I didn’t make any new friends with my last post—someone even took me to task in the comments section for being too old and out of touch to comprehend rap music—and this sure isn’t going to help matters.

I was able to watch quite a bit of today’s news coverage of President Obama’s inauguration and I am in full agreement with my colleague Daisyfae; there was WAAAAYY too much emphasis placed on the fact that he is African American. We don’t have a new black President, folks. We have a new President.

Prior to the election, there was a fear that white America was just paying lip service to the pollsters. There was a theory that Joe/Jane Sixpack would say they were voting for Obama but once inside the voting booth, he/she would never pull the lever for a black man. They even gave it a name: The Bradley Effect. Well, it turns out that white America didn’t give a shit about the pigment in Obama’s skin. We voted for him because he was clearly the right man for the job.

So why did today’s media coverage obsess on the fact that he’s black? While it’s important to acknowledge the historical significance of the moment, it’s practically an insult to give the short shift to his qualifications and accomplishments and talk, talk, talk of little else but his black father and black wife and black children.

Daisyfae said it more elegantly than I did. Would the last reader out please extinguish the lights.

On Friday, January 16th, in Greensboro, North Carolina, a patron open fired on a crowd in the packed lobby of a theater that was showing Notorious, the bio pic of rapper The Notorious B.I.G., hitting one man in the abdomen.

Also on Friday, four people were stabbed in a Brooklyn nightclub at an event that was promoted as the “official” after-party for the film. A 21-year-old victim is in critical condition. Fox Searchlight (the film’s distributor) denies any involvement with the event.

In other news, the KKK rejoiced, proudly proclaiming, “We told you so.”

Way to go, playas’. You get an A+ for perpetuating a stereotype, you low-expectation dipshits. And just before first African American takes the oath of office!

I attended the semi-annual rare bookfair at the Lexington Avenue armory. God, what a glorious afternoon. Think of the one material thing you love the most in life. Now, imagine an armory chocked full of the very best of that one special thing.

It’s like going to the literature museum except you can buy stuff. I had expected to see some depressed prices. The economy is flat on its ass and I expected the prices for rare books to be adjusted downward accordingly but they were not. Stuff was still pretty pricey. Here’s a small sampling of the best of the best.

1. Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. First edition. $3,000.
2. Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time. The true first edition of his first book, published in Paris in 1924. Only 170 copies were printed. $28,750.
3. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The only signed limited edition Hemingway published. One of 510 copies in its original slipcase. $15,000.

1. J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. First Edition. Signed. $6,500.
2. J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. First Edition. One of the all-time classic dust jacket designs. And a pretty good read, too. $6,500.
3. Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women. First UK edition. The U.S. first edition would be considerably more expensive. Collectors prefer the first edition published in the author’s country of birth. Graham Greene UK first editions are more expensive than the U.S. counterparts. It’s called “following the flag.” $2,750.

I paid a visit to the New York Public Library to view a copy of the excruciatingly rare and valuable The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. From Wikipedia:

The book was originally produced in a limited edition of only seven copies, each handwritten and illustrated by J. K. Rowling. One of them was offered for auction in late 2007 and was expected to sell for $103,000; ultimately it was bought for $3.98 million by Amazon.com, making the selling price the highest achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript.

All that money went to a charity. She’s a good egg, that J.K. Rowling. She motivated a lot of kids to pick up a book and read. Huzzah to her for that!

The other six copies are all in private hands; a gift from the author. The copy on display at the Library belonged to someone at Schoolastic Books who was instrumental in getting Harry Potter published. It’s a really beautiful book. The binding is elegant and Rowling’s drawings are actually quite nice. And what spectacular penmanship! She hand-wrote all seven copies. It must have given her a terrible cramp.