books

Recent Movies:

• Pineapple Express ***1/2
• Gone Baby Gone ****
• Bottle Shock ** (based on the book Judgment of Paris)
• Gone in 60 Seconds *1/2

Currently Reading:

• Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai, by Ben Mezrich
• Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen
• How the States Got Their Shapes, by Mark Stein
• The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, by Tony Perrottet
• Batman: The Long Halloween

I read Carl Hiaasen’s comedy Skinny Dip on the flight from Denver to Vegas to Los Angeles on Monday morning at the suggestion of a friend at work. I don’t want to reveal too much of the story, but it’s basically about an idiot who attempts to murder his wife, who was the captain of her college swim team, by tossing her overboard while on a cruise ship. Needless to say, dark hilarity ensues. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, but Hiaasen is a powerfully funny author. I thought this novel was wonderful and I recommend it highly.

I just finished reading Mark Hertsgaard’s excellent book, A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles and I loved it. My father-in-law — who, in 1974, was actually kicked out of the Troubadour with John for heckling the Smothers Brothers — gave it to me a few weeks ago after he’d read it. It’s an awesome read for any Beatles fan. Instead of the typical biography drudgery, Hertsgaard writes the story of the music that was created. So although there’s a little bit of the same old “Lennon was born in Liverpool … They played at the Cavern Club a zillion times …” it is mostly an analysis of how the songs themselves came to be created. Hertsgaard managed to gain access to the archived Abbey Road recording studio tapes and gives blow-by-blow accounts of which of the artists added this line or that chord to each song. He also chronicles the often hysterical banter between the lads from Liverpool as they worked.

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Last night I finally finished reading Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills, a book I bought for Tricia about five years ago. I sailed through the first few hundred pages of David Weddle’s tome a couple of weeks ago and was entranced by the marvelous stories of early 20th century Beverly Hills. But then somewhere about 3/5 of the way into it, the author seemed to lose focus and so did I. He shifted from all these awesome anecdotes about architecture and amour in the first half of the 1900s to depressing essays about drugs and crime and porn and immigration in the second half. It’s really a fascinating book, and Weddle obviously spent a tremendous amount of time on research and documentation, but I’d only rate it about 3 1/2 stars.

Jay Mohr’s Gasping for Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of Saturday Night Live is the second “uncensored” book I’ve read about SNL. (I read Live from New York about two years ago.) Mohr is on the radio pretty frequently here in LA and I really enjoy Last Comic Standing when I catch it. His breakout role was as evil sports agent Bob Sugar in Jerry Maguire, and he appeared in the cult classic, life-in-LA film Go. This book is about the two years he spent as a writer and featured player on SNL. Yes, as you’d expect, there are a boatload of funny stories about all the crazy behind-the-scenes antics of the cast and guest hosts. But the great part about it is the story of his personal life and his struggles with depression, anxiety, and fame. It’s a really fascinating read and I definitely recommend it.

This weekend I finished reading Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich, the same guy that wrote Bringing Down the House. It’s pretty much the same story: M.I.T. math geeks take on the gambling industry. David and Goliath, etc. It’s a good, quick read. I’d definitely grab Bringing Down the House first, though. It was much more in-depth and — although both are allegedly true stories — it felt much less like a fictionalized account. “Busting Vegas” tends to focus more on the relationships and touchy-feely parts of the story; there are chapters written by the author in the first person and there’s a smallish love-story sub-plot. Either way I should warn you that the chances of learning any magic Blackjack skills and winning big are slim. But it’s still a fun book and perfect for reading while you’re on the beach this summer baking in the sun.

Last night I finished reading When the Mob Ran Vegas, a great book that I grabbed at the McCarran Airport on my last trip to Sin City. At times the book suffers from some pretty poor grammar and editing, but the stories are so fascinating that you can forgive the author’s quirky, personal style. Plus, I mean, the guy has got to have a contract on his head; there are dozens of personal anecdotes involving organized crime and its perpetrators, and he really lays the lumber to Sinatra a few times. My mom’s side of the family is 100% Italian — the old school Rhode Island kind <wink wink> — so I recognized pretty much all the characters. (Tales of “the Family” were frequent dinner conversation at my house when I was a kid.) I really enjoyed reading about all the connections to Hollywood and the movie industry, too. If you order a copy from the author’s website, he’ll send you an autographed copy.

My friend Andy loaned me the latest Michael Lewis book, The Blind Side, last week. (I seem to remember reading an excerpt from it in Sports Illustrated earlier this year.) It’s a great look at the high school / college football recruiting process in the SEC. The author does an excellent job of jumping between the histories of ‘legacy’ players in the NFL, the evolution of the left tackle position, and the story of Michael Oher, a freakishly large kid who wants to play ‘in the league’. If you’re a football fan you’ll definitely enjoy this one. And now I’ll have to start paying attention to Ole Miss to see how this kid performs this year.

