I spend a lot of my time in bookstore cafes, and over the past few years, I've noticed that the most frequent topic of conversation is Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). I think the topic is fascinating....but for a different reason than everybody else: I think it's fascinating because for the life of me I can't figure out whether NLP is bogus or not. 

I suspect that it's rooted in truths and that the claims are exaggerated after that. But here's my big question: if NLP supposedly gives you such advantages in life (i.e., the ability to control people's thoughts and decisions), then why are so many people NLP proponents I meet aimless, directionless, unemployed "businessmen"/"entrepreneurs"?

I just don't get it. Why do some companies purposely misspell their own names? Will somebody with Kraft or Tastee Freez please explain to me how the misspelling increases business? 

I just found this letter I wrote to my Senator when I was ten years old. The first sentence is pretty dull, but things pick up from there. Easily the most persuasive letter I’ve ever written. I present to you the letter in full:

October 5, 1992

Dear Congressman Levin:

Right now my class is studying some of the hazards of our state, country, continent, and even our world. For example. Population density, deforestation and POLLUTION!! Now let’s pretend there was some kind of fish in our Great Lakes that had the main ingredient for a cure for AIDS and it gets caught in some pollution, for example pop bottle rings or plastic bags, and became extinct. Then imagine if your son or daughter got AIDS. You would be not very happy. So I’m asking if you could make some kind of law saying you can’t dump any more trash in the Great Lakes.

Sincerely,
Ricky Lax and Lone Pine Elementary School Students

Okay, okay, I know this looks like we're just having fun (pictured is my roommate and my friend Sylvia from Chicago), but I'm actually hard at work here.  I'm writing a story about Pickup Artists, and we followed them into Tryst at Wynn to watch their game.  And now it's time to write about it. 

The #1 FUNNIEST BENCH in the WORLD. Came across this in Bucktown, Chicago. The best, best, best part is that the slogan is, Because when you do one thing, you do it right.

Anybody else going to pick it up today? I'm very, very excited to read it. Big Angels & Demons fan. Hmmm....let's see if I can read and review it in one week. I will try my best, but keep in mind, it's a 500-pager.

Okay...here I go...turning to page 1!

Has anybody seen my Pirate Economics book? I had it on the table a second ago...

This week I reviewed Ben Mezrich's book Accidental Billionaires for Las Vegas Weekly.  You can read the whole review HERE, and the first few paragraphs here: 

Even Ben Mezrich’s fiercest critics have to admit, the guy knows how to pick a good story. In 2003 Mezrich grew famous after writing about the MIT blackjack team (Bringing Down the House), and this year he’s found an even bigger story to tell: the creation of Facebook.

Maybe “found” isn’t the right word; the story was up for grabs. But Mezrich was the one who grabbed it, and now he’s reaping the benefits. Kevin Spacey snapped up the movie rights before the author had even completed his first draft. And having read the book, I can see why; The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook—A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal has the makings of a summer blockbuster: swank Silicon Valley parties, gorgeous Ivy League coeds and an unlikely hero: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In Accidental Billionaires, Mezrich reveals that Facebook began as a website that simply allowed Harvard students to vote on which of their female classmates was hottest. According to Mezrich, the first, second and third hottest girls at Harvard all lived together. The last four digits of their room’s phone number were 3-8-2-5 (F-U-C-K). “The Harvard housing office,” explains Mezrich, “was notorious for bizarre little pranks like that. Putting kids with similar names in the same room … there was a Burger and Fries, and at least two Blacks and Whites … Someone probably needed to get fired.”

I'm halfway though David Foster Wallace's essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." Easily the most clever thing I've ever read. How does somebody so young know so much about so many things? Reading Wallace makes me want to take even more risks in my writing... (Reading Wallace is also discouraging...cause you know you'll never be that good...)

This week I reviewed the first 62 pages of Glenn Beck's new book Common Sense. You can read the full review in this week's Las Vegas Weekly by clicking HERE...and you can read the intro below:

Glenn Beck is great on TV; he shouts, he scoffs, and he cries. But when he writes, when his words are stripped clean of the paint-by-numbers, manufactured emotion that television facilitates, one thing becomes clear: The man has absolutely nothing of consequence to say.

Beck uses every trick in the book to cover this up. He uses more exclamation points than a teenage girl with unlimited texts (e.g., “Open your eyes!” “They’re not rescuing our country; they’re destroying it!”), and more capital letters than a teenage boy writing his first quasi-communist manifesto (e.g., “HISTORY DEMANDS A CLEAR ANSWER.”) But try as he might, Beck can’t turn a paperback book into a flat-screen TV.

Here’s a good example of the type of sentence that might fly on The Glenn Beck Program, but doesn’t hold water in Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Governmen: “The result of preventing failure in a country rooted in freedom is a country that is no longer rooted in logic.”

That sentence would make my undergrad philosophy professor vomit in his mouth. Does Beck actually believe that preventing failure—in all cases, Glenn?—would somehow disengage America from the laws of Boolean logic? Of course not; to paraphrase a Mr. Show sketch, Glenn Beck doesn’t understand what words mean. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.