Saturday August 27th, 12:00p.m.-10:00 p.m.
*READ Books, Toros Pottery, & Lady Boutique*
*Sales All Day… 20% of all books
*Free Live Music w/LITTLE FAITH 7:00-10:00
*Food Truck, STEEL CITY SANDWICH, 6:30-9:30
*Food Cart, DRAGON PIZZA OVEN, 2:00-6:00.
The illustrious Eric Warren will be signing his new book, Eagle Rock 1911-2011, @ READ Books on Saturday, August 13th, from 2:00-5:00. Come on by and purchase a book, have Eric sign it, and ask him questions about Eagle Rock. Eric knows everything.
Now it falls upon dad to play-act the male role model, and presumably offer advice as to how one procures a job. My whole life has been a clumsy attempt to avoid getting hired, and look where it gets me.
Donald: “Hey dad, what should I put down for job experience?”
Dad: “What job are you trying to get?”
Donald: “Comic book store.”
Dad: “Make up a bunch of crap about having worked in comic books stores. Find an adult, or a kid with a deep voice, who’ll lie for you and say he or she was your boss, and that the store has unfortunately closed in spite of your best efforts as an employee. You’ll want to say that the store was in a different state, so they’ll be less inclined to ask a lot of questions on a long distance call. Use one of my alleged college friends as a reference. I’ll try to think of one I haven’t used more than three times myself.”
Donald: “Thanks dad. You’re the best.”
Dad: “Yeah, whatever. Best might be an antonym for what dad is. Go get’um, boy.”
Before anyone out there accuses me of exaggerating my job-procuring techniques, I’d like to assure all and sundry that this is the method that earned me every palatable job I ever acquired, with one notorious exception: LAUSD school teacher. For that job, I told the truth: Bachelors in film production, a series of clerk jobs in camera & book stores, and absolutely no experience teaching children in a classroom. Imagine me reclining in a swivel chair, awkwardly fingering a tie that I have never before worn, while some LAUSD bureaucrat half-heartedly peruses my application. “That’s right,” I might have said, “I’ve never taught a child a thing in my life, at least not on purpose. In fact, if I have ever influenced a minor, it was unintentional, and I’d like to apologize for it right now. I am sorry.” The bureaucrat harrumphs, stamps my application, and looks me squarely in the eye. “When can you start, Mr. uh… Mr.… what the heck’s your name?” It hardly mattered.
That was 1996. Now I’m grown up, and so is Donald. He wants to commiserate with his pops about the plight of teenagers on the job hunt. “Do you recall,” he asks me, “any of your job interviews when you were around my age?”
Do I? Does the bird recall every time he flew smack into a window? This bird recalls each excruciating detail. I once applied to work a phone bank that conducted national polls. They called me for a telephone interview at 1:30 one afternoon, interrupting my sleepy time. “Hurrer?” I burbled into the phone.
Interviewer: “Hello! This is Mary Sunshine from the National Phone Polling Co. Is this Jeremy?”
Jeremy: “Urher.”
Interviewer: “Good afternoon! Can I ask you a few questions pertaining to your application?”
Jeremy: “Mmm, I geh. Gweh.”
Interviewer: “Hmmm… Are you alright?”
Jeremy: (Uh oh. Don’t tell them you just woke up, dummy). “Uh, yeh. ThizhowIallstakonfone.”
Brilliant. Don’t fret; it’s not that I sleep until 1:30 in the afternoon; I simply don’t know how to talk on the phone. Can I have a job talking on your phone? Well, that’s what you get for accidentally telling the truth in an attempt to avoid telling another truth. Now, I wonder, is this the sort of story I should be telling my eldest son as he embarks on his first job hunt? Too late, I already did. My reflexes are as sharp at 42 as they were at 18.
In tandem with the release of his new book, Eagle Rock: 1911-2011 (Images of America), our local historian emeritus, Eric Warren, will be signing and speaking at READ Books on Saturday, August 13th, from 2:00-5:00. Copies can be purchased now (call, email, or come to us), or purchased at the event. If you have any questions about Eagle Rock history, there is no better source than Mr. Warren. And if you want somebody to make something up, I’m your man. Did you know, for example, that the form of the eagle on that pesky rock was carved by space aliens? That, sir, is a written fact.
READ Books, Toros Pottery, & Lady Boutique shall be hosting our 4th Annual Summer Block Party on Saturday, August 27th. Highlights include:
*Live Music from the jazz-gospel trio, Little Faith.
*Food cart wunderkind, Dragon Pizza, hawking pizza from a dragon-shaped cart.
*All day book sales on all books.
*Semi-legal card games in the lot behind the store.
Portland Diary
Part IV Saturday 8/28/2010
The City, The Country, & the Nothing In-between
Hole in a Mountain
Having ordered two large pizzas the previous evening at Apizza Scholls, and having had sufficient time to digest while we slept, we introduced the leftovers to our oven when the cock crowed, and from there ‘twas a short trip to our tummies. When we pick up the rental car at the lot across the street, there is a $39 parking ticket on the window. The dipshit working there last night, who had told us to pick up the car “whenever,” is not working. In fact, there is no one manning the lot during the day. Apparently it is a meter lot by day and a flat fee lot by night.
Because he wants to go to college, Donald is intent on visiting Lewis & Clark College. It is south of Portland, off the 5, situated in a verdant, isolated forest. With the surplus of trees, and the apparent absence of any central campus, I begin to wonder if this is a school for squirrels. Imagine the potential for classroom discipline problems, and the mediocre menu in the cafeteria. We do eventually locate a gathering of buildings deep in the woods. The architecture is suspiciously 70’s, and it doesn’t have any of the cultural charm of the Midwest campuses where I was weaned, though the incorporation of nature has its charm. It hardly matters. This here is a private school with tuition demands beyond our means.
Having fulfilled our education obligation, we will be driving north toward Washington. First, we exit the 5 at Hawthorne in order to check out the wares previously espied at the food truck pod at Hawthorne & 12th. Debbie buys a Nutella crepe. Steven & Donald opt for Belgian fries and greasy meat pies. I get an oyster po’boy whose visual appeal far exceeds its actual savor. This is our least exciting food truck expedition of the trip.
We drive the 5 north across the Washington border, re-cross into Oregon on the 432, and then veer west toward the coast on the 30. Washington looks a lot like Oregon, just more north. Astoria, the largest town we pass through on Oregon’s Pacific coast, has a Cape Cod motif—architecture, seafood restaurants, & sailor bars— one would associate with a New England town. Our destination is Fort Clatsop, the site of Lewis & Clark’s coastal camp, recommended to us by our friend, Counselor Calhoun.
