no ice water in hell! fire hot!

• Timothy K. Beal's Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith is "a blue highways exploration of roadside religious attractions like Golgotha Fun Park and Holy Land, USA."

• David Fincher will be adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The popularity of this theme of a man aging backwards is growing out of control. See also: Young Lions winner The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W

• Richard Hell has a new CD and a new book. I saw him in New York not long before I left, and I was able to wrangle him into a conversation about my dissertation. That's what he gets for lecturing on Nathanael West.

• I came across this bizarre ad on Craigslist for an image control expert. Military intelligentsia welcome.

• Donna Tartt has a new story in The Guardian's original fiction issue. If you haven't read The Little Friend, I highly recommend it. (Later: The Tartt story has mysteriously disappeared, but there are many other reasons to check out the issue.)
  

• Chuck Klosterman is the latest guest on largehearted boy's Book Notes, providing a soundtrack for his recent release, Killing Yourself to Live.

• Doubting Hall offers a guided tour around the works of Evelyn Waugh.