A brief pause for some promotional spots from SMITH contributors, all hearty and occasionally nutritional, with very little aftertaste.

SMITH TONIGHT: Our fans in upstate New York will want to catch SMITH editor Larry Smith, aka me, interviewed on “Like Mother, Like Son,” Patricia and Ramsay Adams’ show on WJFF Radio Catskill, tonight from 9:30-10pm. I yak on about the golden age of storytelling we’re so lucky to be soaking in, why everyone has a story (and yet most of us need an editor), and the crazy little thrill I get each and every time a submission arrives in my in-box, especially when it concerns a woman who has stolen Mick Jagger’s urine and keeps it in her freezer.

LAPPÉ ON WEDNESDAY: Shooting War’s Anthony Lappé hosts “The War Room” his no-holds-barred political variety show about the war in Iraq, the media and more, with Lappé in the Bill Maher seat, only better dressed. This week’s guest is Salon’s Iraq correspondent Philip Robertson, and Lappé will be showing clips from one of the inspirations for Shooting War, the award-winning Showtime documentary BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge. Bonuses: 1) Test your knowledge of American foreign policy, and win a prize; 2) First person to mention SMITH magazine to Lappé wins a free round of Mo’s delicious potato latkes (pictured here—yum!) from your host (AL—I’m good for it-LS]. It all goes down on November 22, 7pm at Mo Pitkins in NYC’s Lower East Side.

RUSHKOFF, NOW AND FOREVER: Douglas Rushkoff’s groundbreaking comic Testament is available as a free PDF along with Rushkoff’s notes explaining the first five issues of the comic and how and why he decided to remix the Bible with his meta, mind-bending, technicolor take on its place in modern times. Dan Goldman calls Testament, “one of the smartest monthly series out there. Crisscrossing the Old Testament, media theory, sociopolitical satire and cutting-edge science, Testament posits that the Bible is not written but being written still, modern times acting out (and changing) age-old stories … this is a great big hurrah for comics in general.”

Rushkoff does a podcast with BoingBoing here.
Rushkoff riffs at the Disinformation conference here.
I love this part. “Attention Deficit Order, for the most part … is an adaptive strategy, a reaction to a world where you’re programmed everywhere you look. We live in what they call an attention economy now, where they’re competing for eyeball hours. So you drug the people so they can give you more eyeball hours. You take Ritalin, I promise you’ll be able to stare at boring Web sites for hours.”