Book Nook

Sarah Palin bombshell…

By Vick Mickunas | Saturday, July 4, 2009, 08:11 AM

Sarah Palin has announced that she is not going to run for another term as governor of Alaska. Bizarre.

She recently inked a deal to write her memoirs but that cannot possibly explain this sudden decision to exit politics and diminish her power base.

For someone who was supposedly in the thick of the thicket of probable contenders for her party’s presidential nomination in 2012 this move seems rather odd. Or is it?

With each passing week another potential Republican presidential nominee seems to get bumped from the fray. Senator Ensign. Governor Sanford. Now, Sarah Palin.

Since the McCain-Palin team went down to defeat last November Sarah Palin has been a constant in the news. The tabloids have been raking the coals, stirring up flames whenever possible.

Palin’s recent kerfuffle with David Letterman was just another act in this circus sideshow.

What do you think? Is there even more weirdness ahead? She’s walking away from her job as governor effective this month. Is Palin still a contender for the White House?

Vick Mickunas

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Is Google trying to cash in on the orphans?

By Vick Mickunas | Friday, July 3, 2009, 10:26 AM

Orphan books that is. According to an article today in the New York Times, internet behemoth Google has attracted the notice of US authorities.

Here’s why:

SAN FRANCISCO — “The Justice Department confirmed on Thursday that it was conducting an antitrust investigation into the settlement of a lawsuit that groups representing authors and publishers filed against Google.

The $125 million settlement agreement, which was signed in October and is subject to review by a federal court, was intended to resolve a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google. In the suit, the authors and publishers said Google’s plan to digitize millions of books from libraries and make them available in its Book Search service amounted to a violation of their copyrights.”

The key issue here is the so-called “orphan books:

“Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google the exclusive right to profit from millions of so-called “orphan works,” books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.”

Google is trying to profit from all those books that are out there without anybody to protect the copyrights. That represents a lot of books and boatloads of potential to profit….

To read the article click HERE

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Come down and see me!

By Vick Mickunas | Thursday, July 2, 2009, 09:20 PM

I’ll be introducing a couple of bands Friday night at the Cityfolk Festival in downtown Dayton. I’ll be at the Dance Pavilion. The bands are Afromotive followed by Son del Caribe. Stop by. Say hi…..

Vick Mickunas

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How many were tortured to death?

By Vick Mickunas | Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 02:43 PM

During the Bush/Cheney years the United States government authorized the use of torture. Have you ever wondered if anybody was tortured to death?

How many died after being tortured by the C.I.A. and those other entities authorized by the US to do so? One? Ten? 50? 100?

Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece yesterday for Salon.com that indicates that there might be many instances where our people tortured their captives to death. That they went too far and killed them. Dead.

Greenwald, the author of books like Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics clearly has an agenda. If it is true that numerous captives died from being tortured does Greenwald’s agenda make it somehow OK that they died by our hands? I don’t think so.

We’ll know soon enough how many died. The CIA Inspector General’s Report is being released.

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Sleazin’ with John Edwards

By Vick Mickunas | Tuesday, June 30, 2009, 11:24 AM

Political sex scandals seem to be popping up on a weekly basis. Last week it was the Republican governor of South Carolina’s affair with a woman in Argentina. The week before it was a Republican senator from Nevada’s affair with a staff member.

Republicans do not have the political sex scandal market cornered however. There are always some Democrats waiting for their own overexposure on the front pages of the tabloids. Who can forget Bill Clinton’s disastrous play dates with an intern?

The Democratic governor of New York was flushed out of office when his expensive call girl habit was revealed. Then there was John Edwards. The former Democratic senator and presidential aspirant had a torrid affair while his wife was battling cancer.

An article today in the New York Times indicates that the Edwards brouhaha is far from over. One of his former aides just signed a book deal and this book might make John Edwards wish that he had never been born.

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Eddie Van Halen was a nice guy…

By Vick Mickunas | Monday, June 29, 2009, 09:25 PM

After Michael Jackson died I was reading some of the tributes. A guy I know back in Des Moines wrote something about one of Michael’s songs that had a fabulous guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen. Billie Jean I think?

