The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne

Turn the volume down when you start The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne. It is loud with music in the room, on the phone, and in our heads. Even the video game is loud. This is the world of 11 year old super star Jonny Valentine after a show in Vegas. He can’t sleep and needs some pills to help. He sneaks into his mom’s room for the pills only to discover the existence of his dad when he goes to his mom’s computer and begins reading and doing some chat room searches and discovers a message for his dad to him, “email me anytime,” with the email address. He writes the email down, goes back to his room, finishes a level in the video came, pops the pill and goes to sleep.

The narrator is an eleven-year-old pop singer. He has a very strenuous schedule and it can take its toll on anyone, especially this kid. What is his mother thinking? His dad has been out of the picture most of his life, but seems to be getting back into the picture via the Internet. Interacting with kids his own age is impossible since he is a pop star. He doesn’t go to school; he is tutored on the road and at home. He has celeb waiting rooms at doctor’s offices and wherever he goes. He is sheltered and protected and his mom is the quintessential helicopter parent. I can’t think help but think of Michael Jackson.

An important theme in this book is one of adult supervision and behavior. Hypocrisy also plays a key role. Young Jonny is navigating this dicey pop star world well considering his obstacles. He has to negotiate the levels of the video game Zenon. He has to figure out to hook up wit his father in a concert city. He always needs to breath around his mother. This is a story of coming to age in the celebrity word of music as an eleven year old soon to be twelve.

He will do well with his Final Exam question for History from his tutor, Nadine.

“Write an essay of approximately 1,000 words in response to this prompt: What does it mean to be property of another person, and what does it mean to be free? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each position? Make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end, and cite at least three primary sources.”

Jonny is going to nail this essay.

The Love Machine by Walter Mosley

Marchant Lewis has created a love machine or he is a love machine, sort of in Love Machine by Walter Mosley. Engaging in an experiment with Lewis, a seven foot five hundred plus African American changes Lois, a petite Korean female. The experiment involved a little device that when touched by Lois and Lewis does things to Lois she can’t explain nor understand that involve sex, her boyfriend and her thinking of Lewis and in fact being drawn to him for no other reason than the experiment and she wants to know what and why.

It’s complicated. When she merged with Lewis via the electric machine, her character, personality, memories were absorbed by Lewis and the others who were also merged. And she, too, absorbed them. She was interested at first in reversing this experiment. She and they were empaths. Sleep and being awake were becoming confused. They live communally in the house named the End of the World. They are a collective called the Co-Mind. Whenever says he is going to create a better world, a new world order, we instinctively reject it which is what Lois is doing, though she is intrigued. Lewis is a  monster and the act of co mingling, absorbing, and spitting out is all part of conquering the world. Are we awake or asleep?

Stepping Stone by Walter Mosley

Truman Pope is reminded, “to pay attention” by his former 4^th grade teacher, Ms Boucher in Stepping Stone by Walter Mosley.  Truman had learning and speaking problems, Ms Boucher cured. Truman now delivered mail for HBH, a corporation on East 56^th in NYC. He has been the only permanent employee of the mailroom for the past 21 years. One day he spies a beautiful woman dressed in yellow and follows her. This gets him in some trouble with HR. He meets her again in the vault. Truman is very good at what he does, he is pure and so many people think he is troubled, slow, and simple. He is not.

True has dreams and nightmares. He sees into the future. Sometimes we don’t know if he is in the real world or the dream world. He has powers and can command people and they listen and follow. As he says, it is better to listen and not talk. He helps people by saying, “Pack a bag and go to a place where you want to be.” And they do. He has identified his vision woman as Minerva and she is bothering him and not answering his questions. She advises him but still doesn’t explain herself to him nor himself to himself. He’ll figure it out eventually she assures him. Then he meets Maud who is nineteen to his forty. Things change. Truman is special.

What if God were human.

Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin

A pair of retired Edinburgh cops leaves the funeral of another retired cop. One is going home the other, Rebus, to a meeting, which he is already late to, with other retired cops in a new cold case unit headed by a full time cop, James Page. Rebus likes referring to him by using classic Led Zeppelin song titles, which annoys some. Talk about deep retirement. This is how Ian Rankin’s Standing in Another Man’s Grave begins.

A woman comes to speak to DI Gregor Magrath about her missing daughter. Magrath retired many years ago and is unreachable, so Rebus goes to speak to her. She tells Rebus that her daughter was the first to disappear and recites more names of missing women since her daughter’s disappearance that share similar details.

Rebus was an old dog, a cop from the last generation. He rubbed elbows with every one and had no friends. He drank with hoodlums, with cops, with low lifes and high lifes. Internal affairs were always looking into something he was doing even now in retirement. He knew his way around the seedier parts of town and didn’t do anything by the book. He was the only maverick in the force because he produced. “…and in walks John Rebus, not even bothering to wipe his shoes, leaving bits of muck everywhere without even noticing.” This was the best description of John Rebus and his twisted way with people. But he does make things happen when few others can or do. He is a maestro.  He is vinyl and the others are digital.

