Signal Watch Reads: Green River Killer - A True Detective Story

The name Jeff Jensen didn't immediately ring any bells as a comics writer when I looked at who penned this book, but as a writer for Entertainment Weekly I know the name, indeed, thanks to the fact that I cannot remember a time when Jamie wasn't a subscriber to Entertainment Weekly.

Jensen's own father, Tom Jensen, was a detective in the King County Sheriff's Department who was on the Green River Task Force from the early 1980's until the unit was dissolved in 1990.  He continued work on the case right up through the Green River Killer's conviction around 2003.

Like a lot of morbid kids seeking a cheap thrill, back in high school I checked out books on serial killers from the local library.  In addition to names like Son of Sam and Zodiac, The Green River Killer was always named as one of the greatest hits of serial killers.  He was called out in part thanks to the sheer number of those he was suspected to have killed and in part because he'd never been caught.  Of course doing a little reading quickly dismisses the whole "brilliant mastermind" scenario of the Hannibal Lecter books.  The reality is that it's hard to catch people who kill mostly strangers and with motives that don't stem from personal grudges, and the stories of both victims and killers are often bleak and tragic.

No Post Tuesday - TR edition

One of the first disagreements Jamie and I had when moving in together was about whether or not I could purchase and hang a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt in the living room.  I was told I could not.  Eventually, I married her anyway.

I think that one day I will get my Roosevelt portrait.

Also, its probably time to crack that 3rd Roosevelt volume.

Signal Watch President's Day!: William Henry Harrison (Number 9)

This President's Day we talk our Nation's* 9th President, William Henry Harrison.

President Harrison was born in 1773 in Virginia, son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  He would be elected President in 1840, and attain fame among generations of school children perusing their textbooks to be shocked at the dates next to Harrison's name, and the reputation as "the guy who died right after taking office".

Which, of course, is true.  After an illustrious career as a member of the US Congress (from what was then called the Northwest Territory), Governor of the territory of Indiana and with an honorable military record, including his role as the General at the Battle of Tippecanoe with the Shawnee and his leadership during the War of 1812, Harrison would find himself nominated twice for the office of President.

During his second turn at running for office under the Whig banner, in 1840 Harrison successfully campaigned as a bit of a good old boy, played up the Tippecanoe angle, which you may recall from the "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" campaign slogan, and did very well, especially in the electoral college.

March 4th of 1841 Harrison took office.  By March 26th he fell ill with a cold which spiraled into pneumonia.  Harrison died on April 4th, 1841.

For a full history of what befell Harrison and why, I invite you review this video:





In his short term in office, some which was spent ill, Harrison did not manage to achieve much other than to make appointments.  He would be succeeded by his Vice President, John Tyler, most famous for being the first President to take office because the elected President had died, and for later joining and serving in the Congress of the Confederacy.  He was also in office when Texas joined the United States.

Alas, poor William Henry Harrison.  A colorful career as a servant to his country, repaid with a somewhat goofy campaign slogan you learned in Junior High and for becoming a cautionary tale as to why one should keep out of the rain.

*for those of us in the good 'ol US of A!

St. Valentine's Day (Massacre)

It ain't all roses, hearts and chocolates.

On February 14th, 1929, 7 men of the "Bugs" Moran Gang were brutally murdered by what is now believed to have been possibly Capone's gang dressed up as cops. Prior to the Massacre, Chicago had been a bit loose with their gangsters, treating them a bit like celebrities who provided jobs and booze in the era of the Volstead Act.

A bizarre but telling detail of the incident:  One victim (with 14 bullets in him) was still alive when found. Asked by the cops who had done the deed, he said "Nobody shot me".

Wikipedia has a phenomenal amount of info on the gruesome crime.

Noir City Special: We Crash Dashiell Hammett's Apartment

So, more than once I mentioned that Jenifer had lined up something highly unusual for my visit to San Francisco that was going to be a real topper for the trip out.

She told me ahead of time that she'd gotten this set up, but it didn't make any sense at the time.  After having spent a few days with Jenifer, I now get that she's just one of those people who has the near-magical ability to make things work.

Its also worth mentioning that Jenifer figured out from looking at pictures that she lives across the street from the recently renovated former apartment of pulp hero, Dashiell Hammett.

