Shameless Plug Number 2. This weekend, the city of Albuquerque is holding the biggest events of the tricentennial celebration in observance of Founder's Day. The Founder's Day parade is on Saturday morning in Old Town, followed by a birthday party of sorts in Tiguex Park. On Sunday, there will be a massive "entrada" recreating the Spanish arriving in Albuquerque. There will be numerous people in period costume, speeches, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, the Duke and Duchess of Alburquerque (Spain) and even cattle. There will be folk dancing on the plaza. But the big deal, for me at least, will be a book signing Ii am having at my shop, Treasure House Books and Gifts. On Sunday from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM, local author and retired newspaper reporter Howard Bryan will sign his new book Albuquerque Remembered. Howard is one of the nicest men in town, and we are honored to have him particpating in this event. Please come to Old Town this weekend, and stop in and see Howard. You'll be glad you did!

My Boozy Grandma Does Good. You might remember a post of a couple years back wherein a ripped the singer of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden for her intoxicated performance at a Summerfest concert. You also may remember the dissing she got after she was arrested for shoplifting a Harry Potter DVD from a Taos Smith's store. Yes, I've been very hard on the old girl, but I'm here today to say she's done good. She has just released a CD of cowgirl songs written by her mother Liz Anderson. It's aptly titled Cowgirl and it is the best Western album I've heard in a long time. We now sell it at the Treasure House.

Income Tax Time. Instead of calling it that, they should just call it AAAAAAUUGH!. I finally got a chance to find out what was up with my accountant, and it turns out she is not lazy at all but dealing with a major health challenge she didn't want anyone to know about. An extension has been filed and all is right with the world. I can't help but get nervous about tax time, however. It seems it has been ingrained into my consciousness that if I don't do my taxes just right the Feds will come busting down my door and haul me off to jail. They also make it hard enough to do my taxes that I worry that one little mistake is just going to piss them off and they'll swoop in and take my business away from me or something. Ben Stein had a wonderful commentary on CBS's Sunday Morning show about how overcomplicated taxes are, yet necessary, and that we should just use a Value Added Tax to pay our share. Not a bad idea.

Take the Lead is a surprisingly good little movie. We went to see it simply because it was about teaching, so I figured at least Susan would enjoy it, and it was at a convenient time for us to go. For those of you who don't know, it it is inspired by the true story of Pierre Dulaine, a ballroom dancing teacher who volunteers his time to teach a bunch of misfit inner city kids to dance. Okay, yes, it has nearly every inner city school movie cliche in the book. There are elements cribbed from Stand and Deliver, Mad Hot Ballroom, and even West Side Story or Romeo and Juliette for that matter. But even with a plot that throws in these films and the kitchen sink, it still manages to seem fresh, thanks to clever direction, editing, good acting, well-fleshed out characters, and most of all a great natural sense of humor. Not really a great movie, but a damned entertaining one. Oh, I forgot to mention, there is some incredbile hot dancing in the film!

Delinquent Schoolgirl Detectives. That's what Sukeban Deka means in English. No it isn't a porn movie. This is a Japanese kid's TV series from the mid-eighties which features cute schoolgirls fighting crime with lethal steel yo-yos. Yes, yo-yos. While the series hasn't been seen in the USA, there were three movies released after the TV show which made their way onto subtitled bootleg video about ten years ago. I bought one of these bootlegs and fell inlove with the series. It has a very high "goofy-quotient" and that is it's main appeal. No nudity, no blood, no gore, no sex, just lots of action and silliness. When have you even seen a 15-year-old girl take down an armed helicopter with a yo-yo? You'll see that in Sukeban Deka: The Movie just released on legit, beautifully subtitled DVD from Media Blasters. My friend Mike is a huge fan of this movie, and I sent him a copy for his birthday. He called me twice to tell me how glad he was to get this DVD. The other two movies are due out soon.

