PART 1: Barack Obama -- The Definitive Explanation -- My Question

I know people who love Barack Obama.  Literally love him; adoration does not do justice to their emotional attachment to the man.   Some others I know merely like him and would vote for him again.  I count myself among those who like him a little bit, but not a lot, and less as time goes by.  I did not vote for him, but neither did I like who I did vote for, and I was pleased to be bidding the feckless incumbent godspeed.   I actually thought Obama was going to be OK, wrong about most things but nondestructive, perhaps a bit Clinton-like, and I freely confess to having felt the occasional frisson of intrigue at the prospect of this exotic, intelligent, history-busting man in the White House.  We've survived bad presidents, surely we can survive this guy.  Better speeches, anyway.

Jeez, what a disappointment.

This article is not going to suggest why anyone should feel the way I do about him, or argue policy.  Time for that as November approaches and voters have their opportunity to apply necessary correctives, a process which may have already begun.  Instead, I am going to suggest why he is the way he is, why he is doing what he is doing.  I think I know.

We are experiencing a President who has not enacted or expressed a single popular policy.   If I were arguing the merits of his presidency, I would argue that there are good reason for their lack of public approval.  They fall on a continuum that starts on the top end with "foolish" and decline through "stupefying" all the way to "bad beyond the power of conventional English to express."  I started to make a list of failures and failures-in-waiting, but it threatened to tilt this article towards the merits of his presidency, rather than the why of the thing.

So let me come at it from a different direction:  Consider the ohmygawd plummeting of the President's popularity.  This guy came in riding an incredible wave of goodwill and affection and national pride (and, as noted, even some amour), but after only a year his postives and negatives have entirely switched polarity.  Think about that -- one year and we've gone way past buyer's remorse all the way to buyer's freakin' grief.  The man has single-handedly created a new opposition grassroots political movement.  I guess maybe he is a good community organizer, after all.    (He did have some help from the dithering Republicans)   My unscientific evidence of his striking decline in public esteem is that I no longer see the same Obama-love on Facebook that I saw in 2009. 

I am not one who believes that leaders should pay particular heed to poll numbers.  Leaders are supposed to lead.  The fact that a very large chunk of the American Center, which is a very large chunk of the public generally, is appalled nor only by almost everything he has done, but also by how he has done it and his attitude about the whole thing -- is not necessarily a reason for him to do things any differently.  There is even a kind of bravery about his dismissal of public opinion, which is why I like him a little bit.

But it isn't just him.  He's taking the Democratic Party -- or at least those impressive Democratic congressional majorities -- down with him.   Some of those Democrats are already gone, many more will be gone come November.  I don't have a firm notion of whether the Republicans will gain control of anything, but it isn't going to be pretty for many of those who have done what the President has asked them to do.  As for 2012, I suspect that the more people see of this President, the less they are going to like his policies and -- you can already see it starting to happen -- they more they are going to understand that he's not really that good a guy.   Polls can change overnight, but unless the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin or other lightweight -- of which they are entirely capable -- Obama will gain the additional historical distinction of being the first one-term black president in the nation's history.

If you're a POTUS supporter, you may be preparing to cancel your subscription.  OK, sorry, don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  But I warn you -- I am actually about to get to the point.

This serious prospect of electoral disaster -- a swing in the electorate that could stay swung for years -- brings us back to the question:   Why is he behaving in this way?  Why is he advancing policies that threaten to guarantee his place among American presidents alongside Jimmy Carter, Warren G. Harding, and Andrew Johnson?  Doesn't he at least care about re-election?  In the short run, doesn't he care about maintaining Democratic majorities in Congress?

Well, no.  No, he doesn't.  And I have a hunch why.

Part 2 will appear later this week.

Why We Don't See Ourselves As Others See Us

Because others are unreliable observers of ourselves, that's why.

Or are they?

I was chatting the other day with a person of unquestioned niceness and good judgment who said that she and her husband had been watching a documentary on the rise of Barack Obama.

"We agreed that he sounds a lot like you," she said.

I'd never heard that one before.  But what next scaped her lips was even more surprising.

"We also think the two of you look a lot alike."

"But he has a tiny roundy head," I said.  "And mine  .  .  .  ," I didn't have to finish the sentence, as it is neither tiny nor roundy.

"Well," she said, "oval." 

 Hmm. 

You know  .  .  .  maybe she's got something there. 

I wonder where my birth certificate is.

Leon, the Test Fish

I have always wanted to own property with water on it.  Maybe it's because I grew up in Bellevue, Nebraska, hard on the banks of the Missouri River, and frequently explored Fontenelle Forest with its springs and streams and lakes.  Maybe it is something more primitive, some atavistic urge to identify with the Precambrian stew of complex hydrocarbons where one day a couple billion years ago (give or take an eon), non-life sparked into life. 

Or it could just be because I like frogs and stuff.

No matter.  My choice of career ensures that I am condemned to living in or near large cities where most of the flowing water I encounter is in the atria of large hotels.  So when The Memsahib suggested that we should transform our backyard -- approximately the size of a Kia's trunk -- into a ecofriendly North Texas biosystem, I readily agreed.  In addition to a backyard full of beautiful trees, bushes, and flowers (and a gigantic built-in natural-gas grill that taps directly into the Barnett Shale and what I'm sure is a very green 46" Samsung flatscreen to make sure we don't miss any of the Cowboy game whilst grilling), we now have a fake waterfall feeding a burbling fake brook that winds (well, it has one curve -- you can't do a lot of winding in ten feet) toward another fake waterfall into a fake pond.  The pond slurries off into a filter and a pump under a fake rock that sends it back up to the fake headwaters that seem to appear out of nowhere to begin the trip all over again.

And we wanted koi, which, translated, means "grotesquely-colored carp with gratuitously showy fins that look like a cross between cardinal and a dalmatian."

