by Arnold M. Herr
Earlier today:
A very attractive woman (long raven-black hair, beautiful symetrical face and a lush figure in a low-cut, tight black leather outfit) stepped up to the counter in my shop and asked me about books written by and about exotic dancers. I asked her if that included burlesque and she replied "yes, of course."
Me: It's an area I wish I knew more about. The only ones that come to mind are the obvious ones by Gypsy Rose Lee and Ann Corio.
She: I have copies of those. I'd like to find some others because I'm writing my memoirs and would like to - you know - compare notes.
Me: You're an exotic dancer?
She: Yep! My name is Queen Bunnypants. You play a tune, any tune and I'll dance exotically to it.
Me (reaching for a CD): All right, let's try this one.
Queen Bunnypants (turning her head to read the title): Oooooo, John Phillip Sousa. My favorite.
I slipped the disk into the player and cranked up the amperage. Out blasted The Stars and Stripes Forever. She did a few high-steppin' movements, grabbed the stanchion, swung around it a couple of times, arched her back and let her hair sweep across my counter. I lifted the calculator so she could clear away the eraser crumbs.
Queen Bunnypants (leaning on the counter): So whaddya think?
Me: I'm impressed. Is Queen Bunnypants your real name?
Queen Bunnypants: It's really Ginger Hale.
Me: C'mon.
Queen Bunnypants: I've also danced under the names Joy Almond and Jugs Wilde.
Although I didn't have any books on exotic dancing, I remembered that I might have a few photos of interest, so I rummaged through one of my file cabinets and found several 8x10s of Josephine Baker, all taken in Paris during the 1920s. One was signed by her. Queen Bunnypants bought a couple of them including the signed one. She was delighted with her purchase and bounced and jiggled in glee. She said she'd be back. I suggested she phone me before coming in. That way, I could post an urgent message on the ABAA discuss line (non-trade of course) and alert the other members who might like to be here when she shows up.
To bring you up to date:
I've had to move my shop recently. A large corporation bought up several retail buildings in the 400 block of North Fairfax Ave. in L. A. where I had been located for more than nine years and sought to upgrade the neighborhood by chucking out what they deemed to be undesireable businesses - mine included. It's still difficult for me to discuss this matter calmly; I was driving along Beverly Blvd. near my old store when I saw one of the new landlords of my old shop in the car next to mine. I had one of my assistants with me in my van at the time and he told me I started snapping and snarling at the other car. I was apparently foaming at the mouth too. I don't remember any of it.
But I've already relocated to another shop about six blocks north of the previous one and am now positioned at a very busy intersection in West Hollywood. It's an old (for Southern California) building - built in the 1920s - and has a stateliness to it that my former shop lacked. For five or so decades it had been the Big and Tall Men's clothing shop. Those folks folded up their tent about two years ago and a Russian video store moved in. They lasted a bit over a year and for a short while before I moved in, it had been a dog poop removal company. I kid you not. They left a few things behind: a beat-up old desk and 15 shovels. I tossed them all out. I mentioned this to Mickey Tsimmis and he admonished me for not calling him. He would have taken the shovels.
"A bookseller can never have too many shovels," he said authoritatively.
There was some white lettering on a black glass panel under one of the two plate glass windows at the front of my new shop that read "Poop Removal." I cleverly transformed the capital "P" to a capital "B" with a single brushstroke. The lower case "p" took a bit more work, but I managed to make it look like a "k". It now read "Book Removal." But only for a couple of days, when the city of West Hollywood notified me that the lettering on the front of my shop covered more square footage than I was entitled to.
Me: What are you complaining about? The dog poop guy had more lettering than I do. He even had a picture!
West Hollywood official: But at least he was providing a useful service to the community.
Shows you where I stand in the pecking order around here. The lettering got painted over. Oh well....
