For Ed Pettit

I'm guessing that when my friend Ed Pettit, a.k.a. the Philly Poe Guy, shuffles off the mortal coil and floats off to his ideal afterlife, it will be this: a huge library with a smoking section.

(Image from the Temple University Urban Archives, an amazing repository of all things vintage and historic in the City of Brotherly Love. Like them on Facebook; follow them on Twitter. Photo originally taken for the Philadelphia Bulletin on April 2, 1959.)

Today's NYT: Full of People I Know

Hanna's on her way, so first thing this morning I scooped up the blue New York Times bag from my front stoop and rushed back inside before the 50 mph winds could get me. I unpacked the paper and saw that Laura Lippman's serial, "The Girl in the Green Raincoat," begins today in the Times Magazine. It's a Tess Monaghan story, and it has a kick-ass opener:

“I’m being held hostage,” Tess Monaghan whispered into her iPhone to her friend Whitney. “By a terrorist. The agenda is unclear, the demands vague, but she’s prepared to hold me here for at least 12 weeks. Twelve weeks or 18 years, depending on how you look at it.”

As always with these NYT serials, I'm torn: do I read it week by week, or save 'em up so I can gorge all at once? I'm so damn impatient. I guess I really should enjoy this one as it was intended: in lazy Sunday doses, with eggs and/or bloody maries.

But Laura's not the only Friend of Secret Dead Blog in the Paper of Record. Turn to the front section of Saturday's paper, and there's Ed "Poe Boy" Pettit, making the case for stealing Edgar Allan Poe's body (and legacy). I still think it's amazing that Ed's 15-second pitch over beers and bison burgers in Old City has turned into this multi-city lit war. I love it. If you want to see Ed do the Poe thing live, he'll be on a Bouchercon Poe panel early Friday morning. Not sure if he'll be able to sneak a pipe in, though...

Pettit photo by Jennifer Kourkounis for the New York Times.

Hollywood Twitters

Poe Boy convinced me to join Twitter as we were having beers yesterday in the Hollywood Tavern. (This would be the Hollywood Tavern in Hollywood, Pennsylvania, just a minute from the Philly limits. Nobody believes me when I tell them that there is in fact a Hollywood, Pennsylania, and that if you squint, it really kinda does look sorta like Southern California.) I can't quite remember what he said that convinced me; by that point, I'd had one and a half Sierra Nevadas in me, and I was willing to believe anything.

But anyway, you'll find these Twitter updates to the left, right under my bio. The cool thing: I can post updates from my phone. The potentially bad thing: You may see ridiculous, drunken updates.

Anybody else Twittering?

NoirCon Hangover: Poe Boy and the Professor

Ed Pettit and Dan Wolkow, in the lobby of the Society Hill Playhouse (Thursday, April 3, 2008).