Serial Killer Hall of Shame

DESPITE ANDY WARHOL'S MAXIM, WE CAN’T ALL BE FAMOUS

The Serial Killer Hall of Shame, my latest book, is a chronicle of the least successful mass murderers and would-be mass murderers in United States history.  The original title of Serial Killer Bloopers was rejected by editors because they felt it lacked gravitas although they didn’t rule out the possibility that this could be the name of the theme song for the movie based on the book.

We begin with Ronald Gray, the self-named Tree Trimmer of Yonkers. He wanted to call himself the Butcher of Yonkers but that name was already taken and besides that Gray was afraid of running afoul of the authorities because he wasn’t licensed to cut meat in the State of New York.  Gray admitted to police that he hasn’t actually begun his serial killer career yet because his lawn care enterprise is currently in its “busy season."

Next there is the pathetic case of Stanley Wellerman who started out in the homicidal maniac profession simply because he thought that the bright orange jumpsuits worn in federal penitentiaries would flatter his chubby physique.  Police apprehended the corpulent psychopath in the middle of his first attempt at murder when a worker at a local fast food emporium called the police reporting that he noticed a bound and gagged victim in the back seat when Wellerman ordered in the drive-thru window.  After initially escaping an extensive dragnet Wellerman was captured when he returned to the drive-thru for extra ketchup.

Mordecai Blaumgarten known as the “Cousin of Ernie” never achieved the sort of fame one would expect from such a prolific and monstrous killer. "Son of Sam" already seemed too much like the title of a Dr. Seuss book so many experts suspect that Blaumgarten's nickname just wasn’t catchy enough to reach a larger audience.  He died in obscurity in the prison movie theater one night when he choked to death on a Milk Dud laughing at a scene in Saw III. 

One of the deadliest killers in American history has yet to be convicted of a crime. Charles W. Langford III, known sometimes as the “Text Message Massacre-er” or the “Multi-Tasking Murderer” is responsible for the deaths of over twenty motorists after cutting them off in traffic while exploring applications on his cell phone.

Often referred to as the world’s clumsiest man, Grand Central Station custodial worker Max Oldman has been nicknamed “Max the Tripper” for inadvertently causing the deaths of scores of hurried New York City commuters. Although repeatedly warned by supervisors, Mr. Goldman almost never displayed the “Wet Floor” sign after mopping the beautiful marble tiles at the top of the steps at the terminal (pardon the word choice). His carelessness with broom and mop handles as well as his strategic misplacement of cleaning carts was like a daily vaudeville sight gag but with a ghastly body count. Oldman now lives off his city pension in Delray Beach, Florida.

Daydreaming of Food

A plate of Pepe's famous morro (pork rinds)

For a while now I’ve been trying to make my way through the standard Italian pasta dishes. I try to be as traditional as possible so I watched a lot of Italian grandmothers on YouTube. I figure that the older the woman the more traditional the recipe.  I like this gal who doesn’t look particularly grandmotherly but she’ll have to do and she has a cool theme song. Why don’t I have a cool theme song? Her old-school knife techniques are enough to make you have one hand covering your mouth in horror and the other on your phone ready to call an ambulance but it seems to work for her. She makes every day food like most people probably eat in Italy.  I think that in general Italians probably eat better than about any other people, at least this is the impression I get from first hand observations.  While nothing fancy it’s the sort of food I prefer over dishes that appear on upscale restaurant menus but hardly work for feeding more than one or two people.  I just think that restaurants put too much emphasis on presentation whereas in the home this isn’t as vital. A bowl of chicken soup tastes wonderful but you can only dress it up so much.

There is a café across the street from my place and the owner cooks great food.  I’ve learned a lot from him in our conversations.  He just cooks different stuff every day, whatever looks good at the market or whatever suits his fancy.  In my bar (Bar Casa Morrut) you just have a small dish or two or perhaps a sandwich.  To say that this place is informal is a huge understatement. I just like the place because the first time I ever happened in there the owner, Pepe, talked to me. I have a simple rule here in Spain for bars and restaurants: if the people are nice to me I go back. Sometimes I go back if they aren’t nice but only if something else is worth the trouble.

