R.L. Stine, wondering why this piece took so long.

​Sometimes in the nonstop world of blogging you do something that takes a little more time, and which you're very excited about. But because of the nonstop world of blogging, and because you want to do it right, and because it takes more time to do that, the idea or scoop or interview you were so excited about gets pushed to the side, to do at night or on weekends, or in the rare blogging breaks. And sometimes by the time you get around to it, the peg -- and occasionally, the enthusiasm -- has been lost. Such pieces have been sacrificed for the greater good of "feeding the beast." They never get their day in the sun, and that is sad.

Today is my last day at the Voice (thank you, readers, coworkers, Tony Ortega, who hired me and set the last two crazy/wonderful years in motion, and everyone who supported and/or stayed friends with me throughout). And thank you to everyone I ever spoke to whose words didn't make it onto the published page. This one is for you.

On Thursday, January 13, 2011, I left my blog-shackles and my computer and trekked from Voice HQ to the Upper West Side to meet R.L. Stine at a Mexican restaurant for lunch and, presumably, what would become a published interview. He had been the inspiration, on the basis of a tweet, for my first viral blog post, "50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City." I wanted to thank him for that (I think/hope I picked up the tab!), and also, I mean, it's R.L. Stine, a name I'd seen on bookshelves since childhood, a writing success story, an inspiration. He had a cranberry juice and his usual choice from the lunch menu; I drank Diet Coke and then coffee and, too nervous to eat, picked at whatever lunch I ordered. Three hours later we parted ways, me with a signed copy of one of his books from the Goosebumps stories; him with my promise to send him the link to the piece, "as soon as it was up."

That promise comes due today. Here is the lost (and, now, found) interview with R.L. Stine.

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DorothyParker.com

​Sad news today for the old(er) New York includes Cooper Union denying St. Mark's Bookshop a lower rent to help keep them in business. And in other news of historic import, Dorothy Parker's childhood home, a 1890s limestone row house at 214 West 72nd Street, is slated for possible tear-down, with a 12-story luxury apartment complex to be put in its place. Kevin Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, is fighting the demolition with a letter-writing campaign to Community Board 7. He asks all fans of Parker to join him in writing a letter, or an email.

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​The petition to save St. Mark's Bookshop has now reached nearly 44,000 names, and one of the latest celebrity supporters of the store is Salman Rushdie, who recently wrote a letter to Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha urging the school to decrease the bookshop's rent by $5,000 a month, reports DNA Info. (He also tweeted the plea to his 88,000-some followers.)

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​Did Shakespeare get the inspiration for his plays and sonnets from smoking weed? A South African anthropologist named Francis Thackeray is seeking permission from the Church of England to exhume Shakespeare's body and analyze it, determining whether the Bard liked to chill with a fat joint every now and then. Science serves an important purpose in our society by answering these urgent questions.

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​David Mamet (who, lest we forget, is no longer a brain-dead liberal), is a big fan of prolific emailerSarah Palin. "I am crazy about her," he told the Financial Times over lunch. "Would she make a good candidate for president? I don't know, but she seems to have succeeded at everything she put her hand to." The interview coincides with the release this month of Mamet's latest book about his relatively newfound conservatism, The Secret Knowledge. Suspiciously for a so-called conservative, Mamet has decidedly froufrou liberal taste in food! Salad with balsamic vinaigrette on the side, eh? Filet mignon rare with no mashed potatoes or sauce, hmm? We smell a rat, Mamet.

[Slate/FT]

[@_rosiegray]

​Ooh. Would you like to own Norman Mailer's nautical-themed Brooklyn Heights home, on Columbia Heights near Pineapple Street? Of course you would, though if you don't have $2.5 million, that will be difficult. But you could own other things the literary icon once touched, like his 1960s-era jukebox, his hundreds of books, his African masks from Zaire, his framed picture of Marilyn Monroe, a button from his 1969 mayoral bid, and more! Mailer's nine surviving kids from his six wives will soon divvy up what they want, and the rest will be offered to the buyer of the house (for, as the Brooklyn Paper puts it, "an added fee") or will be part of an estate sale.

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​We were warned this would happen, but it's still a sad day for nostalgists and fans of F. Scott. The Wall Street Journal, which has a pretty dramatic picture of the razing, reports that the Sands Point, New York, mansion believed by some to have inspired The Great Gatsby has been demolished. The lot can look forward to becoming home to a subdivision of $10 million homes. The house was built in 1902, and people like Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ethyl Barrymore, and Winston Churchill all partied there, quite stylishly, we imagine. R.I.P, possible Gatsby manse. Video after the jump, via CNN.

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​Some exciting news for fans of the late Theodor Geisel, or, as you probably know him, Dr. Seuss: Random House is publishing seven of his "rarely seen" works, which appeared in Redbook between 1948 and 1959, into a hard-cover collection called The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories. Apparently Charles D. Cohen, "a Seuss expert," had been selling the magazine tearsheets on eBay, and Dr. Seuss's art director, Cathy Goldsmith, stumbled upon them. The two got in touch, and then met with Random House VP and publisher Kate Klimo to discuss a collaboration.

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​Not a joke: New York Times bestselling author Snooki will be paid $32,000 by the Rutgers University Programming Association for appearing at two "student-produced comedy Q&A sessions" yesterday. This has generated great controversy, as that's $2,000 more than the amount Toni Morrison, who, you know, won a Pulitzer, will be paid to deliver the school's commencement address in May. Shocking!

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​Sigh. A mansion on Sands Point, above Long Island Sound, that "some F. Scott Fitzgerald scholars believe served as inspiration for portions of The Great Gatsby" is going to be torn down to allow for the building of a five-lot subdivision full of $10 million homes. While it's not known for certain that the mansion, called Lands End, was actually the inspiration for Gatsby's home, it's still sad when a 1902 semi-historical building that may or may not have been designed by Stanford White gets torn down, especially for a subdivision.

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