This account of the killers of Rwanda is simply electrifying. There are no words to describe the horror that was Rwanda, but here 10 perpetrators give their account over 200 pp, testifying to the banality of evil and the mentality of serial killers.

Let me simply the first line of this testimonial:
"During that killing season we rose earlier than usual to eat lots of meat, and we went up to the soccer field at around nine or ten o'clock. The leaders would grumble about latecomers, and we would go off on the attack. Rule number one was to kill. There was no rule number two. It was an organization without complications." (10)

In our day and age, of _CSI_ and _Law and Order_ we are led to believe we understand the psyche of mass murderers. We are used to hear screen killers confess. But that's all fiction.

Here though, is the real thing. Genocide explained, in its starkest, most horrifying terms.

I have never read anything as powerful or as deadly.

There are definitively better pilates videos out there. Pass on this one. Kathy Smith obviously is complementing her vast array of excercises techniques with pilates, here specifically focused on abs -- without really understanding or conveying what they are all about.

Smith spends 10 minutes discussing key terms of pilates (powerhouse, spine alignment etc.) -- a bore for people who know something about it and confusing for those who don't --in all a waste of tape for those who plan to use the video more than once. Then she goes into some pilates excercices, indeed focused on abs -- but she organizes them in whatsoever way, some seem like fluff; others, more tough, are rushed. She does not guide you through the breathing techniques of pilates properly, so that you are either struggling for breath or feel like a balloon about to burst (in one set she just keeps on telling you to inhale without ever letting you know when to exhale!). Worst of all, this exercise guru offers no stretches at the end to strech out your tight abs!!

Finally, particularly annoying is that Smith cheers you on like a cheerleader through the whole video -- so that by the end you are quite irritated, certainly not focused and relaxed, as one should be with pilates. Smith is definitively better at boppy cardio aereobics and should stick to that.

Driven. This is the only way to describe Iva Pekárková's _Gimme the Money_ (Dej mi ty prachy, 1996), impeccably translated from Czech into New York slang by the author herself and her husband Raymond Johnston. Fresh, gutsy, hilarious, the novel is one terrific (and terrifying) joy-ride through New York, propelled by a Czech taxi driver-a woman taxi driver at that.

The fast-paced plot rivets the reader's attention completely; there is simply no way to put the book down once one has begun this rollicking roller-coaster ride. Intrigue, passion, delicious detail, crazy characters-this novel has something for everyone. It is a novel of epic proportions, reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's _On The Road_, yet, in its anecdotes it also zooms in close-up to capture intimate intricacies of City life in sharp shots paralleling Jim Jarmusch's film "Night on Earth".

BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT!!!

Forget the glassy ordinariness of cab-rides you have experienced in the past! And, with Gimme the Money, get into the driver's seat to discover first-hand that every pick-up is "speckled with little shards of adventures" (p 114). As Gin, our heroine, explains, "Every real taxi story is like a short story mystery novel with the first and the last few pages torn off" (p 118).

The plot follows the exploits of Jindøiška, a somewhat naive and trusting Czech immigrant, who becomes wise to the ways of the world in her encounters with foreboding New York and its outrageous inhabitants. In the end, she becomes Gin, a spirit as tough as the City itself.

Mesmerized, the reader observes this metamorphosis unfold through a myriad of adventures, as Gin deftly maneuvers her way (and will) with slippery taxi drivers, punk clients, exasperating lovers and even psychotic killers. Ultimately, Gin becomes the sum total all of these multi-faceted tones, which make up the throbbing pulse of the City, so that "submerged into the City, (like it was a whirling foam)... every cell of your body got permeated by its rhythm, its plasma circled in your veins, and therefore you became, just like everyone else, a building block, a cell, a molecule in that humongous, colorful mosaic..." (p 34).

TRACES OF A CZECH PAST...

Although her thick Slavic accent learns to meld with the groove of Ha-a-lem, in the throes of passion, it still whispers solo in Czech; and though her body is marked by the brutality of the streets, it still preserves that old appendectomy scar lousily sewn up in Czechoslovakia-in all, despite her hard-knock street education, Gin's original spirit remains undaunted. Indeed, the novel is a Bildungsroman, but it is a cool, fresh, hip, happenin' version of the genre. In fact, the book transcends, no, defies, any and all generic categorization, because, unlike the ordinary novel, it so clearly arises from real life.

Pekárková belongs to that "brotherhood of those who DARED" (p 19), as she describes it in her book. She herself, upon leaving Czechoslovakia, worked as one of the few female taxi drivers in New York. Her descriptions are those of a veteran:

When night drivers arrive home at night and fall into bed, the film of everything they'd seen on their shift, of everything they drove past, gets projected onto their eyelids... With the conviction that THEY are not drivers of taxicabs. They are actors. And writers. And screenwriters. And visual artists...On the spool thread of Gin's head, a whole movie sequence was being filmed, about 200 miles a day, and every morning as she was falling asleep, the dailies were getting projected in her head, projected, rewound and fast-forwarded... Days and nights got fused into a single yellowish tint, the reel of the film got melted together, and you couldn't see though it-except in multiple exposure, and each time she went to sleep to the cooing of pigeons, the City reverberated in her head like a single clear, crisp tone of a golden gong (pp 50-51, 54-55).

In Gimme the Money, Pekárková, the former cab driver, became the Czech Republic's hottest new writer, screenwriter and visual artist as she transformed these melting multiple exposures and this cacophonous metropolis into sharp crystal-clear images with penetrating prose.

Pekárková's attention to detail is painstakingly meticulous. By her deft pen, even the tiniest or most banal object is painted in a surprising new light, such as "the weather-worn, wet Yellow Cab [which] fluttered around glistening streets like an insomniac butterfly" (p 29) or a crack in the sidewalk, "where the asphalt is caving in and crumbling apart or where it's bubbling up into space like tiny, tit-shaped volcanoes" (p 103). The language is so smooth, such a subtle mixture of perfect American idiom and rhythmic Uptown slang, that one suspects this is not the translation-that the Czech version is the copy and this the original.

MANIC WORLD

In all, by virtue of Pekárková's covert knowledge and her blatant writing talent, the reader becomes completely, if not obsessively, absorbed into the manic underground world of taxi drivers, with its subterfuges, (such as illicit "dummy cars"), its oily garage romances (bosses oozing charm from greasy pores), its accidents and mechanical breakdowns (see the chapter "The Tree"), and above all its brazen, heroic survival on the road (where, ultimately, one must kill or be killed).

However, it is not merely Pekárková's savvy expertise on the road that makes this journey passionate; rather it is her innate knowledge of people and relationships. Pekárková's character casting is most certainly the acme of the book. In her careful modulation of caricature sketches, she creates believable, yet incredible characters.

We come to love Gin's "chéri" (now husband) Talibe, with his African inedibles, debile ideas (such as wanting Gin to get married for a second time to his "cousin" Ougadougou) and indelibly magnificent sexual delights. However, we also love Gloria, Gin's Cuban roommate, the artiste, who manages to aesthetically plaster exactly 365 immaculate, immolated cockroaches on canvas, as well as all the grease-monkeys, illegals and hobos that make up Pekárková's vast array of characters.

Pekárková's prose also comments critically on contemporary issues, such as immigration and assimilation, multiculturalism and racism, sex and gender, performance and drag or art and trash. Most importantly, our heroine shows us how to maintain one's vital energy and wonder in the rough, drab modern world-unmitigated zest for life being perhaps the ultimate rebellion in the face of today's strident, monotonous, capitalist parroting of "Gimme the money." In sum, Iva Pekárková's _Gimme the Money_ is a definite MUST for all those who want to experience a thrilling, breath-taking read.