Saturday, February 20, 2016
Cindy Crawford's All-American style in review
Cindy Crawford's All-American style in review: 50 iconic photos of Cindy Crawford to celebrate her birthday
Sic transit gloria mundi
When I was driving to Dallas last week, I listened to a few old-time radio shows on XM's OTR channel. One of them was The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. The guest on the show was Louis Bromfield, and I wondered how many people listening knew who he was. I did because Bromfield's novels were very popular at one time, and I pay attention to that kind of thing. Not everybody does, though. After the show, the XM host said that every one of Bromfield's 30 novels had been a bestseller. Who reads him now? Anybody? Does anybody even remember the movies made from them? Yet here Bromfield was, a guest on a popular radio show. Not some late-night talk show, but a primetime hit. Maybe that was because he was also a conservationist and farmer. Does anybody remember that Bogart and Bacall were married at his farm? The farm is still there, by the way, but who remembers that it was started by a bestselling novelist?
First It Was the Thin Mint Melee
NY Daily News: A Queens pizzeria waiter with alleged ties to organized crime was busted Wednesday for torching a luxury car leased by the owner of a rival eatery in a dispute over a catering job.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Umberto Eco, R. I. P.
BBC News: The Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose, has died aged 84.
Jim Davenport, R. I. P.
San Jose Mercury News: REDWOOD CITY -- Jim Davenport, a slick-fielding third baseman who broke in with the original San Francisco Giants and became a fixture in the organization, died Thursday night. He was 82.
Tony Phillips, R. I. P.
Tony Phillips, versatile player for Oakland Athletics, dies at age 56: PHOENIX -- Tony Phillips, an infielder and outfielder who made the final defensive play in the Oakland Athletics' sweep of the San Francisco Giants during the earthquake-interrupted 1989 World Series, has died. He was 56.
Harper Lee, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Harper Lee, whose first novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 10 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction ever written by an American, has died. She was 89.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
I Want to Believe!
Has NASA been keeping a huge UFO near earth secret from us?: Is this a 230ft UFO orbiting an asteroid? Experts claim grainy black and white footage shows alien activity
I Miss the Old Days
Vintage Reads #54: Titular Tramps: Hey, if you can't come up with an attention grabbing title for your sleazy paperback (like "Sintrigue" or "Lust for Kicks"), then just slap a girl's name on the cover and be done with it. Here's a bunch of trashy reads featuring trashy ladies from Amy to Vicky. Enjoy...
A lot of great old paperback covers, many NSFW.
A lot of great old paperback covers, many NSFW.
FFB: Fortune is a Woman -- Hermes Nye
Hermes Nye was a Dallas lawyer who was talented in several fields. Besides being a lawyer, he was a writer and a folksinger who recorded a number of albums on the Folkways label. You can listen to one dandy number about Texas right here.Fortune is a Woman is a literary coming-of-age novel that wound up being published as a paperback original. As the cover says, it's "The explosive story of a struggling young lawyer and the girl who got in his way." Sure it is. Sort of.
The time is the late 1930s, and Paul Cotton is a young lawyer who has ambition but not much get-up-and-go. He's living in the Y and working for an established attorney. He gets an allowance from his father that keeps him solvent. He's attracted to a waitress at a diner, and she likes him a lot. It's easy for the reader to see that she's the Right One, so of course Cotton falls for another woman named Gail, who's obviously the Wrong One. Complications ensue, and eventually Gail winds up shooting another man with whom she's involved. It's up to Cotton to help her out, after which she heads for California, leaving him in Dallas.
And what does Cotton learn from all this? Not much. Since there's zero chance that any of you will ever read the book, I'll tell you that the owner of the firm dies and leaves the firm to Cotton. He's about to make the big time, though no effort of his own. And what's he thinking at the end of the book? "A man with guts and a one-way ticket on Greyhound could get there [California] in no time at all."
The best thing about the book isn't the messy plot. It's the author's voice, which is comic and engaging all the way. The writing is excellent. I won't give you an example, but I'll quote one of my favorite bits:
"You sound like Erle Stanley Gardner."
"I wish I could write like him."
"Yeah, he's a lawyer, too, isn't he? I was reading one of his things the other night. About this old bird who had a big estate out in California --"
"Ever hear about a poor man getting knocked off in one of those stories?"
This isn't a great Texas novel, but it's a very good one. If you ever stumble across a copy, grab it.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Backshot -- Ed Gorman
The title page of this novel reads Backshot: 1902, but the cover doesn't. Not that it matters. It's all the same book. However, there's some connection to Backshot: 2012 by Tom Piccirilli, which was released at the end of last year. I'm not sure what the connection is, other than that the last name of the marshal in Gorman's book is also the name of the protagonist in the Piccirilli book. I tried to check this out through Amazon, but each book has only one review -- and it's the same review, praising Gorman but not mentioning Piccirilli. Maybe Ed will read this and enlighten us.
On to the review. Declan Parnell is a feckless young man who works in a restaurant in a mining town and who's just gambled away all his money. He gets a loan to pay off an outstanding gambling debt, and he messes up. This loses him his only friend and makes him amenable to taking part in a robbery to be conducted by the owner of the restaurant where he works and the woman that Parnell thinks he's in love with. All Parnell has to do is to drop mickey into the drink of a judge. The other two will do the rest. Mean while a tough marshal named Royce is in town to investigate the corrupt sheriff. Royce is nobody's fool.
Parnell dopes the judge's drink, and that's when the twists begin and this plot summary ends. You know without my telling you that things do not go as planned.
Gorman's a master of this kind of story. People aren't what they seem, and Gorman can make even the worst of them seem almost human. There's a special kind of darkness that's revealed as the story goes along, and Gorman manages it well. The setting is winter, and the weather plays a part in the story. It's done so well that you might want to wrap up in your Snuggie while you read. Declan Parnell is the kind of guy who knows he's on the wrong track and wants to do the right thing. The question is whether he'll be able to do it and still avoid the consequences of his part in the crime. This book's the real thing, highly recommended.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
"We Want Our DVD!":
"We Want Our DVD!": “Du Rififi chez Les Femmes” (“Riff Raff Girls”) (1959); Starring Nadja Tiller and Robert Hossein - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s: French gangster movies about mobs, molls, and ingenious but ill-fated heists enjoyed a big vogue in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially after the success of Jules Dassin’s stylish “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes” in 1955. Opening here a year later in an edited, subtitled print as “Rififi,” Dassin’s picture drew a small but appreciative audience of critics and foreign-film fans, and became a perennial favorite in American art houses, repertory theaters, and film schools.
The Woman with the Blue Pencil -- Gordon McAlpine
When it comes to crime metafiction, Gordon McAlpine is tops. Under a different name, he's the author of Hammett Unwritten, which I reviewed here, and now he's published The Woman with a Blue Pencil. It's not easy to summarize, but I'll give it a try. Just before the attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese-American named Sam Sumida, who's become an amateur sleuth investigating the murder of his wife, leaves a movie theater showing The Maltese Falcon only to discover that the world has changed completely, and not just because of Pearl Harbor, about which he knows nothing. Nobody knows him, either. Nothing remains of his life before he entered the theater. He doesn't even exist. No one knows who he is, there's no record of the murder, there are people living in his home, and more. Sam, it turns out, is a character excised from a novel called The Orchid and the Secret Agent, by another Japanese-American named Takumi Sato.
We're presented with Simuda's story as he doggedly continues his investigation, along with chapters from the newer version of the novel in progress. A third thread of the story is made up of the letters that Sato receives from his editor. The letters are darkly hilarious, and the excerpts from The Orchid and the Secret Agent are funny in a different way. Nothing is what it seems to be here, as the separate unrealites keep changing, thanks to the woman with the blue pencil, who's not what she seems, either.
All this and only 189 pages. Highly recommended if you like this sort of thing. If you think you don't like this sort of thing, give it a try anyway. The book might convince you otherwise.
Warren Manzi, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Warren Manzi, a playwright whose Off Broadway thriller, “Perfect Crime,” remains the longest-running play in New York theater history — nearly 29 years and counting — despite the fact that critics often did not like it and theatergoers often did not understand it, died on Thursday in Lawrence, Mass. He was 60.
Readers of this Blog Will Not Be Surprised
Local News - WISN Home: Police found a two-foot alligator in a Manitowoc basement, along with 16 pounds of marijuana. They were looking for a man wanted on a warrant.
“Analog Ellery and the Paperback Hoarder”
“Analog Ellery and the Paperback Hoarder” (by Joseph D’Agnese) | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Award-winning journalist Joseph D’Agnese has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other papers, but the dream of writing fiction was born for him in childhood. His first short-story submission, at age twelve, was to EQMM. It wasn’t until 2012, however, that he began writing short stories regularly and submitting them for publication. Since 2012, he has won a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and had a story selected for the Best American Mystery Stories series. Bringing things full circle, last year he submitted a story to EQMM that will appear in our March/April 2016 issue, on sale next week!—Janet Hutchings
Your Birthday Word
How to find your birthday word Now you can find out your "birthday word" – words that were ‘born’ around the same time you were through the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), who provide an online search tool which allows you to find the first known date for which a word was used.
You won't have to search. It's all on the page at the link. Mine is "bad-mouth," which is a little surprising. I didn't know it had been around that long.
You won't have to search. It's all on the page at the link. Mine is "bad-mouth," which is a little surprising. I didn't know it had been around that long.
George Gaynes, R. I. P.
The New York Times: George Gaynes, who played a grouchy foster parent on the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster,” the beleaguered commandant in seven “Police Academy” films and a soap opera star with a crush on Dustin Hoffman in drag in the Hollywood hit “Tootsie,” died on Monday at his daughter’s home in North Bend, Wash. He was 98.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
The Oscars Library: The Books Behind Hollywood's Best Pictures
The Oscars Library: The Books Behind Hollywood's Best Pictures: More than two thirds of Hollywood's Best Picture winners were inspired by literature, whether it be a novel, biography, play, or short story. In fact, since the inaugural Academy Awards in 1928, exactly 62 Best Picture winners derive from literature, and that's not including the nominees. 2016 marks the 88th Academy Awards, and six of the eight films nominated for Best Picture are based on books, so odds are our list will creep to 63 come February 28th. From epic war stories to classic romantic comedies, here's a look at the lit behind Hollywood's most beloved films dating back to 1928.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, R. I. P.
New York Times: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian diplomat who led the United Nations in a chaotic 1990s tenure that began with hopes for peace after the Cold War, but failed to cope with genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia and ended in angry recriminations with Washington, has died. He was 93.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
The BFFs Who Ruled Silent Hollywood
The BFFs Who Ruled Silent Hollywood: Mary Pickford was America’s original sweetheart, the it “girl with the golden curls,” who became an international superstar playing plucky children filled with innocent wonder. Frances Marion was a patrician sophisticate, “just as beautiful as the stars she wrote for,” who was continually told that she was wasting her looks on writing. Together, they would become one of the powerhouse teams of silent Hollywood, pioneers leading the way through the Wild West of early film.
Overlooked Movies -- A Simple Twist of Fate
It's once again time for another of those posts about a movie nobody likes but me. The critics didn't like it when it was released, and it was a box-office flop. I'm probably the Lone Defender. I should also mention that when I was in high school Silas Marner was required reading. I loved it. I'm the only person I know who's ever said that. I don't know if it's still being taught, but if so, it's probably even more unpopular than ever. So why would anyone, especially Steve Martin, write a screenplay based on it?
