Sunday, June 3, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Some exciting e-book news!
I'm tickled to death to report that I've just inked a contract with The Mysterious Press that means all eight of my Hoagy and Lulu novels (including my Edgar winner, "The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald") will FINALLY be available as E-Books. And under the incredibly prestigious MysteriousPress.com imprint, no less! I'm going to be in some pretty incredible company. Onward into the digital age!!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
I'm Launching a New Mystery Series!
I'm absolutely thrilled to report that I'm launching a new series with my current editor, the wondrous Toni Plummer of Minotaur Books. The novel is called RUNAWAY MAN and it's tentatively scheduled for publication in the spring of 2013. Fear not, Mitch and Des fans. This will be in addition to my Berger-Mitry series. Mitch and Des aren't going anywhere. I'm simply branching out with a brand new hero.
His name is Benji Golden and I'm totally into him. I hope you will be, too. Benji lives and works in New York City. He's 25 but looks younger. He's exactly one-quarter inch shy of five feet six, weighs a buck thirty-seven and is exceedingly baby faced. But he's plenty feisty. He has to be. He's a licensed private investigator who works out of a not-so elegant office on the corner of West 103rd St. and Broadway that he shares with two ex-strippers, one of whom is his mom. Long story. Hell, it's a whole book. Let me just say this much: Benji's dad was a celebrity hero cop who taught Benji most of what he knows. The rest is pure talent. Benji is a specialist who happens to be very, very good at what he does. In fact, he's the best there is in all of New York City. You'll just have to take my word for that until you get a chance to read RUNAWAY MAN for yourself.
Like I said, it's slated for publication in the spring of 2013. The next Berger-Mitry, THE SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS COOKIE, is still on schedule to come out in the fall of 2012. I'm working away on it as we speak. And please don't forget about the THE BLOOD RED INDIAN SUMMER, which will be out in just a few short weeks.
This is all good news. Feel free to let loose with a loud woo-hoo! I know I am. Could not be happier.
His name is Benji Golden and I'm totally into him. I hope you will be, too. Benji lives and works in New York City. He's 25 but looks younger. He's exactly one-quarter inch shy of five feet six, weighs a buck thirty-seven and is exceedingly baby faced. But he's plenty feisty. He has to be. He's a licensed private investigator who works out of a not-so elegant office on the corner of West 103rd St. and Broadway that he shares with two ex-strippers, one of whom is his mom. Long story. Hell, it's a whole book. Let me just say this much: Benji's dad was a celebrity hero cop who taught Benji most of what he knows. The rest is pure talent. Benji is a specialist who happens to be very, very good at what he does. In fact, he's the best there is in all of New York City. You'll just have to take my word for that until you get a chance to read RUNAWAY MAN for yourself.
Like I said, it's slated for publication in the spring of 2013. The next Berger-Mitry, THE SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS COOKIE, is still on schedule to come out in the fall of 2012. I'm working away on it as we speak. And please don't forget about the THE BLOOD RED INDIAN SUMMER, which will be out in just a few short weeks.
This is all good news. Feel free to let loose with a loud woo-hoo! I know I am. Could not be happier.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
It's Not Easy To Be a Manly Man
Have you ever wondered what happens to a manly mystery writer when he discovers he has a deer tick stuck firmly to his butt and his girlfriend is going to be away in New York City for the next three days? Funny you should ask.
It's now peak deer tick season here in Old Lyme -- which, as you may know, happens to be ground zero for Lyme Disease. Paradise has its price, sad to say. If you spend any time outside, gardening or hiking or whatever, you're bound to find one or more of the nasty little buggers has taken hold somewhere on your body and has to be removed with a pair of tweezers. The odds are in your favor. Only a small percentage of the ticks carry the Lyme virus. And the tick has to be on you for at least 24 hours. But you want that tick off of you. Now. Period.
Which brings me to my dilemma of the other night. I was drying off after my shower when I found one in, well, one of those hard to reach places. Twenty years ago I would have called it my extreme upper rear thigh. Now I would have to say it qualifies as my butt. It's a gray area. A gray, fleshy area. Ordinarily, I would have asked Diana to take it out for me. We've done this rather intimate favor for each other many times. In fact, in Old Lyme it's what passes for foreplay. Unfortunately, Diana was in the City and wasn't going to be back until long after those critical first 24 hours had passed.
So it was up to me to remove it myself -- even if I couldn't exactly reach it or see it. Not a problem. Men are taught from an early age to be totally self-sufficient. If you have to rely on anyone else for anything -- anything -- then you're not a man. This is why guys don't like to ask for directions when we get lost. I got out the rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball. Doused the tick. Hiked my foot onto the edge of the bathroom sink. Lined the little bugger up in my sights courtesy of a pocket mirror, grabbed hold with the tweezers and...it broke off. Half of it came away. The other half stayed in.
This is bad. This is very bad. The only thing worse than leaving a tick in, is leaving the remnants of a tick in. Then the bite can become infected.
Still, I was positive I could deal with it myself. I just needed a better, closer look, that's all. I took the tweezers, pocket mirror and a magnifying glass over to the bed and curled up on my back with my legs up in the air. In yoga we call this snail pose. And, yes, I did close the curtains next to the bed. By carefully positioning the mirror and the magnifying glass just so, I was able to see the remaining tick bits quite well. Now all I had to do was coax them out with the tweezers. The problem was that this delicate operation required three hands and I only have two. I did ask Freddie to hold the magnifying glass in his mouth for me but, well, Freddie doesn't do the Timmy's In Trouble thing. Freddie's a cat.
And I'm a guy. And it's at times like these that it's not easy to be a guy. A woman? A woman would have no problem asking one of her woman friends or neighbors to remove the tick for her. And they would have no problem complying. But women are different from men. Women try on each other's shoes. Women share their food. Guys don't do those things. They especially don't ask another guy for help that in any way, shape or form hints at intimacy.
I mean, hell, I can still remember one of the first dirty jokes I ever heard in my life. I heard this the first time I went away to summer camp. Two guys are off in the woods on a camping trip and one of them is asleep in his sleeping bag when he gets bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of his pecker. "Oh, my God!" he cries out. "I've been bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of my pecker! What do I do?" "Not to worry," his friend says. "I'll run to the ranger station three miles away and ask him what to do." So the friend runs to the ranger station and bursts in the door, gasping, and says, "Sir, my friend has been bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of his pecker! What do I do?" And the ranger says, "Here's what you do. You take this here razor blade with you. You slash an X in the tip of his pecker with the blade, then you get down on your hands and knees and you suck out every bit of that venom yourself. It's the only chance your friend has." So the friend takes the razor blade, thanks the ranger and rushes back to the camp site. "What did the ranger say?" the snakebite victim wants to know. And the friend replies, "He said you're going to die."
Translation: I couldn't ask any of my male friends or neighbors for help. I couldn't phone up George, Bill, Milt, Dave or anyone else and say, "I have a tick in my butt! Will you take it out for me?" Flummoxed, I called Diana in New York and said, "I have a tick in my butt! What do I do!" She was very calm about it, considering that by now it was three o'clock in the morning and I'd woken her from a sound sleep. She considered my dilemma for about thirty seconds and said, "Call Gail in the morning. She'll take care of it."
Our neighbor Gail. Of course. Gail is a registered nurse. Gail is a licensed massage therapist. Gail has seen a million butts, including mine. I contacted Gail first thing in the morning. She was totally unfazed by my somewhat unusual request. Told me to come right over. I did. Ordered me to stretch out on my stomach. I did. "Well, you certainly did a number on yourself, didn't you?" she murmured sweetly as she effortlessly removed the remaining tick bits. "It was kind of hard to reach," I explained. "You should have just called me," she said. "Why didn't you call me?"
I tried to explain it to her but, well, I couldn't. Because guys aren't supposed to explain themselves. That's another guy thing.
I tell you, sometimes it's not easy to be a manly man.
It's now peak deer tick season here in Old Lyme -- which, as you may know, happens to be ground zero for Lyme Disease. Paradise has its price, sad to say. If you spend any time outside, gardening or hiking or whatever, you're bound to find one or more of the nasty little buggers has taken hold somewhere on your body and has to be removed with a pair of tweezers. The odds are in your favor. Only a small percentage of the ticks carry the Lyme virus. And the tick has to be on you for at least 24 hours. But you want that tick off of you. Now. Period.
Which brings me to my dilemma of the other night. I was drying off after my shower when I found one in, well, one of those hard to reach places. Twenty years ago I would have called it my extreme upper rear thigh. Now I would have to say it qualifies as my butt. It's a gray area. A gray, fleshy area. Ordinarily, I would have asked Diana to take it out for me. We've done this rather intimate favor for each other many times. In fact, in Old Lyme it's what passes for foreplay. Unfortunately, Diana was in the City and wasn't going to be back until long after those critical first 24 hours had passed.
So it was up to me to remove it myself -- even if I couldn't exactly reach it or see it. Not a problem. Men are taught from an early age to be totally self-sufficient. If you have to rely on anyone else for anything -- anything -- then you're not a man. This is why guys don't like to ask for directions when we get lost. I got out the rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball. Doused the tick. Hiked my foot onto the edge of the bathroom sink. Lined the little bugger up in my sights courtesy of a pocket mirror, grabbed hold with the tweezers and...it broke off. Half of it came away. The other half stayed in.
This is bad. This is very bad. The only thing worse than leaving a tick in, is leaving the remnants of a tick in. Then the bite can become infected.
Still, I was positive I could deal with it myself. I just needed a better, closer look, that's all. I took the tweezers, pocket mirror and a magnifying glass over to the bed and curled up on my back with my legs up in the air. In yoga we call this snail pose. And, yes, I did close the curtains next to the bed. By carefully positioning the mirror and the magnifying glass just so, I was able to see the remaining tick bits quite well. Now all I had to do was coax them out with the tweezers. The problem was that this delicate operation required three hands and I only have two. I did ask Freddie to hold the magnifying glass in his mouth for me but, well, Freddie doesn't do the Timmy's In Trouble thing. Freddie's a cat.
And I'm a guy. And it's at times like these that it's not easy to be a guy. A woman? A woman would have no problem asking one of her woman friends or neighbors to remove the tick for her. And they would have no problem complying. But women are different from men. Women try on each other's shoes. Women share their food. Guys don't do those things. They especially don't ask another guy for help that in any way, shape or form hints at intimacy.
I mean, hell, I can still remember one of the first dirty jokes I ever heard in my life. I heard this the first time I went away to summer camp. Two guys are off in the woods on a camping trip and one of them is asleep in his sleeping bag when he gets bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of his pecker. "Oh, my God!" he cries out. "I've been bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of my pecker! What do I do?" "Not to worry," his friend says. "I'll run to the ranger station three miles away and ask him what to do." So the friend runs to the ranger station and bursts in the door, gasping, and says, "Sir, my friend has been bit by a rattlesnake on the tip of his pecker! What do I do?" And the ranger says, "Here's what you do. You take this here razor blade with you. You slash an X in the tip of his pecker with the blade, then you get down on your hands and knees and you suck out every bit of that venom yourself. It's the only chance your friend has." So the friend takes the razor blade, thanks the ranger and rushes back to the camp site. "What did the ranger say?" the snakebite victim wants to know. And the friend replies, "He said you're going to die."
Translation: I couldn't ask any of my male friends or neighbors for help. I couldn't phone up George, Bill, Milt, Dave or anyone else and say, "I have a tick in my butt! Will you take it out for me?" Flummoxed, I called Diana in New York and said, "I have a tick in my butt! What do I do!" She was very calm about it, considering that by now it was three o'clock in the morning and I'd woken her from a sound sleep. She considered my dilemma for about thirty seconds and said, "Call Gail in the morning. She'll take care of it."
Our neighbor Gail. Of course. Gail is a registered nurse. Gail is a licensed massage therapist. Gail has seen a million butts, including mine. I contacted Gail first thing in the morning. She was totally unfazed by my somewhat unusual request. Told me to come right over. I did. Ordered me to stretch out on my stomach. I did. "Well, you certainly did a number on yourself, didn't you?" she murmured sweetly as she effortlessly removed the remaining tick bits. "It was kind of hard to reach," I explained. "You should have just called me," she said. "Why didn't you call me?"
I tried to explain it to her but, well, I couldn't. Because guys aren't supposed to explain themselves. That's another guy thing.
I tell you, sometimes it's not easy to be a manly man.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Edgar, Freddie and Me
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Still A Thing of Beauty
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Killer Hot Fudge Sauce
I dream about food constantly.
At least two nights a month I dream about an incredibly messy, incredibly amazing chili cheeseburger that I ate ten years ago at the All Star Cafe in Pittsboro, North Carolina. They served it Carolina style, which means it was topped with cole slaw. And it came with a basket of fresh, hot onion rings -- the better to mop up all of the chili, melted cheese and cole slaw that spilled out. I also dream a lot about the mouth-watering pancetta and caramelized onion pizza that they make at a place on East 20th Street called Pizza Fresca. Diana and I like to go there.
Mostly I dream about chocolate. And not just while I'm asleep. Chocolate occupies my mind day and night. It's my greatest passion in life. I'm really not a complicated person at all. If my mind isn't occupied with figuring out how to murder someone, then the chances are very good that I'm thinking about chocolate. If I'm sitting in the dentist's chair I'm wondering why it is they have mint-flavored toothpaste but not chocolate. Or dental floss. Wouldn't you floss more often if they made chocolate floss? I would. If I'm sipping my late morning herbal tea I'm thinking how much better it would taste with one of Maida Heatter's chocolate peanut cookies, and how I ought to bake a batch.
But nothing occupies my thoughts quite like my yearning for the hot fudge sauce that I give to friends and loved ones every year for Christmas. Diana and I have jarred up two batches so far this season and are about to make a third today. It is absolutely killer. The best. Once you've tasted it you'll never go back. It's great on ice cream, of course. And we find it to be the height of sin on Diana's warm, fresh-baked bread. In the spirit of the season I've decided to share the recipe, which comes from the March 1997 issue of Saveur magazine. The late, great journalist R.W. Apple uncovered it in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at a restaurant called Rostoff. He thought it was the best he'd ever tasted and I don't disagree. It's not that hard to make. All you need is a stainless steel double boiler and a bit of patience. Chocolate does NOT like to be rushed.