Chaos Reigns Supreme. All kinds of wacky stuff is going down right now, and I'm feeling a bit out of control. Susan got up in the middle of the night very sick to her stomach and she is taking the day off work. It might have been something she caught from one of the kids in her classroom, or it may just be stress, who knows?
I am battling with a lazy accountant who hasn't yet sent me my taxes. I'm starting to get a bit nervous about it because taxes are due next Monday.
Last Saturday's book signing went pretty well despite no cooperation from the daily papers. It benifited from thee fact that both Don and Judy like to chat about their books, and that they each had a number of titles from which to choose. Almost all the business was from random tourists walking in the shop and asking "So what do you write?"
My next attempt at a booksigning is on April 23rd with Howard Bryan, author of Albuquerque Remembered. This signing is in conjunction with the Albuquerque Tricentennial celebration and the San Felipe de Neri Church birthday bash. However, I'm fighting with the publicity guy from San Felipe, who has sent out notices to everyone saying the signing is from 3:30 to 6 PM, and he's the guy who told me to schedule it from 3 to 6 in the first place! AAAAUUGH!

I have been working on a list of books, movies, and TV shows to recommend, but seems I just can't get around to finishing a coherent post. So here is a list, with links to things you might want to check out or avoid.
Books:
Oyster Blues by Michael McClelland. Funny caper novel.
The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes.
Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Writing by David Morrell.
Movies:
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Uplifting documentary.
Layer Cake. Brilliant British gangster flick. Star Daniel Craig is more like Steve McQueen than James Bond.
Hitchhiikers Guide to the Galaxy. Total botch-up. Awful. Read the books or see the original TV series.
Mindhunters. Interesting premise turns into preposterous stalk and slash. Christian Slater and Val Kilmer are hardly even in it.
Be Here to Love Me. Great documentary on folk singer Townes Van Zandt.
TV Shows:
Big Love. HBO. Best new series on TV, totally bizarre, funny, addictive and a great cast.
My Name is Earl. NBC. Funniest, most original new network comedy. Sweet and rude at the same time.
Doctor Who. Sci-Fi. Winning new version of classic show. Very enjoyable. Best Doctor since Tom Baker.
Iron Chef America. Food Network. Dopey, funny and exciting in a weird way. My biggest guilty pleasure. And what the hell is Mark Dacascos doing as the Chairman here? I also enjoy Emeril Live, which is like what one would get if CUrly Howard had a cooking show.
Distraction. Comedy Central. Finally a game show that tortures people who want their 15 minutes of fame. Hilarious and painful to watch all at once.
The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. I think Steve Colbert is much funnier than John Stewart.
Arrested Development. We are watching these on DVD. The greatest unwatched show of all time. Brilliant.
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Catching up on reruns of seasons three and four we missed. Best comedy on TV now.
Who's Wedding is it Anyway? Style. We are learning what not to do in our wedding from this reality show. Man people can be nuts when wedding time rolls around.
Music:
Lately I've been getting into Electronica a bit, especially those things with a downtempo, world beat sort of of vibe.
Probably the best stuff I've come across has been on eMusic, and is from the Thievery Corporation, and many of the artists on a label called Six Degrees.
Oh, I've been feeling nostalgic for the late 1970s and early 1980s music scene, and have discovered some hard to find stuff from one of my favorite bands of all time, The Damned:
Plan 9, Channel 7
Alone Again Or
Smash It Up
New Rose
Grimly Fiendish

I'll post more fun videos as I find them.

Shameless Self-Promotion. Seems I'm reduced to this because the local media refuse to do it for me.
Tomorrow, Saturday, April 8th, from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm, I'm having a very special book signing at my shop, Treasure House Books and Gifts, 2012 South Plaza in Old Town, Albuquerque, 87104. ABQ Press founders and local mystery writers Judith Van Gieson and Don Bullis will be on sign their books. Judy is the author of Neil Hamel and Claire Reynier mysteries, and her latest release is a reprinting of the Neil Hamel mystery The Wolf Path. Don Bullis is a former newspaper editor and retired New Mexico lawman. His two books are Bloodville and Bull's Eye. Judy and Don are great folks and were nice enough to pick my store to do the signing, so please come on down.

The bigget issue here is that I notified all the print media outlets in town, on time, within their deadlines, and only the wonderful Weekly Alibi was nice enough to print the notice. Our city's tow "newspapers of record" apparently didn't have the f----ing space to devote to it. Also apparently there will be an article about ABQ Press and Judy and Don, but in the damn Sunday Journal the day after the signing. I sent the notice in within plenty of time for their "book editor" David Steinberg to put it in last Sunday's "Book Notes" column, but did he? Hell no. This is the third time I've sent notice to the Journal about an event, only to have Steinberg ignore it. Apparently Page One and Bookworks must give him under the table "inducements" to their events posted, that's all I can figure. And the Tribune, don't get me started. They don't even have a book column, so you have to hope they'll put it under the "Spoken Word" listing in the Friday "La Vida" section. I can't spend big money on advertising these events, because I don't have it. These folks are the only decent venues there are, yet it is a real crapshoot to get a notice published. However, every time I've sent a notice to the Alibi, they are nice enough to publish it. These folks seem to be much more open to actually serving the public than the "big" papers are. I love the Alibi! The other papers, not so much. I guess ad revenue really is the moitivation for publication, not public service.

Bottom line: it is very frustrating trying to get the word out about these things, only to have it ignored.

Dumb Ideas In Hollywood. Back in the 1980s, producer and famous cokehead Donald Simpson invented the "high concept" movie pitch. Simpson, due to his coke habit, was an impatient man who required all movie ideas be pitched to him in one sentence of ten words or less. This unfortunately became the norm in Hollywood and has spread to the publishing industry as well. With the fast pace of our lives, cell phones, cable, iPods, portable game systems and the like, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. We are all becoming Don Simpsons, largely minus the cocaine. If we are going to spend our money on entertainment, we need to know exactly what we are getting into, and quickly.
Up to now, movie titles have been fairly creative. They give you a hint of what the film is about, but usually they serve to tease instead of giving away the whole plot. That has changed with the new movie Snakes on a Plane. The title prety much tells us everything we need to know: there will be snakes, and they will be on a plane. Cool! I wanna see that! Not a clever title like Slither Airlines, Asp Airways, Venom Skies, no. Absolutely no imagination went into naming this film, but again, it clearly tells us what we need to know and it will probably make a bundle of money.

Yes, the movie sounds pretty stupid already, granted, but the high concept fun doesn't stop there. The Don Simpson style pitch for the movie is this: Crimelord releases snakes on an airplane to kill witness. There, I did it in 9 words!
The movie's website does it in 80 words:

Snakes on a Plane stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent who is escorting an eye witness on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles when a crimelord sets in motion the release of hundreds of deadly snakes on the commercial airplane in order to eliminate the witness before he can testify against him. The FBI agent must protect his witness while banding together with the pilot, frightened crew and passengers in a desperate attempt to survive.

Take a look at the trailer to have your brain fried even more.

This film illustrates several things about modern Hollywood:
1) Ideas are so sparse these days, screenwriters are writing by the column. Column one is a person, animal or object, and column two is a location or setting.
2) It takes three screenwriters to do this.
3) Samuel L. Jackson will star in anything.
4) Don't worry about how absurd the mixture of column items becomes. We can CGI anything these days.
5) To make the movie timely, add a terrorist or a crimelord.

Let me illustrate:
Column One:
Penguins
Martians
Buffallo
Debutants
Hillbillies
Hyenas

Column Two:
Nursing Home
Bus
Hovercraft
Deserted Island
Submarine
Shopping Mall

There are many great combinations possible here, and remeber, we are not going for the obvious here, like Debutants in a Shopping Mall but high concept, something that will get people's immediate attention.
Some possiblities:

Hyenas on a Submarine. Terrorists hide a crate of mutant killer hyenas in the cargo hold of an experimental nuclear submarine and former FBI agent turned Navy cook Samuel L. Jackson must stop them.

Penguins in a Shopping Mall. Terrorists set free radioactive mutant penguins in a shopping Mall and former FBI agent turned security guard Samuel L. Jackson must stop them, with the help of his new partner, Larry the Cable Guy.

