Book Notes — Perilous Times

When the military showed up for the Congressional Sexual Assault hearings in Washington, I nearly fell out of my chair.  This is hard to do because I have a considerable center of gravity these days.  But there it was: they were there to give evidence that after decades of failure to control assault crimes, after their proven inequity and ineffectiveness to protect victims, mostly women, from reprisal for even making a complaint and having self-serving resolution handed down by the male commanding officer, the military wanted to conduct business as usual.  There they were.  The military, a wall —  seriously a wall, half a dozen deep — of full-dress uniformed male officers, each wearing a comedy of medals on their chests that would make the most fanciful Pope blush.  What they seemed to be saying is that “they will look after the little lady.”

Last month, an eight-man panel began work on a new GOP federal anti-abortion bill for the U.S. House.

Also, last month, a jury in Texas found a man who shot an escort “not guilty of murder” because he had understood she was to perform more than a lap dance for what he paid and therefore she was in possession of property that belonged to him. He shot her. His action was determined legal. 

Few of us are unaware of what many of our Republican representatives have said about rape, even the biological consequences of rape — one goofy, nearly obscene comment after another.  Their understanding of science hasn’t reached rudimentary. Their understanding of the human condition is mind-numbingly nil. Yet they make laws that have to do with the survival of the species.

Also, I understand how two thoughtful, well-intentioned people can have seriously conflicting opinions on important issues.  But the discussion of such subjects as Roe vs. Wade is owed informed debate as well as a sense of perspective  — historic and personal. 

This is where Perilous Times comes in.  The full title includes the sub heading An Inside Look at Abortion Before — And After — Roe vs Wade.  The author is journalist Fran Moreland Johns who also wrote about important end-of-life issues in Dying Unafraid.   The perspective, or perhaps context, necessary to understand the issue, relates directly to the historic social domination by men and the roles society expected women to play — for the most part — essentially as property.  This is a political, therefore politically correctable, condition that was addressed by the top court, but as Johns points out, the details of interpretation were continually corrupted, usually by state legislatures, to deny women as much control over their own bodies as they could by slipping restrictions into a midnight amendment.

Johns tells real stories in a fair-minded minded manner.  She recreates the time before there were alternatives to “back-alley” butchers.  You’ll meet all sorts of folks along the way, none a stock character.  Quite possibly the girl who lived down the street when you were a kid scooted into the back seat of an old Buick late one morning, and was returned that afternoon all bundled up, missing only a couple of days of school — if things went well. The court decision went a long way to end the quiet and dangerous desperation.

But the news tells us everyday, this story is not over.  For example, Planned Parenthood, an organization that does far more to prevent unwanted pregnancies and create healthy families than the loudest of the anti-choice brigades, is under constant, massive attack from well-funded, highly passionate fundamentalist groups.  One would think the arguments they propose would stem from a debate about when life begins. That’s a damned good question, for which no current answer satisfies all the messy philosophy and science the question unearths.  However, the underlying fundamentalist message isn’t about what they say it is: It is not about life.  If so there would be greater emphasis on adoption and family planning. Instead, the incessant Roe v Wade challenge is to reestablish “traditional” male head of household status and relegate the wife-mother as someone who belongs to him as God’s will would have it — and if they have their way — as U.S. law will demand it.

John’s new book puts the past U.S. chapters in perspective and provides an important perspective on what is happening now, here and elsewhere.

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The naked lady wasn't your average floater. She was the wife of an Indiana senator and half of Washington's Golden Couple. Within hours of finding her body in a canal, police arrest a young Latino boxer believed to be her lover. He has the motive, means and opportunity. Another dead body later — along with some answers that seem too pat for the P.I. — Shanahan dives into the dirty side of politics, the dark side of passion, and the hideous secrets the killer is desperate to hide.