Here's what you'll need:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
7 tablespoons sweet butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of kosher salt
Break up the chocolate into pieces. Melt the chocolate and all of the other ingredients (except for the vanilla and salt) together in the top of your double boiler over water that's at a LOW simmer. Like I said, don't rush this. Chocolate will seize up if it gets too hot. It'll take a few minutes for everything to melt. Use a wooden spoon to stir it together. When it becomes nice and smooth keep stirring it with your wooden spoon for an additional five minutes. Remove it from the heat and stir in the vanilla and the pinch of salt. Then pig out.
It'll keep for a couple of weeks in a jar in the refrigerator, not that it'll ever last that long. You can re-heat it in a microwave or by placing the jar in a saucepan of simmering water.
Enjoy. And, hey, happy holidays.
At least two nights a month I dream about an incredibly messy, incredibly amazing chili cheeseburger that I ate ten years ago at the All Star Cafe in Pittsboro, North Carolina. They served it Carolina style, which means it was topped with cole slaw. And it came with a basket of fresh, hot onion rings -- the better to mop up all of the chili, melted cheese and cole slaw that spilled out. I also dream a lot about the mouth-watering pancetta and caramelized onion pizza that they make at a place on East 20th Street called Pizza Fresca. Diana and I like to go there.
Mostly I dream about chocolate. And not just while I'm asleep. Chocolate occupies my mind day and night. It's my greatest passion in life. I'm really not a complicated person at all. If my mind isn't occupied with figuring out how to murder someone, then the chances are very good that I'm thinking about chocolate. If I'm sitting in the dentist's chair I'm wondering why it is they have mint-flavored toothpaste but not chocolate. Or dental floss. Wouldn't you floss more often if they made chocolate floss? I would. If I'm sipping my late morning herbal tea I'm thinking how much better it would taste with one of Maida Heatter's chocolate peanut cookies, and how I ought to bake a batch.
But nothing occupies my thoughts quite like my yearning for the hot fudge sauce that I give to friends and loved ones every year for Christmas. Diana and I have jarred up two batches so far this season and are about to make a third today. It is absolutely killer. The best. Once you've tasted it you'll never go back. It's great on ice cream, of course. And we find it to be the height of sin on Diana's warm, fresh-baked bread. In the spirit of the season I've decided to share the recipe, which comes from the March 1997 issue of Saveur magazine. The late, great journalist R.W. Apple uncovered it in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at a restaurant called Rostoff. He thought it was the best he'd ever tasted and I don't disagree. It's not that hard to make. All you need is a stainless steel double boiler and a bit of patience. Chocolate does NOT like to be rushed.
Here's what you'll need:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
7 tablespoons sweet butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of kosher salt
Break up the chocolate into pieces. Melt the chocolate and all of the other ingredients (except for the vanilla and salt) together in the top of your double boiler over water that's at a LOW simmer. Like I said, don't rush this. Chocolate will seize up if it gets too hot. It'll take a few minutes for everything to melt. Use a wooden spoon to stir it together. When it becomes nice and smooth keep stirring it with your wooden spoon for an additional five minutes. Remove it from the heat and stir in the vanilla and the pinch of salt. Then pig out.
It'll keep for a couple of weeks in a jar in the refrigerator, not that it'll ever last that long. You can re-heat it in a microwave or by placing the jar in a saucepan of simmering water.
Enjoy. And, hey, happy holidays.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Who I'm Listening To
My bud Rick Koster of the New London Day stopped by the other day to chat with me about "The Shimmering Blond Sister." After we got done with our weighty talk about the role of crime fiction in modern American society Rick, who has spent a healthy portion of his life playing in rock and roll bands, put aside his notepad, sat back on the sofa and asked me the same question he always asks when we get together:
"Who are you listening to these days?"
And so I told him. I'm listening to Sam and Dave. And Otis Redding. There's just something about the energy of the Stax sounds that gets me going no matter how shitty a day I'm having. I'm listening to "The Road to Escondido," an Eric Clapton-J.J. Cale collaboration from a couple of years ago that I keep coming back to again and again. I'm listening to, well, I'm listening to pretty much the same gnarly old white guys whom I've always listened to: Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. Also a lot of my same dead guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duane Allman and Jeff Healey. In fact, I find I'm listening to the same bands I used to listen to in high school and college. The Grateful Dead. The Rolling Stones. The Beatles. Traffic. Cream. To my ears, most of their music sounds so fresh and alive that it could have been recorded last week.
Rick nodded sagely and said, "So you don't listen to anybody new?"
Not so, dude, I said defensively. I like a lot of new people. I like Green Day and The Dave Matthews Band. I love Eddie Vedder. I was just about to say I love U2, too, when Rick broke into hysterical laughter. We both did. Because, of course, those are contemporary performers but they're not new. Not even close. They've been around for, what, 20 years?
Which got me to thinking long and hard about my taste in rock and roll. Up until a few years ago I used to feel I had to keep up with everything new that was coming out. If a college freshman was listening to it then I wanted to be there. Hell, I even tried listening to rap music, which I finally realized I just plain didn't like. I was terribly bothered by this realization. Positive that it meant I'd become paleo, uncool, old. I was ashamed to admit that I still enjoyed listening to music that had been recorded more than 40 years ago.
You want to know something? That''s not where I am anymore. I've moved on. I've decided that from now on I'm going to put rock and roll in the same cultural category as movies and jazz. I happily enjoy watching old Cary Grant screwball comedies and Robert Mitchum noir thrillers. I can never get enough of Bogart. I can watch a Preston Sturges farce any time, day or night. Does it bother me that a lot of my favorite movies are 60, 70, even 80 years old? Not at all. I don't care when a movie was made. A good movie is a good movie, period. I happily listen to Miles Davis and John Coltrane all of the time. I've never stop listening to "Kind of Blue." Every time I hear it I swear it's as if I've never heard it before. Does the fact that it was recorded more than 50 years ago somehow invalidate it? Of course not. So why should I feel guilty because I still like to listen to Hendrix and the Dead? The answer is I don't. Good music is good music and it doesn't matter when the hell it came out. I refuse to feel guilty anymore when I find myself getting down with an old Buffalo Springfield album.
I don't know what any of this means. I don't know if I've just achieved a new level of inner rock and roll peace or if I've simply reached a state of self-justifying old fartdom. But here's the good part: I don't care. I'm cool with it.
"Who are you listening to these days?"
And so I told him. I'm listening to Sam and Dave. And Otis Redding. There's just something about the energy of the Stax sounds that gets me going no matter how shitty a day I'm having. I'm listening to "The Road to Escondido," an Eric Clapton-J.J. Cale collaboration from a couple of years ago that I keep coming back to again and again. I'm listening to, well, I'm listening to pretty much the same gnarly old white guys whom I've always listened to: Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. Also a lot of my same dead guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duane Allman and Jeff Healey. In fact, I find I'm listening to the same bands I used to listen to in high school and college. The Grateful Dead. The Rolling Stones. The Beatles. Traffic. Cream. To my ears, most of their music sounds so fresh and alive that it could have been recorded last week.
Rick nodded sagely and said, "So you don't listen to anybody new?"
Not so, dude, I said defensively. I like a lot of new people. I like Green Day and The Dave Matthews Band. I love Eddie Vedder. I was just about to say I love U2, too, when Rick broke into hysterical laughter. We both did. Because, of course, those are contemporary performers but they're not new. Not even close. They've been around for, what, 20 years?
Which got me to thinking long and hard about my taste in rock and roll. Up until a few years ago I used to feel I had to keep up with everything new that was coming out. If a college freshman was listening to it then I wanted to be there. Hell, I even tried listening to rap music, which I finally realized I just plain didn't like. I was terribly bothered by this realization. Positive that it meant I'd become paleo, uncool, old. I was ashamed to admit that I still enjoyed listening to music that had been recorded more than 40 years ago.
You want to know something? That''s not where I am anymore. I've moved on. I've decided that from now on I'm going to put rock and roll in the same cultural category as movies and jazz. I happily enjoy watching old Cary Grant screwball comedies and Robert Mitchum noir thrillers. I can never get enough of Bogart. I can watch a Preston Sturges farce any time, day or night. Does it bother me that a lot of my favorite movies are 60, 70, even 80 years old? Not at all. I don't care when a movie was made. A good movie is a good movie, period. I happily listen to Miles Davis and John Coltrane all of the time. I've never stop listening to "Kind of Blue." Every time I hear it I swear it's as if I've never heard it before. Does the fact that it was recorded more than 50 years ago somehow invalidate it? Of course not. So why should I feel guilty because I still like to listen to Hendrix and the Dead? The answer is I don't. Good music is good music and it doesn't matter when the hell it came out. I refuse to feel guilty anymore when I find myself getting down with an old Buffalo Springfield album.
I don't know what any of this means. I don't know if I've just achieved a new level of inner rock and roll peace or if I've simply reached a state of self-justifying old fartdom. But here's the good part: I don't care. I'm cool with it.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
What I'm Reading
People are always asking me what's on my night stand. They're not referring to the tin of Bag Balm that's parked next to my Big Ben alarm clock. Or to the stray shirt buttons, ball point pens or note pads that are scattered there. Or to Freddie's brush, Freddie's toenail pruners or to Freddie himself, who at this very moment is perched on the night stand glaring out the bedroom window at the skinny black cat who's had the nerve to wander into our herb garden.
They want to know what I'm reading. I happen to be a restless reader. I often have a stack of four or five books that I'm reading at once on my night stand. I'm also a major league re-reader. I'm someone who comes back to my favorite authors again and again -- especially when I'm in the middle of writing a book of my own. If I'm lost in a jungle of my own invention all day long with no trail, no map and only a dull pocket knife to hack through the dense undergrowth with, then I like to curl up in bed at night with someone who I know I can count on. My favorites are like a form of comfort food to me.
Here's what is on my night stand this very morning:
On top is the latest Alan Furst novel, Spies of the Balkans. Alan Furst is my favorite contemporary writer and whenever I start one of his books I can't put it down so I usually save it for a long holiday weekend. If you aren't familiar with him he writes noirish, murky, incredibly good spy novels that are set in Europe in the early days of World War II. My favorite is Red Gold, which I've read four times. I'm halfway through the new one and so far it's great.
Underneath the Alan Furst is The Black Ice Score, which is one of the Parker novels that Donald Westlake wrote under the name Richard Stark. I probably re-read the entire Parker series from start to finish every three years or so. They're lean, stripped-down criminal caper novels starring the most ruthless, asocial, unsentimental son of a bitch you'll ever meet. The first Parker, The Hunter, was made into the Lee Marvin movie Point Blank. I find them incredibly addictive. I'm also a fan of Westlake's lighter spirited Dortmunder caper novels, but I don't come back to them nearly as often as the Parkers.
Let's see, under The Black Ice Score is The Seersucker Whipsaw, by the great Ross Thomas, who also wrote under the name Oliver Bleeck. Like Don Westlake, Ross is one of the writers whom I started reading when I was college. To this day he remains one of my favorites. He was witty, sly, cynical, nimble and a great plotter. He could do it all -- hard-boiled detective novels, international spy novels, caper novels, Washington novels, you name it. He did it with seemingly effortless grace. He was also one of the nicest guys I've ever met. The Seersucker Whipsaw is a typical Ross tale about warring factions of greedy Western capitalists and spooks who are all trying to rig the same African election.
Beneath the The Seersucker Whipsaw is an old 1960 John D. MacDonald paperback original called Slam the Big Door, which is a tight little crime novel about a messed up journalist who goes down to a small town in Florida to visit a well-off friend only to discover that the well-off friend is in even worse trouble than he is. I'm a huge MacDonald fan. I almost always reach for one of his more famous Travis McGee novels as soon as the weather turns cold here in Connecticut. But as the years have gone by I've come to love his huge output of non-McGees even more. There's no recurring, larger than life hero in any of them. Just average people trying to get out of the messes they've made of their lives. You can almost always find one of his paperbacks on my night stand.
Anchoring the bottom of the stack is Assembly, which is one of the dozen or so short story collections by John O'Hara that I return to when I'm not in the mood to read a novel. I love short stories and for me John O'Hara is the greatest short story writer of the 20th century. His fabulous career took him from a small town newspaper in Western Pennsylvania to Broadway and to Hollywood. He wrote hundreds of short stories along the way. My favorite story of his, The Man With The Broken Arm, is found in Assembly. I've probably read it a half-dozen times. O'Hara was a famously unpleasant person to be around but he understood human nature better than just but any writer I've ever read.
And now, if you'll excuse me, time's a wasting. I want to finish reading that Alan Furst novel before this weekend slips away.
They want to know what I'm reading. I happen to be a restless reader. I often have a stack of four or five books that I'm reading at once on my night stand. I'm also a major league re-reader. I'm someone who comes back to my favorite authors again and again -- especially when I'm in the middle of writing a book of my own. If I'm lost in a jungle of my own invention all day long with no trail, no map and only a dull pocket knife to hack through the dense undergrowth with, then I like to curl up in bed at night with someone who I know I can count on. My favorites are like a form of comfort food to me.
Here's what is on my night stand this very morning:
On top is the latest Alan Furst novel, Spies of the Balkans. Alan Furst is my favorite contemporary writer and whenever I start one of his books I can't put it down so I usually save it for a long holiday weekend. If you aren't familiar with him he writes noirish, murky, incredibly good spy novels that are set in Europe in the early days of World War II. My favorite is Red Gold, which I've read four times. I'm halfway through the new one and so far it's great.
Underneath the Alan Furst is The Black Ice Score, which is one of the Parker novels that Donald Westlake wrote under the name Richard Stark. I probably re-read the entire Parker series from start to finish every three years or so. They're lean, stripped-down criminal caper novels starring the most ruthless, asocial, unsentimental son of a bitch you'll ever meet. The first Parker, The Hunter, was made into the Lee Marvin movie Point Blank. I find them incredibly addictive. I'm also a fan of Westlake's lighter spirited Dortmunder caper novels, but I don't come back to them nearly as often as the Parkers.
Let's see, under The Black Ice Score is The Seersucker Whipsaw, by the great Ross Thomas, who also wrote under the name Oliver Bleeck. Like Don Westlake, Ross is one of the writers whom I started reading when I was college. To this day he remains one of my favorites. He was witty, sly, cynical, nimble and a great plotter. He could do it all -- hard-boiled detective novels, international spy novels, caper novels, Washington novels, you name it. He did it with seemingly effortless grace. He was also one of the nicest guys I've ever met. The Seersucker Whipsaw is a typical Ross tale about warring factions of greedy Western capitalists and spooks who are all trying to rig the same African election.
Beneath the The Seersucker Whipsaw is an old 1960 John D. MacDonald paperback original called Slam the Big Door, which is a tight little crime novel about a messed up journalist who goes down to a small town in Florida to visit a well-off friend only to discover that the well-off friend is in even worse trouble than he is. I'm a huge MacDonald fan. I almost always reach for one of his more famous Travis McGee novels as soon as the weather turns cold here in Connecticut. But as the years have gone by I've come to love his huge output of non-McGees even more. There's no recurring, larger than life hero in any of them. Just average people trying to get out of the messes they've made of their lives. You can almost always find one of his paperbacks on my night stand.
Anchoring the bottom of the stack is Assembly, which is one of the dozen or so short story collections by John O'Hara that I return to when I'm not in the mood to read a novel. I love short stories and for me John O'Hara is the greatest short story writer of the 20th century. His fabulous career took him from a small town newspaper in Western Pennsylvania to Broadway and to Hollywood. He wrote hundreds of short stories along the way. My favorite story of his, The Man With The Broken Arm, is found in Assembly. I've probably read it a half-dozen times. O'Hara was a famously unpleasant person to be around but he understood human nature better than just but any writer I've ever read.
And now, if you'll excuse me, time's a wasting. I want to finish reading that Alan Furst novel before this weekend slips away.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The Mind Of A Mystery Writer, Part Deux
I participated in a panel discussion on crime writing the other day as part of an all-day program called Literary Life in the Lymes that was held at Old Lyme Town Hall. Believe me, this was quite some impressive event they put together. There were panels crammed with local poets, children's authors, illustrators and non-fiction writers. There was even cake. Really good cake. Honestly? I had no idea there were so many talented people living in this area. My panel featured top-notch crime writers like Jim Benn and Eugenia West.
Anyway, when our moderator threw things open for audience questions a very nice lady looked in my direction and asked how I manage to write such intricate murder plots.
To which I replied, "Excuse me, are you talking to me?"
She was talking to me. "Do you already know who committed the crime before you actually start writing the book?" she went on. "Do you start with the ending and then write your way back to the beginning? Or do you have no idea who the killer is as you go along? How do you do it?"
How do I do it? Wow, how do any of us do it? Really good question. If you ask a hundred mystery writers how they do it you'll get a hundred different answers. Trust me on this. I know a hundred mystery writers. And we all go about our business differently.
Some writers like to outline the entire mystery in great detail, scene by scene, before they ever start writing it. They want to know in advance exactly who did what, why, when and how. I don't do that. For me, outlining a book in advance eliminates the joy of discovery, which is half of the fun of writing (the other half is finishing). Outlining also reminds me way too much of my years in television, where you're often required to break a story down, scene by scene, before you're allowed to go to script.
Some writers are strict adherents of Sturgeon's Law, a philosophy attributed to the great fantasist Theodore Sturgeon that goes something like this: The reader can never know where the story is going if the writer himself does not know. In other words, they have zero idea ahead of time who the killer is. They're uncovering who did what as they go along, much as the reader is. I don't do that either. For me, it just doesn't work.
How do I do it? Here's how: Before I ever set out to write a mystery I need to be able to grasp in the palm of my hand what the story really, truly is going to be about. Which means I want to know who did the killing and, more importantly, why they did it. I can usually sum it up in a single sentence: The sister killed her brother so she wouldn't have to share the inheritance with him. Once I know that then I can start having some real fun.
For me, writing the first draft of a book is a lot like taking a cross-country car trip. It's a journey. I know that I'm starting out in here Connecticut. I know that my destination is, let's say, Los Angeles (see above re: sister killing her brother so she won't have to share inheritance). What I don't know is which roads I'm going to take or where I'm going to stop along the way or who I'm going to meet or what sorts of strange, interesting things are going to happen to me. I have no itinerary. I don't want one. I want to be surprised. That's the whole point of making the journey. I'm excited when I wake up in the morning because I don't have any idea where I'm going to end up that day. I just get behind the wheel and start driving. Sometimes I get lost. Sometimes I stumble onto wonderful people and places that become the highlight of the novel. The only thing I know is that I will eventually arrive in Los Angeles.
It usually takes me about six or eight giddy, dizzying weeks to get there. When I have what's before me on my desk is a very sketchy draft of the book. It isn't until I write my second draft that I strap on my tool belt and really begin to construct the book. That's when I focus on the mannerisms and speech patterns of the characters who I've met along the way. Describe the places I've been to in detail. Do the research I need to do. And so on. I usually produce about 25 pages of second draft a week. Then I spend a couple of months cutting and polishing. That's when my pacing and style come to the forefront. I pay little attention to my voice early on. I'm just trying to have fun on my way to Los Angeles.
That's how I do it. And it's how I've been doing it since I first started writing mysteries 25 years freaking ago. You want to hear something insane? I thought I was going to write one mystery and then move to something completely different. But, like I said, I have no itinerary. I want to be surprised. And I almost always am.
Anyway, when our moderator threw things open for audience questions a very nice lady looked in my direction and asked how I manage to write such intricate murder plots.
To which I replied, "Excuse me, are you talking to me?"
She was talking to me. "Do you already know who committed the crime before you actually start writing the book?" she went on. "Do you start with the ending and then write your way back to the beginning? Or do you have no idea who the killer is as you go along? How do you do it?"
How do I do it? Wow, how do any of us do it? Really good question. If you ask a hundred mystery writers how they do it you'll get a hundred different answers. Trust me on this. I know a hundred mystery writers. And we all go about our business differently.
Some writers like to outline the entire mystery in great detail, scene by scene, before they ever start writing it. They want to know in advance exactly who did what, why, when and how. I don't do that. For me, outlining a book in advance eliminates the joy of discovery, which is half of the fun of writing (the other half is finishing). Outlining also reminds me way too much of my years in television, where you're often required to break a story down, scene by scene, before you're allowed to go to script.
Some writers are strict adherents of Sturgeon's Law, a philosophy attributed to the great fantasist Theodore Sturgeon that goes something like this: The reader can never know where the story is going if the writer himself does not know. In other words, they have zero idea ahead of time who the killer is. They're uncovering who did what as they go along, much as the reader is. I don't do that either. For me, it just doesn't work.
How do I do it? Here's how: Before I ever set out to write a mystery I need to be able to grasp in the palm of my hand what the story really, truly is going to be about. Which means I want to know who did the killing and, more importantly, why they did it. I can usually sum it up in a single sentence: The sister killed her brother so she wouldn't have to share the inheritance with him. Once I know that then I can start having some real fun.
For me, writing the first draft of a book is a lot like taking a cross-country car trip. It's a journey. I know that I'm starting out in here Connecticut. I know that my destination is, let's say, Los Angeles (see above re: sister killing her brother so she won't have to share inheritance). What I don't know is which roads I'm going to take or where I'm going to stop along the way or who I'm going to meet or what sorts of strange, interesting things are going to happen to me. I have no itinerary. I don't want one. I want to be surprised. That's the whole point of making the journey. I'm excited when I wake up in the morning because I don't have any idea where I'm going to end up that day. I just get behind the wheel and start driving. Sometimes I get lost. Sometimes I stumble onto wonderful people and places that become the highlight of the novel. The only thing I know is that I will eventually arrive in Los Angeles.
It usually takes me about six or eight giddy, dizzying weeks to get there. When I have what's before me on my desk is a very sketchy draft of the book. It isn't until I write my second draft that I strap on my tool belt and really begin to construct the book. That's when I focus on the mannerisms and speech patterns of the characters who I've met along the way. Describe the places I've been to in detail. Do the research I need to do. And so on. I usually produce about 25 pages of second draft a week. Then I spend a couple of months cutting and polishing. That's when my pacing and style come to the forefront. I pay little attention to my voice early on. I'm just trying to have fun on my way to Los Angeles.
That's how I do it. And it's how I've been doing it since I first started writing mysteries 25 years freaking ago. You want to hear something insane? I thought I was going to write one mystery and then move to something completely different. But, like I said, I have no itinerary. I want to be surprised. And I almost always am.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Joy of Raking Leaves
There's no denying the truth of what's going on outside of my office window. There are more leaves down on the ground now than there are up on the trees. Heaps more. It's time to get out there and start raking them. A lot of people whom I know groan at the prospect of having to take care of their leaves. They consider it an onerous chore. Some of them even pay other people to do it for them.
Not me. I look forward to it.
I love to rake leaves. I love romping in them. I love the smell of them. I love holding them in my hands. I'm an absolute nut when it comes to dead leaves. They're one of the reasons why I moved to New England from Los Angeles (with a twelve-year layover in New York City). Truly, nothing makes me happier than being outside on a crisp, sunny fall afternoon with a rake in my hands.
Mind you, my approach to the job is different from that of a lot of other people. For starters, I'm not disposing of them. I'm gathering them. Diana has a vast complex of wire compost bins out back where I deposit them. Today's leaves will be next year's nutritious mulch for our planting beds.
Plus I'm not a perfectionist when it comes clearing my property of fallen leaves. Anything but. I let plenty of them stay right where they are in the flower beds all winter long just like nature intended. And the lawn? Forget about it. The lawn is never completely clear of leaves. Why should it be? It's not my living room rug. It's outside. I don't understand this fetish that a lot of guys have about forcibly removing every single fallen leaf from every blade of grass. And I really, really don't understand those stupid leaf blowers that they use. I actively detest leaf blowers. They pollute the air with gas fumes and they are absolutely deafening. Have you ever noticed that the guy who's standing there using one always has ear muffs on? Dude, how about some ear muffs for the rest of us? Better yet, how about you get rid of that whiny, stinky thing and use a rake?
No chance of that. For a lot of guys a mere rake won't do. They must, must get every single leaf off of their precious lawn. That's another thing I don't understand -- guys and their lawns. We're talking about a creepifyingly intimate form of attachment here. We're talking about someone fertilizing the grass to make it grow faster so that he has to -- or I should say gets to -- mow it more often. Does that make any sense to you? Why would someone want to mow the lawn more often than he has to? A lot of guys are also into this whole ethnic cleansing thing when it comes to what kind of grass they're growing. They dump toxic herbicides and pesticides all over their very own property just so they can eradicate everything but the one perfect species of perfect grass that they yearn for. Then they water it and water it so as to make sure it's an absolutely perfect emerald green all summer long. I swear, they're more devoted to their lawns than they are to their wives. Hmm...maybe we'd better not go there. Forget I said anything.
My lawn must have eight or ten different kind of grass growing in it. There may even be some terrorist weeds in it. Actually, I don't actually think of my lawn as grass. I think of it as Assorted Field Greens. I can't remember the last time I fertilized it or did anything to it. It's green. It grows. Once every week or two, depending on how much rainfall we get, one of us gets out our non-motorized push mower and mows it. The job takes fifteen minutes. That's my entire relationship with my lawn. I doubt whether I give it more than five minutes of continuous thought over the course of an entire year.
I can think of a million things rather do with my time than mow my lawn. I'm doing one of them right now. Or I was. Done now.
Not me. I look forward to it.
I love to rake leaves. I love romping in them. I love the smell of them. I love holding them in my hands. I'm an absolute nut when it comes to dead leaves. They're one of the reasons why I moved to New England from Los Angeles (with a twelve-year layover in New York City). Truly, nothing makes me happier than being outside on a crisp, sunny fall afternoon with a rake in my hands.
Mind you, my approach to the job is different from that of a lot of other people. For starters, I'm not disposing of them. I'm gathering them. Diana has a vast complex of wire compost bins out back where I deposit them. Today's leaves will be next year's nutritious mulch for our planting beds.
Plus I'm not a perfectionist when it comes clearing my property of fallen leaves. Anything but. I let plenty of them stay right where they are in the flower beds all winter long just like nature intended. And the lawn? Forget about it. The lawn is never completely clear of leaves. Why should it be? It's not my living room rug. It's outside. I don't understand this fetish that a lot of guys have about forcibly removing every single fallen leaf from every blade of grass. And I really, really don't understand those stupid leaf blowers that they use. I actively detest leaf blowers. They pollute the air with gas fumes and they are absolutely deafening. Have you ever noticed that the guy who's standing there using one always has ear muffs on? Dude, how about some ear muffs for the rest of us? Better yet, how about you get rid of that whiny, stinky thing and use a rake?
No chance of that. For a lot of guys a mere rake won't do. They must, must get every single leaf off of their precious lawn. That's another thing I don't understand -- guys and their lawns. We're talking about a creepifyingly intimate form of attachment here. We're talking about someone fertilizing the grass to make it grow faster so that he has to -- or I should say gets to -- mow it more often. Does that make any sense to you? Why would someone want to mow the lawn more often than he has to? A lot of guys are also into this whole ethnic cleansing thing when it comes to what kind of grass they're growing. They dump toxic herbicides and pesticides all over their very own property just so they can eradicate everything but the one perfect species of perfect grass that they yearn for. Then they water it and water it so as to make sure it's an absolutely perfect emerald green all summer long. I swear, they're more devoted to their lawns than they are to their wives. Hmm...maybe we'd better not go there. Forget I said anything.
My lawn must have eight or ten different kind of grass growing in it. There may even be some terrorist weeds in it. Actually, I don't actually think of my lawn as grass. I think of it as Assorted Field Greens. I can't remember the last time I fertilized it or did anything to it. It's green. It grows. Once every week or two, depending on how much rainfall we get, one of us gets out our non-motorized push mower and mows it. The job takes fifteen minutes. That's my entire relationship with my lawn. I doubt whether I give it more than five minutes of continuous thought over the course of an entire year.
I can think of a million things rather do with my time than mow my lawn. I'm doing one of them right now. Or I was. Done now.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The O-Word
It was only a chance encounter on a Metro-North train, but it finally happened to me. A complete stranger just called me old.
I was taking the train from New Haven into New York City to sign copies of my new Berger-Mitry mystery, The Shimmering Blond Sister, at some bookstores. I had a pretty full day so I caught an early morning train. Since we are now in the baseball post-season, I had stayed up much, much later than usual the night before to watch the Giants stomp the Phillies and I wasn't very wide awake.
Neither was the friendly young conductor who punched my ticket: "Heading all of the way to New Haven this morning?" he asked me politely.
"We're in New Haven," I said, blinking at him.
"Oh, right," he said sheepishly. "Sorry, I've been on since five o'clock. Got, like, three hours of sleep last night."
I nodded. "These play-off games go on forever, don't they? I swear they add an extra three minutes of commercials between every half-inning."
"At least," he agreed. "But I had to stay up and watch it. And I don't even like baseball. What I really like is boxing."
"I used to love boxing," I said. "But I haven't watched a fight in twenty years."
To which he said, "Yeah, I hear that a lot from older guys such as yourself. No offense intended."
"None taken," I assured him as he headed on down the aisle, leaving me there alone in my aging, fiftysomething decrepitude.
I'm a bona fide baby boomer. I really, truly never thought I'd get old. I always believed that when I got tired of being my middle-aged self I'd simply buy myself a ticket for a ride at Disneyland and come out the other end seven years old again, giddy with delight. Old? Me? No way.
As I sat there on the train, gnashing my teeth, it dawned on me that I'd misled my young conductor friend on two fronts. It hadn't been twenty years since I'd watched a fight. It had been thirty. And it wasn't boxing that I'd loved. I loved Ali.
Long before there was The King and His Airness there was The Greatest. Muhammad Ali was, and still is, the most transcendent star of his era. He wasn't just a sports star who filled arenas and sold sugar water and sneakers. His career ignited and transformed our nation's dialogue on race, on religion and on the Vietnam War that was tearing America apart.
I was twelve years old in 1964 when the brash, audacious 22-year-old Cassius Clay, whose nickname in those days was The Louisville Lip, slayed a surly goliath named Sonny Liston in Miami to become heavyweight champ. I loved him. Every kid loved him. He was young, smart, funny and gifted. He loved being Cassius Clay. He loved being alive.
And he was growing up before our eyes. After he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali he refused to enter the draft in 1967 to fight in Vietnam. His stand against the war cost him his title and led to him being suspended from boxing for over three years at the very height of his career. It cost him millions of dollars. Half of the country demonized him. The other half -- the anti-war half that I belonged to -- thought he was one of the great, principled heroes of his time.
He didn't seem like the same fighter when he came back. He no longer floated like butterfly and stung like a bee. His punches were slower. His legs seemed heavier. That was why absolutely no one gave the 32-year-old Ali a chance on October 30, 1974 against the reigning heavyweight champ, a young goliath named George Foreman. Their bout in Zaire was called the Rumble in the Jungle. I was going to journalism school in New York City then. I went to see the closed circuit telecast of the fight with some friends at a packed movie theater on upper Broadway. After Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round grown men -- black, white and brown -- stood outside of the theater hugging each other with tears streaming down their faces. No one wanted to leave. We stood out there for hours.
Ali fought on for several more years. He shouldn't have, as we now know. When he came out of retirement in 1980 to take on heavyweight champ Larry Holmes he looked like a listless shadow of his former self. Some medical experts now believe he was already displaying early symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. It was sad to watch Holmes beat him. I didn't even watch Trevor Berbick beat him in 1981. By then I'd stopped watching boxing because I'd stopped watching Ali. It was too painful.
For me there will never be another boxing moment like that night 36 years ago when Ali decked Foreman and won back his crown. But my young conductor friend can't possibly know what that was like, I realized. How could he? He hadn't even been born yet.
Wow, he's right. I am old.
I was taking the train from New Haven into New York City to sign copies of my new Berger-Mitry mystery, The Shimmering Blond Sister, at some bookstores. I had a pretty full day so I caught an early morning train. Since we are now in the baseball post-season, I had stayed up much, much later than usual the night before to watch the Giants stomp the Phillies and I wasn't very wide awake.
Neither was the friendly young conductor who punched my ticket: "Heading all of the way to New Haven this morning?" he asked me politely.
"We're in New Haven," I said, blinking at him.
"Oh, right," he said sheepishly. "Sorry, I've been on since five o'clock. Got, like, three hours of sleep last night."
I nodded. "These play-off games go on forever, don't they? I swear they add an extra three minutes of commercials between every half-inning."
"At least," he agreed. "But I had to stay up and watch it. And I don't even like baseball. What I really like is boxing."
"I used to love boxing," I said. "But I haven't watched a fight in twenty years."
To which he said, "Yeah, I hear that a lot from older guys such as yourself. No offense intended."
"None taken," I assured him as he headed on down the aisle, leaving me there alone in my aging, fiftysomething decrepitude.
I'm a bona fide baby boomer. I really, truly never thought I'd get old. I always believed that when I got tired of being my middle-aged self I'd simply buy myself a ticket for a ride at Disneyland and come out the other end seven years old again, giddy with delight. Old? Me? No way.
As I sat there on the train, gnashing my teeth, it dawned on me that I'd misled my young conductor friend on two fronts. It hadn't been twenty years since I'd watched a fight. It had been thirty. And it wasn't boxing that I'd loved. I loved Ali.
Long before there was The King and His Airness there was The Greatest. Muhammad Ali was, and still is, the most transcendent star of his era. He wasn't just a sports star who filled arenas and sold sugar water and sneakers. His career ignited and transformed our nation's dialogue on race, on religion and on the Vietnam War that was tearing America apart.
I was twelve years old in 1964 when the brash, audacious 22-year-old Cassius Clay, whose nickname in those days was The Louisville Lip, slayed a surly goliath named Sonny Liston in Miami to become heavyweight champ. I loved him. Every kid loved him. He was young, smart, funny and gifted. He loved being Cassius Clay. He loved being alive.
And he was growing up before our eyes. After he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali he refused to enter the draft in 1967 to fight in Vietnam. His stand against the war cost him his title and led to him being suspended from boxing for over three years at the very height of his career. It cost him millions of dollars. Half of the country demonized him. The other half -- the anti-war half that I belonged to -- thought he was one of the great, principled heroes of his time.
He didn't seem like the same fighter when he came back. He no longer floated like butterfly and stung like a bee. His punches were slower. His legs seemed heavier. That was why absolutely no one gave the 32-year-old Ali a chance on October 30, 1974 against the reigning heavyweight champ, a young goliath named George Foreman. Their bout in Zaire was called the Rumble in the Jungle. I was going to journalism school in New York City then. I went to see the closed circuit telecast of the fight with some friends at a packed movie theater on upper Broadway. After Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round grown men -- black, white and brown -- stood outside of the theater hugging each other with tears streaming down their faces. No one wanted to leave. We stood out there for hours.
Ali fought on for several more years. He shouldn't have, as we now know. When he came out of retirement in 1980 to take on heavyweight champ Larry Holmes he looked like a listless shadow of his former self. Some medical experts now believe he was already displaying early symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. It was sad to watch Holmes beat him. I didn't even watch Trevor Berbick beat him in 1981. By then I'd stopped watching boxing because I'd stopped watching Ali. It was too painful.
For me there will never be another boxing moment like that night 36 years ago when Ali decked Foreman and won back his crown. But my young conductor friend can't possibly know what that was like, I realized. How could he? He hadn't even been born yet.
Wow, he's right. I am old.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations
I did it again.
I couldn't help myself. I always, always think I'm going to get smarter. And I never do. I can't. I'm a guy. And this is, well, it's just a guy thing.
Allow me to explain. I'd been having what any living, breathing writer would consider a really terrific week on the job. My new Berger-Mitry mystery, The Shimmering Blond Sister, was officially released on Tuesday. It's an actual book now. I can actually hold it in my hands. Believe me, it doesn't matter how many books you write -- the thrill of holding your new book in your own two hands never goes away. And people seem to like this one a lot. Amazon e-mailed a list of their Top Ten new releases of the week for mysteries and thrillers to all of their crime fiction customers all over the world and The Shimmering Blond Sister was on the list, right there next to new books by John Le Carre and Elmore Leonard. I was thrilled, needless to say.
And that's when I got into trouble. I got cocky. This is a guy thing, like I said. I call it World Beater Syndrome. It's not real complicated. We're not real complicated. Simply put, whenever things go super well for us on the job we get such a boost of confidence that we start to think that we're good at things that, hello, we're really not good at.
This can be a dangerous thing. Some guys, for instance, suddenly think they are irresistible to comely, leggy younger women who happen not to be their wife. If they're lucky, they just make total fools out of themselves. If they're unlucky, they blow up their whole marriage. Some guys suddenly delude themselves into thinking they actually understand the ins and outs of the stock market. They decide they can manage their own investment portfolio on-line just as well as that so-called professional can. What they manage to do is blow up their entire retirement nest egg in about seven minutes.
Me? I delude myself into thinking that I'm handy -- and blow up my house.
I'm not handy. I've never been handy. My father was. He could fix anything. A toaster. A car. He could do wiring, plumbing, carpentry, you name it. Some fathers take great pleasure in patiently, lovingly passing on what they know to their little boy. My father wasn't like that. Any time I showed the slightest interest in anything remotely mechanical -- like, say, what he was doing under the hood of the car -- he would bark, "Get away from here!" He did this because he wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer when I grew up. He did NOT want me to be somebody who worked with his hands and got all greasy. His greatest fear was that I would develop a fascination for the inner workings of engines and grow up to become a car mechanic. I got even with him though. I sat in my room and read books all day and grew up to become a writer. Hah!
I'm a cretin when it comes to fixing things around my house. I know this about myself. Except for when, well, see above re: World Beater Syndrome. A clogged drain. This time it was a clogged drain. The sink in our upstairs bathroom had been draining real slooooowly for the past few weeks. My shaving soap is the culprit. And it's usually not a big deal. All I have to do is take a plunger to it and I bring up a fist-sized blob of ooze that's straight out of the movie Alien and all is well again. Except not this time. This time I plunged and I plunged and nothing came up except stinky air. Since we live in a 200-year-old house with old pipes it is not considered smart to use anything like Drano because it's just as liable to eat its way through the pipe as it is the clog. So I'd been kind of muttering about this nagging, stubborn clog for weeks and feeling just real helpless and useless and unmanly.
Until, pow, I had a good week on the job and suddenly decided to hitch up my jeans, stick out my chest and take a snake to the clog. I was gentle. Really, I was. I was careful. Really, I was. Didn't matter. I still poked a dime-sized hole right on through the drain pipe and sent water and ooze gushing all over the floor. "I'm sure it wasn't anything you did," Diana said kindly. "That pipe must have been ready to go."
Lew the Plumber was nice enough to fit me in the very next morning. Lew the Plumber, whose actual name is Arthur Lewis, is one of Old Lyme's truly great characters. He is not only a licensed, practicing plumber but also a licensed, practicing hypno-therapist, a world class philosopher and a memoirist. Lew has, to date, committed 150 pages of his life story to paper. He is now up to the year 1978. Anyhow, Lew took one look at the mess I'd wrought and said, "I'm sure it wasn't anything you did. That pipe was ready to go." He was even kind enough to show me how corroded it was after he'd taken all of the sections of drain pipe apart. Didn't matter. I'm a cretin and I know it. Still, as my handyman disasters go, this one wasn't too bad. He did clear the clog. And we do have a nice new non-corroded drain pipe. And it only cost me two hours of a plumber's time, plus parts -- which is to say more than my last royalty check but less than my next advance.
You would think I learned a valuable lesson this time: A man's gotta know his limitations. And I do know them. This won't happen ever again. I swear it won't.
Except it will. Because I don't learn. I never learn. It's a guy thing.
I couldn't help myself. I always, always think I'm going to get smarter. And I never do. I can't. I'm a guy. And this is, well, it's just a guy thing.
Allow me to explain. I'd been having what any living, breathing writer would consider a really terrific week on the job. My new Berger-Mitry mystery, The Shimmering Blond Sister, was officially released on Tuesday. It's an actual book now. I can actually hold it in my hands. Believe me, it doesn't matter how many books you write -- the thrill of holding your new book in your own two hands never goes away. And people seem to like this one a lot. Amazon e-mailed a list of their Top Ten new releases of the week for mysteries and thrillers to all of their crime fiction customers all over the world and The Shimmering Blond Sister was on the list, right there next to new books by John Le Carre and Elmore Leonard. I was thrilled, needless to say.
And that's when I got into trouble. I got cocky. This is a guy thing, like I said. I call it World Beater Syndrome. It's not real complicated. We're not real complicated. Simply put, whenever things go super well for us on the job we get such a boost of confidence that we start to think that we're good at things that, hello, we're really not good at.
This can be a dangerous thing. Some guys, for instance, suddenly think they are irresistible to comely, leggy younger women who happen not to be their wife. If they're lucky, they just make total fools out of themselves. If they're unlucky, they blow up their whole marriage. Some guys suddenly delude themselves into thinking they actually understand the ins and outs of the stock market. They decide they can manage their own investment portfolio on-line just as well as that so-called professional can. What they manage to do is blow up their entire retirement nest egg in about seven minutes.
Me? I delude myself into thinking that I'm handy -- and blow up my house.
I'm not handy. I've never been handy. My father was. He could fix anything. A toaster. A car. He could do wiring, plumbing, carpentry, you name it. Some fathers take great pleasure in patiently, lovingly passing on what they know to their little boy. My father wasn't like that. Any time I showed the slightest interest in anything remotely mechanical -- like, say, what he was doing under the hood of the car -- he would bark, "Get away from here!" He did this because he wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer when I grew up. He did NOT want me to be somebody who worked with his hands and got all greasy. His greatest fear was that I would develop a fascination for the inner workings of engines and grow up to become a car mechanic. I got even with him though. I sat in my room and read books all day and grew up to become a writer. Hah!
I'm a cretin when it comes to fixing things around my house. I know this about myself. Except for when, well, see above re: World Beater Syndrome. A clogged drain. This time it was a clogged drain. The sink in our upstairs bathroom had been draining real slooooowly for the past few weeks. My shaving soap is the culprit. And it's usually not a big deal. All I have to do is take a plunger to it and I bring up a fist-sized blob of ooze that's straight out of the movie Alien and all is well again. Except not this time. This time I plunged and I plunged and nothing came up except stinky air. Since we live in a 200-year-old house with old pipes it is not considered smart to use anything like Drano because it's just as liable to eat its way through the pipe as it is the clog. So I'd been kind of muttering about this nagging, stubborn clog for weeks and feeling just real helpless and useless and unmanly.
