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Stupid things, facts.

How impor­tant are facts in fic­tion? I guess it depends on the reader. Since I moved here I’ve been work­ing my way through the vast canon of Detroit-based crime fic­tion, with vary­ing lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion. Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker series is almost uni­formly a plea­sure to read, although I’ve learned not to try to solve the mys­tery as I go along, because he’s going to pull a big rab­bit out of his hat in the penul­ti­mate chap­ter, and you might as well just go along for the ride. Elmore Leonard is, of course, sub­lime from begin­ning to end. Don­ald Goines, not so much. Every­one else falls within that spec­trum.

I’m cur­rently sam­pling “Detroit Noir,” one of the Noir series, col­lec­tions of short sto­ries based in and around spe­cific cities. (Sorry, Hoosiers, “Fort Wayne Noir” is not in the pipeline, although there is a Twin Cities Noir, which I hope fea­tures lots of killers in earflap hats.) It’s not bad, but it could have used another layer of edit­ing, the kind that changes “Manoogian Manor” to “Manoogian Man­sion” and cor­rects what was, for me, a total momentum-stopper in the one story set in Grosse Pointe, a line where “the sun dropped behind the Yacht Club.” I tried to fig­ure if there was any point at which two peo­ple could sit in a car and watch the sun set behind the land­mark Moor­ish watch­tower, and came up with, “Not until the earth reverses its orbit.” The Yacht Club sits on the west­ern edge of Lake St. Clair and enjoys some fab­u­lous sun­rises, but for sun­sets, you’d have to be out in the water some­where.

That kind of stuff dri­ves me crazy. In “The Sport­ing Club,” Thomas McGuane sets his story in 1968 and has two char­ac­ters go to the ded­i­ca­tion of the Mack­inac Bridge, which hap­pened a decade pre­vi­ous. I see this stuff all the time. I know many authors aren’t jour­nal­ists, and I know some iron­ing of the truth is per­mis­si­ble, but I wish they’d respect cer­tain iron­clad truths, includ­ing the con­struc­tion dates of major pieces of infra­struc­ture and the direc­tion of the earth’s travel around the sun.

That is all.

“Detroit Noir” is pretty good, how­ever. I hope there’s another one.

So how was your week­end? Mine went like this: Taxes errands taxes din­ner w/JohnC taxes and now, soon, IRA deposits. I hate doing my taxes, but I love Tur­b­o­Tax, the only finan­cial soft­ware I use. Every year, it gets bet­ter. It now inhales much of my 1099-misc data directly from my bank while I sit there fil­ing my nails. My sole com­plaint: It keeps a run­ning total of your payment/refund. At one point I owed $14,000, an utterly mean­ing­less fig­ure — I had told it all of my income, and none of my pay­ments — but hav­ing a fig­ure like that hov­er­ing in the cor­ner makes you want to put off doing your taxes another few days.

I know I pay too much. There are prob­a­bly dozens of deduc­tions I am enti­tled to and don’t take. I stay squarely on the right side of the law and prob­a­bly pay more than Don­ald Rums­feld, but there’s no valu­ing peace of mind. My receipts aren’t cre­atively embell­ished. I really do keep a mileage log. If I were audited I would surely spend a few sleep­less nights, but at the end it’s entirely pos­si­ble I’d walk out with a refund. (Not bloody likely, but you never know.) I don’t even hate the IRS, too much. Some­one has to be the bad guy.

Early in my career I wrote a story on some tax pro­test­ers in Colum­bus. They were fol­low­ers of Irwin Schiff, and two of the dumb­est tele­phone installers I’ve ever met. One had a Fil­ipino mail-order bride and the other bragged about how much he wanted a Corvette, so he quit pay­ing taxes and bought one. The lat­ter was en route to fed­eral prison when I left town, the other the sub­ject of keen inter­est by fed­eral author­i­ties. They both thought they had stum­bled across the great­est loop­hole in the his­tory of tax law — that the income tax is vol­un­tary. P.S. Irwin Schiff is in jail. Wes­ley Snipes should be.

Not much blog­gage today, but a fun one. Find the No. 1 song on the day of your birth. It’s like the rock ‘n’ roll zodiac. Mine was “Jail­house Rock,” which I con­sider a good omen. Like being born in the Year of the Dragon. Imag­ine being born under “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” That would suck.