Neither of us knew koi from a sperm whale, but it seemed like exactly the sort of thing a North Texas ecosystem needed -- Japanese-sounding fish whose bright colors and gentle nature would have ensured their instant death in any self-respecting Texas waterway.

Our first problem was that we didn't know where to acquire koi.  I suggested Kois 'R' Us, but a quick Google search was unfruitful.

Our second problem was that we did not know anything about fake ponds, algae, pH, chemical balance, food, or anything else necessary to keeping koi alive for the period between releasing them into the pond and rushing the grandchildren over to see them.

Fortunately, we were blessed with a contractor who once had a koi pond himself  (shameless plug:  Tim Euting with Cutters Lawn and Landscape, http://www.cutterslawnandlanscape.com/) who promised to instruct us in koi pond maintenance.  One day when the project was almost complete, I met with him to check the progress of our backyard's transformation.  When we got to the pond, he said:  "I brought you a test fish."

I looked into the pond, saw nothing.  "He's not dead yet," Tim assured me.

"There he is," Tim said.  Sure enough, there was a solitary goldfish, not more than two inches long.  He was a pretty little dickens, white and bright orange, sort of a Holstein of goldfish.  He was swimming.  I took this as a positive sign.

Not Leon

I named him Leon, for Juan Ponce de León, who searched unsuccessfully for the fountain of youth. This is not Leon, but if you can imagine this fish with a more streamlined body and less fabulous tail, you'll come pretty close.

When The Memsahib got home I took her out to the pond and after awhile we saw Leon swimming merrily about.

"Do we get to keep him?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

But then I thought:  Do we? 

What is a test fish, anyway?

Perhaps he had gone through a lengthy and expensive training regimen to become a test fish, and we were only his latest assignment.

Perhaps he was conditioned to be exquisitely sensitive to koi-threatening conditions that he communicated to contractors through semaphore-like signals from his tiny fins.

Perhaps he had exhibited unusual bravery in his koi nursery that suited him to inaugurate amateur suburban backyard fake ponds and their fake owners.

Perhaps his test-fish hardiness would lull us into a false sense of competence in not killing fish and mislead us into believing that any old fish could survive the neglect for which The Mem and I are known among lower vertebrates.

Perhaps he would quickly grow bored with the sameness of our recirculated waters and long for another challenge, or would become a malcontent among the other fishes we hoped soon to introduce, sowing piscatory revolution and advocating for health-care reform.

As it turns out, however, Leon was a standard $0.89 goldfish from Petco that Tim quickly forgot about, and Leon was ours.

Since then, we have introduced ten more fish into the pond.  One (SmartyPants, named for its large bright-orange forehead) immediately  headed for the waterfall and was never seen again, and another (Goldie) began swimming at an alarmingly diagonal angle and vanished soon thereafter.  But the other eight are thriving and growing, despite my efforts at overfeeding.  Leon is still the smallest of the fish, but exhibits a refreshing independence.  The Mem and I have a soft spot in our hearts for Leon, and we still harbor the suspicion that he was chosen especially for this mission.

Perhaps I should have named him Yeager.

PART 2: A Personal Encounter with Mexico in America

When we left off (see Part 1, below), Your Cool Hot Center was sitting there by himself in the Plaza Bar at the Westgate Hotel in San Diego on a Monday evening in February 2008, with an elderly Anglo couple sitting across the narrow room on the opposite banquette.  The old man had a band-aid on his forehead where some doctor had scraped off something unpleasant.   There were a couple of other Anglos sitting around talking.  Seven PM, and with it the mysterious Julio, were drawing nigh. The room had started to fill with Mexicans. 

Westgate Hotel, San Diego

I call them "Mexicans," but they may have been American citizens, they have been visiting, they may have been Cuban or Central or South American or Basque or Spanish or illegal -- I have no idea. Perhaps I should say that, to  my untrained round Midwestern blue eyes, they were of apparent Mexican ancestry. 

They were well-dressed, some casually, some expensively. Middle- and upper-middle-class businesspeople, professionals, and blue-collar types.  (Again, all wild guesses, but I would have made the same guesses if a group of whities had entered the place with similar clothing, grooming, and comportment.)   No jeans.  Groups of girlfrirends, a family or two, couples. All speaking Spanish. Everyone happy, everyone seeming to know everyone else. The barkeep and waiter seemed to know them, too. It was a great scene. A roomful of laughing, well-turned-out Mexicans out for a fun evening.  And the elderly Anglo banquette couple and a couple of other honkies, the latter of whom seemed slightly bewildered by this Mexican tsunami.  And me.

As the room filled, I noticed what looked like a family group looking for some space together. I gestured to them that I would scoot over on the banquette to make room. They gratefully accepted.  Turned out to be a family celebrating a 40th wedding anniversary.  I found myself between a young woman with the family on one side, and a couple of girlfriends out for the evening on the other.

At this point, you may be saying Steverino, you have mentioned that this was a bar.  Bars customarily serve alcoholic beverages, which you have not hitherto mentioned.  Do alcoholic beverages play a role in the remainder of this story?  No.  I limit myself to two drinks when I go singing, because more than that and one tends to forget lyrics and become more annoying than is one's natural custom.  I had had my two before I knew that Julio, whoever the hell he was, would be arriving.  I switched to Diet Coke.

Promptly at 7, there was a slight commotion and into the bar walked a tall, very handsome Latino man with a carefully volumized pompadour.  Perfectly cut light-grey double-breasted suit.  Maybe fifty. He paused to greet almost everyone in the place, and when he got to the elderly Anglo couple he bent down to speak to them.  Julio de la Huerta, one of the ladies told me.  He reminded me of a much better-looking, Latino version of John de Lancie, who played "Q" on Star Trek: The Next Generation:

John de Lancie, not Julio de la Huerta

Then the elderly man pointed at me and said something to Julio. Julio came over and introduced himself and asked me if I wanted to sing. I told him I didn't know any Spanish-language songs, just standards. That's OK, he said, we'll do a standard. (At this point, I had no idea what the musical setup was going to be.) Then I thought of something. "I know a couple of Jobim tunes," I said, "'Dindi,' and 'Insensitive'."  His eyes registered surprise.  (Antonio Carlos Jobim is the Brazilian composer who wrote "The Girl from Ipanema," "Meditation," "Quiet Night of Quiet Stars (Corcovado)," many others.)  Jobim's original lyrics were Portugeuse, but both of those tunes were bossa novas, so I figured even an English version might fit better with this crowd than, for example, "I've Got You Under My Skin."  "I'll call you up later," he said.

