TheLoveColumn

Comparing Townie to Los Angeles Diaries

2012-02-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Diaries by James Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the middle of reading Andre Dubus the III's Townie, I got this book in the mail. Partly because I misplaced Townie and partly because from the first paragraph through I couldn't stop reading James Brown's autobiographical Diaries, I still have to go back and finish Dubus' memoir/autobiography. But, when I do finish Townie, I want to go back through both these books and see why it is that I like Brown's Los Angeles Diaries and consequently Brown, as both a person and a writer, so much more than Dubus and his book Townie.
The similarities between the two books are startling, you'd think I was reading books from a syllabus for memoirs of American male writers at the turn of the 21st century. Both writers have tough stories, come from broken homes, white, lower middle class to poor, latch key upbringings with '70's/'80's adolescence dirty with drugs, alcohol and petty crimes. Both families have been strewn with tragedy. Both writers confess to a great deal of repellant behavior, Dubus with his lust for fighting eventually stomping and getting away with a brutal, public beating of a group of minors in a restaurant, Brown bailing on his family for long stretches of time on meth and alcoholic benders set off by seemingly trivial set-backs and frustrations.
To me, Brown is a much better writer, earned and artful prose compared with Dubus' voice which in my memory yields strain and something like a juvenile vanity, with expository explanations for his misbehaviors and psuedo-tough-guyness? Above all, I have to admit that Dubus' story of submitting his first short story to five different magazines and getting it accepted at Playboy for $2,500, at 24 years old, pains me with envy and discolors him as being spoiled by blessings. But, it's gotta happen to somebody.
Brown's book is laid out in twelve chapters that are more like short stories with Brown and his family as the common thread. The stories bounce back and forth through time periods and are obviously arced and polished off individual pieces that have appeared in other publications in years leading up to this compilation.
This makes for compact revelatory reading whenever a fella like me with only brief pockets of time to steal for such luxuries, gets to it. This works strong.
The risk of rounding off chapters of one's life like this is the slop of getting didactic or preachy, the reward is beauty and revelation. The tightest Brown walks this line is at the end of the chapter called "On Selling A Novel to Hollywood";

My phone stops ringing. My book mysteriously disappears from the bookstores and soon another rejections slip from the New Yorker arrives in the mail. It sounds like the same old story but something has changed this time. Something about it feels brand-new. Maybe it has to do with that third strike. Maybe it's about the other close calls, too, the hopes they inspired and my coming to realize how few ever get the shots I've had. I'm sure of one thing, though. It's not about Hollywood anymore, or getting drunk and wasted, and in some ways it never has been. This is a bigger story now. One about change. Adaptation and acceptance. The drafts are endless but it's the writer, not the story, who undergoes the most important revisions.

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Woodrell's Outlaw Album Just Makes You Want More!

2011-12-18T09:05:00.001-08:00

The Outlaw Album: Stories by Daniel Woodrell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Woodrell is the best writer going. I was so stoked to see this book on the shelf that I bought it at a used bookstore, when it was brand new and I paid full price without hesitation. Not since Thom Jones came and went has there been a more thunderous and subversive voice in the landscape of my readings. Woodrell's use of language reminds me of my grandpa's Mississippi renderings, if my grandpa were willing to come forth with all the darkness southern upbringings dragged through foriegn wars and brought back home have made.
A collection of short stories of 167 pages I made short work of in a few scattered hours with a juice that don't normally flow for readin', I had read "Twin Forks" and "Night Stand" before as I am a committed disciple of the Esquire Magazine. But "Uncle" and "Black Step" will strike a nerve in you like a tuning fork on fillings. Then the language, the brutal beauty of the Ozark/Missouri descriptions, dialogue and punch lines of "Two Things" and "The Horse in Our History" kick in with a swell I can only account for as delicious.
"Them days, boy, furniture'd really start a-fallin' of a Saturday night over on [the] Hill, there. Somebody'd a-get to fussin' with somebody else 'til furniture started flyin' and a-fallin', and that fussin'd go on and on 'til the makin' up started, which was usually louder." pg. 98.
"He wasn't much higher'n a belt buckle, but he was stronger'n Limburger cheese." pg. 103
But the bird Mister McCoy. The bird is soaring over death which is an old car wreck. The poet is wanting to be that white bird winging it free above death. What it really signifies is that Cecil wants to be let off from having to die. That is the point of it she says.
Now to me this point is obvious but I feel sad for a second about Cecil. Two things he never going to be is a white bird. pg. 88
I can only hope that this collection of short stories has been fed to us in order to stave us off a little while longer before Woodrell's next novel comes out. In the meantime, I hope they keep making attempts as turning his other novels into movies with as admirable effort as last year's Winter's Bone turned out to be.

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The Valley Joe Six (2000)

