The Kiss

Let’s spend a moment to think about kissing, about how it must have been an odd thing to do when kissing first began. I mean, it’s such an obviously sexual act. We take our two sets of labia, put them together, open our mouths, and start probing with tongues into the other’s oral cavity. It’s so obviously a substitute for the sex act—putting genitals together with the male entering the equivalent of a mouth, entering as far as possible, probing, probing, and finally ejaculating. In the history of the kiss, until just recently, anyway, the kiss would have been initiated by the male, and the lips would have remained closed until the male forced the female’s lips apart and inserted his tongue. The female would not have reciprocated with her tongue, only allowed the entry of the male’s tongue, but only after a fierce battle. But now, in our age of sexual enlightenment, of sexual equality, the female not only does her share of probing, she often is the initiator of the kiss, just as it is with coitus. Next time I see a long passionate kiss on screen, I will have to think about what it parallels—cunnilingus (from the Latin, cunnus, vulva, and lingere, to lick), where the male puts his lips to her other set of lips and probes with tongue; and fallatio (from the Latin, fellare, to suck), where the woman opens her mouth and allows the insertion of the male’s penis. All these acts, including the act of kissing, are attempts to break down the separation of two people, an attempt to unify two people physically as well as psychically. To enter another’s body. Wow, how similar that is to the act of stabbing someone with a knife or sword. Love/hate, sex/murder. Odd combinations.

There, that should prompt a comment or two, that is, if anyone is actually reading the drivel I write. Possible readers, see the little red "comment" at the bottom of this post? If you click on it, a box opens for you to let me know you're actually there, to tell me you enjoy my drivel, or to tell me how much you hate my drivel. I'd love to hear from you, whether it's love or hate.

OCD & Dick Francis

I think I’m a bit disorderly in an OC way, a condition my wife and a good many of my friends would agree with. I’m especially obsessive about books. I’ve often told people that I need to own books, not borrow them. I need to have them ready when I need them. And when I get an author I enjoy, I tend to read his/her books all in a rapid and continuous swoop, from earliest to latest, as fast as I can go. This involves finding them and buying them, then reading them, then saving them to dole out to friends who are looking for a good read. And now that I’m aging, like fine wine, when I re-read a series, it’s like reading them as though I’ve never before read them. That’s not entirely true since the most recent of the series will stick with me, but the earliest are like brand-new acquaintances. I just finished a second reading of the Prey series by Sandford, and enjoyed it immensely.

Then I dug out some old Dick Francis novels that I’d had tucked away in the garage. Wow, was he ever good. I say “was” because he’s now really old and the writing has been taken up by his son, who can’t come close to the old man’s standards. Everyone who’s ever read any Dick Francis books will agree with me, that the main characters all seem to be the same person, with only their professions varying. All the books are written in the first person, thus assuring the reader that the main character does not get snuffed somewhere along the way. All the males, varying from mid-twenties to late thirties, are engaged in a profession somehow related to British horse racing, all are ethically good to an abnormal degree, all are stoic to an abnormal degree, all are uber efficient at what they do, all invariably get caught in situations that cause them great physical pain which they all endure admirably (stiff upper British lip, you know), all foil the bad guys by sheer determination and mental ingenuity. Because of all this sameness, are his novels boring and repetitious? Not on your bloody life. In every one, the reader gains detailed knowledge of the profession, from photography to winemaking to aviation to banking to architecture, etc. In every one, the reader can hardly wait to gallop to the feel-good ending. There, I hope I’ve encouraged any of you not yet acquainted with Dick Francis to find him and read him. You’ll bloody love him.

Arizona Beauty

We live in a place that has such grand diversity in geograpy, but also in its weather and skies. I took this in 1998, seeing for the first time in my life a double rainbow. And I think we found not one but two pots of gold. And thirteen years later we still consider outselves golden to be living here.

One of the negative weather conditions in the area is the occasional dust storm. This one happened in 1997, the first such phenomenon we'd ever seen. Although they're not common, this year we've had two so far, the first in mid-July, when the cloud was a mile high, over a hundred miles across as it swept over Phoenix from the south, leaving all outdoor pools filled with sandy muck. A mess, yes, but still a beautiful display of nature's beauty.

Then there are the clouds. During the monsoon season, they pile up like huge clumps of whipped cream. Wow, that simile stinks. How about, like giant heads of cauliflower? Nah. White cotton candy on palm sticks? Help me out, someone. Give me something better than those three sorry tries.

Dance, Tiger, & The Help

Well, I called the Dance results right. Now I can only hope I get to see Melanie again somewhere. I think I'm in love. I fall in love so easily.

I think I'm out of love with Tiger. Well, not really. But after these first two rounds at the PGA, he's demonstrated that his game is totally in the tank. And I know how much that pleases a bunch of my redneck Sun City Westers. And they aren't pleased because of his grievous mistake a year and a half ago; they're pleased because they detest his blackness, his apparent arrogance. Ah well, they're welcome to the poison in their souls.

We were looking forward to seeing The Help and we were both slightly disappointed in it. We both felt that the seriousness of the theme deserved a more serious presentation. There was just too much colorful (absolutely no pun intended) levity in the plot. The acting of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer was good, but I can't say the same for the others, especially Emma Stone. I loved her in Stupid Crazy Love, but just barely liked her in this one.

Sinatra, Streisand, and Dance

This week, PBS had two shows from the past, an hour-long Sinatra concert when he was about 65, "Concert for the Americas" in the Dominican Republic, and a fairly recent Streisand concert in the Village, "One Night Only at the Village Vanguard." We have in these two performers the greatest stylist, Sinatra, and the greatest singer, Streisand. I'd never seen the Sinatra concert, but once again it showed me and the world what a showman he was. He gave us several of his standards, but each one was updated for this show. I was surprised to hear that "Strangers in the Night" was one of his least favorite songs and one of his least performed. And, of course, a new version of "Chicago." And most special of all, Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clows," accompanied by only Tony Mittola on guitar. I was struck again by his timing. No one has ever had the ability to be so meticulously in time and tune with the backup band as he strolled the stage, flipping the mike cord as he went, making appropriate hand gestures to emphasize the phrasing. Some singers sound so dated after decades pass, but not Sinatra. Just listen to any of the pop singers from the Forties, Fifties, even the Sixties, and they sound so out of tune with the present. But not Sinatra. Maybe someday his style will be passé, but not for at least another hundred years. Maybe never. Then there's Barbra Streisand. She was singing in a tiny club with people jammed in, the front row almost in her lap. The notables in the audience--Bill Clinton, Nicole Kidman, and James Brolin, her husband. Although she has visibly aged and chose to wear almost no makeup, her voice is even richer than it was back in the day when she was producing those wonderful musical specials for tv, or starring on Broadway, or making movie after movie, some in which she sang, most in which she didn't (her one error, that simply awful Fockers flick). The difference between a stylist and a singer, a stylist doesn't have to be a great singer, but a singer has to be a singer first and a performer second. I've said in the past, we should get Streisand to record every song ever written and then we'd have them preserved in their best possible form.

And one last time about "So You Think You Can Dance." The final four performed last night with the results to be made known tonight. I think I can predict almost with certainty what those results will be. The two females, Melanie and Sasha, are head and shoulders (and legs too) better than the two males, Marko and Tadd. Going from fourth to first, here are the probable results: Tadd, Marko, Sasha, and Melanie. Melanie gets my nod because not only is she a great dancer, she's also a great actress. She'll be able to go on to film if she wants to. Too bad they don't still make musicals like those in which Leslie Caron, Mitzi Gaynor, and Cyd Charisse starred. Melanie would be a shoo-in. For those of you who think the dancing on "Dancing with the Stars" is the ultimate, you ain't seen nothin' till you've seen the dancing on "SYTYCD."

The Beaver & No News

We watched Jodi Foster’s The Beaver last night. Not in a theater, because Dan Harkins kept it exclusively at an east Valley site, and then it vanished. So I ordered it through DirectTV. An unusual film to say the least, but no matter how the public has turned against Mel Gibson, no matter how he’s nearly destroyed his image with the nasty things he’s said and done, Gibson is still a hell of an actor. And that truly awful little beaver he comes to wear on his left arm is really Gibson, acting in both capacities, the depressed toy store owner and the dictatorial beaver, who leads him by the arm (pun intended) back to some sort of sanity. Although Jodi Foster was in the film as Gibson’s wife, it’s really Gibson’s one-man/beaver show. I hope he gets nominated for best actor, but he probably won’t. He’s made just too many enemies in the film industry.

There’s nothing in the news worth commenting on. What could I say about the economy that hasn’t already been said? What could I say about the feuding between Steve Williams and Tiger Woods, both of whom have sort of had their feet in their mouths, Williams looking like an arrogant oaf in his comments about “his” win last weekend at the Bridgeport in Akron, Tiger displaying his usual “everything’s great” image in interviews? Let’s just get through the PGA this weekend and then let the year run its course until we can get back to business as usual in Augusta for the 2012 Masters. There, for someone with almost nothing to say about Tiger and Williams, I said quite a bit.

