The Guns of Dealey Plaza

This is true: at the entrance to the Sixth Floor Museum, which is what has become of the Texas Book Depository in the years since President Kennedy was assassinated, there is a sign reminding people that they shouldn't bring guns inside.

And for some reason, I was the only person in the immediate vicinity who found that ironic.

My father and step-mother recently moved to Dallas for work, and I flew out for Thanksgiving. Shortly after reaching the airport I saw one of those red crawl-displays displaying the date, November 22, and realized that I was making my first visit to Dallas on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in that same city. So I had JFK on my mind practically from the first moment, and it's not such a surprise, really, that the one thing we all decided to do the Friday after Thanksgiving, before we all flew off to our different places again, was to visit Dealey Plaza.

Since the anniversary itself happened to fall on Thanksgiving, most people visited the next day, as I did, and there was a circus going on all across Dealey Plaza. (Here's a photo of the crowd on the grassy knoll.) There were guys selling things near the entrance, the same sorts of guys you'll see hawking t-shirts outside concerts or selling maps of the stars' homes in Beverly Hills. I leaned over to my sister and said "Hey, one of the great tragedies of American history happened here! Let's exploit it!" My step-mother politely declined to spend five bucks on one of their printed maps of the area.

We paid $13.50 per adult, which seemed a little steep, but it included an audio thingie that you hung around your neck. There really wasn't anything on the tape that added to the materials already on display, and the crowds were so large that the tape was moving way faster than I was; about halfway through I turned it off for good and explored at my own pace.

And yes, right at the entrance, where the young guy took our tickets, there was a posted sign reminding people not to bring guns inside. I asked if anyone found that ironic, and the young ticket-taker said "Well, this is Texas," and my dad pointed out that Texas is a concealed-carry state. All of which I knew perfectly well: it was the fact that in this place dedicated to perhaps the most notorious shooting of all time, people needed to be reminded that bringing a gun was perhaps in bad taste.

Apparently I hadn't sufficiently learned from the map-sellers outside that where money is to be made, bad taste really doesn't enter into the equation.

The exhibition itself strives for good taste by broadening its reach beyond the assassination: brief portraits of the Sixties, of Kennedy himself, and of his administration (prompting Dad to recollect when he was serving on an aircraft carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right at the front line at what turned out to be the moment of greatest tension, almost entirely unaware of what was actually going on). But of course the museum doesn't have much in the way of artifacts to go along with these displays: the Kennedy Library in Boston, quite naturally, has all of that, together with the National Archives.

The plain truth, then, is that this is a museum about one event: an assassination. Here too the curators strive to be as tasteful as possible, given what the museum is: blown-up still frames from the Zapruder film don't show quite the worst moment, though they come close. There is a photo of President Kennedy's dark suit jacket showing the bullet hole, but not of his white shirt, which shows the blood much more obviously. And of course there are no autopsy photos or diagrams, for which many thanks. (Yes, you can find all of that on the internet, if you must.)

And there is plenty on the investigation itself, including the FBI's scale mock-up of Dealey Plaza. But what matters most, of course, is the window itself, from where Oswald fired. A giant glass box surrounds the area now, and empty book boxes seek to recreate the situation: boxes stacked high in order to conceal someone crouching behind, peering out through a rifle's telescopic sight, waiting for the right moment.

And I have to say, all conspiracy theories aside: if you were going to do such a thing, that was a perfect place for it. Coming along Houston Street, the motorcade made a sharp left onto Elm Street, which immediately curves back almost in the same direction they just came from before proceeding on toward the highways. This means the motorcade would have had to slow down to make the turn, then curved away from the Book Depository, a perfect shot getting better and better with each second. It's all perfectly obvious when you look down through those windows; there's a tree in the way that would make the shot harder now, but from the original photos that tree wasn't nearly so expansive in 1963. (Oliver Stone had it trimmed back when he filmed JFK there, but that was 16 years ago and the tree has filled out again.)

Of course, the grassy knoll would make a pretty good spot, too. There are actually three such pergolas on all sides of the plaza, any of which would have made a good sniper's perch. I won't go into the various theories, except to say that even though I do believe governments are capable of attempting most anything, I'm not nearly as convinced that they're actually capable of accomplishing such grand conspiracies.

But at least I know I can say this: now, in a concealed-carry state like Texas, I can rest assured that in this one place, the Texas School Book Depository, I am reasonably safe from getting shot. Good to know.

Reading Devices

On the one hand, I'm an old-fashioned bibliophile, one of those people who has books spilling out from every conceivable corner. (Go ahead, open my kitchen cabinets, I dare you.) I've always agreed with Isaac Asimov that a book is a perfect invention: it requires no batteries, it starts when you want it to start, stops when you want it to stop, waits for you with endless patience, and picks up right where you left it every time. Hours of entertainment, hours of education, a truly perfect invention, no question. And as Borges once wrote, "I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books." Exactly right.

