The Night Gardener

After a hard boiled diet of recent Elmore Leonard works -- Pagan Babies, Up in Honey's Room and The Hot Kid -- I've started a flat-out binge of crime novels. I devoured Michael Connelly's Echo Park and The Lincoln Lawyer in short order. Great pacing, solid research, good locales but the dialogue falls flat. Just doesn't have the snap of Leonard at his best. And after the gun play in The Hot Kid and Honey's Room, I wanted more action. I can see these 30s and 40s stories in my head and now I want to write one myself. Something about a bar in the northern suburbs that operates outside the law in the early 1950s. Smoke, whiskey, dames in lingerie and pistols at the ready.

Wanting more noir, I checked out George Pelecanos' The Night Gardener. Despite being centered around a hackneyed serial killer plot -- all the murder victims' names are palindromes, as in Eve, Asa and so on -- this one is officially under my skin. The sentences are heavier than most thrillers, the characters are fuller and sadder and the book's feel is damned realistic. I am hooked, and I want to finish it tonight but I also want to savor it. No higher praise for a book.

On deck: The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta, Soul Circus by Pelecanos, and a collection of early Dutch Leonard crime novels. Life is good.

Cleaning out the camera

My kids, in pumpkin form.



Matthew looks at the camera! Sadly, his brother and sister do not. One day...



A cool stream, straight from the LL Bean catalog.

Mmmmmm, unexplained bacn...

Conversation overheard at a local bar restaurant...

Dot com hipster dude: There's this new term. Have you heard, it's called bacon? It's just like Spam but it's Spam that you sign up for but don't read.

Oh, so that's all the e-mails I send to my Yahoo! account when I sign up to read a first chapter of a book I have no intention of buying. Need to view a hot video clip? Send them to Yahoo! and watch the clip in peace. Then just delete the e-mails.

But according to Google, it's called bacn.

One other great gem from the hipster conversation soon followed. The two guys were talking to a very attractive lady with one of those short spiky hair cuts from the late 70s and early 80s. Very New Wave. She was quite striking and I realize that the only way that haircut works is if you have very small facial features. Anyway, someone was talking about editorial content, like how working women can balance motherhood and a professional life.

Dot com hipster chick: Tell them to read Good Housekeeping.

Meow!

Into the woods

The summer temps made a disorienting return and since the country club -- another martini, Jeeves! -- is long closed, we took the kids for walks in the Rockefeller Preserve along the Hudson. Matthew couldn't take his eyes off the streams, Tim wanted to be carried and Nora wanted to get back to the TV. We loved the fresh air and we're heading back this weekend. What ho!

Fall book season, what?

No book dilemma here, move along. I've been on a tear reading some terrific novels and I'm almost scared to say anything out loud because it might spoil the good run. I've read a pair of Elmore Leonard books -- Pagan Babies and Up In Honey's Room and they rocked. Babies is a streamlined crime novel that Leonard could and sometimes has done in his sleep. Honey's Room is a sort of sequel to The Hot Kid and it's terrific. If Hollywood needs a great source for a film, look no further. A hero US Marshall is looking for escaped Nazi POWs while the war winds down. Intrigue, sex, and adults behaving like adults all make for a sordid tale. You can smell the gun powder and see the 40s lingerie on Honey and one seriously devious Ukranian refugee who is looking for some payback. Dennis Quad, call your agent.

I still have Fellow Traveler on my mind, even after reading the book that was supposed to be the literary event of the season. Philip Roth delivers his last Nathan Zuckerman novel and in the wake of bad reviews, it was okay. No fireworks, which is what critics expect after The Human Stain, American Pastoral and Sabbath's Theater. A so-so novel disappoints after a spree of seminal novels, I guess.

Fellow Traveler is the tale of closeted gays in Washington DC during the Army-McCarthy hearings. Once again, Mallon turns back the clock and immerses us in a world where people behave in ways that we would find contemporary. terrific characters, wonderful historical detail and pure heartbreak in the way people live their lives with the decisions they made.

