The Magnificent Seven- Potshot-A Spenser Crime Novel by Robert B. Parker-A Review

The Magnificent Seven- Potshot-A Spenser Crime Novel by Robert B. Parker-A Review 

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Potshot, Robert B. Parker, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2001 

Of late I have been on something of a Spenser crime detection novel run, you know those sagas of the Boston-based P.I. with the big burly  physique and the no nonsense grit and determination to see a case through to the end, the bitter end if necessary, written by the late Robert B. Parker. I started out several reviews of those books by explaining that most of the year when I review books I review high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for the academy. I also said that come summer time you never know will turn up on your summer reading list and why. So blame this run on the summer heat if you must.  I confessed that like any other heated, roasted urban dweller I was looking for a little light reading to while away the summer doldrums. Then I went into genesis about how I wound up running the rack, or part of the rack, after all there were some forty Spenser books in the series before Parker passed away in 2010.  I will get to the review of his 2001 effort Potshot in a minute after I explain how I came to read yet another Parker crime novel for crying out loud.

See, as I have mentioned elsewhere of late in reviewing some of the other Parker-etched books every year when the doldrums come I automatically reach for a little classic crime detection from the max daddy masters of the genre Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett from my library to see the real deal, to see how the masters worked their magic, in order to spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This summer when I did so I noticed a book Poodle Spring by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Parker finished it up in 1989.

Robert B. Parker, of course, had been a name known to me as the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the earlier ones before moving on to others interests. That loss of interest centered on the increasingly formulistic way Parker packaged the Spenser character with his chalk board scratching to my mind repetition of his eating habits, his culinary likes and dislikes, his off-hand racial solidarity banter with his black compadre Hawk, his continually touting Spenser’s physical and mental “street cred” toughness and his so-called monogamous and almost teenage-like love affair with Susan. They collectively did not grow as characters but became stick figures serving increasingly less interesting plots.

Checking up on what Parker had subsequently written in the series to see if I had been rash in my judgment I noticed and grabbed another Chandler-Parker collaboration or sorts reviewed in this space previously  Perchance To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Since I was on a roll, was being guided by the ghost of Raymond Chandler maybe, I decided to check out Spenser again. And because we still have several weeks left of summer and crime novels have the virtue of not only being easy on the brain in the summer heat but quick reads I figured to play out my hand a little and read a few other Parker works. Now we are all caught up on genesis.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note -2007

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The High White Note -2007

<b>Markin comment:<br />

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The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline. <br />

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Scene Eleven: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The High White Note-2007</b><br />

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<b>The High White Note, The High White Western Night and The High White Wave Merged </b><br />

I am a driven man. I am a driven man, imprisoned, six by twelve room driven, but more by a mental six by twelve internal, eternal, infernal almost paternal quest, and that is the only word that fits for the elusive high white note, or the high white something, that I have spent a lifetime searching for. Certainly longer than that other search, that more physical search for the blue-pink great American West that disturbed my youth, and beyond, and pushed me through many a long, lonesome highway hitchhike mile. But you know that story already now that you have read the previous sketches. <br />

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This one is more wistful, although I have caught a whisper of it here and there along the way. Now it looks like I’m stuck with it to the end, the quest that is. Here I sit, in any case, quarantined, in desolate, high, hard wind-swept, sunless-sea-ed, busted sand-duned, green sea-grass-blown, icy white-capped waved, Atlantic–oceaned, ragged, rugged, jagged Maine-coasted shack of a room getting ready to search, and search hard this time, for that white puff of a thing that keeps disturbing my rest. <br />

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I will, for the duration, put up with an ill-lit stove, half broken from generations of use by others, passing strangers, maybe seeking their own high white notes, or high white something. Or, maybe, just passing sweaty, drunken nights in some fore-doomed attempt to avoid oblivion. I will, moreover, put up with that high-pitched, annoying, buzzing refrigerator in back of me that means, at least, a touch of civilization. And the bubbly, perking, hard-hearted coffee-making machine, chipped plates, moldy-cushioned sofa, and this stuffy-aired place in order to make sense of what drove me here once again to place my shoulder against the wind, the whistling wind that signals that it is time to take note, and to seriously take note, of the demands of the quest. <br />

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And I came here for a purpose, always a purpose, to leave home and sweet-loved, sweet love. And to get away, to clean a man’s mind from the humdrum, fairwayed, fresh-ponded, sun-walked, run-runned, walk-runned, city-maddened depths. Also while we are on the subject from the technological-driven, cell-phoned, personal computer-strapped like some third hand or second-brained, four-walled nightmare. Nightmare-evading Maine fits the bill just fine, although truth to tell Maine figures, Maine always figures in the white note fight, although it is hardly the only place. <br />

