Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Bible: $60. Mussolini glare: Priceless.   W ell, I got my  Trump sneakers  ($400). Ordered a number of  Trump bibles  ($60 a pop plus handling). Up to my ass in  DJT stock  ($62 and falling). So I’m good to go. When Trump starts handing out ambassadorships after the election, I should be near the front of the line. Trump likes loyalty. But he  loves  suckers. So now is the time for all good men (and certain bodacious babes) to suck as hard as we can. Now is the time to buy as much Trump merch as possible, pronto. It will make his day a little brighter. Just put it all on your credit card if you don’t have the cash. (And there’s a good chance you don’t if you’re a longtime Trump investor.) Oh, and word to the wise: Trump will be unveiling a line of Proud Boy Beanie Babies on Monday, so save some of your credit limit for that too. Most politicians just ask for money, and don’t give you anything in return.  Trump does too. But he also offer...

The granddaughters when they were little E very day I get these notifications about what I was doing on this date one or five or several years ago. Facebook and OneDrive and Google Photos all want to remind me that time does fly – and that they’re keeping track. They know I can’t resist another unsolicited photo montage to top up my little shot glass of nostalgia. I don’t mind. Used to be, you’d have to wait until a rare reunion with friends or loved ones before you’d dig out the photo albums. Now the memories arrive unbidden. No special occasion required. Here are the granddaughters at the beach, or at Disney World, or unsteady on their Christmas skates. Here’s us with the dog we loved, that car we drove, that house wherein so many holidays came and went. Here’s Mom when she could still get around OK. Here are these friends we don’t see much anymore.  It’s a daily blast from the past – at least the recent past. Probably a good thing these automated memories don’t predate the dawn ...

The devil wears polyester I was saddened to learn of the death of M. Emmet Walsh on Tuesday. The upside is that it’s now timely to talk about his best role: Private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ first movie: “Blood Simple.” If you haven’t seen “Blood Simple,” here is the obligatory spoiler alert: Get the hell out of here until you have seen it, then report back with your impressions. I saw “Blood Simple” on VHS before I’d even heard of the Coen brothers. Rewatching it nearly 40 years later, it’s fun to note certain motifs and archetypes that tend to reappear in their later work. Chief among those is the oddball villain who adheres to a strict code of amorality. The Coens later said they wrote the Visser character with Walsh in mind. Visser wears a yellow leisure suit and drives a Volkswagen Beetle. (Another PI with a Volkswagen appeared in “The Big Lebowski”).  He has a west-Texas drawl and an easy manner and a heart of blackest coal. His opening monologue doesn’t e...

Austin Butler flies the unfriendly skies F or some reason my wife doesn’t share my interest in World War II aviation. So I waited until she was out of town to finish “Masters of the Air.” My verdict: It’s pretty good. Come for the thrilling air combat scenes, stay for the history.   Since “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998, we’ve seen quite a few hyper-realistic World War II movies: stuff like “Fury,” “Dunkirk,” and “Hacksaw Ridge.” Then there are the miniseries “Band of Brothers” and “Pacific.” By now a certain sameness has crept into these stories. Apparently, there are only so many ways to depict young men fighting and dying between angst-filled moments in the barracks.  “Masters of the Air” has quite a bit of that too. The characters are mostly predictable and dialog is sometimes wooden. But this series focuses on a different WWII: one fought at high altitude, high speed and in subzero cold. It’s the kind of warfare that had never been seen before and won’t be seen again....

Blossom Dearie at the height of her powers. H appy vernal equinox! I’m a solstice man myself, preferring the extremes of too much day in June and too much night in December. But this day of balance between the two is also great and would suffice. I don’t know about you, but it feels like spring arrived a bit too soon this year. Winter came and went in a few short weeks. I had to deploy the snow shovel only half a dozen times, and probably could have gotten by with less. Winter in this part of the country is not what it used to be. But then nothing is, if you believe certain men of a certain age. Still, what are you gonna do? It’s spring, so I suppose one should clean house and do some yard work and take a walk in one’s shirtsleeves even though the mornings are still a little too chilly for that.  Or one could take a couple of minutes and listen to Blossom Dearie’s lovely “They Say It’s Spring.” (You may have to wait a few seconds to bypass the damned ads.) It’s a tune I often find...

T ake a look at this list of Great American Novels, as propounded by the editors of Atlantic Magazine. Let me know what you think.  Being a sucker for any best-of list, I was naturally curious to see how many of these 136 books I’ve read. I’ve gone through the list twice now and still count only 23! This can’t be right! I guess this is what happens when you read way too many best-selling crime novels. A lot of Really Important books fall by the wayside. About the list: The books had to be published in the United States during the last 100 years, and they had to be recommended by a group of scholars, critics and novelists.  The list came to 136 because The Atlantic thought an arbitrary number would be too, well, arbitrary.  Anyway, if I’m going to take this list seriously, that means I’ll have to find space for, let’s see, 113 Great American Novels that I’ve heretofore overlooked. I’m going to need a bigger nightstand. Not that it matters, but here are the listed books I ...

Frequently frisky in an alternate Victorian universe.   W hen everyone and their respective dogs seem to love a movie, it’s a little embarrassing to admit you hate it. But I do hate “Poor Things,” the movie for which Emma Stone won her best-actress Oscar. Not since “The English Patient” have I felt so out of touch.  We watched it the other night, part of a vague impulse to catch most of the movies nominated for an Academy Award this year. It was free on Hulu. For that I am grateful. Now all I regret is the wasted time, as opposed to the wasted money. Also, it’s probably the only thing I’ve ever watched on Hulu where I actually welcomed the ads.  Have you seen it? I won’t offer a review, except to say that it plays like a Terry Gilliam movie (think “Brazil”) co-written by Russ Meyer (think “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens”). It’s billed as a dark comedy, but it’s really kind of a raunchy sex romp tarted up with avant-garde pretensions — something about female empowe...

Maybe we have bigger fish to fry.   S hould TikTok be banned? Beats me. I never use the app. I’m only aware of it because occasionally I’ll look out a window and see two moderately attractive people doing synchronized dance steps while a third person records it. I assume that’s intended for TikTok. Although it could just as easily be for Facebook, or YouTube or any of the other exhibitionist apps that harvest data and persuade its users to do things they might otherwise not. Actually, that’s pretty much the whole purpose of anything on internet, isn’t it? To influence you and to continually improve the ways in which you can be influenced. Which is why targeting a single app seems quixotic. Yes, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company (ByteDance) and as such is required to turn over its data any time the Chinese government wants it. That doesn’t sound optimal. We’re talking 170 million American users, who could presumably be incited to vote for JFK Jr. or participate in the fun Russian...

  T he odds of artificial intelligence someday wiping out humanity are estimated at somewhere between 5 and 90 percent, depending on which expert you ask.   Bummer. But the bigger issue is, how will this affect me and my blog?  I’m feeling pretty good about it. See, while AI floods the Internet with synthetic shit – Taylor Swift nudes, pro-Trump black folk, that strange photo of Duchess Kate – I figure the market for artisan, handcrafted shit can only get better.  Two words: Supply and demand. Well, that’s three words, but the point is, human-generated content is hard to find. If you’ve recently checked Facebook reels, or your news feed, or Amazon, or TikTok or YouTube, you know what I mean. Your finite attention span is being drowned by an infinite tsunami of fakery. There’s so much of it that it’s rendering search engines useless. It’s going to get worse. You really need to quit falling for that stuff. One thing about the Warehouse: everything here is certifie...