2011-12-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

The night before last, we’re driving back from a post-Thanksgiving get-together at my Dad’s - from one part of Northern California to another - `we’ being my woman, my three young sons and myself -and I’m too tired to make it home and the traffic is like molasses, so, we nab a room at a Motel 6 in beautiful, side-of-the-freeway, Vallejo.I recognized that we were in an action packed neighborhood at the front desk when a young brother came in, (from the street? from one of the rooms? from the office?) and needed a paper clip to fix the clasp of his gold chain. The front desk woman who knew this boy asked him how his clasp came to be broken and he told her that his mother had pulled it off his neck. The chain was thick and long, not Run DMC rope, but just shy. The woman behind the counter asked him, “Now wait a minute, why did your moms have to pull this chain off your neck?”There were six or eight people waiting in the small front desk room now, as I’d mentioned traffic was tough out there and it was a Saturday night. The boy was sheepish, answering, “because the clasp is broke now and I just need to fix it.”To which the woman behind the counter replied by facing the strangers who’d gathered in the small office and saying to all of us, “He went from `moms pulled it off my neck’ to `because it’s broke and I need to fix it’.” Head swivel, finger wag, big smile - we were the audience of the Rikki Lake show. Right on cue, Moms comes into the office from outside? or a back room? and asks “What’s goin’ on out here?” Laugh track, pause for character introduction and it’s better than a talk show, even more spontaneous with a touch of blaxploitation sitcom - Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Valley Joe Motel 6.Counter Woman:He say you had to pull the chain off his neck and now he needs a paper clip to fix it.Moms:Oh, he said that, huh? Boy you better get your lies straight before you come up in here.Boy:The clasp is broke.Moms:Uh-huh.Counter Woman:Yeah.Dorky White Man:Can I just get a room please?A mid-eighties, maroon El Dorado with a white vinyl top and a crumpled front side panel was parked closest to our room. A shadow or two rolled out, became folks with lived in clothes and brown bagged beverages then rolled back out of my head downed, tunnel visioned view - get everybody and everything we need into the room.The room was fine, (clean sheets on two firm beds which was what I’d been wanting from the car in traffic), for a crack shack. The top of the tv had the melt marks of a spoon, the bath tub and bathroom floor were marked with burns, melts and wax drippings. I felt a little vulnerable being on the corner of the building with windows facing out onto the parking lot, but, I’d been lazy and wanted the bottom floor, so, I’d have to live with the drive-by exposure. After a brief argument with my five year old boy about the degrees of McDonald’s desserts, “you got apple pies and that’s not fair. Milk shakes are not sweet enough to be called desserts. They are not sweet enough!” We rented a movie about chemical warfare and passed into sleep by the blue glow of the tv.

Louis Owens' Bone Game

2011-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

Bone Game: A Novel by Louis Owens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is books like this that make you fear when you will find another one as good. The Sharpest Sight is the other book by Louis Owens that I have read. This one is better. More full and whole, the prose is strong and the narrative is quick paced, Native American-noir, a term Owens should have capitalized on.

Similar to all his fiction books, the main character, Cole McCurtain, is based on Owens himself. He was a half-breed Choctaw/Irish. A professor of English/Creative Writing and Native American studies at UCSC for a short time which was where I came to know him and where the setting of Bone Game takes place.

Owens mixes Santa Cruz Mountain murder legends in with his own mystical Native American dreamscapes with the irresistable UCSC hypocritical hippie student culture vibe. But he doesn't do it cloyingly as other books I have read do. He doesn't rely on the quirkiness of Santa Cruz, the university and its students. He underplays all that and rolls it into a canvass of much deeper tones, undertones and movements. The cover art for Bone Game, "Melting Retreat" by Veloy Virgil is strongly compatible with the book.

Satisfying is what you walk away with. Bone Game even helps to assuage the hole, (albiet ever so slightly), that Owens left with his inexplicable suicide in 2002.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-10-06/li...

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You Get So Alone At Times It Just Makes Sense - Revisited

2011-07-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"well, that's just the way it is..."

sometimes when everything seems at

its worst

when all conspires

and gnaws

and the hours, days, weeks

years

seem wasted-

stretched there upon my bed

in the dark

looking upward at the ceiling

I get what many will consider an

obnoxious thought:

it's still nice to be

Bukowski.

...we order beer for starters, we sit there as she searches her purse for cigarettes, then I get up, move toward the jukebox, put a coin within, come back, sit down, she lifts her glass, "the first one's best," and I lift my drink, "and the last..."

outside, the traffic runs up and down, down and

up,

going

nowhere.

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Finishes Like A Downhill Runaway Train

2011-06-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

Johnny's Girl: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in Alaska's Underworld by Kim Rich

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book started out interesting and then along about Chapter 11 it became un-put-downable. The story is the non-fiction account of a young girl with wild, itinerant, outlaw parents who wind up in Anchorage, Alaska both because they believed there was opportunity for them and because they'd conceivably run out of road. Mom's schizophrenia gets the better of her after Dad's hustles eventually spiral down to him pimping her out on occasion. Mom gets shipped back to a Michigan insane asylum and after a brief stay in Michigan herself, our narrator/author, Kim Rich, is reunited with her father in Anchorage and her strange life continues. Johnny Rich, Kim's dad runs gambling rooms, prostitutes and any other corner he can cut to make a buck even in his temporarily legit business fronts. Eventually, Johnny Rich makes good as an underworld figure through massage parlors but his arrival at relative success brushes with a set of terminally bad characters that lead the reader through the last 100 pages or so of this tome at breakneck, true crime speed.

Kim Rich is a good writer. Not surprisingly though, this may have taken it all out of her. She sets up this narrative tenderly and informatively, relating great details about how Anchorage was and what it was like to come up there through the '60's and 70's and then BAM! the thing turns into a true crime novel that hits and sickens like a James Elroy piece. Her descriptions of her father, his hustling, bargain-hunting, jailhouse lawyering and his dogs-playing-poker, Cadillac, dark blue topaz cuff link style - are terrific. Her research, interviews and remembrances mesh her scattered jigsaw puzzle of a family together into a cohesive photo. The more I think about this book, the more admirable and unique a piece of work I think it becomes.

I'm reaching back up to the top of this review and changing it from three stars to four.

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2011-02-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex by Andrew Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good read about a debauched, pervy, writer of crap who did a great deal of cocaine, spent all his money on the high life and chasing tail around the world and died in debt. As it should be.

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The Beer Was Good

2011-02-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

My fandom for Bill Murray goes deep. Unabashedly deep. Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter…” Stripes, “I’ve gotta party with you.” Where the Buffalo Roam, is an amalgamation of two all-time iconic heroes of mine. I saw Ghostbusters four times in the theatre with lawn-mowing, car-waxing money, I was so enamored with Murray’s self-assured, slob-cool, Dr. Peter Venkman, “Janine, sorry about the bug eyes thing I'll be in my office.” Scrooged, just gets better every time you watch it. What About Bob? Brilliant, (and the quandary of Leonard Samoylenko, my best friend and neighbor, knowing virtually every line). Groundhog Day is a completely unique monument of creation. Ed Wood. Kingpin. The Man Who Knew Too Little, (what my dear friend, Erik Homan, calls the most underrated comedy of all-time). The sweet, sadness and purity of Rushmore, (my wife’s favorite movie,) “get them in your sights, and take them down.” Lost in Translation completely captured that alien dream that is being in Japan as an American man on business. The Royal Tenenbaums. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, hilarious and heroic, if only in parts. And lately his cameo in Zombieland has kept him in the minds of kids these days.

All of the above before even mentioning Caddyshack which is, in golf circles, inarguably Murray’s masterwork, his piece de resistance, his magnum opus, his jewel, his all-time motherfucker. The quotes of Murray’s Assistant Greens Keeper with the six year schedule, Carl Spackler, slur and drool from every screening of Caddyshack like a rare delicious molasses that might also be the cure for cancer. I include them in an appendix to this column.

So, now, you can begin to imagine the surreal thrill I had this last Saturday when, working with a catering crew at a house that’s backyard scapes into the tee box of number 14 at Pebble Beach, D.A. Points and Bill Murray’s party were approaching. I’d just delivered a vodka cran to George Lopez on 14’s fairway by his request. He kissed me, told me I was beautiful and that he loved me, in that Hollywood way, fist bumped me and blew me up. So, I was feeling a little like anything was possible when one of the patrons at the house we were catering for spoke up and suggested that if I “get a cold beer out here, Murray will come up and get it.”

I called my wife to see if she could google what kind of beer Bill drinks. No response. So, I decided to go with a woman’s intuition, (which is always the way to go by the way). I asked Rachelle, one of our contractually specified, attractive female bartenders to decide what beer she thought Bill Murray would want and she pulled a brown bottle of Mirror Pond Pale Ale from a bucket of ice and snapped off the cap.

I put the bottle on my serving tray and headed out to the lawn. Murray hit a fine shot off the tee to much fanfare and as he headed up toward the fairway in his oversized Elmer Fudd hat, folks from the party around me hollered at him that this one’s for him. He acknowledged us, (and the beer) and turned his direction up the rise toward the golf cart path.

I hold the bottle with one hand onto my tray so as not to spill it on my way down a flowered, planted, landscaped embankment, watching my steps and then I’m in front of Bill Murray and a full camera crew with a boom mic guy, a key grip, two cameras, the caddy. An entourage. And suddenly, I feel like I’m in a reality tv show. Wham. Like that.

I manage to pull my gaze up from the strange sheep skin cover on the hovering boom mic and make eye contact with Bill Murray. I remember the pores in his face. And his eyes. Kind eyes. He shakes my hand. He takes the beer.
“God bless you for this,” is all he says.

Then he took a hit of the beer. Tipped it all the way back.

“Ah, Mr. Murray.” I stammer. “Mr. Murray, I just wanted to say…I just want to say you’re my all time favorite. Really. I just think you’re the best.”

Bill Murray looked at me and gave me a half a nod. But kind eyes, you know, like, ‘don’t go gettin’ all respectful on me now, kid, we’re at a golf tournament.’

“So, now look up at the peanut gallery with me,” I say, slipping my arm around his shoulder and looking up at the lawn I came from. Ten to twelve cameras from the patrons of the party we’re working are snapping photos of us from up there.

The Murray entourage has got to keep moving. I put a hand on his shoulder as he started back toward the grass and told him, “you have a good day now. And kill’em all!” which is what I tell my sons whenever they’ve got a game to play.

Looking back I’d have to say I performed rather like a muttering fool, but I still feel pretty good about it. There should be a contest for people to write in all the things I could have and should have said. So go ahead.

Through the rest of that day I was famous amongst our staff and the two to three hundred guests we served. Lenny and I celebrated at a bonfire on our street when I got home that night with a number of less prestigious, more mass produced beers than Mirror Pond Pale Ale. The next day another co-worker of ours said that his girlfriend had seen Murray on television referring to the beer he’d had on 14 and that he’d said it was “good” on CBS.
We knew he’d be coming by again that day. Apparently Lopez had already been by and taken a tequila before I got there. We also knew that Murray and Points were in the hunt to win this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. So, we were prepared as a staff and as a party for the second coming, as it were, of Bill Murray for his beer.

I was asked if I was going to do it again. Of course. Asked to have my picture taken as a ‘before’ shot. I was coerced into imitating Carl Spackler’s Dalai Lama speech more than once. And finally taken aside by one of the guests, (Golf Guy) who had witnessed my performance from the day before.

Golf Guy
So what are you going to do this time?

Me
Uh, you know, I behaved a little like a mumbling school girl with a crush yesterday, so, I’m just gonna try and play it cool, you know.

My Boss (interjecting)
The best thing you could do Bryan is just not say anything at all.

Me
Yeah, well I’ll definitely take that under advisement.

Golf Guy
No, really let’s think about this a little bit. You don’t want to go all mumbles like you did yesterday.

Me
Yeah. You’re right. I appreciate that.

Golf Guy
So, what are you gonna say? What are your favorite Bill Murray lines? What are your favorite movies of his?

Me
Well, you know Rushmore is my wife’s favorite.

Golf Guy
Just don’t go Caddyshack on him. He’s got to be hating Caddyshack lines anymore. What you’ve got to think about is that he’s in the hunt. He and Points are just a couple strokes off the lead for this thing.

Me
Right, no, I was thinking about maybe combining a little something about, you know, “Rudy the wabbit, Rudy the wabbit” from Meatballs with the line from Rushmore about getting the rich kids in your sights and taking them down.

Golf Guy
Well, you don’t want to get too complicated on him now. You’re only going to have a few seconds. So keep it clean and simple.

Me
Oh no, yeah, of course. I’ll keep it clean.

Then in my mind I saw exactly how it was going to go down. Bill and I would meet at the golf path, just like the day before. The crazy entourage-reality-tv media crush would be all around us. I’d turn him toward my new found fans up on the lawn up there and sling my arm around his shoulder. I’d make a couple of conspiratorial looks around for show and then I’d say, “Look, Bill, I’m not a big golf guy, exactly, but since yesterday I’ve taken a little interest in you and where you’re at in this thing and here’s what I think…” at this point I’d bend my knees and get him to squat down there with me. Me and Bill Murray, squatting down in the cart path at Pebble Beach like I’m going to draw out a pattern in the air with my finger for him to run here on the 14th fairway so I can toss him a ball.

“What I think, Bill, is, I think you got a chance at the whole ball o’ wax here today.
Now, on open ground these guys could take you but you’re here at Pebble Beach. You got a chance. You’re more experienced and you can hit the ball through the bushes faster. You’re like a little rabbit. You’re Rudy the Wabbit, okay?
When you’re playing, think, ‘I’m Rudy the Wabbit.’
Stay right behind them until you get to the woods. When you get to the woods, pass ‘em. Don’t even look in the rearview mirror.
Be ahead of them when you get to the edge of the woods, ‘cause when you get out…
There’s open ground and that’s where you’ll have trouble. You gotta have a hell of a lead when you get outta the woods.
All right, what’s your name?”

“Bill Murray?” he’d say.

“No. It’s Rudy the Wabbit. What’s your name?”

“Rudy the Rabbit.”

“You’re the winner. Let’s hear it for him.”

We get up shake hands. Applause. Laughter. Bill drinks beer. Murray and Points go on to win the 2011 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, the crystal trophy is hoisted the million dollar prize goes to the journeyman from Pekin, Illinois. Representatives of Deschutes Brewery ship me a case of Mirror Pond Pale Ale, you know, for the effort. And we make the whole thing a tradition that goes on as long as Murray can walk the course.

What actually happened yesterday was a little more anti-climactic than all that, for me anyway. I mean yeah, Murray and Points did win the Pro-Am and all that and I’m completely happy for them. But, when Murray tee’d off at 14 yesterday he botched his first drive and took a mulligan then proceeded to pull his next shot directly into the gallery hitting a spectator. So, the Murray entourage was pulled to that spectator and that side of the hole, away from me, with other concerns and attentions. I still took the beer over though. I blubbered out that maybe he needed this one more than yesterday. Murray took it and said, “thanks for this,” and he was on his way, understandably a little shook up over beaning some upper management/golf fan. I did manage to blurt out, “keep them in your sights and take them down,” but it hardly made any sense and fortunately no one even noticed I’d said anything.

I was still welcomed back to our catered event with a hero’s welcome, pats on the back and so on. Murray did tip the Mirror Pond all the way back as he marched up the cart path toward the fairway. (What did they do with the bottle? Did he really pound the whole thing down?) Points eagled 14 spectacularly and then birdied 15 to sew up the win for their pairing. The beer was “good.”

Ellroy Pulls Reader Through Personally Imagined Loopdee-Loops

2010-12-31T11:06:00.000-08:00

American Tabloid by James Ellroy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Okay, there's a certain unbridled geeky imagination spun unedited from a wild man's room thing going on here that's got to be addressed. It's like when you're a kid set free to walk in the wilderness with or without your dog and the beauty of the Manzanita and Evergreens just isn't enough for your comic book fueled imagination so you bust out on these holy terror, blood and guts, end of the world tangents with an adolescent hero at the fulcrum of a story with a nexus based loosely on something the hippies in your household were all upset about on tv last night. The scenario goes on and on as you walk around for a couple of hours until you come to a realization on your way back to the house that this whole convoluted fantasy world you've been absorbed in, is a little too personal and embarrassing to impart to other people or even to write down. So you don't.
James Ellroy doesn't have that filter going on for American Tabloid. He spins some insanely out there yarns about CIA run mob funded Cuban refugee anti-Castro KKK cooperative military training camps in Florida and Louisiana and full-blown fictional beauties like Pete Bondurant, Kemper Boyd, Lenny Sands and Ward Littell, working behind the scenes with and eventually against the Kennedy’s (with weird side-cars of Howard Hughes along the road). It all winds up with a gorgeous ending almost justifying all the loopdee-loop interiors Ellroy takes a reader on with him, but you’ve got to have the patience for that is my warning. The violence and language, the one part in ten sex pulp and the teasing hints at actual history intersecting Ellroy’s madness pulls a reader through the 576 pages like a dominatrix might lead an executive client through a crowded restaurant on a fishing line.
You know, three stars.

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To All My Friends Teaching Second Semester High School Biology

2010-11-14T08:53:00.001-08:00

Mendel's Dwarf by Simon Mawer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Masterful. Ingenius. Brilliant. Also, a little technical and biology specific. So, you know, I highly recommend this book to my friends who are teaching second semester high school biology, or are taking biology right now or have an acute interest or fetish with biology and genetics. The science of genetics, frankly and unfortunately, has left this book, published in 1998, far behind, but it is a beautiful story of the way things were way back in the late nineties.
This would be a decent movie. The history of Gregor Mendel, the friar who first discovered the science of genetics through his pea experiments in the gardens of his monastery in Brno, Austria-Hungary, is presented well enough that I don't know, now, if I'll get around to reading Robin Marantz Henig's, The Monk in the Garden. And you can not read a single page of the narrative that follows the devious mind of Dr. Benedict Lambert, the book's achondroplastic protagonist, without picturing actor Peter Dinklage in the role.
The story is excellent and the information you absorb during the course of Dr. Lambert's affair with Miss Jean Piercey, is magnificent. There are great meditations on the true discoveries that Mendel made during his lifetime that were 35 years ahead of their time, (and recognition) and on the implications and ramifications and ultimate ironies of his making these discoveries as a monk at a monastery. Further, there are very revealing and enlightening passages about the inaccuracies and smudgey work of Darwin and his followers and processors. I may well read this book again.