I'm now hypnotized by PG Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum. I knew the man was prolific but he makes Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King look indifferent to the written word. Pure joy, especially since I am reading this alongside What Ho, Jeeves. Heaven.

Not a bad run of good books, even if Joh Updike missed the Nobel yet again. There's always next year, I guess.

Icn Bein Ein Frankfurter

Still feels like a dream. I spent 48 hours in Frankfurt to moderate a breakfast briefing. I left JFK on a Saturday, landed on Sunday, did the briefing on Monday morning and left for home on Tuesday. I was in the house by 12:30 Tuesday afternoon. Throw in a beautiful blur of Singapore Airlines stews and it's a pleasantly jarring buzz.

Frankfurt was nice. It's sleek and modern and you have to hand it to German efficiency. The city works. There was a major thoroghfare outside my hotel and you couldn't tell. No horns honking, no brakes screeching. People drove in their small, sleek cars and seemed to conspire to move along together as a collective unit -- the opposite of New York, where it's everyman for himself. I loved watching SpongeBob Squarepants in the original German, along with an episode of the OC. Since it was late September, there was plenty of Oktoberfest footage and oompa bands and girls in drindl dresses. Lots of beer and good cheer.

I wished that I had the time and guts to explore the city more but the jet lag kicked in. I hit the main train station and bought Nora a souvenir and walked past the Burger King. I loved the sign for the Angry Whopper.

Spies like us

Finished Journey Into Fear after putting it down for a few weeks. This tight little thriller truly gathered steam in the second half and I should have stuck with it. Eric Ambler has a high rep as an espionage writer but he should be taught as a prose stylist. There is no flab to his writing whatsoever. Instead of assigning some navel-gazing novel to writing students, they should read one of his between war noirs and learn what can be coneyed in as few sentences as possible. No wonder modern day Alan Furst reveres the man, even mre than the more-respected and mainstream John Le Carre. By all means, read Journey and then pick up Epitaph for a Spy and A Coffin for Dimitrios.

Surge protector

Despite a so-so performance from Gen. David Petraeus, you have to wonder if he even had to testify. He didn't exactly sell the war to Congress this week but the Democrats do not have the votes to bring the troops home. The best they can do is to vote cut funding and there is no way they will ever do that, even if the mouth-breathers from The Daily KOS and MoveOn.org are screaming for a complete retreat. A vote to cut the funding would damage the Democratic party for a generation.

Bush's midweek address was muted and bluster-free. He is clearly talking about success and not victory these days and that may be the best we can hope for. His speechwiters have clearly wised up. Even with Petreaus' inability to convince Congress that the surge is working and America is safer, the preseident started the week with a gift. MoveOn.org paid for a full-page ad in The New York Times with a headline accusing the general of betraying the nation. Ah, red meat for the pro-war right, right on time. Nicely done, MoveOn-ers. Well played. Even John Kerry couldn't endorse this tripe.

Bush in Iraq and failure on the left

Okay, I like it when President Bush visits the troops in Iraq. I know that everyone thinks that these visits are a publicity stunts and hollow photo-ops and this is the closest he ever got to dangerous military service, but it works for me. Sue me. When he visited the troops years back on Thanksgiving, some lefty critics said he was photographed holding a plastic turkey. Of course, of course. The entire visit was as fake as that synthetic fowl because this is a phony war. Even the smiles are staged, maaaaaaaan. Whatever.

I am awaiting Gen Petreaus's report to Congress on September 11th about the success of the Surge. I bet he'll say that it has worked in some areas that show real improvement yet Iraq remains a dangerous and unstable place. He will ask for more time for the surge and some on the Left will bellow for his head. How can there be improvements if all the news is bad? Admitting any improvements might mean that the surge is working and that they just might be wrong in the long run.

The failure of democracy in Iraq and with it the entire Bush Doctrine is their gospel now. Failure is their only goal.

Owen, Owen, Owen

It's been a summer of some spectacular celeb meltdowns from Paris in Jail, Britney Goes White Trash, Yo and Lindsay Cokes Up and Crashes Her Car. All very entertaining and so far harmless -- of the three 'ladies' only Lindsay has any talent but has she done anything interesting since Mean Girls? Paris and Britney will go on and on, I am sure, but Lohan actually has to be insurable for a movie to get financing. Robert Downey Jr is a much better bet than LaLohan these days. .

