Saturday, August 31, 2013
An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
CNTV English: It may not sound thirst-quenching it may even sound rather disgusting - but spreadable beer is the latest culinary treat hitting Italy. Food connoisseurs in the European Mecca of cuisine are hailing it as the next big thing.
Link via Neatorama.
Link via Neatorama.
I Miss the Old Days
Ars Technica: What might have been: Visiting Mars and Venus with Apollo-era hardware
Expecting a surge of support after the Moon landings, NASA started thinking big.
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+Avon.JPG)
Friday, August 30, 2013
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Paging Orson Welles
CBS Atlanta: A gimmicky promotion about an alien takeover at a radio station wound up scaring some residents of a north Alabama community.
Texas turns to Ted Nugent to control feral pig epidemic - Washington Times
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If I'd thought of this plot, I'd be on the bestseller list!
Texas turns to Ted Nugent to control feral pig epidemic - Washington Times: As part of the Sportsman Channel’s “Aporkalypse: 2013” series — set for Aug. 25 and described as “an entire night of wild hog stories and adventures” — Mr. Nugent will join Brian “Pig Man” Quaca to shoot dead nearly 500 wild pigs on the farmlands of Texas.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Seamus Heaney, R. I. P.
The Raw Story: Seamus Heaney, who has died aged 74, was widely regarded as the greatest Irish poet since William Butler Yeats, who like Heaney was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Paging Keller
Manhattan wife tries to pay hitman for her husband with $60,000 in rare stamps
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Murray Gershenz, R. I. P.
News.com.au: ACTOR Murray Gershenz has died at the age of 91.
The Hangover star suffered a heart attack on Wednesday, according to TMZ.com.
Gershenz did not begin his acting career until he was 80, but went to appear in several TV shows and movies including Mad Men, Modern Family, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, I Love You, Man and NCIS: Los Angeles.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Gershenz did not begin his acting career until he was 80, but went to appear in several TV shows and movies including Mad Men, Modern Family, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, I Love You, Man and NCIS: Los Angeles.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Forgotten Books: Mr. Majestyk -- Elmore Leonard
Mr. Majestyk started out as a screenplay, and Leonard turned it into a novel about the time it was filmed so it could be released in conjunction with the movie. Majestyk is a melon farmer, and in a way he's like some of Leonard's characters in his western novels. He's a seemingly mild-mannered guy who can't be pushed around. Push him, and he's going to push back. He's a military vet who knows how to push.
Bobby Kopas tries to get Majestyk to hire some melon pickers who aren't up to snuff instead of the skilled workers Majestyk usually hires. Kopas gets what he deserves, but Majestyk goes to jail as a result. There he's involved in a jailbreak with Frank Renda, a mob hit man. All Majestyk wants to do is get back to picking his melons, and he kidnaps Renda, planning to trade him to the cops for his own release. Renda escapes and wants revenge. Big mistake.
There's a lot of action in the book, the usual good writing, and some great characters. In other words, everything you're looking for in an Elmore Leonard book. It's one of my favorites among his novels, and if you've passed it by because it's not as well-known as some of the others, you should check it out. The movie's very good, too. One of Bronson's best.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
Rival campers who opened fire turn out to be sheriff's deputies: An apparent booze-fueled dispute over loud music between two groups at a Chino campground over the weekend escalated to the point where men from both sides drew guns and opened fire.
America's Safest And Most Dangerous Cities For Drivers
America's Safest And Most Dangerous Cities For Drivers
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Annoying slideshow alert.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Annoying slideshow alert.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Victor Gischler's epic fantasy novel
Victor Gischler's Blogpocalypse: INK MAGE ... the new epic fantasy novel from The Gischler
To be published in serial form. Get in on it now for a very low price.
To be published in serial form. Get in on it now for a very low price.
It Figures
Swiss government to open drive-in sex booths - Salon.com: Herzig said. “If the city doesn’t run them, the pimps will.”
Hat tip to Michael Bracken.
Hat tip to Michael Bracken.
Gilbert Taylor, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: — Influential “Star Wars” cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, a master of black and white, has died. He was 99.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Another First
BBC News: A rare painting of three Elizabethan children and their pet could be the earliest portrait of a guinea pig, the National Portrait Gallery has said.
