PFA goes insane! About time!

The good folks at PFA have finally got their act together and put together 3 amazing programs that should occupy most of your evenings in July and August. The first is a celebration of United Artists' 90th anniversary, and the second features must see widescreen classics - if you've only seen these on DVD you're kidding yourselves that you've seen them. The third is a good noir mashup featuring the works of David Goodis. Goodis was the first Walter Tevis.

Hots on for Nowhere

James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia may or may not be his best book. It’s the first book in his LA Quartet and certainly his first major work. I read early period Ellroy about eight years ago and none of it resonates save for his first book Brown’s Requiem which was not good. The Black Dahlia is something quite different from early Ellroy and the entire hardboiled genre. It’s a procedural with a first person narration, and that’s about the end of similarities with other novels set in postwar LA. The narrator is a buck tooth pug turned cop named Bucky. Children make fun of his face. He has a Kraut father who had a wartime crush on Hitler. Bucky ratted on his two best friends – two innocent Japanese kids – to get his job with the LAPD. His mother died from drinking bad moonshine.

This is not your mother’s Sue Grafton novel. This is hopped up pistol whipping pimp shakedown negro wasting Los Angeles. The city’s a nightmare of brokedown and built up, and as Bucky and the other cops move between the scum and glitz they lose their cool and calm. Then the body of a girl is found near the corner of 39th and Norton – she’s been cut in half, organs removed, and tortured – and cops lose their minds.

The press plays up the case and the PD hunkers down to find out who did Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. Turns out Ms. Cut-in-half wasn’t much of a wall flower; she tricked and tossed and rubbed knees for cash, drinks and cigarettes. Bucky’s partner Lee gets hopped on speed to counter the horror of the dead girl, and it turns him into a near lunatic. Ellroy investigates smart angles and there are no short cuts in the book. Ellroy has fun with historical and made up names and gives a pretty good conclusion to a true life murder case that remains unsolved.

Walter Tevis’ published his first novel The Hustler in 1959. The film version that everyone knows came out two years later, and the surprise in the combination of narrative and film is that they are vastly different works of art and both are superb. In Tevis’ book we find a rather straight redemption story with Fast Eddie Felson as the protagonist who has to unlearn the smalltime hustler’s game. He wants the brass ring and needs to graft the traits and thoughts of a winner onto his brain. Assisting the education is the selfish character Bert who guides Eddie toward the brass while Eddie fights the lessons instilled by his former manager and flunky Charlie.

The book’s centerpiece, whereby Eddie receives the thunderbolt of epiphany, comes during a billiard game at the home of the swishy Kentuckian Findlay. The breakdown that Findlay suffers as the game progresses gives Eddie a glance into his own horrible meltdown against Minnesota Fats, which is the book’s first big showdown scene.

And then there’s the woman. In the film she’s Sarah Packard but in the book she’s just Sarah and she all but disappears when Fast Eddie breaks for Kentucky with Bert. At that point the book and film diverge and they both conclude admirably. It’s Eddie who emerges as the ferocious individual, replacing Bert and his cronies in their grownup schoolyard power games. The book is slightly ambiguous about Eddie’s signoff at the end, but only slightly. A reader knows Eddie’s got the upper hand imprinted in his psyche now, and he can use it wherever he finds the next big score.

Name the Author

Today's "prescient" quiz- name the dead American writer who penned the following on September 12, 2001- googlers will be shot-

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job -- armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing.

The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

My Amis True

The weekend is here, so avail yourself of some Kingsley Amis on Drink-

One Coping with the Physical Hangover

If your wife or other partner is beside you, and (of course) is willing, perform the sexual act as vigorously as you can. The exercise will do you good, and- on the assumption that you enjoy sex- you will feel toned up emotionally, thus delivering a hit-and-run raid on your metaphysical hangover (M.H.) before you formally declare war on it. Warnings- 1. if you are in bed with somebody you should not be in bed with, and have in the least degree a bad conscience about this, abstain. Guilt and shame are prominent constituents of the M.H., and will certainly be sharpened by indulgence on such an occasion 2. For the same generic reason, do not take the matter into your own hands if you awake by yourself.

The ideal arrangement, very much worth the trouble and expense if you are anything of a serious drinker, is a shower fixed over the bath. Run a bath as hot as you can bear and lie in it as long as you can bear. When it becomes too much, stand up and have a hot shower, then lie down again and repeat the sequence. This is time well spent. Warning- Do not do this unless you are quite sure your heart and the rest of you will stand it. I would find it most disagreeable to be accused of precipitating your death, especially in court.

On Coping with the Metaphysical Hangover

When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness, (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is, and there is no use crying over spilt milk.

The Boozing Man's Diet

The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree. Well, and it should be simple: no charts, tables, menus, recipes. None of these pages of fusspottery which normally end- end, after you have wasted minutes ploughing your way through- "and of course no alcohol" in tones of fatuous apology for laying tongue to something so pikestaff-plain. Of course? No alcohol? What kind of people do they think we are?

Music of 1H08

This is it to date-What I listened to so far this year. Please give me your best of/worst of and we can compare notes (ie fight).

The Black Keys- Attack and Release. The use of trendy Danger Mouse as a producer could have really sucked. Instead it adds some nice touches. Love Dan Auerbach's fat blues guitar. Hot shit.

Cheap Time-Too Late. Good, but not as great as I had hoped. The vocals sound way too kid-like and precious. Be a man and quit with the cutesy shit. B-.

CoCoComa- s/t. Solid garage rock. I could do without the organ, which sounds rinky dinky at times, but worth it over all. B+.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring (1st one)- A Ken Derr rec. Extremely catchy. My 17 yo little sister likes it too. Reminds me of Wire. A.

Hex Dispensors- s/t. Sort of like the Ramones, but heavier. Every song is in the same time measure. But what the fuck? It works. B+.

Looking Glass "Brandy" Absolutely brilliant song. It has it all- story lyrics, over the top instrumentation and terrific arrangements (check out the horns). This is what 70s session musicians sounded like, I guess. Terrific. A+.

The Pink Fits-super mini lp. Maybe the best album here. Just straight up rocknroll, all loud and ragged as hell. A.

Black Time- Blackout. Kinda sucks. The Cramps without talent. D+.

Beasts of Bourbon- Little Animals- 2 or 3 good songs. The rest are poorly written and just so bleak in sentiment it bums me out listening to this for more than 10 minutes straight. C.

Carbon/Silicon- Jones and James are UK punk royalty. Sadly age hasnt provided any insight. Tell me how a 50 yo can seriously write a tune called Why Do Men Fight? The answer obviously is bc they're forced to endure trite shit like this. My God. D-.

Dirtbombs- the latest one. Still sounds crappy. Just bad songs IMHO. C.

Betty Wright-I Love the Way You Love. Mojo mag had a guide to the best of female soul singers. This was on it. Betty has a terrific voice and the whole album just exudes a 70s black vibe that I totally dig. The last golden era of black music for me. A-.

On The Road

The past weekend's getaway to the upstate was grand but too short. The fiscal year is closing and I'm getting antsy. North? Far North? South? Guatemala? I'm getting the urge to burn some rubber, mark some long hours, and see the world. Your presence is requested. I have one blocked weekend in mid-July but the rest is crystal in the clear. Where in the world can we go?

Apocalypse Orange

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, June 23 (UPI) -- Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.

The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment.

Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization. "You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."