Julio, it turns out, plays Spanish guitar and sings.  He performs with a another guitarist named Ramon, who was not so dashing and wore a hat that somehow didn't fit with the Julio experience.  They set up two chairs and began their performance.   Julio was the star, the exclusive contact with the audience. 

I pause here for a moment to take us back to the political.  I thought:  In this superheated political climate, when we think of Mexicans in the United States, we think of the ones rushing the border crossings, the ones wading across the Rio Grande, the ones killing each other while they terrorize large parts of Los Angeles, the ones stacked up dead like cordwood in the back of a locked Chevy Astro van in the middle of the desert.  We don't think about these folks, who show every sign of being productive humans, yet here they are, yukking it up and paying high drink prices and tipping responsibly and checking out the tunage, which consists of what sounds to me to be pretty traditional popular love songs.  This is something I needed to see and I'm happy to be sitting here in the middle of it. 

But it was more than that.  I've worked with Latino attorneys, judges, clients, so it wasn't like it was stunning to see this group of accomplished Mexicans.  What was striking about this tableaux was the portrayal of prosperity and accomplishment and the suggestion of rather conventional values reinforced by what gave every appearance of being a highly responsible community.   These weren't folks who had gotten dressed up because it was expected in their Anglo-dominated workplace.  They had come to this place as they had because this was a part of the kind of life they wanted to lead.  Can one reach such a grandiose and comforting conclusion from one evening in a bar?  Maybe not.  Maybe I was being sentimental, or merely wishful.  But when I asked myself whether there was in this group anything subsersive to any of my own values, or those of American society generally, all I can say is that, under the influence of two martinis and two Diet Cokes, it didn't seem that way to me.   Rather, it seemed to me that I had a fair amount in common with these folks.   I even entertained the zany thought -- and this may have been the martinis talking, that plus the fact that this was San Diego County -- that a fair chunk of these folks might vote Republican.

I hope this does not sound patronizing.  I intend it to sound like a learning experience.

I can't remember whether Julio spoke any English at all after he and Ramon were seated with their guitars.  I'm thinking there was some at the outset, but that pretty soon the whole evening was in Spanish.  He and Ramon began to play their guitars.  Julio sang the first number or two and was the showman of the pair.  He was the better guitarist, but Ramon, a rather less romantic figure, had the better voice.  The bar crowd was getting what they came to hear and responded with noisy enthusiasm and laughter at gags I could not understand.

After awhile, he called some audience members up to sing.  It was a revelation.  Some of these guys (they were mostly guys; one young woman you'll see below) had incredible voices, amazing talents.  I asked the young woman to my right if these were professional singers. 

In Mexico, she said.

I heard rumbles about an opera singer.  Sure enough, after awhile a large young man appeared at the door of the bar and was recognized by the crowd.  Julio beckoned him up.  This guy not only had a beautiful voice, he had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard, and I consider myself an excellent judge of vocal beauty.  The guy blew the doors off the joint.

Then a guy improbably named Jimmy came up to sing.  He was talented too, but he had a little trouble getting off the stage.  Eventually Julio persuaded him to yield, and Julio and Ramon took a break.

When they returned, Julio gestured for me to come up and take the microphone.  He wanted me to sing "Dindi."  ("Dindi" is pronounced jin JEE, with the j pronounced like the middle consonant sound in pleasure.)    He spoke English to the crowd, asked them to be quiet, which they were happy to do to see what this outlier was going sing to them.  Then he said get your tomatoes ready, and he laughed, and the crowd laughed, and then he and Ramon started right in.  The song has no instrumental intro -- the singer begins with the first note of music.  Didn't look for a key, just started playing the verse.  I was ready.  "Dindi" has a lot of lyrics, but I'd been going over them in my head while I was waiting to go on, and I picked it up and sang it through.  At the end of the song I go out with a coda where I sing O, Dindi repeatedly in a higher register, and Julio and Ramon picked up what I was doing and brought the song to a conclusion the same time I did.

The house went nuts.

Julio asked me to stay up to do another song.   We tossed a couple of suggestions back and forth, and in a few seconds it was one, two, one-two-three-four and I did Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin."  My friends, I am very doubtful if Frank Sinatra ever saing IGYUMS with two Spanish guitars, but we swung it pretty hard and the response was gratifying.  Oh, I admit that it may have been polite enthusiasm, but I was grateful for it nonetheless.  I took my bows and sat back down. 

[I am amazed that I can't find any still pictures of Julio de la Huerta on the Internets.  However, here he is playing at a private party in a different room at the Westgate.  He and Ramon are accompanying a young woman who also came to the stage that night.   She is not going to make you forget Astrud Gilberto but she makes up for this deficiency with some very impressive underpinnings.]

He called me up later in the evening for another song, something simple like "Unforgettable."   But before the evening got late, the crowd began to thin.  It was a Monday.  These people had to get up the next morning and go to work.

So did I.

As I walked down Broadway back to my hotel, I understood that I'd had a very cool evening.  Unlike "Cheers," I'd been somewhere where nobody knew my name.  But it didn't matter.

Meandering anecdote finis.

============

[PS:  The more courageous among you can check out my version of "Dindi" on iTunes, recorded in 2003 in Chicago.] 

============

And I have a request.

