Rental Person Who Does Nothing

Morimoto, Shoji. Rental Person Who Does Nothing. New York: Hanover Square 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

I am starting a service called Do-Nothing Rental. It's available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there...I only charge transport (from Kokubunji Station) and cost of food/drink (if applicable). I can't do anything except give very simple responses.


Description:

I just couldn't resist this outrageous (and enviable) title and premise of Shoji Morimoto's Rental Person Who Does Nothing: a man who hires himself out to accompany another person, but is not required to do or say anything during their encounter; just be there. He gets "payment for being."

Morimoto is inspired by a blog from a health counselor, Jinnosuke Kokoroya, who stated:

People should be paid for just being there...people have a value even if they do nothing.

Another inspiration for him was Pro-Orgorareya, a "professional guest," whose job "is having meals with people.

He just asks people on Twitter to give him food and somewhere to stay. Of the offers he gets, he chooses the ones that look most appealing. 

It seems an incredible concept. Yet author Morimoto, a real-life person, has gained many clients over the past few years via his "Do-nothing Rental" Twitter site. Over 4,000 clients have hired him (at relatively no cost except for travel and food) for such opportunities as:

• Going to a restaurant with someone who doesn't feel comfortable going on their own;
• Watching a drama rehearsal;
• Petting a person's pet dog who loves strangers;
• Walking through the streets of Tokyo;
• Sitting with someone while they scan through dating apps looking for a husband;
• Watching someone doing household chores;
• Passively listening to people (without giving advice)

He never performs activities like other advertised  "doing something" services, such as waiting in line for tickets, running errands, give advice, etc. He judges his requests received from his Twitter account on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes he finds he dislikes the job during the experience, gets fed up with what he is expected to do, and simply walks away. He avoids anything that might be stress-inducing. He rarely performs the same situation twice unless somehow the encounter will be interesting to him the second time.

The book contains many example taken from his Twitter postings about requests, the encounters themselves, and his comments about the experience, both positive and negative. Names are kept confidential as are other key elements that might identify the requestor. 

Morimoto actually is married to an understanding wife and has a child. His wife supports his occupation and sometimes offers her opinion of potential jobs. She nixed the request to watch people have offline sex. Morimoto is obviously not the big bread-winner of his family.

Although I did think about charging fees, I gave up the idea very quickly....I didn't like the idea of an hourly rate. I hated the feeling that someone would be swapping money for my time. I prefer being paid for getting something done, for achieving certain goals -- payment by results.

At the moment, I'm living on savings. What I do isn't really a business. Maybe it's best to think of it as something I'm doing for fun (like a trip abroad I've saved up for). 

Whew! A completely unique concept that Morimoto actually has brought to reality. Rental Person Who Does Nothing is an intriguing read as he quietly, thoughtfully recounts incident after incident and the philosophy behind his decisions. Through these fascinating pages, he shows that he has achieved his "wish to live without doing anything."

People tend to be driven by a feeling that they must "do something." And once they've done it, they feel they must do more -- better and faster. But when I started connecting with people as Rental Person, I realized that a surprising number were after something rather different. 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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          (and read an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jacobs, A.J.. My Life As an Experiment.   

Jacobs becomes a human guinea pig by offering himself up to real-world experiments like outsourcing all his tasks to a company in India and joining Radical Honesty group where he is not allowed to lie. Very wry, dry, and awfully fun to read. (previously reviewed here)

Prophet of the Sandlots

Windgardner, Mark. Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys with a Major League Scout. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 1990. Print.

First Sentences:

A good fifty years ago, the St. Louis Cardinals had a Class D minor league baseball team in Fostoria, Ohio, and the shortstop on that team was a five-foot-five kid from the South Side of Chicago named Tony Lucadello.


Description:

Not quite sure why I have been reading so many baseball books lately, but each one references another, pulling me in deeper and deeper into great writing about this sport. From fictional teams (Brittle Innings and The Great American Novel) to the creating of baseball films (The Church of Baseball), to in-depth biographies (I Was Right on Time), oral histories from the Negro Leagues (The Glory of Their Times), reminiscences (Road Swing and Wait Till Next Year), and baseball columns (Jim Murray: An Autobiography), each has revealed what is so exciting, humorous, and deeply captivating about this game. 

Somehow, they have all led me to my latest plunge into the rabbit hole of baseball writing: Mark Winegardner's Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys with a Major League Scout, Where Brittle Innings was a fictionalized memoir of a baseball scout's former playing days, Prophet of the Sandlots is the real McCoy: the observations, thoughts, and decisions made by a real life baseball scout, Tony Lucadello, as recorded by the author. 