This is a living history park with $3 adult admission, manned by docents in period costume, with a bearded giant playing the part of Meriwether Lewis. He tells us about “himself,” giving a rather favorable account of his character and accomplishments, though not holding back on the myriad tragic elements of “his” drunken life. There is a replica of the original fort, a small museum, and a nature trail that leads us to a humungous canoe.
We decide to race back across Oregon to Washington in hopes of seeing Mount St. Helens prior to the termination of sunset. We’re diverted by some cockamamie car parade in a crappy town called Kelso. We arrive at the visitor center, some 50 miles short of the actual hill, at 6:45. It is closed. We walk a short nature loop in order to test the views from this distance. It’s a pretty trail, extremely marshy and fertile due in no small part to that volcano erupting some 30 years ago, but the view of the St. Helen is inadequate. We return to the car and drive east, racing away from the diminishing sun. The views are plenty and improving around every bend, so I’m thinking that we should proceed as far as we can and try to time our exit from the car with the last rays of sun. Approximately 15 miles from our target, we pull into a turnout, exiting the car clutching our cameras. Lo and behold, there’s a big-ass hole at the top of that mountain.
Such is the trade-off of ending an evening in the Washington boonies that we cede access to the culinary delights of Portland. Searching for food off the secluded highways of northern Oregon is akin to surfing in the Mojave. You can surf downhill on a sand dune, but it’s a bumpy excursion and all you get for your efforts is a bunch of sand in your damn mouth.
Kids: “Hey dad! Let’s go to Burgerville.”
Dad: “Shut the hell up. We’re not going to $&%^@*# Burgerville.”
So we eat at Burgerville, because it beats the hell out of 7-11, and the kids say it’s one of the best burgers they’ve had. It’s 9:55. They may as well be drunk for all the judgment they currently possess. It’s a greasy sand sandwich, I tells yuh. In America, there are three lifestyles from which to choose: There is the yummy culture of urbanity, the charming isolation of the countryside, and the greasy mediocrity of the suburbs in which one gets trapped, like an earthly limbo, when navigating between the first two options.
As a young lad, I verily idolized two actors: Slim Pickens & Sterling Hayden, both large men with silly voices, and possessing appearance & demeanor fluctuating between menace and clownishness. I made frequent oaths to have both of their visages tattooed upon my cheeks: my slim left and sterling right. In more reasonable moments, I figured I could at least tattoo a Sterling quote on my left fist: “Don’t bone me!”, and a Slim citation on my right: “Ditto!” Alas, I had but ten knuckles. Twenty years later, I experience many regrets. Surprisingly, these omissions from my body barely make my top-ten list.
But the pain of regret is palpable, people! The homage I might have paid my boyhood heroes, and still might, weighs as a debt unpaid. I deeply regret that there is no living proof of Slim’s literary leanings for which I may have included him on my list of pugilistic scribes. And why pretend otherwise? I root for Sterling something awful. So the hopes and dreams of three elongated boneheads— Slim, Sterling, and I—are carried on the broad shoulders of Mr. Hayden. Is he up to the task?
He was a man of experience, as duly stated by his character, Captain McCluskey, in The Godfather: “I’ve frisked a thousand young punks.” In addition to the frisking dexterity, he was a bonafide war hero— a marine and OSS Agent— who participated in many combat missions, parachuted into enemy territory, and he was awarded a Silver Star. At 6-feet 5-inches tall, and weighing comfortably above 200 lbs., he’d enjoy a significant size advantage over the street tough Mr. Brown.
And what of Claude Brown, the surly lad who grew up fist fighting on the streets of Harlem? What’s not to like about him? A juvenile delinquent, he was the anomalous individual who sought education & amelioration within the reform system, and culminated as a respected author. Reading his watershed book, Manchild, one gets the idea that he was handy enough with his fists to earn a reputation, though not a neighborhood superstar.
When giving away significant height and weight to your opponent, you best compensate with vastly superior skill, heart, or endurance. Brown, being no dummy, seeks to avoid direct exchanges with his adversary, employing feints, footwork, and head movement. But Hayden is a disciplined man who pursues his prey patiently. Brown’s faster hands occasionally tattoo Hayden’s big mug, but the results are ultimately discouraging, as Hayden answers with a sad, rueful smile, as if to say: “Why postpone the inevitable, friend? Why bone me?” Though his pale countenance shows the marking of the smaller man’s fists, it is the smaller man’s fists that incur the more significant damage. A skull is harder than a fist, so when the skull can endure the beating, the fist will eventually break. When Brown’s hands crumble, his legs tire from evading a giant man, and his heart can no longer tolerate absconding from his counterpart, he is compelled to cover up and take Hayden’s retaliation like the man he is. At this point, the fight looks like a bear knocking about a tired wolf with his burly paws. Though he loses, Claude Brown goes the distance, and he has a few ribs dented. But along the way he exposes Sterling Hayden to be a somewhat oafish strong man, which is precisely why some of us adore him so.
Next Newsletter: The Semifinals!
Louis L’Amour (1) vs. John Irving (5)
Leonard Gardner (2) vs. Sterling Hayden (3)
Having recently completed the brilliant Hollywood novel, Day of the Locust, culminating with a L.A. themed dinner and viewing of the same movie, we are now delving into the unfamiliar territory of science fiction. Please join us in reading our current book, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Perhaps our upcoming meeting might include a meal of futuristic, overlord food, or a stoned viewing of the Clarke/Kubrick classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Erik Warren @ Previous Signing
Eric Warren’s new book, EAGLE ROCK 1911-2011, is here. He will be at READ Books on Saturday August 13th to sign books. You can purchase your copy now, or do so at the signing.
Crusher & KO at hilarious Multnomah Falls
Portland Diary: Part III; Stimulating Road Trip Friday 8/27
In his youth, his salad days if you will, Steven would lounge away the weekend morns beneath downy sheets, in the upper level of his & Donald’s bunk bed, with the shades pulled down low. Now as he creeps up on maturity, twelve-years-old and bound to get older tomorrow, he is unearthing the motivation, which eludes the best of us over decades of toil, to exit the womb of his bed in the wee hours of the morning. There is a television at the foot of his hotel room bed, and there are cartoons on that television. When I heroically crawl out of my adjoining room at 8:00 in the a.m., Steven is watching Tom & Jerry eyes agape, with the mien of one who is trying to contain the rousing energy of a dozen cups of coffee consumed. I would like very much to catch up to him, to sprint backward to a mythical stage of life where one woke up alive, but the coffee machine downstairs is &%*#^!@ broke. How do you say “refund” in Portlandese? No doubt in polite tones that I am presently incapable of articulating. I’d kill a man for a cup of coffee, and I bet you it would be the first Portland homicide of this millennium.
