Truth in Advertising

Last night, after watching the latest Masterpiece Mystery and Top Chef on the tube, I switched to the local late-night news. Came an ad for toothpaste. A new and improved! version of one that's been around a while, and to listen to the V.O. and watch the animation, this stuff is the best product since glow-in-the-dark condoms. (If you ever saw Skin Deep, with John Ritter, that fight between two men in the dark wearing glow-in-the-dark condoms? Unforgettable.)



Um, but back to toothpaste. So the new, improved! stuff will not only clean and disinfect your mouth, it will wax your car and change the cat's litter box, and fish Timmy out of the well, and Jeez, I need to get some of it, right now!

But just for fun, I got online and checked out Consumer Reports. Guess what? One whitening toothpaste is pretty much the same as another. None of them work particularly well, and the one that seems to do the best job with minimal abrasion is the old (and cheap) one, Ultrabrite.

The more things change, the more they stay the same ...

Liars and Posers in Pentjak Silat

To those of you whose ears perked up and who started thinking of everybody they could call or email to rat me out when they read this title, one word:

Gotcha.

This post has nothing to do with the title. Well, okay, it maybe has a little to do with it, but only in the most general way.

Attend:

On another blog I sometimes pass by, I became engaged in a political discussion. I wondered aloud about certain kinds of people and what I considered asinine and mule-headed stances on policy matters, and how on Earth folks could step up to defend positions that were patently indefensible -- racist, sexist, greedy, etc.

Several folks stepped up to be pissed off at me for attacking them. Even though I didn't -- attack them. (And then they started to defend some of the foolishness of which I had spoken, and that was sad. Not a surprise, but sad. See, the real problem with stupid people is that they don't know they are stupid. If they did, they'd merely be ignorant or misguided until, of course, they came to see the wisdom of my position, in which case they would become enlightened ...)

There's a sophomoric practical joke that was all the rage when I was first in junior high fifty years ago. You walked into a gathering of guys and yelled "Hey, asshole!" and then grinned at whoever turned around to look. You only got stung this way once; thereafter your attitude was, "Well, you obviously aren't talking to me, so I'm not gonna look."

Or you got pounded by the football jock who was sure you were yelling at him and who would just as soon stomp you as look at you ...

The old idiom is, "If the shoe fits, wear it." What this means is, if you are guilty of something and somebody calls you on it, then you don't get to kick. It also means that if you aren't guilty, then it doesn't apply to you, and you need not get all het up about it.)

Johnny Cochran helped get OJ off with a variation of this, and I always wondered if that really convinced anybody. If you are a professional actor and you can't make it look like putting on a glove is hard because it is too tight? Even I can do that -- using a glove two sizes too big.)

If I figuratively step into the room and yell, "Hey, asshole!" unless I add your name to that fore or aft, it's not my fault if you turn around and look. If you do, and want to get feisty about it when I wasn't talking to you? That's also not my problem.

(Addendum to the old joke file: Guy walks into a bar. Orders a beer, sucks it down fast, slams the mug down on the bar top. "All right," he yells. "All of you on this side of the room are douche bags! And all of you on that side of the room are assholes!"

Big man walks over, stands in front of the guy. "Buddy," he said, "I don't appreciate you calling me a douche bag."

"Well, then, get over on the other side of the room, asshole ..."

Rings

Using infrared imagining, scientists have discovered a new, huge ring around Saturn. So diffused that you wouldn't see it if you were in it, and big enough that it would take a billion Earths to fill it.

Pretty impressive.

Though I must confess, I didn't find this as impressive as the event of March 10, 1977, by James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Douglas J. Mink, who discovered that there were rings around another planet in our solar system.

And a great topic of party conversation:

So, who's that?

Why, that's Jim Elliot, the famous astronomer.

Yeah? Famous for what?

That's the man who discovered that there are rings around Uranus!

The Passing Parade

Got an email today, a slight variation on scores of such I've gotten since I started getting email. Boiled down, the question is, "How can I get your job?" And the short answer is, "You can't."

The names are changed to protect the innocent, but I'm posting it here -- again -- to offer blanket advice to folks who might see this posting and save me having to point it out to them individually. (Though I confess that since I've put up versions of this before, and spoken to it in my how-to-book about adventures in the writing trade, No Man But a Blockhead, available as an ebook right here over a PayPal button just there, to the right, $5; or on Amazon.com as a kindle book, for the same amount, I don't hold out much hope that this will do the trick ...)

