WaPo Book Review: One Lucky Bastard: Tales from Tinseltown

"Passion without pressure" is how Roger Moore describes the kissing technique he says in his (second) memoir that Lana Turner taught him in 1956, a century or so before he replaced Sean Connery as 007. Gross. This poor girl. Gross.

Roger Moore was 45 when he made his first debut as James Bond ­ -- older than Sean Connery, who’d played the role in five films before he got fed up and abdicated, then was coaxed back and quit a second time – and approximately 110 by the last the last of his seven appearances as 007 12 years later. On the DVD extras for Live and Let Die, his 1973 debut as the superspy he and no one else refers to as “Jimmy” Bond, Moore tellingly bemoans the “30 minutes of daily swimming” he endured to develop the not-particularly-athletic physique he displays in the movie. In the three Bonds he made in the 80s, he rarely looked hale enough to survive a tryst with one of his decades-younger leading ladies, much less a dustup with punch-pulling henchpersons like Tee Hee or Jaws or May Day.

Such was the strength of the Bond brand: Audiences would buy that this guy, who looked and acted like the world’s most condescending game show host, was an elite assassin, as long as he looked good in a tuxedo. Which just happened to be Moore’s primary, not to say only, skill.

To his credit, Moore was aware of his limitations in the part, and in general. This ingrained self-deprecation is present even in the title of his new, low-impact memoir, One Lucky Bastard (which I review in Sunday's Washington Post), wherein Mr. I Hate Swimming, sorry, that’s Sir I Hate Swimming, now, allows that current Bond Daniel Craig -- the most chiseled man to play the part, in concordance with our unforgiving expectations of 21st-century action heroes, but also the best actor, too -- “ looks as though he could actually kill, whereas I just hugged or bored them to death.”

One thing I loved about writing this review is that it meant my best gal Rachel Manteuffel and I were both trying to get references to cunnilingus through the Post's Standards & Practices Dept. at the same time. You'll have to wait another week to read her story, but see to it that you do. It's funny and insightful and honest, like everything she writes, and very, very sexy.

WaPo book review: Easy Street (The Hard Way)

My review of Ron Perlman's autobiography Easy Street (The Hard Way) is in the Arts/Style section of this Sunday's Washington Post. But you can read it now. 

Perlman's frequent deployment of the phrase, "Any muthafucka but this muthafucka!" really endeared him to me. I've always liked him as an actor, though. I watched Beauty and the Beast when I was a kid because I had a crush on Linda Hamilton stemming from The Terminator, of course.

WaPo book review: Without Frontiers: The Life and Music of Peter Gabriel

I was pleased when Ron Charles, the Washington Post's book critic and one the Style section's very best writers, reached out to ask if I'd like to review a trio of upcoming auto/biographies -- that's two autobios, one bio -- by artists. The first of those, in RE: Daryl Easlea's new biography of prog-rock provocateur-turned-adult-rock-minimalist Peter Gabriel, is the Sunday Arts section and online now.

Writing it last weekend inspired me to play some Gabriel albums for the first time in many, many years. Easlea repeats the conventional wisdom about how Gabriel's last album to have any notable chart impact, 1992's Us, was the denser, more difficult follow-up to his five-million-selling So. I loved Us when I was in high school, which gives you a hint what kind of 16-year-old I was. Most of it still sounds good to me.

Julie Taymor probably hates pink even more now

“Julie hated pink. It also seemed as if she could discern gradations of red on the electromagnetic spectrum that no one else could. Humans are ‘trichromats,’ meaning we have three different types of cone cells in our eyes. However, it has been surmised that because of the XX chromosome, some women may possess a fourth variant cone cell, situated between the standard red and green cones. This would make them — like birds — ‘tetrachromats.’ These hypothetical tetrachromats would have the ability to distinguish between two colors a trichchromat would call identical.

To date, only a few female candidates for tetrachomacy have been identified. I didn’t tell Julie my suspicions. And I’m not saying she is a tetrachromat. But it sure would explain several of those extra hours in Tech, when Julie had hues finessed to a fare-thee-well. But then again, a writer will fuss over a single word, to the exasperation of a choreographer who will make endless refinements to a dance step, deliberating between differences an engineer can’t even perceive. In other words, an obsession over subtleties may just be an attribute of expertise, rather than evidence of being a mutant. Still, a scientist should check her out.”

— Glen Berger, "Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History," pp. 146-7.