Daily Blague

Andy Towle is having an auction at eBay, to unload over thirteen hundred of his CDs - in one lot, and to anybody who, in addition to paying the winning bid, agrees to drop by Andy's house to pick them up. That would be in West Hollywood, I believe. Good luck, Andy! As for the picture, which Andy himself calls "cheesy," I don't know how he pulls it off. What ought to be mortifyingly tween is a chuckle instead. He has the air of a kid who can break up the entire classroom without doing anything exactly wrong.

Towleroad was the first Web log to suggest to me that blogs could be well-designed and fun. I stumbled on it when I tried to find out more about a strangely named publication, Arena Homme Plus, that was reviewed in a roundup of 'lad' magazines in the LRB. Andy wrote that he was going through the latest issue "so that you won't have to." His summary made it clear that I wouldn't want to. Andy often writes about things that don't particularly interest me - more often than not, in fact - but he writes with a clear-eyed verve that holds my attention anyway. Of all the blogs that I've been following since late last spring, his has been the strongest template, and I thank him for the inspiration.