The Battle Over the Sea-Monkey Fortune
This is a great story.
Hat tip to Jayme Lynn Blaschke.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Yet Another List I'm Not On
But I'm sure you'll all agree, anyway.
Ten of the Best Private Eyes: The Best P.I. Novel Series of All Time
Ten of the Best Private Eyes: The Best P.I. Novel Series of All Time
Forgotten Hits: What's The Name Of That Song???
Forgotten Hits: SWEET 16 - What's The Name Of That Song???: Today, as part of our latest SWEET 16 feature, Forgotten Hits salutes those GREAT songs that confused the heck out of the record buying public because the TITLE of the song never appears anywhere in the lyrics!!!
Friday, April 15, 2016
Dan Ireland, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: Dan Ireland, the producer and director who bolstered the careers of Rene Zellweger and Jessica Chastain when he guided the actresses in The Whole Wide World and Jolene, respectively, has died. He was 57.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
FFB: Magical Beginnings -- Steven H. Silver and Martin H. Greenberg, editors
This is the third and final anthology in the series edited by Steven H. Silver and Martin H. Greenberg. I've already commented on Wondrous Beginnings and Horrible Beginnings, and as with the other two, I bought this one for the introductions. It presents the first publications by a group of fantasy writers, along with their introductions to each story, and I think we can all agree that this title works a lot better than the one for the horror anthology.In this volume, all the introductions were written by the authors themselves. There's an interesting sense of "if we'd known then what we know now" in reading them. For example, Charles de Lint's effusive praise of Andrew Offut shows that de Lint knew a much different person from the one described by Offut's son in his recent memoir. And several writers here owe their starts to Marion Zimmer Bradley, who also comes in for much praise. Bradley is another who's been the subject of a bit of non-literary criticism lately.
Lisanne Norman wins the prize for longest intro here, and it's also the one with the most detail about the genesis of the story. But all the intros are interesting. Who doesn't like to know how writers got their start and the struggles they had with getting that first publication? I'd read only a couple of the stories in this volume, but now I want to read them all.
Magical Beginnings
ToC from Wikipedia:
"Introduction" (Steven H Silver)
"Introduction to 'People of the Crater'" (Andre Norton)
"The People of the Crater" (1947) (Andre Norton)
"Introduction to 'My Daughter's Name Is Sarah'" (Peter S. Beagle)
"My Daughter's Name Is Sarah" (1959) (Peter S. Beagle)
"Introduction to 'April in Paris'" (Ursula K. Le Guin)
"April in Paris" (1962) (Ursula K. Le Guin)
"To Light a Fire" (Susan Shwartz)
"The Fires of Her Vengeance" (1980) (Susan M. Shwartz)
"Introduction to 'The Fane of the Grey Rose'" (Charles de Lint)
"The Fane of the Grey Rose" (1979) (Charles de Lint)
"Introduction to 'Bones for Dulath'" (Megan Lindholm)
"Bones for Dulath" (1979) (Megan Lindholm)
"Introduction to 'The Unicorn Masque'" (Ellen Kushner)
"The Unicorn Masque" (1981) (Ellen Kushner)
"Introduction to 'The Stuff of Heroes'" (Esther Friesner)
"The Stuff of Heroes" (1982) (Esther Friesner)
"Introduction to 'The Ulfjarl's Stone'" (Mickey Zucker Reichert)
"The Ulfjarl's Stone" (1989) (Mickey Zucker Reichert)
"Introduction to 'Rending Dark'" (Emma Bull)
"The Rending Dark" (1984) (Emma Bull)
"Introduction to 'A Different Kind of Courage'" (Mercedes R. Lackey)
"A Different Kind of Courage" (1985) (Mercedes Lackey)
"Introduction to 'Third Time Lucky'" (Tanya Huff)
"Third Time Lucky" (1986) (Tanya Huff)
"On "Sing'" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)
"Sing" (1987) (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)
"Introduction to 'Birthnight'" (Michelle West)
"Birthnight" (1992) (Michelle West)
"Introduction to 'The Jewel and the Demon'" (Lisanne Norman)
"The Jewel and the Demon" (1998) (Lisanne Norman)
"Introduction to 'The Raven's Quest'" (Fiona Patton)
"The Raven's Quest" (1998) (Fiona Patton)
"About the Authors"
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Scribe Award Nominees for 2016
Scribe Awards | International Association of Media Tie-In Writers: The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is pleased to announce the Scribe Award Nominees for 2016.
My Daughter Blogs about Someone She Knows
I'm trying to figure out who it is: Fire Star Press: Bookaholism
Mike Lazo, R. I. P.