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2010-10-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

On the Books-I-Was-Supposed-To-Have-Read-In-High School tour, this is, of course, another great one. Like Catcher in the Rye, I would definitely read this book again if given the time and chance, and I don't think I've ever read a book twice yet. The layers and levels of resonance that work with seemingly too many themes for one tome to carry is astounding. They all come together and work and feel genuine and organic and all that because Scout, or Jean Louise Finch, our narrator is established as abnormally smart, savvy and sophisticated while starting out with us, she's just about to enter kindergarten. So, the innocence of a child is our perspective, albeit a child with a vocabulary and understanding unevenly seasoned from her single parent, southern, attorney-father upbringing.
The lessons brought to us from Atticus Finch through Scout's consciousness are as poignant and vital as the Golden Rule should be. Don't judge a book by it's cover. Stand for what you believe is right. All men are created equal. Civil rights. Give folks the benefit of the doubt.
And I haven't even addressed the fantastic story that ushers all this into the reader's consciousness. Jem, Dill Harris and Scout's fascinations with Boo Radley. The Ewell/Robinson case. The sexism, the racism, the classism, the tabooisms, the set-up of the town's social network and the spread of gossip are all impactfully, succinctly and seamlessly lain in to the woodwork of this masterpiece.
The ending is so strong and beautiful that the film comes back to me from however many decades ago that I watched it disinterestedly because it was what my grandfather insisted we watch. But I remember the power of that ending effecting me then too. Gotta go back now and watch it again.
And, of course, I love the story of the book itself. Harper Lee's only book she ever wrote. Her prose diamond hard and clear painted with southern language and truisms that make you wish you were brought up in such a town and such an era when perfect metaphors fell from the man on the street as well as the neighborhood ladies and the occasionally ultra-bright little girl. "...a black dog suffered on a summer's day."
Her neighbor in real life was Truman Capote. I could just picture the young, imaginative, fey little boy Capote as Dill Harris in every scene. Pulitzer Prize winner in 1961 and then on to assist Capote with his In Cold Blood project. If there were still a good place to use the word class without irony, it would have to be with Harper Lee.
"Hey, Boo,"

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girls, girls, girls, girls, girls i do adore

2010-07-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

girls: A Paean by Nic Kelman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A tough, dirty, and significant, little book. As obnoxious and disgusting, as ruthless and as amoral as the voices of the narration are - it is also nearer to the bone of the truth of inner male dialogue than most are willing to admit to or want to admit to. I certainly wouldn't admit to thinking this dastardly about the fairer sex, especially the nubile targets of the narrator(s) of girls.
Overall this thing is disturbing. Woven throughout is good writing, undeniably interesting, sometimes even sexy and erotic scenes and it is wildly un-put-downable, dragging you through by your own carnal curiousity like an accelerated, 21st Century Lolita. I think I read it in a day and a half, which for me is rabid.
The author, Nic Kelman's background is something to consider here too as he studied science at MIT where he conducted "among other studies, research on the effects of orgasm on problem solving in males." Then went on to Brown University's Creative Writing program where girls became his award winning thesis.
So, there's lots of good science references and you almost don't remember or notice on the first read through, the constant references to The Iliad and The Odyssey which serve as loosely connected/related deviations to the modern scenes. The patchwork narrative format is truly innovative and radical and works. This is a better book the more I think about it.

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Under the Bright Lights

2010-06-07T17:07:00.001-07:00

Under the Bright Lights by Daniel Woodrell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Everything Daniel Woodrell has written is more than worth reading. I believe that he's gotten progressively better with each book though, culminating with Winter's Bone, and this seems to be his first novel, published in 1986. It is set in a fictional town in Louisiana which doesn't play to his strengths as much as when he writes about his native Ozarks, creating the genre of his own origin, Hillbilly Noir.
Without meaning any detriment to the book, the most memorable part, to me, is the quote in the preface which is so good, I feel like I've been looking for it all my life.
You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes - that means your [preparation:]. That's where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights.
- Joe Frazier

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Cornell Woolrich, A Rich Discovery

