Wallowing in Nostalgia

One Sunday afternoon back in 1956, Fred Williams, Bob Tyus, Richard Perkins, and I pulled into Hubert Newberry's Sinclair service station across the street from the Mexia Theater. Mr. Newberry closed the station on Sunday, so people used it for the theater parking lot. We were in Fred's 1955 green Chevy Bel-Air, a very cool car. Wraparound windshield! V-8 engine! And we were going to see a new movie called Love Me Tender with Elvis Presley. The last song we listened to on the radio before we got out of the car was "Only You" by the Platters, probably on our favorite daytime radio station, KLIF in Dallas.

We might have been hick teenagers, but even we could tell that Love Me Tender wasn't a very good movie. We didn't care. We went to see Elvis. I can't speak for Bob or Richard, but I'm still in regular contact with Fred, and we're both still Elvis fans, 49 years later.

So naturally I watched the CBS two-parter about Elvis. Having read Peter Guralnick's thorough two-volume biography of The King (Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love; highly recommended), I didn't really expect any new revelations, and there weren't any. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and the rest of the cast were OK. Rhys-Meyers had the Elvis sneer down pat, but in his hands the guitar might as well have been an oak plank. It was pitifully obvious that he didn't have a clue as to what it was there for. His lip-synching didn't impress me, either. He should have studied Milli Vanilli. Randy Quaid played the Colonel, and he was the villain of the piece. Too bad Elvis couldn't have stood up to him earlier. By the time he tried, it was too late, or at least Elvis thought so. He thought the Colonel had made him what he was, though hardly anyone ever got worse career guidance than Elvis. What might have been? Who knows, but it was sad to watch it all play out again.

The movie ended, more or less, with Elvis's 1968 "comeback special." Just as well. After that the story just gets sadder and more depressing. The only time I ever saw Elvis in person was about a year before he died. I was shocked by his appearance.

When we heard the news of Elvis's death, Judy and I were eating supper with the kids. The TV set was on, of course, and I think it was tuned to Howard K. Smith. Anyway, the kids still remember that Judy sat at the table and cried when she heard the news. She's still an Elvis fan, too.

Anna Nicole Smith is at it Again

Coma America :: View topic - CASEY CHAOS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY ANNA NICOLE SMITH: "
CASEY CHAOS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY ANNA NICOLE SMITH"

Anna Nicole Smith, who claims to be from my hometown of Mexia, Texas, is having a wonderful time, at least according to Amen drummer Joe Letz at the Amen Message Board. He says that she came ujp to him in the men's room at the Rainbow in Hollywood. (What she was doing in the men's room isn't mentioned.) Then "she offers me some blow, and before i have a chance to refuse, she pulls it out of her hand bag, only to spill most of it on the floor and lose her balance and slip half way into what was probably some dude's piss." Things go downhill from there. It's a long, sad post. I, of course, am shocked at Anna Nicole's behavior. I thought she'd reformed.

The Devil's Right Hand -- J. D. Rhoades

J. D. Rhoades was a guest at Murder by the Book's "Noir Night" a while back, and I've just now gotten around to reading his book. It's a good one. Jack Keller is a bounty hunter, but he's more than that. He's a damaged combat vet who's got some serious problems. DeWayne Puryear does, too, because Keller's after him. And he's guilty of murder. And he's being pursued not just by Keller, but by one of the toughest killers in North Carolina. There's shooting a-plenty, and a high body count. The action hardly ever lets up, which is fine since Rhoades describes it all so well. But there' s still a little time for romance. You'll go through this one at top speed. Check it out.

It's Not about Ego

CANOE -- JAM! Music: Georgia town honours James Brown: "AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) - The Godfather of Soul celebrated his 72nd birthday in grand fashion - unveiling a life-sized bronze likeness of himself."

Little Richard will be jealous, I'll bet.

Plunder of the Sun -- David Dodge

Back in March, I mentioned David Dodge's The Red Tassel. I said then that I was eager for the reprint of Plunder of the Sun, which I knew was coming from Hard Case Crime this month. And here it is, with a Robert McGinnis cover that's probably my favorite of the Hard Case covers so far. And the book lives up to the cover. Al Colby (who also appears in The Red Tassel) is hired to smuggle something into Peru from Chile. The something turns out to be the key to finding the lost treasure of the Incas, Atahualpa's Ransom. There are plenty of people who would kill to find a treasure like that, and of course Colby gets mixed up with them. He also gets mixed up with a couple of beautiful women and a scheming scholar or two. Dodge's writing is smooth, and the plotting is top notch. But what interested me, since I was in Peru only a few months ago, is the local color. I visited some of the places Dodge describes so well, and it was a kick to read about them in this book. They haven't changed much in the 45 years or so since the novel first appeared. And neither has the poverty of some of the people in Cuzco, who are living now much the way they did then. Al Colby experiences it in a much more personal way than I did.

One final little bit of interest (to me) is that I, too, once wrote a novel about Atahualpa's treasure and its recovery (in Ecuador, rather than Peru). That novel was bought and paid for, but it will never see print. Neither will my novel about the Viking treasure ship found in California, bought by the same publisher. It's a long story. Ask me about it when you see me if you have a few minutes to spare.

Confessions of a Listener | Garrison Keillor

The Nation | Article | Confessions of a Listener | Garrison Keillor: "I am old enough to be nostalgic about radio, having grown up when it was a stately medium and we listened to Journeys in Musicland with Professor E.B. 'Pop' Gordon teaching us the musical scale, and the guest on The Poetry Corner was Anna Hempstead Branch, who read her sonnet cycle, 'Ere the Golden Bowl Is Broken,' and the gospel station brought us Gleanings From the Word, with the whispery Reverend Riley trudging patiently through the second chapter of Leviticus, and at night there were Fibber and Molly and Amos and Andy and the Sunset Valley Barn Dance with Pop Wiggins ('Says here that radio's gonna take the place of newspapers. I doubt it. Y'can't swat a fly with a radio.'), but I don't feel a hankering to hear any of it ever again."

I must be about Garrison Keillor's age, but I don't agree with the final sentence above, mainly because reading the preceding one fills me with a hankering to hear some OTR again. The whole article's worth reading, though. Check it out.

P.I. Files: Day to day life of Polly the P.I.

P.I. Files: Day to day life of Polly the P.I.

Polly is a real p.i. in the Milwaukee, and here's a link to her blog. Check it out.

Mysteries by Morse

Carleton E. Morse created the longest running serial in radio history, One Man's Family, which was my mother's father's favorite show. My own favorite, though, is another Morse show, I Love a Mystery. But now and then I listen to episodes of a lesser Morse series, Mysteries by Morse, and in fact last weekend a long car trip was made more bearable by a 10-episode serial from that show, "Brothers of the Living Dead." The show's main character is Captain Friday ("If you like high adventure, come with me! If you like the stealth of intrigue, come with me! If you like blood and thunder (sound of thunder crashing), come with me!"). "Brothers of the Living Dead" has just about everything: a lost city in the jungle, flesh-eating trees, a werewolf (sort of), sudden death, slow death, torture, a staircase lined with skeletons in chains, poison-tipped spears, sappy romance, a mysterious and beautiful green-eyed jungle girl, underground passageways, the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance, and a lot of other things I'm probably forgetting. Completely implausible, of course. You can't just suspend your disbelief. You have to bind it, gag it, and lock it in a closet. But I can do that now and then. It wasn't I Love a Mystery, but it was a lot of fun. I remember another serial episode of the show that I liked even more, City of the Dead. Carleton E. Morse is one of my heroes.

Let's Hear it for Stark House Press

Over at Ed Gorman's blog a while back, Terrill Lankford mentioned all the press that Hard Case Crime has been getting and said that another excellent publisher of similar material, PointBlank, was likely to get overlooked. I hope not. And I hope that nobody's forgetting Stark House Press, either. Stark House has already reprinted Peter Rabe, Douglas Sanderson, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, and Vin Packer. Now, in July, two more Packer novels are coming, and they're both good ones. For what it's worth The Damnation of Adam Blessing may be the only Gold Medal novel to have its name appropriated by a rock band. Check 'em out.

Ed Gorman on Anthony Boucher

Ed Gorman & Friends: "Now to reviewers I like.