Off to the bank to “save for retire­ment.”

Posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 10:54 am in Current events, Media. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


69 responses to
“Stupid things, facts.”

  1. Dorothy said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:09 am

    My birth­day No. 1 song: Tammy, Deb­bie Reynolds (YUCK!)
    My hubby’s No. 1 song on his birth­day, 3 months and 3 weeks before mine: All Shook Up, Elvis. Big improve­ment over Ms. Reynolds.

    We paid out $2600+ in taxes this year. Gulp. Always seems to hap­pen when we relo­cate. Well next year should be bet­ter, if we have a house by the end of this year.

  2. brian stouder said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    pssst – Nance, I think “Jail­house Rock” might not be a good omen, as you fin­ish your taxes up. (mine was “Sur­ren­der” by Elvis Pres­ley; Pammy’s was “ABC” by the Jack­son Five – so I’m a cra­dle rob­ber!)

    And – in keep­ing with truth and accu­racy in fic­tion, I reacted a lit­tle to “Not until the earth reverses its orbit.”, and then MORE to “the direc­tion of the earth’s travel around the sun.”

    But, as any good edi­tor will tell us, the direc­tion of the earth’s rota­tion upon its axis is what deter­mines where the sun rises and sets….unless the edi­tor works for the North Pole News & Mail, or the South Pole Sen­tinel

  3. alex said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Runaround Sue.

  4. Julie Robinson said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Love Me Ten­der. Awww…

    To con­tinue on the fic­tion rant, I also hate it when flow­ers are bloom­ing at the wrong time. That isn’t that hard to look up.

    I too love Tur­b­o­Tax except when it keeps try­ing to upsell me. Don’t you want our enhanced ser­vice? It will pro­tect you against being audited, blah, blah, blah. I think they use TT as a loss leader.

    We’ve tried using Quicken twice but it takes too much time. After you spend hours enter­ing every­thing, you still have the same amount of money as before. If your finan­cial life is uncomplicated–one mort­gage, one 401K, etc, all you need is a cal­en­dar where you note when all the bills are due. Pay them online and record in your check­book. Done in ten.

  5. Kirk said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    “Cold, Cold Heart,” but Tony Bennett’s ver­sion, not Hank’s.

  6. moe99 said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Fri after­noon, I am dri­ving youngest son back from a col­lege road trip to OR. He decides to con­fide in me at that point that his dad’s girl­friend got him a new BMW 2 seater sports car for his birth­day. The only non-cussworthy response I could come up with, after I pulled my jaw up from the 8 year old Sub­aru sta­tion wagon that I drive, was to tell him that back when we were mar­ried, one of our favorite jokes was: What’s the dif­fer­ence between a por­cu­pine and a BMW? With a por­cu­pine, the pricks are on the out­side.

    I guess money can buy hap­pi­ness.

  7. moe99 said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    ps: it’s the ex that got the car, not my son. Sorry to be so klutzy w/ the pro­nouns this ayem.

  8. John said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Autumn Leaves by Roger Williams….that blows. My wife’s is way cooler: Wake Up, Lit­tle Susie.

    Old joke from the late 80′s:
    What the dif­fer­ence between a yup­pie and a pigeon? After the mar­ket crash, only the pigeon can leave a deposit on a BMW.

  9. coozledad said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Dammit. I got “Cal­cutta” by Lawrence Welk. Here I was expect­ing some R&B stan­dard.

  10. Dorothy said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    Off Topic, but to whomever rec­om­mended “In the Shadow of the Moon” a few weeks ago – a big “thanks”. We rented it this week­end and liked it very much! Also rented and viewed: There Will be Blood and Things We Lost in the Fire. Both very good, but the first one was so very creepy. I knew, when I first heard DDL’s voice, that he was try­ing to emu­late John Hus­ton. This was con­firmed when I read up on the movie at IMDB​.com. I cried my eyes out at the sec­ond movie. Halle Berry was very good, as was Benecio del Toro. (one “r” or two??)

  11. nancy said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Julie, very good point about flow­ers. The first time I became aware of Thomas Kin­cade, I was in a TK “gallery,” look­ing at one of his can­vases: He depicts a Cotswold cot­tage on a craggy bluff over­look­ing the sea. Below, the waves are pound­ing, just crash­ing ashore, but smoke from the chim­ney rises lazily in the sky — nope, no wind at all on this seashore — and in the gar­den, every sin­gle flower on every sin­gle bush is in full bloom. The clerk said, “Lovely, isn’t it?” I ran for my life.

    In “Detroit Noir” there’s a moment where a char­ac­ter is star­tled by a scam­per­ing squir­rel in the dark, when they’re all tucked away in their trees. But she’s a lit­tle vague on pre­cisely when in the twi­light this hap­pens, so I’ll give her a pass.

  12. Laura said on April 14th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    My birth­day #1 is “Won­der­land by Night” by Bert Kaempfert. Never heard of it.

  13. ellen said on April 14th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” the Mar­vin Gaye ver­sion. How cool is that?

    Off topic: I’ve been think­ing about why I pre­fer the paper ver­sion of my local news­pa­per to the online ver­sion, and I have come up with this: The hard-copy ver­sion pri­or­i­tizes the news. I can quickly tell from page num­ber, head­line type size, above or below the fold whether the story is impor­tant. The online ver­sion just lists all of the sto­ries under national, world, local, sports ban­ners. I miss the gate­keeper when I read online.

  14. James said on April 14th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

    “The Bat­tle of New Orleans” by Johnny Hor­ton

    Christ!

  15. colleen said on April 14th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    “Light my Fire” by the Doors. Husband’s was “Wheel of For­tune by Kay Starr”.

    Yeah. We have a bit of an age dif­fer­ence.

  16. Connie said on April 14th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Yel­low Rose of Texas by Mitch Miller, the man to whom I owe much of my knowl­edge of lyrics of old songs. Him and the organ teacher.

    I too would be pay­ing the gov big bucks , except for that nice col­lege tuition tax credit.

  17. MichaelG said on April 14th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    There’s fic­tion vs. fact and there’s details right and wrong. Two very dif­fer­ent things. Fic­tion can be what­ever you want it to be. If an author goes to the trou­ble of includ­ing a detail, it needs to be right. One can’t help won­der­ing what else is wrong when one spots a boo boo. That stuff really can ruin a book. An M-16 round does not tum­ble (I’ve seen that in a book). That is an erro­neous detail. Doesn’t mat­ter if the book is fact or fic­tion. And where are edi­tors and other pre­pub­li­ca­tion read­ers?

    For the Twin Cities John Sand­ford is the best. He may be the best of them all.

    My one time wife and I once oper­ated a busi­ness. We had an accoun­tant do our taxes. I used to cringe at the things he deducted and at the big refunds we received. Finally we got audited. I was very ner­vous. I asked the guy what I needed to do and he said noth­ing, that he would take care of things and that it was all part of the ser­vice. In the end I got a very nice let­ter from the IRS say­ing they were sorry for both­er­ing us. The accoun­tant has more than earned his fees over the years. He doesn’t do per­sonal taxes as a rule but he likes my erst­while wife (we’re legally sep­a­rated but not divorced for a vari­ety of rea­sons mostly spelled $$) and does her/our taxes. I’m way money ahead hav­ing had him do our taxes all these years. It might be worth it to get a pro, espe­cially with home office issues.

    Dinah Shore sang “I’ll Walk Alone”. I like the links to the record store.

  18. Harl Delos said on April 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Won­der­land by Night

    I didn’t rec­og­nize the name, but I rec­og­nized the tune when I searched for it on youtube.
    http://​youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​N​_​K​0​N​pWMOGw

  19. Julie Robinson said on April 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Is any­one else feel­ing old when they see people’s songs? Crim­iny, I remem­ber some of those from, like, high school!

    And if you think your song is obscure, the dear hubby’s is Lis­bon Antigua by Nel­son Rid­dle.

  20. Mindy said on April 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” Eww! Husband’s was “Tossin’ and Turnin’.” Much cooler. Grandpa’s was “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tip­per­ary.”

  21. sue said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    I try not to look for errors but some of them are so ridicu­lous you can’t ignore them. The mys­tery series where the hero­ine passed a truck and pulled in front of it in order to take advan­tage of the draft is the worst one I caught. I also won­der why an author sets a book in a loca­tion where he seems to have lim­ited famil­iar­ity. The Harry Dres­den series set in Chicago doesn’t do a thing for me. Here’s Harry on the lake­front; here’s Harry dri­ving out to an inter­change­able sub­urb; etc. Oddly enough, the author who has given me the clear­est sense of place writes fan­tasy: Terry Pratch­ett, who takes me to Dis­c­world on a reg­u­lar basis.

