“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. Continue reading
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 Continue reading
I’m currently reformatting my 1998 hardcover, “Murder on Fifth Avenue,” into a Kindle edition. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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” Continue reading
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.” Continue reading
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. Continue reading
I’m putting my money where my mouth is. Ew. No, I mean that I’ve been bragging about my Kindle books for so long I thought I should give one away. Continue reading
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 Continue reading
“Michael Jahn’s New York City Mysteries: Murder at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine” (originally titled “City of God”) went online at Amazon the other day. It’s Bill Donovan Mystery #3 and the fifth of the ten-book series to go into Kindle Continue reading
For all the whooping and hollering and “just plain folks” blather about being “Jenny from the block” or otherwise like you and me, show biz operates pretty much within the yurt. You’re either inside with the rest of the tribal chiefs and the music and the wholly uncontrolled substances, or you’re alone on the steppes staring at mastodon bones. I remember Cissy Houston at one or another rock scene powwow in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Continue reading
Somebody bought a Kindle copy of “Murder on the Waterfront!” The first one that sold! Maybe it’s so popular ’cause in it a vicious GOP strategist gets his just desserts. Or is it reverts? Continue reading
I often get asked for the exact list of Bill Donovan Mysteries. Continue reading
HYou know when there’s something you were just born to do? It’s effortless, natural, you don’t have to think about it? Babe Ruth was born to play ball Continue reading
I was thinking about the Kardashians. Thinking about this family of orange grifters is a feat not normally accomplished without several applications of Ol’ Red Eye followed by a plump couch to sleep it off on. The Kardashians are, Mom would have said, a perfect example of the rule “you are the company you keep,” in their family’s case, O.J. Continue reading
Ten years ago. It rained Monday night and early Tuesday morning, hard enough to flood the West Village apartment of my son, Evan, and his wife, Denise Continue reading
“Michael Jahn’s New York City Mysteries: Murder in Coney Island” has been published as an eBook to be read in Kindle and related devices. The price is $2.99. It’s available for download now. Continue reading
A few years back … well, 29 years back … the New York Times printed my last bylined article, allowing me to make the accurate if somewhat misleading claim that my career at the paper spanned three decades (first 1968, last 1982). Continue reading
December 8, 2010, 8:00 AM Unguarded Moments: John Lennon in the Studio By ALLAN KOZINN In February, 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Elephant’s Memory — a downtown band with good connections in the antiwar movement — set up at the Record Plant to begin recording the overtly political “Some Time in New York City” album. The sessions lasted just over a month: Lennon’s idea, at that time, was that recordings should be a form of journalism — that once he had an idea, he should pop into the studio, record it quickly and with few production flourishes, and get it out. It was also a fraught time for the Lennons. The FBI had been following them for months, and had informed the Nixon administration that they had been participating in antiwar demonstrations, were spending time with radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and were planning (however vaguely) a tour with an antiwar message. About a week before the sessions began, the government began proceedings to try to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 drug conviction in England. Just before the sessions began, Mike Jahn — then a pop music reviewer for The New York Times (and the first to hold that position), now a novelist and blogger — wrangled an invitation to attend one of the early sessions. (He believes the date was Feb. 22.) “One of the Elephant’s Memory guys — the drummer, I think — called and said that Lennon was doing his first recording work in this country and did I want to drop in,” Mr. Jahn said in an email. “I had reviewed one of their shows and we shared antiwar politics . I was more political than most of the counterculture reporters of the time, and probably knew a lot of the same people. I presume from what he said that the sessions had already begun. Although there was a lot of getting-acquainted going on in that studio. It just may be that this was the first day. No tracks were laid down while I was there (an hour or two).” At the studio, Mr. Jahn interviewed Lennon for a short column that did not appear in the paper but was syndicated by Times Special Features. He also shot a roll of film. One picture ran with his column; another was published in the rock magazine Creem. The rest have never been seen, until now. They show Lennon talking with members of Elephant’s Memory, and several shots catch him rehearsing, with the group’s bassist, Gary Van Seyoc, just behind him. After Mr. Jahn’s column was published, Lennon thought better about having granted the interview and allowing the photographs. He was in the United States, after all, on a visitor’s visa, and was not legally allowed to work — as the photos clearly show him doing. “Lennon freaked out and accused me of playing into the hands of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Jahn said. His own theory, though is that Lennon was upset with him because “after talking to him and taking pictures I went back to the control room and flirted shamelessly with Yoko. I was smitten with her. What do you expect, she was a New York artist. My crowd. She was also very cute and absolutely magnetic. I had the same reaction to her that John did.” Mr. Jahn is currently working on a memoir. We offer the photos as a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder outside the Dakota, on Dec. 8, 1980. Continue reading
Bob took part in a Reality TV show called Pawn Stars a few days ago; this is it. He’s comporting himself more youthfully and relaxedly than on stage, it seems to me. He’s 69 years old. Of course he has the advantage that the other guy is as charmless and aesthetically unappealing as a cheeseburger. Continue reading
Bob took part in a Reality TV show called Pawn Stars a few days ago; this is it. He’s comporting himself more youthfully and relaxedly than on stage, it seems to me. He’s 69 years old. Of course he has the advantage that the other guy is as charmless and aesthetically unappealing as a cheeseburger. Continue reading
As I’ve said to the point of exhaustion earlier in this narrative, I learned the ink-flinger’s trade by imitating my respectable and honored newspaperman father. Well, I was going through his papers over the weekend and found the story below. He wrote it for the Long Island Press, in the 1970s the nation’s fourth largest afternoon daily. Continue reading
Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading
Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading
Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading
