who the HuffPo won’t be calling millionaires any time soon, but who, through hard work and ingenuity, have found an audience for their books.

Of course, all this makes me curious about Amanda’s books, which I haven’t read yet but plan to check out.  With the number of copies she’s sold and the amount of press she’s had in the last week, some of you must have read her, right?  Any recommendations?  Any thoughts as to why she’s gotten where she has?

March 04, 2011   Lauren   about us, Lauren, selling, What's New at DGLM  
20

News from DGLM!

A month has passed since we offered you some news from around DGLM.  February was a busy (and brutally cold) month here, and we’re hoping March will be just as busy (in a good way!) but quite a bit warmer!

Michael started us off right when he placed Ask the Passengers, the next YA novel from A.S. King, author of the Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz and the forthcoming Everybody Sees the Ants, with Andrea Spooner at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.  Ask the Passengers is about a girl, a town, and the passengers in the planes that fly over her house.

This was followed by two books Stacey sold to Jenna Ciongoli at Broadway/Crown by her client Jeff Yeager.  How to Retire the Cheapskate Way is the next Ultimate Cheapskate book, which focuses on planning for retirement.  Broadway/Crown will also be publishing an original e-book by Yeager called Don’t Throw That Away which will provide tips for repurposing common household items.

Jane sold The Courage to Hope: How I Stood Up to the Right Wing Media, the Obama Administration and the Forces of Fear by Shirley Sherrod to Malaika Adero at Atria.  Raised in the deep South during the final violent years of Jim Crow, Sherrod understands firsthand the power of faith and the call to be a witness for truth and racial healing, which served her well in the summer of 2010, when a media storm blew apart her life and forced her to resign her position as the USDA’s Georgia Director of Rural Development.

Jane also placed Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea’s Train Like a Mother, a follow-up to their Run Like a Mother, which will comprehensively focus on how to train for a race and cover the importance of strength training and injury prevention, but with the same wit and tone as their first book, with Chris Schillig at Andrews McMeel.

Jim sold Mindi Scott’s Live Through This to Liesa Abrams at Simon Pulse. The novel follows a girl as she embarks on her first romantic relationship at the same time she is trying to come to terms with the sexual abuse she’s endured at the hands of a family member.

Jane followed this with a deal with Dawn Davis at Harper for Caroline Clarke’s Postcards from Cookie, about Clarke’s life changing journey after discovering that her biological mother was Carole Cole (nicknamed Cookie), the daughter of iconic crooner and pianist Nat King Cole, and the time Clarke was able to spend with Cookie following her discovery.

Emma Carlson Berne’s untitled YA thriller about best friends whose attraction to the same boy turns deadly was sold to Emilia Rhodes at Simon Pulse by Michael.

First Class, a memoir by radio and television journalist Alison Stewart about her journey as she works through the grief of her father’s sudden death by discovering what her parents’ lives were like as they grew up in the 1940’s in segregated Washington, D.C., was sold by Jane to Jerry Pohlen at Chicago Review Press.

Jane also sold James Villas’s latest cookbook, Southern Fried, a comprehensive collection of quintessentially Southern recipes, to Justin Schwartz at Wiley.

Another of Jane’s cookbooks went to Pam Krauss at Rodale: Beatrice Ojakangas’s The Best Soup and Bread Cookbook, a diverse collection of 150 recipes for soups and breads based on flavor, texture and classic combinations.

And Stacey finished us up (for now!) with Joanne Chang’s follow-up cookbook to the successful Flour, which will offer more sweet and savory recipes from Chang’s Boston bakeries.  Chronicle’s Bill LeBlond will be publishing it.

How about all of you?  Any news?  Exciting goings on?  Was it bitterly cold where you are, or are you lucky enough to be somewhere that doesn’t require a million layers to make it through the day?

February 25, 2011   Lauren   advice, fun, Lauren, marketing/publicity, technology  
20

Fun with QR

When I stumbled on the delightful Books2Barcodes site at Wonder Tonic, it renewed my interest in QR code.  I’ve been seeing it around, but didn’t totally understand the purpose and, having only a sad old flip phone, I’d never tried it out.  My awareness grew when a Lupe Fiasco QR code projected on a building I can see from my desk caused a bit of a stir here in Union Square, and now that there are books involved (for the first time I’ve noticed, anyway), it’s time to learn.

So I reached out to digital strategist (and friend of DGLM) Dan Scholz for some help understanding, since I’ve been hearing him talk about it for a while now.  Here’s what he told me:  QR (quick response) code is a two-dimensional barcode that’s primarily useful for dynamic and interactive event and promotions marketing.  Essentially, QR code, invented in Japan several years ago, is a specialized barcode that camera-equipped smartphones can read using barcode reader apps.  You see the code—on the side of a building, in a magazine, on the Books2Barcodes website, on a waffle—and then scan the code using your phone.  That code links to something, often a website with some kind of pre-order or sales information.  According to Dan, the audience for this has been very tech heavy for a while now, but started to reach a tipping point last fall.  The market penetration has gotten much bigger, and 2011 should be a very big year for QR code marketing.

Not having a smartphone myself, I borrowed Stacey’s yesterday to try out Books2Barcodes.  I didn’t have the greatest luck scanning off my computer, I think due to the glare on the screen, but I finally managed to scan the barcode in the page header—and lo and behold, text popped up:  “Call me Ishmael.”  I can’t imagine reading a book in 800-character fragments (which is apparently what the barcodes I couldn’t manage to scan would’ve provided), but I love the ingenuity, and the gimmick draws attention to a fun new opportunity for publishing.

So how can authors and publishers use it?  The internet is full of free QR code generators, so I googled, picked one at random, and used QuikQR to create this one:

You know you wanna scan it.

Smartphone users, why don’t you give it a shot?  (And hey, while you’re there, why not click that little like button?)  If you don’t already have a barcode scanner on your phone, there are a number of free ones to download, including RedLaser, the one I used to scan Moby Dick on Stacey’s.

So what do we think?  Passing fad or technology of the future?  Fun gimmick or serious marketing opportunity?  Have you seen publishers and authors using QR codes?  Any code generators or barcode scanners to recommend?  And what do you see as the possibilities for book promotion here?  Certainly there are some straightforward options, like directing people to Facebook, websites, pre-order links, and giveaways.  But what about something more exciting?  Dan mentioned that one of the greatest things about QR code marketing is that you can generate it for YouTube videos—when scanned, the smartphone’s YouTube app opens right up to the video in full screen with no extra clicks.  I’m not totally sold on book trailers, but I can imagine it working in this context—it’d be a really fun way to expose people to them!

February 18, 2011   Lauren   characters, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
14

What’s in a name?

I’ve been thinking about character names having recently tried to complete this surprisingly difficult Sporcle quiz.  (Do you Sporcle?  You should.  Unless you feel the internet already provides too many distractions, in which case do not click that under any circumstances.)  There are so many associations people have with certain names—some predictable, if they’re the names of famous people or popular characters in books, TV shows, and movies, and others just because of people they happen to know.  I grew up under the impression that Lauren was not a terribly popular name since I never seemed to see it in books or hear it on TV—not uncommon, mind you, but rarer than the seemingly omnipresent Laura—but I now know that I was wrong since it was exceedingly popular when I was born.  In the last few years, I’ve come to associate my own name with a rather unfortunate type of person, thanks in no small part to Lauren Conrad.  After she came on the scene, suddenly it seemed that that was what a Lauren was and every time a Lauren cropped up anywhere, she was kind of awful.  Similarly, Bella has always been one of my favorite names and was up until recently the name that I had always said I’d give a theoretical future daughter, but that’s out now, because I wouldn’t want people thinking I’d named this imaginary hypothetical child after Twilight—which surely plenty of people are doing—since if people are going to make name-based assumptions, I’d rather they be the ones I’m actually aiming for.  I wouldn’t be opposed to naming children after literary characters, but I’d be selecting them pretty carefully, and I don’t think Ms. Swan would make the cut.

When I read, though, I’m also bringing those opinions to bear.  I think part of my attachment to 1984 initially sprung from my fondness for the name Julia.  Reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, for about half the book, I had trouble realigning my impression of Bridgets from the Bridget I grew up with to Bridget Jones—they couldn’t be more different.  Jo March was an early favorite because my grandmother is Josephine, but I’ve long had to resist holding Amy March against people I meet named Amy.

So tell me, authors, do you find yourself deliberating about the associations you have with names you might give your characters?  Do you ever name anyone after people you know, but then feel odd about making that character go through something difficult?  Do you worry that people you know will think you’re assigning their attributes to characters who happen to share their names?  Or do you deliberately avoid names of anyone you actually know and anyone famous, so that the names don’t bring anything to the table?  With so many names out there, how do you choose?

February 11, 2011   Lauren   controversy, favorites, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
8

When the ones you love are kind of…awful

Reading this article in the Guardian about the latest snide Martin Amis remark to disgust people, I was struck by a familiar sentiment:  Oh, Martin, must you always make it so embarrassing to like you?

Apparently Amis declared that he would only write a children’s book if he had brain damage.  Charming, truly charming.  With one asinine comment, he managed to insult children’s book authors, the brain damaged, and, well, children.

Now surely, this attitude problem is much of what Amis is all about and at least part of the reason anyone bothers to talk about him.  (For the record, the other part is that he’s genuinely talented.  Whatever he may be as a man, I truly love London Fields.)  This isn’t the first time he’s said something seemingly exclusively to annoy others.  The protagonist of Money is one of the more repulsive characters in contemporary fiction, and Amis named him John Self.  (Points for self awareness, perhaps?)  And a great many writers of wonderful, wonderful things were also terrible, terrible people.  If we ruled out the artistic products of people who are not also lovely people we don’t object to, it’s terrifying to think what cultural gems we’d lose.  The list of drunks who were nasty to their wives alone would deprive us of much of the canon.

I could list examples, but I’d be here all day.  Instead, enjoy this clip of Jill Sobule singing “Heroes,” her song on this very subject.

Giving that a listen, there are far worse things one could be than a jackass, I suppose.  I think my issue with Amis is less his attitude, which I’d potentially find amusing and endearing if he ever seemed insightful or funny or clever when putting someone down for no reason.  It’s not like I want him to be nice.  It just all seems to come from such a defensive, sad, ain’t never gonna win the Booker sort of place.  Witness his public kerfuffle* over everyone’s favorite British non-celebrity, Katie “Jordan” Price—when an acclaimed literary novelist comes off as jealous of a girl who is famous for wearing little clothing, being so tacky that tacky people look on in horror, and trying to date herself into greater stardom, I find it hard to get upset about his misogyny.  What he was saying was sort of beside the point—the aggravating thing is that he felt the need to say it at all.  It’s not easy to see this as a brave man speaking truth to power and damn the consequences.  Instead, he just seems petulant and insecure, and really, I just want him to be more.  If he’s going to take people down for sport, is it too much to ask that he do it with style and a little more effort to hide his wounded ego?

Looking at your own favorite books, are any of them written by people who are sort of hard to champion?

*With the standard caveat that Wikipedia is perhaps not the most accurate source of information.  Suffice it to say that I’m assuming no one’s sabotaging the integrity of this particular piece of information.  It’s not like it’s a subject where accuracy is of vital importance, like Justin Bieber.

February 04, 2011   Lauren   about us, fun, Lauren  
4

What DGLM sounds like

When I came across this post on The Awl about Union Square’s resident bagpiper, I just had to share it.  One of the oddities of working in our office is that while we’re nine floors up with no windows actually facing Union Square, anything loud going on down in the park sounds like it’s happening in our file room.  When there’s a rally or march or concert, we hear it.  Rounds of IMs will ping around the office, everyone trying to figure out exactly what the protesters are chanting.  Or which song has been played three times in the last hour.  Or whether the person on the megaphone is hawking a product or inciting a revolution.  With the odd acoustics, made stranger ever since they built a building across the street made up primarily of windows, we are a captive and often confused audience.

Yesterday evening was a perfect example.  It sounded like angry hordes were invading 1 Union Square West, and I initially suspected a continuation of the previous evening’s Egypt rally, but it turned out to be a crowd of people waiting for a Lupe Fiasco event in the park…that turned out to just be this ad projected on the side of a building.  (Far enough from where the crowd had mistakenly gathered that I could see it, but not them, from my desk.)  From the sounds of it, the crowd had shown up expecting something a little more entertaining.  Shame the bagpiper was nowhere to be found.

As Jim said when I sent him the bagpiper post, if you want to know what it’s like to work chez DGLM, just go play that clip on repeat for four hours.  For a more authentic experience, while it’s playing ask a couple family members to go honk your car horn periodically and shout angrily and inarticulately at random intervals.

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