  22. Dorothy said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Ya know, I had for­got­ten about this, but think­ing of the Elvis song being num­ber 1 on my husband’s birth­day might explain why my m-i-l used to have an 8×10 framed pic­ture of Mr. Pres­ley on her night stand!!

  23. David said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    “Sherry”, by The Four Sea­sons. Not at all sure what to think of that.

    Jonathan Valin’s Harry Stoner mys­ter­ies are set in and around Cincin­nati, my home town. They are full of lit­tle errors, such as roads that don’t go where he says they go or pecu­liar­i­ties of the local cui­sine that are just plain wrong. Always bumped my con­cen­tra­tion right out of the story.

  24. sue said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Dorothy!

  25. Danny said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    Ha, too funny Dorothy.

    “She Loves You” by The Bea­t­les for me. At one point, Dad had a Ringo hair­cut. But worst was when he came home one day with the Mike Brady perm. That scared me. Thank­fully, it was not repeated.

  26. Catherine said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Help Me Rhonda. Is that why my cousin, born around the same time, was named Rhonda?

    Sue Grafton takes an inter­est­ing approach, turn­ing Santa Bar­bara and envi­rons into Santa Teresa. All the same, there’s a note in one of her lat­est that basi­cally says, “Friends, stop writ­ing me about how I got the land­marks wrong!”

  27. Julie Robinson said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    My dad was pretty lib­eral, but I remem­ber him refer­ring to the Bea­t­les as “those mop-tops”.

    The Four Sea­sons didn’t impact me while grow­ing up, but we got to see “Jer­sey Boys” as well as hear­ing the the album. Know what? Their music was pretty good. The har­monies are fan­tas­tic, and some of the orches­tra­tions (You’re Just Too Good to be True) were bla­tantly ripped off later by Chicago, who did impact me while grow­ing up.

    The real ques­tion for Dorothy is: what was the hit song 9 months before your hubby was born?

    I think I was named for Julie Andrews. Much bet­ter than Brit­ney.

  28. Danny said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    I think I was named for Julie Andrews. Much bet­ter than Brit­ney.

    Up until now, I fig­ured you were the Robin­son sis­ter who stayed on earth while your sis­ters, Penny and Judy were lost in space.

    (Ah, the not-so-obvious tie-in is that Penny (Angela Cartwright) was in Sound of Music)

  29. Jay Small said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    My b’day No. 1: “Tel­star” by The Tor­na­dos.

    Ack.

  30. LAMary said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    I feel ancient. I remem­ber most of these songs as hits. I can’t access the site from work, either. Could some­one look up Jan­u­ary 6, 1953 for me?

  31. MarkH said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    You peo­ple are all so damn young! I remem­ber all your songs.

    Mine? — “Sin” by Eddie Howard. WTF???

    David, Never heard of Valin, but I’ll have to check out the Stoner series, as we share Cincy as a home town, my sec­ond after Pitts­burgh.

    MichaelG, that’s huge if an M-16 round does, indeed, not tum­ble. I’ve read that in many places, even some mil­i­tary jour­nals. It’s sup­posed to be its claim to fame in lethal­ity.

    Tur­b­o­Tax is the bomb, a time/life saver.

  32. derwood said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    (I can’t get no) Sat­is­fac­tion

    I also luv Turbo-Tax.

  33. nancy said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    Ooh, Mary, bad news: “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” Perry Como. For you, I was hop­ing for at least a touch of rock­a­billy.

  34. Andrea said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    I think I chime in as one of the youngest com­menters – “Amer­i­can Pie” was my birth­day song in Jan­u­ary 1972. Good! One year later and it would have been “You’re So Vain,” much worse. Hubby’s is “Mother-in-Law,” which made me laugh out loud (also a big age dif­fer­ence here).