2010-06-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

Rendezvous in Black by Cornell Woolrich

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to me by Eileen McGowan and tripped up a little by her sister CJ who hit me with a key spoiler about the plot when she learned I was reading it. I'd never heard of this book or writer, Cornell Woolrich, until Eileen loaned me this book. And now I'm hooked.
Woolrich was apparently as openly gay a writer as one could be in the '30's and 40's when his work was either successfully pre-dating or coinciding with the pillars of the noir edifice, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, Erle Stanley Gardner, (another name I just learned due to this book), and Jim Thompson and James M. Cain.
The writing is rich with the hardboiled lines and dramatic prose that I love. You can open to nearly any page in the book and catch a gem.
"Because they'd first met, you see, when she was seven and he was eight. And they'd fallen in love when he was eight and she was seven. Sometimes it does happen that way." p. 1.
"Something with red headlights, a chariot from hell, was jockeying around out there, backing into position." p. 6.
"He knew her way of smiling complacently, eyelids half down, in a way that infuriated women, but wasn't meant for them anyway." p.30.
"They went over and sat down, under a bleaching needle-like shower of violet-white arc rays."p. 74.
"These good dames," said Rusty, tightlipped. "Give me a bum like I am."p.86.
"From the theatre, at half past eleven, they went to a Chinese restaurant and dance spot. Pseudo-Chinese. The waiters were Chinese and the food was the "Chinese" food that China never knew but that Americans think is Chinese. But the band played "The Jersey Bounce" and the biggest seller at the bar seemed to be the Martinis. And the man whose money was invested in it was named Goldberg." p.109.
"She dialed a number. She made the wheel go around so fast it sounded like rain hitting a tin bucket."p.121.
"You're going out with Madeline Drew. If you say you're not, you're a liar." The adjective he used to modify the noun was unprintable. p. 125.
"When a girl's not in love, she hates it if you're not a gentleman. When she is in love, she hates it if - you are." p. 130.
And so on. Gorgeously.
Knowing that the author was a gay man made me notice some sort of generalized intimations and capabilities Woolrich brought to the narrative that I found unique. At one point an investigator uses fashion details to try and time-date a photo of a source. And the masterful coverage of the depth of the senses and perceptions of the chapters following a blind victim I chauvinistically attribute to the sensitivities of a gay male narrator.
The suspense, the premise for the story and the timelessness of Woolrich's treatment, teasing the reader along, deliciously, painfully - it's quite an accomplishment. I look forward to reading more of his works. A short story of his, "It Had To Be Murder" was apparently the nexus for Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and consequently 2007's Disturbia starring Shia LeBeouf. Another 28 films credit his writing as the source story. As usual, the joy of discovering a writer of this magnitude and talent is a boon to a reader, like me, and a crime that Mr. Woolrich and his work is not better known and as celebrated as that of his peers.

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Michael Jordan; Dick

2010-06-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback by Michael Leahy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
So you read this book and you gather the very documented impressions that Michael Jordan is a mean dick, Doug Collins, (recently hired as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers) is a spineless, emotional mess and that the author, Michael Leahy, is, or at least put himself in the position of, a creepy, sniping voyeur of sorts.
Scathing. Revealing. And ultimately, so what? Jordan's career as a basketball player still out-beautifies any rotten, entitlement-type behavior he could subject the people around him to or executive shortcomings he may have.
Interesting history and notes on Washington Wizards owner, (recently deceased) Abe Pollin.
Interesting to go back in time in the NBA, even if it was just seven years ago, and read about how things were for a season or two and compare how things have changed.
Also, Leahy makes many interesting observations about sport and media and culture throughout.
"We romanticize the banal, and catalog the silly. We have churned out so many of these stories, competently, even artfully, that at some point long ago we succeeded in making the ridiculous relevant." p. 112.

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Porn Stars Are...Cool

2010-05-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

Sinner Takes All by Tera Patrick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I cannot help my fascination with porn stars. This book is just a shade under Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star in overall quality and there you have Tera Patrick in a nutshell, I guess. Second only to Jenna Jameson in the porn industry, worldwide.
Her candor about her firsts in the business, her relationships and particularly the money she earned and spent and negotiated and was taken for and created are the nasty, dirty nuggets that tease you through from start to finish, but there's more going on.
What amazes me, without exception, about autobiographies is the text that rises above the narrative. The unintentional impressions that the author creates about themselves while they forge through the narrative of their lives as they've interpreted it.
Tera Patrick or Linda Ann Hopkins from Fresno, presents a daring, even courageous, if sometimes hilariously shallow and in the end, wildly hypocritical, life for herself during the course of Sinner Takes All.
Finally, the last chapter is a stunner and a novel and telling commentary on celebrity relationships and how they go. So, more than a torrid read through the sex, drugs and rock and roll adventures of a porn star, (more than enough reason to read any book), Sinner Takes All is a study in autobiography with an unprecedented-type of up-to-the-minute, head change ending.
There is a quote from Evan Seinfeld, Tera's husband in the book, on page 134 which made me laugh out loud and which I hope to carry with me always with the hope of having the opportunity to use in conversation some day.
And then there's this bit of melodrama;
It was the hardest thing I've had to face. I took my Hello Kitty suitcase and my dogs Chopper and Mr. Big Time, packed them in the pink smart car Evan had given me on Valentine's Day, and headed off.
...I cranked up Madonna's "Jump" and Linkin Park's "In the End" and drove and cried the whole way to Vegas, never looking back.

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500 Teapots while substituting Ceramics Class

2010-05-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

500 Teapots: Contemporary Explorations of a Timeless Design by Suzanne J. E. Tourtillott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I found this book while substitute teaching Ceramics yesterday and read the whole thing during my prep period. Surprising that it drug me through from beginning to end. It is, after all, a book about teapots. But what I found interesting was the distinct styles that caught my eye. What artistic styles and techniques attracted me.
Additionally, the introduction by Kathy Triplett had some insightful quotes.
"I have been surprised at every turn how the clayworker's ingenuity persists in finding new resolutions that push the envelope even further."
Her comparisons of the teapot to the human body with its parts referred to as the lip, foot, neck, shoulder and belly as well as the metaphor of the body as teapot or vice versa, carrying fluids as its purpose.
And;
"As all clayworkers know, control has to be forsaken at times and the tension between expectation and unpredictability must be embraced." This quote is pretty all-encompassing. You could substitute the title "clayworkers" for any station in life.
Also;
"[The Teapots:] inspire the hands back into the clay, to return to that unpredictable dance between intention and randomness. There will always be room for new ideas." - pretty inspiring stuff regarding teapots.
Some of my favorites are;
"Proud Catch II" by Richard Swanson on page 191. "Nurse (Fetish Series I) by Karen Marie Portaleo on page 257. The really perverse works of Ilona Romule of which there are several. All the works by Robin Campo of which there are several and all have a sort of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach meets Tim Burton random cragginess to them. Paul Dresang's amazing teapot thing coming out of a purse masterpiece on page 287. And my #1 favorite, "She Wore Her Favorite Hat #1" by Patricia Watkins on parge 389. It's a crazy little gem of a picture book to take in overall.

