Category Archives: Book Corner

01/06/2012
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America the Beautiful, Bloomington High School North, Book Corner, Ernest Hemingway, Habitat for Humanity, It's A Wonderful Life, Our Lady of the Angels, Pearl Tristano, Republican Party, Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree, Vaneta Becker

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.” — Ernest Hemingway. Today’s temperatures should reach the 60s in South Central Indiana.

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BOOKS MAKE A HOME

I’ll scream if I hear anyone saying teachers get paid too much. Or that they don’t deserve collective bargaining rights.

Granted, there are lousy teachers. Hell, I was saddled with, oh, seven of them through my eight years of elementary school. The one outstanding teacher I had, Miss Tristano in fifth grade, was a full-fledged hero. She’d been teaching at Our Lady of the Angels in December, 1958, when fire tore through the school and killed 92 kids and three nuns.

Iconic Image Of The Our Lady Of The Angels Fire

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Anyway, a teacher doesn’t necessarily have to brave an inferno to do heroic things. Take Kathy Loser, the librarian over at Bloomington High School North.

She visits the Book Corner regularly. She dropped in Wednesday, all aflutter. She was consumed by a brilliant new idea that she hopes the school and the bookshop will buy into.

Kathy Loser

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Here it is:

BHSN is one of the few schools in the nation to sponsor a Habitat for Humanity chapter. The kids have been helping build a home for a family with a couple of young children. The house will be ready to move into next month.

Kathy was watching — what else? — “It’s A Wonderful Life” over the holidays. When she got to the point where the Italian family moves into their new home and the neighbors all welcomed them with gifts of wine and groceries, housewarming seed gifts as it were, Kathy got a brainstorm.

Why not present the new family with seed gifts for a new home library?

Her plan is simple. Some of the kids can make a wooden bookscase for the place. Kids in the social studies classes can draw up a list of kids’ books and some standard reference works that every home should have.

Then, with the help of the attractive and charming Book Corner staff, a kind of new home library registry can be created.

BHSN parents and other citizens can come to the shop whenever they need to purchase gifts for their kids or other family and friends. Only the recipients won’t keep the gifts. The customers will select a book from the registry, buy it in the recipient’s name, and the book will be packaged with all the other such gifts and presented to the new home family along along with the bookcase on the day the move in.

What a great idea!

Kathy Loser is so gung-ho for it that she actually bought the first book. It’s “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. “Every home should have this, don’t you think?” Kathy asked as she plunked the book down on the counter.

I think indeed.

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Give Kathy a call at the school, 812.330.7724, ext. 50197, to let her know you like the idea or to make suggestions for the registry or even to donate time or money to the cause.

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THE DEFINITIVE REPUBLICAN

What is a Republican?

Someone who espouses financial prudence?

A backer of strong defense?

An opponent of strong federal regulations?

A pro-lifer?

Look no further than State Senator Vaneta Becker, who represents the Evansville area in the statehouse. Oh, she’s a Republican.

Becker: “Do It My Way Or Else. That’s Freedom!”

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The Republican, in fact, at this weird, weird moment in American history.

Becker has introduced SB 122 this week. It calls for strict standards to be set for the performance of the national anthem at school events. Performers who violate those standards would be fined.

She says the proposed standards would reflect “how we feel about freedom.”

Not habeas corpus. Not the Bill of Rights (except for the sacred Second). Not torture. Not wiretapping. Not personal information harvesting. Not any of the things that Republicans and their all-too-willing Democratic apologists have created or destroyed in response the the specter of scary brown people.

Nope. The national anthem. That, Becker says, is our freedom.

Becker is the modern Republican.

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AMERICA, THE BEAUTIFUL

This is a better song than the “Star Spangled Banner” anyway. And no one could sing it like Ray Charles.

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12/23/2011
2 Comments
670 The Score, Air Jordan 11 Retro, Animal Tool Behavior, Book Corner, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, College Sports, Dan Bernstein, Erik Estrada, Herald Times, Home Improvement, Indianapolis Zoo, Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, Julia Karr, Morning Edition, Nike, NPR, Penn State University, Robert Shumaker, Ron Jeremy, Tammy Faye, Tim Allen, Trishelle Cannatella, Truth, XVI

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“… Tammy Faye calls me and Ron Jeremy calls me. Erik Estrada sends me a Christmas card every year.” — reality show mannequin Trishelle Cannatella, testifying that even celebrity zombies enjoy Christmas.

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A GIFTMAS CAROL

Hah! The Herald Times put my mug shot up. Must be a slow news day.

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ANIMAL MECHANICS

Some pretty smart cookies live and work at the Indy Zoo. And I’m not just talking about the keepers and the animal researchers there.

Rob Shumaker is one of the alpha males at the zoo. He’s the boss of the Life Sciences department and is a world renowned expert on orangutans. He and two other critter scientists have written a book that dispels many of the notions we have about animals using tools. I’m not revealing too much by saying it isn’t just monkeys, apes, Republicans, and humans who use tools.

Shumaker

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The book, “Animal Tool Behavior,” co-written with Kristina R. Walkup and Benjamin B. Beck, asserts that brain size and general smarts don’t determine which creatures use tools, as has been considered gospel until now. Wasps, spiders, dolphins, polar bears, and a host of other species could just as easily as Tim Allen been the star of “Home Improvement.” Maybe easier.

Guess: One Of These Two Is An Animal, The Other Is A TV Star

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Wasps use rocks to smooth out soil. Some spiders throw sticky balls at flying insects and reel them in for supper.

The more we Homo Sapiens sapiens learn, the more we realize we (and Republicans) ain’t so special after all.

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YES, BUT DO THEY USE TOOLS?

So, Nike has introduced a new pair of ugly sneakers, the Air Jordan 11 Retros. And — wouldn’t you know it? — some of Indianapolis’ finest citizens rioted at a couple of locations when they went on sale yesterday.

Just Looking At These Makes Me Want To Go Out And Break Windows

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

A no-spamily, no-brattle zone.

◗ Bloomington author Julia Karr scored big with her teen dystopia novel “XVI.” Now, she’s back with the sequel, “Truth.”

Don’t take chances; buy both.

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◗ Don’t these guys ever learn? The business-suited baboons at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are discontinuing their charitable giving for 2012. This despite the fact that the mob of them made a pretty penny — $826 million, to be more precise — last year. Oh, and the cartel also has some $750 million just laying around — cash reserves, they call it. But, sorry kids, there ain’t enough to spare for your schools.

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◗ Hundreds of football ironheads from Penn State University have signed a fawning letter of support for their embattled former coach, Joe Paterno. Sports yapper Dan Bernstein of CBS-owned 670 The Score dismantles the letter point by point. Paterno, you may recall, heard about his pal Jerry Sandusky being seen sodomizing a little boy in the Penn State shower room. He grudgingly told his putative superiors (in truth, no one at PSU was superior to Joe Pa) and promptly forgot the whole thing. Meanwhile, Sandusky allegedly continued to have his way with young kids.

This is a tough thing for me to say in Bloomington, Indiana, but the more I learn about big-time college sports, the more it turns my stomach.

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12/21/2011
1 Comment
Age of Enlightenment, Angels, Avian Flu, Barack Obama, Bioterrorism, Bird Flu, Bloom Magazine, Book Corner, Christianity, Davy Jones, Evolution, George Carlin, George W. Bush, Katy Perry, Krista Detor, Monkees, National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, NPR, Psychic, Scientific Method, Super Bowl, Tim Tebow, USSR

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.” — George Carlin

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LOOK OUT, KATY PERRY

Bloomington chanteuse Krista Detor’s star is getting bigger by the day. Not only is she the subject of a breathless profile in the current issue of Bloom magazine, but tix to her shows are almost as hot as Indy Super Bowl ducats.

She wandered into the Book Corner yesterday, looking for last minute gifts. She told this nosy bookseller/correspondent that her holiday show last week at the Bloomington Convention Center was the biggest yet.

Krista’s 6th annual benefit blast, “Once Upon a Time,” packed the center’s Great Room a week ago tomorrow.

Better grab your chance to see her soon before she starts filling up those big arenas around the Midwest — or even the entire nation!

Krista! Krista! Krista!

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SECRETS, SECRETS, AND MORE SECRETS

Many of my leftie pals have been screaming to high heaven about the US government’s alleged propensity these days to engage in undercover hijinks, manipulation of information, and generally act like the USSR-lite.

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The Obama Administration — and the Bush Gang before it — claims it must keep the citizenry safe from all manner of mayhem.

Here’s a development from NPR‘s Nell Greenfieldboyce. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity is urging the feds not to release the findings of government-funded research into bird flu mutation to the public. Their rationale — bioterrorists might take the info and create a virulent strain of the virus to unleash on target cities.

Terrorist?

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Usually, federally-funded research is promptly released to scientific journals and even to the mainstream media. The normal follow-up to the time-honored scientific method is to publish findings so other scientists can test and, if needed, poke holes in a new theory. This last step, the Board is saying, is a little too risky in this case.

One aspect of the lab work has been to fiddle with the virus’ genes. Scientists already have developed a strain that is far more contagious than the original.

So, it’s the right to know versus a crippling bio-attack.

Don’t know what my suspicious pals are going to say about this one.

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WHERE WE ARE TODAY

This is America, some 300 years after the Age of Enlightenment began.

A 17-year-old California boy was sentenced this week to 21 years in prison for assassinating in cold blood a high school classmate who was gay.

Judge, Jury, And Executioner

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A young boy in Washington battled a flesh-eating bacterium in 2006. Doctors expected him to die. He didn’t. Relatives had placed a relic of some Mohawk woman at his bedside. Now Pope Benedict XVI says the whole thing was a “miracle” and will declare the woman a saint next year.

Kids: “You Got A Spare Miracle For Us?”

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NFL quarterback Tim Tebow is a flamboyant Christian. He kneels and prays every chance he gets on the football field. His team has won a bunch of games. Some fans argue that the creator of the Universe is interceding on his behalf.

God: “Nah. I’m Busy With This Football Game.”