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I can almost read your thoughts about my thoughts right now. It goes something like this- here he goes again, you say, on some incensed holy grail trip of the mind, or maybe he is for real, real time, real places but still a trip that would embarrass and shame any self-respecting errant knight of yore, searching for that perfect fair damsel in distress to bring home, or more likely, to carry off, kicking and screaming, to some cozy, stone-faced, thatched-roofed, smoke-filled, forested cottage for two. Or of old mad, maddened, maddening Captain Ahab and his foolish fish, or whatever woe begotten thing that he was really looking for in the Melville deep. Or, maybe, some fiendish, freakish, madman pioneer monkishly doing his own shouldering against the storms, against the snowstorms, against the storms of life of the white-peaked Western trek nights. Ah, the vision of the blue-pink Western sky. I wish you well pioneer brother, wherever you landed. <br />

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No, it is not like that at all. This is not some half-baked, half-bright, half-thought out, interior dialogue that I usually get myself tangled up into. Tangled so bad I have to break it up for a while. No, none of that this time. No intellectual gymnastics, no mental tepidity, no squarey circles or circley squares. No this is purely, or almost purely, a memory trip and that seems about right, you know, if you really want to know it has been painful at times, but no way, no way at all, that it is one of those ill-digested whims that you are thinking of. No way. <br />

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And, besides that, from the great American West night hitchhike road I have already gone through many pairs of worn-out, worn-soled, worn-heeled, down at the heel shoe leather (now thick-soled, thick-heeled, logo-addled running sneakers); worn-thumbed, back-pack-ladened, some forgotten town destination sign-waving, hitch-hiked mile (that means bumming free rides on the road, the wide American highway, for those too young, or too proper to the know the long gone, way long gone, exotic word that sustained many a hobo, tramp or bum in his (or her) search for the Great American night) through every nowhere, no-name, no wanna know the name, bus-depot-ed, stranger-unfriendly town from here to Mendocino. Moreover, here I have marks, and here you can call it intellectual or spiritual or whatever, from every diesel-trailed, oil-slicked, mud-flatted, white-lined, white-broken-lined, two-laned, no passing , hard-bitten, steam-fooded truck stop from here to Frisco as well. So don’t tell me I haven’t paid my dues. <br />

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Or it could have been some smoke-filled, nicotine-plastered walls in some long defunct coffee house (when smoking was <i>de rigueur</i>), or some gin-sweated, smoke-fogged Cambridge bar (in the days when smoking was allowed), listening to some local group trying to make it out of town, one way or another. Or it could have been being chained-smoked cigarette (ditto above) writing like crazy, every soul thing, every non-soul thing, every anti-soul thing after passing on the last call train out to the sticks at that old reliable, just don’t have the eggs scrambled Hayes-Bickford, where we all believed that if you just spent enough nights, enough hot, heavy-aired July nights, or enough snow-bound, frost-bitten January nights (this before Super Bowl suspense filled in January) maybe something major would come out, and maybe fame, big fame too, fame etched by the gods. <br />

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Hey, did I tell you how I got here, got here to ocean-winded Maine, this time that is? Did I forget that in my frenzy to tell you what is? Yah, I guess I did forget reading back. Let me tell you of my dreams, or at least the story of my dreams to make it right, okay? One recent, sweat-drenched night I woke up, or was I woken up by one of the cats, in a start. I had a weird old dream, or maybe just a flash of a dream, where I saw, in living, livid color a big old beautiful high white note floating, free and easy, as you might guess on a very stormy high white wave. After than flash, if that is what it was, I could not get back to sleep and lay there, soaking a little and trying to soak off that soaking with an old bedraggled railroad man’s roaring red handkerchief. Or that is at least what I call them ever since I first saw a railroad guy walking down the line when I was a kid, carrying one in the left back pocket of his dirt-stained denims as he uncoupled one train from another, maybe sending it into the great western night. <br />

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But we have already been into that great Western night, or what I think is my idea of the great Western night so I don't know how it figures in the meaning of this dream. It is really bothering me, and it should because, lately, I have been thinking and thinking hard about that very subject. The relationship between the two. No, it did not just come out of the blue, come on now, you guys know better than that. Ain’t you read Freud, or his acolytes or renegades, these things all have secret meanings of their own. But no surprise if you think about it. I have been thinking about the high white note for a while, ever since I read poor old, black, gay, exiled against his will, writer James Baldwin and his infernal short story, <i>Sonny’s Blues</i>. <br />

