I just spent a week guest blogging for Jeff Bercovici’s Mixed Media column at Portfolio.comand as much fun as I had (at times) posting for what I hope is a slightly larger audience, I’m glad to be back. The very first post I wrote relayed some gossip I had heard from some investment banker types — that Time Warner was going to spin off its magazine division, Time Inc — and people at TW blew a gasket.

In fairness to them, I hadn’t called corporate communications for the official denial; I’ve spent too long in the blogosphere, I guess, and also remembered the denials I used to get calling them from Salon. (They denied they were getting rid of Susan Wyland at Real Simple, as I recall — until they did; and they really didn’t like any criticism of the AOL merger, which proved to be such genius.) And I went with one of my sources — again, a person who used to work at Time Inc on the busienss side and who is now involved in the sale of magazine companies — who said this was going to happen soon, like in the next few weeks. So: bad reporter.

But when I finally talked to the the communications people at TW, they did not ask for a retraction (in fact they said it was “unnecessary”) and stressed that what was flat-out patently not true was my assertion that this massive sale would happen “in the next few weeks.” Not that it wouldn’t happen ever or that the idea hadn’t come up more than once…

There were some very heated ripostes to my post, all of them from Time Inc employees, and while I can understand the ire of those on the business side I have to ask of anyone in editorial: Can’t you smell the coffee? The great titles of yore (Time, Fortune, SI) are losing size, readers and general juju. (The debacle at Time, hampered by a horrible redesign and a Friday pub date which keeps them from covering any news that breaks after Wednesday, is a tale no one seems to be willing to tell.) There are no new titles in the offing. As much as the people slogging my blog had their sights set on Portfolio as a disaster (and if Keith Kelly got it right Friday, which I suspect he did, those critics include SI Newhouse himself), at least Conde Nast is trying to build a new brand.

“Time Inc is a good business,” a source said, “but they have nothing on the print side coming up.” The digital future predicted so long ago is now, and while they have increased and improved their web presence, they still have to acknowledge the print audience is vanishing like that iceberg the polar bear is stepping onto…

I predict TW will indeed sell Time Inc, but next year, after Richard Parsons leaves and Jeff Bewkes takes over. This is not a bold and crazy assertion; outside of Time Inc it is almost conventional corporate wisdom. Bewkes comes from cable (HBO); Parsons may be a lawyer but he’s a reader and has some print in his blood. It would hurt him to spin off Time Inc in ways that might not bother Bewkes.

As one of my sources said, it would behoove the folks at Time Inc to be independent anyway. “Right now if you sell something at Time Inc, the TW corporation absorbs the profit. They would be much better off getting rid of Southern Progress [instead of Business 2.0] but that money would go to Time Warner. And at the end of the year they would still be saying, ‘How come you guys aren’t making any money?'”

They still might like to think of Time Inc as the jewel in the crown that is Time Warner, but that jewel is dragging the crown down. If you’re at Time Inc now and think this is idiotic apostasy, why don’t you call me in a year? Not a couple of months, you’re right: no change. But ask yourself what those old-timers who took the buyouts might have seen and if the crown was being pulled over your eyes.

My brother Ethan is here visiting from SF and demands to be entertained. This has kept me popping and bopping around NY much more than usual and last night we headed over to the Luna Lounge in Williamsburg to see Heavy Trash, a rockabilly revivalist band fronted by Jon Spencer. You may know him from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion — or then again, you may not. Despite a devoted local following, the JSBG (or simply the Blues Explosion) never garnered the national fan base some in the rock press saw coming.

I never saw the JSBG, and can’t really tell if they are defunct or in hiatus while Spenser (ably assisted by guitarist Matt Verta-Ray and the power trio Power Solo) pursues his rockabilly dreams, but if his predilection to stop the band’s rocking and bring a song way down while he talks it to death was a hallmark of their performances, therein may lie the problem. I have always been of the opinion that irony kills rock, and his semi-coherent sermons about love and…something, seemed largely ironic.

One could argue that rockabilly has always had an element of humor and certainly progenitors like Billy Riley and Warren Smith were having fun with the squares by singing songs such as “Flying Saucer Rock ‘n” Roll” and “Ubangi Stomp,” respectively. But they sang them with a passion, not to mention a dixie twang, that the New Hampshire born JS just can’t touch. You’ve got to sing it like you mean it, son, no matter how stupid the song.

Ethan and I were the oldest folks in attendance by about twenty years, and between us we’ve seen our share of rockabilly revivalists (and pretenders). There’s a reason that bands such as the Stray Cats, as commercially successful as they were in their day, are critically neglected while the Blasters still sound fresh: Phil and Dave Alvin bought the dream, and never distanced themselves from the crowds or the music. (Dave, who wrote far more sophisticated songs than his rivals, plays solo these days.)

Heavy Trash may think of themselves as closer to the Cramps, who had one foot in goth with an aesthetic that owed more to the Addams Family than the Carter Family, and the T-shirts for sale at the merch table had a cartoonish quality remniscent of the Ramones. Ethan even bought a few for souvenirs, though as he said afterwards, “”It might be a better T-shirt than a band.” Don’t let this be your epitaph, kids.