Debutantes on a Deserted Island. Samuel L. Jackson stars as a retired FBI agent sailing solo in the Carribean who retrieves a a distress signal from a yacht full of debutantes run around on a deserted island. One of the debs is a witness to a terrorist act, and the terrorists traced them to the island. Sam must save them before time runs out

Martians on a Bus. An evil group of Martians land in Washington D.C.intent overtaking the US government. Disguised as normal humans they board a tour bus, secretly wire it with explosives intending to crash it into the White House. Samuel Jackson plays Marcus, a former FBI agent turned bus driver must stop them.

Hillbillies on a Hovercraft. Larry the Cable Guy stars as a poor hillbilly who wins a family vaction to Europe. The fun begins when their hovercraft ride from England to France is interrupted by terrorist attempting to kidnap a French Diplomat onboard. Larry teams with vacationing FBI agent Samuel L. Jackson to stop them.

Perhaps even those ideas are a little too brainy for Hollywood.
If Snakes on a Plane is a success, I envison a whole slew of imitators, like back in the days of Jaws when You had all those nature gone amuck movies, like Grizzly, Day of the Animals, Empire of the Ants, Swarm, and Tentacles.
But this time, nature goes amuck on location. Every film follows the same basic plot: terrorists have unleashed a large quantity of these creatures in a place or on some mode of transportation, and Samuel Jackson must stop them. Using the lazy writer's idea crutch of alliteration, which just makes the titles sound catchier, here is an ABC guide to the potential offerings:

Anteaters in an Auditorium.
Bats in a Bakery.
Cheetahs in a Church.
Dogs in a Dormatory.
Eels in an Elementary School.
Ferrets in a Factory.
Goats on a Golfcourse.
Horses in a Hospital.
Iguanas in an Isolation Chamber.
Jaguars in a Jockey Club.
Kangaroos in a Kindergarden.
Llamas in a Lavitory.
Moose in a Museum.
Newts in a Nudist Camp.
Otters in an Observatory.
Possums in a Penitentiary.
Quails in a Quanstit Hut.
Roosters in a Rowboat.
Steers in a Strip Club.
Tigers on a Tugboat
Urials in a Yurt.
Vultures in a Vomitorium.
Walruses on a Wagon.
Yaks on a Yacht.
Zebras on a Zamboni.
To sweeten the pot, Larry the Cable Guy is Jackson's sidekick or partner in each film, and Liam Neeson is the terrorist with a suave English accent.
Hey, there are are some ideas here that New Line or the Weinstein Brothers might actually greenlight. So just in case any of you smart guy screenwriters out there are contemplating stealing any of these, let it be known they are all copyright 2006 by John Hoffsis. I'll sue your ass, and get Samuel L. Jackson to kick it.

Aloha Albuquerque.
Susan and I returned late last Friday from a much needed vaction on the big island of Hawaii. Susan's daughter Heather lives near Hilo, and we stayed with Heather and her boyfriend Matt. I have been to Honolulu four times and Maui once, but this was a new experience, and for my money, my first exposure to the "real" Hawaii. Hilo is on the wetter east side of the island, while the west side is drier and much more touristy. We joked to Heather that Hilo seemed like another planet or some kind of alternate universe, where things seem mostly the same as "normal reality" but some aspects are just slightly "off."

Before we arrived, Heather warned us we might not get much sleep, thanks to evening noise created by hundreds of Coqui frogs. When I first heard them, I was Matt's car on the way from the airport. I thought the sound was his fan belt squeaking. They are tiny little critters, but make a very loud croaking sound. After about an hour of hearing them, we were pretty amused, not annoyed, and actually they ended up lulling us to sleep. Most people find them very annoying, however Matt has to sleep with ear plugs to drown out the sound. We never actually saw a Coqui frog, because they mostly live up in the trees, but you can't help hearing them!

It rained most of the day on Monday, our first full day, but we did not let that stop us from having a great time. We started the day at a warm pond near the ocean. This is much like a hot spring, but it mixed water from the ocean with spring water heated by volcanic activity in a lava rock pond. Very relaxing. From there, it was off to Volcano National Park, and wonderful, steep walk down to the caldera of the Kilauea volcano. It began raining heavily during the walk, but that didn't stop us, and thankfuly we were partially shielded by the rain forest. I walked out onto the black hardened surface of the caldera and over to a number of large steam vents. This was almost like walking on the surface of Mars.

On the second day, we wanted to go to an nice beach, so Heather took us to Hapuna on the west side of the island. It is beautiful, but it is also the biggest tourist beach. Lots of white folk and no locals. The water was beautiful, and I actually waded out into it and stayed in for about a half-hour. However, I also stayed in the sun too long, and despite slathering myself with sunblock, I managed to get a pretty bad sunburn on my legs, feet and stomach. Ouch! From there we drove to Kailua-Kona. The drive is very unusual. The lanscape becomes mostly black lava rock and brush, with an interesting human touch: people have "graffittied" the landscape by spelling out their names with white shell or rock against the black lava. Very bizarre, but not as ugly as the spray-painted tagging in Albuquerque. We ended up in Kona, and walked around the many tourist shops before heading to dinner. Frankly, I was feeling like I was back in Old Town, because tourist areas are the same no matter where you go; what crap is for sale is the only difference. We stopped at at place called Huggo's on the Rocks for dinner. It is next door to the regular Huggo's and is more of a bar with much cheaper food. I saw this place featured on a recent Rachael Ray Food Network show, and remebered her raving about the food. I had a seafood platter consisting of two kinds of sashimi, shrimp and an island favorite called Poke. It was yummy. We also stayed to see some Hawaiian dances performed by some very talented kids. There were a number of people acting like vultures, ciricling our table waiting for us to leave, so we stayed longer just to piss them off. The drive back to Hilo was over two hours, and we collapsed on arrival.

Day three was a bit more sedate, as we stuck closer to the Hilo area. First, we started with a visit to the Hilo Farmer's Market, which was unbelievable. It was basically broken up into three sections; food and flowers, clothing, and gifts. The food part was amazing, featuring many exotic fruits and vegitables, and just about anything you'd need to make a great stir-fry. Some of the stuff we picked up included Lychee nuts, coconut bread and fresh orchids. I purchased my first authentic Hawaiian bento lunch and was chastized by Heather for devouring it before noon. We visited three different waterfalls, including the amazing Akaka Falls. We also stopped by a fascinating volcanic cave and a double falls know as "Boiling Pots." The highlight of the day was a visit to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, which truly lived up to its claim of being one of the most beautiful areas in all Hawaii. Susan kept mentioning the succession of signs proclaiming "Warning: Trail is steep and slippery when wet" but we forged onward. Every form of tropical plant imaginable is on display here in a gorgeous setting that leads out onto Onomea Bay. If you are ever in the area, this is a must-see! We capped the day off with a visit to a near-by bar and grill where our hosts and ourselves imbibed liberally in Hawaiian spirits. We had hoped to hear Matt play his guitar and sing during open-mic night, but it was the wrong night, but we didconvince him to play a short concert at home for us. Great job, even though he didn't think so.

Day four started with a trip to a nearby black sand beach known for the many sea turtles in the area. It was windy and overcast, but that didn't stop Heather from donning her snorkiling gear ans swimming with the turtles. We must have stayed a couple hours, enjoying the turtle spotting. From there, ot was back to the volcano, so Susan could pick up a video for her classroom. This time we went to an observation point where we could see the caldera and the main crater. After that it was off to Border's so I could pick up some of the great Hawaiian reggae or Jawaiian music I heard on a cool local radio station. I picked up two interesting CDs from Ryan, which is typical of the more bubblegum side ofthe genre, while Mixjah is more hardcore reggae. Great stuff, and it is very uplifting, positive, relaxing music.

Friday was a long travel day. Our plane from Honolulu to Phoenix was delayed two hours and we didn't get into Albuquerque until after 11 pm. The less said about US Airways and their sardine can, bare bones flights, the better. We were exhausted when we got home, but we will remember this terrific vacation forever.