Winegardner was allowed to accompany Philadelphia Phillies' scout Tony Lucadello as he toured the midwest high school and college fields looking for talent, mile after mile, in rain, cold, and blustery days, even into the nights sometimes. Lucadello rarely sat still during these games, observing players from the outfield, first base stands, and even behind trees. 

That's how I analyze their body, by looking individually at the top front, back, right, and left sides and the bottom front, back, right, and left sides. That makes eight.

Oh, and he also constantly strolled under the bleachers and the sidelines looking for loose change, the donating his findings once a year on September 15 to the first church he sees on his travels.

Lucadello, while driving over 2.2 million miles in nine states and three Canadian provinces over the last fifty years, has signed forty-nine major league players, including Fergeson Jenkins, Mike Marshall, and Mike Schmidt. He knows what he is looking for, what players need to do to improve their chances of signing, and how to deal with parents to close a deal or present the bad news that their son will not be given a contract.

The weather in Tony's territory in March April, and May -- the critical months before the annual draft -- ranges from erratic to arctic. To have a fighting chance to see the players he wants to see, Tony gets the schedules from every baseball team in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan and plots out where he needs to go and when. 

Tony has two important pieces of advice for young players that he shares with parents who want to improve their son's chances. These already have been utilized by several of his prospects at an early age and their improvement has been significant.

1. Build a 4' cinderblock wall in the backyard. Inspired after seeing basketball hoops in every driveway, Tony felt boys should have an opportunity to groove their fielding and throwing every day, using a wall as a partner;
2. Hit 100 or more plastic golf ball a day with a bat to improve hand-eye coordination and confidence.
   

Lucadello, himself, had briefly been a baseball player as a Class D (lowest level) minor leaguer as well.

Tony Lucadello was a dirty-uniformed, clean-living little guy who never drank or smoked or swore, who always knew how many outs there were, who never threw to the wrong base, who always was the first to the ballpark and the last to leave, who never made a one-handed catch unless he absolutely had to. Not a lot of talent, really, and a build more like a jockey's than a ball player's.

In short, Tony Lucadello is an interesting, knowledgeable, personable man, someone the author feel very lucky to spend a scouting season with and glean tidbits of Tony's wisdom. The book is a wonderful insight into the man himself, the players and coaches trying to make the major leagues, and the insights he has on how to identify which player from among the hundreds that he watches has the best chance to make the next step to a contract.

And last of all, Tony is a modest man, even after 50 years of successful scouting. It was intially difficult for author Winegardner to persuade Tony to allow him access on his travels, mainly because Tony felt his story might be uninteresting to readers. It is far from that, trust me.

I had doubts, to be honest with you. Why would anyone want to read about me? I'm not famous. I don't want the attention. I'm just an old man who loves the game of baseball. I've given my life to it. And you -- maybe you [Winegardner] can help me spread the word. Maybe you can help me save the game of baseball.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

     More Book Recommendations 

          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Bishop, Michael. Brittle Innings.   

A fictional, quirky look from the eyes of an aged baseball scout about his younger years as a minor league prospect rooming with the real Frankenstein creature, the team's hard-hitting, erudite first baseman. (previously reviewed here)

 

I Was Right on Time

O'Neil, Buck. I Was Right on Time. New York: Simon & Schuster 1996. Print.

First Sentences:

Call me Buck.


Description:

Since it is nearing the end of summer and therefore the baseball season, I thought fans might enjoy this highly entertaining, first-hand account of the Negro Leagues as written by a player from that era. Buck O'Neil's I Was Right on Time offers an insider's look at and stories about the players, teams, stadiums, and fans, along with the quirks of each one as remembered by O'Neil, an actual Negro League player, featured storyteller on the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee.

 

O'Neil, using his conversationally casual writing style, takes us on his personal journey from his boyhood days playing pick-up baseball games to his eventual signing to play with the mighty Kansas City Monarchs, considered to be one of the best Negro teams ever, with lineups that included Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Rube Foster. The Monarchs were the first team to play under the lights, mounted on telephone poles which gave them a home field advantage for any ball hit into the darkness above those low-level lights. Hde later became a scout and coach in the (White) major league.

And the stories are absolutely the best, particularly those featuring O'Neil's teammate, Satchel Paige. O'Neil laughs at the events that caused Paige to always refer to O'Neil as "Nancy." O'Neil also recounts when, in the Negro League World Series with the Homestead Grays and their feared home-run hitter, Josh Gibson, Paige intentionally walked the bases loaded just to face Gibson in a critical situation to see who was the best. Or the time Paige told all his fielders to leave their positions and come to the mound while he went about striking out the side.

