Brain Spasms

It's been a few weeks since I've seen the film "The Lovely Bones," but some of the gorgeous images are still stuck in my brain, along with the astounding performance by Stanley Tucci, whom I didn't even recognize until very near the end. Was also impressed that the teenaged Saoirse Ronan was able to hold her own amongst the heavyweight thespians she was working with.

Meanwhile, the economy still seems stuck in the doldrums. Wrapped up a six week stint last Friday at TD Bank as an AML Investigator. Basically had to review account holders who made cash deposits or withdrawals in the general neighborhood of $10,000 to determine the source of these funds and attempt to ascertain if they were from legal or illegal or questionable sources.

Didn't find any myself, but a colleague across the row was delighted at the cash flow of a client employed by the Scores organization in Manhattan. Another colleague vicariously enjoyed a person living high on the hog in Boca Raton who was apparently quite fond of walking about Florida with major wads of Benjamins stuffed in his pockets.

Try though I do to avoid Olympics overload some shenanigans inevitably infiltrate my personal filter. The ice skater who appears to enjoy dresses, the much criticized Russian skaters who dressed up as aboriginals (which was not a lot better or worse than several of the other truly dumb, pathetic and embarrassing costumes on display) and the Korean guys who seem to think that Apolo Ohno did them wrong during their competitive outing. Anyway, this will all go away soon, Jay Leno will be back on NBC at 11:35 p.m. EST Monday through Friday, and our planet will continue to spin.

Have been plodding in recent days through the latest doorstop by Steven King, "Under the Dome," which might actually weigh more than his earlier doorstop, "The Stand."

My understanding is that he generally has been working without an editor for a number of years and this is not always a good thing. Even Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway (to name but a few) knew that a pair of objective eyeballs on a manuscript could work wonders on overextended prose.

Book Nook

Recently completed reading a fascinating biography of prolific and fabulously wealthy writer Stephen King by Lisa Rogak, who is something of a specialist in unauthorized biographies of writers (she has also profiled Shel Silverstein and Dan Brown).

"Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King" offers a great deal of information about his life and times. Although familiar with the basic outlines of King's biography, I was stunned by the poverty in which he was raised. Absent a father, but with a hard working and often stressed out mom, he was periodically farmed out to relatives and had to deal with plenty of moves from one town to another, hand me down clothes, thick eyeglasses, poor hand and eye coordination, and the usual abuse inflicted by classmates who enjoyed more stable family lives.

This was, after all, the 1950s, a time when father always presumably knew best. To tune out these unpleasant facts of life, King took refuge in comic books and pulp science fiction, which inspired his first literary efforts, which were rewarded by his mother with nickels, dimes, and quarters. An excellent example of the supportive powers of pay for play.

King has been open about his former dependence on booze and drugs, but again the sheer quantity and variety of the substances he selected to abuse was a real eye opener. For example, I've never known that Listerine and NyQuil could be abused at such high levels.

The high profile recovery from his auto accident is covered in harrowing detail (along with his subsequent efforts to overcome his new addiction to painkillers). In the end, we are left with a portrait of a prolific writer, one who is still compulsively driven to write, in his twilight years, enjoying the longevity of his marriage and the successes of his three grown children.

Happy Birthday Patti Smith

One of Patti Smith's claims to fame was helping jump start the New York City punk scene with her early 1970s poetry readings backed by guitarist/critic Lenny Kaye.

One key early venue was Bowery dive bar CBGB & OMFUG, at the time searching for its musical identity. After Patti became a regular, a horde of then unknown--many soon to become very well known--performers followed.

My first concert experience with Patti Smith was January 16, 1976 at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C. The venue held maybe 100 people if you crammed them elbow to elbow.

Other performers that I saw there back in the day were singer and songwriter Jackie DeShannon, electric violinist and fusion pioneer Jean Luc Ponty (an occasional collaborator with musical iconoclast Frank Zappa), Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and other names lost in the haze of time (and perhaps a few hazy substances!).