Until, pow, I had a good week on the job and suddenly decided to hitch up my jeans, stick out my chest and take a snake to the clog. I was gentle. Really, I was. I was careful. Really, I was. Didn't matter. I still poked a dime-sized hole right on through the drain pipe and sent water and ooze gushing all over the floor. "I'm sure it wasn't anything you did," Diana said kindly. "That pipe must have been ready to go."
Lew the Plumber was nice enough to fit me in the very next morning. Lew the Plumber, whose actual name is Arthur Lewis, is one of Old Lyme's truly great characters. He is not only a licensed, practicing plumber but also a licensed, practicing hypno-therapist, a world class philosopher and a memoirist. Lew has, to date, committed 150 pages of his life story to paper. He is now up to the year 1978. Anyhow, Lew took one look at the mess I'd wrought and said, "I'm sure it wasn't anything you did. That pipe was ready to go." He was even kind enough to show me how corroded it was after he'd taken all of the sections of drain pipe apart. Didn't matter. I'm a cretin and I know it. Still, as my handyman disasters go, this one wasn't too bad. He did clear the clog. And we do have a nice new non-corroded drain pipe. And it only cost me two hours of a plumber's time, plus parts -- which is to say more than my last royalty check but less than my next advance.
You would think I learned a valuable lesson this time: A man's gotta know his limitations. And I do know them. This won't happen ever again. I swear it won't.
Except it will. Because I don't learn. I never learn. It's a guy thing.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
What I'm Watching
People are always asking me what I'm watching on TV. I guess that's because they know I used to write for TV and they think I possess some special insight into which shows are good and which shows aren't. I don't. I simply know a bit more than the average viewer does about how incredibly hard it is to put a show together. I also happen to be a really cranky viewer. If I don't get pulled in within the first five minutes I'm gone.
I don't think there's anything transcendently great on the air right now. Nothing as intelligent and riveting as The West Wing. Nothing as riotously hilarious as Reno 911. And please don't talk to me about Mad Men. I think it's empty, pretentious and appallingly badly acted. I hate it.
My favorite program on television is The Rachel Maddow Show. I absolutely adore Rachel and if she ever decides to form a third party and run for president I promise I will work for her campaign. I mean that.
It will not surprise fans of my Berger-Mitry mysteries to learn that Turner Classic Movies is my day in, day out go-to channel. I watch old movies more than I do anything else -- with the possible exception of sports. I watch a truly sick amount of baseball and football. Although for some reason I am not enjoying Monday Night Football as much this season. Actually, I know what the reason is. I can't stand the announcers. Mike Tirico is clueless. Ron Jaworski shouts too much. And I'm really tired of Jon Gruden's act. Or maybe it isn't an act. Maybe he really as big an asshole as he seems.
Because I got bored by Monday Night Football this season I started surfing around and, as luck would have it, I became one of the only three people in America who actually saw Lone Star before Fox cancelled it after only two episodes. Lone Star is this fall's most spectacular flop. It didn't deserve to be. I thought it was fresh, interesting and very promising. I was looking forward to next week's episode. Never happened. Its ratings were abysmal. Fox could have moved it to a different time slot. Instead, they killed it.
Fox is famous for eating its young. They famously destroyed Joss Whedon's brilliant, beautiful Firefly a few seasons back. And they're currently hosing two other perfectly fine shows. I'm talking mindless entertainment here, which is usually all I'm in the mood for after wrestling with words all day long on my computer screen. One is Human Target, a fun, entertaining action drama that stars Mark Valley, Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley -- if you can find it. It's never on two weeks in a row, and seldom on the same night. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the show. It's fine. And they're killing it. The other is The Good Guys, which is a silly but very enjoyable cop show from Matt Nix with Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks. Fox has banished it to prime time Siberia -- Friday nights, where it is guaranteed to get low ratings and, therefore, die.
Matt Nix is the genius who has given us Burn Notice, which I watch religiously. It's off the air right now but is supposed to come back in November. I never miss it. It's THE coolest show on TV. And I'm madly in love with Fiona.
I checked out the new Hawaii Five-O. It's okay. But it's not Hawaii Five-O, know what I mean? And it's blasphemous to be calling it that. Hawaii Five-O was Jack Lord in a shiny suit, shades and pompadour never cracking a smile. It was a camp classic, like Dragnet. This is a whole other deal. There's skin. People even smile.
I'm still watching NCIS. I think the plots are well-crafted and the actors are really funny together. But it does seem to be getting just a tiny bit tired this season. Plus I miss the scenes in Jethro's basement. And I really miss McGee's chin. It's gone. I know he's lost some weight but he actually looks like a different person. Did he have cosmetic surgery? Lipo? I don't want to know. I don't watch the NCIS Los Angeles spin-off that follows it on Tuesday nights. I think it's a complete bore. Although not as boring as The Good Wife, which has to be the dullest show on prime time television. And the hugest waste of fine acting talent.
I miss Warehouse 13. I became strangely addicted it to these past two summers even though I know, deep down inside, that it's not very good. But I'm looking forward to its return.
And I'm becoming strangely addicted to Nikita. It has a brooding, noirish, low-budget charm to it. And Maggie Q is off-the-charts hot. Actually, I'm enjoying Nikita more than I did the much more highly touted hot spy summer series Covert Affairs, which had a great two-hour pilot and then really fizzled. Mostly because Piper Perabo just plain isn't a star. She doesn't have It. Believe me, Maggie Q has It.
I'm not watching a single sitcom that's currently on the air. And you can't make me.
Don't even try.
I don't think there's anything transcendently great on the air right now. Nothing as intelligent and riveting as The West Wing. Nothing as riotously hilarious as Reno 911. And please don't talk to me about Mad Men. I think it's empty, pretentious and appallingly badly acted. I hate it.
My favorite program on television is The Rachel Maddow Show. I absolutely adore Rachel and if she ever decides to form a third party and run for president I promise I will work for her campaign. I mean that.
It will not surprise fans of my Berger-Mitry mysteries to learn that Turner Classic Movies is my day in, day out go-to channel. I watch old movies more than I do anything else -- with the possible exception of sports. I watch a truly sick amount of baseball and football. Although for some reason I am not enjoying Monday Night Football as much this season. Actually, I know what the reason is. I can't stand the announcers. Mike Tirico is clueless. Ron Jaworski shouts too much. And I'm really tired of Jon Gruden's act. Or maybe it isn't an act. Maybe he really as big an asshole as he seems.
Because I got bored by Monday Night Football this season I started surfing around and, as luck would have it, I became one of the only three people in America who actually saw Lone Star before Fox cancelled it after only two episodes. Lone Star is this fall's most spectacular flop. It didn't deserve to be. I thought it was fresh, interesting and very promising. I was looking forward to next week's episode. Never happened. Its ratings were abysmal. Fox could have moved it to a different time slot. Instead, they killed it.
Fox is famous for eating its young. They famously destroyed Joss Whedon's brilliant, beautiful Firefly a few seasons back. And they're currently hosing two other perfectly fine shows. I'm talking mindless entertainment here, which is usually all I'm in the mood for after wrestling with words all day long on my computer screen. One is Human Target, a fun, entertaining action drama that stars Mark Valley, Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley -- if you can find it. It's never on two weeks in a row, and seldom on the same night. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the show. It's fine. And they're killing it. The other is The Good Guys, which is a silly but very enjoyable cop show from Matt Nix with Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks. Fox has banished it to prime time Siberia -- Friday nights, where it is guaranteed to get low ratings and, therefore, die.
Matt Nix is the genius who has given us Burn Notice, which I watch religiously. It's off the air right now but is supposed to come back in November. I never miss it. It's THE coolest show on TV. And I'm madly in love with Fiona.
I checked out the new Hawaii Five-O. It's okay. But it's not Hawaii Five-O, know what I mean? And it's blasphemous to be calling it that. Hawaii Five-O was Jack Lord in a shiny suit, shades and pompadour never cracking a smile. It was a camp classic, like Dragnet. This is a whole other deal. There's skin. People even smile.
I'm still watching NCIS. I think the plots are well-crafted and the actors are really funny together. But it does seem to be getting just a tiny bit tired this season. Plus I miss the scenes in Jethro's basement. And I really miss McGee's chin. It's gone. I know he's lost some weight but he actually looks like a different person. Did he have cosmetic surgery? Lipo? I don't want to know. I don't watch the NCIS Los Angeles spin-off that follows it on Tuesday nights. I think it's a complete bore. Although not as boring as The Good Wife, which has to be the dullest show on prime time television. And the hugest waste of fine acting talent.
I miss Warehouse 13. I became strangely addicted it to these past two summers even though I know, deep down inside, that it's not very good. But I'm looking forward to its return.
And I'm becoming strangely addicted to Nikita. It has a brooding, noirish, low-budget charm to it. And Maggie Q is off-the-charts hot. Actually, I'm enjoying Nikita more than I did the much more highly touted hot spy summer series Covert Affairs, which had a great two-hour pilot and then really fizzled. Mostly because Piper Perabo just plain isn't a star. She doesn't have It. Believe me, Maggie Q has It.
I'm not watching a single sitcom that's currently on the air. And you can't make me.
Don't even try.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
"Match me, Sidney"
Back in the early Eighties, when I was a baby Broadway critic, a young theatrical press agent whom I knew named Jeff Richards always used to assemble a rat pack of fellow young press agents for a pilgrimage any time a movie called "Sweet Smell of Success" was playing at one of the many revival houses that still existed throughout New York City in those days. The whole gang of them would go see the movie together as a kind of tribute. Jeff, who is now a very successful Broadway producer, even invited me to join them once.
Their devotion to the movie came as a real surprise to me. Partly because I didn't know anyone else who'd ever heard of "Sweet Smell of Success," a hard-boiled, truly nasty little 1957 black and white drama that was quite obscure at the time. But mostly I was surprised because it's a movie about a malevolent Broadway columnist named J.J. Hunsecker (played by Burt Lancaster) who preys upon and steps all over a cheap, conniving little schnook of press agent named Sidney Falco, who was played by Tony Curtis. The movie hardly portrayed the profession of press agentry in a flattering light. And yet these guys adored the movie.
They also seemed to notice something that seemingly all movie goers and critics had somehow failed to recognize over the years. We recognize it now, of course. Because pretty much every obituary I read about Tony Curtis, who passed away this week at the age of 85, singled out his portrayal of the press agent Sidney Falco as the greatest acting job of the great star's entire career. That and the three roles he played in Billy Wilder's classic 1959 farce "Some Like It Hot" -- Joe the sax player, Josephine the sax player and Shell Oil, Jr., a millionaire who talked astonishingly like Curtis' boyhood idol, Cary Grant.
I was born in 1952 and Tony Curtis was one of Those Guys for me. I don't remember a time when he wasn't a huge Hollywood star. He's just always been around my whole life. Paul Newman, who died not long ago, was one of Those Guys, too. Actors like Curtis and Newman starred in some of the very first movies my parents ever took me to see.
The Tony Curtis movies I remember most fondly are those that I saw when I was a kid. The ones where Tony Curtis played, well, Tony Curtis. Like "Operation Petticoat," a 1959 World War Two service comedy that he starred in with Cary Grant. It's rather broad. It takes place aboard a pink submarine, okay? Curtis plays Lieutenant Holden, a slick, fast-talking, twinkly eyed charmer who knows how to cut corners and con people and get things done. You can't help but love the guy. And "Captain Newman, M.D.," a 1963 World War Two service comedy/drama he starred in with Gregory Peck that takes place in the psych ward at an Army Air Corps hospital. Curtis plays Corporal Liebowitz, a slick, fast-talking, twinkly eyed charmer who knows to cut corners and con people and get things done. Again, you can't help but love him.
Tony always seemed most at home in those kind of glib roles. Giddy with delight, in fact -- much the same way James Cagney was when he played a character like Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces." That's what makes his portrayal of Sidney Falco in "Sweet Smell of Success" so inspired. Sidney is Tony Curtis playing Tony Curtis except the mask has slipped and we can see right into fast-talking Sidney's desperate, pathetic, tortured soul. Sidney -- unlike the nasty J.J. Hunsecker -- isn't an evil man. He's just hungry. Starving, in fact. And a tremendously poignant figure in the end. I guess that's why those young press agents loved "Sweet Smell of Success" so much. Sidney's pain was their pain. They felt it. I know I feel every time I see the movie. There's just something about the way he jumps every time J.J. pulls out a cigarette and barks, "Match me, Sidney," that breaks your heart.
Like I said, Tony Curtis was one of Those Guys. There are very few of Those Guys still among us, and I don't want to say their names out loud for fear of jinxing them. Every time one of them dies I feel as if another one of the historic landmarks in my hometown of Los Angeles has been torn down to make way for a McDonald's or a gas station. The world is never quite the same after that. And I feel a cold wind on the back of my neck that makes me shudder.
Unlike Paul Newman, who enjoyed a long, full career until the very end of his life, Tony Curtis flamed out in the middle of Act Two. There was hardly any Act Three at all. His last major Hollywood movie was "The Boston Strangler" way back in 1968, and he had to fight to get the role. There weren't many roles after that. Too many personal demons. Too many drug problems.
It gives me no pleasure to say this but my TV writing partner and I once turned Tony down for the lead role in the pilot of a series I was writing for CBS in the early Nineties. It was a revival of "The Saint." We were green-lighted to film the pilot and we had a solid list of very fine, virile young British leading men who we felt were ideal to reprise the role of Simon Templar made famous in the Sixties by Roger Moore. Anthony Andrews was our top choice. The network turned him down cold -- and countered with Tony Curtis. "He looks fabulous and he feels great," one executive told us. Tony was even willing to pay his own way to New York to read for the role. We said no. So did our executive producers. We all said no. For two reasons. Because Tony was about 65 years old and because Simon was supposed to be a Brit. Tony was no Brit. But he was a hell of a movie star. And there aren't many people who you can say that about.
