Saturday, January 05, 2013

And It Wasn't Jeff Meyerson

Middle-aged Brooklyn man so upset about Williamsburg hipsters making noise he made more than 400 phony 911 calls

Here's the Plot for Your Next Big Prison-Break Thriller

Brazil inmates train cat for prison break

Song of the Day

The Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday -HQ - YouTube:

Today's Vintage Ad


10 Astonishing New Species Discovered in 2012

10 Astonishing New Species Discovered in 2012

America's Best Bookstores

Mystery Fanfare: America's Best Bookstores

PaperBack



Jack Lynn, Desire in Duplicate, Novel Books, 1963

The rise of the book bag

Backpacks for students: The rise of the book bag

Grief Takes Many Forms

Man shoots collection of Dale Earnhardt memorabilia after death of pet snake

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Or Maybe You Do

13 Actors Whose Faces You Know From TV But Names You Don't

The Decline of Western Civilization Continues Apace

MTV's 'Buckwild' Premiere Beats 'Jersey Shore' Debut 

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Off-duty Newton police get caught egging house in Framingham

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Blindness & Beyond: José Saramago's Literary Legacy

Baltasar & BlimundaBlindness & Beyond: José Saramago's Literary Legacyon AbeBooks: Nobel Prize-winning writer José Saramago came from very humble origins. He was born into a poor rural family in central Portugal in 1922 but was being hailed as one of the world’s best novelists by the end of the 1990s.

Jupiter's Darling

JUPITER'S DARLING (1955) trailer - YouTube:

Friday, January 04, 2013

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

The moment drunken passenger is taped to his seat during flight to New York after 'trying to choke one woman and ranting the plane was going to crash' 

Song of the Day

BW Stevenson - My Maria - YouTube:

Vertigo-inducing pictures taken by 'rooftopper'

Vertigo-inducing pictures taken by 'rooftopper' who wants to take photography to new heights 

Inside Writing Biz Stuff You Should Read

Rough Edges: Forgotten Books: The Prisoners - Matthew S. Hart (James Reasoner and Bill Crider)

Today's Vintage Ad


I Have Shirts that Are Older than That

16 Songs That Are Now 50 Years Old

PaperBack



James Warner Bellah, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Permabooks, 1962

Noooooooo

Report: Cable Companies Look To Raise Cost For Heavy Internet Use

Or Maybe You Do

And yet another list I'm not on . . . .

10 Book Series So Addictive, You Never Want Them to End

I Miss the Old Days

Rock 'n' roll stars by Tommy Edwards 

The Record Company That Rejected The Beatles

The Record Company That Rejected The Beatles 

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Ketchup on cheesesteak request causes ruckus

Hat tip to Fred Zackel.

Forgotten Books: The Last Man on Earth -- Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh, Editors

The idea of being the last person on earth was once very popular in SF.  I don't know if it still is, but one of the first short stories I ever wrote, sometime back in the latter 1950s, was on that very topic.  I still remember the story, but luckily the manuscript has long since crumbled to dust.  At any rate, it was an idea that must have fascinated me, and in a way it still does.  So I'm the target audience for this collection.

I read several of the stories last week, atarting with Clifford Simak's "The Coming of the Ants."  It's set in the world of City, one of my favorite SF novels, and the subject of one of my very first FFB posts, maybe the very first.  Naturally I liked the story a lot.  The man appears only very briefly, as by the time of the story men have long left this particular earth.

Evelyn E. Smith was a familiar name in the SF digests of the '50s, though not so much now.  That's a shame.  "The Most Sentimental Man" is a nice variation on the theme, and the last man is quite happy to be the only human left on the planet.  Smith touches on the idea of global warming, but it's not a major part of the story, just background.

"The Underdweller" by William F. Nolan has the last guy hiding out in the sewers of L. A., which made it irresistible for me even if not much time is spent there.  

And of course Fredrick Brown's "Knock" is here. It's probably more famous for the short-short story that begins and ends this tale.  Reading the whole thing is as much fun as ever.

I'll be reading some of the other stories eventually.  There are two by Edmond Hamilton, whose City at World's End I loved as a kid.  And a Zelazny I don't think I've read, and . . . .

Cheap copies abound on the 'Net if you're inclined to read this stuff.

Dangerous When Wet

Dangerous When Wet - Official Trailer (1953) - YouTube:

Thursday, January 03, 2013

A Few of Our Precious Rights Remain

Flipping Off Police Officers Constitutional, Federal Court Affirms

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Police: Man Threw Manhole Cover At Car During Argument 

Congratulations to Megan Abbott

Crime Fiction Author Selected as Grisham Writer-in-Residence

Link via The Rap Sheet.

Bruice DeSilve does The Next Big Thing

The Next Big Thing | Bruce DeSilva's Rogue Island

Elvis: Still Shakin'

Elvis Song Too Sexy For School Play, Utah Officials: A parent in the American state of Utah has got All Shook Up about a school musical featuring Elvis Presley songs, so the production has been cancelled.

Update: The Show Will Go On.

12 Historical Speeches Nobody Ever Heard

12 Historical Speeches Nobody Ever Heard

Song of the Day

B.W. Stevenson - SHAMBALA - YouTube:

Great Stories of How Famous Album Covers Came to Be

Behind the Cover 

You Do What You Gotta Do

Teen drugs her parents to get on the Internet: police

Today's Vintage Ad


You Know You Want One

Scientists invent a tail for humans which wags when you're happy 

20 Excellent Photos of Famous Authors Partying

20 Excellent Photos of Famous Authors Partying

'Astro Boy'

The '60s at 50: Tuesday, January 1, 1963: 'Astro Boy'

PaperBack



Jack Douglas, Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver, Permabooks, 1961

The 25 Films Added to the National Film Registry in 2012

The 25 Films Added to the National Film Registry in 2012

The 13 Best Worst Science Fiction Movies Of All Time

The 13 Best Worst Science Fiction Movies Of All Time

Link via SF Signal.

Archaeology Update

The first carpenters? 7,000 year old German water wells reveal earliest known use of wood for construction

Math Dreams

Deathbed dream puzzles of renowned Indian mathematician Srinivasa finally solved - 100 years after he died

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . . .

Naked man chokes dog, bites owner, gets shot in foot

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Fossil Update

Fossil Older Than Oxygen on Earth Found in Australia: Researchers have found fossils of bacteria that are nearly 3.5 billion years old, believed to be the oldest visible fossils ever uncovered.

A Killer Conversation with Jochem Vandersteen.

A Killer Conversation with Jochem Vandersteen.

Well, Duh!

Scientists discover that parrots universally hate techno 

Valley of the Dragon

VALLEY OF THE DRAGON (1961) trailer - YouTube:

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest

Android: Mimic (The Identity Trilogy)Android: Mimic (The Identity Trilogy): Mel Odom: Amazon.com: Books: In a dystopian future, a bioroid detective struggles with his own artificial identity during his search for a killer. 

New Angeles Detective Drake 3GI2RC is not your average Bioroid. First, he’s one of the New Angeles Police Department’s few android cops, and second, he’s haunted by another man’s memories. But even as Drake investigates a very public crime, he must look inward for answers. After all, where does his programming end, and his own personality begin? Mimic is the second exciting novel in The Identity Trilogy, a series written by Mel Odom and set in the Android universe!

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Woman Rams Pedestrian With Her Car In Altercation Over Parking Space

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Patti Page, R. I. P.

NYTimes.com: Patti Page, the apple-cheeked, honey-voiced alto whose sentimental, soothing, sometimes silly hits like “Tennessee Waltz,” “Old Cape Cod” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” made her one of the most successful pop singers of the 1950s, died on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. She was 85.

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

What's Chris Knopf Up To?

Chris Knopf: Next Big Thing Blog Hop

PWA TAKES A STEP FORWARD from Robert J. Randisi

Ed Gorman's blog: PWA TAKES A STEP FORWARD from Robert J. Randisi: PWA has instituted a new Shamus Award for works published in 2012. It is the Best Indie P.I. Novel. This is for novels that have been published by the authors themselves. Entries must bear a 2012 copyright.

Remembering Those We Left Behind

The Rap Sheet: Remembering Those We Left Behind

Arms and the Man

Arms and the boy, really.  It's not that I have anything to add to the national debate about guns.  It's just that sometimes I get nostalgic and want to set down some of the things I remember.  And I remember guns.  For example, the first thing I remember Santa bringing me was a toy M-1 rifle.  I don't remember how old I was, but it was before we moved to town, so I must have been three or four.  It's one of my earliest memories of my mother.  She came into my room very early, before daylight, I think, and carried me into the little living room where we had the Christmas tree.  She had long hair then and was wearing a long white cotton gown.  It was like being carried by an angel, and there under the tree was the M-1.  I thought that rifle was great, and I played with it for years afterward.  So did my brother, later on, and some of the neighborhood kids.  We played with it so much, in fact, that the barrel eventually fell off.  We might have played with it even after that.  It was all a long, long time ago.


