What I'm enjoying right now

• Mad Men. This incredibly-written series has almost succeeded in washing the bad taste of Lost out of my mouth. It's clever, it's stylish, it doesn't sanitize early 1960s America (all the characters smoke copiously and cringe-worthy sexism abounds), and it treats its characters and structure in a way I'm used to seeing in literary fiction, not television. Very interesting, and I highly recommend you check it out.

Don Draper, where have you been all my life?

• Good old Gatsby. I'm rereading parts of The Great Gatsby for my novel craft class, and I'm falling once again into Fitzgerald's beautiful prose. Most writers, when going for that concise expression of deep truths in poetic prose, come off as pretentious. Fitzgerald just comes off as mind-stompingly awesome.

"Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!"

• Old School video games. I spent a few Wii points on Mega Man 9, which is a contemporary game (released late in 2008) designed to look like it's a twenty year-old NES game. Twenty-four colors, primitive music, two-button controls, and sprite flicker if too much is happening on the screen; it's like it popped out of a time warp from 1987, and I love it. It is also, like the old Mega Man games, so hard I sometimes want to throw my Wiimote across the room. Mega Man 9, and some conversations with Brett about the games he's been playing have got me itching to pull out my NES games. I think the original Zelda might be next.

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