Patti's opening act was Garland Jeffreys, who was completely unknown to me at the time, but performed a powerful set that made me an instant fan.

Also there was legendary record mogul Clive Davis, at that time the former extremely powerful head of Columbia Records and founder of Arista Records. I recall him pacing back and forth during the sets.

Patti was wearing her iconic Keith Richards t-shirt and her band was crammed onto the club's notoriously small stage. My girlfriend, Marian LeBlanc, and I were seated at a tiny table very close to center stage. We had tix for the early and late shows.

Early Show
We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together, One More Cup of Coffee (Bob Dylan) (fragment), Privilege (Set Me Free), Ain’t it Strange, Kimberly, Redondo Beach, Free Money, Pale Blue Eyes/Louie Louie, Pumping (My Heart), Jolene (Dolly Parton) (fragment), Birdland, Gloria, (encore): My Generation*

Late Show
We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together, Slavery Days (Burning Spear), Privilege (Set Me Free), Ain’t it Strange, One More Cup of Coffee (fragment), Kimberly, Redondo Beach, Free Money, Pale Blue Eyes/Louie Louie, Pumping (My Heart), Jolene, Birdland, Gloria, (encore): My Generation*

Note: *Special guest John Cale.

One of the more memorable but least pleasant parts of the evening happened when we left the club to find that the battery in my Gremlin had died. This meant a long and extremely cold walk back to our apartment in Roslyn, Va., that included hiking over the Francis Scott Key bridge as a lusty wind blew down the Potomac River.

Book Nook

Christopher Buckley's memoir regarding his parents, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Patricia Taylor Buckley, mixes childhood memories and anecdotes with the serious business of dealing with their final illnesses and deaths within an 11 month period.

Losing Mum and Pup doesn't pull any punches and frankly there were a few anecdotes and insights regarding his dad that I would have been happy not to read.

Given his unique position as only child, Buckley offers a obviously subjective view of his childhood and adult relationships with his parents, each of whom had strong personalities and were well known, successful, and respected in their individual adult worlds.

This certainly caused tensions in their long marriage and generated no shortage of self-esteem issues for their sole child.

As a writer and thinker, William F. Buckley Jr. had a strong influence on my intellectual growth and emerging prose style during my high school and college years. His talk show, Firing Line, was don't miss television in our household and for a number of years my annual subscription to National Review magazine was a cherished Christmas gift.

At one time I had the pleasure of spending about 10 minutes chatting with him at a sparsely attended political fundraiser in North Jersey for a cause that I can no longer recall. He graciously autographed for me a copy of his latest book The Unmaking of a Mayor (sadly this highly entertaining volume about his 1965 New York City mayoral quest appears to be out of print).

For reasons unknown to me, television personality Fran Allison, longtime host of the popular and long running Kukla, Fran and Ollie puppet show, was also at that event. She, too, was very gracious.

In the end, it was appropriate that he died at his writing desk, having written scores of books, several thousand newspaper columns, and countless articles and essays during his lifetime. He was truly a writer's writer.

Tiger's Mess

Here we go again. Another wealthy male celebrity widely reputed to be one of the nicest folks ever born in the history of our planet has a zipper problem, which may or may not be compounded by a fondness for pills and booze, a rampant ego, potential daddy didn't love me enough issues, and lord knows what else.

There is no excuse, story or personality quirk that can justify cheating on your wife under any circumstances (especially when she is busy being pregnant with and subsequently raising your progeny).

One of the more interesting aspects of this pitiful morality play is the use of the word "mistress" by the media. The classic definition of mistress is a "kept woman" who is lavished by her older sugar daddy with jewels, clothes, cars, fancy meals, an upscale place to live, and other baubles. A middle class version of pay for play.

What we appear to have in this case are a bevy of cocktail servers, nude models, hookers, porn stars, golf groupies, good time girls, and self promoters (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

What you do not have here is a mistress situation. You have a rolling international sex tour by a wealthy celeb who likes to go trolling for impressionable young women with more street smarts than book smarts.

So why does this term dominate the coverage? Did the media choose a word less potentially offensive and volatile to the idiot American parents who still believe egotistical millionaire athletes are positive role models for their children?

Does this word make Tiger Woods less guilty of patently offensive behavior? Or is it a case of media celebrities closing ranks to shelter one of their own favorite jocks by playing fast and loose with language?

Only the late language maven William Safire would know for sure. But he is no longer available for comment. Stay tuned, though. There will be many more chapters to read in coming months about this self-inflicted public relations wound.

Who Can You Really Trust?

Just spent 15 minutes on the phone with an agency trying to obtain payment from me for a credit card account my ex-wife opened shortly before our divorce became final in 2001.

She used my name, birth date and SSN to have it sent to her own home. Racked up $5000 in four months then never made a payment. Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time she ran this type of scam on me.

It's a pretty bizarre way to thank me for funding her Master's Degree program and helping to raise her daughter to adulthood. Marry in haste, repent in leisure.

Book Nook

Family and friends know reading is one of my major pleasures. A portion of any free time that I can scrounge is spent immersed in alternating between multiple books, catching up with The New Yorker (am almost two or three issues behind), and clicking to a few favorite online publications.

Have are notes regarding three books I've read in the last month or so.

Carrie Fisher's novel was a revelation. Having not read her two previous offerings (although I did enjoy the film version of Postcards From the Edge) was caught unaware by her luscious prose style.

It was fun trying to identify the true inspirations behind the characters. Jack Nicholson, Eddie Fisher and her mom were easy, others not so much. Clearly need to get up to speed on my Hollywood gossip.

Historian James MacGregor Burns cleanly written narrative simplifies the often convoluted evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court in Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Crisis of the Supreme Court.

Which reminds me, when did it become mandatory for works of nonfiction to carry a subtitle? Is this supposed to make me feel that shelling out $25 or $35 for a hardcover is a bargain? Is the writer being paid by the published word like back in the good all days of the 19th century penny press?

If nothing else, this book offers a convincing argument that the U.S. Supreme Court has never been aloof from politics. It always has been and will continue to be intimately entwined with politics.

One interesting tidbit the author provides is that James Madison to his dying day expressed remorse that the Constitutional Convention, possibly exhausted from debating and implementing details of the functions and responsibilities of legislative and executive branches, failed to exert similar efforts on behalf of the federal judiciary.

Another fascinating portion deals with the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. The general lesson taught in history classes is that the Court refused to alter Scott's status from slave to free man because he spent a number of years in a non-slave state.

While this is true to the ruling, the decision's core findings are filled with bile and contempt:

"No black man or woman descended from an American slave could claim national citizenship under the Constitution, which relegated blacks to a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race and who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

In effect, this shattered the status quo and legislative compromises dating back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, that specified the contemporary states and territories that would be open to future expansion of the peculiar institution.

After this sweeping dictate by a Court dominated by slaveholders (which also marked the first serious claim by the Court to the alleged right of judicial review initially outlined by Chief Justice Judge Marshall five decades previously ), the War Between the States became inevitable.

Finally, "The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle" by prolific British author Russell Miller, fully portrays the extraordinary life and times of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

It's a classic tale of a man who rose above his dire childhood and difficult family circumstances to find international fame as the inventor of "the world's most famous man who never was."

Ironically, he came to detest the character that brought him worldwide fame and financial success because he believed the Holmes stories overshadowed his many other published -- and in his opinion -- better writings.

It would be interesting to obtain his opinion regarding the upcoming film featuring Robert Downey Jr. The actor who embodied Sherlock Holmes in the largest number of films, Basil Rathbone, would probably also offer some choice comments if he were still amongst us.