The Writer's Life 10/10 - Post Its

In a two-page spread in today's NY Post, Maureen Callahan offers the dire views of an NYU prof who thinks Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are negatives. I'm no expert, but I believe the pluses of those companies far outweigh the minuses. A very interesting chart accompanies the piece. It tapped into my love of stats. It is not available at the site, so I took a pic of it. I apologize for the poor quality: 

Also from the Post, in my own words: Opening soon in Manhattan, Zauo will offer a unique dining experience. Patrons will have the option of catching their own meal from large fish tanks. Customers can also opt not to wait for a bite, but they’ll have to pay extra if they want an attendant to make the catch. A striped bass will be $55 if a staff member fetches it, but $45 if the diner reels it in. The savings will come with a catch: You'll have to eat what you reel in - and that may be costly. A foot-and-a-half-long salmon trout will cost $110 — more than double the smaller rainbow trout, $38, and striped bass, $48, swimming in the same tank. There is no catch and release, as the restaurant claims fish are weakened upon being hooked and caught. When the customer makes a catch, an attendant will swoop in with a net, and then unhook the fish before sending it off to be prepared. This sounds like a novelty that will quickly fade, but there are 13 such venues in Japan, so who knows? Here's a pic of staff practicing:

A full page ad in the Post announces the availability of Hemp Oil, sold without a prescription. For those who don't know, hemp has similar properties to pot. I spotted bottles listed at less than $15. I pay $25 for green tea extract. I believe in the latter and would not give it up. I'm debating whether to add the former, wondering if it will diminish the aches and pains of aging. Then again, mine are so minor at present that I don't need more than an occasional dose of ibuprofen. This is one of many brands on the market:

My thanks to the kind folks who bought books today, and to the gentleman and lady who each donated a large bag's worth in which only two were discards, and that because of condition. The inventory has grown to a ridiculous proportion. I also had two requests for partnership. One guy parked in the bus stop at the curb. He had almost as many books in his back seat and trunk as I do. When I told him selling books on the street brought in only a few dollars most days, he deflated. Maxim, who bought Exchanges about a month ago, is so impressed with it that he wants to render an idea he has on a book about his experiences working for Bloomingdales for 20 years. I tried to encourage him to write it himself, but that didn't work. He's going to send his idea in an email. I dread it. My strategy right now is to say I have two books of my own to complete, which is true, although there will be many months when I will be idle in 2019.

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The Writer's Life 10/9 - Words & Pictures

What does Nikki Haley's resignation mean? I have no idea.

Philadelphia is home to the nation's oldest navy yard. At an abandoned warehouse there, U.K.-based artists Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas created this awesome homage to 1950's Hollywood sci-fi:

There is a great pic in today's NY Post of L.A. Dodgers 3B Manny Machado watching the three-homer he hit in last night's series clincher vs. the Braves. Attributed to Getty Images, I was unable to find it on the web, so I took a picture of the picture with my tiny Bell & Howell camera. While quality is lacking, it remains an awesome photo:

I've finished the first of three proof-readings of the novel I will self-publish in January. I'm happy with it, although I expect it to suffer the same sales fate as my nine other books, despite the sexual content. Lovers of erotica may feel there is too much of the other aspects of life in the way in its 290 pages. I will use two tags in the blurbs: "Not much plot, plenty of action" and "Can a novel be both explicit and meaningful?" Henry Miller was a big influence on me. His work is certainly meaningful, but can be only loosely described as novels. They seem more like memoir. Perhaps they were very early examples of the modern category of "creative non-fiction." I still have thoughts I want to add to the narrative, but formatting problems in Word have hampered me. I converted the file to PDF, and this morning I searched for sites that would allow the editing of it for free. I found a promising one, but failed to spot a way to save it to my desktop. I neglected to see if there was a way of saving work on site. I'll check again later. Whatever will be, I'll let the manuscript sit until on or about November 1st, when round two will begin.

My thanks to the woman who donated seven hardcover thrillers in Russian, all in excellent condition, and to Wolf, who bought four of them. He walked away with novels by Tom Clancy in his first language and English. My thanks also to the woman who bought a romance in Russian, and to the guy who calls me Irv, who chose a sci-fi novel; and to the young woman who always buys non-fiction, who selected two, one of them The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner by Friedrich Nietzsche.

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The Writer's Life 10/8 - Potpourri

An article in today's NY Post claims male fertility has dropped sevenfold recently. A spokesman for the study cites plastics, smoking and obesity as likely causes. The first two, especially the second, seem bunk. Wasn't smoking much more prevalent during the baby boomer era?

From Fox News, edited by yours truly: Adolf Hitler’s last surviving relatives have been living under-the-radar on Long Island for decades. His great nephews Alexander, Louis and Brian Stuart-Houston, the only living descendants on the paternal side, live quiet lives and fly American flags in their yards. They are the sons of Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler, who was born in the UK to the Fuhrer’s half-brother, Alois Hitler Jr.. Alois moved to the USA and joined the Navy during WWII. After the war, he moved to Patchogue with his German wife and changed the family name — first to Hiller and then Stuart-Houston. One of their neighbors who knows what's what said they’re “excellent people.”

The ease with which the Jets dispatched the Broncos yesterday was very surprising. I expected the Giants to lose on the road at Carolina, but not because of a last second 63-yard field goal. It's still too soon to evaluate this year's first round picks of New York's teams, but QB Sam Darnold and RB Saquon Barkley seem to have been wise choices... Mason Crosby has had a fantastic career as Green Bay's field goal career, connecting on almost 80% of his attempts since his rookie year of 2007. He suffered a nightmare yesterday, missing four of five and an extra-point in his team's eight-point loss at Detroit. Watching the highlights at youtube was painful. I bet he didn't get much sleep last night. Geez... Speaking of field goal kickers, the kid doing it for the Texas Longhorns has picked up a catchy moniker: Cameron Dicker the Kicker.

RIP John Gagliardi, 91, winningest college football coach in history. He spent 60 years as the head man at Division III St. John's College in Minnesota, amassing 489 wins. His teams qualified for the post-season 24 times and won four national titles. Well done, goombah. Here's a pic:

My thanks to the woman who bought a book in Russian, and to the gentleman who donated two large bags of books that included a lot of obscure sci-fi, Tom Clancy thrillers, and interesting non-fiction, more good stuff for the public to ignore.

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The Writer's Life 10/7 - Author, Artist, Actor, Bears

Four articles in today's NY Post provided fodder for the blog:

Dacre Stoker, 60, is the great grandson of Bram, the creator of one of literature's and film's most enduring characters, Dracula. With the help of a co-writer, the Montreal native has put together pieces of his ancestor’s lost literary legacy. The result is Dracul, a pre-quel to the 1897 classic. Stoker and J.D. Barker discovered that the publishers edited out the first 101 pages of the original manuscript. To find what went missing, the men tracked down other editions and combed through letters and journals. Some of the new novel’s material was drawn from interviews with cousins across Canada and England. Here's the cover:

A work by street artist Banksy shredded itself after being auctioned off for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s in London — and the buyer may be left holding the scraps. Just after bidding closed an alarm sounded and the piece fell through a shredder the artist secretly built into the picture frame, slicing Girl with Balloon into strips that dropped from the bottom of the work. A broker said: “This is now part of art history in its shredded state, and we’d estimate Banksy has added at a minimum 50% increase to its value.” Here are side by sides, before and during:

RIP consummate actor Scott Wilson, 76, best known for his portrayal of Hershel in 37 episodes of The Walking Dead. He did so much more. There are 81 titles under his name at IMDb. Although he was never nominated for an Oscar, he received critical acclaim for his chilling portrayal of one of the killers, opposite Robert Blake, in In Cold Blood (1967). He received a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in the screen adaption of William Peter Blatty's novel, The Ninth Configuration (1980). He was perhaps the best aspect of the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. He was also in The Right Stuff (1983), an episode of The X-Files, one of Law & Order, and nine of CSI, to name a few. Here's a quote attributed to him: "When you arrive to a set and you see the sky all lit up and the sets all lit up, for me it is very exhilarating and it's a lot of fun. It's really fun to see that and to be a part of it. It's just like going to the circus." Well Done, sir. Thank you.

President Trump has another victory. An article in today's Post dubs supporters of Justice Kavanaugh as "Mama Bears" and suggests they are galvanizing for the mid terms, just as female Democrats are.

My thanks to the young woman who bought Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, the only sale of today's session in Park Slope.

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The Writer's Life 10/6 - Jolly

My Friday night movie fix, courtesy of Netflix, traveled all the way back to 1930. Morocco was Marlene Dietrich's American debut, and she is mesmerizing as a cabaret performer who falls for a Legionnaire played by Gary Cooper. Both were in their late 20's at the time. Dietrich does a number each in French and English. In the film's most famous scene, she is in top hat and tux, and kisses a woman during the performance. This, of course, was in Hollywood's pre-code days. The situation is complicated by the soldier's ambiguous attitude toward woman, which allows a rich man, played by Adolphe Menjou, to make it a love triangle. Menjou seemed the same age, fortyish, throughout his long career. I chuckle whenever I see him, having read what a nasty piece of work he was off screen. Anyway, I was surprised at how modern the acting was. Usually, in work from this period, the techniques used in the recently ended silent era linger, are obvious and seem out of place. Dietrich does wonderful, subtle things with her hands throughout the narrative. She was nominated for an Oscar, as was director Josef von Sternberg, with whom she worked seven times. The pace is measured. The major flaw is a lack of character development, back stories. Although there are leaps in the plot, the story is easy to follow through its 92-minute running time. The closing sequence is awesome, despite being open ended. Jules Furthman adapted the screenplay from the novel Amy Jolly by Benno Signy. The sets seem authentic, although I've never been to Morocco. Filming was done in California and Arizona. Obviously, von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes were great artists. According to his bio at IMDb, the auteur was also a hardcase. I wonder how he and Menjou got along during the shoot. To my chagrin, I was unable to find specifics on a piano solo that plays in the background at several points. Man, it fit perfectly. 4600+ folks at IMDb have rated Morocco, forging to a consensus of 7.2 on a scale of ten. The print is first rate. If there were any flaws, I didn't notice. Kudos to the restorers. Here's a pic of the stars in character:

From Yahoo's Odd News, edited by yours truly: After seeing reports of meteorite pieces selling for thousands of dollars, a Michigan man took his doorstop to be examined. He'd found it in a barn he bought in 1988. The farmer who owned it said the rock landed in his backyard in the 1930's and was dug out of the crater created upon impact. It's worth $100,000. The Smithsonian and a mineral museum in Maine are considering purchasing it. It weighs 22.5 pounds. Here's a pic:

My thanks to the kind folks who bought books today on Bay Parkway. Here's what sold: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Stephen King's Cujo and Firestarter, three books in Russian, and a young adult novel about a pro baseball catcher.

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The Writer's Life 10/5 - Pretty, Pretty Peggy Sue

From Yahoo News, heavily edited by yours truly: The woman Buddy Holly sang about in 1957 passed away on October 1st. Peggy Sue Gerron was 78. In a great bit of trivia, the song was originally titled Cindy Lou, after Holly’s niece. Holly wrote it with producer Norman Petty and Crickets' drummer Jerry Allison, who persuaded his pal to change the name in order to impress his girlfriend, with whom he was having a spat. When the band reformed after the plane crash that killed Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens, she traveled with the group. She and Allison eventually divorced. She attended junior college and became a dental assistant. Her second husband was a plumber, and she became California’s first female licensed woman plumber. When her mom fell ill she returned to her hometown, Lubbock, Texas, where she became a celebrity speaker, columnist, and radio host for a show called Rave On, which is, of course, the title of another Holly hit. In her later years she worked preventing domestic violence and drug abuse. In 2008 she released Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?: A Memoir by Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue, in which she included 150 of the entries of the diary she kept back in the day. Each year on February 3rd, "the day the music died," she left a single red rose at Holly’s grave. Here's the cover of her book:

A blurb in today's NY Post reports the results of a scientific study. Harvard researchers have found that increasing the number of wind turbines to create energy will increase temperatures. They also maintain that it will still be better for the environment than fossil fuels. I doubt zealots will be happy with this half a loaf is better than none report.

I get it - Dez Bryant is a jerk, but so are many NFL players. Why won't anyone sign him? Have his skills diminished, or is there more to this story? Last season he caught 69 passes, averaging twelve yards per reception.

My thanks to the kind folks who bought books today, and to the gentleman who donated a large bag filled with mostly non-fiction, much of it intellectually challenging. He lost his job recently, fell way behind on his rent, and is being evicted. He will keep his most cherished titles, and give the rest to me a little at time. Like so many of my donors, he cannot bring himself to throw away books.

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The Writer's Life 10/4 - Yes, My Fellow Travelers

From the NY Post's Weird But True column, in my own words: A Brit who claims to be a time traveler has passed a polygraph test. He says that he's met telepathic robot-human hybrids in 8973, and that everyone will be time-traveling by 2028. Holy smoke - I may be alive to experience it! Remember the advice George Costanza gave Jerry when he was about to undergo a polygraph administered by the policewoman he was dating, who didn't believe he didn't watch Melrose Place: "It’s not a lie… if you believe it.” Here's a pic of the real Dr. Who, who has terrible news for liberals - President Trump will be re-elected:

An article in the Post reports that 88 million Americans - one in three - eat fast food each day. That should set the killjoys off.

From Yahoo's Odd News, in my own words: Police in northern Minnesota have been getting calls about birds that seem drunk. They are inebriated. They've been ingesting berries that have fermented earlier than usual this year because of an early frost. Authorities say they'll eventually sober up. Here's one of the offenders:

It appears Brett Kavanaugh has passed his seventh FBI investigation. This should satisfy liberals  - not!

My thanks to the middle age woman who bought the Danielle Steel translation in Russian, and to Ira who purchased a trivia book, and Creative Dreaming: Plan And Control Your Dreams to Develop Creativity, Overcome Fears, Solve Problems, and Create a Better Self by Patricia Garfield, and The Manhattan Madam: Sex, Drugs, Scandal And Greed Inside America's Most Successful Prostitution Ring by Kristin Davis. Special thanks to the Latino gentleman who parked his bike and, as usual, paid a lot more than I asked, this time for a little booklet, threeXthree, titled Desire.

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