  35. whitebeard said on April 14th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    Birth date tunes, indeed! For me, Christ­mas Eve, 1937 … “The Dipsy Doo­dle” by Tommy Dorsey; for my wife, Easter Sun­day, 1941 … “Amap­ola (Pretty Lit­tle Poppy)” by Jimmy Dorsey (two Dorseys, that’s a coin­ci­dence) and for our grand­son, who lives with us, March 1995 … “Take a Bow” by Madonna (very appro­pri­ate because he is big­ger than life in any sit­u­a­tion, even at 13).
    No Tur­b­o­Tax here, but a new accoun­tant to replace the old one, who gave bad advice and did our taxes late, which earned a penalty and nasty inter­est that was later for­given because a Nor’easter (think hur­ri­cane with snow) ripped through Con­necti­cut at tax time and we were declared a dis­as­ter area, or some­thing, the IRS pro­nounced, much to our sur­prise.

  36. jcburns

    jcburns said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Rent (or, maybe, don’t) the awful ‘Bird on a Wire’ with Mel Gib­son and Goldie Hawn. Osten­si­bly set in Detroit (hey, Detroit news­boxes amongst the Cana­dian park­ing signs), the city seems to have cleaned up and grown a set of snow­capped moun­tains while I wasn’t look­ing. Yep, Van­cou­ver. And then in a final geo­graphic insult, appar­ently as a key plot point they head down to the water to take a ferry from Detroit across Lake Michi­gan (!?) to Racine, Wis­con­sin.

  37. Bill said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” by The Andrews Sis­ters.

    I can’t even pro­nounce it! The German-English trans­la­tor says it means ” With Me you Are nice.” Ah, the good old days.

  38. sue said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Wow, Nancy, you’re closer than I thought. I’ll drop by on my way to Sleep­ing Bear Dunes this sum­mer.

  39. nancy said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Oh, please. Movies are another thing entirely. Those low brown hills of south­ern Cal­i­for­nia stand in for every­thing from Korea to Cleve­land. I have a feel­ing if I ever vis­ited Van­cou­ver it would look just like home.

    But for Detroit non-verisimilitude, noth­ing beats “Pre­sumed Inno­cent,” which is set in Scott Turow’s fic­tional Kin­dle County, but filmed in Detroit. The open­ing scenes show Har­ri­son Ford com­mut­ing to work on a ferry, which would make him a dis­trict attor­ney who actu­ally lives in Canada. I won­der what his tax-prep is like?

    Some­one men­tioned the author who cops up front to get­ting all the land­marks wrong. It raises an inter­est­ing topic. My bar­gain with writ­ers is always that you can cre­ate a fic­tional world within a real city — give it a sec­ond news­pa­per, a dif­fer­ent mayor, etc. — but you have to respect at least some level of the exist­ing land­scape. I get irked when writ­ers put in free­ways that aren’t there (although they can invent streets), bridges that don’t exist, etc. If you want to do that, call your city some­thing else entirely (like, say, Kin­dle County). One of Loren Estelman’s Detroit books invented an entirely new sub­urb with a spooky aban­doned fac­tory. I thought, aren’t there enough exist­ing ones to work with? I guess not for the story he wanted to tell, but it bugged me through­out.

  40. Julie Robinson said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    Today my big sis­ter and only sib­ling is under­go­ing emer­gency triple bypass surgery. NNC has been a great dis­trac­tion for me. If you are a pray­ing per­son, she needs them.

  41. sue said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    Send­ing good thoughts your way, Julie.

  42. Danny said on April 14th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

    Julie, will do.

    JC, I bought my friend the com­plete series of Kung Fu (the orig­i­nal TV series). He and his wife spot­ted high-tension wires in the dis­tance of one long shot. Pretty advanced for the 1800′s, eh?

  43. Julie Robinson said on April 14th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    Thanks, all. I just heard from the hos­pi­tal that it went well but she needed one more bypass. I’m fly­ing out tomorrow–couldn’t get a flight today. I may have lim­ited inter­net access for awhile but I’ll be think­ing fondly of you all.

  44. brian stouder said on April 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Julie – here’s wish­ing strength to your big sis­ter – and to you!

    I have an appoint­ment w/Red Cross for phere­sis – which is quite an easy way to feel like you’re doing some­thing tan­gi­ble to help folks out. (all you do – after affirm­ing that you aren’t shag­ging a drug abus­ing Samoan pros­ti­tute [etc] is lay back and watch TV for 90 min­utes – which I’m quite good at!)