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Where Can I Find ZZ Packer?

2010-05-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer

These are good short stories. I find myself in love with ZZ Packer and looking, searching for more, unrequited. She may be at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas right now - I don't know.
I think my favorite story was "Speaking in Tongues" because it's the raciest, with street people and a little sex and violence mixed in, but that's just my bent. They are all very good and none of them boring or slow.
Her writing is rich with those writerly woman currents of metaphor and lines that subtly indicate the story as a whole and where it's going and then reaches beyond the story. In the midst of a seemingly logistic paragraph she mentions that her main characters swerve out of the lane their driving in and "Cars behind us swerve as well, then zoom around us and pull ahead as if we are a rock in a stream." (from "The Ant of the Self"). You will find indicators like this set in all of her stories collected here cementing each story with real art.
Her descriptions of black people and their expressions and their ways are so on point as to be a quality separating Packer from other writers in and of themselves.
"Man, did you smell them?" Arnetta said, giving the girls a slow once-over, "They smell like Chihuahuas. Wet Chihuahuas." Their troop was still at the entrance, and though we had passed them by yards, Arnetta raised her nose in the air and grimaced. (from "Brownies").
The last line of each of the eight stories herein resonates with significance and meaning and metaphor. It can be easy to get cynical about and make fun of, but, of course, Packer's stuff is just too pure for that.
"The sky had just turned her favorite shade of barely lit blue, the kind that came to windows when you couldn't get back to sleep but couldn't quite pry yourself awake." (from "Doris is Coming").

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Thank You For The Portable Ashtray!

2010-04-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company continues to be the most dynamic, grass roots, creative, marketing savvy, appreciative, conscientious and coolest company on the planet! I dug the "share your story" campaign, the free pack coupons are terrific and now the Portable Ashtray! I haven't smoked since August of last year, but when I did I was definitely guilty of flicking my butts out the car window, a horrendous breach of my hippie, no-littering, respect-mother-earth upbringing and a thousand little karma ticks against me out in the cosmos. You all came up with a great solution!
Praises to you all Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company! Keep up the good work! And keep me on your mailing list!

Sincerely,

RB Love
Santa Cruz, CA

Piss And Vinegar releases "Thigh High Leather Boots" on REVERBNATION

2010-04-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Mainly composed of what one guy thought would be a good name for a band, Piss And Vinegar has released its' one and only existing single, "Thigh High Leather Boots", on REVERBNATION over this last weekend.
The single has a distinctly informal, garage sort of production quality which stems from the overtly affected artistic strategy the band posed by getting together informally and recording in a garage-type studio.
The overpowering monologue which holds the piece together is delivered by 48-year-old, rock and roll ingenue Mary Kay Love. Rumor has it that the loose, disjointed and seemingly spontaneous delivery of Mrs. Love's monologue was recorded in just one take, no small achievement when you consider Love's reputation for being tight, locked, loaded and rigid.
The rest of the band is a virtual super group with Alex Quinn of Los Angeles' LANTVRN on drums, Long time Chico music scenester, Dan Quinn on bass, Santa Cruz High basketball's starting two guard, Cody Love, on guitar, award winning essayist Ty Gideon Love on keyboards and Piss And Vinegar's Chief Visionary Officer, Arby Love on backup vocals.
Piss And Vinegar will embark on their Tour of the Mind schedule whenever they think about it or whenever you think about it for that matter.
Listen to Thigh High Leather Boots obsessively and make it #1 on the REVERBNATION charts for Santa Cruz, Ca.

Check Out Piss And Vinegar's Thigh High Leather Boots on REVERBNATION

2010-04-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

2010-02-19T23:11:00.000-08:00

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow. That was a good one. And I love that the title is like a non sequitur left to interpretation. Camus wrote that he was inspired to write The Stranger after reading Postman. It has that forsaken, death toll, resonance to it. Only more delectable for me because it is written in the hardboiled vein. The hardboiled's hardboiled in fact. James M. Cain was so much darker and harder than Chandler, I think.
The dialogue and what a lech Frank Chambers is, are what makes the whole thing so sickeningly beautiful.
She was standing there in a red kimono, as pale as milk, staring at me, with a long thin knife in her hand. I reached out and took it away from her. Whe she spoke, it was in a whisper that sounded like a snake licking its tongue in and out.
"Why did you have to come back?"
"I had to, that's all."
"No you didn't. I could have gone through with it. I was getting so I could forget you. And now you have to come back. God damn you, you have to come back!"
"Go through with what?"
"What he's making that scrapbook for. It's to show to his children! And now he wants one. He wants one right away."
"Well, why didn't you come with me?"
"Come with you for what? To sleep in box cars? Why would I come with you? Tell me that."
I couldn't say anything. I thought about my $250, but what good was it telling her that I had some money yesterday, but today I lost it playing one ball in the side?
"You're no good. I know that. You're just no good. Then why don't you go away and let me alone instead of coming back here again? Why don't you leave me be?"
"Listen. Stall him on this kid stuff just a little while. Stall him, and we'll see if we can't figure something out. I'm not much good, but I love you, Cora. I swear it."
"You swear it, and what do you do? He's taking me to Santa Barbara, so I'll say I'll have the child, and you-you're going right along with us. You're going to stay at the same hotel with us! You're going right along in the car. You're - "
She stopped, and we stood there looking at each other. The three of us in the car, we knew what that meant. Little by little we were nearer, until we were touching.
"Oh, my God, Frank, isn't there any other way out for us than that?"
"Well. You were going to stick a knife in him just now."
"No. That was for me, Frank. Not him."
"Cora, it's in the cards. We've tried every other way out."
"I can't have no greasy Greek child, Frank. I can't, that's all. the only one I can have a child by is you. I wish you were some good. You're smart, but you're no good."
"I'm no good, but I love you."
"Yes, and I love you."
"Stall him. Just this one night."
"All right, Frank. Just this one night."
Pgs. 37-38.

