CALL ME SNAKE

According to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers earn $657.5 million per year, on average. That comes out to more than $210,000 PER HOUR. In other words, these people earn more in 15 minutes than I do in an entire year. What do I do in a typical 15-minute stretch? Check my email, have a sip of water, check something on the internet (weather, time, sports, etc.). Go outside, check the mailbox. Come back in, sit down, type a few words, stop for a break. A year, in a sense, is made of these 15-minute stretches, all added together. So you can see why they get what they do and I get what I do.

RISKY BUSINESS is often remembered as the movie that made Tom Cruise a star. While that is true, it's also the movie that made my cousin Mike a star. He played a pivotal role in the famous party scene, where the Tom Cruise was interviewed for college (Princeton, I believe). During that scene my cousin's silhouette--as viewed through a shade--dominates the screen for several seconds. In that period, nobody watching the movie is thinking about Tom Cruise; they're wondering: Who in the heck is that guy behind the shade? How can I get to know this guy better? This is a guy with real presence. This is a guy who could really carry a picture.

Unfortunately, my cousin, to the best of my knowledge, never followed up on that leading role, choosing instead to go out on top. In so doing, he paid homage to the age-old dictum: Leave 'em wanting more.

In a recent review of "Right At Your Door," a Boston Globe critic said the movie "takes a potential and horrific real-world scenario and bit by bit trivializes it into a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode.’" Since when is a comparison to the "Twilight Zone" a putdown? In my opinion, Rod Serling classic has rarely been equalled, let alone surpassed, in contemporary filmdom. I'd be happy to have my work condemned by comparing it to the Twilight Zone.

I'm back from the Midwest, a trip capped off by a 1100-mile drive from Chicago to Boston by way of Vermont and New Hampshire. Along the way, I listened to several books on tape--including recent offerings of the detective genre--and based on what I heard, I can say that Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler need not worry about being supplanted. Robert Parker's latest creation, Sonny Randall, is many steps down from his Spencer oeuvre, which in turn was many steps down from Philip Marlowe. Stuart Kaminsky's Lew Fonesca series, which was recommended to me by a discerning friend, was good for a car drive. But there is a clear formula at play here--as well as a steady cast of characters--that you don't get in Hammet and Chandler books. So, as I've said before, the masters have not yet been surpassed. In my book the closest competition to those classics of a half century ago comes from: Elmore Leonard, Walter Moseley, and Henning Mankell.

On another note, CALL ME SNAKE is hard at work on a book about the mathematics that underlies string theory. As a result, CALL ME SNAKE is fairly busy these days and may not be posting as often or as regularly as he or she would like to. But maybe he'll be posting as often or as regularly as others would care to see. But that, of course, remains to be seen.

I'm off to the heartland to touch the soil and search for my roots. The places I'm going are unspoiled, untouched by the reach of the internet. So CALL ME SNAKE will be taking a week's hiatus. But we'll be back, fully reconstituted (as they say with orange juice) and better than ever.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, a hero rises in our midst. It might be a person who’s never distinguished himself before in any way. A person, on the face of it, wholly lacking in the “right stuff.” A person, in other words, very much like me.

If such a person rises to the occasion--“stepping up to the plate” when circumstances warrant it--he should be recognized for his heroic deeds. And even if his deeds are not especially heroic--in the sense that he did not risk life or limb or otherwise jeopardize his retirement annuities--he should still be recognized for the mere act of acting. If this argument holds any water, it should not be undermined by the fact that the “hero” in question is none other than your humble narrator and sometimes correspondent.

As I’ve already intimated, I’m not your typical hero. Yes, I did save a guy choking on a chicken souvlaki a couple of years back. It was in the lobby of the American Repertory Theatre--my first and only chance to employ the Heimlich Maneuver. And, to my amazement, it worked. The guy spewed the remains of his sandwich on the floor, thanked me for the pelvic adjustment, and promptly resumed eating. I told him to take it slow--doing a choke signal and mock Heimlich gesture as reminders--and then returned to the ticket line. Unfortunately, I’d lost my place in the queue and had to stand patiently at the end, while the people in front of me haggled over seating arrangements for the next 10 seasons, one show at a time.  

Then there was the guy from college I fished out of Pennsylvania’s Youghiogheny River while kayaking on a snowy spring day in the 1970s. He was losing it from hypothermia in the 30-ish degree water, and I ferried him to the shore, walked him to the road, and told him to wait there for the van. Twenty years later I ran into him in Cambridge. He was teaching at MIT at the time and brushed me off dismissively, saying: “Yeah, I remember you.” Maybe I should have left him floating there in the rapids of the mighty Yough. Or sitting on the roadside, waiting for a van called Godot. But what’s done is done. He has tenure now, and where am I?

Which brings us to the latest escapades of a week or so ago. It was 1:20 a.m. on a hot midsummer’s night. I needed to retire soon, knowing that my kids would wake me early the next morning (as they unfailingly did whenever I stayed up late). But before locking the door, I got curious about the smell of smoke outside. My neighbors had cooked on their deck earlier and, to my annoyance, they’d left their grill smoldering for hours. By now the smoke was blanketing our house, and I wondered why they hadn’t shut the darn thing off.

Upon closer inspection I realized it wasn’t the grill that was smoldering. It was their deck. And it wasn’t just smoldering, it was on fire. Literally in flames. I grabbed the phonebook and called them. They didn’t answer, so I called 911 instead.

After giving the EMS operator the address, I raced outside, wearing only my boxer trunks. I then scaled the fence, shouting as loud as I could to wake my neighbors. I turned on their hose full bore, getting drenched by the sprinkler it was attached to. Rather than waste time trying to detach it, I carried the sprinkler to the burning deck and started spraying, yelling for my neighbors until they finally stirred.

A couple of minutes later, the “first responders” arrived en masse. I tried debriefing the first fireman on the scene, but he pushed me aside, saying: “Get out of the way!”

My role in the proceedings was apparently done, and it was time for the professionals to fight over the meager embers I’d left behind. I climbed back over the fence and watched them take an ax to the deck, to make sure no subsurface combustion was still going on. My neighbors probably did not enjoy seeing that, nor were they likely to have enjoyed seeing their beautiful garden trampled by firefighters.

Deep down, I’m sure they’re holding the whole thing against me. For the sad truth is, you shouldn’t go into the hero business expecting a ticker-tape parade. Or even gratitude. Nobody likes owing anybody  anything--whether it’s the 10 bucks you lent them, the roof over their heads, or their lives.

While the images of a blazing deck already seemed surreal, I had no doubts about what I’d done--or about what might have happened had I not followed my nose. “All in a day’s work,” I told myself when I finally crawled into bed--an hour later and several gallons soggier. I did a self-Heimlich for good measure, closed my eyes, and dreamed of Lenny Skutnik.

I was supposed to meet with an MIT physicist earlier today to talk about string theory, which has been my preoccupation for quite some time. He cancelled, leaving me a cryptic message to the effect that he was overextended and "could not get involved in my project." I was disappointed by his note, as well as a bit confused. But we cleared it up in a brief phone conversation. He seemed to think I was trying to get him to write a chapter in the book I'm working on. When I explained that I simply wanted to talk to him, as his research beared closely on a chapter I was writing, he was happy to comply. I could have proceeded without his assistance but am sure the work will profit from conversations with leading scholars like him.