Oct 7, 2009, at 3:47 AM, (Name Withheld) wrote:

Mr. Perry, First off, I just want to say that I'm a big admirer of your work. I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise and I read Earth Hive when I was in middle school and was absolutely blown away by it! Your ability to bring paper to life in a way that is usually only seen in multi-million dollar special effects scenes on the big screen is absolutely phenomenal. I also admire the way you are able to input your own characters so seamlessly into an already well established franchise. (I think I still have a crush on Billie!) Anyway, I am attempting to write in an equally action-packed and character-driven franchise (shared universe name here) and would like any and all advice you could give me about getting my work to the right people so that it might be able to see the light of day. I believe that, despite not having formal education in the field, I have some very good material and a lot of ideas that could help this franchise achieve something on paper that has never been done before and would like some help in making this happen. Thank you very much for your time, (Name Withheld) _______________________________________

(Name --)

I appreciate your compliments, thanks.

As for trying to write in the (Shared Universe you mention) your options are limited. Rights to do books based on the characters are owned by the movie folks, probably (Joe Hollywood) and (The Company He Owns,) and leased to book houses.

The only way you can get to write one of these is get hired by the company who has leased the rights. The most recent novels came from (Tie-In Books) and you'd need to contact them and see what their policy about hiring writers is.

You need to understand that your chances are very small you'll get the job. First, if they've gotten the rights to do a few of these, it's most likely they've already assigned them. If there's a book just coming out, they bought it six months or a year ago, and if there's one due in six months or a year, they've already bought that one.

If they have rights to books not yet assigned and are looking for new writers, that is your only shot, but there is almost certainly going to be a long line of writers ahead of you who'd like to take that shot.

I see that (Big Name SciFi Author) wrote one of these. (Big) is a New York Times Bestselling author who has won major awards in the science fiction field. Given the choice of hiring him, or somebody they don't know who has no track record, who would you hire?

Direct novelizations of the movies get done when the script is theoretically finished, months, or maybe a year before the movie hits the screens. Without a track record, you simply won't get the chance to do a tie-in to the movie. Those go to people they know can do the work cleanly and quickly.

Ideas are cheap, and in this part of the business, execution is way more important than a terrific idea.

I don't know anybody working at (Tie-In Books), but you can probably get contact info at their website:

www.goodluckbutdon'tholdyourbreath.com/

My best advice to you is to write your own original material, get it out, and once it is sold and published, then you have something to bring to the table if you want to try working in an established universe.

Good luck with it.

Literary Gem

Came across a line in a Stephen King short story, from his latest collection, Just After Sunset.

Tickled me when I read it -- it was like one those folksy aphorisms you hear, that, even if you have never heard it before, you feel as if you have, or should have. I dunno if it is his line or if he just repeated something he picked up along the way, but it made me grin.

From the mind of a man driving on a highway in Florida who needs to stop and take a whiz, in the story "Rest Stop,"

"Yet there was a fundamental problem with beer any undergraduate understood: You couldn't buy it, only rent it."

A Journal of the Plague Years

So, local news last evening did a story on the airport. Seems that PDX is going to be offering surgical masks at the TSA checkpoints, for those coughing, sneezing passengers who might, uh, voluntarily want to don one to protect their fellow passengers.

Some parts of the medical system in the U.S. are making it mandatory for health workers to take the swine flu vaccine. You don't, you stay away from patients, maybe lose your job.

Commercial airliners are essentially large petri dishes. If you want to make half the world sick, set a bioweapon-grade viral pathogen loose at a major airport anywhere in the world. Within days, that bug will have made its way to far corners of the Earth.

The airlines recycle cabin air, and as anybody who has ever flown knows, thus take out enough moisture so such air would be right at home in the Gobi Desert in midsummer, drying out sinuses as effective as shoving a hair dryer up your nose.

The airlines tout their "hospital quality" air filters. But the Purolators they use filter down to -- in theory, if they are clean -- 0.3 microns.

Viruses vary, but most are way smaller than 0.3 microns -- those include the influenza ones -- so those suckers zip right on through those filters like wrens through chicken wire. Might as well kiss every other passenger on the lips when you get onboard for the exposure you'll get flying from Portland to Dallas.

The aircraft filters stop some bacteria, and will catch fatter particles, but none of those cause the flu.

Of course, I'm of a mind that the media have blown this H1N1 swine flu virus threat into slow-news day proportions. Regular old bird flu kills thirty thousand people a year in this country, and the swine version looks to put up about the same numbers. That's bad, of course, but we aren't talking about the Black Death here.

Watching Channel Two, you get the impression the other Three Horsemen are just down the street behind Pestilence, and might as well bend over and kiss your ass good-bye now.

Yeah. People get sick, and people are going to catch this stuff, but not everybody will. When I was young and fit and working as a PA at a Family Practice Clinic, during the season, we had literally hundreds of patients cycling through with flu every day, and I never caught it. Not in five years of very-frequent exposure.

Didn't catch a host of worse things that passed through our doors, either. Medical people are taught aseptic technique.

No guarantees -- sometimes you catch shit, but here's the deal to shade the odds your way:

Wash your hands frequently, or use Purell when you can't. Don't let people cough or sneeze in your face. Don't drink out of the same glass your spouse does if they are sick.

Drink a lot of water, and get enough sleep, eat good food, to keep your immune system running well. But don't, for God's sake, board yourself up in your home with your gun handy to shoot callers who might have a seasonal allergy.

The end times might be coming, but swine flu isn't the harbinger. The monsters are not due on Maple Street just yet.

Shades of McGee

Save for a couple of the hardbacks, all my Travis McGee books are either lent out -- which means gone forever -- or if they are paperbacks, in a box in the attic.

MacDonald also wrote a shitload of other novels in the adventure/thriller/detective arena, starting in 1950; as well as a few science fiction titles: Wine of the Dreamers, Ballroom of the Skies, and The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything. They'd all be in the same box.

I haven't revisited the older titles in a while, but whilst in Powell's yesterday, I came across a book-club omnibus consisting of: The Quick Red Fox, Pale Gray for Guilt, and Dress Her in Indigo, all from the sixties. Book was cheap, dust-jacket in okay condition, so I picked it up. It's a reader, not a collector.

In 1964, there were four Travis McGee books released, two in '65, two in '66. None in '67, but two in '68, and one or two a year from then until the last one in 1985. Fox was the fourth title. Guilt, the 9th, Indigo, the 11th. (They were all a lot shorter than most novels today, which was the norm for the time. And he was prolific.)

They will read as period pieces now --written and set in the pre-computer, pre-internet days of yore, but I'm looking forward to seeing how well they've held up. I confess I expect pretty well, not only because my eyes will be fogged with nostalgia, but because, in the words of the late Ted Sturgeon, "I don't believe he (MacDonald) ever wrote a bad book."

I regret that I never had a chance to meet the man. I did send him a copy of my first novel when it came out, given how much I swiped from him. He was on the road, but his secretary sent a note saying they'd gotten it. After he died, I traded a couple of letters with Dan Rowan, who had been MacDonald's buddy, gotten crosswise with him, but reconciled just before MacDonald died. There's a book of the letters those two exchanged.

MacDonald had a few movie deals that finally saw light -- couple Travis McGee things that, not to be impolite, stank on ice, mostly because of the casting. And the setting. And the writing. But other than that, they were pretty awful. Supposedly there's another one sort-of in the works.

Probably MacDonald's best transfer to the silver screen was The Executioners, which was done twice, both times as Cape Fear. First version started Gregory Peck, Polly Bergen, and Robert Mitchum, in 1962. Second version was in 1991, with Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and Robert De Niro.

First version, Mitchum was ball-chilling scary and you never really saw anything overtly nasty.

Second version, directed by Martin Scorcsese, in which case, more was considerably less. Marty is a great director, and De Niro a great actor, but it was no contest. Smartest thing Scorsese did was give Mitchum a part in the new movie.

Bloggers Beware!

From The New York Times, By The Associated Press

Published: October 5, 2009
Filed at 10:33 a.m. ET

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers.

But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

The rules take effect Dec. 1.

