“Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of Fantasy Football”

Rich Hanson is an out of work, mid-level auto executive from Michigan, who knows nothing about football and cares less. As a joke, his wife enters him in a nationwide “coach contest,” the winner of which gets to coach one game of the hapless Boston Terriers, who have languished in the basement of the NFL so long that they think they are -- and are treated like -- janitors. Of course, under his comically unconventional guidance the Terriers win. And win. And win. He stays for the rest of the season, becomes a national hero, and and over the course of a winning season and a Superbowl victory uses this “Chance of a Lifetime” to learn much and teach more about the meaning of success, ethics, love and loyalty.

“The Chance of a Lifetime” is part “The Natural,” part “Slapshot,” and part “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Said Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune columnist, Clarence Page, “I loved this book.  Author Dennis Wholey serves up an instructive parable for all of the Walter Mittys out there who still harbor dreams of a great Super Bowl moment in their lives.” Said poet Nikki Giovanni, “If you were my sister-friend, I’d say GO GIRL. Everyone who’s had a dream needs this book.” And no less than pioneering author Gay Talese remarked, “I’m a football fan and a Dennis Wholey fan, and Dennis’ latest book reaffirms my appreciation of both.”

Dennis Wholey is a New York Times best-selling author of a number of self-help books. He also is host of the nationally syndicated PBS international affairs television series, “This Is America with Dennis Wholey,” in which he chats with world leaders, celebrities, newsmakers, authors, journalists, and experts from all walks of life. Dennis is a born empath. His subjects tell him everything. 

He is a friend of mine, you may have guessed, going back to the mid-sixties when he perpetrated the #1 hit record, “Wild Thing with Senator Bobby,” which for one thing earned him the undivided attention of RFK for a flight from New York to Washington during which he schooled the future presidential candidate and tragic legend on how to make a record. 

And while Dennis is a friend, I have a couple of criticisms of “The Chance of a Lifetime.” As a first-time novelist he hasn’t quite gotten down the balance between description and dialogue, as a result of which there’s too much of the latter. That does, nonetheless, give the prose a kind of energy that foretells the novel’s inevitable appearance as a motion picture. And he kind of rushes the ending, addressing the readers directly. I don’t care for that technique, but in line with the dialogue it does lend a sort of immediacy.

All that notwithstanding, “The Chance of a Lifetime” does exactly what NBC sportscaster Bob Costas says, give “a whole new meaning to the idea of Fantasy Football”

Here’s an excerpt. 

http://denniswholey.com/files/The_Chance_of_a_Lifetime_Wholey_11_page_excerpt.pdf

Elsewhere in this narrative I printed my old man's description of his encounter with Dutch Schultz at the height of the Depression and in the waning days of Prohibition. Here in a 1975 column he recalls the effect of that especially ridiculous exercise in social engineering on our home town of Sayville, N.Y., lately best known as the place to catch the ferry to Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines, the gay towns on Fire Island. He was a newspaperman before me, and in many ways led a much more interesting life. Here's his piece:

Slats Thompson and the Good Ship '100 Proof'
by Joseph C. Jahn

It's been 42 years, give or take a drink, since the Volstead Act passed into blessed oblivion, but there are old timers out my way who vividly remember Prohibition's effect on their lives.

Rum Row was only a few miles off the coast, and ships that passed in the night included small vessels (local registry) whose bilges were awash with illicit bottled goods. A good deal of maritime money passed hands, allowing some blue collar workers to live in the same baronial splendor as politicians and cops.

Slats Thompson was nonplussed when he stood before his draft board, at age 35, in 1941, and volunteered for the Navy. "Have you had any sea experience," the chairman asked.

"In small boats," Slats said. 

That was modest. Slat's old speedboat wasn't called "100 Proof" for nothing during her heyday on the Great South Bay. Not only was she the fastest boat around, but Slats enjoyed 100 per cent protection from the law due to his generosity to parties of the second part.

But rum running was only one manifestation of local interest in the outside world during Prohibition. The ' worst booze Manhattan speakeasies served their customers did not come from Rum Row. It came from stills in and about my town. The odor of booze was as familiar to discerning natives as the smell of salt in the seaborne air. 