Julio still plays on Sunday and Monday nights at the Plaza Bar at the Westgate.  I reckon I'll be back there someday.  And when I do, I'd like to honor that crowd by singing a Spanish-language love song.  Who out there knows one they can recommend?  Not one that was a hit stateside, but one that would surprise and please a crowd not expecting to hear it.  Many thanks.

PART 1: A Personal Encounter with Mexico in America

This one's going to meander a bit.  In fact, it's going to meander into multiple articles.   But at least it will meander from something serious to something fun.

I'm listening to this preposterous 60 Minutes segment on some canal that seems to be in the path of unconventional pedestrian crossings from Mexico to the United States, and in which some of those unconventional pedestrians are drowning.  (Is Bob Simon the worst interviewer in American broadcast journalism?)   And I'm thinking the usual commonsense thoughts about assumption of risk, and also thinking about what I would have thought was one of the  irreducible functions of a national government -- the raw physical security of the country's borders -- and wondering why we are even debating the wisdom of turning back an invasion through the stout measures being undertaken by the State of Arizona.

The whole immigration debate saddens me.  Yeah, I think that we should resist the importation of that element of Mexican culture that lacks the political will to eradicate the drugs and violence and general crap that seems to be infecting Mexico.  (I understand the argument that US demand has something to do with the drug cancer in Mexico, and I think there's a lot to it.)  I don't know why that element exists in the Mexican polity.  History, geography, political instability, education, religion, economic regulation or its lack, some stew of all of those things and more.  Doesn't seem to me to be racist or even a little bit unreasonable to say stay where you are until we figure this out.  

But, aside from, oh, drug lords, urban gangs, corrupt officials, and George Lopez, I like Mexicans same as other folks.  I observe them working hard and doing good work -- work, in any event, as good as I am accustomed to seeing from their non-Mexican counterparts.  So I'm hoping we can find a way to secure the borders and welcome what is valuable about the good people wanting to come here to get away from the busted system to our south.  They're just coming because they want to make money, you say?  Well, that's what I want, too.  Seems like we should be able to figure out a way to do that together, without stigmatizing an entire class of people as criminals, on the one hand, and accusations of racism, on the other.

And I think about an evening a couple of years ago in San Diego.

Many of you know that I'm a bit of an amateur lounge singer.  (When you observe the combination of bit (as in diminutive), amateur, and lounge, you can get some fix on my talent level.)  So when I'm in a strange town, I travel to Google and see if there are any piano lounges nearby.

I was in San Diego to work on a case with our office there.  First evening after I arrived I was on my own.  Google reported a piano bar at the Westgate Hotel, just a couple of blocks up Broadway from where I was staying.

I strolled -- I might have ambled, I don't recall -- into the Westgate lobby around six.  Sure enough, I heard a piano tinkling nearby.  And I use the word "tinkling" with all connotations intact.   The accompanying vocals were worse.  I poked my head into the bar.  It was a long, narrow room, ornately appointed, with banquettes with tables on each wall, the piano at the far end, and a very small bar tucked around a corner.  A very elderly couple sat at a table on the right banquette; there might have been one or two other people in there.  The auspices for high musical art were not good and I turned to leave, when the pianist saw me and called out merrily to "come on in!"  I have a soft spot in my heart for those souls who eke out livings as musicians, but for whom the combination of talent and luck never ignited.  I felt sorry for the guy.   I went in and sat up by the piano.

Plaza Bar, Westgate Hotel, San Diego

About this crowded when I arrived.

Banquettes extend down the walls of a long narrow room behind the phographer.

The pianist was a very friendly gent and we got to talking about the Great American Songbook, what are usually called "standards."  I'll spare you the details, but, as sometimes happens, the pianist asked me to sing a song or two.  That was a pretty low-risk proposition, since the audience consisted solely of the two very elderly people sitting on the banquette.  I think I sang "The Shadow of Your Smile" and "The Days of Wine and Roses."  Maybe "That's All." 

The pianist said, "You should stick around for Julio."

The elderly couple on the banquette beckoned me over, thanked me for the songs.  "You should stay for Julio," the old man said.

Piano, Plaza Bar, Westgate Hotel

Picture this singer (Karen Giorgio) as a slender

Italian guy who looked a little like Montgomery Clift.

By that time, the pianist's shift was over and he was packing up his stuff.  "Julio starts at 7," he said.  "This place will start filling up soon."  He closed the piano and covered it.

And sure enough, maybe a quarter to, people began to arrive at the bar.  Just a few at first, and then a steady stream.

A steady stream of Mexicans.

PART 2 of this meandering anecdote will appear on Thursday.

One For the Ladies

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day 
starring Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, and Ciaran Hinds

I believe I rashly promised that my next review would be of some work of art that chicks would enjoy.  I didn't have to think very long to recall this marvelous confection.  The Memsahib and I went to see this at the local art house (the wonderful Angelica in the Shops at Legacy in Plano).   The Mem doesn't care for violent action flicks, which tend to be relegated to pay-per-view at home.   I don't mind -- it's a good policy that steers us away from blockbusters and toward deserving smaller movies.  

I liked this one a lot.  Frances McDormand plays a governess terminated from her prior employ.  She is desperate for work and contrives to be assigned to bird-dog a flighty American babe played by the ubiquitous but ubiquitous-for-a-reason Amy Adams.  Ms. Adams is an American in London on the make and pursued by a variety of unacceptable gentlemen from whom Ms. McDormand seeks to protect her -- but not too vigorously.  In the meantime, Ms. McDormand's very proper Miss Pettigrew -- well, she lives for a day, and, we are led to believe, more to come.

The two principals are a delight to watch, and Ciaran Hinds steals the scenes he is in.  (He played Julius Caesar in the HBO miniseries "Rome.")  

This is not a movie that is going to make you forget the greatest chickflicks of all time, but the skill of its stars, the wit, and, to be blunt, the romance, must win over even the guy-est of the guys.  When it comes right down to it, most dudes will admit, if only to themselves, that they enjoy the game of romance.  They will indeed sit still to watch it on the screen. 

