Allan Rocky Lane 

Dixie Cup Lids

When I was in first grade, the school I attended was located only a couple of blocks from my house. But on the way, I passed two mom-and-pop stores that sold groceries, candy, and soft drinks. They also sold hamburgers to kids who didn't want to eat in the cafeteria. I usually just went home for lunch, but I loved to stop at one or the other of those stores after school and buy a little cup of ice cream that cost five cents, which also covered the cost of the little wooden spoon you got to eat the ice cream with. We called the ice cream "Dixie Cups" because, I suppose, the company that made the ice cream was named Dixie and because the ice cream came in cups. But nobody really cared about the ice cream, or at least I didn't. What I like was the photos of movie stars on the inside of the cup lids. I had a small but select stack of these that I'd collected, but somehow they disappeared over the years (I suspect that my mother tossed them along with my comic books). Recently I've picked up a few replacement lids on eBay. My favorites were always those of the B-western stars, like Allan "Rocky" Lane, Wild Bill Elliott, Charles (The Durango Kid) Starrett, and it's fun to have them again.

Bloggers Beware?

anniesj: a word to the wise

For all I know, this is a hoax, but any of you political types might want to read it just for fun.

I'd been looking for this book for many years. I'm not sure Falcon Books were very well distributed in Texas, since I've run across very few of them, and I'd probably never have found this one if it hadn't been for eBay. Sure, the book was reprinted by Fawcett Crest in a slightly revised version as SO NUDE, SO DEAD, but I wanted the Falcon. Now I have it, even if it isn't signed, like Richard Moore's copy. I've even read it. It's told from the point of view of a heroin addict who wakes up one morning with a beautiful dead blonde babe in his bed. Not exactly an original idea, except for the addict part. He has to fight his addiction while trying to find the killer. There's a lot of brutality in the book, mostly torture and beatings, and a lot of sex. Ray Stone might be an addict, but he's pretty much irresistible to women. There's some awkward writing. ("Ray," she hissed. "Now!") But the story moves right along, and there's even a mention of Hunter College, which may or may not have been the inspiration for Evan Hunter's last name. Not a great novel, and no fan of Mickey Spillane's will be surprised by the ending, but I'm still glad I finally got my hands on a copy. 

Do people really live out their lives acting out a series of cliches, or is it just that way in the movies? I saw RAY yesterday, and it was a lot like a Douglas Sirk melodrama from the 1950s with a little more frankness about drugs and sex (but not much more; it's rated PG-13, after all). For that matter, it's a lot like one of those '50s rock 'n' roll movies of the GO, JOHNNY, GO era, especially in the way it presents the off-the-cuff creation of classics like "What'd I Say?" and "Hit the Road, Jack." Even though the movie's very long (and sometimes seems even longer), it doesn't really deal with the complexity of Ray Charles' character (it all goes back to childhood trauma!), and some of the supporting cast members are reduced to simple stereotypes. Sure, Jamie Foxx does a terrific job of presenting himself as Charles (except for a dream sequence at the end, when the glasses come off and show us Foxx himself, a jarring note). And of course the music is wonderful, worth the price of admission all by itself, but I left the theater feeling pretty unsatisfied. As we know, however, I'm a grumpy old man, and some of the audience liked the movie a lot more than I did. One elderly black woman pushing a walker told the woman beside her that she loved it and that she was "ready to see it again right now!" 

Monster Mash

If you want to hear the song and see the monsters dance, this link is the place to go.

And if you want a great page full of Halloween-related links, check out Incoming Signals. Everything from rogue taxidermists to the "Mickey Mouse contemplates suicide" daily comic strip from October 1930.

Not a Political Post

On Wednesday I did my civic duty and voted. And believe me, after just a few minutes in the Alvin early voting room, I'm convinced that democracy is not only messy but that we're in serious trouble. The place looked like the wrap party for the combined casts of Dumb and Dumber and Deliverance.

One woman with a nearly shaved head tried to vote in the college board election and came out of the booth saying that she'd done it all wrong and that her tranquilizers were to blame. The election officials voided her ballot and asked if she wanted to vote again, but she was zoned out and just wandered over to the national election side and got in line there.

And that side of the room was an interesting zoo all by itself. One guy in front of me was about 90 years old and using a walker. He had a voter registration certificate that was at least five years out of date. I don't know how they ever settled that one. The discussion was still going on when I left. The zoned-out woman was in the booth next to me, and one of the election officials was with her. I didn't try to listen in, but the official was talking the whole time. I wonder just who was voting. All in all, it was a depressing experience.

My favorite band of the '70s was Creedence Clearwater Revival. I could give you a list of their songs that I like, but it would take too long. When Creedence broke up, I continued to keep up with John Fogerty, whose voice and arrangements gave the group most of its distinctive sound. His new CD is DEJA VIEW ALL OVER AGAIN, and the title song is an anti-Iraq war tune, comparing Iraq to Viet Nam in Fogerty's usual understated way. But the title might also have another meaning, as most of the songs on the CD already sound familiar, as if you might have heard them on some other John Fogerty production. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I like Fogerty's music, and I'm always happy to listen to whatever he comes up with. "I Will Walk with You" is a nice country-flavored love song, and "Honey Do" is a humorous number that's going to remind a lot of guys of something they hear all the time. My grandmother used to cook rhubarb, and I haven't had any in probably 50 years, so I got a little nostalgic listening to "Rhubarb Pie." "She's Got Baggage" is probably the hardest rocker on the CD. Good stuff, too. In fact, all the songs are good, if familiar. Great listening. 

The Red Sox, the Curse, a Total Eclipse, and the Kingston Trio

Judy and I are baseball fans. We watch the Houston Astros on TV or listen to them on radio just about every evening during the summer, and we enjoyed their run toward the play-offs this year. While we were sorry to see them miss out on the World Series (and they certainly had their chances in the play-off games with the Cardinals), we at least had the fun of seeing them get past the first play-off round for the first time in their history.

I've always been a National League kind of a guy, and ordinarily I'd have been rooting for the Cards in the World Series. But not this time. Here's why not: I'm a big fan of the Kingston Trio (see my homepage for more on that topic). On October 17th, the Kingston Trio sang "The Star Spangled Banner" before the play-off game between the Red Sox and the New York Yankers. At that point, thanks to the magic of the KT, the Curse of the Bambino was lifted, and the Red Sox went on their unprecedented winning streak of eight games in a row, thereby becoming (as far as I know) the first team ever to win a World Series on the night of a total eclipse of the moon.

Blogger Blues

Blogger has been trying its best to keep me from posting today, but it appears to be cooperating again. For now, at least. So here goes.

Recently I've been reading James Lee Burke's Last Car to Elysian Fields. I've been a big fan of Burke's writing since I read a paperback copy of Lay Down My Sword and Shield around 30 years ago. But lately I find myself thinking that that he's overdoing the description bit. He does it so well that I don't really blame him, however. And there's another thing that bothers me. In reading Last Car and Bitterroot, I thought that there was a lot of sound and fury but not much of real consequence. Plenty of violent action, but not much else. And everybody in the book is screwed up beyond belief. Isn't anybody in Louisana anywhere near normal? While I'm carping, I'll also add that Last Car relies too heavily on the old deus ex machina or even what the Disney guys call "fairy dust" to help wrap things up. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

Blogger Blues

Blogger has been trying its best to keep me from posting today, but it appears to be cooperating again. For now, at least. So here goes.