MEDIA ALERT: Next week I will be guest blogging for the vacationing Jeff Bercovici, writing his Mixed Media column at Portfolio. Be sure to visit for tips, gossip and ill-informed opinions — and don’t forget to bring any dirt you may have picked up along the way.

One of the many advantages of spending a few weeks abroad (see below) is that you don’t see any American news. The house we were staying in had French satellite TV and we saw plenty of news about America, courtesy BBC World and CNN International (no Al Jazeera English, sorry to say), but it was not always front and center. The fires in Greece beat the floods in the midwest, though both got their due, and on CNNI there was that palpable frustration you see on television when a tropical storm like Dean does not develop into a full-blown hurricane. “Tropical Depression” says it all.

International news networks, of course, cover the news from a more international perspective, meaning there is not one end of the telescope to see the world through but many. The US is still the proverbial fat man in the bathtub as far as economics go (I caught a very lively roundtable discussion on BBC about why hedge funds matter and how the mortgage crisis could roil the financial waters ’round the globe) but politically the sense that the Bush administration is a star in Nova is everywhere. It is hard not to look at each new resignation, each bellicose speech, as one of its death throes. News of its decline was deemed important, and speculation about what impact it would have on next year’s presidential election was also keen.

So it was depressing (if not tropically so) to get home Monday and tune into Anderson Cooper’s 10 pm news show (which is called 360 but tends to present a perspective that, degree wise, is more like 90) on American CNN and learn that Alberto Gonzalez had resigned — 22 minutes into the broadcast. Talk about burying the lead. Cooper wasn’t hosting that night; the lamentable Soledad O’Brien (who has done more for the smirk-as-default-expression than Deborah Norville in her hey day) was filling in for him, but given Cooper’s recent track record, he would have gone with the same lead story: Michael Vick’s guilty plea and apology.

Let me be the last to say that Michael Vick is a bad man, and I think that anyone who abuses and kills animals should meet a similar fate (surely someone has suggested that he literally be thrown to the dogs: Vick vs. the Pack! we could all bet on the outcome). But 22 minutes of coverage, at the top of the hour, with much of it given over to a cheesy uninformative “investigation” of dogfighting in America? Yes, I’m sure CNN is giving its viewers what they want but given the role of the attorney general in defending the president’s right to spy and torture, and the historical, Watergate like nature of his resignation, shouldn’t someone at the network have made the call that the story deserved better placement? How about a compromise: lead with Vick and his apology if you insist (don’t forget to find Jesus, Mike!) — but then turn to the little matter of the wheels coming off the Bushmobile, and come back later with your lame “in depth coverage” of dogfights?

What happened to the idea that the people deciding what was news had some moral responsibility to give the public something other than what they want? I know, I know: it’s a naive question when a network like CNN is owned by Time Warner and the people in charge are businessmen before they are journalists and their first responsibility is to their shareholders, and giving people plenty of scary black athletes and their killer dogs is as natural to them as giving your kid Cocoa Puffs for dinner. But there is another way to do things, folks. You only have to cross the pond to see it — and believe me, the BBC is only too happy to serve up dead Diana news (for this Friday, the tenth anniversary, the network has opted to rerun her entire funeral).

Now at least, thanks to Republican Senator Larry Craig we have a story we can all agree on. Kids like it because it features men having sex in public bathrooms (as my daughter said when she caught a glimpse of the news last night: “Ewww!”) while grownups can enjoy yet another fatal blow to the GOP mastodon. Thanks to Keith Olbermann for pointing out that Fox News, in covering the scandal, neglected to mention Craig’s party affiliation. The hypocritical, homophobic right wing senator has been a vehement opponent of gay marriage, gays in the military and sexual deviance of any sort. As the senator himself said at the beginning of his denial, “Thank you all for coming out today.”

We just came back from two weeks in the south of France & I am experiencing that mix of emotions I always have after any time abroad. We had done a house exchange with a family in the little village of Cadenet, about a half an hour from Aix-en-Provence and I had a good idea of what I was getting into. Peggy and I had traveled some of those same roads before 18 years ago, sans fille, and had even had one of those perfect moments in the nearby village of Bonnieux. Back then a perfect moment included a bottle of wine and that work-free quiet of the Provencal afternoon. But again, that was before kids and before I quit drinking.

I did not miss the wine (much) and the non-alcoholic beer is better and more accessible there. The quiet is still on tap: the town (pop. 4000) grinds to a complete halt from about 12-2 and Wednesday people take off as well, just because they’re French and they feel like it. You need to adjust your schedule accordingly: if you want a baguette with your lunch, you better get down to one of the village’s four boulangeries before the baker quits for lunch. As our friend Veronique says about the day-to-day French rhythms, in which work takes a back seat to just about everything else, “It forces you to have a life.”

We brought Franny and her cousin Sally (both 14, going on 17) and they got right into it: Each afternoon that we were not exploring any of the more famous, ruin-studded local towns, the girls found what there was of local street life: other teens looking for diversions in a town fairly free of them. What they did was hang out together in cafes & talk & flirt, using what little French and English they shared. The girls were motivated to learn more French, as many girls have been upon visiting France, and the French predilection for PDAs (no, not those damned hand held work handcuffs, but public displays of affection) is still much in evidence.