An hour later I find myself back at the 4th Avenue food trucks in the company of my family, no explanation of how we got here, knowing only that we seek a rental car. When I was fully cognizant last night, my wife had told me that the rental agency was on 4th Avenue. And there it is. And there is the Vietnamese sandwich truck. I bet you—the same you who I bet in the last paragraph—that there’s a Vietnamese ice coffee there with my name written on it, most likely in Vietnamese. We procure a load of sandwiches to eat upon reaching our destination, and I drink several cans of sweetened coffee so as to guarantee that we reach our destination. Today we leave the city.
Our destination is the Columbia River, which we access on the 84 east. There are several picnic benches at the trailhead for Laterelle Falls. We eat our sandwiches, and then begin the uphill hike in concordance with our digestive processes. Beyond the large falls that can be seen from the road, the trail ascends deeper into shaded woods toward a 2nd, larger water fall. The trail eventually loops back to the highway, where we eagerly make acquaintanceship with a public restroom. We do not defile the trail, or its environs, because we Angelinos are not Philistines. We are Angelinos.
Further east, we park and walk to the still larger Multnomah Falls. We are all hiked out, but not so tired that we can’t read a rather amusing plaque that tells the even more amusing story of a “bus-sized” rock that fell from the top of the falls and landed in the water below, thus disturbing a wedding taking place on a lovely bridge below the falls, by showering the party with impressive tides and sundry rock detritus. There was no mention of casualties, which may have detracted from the goofy hilarity of the images this story evokes. Debbie, Donald, & Steven withhold their laughter, lord knows why, but I laugh loud enough for the bunch of us… because we’re Angelinos. Heh-heh. A bus-sized rock.
Approaching the northern border of Oregon, still tracing the route of the Columbia River, we drive into a town called Cascade Locks. There is some significance to this name, most likely pertaining to some cascades, and perhaps a lock (or two), but our cultural curiosity is aroused by loftier game. There is a roadside eatery, Eastwind, which is reputed to be the peddler of the largest soft serve ice cream cone in the history of the universe. The honky family in front of us staggers away from the service window with a slew of cones that lodge surpluses of ice cream reaching the peak of the consumers’ nostrils when held at the consumers’ hips.
“I’ll have four of those,” I tell the cashier, pointing back at the happy honkies, but referring to the cones. “Chocolate-vanilla swirl, please.”
“Four small cones,” the young cashier calls over her shoulder to the teenage boy manning the ice-cream machine. He’s got long, strong, wiry arms. He’s gonna’ need ‘um.
After an hour of licking, we cross a bridge into Washington, for no better reason than to provide an answer to the perennial question: “Who the hell’s going to stop us?” Answer: The lady at the toll booth, unless we give her a dollar. We have one of those. The Washington side of the Columbia is shockingly similar to the Oregon side. They even have a Lewis & Clark Museum, which I am told occurs likewise in Oregon. This one closes at 5:00, charges $7 per person, and it is now 4:00. We return to the parking lot, where we are accosted by a huge dog whose slobber is more potent than his teeth. Well, if this is the way Washingtonians behave, we might as well return to Oregon.
Before driving back to Portland, we make a late afternoon stop at the banks of the Big Sandy River. Belying its reputation for rain, Oregon is presenting itself as a rather hot, sunny host today. Steven & I roll up our shorts several inches and waddle into the east end of the river. About 5 minutes later, we emerge on the western banks, our shorts no wetter than when we entered. Sandy, perhaps…
Our intermittent culinary adviser, and perpetual nemesis, “Evil” Jose P, has instructed us to eat at the oddly named Apizza Scholls. He calls them “the Pizza Nazis,” which I am hoping is merely a friendly nod to the Germanic sound of their name. You know, like: “Dr. Scholl’s: Your friendly shoewear Nazis!”
Though Donald points out that the clientele and staff are all plainly hipsters of the worst kind, and we are told that the wait for a table will be in excess of 40 minutes, everyone is decidedly more polite than your average Nazi. So maybe, I’m thinking, there are fewer commonalities between hipsters & Nazis than some may suppose. Testing Jose’s thesis, I try to order a bottle of Becks at the bar, but there are no German beers to be had here. Hungry as a… well, you’re not going to get any Nazi-themed analogies out of me here. We are famished is all. Donald & Debbie reel across the street to investigate a used record store, coming back 20 minutes later with a CD of Yo La Tengo’s Fakebook.
Though the wait is excruciating, the pizza proves to be phenomenal in its New Yorky authenticity. When we try to order a large sausage and a small cheese, we glimpse the roots of Jose’s funny moniker. “We only serve 18 inch pizzas,” the waiter says in a faintly German accent… very faint. So our family of four ends up with two 18 inch pizzas, and we couldn’t be happier. If this is how they eat pizza in Nazi Germany, then sign me up Jose.
We drive west on Hawthorne toward downtown and the hotel, stopping at the Hawthorne branch of Powell’s, and its cookbook store next door. The attendant at the parking lot across the street from our hotel quotes us a $7 overnight fee, which is $9 cheaper than the fee at Mark Spencer. When we ask him what time we need to move the car, he says what sounds like: “When you like.” We enter the hotel lobby to the sweet smell of hot chocolate. The coffee machine is up and working. There will be no homicides in Portland tomorrow morning.
Literary Fight Club: The Quarterfinals
(2) Leonard Gardner (Fat City) vs. (7) James Jones (From Here to Eternity)
Gardner, as mentioned in previous READ Books Literary Fight Club installments, was an amateur boxer from sketchy Stockton, and Jones was an amateur boxer from a small town in Illinois. Jones is said to have competed in the Golden Gloves at welterweight (147 lbs.). He did not excel. Gardner being a somewhat private man—not a notoriously private man, mind you, as he is too obscure a figure to be attributed any notoriety—has proffered little detail about his competitive fighting. Judging from photos of the man, where he appears lean and of average height, he likely belongs in a similar weight class as Jones. But Gardner’s entire life has included a deep emotional & physical entwinement with boxing. He learned the ropes from his father, competed in his youth, wrote about it in his middle years, and in his later years has opened a gym in Stockton with the almost-great 1970’s light-heavyweight contender, “Indian” Yaqui Lopez. Fat City is a great novel, the best fight novel, and was made into perhaps the best fight film ever by another amateur boxer, John Huston. A Gardner journalistic entry, Roberto Duran and the Wise Old Men, further displays his profound expertise on the subject.
Both men possess fair fighting experience. Jones has the advantage of being a combat veteran of WWII. This indubitably made him a harder, more determined man, though many of the combat skills acquired in the military do not translate into a sporting fight. There will be no weapons allowed here, nor any eye gouging. As referee & author, I guarantee it. Within the realm of a (relatively) fair fight, Jones has one distinct disadvantage: He was not a clean liver. The man drank like, well, like a war veteran.
Initially, these two scribes look evenly matched. They jab and circle, occasionally crossing over one another’s jab, and then hooking after the cross. Neither possesses the devastating one punch knockout power of a professional, yet neither is so clueless as to leave a chin dangling in the air for the other to tag cleanly, so this fight is not going to be a brief one. Both men fight aggressively, exchange freely, and they cut each other up something awful. It would behoove Jones to tug Gardner into a wrestling match, where his military training would trump the pure boxing of his adversary. But Jones’ foundation is that of a boxer, thus he chooses to stay with the girl who brought him to the dance, rather than the one who can get him home safely. By the time Jones realizes that he is running out of gas, he no longer has the energy to hold Gardner. When he tries to turn it into a grappling match, too late, girl #2 has left the building. Gardner thumps his body with short hooks, and then brings up an uppercut utilizing the thrust of his legs. Two tough guys who are not apt to quit: the victor is the one who has lived a focused, disciplined life, while the loser was keeping company with too many bottles. Jones does not go down, he does not quit, but he does get awfully tired, and he bleeds and staggers. The fight is stopped by the referee and ruled a TKO.
NEXT NEWSLETTER: Last of the quarterfinal matches…
(3) Sterling Hayden (Wanderer) vs. (11) Claude Brown (Manchild in the Promised Land)
Book Club
We are currently reading MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf. Our next meeting will be Saturday evening, June 11th. We will have a potluck meal, and presumably discuss the book. Let us know if you want in.
We shall reconvene on Saturday, May 7th for an evening of food, drink, & discussion of Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose.” Let us know if you want to participate… or just watch. 
Uh, the store will be closed this weekend, Friday-Sunday (4/8-4/10). Friends will be in & out to take care of on-line sales, but according to the guidelines of their probabtion, they will not be allowed to interact with the general public. We’ll be back on Monday.
Steven Mounts Offensive Upon His Steed
Part III: Portland Diary
Thursday 8/26 Bicycles for Bipeds
“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
~ Orson Wells in The Third Man.
Portland is too damned relaxing. What with its pleasantly inebriating breweries, easily navigable streets, and unintimidating street people, one can exist here carefree. Do they have jobs in Portland? If the answer be yes, then why doesn’t everyone live here? I’ll tells yuh why I won’t: all this urban tranquility will screw an honest, surly man up something awful. My third morning here, and I lay in the hotel bed like an elephant that lost a fight with the tranquilizer gun. Give a man a little alcohol and few worries, and you got yourself a decidedly un-dangerous man. But I wanna’ be dangerous, ma’! Is it surly will power that shall move me from repose, or is it the promise of free croissants and hard boiled eggs at the continental breakfast in the lobby?
Fueled by coffee and yolk, my family and I venture east into congenially sleazy Chinatown, where we meet up with an unthreateningly tattooed young entrepreneur who rents us four hipster bikes, and offers encouragement for free. Today when we traverse the broad sidewalks of Waterfront Park, it is all elevated and aloof upon our wheeled pedestals. The pedestrian sea parts for all of Portland’s chosen people on two wheels. It’s like Holland without the abnormally tall people and their crazy windmills. We travel the bike path until it’s no longer a path, but a mere deserted waterfront street. And then it’s a path again, until it’s not. We hit a dead end at something called South Waterfront District, and then move back into town into the University District.
Sufficiently south, we stumble onto the elusive 4th Street food trucks that we had been unable to locate on our previous sojourn. Oddly enough, they’re located on 4th Street. Although the eggs have barely settled in our stomachs, culinary temptation must be endured. We are strangers in a strange land, and their strange food strangely demands our attention. A $3 Vietnamese baguette sandwich serenades my and Debbie’s bike callused posteriors, while Steven & Donald hear the siren song emitting from a food truck that hawks something called “The Fat Ass Jerk Burger.” I’m sure Portland is just kidding us; they’re far too nice here to mean it. Just up the street, Portland State University is, of all things, really pleasant. It’s green, and pretty, and collegiate, and close to food trucks, and surely a great place to lounge around and listen to the rhythmic tick-tock of cuckoo clocks.
With our jiggling bellies swaying left and right like a bobbling bubble in a level, we depart downtown via the Hawthorne Bridge, which takes us uphill toward the Hawthorne District. We see a pod of food trucks at which we do not stop. That’s strange. Due to the increasing incline of the street, Debbie and Steven decide to leave the biking to Donald and I, while they take to walking their bikes as if the inanimate things were overly excited dogs that required a calming hand. Down boy; let the other dogs— the rowdy, silly dogs— run ahead up that silly old hill, while we amble along at a more sensible pace.
Further up the Hawthorne hill, Donald and I, we impassioned pooches, find the Excalibur Comics shop. Tongues a-wagging, Donald buys a couple of Silver Surfers, and I purchase an old Classics Illustrated of The Jungle Book. We exit the premises just as Debbie and Steven approach on hooves. Rather than risk the downhill rapids of busy, steep Hawthorne, we four circumnavigate our return on the relatively car-less residential streets. Oh man, I could live here in these pleasant homes situated just around the corner from urban streets. I’d get a job at Powell’s, open up a martial arts dojo, tutor wayward Portland children, or maybe just learn how to repair cuckoo clocks.
Before re-crossing the Hawthorne Bridge into downtown, my boys and I detour beneath the bridge onto a bike trail that takes us past the OMSI and drops us off onto the “River Corridor Trail” heading south. Three miles along we exit the trail at the Oaks Amusement Park, which looks to me like the place where Los Angeles people who go to Chuck E. Cheese’s would go if they were Portland people living in Portland. Steven asks if we can park the bikes and go on a ride. I tell the truth when I say “no,” and then lie when I say “maybe tomorrow.”
After meeting up with Debbie, we re-cross the bridge into Portland and spend the rest of our bike time reading in the waterfront park. Steven and I finally finish our duo, dramatic reading of Murder on the Orient Express. I perform all the women voices in all sorts of accents, while Steven goes manly in monotone. We note that the lawn we are sitting on is an odd whitish-green color, and that there are many ducks on the lawn. Thank god I have no sense of smell. Once again, I am spared unpleasantness by having been a teenage smoker!
On the way back to the bike rental office, Steven and Donald decide to bike through an area where water spouts in intervals from the ground. For reasons none of us can fathom, least of all Steven, Steven crashes his bike into Donald’s, and both pinball, fly, and land. Donald rises from the ground and performs a rather bad humored imitation of Steven’s facial expression at the moment he had been launching his surprise attack. I take a picture of Donald imitating Steven, show it right there to the family, and we all agree, Donald grudgingly, that the imitation makes Donald look a lot sillier than Steven could ever hope to look. And Steven is very ambitious when it comes to looking silly.
It is twilight when we pass the food trucks nearest our hotel, and twilight is as good a time as any to eat food truck food. Most of the trucks have already closed, but Donald is satisfied with a Chinese chicken dish and Steven eats sushi from the same ambiguous Asian truck. Speaking of ambiguity, the guy who sells me and Debbie our gyros and kefta kabob is a Greek-Lebanese man from Brazil. About the only food they don’t seem to have here is Swiss.
Rip Torn Plays Choke-a-Chicken with Norman Mailer
READ Books Serial Newsletter: Part II; LITERARY FIGHT CLUB
Literary Fight Club Background: After taking nominations from our readers regarding the toughest authors to ever attack the written word, we came up with 16 surly scribblers. The editorial staff rated them from 1-16, taking into account real life fighting experience, and then pitted them against one another in a tournament format. Each fight takes place in a ring without the benefit of typewriters or sundry weapons. Winners advance to the next round. Losers presumably return to their day jobs, or to the grave as the case may be. Below is the first round and quarterfinals.
Did you ever participate in an NCAA basketball pool? If you have, you should know that the #16 seed never beats the #1 seed. Ever read a cowboy novel? If you have, you know that the hero doesn’t traipse about punching women in the mush. This fight is going to be the opposite of competitive. Let’s go ahead and call it non-competitive.
We have the makings of a potential stinker here. In Stein we get a durable, if obtuse, brawler with questionable conditioning and an even more dubious skill set. But she is a stocky one. L’amour’s top seeding is due to his versatility: He was a professional boxer who sparred with Pete Petrolle, brother of the great Billy “The Fargo Express” Petrolle (and a helluva boxer himself), and Louis picked up various martial arts during a stint as a merchant marine in Asia. Though literary critics opine that Stein’s style is often perplexing, do not expect the well-versed western author to be confused. He’s an uncomplicated guy who’ll simply need to find a way to secure a decision victory without actually striking a lady.
Expect dull & merciful with lots of clinching. From a distance, Louis plants a restraining palm upside her forehead and utilizes his monkey arms to keep Gertrude at a distance as she flails away like a windmill in cartoon futility. When his arms tire, he draws her into a clinch where he waltzes her gently around the ring, attempting to engage Ms. Stein in a kind of literary salon in motion, discussing favorite authors and whatnot. The crowd boos. It wants blood. But the cowboy retains his decency and garners a unanimous decision.
Leonard Gardner: Fat City (2) vs. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime & Punishment (15)
Was it not James Brown who quipped/sang that he did not know ka-ra-te, but he did know ka-ray-zy? While crazy just might take the day when matched against inept & scared stiff, it’s never gone too far when pitted against substance & skill. As the skilled light-heavyweight champ (and sporadic bar room battler) Billy Conn once opined, a professional boxer fighting a street fighter is akin to “hitting a girl.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s just not fair or sporting.
Fighting out of the blue corner we have the adept Leonard Gardner, author of the greatest boxing novel in the history of ever— Fat City—a for-real amateur boxer, and a fairly rough customer hailing from the mean streets of Stockton. Fighting out of the red corner we have crazy Fyodor, who for his part was purported to be a wee bit mad, which probably explains his nomination to this event by a sadistic reader of this newsletter. He who nominated Fyodor did him no favors.
Crazy D, upon finding out that weapons & sharp objects are not allowed in the ring, is understandably uneasy and increasingly twitchy in the eyes. The fight commences with Dostoyevsky bounding around the ring like a nervous kangaroo lacking only the bounce in his step. Feinting & shuffling, Gardner gradually cuts off the ring, patiently waiting for his foe to tire himself out. Between the excess movement & the bulky overcoat that he dons, Crazy D eventually finds himself trapped & exhausted in a corner, pining for 19th century weaponry, instead finding himself recipient to a flicking jab from Gardner, which leads to a merciful first round KO.
Sterling Hayden: Wanderer (3) vs. Charles Bukowski: Ham on Rye (14)
Oh, this one has the potential to get ugly. But then, what event involving Bukowski would not have the makings of a grotesquerie? Sterling Hayden was first & foremost an actor who made a career out of giving voice to great lines such as: “I’ve frisked hundreds of young men in my days” (Godfather Part I) and: “You’re a no-good, nosey little tramp who’d sell her own mother for a piece of fudge, but you’re smart along with it. Smart enough to know when to sell and when to sit tight… Shut up! You got a great big dollar sign there, where most women have a heart!” (The Killing). After having gotten too cooperative with HUAC during the Hollywood Blacklist era, Sterling grew progressively disgusted with himself and his career, and spent his later years writing a long memoir and an even longer novel. More important to these proceedings, Hayden was a huge, athletic man and a bonafide WWII combat hero.
Bukowski was pretty much a drunken swine harboring either a surplus or deficiency of sensitivity and talent, depending on one’s literary affiliation. Whereas Hayden dealt with his self-loathing by working & exercising, Bukowski was more partial to working & drinking & acquiring venereal diseases. Whereas Hayden fought men in war and was victorious, Bukowski scrapped with his wife in a documentary of his life and more or less earned a draw. He boasted about having been smacked around a few Los Angeles bars in his salad days, thus he’s probably accustomed to taking a punch.
So the fight… It begins with Hayden bellowing (at no one in particular): “Don’t bone me!” (The Asphalt Jungle) before moving his lithe, hulking body across the ring. The audience collectively cringes at the brutality that ensues. Upon waking up in a bar several days later, Bukowski stumbles home to his typewriter to compose an account of the fight as he recalls it.