Shortly thereafter, the guy who had owned the poop business dropped by my new shop and introduced himself as I was unpacking books. He told me he had been a newspaper reporter once, but wasn't very good at it and going into the poop removal business seemed to be a natural for him: it enabled him to keep his old nickname - Scoop. He was sad that he had to close up his shop.
Scoop: I miss some of the neighbors around here. See that old guy across the street?
Me (looking out the window): The one with the cape?
Scoop: Yeah. He used to come in every day. The entire year I was here, he always came in to say hello.
Me: That's nice.
Scoop: In all that time he never shook my hand. In fact, almost everybody avoided shaking my hand.
I made a mental note to head for the sink the moment Scoop left.
Just last week:
Mickey called me on my cell phone. I was in my car driving back to my bookshop in West Hollywood after buying a load of Limited Editions Club volumes at Park LaBrea. My sister was holding down the fort at the store while I was out. I would have used my van, but it was being repaired that day. The books were piled loosely and were sliding around in the back of my old Corvette. All my empty boxes were still in the van.
Mickey: Harry Greenstamps died and is being buried today. My car's on the fritz and I was hoping you could pick me up to take me to the funeral. Whaddya say?
Me: I never liked the guy, Mickey. You hated him too.
(Harry Greenstamps fancied himself a book maven, but was a sometime book scout whose specialty was medical and technical textbooks. Most dealers bought nothing from him).
Mickey: I know, but I'm going just to make sure he's really dead.
Me: OK, I'll be by in 15 minutes.
I got there in 10 and found him noshing on a bowl of cold gray gruel.
Mickey: I have to fortify myself for this.
Me: Gimme a break Mickey; you get flatulent when you eat that stuff.
Mickey: Not excessively so.
Me: We're gonna be in a small car. A little bit goes a long way. Why don't you eat this thing over here instead.
Mickey: It's a six-year-old banana. It's past its prime.
I lowered the two windows in the car and we set off for the funeral parlor. Mickey was pawing through my LECs.
Mickey: How come I don't get calls for stuff like this anymore?
Me: Change your diet.
Mickey: In fact, I rarely get calls at all anymore. I miss the looting and pillaging.
We got to the viewing and sure enough, Harry was righteously dead. Mickey and I were all for leaving at that point, but Harry's ex-wife pleaded with us to accompany the small gathering to the cemetery. Small was right: there couldn't have been more than 10 or 12 people altogether. That included Harry. In a weak moment I relented and said "sure, why not?"
Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
Mickey wasn't pleased either but kept quiet since I was his ride back to his store. Harry was stowed in the back of a hearse as Mickey and I galumphed outside and piled into the 'vette. We pulled into the procession. Somehow we ended up directly behind the hearse; the limousine and rest of the caravan had gotten stuck at a long light. A few moments later, as the hearse stopped at an intersection, some goniff ran up to the driver, stuck a gun in his face and yanked him out of the car. The carjacker slid behind the wheel and sped off. Mickey and I stared in disbelief. The hearse driver ran up to me.
Driver: That son-of-a-bitch just stole my hearse with your friend in the back.
Me: He was no friend of mine.
Mickey: Nor mine.
Driver: Lemme in the back!
Me: Are you kidding?
Another weak moment: I popped the release for the rear window/hatchback which is hinged at the targa top. The hearse driver leaped in among the LECs. He made to toss them out but I spun around in my seat and glowered menacingly at him.
Me: Toss out one book from this car and I will beat you to death with that copy of Walden you have in your hand there.
Mickey: Is that the one signed by Edward Steichen?
Me (still glaring at the hearse driver): Yeah.
He carefully set the book down and made himself comfy.
Driver: OK, I won't mess with the books. Could you please haul ass?
The car was dangerously overloaded and hadn't been tuned up in a year and half. I told him if we have to haul ass, we'll have to make three trips. But then I realized that I could never live down the humiliation of having the 'Vette outrun by a hearse. So I floored it.
KA-POW! PTOOOEY! SCREEEECH!