But Amy Winehouse and Owen Wilson? Talk about a pair of despair. Winehouse is the smoky popstress with the ratty beehive and her slo-mo decline just sad because she has a nice set of pipes. Despite a killer record with a nice single -- Rehab -- she seems hellbent on the coke/heroin diet that has turned her into a cadaver recently. I saw one pic of her from a year or two back when she had some weight on her frame and she looked terrific. Rocking, even. Now, she is stick-thin, covered in bruises and looking like she is trying to fit into a balso wood coffin.

Then came word last week that the Golden Guy from the new wave of funny guys tried to commit suicide because of heroin use and depression. This one is just baffling. Wilson seemed smart enough to know that this is all a game and he was the master at it. He made funny movies that made people smile and when he entered a scene onscreen, he was Mr Good Time. Now, it's going to be hard to watch The Wedding Crasher, Zoolander or even watchable dreck like Starsky and Hutch without thinking this guy wanted to off himself when he was on top.

Amy and Owen, come back. It's not that bad, dammit.

I hate when that happens

So you're driving to the local convenience store while on a camping trip and a group of Amish girls kidnap you and throw you in the back of their horse-drawn buggy. It's one damned thing after another.

History Boys

A charming little movie based on the play by Alan Bennett. A class of young men are taught by a pair of teachers thanks to schoolmaster's best attempt to get them into Oxford or Cambridge. One teacher is a beloved classics professor who recites yards of poetry, prose, lines from films and snippets of song. He is a fat letch but the kids all have his number. He is teaching something to love -- history and the English language. A new, much younger prof is hired to help the boys enter college at any cost. He urges them to think differently and to take the opposite tack in an argument. A useful skill to have but he doesn't care if the students have any passion for th topic or if their new position is wrong or even offensive. In fact, the more jarring the opinion, the better. Who cares if it's wrong to argue about the evil in the Holocaust, just make the argument to get the grade.

Despite being about 10 minutes too long, the movie still works. Although I wish that I had seen the play. I was in London last year and it would have been the highlight of my trip but sadly, the film had already been made. Maybe we can see the revival on Broadway one day.

Who knows, maybe it's playing in English in Frankfurt. I'm going for a few days at the end of the month. Yeesh.

Reminding ourselves to remember

An interesting article in today's NY Times about the upcoming anniversary of 9/11. What is the right way to remember that day, the reporter wonders and asks a few people. One person thinks the ceremonies of reading the names is overdone and says he finds the grief exhausting. A woman who lost her firefighter brother in the attacks says that six years since the event has ben a 'blink of an eye' for her and her family. I can sympathize with both people. The event has become smaller for people and the politics surrounding it has only diminished the event. Some see it as a reason for getting the country into a misguided and mismanaged war. Some even share theories that the attacks were known about in high circles if not planned from the Oval Office. (That this is the same administration that couldn't send ice or water to New Orleans two years ago escapes these eager theorists).

My company lost 16 people on that day. Last year, I was frankly surprised that there was no mention from the managers in New York whatsoever about the day and the people we had lost. We did hear about a moment of silence at the London office but nothing from the managers in New York. Odd, even a bit chilling but I can understand -- for the two senior managers at the time, the events of that day were too close.

Maybe I'll donate money to honor those who were lost. Perhaps I'll have the guts to thank the policemen and women for protecting me and my commuters in Grand Central every morning. I do know I won't forget that day. Even now, when I see a perfectly blue sky on a day of wonderful weather, I still think about that morning when three thousand Americans died in 90 minutes. That will be my tribute always.

Mumble BANG Repeat

I saw an illegal copy of the summer's hot action flick last night and while watching the serious shenanigans, I had a thought. Your TV should have a sound design feature that pumps up the urgent muttered dialog of paranoid action flicks and then lowers the volume during the chase scenes when all decibal hell breaks loose. These pair of scenes happened at least half a dozen times in two hours: A pair of beurocrats mumble about the need to kill a government trained assassin who likes to hop the globe and then, BAM it's fast music, breaking glass, pistols, motorscooters, and the brayng sirens of foreign police forces pouring out of your speakers.