The story around the apartment itself is kind of amazing, and involves sleuthing on the part of his truest fans.  Its true Hammett lived in multiple buildings, but by looking at return addresses on envelopes from letters, descriptions of Sam Spade's apartment in The Maltese Falcon and a few other contextual clues, they've narrowed it down and figured out that this was the apartment Hammett resided at for a few years in San Francisco, and when he wrote The Maltese Falcon.

I'm still not entirely clear on how Jenifer made the contact, but this morning we met up with one of the organizers of Noir City, who had been one of those investigators and who had lived in the apartment himself and did a lot of renovations.  I won't go into specifics, but basically the apartment is now a very weird spot.  Nobody lives there, and its a residential building, so there are no tours.  Essentially its supported by a philanthropist who pays the rent and maintenance and the place sits empty most days except for an occasional tour like ours or a walking tour.

Jenifer models next to the plaque talking about Hammett outside the security door.

The building is down the street from my hotel, as well.  And one thing I've learned in my short stay is that behind a lot of these facades, there's something going on or some crazy history in a lot of these buildings you wouldn't guess walking by, be it a famous author's former residence, or a secret stash of vintage cars or swimming pools by big doors.

Just inside the doorway

It doesn't seem that anybody was really aware of the building's history until the last 20 years, and so the apartment had to be basically re-done to match the original decor.  The building went up in 1917, and so Hammett would have lived there about 10 years after it opened.  Since that time, landlords had removed doors, painted over glass, added a hundred layers of paint, etc...

Dedicated folks pieced together the apartment from fixtures in apartments from the building that were original, found items that matched the book, etc...

Its a fairly small place.  A bedroom/ living room with a murphy bed, a small bath (with the original clawfoot tub and toilet, so you can stand where Hammett stood as he showered, I suppose), a small kitchen, etc..   So this was not from a period in Hammett's life where the money was just rolling in.  Its a modest living space in a part of town with a lot of character now and then.

I did take more pictures, and when I upload them to Google, I'll post a link.

Oh, the Falcon on the desk?  I'm not sure what that's about.

No, this was not Hammett's chair, but its a nice chair, right?

Of a very special, very noir weekend, this was an unbelievable bit of history that put a near surreal spin on things.

Thanks to Jenifer for arranging the tour (and so much more during my stay), to Bill who was more host that tour guide, and Doug, who was... there, I guess.

More pics when I get home and get them off my phone.

Signal Watch Reads: Feynman

A few months ago Jim Ottaviani visited Austin during the promotional tour of his graphic novel, Feynman, a biographical sketch of famed physicist Richard Feynman.  It turns out that Jim's day job is in the field of digital libraries, and he had a sort of informal chat at the library, where it turned out he knew two of my colleagues from graduate school.

Its a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.*

A few things:  

1)  I struggled mightily in high school physics and stuck with geology as much as possible in college when asked to to take science (rocks!).  My investigations into modern physics (stuff they were not teaching at my high school) have been mostly catch-as-catch can through television specials, reading articles online and this, my third comic book on physics in any way, shape or form.  I know some basic principles, I know some names, I understand that light behaves like a wave and a particle, and aside from that, I sort of stop and start with what everyone who has ever owned more than one Pink Floyd album knows about Schroedinger's Cat.  And, as I understand it, what we consider the point of the experiment is incorrect.

2)  I don't pretend like I had ever heard of Richard Feynman before this book hit the shelves.  The pop-culture aspect of science also eludes me, and so I had not read any of Mr. Feynman's books or sat about urbanely quoting the man over coffee served in a small and delicate cup.  

3)  I have a hard time remembering the basic fundamentals of physics.  Every time I return to the material, that part of my brain re-engages, and neurons re-fire, but its not something I think about very often.  Its sort of how I wrote down what the Higgs-Boson is just so I had a place to go look it up every time I needed to know while reading an article on the LHC.

My hat if off to Jim Ottaviani for his handling and structure of a book that could have been an horrendous mess.  The book is really 85% biography, 15% physics lesson in order to explain why Feynman matters to Sally Q. Reader.  As he states in the afterword, I had no doubt that Ottaviani had done his research enough to both understand and not judge the man particularly one way or another, and to internalize what Feynman was on about enough to share it with an audience as clueless about physics as myself.

Take a minute today

Remember, remember...

Before it was a movie that utterly watered down the premise and execution, V for Vendetta was the comic that every mildly disaffected teenager should read.  And then read again every five years, like any book that affects you in your youth.