But every time I move, I fill dozens of boxes with books. Hundreds of pounds of them, growing every year. Not to mention the aforementioned kitchen cabinets. When I travel, I generally limit myself to bringing two books, simply because of the weight and the bulk. This is no problem when traveling for a couple days; but for a month-long trip, two books might not be enough. And what if I'm on the road but need one of my many reference books?

This is why the idea of a "reading device" (there isn't a good name for these things yet) has some appeal. And since Amazon has just released the Kindle, I figured I'd take the occasion to write about this whole class of gadget a little.

The first e-book readers were basically limited-function computers, with LCD displays that had the same problems as computer screens: tough to read in daylight, and a glare that would absolutely hurt the eyes after too much reading. I liked the idea of them, but none of that early wave of devices was anywhere near as good as a book.

Then came this whole eInk development. Now we were starting to get somewhere: an LCD-like screen without glare, easily readable in daylight, something that really resembled a piece of paper, but one that you didn't have to flip in order to read what was printed on the other side of it. The Sony Reader was first, and it has a lot of advantages: it's light, it has decent capacity, and if you buy you get some books for free to get you started. One gigantic problem, though: it's not compatible with Macs, and in order to get books onto the Reader, you have to first interface with your computer. So much for that idea.

Now Amazon has released the Kindle, and it has one immediate advantage: no computers are involved at all, it operates wirelessly by downloading books from Amazon's servers, using what is basically Sprint's cellphone network--except that Amazon absorbs the cost of the wireless connection (and of course bundles it into the price of each individual book). (By the way, there's a decent comparison of the Reader and the Kindle here, on CNET's site.)

But there's a new problem: the Kindle itself is godawful ugly. I mean, look at it. It's horrifically, incomprehensibly ugly. And there are so many buttons, it looks almost impossible to hold without accidentally triggering something. This ugliness problem is no small thing--like it or not, the hip factor matters, and the Kindle could absolutely learn some things from, say, the iPhone (it could also use the iPhone's touch screen, which would help straightaway by removing that clunky keyboard). The Reader looks much cleaner, and that's good--we shouldn't be distracted by the package, the reading experience should be all about the words, and every other distraction should simply vanish. Accidentally hitting the Next Page button a hundred times is also a pretty bad thing.

And, as with the Reader, it's still too expensive. I'd be willing to spend about $100 on a "reading device," but $400 is way beyond the pale. Particularly when you're not saving that much on the books themselves. It would be even nicer if you could get a bundle discount on the books--buy it in print and for the Kindle, and get a special price for both. That would be nifty.

Still--in his video promo for the Kindle, Neil Gaiman talks about how, when he traveled to Florida to write American Gods, he had to drive rather than fly, because of the hundred pounds of reference books he took with him. This sort of argument carries an awful lot of weight (sorry) with me, and makes the idea of a device of this sort that much more attractive.

But all in all: we're not there yet. We're getting tantalizingly close to a device that could actually bring a significant part of my much-loved library on the road with me, but we ain't quite there yet. Maybe in its second generation of the Kindle, Amazon can drop the price and pretty it up significantly. That might just make the crucial, final difference...

Strike Striking Struck

So you may have heard that some writers are making a lot of noise, and the world holds its breath lest it be forced to endure life without TV shows.

There is a very good WGA-produced video explaining what it's all about that can be found here on a MySpace page...

And the best reporting I've seen on the strike, on a day-to-day basis, is definitely Nikki Finke's LA Weekly column, which can be found at her Deadline Hollywood Daily site...

As a writer, I'm (almost) completely on the WGA's side. As the above video demonstrates, the issue at hand is one that will only get larger as time passes--and the pay inequities, already pretty outrageous, will become intolerable. Since I plan to have a nice long future writing for media including film and television, this is a fight whose worth is self-evident.

So why did I say (almost)? Well, you know. Self-interest takes its toll. And just a week before the strike began, Marc and I pitched City of Truth to several production companies, getting enthusiastic responses from every one of them. Three companies, to date, have asked for copies of the script, so it is now being read in some lovely places. But with the strike, even though I'm not a WGA member, I still can't sell anything to a signatory company (and all the interested parties are signatories). I can't pitch to anyone new, can't have a meeting with anyone from any of these companies. So if we get a call next week from someone saying he loves the script and wants to pay me money, I have to say no. This is whattayacallit--frustrating.

Why am I not a WGA member? Partly because playwrights aren't covered, and partly because I have tried to keep away from unions for as long as possible, ever since seeing what happened to some actor-friends in Chicago who joined Equity too soon--suddenly they couldn't work for the non-union theatres anymore, but they didn't yet have a solid enough reputation to get steady work at the union theatres. End result: an endless string of dayjobs.

Plus there's a whole discussion we could have about when unions are essential, and when they overstay their welcome. But that's for another day. For now, writers are on strike over something they need to strike about, and I'm behind them for this fight--hell, I may even go out and hold up a picket sign once or twice.

Even so... like every other writer, I really hope this one can get settled soon. It won't, but I sure wish it would.