TEN POUND PRESS

Thirty-First Situation: conflict with a god

2012-01-28T18:14:00.001-08:00

Georges Polti wrote a book not quite a hundred years ago called The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. When you consult this manual you are amazed and fascinated by the classification scheme. You probably have to have a touch of madness to be a taxonomist of any sort. Not that I don't appreciate such things. I suppose I'm more of a 'lumper' than a 'splitter,' but I love reading this bizarre little book. It is a lot of fun to play the game and think about all the various situations he describes. Stories are about love and death. Not much more than that. I could have said sex and violence, but it's the same thing. Squeezing thirty-six different plots out of those four fundamentals is an accomplishment. Nutty, but that's OK. The clincher for Polti, though, is the impossibly overwrought prose, leaden with allusions and drowning in names and references in foreign tongues. You can hardly get through three sentences without gagging or guffawing, which makes it brilliant. I picked up my copy for fifty cents or some pittance at a the local library book sale. I love discards. Where else can you find treasures like this? Here's part of the discussion of the Thirty-First Situation, or "conflict with a god":

This remarkable grouping has been in our day almost entirely ignored. Byronists as we still are, bon gré mal gré, we might yet dream of this superb onslaught on the heavens. But no! -- we treat even the evangelical subject of the Passion, while we pass by, this genuinely dramatic situation, and content ourselves with sanctimoniously intoning the idyllo-didactic phrases which preceded the sacred tragedy, -- itself left unseen.

I think they invented WTF as means of textual commentary far too late. Isn't that fabulous? It's the sort of writing, because of the fact that it is actually real and has been reprinted as recently as 1973, that makes me believe crazy stuff like what Dan Brown cooks up in his DaVinci Code books. Part of the problem is that that original work is in French, and this is a translation (by Lucille Ray). But only part. This Polti guy is a kook, but a well-read one, and it is hard not to enjoy his obvious sincerity. I've actually learned a bit about literature as well. He uses examples of his plot types or "Situations" that reference the famous Greeks like Euripides and Sophocles, which inspired me to get some books and read them both. Here's a few of the other Situations: Ninth, Daring Enterprise; Sixteenth, Madness; Twenty-Fifth, Adultery; Thirty-Sixth, Loss of Loved Ones. There are a lot of ways one could slice-and-dice the various forms into which most of our stories fall. It would be pointless, because you cannot classify the infinite. The human heart, head, and soul make a lethal combination. That trinity can generate quite a variety of mayhem, be it good mayhem or bad mayhem, and it all makes for good stories and plots. Whoops, I mean Situations.

Speed's Trail

2012-01-16T19:12:00.002-08:00

West of me, about a mile and a quarter as the crow flies, is a high knobby peak. It didn't have a name until today. The USGS topo for Yreka says it is 1154 meters (3786 feet) high, which is 344 meters (1129 feet) above my house. We hiked up there in honor of Martin L. King, Jr., and discovered a sign that read "Speed's Trail" and below that "Speed Jones, 1923-2007." I guess we'll call it "Speed's Peak" from now on. The combination of roads and trails that zigzag to the top could keep you busy for months, but we managed. Speed's Peak is the highest of a northwest-to-southeast trending group of four knobs that drop successively to 947 meters (3107 feet) in about three-quarters of a mile. It's a funny little fingerling ridge that seems only remotely connected to the commanding Humbug-Mahogany Point-Gunsight Peak prominence that marks the eastern terminus of the Klamath Mountains. This little cluster of steep, rocky hills is a popular playground. Kids paintball in the lower parts, dirt bikes crisscross the midsections, hardy mountain bikers leave tracks at the junctions on the wide saddles, and a few hikers push on to the top. There are abandoned party spots and homeless hideouts amidst the scraggly cedars and skinny pines. It's not in the guidebooks, but it is a hell of a view and a good workout. I got lost trying to make sense of the geology. I could see cobbles of quartzite, and broken masses of phyllite, chert, and possibly schists. The rocks were green with what I think was chlorite, and there was lots of serpentinization. Large clusters of dark stuff bewildered me. The map was no help, lumping it all into "Mezosoic meta-sediments" and other non-committal verbiage. I suppose it's not the rocks that matter, but the story of how they got there. We got there by putting our boots on and huffing and puffing and sweating on this cold but calm and sunny day.

The Last of the Innocent

2011-12-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of the work of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the writer-artist team responsible for Criminal. The latest installment (the sixth graphic novel collection) is called The Last of the Innocent and manages to continue the impossibly high standard of the previous releases. These guys really understand that noir is so much more than a two-fisted alcoholic P.I. beating people up while pursuing his twisted sense of justice. Not that that can't work--Ken Bruen pulls it off marvelously with his Jack Taylor books. But too many hard-boiled stories fall into the trap of a standard mystery camouflaged with lots of f-bombs and bar fights. That is not a bad thing, mind you, just a little tiresome. Messrs. Brubaker and Phillips are more interested in characters and the web of complications that life brings. Sure, there are hit men, mobsters, gamblers, tycoons, whores, junkies, thieves, crooked cops, and femme fatales aplenty in Criminal. But what makes the whole thing work is the humanity of the protagonists. They all have a "regular joe" side of their characters that gives the reader empathy for them and their various plights, even if they do (and they will) something stupid or evil. Moreover, their entanglements are entirely believable. They are motivated by their hopes, fears, and dreams, just like all of us. And when they get sucked into the maelstrom of violence and death the stories morph into tragedies. And I love a good tragedy. Genre fiction rarely gets the attention of the serious literary critic, and comic books hardly ever get the notice they deserve. But Criminal is the real deal--serious, poetic, profound, and thoroughly entertaining. Val Staples continues with his beautiful colors (ably assisted by Dave Stewart). Check out The Last of the Innocent and the rest of the Criminal series. You might find yourself hooked.

Somewhere West of Life

2011-12-04T14:21:00.001-08:00

It's an allusion. Brian Aldiss' 1994 novel Somewhere East of Life is a strange and terrifying book, and its images still haunt me. My notes (I've kept a log of my reading since 1990) tell me I finished it in 2000. I recently added Mr. Aldiss' Forgotten Life (1988) to my pile, I suppose I'll have to tackle that next. But this is not about his excellent work, but rather that of another writer, an American named Nathanael West. In the 1930s he wrote two short novels, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, that were ultimately made into Hollywood movies. I salvaged a Nathanael West anthology from a discard pile (he published only two other short novels) and powered my way through both dark and twisted stories. I suppose they aren't stories so much as plots. Weird guy hangs around other weird people who all go crazy and shit happens and it's all fucked up at the end. I don't mean that as a criticism, just an observation. You read these stories because these crazy people are all real and recognizable. They lie beneath our surfaces, lurking, ready to burst out when the veil of middle class respectability finally splits from the tension of accumulated injustices. None of us like to believe we have the savage beast within our breasts, but Mr. West says emphatically that we do, and we'd be fools not to accept that fact. Mostly the two tales are about the failed American Dream. Everywhere West looked he saw phonies, hucksters, con artists, bullshitters, and storytellers. And he saw the Great Depression, which shattered a lot of dreams and surely influenced a generation of writers and artists. He died in a car accident three years short of forty.

Choke Hold

2011-11-28T14:24:00.001-08:00

The hard-boiled field is mostly a man's racket. The heroes and anti-heroes are tough guys. The writers are overwhelmingly male. Women are usually victims, femme fatales, or side stories. Thankfully things have changed in the 21st century and no one exemplifies that more than Christa Faust and her heroine Angel Dare. I posted about both of these ladies a few years back when I received Money Shot from Hard Case Crime. Well written, tightly plotted, and action-packed, Money Shot was one of the best of the entire line. I was quite enthusiastic when Choke Hold, the sequel, hit the bookshelves earlier this year. Angel Dare is a sort of male fantasy dream woman: an ex-porn star with all the requisite looks, bravado, and skills one expects from such a character. In the first book, Angel's life is turned upside down by Croatian gangsters running a sex slave operation. Taken captive, she fights her adversaries with a courage and relentlessness she did not know she possessed, eventually killing most of them and ultimately testifying against others. At the end she has to leave everything behind and join a witness protection program. The new book starts with the vengeance-mad criminals managing to track her down and she has to go on the run. She hooks up with a young MMA fighter and his trainer out in the southwestern desert and they do their best to fend off the mobsters, a Mexican drug lord, and a crazed, jealous dojo owner and her coke-addled teenage minions. Choke Hold is a fast and furious ride where once again Angel has to call on all her considerable talent and warrior spirit to stay alive. Suffice to say the ending screams for a sequel. Ms. Faust has done it again. Money Shot featured a brilliant Glenn Orbik cover and Choke Hold, as you can see, is equally spectacular. Mr. Orbik is my favorite of all the Hard Case illustrators. I can't wait for the next one!

The Veil

2011-10-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

The ancient Celts believed that the Samhain marked the time between summer and winter. This "cross-quarter" day (half-way from the Autumnal Equinox to the Winter Solstice) actually makes more sense as a seasonal dividing line for those of us living in the temperate zones. After all, it has been below freezing at my house--just south of the 42nd parallel--for the last week. The Celts also believed that this time of year was when the veil between the material and the spirit worlds was the thinnest. Thus you made masks and carved scary faces in vegetables (probably turnips, pumpkins are from the New World) to keep the ghosts of the dead away. I love the fall, and the approach of winter is always exciting because I like to ski. This last week I've been reading a book called The Meaning of Quantum Theory by a UK writer named Jim Baggott. This remarkable theory is at the heart of contemporary physics and is wildly successful at predicting the outcomes of experiments. The problem is that no one is quite sure what it means. The results of quantum theory are spooky and give a picture of "reality" far at odds with that of the classical mechanics of Newton. Quantum mechanics probes the veil between physics and metaphysics. What the theory tells us is unequivocal: particles behave like waves some of the time and like particles some of the time, measuring the position of a particle makes it impossible to also measure its momentum, and the properties of two separated particles appear to be dependent on each other. Quantum mechanics may possibly violate the postulates of special relativity (another wildly successful theory) and might entirely upend our notions of causality and the flow of time. Or not. No one is quite sure even though the leading minds of the world have been working on it since the 1920s. I'll finish the book tonight if I don't get interrupted too often by trick-or-treaters. It's good stuff. I'll admit that I have to skip most of the math parts as calculus was over thirty years ago. There's like this veil between the squiggles on the pages and my brain!

Skepticism

2011-10-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

According to Eric Partridge, my word guru, "skeptic" is from Greek and means "doubt." Skepticism is a good thing. In science, it is crucial. Many confuse the meaning of the word with that of "cynic." Having been accused--many times--of being a cynic, I'm used to the mix-up. The ancients who called themselves Cynics ("the snarlers") were contemptuous of society's conventions but nonetheless strove for virtuous conduct. The modern meaning of cynic is one who doubts all motives but selfishness. That is, a person who does not believe altruism exists. This has nothing to do with asking good questions and demanding to see the evidence before making a conclusion. People don't like skeptics because skeptics don't like sloppy thinking. Skeptics like to account for all the possibilities before embracing a course of action. This often comes across as contrariness or obstructionism, but it is really just trying to see things as clearly as possible.

Those in the American political scene who doubt the science behind climate change are called skeptics, but this does a disservice to real skeptics. Real skeptics are not merely deniers. Real skeptics look for flaws in an argument and demand to be convinced with logic and facts. Deniers don't require that sort of rigor. They already have their minds made up and you won't get anywhere with them using silly things like evidence. One skeptical scientist--Richard Muller of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Lab--recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining what his current research has revealed about global warming. His was a sort of meta-research as his team looked at already-existing data and analyzed its reliability. They concluded that the numbers were good--global temperatures are on the rise. They made no statement about whether the cause is anthropogenic, but that wasn't the point of the study. Here's Dr. Muller:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

That's science in a nutshell. If the data is good, it will hold up to scrutiny. If the methods are good, the data is trustworthy. Transparency and openness lead to progress. This is exactly the opposite of politics, where lies and half-truths are the meat-and-potatoes of campaigning. Where secrecy, denial, and re-writing history are the essential skills candidates master. Where visceral responses are more important than analysis and where being brainy is a handicap. Screw politics and learn to think like a scientist!

Read some more about Muller and the BEST project here.

subrecursive hierarchies of functions*

2011-10-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

The world lost another tech giant. Dennis Ritchie was the inventor of the C programming language and a co-creator of the UNIX operating system. He died this week at the age of 70. Originally from New York, he earned degrees from Harvard in both physics and applied mathematics, and spent his career with the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey. Those software creations--C and UNIX--are the foundations of most of today's systems. Macintosh computers, for example, run a Unix-based OS. Programmers learn things like C++ and Java these days, which are the progeny of C. Most of the servers that hold this whole intertubes thingie together run UNIX or a variant. Mr. Ritchie didn't do stuff that tech consumers notice. Instead he did the real brick-and-mortar work of the Information Age. Those of us lucky to be living in the wired world are standing on foundations laid down by this guy and his contemporaries. Recquiescat in pacem.

*the subject of Ritchie's thesis
I don't know what it means, either.

Game of My Life

2011-10-08T14:36:00.001-07:00

In the wake of the wonderful 2010 World Series, a plethora of books about the San Francisco Giants have been newly-written or re-issued with updates for that memorable season. One of the latter is Matt Johanson's Game of My Life: San Francisco Giants. Originally published in 2007, the new edition now includes vignettes from the championship club. Each chapter focuses on a particular player and their most memorable game in orange-and-black. It starts with Orlando Cepeda's debut in 1958--which was also the first Giants game in San Francisco--and ends with Brian Wilson's save in Game Five of the 2010 World Series. Along the way the reader is treated to terrific stories from the likes of "Dirty Al" Gallagher, Tito Fuentes (a childhood favorite of mine), Dan Gladden, Robby Thompson, Darren Lewis, Kirk Rueter, Rich Aurilia, and many other fan favorites and interesting characters. I particularly enjoyed reliving Bob Brenly's "greatest Humm-Baby performance of all time" game since I was in attendance with much of my regular Candlestick posse. My friend Frank actually caught Brenly's game-winning homer when it bounced up to our seats in Section 30 in the LF bleachers. I will also never forget Mike Krukow's complete game victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Four of the 1987 NLCS. We were lucky enough to have scored tickets in Section 2, right behind home plate. After Jeffrey Leonard's improbable, wind-aided home run that gave the Giants the lead my buddy Ron was so excited he started beating on me and I collapsed to the concrete in a fetal position. Never was getting the wind knocked out of me so worth it! Giants fans will recognize many of the great moments: Will Clark's big hit off Mitch Williams to win the pennant in 1989, Brian Johnson's homer in extras to beat the Dodgers in 1997 (and Rod Beck's miraculous pitching in the same game!), Kenny Lofton's hit in 2002 to send the team to the Series, and Jonathan Sanchez' no-hitter against the Padres in 2009. Players from the obscure Brian Dallimore to all-time great Willie Mays share their anecdotes, making Game of My Life a must-read for Giants fans. Mr. Johanson has done an excellent job assembling all the stories and adding his own take on the colorful history of the many who've worn the Giants uniform. He's also--like me--a California public high school teacher! That's extra credit, for sure.

Many thanks to the nice folks at Skyhorse Publishing for sending me a review copy.

New books!

2011-09-08T19:20:00.001-07:00

Ziesing's is my favorite place to get books. Just got a shipment today, in fact, and I've got them stacked on my desk by thickness. The thinnest one on top is The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon--only 152 pages! I think I can make my way through that one. Then a Stark House reprint of Mercedes Lambert's Dogtown and Soultown. The new edition has a foreword by Ken Bruen, which is how I got interested in the books. I like everything he writes, so I figure I'll like everyone he writes about. Next is a novel from the great Charles Willeford, The Shark-infested Custard. Apparently he couldn't find a publisher for it in the 1970s and it languished until after his death in 1988. Brian Aldiss follows with his novel of that same year, Forgotten Life. I was captivated by Somewhere East of Life (1994) and this one is supposed to be part of the same loose tetralogy ("The Squire Quartet") with that one. I imagine I'll track down the other two at some point. Something new (2010) called Stories caught my fancy because one of the editors is superstar fantasist Neil Gaiman. People like Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Chuck Palahniuk, Tim Powers, and Gene Wolfe contributed to the collection. I always enjoy good short stories and this looks like a great anthology. One writer who seems terribly under-appreciated to me is the late Thomas M. Disch. His The M.D. is next on the pile and calls itself "a horror story." Last but not least is the massive Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection by Stephen King. I've been reading him for a long time and I've come to really appreciate his short works. This one has more than twenty stories and is over 800 pages long!

What's on your book pile these days?

Rock cycles

2011-09-03T17:51:00.003-07:00

I took a walk one afternoon this summer up the Gully Trail at Greenhorn Park. Eventually it peters out and joins the Humbug-Big Ditch trail junction, and if you keep climbing you get to a road that leads to the top of the ridge. Mountain bike riders call that stretch "The Wall" because it is steep and very hard going. I have yet to make it to the top on my bike, but my feet got me there well enough. One of the road cuts on a wide switchback glistens with a grayish-green rock outcrop that screams "serpentine" to the native Californian. Sure enough, there's serpentinization, but that's just on the surface. I cracked a few of the scattered cobbles open and was presented with an opaque black rock that fractured easily. Back home, it showed little or no cleavage, a minute and hard to discern crystal structure, left a black streak, and attracted a compass needle. It was magnetite, an ore of iron.

I was looking, actually, for chromite, an ore of chromium that contains much iron--the whole county is riddled with the stuff. The Klamaths sit on a basement of peridotite, a rock formed in the mantle. Ancient bits of old seafloor have been thrust landward by the inexorable grinding of the tectonic plates. These rocks are known as ultramafic to the geologist--silicates rich in magnesium and iron. Mineralization occurs along fault lines and contact points with younger igneous material. Magnetite is interesting in that it shows both of iron's oxidation states, what were once called the ferrous and ferric forms. Nowadays the more prosaic iron(II) and iron(III) are used. FeO, iron(II) or ferrous oxide, found alone is called Wustite by the mineralogist. Fe₂O₃, iron(III) or ferric oxide, is the better-known hematite. The magnetite form is known as iron (II, III) oxide and can be written Fe₃O₄. All three minerals can occur as commercial-grade iron ores. Magnetite is used as a catalyst in the Haber Process that converts ("fixes") atmospheric nitrogen and produces ammonia. Ammonia is one of the cornerstone chemicals of the industrial world as it can be easily oxidized to make fertilizers and explosives, and is also the basis of some plastics, fibers, dyes, and pharmaceuticals. About 130,000,000 metric tons are produced annually worldwide.

I wasn't thinking of any of that when I huffed by on my Stumpjumper last week. I was just trying to keep up a steady pedaling and not get out of breath. It was hot, my face was flushed, sweat was pouring down my cheeks, and my heart was beating with a fury inside my chest. Between my feet and my wheels, I hope to stumble across many more cool rocks and minerals here in the State of Jefferson.

L.A. Noire

2011-08-08T10:26:00.002-07:00

Video games are wasted on me. I spent far too much of my youth avoiding them to have any real skills with buttons and joysticks. I "walk" like a drunken sailor and "drive" like a crackhead. I usually shoot one of the good guys or pump 12 shots into the wall next to the bad guy while he sneers at my incompetence. I got vertigo when I was lost in a Bioshock maze and had to quit the game. I always have the instruction sheet on my lap so I can remember how to play, I never turn off the help screens, and I keep it set in "beginner" mode. "Getting to the next level" means handing the controls to someone else. Suffice to say that 99% of the time my PS3 is used as a blu-ray player. Oh, I take batting practice in MLB 2K9. That's not too tough.

But I had to have L.A. Noire. I had to. A game that looks and feels like a Raymond Chandler story on steroids is my kind of thing. I love the so-called film noir period in Hollywood--nothing gets me more excited than men in grey suits and fedoras chasing unattainable women and hopeless dreams. L.A. Noire works the cops-and-corruption side of the street, a distinct subset of the noir milieu. I usually prefer the stories of sympathetic chumps like Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster led astray by fabulous femme fatales. (Who among us wouldn't follow Jane Greer or Lizabeth Scott to their doom?) But Los Angeles in 1947 is great place to be, and Cole Phelps' journey into the heart of the city's power structure is a compelling one.

I can't speak intelligently about "game play." It would be like asking me how an F1 race car handles--did I prefer the McLaren or the Ferrari on the first chicane at Monaco? But I can tell you that L.A. Noire is gorgeous. The film-making, if you can call it that, is first-rate. The soundtrack is perfect, combining the likes of Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington with original scores. I'm blown away by the depth and richness of the scenery and characterizations. It almost doesn't matter that I can't play the thing worth a shit--it's just plain cool. There's even a tie-in e-book from an outfit appropriately named Mulholland Books. This seems to be the new trend--I understand one of my all-time favorite authors (John Shirley) has a Bioshock tie-in novel. Guess I'll have to dust that one off and try again.

America Noir

2011-07-23T17:02:00.001-07:00

Academic language is a subset of American English. I'm a Berkeley grad, and deciphering the argot of professors was de rigueur during my time there. I imagine most college students have had similar experiences with scholarly obfuscation. Check this out:

As the dominant strain of modernism increasingly assumed quasi-official status in the postwar period, artists working in popular forms, who were beneath the notice of serious intellectuals (except as they fell under the general heading of mass culture), found themselves freer to maintain a critical stance vis-à-vis the Cold War state. (p221)

I love it! It's from a book called America Noir: underground writers and filmmakers of the Postwar Era, by, you guessed it, a college professor. His name is David Cochran. I realize the above passage isn't too difficult, no big words and only one foreign phrase, but in tone and style it is wholly academic. You certainly couldn't say "popular American artists began to criticize American culture during the Cold War." That would lack the flair and polish the audience for such a book expects. I don't mean to pick on Prof. Cochran, after all, he's a noir-man like me. And it's a good book--the stories of the various artists (from Jim Thompson to Rod Serling) are interesting and enjoyable. And Cochran is capable of some real gems--here's his take on the brilliant Charles Willeford:

In a string of pulp paperbacks published in the fifties and sixties, Willeford created a world in which the predatory cannibalism of American capitalism provides the model for all human relations, in which the American success ethic mercilessly casts aside all who are unable or unwilling to compete, and in which the innate human appreciation of artistic beauty is cruelly distorted by the exigencies of mass culture. (p40)

I like that. Academic study of noir is a little dry for everyday reading, I know, but I've a passion for the subject. Nothing comes close to Eddie Muller's magnificent Dark City: the lost world of film noir, but that's an unfair comparison. Mr. Muller's book is strictly about movies, is for a popular audience, and is filled with vintage photos. And it is as intelligent as it is entertaining. But Prof. Cochran's book has its place on the shelf--I certainly learned a lot and was pointed in some new directions.

Thirty years ago . . .

2011-07-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

. . . I was finishing my senior year at the University of California. The space shuttle Columbia made its maiden voyage on April 12th and I was awarded my B.S. degree on June 13th. Columbia broke up over Texas during re-entry on January 16, 2003. That was its 28th flight. Sister ship Challenger, launched on April 4th, 1983, was lost at the start of only its 10th mission on January 28, 1986. Atlantis, first launched on October 3rd, 1985, touched down at Cape Canaveral early this morning, closing the door on the entire shuttle program. It was the 33rd trip for Atlantis. The newest member of the fleet, Endeavour, was first launched on May 7th, 1992, and completed its 25th and final voyage on June 1st, 2011. Workhorse Discovery made 39 flights between August 30th, 1984, and March 9th, 2011. I remember talk at the time of Columbia's debut was that each shuttle would be capable of 100 missions. Although NASA fell short of that optimistic prediction, thirty years of performance from such a complex machine subject to such demanding conditions is still an impressive accomplishment. If you want to do pure science, satellites, robots, and unmanned probes are much better than human-filled spaceships. If you want to explore, you need people. I hope NASA can continue to do both.

Elaine Bartholomew Rothwell

2011-06-02T07:17:00.003-07:00

My mother-in-law passed away earlier this week after being hospitalized due to a heart problem. She was a month past her 85th birthday--she was born in 1926, the same year as Marlyn Monroe. Elaine grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father Fred Bartholomew was an artist and passed his passion and talent on to his daughter. Elaine met her "man in a uniform" in 1945, when newly-minted ensign William Stanley Rothwell, a fellow Minnesotan and an Annapolis grad, swept her off her feet. They were married a year later and had a long and loving partnership. Elaine raised four children while Bill pursued a career in physics. Once the family moved to California, Elaine returned to her art, earning a degree from San Jose State University in 1966. Her work with Vi Woodbury brought her to etching and printmaking which she pursued for nearly fifty years. Elaine and Vi remained lifelong friends. Elaine, signing her work as E.B. Rothwell, developed a unique style that was both playful and serious, skillfully combining high art with popular references. Her signature technique was the use of negative space to hide images and her best work always had something below the surface to tease the eye and prick the mind. Bill and Elaine retired to Auburn, California where she was active in the local art scene. She is survived by her husband, her three daughters, Suzanne, Amy, and Wendy, her son Bart, and her two grandchildren, Damien and Cherise Verrett, as well as two step-grandchildren. I will remember her for her great love of history and in particular her enthusiasm for classical Latin ("It's KICK-ero, not SISS-ero!"). She was a sharp and combative conversationalist and a supreme story-teller with a prodigious memory. Rarely do I meet someone who can out-talk me! She was a wonderful mother and wife, and a fascinating and charismatic woman who in many ways was years ahead of her time. I will miss her very much.

Z-books

2011-05-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Some folks like e-books. Others like iBooks. But I'm a Z-books man. As in Ziesing Books. Mark and Cindy Ziesing have been peddling books for a long time out of their home in Shingletown, California. That's State of Jefferson country in case you don't know. Shingletown is an unincorporated little burg in Shasta County just east of Redding on State Route 44 on the way to Lassen Park. The Ziesings have a print catalog and a website jam-packed with lots and lots of weird and wonderful stuff. They used to publish books as well, and I have maybe a half-dozen lovely hardcovers with the Ziesing imprint--John Shirley, Tim Powers, Iain Banks, Lucius Shepard and the like. I've been shopping at Ziesing for about twenty years and in all that time have never talked to an employee, salesman, or customer-service rep. When you call on the phone either Cindy or Mark will answer. Same when you email. You get hand-written notes from them in your packages. This is a real, live, mom-and-pop operation. I once had a shipment of Z-books stolen from my post office box. When I called Ziesing, Mark sent me replacements without hesitation and charged me only the shipping! (There were, if I remember, a few one-of-kind items that I'd ordered that were lost forever, but the bulk of it was indeed replaceable.) He certainly did not have to do that, and I certainly did not ask him to, but he made me a customer for life nonetheless. Those low-lifes who stole from me (and them, by extension) would obviously never appreciate the literary bonanza they stumbled upon or the grace and class of the Ziesing operation.

I just received my latest order. It was preceded, of course, by an email from Cindy letting me know it was in the mail. All four books were individually paper-wrapped before boxing--you think Amazon does that? I got two hardcovers, The Right Madness by the late James Crumley and Leather Maiden by Joe R. Lansdale. Mr. Crumley is considered by many as a modern noir master and this is my first foray into his oeuvre. The book was listed as "Fine in Fine dust jacket." That means it is a new book that has sat on a shelf for a while (it's from 2005). That one set me back five bucks. Mr. Lansdale is a well-known and accomplished horror and crime fiction writer, and I've read several of his excellent short stories. This is my first Lansdale novel. The book is new, a 2nd printing from 2008, and it cost four bucks. I'm cheap--I scour the "sale" section. I challenge anyone in bookstore meccas like Berkeley or Portland to find better deals with less hassle than that. I also picked up a vintage paperback from Ballantine (it looks like a 70s edition) of Theodore Sturgeon short stories (E Pluribus Unicorn) for two bucks, and a new mass-market paperback from Joe McKinney called Flesh Eaters. The new book was $6.99, the most expensive item on the list! I interviewed Mr. McKinney a few months ago for the Gutter Books website--another small, local, independent venture. Flesh Eaters is one of his apocalyptic zombie books. The Sturgeon was a real find as he is one of the all-time SF greats.

When you are weary of shopping at soul-less box stores and giving your Visa number to mega-corps, check out Ziesing Books. In fact, don't wait until you are weary. Shop there now. Besides, they are also Giants fans.

Expert Mouse

2011-05-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

That's what the Kensington people call it, but it isn't a mouse at all. It's a trackball. I developed a fondness for trackballing over mousing a long time ago, but my old trackball was not compatible with Windows 7. Kensington finally updated their Expert Mouse and claimed Win 7 functionality with the new Trackball software. I bought the damn thing and downloaded the software but couldn't get it to work. A quick search on Google brought me to a forum where some fellow suggested using a different version of the software available at the UK site for Kensington. By golly, it worked! I'm now fully functional with my new trackball. The wireless mouse that came with my Dell wasn't bad, in fact it was pretty nice as far as mice go, but I'm happy to be back to my four-button cue ball & ring ways. I sure like the Kensington product, but I have to say the website support is damn poor. Having to find a different version of the software on my own somewhere else is not what I call customer service.

Orange & Black Congrats Ale

2011-05-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Mi concuño Alberto sent me a beer in the mail. Now that's a true friend! Alberto is my sister-in-law's husband, that is, we are married to sisters. English just doesn't have as elegant a term as the Spanish for that particular relationship, so concuño it is. Moylan's Brewery in Novato made a special black ale to celebrate the Giants winning the World Series. That's what was in the mail and no one could appreciate it more than me. After all, I'm a crazy fan and a brewer who also made a beer to honor the champs. My lovely bride and I enjoyed the pint of Congrats Ale while watching Tim Lincecum destroy the Mets on TV. Supposedly Orange & Black had a bit of orange flavor to complement the dark grains, but I'll admit that neither of us detected that. Nonetheless it was a lovely and refreshing brew and was good luck for the lads as well.

Muchas gracias, amigo!

The Mental Game

2011-04-21T14:05:00.002-07:00

"Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical."

Yogi Berra is credited with that bit of wisdom. Funny thing, it is true. Baseball is a mental game. The pace may be languid, and the physical action sporadic, but the athleticism required to play professionally is a rare trait. A small percentage of the population has that kind of talent. A small percentage of those athletes make it to the big time. What separates the ones who stick from the ones who don't is mental. Fortitude. Perseverance. Desire. And what separates the greatest players is their ability to learn--to adapt and adjust. To maximize what they have and acquire new skills. Jim Kaplan's new book, The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century, brought this point home.

Mr. Kaplan relates a story about Juan Marichal telling Willie McCovey that he was going to change his approach before a game, asking him to play deeper in left field. It was June 15, 1963, at Candlestick Park and the opposing team was the Houston Colt 45s (later Astros). McCovey, amazed that the red-hot Marichal would be messing with things coming off a shutout and five straight wins, obliged nonetheless. Marichal explained that the Colts had hit him hard last time, and he needed to give them a new look. Here's Kaplan:

After consulting his notes on opponents, Marichal had concluded that Houston players were getting a preview of the coming pitch by reading his grip. Abandoning his high leg kick, he hid the ball, brought his hands together belt high and pivoted quickly.

McCovey wound up making a play on the fence late in the game to get an out and help preserve Marichal's no-hitter. Warren Spahn had the same attitude. Here's more from Kaplan:

"I don't pitch the hitter the same way from season to season," said Spahn, who could remember pitches he'd thrown 15 years prior. "Why? Well, I think hard about hitters and try to think the way they think. So there's always the possibility that the hitter may have given considerable thought to the way I pitched him in the previous year and he might be looking forward to those pitches next year."

A little later in the same chapter:

Like Spahn, Marichal had an extensive mental book on hitters' weaknesses. "This is a guessing game," he said. "I'm always trying to guess what the hitters are guessing. I haven't gotten any better, only smarter."

On July 2nd of the same 1963 season, Spahn and Marichal would pitch a 16-inning 1-0 game in San Francisco that Willie Mays would end with a home run. Spahn was pitching for the Milwaukee Braves (now Atlanta), the club he had come up with when they were still in Boston. That game is the subject of Kaplan's book, but it's really about two men, two ballplayers from different backgrounds and different generations. Their personal histories and their accomplishments on and off the field are interwoven throughout the account of the great pitching duel. Spahn was 42, and just about at the end, while Marichal was 25 and just beginning his exceptional run of great seasons (familiar to every Giants fan). Warren Spahn, the winningest left-hander in baseball history, died in 2003 aged 82. His son Greg supplies the forward for the book.

Stories about baseball before the era of division play and free agency naturally contrast sharply with much of today's game. But the game itself, and the contest of wills between the participants, remains the same. I get the feeling that Mr. Kaplan is nostalgic for a lost era of baseball, before Twitter and ESPN and whatnot. I was nine years old when the NL West and NL East were created, and I was in high school when Andy Messersmith was granted free agency. I'm not sure I've known anything but modern baseball. I remember though, when people watched the play on the field and not Jumbotrons or iPhone screens. So I can relate to his longing for some of those bygone things.

Read The Greatest Game Ever Pitched and tell me what you think.

New music

2011-04-20T10:10:00.001-07:00

I splurged yesterday at the Music Coop in Ashland. They have a new location right on the main drag and I had to check it out. The owners were happy and in a chatty mood. When I walked in Bob Dylan's Together Through Life was playing. I hadn't heard it, but it sounded much like the stuff from Love and Theft and Modern Times, both of which I like, so I bought it. CD #1. Then I rummaged through the Dylan section and found New Morning, one of my favorites ("If Not For You," "Day of the Locusts," "Went To See The Gypsy") and in need of replacing as the LP is almost shot and the tape made from the LP sounds terrible. CD #2. In the new releases bin I saw Low Country Blues from Gregg Allman and decided to take a chance on it. I've always loved his voice and the Allman Brothers Band made some of my all-time favorite music "back in the day." If the old survivor is going to sing the blues I want to hear it. CD #3. Remember Ronnie Montrose and "Rock the Nation"? Well, that album was up in the display area in the M's and got me looking through the 13th letter of the alphabet. I came across Mink DeVille's Le Chat Bleu, remastered and re-released with oodles of bonus tracks (including an interview with Doc Pomus). Willy DeVille unfortunately passed away in 2009, but his music lives on. "Venus of Avenue D" (from Cabretta) was one of those minor FM hits that got airplay in the Bay Area on stations like KSAN when I was in high school. My older brother Brian had a classmate who was tuned into all the hippest and coolest music, he turned us both on to acts like The Tubes, Patti Smith Group, and Mink DeVille. Thank goodness--I was fixated on Journey, Robin Trower, and Fleetwood Mac at the time! CD #4. I'm always on the lookout for good be-bop recordings, and the so-called Rudy Van Gelder Series from Blue Note is usually a solid bet. I got interested in saxophonist Hank Mobley because of his work with Miles Davis, and I previously bought the excellent Soul Station. The latest addition is Roll Call and features the same band (Paul Chambers, Art Blakey, Wynton Kelly) as well as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. It was recorded on 13 November, 1960, my 1st birthday! CD # 5. My namesake Mark O'Connor is a man of great musical versatility, and any album with my name on it is likely to garner my attention. I love his jazz forays and the one I picked up is called Live in New York and features his Hot Swing Trio. CD #6. The final disc in the shopping spree was playing when I left the store. The owner kidded me about how he wasn't trying to sell the CDs he was playing, he just played what he liked. Yeah, sure. Worked on me. It was a recent Sam Cooke collection called Portrait of a Legend and contains over 30 tracks. No one has a voice like Mr. Cooke. If you looked up "soulful" in the dictionary there should be a picture of Sam next to the entry. Another brilliant artist and performer who died too young. CD #7.

Not a bad haul, eh?

The Greatest Game Ever Pitched

2011-04-19T10:38:00.002-07:00

Jim Kaplan's new book starts like this:

For four hours, 10 minutes, and 16 innings, all through the night of July 2, 1963, and into July 3, Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal slugged it out like a veteran boxer and a young contender.

That's what they call a "hook" in the book trade. It worked for me, of course, being baseball fan and a Giants junkie. I was contacted a few weeks ago by some nice folks at Triumph Books asking if I would be interested in a "review copy" of Mr. Kaplan's The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century. Let's see: free book, Juan Marichal, Candlestick Park, Warren Spahn, SF Giants, baseball history . . . uh, sure, OK. Like I was going to say "no." Funny thing, I don't read a lot of baseball books. I mean, I don't actually read The Baseball Encyclopedia (I have the 7th ed.) even though I've spent a lot of time in my life with that book on my lap. (Nowadays I peruse Baseball-Reference.com.) I did read David Halberstam's Summer of '49 and October 1964, both of which were excellent. And W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe remains a favorite (the film version is a bit heavy-handed for my taste--Mr. Costner is far better in Bull Durham and has much better co-stars). I couldn't watch Ken Burns' Baseball, it kept putting me to sleep. Despite the fact that I'm a Giants baseball fanatic and follow the major leagues pretty closely, I'm actually not all that qualified to write a review of a baseball book. I just don't consume that many of them! I'm much better with 40s and 50s noir or post-modern SF. Alas, duty calls!

Look for my review at the end of the week on my Giants blog Raising Matt Cain.

I rode my bike today

2011-04-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't been on my bicycle since my accident. That fall and subsequent concussion took place on September 15th, 2010. Today the sunny weather gave me a chance to think about a mountain bike ride instead of a trip to the ski park. I chose the ride. I took my time and went slowly. I even got off and walked on some narrow uphill single-track. The creeks in Greenhorn Park were raging. I had to make three crossings. The first was ankle deep and I could push the bike. The second was a bit shallower and I rode across. The third was knee-deep and I had to carry the bike! Good thing I wore my wool socks.

Discovery

2011-03-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

It was a clear October morning in the Mojave Desert twenty-three years ago when I got to see Discovery touch down at Edwards Air Force Base. This was the first Space Shuttle flight in over two years after the Challenger disaster in January of 1986. The landing area was packed with spectators and well-wishers, and the general feeling was one of great relief when the big bird came down without a hitch. I was there when Challenger came down on her final landing in November of 1985. There was hardly anyone in the big lake bed parking area at the time. No one had any inkling it would be Challenger's last successful mission. Space travel is inherently dangerous, but the regularity of the program's success lulled us into believing it could be routine. It took another disaster, the terrible break-up of Columbia over Texas on its return flight to Canaveral in 2003 to remind us once again that this sort of thing is risky--very risky. You can have all the best scientists, engineers, and technicians and still lose a payload, a rocket, or a crew. I like to say that the first rule of the universe is that "Nature f----s with you." And that the second rule is "People can't do much about Rule No. 1."

Discovery will fly no more. She came down on Wednesday having flown 39 times since 1984 and having logged 148 million miles. Endeavour is set for an April launch, and Atlantis for June. That's it for the Space Shuttle after three decades. That will be a sad day for me, as I've been a fan of humans in space since I was a boy following the Apollo missions. The real exploration of the final frontier is done better by satellites and robots--one only has to look at the pictures from Cassini and Opportunity to know that. But humans are explorers, and will continue to explore space from their rockets and spaceships. The ISS is still up there, still working, and still filled with explorers. Let's not forget about them.

Winter's Bone

2011-03-05T19:47:00.001-08:00

This weekend I redboxed a movie called Winter's Bone. It's based on a novel by an excellent American crime writer by the name of Daniel Woodrell. I haven't read the book, but I'm familiar with Mr. Woodrell, who sets much of his fiction in the Missouri Ozarks. The main occupation of the characters in Winter's Bone seems to be avoiding the law while they cook meth. The unfortunate Ree, played beautifully by Jennifer Lawrence, struggles to keep her family together while shit hits the fan all around her. Ree is the oldest child of Jessup Dolly, and she has to care for her younger siblings because her mother is nuts and her father is a fugitive. Ultimately Ree--all of seventeen--has to go toe-to-toe with the head honcho of the vicious, inbred clan they all belong to. It's compelling stuff, particularly because the landscape is filmed so lovingly. The rural ghettos of America are oddly photogenic. I'm not sure if it's the car wreck or the rescue that fascinates us. The folks in Winter's Bone don't expect rescue, but without giving away too much it is safe to say Ree Dolly gets her share of both rescue and car wreck in the story. The acting and writing are both excellent as all the characters have depth and seem believable. Winter's Bone is noir in tone and feel but a surprising and uplifting drama as well. Director Debra Granik gets a tip of the tam o'shanter for an engaging and rewarding film.

"It's all about the pow-pow."

2011-02-26T17:12:00.000-08:00

My skiing buddy is a total powder snob. He barely wants to have his skis touch a groomed run. He won't go to a resort unless there is a chance of "freshies." Today we hit the road early and got to the parking lot at Mt. Ashland before they opened. We managed to be on the summit and over to "the back side" before it had been touched. I got to experience a true "bluebird" or powder-skiing day in windless, cloudless, sunny conditions. We and a few others trailing us got to cut the first tracks in some luscious, fluffy "pow-pow." I was so excited on the first run and had so much adrenaline that I hardly remember getting down the hill. But by the second run I had calmed down and realized the skiing was fun and easy. The view south to Mt. Shasta and the Shasta Valley was magnificent, we could see the snow-capped Marble Mountains and Trinity Alps. It was a spectacular day. The trek back to the chairlift area is long and on a mostly-level road, so it is a workout, and being out of shape I tired quickly. But I accomplished a major goal I had set for myself as a skier, which was to be confident enough to leave the "groomers" and head for the backcountry. I took a spill on the last run because I was worn out and missed a turn. But the snow was soft and deep and the faceplant was painless. It's good to be reminded that the mountain is your master and not your mistress.

I'm celebrating my great morning (we were in the bar and eating lunch at exactly noon) with a little George Dickel No. 12 Tennessee Whisky. Good stuff! (Note that they use the Scotch/Canadian spelling rather than the Irish/American "whiskey.")

Weekend crescent

2011-02-06T19:38:00.001-08:00

I caught a glimpse of the very young crescent on Friday night just before 8:00 p.m. local time (PST). It was just getting ready to set over the western foothills. On Saturday I saw the moon late in the afternoon, high in the sky, and watched it brighten in the deepening twilight. Tonight Jupiter was the crescent's companion, and I could really appreciate the earthshine glowing on the full face of the disk. The bright bottom limb looks a bit like a canoe or gondola, with its pointy horns nearly even with the horizon line. The moon is smiling at us! The unseasonably warm, dry, clear weather may be a bummer for the skier in me, but the flip side is an outstanding view of Luna in all her early-phase glory. First Quarter is not until Thursday--get outside and enjoy the beautiful young moon!

Even MORE new books!

2011-01-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

I'm stocked up for the New Year. The last shipment arrived yesterday--this time from Amazon. I've been trying for a year to find the rest of the fabulous Criminal series by Ed Brubaker (writer) and Sean Phillips (artist). I had volumes 1, 3, and 5, but my nearest comic shop (Ashland) never seemed to stock the rest of the set. So I simply ordered volumes 2 and 4 on-line. The stories are standalone but also overlap, and are told with multiple flash-forward-and-back sequences, but they never lose their grip on you. The colors by Val Staples are pitch-perfect and bring the whole thing to life. If you are looking for noir, look no further. Brubaker is a master storyteller and the illustrators capture the characters and action perfectly. I'm a big John Shirley fan, and ordered his latest--Bleak History--as well. Mr. Shirley is not an easy guy to pigeon-hole. Sure, most of his stuff is fantasy/horror/sci-fi, but that's like saying James Joyce wrote about Irish people. It's true, but useless. John Shirley writes brilliant fucking shit that will explode your brain. How about that?

What's on your book pile?

New books!

2011-01-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

Right on top of Out of the Gutter 7 is the latest shipment from Ziesing Books. (Don't know Ziesing? Time to find out.) Sitting on top is Charles Willeford: a 1986 Hoke Moseley novel called New Hope for the Dead. Underneath that is a Dave Zeltserman title: 21 Tales from New Pulp Press. It seems I share a link with Mr. Zeltserman. One of the stories in the collection--Adrenaline--originally appeared in Out of the Gutter 2. My story--Tweaker--is in the same issue. (That tells me I should get off my butt and write more stories!) Then there is the inimitable Walter Mosley: a new series featuring Leonid McGill, PI. It's called The Long Fall. The bottom of the heap is a 1986 Mysterious Press hardcover: Veil, by George C. Chesbro.

I can't wait to get started! What's new in your book basket?

Out of the Gutter 7

2011-01-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

The new Out of the Gutter magazine is here--number seven! It now has the Gutter Books imprint and the look and feel of the trade paperbacks in that line. OOTG7 is the "U.S. vs. U.K." issue, alternating an American story/author combo (edited by Matt Louis) with a British Commonwealth story/author combo (edited by Pulp Press' Danny Hogan). I enjoyed the variety of tone and language in the tales--the back-and-forth setup was fresh and fun. The stories were consistently excellent, and the whole layout and format of the new issue is first-rate. All OOTGs are organized by length. There's a "Flash" section followed by a "10 Minute Read Department" and a "15-20 Minute Read Department" (as well as various non-fiction pieces). Don't let the "gutter" name fool you. This may be graphic, hardcore crime writing, but it is skillfully executed by serious folks. Tough times call for tough fiction! Buy Out of the Gutter 7 and you not only get a fine read but you support a truly independent publishing venture.

Uranus

2011-01-03T20:09:00.001-08:00

I discovered an excellent new astronomy blog called Prime Time. I was looking for help with Uranus. Uranus is the favorite planet of schoolkids everywhere. They always ask if you have pictures of Uranus. Nowadays you are supposed to say Uranus like "urine us" which isn't any better. The alternative is "your AH-nus" which just sounds like you are being snooty. Tonight, with the help of the description and map on the aforementioned Prime Time blog I was able to see Uranus. This week it is in the same binocular field with Jupiter, and with a little patience I was able to pick out the far distant planet once known as "The Georgian Star." I'm lucky to live in a place with dark skies. Even though I live in town and there are all the usual sources of light pollution (like streetlamps and porch lights) visibility is still very good. The hardest part is keeping the binoculars steady! Once I could do that I could see Uranus easily. The bluish-green tint the planet is known for would jump out at me when I averted my eyes from the spot. Uranus is more than a billion miles from Earth, closer to two billion, in fact. That's a long way for the sunlight to get there and back again so we could see it this week.