Its funny what age, experience and the insight derived from both bring to a text you think you know.

I've mixed feelings regarding the fact that both Anonymous and emo teens have adopted the face of Guy Fawkes, a figure who's politics are so of his time and personal issues, that I've never been able to get my head around the morality of his gameplan.  But, really, my trip to England finally got my head around some of how the non-democratized world worked in ye-olde-era in which nations' fates hung upon big-stakes games of "get rich or die tryin'", and how quickly one could end up dead in crowned countries right up til fairly recent history.

Its a far leap from The Gunpowder Plot to the Occupy Wallstreet movement, and I suspect that its the anarchic principles outlined in V the comic and movie that inspire the mask.

I watch Anonymous with a sort of detached interest.  How does one condone vigilantism, be it on the internet or elsewhere?  How does one not smile a bit when you see masked Trickster agents befuddling folks who believe they've got it all under control (and profit from keeping it that way)?  But cringe when you see that same merry approach to chaos used without wisdom or restraint?

But, hell, I heard this week they might be targeting M13?  That would be remarkable.

Between you and me, I do not want either governments or corporations who do not tremble a little at the thought of what the unwashed masses can do.

There's an argument to be made about Mystery Men, here, as well, of wondering about the morality of a Superman or Batman who can disappear into the shadows by putting on glasses or pulling off a cowl.  And its interesting to see the masks appear at rallies, online, on posters...  If you don't know who we are...?  you've given us a playing field in which we know more than you do, and we know how to make it hurt...

And maybe that's what I find fascinating about this return to a 1938 Superman, brash and dangerous, as likely to make mistakes as a drunken bull perusing a china shop.  Its amusing how some readers find this idea unsettling, and I think that's the energy the character likely exuded back in the day, that captured the imagination of street kids with clear moral compasses, but the lack of experience or knowledge to understand how complicated the world can become, or understand the concept of compromise.

So, let us all remember, remember...

It was surely about justice in the mind of Mr. Fawkes.  Or at least a moral obligation to the church and/ or crown.  But there's always a fine line between anarchic justice and terrorism, isn't there?  You don't see me striking back against those with whom I disagree with cyber-attacks or by burning down their office cubes.

Its not the way I prefer to engage with those with whom I disagree.  But it doesn't mean you can't enjoy seeing someone get tweaked now and again.

So, what is "Melbotis"?

So, it occurred to me - there's a whole audience out there that doesn't know what the story is with "Melbotis", "The League", why is the house called "League HQ"?, etc...

So, here's the story.

In 2000, Jamie and I moved into a house in South Austin just about the time some friends had broken up and were moving to separate coasts.  Whilst together, they'd taken on a Golden Retriever pup they named "Melbotis".  The name came from an inside joke they had about a couple named "Melba" and "Otis".  I didn't know this until well after they'd handed Mel over to us in the summer of 2000.

The pronunciation is, roughly, "Mel-Boh-Duss".

Right after he came onboard, I took Mel to the vet for his routine check-up, but at his original vet.  I believed his name was spelled "Melbodus", and learned that, no...  it was spelled "Melbotis" while looking at his medical records.

Mel was a big boy.  I think he topped off at 112 pounds before he got put on a diet.  Big, and very happy to try to sit in your lap, or at least get as much into your lap as possible.

He was also oddly smart, and we began to realize his vocabulary was fairly extensive.  He loved to swim, run off the leash, hoard toys and tennis balls, shake, play fetch, do a trick or two, and destroy toys.  He could follow directions and hand gestures, and generally liked being involved in whatever scheme you had going on.

I was 25 when we got Mel, and something about a dog that large that seemed to know his own business meant that I was perfectly comfortable treating him more like a roommate than a pet.  Sure, we fed him and took care of him, but he was given a lot of latitude to just sort of come and go from the house to the yard, get in the car if he felt like it, and just generally hang out.

Mel's Halloween costume circa 2002

Jamie had never had a dog, and suddenly she was faced with this thing as large as herself living in the house. I would not characterize the first year as building a deep emotional bond, but then Jamie's job evaporated, and she spent a few months at home looking for jobs.  And during that time, she and Mel became really good buddies.

In 2002, we moved to Arizona.  For a while I'd made jokes around the house about how we were the "League of Melbotis", and so when I launched a blog in 2003 (this was new stuff back then), that was what I named the site.  You can still see League of Melbotis online.

