Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 26

Hope Through Stories. Freedom from Fear.

We can reenact the scene and argue what happened. Michael Brown was shot as he reached into the car, or he was 135 feet away. He grabbed the gun, or he had his hands up. Whichever you believe, the prosecutor’s choice not to request indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown, and to allow him to speak to the grand jury, and to show all evidence instead of those pointing to probable cause to indict, are all disturbing, if not infuriating. We have a court system to decide these things, and gaming it to get the result you want only confirms that the system only works for the powerful, affluent, and connected.

A young man is dead, who didn’t have to be, for many reasons. He was “no angel” as the so-called liberal media decided to say in one of his obituaries, but neither was Officer Wilson–who was fired when the Jennings Missouri police department was *disbanded* for corruption and racial profiling, who had previous fired at an unarmed black woman and child who refused to pull over in a traffic stop–was hired again, and went on patrol alone, with no Taser, because “he did not feel comfortable” with one. When a white suburbanite sees a police officer, he sees safety, someone on his side. In neighborhoods like Ferguson, where arrests for misdemeanors and fines drive the local budget, you see the tax man with a gun coming to empty your pockets.

We’ve always been a violent country enamored of violent solutions, but in the last 20 years or so, the blinders feel like they’ve been belted on more tightly. He hit a cop; did he have to be shot, while fleeing? Does a car have to be chased until it kills a pedestrian? Crime rates are at a historical low, and fear is at a hysterical high. We are segregated, rich from poor, black from white, right from left, and have difficulty seeing why the other side is “crazy” because they don’t think the way we do. We’ve been carved into demographics and gerrymandered to death, to where there are more than “Two Americas” as one pol said, but more than we can count.

I don’t expect to solve our problems with a blog post. You don’t have to agree with me. My father was a cop, I’ve known good and bad. They have a tough job, even if it isn’t as dangerous as we like to think it is, thanks to television; it’s not even in the top 10 dangerous jobs. 100 officers died from work-related injury in 2013, out of 900,000 officers. So while it is a position I respect, when loggers and farmers die on the job more often than you do, the argument that you have to shoot unarmed suspects to be safe doesn’t hold a lot of water. Officers have batons, Tasers, pepper spray, at their disposal. More less-than-lethal tools than ever before. I want police and citizens to be safe. With all the money we dump into policing, you’d think we could protect our officers by having them patrol in pairs. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? And patrol on foot, hire more officers if need be. Know the people you’re protecting. Our town has a “Coffee with a Cop” session, where you can meet the officers, and they can meet you. There are neighborhood organizations, the police should have to go to them regularly, to know what the concerns are, and to be seen as a face, a person, not a threat.

Or maybe we can pass a law that every police chief has to watch THE WIRE, I dunno.

One thing we should all be able to agree on is that the kids affected by this deserve better. The schools in Ferguson are closed, but the library is open. Many kids are going there to read books and play. Joelle Charbonneau, author of The Testing Trilogy, has a page up to solicit donations of signed books from authors, called Hope Through Stories. You can start there. Ashley Cassandra Ford has a great idea too, she’s asking for cash donations to the Ferguson Public Library, which has a Paypal donation page. I sent them a few bucks, and a few books, too. Not a signed copy of my book, but three books by Octavia Butler, one of my favorite authors, who uses science fiction to depict the difficulty of different cultures living together. Something we can all benefit from reading.

We’ll be seeing this image a lot in the coming months. Some will see it as affirmation that “those people” act like “they do,” forgetting that majority white cities have rioted over sports, pumpkins, or a coach who tolerated a child rapist in his midst getting fired recently. It’s easy to hate, they want us to hate. Angry and fearful, we are predictable and easy to control. Don’t let your fear rule you. You’re a whole different person when you’re scared, to quote Warren Zevon. And it’s not pretty. No, it ain’t that pretty at all.

Tagged: Ashley Ford, Ferguson, Joelle Charbonneau, Police State

Watch out, John Taylor… there’s a new pork roll in town

For a century, pork roll in New Jersey has gone by one name, despite competitors: John Taylor.

Our beloved “Taylor Ham,” or pork roll, we can argue about what it’s actually called, but let’s agree that our unofficial state Mystery Meat is delicious. The spice recipe is a well-guarded secret, and because it is a type of sausage, we know not to look too closely as to how it is made. So I’ve drastically cut down my consumption, as processed food products, especially those with nitrites, have become a health concern.

Well now there’s a grass-fed, pasture raised and antibiotic-free contender in the ring, from Vincenza meats. Available in New Jersey at Whole Foods, in the deli, I first learned of them in a Saturday Star-Ledger article, and immediately walked up Bloomfield Avenue to my local Whole Paycheck. I had to scour the store; it’s not packaged, it is a deli item. I ordered mine a little thin because I like mine crispy, but forgot this is “deli thin” so normal thicker slices might have been better to mimic the packaged pork roll slices.