Recently I've been reading James Lee Burke's Last Car to Elysian Fields. I've been a big fan of Burke's writing since I read a paperback copy of Lay Down My Sword and Shield around 30 years ago. But lately I find myself thinking that that he's overdoing the description bit. He does it so well that I don't really blame him, however. And there's another thing that bothers me. In reading Last Car and Bitterroot, I thought that there was a lot of sound and fury but not much of real consequence. Plenty of violent action, but not much else. And everybody in the book is screwed up beyond belief. Isn't anybody in Louisana anywhere near normal? While I'm carping, I'll also add that Last Car relies too heavily on the old deus ex machina or even what the Disney guys call "fairy dust" to help wrap things up. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

B-Movie Hall of Fame

VinceKeenan.com

Vince Keenan says, "The B-Movie Hall of Fame inducts its new members. Who’s in there already if Sonny Chiba is only getting in now?"

This link provides the answer.

Clear Channel Clobbers Houston Geezers

HoustonChronicle.com - KBME to join all-sports radio ranks: "The departure of the beautiful music format on KBME also means the departure of veteran Houston radio host Paul Berlin, a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame who has been a fixture in Houston radio since 1950.

'Paul will be with us at least through Dec. 15,' Charles said. 'We've been proud to be partners with him. You don't get to work with that many legends in this business.

'But there is not a musical fit with him (among Clear Channel's Houston stations), and that is one of the hardest parts about this decision.'"

So Clear Channel is taking the only music station I listen to and going to all sports-talk, all the time. There's already a sports station, but what the heck. Now no one will be playing music from the 1940s and 1950s. I'm really angry about this, but of course there's not a thing I can do. Being an old geezer, I'm not anybody's target audience anymore, except for the people who run Goodlife TV. And the commercials on that channel are too depressing to watch.

Dream Lovers 

Because I was an adolescent in the late 1950s, Bobby Darin was a guy I sort of grew up with. Not that I ever met him. I watched him on American Bandstand when “Splish Splash” came out, and I remember that he and Buddy Holly both had hits with “Early in the Morning” (Darin was singing under the name of the “Rinky Dinks” for that one, but everybody knew it was him). I remember when “Mack the Knife”hit the air, and I realized that Darin could be Frank Sinatra if he wanted to, and I remember his folk phase with “If I Were a Carpenter” and “Long Line Rider.” Then he had a TV series. And then he was dead.

I knew all that, but I didn’t know much else. When I read that Kevin Spacey was making a movie based on Darin’s life, I was interested, and when I saw a copy of Dream Lovers by Dodd Darin, Bobby’s son, at Half Price Books for a couple of books I picked it up. It’s a fascinating
story.

I’d heard that Darin was “brash,” but he was more than that. He was a terribly obnoxious egotist, but he was also a guy who had many loyal friends. And he was smooth with the chicks. Possibly my favorite story in the book involves is relationship with Connie Francis. I didn’t know he even had a relationship with her, but apparently two of them were very much in love, or Darin was as much in love with her as he could be with anybody. Here’s the story: “While he was seeing Connie, [Bobby] was having sexual relations with other women. Bobby told her that he had to have sex to keep his skin clear, and Connie not only believed him but has said that she was not threatened by these other girls.” Now that’s a convincing guy. Either that or Connie was remarkably naive.

While I knew about Darin’s career, I didn’t know much about Sandra Dee. I’d seen her in the movies (Gidget!), and I knew that she and Darin had married, but that was about all. She just dropped out of sight during the late 1960s and never showed up on my radar again. Little did I know what a mess her life has been. I guess that cutie-pie screen image fooled me. You’d think I’d know better. The book was published in 1994, and at that time she was still in the grip of alcoholism and anorexia. I don’t know how she’s doing now, but I’d like to think that she was recovering. She’s three years younger than I am, which is a scary thought for me. I don’t know exactly why, though.

Dream Lovers is a pretty melancholy book, all in all. I’m sure that writing it was therapy for Dodd Darin, and it’s not a happy story. Bobby Darin went became a big star, and then he went from the penthouse to the outhouse before staging a hugely successful comeback. But he died before the comeback was complete, apparently through his own carelessness, or something. He’d had a heart condition since a childhood bout with rheumatic fever, and he was having serious problems . So there’s no real explanation for this: “He went to the dentist to have his teeth cleaned. Heart patients are supposed to take antibiotics when having dental work done, as a preventive against bacteria invading the bloodstream. . . . For reasons known only to [Darin], he didn’t take the antibiotics.” And septicemia killed him not long afterward.

For a guy who’s Bobby Darin’s son, Dodd Darin at times has a shaky grasp of music history. He says at one point, “The Stones followed the Beatles, then came the Beach Boys . . . .” Having been around during those days, I know full well that the Beach Boys were selling hit records years before Beatles came along. Don’t let a little thing like that bother you if you’d like to know more about Bobby Darin, though. It’s a fascinating, if depressing, story.

Among the DVDs I picked up at The Dollar Tree was one with eight episodes of the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940s. I watched four of them today, and they were all great. This is one DVD that's definitely worth a buck. Obviously the guy who did SKY CAPTAIN has seen these. My favorites of the four I watched were "Japoteurs" and "The Underground World," but "The Mummy Strikes" was also a lot of fun. It's not the stories that makes these cartoons worth watching. Those are pretty lame. But the artwork, the animation, the fluidity of the movement, the images, the color -- zowie! The disc I got is Volume 2. Now I have to find Volume 1. And Volume 3 if there is one. 

SKY CAPTAIN redux

Ed's Place: "Pop Dreams from the Collective Gutter by Jack O'Connell"

I'm sure all of you check in at Ed's Place daily, but if you missed this post by Jack O'Connell, hop over there and check it out. You might have to scroll down, but don't miss it.

Enfield Grenade Launcher

Sportsman's Guide - Government Surplus - Used No. 4 Enfield Grenade Launcher

The clearance price is only 20 bucks. Of course it's a used grenade launcher, but that's still a bargain.

Yesterday I visited The Dollar Tree ("Everything's a Dollar") and checked out the DVDs. I wound up with a stack that included mostly old TV shows: "The Jack Benny Show," "Topper," "Mr. and Mrs. North," "Ozzie and Harriet," and "Flash Gordon," which starred Steve Holland. It was filmed in Europe and syndicated in the U.S. in the mid-1950s. The episode I watched ("Flash Gordon and the Planet of Death") is so bad that it makes PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE look like CITIZEN KANE. The climactic fight scene is truly pathetic. The costumes worn by the Evil Invaders are hilarious (one of the E.I. looks exactly like Old Weird Harold from the FAT ALBERT cartoons; Bill Cosby must have seen this Flash Gordon episode). The pseudo-science in the story is even funnier than the costumes. Naturally I can't wait to see the other two episodes. 

School District Bans Halloween

komo 4 news | School District Bans Halloween

And the reason for the ban? Check it out. Halloween is offensive to real witches. I'm glad my new Sally Good book is so up-to-date!

Up from the Depths

A song kept running through my mind yesterday after I posted the news about A Bond with Death. The song was written by Harlan Howard, and I first heard it sung by Hank Cochran, though others have recorded it since. It's "Sally Was a Good Old Girl." Maybe you've heard it:

Sally used to carry my books to schoool.
Sally was a good old girl.
Do my homework 'cause I was a fool.
Sally was a good old girl.

