Gene Ayres Blogspot

Is Shakespeare Relevant, Part II

2012-01-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

Whether or not the Reader accepts the premise that William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, was not what he seemed (i.e. a writer/poet and man of letters) or my own premise that he was in fact the inventor of Hollywood (i.e. the first celebrity producer) William Shakespeare was not a fool or a foil, as depicted in the film Anonymous: he was anything but. I see him not only as a forerunner to Cecil B. de Mille and Louis B. Mayer, but also a forerunner to the Vampire Capitalist and Wall Street corporate greedmeister as depicted in the movie Wall Street by Michael Douglas. Shakespeare had a lot of business savvy, was denounced for being greedy just like Gordon Gekko, was accused of piracy and plagiarism just like Dan Brown and Steven Spielberg, hoarded grain to drive up prices during a famine just like Monsanto, owned a theater company (i.e.studio) just like Goldwyn (well, a partner, anyway), and fostered a bastard son who became England's first real estate developer, the forerunner of Samuel Levitt, as well as publisher of the first 'get rich quick' books: Sir William Davenant. And more important still was the ongoing conceit that even an uneducated commoner with illiterate parents, no books, no known education, and illiterate daughters could still be a genius entrepreneur who made good. In short, he embodied the future myth of the American Dream. So what could be more relevant than that?

That Shakespeare was a successful businessman (and also tax evader, as it happens--in other words an Elizabethan Romney)--is one of the few facts that actually exist about the man. Even Stratford-Upon-Avon is really just a theme park, all of which was built 150 years after his death, during which time nobody even remembered or heard of him in that town until P.T. Barnum showed up and tried to buy the "New Place" (already rebuilt at least once from scratch).

Thus was Shakespeare, followed by his son Davenant (also Poet Laureate of Maryland, later on) a true symbol and founder of all that America and our British Imperial ancestors valued most: money, property, and power over the works and labors of others. Small wonder his corporate sponsors and their Academic Ayatollahs protect him and his legacy with such ferocity.

All of which reminds me of the forthcoming U.S. election, and the continuing efforts of politicians to outdo themselves rewriting history, polishing their Newspeak, protecting their own best interests, altering facts to support their own ideology, and making Orwell the greatest prophet since Jesus.

Is Shakespeare Relevant?

2011-12-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, the film Anonymous attempted to make a case that Shakespeare was a fraud--a premise I support in my own book Il Libro Segreto di Shakespeare --but with different conclusions as to who the true author really was. I'd say read the book, but unless you are fluent in Italian, Russian, Czech, or Polish you can't, until an English language publisher is finally willing to step forward and put this book out there. Thus far they won't, making this the first book in literary history to be a bestseller in foreign translation, and not published in the author's native language.

Apart from the fraud part, I take issue with Roland Emmerich's film primarily because it is irrelevant. Unfortunately, he and his producers spent $30 million trying to convince an uncaring filmgoing public that William Shakespeare was actually the 17th Earl of Oxford, the Elizabethan equivalent to Donald Trump. Or rather, it was like trying to convince American readers that Michael Moore is really Donald Trump. Or that Mark Twain (an important character in my book) was actually Cornelius Vanderbilt (no offense to Anderson Cooper, who apparently actually is Cornelius Vanderbilt). It's like telling the 99%ers that they are unimportant.

The point is this: in order for Shakespeare, the Godfather of the English language, to seem relevant today his actions, rather than his words, are what need to be addressed. We live now in a world in which, on the one hand 300 million Chinese can speak and read English reasonably well, whereas only about 5,000 Americans can actually do the same. Let's face it, when most people would just as soon Tweet, relevance becomes a dicey thing.

In my case, I make a claim for relevance as follows: William Shakespeare was the Elizabethan equivalent of P.T. Barnum, with a heavy dose of Donald Trump, and an even heavier dose of (in fact I make a case that he is the original) Cecil B. DeMille, and in fact his primary achievement was to have invented the producer as superstar and was therefore the forebear of Hollywood. And I dare anyone to question the relevance of Hollywood, because without Hollywood America has no culture at all. You will note that Cecil B. DeMille's name was atop every movie he produced, and I can guarantee that he never wrote (or read) a word of any of them. Nor did Joseph E. Levine, Samuel Goldwyn, or their successors. Shakespeare's name is known today for one reason and one reason only: his name, somehow, got stamped on all those plays. How a functional illiterate (he was), with illiterate parents, illiterate daughters (to me the clincher--come on, have you ever read or seen The Tempest?) and no books, no degrees, no correspondence, and no known friends or associates with any education whatsoever managed to 'write' all those plays is indeed the mystery of the ages. To me it couldn't be more simple: he didn't do it. And Mark Twain, by the way, agreed, in his long suppressed essay Is Shakespeare Dead. Read it! If you can find it. Then read my book. It might even be available in English by then.

What's in a Name?

2011-12-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

Recently I attended a rather remarkable catered event sponsored by Amazon.com's answer to the democratization of publishing--CreateSpace--whose motto seems to be 'Anyone can be an author.' Unlike, apparently, in the old un-democratic days when you had to be able to write, with a product that passes at least somebody's version of muster (usually one of those now-nearly extinct educated female editors with a no-nonsense approach and a degree or two from Barnard or Wellesley). Yet here in the now in Seattle, it all seemed fitting, because one of the key topics was having a so-called 'platform,' and as former publisher and editor Alan Rinzler (who has published and edited such dauntingly diverse clients as Toni Morrision, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Shirley MacLaine, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, and Robert Ludlum and thus has stood on lots of platforms prior to this one at the Asian Art Museum) put it, "who are you to write about this subject?" Indeed, having just seen published the sixth translation of my book about Shakespeare--worse, daring to challenge the orthodoxy on that subject--indeed, who am I, to dare to do so, when even such stalwarts as Mark Twain and Otto Von Bismarck were chastened for doing so?

I have been ready with an answer for some time, of course, which I provided to several Italian journalists who were properly curious enough to ask. Indeed, who am I--Gene Ayres, John Underwood, or whatever else I choose to call myself-- to write about Shakespeare, when I don't hold one single university chair on the subject, or even have a PhD in English, let alone hold a tenured post at Oxford, Harvard, or Yale or even a cubicle at the Folger Library? My answer is simple: who else but a 'commoner' should be better qualified to write about one of his own? I have done my 10,000 hours of work, study, and preparation for my chosen role as Outlier. Because as surely as the Oxford theory of Shakespeare (as set forth in the film Anonymous) is only half correct (it wasn't Shakespeare who dunnit--well, he dunnit, but not the writing part) so also is the notion that only a cloaked don in an ivory tower is qualifed to speak for a man who had, at best, a third grade education and spent most of his time avoiding taxes and hoarding grain.

Hello? I have always been amazed at the rigid orthodoxy surrounding the Shakespeare myth, which has become to all intents and purposes nothing less than a religion--so powerful that as with most religion the facts themselves are considered irrelevant--that he only had a third grade education at best, owned no books, attended no universities, corresponded with no one but a local Stratford merchant who became his son-in-law and a lawyer about a real estate deal in London, and had two illiterate daughters-- are pretty much the only known facts about the man. And yet it is nothing short of blasphemy to suggest that maybe this guy could not possibly have written anything more than a shopping list, if that. And yet the dons, or what my doomed fictional professor-character Desmond Lewis (author of the Book Within the Book, pictured below) dared to call the 'Ayatollahs of Academe,' have gotten away with this for centuries. So, yes, Shakespeare was an unqualified illiterate who somehow wrote all those great plays and poems while in a presumed trance in his Bankside office, and thus only a learned academic is qualified to write about it, by way of presumption? No wonder Sarah Palin has gotten away with claiming to be the only qualified expert on Susan B. Anthony, except in reverse (or was that Michelle Bachmann? I do get these mid-life cheerleaders confused). Mark Twain had a ball with all this nonsense, of course, noting in his essay 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' how every single word in those hundreds of scholarly volumes the academics have generated over the centuries consists of but a single element: what Twain called 'surmise.' Hence, the following so-called logic: Shakespeare had no formal education, so he must have had some books. And since he had no books, he must have borrowed some from his learned friends. And since he had no learned friends, he must have talked to some in a pub. And since there's no evidence of him doing that except in one tavern in Oxford begetting Sir William Davenant with a bar maid, he therefore "must have been" a genius who thought it all up all by himself. All of which somehow 'proves' that he wrote the plays, simply because he managed to post his name on them (my theory, of course, is that he was a producer, and the first of his kind).

At least I, who dare to tackle this subject on grounds of an ancestral link to Shakespeare's own company among others, plus having dealt with many producers myself in my time, at least have a Bachelors Degree. Plus I have also read a book or two, and unlike Shakespeare even own a couple (and of course, also unlike Shakespeare have written several including the Italian book currently in print).

On a related subject, the issue was raised at this seminar about using a pseudonym. Apparently this is frowned upon. "What are you trying to hide?" The panelists wanted to know. Hmm. Good question. Maybe they should ask Mark Twain. In my case John Underwood was 2/3 of my father's name and also of his mother's father's name, in addition to being one of Shakespeare's partners in crime, so it seemed to fit. At least as well as Samuel Clemens nom de plume Mark Twain. Or Ed McBain's alter ego Evan Hunter (neither of which, incidentally, is his real name). Mine, for the record, is Gene (short for Eugene) Ayres. Sometimes I go by E.C. Cheers!

What Makes a Bestseller?

2011-11-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

"Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor."
Matthew 13:57

I find myself facing a fascinating, if not frustrating conundrum. How can it be that my long-languishing mystery-thriller about the Shakespeare authorship (writing as John Underwood) has been published in six different languages variously titled The Shakespeare Chronicles, A Thief for All Time, and A Tiger's Heart and yet not in my own native language or country? Salmon Rushdie comes to mind, of course, as well as Solzhenitsyn. And for that matter Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Galileo weren't exactly rock stars in Rome either. But now, it seems, I am. Well, not quite a rock star, but pretty close. I now have a bestseller in Italy, a book that has been rejected for nearly a decade in my home country.

So what's up with that? Just as the Shakespeare academics always dismiss those who doubt the Bard's credentials (or, actually, lack thereof) as cranks or merely uninformed, so has been this author banned for daring to question the world's most lofty and cherished literary deity as, well, a fake? And yet have we not heard this story before? The movie Anonymous, borrowing on my premise of Shakespeare as a fraud is the first film to dare to challenge the orthodoxy, and got pretty well hammered for doing so. And while I agree with Roland Emmerich's plot line only to the extent that it wasn't Shakespeare, it has become readily apparent that it's a lot easier to question Jesus (or at least Mary Magdalen) in the English-speaking world, than to question Shakespeare. Even though, as Derek Jacobi so eloquently puts it in the prologue to John Orloff's screenplay (as borrowed from Mark Twain and as Ben Jonson wrote:) "The man lacked art." Or an education, or even a book, for that matter.

Not that that matters. We live in an age now in which the loudest voice, or the most heavily armored authority, or the most well-heeled hypemeisters rule not only the air waves, but pretty much the whole damn whole roost. Including the publishing world. Not that they haven't done so for millennia, but still... So it is that whenever anyone presents a book on the subject of the Bard to an American or U.K. publisher, the first thing their editors seem to do is run the manuscript past the biblical authorities for signs of heresy, and these 'experts,' whom my soon-to-be dead character Desmond Lewis calls 'the Ayatollahs of Academe,' render judgement, always negative, just like the Bishops and Torquemadas of old. And this, mind you, in the land of 'freedom and opportunity' and our much-oppressed 'First Amendment.'

Even Rushdie found a home in Great Britain. I am still waiting for my invitation. Or publisher with the courage of an Emmerich (who lives safely in Germany), to question authority.

As to my own book, without giving away the plot, let me make one thing clear: it wasn't Oxford!

Confessional from Hacker Hell

2011-07-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's finally over: a long nightmarish week of life in a cloud-computing thunderhead, Cloud 8 1/2 as opposed to Cloud Nine, a dark cloud which, if there is a silver lining, it's strictly of the organizational variety. The Chinese have a term for making a mistake like I did: Loss of Face. In my case for falling flat on my shoulda-known-better ass for the oldest phishing scam there is: the "Lost in the Wilderness Send Money" scam. No, I didn't send money. I just asked everybody I know, ever met, ever emailed, or did business with to send money. Lots of it.

Luckily, nobody else fell for it, although one friend nearly did. Looking back, the Hacker-spammer-phisherman knew exactly which buttons to get me to push. Most disturbingly, I have long known better than to fall for internet scams, other than a car purchase/theft which I easily averted. Yet there is a weakness millions of us vulnerable humans seem to be afflicted with: a willingness, even a need, to trust. To believe. To Be a Believer: whether it's the latest get rich scam, penny stock, lottery ticket, religious con or Republican claim that being broke, busted, disgusted and unemployed is somehow guaranteed to make you rich like them if you simply trust them with what remains of your money and be happy being broke and so on.

But I digress (although, no, wait, this is about money, in the end. As William Goldman wrote, "Follow the money."). My own need to trust came from a different direction: My Quaker upbringing. Trust in God, I was told. So I trusted in Google, which is almost the same thing. I trusted G-mail. After all, they live up in the clouds too, don't they? So I Believed that if I got an email with the Google header and logo, purporting to need an update of my name and password based on random selection, or my account would be closed down in 48 hours, for some reason I believed it. That was the kicker, the one that worked. Lose my Gmail account in 48 hours? No way! This cannot be allowed to happen! My whole life is attached to that account, to all the saved emails, including the query letters and submissions, some with manuscripts and other writings attached, and certainly opinions on all and sundry matters deemed to be private.

So, of course, I made exactly that very disaster happen. And of course knew immediately I should never have clicked 'send,' I shoulda taken a moment longer and gone to Snopes.com first. What was the rush? I had 48 hours. But I was frustrated by an effort to ask Google if this was necessary, and of course there is no 'Ask Google.' Also, admittedly, I'm an impulsive sort, and sometimes, it seems, a careless one too. And some impulses can be fatal--like "Let's pass this fucking slow truck NOW, dammit!" And just luckily, this one was not.

Live and learn. That's what they say, whoever 'they' are. And some lessons are more costly than others. Luckily this one worked out, in the end--after five days of suspense, misery, agony without the ecstasy, and fielding angry or worried phone calls from around the world, mostly to the effect of: "This can't be true, right? You're not really in Spain and flat broke and for some reason desperately in need of $3,500, right?" "Uh, hello? Say what?" was my first response, followed by "Omigod, I am so sorry, this can't be happening!" Being safely in Seattle at the time, at least I thought I was, and yet these calls kept coming (emails no, because the clever SOB that stole my password promptly changed it, along with my security data, answering my emails posing as moi, demanding even more money (or maybe a little less?) and a five-hundred-million client Google.com forced to give the Occupier the benefit of the doubt as to ownership until convinced otherwise without actually having a readily apparent way to tell them.

Fortunately, I also have Friends in High Places, if not actually God, who helped facilitate my contact with Google's Recovery Team and convince them that the marginally literate, spelling/grammar/syntax and ethically-challenged person claiming to be the Author Gene Ayres (currently apparently broke and busted in Spain) was not who he said he was, and that person was, um, actually, ME! Moi. After all, I knew who I was and could prove it. And ultimately, as it turned out, my usurping impostor could not, and thus was vanquished and banquished(if not to jail in South Africa where he actually lurks). And my property and Good Name returned, if slightly tarnished from the experience, my profession, friendships and personal business are only slightly the worse for wear.

So, yes. Live and learn. It's a good motto. So is "Be careful out there!" Even for a Writer who thought he was immortal and knew everything.

Ciao for Now (CFN).

Civilization as We Know It

2011-04-18T13:40:00.001-07:00

There were three extremely disturbing stories in the news this morning, and none had anything to do with Libya, or Obama, or deficits (at least fiscal ones) or our disfunctional Congress. What they had a lot more to do with was the End of Civilization as we know it. To wit: the Philadelphia Orchestra is bankrupt. That is huge, and utterly inexcusable to be allowed to happen in any society that still imagines itself to be advanced. On a lesser scale, but equally significant, here in Seattle two similar cultural decisions have been reached: to close down the Intiman Theater, arguably the finest repertory company on the West Coast; and on a smaller, but perhaps even more significant scale, Nordstroms is firing all its piano players. No, not because they are too costly, or not gifted enough, or destract shoppers from their mission. No, it's because today's shoppers, it turns out, pefer canned pop music to live piano. So I think it wouldn't be too much of a reach to say that today's shoppers at Nordstroms are the same majority that seem to prefer Fox News to PBS, and Rush Limbaugh to rational discourse, and if they read at all, its probably either "How to Get Rich Quick" books or the comics.

And it's not like we can no longer afford the luxury of culture. We have now become a nation of hoarders: of money, of guns, of property (see how all those foreclosures are being gobbled up by 'investors') and most of all righteousness. None of which supports, or even gives a crap about the key elements that make a nation, and a society, into a civilization. Otherwise people would gladly pay taxes to support these essential institutions, and maybe write a check or two themselves, instead of buying, say, another Ford F-150 and the latest assault rifle to guard their own personal domain against all and sundry: especially if they don't look like you or go to your church.

If all it took (which is what today's American Republicans and Tea Partiers are now demanding) for a nation to be functional is to have a large army and police force, then Ghengis Khan was the most civilized man in the history of the world. Which brings me to China, a country I know something about, because China has already been through all this. Less than thirty years ago China's leaders, in their wisdom, decided their country had no need or use for such unimportant things as, say, education, health care, art, science, or music. Just as we seem to be concluding here and now. All of those cultural 'nonessentials' were disposed of, at huge cost in terms of lives and the kind of institutions and infrastructure that makes (or breaks) a great nation.

Now, it seems, albeit at a slower pace, we can't wait to follow China's example. Ironically China is starting from scratch to rebuild a new, viable nation and society even as we can't wait to destroy our own. So far they've got the economics part down, and everyone is busy being a good consumer or producer. What they don't have, by and large, are those very things we are now discarding: orchestras, museums, galleries, libraries, theater, public welfare or even charities. Big houses? Sure. Stretch limos? No problem. Giant department stores with canned pop music selling expensive goods nobody actually needs? Absolutely. More and more it seems, they are becoming us, and we are becoming them.

Hollywood Vision (Not!)

2011-04-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

Pet Peeve:

Hollywood producers have long had the habit of shooting location footage in their back yard and calling it Rome. Or Alaska. Or Seattle. Or New Jersey, where I happened to grow up. What these people seem obliviously, vaingloriously, utterly incapable of grasping, or even imagining, is that the rest of the world, or for that matter the rest of the country, does not in the slightest resemble those brown, burned out hills and valleys that surround Los Angeles, and resemble nothing so much as, well, Los Angeles.

This past week I was watching two of my favorite shows, and they are favorites no more, because I have become so weary of having burnt brown stains smeared across my screen and being asked to believe it is Seattle, or Princeton, or Niagara Falls. Do these people in Hollywood actually imagine that nobody outside of Los Angeles County (or for that matter, inside of Los Angeles County) ever goes outside, opens their eyes, and looks around? That we won't notice the Hollywood sign hanging over, say, Brooklyn?

The first offender this past week was the series that specializes in graphic gruesome detail, apparently more titillating by a long shot then, say, sex, to these people, these days. It's called 'Bones,' appropriately enough I suppose, although it's rarely about anything that basic or natural. This week's episode of Bones featured, or we were being asked to believe it featured, a bone yard on an upstate New York campus, on the Canadian border. Now, I happen to have spent several years getting my bachelors degree on a university campus in upstate New York (Syracuse) and while it often had more than I cared for in the way of snow, or ice, or leaves blowin' in the wind, or arboreal forests, not to mention numerous frigid lakes and rivers, what it did not ever look like, even once, was a flowerless, grassless, treeless brown dirt yard out back behind, say, Burbank, where this dismal footage was so obviously filmed.

The other offending episode was from my favorite 'Jersey' show, 'HOUSE' about a person of that name, not a building, for those of you who might be unaware. 'House' is supposed to take place in the very elegant and stylish (and historic) town of Princeton, New Jersey, at a medical center adjacient to the university by that name. Blessedly, these producers sent out a B unit to take some stock footage of the area, which they use in the main titles. ('Bones' is supposedly based in Washington, D.C., and stock footage of that area is also used in the main title, and nowhere else). Now, if you haven't been to Princeton, you should go, it's a beautiful town. Unlike, say, the brown hills above Woodlawn Cemetery, where they apparently film 'House' as well as 'Bones.' This week's 'House' episode also involved a road trip. And this gets into yet another of my least favorite Hollywood conventions: long boring car scenes in which two actors pretend to be riding in a car while spewing hours of verbal exposition (in Bones, they will ride in a car without stopping for so much as a traffic light for ten minutes at a time in the middle of D.C.--try that some time!). The oldest convention in Hollywood is to run stock footage in the background of scenery rolling past. Unfortunately, said scenery is always of the highways and byways of Los Angeles, looking exactly like Los Angeles, and nowhere else, with brown treeless hills and boring neighborhoods and mini-malls everywhere.

Even my current favorite show, 'Grey's Anatomy,' supposedly set in Seattle, where I now live, features brown treeless hills for a background, whenever they show the grand foyer of the supposed Seattle Grace Hospital, and the 'landscape' beyond. Here's a clue, Hollywood location managers and producers: Mt. Rainier does not in the least bit resemble the Hollywood Sign. And Puget Sound does not consist of a brown blotch of Van Nuys Airport runway. And Princeton, N.J. does not look in the least like a burnt out soccer field in Canoga Park, where this road trip apparently took place. And the day it does, is the day I finally return to L.A., where my own career was once long-sidelined.

Life Non-essentials

2011-04-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine works at NOAA, at their main research facility in Seattle. Or at least she will until Friday. Seattle happens to be the closest American city to Asia, as well as the devastating turmoil in Japan, where radioactive water continues to flow into the Pacific, and radiation into the air, all of which, sooner or later, will circumnavigate the globe. Already, low levels (so we are told) of radiation are turning up in both air and water in such unlikely places as Boise, Idaho, and Boston, Massachusetts. But no matter. Nothing to worry about, right? Except, well, maybe a little something called 'nuclear winter.' Which we may be having already in the Northwest, actually, since we have hardly seen the sun in six months, and then only on the cold days.

Oh, and NOAA is also charged with trying to figure out whether the Gulf of Mexico is still alive, given most of its creatures are not; or, like the dolphins off Florida, are in the process of dying horrible deaths.

But no matter. These are not important things to consider. At least not in the minds of the Republicans and Tea Party goers currently in the process of shutting down the Federal Government, apparently on the basis of the notion that all government is bad.

No doubt Mssrs. Ryan and Boehmer will personally guarantee that your seafood is safe to eat, your air safe to breath, and your water safe to drink (or spray on your crops). They are already targeting the EPA for a permanent shutdown for interfering with the American Dream, or something. So I guess we should not be surprised that they are going to shut down NOAA as well, starting on Friday.

So if that rotting dead thing on your plate doesn't resemble what a salmon used to resemble, and that tingly brown stuff you're choking on seems unrelated to air, and the water in your glass looks like, well, radioactive fallout, don't worry. Be happy. The Republicans and Tea Party goers are going to save you lots of money, and that's what counts.

At least if you're a bank CEO, trust fund heir, or hedge fund manager.

Presumably those people breathe different air, drink different water, and eat different sushi than the rest of us.

Barbie Does Dali

2011-03-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

I heard two strikingly contradictory, and yet somehow related stories on NPR, the past two days. The first was about Barbie. It seems Mattell is closing its Barbie factory in China. This was not the usual factory American corporations like to operate out of China. This one was special. This one had been intended for the express purpose of selling Barbie Dolls in China itself: to the growing market of pre-teen Chinese girls in the growing Chinese middle class, already some 300 millino strong when I was there (must be closer to half a million by now, which is a lot of girls). Unfortunately for Mattel, it turns out the Chinese didn't take to Barbie after all (even though my stepdaughter, with whom, along with her mother, I successfully absonded from the PRC per several chapters in my book, was a huge Barbie fan). Could this national failure on the part of the Chinese possibly have anything at all to do with the fact that Barbie, at least during my three year tunure from '04 to '07, happened to be proporionately about seven feet tall with Russian blond hair, an impossibly pixiesh face, vacant cranium, a robot body, and empty blue eyes, none which do very much at all to further enhance the self image of the average short, bright, black haired, brown eyed Asian girl. As for Ken, don't ask.

The other story was about NPR itself, whose days have been numbered almost as long as the PRC. It seems that they are being accused of what Fox 'News' has been getting away with for decades: promulgating a specific point of view: in NPR'scase one that happened to be a bit too progressive for Tea Party thinking, which, apparently, is all that matters any more in Washington.

As for what Mattell was actually doing in Shanghai is little different from what Hollywood used to do there, which in large part has brought about China's new capitalist revolution. It's called 'p-r-o-p-o-g-a-n-d-a.' Except this time, it didn't work. I wonder why?

The China Syndrome

2011-01-21T09:08:00.000-08:00

As has been noted and reported repeatedly over the past year, America is not just on a war footing now. We have never not been on a war footing, or actively fighting on at least one front since I was born, since the first Boomer was born, and for most of the 20th Century before then, not to mention much of the 19th Century, and a fair chunk of the one before that, even a hundred years prior to our Independence (all those Indian wars, remember? Or maybe we'd rather not).

Meanwhile, the Military Industrial Complex and the right-wing pundits who currently dominate the media landscape in the U.S.A. just now are agitating, slavering, and creaming in their dress uniforms over the incredibly profitable prospects of the biggest war ever yet to come: the war with China. Yes, Hu Jintao is a typical conservative political hack, the perfect Chinese equivalent to John Boehmer except in a bigger House. His and his party's policies on human rights, among other issues, still suck. But the current branding of him as a dictator, and of China as a dictatorship a la the kind we've always supported in the past like, say, Baby and Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, is sheer nonsense.

Having spent three years inside China, per my latest book, and experienced their educational, economic and political system first hand, the closest thing to a dictatorship China can be compared to is the United States House of Representatives. The Communist Party does dominate politics in Beijing. And in the major political hubs, and the provincial state houses. But in China, dominating politics is a long way from dominating people's behavior or beliefs, the way the Christian Confederates have done, say, in the Southern U.S. for the past 400 years.

What's really wrong with China is exactly what's really wrong with the USA, which is why they have been studiously copying us for the past 30 years: it's called Capitalism, which is, at least in practice, synonymous with corruption. China is utterly corrupt. But then, so is the American Congress. As well as the Chamber of Commerce, and most religious establishments going back to the first Pope. Or maybe at least, the second one.

But what China wants is not war, or world domination, unlike us (and our Imperial predecessors going back to Rome, which we now closely resemble). What China wants, just like any tough gangbanger in Bedford Stuyvesant, is respect. The kind Aretha wanted. The kind any modern woman wants (including, incidentally, in China). We have given them absolutely none during our entire history, and this is about to change. The fact they have been smarter, more resourceful, and less wasteful and corrupt than us is why we are in our respective positions now: them rising and us sinking.

But here's where our entire media empire falls on its face in it's predictions as to the future. China is not going to rule the world any time soon, and nor are we. Here's why: pollution, global warming, and astronomically rising health care costs. Our health care system is on the brink of disaster, and no one wants to make the sacrifices necessary to save it. Ditto the environment, and hence the economy. In China, which has 1.5 billion people, the overall health of the people, the land, and agricultural resources, indeed the air, forests and the water, are on the verge of total collapse. All of that booming industry, all of that GM agriculture, and the overall lack of sanitation and recycling there are such that another pandemic is inevitable, and the next one might just take all of us down. Just in terms of an oncoming epidemic of cancer alone will overwhelm China's medical system, just as the rising epidemic of obesity is going to overwhelm our own. And add the impact of diseases migrating north, taking out whole ecosystems and species, spells out disaster not just for China, but for we who are behaving no better than they, and subsequently the rest of the developed and developing world as well.

Unless, of course, somebody changes their tune, and their behavior, and fast. But then, that's not human nature. It's like waiting for Republicans to decide that maybe a little gun control might not be such a bad idea after all.

From Russia, With Love

2010-12-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

I have a conundrum that may be unique in the annals of the literary expose. I just received via parcel post a package of books from Russia (see below). They are in Russian, of course, and published by Ekmo, a Russian publisher. They look very cool, actually, a nice hardcover edition with an embossed color illustration, as you can see. I am the author of this book, and have no idea what the Russian title is, but my original title was The Shakespeare Chronicles, written by me under the pseudonym John Underwood: my paternal great-grandfather's name, and also the name of one of Shakespeare's Boon Companions.

Here's the thing: there is no English language version of this book. (Full disclosure: there is an obscure nonfiction trade book by the same title and a different pseudonym of Desmond Lewis. This is actually the basis of my book, and is part of the plot). My foreign agent Danny Baror sold rights to my book to Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian and Italian publishers back in 2005. My New York agent at the time couldn't find a single U.S. or English taker. As a result, Baror dropped the book like a hot potato because he, as well as those European publishers, had all expected an American edtion to further sales and interest, which didn't happen. So what kind of book could this be, to be so quickly snapped up in Europe, and so universally dismissed and rejected in the U.S. and UK?

In brief, the book is a puzzle mystery, about a contemporary journalist who discovers that Shakespeare was not what he seemed. But what I have learned is that, unless you are Mark Twain (who also criticized and questioned Shakespeare, and got censored for it) one does not question or criticize The Bard of Avon in the English-speaking world. You can question Jesus. Or the President. You can excoriate the Opus Dei, or even the Vatican. You can elevate Mary Magdalen to a possibly well-deserved place at Jesus's side, and even imply that Paul in The Last Supper is actually a woman, namely Mary Magdalen (I like that one, having seen the painting). Dan Brown did all this in The Da Vinci Code and wasn't even struck by lightning.

What one cannot do, however, and must not do, is openly call Shakespeare to question. Unless you are in Russia. Sure, you can write some easily dismissable minor tome about how he was really the Earl of Oxford or Frances Bacon (Mark Twain's conclusion) but those notions are all complementary, in the end, as though God, or Will o' the Wisp had some hand in why his name, and not another, should appear under the title of so many great works (and quite a few not-so-great ones as well). Such temerity and disrespect of authority is simply not done. At least not in the UK or its global cultural and linguistic sway. And never mind the facts, but then since when were believers ever swayed by facts in any case. Shakespeare is The Bard, it is etched in stone, and never to be questioned--ever.

I, for writing such heresy am therefore a literary apostate, it seems, and, like Marlowe in Shakespeare's time and now all of we who are not Muslims or Baptists, an infidel to boot. The Ayatollahs of Academe have as much as said so, hence my literary escape to Russia.

But wait. All of that was five years ago. It took that long to translate my 110,000 word manuscript into Russian and revise it in ways I will never even know about including a new title and author's name to suit Russian and other Eastern European tastes. Surely challenging those in positions of power who usurp the works or rewrite the words of others; who steal the congressional seats of progressives (wait, I digress); who take credit for good works they opposed; who profit from the misery of others including famine; who exploit all manner of land, and property and persons; who get rich by unscrupulous lending practices (all of which Shakespeare provably did), surely to take such a stand, would be applauded, not censored!

Except, it seems, amazing as it seems, in the English-language publishing world. And so my manuscript lies fallow, unread except by those unblinded or censored by English and American literary belief and tradition. And yet there is something familiar about all of this. Might history yet be repeating itself? Who else must be experiencing this kind of blanket condemnation and censorship for daring to disclose the inconvenient truth? And now in England, no less, where my own fictional journalist dared to venture. Julian somebody? But stay. At least he got a book deal. I am still waiting.

In Concert

2010-11-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

Last Friday evening I attended a concert at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, where I live, and as I occasionally am wont to do. It was an old favorite, a Romantic paen, the ultimate Classical performance piece: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. The guest conductor was a young Spaniard, Pablo Heras-Casado, and the performer was an Englishman, multi-award winner, named Stephen Hough. It was a perfect performance, and as always, powerful experience. But I am not a music critic, per se, other than at my own personal level. But I come from a musical family, have grown up with and lived with music all of my life, been a musician of sorts myself, and music remains my first love.