"Tierney's 'Deets' Shanahan series offers characters of depth and sensuality, and well-placed swipes of razor-sharp humor." — Publishers Weekly starred review

"A series packed with new angles and delights." — Booklist

"Keeps the reader intrigued with (Shanahan's) cogent observations of human nature and his interaction with police officers, his mistress and the various other characters Tierney draws so well." — Indianapolis Star

Life Death & Fog Books, has been established to bring the first four Shanahan novels to paperback and a variety of e-book formats. After more than 10 years, friends of Deets can now conveniently catch up with the early days of the aging PI's career. Paperback editions are from Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble. E-books are available for Kindle and Nook.  Available Here.

Note:  Writers, much like parents, aren’t supposed to have favorites.  But I must confess that among the early Shanahans, this is my favorite.  Reviewers and the people at Goodreads seem to share the feeling. There is Indianapolis history here as well as a mystery about as tightly told as I could tell it. Older readers will recognize a time and a place, much of it having slipped away. Younger readers can view a city that lies just beneath today’s surface.

Rant — Even In The Smaller Histories, We Tend To Honor The Male

I love Wikipedia, fallible, as it has to be simply because of its democratic nature.  Time also makes it favorable to fresher information readily available digitally or the already ensconced subject is followed faithfully by legions devoted to established icons.  This is true of Google as well.

I had occasion to look up the entry about the family business in Indianapolis — Laughner’s Cafeterias, the birth of which is fixed at 1888.  It continued well into my lifetime as well as into my life.  I marvel at the history, which is far richer than the entry.  The Laughners were candy makers — chocolate, taffy, peanut brittle, hard-ribbon candy.  And while there are other claims, it’s quite possible that the Laughners invented the “cafeteria” when they opened the Dairy Bar with a tray rail and a steam table in the 19th Century and smoothing out the wrinkles in the 1920s. The family also sold food and fruit drinks at fairs, carnivals, Riverside Amusement Park and the Indianapolis 500. Generations were involved. The family was embedded in the work and play of the city.  Me too, later.  One couldn’t escape it.  It was the family business and if the family needed you, you went

Flora May Laughner-Brock, Claude F. Laughner

Claude Laughner, the founder’s son, was the dreamer, schemer, entrepreneur.  He didn’t get much credit for his participation in the city’s restaurant history. And we will always regret his answer to an invitation to invest in Coca Cola.  He spit it out and said, ”this stuff will never sell.” I could be writing this from my private deck on the Riviera. However, he kept things going, and pretty well at that, until bankers started jumping out of windows.

What bothered me most when I read the Wiki entry was that one of the most important contributors to the legend, such as it is, or to its longevity, which is at least notable, was a woman, though like most such histories, we are exposed to the noble lineage of the male children.  What happened was the Depression destroyed everything. The restaurants fell on hard times. The family could barely scrape by. The Laughner heritage was about to be shattered.  Claude’s wife, a smart, determined, hard-working person ended up starting three cafeterias on her own, when not only were the times not favorable for business in general, but when most women would simply not have undertaken the challenge because they were women.

It is true these were not cutting-edge destinations.  They were essential bridges in the legacy only she could manage. And it is true that there was an exciting (The story of which merited a long New Yorker piece) renaissance for Laughners that was built on the foundation she put back in place, admittedly inspired by more than a little creative genius from the next generation. But Flora May Laughner-Brock is a key figure largely ignored by those who benefitted by her business savvy and her desire to support her family.  Without her, the Laughner history would have ended earlier and, quite possibly, with far less accomplishment, certainly without the continuity.  Bless them all, but it wasn’t all about the boys.

Sadly, much of it is lost now.  Harold’ Steer-In, originally Laughner’s Steer-Inn, is a hot spot on the city’s East Side.  Down the street from the seedy, legendary Al Green’s Drive-In on Washington Street, was the slicker, but far less scandalous Laughner’s Double L.  The super deluxe Laughner cafeterias are all gone now, as is Jonathans, a fine dining restaurant named after the founder.  MCL, which possesses a snippet of Laughner DNA from the 1950s, still exists.

Film Pairings — Two Crime Films From South Korea, Or Night Of A Thousand Knives

Both are stunning, one particularly for its Tarentinoesque violence, the other for its mix of murder, madness and heavy doses of magical realism.

Fan rankings suggest that Man From Nowhere might be the more accessible of the two by mainstream audiences. A pretty standard “heroic plot,” a mysterious young man with a dark and tragic past just wants to live his simple, anonymous, solitary life.  A drug-addicted neighbor and her all-but-abandoned daughter don’t set out to destroy this man’s brooding personal exile, but of course….

With the blood and guts level extraordinarily high and the story-line standard with what seems like a forced, sappy, Hollywood ending, Man From Nowhere is nonetheless a very well constructed product perhaps even flawless to that end.  Actor Won Bin is magnetic, especially as the mysterious “pawnbroker.”  Some of the attraction — and mood — is lost as he is transformed into a slick assassin for a non-stop, violent crescendo.

Less celebrated and less financially successful, Private Eye is my favorite of the two.  Admittedly, we move from a Jackie Chan comedy to a Federico Fellini vision.  What works for me, though, is that this is innovative, imaginative filmmaking. In this charming period piece, a powerful official’s son is missing, well actually dead, a fact not in evidence yet.  A young, terribly naïve, medical student practices on the cadaver he found in the woods and is now fearful he will be charged with murder.  He hires the P.I. to find the real killer.  There’s this circus and morphine and possibly the start of international opium wars.  And then the King of England shows up.

Credit for this action, buddy movie has to go to cinematographer Choe Chan-min, director Park Dae-min and actors Hwang Jung-min and Ryu Deok-hwan

For your evening libation, you might consider a Midori sour, made with sweet melon liqueur.  It is a popular choice in the region.  In one of Seoul’s trendy, young neighborhoods, it is reported that take-out drinks are served in IV bags, more than fitting for the first film.  For the second, chill on some comfortable pillows.

Rant — Somehow I Know It’s My Doing

It will soon become obvious that I need some sort of spiritual renewal — the sooner the better.  On the other hand, I need to rant.

I call it convergence.  It’s when the coin always turns up tails. For example, I live on a hill.  I can see many blocks in all directions.  Backing out of the garage, it’s clear there is no one around (for a mile, seriously) EXCEPT for one person, slowly pushing a stroller, talking on the telephone and who will likely reach the driveway at the exact moment of our departure.   This may be the same person who is at the end of the long, empty aisle at the grocery where I have gone to pick up one essential item.  In the stretch of 100 feet of rare, empty space, I target the product to find that the sole, other customer has set up camp in front of my shelf — well not mine, exactly, but you know what I mean — and is examining each ingredient in it and in competing products and sizes.

The other day, in need of a couple of hours of passive entertainment before bed time, I cursed network TV in general (especially now in tacky reality shows and summer reruns) and PBS’s constant state of fundraising with repeats of how I can eat something that will make me brilliant and live to be 100 if I live long enough to get through the show to find out what it is and buy the book.  The Netflix disc arrived cracked.  Netflix download refused to give anything up — not even the wonderful documentary Helvetica, which I’d gladly watch again. “Unavailable now, try later, ok?”  OK. The button will only let me agree. Just as one cannot, or should not, I suspect, run over a person pushing a stroller, I don’t have a choice here. Back to an obscure channel on TV.  It’s Seinfield, I guess.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I call it convergence.  It’s the John Cleese freeze.  It is my doing.

Commercial Two

Two sixteen-year-old boys break into a house looking for small change. Instead they find more money than they ever dreamed possible. Unfortunately, they also discover the blood-spattered body of an undercover cop. The kids make a big mistake. They take the money. With fingerprints all over the victim and blood on their shoes they give the prosecution an airtight case against them. Enter Shanahan who uncovers a few secrets among the rich and powerful that might make a difference.

