The New York Times notes that his recently published presidential biographies, "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever" and "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," have been the top two books on the list for the past full week, with the latter having sold about one million copies.

In fact, the Times suggests that O'Reilly might be "the most popular history author in America" in part due to his television fame, and partially due to the sheer volume of work he has pumped out over the years:

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Seinfeld talks about how he constructed a joke about Pop Tarts and, of course, his trademark "nothing." "In my world, the wronger something feels, the righter it is," he says. "So to waste so much time on something this stupid--that felt good to me."

Here's the Pop Tart joke from a 2010 performance on David Letterman's "Late Show" (at 1:19)--which is still a work in progress:

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Apatow also spoke on NPR earlier this week and has given advice As a Grown Man, too.

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But last week Gawker got ahold of the proposal, publishing it and annotating 12 choice lines (one of which mentions that her "vegan dinner party" was featured in the New York Times) with a dose of snark. Dunham's lawyer asked Gawker to take the proposal down (and it did). But now Deadline reports that Dunham wants the 12 lines to be taken down, too.

Deadline notes that "this is hardball":

This is hardball: Harder represented himself to Gawker’s attorney as “litigation  counsel for author and actress Lena Dunham [and] Lena Dunham has retained an attorney to demand that Gawker remove 12 quotes from her book propsal from our site,” an insider tells me.  (I hear Random House isn’t bitching to Gawker, only Dunham.)

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In comedy, "Modern Family" continued to reign with a series nomination and three episode noms.

Below are nominations for the top TV categories:

DRAMA SERIES

"Boardwalk Empire," HBO

"Breaking Bad," AMC

"Game of Thrones," HBO

"Homeland," Showtime

"Mad Men," AMC

COMEDY SERIES 

"30 Rock," NBC

"Girls,"  HBO

"Louie," FX

"Modern Family," ABC

"Parks and Recreation," NBC

NEW SERIES 

"Girls," HBO

"The Mindy Project," Fox

"Nashville," ABC

"The Newsroom," HBO

"Veep," HBO

Find the rest of the nominees here. The WGA will announce the award winners on Sunday, Feb. 17.

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It Books executive editor Mark Chait, who helped negotiate the deal, said of Saget, "I've been dying to do a book with Bob ever since he almost made me p-ss my pants with laughter in 'The Aristocrats,'" a reference to the 2005 documentary in which Saget, along with 99 other comics, improvised perverse and absurd renditions of a classic Vaudeville joke. "It is now well-known that Bob Saget is very different from the neurotically conservative Danny Tanner character he played on 'Full House.' With this book he truly lets it all hang out -- the full monty of his crazy self, his dirty humor and unique personality," Chait said.

The AP notes that the book will have "filth and craziness and stories of such comedians as Richard Pryor and Don Rickles." And, if Saget's tweets are any indication, "it may get dirty."

h/t THR

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Russell Pool for "House Beautiful" 1951

If, while watching the sun set on a used-car lot in Los Angeles, you are struck by the parallels between the image and the inevitable fate of humanity, do not, under any circumstance, write it down.

— Fran Lebowitz

LONG AGO, IN A TIME OF PEACE and relative innocence, I decided that I would like, very much, to be a writer. At that time, I was just a person who wrote stuff; a swell hobby and a fine way to pass the time while everyone else worked, but what I really wanted was to get paid to write stuff. Besides the obvious fiduciary benefits of such an arrangement, I was most interested in the title it confers. “Writer” would provide identity and security. “Person who writes stuff” provided only stomach pains.

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But leaving nice reviews for a friend, as Weddle did, hardly seems like something a rival would do. The LA Times reports that the practice of writers penning nice reviews for fellow writers, as with blurbs on a book jacket, "can look a lot like back-scratching," but "it's not at all uncommon -- and it's never been discouraged" within the publishing industry.

When Weddle investigated the matter more deeply, Amazon sent him the following email:

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Glen Berger, co-writer of the disaster-prone "Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark," is working on a book. "Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History," will come out next year, Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday. Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp said the book would be, "entomologically speaking," the "ultimate fly-on-the-wall account" of how a musical is made.

