Benjamin Whitmer's Blog, page 40

A great choice

[Thanks to West Denver Copwatch.]

Just when you think our local police couldn't get any more stupid or brutal, they do something so insane you start to wonder if they're padding the precincts' walls these days. This time it's the Lakewood police — Lakewood, for those not from around here, is a suburb immediately adjacent to West Denver — and they . . . get ready for it . . . pepper sprayed an eight-year-old.

From 9News:

When most kids throw a temper tantrum, they get time out. In 8-year-old Aidan's case, he got pepper sprayed.

A Lakewood Police report details the second grader's violent temper tantrum in a classroom at Glennon Heights Elementary on Feb. 22.

According to the report, Aidan "was climbing the cart and spitting at teachers. He also broke wood trim off the walls and was trying to stab teachers with it."

"I wanted to make something sharp if they came out because I was so mad at them," Aidan said. "I was going to try to whack them with it."

The report goes on to say Aidan, "was holding what looked like a sharpened one foot stick and he screamed, 'Get away from me you f—ers.'"

Lakewood Police officers ordered the 8-year-old to "drop the stick." When he refused, they sprayed him with pepper spray twice until he dropped the piece of wood and was handcuffed.

The rest.

Note that the article makes reference to "officers." Meaning, plural. More than one. And they couldn't find any other way to subdue a child having a tantrum than with pepper spray.

I can almost hear what must have been going through their heads. "Jesus Christ, that kid's huge! He's gotta weigh 80 pounds! He could pass for nine! I better take him down before he gives me a splinter with that stick."

Of course, there's this from the Lakewood Police Spokesperson:

"You've got teachers barricading themselves in a room. They are obviously frightened," Davis said. "I think they not only made the right choice, they made a great choice that day to use the pepper spray."

There's nothing you can do with logic like that. Except call 'em for what they are: dumb thugs and cowards.

And, perhaps, be thankful that they incident didn't happen in Denver. Where the police might've just shot him.

Update: Well, it turns out the kid really did weigh about 80 pounds.

One of his lesser known powers

All that talk about ejection ports the other day just reminded me of something I noticed when watching a Captain America: The First Avenger trailer:

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Did you catch it?

Here's a picture (click to increase size):

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Looks like one of Captain America's powers is the ability to anticipate 1911 customizations of dubious value by four decades or so. And it's a shortened Commander model to boot, which wasn't introduced until after the war.

And, yeah, I know that bitching about the historical inaccuracy of a Captain America movie is like sniping at John Wayne Gacy's make-up job, but this is the kind of shit I obsess about.

2011 Spinetingler Awards

Spinetingler Magazine has announced the nominees for the 2011 Spinetingler Awards and Pike is in the running for Best Novel: New Voice. The competition is incredibly steep, but if you want to, you can vote here. PM Press, which was the only press that would even consider publishing a book like Pike, is also up for best Best Mystery/Crime Fiction Press, Publisher or Imprint, and they're worth your consideration too. They deserve the hell out of it.

I'll admit to being a little uncomfortable about being included in these "best of" things. One the one hand, writing ain't a competitive sport. I'm real proud of Pike, but I'd never say it was better or worse than any of the others up there. Just that it was the best book I could write at the time.

On the other hand, I've done it, and I really appreciate the attention it brings to books that otherwise don't get noticed. Brian Lindenmuth of Spinetingler Magazine reads more and better than most anybody I've met, and I've already got a notebook half-full of his recommendations. I'll be adding what's on here to it.

Some of the other books up for awards that you might want to check out include Charlie Stella's Johnny Porno, Lynn Kostoff's Late Rain (and, yeah, I know it's competing with Pike – I'm not sure which one I'll vote for yet), and Jonathan Woods' short story collection, Bad Juju. The rest of them are probably just as good, given who compiled the list, but those are three that I really, really liked from last year.

I also thought the David Thompson Community Leader Award was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I honestly don't know who the hell I could really vote for, though, in that it's full of people whose incredible generosity I've experienced firsthand, including Elizabeth White, Steve Weddle (and here), and Keith Rawson, Cameron Ashley, and Jimmy Callaway.

The only name glaringly omitted from the list is Brian Lindenmuth himself, but I guess I can see why it wasn't included. Still, huge thanks to him for everything he does to support authors. The whole crime fiction community would be a far smaller and cheaper thing without him.

Update: I should have said "One name glaring omitted from the list" because sitting around thinking about it, I keep coming up with other folks. Jedidiah Ayres, Linda Brown, Bobby McCue, Scott Montgomery. It's incredible to me how many great people I've gotten to meet in the last few months.

Five questions

Scott Montgomery recently asked me five questions in anticipation of this month's Hard Word Book Club in Austin. Here are the results.

With its working class misfits with dark pasts fighting darker corruption, Benjamin Whitmer's new mystery Pike is quite possibly the purist definition of modern hard boiled fiction. His title hero has a hard past, mainly of his own doing, and besides that the only things he has are his young friend, amateur boxer Rory, and a personal code.

When the hero's daughter dies from a supposed overdose and he inherits his granddaughter, he suspects something isn't right. He and Rory go to Cincinnati and run up against one dirty cop.

Whitmer files his prose style to a razor sharpness that makes Hammett look flowery. His action scenes are fierce and his terse dialogue can be both funny and chilling. It's no suprise the book, published by independent publisher PM Press' hardboiled imprint Switchblade, has been steadily getting attention from crime fiction fans, booksellers, and writers of crime fiction.

Ben is kind enough to agree to call in to The Hard Word Book Club's discussion of Pike on March 30th. I thought I'd warm him up with some questions via e-mail.

The rest.

Guns, Books, Etc.

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I've got a friend whose looking for his first carry gun, and after watching him shoot mine, I just recommended he buy a Glock 19. But I need to tell him to make sure it's a gen3, for God's sake.
"What kind of guy without a drug or alcohol problem looks this way? Only a writer."
Waiting for Godot: the video game.
Hey, like Madeliene Albright said, "What's the point of having this magnificent military if we never use it?"
Photos of the US soldiers posing with their kills. That I've had T. Roosevelt on the brain lately somehow makes all this . . . unsurprising?
Of course, we kill most of them cleanly.

Choosing your first 1911

I just posted a link to this article about choosing your first 1911 on Facebook, and thought it was worth a repeat here. It's one of the best articles on 1911s around, period, and if you're considering buying one, a great resource.

By the way, the only reason I chose a Springfield GI over a Mil-Spec for my first — and only — 1911 was purely whimsical. I wanted a gun as close to what John Dillinger and "Choc" Floyd carried. My choice is not the kind of thing that anyone else should even consider, unless you just happen to be built of the same kind of whimsy. I've already spent more than I would have if I'd just bought a Springfield with all the bells and whistles, and I've put a ton of time into it.

That said, I'm very, very happy with the result, and am enjoying every step, as well as getting a great hands-on education in the platform that I don't think I could've gotten any other way.

Anyway, the article:

It's not unusual for my opinion to be requested by people who are considering buying a 1911 for the first time. In many ways, the 1911 is emblematic of the gun world. It has it's aficionados, it's true believers, and it's know-it-alls. There are few experts. I often wonder why people ask my opinion, but it happens often enough that it must seem valuable to some. I want to quantify this blog post by stating I am no expert. I have owned a lot of different 1911 style pistols. I have shot a lot of 1911 style pistols. I carry a 1911. Those are my qualifications. I have not owned or shot them all though, and I'm certain there is much I do not know. This, however, is my opinion and advice, if you think it may be valuable, take it. It's your's. If you think it's opinionated crap because I don't fall to the altar of your particular brand of gun, you are welcome to your own opinion.

I do not mean to disparage anyone's pistol of choice here, only relate my experiences. This is not a blog post about what a 1911 is and is not. If you want to read my opinions concerning that, go here. In this blog post, "1911″ and "1911 style pistol" are synonymous.

The problem with choosing a first 1911 is there are so damned many of them. The 1911 is not just a pistol. It is a weapons platform. The original patent expired years ago, and almost every major firearms manufacturer has produced at least one 1911 style pistol, often several. Some manufacturers, at any given time, can deck out an entire gun store in multiple variations of the 1911. Gun stores are unable to carry every possible variation, and they need to sell what they have in stock. The guy behind the counter will give you his opinion. He may be a seasoned shooter of the 1911, or he may be a know-it-all true believer of a particular brand. Unless you know him personally from the range, it's difficult to determine if he knows what he is talking about when your own knowledge base is spotty. He may have vested interests, and that's a bad thing when it's your money being spent.

Realize too, that your first 1911 may not be your last 1911. Some people feel like they got burned when the 1911 they chose did not live up to their expectations. The truth is, they just chose poorly. This blog post is about how to make the right choices for that first 1911, and how to continue to make subsequent wise choices on the next ones.

The rest.

Lint and 1911 ejection ports

I'm always amazed at how much dirt and lint a carry gun can pick up.  This is what mine looks like after about a week of being in the holster:

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Click on the picture to zoom in and really get a good look at how dirty a carry gun can get, especially around the muzzle and the trigger and trigger guard.

All the lint's a good reason to keep up on drawing and dry firing exercises — it knocks it off, if nothing else. But it also reminds me of another choice I made for my carry gun: to keep the standard GI ejection port, instead of going with the lower, scalloped version that's pretty much ubiquitous.

Here's the standard. And for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's the port in the slide through which you can see the barrel. After the gun fires, that's where the empty brass gets kicked out of. (The gun shown here, by the way, is a Springfield GI model, exactly as mine was before my first round of modifications. Most everything else has been internal.)

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Here's the lowered and scalloped version. The gun shown here is Springfield's slightly more upscale 1911, the Mil-Spec.

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Most people will tell you that the lowered and scalloped version has something to do with reliability, but as far as I've read, that's not really the case. It's true that if you're firing hand-loaded, under-powered rounds in competition, then having a little extra space for the brass to dribble out can be helpful — and, as I understand it, that's why folks started having them lowered. The only reason it really became standard is because it signified a custom job, sort of like the swiss-cheese triggers you see around, and people wanted guns that looked custom. As for the scallop, the only reason that's there is to help keep the brass from getting dinged up, to make it easier for reloading.

However, as I've said before, I don't compete and I don't hand-load. And one thing that's fallen by the wayside is the purpose for that original higher port: to keep dirt out of the linking system — something that can turn the gun from a useful self-defense tool into a really awkward club. That photo above is after a week of me carrying in pretty clean conditions. I can only imagine it after a camping trip, or some hiking, on top of normal wear. I tend to get a little dirty here and there, and I imagine my gun will, too.

On a side note, I can't speak for everybody's 1911, but it looks like the extractor's the key for reliability in mine. Since I put in the Ed Brown Hardcore extractor and firing pin stop and tensioned the extractor properly — I keep it at 1 and 1/4 lbs. on the dot, checking it every time I clean the gun — I haven't had any reliability issues. Now, granted, I've only fired a few hundred rounds through it, but thus far, no problems at all.

Also, I do apologize for showing the same gun over and over again, but it's pretty much the only one I deal with right now. There's an old saying that goes something like, "fear the man who has but one gun, because he probably knows how to use it," which I always like to think I'm all about. But I'll be the first to admit that it has more to do with poverty and the price of ammunition than personal purity.

Brownsville girl

I just posted a link to the Dylan song "Brownsville Girl" on Facebook, and then, for some reason, Googled it. It's been my favorite Dylan song for years, from its opening description of the Gregory Peck film, The Gunfighter, to the sardonic back-up singers that rip on Dylan throughout. I know it's not exactly from the part of his catalog that most people dig, but I remember roaring across Kansas on my first trip out here to the Rockies, everything I owned in the back seat and no prospects at all, listening to nothing else for pretty much the whole trip.

Well, we're drivin' this car and the sun is comin' up over the Rockies

Now I know she ain't you but she's here and she's got that dark rhythm in her soul

But I'm too over the edge and I ain't in the mood anymore to remember the times

when I was your only man

And she don't want to remind me. She knows this car would go out of control

There are very few songs that can get me right out a rut and back writing like this one. Or at least out of the house and out of my own head, walking. And, it turns out that there's probably a reason I like it so much. The song was co-written with Sam Shephard, who I've also got a pretty deep fondness for.

It also looks like there might be a movie coming. The screenplay's already been written by Jay Cocks, who wrote The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York for Martin Scorcese — two of Scorcese's works that, again, most dismiss, but I really like — and Brad Pitt's been offered the role of Henry Porter.

Anyway, here's the song on YouTube, with the screen left black most of the time, which is nice:

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Update: Also, an unflattering, and to my mind, wrong-headed clip from a documentary that gives some of the story of the song:

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Update II: Steve Weddle of Do Some Damage, Needle Magazine, and all kinds of other things, has a fantastic post about the song at Jedidiah Ayre's hardboiled wonderland:

This isn't a song about an old movie or an old love. This isn't a song about what it means to grow old, to live your life looking back, wondering when you're done. This isn't a song about regret, about being chased, about the "dark rhythm" in a woman's soul. This is a song about all of that, a song about a dying gunfighter, especially when it takes him a lifetime to die.

The rest.

Yeah, that's it exactly.

Quote

Another, this one from Robert Bolaño, as pilfered from The Mumpsimus.

The truth is, I don't believe all that much in writing. Starting with my own. Being a writer is pleasant — no, pleasant isn't the word — it's an activity that has its share of amusing moments, but I know of other things that are even more amusing, amusing in the same way that literature is for me. Holding up banks, for example. Or directing movies. Or being a gigolo. Or being a child again and playing on a more or less apocalyptic soccer team. Unfortunately, the child grows up, the bank robber is killed, the director runs out of money, the gigolo gets sick and then there's no other choice but to write.

I'm finally reading 2666, and, yeah, it's fucking great.

Quote

This'll probably only be of interest to those of you who sit up nights obsessing about Theodore Roosevelt — and I'm fully aware there aren't that many of us  – but this, from Sarah Watts' Rough Rider in the White House, blew me the fuck away:

The chapters that follow demonstrate how Roosevelt's desire for toughening the nation's body against degeneration, his flight from effeminacy, his need to inflict pain on himself and others, and his rational use of men's capacity for "primitive" violence combined to cultivate an emotionally shared, exclusionary community of white, heterosexual males. Few men of Roosevelt's time understood the deep emotional sources of these urges, for the president and for his era. Owen Wister did, though, when he remarked that Roosevelt's stile of manhood "inevitably" led to the Great War, whose peculiar horror lay in "having our myths about blood and fire and mutilation and blindness come true."

I can't track down the Owen Wister quote, but I gotta have it. The only thing I have on the shelves by him is The Virginian, which is itself a pretty good fictionalization of those myths he talks about. I'm guessing it's from an essay Wister wrote called "Roosevelt and the War: A Chapter of Memories." Unfortunately I don't have a subscription to Harper's, goddamnit, though I might have to get one just for this.

Update: Somebody was kind enough to email me a .pdf of the full Harper's article. And it turns out that it doesn't have the quote. Instead, it's in a book Wister wrote called Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship, on page 339. Which, y'know, I would have known immediately had I actually checked the footnote instead of just heading straight into Google. Anyway, book ordered from the local library. Soon, the full thing.