They cook up nicely in a little butter. They have enough fat to not need butter, but why not? I didn’t slice the edges to keep them flat, because I thought they’d fry more like salami, but they still puffed up like the classic. You can see the spices once they start cooking.I let the edges get crisp and then flipped them, and because I don’t have rolls, I simply fried up some tomatoes and eggs to go with.

The taste? Like good pork roll. Nothing unique or different, which was the idea- to make it taste like classic Jersey pork roll. It has some tang to it, thanks to the fermentation, and the article states they put a little port wine in the mix, but it doesn’t taste fancified. So, if you’ve been looking for a pork roll made from humanely raised pigs, Vincenza pork roll will satisfy your conscience. At $14.99 a pound (versus $7.49 for John Taylor pork roll) it’s twice the price, for about the same taste. I haven’t been able to verify the ingredients, if he adds nitrates, whether from celery juice or not.

Next time I’ll do a side by side test with kaiser rolls and Land O’ Lakes American cheese.

Tagged: New Jersey, Taylor Ham

Proud to announce: Dark City Lights

Proud to announce that my story “The Big Snip” will appear in Dark City Lights, a NYC themed anthology edited by Lawrence Block, and published by Three Rooms Press. From the cover, I’ll be joining Erin Mitchell, Jerrold Mundis, SJ Rozan, Elaine Kagan, Jim Fusilli, Jonathan Santlofer, Robert Silverberg, Ed Park, Warren Moore, Parnell Hall, David Levien, Jill D. Block, Jane Dentinger, Peter Carlaftes, Tom Callahan, Eve Kagan, Bill Bernico, Kat Georges, Annette Meyers, Brian Koppelman and Peter Hochstein.

Good company. It comes out in March 2015, but you can pre-order it from Amazon.

Tagged: Lawrence Block, New York City

ginko inspiration

the butterflies carpeted the Earth with their corpses, and left trembling and gravid those of us who’d felt their kiss

Yes, Virginia, There Really Were Female Private Eyes In Hard-Boiled Stories

Thomas Pluck:

Great reading for anyone who writes or read crime fiction, or is simply interested in what real private investigators actually do, Writing PIs has a fine retort to that recent NY Times review of Inherent Vice masquerading as a think piece declaring the death of detective fiction. Check it out.

Originally posted on Guns, Gams & Gumshoes:

One of the Guns, Gams and Gumshoes, Colleen, just finished writing an article about female private eyes in literature, so it was surprising to read the November 14, 2014 article “The Death of the Private Eye” by John Semley in the New York Times and see references to only men being shamuses in hardboiled fiction.

There Were Lady Dicks, Too

The hardboiled private dicks in pulp fiction’s hard-hitting, heart-pumping stories included numerous female characters as the main protagonists, although you’d never know it from Semley’s text:

“The hard-boiled gumshoes were men…”

“If the private dick has all but disappeared, something of his DNA is woven into the biology of the authority-bucking hackers…”

“This is the real essence of the P.I….despite his venality…”

Miss Marple: An Amateur Sleuth

Semley does, however, give a passing nod to Miss Marple (“the old-school gumshoe feels as irrelevant as Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple felt a generation before”)…

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Veteran’s Day

Seen last night in the Haight district of San Francisco.

Let us never create more veterans than absolutely necessary.

Let us take the best care of very veteran we create.

Tagged: San Francisco, Veteran's Day

Noir at the Bar: Bouchercon 2014

Join us!

Tagged: Bouchercon, Noir, Noir at the Bar

Pluckery at Bouchercon 2014

I’ll be at Bouchercon 2014: Murder at the Beach next week, at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Long Beach, California.

I have an Author Focus panel on 11/15,  Saturday morning at 9:00AM in Harbor B, where I’ll be reading new fiction, and signing copies of Blade of Dishonor and Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT. There will also be donuts. Or cookies, or whatever baked goods I can wrangle in Long Beach. So come by for second breakfast, and we’ll talk martial arts, crime fiction, and whatever you like. The focus panels are only 20 minutes long, so it’ll be quick. I will also arm wrestle all comers.

Thursday (11/13)  evening in Regency C they are holding the Bouchercon flavor of Noir at the Bar, hosted by Eric Beetner. There will be a lot of authors at this one, reading a sixty second hook from their novel, and I’ll be one of them.

The rest of the weekend I’ll be wandering around with friends, relaxing in the pool, and schmoozing at the bar. I’m easily recognizable as the guy as wide as he is tall with the beard with a beer in his hand, so please say hello if you want to chat.

I don’t bite, unless you are made of bacon.

 

Tagged: Bouchercon

Stories of Gratefulness – a new book by Jody Lynn Reicher

The most reassuring and simultaneously daunting secret you’ll learn is that incredibly successful people have just as many doubts as those who are just starting.

