Dave's Fiction Warehouse

C ynthia from HR brought around the Christmas card. By the time it reached Henderson’s desk, it was already bulging with bills. Henderson sighed and reached for his wallet. He wasn’t crazy about diminishing his meager supply of cash, but it was Christmas and he supposed he should do his part to help the less fortunate. Probably a coworker had suffered some medical emergency, some unforeseen household disaster. He slipped a fiver into the card and then noticed the name on the envelope. “Mr. Ryan? Who’s that? The only Ryan at this company is the boss.” Cynthia smiled and took the envelope. “Yes, Donald J. Ryan. The Third. He’s a wonderful boss, isn’t he?” Henderson frowned. “Depends what you mean by ‘wonderful.’ I haven’t gotten a raise in five years, while the company’s profits have about tripled. But I suppose he’s nice enough. What happened? Is he all right?” Cynthia looked at him blankly. “Oh yes. He’s fine. Never better. Why do you ask?” “If he’s fine, why are we giving him money? I...

All I want for Christmas is not this guy. T his is what it’s come to: Watching the results of an Alabama senatorial election likes it’s the freaking AFC playoffs. Does scrappy underdog Doug Jones come from behind to knock off crappy horndog Roy Moore? It’s anybody’s game! Who’s ready for some football? My prediction just before the polls close: Roy Moore will win it handily. Not even close. Two touchdowns and a field goal. Why? Because (a) I have a history of backing lost causes, and (b) we now live in the time of Donald Trump, from whom guys like Roy Moore derive their mojo. Oh, and (c): it’s Alabama. Any other place, dating 14-year-old girls as a grown man might be a deal-breaker. Not so in the state of George Wallace, country of Trumpistan. Thanks, Don! That’s another one we owe you. OK, enough with the negative energy. What I’m doing here is an old trick of mine: Predicting an outcome so the opposite will occur. If I say Moore will win, my personal history would indicate that he wi...

T he wife and I were talking about sexual harassment a couple of weeks ago. I forget which famous person who was accused and fired that day; you lose track after awhile.  But I do remember saying, "Jeez, who's next, Garrison Keillor ?" It was a joke. I was trying to come up with a famous person, other than Pope Francis, who would seem least likely to play the horndog with his coworkers.  And now here we are. Look: Any rich, famous man who hasn't  sexually harassed an underling? If so, please step forward; it'll save time.  The rest of you: what the hell's wrong with you? Something's happening here, a wise man once said. What it is ain't exactly clear.  I think we can conclude that a great many wealthy, powerful men are swine. Probably they're swine because they're wealthy and powerful. They do it because they can. So much for the notion of being elite. We can also conclude that the women who were groped, assaulted or got an unsolicited view of ...

Dylan's dick drawing reveals a key clue W hat kind of monster would spray-paint crude penises on 27 late-model cars? “American Vandal,” my new favorite show, attacks that question with all the seriousness of its artistic forerunner, “Making a Murderer.” A crime has been committed, and two high-school filmmakers become obsessed with unearthing evidence and following it wherever it leads. It doesn’t seem to matter that one crime is sophomoric vandalism, and the other is a brutal sex murder. That’s what makes “Vandal” such a sharp satire.  Like “Making a Murderer,” there are plot twists and apparent coverups, multiple suspects and motives and seemingly endless fan theories.  Like “Murderer,” you come to realize that the proliferating genre of true-crime documentary is not about the thirst for truth, but the thirst for entertainment in the misfortune of others. The show’s protagonist, Dylan Maxwell, is a mouth-breathing lug who is exactly the sort of person who’d amuse himself by ...

W e’ve been watching “ The Americans ,” the FX series about two Soviet intelligence agents posing as a married-with-children couple to spy on the American government. Spoiler: this is not a documentary about Donald J. Trump and family. It’s set in the early ’80s. Therein lies the charm, I guess. It seems almost quaint to imagine the Russians bothering with deep-cover agents when they’ve pretty much got the run of the White House now — and when almost half of Americans are OK with it. Who would have guessed? The show premiered in 2013, but we’re latecomers, now just halfway through season 3. For some reason, it’s not a show we’ve cared to binge-watch. But two thumbs up so far. As a fantasy about Cold War espionage, it’s mostly preposterous but always entertaining. Things I really like: Keri Russell: Beautiful, lithe and lethal. If all spies were this charming and dangerous, we’d really be in trouble. One question: How does Elizabeth get all those wigs on over that beautiful head of hai...

F ilm noir of the week is “ Sudden Fear ,” starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. You weren’t aware of Film Noir of the Week? Yeah, that’s something I just came up with. I fully expect to forget about it over the next few days. Anyway, “Sudden Fear” is a perfectly respectable noir, made in 1951 just before all the conventions of the genre solidified into cliches. It’s shot in black and white, in a blissfully traffic-free San Francisco, with possibly the most evil-looking leading man in history. Mr. Nice Guy Jack Palance’s sharklike features and jet-black widow’s peak are a delight to behold, but they also work against the script in an unlikely way: No one could ever believe this guy would have anything but the worst of motives. Especially when he smiles. And yet Joan Crawford’s character — a wealthy, glamorous (of course) playwright — falls in love with him, marries him, and immediately decides to revise her will to leave him everything. You know, in the unlikely event of her death. ...

I wonder: Has the iPhone made the world a better place, or a worse one? Always a popular subject and more in vogue this month now that the iPhone has turned 10. (Any anniversary that’s a multiple of five is red meat to pundits caught in the dog days of summer.) And so Timothy Egan and David Brooks both have nice columns on the subject in the New York Times. Both regard smartphones in general as a mixed blessing at best. Tim Egan compares it to the printing press, if the printing press had only been used to disseminate total bullshit (hashtag #thatfuckingtrump). Brooks says the iPhone has made it too easy to cancel engagements, or bail on commitments of any kind. He wonders if that doesn’t dissolve the social glue that keeps us civilized. Both are valid points. When you have a device that “does everything,” “everything” presumably includes the bad as well as the good. Personally, I like the maps, the reviews, and being able to reliably coordinate an airport pickup. The rest of it I coul...

All dressed up and no place to go I haven’t posted for — what, five months now? — because every time I have an idea it somehow ends up with the phrase “that fucking Trump.” The original idea could be about television or books or movies, or gardening or the importance of regular oil changes, and still those words keep forcing themselves forward in the first paragraph. But I’m past it now. I figure it’s not up to me to forestall the end of Western civilization. My eight or so fans are already on board. If anybody else cares about it, let them step up. That fucking Trump. Meantime, I finally got around to watching the last two episodes of the sixth season of “Game of Thrones.” That’s how cutting-edge I am. I was loving the season last year about this time, and then my trial HBO subscription ran out. The hardest part was avoiding spoilers for 12 freaking months. Turns out I needn’t have bothered. Everything in the finale I saw coming a mile off. Ramsay Bolton was finally consumed by Rottwe...

These needy seniors are making me thirsty I used to be a Meals on Wheels driver, and let me tell you, those were the days: Pulling down a generous stipend while delivering gourmet cuisine to indolent oldsters. The only downside was that they were lousy tippers, and tended to complain if the foie gras was grainy or the filets were overdone. Ha ha. Very funny, right? Actually, I found Meals on Wheels to be about as economical and efficient as any government-assisted program could be. Almost austere, really. Nearly all of us were volunteers. We’d donate our time and cars and gas money to haul mediocre cafeteria chow to lonely folks who might otherwise go hungry. In the process we’d see how they were doing. We had one job and we did it pretty well. On my route, I never got the feeling that the food was being wasted. I don’t know that everyone was 100 percent delighted to see me personally at the door — I’m not the sort of man who lights up a room — but I always imagined that, worst-case sc...

Same body type, better manners Y ou run out of metaphors to explain Trump. In the shit-hits-the-fan scenario, is Trump the fan, or is he the shit? In the Hitler scenario, is Trump really Hitler, or is he Mussolini’s feckless brother Doug? In the comet-destroys-Earth scenario, is Trump the comet, or is he just a guy on his toilet, tweeting out his reactions to “Fox and Friends”? The thing about history is that when you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to know what the hell’s going on. To make sense of things, you must turn to classic ’60s television. There’s a Star Trek episode called “ And the Children Shall Lead .” In it, a man who resembles the Trumpster gets children to indulge in homicide. The metaphor works because the Friendly Angel, who controls the children, is also overweight, cheesily transparent, and can’t speak without lying. The kids, like many of Trump’s supporters, are kind of creepy and easily persuaded to commit horrific acts in service to a none-too-bright svengali. ...

C all me Ishmael. Or call me Dave. Really, either one is fine. The thing is, I’ve started reading “ Moby Dick .” It’s a Lenten exercise. Last year it was “War and Peace,” this year it’s the great white whale. Somehow I’d managed to avoid it until now. Then Lent rolled around and I started thinking of things I’d never do except as penance. This book sprang to mind. Tough sledding, yes, but not without benefits. You know how it is when you’re standing around at a cocktail party and people start going on about Melville? Now I’ll have one less reason to walk away. Also, the next time one of those Facebook click-bait quizzes show up, about how many great books I’ve read, I’ll be able to pad the score by one. But really, I don’t know if I’m writing about “Moby Dick” now, or writing about Lent. Lent, probably. It’s something I never heeded as a younger man. But my wife was raised Catholic and is now Episcopalian, so I’ve become aware. I’m still a little fuzzy on the theological aspects of it,...

I magine if all those thousands of bored, unfriendly TSA screeners at the airports were turned loose to harass folks on the street. That’s sort of how Trump’s deportation plans are shaping up. Instead of you going to them, they’ll be coming to you. Taking off your shoes will no longer suffice. Now they’ll have the power to seriously screw up your life. Just because they’re hunting undocumented immigrants doesn’t mean they’ll leave everyone else alone. What Trump wants is for people to be detained merely on the basis of accusation. And, no doubt, collaboration. He wants 10,000 new agents devoted to the task, and he wants every local law enforcement agency in the country to help out. He also wants to loosen or bypass due process for those who object to being rounded up. Nobody wants violent criminals in this country, particularly if they’re here illegally. That’s why these people were already being arrested and deported long before the current president afflicted us. What Trump wants now...

Y ou get used to President Trump blowing bullshit, but this has to rank as the most inelegant non sequitur in the history of presidential remarks. Here’s Trump on Wednesday, fielding a question about the “sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the United States: "Well, I just want to say that we are, you know, very honored by the victory that we had — 316 electoral college votes. We were not supposed to crack 220. You know that, right? There was no way to 221, but then they said there’s no way to 270. And there’s tremendous enthusiasm out there." Thanks for clearing up your feelings about hateful behavior, Mr. President. Your words are a comfort in these troubled times.

This is supposed to be a bookshelf S eriously, you have to figure out a way to tune this stuff out once in awhile. In my case, I took up woodworking. I know; that’s a hobby you’d expect of any aging retiree, even without an alarming political climate. But it was a pretty big step for me. Prior to last November, I’d never built a damned thing. Now, three months after Trump’s election, I’ve put together a headboard, a bookshelf with cupboards, a coffee table and a big sideboard/buffet for the kitchen. Oh, and quite a few charming bookends. It hasn’t been a path to instant serenity. I’m still about as good a woodworker as Trump is a president. But it is helping me cope with the day-to-day outrages perpetrated by this absurd man and his minions. When you’re trying to align drawers in a cabinet that is somehow not fully square, it tends to take your mind off national concerns. And the tedium of applying multiple coats of varnish to a project is about as close to zen as this cowboy will ever...

N o matter what happens with Trump’s dumb travel ban, we’re nearly certain to see another ISIS-inspired attack sometime this year. But that’s not the scary thing. The scary thing is that Trump and Bannon will be absolutely delighted when it happens. It’s been nearly eight months since the last big incident, in which an American citizen killed 49 people in Orlando. Now, the media ignored the Orlando massacre so you’ve probably never heard of it, but I do recall Trump congratulating himself at the time. He relished “the congrats for being right” about the threat posed by people with Muslim-sounding names. Not much since then, though. Trump keeps going on about terror and crime and carnage everywhere, but without some real blood in the streets his words ring a little hollow. You can never find a terrorist when you need one. Trump and Bannon would settle for a few dozen casualties, but what they’d really like is a really spectacular attack, something to stampede public opinion and make it ...

If only mass shooters used muzzle-loaders. I n the tragic wake of the Bowling Green Massacre, you’d think people would be lining up at gun stores. That’s the normal response when guns are used to kill large numbers of Americans at a single sitting: People immediately think to themselves, “hey, how better to honor the memory of the victims than by buying a bunch of the same weapons used to kill them?” But gun sales now are not just flat, they’re actually declining! I can think of only two reasons for that: (A) The Bowling Green Massacre happened only within the skeletal head of Kellyanne Conway, and (B) treacherous gun-grabber Barack Hussein Obama is taking a break from all that, having failed to grab a single gun during the past eight years. And so we arrive at the single silver lining of Trump’s dark carnival: Gun makers are feeling some pain. Stock prices are down about 20 percent and so are ammo sales. The NRA’s chosen one ends up screwing the industry on which it thrives. This prob...

N ot all morons are assholes, and not all assholes are morons. In a nutshell, morons are people who don’t know what they’re doing wrong, and assholes are people who don’t care. Very few of either category wind up president of the United States. So now that we have a president who is both a moron and an asshole, it kind of feels like God has decamped to another universe. Apparently, the slogan on our paper money is no longer enough to ensure God’s continued support. El Presidente Donaldo von Trumpachev: Moron (Exhibit A: Naked ignorance of any single fucking thing that might possibly be germane to the job he now holds. Or, just anything he happens to be talking about. See: Frederick Douglass, the difference between “refugee” and “illegal immigrant,” and “Two Corinthians.” Add your favorite here; it’s the internet so we can’t run out of space. Can we?) Supreme Leader for the Next Eighteen Months Doni Goodluck Trumpabe: Asshole. (Exhibit A: Instinctively sticking it to anyone who seems w...

P resident-elect Trumpachev. Every day it’s a new fucking travesty with this guy. On the day after the election I dared hope he might not be as bad as I thought. I was right: He’s much, much worse. He’s the most unpopular president-elect in history. I wonder why? He can’t articulate a single policy beyond bellicose boasting, can’t finish a declarative sentence most of the time. He kisses up to foreign dictators and despises the fellow Americans who question whether vulgarity and ignorance are great qualities for a leader. He needed Russian intervention to eke out a razor-thin victory; half of the minority who voted for him just did it as a middle finger to Washington. They never thought the asshole could win. Trump voters say we should give him a chance, look for the good in the man. Nope. Can’t even. He’s blown his chance about 800 times since Nov. 9. I’m done. And if there’s even a slight whiff of goodness in this goofball, he’s masking it well with the sulphurous scent of malign ego...