Lunch With The Falcon

For some reason I had it in my head that Tadich Grill was the famous place Sam Spade eats in The Maltese Falcon, but in fact it’s John’s Grill on Ellis St. Established in 1906, John’s Grill has the feel of Old San Francisco in the modern day. Since I know everything, I know exactly what people visiting San Francisco think of as Old San Francisco, and John’s Grill is it. Though the table was a bit cramped, the food and service were very good. I recommend it if you find yourself in the City.

I found myself there this afternoon after a strange and fortuitous coincidence determined a connection with a former head of the homicide detail in the SFPD--just what this writer needed! A two and a half hour talk provided one of the most interesting discussions in recent memory and reminded me of just how little the public knows about what really goes on inside organizations that affect us as profoundly as the police. Lieutenant X answered many of the questions I had for him that related to my story, as well as volunteering some fascinating tales of his experiences during a long career inside the department.

The political situation as it changed over the decades was interesting, but not as much, to me at least, as the little details about the job that could be provided only by someone who has experienced that life. As any random flipping past TV channels or movie guides will make plain, people love stories about the police. But this afternoon’s interview made plain that in fiction we rarely, if ever, hear the real deal.

What we usually get are contrived situations set in a world that only those on the inside really know. The demands of storytelling say that only details germane to the story itself be included. Even if Lt. X were to write a crime novel, his editor would likely require that he take out most of the great details he provided included if they didn’t further the story. A non-fiction book by such a person would be fascinating, if the author were prepared to move to Tibet or somewhere equally remote upon publication.

So I’m left tonight with way more information than I can possible make work in a novel that isn’t a police procedural. But I’m much more confident that I can make the scenes that involve the police and their work sound more authentic.

A larger problem, however, is how much I should rework my novel to fit facts and how many ‘errors’ to leave in to further the story. This is an issue with setting a novel in a real city. People who know how things work there (such as how a suspect injured before being taken into custody is processed after his wounds are treated, for example) will find mistakes that grate on their nerves, even if the story benefits from those un-factual elements. So for each detail I now know to be wrong, I must decide if correcting it is better for the story than leaving a known mistake in place.

Or course, I could just change the setting of the story to a fictional city. That would solve A LOT of problems. But Hammett didn’t do that, and decades later people go to eat where the Maltese Falcon resides. Hmmm.

Surprise!

Sometimes you just don't know what you're looking at.

A friend is in Paris for the month and graciously offered to let a struggling writer use her house as an escape from all things familial. Wow, what a difference it's making for my productivity. I've been spending the evenings there, hunkered over my laptop, warmed by my space heater, flipping through pages full of red ink and bad writing, trying to make some sense of the monster.

I've been moving along at such a cracking pace, in fact, that I'm rewriting the final showdown tonight. I hope to do it in one evening, leaving me the difficult wrap up to execute before I print the monster and go through the entire process again. Woo-hoo!!

But I was thinking of the above picture the other day when I was cruising along from one scene to the next and my main character completely surprised me. It turns out that at one point in his career on the SFPD, he fully intended to murder someone. This is my hero, remember. Yes, it was a very bad man for whom he lay in wait, ready to violate most of his high principles. But until I got to that scene, I had no idea it was this experience that has made him who he is in the rest of the story and explained why he has made certain choices. Several times in the writing classes and seminars I've attended I'v heard some very successful writer say the same thing happened to them, but this is the first time I have been so surprised by one of my own characters. You go along, thinking you're in control (sort of) and that you're making things happen according to your well-laid plans of plotting and character. Suddenly, wham! What you thought was clear is suddenly not, or vice versa.

One of, if not the theme of this novel, is the question of what decent people are supposed to do about evil. At what point does someone accept personal responsibility to deal with wrong doing if no one else is, or if that someone is the only one who can deal with it? Now I know why my character feels as he does about this question. And soon (I hope), so will you, lucky readers!

The photo is of my dog, Charlie, sticking his head out the truck window, btw.

Red and Green Lights Don’t Always Mean Merry Christmas

I’m trying to think of just one of my Xbox Live friends who hasn’t had at least one 360 succumb to the Red Ring of Death. Each name I think of had at least one console die, another had FIVE RRoD replacements, another SIX! As in, your first console goes RRoD, so you contact Microsoft, who sends you a coffin, into which you place your deceased console to return to them, at which point you wait for anywhere from a couple of weeks, to several weeks, to way too many weeks, until a replacement arrives. You use that for a short time and it goes RRoD, so you contact Microsoft, who sends you a coffin… TIMES SIX.

My original 360 console finally gave up the ghost after two years of being a survivor, and in my closest circle of just over 20 XBL friends, mine was the last man standing. Everyone else has already sent at least one console back. Did I mention the guy on his sixth? I did? Okay.

Microsoft won’t say what exactly causes the RRoD, though in the media this situation is generally believed to be related to a flawed design of the heat dispersion for the machine’s CPU. That Microsoft acknowledged a problem and extended its warranty coverage to three years is a good thing. The time it takes to complete the repair, and the number of times some customers have to go through the same failure-related process is bad, almost as bad as that fact that the console has such a flaw in it to begin with. MS is currently offering as compensation for down time caused by the RRoD defect one month of Live, a $4 value! But this is really just a reimbursement for the month of XBL you lose when your console is away, rather than a ‘we’re sorry’ gesture.

Of course they aren’t saying how many people have had their 360s go RRoD, but based on our group’s experience, it is a lot. I’m amazed that no one has filed a class action suit after two years of this. MS has clearly released a flawed product in their race to beat Sony’s PS3 to market and gain market share. The strategy seems to have worked, although it’s a bit hard to say if it isn’t the PS3’s higher price and relatively weak game selection that is helping Microsoft against Sony. (The Nintendo Wii, of course, is crushing everyone.)

It’s Xbox 360 customers who are paying the price for beating Sony to market. But Microsoft is in an unusual position that might protect them from a class action suit. When my 360 died the other day, I wondered if I should do anything beyond beginning the repair process that so many of my friends have endured. Would I even join a class action suit against Microsoft if one were announced?

I’m not sure I would, because like many of my friends, I suspect, I wouldn’t see that in my best interest. Sure, I might get a small check, my tiny piece of a settlement. But would I be better off in the long run if Microsoft took the hit of such a suit? I doubt it.

The reason is simple. My 360 is much more than a video game console. It’s a way I keep in touch and interact with some people who have become very close friends. They live around the world, and getting together to play video games is the main way I interact with them. I know their names, I know phone numbers and addresses and names of family members, I’ve met some face to face and some have even come to stay at my house. Just a moment ago I noticed that a friend in England was online, which meant that he’d just returned from a long trip. I logged into Live and invited him to chat, then talked to him for twenty minutes. Sure, I could’ve called him on the phone, for .xx cents per minute, if I’d known he was awake at 1:30 in the morning and I didn’t mind waking his wife and kids up. But seeing him on Live made it easy and cheap to catch up.

Xbox Live was what brought us all together in the first place, and I don’t want to lose that connection. I want Live to flourish, and I want my frickin’ 360 to work so that I can continue to meet up with my XBL friends for Friday night fun or talk to someone across the globe when I see him online. To me, the games are fun, but the social element of my XBL experience goes way beyond that. I think many others are in the same situation, which is why it hurts so much when we see those red lights.

Now I’m just hoping the repair will be quick and permanent. I don’t want to be writing about my second, third fourth, five, sixth, or dare I say it, seventh RRoD repair.

Strappy Torture

I have an attitude toward exercise that I suspect is common among many former athletes. Bike racing was so hard that having endured it for several years, some part of my brain still thinks I’m 20 years old and as tough as nails. To me, working out properly involves free weights in the winter and five hours a day on the bike the rest of the year. Hills, intervals, sprints: pain, pain and more pain.

Back then I made up for my lack of brains with fitness and muscle, instead of fat, as I do today. But I still look at exercise gimmicks with great skepticism. No device is ever going to make working out easy, because it’s the pain that gives the benefit. An effective work out device just makes the pain arrive faster, not help you avoid it altogether.

So when my wife informed me that she’d purchased a training device from her personal trainer, I rolled my eyes in spite of how much benefit she’s been getting from her lunchtime exercise. The lack of brains was kicking in again.

She told me about the device she calls Strappy Torture and I listened remotely in that state of mind I instinctively slip into whenever anyone starts talking about exercise equipment, thinking that the latest Thigh Master has arrived on the scene and that we now owned one. But something she said snapped me out of that mood. I could’ve sworn I’d heard the words “Navy SEAL.”

Like most guys I would buy just about anything a Navy SEAL wanted to sell me, especially if it related directly to being a SEAL and having that degree of toughness and competence. But even if a SEAL had a recipe for peanut butter cookies, I’d assume that was probably the best peanut butter cookie in the world, just because a SEAL was promoting it. Anyone who survives BUDS is a contender for toughest human ever, as far as I’m concerned. Even at the peak of my mental and physical toughness, I never would’ve made it through BUDS.

And sure enough, the TRX Trainer was invented by a Navy SEAL, is used by the teams to stay fit when deployed, and due more to the inventiveness of the exercises created to be done with it than with the device itself, the TRX is aptly called Strappy Torture. It brings the pain right away! This is not a Suzanne Sommers special.




It’s a simple device, amazingly overpriced for the materials and manufacturing involved, but not for the benefit it delivers. We used to say that bike racing was harder than running because a runner who wants to will eventually get tired enough that he just falls over. But on a bike, when you get to that point of collapse, you can coast for a bit to recover, and then go a little more. When you’re doing pull ups, you reach a point where you can’t do another and have to stop because you can’t suddenly weigh 50% less and then get the remaining use out of your muscles. But with the TRX, changes to resistance are easily changed just by adjusting the angle of movement. So you can torture every last ounce of strength out of yourself. It’s great!

After making plain that I no longer resemble the fit 20-year old mentioned above (which took about 30 seconds with Strappy Torture), I left the device hanging from the guest room door. When my 3-year old daughter got home from pre-school, she saw the TRX and was very curious to check it out. She hung from the handles for a moment, twisted around, having a ball, until she slipped on the rug and smacked her head against the door frame. Strappy Torture shows no mercy, even to toddlers!

But this morning while getting ready for school, she said, “Daddy, can I do Strappy Torture?” That’s my girl. A bump on the head only leaves her wanting more. She may be a bike racer yet.

Or a Navy SEAL.