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You know I really should make you read the whole thing and then you could come back and get an idea about my dream, or the thought of what my dream was all about. And then the great Western trek into the night, hell in the day time even, would make a great deal more sense. But I am going to let you off the hook this time and just tell you that old “Sonny” is a story about brothers, and I have been thinking about that too lately, although not in the friendly, gee I should get back in touch with my own brother sense, but about brothers who drifted back and forth in each other’s lives until one day the reality set in hard and hard was that Sonny, a high white note-seeking jazz pianist really got high on the white note. Busted, busted hard, busted back to clean but busted and his brother, would you know that it was his big brother, had to help him put back the pieces, even though the pieces were what made Sonny interesting and alive. That's me, living on old sweet, sweet dream of that white note, and, as well, Angelica-ish-driven memories of that old time blue-pink night before I go.

On The 50th Anniversary- The Vagaries Of The Summer Of Love-“Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue” (2015)-A Documentary Film Review

On The 50^th Anniversary- The Vagaries Of The Summer Of Love-“Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue” (2015)-A Documentary Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, a documentary about the life and times of blues singer Janis Joplin and the San Francisco rock and roll scene in the 1960s which nurtured her talent, 2015

On more than one occasion the now retired film editor in this space, Sam Lowell (still carrying the baggage of emeritus for all the world to revel in), would point to the fate of the Three Js as the price those of his generation what he called the Generation of ’68 for the decisive year in that turbulent time had to pay for that little jailbreak out that the better part of youth nation was trying to turn the social norm. The Three Js-Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin crashed and burned just when their stars were burning brightest and in a sense their fates wrapped up what many considered the ebb tide of those times when the slogan of the day was “drug, sex, and rock and roll” was followed by the slogan in the end “live fast, die young and make a good corpse.” Tough stuff to think about some fifty years later when evaluating the residue effects of those times on what ugliness is currently going down in America.    

The film, really a documentary, Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, details the life and times of the third in the trilogy. Goes, as such bio pic usually all the way back to her growing up days in Port Arthur, Texas and gives us a picture through film clips and “talking head” interviews (standard in this kind of film so nothing untoward intended) of , well, Janis Joplin becoming blues singer extraordinaire Janis Joplin. Usually that look back to the roots is perfunctory, glancing at the early age when a celebrity showed promise. But the lookback in Janis’ case where she did not begin to shine until late teenage times gives a much better insight into the negative aspects, the harassment and taunts from unfeeling classmates neighbors and of her growing up that would follow her down the garden path for all her tragically short celebrity life.  

So nothing at first pointed to Janis becoming a blues star except a serious bout of loneliness and harassment growing up giving her plenty of personal blues which later she may have been able to feed off of when in performance. At a steep price as it turned out. All she knew was early on that she had to leave Texas and her family behind. There were many false starts including some early time in San Francisco trying to work the budding folk circuit. All she got from that was habit for drugs, for evil heroin above all. And shipment back to Texas.

Then something happened, something she was able to grab onto when she returned to Frisco in the early stages of the Summer of Love. A new sound was being born under the sign of a particular Frisco beat and sensibility. Janis was able via contact with a group of young “hungry” musicians, Big Brother and the Holding Company, to make a big imprint of the scene. That combination of singing, shouting, screaming from a white girl found a home in the trendy, trend setting Bay Area (one black commentator/band member though she was black before he saw her in person). All you have to do is look at the whole series of poster art concert announcements which have been exhibited at the de Young Museum in its celebration of the Summer of Love to know that she and the band made every important concert in the area over a few year period. Decisive was the Monterrey Pops Festival (as it was for other up and coming performers as well) where she blew the house away.  

Eventually Janis broke with the band, with Big Brother probably a bad career move, and moved on to her own career as a solo artist. (In an interesting take one rock critic argued that she should leave the band after she did called on her to come back but that has more to do with fickle critics than career moves) And gained even more fame. Gained headlines and magazine covers. But the pain of that deep-seated Texas hard winds, that blue norther pain, never let her be and in the end the “fixer” man did his evil work and she fell through the hole at 27 in 1970.

During the one hour and forty-five minutes of the film though you get to know why she was an icon of the Summer of Love that dwindled into the dust some fifty years ago. Why she brought a new sensibility to rock and blues. Watch this one to remember what it was like when women, men too, played rock and roll for keeps. Whatever the price.   

An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

With A New Introduction By Sam Lowell

[Every guy who dig the gold of film noir and reviewed the material and it was mostly guys in the old days cut his eye-teeth on the film noir detective-guys like Philo Vance, Phil Larkin, Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Jeff Culver, and Jack Dunne. Including one Allan Jackson, who out of respect for a fallen comrade used the moniker Peter Paul Markin for many years although I am not sure what he is using now, maybe Mitt Romney or Madame La Rue, who knows. Allan, formerly the head honcho at this publication and in the interest of transparency an old high school friend of mine, got the big boot, got “retired” a while back partially with my help. Others have written to eternity on this basically “inside the Beltway-type” stuff about his demise, and about where he landed after falling down here so I don’t need to repeat that material here. Except the son of bitch is trying to resurrect himself by stealth or by sucking up to current site manager and his replacement Greg Green or both by portraying himself, partially through me I admit, as the indispensable guy to introduce encore presentations of various series produced under his leadership. (I will admit that Allan sweated, perspired bullets editing, cajoling and squeezing every last writerly effort out of those series, especially the hallmark The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series.)

I guess Greg has only himself to blame for the Allan creep. (I will take my share as well insisting that Allan was the only one who could do justice to the rock and roll series and dragging him back from exile out who knows wherever he was, Utah with Mitt Romney, San Francisco with his old honey Madame La Rue helping run her high -end whorehouse or slumming with Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley our old high school friend now the doyen of the drag queens in that same town. I will address my part in the publication shake-up below as the decisive vote for his ouster below in passing.) Greg, maybe insecure in his new position  anointed by only that single decisive vote of no confidence in Allan and saddled with an Editorial Board which Allan would never have put up with but which we insisted on to guard against a return of one-person, one-man rule, had the bright idea that to appeal to the younger crowd that the writers here should abandon their serious pursuits like in-depth political, cultural and social analysis via books, art, cinema and music and go full bore reviewing cinematic comic book character-derived films, video games and tech gadgetry. Christ, for a guy who spent many years as the chief over at American Film Gazette what the hell was he thinking. I won’t even mention that the thing was a total bust since the kids don’t give a fuck about “high- brow,” middle brow,” any brow reviews from a literate publication. They don’t read this kind of stuff however you doll it up and get their tastes from social media-end of story.  

What is not the end of the story although almost sank this publication was the real demographic that reads this material-the so-called baby-boomer generation and what Allan specifically called the Generation of ’68 to ground the audience he was gearing things to rebelled at comic book cinema, video games and tech garbage. Aided by the writers, young and old, who had to write the swill and who threatened murder and mayhem if that continued. So Greg did a “dixie,” did an about face and decided to revive some of Allan’s series from the archives which he thought were pretty good to retain the base. His first attempt at the rock and roll series was to get Frank Jackman to do the introductions. Frank is a good reporter, a crack journalist but knew nothing about the inner workings of that series. I got fed up and after hearing that Allan was back East, back in Maine, after being abandoned by Mitt Romney, getting tired of whorehouse management or when doyen Timmy tired of him take your pick I contacted him with an olive branch to come back to do the encore introductions. He did a bang- up job and while Greg stated that he was worried about Allan hanging around he consented to let him do the very popular Sam and Ralph Stories about a couple of lifelong friends who met via the anti-Vietnam War struggles and have kept the faith all these years. He is at work on that series now.             

Here is where the Allan creep plays out. Greg at my suggestion (I am right now doing my turn as the rotating chair of the Ed Board) has decided to renew, to do an encore presentation on film noir private detectives which a number of readers have asked for in the wake of these other encore presentations. Alan approached Greg telling him that he, Allan, was the only one who could do justice to the encore introductions. WTF. I am the guy who put film noir private detection on the map, wrote the still definitive volume on film noir The Life and Times of Film Noir: 1940-1960. Yes, WTF. After I settled down, after I mentioned to Greg that Allan might know maybe that Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that was probably the real extent of his knowledge whatever he tried to con Greg with. So that battle won I am here to introduce the various sketches which several writers have worked on over the years. Enough for now though except to say that Zack James’ take on real-life private detection is kind of interesting although not my cup of tea.  Once we get rolling I will expand on that idea.]    

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By Zack James

Fred Sims’ tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus, private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor. Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.                 

The story about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s when he was first starting out in the business, first had gotten himself the office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days. Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves, guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for little risk, so they, the suckers, think.

Well the long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malones couldn’t cover fast enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got out.

Arthur though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life worthless. Chester was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who was behind it.  I told him that would be a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the matter.

Here’s where everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman, Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course, aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about Chester’s operations since he had been gone.

It turned out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts. So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do. Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People are strange, right.

When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried s Mama Mia!-The Movie (2008)-A Film Review

When ABBA Exploded The Known Musical Universe And Put It On A Small Greek Island- Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried s Mama Mia!-The Movie (2008)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Intern Josie Davis

Mama Mia! The Movie (I was told to use this title to both avoid confusion with the latter 2018 film which I will also review in its turn with the same theme and most of the same cast and to replicate the way the film was publicized at the time), starring the divine Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan at one time the dashing James Bond in the a few films in that series, Colin Firth who somebody said used to be the King of England,  Stellan Starsgard who used to be a guy named Terry with a junkie wife who owned a glass house in Malibu but got too greedy and got wasted for his troubles, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski two members of the famous doo wop, no disco, trio Donna and the Dynamos who tore up the stage when I saw them in New York City one night with my girlfriends from high school, music by ABBA, 2008         

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I am thrilled to be writing my first film review for this publication, for Greg Green. (Greg said the way things are in the publication business today that I had better mention that I was Elsa Greg’s daughter’s roommate in journalism graduate school at NYU-something about transparency otherwise the whole thing will stink of nepotism, so I have written what he has asked me to do). I am working here as a paid intern to learn the journalism trade and right off the bat Greg assigned me the Mama Mia 2 film which I had just seen and loved. Not only that but since Elsa already told me that her father was very thorough I get to do a review of the first one as well to get a fresh look from new eyes about the relative merits of the two. Zack James one of the friendly older writers here who wrote the review of the original helped me with his perspective although he said musicals were not his and he thought there were too many musical and dance interludes something I thought was great since the storyline was pretty simple. The conditions that an intern work under is that, since we are not covered by Guild regulations, we are paid by the word so I am doubly thrilled to have two reviews to do since my rent will be coming up shortly and I can use the money since my parents have told me after graduate school I have to fend for myself. “Learn to fly” as my father put the matter in his usual gruff way.         

Maybe the reader did not need to know that last part, the rent money and parent abandonment part but a funny, wise, kind of looking like a modern version of  Merlin the Magician older writer, Sam Lowell, told me that writers getting paid by the word went out with the Pony Express and it is a shame that they are calling what he called stringers “interns” to get slave labor to do the work otherwise assigned to active Guild members. Here is where he is wise-Sam, he told me to call him Sam, said to play the game for all it is worth, to write like he did when he was starting out say, 10, 000 words when everybody knew that the space available for the piece was maybe 3000 words. They had to pay for the former number no matter how much they edited the piece down once it had been assigned. So I will write like crazy including Sam told what I have already written since Greg likes, allows his writers, I like how that word sounds regarding me, to let the readership know some of the “inside” stuff about the publishing business, the hard-hat water cooler stuff so I will oblige.      

Sarah Lemoyne, who went to NYU journalism school a few years before me, told me to avoid Sam Lowell like the plague. Told me that before long he would have me writing his reviews for him under his by-line and would keep me a stringer, intern I told her, forever like almost happened to legendary break-through by-line writers Leslie Dumont before she got her big break with Women Today once she saw the writing on the wall here. Sarah said I would probably, if Sam was in a rush, grab some studio press release and have her doll it up. Funny, Sam seems like a kindly old man, a wizard and while Sarah seems to be the star amount the younger up and coming writers and is being championed by the legendary Seth Garth whom I first heard about at NYU I haven’t been here, haven’t been as Sam says around the water cooler long enough to get an idea of who the players are and what they have in mind. All I know is that I want to be a film reviewer, maybe books and music later, and that Sam has been nice to me and gave me this additional information -this is a cutthroat business so keep your own counsel. Listen to what everybody who has something to say have their say and then discard most of it and just write that pure, fine white line you studied about in school. And forget the fossil “pyramid” nonsense which went out with the pharaohs although they still teach that stuff as the new dispensation in the journalism schools.

I have heard from more than one source that Sarah is “sweet” on Seth, he told me to call him Seth although I feel funny calling these older guys by their first names since in grad school when some journalist came through it was Ms. This or Mrs. That, even though she has a partner, a woman, whom she is having an affair with. Thus I don’t know how to take what she has said about Sam, about him maybe taking dead aim at me which is ridiculous since he has his long- time companion Laura Perkins who also writes here (and who when I met her watched him like a hawk). I see what this cutthroat stuff is all about regarding people cutting people but I am just going to write my brains out so Greg can say he made the right decision taking Elsa’s recommendation.

Here is the “skinny” a cute word that Sam said he coined way back when he was also young and hungry to let people know a little bit about the plot and whether they should bother to see the film if is a “dog.”  I already telegraphed that I liked the sequel, so I was prepared despite Zack to like this one and I did although now I wished I had seen them in the correct order because I was not aware that Sam, played by Pierce Brosnan had actually made Donna an honest woman. I will explain that in a minute but I just wanted to give the reader an idea why I thought it was important to have seen the films in order to understand why Sam was so distraught in most of the second film.

Sam Lowell, actually Sarah Lemoyne said the same thing but I will give Sam the credit since he has been so helpful, said that musicals don’t let plot get in the way of the Tin Pan Alley songs and the dancing when dancing is part of the project as here in a couple of spectacular episodes. And Sam in right on the face of it. The boy and girl have already met so that is no real factor-the real part is that young Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried is desperate to get married and get the hell off the island prison of a hotel that her single-parent Mom, Donna, played by very versatile Meryl Strep, have dwelt in since she was born. She loves her beau but doesn’t want to wind up like her mother who drifted to the island after a whirlwind spree with three lovers when she was younger. That three lovers will anchor the “controversy” central to the film-which one in pre-DNA times is the father she never knew taking a cue from Jack Kerouac among others in the unknown fathers pantheon (this courtesy of Sam who is something of an expert on the “beats” from the 1950s who I have heard of in passing but really don’t know anything about).       

Motivated by the desire to know who her father is, and to gain some peace of mind, she invites the three likeliest candidates, Sam, Harry and Bill to the island to see what is what and also to have her “father” give her away in the time-honored tradition. Fine, except dear mother, dear Donna who as I mentioned in the cast line-up I saw with her group Donna and the Dynamos in New York City when I was in high school, who has raised her alone is pissed off that the three guys are around. That will produce angst, alienation and a few heart-felt songs and dances between the two before the wedding bells ring but will be resolves nicely by having Mom give daughter away-which seems right. Hold the cameras though just as Sophie and her man, her Sky are about to tie the knot and unleash who knows what song and dance cascade at the reception Sophie calls the whole thing off after deciding that like any thoroughly modern Millie they should live together and see the world. In any case that new decision brings forth a cascade of song and dance so all is well that ends well. Except Sophie never does find out who her father is and the three guys are just as happy to cut her in thirds-metaphorically. And guess what as I have already mentioned Sam and Donna get married in Sophie and Sky’s place. A feel-good movie which will beget, Sam’s word, another feel-good movie in ten years’ time. Wait and see.               

*From The Karl Marx- Friedrich Internet Archives- In Defense Of The Paris Commune And Defense Of Its Class-War Prisoners-1872 Address

Click on the headline to link to the Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Archive online copy of the material mentioned in the title on the defense of the Paris Commune and its class-war prisoners.

Markin comment:

Readers of this space are, by now, familiar with my interest in the defense of class-war prisoners and, perhaps, know that I express that interest through support to the efforts of the Partisan Defense Committee (PDC). One of the reasons for that support of the PDC is its commitment to the non-sectarian defense of all class-war prisoners, a tradition in which it follows the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) principle expressed in the slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” That principle also animated the early James P. Cannon-led work of the International Labor Defense, the legal defense arm of the American Communist Party and of the early legal defense work of the Trotskyist American Socialist Workers Party.

Perhaps not as well known, although it would seem axiomatic to their theories, is the even earlier class-war prisoner defense work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as an expression of their concept expressed in the slogan “workers of the world unite.” In no place was this work more ardently pursued that in their defense against all-comers of the Paris Commune during its short, historic existence and later, after it was crushed of its refugees, exiles, prisoners and their families. Much of this work was done early on through the Marx-created and led First International, and after its demise in the wake of that defeat through other Marx-influenced national organizations. I am posting some material here to provide some examples of their efforts.

The important point here is that, to my knowledge, there was, at most, only one proclaimed Marxist in the leadership of the Commune, and not much more adherence among the plebeians and artisans who heroically defended the Commune. So, mostly, those being defended by Marx and Engels were leftist political opponents, in some cases, severe political opponents. That approach is what has animated my own legal defense work and, hopefully, yours. Here, by the way, is another slogan to end this comment, fittingly I think-All Honor To The Paris Communards! Long Live The Memory Of The Paris Commune!

Once Famous California Private Detective Lew Archer Passes At 104 (1915-2019)-Found Dead In An L.A. Skid Rooming House Of An Overdose

Once Famous California Private Detective Lew Archer Passes At 104 (1915-2019)-Found Dead In An L.A. Skid Rooming House Of An Overdose

By Seth Garth

I don’t write obituaries. And if I did write obituaries it would not be about has-been private detectives who started out like a house on fire in the business and wound up head down in some common rooming house toilet after a heroin overdose at the age of 104. (Started out by the way via U.S. Army Military Intelligence during World War II and settled in nicely right after   the war cracking cases.) I have written about plenty of junkies, guys and some gals, who were the drug lords of their ages like the always stoned Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in their prime, Sadie Hawkins the painter not the poet, Doctor Gonzo, Hunter Thompson who made a profession and a good living out of his experiences, Sid Levitt, Sally Devine the chanteuse, and a few other morphine addicts like Frankie Machine but they all had their resumes up to date, were doing their thing when they were “walking with the king.” Wrote, painted, sang some of their best stuff high as kites, maybe higher. Funky flunky Lew Archer fell down, went into the nether land after his fifteen minutes of fame. So, no, no obituaries for yet another American ninja private detective failure who couldn’t even make the P.I. Hall of Fame on a pass, on some bogus lifetime achievement basis (a campaign I regret to say I was part of in my wooly youth). Jesus, what a bum, him and that last so-called P.I. partner of his, a guy named Kenny Miller, no, Millar who introduced him to low-life crime and the junk.*

[* I was going to save the fire-branding of Millar if that was his name he used many from Stan Lappin to Ross McDowell, no, McDougal, I understand before they kicked him out of the club, tossed his ass in stir I think when he conned a bunch of guys, private detectives mind you, into giving him dough for  a surefire scheme he had to take Vegas dough, casino dough, like low-hanging fruit. All of it ending up his nose, a cousin cocaine addict before that was cool, and dragged dregs time Lew into his scheme as the punching bag fall guy since he had no other place to fall.

This Millar was working out of the Tappan Building in the Bunker Hill section of town, of L.A. skid row really. That building was filled with failed junkies like him, sleaze ball repo men with worn threadbare suits and rounded heels, a few working girls using the place for their assignations, winos pissing in the tacky carpeted halls, ambulance chasing lawyers whose last successful case was when FDR was president, failed dentists who had taken too much of their own medicine, doctors who had their licenses pulled for eighty-six degrees of malpractice, three card Monte artists on the lam, small bit life insurance guys selling low-priced premiums to poor folk with no return address, and the usual flotsam and jetsam of underground L.A., Hollywood.

The report was that Lew was so down on his uppers he grabbed Millar’s lapels to get “back in the game” after Sheila Sharp gave him the boot when he started taking a cut of the coffee and crullers money. This Millar bastard just wanted to use Lew as a front, a name from the past when he offered his services to old ladies looking for lost heirs and grabbing the dough, short money as it was since most of them who would deal with Ken had lost or used up all their serious money by living too long. Lew in his prime would have had this bum for lunch and had time to go bowling. The minute I saw the Millar name attached to Lew’s in the obit I cringed because even back in the East, even among the younger aficionados of the private detective racket his name was infamous for bullshit on a stick. Yeah, if as reported they put his ass in stir as much as I hate to say it about any man against the fucking coppers good riddance.]     

  

Frankly I was shocked when fellow writer and crime detection devotee Sarah Le Moyne told me she had read in one of the Los Angeles newspaper of Lew’s death when she was doing some research for a movie review she is planning to do on old-time Hollywood, the times when movie stars and all the way down the food chain were practically enslaved by the movie moguls like Harry Golden and Jimmy Wallace. (A measure of Lew’s fall can be gauged by his various receptions in the studios. When he was riding high he was as welcome as spring, had all kinds of starlets hanging off of all arms. Harry and Jimmy, other executives too were glad to send business his way since he was known to be stone-cold discreet while working a case. When he fell down, when he hit the skids, working some panhandle thing after kindly Sheila Sharp had to give him the boot orders were left to call the coppers if he even tried to hang around the front entrance of any studio.)     

I had thought that Lew had passed away long ago since I lost track of his whereabouts in the early 1980s. I guess this is the time in the interest of the current fade for transparency, or statements that make it seem that way, that those were the days when I had been involved with a committee of private detection devotees and private detectives to get Lew Archer into the P.I Hall of Fame the first time, the life time achievement time. I also admit that later egged on by Sarah that I acted to attempt to get him into the Hall  under a modern-day version of the idea that today we are more tolerant of asexuality as an attribute of a detective than the various nomination committees were back in the 1970s when every hardboiled detective, mostly male but increasing female too, had to bed anything in sight, client or stander-by. Lew fell down and the committees laughed in our faces since half of them were clueless about who Lew Archer even was, and why were they being bothered about some two-bit gofer who by then Sheila would not even let do repo work.                  

I will get to Lew’s early resume when it looked like he would join Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Phil Larkin, and Fester Dolan in the pantheon in a minute but that “two-bit gofer” is no exaggeration. I had been working in the early 1970s for the East Bay Other, now long gone with many other well-done journals and newspapers in the Bay area when the editor, might have been Sam Lowell, no, Ruth Ryan, knowing my schoolboy days interest in private detectives heard that a guy named Lew Archer was working for up and coming female private detective operator Sheila Sharp over on Post Street in Frisco town. (Sheila would make the Hall on her first try and I was there for her induction.) Ruth knew I had mentioned him one night when I was going on and on about great private detectives, real and literary, and those who could have been great but fell down like Lew who had solved the famous Galton and Harlan cases and a fistful of lesser ones before he hit the skids.      

Based on that information Ruth told me there might be a story there if Lew would consent to an interview. That was arranged through Sheila (whom Ruth had gone to school with) and we did the story which was nominated for a couple of prizes although no wins. In that interview I tried to get Lew to help me figure out why a guy whose name was still recognized in some high-end P.I circles for the Galton and Harlan cases was at that time serving them off the arm, serving the real detectives in the office their coffee and crullers (his hand in the till getting him canned from even that task). How he had at some point in the mid-1950s lost it, stopped trying to grab every female in the room as part of the overhead of his job just like Sam, Phil and the others. Started that long trip downhill so he messed up the Phillips case, got the girl he was supposed to save killed and her father committed suicide after in despair.

Worse mucked up the Jamison case so bad the public coppers had to bail him out (bad, very bad for the profession when “cold file it” after three days public coppers get involved in a serious case in any way). Reading about that case later gave me the chills. I didn’t claim to know his state of mind at the time, but something snapped. Lew went off on a tangent that cost half a dozen innocent people their lives just because he couldn’t let go of the fact that a few gangsters were in the background of the case (dumping money out of the casinos via a couple of “mules”) and only zeroed in on them. Couldn’t figure that some airhead professor who had a thing for young girls couldn’t pull a gun trigger. After the professor winged Lew the public coppers had to come in and pick up the pieces. Jesus, I would have blown town after that.      

How Sheila took pity on him for old time’s sake and let him do repo and keyhole peeping work when he was down and out I don’t know. Sheila was pound for pound one of the smartest operators around but her soft spot for Lew took some of the luster off a shining career. And when he bungled a big case on that latter skill, had some U.S. Senator in some hotel room with some woman not his wife on the hot seat but forgot to get the photographs brevetted him to the donut and sub sandwich detail.     

I supposed I could, if I still have them in the attic, look at my notes from that interview (those were the days when you took notes on yellow legal pads and wrote with pens) to piece together what he had said. (I tried to see if there was an archive for the East Bay Other on the Internet but no luck.) The gist of the downfall was two things-one a woman not his wife and the other Harry Daley, the famous psychologist. The woman not his wife part, when he had a wife, was Vera, the aide to that Mrs. Galton whose grandson he found after he had been kidnapped for serious ransom. He went on and on about her although when I checked later it was not clear if there was a Vera involved in the Galton case. What was true was that his very real wife divorced him, took all his money and whatever she could grab when she won that big adultery case against him leaving him busted.

This maybe Vera, some kind of gold-digger dumped him flat, left him high and dry. Literally dry. After Vera left he developed serious sexual impotency problems, couldn’t get it up. Lost his nerve with women after he couldn’t stand the gaff in the Sternwood case where the younger beautiful daughter Carmen put the whammy on him because he couldn’t “get it up.” Made him make a fatal mistake when the guy he was tailing, big-time gangster Eddie Mars, was not the guy who he killed in an ambush he had set up to impress Carmen. Jesus.       

Harry Daley entered the picture a few cases after this when his women clients were willing to throw something in beyond fifty dollars a day and expenses, he balked, and his business was beginning to die. Guys like Larry Larkin and Jack Vance were grabbing dough, expenses and whatever else was thrown at them. Harry had been recommended by Danny Harlan the guy he saved from a serial killer wife who wanted it all, all his dough that is, but not him. After a few sessions under Harry’s guidance Lew turned a new leaf, began to look at each case not as a puzzle to be solved by looking at hard facts, gluing them together and be done with it but looking at the motivation of the parties involved, the perp’s too. Jesus Lew as totally out of step with the rules of the road for hard-boiled detectives. Didn’t help his sexual impotency but didn’t solve any cases either. The notorious Norris serial killer case he had Jimmy Norris, a women hater, in his sights just after one murder, and let him go figuring maybe something his mother did long ago set him on the wrong road. The public coppers stopped Jimmy after three more murders.     

Like I said this is no obituary and I don’t write them but just thinking about the dismal spiral downhill to working with a sleaze like Kenny Millar who was disbarred from the profession after Sheila had to let him go and then dropping down further to the junk to ease whatever pain was causing his pain and a no name end in some Bunker Hill skid row rooming house filled with pissed halls and wasted needles is no way for a guy to end. I guess I can say this though-RIP, Lew Archer, RIP.