What's the word for the feeling when you're online doing something, and you have your gmail open, and you don't necessarily want to initiate contact and yet you yearn - yes, yearn - to hear, however informally, from your list of friends and family all lit up green on your sidebar, and so you manually - yes, manually - set your chat light to a corresponding shade signaling your availability (a rarity!) and yet . . . no one chats with you?

I believe the word is twitter.

Initial casting of the movie version of FREEDOM, by Jonathan Franzen Part I.

Walter Berglund - A young Richard Dreyfuss















Patti Berglund - A middle aged Patricia Clarkson













Richard Katz - a tall Richard Lewis


















Joey Berglund - a youngish Josh Hartnett
















Connie - An anorexic Christina Ricci

















Jessica Berglund - A Marilyn Manson-less Evan Rachel Wood

Following a reading of Franzen's Freedom with the 1971/1972 book-length interview with Jerry Garcia is fun! To wit, Jerry Garcia on freedom:

That's the "freedom lie." There's been a lie about what freedom is and the big lie is that freedom means absolutely and utterly free, and it really doesn't mean anything of the sort. The case in point is when you have your own scene like that. Somebody comes in and they're free to move in, but likewise you're free to tell them to get out. Freedom is a premise that's been put forth that's been abused.
For any scene to work, along with that freedom there's implicit responsibility--you have to be doing something somewhere along the line--there is no free ride. And you have to know where you're going. It's helpful to have a scene that will indulge you long enough to let you find out. That's basically what our scene was doing and when people were coming into town and kicking around for a while, they'd learn the ropes, they'd learn how to work it on the street and how to do a little hustling during the day and just survive until they could find something they could really attach on to. That was the general story.

Proposed cast for potential film about the 1983 Braves

Dale Murphy: James Franco

Bob Horner: Will Ferrell

Steve Bedrosian: Sam Rockwell

Claudell Washington: Don Cheadle

Rafael Ramirez: Mos Def

Glenn Hubbard: Zack Galifinakis

Pete van Wieren: Bob Balaban

Mrs. van Wieren: Renee Russo

Skip Caray: William H. Macy

Chip Caray: Haley Joel Osment

Ted Turner: Paul Rudd

Gordon Soley: Richard Dreyfus

Mr. Wrestling II: Keifer Sutherland

Phil Niekro: Kevin Costner