Mike Lazo, Lead Singer of The Tempos Dies at 83: On April 12, 2016, after a long illness, Michael Lazo passed away at the Charles Morris Skilled Nursing facility. He was born on May 1, 1932, to the late Michael and Susan Lazo. Early in life, he discovered that he had been gifted with a wonderful and versatile singing voice. While still a boy, he sang weekly on the local KDKA Betty Dugan radio program. After graduating from Taylor Allderdice in 1949, he served in the Army and was stationed in Korea. While serving he met the late Gene Schacter with whom he went on to form The Tempos, a quartet which also included Jim Drake and Tom Minito.
Forgotten Hits: The Mamas and the Papas Revisited
Forgotten Hits: The Mamas and the Papas Revisited: Ten Things You Probably Never Knew about The Mamas and The Papas
Anne Jackson, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Anne Jackson, who was half of one of America’s best-known acting couples, sharing much of a long and distinguished career with her husband, Eli Wallach, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
My Adventures with Katherine Anne Porter
In 2002 I did a post about meeting Katherine Anne Porter when I was teaching at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas. That post was followed by several others. Not long ago, a former colleague of mine at HPU sent me a couple of photos from that meeting that I'd never seen before, and I decided to consolidate my previous posts into one sort of new revised one.
Dr. Roger L. Brooks, the president of HPU, was a former English professor and an avid reader and book collector. He was also something of a promoter, interested in getting publicity for the college, and in 1976 he invited Katherine Anne Porter to come to Brownwood for a symposium on her work and a celebration of her birthday. Ms. Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, which is near Brownwood, or would be if it still existed. It's a ghost town now, or it was the last time I was there. Maybe it's revived. Nope, it doesn't appear to have revived. At any rate, Ms. Porter's parents are buried in the Indian Creek Cemetery, and she hadn't visited their graves since WWII. A visit to that site was part of the inducement used to get her to come to Texas. It worked, and she accepted the invitation.
Nobody wanted to cause Ms. Porter any problems, so we faculty members were weren't allowed to hover around her after she arrived. I was taken to the motel where she was staying to meet her, along with a couple of others. When I was introduced to her as "Dr. Crider," she held out her arm and said, "Oh, Dr. Crider, the pains start right at my wrist and go all the way up my arm!" I explained I wasn't that kind of doctor, and she let me off the hook, but I worried about her the rest of the weekend. I was told that she was a bit of a worrier, herself, and that nothing was wrong with her arm or any other part of her. I hoped that was true.
As I mentioned, the college held a symposium in conjunction with Ms. Porter's visit, and scholars from all over the country came to read papers. I'm not sure they were interested in visiting a small backwater university, but you can bet they wanted to meet Ms. Porter. Two of them I remember were Joan Givner and Darlene Unrue, both of whom have done excellent scholarly work on Ms. Porter. Joan Givner went on to become Ms. Porter's chosen biographer, and I suspect that she no longer remembers that I was the one who introduced her to Ms. Porter in Brownwood, Texas, 40 years ago.
Some of the HPU faculty members were allowed to go with Ms. Porter to the Indian Creek cemetery to visit the grave of her parents. I wasn't included, but I'm told it was quite a congenial trip, and the group even had a picnic on the cemetery grounds. At the far left of the picture is Almola James. Closest to the grave marker is Elva Dobson, and Ms. Porter is beside her.
Someone had to scout out the location of the grave beforehand, and I did get in on that trip. As you can see in the photo, I was a skinny guy. The woman in the center is Al James, and the fellow kneeling down is George C. Pittman, the chair of the English Department.
Since I didn't go on the trip to the cemetery with Ms. Porter, I was rewarded with a seat beside her at the birthday banquet. In the photo, left to right, are George C. Pittman, Katherine Anne Porter, me, Judy Crider, Robert Dobson, and Elva Dobson. Here's what I remember about the banquet. Ms. Porter wore a white wedding dress that she said she'd bought in Mexico when she lived there in the 1920s or '30s. You can see it in the picture. What you can't see is the big emerald brooch she wore pinned to the dress. I hardly notice things like that, but you can bet my wife, Judy, noticed. People think of Judy as a shy person, but she wasn't. She was very good at talking to people, and she asked about the brooch. Ms. Porter said that she'd made a big bundle of money from the movie sale of her novel, Ship of Fools. She said, "Some people buy boats. I bought emeralds." This made perfect sense to Judy.
