Media: NCIS – Navy Criminal Investigative Services - "Dead Man Walking"

“Dead Man Walking” first aired February 20, 2007

With a plot stripped from the current events surrounding the decidedly Cold War murder of former Soviet operative Aleksander Litvinenko, the NCIS team is asked to investigate the poisoning murder of an American nuclear inspector. The twist is the inspector himself is requesting the investigation.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspector Navy Lt. Roy Sanders (Matthew Mardsen) enters NCIS headquarters with Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray) (wearing a $2000 Armani Jacket – the spoils of his writing career) requesting Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) to investigate his murder while dramatically pulling out a clump of his own hair and showing it to Gibbs during his request. Mossad Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) begins the first segment with a strange déjà vu regarding Lt. Sanders. Ziva seems to know him from somewhere. Gibbs enters and reveals that Sanders is still being examined by NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) and his thought is Lt. Sanders is suffering from radiation poisoning, but the source is yet unknown. Ziva tries to think of where she knows Lt. Sanders.

Fearing the McGee has also been exposed, he is forced by Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) to strip completely so that he and his clothes can be analyzed for radiation. Abby wants his Armani jacket also, promising she will not harm it. Meanwhile, Ducky has a living client for a change who is able to talk back to him. Blood samples are drawn and sent to radiobiology for analysis. However, Ducky and Lt. Sanders believe that he has been poisoned with an alpha emitter (such as Polonium-210 as in the Litvinenko case) rather than beta- or gamma- emitters (such as Uranium-238 and Plutonium-239). Alpha particles can be stopped by the dead skin cells on the epidermis, but when ingested can wreck havoc on internal organs).

Ziva is ordered to accompany Lt. Sanders to Bethesda, where he is being transferred. Gibbs is hoping that this will jog her memory of where she has seen Sanders. Sanders registers what looks like flashing recognition before Ziva launches into her attempts to make a connection. Make a connect they do, but it is just Ziva’s dumb luck. The scene breaks to Gibbs and Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) visit IAEA headquarters and meet Sanders’ colleagues Mark Sadowski (Marc Vann) and Diane Russio (Kate Norby) and the harried secretary Holly Stegman (Erin Torpey). Gibbs appraises them that Sanders was poisoned with radiation. DiNozzo searches Sanders’ desk finds a picture that proves to be his sister. The radiobiology lab returned the results showing that Sanders was poisoned with Thallium no longer than 72 hours previously. This send the NCIS team into an investigation of where Sanders had been in the previous 72 hours.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Dr. Timothy Hass (Scott Klace) explains to Sanders that the two tables he is taking, Prussian Blue, has been used for many years as a poison antidote. He goes on to say that it works best as a preventative. Abby begins her analysis of everything Sanders could have ingested. While Ziva is questioning Sanders she discovers that she knows him from passing him while running in the mornings. This sets a spark between to two that appears to be ultimately doomed by Sanders’ impending death. While DiNozzo and McGee search Sanders car, they note the smell of cigars (yes, this is foreshadowing). They remove Sanders’ gym bag for analysis by Abby. Gibbs arrives and sends the pair to Sanders’ apartment to look around.

Ziva walks in the garden with Sanders and questions him about his personal life, trying to find if he has a significant other. He says there are none. Ziva begins to look doomed in her attraction to him. She asks him to detail his day, which included a trip to the local shooting range. After Sanders falls faint into Ziva’s arms, the two return to his room to find Sadowski and Russio, the latter of whom Ziva questions more closely about his personal life. When Ziva suggests that he may be gay, Russio says no and proceeds to tell her why (but it is not what you think).

Dr. Timothy Hass (Scott Klace) reports to Ziva that Sander’s radiation levels continues to increase, indicating that he is still being poisoned. As Ziva relates this to Gibbs, Gibbs’ ears perk up at the thought that Sadowski and/or Russio may be trying to kill him. Meanwhile McGee and DiNozzo go to the shooting range where DiNozzo is assaulted by the proprietor, who had previously been sued for sexual harassment. McGee found a hot source at the range, but could not discreetly identify the source. McGee notes that one common denominator is Sadowski who was at the shooting range and in the hospital room. Gibbs had him brought in and leaned on him with no results.

Abby determined that there was cigar ash among the most radioactive of the micro-debris. Thus, the cigars were spike with thallium, which was subsequently delivered by insufflation. This method of delivery is similar to that of intravenous administration as highly lipid-soluble substances readily pass into the blood stream when inhaled into the lungs. Ziva secured the cigars, and Gibbs requested all of the bank records of everyone at the IAEA. Sadowski falls ill at the same time Gibbs looks at footage from the firing range where Sadowski inhaled second-hand smoke from Sanders’ cigar, thus exonerating him. Russio emerges as a likely suspect. DiNozzo and Ziva have a heart to heart in the hospital lobby.

