Saturday, July 25, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
I Want to Believe!
NY Daily News: The mystery behind a Los Angeles gun fanatic found decomposing in a car last week has deepened as his fianc�e's family said he was an alien-hybrid secretly working for the government.
Today's Bonus Forgotten Book: Paper Towns -- John Green
Since the movie version of Paper Towns opens today, I thought some of you might be interested in my review of the book, which certainly isn't forgotten, which appeared 6 years ago on the blog. Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: Paper Towns -- John Green
Forgotten Books:The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine
Will Murray is one of those prolific writers whom I admire greatly. He wrote many of the novels in The Destoyer series, and now he's writing books that continue the adventures of Doc Savage, Tarzan, and, most recently, The Shadow (in The Sinister Shadow, in which The Shadow meets up with Doc Savage). He also knows just about everything about every pulp magazine ever published, or so it seems.Before I read The Sinister Shadow, I decided I'd better brush up on my Shadow lore. I was a big fan of the character on radio when I was a kid, but the radio Shadow isn't the same as the pulp Shadow. In fact, the pulp Shadow is a complicated guy in more ways than one. Luckily I had Murray's book on had to clear things up for me, at least as much as things can be cleared up.
As you can tell from the ToC below, there's a lot of info in the book, but the ToC just gives you a vague idea. It's a great book. Unfortunately, cheap copies do not abound on the Internet. If you happen to run across one at a reasonable price, grab it.
Contents:
1. The Men Who Cast The Shadow by Will Murray
2. The Duende Shadow Index by Will Murray
3. The Golden Shadow by Bob Sampson and Will Murray
4. The Vulnerable Shadow by Bob Sampson
5. Theodore Tinsley-Maxwell Grant's Shadow (interview by Will Murray)
6. The Third Cranston by Bob Sampson
7. The Purple Girasol by Walter B. Gibson
8. Blackmail Bay by Walter B. Gibson
9. Walter B. Gibson Revisited (interview by Will Murray and Bob Sampson)
10. The Sinister Sanctum by Will Murray
11. The Authors
Features:
Interviews with the authors of the pulp Shadow (see above)
Short story "Blackmail Bay" by Walter B. Gibson
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Three in One Volume of Jack Lynch's Bragg Books -- Free (PDF version)
Bragg V1 - Brash Books: THE FIRST THREE, POWERHOUSE NOVELS IN JACK LYNCH’S EDGAR AWARD-NOMINATED AND TWO-TIME SHAMUS AWARD-NOMINATED BRAGG SERIES…NOW IN ONE VOLUME!
It May Appear that I Am Here . . .
. . . but I am not. I'm on my way to Austin to attend Armadillocon. I'm going a little early so I'll have time to visit my sister and my son while I'm in town. The usual posts have been scheduled, along with some of the usual weird miscellaneous items. I'll be back on Monday, so behave while I'm gone.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
It Might Have Been Worse If Her Colleague Had Not Been in a Suit
NY Daily News: 'Horndog High' teacher says NYC Ed Department gave her ‘unfair’ 2-year suspension for after-school tryst with female colleague in suit
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
First It was the Thin Mints Melee
Orlando Sentinel: Machete-wielding man threatened teen for disciplining Chihuahua
First It was the Thin Mints Melee
WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports: Police say that Terry Gauntt asked his girlfriend, Kimberly Moore, for his cigarette lighter when she grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him repeatedly, after 2:00am Tuesday.
The Drunk Squirrels WBAGNFARB
CBS News: A squirrel in the UK broke into a Worcestershire pub, July 12, 2015, and caused over $400 worth of damage. 62-year-old Sam Boulter, the owner of the Honeybourne Railyway Club, told the Western Daily Press that he originally thought his private members club might have been ransacked by burglars, when he discovered the damage.
Hat tip to Laurie Powers.
Hat tip to Laurie Powers.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
E. L. Doctorow, R. I. P.
Author E. L. Doctorow dead at 84: Author E.L. Doctorow, who wrote "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate," has died. He was 84.
Hat tip to Deb.
Hat tip to Deb.
First It was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
. . . and now it's the Ramen Noodle Robbery: A South Dakota man brandishing a chain yesterday robbed another man of a cup of ramen noodles outside a convenience store, police
Theodore Bikel, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Theodore Bikel, the multilingual troubadour, character actor and social activist who created the role of Baron von Trapp in the original Broadway production of “The Sound of Music” and toured for decades as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
And never leave home without it.
A Teen Girl Who Was Nearly Killed In A Riptide Was Saved By Her Selfie Stick
A Teen Girl Who Was Nearly Killed In A Riptide Was Saved By Her Selfie Stick
Vixen -- Bill Pronzini
Vixen is billed (no pun intended) as a "Nameless Detective Novel," but we fans of the series know that Nameless has had a name ever since Twospot. Not that it matters. We'll just call him Nameless.Nameless tells us in a brief prologue that before the case he's about to relate, he'd never run into a genuine femme fatale, one of those "whose brand of evil would be like nothing I could ever have imagined." This time, though, he does.
Cory Beckett is her name, and the case starts off simply enough. She wants Nameless and his agency to find her brother, who's jumped bail in a the case of a stolen necklace. She doesn't want anyone to speak to her brother, though, when he's found. She just wants to be informed of his location. Things don't work out that way. To say that complications ensue would be understating the case, and the story gets darker as it goes along, all the way to the end, which is very dark, indeed.
At the same time we read the story about Cory Beckett, we also get other stories about Nameless's family, about Jake Runyon, about a man named Frank Chaleen. Pronzini brings all this in with his usual style and skill, and the stories add a deceptive depth to the proceedings, which, by the way, are concluded in about the same length as a Gold Medal novel from the 1950s. It's a pleasure to read a book that's not padded out to doorstop size yet which has enough plot to satisfy anybody. The Nameless series is one of the best private-eye series ever written, and Vixen is a fine addition to the canon.
The history of the first quick-draw shootout
The history of the first quick-draw shootout (VIDEO).: On July 21, 1865—150 years ago today—Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in the center of Springfield, Missouri in the first example of the type of Old West showdown that defines the era on the big screen.
Possibly You've Been Wondering . . .
. . . what was the first stereo LP released by every label that was active in the late 1950s. "MR. MUSIC" has the answer.
Overlooked Movies -- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
This review originally appeared in September, 2004. I thought I'd run it again because after reading this article, I was reminded of how much I enjoyed the movie. I highly recommend you click on the link and check out the article.I grew up during the 1940s and 1950s. The world was a different place then. One way it was different, at least in Mexia, Texas, is that on Saturday afternoon all the kids I knew, and plenty of others besides, went to the double feature at the Palace Theater. The Palace, in spite of the name, was a pretty ratty place, but that didn't matter to its clientele. For about a dime, we got to see two cowboy movies (Johnny Mack Brown, Charles Starrett, Rex Allen, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Allan Rocky Lane, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue, Monte Hale, Tex Ritter, and you know all the rest). We also got a cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and a serial. Probably my favorite part of the whole afternoon was the serial. Why? I don't really know. I do know that my earliest movie memory is going to the Palace with my grandfather. I have no idea what the movie was, but the serial was The Phantom. At the end of the chapter we saw, The Phantom was sinking into a bed of quicksand. I remembered that scene vividly for well over 50 years, and finally, a few years ago when The Phantom was released on DVD, I got to see how he escaped.
So what does all this have to do with anything? Well, yesterday I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And I loved it. It was the next best thing to being six years old, back at the Palace Theater. I just sat there with a silly grin on my face for the entire running time and enjoyed the heck out of it.
Yesterday I posted a link to Roger Ebert's review of the movie and recommended it highly, especially the second paragraph. After I posted that, I read James Reasoner's blog, where he comments on a book by Milton Lesser. I highly commend James's comments to you because he echoes Ebert's remarks. And like both of them, I have no problem overlooking the ridiculous plotting and the pseudo-science of something like Sky Captain or Secret of the Black Planet. Those things aren't the point. Having a good time is the point, and at Sky Captain I certainly did that.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Douglas Cook, R. I. P.
Deadline: Screenwriter Douglas Cook died at noon Sunday in Santa Monica. He was 56 and was surrounded by his family when he passed away. Cook and his writing parter David Weisberg wrote the screenplays for The Rock, Double Jeopardy and the upcoming picture Criminal.
First It was the Thin Mints Melee . . .
. . . and now it's the Turtle-nest fight leaves one man wounded, another arrested
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
George Coe, R. I. P.
Rolling Stone: George Coe, an original Saturday Night Live cast member and longtime actor and voiceover artist with over 50 years of credits, passed away Saturday in Santa Monica, California after battling a long illness, Variety reports. He was 86. Coe was featured among the other "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" when Saturday Night Live debuted on October 11, 1975.
PaperBack
Francoise Mallet-Joris, The Loving and the Daring (The Illusionist), Popular Library Eagle Books, 1957
Paging Inspector Clouseau
CMPD: International jewel thief, 84, targets SouthPark store: Police say an octogenarian, international jewel thief, credited with a decades-long career in locales like France and Monte Carlo, stole a $33,000 ring from a SouthPark Mall jewelry store this month.
46th anniversary of the first moon landing
Seems like only yesterday, but at the time I was using a wired landline phone, writing grad school papers on a portable typewriter, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival on a record player. Let the whippersnappers snicker, but I saw this happen on a TV set without a remote control. It's something I'll never see again in my lifetime and something they'll never see at all.
Deseret News: On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the moon, making history forever with their "giant leap for mankind."
Deseret News: On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the moon, making history forever with their "giant leap for mankind."
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Alex Rocco, R. I. P.
The New York Times: NEW YORK — Alex Rocco, the Emmy-winning character actor best known for taking a bullet through the eye as the Las Vegas casino boss Moe Greene in "The Godfather," has died. He was 79.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
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