Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 4/12

It was raining lightly as I headed for the shelter of the viaduct at Avenue Z. It soon ceased, but the wind picked up and the temperature dropped, and for the first time in two weeks the floating bookshop ended up with bupkis.
A few nights ago I revisited True Romance (1993), courtesy of Netflix. Tony Scott directed Quentin Tarantino's screenplay. Although it is not on the level of Reservoir Dogs or Jackie Brown, it has the over-the-top brio of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds, and the in-your-face dialogue that is a Tarantino hallmark. Two scenes stand out: Gary Oldman's bizarro turn as a dread-locked wannabe black drug dealer, and a verbal exchange about Sicilians between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper. Christian Slater and the irresistible Patricia Arquette are the leads out to prove love conquers all. James Gandolfini has a memorable smackdown with Arquette, and Samuel L. Jackson has a brief scene early in the film. Val Kilmer, whose face is never scene, plays Slater's alter ego, the ghost of Elvis - as I said: Over The Top. The film is particularly notable for those of us who grew up in the Bensonhurst-Bath Beach sections of Brooklyn, as Frank Adonis, who lived above a store on Bath Avenue, has a supporting role as one of the mafia henchmen, as he did in Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull etc., etc.. Adonis actually was the lead player once, in One Deadly Road (1998), as a boss with a hyena-like laugh. I'm not sure if it was one of those straight to video films. If it had a theatrical run, it certainly wasn't long. I would have never have heard of it had I not run into a young man I once coached at Lafayette High School, Charlie Addessi, who has been on the fringes of the movie business for a long time, as I am on the fringes of the book world. He was involved somehow, although I did not find his name among the production credits at allmovie.com. I don't know if Adonis still lives in that apartment, but his presence there proves that even those who have appeared in first rate films have not necessarily achieved a significant degree of success. According to IMDB, he has 32 credits. Who knows, perhaps the fact that he has not been spotted in the neighborhood for a while means he has gone Hollywood.
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Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 4/4

Nice comeback from yesterday's fiasco. Sold a Melissa Etheridge CD to a mailman and a bunch of soft and hard cover books, including a large one on the history of the CIA, part of Arlynn's vast donation, which included three children's books I sold to a nice Russian lady, among them the wildly popular Sponge Bob. One of my regulars, a woman with a beautiful islands accent, emerged from hibernation to buy, in mint condition, James Patterson's I, Alex Cross. "I didn't want to go out of the house," she said with a shudder, lamenting the long winter.
The highlight of the session was the appearance of my buddy Bob Rubenstein, author of Ghost Runners. He is hard at work on his follow up and is becoming weary of Nazis. I quipped that he should do what Quentin Tarantino did at the end of Inglorious Basterds - a cathartic killing of them all that flies in the face of actual history. He looked at me and said: "You just gave me the ending to the book." He will kill off the Nazis and the corporate people, like Henry Ford, who did business with them. That would be fun. I can see it, something like a mock trial and a death sentence. Bob will have plenty of time to work it out. He is leaving on a three week trip to New Mexico on Friday, by train, a conveyance he finds conducive to writing. I'd go nuts. I did a 30 or so hour trip to Kalamazoo my first semester at Western Michigan University. Hated every minute of it. From then on it was airlines.
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