At NCIS headquarters, Ducky provides Gibbs his results of the checkups of all the IAEA personnel. He notes that one person had traces of ferric ferrocyanide, the chromophore in Prussian Blue, indicating that one of the staff was taking the substance to protect against radiation poisoning. Ducky pointed out the guilty party on a computer screen and referred to the party as her. After some harrowing minutes, Gibbs and McGee go to the IAEA and apprehend the secretary Holly Stegman, who had poisoned him on the $50,000 behalf to scare him from going to Uzbekistan where he was to conduct an inspection that would have found them not in compliance. The episode closes with Sanders still alive and sharing a tender moment with Ziva. Perhaps, finally, Ziva will find love.

“Dead Man Walking” is an above average episode of NCIS. While not a disappointment, it did not carry the momentum established by the recent ”Friends and Lovers” and ”Blow Back”. The next episode, “Skeletons,” promises the return of Army Lt. Col. Hollis Mann, who will undoubtedly heat things up for (and with) Gibbs.

Stars:

Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette)
Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly)
Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray)
Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon)
NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly)
NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum)
Mossad Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo)

Guest Stars:

Mark Sadowski (Marc Vann)
Dr. Timothy Hass (Scott Klace)
Diane Russio (Kate Norby)
Holly Stegman (Erin Torpey)
Dee Dee Chesney Diane Delano)
NCIS Special Agent Michelle Lee (Liza Lapira)
Navy Lt. Roy Sanders (Matthew Mardsen)

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Movie: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Based on Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind book of the same name, Alex Gibney’s documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room is a necessary reduction and simplification of the Enron scandal gratefully explained in non-business, pedestrian terms. The book Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron was an exhaustive look at the scandal by Fortune magazine journalist Bethany McLean, who penned the first story questioning the market dominance of Enron, “is Enron Overpriced,” published in Fortune, March 5, 2001. By all accounts, this was the first negative or even questionable coverage of Enron to appear in print. Authors McLean and Elkind do all but take the credit for getting the Enron death spiral started. Nevertheless, the Peter Coyote-narrated documentary is assembled in such a way to demonstrate both the arrogance and naivety of the three Enron principles, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow.

The documentary remains faithful to the book insofar as what is dealt with on celluloid is concerned. In deference to an obvious time factor, director Gibney leaves out entire sections of discussion, most critically Rebecca Mark, the Pussy Galore of Enron who wasted billions of dollars on the ill-conceived deals in Dabol, India and later with the Enron water concern Azurix. She would have added sex-appeal to the case but her absence in the documentary is no deal killer as there are plenty of other examples of faulty thinking to consume. Time is allotted to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling humble upbringings and to their ultimate academic and political successes in the early years of Enron. They are certainly not treated sympathetically, but the authors and director do take a human interest position in the documentary, carefully illustrating how otherwise good people can make profoundly bad and, in many cases, illegal decisions. Time is also given to the early Enron Energy scandal that took place in the New York offices in the late 1980s that threatened to sink Enron then, setting up the pattern of pushing the business envelope far into the red area of impropriety.

The perspective of both the book and documentary is well beyond the simple contemporary journalism surrounding the Enron story as was the case with Wall Street Journal writers Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller’s 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies That Destroyed Faith in Corporate America, which focused on the 24 days between Enron’s 2001 third quarter earnings report and the company’s bankruptcy. McLean, Elkind, Gibney spend much more time behind the stories than on the revelation of the story. The non-technical content of the documentary helps define the level of graft and mismanagement that took place at Enron, placing blame with everyone involved. It is a must see for anyone interested in corporate scandal in the early twenty-first century.


This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Media: NCIS "Friends and Lovers"

“Friends and Lovers” first aired February 13, 2007

The NCIS writers use the cheapest convenient coincidence convention to create the most delicious plot twist of the season. And it has nothing to do with the dead sailor found in an abandoned building, whose cause of death is a bit mysterious.

A couple returns to the place of their first meeting to seal the deal on marriage. While proposing, the erstwhile groom stoops to a knee in proposal and notes a dead body, replete with maggots, killing the moment. The team is meanwhile receiving knife training from Mossad Agent-on-loan Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), trainees including the delectable NCIS Special Agent Michelle Lee (Liza Lapira), who almost skewers Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) before he orders the team to Georgetown to pick up the stiff.

Things move quickly. NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) notes advanced liver disease and a high blood alcohol. First indications show death through overdose misadventure as several other agents were identified in the sailor’s blood. Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) identifies the toxic agent that killed the sailor as oleandrin and neriine, naturally-occurring cardiac glycosides similar to digitoxin, derived from the oleander plant. The sailor was murdered.

But that is just the boring subtext to the story. The Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) - Dr. Jeanne Benoit (Scottie Thompson) story hits a high note the day before Valentines Day. Over a romantic martini, DiNozzo and Benoit are interrupted by Benoit’s persistent former boyfriend, whom DiNozzo wants to help out of the picture and who Benoit wants to take care of herself. Later, DiNozzo shows bigger balls in his exchanges with Benoit than previously regarding this mysterious suitor and her reluctance to dispatch him when he discovers that he and the mysterious suitor both arranged for an island get-a-way with Dr. Benoit. Tony waffles none at all, making his displeasure and suspicion perfectly clear.