Overlooked Movies: Jivaro
You'll notice that the poster doesn't mention 3-D, but if you watched the trailer I posted, you can tell that the movie was obviously intended for 3-D showings. My hometown didn't have a theater that showed 3-D, so I saw it flat. I think the rest of the country did, too, the 3-D fad having died down by the time this move was released. Too bad, because Rhonda Fleming was great in 3-D. Note the great scene in the trailer. (Here are my comments on a Fleming movie that I did see in 3-D.)
What is Rhonda doing in the Brazilian jungle? Well, she's there because her rotter of a fiance has been writing her about the plantation he owns, so she goes to check him out. He's lying, though. He's just a drunk who's taken up with Rita Moreno. Rhonda arrives in town, and immediately Fernando Lamas and Brian Keith fall for her. Who can blame them? Lamas goes around a lot of the movie dressed as he is in the poster, so there's beefcake to go with the cheesecake.
Along with all the rest, there's plenty of action, some shrunken heads, and a rope bridge scene, even though the rope bridge is kind of disappointing because the bridge is only a few feet above the water. They needed some quicksand, too. The jungle is all backlot stuff, but who cares. I'd love to see it again.
Monday, August 26, 2013
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: Killing John Cusack eBook: K.H. Graham: Kindle Store: Killing John Cusack is a 9,700 word horror/dark humor short story. After losing his son in a tragic accident involving a celebrity, a father discovers that similar deaths have been occurring all over the world. After slowly becoming obsessed with getting to the bottom of these deaths, he learns that there is something peculiar about the accidents.
There is a force behind these tragic accidents that he is not quite prepared for...a single killer that can take on any face it wishes. In their ultimate confrontation, the killer just happens to be wearing the face of a certain movie star we all know and love.
Why I Won't Be at WorldCon
A couple of people have e-mailed to ask why my name is no longer on the guest list for San Antonio WorldCon. Don't worry. I didn't get kicked out for bad behavior. Here's the scoop.
Judy and I bought our memberships to WorldCon a couple of years ago, and we got our hotel reservations as soon as they became available. We were really looking forward to the convention, to getting together with old friends and to making new ones. But sometimes life throws you a curve.
If you've been reading this blog for a long time, you might recall that in 2007 Judy was diagnosed with small-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I haven't talked about this often on the blog, since the blog is more or less my escape from reality, but maybe it's time for an update.
The kind of lymphoma Judy has isn't curable, but it's treatable, and since 2007 Judy has been through innumerable clinical trials and rounds of chemo. Okay, maybe not innumerable, but more than I'm able to enumerate. Let's just say there've been a lot and that it's been tough. Judy's borne it all with grace and courage as those of you know know her would expect.
Last fall, something strange showed up on a PET scan. Even after a biopsy, the doctors weren't sure what it was, so we were sent to the doctor at M. D. Anderson who specializes in unknowns. She thought the lesion was sarcoma, and Judy started chemo for that. The chemo didn't work, so they tried radiation, six weeks of it, five days a week. That "arrested" the sarcoma, but other lesions appeared. Judy's lymphoma doctor was sure they weren't lymphoma, but other doctors weren't. Judy had another biopsy. Even after that, some of the doctors weren't 100% convinced, but Judy's lymphoma doctor was. He released her to a sarcoma doctor.
On August 5, Judy started a new chemo regimen. It required her to be in the hospital for six nights, as some of the chemo was administered for twenty-four hours a day. The chemo has some serious side-effects, and Judy had to be closely monitored. Her blood counts were so low at the end of the period that she had to have a transfusion, which meant another night in the hospital. There are two weeks between the treatments. I won't go into detail, but they're no picnic, either.
If the treatment is working, there will be five more rounds. The second one will begin today or tomorrow and will still be going on during the weekend of WorldCon, so there was just no way we could be there. We won't be at Bouchercon, either, I'm sorry to say. Maybe next year.
Judy, as usual, is taking all this a lot better than I am. All we can do is hope that the treatment works. We're hanging in and trying to take it a day at a time, which is a lot easier said than done, as some of you who have gone through similar experiences know all too well.