In case you're wondering, the network backed down and didn't force Tony on us. Instead, they forced us to use an Australian actor named Andrew Clark who happened to bear a striking resemblance to another CBS star named Tom Selleck. The pilot wasn't picked up because Andrew tested poorly with focus groups. I have no idea what happened to Andrew. Tom Selleck is still working.
Me, I no longer write for television. I no longer smoke either, which means I never get to stick a fresh Marlboro in my mouth and say, "Match me, Sidney," to whomever is sitting next to me. I miss saying that.
Their devotion to the movie came as a real surprise to me. Partly because I didn't know anyone else who'd ever heard of "Sweet Smell of Success," a hard-boiled, truly nasty little 1957 black and white drama that was quite obscure at the time. But mostly I was surprised because it's a movie about a malevolent Broadway columnist named J.J. Hunsecker (played by Burt Lancaster) who preys upon and steps all over a cheap, conniving little schnook of press agent named Sidney Falco, who was played by Tony Curtis. The movie hardly portrayed the profession of press agentry in a flattering light. And yet these guys adored the movie.
They also seemed to notice something that seemingly all movie goers and critics had somehow failed to recognize over the years. We recognize it now, of course. Because pretty much every obituary I read about Tony Curtis, who passed away this week at the age of 85, singled out his portrayal of the press agent Sidney Falco as the greatest acting job of the great star's entire career. That and the three roles he played in Billy Wilder's classic 1959 farce "Some Like It Hot" -- Joe the sax player, Josephine the sax player and Shell Oil, Jr., a millionaire who talked astonishingly like Curtis' boyhood idol, Cary Grant.
I was born in 1952 and Tony Curtis was one of Those Guys for me. I don't remember a time when he wasn't a huge Hollywood star. He's just always been around my whole life. Paul Newman, who died not long ago, was one of Those Guys, too. Actors like Curtis and Newman starred in some of the very first movies my parents ever took me to see.
The Tony Curtis movies I remember most fondly are those that I saw when I was a kid. The ones where Tony Curtis played, well, Tony Curtis. Like "Operation Petticoat," a 1959 World War Two service comedy that he starred in with Cary Grant. It's rather broad. It takes place aboard a pink submarine, okay? Curtis plays Lieutenant Holden, a slick, fast-talking, twinkly eyed charmer who knows how to cut corners and con people and get things done. You can't help but love the guy. And "Captain Newman, M.D.," a 1963 World War Two service comedy/drama he starred in with Gregory Peck that takes place in the psych ward at an Army Air Corps hospital. Curtis plays Corporal Liebowitz, a slick, fast-talking, twinkly eyed charmer who knows to cut corners and con people and get things done. Again, you can't help but love him.
Tony always seemed most at home in those kind of glib roles. Giddy with delight, in fact -- much the same way James Cagney was when he played a character like Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces." That's what makes his portrayal of Sidney Falco in "Sweet Smell of Success" so inspired. Sidney is Tony Curtis playing Tony Curtis except the mask has slipped and we can see right into fast-talking Sidney's desperate, pathetic, tortured soul. Sidney -- unlike the nasty J.J. Hunsecker -- isn't an evil man. He's just hungry. Starving, in fact. And a tremendously poignant figure in the end. I guess that's why those young press agents loved "Sweet Smell of Success" so much. Sidney's pain was their pain. They felt it. I know I feel every time I see the movie. There's just something about the way he jumps every time J.J. pulls out a cigarette and barks, "Match me, Sidney," that breaks your heart.
Like I said, Tony Curtis was one of Those Guys. There are very few of Those Guys still among us, and I don't want to say their names out loud for fear of jinxing them. Every time one of them dies I feel as if another one of the historic landmarks in my hometown of Los Angeles has been torn down to make way for a McDonald's or a gas station. The world is never quite the same after that. And I feel a cold wind on the back of my neck that makes me shudder.
Unlike Paul Newman, who enjoyed a long, full career until the very end of his life, Tony Curtis flamed out in the middle of Act Two. There was hardly any Act Three at all. His last major Hollywood movie was "The Boston Strangler" way back in 1968, and he had to fight to get the role. There weren't many roles after that. Too many personal demons. Too many drug problems.
It gives me no pleasure to say this but my TV writing partner and I once turned Tony down for the lead role in the pilot of a series I was writing for CBS in the early Nineties. It was a revival of "The Saint." We were green-lighted to film the pilot and we had a solid list of very fine, virile young British leading men who we felt were ideal to reprise the role of Simon Templar made famous in the Sixties by Roger Moore. Anthony Andrews was our top choice. The network turned him down cold -- and countered with Tony Curtis. "He looks fabulous and he feels great," one executive told us. Tony was even willing to pay his own way to New York to read for the role. We said no. So did our executive producers. We all said no. For two reasons. Because Tony was about 65 years old and because Simon was supposed to be a Brit. Tony was no Brit. But he was a hell of a movie star. And there aren't many people who you can say that about.
In case you're wondering, the network backed down and didn't force Tony on us. Instead, they forced us to use an Australian actor named Andrew Clark who happened to bear a striking resemblance to another CBS star named Tom Selleck. The pilot wasn't picked up because Andrew tested poorly with focus groups. I have no idea what happened to Andrew. Tom Selleck is still working.
Me, I no longer write for television. I no longer smoke either, which means I never get to stick a fresh Marlboro in my mouth and say, "Match me, Sidney," to whomever is sitting next to me. I miss saying that.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The New Normal
When I first moved to Old Lyme from New York City I was warned that the local A & P supermarket happened to employ the grouchiest women in all of Southeastern Connecticut. I learned this for myself right away when I was poking around in the produce department and heard one of them growl to the other, "I hate this fucking department. I want to go back to the courtesy desk."
But Old Lyme is a small village and there's only the one supermarket in town so I became a steady, loyal A & P customer. In fact, I've shopped there several times a week for 25 years. And I've discovered that the women who work at the A & P -- and they are mostly women -- aren't grouchy at all. They just don't like to be treated the way some of the people in town treat them, which is rudely. But if you're nice to them -- if you talk to them like people -- they'll be nice right back to you. More than nice.
In fact, I've gotten to be pals with a lot of them over the years. Not pals who go out to dinner together but pals who catch up with each other for a few minutes every day to exchange tidbits of local news and gossip. That's small town life. It's a community where everyone is connected to everyone else. When you go shopping you stop and chat with with your pals. I'm pals with, let's see, there's Rosie and Sue and Yvonne. There's the two Lisas, there's Tina, Marian and Mary Lou. I've probably been pals with Terri the longest. Terri was a cashier fresh out of high school when I first moved here. Now she has a daughter of her own in high school. Terri and her husband Greg just adopted a black lab puppy named Riley. I saw his picture on Facebook. Terri and I are Facebook friends.
I know what goes on there with them. I know whose husband is no good. I know who can't get along with her mother no matter how hard she tries. I know whose son just got back from Iraq. I know who has a new boyfriend and who wishes she did. "I'm still searching for Prince Charming," she informed me brightly one morning. "But all I ever meet are frogs."
And they know what goes on with me. They always want to know when my newest Berger-Mitry mystery is coming out. When it does they all read it. They are some of my most faithful fans.
So it came as something of a blow to me when we were informed last week that our local A & P is closing at the end of October. The market has been sold to another chain called Big Y, which intends to shutter it for a month and then reopen it under new management. Only about 30 percent of the 88 people who presently work there will be retained by Big Y, and most of those people will be transferred to other Big Y markets.
I'm going to miss seeing my old friends every day. They're going to miss seeing each other. Already, they've begun exchanging tearful embraces. And they're planning a major farewell blow-out party. I know what they're calling the bash but I've sworn I won't tell anyone.
In case you're wondering why Big Y isn't keeping them around it's really pretty simple. The A & P is a union supermarket and Big Y isn't. So those lucky 30 percent who do hold on to their jobs will make be making less money and enjoying fewer benefits. Which, of course, is what our economy is all about these days. Squeezing more profits out of an existing business by taking money from the pockets of the people who work there -- if they're lucky.
I'm sure it will all be fine in the end. I'm sure I'll get used to shopping at the new market and I'll make new friends with the new ladies who work there. But it won't be the same.
It'll just be the new normal.
But Old Lyme is a small village and there's only the one supermarket in town so I became a steady, loyal A & P customer. In fact, I've shopped there several times a week for 25 years. And I've discovered that the women who work at the A & P -- and they are mostly women -- aren't grouchy at all. They just don't like to be treated the way some of the people in town treat them, which is rudely. But if you're nice to them -- if you talk to them like people -- they'll be nice right back to you. More than nice.
In fact, I've gotten to be pals with a lot of them over the years. Not pals who go out to dinner together but pals who catch up with each other for a few minutes every day to exchange tidbits of local news and gossip. That's small town life. It's a community where everyone is connected to everyone else. When you go shopping you stop and chat with with your pals. I'm pals with, let's see, there's Rosie and Sue and Yvonne. There's the two Lisas, there's Tina, Marian and Mary Lou. I've probably been pals with Terri the longest. Terri was a cashier fresh out of high school when I first moved here. Now she has a daughter of her own in high school. Terri and her husband Greg just adopted a black lab puppy named Riley. I saw his picture on Facebook. Terri and I are Facebook friends.
I know what goes on there with them. I know whose husband is no good. I know who can't get along with her mother no matter how hard she tries. I know whose son just got back from Iraq. I know who has a new boyfriend and who wishes she did. "I'm still searching for Prince Charming," she informed me brightly one morning. "But all I ever meet are frogs."
And they know what goes on with me. They always want to know when my newest Berger-Mitry mystery is coming out. When it does they all read it. They are some of my most faithful fans.
So it came as something of a blow to me when we were informed last week that our local A & P is closing at the end of October. The market has been sold to another chain called Big Y, which intends to shutter it for a month and then reopen it under new management. Only about 30 percent of the 88 people who presently work there will be retained by Big Y, and most of those people will be transferred to other Big Y markets.
I'm going to miss seeing my old friends every day. They're going to miss seeing each other. Already, they've begun exchanging tearful embraces. And they're planning a major farewell blow-out party. I know what they're calling the bash but I've sworn I won't tell anyone.
In case you're wondering why Big Y isn't keeping them around it's really pretty simple. The A & P is a union supermarket and Big Y isn't. So those lucky 30 percent who do hold on to their jobs will make be making less money and enjoying fewer benefits. Which, of course, is what our economy is all about these days. Squeezing more profits out of an existing business by taking money from the pockets of the people who work there -- if they're lucky.
I'm sure it will all be fine in the end. I'm sure I'll get used to shopping at the new market and I'll make new friends with the new ladies who work there. But it won't be the same.
It'll just be the new normal.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Signs Are Everywhere
It was a balmy 81 degrees yesterday here in Old Lyme. In fact, it was so warm out that it almost felt like a long, lazy summer day. But it's not summer anymore. The air smells different. The sunlight slants much lower through the trees. No, I'm afraid there's just no denying it. Autumn has truly arrived in our little corner of Southern New England.
The signs are everywhere. And I don't just mean the maple trees that are starting to turn a million different spectacular shades or red and orange. Oh, sure, the trees are a dead giveaway. But there's much, much more going on here as the seasons change. You just have to look. And listen.
There's our neighbor's rooster, Ugly Bob, who has taken to crowing from dawn straight through until dusk with newfound stentorian vigor. I've stopped calling him Ugly Bob and started calling him Mr. Bob Goulet.
There are those squadrons of geese that have started flying low over the house in the first light of dawn, honking their heads off. When Freddie was still a kitten the sound of those honking geese would send him darting from the foot of the bed to my night stand so he could watch them through the window, his ears up, tail swishing eagerly. Now that Freddie is a mature gentleman he just opens one eye and says, "Oh, the fucking geese are back." And goes back to sleep.
There are the swarms of migratory birds like those grackles that paused yesterday afternoon to rest in one of our trees for a few minutes. There were hundreds and hundreds of them perched there -- just like in Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" -- before a silent signal passed between them and they took off again in a huge, flapping cloud.
The monarch butterflies are passing through, too, on their way down to sunny Mexico. They were nearly wiped out a few years back by a freakish winter freeze down there. But they're staging a comeback. A whopping six -- count 'em six -- spent some quality time basking in our butterfly bush yesterday before they resumed their long journey south.
Ed, the pickerel frog who took up residence in our herb garden a couple of weeks ago, has started to burrow around in the soft soil. He's searching for a possible winter residence, we think. Diana has provided him with a berm of composted leaves in the hope that he will stay with us. We've gotten kind of attached to the little guy.
We had our first chilly morning on Wednesday. It was 43 degrees. My morning coffee tasted better than it had for quite some time, I must admit. And, for the first time since Memorial Day, I had to put on something other than a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Out came a pair of treasured old blue jeans and a flannel shirt. An actual pair of socks, running shoes. It felt weird to be wearing so much clothing again. It triggered a powerful Back to School sense memory. A feeling of pure dread, no question. Followed by a wonderful sense of relief that I no longer have to go to school every morning. I felt this same relief the first morning after Labor Day when I heard the school bus going by our house. I was just so incredibly glad that I wasn't one of the kids on that bus. Better them than me. I suppose a day will come when I'm finally mature enough to not feel this way. But I'm not counting on it.
This is reputed to be a bumper year for acorns. You don't have to tell the squirrels this. They know it. They are positively manic. Scampering up and down the oak trees with feverish intensity, their cheeks bulging. There are so many acorns up there that the squirrels have even taken to knocking them from the trees down to their brethren waiting there for them on the ground. I can hear the acorns falling on our roof and driveway all day long. It's a strange, crackling sound. It took me a while to figure out what it was.
Very industrious, those squirrels. Smart, too. They know that winter will be upon us sooner than we can possibly imagine.
The signs are everywhere. And I don't just mean the maple trees that are starting to turn a million different spectacular shades or red and orange. Oh, sure, the trees are a dead giveaway. But there's much, much more going on here as the seasons change. You just have to look. And listen.
There's our neighbor's rooster, Ugly Bob, who has taken to crowing from dawn straight through until dusk with newfound stentorian vigor. I've stopped calling him Ugly Bob and started calling him Mr. Bob Goulet.