This Moment in History: Qaddafi dead

Today I saw reports that Libyan leader/ dictator/ state-funded-terrorist-supporting quack Muammar el-Qaddafi (I'm going with the NYT's spelling) had been killed in a clash in Libya between Qaddafi's dwindling forces and the uprising against his regime.  On the elliptical at the gym, I watched Anderson Cooper trying to make sense of video footage he'd received of a bloody-faced Qaddafi, apparently just before his death.  And here's an article on the whole, ugly, final day of Qaddafi's life.  

Our younger readers will not necessarily remember Qaddafi as the bogeyman to the US that he was back in the 1980's.  But his participation in bombings of airline flights inform a bit of why it seemed logical to the US populace in 2003 that perhaps Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorist action.  Many of us remember Qaddafi in association with bombings such as the one at Lockerbie.

I also recall our repeated attempts to bomb Qaddafi, which eventually led to his retreat from the world stage as the US sent sorties of F-111's over Tripoli, strategically placing bombs into the bedrooms of his various homes.

I was in history class when we discussed how and why we'd bombed Libya.

I won't mourn the man, but just as I am uncertain that I was uncomfortable with the festival atmosphere that followed the death of Bin Laden, it doesn't feel like anything to celebrate.  It just feels like is something that never should have happened to begin with.  I dunno.  I guess we'll just have to differ on that.

9/11 post - 10th anniversary

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the events of September 11th, 2001.

But I don't know what to write about it.

Like all of you, I can tell a long story about where I was, and how it affected me personally.  I think these stories are important.  They're how we know the event happened as something other than images on a TV screen or in a headline.

I've told the story before, and I'll likely tell it again sometime, but not here or today.  Its just what happened to me and to Jamie.  It is not what happened in New York or at The Pentagon or in Pennsylvania.  And its not what happened in the days following, with candlelight vigils, American flags hanging from housefronts, and calm unity and certainty in the face of not just tragedy but of absolute and frightening change to how we thought about the world.

This is where I stop, because in reviewing the timeline, I'll start rambling on, and I strongly suspect that our visions of the world will differ, and I don't want to have that conversation.

The world didn't begin or end on 9/11/2001.  It changed.  And like a lot of changes (something we aren't very well equipped at dealing with in a single generation), the world changed enough that we had a chance to reveal ourselves, and for a short while, we were okay, and we got through it.  We remembered that emergency personnel are true heroes, that soldiers go to war for us, and that the civilization we've built will always have some on the outside who will crash against the walls.  That was for a while, and like all changes, this one showed new sides to us that we've not yet reconciled.

This isn't the place for anything else to write on the topic.  No doubt, you'll have skipped this or breezed through it, along with a thousand other 9/11 memorials and tributes that will pass by you today.

I don't know what to think about.  The victims, most certainly.  The first responders, absolutely.  The hi-jackers?  Why they were there and a half-century of policy most of us think about once or twice a year?  A strange man in a cave that we've finally killed a decade later?  The line from there to now and the thousand things I never guessed I'd see?

The fact that in 100 years this date may well be forgotten?  Or that this date in 2111 may well be remembered just enough to be used by mattress stores to discount their wares?

I don't know.  I know we'll see a hell of a lot of replays of footage I watched over and over 10 years ago, and I'll be able to remember sitting in a hotel room on the bed, uncertain of what was live and what was replay and watching the still aircraft on the tarmac for days, wanting to see them move and not wanting to see a solitary plane in the sky.

Heading for the Beach

Hey, Signal Corps!

As of tomorrow I am packing my swimtrunks, my suntan lotion and my REO Speedwagon 8-tracks and Jamie and I are headed for Galveston for a few days with my folks and my brother and his lady-friend.

we shall all look splendid in our bathing costumes

Galveston is a town of unfortunate history and frequent calamity, but its also a fascinating little burg sitting out there on a spit, bravely casting its face against the many dangers the sea and sun can deliver. But its a fun place to go, and relatively shark free.

The island is home to some fascinating Queen Anne homes, both restored and decaying, three universities (including a medical school), an aquarium, a sort of zoo thing, an airplane museum and was one of the ports pirate Jean Lafitte used as a headquarters.

Every fall they have an event called "Dickens on the Strand" where locals dress up like Victorian-era folk and make a sort of living Christmas display in their touristy/ shopping area off the beach. I've never been, but it sounds... well, I don't know how they don't pass out in those get-ups. Its still warm here in November.

Its The Admiral's* B-Day, and as his B-Day usually comes and goes with a minimum of fuss, the KareBear decided this year we'd do it up a bit more. So off we're headed to sunny Galveston where we'll... I have no idea. I suspect it will be fun, though.

But that's it for me. I'm all tuckered out. You kids have a good weekend and we'll see you next week.

our birthday boy in his finest regalia

*for those new to the Signal Corps, "The Admiral" is not actually an Admiral and his service was limited to four years in the Air Force. Its an affectionate honorific.

Lucille Ball's 100th

this is way better than the issue when Jerry Lewis meets Superman

Today is the 100th birthday of Lucille Ball. She passed in 1989, but she's more than made her mark on pop culture. I do wonder, though, if kids today even understand references to "Oh, Ricky! Waaaaaah!" or a dozen other Lucy-isms.

I make it sound like I had this really depressing childhood of spending summers watching re-runs by myself on KBVO, but it was a fun childhood of spending summers by myself watching re-runs on KBVO. Yes, Beverly Hillbillies was my favorite classic TV show (oh, that Jethro), but by 8th grade I started to actually quite like I Love Lucy.

The more I watched the show as I got older, and quit thinking of it as the show that my grandparents watched when they were in town (they also really, really liked Hunter.  I have no idea why.), the more I came to appreciate the dynamic of Ricky and Lucy, and, of course, I better understood the context of the show at the time.

how Jamie never wound up in a similar situation, I'll never know

So, my folks just gave me my high school yearbooks...

There's nothing to show you the trail of wreckage you and your peers have made out of your lives like sifting through the high school yearbook.  My folks are moving to Austin this fall, and so they are in the process of clearing out the old homestead back in Spring, TX.

The yearbook is full of faces and names I haven't thought about in the 18 years since me and good 'ol Klein Oak High parted ways.  Old friends, old flames, lovely well-wishes from people I don't remember, pictures of people who I don't recall, people who I only remember horrible and/ or embarrassing things about, etc...

But as this site is 90% comics and superheroes and 10% confessional, I thought I'd post a few photos.

Some context...

These are all from my Senior Year (Class of '93 RULES!!!!   WHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!).  That year I was in drama club where I did about three plays, I had a great little red '83 Honda Accord named The Badger, and had some pretty great friends, some of whom pop up here from time to time.  I did not post their pictures here, but totally would if they gave me permission.

The Drama Club thing is important, because it'll help explain a bit about why I popped up doing silly things.

I have carried my shame long enough, and now I share it with you.

Let's see here.  Dancing?  Check.  Gold hat?  Check.  Singing showtunes?  Check.  Wearing bootleg Jane's Addiction concert shirt?  Check.

Your reminder that TR was 10x the man of anyone alive

that @#$% is real

Thanks to RHPT for the image

And Sometimes Superman Went Crazy and Became King of the World: Action Comics 311

Oh, comics.

I first saw this cover years ago, and only recently obtained a copy of Action Comics #311, the one where Superman becomes a despotic tyrant over all the Earth.  Only, you know, in the kind of goofy way Superman would have become a despotic tyrant during the Silver Age in comics aimed at kids.

I like that he added the fleecing to his cape.  You got to class it up as king.

Key to making sure you're king?  Demanding trays full of jewels.  I will need to remember that.

Superman does nothing by half-measures, so you should expect none of that here.  The story in brief: Superman gets exposed to Red Kryptonite, which splits him into two sides, one bad and one good.  The bad side remains Superman, but the other becomes human-strength Clark Kent. Bad Superman decides there's no good reason to help people, and so he decides to just lord it over them.

No, no it doesn't make any sense.  But where have we seen this good/ bad split before?  Well, not exactly before...  you saw it in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. Also, we see good/ bad Superman as Superman/ Clark in...  SUPERMAN 3 where Red-K was also to blame!

So, yeah.  Red K.  Its a real problem. Avoid it.

I'm going to editorialize like crazy here, but there's also an ad run in the front cover of the comic, featuring Bob Hope teaching kids about loving their neighbor, religious tolerance, wrestling with singular world viewpoints, etc... all in 5 panels!  And it is seemingly sponsored by the US Govt.

clearly, Bob Hope was a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda

Quite a few of these pop up in these Kennedy-era comics.  It's oddly kind of stunning.  These days, this sort of hopeful, "it's a small world" talk would get you a 24 hour news cycle on Fox accusing you of hating the troops.