I probably won't have much more to say about this until the treatments are over, but if the blog posts become sporadic or even stop for a while, you'll know why.
Judy and I bought our memberships to WorldCon a couple of years ago, and we got our hotel reservations as soon as they became available. We were really looking forward to the convention, to getting together with old friends and to making new ones. But sometimes life throws you a curve.
If you've been reading this blog for a long time, you might recall that in 2007 Judy was diagnosed with small-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I haven't talked about this often on the blog, since the blog is more or less my escape from reality, but maybe it's time for an update.
The kind of lymphoma Judy has isn't curable, but it's treatable, and since 2007 Judy has been through innumerable clinical trials and rounds of chemo. Okay, maybe not innumerable, but more than I'm able to enumerate. Let's just say there've been a lot and that it's been tough. Judy's borne it all with grace and courage as those of you know know her would expect.
Last fall, something strange showed up on a PET scan. Even after a biopsy, the doctors weren't sure what it was, so we were sent to the doctor at M. D. Anderson who specializes in unknowns. She thought the lesion was sarcoma, and Judy started chemo for that. The chemo didn't work, so they tried radiation, six weeks of it, five days a week. That "arrested" the sarcoma, but other lesions appeared. Judy's lymphoma doctor was sure they weren't lymphoma, but other doctors weren't. Judy had another biopsy. Even after that, some of the doctors weren't 100% convinced, but Judy's lymphoma doctor was. He released her to a sarcoma doctor.
On August 5, Judy started a new chemo regimen. It required her to be in the hospital for six nights, as some of the chemo was administered for twenty-four hours a day. The chemo has some serious side-effects, and Judy had to be closely monitored. Her blood counts were so low at the end of the period that she had to have a transfusion, which meant another night in the hospital. There are two weeks between the treatments. I won't go into detail, but they're no picnic, either.
If the treatment is working, there will be five more rounds. The second one will begin today or tomorrow and will still be going on during the weekend of WorldCon, so there was just no way we could be there. We won't be at Bouchercon, either, I'm sorry to say. Maybe next year.
Judy, as usual, is taking all this a lot better than I am. All we can do is hope that the treatment works. We're hanging in and trying to take it a day at a time, which is a lot easier said than done, as some of you who have gone through similar experiences know all too well.
I probably won't have much more to say about this until the treatments are over, but if the blog posts become sporadic or even stop for a while, you'll know why.
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+Space+Tug+Pocket+Books.JPG)
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
Deputies: man threatens to kill wife over dirty cat litter Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Ted Post, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Ted Post, a prolific director who collaborated with Clint Eastwood on two hit films, directed hundreds of episodes of television series like “Gunsmoke,” “Peyton Place” and “Rawhide,” and made a low-budget film about the Vietnam War that was widely ignored when it was released in 1978 but is now regarded by many critics as one of the best in its genre, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 95. His son, Robert, confirmed the death.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Celebrations in the Ossuary: Kyle J. Knapp: 9780983377573: Amazon.com: Books: Kyle J. Knapp (September 1, 1989 – June 18, 2013) was a poet, musician, and short story writer from Freeville, New York. His debut collection of prose, Pluvial Gardens, was released in 2012. He studied Social Sciences at Tompkins Cortland Community College and worked for the school as an English tutor. Kyle enjoyed nature, fishing, and playing guitar. He was a prolific artist, who, at the time of his passing, had written enough material for two additional collections of poetry and a near-complete novel.
John Schoenherr Revisited
Omni Reboot | FROM THE OMNI ARCHIVE: DUNE: FRANK HERBERT CALLED HIM THE ONLY ARTIST TO HAVE VISITED DUNE. DECADES AFTER THEIR PUBLICATION IN OMNI, JOHN SCHOENHERR’S ILLUSTRATIONS ARE AS MELANCHOLY AND POWERFUL AS EVER.
Link via mental_floss.
Link via mental_floss.
Julie Harris, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Julie Harris, the unprepossessing anti-diva who, in the guises of Joan of Arc, Mary Todd Lincoln, Emily Dickinson and many other characters both fictional and real, became the most decorated performer in the history of Broadway, died on Saturday at her home in Chatham, Mass.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
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