Glad you asked.

Galley Friend J.E. sends us this wonderful link on the sales of Gawker’s book, The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media. Between Oct. 2 (when it went on sale) and Nov. 1, the book sold–can you guess the number? I bet you can’t. Go ahead and pick a number, I’ll put the answer below in inviso-text:

242 copies

That’s right. As Portfolio admits, that number may be an undercount by as much as 25%–but still. And for that, Gawker snagged a $250,000 advance. I don’t get it. Are book publishers just stupid? That’s what I’ve always suspected. Either there’s a hidden logic to the industry which completely escapes me, or publishers routinely hand out giant advances to projects which have no chance of be being profitable, even when there’s lots of prior history shouting, “Danger! Danger!” I mean, it’s not like we haven’t seen this before. The publishing industry seems about as rational as the music industry.

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The good news is that they held Dallas scoreless for almost 3 minutes.

Suck it, Jenny.

While I was away, some interesting bits on Pajiba:

* Joss Whedon makes his triumphant return to TV. Awesome. Let’s hope they treat his new show better than they did his last one.

* Coincidentally, they also give us a list of great screen heroines. You can guess who leads the list.

* Also, they say Black Book is a pretty good flick. Galley Friend M.G. should put this on his Netflix queue right now. Do it, M.G., I’m watching . . .

One of the joys of growing up with the Wershovenist Pig was that he had, even at age 14, an astonishing grasp of the music scene. While I was still playing with G.I. Joes, the Pig was buying the Sugar Cubes’ first album and thoughtfully remarking that he thought something big might come of their lead singer. In high school and college he got even deeper into cool-kids music, picking up on Hüsker Dü before the Indigo Girls made them famous, championing New Order and Bob Mould and about a billion other acts I’d hear of only through him. He was like Lester Bangs, only cooler. Normally, I knew my place and I’d just try to absorb his coolness, but every once in a while I’d think I’d found a new band that I’d try to introduce him to. I was always about two years too late.

Which is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago, when I asked him, “Hey, this Feist chick is kind of interesting, have you heard her?”

The Pig rolled his eyes. Canadian bands have always held a special place in his heart and it turns out that he’s been tracking Leslie Feist and Broken Social Scene for like six years. Guh.

But even if you’ve heard Feist and her single “1 2 3 4,” I urge you to watch the video she shot for it. Yes it’s infectiously happy, yes it’s bubble-gum pop at its most endearing–but my God, this looks like it was amazingly hard to shoot. All in one take, and, in particular, the trick at the beginning getting the dancers concealed behind her as the camera turns, well, that’s just sick camerawork. But my favorite thing about the video is that it doesn’t advertise how show-offy it really is. Instead, it looks simple and fun, as if they just kind of threw it together.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA7ycePZujY&rel=1]

Filmdrunk has a moving tribute to the man, and the voice.

Schwarzenegger watches the Chargers:

Shawne Merruhman, you call yourself a steroid abusuh?!

I make big laugh at you. Ha ha ha ha. You are little more than a namby-pamby wurst-swallowuh, yes? How many hausfraus have you grabbed and made bangbang with lately? Back in 1979, I broke a personal best by groping over 765 asses in just one month, yes. And when I groped an ass, I groped it HARD, yes. I would tear it, the woman’s asscheek, clean off her body. She would never sit on a shittuh the same way again. If she wanted to make braunschweiger in the toilet, yes, she had squat like a 1932 Vienna homosexual in a back alley. It was FANTASTIC AND WONDERFUL. Have you ever done such things as this, tiny little Shawne Merruhman? Then you cannot call yourself a true steroid abusuh, yes.

A true steroid abusuh, he does not research his steroids, yes, or know where they are coming from, the steroids. That is for little Heidis. I was dedicated, yes, to being a top bodybuilduh. And that meant I was willing to plunge into the unknown, or to plunge the unknown into me. One time I injected myself with this pure mercury, because this mercury, it is liquid metal and I wanted to be like the T-1000 and stab people and milk cartons with my liquid metal knife-arms. This did not work, yes, and sometimes I see diamond patterns now. But I am still more man than you, miniature Shawne Merruhman.

So hot.The funniest line ever: ” . . . and milk cartons . . .”

In other important KSK news, Big Daddy Drew posits the question, “Which Deschanel sister is hotter, Emily or Zooey?”

I leave that to you to answer. But the Wonder Woman costume goes a long, long, long way. . .