Amoeba's Secret by Paul McCartney

It is always interesting when an artist of Paul McCartney's stature and accomplishment goes on a late career roll. Often, a string of records that would have been heralded as a watershed period earlier in an artist's career is downplayed or simply ignored. It's as if we take the genius of legendary artists like McCartney for granted. Before we can acknowledge the greatness of their current music, we require them to eclipse not only their finest work but, even more difficult, our memory of their finest work, which is tangled up in nostalgia for wherever we happened to be in our lives when we first heard it.

Beginning with the release of "Driving Rain" in 2001 and carrying through "Chaos and Creation In The Backyard," "Memory Almost Full" and especially last year's incredible "Electric Arguments" (released under his now not so secret alter ego The Fireman) McCartney has been quietly making the best music of his post Beatles career and some of the best music of his entire career. I don't know if it was the death of his longtime wife Linda or a new found desire to prove that he is still a vibrant, adventurous artist with something to say but Paul McCartney has without a doubt made some of the best music of the decade.

"Amoeba's Secret" is a four song live ep that was recorded at a rare in-store appearance Paul made with his band when "Memory Almost Full" was out. It includes a rocking version of "Only Mama Knows," from that same album, a rare live airing of an obscure Wings b-side called "C Moon," the playfully nostalgic "That Was Me" and a rambunctious airing of "I Saw Her Standing There." The thing that really jumps out at you is just how much fun McCartney, his band and the audience are having. It's really hard to believe that this is a man in his sixties and hard to think of a time when he has ever sounded better.

For those of you who have been ignoring what amounts to a period of rebirth for one of the most important artists of the rock era, do yourself a favor and spend seven dollars on this funky little ep. Or better yet, you can buy the download for a mere four. Either way you won't be disappointed.

The Best American Short Stories 2007, Edited by Stephen King, Series Editor Heidi Pitlor

When I was a kid, even before I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a short story writer. Not an author or the more generic title of "writer," but specifically a short story writer. As an adolescent, I would sit in my room and read the short stories of O. Henry, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe and pretty much anyone else I could get my hands on. I certainly read lots of novels and probably more nonfiction than someone my age would usually read but, it was the short stories that made me dream of one day becoming a writer.

I guess I still carry this dream around or at least the love for great short fiction. While cruising the Amazon Kindle Store trying to choose a new book to read on my beloved Kindle reading device (if you don't know what that is and you're even a semi serious reader, you owe it to yourself to visit the Kindle page at Amazon) I ran across a new collection of short stories by Stephen King. I've always loved his short fiction so, I clicked the link to read the descriptions and reviews of the book. In the description it mentioned that King had rekindled (that's probably an unfortunate pun, since I was reading about this on my Kindle) his interest in writing short fiction while editing the 2007 edition of the popular "Best American Short Stories" series.

While I still plan to read King's new collection, my interest immediately shifted to this anthology. One of the great things about Stephen King is that he is not only a gifted writer, no matter what the literary snobs sometimes think, but he is also one of the world's foremost fans of fiction and his selections for this yearly collection did not disappoint.

The titles and authors of the powerful stories in this book are too numerous to mention here so I'll just say that there wasn't a week story in the bunch and there were several which had me thumbing to the author notes at the back of the book to find out what else they had written. I hadn't read one of the annual best of books for several years and I had forgotten how strongly they reaffirm my belief that short fiction is not dead and, like blues or jazz in clubs all over the world, is still being practiced and honed to a fine art in dozens of literary magazines just outside the window of mainstream fiction.

The question is, did this collection make me want to be a short story writer again? I would say yes but that particular dream has never completely died.