That was the car, not me. I burned plenty of miles off my rear tires. There was a lot of roaring and screaming going on. The roaring came from under the hood and the exhaust pipes. The screaming from my passengers. We went careening along surface streets through Hollywood, onto the 101 freeway, across the Valley and down the 405. Along the way the hearse driver called 911 on his cell phone and we picked up a contingent of police cars. They signalled for me to back off, but I stayed close nonetheless. The hearse barrelled off the freeway near Los Angeles International Airport and quickly spun out of control when the carjacker hit a patch of oil in the road. The hearse plowed into a light pole at about 45 mph in front of a doughnut shop just off Century Blvd. The tail end swung around and the rear door flew open, launching the casket (with Harry inside) into a parked Willys. The coffin splintered and Harry's body rocketed over the car and landed in the hole of a 25-foot tall doughnut.
"God, I love the book business" I said as I slammed on the brakes behind several police cars. To make a long story short, the carjacker was arrested after being pulled from the wreckage and the hearse driver (he called himself Downwind Murphy and after skidding through much of L. A. County with him jammed into my car, I can attest to the appropriateness of his name) made a persuasive case to the cops that we had to get the body to the cemetery.
The problem, though, was that we had no way to carry Harry's carcass to the gravesite, what with the hearse all smashed up. One of the cops though, got the bright idea of tying him to my car. He produced some rope and helped us tie Harry to the Corvette's hood.
It was a warm day, and Corvettes run hot despite the weather. But on a warm day they run even hotter. Having Harry's corpse simmering on the griddle was sufficient reason for me not to spare the horses to the graveyard.
While waiting at an intersection I did a double-take when I spotted a guy in a dirty, fringed buckskin jacket holding up a sign that read "will blow for food."
In his other hand was a trumpet. Downwind got very excited and yelled for me to pull up alongside the musician.
Downwind: Let's grab that guy. We'll slip him a few bucks and get him to play Taps. They were gonna have me play it on my spoons, but he'll be better.
Downwind talked the guy into accompanying us for ten bucks. He crawled into the tiny space behind the two seats already filled with Downwind and my LECs. He tossed the trumpet to Mickey to hold and introduced himself as Howard Wagstaff Gribble. He had recently eaten something with a lot of garlic in it; you could tell. We were all sweating heavily. It was a pretty funky ride. Mercifully, it was short.
We arrived at the cemetery a short while later with Harry strapped to the hood like a dead moose, and Mickey, Downwind, Howard Wagstaff Gribble, me, and 100 or so LECs all scattered higgledy-piggledy inside the car. There were gasps of shock from some of the attendees, but I could also detect a few satisfied "see, I told you he was really dead" and similar remarks making the rounds.
The body was quickly wrapped in my blue car cover, which was quickly pulled out from under the LECs - no replacement coffin was handy, and frankly, we were all in a hurry to get this over with anyway. Harry was then lowered into the ground with great alacrity and little dignity.
It was obvious Howard Wagstaff Gribble hadn't had much experience with a trumpet, and I overheard him telling someone that he had "blown up a lot of balloons, so how bad could I be?" Actually, pretty bad. But what he lacked in musicality, Howard Wagstaff Gribble made up for in lungpower.
The tune started out resembling Taps, but quickly gained momentum and began sounding like Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy. As you might imagine, the ceremony soon morphed into a scene of graveside jitterbugging and a swell time was had by all. Downwind Murphy was even persuaded to play much of the Cole Porter Songbook on his spoons.
Thusly, Harry Greenstamps was laid to rest as most of the mourners boogalooed off into the sunset.
I on the other hand, was not feeling so merry; turns out that one of the LECs - the Matisse-signed edition of Joyce's Ulysses got interred with Harry in my car cover. On the drive back to Hollywood, Mickey and I plotted its retrieval.