O'Neil writes about players with colorful nicknames: Sea Boy, Gunboat, Steel Arm Davis, Ankleball Moss, Copperknee, Mosquito, Popeye, and Suitcase. Of course, there are anecdotes about the more famous Negro League players such as Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Frank Robinson (the first major league Black manager), Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson as well as some tremendously talented, if lesser known stars like Larry Doby,  Luke Easter, Smokey Joe Williams, Josh Gibson,and Cool Papa Bell ("So fast he could get into bed after switching off the light switch before the room got dark." Spoiler: Bell had noticed a slight in his hotel room's on/off switch, causing a slight delay before the lights went black. Bell won some money from a gullible Paige for that neat trick).

 

And O'Neil clears up many misconceptions, such as that the one that Negro League players were inferior to white major leaguers. O'Neil compares all-star lineups from each league and concludes the Negro players would have a strong chance to beat their White counterparts. Also, his league did not play make-shift games in rag-tag environments with poor equipment as so often was portrayed in movies. Negro Leaguers in fact played established schedules in up-to-date ball parks, cheered on by fans that rivaled the major league parks in attendance numbers.

O'Neil has plenty of stories as well from his own later career as a major league coach and scout. I particularly gasped when, while in Mississippi scouting for the Chicago Cubs, O'Neil once got lost looking for the Jackson State-Grambling game and ended up at an unknown field where the Klu Klux Klan was holding a fund-raising rally in white robes and full hooded regalia.

As a member of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, O'Neil was instrumental in petitioning the Hall to consider including Negro League players initially not eligible for the Hall. Later, he and the Veterans Committee were tasked to come up with the historic Negro League players worthy  to be considered for Hall inclusion. Luckily, O'Neil had either played with, coached, or at least heard about most of the best men from the past.

 

But O'Neil also inserts a few examples of the prejudices facing him and these players, from restaurants to hotels to press coverage, that still go on as he wrote this book.

I still hear African-American players referred to as "articulate," as if we should be surprised a black man speaks so well. I still see a black player labeled as an underachiever, while a while player who carries the same stats is called an overachiever. Joe DiMaggio? Why, when people talk of him, they talk of his grace and his intelligence and his consistency. Willie Mays? He was "naturally gifted," as if he didn't have to work as hard as DiMaggio to be come a great ballplayer. Poppycock. From 1949-1962, eleven of the fourteen National League MVP trophies went to black men, and all of them, including Mays, Aaron, and Banks, worked damn hard to get those trophies.

But for the most part, O'Neil revels in the wonderful opportunity he had to be a part of this league and play with these men who were heroes in their communities. It's a warm, funny, honest depiction of that era, one that any fan (or anyone else) interested in fascinating stories about bigger-than-life personalities playing the game they loved.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It.  

The definitive book of early baseball in the late 1800s through the early1900s as told through oral interviews with the men who played the game then. (previously reviewed here)

The Plague and I

MacDonald, Betty. The Plague and I. New York: Lippincott 1948. Print.

First Sentences:

Getting Tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can't even remember where you were going. The important things now are the pain in your leg; the soreness in your back; what you will have for dinner; who is in the next bed.


Description:

Can a person have a deadly disease and write an in-depth memoir of the experience, yet keep a sense of humor in the narrative? Well, I'm here to tell you that Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, does just that. 

It is a deeply personal, introspective, self-deprecating immersion into the journey through the world of serious illness that begins with her getting fed up with a recurring cough and feeling weak, several doctors' diagnosis (or lack thereof), then takes us through daily life a tuberculous sanitarium from a patient who just happens to be a gifted, humorous writer.

MacDonald is the author of The Egg and I which wittily documents her life with her husband on a chicken farm with no electricity and no running water. She is clearly a survival-type person who can still keep her sense of humor while experiencing outrageous conditions.

Our family motto was "People are healthy and anybody who isn't is a big stinker.

MacDonald's parents and siblings were all extremely healthy. Her father made the children run around the block and do calisthenics to music before breakfast every day (and chew each bite of food 100 times), and a weekly ice bath, even on freezing days when they lived in Montana.

But in the 1930s, divorced and the mother of small children, MacDonald contracts tuberculous, an extremely communicable disease which at that time was usually considered a death sentence. Treatments focused on absolute bed rest in a quiet place, to let lungs recover without exertion. That meant laying around in bed all day, usually in one position, with no reading, talking, reaching, sitting up, or walking without a nurse's permission and help.

So MacDonald begins her stay at The Pines sanatorium in upstate Washington and soon learns the rigorous routine and very strict rules enforced by the doctors and nurses (one fierce Charge Nurse she refers to as "Granite Eyes"). Any deviation from this behavior is considered being uncooperative and are grounds to be sent home (it was a sanatorium that accepted MacDonald and a few other patients free of charge).

