Monthly Archives: May 2018

Another duck story with a happy ending…

I used to spend a lot of my life in second-hand book stores…and not just hunting for old comic books.  I bought books on old movies, books on popular culture, books on politics and history, fiction by favored authors and sometimes just books that looked interesting if they were cheap enough.

This more or less stopped with the rise of the Internet.  I once carried a little list in my wallet of rare books I was seeking and for a long time, I was lucky if I came across one of them every two or three years.  I had more or less written the rest off as ungettable until one day, I located and ordered every single one of them via the worldwide web.  And that really did happen in one day.

I have rarely been in such a store since, partly because I have been seeking no old books I could not find on eBay and partly because since everyone else buys theirs that way now, such stores have largely disappeared.  We're about to lose another.  Robert Spina — thank you, Robert — sent me this link to an article about the closing of Book Castle-Movie World out in Burbank. It was the domain of a gent named Steve Edrington and as you'll read, he is closing it after being in that line of endeavor for 51 years.

I don't think I ever even went to Steve's present store but I was in a previous one, at least two decades ago. He remembered me from his first such establishment, Bond Street Books on Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood. I was at Bond Street a lot back in the sixties buying old comic books and many non-comic books.

If there's a skill to running that kind of business — and obviously, there is — Steve had it well-mastered. I hope he doesn't regret his decision to close down, though I'm assuming he didn't have a lot of choice. It's sad in a way that there are so few of those places left. True, I haven't supported any of them this century but it's hard to not be nostalgic for something that once upon a time brought you such joy and added value to your life.

One bite. Everybody knows the rules…

• I think Michael Avenatti's just out to see if he can be on TV more times this year than Steve Harvey.

Fred Kaplan on why it was wrong for Trump to decide to opt out of the Iranian nuclear deal. I think Congress should have intervened. They might not have been able to stop him but maybe they could have passed a law that said that in the event of war, the first men drafted to go fight it would be older ones who play a lot of golf…even if they have bone spurs.

In the immortal words of Deep Throat: "Follow the money!"

Staggering Revelations

Tonight we have what I'd say may be the most staggering revelations since the tangle of "Trump/Russia" investigations began almost two years ago. This is not hyperbole.

The most important ones are that a Russian oligarch paid more than $500,000 into the shell company that Cohen earlier used to make his payment to Stormy Daniels. The money is nominally from the US affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg's holding company. But this is a direct connection.  AT&T made payments totaling $200,000. Novartis, the drug manufacturer, chipped in almost $400,000. In what still must be considered preliminary reporting, The New York Times now says that transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed into "Essential Consultants LLC", the shell company Cohen used as the vehicle to pay Stormy Daniels and then later used to arrange another hush agreement at least nominally for billionaire Elliott Broidy, a then-RNC deputy finance chair who is tied up in the Trump/Russia probe through fixer George Nader. The payments all end in January 2018. That's when the name "Essential Consultants LLC" was first published by The Wall Street Journal as part of the Stormy Daniels story.

Click here to read the whole thing.

And by the way, I don't think the real "Deep Throat" (Mark Felt) actually said "Follow the money." At least, no one ever said in public that was a direct quote from him so it may have been invented by William Goldman for the movie, All the President's Men. But someone said it.

My pals who form the musical group Big Daddy have been busy doing what they usually do: Taking recent hit songs and rearranging them so they sound like records from the fifties. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you might like to catch them performing live at Boulevard Music in Culver City on June 30. Here's where you go to get tickets.

In the meantime, here's what they did to "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars. They're right. It would have been a much better song if it had been recorded by the Statler Brothers…

In a few hours, Donald Trump will announce what, if anything, he's going to do about the deal that blocks Iran from going nuclear for the time being. I wouldn't presume to guess what that announcement might be except that he will, of course, insist he's making the absolute right decision and that the world will be a lot safer because of him and we should all praise him for that.

This piece by Alex Ward explains why Trump hates the existing Iran deal. I'm sure everything Mr. Ward says is true but two other reasons occur to me, one being that Trump's campaign for the presidency was largely based on the premise that every single thing the Obama administration had done was wrong and stupid and terrible and in bad need of reversal. Much of what Trump has done in office seem to me to flow from a need to change what he condemned on the campaign trail even though he has no better plan or idea to put in place. Obamacare, he said time and again, was a disaster that had to go and he'd replace it with something better and cheaper that would cover more people…and so far, we haven't heard even the bare bones of a plan.