A very attractive woman (long raven-black hair, beautiful symetrical face and a lush figure in a low-cut, tight black leather outfit) stepped up to the counter in my shop and asked me about books written by and about exotic dancers. I asked her if that included burlesque and she replied "yes, of course."
Me: It's an area I wish I knew more about. The only ones that come to mind are the obvious ones by Gypsy Rose Lee and Ann Corio.
She: I have copies of those. I'd like to find some others because I'm writing my memoirs and would like to - you know - compare notes.
Me: You're an exotic dancer?
She: Yep! My name is Queen Bunnypants. You play a tune, any tune and I'll dance exotically to it.
Me (reaching for a CD): All right, let's try this one.
Queen Bunnypants (turning her head to read the title): Oooooo, John Phillip Sousa. My favorite.
I slipped the disk into the player and cranked up the amperage. Out blasted The Stars and Stripes Forever. She did a few high-steppin' movements, grabbed the stanchion, swung around it a couple of times, arched her back and let her hair sweep across my counter. I lifted the calculator so she could clear away the eraser crumbs.
Queen Bunnypants (leaning on the counter): So whaddya think?
Me: I'm impressed. Is Queen Bunnypants your real name?
Queen Bunnypants: It's really Ginger Hale.
Me: C'mon.
Queen Bunnypants: I've also danced under the names Joy Almond and Jugs Wilde.
Although I didn't have any books on exotic dancing, I remembered that I might have a few photos of interest, so I rummaged through one of my file cabinets and found several 8x10s of Josephine Baker, all taken in Paris during the 1920s. One was signed by her. Queen Bunnypants bought a couple of them including the signed one. She was delighted with her purchase and bounced and jiggled in glee. She said she'd be back. I suggested she phone me before coming in. That way, I could post an urgent message on the ABAA discuss line (non-trade of course) and alert the other members who might like to be here when she shows up.
To bring you up to date:
I've had to move my shop recently. A large corporation bought up several retail buildings in the 400 block of North Fairfax Ave. in L. A. where I had been located for more than nine years and sought to upgrade the neighborhood by chucking out what they deemed to be undesireable businesses - mine included. It's still difficult for me to discuss this matter calmly; I was driving along Beverly Blvd. near my old store when I saw one of the new landlords of my old shop in the car next to mine. I had one of my assistants with me in my van at the time and he told me I started snapping and snarling at the other car. I was apparently foaming at the mouth too. I don't remember any of it.
But I've already relocated to another shop about six blocks north of the previous one and am now positioned at a very busy intersection in West Hollywood. It's an old (for Southern California) building - built in the 1920s - and has a stateliness to it that my former shop lacked. For five or so decades it had been the Big and Tall Men's clothing shop. Those folks folded up their tent about two years ago and a Russian video store moved in. They lasted a bit over a year and for a short while before I moved in, it had been a dog poop removal company. I kid you not. They left a few things behind: a beat-up old desk and 15 shovels. I tossed them all out. I mentioned this to Mickey Tsimmis and he admonished me for not calling him. He would have taken the shovels.
"A bookseller can never have too many shovels," he said authoritatively.
There was some white lettering on a black glass panel under one of the two plate glass windows at the front of my new shop that read "Poop Removal." I cleverly transformed the capital "P" to a capital "B" with a single brushstroke. The lower case "p" took a bit more work, but I managed to make it look like a "k". It now read "Book Removal." But only for a couple of days, when the city of West Hollywood notified me that the lettering on the front of my shop covered more square footage than I was entitled to.
Me: What are you complaining about? The dog poop guy had more lettering than I do. He even had a picture!
West Hollywood official: But at least he was providing a useful service to the community.
Shows you where I stand in the pecking order around here. The lettering got painted over. Oh well....
Shortly thereafter, the guy who had owned the poop business dropped by my new shop and introduced himself as I was unpacking books. He told me he had been a newspaper reporter once, but wasn't very good at it and going into the poop removal business seemed to be a natural for him: it enabled him to keep his old nickname - Scoop. He was sad that he had to close up his shop.