Gold & Parker

Gold keeps going up, up, up; the Dow keeps going down, down, down. I’m still a cockeyed optimist when it comes to our country and our economy. But then, I’m not one of the many who are out of work without much hope on the horizon. I’m still hoping that Obama and the present administration can pull us out of this mess, create enough jobs to get us under 9%, get government spending under control. He spoke about putting money into the infrastructure—building bridges, fixing highways. So, when’s he going to do it? Soon, I hope.

In rummaging around in my books, I came upon one by Parker called Wilderness. I thought I’d read it but soon discovered I hadn’t. And I’ve had it for probably twenty-five years. It’s a stand-alone novel about a man who witnessed a killing and is then frightened off by the killer from testifying. It was written in 1979, eight years after the first Spenser, and it reads like a typical paperback pot-boiler, you know--short, tough language, not much style. In fact, it reads like he may have written the whole thing in about a month. I’ve always enjoyed reading an author from start to finish to see how the style evolved. Some commercial writers never evolve, never improve. James Patterson comes to mind. But when one reads the Spensers from start to finish, you can see how his characters grow, how the style gets better and better. Until about the last four years of his life, that is, when he just began cranking them out. I love the Spenser series despite its falling off in the last three or four. I loved the old Spenser tv series with Robert Urich. After that, I was never able to read a Spenser without seeing Urich, without seeing Avery Brooks as Hawk. I just read somewhere that Michael Brandman has written a Jesse Stone novel called Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues, due out in September. And Ace Atkins will write more Spensers. I just don’t see how anyone is going to be able to convince me I’m still reading Parker, still reading about the old reliable Spenser or Jesse Stone. We’ll see.

New Design & Old Tiger

I wanted to insert a hit counter on my blog, and in order to do so I had to change my template. I didn't really want to change it, but this one looks pretty good. So I guess I'll stick with it. I keep thinking that working on a blog should be relatively simple, but it isn't. Or maybe I'm just stupid. Amazing how much one has to learn these days to stay up with all the technological advances. The Net is fun, but oh so complicated . . . and getting more so every day.

The weekend gave me my first chance to see Tiger back on tour, and although he looked pretty rusty, especially with the putter, he looks all right. Just look at the people he was ahead of in the field at Akron. And the crowds were positive. I expected some hostility, judging by all the rednecks who live in my town, but he's been treated well by most people. We just don't have the same degree of admiration we once had. Or at least, I had. This week's PGA Championship will be his second test.

Time for another picture, not one of my cats, but one I wouldn't mind having.

Good Killers

In the Prey series by John Sandford, two of the books concern a mob hit person named Clara Rinker, Certain Prey and Mortal Prey. Rinker is an unusual character because, although she has killed well over thirty people, most of them are bad asses, people the St. Louis Mafia wanted hit for various reasons. But some of the kills are innocents, whom she kills strictly for the money. Unlike most serial killers, Clara Rinker is not a psychopath; she’s a sociopath who from her early youth was raped and beaten by first her step father and then her older brother. She’s smart, attractive, efficient . . . deadly efficient. And the reader sort of sides with her, empathizes with her. In that regard, she’s a lot like the Lawrence Block character, Keller, another paid hit man. Keller also kills a lot of people, mostly bad asses, as well as quite a few innocents. But the reader sees him as a good man despite his profession. He’s smart, efficient, sensitive, a fanatic philatelist. It’s so odd that the reader can side with him, just as with Clara Rinker. Then there’s the character Dexter Morgan, from Jeff Lindsay’s novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, later the main character in tv’s hit series (no pun intended) Dexter. Dexter is a true psychopath whose foster father convinces him to turn his killer lust into a good thing by killing only other serial killers while he works as a forensics expert for the Miami police department. It’s not as easy to see him as a positive character as it is with Rinker and Keller, but the tv show has turned him into one of the good guys even though he still lusts for the kill. What an odd trio of characters, a mix of good and evil. I can’t think of any other fictional character quite like them although I’m sure there are others out there.

Random Thoughts & Robert Crais

Oh for a book and a shady nook, / Either in door or out; / With the green leaves whispering overhead, / Or the street cries all about. / Where I may read all at my ease, / Both of the new and old; / For a jolly good book whereon to look, / Is better to me than gold. (John Wilson)

I’m not so sure now that gold has gone up another forty bucks an ounce. I love books, but gold . . . well that’s another story. I’ve considered investing in gold these last two stinky economic years, but every time, I think it’s hit its high and don’t invest. Should have done it two years ago. But then, I also should have bought some desert land in the west Valley a decade ago. Whoa! Would that have been a good investment.

It’s another hot day here in Arizona and we have a coyote out in our back hedge, sleeping in the shade. The birds all hate his presence and keep chattering at him. But not getting too close. Even the stupid doves keep their distance.

Another writer I admire is Robert Crais, especially in his Elvis Cole series. Here’s a sample: “From the parking lot, you could look down on the beach and see young men and women in wetsuits carrying short, pointy boogie boards into the surf. They would run laughing into the surf, where they would bellyflop onto their boards and paddle out past the breakwater where other surfers sat with their legs hanging down, bobbing in the water, waiting for a wave. A little swell would come, and they would paddle furiously to catch its crest. They would stand and ride the little wave into the shallows where they would turn around and paddle out to wait some more. They did it again and again, and the waves were always small, but maybe each time they paddled out they were thinking that the next wave would be the big wave, the one that would make all the effort have meaning. Most people are like that, and, like most people, the surfers probably hadn’t yet realized that the process was the payoff, not the waves. When they were paddling, they looked very much like sea lions and, every couple of years or so, a passing great white shark would get confused and a board would come back but not the surfer.” (p. 10, Voodoo River, Robert Crais)

Yeah, it’s the process that’s the payoff, not the waves. I really must remember that.

Ed McBain

I have to share with you some of the good stuff from McBain’s Matthew Hope series. All of what follows is from Jack and the Beanstalk. I hated to see McBain go, he was such a good writer. I hope you enjoy these snippets as much as I do.

Frank’s (Matthew’s lawyer partner) rules for treating a woman: 1.. Always treat a lady like a hooker. 2. Always treat a hooker like a lady. 3. Never send a lady anything perishable. 4. Never send a hooker anything durable. 5. Never try to buy a lady into bed. 6. Never try to talk a hooker into bed. 7. Always tell a lady you love her. 8. Never tell a hooker anything. 9. Never believe a lady who tells you she’s a lady. 10. Never believe anything a hooker tells you.

Frank believes that everyone’s name is either a “frère Jacque” or an “Eleanor Rigby.” For example, Jerry Travis is a frère Jacque, and Rosalie Travis is an Eleanor Rigby.

Matthew, commenting on a friend of Joanna’s named Daisy, after Daisy Buchannan from The Great Gatsby, which led him to remember, “I suddenly remember what we used to call The Great Gatsby back when I was an undergraduate at Northwestern. The Light on Daisy’s Dock. This was supposed to have sexual connotations. ‘Daisy’s dock’ referred to Daisy’s vagina. The possibility that it had a light on it was enough to send all of us pink-cheeked sophomores into gales of hysterical laughter. We also used to enjoy singing a song called ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,’ the ‘now’ being synonymous with the ‘dock’ Daisy had a light on. Oh my, we were such great wits back then."

A woman goes to see a gynecologist. The gynecologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?” The woman says, “My husband keeps complaining I have a very large vagina.” “Well, let’s take a look,” the gynecologist says. He puts her up on the table. He puts her feet in the stirrups. He takes a look. “My God, what a huge vagina!” he says. “My God, what a huge vagina!” “Well, you didn’t have to say it twice,” she says. “I didn’t!” he says.

Cooking Tips

I thought I should write down all the cooking knowledge I’ve acquired over the years, my advice to young cooks. When I think about it, it’s a pretty slim list considering how many years I’ve had to acquire it. First, hard-boiled eggs are really hard-cooked eggs. That is, it’s a misnomer to call them hard-boiled when you shouldn’t boil them at all. The trick is to put them in cold water, bring the water to a boil, and then cover them and turn them down to low for no longer than twelve minutes. Something else about eggs: scrambled eggs are much lighter and tastier if you scramble them with water instead of milk, about a teaspoon for each egg. Coring lettuce. You must buy a head of lettuce that has a nice firm light green stem end, one that sticks out from the head itself by a half inch or so. Then you slam the stem end onto the counter and pop out the stem and that which intrudes into the lettuce head. Then some water into the core, let the water drain, then stick it in a lettuce keeper for the refrigerator. Another good tip: any jars of pickles or olives or whatever that seems hard to get the lid off, just take an old-fashioned bottle opener with a sharp tip, insert it under the lid, and pry upwards until you hear the vacuum seal release. Then it opens right up. Any meal that can be prepared ahead of time and put in the oven is better than any meal that must be prepared right at the time with all dishes coordinated for the same time. In other words, all hot dishes and casseroles are the best of all. Once upon a time I would grill steaks to go with baked potatoes, salads, and some sort of veggie. Well, I always found that cooking the steaks, watching them dutifully, after all else is ready and served only made me late to the table. The steaks were almost always either undercooked because I wanted to get them done in time to go with the other stuff, or cooked just right but always way after everything else was eaten. A word about recipes: don't follow them except in a general way. You don't need something telling you exactly what ingredients you should use and how much of each. Just go by feel. Chili and beef stew is better by simply adding whatever strikes your fancy, then tasting a bit to see how it's going. What's the fun in following someone else's recipe? And it's amazing how many good things you can create beginning with a cream sauce, then putting it on baking powder biscuits--hard-cooked eggs, tuna, diced chicken or turkey or ham, ground beef or pork, even hot dogs. There, that’s it. The wit and wisdom of Chef Travis.

Crazy Stupid

If I thought Horrible Bosses was funny in a sort of slapsticky, raunchy way, Crazy, Stupid Love was twice as funny, twice as well done as Bosses. And without the raunch or the stick. The laughter was more subdued but more genuine, the plot more unexpected. I think this may be the best romantic comedy I’ve seen in at least ten years. Steve Carrell is a funny man, and in this show, he was more genuinely funny and human than in most others, more so than in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, Date Night, Dinner for Schumcks, or Despicable Me. You need to go see this movie. You’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

And this one is just too cute to pass up. I'd like to take all five of them in my arms and squeeze. Not too much, just a little.

Tiger & Debt Ceiling

Tiger is returning next week at the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, and golf fans all over the world will be watching to see if he’s the old Tiger or some new version. The tv ratings will be twice what they would have been if he hadn’t decided to show up. I can hardly wait. He’ll be rusty so I don’t look for anything like a win, but Tiger’s Tiger, and he may just do it for the eighth time at this Ohio venue. We’ll see.

The August 2nd deadline for the two political parties’ either putting up or shutting up looms. The Republicans led by John Boehner are still trying to get passed an amendment for a balanced federal budget. If they’re successful, our nation could fall into a depression as deep as or deeper than the Thirties chasm. They keep arguing that the federal budget should be the same as any family’s budget: don’t spend more than you take in. But that comparison doesn’t work. The federal government is in the business of keeping the nation afloat, and that requires spending dollars we may or may not have. We simply can’t allow such an amendment to pass. Then there are the Republicans who don’t want any tax increases, especially on the filthy rich, like those individuals and corporations making millions and billions of dollars annually. When I see what some CEO’s make each year, the numbers are so large they don’t make sense. C’mon, boys and girls, let’s not allow our nation to default on its loans. Raise the debt limit to a level that would allow our nation to keep running as it has been.

Horrible Bosses

And I thought Sandford’s Preys were full of blue language. We just saw Horrible Bosses and I thought my ears were going to fall off. It was hilarious, but oh so blue. Let’s see, there were plenty of F-bombs, and a whole bunch of MF-bombs, C1-bombs, C2-bombs, P1-bombs, P2-bombs, and quite a few bombs of various other colors and designations. I’ll leave you to figure out what they all might have been. But, as I said, it was hilarious. And of an audience of about forty, only three got up and walked out. When I first saw the title, I thought it was going to be a tribute to Rose Putz, my former boss at Stardust, but she wasn’t mentioned. The three bosses in the film were so horrible that their three employees decided there was only one way to get out from under them (and in the case of the dentist played by Jennifer Anniston, her dental assistant, played by Charlie Day, really was under her)—hire someone to kill them. So they went to the nastiest bar in town and found M-F Jones, played hilariously by Jamie Foxx, who, for $5,000, told them how to do it but wouldn’t do it for them. The rest of the plot involved their misguided attempts at murder. It was all pretty much obvious, but how they got to the obvious ending was pretty funny. And along the way, Bobby (Jason Sudeikis), when he first sees the wife of Nick’s (Jason Bateman’s) horrible boss (Kevin Spacey), says, “I’d like to bend her over a barrel and show her the fifty states.” To which, Bobby says, “What does that mean?” And the audience echoes that thought about nearly everything in the movie, “What does that mean?” But it was hilarious.

Bad News, Sad News

Oh, TNT, say it isn’t so. I just read in “Entertainment Weekly” that one of my favorite shows of all time, Men of a Certain Age, is being canceled after only two seasons, and really short seasons at that. What a shame, when so many truly stupid shows, mostly reality shows, go on and on and on. I hope some more reasonable network will pick it up and let the Men continue to age and make us laugh and cry. Here’s what TNT had to say: “TNT has been proud to be a part of Men of a Certain Age for two seasons. While the show has featured great storytelling and impeccable performances, the audience simply hasn’t built to the point where we can continue the series. This was an extremely difficult decision for us. We wish Ray Romano, Mike Royce and the terrific cast and crew of Men of a Certain Age the very best and look forward to exploring new programming possibilities in the future.” How could they have expected huge ratings when they tucked this show away on late Tuesday nights?

The F-Bomb

As I said earlier, I’m in the process of re-reading all the Prey series by John Sandford. And although I really like them, I can’t get over the number of F-bombs he uses in all its many variations. I’m not a prude, and I don’t mind reading the words, or even hearing them in movies, but it seems like it’s in overload in Sandford’s books. I keep remembering how, in my distant past, The Catcher in the Rye was banned in most high schools because of that one F-bomb near the end, when Holden sees it graffitoed on the wall at the museum. Catcher is one of the most affirmative and moral novels ever written, yet it suffered for years from the stigma of that one word. Holden wanted to be the “catcher in the rye,” the savior who would protect his little sister Phoebe and all the other Phoebes of the world from evil, as symbolized by that word. Not that the act itself is evil. Just that those who used the word back in the old days intended it as evil. Today, it seems to be just another word, neither evil nor good.

Golf Disappointments

Two golf disappointments: Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie.

Tiger recently gave Steve Williams his walking papers, and from the sounds of Steve, it was totally unexpected . . . and disloyal. If what Steve says is true, then Tiger has slipped monumentally in my regard. I once considered him one of the people I most admired, well spoken, handsome, honest (or so I thought). And then the tragic November incident and all the ugliness that followed. And now this seeming disloyalty to his friend of twelve years, Steve Williams. I, like a lot of other golf fans, will probably still root for him when and if he gets back on tour, but it will be with mixed emotions. We will no longer smile and hoot with him when he makes a long snake for birdie to win whatever tournament he’s in. We’ll watch and consider how it writes another chapter in a career that could have been, should have been, wonderful.

Then there’s Michelle Wie, who I and everyone else thought would be the female Tiger. She’s tall and beautiful, and wonderfully skilled as a golfer. But what could be going on inside that pretty little head of hers, causing her so often to pout that little pout with those pretty little lips? She seems to be missing that most important ingredient in a golf game—the five inches between the ears. She’s still young and could still live up to her potential, but I’m beginning to doubt if it will ever happen.

How disappointing, Tiger. How disappointing, Michelle.

Tree of Life & SYTYCD

We went to see Tree of Life yesterday, and I sat and carefully watched to see why it was so difficult as had been reported by reviewers and those I’d talked to about the film. My impressions are that, like the Beatles way back when, it was a film heavy on symbols and mixed meanings. I remember reading someplace in the Sixties what the Beatles had to say about one of their songs, but I can’t remember which one. Anyway, the song didn’t make much apparent sense but got everyone trying to figure it out, a little like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” but that wasn’t the song. They were smugly satisfied that they could feed the public something that made no sense but sounded like it did, an inside joke about the stupidity of their listeners. I think Tree might be somewhat the same.

The symbolism sort of overlaps, and the words whispered at various points are so hard to hear and out of context that we don’t know what’s going on. But the main sets of symbols are the trees and the water. All the shots of trees are supposed to suggest how intertwined the human race is, how complex that relationship is. The water always suggests life and fertility, and there were water scenes everywhere. Then there’s the overlapping. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) is like Job in his suffering, and a little like the Old Testament Jehovah, the angry, punishing father, and Jack, the oldest son, is a little like Cain, with the second son like Abel. Jack is a very strange little boy. Right after his brother is born, we see him sort of frowning at the baby. And in almost every scene thereafter he’s seen with that awful look on his face, even when he’s hugged by his father or punished by his father. And we hear him pray that God will kill him, and later tell his father that he’s much like him in his anger and darkness.

That twenty-minute section near the beginning was beautiful and said more about what Malick was getting at than anything else: the fiery beginning, or Genesis, followed by the oceans and the beginning of life, the dinosaurs with the raptor about to feast on the fallen creature, stepping on his neck, then deciding against it. I guess that was to show the start of life’s compassion. The cinematography was gorgeous but maybe a bit too long. And then back to the narrative plot (which kept folding back and forth between reality and symbolism, present and past). The O’Briens get the news that their 19-year-old son has been killed. We never find out how he died, but since Mrs. O’Brien gets a telegram, we assume he was killed in war, probably Viet Nam. This was the youngest son, the one who might have fulfilled his father’s dream of being a musician. The rest of the plot is a series of flashbacks to the three boys when they were still adolescents, the strictness of the father at the dinner table, the punishments involving that odd flight up the stairs to the attic, the drawing of the line between their yard and the neighbor’s, Jack’s tentative move toward evil, Satan, when he and the band of boys break out the windows of an empty house, the shooting of the frog tied to a rocket, the breaking into a house where he goes through the woman’s underwear, taking a slip and then releasing it into a stream, the planting of the tree and the growth of that tree over the years, the growing separation of the O’Briens with the father the stern disciplinarian and the mother a childlike innocent. And then there’s the aging Jack, the architect who “thinks of his brother every day” and is so dissatisfied with his life. Whoa, that’s a bunch of symbols and misty meanings behind a very simple plot. Just look at the little suggestions of symbolic meaning: the partly shaved head of one of the boys (Jack’s?), the desolate doorway Jack steps through to follow the barren landscape, the drowning of the boy in the flowing water. This last one suggests that even in the life-affirming water, God can whimsically reach out and take a life just to show his power. I think one of the best symbols of all was that minute-long view of the starlings’ flight. We used to see it in New York, and it’s so mystically fascinating to watch the shifting patterns of those thousands of birds, all flying together in moving Rorschach blots. I think Malick must have been suggesting just that: the mystery of the flight, the mystery of life and death. Even at the end you get the feeling that Mrs. O’Brien might be Mary, who “gives God her son.” And all the people with Jack at the end, all walking around in the shallow water, an affirmation of life.

Wow, does that sound like a bunch of bullshit. Anyway, there you have my impressions of Tree of Life. I think I may have to stick to flicks like Dumb and Dumber for a while.

I hate to keep beating this dead horse, but I can't help it. We're now down to the last eight dancers in So You Think You Can Dance and I have to say once again just how good a show it is. I think Melanie will win simply because she's such a good dancer, and so elegant in her moves and hand gestures and facial expressions. But the other seven are really good. This past week, the ten finalists all danced one number with an all-star from past shows, and each one thirty-second solo. Nine of the ten performances were great, with only one not up to par. Unlike American Idol, the three judges are all so informed on what they see, even this week's guest judge, Neil Patrick Harris, spoke meaningfully about each performance. The judges on Idol nearly all say the same stupid things after a performance. Their musical expertise isn't nearly as great as the dance expertise is on Dance. I can hardly wait for next week's show. I just hope Cat doesn't show up in another outfit with a too short skirt. She looks so much better, classier, in a calf- or floor-length skirt. Check out Melanie and Pasha's Viennese waltz from last week's show. Click on the bottom right to view it full-screen.

Big Water

Our trip back to South Dakota this summer brought back memories of a long ago summer when I fished from the shore for northerns and caught enough of them that I was a hooked fisherman. Hooked enough that I bought a Fish-‘N’-Float outfit in Chicago that would allow me to fish out on the big water instead of just from shore. By “big water” I mean the Oahe Reservoir, one of the bodies of water created by the dammed Missouri River. And I don’t mean “damned,” although that muddy river that gave my hometown its name, Mobridge, was often damned whenever the winter ice would break up and then the old Mo would flood the land along its banks. Or damned whenever one of our young citizens close to swim in it and go down never to be seen again. When I was a boy, I used to fish the river with throwlines from the shore, but never to swim in it, catching a wild variety of fish, most of which were inedible—carp, sturgeon, eel, suckers, shiners, something we called golden-eyed herring, catfish, bullheads. And after the river was dammed at Pierre, a hundred miles to the south of Mobridge, we had a body of water with over two thousand miles of desolate, uninhabited shoreline. I used my Fish-‘N’-Float outfit, a truck innertube inside a canvas sleeve with a seat in the middle, several times when we returned to Mobridge for summer visits, always hoping to latch onto a northern big enough to tow me around, never having such a thing happen. In fact, I never satisfied that old hunger to fish the reservoir, always assuming there would be a time to do it, never doing it. And now that I’m an old unsatisfied fisherman, I think I’d like to buy another Fish-‘N’-Float and try it again, dipping my old, fragile legs into that mysterious water, casting out and reeling in, hoping with each cast that I’d find that big old northern I’ve always dreamed about.

The Open, Some TV, and 2 Golf Jokes

For anyone crazy enough to get up in the middle of the night to watch Open golf in England, you were probably as delighted as I was when Tom Watson hit a 4-iron into a strong breeze at the par-3, 160 yard sixth hole, the ball landing on and bouncing once directly into the cup. I certainly hope he had two pairs of pants with him, because he had a most unlikely hole in one.

And on to television.

So You Think You Can Dance just keeps getting better and better, with lavish costumes for the dancers and amazing lighting effects for each performance by the couples as well as the entire company. Comparisons are invariably made to its sister reality show, American Idol, but anyone who’s seen both would agree that Idol comes off as a sorry second. SYTYCD has so much more class than Idol with judges that actually know what they’re talking about, with a format that doesn’t rely so much on viewer voting to decide who stays and who goes, with Cat Deeley instead of Ryan Seacrest, and choreographers who keep going farther and farther in their quest to create intricate and dramatic dance routines. If you’re not presently a fan, watch it just once and you’ll become one.

And I’m more convinced with each episode that Men of a Certain Age is the best show on the tube. The writers manage to keep each of three plot strands going in unpredictable directions, none of the three overshadowing the other two. Joe (Ray Romano) is now attempting to make it on the senior tour, and Romano, after many golf lessons, now actually looks like a golfer. Terry, the aging Lothario, has had success selling cars for his buddy Owen Thoreau, but he still yearns for some kind of creative success, either as an actor, or in a new role as director. And Owen has to put up with his father, the founder of Throeau Chevrolet, and they just keep losing money. This is a really unpredictable show, full of interesting characters and plot twists. As with SYTYCD, if you haven’t seen these Men, you should.

And two more golf jokes, both oldies, but still very much goodies.

1. “The Yukon Department of Environment advises golfers to take extra precautions against bears, while playing on golf courses in Whitehorse, Annie Lake, Dawson City and Watson Lake. They advise golfers to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert, but not startle, the bears unexpectedly. They also advise you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter with a bear. It is also a good idea to watch for signs of bear activity. For example, golfers should be able to recognize the difference between Black Bear and Grizzly Bear droppings on the golf course. Black Bear droppings are smaller, and contain berries and possibly squirrel fur. Grizzly Bear droppings have bells in them, and smell like pepper spray.”

2. Joe was trudging off the course after what was his worst round in years and years. He’d hit three balls out of bounds, had four penalty strokes in one pond or the other, and had so many 3-putts he couldn’t even count them. He passed a dumpster at the back of the clubhouse, took each club out of his bag one at a time, broke each across his knee and deposited the pieces in the dumpster, then followed with the bag. He went in the locker room and sat wearily on the bench by his locker. He found an old single-edge razorblade on the shelf and slashed each wrist. At that very moment, Charlie came through the door, saw Joe and shouted, “Hey, Joe, I’m getting up a group to play tomorrow. You interested?” Joe stood up with wrists crossed tightly and shouted, “What time?”

The Open & 2 Jokes

I think it should be Royal St. Gorges, and I don’t mean “gorgeous.” They can say all they want, rave all they want, about links courses, but I find them just plain plain, and Royal St. George's is about as ugly as they come. So much of the scoring seems to depend too much on luck, a good luck bounce here, a bad luck bounce there, a warm dry tee time or a drippy cold tee time. I guess I’d rather watch four hours of major golf played in the U. S. than twelve hours of Open golf that comes on at 1:00 a.m. And I want some American to step up to take Tiger’s place in the order of things. Nah, I want Tiger to get back.

How about a long golf joke?

The Hitman

One morning, a man approached the first tee, only to find another guy approaching from the other side. They began talking and decided to play 9 holes together.

After teeing off, they sat off down the fairway, continuing their chat.

"What do you do?" the first man asked.

"I'm a salesman. What about you?"

"I'm a hitman for the mob," replied the second man.

The hitman noticed that the 1st guy started getting a little nervous and continued. "Yeah. I'm the highest paid guy in the business. I'm the best." He stopped, sat down his bag of clubs, and pulled out a fancy, high powered rifle that was loaded with all types of scopes and sights. He than asked the man where he lived.

Still nervous the man replied, "In a subdivision just west of here."

The hitman placed the gun against his shoulder, faced west, peered into a scope and asked, "What color roof ya' got?"

"Gray."

Then he asked "What color siding?"

"Yellow."

"You got a silver Toyota?"

"Yeah," replied the first man who was now completely amazed by the accuracy of the hitman's equipment. "That's my wife's car."

"That your red pickup next to it?"

Looking baffled the man asked if he could look through the scope.

Looking through the sights, he said "Hell. That's my buddy Jeff's truck. What the hell is he doing there if I'm..?"

The hitman looked through the scope once more. "Your wife a blond?"

"Yeah."

"Your buddy got black hair?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, I don't know how to tell you, but I think you've got a problem. They're going at it like a couple of teenagers in there." said the hitman.

"Problem??! THEY'VE got the problem! I want you to shoot both of them! Right now!"

The hitman paused and said, "Sure. But it'll cost you. Like I said, I'm the best. I get paid $5,000 per shot."

"I don't care! Just do it! I want you to shoot her right in the head, then shoot him right in the groin!"

The hitman agreed, turned, and took firing position. He carefully stared into the sights, taking careful aim. He then said, "You know what buddy. This is your lucky day. I think I can save you $5,000!"

Now, how about a short golf joke:? Why do golfers always carry two pairs of trousers with them? Just in case they had a hole in one.

Larry Crowne & Teeth

Quick movie review: Larry Crowne with Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks rated only a C+ for Entertainment Weekly, and our local reviewer for The Arizona Republic thought it worth only 2½ out of 5 stars, saying it “has its moments but it doesn’t earn its laughs—or its dramas. A disappointment.” Hmm? How can any movie starring Julia and Tom be a disappointment? The laughs were muted but honest and didn’t need to depend on sexual innuendo or vulgar language or toilet jokes or farting, barfing, or diarrhea, as do too many of today’s blockbusters, like Hangover I and II, The Little Fockers, and Bridesmaids (although Bridesmaids had other very funny moments aside from the dress shop scene). When I go to see a romantic comedy, I don’t need high drama or hilarity. I want an honest romance that makes me feel good, as in Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Notting Hill, or Pretty Woman. And Larry Crowne, although not quite in the league of those just mentioned, still delivers.

And for those of you who knew about my impending teeth extractions and were concerned for me, don’t be. It was a . . . piecea cake. Well, okay, more like a chocolate shake. I was more worried about it than I should have been. I mean, five teeth. All at once. Three were broken crowns and were down close to the gum line and two were in between the broken crowns and needed to go to accommodate a partial plate for upper left and right around my front teeth. I went in, got three or four shots of Novocain, opened my mouth, and push pull crash bang—five minutes later the surgeon was done. He said he’d put in some dissolvable stitches but everything was fine. I said, “What?! You mean you’re done?” He put in my temporary partial plate and some gauze and said goodbye. And $1200 later I was out of there. And yes, a huge DQ chocolate shake because I’d been such a good boy.

Home Again

The old home town looked beautiful, with the low hills across what used to be the Missouri River greener than they’ve ever been. And the water of the Oahe Reservoir, the result of one of the dams on what used to be the Missouri River, brimming up to a level never seen before. Beautiful. One of the female visitors for the Fourth, someone who had never before been to Mobridge, took 192 photos of the hills and water. She just couldn’t get over how lovely the area was.

Mobridge no longer was the dusty little town we grew up in. You really can’t go home again because that home no longer exists. Nearly all the houses and yards in my memory were now so much less grand, so much smaller. So many of them not even there anymore. Rosalie and I would drive around town, remembering what families lived where, remembering adventures and misadventures in our youths, probably embellishing those memories with details that never really happened. The memory is a fickle animal, painting some scenes more vividly than they deserve, leaving long stretches of time completely blank.

Our week in the old home town was interesting although not particularly fun. Just too many reunions, too many social obligations. And several of the interesting things involved my learning more of life’s little lessons. My mechanical aptitude measures about ten on a scale from one to a hundred. Locks. On our first day in our motel, we left and I punched in the little button on the door knob, then turned it just as I had always done with simple locks like that. When we returned, nothing I did would open the door. Off to the manager, who came and finally had to kick the door open. He told me I had only to push the button in, not turn it. Okay. I wonder how many others had locked themselves out as I had. The next day, we drove down to the water to see how it was doing. Parked the Chevy rental, got out, closed the door, heard the little beep and flash of headlights. Yikes! Sure enough, the car had locked itself. And, sure enough, I had left our only set of keys in the car. How was I to know, owner of a stupid car of 2001 vintage, that cars were now so smugly smart that they could lock themselves, especially when they encountered drivers stupid enough to leave the keys in the car? After many searches for someone who could jimmy the lock, we were again in the car, never again to make the same mistake. Damn smug Chevy. And after my ranting and raving against cell phones, I recanted and bought a Samsung cheapie for our trip. My grand niece Claire gave me instructions on its operation, much more complicated than I’d anticipated. But neither she nor the instruction manual (way too complicated) told me I had to have the phone turned on to receive any calls. How was I to know? If the silly thing could change the time to whatever time zone you were in, how could it not also turn itself on when a call came in? I guess I’m just too stupid to keep up with a technology that advances at light speed. Every communications device now on the market is obsolete as soon as it comes out.

It was good to return to our known world, to our two cats, to the heat and humidity of the Valley of the Sun. Maybe in five years we'll make the trip down memory lane again, providing we still have our memories. A card I bought says it well: "The positive side to memory loss . . . you meet new people everyday!"

You Can't Go Home Again. Or Can You?

We're getting ready for our flight to South Dakota tomorrow, suitcase on the bed waiting to be filled. But Squeakie thought she'd fill it first. I went in the bedroom and there she was, in the suitcase, sitting there almost pleading with us to take her along. Well, much as we'd like to, we can't leave Dusty alone. Besides, she'd probably never make it through the pre-boarding patdown.

We're both feeling ambivalent about this year's trip--excited to see people we haven't seen for a while, people we may never see again, and nervous about how hectic it will be, seeing all those people. Three different sets of reunion activities--my sixtieth, Rosalie's fifty-fifth, and the Pooley family reunion (all the nieces and nephews on the Zimmer/Pooley side of the family). It will, I'm sure, be another week of getting there and then wishing the days away until we can come home again. Way too much small talk, way too many obligatory meals at one restaurant or club or another, too many nights sleeping on an unfamiliar mattress with an unfamiliar pillow. I'd take my own pillow with me but the airline would probably charge me an extra hundred bucks.

How about a few Mobridge, S.D. photos?

Mobridge High School, where Rosalie and I spent so many enjoyable years. It was torn down this year to make way for a new one. All those memories now in the dumpster.

The old Travis house at 100 7th St. East, on the north side of the city park. I lived there from 1946 until I moved out to marry Rosalie in 1960.

Ah, yes, the West End Tavern as depicted at the Klein Museum. How many hours and how many dollars did I spend there? But I and a lot of other Mobridge males got our sex education there. Now it's gone forever, shut down finally by a group of Mobridge do-gooders.

The Mobridge Country Club, where I first learned the game of golf, a nasty little sand green course now converted to grass greens. Now that brother Dick is gone, I won't mind never playing there again.

One of the Oscar Howe murals that adorn the walls of the auditorium where I played my high school basketball games. This one depicts the agony of the Sioux Sun Dance, the one I used for the cover of my Mobridge novel, Match Play.

And finally, a shot of a Fourth parade, a parade I've seen too many times, almost always the same, small floats with children and adults tossing candy to the kids along the way, horses depositing steaming piles on the asphalt to the dismay of the viewers.

Who says you can't go home again? Thomas Wolfe, that's who. But he must have been wrong. Wasn't he?

Songs

I pulled out my notes on songs never quite completed, bits and pieces of clever ideas (at least I think so) that I never got around to finishing. So I finished two of them.

Down from the Mountain

Down from the mountain, / Into the shade, / Life is a fountain, / Death is a blade.

A blade can kill you / Or fill you with rage, / Just climbing the mountain / Won’t make you a sage.

A sage will sit wisely / And bask in the sun, / He knows that his journey / Doesn’t ask him to run.

He’ll saunter up slowly / Till he gets to the crest, / Where he’ll pause and gaze inward, / Then decide what is best.

Then come down from the mountain, / Into the shade, / Life is a fountain, / Death is a blade.

Love at Second Sight

Intro. It’s said that love is better / The second time around, / But sometimes second sightings / Are a lot more sound— / I know form personal experience / And here is what I found.

When I first saw you / I didn’t think much about you. / Then I saw you again / And I knew right then / I couldn’t live life without you.

It was love at second sight, / You and I were right— / How could I fight it? / I couldn’t just write it off. / Love at second sight, / Love at second sight, / It was so right for me.

When I first kissed you, / We just couldn’t get it together. / Then I kissed you again / And I knew right then / I wanted to kiss you forever.

It was love at second sight, / You and I were right— / How could I fight it? / I couldn’t just write it off. / Love at second sight, / Love at second sight, / It was so right for me.

And here are a few of the bits, still incomplete. Anyone out there who might like to give me a hand (or a line or two)?

I like the give and take of living / But there’s a whole lot / More taking than giving. / I like the bump and rub of loving / But there’s too little rubbing / And too much shoving.

I don’t love you anymore / But I sure as hell / Don’t love you any less.

The harder you hang onto love / The more it always seems to slip away

Somewhere I have never loved you, somewhere, / Somehow I have never known your touch.

We must be the most unlikely lovers

Woe to man is woman

Scudder & Two Jokes

Another snippet from Lawrence Block. I’m still not sure what it is about the writing that so impresses me. I mean, it’s not really Block’s voice we hear; it’s Matt Scudder’s. And the style of those words is so characteristic of Scudder, so unadorned, so alcoholic dark. I thought I’d learned all there was to learn about AA from the other books in the series, but this one is really loaded (no pun intended), the plot hinging on Step 9 of the Twelve Steps, the step where one makes amends to all who have ever been harmed by the one making the Step 9 list. But back to the style, listen to what Matt has to say about one of the choices an alcoholic has to make.

"Armstrong’s. When I first got sober I couldn’t see why I couldn’t go there anymore. Whether or not you were drinking, it was a good place to sit, a good place to eat, a good place to meet prospective clients. I heard it said at meetings that one way to avoid a slip was to stay out of slippery places, but on the other hand I kept running into bartenders who’d held on to their jobs after they sobered up. It is, after all, the drink that gets you drunk, not the place where they sell the awful stuff." (p. 138, A Drop of the Hard Stuff)

I can't seem to leave it alone. It's like an itch that won't stop reminding you it's there. Another snippet: "The super at Jack's rooming house was named Ferdie Pardo. Short for Ferdinand, I suppose. He wore a dark blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a pack of Kools in his shirt pocket and a pencil behind his ear, and he looked like a man who didn't expect the day to turn out well." (p. 248, A Drop of the Hard Stuff)

And while I’m at it, why not two jokes, one from Hard Stuff and one from Sandford’s Winter Prey.

Mailman brings the mail to this one house and the wife invites him in, gives him a fresh-baked brownie and a cup of coffee. Next thing he knows she’s taking him upstairs to the bedroom. Afterwards she hands him a dollar. And he says, “Hey, what’s this?” “It’s for you,” she says. “It was my husband’s idea.” “Your husband’s Idea?” “Yeah,” she says. “I asked him what should we do for the mailman for Christmas, and he said, Fuck him, give him a dollar. The brownie and coffee were my idea.” (pp. 204-05, A Drop of the Hard Stuff)

Guy walks into a bar, he’s got a head the size of a baseball, says, “Gimme a beer.” The bartender shoves a glass of Bud across the bar and says, “Listen, pal, it’s none of my business, but a big guy like you—how’d you get a little teeny head like that?” The guy says, “Well, I was down in Jamaica, walking on the beach, when I see this bottle. I pull the top off, and holy shit, a genie pops out. I mean, she was gorgeous. She had a body that wouldn’t quit, great ass, tits the size of watermelons. And she says I can have a wish. So I said, ‘Well look, you know, what I'd wish for, is to make love to you.’ And the genie says, ‘Sorry, that’s one thing I’m not allowed to do.’ So then I say, ‘Okay, how about a little head?’ ” (p. 160, Winter Prey)

Herman Golf

I found this old “Herman” that I’d tucked away in one of my books, and it seems to be perfect for my current predicament, the damnable game of golf. I may not cut my clubs into small pieces, but I may put them all out at a garage sale. People (yes, you, Anne) keep telling me that even though I can no longer play as well as I used to, I still play better than nearly all who take up the game. Bah! My present scores wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all I'd ever done, play to a fifteen or sixteen handicap. Then I wouldn’t now be so dissatisfied with the scores I keep making round after round. But in the past, I could always look forward to a round of golf because there was always the possibility of something magical, like a really low score, or a bunch of birdies, or the occasional eagle. Well, that sort of magic is gone and can never return. So, here's to Herman and his hacksaw.

Sport Coat Heaven

I was certainly never a clothes horse, but as I was reading A Drop of the Hard Stuff, Matt talks about the first really good suit he bought when he first made detective, a two-button, single-breasted medium blue suit for which he paid three times more than he normally spent. And that started me thinking about some of the suits and sport coats I’d owned through the years.

I had a suit when I was in high school. I guess everybody did. We wore them on special occasions, like to the prom, or to weddings or funerals. But then, I never went to any weddings or funerals until after I graduated, so it must have been the two or three proms I went to. It was a brownish double-breasted beast and I never felt comfortable wearing it. As I recall, the only tie I ever wore with it was a wide thing displaying a large South Dakota pheasant. Dashing.

After I got out of the army and went to New York to join my buddy Chuck Cavallero, I bought a charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers jacket for $100. You have to understand, that hundred bucks in 1955 would be equivalent to about a thousand today. Why in the world did I feel the need for a BB sport coat? Must have been to impress all the New York women I never met. I wonder what ever happened to it. Must have gone to the sport coat heaven in the sky.

Sometime after I began teaching, I bought a tan jacket from Perron’s Toggery (a toggery in Mobridge—isn’t that an odd bit of pretentiousness?) for $50. With leather elbow patches. And I wore it almost exclusively for the first decade of my teaching career. And then it too went to the SC heaven.

In 1958 or ‘59, Bill Pilgrim gave me a jacket he no longer wanted, a heavy, black-and-white plaid with black leather elbow patches. It was too heavy to wear in school, and I can’t remember ever wearing it anywhere. It must have hung in my closet for years before I passed it off to some poor devil by way of Goodwill.

And during my teaching years in New York, I bought two jackets from Sears, one blue and one maroon. I alternated them daily until the time came when I no longer felt it necessary to wear a jacket and tie to school. I kept both of them until well after I retired, and then they hung in my closet until I no longer had a need to wear them. I mean, when in retirement in Sun City West would I ever have occasion to don a sport coat? Never. They too went to Goodwill a few years ago. And my last purchase was a dark gray pinstripe from Sears that I needed when Lyle Zimmer, Rosalie’s brother, asked me to be his best man at his late-life marriage to Merriel McMacken six years ago. It’s still there in my closet, waiting for the time when it may join me in a crematorium. I’m not sure if a body is dressed up to be cremated. Probably not. So, it too will probably eventually make it to Goodwill.

And that’s it, an entire lifetime of suits and sport coats in a non-clothes horse life.

Matt Scudder

I’ve written about John Sandford and what I think makes him such a great writer. Now I’m reading the last book by Lawrence Block, the last in the Matt Scudder series, called A Drop of the Hard Stuff. He hasn’t written a Scudder in quite a few years, so I was looking forward to seeing how Matt was doing. He’s doing just fine. Same old Matt, aging year by year in real time, plodding along as he’s always done. But in this one, he’s telling his old friend Mick Ballou about a childhood friend of his. So it’s a flashback to a time after Matt has left the police force, after he’s finally gotten off the booze and the endless AA meetings he attended. I’ve read the entire series twice because I found Matt and the other characters so interesting. And now I’m trying to understand what makes Block such a unique writer. The style is purely Matt Scudder, nothing fancy, each word simple and straightforward, each scene described in black and white, with booze always at its center. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to learn about AA and its precepts. But that’s an important part of the series and the style. Matt Scudder is a dark character, much like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, and his style of detecting is dark and plodding, and sometimes violent, especially when he enlists the help of Mick Ballou, who owns a bar and is on the left side of the law. In this one, he tells Mick about meeting Jack Ellery, years after they were in grade school together in the Bronx, each of them going separate ways, Matt into the police, Jack into two-bit burglary and liquor store holdups. But they meet at an AA meeting, with Jack apparently now off the booze and wanting to set his life right. But then he’s killed by someone who shot him in the mouth and between the eyes. And Matt simply has to track the killer down.

Now a semi-long excerpt to give you a taste of this style so difficult to pin down:

So he stayed sober in prison. Then they let him out and he came home to New York and got a room in an SRO hotel a couple of blocks from Penn Station, and by the third night he was drinking blended whiskey around the corner in a place called the Terminal Lounge.

“So called because of its location,” he said, “but the name would have fit the place even if it had been in the middle of Jackson Heights. Fucking joint was the end of the line.”

Except of course it wasn’t. The line ran its zigzag course for another couple of years, during which time he stayed out of trouble with the law but couldn’t stay out of the bars. He’d go to meetings and begin to put a little time together, and then he’d have one of those oh-what-the-hell moments, and the next thing he knew he was in a bar, or taking a long pull on a bottle. He hit a few detoxes, and his blackouts started lasting longer, and he knew what the future held and didn’t see how he could avoid it.

If you’ve never read this series by Lawrence Block, now seventeen books stretching over thirty-five years, you should give him a try. He’s well worth the read.

Rory's Roar & Sandford

Well, I and other faitful golf fans watched Rory's coronation after his record-breaking performance in this year's U.S. Open. How nice to have someone new to cheer for, to watch to see just how far this young phenom can take it. I still want Tiger to return to form, but now, when and if he comes back, he'll have a legitimate opponent to contend with. Good for him, good for Rory, good for golf.

Back to Sandford for a bit. I’m buzzing through the first in the series, now into Winter Prey, the fifth, and man, is it ever winter in Wisconsin. If you ever want to relive a truly cold night (I don’t know why anyone would want to), then read the first two chapters of Winter Prey and you’ll feel and hear and smell what it’s like when the temperature drops to thirty below. It’s cold enough to kill.

In this one, Lucas first meets Dr. Weather Karkinnen, the woman he would later marry. He’s been called in by the local sheriff, who doesn’t feel adequate to investigate a triple homicide in Grant, a small town in northern Wisconsin. He knew about Lucas’s reputation, knew that Lucas was living in a lakeside cabin not for from the site of the murders, and asked for his help, deputizing him to keep it all legal. It’s hard to explain Sandford’s style, why I think it’s so good. It’s definitely not a literary style. If you’re looking for that in a hard-boiled thriller, you’d have to look into James Lee Burke, who, despite the violence of most of his Dave Robicheaux novels, is as close to Faulkner as any living writer. With Sandford, it’s the authenticity of the dialogue and his attention to sensory detail that makes him so good. For example, “The wind whistled down the frozen run of Shasta Creek, between the blacker-than-black walls of pine. The thin naked swamp alders and slight new birches bent before it. Needle-point ice crystals rode it, like sandpaper grit, carving arabesque whorls in the drifting snow.” Not great, maybe, but very good. Many readers might object to the frequency of the F-bombs, but that’s the way people in a tough trade talk. For example, Gene Climpt, the sheriff’s investigator, is describing to Lucas one of the men they’re going to interrogate: “If that son-of-a-bitch’s heart caught on fire,” Climpt said, “I wouldn’t piss down his throat to put it out.” Again, maybe not great, but unusually good. If you’ve never read Sandford, give him a try. His plots are intricate and surprising, his characters spot-on three dimensional.

Twins Entwined

Another Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting here, fidgeting as I wait for Rory McIlroy to tee off in the U.S. Open. I want to be a spectator to golfing history. I want to see him win by a new record number. I want another Tiger. He seems like such a really nice person. I need another Tiger but one I can appreciate without the sexual baggage that Tiger gave us. Come on, Rory.

A few years ago (Wow, I guess "a few" is really fifteen) when I was teaching creative writing in a nearby junior college, I wrote this story to illustrate the omniscient point of view, loading it with every old omniscient device I could think of. And it came out better than I'd planned. What do you think?

A Tale of Twins Entwined

Once upon a time in a village far far away in a land equally far, there lived a lovely young lady named Maleeva, or Mal to her enemies.

The land was known as Bountiful, the village, Punkydale. However, as our tale begins, the land was anything but bountiful, for a terrible spell had been placed on it and now nothing would grow—no corn nor peas nor beans, no potatoes, no wheat, no barley, no hops (no beer!), no apples nor oranges nor kumquats (but then, who needs kumquats? for that matter, who knows what a kumquat is?). The only thing that grew was the people’s hunger . . . and Maleeva’s sour disposition. You see, Maleeva, though fair of face and form, was foul of feeling, a fearsome fowl of a female. She was lovely outside but inside she was vile, a veritable vial of vile venom.

One day shortly after the spell had been placed, a young man strolled into Bountiful from the adjoining land named William (the land, not the lad, for the lad’s name was Beneeva, or Ben to his friends). You, Dear Reader, have probably noticed the similarities in the names of our two young people, the lad named Beneeva and the lass named Maleeva, or Ben and Mal. The two were outwardly similar, very similar, for they were brother and sister, twins, as a matter of fact. They had been separated at birth through no fault of their parents. The midwife, a wicked woman named Wanda, had taken the girl child and lied to the mother, saying there was only one child born. Wanda took the girl child because of the baby’s outward beauty (a beauty which grew inwardly ugly because of Wanda’s wicked ways) and left behind the boy child because of his outward ugliness (an ugliness which changed to handsomeness as the boy grew up and his grotesque nose diminished).

The two grew to young adulthood unaware of sister, brother, twin, and fate brought them together in this time of unbountiful famine.

It was afternoon when young Ben entered Punkydale. He approached the lovely Maleeva, who was sitting on her front stoop frowning at the ground. He removed his cap and was just about to speak when Maleeva, with a howl of triumph, pounced on a big fat beetle and promptly popped it in her mouth.

“Uhh,” Ben began, “uhh, wasn’t that a beetle you just popped in, chewed up and swallowed?”

“Well, of course it was, you idiot!” she snarled, wiping with the back of her hand a black beetle leg from the corner of her mouth. “Did you think it was a Big Mac or, or, or . . . even a Whopper?” she asked, her eyes going dreamy at the thought of such epicurean delights, such gastronomical pleasures.

“Uhh, I’m not certain,” he replied uncertainly. “What is a Big Mac? What is a Whopper?” Beneeva, you see, was hardly a man of the world and didn’t know a Big Mac from a Whopper, or an epicure from a gastronome. “You idiot!” she screamed, thinking she’d never before seen as silly a young man as this one. “It was a Big Bug I chewed up and swallowed and it was delicious. Who are you and what do you want?” Then she smiled craftily and rubbed her hands together as she realized what this foolish young man might mean to her. “Do you, perchance, have anything to eat? I mean, other than beetles?”

Ben swept his arm and cap to the side and bowed to this fiery female, just as his mother had taught him to do. “My name is Beneeva, but my friends call me, Ben. I have no food, sweet lady, but I would be honored to find you some. Prithee, tell me, oh fair one, what you are called.”

“I am Maleeva, but my enemies call me, Mal. Prithee, tell me, Ben, why are you here if you have no food? There are only so many beetles and I am not one to share.”

“I’ve come to Bountiful to find my fortune. Can you tell me, Mal, of any opportunities for a willing and able young lad seeking his fortune?”

Mal grinned, her eyes little slits of satisfaction. “Why, yes,” she purred. “A handsome young man such as yourself could do handsomely by going up the mountain and slaying the nasty gnomish magician who lives in that distant castle.” The magical gnome she referred to, a gnome named Norman, was the very gnome who had placed the spell of famine on Bountiful. Norman wanted no one not a gnome to live in that land, and since the residents of Bountiful were all tall, handsome folk, nary a gnome among them, Norman would soon be the only gnome left standing.

“And all I need do is go up the mountain and slay a small nasty gnome? And I will have made my fortune? Is there a fortune to be found up there?” He had more questions but he couldn’t think how to phrase them.

Mal kept bobbing her head with head-bobbing answers to Ben’s questions. “That’s it” she answered. “Anyone, even a gnome, who could afford to live in a castle such as the one on that high mountain, must surely have a fortune lying about, and it would have to be a fortune he came by unfairly, illegally, so it would be yours quite fairly, legally, to grab.”

Ben swept his hat from his head and bowed to the lady fair and took his leave, hurrying up the mountain to find his fortune.

Meanwhile, up the mountain, Norman was just getting up from his evening meal, a feast of such gargantuan proportions that his gnomish little body was swollen, his little face red and dripping with the labor of his feasting, his belly a balloon. He wobbled and waddled over to the open window and climbed heavily up onto a small stool to see how his spell was going down in Punkydale. He stood there with chin resting on the sill, his stomach pressed painfully into the stony wall. He was surprised to see a young man struggling up the trail to the wall surrounding Norman’s castle.

“I wonder what he’s up to coming here,” Norman wondered. “Up to nothing good, I’d wager. I certainly hope he isn’t thinking of doing anything drastic about the spell I placed on Bountiful.” Norman decided he should, just to be on the safe side, get his magic wand and turn this young man into a toad or a fly or a wart on a boar’s behind. But when he turned to step down from the stool, he toppled onto his stomach and no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t right himself, his belly just too round and bulbous for his feet to find the floor.

Minutes later, Ben came through the large entrance door and looked down at Norman there on the floor, his little legs and arms futilely flailing the air. Norman peeked over his shoulder and gave Ben his most pathetic look, intending it to appeal to the lad’s good nature. Then Norman glanced at the table where he’d left his wand near the remains of his dinner. He saw the young man’s eyes follow his and Norman knew the mistake he’d made.