The big budget production became notorious for a series of stunt accidents during previews. The show was eventually revamped and the original director, Julie Taymor, was fired. Taymor later sued the producers, who countersued. A tentative settlement was reached over the summer.

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John Updike's 2005 description of two Chinese writers, including Mo Yan, gives some (now prophetic) insight into why most of us have never head of Mo before:

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I love your column. I love your political commentary even more. Your last piece on Romney was genius. Thanks for making my day.

OK. Here's the question. I'm an INTP. (The N is 26 to 1 Intuition over Sensation.) I'm a professional academic, and pretty successful at it. I have tenure. I've written two books. My introversion doesn't hinder my being a highly effective presenter at conferences. Even if I need to retreat to recharge with my dogs on a regular basis, an academic schedule makes that easy to handle. So what could be the problem, right?

I love to write. But I never have enough time. I've managed to get a novel out on Kindle and two books out with good university presses, but my super-heavy teaching load and service load do not permit me to achieve what I might otherwise achieve. I'd like to work at a research school with a lighter teaching load instead of a teaching school. But I'm not sure anyone would hire me at my age. Moreover, my considerably older husband works where I do and is very happy. He doesn't want to budge. I'm already 55. If I make a move it has to be now, and it may already be too late.

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Trillin talked about his approach to humor in an interview with Mother Jones last year:

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I'm 25, living in a city I love, working a job I love, and writing. Writing has been my dream more than my passion for most of my life, but I'm good at it and I've finally gotten the discipline to put my butt in the chair every day and bang out a few words. Unfortunately, I'm good at my job, too.

I work in food service in a demi-managerial position (at a recently opened mom-and-pop joint where job titles are a bit of a joke) and am the most reliable and competent person who works there, aside from the owners. It's not hard. I work a schedule I like, I do work I like, I'm not as young as my co-workers and I take what I do seriously. But the owners would love me to do more. What exactly "more" is remains undefined. They've given me multiple raises in the six months since the cafe has opened -- small ones, but a raise is a raise. It's nice to be working somewhere I'm appreciated, making (slightly) more than minimum wage, doing something I love. But.

Writing is what I love, it's what keeps me going. I can't write and manage this cafe. I don't know how to broach this with the owners, who are clearly set on grooming me to take on some of the day-to-day managerial duties from them. Help!

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“Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.” This sad litany comes from an idiosyncratic novel by David Markson called The Last Novel, in which he tells the story, in fragmentary anecdotes, of an aging author writing his final book. The novel references hundreds of other writers and artists of various kinds, many of whom went unrecognized during their lives.  Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. I can’t stand the thought of anyone ending up that way.

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See here:

While many responses to my book were positive, the tone of some of the critiques—from “mystic woo woo about the frou frou"  to “bad news for everyone who has one” — suggests to me that our culture, even one in which Fifty Shades of Grey is being devoured by millions of women, still has problems discussing women’s sexuality in a positive, empowering way. And we need — perhaps women especially — to be able to have that conversation.

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I recently quit my job as a staff writer for a weekly newspaper. I had applied for the editor’s position, since our current editor was leaving for (much) more lucrative work outside the confines of journalism. I felt qualified for the job and had established an excellent working relationship in the community with many people. I had worked as a staff writer for almost two years at the time and felt confident that I was prepared to take on the editor’s position.

My reason for leaving my position was the fact that the publisher, who was rarely in our office, basically ignored my application for almost a month, then put me into the editor’s position as "fill-in" (his words) and offered me no pay raise, no title and no support. Rather, he denigrated me at every turn. I received approximately 20 minutes of training for the editor’s position. Even though I had worked in the publishing field for almost 15 years, my publisher told me that the "fill-in" position would afford me "valuable experience" -- apparently the 11 years I had been employed in various departments by this company hadn’t given me enough "experience" to get a promotion or a raise (by the way, my rate of pay was, from start to finish, $7.50 per hour).

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Ill Doctrine: Brother Ali Meets the Little Hater from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Hip-Hop culture doesn't leave a lot of room for self-doubt, which is part of what makes Brother Ali so unique.

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