FORGET ABOUT IT - AL ZYMER'S BLOG (FORMERLY THE KNOWLEDGEABLE BLOGGER)

FORGET ABOUT IT: INSTALLMENT 37

2011-06-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

Chapter 76 -- Mischa Goss
The minute I read the story in the New York Times, I knew it had something to with Manny La Mancha, and with all of us.
"An Ardent Friend Forever; Then Came the Theft Charges," said the headline.

"When his drinking buddy and fellow hockey fan Jeffrey Shaw was arrested in February in rural Idaho and exposed as Enrico Ponzo, a fugitive mobster from Boston, Mr. Verceles brought a strikingly sunny outlook to the strange story.
He soon moved into Mr. Ponzo’s house in Marsing and said he planned to look after it until his friend, regardless of the ruse he later admitted his life had been, was eventually free. One day, Mr. Verceles said, they would fish together again for Idaho trout.
“What he did in the past,” Mr. Verceles said in an interview at the time, “it ain’t my right to know.”
Now prosecutors say Mr. Verceles, 39, was more curious than he made himself out to be. He and two other men have been arrested and accused of using a jackhammer to break through the foundation of Mr. Ponzo’s house, then using a blowtorch to open a steel safe beneath the floor and stealing more than $100,000 in cash, as well as gold and other valuables.
“It’s way crazy,” said Bodie Clapier, a rancher who grazes his cows next door to the house. “It’s just way crazy.”
The three men, arrested April 15, are charged with conspiracy, burglary and grand theft.
Many people have asked how Mr. Verceles, a mechanic, might have known to look beneath the foundation. Did Mr. Ponzo tip him off? Did someone else? Douglas D. Emery, the Owyhee County prosecuting lawyer who filed the charges, noted that Mr. Ponzo was believed to have overseen the house’s construction more than a decade ago.
“It’s conceivable that whoever put the floor in would have known something,” and that information was somehow passed to Mr. Verceles, said Mr. Emery, who emphasized that he did not know, because federal agents had handled the investigation.
Mr. Ponzo, who had been a fugitive for 17 years, has been extradited to Massachusetts to face charges that include attempted murder. Mr. Clapier said that Mr. Ponzo called him from jail on the day before Easter, and that he sounded surprised and “a little bitter” toward Mr. Verceles.
Mr. Clapier said it was now up to him to feed Otto, Mr. Ponzo’s schnauzer.
“I water my cattle right there,” he said, “so it’s easy.”

CHAPTER 77: Shane Dickey and Sepp Blatter
Why does everyone turn against me? Is there no one left I can trust? First that limp dick Lebby decides to screw me by going to the CIA doctor who hates me and to Park's assistant, Dee Nada, a tough dyke who hates me even more. Now comes that lunatic Russian gangster Misha Goss, whose role in this whole thing has always baffled me. What side is he on?
It's time to turn to someone who makes even me look like a hero -- Sepp Blatter. A real mechanic. He'll know what to do and who to kill, as long as he gets paid enough...

Burning Books

2011-06-09T16:23:00.000-07:00

What began as a book rescue mission has become a literary nightmare for a Pike Lake, Sask., woman, Charles Hamilton of CBC reports.

Shaunna Raycraft took over a collection of 350,000 books when a neighbour threatened to burn them after her collector husband passed away.

But now Raycraft and her own husband don't know what to do with all the books and are forced to contemplate burning some books themselves.

Raycraft said she was amazed when she first set eyes on the massive collection kept by their neighbours on a nearby acreage. "There was a house floor-to-ceiling with books," said Raycraft. "He was the collector; she had tried to get someone to appraise the books but they wouldn't come out [to the rural setting]."

"She didn't know how to deal with them so she started to burn them," Raycraft explained.

But the Raycrafts are book lovers and couldn't stand the sight of them being destroyed. Some of the books appear to be old and quite rare. "There was a first edition copy of Black Beauty on the top pile and the bottom was all charred off [from being burned] but the top was just immaculate," she said.

So Raycraft and her husband plunged in and took over the collection, bringing a small house onto their property to accommodate all the books. They piled box after box of books into the house.

"We're talking 30 tonnes of books. The weight of the books is pulling the house apart."

The books range from old textbooks to volumes of Shakespeare to 'How-To' manuals.

Raycraft tried selling the books on eBay, and to collectors and used book stores, but no one wants the task of sorting through them.

So now the Raycrafts have come to the end of the road with all the books. "We are kind of at a standstill," said Raycraft. "I work at two jobs. My husband is a full-time student. We have three kids and no time. And no money. And so we're at the point now where were looking at having to burn some of the books ourselves."

Raycraft said the books need to be in a climate-controlled setting. And they need help and expertise sorting through them. Or just help disposing of them.

"My goal is to get a sea container brought to the house. Most of the boxes are still unopened and unsorted. When you say to somebody,'I have 350,000 books,' it just goes over their head — they have no concept. It's very hard to take a box in and say, 'Here, sort through this and see what you want.'"

Raycraft said she has no idea how much the entire collection is worth but is looking for suggestions as to what to do with it.

Assault with a what?