The staff at The Pines had but one motivating factor -- to get the patients well. This motivating factor, like a policeman's nightstick, was twirled over our heads twenty-four hours a day....'We are going to make you well and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,' we were told. 'Here is the line, either follow it or get out.'

That meant absolutely no deviation from the schedule and conditions that produced quiet. Day by day, truly hour by hour, MacDonald passes the time waiting for the next meal, whispering secretly to her roommates, having infrequent tests done (without her ever learning the results or any progress, good or bad), and trying to sleep during the twice daily 2-hour rest periods. Visitors were allowed for only a few minutes once a week, no more than three people at a time, and no children permitted. 

The night went on and on and on and I grew progressively colder and sadder. 'The one thing to be said in favor of life at The Pines,' I thought, as I tried futilely to warm a small new area at the bottom of the bed, 'it's going to make dying seem a like a lot of fun.'

I'm not making this memoir sound funny, I know, but believe me that MacDonald, although faced with many unfriendly people, restrictions, boredom and medical tests, retained her wry sense of the world and people around her. She records that her roommates offered her some wise words: "The first hundred years here are the hardest."

Being sent to an institution, be it penal, mental, or tuberculous, is no game of Parchesi, and not knowing when, or if, you'll get out doesn't make it any easier. At least a criminal knows what his sentence is.  

Not knowing how long she would be in the sanitarium, not ever being told whether her health was improving or getting worse, and living under the constant threat that to not follow the rules meant being sent home and her bed given to someone more willing to try to get well were challenges she faced daily. But overall, her memoir of the experience is a fascinating, entertaining, sobering, and wonderfully witty experience.

From my stay at The Pines I learned that a stiff test for friendship is: "Would she be pleasant to have t.b. with?"

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Diamond, John.  Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.  

Times of London writer and admitted hypochondriac Diamond details with humor and fear his bout with throat cancer via his newspaper columns. (previously reviewed here)

 

Welcome to the Circus of Baseball

McGee, Ryan. Welcome to the Circus of Baseball. New York: Doubleday 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

"Oh, man. I think that sumbitch is actually dead!"

 

Description:

 

Hardly the first sentence one might expect from a book about minor league baseball, but there it is. Turns out to be the thoughts of a spectator watching  an in-game entertainment act called, "Captain Dynamite.' In this act, a family assembles a make-shift coffin around the father, loads him up with dynamite, seals the lid, and then ignites the whole thing to a thunderous blast. (He does recover, walks away, albeit a bit unsteadily, piles his kids and wife into their beat-up wagon, and proceeds on to the next gig down the road.)

It's just one of the fascinatingly unusual recollections of author Ryan McGee, currently a senior writer and co-host on ESPN, about his first sports job experience as a minor league baseball team intern in 1994. His memories of the trials, tribulations, and genuine goofiness of people, events, and work demands are set down in his wonderful new book, Welcome to the Circus of Baseball.

Fresh out of college, McGee lands a job as an almost-unpaid ($100-a-week) intern for the Asheville minor league baseball team, the Tourists. This team is in the Division A league, meaning the players are most likely just out of high school, from a Spanish-speaking country, or a veteran re-habbing from an injury. For many, it is their first time away from home, cooking, doing laundry, managing money, etc. All are trying to climb up the ladder to join the major league, "The Show," although only a handful will make it.

The Asheville Tourists play in McGee's favorite stadium from his childhood, McCormick Field. It's the same field where Crash Davis (Kevin Cosner) hit his final dinger before hanging 'em up in the film, Bull Durham. It's America's oldest ball park, and once hosted Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Bonds, and many other great players. 1994 also was the year Michael Jordan tried his hand at baseball and played for the Hickory Crawdads, although he never played against Asheville. Needless to say, the Tourists sold out all those home games anyway before the season even started.
 

McGee's various jobs include providing balls to the umpires, pulling the tarp over the infield on rainy days, stocking the Dairy Queen machine with gooey mixture (with disastrous results), running the concession stand, and providing beer to the star player, even though it was forbidden by the dugout rules. He once even donned the Tourist mascot outfit, Ted E. Tourist, the bear, for the team photo. The regular mascot was a college method actor who felt he had to "become one with the bear" and therefore could not be held responsible for his actions while in costume, specifically groping a few women fans..

