Pet-food ads make me sore. Or why Michael Crichton never visited a genetics lab.

Author Michael Crichton was once asked if he visited genetic research labs before writing Jurassic Park. His reply? “No. Why would I? They don’t know how to make a dinosaur either.” That’s the fun of fiction. You can take something ridiculous and jazz it up with a little pseudo-science to create a great story. But in the real world of pet nutrition, science is better.

I recently saw a dog-food commercial that boldly stated that Golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers may look similar, but have very different nutritional requirements. Wow! I went through four years of vet school and seven years of practice without learning this. Until recently, my wife edited the premier veterinary text book in the country but also somehow missed that point while poring over hundreds of pages on nutrition.

News flash for pet-food advertisers. Not only do Labs and Goldens look similar, they are both retrievers from the sporting-dog group. Not only do they share similar nutritional requirement with each other, they share them with other members of the group, including spaniels and setters. Or for that matter, other large dogs like Dobermans and Shepherds. In fact, their nutritional needs are not very far off those of miniature poodles, with the obvious exception of kibble size and caloric intake. Now it is true that nutritional needs vary with age, pregnancy status, and illness. But to say that two similar, healthy retrievers are somehow internally alien, is for want of a better term, dog wash.

The other thing I’ve noticed lately is an appeal to politically correct perceptions of pet nutrition. I’ve seen ads touting a dog food that contains no genetically modified ingredients. Yet, there is no evidence that GMOs are at all harmful. In fact, genetic modification is not even new. It has been going on for centuries under the auspices of selective plant breeding. All genetic engineering does is shorten and simplify the process, so that only the desired traits (eg, disease/drought resistance, extra protein, etc.) are added to the altered plant.

Another type of ad appeals to the cave man in us, touting that dogs are wolves that should only eat meat. Ugh! While this might have some viewers beating their chests in a Tarzan yell, it is again not true. Dogs are not wolves. They are pet animals with a 10,000-year history of domestication. And even in the wild, wolves consume a fair amount of vegetation, like that yucky stuff in the rumen of a deer. Decades of research have shown that animal by-products and vegetable sources have benefits as cost-effective forms of nutrition. That’s something that name-brand dog foods like Purina, Iams, and Science Diet know well. In fact, all-meat diets can actually cause nutrient imbalances, especially in minerals like calcium and phosphorous.

So, whenever you see one of these dog-food ads, remember to take them with a grain of genetically modified salt. Then give your dog his Science Diet with a clear conscious.

With that one word, and that look, we know exactly what kind of men these are.

Wait until Dark will be on TCM this weekend. A very good film, with excellent acting. Audrey Hepburn plays a very plausible blind woman, being very plausibly terrified. But it is the character portrayals by the likes of Alan Arkin, Jack Weston, and Richard Crenna that really float my boat. The writing is also nice and crisp, and provides perhaps the best example of ‘show don’t tell’ in the trade.

Early in the movie, Alan Arkin’s creepy evil is revealed. But we don’t know about the characters played by Crenna and Weston. Both actors are likable, so we suspect maybe they might have some moral fiber. Maybe anti-heros. But we don’t know. Instead of expending yards and yards of film telling us about their character, the writer removes all doubt in just three short lines and one look. I paraphrase.

Crenna asks, “Do we have to hurt anybody?”

Arkin responds, “Do you care?”

Crenna answers, “No,” with a look on his face that says it really doesn’t matter to him at all.

With that one word, and that look, we know exactly what kind of men these are.

I've ordered more Elmore paperbacks. Twill be a sad day indeed when I run through his bill of fare.

Haven’t mused my grey matter lately. Things come up and I was traveling. The latter consisted of four airplane flights and time on a cruise ship sipping wine on a sunlit balcony (it was tough, but somebody had to do it). Needless to say, I had lots of time for reading. In this case, my good pal Elmore Leonard.

I first read Rylan, the last of this series and one of the last books Dutch ever wrote. The book was a bit unusual in that there was no standard plot line. Rather, there were three successive plots, loosely connected to make a novel. None of the three novellas had the standard structure of a thriller or heist book. But the characters lived and breathed, and I loved it.

Next up was Out of Sight. Pardon my lack of originality, but it was out of sight! The villains were most interesting and in some cases (eg, Jack Foley) quite likable. The protagonist (Karen Sisco) was fun and much more textured than your typical pulp heroine. I liked the book so much, that I ordered the movie off Amazon as soon as I got home.

But here’s the rub. My two books were completed by the time the boat docked, and I hadn’t brought my kindle. So I was stuck getting an airplane read at a jet-way snack counter that had a total of 10-15 paperback novels lined up next to the trail mix. So I purchased a David Baldacci (The Last Mile) because I had read one of his books previously, and it had been an ok thriller. The problem this time was that I had just read Elmore Leonard. I know that Baldacci is a very popular writer, but compared to Dutch, his characters were wooden and his pacing turgid. And what’s with the exposition? Describing everything in excruciating detail, from a breakfast order to the pattern on some guy’s tie. Does that advance the plot? Do I need to know? Can’t I let my imagination fill it in? Do I care?

Long story short, I stopped Last Mile on page 80, and switched to Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham. More on that in another blog. And of course, I’ve ordered more Elmore paper backs. Twill be a sad day when I run through his bill of fare.

An old-world feel and a clash of cultures.

I recently watched The Blue Max, a mid-sixties film about WWI fighter pilots in Germany. Some critics panned this initially, but the history buff in me has always loved it. I loved the attention to detail, with real German fighters, including Albatross DVs, and Fokker DVII and DR1 (triplane) models. The British fighters were limited to SE5s, which must have been all they could muster in 1966. The aerial battle scenes are striking. But more than that, there is an old-world feel to the story, which is essentially a clash of cultures.

Young Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) is a line grunt who transfers to the air corps (Luftstreitkräfte). When he enters service at the start of the spring 1918 offensive, he’s forced into a squadron of wealthy elites, where he fits like the proverbial square peg in their round holes. For much of the rest of the movie, he is trying to prove himself in their eyes, which is ultimately his undoing. His bitterness and personal drive turn this basically decent person into an arrogant cutthroat, as he is consumed with his goal of achieving the coveted Pour le Merite medal (Blue Max) that comes with 20 kills.

The acting is very good, with Brits like James Mason and Jeremy Kemp adding their excellent accents to many German roles. Kemp is a standout, as is Karl Michael Vogler as Hauptman Heidemann, the squadron commander. Vogler’s portrayal neatly combines decency, hauture, and autocratic authority, making these characteristics blend into an interesting 3-D character. Ursula Andress (Katie) is only passable, but she is there for her looks, not her acting.

The late George Peppard is the only real disappointment. Although his acting is fair/good, there is no German “feel” about him. And he has no accent, making his portrayal stick out. This may have been intentional, intending to show that Bruno was different, or it may have been his inability to do a credible German accent. I suspect the latter, given George did the same thing in Operation Crossbow (also with Jeremy Kemp). As I watched the movie, I thought how wonderful it would have been to have Max Schell or even Hardy Kruger as Stachel. Both were the right age, and formidable actors of German birth.

I’ve thought about basing a novel on either WWI or WWII, perhaps a murder mystery or thriller. It would be fun doing the research and immersing myself in the dialogue and mores that went with such times. Of course, most readers no longer have an understanding of this history, so they might not appreciate it. But, it’s something to think about.

 

It just gets better and better!

In these musings, I often wax poetical about Stephen King, my favorite author and a master of the horror genre. But today I want to talk about another writer I have grown to love over the past decade.

I first discovered Elmore Leonard watching a repeat of one of my favorite western movies. With the opening credits of Valdez is Coming, I discovered it was based on a Leonard novel of the same name. Soon, I had a copy on my Kindle, followed by Hombre, another great dark-western movie. This in turn was followed by Escape from Five Shadows, Last Stand at Saber River, The Law at Randado, and all the other Leonard westerns, including a complete collection of his western stories. But then I asked myself, now what?

I grew up in Detroit, as did EL. But until a few years ago had never read one of his gritty urban novels. But I enjoyed the movie Get Shorty, and since I had no more westerns to read, I gobbled up that one before diving into his other crime fiction. That’s one of the fun things about discovering a prolific author. The anticipation of digging into his body of work, knowing that it will be a feast that’ll take a long while to reach dessert. I always found that a bit of a problem with Tolkien. He baked a delicious four-layer cake, but one can only chomp through the ring trilogy and Hobbit so many times before cavities set in.

My most recent Leonard appetizer was Riding the Rap, the second of the Rylan Givens novels. Rylan is a US Marshall from the coal mines of Kentucky. Like all Leonard’s characters, he’s richly crafted, multi-layered, and a little quirky. I’m looking forward to tackling another quirky character, a judge called Maximum Bob. He’s sitting in my to-read pile courtesy of an Amazon partner selling him for $0.01 plus shipping. But for now, I’m nibbling another collection of short fiction, Fire in the Hole, which features Rylan again. It just keeps getting better and better.

I resolve to be less derivative in 2017!

For me, perhaps for all writers, one of the most difficult aspects of the craft is coming up with fresh, original ideas. Not really original themes, as one can argue that almost every theme that can be written has been written. That is to say, all tragic love stories derive from Romeo and Juliet to some extent. Originality comes into play more in how an author expands on a common theme, or twists that theme in a new direction. As I usually do, I’ll refer back to The King for an example.

Stephen King is a master at layering original ideas, one atop another. Originality oozes from the plot, the backstory, the characters, the climax. Let’s take as an example, The Green Mile.

The theme of GM is fairly standard sci-fi/horror fare. A man with extra sensory powers such as mind reading and healing by touch. This has been covered by everything from Star Trek, to Twilight Zone. King himself deals with it earlier, in The Dead Zone. Yet, in the GM, he sets the theme in a prison death house. One in the depression, no less. The bearer of these gifts is a mentally retarded prisoner and a black man in the Deep South, making him the ultimate underdog. For all intents and purposes, John Coffey is akin to an abused dog, something sure to arouse sympathy in almost anyone. All that is pretty original, but King doesn’t stop there.

The supporting cast is rich as well, weaving in and out of each other’s lives in original ways to tell this tale of wonder, evil, love, and retribution. Paul Hedgecomb is the ultimate protagonist, fundamentally sympathetic. Percy and Wild Bill are the ultimate villains, both detestable yet interesting. Belinda and Hal Moore provide an interesting cancer sidebar. Even the other death-row denizens and guards are varied and richly crafted. As if all this wasn’t enough, into the plot weaves Mr. Jingles, a performing mouse that creates reader empathy while cutting across the lives of multiple characters. Now that is originality.

And the GM is just one of King’s novels.

We writer's have a reputation for heavy drinking.

As a group, we writers have a reputation as heavy drinkers. Names like Poe, Hemingway, Capote, Wilde, and Charles Bukowski were well known to tip the bottle more than a little. With good reason. Booze opens the mind to all kinds of possibilities, and removes the inhibitions that tend to constrain the imagination and stifle creativity. This truism is so strong that it has spawned sayings such as “Write when you’re drunk, edit when you’re sober.”

Stephen King certainly understands this stereotype. Almost every writer in his books is either a drinker or a recovering alcoholic. In one of my favorite short stories, 1408, the protagonist/victim, Mike Enslin is asked if he drinks. His response is essentially, “Of course, I said I’m a writer.”

In his book, On Writing, King notes that his penchant for writing about alcoholics started before he himself confronted his drinking problem, possibly foreshadowing his own self-denial. He admits to having consumed, in his drinking prime, a case of lite-beer tallboys per day. That’s 24, 16-ounce beers with an ABV of about 4%. Doing the math, this comes to more than 15 ounces of pure alcohol per day. Let’s put that in perspective.

Moderate alcohol consumption, the type that is said to be beneficial and even life prolonging, is usually described as 1-2 drinks per day for men. Said drinks are defined as either 12-ounce (4.5% ABV) beers, 5-ounce glasses of wine, or 1.5-ounce (40% ABV) glasses of liquor. Now, as an epidemiologist, I know that daily drinkers tend to underestimate their alcohol consumption, and that they rarely adjust their survey responses for subtleties such as a 3-ounce barroom pour or beers and liquors with higher alcohol content. That is to say, your average drinker probably counts his 20-ounce IPA draft as one beer, even though it’s nearly twice a 12-oz bottle and runs at an ABV of 7%. So, let’s be generous and ascribe healthy consumption as actually 3-4 drinks (roughly 2 oz pure alcohol) per day. This means that King used to imbibe at least 7-8x more alcohol than is healthy.

Most of us can barely imagine this level of intake, even if one assumes King had a hollow leg to store all that lite beer. But his body became accustomed to the load, just as his brain became addicted to the mind expansion of it. His biggest fear of stopping was not that he couldn’t do it, but that he might lose the creative spark, thereby losing his writing gift.

In the final analysis, King decided that love was more important than booze; love of life, love of family. This idea was brought home by his wife, who told him to kill himself if he wanted, but not to insist that the rest of them watch him do it. With that bit of angel-feathers intervention, she saved his life. Saved it to write more great books that we could all enjoy.

Thank you, Tabitha King.