The second reason is closely related. In my career as a professional writer, I have often been courted by agents who wanted me to leave my guy and make them my guy. The pushiest ones were the ones I was least likely to consider and one of the things the pushiest ones all did was to tell me that I was robbed blind on every single deal my previous agents had made for me. It was like if you sold your old Honda Accord for $2000 — or about what comparable cars always went for — and I said, "My God! You got taken to the cleaners! If you'd let me sell it for you, I would have gotten you Fifty Thousand Dollars for that car!!!!" (To convey the hysteria in some of those pitches, I probably should have typed that in ALL CAPS and BOLDFACED ITALICS.)

Your sleaziest agents always seem to say that. No deal is any good if they didn't make it. Some of them even seem to believe their own bull or take it as some kind of personal incentive to promise you the moon plus several planets and then set themselves the goal of achieving it. They often do great damage to their clients because they're not satisfied to make you a good deal. They need, for their reputations and/or egos, to make you the best friggin' deal in the history of mankind. Nothing less will satisfy them, never mind satisfying you. Trump, who continually tells us that he's the greatest negotiator and deal-maker who ever lived, reminds me way too much of that kind of agent.

Hey, I tried one of these. Just Crack An Egg is a new idea from the folks at Ore-Ida who specialize in frozen potatoes and it comes in four variations: Denver Scramble, All American Scramble, Rustic Scramble and Ultimate Scramble. With each, you can whip up a quick omelet in your microwave just by adding one fresh egg.

I'm one of those rare freaks who isn't wild about cheese in my omelets — a preference that seems to always horrify restaurant waiters or the person at a breakfast buffet who mans the omelet station. They always look at me like I asked them to leave out the egg. Also, for allergic reasons, I don't want peppers of any sort in anything I eat. All four variations of Just Crack an Egg, like 95% of all breakfast sandwiches available in the U.S.A. contain cheese and all but the All American Scramble contain peppers. So I went with that one and decided to make it "as is," including the cheese.

You open the cup and in it, you find three little packets — one each of cheese, bacon and potatoes. You take them out. You crack your egg into the cup. You open the three packets and empty them in. You stir the uncooked omelet. You put it in your microwave for forty seconds. You stir what's in the cup then put it back in for another thirty seconds and it's done…or at least it's supposed to be. My microwave runs hot but my omelet-in-a-cup still seemed to need another fifteen seconds…but fine.

Any good? Yeah, I guess. The end product was what you'd expect: A microwaved scrambled egg with that stuff in it. But I decided I still don't want cheese in my omelet and the potatoes really didn't bring anything to the taste or texture. So what I may do in the future is crumble some cooked bacon into my own cup, crack my egg and save two and a half bucks.

This reminds me of the problem I have with all these new prepared meal services that are advertised on half the web pages I visit — services like Home Chef and Hello Fresh and Prepped and all the others who offer to deliver ready-to-heat (or sometimes, ready-to-cook) entrees to your door. Due to their relentless promotions (and my food allergies, which are many), I often feel like there's an industry out with the sole purpose of feeding me food that will kill me. Almost every carefully-selected-by-their-gourmet-chefs dinner contains something I'm allergic to and often, some component which I could eat but just plain don't like. At least with Just Crack An Egg, I could leave out the little packet of red and green peppers.

Wikipedia, which is never wrong about anything except most things, tells me that "up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, including 5.9 million children under age 18." That sounds right to me and gives me comfort that I am not alone in this world. When I get some time, I think I'll write a few more posts here on this topic. I need to explain better to certain friends of mine why I'm not being anti-social when I don't want to go with you to an Indian restaurant and why you should never-ever-ever buy me something to eat without my advance consent.

And as for Just Crack An Egg, I guess this is a good review of a product I will probably never buy again. The best part of it for me was the separate packets.

One bite. Everybody knows the rules…

For some time now, most of us have been amazed that Donald Trump could say one thing on Monday, the opposite on Tuesday…and then on Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be out there suggesting that any charge of a contradiction was indicative of a biased, dishonest media. Now we have that latest in a will-be-getting-longer list of lawyers contradicting everything he said a few days ago regarding the James Comey and Stormy Daniels matters.