Stephen King, in a recent interview, talks about how he still struggles with it. Brave heroes will tell you that yes, they were afraid. They just acted anyway. So it should be no surprise that one of my most accomplished friends, Jody Lynn Reicher, struggled with low self-esteem as a child. As a young woman growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, she was told that her dream of becoming a Marine was impossible. Then she was told that her foot problems would stop her from running. but that didn’t stop her from becoming an ultramarathon runner, and holding running events for charity. And in her 40’s,  people told her to forget her dream of becoming a pro MMA fighter… and you know what I’m gonna say. I’ll let the photo speak for itself:

Jody taught me not to quit. She helped our trainer Phil Dunlap show me what I could accomplish. I’m a slow learner. I need to know how things work, and it takes time for my muscle memory to kick in. I never thought I’d hold my own on the grappling mats, but by sticking with it, and failing over and over again–“Failing better” as Samuel Beckett calls it–I achieved the goals I set out for myself. The same with writing, work, hiking, and any other goal.

Now Jody didn’t learn this on her own, either. And she’s written a book about it, and the power of gratefulness. This book shows her struggles and introduces us to the people who encouraged her, and who believed in her when she didn’t believe in herself. I was honored when she asked me to write the Foreword to this book, and my foreword, about how “Gratitude is Attitude” is available in:

Reaching God’s Perfection: Stories of Gratefulness, by Jody Lynn Reicher.

Available now for Kindle, cover by Suzanne Dell’Orto, ebook design by JW Manus. Trade paperback will be coming soon. It will also be available on iBooks and Nook shortly.

Jody is an inspiration, so if you enjoy inspirational memoirs this is a great read, introducing you to someone with unbelievable endurance and an contagious, positive spirit.

Tagged: Jody Lynn Reicher, Mixed Martial Arts

Five Terminator 5 Ideas That Probably Don’t Suck

One of the my favorite movies, that has influenced me the most, is THE TERMINATOR, made in 1982 by James Cameron. With Arnold Schwarzenegger as the bad guy, Linda Hamilton as a feisty waitress upon whom humanity’s fate relies, and Michael Biehn as the apocalyptic warrior sent to protect her from an unstoppable killing machine. I give the film a 3800 word exploration here.

T2 has its moments, but it is superfluous. I loved it when it first came out, now I enjoy it. T3 was a silly money grab that undoes everything T2 built, and the fourth was just awful. So when I heard that they are making a new one, I didn’t care. The name is dopey, Terminator: Genisys, a play on Genesis and sys, which sounds “computery.” Then I heard Arnold would be in it, and I was a little interested. Then I read the plot and I wasn’t anymore:

From Wikipedia, so it could be BS:

According to reports, Genisys proposes that Sarah was orphaned at age 9 by a Terminator, and was since brought up by another Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger, programmed to protect her. Sarah would then have been trained by this Terminator to face her destiny, which she adamantly tries to reject.

That sounds eminently terrible. I prefer the closed paradoxes of the first two films, which aren’t perfect, but make more sense than this. And it’s completely unnecessary. Here are five Terminator 5 plots that don’t ruin the first two movies, and most likely would not suck:

1. SkyNet sent T800s into the future to rebuild it 100 years after we win.

You can have an all-new cast because everyone is dead. And if you want old Arnold as a Terminator, it’s quite simple. He appears in a nuclear wasteland. Naked, big, muscly CG Arnold. He starts walking. We cut to the new world, shiny and peaceful and without war. We meet our characters. We cut back to Arnold killing his way through the wasteland where mutants and outsiders live. He gets into a city with a computer network and “uploads” the virus SkyNet made to allow it to take over and rebuild itself.

2. SkyNet sends a T-800 to kill Sarah Connor’s grandfather on in… World War Terminator.

Another all-new cast. This is a pulp idea, it’s silly, but a lot of fun. A spy Terminator infiltrates German ranks? Or he’s a leatherneck on Iwo Jima and his secret is revealed when his squad is captured and a Japanese officer tries to behead him. Connor is on the battlefield, somewhere. And he never tells his granddaughter about the killing machine, because who would believe it?

3. SkyNet wasn’t destroyed and strikes at a fragile humanity as we rebuild.

This is easiest, laziest one. But Mad Max Terminator sounds better than “Sarah had a Terminator buddy and somehow forgot. And the first movie didn’t happen.”

4. Fallout Terminator.

They end T3 with humanity in bunkers. Start from there and forget McG’s horrible T4 ever happened. Start with Kyle Reese as a soldier for the resistance and end with him going back in time. This is what we wanted from T3 anyway.

5. Reboot The Terminator.

I know, I know. Hear me out. Make Arnold be Reese. He’s old, experienced. He volunteers because he is old and wounded and make Sarah be the daughter he never knew. We never met her parents, remember? Play with her age, make her a bit younger, and it works. Let the Terminator be played by a young monster, Dave Bautista, or Jason Momoa.

Tagged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, remakes, The Terminator