VinceKeenan.com: "Book: Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir, by Arthur Lyons (2000)"


This sounds like a great book. Lyons also wrote a darn good series of private-eye novels, well worth looking for in the used-book stores.

This week I read Al Guthrie's TWO-WAY SPLIT. Good stuff. Set in Scotland (Edinburgh), with some tough characters that include an ex-con and some armed robbers. There's a not-so-tough private-eye who got into the business because he liked reading p.i. fiction. His heroes are Max Thursday and Johnny Killain. You gotta like a guy like that. The title's one of those jokey ones that works about three different ways.

The book was published by PointBlank, an imprint of Wildside, and they're going to be reprinting the Truman Smith books. Looks like I'll be in good company.

I was reading about Harry Whittington's A MOMENT TO PREY over at Ed's Place the other day, and I couldn't quite figure out what the original title must have been. I finally got around to looking at my Black Lizard copy of the book and discovered that Gold Medal had published it as BACKWOODS TRAMP. I have to admit that Whittington's original title is classier, but there's just something about a title like BACKWOODS TRAMP that's hard to beat. And the cover of the Gold Medal edition beats the one on Black Lizard by a backwoods mile.

It's still hard for me to believe it's been 45 years since I graduated from high school, even after having a reunion with some of my classmates. We all still look young to me. OK, maybe not young, but we don't look old. OK, some of us do, but not all of us.

The funny thing is that I really don't remember much at all about the graduation ceremony. I do remember walking across the stage and getting the diploma, but that's it. For years, I sat in the orchestra pit and played in the band for graduation, and I remember some of those times better than my own graduation.

I do remember that outside the city auditorium, shortly before we marched in, Mike Leary said, "Do you need to take a nervous weechie?" I assured him that I didn't. I felt fine. Little did I realize what I was getting into by actually graduating. I tried to solve the problem by staying in college forever, but that didn't quite work out.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
I have no idea what I'm doing, except that I'm trying out a new feature of blogger.com called "Blog This." One blog that I read nearly every day is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, where I learned some really interesting biographical stuff about Brian Donlevy. Maybe it will show up here, and maybe not. We'll see. OK, it works. All you have to do to see what I'm talking about is click on the link at the beginning of this entry.

Ray Charles has died. I've been listening to his music for nearly 50 years, and I still remember the first time I ever heard "What'd I Say." I was in a car full of teenagers driving down the highway between Mexia and Corsicana, Texas. We were listening to WRR, a station out of Dallas, and the song came on. We nearly went nuts. They called Ray Charles "The Genius." When it came to music, I guess he was.

Tomorrow I'm going to a high school reunion. I know some people hate those things, but I happen to enjoy them. I went to a small high school, and there were about 60 people in my graduating class. When we graduated in 1959, many of us had been attending school together since the first grade. If you count the time that we spent together outside the classroom (band, football games, and other school activities, not to mention dating), you'll realize that for 12 years I spent more time with a lot of those people than I did with my family. So it's no wonder that they still mean a lot to me and that I enjoy seeing them whenever I can. I'm always interested to hear how they've spent their lives and what they're doing now. It happens that 45 years have passed since our graduation, a fact that's hard for me to wrap my mind around. I still remember certain things from those days with a crystal clarity. Good times.

OK, I know you've been on tenterhooks while waiting for me to talk more about my favorite doo-wop groups. Certainly one of them is the Drifters. Here's a group that went through so many personnel changes that I can't remember them all, including changing the lead singer again and again, yet for ten years or so they remained reliable hitmakers. My favorite configuration was the one with Clyde McPhatter singing lead, and I also like McPhatter's singles a lot. Other groups I really like are Dion and the Belmonts, chiefly for two or three recordings, including one of the all-time best, "I Wonder Why." I also like the Crests quite a bit. "16 Candles" is the one everybody seems to remember, but they did some other great stuff as well.

