Mallory's Camera

Overheard on Cannery Row:
First Lady: Who's John Steinbeck?
Second Lady: I don't know. I think maybe he was one of those actors in old Westerns.
First Lady: I don't like Westerns.

In other news, apparently one of the people who wandered into the store Sunday and thus got to experience my patented retail stand-up comedy routine firsthand – "It's like climbing Mt. Everest! You have to start at base camp!" – was the news director of the local NBC affiliate.

He sent a news crew out yesterday to continue the conversation.

Basically, they wanted me to jabber about the slow state of Christmas sales which I was happy to do, even with the certain foreknowledge that after 2.3 seconds they would cut away to the oily smirk of the incomparable Ted Balistreri , owner of the Cannery Row Company, who'd get to twist his big gold rings for 4.6 seconds while ranting about how business is great, business is better than ever, America is the greatest country in the history of the solar system and how about those soldiers in Iraq, huh? Are they great or what? That's just the way that television works. All publicity is good publicity.

What I wasn't prepared for was how absolutely ghastly I looked at close camera range. I mean, I'm 53 years old. I flatter myself that I've put vanity behind me. But obviously I haven't. What was that roadmap of California doing etched upon my face? And my God! Was that crepe neck hanging over my collar? Crepe neck! I mean, you can drop a buck on a Lotto ticket and tell yourself, "When I win, the first thing I'm gonna do is book an appointment with Heather Locklear's facelift surgeon." But there's no plastic surgeon alive that can win the war against crepe neck.

Naturally after seeing myself I went into a deep decline and had to watch a bad movie. Skeleton Key starring Kate Hudson. We don't have to ask ourselves why Kate Hudson has a career, we know why Kate Hudson has a career – she's the daughter of Goldie Hawn who's fighting her own losing battle against crepe neck although she did have a very successful chin implant several decades ago – I mean the only way you'd know it was there was by looking at the before and after pictures.

The movie is dreadful in so many ways that I won't bore myself recounting.

However! I did get a cool hit in the midst of watching it for a horror plot. Benito Cereno does Gone With the Wind: a Wilkes family transplanted to the bayou just before the Civil War. Myriad strangeness. Lonely wayfarer happens upon the mansion in the night. Or maybe he's a deserter from the Civil War. Turns out the slaves have worked an ancient New Orleans hoodoo to turn themselves white and the massa's black.

Emboldened by this exercise in Plotting 101, I then composed an Elmore Leonard-type scenario in my mind. My Cannery Row novel! Las Vegas couple invests their entire retirement savings in a franchise on Cannery Row (teeshirts! that change color in the sun!) The store hemorrhages money but they're locked into a lease that goes till 2009. What are they gonna do? They decide to hire a hit man to make the owner of the fabulously venial Cannery Row company tear up the lease! Hit man has literary sensibilities, big East of Eden fan etc etc.

Hijinks ensue.