We begin with a brief health update. I’m infused. I had my first IV iron treatment last Wednesday. I think it’s going to work. I felt better the day after, then wrote an irksome things post in a normal time frame. My illness has made it hard for me to be as fast a writer as usual. I’m still not as prolific, which has been frustrating given how fast the news cycle is turning right now.

Shorter Adrastos: My recovery is unstalled. It’s a damn good thing because we’re going to Vegas next month for our nephew’s wedding. Almost as important for me is that I’ll see Penn & Teller live for the first time. More about the dynamic duo of modern magic later.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen wrote this week’s theme song for Steely Dan’s 1980 album, Gaucho. Until recently, I’d thought of the album as mid-level Dan mostly redeemed by the presence of Hey Nineteen. I was wrong. Gaucho took forever to make but it’s a helluva album. It only took me 44 years to figure that out.

We have two versions of Glamour Profession for your listening pleasure: the 1980 original and Steely Dan live in 2018.

I selected a Renoir painting as the featured image because what artist’s work was more glamorous than Pierre-Auguste Renoir? If that’s an illusion it’s a Grand Illusion, which is a great film by the painter’s son, Jean Renoir.

Glamour Profession is about a high class Hollywood cocaine dealer making a “special delivery to Hoops McCann.”

The drug dealer in question was also patronized by Joe Walsh and other members of The Eagles hence this more famous tune:

We begin our second act with some book chat. I’m feeling both chatty and bookish. How about you?

What I’ve Been Reading: I read mostly non-fiction nowadays. I tend to have several books going at once until one captures and captivates me.

The first book I read from cover to cover after my Mardi Gras bloodbath was A Good American Family: My Father and the Red Scare by David Maraniss.

The title says it all, but I was particularly interested in the political journey of David’s newspaperman father, Elliot. He was both a communist and super-patriot; a combination which most think is impossible. It was not for Elliot Maraniss.

This is a great book with typically fine prose from Maraniss who I have taken to calling the David Halberstam of his generation.

Grading Time: I give it an Adrastos grade of A. I’m a tough grader but not of Maraniss tomes. He’s the real deal, the shit, the bomb or whatever you want to call him. I like the next book nearly as much.

Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World by David Maraniss. The 1960 Olympiad was the first to be televised internationally. It made Jim McKay a broadcast legend and made sports superstars of Rafer Johnson and Wilma Rudolph. Maraniss covers all that as well as the political backdrop to the games and the other athletes who had their brief shining moment in 1960.

Grading Time: I give it an Adrastos grade of A. I don’t usually care about the Olympics, but Maraniss made me care in a way that not even my diminutive countryman Bob Costas could.

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making Of The American Century by Beverly Gage. Gage is a Yale historian but not what Gore Vidal derided as a scholar-squirrel. She’s a graceful writer who dislikes Hoover’s politics but writes sympathetically of his de facto marriage to Clyde Tolson. FYI, they were treated as a couple by such luminaries as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. For a time in the Fifties, Hoover, LBJ, and Tricky Dick were neighbors.

Grading Time: I give it an Adrastos grade of A. I seem to be ruining my reputation as a tough grader. I’ll be a bit tougher on our next tome.

Quantum Criminals by Alex Pappademas with artwork by Joan.LeMay. The music of Steely Dan has helped me get through my extended illness. I was convinced that the oldest and most sardonic of my docs was a Dan fan. He is not. My response was ripped from a film classic:

Quantum Criminals is a book of essays about selected Steely Dan songs accompanied by illustrations by Joan LeMay. This is the one for this week’s theme song:

That image lives up to this line from Glamour Profession: “Living hard will take its toll.”

I neglected to call Alex Pappademas my countryman until now. He’s a music writer at The Guardian and he nails most things about Mr. Steely Dan, as he calls Becker and Fagen.

Pappademas spends a bit too much time on minor controversies for my taste but thanks to him I now know that Yacht Rock is not meant to be a derogatory phrase. But I’m not sure how well it works with the Noir lyrics of Steely Dan. I think Gino, Daddy G, The Razor Boy, Kid Charlemagne, Cousin Dupree, and Hoops McCann would sink a yacht rather than cruise with rich pukes. They dig “illegal fun under sun” after all.

Grading Time: I give it an Adrastos grade of A-. I guess that’s not enough to regain my tough grader reputation. Oh well, what the hell.

The last word of our second act goes to another Steely Dan song from Gaucho:

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth Casting Edition: I’ve had Edgar Allan Poe on my mind since Dr. A and I visited the Poe Museum in Richmond last fall. His books have been adapted for the screen many times and the author has been portrayed by some distinguished actors. Below we have John Cusack in 2012’s The Raven and Joseph Cotten in 1951’s The Man With The Cloak flanking a rather dissolute looking Poe.

FYI, like Poe, Joseph Cotten was a native Virginian.

This is a song about a chick named Virginia, but I dig it, so here it is:

Your Weekly Oscar: It’s double keyboard ecstasy with a composition by OP and Count Basie.

Have I told you lately how much I love Oscar Peterson? That goes for Bill Basie as well.

Let’s take a trip to Vegas, baby.

The Best Of Fool Us: This is the final segment of the most recent episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us. It features a magician that Penn & Teller know from their days as street magicians in Philly. He fooled them.

Teller Speaks: I was tempted to call this Teller Talks, but I wanted to pay tribute to the fine memoir, Harpo Speaks.

Saturday GIF Horse: If you’re sick of Penn & Teller, you’re SOL; shit out of luck.

I posted that sharky image from The Simpsons to scare the Kaiser of Chaos. I hope it worked.

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk with some more music.

Saturday Classic: I mentioned my Basie love earlier. Here’s a live recording of Bill and the band at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967.

That’s all for this week. The last word goes to Penn Gillette & Raymond Joseph Teller.