As an author, I am best gifted, for better or worse, at composing with words. Words are a wonderful tool and thing, however often disparaged by the linguistically challenged (George W. Bush and Sarah Palin come to mind),and the English language is the compendium of all languages. But the spoken language still cannot stand up to music as a form of expression, which has no equal. My proof for this assertion to any who might doubt it? In an audience of several thousand persons, in a city consisting of possibly two hundred nationalities and a hundred language speakers, and listeners composing possibly the entire socio-economic and political spectrum (granted hip hop gang bangers were under-represented), the one thing everyone had in common in the room, perhaps apart from breathing the same air, wearing some form of clothing and being homo sapiens, was that they loved this music (well, excepting a couple of dozing kids). Like thousands of previous such audiences worldwide, culture wide, and irrespective of language have done for the past one hundred and thirty five years, and will continue to do, if the human race survives, for hundreds or thousands of years to come, we listend, rapt, as one, and understood every note. Music at this level is that great a communication medium. And it's that universal, at least for our planet.

But there was something else going on as well. I was reminded, in the program notes, of an historic incident that took place prior to the premiere of this concerto, back in 1875. Tchaikovsky, like most artists in history other than maybe Picasso and Dali, being insecure and lacking in confidence in his work, turned to an 'expert' in the field for an opinion, prior to submission for publication. Tchaikovsky was already well known for prior works, but still insecure, mind you. So he turned to the pre-eminent pianist in Russia at the time, scion of a renowned musical family that remains prominent to this day, Nikolai Rubenstein. Rubenstein must have been in a really, really bad mood that day. Who knows, or will ever know what chemical or cultural substance had ticked him off, but after the first few notes, as performed by the composer, he lit into poor Piotr with a string of invective that would have made a Bolshevik's ears burn, until the poor composer fled in tears, literally (granted he was gay, and thus already hyper-sensitive, I suppose, to such artistic criticism). In any case, luckly for the rest of humanity, Piotr had the recuperative strength and resourcefulness, and remaining confidence, I must add, to turn elsewhere for affirmation, and found it, in German pianist (founder of another perhaps less beneficial dynasty) named Hans von Bulow. Von Bulow was thrilled to be offered the chance to premiere the piece, which took place in Boston, history should note, to instant world acclaim, and of course, the rest is history.

But justice, being my preferred topic as a mystery writer, is sometimes attained in unexpected ways. People can be unfairly judged, and denounced, and dismissed, for a host of reasons, almost always unjust. Rubenstein recovered, in time, for his outburst, made amends with Tchaikovsky, and became this concerto's principle supporter and player for the rest of his life. And this is more than a small thing, in the way of penance. We can only hope for this kind of justice in our own works, and lives, and situations, ourselves, because even this apology-founded form of restitution happens all too rarely in our world.

Truth in Advertising

2010-10-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

We've all had it up to our ears and beyond: all of the half-truths, exaggerations, misrepresentations, lies, and distortions on television. And that's just the news! Then there are the ads, that make the good old fashioned lie almost virtuous, by comparison. Which of course leads to those so-called 'public announcements' that are political ads. Which are every bit as truthful as say, Hitler announcing his new humanitarian child care program at Auschwitz. Still, there is nothing new about all this, and these practices have been around for a long time.

Most of us probably are too young to have read it, but back in 1960 there was a bestseller by a Madison Avenue guru named David Ogilvy called Confessions of an Advertising Man, in which, even then, the founding partner of the premier New York and London ad agency Ogilvy and Mather and inventor of modern advertising complained that “political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.” Yeah? No kidding.

And this practice seems to be rather time-dishonored. This observation was made in the 1960s, mind you. But this admission certainly sheds further light on another famous line of his, his dismissive if not defensive insistence that “Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” Such as corrupt politicians and their views and intentions?

So now our democracy has come down to choices between those who consistently break good-intentioned and reasonable-sounding promises, and those who have no intention of fulling any promises whatsoever other than to an immediate circle of sponsors and handlers. Hence they have nothing to offer except slander, bigotry, hatred, and threats of violence. Amazing, really. I mean, if what you really want to do is round up and shoot all those who disagree with you (which, guess what, has been done a thousand times before) why bother pretending otherwise? Would Torquemada have been more legitimate if he'd run for office first before leading the Spanish Inquisition?

Hitler, on the other hand, did run for office making statements that sounded chillingly like many of today's Tea Baggers, and he got elected: as leader of Germany's National Worker's Socialist Party which was every bit as socialist as Henry VIII.

What seems to be different about America today is that you can get away with saying just about anything about anyone, and not only do so with impunity, but you can also put it out there on radio, TV, the internet and a billboard as though it were gospel truth, when in fact it is absolute fiction (as is much that is cited as 'gospel,' of course).

George Orwell predicted all this, as some of us have been pointing out ad nauseum, as of late. And Machiavelli practically invented masquerading lies as truth a long time before there was any radio or TV to blather all over the place. Suddenly, today, for the first time in history, facts are completely irrelevant and immaterial. All that matters is opinion, and the more viral and virulent the better. Hence regardless of the evidence, Obama remains a foreigner Muslim Socialist planning to overthrow the government of which he just happens to be the elected leader. Hello? And that global warming is a 'hoax', apparently perpetrated by all the scientists in the world together except those on the payroll of Exxon and BP.

And I love the one about how the 'government' is threatening to 'take away our guns.' Granted, I don't have any guns and always felt perfectly secure not having them, given I am guarded by the world's best equipped police force backed up by the world's largest military. But apparently either that is not enough weaponry for the NRA and ilk, or they intend to take on those forces with their own arsenal.

So what is 'truth,' if it is not an absolute, as determined by God, Jesus, or God's self-anointed representatives on Earth i.e. the latest Pope, Archbishop, Rabbi or Mullah? And what about the people who do this so-called 'creative' work, producing, writing, directing and acting in all this for-profit media mayhem. Can such a media prostitute actually imagine he or she is just 'doing a job,' by taking money to spread such lies? And if so, how is this job any different than a hooker spreading STDs for a price? Because the social damage being perpetrated by these 'artists' is far worse-- perhaps in the long term even worse than spreading AIDS.

As to where it is really coming from, let alone where it will ultimately lead, is anybody's guess. It may simply come down to William Goldman's great line “Follow the money,” from All the President's Men. There is a staggering amount of money being pumped from sons of billionaires and other self-righteous inheritors and exploiters serving venal and greed-driven self-interests into the pockets of the inheritors of Paley and Luce (no matter how flawed they themselves may have been) who have devolved from disseminators of news, information and culture to distributors of propaganda, misinformation, lies and trash. Let's face it: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes make Ted Turner and Larry Flynt paragons of enlightenment by comparison. And they make Paley and Luce look absolutely saintly.

Hour of the Manatee

2010-09-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

My first Tony Lowell Mystery and award winner was Hour of the Manatee (St. Martin's 1994), set on the West Coast of Florida. There, years after I wrote that book, I experienced just such an hour, actually closer to two hours, swimming in the Gulf with some of the last of the manatees this past week, as August turned to September in this, the Year of the Tea Bag, 2010.

My sculptor/artist friends Kevin Brady and Susan Super and I were heading for the beach at Ft. DeSoto, on the tip of a cluster of small sandbar and mangrove barrier islands at the mouth of Tampa Bay. It's a county park, and a beauty, often voted America's #1 Beach, with an old fort, a lighthouse, sawgrass dunes and lagoons, pure white sand, mostly clear water (once gin clear), and one helluva lot of mosquitos. They were mini-monsters out of a horror movie or eco-disaster 2012, the worst I had ever seen except for Canada. Skeeters to the left of us, skeeters to the right of us, pouring out of the soggy marshes that stood between us and the beach, and we would have to run the gauntlet to get there. For some reason I seem to be relatively immune to mosquitos, happy to pass me up for younger, sweeter blood. But quickly the others were literally covered, especially poor Susie to whom they were drawn like flies to honey. We forged onward, waded through the bugs, and the marsh, and along the pathway through the sawgrass, over the dunes, through the lagoon, at last to the open beach. And there before us a whole new melodrama unfolded, of people running screaming out of the water like a scene from the original Jaws. I looked south, to where I could just make out a large dark shadow in the water, gray, ominous and fearful, coming towards the fleeing swimmers.

Compulsive as always and heedless of danger, camera in hand, I raced past the fleeing outgoers and into the Gulf for a closer look. I'm not crazy nor foolhardy. I knew this was no pack of Great Whites or tiger sharks looking for a free lunch. I knew it was mammals, or at worst, manta rays. I'd always wanted to see a manta ray. I'd seen a whale shark in Cape Cod Bay once that was 26 feet long, gentle as a lamb, and ate algae. This was a whole pod of manatees, the largest I'd ever seen.

There were six of them, the biggest in the center, ambling slowly along, grazing, nibbling, nudging, sizing each other up, because size matters and these were really big animals, some over ten feet. We had stumbled, in our flight from mosquitoes, directly into the path of a manatee mating ritual, something once in a lifetime to see. The queen was exactly that, biggest of them all, and lorded it among her surrounding male suitors as they nudged us gently aside. Those boys were more than ample protection from any lurking sharks, human or otherwise. It is a fact that manatees are totally shark proof. They are not, however, boat-proof, and whether or not they prove to be people-proof remains to be seen. We petted them like newborn puppies as they swam slowly past, perhaps oblivious to us in their love-throes. They continued on their way, graceful and slow.

Then, after a hundred meters or so, to our utter amazement, they turned and came back. We stood awestruck and waited. The other people on the beach--three couples--cautiously rejoined us in the water. One black West Indian couple had also recognized our new friends as manatees and got their first. The scared-off couple came back, sheepish but also right, because when you're down there in the murky water with something coming towards you, you don't take chances when you don't know what it is. They, twenty-something young professionals, were also in a mating ritual, also fun to watch. The third couple, which had slept through the first encounter up on the beach, came down and joined us as well: two sleepy blue-eyed blond students from Germany, roaming the Coast from New York to New Orleans. They too had been traumatized by the mosquitos, but had forged onwards to the beach like us, and now would be rewarded by a meeting with the manatees. The manatees went by, and came back again, sliding between and among us. This continued for two hours. The Queen was taking her time choosing her mate. She will continue to play hard to get for days to come. What's the hurry when you're a manatee, and being courted by five lusty males? But she'd better hurry. Change is coming, and it's not all going to be good, for a young manatee to face.

Day of the Dolphin

2010-06-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a book by one of my favorite authors, the Scottish eminence Alexander McCall Smith's Unbearable Lightness of Scones (latest of the 44 Scotland Street series). Smith described, in one chapter, a fanciful encounter between one of the characters, Matthew, while bathing, ever so briefly, in the warm ocean waters off Perth, Australia during his honeymoon. Seems he dipped his toe in a little too far, it's well after sundown, and everyone in the world except him, it seems, has seen Steven Spielberg's Jaws epic, and knows what happens next.

Except it doesn't. Despite being repeatedly forewarned by cafe waittresses and the like that Great White Sharks lurk in these here waters, Matthew just can't wait to get his feet wet. And so, despite protests from his about to be (correctly, she thinks) widowed bride, Matthew ventures into said seas, gets immediately knocked off his feet by a rogue rip tide (about which he has also been warned) and swept out to sea. And all of those love metaphors are for naught.

So much for Matthew, about to be come Shark fodder. And sure enough, as he sees the coastline fade into hopeless oblivion, a fin appears, sweeping past, taking a dreadful pause, and turning back. Matthew, most surely, is done for.

Not.

Because as the white moonstruck beast cuts through the water towards him, it rises and slows just enough to reveal it's blunt Asian snout (sharks don't have snouts) and a cuddly dolphin nudges itself alongside, and smoothly escorts our fainting hero to safety.

As soon as Matthew is back on his feet, he tells a tall tale and is immediately scoffed upon (at first by the local gendarmerie) for his troubles, and he wisely clams up his lobster trap and speaks of the incident no more.

Thing is, I had my own dolphin moment once, myself, in very similar circumstances. Except I was six years old (coincidentally the same age as another character in this series), and was in the process of being swept out to sea by another rip tide in the then-pristine Gulf of Mexico, circa 1952. I too had been warned about sharks. But I already was one by that time, at least in terms of swimming ability.

For a brief bit of background, my father, a New York AT&T executive statistician, had come down with pneumonia, coincidental to working in an office full of smokers (he was a non-smoker, himself) and the company had sent the family to Florida for him to recover, before ordering him back to Cancerville. It took about a year, and it was a memorable year, for me. My shark attack was the least of it, and given that mine, too, was a rescue-minded dolphin, the best as well. We also had a tidal wave that winter, but that's another story.

Point is, that dolphin could still be alive today, like myself, thanks to him (or her). Except for the small problem of this ever-expanding oil spill. I don't know what it's doing for the sharks. If there are any left.

Lottery Nation

2010-04-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

It always amazes me about how quickly we humans, or at least we American humans, can be manipulated into fits of righteous rage against things that are absolutely in our best interests, but we don't know it. The reason we don't know it, of course, is because loud, shouting bloggerheads, tea baggers and Repugs keep telling us the opposite of what's true, thus rewriting history, logic, economic theory, and the basic principles of right and wrong. It can be confusing, I must admit.

What really gets me, though, is how poor and working people can be so adamantly opposed to the very notion of taxation. It's become an evil plot, certainly a dirty word, the very utterance of which has come to be the real-world equivalent to Harry Potter shouting: "Voldemort!" in a crowded dining hall.

It seems that for pretty much the same kind of reasoning that can send people who depend on Medicare, for example, into a foam-frothing rage about a "government takeover" of their health care, those same people can feel the same way about paying taxes.

Granted, the tax system is grossly unfair. It's grossly unfair to the Middle Class, which carries the heaviest tax burden of all, in the form of payroll taxes and sales taxes, which are inordinately burdensome to the poor and middle classes as well. Yet all those people ranting about "big government" and Obama the Socialist (or "Communist" or "Nazi," sometimes in the same breath) are people who are heavily dependent on government largesse for, often, their own Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability, military pensions, VA care, you name it. And these same people would go apoplectic should anyone even dare to suggest that we should cut back on the world's largest military, for example, with a budget equal to the rest of the world combined. Nor would they tolerate the very notion that we should maybe reconsider the $billion a day we spend on our various wars, or twenty year retirements for politicians, police and other public servants at full pay, or all those freeways, airports, sports stadiums, schools, colleges, fire stations, bridges and so on that are paid for on the public nickel with our tax money that presumably someone else needs to spring for since we don't want to and ain't gonna.

But to even dare to suggest that, hey, here's an idea, let's tax the rich bankers, Wall Street tycoons, arms dealers, oil executives and corporate CEOs for their stock options and derivatives instead, and you're up against the wall, motherfucker, for talking treason.

Rich people do have a strong sense of entitlement, and have pocketed senators, judges, and whole government agencies to do their bidding and protect their interests, and most of them, or their corporate entities, don't pay taxes anyway. They are quite happy to let the workers and middle class keep footing the rising bills, blaming each other or politicians from some other state (never their own) for all that corruption and so on. But what amazes me is that the workers back them up every time, and even stage rallies defending Big Oil from communist socialistic meddlers daring to suggest they pay their fare share to support a system that benefits them so greatly.

All the tea baggers who are screaming bloody murder about paying what is actually the lowest tax rate in the developed world haven't said a peep about the Goldman Sachs types who looted our economy and pocketed the proceeds (all done legally) or all the Bush/Cheney cronies and their handpicked SEC guardians like Enron and Haliburton. Instead, they vent rage on anyone who suggests these criminals should be held accountable for the grandest cases of larceny in the history of the world, ongoing. It's un-American, I guess, to critize the rich and powerful for not paying their fare share and exploiting the rest of us at the same time because everybody else wants to do it too, given half a chance.

