David Thayer

Wellington Leg:  Here on the thirtieth ultimo the Wellington Leg Books for Turtles Program has ended in failure. Program Manager Hop Girard admitted that the plan to see what turtles read has turned into an exchange program wherein Legians want to trade in their amphibians for classic books.  The final straw for Dr. Gerard came when an Aldabra Giant Tortoise, weighing over five hundred pounds, chewed thirty pages of John Barth’s THE SOTWEED FACTOR.  Billed as a reality TV battle of the titans the program was overly long ( 17 hours) and the Giant Tortoise hardly budged.

Entertainment expert Roy Canada compared watching the tortoise with the time he had to read a book in Montreal: “Well, it was really cold and windy but it just wouldn’t snow. The Habs were playing the Leafs and I think there was a guy in a Santa suit drinking mojitos.”

Tortoise handler Trixie of Hollywood was dismayed to find three rocks and a head of lettuce arrayed around the Barth tome. “I’m like, are you people for real? This is iceberg lettuce!” Trixie reminded city officials that ice berg lettuce sank the Titanic.

Although filming has ended the Aldabra Giant Tortoise, native to the Seychelles, has taken up residency in Wellington Leg. DCI Borchardt scheduled to appear in Richard 111, issued a Summons to the great beast: “He ate the summons,” Borchardt said. “He is under arrest.”

Mr. Simmons, appearing on behalf of the tortoise, said the summons bore a striking resemblance to a persimmon. Judge Timmons ordered Simmons to retrieve the Summons in a Summary Judgment. Simmons presented a persimmon to Timmons who demanded that Simmons be summoned to a persimmon expert.

Meanwhile the Aldabra Giant Tortoise has been ordered to “move along.” Yellow tape used to designate the crime scene area has vanished and is believed to have been consumed by the tortoise. Bobby G for Wellington Leg Crime Beat.

Wellington Leg: A fearsome combination of bubble driven scary headlines and a shortage of flan is leading to speculation that the Piltdown Exchange will demand fresh material from the managers of the Literary Hedge Fund. As temperatures spike the ability to reimagine historical figures is threatened by an inverted yield curve: the yield curve is considered inverted when the observer is upside down and Paris Hilton is on parole.

Borrowing heavily from the classics is creating a fiction bubble coinciding with a dearth of celebrity-chef-confessionals creating short term pressure on the hedge fund’s ability to leverage and releverage at reasonable interest rates. “It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen a Patterson novel,” noted trader Paulie Shorts, Wellington Leg’s most honored businessman. “I’m not remodeling my downtown loft this year,” he said.

Others close to situation were more sanguine. “Come on, we got Obama, Hillary, Roger Clemens. Nascar, a couple of famous twins. Literature is good long term hedge for any portfolio.”

“I hate to say this,” Paulie Shorts added, “we need the earl. Sure he couldn’t find Australia and his characters are on strike, but no one understands the futures market like he does.”

Pressure on the exchange was relieved after mall security officers, acting on a tip, detained several Walmart greeters pumping air into bicycle tires near the Celebrity Pit. “They claimed to be delivering calzone to the floor specialists,” DCI Borchardt said. “I for one believe them. I want to believe them. These guys are old.”

“Derivative drivel,” said Professor Moriarity. It isn’t clear what the professor was referring to although he was holding a subway map and a Krispy Kreme at the time. The professor was pelted by tomatoes as he crossed the virtual picket line surrounding Wellington Leg. “Imaginary characters,” Borchardt said, rolling his eyes, “A word to the wise,” he added.

Flan futures recovered in late morning trading while the Calzone Oscillator was off the charts. Geraldo reporting for Pork Bellies Unlimited.

Wellington Leg: Samuel Moyer, a character from an unpublished novel, is fed up with obscurity.  Sammy exhibits sociopathic tendencies while displaying a genius for numbers in the novel whose title cannot be mentioned in the pre-IPO lockdown phase. “I’m a minor character,” he said, “But, come on, if the author had done a better job I’d have my own character blog by now.”

