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BEAT to a PULP :: The Pickle :: Chris La Tray

A Couple of Howard Hunt Covers in Color

A PQ Interview with E. Howard Hunt

I have no idea how a very low circulation zine got an interview with E. Howard Hunt, but there it is in the Spring 1979 (Volume 2, Number 1) issue.

Today's Western Movie Poster

Seattle Leads the Way

The Associated Press: Court: Seattle police OK to stun pregnant woman: "Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent.

[. . . .]
Rather than give her the ticket and let her go on her way, the officers decided to arrest her. One reached in, turned off her car and dropped the keys on the floor. Brooks stiffened her arms against the steering wheel and told the officers she was pregnant, but refused to get out, even after they threatened to stun her.

The officers — Sgt. Steven Daman, Officer Juan Ornelas and Officer Donald Jones — then stunned her three times, in the thigh, shoulder and neck, and hauled her out of the car, laying her face-down in the street."

I Still Want You to Get off My Lawn

Men do not grow grumpy with age, research finds - Telegraph: "Rants by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Bob Geldof on the television show Grumpy Old Men might suggest otherwise, but a study suggests it is younger people who have a more negative outlook on life.

Despite the curmudgeonly stereotype cultivated by Victor Meldrew in the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave, scientists found that older people view the world through rose-tinted spectacles, remembering the good times rather than the bad."

Latest Issue of Crimefactory Now On-Line

CRIMEFACTORY: "NEW FICTION BY:
RAY BANKS
DAVE ZELTSERMAN
KIERAN SHEA
PATTI ABBOTT
JOSH CONVERSE
STEPHEN D. ROGERS
GERARD BRENNAN

NEW FEATURES BY:
JIMMY CALLAWAY
REED FARREL COLEMAN
CRAIG MCDONALD
CHARLIE STELLA
CHAD EAGLETON
THE NERD OF NOIR"

Step Brothers

Yes, I watched this movie.

Yes, I laughed.

Yes, I'm ashamed of myself.

Yes, that is all I have to say.

Wouldn't Anyone Try to Help?

Drunk Pa. man tried to revive dead opossum | WOPULAR: "Police say they charged a Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen trying to resuscitate a dead opossum along a highway.

State police in Punxsutawney say several witnesses saw 55-year-old Donald Wolfe, of Brookville, near the animal Thursday afternoon."

Hat tip to Fred Zackel.

Desire Under the Elms

Dracula Update

'Twilight' time! 'Dracula' creator's relative wants memorial in Dublin | Entertainment in Ireland and Around the World | IrishCentral: "Perhaps feeling that the worldwide fascination with Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and the 'Twilight' movie series has focused attention on the wrong vampires, a relative of the creator of the grand-daddy Gothic novel 'Dracula' wants to have a memorial erected in Dublin in time for the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker's death this year.

'It's an oversight. There is no permanent memorial in his home city to this guy,' said Dacre Stoker."

Move Over, Paris Hilton

Heidi Montag’s Post-Hills Plans: Be a Hollywood Mogul - PEOPLE TV Watch: "I have been able to truly find what makes me the happiest in life,” Montag says.

And what might that be? “Getting to truly show the world my creative ability … while playing … different characters.”
One of the characters Montag wants to play is “a lifeguard named Summer” in a script she wrote herself.

“I am making the first 3-D beach comedy about a shark that attacks a small beach town and I save the day with my 3-D boobs,” Montag says. “I’ve even written a role for Dolly Parton to play the town mayor!”"

Hat tip to Vince Keenan.

The Museum of Bad Art

MOBA : The Collection: "The pieces in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the merely incompetent."

Today's Western Movie Poster

Dino Update

Scientists find first ever southern tyrannosaur dinosaur: "Tyrannosaurus rex, once believed to have only roamed the Earth north of the Equator, may also have lived in the southern hemisphere, paleontologists said Thursday.

Scientists from Cambridge, London and Melbourne have found the first ever evidence that tyrannosaur dinosaurs existed in the southern continents. They identified a hip bone found at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia as belonging to an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex."

The 10 Definitive Time Travel Movies

The 10 definitive time travel movies - Salon.com slide show

Forgotten Books: THE VENETIAN BLONDE -- A. S. Fleischman

I was saddened by the death the other day of Sid Fleischman at age 90, so I thought I'd re-read one of his books. I believe The Venetian Blonde was his last Gold Medal book, but don't hold me to it. It's one of the funny little quirks of my memory that I remember how much this book impressed me back in 1964 when I first read it. Maybe it was the title, or possibly the cover, that caught my eye and made me pluck it off the newsstand. Either one would do the trick.

The blonde isn't in Italy. We're talking Venice, California, here. A cardsharp named Skelly still has his skill, but he's lost his nerve. He's in Venice to put the touch on a friend. Instead, he meets the friend's wife, who's about to work a million-dollar con and needs his help. Skelly doesn't want to get involved, but he's desperate for the dough. He owes a gambler $125,000, and the gambler's not happy about it, not at all.

Skelly meets the blonde in a bar, and she immediately falls for Skelly the way women do in these books. Skelly falls, too, but he doesn't see how it can ever work out.

As you have already guessed, the con doesn't go as smoothly as Skelly had hoped. There are plenty of twists and turns, with a couple of good ones only six or seven pages before the end. It's all very smooth and expertly told. Stark House has already done one Fleischman double, and it includes this novel. There's another double coming later this year. If you like Gold Medal crime and adventure novels, both volumes are well worth your time.

Two Nights with Cleopatra

Make it So!

The Way Old Friends Do? Abba offer hope to new generation of fans with reunion hint - Times Online: "They have always maintained that they would never re-form and famously turned down $1 billion (�600 million) to tour again, but Abba have given a new generation of fans hope of seeing the band perform live.

For the Mamma Mia! devotees who have come to the band’s music nearly 30 years after they split, tribute bands and YouTube clips of the Swedish foursome in satin and spandex seemed the closest they could get.

But in an interview with The Times today, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the male half of the Swedish group, offer a beguiling change of tone.

Asked if they would consider an intimate one-off performance — perhaps with an orchestra — that could be beamed around the world, Andersson said: “Yeah, why not?”"

Avatar II

Link via Neatorama.