Book Review: "Thank You For Smoking," by Christopher Buckley (1994)

"Thank You For Smoking," by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley’s 1994 satirical novel “Thank You For Smoking” is still a trenchant and wickedly funny book, even 20 years after it was first published. “Thank You For Smoking” tells the story of Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobby spokesperson, or “smokesman,” as he is often dubbed. Naylor works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, which pumps out highly dubious studies that purport to show no link between smoking and cancer. Naylor delights in the challenge of arguing the seemingly inarguable, and some of the funniest scenes in the book are when Buckley paints Naylor in a corner, like having him confronted with a young cancer patient on “Oprah,” and seeing Naylor wriggle out of the jam. Naylor would be even more at home in 2014 rather than 1994, as the proliferation of cable news and the Internet has often proved that dubious arguments can sound plausible when they come from attractive visages. 

Buckley has a lot of fun with the lunch meetings that Naylor has with his friends Polly and Bobby Jay, who are spokespeople for the liquor and firearms industries. They call themselves the “Mod Squad,” with mod standing for “merchants of death.” Like Nick, Polly and Bobby Jay are somewhat defensive about their jobs, so they take great comfort in each other, often arguing about who has the worst job.

 “Thank You For Smoking” follows Nick as he battles not only smoking opponents, but also his boss BR, who isn’t very fond of Nick, and his comely co-worker Jeannette, who is clearly angling to take Nick’s job. However, Nick has someone on his side because “The Captain,” an old man who is one of the most powerful men in the tobacco industry, thinks very highly of him. Nick becomes the Captain’s golden boy, and gets sent out to Hollywood to convince movie executives to feature more smoking in their films. An assistant to a big-shot producer tells Nick:

“We’ve got this CIA movie deal project in the works, it’s going to be very big. The idea is the CIA thinks Franklin Roosevelt is too cozy with Stalin, so they kill him so Truman will get in and nuke the Japanese. Fabulous Film.”

“Sounds great. But I don’t think the CIA existed back in 1945.”

“It didn’t?”

“I think it started in ’47.”

“It’s a little late to change the whole premise.” 

The movie producer eventually decides that the best way to promote cigarettes in a movie is to set it in the future. But Nick hesitates, asking, “But don’t you explode if you light up in a spaceship? All that oxygen?”

“It’s the twenty-sixth century. They’ve thought that through. That can be fixed with one line of script.”

But things start to fall apart for Nick when he is kidnapped and nearly killed as his kidnappers cover his body with nicotine patches, intending to give Nick a lethal dose of nicotine. However, Nick survives the attack. “Dr. Williams said that, ironically, it was his smoking that had probably saved him. That many patches on a nonsmoker would almost certainly have brought about cardiac arrest sooner.” 

Nick starts reaching crisis mode as he’s enjoying the company of Jeannette, and also a female reporter who he is unable to resist. The FBI starts investigating Nick’s kidnapping, but eventually it becomes clear that they are more and more suspicious of Nick’s activities, even thinking that he may have faked the whole thing. And that’s where I’ll leave the plot summary, not wanting to spoil the whole thing.

It’s very clear that Christopher Buckley knows his way around the corridors of power, as he describes the various D.C. types that inhabit his novel. Buckley pokes fun at both sides of the smoking debate, the media, Hollywood movie moguls, and stupidity and hypocrisy in general. Throughout the book, Buckley fires off great lines like, “The achievement of car phones is that your morning can now be ruined even before you get to the office.” Just substitute “cell” for “car” in that sentence and it’s even more true today. If you’re in the mood for a very funny satire of lobbyists, and Washington D.C. culture, pick up “Thank You For Smoking.” The only way it can be hazardous to your health is if you laugh too much.

Book Review: "Big Hair and Plastic Grass," by Dan Epstein (2010)

The cover of "Big Hair and Plastic Grass," featuring Oscar Gamble and his amazing Afro.

J.R. Richard throwing some heat for the Astros in the late 1970's.

Steve Garvey and his massive forearms.

Willie "Pops" Stargell, wearing maybe the funkiest uniform ever.

My favorite baseball player, Steve Carlton, on his 1975 Topps card, surely the funkiest cards of the decade.

I received Dan Epstein’s book “Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70’s” for Christmas and I just finished reading it. It’s a great read, and I would highly recommend it to any fan of 1970’s baseball. I would also highly recommend following Dan’s very witty Facebook page for the book, on which he wishes “funky birthday greetings” to every player who made the 1970’s the great baseball decade they were. 

“Big Hair and Plastic Grass” takes the reader through the 1970’s, season by season, from 1970 and Curt Flood’s challenge of baseball’s reserve clause, to 1979, when free agency was nudging player salaries towards $1 million a year. There are several entertaining diversions along the way, with chapters devoted to the “concrete doughnut” stadiums that proliferated during the era, to the outlandish and amazing uniforms that teams like the Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates sported. 

Even though I was born in 1981, the baseball world of the 1970’s doesn’t seem at all like the distant past to me. One reason is that a lot of the big stars of the 1970’s were still playing well into the mid-1980’s, when I started following the sport and collecting baseball cards. Star players who first blossomed in the 1970’s like George Brett, Robin Yount, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Fred Lynn, Dave Parker, Carlton Fisk, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, Tom Seaver, Steve Garvey, Graig Nettles, Don Baylor, Reggie Jackson, and Dave Winfield were all a big part of my early baseball card experiences. I was always interested in older baseball cards too, and I spent many hours at Shinder’s, the local baseball card store, combing through piles of common cards from the 1960’s and 70’s, which greatly increased my knowledge of random 1970’s players like John “The Hammer” Milner, Kurt Bevacqua, and Mike Lum. Also, a lot of the books I read about baseball were full of stories and anecdotes from the 1970’s. I bought books like Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four,” Sparky Lyle’s “The Bronx Zoo,” and Bill Lee’s “The Wrong Stuff,” even though they were well beyond my 10-year-old comprehension. 

Epstein makes the argument that the 1970’s saw more changes in baseball in that one decade than in all the other decades before it. I agree with this theory, as the game saw changes in artificial turf, polyester uniforms, free agency, players growing facial hair and long hair, the adoption of the designated hitter and night World Series games. Epstein does a great job of recapping these changes, as well as the decade’s many memorable teams and players like the “Big Red Machine,” Charlie O. Finley’s “Mustache Gang,” and the New York Yankees “Bronx Zoo” teams of the late 1970’s. Because the book is only 320 pages, Epstein doesn’t go into a great amount of detail about each season, but he does a nice job of recapping the highlights and lowlights. One of my favorite chapters is the one on the uniforms of the 1970’s, which were much more colorful than at any other time in baseball’s history. I wish more teams now would take chances on more brightly colored uniforms, instead of the staid classicism that has reigned since the 1990’s. Epstein describes the Houston Astros’ memorable “orange rainbow” uniforms of the late 1970’s thus: “Standing in against an Astros fireballer like J.R. Richard must have been nerve-racking enough without being additionally distracted by something out of Jasper Johns’s mescaline nightmare.” Well put, Sir. 

The 1970’s were a time for free spirits to roam free in baseball, as players became more outspoken. The decade featured many colorful characters like Ron LeFlore, who came to the Tigers from prison, where he had been doing time for armed robbery, Reggie Jackson, perhaps the decade’s biggest star, whose outsized ego was only matched by his tape-measure home runs, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, who angered Commissioner Bowie Kuhn by saying he sprinkled marijuana on his organic pancakes, Sparky Lyle, whose trademark in the clubhouse was sitting naked on birthday cakes, Dock Ellis, who pitched a no-hitter in 1970 while under the influence of LSD, Mark “the Bird” Fidrych, a pitcher who famously talked to the baseball and who was an overnight sensation in his 1976 rookie year, but due to injuries never regained his form, and clubhouse prankster Jay Johnstone, backup outfielder and expert at hotfoots, and other assorted mayhem. Even a seemingly square player like Steve Garvey, who was nicknamed “Senator” and “Mr. Clean,” and had a junior high school named after him-while he was an active player-proved to be more of a free spirit than everyone thought, as in the late 1980’s it came out that Garvey was dating several women at the same time, and had out-of-wedlock children. All of these players, and many others, made baseball in the 1970’s a highly entertaining sport to watch. 

