Cat In A Topaz Tango

On the other hand, a little amnesia might come in handy to a dude.

Imagine my forgetting Miss Midnight Louise. I have indeed hit my head while pursuing a criminal more than once. In fact, I took several head and body blows during the course of saving my Circle Ritz friends’ hides in this latest case.

In fact . . . now that I think about it, I am having trouble pulling much out of the old memory bank, like certain feline dames I may or may not be related to, who hang out at a certain Vegas hotel and also a nearby police substation.

Sometimes forgetting family is the best way of dealing with them.

There was an exciting new development on my Vegas turf. A mystery bookstore opened in nearby Henderson that offered a vintage-flavored atmosphere and food for the body as well as the reader’s soul. The enterprising couple behind Cheesecake and Crime—he whips up the many varieties of cheesecake, including jalapeño, which sets my collaborator’s tastebuds tingling—hoped to make it an institution.

Since Miss Carole has had the good taste to set not one but two mystery series in my backyard, I wished it well, but the brick-and-mortar bookstore part folded soon after the 2008 economic swoon. Independent mystery bookstores are a dying breed (no matter how appropriate the phrase is to the genre), so it is a truly lamentable turn of events.

And the clerks wore vintage clothing! My Miss Temple is distraught.

You may still order their baked goods virtually at www.cheesecakeandcrime.com. (You can also grab and/or order my books wheresoever you may find them so that I do not end up as mouse cheesecake!)

Lastly, we received a flurry of excited mail in the fall of 2007 about a new television series, Viva Laughlin, set in the rising shadow city south of Las Vegas visited herein.

Why was producer Hugh Jackman playing a key hotel-casino owner named “Nicky Fontana”? Were my books now a TV series? Alas, no. ’Twould have been far better if that was the case. In fact, Viva Laughlin aired only two of its three filmed episodes, one of the fastest flash in the pans of that TV season or many others.

How did “Nicky Fontana,” owner of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel in my series and in manuscript since 1985 and in print since 1990, become a character in VL? (Note that the initials are the reverse of Las Vegas’s.) Miss Carole suspects some script researcher came across one of my books and liked the name.

Miss Carole also avers that if they had used my series for TV, with the hunky Mr. Hugh Jackman playing Mr. Max Kinsella, it would have been a hit. Several readers of the female persuasion reacted to that scenario with sighs and swoons, but, alas, it was not to be.

Very Best Fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.

If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter and/or buying his custom T-shirt and other cool things, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at P.O. Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555 or at www.carolenelsondouglas.com. E-mail: cdouglas@catwriter.com.

Carole Nelson Douglas

Plays the Dance Card

How splendid to see you getting out of your couch potato rut, Louie, to cut a few crooks on the dance floor.

The reality TV dance show craze might look like it inspired Louie’s latest adventure, and, in fact, I’m a fan of two of them, although dancing doesn’t come naturally to me. My creative right brain isn’t geared to the left-brain elements of complicated steps and music.

I’d taken a little modern dance in college but missed getting early childhood lessons, and was never very good at it. So I started taking tap dance lessons as an adult because I think it’s always good to grapple with something that doesn’t come naturally.

It’s shocking to realize I’ve been dancing, and finally getting better, for more than twenty years now. I started by studying tap dancing, moved to clogging when I lost the instructor, and finally added the most difficult dance form of all, flamenco, which involves complex and simultaneous foot, arm, and skirt movements, and mastering the castanets too.

Here are some dance sites on the Web, for those who have access. If some sites are no longer available, you can do your own “tango” search.

For a funky montage of images illustrating the lyrics of Barry Manilow’s huge hit, “Copacabana,” see http://noolmusic.com/videos/copacabana_-_barry_manilow.php.

Watch the Muppets assist Liza Minnelli in a charming take on the classic number at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eek-XeZvHno.

To play voyeur with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez in a sizzling tango clip from Shall We Dance, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bibtqDxXv1o.