Scoop: I miss some of the neighbors around here. See that old guy across the street?
Me (looking out the window): The one with the cape?
Scoop: Yeah. He used to come in every day. The entire year I was here, he always came in to say hello.
Me: That's nice.
Scoop: In all that time he never shook my hand. In fact, almost everybody avoided shaking my hand.
I made a mental note to head for the sink the moment Scoop left.
Just last week:
Mickey called me on my cell phone. I was in my car driving back to my bookshop in West Hollywood after buying a load of Limited Editions Club volumes at Park LaBrea. My sister was holding down the fort at the store while I was out. I would have used my van, but it was being repaired that day. The books were piled loosely and were sliding around in the back of my old Corvette. All my empty boxes were still in the van.
Mickey: Harry Greenstamps died and is being buried today. My car's on the fritz and I was hoping you could pick me up to take me to the funeral. Whaddya say?
Me: I never liked the guy, Mickey. You hated him too.
(Harry Greenstamps fancied himself a book maven, but was a sometime book scout whose specialty was medical and technical textbooks. Most dealers bought nothing from him).
Mickey: I know, but I'm going just to make sure he's really dead.
Me: OK, I'll be by in 15 minutes.
I got there in 10 and found him noshing on a bowl of cold gray gruel.
Mickey: I have to fortify myself for this.
Me: Gimme a break Mickey; you get flatulent when you eat that stuff.
Mickey: Not excessively so.
Me: We're gonna be in a small car. A little bit goes a long way. Why don't you eat this thing over here instead.
Mickey: It's a six-year-old banana. It's past its prime.
I lowered the two windows in the car and we set off for the funeral parlor. Mickey was pawing through my LECs.
Mickey: How come I don't get calls for stuff like this anymore?
Me: Change your diet.
Mickey: In fact, I rarely get calls at all anymore. I miss the looting and pillaging.
We got to the viewing and sure enough, Harry was righteously dead. Mickey and I were all for leaving at that point, but Harry's ex-wife pleaded with us to accompany the small gathering to the cemetery. Small was right: there couldn't have been more than 10 or 12 people altogether. That included Harry. In a weak moment I relented and said "sure, why not?"
Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
Mickey wasn't pleased either but kept quiet since I was his ride back to his store. Harry was stowed in the back of a hearse as Mickey and I galumphed outside and piled into the 'vette. We pulled into the procession. Somehow we ended up directly behind the hearse; the limousine and rest of the caravan had gotten stuck at a long light. A few moments later, as the hearse stopped at an intersection, some goniff ran up to the driver, stuck a gun in his face and yanked him out of the car. The carjacker slid behind the wheel and sped off. Mickey and I stared in disbelief. The hearse driver ran up to me.
Driver: That son-of-a-bitch just stole my hearse with your friend in the back.
Me: He was no friend of mine.
Mickey: Nor mine.
Driver: Lemme in the back!
Me: Are you kidding?
Another weak moment: I popped the release for the rear window/hatchback which is hinged at the targa top. The hearse driver leaped in among the LECs. He made to toss them out but I spun around in my seat and glowered menacingly at him.
Me: Toss out one book from this car and I will beat you to death with that copy of Walden you have in your hand there.
Mickey: Is that the one signed by Edward Steichen?
Me (still glaring at the hearse driver): Yeah.
He carefully set the book down and made himself comfy.
Driver: OK, I won't mess with the books. Could you please haul ass?
The car was dangerously overloaded and hadn't been tuned up in a year and half. I told him if we have to haul ass, we'll have to make three trips. But then I realized that I could never live down the humiliation of having the 'Vette outrun by a hearse. So I floored it.
KA-POW! PTOOOEY! SCREEEECH!
That was the car, not me. I burned plenty of miles off my rear tires. There was a lot of roaring and screaming going on. The roaring came from under the hood and the exhaust pipes. The screaming from my passengers. We went careening along surface streets through Hollywood, onto the 101 freeway, across the Valley and down the 405. Along the way the hearse driver called 911 on his cell phone and we picked up a contingent of police cars. They signalled for me to back off, but I stayed close nonetheless. The hearse barrelled off the freeway near Los Angeles International Airport and quickly spun out of control when the carjacker hit a patch of oil in the road. The hearse plowed into a light pole at about 45 mph in front of a doughnut shop just off Century Blvd. The tail end swung around and the rear door flew open, launching the casket (with Harry inside) into a parked Willys. The coffin splintered and Harry's body rocketed over the car and landed in the hole of a 25-foot tall doughnut.
"God, I love the book business" I said as I slammed on the brakes behind several police cars. To make a long story short, the carjacker was arrested after being pulled from the wreckage and the hearse driver (he called himself Downwind Murphy and after skidding through much of L. A. County with him jammed into my car, I can attest to the appropriateness of his name) made a persuasive case to the cops that we had to get the body to the cemetery.
The problem, though, was that we had no way to carry Harry's carcass to the gravesite, what with the hearse all smashed up. One of the cops though, got the bright idea of tying him to my car. He produced some rope and helped us tie Harry to the Corvette's hood.
It was a warm day, and Corvettes run hot despite the weather. But on a warm day they run even hotter. Having Harry's corpse simmering on the griddle was sufficient reason for me not to spare the horses to the graveyard.
While waiting at an intersection I did a double-take when I spotted a guy in a dirty, fringed buckskin jacket holding up a sign that read "will blow for food."
In his other hand was a trumpet. Downwind got very excited and yelled for me to pull up alongside the musician.
Downwind: Let's grab that guy. We'll slip him a few bucks and get him to play Taps. They were gonna have me play it on my spoons, but he'll be better.
Downwind talked the guy into accompanying us for ten bucks. He crawled into the tiny space behind the two seats already filled with Downwind and my LECs. He tossed the trumpet to Mickey to hold and introduced himself as Howard Wagstaff Gribble. He had recently eaten something with a lot of garlic in it; you could tell. We were all sweating heavily. It was a pretty funky ride. Mercifully, it was short.
We arrived at the cemetery a short while later with Harry strapped to the hood like a dead moose, and Mickey, Downwind, Howard Wagstaff Gribble, me, and 100 or so LECs all scattered higgledy-piggledy inside the car. There were gasps of shock from some of the attendees, but I could also detect a few satisfied "see, I told you he was really dead" and similar remarks making the rounds.
The body was quickly wrapped in my blue car cover, which was quickly pulled out from under the LECs - no replacement coffin was handy, and frankly, we were all in a hurry to get this over with anyway. Harry was then lowered into the ground with great alacrity and little dignity.
It was obvious Howard Wagstaff Gribble hadn't had much experience with a trumpet, and I overheard him telling someone that he had "blown up a lot of balloons, so how bad could I be?" Actually, pretty bad. But what he lacked in musicality, Howard Wagstaff Gribble made up for in lungpower.
The tune started out resembling Taps, but quickly gained momentum and began sounding like Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy. As you might imagine, the ceremony soon morphed into a scene of graveside jitterbugging and a swell time was had by all. Downwind Murphy was even persuaded to play much of the Cole Porter Songbook on his spoons.
Thusly, Harry Greenstamps was laid to rest as most of the mourners boogalooed off into the sunset.
I on the other hand, was not feeling so merry; turns out that one of the LECs - the Matisse-signed edition of Joyce's Ulysses got interred with Harry in my car cover. On the drive back to Hollywood, Mickey and I plotted its retrieval.
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Editor's Note: Arnold M. Herr takes a breather but will return in the not too distant future. Coming soon: The Lopsided Merkin
Editor's Note: Arnold M. Herr takes a breather but will return in the not too distant future. Coming soon: The Lopsided Merkin
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