Some fun things elsewhere:

Bag of Bones mini-series? Okay!

Peter Orullian interviews Lev Grossman.

Dan Callahan on Michael Fassbender.

Adam Gopnik on fantasy and YA literature: "Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist, fights that never happened, all set against the sort of medieval background that Mark Twain thought he had discredited with “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court."

And also: "Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little elevation; since life is like this already, they imagine that it might be still like this but more magical."

Kathe Koja wins the Gaylactic Spectrum Award.

The legend of Zelda (Fitzgerald).

An amateur reviewer on Twilight: "There are times when I feel like I'm at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, shamefully staring down at my feet as I stand and admit truthfully, 'Hi, I'm Riley, and I hated Twilight."

More on literary criticism!

Weird Fiction Review. One of the coolest new things out there.

Magick4Terri. Important cause for an important woman.

And finally, an ode to Kermit the Frog:

If we had to get think-piecey about what the Muppets meant in their first mass moment and what their tenderest fans took from them, we might note that the years of Kermit's ascent coincided with those of Woody Allen's rise from cult farceur to major American filmmaker, and we would notice that the amphibious banjoist, with his nebbishy neuroses and his Borscht Belt funny bone, strikes some of the same chords as the mammalian clarinetist.