I can't answer that, but I can say that the movie does pretty much follow the plot of the George Eliot classic. Martin plays a guy who finds his wife has been unfaithful and moves to the sticks to make artisanal furniture. (Okay, I'm very slow, and this is the first time I've noticed that artisanal says that art is anal. That's true in many cases, I suppose, and it kind of fits Martin's character here.) Martin collects gold coins, and if you've read Silas Marner, you know the rest. Coins stolen, foundling discovered, child changes grumpy man into better person, serious complications ensue. I won't divulge any of the latter, just in case some of you haven't have the pleasure of reading Silas Marner or seeing this movie. Or the displeasure, considering that I'm the Lone Defender.
Since A Simple Twist of Fate is based on a Victorian work, there are plenty of plot contrivances and coincidences -- simple twists of fate. They didn't bother me a bit. The movie's quietly funny most of the way and slapsticky funny at least once. It's warmhearted and it works out the way I'd like for real life to work out, although it does so all too seldom. You probably won't like the movie, but that's okay. My feelings won't be hurt.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Vanity, R. I. P.
Prince Protege Known for 'Nasty Girl': Vanity, a former protege of Prince’s and a member of Vanity 6, has died at age 57, TMZ reports.
Johnny Duncan, R. I. P.
Hollywood Reporter: Johnny Duncan, a popular guy around Hollywood who played Robin the Boy Wonder in a Batman serial that was shown in theaters in 1949, has died. He was 92.
Duncan, who taught Lana Turner the Lindy, palled around with Humphrey Bogart and had his head chopped off by Kirk Douglas in a sword fight in Spartacus, died Feb. 8 at his home in Davenport, Fla., his family announced.
Ails of the Chiefs
Ails of the Chiefs: We’ve all heard of playing sick, but it turns out that presidents like to “play well” instead.
New Poem at the Five-Two
The Five-Two: Chuck Von Nordheim: JACQUELINE EXPLAINS HER ASSAULT ON HER BOYFRIEND TO THE POLICE
First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .
. . . and now it's the Fork assault at Ocean Buffet leads to woman's arrest
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Frank Lloyd Wright Gas Station
Frank Lloyd Wright Gas Station: Frank Lloyd Wright designed this Minnesota gas station of the future with a lookout tower
It's Washington's Birthday (Or Presidents' Day, Take Your Pick)!
Washington's Birthday, also known as Presidents' Day, is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of February. The day honors presidents of the United States, including George Washington, the USA's first president.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Happy Valentine's Day to Me
I'm back in scenic Alvin, Texas, now, after nice weekend in Dallas at ConDFW. I saw some old friends like Scott and Sandi Cupp, the Siros brothers, Mark Finn, Carole Nelson Douglas, Paul and Lillian Stewart Carl, Dwight Simms, Martha Wells, Rhonda Eudaly Simpson, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Several of us went to dinner last night at RedHot&Blue, where I had some great bbq brisket. I was on a few panels, and all of them went well, so that was good.
This morning as I was looking around the hotel room to be sure I had everything packed up and ready to go, I felt Judy's presence in the room so strongly that I turned my head to look for her. I didn't see her, but I still had that feeling. Then I remembered it was Valentine's Day and remembered that we'd shared more than 50 of those over the years. Then the feeling was gone, but for a few seconds, five or ten, my Valentine was there in the room with me. I don't know how much stock you put in things like visitations, but as for me, for today, anyway, I want to believe.Bud Webster, R. I. P.
I never met Bud Webster, but I was much impressed by his work published on Black Gate and with his books (my reviews are here and here). The SF community has lost an invaluable historian and fan.
Bud Webster, July 27, 1952 – February 14, 2016
Bud Webster, July 27, 1952 – February 14, 2016
The Croquet Kid (Update)
The Croquet Kid: A controversial image has kicked off a modern-day Lincoln County War that has upended the world of Old West collecting. Experts face off over its authenticity. You decide who to believe.
Henry James' The American Inexplicably Not Included
Flavorwire: 25 Excellent Novels About Americans Abroad
Presidential Love Stories
Presidential Love Stories: With Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day around the corner, we looked in our vault for some presidential love stories. We often think of presidents and First Ladies as stodgy old men and women. But they too were once young, and the stories of how these power couples first got together show a human side to the presidency.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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