It's out of the theaters now, so rent it, download it, sit close to your honey, make sure the popcorn is buttered enough for the guy but not too much for the honey, and havs yourself a merry little evening.

Why is Luke Wilson So Smug?

Why does ubiquitous AT&T pitchman Luke Wilson (brother of Owen) seem so -- I dunno, self-satisfied when he's making invidious comparisons between AT&T's services and Verizon's?  From here, it seems that Wilson has two problems:

(1)  Every iPhone owner I know holds two strong opinions:  (a) the iPhone is an absolutely phenomenal piece of technology that they dearly love, and (b) AT&T sux to a degree of suckitude previously unknown to humankind.  Spotty coverage is one problem, but the worst is dropped calls.   This is in sharp contrast to Verizon subscribers, who seldom have these difficulties.

(2) That is one terrible haircut.

So while AT&T is entitled to make a case for the quality of its wireless service, Wilson's sarcastic and unctuous attitude looks ridiculous to a public accustomed to AT&T's lousy performance.  Apparently he believes that the ability to talk on the phone and surf the internet at the same time is more valuable to consumers than the actual ability to place and complete calls.   It's as though Toyota had hired Pauly Shore to tout their renewed commitment to quality and safety.

I Know Lots of People Dying Isn't A Good Time, but Read It Anyway

The Death and Life of Bobby Z by Don Winslow

Sometimes, when you're at loose ends, looking for something to do, the thought arrives that you must, before another instant passes, sit down with a book featuring a sociopath who just happens to have superb Gulf War infantry training and really, really poor impulse control, who has murdered a biker in prison  with an edge-sharpened license plate (in his defense, the biker was probably going to try to kill him eventually), who is given the opportunity to escape the death that unquestionably awaits him in the cell block by agreeing to pose as a guy he looks a lot like, a (deceased while in custody) SoCal surf and drug-dealer legend, for the purpose of being traded to a sadistic Mexican drug lord for an undercover US drug guy that the overlord has found out.  When you have a craving for some readage like that, really, nothing else will do.  Gotta have it.

You're in luck!  The Cool Hot Center can report that The Death and Life of Bobby Z fits your bill to a T.  And lest you think I may have strayed from my policy of not disclosing material plot points, let me assure you that you learn all of the foregoing within the first few pages.

I was enthusiastic about Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine  back a week or so ago, and Bobby Z is an equally bracing read.  Now, I am assuming that our readers here are aware we're talking about books where there is a lot of crime.  And I'm not talking about securities fraud or cybersquatting.  This is a book where everyone -- the US agent, lots of bikers, an army of Mexican drug guys, and the former right-hand-man of Bobby Z, all want the frequently-jailed narrator (real name, Tim Kearney) dead.  They do not succeed -- we know this because this book is in the first person -- and it's not just because he runs away successfully.

Tim spends a lot of time thinking about his life as a failure.  (He told the judge his problem wasn't breaking and entering -- it was breaking and exiting.)  Although, like Frankie Machine, he is highly competent at the things he needs to do to stay alive.  And in the middle of all the suspense and violence, you find passages like this:

"They had a lifeguard at the public pool in Desert Hot springs, he remembers.  They called her Big Blue because she wore a bright blue one-piece bathing suit.  No one ever actually saw her swim -- the popular theory was that if anyone started drowning Big Blue would just jump in and raise the water level so that the drowning person would just sort of wash up on the edge of the pool.  No one ever volunteered to test the theory, though, so Tim's memory of Big Blue was her sitting up in that big chair reading Mademoiselle magazine while chewing on beef jerky."

One more cool thing:  This book in its paperback version is 259 pages, and has 79 chapters.  There are numerous chapters that are 1 and 2 pages long.  You got some adult ADHD issues, this is the book for you.

Finally:  The first couple dozen chapters or so of this book take place in one of my favorite places in the entire galaxy, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park just over the mountains from San Diego.  I've hauled my bride, her grandchildren, and numerous unsuspecting friends over there to experience the desolate beauty of  this Death Valley Lite (and a cool little underground museum).  When I lived in Poway and needed to unclog the synapses I'd go by myself -- cup of coffee in Santa Ysabel, breakfast in the old mining town of Julian, then downgrade all the way to the desert.  And now, here it is, starring in this book. 

In my visits there, though, I never saw any pitched battles between a three-time loser accompanied by a six year-old boy and a phalanx of crazed Mexican drug czar minions.  So I was glad to see that someone had filled in this gap in my understanding of the area.

======

I promise I'll soon review something that chicks might enjoy.

A Pulpy, Corny Classic

A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins

In 1986 when I lived in Chicago I took a short story writing course with Asa Baber through Northwestern's night school.  Baber was an author (Tranquility Base, Land of a Million Elephants) and wrote the "Men" column for Playboy for many years.  Around fifteen students, and every last mother one of them a miserable writer, including yours truly, to judge from my aggregate published output to date of nothing.  (We pretend writers all thank Jah for Blogger.)  One night one of the smarmy young pretend writers in the class was making a dismissive reference to Harold Robbins, comparing him unfavorably to -- I don't remember, some writerly ideal like Mailer or Updike or the like, accompanied by the nodding agreement of the class.   I had never read a Harold Robbins novel, but I spoke up, probably rather more sharply than I should have, to note that Harold Robbins actually finished writing books, wrote books that attracted the attention of real editors, and were read by millions of real readers, many of whom may not have had the elevated tastes of these kids (who probably hadn't read Updike or Mailer since college), but who were not being fooled into reading something they didn't enjoy.  That shut 'em up.

In the intervening two-and-a-half decades, I still hadn't read a Harold Robbins novel.  I don't know how I came across A Stone for Danny Fisher, but I think I read somewhere that as Robbins's first novel (published in 1951), it had about it some of the grit and drive that may have dissipated somewhat in his later potboilers (The Betsy, Heat of Passion, The Carpetbaggers).  I am very glad I picked it up.

