Innocent Bystander

Book snook...

Let's start off by stating the obvious: I live in a very small apartment. It is, in many ways, the apartment of my dreams. Downtown setting with a central location, floor to ceiling windows, compact, easy to clean, and best of all: all my stuff is here. Not sure how that last part happened, but it's true.

And most of that stuff is books. Shelves and shelves of books. So it should come as no surprise when I tell you this one salient, inarguable fact: I LOVE BOOKS. I really do. If someone told me you can only buy one type of thing from now on (outside of the realm of essentials, like food and clothing) I would choose books. No DVDs, not even (GASP! SHUDDER!) comics. I'd give them all up for my primary means of entertainment, books.

But lately I've felt trapped and encumbered by the sheer volume of books I own and continue to buy. So...and oh, I'm so feeling guilty for saying this, but...I've been slowly seduced by the Kindle. Yes. There. I've said it.

Because I love the feel of a book, the weight of a hardbound, the glossy (or matte) sheen of the dustjacket. I love the larger trade paperback format, and I hate the "mass market" paperbacks. Yes, I'm a book snob, too. A well-designed book will set my heart all a-twitter (no, not that Twitter) in a bookstore, and I find myself occasionally buying even cookbooks when they're really, really nicely designed. And I don't cook.

All of that would go away with a Kindle, at least while they continue to be manufactured with a black and white screen. There are rumors flying that Apple is coming out with some kind of "Tablet" computer, but the rumors are wild, ranging from a wafer-thin "giant iPod" with a touchscreen (kind of the Mac version of a NetBook) to a full-service computer running the Mac OS at a cheaper price point but with the touchscreen, too. I'd love it if Apple got into the iBooks business, ala iTunes, selling book downloads, but to me the key to all this is a color screen. That one tiny change would almost make up for the missing physical feeling of holding a book.

And then there's the thing about bookstores. All this Kindling and downloading just continue to add to the further demise of bookstores, independent and otherwise. I fear my beloved Borders (much preferred by me over Barnes and Noble) is about to go away. I fear a lot of independent bookstores are going, too. The latest casualty here in San Diego is downtown's Wahrenbrock's, a used bookstore that was a fixture in town for decades. When I first moved here there were tons of used bookstores downtown, on Fifth Ave. in Hillcrest and on Adams Avenue. Now...well, sadly, not so much. I love bookstores almost as much as the books they sell, but I'm acutely aware that every time someone downloads a book we might save a tree, but we kill just another little piece of a bookstore somewhere. I'm not sure I want to contribute to that.

Still, I have two wonderful book-loving friends (you know who you are), who are Kindle converts. Neither are the in-your-face "you must try this!" zombie types, but their quiet admiration for this new technology has certainly swayed my opinion a bit. The only thing I'm holding out for right now is color, and/or Apple's entry into this market. In the meantime, I'll sit here in my tiny apartment, surrounded by books...real books.

Great ideas that never came to be...

Like everyone else in this great land of ours--and quite possibly the world--I am always looking for the next big thing. You know...the one thing that makes you rich and famous. Like a pet rock. Or Rubik's Cube. Or the guy in Wisconsin who painted one black and white dairy cow and got it on 30 bajillion products. Stuff like that.

I've had many great ideas in my lifetime, none of which have come to fruition. My two latest disappointments still bewilder me, and at times--I do confess--make me cry. Here they are, but please don't steal them...

With Hollywood's passion for turning aging, rotting TV shows into big budget movies, what could be more of a sure thing than combining TWO of them into one great flick? We take the kids from Saved By the Bell and the kids from The Facts of Life, and merge them into one surefire hit: Saved By the Facts of Life! What could be better than Natalie (Mindy Cohn) married to Screech (Dustin Diamond)? Or Blair (Lisa Whelchel) and Jesse (Elizabeth Berkley) as aging strippers in Vegas? Kelli (Tiffani Thiesen) and Tootie (Kim Fields) living as a married couple in San Francisco? This would be the sitcom film to crush all sitcom films! It's funny, it's touching, it's dark, it's daring! Alas, Hollywood closed and locked their doors when I came knocking with this one.

Videogames are the cash cow of entertainment these days and a winning game concept could bring millions--if not BILLIONS--to the creator and publishing company. So what could be more natural than this game, exclusively for the Wii: Wee Wii! Yes, your little onscreen avatars pee into increasingly more difficult places to rack up points and progress to the next level, floating along on their urine output and aiming accuracy! Perhaps it was how I placed the Wii controller in the demo I produced: You literally have to hold it straight out at crotch level and rotate around while moving the controller up and down to hit your targets. Still, once I threw in the "write your name in the snow" module, I thought they'd buy it. "Too unrealistic for women," they said. "You're ignoring half the audience." I offered that maybe some women would enjoy the option of peeing standing up, but my somewhat soggy logic rained down on deaf ears.

Oh, well...back to the drawing board.

Three more Parker Novels by Richard Stark: The Seventh, The Handle, and The Rare Coin Score...

The University of Chicago Press continues its reissuing of Richard Stark's great Parker novels in a new trade paperback format and--best of all--in chronological order. The latest gang of three includes novels seven through nine, from 1966 and 1967: The Seventh, The Handle, and The Rare Coin Score.

The Seventh--chronicling yet another Parker job gone bad, this time with seven men, hence the title (indicating each's share in the score) is the weakest Parker novel I've read so far, out of the first nine. Part of the problem is Parker isn't it in for long stretches. The gang robs a football stadium during a big college game, and if everyone sticks to the meticulous plan, everyone will get their seventh of the take. But fate lends a hand when the woman Parker is staying with is murdered, and the gang suspects one of their own did her in. Like the Marx Bros., even "bad" Stark is great...so when I say "weakest" remember what I'm comparing them to: the other eight novels.

The Handle is as close to a James Bond novel as Stark (really Donald Westlake) was ever going to write. You can tell some bright-eyed and busy-tailed editor wanted to do something even remotely Bondian during the peak of 007 mania. Stark and cronies invade a small island, home of Wolfgang Baron's gambling mecca. The Outfit comes back into the series, paying Parker to put together a plan to take down the island and Baron. It's an exciting, cinematic story, and the book even adds in footnoted references to previous Parker novels, just to push the fact that this--like the Bond novels of Ian Fleming--is also a series.

The Rare Coin Score is my favorite of this set of three Parker novels. It introduces Claire, the woman who becomes a constant in Parker's life and the rest of the books, and delves into something near and dear to my heart: the collector's mentality. Parker and Claire rip off a coin collectors' convention in this one, and as usual it just takes one almost member of the gang to turn the tide.

I love the Parker novels for their economy of story-telling, their tight plots, and the discipline of Westlake as a writer. His Parker books are almost always 160 pages, as if there's a magic bell on the typewriter when he reaches that count. I've never really encountered another character like Parker in fiction: Tough, amoral, but also honest (in his own way) and fair, Parker is a one of a kind character by a one of a kind writer.

Friday Foto #93...

Balboa Park, San Diego. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

Complete Dick Tracy vol. 8 by Chester Gould...

IDW's continuing series of chronological reprintings of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy has certainly switched into high gear this year. With Eisner Award winning editor Dean Mullaney coming on board to edit the series, Tracy has undergone a makeover into the format of the Terry and the Pirates and Little Orphan Annie books, and couldn't have come a better time. Mullaney's presence has also upped the publication of this amazing series to three books a year. Volume 7 came out in April, the current one in July, and volume 9 is scheduled for December, just in time for Christmas gift-giving.