Legal advisor Graf von Sitzbaedchen agrees: “I’m a recurring character on ONE MORE BITE OF THE APPLE,” he explained. “Sammy is more developed than I am, but I’m incredibly popular in Japan. I can’t even visit Bucharest. Sammy gets no love.”

Hedge Fund Interest? Urquhart Depew, former dogsbody turned hedge fund manager thinks the Lost Character IPO might have legs: “We’re long the yen, short the dollar, and leveraged sixty to one. The upside is huge: the appetite for private equity is infinite, the short interest will get crushed once we sign the characters we need.”

Full disclosure: investing in unknown characters is risky. Urquhart Depew is a fictional character whose personality profile suggests a certain schadenfreude which when comibed with weltschmerzen creates a financial sturm und drang scenario common to Wagnerian opera. Trading is thin and the float is small warns Professor Moriarity on loan from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

What does fiction have to with Wall Street? Sammy Moyer says,” You gotta have a storyline. Even if I suck, you can still reap a windfall if interest rates rise.”

Wellington Leg: In a blow to reading darkness fell on Wellington Leg when a big tuna crossed the sun’s orbit shortly after one o’clock on Saturday. Fans gathered at Eddie’s Book Nook fled into the streets to observe the tuna’s parabolic journey across the northern sky. Angry peasants holding torches created a disturbance near the historic Rotunda before steel helmeted riot police fired tear gas into the mob. The eclipse also caused traffic to snarl around the statue of Dick on Horseback donated to the city by Lamont “Dick” Redondo hero of the war with Goth.

Hizzoner hurried to the Podium to reassure the assembled vassals and serfs that the tuna incident was little more than an elaborate hoax. “Certain elements,” he said, “have launched tunas skyward on numerous occassions…Wellington Leg stands prepared to scotch these rumors, to nip them in the Bud.” Observers remarked that Hizzoner may have disclosed the secret formula for the Boilermaker although the use of Scotch remains controversial.

DCI Borchardt and the Flying Squad commandeered a supply of torches found near Yellow Fin Alley. “Wastrels and layabouts,” Borchardt fumed. “Is this what Lamont Redondo fought for?” he asked.

Fisherman John, a colorful local, was taken into custody when tuna making materials were seized from the trunk of his lime green AMC Pacer. “It’s difficult to make a tuna from scratch,” Borchardt explained. “John knows how.”

Extra patrols near the Tower and the Big Fence that now surrounds center field will continue through the weekend. Vendors offering “tuna melts” have been issued citations and peasants with dirty faces are warned to avoid downtown. Bob Copernicus reporting.

Wellington Leg: Geologists at the Polytechnic Institute discovered a large formation of limestone sticking out of the ground a block from Wellington Leg Police Headquarters. The massif damaged a car belonging to Mrs. Edna Ponce Bombardier a distant cousin to the exiled monarch of the Germanies and notorious party goer Irmgard of Thoringia. Mrs. Bombardier’s Jaguar E-type suffered nose damage during the unusual geologic event.

X-rays of the Earl’s Brain reveal a similar pattern according to a spokeman for the Imperial Hospital where the earl is resting after a dyna-plasty treatment. “Dyna-plasty is controversial because we use dynamite to blow up big portions of the brain,” admitted Dr. Wha, owner of the eponymous cafe on Gerund Street.  Dr. Wha employed the “drill and shoot” method of tunneling through the outer layer of limestone that protects the adult brain from new information. Once a hole is created it is then filled with discarded box scores garnered from a vast Google data base.

Why Wellington Leg would resemble the earl’s brain is a matter of conjecture according to City Hall. Hizzoner’s brain, long admired for its longitudinal stripes, has been on display in the Historic Rotunda for the past several weeks. The brain can be installed in the mayor’s cranium “in case he needs it,” according to Deputy Mayor Gus Flaubert. “So far, so good,” Gus added.

A waiter at Dr. Wha’s Cafe said the Limestone Sandwich, a new menu item, is selling well. “People in Wellington Leg want healthy choices,” he said. “Limestone is tasty and goes great with black beans.”

A word from Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe, blogger in chief: “Please disregard this entry in its entirety. It is appalling how irresponsible ideas circulate on the Internet. Rest assured that if damage to a Jaguar E-type is the sort of thing blogged about, the entire house of cards will come crashing down.”

A decent interval has passed since Miss Snark shut down her blog, long enough to consider what literature’s corner of the world gained and lost, how departures never fit into the perpetual arrivals that blogging promised. Miss Snark stopped while she was ahead like Sandy Koufax or Marcus Aurelius ( Conquer Germany? Why?)

Your reporter warmed slowly to Miss Snark. She is a literary agent and in blogging terms held a high ground aspiring writers yearn to occupy. I thought of baseball tryouts where a genuine pro would arrive with an incredible equipment bag, a guy who changed socks to face left handed pitching while the rest of us wore the same socks over and over no matter who was pitching, a tactical disadvantage with enormous implications.

Miss Snark had plenty of socks. She helped open the floodgates to other agents who blog and generally dispensed information to her flock without resorting to indiscriminate ridicule. She created an entertaining if slightly exhausting site wherein subtext ruled the waves. Her audience knew all the words creating the feeling of being at a Grateful Dead concert at three in the morning on a school night.

After CBGB closed I wondered where future generations of punk rockers would go, which sidewalk would contain the assembled mass of Mohawks and lip hardware necessary to create the feeling that unless my Dockers spontaneously combusted my nose would be forever pressed against the window? Or, put another way, what is a blog without a crowd?

Where have Miss Snark’s faithful gone?

There was a time when writers endured periods of being hated before being admired or being admired by a hateful few, men with astigmatic pinched skin or those harridans of culture anarcho syndicalist suffragettes without a cause; their ardor, directed your way, would be the antithesis of desire, or My Way. That my best friend electrocuted a frog is a difficult admission to make if only to be briefly hated before gaining a little traction with the follow-up “in search of a cure for polio.”

Children cope with this guilt by association far better than adults. They might take the frog eletrocution in stride until Middle School which is called Middle for its clever evocation of the Middle Ages.  Friendship has been covered over the centuries by Cicero, De Amiticia, and Jerry Seinfeld ( “You have a mom! I have a mom too!”) with perhaps equal amounts of success.

Maybe this is overly Russian of me but I did imagine a certain exile period of being hated by a gaggle of Trotskyites living out their days in Guadalajara smoking Camels and filling notebooks with thoughts of scabrous vengeance on the donkey riding padre who tormented them in Middle School. I don’t who let the side down in this case. Me? Them? Father Serra?

My untrained eye fails me here. Perhaps all fiction evokes the idea that the fragments of memory fall victim to the superior imagination which is why so much work is devoted to putting Aristotle in your hands like a titanium driver: hey, try this guy. Hit the ball harder.

Who hates ya, baby? That’s the real question.

Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN got a nice write up in the Chicago Tribune, a mention at Collected Miscellany and a long review from James R. Winter at January Magazine while RN Morris got some ink from the Philly Inquirer for THE GENTLE AXE. Both Megan and Roger are contributors to the Rap Sheet. Megan wrote THE SONG IS YOU while Roger debuted with Macmillan New Writing the UK imprint thought by some to be the end of civilization as we know it. Update: this hasn’t proven to be true although Scooter disagrees.
Megan and Roger have an open invitation to visit Wellington Leg and take a walk up the famous Boulevard of the Stars.

What Wellington Leg is reading: Kjell Eriksson’s THE CRUEL STARS OF THE NIGHT. Recommended by publicist-philosopher Lars Kierkegaard who enjoys the multi-layered gloom of Uppsala in fall. Lars is still contemplating his failure to launch the earl’s career. “We ponder,” he said. “We replace headgaskets.” A headgasket shortage still plagues the Leg even in this day and age.

Marge, the afternoon cashier, is reading Peter Spiegelman’s BLACK MAPS, now out in paper. Marge recommends NIGHT FALLS ON DAMASCUS by Frederick Highland and Alex Carr’s AN ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN.

Eddie of Book Nook fame is proofing WELLINGTON LEG CONFIDENTIAL short story collection about crime and corruption here in the Leg. “Hizzoner is sweating bullets while we edit the stories,” Eddie said. A box of Cuban cigars and a Roger Clemens autograph set progress back in May. “I was bought off,” Eddie says.

THE EARL’S BEHEADING is now in treatment form says Wilfredo Tagesblatt, VP of Development. “We’re working with Trump’s people,” he confided. The goal is to have the earl beheaded in Prime Time probably in Atlantic City. Wicker baskets are needed, so if you have any write to REALITY, care of Wellington Leg. Bobby G reporting from a dark desert highway cool wind in his hair.

Wellington Leg: Today begins a series called Writers We Don’t Know. In the vast crime fiction spectrum your reporter doesn’t know the work of many fine writers. Luckily the research staff of the Druidical & Literary, though imaginary, work cheap and require little in the way of sustenance other than the occasional shout out. I tip my hat to you, especially Walter, our Heinrich Boell specialist.

I don’t know Peter Spiegleman. We shook hands at Left Coast Crime but in terms in journalist integrity I think we’re okay. Let’s borrow from Peter’s website in an effort to get to know his work: I’m reading BLACK MAPS, not his latest work, but quality wise this up there, my friends, bleak, subtle, well written with a Wall Street setting.

In fact, Peter edited WALL STREET NOIR a collection released in May from Akashic Books. You get Jim Fusilli, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrell Coleman, Jason Starr, Twist Phelan and more in this collection. Most of the traders on the Piltdown Exchange are reading this book when Live Hog trading permits.

BLACK MAPS won the Shamus Award. Peter’s most recent novel RED CAT was released by Knopf in February. I know what you’re thinking: Knopf? Mystery-thriller? It certainly implies high quality writing.

High quality in most products is a plus ( genuine Colgate toothpaste comes to mind.) Remember the Yugo? Quite a battle cry but I bring this up because in the commercial publishing world high quality writing is often seen as a barrier to success. And high quality writing that actually tells a story? Well, this can fall into the void between literary doodlings about dead hydrangeas ( must everything die?) and the more familiar thriller about librarians being chased by spectral descendants of Vlad the Impaler.

I’ll continue my Peter Speigelman coverage as the cup of knowledge slowly fills displacing the sodden molecules of ignorance. TTFN.

The thirteenth ultimo: Wellington Leg’s towne council spent Wednesday in emergency session debating a proposal that would render the towne “imaginary.” Coming on the heels of quoting Marcel Proust in the city’s revised parking ordnances several members objected to the overly philosophical nature of Alternate Side of the Street Parking thought to be handed down from Norman invaders who parked their horses in a herringbone pattern between assaults on the fortifications.

Whig Party boss Big Bob Thunder set the tone by saying “he cannot recall a time when he used his imagination” and suggested that “military action” may be contemplated to enforce the new Proustian Regulations.

The Current Law reads: where man or woman venture to bring their conveyance to rest is a matter of grave concerne to Public Order and a gentle aspect to passersby.

Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe was elected Chief Blogger of Wellington Leg ending a bitter dispute with the mainstream Druidical & Literary whose “virtual paperboy” experiment resulted in several injuries during the very merry month of May. “Virtual Paperboy” was an ill-advised attempt to throw internet content at people’s doorsteps without regard to Scientific Evidence that such content can be dangerous. D&L reporter Bobby G suffered head lacerations when confronted with a “really big blog” about “really big stuff.” Bobby was taken to Kaiser Wilhelm Hospital to study the deeper meaning of Prussia’s ill advised alliance with France. “I’m reading Von Clausewitz,” he said, adding, “I feel better already.”

A grapefruit sized object removed from Bobby’s skull proved to be a grapefruit. DCI Borchardt interviewed Wendy Wenders of Prussia Close, a notorious blogger with a grapefruit orientation. “It’s all well and good to post articles about grapefruit,” Borchardt warned. “Ms. Wenders crossed the line.” Geraldo reporting with intern M. Proust.