An occasional two cents worth about novels, news, and miscellany.
October 28.
Southwest Airlines has always used some kind of
open seating system. The current method involves numbered boarding passes and getting aboard by groups.
Once on the plane (George Carlin preferred to say "in" the plane) passengers choose whatever available
seats looks best.
This morning, a Southwest email made me think the policy was changing.
"Grab your favorite seat," it said. Could Southwest be moving to reserved seats?
Then I looked a little closer at the seating diagram and saw that
all seats are still open... except two.
Bonus Whimsy Points. If you're gonna fly commercial, you gotta laugh occasionally.
October 22.
"Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution,
freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters,
but if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad."
So said the movie version of Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, to his young Watergate reporters,
Bob Woodward and Carl Benstein. I don't know if the real Bradlee really said it, but it fits his legend, so
let's print it.
Bradlee's death at 93 seems to write -30- to a brilliant era of
newspapering. His paper and all others are greatly diminished. Yet good reporters keep coming along, digging
up dramatic and essential stories, and we have to hope today's journalism bosses devise a business model to
publish them.
For now, the Post has Bradlee's obit, of course. So does the
once and present rival, The New York Times.
Update: An account of Bradlee's career from the always-interesting David Carr.
October 18.
I wish Andy Borowitz's headlines weren't so damn real. He's a humorist with The New Yorker. He makes up stuff.
Not all cable shows embarrass themselves. Props to Shep Smith, the token rational person at Fox News,
for straight talk.
October 16.
Can we all agree that the "news you can use" mentality has gone too far? Here's the first version of a USA Today "Money" headline.
Then, when the headline went viral, as truly dumb, distasteful headlines do these days, USA Today nimbly tried something else.
Hat tip to the indispensable Jim Romenesko, who finds stuff like this almost daily.
October 15.
PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak makes a point that's obvious, but still startles us old broadcasters.
Dvorak argues with characteristic
self-assurance that over-the-air radio and television are marked media.
In a few years, he figures, they'll be as dead as Monty Python's parrot.
That's over-the-air broadcasting. We'll still have the information and entertainment,
but it will come down the Internet pipe instead of a TV aerial.
Dvorak likens the change to the news business. We still need news, and we still get it, but not from dead-tree editions.
Young consumers, especially, have abandoned the old media and get most everything online, he argues. The product, he says, is exactly the same.
Only the delivery media are changing.
I'm not sure he's right about that. Just as HBO showed up how much edgier quality storytelling could be on cable
than over-the-air, so Netflix and other sources are pushing the envelope with their content. Believe me, the current broadcast networks would love to
compete on content with other choices. For now, they can't because if they get too edgy, the antediluvian FCC can make life miserable for their stations.
In Louisville, where I used to live and work, the ABC station refused to carry NYPD Blue when it premiered in 1993. David Caruso's butt,
apparently, was a threat to Kentucky and Southern Indiana morality. (I could understand banning Dennis Franz's butt.) This was a decision of such retrograde stupidity
that I could hardly believe it. NYPD Blue thrived, then and now. It ran for twelve seasons. Almost all of the craven stations that refused to carry it, claiming to protect
their viewers from naughtiness, came back aboard when they realized how popular it was.
It's still available on DVD and streaming services. If you want to catch lots of Charlotte Ross in the famous
"Nude Awakening" episode, go for it.
Update: HBO has announced a new standalone online service that will not require a cable or satellite subscription,
according to the Washington Post.
The Post says this move may help consumers who detest the overpriced bundles forced on us by providers. I'm for that. This may explain why my cable company agreed to sell me a
smaller, cheaper, unadvertised package than I had before. They saw the handwriting on the flat screen.
Update, Oct. 16:Now CBS will offer an online subscription.
The Times says "CBS All Access" will
cost $5.99 monthly for current programs and archival shows, too. B-bye, bundle.
October 14.
Isn't computer security fun?
No? Governments don't like it, either.
A computer security company today revealed that Russian hackers exploited a bug in Microsoft Windows
to spy on governments and even a NATO summit meeting.
The New York Times reports that the bug is present in Windows versions from Vista to the current version 8.1.
Microsoft is expected to release a fix today. Y'all be careful out there.
October 12.
It's almost impossible to describe the awfulness of Fox Sports 1's treatment of the first National League
Championship Series game last night.
The game itself was squeezed into a split screen. A panel of guys in suits filled the other screen. They talked nonstop.
They barely paused to acknowledge anything that happened at that moment on the field.
Even for young viewers who think they can multitask, this must have been an Ipcress File-level of perception distortion. It looked more like Meet the Press for Dummies than a baseball game.
Here's what was arrogant and irritating about it. Those of us who thought the game was on Fox Sports 1, as many games have been,
were given no clue when we tuned in that this was just an idiot gimmick, not the real telecast. I saw no superimposed notice that I should tune to Fox, not Fox Sports 1.
Such a notice appeared occasionally, apparently, but it should have been always-on.
Many viewers were similarly snookered. Read the tweets at #NLCS. #NSFW. (To their credit, producers responded to my query,
telling me where to find the game.)