Probably the biggest change in baseball in the 1970’s, and the one that continues to have the largest impact on the game, was the beginning of free agency. From that point on, players were free to sell their services to the highest bidder, which caused salaries to skyrocket. The average major league baseball player made just $29,303 in 1970, and by 1979 that was up to $113,558. For the 2012 season, the average player made $3,440,000. Oh, how times have changed.

I could go on and on about baseball in the 1970’s, but suffice it to say that Dan Epstein does a wonderful job of making a vibrant, yet somewhat overlooked decade in baseball’s history come alive. If you’re a fan of baseball, go out and read “Big Hair and Plastic Grass.”

Concert Review: Robyn Hitchcock at the Varsity Theater

Robyn Hitchcock in front of the marquee at the Varsity Theater, September 8, 2013. (Photo by Mark Taylor.)

Robyn Hitchcock on stage at the Varsity Theater, September 8, 2013. (Photo by Pondie Taylor.)

In September, the night after I saw Tom Rush, I went to see Robyn Hitchcock at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. I’ve seen Robyn several times before, at the Varsity, at the Dakota, and on “Wits.” Like last year’s show at the Dakota, this was a solo show. Robyn put on a wonderful show, as always. But the real highlight for me was before the show. I was eating dinner at the Loring Pasta Bar with my wife and my Mom, just down the block from the Varsity. We were sitting outside, as it was a lovely evening. I looked up and who was walking down the street towards me? Robyn Hitchcock! I said hi to him, shook hands with him and told him we were about to see his concert. Robyn said that we had to make sure we saw Eugene Mirman, the comedian who was opening for him, because “Without Eugene the show won’t make sense.” We also ran into Robyn on our way from the restaurant to the Varsity, and I was standing next to Robyn as he took a picture of the Varsity’s marquee. “Not often you get to see your name up in lights” Robyn said to me. I stupidly didn’t think to get my picture taken with Robyn, unfortunately. But it was pretty cool to have a couple of moments with Robyn before the show.

The Varsity was a fantastic place to see Robyn. I hadn’t been in the Varsity since they remodeled it, and it’s better than ever. It was very comfortable; we had our own table, so it was like seeing Robyn at a jazz club. But honestly, this wasn’t my favorite Robyn show I’ve seen. I’m a pretty hardcore Robyn fan, but there were a lot of songs I didn’t recognize. I was like, “What album is this one from?” Of course, Robyn doesn’t have many “hits” like other artists do, so he has more freedom to dig deeply into his back catalogue. There were also too many songs that sounded too similar to each other, I needed a little more variety. I was also a little disappointed that Robyn didn’t play anything from this year’s “Love From London” album, as I think it’s a fantastic collection of songs. (I reviewed the album, in painstaking detail, here.) But that being said, there were many lovely moments, like “The Wreck of the Arthur Lee,” which is a great Hitchcock song. And Robyn did play “Museum of Sex,” which is one of my personal favorites of his. Honestly, I love the “Ole! Tarantula” album so much that I’d love to hear Robyn play all of those songs. Robyn also did a lovely version of the hypnotic “Queen Elvis,” which was a request from a very inebriated female fan. After “Queen Elvis” is when the songs started sounding too similar for me. I also got to hear Robyn sing “My Wife and My Dead Wife,” which I’ve never heard him sing before. In an interview with “Time” magazine from earlier this year, Robyn said: “I would love to never play ‘Balloon Man’ or ‘My Wife and My Dead Wife’ again.” Huh. Robyn closed his set with two great songs from “Ole! Tarantula”: “Adventure Rocket Ship” and “Ole! Tarantula.” As usual, Robyn’s guitar playing was excellent throughout the show, although he told fewer stories during the concert than he has in the past. For the encore, he sang three covers, my favorite being The Kinks’ “Fancy.” Robyn then closed with “I’m Only You,” complete with the amazing guitar playing that always highlights his live versions of this song. 

After Robyn was done, he and Eugene came back out and bantered for about 15-20 minutes, telling funny stories and making each other laugh. Robyn was very funny, as was Eugene, and Robyn brought back a story he had told at the “Wits” taping earlier this year about things invading from Canada. I’ve always thought that Robyn Hitchcock would make an excellent stand-up comic, and this encore was the closest he’ll probably come to that. It’s always fun to see Robyn, and it’s obvious that he likes the Twin Cities a lot, since he’s come here three times in the last 12 months. This show was a little odd because he didn’t play anything from “Love From London,” and there wasn’t even a merch table to buy any of his CD’s! He must really like it here. 