Penelope: journey's end

2011-01-01T13:04:00.001-08:00

I have come to the end of James Joyce's Ulysses. The final episode is known as "Molly's soliloquy" and consists of a running internal monologue bereft of ordinary sentence structure and punctuation. We get to listen in on Molly Bloom's mind as it runs on and on like all minds do, intermixing the past, present, and future with impressions, feelings, and half-formed thoughts as well as vivid descriptions, precise details, and surprising insights. We know nothing of the real Molly in the rest of the book and have only her reputation and the things the other characters think and say about her to form an idea of her make-up. The long journey into her unregulated, unselfconscious mental stream reveals a complex woman full of contradictions. She enjoys her extramarital affair and fantasizes about other lovers, but also reminisces about falling in love with Leopold Bloom, realizes the depth of her feelings for him, and resolves to give their marriage a fresh start. Molly is petty and self-absorbed, but also sensitive and empathic. She's ignorant--i.e. uneducated--but intelligent and perceptive. There's enough Molly there to either love or hate and that seems to be the point. Joyce hasn't made anything easy in Ulysses and it is no surprise that Molly is an enigma as well. You could argue just as easily that Molly represents the divine or the debased, that she's an earth-mother or a harlot. I would imagine that the real Molly is like all of us--a little of both and a lot in-between. Joyce refuses to settle the argument and forces us to take all of Molly, the good parts and the bad parts. It is interesting that Molly's favorite word is "yes" and that she uses it almost like punctuation (think of "like" and "um" and "you know" in conversation) throughout the monologue. The whole episode begins and ends with the word "yes." Her last thoughts are of Bloom and her love for him. The book, for me, ended on a hopeful note. Despite the myriad of injustices done to us each day, the suffering, and the failed dreams, there is still a chance at love and renewal. Life goes on in all its confusion and uncertainty and each day is its own epic struggle to understand and be understood.

A healthy and prosperous 2011 to all of you!

New stuff and new old stuff

2010-12-29T12:09:00.000-08:00

Found a copy of Walter Mosley's The Tempest Tales (2008) in Ashland yesterday. Mr. Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins stories, and as excellent as those books are, they are only a small part of his output and give little indication of the range and depth of his work. Check out Futureland and The Man in My Basement if you want to have your preconceptions about a "crime writer" challenged. As far as his crime stories go, Mosley is often compared to Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler, but I think of John D. MacDonald as his literary antecedent. Both are superb observers of their time and astute social critics, and manage to craft taut, fast-paced tales peopled by intriguing and sympathetic characters. That is no mean feat. Speaking of The Late, Great John D., I also picked up a Fawcett Gold Medal reprint of his 1954 novel Contrary Pleasure. It looks like a 1970s vintage but is in good shape despite the yellowing pages. I found the first of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series (Cop Hater) in a somewhat battered late-80s re-issue, and the second of Donald E. Westlake's Sam Holt mysteries (I Know a Trick Worth Two of That), recently re-released in trade paper by Felony & Mayhem. I also grabbed a hardcover omnibus of classic pulp called Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames, which is 600 pages of everyone from Robert E. Howard to Robert Bloch. It features a story by Paul Cain ("Black"), one of the best writers you've never heard of, and no relation to his more famous contemporary James M. Cain.

I also ventured into The Music Coop, where antediluvians like me can find actual albums on CD. I picked up John Prine's Sweet Revenge (1973) and Patty Loveless' Mountain Soul (2001). Like I said: new stuff and new old stuff. That ought to keep me entertained for a while.

Ithaca

2010-12-26T13:31:00.001-08:00

In the penultimate episode of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom returns home. He has Stephen Dedalus in tow, and they drink cocoa and converse about art and science. Bloom had forgotten his key and had to break in to his own house. Later, after Stephen leaves, he hits his head on some furniture in the dark as his wife Molly had rearranged things in his absence. Molly awakens when he comes to bed, and he tells her about his day. She had entertained her lover Blazes Boylan earlier in the afternoon. Bloom thinks about their long and difficult marriage and her many adulterous liaisons. It is hardly a heroic return to a faithful Penelope for the aggrieved Bloom. Joyce uses an impersonal catechism technique of question-and-answer that varies from precise, elaborate cross-examination to absurd, comical repartee. Bloom's fears and dreams are ruthlessly analyzed and made pathetic. The tone is despairing, but in the end Bloom embraces "abnegation" and "equanimity" before falling asleep. Joyce makes explicit the universality of Bloom's experience:

What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and nonentity?

Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.

The odyssey of this melancholy, cuckolded alien in a neglected city of a fading empire is bereft of heroes, monsters, and goddesses. It is a far cry from the Odyssey it purports to emulate. Joyce pulls down the lofty myth and gives it to all of us, making the Everyman the real hero of the modern world. He also pulls apart the novel as a form by refusing to follow its strictures and showing how almost any type of writing can tell a story and teach a moral lesson. The elaborate artifice and complex structure of Ulysses creates a contradictory effect in the reader--the characters are stripped of their pretensions and falsities and exposed for the shallow, grubbing humans that they really are. Molly Bloom takes over the remaining 45 pages. Her internal monologue, lying in bed next to her sleeping husband, is the final episode. I'll finish it up before the New Year so check back soon for my final thoughts on Joyce's famous creation.

Storm's a-comin'

2010-12-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

A stout south wind has been blowing all morning long. Now drops of rain dot the flagstones of the back patio and streak my window. There'll be a storm tonight for Christmas! It's warm enough that we'll likely only get rain in town, but snow will fall on the hillsides. I expect we'll be driving through the white stuff on Forest Mountain later this evening.

Winter warmer

2010-12-22T15:52:00.001-08:00

I saw the moon bathed in a warm, orange-red light late Monday night while it was eclipsed by the earth. The day had been gray and overcast, but the skies cleared after the sun went down. If you were standing on the moon and watching the total eclipse, you'd see the sun blocked by the earth. Sunlight would appear as a reddish ring around the earth--the lucky lunar crew would be seeing all the sunrises and sunsets at once! This refracted light is what colors the moon for earthbound observers. Monday's hue was the color of good bourbon. Good thing I had some good bourbon on hand, because we toasted the Winter Solstice with it the next day. Evan Williams Single Barrel is lovely stuff, and this particular bottle that we cracked on Tuesday was filled on the 14th of June, 2010, from 10-year old barrels. Where were we on the 14th of June? Why, at the ballpark watching the Giants clobber the Orioles! The earth covered the sun and colored the moon. The sun started its long journey back north. The Giants won the World Series. Happy Holidays!

I lacked a proper motive

2010-12-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

I still play music CDs. They sound a hell of a lot better than .mp3 files. Plus I like handling the discs and looking at the cases, though I can't read the tiny print anymore without aid. I still have LPs and a working turntable. Records are a bit of a hassle, but are certainly much easier to read than CDs and I enjoy the art and layout of the albums. I've taped many of the albums I listen to a lot. Both of the vehicles I own still have working cassette players--my 2002 Honda came with one. Suffice to say that I've been late to join the iTunes crowd. I don't have an iPod and I don't go running around with my ear buds in. I can rip CD music to my computer, I can stream a radio station, and I can listen to Pandora through my PS3--I'm not technologically challenged. I get the digital music thing. I just lacked a good reason to start a downloading frenzy from iStore (er, iTunes Store).

But no more. The Giants released a video called Giant! Perfect '10 in San Francisco. and it was only available via iTunes. Quicker than you could say Windows7 I had a program, an account, and the damn thing downloaded. All for just $3.99! Then I discovered they had games. I mean actual Giants baseball games, like the 2010 NLDS and NLCS and etc. Pretty cool, eh? And only a $1.99 per game.

I'm tuned in now.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-21T14:54:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like it because the rules are simple: get together with those you love and eat a big, happy meal.

I can live with that.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The war to end all wars

2010-11-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, an armistice was signed to end the war. It wasn't called World War One then, of course. It was simply The War or even The Great War. The slaughter and futility of that dark time in human history did not quite make the impression on men and nations that it should have. Humanity had to go and do it all again, bigger and better this time, and call it World War Two. Some day, perhaps, we'll learn. I'd love to live long enough to see the last of all wars. I dream of a time when no one will ever have to bear arms against another. Unfortunately, that is not the world I live in. Politics, ideology, racism, fear, ignorance, and greed may fuel wars, but human beings fight them. People who put on a uniform usually do so to protect those they love. Nations will wrap their wars in the usual nonsense that nations wrap things in, making the killing of others more palatable to their citizens. But that doesn't take away from the fact that people serve their country and risk their lives for their families, their friends, and their fellow citizens. Armistice Day--the original 11/11--is no more. Now we call it Veterans Day. All of us have veterans in our lives. Think about them. Thank them. Wish them a good day. And wish for the day when we can all live in peace. After all, that is what they fought for.

Bloomsday: after midnight

2010-11-07T12:05:00.002-08:00

The two protagonists of Ulysses come together in the final act. Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus seek refuge from the cold, dark Dublin streets in the "cabmen's shelter" and engage in rambling and unsatisfactory conversations with each other and with an ancient mariner they meet. Bloom struggles to express his paternal affection for the drunk and ill-tempered Stephen, who seems unwilling to talk directly about anything, preferring to be obtuse and philosophical. Bloom persists in looking out for Stephen, and finally convinces him to come to his house and sleep off his binge. This part of the story is analogous to the "homecoming" portion of the Odyssey. A disguised Odysseus returns to Ithaca and hides out in his aged but loyal swineherd's hut. He meets his grown son, Telemachus, and ultimately they plot the rescue of Penelope and the destruction of the suitors. The two modern men do nothing so bold. Bloom delays his homecoming for fear of encountering his wife's lover, and Stephen is oblivious to the older man's ingratiating efforts. The episode is told in a labored, almost overbearing tone, what you might call high-falutin', once again showcasing Joyce's remarkable mastery of the language and love of good parody. Two things seem to be at work here. One is Joyce forcing you to examine your bias when you approach a work. We all come loaded with preconceptions when we examine art, and Joyce gathers them all up and tosses them back in your face as if to say (like Kool Mode Dee) "how ya like me now?" It makes for difficult and frustrating reading, but when it's all over it empowers you to strip away artifice and technique and look for the essence of things. The second is the elevation of the banal. The Odyssey is warriors and gods--Ulysses is everyday men and women. Joyce reveals the profundity of everyday encounters and throwaway thoughts, he elevates his "everymen" by making them the subject of his great artistic endeavor. The ordinary, quotidian travails of our fellow humans ought to be a source of the wisdom and inspiration we seek from myths and legends.

My long journey through Ulysses is nearing it's end. Only two more episodes--a little over a hundred pages--remain. Stay tuned.

Estate Homegrown Ale

2010-10-18T21:12:00.001-07:00

I've been drinking beer from the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico for nearly thirty years. The stuff is damn close to mother's milk for me, and I'm always happy to try a new batch. The latest to cross my lips is the Estate Homegrown Ale that features "wet" hops grown at the brewery site. The hops used in beer are the unpollinated flower clusters--called cones--of the female plant. They are typically dried in kilns before packaging or further processing. "Wet-hopping" is using the freshly picked cones directly from the vines and substituting them for dried hops both in the kettle and after fermentation. The result is a rich and spicy "green" beer with a massive aroma and fresh, garden-like flavors. In the hands of skilled brewers the effect is marvelous, and the Estate Ale is no exception. Despite the high alcohol content (6.7%), the beer was very smooth and had a refreshing, light malt flavor. The huge hop profile was not at all overwhelming and the ale was dangerously quaffable. Go out and get some, I say, and drink it up while you can.

Gutter Books

2010-10-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Matt Louis, publisher of Gutter Books, asked me some time ago if I'd like to contribute to the "News and Events" blog on his website. Who could refuse? He connected me with author Joe McKinney--a homicide cop in San Antonio--who had submitted his novel Dodging Bullets to Matt for publication. I was able to read (and comment on) an advance proof of the book, and I sent Joe an inquiry and a list of questions. He was not only gracious and friendly, he sent me lengthy and detailed responses. I think you'll enjoy his thoughtful and interesting take on things. Go read the interview! And support your independent, small-press publishers!

Todos somos Chilenos

2010-10-09T17:47:00.001-07:00

Your morning alarm is electrical, the pulses carried on copper wires. The coffee you make and the hot shower you take require copper wires and copper pipes. There is copper in the bronze hinges and drawer pulls in your closets and cabinets. There's copper in the brass buttons of your suit coat. You've got copper-clad pots to boil your eggs. Your computer and cell phone can't be made without copper. The electricity you pay two bits for two kilowatt-hours for is generated by huge, spinning bundles of copper wire. They work much like the windings in your car's alternator--more copper. You drive to work past homes and buildings whose veinous systems of copper wires and copper pipes keep them lit and habitable. The quarters you pump in the parking meter are disks of pure copper sandwiched between layers of a cupro-nickel alloy.

The United States consumes about two million metric tons of new copper in a year. A metric ton (aka tonne) is one thousand kilograms, or 2205 pounds. Two million of those is over 4.4 billion pounds. If there are 310 million Americans, that is 14 pounds of copper per person annually. If you live 80 years, that is 1120 pounds, or over half a ton (either kind!). The copper folks tell me a child born today will need 1500 pounds of copper to maintain our accustomed standard of living.

Chile is the world's largest copper producer, supplying about a third of the world's needs. The U.S. imports about a third of the copper it needs, and thus depends on Chilean output to augment domestic production and recycling. Copper is Chile's most important export, accounting for about 35% of the country's total. Copper mining and refining creates enormous environmental challenges for even the wealthiest countries, and the crisis in Chile has made the world aware of the hazards inherent in underground copper extraction. The dramatic news from Camp Hope that a rescue shaft has reached the thirty-three men trapped underground in the San Jose Mine has everyone optimistic that they will ultimately be rescued.

Everything we need for life is either grown or mined. Copper has been mined by human beings for millenia, it was one of the earliest metals our ancient forbearers utilized. Metalworking is one of the foundations of civilization, and its origins are somewhere in the mists of prehistory. Our modern way of life is even more dependent on the steady supply of copper and other metals. So we are all Chileans. Those men down there, they are our lifeline. They are literally our connection to the earth. Let us hope they all make it out safely, and that the next time they go down there, things will be better.

"Pander to their Gomorrahan vices."

2010-09-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

This latest section of Ulysses was written like the script of a play, in dialog with acting instructions and scenery descriptions. It ran from page 422 to page 593 of my ancient Random House hardcover, by far the longest episode, but also the easiest to read. It certainly wasn't any easier to understand than the rest of the book, but it was once again engaging and intriguing. A drunk Stephen Dedalus takes off for the red-light district of the city and winds up in a brothel. Leopold Bloom, protectively, hurries off to keep an eye on him. The episode ends with Stephen getting punched out by a soldier and Bloom intervening with the local cops to avoid an arrest for a public disturbance. In the middle of it all, Bloom goes on trial and faces his entire lifetime of fears, neuroses, and hang-ups in a series of interrogations in front of various hostile audiences. He even sees a vision of his dead son Rudy immediately after rescuing Stephen. The whole crazy, hallucinatory adventure is something of a critique of society's sexual mores. The immoral behavior Bloom is chastised for is nothing more than the natural impulses of the body and the free-running fantasy of the mind. He's helpless to defend himself, as any of us would be against arbitrary and hypocritical standards imposed by narrow-minded, fearful people. Bloom becomes something of a mirror for all of us to examine how we would be seen by others if they knew our innermost thoughts and feelings. No one wants that, of course, the very idea makes us squeamish, and Bloom's ordeal is indeed unsettling. He survives and carries on, not triumphantly, but doggedly, enduring his humiliations without rage or despair. Joyce assembles a little of everything into these narratives--history, language, politics, social satire, music, theology, evolution, melodrama, and the base instincts of everyday people. It's like you are riding on a sea of the collective unconscious and picking up and examining the flotsam. I hope my barely-adequate grasp of this extraordinary book does it some justice.

Wham! Bam! No thanks, man.

