Elmore Leonard, 1925-2013

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Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard, Miami Book Fair, 1989

Elmore Leonard wrote 45 books. Were they good books? Well, let me ask you: Do you know anyone who’s written 45 good books? Neither do I. He’s a literary Joey Chestnut.

I know Leonard wrote at least one good book though and that book is Get Shorty. It’s not Proust but it’s a good novel, not just good as genre fiction. I really enjoyed it.

In fact, my enjoyment was such that I bought another Leonard book, Maximum Bob. If I’d read Maximum Bob first, I would have stopped right there with the Leonard canon. Maximum Bob is so bad, it’s hard to believe these two books were written by the same person.

I read Gold Coast as a tiebreaker. Gold Coast is better than Maximum Bob, no question about it, but not nearly as good as Get Shorty. So I stopped reading Elmore Leonard books, but I highly recommend Get Shorty.

R.I.P. Elmore Leonard

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How the Willis Tower Got Its Name

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When the Sears Tower opened in 1973, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the biggest retailing company in the world. The annual Sears Christmas catalog was like amphetamines for American schoolchildren. (This was before half of America’s schoolchildren were already on amphetamines.)

Sadly, as time passed, the fortunes of Sears & Roebuck declined. Sears moved its offices out of the tower and sold it to some guy named Willis, who was so sick and tired of listening to people say “What you talkin bout, Willis?” that he renamed it to the Willis Tower.

Now when people say “What you talkin bout, Willis?” he says “You want to know what I’m talkin bout?! I’m talkin bout THE TALLEST BUILDING IN NORTH AMERICA! That’s what I’m talkin bout, you pricks.”

Looking down from Willis Tower skydeck, 103rd floor
Looking down from Willis Tower skydeck, 103rd floor (Photo credit: Paul Epps)

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Is the Medication Working?

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Fluoxetine (Prozac), an SSRI

“How is your new medication working?”

“I can’t tell yet . . . I’m going to read for a few minutes then I’m going to bed.”

“How is your new medication working?”

“You just asked me that 10 seconds ago.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I DID answer you. I said I CAN’T TELL YET.”

“I don’t think it’s working.”

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Rearview Cameras in Cars

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Gov’t delays requiring rearview cameras in cars — Associated Press

Rearview cameras in cars seem like a good idea. Who wants to accidentally back over a child or a pet, right? It’s upsetting, not to mention whoever the child or pet belonged to is probably going to hold it against you forever.

Let’s make rearview cameras required by law.

In fact, let’s make rearview and frontview cameras required, because kids and pets can get under the front of your car too, and running over them is bad, no matter what direction you’re going.

I’ve seen TV commercials where cars can detect obstacles in their path and stop automatically to avoid a collision. That’s great. Let’s make that required too.

In fact, let’s make so many features required by law that you can’t even buy a car anymore for less than $50,000.

You know what else is a good idea? Freedom, which is the reason we started up this country in the first place. Let people buy and sell whatever they want.

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We Need More Voter Suppression, Not Less

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Lost

The latest update of the Pew Research Center’s News IQ quiz finds that while 79 percent of respondents correctly identified the Twitter logo, only 55 percent could identify Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General.

The Holder question was not an open-ended question, which would have been more difficult, e.g., “Name the current U.S. Attorney General” or “Who is Eric Holder?” It was a multiple-choice question. The question (you can take the quiz yourself here) shows a photo of Holder and asks respondents to select his job from a list of four options.

Results were even worse for other questions. Fifty percent correctly identified Syria as the highlighted country on a map, again from a list of four choices, and 43 percent were able to identify Elizabeth Warren from a set of four photos.

And still there are some misfits who continue to insist that voter suppression is a bad thing.

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Doing What He Loved

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Witnesses told police no one was standing near a Rockdale County man when he fell 85 feet to his death at Turner Field, investigators said Tuesday.

Ronald Lee Homer, 30, of Conyers, landed in the players’ parking lot outside of the stadium when he fell from the fourth level around 8:30 Monday night, Atlanta police said.

— Conyers man dies after fall at Turner Field

He died doing what he loved — watching a Braves game. Well, technically he wasn’t watching the game, he was falling off the stadium, but we’ve got to make the “doing what he loved” bromide work.

And please, no jokes about Homer’s (85-foot) odyssey, you sick bastards.

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Inexplicable Things Happen When You Buy CLIF Bars by the Box

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CLIF Bars

For reasons that have never been unraveled, when you go to Trader Joe’s and buy a box of CLIF Bars, rather than just scanning the product code on the box, they have to open the box, take out one of the individual bars, scan it, ring it up with a quantity of 12, and then stuff it back in the box.

But not today! Today, when I bought my box of CLIF Bars, the checker had an individual bar sitting next to the register. She just scanned that bar instead of opening the box.

“Is this new?” I asked. “Keeping a CLIF Bar next to the register for scanning purposes?”

“No,” she said, “a woman bought a box earlier and didn’t want me to open it so I got a bar off the shelf to scan it and then just kept it here.”

“Hmmm . . . maybe she was buying them as collectibles, like baseball cards. It makes the value go down if you open the box.”

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EppsNet at the Movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

When you are young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren’t Einstein. You weren’t anything.

That’s a bad moment.

Chuck Barris was way ahead of his time in recognizing how many Americans are willing to make an ass of themselves on television.

The tone of the movie is inconsistent — is it a comedy? a thriller? a tragedy? — but it’s entertaining.

Thus: Recommended!

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

An adaptation of the cult memoir of game show impresario Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), in which he purports to have been a C.I.A. hitman.

Director: George Clooney
Cast: Sam Rockwell (Chuck Barris), Drew Barrymore (Penny), George Clooney (Jim Byrd), Julia Roberts (Patricia Watson)

IMDb rating: 7.0 (95281 votes)

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Can You Hate Both Political Parties Equally?

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Democrat or Republican. Liberal or conservative. If you’re not one, you must be the other. If you don’t vote, people — apparently rational, functional people who manage to drive their cars without ramming them into walls — tell you with a straight face that your non-vote is a de facto vote for the candidate you would have voted against (had you voted). Because you’re not allowed to hate both. Because, in under our idiotic one-or-the-other political system, even if you hate both parties, you’re supposed to hate one party more than the other.

— Ted Rall
The Lincoln Memorial

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Pictures of Food

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"The Basket of Apples" by Paul Cézanne
“The Basket of Apples” by Paul Cézanne

Years ago, if you wanted to show your friends a picture of your food, you’d have to break out the palette and the easel and paint one. Time-consuming!

Nowadays, with the likes of Facebook and Instagram, it’s just point and click!

Another way life gets better and better thanks to computers . . .

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Profiling

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Burglar

The office park where my a friend of mine works was burglarized over the weekend. Surveillance cameras captured the whole operation.

“They were Mexicans,” he said. “They look like professionals. They were wearing hats and jackets so you couldn’t see their build or anything.”

“So how are you identifying them as Mexicans if you couldn’t see them?” I asked. “Because they were stealing stuff?”

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