When it comes to music, I'm hopelessly stuck in the past, just another example that proves I'm a case of arrested development. I listen mostly to music from the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, though there are some notable exceptions. I have a weakness for vocal group harmony, particularly of the doo-wop variety, which might explain why I liked the music from the late 1950s folk book so much. Not that there was any resemblance to doo-wop. The harmony was what drew me in. The folk era group that I liked most was the Kingston Trio, and I still like them. (Click on the G-Strings link for more.) I'm partial to the first configuration of the trio, the one that featured Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and Bob Shane. Tomorrow, I'll write a little about my favorite doo-wop groups.

One of the blogs I read every day is Ed Gorman's, found a www.edgorman.com. Just click on "Ed's Place." Recently he's given out the good news that several of Stephen Marlowe's books will be coming back into print through Ed's new imprint with Wildside Press. More good news (for me, at least) is that Wildside, through its PointBlank imprint will be bringing back my Truman Smith series. But I digress. I was talking about Stephen Marlowe. When I was a kid, I loved his stories under various names in the old SF digests I read, particularly the "Johnny Mayhem" series he did as, I think, Milton Lesser. A little later on, I started reading his Gold Medal books about a private-eye named Chester Drum. Not to mention his books as "Andrew Frazier" and "Jason Ridgway." He's still writing, so I have even more books of his to look forward to.

From 1971 until 1973 I taught English at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas. I was department chair from 1977 until 1983, having taken over from Dr. George C. Pittman, who had gone to be the chair at Mississippi College. Last weekend, George and his wife, Alicia, who have moved back to Texas, had a reunion of some of the HPU faculty from the early 1970s. Judy and I hadn't seen some of them in 25 years or more, and it was terrific to see them again. We were all great friends in the '70s, and we picked up as if no time at all had passed. The photos that some people brought from those long-ago days proved something about the ravages of time, but I'd rather not dwell on that. I thought everyone looked great. There was a little more gray hair, and a couple of us had gained a pound or two, but that was all. We had some wonderful times at Howard Payne, thanks mainly to the people we met there. Seeing them again was a rare treat.

As always, I'm years behind on my reading. When new SF writers come along, I'm lucky even to hear of them until everyone else has read several books by them or they've won major awards. A case in point is China Mieville. A big name these days, apparently, but I'm just now reading King Rat, published back in 1996. I'm glad I finally caught up with it, though. I'm a sucker for books set in the sewers of London (or anywhere else), adn this one has some great sewer stuff. Grunge is the word, and there are some scenes that might turn the stomachs of people who are easily disgusted with improper eating habits. I think this book would qualify as "urban fantasy," and its basis in the Pied Piper story is fun. Lots of rats and spiders and birds, not to mention a number of gruesome murders. There's just one nagging question, but I won't say what it is and spoil things for anybody who might want to read the book. I hear that Mieville's other novels are much longer and more complex than this one, but I might have to try one of them, much as I hate long books.

I picked up a copy of Donald Wollheim's anthology The Macabre Reader on eBay the other day because I remembered having read it as a kid and liking most of the stories in it. Last night I reread "The Cairn on the Headland" by Robert E. Howard. I still enjoyed the story, but what surprised me most was the fact that practically nothing at all happens in the story. There's not much of a plot, and it's pretty easy to see from the beginning just exactly how things are going to work out. (I probably didn't find it that easy when I first read the story more than 40 years ago, however.) Howard's writing is what carries the story, and it's still as full of energy as ever, at least for me. The Howard story that really knocked me out all those years ago was one called "Valley of the Worm," or something like that. I should look around for it and see if it still works for me.

Judy and I went to see The Day After Tomorrow yesterday. The theater was pretty crowded for a Tuesday afternoon, so I guess the movie's a hit. I was reminded all the way through not of the disaster movies like The Towering Inferno or Earthquake but of the old B&W SF movies of the 1950s. In those movies it was always The Bomb (or some variation thereof) that was wreaking havoc with nature, and all the familiar tropes are present in The Day After Tomorrow: the good-looking lead scientist, the diagrams, the pseudo-scientific explanations for what's happening, the guy you know is gonna die (sacrificing himself for the others, of course), the doubting Thomas who's finally converted when he sees the giant grasshoppers -- I mean when he sees the horrible results of the massive storms -- and all the rest. What's not to like? And the special effects were fun, too.