“Ah hah!” Ben cried in triumph. “And what do we have here?” He rushed to the table, took the wand and waved it overhead. Then, without really knowing what he was about, he began a strange chant: “Hicka, hacka, hoaka, hum—this gnome is gone with a flick of my thumb.” Ben flicked his thumb and sure enough, Norman disappeared in a little round puff of smoke.

And the evil spell on Bountiful went with him to wherever Norman had gone. Actually, he was transported to an island many many leagues from Bountiful, the island of Punypoo, where all the natives were even shorter than Norman, and Norman couldn’t have been happier, even without his magic wand to aid him.

Ben came down the mountain with the magic wand. There was Mal, about to pop another beetle in her mouth. He pointed the wand at her and, with a voice and words not his own, conjured: “Meely, mally, mimbledy, mole—remove the beetles from this girl’s soul.” Mal’s mouth opened in astonishment. Her eyes grew round and large as kumquats (which aren’t really very large). With four hiccups, three coughs, two gurgles, and one giggle, she bent forward at the waist and from her mouth out poured a stream of beetles. It was a most disgusting sight. To me, to you, that is, but not to Ben, who, like Professor Higgins, could find nothing foul in his fair lady. When the beetle stream diminished and then dribbled to a conclusion, Mal straightened, her face now radiant with her newly cleansed soul. She was now magically as lovely inside as out.

And all would have ended happily ever after if, at the very moment that Ben and Mal were rushing into each other’s arms, the wicked midwife Wanda had not rushed round a corner and skidded to a halt, putting a halt to the rushing couple and the happy ending.

“Desist, you idiots!” she shouted with upraised arms. “Don’t you realize what I now realize, now that I’ve seen this lad who is the very image of Maleeva, and her spitting image at that?”

The couple, not yet arm in arm, looked at each other in wonder, then turned to Wanda and said with one voice, “No. We don’t realize what you now realize. What don’t we realize?”

“You two are brother and sister, twins to be precise, two sides of one coin.” Shocked silence. Ben and Mal looked at each other, then back at wicked Wanda, disbelief plain in their twinned expressions.

“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Wanda went on. “I wickedly stole Maleeva away from your mother just after she was born and I raised her as my own, raised her to be as wicked as I, and I now regret both the stealing and the raising. But you must not make matters worse by falling in love. A brotherly/sisterly hug and a peck on the cheek is one thing, but incest will never do, not even in a fairy tale.”

Ben and Mal believed her. So Ben again raised the wand and waved it over their heads, his and his sister’s, the sister who would have been his wife and lover in another time, another place . . . another story.

“Blinka, Blonka, Beetle-de-bun—make the two of us into one,” he chanted. In an instant they blended, coalesced like smoke, the two now joined at more than hip, male and female together in one harmonious whole, the very “marriage of true minds” to which Shakespeare would not “admit impediments.”

And he—she—they, or with a brand new pronoun for this equal rights occasion, “hesh” lived happily ever after.

The moral? In matters of money, two million is always much better than one. But when it comes to twins in love, one will always be better than two.

Boners & Weiners & Writing

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. We have two congressmen who are stuck with unfortunate surnames, John Boehner, Republican Speaker of the House, and Anthony Weiner, Democratic congressman from New York. Weiner is now, and will always be, known for tweeting a photo of his “weiner” to a female college student. As he now says, what a stupid thing to do. But think about what may have been his and John Boehner’s crosses to bear when they were boys and young men: John would have been unhappily called Boner, and Anthony called Weiner, just as it’s pronounced. No wonder he was compelled to send out photos of his penis. I also wonder when John will do the same.

In our present age of texting and tweeting, what will happen to writing for writing’s sake? I guess it will still be in the hands of our professional writers. But how sad for our young people who think a 140-character tweet or the uninspired shorthand of a text is the end all of clever conversation. David McCullough has this to say: “The loss of people writing—writing a composition, a letter or a report—is not just the loss for the record. It’s the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t [writing]. And that’s a handicap. People [I research] were writing letters every day. That was calisthenics for the brain.”

More on Sandford and his writing in the Prey series. “They were ten minutes off the expressway, in a neighborhood of tired yards. The postwar frame houses were crumbling from age, poor quality, and neglect: roofs were missing shingles, eaves showed patches of dry rot. In the dim illumination of the streetlights, they could see kids’ bikes dumped unceremoniously on the weedy lawns. The cars parked in the streets were exhausted hulks. Oil stains marked the driveways like Rorschachs of failure.” (p. 219, Shadow Prey) Nice, huh?

SYTYCD

I’ve raved about So You Think You Can Dance before, but here it is again. Last Thursday they announced the top twenty, with those chosen to dance in groups of two to five. And the performances were spectacular. We’ve watched all seven previous seasons, and so far, this season looks like it will outperform all that came before. If you’re not a fan of this show, you should be. We can’t figure out how the dancers can learn as many new routines as they do and still not make any mistakes in their performances. There may be tiny mistakes, but none but the judges and choreographers would pick them up. You can view last Thursday’s routines by going to So You Think You Can Dance and clicking on “Clips.” And here’s one from last season’s show just to give you a taste of what you’ve been missing.

Rangé Golf Balls

I have so little to write about that I'm resorting to this video about the great game of golf, especially about the kind of balls we should be playing with. Thanks, Larry.

Backyard Critters

Another Sunday. And it’s simply gorgeous—calm as a glassy pond, temps rising to the mid-nineties, cloudless skies. We’re so lucky to be living here. The only negative to life in Arizona is the annual threat of fires up north. Right now we have one covering well over a hundred thousand acres with 0% containment. Nature’s broom, sweeping away old stuff to allow new stuff to grow. Regrettably, some humans get in the way, but Nature doesn’t distinguish between tree and man.

I’ve noticed lately that Fred Lizard is back. Well, maybe he never left and I just haven’t seen him. Last evening, we watched him scuttling across the yard, pausing for a few pushups before he finally made it to his home in one of the oleander bushes. He was much bigger than I remembered, almost a foot from tip of tail to nose. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Fred Lizard was one of my characters from Life in the Arbor, the one who dreamed of being a fire-breathing dragon.

And while I’m talking about backyard critters, we now have a pesky woodpecker who found that pounding out his challenges on our metal downspout wasn’t as effective as drilling away on our Direct TV satellite dish. And he loves to do it right around 5:00 in the morning. Nobody I’ve asked knows why woodpeckers do that. Is it a challenge to male rivals or is it a call to area females saying, “Look at me, I’m sooo handsome?”

Sandford's Prey Series

I’m rereading the Prey series by John Sandford, and I don’t think I ever read the first one, Rules of Prey. But then, I may have just forgotten, having begun the series when it first came out over twenty years ago, and my mind and memory aren’t what they used to be. You know, the old joke about having a library of three books, reading them and rereading them over and over, chuckling every time over a humorous section, shivering every time over a scary section, each chuckle and scare a brand new sensation. Sandford mentions in the introduction to Rules that when he wrote this first one about Lucas Davenport he thought it would be a stand-alone novel. But then he began writing more of them, all Preys, all with Davenport. He’s now up to twenty-three, the last one called Buried Prey, in which he flashes back to when Lucas was a beat cop working his way up to detective. I have a lot of favorite writers and series—Harry Bosch by Connelly, Travis McGee by MacDonald, Spenser by Parker, Elvis Cole by Crais, the 87th Precinct by McBain, Mathew Hope by McBain, Matt Scudder by Block, Dave Robicheaux by James Lee Burke, Jack Reacher by Child, Alex Delaware by Kellerman, and Thorn by James W. Hall—but I’m beginning to think that Lucas Davenport and the Prey series may be my most favorite. The character is so believable and the writing is so first-rate. And Davenport ages in real time, unlike some of the other characters, like Spenser or Travis McGee or Steve Carella or Alex Delaware, all of whom span almost thirty years and yet haven’t aged a bit.

Back to the Prey series and Rules of Prey. Lucas is assigned the maddog case, a serial killer who targets women, carefully stalks them, then subdues them, rapes them, and stabs them to death. But he’s no maddog. He’s methodical and very intelligent, and he makes it a point of following various rules he’s made up, then leaving that rule with the body to confound the police. A good plot device, excellent characters. When I say that Sandford’s novels are well written, I mean it in a technical, commercial sense, not in a literary sense. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald were great literary stylists, and although they all met with commercial success, their styles weren’t dictated by commerce. For example, Sandford writes of Lucas: “He ate lunch at a McDonald’s on University Avenue, sharing it with a junkie who nodded and nodded and finally fell asleep in his French fries. Lucas left him slumped over the table. The pimple-faced teenager behind the counter watched the bum with the half-hung eyes of a sixteen-year-old who had already seen everything and was willing to leave it alone.” That’s not great but it’s certainly very good. James Lee Burke is the only other who comes close to a style that might be considered literary. More on this when I stumble onto other passages that illustrate my point.