The cover tells some of the story:  A hot mid-twentieth-century chick with one of those hot mid-twentieth-century hot-chick hairdos and really hot mid-twentieth-century hot-chick foundational undergarments, a fleabag room, and boxing.  What's not to like?

The book has all these things, but quite a bit more.  It is about a boy growing into manhood in Brooklyn during the Depression.  He suffers from economic deprivation, limited prospects, and the curse of anti-Semitism.   He overcomes them to a point, but the logic of the life he has chosen soon drives him to become a very different kind of person.  He struggles with the demands of his new life, which is in sharp contrast to the joy he takes in the woman he loves.  

If you're thinking about picking this up, let me be clear about a couple of things.  First, this is a story you've heard before.  As you read, you will find yourself predicting what happens next, and you will frequently be correct.  To adopt the boxing metaphor, Robbins telegraphs his punches.

Second, this is not sophisticated writing.  It is sometimes childishly simple.  Lots of adverbs.  (Most good writers profess to hate adverbs (I almost said "unanimously" hate adverbs.))  I'm flipping through the book right now, let's see  .  .  .  you'll find sentences like: "Slowly the beating of her heart quieted."  "Her hand reached up wonderingly and touched her hair."  "The dark rolled around me in gentle swirling clouds."

But -- and this must have been what I was sensing in 1986 -- there is something to hold your attention on every page.  Something that keeps you moving through the dialogue and exposition.   These simple and sometimes corny words tell the reader what is happening.   They don't tell you how smart the author is, they don't trick you with pointless plot devices, they just set forth the dramatic facts of the life of a young man the reader comes soon to care about.  It's a story.  Robbins doesn't apologize for it or dress it up.  He just flat tells it.

Folks, that's writing.

Finally, Something Upon Which Muslim Clerics and I Can Agree

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1267262/Iranian-cleric-Women-wear-revealing-clothing-cause-earthquakes.html

The Cool Hot Center's List of Presidential Virtues (Revised)

Author
Not Bush
Black, or Blackish
U.S. Citizen
Over 35
Lived in the U.S. at Least 14 Years
Herald of a New Age of Bipartisanship
Handsome
Kinda Sexy, Actually
Charismatic
Eloquent
Articulate
President of Harvard Law Review
Extremely Smart
Athletic
Valuable Community Organizing Background
Humorous
Open, Media-Accessible Administration
Not Republican
Not Really a Socialist, so Much
Family Man
Beautiful Family
Esteemed Abroad
Cannot Be Judged by Former Radical and Race-Baiting Associations
Healer
Youthful
Strong-Willed (Quit Smoking)
Non-Drinker

Two Summer Reads: A Vulgar Masterpiece and a Slick SoCal Crime Thriller

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston

We all learned in school that when we read a novel we must suspend disbelief.  Sometimes, to enjoy a work of art, we have to suspend disapproval.  In this case, we have to suspend our disapproval of people who punctuate almost every utterance with one or more obscenities.   Can you do it?  If you can, and you have a ken for crime novels -- there's a little mystery here, but it's mostly a crime novel -- pick up this number.

The voice is that of Web, a wiseass slacker, but turns out Web wasn't always a guy who cleans up what's left of one after one passes over (or, frequently, in this novel, is unnaturally killed).  He used to teach school; his father is a famous writer.  Too much more than this I don't want to reveal, except to say that (1) the death-scene cleanup business is fiercely competitive, (2) his best friend, roommate, and sometime employer is a tattoo artist, and (3) things get immeasurably worse for him when he tries to accommodate a hot chick whose father has committed suicide.  Seriously, who among us can't identify?

The particular brilliance of this fine novel is in the razor-sharp, and frequently hilarious dialogue.  Doubtful that too many readers of this blog hang out with guys like Web, but we all know smartmouths who can hardly express themselves other than in ironic asides.  It rings true.

And despite the gruesome subject matter, the text is not utterly drenched in blood.  (See the next novel for that.)  In fact, this is a real novel.  The protagonist grows and changes, and we like it, because we care about him. 

If you think you can get past the violence of the language (and violence to the language) and you have a natural affinity for the genre, this is one you should check out.

Continuity complaint:  At one point, Web points out a constellation to the toxic hot chick.  The constellation he points out is Corvus, the Crow, which is a rather obscure constellation and somewhat low in the sky when it appears, and I am doubtful that anyone could see it, much less identify it to someone who didn't know the night sky, from a moving car in the light-drenched Los Angeles night.

(P.S.:  I have seen news accounts that Mystic Arts is going to be made into an HBO series.)

=====

The Winter of Frankie Machine, by Don Winslow

I lived in the San Diego area so I'm a sucker for the novels of T. Jefferson Parker (who, thankfully, is one of our more wonderful crime fiction writers).  Don  Winslow paddles out into the same surf.  This one is a peach. 

One of my book-review rules is not to give away any of the plot -- at least not any of the plot that doesn't appear in the first few pages.  This baby doesn't really get rolling until some ways into it, but you know, you just know, something is about to pop.  When the cover of the book displays a sinking boat and the name "Frankie Machine," and your main character Frank Macchiano is a pillar of the Pacific Beach recreational fishing community and a meticulous businessman, the pleasant rhythms of his daily routine are unlikely to continue.  And when it starts to pop, it doesn't stop popping until the final page. 

A lot of that popping comes from .38 caliber instruments. 

This book reminded me just a little of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, featuring a hero -- such as he is -- who never seems to be at a loss for the right thing to do.  Oh, he runs into a spot of trouble here and there, but Frank always seems to have an appropriately violent solution.  

Let's put it this way:  When I was reading this, I thought DeNiro should play this guy in a movie, and whaddya know?