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"The Steel Web is a thoroughly enjoyable mystery." — Mystery News

"Fast-paced, wryly told, and evenly balanced — solid detection combined with warm, empathetic characterization." — Kirkus Reviews

Life Death & Fog Books, has been established to bring the first four Shanahan novels to paperback and a variety of e-book formats. After more than 10 years, friends of Deets can now conveniently catch up with the early mysteries. Paperback editions are from Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble. E-books are available for the Kindle and Nook.

Film Pairings — Can’t Keep A Bad Guy Down

Life goes on for a pair of executed criminals, one in the 1946 film, Decoy, and another ten years later in Indestructible Man.

 

Both films are cinema curiosities.  Indestructible Man, no doubt a vehicle for horror star Lon Chaney Jr., is a low-rent blend of crime and monster film.  Chaney’s character is electrocuted for the crimes he committed, but his body is pirated to unscrupulous scientists, who not only bring him back to life, but also inadvertently give him superhuman survival capability.  This enables him to exact revenge on all of those who have done him wrong. How can he be stopped? Bazookas?  Flame throwers?  Hilarity — well sort of — ensues.

Fortunately, the scientists have also rendered Chaney’s character unable to speak.  And all we have is the squinting close-ups of the mad man’s eyes.

Seems to me Decoy is a curiosity of a much higher order.  While there may be some kitsch value to the Chaney film — fun to ridicule — Decoy shows what can be done with a small budget even with the challenge of the highly stretched premise of an executed criminal brought back to life.  All you need are some good writers, talented actors and decent camera work.

The key distinction here, though, is plot.  The corpse is swiped from the gas chamber, provided an antidote to the deadly cyanide in order for a pair of even more devious thieves to find the money the criminal hid before he was caught and killed. The reborn, if not rehabilitated, con agrees to draw a map. There is feigned love and double-double crosses as well as the presumably fooled not being so easily fooled.   Twists and turns amount to something here, and the story is told well.  A little gem.  Sheldon Leonard is featured.

If you are at home in front of your big screen TV, fix something silly to sip on, perhaps with a gray umbrella — not too cheery — for the first one.  Skip the simple syrup for the second, sit back and enjoy.

San Francisco Neighborhoods — Divisadero And The Birth of NOPA

The New, Trendy Bi-Rite

There was SOHO in Manhattan, WEHO in L.A. and SOMA in San Francisco. Now there is NOPA — also a San Francisco neighborhood.  NOPA stands for North Panhandle.  For the uninitiated, the panhandle is a pleasant, green, well-traveled thin strip of park that eventually leads to the much larger Golden Gate. The main street for the gentrifying neighborhood is Divisadero, once the dividing line between San Francisco proper, to the east, and the Outerlands, once barren sand dunes that extended west to the ocean.

NOPA is the new “cool” if “cool” is still cool.  The restaurant called NOPA is one of the trendiest brunch and dinner places in town.  Other restaurants and bars have followed and are in the works, including a high-class “mezcalaria.”  Bicyclists have settled in. A low-key, live music nightclub — Justice League — dominates the night. Though in all fairness, the club was there before all the hoopla.  During the day, the first adapters are trying out a coffee shop famous for rye bread and the chic Bi-Rite market, which has set up its second store here selling its pricey products, among them its obsessively sought, eccentrically-flavored ice cream. Pleasantly odd shops are also popping up on the quickly evolving block.

What lurks behind the barricade?

The city prepared for the rebirth with a lamp-lit street island planted with trees and flowers as well as sidewalk cut-outs with tables and chairs for that sidewalk café ambiance.

Predictably, neighborhood homes are being renovated and rents are going up. It’s also quite likely that some of the older businesses will not be able to adapt to the new pedestrian street traffic consumer profiles.  This seems to be a childless, younger crowd.  The baby stroller operators are elsewhere — The Marina, Noe Valley, Fillmore and Union.

NOTE:  When I moved back to San Francisco 16 years ago, I moved to this once more rugged neighborhood, then called “The Western Addition.” This is where my San Francisco my fictional P.I., Noah Lang, partner of Carly Paladin in the San Francisco mysteries, lives — though he has more creative digs as well as a more exciting life.  

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The 69-year-old semi-retired private detective reluctantly takes the case of a Mrs. William B. Stone who seems to have lost track of her husband. Shanahan, who finds his once lonely life complicated by an attractive younger woman, nevertheless finds his client's husband almost immediately. But the job isn't over. The problem is the man is dead and buried in his own back yard. Who did it and why leads the detective to the city's meaner streets where the veil of secrecy is finally lifted.  Available here.

“Intricate, lusty, funny, moving adventure about believably vulnerable characters.” — Publishers Weekly

"The interest in this fine novel lies.in its characters, especially the appealing Shanahan, keenly aware of death's proximity as he re-engages with life." — Houston Post

"The pragmatic investigator makes a good first impression." — The New York Times 

Crime Films – Two You Might Not Want To See

I’m not recommending these movies to anyone.  One is so sleazy that a hot shower is in order after viewing.  The other is amateurish and pretentious.  Yet, there is something bold and original about both.  If you are an adventurer in your film going and want to witness how much risk some off-the wall creative minds will take for their vision, you may want to see The Paperboy and Arc.

The Paperboy has an all-star cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Macy Gray, Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, John Cusack and Scott Glenn.  They all sweat convincingly in the Florida humidity. Efron (clad only in his tighty whities for half the film) and McConaughey  (a noted shirtophobe) provide enough male pulchritude to suggest soft porn while Kidman, fully clothed, mimes a sex act so graphically that the scene could qualify for a triple x rating. Some call it “air sex.”

The story is about two ambitious reporters trying to keep a convicted murderer from execution. Kidman excels as the aging vamp drawn to the convict, though she’s never met him. As the reporters attempt to gather the facts about the trial and arrest, Kidman joins the team and inadvertently seduces Efron, the virgin younger brother of one of the reporters. Cusack provides a quiet, dumb menace that reflects, it seems, the character and atmosphere of the film. Lee Daniels (Precious) directed this 2012 film that accumulated awards and accolades as well as considerable criticism.

Arc (2006) cannot boast the cast or the production quality of The Paperboy. One wonders what rookie director Robert Ethan Gunnerson could have done with the resources available to Daniels.  Corrupt police, drugs, prostitution of all type and kidnapping form the backdrop for a heroin-addicted young man called “Paris,” played by Peter Facinelli (in his pre-Goth days) as he attempts redemption.  The film is an unconventional take on a conventional story.  A fundamentally decent guy caught in a dangerous underworld, Paris wants to redeem himself with a noble deed.  He decides to find a kidnapped child.  With the help of a newly recruited prostitute, he begins his search for the boy. In an attempt to make the film seem higher-minded than it is, the dialogue is filled with out-of-character quotes from famous writers and philosophers.  Dialogue courtesy of Bartletts.

It’s impossible not to pay attention to the peculiar, seemingly random, cinematic style.   I’m guessing one hand-held camera, using available light, did the job.  From time to time we see the film in black and white, then for no apparent reason, in color. A spotlight (or flashlight) is used to follow the actors when natural light isn’t enough, achieving a strange, moody effect.

Both films use the hokey split-screen device. And both leave a lingering, though not necessarily pleasant aftertaste.  However, both are provocative. If that’s enough, perhaps they are worth a few hours of your time.

To accompany these hardcore movies, (if you are not driving anywhere) go for the straight stuff— whiskey, gin, etc. — keeping in mind that you’ll be spending some time in a sweaty swamp with mosquitoes, alligators, water snakes and worse, soulless humans.