At headquarters, Ziva looks at a police sketch of a woman seen at a local bar with the dead sailor, shortly before her death. Noting a resemblance to pop star Shakira, Ziva proceeds to shake her assets in DiNozzo’s face, mimicking the beautiful Latina, while he looks for an intimate vacation for him and Dr. Benoit. City cops Detectives J.D. Morris (Michael Whaley) and John Carson (Jonno Roberts) interrupt the proceedings, bringing Gibbs a junkie with the dead sailor’s credit card. The junkie implicates himself is hinging around long enough to rob the sailor before he died.

Meanwhile, Abby and Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray) look at a laminated card found in the dead sailor’s pocket. Abby notes that a blood stain was intentionally laminated. Further investigation revealed that the killer had left NCIS a message written in blood and then cleaned, “Expect More.” Ducky determines that the oleander was administered in the alcoholic beverages consumed by the unfortunate sailor. At the same time, NCIS Medical Examiner Assistant Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and NCIS Special Agent Michelle Lee are playing grab-ass beneath a table.

Gibbs wants to search the private club where the sailor had been in attendance but has the jurisdictional problem of not being able to get a warrant through detective J.D. Morris. Gibbs takes the problem, with NCIS Special Agent Michelle Lee, to NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly) and receives no satisfaction. DiNozzo identifies the strange woman last seen with the dead sailor. DiNozzo and detective John Carson strike up a relationship while investigating a case. Carson just lost a girlfriend and DiNozzo has gained one. The circumstances, while depicted as unassociated, are weirdly intertwined. The exchange while viewing a stake out is foreshadowing. The two prove to be kindred spirits and strike up quite the budding relationship.

Abby identifies the blood on the laminated card as that of a woman who was murdered some months ago. She turns out to have been poisoned with oleander. An investigation of the crime scene evidence reveals a planted bloody footprint containing a covert message on the sole of the boot. When photographed and folded, it reveals the message, “Dead Whore.” The team has a serial killer.

The team still has no legal way to enter the club and the security is hip to the city’s attempts to infiltrate, not allowing any agents in. The team works their collective way around this problem by sending in McGee under his pen-name Tom E. Gymcity (Deep Six) with Ziva, Abby and Lee, all in heels. They are to locate the missing woman last seen with the dead sailor. Jon Carson notes the woman in the alley. She presses the head of the clubs security for money not to tell the authorities that the club was involved in the two known murders. The security chief breaks her neck and is met with the NCIS team and gunfire is exchanged. The security chief and girl lay dead and John Carson collapses with a gunshot wound to the chest. DiNozzo gives aid until Carson expires.

The bloody boot print is traced to the dead sailor, who turned out to be the murder of the girl whose blood was left on the card. The final scene shows DiNozzo asleep in Benoit’s sofa and Benoit deleting one last email message from her persistent suitor, who has finally accepted that she is gone. It is a picture, which she opens before deleting, showing her and a smiling John Carson, disappearing into the ether.

While the writers fooled around with passable scripts for the better part of the season, they have finally arrived in living color. A season climax is looming and we can see it beginning to take shape. The story line is developing in such a way that we should expect a renewal for next season.

Stars:

Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette)
Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly)
Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray)
Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon)
NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly)
NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum)
Mossad Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo)

Guest Stars:

Matt Barrows (Daz Crawford)
Mary Elizabeth Donahue (Debbie Campbell)
David Cross (Brady Smith)
Lisa Delgado (Corri English)
Frank Holtz (Dean Cechvala)
Detective J.D. Morris (Michael Whaley)
Dr. Jeanne Benoit (Scottie Thompson)
Metro Police Detective John Carson (John Carson)
NCIS Special Agent Michelle Lee (Liza Lapira)
NCIS Medical Examiner Assistant Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen)

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Literature: Beethoven - The Universal Composer (Eminent Lives) by Edmund Morris

Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Edmund Morris is perhaps best know for his detailed biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) and Theodore Rex. But in Beethoven: The Universal Composer, Morris heeds the call of editor James Atlas and HarperCollins for a contribution to The Eminent Lives Series, which currently contains biographies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Sigmund Freud, and Alexis de Tocqueville each written by expert biographers. Morris writes on no less an historic figure than Ludwig van Beethoven, the titan of Western Music.

Morris, a musician and music scholar, has studied Beethoven for fifty years. He distills in that most British fashion, the life of the great composer, focusing equally on Beethoven’s life, art, personal and professional relationships, health, and place in the history of music. Morris deftly characterizes Beethoven’s place among contemporary and near contemporary composers thusly:

“Of all the great composers, Beethoven is the most enduring in his appeal to dilettantes and intellectuals alike. Bach and Mozart had their periods of misapprehension—the former mocked as passé even in his own lifetime, the latter miniaturized by the Victorians. Handel, by contrast, was giantified, but as the composer of Messiah mainly, at cost to his operatic achievement. Haydn—Beethoven’s teacher—is admired more by connoisseurs than by the general public. Schubert was still being caricatured as an idiot-savant songster long after World War II. Brahms has never gone down well in France; Bruckner is a minority taste outside the German-speaking world; and Sibelius, who once seems sure of a seat on Parnassus, has been replaced by the masturbatory Mahler…” That certainly hits the high points.

