Brian Bedford, Voice of Disney's Hottest Cartoon Fox, Has Passed Away at 80: In a week already rife with loss, Brian Bedford—theater great and voice of Robin Hood (i.e. the first cartoon animal you ever looked at and thought “I would definitely hit that”)—has passed away at the age of 80.
Since the age of 15, Bedford has been performing on stage. He won two Tonys, one for Two Shakespearean Actors in 1992 and another for London Assurance in 1997. He also performed in Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival for over thirty years.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
The 16 Biggest Rolling Stones Hits of the '60's.
Forgotten Hits: Sweet 16 (1/16/16): The 16 Biggest Rolling Stones Hits of the '60's.
Friday, January 15, 2016
Dan Haggerty, R. I. P.
Houston Chronicle: Dan Haggerty, the screen actor better known as the beloved, bearded, bear-befriender Grizzly Adams, has died at age 74, according to TMZ.
First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .
. . . and now it's the BBQ brouhaha: Breasts bared, pork chops fly
Do You Want to Believe?
The Holy Order of the Sasquatch: “Finally, a religion that lets you believe whatever you want!”
Link via The Presurfer.
Link via The Presurfer.
Florida Tribe's Last Alligator Wrestler
OutdoorHub: For generations, the Miccosukee Indians of Florida have handed down a tradition of alligator wrestling, but that may now have come to an end. According to the AFP, the tribe’s last alligator wrestler announced recently that he will be retiring from the trade, and there are no others in the tribe of 600 to take his place.
FFB: Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters -- Richard S. Prather
Shell Scott isn't likely to be forgotten, not with the sales figures achieved by Richard S. Prather's accounts of his adventures. Check out the cover to the left. "Over 35,000,000 Shell Scott Books Sold," and that was in 1967, years before Scott's career ended for the first time in 1975, when Prather sued Pocket Books because he believed that they weren't giving him the correct sales figures for his books. Thanks to editor Michael Seidman, Prather resurrected Shell Scott a decade later with the 1986 publication of The Amber Effect, but the huge audience for the kind of novels that had been so popular a few decades before had begun to vanish. One more novel, Shellshock, followed, and that was the end of the series.I was lucky enough to meet Richard S. Prather and talk to him a little bit at the first Baltimore Bouchercon in 1986 when he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private-Eye Writers of America. It's hard to believe that was almost 30 years ago. Prather was a dapper little guy, and the one thing I remember from his panel is that he said he outlined not just the entire novel before writing it but also every chapter in the novel. But I'm not going to talk about one of his novels. I'm going to talk about a story collection. Why? Well, I like the cover, for one thing, and for another thing, I'd never read any of the stories before. I've read a good many of the novels already, though not all of them.
"The Best Motive" (it's jealousy, in case you were wondering) begins with Scott entering The Haunt, a nightclub "with lively corpses and a hot orchestra." The waiters dress in glowing skeleton suits and wear skull hoods. Since this is a Shell Scott story, you'd be right it you thought that through a bizarre series of circumstances, which involve Scott getting beaten up and hit on the head, Scott would end up in one of those outfits. By the way, Scott is hit on the head and knocked out an alarming number of times in these stories, more than any ten NFL players in an entire season. Scott is working for a beautiful young woman named Ellen, who has "a shape like a mating pretzel."
"Crime of Passion" takes place at a wild party were a man gets roasted instead of a pig. Scott's method of getting the confession is strictly for laughs.
"Squeeze Play" packs a lot of plot into a short story, and it's not Scott who's being squeezed. However, when he remembers at the end that a beautiful tomato still has his hundred bucks, you get the idea that he might get squeezed, after all. Tomato, by the way, is a term Scott uses often to refer to women. (In the late 1940s, a pretty cousin of mine attended Stanford University. She was a nationally ranked amateur tennis player, but there was no women's tennis team at Stanford. So she practiced with the men. She was known as "The Tennis Tomato." As far as I know, she didn't object.)
"Butcher" is much less lighthearted than the other stories here, and the ending is so unPC that it might give some people the fantods.
"Babes, Bodies and Bullets" is the quintessential Shell Scott title, so I'll forgive the missing Oxford comma. It begins with Scott at a boring party where people are talking about opera. He prefers the kind of party with "juicy tomatoes dancing can-cans." But don't worry. Soon enough he's confronted by "the kind of woman who made men want to join nudist camps. With her, of course." He's eventually smuggled into a "hospital" where the bad guys are fixed up, and there's plenty of shooting and head-banging. At the happy ending, however, Scott finds himself in a room with two beautiful tomatoes and three stiff drinks. "This was my kind of party."
"The Double Take" begins the morning after a different party, one at which Scott claims to have consumed "bourbon, scotch, martinis, and maybe even swamp water." He's not feeling well, so he goes to a bar where he's confronted by a beautiful tomato who demands $20,000 dollars and then starts blasting away at him with a .22. Then she runs into the women's restroom. A man follows her, and Scott follows both of them, but he's too late. They've gone through the window. After that, things get complicated, but you can bet Scott winds up happy at the end.
"Film Strip" opens with Scott, a movie camera and a hot tomato who's wearing a bikini and who confesses that she's always wanted to be a stripper but has suppressed the urge. Hilarity ensues until someone starts shooting at Scott. This one doesn't so much end as promise a lot more to come.
Any of these stories would be a good introduction to Shell Scott if you haven't read about him before. Obviously Scott's zany, violent, sexy adventures are not to everyone's taste, but he appealed to millions at one time. Others tried to write similar stuff, but nobody could do it like Richard S. Prather. The stories still work for me. Shell Scott is the Real Thing.