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A little baby has been missing in Kansas City since October 4. A Dallas psychic has claimed to have had a vision of where the kid is buried. A party of volunteers actually went searching for her in the area where the psychic said she was. The kid, natch, wasn’t there.

The Renowned Crime Investigator

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And, of course, the old standby: 72 percent of Americans believe in angels while only 45 percent believe in the theory of evolution.

Sigh.

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I’M A BELIEVER

Yep, the Monkees.

BTW: For all the rage surrounding Davy Jones back in the ’60s, he sure looks dorky trying to keep time to the beat, doesn’t he? And did you notice he’s a monobrow? And his face is shiny?

Oh, alright, I’m still envious of him.

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12/13/2011
1 Comment
Abortion, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Book Corner, Dawn Johnsen, Department of Justice, Indiana University, John Hamilton, Maurer School of Law, Mike Royko, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Office of Legal Counsel, Ryder, Walmart

The Pencil Today:

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DOES THAT INCLUDE ME?

My idol, Mike Royko: “It has been my policy to view the Internet not as an ‘information highway,’ but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.”

Royko

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NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE

At long last, I can throw my enthusiastic support behind the Occupy Movement.

I’ve been fairly tepid in my backing of the three-month-old grass-roots protest. Staging a Boy Scout Jamboree in People’s Park won’t do the job when the corporate and legislative forces of the mightiest nation in the history of the Earth are aligned against you.

Occupy Bloomington

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Yesterday, things changed.

Women’s defense courses teach a few tricks when a person faces a much stronger foe. A man may menace a woman, towering over her, possessing twice her brawn, but if she carefully aims a knee or a toe at those little ovoid organs dangling between his thighs, the contest will suddenly — seemingly magically —  be evened.

Occupiers aimed a swift kick at the balls Monday. Protesters tried to shut down ports in Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, and Portland with varying degrees of success. Others tried to interfere with operations at Walmart distribution centers in Salt Lake City and Denver.

“The Man” isn’t writhing on the ground just yet. He may never. But yesterday was a nice start.

Occupy Protesters Block The Port Of Oakland

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THE CRUSADING JOURNALIST

So, having spent Sunday night writing up my Top Ten Local Political Stories in 2011 article for the Ryder magazine, I felt awfully smug and snarky.

I chided both parties, wondered when there’d be a funeral for the local Republican party, gave a justifiable raspberry to the entire Indiana General Assembly, guessed that a certain elected official had nightmares about wearing a county correctional center jumpsuit, and repeated unflattering speculation about how an unsuccessful mayoral candidate raised his hefty war chest this past spring.

Heading Out To Pasture

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In fact, I fairly bullied that candidate, a harmless fellow named John Hamilton. His wife, it so happens, is a fairly well-known former Washington appointee, Dawn Johnsen.

Johnsen, you may recall, served under Bill Clinton in the Office of Legal Counsel. When Barack Obama took office, he nominated her to be the head of that office. The Republicans dug into her past and discovered that she’d once or twice uttered a sentence about abortion that didn’t conclude with her demanding that women who’d had one ought to be horsewhipped.

Naturally, GOP Senators tripped all over themselves trying to paint her as something akin to a blood-soaked abortionist herself. They held up her appointment in 2009, then adjourned. Obama renominated her in 2010 and, yup, the Republicans held it up again. Finally, after months of sitting around and waiting, Johnsen stuck her tongue out at the whole of Washington, withdrew her name from consideration, and came back home to Bloomington.

She seems happy enough teaching constitutional law here at Indiana University.

Johnsen At Her Nomination Hearing

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Hamilton, on the other hand, has led a less headline-worthy life. Were it not for his fortuitous taste in brides, I implied, he might not be given a second thought as a mayoral candidate.

I echoed the oft-repeated whisper that his campaign contribution pot of gold might have been the result of Maurer School of Law faculty members feeling compelled to write generous checks to him as a way of currying favor with their esteemed colleague, his wife.

I even referred to him as Mr. Dawn Johnsen.

It was 21st Century journalism at its finest. I proved myself to be witty, bold, sassy, and ready at the drop of a hat to point and gawk at people in power and those who want to be. And hidden somewhere among all that brilliant verbiage might even have been an atom of truth.

Okay, maybe an electron.

Hell, Bloomington’s a small town, really, and everybody knows everybody else’s gossip. Especially politicians and IU faculty members.

Hamilton might even be the next Congressman from the great state o’Indiana’s 9th District. That’s part of the gossip, too — that his mayoral tilt was really a test run for a bigger prize.

Hamilton’s Real Goal?

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One of the hazards of being a professional smart-ass is the fear that one day one of my subjects might walk up and jab me one in the nose. Worry not, though. I figure that John Hamilton is too much of a refined gentleman to flatten my snout. Plus, it’d look bad for a guy trying to run for Congress having to explain why he assaulted and battered a beloved blogger.

Everybody’s happy, right?

I thought so until yesterday afternoon. I was blissfully peddling tomes at the Book Corner at about 2:30 when who walks in but Dawn Johnson herself.

My body froze but my mind raced. Oh sweet Jesus! She’s here to tear my head off. Oh holy god, here she comes!

But Johnsen strode past me. I exhaled. What am I worried about? She’s a big time lawyer. She’s too smart to bloody up some knuckleheaded snark-meister.

Probably Some Journalist

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She headed for the back of the store where Margaret, the boss, holds forth.

Oh no. No, no. She’s gonna demand that I be fired. I love this job. I get to hang out among books and readers and meet everybody in town. I even get paid a couple of pennies a week to do it. Oh, what an idiot I am! Why do I have to be such a smart-ass?

I watched as Johnsen conferred earnestly with Margaret. They took an awfully long time, talking about my future. Jeez, I thought, let’s get it over with.

I figured, All you gotta do is tell Margaret that nobody in town’ll ever shop in her store again as long as she keeps that no-good, insulting, smart-aleck, so-called journalist in her employ.

But then I shook my head clear. What the hell am I thinking? The piece hasn’t run yet for pity’s sake! I haven’t turned it in. I haven’t even finished it!

Hahahaha! What a dope I am. I felt like dancing among the stacks.

Johnsen came up to the checkout counter and placed a kid’s book down. “Everything alright?” I asked, my voice cracking the tiniest bit.

Oh sure, she said. She added that she’d ordered another children’s book from Margaret. That’s what had taken so long.

I snorted. Johnsen looked at me, puzzled.

I couldn’t stop myself. “I gotta tell ya…,” I began. I told her the whole story of my little panic attack moments before. Well, not exactly the whole story; I left out the Mr. Dawn Johnsen part.

“And, I swear to god, I thought you were gonna clunk me on the head,” I concluded.

Johnsen laughed. “Oh,” she said, “I’d never do that!”

I handed her the kid’s book in a bag. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “You’re a great sport.”

“I can’t wait to read your piece,” she said. And then she was gone.

I smiled as she went out the door. I watched her walk down Walnut Street, the smile still plastered on my face. For at that moment it occurred to me: Dawn Johnsen and her husband, John Hamilton, are going to read my story.

Sure, she’d never clunk me on the head. But is John Hamilton really all that harmless?

Yeesh. The things you have to worry about when you’re a crusading, smart-assed blogger and so-called journalist.

Does He Pack A Punch?

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12/09/2011
1 Comment
A Home of Her Own, Barack Obama, Beach Boys, Book Corner, David Baker, Katha Pollitt, Leo Cook, Molly Ivins, Monika Herzig, Nancy R. Hiller, Peter LoPilato, Plan B One-Step, R.E. Paris, Ryder, Sex-Positive Feminism, Sub-prime Loans, Susie Bright, The Giant Gila Monster, The Nation, University of Evansville, WFIE, XKCD

The Pencil Today:

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THE TRUTH ABOUT MOLLY

“I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.” Molly Ivins said it. I wish I could have had the pleasure of spending a long night drinking beer and raising hell with her. She was my kind of gal; she had a dog named Shit. She died of breast cancer in 2007.

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TOO DUMB TO SUCCEED

Maybe the hyenas who run the big outfits that foisted that flood of sub-prime loans upon us, driving us into a world of underfunded schools, unemployment, lost retirement nest eggs, and such are right when they say they’re special because they’re smart.

After all, these eels created “financial instruments” that were inscrutable, made them gobs of dough, and collapsed several investment banks and other financial institutions. Still they roam the streets free.

They are smart. Immoral, bestial, craven, and nefarious, sure. But smart.

As opposed to the man who stole a tuba, valued at $3500, from the University of Evansville. WFIE Channel 14 in the southern Indiana town reports that Kevin Neal called a local music store saying he had a tuba he wanted to sell. The music store owner said come on over. While waiting for Neal, the storekeep got a call from the music director at the U of E, saying — you guessed it — the school’s tuba had been stolen.

This Is Not A Financial Instrument

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Too bad for Neal; the music store proprietor had recently sold the tuba to the school so he knew exactly what it looked like. It was, the music man concluded, too much of a coincidence.

The cops were called. They staked out the music shop, ID’d the alleged thief from security videotapes, and slapped the bracelets on Neal. He spent last night in the Vandenburgh County lockup.

He has now spent more time in jail than any of the smart baboons who bilked the planet out of trillions.

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LEO & THE GIANT GILA MONSTER

Celebrity bartender and man-about-town Leo Cook has scored a gig catering for that remake of “The Giant Gila Monster” being shot in Franklin.

Vogue Cover The Month After Hell Freezes Over

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Leo brought some fab chicken tenderloins marinated in a secret sauce into the Book Corner the other day and broke the good news.

He is a fortunate man to be associated with such an august production. The moviegoing public has been clamoring for an updated version of the 1959 sci-fi classic for decades now.

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WOULDN’T IT BE NICE…

…To start your day with some great pop?

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COMIX & BOOKS

Exercise your link finger here:

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

Susie Bright of Santa Cruz, California is one of the cool ones. The writer/entertainer essentially created the category “sex-positive feminist” back in the 1980s as a reaction to the joyless prigs who seemed to be ruling the feminist world at the time.