Six young women have gone missing with very similar traits: all connected to a certain roadway, all sent a picture of a picture from the same locale to someone on their cell phone address book. Is this picture real or designed to throw the police off track. I know when I’m in Scotland a good pair of wellies is required footwear to be stored in the boot. Why doesn’t Rebus know this?

Rebus just bulls ahead not making friends as the gangsters have words with him for speaking to the other, the cops are finding him tiresome yet he is doing a lot better than they are, and the civilians are frustrated with him. His strength is he is keeping his eye on the prize in spite of how much alcohol he consumes. A colleague may have said it best, “Tell me, is it possible for anyone to come to know you without them always feeling they’re slipping their neck into a noose?’

Keep track of the songs so you can answer the question in he end?

Lennon Revealed by Larry Kane

My friendly local bartender, Mike, from Burley Oak gave me a copy of Lennon Revealed by Larry Kane. Kane knows Lennon well. He was on both the 64 & 65 Beatles’ Tours. He has stayed connected with John up to 1980. John trusted him and Kane knew all the people around John so he could do interviews with them as a trusted confident. The details of this book are incredible.

This is a very enjoyable book. Kane doesn’t pull punches. He begins with the tragic evening of December 8, 1980, some other interacting stories and then gets right to the core of John’s three main women, Cynthia, Yoko, and May Pang. Sure there were other women during the Beatles’ tours, but the press was more discreet about that stuff than they are now.

John was a troublemaker in a fun and whimsical way at times, and in a more self-destructive way, especially when he had drink or drugs. During his childhood, he was a juvenile delinquent. With the Beatles he was terribly whimsical and oftentimes the clown who could also shock the world with a concise statement that could and would be misconstrued, like the Jesus Christ statement. And then we all came to love him when he moved to NYC and took up the cause to better the world and seemed to threaten the Nixon Administration. It took a while for John to fine tune his skills and his wit and Yoko was very instrumental in that. He took time to grow up and then he was gone.

It wasn’t that he was a troublemaker he was a thinker, an intellectual, a man with questions and answers. During his second American tour, he commented on the war in Vietnam. He was a maverick. Celebrities were silent on political matters, especially after the 50’s and McCarthy. And a member of the Fab Four speaking about politics and the war was really an enigma and bothered Epstein, but John was John. John was ahead of his time. When he moved to NYC he immediately became involved with the Peace movement. Though many members were anti war, John wanted to keep it positive. His association with Hoffman, Ruben, and others scared the US Government and then FBI got involved and Lennon spent a lot of time in courts resisting deportation and gaining citizenship. John’s convictions for Peace and his music became the theme for many in the early 70’s and it still burns brightly today. John was ahead of his time and those like John are called troublemakers because they make us think and make us move forward when the leaders of any time choose to remain blind and wish to maintain the status quo.

The intimate details of John the performer during the early tours are eye opening and informative. We learn so much about Lennon and the boys, pre performance, performance, and post performance behavior and antics. The plane rides are the most fun and engaging. Fears and joys are shared and shown to make John so human. It is a wonder with his phobias, he chose NYC of all places to live, but then it makes sense because he could get lost in NYC not to be confused with his famous “Lost Weekend.” Some highlights for me were that their concerts were only 35 minutes long, they made $150, 000 for one concert in Kansas City which was more than other concerts they gave, and that the Shea Stadium concert for 55,000 fans was the first of its kind. We forget just how many barriers the Beatles tore down. But most informative was the fact that they almost canceled the Jacksonville, Florida concert because the crowd was going to be segregated. The concert went on with an integrated crowd. The lads really did change more than just music; they changed us.

Larry Kane has written a fabulous account of a man who changed our lives. I saw John and Sean in Central Park a couple of times and so admired what he was doing. While watching a Monday Night Football game, Howard Cosell interrupted the broadcast to announce that John had been shot. I lived on Second Avenue and 71^st Street. It was late and it was very very cold that night. I bundled up and proceeded through Central Park to the Dakota. A small crowd was already there and someone had a boom box playing Lennon and Beatle music. Candles flickered and he crowd grew as people sang softly, cried publicly, and were so well behaved. The next weekend in Central Park was an amazing gathering of so many people and glorious singing to honor this man. Every year after that, I would go to the Dakota and then Strawberry Fields to lay a white rose on the steps or Imagine mosaic in honor of this great man. Starting in the 90’s because of the Internet and my presence on list serves, I announced my plans to go to Strawberry Fields on Dec 8 and messages from all over the world came in asking me to place their name and message on a sheet of paper to accompany the white rose. In the dot matrix days that roll often contained more then twenty pages of names and messages. Last December 8, I went to Iceland to see the Tower of Peace. What happens ever December 8 at Strawberry Fields in NYC is astonishing and so unique. I don’t know of any other tribute to a man quite like what occurs on December 8 around the world. Oh perhaps Jesus Christ on December 25 in Bethlehem.