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2010-02-15T17:29:00.000-08:00

When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A little repetitive maybe. Repetitively great! Tons of anecdotes and going overs of the exploits of Bird and Magic. Makes you realize how significant they were and what a renaissance that was for basketball in general and the nba particularly.
One section was so significant, like an allegory beyond the book itself, about the differences in acumen between Magic and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I feel obliged to re-type it here;
"Thank God Kareem was my teammate, because I used to cringe at the way he treated peopl," Magic said. "There was a way to say no if you didn't want to sign an autograph. You could say,'I'm Busy right now,' or, 'Sorry, not today.' But Kareem didn't do it in a very kind way. Sometimes he's have people in tears. It's hurt him now that he's done playing."
More than a decade after both men retired, Kareem approached Magic to learn more about Johnson's business acumen. Abdul-Jabbar had struggled to find his niche since he stopped playing, and he was looking to Magic, who had made millions off the court, for advice.
"I want to be like you," the center said.
Magic shook his head.
"No, you don't," Johnson answered. "To be like me, you've got to shake hands, hug people, attend luncheons. You've got to be nice to people all the time. You've got to make small talk. You've got to be on."
"Well, maybe I can do it another way," Abdul-Jabbar said.
"There is no other way," Magic explained. "You have to be cordial. You can't treat your teammates without any courtesy, or humiliate reporters, or blow off fans."
Magic shared a story with Abdul-Jabbar that happened in his second season in the pros and resonated with him for a decade. The Lakers were finishing up a pregame shoot-around when a man and his young son timidly approached Abdul-Jabbar and asked, "Kareem, can we please get a picture?"
"No," Abdul-Jabbar snapped without breaking stride.
Magic, standing nearby, could see the young boy was crushed. Johnson was not yet and All-Star, an MVP, or a household name, although he was well on his way to accomplishing all of that. He walked over to the father and said, "How about a picture with me?"
As the grateful father lined up the shot, Magic joked, "Maybe I'll be in the Hall of Fame someday too."
Twenty-two years later, Johnson sat in a boardroom representing Magic Johnson Enterprises with hopes of generating some new business. After he made his pitch, an older gentleman approached him.
"We met before, a long, long time ago," the gentleman said. "You posed for a picture with my son. Kareem blew us off, but you were very nice."
The son was a grown man, a successful attorney in Los Angeles. His father was the CEO of the company Magic was soliciting.
"My son is 29 years old now," the man said,"and he still has that picture on his wall."
As Magic walked out of the meeting with a new multimillion-dollar client in his portfolio, he thought to himself, "See, Kareem? It could have been you."

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2010-02-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind by Chuck Barris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I finished the book this morning and then watched the movie, (made from a Charlie Kaufman screenplay adaptation) tonight after the Super Bowl. I can tell you that the film was a lot more edgy, dark and less fun than the book. Although both representations are meritorious. I've come to idolize Chuck Barris since I read You and Me, Babe years ago. The whole thing is an interesting read what with the whole fantasy about Chuckie Baby doubling as a CIA assassin. But, Barris' real life stuff is what fascinates me most. "Palisades Park" then crazy television success into his current status as a writer. At the end of the film, the camera intimates on the then septuagenarian Barris' face while Sam Rockwell's voice over tells of an edifying new game show Barris has thought up. That stays with you in a way the book does not. From the film you are left wishing that Chuck Barris could just appreciate what he did and what a spectacular life he's led and that, critics be damned, he did make worthwhile hilarity on tv, he did buck the system and he seemed to have more laughs than anyone else. Reading the book, you get a sense that maybe he did know some of those things.

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2009-12-27T18:14:00.000-08:00

The Devil's Redhead by David Corbett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm a sucker for the genre. Crime/Noir. Jim Houston introduced me to David Corbett at a reading he gave at the Capitola Book Cafe years ago. So, I had always wanted to read one of his books. I'm married to a redhead and I'd read Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red earlier this year, so,...The Devil's Redhead.
After a whirlwind romance followed in short order by a bust, our protagonist, Danny Abatangelo, comes out of a ten year stint for running weed, unable to deter himself from reconnecting with Shel, the whirlwind he'd had to part with. Shel is tied to a new beau who's a frustrated flunky for a Bay Area crime family made up of hillbilly meth-type characters who are all delicious in their own ways. And we're off to the races.
The book is about 100 pages too long for the thrill ride that it really is. There's so many seemingly detouring lefts, sub-plots, characters and some of them sudden and unexpected, some of them, maybe unnecessary.
There is also a great deal of masterful writing. One section in particular, sustained such a strength of prose that I'm sure it must have been excerpted somewhere, somehow. Chapters 22 and 23 run a gambit of Reservoir Dogs-like power scenes of violence, dips of relief and salvation, back through tension, disgusting gore and then poetic empathy.
"Rendered green and hazy...the figures seemed strangely innocent through the lens, as though their images were projections - not their real selves. Their real selves remained elsewhere, asleep in bed with their alibis." Page 337.
Also, pages 325-333 describing a sort of reverse Stockholm syndrome in which the main female character's captor reveals the strange and desperate love he's formed for her after she's stitched up his bullet torn arm is strong, strong stuff. Overall this thing feels like a solid hit after you're done reading it like it's maybe taken longer than you thought it would but when the swing hits that sweet spot in the bat all your minor complaints just disappear and you can still feel the ball resonating from the connection it's made as it sails out there.

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