Though we had internet access in our maison (an old farmhouse just above the town, with ceilings so low I felt like I was visiting Bilbo), I chose not to blog about while I was there: too much like work. Also, there seems to be something about the Provencal soujourn that brings out the worst in writers. I thought Peter Mayle was tiresome until I attempted to read Yvone Lenard’s risible Magic of Provence. I found even MFK Fisher’s Two Towns in Provence tough sledding, sprinkled as it is with fairy dust and commas. There is something about the Mediterannean pace of life there that makes even good writers lose their edge and melt like camembert in the afernoon sun.

Of course you could blame the locals, who for all I know are putting on an act for the benefit of the tourists. After settling on a boulangerie (the French take their bread very seriously — one place had already gone out of business for not being up to snuff — and the the girls practically lived on baguettes) I practiced my baby-talk French on our guy, who was happy to correct me.

“Pains au chocolah,” he corrected me. “In English you go up at the end of a sentence, while in French you go down. When you are done, it is finished. Like in love.”

That’s the kind of line you expect a French baker to lay on you, and maybe in French it really all does go back to romance. That part I like about the French. My mixed feelings had more to do with our return. The surly US customs people seem determined to make you reconsider your citizenship, and upon unloading the luggage at home I confronted a fellow pissing in the sidewalk across the street.

Why I bothered to confront him I couldn’t say. “Do you really have to do that here?” I said. “I live on this block and it stinks up the street.”

“Sorry, man, I live on this block too,” he lied. “But I just couldn’t hold it, you know?”

At which point one of young men from the projects down the street chimed in: “You can piss anywhere you like!”

“Yeah,” said the offending party. “What’s your problem, man? I can piss anywhere I like!”

Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite — Brooklyn style.

I was late to learn that Sam Mendes is directing a film adaptation of Richard Yates’ 1960 suburban noir novel, Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and I’m still trying to be optimistic about the outcome. “Optimism” is not a word one associates with Yates; his stories were so bleak, so rife with defeat and self-delusion and alcoholism that it is small wonder that Hollywood has not tackled him sooner. Unhappy endings often win Oscars — just look at Mendes’ own American Beauty — but they need stars to get the green light. Hence Winslet (who has reportedly wanted to make a movie of RR for years) and DiCaprio, together for the first time since Titanic.

The success of American Beauty (which, like RR, ends with a downer of a death) might seem like a good sign — that was another vision of stagnant suburbia and the dark passions that lie beneath its surface. But that film (written by Alan Ball, who went on to create Six Feet Under for HBO) was all surface itself. Kevin Spacey made us believe in lonely Lester Burnham, the dad with a thing for a high school girl, but the rest of the characters were pretty one-dimensional and Ball’s critique of suburban life was rather shrill and simplistic — in a very sixties kind of way.

What gives Revolutionary Road its staying power is its complexity, and the complicity of the characters in their fate. Frank and April Wheeler have moved to the suburbs of NY and hate themselves for it. They know better, damn it, they’re artists yearning to breathe free (he’s meant to be an author, instead of writing ad copy; she could have been a star on the stage, she believes). They have heard the distant bongos of beat cullture, probably read Henry Miller and want to go live in Paris — but instead of fleeing the air-conditioned nightmare they turn the temperature down. It’s the birth of the New Frontier but they’re not going anywhere. Imagine if the Dick Van Dyke Show had been written by Ibsen and you get the idea.

A few women have told me that they believe April Wheeler is one of the best female characters written by a man in modern literature, and as Blake Bailey noted in his excellent Yates bio, A Tragic Honesty, it was a too-close-for-comfort portrait of Yates’s first wife. He was a keen observer of human nature (as well as a bipolar drunk) and she never forgave him, even though April appears as the more sympathetic character and Frank (a dead ringer for Yates) comes off as the coward.

Winslet, who is wonderful even in bad movies, already grappled with suburban angst in Little Children and may save Mendes’s movie from a counterfeit ending. It would certainly have surprised Yates, who met his share of bullshit artitsts of the Hollywood variety (when he was not being institutionalized) and liked to keep his expectations low. I interviewed him in 1990; he was living beside a bike shop in Westwood in the most barren apartment I have ever seen. Years of hard living had taket their toll; though in his sixties then he appeared at least 20 years older, and the walk up the stairs to a fancy restaurant nearby just about killed him.

His reputation was obscure then; my editors at California magazine had never heard of him, and they were well-read people. Yates was working on a novel that drew on his experiences as a speechwriter for then attorney general Robert Kennedy, in the early sixties but, characteristically, he’d been unimpresssed by RFK and unconvinced of his love of mankind. The book was unfinished when he died a few years later, just as the interest in Hollywood in his fiction never bore fruit — at least in his lifetime. My impression was that he was a real gentleman beneath the shabby exterior and that you would find plenty of stickers from hell on his suitcase, if it hadn’t been stolen at the luggage carousel.

My editors held the story I wrote, by the way, looking for some kind of hook. Then the magazine went out of business — a very Yatesian ending.