Update: Todd Mason's take on the stories in this book can be found here.
Another Update, this one from Linda Pendleton: The last Richard Prather Shell Scott mystery is The Death Gods, published in ebook and print in 2011. I've also published my interview with Prather, and that turned out to be his last interview.
Here is The Death Gods at Amazon.
Also Open Road Media is publishing all the series as ebooks, except for The Death Gods, which I handle.
Prather was such an interesting writer and his humor was often outrageous.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Actual Bookstore Conversations
BookMine - Old, Rare & Out of Print Books: We are doomed! These are actual conversations with people, who in theory, should know better. Keep in mind, these people drive cars, vote and might even have jobs.
Link via Boing Boing.
Link via Boing Boing.
Alan Rickman, R. I. P.
BBC News: Actor Alan Rickman, known for films including Harry Potter, Die Hard, Truly Madly Deeply and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, has died at the age of 69.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
A Visit To Jack London State Park
Fire Star Press: Behind the Literature My daughter, Angela Crider Neary, talks about the trip she and I took to the Jack London State Park a few years ago. Extra special bonus: A lot of photos of me!
Croc Update (Fossil Edition)
Fox News: Paleontologists have discovered the fossil remains of the
world’s biggest ocean-dwelling crocodile buried on the edge of the Sahara, a creature that was twice the size of anything seen today.
Named Machimosaurus rex, this croc would have weighed in at
least 6,600 pounds and been around 32 feet long. Other than its size, it would have looked much like a modern day crocodile except for its narrow snout – which was designed to allow it swim in the ocean.
Monte Irvin, R. I. P.
SI.com: On Monday night, the baseball world lost a giant with the passing of Hall of Fame outfielder Monte Irvin at age 96. A key figure in the integration of the major leagues, Irvin nearly beat Jackie Robinson across the color line before going on to star for two New York Giants pennant winners, and later served as baseball’s first black executive and a key figure in the Hall’s recognition of Negro League stars. He had been living in a retirement home in Houston, and prior to his death was the second-oldest living Hall of Famer, behind only Bobby Doerr.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Squirrel Obsessives Through the Ages
From Portrait Painters To College Applicants, Squirrel Obsessives Through the Ages: George is the president of The Squirrel Lover’s Club, a 20-year-old group with about 1,500 dues-paying members that hail from around the world.
Overlooked Movies -- Bowfinger
Once more I demonstrate how much I like movies that hardly anyone else does by saying that I really get a kick out of Bowfinger. Steve Martin plays the title character, a movie producer who makes Ed Wood look successful. He wants to direct a script, and he has one written by his accountant that he's sure is perfect. It's called Chubby Rain, and the premise has to do with aliens hiding in raindrops. Martin contrives to meet a big-time movie exec (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) at a restaurant, and the exec agrees to distribute the movie if Martin can land the biggest action star around, Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy, Jr.).
His meeting with Kit doesn't go well, but Martin's going ahead with the movie, anyway. How? Simple. He'll have his actors walk up to Murphy in public and say their lines while Martin films the scene with a hidden camera. Will it work? Martin tells them that Tom Cruise didn't know he was in that "vampire movie" until two years after it was shot.
Things go well until Kit, who's a head case, goes into hiding. He's a member of a cult called MindHead, and thinks aliens are stalking him. Martin finds someone who looks just like Kit, however, a guy named Jiff. We learn soon enough that the resemblance is only natural since Jiff is Kit's brother.
That's enough about the plot, which is even more complicated than it sounds, though it plays just fine. Much hilarity ensues (for me, anyway), and the cast is terrific. Murphy hasn't been very successful in recent years, but he does a wonderful job as both Jiff and Kit. I've been a fan of Steve Martin since he was on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with an arrow through his head, and he's great, as usual. Heather Graham, Christine Baranski, Downey, and all the rest are their equals. I laugh just thinking about some of the scenes in this movie. It's not cutting edge or even close, but it's very funny. Check it out.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Brett Smiley, R. I. P.
ABC News: Brett Smiley, who appeared on Broadway in the original musical "Oliver!" in 1965 and went on to become a glam rocker and achieve cult fame, has died. He was 60.
PaperBack
Laura W. (as told to Roy Talbott & Barbara Hoffman), Confessions of a Part-Time Hippie, Classics Library, 1967
David Bowie, R. I. P.
CNN.com: (CNN)David Bowie, whose incomparable sound and chameleon-like ability to reinvent himself made him a pop music fixture for more than four decades, has died. He was 69.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson and Deb.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson and Deb.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Richard Libertini, R. I. P.
Hollywood Reporter: Richard Libertini, the busy character actor who played the insane Central American general Garcia in the 1979 madcap comedy The In-Laws, has died. He was 82.
I Want to Believe!
Honduras to make archeological dig for mysterious ‘White City’: Honduras said Thursday it was starting a major archeological dig for a mysterious, ancient “White City” supposedly hidden in jungle in its northeast that explorers and legends have spoken of for centuries.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Daily Mail Online: André Füzfa from the University of Namur has proposed a method that would allow humans to control gravity, and says it’s achievable with current technologies.
Otis Clay, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: Hall of fame rhythm and blues artist Otis Clay, known as much for his big heart and charitable work in Chicago as for his singing internationally, died Friday.
He was 73.
The Mississippi-born Clay — whose gruff, tenor-tinged voice on blues songs such as “Trying to Live My Life Without You” varied from his haunting but hopeful baritone on gospel standards like “When the Gates Swing Open” — died suddenly of a heart attack at 6:30 p.m., said his daughter, Ronda Tankson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
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