I've thought about this incongruity for a long time that is so uniquely American, and can come up with one answer, and one answer only as to why this is so. The answer is simple: Joe Plumber is on the side of Big Oil because any day now he's going to be rich too, because he's got big dreams and big plans, plus a winning lottery number for sure, next lotto game around. And hey, since he, and you, are all going to be invited to join the country club any day now, we wouldn't want those gov'mint meddlers tampering with our rightful winnings, would we? We want to keep every penny of those millions to come, same as those Wall Street guys do. It's the American Way to the American Dream. And let somebody else pay, but don't even think about not building that new prison down the street, because that's where all those people who disagree with you and them ought to be, and the sooner the better!

Plus, I got an uncle who's a prison guard, who can retire next year at 40 with $60,000 for life and promised to buy me a new car, so no way you're gonna cut his benefits, jack. 'Cause I'm locked and loaded, and won't back down!

A Letter to God

2010-03-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Dear God (or Allah)

Since I think nobody reads these posts except you and me anyway, I hope you don't mind a bit of frank discussion here, and I do have a few questions. First off, are you two the same Deity, or like, brothers or something? Possibly even twins? I ask, because both your (God's) Son's followers and those of your (Allah's) Prophet Mohammed all insist there is only one God, so which one of you would that be, or are you maybe Siamese Twins? That could explain a lot. I'm also wondering about Jehovah. Where did he go? Is he maybe way over in the far side of the Universe busy making new galaxies and stuff? That is a long trip, which may be why we haven't heard from him for a while. (If you hear from Him, tell Him I do love those Hubble pictures, by the way.) Was that your idea? And speaking of Jehovah, is He your Father, by any chance? That would make sense. Like Jupiter and Apollo and stuff. I think he is older than you two, according to your Old Testament.

Also, I'm wondering about Gaia? Is she, like, your Mom or something? Forgive my ignorance, there are so many confusing and mixed messages out there. But a lot of people think she is the Earth Mother. Does that make her like, a Goddess, or is she someone else? For all I know, she was Jehovah's wife. Or even his daughter, and your Sister. That would make sense. Maybe there's a bunch of you, like all those Greek gods. Were they real? I think Greece is kind of a mess now, with their economy and all, and the way Democracy has turned out. Maybe it's their fault. Even Gods shouldn't get too greedy, do you think so?

But getting back to what I wanted to chat about, is all this confusion. Wars between religions, and even between Christian religions, and Christians carrying weapons when Jesus said "love thy neighbor" and stuff. Everybody is so right and righteous these days, with no tolerance whatsoever for any thinking other than their own, if you can call it that. Was this all part of your Plan? And if so, what for?

And Allah, a quick question for you, if you don't mind. I'm assuming those "Black Widow" suicide bombers are in your care now, and have received those promised 64 virgins as their alloted stipend that all suicide bombers get. At least according to your Madrassases and mullahs, anyway. But those guys are your teachers and spokesmen and religious leaders, and they were the ones who inspired all those suicide bombers in the first place, right? But did you really tell them to do that, or was that their own idea? Also, I'm a bit puzzled as to what female suicide bombers would want with 64 virgins, anyway. Are they gay or something? Even so, I don't think even gay women care that much about virgins. And where do all those virgins come from, anyway? Is there a virgin farm or something, maybe in East Dagestan? Just asking. Because those Moscow bombers only killed 38 people, and I'm sure many of them weren't even virgins, so where will they get their fair share up there in Heaven, assuming they want them? Even we Americans can only bomb so many villages, and a lot of them don't even have many virgins any more. Also, since young girls aren't allowed to congregate together in Your societies, like in classrooms or soccer stadiums and such, it must be really hard getting enough virgins lined up to reward all your suicide bombers with, female or otherwise.

Also, it seems to me those virgins can't be too happy about this arrangement. Or do their opinions matter? Maybe not. They don't in your countries either, God, so I gather. Or women either, other than your Virgin Mary. And I don't get it about her either. If she was Jesus's mother and you were his Father, how did--never mind, I'm in enough trouble already. But I do think women are getting the shaft here, if I may say so, so to speak. What's up with that? I mean, as a rule they are way more peaceable and nicer, and take way better care of your planet and its creatures than us males. Does Gaia know about this, or are you and her not speaking? If I were her I'd be pretty mad, myself. Do you think she's trying to tell us something, or even Mother Nature, what with all those recent earthquakes and melting glaciers? Or did you do that, and if so, why? To get more virgins shipped up to heaven? And why pick on Haiti? They had enough trouble already, and hardly any virgins to begin with. I'm really confused.

Maybe I'd better wait for Enlightenment. Or that Rapture thing. When is that, by the way? And will Glenn Beck be joining them, by any chance? I hope so.

I have several more questions, but I'll save them for next time.

Your faithful servant,
Me

Almost Somebody

2010-02-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I haven't posted since my eulogy to Dominick Dunne back in January. My apologies, and mea culpa. But the cells have not been dormant. I've been thinking. Three a.m. toss and turn kind of thinking, even as a beautiful woman lies peacefully and blissfully unaware at my side. I've been thinking about why I've had so many near misses, so many close calls, so many Almost Famous moments, dancing with stars, even my own Fifteen Minutes of Fame, personally bestowed by Andy Warhol himself, yet always felt like an impostor, like I didn't belong. What's up with that?

Well, for starters, it was extraordinarily reassuring to learn, even so many years later and too late to thank the man personally, that Nick Dunne had always felt the same way. We were opposites, of course, in some ways: he grew up rich, I didn't. He was famous. I wasn't. He was hugely successful. I wasn't. And yet, and yet: we felt the same way about ourselves, and our lives. Strange thing, that. And so I set out to understand it, at least about myself. And I came to some startling realizations: what was at the root of all of it, both Nick Dunne's self doubts and my own, was a common and simple illness. It's called depression.

He dropped out for ten years to deal with it. I've been dealing with it my whole life, almost from birth (being conceived in the aftermath of Hiroshima didn't help). In fact, I am a recovered depressive. This is like being a recovered alcoholic, or cold turkey ex-smoker. Recidivism is likely. And I have recovered from depression more times and more often than any smoker ever quit. But what's different for me, now, at this late stage in my life, is the aforementioned woman at my side, who has provided the cure. It was so simple, in the end: it's called 'happiness.' It's actually out there, a brass ring on the Merry-go-Round you can actually seize, if you're quick enough, and alert enough, aware enough, and willing to try. It comes in all sizes, money can't buy it (as Lennon tried to warn us) and yet there it is.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, Almost Somebody). Stay tuned.

My Friend in Passing, Dominick Dunne

2010-01-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

Back in my carefree New York days from the late Sixties to mid-disco, I got to know Nick Dunne in an environment with which he had far more comfort and self-confidence than I. Or so I thought. He was from a more privileged background than I, certainly: an upper class upbringing in a home in which his elder brother (like my own) was already an accomplished author, and his grandfather was what I would later call "Old Money" (the original title of my first book). He had this in common with the Kennedys as well, ironically, given they would become his prime targets later on. The setting where we first met and got to know one another was in the Hamptons, at the home of then Park Avenue ingenue Gillian Fuller (actually Gillian's mother's 'dog house,' as she called it at the time). But what we had in common was a well-hidden sense of not belonging--not just there in Southhampton, but anywhere.

I was there shooting a short "art" film that winter weekend in 1972, together with my then girlfriend jazz singer Asha Puthli, her constant partner-in-crime and then- red-hot Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn, and one of Dominick's principle cast members from his recent hit film Boys in the Band, Frederick Coombs. Nick had actually just finished producing his second feature after a long career in Hollywood, which would introduce a new young actor to the world, Al Pacino (Panic in Needle Park). Nick, unlike me, felt reasonably relaxed that weekend, and appeared as an extra in our little 20 minute short, Bad Marion's Last Year, which would be shown some months later at the Guggenheim Museum in a showing attended by Andy Warhol himself, then permanently shelved, probably for good reason. I do remember sharing "a bit" of weed with him off and on that weekend: a practice I, at least, have continued to this day. To me it was like a glass of good merlot, although apparently for him it was something stronger, and darker.

A few years later when I first turned up in Los Angeles, Nick was still there, pretty much winding down his Hollywood career. What I didn't know until many years later were the reasons for his sudden departure soon after my arrival. But meanwhile he was kind to me, introduced me to his kids Griffin and Dominique in passing, and gave me my first Hollywood job, which was to proofread his first novel, The Winners.

I was too polite to comment beyond that it was "very long", which he admitted. Basically, it was a sequel to then-hot Jackie Collins look-alike Joyce Haber's bestseller, The Users. Apparently Nick knew a lot about those things and those people, also fully chronicled by his sister-in-law Joan Didion then and since. But the book was a disaster, and I lacked the nerve to say so.

The critical response, predictably, was awful, and Nick packed up and left Los Angeles soon thereafter, only to return to cope with the tragedy of his daughter's murder a decade later. I never saw him again after that. So it was with some degree of shock when I read in his recent obituary in Bio Magazine that he'd always felt like an outcast, even in Hartford, and that he'd lost much of a decade, much as I did, after my own first mystery books failed to sell.

We had something else in common as well: we were both drawn to write by a strong sense of justice, and the lack thereof in our world. His daughter's killer had famously gotten off, followed by O.J., and while not suffering anything so traumatic in my own life, I'd worked for Civil Rights up to and including the time we first met, and I had been exceedingly shocked by the elevation of the first of several shallow and unqualified men with potentially criminal backers and proclivities to the Supreme Court, which had inspired my first book, Hour of the Manatee (originally "Old Money" then later "Storm Warning"). I could go on. But in conclusion, I will simply raise my glass and pipe, and say: "Nick, here's a toast and a toke to you. You did well. God bless."

And may justice prevail in the next world, as it has too often failed to do in this one.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: Almost Somebody: Reflections from a Known Unknown

Best Screenplay Never Produced

2009-12-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

Years ago when I worked in Hollywood, naïve enough to imagine changing the world (or at least the film industry, if only a mere fleck of a change) I was given a screenwriter's dream opportunity: work as a name director's--better yet, a living legendary name director's--house writer. (House as in 'in-house'). I'd been kicking around the 'Hood for a few years, mostly getting by writing animation (see Gene Ayres on IMDB) when a tennis pal of mine, from an L.A. citywide singles-tennis dating club called, cleverly 'Tennis Match', gave me an introduction to a client of his. My buddy, whose name was one of my all time favorites—Christopher Street-- was a dead-ringer for Michael Caine's younger brother, and looking back, knowing both of them were orphans, it was probably true. Anyway, Chris was the kind of entrepreneur who is very successful serving the byways and back alleys of the 'Wood, in his case running a window-washing operation. He was, like Michael Caine, a very charming street-wise Brit, a good talker, and had, as a personal favor to me (or perhaps just a payback for a tennis bet, who knows) managed to land the legendary and original 3D film director, Jack Arnold (Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, The Incredible Shrinking Man) as a client, at Jack's longtime home in Woodland Hills, which had a lot of windows, and some pretty good views that needed frequent clarification.

Chris had somehow managed to find a way to tell Jack all about me, his tennis buddy, and what a great screenwriter I allegedly was. And as it just so happened, Jack was trying to work his way back, after a near fatal on set stroke that had cost him one of his legs, a few years earlier. Jack's last movie had been a comedy classic starring Peter Sellers in three roles, The Mouse that Roared. Then, based on the fact that this was the advent of the Age of Television, and Jack had previously been a television producer/director including of Robert Wagner in It Takes a Thief and as partner of Blake Edwards in the still-classic series Peter Gunn, and Peter had gone on to considerable fame and fortune with The Pink Panther series, Jack was, I suppose, starting to feel left behind.

What Jack Arnold wanted, and needed, was a blockbuster comeback feature, and he had just the project: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel, The Lost World. Michael Chrichton hadn't gotten around to expropriating that title yet with his dinosaur knockoffs, and Jack had an ace in the hole: special effects artist Albert Whitlock, long a legend for his Alfred Hitchcock backdrops. Albert was another Brit: like Hitchcock, and for that matter Christopher Street. He was also the highest paid staff employee at Universal Studios (directors, actors and screenwriters were contract employees, not staff employees). His salary, and we're talking 1981 dollars, was more than $1 million a year.

Anyway Jack and Albert needed a writer, and I'd just written a spec screenplay about a rogue warlord in Kazakhstan who'd gotten hold of a nuclear weapon (it's long since been lost, but to make a long story much shorter, it got me the job).

So there I was, with my own office next door to Jack's in Building C on the Universal lot, right under the shadow of the Tower that E.T. Built. Across the hall was David Lynch, working on his version of Dune starring Sting. Just down the hall was Rafaella de Laurentis, working on another blockbuster (or maybe the same one). Joe Dante, John Landis (huge Jack Arnold fans and devotees) dropped by regularly. Spielberg had just set up shop next door for the next Indiana Jones adventure.

I wrote, I must modestly insist, a gem of an adaptation. Even Albert Whitlock, after warning me over a cup of tea that “there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip” (how prophetic, or just knowledgeable he was!) loved it. He even invited me to his Santa Barbara estate for the weekend to talk shop (which my then fiance fatally vetoed, insisting I owed her a trip to Hawaii to celebrate).

When I got back, I got a call from Jack: I'd been replaced. I should have known better, and was too naïve to know, that in Hollywood, the first writer is always replaced. It's industry policy. Even if he wrote the book, which I certainly hadn't.

Jack got his own comeuppance, I'm sad to say, a year or so later, when the next version got turned down by Universal to make room for a Dan Ackroyd movie that bombed historically, but never mind. Jack gave the script to his son in law no less, who happened to be President of another studio, 20th Century Fox, at the time. His son in law, who shall remain nameless here, gave it to a reader (only readers—Hollywood's equivalent to interns—ever read anything) who duly reported its merits, upon which son in law said, bluntly: “Who the fuck cares about dinosaurs?”

Apparently nobody but Steven Spielberg. Oh, and Michael Crichton, who apparently got busy...

So my vote for Best Unproduced Screenplay in the dramatic sci fi Avatar category would have to be: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. By Gene Ayres. The man who cared about dinosaurs.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: Sixties to 60: A Hipster's Journey)

Storm Warnings

2009-11-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

I was raised in a Quaker family, and grew up protesting nuclear weapons in Times Square back in the Fifties (remember 'Ban the Bomb'? That was me, a naive six year old, holding one of those signs). When I graduated from Syracuse University in 1968, the war in Vietnam was raging, and so was my generation. We truly believed we could change the world, bring peace and prosperity and justice to all, and—well, you know how all that turned out.

Two decades later, after working so hard to change the world with so little success, I finally concluded that presenting the “truth” as I saw it didn't always work, if ever. Sometimes, I was beginning to realize, good storytelling may be a better way to reach people than on-the-nose reality. Or even gently presented reality laced with humor, the way the late great Art Buchwald mastered this skill with his political satires. Having taken my best shot at doing good without much success, I decided to try my hand at doing well, or at least making a living as a writer. I moved to Hollywood, and soon became a successful studio writer. Not successful enough to start a foundation, but at least successful enough to have some discretionary income for a change, and even support favored causes, like the WWF, Greenpeace and Unicef (and also occasional starving artists—a personal weakness, and later on, support a family. One of my many jobs in that era was at Hanna Barbera Studios, as staff writer for the new children's animation series, The Smurfs. This led to a certain degree of popularity and notoriety (I wrote the premiere and majority of episodes for the first two seasons, gave an interview which became part of Matt Groenig's curriculum at UCLA, and eventually walked away after losing an effort in the NLRB to get residual payments for myself and my peers).

I remember a seminal moment in my Hollywood career when I received a letter from The Friends Journal, which had somehow caught on to my Quaker background and wanted to know, very bluntly stated, what I was doing to promote peace in the world.

Well, I was flabbergasted. Since the only honest answer was “not much” (given Hefty Smurf's overtly violent tendencies, not to mention anti-intellectual bent, not to mention Jokey Smurf's cool habit of planting bombs everywhere just for laughs—how quaint an idea that would be these days—wonder why you haven't seen any old Smurfs episodes lately?). In my defense, I'd had zero influence on the content, character development or story structure of the overall series, since it was based on Belgian author Peyo's already famous illustrated books. I had managed to create a couple of non-violent characters, such as Poet and Painter Smurf, as a form of self absolution. But I was ill-prepared to answer to the Vatican of Quakerism, The Friends Journal. I also felt I was being judged (and not with a favorable verdict, which was also how I saw it myself), so I didn't respond.

About two years later, when I'd attempted to salvage my animation career (basically in order to feed a newly acquired family) I took a job at another studio, Filmation Studios, which was producing a hot new series called He Man with a female counterpart called She Ra. You can imagine, if you haven't seen it. But there, at last, my conscience caught up to me, and I called it a day. That same week, perhaps not coincidentally, I got a call from a reporter from The Long Island Express, back east in New York. Apparently I'd been overheard by someone, somewhere, speaking out at last, against violence in children's television. How word of this had gotten back to New York I don't know, but I dutifully answered questions and reconfirmed my views about all this, particularly concerning all the ancillary products like toy weapons that were become big sellers (another current show, G.I. Joe, was also hugely popular, was selling ancillary toy weapons and other war implements as was yet another violence prone show from my old employers at H.B., called Transformers, and toy (which would later become all too real) guns were becoming a must have among the boy populace. This interview managed to find its way back to the Coast in a matter of hours, and the next day I was called onto the carpet, so to speak, and summarily fired. That old expression “you'll never work in this town again” was particularly directed at me, just then. This actually proved to be hyperbolic, for a time, as I picked up a 16-episode assignment later that year on Dennis the Menace from an old friend who'd adopted my dog Woofie after it ate my then-step-daughter's bird Smurfy. But, once Dennis was done in L.A., so was I.

I moved to Florida in part to take advantage of some still-available grandparenting, as I'd become single parent to my son Jonathan by this time. I had a screenplay with me I'd been unable to sell in L.A.: my Great American Screenplay, you might say, titled Old Money. It was based on a true crime in my old hometown in New Jersey: a crime I always believed someone had gotten away with. I'd become very weary of privileged people getting away with crimes, which seemed to have been happening on the political front my entire life. Clarence Thomas had just been elevated to the Supreme Court, and I decided that if justice couldn't be rendered in the Real World just yet, at least not the way I'd been raised to hope and dream it should my whole life, maybe it at least could happen in fiction. And so my first mystery novel evolved, which I retitled Storm Warning, and for which I reinvented myself as a somewhat worn-out former press photographer who'd retired to Florida to work on his boat, and solve crimes when called upon, if they were sufficiently justice and ecologically oriented. My principle character, Tony Lowell, would be a Vietnam veteran-turned-hippy peacenik, who refused to carry a gun. This was radical for the time, since this was the 1990s and the age of Gingrich and the rise of the NRA to national dominance. Whether or not He-Man and G.I. Joe had anything to do with it, guns were increasingly popular, the more the better (which situation has hardly improved since then, hence all those ongoing mass killings, Ft. Worth being just the latest). Detective fiction at the time was likewise increasingly violent, the typical hero a Stallone or deNiro type who shot first, then again just to make sure, and then maybe wouldn't bother to ask questions. Even female protagonists in mysteries (those of Sarah Paretsky, etc.) were taking on this demeanor, basically striving to out-punch and outshoot the guys, to stake out their place or whatever, in literary lore. But I would stick to my guns, or rather no guns. It was the least I could do. Or at least, what Tony Lowell could do.

Actually, there is plenty of precedence for a non-violent detective hero. Not that Tony didn't at least kick back on occasion. I do not recall Sherlock Holmes ever committing an act of violence in his career. He used wits, not brawn. Agatha Christie also specialized in non-violent private investigators, including Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. True, he may have had a weapon or two, but he seldom used one. I also had another challenge: theirs was not the American Way. I didn't want Lowell to be preachy or morally self-righteous. If I'd learned one thing in Hollywood, it was that boring was fatal. And what could be more boring than preachy righteousness? Thus Lowell was something of a bad boy too. In fact, he was known to smoke pot on occasion (didn't we all, in the 60s, except Bill Clinton?). And he was more than worldly in other ways as well. Publisher's Weekly would eventually describe Tony Lowell as “Travis McGee, Don Quixote, and Willy Nelson all rolled into one.” But that's jumping ahead.

Manuscript finished, on a last minute impulse I decided to submit it in a contest I'd just learned about: the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First P.I. Novel competition, in New York. Two months later, having just taken a job to write non-violent animated films for a non-profit Quaker-run Santa Fe film company I received word that Storm Warning had won the SMP/PI Writers of America contest and would be published as the start of a new series by St. Martin's Press. Because Ed McBain had previously published a mystery by the same title, SMP, my then-agent Dan Strone and I came up with a new title for my award winning first mystery: Hour of the Manatee. It was then that I decided each book would have an eco-theme, combined with a social justice theme, along with good old fashioned hard boiled crime writing.

The next year The Tony Lowell Mystery series was born, and began it's short but influential run in (and out of) Florida. It has recently been revived as a POD and ebook series by World Audience Publishing (www.worldaudience.org) with a long-withheld fifth addition, Cry of the Heron. Whether today's readers are ready for the return of the hip detective remains to be seen. But the issues themselves have never been more timely.

Consensus Building, Chicago Style

2009-10-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Imagine our president doing what he does best, back in his hometown during the last Depression, eighty years ago. A community activist and consensus builder at heart, our man Barack is trying to bring together two of Chicago's most powerful and opposing parties: Al Capone, and Elliot Ness. Al, of course, represents a local ethnic community as well as important Chicago business interests. Mr. Ness, an outsider and worse, a government official from, even worse--Washington, D.C.--is getting the worst of things, in terms of local politics and economic issues. Hence our man Barack's skills are brought to bear.

Obama: Mr. Ness, meet Mr. Capone.

Capone: Nice ta meetcha.

Ness: Are you kidding me?

Obama: So, Mr. Ness, I understand you have some concerns about Mr. Capone's business activities in our fair city?

Ness: Not really. I just wanna bust his ass and get out of this dump.

Capone: Hey, watch yer mouth, fuzz face or I'll teach ya to exit via dat window over dere.

Ness: You see what I mean. I'm dealing with a criminal element here, and you're just trying to make nice. What's with that?

Obama: Please, Mr. Ness, we really have to learn to get along here. Mr. Capone has very legitimate concerns about how his people are being treated by you outsiders, and he simply wants some respect.

Ness (rising): I'll show him some respect, soon as he's behind bars.

Capone: Yeah, just try it fuzz face and I'll blow your ugly puss here to Peoria.

Ness (to Obama): You see what I'm dealing with here? This man heads a violent organization producing and marketing illegal drugs and operates extortion rackets all over the country. And you want me to make nice?

Obama: well, I do think you're exaggerating, somewhat. For example, Mr. Capone has assured me that his organization, M.A.F.I.A. is a legitimate lobbying firm, simply seeking to promote firearms safety for all Americans.

Capone: Dat's right. M.A.F.I.A. stands for Making Automatic Firearms Indespensable in America. We got friends in high places, pal.

Obama: Yes, and that said, I think we really need to relate on equal terms here, as fellow Americans. That's why I've ordered some bootleg--I mean, beer, so we can have an amicable Beer Summit, to discuss these and other important issues for our fair city.

Ness: Is he serious? You expect me to talk to this thug as an equal? I'm not some local gangster, pal. I'm from the government!

Obama: Now, now, sir, there's no need to swear.

No Place Like Home

2009-09-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a lot of places. Some of them were wonderful, scintillating, beautiful, even stunning. Some of them less so. None of them, however, ever felt like home. And this chronic feeling of rootlessness is strange, given that I come from Colonial era families on both parents’ sides. I'm many generations removed from the push West, and myself have straddled the four corners of the continent, always searching, never finding. Where did I truly belong, and what would there be about such a place that would make me feel at home there?

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, clicked her ruby heels and whispered, “There’s no place like home.” For her, that black and white farm in Kansas was where she belonged. Good for her. But I never felt that way anywhere, from the very beginning. Maybe being a Jersey Boy had something to do with it. Jersey was always a place to leave, not go back to. But Springsteen did fine with that locale and identity. So did Malcolm Forbes, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Thomas Edison, and Einstein.

Me, I never fit in anywhere (other than the superficial niceties and necessaries for survival), even from the beginning, and had to keep moving. But what feeling or thing was it I was so desperately yearning for, searching for my whole life?

Even the word 'home' itself is a misnomer. When that National Board of Realtors announces the “sales of new homes” figures for last month, they are talking about buildings. I am talking about a sense of place. A place where I feel I belong. I have been all over Planet Earth in this search, and with all that travel why did nowhere ever every feel like home?

Odysseus’s journey home only took a few years. Mine, still ongoing, has taken fifty years and I’m still looking. Does that make me a footloose drifter? Even a homeless person? In a way. Yet I’ve owned lots of buildings, and parts thereof, and own a condominium now, where I presently live with my family. It’s very nice. But once again, it’s not home. It’s just the place where I live. Some of the ‘homes’ I’ve owned or lived in were very upscale—luxurious, even. These ranged from a spring Street loft to a Murray Hill penthouse in NY, to a hillside Spanish chalet in Sherman Oaks, California, to a luxury ranch in Ojai, to an adobe chalet in Santa Fe to a golfside bungalow in St. Pete. All were quite nice. But none of them were home.

Why not? What was missing, from the time of my childhood? And if others feel this way as much as I do, what does this say about our history, and culture, and people? Have we become a nation of drifters?

(Excerpt from Gene Ayres' forthcoming memoir: On the Road Again 2010)

The Losses Mount

2009-08-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

I never knew Ted Kennedy other than by reputation, but my first awareness of him other than as Jack's and RFK's younger brother came at the time he and I were both new in our jobs and working towards the same goal: justice for American minorities in terms of those most basic of needs: health, education, and welfare. I was working for Kenneth B. Clark at the Metropolitan Applied Research Center in New York City. It was 1969, and I was a young idealist and Conscientious Objector to the war in Vietnam, and as a birthright Quaker, had taken a position with an NGO for my so-called Alternative Service in lieu of military action. This required (and I received) permission from the office of the President, who at the time was Nixon, whose mother had been a Quaker herself.

At that time Dr. Clark had hired another white person besides myself for his Harlem-based research and educational development programs: the indominable Jeanette Hopkins, one of two venerable, powerful women pioneers I would work for in my lifetime in the publishing world (the other would be Ruth Cavin at St. Martin's Press). Jeanette Hopkins was a senior editor for Harper & Row, on leave to prepare a series of books for M.A.R.C. Corporation to design and present specific programs intended to breach the education gap in the black community (which remains as big a problem today, sadly, as it was then).

I had managed to support myself with a grant from the Ford Foundation, called a Junior Fellowship. As I had been drafted right out of college (Syracuse) in 1968, and had no opportunity to go on to graduate school, this fellowship was designed just for me, as I could not qualify with only a Bachelors for a Ford Fellowship. With that modest funding paying my rent, with Jeannette's and Dr. Clark's backing, we were working on two books, and one of them touched on the problem of health care in the so-called 'ghettos' of America. I'm sad to say, much like Kenneth Clark's other vaunted achievement in his life (as consultant to Thurgood Marshall and key witness in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954), while many outstanding African-American scholars, leaders and writers have emerged from that era (our recently elected President Obama comes to mind) and perhaps were even encouraged by our efforts, in the larger sense, as with health care in America, nothing much has changed.

That said, go in peace, Ted Kennedy. You fought the good fight, and it may yet prove not to have been in vain. In the meantime, however, it is with a great sense of sadness and irony to note that Kennedy's dream has still not been fulfilled, and was not to be in his lifetime. But then, neither has Dr. Clark's, who I think never even dreamed that a black man might become President.

Which leads me to another death on the same day, of another significant contributor to American life and literature. And this one was, for a time, a friend of mine: Dominick Dunne.

I first met Nick Dunne (and here's where these two events merge) while essentially living two lives. When I first started working for Dr. Clark in Harlem I was a young idealist, living in Soho (at 154 Spring Street, to be exact) sharing two artists' lofts with three other filmmakers. Across the street was the studio of a West Indian jazz artist of great talent named George Braithwaite. One weekend around 1971, George had invited me to his basement studio to hear a singer from India he was recording with named Asha Puthli. Asha was at the time also making an album with Ornette Coleman for CBS records. George was recording his own album for CBS Records, and his producer was the legendary John Hammond, who I also met. Asha's producer was the equally legendary Clive Davis.

To make a long story short, Asha and I became an item, and I left Spring Street for her penthouse on East 36th Street, where I was to soon be hobnobbing with the rich and famous of the era who enjoyed associating with artists: among them Dominick Dunne, fresh off the success of his second feature film, Panic in Needle Park, starring the then still-unknown Al Pacino. Together with one of the lead players in his earlier ensemble film The Boys in the Band, Frederick Coombs, Nick was a good enough sport to make a guest appearance, literally, in my infamous tribute to our newly mutual acquaintance Andy Warhol starring his superstar Holly Woodlawn, Asha herself, Frederick Coombs, and then Park Avenue engenue and debutante Gillian Fuller. This film, made over a weekend--literally--at Gill's parents home in Southampton, was shown only once: at the Guggenheim Museum, which debut was attended by Andy Warhol himself. Originally titled "Bad Marion's Last Year," this film got its fifteen minutes of fame (along with its director, yours truly) and was then rightly shelved forever. I later redubbed it, to humor Asha and Holly, as "Andy Warhol's Tacky Women." A badly made copy of it exists, I believe, among the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art, whose curators are still scratching their heads as to its meaning and merits, if any, to this day.

Anyway, here's to Dominick Dunne, whose second novel actually lambasted another Kenndy family member's darker side, who once introduced me to Hollywood, and even to his lamented murdered daughter Dominique, and who gave me my first Hollywood job proofreading his very fist novel, which will not be named here. The terrible murder of Dominick's daughter later on might have influenced my eventual decision to become a mystery writer in order to seek and render justice on paper where it could not be found in real life. Dominick Dunne, I salute you. Your daughter awaits you in one place where justice truly prevails. Zaijian.

Storming Off

2009-08-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

I just couldn't wait. I love disaster movies. Or used to. NBCs miniseries "Storm" was pretty bad, though. Starring former Dawson's Creek hottie James Van Der Beek, playing stud-disguised-as-geek per usual, I hung in there for part I, mostly because I could relate to a scientist that resembled Elvis Costello meets Ken. Or at least, wish I could. Complete with thick black rim Buddy Holly glasses, James really knows how to stand out in the crowd when the LAPD gets after him big time.

Van Der Beek's geek, Dr. Kirk Haffner, gets to play a smart pawn to Treat Williams over-the-top and out-to-lunch defense contractor wannabe, whose idea of national defense is to blow up the atmosphere. Never mind General So-and-So is totally in his pocket on this one, along with two really dumb young scientists who must have skipped class a lot, but sure know how to push those buttons.

Complete with kewl 1950s retro FX, Dr. Kirk has come up with a way to control the weather, which the DOD has big plans for, weapons-wise. And Treat Williams corporate killer won't take no for an answer. This guy wants that Blackwater contract bad, it seems--bad enough to kill all those unpatriotic people who question his judgement--people like Dr. Kirk, who suddenly thinks maybe he shouldn't be doing this kind of thing.

Meanwhile, Kirk's scientist sidekick has already blown open Pandora's hard drive and fired up those weather satelites big time, and blown some big holes in the ionosphere, letting in a lot of electricity. Or something. Really, really bad weather results, which of course nobody can control except maybe Dr. Kirk, but meanwhile he is on the run, because he's been framed.

Treat Williams and his expected gang of bad cops and generals are trying to kill Kirk for being, well, reasonable, and asking questions like, "Are you sure it's a good idea to um, destroy the atmosphere?" So most of the next hour or two of this four hour extravaganza will consist of chase scenes. They look like loops, actually, to save money. The same chase scene over and over-- of Kirk running down a blind alley. Did you ever notice how, in movies, the hero always runs straight down the middle of the street or alley, chased by speeding SUVs or cop cars, and he or she never, ever, thinks to, maybe, dodge to one side or the other?