One more thing:  This novel moves easily through the Cosa Nostra underworld of Southern California.  Almost every major character is recognizable as a thinly-disguised real-life thug to those who have done much reading in Mafia history.  You will find Jimmy "the Weasel" Frattianno, Frank "Bomp" Bompensiero, Jack Dragna, Allen Dorfman, Allen Glick, Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein, and several others, all committing crimes looking very much like the crimes of their real-life doppelgangers.

Lotsa killing of bad men.  Highly satisfying.  Could not put it down.

No Woman Who Thinks This Is a Good Look for Her Should Be Questioning Sarah Palin's Judgment

Tina Fey may be the world's only beautiful woman who needs a makeover. 

Same Parents, If Not Separated at Birth: Smarmy Geico Question Guy . . .

.  .  .  Mike McGlone,

and Warner Brothers Bad-Guy Character Actor and Real-Life Convict Paul Kelly

Same Parents, If Not Separated at Birth: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown . . .

and former Trusted Person

Dan Rather

Prime Numbers Are Funny

 Occasionally I get the question, "Steverino, how can I write things funny?"  Actually  .  .  .  no one has ever asked me that.  And  .  .  .  nobody ever calls me Steverino.

But I do have a comedy tip for you today that you can use even if you are not a funny person.  This is something I noticed when I was writing some the earlier articles on this site.

Someone trying to write funny, if he or she is doing it right, pays attention to every single word, every single piece of punctuation.  The cadence of each sentence, and the rhythm when one strings sentences together.  How the text looks on the page.   We've all thought it:  That was a good joke, but he told it badly.  Works the same with text.  The smallest decision can have an impact on creating the proper gestalt for the generation of yuks.

Not everyone can write amusingly, and I can tell you for a fact that a number of commenters on this website would place me among the "not everyone" group.  But I am here to pass along to you one of the overlooked rules of comedy which you may use to add (what I concede is a very incremental quantum of) humor to your writing:

Prime numbers are funny.

Prime numbers, you will recall, are those integers that have only two positive integer factors -- one and themselves. So an even number can never be a prime, because it is divisible by 2 (as well as one and itself).  For example:

What I should have said is that prime numbers are funnier than non-prime numbers.  As the foregoing illustration suggests, a prime number alone is not enough to elicit chuckles -- rather, when used in preference to a non-primes when a sentence calls for the invention of a number, it tends to set the stage for the actual point of your gag-in-chief better than any other kind of number. 
So if you are drafting something light-hearted, and you need to make up a number, remember:   11 is funnier than 10 or 9 or 12; 17 is funnier than 16 or 18, or, for that matter, its odd brother 15.  But the real hilarity starts in the mid-double-digits:  61, 53.  And the funniest primes of all are those with more syllables:  47, 97.

I should add the qualification that if you need a particularly large number, or a decimal, the rule in its refined form is that the significant digits of the number should be a prime number.  So even though 673,000 is not a prime number, it is funnier than 674,000.  When I needed a fractional number for a exagerratedly small number of megapixels in the first article on this site, I used .079. 

You probably recall chortling uncontrollably.

As noted, even numbers are not amusing.  Imaginary numbers sound like they should be funny, but can really deflate a jape.  Transcendental numbers actually make the reader dislike the writer, and complex numbers bring even the most riotous tale to a complete stop.  Irrational numbers:  tragic.  Whole numbers -- well, they're only distinguished from counting numbers by the presence of zero, which is only funny as a punch line, for example:  "To calculate the number of times Marcus got lucky at P.J. Clarke's in a year, you take the amount of money he's spent there rounded to the nearest grand, times the inverse average relative humidity in the men's room, divided by the square root of the standard deviation of the distribution of ages of the women claiming to him that they're single.  Then you take that quotient and multiply by zero."  See.  Could be funny in a better joke, but you get the idea.

Why should this be so?  I believe there are three reasons:

(1) Things that are unexpected are funnier than things that are expected.  Prime numbers are of equal dignity with other integers, but because they are never the result of multiplication or division (other than when appearing as significant digits in non-primes), they appear in our daily lives marginally less frequently than other numbers, especially counting (natural) numbers.  They are thus marginally more unexpected and thus of marginal positive comedy value when employed in preference to non-primes.

(2)  They never appear in childhood multiplication tables, and thus do not have about them the faintly unwelcome fragrance of non-primes that were the answers to drills we resented when we were children.   That is, it's not so much that primes are so side-splitting -- it's that other natural numbers are so dreary.

(3)  There is something inherently funny about prime numbers that cannot be described.  I think maybe it's that they're exotic and mysterious -- theorums relating to large prime numbers remain under study -- but not so conceptually difficult that people don't feel just a little cool and proud that they know what prime numbers are.  For example, would this website be funny if it related to any other type of number?   (Link:  vulgarity alert.)

Alas, with the migration of childhood arithmetic to calculators, primes will probably lose their slight appeal to our subconscious, and their laff-riot potential will fade.  In the meantime, if you are a comedy blogger, switch the significant digits of all of your discretionary numerical references to primes and I can almost guarantee that you, too, can attract upwards of 13 unique hits a day.

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Follow Your Cool Hot Center on Twitter:  @CoolHotCenter

 

 

[NOTE on 1-4-13:  The Farrelly brothers are about to release a new comedy.  What did they call it?  Movie 47.  I'm telling you, men and women, I'm on to something here.]



Top Dozen Reasons Why I Wish the Burger King Were OUR King

(12) Believes in the virtue of vigorous capitalist competition.

(Artist: TRPollard Jr)

(11)  Is always cheerful.

(10)   Fully appreciates the value of espionage to maintaining balance of power.  (Link goes to latest commercial showing the King stealing McDonald's plans for the Sausage McMuffin with Egg, his predecessor having left the Breakfast Sandwich Reverse-Engineering Project scandalously underfunded.) 


(9)  His public appearances limited to 30-second televised segments with a beginning, middle, and end.

(8)  Frozen expression on his face is 100% natural.

(7)  Although unmistakably regal, he is by no means an elitist; he moves freely among the common people.