Also:  apparently kids were still into Bob Hope in the mid-60's.

But it's not that, nor the suggestion the comic makes that China built an entire replica of New York City (to scale, btw) just to blow it up for atomic bomb tests that I want to point to.  No, its exactly the manner in which Superman demands the nations of the world crown him Head Cheese.

He heads to the United Nations general assembly, takes the podium, and...

I invite you to click for full-sized madness

 Right on.

For those of you who didn't look...

We will SUPER bury you!

Pretty good stuff.

Of course, the actual pounding of shoe to podium associated with Krushchev may be Cold War myth, but it was taught to me as fact. I am betting that was one of the more fun panels these guys put together.  No idea what readers, their parents, or the CCA said about this one.

And I particularly love that Superman is still going to town, menacing the General Assembly with a bright, red boot as the cameras roll.

at this point, I imagine Superman has broken out into song

This, by the way, is a two-parter!

And if you missed it:

You can drop the "tator" part, Olsen

Rubbernecking 1947 Crime Scenes: "The Black Dahlia" book and movie

So, I'm not quite ghoulish enough to spend a lot of time watching shows about true life murder (unless I'm unemployed, then all bets are off.  City Confidential is aaaammmaaaaaaazing.).  For reasons I'm not quite sure of, I've been aware of the Black Dahlia murder since at least high school.  "The Black Dahlia"* was the name used in the LA press to describe torture and murder victim Elizabeth Short, found dead and terribly mutilated in an empty lot in January of 1947.  Short's murder has never been solved.

The crime has been endlessly revisited, much like the Jack the Ripper slayings, due to the unthinkable cruelty inflicted upon Short, the seeming calculated ruthlessness, the bizarre manner of public disposal, the odd follow ups from someone seemingly Short's killer, and the fact that the crime went unsolved despite a media frenzy and all-out effort by the LAPD.

I'm going to interrupt you now and say, I am totally not @#$%ing kidding:  DO NOT GOOGLE FOR IMAGES OF ELIZABETH SHORT.  Due to the nature of Google image search, you're likely to turn up autopsy and crime scene photos, and, I repeat:  her manner of her death was absolutely horrific.

She looked like this in life.  There.  You're done.

Back in the 1980's, crime novelist James Ellroy penned a fictional account of the investigation of Short's murder, and I think its safe to say that Ellroy stuck to some basic facts of the case, held close to historical accuracy for the time, but otherwise readers should consider the book a work of complete fiction (including characterization of Elizabeth Short).

I recently completed the book and watched the movie, The Black Dahlia.  Reading the book and watching the flick back-to-back is something I've been doing a lot of late, although I confess I gave up on the film of Slaughterhouse Five, deciding I wanted more time between the book and movie, but in this case...  I hadn't been completely sold on Ellroy's Black Dahlia.  Maybe I should have been, but parts of the book felt like they'd been cut too short or sold short, other parts seemed to linger on a bit longer than I felt necessary.

SPOILERS, AHOY

Some of the characters are fairly obvious, and, frankly, I felt that the minute the entirety of the Sprague clan showed up, and the way in which our narrator meets the family, this would be another tale in which the well-hidden perversions of the wealthy lead to victimhood for others.

As the book arrived in the 1980's, I can't be certain that it hasn't been imitated endlessly since, or if its carrying on the tradition of stories like Hammett's The Dain Curse or The Big Sleep by Chandler, and there's been enough repetition in crime and noir fiction that its almost inevitability of the genre.  It doesn't really matter, I suppose as I wasn't able to guess, exactly, who was responsible for the Dahlia until it was revealed in the novel, but it seemed as if rather than pursuing red herrings, the book could have tried to come to less of a dead end so early on.  The winding mess does obfuscate the mystery, but somehow the denouement just feels a bit too much like a "hoo-dunnit" by the time the final chapters put things into place.  Moreover, unlike the similar fictional reconstruction by Alan Moore in From Hell, the players selected are all entirely fictional, and it feels a little odd solving a very real, very tragic murder with fictional characters, motivations, etc...

Frankly, I couldn't ever shake the feeling that making Lee Blanchard the killer would have been a more logical and more interesting choice, even after pursuing the Sprague clan, but...  a lot of people who've read the book apparently thought otherwise.