2010-09-16T10:54:00.001-07:00

I took a spill on my mountain bike yesterday. My buddy Brian and I were on the Hawkinsville Ditch, riding home from Long Gulch. It's a place I've been many times--it's a great ride in the woods just on the edge of town. The fall gave me some raspberries and bruises the size of small nations and they hurt like hell. I also hit my head, cracking my helmet at the left temple and sustaining a concussion. Brian had to walk me and my bike out--I don't remember any of it. Did I mention Brian is an all-around great guy and a real mensch? Anyway, Sue and I spent a long evening at the ER. I was examined and given a CT scan. The good news is they found nothing. The brain did not show up on the pictures, meaning I'm going to be OK! Seriously, I have to consider that I'm lacking a brain. I pursue two sports--alpine skiing and mountain biking--which routinely cause me to injure myself. I do these things with other fellows who are natural athletes. They carry themselves with an enviable, relaxed grace that I strive to imitate. They are sure-footed, nimble, and unselfconscious. I am none of those things. I have two left feet on some days and two right feet on others. I huff, puff, grunt, groan, grimace, and sweat in equal measures while these guys cruise around effortlessly. I'm fifty years old and I'm still pursuing a chimerical childhood playground dream. Alas, I do manage to have quite a bit of fun in between the stints on the DL. I suppose that's what keeps me going. Plus all the other ways that people stay in shape are, to my mind, wretchedly dull. Jogging? Lap swimming? Elliptical machines? Good god, I'd be crazy with boredom! After this latest episode, though, I'm beginning to see why these other pursuits are so appealing. They are safe! You aren't going to hurt yourself. Not much in the adventure/adrenaline department, but no trips to the hospital, either.

This "brain bruise" has been a sobering experience, and not just because the doctor told me to lay off the sauce for the next few days. When I torqued my rotator cuff skiing several years ago, I told myself I would learn to be a better, smarter, safer skier. For the most part, I have been. I've torn skin off my hide many times on my bike, but I've never had a serious injury. Nothing, at least, that ice packs and TLC couldn't cure. This time, though, I gave myself a serious whack on the noggin. The ER doc told me I must "absolutely not sustain another concussion for at least three months." The first thing I did was count the months on my fingers: October, November, December . . . and then asked him "you mean I can go skiing in January?" What the hell is wrong with me? I sat there on the table, not remembering how the hell I got there (I still don't), and the only thing I was concerned about was using my ski pass!

I make a living with my brain. Not only that, my mind is where I keep all those things that mean the most to me. The people I love and have loved. Memories, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Forgetting most of an afternoon in which I was pedaling through a forest over a rock-strewn trail on my beloved Specialized Stumpjumper is, frankly, a scary experience. I don't forget anything. I've got a mind like flypaper--crap sticks to it without me hardly trying. Yet much of yesterday is gone. The doctor said my injury "erased the tape." Tape--what an anachronism! C'mon doc, you meant to say "deleted the file." Either way, I don't like it. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful it was a relatively minor thing. People get concussions and they get over them. I didn't do anything that can't be undone with time and care. But I still don't like it. And I particularly don't like the bruise to my ego. I feel like a klutz. I mean, I chose this activity and inflicted this damage to myself entirely of my own volition. I don't have to risk life and limb in order to have fun and stay fit. I could take up square-dancing or something. On second thought, that involves rhythm and timing and coordination and even grace, so forget it. Maybe one of those Richard Simmons workout videos would be more my speed. There's always the stationary bike. I could ingest hallucinogens and watch Pink Floyd videos or something to fight off the tedium. Or maybe the NordicTrack. I'd be in better shape and it's about the same price as my Rossignol Phantoms.

Forget that. "I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam." I'm going to have to take it easy, though, I know that. And I'm going to have to be more attentive and more measured when I head for the mountains. If I want to be an athlete, I'm going to have to know my limits, and to play my game and not chase after someone else's. I'm going to be good. I promise. I'm going to follow doctor's orders and I'm going to take care of my head.

See you on the slopes.

"Just you try it on."

2010-08-05T14:03:00.002-07:00

I know it is hard to believe, but I think I just finished the most bewildering section of Ulysses so far. The story seemed to be about a woman--Mina Purefoy--giving birth after a hard labor. But like all things in this bizarre and fascinating book, that's not what we read about. We read about Stephen Dedalus and his merry band of drinking chums. They party for a while in the hospital until the shocked staff finally kicks them out. Leopold Bloom tags along as well, as he had come to check on Mina. Lots of talk by the lads, lots of meanderings and ruminations and . . . well, I'm not sure. The whole thing is like the charts of human evolution that used to be in the biology and anthropology textbooks of my youth. The ones that showed the four-footed apes, then the knuckle-draggers, then Cro-Magnon man, and finally Homo sapiens sapiens. The paragraphs are like the links in "the chain of evolution" of the English language. It's like Joyce wanted to trace out the phylogeny and ontogeny of the mother tongue, step-by-step. I noticed I used "like" and "seem" a lot. Can't help that. This book is very difficult to understand. But I'm still at it, and I've read 421 of the 768 pages, so there's no turning back now.

The new Hard Case is here, the new Hard Case is here!

2010-07-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

I've spent a bit of time on this blog talking about Hard Case Crime. No. 66 showed up in the mail today: Murder is My Business by Brett Halliday. It is from 1945 and features private eye Mike Shayne. The cover is by one of the most recognizable of illustrators, Robert McGinnis. You know his work from movie posters like Barbarella and Thunderball. He obviously has a thing for deathly pale, freakishly long-limbed women, as we see one on nine of his ten covers for the line. (I'm a Glenn Orbik man, myself.) As much as I've enjoyed reading and collecting the series, I must admit that the quality has been disappointing. Many of the reprints, even the modern ones, were dull and dated reads. Contemporary novelists like Ken Bruen, Jason Starr, Christa Faust, and Allan Guthrie all produced good stuff, and old-schoolers Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake were always worth a look, but overall the set is a bit of a letdown. I'd like to see more new writers and more 21st-century noir. The reprints are a nice history lesson, but there are too many. The cover art has been a lot of fun--I've half a wall devoted to it in my parlor and it looks damn good. (The lineup can be seen in thumbnail here.) Here's what came today:

Bloom's fantasy--not quite half way

2010-07-19T08:10:00.001-07:00

I'm still tackling Ulysses. Alas, I'm not even halfway through! The most recent episode took place on Sandymount strand, where Leopold Bloom sees a pretty girl--Gerty McDowell--who flirts with him from afar. Most of the scene is told from her perspective in the ornate and overheated style of 19th-century romance novels. She daydreams rhapsodically about love while sitting on the beach with her friends. When they are distracted, she contorts her body in order to reveal her legs and underthings to Bloom. He eyes her from behind a rock and masturbates as she becomes more emboldened. A fireworks show is in progress, and Bloom's climax occurs as they burst overhead. Here's a sample:

And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely! O so soft, sweet, soft!

The rest of the section is told mostly via Bloom's stream-of-consciousness. He ruminates on his actions, thinking that he was a cad and behaved like a brute, but he also rationalizes, telling himself that she enjoyed his attention and that all women appreciate being reminded of their sexual hold over men. He also fantasizes about seeing her again:

O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do. Will I?

It's a strange book, and a difficult one, but as I mentioned before I find it oddly compelling. I have a feeling that I'll be coming back to it--like a murderer to his crime scene--after I finally finish.

Idiots in Sacramento

2010-07-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

Lots of people don't know that asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral. It is often mined from serpentine rocks. Serpentine is the State Rock of California. You have probably seen road cuts containing this lovely grey-green stuff in your travels throughout the state. The rock is intimately associated with the unique flora of California, as many species are endemic due to the presence of serpentine soils. Serpentines are also associated with gold-bearing rocks, and we all know how important gold is to the history and culture of the Golden State. (Gold is the State Mineral.)

It seems State Senator Gloria Romero has a problem with this. She's sponsoring a bill that would strip serpentine of its State Rock status. Apparently serpentine is bad because asbestos comes from it. Never mind that EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRIAL MATERIAL WE USE COMES FROM ROCKS. I guess ground is bad, too, because oil comes out of it. Substances are not good or bad. They are what they are. Oil isn't bad. Neither is aluminum, or copper, or chromium, or clay, or gypsum, or quartz, or talc, or asbestos. How we choose, as a society, to extract, use, and dispose of these things is what makes them a benefit or a danger. Most things, in the real world, are a little of both, aren't they? Didn't we learn this stuff in school? We're grownups now, aren't we? You'd think our "leaders" in Sacramento would have better things to do, like fund our schools, fix our roads, balance our budget--you know, actual work.

You, madam, are an idiot.

Old school noir

2010-07-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

David Goodis is one of the finest writers you never heard of. You may be familiar with the Francois Truffaut film Shoot the Piano Player--that was an adaptation of Goodis' 1956 novel Down There. Goodis also wrote the screenplay for the 1947 Bogart & Bacall vehicle Dark Passage, which was based on Goodis' novel of the same name. In 1965, Goodis sued United Artists and ABC-TV for copyright infringement, claiming that the hit show The Fugitive was plagiarized from that book. The case was ultimately settled in Goodis' favor in 1972, but he had died by then. Wikipedia claims "the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law." (Details here.) Despite the fact that you probably never heard of David Goodis, you have encountered his work or his legacy. What you ought to do is pick up one of his novels. I blogged earlier about the superb The Wounded and the Slain, recently re-issued by Hard Case Crime. I just finished Night Squad (1961), and Cassidy's Girl (1951) awaits me on the shelf. I found them at Moe's Books in Berkeley, and both are 1990s Vintage Crime/Black Lizard editions. Night Squad is the story of Corey Bradford, a disgraced ex-cop who goes to work for a gangster. At the same time, he's recruited for undercover work by a special "black ops" police outfit--the Night Squad--charged with taking down the crime bosses. Bradford has his own reasons for playing both sides against middle, and the book is really the story of him figuring out who and what he's loyal to. It's set in "the Swamp," the squalid ghetto of an unnamed city where street violence, drug abuse, prostitution, and corruption are the norm. Goodis uses the crime novel form to explore larger themes like betrayal and reconciliation, and to look at people in an unadorned, brutally frank way. He's not judgmental, in fact, he's sympathetic to even the most hardened and vicious of his characters. The tone and mood of his work is bleak, but surprisingly, is never hopeless. It's a tough balancing act, something it takes a master to pull off. Even if crime fiction isn't your bag, you can't help but notice the lucidity and vividness of Goodis' prose, and you can't help but be moved by his empathy for the down-and-out, the distressed, and the desperate. I think you ought to put David Goodis on your reading list so he'll be one of the finest writers you have heard of.

Football noir

2010-07-13T10:09:00.002-07:00

The Jook is the story of an ex-NFL superstar named Zelmont Raines who has partied away his fortune and is reduced to playing American football in Europe. When the league creates a new franchise in his hometown of LA, "Zee" gives it one last shot and tries out for the team, hoping to make a comeback. Burdened by debt, legal hassles, and an insatiable appetite for pussy and crack cocaine, Raines is the classic doomed noir protagonist. When he gets involved with a cunning and ruthless femme fatale and her absurd heist scheme, it's only a matter of time before his world comes crashing down. Los Angeles writer Gary Phillips puts us right in the middle of the Southland's mean streets, peopling the novel with local hoods, imported gangsters, and big money wheeler-dealers. You can't have an LA story without dreamers and wannabes, as that city, more than any other, sells glitz, glamor, and the high life to countless hopefuls. No matter how many faded stars and failed big shots litter the streets, there are ten to take their place in the great, grasping swarm of climbers that give the city its most distinctive characteristic. Mr. Phillips lays bare not only the moral hypocrisy and phoniness of professional sports, but makes us think about the corrosive effect these million-dollar TV fantasies have on communities and their youngsters in particular. It's a hot, trashy read, with foul mouths and sordid sex, and it's a smart, gripping tale of survival and redemption as well. The Jook is part of PM Press' Switchblade crime fiction imprint. "Jook" is an alternate spelling of "juke," which means not only to dance and party ("juke joint", "jukebox"), but to cut and maneuver on the football field in order to get past a defender and make a play. WordMan™ thought it was a pretty clever title.

Summer noir

2010-07-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I-5: A Novel of Transport, Crime and Sex is one of the 2009 releases from Oakland's PM Press in their Switchblade hardboiled fiction line. Berkeley writer Summer Brenner tackles the dark and tragic subject of international human trafficking with the story of Anya, a Russian peasant girl who is lured to America with promises of jobs and freedom, but finds herself instead a captive and a prostitute. Ms. Brenner writes Anya's story mostly in the present tense and in a plain, unadorned style that pulls the reader in and creates empathy with the girl's terrible fate. The story is set in California, mostly along the long, gray ribbon of road that bisects the state and joins its major population centers. The highway is always, metaphorically, an artery, a path for the lifeblood of the organism. We've all jockeyed for space on "the Five" with the endless number of tractor-trailer rigs, tankers, and freight trucks that carry our household goods and our industrial materials--the very stuff of our society's existence. How many of us thought that those big diesels might be shipping a human cargo? Brenner puts us right in the middle of that sordid enterprise, with its suave operators and elaborate deception schemes, but also manages to tell a brisk crime tale as well, with oddballs, sympathetic losers, creeps, and thugs. Good noir fiction puts you deep into the underbelly of everyday life, and opens your eyes to the damned and the doomed that are all around us. I-5 manages to be an exposé as well as a novel, and works brilliantly on both levels. Brenner concentrates on the human element, allowing the story to unfold and tell itself, and one can't help but be disturbed by a world that allows for disposable people.

The World Cup

2010-07-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

I'm only a mildly-interested football--er, soccer--fan, but I've watched quite a bit of the action from South Africa this year. That's mostly due to the new DishTV I had installed so I could watch my favorite baseball club, and the fact that the early-morning broadcasts fit my summer schedule nicely. I watched both group stage and knockout stage action, though I did miss the most of the U.S.-Ghana match. My rooting interest was simple: I wanted to see a new champion. I wanted the finals to involve teams that had never hoisted the Jules Rimet Trophy. That's worked out rather nicely, with Spain facing Holland, don't you think? I admit I was rooting for Germany--three-time champion--to beat Spain, but only because I like teams that score lots of goals, and Germany had soundly thrashed England and Argentina, scoring four goals in each match. Four goals is almost unprecedented in a competition where 1-0 is not only the most common score, but is also considered a decisive result. I'll admit, the dearth of goals is the main reason I can't get too excited by international football. They lads are certainly terrific athletes, and the steady flow and rhythm of passing and probing, passing and probing, can be entertaining. But goddammit, kick the fecking ball towards the net, will you? The game--at this level, is just too damn tactical and defensive. I think a team ought to feel that they can score, at the very least, one goal per half. That would make, for the most part, 3-2 and 2-1 results common rather than out of the ordinary. And don't get me started on the silliness of penalty kicks deciding championship games. I mean, should the World Series be decided by a home-run derby? Ye gods, that would be hideous. Being an American, I still have a hard time with "draws" as well. If FIFA restructured the group stages so that zero points were awarded for draws, just like for losses, you'd see a much more aggressive and attacking style of play as teams would have to go for the win. Spain, who certainly were the better club versus Germany, and deserved to win, has won its last three matches 1-0. Booooooooooring!!!! I have a feeling the final with Holland will end 1-0 as well, which would take some of the luster off the championship, at least for me. I also expect it will be Spain 1, Holland 0, as the Spanish team looks even more disciplined about possession and ball control than the Dutch team. We'll see, of course, it could be 90 minutes of cracking good football and end 4-3! But that would be a shocker. Perhaps the best thing about soccer is it requires so little time investment. The whole thing is over pretty quickly, what with the running clock and the short halftime. I can agree with fans that it is a beautiful game, but I cannot accept the notion that it is THE beautiful game. Sorry, that's a crock of snooty bullshit. Nor can I buy the idea that these guys are the "best" athletes in the world. Any sport played at an international level requires great athletes. I wonder how these fellows would do in ice hockey, where you have to skate like Michelle Kwan, crack heads like Ronnie Lott, and dribble, pass, and shoot like Kobe Bryant. With a stick, fer chrissakes! Trying to bully people into believing that one particular sport is the best with pronouncements like that makes me want to gag. Sure, I'll buy that it is the most popular sport in the world, but that is certainly not much of an argument. After all, Titanic is the most popular movie ever--does that make it the best? I don't think so.

That's my take on the World Cup. Congratulations to Spain and Holland for their success, and may the best squad take home the honors. And score some bloody goals, will ya?

Gobshite

2010-07-05T11:24:00.001-07:00

My dad's first cousin lives in Sligo, Ireland. He was a wonderful host when we visited that country, hauling us around, introducing us everywhere, giving us insight and opinion on all things Irish. When he talked about someone he didn't like, he invariably referred to them as a "bleedin' gobshite." Of course I though it was the most marvelous insult ever. The Irish version of the Queen's English is full of peculiarities and lovely bits, and I can't get enough of it. Pronouns are particularly fun. You hear the reflexive a lot: "Is it just yourself today?" Or the use of the personal for the possessive: "I reached for me drink." Another of my favorites is "your man" or "your man there," used to refer to some other person. In formal study, the dialect is called Hiberno-English, from the old Latin name of Ireland, Hibernia. There's enough unusual syntax, curious idioms, and colorful vocabulary there to keep WordMan™ happy for the rest of his days. Alas, like all things old, Hiberno-English is dying out. The younger generations have become more and more Americanised (as the Irish would spell it) and the country more global and multi-cultural. TV, the internet, mobiles (Irish for cell phones), and a flood of euros will do that.

Fortunately, there's Irish novelist Ken Bruen and his fictional creation PI Jack Taylor. Jack is "old school" Galway, a keeper of the Celtic flame, and he rails (mostly futilely) against the creeping modernization of his beloved country. We are always meeting old Galwegians who still use the old expressions and follow the old traditions. Cross is the latest I've read--having come across Priest last year--and Sanctuary awaits me on the shelf. The hard-boiled Taylor is rude, rough, lonely, and cynical, like a good noir protagonist ought to be. Despite the fact that the rather straightforward stories are premised on some shockingly savage violence, they are surprisingly funny, and even tender in spots, as our battered hero muses on his life and his many misdeeds. No matter how bad it gets, Jack Taylor manages to gain some measure of redemption and self-respect, at least enough to carry on. And all the while he's a treasure chest of Irish thought, history, and language. I don't know if Mr. Bruen set out to be a guardian of Irish culture, but through the voice of his angry PI, he is, and he manages to do it without pedantry or whingeing.

Begob, I'm back at it

2010-06-22T14:50:00.001-07:00

Knocked off another episode of Ulysses. This one has poor Bloom subjected to some racist abuse by a fellow known only as "the citizen." Bloom makes a pitch for universal love and speaks of the injustices heaped upon Jews worldwide. The passages describing events are told in over-wrought parodies of various writing styles, everything from traditional sagas to the society pages. Long lists of names, satirizing Irish mythology, Church saints, clergymen, royal families, and the like pepper the pages. How about this one: Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria. It's like Damon Runyon and William S. Burroughs helped Hunter S. Thompson write a chapter in a Donald E. Westlake comic crime caper. My favorite part is about brewing beer, and seems like just an aside (but you can never be sure with Joyce) when the bartender brings a drink ("a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale"):

For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night and day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.

I like that--lords of the vat. Beats lords of the dance, eh?

New computer!

2010-06-06T14:55:00.004-07:00

Upgrading was the theme for this weekend. I bought a new Dell, an XPS 9000 with a 24" monitor which I'm using right now. I took the 5-year old Dell E510 and added 1 GB of RAM and a PCI wireless card. That machine has been moved to the other end of the house where my lovely bride can use it. Everything went swimmingly! The new machine is fast and quiet, and the old machine is still humming along. I realize that Dells are kind of like Fords--safe and predictable and even boring--but I'm pretty excited that everything came together "right out of the box." I'm also happy the old computer is useful, as there is too much digital junk already in this world. When I set up the first system, it asked me for a "name." At the time I had a sheet of Greta Garbo 37-cent stamps on my desk. Yes, I keep stamps on my desk. I'm currently featuring "Cowboys of the Silver Screen" with Tom Mix, Gene Autry, William S. Hart, and Roy Rogers, as well as "Legends of Hollywood" with Katherine Hepburn, all 44-cents. I slapped one of the Garbos on the box and called it "Greta." When it came time to name the new computer, I was stumped. Rummaging around in my odds-and-ends pile, I found two unused Garbos, so I called the new box "GRETA2." Take a look--who could resist that face?

The Holy Trinity

2010-05-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

Today is Trinity Sunday. My holy trinity is Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, and Jonathan Sanchez.

Go Giants!

"Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell

2010-05-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

walked as far as Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion Square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling." (p. 246)

This chap keeps showing up along Joyce's Dublin streets. I'm not quite sure who he is, and what he's all about, but he keeps making appearances and is always referred to by his full name. And I'm not exactly sure what a "stickumbrelladustcoat" is, but I sort of like it. The entire novel is having that effect on me--I'm not sure what it's all about, but I'm having a good time. Imagine riding a tourist bus in an exotic city with a guide speaking in an incomprehensible tongue and you'll get the picture. The scenery and is fresh and interesting even if you can't make heads or tails of it.

Back in the gutter again

2010-05-10T15:08:00.003-07:00

At least I hope.

Matt Louis, publisher and editor of Out of the Gutter magazine, has a new venture called Gutter Books. Mr. Louis hopes to expand beyond his hardcore pulp journal into publishing books, particularly crime fiction. Sounds good to me. I've published two short stories--both in Out of the Gutter--so you can understand my fondness for all things gutter (scroll down to the bottom of the blog). Matt asked me if I would help out Gutter Books by contributing to the blog on the website, and doing stuff like advance reading and perhaps some editing. How could I say no? Not only that, he says he'd like me to turn one of my short stories into a novel and submit it for publication!

Ann Landers is reputed to have said "Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them."

I'll have to start working my ass off pretty soon.

Outstanding local brew

2010-04-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

The Wild River Brewing and Pizza Co. in Medford, Oregon is another place here in the State of Jefferson to get great beer. We had a chance to partake on Saturday, and I had both the Kölsch and the Pilsener. Having never been to Köln or Pilsen I can't vouch for the "authenticity" so prized by micro-brewers, but I can tell you that both were delicious and drinkable. I found the Kölsch particularly lovely, with its clean, malty flavor perfectly balanced by subtle hop crispness. A perfect beer for a sunny spring day.

2010 Dipshit Award

2010-04-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

My 2010 Dipshit Award goes to this jackass:

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

His name is Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi. Here's more of his religious wisdom:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he said.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Past the quarter-mark

2010-04-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Stephen Dedalus spent the early afternoon regaling his friends with a number of wild theories about William Shakespeare. I'm just over the 200-page mark in Ulysses. The entire section is filled with wordplay, rhymes, and jokes. Buck Mulligan provides much of the silly banter, but also spots Leopold Bloom and makes anti-Semitic remarks about him. Mr Bloom is an acquaintance of Stephen's father, Simon, but unknown at this point in the story to Stephen. It seems like Joyce is cramming everything he knows into this one book--foreign languages, history, philosophy, politics--and taking every opportunity to show off his erudtion and arcane humor. I'm still surprised I'm enjoying the trip inside his head, as it is often tough going and impossible to follow. There's just something compelling about the whole thing. Perhaps when I'm done I'll understand why I took the plunge in the first place!

Bend beer

2010-04-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

We visited our pals in Bend, Oregon this weekend and drank some primo brews. The Deschutes Brewpub is right downtown and always jammed, but we managed to slake our thirst with hand-pumped ales (Bachelor Bitter and Mirror Pond) before heading to dinner at the excellent but unpretentious High Tides Seafood Grill. There's nothing quite like the smooth creaminess of beers "from the cask." The Brits call it "real ale" and I can't argue with them. Later in the weekend we got a tour of the actual Deschutes Brewery (located in a huge building in the Old Mill district) which was very impressive. No beer was being made, but we got an up-close-and-personal look at the brew vessels: massive, gleaming, custom-made million-dollar stainless-steel tuns and kettles that had me swooning with brewer envy. The tour was free and low-key (only 6 people), but thorough, and the beer samplers were free, too. Who can argue with that? The Green Lakes organic has a clean, light maltiness, suitable for serious quaffing, while the Hophenge is its opposite, a massive humulone-soaked high-alcohol snifter-only brew. Both were excellent. After that we enjoyed a fine meal and some more outstanding Bend beer at 10 Barrel Brewing Company. The S1NISTOR black ale (on nitro) was dreamy, rich and satisfying, taking full advantage of the "de-husked" dark malts. The Apocalypse IPA was smooth and well-balanced, with just the right hoppiness. When we hesitated over our beer choices the waitress brought us samplers so we could make up our minds! That's how it ought to be--you don't want a full pint of a beer you won't enjoy. In fact, the only one I didn't like was their Dubbel, but I'm not particularly fond of Belgian-style ales anyway, so that's not a knock. All in all, a damn fine Easter weekend. Thanks, H & D, for the superb hospitality and the willingness to keep me thoroughly lubricated with the good stuff.

Maundy Thursday

2010-04-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

They don't call it Maundy Thursday anymore, sticking with the more palatable Holy Thursday. "Maundy" is a fine old word with not much going for it these days. WordMan™ has a fondness for such things. "Maundy" comes to English via Latin, mandatus being the past participle of mandare, meaning to entrust or to order. Mandatus is also a noun, meaning a command (you can see the obvious root of "mandate"). Thus Christians are mandated to be holy, I reckon. To fulfill the command of John 13:34 ("love one another as I have loved you"). To wash the feet of the poor (John 13:1-17). Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for Maundy Thursday offers an alternative etymology for "maundy," saying it comes from mendicare (French mendier) meaning to beg. Apparently the English king distributed alms to the poor on that day, filling the "maundsor" baskets of the less fortunate ahead of the Easter feast. Now that's more like it, a fine old controversy for grey-bearded Oxford dons to thrash out with their grad students.

Bloomsday afternoon

2010-03-24T17:12:00.001-07:00

I've only read through page 181. Leopold Bloom managed to get some work done and eat a bit of lunch. He winds up in the National Museum and remembers the bar of soap he bought. I'm reminded of this Woody Allen joke:

I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

Talking about the plot of Ulysses is pointless. Not a whole lot happens. But a whole hell of a lot is going on, even if you can't follow it. Mostly, it's mental. You spend a lot of time in Mr Bloom's head as his mind wanders. Here's a piece:

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the cobble stones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move. Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his. Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering.

This is an easy passage, with, if not complete sentences, at least complete thoughts. It's quite a jump from dog puke to an inventors' hall, but we all know our minds can do that. You see? There's a lot going on even though nothing is happening. I'm enjoying the ride despite the fact that it is bumpy and meandering--you have to stop frequently and go back, too. Normally, that would drive me nuts. I'm not sure why Ulysses has a hold on me right now. Perhaps St. Patrick's Day put me in a Irish mood. I think, though, it might be the familarity of it. The world of Bloom's mind that Joyce crafted feels like my own. Maybe that's what the fuss is all about. You can't "record" your stream-of-consciousness, but you could create, with art, a reminder, or a facsimile, that seems like your own mind. We all know fiction doesn't have to actually be realistic--the reader just has to believe it is. I believe I'm in Bloom's mind when he's walking down the street, so I keep reading.

Bloomsday, continued

2010-03-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

I'm still in the early morning of Bloomsday, having just attended a funeral with the aforementioned Mr Bloom. I also met Simon Dedalus, father of the aforementioned Stephen Dedalus, who was at the same funeral as Mr Bloom. The action in Ulysses takes place in a single day. Both Stephen and Leopold have had their breakfasts--Stephen's was prepared by his antagonist, Buck Mulligan, while Leopold served his wife Molly her tea and toast in bed before sitting down in the kitchen to his fried kidney. Both then went out into the city for walks. I followed Leopold's peregrinations with my Dublin map! Much of the story so far involves convoluted passages of internal monologues interspersed with random thoughts, stray impressions, and remembrances of things past. Imagine a kaleidoscope that never settles on the same pattern and you'll get the idea. Joyce is attempting to convey--it seems to me--all the stuff that fills the mind of an ordinary person on an ordinary day going about his regular business. It is confusing, infuriating, and fascinating at the same time.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

"Mr Leopold Bloom . . .

2010-03-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

. . . ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls."

I've decided to tackle Ulysses. I cannot say why. Mere days ago, I looked up on my bookshelf, and there was James Joyce, stuck between Erica Jong and Richard Kadrey. I still have the copy of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that I read in high school. I remember the book bewildered me at seventeen, but bedazzled me at twenty-seven. So far, I've met "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan" and been re-acquainted with Stephen Dedalus. Every page is sprinkled with Latin and Greek and allusions to things I think I should know about. Much seems like nonsense, but it is interspersed with much I want to leap up and write down and recite out loud, over and over again. Perhaps the "ineluctable modality of the audible" is at work.

I'll keep you posted. This might take a while.

I'm hella stoked

2010-03-04T07:05:00.001-08:00

A young fellow from our neck of the woods got excited one day in science class at UC Davis. He decided that the slang term "hella" would make a good prefix in the SI system. Everyone is familiar with mega-and giga- from computerspeak, and most of us know a kilo-meter is a bunch of meters (1000, or 10^3). So far, the SI folks don't have a prefix for 10^27 (10 raised to the 27th power). This lad--Austin Sendek is his name--thinks "hella" would do nicely. I'm all for it. After all, we need more humor in science. There are only so many "Uranus" jokes to go around. To give you an idea of how big 10^27 is, the world's electric power usage** is about 2 tera-watts, or 2 x 10^12 watts. That's only 0.000000000000002 hella-watts!

There's a Facebook page about "hella" and the story made it across The Pond to The Daily Telegraph!

**The number is from Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents.

Life begins anew

2010-03-02T18:02:00.002-08:00

The San Francisco Giants play their first Spring Training game on Wednesday. Baseball season begins and I live again. I believe Rogers Hornsby is credited with:

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.

I like to ski, and that helps. Otherwise, Rogers has it spot on.

Go Giants!

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), marks the end of the festive time--Carnival--after the Epiphany and before the fasting and prayer season of Lent. In English-speaking countries, it was often called Shrove Tuesday. "Shrove" is the past tense of "shrive," meaning to confess and obtain absolution. (You can also say "shrived.") Partridge says that "shrive" is from the Old English "scrifan" meaning to prescribe a penance on. So if you haven't done your penance, you better hop to it. It is Ash Wednesday after all--no more partying until Easter!

Criminal

2010-02-03T08:28:00.003-08:00

I just finished COWARD, the first volume of Marvel's CRIMINAL, a noir comic series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It's brilliant stuff, and I can't wait to read the rest. I was introduced to Criminal via a short piece in Dark Horse's Noir collection, which I blogged about recently. The storytelling is so crisp and sure-handed, nothing seems out-of-place, and it deftly works in flashbacks and character development along with action. The protagonist of the story is a professional thief with a powerful instinct for self-preservation. As a result, he's a meticulous planner, obsessing over the smallest details in order to avoid personal risk. Our "coward" is more than willing to walk away from a payday if he thinks the job is too dangerous. Naturally, he gets involved in a scheme that starts to spiral out of control, and his personal loyalties and his fanatical adherence to his own "rules" are put to the test. The inks and colors are first-rate, adding a brooding, danger-laden atmosphere to the story. These guys are one hell of a tag-team and I suggest you go out and buy their stuff. I also recently read their pulpy, villainous super-hero tale INCOGNITO, which is also terrific. Both books re-imagine the rich landscape of American pulp, action-adventure, crime, and noir fiction in a post-modern world. The fact that they are beautiful visual art pieces as well only makes them more appealing!