  45. MichaelG said on April 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Trust me, Mark. I’ve fired many, many rounds through an M-16. Includ­ing tracer. It does not tum­ble. Think about rifling, aero­dy­nam­ics, etc. It couldn’t tum­ble. The lethal­ity you speak of results from an air space at the for­ward end of the brass jacket. When the round strikes, the melted lead surges for­ward into the air space caus­ing the spin­ning (not tum­bling) jacket to burst with unfor­tu­nate results for the hit­tee.

  46. nancy said on April 14th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Julie, need­less to say: Strength, courage and good thoughts.

  47. Dexter said on April 14th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

    My song really is pathetic…but if I could pick…I’d pick <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_QhuaRLls&feature=related" >this , a truly great cover ver­sion of the Hendrix-style Dylan clas­sic…

  48. LAMary said on April 14th, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    You’ve all seen my son’s high school I bet. It’s been in so many movies and com­mer­cials as a stand in for stan­dard WPA built Amer­i­can High School.

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​J​o​h​n​_​M​a​r​s​h​a​l​l​_​H​i​g​h​_​S​c​h​o​o​l​_​(​L​o​s​_​A​n​g​e​l​e​s​,​_​C​a​l​i​fornia)

  49. Danny said on April 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    Ha, Mary! Grease and Room 222 among oth­ers. Pretty cool.

  50. Howie said on April 14th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    In the Year 2525 – Zager and Evans…

    I could do worse!

    I use Tax­ACT, which is a great pro­gram with less mar­ket share. They do mar­ket­ing by annoy­ing spam, so thats two strikes against ‘em. I found it way before the spam started, which is my excuse for stick­ing with them.

    Julie, prayers sent.

  51. Deborah said on April 14th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    “Good­night Irene” by Gor­don Jenk­ins & the Weavers.

    I like to read Tony Hiller­man nov­els set in the Four Cor­ners area and there abouts. We have land in Abiquiu, New Mex­ico so I’m very famil­iar with the area. So far I haven’t caught any mis­takes about place, dates, times.

  52. basset said on April 14th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    “Yel­low Rose of Texas” by Mitch Miller for me… and look­ing at Sep­tem­ber 2 in more recent years, I don’t see a sin­gle song I rec­og­nize until the Macarena in 1996. Before that, noth­ing till “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” in 1984.

    phere­sis… just fin­ished my eight-gallon card, mostly white cells with the occa­sional red or whole blood. and that’s only since we’ve been keep­ing track the last few years… started at IU in the early Sev­en­ties, back when Alumni Hall would be packed full of guys try­ing to beat Pur­due for every blood drive.

  53. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 14th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    Julie, all good gifts to you and your sis­ter — travel well in grace and peace.

    Switch­ing hats, the tum­bling of the old M-16 round was on impact, not in flight. As MichaelG said, the shock­wave in front of the rapidly spin­ning, high veloc­ity pro­jec­tile meant that a non-center-of-mass impact on a human body was more likely to “tum­ble” along the lines of tis­sue, tear­ing up the limb or torso.

    In boot, we had Viet­nam vet DIs talk about casu­al­ties with no vis­i­ble mark on them, but clearly dead from major wounds, which would all turn out to be inter­nal from a small entry point by a col­lar bone or jaw­line. Some­where in this gen­eral neigh­bor­hood of enlight­en­ment and learn­ing was where i real­ized a career in the Marines was not a good idea for some­one with too much imag­i­na­tion and a ten­dency to stop and think through impli­ca­tions — a choice my sergeant instruc­tor heartily endorsed for both my own good and that of the Corps, and ended up lead­ing to sem­i­nary.

    But i could still dis­as­sem­ble, clean, and reassem­ble a Mattel-16 in the dark with­out los­ing the sear pin or any of the three springs. Some stuff you just don’t for­get.

    Bas­set, i seem to recall us Boil­er­mak­ers whoopin’ on you Hur­ryin’ Hoosiers in the blood drive (but i have absolutely no rec­ol­lec­tion of help­ing steal the Old Oaken Bucket from Memo­r­ial Union at Bloom­ing­ton in 1978, none at all).

  54. Michael said on April 14th, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    “Poor Side of Town”. Sigh.

    Regard­ing inac­cu­racy — yeah. Don’t pick a town off the map unless you actu­ally go there and put things where they really are. I had two expe­ri­ences with that. One was sci-fi set in Hager­stown, IN (went to school there, lived eight miles out), which I picked up while liv­ing in Ger­many. A real burst of home­sick­ness, betrayed entirely by the fact that the author (who lived in *Loo­gootee*, dammit, he coulda just jumped in the car and made a day of it) had obvi­ously never actu­ally gone to Hager­stown. So why not just invent a place?

    Sec­ond one was David Brin’s _Gaia_, in which Bryan Park in Bloom­ing­ton some­how over­looks the down­town. Now, I like to think that south­ern Indi­ana is hilly. But ain’t no way any­thing in Indi­ana over­looks any­thing else. That just pissed me off. Again: why put some­thing in a real place if you’re not going to use the real place?

    Then there was Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, both book and movie. The book wasn’t bad — it ref­er­enced Ran­dolph County (yes, Indi­ana), by which it was pos­si­ble to deter­mine that the first sight­ing took place maybe three miles from my home, but there were no impos­si­ble details, so that was OK.

    But the movie. The movie had moun­tains behind Muncie. Which, OK, would indeed improve Muncie, and nobody’s fault­ing that, but instead of moun­tains, instead they have Ander­son. Depend­ing on your direc­tions.

    So: slop­pi­ness. Bah.

  55. Joe K said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    N,I was born on 15 Dec of 1957, Jail house rock was #1 thought you were born in 56???
    Joe

  56. nancy said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    Nope, 1957. I’m three weeks older than you.

  57. Tricia said on April 14th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Like David of 2:14 PM, “Sherry” by the Four Sea­sons – groovy! … but glad my name isn’t Sherry.

    I use Tur­b­o­Tax too, so why didn’t it clue me into the fact that the year that my daugh­ter grad­u­ated from col­lege, we needed to pick whether she was still a depen­dent, or no longer a depen­dent? Trust me, folks – you want to have this dis­cus­sion. We claimed her, and she claimed her, and now (since she ‘won’) we owe. Ouch.

  58. Dexter said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:26 am

    happy tax day! My accoun­tant called and gave me hell for get­ting four grand back. Of course that’s a bad plan, but what the hell?…HE’S the accoun­tant. Next year I’ll owe a lit­tle instead, and I’ll feel worse than I do now , with money com­ing back that I made zero inter­est on. As if banks are pay­ing SO MUCH inter­est. I am just glad it’s over.
    I used to do my own paper­work on the taxes, too. The accoun­tant always finds legal ways to pay less taxes. It’s a no brainer for me…leave it to the experts. Good luck, last-minute fil­ers. It’s just “Our Town” moments now, recall­ing all-nighters with Camels and per­co­lated cof­fee, ten sharp­ened pen­cils and bright lights. And always, always, the last minute dash to the P.O. to hand my return to the postal worker stand­ing by the mail­box with the big tub. Even today, the drop-box at the drive lane at the P.O. was totally jammed an hour before pick-up hour.

  59. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 4:26 am

    I think I was named for Julie Andrews. Much bet­ter than Brit­ney.

    There being no such thing as a Julie Andrews Spaniel, I have to agree with you.

    But ain’t no way any­thing in Indi­ana over­looks any­thing else.

    Since you were born to “Poor Side of Town”, you wouldn’t remem­ber, but half a cen­tury ago, that wouldn’t have been a true state­ment. The Army Corps of Engi­neers has since flooded a lot of the “any­thing else” places.

    The movie had moun­tains behind Muncie.

    They filmed the “China Beach” series in Cal­i­for­nia. When they did a sun­set scene on the beach, the sun would be set­ting over the ocean – which would have been in the east.

    Richard Bach, famous for “Jonathon Liv­ingston Seag­ull”, also wrote a book called “Con­fes­sions of a Reluc­tant Mes­siah”. It starts out explain­ing that he was born in the mys­ti­cal moun­tains east of Fort Wayne. I always thought that they were *excep­tion­ally* mys­ti­cal, in that every time some­one installs a sep­tic tank, the pile of exca­vated dirt becomes the high­est point for miles around.

  60. Dave said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    “If I Knew You Were Com­ing (I’d Baked a Cake)”, by Eileen Bar­ton. I know the song but can’t say that I’ve ever heard of Eileen Bar­ton.

    Wife gets Tony Ben­nett, “Cold, Cold Heart”.

    Good­ness, some of you folks make me feel old, thank good­ness for White­beard. Sorry, White­beard.

    Wasn’t Jonathan Valin a one­time Cincin­nati Post colum­nist? I think I read all the Harry Stoner books and there aren’t that many, seems like going on twenty years ago. Piqued my inter­est because I’ve spent a lot of time in Cincin­nati.

    A series I like and can’t account for the accu­racy of details are the John Rebus mys­ter­ies by Ian Rankin, set mostly in and about Edin­burgh, Scot­land. Rankin lives there so I would hope it all rings true but Valin lived in Cincin­nati.

  61. alex said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Mys­ti­cal moun­tains east of Fort Wayne. That really hit me funny, hav­ing just trekked across north­west Ohio recently. I’d for­got­ten the earth doesn’t get any flat­ter.

  62. Kevin Knuth said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:25 am

    Although I live in Fort Wayne, I used to work for a com­pany in North Hol­ly­wood, CA. I telecom­muted to work.

    I am a big fan of Michael Con­nelly and his Harry Bosch nov­els. His crime noir nov­els are gen­er­ally based in L.A. In his writ­ings, he often men­tions real streets and land­marks. So one day, while vis­it­ing the cor­po­rate office, I was quite inter­ested. Accord­ing to the book, Harry took a turn at the inter­sec­tion our office was located at. Drove 4 blocks, turned again into an apart­ment com­plex.

    So I fol­lowed the path….no apart­ment com­plex. It was an office build­ing.

    But, hey, if you don’t live in L.A., would you ever really know?

  63. basset said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:28 am

    sci-fi in Hager­stown, Indi­ana? I went to Loo­gootee High and never heard of Hager­stown till just now, had to Mapquest it. since it’s right out­side New Cas­tle I sup­pose this author just fig­ured one basketball-obsessed community’s about the same as another.

    blood drive… I remem­ber IU won in ’73, dunno about the rest. and you can have the tro­phy, I didn’t go to a sin­gle foot­ball game the whole time I was there…

  64. John said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Harry Bosch rocks. Very fun books to read.

    Tri­cia, for­tu­nately for me, when our daugh­ter moved out on her own, I did her taxes so it was quite easy to arrange the min­i­mum amount to be sent in to IRS. I did kick back some of the money her way. But def­i­nitely have this dis­cus­sion with your adult child.

    Nancy, does Joe get a trip to the dog­house for try­ing to tack on another year to your life?

  65. Connie said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Bas­sett, looks like we are birth­day neigh­bors. You are older by one day.

    I recently read a book called “City of the Sun”. I picked it up because it was set in Indi­anapo­lis. Except for a few street names that just wasn’t Indi­anapo­lis. Not rec­om­mended unless you really want to read about an Indi­ana boy kid­napped to Mex­ico for var­i­ous per­ver­sions.

  66. MichaelG said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    I’m a Con­nelly fan as well and I’ve had occa­sion to fol­low his foot­steps in the val­ley. I think chang­ing an apart­ment house for an office build­ing is an accept­able detail switch because curi­ous read­ers might bother res­i­dents. Also that sort of detail has no effect on the story or on cred­i­bil­ity the way mis­plac­ing the sun­rise would.

  67. LAMary said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    Year of the Dragon folks rule.

  68. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    I recently read a book called “City of the Sun”. I picked it up because it was set in Indi­anapo­lis.

    The author was obvi­ously con­fused by the fact that the Colts play in Indi­anapo­lis.

    In Bal­ti­more, it’s the Sun, in Indi­anapo­lis, it’s the Star, in Toledo, the Blade, in Grosse Point, it’s Today, and in Fort Wayne, it’s the Mace­don­ian Tri­bune.

    What? You were expect­ing Frost on such a nice spring day?

  69. Kevin Knuth said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Michael G-

    I was not upset at all…..I actu­ally found it fun! I was read­ing that par­tic­u­lar book when I hap­pened to be out there….so what the the heck! Drive around and see what’s what.

    He does a great job of catch­ing the “feel” of the areas he describes….just changes some facts to pro­tect the inno­cent!

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