All reet! All reet!

Last night I reread, for the umpteenth time, Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit," and it was just as fresh as it was when I read it for the first time in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION nearly 50 years ago. It's the story of a man and his android, one of whom is psychotic. It's gruesome and funny and stylistically inventive. Bester was writing "new wave" SF before anybody even knew there was such a thing. A classic.

So jeet your seat!

So we went to see Troy the other day. I wanted to see The Day After Tomorrow, but that one was sold out. Judy refuses to go to an early movie, so we have to compete with the crowds. Luckily, Troy was just starting, so I bought tickets for that. Having taught the source material for the movie for thirty years or so, I was naturally a little taken aback by some of the changes the movie-makers made, but I wasn't surprised by them. I thought Orlando Bloom was a bit wimpy as Paris, and while he made a great blonde elf bowman in the LOTR movies, I wasn't impressed with his arrow-shooting scene in Troy. Whenever he and Helen were onscreen, I thought I'd stumbled into a movie called Troy 90210.

October 21, 2003: We got in from the Bouchercon about 6:00 yesterday. We had a pretty much hassle-free flight, which was a surprise, considering the recent box-cutter
incidents. I thought we'd be trapped in lines all day, but it didn't happen.

We didn't gamble much. We got a roll of nickels in each registration
packet, and I quit when I was up by a quarter. Judy lost the roll and
another couple of bucks. That was it. A friend of ours bet $200 on the
University of Texas to cover the spread in their game on Saturday, so he did
all right. He also won over $400 at the blackjack tables. He had a much
more profitable weekend than we did.

Since we were there mainly for the convention, we took in only one show, the
Lance Burton magic show. It was amazing and terrific. I couldn't figure
out how he did any of it. I'm a big fan of magic shows, and I wasn't
interested in seeing any of the other stuff, like Wayne Newton.

We did walk down most of the Strip and visit most of the big hotels. I know
some people don't like Las Vegas, but I liked it just fine. The
extravagance and glitz were overwhelming, but I like the idea that there's a
place like that where people can go if they want to. There were lots of
youngsters there, barely into their twenties. By that age I'd been to
Dallas and Waco.

For us the convention is more about visiting with friends than about the
programs, but we did attend a few panels, all of which were pretty good. We
had a great time.

October 14, 2003: Tomorrow Judy and I leave for Las Vegas where this year's Bouchercon is being held. I was Fan Guest of Honor at the convention last year, and Judy and I won the Anthony Award for "Best Short Story." So this year's convention might be a bit of a let-down. Maybe we'll win Big Bucks at the casnio to make up for it.

October 13, 2003: I propose this simple test for Rush and the Dittohead Nation. I'll pick a celebrity's name at random. OK, Alec Baldwin. Now let's assume that Alec Baldwin is in Rush's exact situation: popping hillbilly heroin for years, turned in by his housekeeper, takes responsibility after being exposed on the cover of National Enquirer in supermarkets all over the nation.

So. How would Rush and the Dittoheads respond?

(A) By urging tolerance and compassion because "Alec's only human" and "we all make mistakes."

(B) By entering full attack mode and saying that Alex is "typical liberal scum" and "typical Hollywood elite" (a group that includes everyone except Arnold S. and Dennis Miller, since the Repubs want to run them for office), who deserves to be ridiculed today and every day for months.

I'm betting it would be (B), and all I'm asking is the same treatment for El Rushbo.

October 13, 2003: The latest National Enquirer has another big article on Rush Limbaugh. I haven't bought a copy, and so far nobody on the 'Net has had anything to say about it. So I don't know if it adds anything to the original article or is just more of the same to sell the magazine. I'm eager to find out, though.