The format change coincides with the beginning of Tracy's--and Gould's--golden age. Volume 8 (click here to get your own copy!) introduces us to a number of classic villains, including Pruneface, 88 Keyes, Laffy, Mrs. Pruneface, and the one and only Flattop. The front page headlines during these years--mired deep in World War II--were horrifying enough, but somehow Gould outdid himself with these incredible bad guys. While World War II is certainly a part of Tracy's world--Pruneface is a spy, gas and tire rationing are apparent, one story deals with a daycare center for children whose mothers work for the war effort, and--most tellingly--that single shot of a star in someone's window, indicating a soldier killed in action--but it stays that way: just in the background. Gould wisely knew his reader wanted to escape from the horrors of war, and he certainly gave them his own horrors to concentrate on.

Gould still sometimes gets befuddled with his own writing...Flattop has money from "killing" Tracy that we never actually see him get; Mrs. Pruneface wants revenge for the death of her husband at Tracy's hands, but the last we hear of him, he's being transferred to the county jail, "heading straight to the electric chair," as Chief Brandon exclaims. (Mrs. Pruneface shows up just a few short months later, so I guess we're to take it that justice acted much more swiftly in the 1943...) When Mrs. P. captures Tracy, she devises one of the most insidious death traps ever: chaining him to the floor between two blocks of ice, with a refrigerator resting on boards above. Attached to the back of the fridge is a huge metal spike, designed to pierce Tracy's heart as the ice melts. And oh, yeah...it's in the kitchen. In August, And they close the windows. And turn the oven on. And leave the oven door open. Yikes! I can't make this stuff up, but Chet Gould sure could.

And then there's Flattop, the quintessential Dick Tracy villain. Cool, calm, and collected, a paid assassin brought into town just to kill Tracy--during Christmas, 1943, no less; how's that for warm holiday sentiment?--Flattop has nine lives and escapes to bedevil Tracy in the next volume (almost 15 years later, his identical son, Flattop Jr., appears in one of my all-time favorite stories--clearly Gould knew a great character when he saw one). It's very wise of IDW--however annoying--to split the Flattop storyline into two volumes. As the top Tracy baddie, he probably represents the one storyline more people will want to read. As good as volume 8 is, volume 9 will present the pinnacle of Gould's creativity: in addition to the conclusion of the Flattop storyline (featuring the introduction of ham actor Vitamin Flintheart), we'll meet The Brow, Shaky, Measles, Breathless Mahoney, Gravel Gertie, B. O. Plenty, and the Summer Sisters. This is Gould running at his fastest and most furious. Don't miss it!

District 9 (2009)

I think District 9 is an incredibly well-made, engrossing film. But I don't think it's the blockbuster film of the summer, nor does it quite exactly live up to all the hyperbole it's generated. The sci-fi action flick (and to me at least, it was much more of an action flick than anything else) does certainly touch on race relations and wows you with its special effects bang for its buck. Peter Jackson made a wise decision producing it and lending his name to the promotion of it, because without him I feel the film would have ended up in Landmark cinemas across the country (definitely not a bad thing) and would have been lucky to eke out $15 million.

The story of a giant spaceship that stalls out over Johannesburg, South Africa twenty years ago and ends up spawning an alien ghetto, the film begins with a documentary style exploration of a private company charged with moving the aliens outside of J-burg to more of a concentration camp type of setting. The aliens--big, ugly, bug-like creatures nicknamed "Prawns," due to their similarity to shrimp--have been forced into a ghetto-like society, filled with violence, drugs, and even interspecies prostitution. Into that volatile mix comes Wikus Van De Mewre (newcomer Sharito Copley) who has to evict the prawns from their current shanty homes and convince them to sign (or scrawl) a paper that acknowledges the move. In District 9, Wikus and his paramilitary escorts find various illegal activities, including a mysterious canister that infects Wikus and starts to dramatically transform him into something entirely different.

District 9 certainly is a story about discrimination, but it quickly puts that on the back burner--along with its documentary format--and becomes an almost-routine action flick, albeit one with a good story and great special effects. It's never anything less than engrossing, but I guess I was slightly disappointed by the amount of hype that preceded my viewing of it. Copley is a marvelous actor and a definite find, going from a bit of a good-natured tool (both as part of the establishment--an evil corporation trying to strip mine alien technology--and as just a goofy guy in general) to a tragic hero. There's certainly room for a sequel, with the escaping alien ("Christian") and his son (both of whom added a really touching presence to the film) returning as promised to "save" Wikus. I'm sure District 10 isn't far off in our future...but who knows if Christian will return to save his friend or destroy the world that reduced his species to medical experiments?

Happy birthday, Mom...

I would be remiss in my duties as a son if I didn't take a moment to remember the fact that my mom would have been 90 years old today. She died in 1997.

My mom was definitely someone who loved her comfort zone. That zone included family and friends, her soap operas, and--for most of her life--an ever-present pack of cigarettes. She loved small town life and would be so pissed to find out that CBS has canceled her beloved Guiding Light, to be replaced by a game show (and not even a NEW game show, just a rehash of Let's Make A Deal).

Some of my fondest family memories revolve around her birthday each year. When I was a kid, we'd always take that week for our annual vacation at the Jersey shore, first at Asbury Park, then--starting in 1964--at Atlantic City. Her birthday night was often spent at the Ice Capades, the skating show that "wintered" during the summer in Atlantic City, getting their new act together to take on the road in the fall and winter, when people were more prone to think about winter activities such as watching people ice skate. It was something she dearly loved, so my brother and I went along for the ride. It was the least we could do.

My life has changed a lot in the 12 years or so since she passed away. I moved to the West Coast, and now live in paradise (most of the time, at least). I don't think she'd ever understand my need to leave a well-paying job and find a different place to live, a place to start over. I'm not quite sure at times I do, either, to be honest. But I digress. Happy birthday, Mom.

Manhattan Nocturne by Colin Harrison...

Manhattan Nocturne is the second book by Colin Harrison that I've read in the past few months. The first was The Finder, which was reviewed here. Both are big, sprawling novels about New York City, with Manhattan being as much as a character in the book as anyone else.

Porter Wren is one of New York City's most successful newspaper columnists. His writing deals with those quintessential NY stories, tales that can only happen in the Big Apple. Like the woman shot and killed by her ex in the laundromat while holding her wedding gown. Wren digs deep into the underbelly of the city and comes up with the dirt everyone wants to read. He's also a man who has a loving, successful doctor wife, and two great kids.

This penchant for a certain kind of reportage lands Wren right into the lap (literally) of the beautiful Caroline Crowley, who wants Wren to find a certain videotape of herself with Wren's publisher, the influential billionaire and media magnate Hobbs. It seems that Caroline's late husband, Simon Crowley, the superstar movie director, had his own private collection of videotapes. Simon's hobby was filming people's discomfort and dismay, and one night he urges Caroline to film herself with someone. She picks Hobbs. Simon turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, and now both Caroline and Hobbs want that tape. But what other mysteries lurk in Simon's collection?

Like The Finder, Manhattan Nocturne is a book that takes us down a lot of New York's side streets. Harrison specializes in this type of thing, evidently, and while MN weighs in at about 360 pages, all of it is golden. There's a certain quaintness to it, too. It was written in 1996, so Wren's columnist days are definitely numbered. Pagers are more popular than cellphones. The Internet is a research tool, able to find out anything about anybody. I'd be interested to see Harrison revisit Porter Wren now. Is he still a tabloid columnist, or did the Internet kill the newspaper star?

Manhattan Nocturne is also a story of sexual obsession. Caroline Crowley is a woman every man wants, from Wren to Simon to the obscenely rich and fat Hobbs. She uses sex to get what she wants, but she's smart enough to know that won't last forever. MN presents a world that spins on the twin axles of sex and avarice.

How this book came to me is an interesting story in and of itself (or at least I think so). One day I came home from work (a place I occasionally go to) to find an Amazon.com package awaiting me, leaning against my apartment door. I racked my brain for a second (that's all the racking my brain will stand for these days) to try and remember if I had ordered anything...turns out I hadn't. It was a belated birthday present from my friend Caryn, who is exiled in Texas these days. Turns out she had read The Finder, too, and then picked up MN and thought I would like it. I guess great minds really do think alike.

Going to the dogs...

Down at the end of my hallway, outside my apartment, where the hall turns to the longer part of the building and the elevators, sits a pile of blankets and bedding that wears the unmistakable scent of a dog. You can smell that heavy, wet dog smell when you walk by it. The strange family who lives in that one-bedroom apartment next to the laundry room--strange in the fact that sometimes it's two or three or four people there of varying ages, while the apartment remains the same size--has two small dogs. But this heap of trash-worthy smelliness makes me think the dogs are bigger than full-grown sheep.

Don't get me wrong: I like dogs. I've never owned one, but I'm partial to smaller ones, like Jack Russells or Whippets. On a walk back from the grocery store the other day, I saw a black and white spotted Whippet running ahead of its master, having the time of its life. I envied both the dog's attitude and the guy who owned him. It all looked like so much fun.

But I can't wrap my head around a pet in this tiny apartment, especially one who farts and licks his privates (there's enough of that going on in here already, BA-DUM-DUM). And I'm also much more of a cat person, even though I can't really be around them, either, these days (turns out I'm allergic to them...that would explain 15+ years of adult-onset asthma, I guess). I get my cattiude at work where we have an office cat, Mooch, who has adopted us and hangs out all day, usually on people's couches and/or the receptionist's desk.

I also can't wrap my head around the picking up the poop thing. Oh, I know...I donned protective goggles and gas mask to clean out a litterbox with TWO cats using it, every day for over 15 years. Let me tell you, manipulating a back-hoe and a Caterpillar in a small space like an apartment bathroom is no easy task. But grabbing a thin plastic bag and picking it up off the sidewalk is something entirely different. Partly because you just know the dog is watching you and thinking "SUCKER!!!"

My apartment building allows dogs these days, something they didn't do when I first moved in. No pets allowed then, but the occasional cat was viewed with indifference, probably because the building manager had one of her own. Now there are a lot of dogs here. I know of at least 4 on my floor alone, including one down the hall from me who barks at EVERYTHING: people, cars, radios, doorknobs. I hear this dog every day, twice a day, as his people walk him. He pauses at my door each time he goes out and barks. Once out in the street, he barks. Back in the building, going home, he pauses again outside and barks. God forbid you get in the elevator with him. He barks all the way up or down.

The woman who lives below me has a small dog, too, and this dog barks constantly. Her dog makes the above-mentioned dog seem like the Marcel Marceau of dogs, except without the white-face make-up and black and white striped shirt (which I suppose would also make the dog French). I don't know what the deal is with the dog below me. I think she locks him in the bathroom all day and he just barks and barks and barks. I hear him most when I'm in my bathroom, so it leads me to believe this is the case. My building is very soundproof from apartment to apartment, so the dog is muffled all the time, but still heard. In fact, other than when my comely neighbor--at the time--wore heels and walked in her kitchen and the building's resident cougar lived above me with bouncy bed springs, the only thing I've ever heard from floor to floor is this dog barking.

I think my own attitude in life (best summed up as a combination of "stay the f*ck away from me/PET ME! PET ME!") is what draws me more naturally to cats. Dogs are a bit too eager to please, a bit too jumpy and high-maintenance. I'd like a dog that was more "Oh, you're home..." as opposed to "YOU'RE HOME!!! YOU'RE HOME!!! YOU'RE HOME!!!" You know, a dog who would give me a sidelong glance, a muted sigh, a nap resumed, in response to my key in the front door. That's a dog I could get behind, but that dog would more than likely be a cat.

Friday Foto #92...

Cloud warrior. Balboa Park, San Diego. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!