This disaster reflects a common problem with big institutions, including media. They think it's all about them, not the people the serve.
So instead of a ball game, we get hours of self-indulgent thumbsucking with the game on half the screen.
Trust me, Foxies. You'd have done much better with Vin Scully and a test pattern.
Try that next year. Vin will be back, although for this lame-brained fiasco, I hope there won't be a next year.
October 11.
Didn't I hear something about a paperless society? Not at my house, apparently.
This morning, I grabbed a chance to shred thousands of pieces of paper. Old book drafts. Exams and Scantron answer sheets from
years of teaching at the University of Arizona (can't just throw those in the trash because they have identifying information on them, and student privacy rights
must be protected.) Ancient bills and receipts.
A local group called The Best in the Business, Nunn-Better Pet Sitting Service, and Tucson Marketing Tools had the bright idea of hiring a shredder truck and staging a shredding benefit for the Pima Animal Care Center.
God knows PACC needs the money. So you drive up, open your trunk, and a battalion of volunteers swoops in to unload all those paper-filled boxes. They didn't even
ask for a donation, but I was happy to pay up. A big ganga, as we say out here in Tucson; a bargain.
The photo above is Sasha, my recently-adopted dog from Southern Arizona Golden Retriever Rescue. She thanks these folks for helping animals.
She's a retriever,
I couldn't leave her
If I tried.
Apologies to Neil Diamond, but I'm told that he likes rescue dogs, too.
October 10.
Here's a confection that shows one possibility of online newspapering.
It's pretty simple: black-and-white drawing, a very short story, and wonderful use of color and movement in the unexpected setting of "The Gray Lady."
Certainly worth a look and a laugh... especially if you share the author's serious pathology about gummi (or is it gummy?) bear consumption.
October 9.
You'll find some of the best writing anywhere in the sports sections of good newspapers.
In the Los Angeles Times, Bill Plaschke described the hometown Dodgers as "Busch whacked" on the St. Louis Cardinals' home field. The Cards celebrated and prepared for the
National League championship series with the San Francisco Giants; the star-studded, supposedly super Dodgers flew home in defeat.
"The team with the richest payroll in baseball history turned out to be a beautifully detailed Cadillac without any tires,
a $240-million clunker that couldn't even finish the first October lap," Plaschke wrote. Funny, and right on the money.
October 7.
It's National Newspaper Week. Yeah, that'll turn things around. Even the best paper in America, The New York Times, is looking to cut its newsroom staff by 100.
That's 100 people. Television, too; CNN plans to lose 300 through a combination of buyouts and layoffs. They call these times of creative destruction.
Let's hope the creation is outstripping the destruction when the dust settles.
October 5.
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The new season of Inspector Lewis begins tonight on PBS.
When the classic Inspector Morse ended its long TV run, I wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on the chances of a worthy show starring Morse's sidekick, Detective Sergeant Lewis. This, perhaps, is why I'm not a TV producer.
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Lewis, played by Kevin Whatley, was the working class, easygoing partner in crime solving to John Thaw's cerebral and often imperious Morse. These two made a perfect team, slowly developing respect for each other and eventually working as one. But it was always Morse in charge. We thought of him as the independent heart of the series. Lewis, not so much.
But here we are, 27 years after the first Morse, 14 years after the last, and now-Inspector Lewis is back with a rebuilt and thoroughly enjoyable series that has aired, off and on, since 2006.
Lewis was promoted, taking Morse's old role. Whatley eased into the new position with the skill he showed throughout the original series. And the brilliant twist gave him Detective Sergeant Hathaway; this time, the lower-ranked policeman was the highly educated, intellectual one. Like Thaw and Whatley, Whately and Laurence Fox became a unique team.
Now Lewis is retired and Hathaway is the Detective Inspector. Lewis gets called back as a consultant on a tough case. "I'm only trying to help," he tells Hathaway when the younger man chafes at his return.
It should be fun watch these two fine actors make the Morse magic again.
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October 4.
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Publishers Weekly has
five nice succinct writing tips from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley.
Among them: take your time, read a lot, enjoy the work and don't fixate on the possible rewards. Much better in her words!
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October 3.
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"Just when you think you can quit him, hate him, make fun of him, Hemingway continues to fascinate."
Timothy Egan writes about tracing the author's travels, from Switzerland to Sun Valley to Key West, through happy times and the "life going dark" before his suicide. Interesting to read the comments on this New York Times article.
Some agree with Egan that Hemingway was the 20th century's greatest writer. Others dismiss him as a jerk, an anachronism, an apologist for animal abuse...
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October 1.
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Kirkus has announced eighteen finalists for Kirkus Prizes. Six contenders in each of three
categories -- fiction, nonfiction and young readers' literature -- remain in the running for $50,000 first prizes.
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is likely the most publicized entry so far. Bought by thousands. Read by dozens, probably.
This link will take
you to capsule summaries of the finalists; you can click from there to read the full Kirkus reviews.
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September 30.
Best line of the day: "Whoever told you that you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet is a deeply cynical and untrustworthy person."
Calvin Trillin in The New Yorker.
Writers are readers, and few novelists bring me more reading pleasure than T. Jefferson Parker. His latest, Full Measure, comes out on October 7.
It's set in the hill country north of San Diego, near where Parker himself lives. An Afghanistan war veteran comes home and finds his family's longtime business near failure and his younger brother in serious trouble.
Parker has a great feel for Southern California -- not the mean streets of L.A. but other surprisingly troubled territory such as Orange County and San Diego -- as you know if you have read
his Edgar Award winners, Silent Joe and California Girl. His characters are realistic and sympathetic, even when they're far from perfect. I'm looking forward to this one.
September 29.
The New Yorker magazine editor says he looks for covers that go "too far enough."
It's a clever way to describe the effort to stay relevant and edgy,
while keeping in mind the quality favored by longtime readers. The style changed with September 11, 2001, editor David Remnick said.
Now covers are news-oriented, not so much "bowls of fruit and covers reflecting the change of seasons."
Covers are challenging. Here's my story of getting the Lovers Crossing cover right, with some things lost in translation between Arizona and New York.
September 28.
Tim Steller has a good column in today's
Arizona Daily Star about the bombardment of poisonous political ads. It reminded me of how I would like to warn candidates: you're toast with me if you...
- Call me at home without my permission. That goes for your robo-dialers, pollsters and “independent” committees, too.
- Send more than one email a week begging for money because [insert name of preferred wealthy villain here] is giving millions to the other candidate.
- Say you’re “fighting for Arizona’s working families.” If the whole family is working, fight to reform child labor laws.
- Spend all your commercial time telling me why your opponent is Wrong for Arizona.
- Show yourself explaining things to an improbably diverse klatch of adoring voters. Please. In the real world, there are no adoring voters left.
- Sit on a little bitty chair reading to rapt children at a school you have never seen before and will never go near again.
- Give a speech with the audience behind you, staring at the back of your head. How rude is that? (Yes, Mr. President. This includes you.)
- Claim an endorsement from some other politician who is widely regarded as one of the free world’s worst pandering lunkheads. (Yes, Sheriff Joe. This includes you.)
- Promise that, as a state assemblyman or corporation commissioner, you will take back America.
But they all do that stuff. So I have to vote for one of them, or somebody worse will get in. God help us.
September 27.
Do you ever reread favorite novels? This week, perhaps prompted by awful news stories from the middle east, I decided to revisit
The Little Drummer Girl (1983) by John le Carré. The title character is an actress (Diane Keaton in the movie version) recruited by an Israeli intelligence agent (Klaus Kinski)
to penetrate the inner circle of a Palestinian terrorist leader.
One night, the Israeli takes a commercial flight to Berlin.
As le Carré wrote in his narrative, the German airline Lufthansa in those days could not fly the route because of postwar agreements among the occupying powers in Berlin:
the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
This reference made me smile, because I had once caught William F. Buckley, Jr. forgetting that fact in one of his marvelous novels about the cold war spy Blackford Oakes.
Buckley had a character take a Lufthansa flight to Berlin. I wrote and explained the postwar rule;
believe me, it took some nerve to explain something to Bill Buckley. But he was a nice guy, as I discovered. He wrote one of the best letters I ever received.
Extra credit for brevity.
What's weird about this is that Buckley had reviewed The Little Drummer Girl for The New York Times just three years earlier.
There in the book was the line, "Lufthansa was forbidden to fly the route."
How an accomplished cold warrior like Buckley missed that, I never knew. But I've always been grateful for the exchange with him... even though the paperback edition went uncorrected.
September 26.
I learned today that I have some things in common with one of my favorite novelists.
Michael Connelly and I were both born in Philadelphia, Pa. on July 21... although I have a ten-year head start on him. We're both left-handed.
Michael, however, has sold approximately 58,000,000 more books than I have. My hunt-and-peck typing must be slowing me down. Or it could be that he's simply one of the very best on the planet at what he does.
Also in that category is Joseph Wambaugh, one of Connelly's literary heroes. Since both chronicle exploits of the LAPD, somebody at the Los Angeles Times had a great idea:
let Connelly interview Wambaugh at Musso and Frank, the historic Hollywood restaurant where their characters sometimes eat and drink.
Here's my pic with Wambaugh at a Mystery Writers of America meeting in Hollywood, circa 2003.
September 24.
Sorry to learn this week that La Fuente has closed. Tucsonans and people from around the world have been eating Mexican food there for 55 years. It was the first restaurant I visited in Tucson because of a great recommendation from relatives.
I especially admired the Mexican civil war photographs in the lobby, most of them taken or commissioned by Agustín Casasola. I used them early in my first novel, Lovers Crossing. Leaving after dinner with friends,
Brinker wonders about one picture of a woman standing on the steps of a railway car. (She's on the left in the photo below.) "Was she fleeing the war or arriving in the midst of it? Perhaps someone met her, embraced her in welcome.
Maybe she was alone in the tumult. Far down the platform, she might have seen a loved one left behind. Where had she come from? Where was she going? What had she done?"
Brinker never found out. Neither have I.