I am speaking, natch, of Rudy Giuliani, a man who — yes, I know it's hard to believe — once stood for a certain amount of integrity. Now, he'll do anything for Trump except, apparently, get his story straight. In the last few days, it's changed more times than most parents have changed diapers. He puts out one set of facts and then, if it doesn't work, don't worry — because he's got another. And then another and another.

William Saletan, Matt Yglesias and Ben Mathis-Lilley all express their bewilderment at the sloppy lawyering going on here. It sounds to me like Donald and Rudy worked it out without consulting experts…then Rudy went out and began spreading that version…

…and then when all these legal scholars weigh in and say "Giuliani has gotten Trump into more trouble than before," Rudy and Donald get on the phone and one of them says, "Okay. Let's come up with something else."

I realize a lot of Trump backers really don't care about this stuff…or who he cheated with or what he lies about or how he personally profits, just as long as a liberal does not move into his seat of power. But they've got to be worried that all this is making that world-destroying change more likely. And they've got to know that this will never end; that we'll be hearing things that Trump will try to brush away as "Fake News" every remaining day of his presidency and for years after. And now, this…

• Any time you're on the Internet and you see a sentence that begins with the words "Nobody can deny that…" there's a 75% chance you will disagree with what follows. Nobody can deny that this is so.

• Trump would be better off if he'd paid Rudy Giuliani $130,000 to not talk about him and hired Stormy Daniels to speak on his behalf.

Alton Brown shows you the safe way to slice a mango. I don't eat mangoes but if I did, I bet I could follow Mr. Brown's instructions to the letter and still injure myself. You're probably better at this than I am. In any case, viewer discretion is advised…

As readers of this blog know, I had this wonderful friend named Carolyn in my life for around twenty years. The first ten were mostly joyous, though there were times when we seemed to mutually agree the relationship was over and I, at least, went off to be with someone else. Then we'd be back together. Then we wouldn't be. The last ten were as joyous as a relationship can be when one party is battling cancer and the other — me, in this case — tries to be as supportive as humanly possible while becoming increasingly certain the battle is not winnable.

For most of the last five, that battle was darn near a 24/7 struggle for Carolyn. As a close observer and participant, I vacillated — sometimes in the same burst of thought — between admiration for her tenacity and sadness because I knew how it would end.

The beginning of that end came one evening in April of 2016 when she was having a serious problem breathing. I took her via ambulance into an emergency room where we got her immediate short-term relief via some sort of respirator but had to wait close to six hours for a doctor who knew more about what else should be done for her.

During that period, she went to sleep — or maybe they induced it, I'm not sure — and I plunged into my iPad. If you're ever going to have to spend a lot of your life in waiting rooms and medical offices, get yourself an iPad or something comparable. I can't always get a decent Wi-Fi signal but I always have plenty of books to read via the Kindle app and games to play. I got to be so good at Sudoku that I should probably give up writing and spend my time trying to hustle suckers into playing it against me for money.

And if I do remain a writer…well, sometimes, I can write something on my iPad while waiting or even post on my blog so I don't resent waiting time so much. On more than a few occasions, I was able to use it to find a phone number or some other necessary information that would help Carolyn. I was really glad I had it and I still make a point to always have it fully-charged and to keep a portable charger fully-charged, as well.

For no visible reason the other day, I got to thinking of how technology had made her last years better. I don't mean the medical technology, which obviously helped a lot. I mean things like my iPad and her cell phone and the Amazon Echo I got her for the room she lived in for the last year-or-so in an Assisted Living facility. I expect that Amazon or some company will soon bring out one of those designed for hospital rooms or nursing homes. It will play music on voice command or summon help or phone people or whatever a confined-to-bed person needs. Carolyn's kept her company when I couldn't and it would have been difficult for her to tune in a radio.

One day when I was at the Assisted Living place, Carolyn and I heard faint cries of "Help, help!" We ran to investigate and found that two doors down from her room, a very sweet but frail elderly woman had fallen. Her room had pull-cords — one by the bed, one in the bathroom — that she could use to summon aid but she'd fallen nowhere near either.

I had learned helping my mother when she fell that in this situation, you shouldn't try to help someone to their feet. They'll probably be too wobbly and shaken for that. Instead, you place a chair — preferably a good, solid one — behind them and get them up and into that, which is what Carolyn and I did. I'm sure within minutes, someone from the nursing staff would have happened by, heard the lady's cries and done what we did, but we can all imagine a scenario when that might not have been in time. An Echo-like device that was continuously monitoring the room could have brought help almost immediately.