Traffic

Ye olde blogge here generally gets limited attention. Numbers of folks who drop round have climbed slowly but steadily since I started it, but aren't impressive -- over the last year or so, I've averaged around twelve thousand visitors a month, around four hundred or so a day. Some are regulars -- couple hundred or so, it seems, though that's hard to track precisely. And I usually try to entitle entries with something that does not artificially inflate the numbers when the search engines go looking -- no "free porno" or "Michael Jackson's Hidden Secret!"

For some reason, the last few weeks, the passers-by have gone up. Still not in the stratosphere, but on most days, half again the normal traffic, and a couple times, twice as much. Had a thousand-plus hit day recently.

I dunno why. I'm speaking to the same subjects I usually do, in much the same devil-may-care manner as always.

My stat counter shows referring links, and the log shuts off at a hundred, but there aren't any big clumps there. I have a few sites linked to mine that send as many as score or so of readers, but most of the hits, according to the counter's tally come directly -- i.e., "no referring link."

The proportions are the same, in that the sine-wave usually peaks mid-week and declines through Sunday, going back up again on Monday. (People must be sneaking peeks at work.)

Most hits come from the USA, but spread out across the country, no big surges from any one state. I get visits from Europe, Asia, Canada, South America, a few from Australia and Africa.

Broken out by city and even ISP, no big skews.

Decidedly odd.

I wonder if somebody is screwing with me ...

Bulletproof

I have to tell this story on myself: At our most recent silat class, we were working some basic entries from the first djuru, and Toby, Edwin, and I were cycling around. It was dark, the only light from four tiki torches, and it was raining. The tall and wide-canopied tree we were under stopped most of the rain, but some was getting through -- it was coming down pretty good.

Toby was attacking, and I was defending, and I wasn't paying attention, wasn't doing the technique as I should have been -- which was not waiting for his punch to arrive, but beating him to the position.

He stepped in and punched me in the jaw.

Not hard, but it was a real line, and I got tagged because I was mentally wool-gathering.

My fault entirely. Any time I miss a block, it's my fault -- even if I didn't know what was coming -- but which I did -- I should have had the line covered.

It was a good lesson in several ways. Had I been focused, had I stepped in, instead of waiting, it wouldn't have happened. It being dark and raining had better not matter. But I was goofing off, watching somebody else, mind wandering.

When being attacked, this is a bad thing.

Funny how getting hit now and then refocuses you. If I had to bet, I wouldn't expect that to happen again soon.

Stage Fright

Got into a discussion about stage fright -- mostly secondary to public speaking -- recently. Giving a speech in public is, for some people, scarier and more nerve-wracking than getting a root canal.

Performance anxiety can be treated, of course, and there are some well-known actors and singers and speakers who suffer from it. Training helps, there are drugs, notably beta-blockers, and even the folks most comfortable getting up in front of an audience still get butterflies. That edginess can help, if it's not overwhelming.

But big performances make for bigger butterflies ...

I came across this video a year or so back, and wondered how I'd feel in his guy's shoes.

The set up is, there's a busker -- street musician -- in Copenhagen, who was doing some Bruce Springsteen songs, and, all of a moment look who arrives:

Bruce Fucking Springsteen.

Imagine it: You're strumming away doing a Springsteen cover and the Boss Himself steps up.

Heart-attack time. Holy shit!

But, it gets better. Springsteen borrows a guitar and goes into "The River", and there you are, totally unexpected, playing live with Bruce Fucking Springsteen ...

If your head didn't explode from pure joy -- or terror, it would be a memory you'd likely carry with you to your grave.

The notion that I might be playing a song by somebody I love hearing and he or she was in the audience? Playing "Blackbird," and you look down to see Paul McCarthy sitting in the front row, all attentive?

No pressure there ...

A Good Writing Session

Now and then, you get into flow -- that state of function wherein things go like sliding your fingertip through warm oil on glass -- smoothly, effortlessly, dead on-target. The sweet spot on the bat connects and puts the ball over the fence; the half-court last second basket is nothing but net; the zanshin of sword in sheath becoming sword in hand just is, with no sense of time passing.

Like the werewolf in Trader Vic's -- his hair is perfect ...

Doesn't happen that often for me in any venue. Now and in a great while in writing, it does, and I never see it coming. I sit down, and of a moment, two hours have passed, I have eight pages of a chapter, and everything came out in ways I didn't see going in. It's as is somebody else wrote the scene and I was sitting behind him watching it unfold, going, "Damn! That's good! Now what, now what?!"

