1. James Franco has invested heavily into the Jason Lea Bank of Goodwill. He has ties to Freaks and Geeks and the Spider-Man trilogy, both of which count for something ‘round here. But that doesn’t make him a good author.

I had concerns after reading Franco’s short story in Esquire. Palo Alto, a series of short stories based in a fictional facsimile of Franco’s hometown, is similarly unremarkable, according to PW.

The reviewer said it “reads like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho fell into a Catcher in the Rye remix.”

I’m not sure what that line is supposed to mean, but it elicits an “oh, snap!”

Let me be clear. I haven’t read Palo Alto. But bad review paired with the underwhelming first impression of “Just Before the Black” have quelled any anticipation I might have had for Franco’s fiction.

2. Online Masters compiled the top 40 comic stories to integrate into college curriculums. I love that Ohio natives Brian K. Vaughan (who is misspelled as “Vaughn”), Jeff Smith and Harvey Pekar wrote six of the 40 suggestions.

All the usual suspects — Watchmen, Maus, Sandman — show up, but it’s a pretty good primer for those who don’t care about superheroes but are intrigued by the potential of the medium. Not that the list completely ignores capes, All-Star Superman makes a deserved appearance.

3. Some clever soul has started an @emperorfranzen Twitter feed in the wake of Jonathan Franzen’s Times cover.

Samples: “I see too many self-pub novelists “pushing” their books too hard. Me? I never do publicity. It does me.”

“I love me some marshmallow Peeps. I imagine each one is a chick lit author as I devour them.”

“Writing Tips From the Franz: “Write what you know. You know nothing. So write nothing, and read my books instead.”

4. Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng update us on their school in Sudan.

Speaking of Sudan...

Still speaking of Sudan...

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I have a soft spot for any Freaks and Geeks alum, so I was excited when James Franco wrote a short story for Esquire.

If you didn’t watch Freaks and Geeks (shame on you), you might know Franco as Willem Dafoe’s son in Spider-Man or the guy who common-law married his pillow on 30 Rock.

He won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of James Dean.

I love Franco — not in the same way legions of indie-film-watchin’, peasant-skirt-wearin’, living-with-my-parents-and-thinking-of-getting-a-doctorate twentysomething women do. I just think he’s talented and picks strong material. Y’know, not counting Pineapple Express.

But Franco’s short story has garnered mostly negative attention. Salon even declared its crush on Franco finished.

I think Entertainment Weekly, of all outlets, assesses Franco the most fairly. His story “Before the Black” is, in a word, unspectacular. It’s also overly familiar. If I had a dollar for every short story that ended with an ambiguous maybe suicide, I could afford to put a basketball court in my backyard. (OK, that’s an exaggeration; but I could at least buy a pair of new basketball shoes. Nice ones. The kind you got jumped for in middle school.)

Yes, Franco will get published more easily because he’s famous. (He has a book deal with Scribner.) Yes, there are unpublished, unknown writers who deserve it more. But Franco’s young and still searching for his voice. Maybe he’ll get there. Maybe he’ll spend the rest of his career writing unspectacular, overly familiar stories.

But can we blame a man for getting published just because he could?

At least he isn’t writing a memoir or a thinly veiled memoir under the guise of fiction.

So, no, Franco hasn’t eclipsed Steve Martin as my favorite actor/writer. (Does Vonnegut count?) But my (man-)crush is still going strong.

On a completely unrelated note, one of my favorite bloggers measures the merits of blogging as opposed to Tweeting or posting on Facebook.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I must confess I am not a reader of short stories.

I enjoy the ones I've read immensely, but I'm always left wanting so much more.

I recently reread "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I thought I was preparing to see the movie, but that hasn't happened yet. That's OK. Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors, so it was a pleasure to reread this story.

Although ... Benjamin is born as an old man and the other characters merely treat that as an oddity ... what??? No investigation. No hand-wringing wonder. Nothing.

That spoils the rest of it for me.

It is an interesting concept, raising all sorts of questions about what would it really be like to be youthful with all the knowledge of age. (Notice how few ponder the reverse.)

Perhaps this story just tries to tackle too much in its short format.

As I said I read few short stories, but my two favorites have stuck with me for more than 30 years.

"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury is the story of a group of 9-year-olds on a Venus where the sun shines and the rain stops only one hour every seven years. One of the kids moved to Venus when she was 5 and so remembers what the sun was like. This sets her apart from the other children. And they don't like that.

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of one cousin visiting another and stealing her thunder with talk of bobbing her hair. Her cousin is jealous and exacts her revenge. But Bernice gets the last word.

I've never really thought about the similar themes of these two tales. Both look at how cruel we can be to one another.

Where I think these two work as short stories is in their singular focus.

And, while I'm not ready to give up my novel reading, I would like to add a few short stories to the mix.

Any suggestions?

- Tricia Ambrose