Beethoven—a name so big he need be known only those three syllables. Lesser gods were known by one name before him, Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle and even lesser ones than that after. Morris captures this bigness without hyperbole if such an exaggerated descriptive can be applied to such a larger-than-life talent. Morris carefully navigates the composer’s childhood and adolescence, focusing on Beethoven’s paternal grandfather, Ludwig, as inspiration more than his drunken and abusive father, Johann. Morris details Beethoven’s first publications and evolution toward both the Eroica and deafness. The writing begins to gain momentum when Morris juxtaposes the despair of the Heiligenstadt Testament with the music composed during and shortly thereafter Beethoven’s stay in that rural setting north of Vienna. It continues to speed to the famous Third Symphony, where Morris describes the effect of its performance at the Lobkowitz Palace:

“Anyone can walk into the second-floor concert hall and having first gotten used to its disconcerting smallness, imagine two fortissimo chords of E-flat major exploding around the room. They were cannon shots of a new symphonic language, remarkable not for their mere loudness…but for a discharge of energy that almost immediately drove the E-flat in the low strings down to a C-sharp, a pitch so far removed fro the tonic that it seemed a miracle that Beethoven could modulate back home only twelve bars later.”

The initial failure of Fidelio is ruminated on at length, ending the unpleasant segment with a description of Beethoven’s December 22, 1808 concert, where the composer unleashed on a naive public his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Fourth Piano concerto, portions of the C-major Mass and his Choral Fantasy all to the tune of four hours of music. The concert went poorly and Morris quotes Mark Twain, that it would be merciful to draw, “the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.”

The “Immortal Beloved” is addressed as well as the death of Haydn, the meeting with Goethe, and the family strife in the Composer’s efforts to gain guardianship of his brother Casper’s son, Karl. Clearly, Beethoven was quite mad during this period as evidenced by his paranoid behavior and bad temper. His musical output declined as well as his health, primarily due to chronic hepatic disease resulting from fulminating ulcerative colitis. It was 1815, and the music was indeed running out of the composer. Morris notes that Beethoven, in a spasm of creativity, jotted down four bars that would ultimately become the fugal ending of his future masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven emerged slowly from his personal strife into what is called his “Third” and final creative period. The beginning of this period is debatable, but it more than likely began with the composition of the thirty-three “Diabelli Variations.” This last period produced the grand Missa Solemnis, the last five string quartets, the last five piano sonatas, and the most sublime the Ninth Symphony. This is rarified music to be sure. Morris describes the latter:

“It was [Beethoven’s] downbeat, therefore, that produced the most revolutionary sound in symphonic history: a long, hovering, almost inauditable bare fifth on A, seemingly static yet full of storm. High over this cloud layer, like reflections of distant lightening, a series of broken fifths dropped pianissimo and very slowly. They repeated themselves, no louder, while the hovering fifth prevented any sense of acceleration.”

An astute listener does not need to read music to understand what is happening. It is as perfectly obvious as it is revolutionary. This is the pinnacle of Western Musical Thought, well described in words. All music was permanently changed with the Ninth Symphony. Not Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, or anyone thereafter produced such music. Author Morris not only presents with crystal clarity, he does so in a way beyond argument. Beethoven: The Universal Composer is a grand introduction to Beethoven before one embarks on Thayer or Solomon.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Media: NCIS "Blow Back"

“Blow Back” first aired February 6, 2007

Could anyone play a dangerous foreign (never mind the nationality) operative with better than and with the effortlessness as Armand Assante? Doubtful. NCIS is graced with Assante’s virile presence, ever so brief, in “Blow Back.” The journeyman actor plays the mysterious arms dealer whose code name is "La Grenouille" (The Frog). His presence and the revelation of several side relationships marks the best, most integrated NCIS episode of the 2006-2007 season.

The story begins with the apprehension and kidnapping of an Israeli arms intermediate, Eli "Goliath" Lisack (Assaf Cohen) by mysterious forces that turn out at the end of the segment as Special Agent Anthony "Tony" Dinozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Mossad Agent-on-loan Ziva David (Cote de Pablo). Lisack, having been sedated in the kidnapping, awakens on a small jet plane with DiNozzo and Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), where he is relentlessly taunted by Gibbs and DiNozzo, who tell him a variety of tales about their destination. Ziva enters the cabin and stops short of issuing Lisack a now famous NCIS female ass kicking for being a treasonous Israeli. Just when Lisack thinks he is going to be turned over to a foreign concern to be disposed of, he finds himself deplaning in Washington DC. En route, Lisack gives up rogue American arms operative with former ties to national intelligence, Charles Harrow (Fred Tate), who, as Lisack reveals, has agreed to sell the U.S. Navy’s intelligence software, Ares, to the highest international bidder.

At NCIS headquarters, Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray) and Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) discover more information about the mysterious Charles Harrow. Discovering his address, Gibbs sends Ziva and McGee (couldn’t find DiNozzo, who was wooing the comely Dr. Benoit on the cell phone) to Harrow’s address. DiNozzo and Gibbs begin scouring intelligence about Harrow and stumble upon a Trent Kort (David Dayan Fisher) who turns out to be a suspect that NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly) had DiNozzo watch in a previous episode. Gibbs notes the surprise on DiNozzo’s face at seeing Kort and asks him if he knows Kort. DiNozzo lies to Gibbs.

Visibly shaken, DiNozzo barges into the director’s office while an assistant is tending to the Director’s broken bra strap, the ensuing conversation can only be described as titillating. Getting down to business, DiNozzo informs Shepard of his discovery. Shepard is curious as to why this man was not identified earlier than now (a keen bit of foreshadowing noted). DiNozzo is expresses his fear for having lied to him. Gibbs is brought into the discussion, making the scene more awkward than the broken bra strap. Shepard asks Gibbs to call off Ziva and McGee and he toys with her. She loses her temper and directly orders Gibbs. In the meantime, Ziva and McGee are hot on the hunt. They just begin to apprehend Harrow when they are called off by Gibbs and ordered to only follow, but not approach him.

Back at NCIS, Gibbs and Shepard have a spirited discussion of Shepard’s use of DiNozzo, the Director chiding Gibbs for having quite. Gibbs brings up the distant past with Shepard and Paris, prompting the Director, in a beautifully choreographed scene of sexual tension, to pull rank on Gibbs. DiNozzo is monitoring the bidding on Ares, identifying an Irish national as one the bidders. Tony expresses his regret to Gibbs for having lied to him. Gibbs is equivocal. Ziva and McGee have their cover blown and set out on a foot chase with Harrow, who runs up a set of stairs, experiences a myocardial infarction, and promptly dies. The Director proves unimpressed with the loss of her most valuable intelligence asset.

Shepard completely loses her shit with her staff, an experience only intensified by Gibbs’ insolent chiding. Gibbs suspects that Shepard’s interest in Harrow has nothing to do with Ares. Ziva and DiNozzo are dispatched to Harrow’s house to recover anything that may look like Ares. Gibbs approaches the Director for some answers regarding this entire case. Shepard reveals that in the past she knew La Grenouille (Armand Assante) and that something personal is amiss. Ziva and DiNozzo return with the goods to NCIS headquarters and Abby and McGee find Ares among all of the stuff. The team determines when and where Harrow was supposed to meet La Grenouille (with highest bidder for the Ares program) and then realize they no longer have Harrow to make the meeting. NCIS is in need of a certain late-sixties English gentleman.

Enter NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum), who is tapped to conduct the exchange with La Grenouille. The team is assembles replete with the sniper team (Archangel) of DiNozzo and Ziva (Ziva as marksman). Ducky meets the operatives and turns over the software. He is then approached by La Grenouille with whom he converses in French about Italian opera. They seal the deal in Ducky’s car, drinking 200-year old cognac. Ducky finds the poisonously urbane La Grenouille charming who reveals his name as Rene. To help Ducky cover, he wears an earwig and is directed by McGee over the technical points. Before La Grenouille departs, Duck presses him for payment (which is in diamonds). As La Grenouille ascends into the plane, Shepard is asked by Ziva to give the kill order. Shepard receives a 911 call on her phone. She calls down Ziva and reveals that the CIA is in deep cover on the plane with La Grenouille, ostensibly in the guise of Trent Kort.

By ten lengths is “Blow Back” the best episode of the season. Finally NCIS writers have quite farting around and begun a story line with meat. What propel episodic shows are questions. What was Shepard’s relationship with La Grenouille? What is Shepard’s relationship with DiNozzo? What are Shepard’s feelings toward Gibbs? Where is DiNozzo going with his relationship with Benoit? Where does Ziva, who is now a third wheel, fit in? When will McGee and Abby re-consummate their relationship? “Blow Back” shows NCIS getting its traction and accelerating toward the season’s end.

Stars:

Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette)
Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly)
Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray)
Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon)
NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly)
NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum)
Mossad Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo)

Guest Stars:

Cynthia Sumner (Stephanie Mello)
La Grenouille (Armand Assante)
Trent Kort (David Dayan Fisher)
Martin Quinn (Corey Stoll)
Charles Harrow (Fred Tate)
Nick Hurley (Jim Parrack)
Charles Harrow (Fred Tate)
Max Phillips (David Batiste)
Regine Smidt (Sandra Hess)

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Literature: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Audiobook

Considered with Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury may rightly be considered William Faulkner’s masterpiece. The two southern Gothic stories share the characters of Quentin Compson and Shreve in an overlapping of story lines. The Sound and the Fury was first published in 1928 but did not gain popular attention until 1931, when Faulkner published perhaps his most commercially minded novel, Sanctuary. Richly complex, The Sound and the Fury is considered finely crafted, displaying all of the elements of exceptional fiction writing. For this reason, the book is included in countless college and university curricula where students are exposed to its complexity too early for their understanding.

To this reader, Faulkner was never as accessible as when narrated. A number of years ago, I listened to the tale of Joe Christmas in Light in August (1932). Faulkner wrote in an early twentieth century cadence heavily influenced by the Southern African-American vernacular. Reading this is often challenging enough even not considering the stream of consciousness narration often employed by the author. A good narration goes a long way in clarifying the story. Such is the case of Grover Gardner’s reading of The Sound and the Fury.

Gardner’s voice is captured against a paper-dry aural backdrop with no compression or reverberation used. His ability to shift between accents, patois, and vernaculars is seamless with little or no bleed through. This dry sound is well suited for Faulkner’s story of the post Reconstruction decay of the Southern Aristocracy. Gardner’s best reading is of the April 6, 1928 chapter narrated by the bitter Jason Compson IV. Gardner captures Compson’s black humor and insincerity perfectly. He is equally up to the task for the Benjy and Quentin sections, capturing the white heat of thoughts and memories fleeting by faster than images can be mentally integrated and understood. Literary criticism would do well to focus on these sections in comparison with the words of Christ in the Gospel of John shortly before His Passion. Christ speaks in metaphor and allegory in an almost ethereal manner very much in keeping with those motifs (shadow and light) employed by Benjy and Quentin in their fractured narratives.

Simply listening to a narration of The Sound and the Fury does not necessarily substitute for actually reading the book. A story so complex requires study. Faulkner does not make things easy for the reader and this approach is anathema to our Twenty-First Century tendency to fast culture consumption with little consideration. This story requires the reader to employ all means necessary to understand the story and the manner in which the story is told. While not a substitution for reading, the narrated book does allow the reader to better understand the rhythm of Faulkner’s writing, aiding in the textual reading.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Literature: Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald

This review concludes a survey of a quartet of books devoted to a general treatment of the Enron Scandal. At 4:28 AM on December 2, 2001, lawyers for Enron filed for bankruptcy protection via Internet through the United States Bankruptcy Court in New York. At the time, Enron’s was the largest corporate bankruptcy to be filed, this after claiming $111 billion in 2000. Enron claimed debts in the tens of billions of dollars at the time of the bankruptcy filing. Enron’s graft and subsequent loss in their bankruptcy would be dwarfed by that WorldCom just eight months later on July 21, 2002.

Unlike WorldCom, which employed standard accounting malpractice, Enron set a new standard of graft by the misapplication of “mark to market” accounting (accounting for multiyear revenues in the first year of contract, no accrual accounting) advocated by Jeffery Skilling and the Andrew Fastow off-the-books special purpose entities to shift debt off of Enron’s books, making the company look better to investors. These illegal activities, coupled with the intense money-losing fiascoes of Rebecca Mark in Enron International and Azurix and Ken Rice in Enron Broadband and Enron’s fate was all but sealed early.

Since the dust settled from the Enron Bankruptcy, many books have been written trying to explain, with differing levels of success, the course of events leading to the energy company’s demise. Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind concentrated on the inattention of CEO Ken Lay, the aggressive accounting of Jeffery Skilling and Richard Causey, the pornographically poor judgment of Rebecca Mark, and, necessarily, Fastow’s shell entities. This book was well-researched and fairly unbiased.

Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron by Robert Bryce, a Houston investigative reporter, is anything but unbiased. This is a beautifully jeering account, from a journalist’s perspective, of emotionally-stunted geeks who struck it rich and were still not pleased. Pipe Dreams focuses mostly on Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling, while giving the necessary attention to Fastow and the ultimate giant killer. Also emphasized was the government and political relationships that existed between Enron and the Bush Family.

Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron by Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins gives an insider’s view of what happened at Enron. Sherron Watkins was the Tomball, TX whistle-blower who first expressed concern to Ken Lay regarding Enron’s questionable accounting practices shortly after the resignation of Jeffery Skilling as CEO in 2001. Her memos were the beginning of the end. This book concentrates on Watkins and her relationship with Fastow and his lieutenants at Enron.

Now, add to this group the best written of the bunch, Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story. Eichenwald, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, previously wrote books on The Prudential Securities scandal (Serpent on the Rocks) and the Archer-Daniels-Midland price-fixing debacle (The Informant: A True Story). Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story is the result of intense interviews and research and is written in an engaging narrative voice that adds to the natural page-turning quality of the Enron story.

Unlike the previously mentioned books, Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story concentrates closely on Andrew Fastow and his special purpose entities that are credited to the final insolvency of Enron. Also well treated were the rolls of Michael Kopper, Treasurer Ben Glisen, and chief accounting officer Richard Causey. Sherron Watkins receives mention only as the memo writer and one hero, Vince Kaminsky, risk modeling analyst who was one of the loudest voices crying in the wilderness.

But is ultimately Fastow who receives the most attention. Great detail is provided regarding his side deals names South Hampton, Chewco, Jedi I and II, LJM1, LJM2, the Raptors, and Braveheart. As delicately as possible, Eichenwald presents how the accounting surrounding the four side deals know as the Raptors endangered Enron, as well as how the unwinding of these deals drove a stake into the heart of the company. Once the Raptors went bad, because of built-in stock price and trading level triggers, the remaining deals also unraveled. Between August 2000 and December 2001, Enron’s share price dove from $90 to less than $0.50.