2011-06-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

posted Wednesday, June 8th

Man With Dead Weasel Accused of Assault
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 8, 2011 at 3:26 PM ET
HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) — Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.
The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.
The attacker was apparently looking for his girlfriend and had gone to her former boyfriend's apartment Monday where the victim was a guest.
KXRO reports he left the carcass behind.
Police later found the 33-year-old Hoquiam man arguing with his girlfriend at another location and arrested him after a fight.
He said he had found the marten dead near Hoquiam, but police don't know why he carried it with him.
A marten is a member of the weasel family.

Don Winslow's 'Savages' gets film and prequel

2011-06-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

From Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy comes this very interesting item about a writer I've raved about:

Mystery writer Don Winslow is getting an unexpected bonus out of Oliver Stone's adaptation of his book "Savages," about pot growers in Southern California getting in too deep.

First, the film begins shooting next month with the Oscar-winning director at the helm. With Stone comes a star-heavy cast, including John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Emile Hirsch, Salma Hayek, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson and Benicio Del Toro.

So what's the bonus? Winslow is now writing a prequel to "Savages," an idea that came out of working with Stone and screenplay co-author Shane Salerno, Deadline Hollywood reports. Not coincidentally, the new prequel will be published by Simon & Schuster around the time of the film's release in 2012.

"Savages," which juxtaposes high-end California living with the dangers of the drug trade, includes a powerful drug cartel, a beautiful girl's kidnapping and a dangerous criminal scheme. Our reviewer called it a "marvelous, adrenaline-juiced roller coaster of a novel" and it includes lines such as: "You can spend fifty thousand years practicing meditation or you can buy a gun."

2011-06-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

POSTED MONDAY, JUNE 6TH

(To catch up, all the archives are now on their own site -- in order of appearance.)

CHAPTER 74: Dana Dancer, Youda Best, Al Inc.

I have a confession to make, and I just got Youda on her cellphone so I could explain it to all you guys at the same time.

I've been working both sides of the road here -- first for Manny La Mancha and then for Drew Lebby and his boss, Mr. Heartbag. When I pulled Al out of that pool, I knew that Manny had engineered it. But why? I had to find out.

Al seemed like a good guy. So when he and Quentin called to recruit me to their team, I said yes. Of course I told Lebby and his boss about it -- those guys are dangerous if you screw with them.

Not that Manny was any kind of a pussy, either. But I'd known him for a long time, and after he got popped I missed him. A classy crook…

Any road, I just can't go on with this deception. I'm calling you all to tell you that I'm back on your side. If anything happens to me, you'll know who did it...

CHAPTER 75: Drew Lebby, Dr. Elvin Park, Dee Nada

So we gathered in a booth at the Watergate Hotel's coffee shop -- a beautiful choice on their part, I must admit.

"Okay, you asked for this meeting," Dr. Park said. "What's up?"

"What's up is that I think my boss, Heartbag himself, has designs on my future," I replied.

"And what would you like us to do about it?" Nada asked.

"I think it's about time for me to get some protection, as the actress said to the Bishop. Are you still handing out those Stay Out of Jail passes?"

"That depends on what you have to trade," the good doctor said. "Right now, the only thing we don't know is what both La Mancha and Al saw that made them so dangerous. You have any thoughts on that?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," I answered. "Let me make a couple of calls and see what I can find out from a contact I've recruited."

Nada started to say something, but shut up after a quick look from Dr. Park...

Happy Birthday, Norma Jean

2011-06-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

From the always crunchy Carolyn Kellogg, writer of the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog, comes this gorgeous item:

Norma Jean Mortenson was born on this day in 1926 right here in Los Angeles; she would endure a difficult childhood and become screen star Marilyn Monroe.

Although she often played blond bimbos, Monroe was quite a reader. There’s a photograph of Monroe reading “Ulysses” by James Joyce in what looks like down time during a playground photo shoot. Of course, since it’s Marilyn, she’s wearing a bathing suit. Such is the price of pinup-dom.

When she died in 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s library included “The Fall” by Albert Camus; a book of lectures by J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atom bomb; stories by Chekhov; Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”; Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio”; two books by Theodore Dreiser; three books by Bertrand Russell; lots of plays; “Moses and Monotheism” by Sigmund Freud; and “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert. Those are all part of Marilyn Monroe’s library as catalogued by volunteers on the Web site LibraryThing.

In 2010, Farrar, Straus and Giroux released a book of Monroe’s own writings, “Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe.” In our review, Richard Schickel noted that the book showed how much Monroe “became a devoted reader of serious literature.”

Happy 85th birthday, Marilyn Monroe.

Greetings, American Liz

2011-06-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

From W Magazine, this nice gift -- the trailer for David Fincher's upcoming (December) film version of Steig Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

"We gave you an exclusive preview of Rooney Mara’s complete Salander transformation...and now we’ve got the official trailer," says the magazine. "It’s signature Fincher from the looks of it, and while there isn’t a lick of dialogue (just the brilliant Trent Reznor and Karen O. cover of Led Zeppelin’s "Immigrant Song"), it’s every bit as haunting as we could have hoped for."

Thanks, W.. Links served up at other sites now seem to have been removed by Sony Pictures, so you're the only game in town...