Oddly enough, just about everyone smelled it but the constabulary. "They allus seemed to have bad head colds," is the way old man Phillips explained their inability to detect the odor of ersatz Old Granddad fermenting in farm houses and barns.

The constables' vision wasn't any better. Among the things they never saw were speakeasies. And their hearing was even worse. Among the night noises they never heard was the roar of trucks carrying booze from the speedboats to the city. The free-wheeling trucks shook our houses, but never stirred the law.

These activities brought interesting visitors to town, including gangsters like Dutch Schultz, who immediately fell in love with the environment. It was an ideal place, Dutch concluded, to dispose of the bodies of members of other gangs who dast hijack his trucks.  

More than one native peered into an abandoned car to discover the remains of a hoodlum with a neat round hole in his noggin. Did they report their findings to the constabulary? Only if they were very dumb. To be called as a witness in a gangland rubout was the closest thing to suicide. It made insurance companies very nervous, too. A chicken farmer who lived north of town was painting his front porch one Sunday afternoon when two dapper gents in a long black Lincoln stopped to inquire the whereabouts of the town dump. The chicken farmer's curiosity was whetted by the presence in the back seat of a third party who appeared to be in need of an undertaker.

"Three blocks to the east and turn north," he told the visitors. When the long black Lincoln pulled away, the painter got his family into his old flivver and hauled stakes. He returned a week later to learn from a neighbor that in his absence a very deceased person had been unearthed at the town dump.

"You missed all the excitement," the neighbor said.

"The hell you say," the chicken farmer responded, and resumed painting his porch.

Published in the Long Island Press, February 21, 1975

I'm currently reformatting my 1998 hardcover, "Murder on Fifth Avenue," into a Kindle edition. I just came upon this exchange between Captain Donovan and  Sergeant Moskowitz beneath the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

"So what's with Christmas trees anyway?" Mosko asked, wondering if it wasn't time to break the spell.

"Its a nice tradition if you're not allergic to them and don't have cats," Donovan replied.

"I mean what's a tree got to do with Jesus or the Holy Land? I been to Israel a couple of times and I didn't see a single pine tree."

"This is a Norway spruce," Donovan replied. 

"I seen even fewer of them," Mosko insisted. 

"You want to know what the tree thing is about?" 

"Yeah. I figured you would know. Does it have something to do with the tree the Romans cut down to crucify him on?"

"I don't think so," Donovan said dully. "To the best of my knowledge, the Christmas tree is a pagan tradition from northern Europe. They used to bring a tree indoors every year before the snows closed in. It was a ritual to ward off evil and ensure that the trees outside would survive the winter."

"That still doesn't tell me what a Christmas tree has to do with Jesus," Mosko said.

"Nothing, okay? It has nothing to do with Jesus. What's a gefilte fish got to do with Abraham and Sarah?"

Mosko replied, "The day there's a seventy-foot gefilte fish standing on Fifth Avenue I'll tell you."

I knew a lot of currently dead rock stars.

This year marks the 44th anniversary of my becoming the first full-time reporter/photographer covering the rock beat at The New York Times and, as such, the first full-time rock journalist of any major American newspaper or other form of major media. It was a dirty job -- forget Mike Rowe's sewers, septic tanks and oil spills -- but someone had to do it. Why was it dirty and depressing? Because I've known and loved and praised, hated and insulted, been insulted by, run into, run from, abused substances, had my ears assaulted, or otherwise invaded the private spaces of a lot of rock stars who have since become deceased, ceased to be, rung down the curtain, kicked the bucket, croaked, shuffled off this mortal coil, or in one way or another joined the choir eternal. 

The ability to manipulate six wires is no guarantor of intelligence.

Put another way, many rockers’ tin ears seem to have metastasized. 

The number of dead rockers -- some of them good and talented people -- of my acquaintance stands at 33.

It's tempting to think that drugs were behind most of these abrupt departures. However, in many cases death came via largely unrelated medical problems -- heart attacks or cancer, mainly. A number did die of overdoses of either drugs or alcohol, sometimes both. Others succumbed to crashes by aircraft, cars, and skiing into trees. There also were murders and one suicide, possibly to avoid death by any of the aforementioned. This year there are three new entries, Hoyt Axton, Steve Ferguson, and Steve Paul as well as expanded commentary on many of them. 

If you're adding up and tracking deaths per band, we’re talking about three-fifths of Canned Heat, half of the Who, two-fifths of MC5, one-third of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Peter, Paul & Mary, and a quarter each of the Doors and Beatles.

They were rockers who died, died. Here's the list.

SPIRITS OF ROCK STARS PASSED [sic]

Hoyt Axton -- folk and country singer and son of the co-author of “Heartbreak Hotel.” His own writing included “Joy to the World,” the worldwide hit by Three Dog Night which became the theme of “The Big Chill,” the movie that chillingly summed up my grad school experience and the years thereafter. (You’ll simply have to guess which one of them I was.) Of Three Dog Night, Hoyt dropped a couple of tidbits on me. Both concern their renditions of his song “Never Been to Spain.” They objected to using the line “but I kinda like the Beatles” because they considered themselves competitive with the latter. But they sang it. However, they changed his line “in Oklahoma, born in a coma” to “in Oklahoma, not Arizona.” Considering the political climate in Arizona lately, I’ll take the coma. He died of a heart attack in Victor, Montana, on October 26, 1999, two years after his mother drowned in a hot tub in Tennessee.

Sonny Bono -- of skiing into a tree, January 5, 1998. Interesting man with extraordinary taste in women. You’d have to chat with her to fully understand that. 

Harry Chapin -- in a car accident July 16, 1981. Harry was one of life’s really good people, and I don’t say that simply because he was grateful enough for my career-launching review to put me on his Christmas card list and invite me to his wedding.

Jim Croce -- in a plane crash September 20, 1973.

John Denver -- in a plane crash October 12, 1997.

John Entwistle of the Who, and the only one of them who was capable of standing still -- June 28, 2002 of a heart attack also involving cocaine and a prostitute. In Vegas, naturally.

Steve Ferguson of NRBQ. He was the guitarist and the best. And is credited with their eclecticism, which included rockabilly and experimental jazz. I was an unabashed NRBQ fanboy in their late 60s years, wrote them up as often as I could, and dragged Clive Davis to see them, which got them their first recording contract. Then I dragged Hendrix to see them and they goofed on him. He threatened to throw a table at them, then walked out, shaking his head. That was the last time I saw him. I lost interest in the band after Steve left in 1970. He died of cancer, October 7, 2009. 

Rory Gallagher -- Irish blues rocker, died June 1995, of complications of a liver transplant. I should have gone with him that night backstage at the Rod Stewart and Faces show in Anaheim when he said "come have a jar" and beckoned me toward his dressing room. But I had just had a bottle with Rod and the boys during the ride from L.A.

Jerry Garcia -- died August 9, 1995 of a heroin-related heart attack doubtlessly aggravated by his lifelong taste for junk food.

Bill Graham -- legendary concert promoter and foul-mouthed pain in the ass. We had a rocky relationship but eventually made up. He died October 25, 1991, of a helicopter crash while returning from a Huey Lewis and the News concert. 

Jimi Hendrix -- died September 18, 1970, of a drug overdose. He would be humiliated by his surviving family's messy fight over his estate.

Bob Hite -- six-foot, 300-pound singer for Canned Heat, died of a heart attack April 5, 1981. He proclaimed me “a freak” at a time when it was considered high praise.

Janis Joplin -- died of a heroin overdose October 4, 1970. That'll learn her for snarling at me.

Don Kirshner -- pioneer assembler of boy bands, famously the Monkees. Of a heart attack January 17, 1991, in Boca Raton, Fla. Should have known it was bad karma to live in a place whose name translates as "mouse mouth."

Ronnie Lane -- of the Faces and Rod Stewart and Faces; died June 5, 1997, of multiple sclerosis. No doubt he had a jar with Rory Gallagher, who opened for Rod in a 1974 tour.

Jerry Leiber, August 23, 2011, of cardiopulmonary failure. Do I really  have to explain who Leiber and Stoller were? Let me just say “Hound Dog,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me,” “On Broadway,” "Spanish Harlem" and on and on. Of their songwriting partnership, Leiber said "I yelled, he played." They did it for me once, using an old upright piano, at the Brill Building, which also needs no explanation. That private performance was one of the most wonderful rock and roll moments I ever had.

John Lennon -- murdered on December 8, 1980, outside his apartment building, New York's 19th century landmark the Dakota, which also was the setting for "Rosemary's Baby." He would have enjoyed the subsequent deification.

Linda McCartney -- one-time photographer (I bought some photos of Jim Morrison from her)  -- and part-time, sort-of backup singer; I first saw her getting into the elevator at Andy Warhol's Factory. This was a year or two before she told a friend she was moving to London with the intention of marrying a Beatle, any Beatle, and snagged the prize. She died April 17, 1998, of breast cancer.

Keith Moon -- the Who's wild man drummer; drowned in his own vomit following a drug overdose on September 7, 1978, surprising no one.

Jim Morrison -- died July 3, 1971, by one account of a heroin overdose and choking on upchucked sweet and sour pork, surprising even fewer than were later surprised by Keith Moon. He would have enjoyed the postmortem idolatry, especially since current cultists are actually building a religion around him.

Felix Pappalardi of Mountain, April 17, 1983, murdered in the Riverside Drive building where I used to get my teeth fixed.

Steve Paul, legendary proprietor of Steve Paul's Scene at 46th and Broadway. It was there that many of the star-studded jam sessions you heard about took place. The Scene was three blocks from the Times and easy to drop in after work, which is to say at one in the morning. It was harder to remember what happened the next day. He died October 21, 2012, at a hospital in Queens, cause unknown at this time. I have a query out. Check back next year.

Elvis Presley, August 16, 1977, drug overdose aggravated by too many fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches. He would have been embarrassed by the deification.

Billy Preston - R&B keyboardman who became famous for keeping the Beatles from killing one another during the "Abbey Road" days, June 5, 2006, of kidney failure.

Doug Sahm -- of the Sir Douglas Quintet and a dozen other bands and a very influential figure in tejano. He talked faster than anyone I ever met. His embullience let him sing the line "you're such a groove you blow my mind in the morning" and make you like it. From his hit "Mendocino." He died November 18, 1999, of a heart attack in a hotel room in Taos. I would like to think there was a bottle of Lone Star on the nightstand.

Fred "Sonic" Smith -- of MC5, later husband of Patti Smith (no blood relation). Died November 5, 1994, of heart disease.

John Stewart, of the Kingston Trio and a long solo career that included writing "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, "July You're a Woman" for everyone, and "Chilly Winds," a tip of the cowboy hat to the glory days of folk's road songs, for his old mates in the Kingston Trio. Try his tune “Cannons in the Rain” if you get the chance. He died on January 19, 2008, of a stroke.

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary, September 16, 2009 of cancer. The only folkie to come out of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene who actually grew up in Greenwich Village. We hit it off, an iffy sort of thing with people whose performance you have to review. Mary was a keeper.

Rob Tyner -- singer for MC5, died September 17, 1991 of heart failure while driving home from the grocery store.

Dave Van Ronk - "the Mayor of Macdougal Street" and early nurturer of many folksingers, including the young Bob Dylan. Only Dave could get away with singing "Swing on a Star" in a Village club. He died February 10, 2002, of colon cancer.

Henry Vestine -- guitarist with Canned Heat; died October 20, 1997, of a heart attack.

Alan Wilson -- guitarist with Canned Heat. He killed himself in Bob Hite's backyard September 3, 1970.

Frank Zappa -- rock's cranky innovator (he was House with a guitar before Hugh Laurie became House with a guitar) and first-amendment advocate who clashed famously with anti-rock activist Tipper Gore over censorship of rock lyrics; died of prostate cancer on December 4, 1993.

Right-wing attack dog goes from Washington fame to New York morgue in a New York minute. "Murder on the Waterfront." 

"Good humor and a nice line of acerbic wit throughout … some clever turns of phrase … a fun read." -- Amazon

Murder on the Waterfront"

I just began chapter three of my memoir, which is not so much about me  as it is a retelling of the family folklore, the stories that fell off my very peculiar family's tree, titled "Told to me by a sailor who died (I’ll never know if the bastard lied)." They really were an odd lot, Forest Gumpian but not as intelligent. See one of my first blog entries, "Jimi, Harry and Me."

I wrote The Quark Maneuver in the early 1970s after having spent the first half dozen years of my career writing about music, TV, and the movies for several publications, predominantly The New York Times. Correspondingly, I was accustomed to periodic sleepovers at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, often while trying to get a foot in the door of Hollywood  screenwriting. The only thing to come of that was a script I thought perfect for Harry Guardino and Brenda Vaccaro, who were at the heights of their careers at the time. I had always wanted to write mysteries and was in love with the Inspector Maigret stories by Georges Simenon. I felt that New York City needed its own Maigret. At the same time I also was obsessed with The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (book 1971, movie 1973). Between the two I had the notion of taking a middle-aged, going-to-seed sort of character and sticking him a thriller plot, adding a girlfriend. 

That’s sort of what Forsyth did in Jackal,  minus the girlfriend, though his Claude Lebel is hardly as studiously middle aged as Jules Maigret. Nonetheless, sticking an anomalous hero in a thriller won Forsyth fame, public acclaim and an Edgar Award. So I wrote a screenplay titled The Jericho Incident, booked myself into the Chateau Marmont, and shopped it around. There was some polite applause, but no sale. I doubt that Harry Guardino and Brenda Vaccaro ever got wind of it. Finally, a well-respected Hollywood agent told me to go back to New York and turn it into a novel.  

After 18 rejections it was bought by Ballantine, the publisher that rejected it the first time (a new and clearly more visionary editor had come on board). She considered the title too obscure. We changed it to The Quark Maneuver, referring to ... oh, never mind, that would be a spoiler. Our mistake was that in the early 1970s no one beyond physicists and a few science geeks had heard the word “quark,” nor could spell it. Likewise with the name of the Harry Guardino character, Paul DiGioia, the middle-aged, paunchy and somewhat grumpy detective lieutenant. The Brenda Vaccaro role was Diana Contardo, a lost and lonely 26-year-old who ran an Italian restaurant near the East River and who, fortuitously, got her exercise by doing martial arts. So here we had a pretty 20-something girl with sad eyes hooking up with a 42-year old man who life had beaten up a bit. The should-have-been-predictable result was that she took over the.whole.book as readily as she took over DiGioia. 

Whatever, The Quark Maneuver worked. People loved the combination of who'd-have-thunk-it heroes and thriller plot (that had a bit of a stealth mystery in it). Paul and Diana tore themselves away from Contardo's ("fine Italian food") and she rode off in her white 1970 Pinto to save the world. Six years after Forsyth got his Edgar I got mine. 

I was so enamored of the team of Paul DiGioia and Diana Contardo that, in the early 1980s, I brought them back, with the names Bill Donovan and Marcia Barnes, in Night Rituals, the first Bill Donovan Mystery. In 2012, exactly 35 years since they first came to life, Paul and Diana live on as Donovan and Marcy in the Donovan books. New York has its own Maigret, and he's hooked up with New York's own Emma Peel. Here, in The Quark Maneuver, is the moment of their creation.

12-10-12

Don't ask.

This came into my Facebook account (http://www.facebook.com/WeegeesBored): 

"Mike- your Murder in Coney Island book was just the ticket for reading while we were driving home to Austin from Big Bend. That's a long drive. The only way to make the book better was if it were about 100 miles longer. And I'm not even a big mystery reader. Loved it. Made me really miss Noo Yawk …  And I have another one queued up and won't wait for a road trip to read it. I can lock everyone out of the house and read it at home." -Sara Breuer

Wow! Thanks!

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Jahns-York-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B005GSS314/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2