Tales of an Old Limo Driver

" . . . Yeah, he's a good actor. And he had a fistfight with Edward G. Robinson in the backlot of the old MGM studio."

"How I long for a reliable companion" -- Eli Sisters

The expert

Overheard out in the world, a woman educating three others:


"We all go out in the world as representatives of ourselves. There is just so much artifice. That's why it is so good to see you guys. You're life. Living. You're lavender. Lavender chocolate. A big piece of lavender chocolate."

Seen at the bar

An older, balding, bespectacled man in a police jacket.  Were it an MI-5 jacket he could be straight from a Le Carre novel -- the middle-aged, middle class part of the security apparatus.   Behind the bar, he picked up each of the very many bottles and swirled it, then held a flashlight to the bottom, shining the light through so the bottle glowed.  Looking for cracks? Worms?  Sediment? Fingerprints?  In any case, a job for the police.

"He was an unattractive creature with his clothes on; in the nude I thought he looked something like a goat." -- Patrick deWitt

LA Times headline of the day:

Woman Who Offered Sex For McNuggets Was Hungry

Favorite recent sentence from a newspaper:

"In theory, nothing is sacred."

-- Anthony Tommasini on the less-operatic " Porgy and Bess"

2011 Reading List

Most recently read first:

Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World -- Richard Rhodes


House of Holes -- Nicholson Baker

Backwards Ran Sentences : The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker -- Wolcott Gibbs

The Master and Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov

Wolf Hall -- Hilary Mantel

Train Dreams -- Denis Johnson

Assumption -- Percival Everett

The Face of Trespass -- Ruth Rendell

Pictures at a Revolution -- Mark Harris

The Score -- Richard Stark

The Stars My Destination -- Alfred Bester

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 -- Alistair Horne

The Sleepwalkers -- Paul Grossman

On The Road -- Jack Kerouac

Thy Neighbor's Wife -- Gay Talese

Varieties of Disturbance -- Lydia Davis

Comedy in a Minor Key -- Hans Keilson

Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure -- Craig Robinson

Outsider in Amsterdam -- Janwilliam van de Wetering

My Animal Life -- Maggie Gee

The Moonstone -- Wilkie Collins

Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence -- Bill James

A Meaningful Life -- L.J. Davis

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage -- Richard Holmes

Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960 -- William Boyd

Embassytown -- China Mieville

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews -- Geoff Dyer

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government -- David K. Johnson

Just Kids -- Patti Smith

Started Early, Took My Dog -- Kate Atkinson

Memento Mori -- Muriel Spark

Half a Life -- Darin Strauss

Three Men in a Boat -- Jerome K. Jerome

Toward You -- Jim Krusoe

The Arabs: A History -- Eugene Rogan

Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry -- David Orr

Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence -- Geoff Dyer

Bossypants -- Tina Fey

The Buenos Aires Quintet -- Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Funeral for a Dog -- Thomas Pletzinger

Ecstasy -- Mike Leigh

Season's Greetings -- Alan Ayckbourne

Mary Broome -- Allan Monkhouse

Heads You Lose -- Lisa Lutz and David Hayward

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe -- Charles Yu

Lidless -- Frances Ca-Chu Cowhig

A Lesson in Narrative Time -- Jody Bolz

Savages -- Don Winslow

Fen -- Caryl Churchill

Saul Bellow: Letters -- Saul Bellow

The Children's Hour -- Lillian Hellman

Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte -- Maureen Adams

In a True Light -- John Harvey

She Was My Brother -- Julie Jensen

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto -- Chuck Klosterman

Vampire Boy -- Carlos Trillo & Eduardo Risso

Life -- Keith Richards

Revolution: The Year I Fell In Love and Went to Join the War -- Deb Olin Unferth

The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics -- Walter Mondale and David Hage

The Providence Journal on Babe Ruth

in 1914, playing for the Providence Grays:

"Babe Ruth seems to have gotten in on the ground floor with the fans as a result of his baffling southpaw pitching and his ability to give the horsehide vigorous punishment with the wagon tongue."

  -- from "Babe" by Robert Creamer

"Ham, ham, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, ham, ham HAW!"

Nicholson Baker, "House of Holes"

Wolcott Gibbs on Thomas Dewey

"Dewey, whose indifference to money is such that he can remember offhand how much he was making at any given day in his life . . . ."

[Dewey, District Attorney at the time, responded to Gibbs' criticism by having Gibbs' bank account impounded.]


from "Backwards Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs"

is it me, or the universe?

Philip K. Dick's daughter on the arrogant component of her father's mystical experience:

"Wouldn't you have gone to the doctor? I'd have thought something was wrong with me."

On Irony Highway

Truck stopped, out of gas, on freeway off-ramp, with logo: West Coast Logistics, Inc.

"There are hardly five critics in America, and several of them are asleep." -- Herman Melville

(cited by Sam Allingham at The Millions)

Where are the sexy policemen, nurses & firemen the rest of the year when you really need them?

                            -- Sarah Silverman.