Starmaker—Life as a Hollywood Publicist with Farrah, The Rat Pack and 600 More Stars Who Fired Me by Jay Bernstein as told to Larry Cortez Hamm with David Rubini (ECW Press)

For a superstar press agent, Jay Bernstein’s timing is way off in releasing this book just now. For one thing, he’s dead—the memoir was finished by friends and family, who apologize at the end of it for all the cool stories from Bernstein’s half-century Hollywood career which aren’t in the book because he never committed them to paper.

Bernstein represented some of the biggest celebrities of the ‘70s, but those clients—predominantly Farrah Fawcett, her husband Lee Majors, and Three’s Company’s Suzanne Somers—don’t have a different cachet now.

If Bernstein could’ve revealed then what he reveals now, it would have changed a lot of impressions about these stars, whom he guided through.

Bernstein wasn’t a mere observer. He shaped the public images of his clients and advised them on major deals and lawsuits to such a degree that he was portrayed in separate “Behind the Camera” TV movies about Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company. (In both cases, the “Jay” character was played by Wallace Langham of The Larry Sanders Show.)

He also created a persona for himself that was as vivid as any he concocted for the stars he handled. He owned thousands of walking sticks. He grew a beard, he writes, so as to appear more threatening and mysterious in the cleanshaven Californian movie culture.

The ‘70s loom large in Starmaker, and how quaint that age seems, a time when managers made stars, rather than the masses having their say via reality shows or YouTube. It was a time when audiences were followers rather than leaders, and Bernstein’s job was to corral them and keep them happy. He created excuses for his stars’ transgressions, ones that would never hold up in court but which suited the tabloids. And he learned how to overlook bad behavior from the most notorious bad boys of their time, The Rat Pack, as an assistant publicist on the film Sergeants 3. (Sinatra was a jerk to him, ordering to play racist practical jokes on Sammy Davis Jr., but also told him “You’re the only guy around here who seems to have any fucking class.”)

Starmaker thus begins with the old Hollywood of Frank & Dean and the preeminence of motion pictures, then shifts to TV as the top medium for the bulk of the book. What it misses is a third act. Bernstein faded into the background credits as a TV producer, and the stories of his overseeing the Stacy Keach Mike Hammer series are considerably more distant than his ratty ‘60s or jiggly ‘70s. He remains a legendary figure in Hollywood history, but for all his longevity and influence, he was of his time and that time passed him by.

As an arts editor, “calendar highlights” columnist, features writer and informed reader, I’ve covered the doings of RJ Julia Booksellers for over 15 years. (The store itself is 22.) I’ve interviewed such shop-sponsored authors as Christopher Hitchens and Brad Meltzer. I’ve previewed hundreds of booksigning events and charity fundraisers at the shop. My family has browsed there many times, and even attended a theatrical performance of chapter-book superstarlet Junie B. Jones.

In all those years, all those opportunities, I don’t believe I have ever once met or talked to RJ Julia’s founder and owner Roxanne Coady.

I say this not because I want to suggest that Ms. Coady  does not work 24/7, and wear oodles of hats, in her quest to run the ideal independent bookstore. She is indeed the cover by which RJ Julia is judged. What I do want to make clear is that RJ Julia is a large, vital community operation, succeeding on many levels, impressively staving off the continual threats to the demise of the bookselling industry, involving many committed staff members and customers in the pursuit of a literary community gathering place.

This is not one of those little bookshops (love them as I do) where a single person behind a small desk in the corner determines the personality, scope, attitude and atmosphere of the place. RJ Julia is much grander than that.

Which is why, when I received Coady’s latest monthly “Dear Reader” email this morning, in which she effectively announces her retirement from day-to-day operations at the store, I took heart.

The email reads, in part:

We think it’s … time for R.J. Julia to grow in new ways, in the care of new hands that will guide the store to take its proper place in a new world; a changing of the guard in a time of change.

Rest assured: This is not an end for R.J. Julia, but simply a new beginning. The store will not close. We are determined to see R.J. Julia survive and thrive into the future. And there is good reason to think it can. The last few months have shown a resurgence of support and sales for independents across the country. There is even talk of this being the beginning of a renaissance for independent bookselling.

I concur with that thinking and believe that R.J. Julia and our community deserve to take advantage of this renaissance. To do this successfully, the store needs a new steward. Two venerable bookstores have seamlessly been transferred to new owners over the last couple of years–Politics & Prose in Washington, DC and Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA. The new owners are innovating, investing and reinventing–it is extraordinarily exciting to witness. I have spent many hours talking with the new and old owners and feel confident that we can accomplish as seamless a transfer at R.J. Julia.

So we will begin the process. I am committed to being patient in order to find the right person and to do this the right way. The first and foremost priority is putting this big, cherished baby we call R.J. Julia into the right hands. All that has been accomplished in these years is now part of R.J. Julia’s DNA–all the staff have left their mark, all the authors have left their inspiration. And all conversations, joy, sadness and ideas that you have left– it’s all still here.

You’ve got to love that fluid epistolary style Coady has, knowing that she’s writing to an audience of readers and doesn’t have to distill her complex thoughts about leaving the business she birthed into a series of soundbites or tweets.

Coady’s built an institution that deserves to endure, and she knows it. It’s unusual, I think, for supporters to be let in on the transition so early in the process, actually being asked if they know of any worthy candidates for the gig.

I’ve been in the book business myself—managed a couple of shops, owned one of them for a short while, dwelled in the antiquarian and used-book and library realm as well. I think Roxanne Coady’s optimism is justified. There are no end of capable bookstore managers out there. Yes, a lot of shops have gone under, and the demise or depression of the major national book chains (which once helped hasten the closing of some of those small shops), but there’s plenty of evidence that well-run small bookstores with realistic expectations and a genuine desire for community outreach can endure and thrive. By positioning itself as the booksigning and author-appearance capital of Connecticut, RJ Julia has not just a neighborhood feel but a cutting-edge reputation of the place where you can hear about bestsellers before they happen, latch onto trends early or simply find out that your favorite writers have new books out.

A moment of silent reading, please, in honor of Roxanne Coady’s pioneering spirit. Followed a loud, live-recitation hurrah for the RJ Julia reading revolutions yet to come.

Made whole wheat biscuits for dinner one night last month. But we were out of buttermilk. Not even the powdered kind.

When fetching the accustomed substitution of regular milk with lemon juice. I noticed we still had some flavored Sugar Cookie Egg Nog (Hood brand) in the refrigerator. So I used that. Fortunately I hadn’t already put sugar in the batter.

The biscuits came out great.

Later that night, like much later, like 2 a.m. I decided to start some slow cooker oatmeal for breakfast– four cups water, two cups rolled oats, a few diced apples.

Kathleen gets up hours before i do. The note she left next to her bowl. “try the oatmeal with sugar cookie egg nog!”

That got me wondering if I could work the stuff into the potato kale soup, or quiche, or pie. Luckily, the holiday season ended and the egg nog left the Stop & Shop shelves before things got out of hand.

Joop & Junie may seldom play out anymore, but their youngest kid Marty, aka Smarm of Godawfworrr, soldiers on with spit and no polish.

Godawfworrr’s name is a slam on Smarm’s hippie half-brother Free Bus (born during the Freredom Rides), whose psychedelic act in the ‘70s was Son, God.

Fifteen years apart in age and worlds apart in temperament and taste, one of the brothers would’ve killed the other ages ago if not for their sweet, peacekeeping sibling Veeni (real name unknown, and we’re not sure we want to.)

On the heels of their parents’ benefit concert and CD announcement for their old nursery school, Smarm (now in his 40s) has decided to use his own musical might to destroy a building. Free Bush and Veenie are against the demolition. Details forthcoming. One thing for sure: the whole fam’s coming out of hiding, and there’ll be no end of benefit shows for history-loving locals.

Bullfinch closed, because the toilet pipes froze… Masked Monkey and Shattered Helmet at Hamilton’s, the club that won’t allow drug references in the band name but doesn’t mind dick jokes…  Danger on Vampire Trail at D’ollaire’s, with some slavish local imitations of that national wonder: Clue of the Screeching Owl and Mystery at Devil’s Paw…

I think I have Chronic Fatique syndrome.

Royal Baths, Better Luck Next Life. I usually find the after-plucking squeaks of guitars (a ubiquitous studio-production technique of the last ten years) to be akin to fingernails on a blackboard. But Royal Baths opens the first song on this album, “Darling Divine,” with a whole passel of ‘em, and it’s great. The frisky fingering leads you to continually expect the unexpected. There’s some straight-ahead rock stuff like “Nightmare Voodoo,” but most songs have rhythmic and vocal variations that go well beyond the wild, sitar-satiric guitar solos. Swoops of sound interrupt the vocals, echo chambers turn plinks into yowls. The soft and reflective becomes the ominous and overwhelming. There’s a song called “Faster and Harder,” but the music for it is strangely and wonderfully neither.

As the final song, “Someone New,” says,

Tell my girl she’s now alone.

This time I’m not coming home.

Keep my records and sell the rest.

Tell my girl I loved her best.

Drown in Royal Baths: Creepily cool from top to bottom.

DC Universe Legacies by Len Wein (DC Comics hardcover)

DC Comics decided to revise its entire 80-year superhero mythology. They needed this reprioiritizing and revisioning to be be anything but a boring history text.

Any number of young whippersnappers would’ve loved this assignment. But it would have turned out very differently than it did under this old whippersnapper, the legendary Len Wein, original writer of The Swamp Thing and expert resuscitator of The X-Men.

Wein frames the new DC scriptures as an exercise in nostalgia, as witnessed by a cop who’s spent his whole life scrapbooking superhero articles. The sheer mass of information that needs to be divulged is daunting—Brad Meltzer’s entire world-changing Identity Crisis series is shortened to about two panels here. There’s little about heroes’ personal struggles. It’s the DC story as written in public—the relationships, the feuds, the organizations, the sidekicks, the supervillains. Wein adds a human subplot about the cop’s gangster brother-in-law.

The artwork, by a slew of artists working in the classic muscled-hero style, adds buoyancy and color to a narrative that can’t help but bog down occasionally. Stories with their own arcs and climaxes and folded into the middle ground of a much larger tale, so naturally it’s jumpy and disorienting.

Yet for such an outrageous exercise in condensation—millions of comic stories boiled down to their essence—Wein actually builds a momentum, a plot and even a moral—people can change. Even superpeople.

Wonderful Register profile by Randy Beach about local magician and recycling activist C.J. May.

I’ve seen May’s socially conscious magic act, benefited from his environmental expertise, and enjoyed his Celtic folk howlings in parades. One of those New Haven characters whom  you hope will land on his feet. Yale’s letting May go as the beaming face of its diverse recycling efforts, diffusing his duties to a variety of departments. Don’t let the guy be thrown out. Find him a new gig worthy of his transformative powers.

One of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes involves corn syrup, and other than some gloppy Halloween make-up, it’s the only thing I’ve ever used corn syrup for.

When I decided to make cookies this morning, the Karo bottle had run dry, having given up its last drop for a batch of cookies just three days ago.

The sweet sticky syrupy stuff which I do keep around all the time is molasses. Don’t use it much, but it makes the kitchen feel Colonial.

So I substituted. Strong flavor, molasses. A doubly sweet cookie—trebly sweet when you count the brown sugar.

Here’s what I did:

Beat one cup brown sugar with about three quarters of a cup of margarine. (I use Smart Balance brand.)

Add two small eggs (or one large—I like buying those two-and-a-half dozen packs of small eggs) and beat some more.

Vanilla would be optional here. A teaspoon of two.

Mix all that up thoroughly.

Add a half cup whole wheat flour, one and half cups white flour, one-quarter teaspoon baking soda, three-quarters teaspoon baking powder and half a teaspoon salt.

Mix like crazy. Then add a cup to a cup and a half of chocolate chips.

Put tablespoon-sized blogs on a lightly buttered baking pan. (For cookies, I like to use my cast-iron pizza pans.) The dough can fill two large pans, and should make just over three dozen cookies.

Bake for eight minutes at 375 degrees, then check how they’re doing. (You might want to switch upper and lower pans.) Cook another two to four minutes—you shouldn’t go over 15 minutes total. Take the cookies out when they’re puffy but formed—they’ll dry a little harder than they look, and it’s real easy to overcook them.

…but not to overlook them. The aroma is exquisite.

An entire band fell asleep and missed a gig. All of five of them. With, they swear, no pharmaceuticals involved. “Except caffeine,” the singer says, “and that obviously didn’t work.”

Out-of-town affair, of course. Long drive. Wrong directions. Finally arrived, three hours before the show, at a friend’s house—empty, but the band had keys—where they could dress and nap. And nap and nap and nap.

This is why, upon their homecoming engagement at the Bullfinch, Random Hall Sweep played all night in pajamas. They’re shaking a curse.

Preschool Friends with Addi Tude at the Bullfinch… Ideas & Discoveries and Teen Ink, some kind of bright-eyed youth aggregation, at Hamilton’s… Wordy cult heroes Library Journal, with a solo set by leader Dewey, at D’ollaire’s…