McGee also wrestled with the 165-lb beer kegs on Thirsty Thursdays when every drink was only $1. He noted that most fans bought two beers, then returned to the back of the line, timing it so they were finished with those original two beers by the time they again reached the counter so they could get the same order again ... repeating this rhythm for the entire three-hour game, never watching a single batter. One Thursday, 66 kegs of beer were sold, about 8,600 servings to the 4,000 fans. Predictably, all Thirsty Thursday games were sold out.) 

McGee loved baseball, but some of his expectations were trimmed when the first busload of the team arrived:

The Tourists stepped out into the shadowy concourse behind the ballpark, not a superhuman gladiators arriving to take stock of the colosseum where they would do battle. No, they unloaded off the bus like someone had spilled a stack of bowling balls ."Where the hell are we?"

Instead of observing the actual Tourist ball playing, McGee focuses on the stadium itself ("The coaches' quarters were both so tiny that it never felt like you walked into them. It was more like you were putting them on.") and the behind-the-scenes workings of what makes a minor league team work; how fans get attracted to game (see Captain Dynamite and Thirsty Thursdays references above); and who exactly were the people who contributed to or watched the final product.

A few of the quirky individuals included:

• Ron McKee, Tourists GM, who bleached the baseballs to make old ones look new enough to use in games rather than buy new balls;
• James the Mountain Man who, dressed only in overalls, would dive into the bushes behind the fences to retrieve lost baseballs for reuse, not minding the snakes and other critters who frequently bit him;
• Big Mike who repeatedly throughout the game walked away from the concession stands carrying nachos, four hot dogs, and a large drink, and usually additional items for his consumption;
• The Circuit Rider who galloped in from right field on his horse, preaching and singing Bible-related sermons;
• Macaullay Culkin who was filming Richie Rich and needed someone to throw him some pitches. Another Tourist intern made $100 for this pitching gig, but GM McKee made $300 just from renting the pitcher's screen, a widely-repeated joke.

Memorable events included when author McGee and the interns mistakenly poured bags of kitty litter onto the infield dirt to dry it out for the next day's game, inadvertently inviting hundreds of feral cats to come to the park that night to use their new facilities. And don't forget the Great Mascot Brawl at the 1994 All-star game. Truly a sight to behold.

McGee has so many more stories that I could go on and on. Suffice to say, if you love baseball, especially the workings of minor league teams, and quality humorous writing, then Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is a great choice for you.

Don't tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby. 

     - General Manager Ron McGee to the complaining intern/author Ryan McGee 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Shelton, Ron. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit.   

Humorous and detailed account of the filming of Bull Durham. (previously reviewed here)

The Church of Baseball

Shelton, Ron. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit. New York: Knopf. 2022. Print

First Sentences:
 

Bible stories were a big part of my growing up. The dramatic tales of Moses parting the Red Sea and coming down from the mountain and Jesus routing the money changers in the temple and the whole fantastic narrative still live loudly in my DNA.

Description:

If you have never seen the minor league baseball movie, Bull Durham, stop reading this right now and find that film somewhere ... NOW!  And don't come back until you have watched this cinematic gem, certainly one of the best sports movie of all time.

Ron Shelton, the screenwriter and first-time director of Bull Durham, walks us through the process of making his film in his delightfully entertaining The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit.

The book is divided into four parts: "Development" where Shelton discusses his personal history playing professional baseball and his experiences as the seeds to create the original script; "Preproduction" that details the interviewing and hiring of actors, identifying shooting locations, etc.; "Production" with the ups and downs of the actually filming, along with the challenges of costumes, lighting, and weather; and "Postproduction" when the movie actually hits the public screens and the response by reviewers (lukewarm) and public (wildly enthusiastic). 

Each stage has its unique nerve-wracking pitfalls, missteps, and obstacles which threaten to stop production. The ballpark had to be re-painted to a preferred color, the frosty breath of actors during the Durham cold weather had to camouflaged, and hundreds of extras had to be found (without pay) to fill the stands. But each trial has its own humorous moments (taken in hindsight by Shelton who probably did not find them funny at the time). He walks us through scene by scene, decision by decision, to really help us understand the entire film-making process. I only have room to present a few interesting items to whet your interest.

• "Crash" Davis, the film's main character, was actually a real person whom Shelton read about while looking through minor league records. Davis had hit the most doubles (50) in a minor league season. Ebby Calvin LaRoosh was a bright-eyed waiter who served Shelton at a restaurant with the introductory words, "Call me Nuke" (but he didn't know how to spell it when asked by Shelton). "Annie" is a generic name given by players to female groupies. "Savoy," Annie's last name, was on a matchbook that Shelton found in his pocket from a dive bar in Los Angeles.

• Costner wanted to audition for the part by demonstrating his throwing and hitting. Both he and Shelton found that they each "kept a glove and ball in the trunk of our car for reasons neither of us questioned.' Turned out Cosner was a switch-hitter with a beautiful swing;

• Throughout the shooting, the studio heads did not like Tim Robbins as Nuke and repeatedly tried to replace him. One unnamed head felt Susan Sarandon was completely wrong as well. About half way through shooting, Shelton received a phone call from the studio saying they were unhappy with Cosner's performance and they were immediately sending Kurt Russell down to replace Cosner and re-shoot everything fresh. (Turned out to be Russell on the phone making a prank call.)

• Studio producers tried, right up to the film's release, to remove the pitcher's mound scene where the players discuss the curse on a player's glove, what to get Millie and Jimmy for a wedding present, and how to align Nuke's chakras. (Preview audiences, however, on comment cards consistently rated that scene as their favorite);

• When they needed to fill the stands with extras, a production assistant contacted a friend working with the Pink Floyd concert nearby at the University of North Carolina. The band then announced to their fans that there would be a great after-concert party at the ball park, so concert-goers all trooped over to sit in the stands, waiting for Pink Floyd to show up (which they never did), and were unknowingly briefly filmed as background;

• Paula Abdul did the choreography for Nuke's bar dancing scene in exchange for a promised speaking role, a deal which Shelton did not know about and was not added to the film;

• After the film was public, Shelton met the pitcher Milt Pappas, who held a grudge for being included in Annie's speech about the worst trade ever in baseball ("Who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake?");

• [Shelton recalled]: When I signed off on the final cost of the movie, I believe we were ten cents under budget.

•  When Bull Durham opened, it faced competition from current movies including Big, Die Hard, Coming to America, Cocktail, Midnight Run, Rambo III, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It grossed $5 million the opening weekend, then shockingly grossed more the next weekend and the third as well. After 28 weeks that summer, the film grossed the equivalent of $120 million in today's dollars.
  

 

What's not to love about a well-written memoir full if eobderful stories about likeable people, while gently walking us through the steps and decisions around constructing a delightful movie? I loved it and gobbled it up in only a few reading session. Can't wait to see the movie again and remember the process, choices, fights, and joy behind each portion.  

[Writer/Director Shelton]: My interest in baseball isn't analytical, romantic, or even patriotic. I like the game -- it's nuanced and difficult and physical-- but it has a appealing vulgarity, an earthiness...

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Elwes, Cary. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride

Recollections from the star of the wonderful adventure comedy, The Princess Bride, about the making of the movie, from ad-libbed comments by Billy Crystal that made Mandy Patinkin laugh so hard he broke a rib, to the weeks of sword fighting instruction, to Andre the Giant plowing around the landscape on a motorcycle, breaking Elwes toe in the process. Delightful.

The Diary of a Bookseller

Bythell, Shaun. The Diary of a Bookseller. New York: Knopf 2021. Print

First Sentences:

[George] Orwell's reluctance to commit to bookselling is understandable. There is the stereotype of the impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor...and it seems (on the whole) to be true.


Description:

What lover of books, bookstores, and quirky bookdealers can resist reading about the ins and outs involved with the actually running of a bookstore? Certainly not I. Therefore, it is with great joy that I stumbled on and now recommend to you, Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller.

 

Bythell, is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. He is either 1) the typical quirky book dealer; or 2) simply an ordinary man facing a world of odd-ball customers who wander into his world with their own idiosyncrasies and who daily drive him almost to despair. After several years of observing his customers and reflecting on his other book operations (buying collection, pursuring book fairs, inspecting a family's inherited collections, etc.), Bythell decides to record his book life in a daily account over the period of one year to share his odd world. 

 

In this notebook, Bytgell jots descriptions of the daily actions in his store, the town and his book-buying expeditions. He records his cranky thoughts on these activities and people, plus notes each day on the number of customers, money in the till, online orders (with the number of books that were actually found on their shelves to fulfill these online orders). 

 

While this bean-counting info may seem boring, it is quite interesting over the days, especially the shop's number of unfulfilled online orders. These failures most often occur due to Bythell's worker Nicky's unique convoluted system to shelve titles. She had once filed British Trees: A Guide for Everyman, in the section "Scottish poetry." Of course, many of these books now cannot be located. This is the same bookshop worker who, every Friday ("Free Food Friday" to her), brings in food to share which she had salvaged from dumpsters.

Here are a few of Bythell's other observations:

• Any bookseller will tell you that, even with 100,000 books neatly sorted and shelved in a well-lit, warm shop, if you put an unopened box of books in a dark, cold, dimly lit corner, customers will be rifling through it in a matter of moments. The appeal of a box of unsorted, unpriced stock is extraordinary.

