The James Frey Super Badass Killer book tour hit the Blender Theater this week, and the sleepy burg called New York is still reeling from the overpowering awesomeness. This tour, you'll recall, is not just some punk ass reading at Borders; no, it's a heavy metal-blasting punch of literary skill right in the face. Fiction writer Frey "walked through his adoring fans flanked by two huge body-builders," then read while hardcore Terry Richardson photos of guns flashed on a screen behind him. Someone asked Frey about writer's block. "Writer's block is for chumps," he replied. Step back, abstract psychological concept! At least Frey is bringing some energy to his book tour, as terrible as they usually are. But where was all that overpowering machismo when he was taping this Barnes & Noble promo earlier this week?:

So, have there been any updates in the prolonged daily rollout of salacious details about "Preston," the mystery professional athlete who allegedly had a fling with Terrance Dean, former closeted MTV producer and author of the upcoming book on the gay side of hip hop? Well yes there has been an update! Though we must say, he's really trickling this story out slowly. Today, Preston—who we now know is a pro basketball player—reveals his down-low status, and then takes Terrance home to meet his mom:

Because I didn't grow up with rich, famous New York media figures for parents, who could use their connections to insert me into a choice job in the media world, I've always been in favor of banning people who do have such parents from holding those good jobs. It would make the competition for them more meritocratic, and (bonus) wouldn't affect me personally. Sure, some of those legacy kids are smart and qualified for their positions—but then again so are dozens of other, less connected people. Prime example: Nathaniel Rich, son of Times demigod columnist Frank Rich. Nat is an author and associate editor at the Paris Review, and, by all accounts I've seen, intelligent and capable. But still, I think we should ban him from writing out of pure spite and envy. It just seems like the revolutionary thing to do. In the clip below, Nat talks about how growing up in the Rich family has affected his career. "I don't feel I need to respond to it. People refer to me a lot worse ways (than as a Rich boy)," he says. Such as?

Michael Roberts, the Vanity Fair fashion and style director who attributed the uproar over the sexy Miley Cyrus photos to unsophisticated Americans who don't handle "chic pictures" as well as his fellow Europeans, is not just dispensing cultural criticism through the media: he has a book coming out! And in a fun coincidence, the 112-page tome is going to be called Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties, from A to Z. Perhaps he'll add a section addressing the fact that "The whole kiddie porn prurient angle seems to be worryingly sour grapes from other magazines that didn't get a picture like this." After all, at Vanity Fair "We don't do cheesy teen pictures. We do chic pictures and pictures that are beautiful portraits." Alrighty then. Just for kicks, another now-ironic quote from last October's Telegraph profile of Roberts:

Terrance Dean, the gay former record exec and author of the upcoming book "Hiding In Hip Hop" that promises to EXPOSE THE GAY RAPPERS (we hope) has a blog! Well, a little one. At this point it only has three entries. Still, the book itself doesn't come out for two more weeks, and nobody has offered us a bootleg copy yet, so we're going to go through his blog entries carefully for any clues as to it's EXPLOSIVE contents. After the jump, a little detective work and a lot of blind speculation.

Here's a video clip in which the interviewer had two very simple and specific question for Corrections author Jonathan Franzen, who famously got himself disinvited from the Oprah Book Club for being too ungrateful: Do you regret your run-in with Oprah? And would you be part of the book club if you could do it over again? To these simple questions, Franzen stares at the floor and says things like "What does regret mean?" and then remarks on the magnitude of dividing the world's opinion in two. Maybe this is the nuance necessary to be a literary titan; check out this quote of his at the time of the dispute: "To find myself being in the position of giving offense to someone who's a hero — not a hero of mine per se, but a hero in general — I feel bad in a public-spirited way." No, that's just mealy-mouthed. Yes or no question, Jonathan Franzen. The full clip, after the jump.

Asylum.com, a "new men's lifestyle site," is hiring a staff editor. They need someone with a "strong writing voice, and an appreciation for Frankenberry cereal." (They need men who are afraid of adulthood? Because that's the only thing pink marshmallow cereal represents after 25.) The job also includes "ensuring that content captures the irreverent tone of the site" and "overseeing the promotion of material for maximum viral impact." See, now we can't even tell if they're still joking! We see the best candidate as being Chuck Klosterman, former Spin pop culture writer with a talent for self-absorption, and author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Click to figure out if you should apply...

The preponderance of outstanding evidence has finally and inexorably built up to the point that no reasonable person can avoid coming to the conclusion that "Alternadad" author Neal Pollack, who enjoys both chronicling and defending his decision to chronicle his young child, is just not much of a writer at all. Despite his background as a professional writer with the Chicago Reader, McSweeney's, Vanity Fair, GQ, and other respected outlets—as well as his ability to convince publishing houses to pay him money in order to write books—it is now impossible to deny the fact that Pollack is just not cut out for this whole writing thing. The scale-tipping work is his new Men's Journal profile of Woody Harrelson, in which the sheer lack of insight, or even cleverly redeeming turns of phrase, has us vowing never to read anything by this fucker again.

Happy birthday to Colombian author and friend of flowy-panted, dreamy Americans everywhere, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Nobel laureate is 80 today.

Recipe for September 16 Brooklyn Book Fest: