GAPB #12: Crime and Punishment

I love it when a plan comes together.

I also love it when I finally come up with a suitably cool ending for a cool premise I thought up for a crime novel. I can now officially start writing the thing, and hopefully it turns out well. Hell, I just hope it turns out, as opposed to the several unfinished and – in hindsight -- pretty lame material I’ve tried to write in the past. My inability to write hard-boiled material is likely due to the fact that I’m about as hard-boiled as a…uh…a really soft egg?

This is what I’m talking about. Raymond Chandler could spin analogies so witty that it would make you want to take off your pants. Agatha Christie was an elderly British mame, and yet she was the greatest mystery writer of all time. Then again, she was also anti-Semitic, so she wasn’t all peaches and Poirot stories.

But now I have my ending. Perhaps this is the first step towards my becoming the next great crime/mystery novelist. I can take my place along such modern masters of the genre as Lawrence Block, Joan Hess or Gregory McDonald. Or, failing that, I’ll simply have to write true-crime stories. Given my laziness for research, however, I’ll end up just committing crimes and then writing my memoirs from prison. My memoirs will likely start after a lengthy forward about how to live with being someone’s shower bitch, since, as I said earlier, I’m as hard-boiled as a really soft egg. I would be eaten alive in prison.

Speaking of being eaten alive, the previews for Miami Vice bite. I love Michael Mann and all, but the brilliance of the old TV show was in its innate cheesiness. It would be like if the makes of the Brady Bunch movies (two of the more underrated subversive comedies of our time, btw) had decided to play them straight. That would’ve both blown and sucked at the same time.

A ‘real’ Miami Vice movie would feature…I dunno… let’s go with Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama as Crockett and Tubbs, spouting cheesy one-liners. That’s a movie that I would’ve gladly missed since I know it would’ve been bad. But with the real Miami Vice, I’ll probably end up seeing it out of respect for Mann, and I’ll likely end up disappointed.

Also, speaking of cheesy TV, I caught the opening credits of 90210 on TVTropolis the other day, and was shocked to learn that Sex And The City’s Darren Star was also the creator of 90210. A quick check of IMDB reveals that Star also created Melrose Place to boot.

I nominate Darren Star for first-ballot induction into the men’s wing of the Woman Hall of Fame. Sure, it’s not like he’s come up with any good shows, but think of how much water-cooler conversation and enjoyment he’s created for the ladies over the years. Darren Star, I salute you.

Back-handed compliments aside, I’m sure Darren Star could come up with a great ending for a crime novel, so I shouldn’t talk.