BOOK

YOU LOOK NICE TODAY
Stanley Bing
Bloomsbury, 2003

Stanley Bing is a long time columnist for Fortune magazine and along the way he's written several books -- a novel and four non-fiction books dealing with the business world (two of which would make savvy reading for any MBA students on your gift list: Crazy Bosses: Spotting Them, Serving Them, Surviving Them and the more recent What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness). You Look Nice Today is Mr Bing's second novel, and is set -- where else? -- but in a big corporation in the decadent late 90s. Haven't we been here before?

The innocuous-sounding story is actually a comic novel which describes what happens to a hot shot manager, Harb, who becomes way too involved with his administrative assistant, CaroleAnne -- by being kind to her. Now, if you're hoping for a romp about office parties where sexual depravity is the norm, this isn't the book for you. Rather, you're in for accelerated cash bonuses, the sale of a second hand car between the two of them and the hot shot helping the administrative assistant move away from her physically abusive husband.

Pretty chaste stuff, especially in the hands of Mr Bing's narrator, Harb's best friend Tell, who sets out the tale with prim precision. So are Harb's motivations as pure as they seem? Tell, of course, has an opinion: "There is nothing wrong with it in actuality, but it carries the appearance of impropriety to those who see bad motivation at the root of all human behaviour."

But, as the book has it, "no good deed goes unpunished," and so as business deteriorates, so does Harb and CaroleAnne's relationship, until finally she quits and post haste files a $150 million lawsuit against the firm claiming pretty much everyone there conspired to sexually harass her.

Those of you who enjoy watching high profile courtroom dramas on TV will particularly enjoy the middle section entitled, appropriately enough, The Trial. The book's narrator, gives us not just the play-by-play in the courtroom, but also access to the firm's Human Resources director's inner thoughts.

The book ends both as you want it to end and not. Does everybody live happily ever after? Only if you believe in fairy tales.
-- Dr Markus Martin

FILM

Top Secret!
Dir: J Zucker, D Zucker, J Abrahams
Paramount, 1984 (DVD 2002)

In 1984, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker slapstick directorial trio (of Police Squad and Airplane fame) set out to make a new film, the spoof film to top all spoof films. The result, Top Secret!, is a deeply silly, uproarious hybrid of an Elvis flick and a cold war spy thriller. A very young Val Kilmer stars as Nick Rivers, an Elvis-esque US pop singer sent to the other side of the Iron Curtain on a goodwill tour as a replacement for an unavailable Leonard Bernstein. Nick falls in love with Hillary, the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, and soon finds himself embroiled in the French Resistance. Does history mean nothing to these people? Er, no. The film pokes fun at many silver screen sacred cows, including The Wizard of Oz, Goldfinger, and M*A*S*H. Top Secret! fun fact: the East Germans in the film aren't actually speaking German -- all their dialogue was actually in Yiddish. Maybe they do care about history after all.
-- Carla Sparks

MUSIC

COMES A TIME
Neil Young
Reprise, 1978

Sandwiched between country/hard rock mish-mash American Stars and Bars and searing rock classic Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young's Comes A Time is a bit of an oddity -- albeit a popular oddity. For many of the fans who adored the accessible folksy tunes of Harvest, Comes A Time was a return to form. The LP yielded a few 70s classics, including "Lotta Love" with backing vocals by Nicolette Larson (who went on to have a top 10 hit with the song on her own) and the title track.

The album's stand-out song is the haunting "Look Out For My Love." Perhaps Randy Newman put it best (in the excellent Neil Young biography Shakey): "It wasn't a love song. It's like, 'My love, it's really heavy. Watch out! It's in your neighbourhood.' It's like a stalker." The music is evocative of dark alleys and desperation:

I'm home again to you babe
You know it makes me wonder
Sittin' in the quiet slipstream
In the thunder
Look out for my love...

With his new concept album Greendale and accompanying film on the shelves, it's a good chance to have a glance through Neil Young's back catalogue. Next to the rawness of Rust Never Sleeps, Comes A Time feels innocent and by times mawkish, but taken on its own it's a slice of 70s nostalgia with catchy jangly tunes and a big smiling Neil on the cover. There's simply no finer porch music.
-- Toss Taylor

Calling all doctors! Do you have a classic film, CD or book that you love? Would you be interested in sharing it with your colleagues? If so, why not submit your review to the National Review of Medicine. Send your article to [email protected] and we'll send you a gift if we publish it.