The Novel in Progress

September became October, and October has become...January...

Bad news: my agent has been laid up with a nasty jaw infection for the last month, so she's not going to send the novel out to editors until January.

Good news: she doesn't think it's going to need anything but some minor rewrites, and once I do those, the ms. will be sent to NY. She's already got five or six editors expecting the book, so I am, very obviously, sweating hopefully.

That's the latest update. In the meantime, I've begun the first story for Book II: "The Secret of Grisley Swamp."

I promise not to include the line, "I would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't a'been for you meddlin' kids!"

The Boys from the Black Rhino

If you grew up in the sixties or seventies, you grew up with rock and roll. By the time we were in high school, we knew the songs, we knew the bands; rock was the background soundtrack to our lives.

Except for me. Somehow the music stayed way in the background, perhaps because I was reading more than anything, then becoming a movie and tv geek. Music was not really a part of my life. It never really touched me in my heart. It danced around me, yet never wove its way in.

Until 1978.

Like every college-age American, at 11:30 on Saturdays, we watched the only counter-cultural show that spoke our language, that was aimed directly at us: Saturday Night Live. And, late in the year, two shifty looking white dudes from Calumet City, Illinois, fresh from the stage at the Black Rhino Club, took SNL by storm...
...and the Blues Brothers opened up to me a world of music that finally touched my soul.

The origins of the Blues Brothers are well known, and I suggest you go to Blues Brothers Central for all the info you need. Basically, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi started the Blues Brothers as an SNL warm up gig. They got their first (and lesser-known) chance as the BBs on stage in 1977...as Bees, performing "King Bee."

But that was just one song, as the Bees. And no one thought about it ever again.

Then came November 18, 1978. Belushi, fresh off the success of Animal House, took the mantle of Jake Elwood Blues, and Aykroyd, the creative dynamo behind the duo, became Elwood Jake Blues. They opened for Steve Martin during a series of performances at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. Their first album, Briefcase Full of Blues, was recorded from these shows, and their first performance on SNL officially as the Blues Brothers was "Soul Man."
They were clearly Dan and John. And yet, somehow, they were not. I wasn't sure at first if it was really them. There was someone else behind those Ray-Bans. They were different personalities -- characters and iconographs made real. And the music was rock and soul with a sense of humor...combined with reverence, irreverence, and a distinctly contemporary groove.

It sparked me. It sparked a lot of people. It woke something up in America's musical psyche. This one-of-a-kind combination of a little bit of comedy and a lot of old-fashioned music, filtered through the funky groove of the '70s, made the blues cool again. Hell, even B. B. King and Ray Charles admitted that the Blues Brothers revitalized not only their careers, but the Blues. It's the only musical that regular guys watch and absolutely love -- because they don't look at it as a musical. It's a dude flick, with cool songs. Get it?

And the movie was a rebirth for the costars when it was released in 1980. Although the film was panned critically, it has since become an overwhelming cult favorite. It jump-started the faltering careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the musicians from Booker T. and the MGs, and made B. B. King ask if he could be in the next one.

He was, in Blues Brothers 2000, released in 1998 (please, don't ask me, I have no idea). Not a hilarious film; maybe not even a good one. But the music is fine, the heart is in the right place, and John Goodman proves he can sing a mean cover of "I'm Looking for a Fox." That, and Aykroyd's cover of "Cheaper to Keep Her," make the dvd worth the price.

Comedy opened up a world of music to me. And since the Blues Brothers and the untimely death of Jake, I have explored the blues and soul music of B. B. King, Albert Collins, Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers, Johnny Lang, Susan Tedeschi, Matt Guitar Murphy (Blues Brothers guitarist who is recovering nicely from a stroke), Delbert McClinton, Candye Kane (I fixed the spelling, Candye!), Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Koko Taylor, Tinsley Ellis, John Lee Hooker, Aretha, Johnny Winter, Ana Popovic, Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Kim Wilson, Buddy Guy, Wilson Pickett --

Driving rhythm, pounding guitar, haunting blues organ, triumphant and sad horns. Man, all it does is reflect the cascading beats of the masculine heart as some woman tramples on our soul.

Elwood lives. Jake's blood brother, Zee, lives. They're performing October 8 in Orlando at the House of Blues, where every bar in every HOB location is called Jake's Bar.

My temperature's rising and I'm goin' back to Miami. I owe you guys.

House of Mystery

I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house; at the very least, a house of mystery. What I want is the Winchester House...but with a plot.

The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reputed to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Sarah Winchester's day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. The cost for such constant building has been estimated at about US $5.5 million (if paid in 1922, this would be equivalent to almost $70 million in 2008 dollars).

The mansion is renowned for its size and utter lack of any master building plan. According to popular belief, Sarah Winchester thought the house was haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles, and that only continuous construction would appease them. It is located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, California.
(from Wikipedia, which, although cursory, is pretty accurate)

Great story. Close to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, which is the other house of mystery I’d love to live in.
(Go here for the complete and exhaustive story of the haunted mansion: www.doombuggies.com)

But it doesn’t have a plot either. Especially if you consider that lame-ass Disney movie. No plot, no fun.

So there’s this family in NYC who hires an architect to redo their apartment. Then, last week, an article in the New York Times appears all about the apartment and what happened there. And suddenly the rights to the piece are bought by J. J. Abrams of Lost/Alias/Star Trek XI fame, who will somehow bring the story of this apartment to the screen in a few years.

Yes, yes, I want to live here.

Here’s the link to the NYT article, "Mystery on Fifth Avenue." Make sure you look at the slideshow.

Just remember: you, too, can have a house like this...at $300 a square foot.

Another Key West Story...I mean, Tail

For Clyph:

So Maria and I are sitting in Capt. Tony's Saloon on Greene St. in Key West. That's THE Capt. Tony of the Jimmy Buffett song, "Last Mango in Paris." About 3 or 4 in the afternoon, ready to have the first beer of the day -- yeah, I know. Amateur! So in walks a Conch. Okay, maybe not a native Conch, but a Conch at heart. Ex-hippie. Holes in the t-shirt, unwashed shorts, long gray beard. He has a dog on a leash. Not a strange sight at all in the bars of Key West; hell, Capt. Tony's has a water dish out front for the fur monsters. But on top of this dog was a cat. Riding the dog's back.

Not a bad trick, I thought.

Then I saw something squirming on top of the cat, making it agitated.

It was a little white mouse.

I blinked a coupla times, took a sip of my beer, and said to Maria, "Goddamn."

Then -- then -- it got interesting.

This guy had semi-trained the animals so he could show them off and panhandle. Not a bad gig -- I'll give him that. But the operative word above is SEMI-trained.

You can only train a cat soooo much.

He led the three-furred-salad farther into the bar...and something spooked the cat. I'm betting the mouse shit on his head. Anyway, the cat rrrooowwwwwwlllllled and sprang off the dog -- the mouse went flying -- and the cat, claws extended, embedded itself in the left side of a guy at the bar.

First, the hippie picked up the mouse and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he pulled the cat out of the man's flesh and put it back on top of the dog. The cat sprang off again. The man flinched in expectation. The cat landed on the floor and licked a front paw, as if saying, "I meant to do that."

"Goddamn," I said.

The hippie gave up, picked up the cat, and led the dog away.

Lest you don't believe me: