Comments on: DTW.

By: Jolene

Jolene — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:43:42 +0000

Thanks, Jeff. I think I’ll remember the story as you told it. I like it that way.

By: brian stouder

brian stouder — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:43:43 +0000

Sounds like a case for Laura Lippman’s Memory Project…!

By: Jeff (the mild-mannered one)

Jeff (the mild-mannered one) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:16:46 +0000

Jolene, i'd say "his latest" since he's so consistent, or "The Big Blowdown." And i have to note in checking the title -- my story absolutely has to be wrong, which bugs me not the least because i've been telling it for years. Stanley Fish bought two books by some up and coming crime novelist from me in '85, and i read them and liked them (and loaned them and didn't get them back) and that author became Pelecanos over time . . . but his first novel was '92. I am abashed, and baffled. Forget the Fish tale, and read the Pelecanos anyhow.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:31:26 +0000

Hey, Pilot Joe — DeKalb is the closest airport to my home. Always thought I had to be rich and have my own plane to fly out of there. No? I can take a charter plane wherever? Tell me more, ‘cuz I really hate flying commercial. I’m one of those people who has all the luck. Flying out of Fort Wayne is expensive and usually requires a connection or two, and the planes I’m on are always late and miss the next flight. It’s especially bad at that clusterfuck of an airport in Atlanta, where they never give you a reasonable amount of time to take the tram from the terminal you’ve landed at to the one you need to be at.

By: Jolene

Jolene — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:27:26 +0000

Jeff, which of Pelecanos’s books would you recommend that I read first?

By: Jolene

Jolene — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:24:43 +0000

Thanks for the detail, Joe. I only knew about this topic from reading Fallows’s blog. Sounds like we’re in for “interesting times” aviation-wise in the years ahead.

By: Dexter

Dexter — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:45:28 +0000

Pilot Joe: My daughter’s S.O. just finished training on the new Hawker. He is a pilot for NetJets, the way to go, for sure. Fractionalized ownership of an aircraft makes more sense than owning a jet outright. I was thinking that when our host gets her ten million dollars and moves to NorCal, she will be able to afford NetJets, but maybe not…it’s very expensive. Not all big shot V.I.Ps travel privately on jets.

Al Gore told Tom Brokaw “I am flying on Southwest tonight”, for example.
Of course most of the people my pilot flies are C.E.O.s , with the occassional celebrity flight, even some very famous movie stars.
He told me that once he flew a plane across country with one name on the manifest. A rich woman flew her cat out to be her. A cat. A kitty cat. Meow kind.
Ain’t that the shits?

By: Joe Kobiela

Joe Kobiela — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:15:17 +0000

Jolene,
The planes that are mentioned in the book, Cirrus and Eclipse jet are now both in production. The cirrus is a 4-place single engine prop plane, Fast,easy to fly but unpressurized. Really do to weight restriction you can have a pilot and 2 passengers and fly about 600 miles in 3hr not bad but it is small. The eclipse jet is faster yet but has its problems. It was suppose to sell for around 850,00 but due to engine and avionic problems the price is up to around,2.15 million, this eliminates the owner pilot and puts it in to the same class as a Cessna mustang price wise and the mustang is much larger inside.As far as free flight goes, we already use it in charter and private flight using gps to fly a straight line point to point. The airlines can not use gps unless their entire fleet is upgraded and pilots trained to use it so they still fly from vor to vor sometimes miles out of there way. The airlines are in deep trouble and they are looking for to blame anyone or anything but them selfs. They will tell you that small planes will blacken the sky’s over major city’s where in reality small planes do not use O’hare Dulles, JFK or LAX. The system works but if you have 5airlines schedule a 9:00am departure someone is going to be late getting airborne.
It is bad now, but going to get worse
Joe

By: Jeff (the mild-mannered one)

Jeff (the mild-mannered one) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:19:30 +0000

Don’t know from Dark Knights, but i can recommend as Jolene did earlier the George Pelecanos piece from the WaPo magazine yesterday — http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/15/AR2008071502119.html?sub=AR

Reminded me when i was night manager of Von’s Book Shop in West Lafayette in 84 & 85, and one night someone brought Stanley Fish by after a lecture. He’d just hit academic rock star status with “Is There a Text In This Class?” but no one was around, it was late, and Dr. Fish cruised up and down the high aisles crammed with used and new nudged against each other (today Von’s keeps the used in the newly cleaned up basement).

Just at close at 10 pm he and the prof who was his local guide came back to the counter, asked me some unnecessarily nice questions about life and plans and such, and then laid two George Pelecanos novels down in front of me and paid up. “I’ve never heard of him,” said the clerk that was me, and Stanley Fish said “You will,” took the bag, shook my hand, and walked off.

Next payday i bought copies of both, employee discount. Loaned ‘em out and never got ‘em back years ago. Fish knows talent, 17th century or 21st.

By: brian stouder

brian stouder — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:48:13 +0000

A 100% non-sequitur: The young folks and I just got back from The Dark Knight, and I must say – the movie is 100% engaging, and Heath Ledger’s Joker absolutely MAKES the movie. It has more than a few laughs, and it is about 15% incoherent (the director LOVES swirling, spinning shots; I think more than 50% of the movie is a panning rotation)……………and, I have problems with about 75% of its politics.

The movie pretty regularly presents the Good Guys as (essentially) torturing the bad guys – who they begin referring to as “terrorists” – to get information from them. Toward the end, they attach a fig leaf by having the hero (Christian Bale) lose his best, most conscientious employee (Morgan Freeman) ove a dispute regarding illegal wiretapping, but not before Freeman helps conduct an “extraordinary rendition” (or kidnapping!) of a bad guy.

Toward the end, the ethics of the movie become (to me) simply incoherent….and granted, all this is intended to be is a big budget summertime flick, made to generate gonzo cash (which it seems to be doing).

But in the movie’s garbled attempt at modern relevancy to the current day, I think it was akin to ideological pornography – raising important, serious issues soley for wham-boom salacious sizzle.

I found myself wincing on more than one occasion