We loved to play with toy guns.  We all had them, my sister included, as you can see in the photo.  I'm on the left, with my brother between me and my sister. The kid from across the street is on the right.  His name was John Roy Truelove, and he had guns, too.  We could play for hours, shooting each other with cap pistols.  What the photo doesn't show is my very favorite gun, which was a cast aluminum Luger.  It had no moving parts, but I thought it was swell.  I must have gotten it about the time I got the M-1.  Long gone, however, with all the rest of the arsenal.  It looked just like this one.

Later on, when we moved from the first house in town to the one I associate most with my life in Mexia, Texas, my brother and I shared a room.  There was no closet in the room, and our clothes and shoes were all in a little armoire.  Together we probably had four pairs of jeans and six or eight shirts.  Well, we had some underwear and socks, too.  That was it.  

Besides the armoire, two twin beds, and a desk, the room had an open gun cabinet that held a couple of .22 rifles, maybe three.  Two shotguns, and automatic and a double-barrel.  Later on a couple of deer rifles.  Ammo was right there in the cabinet behind a couple of little doors in the bottom.  Shotgun shells and .22 cartridges: shorts, longs, and long rifles.  

We never thought a thing about any of that.  That's just the way things were.  Our parents told us never to play with the guns, so we didn't.  We were allowed to handle them, but we were cautioned never to point them at anyone.  "There's no such thing as an unloaded gun," we were told.

Comic books and movies with guns?  Oh, yeah.  Hardly a Saturday afternoon passed that I wasn't at the double-feature cowboy show at the Palace Theater.  Some kids even brought their cap pistols to the show.  And a lot of the stars had comic books that I read: Monte Hale, Roy Rogers, Rocky Lane.  Add to that the Lone Ranger and Kid Colt.  Probably others.  Lots of gunplay in all of them, though I remember that the Lone Ranger never killed anybody.  Maybe the others didn't, either.

When I was a teenager, I stopped going to the matinees, but nobody thought anything of it if I said I'd like to take the .22 on Saturday and hunt armadillos or that I'd like to take the shotgun and go dove hunting.  If we didn't have enough shells, I could go down to Western Auto, walk in, and buy a box.  I could drive by and pick up a couple of friends with their shotguns, and off we'd go.

That's really all there was to it.  I never developed a lasting affection for guns, and I haven't owned one since I was a kid.  One of the .22s was mine, and I gave it to my brother when our parents died.  He's the family gun collector, and he always liked hunting more than I did.  I never cared for it, myself, and my dove hunting expeditions were few.  Never went deer hunting at all, though my brother and father did for a lot of years.

That's my history with guns.

King Louis XVI Update

Squash Holds King Louis XVI's Blood

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Angry Cowboys Fan Fills Washing Machine With Explosives, Fires Rifle At It Just To Blow Up Tony Romo Jersey

NSFW language in the video.
Hat tip to Art Scott.

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

BBC News - Texas rangers on the rise of modern day cattle rustling: Texas is America's biggest ranching state. In recent years, it's seen a sharp rise in the number of cattle being stolen.

Hat tip to Richard Prosch.

Time Is Running Out!

Top Suspense Group: New e-reader for Christmas? Or just weary of the hunt for writing of genuine quality in the ever-growing eBook marketplace? 

For two days only, January 1st and 2nd 2013, selected titles from the twelve authors of the Top Suspense Group will be selling for 99c each. That's a dozen proven thriller and suspense titles for less than the cost of... I don't know, something that sells for twelve dollars. But you get the idea. 

Click here to see and order any or all of the books you can see below. Favorite Kills is a collection of award-winning and nominated short stories by Top Suspense Group members and includes Number 19 by Naomi Hirahara.

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

2 Men Shoot Each Other Over Last Cigarette

Hat tip to Fred Zackel.

Song of the Day

Rolling Stones-start me up - YouTube:

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Note to grammar cops: I didn't write this headline.

Man punched female driver, got naked, laid down in road, deputies say - 

Only 99 Cents for One More Day!

The Blacklin County FilesThe Blacklin County Files: Bill Crider, Judy Crider: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Sheriff Dan Rhodes tackles five tough cases with compassion and humor. Killers, crooks, cats, cattle, cranks, and ice cream. Plus recipes!

Today's Vintage Ad


Top 10 Most Deadly Poisons Known To Mankind

Top 10 Most Deadly Poisons Known To Mankind

Yet Another List I'm Not On

Top 10 Child Geniuses 

PaperBack



John Burke, The 300 Spartans, Signet, 1962

The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World

The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World

Big Sale!

Go here for the titles.  Click on the covers to order.

The Sword and Sorcery Precursor to Empire Strikes Back

The Sword and Sorcery Precursor to Empire Strikes Back

Link via SF Signal.

11 Amazing Thank You Notes From Famous People

11 Amazing Thank You Notes From Famous People

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Man allegedly uses sledgehammer to attack roommate

Photos of Famous Authors Playing in the Snow

Photos of Famous Authors Playing in the Snow 

A Literary Review of 2012

AbeBooks: A Literary Review of 2012

Million Dollar Mermaid

Million Dollar Mermaid - Official Trailer (1952) - YouTube:

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Man, 60, critically ill after 'trolley rage' incident at Marks & Spencer store 

Hat tip to  Jeff Meyerson.

Happy Birthday to the Internet!

Internet quietly celebrates its 30th birthday: The internet, a revolutionary and cheap communications system that has transformed the lives of billions of people across the world, turned 30 today.

Max Allan Collins Weighs In

Favorite/Least Favorite Films of 2012 

Gator Update (Bachelor Party Edition)

Men Go Missing in Alligator Infested Waters After Bachelor Party

Big Sale!

Go here for the titles and click on the covers of the books you want.

New Year's Eve at the Pelican Club, Galveston, TX

Tom & Angela Neary, Judy & Bill Crider

Song of the Day

Jerome Moross: The Big Country - Main Theme - YouTube:

Today's Vintage Ad


13 Calendars For 2013 That Shouldn't Exist

13 Calendars For 2013 That Shouldn't Exist

PaperBack



William Crawford, Stryker #3: Drug Run, Pinnacle, 1974

12 Oddest Photos of 2012

12 Oddest Photos of 2012 

I Miss the Old Days

Free Calendar 

My Favorite 2013 Prediction

Earth’s twin will be discovered in 2013, astronomers predict

I don't really think it will happen, especially considering this.

We Can Only Hope

The Words That Will Be Banished in 2013

What a bunch of mugs!

What a bunch of mugs! 

The Statistics Of How We Spent 2012

The Statistics Of How We Spent 2012

Overlooked Movies: The Big Country

Not overlooked but one I felt like writing about.  I may have mentioned before that the soundtrack LP was the first soundtrack I ever bought, and I liked the movie a lot, too.  It's based on a novel by Donald Hamilton, so it was my first encounter with him, though I didn't pay any attention to that at the time.  It was only a few years later when I discovered the Matt Helm series that I went back and read Hamilton's westerns.

The story is complicated, so I won't go into all of it.  Gregory Peck, playing it noble, is a former sea captain who comes to live on a ranch owned by Charles Bickford.  Peck is engaged to Bickford's daugher, played by Carroll Baker.  Charlton Heston is the ranch foreman who doesn't like Peck because he thinks Peck is a coward.  That's far from the case, but Peck keeps doing things that turn people against him, including Bickford and Baker, because of his meekness.  The town's schoolmarm is Jean Simmons, and she owns a ranch with water being used by both Bickford and Burl Ives, a rancher with a crude following.  Chuck Connors has a great turn as his villainous son.  

There are duels, gun battles, and an epic fistfight between Heston and Peck, one of the best on film.  The title gets repeated a lot in the dialogue.  I never seem to include this film in any list of the Ten Best Westerns, but it's still a favorite.

The Big Country

The Big Country Official Trailer #1 - Charlton Heston Movie (1958) - YouTube:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

New Year's — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts: January 1 Becomes New Year's Day The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months and 304 days, with each new year beginning at the vernal equinox; according to tradition, it was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century B.C. A later king, Numa Pompilius, is credited with adding the months of Januarius and Februarius. Over the centuries, the calendar fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem by consulting with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the Julian calendar, which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most countries around the world use today. 

As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future.

Monday, December 31, 2012

A "Lost" Story by Bram Stoker

Read Bram Stoker Lost Story

Oxford American Dictionary names GIF word of the year

Oxford American Dictionary names GIF word of the year

I Got Yer New Year's Resolution Right Here

New Year’s resolutions: Reading a book every day.

Richard Rodney Bennett, R. I. P.

NYTimes.com: Richard Rodney Bennett, the British composer who in a long, distinguished career moved with ease among classical concert music, jazz and film, died on Dec. 24 in New York, where he had lived since 1979. He was 76.

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

The 10 Most Overrated Movies of 2012

The 10 Most Overrated Movies of 2012 

Song of the Day

Orioles - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve (original version) - YouTube:

The Hundred Best Lists of All Time

The Hundred Best Lists of All Time 

The Decline of Western Civilization Continues Apace

Or maybe this is just a bad joke.

The 50 Shades Of Grey Effect: Jane Eyre, Pride And Prejudice And Sherlock Holmes To Be Republished With 'Explosive Sex Scenes'

Today's Vintage Ad


Close Out The Year With Some Best-Selling Last Words

Close Out The Year With Some Best-Selling Last Words

Viking Update

The Raw Story: When the sleek, beautiful silhouette of Roskilde 6 appeared on the horizon, 1,000 years ago, it was very bad news. The ship was part of a fleet carrying an army of hungry, thirsty warriors, muscles toned by rowing and sailing across the North Sea; a war machine like nothing else in 11th-century Europe, its arrival meant disaster was imminent. 

Now the ship’s timbers are slowly drying out in giant steel tanks at the Danish national museum’s conservation centre at Brede outside Copenhagen, and will soon again head across the North Sea – to be a star attraction at an exhibition in the British Museum.

The 11 most fascinating scientific discoveries of 2012

The 11 most fascinating scientific discoveries of 2012 

PaperBack



Peter McCurtin, The Assassin #1: Manhattan Massacre, Dell, 1973

Worth It For the Crocodiles Alone

Mail Online: It's a real animal house! The $15million Texas mansion filled with dozens of stuffed polar bears, crocodiles and lions

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Or Maybe Not

Books That Will Inspire You to Be a Better Person in 2013

The year's 9 most hilarious New York Times corrections

The year's 9 most hilarious New York Times corrections

The Strange Story of William Faulkner’s Only Children’s Book

Brain Pickings: The Strange Story of William Faulkner’s Only Children’s Book

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Jersey woman charged at boyfriend with hammer after he refuses to pay for laundry, reports say

10 American Female Serial Killers

10 American Female Serial Killers

New Poem at The 5-2

The 5-2 : Crime Poetry Weekly: Kimberlee Smith

Times Square New Year's Eve: Black and white photos show history of holiday

Times Square New Year's Eve: Black and white photos show history of holiday

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

The Desert Rats

The Desert Rats (1953) trailer - YouTube:

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Song of the Day

Status Quo: Pictures Of Matchstick Men ( 1968 ) - YouTube:

Libby Hellman Profile in Chicago Tribune

Libby Hellman profile.

PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest

Modesty Blaise: Lady in the Dark (Modesty Blaise (Graphic Novels))
Another great comic strip collection from Titan Books.  Not to be missed by Modesty fans.  The large format makes this one especially enticing.

Modesty Blaise: Lady in the Dark (Modesty Blaise (Graphic Novels)): Peter O'Donnell: 9780857686930: Amazon.com: Books: Stories from the classic newspaper strip Modesty Blaise are collected here in the latest in Titan's deluxe library series.

This volume includes the classic stories The Girl from the Future, The Big Mole and Lady in the Dark! 


With story introductions that take the reader behind the scenes of Modesty's world, this outstanding collection is not to be missed.

The American Scholar: In Praise of Small Presses

The American Scholar: In Praise of Small Presses 

Today's Vintage Ad


First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

OrlandoSentinel.com: Woman stabbed drunken joker 9 times during holiday party for teasing, cops say

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Looking for Work?

The 8 Craziest Job Openings in the Military-Industrial Complex

PaperBack



Stuart James, Jack the Ripper, Monarch, 1960

No, It's Not Your Neighbor's Leaf Blower

What is the Most Annoying Sound in the World?

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .

Feud over Frankie the cat leaves family with £20,000 legal bill after 'foster owner' refuses to hand him back 

Monocles: How did they become a symbol of wealth?

Monocles: How did they become a symbol of wealth? 

Texas Crimes of the Year, 2012

Texas Crimes of the Year, 2012 

This is, as you can imagine, long.  Very long.

The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Rulers of All Time

The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Rulers of All Time

Tarzan and the Amazons

TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS (1945) trailer - YouTube: