Book review: "Full Disclosure" by Stormy Daniels

Stormy Daniels was well into her career as a porn star and adult film director, when her husband suggested they have a baby. 

Daniels was cool to the idea, but her husband, Glen, persisted. 

"Okay," she finally said, "But there are terms. You have to do porn."

Glen was puzzled by this demand, but Daniels was looking ahead. In her 2018 autobiography, "Full Disclosure," Daniels explains she knew that judges often looked down on porn performers like herself and would often rule against them in child custody fights. If Glen did porn, it would even the playing field. 

"If we ever split up, you can't use it against me in court," she said.

Glen was dubious, but Stormy was serious. So he soon started performing in porn movies. At first, he just had sex with his wife on camera, and Glen thought that he'd met the terms of the deal. But Daniels said no. Here's how she put it in the book:

"You can always stand up in court and be like, 'She did a hundred scenes in her career, and on the few that I did, I only worked with her.'"

"So what do you want," he asked.

"You need to f*** other bitches." He rolled his eyes. I was sex-trafficking my husband. 

This scene from "Full Disclosure" illustrates many of the strengths of this book. First, it takes us into a world — the lives of porn stars — that most of us know little about. Second, it's an unashamedly personal anecdote. And last, it's told with a nice dash of humor. 

That combination makes "Full Disclosure" an interesting, fun and eye-opening book.

Most people, of course, associate Stormy Daniels with Donald Trump, due to their well-known — though short — relationship. Many would probably pick up this book just to read the Trump parts.

That's too bad, because there's a lot more to the book. Even if Trump was never mentioned, "Full Disclosure" would still be a book worth reading.

The book is smoothly written, but I'm not sure who gets credit, since Daniels used a ghost writer named Kevin Carr O'Leary. There is a wry sense of humor that threads through much of the book, and I sense that it does come from Daniels herself. 

Daniels holds back almost nothing about her personal life. 

She describes growing up poor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, living in a filthy home with a mother who was checked-out as a parent. Beginning at age nine, for two years, Daniels was molested almost every day by a man in the neighborhood (by enduring it, she felt she was protecting a younger friend from the man). In telling the story, she's not asking for pity; she's just explaining what her childhood was like.

She was having consensual sex, and plenty of it, by eighth grade and continuing into high school. She began stripping while still in high school at what she calls a local "titty bar."  She was so naive, she had never seen a eyelash curler before; other strippers showed how to use it and gave her other life advice as well. "I grew up in a strip club," she said.

Daniels recognized that dancers with larger breasts got bigger tips, so she soon got breast implants. The doctor gave her larger implants than she wanted, boosting her to a triple D size. At first, she was mad.  But then she saw her income surge. "Best twenty-two hundred dollars I ever spent."

She was smart enough to see that she could make even more money as "feature dancer" — one who travels the country making special appearances at strip clubs — and carefully built up her credentials to become one.

Soon she started doing porn, insisting on a contract to control her career and eventually getting the chance to direct and write movies.

Daniels is really the only continuing character through the book. So many men come in and out of her live as boyfriends (or, occasionally, husbands), it's actually tiresome for the reader.

On one page she announces a romance with her bodyguard, but by the end of the paragraph they break up. In the very next paragraph, she falls for a roadie working on her shows. That one must not have lasted very long because on the next page she's gushing about a porn director that she will soon be sleeping with.  

Her marriage to "Glen" (actually Brendon Miller) doesn't last long despite him completing her porn challenge and becoming pregnant. Still, her story of giving birth to their daughter is one of the best parts of the "Full Disclosure."

She had planned to have a home "tub" birth, but after 48 hours of unsuccessful labor, she was rushed to the hospital. It is dramatic, but still with a touch of humor. Hurrying to the hospital, Stormy insisted on taking the doula's minivan, not her Escalade. "This is an eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle. I'm not giving birth in it!" Told not to eat at the hospital while in labor, she insisted Glen get her food from the vending machine. A nurse later comes in to find her "covered in crumbs and wrappers."

I do wish the book had more pictures. No — get your mind out of the gutter —  I don't mean those kind of pictures. I would just like to see more of Stormy Daniels at different ages. There is only one picture in the whole book, plus the cover photo. 

OK, I guess I can't finish this review without talking about Donald Trump. 

The Trump sections were probably my least favorite parts of the book — messy, frustrating because , this is one place where she made poor decisions. 

As she tells it, she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament and he invited her to dinner. When she arrived at his hotel, expecting to go out to dinner, she was ushered into Trump's hotel penthouse.  He emerged in his pajamas. She tells him, "Go put some fucking clothes on."  He does.

What followed was three hours of conversation — I'm not sure she ever got dinner — covering a variety of topics including the economics of porn, and Trump's golf course clubs. As the night wound to an end, Stormy went to the bathroom. When she emerged, Trump was there in his underwear, expecting sex.

This is the book's most puzzling moment. For so much of the book, Daniels presents herself as a strong , confident, decisive woman. But in this moment she just seems to give in, lie down and spread her legs. Why didn't she say no? She doesn't explain. 

It's sad that so much of Daniels life is overshadowed by the one episode. She overcame a dirt-poor upbringing and childhood sex abuse to make herself successful. Sure, her line of work isn't what most would choose, but it worked for her. And for I respect her for her taking charge of her life. And she's pretty funny too.

"Wheel of Fortune": When should you buy a vowel?

If you watch "Wheel of Fortune," you may have wondered about the right time to buy a vowel. Some contestants do it at the first opportunity, while others wait, trying to earn money by guessing consonants first.

There are pros and cons to each strategy. Guessing consonants correctly wins you money (or prizes), while buying vowels cost you $250 each time. But when buying vowels you can't end up with a "Bankrupt" and lose all your money, as you could if you're spinning the wheel to guess consonants. Vowels are also easier to guess, since there are fewer of them, so you're less likely to be wrong and lose your turn.

(For this article, I'm assuming people know how "Wheel" is played. If you don't, check out this page.)

I've often wondered if contestants jump too quickly to start buying vowels. In many cases, a player buys a lot of vowels, then loses his or her turn, and another contestant swoops in to solve the puzzle. It seems like the first player did the work, the other reaped the rewards. I decided that if I was ever on the show I would try to get as many as four consonants on the board before buying vowels.

But what way is really right? To find out, I monitored the first 100 "spin" games of Wheel's 42nd season, which started Sept. 9 with new host Ryan Seacrest.

My question was simple: Does buying a vowel early make it more likely you will win? Here's what I found:

Out of those 100 games, the first player to buy a vowel won 44 of them. If it was random, you would expect each player to win 33.3.  So that seems a clear vote for buying vowels early. 

Breaking this down further, I looked at how well players did if they bought vowels on their first opportunity, versus if they waited one more turn and bought on their second. (To be clear, you can't buy vowels until you've won some money, so your first opportunity to buy a vowel would come on your second play.)

Here's how it worked out. Players who bought a vowel on their opportunity won 43% of the time (28 of 65), while those who waited one more turn won just 32% of the time (8 of 25). This further supports the strategy of buying vowels early.

Still, there was another factor to consider. Could it be that the advantage I found comes just from being the first player to play? That is, since the first player to play is often the first player to buy a vowel, is it simply the former element that gives the advantage?

To find out, I tracked 34 of the spin puzzles to see how the first player did. That player, it turns out, won 11 of 34 — in other words, just a hair less than a random distribution. This suggests that going first gives no advantage in itself.

To be certain, a larger sample size for all of these elements would be great. But based on what I have, I'm revising my plan: Buy vowels as soon as you can. 

So you want to attend Long Beach City College - Part Two

If you read Part One, you'll know that my attempt to enroll in a free, zero-credit class at Long Beach City College involved a bizarre winding odyssey through bureaucracy, computer errors, and a largely non-responsive college staff.

Still, I did get enrolled and thought the complications were behind me. Then, less than two weeks before the first class, I got two emails from LBCC. One said, "Our records indicate that you may be missing a required college level Math course." The other said basically the same, except about an English course.

Now, I do understand that to earn a college degree you have to take certain classes in a certain order. But in this case all I was simply trying to do was take a single how-to class in tiling so I could retile my home shower.  I wasn't seeking a degree. Even if I was, the tiling class wouldn't help since it counted for zero credits. 

So I couldn't imagine the relevance of math or English courses. 

Fortunately, the emails from LBCC came with a phone number and an email address I could contact for more information. OK, I thought, I should be able to clear this up quickly. I called the number and left a voicemail. Then I sent an email. 

I hadn't gotten a response to either by the next day, so I called again, left another voicemail, and emailed again. 

By the next week, I still hadn't gotten a response. So I left more voicemails — four in all — and more emails — another four. I finally got a response to my fourth email, from "Community Education Coordinator" Sarah Bowers, who promised, "I will look into this for you and get back to you today." 

I never heard from her again.

Only when I contacted the office of the school president did I get a call from Sara Blasseti (sblasetti@lbcc.edu), head of the counseling department. She told me, in short, that I didn't need to worry about the "required" courses. They're not required for me, she said.

That was good to know. But why did it take five phone calls and four emails to get that answer?

Two weeks after I had left the first voice message — in fact, after the class had already started — I got a voicemail from someone responding to my query.

With all this bureaucracy and lack of communication, I half-expected to show up for the first class and find that I wasn't enrolled. 

I needn't have worried. The teacher never took roll. For this class, you could have just shown up. In fact, if you want to take this class, that's exactly what I would suggest.

Book review: "The Struggle for Taiwan" by Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Let me say up front: I didn't read all of "The Struggle for Taiwan," the 2024 book by Sulmaan Wasif Khan. I read the first 65 pages or so, and then about 30 pages at the end. That was enough for me. I skipped the middle section, probably another 165 pages. 

It's not that this is a bad book; it's just not what I was looking for. 

I was preparing for a trip to Taiwan, so I wanted to learn more about the country's history. "The Struggle for Taiwan," indeed, has lots of history.

The subtitle sums things up nicely by describing the book as "A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between." 

Khan traces the history of Taiwan from 1644 to present, with an emphasis on the most 75 years.

Khan, a professor at tufts University in Massachusetts, is thorough and, as best I can tell, fair. He meticulously records events, names, dates. He recounts the many missteps between Taiwan, China and the United States that have brought us to the present state that he describes as "the edge of chaos."

Unfortunately, Khan efforts to be thorough and fair too often leave the reader trying to sort through a bin of dry facts. Strong statements seem to always be offset by an alternative or contradictory point of view. One American leader say this, but then another says just the opposite. Taiwan says one thing, China disagrees. Back and forth. 

There are too many trees, and too few views of the forest. As a Taiwan beginner, I was looking for the bigger meanings and the larger picture, but I frequently felt like "The Struggle for Taiwan" was leaving it to me to figure those things out. 

Some more human stories would have been nice, but I'm not sure, even having read the introduction and the epilogue, whether Kahn has ever even been to Taiwan. He's a top-notch researcher certainly, but he could be a better storyteller. This is a book for deep-dive historians, not for casual travelers. 

So you want to attend Long Beach City College? Good luck

It all started in the shower. I looked down and realized there was a problem.

Several tiles on the shower floor were cracked and some were discolored. There was also grout missing between tiles on the floor and on the wall.

"How can I fix this?" I wondered. Should I hire someone? If so, how much would it cost? Or, I pondered, could I fix it myself?

Soon after, by luck, I found that nearby Long Beach City College offered an eight-session class in tiling as part of it's Home Remodeling curriculum. This sounded pretty good — I mean, you can learn a lot from YouTube videos, but there's nothing like having face-to-face instruction. I decided to sign up.

And so began a very strange odyssey. 

I found the class listed in the LBCC catalog, but something was missing: The cost. I scoured the college's website but could not find a price. So I found an email for "Adult Education" and sent my question there. Soon, I got a response from a gentleman named Franco: The class was a free! 

(I probably shouldn't tell LBCC this, but I would have probably paid as much as $150 for a tiling class. But I'm not going to turn down free.)

The first step in enrolling was to go through an identity verification process. The LBCC website diverted me to the website ID.me. There, I had to submit photos of my driver's license (front and back), do a video scan of my face, and submit my Social Security number and other personal details. It seemed a bit much for a free how-to class, but soon I was done and ready to enroll.

Oops, no I wasn't. First I had to complete the college application. And it was not a short form.

Among the many details the form demanded were the dates I graduated from high school and college (not just the years, the exact dates). These events were over 40 years ago, mind you.

I had to name the highest math class I took in high school and the grade, the highest English class and that grade, too. 

They asked about my family size, family income, marital status, sexual orientation. They asked whether I needed housing or employment assistance, whether I wanted to be in student government, and whether I wanted to play on the school's badminton, bowling, fencing, football, lacrosse, soccer, tennis or wrestling teams. One strangely specific (and ungrammatical) question was: "What is the birth year of your youngest child under 18 years of age who receives more than half of their support from you?"

Again, it seemed a bit much to take a free class, but I eventually got through it and was ready to enroll. Yay, finally.

So I clicked on the "Enroll in class" button and ... "Page not found." 

Sigh. The system — apparently — was getting an upgrade. 

I soon got an email asking me for feedback on the application process. Ah, thank you for asking, I do have some things to say. But when I clicked on the link to reach the survey, I only a got a page that said "Forbidden: You do not have permission to access to this resource." Sigh. Perhaps they didn't really want feedback.

I waited three days and I tried to enroll again. This time the website worked, I easily found the class I wanted, and clicked on the button to enroll in the class and ... hit another barrier. 

This time, I got a message saying there was a "block" on my account and I couldn't enroll until I'd cleared that block. But there was no indication what the so-called block was, or what I was supposed to do about it. Do they offer communications classes at this college?

So I emailed Adult Education again. Franco was quick to respond — good job, Franco — and explained that I need to go into the Admissions Office and present my ID in person. 

This was good to know, though how I was supposed to have known this without Franco's help was unclear. I also wondered, if I had to present my ID in person, why did I have to go through online ID.me process?

Before I headed in to the Admission Office, I wanted to find out if I needed an appointment. I tried to call, but apparently no one in that office answers the phone. So I sent an email simply asking, "Can I come in anytime, or do I have to make an appointment?"

A day later I got an email response that gave me the addresses of two offices where I could present my ID. But they didn't answer my question about whether I needed an appointment. Do they offer reading classes at this college?

I sent another email asking whether I needed an appointment or not. No response. I emailed again. And again. Finally, after two weeks, I got an answer ("No, you do not need an appointment")

By that point, I didn't need that answer. I'd placed a Zoom "phone call" to LBCC. The rep who came on the call said yes, I could go in person to an admissions office to present my license, OR we could just do it on Zoom if I would turn my camera on. So I did so, held up my ID, he checked it and I was good.

This was a lot faster than going in in person, but if I hadn't called (well, Zoomed) I would never have known about it. 

Having completed the ID check, I did successfully enroll in the class. 

You might think that is the end of the story, but no. Remember that student survey that I was blocked from filling out? I waited three days and tried again, but I was still blocked. I emailed LBCC and asked how I could access the survey. I got a response saying my application was "successfully submitted." I seems that LBCC specializes in not answering a direct question.

Then I got another response telling me to "click on the link within the email received." I replied to say that is exactly what I did, but it doesn't work. So naturally they responded to say they've marked the ticket "resolved."

I told them the issue was not resolved. Their response? "We've marked this ticket (#1072434) as resolved." 

All of this for a free class.

This story originally ended here. But wait there's more, including a way to avoid all the problems described above. See Part Two.

Book review: "Wooden" by Seth Davis

In the sports world, few people are as esteemed as John Wooden. Wooden coached UCLA's men's basketball team to 10 national championships in the 1960s and 1970s, earning a reputation as a brilliant and wise sage of the game.

Some called him the Wizard of Westwood — UCLA lies in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles — while some regarded him as something close to a religious icon. Author Seth Davis, in his stellar 2014 biography of Wooden, said that in the public's view, the Bruins' leader "wasn't just a great coach, but a good man. A teetotaling, church-going, nonswearing, nonsmoking paragon of rectitude. Saint John." 

But in "Wooden," Davis paints a much more complex picture of the UCLA coach. Wooden was,
according to many, not just a demanding coach, but a mean and impossibly rigid one. Some of his players complained that Wooden favored the stars of the team and ignored the rest. And some observers charged that Wooden's teams broke NCAA rules on their way to championships.

It's not that this book is a "hit job" aimed at shredding Wooden's reputation. But Davis does firmly take Wooden off his pedestal, and shows him as a multifaceted human being with quirks and flaws, strengths and weaknesses.

In all, this is one of the best books I've ever read. In the category of biographies, only Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs comes close. Davis' research is thorough, and his choices of stories to include impeccable. Virtually every page has an interesting anecdote. 

Davis takes us from Wooden's boyhood in a small Indiana town to his development into one of the greatest basketball players of the first half of the 20th century.  From there, we follow his career first as a high school teacher and coach, then a coach in college.

While Wooden's 10 national championships are widely remembered, David doesn't pass over the less well-known 14 years before then, when the coach labored in frustration with teams that were barely above average. Davis' chapters on the championship years from 1964 to 1975, when Wooden coached such famed players as Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,), Bill Walton, Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard, are filled not just with the pressure-packed big games, but many great behind-the-scenes stories as well.

Finally, Davis finishes with a surprisingly robust section on Wooden's retirement, when, free from the stresses of coaching, the coach fully embraced his role as wise elder of UCLA basketball. 

"The pressure of being on top eventually got to him, but not nearly as viscerally as it did for so many other great coaches," Davis writes. "The ten championships aside, John Wooden's greatest victory may well have been his ability to emerge from all that tumult without losing sense of who he was — not a perfect man but a very good one, a teacher more than a coach, a Christian, a husband, a father, anything but a wizard."

At 525 pages, this is a long book (so this is a long review). It took me a while to get through it, but I really didn't mind. It was much like a good streaming series, where each episode — or each chapter — is a compelling story unto itself. I didn't want to skim ahead in fear I'd miss something good.

Many great names from sport make appearances in the book: There's Denny Crum, Rafer Johnson, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Bobby Knight, Jerry Tarkanian, even a young broadcaster named Dick Enberg — just to name a handful. Davis offers intimate stories filled with colorful details. There are smaller mini bios of people like Alcinder and Walton, and lesser know players like Clarence Walker Willie Naulls, and a troublesome booster named Sam Gilbert.

One of the most striking things to me in the early part of this book is the number of ways John Wooden almost didn't become, well, John Wooden. 

Entering high school in Martinsville, Indiana, Wooden's favorite sport was baseball. But his school didn't have a team, so he devoted his athletic energies to basketball, earning him a chance to play in college at Purdue. 

In college he emerged as a nationally known star but his basketball career nearly came to an abrupt end when he accepted a small stipend one summer to play a game with a semiprofessional team (getting paid was against college rules). He eluded punishment only when his teammates convinced him to sit out the second half of the game.

During World War II, Wooden enlisted in the Navy — without even telling his wife ("It was probably the major disagreement that my dear wife and I had in all our years," Wooden recalled). Just before Wooden was shipped to the Pacific aboard an aircraft carrier, he came down with appendicitis and was kept home while he recovered from surgery. Several months later, the man who replaced Wooden (a fraternity brother of his at Purdue) was killed in action. 

Then there's the story of how close John Wooden came to not coaching at UCLA. In 1948, Wooden had achieved some success coaching at Indiana State and was being wooed by both UCLA and the University of Minnesota. Wooden was inclined to choose Minnesota, since it would allow him to stay in his native Midwest. It all came down to the  night of April 17, 1948, when Wooden expected a call from Minnesota at 6 p.m. and then a call from UCLA at 7 p.m. . 

But the call from Minnesota didn't come. Wooden concluded that that school had changed its mind, perhaps hired someone else. So when UCLA called, he accepted the offer. About an hour later, Minnesota called. A snowstorm had knocked out the phone lines, preventing calls from getting out.

Minnesota's athletic director offered Wooden the job. But Wooden said he had already accepted UCLA's offer, and would not go back on his word. 

While race issues are not a central part of the book, they were threaded through much of Wooden's career. On this topic, Davis gives Wooden a mixed review.

Wooden was no grand civil liberties champion to be sure, but he didn't hesitate to add black players to his teams, even when few other colleges did so. On more than one occasion, when coaching in the Midwest, he had his team walk out of restaurants that refused to serve a black player. But on another instance, he planned to leave African-American player Clarence Walker behind on a trip, because the tournament did not allow blacks (due to pressure from others, the tournament changed its rules).

Late in his career, Wooden was asked, "Who is harder to coach, white players or black players?" He answered: "Seniors."

Wooden arrived at UCLA in the fall of 1948 at age 38, and immediately started to impose discipline on a ragged program. 

His practice sessions were run with precision. Wooded taught the players exactly how to pivot, pass, catch, dribble, and shoot. He showed them how to watch the ball into their hands when receiving a pass. He described precise angles to take on a fast break. He even taught his players how to put on their socks (to avoid blisters). They had never seen a coach like this.

Wooden's new charges were struck at how this genial, quiet, reserved midwesterner was transformed once he stepped onto a basketball court. "He was a tenacious, tough, hard-nosed, vicious competitor," Eddie Sheldrake said. "He looks like a preacher and acts like a preacher ... but when you look at those beady eyes and that pointed nose and you get him on you, he's wiry. Let him guard you for a game and you'd wish you never went on the basketball court."

In telling the John Wooden story many people recall the highs but few remember the lows, like the 14 years Wooden labored in obscurity at UCLA before his first championship.

The school, which had promised Wooden a new arena when he was hired, gave him only lukewarm support and provided the team only a cramped third floor gymnasium that it had to share with the gymnastics team. (The long-promised new arena, Pauley Pavilion, finally opened in 1965.)

By 1962, the local newspapers and UCLA's basketball supporters were starting to grumble about the team and the coach.

"It was about the growing sense that too often his teams were good enough to raise expectations but not good enough to meet them," Davis said.

Among the good subplots of the book is Wooden's icy relationship with the Olympics. Wooden never coached an Olympic team, and never encouraged his players to try out for the squad. It all started in 1956 with Willie Naulls, who Wooden considered at the time the best he had ever had. But Naulls was not selected for the U.S. team that year and from then on Wooden kept his distance from the Olympics.

Wooden could be a stern disciplinarian, a characteristic that led to conflicts with many of his players. But he wasn't too proud to admit his was wrong — often after a feud with a player or one of his assistant coaches, Wooden would reach out to apologize the next day. 

One thing Wooden almost never apologized for was his sideline behavior. Despite his reputation as a cerebral tactician, those who were close to him on the bench saw another side. Not only did he relentlessly badger the referees during game, he took it a step further by constantly ridiculing opposing players as well. Only those on the floor of the game were aware of the behavior; from the stands, most fans thought Wooden was simply exhorting his team.

Readers will probably be most interested in the championship years, and Davis fills those with great details on players like Alcindor, Walton, Hazzard and Sidney Wicks. Even knowing the ultimate result, Davis' accounts of some key games had me on the edge of my seat

One of the most remarkable anecdotes from the book was from the 1970 postseason banquet after the Bruins had won their sixth championship. As part of the activities, each player got a chance to address the audience. And senior Bill Seibert, largely a benchwarmer under Wooden, had a lot to say.

Seibert ripped Wooden for "unequal treatment, a "double rules standard," and "lack of communication" between the coaches and players.

As Seibert spoke, his mother started to cry. His father stood up and shouted at him to sit down. But he kept right on talking. "It was," said Enberg, "the most uncomfortable I have ever felt in my life."

UCLA never had a postseason banquet again.

The anecdote illustrates a painful part of Wooden's story. The more he won — including three undefeated seasons and at one point a winning streak of 88 straight games — the more he became a lightning rod for criticism. Fans, the media and team boosters complained if he didn't win every game, or win by enough, and even sometimes if he won by too much. Wooden was tormented by anxieties and insecurities.

"The very years that produced the greatest coaching record in the history of college sports were in many way the unhappiest years of his life," Davis said.

Davis doesn't dodge one of the most uncomfortable elements of Wooden's coaching tenure: The influence of booster Sam Gilbert. Gilbert orbited the world of UCLA basketball, helping players get free meals from restaurants, high-end clothes, jobs, and discounts on car purchases —  all potential violations of the college basketball's rules.

Davis is careful to note that Wooden kept his distance from Gilbert (it's notable that even higher UCLA officials were scared of Gilbert because of his association with organized crime) and never encouraged his players to associate with Gilbert. The question, which Davis leaves unanswered, is: Should Wooden have done more?

Wooden's final act was a good one. Wooden left the tumult of the basketball court behind but spent decades in retirement connecting with scores of his former players. Many of them made the pilgrimage to Wooden's small condo (his salary at UCLA was never more than $27,000 a year), sharing stories and memories, and yes, even offering wise counsel. Those were probably his happiest years.

"At the end, this was John Wooden's greatest gift to his former players," Davis writes. "He was finally available — truly, emotionally available — in a way that he never was when he was coaching."

One former player, Marques Johnson, concluded, "Appreciate him for what he was — a great coach, a great person, but not a god."

As much as I like this book, I do have a big complaint: The use of pictures in the book is weak. First, there's not enough of them. "Wooden" is 525 pages long and covers nearly 100 years of history. The narrative includes scores of players and coaches who were in the public eye. But there are only a paltry 22 pictures; the book cries for 100 or more.

Second, those 22 pictures are lumped together in central section of the book. Yes, this is a fairly common format, but it's unfriendly to the reader, who has to zig-zag back and forth from the text to the picture section to see if there's a relevant photo.  Why not put the photos at the appropriate place in the book? 

Book review: "Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News"

Today, it's hard to imagine a time when you couldn't get news any time of day or night. We can just pick up the phone, glance at the computer or flip the TV to any of several all-news channels to see what's happening in the world.

But. little children, there really was a time where none of that was possible. News only came once a day in a newspaper delivered to your door or on short TV broadcasts. 

Ted Turner changed all that in 1980 when he launched Cable News Network. Today, we think of CNN and 24-hour news as such a normal part of the TV landscape that we don't realize what an audacious and risky idea it was at the start. No one had done it before; the pioneers of CNN were making up the rules as they went. 

In "Up All Night," published in 2020, author Lisa Napoli describes decades of key moments that led to the launch of CNN. 

It was far from a straightforward path. Napoli starts the story a good 31 years before CNN's birth with the tale of a girl who fell down a well near Los Angeles in 1949, and the ambitious but technologically clumsy efforts to cover that news on TV.

Napoli's narrative unfolds on two parallel tracks — one about the early development of TV, the other about Ted Turner. The TV news history is a necessary component of the story, but the Ted Turner tale is far more memorable.

Turner inherited an Atlanta billboard advertising business from his father, and in bits and fits, created a wide-ranging business empire. He forayed into television with the purchase of a fringe independent station in Atlanta.

Turner had no interest in putting news on the station — it most showed old movies — but the FCC required some "public service" element, so he reluctantly allocated 20 minutes late a night. The "news" program was filled with gags and parody, including one night where it was co-hosted by a dog. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man who would change the face of TV news.

Napoli portrays Turner as quirky and outrageous. During sales calls he would often throw himself onto the floor to show his determination to get a deal. He was so cheap that he'd cut his own hair and sift through incoming mail at the TV station for uncanceled stamps that could be reused. But he spent big on buying and rehabilitating the Atlanta Braves baseball team and even more on sailboat racing, his favorite hobby. 

"His frank, explosive personality was legendary, especially among his inner circle, who warily tip-toed around his ever-changing mood,"  Napoli writes. "Was he up, or was he down? He'd return from sailing expeditions clutching laundry lists of ideas they'd have to drop everything to pursue, only to find days later that he'd changed his mind. He was like a hyperactive kid, exploding into work in the morning — if he hadn't slept on the pull-out couch in his office the night before — spouting poetry, singing song lyrics off-key, roaming the halls to pump up the staff."

While the first half of the book lays a nice foundation, the book really hits its stride in the second. As the drumbeat grows toward the debut of CNN, a confused frenzy of hiring and preparation goes on behind the scenes. As a reader, even knowing of CNN's eventual success, you wonder if the motley crew assembled for this project can really pull it off.

With Turner watching his pennies, the station ended up hiring dozens of recent college graduates, paying them peanuts and throwing into whatever needed to be done. For the grads, it was energizing buzz of a time, working on a groundbreaking project during the day and partying at night. Napoli calls it "'Animal House' meets 'Network.'"

For all its strengths, the book is hamstrung by a peculiar writing quirk of Napoli's: She is stingy in offering dates for many of the events in the book. This is a history book at its essence, so dates are important. But many of the events in "Up All Night" float in the air untethered to a timeline

Natali tells a detailed story of Turner's participation the Fastnet sailing race in which 19 people died, but never says when it took place, not even the year. Other events are described but never dated, including the critical meeting where Turner decided to start an all-news channel, the landmark launch of CNN"s first satellite, and the groundbreaking of the network's first building. 

At one point, Napoli quotes Turner saying, "I hate the news. I'll never do news." This is a funny quote, and would be especially amusing if Turner said it right before deciding to launch CNN. But she offers no date.  

The other flaw: There no pictures (at least in my edition of the book). Napoli included dozens of continuing characters. It would be nice to see some of them. Early CNN anchor Kathleen Sullivan is described by a producer as "astoundingly beautiful in a non-conventionally beautiful way." Wouldn't it be nice if we could judge for ourselves?

Similarly, Napoli frequently describes the disorder of Turner's first TV station and later the mess (and "scurrying rats") of the first CNN facility.  How about a picture or two of the places?

The cost of driving, 2024

Dedicated readers of this blog will recall my groundbreaking 2019 article "The cost of driving," and its paradigm-shattering follow-up "The REAL cost of driving."

Now — buckle up your seatbelts — I'm updating this report for my new car, a 2024 Kia Sportage. How much does it cost to drive this car?

First, we start with the cost of gas. The last time I bought gas it was $4.95 a gallon. Since this car gets about 37 mile per gallon, that works out to 13.4 cents per mile for gas.

Then there's maintenance. This could be complicated, since the costs of oil changes, repairs, new tires and the like can vary widely and come at unpredictable times. Fortunately, there's a shortcut. AAA's 2023 "Your Driving Costs" publication shows the cost of maintenance of a small SUV (the Sportage's category) as 10.4 cents per mile.

Then there's depreciation. This, again, can be a tough one to figure. Each mile you drive brings you one step closer to the day when your car dies and you have to buy a new one. I'm going to estimate that car will last 160,000 miles and that my next car will cost $37,000 (don't like those assumptions? Fine. Do your own calculation).

Dividing $37,000 by 160,000 comes to 23.1 cents per mile.

All of that adds up to 46.9 cents per mile.

To be clear, I'm talking about the cost of driving, not the cost of ownership. For instance, as a car owner you have to pay car registration fees each year, but those do not change depending on how much you drive.

Then there's car insurance. In the past, I could make a pretty strong case that the cost of car insurance didn't vary depending on how much I drove. But now, my insurer, AAA, asks for my car mileage each year. They may indeed be using that information to set my rate, but to what degree?

Under my current policy, I'm paying $902 to insure the Sportage. I'm expecting to drive the car about 10,000 miles in the year. So insurance cost 9 cents per mile. Still, I don't believe there is such a direct connection that each extra mile I drive costs 9 cents. There's a basic cost of doing business — if I only drove, say, 10 miles in the year, do you think AAA would only charge me 90 cents? Of course not — there's going to be minimum charge at least.

With some arbitrariness, I'm going to say that driving each mile adds an extra 6 cents. So total cost of driving: 52.9 cents per mile. 

 

Book review: "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" by

All Chick Donohue wanted to do was bring some guys beer. It shouldn't be a big deal, right?

Except in this case, with Donohue in New York City and the intended recipients of his beer largesse in Vietnam, it was a big deal. And it was an especially big deal since the men Donohue was looking for were a little bit preoccupied fighting the Vietnam War. 

It all started in 1967 as Donohue was sitting in his local bar — Doc Fiddler's — in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. The bartender and some patrons were talking about how many local young men had gone off to fight in Vietnam. They worried that, given growing public resentment over the war, that the soldiers didn't feel supported. 

So the bartender suggested that someone bring those guys a beer to show them that their home neighborhood was thinking about them. After a little pressure from the bartender, Donohue volunteered to do it.

This is the opening of "The Greatest Beer Run Ever," Donohue's 2020 book. It is a story so incredible, so preposterous, that it seems impossible that's it's actually true. Yet it is.

Even as Donohue volunteered for the beer run, he doubted it was possible. "Some authority figures will probably stop me, but I have to try," he recalls thinking. 

Donahue was in the Merchant Marines, so he managed to get himself onto a ship delivering ammunition to the troops in Vietnam. Once there, he heads off to deliver beer.

The story takes a series of surprsing twist and turns. Donahue travels around with U.S. troops and gets shockingly close to the front lines. Despite his prediciton, no "authority figure" stopped this civilian from traveling around a war zone trying to deliver beer. In fact, Donohue was surprised how readily he was able to get rides on U.S. military planes and helicopters and was even treated with deference by Army officers.

Finally, a buddy explained why:

"Don't you get it, pal? They think you're CIA! Because why the hell else would you be here? In jeans and plain shirt, no less."

After successfully delivering some of his beer, Donahue ends up in Saigon when the Tet Offensive breaks out. This opens up a whole new chapter of the adventure. Frankly, Donahue was lucky to get out of Vietnam alive.

I don't want to give up too much of the story, but this is a book you should read. It's fun, it moves fast and you'll learn some things about the Vietnam War.

You may wonder, as I did, whether this story is just too good to be true true. Could Donahue have just made it up? So I was pleased to discover that a professor at Columbia University closely fact-checked the story and confirmed its authenticity. 

There are three "bonus" chapters tacked awkwardly onto the end of this book. One is a "Where are they now?" section, another describes the neighborhood of Inwood, and the third recounts a quirky Vietnam War story, but not one involving Donahue. Each of these might be of some interest, but they don't mesh well with the rest of the book. The "Where are they now?" chapter, in particular, goes on too long.  

Your Big Mac now costs more

There's been a lot of discussion about how California's new $20-an-hour minimum wage for workers at large fast food chains will affect prices. So I decided to check if the prices at my local McDonald's changed after the law went into affect on April 1.

I checked the prices of more than 25 different items on the McDonald's menu both four days before the law's start date and then two days after.

The prices of all the items increased. The increases ranged from 2% (McCrispy) to 12.6% (the 4-piece Chicken McNuggets). The average increase was 5.6%

To be clear, each McDonald's franchise owner is free to set prices as he or she sees fit. So the price changes at your local McDonald's may be different.

	March 28	April 3	% increase
Big Mac	$5.89	$6.19	5.09%
Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$6.89	$7.19	4.35%
Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$5.69	$6.19	8.79%
Double Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$8.29	$8.49	2.41%
Double Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$7.29	$7.59	4.12%
Cheeseburger	$2.89	$3.19	10.38%
McCrispy	$4.89	$4.99	2.04%
Spicy McCrispy	$4.99	$5.39	8.02%
Deluxe McCrispy	$5.59	$5.79	3.58%
Deluxe Spicy McCrispy	$5.89	$6.29	6.79%
Large Fries	$4.59	$4.79	4.36%
McNuggets
10 pieces	$5.69	$5.99	5.27%
4 pieces	$2.39	$2.69	12.55%
6 pieces	$3.59	$3.69	2.79%
20 pieces	$7.49	$7.99	6.68%
40 pieces	$11.29	$11.89	5.31%
4 spicy	$2.49	$2.69	8.03%
Meals
Big Mac	$9.99	$10.49	5.01%
Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$10.69	$11.19	4.68%
Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$9.89	$10.39	5.06%
Double Bacon Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$12.19	$12.69	4.10%
Double Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese	$11.79	$12.29	4.24%
Meals
McCrispy	$8.99	$9.49	5.56%
Spicy McCrispy	$8.99	$9.49	5.56%
Deluxe McCrispy	$9.39	$9.89	5.32%
Deluxe Spicy McCrispy	$9.59	$10.09	5.21%
Meals
McNuggets
10 pieces	$9.79	$10.29	5.11%
6 pieces	$7.19	$7.69	6.95%
Average			5.62%