Brother, can you spare 25 percent? I n a perfect world, Joe Biden’s plan to extract more taxes from billionaires would seem a slam dunk. Basically, it calls for a 25 percent tax on all wealth over $100 million. It would apply to the 0.01 percent of Americans who are literally the richest people on earth – people whose wealth is counted in the hundreds of billions, not millions. These folks could pay a 90 percent tax and still never feel a difference in quality of life, in the sheer numbers of yachts and residences and private jets they can afford. But here’s something else they can afford: Congress. The Republican Party. Legions of lobbyists and wealth managers and tax experts who labor tirelessly to make sure all that obscene wealth stays right where it’s at.  Biden’s plan will not be warmly received in the oligarch-controlled House. For all the GOP likes to talk about “hard-working” Americans in an election year, they seem pretty determined to make sure those who work for a livin...

No time for small talk.   W elcome to Dave’s Oscar Recap, wherein I paraphrase what everyone else has already observed about last night’s show and pass the savings on to you.  First, it seemed to go by pretty quickly. Right? That’s something nobody ever observed about the Oscars. Maybe it had something to do with the earlier start, and Daylight Saving Time, and because for the previous 13 years I watched it in the Eastern time zone. There, the show always drags on toward midnight.  Credit must also go to Al Pacino, who, with his pants pooling around his ankles, decided to dispense with the usual bon mots and the usual mention of the other best-picture nominees. That saved a few minutes right there.  Finally, I have the sense that all those phone book-inspired thank-you speeches were fewer and shorter this year. Maybe that’s because I took to muting the TV after each winner was announced. You should try it sometime.  A couple of exceptions:  the guy who sugg...

  M y own objection to Daylight Saving Time derives from personal laziness: it’s annoying to change clocks, especially the digital ones that require an arcane sequence of key presses I can never quite remember.  Ditto with the car clocks. I always decide to adjust them while driving, and it’s only a matter of time before this results in some damage.  Other than that, I guess I don’t care. On my relaxed work schedule, I wake up when I feel like it regardless of The Man’s rules on saving or squandering daylight. The sun isn’t changing position, so why should I?  As a wise man once said, “’I’m as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change.”  Still, I recognize that some people do have regular jobs. If I were among them, I’d probably have certain questions. Such as: Why? Why must we disrupt the sleep patterns of hard-working Americans twice a year? Resetting a clock is not the same as resetting a brain. It takes some time to adjust, which is why accidents (...

I f you ran into Marge Green at a Walmart, you’d assume she was there to shoplift. If you saw her at a hair salon, you’d think she was filling in for Lauren. If she pushed into a Denny’s, you’d figure the boss told her she was out of sick days.  They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But with Marge you really can. If you were to peek behind her mask of rudeness, crudeness and utter predictability, you’d find … yep, pretty much the same thing.   Marge is an American success story: a potato-faced ignoramus who scored a winning scratch-off ticket at the Gas N Go. In her case, the ticket took the form of running in a Georgia district where most of the voters are dumber than she is. She’s spent most of her time since galumphing around the halls of Congress in MAGA apparel. Also, hooting and hollering during State of the Union addresses.  But at least she’s delivering for her constituents, right? Wrong. The highlight of her three-year legislative record is renaming ...

N o point in watching the State of the Union address this year. I rarely do. Usually I skip it because it’s boring political theater, but tonight I’m skipping it because I can’t bear to witness (a) any potential Biden gaffes and (b) the jeering Greek chorus that is today’s GOP.  Biden may well make a slip or two. He does that from time to time. No big deal. He’s proven himself a capable president with the wisdom to surround himself with capable people. But the stakes seem unusually high tonight. The slightest stutter or mispronunciation will be cast as a nail in his campaign’s coffin, and will command more commentary than the speech itself.   His opponent, of course, mangles names and dates and syntax and basic reality every time he opens his puckered mouth. He does it so often that they aren’t considered gaffes at all, just more of the dark and demented worldview that features his bloated self at the center. Somehow, nobody minds. Far from it. I often think of the line f...