(6)  Goes way beyond "don't ask don't tell."

(5)  Very unlikely to lecture us about childhood obesity; almost certain not to demand that we like organic lettuce.

(4)  Ruling by divine right eliminates need for Congress. 

(3)  Will never give a 23-minute answer to a 7-second question; in fact, will give no speeches at all.


(2)  Gravely concerned over the effect on human life of the depletion of the ozone layer.

(1)  The man knows burgers; I like burgers.

 

*     *     *

Follow Your CoolHotCenter on Twitter:  @CoolHotCenter

TECHNORATI CLAIM CODE YCQPKZFTW2U2

Move along, nothing to see here, folks.  Just verifying my existence to the blog search site Technorati.  Thanks for visiting.

YCQPKZFTW2U2

Please check the archives for items of interest, and thanks again for dropping by.

Steve

Is Michelle Distancing Herself from Obama?

What on earth has happened to the spicy Michelle Obama? This is not a shy lady. Neither is she a woman without strong views on the news of the day. For awhile there, we would hear from her with some frequency on matters of public interest.  When Obama took office, I had expected that we would see a FLOTUS in the Hillary Clinton mode, very much in the foreground as an advisor to the President, and vocal in support of the administration’s policies. I thought it likely that she would seek public office herself someday.

I still think that.

And that’s why I find it most interesting that, as her beloved (I’m not being sarcastic here) husband is suffering an appalling decline in his personal popularity, and his initiatives, one after the other, leave the center who elected him mostly aghast, she is reportedly devoting her fierce intelligence and legendary energy to the encouragement of organic arugula. True, her gardening efforts have called attention to the levels of lead in urban soils, but other than that not even Michelle Malkin has found anything overtly political in the First Lady's switch in fertilizers from sewage sludge – really – to “White House compost, crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand,” according to The New York Times. (Oops, I spoke too soon.)

I confess that it has occurred to me that Mrs. Obama might have her finger a little more firmly on the pulse of public regard than does her man, and is looking forward to a time when she might want to offer herself up for voters’ approval. A prominent public embrace of POTUS’s widely loathed – at least for now – initiatives on health care, immigration, judicial appointments, international blame-taking, and all the rest would make deniability, uh, implausible:

“I stand before you now as one who, according to the Congressional Avoirdupois Office -- created with bipartisan support at my request -- advocated for policies that resulted in a net aggregate reduction of 157 million tons of suet from the growing bodies of our nation’s children and adolescents during the four years I served this country as its First Lady. That, in turn, has reduced childhood diabetes and other lard-related illnesses to the point where our nation can safely reduce its reliance on professional healthcare, which, as you know, has declined in recent years for some reason." [Wink, eye-roll.] [Wild cheering.]

I’m not saying that her trademark project of fighting childhood obesity is unworthy. Every FLOTUS has assigned herself some uncontroversial cause or other, and this is a pretty good one. But during this period of enormous change accompanied by enormous controversy, her disappearance from the hustings is notable. Thinking ahead, that one is.

By the way:  Turnips, carrots, spinach, chard, black kale – the President has reportedly vetoed beets – it’s not surprising that Malia and Sacha have lost weight. What’s surprising is that they haven’t run away. If you’re invited to the White House for dinner, you might sneak in some Skittles for the young ladies; and, as a gift for the host, Obama’s own personal weight-loss aid:   a carton of Marlboro Lights.

You Can Say You Knew Her When

I interrupt this blog for some special pleading. The charming daughter of some fine friends of mine (Claire Colmar, daughter of Craig and Teri Colmar), is a finalist in a competition for a role on the hit show “Glee.” If you haven’t watched the show, I urge you to do so; it’s one of the Memsahib’s favorites and also one of my guilty pleasures.

May I ask you to go to the following site and vote for Claire, and pass it along to others? It appears that one must register on the “Glee” site to vote, but I suggest to you that this is a small price to pay to advance the career of this quite talented and serious young actress. (Register first, then go back and paste in the following link, and click the “save vote” box in text materials below her video.) Wish I had a photo to post, but the “Glee” site is resisting allowing me to copy her image.

Many thanks.

Vote for Claire Colmar here:

http://myfoxchicago.upickem.net/engine/Details.aspx?p=V&c=15126&s=3245011&i=1&m=X#SD

Looking for a Good Mystery? Avoid This One

Wild Indigo, by Sandi Ault

If you are looking for a mystery/thriller with a Native American slant and even an intriguing dose of mysticism, run, don't walk, away from this volume and pick up something by Peter Bowen or Kirk Mitchell. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books I have put aside without finishing, and this is one of them.

I can even pinpoint the exact moment when I came to this unhappy conclusion (no spoiler): The heroine, Jamaica Wild, explains that the reason she does not have blinds on the windows of her home is because she wants to be able to see the surrounding mountains through them.

Ms. Wild's lack of awareness that blinds may be opened to view objects through their accompanying windows will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this far. Ms. Wild is dumb as a stump. And not entertainingly so. She never says anything interesting, unexpected, witty, or suggestive that she is capable of solving the mystery. She is weirdly forgetful and unable to interpret some pretty obvious circumstances.

Indeed, the entire pueblo is a pretty dull place  None of the other characters, with the possible exception of Momma Anna, who tends to speak in sentences of no more than five words, ever says anything that suggests you'd like to be seated next to him or her at dinner.

But a mystery with a stiff central character (even one who is in every scene, and is telling the story) can be redeemed by good writing. Alas. The writing is writing-class poor. The book seems not to have had an editor's care. From page 5: "I looked through the shattered windshield, the scene beyond it in fragments like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the green of the forest land rising to the blue and purple shoulders of the Rocky Mountains, the high peaks watching like guardians over the normally peaceful, ancient village of Tanoah Pueblo." Multiply this cliched, redundant, unlikely, dull, and plot-stopping level of irrelevant detail by several hundred pages, and you can put away the Ambien.

Don't get me started on the wolf.