And yet another thing that helped was that we have services like GrubHub and DoorDash and other folks who deliver meals from restaurants. Carolyn found the food at the Assisted Living place far from delicious and also far from what she thought she should be eating. We got her a mini-refrigerator for her room and either I or my assistant John would bring her meals. When one of us couldn't get over there, Carolyn would call and tell me what she wanted and I'd order it online for her either from my home computer or my iPhone or iPad.

A nice thing about those services is that you pay (and even tip) via credit card so the recipient doesn't have to hassle with cash or cards or gratuities or anything. I could specify that her order should be delivered to the front desk of the nursing home.

But before I placed it, I'd phone whoever was at the front desk and tell them, "I'm ordering Thai food for Carolyn. Would you be on the alert for it and get it to her when it arrives? And by the way, would you like some egg rolls or pad thai? I'll pay for it." The desk folks almost always declined but they all appreciated the offer and would make sure Carolyn got her dinner.

There were other ways that being online helped — ordering prescription refills, making medical appointments, just being reachable — but I'll close with one story, not about technology helping Carolyn but about it helping my mother, who passed away in October of 2012…

My mother loved cats. She had several in her home over the years but when the last one died, she decided it would be the last one. She had too many physical problems and spent too much of her life in the hospital to take proper care of another feline. It was something she missed dearly.

As you may know, I feed feral cats in my backyard and I currently have two clients. Lydia, who's been around for more than a decade, is almost always out there. Sylvia has been coming around for almost as long to join her most evenings for dinner. For years, I had one we called The Stranger Cat who was adorable and friendly and who loved to be petted. The Stranger Cat almost never left my yard. When the gardener or the pool guy came around, The S.C. would grudgingly trudge over to a neighbor's yard and wait impatiently until they were gone. Then once they were outta there, he'd immediately return to his chosen place to lie in the sun that day and give me stares that said, "Why are you letting those people into my yard?"

Sometimes when I took my mother in for doctor appointments, we'd stop at my house on the way back to hers. Physical limitations prevented her from coming into my house — it would have been too rough on her — but I'd pull into the garage and she'd stay in the car while I went and got the Stranger Cat. She would pet him and hold him on her lap for a few minutes and it would cheer her greatly because he was so affectionate as long as you weren't a gardener or pool guy.

When the Stranger Cat died in May of 2012, I didn't tell my mother because…well, why? She didn't need any more sadness in her life. Occasionally, she'd ask me how he was doing and I'd lie and say he was fine. By this point, she was unlikely to ever be well enough to be taken to my garage to pet him.

A month before she left us, she was in a nursing home in Torrance and I was spending time with her one evening. She asked me about the Stranger Cat and I said he was doing well and he missed her and I'd take her by soon to see him, even though I knew that wouldn't happen. This was the biggest lie I ever told my mother and the only time I got away with it. She said she'd love to see him and I did what I could. I showed her a few photos I had of him on my iPad.

A bit later, I was out in the hall talking to Carolyn, who was at my house with her friend Annie. She mentioned that she'd just fed Lydia and Sylvia, and I had a sudden, fiendish idea. Sylvia looks very much like the Stranger Cat and is almost surely a younger relative of his…

Carolyn's cell phone was an old flip-phone that she loved and refused to upgrade. It would not work for my scheme but fortunately, Annie had a more modern phone and was willing to help. We set up a Facetime call between Annie's phone in my yard and my iPad which I was holding in my mother's room. Annie had her phone trained on Sylvia but we didn't tell my mother it was Sylvia. I told her she was watching the Stranger Cat live from my home.

Even if her eyes had been good, I don't think she could have seen the difference. By then, they were so bad, I could probably have had Annie aim her camera at Carolyn or even Sergio and my mother would not have known she was not looking at a live video of the Stranger Cat dining. It made her very happy so it made me very happy and Carolyn, as well. I had the sense even Sylvia liked it, though perhaps not as much as the Mixed Grill she was eating.

As any decent scholar of film history knows, after Shemp Howard died from a heart attack, four Three Stooges comedies were filmed with a stand-in pretending to be him. He has been referred to as Fake Shemp and it's obvious Donald Trump stole the whole concept of Fake News from this. Thanks to modern-day technology, we were able to create Fake Stranger Cat…and for a very good cause.