When I worked as a corporate speechwriter, my hardest job was weaning people off of their PP dependency and getting them to tell me what they did in conversational rhythms rather than bullet points. The people who downloaded the most data in pre-speechwriting interviews <I>and</I> delivered the best speeches at the events were the ones who'd never used that "gateway" program.

Neil Gaiman's lovely little fairy tale is going to be a movie. This could be good news, since <I>Stardust</I> has a deliberately simple storyline, unlike most of Gaiman's oeuvre and offers the best chance of a straight movie adaptation.

Even with lobsters&mdash;or is it the blonde thing?

Heuristics&mdash;and Dan Goldstein&mdash;say not necessarily. A more pop-culturish explanation is presented on <A HREF="http://www.dangoldstein.com/dsn/archives/2006/03/malcolm_gladwel_1.html… blog</A>, where he shouts out to an excellent Malcolm Gladwell interview on ESPN.

Entertaining a nightly audience of 60,000 in your rumpus room.

"At the rager the chicks come and go<BR>Talking about art or something, I don’t know."