Like Nigel's amp, this flick goes to 11.

I finished a book I had been meaning to re-read for more than a decade and I was glad to pick up an old paperback for fifty cents. I was late for work one rainy morning and took the book with me ona whim. Thanks to some heavy rain and slow trains, I went through 75 pages by the time I hit the desk. Rabbit Redux is one of Updike's screwier novels with weaknesses and strengths throughout. It probably reads like caricature noe but very few writers were writing about the counter-culture while it was happening. The late 60s came to the 'burbs in the pages of this novel and Rabbit Angstrom was the only man in America who supported the Vietnam war. He hates it but thinks it has to be fought. It's definitely worth a read and should make a good reconsidering essay in the pages of National Review.

Right now I am reading The Shooting Party and awaiting a phone call about a job. Hope to hear something good this week. Fingers crossed.

Mad Men -- Good Episode

Finally, the killer episode from Mad Men, the most promising show of the summer. After a terrific start, the resulting three episodes were setting the stage for something big. Oh, I thought, Don Draper has a mysterious past. His wife is a blank slate awaiting relief thanks to a future cocktail of valium and Betty Friedan. His co-workers are going to have their interesting lives that will touch us and horrify us in short order. It's been a frustrating few weeks to watch the set up, especially since the executive producer worked on The Sopranos, a show where a lot of groundwork was laid but sometimes nothing grew, but this week's episode delivered.

Don and his wife return from an awards ceremony where Don wins a coveted award, a golden horseshoe. They are dressed to the nines, more than a little wasted and too tired and content to have sex. Even with the swanky lingerie, which looks like battle armor designed by Edith Head, his wife is a knockout. No zombie here.

They wake up, cough up their smoker's lungs and start their day. Don is in his sharp late '50s suits, the type that only he and his boss seem to have a tailor who knows how to make a suit fit. A mysterious young man dressed like an upstate farm hand shows up. It's Don's half brother with the last name Witcombe. Don is scared and disgusted to see someone from his guarded past. The kid clearly adores him and Don doesn't want anything to do with him. He has created this life and there is no room for someone from his early days. We see a picture of Don in Army khakis with his arm around a young boy. Some talk of family members long gone, an uncle who thought he was soft. Don looks like he about to be sick. His head -- and ours -- are spinning.

Meanwhile, Don is pushing a client to create a bank account for the new man. Statements sent to the office, nothing that the little wife has to know about. This is another bracing fact tht the show delivers -- what wife doesn't know the flow of every dollar in her house? What secretary would cover for a boss' afternoon affair? Who has time to sleep with someone outside the home?

Don's life is a contradiction, and it is the photo opposite of Tony Soprano. The gangster was a dangerous man who dealt with killers, drug dealers and whores. On the inside, he was a family man who loved his family even as they were driving him nuts. Here, Don Draper is all external perfection, a true leader, a creative type and a family man. Inside, he beds women, crushes his competition, drinks to escape problems and has a secret past that cannot see the day of light.

Mad Men is slowly becoming excellent television.

Escape to Bear Mountain

The humidity skedaddled after two days of rain and that meant one thing: get the kids out of the house and now! We hit Bear Mountain where, fourteen years ago, Regina and I had our wedding reception. The weather then was a lot like today, light blue skies, warm yet manageable temps and a slight hint of fall. Just perfect.

Romney and Guiliani's bad week

So Rudy Guiliani's daughter is an Obama supporter. Slate discovered her Obama button on her FaceBook page and wrote a squib that shot around the blogosphere. Too delicious to ignore. The blurb mysteriously disappeared but the story was out. I wonder who contacted the young lady and what was said? "Miss, just name the make and model of the car you would like at college in the fall. It's yours."

Rudy's bump smoothed out when Mitt Robot Romney told a crowd in Iowa that his sons are serving their country not in iraq but by helping him get elected president. Yes, driving in an AC-filled SUV now qualifies as military service in a Romney White House. If you share the same last name, of course.

