Cemetery of Forgotten Books

We gathered up a stack of books to drop off at a nearby library’s used book room. Among them: The Reversal, a recently published crime thriller by the great Michael Connelly. We had purchased it only a few months ago and read it straight through. One gulp. The last word on the last page had barely finished resonating before we stuck the bestseller on a shelf and returned to the grim demands of daily life.

Until this morning when it came off that shelf (where we found it next to Grisham’s The Confession) we had not given The Reversal a moment’s thought. We’d forgotten we owned it. We couldn’t swear that we had even read the novel. Flipping through the book, examining a passage here, a passage there, brought nothing of the story back to mind.

Okay, we know it featured a regular Connelly character named Mickey Haller, the “Lincoln Lawyer,” an ethics-challenged defense attorney, half-brother to Connelly’s police detective hero, Harry Bosch.

But we know all that mostly because it says so on the cover. We also spotted both names while we searched the book to jog our memory. Memory remained otherwise unjogged. What “reversal”? What crime? Who did what and why? How did Haller and Bosch triumph, and over whom? No image, no episode, no snatch of dialogue bubbled up from the depths. We were stumped.

We dropped The Reversal back atop the stack of books to be recycled and thought, “That has got to be the very definition of a great read.”

The Reversal by Michael Connelly. Highly recommended.

Anthony Hopkins Plays Baal

We went to see the new Anthony Hopkins film The Rite this evening. When we got home we were pretty hungry. Sure, we had bought the large tub of popcorn, but only because it’s easier to carry than the paper bags, and has a stable base so you can set it on the seat next to you with no fears of an avalanche. No way were we going to eat more than 7% of the contents, nor did we, and so, upon returning to our little bungalow on Mulholland Drive, the first stop was the fridge.

Lo and behold! What did we see but the second half of the “Kung Pao Chicken Salad” we’d bought earlier at Gelson’s Deli. Did we make short work of it? And how!

You know what got us most about the salad? The bean sprouts. Yup: bean sprouts! The funny thing is, we don’t normally go for bean sprouts in a big way. They seem a little too health-foody, if you know what we mean. Like hay for cows. But tonight they seemed, instead, fresh and crunchy. Just the thing after seeing a movie about exorcism set in Rome, “the Eternal City,” and starring Anthony Hopkins, a Welsh actor. It was swell to see the great Irish actor, Ciarán Hinds, in a small role as a lecturer on demonic possession. There were many Roman cats in the movie. You’d like them.

After we had polished off the Kung Pao Chicken, we were mighty tempted to nom down on a couple of Eggo toaster waffles spread with lemon curd, but the late hour forbade.

Rocky Peak Adventure

What you see here is the photo I took at the summit of Rocky Peak. At 2,750 feet, this rugged promontory, well-deserving its petrological title, is the third highest point in the Santa Susana Mountains which form part of the northern boundary of Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley.

If you want to enjoy the same vistas I gazed out upon from this lofty aerie — once, by the way, part of the vast real estate holdings of entertainer Bob Hope — your desire can easily be satisfied. All you need is a stout trek pole, sturdy boots, a boonie cap with a chin strap, three water bottles, two chicken sandwiches, a backpack full of Cuties™ mandarin oranges, an iPod loaded with I, Sniper, a Bob Lee Swagger novel by Stephen Hunter, a smartphone equipped with GPS, a camera for bringing back the proof of having reached the summit and the iron determination to plod wearily up thousands of feet of not-too-step yet all-too-steep much-fissured fire road.

My little guidebook calls the Rocky Peak Road an easy hike. So it is. Easy to take exit 32 off the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Easy to park in the turnout located to the south on Santa Ana Pass Road. Easy to cross north on the bridge over the Freeway to reach the trailhead.

After that less easy: an hour and half of glute-stressing climbing, followed — after a chicken sandwich break en plein air during which you can admire the view of the Pacific far to the west — by a wobbly-legged descent of similar duration. But not too demanding, even considering the cold, unceasing, buffeting wind way up top which may possibly slap you so silly that you, too, forget to snap the evidentiary photo celebrating your conquest.

Half-way twixt summit and trailhead — at the juncture of the Rocky Peak Road and the Hummybird Trail – a thoughtful park ranger has installed a restful bench.

When You Care Enough to Send the Anapest

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and grocers grew fey,
As they set out their produce in cheery display
In which veggies foreshadow the Birth of the Lord
With a Rudolph the Red-Nosed made out of a gourd,
It was captured by Mrs N. Work with her phone
As she shopped for potatoes and fresh provolone,
And repurposed to say have a most Happy New
Year, and Merriest Christmas. Yours, Nice W.

Lines Written After Reading “Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant”

GLENDOWER:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

—— From Henry IV, Part One, Act iii, Scene 1

From Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

…the two of them made some mutual arrangement. Then they smiled at each other, again without any sense of surprise or excitement, as if long on famiiar terms, and the waitress retired from the table. Barnby handed the stump of pencil back to Maclintick. We vacated the restaurant.

‘Like Glendower, Barnby,’ said Maclintick, ‘you can call spirits from the vasty deep. With Hotspur, I ask you, will they come?’

‘That’s to be seen,’ said Barnby. ‘By the way, what is her name? I forgot to ask.’

‘Norma…’

— Anthony Powell

Glendower Calls the Spirits

The world we touch and smell and taste,
The world we hear and see
Pays homage to the vasty deep
In which it soon will be,

But giving memory its due
(Which is to say: a lot),
The things we touch, smell, taste and hear
And see are all it’s not.

WikiLimereak

There once was a man called Assange
Whose name did not rhyme with mélange.
“You must say it,” he said,
“Not like ‘mange’ but instead
“Like the Congolese river, Ubangi.”

Who Was That Lady?

Say good-bye to this ancient Roman goddess before she leaves her present home in The Getty Villa in Los Angeles. She will return this Sunday to her birthplace, Sicily, where, we hope, she will be better treated than before when she was left buried like an old tin can for several millennia. Having seen how nice she looks when cleaned up, the Sicilians suddenly want her back, so back she goes.

Her name is Aphrodite or Hera or Demeter or Athena, depending on the now-missing identifying objects she once held, and on the now-missing headpiece she once wore. Maybe the Sicilians can kick around in the dirt and find something to I.D. the lady.

You can see that Jane Doe — Giovanna Cervus in Latin — is a doughty hunk of woman. Eight feet at least, without shoes. The picture above includes a field trip kid for scale.

Mostly she’s made of limestone, but her head, arms and feet are marble. Marble, intones the informational card on her pedestal, was an expensive Greek import and so was saved for the nicer bits.

We’re also told that close inspection reveals faint traces of pink and blue pigment in the crevices. No such close inspection was vouchsafed this member of the public. The alert museum guards forbade pedestal clambering. Peer as we might from the allowed distance, nothing pink or blue was revealed to our sight. But we take the coloration as a matter of faith from the Getty curators who have never lied to us.

The statue was carved sometime around 400 B.C. Or 400 “B.C.E” to you godless heathens out there. It’s well preserved — not too badly weathered, that is — so we guess the Sicilians valued Ms Unknown Goddess and took good care of her for a while, until they forgot where they’d put her.

Saint Crispin is Crispy Times Two

From William Shakespeare’s Life of King Barry I, Act 4, Scene iii

LORD PETRAEUS:

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men (or women)
That are out of work back in the U.S.!

KING OBAMA the FIRST:

What’s he that wishes so?
My servant McChrystal? Er, no, I mean Petraeus:
If they are mark’d to die, they’re enow
To do your country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men (or women), the easier to sideline and dismiss
As victims of post-traumatic stress disorder.
No, faith, lackey, wish not a man (or woman) or woman (or man) more:
Rather proclaim it, Petraeus, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him be interviewed by the Times.
He that outlives Afghanistan, and comes safe home,
He that ignores the recommendations of our VA deathbook and sees old age,
Will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had in Mazar-i Sharif.’
And the VA Admin will blink and wonder “Who? What? Where’s that?”

Old men (or women) forget: Kabul shall be forgot,
But some Oath Keepers will remember
What feats they did there: then shall our names,
Familiar in his (or her) mouth as barnyard words are in ours:
Barry the king, Gibbs the Jester and Axelrod,
Pelosi and Reid, Barney and Durbin,
Be in their flowing curses freshly remember’d.
Those few, those unlucky few, that band of outsiders;
For he (or she) to-day that sheds his (or her) blood in this
Illegal conflict I inherited from Bad King George
Shall be an outsider — Be he (not she) ne’er so vile,
One of my Czars shall manage to vilify him further:
And Democrat men now a-bed with each other
Shall think them accursed who were there,
And hold each other’s manhoods whiles any speaks
That languished in Afghan upon Saint Crispin’s Day.

For the original version of Henry V’s Saint Crispin’s Day (October 25) speech to the troops before the Battle of Agincourt, go HERE.

Mulholland Senile Dementia

Not for nothing does David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive begin with a collision. Living even on an unfamous appendage of this infamous mountain road means near-daily witness to mayhem. See, for instance, this post about a recent meet n greet not many yards from NiceWork Central. Los Angeles drivers are better at driving supersonically than in turning adroitly or stopping in a timely manner. Corruscating puddles of broken Safe-T-Glass guide the Mulholland Drive traveller on moonlit nights.

So imagine NiceWork‘s chagrin upon learning of the planned closing in October of Disney California Adventure‘s roller coaster Mulholland Madness. It must be demolished to make way for restaurants. We cancelled all our appointments and high-tailed it to Anaheim to grab one last snapshot of the venerable ride.

You see a photo of the attraction’s signage atop this post. And below you see one of the series of panels of a monumental mural which conceal the roller coaster’s maze of tracks from curious passers-by.

This fine painting is not to be confused with a similar work, also depicting the twisty Santa Monica Mountain crest road, by David Hockney, and which hangs not so far from its subject in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art:

Oh, well. Ars longa, right? The painting endures — at least it was still at LACMA last time I looked — but the thrill ride soon passes into dull memory. Wave at the thrilled thrill-seekers one last time before Mulholland Madness hits that Final Speed Bump.

Suspended Disbelief

Your NiceWork movie reviewer received his orders and obeyed them at once. He sped directly to the local AMC Cineplex to sit in smug judgement on M. Night Shyamalan’s new spooker:

No sooner had your reviewer settled down into his plush theater seat than Mr Shyamalan began to unsettle him with upside down shots of Philadelphia from an inverted helicopter. Buildings depended like stalactites behind the opening credits giving your reviewer a bout of reverse vertigo: the feeling that you are about to fall straight upwards.

WHAT HAPPENS: Three guys and two gals get stuck on an elevator suspended motionless around the 21st floor of an office building. One of them is a psychokiller of sorts who takes advantage of the repeated blackouts to psychokill.

BEST TOE-CURLING SCENE: Dwight the custodian heads way up to the roof of the building to see about unsticking the stuck elevator from above. As he steps out of the stairway onto the roof, a gust of wind whips his little cap away. He runs after the cap as it scoots along the tar and gravel then pops over the edge of the roof…

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A NON-HUMAN: There’s a devilish raccoon in the basement walking around the buffers at the bottom of the hoistway.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY NON-MAMMALIAN NON-HUMANS: A pair of devilish pigeons give Dwight the custodian the fright of his life as he descends the hoistway from the roof.

BEST FIGURING OUT THAT SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL IS AFOOT: By the Latino security guard who, thanks to a good Catholic education, knows an incursion of the Prince of Darkness like the back of his amulet-clutching hand. SPOILER ALERT: When assailed by the Evil One, try praying in Spanish.

BEST STEPPING INTO A PUDDLE OF WATER WHILE  HOLDING A LIVE ELECTRICAL CABLE GIVING OFF SPARKS: The other security guard.

BEST UNSHAVEN UNBELIEVING PHILADELPHIA PD DETECTIVE: The unshaven unbelieving detective from the Philadephia Police Department. SPOILER ALERT: He never shaves, but eventually he believes.

Was DEVIL a good spooky spooker? Well, yeah, sure. It gave your NiceWork movie reviewer the very heebie-jeebies he willingly sought, but not so much that he couldn’t endure to the bitter end. He sat right there a-twitching until the final credits rolled. DEVIL even had a happy ending of sorts if you don’t count the dozen or so people who get hauled off to Hell in various ways (e.g. by broken glass in the jugular) before the unshaven detective gets everything nicely sorted out.