Last night Tricia and I went to see Tamar at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. She played a great set and we had a good time. We didn’t get home until after 11, and I couldn’t get to sleep.

I was up until 1:30am reading Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. What a crazy story! Can you imagine seeing a 50′ tall wave of molasses barreling towards you at 35mph? And the ten-year legal battle that followed was one of the country’s first major class-action lawsuits. Truly a fascinating tale.

Tonight is our big engagement party at the Viper Room. We’ve got the club reserved for the night, which is pretty flipping cool. (Give me a ring if you want to get on the guest list.) Our good friends Von Cotton play at 9pm and our other good friends becky start their set at 11pm. It should be a pretty wild time.

Are you wondering what media I consumed this weekend? I knew you were. And so I shall tell you.

• Heat ****
• Sopranos *****
• Oh the Glory of It All, by Sean Wilsey ****½
• Oceans 13 ***½
• John from Cincinnati ***½
• A Prairie Home Companion, featuring Martin Sheen, Randy Newman, and Paula Poundstone (live at The Greek) ******
• Saturday Night Live (rerun) ***½
• SNL Tribute: Chris Farley ****

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since I read Krakatoa — The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, by Simon Winchester. Because I loved that book so much, at some point around Christmas I bought A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. I was not disappointed. Winchester managed again to make plate tectonics quite thrilling. It’s a fabulous book and — like Krakatoa — it’s amazing to learn how much of today’s political, religious, and socio-economic landscape has been influenced by monumental shifts (literally) in the planet’s physical landscape.

I finished the tale of San Francisco’s epic disaster late Sunday night and was pleasantly surprised to find that my fiancée had another of Winchester’s works sitting on one of our bookshelves. I read The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary on Memorial Day. I forgive the author his predilection for obscenely long titles because his writing is so brilliant. This third book was as awesome as the first two I read and I’ve added everything else he’s written to my Amazon wishlist.

Somehow I managed to forget to write about this wonderful book. I read Miles Harvey’s The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime over a year ago and it is brilliant. I’ve been thinking about it lately because of the awesome song “Maps” by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. You see, I have been in love with this song for months and I just can’t make any sense out of it. Let’s ignore the fact that I had heard the song a dozen times — and loved it — before I (a) knew the title and (b) realized that what she is singing in the chorus is “Maps / They don’t love you like I love you.” Maps? MAPS? What the hell does that mean?

So I’ve decided that she’s madly in love with this guy. She found a bunch of maps in his possession and now assumes he is going to leave her for someone else far away. The “they” in the song refers to the people at his destination. The “maps” is just an anguished exclamation. It works.

But a few days ago I started thinking that maybe she’d read this book. Maybe that’s what this song is. She’s madly in love with the main character in the book and is desperately trying to convince him to stop stealing maps and (re)turn his attention to her. The maps don’t love him. (He’s a little bit twisted.) Either way: Great song. Great book. I recommend them both.

I am not even 100 pages into my latest William Poundstone book and I already know it’s going to be a favorite. Fortune’s Formula, The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street is the fourth Poundstone book I’ve read. The man is a genius of a writer. Labyrinths of Reason and Prisoner’s Dilemma have been in my personal top ten list for years and years and I urge people to read them every chance I get.

I have long been fascinated by the idea of “meaning” in communication. I’ve held the belief for as long as I can remember that the responsibility for communicating meaning is always placed on the person creating the message. If I am trying to tell you something, it is never your fault if you don’t understand. I just read a passage in Fortune’s Formula that really rocked me. It’s so good that I can’t help but quote it here:

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Last night’s Saturday Night Live with Peyton Manning and Carrie Underwood was excellent. I am so happy that the show is in something of a revival right now. It’s a long-overdue, glorious return to funny. The last dozen or so SNLs have had me in stitches on more than one occasion. The digital shorts and the fake commercials are superb, the guest hosts are good again, and even the news is smart and witty. I miss Tina Fey, but whatshisface and Amy Poehler are doing a great job. I am kind of tired of so many recurring sketches, but I can live with it. I’m just glad that it’s finally stopped playing second-fiddle to The Daily Show and Best Week Ever. Those two shows are usually side-splitting and I had been more than a little bit sad that NBC’s classic favorite, the show I’ve watched since I was ten or twelve, had fallen into irrelevance. Now it’s back to being a standard and it’s worth watching.