I don’t know if a joint like Pepe’s would go over in America. You’d need a very adventurous clientele.  Here in Spain people don’t mind sharing dishes and they also don’t have a problem with a very limited choice of menu items. The prix fixe (menu del día in Spanish) is the norm, especially at lunch where you choose between perhaps six items for the first and second courses instead of making everything to order.  One thing that never ceases to charm me is how men will sit around at the bar discussing recipes and cooking techniques. As I have said before, I want to write a cookbook called Recipes I Have Overheard at the Bar in Spain.

¡Buen provecho!

Tomato Butter Sauce with Gnocchi

You may have noticed that I put the sauce before the gnocchi in the title. This may be because I still have a lot to learn about making potato gnocchi but I really wanted to emphasize the sauce in this recipe. This is one of my favorite food discoveries in quite some time.I could tell before I made it that I was going to like it, and why wouldn't I like it?  It has butter and tomatoes in it.

Whether or not you want to make gnocchi this video is well worth watching for the tomato butter sauce she prepares to serve with the gnocchi. The recipe is as easy as it is delicious. I made a few changes and additions. This is a perfect sauce for gnocchi and would go well with raviolis or tortellinis. I looked around on the web in Italian saw no recipe for this sauce although it seems quite a standard among American cooks and seems to have it's roots in Marcella Hazan's recipe.

Tomato Butter Sauce

2 cans whole tomatoes, crushed
1 can tomato concentrate (the concentrate here isn't as strong as in the USA)
100 grams butter
1 whole onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 bay leaves
salt & pepper

Put all of these ingredients into a pot and simmer for about 45 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and mix with a hand blender. That's it. Toss gently with the gnocchi and perhaps shred a bit of Parmesan cheese on top and you have a great second dish.

Podcasts in Spanish

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions; I simply try—at least for a while—to continue on my path but with a bit more vigor. To this end I have been looking diligently for audio files in Spanish to listen to as I wander about my day. I came upon a veritable gold mine of podcasts in Spanish from Onda Cero called La Rosa de los Vientos. There are dozens and dozens of topics to choose from and the Spanish is clear and easy to understand. This is quite simply one of the best learning tools I have come across in my time here in Spain.

After less than a week I already feel like my Spanish has improved. I also feel that I am simply making a lot better use of my time. It’s sort of like the ultimate in multi-tasking when I can improve my Spanish while carrying out such mundane chores as going to the supermarket, cooking, cleaning, and dozens of other situations I find myself in throughout the day. Not only am I improving my Spanish but I’m also learning something from the programs. It’s definitely a win-win proposition.  I have been asking around forever for podcasts in Spanish to no avail so this is why I want to share my find as quickly as possible.  Enjoy!

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Contains Spoilers)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Do Not Read This Until You've Finished the Book!

(Spoiler City ahead!)

Insanely brilliant and Exhibit A as to why reading is the funnest (sorry, I like this superlative adjective) thing in the world. The problem I have with most whodunnits is that my attitude very often is whogivesashit? Any hack can insert a bunch of plot twists in a story but a story full of twists does not a good story make. While I sped through the book (thoroughly loving every word) in the back of my mind I was terrified that the author was going to mess it up by insulting my intelligence (and anyone who knows me knows that’s hard to do) by throwing in some clumsy bit that just didn’t make a lick of sense simply to throw the reader off the scent.

My girlfriend and I read this together, sort of. She started first and was 190 pages ahead of me before I began. Over the course of a couple of days we practically got into fistfights over possession of the damn book. I would talk her into taking a nap, telling her how tired she must be from the morning’s activities, whatever the hell they might have been and it’s really none of your business. The split second her eyelids slammed shut I’d yank the book out of her hands and bookmark her page which was still well ahead of mine despite my sometimes deceitful efforts to manipulate the book into my custody, all part of my game to play catch-up

When I didn’t have the book in my hot little hands I sneaked a peak at the goodreads ratings for the book, being as careful as a soldier in a minefield not to let my eyes glance upon a review that would reveal even the slightest secret in the tale that I had yet to uncover in my own reading. If you are reading this and you haven’t read the book yet I have only one question for you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Read the damn thing already. It’s only about the most fun you will ever have. This book makes me pity (even more) people who don’t read.