Eichenwald concentrates on the disconnect between Ken Lay and his entire company, Fastow and his cohorts and detractors, and the corporate ignorance of cash flow in deference to deal making and revenues. The author concentrates on the Sophistry practiced by Lay when in communication with the Security and Exchange Commissions, Congress and three presidents. This book is so well written that it could easily be a suspense thriller in the guise of The Bourne Identity to those readers with a healthy business and accounting education. In fact it is only the esoterica that prevents this epic story from being a blockbuster. Like all of the mentioned books, the Enron circumstances following the Sherron Watkins’ memo naturally accelerate as Enron enters its death spiral and finally succumbs to Fastow’s vice.

I stop short of endorsing a single one of these books to the exclusion of the others. Enron was a phenomenon so big that its story could not be told in a single book. I would suggest that the reader first read either Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron or Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron before tackling Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, but surely read at least two of these books.

Since the publications of these books, the other shoe has dropped for the majority of the principals. So, what happened to the major movers and shakers in the Enron saga? Here is a list of those characters most prominent in these four books about Enron:

Ken Lay, chairman and CEO: Was found guilty on six counts of conspiracy and fraud on May 25, 2006, was to be sentenced, along with Jeffery Skilling, October 23, 2006. Lay died of an acute myocardial infarction while in Colorado, July 5, 2006. His conviction was vacated October 17, 2006, due to his death.

Jeffery Skilling, president (1997-2001), CEO (2001): On May 25, 2006, was found guilty on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. Skilling was found not guilty on nine counts of insider trading. Skilling was sentenced on October 23, 2006 to 24 years and 4 months in Federal prison, which he began serving December 13, 2006 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, Minnesota.

Greg Whalley, president (2001): Considered “One of the Luckiest people in Houston” by CNNMoney.com for not being called to testify in the Lay-Skilling Trial. He was last working for Centaurus Energy, the Houston hedge fund founded by John Arnold, who worked under Mr. Whalley at Enron as a natural gas trader.

Andrew Fastow, CFO: On January 14, 2004, Fastow pled guilty to two counts of wire and securities fraud, agreeing to serve a ten-year prison sentence and an informant cooperating with federal authorities in the prosecutions of other former Enron executives in order to receive a reduced sentence. Fastow was sentenced to six years, followed by two years of probation and is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana.

Michael Kopper, head of special projects: Kopper was the first Enron executive to plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy. He reported to a Beaumont, Texas Federal Institution January 30, 2006 to begin serving a 37-month sentence.

Richard Causey, CAO: Richard Causey was indicted on January 22, 2004 for wire fraud and conspiracy charges. Causey originally pled not guilty, but on December 28, 2005, entered a guilty plea and agreed to testify against Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling in exchange for what ultimately proved to be a five and a half year prison term at the Federal Corrections Facility at Bastrop, TX.

Ben Glisan, Jr., treasurer: Ben Glisan pleaded guilty September 10, 2003 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Glisan spent time in two federal prisons in Texas — one near Bastrop, the other in Beaumont. He was ultimately confined to his Houston home under house arrest, his sentence concluding in January 2007.

J. Clifford Baxter, executive vice president, Corporate Development: Allegedly shot himself in the head on January 25, 2002 in his black Mercedes-Benz in Sugar Land, Texas.

Lou Pai, CEO, Retail Energy: Made out like a bandit to the tune of $270 million six months prior to Enron’s meltdown…by the skin on his chinny-chin-chin. Pai now raises horses in Sugar Land, Texas.

Rebecca Mark, CEO, International Division & Azurix: Made out like a bandit in spite of her questionable judgment that led to Enron’s staggering losses in Dahbol, India and the aftermath of Azurix. She operates cattle ranches in Colorado and New Mexico.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Literature: Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield

“For those interested in reading abut the Rolling Stones’ journey through America in the summer of 1972…a book about that tour is still in print.”

What Robert Greenfield is referring to at the end of his new Stones tome, Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones is his previous one, S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones. Greenfield goes on to say:

“To be sure it reads nothing like this one.” That may be the understatement of the year.

Greenfield’s account of the circumstances surrounding Exile On Main St. and its recording at the Villa Nellcote is at best effete and at worst an incredible waste of time. Written as arrogant nostalgia, the author does nothing to illuminate the proceedings, only make them more shrouded in half remembered possibilities and partial truths. He only casts the sessions in a pseudo-romantic sepia tone of cheap French Impressionism disguised as elegantly wasted decadence. Relying wholly on interviews and past publications, including the group’s drug connection, Tony Sanchez’s perniciously yellow Up and Down With the Rolling Stones, Greenfield cobbles together a flawed narrative sounding like a drunk and verbose Truman Capote, down in his cups shortly before his death.