I had a scene in mind. A character who has been captured by the bad guy and is naked, drugged, and about to be tortured and killed. I'd set it up so that all of this character's physical skills were neutralized. (Cleverly using a drug that lowers blood-pressure so much that any activity that requires quick motion will cause a loss of consciousness. Stand up fast, you pass out. Swing your fist hard, you pass out.)

Now, Steve, how you gonna get your protagonist out of that fix, hey? And I really didn't know, though I had set up the answer early in the book without realizing it. I started writing, and there it was. My God, how did I come up with that?

Well. You'll have to wait for Bristlecone to get finished, bought, and printed to find out what I did. And I don't know how great a scene it is, objectively. But if half of what a hoot it was to write comes through, it'll play like gangbusters and keep a reader turning the pages, and that's the goal for me.

I believe I'll go walk the dogs while the sun is shining and the rain is in abeyance. Maybe take the rest of the day off, 'cause any writing I do isn't going to get any better than what I did this morning. No way.

Um ...

So I was over on Wim's page -- link in the list to the right -- and saw this image over a sponsored ad. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but ... does this picture seem, oh, I dunno, kind of gay? Effete, even?

Just an observation, is all ...

When the Ground Trembles

I've been reading about the terrible event in Padang, Indonesia, the earthquake whose death toll still isn't known. Awful thing.

I've been in small quakes, eight or nine times, and even at low levels, it's an eerie experience.

Growing up in Louisiana, the mud didn't rock and roll. But when we moved to L.A. ... ?

First time, I was sitting in my car, parked, and suddenly the car started vibrating. My first thought was that some kind of animal, a dog, maybe, had somehow wedged itself under the car and was trying to get loose. I alighted from my vehicle to see, and when I put my feet on the ground, realized there wasn't a dog big enough to move the ground itself.

No fear, just wonder. But there weren't falling buildings around me.

Probably had five or six more low-key experiences like that over the three years we lived in SoCal.

In Oregon, in nearly thirty years, I have felt quakes but twice. First one was about five a.m. one spring day. My wife and I woke up with the bed trying to walk across the floor. We knew what it was immediately. Not a lot of damage, though one man was killed when a boulder jolted loose on a hillside and fell on his car.

Second time, I was on a massage table. I started feeling a vibration and I said, "That's an interesting technique." Therapist said, "That not me."

I feel for the folks in Indonesia. Our charity is Doctors Without Borders, or NW Medical Relief. We'll need to send them a contribution.

A Spy Among Us ...

"I am loath to say it, Colonel Hathaway, but I'm afraid we must consider the possibility that ... one of our men is a traitor ..."

(Thanks to Steve Van Harn for the picture.)

Pipes

Had the plumber come out yesterday. After a week of using a counter-top water filter to see if we wanted it, we got the permanent under-counter version installed a few days back, whereupon we discovered a small leak under the kitchen sink.

(And how is that water-drinking going out there? Everybody getting in their eight glasses a day?)

The old faucet was corroded, allowing a little water to seep down onto the floor of the cabinet. And when we turned off the supply valve, it was old and worn enough that it leaked a bit, too. Stuck a bucket under them and made an appointment to have 'em fixed.

I'm not particularly handy, but I replaced the faucet last time, been ten or twelve years. Back in the day, faucets had rubber or neoprene washers in them, and if they started to drip or leak, you could shut the water off, take the valve apart, and replace the washer. Kitchen and bathroom faucets are all washerless now, and when they go, you toss 'em. Lifetime guarantee on the one I had. Apparently the lifetime of a raccoon.

I bought a new faucet, a four-holer. The valve, which was brazed onto the copper pipe, was beyond me -- I don't have the pipe cutters, torch or solder, and if I did, I could see setting my kitchen on fire, so I called the plumber. (Most of the pipes under the house are galvanized steel. Copper is better, and these days, you see a lot of PVC.)

Plumber came, attended to the kitchen pipes, plus a couple of leaky faucets outside, long as he was here, and we are back to what passes for normal around here ...

Got to Love the Internet

Got a note from a woman connected to Fabryka Slow, the Polish publisher of The Man Who Never Missed. Wants to put my picture up on their site, and could I send 'em one?

Sure, no problem.

This brought up a recollection of an article I read last evening on The Dreyfus Affair, which had in it a passing reference to a coincidence worthy of the internet, so here the segue ...

Those of you who missed history class that hour when France was covered, this concerned a scandal that rocked the country in the late 1890's, in which a French officer was convicted of espionage -- selling secrets to the Germans. This was a crime he had nothing to do with, but was accused of simply because he was a Jew.

There was a document purportedly written by Dreyfus that was a big part of the evidence against him, and a handwriting expert was brought in. Because, the expert said, the handwriting looked nothing like Dreyfus's, he therefore concluded that it must be his -- he had disguised it.

Only the French.

The letter, which eventually made its way into the newspapers -- the internet of the day -- was read by a stockbroker, who recognized the handwriting as belonging to one of his ne'er-do-well clients -- the man who was, in fact, the guilty party. This was kept under wraps, though Dreyfus's brother eventually ferreted this out.

Dreyfus, meanwhile, was railroaded into a life sentence, showing that anti-semitism was alive and well in turn-of-the-century France.

Eventually, because Dreyfus's brother wouldn't let it go, the glaring inconsistencies were such that people felt compelled to step up. The real villain was finally uncovered, Dreyfus was freed, and they all lived happily ever after. (Dreyfus had a long career, was highly-decorated, and died venerated and admired.)

The part I loved was that the French Army was so intent on not looking bad that it covered up evidence left and right. An anti-semite officer assigned to the case intercepted a telegram that revealed the guy who had really done it, and was fired and shipped out into the boonies for his diligence, then stuck in jail. (He was eventually brought back, dusted off, promoted, and had a long and successful career, too.)

The internet connection is tenuous, but, the writer, Adam Gopnik, means, I think, to point out that putting things out in public, ala the incriminating letter, might turn up unexpected evidence, even if nothing is really done with it. Unlike a paper letter that one can burn, once something is posted on the net, it is there forever, and a diligent hunter might find it.

This is why telling the truth is a good idea. As William Goldman's second book on the screen trade offers, falsehoods are harder to keep straight. "Which lie did I tell?" catches people flatfooted sometimes. (This would be a good place for me to go back into the silat wars, but -- nope. Not gonna ...)

Indy Rides Today

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,857 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #15 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Movie Tie-Ins
  #31 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
  #71 in	Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction And given that there are millions of titles on Amazon.com, making it into the top three thousand ain't so bad ...

  
  

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Go Ask Alice

In my previous post, I spoke about Roman Polanski and his infatuation with young girls. A bit more on what I like to call the Dodson Syndrome. (The Rev. Charles Dodson is better known under his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll, for the adventures of Alice and her trip through the looking glass. While this was his main claim to fame, he was also a photographer of some note, and a survey of his surviving photographs reveal that half of them were of young girls. Could have been more or fewer such -- many of the images or plates have been lost.)

Behold, above, Dodson's photograph of Alice Liddell, the model and namesake for the girl who fell down the rabbit hole.

There is no evidence that Dodgon was an active pedophile, though it was thought for a long time that he probably tended that way, since he never seemed to have any adult liasons, women or men. It is also likely that he probably never acted upon any such urges. Current thinking seems to have shifted somewhat, and allows is that the Victorian child-cult, which saw children as aspects of innocence, might have been the impetus that drove his photography and friendships with children. (I dunno. The gaze of the photographer who shot this image of Alice seems tinged with sensuality, and he apparently took a lot of nudes of children, some boys, mostly girls, but maybe that's just the cynic in me.)

These days, older men who befriend young children not their own, or at least related to them, are often considered in that more cynical light. Especially given the numbers of soccer and basketball and gymnastics coaches being arrested for inappropriate activity with their charges.

To continue: The title of this entry is the same as that of Oscar Wilde's only full-length novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. For those of you who missed it, this tale concerns a handsome young man with whom an artist is so enamored that the portrait he paints of dear Dorian takes on magical aspects -- no matter how dissolute young Gray becomes -- and he stoops pretty low into debauchery -- he never seems to show the effects. But the portrait ages, shows all the marks of a wicked life, and it's probably not a spoiler to tell you that deals with the devil, no matter how one gets into them, often end as greasy puddles on the floor ...