There are those squadrons of geese that have started flying low over the house in the first light of dawn, honking their heads off. When Freddie was still a kitten the sound of those honking geese would send him darting from the foot of the bed to my night stand so he could watch them through the window, his ears up, tail swishing eagerly. Now that Freddie is a mature gentleman he just opens one eye and says, "Oh, the fucking geese are back." And goes back to sleep.
There are the swarms of migratory birds like those grackles that paused yesterday afternoon to rest in one of our trees for a few minutes. There were hundreds and hundreds of them perched there -- just like in Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" -- before a silent signal passed between them and they took off again in a huge, flapping cloud.
The monarch butterflies are passing through, too, on their way down to sunny Mexico. They were nearly wiped out a few years back by a freakish winter freeze down there. But they're staging a comeback. A whopping six -- count 'em six -- spent some quality time basking in our butterfly bush yesterday before they resumed their long journey south.
Ed, the pickerel frog who took up residence in our herb garden a couple of weeks ago, has started to burrow around in the soft soil. He's searching for a possible winter residence, we think. Diana has provided him with a berm of composted leaves in the hope that he will stay with us. We've gotten kind of attached to the little guy.
We had our first chilly morning on Wednesday. It was 43 degrees. My morning coffee tasted better than it had for quite some time, I must admit. And, for the first time since Memorial Day, I had to put on something other than a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Out came a pair of treasured old blue jeans and a flannel shirt. An actual pair of socks, running shoes. It felt weird to be wearing so much clothing again. It triggered a powerful Back to School sense memory. A feeling of pure dread, no question. Followed by a wonderful sense of relief that I no longer have to go to school every morning. I felt this same relief the first morning after Labor Day when I heard the school bus going by our house. I was just so incredibly glad that I wasn't one of the kids on that bus. Better them than me. I suppose a day will come when I'm finally mature enough to not feel this way. But I'm not counting on it.
This is reputed to be a bumper year for acorns. You don't have to tell the squirrels this. They know it. They are positively manic. Scampering up and down the oak trees with feverish intensity, their cheeks bulging. There are so many acorns up there that the squirrels have even taken to knocking them from the trees down to their brethren waiting there for them on the ground. I can hear the acorns falling on our roof and driveway all day long. It's a strange, crackling sound. It took me a while to figure out what it was.
Very industrious, those squirrels. Smart, too. They know that winter will be upon us sooner than we can possibly imagine.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Truth About Rock Hudson and Me
I get asked every once in a while to teach a creative writing seminar. I have to be honest with you, okay? I'm really not the academic type. In fact, whenever I walk into a college lecture hall I feel an almost uncontrollable urge to snooze. But I'm always happy to help young writers learn how to write.
Or I should say un-learn how to write.
I happen to think that we're all natural born storytellers. We've been telling each other all kinds of stories since we were little kids. Funny stories, scary stories, crazy stories, all kinds of stories. The problem that a lot of us run into is when we try to put those stories down on paper. That's when the awful crap they taught us back in high school kicks in and we suddenly get all self-conscious and lose our voices and choke.
Our teachers mean well, I suppose. I really don't mean to dump on them. But it's my belief that most educators manage to systematically suck all of the pleasure out of the writing process. They turn it from a natural, juicy, joyful form of self- expression into a tortured, dry, foreign language that exists only in the academic world of term papers. Term Paperese is not a language that anyone ever speaks in. It's a dense, impenetrable language of convoluted, contorted grammar replete with multiple commas, gerunds and lots and lots of impressive sounding, empty words. It's a language of paragraphs that begin with phrases like "Having therefore concluded that he could no longer proceed on the existing course he henceforth proceeded to blah-blah-blah." It's a language that uses semi-colons. Who the hell ever uses semi-colons? I don't. I've written 20 books and I've never used a single one. Because I don't talk like that. Nobody does -- outside of a term paper.
I think writing should be un-self conscious and fun. It should be just as easy and natural as talking to a friend. I'm a member of the Grip It and Rip It school. Just let it go. So whenever I teach a class my whole thing is to start out by trying to get young writers back to where they were before their natural voices got all suppressed by Term Paperese. That's why I always begin with the following exercise. You can try this at home. It's easy. It's fun. And you will really be surprised at what pops out. That's because every time you do this it comes out differently.
What the hell, I'll do it myself and show you what I mean:
The five most amazing things that absolutely nobody knows about me are...
1. I once appeared onscreen in a movie with Mr. Rock Hudson. It's true, I swear. It was called "Pretty Maids All In A Row." It was made in 1971. It co-starred Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas and was directed by Roger Vadim. Rock played a high school football coach who was diddling a string of comely young female students. I was an extra in a crowd scene of high school kids. You'll need a microscope to find me but I'm actually on-screen with Rock Hudson. I got paid $35 for a day's work that mostly consisted of sitting in the hot sun. And a box lunch that consisted of a ham sandwich, a pickle, a cookie and an apple. The pickle was limp.
2. I was Art Linkletter's paper boy when I was a kid growing up in West L.A. I used to deliver the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to the famous TV personality every day. He was a lousy tipper at Christmas. Don't ask me why. Cheap old people do the darndest things.
3. All of the men in my family can wiggle their ears. I can even wiggle one ear without wiggling the other. None of the women in my family can wiggle their ears at all. I don't know why this is so. It just is.
4. Ruth Gordon once tried to give me her Oscar to take home with me. Do you remember Ruth Gordon? She was that somewhat nutty, tiny old lady who starred in the cult movie "Harold and Maude." Anyway, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress back in 1968 for "Rosemary's Baby." And when I was a young reporter in New York in the early '80s I interviewed her in her palatial apartment overlooking Central Park. She had just co-starred in a Clint Eastwood movie called "Every Which Way But Loose." She and an orangutan called Clyde. Miss Gordon was quite elderly by this time. Also quite dotty. After our interview was over I happened to notice her Oscar sitting there on a bookshelf. I'd always wanted to hold an Oscar so I asked her if she'd mind if I picked it up. She shot back: "Aw, hell, you can take that goddamned thing home with you for all I care. Go on, take it. It's yours. You want a bag or something to put it in?" For the record, I left it right where it was.
5. Everybody at Emerson Junior High School thought I was Kenny Handler's kid brother. All of my teachers did. Mr. Rudolf, the boy's vice principal, certainly did. It was Mr. Rudolf who gleefully administered swats with a wooden paddle to my bare bottom whenever I committed a grievous offense like, say, coming to school with my shirt untucked. God, I feel old all of a sudden. Seriously, I actually went to junior high way back when they used to beat us. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Almost as hard to imagine as, say, growing up in a world where filmgoers actually bought that Rock Hudson would chase after high school girls. Where was I? Oh, yeah. After Mr. Rudolf got done paddling the crap out of me one time he said, "Why can't you behave yourself like your brother Kenny?" Mystified, I asked my father, "Do I have a brother named Kenny that I don't know about?" "No," he replied. "But you know who he is. Kenny's a couple of years older than you. He's probably in high school by now. And his sister, Barbara, must be five or six years older than he is." "Dad, what in the heck are you talking about?" I asked him. "I'm talking about Elliot and Ruth Handler's kids," replied my dad, who happened to be in the toy business himself but was not related to Elliot and Ruth Handler, the founders of Mattel Toys. But he did know that the Mattel Handlers had two kids named Barbara and Kenny and that they'd named the Barbie and Ken dolls after them. Mystery solved. It was just a simple, painful case of mistaken identity. All of my teachers at Emerson may have thought I was one of those Handlers but I wasn't. Because if I'd been one of those Handlers then there would be a Dave doll. There's no Dave doll. Never has been, never will be. So near yet so far...
Okay, there, I did it. That was kind of fun. Actually, I'd forgotten all about Kenny. Haven't thought of that in years. It's surprising what pops into your mind when you do this. Now it's your turn. Don't hold back. Go for it:
The five most amazing things that absolutely nobody knows about me are...
Or I should say un-learn how to write.
I happen to think that we're all natural born storytellers. We've been telling each other all kinds of stories since we were little kids. Funny stories, scary stories, crazy stories, all kinds of stories. The problem that a lot of us run into is when we try to put those stories down on paper. That's when the awful crap they taught us back in high school kicks in and we suddenly get all self-conscious and lose our voices and choke.
Our teachers mean well, I suppose. I really don't mean to dump on them. But it's my belief that most educators manage to systematically suck all of the pleasure out of the writing process. They turn it from a natural, juicy, joyful form of self- expression into a tortured, dry, foreign language that exists only in the academic world of term papers. Term Paperese is not a language that anyone ever speaks in. It's a dense, impenetrable language of convoluted, contorted grammar replete with multiple commas, gerunds and lots and lots of impressive sounding, empty words. It's a language of paragraphs that begin with phrases like "Having therefore concluded that he could no longer proceed on the existing course he henceforth proceeded to blah-blah-blah." It's a language that uses semi-colons. Who the hell ever uses semi-colons? I don't. I've written 20 books and I've never used a single one. Because I don't talk like that. Nobody does -- outside of a term paper.
I think writing should be un-self conscious and fun. It should be just as easy and natural as talking to a friend. I'm a member of the Grip It and Rip It school. Just let it go. So whenever I teach a class my whole thing is to start out by trying to get young writers back to where they were before their natural voices got all suppressed by Term Paperese. That's why I always begin with the following exercise. You can try this at home. It's easy. It's fun. And you will really be surprised at what pops out. That's because every time you do this it comes out differently.
What the hell, I'll do it myself and show you what I mean:
The five most amazing things that absolutely nobody knows about me are...
1. I once appeared onscreen in a movie with Mr. Rock Hudson. It's true, I swear. It was called "Pretty Maids All In A Row." It was made in 1971. It co-starred Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas and was directed by Roger Vadim. Rock played a high school football coach who was diddling a string of comely young female students. I was an extra in a crowd scene of high school kids. You'll need a microscope to find me but I'm actually on-screen with Rock Hudson. I got paid $35 for a day's work that mostly consisted of sitting in the hot sun. And a box lunch that consisted of a ham sandwich, a pickle, a cookie and an apple. The pickle was limp.
2. I was Art Linkletter's paper boy when I was a kid growing up in West L.A. I used to deliver the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to the famous TV personality every day. He was a lousy tipper at Christmas. Don't ask me why. Cheap old people do the darndest things.
3. All of the men in my family can wiggle their ears. I can even wiggle one ear without wiggling the other. None of the women in my family can wiggle their ears at all. I don't know why this is so. It just is.
4. Ruth Gordon once tried to give me her Oscar to take home with me. Do you remember Ruth Gordon? She was that somewhat nutty, tiny old lady who starred in the cult movie "Harold and Maude." Anyway, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress back in 1968 for "Rosemary's Baby." And when I was a young reporter in New York in the early '80s I interviewed her in her palatial apartment overlooking Central Park. She had just co-starred in a Clint Eastwood movie called "Every Which Way But Loose." She and an orangutan called Clyde. Miss Gordon was quite elderly by this time. Also quite dotty. After our interview was over I happened to notice her Oscar sitting there on a bookshelf. I'd always wanted to hold an Oscar so I asked her if she'd mind if I picked it up. She shot back: "Aw, hell, you can take that goddamned thing home with you for all I care. Go on, take it. It's yours. You want a bag or something to put it in?" For the record, I left it right where it was.
5. Everybody at Emerson Junior High School thought I was Kenny Handler's kid brother. All of my teachers did. Mr. Rudolf, the boy's vice principal, certainly did. It was Mr. Rudolf who gleefully administered swats with a wooden paddle to my bare bottom whenever I committed a grievous offense like, say, coming to school with my shirt untucked. God, I feel old all of a sudden. Seriously, I actually went to junior high way back when they used to beat us. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Almost as hard to imagine as, say, growing up in a world where filmgoers actually bought that Rock Hudson would chase after high school girls. Where was I? Oh, yeah. After Mr. Rudolf got done paddling the crap out of me one time he said, "Why can't you behave yourself like your brother Kenny?" Mystified, I asked my father, "Do I have a brother named Kenny that I don't know about?" "No," he replied. "But you know who he is. Kenny's a couple of years older than you. He's probably in high school by now. And his sister, Barbara, must be five or six years older than he is." "Dad, what in the heck are you talking about?" I asked him. "I'm talking about Elliot and Ruth Handler's kids," replied my dad, who happened to be in the toy business himself but was not related to Elliot and Ruth Handler, the founders of Mattel Toys. But he did know that the Mattel Handlers had two kids named Barbara and Kenny and that they'd named the Barbie and Ken dolls after them. Mystery solved. It was just a simple, painful case of mistaken identity. All of my teachers at Emerson may have thought I was one of those Handlers but I wasn't. Because if I'd been one of those Handlers then there would be a Dave doll. There's no Dave doll. Never has been, never will be. So near yet so far...
Okay, there, I did it. That was kind of fun. Actually, I'd forgotten all about Kenny. Haven't thought of that in years. It's surprising what pops into your mind when you do this. Now it's your turn. Don't hold back. Go for it:
The five most amazing things that absolutely nobody knows about me are...
Saturday, September 18, 2010
It's Not Me, I Swear
Call me naive, but I really, truly thought this whole tawdry scandal would go away. I was wrong. The ugly rumors have continued to swirl throughout the New York publishing world week after week after week. Sleazy tabloid journalists by the dozen have been e-mailing me and phoning me, day and night. And here in my bucolic New England village of Old Lyme -- better known as Dorset to readers of the Berger-Mitry mysteries -- my friends and neighbors have taken to hooting at me behind my back at the hardware store even more than they usually do.
So I'm going set the record straight right here and now. This will be my only official statement on the matter. After this, I will not say another word about it because, quite honestly, I'm sick to death of the whole mess.
This (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape that has been making its way all over the damned Internet is not, repeat not, a tape of me having sex with some hot babe in a chic hotel room in Chelsea. For the record, I've never even had sex with a hot babe in a chic hotel room in Chelsea. Actually, maybe I have. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
My point is that this (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape is a tape of a blond television personality named Chelsea Handler having sex with, well, I don't know who the hell the guy is. Or where their sweaty encounter took place. But I do know this much:
It's not me on that tape. I have no connection to the tape whatsoever.