Chris Matthews blew a gasket and let his mouth outpace his brain. "Why don't these necons, these chickenhawks, take their kids down to the recruitment ofices and sign them up for the army or marines?!"

Easy, Chris. It's the same reason you don't take your kids down to the mosque to volunteer them to be a suicide bomber. Parents don't control their kids that way. The US military is made up of volunteers and parents do not send their kids to war. The soldiers are legal adults -- granted they cannot drink in every state -- who volunteer to serve. Besides, the military brass doesn't want a draft or sldiers who were drafted by their parents. The jihadists, on the other hand, might want a gullible son of an MSNBC commentator for its next attack. Play some Hardball, Chris.

Mad Men of the Summer

I thought the show of the summer was going to be re-runs of The Office or 30 Rock, a pair of shows I discovered and started loving after Christmas. Instead, the show to watch is Mad Men, the tale of an ad exec in the late 50s. After four episodes -- some good, some stale -- it clearly has potential. It feels like they are laing the groundwork for some great stories down the road and it occasionally has that Sopranos vibe, where the Mad Men creator wrote and directed a few episodes. What is normal life like for a gangster or a highly successful and secretive mid-level executive? Both drink too much and sleep around and they must kep an eye on their crew for any ambitious back-stabbers. Of course, Don Draper can't whack any rivals and his family is always safe from retribution, but it doesn't mean that the stakes are not high.

The best thing about the show are the production values -- the women clean the dishes while they re dressed for cocktail party. who look like they ar ready for a cocktail party. Don stands out in his sharp suits while his co-horts are in sad black garb like anonymous company men. And I'm not the first one to mention the smoking or the afternoon ofice drinking -- it's the highpoint of the cocktail culture. Instead of mid-afternoon Starbucks, it's amber liquids and steely martinis.

The creator of the show has definitely read his John Cheever. Draper lives in the leafy suburb that the New Yorker short story writer moved to when he wrote his tales of love and lost romantics. This is out 10th summer in Ossining and I keep straining to see of any of the outdoor shots were indeed done here. The only movie or TV crew here was the Bill Murray yawner Broken Flowers a few years back. Hard going watching that flick but the opening scene of a house not far from here did highlight one point of Ossining: a millionaire can live quite close to a family that looks like it has a tough time paying the bills.

I wonder what's going to be revealed with Don and his past. He doesn't talk about the Army, his Purple Heart or his childhood. Even his wife -- an airhead who is destined for a mid-life of Valiums -- doesn't know anything about the man she married. We did have one clue though: a commuter said hello to Don and called him Whitcomb. Why the name change for Brooding Don. Can't wait to find out.

A man, his pig and his family

We hired a sitter and took Nora to see The Simpsons Movie and had a blast. I had heard that it was a strong film and Nora and I have been watching the trailer and teasers for a few months now. One ritual when I come home is to have Timmy say 'Daddy!', Matthew search my grocery bags for snacks and Nora tell me that the Simspons are on. When we're bored and she's feling tired, she asks to watch the DVD and she is obsessed with seeing the 'Who killed R Burns?' episodes. Great, now I have to buy Season Six. No sweat there.

The film was good, the colors were vibrant and the trailers were awful. I loved the freedom for the cruder humor to come out and I would kill for a Krusty the Clown movie. A jaded tale of old Hollywood. Yes!

So, two movies in the theaters this summer. The glorious Ratatouille and this one. We are still hoping to get away from the kids to see Knocked Up. Me, I want to sneak away and see Superbad.

Rat in the kitchen

Nra and I loved Ratatouille, Pixar's latest computer animated masterpeice. After the so-so Cars, which was gorgeous but oddly not that compelling, it was nice to have a story that matched the glorious animation. And a glory it is -- there are some scenes that look just like a photograph of Paris and I bet we were 10 minutes into the film when I forgot that we were watching a cartoon. It was a tad long, however. Some fathers were taking their kids out because the ending was going to be as subtle as some of the lighting, but still, Pixar serves a terrific treat.