•  [A customer asked] "Do you remember me? I bought a book about bowling from you five years ago."

• Flo [an employee] was in today. She seems to have mastered her pout, and spent most of the day demonstrating it.
  

•  I noticed that the staple gun didn't appear to be working, so I tested it on my hand, at which point it decided to work.

•  At 10:00 a.m. the first customer came through the door. "I'm not really interested in books," followed by "Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power." By 10:30 a.m. my will to live was but a distant memory.

•  [Observing a customer reading in the poetry section] I noticed that he had removed his false teeth and put them on top of a copy of Tony Blair's autobiography which had been left on the table.
  

To me, it is a dryly humorous book through Bythell's use of deadpan observation of odd characters and situations. You feel you are perched on his shoulder as he slowly works through each day's obstacles, many caused by his own indifference to planning, avoidance of confrontation with annoying people, and general lack of seriousness about the organization and decisions faced regularly in his book business.

A thoroughly absorbing immersion into the world and people in a bookseller's world. I loved it as I knew I would. Hope you will, too.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels.   

Fictional account of a woman's perspective on operating traveling library housed in a small horse-drawn cart. Delightful, with several sequels leading her to finally open a bricks and mortar bookstore described in The Haunted Bookshop.

 

Lands of Lost Borders

Harris, Kate. Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road. New York: Knopf 2018. Print

First Sentences:

The end of the road was always just out of sight. 

 

Cracked asphalt deepened to night beyond the reach of our headlamps, the thin beams swallowed by a blackness that receded before us no matter how fast we biked. Light was a kind of pavement thrown down in front of our wheels, and the road went on and on. If I even reach the end, I remember thinking, I'll fly off the rim of the world.


Description:

Thus begins Kate Harris's Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road. It depicts one of the author's many dangerous efforts to elude unfriendly border guards in China, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India, and other countries in retracing the ancient route of Marco Polo on a bicycle.

Author Harris is a confirmed explorer. From her earliest age, she had a restlessness to her dreams. Although a gifted student in biological sciences at Oxford and MIT, her ongoing goal was to take a one-way trip to help establish a colony on Mars. She even participated in a Mars simulation experience complete with desert living in regulation space suits.

Harris, a voracious reader and researcher throughout her life, always was fascinated to read about into the personalities and adventures of early explorers like Marco Polo, Magellan, Mrs. Fanny Bullock Workman, and Alexandra David-Neel. She eventually quit her research job in a windowless lab (staring at "planktonic fecal pellets" through a microscope and recording minute changes). Then, she charted a cross-continent route using ancient maps and out-of-date atlases, grabbed her childhood girlfriend Mel, loaded up their bicycles, and set off to pedal on a year-long trip from Turkey to India, following the route of Marco Polo. 

Along the way, they live on dried noodles, stale water, and the often unusual food and shelter offered from the locals who could neither speak English (and Harris does not speak their language) nor understand what the women are doing on bicycles on these high ranges. The cyclists are continually stopped by police (who mostly want to pose with the women and try out their bicycles), pushed off pot-holed highways by monstrous trucks, and even chased by wild yaks.

As we sped down the pass, every little bump and divot and pebble on the road blurred together into a pavement of pure concussion. Such is the price you pay to reach forbidden Tibet; pain in the legs, in the butt, and in the brain, which can't conceive a coherent thought because all it knows is the jackhammer jolting of the body and bike to which it is connected.  

But through all the adventures and challenges thrown at them, the women kept up their spirits, recording their daily feelings and trials with a camera and a notebook that eventually was turned into this book. They had plenty of time to consider the world around them as well as their place and purpose in the world. And oh, the descriptions of their observations and musings are wonderous, philosophical, emotional, colorful, and truly insightful.

The night air was cool for July and laced with the sweet breath of poplars and willows that grew in slender wands beside the river. No clean divisions between earth and sky, light and dark, just a lush and total blackness. I couldn't see the mountains but I could sense them around me, sharp curses of rock. The kind of country that consists entirely of edges.

And the places they bicycled. They pedaled and groaned and camped on such locales as:

[the] Tibetan Plateau, that upheaval of rock and ice and sky, but also the Pamir Mountains, where herds of sheep with improbably huge horns dodged avalanches and snow leopards with elegance close to flight. And the Taklamakan, a shifting sands desert dwarfed only by the Gobi and Sahara whose name, according to legend in not literal translation, means 'he who goes in never comes out'....Even more compelling than far-flung mountains and deserts were the stars above and beyond them, distant suns lighting who knows what other worlds.'