After a while, it dawned on me that a song I heard more than 40 years ago gave me the name of Sally Good, the main character in my series of novels set in a Texas community college. This is pretty scary, and I don't even want to think about where any of my other character names and/or plots might have come from.

NAKED CITY

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries

Click on the link above for some good commentary on THE NAKED CITY (TV version) and reviews of a couple of shows. (Andy Jaysnovitch, take note.)

Horror Film Quiz

MSNBC -

Another link via Incoming Signals. I confess that I missed two, but one of them was #3, and I'm sort of glad I missed that one.

Book Heaven

Book Heaven

There's a new blogger on the block. Andy Jaysnovitch, compulsive madman, has some great stuff at the URL above, so click on it to find out about Google Whacking, among other things. Great stuff.

This is my new St. Martin's release. I really have fun writing these books, which have a community college setting, and I think this one's the best of the series. The bad news is that I've heard from my editor that "the numbers" for this series aren't as good as the numbers for the Dan Rhodes books, which means that Sally Good will quitely fade away, I'm afraid. The good news is that "the numbers" for the Dan Rhodes novels are actually improving, so I'm supposedly going to sign a two-book contract for that series Real Soon Now. Still, if you'd all rush out today and buy ten or twelve copies of A BOND WITH DEATH for Christmas and birthday gifts (one size fits all!), maybe my editor would see the light and let me write another one. 

Scholars Grapple With Godzilla Legacy

Yahoo! News - Scholars Grapple With Godzilla Legacy: By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer

LAWRENCE, Kan. - He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy.

AP Photo

The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film.

And I say it's about time!

Hidden Gags in WB Cartoons

Via Incoming Signals, here's a link to a page that you Warner Bros. cartoon fans (and I include myself in that group) might find of interest. It's a list of stuff the cartoonists and directors slipped into the cartoons for their own amusement. I suppose some of you might know all this stuff already, but it was mostly new to me.

Shall We Dance?

The other day Judy and I were going to the movies. I had decided that we’d see Team America: World Police. Judy had decided that we’d attend Shall We Dance?.

So, you’re probably asking, how did you like Shall We Dance? It was OK. I’ve seen it reviewed (in the Houston Chronicle, for instance) as a “chick flick,” but it’s not. It’s a “male mid-life crisis” flick, with Richard Gere having the crisis.

Gere, you see, is a lawyer. He writes wills all day and makes plenty of dough. He’s married to Susan Sarandon (!), and he has a teenage daughter who doesn’t think he’s a complete doofus. And yet . . . there’s something missing. He knows he should be unreasonably happy, but he’s not. He feels somehow incomplete, filled with vague longings. He doesn’t know what he needs, or what he’s longing for, but every day as he rides the el-train home, he looks up at Miss Mitzi’s dance studio, where there’s often someone standing in the window looking down at the train. So Gere decides that what he needs is . . . Geritol. Ha ha. Just kidding. What he decides he needs is . . . is . . . Jennifer Lopez.

Well, who among us can blame him? After all, she glows in that window like a religious icon, and, as it turns out, she’s a dancing fool. It’s only when she’s called upon to deliver dialogue that the fantasy takes a serious hit. Maybe that’s why, by the end of the movie, [SPOILER ALERT!] Gere has decided that he what he needs really isn’t J Lo after all. Or maybe it’s because he takes a second look at Susan Sarandon. What he really needs is . . . ballroom dancing! Except that it seems that he might have given it up at the end, which wouldn't be good, so I plan to disregard that implication. I prefer to think that the movie ends with Gere happy and complete and light on his feet. [ END OF SPOILER ALERT!]

This is a nice little movie. It has some laughs, it has a uniformly good cast. Gere is rumpled and relaxed and seems to be having a fine time. Sarandon doesn’t have much of a part, but she’s gorgeous. Among the supporting players, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Mya, and Anita Gillette rate special mention. This movie may not give you complete happiness, but it will most likely make you smile and feel good for a little while.

I’ll bet it’s no Team America, though.

At the risk of sending Lee Goldberg to abebooks again, I thought I'd mention Marvin H. Albert. He wrote for Gold Medal (and others) under various names, including Al Conroy, Nick Quarry, Tony Rome, and of course Marvin H. Albert. He wrote crime novels, adventure novels, p.i. novels, and westerns (the Tony Rome books and several westerns were made into movies). The book in the picture looks like a typical '50s juvie, but it's far from it. It's a "big caper" novel that Lionel White might have been proud of. A cop is led astray by the title character and gets involved in a bank heist, which (surprise!) goes wrong. At that point, things take a violent turn. There are scenes of sadistic sex and sadistic torture along the way to the inevitable noir ending. Albert might be in the same league with some of the top GM writers, but he was certainly good enough to look for under any of his various names. 

Our Space Program Tax Dollars at Work

Faulty installation of switch doomed Genesis, NASA says: South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Faulty installation of switch doomed Genesis, NASA says

A `gravity switch' was backward and failed to trigger 2 parachutes, an investigator says.

By John Johnson
Los Angeles Times
Posted October 15 2004

NASA's Genesis space capsule crashed in the Utah desert last month because a critical piece of equipment that was supposed to trigger the release of two parachutes apparently was installed backward, space-agency officials said Thursday."

Is this a sad commentary, or what?

As shameful as it is for me to admit it, I've never seen either of the two X-Men movies. Now someone has e-mailed me to say that Casa Loma, the "castle" we visited in Toronto, was used as the school for mutants in the movie. This is another picture I took of it. Now I have to rent the movies and see if I recognize the place in them. 

I love Daniel Pinkwater's books. Sure, they're supposedly for kids, which I guess just proves that I never grew up. (Not that we really needed further proof of that.) Among my favorites are LIZARD MUSIC, FAT MEN FROM SPACE, ALAN MENDLESON, BOY FROM MARS, and of course THE SNARKOUT BOYS AND THE AVACADO OF DEATH. Pinkwater's latest is a sequel to THE HOBOKEN CHICKEN EMERGENCY (which I also like a lot), and I wish it was about twice as long as it is. Funny, insightful, nostalgic, and a lot of other good things. Highly recommended. 

Google Desktop Search Download

Google Desktop Search Download

This is great: a google search of Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and Word, among other things. Takes seconds to download and works like a charm.

Veronica Lake 

Veronica Lake

My Way News: "Veronica Lake's Reputed Remains Resurface"

I was tipped off to this story by a note on the always entertaining Thrilling Days of Yesteryear site. I first fell in love with Veronica Lake when I watched I Married a Witch on TV. I don't know what year it was, but my family was spending a weekend with my aunt in San Antonio, and she had a TV set. We didn't, and nobody I knew did, either. So I was fascinated. Because my aunt had a small apartment that she shared with another woman, there weren't beds for everyone. I slept on the living room floor, which was great, because I got to watch the TV late into the night and see the movie. I thought Veronica Lake was probably the most beautiful woman in the world. Maybe it was the hair style, but I've never really changed my mind. Later, I managed to see quite a few of her movies, and I always enjoyed her performances. Of particular interest to me in the article is the following sentence: "She was working as a New York cocktail waitress, drinking heavily and married to her fourth husband, a commercial fisherman known as 'Captain Bob.'" You never know what an interesting past some of your friends have had until you read about it on the 'Net.

I found a couple of Modesty Blaise paperbacks in the Bouchercon dealers' room, so naturally I picked them up. There's no better company on a long plane ride than Modesty and Willie Garvin. The one I read on the way home is THE SILVER MISTRESS. (I have no idea what the title means or how it fits anything in the book.) Pure escapist fantasy, smooth writing, exotic locations, entertaining characters, humor: what more could you ask for? OK, so the cover's not bad, either. 

This is a shot from the "open tower" of Casa Loma, looking past another tower toward downtown Toronto. 

Bouchercon

This won't be much of a Bouchercon report, but I'll sort of summarize some of the high points.

1) The convention was well organized. The panels started on time and ended on time. They were all in the rooms they were scheduled for. And the ones I attended went off very well.

2) I met a few people whose books I've admired. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr are two names that come to mind. Lee Goldberg introduced me to Lono Waiwaiole. I didn't meet Bernard Cornwell, but I did go to the one-on-one interview he did.

3) Got to see a lot of friends from DAPA-EM and a lot of writers that I've met over the years. That's always fun, too.

4) I met Sara Weinman, whose blog I read regularly. I was hoping to meet her brother, Jaime, whose blog I also read every day, but

5) I didn't take any photos of the convention. All my pictures are of the places Judy and I visited in Toronto: the CN Tower, Casa Loma, etc. If you don't believe I was there because of the lack of photographic evidence, you can click here.

6) We went to see Mama Mia, which was great. I took a lot of abuse from people who don't like ABBA as much as I do, but what do they know? Squat, that's what.

7) The security wasn't as much of a hassle as I'd feared. Maybe because it was the Canadian Thanksgiving, the lines at the airport on Monday weren't bad at all. There was certainly no traffic on the highway that day.

8) I picked up a couple of Modesty Blaise paperbacks at Tom and Enid Schantz's table. There's nothing like pure escapist fantasy for a long plane ride.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

France May Allow Jamming of Mobile Phones: "Monday October 11, 8:30 pm ET
French Official Approves Decision to Let Some Places Install Mobile Phone Jammers

PARIS (AP) -- Watch a movie or make a mobile phone call. Soon, in France, you might not be able to do both at once.

The government's industry minister has approved a decision to let cinemas, concert halls and theaters install cell phone jammers -- on condition that emergency calls can still get through, officials said Monday.

Let's hope the U.S. will do the same!

Marion Reasoner is in the middle of the back row. See my post below. 

Marion Reasoner

Probably not nearly as many people knew about Marion Reasoner as knew about Christopher Reeve, Rodney Dangerfield, Jane Leigh, or Ken Caminiti, but I want to note his passing here. He was James Reasoner's dad, and I met him only once, at a WWA convention in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the early '90s. A group of us went out to dinner one evening there, and we decided to have our picture made while we were wearing western garb. James is in the front row on the left. I'm in the back row on the left, with Judy beside me and Marion Reasoner beside her. We were a tough-looking crew, right? Okay, maybe not. Anyway, Marion was a great guy, and Judy and I both took to him immediately. I bought my first VCR from him and James way back in 1981. It was top of the line and cost $1250. Hard to believe. I paid for it with my half of the advance from the Nick Carter novel I wrote with a friend named Jack Davis. I'd never written a check for an amount that large before, and I screwed it up. My hand was probably shaking. Marion was kind enough to send the check back and let me write another one. I think I screwed that one up, too. Another member of what Tom Brokaw called "the Greatest Generation" is gone, and the world is a poorer place today.

I'm Back

We got in from the Bouchercon a couple of hours ago, and the first things I heard were that Christopher Reeve and Ken Caminiti had died while I was gone. I enjoyed Reeve in several movies in addition to Superman, and Somewhere in Time is one of Judy's all-time favorites. He demonstrated a heck of a lot more courage after his injury than I'd be capable of, and I've admired him for it. Caminiti was the third baseman for the Houston Astros for a number of years and later became the National League's MVP. Soon after his retirement, he admitted to using steroids, which tarnished his image considerably, and then he fell on really hard times. He was an alcoholic, and he went on to abuse hard drugs, including crack cocaine and heroin. He was a heck of a ballplayer, and it's sad to me when someone with his abilities goes down the wrong road. The power of his addictions was just too much for him to overcome. Maybe if he'd had some of Reeve's courage, he could have helped himself, but I'm not sure if even that would have helped. I'm sorry as heck for both of them.

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel more like saying something about Bouchercon.

North of the Border

In an hour or so, Judy and I will be heading for Houston Intercontinental Airport, where we'll board the big silver bird for Toronto and the Bouchercon. I might as well admit that I hate air travel. Not the flying part, though that's bad enough. It's the "security" part that gets me down, all the lines and waiting around. Flying just about anywhere has become an all-day proposition. So today is pretty much going to be devoted to travel. Monday, when we're returning will be the same. In between, maybe we'll have some fun at the convention, see some friends, maybe even have a look at the city. I'll be back at the keyboard next week with a sketchy report of our activities. Try not to miss me too much.

This is from a 1961 Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalog. I was too old by then to be interested, but this page is similar enough to one from ten years earlier to be representative of the kind of thing I'm talking about below. I could look at a page like this for hours, trying to decide just which set of holsters would look the best on me. 

The Sears Catalog

Someone mentioned something to me today, and it sparked a veritable frenzy of nostalgia. Yes, I can even get misty-eyed when I think about the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

When I was growing up in Mexia, Texas, there weren't a lot of fancy stores. We had three five and dime stores: Perry Bros., Duke & Ayres, and Ben Franklin, all with limited stock. There were some department stores with shoes and clothing, but I wasn't interested in things like that. So the way I got to see all the latest stuff, from bikes to guns to toys, was in the Sears catalog. When the new one arrived, I'd study it for days, looking at the baseball gloves and shotguns and just about everything else. One of the happiest days of my life was when I saved enough money to order myself a J. C. Higgins baseball glove. I could never have afforded it if it hadn't been on some kind of sale as a discontinued item. I still have it, as a matter of fact. It's pretty worn, but I can't part with it.

And then there was the best thing of all: the Christmas catalog. Zowie! I can't even begin to describe what a joy it was to pore over that one, with toys galore, few of which we could afford and fewer of which I ever got to order. Just looking at them, however, was just about enough of a thrill for me.

eBay item 6929031456 (Ends Sep-30-04 17:00:00 PDT) - ATTENTION TO ALL YOU WELL KNOWN, AUTHORS!

eBay item 6929031456 (Ends Sep-30-04 17:00:00 PDT) - ATTENTION TO ALL YOU WELL KNOWN, AUTHORS!: "So that is why I am selling my manuscript mostly to well known authors and whether Oprah Winfrey reads this or Stephen King or the ever so popular J.K. Rawlings, if they bought my book for my price and put there name on it as the author, everyone will pick up the book and read it, because these authors have already earned a reputation. Now I have actual pictures of my manuscript and a legit publshing Co. that will put my book in print for 695.00 dollars. The book will then be advertise to over 25,000 different book stores through the internet only"

I read about this on Lee Goldberg's blog, and my mind is boggled. If the guy got a buck-fifty for the book, I'd be surprised, but $150,000? How depressed would I be if he got that much? Don't ask. You can tell from the small sample above that there might be a few problems with hiw writing.

Roy Drusky

Somehow I missed the news that Roy Drusky died back in September. I heard him a lot on the radio in the early 1960s when I was working at Red Arrow Freight Lines in the summers. The radio was always tuned to KTON in Belton, Texas, which was a country station. I especially remember "Three Hearts in a Tangle" and his duet with Priscilla Mitchell, "Mr. Peters." He did a great version of "Red, Red Wine" around 1970. He had a distinctive voice and was a good songwriter, but he never achieved the fame that he deserved. RIP.