Susie is not happy about the new federal regs concerning the Plan B One-Step birth control pill. Nor is essayist Katha Pollitt happy. Susie links to Pollitt’s piece in The Nation about the Obama administration’s endorsement of new rules that turn women into children who need to be lectured about their naughty urge to fuck.

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By pandering to religious fetishists who view sex as icky and men who are scared of women, Barack Obama is demonstrating that he wants to keep his job in the worst way.

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12/07/2011
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Angela Merkel, Book Corner, Cats and Machines, Chicago Cubs, European Union, Eurozone, Grover & Sloan, Krista Detor, Larry Bird, Little Miss Sunshine, Marcel Proust, Mitch Daniels, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ron Santo, Ross Gay, Standard & Poors, Steve Carell, Timothy Leary

The Pencil Today:

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AIM HIGHER

Dr. Timothy Leary said it: “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

Timothy Leary In 1992, Covered In Psychedelic Images, Natch

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FOUND MONEY

This time of year Hoosiers reach into their hall closets for those coats they haven’t worn for nine months or so. They dig into the pockets and, lo and behold, find folded up five dollar bills.

Happens all the time.

Gov. Mitch Daniels did the same thing yesterday and was so pumped that he called a press conference.

Only it wasn’t a fin he found. It was $320 million.

That is, 64,000,000 five dollar bills.

“I’m Gonna Go Check Under the Sofa Cushions Now!”

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The Indy Star reports the swag was found in some hidden-away bank account by a State Department auditor. The dough was revenue from corporate income taxes. It was all a happy accident, Daniels said, beaming.

Yeah, what a thrill. Especially for Indiana school districts which — mirabile dictu! — have suffered some $300 million in funding cuts over the last three years.

The whole charade stinks, no?

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OLD NUMBER 33 IS 55

Happy birthday, Larry Bird.

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ILLITERATES

So, Bloomington’s unofficial poet laureate Ross Gay comes into the Book Corner yesterday afternoon. We chat about our work habits. He tells me he likes to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write for three hours or so. Then he says he isn’t disciplined enough. I tell him he’s nuts.

Poet Ross Gay

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Then he browses for a few minutes, comes back, and puts a couple of small books on the counter. One of them is by Marcel Proust.

Anybody who hopes to be considered intelligent must read Proust. Me? All I know of Proust is from that movie, “Little Miss Sunshine.”

You know, where the Steve Carell character has spent his life studying Proust? And finds himself pretty much in nowheresville?

I confess to the lanky rhymer: “I’ve never read a word of Proust.”

He exhales as though he’s relieved. “Neither have I!” he says.

Cool. Ross Gay and me.

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JUNK SCIENCE

Let me get this straight. Investors the world over were thrilled that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on a plan to put wayward European Union nations back on the right track.

Money Can Buy Me Love

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Markets went up in the US, China, Japan, and Europe itself. Even those stuffed shirts in the UK started investing again. The party lasted a single day.

Standard & Poors issued a warning Monday night saying the honchos took too long to come to an agreement. So, S&P just might downgrade the credit ratings of 15 eurozone nations. And now the markets are going all to hell again.

What is it about this shell game that I don’t get?

Besides everything.

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CATS AND MACHINES

Click the thumb below and see Episode 5 in Grover & Sloan’s tale of the cat and the air pump.

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BASEBALL IN DECEMBER

I’m still giddy over the election of my favorite baseball player of all time to the Hall of Fame Monday. Ron Santo had an Italian daddy-o, was as emotional as an opera singer, loved pizza, and hit home runs for the Chicago Cubs in the 1960s and early 70s. When I was a little kid, I imagined he was a member of my own family.

So shoot me if I have the diamond game on my mind. Luckily, baseball junkie Eric Van Gucht reviews the book, “Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert” on our Salon page. This kid is good and I hope he’ll do a lot more writing for us from here on out.

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ Only one link today: Facers were particularly unimaginative last night and this morning. This one, though, is well worth standing alone.

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Krista Detor, our town’s sweetest canary, is putting on her annual holiday show Thursday, December 15, 7:30PM, at the Bloomington Convention Center. Whip out that wallet and splurge. You’ll thank me — and Krista.

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11/28/2011
4 Comments
Andy Rooney, Ayn Rand, Bill Veeck, Bob Dylan, Bob Greene, Book Corner, Brooklyn Decker, Christie Hefner, David Halberstam, Hugh Hefner, Hunter S. Thompson, Jr., Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe, Paige Young, Pete Hamill, Playboy Magazine, Pornography, Viagra

The Pencil Today:

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I USED TO READ IT FOR THE ARTICLES — HONEST!

We sell Playboy at The Book Corner.

We get about five of them each month. Surprisingly, we sell them all.

One Of The Most Iconic Logos In American History

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The guys who buy them are older, natch. Why would a young guy buy a quaint magazine that shows young women in various stages of dishabile when, on the interwebs, he can find nude women of every conceivable physiologic and topographic stripe?

Internet porn has made an entire generation of males far more familiar with the exo-geography of female genitalia than the typical country doctor of the 1880s was.

Every once in a while the news will carry a report that Playboy — the company — is in some kind of financial or market distress. Or that the Hefners, pere et fille, are venturing into something new — streaming video, say — that will make the brand relevant again.

But it’ll never be relevant again.

One day, probably soon, Playboy magazine will be no more. Andy Rooney’s gone, so he won’t be able to lament its passing. And Bob Greene probably is so gun shy about any topic having to do with sex that he’ll keep a mile away from it.

Maybe someone like Pete Hamill will write Playboy’s eulogy. We’ll see.

No matter. It’ll be dead. And that’s too bad. Sort of.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with Playboy magazine throughout my life which, coincidentally, almost matches the lifespan of the mag thus far. Playboy magazine and I both came out in the 1950s. Playboy’s made a hell of a lot more money over its lifetime than I have.

This Could Be The Start Of Something Big

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One afternoon, my little pals and I found a waterlogged old Playboy behind the factories a couple of blocks north of our neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It had to be around 1966. That would have made us ten.

We gathered around Danny, the toughest of us and therefore our leader, as he tore through the pages, looking for — as we so charmingly put it — the naked ladies.

August, 1966

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He didn’t have to look far. The ad on the inside cover gave us that first delicious eyeful.

At that time, Winston cigarettes used the tagline, “It’s what’s up front that counts.” You could hear it all day long on TV (yup, kids, TV used to carry ads for smokes). The line ran in all Winston’s newspaper and magazine ads, too. Even in family media, the ads were an obvious double entendre.

Of course, Playboy had to lop the double off the entendre.

A chesty (what else?) gal stared out at us from the ad. She was wearing a man’s dress shirt, completely unbuttoned. Her torpedo breasts seemed to jump off the page at us.

I’m surprised one or more of us didn’t pass out.

She held in her fingers a Winston. Just beneath that shocking, riveting, blood-pressure-spurting picture of the almost-naked lady ran the tagline, “It’s what’s up front that counts.”

We literally fell to the ground laughing.

The ad was, to our pre-teen sensibilities, the single most sophisticatedly funny thing ever conceived by the human imagination. We laughed for at least five minutes over it.

Of course, we collected ourselves and got back to the serious business of searching for more naked ladies, of which we found a good deal.

We pored over that magazine like anthropologists studying the earliest hominid fossil yet found. The only difference was, anthropologists aren’t likely to gasp every few moments as they examine ancient bones.

So I won’t snow you and say I never looked at Playboy for the pictures. Good heavens, I had a three-year-long crush on Miss November, 1968, Paige Young.

Paige Young

(Note from responding paramedics: Big Mike has passed out. He should be fully recovered within minutes. He will resume typing his post at that time.)

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But looking at naked ladies got old after a few minutes (oh, all right, a couple of hours). It was then I’d turn to the articles.

People today think of Hugh Hefner as the wizened old lech who gobbles Viagras like they’re Peanut M&Ms and tries to marry giddy blondes three at a time.

Man’s Best Friend

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At one time, though, he was one of the most forward thinking people in America.

Okay, let’s try to get beyond the fact that he sowed the seeds of what is now this weird American predilection for cantaloupe-chested, impossibly thin-waisted, freakishly long-legged virtual-females.

I thumbed through a recent edition of the mag and, honestly, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss is about. I don’t know what’s more disturbing — the look of blissful dumbness on the naked ladies’ faces or their quasi-human bodies.

Brooklyn Decker Does Not Exist In Real Life, Guys

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So yes, Hugh Hefner has to answer for screwing up this holy land’s female physical ideal.

But one day, long ago, he and his mag introduced me to — or broadened my burgeoning awareness of — the concepts of civil rights, feminism, birth control, the anti-war movement, free speech, consumer protection, apartheid, the environment, and a host of other issues that define liberalism.

I could read in-depth interviews with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Marshall McLuhan, Bob Dylan, Jesse Jackson, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ayn Rand (yes, it’s important to hear the bleatings of the deranged, too).

Malcolm X

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Let’s not kid ourselves and pretend Hugh Hefner was a great man of the ages. His Playboy philosophy elevated the acquisition of consumer goods and sexual partners to something akin to religious status. A man was not a man in Playboy nation if he didn’t drive a Corvette, drink Dewar’s, and bed at least two heretofore unknown women a week.

But, to borrow a phrase from that great philosopher Bill Veeck, I prefer tarnished genius to simon-pure mediocrity any day.

As loathsome as much of Hugh Hefner’s worldview was, just as much of it was liberating and enlightening.

“Hefner was fighting that part of the Puritan ethic that condemned pleasure,” writes David Halberstam of Hefner in the book. “The Fifties.”

True enough. If nothing else, Hefner helped America shed its prudish attitude toward sex. Sadly, we’ve now developed a giggly, dopey, 10-year-old boy’s attitude toward it. I don’t know which is better.

I do know Hugh Hefner’s mag awakened the socially conscious thinker in me. Nearly five decades later, I’ve gone way beyond Playboy when it comes to contemplating the issues of the day. Now I’d hope we’d all go way beyond its plasticized, airbrushed/photoshopped, vacuous image of female beauty.

Too bad. It hasn’t happened yet.

♢

11/17/2011
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Adam Sarnecki, Book Corner, Boomerang, Confiscatory Taxes, Dwight Eisenhower, Joe Batters, Lauren Kahn, Little Sicily, Meth, Michael Lewis, NPR, Republican Party, Taxes, Tea Party, Tony Accardo

Thursday, November 17, 2011

THE NAKED CITY

Too lazy to run and catch my #6 bus yesterday, I splurged and called for a cab.

The driver was fairly chatty. He mentioned the recent spate of what can only be described as “big city crimes.”

✍

There have been, in the last few weeks, the random shooting of a middle-aged woman on Hallowe’en night, the killing of the young pizza delivery driver the weekend before last, a botched bank robbery and a successful one, and the murder of a clerk at an adult toy store the day before yesterday.

“I grew up here,” he said in that tell-tale South Central Indiana twang. “We used to leave our doors unlocked. Now, I don’t know.”

He shook his head sadly. He was about 60 or 65.

“Ya know what was a big crime when I was a kid? When somebody got arrested for drunk driving. That was the worst thing that happened. It sure was different back then.”

I added my bit. “And there were jobs, too.”

“Yeah. There were jobs. Now, nothing. The only thing left to do is make that meth. Y’now,” he said, “I think that’s what’s behind all this….” He gestured broadly in the direction of College Mall, as if there were felonies and atrocities being committed in every store even as we spoke.

“They go crazy on that meth,” he concluded.

He got a call for another pick up just as he was stopping to let me out me at The Book Corner. I watched him as he drove off, looking for that next buck. The world — or at least Bloomington — sure hasn’t turned out the way he figured it would.

♢

JUST PAY YOUR TAXES AND SHUT UP

My mother had a fetish for paying bills.

That sounds bizarre but it’s true. She grew up in the Great Depression. Her mother ran a little corner grocery in the Little Sicily neighborhood on the Near Northwest Side of Chicago.

Outfit Boss “Joe Batters” Accardo: The “Pride” Of Little Sicily

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Ma’s ma paid her bills when the mood struck her. Vendors and suppliers would send burly guys with snap-brim caps pulled down low late at night to bang on the door of Ma’s girlhood home. They wanted their money.

Grandma would send Ma to answer the door. Grandma figured the burly guys’ hearts would melt at the sight of the curly haired little girl looking up at them with sad brown eyes.

Their hearts may indeed have melted. Still, they made sure Ma would convey a message to Grandma. “You make sure to tell yer mudder,” they said time and again, “d’at she gotta make good. You tell her d’at, y’hear me?”

Ma came to loathe answering the door. Even as a grown woman, when the doorbell would ring unexpectedly she’d straighten up and her eyes would dart, like a rabbit catching the scent of a dog.

Like every single parent in existence, she vowed to do things differently. As an adult she’d chomp at the bit waiting for the mailman to come. She wanted to pay her bills immediately.

At times, I thought she might run down Natchez Avenue in search of the mailman.

“Mister! Mister! Do You Have Any Bills For Me?”

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She rarely wasted an opportunity to crow about her bill-paying acumen. Once in a while, she’d mention someone else who — horrors — wasn’t as “Johnny-on-the-spot,” in her words, as she was with creditors. She could never get over how Aunt Teresa kept Dr. Francona waiting for his payments. And in those more innocent days, Dr. Francona never wasted an opportunity to tell Ma that her sister was in arrears.

Ma paid cash for everything, too. She considered the use of checks and credit cards to be gaming the system. (You know what? She was right.)

It didn’t even matter if the bill was in error. She paid. She had a reputation and a streak to uphold. Once, the college that my older brother was attending billed my parents for a semester that he hadn’t taken.

Most people would have called the college bursar’s office and told the clerk to kiss their asses. Not Ma. She called and arranged a bill payment plan: Ten dollars a month until the books were clear. It took her 40 months to pay off the princely sum of $400 dollars (oh yeah, everything was different back then.)

When she mailed in her last payment, she included a note that said, “My bill is paid. I’m up to date.” She crowed about that, too, for years afterward, as if when the bursar’s clerk opened up the envelope, she slapped the side of her head and muttered, “Wow! That lady sure showed us.”

Ma and Dad would do their own taxes, natch. Neither had graduated from high school so the forms and the math presented quite the challenge. Nevertheless, they soldiered on. And I never — ever — remember them complaining about their taxes.

They must have figured, it’s the price we have to pay and that’s that.

Today, of course, the paying of taxes is seen as only slightly more acceptable than child molestation.

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And this in a land that among the industrial nations of the Earth has just about the lowest tax rate.

The way people piss and moan about taxes, you’d think we were suffering under a tyrannical, confiscatory system (perhaps like that under the revered Republican icon, Dwight Eisenhower.)

“I’ll Take 91% Of Your Paycheck, Please. Thank You.”

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I mention all this because the author Michael Lewis was on NPR this morning, talking about the financial problems in Greece. His new book is “Boomerang.” It tells of the Eurozone economic crisis.