Perhaps the only clear truth contained in this book is what ego-centric miscreants Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg were. Genius or not, Keith Richards conducted everyone around him like a dysfunctional symphony, blissfully wasting everyone’s time and money. Through the looking glass, Greenfield casts Mick Jagger as instigating victim, Mick Taylor as androgynous innocent, and Bill Wyman as oversexed pederast. Gram Parsons comes off a pampered bumpkin savant toyed with by the rest of the entourage, while Stephen Stills is depicted as a course Texas Rube. Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones uses every device to propagate the myth of Rock aristocracy and the Romantic ideal of the artist (Keith Richards) as (anti)hero and does so with copious tired allusions to song lyrics that are just lame. The sum total is that this book is a bore.
Greenfield is not above playing academic as he takes on other authors by correcting their 30-year-old mistakes. On page 59, Greenfield chides:

“(Memo to Stephen Davis, author of Old Gods Almost Dead: the 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones: It was not, as your incorrectly wrote in your book, the ‘overweight, glamour-deprived Gram Parsons…It was Stephen Stills.’ Next Time you want to check a fact about the Stones, please feel free to call me in the office.)”

On the very next page, Rolling Stones expert Greenfield writes:

“In a week’s time when Sticky Fingers is released…Featuring classic songs like “Bitch,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Jumping Jack Flash…”

“Jumping Jack Flash?”

The last that this humble writer understood, “Jumping Jack Flash” was originally released as a single in 1968 during the preparation of Beggar’s Banquet, four years before, and never appearing on, the release of Sticky Fingers. That is a woeful gaff to make on the very page following a hissing diatribe against the same error by another author. But then again, I am sure that this was an editorial oversight on the part of Greenfield’s publisher, Da Capo Press.

Not.

Sadly, Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones is a historical disappointment that Greenfield dispatches as “Rock writing” versus “Rock criticism.” In that argument, Greenfield approaches closely the literary genera promoted by the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, that is to say, fantastically fictional history. The greatest casualty here is the album itself. Exile On Main St., perhaps coupled with Sticky Fingers arguably represent the greatest output of Rock music ever. Arguably because there are Beatles fans, joined at the hip with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band who would beg to differ. The recording could have been better served and has been. I recommend the slim Continuum volume Exile on Main Street by Bill Janowitz.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007

Literature: S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield

The recent publishing of Robert Greenfield’s Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones warrants a reconsideration of his previous book on the subject of the Rolling Stones, S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones. Chronicling the Rolling Stones 1972 U.S. Tour, S.T.P. (Stones Touring Party) was originally published in 1974, experienced and written while still close to the source. The tour was undertaken in support of the recently released Exile on Main Street.

Chronologically, S.T.P. occurs three years after Stanley Booth’s account of the controversial 1969 World Tour The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, roughly buffeted between the drowning death of Brian Jones in July 3, 1969 and the murder of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert, December 6, 1969. Discographically, the period in Booth’s account encompasses the releases of Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, and the recording of Get Yer Ya Yas Out and Sticky Fingers. There was no formal would tour to promote Stick Fingers and its production overlapped that of both Let it Bleed and Exile setting up the 1972 tour. Reportage-wise there is no account for 1970 through ’72. That is until Greenfield’s new Exile.

S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones is an account of what many consider the greatest Rock and Roll Tour in history. A bit of hyperbole, to be sure, but I suspect that it was the Rolling Stones, swaggering into their decade, which set the tone for Rock and Roll excess. Exile on Main Street was released on May 12, 1972. Rehearsals for the tour took place in Dallas, Texas. The tour began June 3, 1972 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver British Columbia and officially ended July 26, 1972 in at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There were 48 shows between these dates and added American concert dates.

Greenfield begins S.T.P. where Booth leaves off with The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, at Altamont. He details the Stones preparations for the tour and revels in the excess of the tour itself. Greenfield relies mostly on interviews and his writing largely lacks the immediacy Stanley Booth had actually traveling with the band. But, alas we have no better guide and like Holy Scripture, how else can a myth be born? While the Rolling Stones were at their “elegantly wasted best” during the 1972 appearances, they were more controlled than in the 1969 set of concerts. During that tour, the band was feral, slashing through shows, some brilliant some utter trash. Bootleg live recordings from the period bear this out. On any given night, the Stones could create the most primal and essential music and the next night they would play like a sloppy drunk garage band standing in their vomit. The band perfected its hedonism.

By 1972, much was the same, but much had changed. The band ran a bit tighter ship. The true star of the shows was the Exile material. “Rocks Off,” “Happy,” “Down the Line,” “Tumblin’ Dice,” and “Sweet Virginia” were all performed live to great acclaim. Exile on Main Street was released amid what could only be considered a futuristic promotional process. The Stones were tax exiles in the South of France where, at the Villa Nellcote rented by Keith Richards, the band created perhaps the masterpiece of Rock music. It was not view so at the time, but then again time provides the hind sight to consider such things.

Greenfield’s account is close to the source while not being in the middle of it. The author has been taken to task by critics for having relied on too many second and third sources. This is perhaps best as those summer months in 1972 were spent in a warm heroin haze that has taken on a faded color photograph tone over the past 35 years. In a myth, the circumstances need not have happened to nevertheless be true.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2007