Chelsea Handler is not, repeat not, my ex-wife, as has been widely and erroneously reported. Nor are we related, as has also been widely and erroneously reported. Chelsea Handler is not my sister. Chelsea Handler is not my cousin. I've never so much as met Chelsea Handler, although she seems like a perfectly nice person. Actually, no she doesn't. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
To many loyal readers out there: Anyone who has tried to download this (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape thinking that what they'll be seeing is a tape of a certain sleek, hard-muscled mystery writer named David Handler having sex some hot babe in Chelsea will be seriously disappointed. I apologize for the confusion. I'm truly sorry.
Actually, no I'm not. The truth is, I've gotten a ton of attention from this whole fiasco. It's the kind of free publicity that an author like me dreams of his whole life. In fact, I've gotten so much free publicity I've been thinking that I may as well just cash in and make a sex tape of my own. You know, a tape of me having sex with some hot babe in Chelsea. Or, better, yet, having sex with Chelsea Handler. In Chelsea. I wonder if she'd go for that. It sure would give my book sales a huge boost. Maybe I ought to have my people reach out to her people. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
My point is: It's not me on that tape. I have no connection to the tape whatsoever.
At least not yet.
So I'm going set the record straight right here and now. This will be my only official statement on the matter. After this, I will not say another word about it because, quite honestly, I'm sick to death of the whole mess.
This (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape that has been making its way all over the damned Internet is not, repeat not, a tape of me having sex with some hot babe in a chic hotel room in Chelsea. For the record, I've never even had sex with a hot babe in a chic hotel room in Chelsea. Actually, maybe I have. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
My point is that this (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape is a tape of a blond television personality named Chelsea Handler having sex with, well, I don't know who the hell the guy is. Or where their sweaty encounter took place. But I do know this much:
It's not me on that tape. I have no connection to the tape whatsoever.
Chelsea Handler is not, repeat not, my ex-wife, as has been widely and erroneously reported. Nor are we related, as has also been widely and erroneously reported. Chelsea Handler is not my sister. Chelsea Handler is not my cousin. I've never so much as met Chelsea Handler, although she seems like a perfectly nice person. Actually, no she doesn't. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
To many loyal readers out there: Anyone who has tried to download this (alleged) Chelsea Handler Sex Tape thinking that what they'll be seeing is a tape of a certain sleek, hard-muscled mystery writer named David Handler having sex some hot babe in Chelsea will be seriously disappointed. I apologize for the confusion. I'm truly sorry.
Actually, no I'm not. The truth is, I've gotten a ton of attention from this whole fiasco. It's the kind of free publicity that an author like me dreams of his whole life. In fact, I've gotten so much free publicity I've been thinking that I may as well just cash in and make a sex tape of my own. You know, a tape of me having sex with some hot babe in Chelsea. Or, better, yet, having sex with Chelsea Handler. In Chelsea. I wonder if she'd go for that. It sure would give my book sales a huge boost. Maybe I ought to have my people reach out to her people. But never mind -- that's not where I was going.
My point is: It's not me on that tape. I have no connection to the tape whatsoever.
At least not yet.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
A Writer's Best Friend
I first heard from David Thompson about 20 years ago when he sent me a hand-scrawled fan letter telling me how much he loved my work. My third Hoagy and Lulu mystery, The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald, had just won an Edgar Allen Poe Award, which for you civilians out there is a moderately big deal in the mystery world. David told me he worked part-time at a mystery bookstore down in Houston called Murder By the Book. He was writing to not only congratulate me but to tell me how much he wished he could get his hands on some copies of the first two books in the series, The Man Who Died Laughing and The Man Who Lived By Night. My publisher, Bantam, had let them go out of print. He asked me if I knew when they'd be coming back into print. Soon, I said.
Well, they did come back into print. But it wasn't soon.
I didn't actually meet David face to face until a couple of years later at a Bouchercon in...I don't know where. Seattle? St. Paul? He turned out to be a gawky, toothy kid with glasses who looked about 13. For all I know he may still have been in his teens. We had lunch together. Or I had lunch. He talked. And talked. And talked. I had never met anyone who loved to talk about mysteries and mystery writers as much as David did. He was the most enthusiastic guy I'd ever met. And it wasn't just mysteries that he loved. It so happened that I was still a sitcom writer in those days and, believe me, he loved sitcoms almost as much as he did crime fiction. When he found out I'd written for Charles In Charge he got so excited I thought he was going to pee in his pants right there in the hotel coffee shop. He peppered me with a million questions. He was still asking them when the elevator door closed in his face. He almost lost his nose.
He also asked me if those first two Hoagy and Lulu novels were ever coming back into print. Soon, I said.
We stayed in constant touch over the years, especially with the advent of e-mail. He became the kid brother I never had. He was an incredibly sweet guy. He was always writing to tell me how much he was enjoying my work and other people's work. He was always peppering me with questions. Had I ever heard of this new writer named Laura Lippman? Yes, I said. I just met her at the Lake Mohonk Mystery Weekend. She's very talented and nice. Do I like Seinfeld? I didn't at first, I said. But now I'm hooked. Were my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels ever coming back into print? Soon, I said.
Constantly, he was begging me to come down to Houston for a signing. I was able to make it down to Murder By The Book on several occasions. I love mystery bookstores. Hell, I became a mystery writer because my first apartment in New York was right down West 87th Street from Murder Ink. But I'd never been in a mystery bookstore like MBTB. That's because it's not a store. It's a community center. A place where people hang out and never leave. Why would they? Everything, everybody they need is right there. Dean was still managing the store the first time I went down there. This was about ten years ago, if memory serves me right. I'd just launched my Berger-Mitry series. The next time I went down there David was managing the store. And there was an uber-cool young woman who'd started working there named McKenna. They were a couple, it turned out, and would get married a few years later.
After my signing they took me out to dinner and the first thing David wanted to know was -- you guessed it -- were my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels ever coming back into print. I had to admit to him that I honestly didn't think they ever were. That was when David started talking. I swear, he didn't come up for air for 45 minutes. He told me that he intended to bring those novels back into print himself. He told me he was going to launch his own little publishing company that would be devoted to paperback reprints of books like mine that deserved to be back in print. He was going to call it Busted Flush Press in honor of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. The first title he intended to bring out would be an omnibus of my long-lost first two Hoagy novels. Would it be okay with me, he asked, if he contacted my agent Dominick Abel in New York to inquire as to how to purchase the reprint rights and so forth? I said sure. Then I got on a plane and never thought about it again.
Until the crazy son of a bitch actually did it. All of it. He launched Busted Flush Press just like he said he would. And he brought out my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels in 2006 just like he said he would. Quickly, he brought out another Hoagy and Lulu omnibus. And, believe me, he didn't stop with me. Before long he was publishing writers like Ace Atkins, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman and A.E. Maxwell. He was assembling mystery anthologies. He was commissioning original novels. The guy was a total juggernaut. Truly, I didn't know how he did it.
The last time I was down there was right after that big hurricane that flattened Houston. He and McKenna were married by then and not only was Busted Flush Press roaring along in high gear but they were in the process of buying the store. Or I should say she was. Technically, she's the owner of MBTB. But I couldn't imagine David wouldn't be involved in the day to day operations. I also couldn't imagine how he found the time and the energy to do everything he was doing all at once. Well, I found out on that trip. There were still power outages at a lot of the hotels so I ended up spending the night in their guest room with McKenna's cat, Manolo, parked firmly on my hip for company. And that was when I found out David's dirty little secret: He never slept. The guy worked eighteen hours a day seven days a week. He also seemed to subsist on nothing but fast food and caffeine.
When he took me to the airport I thanked him for all of his support and hard work. I also gave him some big brotherly advice. I told him that when I was in my 20s and early 30s I used to work the kind of crazy schedule he was working and I ended up getting deathly ill with pneumonia. Seriously, I was coughing up blood like Doc Holliday for months. You can't keep living like a college kid who's cramming for finals, I told him. I urged him to slow down and take better care of himself. Get more sleep. Eat better food. Exercise. All of those things.
My advice didn't go in one ear and out the other. It never went in at all. He didn't hear me.
He just kept going. More reprints. More anthologies. David never slowed down. David loved what he was doing too much to slow down. A couple of months ago, bam, he called me up out of nowhere and asked me if I'd consider writing a brand new Hoagy and Lulu novel for him. He already had the subject in mind: Baseball. And then a couple of weeks ago, bam, he told me that he was going to combine forces with Tyrus Books which, like Busted Flush Press, is a small outfit devoted to paperback reprints of long-lost titles. He was very excited about the merger. So was I. "It'll give you a chance to slow down," I said to him.
He didn't slow down. He just died. His heart gave out last night. Did he make it past 40? I'm not sure. If he did it wasn't by much. I was really shaken by the news when my agent, Dominick, just called me with it. I went onto Facebook and discovered that everyone in the mystery world is shaken. Because David Thompson was a friend and supporter and kid brother to dozens of other writers just like me all over the country. Hell, all over the world. He loved writers and writers loved him. This writer certainly did.
Goodbye, David.
Well, they did come back into print. But it wasn't soon.
I didn't actually meet David face to face until a couple of years later at a Bouchercon in...I don't know where. Seattle? St. Paul? He turned out to be a gawky, toothy kid with glasses who looked about 13. For all I know he may still have been in his teens. We had lunch together. Or I had lunch. He talked. And talked. And talked. I had never met anyone who loved to talk about mysteries and mystery writers as much as David did. He was the most enthusiastic guy I'd ever met. And it wasn't just mysteries that he loved. It so happened that I was still a sitcom writer in those days and, believe me, he loved sitcoms almost as much as he did crime fiction. When he found out I'd written for Charles In Charge he got so excited I thought he was going to pee in his pants right there in the hotel coffee shop. He peppered me with a million questions. He was still asking them when the elevator door closed in his face. He almost lost his nose.
He also asked me if those first two Hoagy and Lulu novels were ever coming back into print. Soon, I said.
We stayed in constant touch over the years, especially with the advent of e-mail. He became the kid brother I never had. He was an incredibly sweet guy. He was always writing to tell me how much he was enjoying my work and other people's work. He was always peppering me with questions. Had I ever heard of this new writer named Laura Lippman? Yes, I said. I just met her at the Lake Mohonk Mystery Weekend. She's very talented and nice. Do I like Seinfeld? I didn't at first, I said. But now I'm hooked. Were my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels ever coming back into print? Soon, I said.
Constantly, he was begging me to come down to Houston for a signing. I was able to make it down to Murder By The Book on several occasions. I love mystery bookstores. Hell, I became a mystery writer because my first apartment in New York was right down West 87th Street from Murder Ink. But I'd never been in a mystery bookstore like MBTB. That's because it's not a store. It's a community center. A place where people hang out and never leave. Why would they? Everything, everybody they need is right there. Dean was still managing the store the first time I went down there. This was about ten years ago, if memory serves me right. I'd just launched my Berger-Mitry series. The next time I went down there David was managing the store. And there was an uber-cool young woman who'd started working there named McKenna. They were a couple, it turned out, and would get married a few years later.
After my signing they took me out to dinner and the first thing David wanted to know was -- you guessed it -- were my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels ever coming back into print. I had to admit to him that I honestly didn't think they ever were. That was when David started talking. I swear, he didn't come up for air for 45 minutes. He told me that he intended to bring those novels back into print himself. He told me he was going to launch his own little publishing company that would be devoted to paperback reprints of books like mine that deserved to be back in print. He was going to call it Busted Flush Press in honor of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. The first title he intended to bring out would be an omnibus of my long-lost first two Hoagy novels. Would it be okay with me, he asked, if he contacted my agent Dominick Abel in New York to inquire as to how to purchase the reprint rights and so forth? I said sure. Then I got on a plane and never thought about it again.
Until the crazy son of a bitch actually did it. All of it. He launched Busted Flush Press just like he said he would. And he brought out my first two Hoagy and Lulu novels in 2006 just like he said he would. Quickly, he brought out another Hoagy and Lulu omnibus. And, believe me, he didn't stop with me. Before long he was publishing writers like Ace Atkins, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman and A.E. Maxwell. He was assembling mystery anthologies. He was commissioning original novels. The guy was a total juggernaut. Truly, I didn't know how he did it.
The last time I was down there was right after that big hurricane that flattened Houston. He and McKenna were married by then and not only was Busted Flush Press roaring along in high gear but they were in the process of buying the store. Or I should say she was. Technically, she's the owner of MBTB. But I couldn't imagine David wouldn't be involved in the day to day operations. I also couldn't imagine how he found the time and the energy to do everything he was doing all at once. Well, I found out on that trip. There were still power outages at a lot of the hotels so I ended up spending the night in their guest room with McKenna's cat, Manolo, parked firmly on my hip for company. And that was when I found out David's dirty little secret: He never slept. The guy worked eighteen hours a day seven days a week. He also seemed to subsist on nothing but fast food and caffeine.
When he took me to the airport I thanked him for all of his support and hard work. I also gave him some big brotherly advice. I told him that when I was in my 20s and early 30s I used to work the kind of crazy schedule he was working and I ended up getting deathly ill with pneumonia. Seriously, I was coughing up blood like Doc Holliday for months. You can't keep living like a college kid who's cramming for finals, I told him. I urged him to slow down and take better care of himself. Get more sleep. Eat better food. Exercise. All of those things.
My advice didn't go in one ear and out the other. It never went in at all. He didn't hear me.
He just kept going. More reprints. More anthologies. David never slowed down. David loved what he was doing too much to slow down. A couple of months ago, bam, he called me up out of nowhere and asked me if I'd consider writing a brand new Hoagy and Lulu novel for him. He already had the subject in mind: Baseball. And then a couple of weeks ago, bam, he told me that he was going to combine forces with Tyrus Books which, like Busted Flush Press, is a small outfit devoted to paperback reprints of long-lost titles. He was very excited about the merger. So was I. "It'll give you a chance to slow down," I said to him.
He didn't slow down. He just died. His heart gave out last night. Did he make it past 40? I'm not sure. If he did it wasn't by much. I was really shaken by the news when my agent, Dominick, just called me with it. I went onto Facebook and discovered that everyone in the mystery world is shaken. Because David Thompson was a friend and supporter and kid brother to dozens of other writers just like me all over the country. Hell, all over the world. He loved writers and writers loved him. This writer certainly did.
Goodbye, David.
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