Monster Blog!

Monster Blog!

Another link via Rick Klaw: a blog devoted to the monster comics of Jack Kirby. Great stuff.

eBay item 2492392403 (Ends Oct-11-04 10:46:05 PDT) - DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel

eBay item 2492392403 (Ends Oct-11-04 10:46:05 PDT) - DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel: " DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel
Limited Edition Hardcover Rights Novel 'The Abandoned'"

I found out about this from Rick Klaw. Maybe I should give it a try. But then Clegg claims that he sold 250,000 copies of an e-book. Zowie. I never had sales like that!

Bouchercon

Judy and I will be taking off for the Bouchercon in Toronto on Wednesday. Toronto isn't all that far, but it will take a full day's traveling for us to get there. Naturally all my usual travel anxieties are setting in. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I thought the new airport security measures actually made me safer, but I don't. They seem to me to be the equivalent of busy-work, and some of them seem ridiculous. From what I can see, they've made air travel highly unpleasant, if not impossible, prolonged the agony of the trip, and done nothing at all that's practical. But what do I know? I'm sure that after we arrive in Toronto and clear customs, we'll have a great time, and I might even enjoy a day or two of the convention before I start to worry about the trip home. My panel is at 2:00 on Saturday, and it's on "being prolific" or something like that. I'm not worried about that part of things. I can always find something to say if called on. And I have no trouble keeping quiet if not called on.

It's been 24 years since we first attended a Bouchercon. That one was in Washington, D.C. It was very small. I doubt that more than 250 people attended. Maybe not that many. One-track programming, and only a few programs at that. But we had a wonderful time, which is why we've been to so many Bouchercons since then. We've missed only three, I believe. The best one was in Austin, because I could just get in the car and drive to it. What a pleasure that was!

Janet Leigh, bathing beauty.

Yahoo! News - 'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77

Yahoo! News - 'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77: "'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77"

I really hate that headline. Makes it seem that Janet Leigh was a psycho, which I certainly hope wasn't true. I suspect that there's hardly a guy of my generation (Old Guys, again) who wasn't struck by her beauty now and then in movies like Houdini, Prince Valiant, The Black Shield of Falworth, The Manchurian Candidate, Bye Bye Birdie and plenty of others. She never did much cheesecake, and a lifelong dream of mine was fulfilled (sort of) when her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, whipped that sweater over her head in Tradiing Places. I always thought of Janet Leigh as a class act. RIP.

The Old Hometown

I spent some time in my hometown of Mexia, Texas, this weekend, and, as usual, I left feeing about a million years old.

This time I did a couple of things. I stopped in at the site of the former Eubanks Hardware Store (which is now a sort of antiques mini-mall) to buy something to read (more about that later, maybe). Standing on the sidewalk out front, I noticed how oddly quiet it was. When I was a kid, the whole downtown was alive on Saturday afternoons. Now, there wasn't a sound. Nothing. There were no cars parked along the street, and the buildings on the other side have long since been knocked down. It was an eerie feeling, standing there in all that quiet.

After I left there, I drove down the block and stopped in front of the lot where the Farrar Lumber Company once stood. My grandfather worked a the lumber yard for many years, and I used to walk there from our house to visit him or just play around in the lumber. I could still draw you a pretty good floor plan of the main office, with its high counter on one side, the stairs at the back leading up to the second floor, the bench and the big pot-bellied stove opposite the counter. There's nothing there now.

Across the street is the building that once housed the town's Buick dealership, where my father bought our baby-blue Buick Special four-door hardtop in 1956. I can't even begin to describe what a thrill it was to drive around in a car like that. (It drove like a tank, by the way, since it didn't have power steering; but who cared?) The building became a pawn shop at one time after the Buick dealership closed, but even that sign is pretty much faded away now. There are bushes and trees growing all around the building, right up against the brick wall. A big portion of the roof has fallen in, and you can see the sky through the second story windows.

The back of the second floor used to be some sort of residential hotel. The roof is still over those rooms, but the windows are completely missing. You can look through them at see how small the rooms were. You can see the transoms over the doors. There appears to have been one light in each room, a bulb screwed into a socket that hangs down from the ceiling on a braided electrical cord. The odd thing is that in all three rooms I could see into, the light bulbs are still there, right where they've been for who knows how long. I never knew who lived in those rooms or what their lives must have been like. I probably couldn't even guess.

Weep for Me

You learn something every day, and on a recent digest from the fictionmags group, I found out that John D. MacDonald's son gave his permission to British publisher Robert Hale to reprint Weep for Me. From what I understand, there was a small first printing and then a second printing. I checked out abebooks.com and saw several copies listed for prices that are fairly reasonable. I should probably buy one, but I won't, since I have copies of both paperback printings. Since JDM wasn't happy with the book and didn't want it to be reprinted, I'm surprised his son gave permission. I'm even more surprised that this news slipped past me.

Ed's PlaceTh

Ed's Place: "THE REAL DEAL--THE REAL ENNIS WILLIE
September 30, 2004"

The big news over at Ed's Place today is that thanks to Ed's blog, Ennis Willie has come out of lurkdom. I'm hoping that there'll be plenty of follow-up to this story.

This is the book I mention below. Well worth your time, and it even has a CD with some "air checks" by famous DJs. 

Top 40, News, Weather, and Sports

If that title doesn't ring a bell with you, you must not be an Old Guy. Top 40 Radio was a big part of my teenage years, and in fact its boom coincided with my adolescence. I turned 13 the month that "Sh-Boom" hit #1 on the charts, a fact that I 've always considered significant, even if it was only the Crew Cuts version.

I was lucky enough to live in Central Texas, where my radio picked up KLIF during the day. When atmospheric conditions were right, I could get KTSA and KILT, too. For those of you who don't know, those were the three McClendon stations, the property of Gordon McClendon, The Old Scotchman, one of the true pioneers and great innovators of Top 40 radio.

When I got a little older and entered the American Graffiti stage of my life, the car radio was always on. At night in Central Texas, you could pick up John R. (The Old Hoss Man) and Gene Nobles, both on WLAC in Nashville. They advertised Silky Strate and Randy's Record Shop (which I believe was in Gallatin). In New Oleans, there was Jack the Cat on WNOE. We could even get Dick Biondi in WLS in Chicago. When I went to college in Austin, I listened to Ricky Ware on KTSA during the daytime. Those were great days for DJs and for Top 40 radio.

And for me. I must have ridden a million miles with Bob Tyus in his 1940 Chevrolet, Fred Williams in his black '50 Ford, Richard Perkins in his '54 Cevy, Mike Leary in his '53 Ford, Geoff Gore in his '51 Studebaker. Always with the radio on, always with the great music coming through those crummy little speakers.

The Top 40 format might have been rigid, but the song selection was plenty eclectic. Every station played pop, country, rock, doo wop, rhythm and blues. You might hear Johnny Cash one minute and Percy Faith's orchestra the next, followed by Clyde McPhatter.

I know it's just an Old Guy's fantasy that the music was better in those days than it is now, but it's still the music I prefer to listen to. I should try to improve my tastes, but I know I never will.

All this was brought on, by the way, by my reading of The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The Rise of Top 40 Radio by Ben Fong-Torres. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Charles Williams (Again)

Because I'm doing that Gold Medal Corner article about Charles Williams for Steve Lewis' next Mystery*File, I've been re-reading some more of the books. The more I read, the more convinced I am that Williams was one of Gold Medal's best.

Nothing in her Way is about con games, and there are a couple of elaborate ones in the book, along with some minor ones. The way Williams handles these, and the way his plot keeps coming up with one suprise after another, shows you his technical mastery. And even though you might know how the story is going to end, you don't. Not really. Because another thing I've noticed about Williams is that he writes terrific endings. I'm not talking about the climactic events. I'm talking about the final sentences.

A Touch of Death is a noir thriller, one of those where a guy gets mixed up with a dame in a scheme to make some money. It seems simple at first, the way it always does, but then things start to get complicated. The narrator, Lee Scarborough, thinks he's ahead of the game all the way until the end, when he finds out that he didn't even know the rules. A devastating ending, almost as good as the one for River Girl.

If you're not acquainted with Charles Williams' books, you're really missing some great reading.

: RevolutionSF - Boppin' at the High School Hop : Fiction

: RevolutionSF - Boppin' at the High School Hop : Fiction

In honor of the opening of Shaun of the Dead, I'm posting this link to my very own zombie story, which appeared in the excellent webzine revolutionsf (and I'd give 'em a plug even if they hadn't published my story).

Robert B. Parker's DOUBLE PLAY

I've admitted it before, and I'll admit it again: I'm Robert B. Parker's target audience. Whatever it is that he does, I like it. So naturally I read his nonseries novel Double Play. I have a feeling that this book fits into my previous comments about the generation gap in the mystery-reading public. It seems to me that this is definitely an Old Guy's book.

Why?

Number one, it's about baseball. How many young baseball fans do you know? Don't young people all like some cooler, faster-moving sport?

Number two, it was written by Robert B. Parker, who's even older than I am. (Maybe that's why I like his work.)

Number three, it's set in the 1940's. I don't remember much about the time Jackie Robinson came up to the major leagues, but soon after that I became an avid baseball fan and baseball card collector (check out some of my cards here if you'd like to see them). Parker really nails the time period, especially in the autobiographical chapters interspersed throughout the narrative. In fact, the short chapter on Life magazine is worth the price of admission all by itself. The autobiographical chapters are, for me, the most interesting part of the book, since they make the setting personal for Parker and in a way for me.

Number four, it has plenty of that male bonding stuff that's in all the other Parker books you ever read. And all that stuff about a code, too. This time, the main character is a guy named Burke. I didn't catch the first name; maybe it's Edmund. I mean, that would fit, right? Edmund Burke, Edmund Spenser. That Parker is a real cutie, slipping in those English major jokes the way he does.

So what? you're saying. What about the plot? Well, that's about Burke, who gets a job as Jackie Robinson's bodyguard for Robinson's first year in the major leagues. Burke is what we Old Guys used to call a burned-out case, thanks to WWII (The Big One) and his ex-wife. He's going to find a kind of redemption, though, thanks to Robinson and a woman named Lauren. You know that from the start, probably, so I'm not spoiling anything. How it happens is what you'll have to read the book to find out.

Hard Case Crime

The Houston Chronicle has a nice spread on Hard Case Crime today. Front page of the Zest magazine, and two pages inside. As a sidebar on another page, there's a little article on me. Here it is.

The man with a taste for the hard-boiled

By LOUIS B. PARKS
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

ALVIN -- Mystery writer and vintage paperback collector Bill Crider has a recurring dream.

"I'm driving in some small town, and there's this little out-of-the-way bookstore. I go in, and there it is, full of these old books."

Carlos Javier Sanchez : Chronicle Alvin resident Bill Crider has written more than fifty books about different detectives.

But anyone who reads noir crime thrillers knows that dreams usually become nightmares in the final chapter.

"The bad part is," Crider says, "I can't read the titles."

Crider's suburban home is like the dream bookstore -- floor-to-ceiling with thousands of vintage paperback books.

"My wife Judy is a saint, believe me," he says.

Crider, 63, has a definite taste for the era of bad blondes, big guns and tough guys.

"I got interested in the writers who wrote (crime) paperback originals, like Jim Thompson, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, Donald Hamilton -- particularly the (Fawcett) Gold Medal books, the Ace Double books. I have all of those."

Since the mid-1980s, the retired English professor has published more than 50 novels (see www.billcrider.com). Many are mysteries -- though not the hard-boiled style he collects -- under his own name, including a dozen about modern Texas sheriff Dan Rhodes. This summer brought Dead Soldiers featuring Carl Burns, an English professor at a small Texas college.

Crider also writes under pen and house names and does Willard Scott's weatherman mysteries, as the TV star freely admits. Crider's wife is his copy reader and occasional collaborator.

But book collecting is his passion. His essay on his first love, paperback originals, is at www.allanguthrie.co.uk/bcpbo.htm.

"There are a lot of reasons I like them," Crider says. "They're short. Most writers in this vein are really good storytellers. They get in, tell the story; it moves fast. They do a good job with the characters in a short space."

Crider used to haunt used bookstores looking for rare paperbacks. Now he buys most over the Internet, especially at eBay.com and abebooks.com.

"It's gotten so easy," he says. "And the books have gotten much more expensive. The Jim Thompson books I got for a dime are worth a couple of hundred bucks now."

Not that he'd ever sell them.

The STAR WARS Trilogy

OK, so I bought the set of "original" trilogy on DVD this week. I may never watch the movies, but I figured no house should be without the set.

I hear that there's a lot of whining about George Lucas having made some minor changes in the movies. I may not approve, but so what? They're his movies. Stuff like that happens all the time.

You English majors probably thought immediately of Henry James, whose thrilling novels you first came to know and love in their serial form. Or maybe their first book form. And then old Henry rewrote nearly every single one of them for the "New York" edition. He didn't make just minor changes. He went through and completely rewrote them. So now we have different thrilling versions to enjoy, and what's wrong with that? Works the same way with the Star Wars movies, right? We still have our old VHS tapes of the originals, and we can copy them to DVD if we want to.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't approve when John D. MacDonald updated his pulp stories for inclusion on The Good Old Stuff and More Good Old Stuff, but they were his stories. If he wanted to rewrite them, he had a perfect right to do it.

I don't approve of colorizing movies, either. Seems to me that's most often done by someone other than the original director, so it's clearly different, and clearly evil.

Cellular

Vince Keenan and I don't agree on Sky Captain, but we do on Cellular. (Vince's review is here. You may have to scroll down to find it.) Judy and I went this afternoon, and we both enjoyed it. I must admit that you have to be willing to say to yourself, "It's only a movie" and not ask for logic and/or common sense, but after you do that, you should have a great time. Chris Evans is appealing in the lead, Kim Basinger is, well, Kim Basinger, and William H. Macy plays the cop who's about to retire a little bit differently from everyone else who's done it before him. Jason Statham makes an effective villain.

Maverick

I watched Maverick on GoodLife TV last night and noticed that this show was written by R. Wright Campbell. Later on in his career, Campbell turned to writing mystery novels, some under that name, but most as Robert Campbell. I particularly liked his series about a Chicago ward heeler named Jimmy Flannery. When I won the Anthony for "best first novel" at the Bouchercon in 1987, Campbell won for "best paperback." Somehow the awards got mixed up, and I got the one intended for him. I met him after the banquet, and when we exchanged awards, I told him how much I enjoyed his books. He seemed like a nice guy.

Cheyenne comes on after Maverick, and last night's show featured James Garner in a small role. He appeared in a number of episodes of Cheyenne before he got his own series, usually as a cavalry officer.

Las Vegas Mercury: Goldberg: Dear Young Hollywood

Las Vegas Mercury: Goldberg: Dear Young Hollywood: "I just read that Paris Hilton has signed on to play Daisy Buchanan in a remake of The Great Gatsby and that Mr. Gatsby himself will be played by Chris Carmack--purportedly a 'star' on the TV show 'The O.C.'--and that former N'Sync heartthrob/astronaut Lance Bass is set to produce the movie"

Tod Goldberg is kidding us, right? Right? Please let him be kidding us. It's a funny column, unless he's teeling the truth. In that case, it's more like . . . scary.

Rory Calhoun

Ever see any movies with Rory Calhoun? If you're my age (which so few of you are), you probably did. But did you know he was also a novelist? I've had The Man from Padera (Major Books 1978) on my shelves for probably 25 years, but I'm just now getting around to reading it.
The main character's name is Domino, which seemed a little suspicious to me since Calhoun starred in a movie titled The Domino Kid back in 1957. I looked the movie up on the IMDb and discovered that the plot is identical to the plot of The Man from Padera, not that there's anything wrong with that, since Calhoun is credited with the screenplay of the movie.

It's the old story of the guy who's out to find the man who killed his paw. Or in this case (to up the ante a little) the seven men who killed his whole family. The book consists mainly of a series of gunfights, leading up, of course, the the big shootout at the end, after Domino finally discovers who the mysterious seventh man was. (No prize for you if you figure it out long before Domino does.)

In spite of the publisher's name, Major Books wasn't exactly a major force in the paperback market, so you might be wondering why a movie star like Calhoun didn't find a better publisher. Calhoun, after all, did star with Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, not to mention his appearance in the unforgettable Motel Hell. He was also in one of my personal faves, Hell Comes to Frogtown, though Hell was played not by Calhoun by by Rowdy Roddy Piper. Calhoun played a character named "Looney Tunes. But I digress.

One possible reason Calhoun didn't find a bigger publisher is that the book really isn't all that good (this, in spite of the fact that my book has "Real Good" printed on the cover by someone whose initials are J. W. G.). There are a few problems with the writing that a good editor could have taken care of, and in fact just a good copyeditor would have made a difference. But there are other problems, too, like characterization. It's a little on the thin side, not to say the cliched side, though that would also be fair. Some of the descriptions are quite good, though. It's almost as if Calhoun was watching the movie as he wrote them. Maybe he was.

There's some graphic violence in the book, and at least one sex scene that would have been impossible to film for the regular markets in 1957.

As far as I know, this is the only book Calhoun ever published, which is OK by me. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good enough to send me looking for another one.

The Immoral Mr. Teas dreams while visiting the dentist. 

'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82

'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82: "'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82
Associated Press
September 22, 2004 MEYER0923

LOS ANGELES -- Russ Meyer, producer-director who helped spawn the ``skin flick'' with such films as ``Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'' and later gained a measure of critical respect, has died. He was 82.

Meyer died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Meyer's films were considered pornographic in their time but are less shocking by today's standards, with their focus on violence and large-busted women but little graphic sex.

Altogether he produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot at least 23 films, including his debut, ``The Immoral Mr. Teas,'' in 1959 and the 1968 film ``Vixen,'' whose success earned him notice from major studios."

What can I say? I'll certainly never forget seeing The Immoral Mr. Teas. When I was a freshman in college, a friend (Bob Tyus) and I were determined that we would not only see it but that we would take our friend Mike Leary as well. Mike resisted. He refused to give in to our evil influence. So we carried him. In those days, freshmen at The University of Texas at Austin weren't allowed to have cars. It was well over a mile to the movie theater, down Congress Avenue, at that time the busiest street in town. And there we were, carrying this skinny kid. Well, we carried him only about half way before he gave up and agreed to walk. He later told me that he wished we'd forced him to do more things like that. RIP, Russ Meyer.

Peter and the Starcatchers II

Here's my favorite sentence from the book. It's the first sentence in Chapter 49:

"Quiet," Slank hissed.

Peter and the Starcatchers

So you're probably asking yourselves, why did a grown man read Peter and the Starcatchers? I could say that I read it so you wouldn't have to, but that would be Wrong. That would be A Lie. I read it because it was written by Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry and because I had high hopes for it. Unfortunately, those hopes were pretty much dashed.

I thought the book was sort of OK at the beginning, but the more I read, the less impressed I was. For one thing, since Barry had a hand in it, I thought it would be hilarious. I was wrong. There are a few laughs and some mild amusements. That's it. And, let's face it, the writing is, well, . . . pedestrian. It doesn't have any sparkle.

Then there's the plot. Ridley Pearson came up with the idea to write a "prequel" to Peter Pan, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But then he decided to explain everything that James Barrie left unexplained: why Peter can fly, why there are mermaids in Neverland, where Tinkerbelle came from, and so on. The bottom line here is that some things are best left unexplained, at least as far as I'm concerned. Like magician's tricks. They astound me when I see them performed, and I don't want to know how they're done. When you know that, the fun is gone. Especially when the explanation is as long-winded as it is here.

Reading this book made me realize again that not just anyone, even if he's Ridley Pearson or Dave Barry or a combination of the two, can sit down and write a magical children's book. It made me appreciate even more what J. K. Rowling has done with Harry Potter.

Peter and the Starcatchers will probably sell a gazillion copies. Pearson and Barry have at least that many fans between them. Maybe I'm wrong about the book. Maybe kids will love it. Anything that gets them to read is fine by me.

More On Marlowe (and Laymon)

If you haven't checked the comments on my Dan J. Marlowe post below, take a look. James Reasoner tells us a little something about the Fastback books, and Pete Enfantino fills in a lot of the details on those and some other things.

Chicklit Forums: Books--a drinking game

Chicklit Forums: Books--a drinking game

Via Jayme Lynn Blaschke's blog, here's a thread on chicklit that's got some pretty funny author drinking games. There's even one for Anthony Trollope.

Here's a shot of a couple of the books, more like booklets, that I mention below. 

Dan J. Marlowe

Ed Gorman has some more questions and comments about Dan J. Marlowe. I've sent him a note about Al Nausbaum's relationship with Marlowe, but I'd like to take off from Ed's remark about the support Marlowe received after his stroke from So. Cal. writers like Richard Laymon. I have three odd little items called "Fastback Sports Books" by Marlowe and one by Laymon. These were published in 1985, and they're 25-30 pages long. I have no idea where they were sold or who the intended audience was. I just couldn't resist picking them up when I saw them. I wonder how much Marlowe and Laymon got paid for these.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "Clark Redfield on Book Reviewing
I keep planning to write something about Elmer Rice's play Dream Girl, and then putting it off. Meanwhile, here are some more quotes from the play's wisecracking and frankly not very likable male lead, Clark Redfield, a book reviewer who -- to the surprise of the heroine, Georgina Allerton -- wants to get out of book reviewing and into the more rewarding field of sportswriting."

Highly recommended reading. Check it out.

Charlie Chan in Cyberspace

Charlie Chan in Cyberspace

A blog devoted to Charlie Chan. Pretty cool.

I went into a store yesterday and discovered that WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER is out in paperback. The publisher didn't tell me, but then publishers rarely seem to care about telling me anything. I think it's a pretty good book, and I had a great time writing it. And you have to admit that it has a great cover. 

When It comes to old serials, I'm a sucker for the ones with Rocketman. You put a guy in a rocket suit, and I'm there. In one serial, the Rocketman was known as Commander Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe. I always wondered how a guy attained that office. Is it elected or appointed? I think it was made clear in SKY CAPTAIN that Joe was a mercenary, so maybe Sky Marshal of the Universe is, like Sky Captain, a self-appointed rank. 

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I grew up during the 1940s and 1950s. The world was a different place then. One way it was different, at least in Mexia, Texas, is that on Saturday afternoon all the kids I knew, and plenty of others besides, went to the double feature at the Palace Theater. The Palace, in spite of the name, was a pretty ratty place, but that didn't matter to its clientele. For about a dime, we got to see two cowboy movies (Johnny Mack Brown, Charles Starrett, Rex Allen, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Allan Rocky Lane, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue, Monte Hale, Tex Ritter, and you know all the rest). We also got a cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and a serial. Probably my favorite part of the whole afternoon was the serial. Why? I don't really know. I do know that my earliest movie memory is going to the Palace with my grandfather. I have no idea what the movie was, but the serial was The Phantom. At the end of the chapter we saw, The Phantom was sinking into a bed of quicksand. I remembered that scene vividly for well over 50 years, and finally, a few years ago when The Phantom was released on DVD, I got to see how he escaped.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Well, yesterday I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And I loved it. It was the next best thing to being six years old, back at the Palace Theater. I just sat there with a silly grin on my face for the entire running time and enjoyed the heck out of it.

Yesterday I posted a link to Roger Ebert's review of the movie and recommended it highly, especially the second paragraph. After I posted that, I read James Reasoner's blog, where he comments on a book by Milton Lesser. I highly commend James's comments to you because he echoes Ebert's remarks. And like both of them, I have no problem overlooking the ridiculous plotting and the pseudo-science of something like Sky Captain or Secret of the Black Planet. Those things aren't the point. Having a good time is the point, and at Sky Captain I certainly did that.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG)

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG): "SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG)"

I recommend that you check out Roger Ebert's review of Sky Captain, especially the second paragraph.

The SF Site Featured Review: Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades

The SF Site Featured Review: Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades: "Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades
Robert Silverberg, Subterranean Press, 630 pages" A review by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

I've talked about Robert Silverberg here before, and this is an excellent review of the book Ed Gorman mentioned in his blog last month. I just gotta buy a copy of this, even though I'm sure I have most of the stories in anthologies already.

Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill

Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill: "Project Gutenberg's Hand Shadows To Be Thrown Upon The Wall, by Henry Bursill"

Some of you might even be old enough to remember amusing yourselves this way when you were kids.

The first two Hard Case Crime books are on the stands around here, and I like the way they look. The first one, GRIFTER'S GAME, is a reprint of Lawrence Block's first Gold Medal Book, MONA. The one pictured above is the line's first paperback original. I started reading it last night, and from the very first paragraph I knew I was going to like it. It's set in the 1950s, with a tough-talking narrator and an untrustworthy blonde. Right there you've got something. And of course the throwback cover is a nice touch. One of the next books, LITTLE GIRL LOST by Richard Aleas (get it?) has a new McGuinniss cover. I'll probably wind up buying these books just to collect them. 

Me Gotta Go Now

Me Gotta Go Now: "Me Gotta Go Now"

Check out the new stamps on Dave Lewis's blog today.

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: "Generation Gaps"

Sarah has a good post on the generation thing, and there are a lot of thoughtful comments from her readers, too.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "Richard Matheson

I can't think of any writer of our time who has written as many acknowledged masterpieces as Richard Matheson. Combine I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, Journal of The Gun Years, and a few others--and who else comes close?"

Ed Gorman's comments about Richard Matheson are as good an occasion as any for me to repeat one of my favorite stories about the power of books. When I Am Legend appeared in paperback, I bought it off the spinning rack in DeGuire's Bookstore in Mexia, Texas. I thought it was about the best thing I'd ever read, so I read it again about a week later. I still thought it was great (I was only 13 or so at the time, but fifty years later, I still think so). A couple of years later, I let a friend borrow it. He told me once, a long time afterward, that he couldn't believe that anyone would let him borrow such a wonderful book. He bought his own copy and became an avid SF reader after that, and a collector as well. He let another friend of ours borrow his copy, and a month or so ago I saw that friend for the first time in many years. One of the things he mentioned was how much he'd enjoyed reading SF when we were in high school, and the first book he mentioned was I Am Legend.

Just finished reading this one. Very different from Williams' crime novels. The narrator is 7-year-old Billy Noonan. His father and his Uncle Sagamore are direct descendants of the King and the Duke from HUCKLEBERRY FINN. (I could prove this by sophisticated literary analysis, but I'll spare you.) I think the book was also influenced by John Faulkner's CABIN ROAD series.  

eBay Udate

For those of you who've been on tenterhooks waiting to hear about my eBay woes (see below if you missed the post), I've finally (after another e-mail or two) received a response from the dealer who sent the wrong magazine. He tells me that he'll send out the correct magazine on Tuesday and that I can keep the one I already have. If he comes though, then I'll have to give him positive feedback. After all, it's not every day I get a free magazine.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries Some enterprising soul discovered that on this site one could locate copies of the scripts from those old-time radio programs sponsored by the likes of Camel and Lucky Strike; for example, you can download (in .pdf form) scripts from The Jack Benny Program, The Abbott & Costello Show, Blondie, Richard Diamond, etc. (A few of the scripts won’t download properly due to missing pages, but I worked around that problem.) To me, the most interesting find was a cache of scripts of The Jimmy Durante Show from 1948-50; there are only three shows available from that period so the scripts are an amazing discovery (there are also a handful of scripts from The Durante-Moore Show as well).

This is a pretty interesting discovery, all right!

Hardluck Stories

Hardluck Stories: "Over There" by Gary Warren Niebuhr

The new issue of hardluckstories is on-line and it's well worth your time. I'm happy to say that a friend name Gary Warren Niebuhr has a good story in this issue, which was edited by Al Guthrie, author of Two-Way Split.

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion: "September 13, 2004 -- FOR me, it's a sign of summer's end as cer tain as leaves chang ing colors: Teary-eyed freshmen turning up at my office to complain about their English placement-test results. How is it possible, they want to know, that they got A's in English classes throughout high school, took honors English courses as seniors . . . and still managed to fail an entry-level college exam that requires them only to analyze a few short reading passages and write a rudimentary narrative essay?"

Sounds like I wrote it myself. I remember all too well hearing exactly the same story many, many times.

Armadillo

Armadillo: "At this point, I knocked off for a quick dinner, and rejoined the con at 7:00 for a panel on 'Movies That Should be Remade'. In addition to the aforementioned Klaw and Finn (sounds like an animal act), Bill Crider, one of the elder statesmen, and Howard Waldrop joined in this panel. This panel was probably more serious than you might have thought, because the participants were very knowledgeable and had very good assessment of what worked (and couldn't work again) and what didn't work (and could never be made to work) in some classic and not-so-classic movies."

Someone sent me this review of Armadillocon, which confirms my worst fears. "Elder statesman," indeed. Well, at least he didn't say, "Old fart."