Halfway there

2010-02-02T06:38:00.003-08:00

The shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere--the winter solstice--is about six-and-a-half weeks behind us. In just about six-and-a-half weeks from now the vernal equinox will mark the start of spring. We sit right in the middle today, the "cross-quarter" point on the calendar that is celebrated in this country as Groundhog Day. Brigid of Kildare had her feast day yesterday, and Imbolc is reckoned tomorrow. In Punxsutawney, the eponymous Phil reportedly saw his shadow, meaning "six more weeks of winter." I'm a skiier, so I don't mind. But I was thinking that Pennsylvania is on the other side of the country, and we could use our own little fellow here in the State of Jefferson. I propose we select a rock chuck in Montague and call him something like "Malachi." We'll have to be quick about it, of course, as the poor creature will likely be blasted to smithereens by an alert 12-year old with a .22 as soon as he pops his head out of his hole. But at least it would offer a better local forecast, don't you think?

Out of the Gutter VI

2010-01-23T15:38:00.003-08:00

Yes, there have been SIX issues of Out of the Gutter! The latest, Sexploitation, contains the usual degenerate fare. I particularly liked Chris Pimental's "The Vigg Train" and "Life Model" by Angela Caperton. What stood out in this edition was the non-fiction, especially the interview with porn writer C.M. Gordon (his shamus is called "Max Load") and the story of the early days of Hustler magazine ("Thinking Pink with Larry Flynt") by one-who-was-there Mike Sheeter. The disturbing "What I Learned in John School: a true story by an unnamed author" was more chilling than most of the collection. Clair Dickson chipped in another Bo Fexler tale--some day she'll have to anthologize them all. I remember thinking I ought to create a recurring character (thus Matt Cadd, Private Eye was born) when I first encountered Ms. Dickson's P.I.. If you are tired of the usual homogenized, corporate crap that passes for entertainment these days, try some independent, small-press, one-of-a-kind stuff like OUT OF THE GUTTER. Founder and publisher Matt Louis has been fighting the good fight and deserves your support. And I should mention that M.C. O'Connor has two stories published in OOTG--one in issue 2 and one in issue 4. So hit the website and support your local author!

The Corpse Wore Pasties

2010-01-17T09:54:00.002-08:00

The latest Hard Case Crime release is a fun and funny Westlakean romp through the bars, back alleys, and burlesque shows of--where else--NYC. A fellow by the name of Jonny Porkpie ("The Burlesque Mayor of New York City") gets the by-line and is also the main character. Jonny is a reluctant detective. He's the host of a burlesque show that features a faux-poisoning act. Only this time there's no faux--the perfomer ends up actually poisoned to death. Naturally our hero gets on the wrong side of the law and becomes Suspect No. 1. Much to the chagrin of his friends and loved ones, Jonny decides to solve the case on his own. He's a bumbler, naturally, but a determined and resourceful bumbler, and his attempts to piece the whole mess together and clear his name make for a lively and entertaining read. The women make up the best part of the book. A whole host of beautiful, smart, cagey, and scantily-clad femmes populate the pages of The Corpse Wore Pasties, and you can't help but like all of them, even the evil ones. There's Nasty Canasta (Jonny's wife in the story), Angelina Blood, Victoria Vice, Jillian Knockers, Eva Desire, Cherries Jubilee, Brioche à Tête. and LuLu LaRue. What's not to like? The book has a breezy style but is carefully plotted and well-paced with enough misdirection to keep you guessing until the end. My favorite scene involves Jonny hiding in a foam rubber zeppelin (a Hindenburg stage prop) while Cherries lies to the cops about his whereabouts and drops one-liners about "hot air" and "flight risk" and distracts the poor flatfoots with peeks at her uh, assets. Oh, the humanity! Like I said, Westlakean. Not many writers would get me to favorably compare their work to the grandmaster, so a tip of the porkpie to Jonny for a fine effort. Let's hope there's more from him in the future.

Oh, and how about that fabulous Ricky Mujica cover?

Steroids, moral outrage, and media blather

2010-01-12T08:44:00.005-08:00

I guess I'm supposed to care that Mark McGwire used steroids. Rather, that he admitted that he used steroids. I don't. I don't care that he used them and I don't care that he admitted to using them. This is baseball, folks. Major League Baseball to be precise. It is a multi-billion dollar international entertainment industry. It is not a place for moral lessons. Mark McGwire wants a new job with MLB so he has to toe the party line and apologize regretfully for his past actions. That's it. There's no story and no substance. If he stayed retired he could (and should) keep his business to himself. How about this? You keep your business to yourself and I'll keep mine to myself. And if you are looking for a "solution" to the "steroid problem" then I have one: allow their use. These are drugs, folks. When properly prescribed, administered, and monitored, the danger and health consequences of these drugs become manageable. Just like other drugs in our multi-billion dollar international pharmaceutical world. Professional athletes use all sorts of medical technology to improve their performances and achieve at a higher level. More power to them. As long as they are ADULTS and aware of the risks they should be able to do whatever they want. Just like any other citizen.

That's enough of that.

Spring training is just weeks away! Nothing makes a baseball fan happier--other than the actual start of the season!

Welcome to Twenty-ten!

2010-01-02T10:44:00.003-08:00

We've managed to get past the awkward aughts. Did you go around, like me, saying "aught-five" and "aught-seven" and such? Probably not--I'm a lot geekier than you. You likely said "oh-five" and "oh-seven." That's reasonable, most folks say the Big One that hit San Francisco was in "ninteen-oh-six." Which ought to be a lesson to us. We say "seventeen" for the 1700s, "eighteen" for the 1800s, and "nineteen" for the 1900s. So what are we going to say for the 2000s? "Two-thousand?" I don't think so. Are you really going to say this year is "two thousand-ten?" Perhaps an abomination like "two-oh-ten" is more your liking.

No matter. This is year Twenty-ten.

Next year we'll say "twenty-eleven," and after that "twenty-twelve," "twenty-thirteen," and so on. There, you see? WordMan™ was there when you needed him.

Felicem annum novum.

It's all Greek to me

2009-12-31T17:04:00.002-08:00

The moon is at perigee on the 1st of January, and at perihelion on the 2nd. "Peri" is Greek and means "around." The "gee" is from Gaia, the earth goddess of the Greeks, and the "helion" is from Helios, their sun god. So, the moon is at its closest point to the earth in this lunar month, and the earth is at its closest point to the sun in this solar year.

It's supposed to be a very bright full moon tonight, but alas, the storm clouds here in the State of Jefferson on New Year's Eve obscure the moon's rise. This is the second full moon of December--a blue moon.

Happy New Year!

Festival time

2009-12-24T21:02:00.002-08:00

On sunset of the 11th of December, Channukah began. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was on December 12th. The Winter Solstice was on the 21st. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. Boxing Day and St. Stephen's Day are on the 26th. The New Year rolls in right after that. No matter how you slice it, this is the holiday season.

Merry Everything!

Graphic noir

2009-12-13T12:02:00.009-08:00

This collection from Dark Horse is only 5/8 of an inch thick--120 pages in 6 x 9 format. I was trying to think of something bad to say about Noir, and that was all I could come up with. Simply put, there's not enough of it! I had to read it twice to really savor all the stories and great art. David Lapham's "Open the Goddamn Box" starts things off brilliantly with a savage twist on junvenile delinquents, Chris Offut crisply re-works an old story with "The Last Hit" (illustrated by Kano and Stefano Gaudiano), and Gary Phillips smoothly fuses noir and SF with "The New Me" (illustrated by Eduardo Barreto). Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips contribute a sinister Criminal emission called "21st Century Noir," and Brian Azzarello teams up with Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá for the last piece, a sucker-punch called "The Bad Night." That's only 5 of the 13 offerings. It's great stuff, and it was one of my many fabulous 50th birthday presents (thanks, J&R!). I'm going to try to turn 50 again next year since it worked out so well this year.

RIP Liam Clancy

2009-12-10T06:59:00.002-08:00

In my father's world, there was only one music. All else was noise. That music was the Clancy Bros. and Tommy Makem. As a boy, I heard those records to the point of nausea. In fact, I couldn't listen to Irish folk music for decades. Fortunately, I got over that. One of the best things we did on our two recent trips to Ireland was haunt the pubs where they had "trad" sessions. I was amazed by how many of the songs I knew! Liam Clancy, the last of the surviving band members, passed away last week. Mr. Clancy appeared in Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, a film about Bob Dylan. He's seated on a barstool, a pint of Guinness in front of him, and reminisces about meeting "that little pain-in-ass" back in the heyday of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Then he sings, a cappella, Dylan's "Girl From the North Country." It's my favorite moment in that engrossing film, even better than Joan Baez' impression of the infamously-nasal Mr. Dylan. Thanks, dad, for turning me on to the music. I'm sorry it took me so long to really appreciate it.
Recqueiscat in pacem.

" . . . not an unmixed blessing . . . "

2009-12-04T16:58:00.005-08:00

Fifty years ago, four scientists working for the University of California published an article in the October issue of Hilgardia, a journal published by the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. It was called "The Integrated Control Concept" and was credited to Vernon M. Stern, Ray F. Smith, Robert van den Bosch, and Kenneth S. Hagen. The paper is considered a landmark work in IPM--Intergrated Pest Management. The same University Division also produces a magazine called California Agriculture. The October-December issue has a short piece by Jeanette Warnert called "The 50th anniversary of a great idea." I quote:

The 20-page paper clearly and concisely described the consequences of pesiticde overuse and detailed their vision of a sustainable pest control system.

Ms. Warnert also points out that this work predates Rachel Carson's Silent Spring by almost three years. Ms. Carson was a careful and prescient thinker, it is likely she was aware of "leading edge" scientific ideas, whether she'd read the piece or not. Clearly there was an increasing awareness in the post-war world of the consequences of rampant technology. None of the men involved, like Carson herself, ever called for the elimination of pesticides. In fact, they all recognized the need for them as part of an integrated approach. That's the whole idea--integrated pest managment. Only a fanatic can comfortably spout extremes. The rest of us have to deal with juggling real-world conflicts. I try to support so-called "organic" agriculture because the practitioners tend to talk about sustainability, not because I believe that chemicals and other technologies are bad. Far from it--the world's billions won't be fed without them. Fifty years ago, some smart folks told us we need to re-think the way we farm. The benefits of large-scale crop-raising and industrial food production are too great to ignore, but so, of course, are the perils. Messrs. Stern, Smith, van den Bosch, and Hagen did their best to help us all sort it out.

(My title is a quote from the piece. I lifted it from Warnert's article.)

Whiskey Trinity

2009-11-29T20:43:00.002-08:00

Irish whiskey is its own thing--neither Scotch nor Bourbon nor Canadian. The third and final whiskey of my three whiskey presents was Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey. A product of County Offaly in the Irish Midlands, Tullamore Dew is a smooth and mellow whiskey with a rich malt flavor and a dry, lingering finish. The holiday package came with some hefty tumblers bearing the brand name. You can never have enough thick-bottomed whiskey glasses! This whiskey makes a superb nightcap, but I also think it would do very well in an Irish coffee. That drink is a particular favorite of mine, and a specialty of the house. One of these days I'll have to have a taste test with a stable of Hibernian spirits. Because I like Irish coffees so much, I forget that the Malts of Erin are outstanding sippin' whiskies, with their bright, clean flavors and easy drinkability. Tullamore Dew, with its subtle spiciness and muted woody notes, completes the two-bourbons-and-an-Irish whiskey trinity!

Whiskey by the numbers

2009-11-22T15:04:00.002-08:00

I received three whiskies from friends for my 50th birthday. Am I easy to buy presents for? Two were bourbons, both the latest versions of cherished favorites. In 2002 I bought a bottle of Evan Williams Single Barrel. It was from barrel no. 144, laid down on 8-27-92, bottled 4-1-02. Now that was a few years back, but I remember it being a tasty treat. Ten years is a long time for a bourbon! The 50th birthday bottle is from barrel no. 313 (dig the thirteen!), put in the wood on 8-24-99 and bottled 4-8-09. It is crisp and spicy, with a clean, bright finish, and dangerously drinkable. Another premium whiskey that never fails to please is the rich and sumptuous Woodford Reserve. I have an empty from some time ago (I can't remember precisely!) from batch no. 22. It is bottle no. 11013 (11-13 is my birthday). Interestingly, it is a one-liter size. You have to love the no. 22, an iconic pair of deuces for Giants fans as both the Clarks--the unrelated Will and Jack--wore 22. The new one is in the standard 750 mL format, but in the same distinctive shape that makes Woodford easy to spot. It is from batch no. 407 and bottle no. 05611. Tune in next week for whiskey number three. I love my friends.

Water on the moon

2009-11-18T06:28:00.002-08:00

The big ball of rock we learned about as kids turns out to be full of surprises. Like water, for example. Who knew the moon had water in its rocks? Actually, a little thought about what rocks are and what they are made of should make this recent discovery a lot less surprising. Rocks, and the minerals that make them up, contain a lot of oxygen. That oxygen is typically bound up in oxides, silicates, hydroxides, and whatnot, but it is present in great abundance. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and free protons in the solar wind could provide a ready source of hydrogen ions capable of reacting with the oxygen in lunar minerals. In fact, the presence of water, or at least hydroxyl groups, in the lunar regolith has been speculated on since the early 1960s. Water molecules could not exist on or near the moon's surface, but they could certainly exist in the bedrock or deep within shadowed craters. (The LCROSS mission probed such a crater.) These recent findings, exciting as they are, don't do much more than confirm some long-held hypotheses about our near neighbor. The mechanisms of lunar water creation, transport, and storage are barely beyond the speculative stage, and the presence of something like large-scale polar ice is still awaiting discovery. Nonetheless, water on the moon is pretty damn cool, don't you think?

Friday the 13th

2009-11-13T15:29:00.003-08:00

I was born on Friday, November 13th, 1959. Today is Friday, November 13th, 2009. It is my 50th birthday! I'm a lucky man, I think. If you measure wealth by the love of family and friends, then I'm rich. I'll have another Friday the 13th birthday in 2015, when I turn 56. I hope I can make the same report then.

Ill Wind

2009-11-12T06:40:00.002-08:00

William Ledbetter Heath sets his 1957 novel Ill Wind in the fictional town of Morgan, Alabama. Idyllic and relatively prosperous, things begin unraveling right from the start when a leading citizen is rushed to the hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In a coma and unable to explain himself, the town's residents take up the mystery. Was it an accident? A suicide attempt? In the process, the power structure of the whole county is laid bare, with its intricate relationships among the friends and rivals of the unfortunate man, and their long-simmering conflicts burst into the open. There is no crime in this crime novel, but the repressed desires, sublimated ambitions, and buried secrets add up to make tightly-wound noir tale. In fact, Mr. Heath has crafted a brilliant work, gripping and suspenseful, with deft characterizations, masterful dialog, and an eye for subtle details. I have the 1985 Black Lizard reprint with the Kirwan cover. (I blogged about Southern Noir and W.L. Heath's Violent Saturday earlier this year.)

Irish noir

2009-11-03T16:51:00.005-08:00

Irish writer Ken Bruen's Priest features recurring character Jack Taylor and is set in the Irish coastal city of Galway. Taylor is a disgraced former cop ("Guard" in Ireland), just out of the madhouse, trying to get a fresh start in the town of his youth. Haunted by a death he was responsible for when he was drunk, he goes into pubs and orders drinks but doesn't touch them. His only contact with reality is his hard-assed ex-partner, a lesbian, who he has erotic dreams about. Jack's confusion and alienation is furthered by the appearance of his childhood tormentor, Father Malachy, who seeks his help on a murder case. The local Guard commander tries to muscle Jack out of the picture, but help from an unlikely source resurrects our protagonist's resolve and he goes after the killer. Demons from his past overwhelm events, and the coda comes with shocking finality. The novel is set in the midst of the New Ireland, flush with money and development, where the old village ways are losing out to EU immigration and American corporations. We experienced much of the city on our 2001 Ireland trip, and it was quite a bit of fun to walk the same streets again with Jack Taylor. The book has lots of quirky Hiberno-English and the dialogue is rich in Irish idiom, so be prepared for the full-immersion course. It's dark stuff, too, not for the faint of heart, just way I like it.

RIP Norton Buffalo

2009-11-01T14:16:00.002-08:00

Bay Area rocker Norton Buffalo died from lung cancer on Friday. He was 58. Norton and his band the Knockouts actually performed a free concert--just a few years ago--in Miner Street Park here in Yreka. I have an autographed CD from the event. He was a master of the harmonica, at home in blues, country, rockabilly, boogie-woogie, R&B, you-name-it. He had a long and varied career, despite it being cut short by illness. He was a fixture in the San Francisco and Northern California music scene for over 30 years, mostly with the Steve Miller Band, but also working with the likes of the Doobie Bros., Elvin Bishop, Merl Saunders, Mickey Hart, Roy Rogers, Commander Cody, and the New Riders. He was much too young.
Recquiescat in pacem.

Sloth

2009-10-27T06:32:00.002-07:00

Sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The effort required to be virtuous, to serve God, is avoided by the slothful, thus we have the sin. I think sloth has gotten a bad rap from this sort of illogic. Why can't we cultivate virtue slowly and carefully, like we cultivate imagination or creativity? "Sloth" comes from "slow" and is as Anglo-Saxon as Geoffrey Chaucer. These days, we all want to slow down. The harried, frantic pace of life in the 21st century has us all wondering if we've missed something, forgotten something, failed to experience something, or don't know something. This social pressure to always have something or to do something works on us ad nauseum. I say the hell with that. Brenda Ueland, in her fine and inspirational book If You Want to Write, says "Our idea that we must always be energetic and active is all wrong." She goes on to say "the imagination needs moodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering." The soul, she believes, is killed by busyness, by attention only to chores and duties. To live, to love, to feel, and to grow requires a kind of anti-effort. We cannot strive to be better--we have to nurture that part of us, tease it out, guide it along. As my dear and lovely bride said to me last night, "you can't be lazy enough!"

0630

2009-10-16T06:38:00.003-07:00

Looking east this morning the skies were clear and the old moon was just visible above the hills. Only a fingernail sliver of of the disk was illuminated, but earthshine gave the whole face a bluish cast. Venus shone brightly a few degrees to the left (north) and Saturn glowed faintly above that. Sky Calendar says that Mercury was above the horizon in the same grouping, but my hometown is nestled in its own little bowl, surrounded on three sides by mounds, highlands, and ridges, with only an opening to the south for the interstate to snake its way in. It was a beautiful sight, especially on the last day of the work week. The autumn weather has turned gorgeous, and I'm looking forward to getting my walks in today. I wonder what other treats nature has in store for me.

Throwin' rocks

2009-10-10T17:29:00.006-07:00

I remember chucking rocks at all sorts of things when I was a kid. Dirt clods, too. And baseballs, of course, and tennis balls and super balls and basketballs and whatnot. You could bounce stuff off walls and fences and dirt infields and blacktop playgrounds. You could splatter stuff at the forts the neighboring squads had set up for the endless games of "war." Or skip stones in the bay, or toss driftwood into the muck at low tide. It just seemed like that's how a kid found out about the world. Well, maybe this kid. Some things you hit were OK to hit, and some you were glad you missed. But in the end, the brain had a catalog of collisions, a trial-and-error knowledge base, an empircally-derived picture of the man-nature interface. In short, science. I was thinking about science and throwin' rocks when I read about NASA's LCROSS mission. It was a high-tech, 21st-century version of throwin' rocks! A spacecraft booster and its payload crashed into Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole early Friday morning. The dust plume analysis will--NASA hopes--reveal the presence of lunar water. Imagine a quarter-million mile rock toss just to figure out what's there! I think it's fantastic.

(p.s. The Soviet Union's Luna 2 was the first man-made object to crash on the moon. That happened fifty years ago, on 13 September 1959, two months before I was born.)

Treasure Hunt

2009-10-03T16:49:00.002-07:00

This morning was the library book sale. Friends of the Library and volunteers fill the middle school gymnasium with long tables of books. There are bags and boxes of books under the tables and stacked along the walls. Where there are books, there are book people. And the books are cheap: fifty cents for a paperback, one dollar for a hardcover. Book people are treasure hunters. You never know what golden nuggets will turn up when you shove aside the James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and Tom Clancy duplicates. 'X' marked the spot for me today--I found one of those hopelessly nerdy items only a book nut like me can appreciate. In 1934, the Governor of California was The Honorable Frank F. Merriam, and one of his subordinates was George D. Nordenholt, the Director of the State Department of Natural Resources. Among Mr. Nordenholt's minions were the geologists of the State Division of Mines. One of them--Clarence A Logan--authored Bulletin No. 108 (1934), Mother Lode Gold Belt of California. I found this out-of-print gem jammed between a couple of oversize self-help manuals. The hardbound book--actually a report--is an overview of the mines and geology of California's famous Mother Lode. Richly illustrated, there are maps, inserts, and photographs detailing the economics, metallurgy, and history of the nation's most renowned gold-producing region. I spent much of the afternoon patching and taping the many tears in the pages and plates, but the bulk of the material is in good shape. I found a spot for it on my bookshelf right below Bulletin No. 193, Gold Districts of California (this 1963 report was revised and republished as a clothbound Sesquicentennial Edition in 1998), and right next to Bulletin No. 190, Geology of Northern California (1966). Like I said, stuff only a science geek could truly appreciate.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

2009-09-22T06:28:00.002-07:00

Pete Seeger was on to something when he tacked his famous line to the poem from Ecclesiastes. "To everything there is a season" is how chapter three of the King James Version starts, and it goes on to talk about birth and death, love and hate, and peace and war. If King Solomon was the author of those lines, then he managed to pen a number one pop hit (via the Byrds)! Not bad, eh? Today the autumnal equinox marks the start of fall in the northern hemisphere. Even the redoubtable Eric Partridge (WordMan™'s hero) admits that the Latin autumnus--the adjectival form being autumnalis--is "of obscure origin." He suggests it might have come from uertere (later vertere), the verb meaning, naturally, "to turn." Here in the State of Jefferson the 40 ºF mornings are evidence enough that we are turning from the warmth of summer to the cool of autumn.

Shastafarian Porter

2009-09-13T17:54:00.002-07:00

One of our local treasures here in the State of Jefferson is the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in Weed. They make a range of tasty brews, but I particularly like two--Mountain High IPA and Shastafarian Porter. The black ale with the groovy name assaults your nose with chocolate malt right off the top, and the first taste is a massive dose of roast barley. But the the porter has a smooth, easy drinkability, too, and the hops, hanging in the background, finally assert themselves on the back of the tongue as it goes down, balancing it all very nicely. Shastafarian is both full-flavored and thirst-quenching, refreshing as well as satisfying. I can say the same about the IPA as well, another delicious ale for quaffing. But tonight the porter was the beverage of choice. The brewery has a lot of fun with its Weed locale--advertising the beers with "Try Legal Weed" and "Weed. A flavor yet to be discovered." They've even re-worked an old saw as "A friend in Weed is a friend indeed." It wouldn't mean much if they didn't make outstanding beer. Grab some Shastafarian and see for yourself.

The Truth of the Matter

2009-09-07T11:07:00.002-07:00

The first place I found John Lutz was in The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction--his byline was under the story "Tough." I like to collect the old Black Lizard paperbacks (with the Kirwan covers), and sure enough one of them was John Lutz' The Truth of the Matter. (I love the Fantastic Fiction website and use it all the time.) "Tough" is a hard-boiled tale about a grizzled old desert rat who matches his wits and guts against a trio of escaping robbers who commandeer his home as a hideout. The story is as tough and hard-boiled as anything in the genre, with a shocking conclusion that leaves you reeling. You get the sense that Mr. Lutz is a masterful writer. The Truth of the Matter, from 1971, is as far as I can tell his first novel. It is a simple story of a couple of down-and-outers. Ellie is a small-time hooker who takes a chance on a rugged, good-looking, smooth-talking john with a mysterious past. The john is Lou Roebuck, and he turns out to be a pathological liar with a persecution complex. Lou's hasty and inexplicable killing of an old accomplice sends him running, and when he runs into Ellie they run off together. A suspicious sheriff noses around their lakeside hideout, and that starts another round of running. Eventually the running and the paranoia get the best of our whacked-out protagonist, and things come to a head in an ending both explosive and anti-climactic. Late in the tale, we finally get to the "truth of the matter" in Lou's backstory, and it gives his character some depth and wins him some sympathy. Before that point, his obvious fabrications are so ridiculous you burst out laughing, and his increasing hostility toward his likeable companion wears mighty thin. Ellie is the deeper character, with an appealing self-possession, an undramatic fatalism, and a thorough lack of pretension. It was an enjoyable ride through a crime fiction landscape, featuring iconic figures like the Fugitive, the Prostitute, and the Lawman, with a dose of the Friendly Outsiders who help our heroes along the way. And that's the truth of the matter.

National Bourbon Heritage Month II

2009-09-05T18:02:00.002-07:00

How are you celebrating National Bourbon Heritage Month? I'm dipping in to bottle no. 01937 from batch no. 383 of Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Very smooth, very sumptuous drink, highly recommended.

National Bourbon Heritage Month

2009-09-03T06:58:00.004-07:00

Yes, that's right, boys and girls, September is National Bourbon Heritage Month. Apparently we can thank Senator Jim Bunning for that Act of Congress. Other than being a fine major league pitcher, the guy comes across as a doofus, but at least he knows a good drink. I think we should all celebrate America this month by drinking more bourbon. Cheers!

Playstation 3

2009-08-30T11:32:00.005-07:00

The Blu-ray player I mentioned in the last post is actually a PS3--Sony's latest game console. I skipped the video game revolution. I was around, and watched it happen, but for a few forays into some PC sports games I ignored the expanding popularity of this youth-oriented medium for the last thirty years. I'm not sure why I had no interest--admittedly I'm on the leading edge of the age group of game consumers--but I know that I often reject new technolgies at first glance before surrendering to them down the road. In the case of video games, I suppose I will never achieve any sort of skill or mastery in a world of rapid sensory input requiring even more rapid dexterity, but I felt the need to at least explore and find out what all the fuss was about. I started with Bioshock--a shooter/adventure game a young friend recommended--which fortunately has a "newbie-level" difficulty setting. I found the controller to be remarkably sensitive and fast-acting, and more often than not I would find myself hopelessly lost and turned around in the game's world. Thank goodness for the maps and hints feature, I would have given up without them. The graphics, design, and layout of Bioshock are superb, as rich and satisfying as a movie, and the story you become involved in has the sophistication of a novel. Some day, not soon, I'll "get to the end," but in the meantime it has been fun to spend a few spare moments playing around in an imaginary space, like reading a comic book that lets you re-arrange the panels. Another game, in fact the one that started me on this path, is also by the same company, 2K Games. It's a baseball game, of course, MLB 2K9, and it features Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants on the cover. When you're a fan like me, you don't need much of an excuse to indulge in something Giants-related. I got that one installed and running, and immediately was overwhelmed by the myriad of choices presented to me. I've got left and right buttons in the front of the controller, two each, and then four buttons on top for each side, as well as two sticks which also toggle another set of commands. I have to keep stopping and looking at the directions so I can remember how to throw, pitch, hit, catch, run and all the rest of the stuff you have to do in a ballgame. I feel like a kid in T-ball who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a high school hardball contest. I tried a game with the Giants and Matt Cain against the Milwaukee Brewers. After Prince Fielder's 3-run homer in the first inning I set it to "practice mode." I then managed three innings of a 1-1 duel with the same lineups, including a bases-loaded single by Matt Cain! I was so tired keeping track of every little thing by then that I quit and took a long break. Eventually I'll learn to play an entire game, and maybe even play against someone. That could be some time though. I just don't think I've got the thumbs for it.

Blu-ray debut

2009-08-23T18:28:00.004-07:00

I bought a Blu-ray player (a PS3!) and my first Blu-ray movie was Richard Linklater's A SCANNER DARKLY. Based on the 1977 novel of the same name by SF master Philip K. Dick, the film is notable for its use of rotoscoping, and particularly Flat Black Films' proprietary Rotoshop software. It would be a shame if that was the only memorable thing about this brilliant and engrossing movie. Set in a near-future world of total surveillance, undercover cop Keanu Reeves discovers that he has become the subject of his own investigation. The paranoia runs deep, and the layers of betrayal and double cross overlap and force him, ultimately, to question his own identity. The drug culture is dominated by a new scourge--Substance D--which gradually makes its users unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. The War on Drugs has enlisted a corporate partner--New Path--to provide incarceration and rehabilitation of the legion of D-junkies on LA's streets. The movie manages to be hilarious at times, like when the zonked-out druggies argue about whether a stolen mountain bike has 8, 9, or 18 gears, or when Robert Downey Jr. claims to have invented a pistol silencer, only to make the blast louder. Mostly, though, it's dark, like the title suggests. It has lots of noir elements, like the low-life characters and their aimless schemes, but it lacks noir's melodrama and brisk pacing. The colors and animation (like a filmed comic book) are gorgeous and perfectly suited to the futuristic setting. It is a highly unusual film, and not for everyone, but I found that it captured the sense of loss and devastation of the Dick novel, yet had a smart, contemporary take on the futility of drug politics and law enforcement. There's an ominous foreboding throughout the story, as if the truth about the state of things will be too great for any one person to bear. In the end, that spirit-crushing revelation comes as no surprise to our washed-up hero, yet he manages to find a shred of hope and still looks to the future for redemption. I think you should watch A SCANNER DARKLY.

Losers Live Longer

2009-08-22T10:36:00.004-07:00

The new Hard Case is here!

The cover art is by Robert McGinnis.

Hoka-Hoka-HEY!

2009-08-16T18:24:00.003-07:00

I was not prepared to like, let alone read Larry Marder's Beanworld. I like color in my comics, and I like "realistic" drawings (even if they are of supernatural or metaphyiscal events). Beanworld puts you off with its 2-D simplicity and spartan layout. But don't be fooled! There is a lot going on in Beanworld, and you are better off for diving in and joining the adventures of Mr. Spook, Proffy, and the Chow Sol'jers as they bask in the divine grace of their protector, Gran'Ma'Pa, and fight the Hoi-Polloi Ring Herds for Chow. Part fable, part allegory, part yuk-yuk, it is indeed "a most peculiar comic book experience." It was hard to get started--but my buddy Marcus usually feeds me things that he knows I'll like, so I plowed ahead and tackled Book One, Two, and Three of Beanworld from the now defunct Eclipse Comics. These collections include quite a bit of commentary and history from Mr. Marder himself, and I held off reading them until done with each story set. The tales speak for themselves, and are open to quite a bit of interpretation. They can be viewed on many levels, and Marder himself says his goal was a comic for "thinking about" (and not just "looking at"). I found them to be funny and fun on the most basic level--just reading them.