It was fun discussing the story together although she was VERY careful not to let spill anything she had learned from her higher vantage point in the plot. Instead of wolfing the book down in a sitting or two the process was drawn out—almost in agony at times—over the course of several days. Our talks about the book were a bit one-sided because I could venture theories on what would happen but she couldn’t because she “knew too much.” The staggered nature of my reading allowed me the luxury of putting a lot more thought into the book as I went along. At one point I went back and reread the first couple of chapters just to see if I had missed some vital clue to the story that wouldn’t have made sense to me the first time around. The author is much too skillful for clumsy displays of foreshadowing and there were no lame red herrings as in most whodunnits (a genre I generally avoid like vampire novels).

What I loved about the book…scratch that, one of the many, many things I loved about the book was some of her penetrating insights that were often hilarious; not something you see much in this genre of literature. Like when Amy is watching TV in the cabin and she takes note of the commercials which target women and she thinks about women who “clean and bleed.” Or when she changes her appearance to look less hot, “I don’t miss men looking at me. It’s a relief to walk into a convenience store and walk right back out without some hangout in sleeveless flannel leering as I leave, some muttered bit of misogyny slipping from him like a nacho-cheese burp.” Brilliant, poignant, and very funny!

(Because I knew my girlfriend would sneak a peak at my review before I finished writing it I put in this bit below just for her. At this point in my review I was still 100 pages from the end. I had used my time away from the book (my forced exile) this morning to string up an old CD on my clothes line as people do here in Spain in an attempt to shy away pigeons.)

Why do I hate pigeons so much, you ask? Because when I was a kid pigeons killed my brother but replace “killed my brother” with “shit on my clean clothes.” That’s why.

One of my only criticisms of the book:

I didn't like the Desi character and wish he had been left out completely. It was way too much of a coincidence that he lived right up the road from Amy and his role at the end of the story was very contrived. I thought that Amy let the hillbillies off the hook rather easily considering what a vindictive bitch she had been all her life. They rip her off and ruin her plan and she lets them walk away scot free? She fucked over Hillary because she showed up late for her at school one day. The hicks probably didn’t have a high school diploma between them and she is going to allow them to keep breathing? Instead of framing Desi she could have killed the two hicks and hung all of it on them. I would have even liked to have seen the two hicks get some character development earlier in the story without the reader having the faintest clue as to what they were doing popping up in the narrative. Two menacing meth-head drifters would have been a lot creepier and cool than some twink who had a boyhood crush on her and lives with his mom.

How about this? The hicks are introduced earlier in the story as they make their way across the ravaged landscape of financially-wrecked America. They grift and at times resort to acts of violence to get what’s theirs until finally they intersect with Amy at the hillbilly Club Med. This would have added another layer of intrigue to the story and another couple of suspects in the disappearance. Finally Amy crushes the hicks in her own imperious manner and uses this to make her return to her husband. The whole thing with Desi was just too full of holes. What if Desi had an airtight alibi on July 5th?

In the movie version we could see a short scene of the two grifters at work, a home invasion where they rob some innocent old lady and slap her around a bit and perhaps one or two other episodes where the violence escalates, just enough to make the viewer include them in the list of possible suspects. This would also lend a bit of action to the beginning of the story. Then when Amy sees the girl for the first time the viewer knows her history (a very chilling introduction). They rob Amy but instead of Amy whimpering away she follows them and brings down her biblical wrath just as she has upon her husband and anyone else stupid enough to cross her. This works as a substitute for the Desi thing and chops one character out of the story for the economy needed for the screenplay.