We’ll give Chuck B. the last word: ”He hit me in the mouth. It knocked my last tooth out. I crawled to the stool in the corner and swallowed a shot of whiskey. There was a real looker in the first row. She lifted her skirt a little and flashed me a nice, long leg. I stood up and spit blood. I took a swing at Hayden and missed. He hit me in the mouth. He knocked my last tooth out. I crawled to the stool in the corner and swallowed a shot of…”
Jack London: The Call of the Wild (4) vs. Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead (13)
In London and Mailer we have two boxing enthusiasts whose accomplishments in pugilistic journalism & literature far exceeds their exploits in the ring. For London’s part, he wrote several first rate boxing stories—the best being “A Piece of Steak”—and helped coax James Jeffries out of retirement in a vain effort to wrest the heavyweight title from Afro-American Jack Johnson; London’s famous socialist sympathies did not necessarily extend to the duskier races, as he wrote instigating articles calling for Jeffries to win the title back for whitey. Mailer wrote a solid 239 page essay (239 pages is an essay? For Norman it’s an act of self-restraint), The Fight, about the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. London, of course, was a rough adventurer who enjoyed a good shipyard scrap. Mailer was an intellectual Brooklyn boy bent on proving that a Jew would fight, and in his twilight years he enlisted the services of Puerto Rican light heavyweight champ Jose Torres as his personal boxing instructor.
Both men knew a few things about the science of fisticuffs. London had advantages in stature & experience, though he tended to be drunk during his waking hours. Comparatively, Mailer was clean living (comparatively, I said!) and perhaps more technical due to his association with Torres, but he was a short man who wasn’t getting any taller, and getting into shoving matches with the likes of Gore Vidal at cocktail parties ain’t exactly the same as exchanging blows with longshoremen on the Barbary Coast.
In Mailer’s case, there is filmed evidence of his fighting prowess (or lack thereof): a hard-to-find movie set imbroglio between our hero and a kooky, young Rip Torn about 20 years pre-Larry Sanders. Rip essentially attempts to brain Norm with a small hammer; Norm drags Rip to the ground with Rip inconveniently on top. Rip lies atop our hero rapping oddly on about how Norm should calm down and accept the hammer blows for the sake of art, while Norman chews on Rip’s ear, and Norm’s wife pulls Rip’s hair and lectures him about scaring the b’Jesus out of her half-naked hippy children. In Norm’s favor, he did persevere through a few hammer blows (good chin?), and offered a carnivorous resistance to boot. On the other side of the ledger, his take down attempt was horrid, and he partook in an awful lot of kvetching in his fruitless effort to talk Rip off of him.
Reason & rationale have their place in this world, so I’m told, but it’s a misplaced sentiment in a fist fight. Still, I’m figuring that anyone who can take Jack London and his John Barleycorn ways a few rounds deep into a fight has a damn good chance of prevailing when Jack passes out in a pool of his own vomit. But Jack won’t give Norman that chance. He’ll hold Norm’s head down with one hand, and slap his face into salami with the other. Norman will explicate on the errors of Jack’s un-sportsmanlike ways in elegant, panicky prose, while Jack, as is his custom, simply gets to the point. Thwack. Owww. Thwack.
John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany (5) vs. Chuck Palahnuik: Fight Club (12)
In our fourth fight of the evening, we have writers from somewhat similar fight disciplines. Irving has a fine wrestling pedigree. Palahnuik has large muscles, so I suppose he wrassles with cumbersome weights. Weightlifting is a fine compliment to real skills, such as wrestling, boxing, and jujitsu. On its own, it’s kind of like somebody who types a lot, but doesn’t know how to tell a story or create a poem. It looks pretty impressive from a certain distance, but it doesn’t amount to a whole lot up close and on its lonesome.
Relating to distance, Irving will be looking to close it immediately. Chuck P. windmills his bulging arms and thrusts them in the direction of Garp’s noggin. Like any good wrestler has been taught to do, Garp bends his knees, gets underneath the punches, and shoots in on the bulky fella’s legs. He scores a takedown. Once on his back, Chuck endeavors to bench press his smaller coeval, but he discovers that displacing an experienced grappler from your chest is entirely different than heaving dead weight skyward. Garp twists Chuck into pretzel-like positions, occasionally knocking upon his skull as if it be a stubborn door that refuses to open and let him in on a cold winter’s eve: Anyone home? C’mon! I know you’re in there; I can hear you being hollow! And though bleed he may, Chuck will enjoy every second of his tedious beating, because we know that he meant every word of Fight Club.
Ernest Hemingway (6): The Old Man & the Sea vs. Claude Brown (11): Manchild in the Promised Land
Here we have another compelling contrast of styles. In Hemingway we encounter a barrel-chested prodigy from the well-heeled suburbs of Chicago. A less likely candidate for literary accolades, Brown was a product of the streets of Harlem. Brown grew up fighting because he had to; Hemingway fought because he enjoyed it. At the height of his fame, Ernie would hold impromptu sparring sessions with guests in his Cuban home. He was a rugged sports enthusiast who reveled in physical contact. While there may have also been a degree of sport involved in the street fights of Brown’s youth, the culture of the streets was less forgiving than that of Hemingway’s drawing room. Withdrawal from a fight was simply not an acceptable option.
While Hemingway enjoys a bit of a size advantage, Brown most likely possesses superior speed. Hemingway, though a layman in the sport, employs a minor degree of proficiency in the art of boxing that will give him further advantage.
Size and a simulacrum of boxing technique allowed Hemingway to intimidate his crew of sycophants and literary types, such as George Plimpton, who he’d coerce into sparring matches and bully with his size and aggressiveness, but when faced with a more capable adversary, such as big, drunk Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Hugh Casey, Hemingway would resort to kicking the testicles. Dirty tactics will not be sufficient in his quest to make the smaller, street smart Brown quit. Expect Brown to be a more willful and sober participant.
Hemingway learned a few tricks palling around with boxing legend Gentleman Gene Tunney. He feints with a left jab, and then crosses a right over Brown’s guard, staggering the urban writer. He hooks off the jab, grazing Brown’s chin and putting him on his butt. Brown immediately springs to his feet and returns to the battle refocused. As Hemingway’s work-rate decreases, Brown scores with some glancing flurries. Hemingway occasionally staggers the smaller man with crosses and hooks, but he cannot discourage him nor put him away.
Hemingway is tough, but with a bully’s mentality. When the bully cannot force his opponent to quit, he throws in the towel. That’s what happens here. Brown takes his lumps, but he persists. Hemingway takes less lumps, but quits when faced with his opponent’s intractability. Subsequent to surrender, Ernie invites his new friend over to his home for drinks. Perhaps at a later hour their combat will continue in a drawing room, and Hemingway’s penchant for heavy drinking and nut sack booting will give him the advantage when both men are sufficiently soused. In the official fight though, Brown pulls off the upset.
James Jones: From Here to Eternity (7) vs. Charles Johnson: Middle Passage (10)
A true MMA harbinger, this contest pits a boxer (Jones) against a traditional martial artist (Johnson). Though Jones’ background was strictly amateur, it was competitive nonetheless. On the other hand, Johnson has been practicing karate & kung fu for years, but not on a competitive level. And we’d be wise to recall that Jones was a combat marine in WWII. I somehow recall that Jones was a combat marine. World War II, I think.
This fight comes down to will and distance. When the encounters occur at long range, Johnson is able to get off kicks from angles that Jones is unaccustomed to defending. When Jones is able to close the distance, his short, hooking punches rattle Johnson. While Johnson sporadically slows Jones’ forward progress with low kicks, Jones’ dedicated body punching consistently wears on his foe’s stamina. Lacking the energy to dance away from the brawling boxer, unable to keep the requisite kicking distance, Johnson is mauled inside. Jones is awarded the decision in a sloppy, but spirited scrap.
Thom Jones: The Pugilist at Rest (8) vs. David Mamet: Glengarry Glenn Ross (9)
They say that styles make fights, and this one should be a doozy. In one corner we have Jones of pugilistic short stories fame, and an amateur boxer & ex-marine to boot. In the other corner we have Mamet the playwright, an aggressive Chicago boy with a Brazilian Jujitsu base.
The well-schooled boxer beats upon theatre boy’s mug with the staccato rhythm of a Mamet monologue as he steps in and out of range with a skewering jab. Being of amateur pedigree, however, Jones lacks the knockout pop required to finish off his adversary. Though his face is cut more profoundly than the final edit of one of his films, Mamet eventually times a jab correctly, ducking low and inside, and get his hooks around Jones. He drags him to the $%&#*% ground, where, Jones inadvertently gives up his back in an effort to regain his feet. Potty-Mouth Dave chokes him out. He chokes him the $&#^ out.
Quarterfinals
(1) Louis L’amour (Cowboy Boxer, MMA) vs. (9) David Mamet (Profane Brazilian Jujitsu Practitioner)
Though he was a prolific writer in the western fiction genre, guns aren’t allowed in our literary ring, so L’amour’s most significant work pertaining to these proceedings is his single foray into biography, the excellent Education of a Wandering Man. In it, he abstemiously chronicles his many forays into fisticuffs both organized and dis: He boxed professionally, sparred with at least one-half of the great Petrolle brothers, studied Asian grappling arts, and experienced a few harbor tussles as a merchant marine. In short, he was a mixed martial artist before such a moniker existed.
In the canon of Mamet’s work, only his most recent film, Red Belt, directly relates to the science of combat. Mamet, unlike L’amour, began his martial art training at a relatively advanced age. He is an ardent Brazilian Jujitsu student who has earned a purple belt, and his characters cuss like sailors. But here’s the quandary: L’amour was an accomplished fighter in his physical prime, while Mamet is reaching his martial peak around the age of sixty. Mamet’s best chance rests on L’amour taking him lightly, and then taking the western author to the ground where he might find a neck to choke, or a wing to break off. Standing up, Mamet stands as much chance as a bottle of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. And L’amour, indubitably, must be an Irish name, yes?
L’amour was far too serious and experienced a man to enter a fray casually. He’d witnessed and partaken in enough fights to have learned the importance of vigilance & ruthlessness in combat. Mamet will intelligently look to shoot in on L’amour and force a clinch. Being stronger, younger, and possessing an athlete’s reflexes, Louis is able to thwart & repel the playwright’s advances. He bides his time, looks for openings, and creates proper spacing. When Mamet makes the mistake of shooting for a takedown from too far a distance, L’amour sets his feet and lands a short right hand on the point of Mamet’s chin, putting him to sleep. Upon regaining consciousness a few minutes later, he thanks his conqueror for the encounter, and states that he very much enjoyed the $&%*#* experience. Who wouldn’t?
This here is the classic contrast of styles: wrestler versus boxer; 500 pages of quirky character development butting heads with 200 pages of terse adventure prose; Garp in battle with White Fang (dual meaning, you shall see). These two scribes are likely to stir up the partisan juices in both literary and fight fans.
London was reputed to have an amateur boxing pedigree, but records being what they were over a hundred years ago, this is hard to document. In any case, he was an avid boxing fan who, much like Hemingway after him, was known to seek sparring matches with pretty much anyone fortunate enough to cross his besotted path. His main sparring partner was his pugnacious wife, which compelled the turn-of-the-century gentleman to develop a much better defense than offense. Also worthy of mention in things athletic, London waged a life-long war with John Barleycorn, eventually succumbing to death by alcoholism.
Irving, being a modern man, possesses a relatively well documented wrestling history, having nearly won a New England high school championship in the 133 pound weight division. While attending the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he frequently grappled with the fabled Dan Gable. There are photos extant that show Gable leg sweeping Irving some 15 feet into the air. This all proves at least three things: John Irving is a pretty bad man on the ground, smaller than Jack London, and he got his ass beat on a regular basis by the baddest wrestler on the planet. His fighting moniker, me thinks, shall be “Garp.” Goofy, yes, but intimidating, no?
Keeping in mind that, due to their ubermenschen ability to cut weight, a 133 pound wrestler is really a 158 pound man, Garp probably gives up some 25-30 pounds (and considerable reach) to Fang. The larger man knows enough to keep the smaller man at the end of his jab, and in the early going he does so successfully. Garp, however, has been trained to keep his weight low, and thus keeps his chin out of harm’s way, taking most of the punches on his forehead as he bends at the knees.
When Fang takes to stabbing his jab at the smaller man’s eyes, thus opening up a cut on his brow, Garp moves hastily to close the gap. Having learned to box in an era when clinches were a normal activity, Fang welcomes the clinch as if it were a respite, thinking he’ll lean his greater weight on little Garp, rub the laces of his gloves into his eyes, and target the body with short uppercuts. Marquis of Queensbury be damned, Garp surprises his antiquated foe with a vicious foot sweep, subsequently landing on top of Fang in side control.
Garp’s plan is to maintain top control without taking unnecessary risks, but he finds Fang an unwilling partner in his sweaty-man-mat-dance. Having spent many an evening on the Barbary Coast, Jack has few qualms—make that no qualms—about barring no holds. Garp soon regrets having entered this fight with a healthy coif of bushy hair, two eyes, and a full set of testicles with nerve endings built in. Utilizing fingers, teeth, and a firm nut sack grip, London renders Garp’s occupancy of top position a surprisingly unappealing advantage. But perhaps he goes too far when he begins to nosh on Garp’s ear. White Fang indeed.
One should never underestimate the resiliency or conditioning of a wrestler, nor the lack of both traits in a lush. Aching in his lower regions though he is, Garp is especially offended (and motivated) by London’s foray into cannibalism, and offers a head-butt and two insistent forearms as rejoinder to the opposing author’s teeth. The more London fouls, the more Garp aggressively pursues his ground & pound techniques. Initially, London welcomes the gutter fighting, and he even regains his feet on several occasions. But every time London attempts to land his right hand, Garp shoots under for his legs and a takedown is the result.
Being tossed and dragged to the ground by a well conditioned wrestler is an arduous adventure best not taken on by one who prefers training in saloons. Fatigue, as the sages say, makes cowards out of all men. Observing the cause and effect relationship between his fouling and Garp’s retaliating, London eventually decides to acquiesce to his foe’s grappling superiority, noting that when he refrains from eye gouging, the other man is reflexively less insistent on the pounding and the choking and the head squeezing. Quirkmaster Garp is thus satisfied in pinning the adventure hero to the ground, and gradually lays and prays his way to a unanimous decision, but not without alienating many fans, who find his fighting style decidedly less appealing than his prose.
(3) Sterling Hayden (Freestyle Adventurer) vs. (11) Claude Brown (Street Fighting Memoirist)
NOTE: One of our remaining fighters is about to exit the fray, involuntarily, with an injury. We are currently taking nominations for a replacement fighter. Email us.
BOOK CLUB
We are currently reading “Travels with Charley” by Steinbeck. Our next meeting will be on Saturday 3/19. Contact us for more information.
READ Books Serial Newsletter: A newsletter in several, brief installments.
Four years is a helluva long time if you’re, say, five-years-old. Listen, I know a few five-year-olds that have been bumming around our bookstore since we opened in February of 2007, and they’d be mightily impressed to know that our bookstore is their contemporary (our kindergarten clientele possess this sort of vocabulary). If they continue to spend time here for the remainder of their lives, or if the world is to end today, we’ll be able to claim that we have been a chief influence on their lives. But who’d be listening, right?
Four years… Boy, if you were sitting here right now, plastered to our couch that we stole from the late, great Yarn Store, I could tell you some stories. And they’ll be mediocre stories, and you’ll want to get up and leave, and you’ll be made to feel intense discomfort as I blink spasmodically, foam dribbling unaccountably from my stubbly lips. And I’m guaranteed to laugh at all the wrong moments—the uncomfortable moments. But you’ll stay and listen, because you’re unflaggingly polite. I’m banking on that very politeness, the kind that we shall call unflagging, to get you to the end of this newsletter in my company. Here, take my hand, cupcake.
We’ve got us some wonderful neighbors. There’s Toros, the extraordinarily talented pottery guy, on our left. He’s an artist, a teacher, and he makes his own wine that he lets me taste when I behave myself. Little known fact: In his tempestuous youth, Toros was arm wrestling Yokozuna of Armenia. On our right we’ve got Lady Boutique, with its wily proprietor Camille. Word on the street is that her clothing shall one day attire all of Eagle Rock, regardless of one’s sex. When she’s sober, she tells us that we’re her favorite neighbor. When Toros serves her a few free glasses of wine, she tells Toros that he’s neighbor #1. I’d arm-wrestle him for the honor, but the guy’s a ringer, and my Trader Joe’s wine cannot compete with his handmade (foot made?) libations.
Across the street we got us the old gentleman and his crew of semi-homeless crack-heads; if they’re not selling drugs out of that sketchy parking lot, then they’re doing a hell of an impression of a drug dealing enterprise. So long as they stay out of the medical marijuana racket, they should be able to avoid the ire of our community. Several times a year, various 50-something-year-old guys with neck tattoos visit us, walking an ominous beeline from across the street, and they want to sell us books that are invariably stolen, or sundry odd items such as a car lock picking gadget with which I suppose we could steal our own books.
“What the hell’s this?” I’d asked the ex-ex-con who wanted to sell me this peculiar gadget, which I was now giving the Helen Keller treatment: poke, rub, smell: what are you?
“Oh it’s for, uh, it’s what tow truck drivers use to break, uh, get into cars that are locked. To get the keys, I guess.”
“I don’t think we have any tow truck drivers buying books here. Or they haven’t identified themselves as of yet. Anyhow,” I pointed out by way of apology, “this ain’t a book.”
“Oh!” His eyes lit up, “you want books. I can find some of those soon enough.”
“Perhaps you will be needing this,” I suggested, handing him back his lock picking gadget.
Crime’s a hell of a thing, though not as prevalent as we often imagine. I’d say that 95-99% of the people we’ve encountered here have been unflaggingly polite (10% discount to anyone who can accurately count how many times I use the word unflaggingly in this newsletter), and chose not to steal from us. Thank you all. Those few who have attempted to sell us stolen books looked like they often slept in prisons. Those who we’ve suspected of stealing books from the store have often looked suspiciously like me, or sometimes like me if I were a slightly younger woman with a head of hair. Beware of lower-middle-class white men with facial hair, bad stories, poor comedic timing, and a love of free literature. Have I ever told you about the guys who kept coming into the store to try and sell us Omaha Steaks from their truck? Or the guy who sold us a neon sign but did not give us one?
People who encounter my children in the bookstore like to tell them how lucky they are, what with the growing up in the presence of books that their parents won’t let them take home to read because: “somebody might just walk in the store tomorrow and want our only copy of Hugo Cabret, but will they be able to buy it? No! Why not? Because it’ll be at home, lying forgotten beneath your pee-stained blanket in your stinky little bed. And then how will we pay for your college? Who’ll send you to college then?” Which is, of course, completely absurd— My kids aren’t going to college. They’re going to work here for minimum wage, and they’re going to share their earnings with their damn parents. Yeah, next time you’re in, come tell them how damn lucky they are, how much you envy their childhood. Just be a good guy, and please don’t call child services. If my wife and I get thrown in the pokey, the bookstore is coming down with us. Remember, we’re all in this together. Unflaggingly.
Disclaimer I: My children do not, nor never have, really wet their beds. That was me. I substituted them for comedic effect. Perhaps I should have left it as me.
Disclaimer II: Since I have yet to purchase drugs from any of my neighbors, I have no legal proof that any of them are pursuing the pushing professions. So when y’all go over there hoping to score, please do not drop my name. And no waving; I do not know you.
We are currently reading Mark Kurlansky’s protracted tome on salt. It’s called Salt. We are meeting on Saturday evening (2/12), at the bookstore, to discuss the book, eat salty foods, and choose our next read. All are welcome, but please RSVP your attendance. This is what we call a “Pot Luck Affair,” and we all need to have a rough idea of how much food & drink to bring.
Next Week: Part II; The Return of Literary Fight Club & Reading Recommendations.