Set list:

The Abyss

I Got the Hots

The Wreck of the Arthur Lee

Museum of Sex

Queen Elvis

Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom

Wax Doll

Cynthia Mask

Aquarium

She Doesn’t Exist

Sometimes A Blonde

My Wife and My Dead Wife

Adventure Rocket Ship

Ole! Tarantula

Encore:

Born In Time (Bob Dylan)

Tower Song (Townes Van Zandt)

Fancy (The Kinks)

I’m Only You

Robyn and Eugene talk

Concert Review: Tom Rush at the Cedar Cultural Center

Tom Rush

Me, Tom Rush, and my Mom, September 7, 2013.

Back in September, my Mom and I saw Tom Rush at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. My Mom is a huge fan of Tom Rush-she has many of his albums from the 1960’s. This is the 3^rd time that I’ve seen Tom Rush with my Mom, and he puts on a great show every time. Rush is a relaxed, easygoing performer. He has a mellow baritone voice and he’s an excellent guitar player. He is also very funny and witty on stage, spinning yarns from his 50 years in the music business.

Tom Rush first came to prominence as part of the folk boom of the 1960’s. He recorded several albums for Elektra Records, before switching labels to Columbia in the 1970’s. Rush’s most famous album is 1968’s “The Circle Game,” which featured songs by young songwriters like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne, as well as Rush’s most famous song, the self-penned “No Regrets.” 

Rush is equally adept at singing folk or blues songs, and he also enjoys singing humorous songs like his concert opener, “Making the Best of a Bad Situation.” Rush performed this concert solo, just like the other times I’ve seen him, with just his guitar for accompaniment. But when you’re as good a guitar player as he is, no other accompaniment is needed. Rush’s voice is adept at coloring the emotions of a song, whether it’s good humor or painful memories. Rush’s version of “The Remember Song,” a humorous song about losing one’s memory as one ages, has become a surprise hit on YouTube, with over 6 million views. One of my favorite songs was the old blues song, “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” on which Rush used his ring as the slide on the guitar. Another great song was Rush’s mellow version of “Drift Away,” which was a hit for Dobie Gray. Just before the end of the first half of the concert, “Spider” John Koerner joined Rush on stage and sang “Rattlesnake.” Koerner and Rush have been friends since the 1960’s, and Koerner is a legend in the Twin Cities folk and blues scene. As usual, the highlight of the first half of the concert was the closing song, “Panama Limited,” which is an old Bukka White song. Rush does amazing things on the guitar during “Panama Limited,” as he imitates train whistles, and the sound of a train speeding up and slowing down. It’s amazing, and always leaves me breathless. 

The second half of the concert featured more great songs and more fantastic guitar work on tunes like “Ladies Loves Outlaws,” and the humorous John Prine song “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian.” Rush sang a brand new song, the lovely “How Can She Dance Like That?” As usual, Rush’s last song before the encores was “No Regrets,” with the instrumental “Rockport Sunday.” Rush said of “No Regrets,” “I’ve written better songs, but that’s the one that sticks with people.” And it’s been covered by many, many people, from the Walker Brothers, who had a British hit single with it in the 1970’s, to U2, who have incorporated the song into their concerts. For the encore, Rush sang his version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” It was a great and fiery version of the song, although it’s a song quite at odds with Rush’s image. (I highly doubt the gentle Mr. Rush uses a “cobra snake for a necktie.”) 

Seeing Tom Rush at the Cedar is always an enjoyable evening full of fine singing and terrific guitar playing. Rush also talks to fans and signs autographs during intermission, and he’s just as nice off stage as he seems on stage.

Set list:

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

Fall Into the Night

Woody Guthrie song-Dust Bowl Blues?

Urge for Going

The Remember Song

Baby, Please Don’t Go

Fish Story Song

Drift Away-Dobie Gray song

Rattlesnake-with Spider John Koerner

Panama Limited

Ladies Love Outlaws

What I Know

New song-How Can She Dance Like That?

Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian

Merrimack County

No Regrets/Rockport Sunday

Encore:

A Child’s Song

Who Do You Love?/Bo Diddley