So the chase is on, and every time, he is cornered by six cop cars, and every time, manages to escape once again by, um, running away. Only to be recognized instantly, by the next six cop cars, and get chased all over again. Tiring, really. I think it's those Buddy Holly glasses. They kind of stand out.

As always, there are subplots, of course, to this human interest story that should be about global warming and, well, isn't. There's the nice hispanic EMS tech, whose pregnant wife is, well, pregnant. LA is falling down around his ears thanks to killer lightning and stuff, but he's got plenty of time to drive her around, take her to the hospital (oops, false alarm) then back home, then around some more, in his ambulance, for which there seems to be little need, otherwise. Sure, an accident here, a fallen down building there. No big deal. Then there's the black National Weather Service guy, who's totally clueless. Why are there snowstorms in Honolulu? You got me. But he does want to get back with his girlfriend, the Miami bartender. Very human.

Then there's the female cop whose boss is in cahoots with the NSA and FBI who are trying to kill Kirk, which seems to her to be a bit excessive. Meanwhile, when things get really bad in Part II, the baddies decide to let Kirk fix the busted atmosphere first by reversing all that electricity back to wherever it came from. Too bad he can't reverse all those dead people, though. Still, with his looks, if anyone can do it, it'd be Dr. Kirk.

The other Hollywood convention I love and this movie totally has, is that no matter what kind of disaster it is--earthquake, typhoon, comet, meteor, tornado, volcano, tidal wave, etc. it always manages to take direct aim at poor old Los Angeles. I mean, what are the odds, in a world this size? So of course a direct hit of every kind of bad weather that ever existed is heading straight for L.A., and the pregnant EMI driver's wife has unwisely taken shelter with grampa in the basement of their valley ranch house which, for some reason, is filling with water (unlike, say, the L.A. River), and of course, in a wild coincidence, the wind has blown the bookcase over to exactly block the basement door, while meanwhile the bartender just has to go outside in the middle of 150 mph winds to see what's up, despite horizontal debris blowing past the size of truck bumpers (and will actually include truck bumpers). After ignoring Weather Man the whole show, this part has a nice touch to it. Girlfriend is willing to go back to Weather Boy if he'll drop everything and come hold her hand in her hurricane-beseiged bar in Miami (he's in L.A., remember). Which he somehow does, even though both cities are in the middle of a Category 5 at the time. Hey, love conquors all, I guess.

Anyway, EMI guy gets home in time, pregnant girl has her kid in the wet basement, grampie is rescued from somehow getting himself trapped underneath the water heater (it's sort of like going out into the garage and somehow the car falls down on you while you're walking by). Exciting stuff. All 40 minutes or so of it (to balance out the car chases).

Oh, there's also the two bad guys with a really bad black SUV who machine gun everybody in sight, in order to protect National Security. The cute female cop gets them, in the end, by being a much better shot than them, even with them having AK47s and MAC 9s against just her and her .9mm police special.

Everybody's happy in the end, except the bad guys and all the dead people, and the insurance companies and FEMA, I suppose (though they aren't mentioned), since America and the World are pretty much trashed, and of course Treat Williams isn't happy at all because he doesn't even get his surefire no-bid defense contract for his really good weather weapon! Neither is the general very happy, since he's about to be arrested. So they'll get theirs. And the way Female Cop is looking at Kirk, James Van Der Beek is going to get his too. But then, what else is new?

The Storm is Coming

2009-07-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the first episode of an NBC miniseries called “The Storm.” This struck a nerve. My first mystery novel, Hour of the Manatee, was originally titled Storm Warning, and it was just that. The NBC movie was marginally about Global Warming and very exciting, and timely too, were it not for the ridiculous plot. The basic theme of runaway weather is real enough, as we speak. Bizarre mini weather phenomena have been occurring worldwide of late, and if not quite as dramatic yet as in the film, it is at least equally strange and perplexing.

Even in Seattle, where I now live, the weather has shown a remarkable tendency towards the strange, pretty much since I got here two years ago. I also felt exonerated, too, by seeing a high level General as the prime heavy in this script. In my latest eco-thriller Cry of the Heron, an Air Force General is less than heroic. Weather as a weapon? Maybe. But it is Mother Nature’s weapon, not ours (which in fairness, is the underlying moral of this over-the-top TV movie.)

Here is Seattle, the reputed weather pattern has always been dull (literally) and predictable: a long, gray, rainy winter, and a short, but bright summer. Seattle summers are, or have been, in fact, the nicest in the world: little or no rain, clear skies and bright sun, moderate temps rarely about 80, maybe a few clouds and an infrequent, short rain storm, usually in the pre-dawn hours. As my Chinese wife noted, with considerable satisfaction, it’s “not too hot, and not too cold.” Unlike China, these days. My wife is from Harbin, in the northernmost part of China, the former Manchuria, which borders Mongolia, Russian Siberia, and North Korea. During my 30 month stay there ending two years ago (culminating in my recent memoir A Billion to One) Harbin was icily cold in winter, beginning in October, and hot in the summer, often into the lower 90s (30 d. centigrade).

Two weeks ago I talked to my wife in Beijing via Skype, using webcams. She was sweating, literally. It was 11 p.m. their time (and fifteen hours earlier in Seattle) and she was fanning herself in the heat. It was 95 degrees. She said it was too hot to go out, when I suggested a cool mall or library--at least during the day. And while her family there is upper middle class, air conditioning is still rare in China, mainly due to its massive energy demands (clothes dryers are still not in use for the same reason—China needs its energy for industry just now, and all else is secondary, unless, of course, you are a high party official).

Here in Seattle, at the time, it was gorgeous: upper seventies to low 80s in the day, and low 60s to upper 50s at night. I’d been swimming every day in our pool, or even Lake Washington, which is remarkably clean, still. I felt guilty. But change is coming here as well. Last winter, we had a sudden snowstorm that completely paralyzed the city. They didn’t know what to do with 6-8” of snow. It had never happened before. As a result, this paralysis lasted for as long as ten days. My condominium complex is on top of a hill with steep access roads. They were not plowed, for two weeks. There are no plows. Then they froze, along with the parking lot above.

Now, in late July, the beautiful weather here has taken a bit of a Beijing turn. Yesterday it was 95 f. in Kirkland, just down the lake. And that was just the beginning. It’s expected to get even hotter for the next several days, even over 100 in places. People are looking for “heat shelters” now, an unprecedented problem for this part of the country. I am lucky: my 3 story building has units above and below us which provide insulation, and lots of shade and breezes. We are moderated by these, and as a result I was comfortable, even during the night when, again without precedent, the temperature stayed high. Which meant upper 70s. When I lived in Florida, it never got that cool at night, and AC ran 24/7 in the summer. (I am going there next week to see how it is now, and also visit my son and old friends from my Tony Lowell Mystery days. There too, anything is possible now. I know they’ve had a multi-years’ long draught, which is unprecedented for them).

Meanwhile, I am enjoying Seattle’s new heat, which is still not as bad (and much cleaner) than Beijing’s heat. Or Florida's. It may still be the best weather in the world at the moment. Unfortunately, the whole word is changing now, and “best” may not be that good, before long. As for the mini-series “Storm”, which continues next Sunday, I can hardly wait to see what ridiculous plot twist comes next. And what the real Weather Woman--Mother Nature--has in store for our next punishment. Whatever it is, we deserve it.

The Beat Goes On

2009-07-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

I believe there is such a thing as time travel. It is called 'Art.' It's music. It's film. It's paint. It's sculpture. It's what we do that makes us human. Art is timeless. You're there, at the moment of creation, every time. Have you ever wondered why it is that when you listen to an old song, one that got you viscerally that first time you heard it, it's that first time happening, at some level in your soul, all over again?

Why is it that ten million people wanted to attend Michael Jackson's funeral? I was never a fan, but I always found him fascinating, and that Moon Walk was kinda cool. As a human being, he was a pretty spectacular flop. But at some level, he reached maybe a billion people worldwide, with those moves, those tunes, that beat. And even I, ever a non-fan, can summmon a moment in my past life when it got to me, and even I was sashaying across a floor in a club somewhere (I lived in L.A. back then) moving backwards, trying not to fall on my ass, and having one helluva a blast. I can hear it now, in my head: Jeannie Jeannie. Or maybe it's just Beat It.

MJ is gone now, but the beat goes on. And I couldn't care less about the rest.

Home of the Brave

2009-06-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Lowell and Perry are out sunning, as usual. As usual it's late afternoon, to avoid the mid-day Florida heat. Perry is circumspect, as usual. Lowell is working on the brightwork of his perpetual rehab project, the schooner Andromeda. Keeping up the wood finish on a wooden boat in Florida is about like painting the Golden Gate bridge. By the time your done, it's time to start over again.

"Hey, Lowell," says Perry, through a cloud of cannabis. He's been smoking more lately, and enjoying it less. "Don't you ever get tired of working on your damn boat?"

"Sure. Every year," responds Lowell, slapping on a new coat of varnish on the stern rail, having finally finished re-sanding it.

"Seems to me you spend about ten hours of varnishing for every hour sailing, wouldn't you say?"

Lowell grins. "So few? I'd put it at more than a hundred to one. In fact, when was the last time we went sailing, like out on the Gulf?"

Perry relights his pipe, with a shrug. "Last year? No, the year before, I think. Which is my whole point."

"So? It gives you something to look forward to. Plus, think of all those memories."

"Mostly bad ones, what I remember. I am really not crazy about being driven through tidal waves with the boat about to tip over and I don't, like, swim, and there's lightning and thunder and we're goin' nowhere fast, and what's the point?"

"The joy of nature. And leaving no carbon footprint," adds Lowell. "And the sensation of speed."

Perry snorts. "Speed? That's speed," he notes, gesturing at a passing cigarette boat out on the Manatee River, beyond the bayou.

"It's not the same. Speaking of carbon footprints," mentions Lowell, "only thing burns more fuel for no good reason is those fucking leaf blowers."

"Hey, I love those leaf blowers. It gives me a sense of power. Pushin' all them leaves around."

"And dust," notes Lowell. "Those things mostly just push dust around."

"Hey, luckily here in Florida we don't get too much dust."

"Hence, no need to blow it around. And they create more CO2 than a hundred cars."

"That so? But it's very useful. We do get leaves, y'know. Like, every year in the fall?"

Lowell dabs a bend in the rail with his brush. "Are you familiar with the concept of a rake? What happened to all your Native American one-ness with nature, anyway?"

"Got bred out of us, I guess. Due to forced contact with Whitey."

"Hey, watch it. I haven't been white since the week I was born. Not even then. Pink, more like." Lowell gestures at his brown, well-weathered face with his brush. "Does this look white to you?"

"Only metaphorically speaking. Which is the whole point. No Native American would have the self-and globally-destructive impulse to tear up a river bed in order to make waves at seventy m.p.h. or whatever and leave a cloud of smoke and coating of oil in my wake as my gift to Planet Earth."

"It's just our way of showing our superiority to all things and creatures, great and small. It's also how some of us feel compelled to express our contempt for rules, regulations, and life's lower forms."

"Like your dead manatee out there," nods Perry, towards the mouth of the bayou, where a mother and calf had once lived, until the mother had been hit by possibly that same passing surface shark, as Perry likes to call them.

"Good point. But we Anglo-Americans have a strong need to kill stuff and wreck things, anyway. It's how we show our superiority. None of that Chief Joseph shit for us. Guns and God and Gobs, that's us."

"Gobs?"

"Good Ol' Boys. Like my man Dick Cheney. And our lady, Sarah Palin. Shoots wolves from airplanes, like sitting ducks. How cool is that?"

"Way cool. Wolves, ducks, and panthers."

"Don't even mention the panthers. What's left of them."

"But hey, you gotta admit, they look good on those clubhouse walls."

"Yeah, them and the elephants. Gimme that pipe." Lowell takes a toke, thinking about what kind of people like to behead wild animals. The same kind of people that like to behead people, probably.

"Anyway, as you say, some people just gotta be free, 'cause this is the Land of the Free."

Lowell nods. "Except from danger, threats, exploitation, deception, corruption, pollution, or injustice."

"Whaddaya want?" points out Perry. "Those things are all legal!"

That's a Croc

2009-06-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

Lowell and Perry have just finished a difficult investigation involving a former police officer who had taken the law into his own hands, and his wife’s life along with it. Perry is morose. “People keep killing each other,” he complains. "Over nothin'."

“That’s because they have easy access to deadly weapons,” responds Tony, lighting his customary micro-dose of cannabis. Perry waves it off. “Used to be just fisticuffs, or a few sharp words. Now they use sharp objects.”

“Or firepower,” admits Perry. That’s a big admission for him. He’s NRA all the way, and has a weapons depot to prove it, in his barn and basement. Which is ironic, as Tony Lowell often points out, because Perry was trained very well in Special Forces to kill with his bare hands. That said, he’s basically a very peaceable guy, he just loves his guns. He wants to show Lowell the latest. A Ruger .38, actually an antique, but in perfect condition. “It reloads the old fashioned way,” he boasts, proudly, popping the clip out and back to demonstrate. “It can’t possibly shoot more than ten people at a clip.”

“That's reassuring.” Lowell waves it off. He’s a former Seal himself, but he hates guns. He’s seen too much of what they do. Especially, to people, for whom most were intended. Like this Ruger.

“Look, if that joker’s wife had one of these, she’d still be pole dancing at the Clam Shack,” Perry points out, defensively.

“Maybe,” replies Lowell. “But cops get a lot more practice at shooting than wives, usually. He’d of grabbed it out of her hand and shot her with it instead of just strangling her, that's all.”

“Huh.” Perry doesn’t want to think about that.

Lowell changes the subject. “Speaking of shooting, did you read about the kid who shot a croc down in Everglades? Except, she wasn’t. It was all legal, though.”

“Hold on.” Perry takes a long, thoughtful toke, like the peace pipe his ancestors once smoked, with this same herb inside. “She wasn’t what?”

Lowell looks up from where he was watching a crab scuttle away past the pier piling at his dangling feet. “She wasn't a crocodile. She was a woman.”

“A kid shot a woman in Everglades? Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“He was only fourteen. She was sunbathing. He said he was sure she was a croc, on account of she was lying down.”

"Maybe she was. That's never wise, in Florida."

“Oh, like sunbathers are supposed to never lie down now?”

“Not in National Parks. Besides, it’s legal to carry guns in there now, so what’s the point of not usin’ ‘em? So where was this?”

“At a state park campsite, near the Straits."

Perry nods. "There’s a lot of crocs down there, man.”

Lowell shakes his head, just trying to envision the scene. “She was a lovely woman, apparently. Left a husband and daughter.”

Perry looks doubtful. “Except for she resembled a croc.”

“Easy mistake to make, no doubt."

"The kid was probably just in a hurry. Jumped the gun, so to speak. Accidents happen, man."

"Perhaps he didn’t notice her purple polka dot yellow bikini.”

“That could happen. Like that kid in Washington who shot a hiker. Thought she was a bear. She was wearing orange, too."

"Well, Bikinis are kinda hard not to notice, especially when you’re a fourteen-year-old boy.”

Perry shrugged. “So how did he get out there? Into the Glades?"

"His grandpa. An old boy from way back. I gather gramps is devastated, though."

"Yeah, he won’t be able to take the kid hunting again ‘till next year.”

“Really? That's it? No hard time for, say, manslaughter?"

"Nah. He was just a kid." Perry throws a stick in the water.

"A kid with a gun." Lowell stirs an eddie with his toe. "One thing I don't understand," he says, at last. "I thought it was illegal to shoot wildlife in national parks, anyway.”

“Well, technically that’s true, but what’s the point of having a gun if you can’t shoot sometin’?” Perry points out.

“So it’s all legal. Except the girl part."

"Maybe some community service or somethin'. But the lawyers are workin' on that."

"So what's next? People can carry a gun everywhere?”

“Except to school. But they’re working on that.” Perry chuckles. “Anyway, boys will be boys. You gotta give ‘em some slack.”

Lowell nods. The sun is getting low. Mullet are jumping. Almost time for a beer.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=Gene+Ayres

Ifs Ands and Butts

2009-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Lowell and Perry are at it again, sitting on the dock of the bay, Manatee Bay, having a toke, and Perry is morose as usual. This time it's about all the cigarette butts that have washed up on shore.