END SPOILERS

I do like most of Ellroy's style, and its made me curious to check out some of his other work (this seems like a very good companion piece to what I remember of the film adaptation of LA Confidential, also by Ellroy). 
I've been looking at American Tabloid as an audio book, and I might have to do that.

The sprawling cast of the book feels right, especially in the multiple environments our narrator passes through, and Ellroy does a good job of knowing all of his characters well enough that you don't get lost.  He seems to fully realize the world of 1940's-era LA and Hollywood, refusing to romanticize any of it. And while he's not as razor quick as a Hammett, Chandler or Westlake, his more "novelistic" approach to traditionally pulp material does give the proceedings a welcome bit of gravitas.

What's terribly odd is how... off I found the recent adaptation to film by Brian DePalma.

these poor jerks thought they were in the next big movie

Released in 2006, the entire tone of the movie seems simply off.  DePalma seems to want to imbue the movie with same sweeping grandeur he captured in The Untouchables, which was a movie far more like a tale of larger than-life heroes and villains playing out morality tales against the marble and granite backdrops of Depression-era Chicago.  Its a strange tack to take with a story that is, flat out, crime-fiction-noir, the kind of story that relies on dingy apartments, bare light-bulbs, cheap-looking actors and a bottle in either foreground or background of every shot.

I knew things had missed the mark fairly early on, but almost groaned aloud when I saw DePalma had transformed the dank, intentionally dark and unobtrusive "lesbian bar", Laverne's, into a swank, deco dinner club complete with a KD Lang (plus dancers) floor show.

Casting for the movie could have been mostly on.  Josh Hartnett was likely okay to cast as narrator Bucky Bleichert, but a producer somewhere decided you can't hire Hartnett and give him prosthetic Buck teeth, no matter what the character is named, and so the teeth disappear before the end of the Act 1.  Scarlet Johansson, always welcome on the screen or in my home, is clearly cast about 10-15 years too young for her role, coming off as a co-ed playing grown up rather than the worldly Kay Lake of the novel.  Hilary Swank never captures the acute weirdness of Madeline Sprague...  the list just kind of goes on.  But, man, do the Sprague-scenes feel like actors chewing up the scenery...  Aaron Eckhardt and the character of Lee feel simply wasted in this adaptation.

you would think Ms. Johansson would make everything better

But even the directing and cutting feel weird.  Scenes are awkwardly shot, seemingly lacking B roll and inserts for close-ups.  Actors seems to know their lines, but haven't quite found the scene, but that's what's on the screen.  And the investigation into the life of Elizabeth Short gets dumbed down into a series of sort-of-goofy screen tests.  Bucky and Lee's absolute unraveling just doesn't make it into the movie, and that's unfortunate (for Ellroy and the viewer).  It was so much the point of the book, and here it just feels like plodding plot points.

All of the pieces are there, from big name actors to up and comers, to beautiful sets, a name director and a best-selling novel as the source...  Anyway, don't take my word for it.  The New York Times also watched the film.

On the whole, its a missed opportunity.  My personal feelings about how Ellroy wraps up the mystery aside, something really weird happened here, and I doubt that's a story Mr. DePalma will ever get to tell.  And because Short's death was very real, and because its not completely outside the window of memory, even while preserved in records and black and white photos, somehow it seems you need to do better when you're given the chance.

In interviews and elsewhere, its no mystery that Ellroy carried (or carries) his own low-level obsession with the Black Dahlia, and wanted some sort of justice for Elizabeth Short. 

As I understand it, Ellroy isn't alone, and a few folks hit the LAPD for the Short files on a routine basis, hoping to find some new clue, somewhere in the endless amount of paperwork created during the investigation.I find it unlikely that with 60 years turning to 70 since Elizabeth Short died, that anyone will ever know what truly happened, but she was real.  And so you hope that those who want to use her memory to tell their stories will do so with the care that I believe Ellroy genuinely employed, but which somehow got lost in the same Hollywood that killed Short the first time around.


*the name was coined after The Blue Dahlia, a popular movie of the era starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

Signal Watch President's Day Profile: Calvin Coolidge

Most of you know that when it comes to Presidents, I find Theodore Roosevelt to be up one of the most fascinating (somewhere next to the "now-slipped-into-the-territory-of-mythos", like Abe Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, I guess).  But 'ol TR gets a lot of coverage, so I won't do that here until I actually read that third volume by Morris. 

The 20th Century saw a wide array of men (well, a wide array of moneyed white men) land in the White House. From Reagan to Kennedy to FDR to Nixon to "Wild" Bill Clinton, it was a wild ride, indeed.

But who talks about Calvin Coolidge? Nobody.

Coolidge was fortunate to land in the White House between World War I , and that little political hot potato we call The Great Depression.*  Coolidge managed a Bush-43 maneuver, saying good-bye to the White House just as the economy was going to holy hell and leaving Hoover in office to make a series of increasingly bad decisions, and shrug off responsibility.  Coolidge was part of a chain of Republican presidents that is mostly dull when history isn't making you want to slap both Harding and Hoover.  Somehow, Coolidge never feels very slappable.  But he doesn't seem much of anything, when you do a little Googling.

It may explain much that Coolidge took the Presidency only after the death of President Harding, who was on a "Tour of Understanding" or some such, which was not entirely unlike Superman walking across America to "get back to the people".  Coolidge served without much in the way of scandal or notoriety, and if you think about our record since Truman, that's kind of AMAZING.

Coolidge served from 1923-29 as President, and somehow William Henry Harrison gets more ink for managing to catch a cold during his inauguration and immediately die in office (which: hubris, people).

This guy.  6 years.

Why do we not write songs about Coolidge, insist on naming airports after him, and why have conservatives not lauded Coolidge as they do Reagan? From the White House's own website:

The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing

Well, to his credit, the 1920's were a pretty good time in America, if you ignore Prohibition and how much that would have put a cramp in you getting your party started. We had movies by the 1920's, phonographs, a lack of war, gangsters livening stuff up with bathtub gin, and flappers were making wearing slinky dresses and dancing and drinking a welcome idea.

The White House also says:

But no President was kinder in permitting himself to be photographed in Indian war bonnets or cowboy dress, and in greeting a variety of delegations to the White House.

So, you know: he was screwing around with disguise kits for 6 years.  Was he the Jimmy Olsen of presidents?

Now largely forgotten, the raves in the Coolidge White House were, according to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Off the hook".

Even the White House seems to struggle to figure out what this guy was actually doing 40 hours per week other than hanging about, or even to have something positive to say about the dude, but its hard to say much negative either. The reason: Coolidge is most famous for not just doing nothing, but for basically refusing to talk during his Presidency. Including (or especially) at social functions and dinner parties. He was pretty keen on just answering with a simple "yes" or "no", leading this website to postulate that Coolidge was likely an early cyborg presidential replacement.

Clearly, this lack of "shooting one's mouth off when given the slightest provocation and when nobody can stop you" is where Coolidge and I would diverge, but I kind of like the idea of the person who runs their life and presidency by remembering the old adage about "better to remain silent and let them think you a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".

In some ways, he's the ideal Tea Party guy, in that his lack of desire to see the government (ie: himself) actually do anything fits in neatly with the "less government" idea.  He was no TR when it came to using the Presidency and, by extension, the entire US, as a blunt instrument.  Coolidge, sought not to rock the boat and to do what he could to promote Capitalist ideals.  After all, he was the guy who coined the idea that "the business of America is business". He may be the Ron Swanson of Presidents.

Without trying to throw too many political grenades, I'll mention that the Democrats of the Southern States during the 1920's were not always the most interested in concepts of social justice based upon racial, ethnic and other barriers.  Republican Coolidge was of the Abraham Lincoln school of 19th Century and early-20th Century Republicans and recognized the gallant participation of African-Americans in the first World War, and acted in support of black citizens, Catholics and others who had to put up with the bigoted nonsense Americans tend to cultivate (see:  Woodrow Wilson).

On a  final note:

I read somewhere long ago, and cannot find the source, that Coolidge also liked to sneak off and hide in the bushes from his security crew, then hop out and scare them when they came looking for him. If true, then Coolidge was exactly my kind of guy.

Hmmm.  You know, I probably should have covered Taft.  That guy was probably more interesting.

More reading on Coolidge:

Wikipedia is oddly complete
Calvin Coolidge's web site (Yup)

Well, that sort of covers it.  He's not exactly John Adams, people.


*If anyone wants a name for the Depression we're sinking into now, may I recommend "Great Depression 2:  Depression Forever!"