I always wonder when reading books such as this which depict exploration, survival, perseverance, and challenges, just how well I might do if faced with the same situations. In the case of Lands of Lost Borders, it is clear I would have given up on the first 15,000-foot climb up a mountain of potholed switchbacks. All the more reason to admire Harris and Mel's fortitude, but only from my cozy chair.

What is the point of exploring if not to reveal our place in the wild scheme of things, or to send a vision of who we are into the universe? A self-portrait and a message in a bottle; maybe no other maps matter....After all, the Latin root of the word explorer is "ex-plorare," with "ex" meaning "go out" and "plorare" meaning "to utter a cry."

Happy reading.

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Beagle, Peter. I See By My Outfit.   

In 1965, two men decide to ride small motor scooters from New York to California (don't ask why). En route, author Beagle describes the people, environment, and culture in a witty, detailed, friendly manner that makes you want to hear every observation he is willing to share.

 

 

Insomniac City

Hayes, Bill. Insomniac City. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Print

First Sentences:

I moved to New York eight years ago, and felt at once at home. 

 

In the haggard buildings and bloodshot skies, in trains that never stopped running like my racing mind at night, I recognized my insomniac self. If New York were a patient, it would be diagnosed with agrypnia excita, a rare genetic condition characterized by insomnia, nervous energy constant twitching, and dream enactment -- an apt description of a city that never sleeps, a place where one comes to reinvent himself.


Description:

From these very first words, I loved Bill Hayes's Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  Who could not fall in love with such captivating language to describe a unique environment? Clearly, this book promised to be full of wry, thoughtful and unique observations, so I was all in.

 

Author Hayes moved to New York from San Francisco after the sudden death of his long-time partner, Steve. As an insomniac, Hayes began to wander his new city in the late and early morning hours, both observing and conversing with people who were similarly sleep-challenged.

In the summertime, late into the night, some leave behind their sweat-dampened sheets to read in the coolness of a park under streetlights. Not Kindles, mind you, or iPhones. But books,. Newspapers, Novels. Poetry. Completely absorbed as if in their own worlds. And indeed they are.

Hayes also brought along his camera, his "travel companion," during day and night city walks. He shot photos of people for his own private enjoyment. Unwilling to intrude on some intimate scenes, Hayes shot body parts that reflected the person's essence.

Couples captivated me -- on the Tube, on park benches, arm in arm on the street. Couples so in love you could see it in their faces....Their smiles were heartbreaking. I took pictures of their hands, laced together as if in prayer, or their feet -- the erotic dance that is a prelude to a kiss.

Hayes records these episodic meetings, observations, and photos in his diary, entries which he compiles into Insomniac City. And oh, the joy, hope, and humanity each piece presents to us lucky readers fortunate enough to share his everyday sights, elegant writing, and imagery. 

Sometimes I'd sit in the kitchen in the dark and gaze out at the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Such a beautiful pair, so impeccably dressed, he in his boxy suits, every night a different hue, and she, an arm's length away, in her filigreed skirt the color of the moon. I regarded them as an old married couple, calmly unblinkingly keeping watch over one of their newest sons. And I returned the favor; I would be there the moment the Empire State turned off its lights for the night as if to get a little shut-eye before sunrise.

But there is yet another part of this wonderful book besides late night observations and photographs. Hayes meets Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling author. The two men connect and become romantic partners, a first for Sacks in decades. Their loving relationship is also reflected on in Hayes' diary as he records bits of their conversations, random thoughts from Sacks, and a peak at the new life they spend together.

...last night the clock chimed,..O[liver] and I counted the chimes carefully. A big smile broke out on his face. "Oh! That's very eccentric! Earlier, it did ten chimes at four o'clock, and now, seven at nine."

We laughed how this is like having an aging parent in the house, one who's a little "dotty," gets a little lost, misremembers, from time to time ... 

I could keep on giving examples of Hayes' narrations, but I have to stop and leave so many more for you to experience. Suffice to say, I fell in love with both these men, New York City, and the beauty of descriptive writing that will stay with me for a long time. Highest recommendation.

I have come to believe that kindness is repaid in unexpected ways and that if you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York -- which is to say, New Yorkers -- will take care of you.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales.

Highly unusual cases recorded and commented on by Sacks, detailing his experiences in a New York neurology clinic depict some of his patient' symptoms and treatment, including: a man with no recollection of any events in the last sixty years; a man who cannot recognize faces (including his own); an autistic, but brilliantly gifted artist; a woman who has Irish songs from her childhood constantly running through her head; and of course, the title character who grabbed his wife's head and tried to put it on his own head. Incredible, readable, and wonderfully entertaining as you try to imagine the reality of these patients.