Anyway, I hadn’t thought about Eddie Van Halen in years. Then today I saw something about Eddie getting re-married. It mentioned that his ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli attended the ceremony.

That’s when it hit me. I thought, that Eddie Van Halen is still a nice guy. I met him once a long time ago. Knowing that Valerie was welcomed at the nuptials made me certain that Eddie is still a decent fella. Fame hasn’t wrecked that.

I met him briefly in the early 80’s when Van Halen was a huge concert draw before singer David Lee Roth left the group. I’m thinking that it was 1982?

Van Halen was playing at an arena in Omaha. I was working with a guy who was doing the backstage catering. We had a heck of a time fulfilling that contract. The “rider” as they called it was a laundry list of stuff that we were supposed to provide for Van Halen and their crew.

It was nightmare finding all that stuff. We drove around Des Moines in a van picking up supplies and checking them off the list.

A few years before that Van Halen had achieved some measure of notoriety for trashing a dressing room. It seems that the caterers that night failed to take care of one minor detail in the contract rider, they didn’t go through the M&M’s and remove all of the brown ones. When the boys in the band detected some brown ones in their snacks they used that as a pretext to trash the place.

Our rider specified: no brown M&M’s. We knew they weren’t kidding. That made my boss a bit paranoid about obtaining all the supplies that were being demanded.

We found all the numerous varieties of exotic booze. It turned out that the hard liquor was mostly for the roadies, mainly grizzled Nam vets who looked like they hadn’t slept lately. The Liebfraumilch was for Eddie.

We were able to locate the inflatable dolls they requested. I’m not making this stuff up!

The thing that had us baffled was the request for two dozen Coney Island Whitefish. In those pre-Google days we were stumped. As we drove around we asked everybody we met and nobody knew what we were talking about.

Finally, we went into another adult bookstore. We had been to several already while looking for inflatable dolls. The woman behind the counter appeared to be well past retirement age. We asked her, excuse us ma’am but are you familiar with Coney Island Whitefish? She cackled and took a long draw on her unfiltered smoke.

She said “boys, I haven’t heard that term in 40 years! Coney Island Whitefish are rubbers! They’re an old term for condoms, the only kind of ‘fish’ that ever used to wash up on Coney Island.”

We thanked her and checked the last thing off our list. When we got into Omaha the head of the sound crew went down our list and verified that every single item was available. When he reached the listing for Coney Island Whitefish we pulled out the boxes of condoms. He seemed somewhat disappointed that we had figured that one out. No brown M&M’s. Lots of condoms. Dolls. We figured we were all set.

The opening act were some guys who called themselves The Granati Brothers. There was was no reference in Van Halen’s rider to them. No provisions to provide them with food, drink, shelter. Nothing. Like they didn’t exist. We were bound to follow the contract. No deviations were allowed.

As the Granati Brothers were playing Eddie Van Halen was wandering around backstage. He was wearing ripped up sneakers and a big grin. He clutched a bottle of wine. I was washing up the dishes after serving dinner to the roadies.

We were getting ready to pack up the food. The Granati Brothers had finished their set. Eddie Van Halen approached me. He had the three Granati Brothers with him. Eddie didn’t order me around. He came up to me and in the most charming way he practically begged me to make up some plates of food for the Granati Brothers. He did this discreetly. None of the Van Halen crew or band witnessed his act of kindness and compassion. He genuinely just wanted to get them fed and he knew they were not going to eat otherwise.

Nice guy. Apparently, he still is.

One night in Omaha long ago…

Vick Mickunas

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Some new baseball books…

By Vick Mickunas | Monday, June 29, 2009, 12:26 PM

My friend Paul Dickson knows as much about baseball as anybody I know. This year he has already published two new baseball books, a new revised edition of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (WW Norton) and The Unwritten Rules of Baseball (Collins).

Yesterday, Paul reviewed a couple of new baseball books for The Washington Times. He covered SATCHEL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND By Larry Tye (Random House) and

THE BALTIMORE ELITE GIANTS: SPORT AND SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL By Bob Luke (The Johns Hopkins University Press)

His piece is titled “Attaining Racial Equality in Baseball”. To read his reviews click HERE:

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