Lewis told the interviewer that a core problem causing Greece’s woes is the fact that relatively few people pay the taxes that they owe and the Greek legal system doesn’t go after them.

Hmm.

And the GOP and the Me Party-ists cry like kindergarteners whenever the word tax is uttered.

Ma would have some simple advice for those who are allergic to raising taxes to help people in need and set the economy right. She’d have said, “Do what you’re supposed to do and pay your bills!”

♢

11/16/2011
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A Boy Named Sue, AuthorHouse, Bloomington Indiana, Book Corner, Crisis Economics, Ivy Tech, John Maynard Keynes, Johnny Cash, Joy Shayne Laughter, Karl Marx, Kleindorfer's, Larry Eubank, Shel Silverstein, Two and a Half Men, WorldNetDaily

Today: Wednesday, November 16, 2011

MY NAME IS SUE, HOW DO YOU DO? NOW YOU GONNA DIE.

Heard a great quote from the late economist John Maynard Keynes this morning.

“In the long term,” he said, “we’re all dead.”

Sounds pessimistic, no?

No. I take it to mean, Get the hell going and do something now.

And, in fact, that’s what Keynes was was advocating. He was a crisis economist. His idea was that during periods of financial collapse, worrying too much about the long, long range repercussions of rescue efforts gives short shrift to people who are suffering now.

Yeah, Keynes was being a smart ass when he uttered the line. That’s probably the main reason I like it. The above-mentioned reason, though, ranks a very close second.

We’re all the walking dead. Throughout my entire adult life, my guiding principle has been, What am I gonna think about when I’m laying on my deathbed?

Am I going to think, Man, that was quick; and watching all those episodes of “Two and a Half Men” really made it fly by?

This Is How You Want To Spend Your Life?

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So, early on, I decided to do what I love and hopefully, in my infinitesimally miniscule way, give this crazy, mixed-up world something good. I became a writer.

My idea was I could introduce readers to people they’d never be able to meet, describe places they’d never be able to see, and explain things they’d never have an opportunity to think about.

I’ve been rewarded with a rich life of fascinating characters, broadened horizons, and occasional crushing poverty. You can’t win them all.

A pal of mine — let’s call her Thalia — just quit her job. She wants to start her own online business. The going has been slow and stress-inducing. But she’s plugging away almost to the point of jeopardizing her health and whatever sanity she has left.

Thalia visited me at The Book Corner the other day. She danced around my questions about how things were going until, finally, she could no longer evade them. “I’m scared,” she said. “Plus, there’s that voice in my head that says Are you nuts? Whaddya doing? You’ve got no business starting your own business.”

If she was smart, if she was prudent, if she was thinking about the “long term,” she’d have stayed in her job. And died a long death.

She’ll live now. She’ll continue to eat — albeit in smaller portions. But she wants to trade in a product she loves and has been trained in. And she wants to do something that just might do this crazy, mixed-up world some good.

Yep, Thalia will really live now — that is, until she dies.

♢

WHO’S SUE?

Does the previous entry’s headline ring a bell? It’s a line from a very famous song, the biggest hit Johnny Cash ever had, called, “A Boy Named Sue.”

I used to listen to it constantly on the transistor radio I had surgically attached to my ear during the summer of 1969, much to the annoyance of all adults in my general vicinity.

The best line I could think of that referred to death was the one about the boy, Sue. You know who wrote that song? Shel Silverstein.

Yup, That Shel Silverstein

♢

POUNDING THE KEYBOARD

Not every local writer or author is as wildly celebrated as our own Joy Shayne Laughter.

Passing motorists point at her and shout, “Hey, there’s the chick in the fedora!”

Our Joy

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She lives a life that’s the envy of South Central Indiana. In fact, she was seen the other day at Kleindorfer’s, shelling out big bucks for the most expensive snow shovel in the place.

Some scribes, though, toil away in anonymity.

Take Larry Eubank. Comes in to The Book Corner every morning for a Herald Times. Always listening to music on his quaint, old-school headphones. Friendly as can be.

He was holding a copy of a brand new book in his hand when he came in yesterday morning. He held it up and said, “Just to let you know, I brought this in. I’m not shoplifting.”

So I put the phone down before the 911 operator could pick up.

“You’re lucky, pal,” I said, watching him through narrowed lids.

Turns out the book in his hand was, indeed, his. As in, he wrote it.

It’s his second book. Ironically, I’d just sold his first book last week to an Ivy Tech student who’d expressed an interest in works on socialism vs. capitalism. That book was called “The Case against Capital.” Larry’s new book is called “Why Marx Was Wrong.”

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The copy he had in his hand was an uncorrected galley edition. It’ll be published by AuthorHouse.

Larry and I likely would disagree about everything up to and including whether the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning. He’s penned articles for, among others, the website WorldNetDaily, a gang whose very existence makes me break out in hives.

But what of it? That’s one of the reasons I became a writer — to get to know people who I wouldn’t normally pal around with. To broaden, as I mentioned earlier, my horizons.

Larry Eubank is still as friendly as can be. And he’s living his dream. I like that.

♢

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