Ms. Porter made a talk at the banquet, and I suspect that there's a recording of it buried somewhere in the HPU archives. I'd love to hear it again. I'm pretty certain she talked about the wedding dress, and she might even have mentioned the wooden coffin that she'd also bought in Mexico and that she planned to be be buried in. Several of us had heard that she kept the coffin in her home in Maryland, but that hadn't been confirmed.
It was confirmed later, however. Two members of the English Department, Dr. Charlotte Laughlin and Dr. Alta Ada Schoener, were invited to visit her in Maryland, and they got a picture of the coffin, which was under a sheet inside a closet. That's it in the photo to the right.
As for the symposium, it was typical of that kind of thing, with people reading papers on Ms. Porter's life and works. It's all laid out in the article to the left.
On Sunday after all the other festivities, HPU had its graduation ceremony, where Ms. Porter was to be awarded an honorary degree. She was seated on the stage with the other dignitaries, who included a local doctor, just in case something went seriously wrong. Nothing did, although somehow or other Ms. Porter had gotten the idea that she was supposed to hand out the diplomas to the graduates, a job usually reserved for the college president. Dr. Brooks, however, wasn't going to embarrass anyone, and when Ms. Porter got up to hand out the diplomas, he went right along with her. She got tired part of the way through the ceremony and had to sit down, but about half the graduates in 1976 got their diplomas from her.
After her death in 1980, Ms. Porter was cremated. I have no idea if her wooden casket was used. For some reason her ashes weren't returned to the Indian Creek Cemetery where she wished to be buried until 1981. Here's the bulletin from St. Mary's Catholic Church in Brownwood for April 5, 1981, and you can see the mention of Ms. Porter's interment. At some point a stone was placed in the cemetery as a memorial to her, and you can see it on the left.
And that's the whole history of my experiences with Katherine Ann Porter.
Dr. Roger L. Brooks, the president of HPU, was a former English professor and an avid reader and book collector. He was also something of a promoter, interested in getting publicity for the college, and in 1976 he invited Katherine Anne Porter to come to Brownwood for a symposium on her work and a celebration of her birthday. Ms. Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, which is near Brownwood, or would be if it still existed. It's a ghost town now, or it was the last time I was there. Maybe it's revived. Nope, it doesn't appear to have revived. At any rate, Ms. Porter's parents are buried in the Indian Creek Cemetery, and she hadn't visited their graves since WWII. A visit to that site was part of the inducement used to get her to come to Texas. It worked, and she accepted the invitation.
Nobody wanted to cause Ms. Porter any problems, so we faculty members were weren't allowed to hover around her after she arrived. I was taken to the motel where she was staying to meet her, along with a couple of others. When I was introduced to her as "Dr. Crider," she held out her arm and said, "Oh, Dr. Crider, the pains start right at my wrist and go all the way up my arm!" I explained I wasn't that kind of doctor, and she let me off the hook, but I worried about her the rest of the weekend. I was told that she was a bit of a worrier, herself, and that nothing was wrong with her arm or any other part of her. I hoped that was true.
As I mentioned, the college held a symposium in conjunction with Ms. Porter's visit, and scholars from all over the country came to read papers. I'm not sure they were interested in visiting a small backwater university, but you can bet they wanted to meet Ms. Porter. Two of them I remember were Joan Givner and Darlene Unrue, both of whom have done excellent scholarly work on Ms. Porter. Joan Givner went on to become Ms. Porter's chosen biographer, and I suspect that she no longer remembers that I was the one who introduced her to Ms. Porter in Brownwood, Texas, 40 years ago.
Some of the HPU faculty members were allowed to go with Ms. Porter to the Indian Creek cemetery to visit the grave of her parents. I wasn't included, but I'm told it was quite a congenial trip, and the group even had a picnic on the cemetery grounds. At the far left of the picture is Almola James. Closest to the grave marker is Elva Dobson, and Ms. Porter is beside her.
Someone had to scout out the location of the grave beforehand, and I did get in on that trip. As you can see in the photo, I was a skinny guy. The woman in the center is Al James, and the fellow kneeling down is George C. Pittman, the chair of the English Department.
Since I didn't go on the trip to the cemetery with Ms. Porter, I was rewarded with a seat beside her at the birthday banquet. In the photo, left to right, are George C. Pittman, Katherine Anne Porter, me, Judy Crider, Robert Dobson, and Elva Dobson. Here's what I remember about the banquet. Ms. Porter wore a white wedding dress that she said she'd bought in Mexico when she lived there in the 1920s or '30s. You can see it in the picture. What you can't see is the big emerald brooch she wore pinned to the dress. I hardly notice things like that, but you can bet my wife, Judy, noticed. People think of Judy as a shy person, but she wasn't. She was very good at talking to people, and she asked about the brooch. Ms. Porter said that she'd made a big bundle of money from the movie sale of her novel, Ship of Fools. She said, "Some people buy boats. I bought emeralds." This made perfect sense to Judy.Ms. Porter made a talk at the banquet, and I suspect that there's a recording of it buried somewhere in the HPU archives. I'd love to hear it again. I'm pretty certain she talked about the wedding dress, and she might even have mentioned the wooden coffin that she'd also bought in Mexico and that she planned to be be buried in. Several of us had heard that she kept the coffin in her home in Maryland, but that hadn't been confirmed.
It was confirmed later, however. Two members of the English Department, Dr. Charlotte Laughlin and Dr. Alta Ada Schoener, were invited to visit her in Maryland, and they got a picture of the coffin, which was under a sheet inside a closet. That's it in the photo to the right.
As for the symposium, it was typical of that kind of thing, with people reading papers on Ms. Porter's life and works. It's all laid out in the article to the left.
On Sunday after all the other festivities, HPU had its graduation ceremony, where Ms. Porter was to be awarded an honorary degree. She was seated on the stage with the other dignitaries, who included a local doctor, just in case something went seriously wrong. Nothing did, although somehow or other Ms. Porter had gotten the idea that she was supposed to hand out the diplomas to the graduates, a job usually reserved for the college president. Dr. Brooks, however, wasn't going to embarrass anyone, and when Ms. Porter got up to hand out the diplomas, he went right along with her. She got tired part of the way through the ceremony and had to sit down, but about half the graduates in 1976 got their diplomas from her.
After her death in 1980, Ms. Porter was cremated. I have no idea if her wooden casket was used. For some reason her ashes weren't returned to the Indian Creek Cemetery where she wished to be buried until 1981. Here's the bulletin from St. Mary's Catholic Church in Brownwood for April 5, 1981, and you can see the mention of Ms. Porter's interment. At some point a stone was placed in the cemetery as a memorial to her, and you can see it on the left.And that's the whole history of my experiences with Katherine Ann Porter.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
First Magnolia Blossom of the Year
Judy always looked forward to the first magnolia blossom of the year. This is the one for 2016. It bloomed at almost exactly the same time as the one last year. The bee is enjoying it, I think.
“Last Minute Thoughts on Millennials, Acronyms, and Bullets”
“Last Minute Thoughts on Millennials, Acronyms, and Bullets” (by Carl Robinette) | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Carl Robinette made his professional fiction debut with “The Hard Rise,” in the Department of First Stories of EQMM’s September/October 2014 issue. Since then, several more of his short stories have been published in print and online and he has recently sold another story to EQMM. He tells us he is currently putting together a collection of his short fiction, while continuing to work in local community news. He’s a contributing reporter for the Star News in Chula Vista and several other publications in San Diego County. His predicament as a multitasking Millennial is the subject of his first post for us.—Janet Hutchings
Arthur Anderson, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Arthur Anderson, who performed on radio as a teenager with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and appeared on Broadway, in films and on television, but whose most enduring role was as the voice of Lucky Charms cereal’s leprechaun, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Rare and Collectible Books by William Shakespeare
Rare and Collectible Books by William Shakespeare: Considered the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare's works are among the world's most widely read, most intensely studied, and most passionately collected. Early editions are also some of the most valuable.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Happy Anniversary to Paris and Kim
NY Daily News: April 12. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine is declared safe. The first space shuttle successfully launches. And, most importantly, reality star Paris Hilton takes soon-to-be reality star Kim Kardashian to a red carpet event, unintentionally introducing the world to a woman they liked watching do very little even more.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
I'm Sure You'll All Agree
Jack MacLane inexplicably not included: The Best Horror Authors Alive Today
La-la-la, don't hear you!
Hoarding is serious disorder — and it’s only getting worse in the U.S.: he most common acquisitions are clothes and books.
Overlooked Movies -- Three Coins in the Fountain
Back in 1954 this movie taught me that all women want husbands, preferably hot Italian husbands, but a snooty old American will do if you're a desperate 35-year-old who's practically an old maid already. The woman who toss coins in the Trevi fountain are Jean Peters, Maggie MacNamara, and Dorothy McGuire. The men they're after are Rossano Brazzi, Louis Jourdan, and Clifton Webb. There are many plot complications, but don't worry. All's well that ends well, and who cares about the plot? What really matters here is that the movie was filmed in Rome and Venice in full color and in CinemaScope. I hope you took a look at the trailer, since it pretty much makes that point. Back in 1954, for a kid sitting in a theater in a small East Texas town, color and CinemaScope seemed about as close as he'd ever come to seeing the Grand Canal and St. Mark's Square. It was that way for a lot of people in those days, and this movie gave me (and them) a great travelogue wrapped up in three nice stories.
Is the stories believable? Not for a minute, what what does that matter to an impressionable kid? Or to an adult who can remember that kid? It's a product of its time, for sure, so view it as a charming historical artifact.
The title song was sung over the opening credits by Frank Sinatra, as you know if you watched the trailer, but the massive radio hit was the recording by the Four Aces, which will appear later as the Song of the Day.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Get A Clue by Robert Lopresti
Get A Clue by Robert Lopresti | Trace Evidence: Robert Lopresti’s character Leopold Longshanks solves a mystery in AHMM for the eighth time in the May issue. Here, the author talks about his relationship with an ever-present aspect of literature from fair-play puzzles to thrillers to whodunits: clues.
Coming from Stark House Press
STARK HOUSE PRESS: Scratch a Thief / House of Evil
978-1-933586-99-1
Two classic crime stories from the early 1960s: a cop with a grudge pursues an ex-con who wants to go straight, and a failing B-actor becomes involved with a Hollywood sex cult. New introduction by Ki Longfellow. May 2016. What this description doesn't tell you is that the book contains a wonderful memoir/introduction by Ki Longfellow. I know you're tired of hearing me say it, but Stark House has the best introductions anywhere, and this is another one that's worth the price of admission.
Howard Marks, R. I. P.
The New York Times: Howard Marks, an Oxford-educated drug trafficker who at his peak in the 1970s controlled a substantial fraction of the world’s hashish and marijuana trade, and who became a best-selling author after his release from an American prison, died on Sunday. He was 70.
The '60s at 50: Monday, April 11, 1966
The '60s at 50: Monday, April 11, 1966: LSD in the United States: Authorities said the drug produced extreme sensations of color, sight and taste, breaking down the sense of reality. Sometime in the early 1960s, probably 1961, I took a course in conversational Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin. It was essentially a class of Show and Tell. Each student had to bring something to class and talk about it in Spanish. We could bring a newspaper article or a picture or a book. We were required to subscribe to La Prensa, so most of us brought articles from that paper. One of the students was married, and her husband was in the psychology department. One day she brought a couple of weird-looking pictures, not unlike the one above, to class, and she told us that her husband was doing experiments with a drug. Under the influence of the drug, a person looking at the picture would experience all kinds of things. It was an interesting presentation, but I pretty much forgot about it until a few years later when that drug was in the news a lot in articles like the one above. I've often wondered what happened to that woman and her husband.
And this reminds me that when I was a T.A. during my second tenure at UT, one of my students, a very good writer, was the first person arrested in Texas for the illegal sale of LSD. He was later arrested again for the same crime. I still remember his name, so I checked a newspaper archive just to be sure my memory still serves me well in this case. It does. He told the court that he got the LSD in California, "where drugs like LSD are accepted." He said, "You can sit on a street corner in California and if someone doesn't give you a bite of a sandwich, he'll give you some LSD."
I miss the old days.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
William Hamilton, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: William Hamilton, a cartoonist known for lampooning the rich and powerful in the pages of The New Yorker magazine, has died, according to reports published Saturday.
Hat tip to Deb.
Hat tip to Deb.
Can't Dance Forever -- Jon Dalton
From the first the problem of the missing boy is an odd case, as Mallory finds himself dealing with the boy's aunt, who refuses to tell him where the boy is (but who drops a truly weird hint) and a sexy high-school teacher who's either alcoholic or slightly crazy (or both, and more) and who seems intent on seducing Mallory.
Eventually the case expands to become much more than it had seemed, and Mallory's forced to call on old friends and finally his old secret organization for help in sorting things out. Lots of people die, while others are beaten or tortured, so be warned: This isn't a cozy.
The book's title is, in part, a reference to Mallory's partner, Vicki, who dances at a club. Their relationship is at a crossroads when the book begins, and it's greatly complicated by events in the novel. Check it out.
New York's First Female Crime Boss
New York's First Female Crime Boss Started Her Own Crime School: Organized crime in New York is often portrayed as a boy’s game, but one of the first and most influential crime bosses in the history of the city was a Prussian immigrant known as “Mother” or “Marm” Mandelbaum.
Traveling the Chisholm Trail
Traveling the Chisholm Trail: History, legacy and legend come to life in the Lone Star State.
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