The story represents a number of things, mainly Faustian bargains, one of which is the desire to stay, like Peter Pan, young forever.

I think that among certain kinds of men, this might be part of the reason for connecting to younger women. If you are middle-aged and feeling creaky, a sweet young thing hanging on your every word and arm offers a soothing balm to your aged ego. Look, see here, I can still attract the young and beautiful! I'm not so old!

An adult man who enters into a sexual relationship with a child, would have to be dealing with issues of insecurity and power.

I knew a guy once, kept getting married and divorced. His first wife was fifteen when they met, he was eighteen. Not so bad, though a college freshman and a high school sophomore maybe aren't the best matches.

They split, and his second wife was seventeen when they wed, he was twenty-one. Still only four years difference.

This third wife was eighteen, and he was twenty-six.

His fourth wife was nineteen, and he was thirty-four.

After that divorce, he didn't get married again while I knew him, but his girlfriends were none of them out of their teens.

Such relationships allowed him to be an authority figure. The girls and young women were inexperienced and he was the wise, mayhaps even father figure, who had all the answers. At least at first. Once they were around him for a while and learned how much he really knew, they tended to be less impressed, and at least the three I knew left him. He was always able to find a new replacement for whom he could be, at least for a time, wise.

Far as I know, he never had any relationship with a woman near his own age that lasted more than two dates. How sad is that?

All of which it so say that why Polanski hankered after young and beautiful and innocent girls might be understandable. Aside from the purely aesthetic aspects, the balance of power was so much in his favor, and had to make him feel more in control.

Understanding it is not the same as condoning it.

Roman Finally Got Busted

A slightly-edited reprise of a post I did elsewhere:

Roman Polanski, if had done nothing but Chinatown, would have made his mark indelible as a director. But a big part of what he'll be remembered for is that he had a thing for little girls.

(Oh, and Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders, but that's not where we are going here.)

Being really good at your job? That doesn't buy you a pass to diddle the children. What folks who say, "Oh, poor Roman!" want to wave off that's not in dispute, is that the man had the hots for girls who'd just stepped into puberty. That in 1977, he took a thirteen-year-old girl to Jack Nicholson's house for a "photo shoot," plied her with champagne and Quaaludes, then raped her, and since the original charge included "sodomy," you can make of that what you will.

Was Samantha (Gailey) Geimer the first? I can't say. But she wasn't the last post-pube, pre-adult; at the very least, there was fifteen-year-old Nastassja Kinski. One might not be blamed for wondering if those were but the tip of the condom.

More, when asked about his arrest, Polanski shrugged it off. He liked 'em young, so, what's the big deal?

We have all seen young teenage girls who could pass for much older, and the term "jailbait," is used in referring to them; just because they look old enough doesn't mean they are. And you can't get jailed for wicked thoughts -- but Polanski knew how old this girl was -- that was part of the appeal for him.

The law came, busted him, convicted him, and he was out on bond while they were pondering the sentence. His attorneys had cut a deal. He served forty-odd days, and was going to skate past that, but the judge caught a lot of flak, and was thinking about reneging on the deal. There was gonna be hard time at the big house, so the winds were blowing.

Roman caught a plane to Paris and never came back.

Spending the next thirty-odd years living high on the hog in France, getting laid by younger --and those not yet legally women -- his life as a fugitive hasn't exactly put him into the Jean Valjean class, has it?

The French, who are ever so much more cosmopolitan about such things than those of us over here in the gauche New World, welcomed Polanski and excused his penchant for little girls because he was an auteur. Good for them.

That Polanski's victim doesn't harbor bad feelings for the man these days is admirable on her part. (And that she sued him and there was an undisclosed settlement might have influenced that.)

That the law should shrug it off because it was long ago and he's old and respected now? And maybe not so much a threat, given his age? Maybe not such a good thing.

I'd doubt that he's gonna do any time, if he even gets extradited, which is also not a sure thing. He's not being pursued for statutory rape, but for jumping ship. Statutes of limitations are different for those two.

Yeah, I saw the documentary. He might have gotten screwed on the deal his lawyers cut with the judge. That wouldn't have made it unjust, would it?

You can't do the time, don't do the crime. (Unless, of course, you have a good lawyer. We all know that OJ, Robert Blake, and R. Kelly were found not guilty ...)