For all the young romantics I  once thought I should write a book. So I did. Just one problem: It was a crappy book.  Turns out that’s no longer a dealbreaker. Born too soon!  As of yesterday, an Amazon bestseller list was full of crappy books. And not – as you’d assume – just because the category was “young adult romance.”  No, as this story in Vice reports, the books were all generated by AI. Until Amazon intervened (after complaints from real authors), dozens of books with nonsense titles and nonsense content were crowding the list. Because “young adult romance” is synonymous with “credulous fool,” these fake books were getting a lot of clicks. And clicks, as we know, are the same as cash for the unscrupulous.  In fairness, it’s not just dewy-eyed post-adolescents who are feeling the AI burn. The Washington Post reports how tech journalist Kara Swisher recently found her own memoir being shouted down by a bunch of suspiciously similar books, each with a sligh...

Intruder detected. I installed a video doorbell. Unlike my last foray into video surveillance, this one was pretty easy. Much clearer, too. So far, we’ve been able to review our arrivals and departures in 2K clarity. Every time I step outside I get a notification on my phone. I feel more secure already. It’s not perfect. Reviewing the footage, I see that while the camera is nicely situated for a doorbell, it’s kind of in the wrong place to keep an eye on our cars. One porch column occludes the precise location where a thief recently gained access to my aging RAV4.  Oh well. It’s still a step up from the four-camera setup I had in Jacksonville. That system did record a number of incidents over the years:  a guy stealing a bike from a nearby coffee shop. a shadowy figure pilfering beer from a rental home across the street. a hooded dude rifling our Prius in the middle of the night. a dramatic auto collision on our corner. a rich tapestry of beggars, drunks, idlers and loons. cou...

I like war movies and I like historical epics and I like Ridley Scott. So I knew I’d be watching “Napoleon” as soon as I could stream it for free. That was last night. Thanks, Apple TV+!  Having seen it, I can say that this is one of those films where I would not regret the price of a theater ticket and a large bucket of popcorn.  Here’s what it is: sweeping battle scenes, deft direction, terse writing and often brilliant acting by Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby and the strong supporting cast.  Here’s what it isn’t: Historically accurate. The most memorable scenes are the ones that didn’t really happen: Napoleon leading a cavalry charge, bombarding the Great Pyramids, rushing to Josephine from his exile in Elba, chatting with Wellington after Waterloo.   I don’t mind. I’m no great expert on the Napoleonic Wars, but the film seems to capture a sense of the time, if not a hyper-realistic picture of it. A movie can be completely accurate or it can be entertaining,...

Or, you could kiss my ass. I n the process of copying all my Warehouse posts over to a more portable format, I occasionally stumble across things that I was totally wrong about. Hard to believe, I know. But here’s this one from 2011 , my first mention of Donald J. Trump on this blog. Yeah, I was right about him being a horse’s ass, but so was everyone else. No, it’s this line that bothers me: “It’s not Trump who’s dangerous. He’ll never be elected president and he knows it.” And here we are in 2024. Trump lost the popular vote bigtime but was elected anyway and now polls suggest it might happen again. After all the fraud and felonies and lies and insurrection, he’s somehow ahead. Or seems to be. Polls have been wrong before, and I pray they are this time too. But I’m beginning to see that there’s no underestimating the American public. And I’m more than a little worried.

A dirty thief crept by the other night. Some idiot left our 11-year-old Toyota unlocked and the miscreant was able to rifle the glove box and center console. My initial investigation revealed only one thing missing: a single iPhone charging cord, blue in color.  Could have been worse. Could have left a Glock and a Samsonite full of cash out there. Fortunately, I possess neither. I did have a pretty nice pressure gauge, but it was ignored. Apparently, footbound bandits don’t concern themselves with proper tire inflation. Casual theft was a bigger problem in the Jacksonville neighborhood we left to move back here. Little groups of teens would wander the streets at all hours, trying door handles and nicking Amazon packages off front porches. Also locked bikes, holiday decorations and house plants. Everyday someone would post a Ring video of some dudes or dudettes strolling away with their stuff. In Springfield, we all came to feel that if you left any door or gate unlocked for even f...