"Leave it to Big Tobacco to trash the world," grumbles Perry. "You never saw a pot head who littered like this," he complains.

"That's true," nods Lowell. "Unlike cigarettes, weed is au natural."

"I was down at Albertson's last week," says Perry, careful to stub out his joint and replace it in his pocket. "They have these Mexicans to sweep up the parking lot, but they miss a lot."

"How do you mean?" asks Lowell, fishing out a netful of cigarette filters that have clustered around his dock piling. He's long since given up on catching any edible fish, but sometimes nets come in handy.

"There was this stiff breeze coming in off the Gulf. It was blowing all this small stuff the sweepers miss up against the curb on the other side of the parking lot. It was piled up like a berm against the curb, about four inches deep. It was all cigarette butts, man, and there must've been thousands of 'em. Tens of thousands."

"Probably only a year's supply or so, for the shoppers," points out Lowell. "You have only yourselves to blame, you know," he adds.

Perry, who is Native American, shakes his head. "No way. We may have introduced tobacco to the colonist occupiers, but we only used it for ceremonies, and we didn't make plastic filters that are non-biodegradable like all this shit."

"So the problem is with the plastic filters?"

"Sure. I read it in the New York Times. Paper and tobacco will degrade, eventually, although they are full of other poisons, like nicotine and benzene, and cadmium. Which is why there's no more fish, by the way. But these plastic filters are forever, man."

"That's a bummer." Lowell kicks at the water, angrily. It kicks back.

"I talked to this lady there. She was wearing a business suit. Reminded me of your friend Detective Bedrosian."

"Lena? Was she there?"

"No, it wasn't her, or I'da ragged her tight little ass for not writing some tickets for litterin'. But this woman, a banker or something, she loads all these plastic bottles and glass and newspapers and shit into the recycling bin, you know? And she's smoking a Benson & Hedges. Which she then chucks on the pavement like it's nothing at all, and walks away. So I ask her, 'hey, home come you do all this recycling and then you trash the place?"

"And?"

"And she gives me this look, like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. It's like cigarette butts are exempt from litter laws. They don't count, because they're small, see. So then she says, 'Oh, I thought they were biodegradable.' Bullshit. Since when is plastic biodegradable? So she lights up another and goes off in a huff, before I can show her that pile of butts by the curb."

"That reminds me," says Lowell. "Next week is Beach Cleanup Week. Most of what we pick up every year is cigarette butts, actually, now that you mention it."

"Maybe we can lobby the legislature to make them recyclable," suggests Perry. "Maybe we could go into the used butts business. Ten cents a pound, and they get turned into newspaper."

"No good. Nobody reads newspapers any more," says Lowell, sadly. "Maybe soft drink containers? Or Big Mac wrappers?"

"Sure," says Perry. "Then they'll end up on the beach all over again. Then you can pick those up next year, and recycle them into washing machines or gravestones or something."

Lowell nods, thoughtfully. "What goes around comes around," he says. "Are we out of beer?"

More Pot Politics

2009-05-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

I picture my laid-back detective PI Tony Lowell hanging on the dock with his Native American pal Perry Garwood sharing some really good Panama Red, and also some really good Jamaican Red Stripe. Life is good. But Perry is bugged, as usual. "Tony," he says, "have you read about this situation in Washington State? Here we are in the middle of an eco-meltdown, eco-as in economy plus eco-as in ecology, a serious meltdown, and there's no money except in those banks getting all those bailouts."

"Bail is important," notes Tony, deeply inhaling the still almost pristine Manatee River mist. "Innocent until proven guilty, remember? Plus, a lot of our clients depend on that. What's liberty without bail?"

"Yeah, sure, OK, but here's the point. America's got 1/4 of all the prison inmates in the whole world."

"Maybe it's because we have a lot of bad guys," suggests Lowell, reasonably.

"Sure, but it's like, look at possibly the most progressive Blue State. Washington State. Did you know they just laid off 3500 teachers, for budgetary reasons? That's a huge number, considering they already got 28 kids in every classroom."

"How about Florida?"

"Don't even talk about Florida."

"OK," agrees Lowell. "I won't talk about Florida. Except to mention that's where we are."

"Doesn't matter. Florida, Washington, it's all the same. The U.S. of A.," Perry reminds him. "It's an eco-disaster."

"But we need those jails, to protect the Land of the Free. What's your point?"

"My point is, in that same article, they mention King's County. That's, like, Seattle. And King County wants to build this big new jail. A hundred million dollar state of the art new jail. They fire all those teachers, but they got money for a new jail."

"That's for all those kids who smoke pot," tokes Tony. "You gotta put them somewhere."

"Bullshit. They shouda arrested Confucius, when they had the chance. And Satchmo. Big potheads, both of 'em. Not to mention Mohommed, and those Rabbis and monks and shamans who used all that incense."

"It's better not to mention them."

"Sorry. Anyway, I'm wondering what's up with a state that will spend another 100 mil or so, when they claim to be flat broke, to lock up more kids caught with weed, when they are laying off all those teachers."

"Good question," notes Lowell. "But I'm sure they know what they are doing. Plus, they're better than most states, right?"

"Very funny," grumbles Perry.

"Anyway," concludes Lowell. "Do we have any more Red Stripe in the cooler, or what?"

When Gay Meant Happy

2009-04-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

Back in Jane Austen's time people used to laugh, and sing happy songs like ‘now we don our gay apparel.’ But now gay means getting murdered in rural Wyoming like Matthew Shepard, or flogged in Teheran, or at best having to be secretive, or at least pretty brave, if you choose to come out anywhere outside of, say, the West Village or West Hollywood. But to me, I keep wondering just what all the fuss is all about. It’s like the old saying, ‘some of my best friends are Jews.’ Or in this case, ‘gays.’ Relatives too. Even favorite ones. Having worked in the arts, music, Hollywood and literary worlds my whole life, I was bound to meet one or two of them. And it’s hard to understand why all this anathema from the rest of us. Most of the gays I’ve met are very nice, well educated, well dressed, polite people who wash their hands, and have excellent taste in most matters. Every town or city I’ve ever lived in was improved once gays moved in: art galleries were opened, good restaurants, theater groups, musical venues, museums, and attractive neighborhoods all seem to be preferred a lot more by gays than, say, those who live in double-wides but attend church every Sunday before going out to blow away Bambi’s mother.

In much of the world, even more than in Wyoming or our Christian-feigning West, people are so afraid of gays they routinely beat or kill them on sight (even more so in Islamic and African cultures). And no issue involving gays seems to inflame all these righteous religionists quite so much as marriage. In fact, none of the gay people I know personally are actually in any huge rush to get married at all. Truth is, gay people are about equal to straight people when it comes to marriage. Some want it, others don’t. Some would rather ‘cohabit.’ Or, as the Religious Right would have us believe, ‘live in sin.’ Of course, if you’re Christian, all sex is sin, even though you’re under some kind of moral obligation to get married, go forth, and multiply (thus our seriously overcrowded, over-polluted world). I suppose on the other hand, so long as you’re straight, it’s perfectly fine to live in sin, too, so long as you pay the piper. Or at least your congress person and clergyman. If you’re gay, you’re not allowed to do either one.

I think this whole coming out getting married thing is going a bit overboard though, really, because I think the people who are going to really make out the most in the long run, apart from the Cadillac-driving Jesus preachers, are lawyers. (BTW, was Jesus straight? I can’t get a ‘straight’ answer on this one. Only Mary M. knows for sure, I guess. But if he was so straight, how come he never got married and procreated like God said?) Anyway, getting back to the gay thing, it’s divorce lawyers who are going to make out like bandits, from all this gay marriage. The more states allow gay marriages the better, for them. Because gay people are no more devoted to long term relationships than, say, Hollywood actors, or Republican preachers. Which also goes for long-term marriage.

But here’s where I fall down laughing, while others are busy shouting. If you are to believe the Religious Right, the reason they are all so outraged about gays being allowed to marry is that, in their words, it is a threat to the institution of marriage. Why, exactly, is that? Are they terrified that all their sweet young straight things, all so good and Christian-like, (those who aren’t pregnant from pre-marital unprotected sex, at least) all those hockey star manly guys and Texas halfbacks are going to be unable to resist the huge attraction, should gay marriage be allowed, to abandon their hetero sweetheart fiancés and dash off to marry the nearest gay person instead? Thus, there is a belief, among Christian types, that there is a conspiracy behind all this gay marriage. It’s to make us all gay. Or at least, to make your kids gay. Because after all, given the chance, at least according to these ‘Christians,’ gay must be the preferred alternative, unless we beat it out of you.

So the anti-gay crowd is determined, at all cost, to make certain that their upstanding straight high school age children be taught abstinence, and biblical studies, and hockey, and rid the world of gays so they can all remain straight gun-loving Christians (or for that matter, Muslims). But what’s so hilarious about that notion, is the idea that adults in pulpits or Governor’s offices can make any red-blooded teenager or post-adolescent, for that matter, do anything. Let alone practice abstinence while deprived of even the knowledge of alternatives, let alone change their sexual preferences for reasons yet to be disclosed (other than behind the doors of some Baptist ministry in East Texas or Grisham country, I suppose).

Let’s get something straight (pun intended): you can’t make people be something they aren’t. Try as you might. If God intended gays to be so straight, he’da made them that way. Y’know? No doubt so they could run for governor of Alaska. Or for congress in Raleigh. Or maybe for the next Presidency of Iran, the current leaders of which insist there are “no gays in Iran.” Or at least none that haven’t been whipped, beaten, murdered, or driven into exile. Like those in Wyoming.

Help! There's a Song in my Head

2009-04-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

I have this problem. It started about three months ago, when I woke up one morning with a song stuck in my head, and it wouldn’t go away, no matter what I tried. I can’t remember which song it was, but I know how it got there. It got there when I was eight years old, listening to 50s pop radio in Westfield, New Jersey, where I grew up. No, wait. Oh no. Here it comes again! Something about a Honeycomb, I think it was called. It went: It’s a darn good life and it’s kinda funny how the Lord made the bee and the bee made the honey and the honey bee lookin’, for a home, and they called it a honeycomb. By a country western artist named Jimmy Rogers. Why do I remember this? It really, truly beats the hell out of me.

By no stretch of the imagination should I be carrying this song around in my head, let alone here, now, in the 21rst Century, let alone using it for my six o’clock wake up call. I mean, I know lots of songs. Some of them I’m quite fond of, like Yesterday. And You Are My Sunshine, which my students in China also enjoyed singing on occasion. This one, I wasn’t fond of, still am not, never liked, and hadn’t heard for fifty one years, as far as I know. Until that morning three months ago inside my head.

It’s gotten worse. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini has now made itself known. Or reknown. Even worse, Candy Girl! Then along came The Money Tree. Out of nowhere. Why couldn’t it happen to you instead of me? These horrors, and a dozen or more other songs I have not listened to, or wanted to, in half a century, are now perambulating around inside my head like an old juke box and they own it.

Maybe it’s my punishment for joining the Napster Rebellion a few years back, when my books were all out of print and I admittedly had nothing better to do. So I downloaded every song I ever knew. Or so I’d thought at the time. This lot now occupying my head like an invading army had been willfully, deliberately, and maliciously excluded at the time. So now, it seems, they are exacting revenge. I had no trouble justifying Napster, I quickly want to add. After all, I’d bought those songs at some time in my life: every one of them. Except this bunch now taking over. Many of them more than once. The really old ones, like Sail Along Silvery Moon and Green Onions I’d bought as 45 rpm singles. Then others, like Night Train and Harlem Nocturne I’d bought as record albums. LP’s, they were called in those days. And each time I bought a record album, it had been for one song, one cut. I had to buy the other ten or so along with it, whether I wanted to or not. Those were the rules (and sometimes the other songs won me over, but often did not). Some albums, as time went by, I really loved in their entirety. Like the early Beatles albums. So I played them until they were scratchy and worn out, then bought them again.

This continued through college, and the British Invasion, and Folk Rock and the Acid Rock Revolution. LPs came, and songs were played, and played again, and discarded, and replaced. Then came 8 tracks. Those were great, or so we thought. You could play them in cars! Never mind their annoying habit of stopping in the middle of a cut to change tracks, then like as not missing a beat or ten. If not a track or two. Or backing up a few bars. So, I went to Sam Goody’s and bought them all over again. As far as I’m concerned, the heir to this media empire, Time Warner, owes me for those alone. Ditto cassettes, when they came along soon after. Good for about three plays and then pfft. By now I’d probably bought Revolver for the fourth or fifth time. Just to hear In My Life. And so it went. Beatles. Doors. Stones. Airplane. Mamas and Papas. Youngbloods. Then, later on Pink Floyd, and Dire Straits, and REM. And whatever happened to those amazing one hit wonders, the Zombies? But never, never, in any moment of altered-state delirium, did it ever occur to me, did I ever consider buying, or wish, want, or would have been willing, even if twisted by the ear or bent in a rack, to buy Honeycomb, by Jimmy Rogers. Let alone twice. Ditto Hello Muddah, also squatting happily now, in my brain pan. What to do, what to do?

Luckily, some of the more recent arrivals throwing all-night parties in my head aren’t so bad, like Moondance, and Get Together. But Jimmy, Jimmy Coco Pop? Where did that come from? And what about He’s So Fine, and My Boyfriend’s Back? Who’s responsible for these travesties, anyway? I hated both of those in high school, and haven't gotten any fonder of them since. And don’t tell me it’s some kind of emerging Manchurian Candidate mind control thing, even though I did, as it happens, recently spend three years inside the former Manchuria (see my book A Billion to One for details.) In fact, the Chinese wouldn’t touch those songs with a ten foot chopstick, not even to implant them in my brain. And why would they? Let me think...

Not that the Chinese are the paragons of good taste, or anything like that, other than food-wise. At least not since Mao leveled the place. It’s just that they aren’t capable of comprehending anything quite that bad. Besides, they liked me there. Why would they choose to torment me, their “beloved foreign teacher” (as the leaders loved to call me) in such a hideous way? If they wanted state secrets, no problem. I know exactly where Texas, for example, is located. I can show them on a map. They can have it. They want the formula to Cheese Doodles? They can have it, too. Ditto Colonel Sander’s Secret Recipe. No wait, they already have that. Copy my books? No problem! No one else was reading them.

So, no, I don’t think I can blame the Chinese for this subsequent turn of events inside my head. It’s something about my childhood coming back, I think. Sort of like seeing my life pass before my eyes, except in slow motion. Or hearing it, like a slow passing freight train. Come to think of it, I just got a craving for Cheez Whiz. I used to love Cheez Whiz! Especially smeared on Triscuits. Now where did that memory come from? It just waltzed in out of the globally warmed smog, without so much as a knock on the door. What’s going on here? Hu Jintao, is that you? How did you find out about the Cheez Whiz? I’ve been hiding that secret for decades, and not even Dick Cheney could have tortured that one out of me.

Help! I’m trapped in darkest Seattle with Hello Mudder stuck in my head, and images of Cheez Whiz! Who’s doing this to me? Is it the Chinese? Ni zher tamen? What did I ever do to you? Other than write that book. No, wait! Oh no, not The Lion Sleeps at Night! I refuse to say another word.

Return of the Gator

2009-04-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

Back in 1995, when my second Tony Lowell Mystery, Eye of the Gator was published (with all due acclaim) my then-publisher, St. Martin's Press, sent me to Gainesville, Florida, for a booksigning. Of course those in the sports world know Gainesville to be home of the University of Florida (and thus, presumably, lots of educated people as well, interested in the themes I was hoping to bring to the table) and naturally, anything with 'Gator' in the title should resonate loudly there. Besides, my laid-back P.I. was (albeit fictional) an alumnus of that fabled school. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that, even in the hometown of the Florida Gator, anything that didn't involve All American quarterbacks, NBA-bound point guards, or at least Ted Bundy or Tom Petty, didn't qualify. Thus my books, and presence, were met with resounding yawns.

What my book was actually about, of course, in fact had little to do with the sports Gators and their fans. In fact, it had nothing to do with them whatsoever, other than that both were set in Florida, and there were alligators lurking somewhere around. My 'Gator' had been inspired by a recent event in central Florida, in a region chillingly known as 'Bone Valley.' There is a once-lovely river there called the Alafia, which flows through what is now phosphate mining country. Back in the '90s people living along that river were met one morning with the spectacle of thousands of dead bodies floating downstream. It reminded me of the Mekong River post Pol Pot. But this was a clear and present danger, taking place right here in tourist country, and it was a major shock. Of course most of these bodies floating down the Alafia weren't human. They were, however, pretty much everything else that had once lived in that river, which, thanks to a chemical spill by the aforementioned phospate mines, was now dead. Including more than a few hundred alligators, now belly-up for all the world to see. And smell.

My subsequent book, while a mystery novel, was about domestic violence, race relations, a toxic chemical spill, and a murderous attempt to cover it up. This was, in fact, arguably the original eco-thriller. But I should add that there was also a sports star involved in my plot: an ethically and morally challenged former baseball Hall of Famer with a penchant for violence his adoring public was all-too willing to forgive. This, of course, being a novel, was a character completely unrelated to anyone living or dead. I mention all this because Eye of the Gator is now back in print. It seems that all of these events, while perhaps seemingly unrelated to the college scene in Gainesville then or now, has everything to do with what is still happening in our world. Perhaps even more so than in 1995. Hopefully this time the yawns won't be quite so loud. My ears are still ringing.

A Word on Expert Opinions

2009-03-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof drove home a particularly sore point with me, in regards to my book A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. This book, and of course I, the author, take the position that a truly objective and accurate perception of what life is really like in China today could only be offered by someone who is not a "known expert." Such a person, for example Kristof himself, would be watched, followed, monitored, and escorted everywhere. And his fully programmed and monitored visit would be short: a week, perhaps two, a month at most in a foreign setting like China. Whereas I, as an unknown (at least in China) was free to come and go, live among the people, walk the walk, and talk the talk (well, some of it, anyway).

Yet when I returned after nearly three years to the States with a stack of dispatches, chapters, blogs and memoirs about those experiences (and a new Chinese wife and step-daughter to boot) my subsequent book, while represented by a top literary agent, was dismissed by virtually every major New York publisher, always for the same reason: I was not an "expert." Not, at least, in their eyes, or those of, say, The New York Times. Which was to say, of course, that I was not sufficiently famous to know anything.

So let's take a look at what Kristof had to say today on this subject, since it is all those well-known experts who have just driven a stake through the heart of the global economy, starting with our own; and it was other similarly admired "experts" who had previously and recently succeeded in getting us embroiled in yet another unwinable war, enabling others to loot our national treasury in the name of "reducing government", and trashing or ignoring all accepted science in terms of environmental, economic, legal, medical, social, or cultural values and institutions in our country.

To quote Mr. Kristof, on the subject of "experts":

do experts actually get it right themselves? The expert on experts is Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts’ forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about.

The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.

“It made virtually no difference whether participants had doctorates, whether they were economists, political scientists, journalists or historians, whether they had policy experience or access to classified information, or whether they had logged many or few years of experience,” Mr. Tetlock wrote.

Indeed, the only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones. That had to do with a fault in the media. Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites. People who shouted — like, yes, Jim Cramer!

So there you have it. The self-proclaimed expert who shouts loudest gets the most attention. And the most bananas. And apparently public credibility and book deals along with it, even though (as we all suspected anyway) such people tend to be wrong about pretty much everything, pretty much 100% of the time! Amazing, really. And more than a little troubling.

But then, as I noted in the Foreword of my own book, I don't claim to be an expert; only an observer. So, in conclusion, the publishers were right: I am not an expert on anything, including China. But I did live and work there for 30 months. And lived very well. And taught some radical ideas at a major university, and also got to come home and write about it. Even Nicholas Kristof can't make that claim. Not that he would.

And Justice for All (or at least for a Change!)

2009-03-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

My current favorite TV show is Boston Public. It’s an often humorous, usually outrageous, and over-the-top, but still thoughtful look at our so-called justice system. One of the key elements about the legal system is how often it has nothing to do with justice. Not so the mystery genre, in which I write. In the real world, justice depends on who’s in charge, who calls the shots, who can afford the best lawyers (Denny Crane) or the best lobbyists. Only in a theoretical world, a world of right and wrong, of clear distinctions, where ‘might makes right’ is a falsehood, where the good guy always wins, is there true justice. Which, unfortunately, is mostly a world of imagination and fiction. Maybe this is why this kind of fiction is so popular, anad why justice is what I like best to write about. It's what too few people get, in their lives. They hope things will be better in Heaven, of course. It's why they believe in Heaven. Because too often there is none here in our world.

Those events that might turn history, like the Obama victory, are few and far between. The great thing about writing, especially fiction, is that the author gets to render justice. Every time. Norman Mailer once wrote a novel, back in his early days, called The American Dream. It was about getting away with murder (of course at multiple levels). A newer version, less lethal but in the end no less criminal, has been the looting of our nation’s resources by bank CEOs and Wall Street’s so called ‘Masters of the Universe.’ I think more than a few of us harbor fantasies, of late, of getting away with taking out a few of those greed-driven felons. That's where the respite of fiction comes in. Like my Hour of the Manatee, about a Supreme Court shoe-in who maybe got away with murder. But no one gets away with such real-life crimes like killing the whistleblower, looting the treasury and living happily ever after in Belize in a good mystery. In a satisfying thriller, the hero will always track that thieving murderer down, in the end, and bring him to Justice. It's what the people need, at least to have faith in their core values: that right truly does prevail over wrong, at least in principle. It's what we live for, we who have to live in the real world the rest of the time.

The Politics of Pot

2009-03-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

There's no question that when I published the first Tony Lowell Mystery back in 1994, the idea of a private eye who preferred weed to Winstons and Kung Fu to Kalashnikovs was perhaps more than your average hard boiled mystery reader was ready for (the cozies were a different market, and Tony Lowell hardly fit into the Miss Marple role either). I've since learned, at least during that era of the rise of the Religious Right and NRA nationists, that mystery fiction was a mostly conservative genre. At least back then. Which was odd, given that most readers then, as now, were women. Odd, that is, until you see the rapid rise and huge success of the hard boiled female detectives and their authors, like Patricia Cornwell and Sarah Paretsky. My Tony Lowell had a female counterpart, of course: a right wing female police detective. Maybe I should have let her run with the series. But no matter. What's done is done, and I am banking today that a nonconformist P.I. with a Sixties outlook, who refuses to carry a gun, is ready at last to come into his own.

For one thing, I live in a state that legalized medical marijuana, and is now trying to figure out how to reconcile that with a long tradition of "lock 'em up" politics that has demonized that historic medical herb as being a Class A "drug." Even the AMA has come out admitting that marijuana is a. non-addictive, and b. beneficial to many. As for the DEA, their unsupportable and unconstitutional position has always been a reverse equation: crack heads also smoked pot, therefore pot smokers are also crack heads. This charge is of course, in fact, patently false.
The historic truth about smoking pot is very simple. While it has been in common use since Confucius's time (I was greatly amused to see that a casket if still really good cannabis was recently uncovered in a venerated Chinese philosopher's tomb) and may have been the secret ingredient in the rituals of all early religions, not to mention medical procedures, pot was demonized in Nixon's time strictly for political reasons. Smoking pot had become a symbolic act of defiance by young people against their corrupt leaders and government. As a result, when Nixon went to China and made his private deal with Mao Tse Tung, part of the deal was that China, too, would outlaw weed from then on thus avoiding similar protests, as the theory went (although China has not been to forceful about this policy, as I learned while living and working there for three years per my new book to A Billion to One).

Anyway, getting back to Tony Lowell, he, like his author, were Sixties rebels (Lowell went to 'Nam, where everyone smoked weed in order to remain sane), whereas those ideologues who pursued the demonization of that medicinal and spiritually uplifting herb were all draft dodgers, trust fund babies, and members of the Bush Skull and Bones caball who have since plunged moral hypocrisy to never-dreamed-of depths (other than by Dante and George Orwell). So the whole issue since that time has been an effort by right wing Republicans, Neocons, Racists, gun nuts, Neo-Nazis and Religious Conservatives (who have no problem with deadly and really addicting drugs like nicotine and alcohol, from which they heavily profit) to outlaw not just pot, but the very thinking, belief systems, cultural values and open mindedness associated with that totally natural herbal remedy and supplement.

I'm betting on change. I think people are going to wake up to the fact that there are kids doing hard time for smoking a joint while massively corrupt felons take government funding and buy themselves corporate jets and fly off to their million dollar island hideaways to update their off-shore bank accounts, all on the pubic dole while demanding tax cuts for their ill gotten gains. You know that, apart from poor Bernie Madoff, most of them will never spend ten minutes in jail. This is fodder for good detective fiction to come (and isn't good fiction the source of real truth, in the end?). We'll talk about the environment another time. A lot of crimes happen in that arena too, most of them crimes against nature. Tony Lowell will be there, too, fighting the good fight, as always. Stay tuned!

Life in the Fast Lane

2009-03-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

It may be a particularly American phenomenon. Or maybe it goes back to the Ancient Greeks. I think it goes back to the cave man, actually. But given all of the stresses we already face in our lives, why is it we always seem to be in such a rush? I’ve been this way my whole life, and on those occasions when leisure is a must, or at least preferable (sex comes to mind! Or a good meal) it’s hard to change one’s ways.

I even have this thing called a shaking leg syndrome. And now my wife Tina has it too. Is this how we found each other? Or is it contagious? This all may be primordial, of course. A leftover instinct or gene from a time when we had to be on full alert at all times, or that saber tooth tiger lurking on those rocks up ahead was sure to get us. Or you. Us or you. Which also may explain why more men (the hunter chromosome) might have this problem than women. Although certainly some women are in a big hurry to catch up, it seems. Ironic.

All my life I’ve been glancing at my watch. Why? What am I afraid I’m going to miss? Life itself? True, we have only so much time. And our biological clocks are ticking away. You’d think twenty four hours, over seven days, over twelve months, for eighty odd years is usually long enough to get things done. But for me, even if there isn’t a deadline, I’ll make one. Again, why? Getting back to that primordial thing, maybe those of us with this instinct just can’t help it. We’re hard -wired this way. It can certainly be costly. Ben Franklin, who clearly didn’t have this problem, was right: ‘haste makes waste.’ But isn’t it equally true that ‘the early bird gets the worm?’ I have a chapter about this in my new China memoire A Billion to One, actually. Which in itself nearly fell victim to this compulsion. It is very difficult to edit and proofread one’s own work, as other writers know only too well. We’ve already been there and done that. We’ve experienced the event, had the inspiration, taken the necessary action, written it down. Why go through it again, and again? And so we rush. And mistakes happen.

Maybe all this is why we love suspense fiction (and movies) so much. Movies had a finite time frame. There’s always a ticking clock, literally, and a line waiting outside if it’s really good. Books are more leisurely, surely, but still: the better the story, the more we feel rushed to find out what happened.

And how about sports? Men love sports more than women. Maybe there’s a reason for this. It’s a safe way to expunge those feelings of urgency and desperation. Time is running out. Football has not just one, but two ticking clocks. We must score that winning touchdown or goal or—what? Or lose. Which is the symbolic manifestation of death, I suppose. We must kill that tiger before it kills us. We have ten, nine eight seven six seconds to do it before it—argh! Again, it’s much safer just to read about it in a book. What’s the hurry? Tomorrow is another day. Which reminds me. I’d better set my alarm clock. I have a deadline. Or at least, I think I do.

What's in a Name?

2009-03-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hello, World. My name is Gene Ayres: a nice, simple, two syllable name. If only. Sadly, I have learned in life that nothing, even a name, can ever be simple. For example, I used to be known as E. C. Ayres, in literary circles. Then I learned too late that if people happen to live in a Red State, or a former one like Florida, which I did, or, say, Chicago, home of William, they will have an irresistible need to correct my spelling to “Gene Ayers,” or, formerly, “E. C. Ayers.” Don’t ask why. I can’t explain it, it’s just one of the things. But it did cost me a lot of book sales. It’s bad enough to have been born an Ayres and to be forever mistaken for an “Ayers.” It’s even worse to be named “Eugene,” my full name (don’t even ask about my middle name: we won’t go there, at least not in this blog). Back when I was fighting for my seat on the school bus, Eugene was just not a name you could safely have. It’s small comfort decades later that it has been since assumed by lots of cool rap singers, college towns, sports stars and the like. Suffice to say back then it was not. And just try telling people (which I didn’t know at the time anyway) that they should be more respectful because Eugene was the name of seven straight Scottish kings, back around the time of Macbeth.

My parents’ excuse was that I was the fifth in my line, and had been proudly preceded by four prior very distinguished Eugenes (although none of them kings), not to mention a rich uncle, so I should have been grateful. Small comfort there for an impressionable young kid, believe me, especially since my own father had cleverly avoided this moniker his whole life long.Hence my shortened name, Gene. Which, while better, was hardly heroic. At least not in my neighborhood. At least not back then.

The worst blow to my childhood pride and dignity, in fact, was my mother’s unfortunate insistence on calling me “Genie.” And no, she wasn’t alluding to large magical Arabs in bottles. Nor did I ever manage to successfully appease myself by attempting to relate to such. It was just too much of a reach, even for an imaginative kid, which I had to be to survive. And whether somewhere deep down in her heart Mom had hoped I’d turn out a girl I know not, but the kids in my ‘hood took immense pleasure in chanting the Steven Foster song, “I dream of Jeannie.”

Amazingly, having survived all this, even now people ask me with stone-straight faces: “Are you related to Jane Eyre?” (Evidently people can’t spell her name either. Not that she even existed.)You’d think I’d have changed my name, somewhere along the line. I did, actually, for my ‘90s Tony Lowell Mystery series (now revived!) to “E. C.” as I said. And in my forthcoming thriller The Shakespeare Chronicles, for the European edition I am using the pen name John Underwood (actually my father’s mother’s father’s name). Also because it’s the name of one of Shakespeare’s ‘boon companions’ and sounded cool.

I really liked the names “Evan Hunter,” and “Hunter Thompson” because they sound like the kind of tough, cool hombre I used to yearn to be (although, for the record, I don’t hunt), but alas, those were taken. Anyway, none of them were really me. And having survived all those mishaps and misspellings, in the end I have chosen to hang onto my lifelong name, if for no other reason than it’s the only name I’m likely to answer to, at this late stage. Just please don’t spell it “Gene Ayers.” I hate that. Plus, then you won’t find me on Amazon or Google. You will, however, easily find me at www.geneayres.org . Just so you know.

Onward and Sideways

2009-02-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers:

What an ordeal. Here I had a great blog, all was going smoothly, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, it vanished in a cloud of digital smoke: poof! Oddly enough, my last blog was titled: The Politics of Pot. Could there be a connection there, somehow? Could those who have attacked and demonized Michael Phelps just for being a normal American kid be on my trail as well?

I was writing about my non-conformist, unorthodox, ex-hippy detective Tony Lowell at the time. Tony Lowell, as it happens, just like probably a hundred million other Americans who remember the Sixties (or at least still listen to the music) has been known to do a Michael Phelps on occasion. They hypocrisy of calling that action a crime is so monumental and sweeping (thanks to the recent powers-that-be of the past decade) that it reminds me of Rush Limbaugh demanding that all "druggies" be put in jail, while snorting Oxycontin between sets. Puhleeze, enough already, and let's hope our almost-too-good-to-be true new Administration will put an end to this nonsense at last and teach the media mavens to focus on what's actually important, what is truly criminal out there (for example, why is Karl Rove still walking around? Or any and all of those mega-thieves on Wall Street?).

I look forward to the day that all crimes are solved, and private investigator Tony Lowell no longer needs to worry about who's profiteering from polluting the Gulf, killing the manatees, shooting the Panthers, and rigging the Supreme Court.

As Buddy Holly once sang (even before the Sixties came along) that'll be the day!

In any case, moving on, I am now back online.