Review: Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James

Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James by Rick James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lot of fun to read and even though it was really ghost written for James, as explained in the introduction by co-author David Ritz. It has James' voice, including crude language, throughout. It is a brisk, salacious, tell-all story of a life of near misses, crimes, jail time, and the high-life. Prince gets taken down as being a jerk as does, kind of, George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic for choosing to indulge in James's blow instead of helping foster his glow. Along the way, Rick takes cocaine to get into the mood for his first TV exposure with Dick Clark (American Bandstand Season 21 Episode 42 aired Jul 22, 1978), fosters the singing careers of Teena Marie and Eddie Murphy and hangs with Linda Blair. Most interesting to me was with the near misses with Toronto all-star Mynah Birds (including Neil Young) and later with White Cane.

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Review: The Last of the Mountain Men

The Last of the Mountain Men by Harold Peterson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I read this book in 1994, the plucky and somewhat dismissive semi-hermit recalled to me Walden and its author Henry David Thoreau. Like Thoreau, this man had to make it town for supplies, etc. occasionally. However, for this living anachronism it was a rocky trek, not the "stroll" it was for Thoreau. Like a connection to the Transcendentalist Movement, this man was proud of his self-sufficiency and the study in solitude and self-reliance compelled me to gift it to the only like-minded person I knew: Ernest Mann:



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Review: Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James

Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James by Rick James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lot of fun to read and even though it was really ghost written for James, as explained in the introduction by co-author David Ritz. It has James' voice, including crude language, throughout. It is a brisk, salacious, tell-all story of a life of near misses, crimes, jail time, and the high-life. Prince gets taken down as being a jerk as does, kind of, George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic for choosing to indulge in James's blow instead of helping foster his glow. Along the way, Rick takes cocaine to get into the mood for his first TV exposure with Dick Clark, fosters the sining careers of Teena Marie and Eddie Murphy and hangs with Linda Blair. Most interesting to me was with the near misses with Toronto all-star Mynah Birds (including Neil Young) and later with White Cane.

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Review: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin G. Boyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a detailed study of the life of Ossian Sweet. Sweet was an American physician in Detroit, Michigan, noted for his armed self-defense in 1925 of his newly purchased home in a white Detroit neighborhood against a racist mob trying to force him out. This lengthy account is his life from Bartow, FL to his lonely suicide March 20, 1960, in his office apartment in Detroit, MI. Beside details of the day Sweet, family members, and friends found themselves in an armed stand-off with the crowd (I am sure some details are up for debate), much is told about this was the genesis of the nascent NAACP's legal defense fun and experience, leading up to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. Also, there is the background of frumpy idealist attorney Clarence Darrow who came in to fight for Sweet et al in the first and subsequent trials. Much of this is approaching a scholarly level of detail, which made this a longer time in reading than I expected, but a very important chapter of U.S. and Detroit history.

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Review: The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very readable, very enlightening overview of the science on brain health and maintenance of people, say, 40 - 60. While there is nothing conclusive that nootropics—also called smart drugs, memory enhancers, neuro-enhancers, cognitive enhancers, and intelligence enhancers—are possible, let alone present in the form of resveratrol or red wine, blueberries or antioxidants. But, there is studies upon studies that prove the existence of and capability to foster neurogenesis (birth of neurons)—the process by which neurons are generated from neural stem cells and progenitor cells—in the adult human hippocampus. This can be easily done with the two E's: exercise and education. Exercise at least a half hour a day and do education at least in crossword puzzles, something that fosters increased blood flow to the brain and active research and problem solving.

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Review: The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of "Boxer" Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer

The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of "Boxer" Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer by Chris Blatchford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating criminal career biography of Rene "Boxer" Enriquez. The arc is from growin up on the violent streets of East L.A., prison at the age, induction into the widely feared Mexican Mafia La Eme. Enriquez helped La Eme become the powerful and violent organization that it is now, with a base army of approximately 60,000 heavily armed gang members who control the prison system and a large part of California crime. Arguably the most dangerous gang in American history, journalist Chris Blatchford with the cooperation of Rene Enriquez, reveals the inner workings, secret meetings, and elaborate murder plots that make up the daily routine of La Eme. This includes the details of the 2000 Pelican Bay mass assault on black prisoners which can be viewed online.

It is interesting to me that divulgence of this information is to a great degree symptomatic of a weak period in La Eme, when lethal violence had leaked out of the criminal subclass (namely, resulting in the death of children) and lax vetting of candidates allowed informants to enter. This is very similar to me to the story of the success of William Queen, a nearly 20-year ATF veteran as well as a motorcycle enthusiast, in infiltrating the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mongols. During the same time in 1998, the ATF was contacted by a confidential informant offering to help place an agent inside the gang. Looking back on the story ending with Boxer disappearing into enter the federal government’s witness protection program, I ponder much this fact that we only see these organized crime innards when they spill out due to lax controls.

Does society tolerate or even have a role that accommodate organized crime within certain parameters? When gangs keep violent crime to internal policing, attacking other gangs over "turf", and preying on unorganized non-violent criminals like drug dealers and offer security to small business (mild extortion), is it, in a sense, "OK"? It seems in practice, from the original Mafia to the Mongols to La Eme, history shows that it is. This line of thought recalls to me this sanguine philosophy: "The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, 'Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world.' He said, 'What? Don't you think there's enough?' I said, 'I think there's just the right amount.' (From: John Cage. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press.)


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Review: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this years ago, the affecting musings of a "compleat" composer essayist on art and such joie de vivre topics as mushroom collecting. Three things particularly stay with me over the years :

1. his ordering that it's good to listen to music, better to play it, best to create it via composition. this urges me to someday become capable on some instrument and also create something, maybe my own book if not a tune

2. cage in a silencing anechoic chamber, an experiment I duplicated in a semi-anechoic chamber at General motors. there's no silence for the living. you hear 2 distinct and low volume tones: the high pitch of the nervous system and the low pitch of the circulatory system.

3. This sanguine philosophy: "The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, 'Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world.' He said, 'What? Don't you think there's enough?' I said, 'I think there's just the right amount.'


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