Scanning the Bookshelf

"We splash on, hour after hour, up and down the barrancas, walking as best we can on the slippery mud left behind by the rains, all the while slipping, sliding, and slamming our toes into rocks, as we walk through the night. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't stop for a break: There is not one dry square inch in this ink-black water world at our feet. Besides, the temperature has dropped sharply, and it is too cold to stop. Every time we slow, I get the shivers."

You have to appreciate the effort Tim Gaynor puts into "Midnight on the Line: The Secret Life of the U.S.-Mexico Border" (Thomas Dunne Books, 304 pages, $25.95), a first-person account of the reality (make that harsh reality) on both sides of the line from the Gulf Coast to San Diego. The Reuters reporter spent four years interviewing, riding along with and/or hanging out with border patrolmen, SWAT team members, former drug smugglers, miscellaneous unsavories and the like. It is not a pretty picture, but it is an unfiltered look at an area and issues that impact us all.

You have to value the effort Tom Davis put into researching "Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL From Someone Who Was There" (Grove Press, 302 pages, $24). In this case, Davis' research was also his life, as the funnyman's memoir ranges from dropping acid on Easter Island (and creating "The Coneheads" with Dan Aykroyd) to hanging with Jerry Garcia and jamming with Keith Richards and John Belushi.

Drugs? He's met few, but then again, not too few to mention: Davis writes as much about his intake of psychoactive drugs — a good thing, he says — as he does about his stint in and around "Saturday Night Live" and its crew of far more famous (but not necessarily more funny) players.

This, after a discussion of LSD god Owsley Stanley: "Tripping at Grateful Dead concerts, I found that I would have wonderful series of comic ideas.

I learned to carry small notebooks and pens. The next day I would find that about one in ten ideas was good, about the same ratio as without the stimulants — but I had a hundred ideas."

Davis' memoir and Carol Leifer's "When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror" (Villard Books, 190 pages, $24) make a nice pair of bookends. Leifer, a stand-up comic who also did a writing stint at "Saturday Night Live" and was a writer-producer on shows like "Seinfeld," comes to the realization that her "greatest memory to date happened at Shea Stadium" and that just might date her ... a bit.

The memory? The Beatles concert at Shea in 1966.

And age just might be the name of the game: "So not surprisingly, this memory blows people away. But lately I've noticed, pretty soon after that blowing away is over and long gone to bed, a number of people then remark, 'The Beatles ... Jesus Christ! How old are you?'"

Old enough to be rueful, witty and charming, that's how old. Sample joke from sample chapter titled "40 Things I Know at 50 (Because 50 Is the New 40"): "If you plan on having your lover's name tattooed on your arm, always leave room before it for a possible 'I Hate' down the road."

In your face, Osama!

To find out more about Martin Zimmerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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