For me, Anthony Boucher is the patron saint of mystery reviewers. He wrote the stuff, he taught the stuff, he edited the stuff, he even had a local San Francisco radio show about the stuff. Those are difficult qualities to beat. And he truly did judge books by what they intended to do."

I feel the same way. When I was a kid, I loved Boucher's reviews in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Later on, when I was in college, I read his mystery reviews every week in the NYTBR. And when I got to grad school, I got the coveted "stacks permit" and immediately located the bound volumes of the NYTBR, going back to the beginning of Boucher's tenure there. Instead of doing the "serious" research I should have been engaged in, I'd be in the stacks every day, a big blue-bound volume opened in front of me and a notebook beside it for writing down authors and titles.

Which brings me once again to the good people at Ramble House Books. Mike Nevins has done the world a great service by collecting three volumes of Boucher's reviews and commentary, and Fender Tucker has done an even greater service by publishing them. No mystery fan should be without them.

Headline of the Day

ABC News: Two on Ethics Panel Won't Probe DeLay

I can't help it. It strikes me as funny. Hey, I wouldn't want to probe him, either.

Texas House Bans 'Suggestive' Cheerleading

Texas House Bans 'Suggestive' Cheerleading - Yahoo! News: "AUSTIN, Texas - After an alternately comic and fiery debate — punctuated by several lawmakers waving pompons — the state House on Tuesday approved a bill to restrict 'overtly sexually suggestive' cheerleading to more ladylike performances."

Yes, folks, having failed to solve any of the state's other major problems (school financing, property tax, and the like), the lawmakers in the House of Representatives of My Home State have turned to the truly important things. We can only hope that the Senate will agree and that Our Great Governor will sign the bill into law, thereby sparing me that awful sight of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders doing suggestive things with their bodies. I am truly happy.

The Sound of Frustration

Jory Sherman's Blog: "
I feel that the Western novel has little chance of reaching the general public, attracting female readers, or attaining mainstream, or even mid-list status unless the publishers take positive steps to educate all those concerned with distributing, selling and reading novels. The writers of the today's Westerns are fighting massive waves in hip-deep waters armed only with wooden swords. And, the waves are getting higher, attaining Tsunami status."

Another interesting post by Jory Sherman, whom I met for the first time last weekend. He's got some strong opinions, and I have to admit that I agree with some of the ones about publishing.

Charlaine Harris

Last night Judy and I went to Murder by the Book in Houston where Charlaine Harris was signing her new book, Dead as a Doornail, a Sookie Stackhouse novel. We've known her for years, and it's great to see her having such a great success with her Sookie series. I have to admit that the books have everything: vampires, shape shifters, sex, violence, romance, and Bubba. It's hard to beat a combination like that.

Charlaine has a new series coming out from Berkeley books this fall, and it sounds like another winner. It's about a woman who, after being struck by lightning, discovers that she has the ability to find corpses. I'm looking forward to reading it.

That being said, I think my favorites among Charlaine's many excellecnt books are the ones about Lily Bard (Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, etc.). Luckily for readers everywhere, Berkeley is reprinting these. Check 'em out. Along with all the others, of course.

Little Richard -- Prima Donna or Goofball? We Report, You Decide.

WhatGoesOn.com- Little Richard slams The Beatles in concert: "Mary says that during the show, in between virtually every song, Little Richard went off on long rambling monologues that most of the audience couldn't understand at all. She says many other people who were near to where she was sitting had the same feelings, and some people were laughing at how embarrassing the show was, while others were shouting get on with it and play music."

Click the link for the whole sordid tale.

Review: Deadly Diversion -- Eleanor Sullivan

In an earlier blog entry I mentioned Eleanor Sullivan's "virtual book tour" for her novel Deadly Diversion and said I'd post a review when I'd read the book. Medical mysteries aren't usually my thing, though I do enjoy the Diagnosis Murder books by Lee Goldberg. Now I can add the Monika Everhardt series by Eleanor Sullivan to that short list. Everhardt is the head nurse in an intensive care unit, a place where a natural death isn't entirely unlikely.

But murder is another story. In Deadly Diversion a cancer patient who's scheduled to talk to the cops about a murder that occurred a long time back dies of respiratory arrest. Turns out that maybe the patient was murdered himself, and suspicion falls on the nurse who was assigned to care for him. Everhardt steps in and finds herself in quite a tangle of murder, hospital politics, and more. The writing's good, and the mystery's an intriguing one. The characters are very well done, possibly because Eleanor Sullivan is a nurse herself (there's an interesting story about that right here). She knows her way around a hospital and its staff, and she knows people. Deadly Diversion is recommended reading. Check it out.

Burrito Day on the Blog

Freebirds World Burrito

Jayme Blaschke, Freebirds Burrito fanatic, stars in a commercial for the company. You can watch it on-line at the link above and vote for it as being the best of the group. He's the one on the upper right, and (strangely enough) doesn't look a thing like the photo on the cover of his new book.

Oops!

News: "Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616)
By Tom Anderson

01 May 2005

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing."

Paging Cap'n Bob! Paging Cap'n Bob!

IOL: A Step Beyond: "First we cloned Dolly, now Willy. A cast kit with the name Clone-a-Willy is available on the Internet and is needed to enter a competition that promises to rock women's worlds and give the winner a head start.

According to the British tabloid Sun newspaper, 'the hunt is on for the fella with the perfect manhood - to model for a new sex aid'.

'Blokes who reckon they measure up will have to take a cast of their pride and joy at home, then send it to bosses at the sex shop chain Hustler Hollywood to be judged.'

The winning entry, writes the paper, will be 'the model for a series of battery-powered rubber replicas that may find their way into thousands of women's bedrooms'."

From the Crime Fiction Dossier

Crime Fiction Dossier: "Agatha Award Winners

The winners of the Agatha Awards were announced over the weekend at the Malice Domestic conference.

* Best Novel - Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear
* Best First Novel - Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak
* Best Nonfiction - Private Eye-Lashes: Radio's Lady Detectives by Jack French
* Best Short Story - 'Wedding Knife' from Chesapeake Crimes by Elaine Viets
* Best Children's/Young Adult Novel - Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliet

Congratulations to all the winners!"

Is that a Burrito in your Pants, or are you Just Glad to See Me?

School Mistakes Huge Burrito for a Weapon - Yahoo! News: "CLOVIS, N.M. - A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school. All over a giant burrito.

Someone called authorities Thursday after seeing a boy carrying something long and wrapped into Marshall Junior High.

The drama ended two hours later when the suspicious item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa and jalapenos and wrapped inside tin foil and a white T-shirt."

Relics of the nuclear arms race

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Relics of the nuclear arms race: "The unlikely gateway to America's nuclear past is Las Vegas - the desert community just 60 miles from the Nevada test site.

I say 'unlikely' because few today are aware that in the 50s and 60s - when Las Vegas itself was searching for its own road to riches, and casinos were not the money-for-old-rope, mega operations they are today - the city fathers cashed in on the seismic bangs that regularly broke their windows.

Unused to the first earthquake-like shockwaves, gamblers took cover beneath roulette tables when the chandeliers shook."

This is an interesting article, passed on to me by Scott Cupp, and I'm reminded of a book I read recently, Richard Rayner's The Devil's Wind. I'll have to report on that soon.

The LeBlanc Challenge

This weekend at a writing workshop in Winnsboro, Texas, I met Deborah LeBlanc, a writer who's concerned about literacy, as I'm sure many people are. The difference in Deborah and the others is that she's actually trying to do do something about it. Here's the deal in her own words: "The LeBlanc Challenge will focus on reading, reading comprehension, and writing skills. The winner of this challenge will receive $5000 in cash, PLUS an additional $1000, which will go to the public school of their choice for the purchase of text and/or library books. To further the literacy cause, I'm adding a 'kicker' to the challenge. Should the winner choose to keep his or her winnings in a college fund, (either for themselves or a child) I will personally work with the chosen university regarding a matching funds program. As I'm sure you are aware, a matching funds program can turn that initial $5000 into $10,000. Not a bad start for a college education."

The contest requires the reading of Deborah's books, but I have to admit that this is one of the best promotional ideas I've seen in that its intent is to get people involved in both reading and writing. I think it's a great idea.

There Was Only One Catch . . . .

That "desert island" question down below reminds me of another book I guess I'd have to take: Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It's beyond a doubt one of my favorites.

Flashback to Spring, 1963. I'm doing my student teaching at A. S. Johnston High in Austin, Texas. There's a kid named Ronald Swank in my class, kind of a rough and tumble guy, but he likes to read, and we get along. One day after class he comes up to talk, and he's holding a blue paperback. "I like to read war books," he says. "I thought this was a war book, but it's not. Do you want it?" I take the book and look it over. It's Catch-22. I've heard about it, so I thank him and take it back to the dorm with me. That night I start reading it. It's different from anything I've ever read before. The characters all appear to be crazy, there are great one-liners on every page, the plot (if there is one) sure isn't linear. And I love it. Ronald Swank has changed my life.

Over the years, I've probably read Catch-22 a dozen times. I picked it up again last week and started it again. It's just as fresh to me now as it was 42 years ago. A great book? I don't know what the ultimate judgment of history will be. Who reads it now? Anybody? Or is it already forgotten? All I know is that for me it will always be one of the best books of the late lamented 20th century.

Edgar Winners

And the Winners Are...

BEST NOVEL

California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker (William Morrow)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Country of Origin by Don Lee (W.W. Norton & Company)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

The Confession by Domenic Stansberry (Hard Case Crime)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories edited by Leslie S. Klinger (W.W. Norton & Company)

BEST FACT CRIME

Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder: A Reporter and a Detective's Twenty-Year Search for Justice by Leonard Levitt (Regan Books)

BEST SHORT STORY

"Something About a Scar" – Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You by Laurie Lynn Drummond (HarperCollins)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

In Darkness, Death by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler (Philomel Books)

BEST JUVENILE

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett (Scholastic Press)

BEST PLAY

Spatter Pattern (Or, How I Got Away With It) by Neal Bell (Playwrights Horizons)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

Law & Order: Criminal Intent – “Want”, Teleplay by Elizabeth Benjamin. Story by René Balcer & Elizabeth Benjamin

BEST TELEVISION FEATURE OR MINI-SERIES TELEPLAY

State of Play by Paul Abbott (BBC America)

BEST MOTION PICTURE SCREENPLAY

A Very Long Engagement - Screenplay by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, based on the Novel by Sébastien Japrisot (2003 Productions)

Wow!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Extinct' woodpecker found alive: "The spectacular ivory-billed woodpecker, which was declared extinct in 1920, has been found alive in North America, Science magazine reports."

Wow! When I was a little kid, I used look at my grandmother's bird books and dream of someday finding an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in, say, the Big Thicket. That's one of those dreams I left behind a long time ago, but now somebody's found one. I really hope this is true.

Voices of Vision -- Jayme Blaschke

Contiuing my foolish practice of plugging books by writers other than myself, today I'm recommending Voices of Vision by Jayme Blaschke. The book is a collection of interviews with such luminaries as Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellision, Neal Gaiman, and Gordon Van Gelder, seventeen interviews in all. I, for one, can never resist writers (and editors) talking about their work, and these inverviews are all thoroughly entertaining. Blaschke asks good questions, and he doesn't stick to the standards. Check it out.

And if you ever see Jayme at a convention or elsewhere, you can ask him how he persuaded the nice folks at the University of Nebraska to use his picture on the cover.

The Games People Play

Juri Nummelin over at Pulpetti has challenged me to answer a few questions. I'm really bad at this sort of thing, but I'll give it a go.

(1) You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
Today, Moby Dick seems just right to me. Let's see Montag memorize that one.

(2) Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Sure, all the time. I think the first one was Becky Thatcher, and Modesty Blaise is a continuing fantasy of mine, not that she'd give me a second look.

(3) What are you currently reading?
Silvertip's Strike by Max Brand, because I've never read a Max Brand novel before, and I've been promising myself for months that I would.

(4) What five books you would take to a deserted island?
Naturally I'd want Shakespeare's collected works in one volume, which would just count as one book. I'd probably need that nice Library of America volume devoted to Chandler, or maybe the one devoted to Hammett. Again one volume equals one book I guess I'll take 'em both. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And War and Peace. I've never managed to read that one. Maybe if I were desperate, I could get through it.

(5) Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Nobody, probably. I'm not a pass-along kind of guy. If I think of somebody, though, maybe I'll send it along.

The Only Thing I Find in my Yard is Fire Ants

IOL: Science & Tech: "London - A man landscaping his garden in eastern England has unearthed a major hoard of tools and weapons dating back nearly 3 000 years, an archaeologist revealed on Tuesday."

Warden -- Jim Willett and Ron Rozelle

There have been a lot of books about prisoners, but not so many about the other men who spend a large part of their lives in prison, the ones who run the place. Warden: Texas Prison Life from the Inside Out is the story one one of those men, Jim Willett. He grew up in Groesbeck, Texas, not far from Mexia, my hometown, and his father had the Pearl beer distributorship in Mexia. I never knew Jim Willett, but I found his story fascinating. He began work for the Texas prison system as a way to earn money while he was in college and wound up spending the rest of his working life in jail, beginning as a guard at one of the pickets and finally becoming warden of the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, the unit where the death sentence is carried out. Along the way he was present at the most notorious hostage situation ever to occur in a Texas prison, and toward the end he oversaw a number of executions. Warden tells about some of his experiences, and interspersed among them are accounts of of those executions. If you've ever wondered about what goes on in the Death Chamber, these accounts are worth the price of the book by themselves. Texans will immediately recognize the names of several of the men whose deaths Willett oversaw: Dennis Dowthitt, Kenneth McDuff, Gary Graham. How Willett felt about his job may surprise you, or it may not, but the power of these stories will stay with you for a long time.

L. A. Festival of Books

Mystery Dawg: "Festival of Books - Mystery Dawg Edition!"

Al Calcagno has lots (and I mean lots) of pictures from the festival posted on his blog. All your favorite writers. Check it out.

Deadly Diversion -- Eleanor Sullivan

Eleanor Sullivan (the current, very much alive writer, not the late, great editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) has a good idea: a virtual book tour. She's sending out copies of her novel (Deadly Diversion) to bloggers and people who have websites and hoping for a link in exchange. This is probably a good bit cheaper than flying around the country to all the mystery bookstores. I got my copy of the book today, and I'll post a review here when I've read it.

Fibber McGee and Molly

Ivan, over at the indispensable Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, tipped me off to a really cheap boxed set of Fibber McGee and Molly CDs not long ago, so I ordered it at once. I didn't have a chance to listen until this past weekend, driving to and from the Aggiecon. On the drive, I heard six shows (one of them from early in the program's history) and enjoyed every minute of them. (Judy, for some reason, was not impressed.) For years, the catch-phrases from those shows were catch-phrases in my own family: "'T'ain't funny, McGee" and "That ain't the way I heered it." I'm pretty sure kids these days would think the shows were awful and lame, but I loved them in the long ago, and I still do.

Sarah Glazer on Self-Publishing

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > The Book Business: How to Be Your Own Publisher: "How to Be Your Own Publisher"

You have to register to read The New York Times, but this is a pretty interesting article about self-published books.

Back from Aggiecon

Judy and I have returned from our annual sojourn among the Aggies, and as usual we had a fine old time. The only bothersome thing was the realization that when we attended our first Aggiecon in 1980, most of the students who organized this one weren't even born yet. That's downright scary.

One of the Big Name Guests was Michael Moorcock, as I mentioned in my previous post. I heard that while he already has a nice home near Austin and another in Majorca, he's considering buying one in Paris. Elric has been very good to him.

And Joe Lansdale's talent has been very good to him. He tells me that he has seven books coming out from small presses this year, four of them collections of older material and three of them new stuff, including two new novels. The Drive-in 3 is of course the long-awaited sequel to the first two Drive-in novels, and Flaming London is the follow-up to Zeppelins West. Ned the Seal lives!

The panels seemed especially well-attended this year, and Aggiecon seems well on the way back from the doldrums it had sunk into a few years back.

Aggiecon

In mere moments, Judy and I will be leaving for lovely and scenic College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University and the Texas Aggies. We'll be attending Aggiecon 36. Aggiecon, for those of you not in the know, is a small regional science fiction convention. Judy and I went to our first in 1980, and we've missed only one in the years since. At Aggiecon, I've seen writers like Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp, Harry Harrison, Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, and a lot of others. I've seen artists like Boris, Michael Whelan, Frank Kelly Freas. And I've made a few friends, too. I met Joe Lansdale in 1980, and we've been pals ever since. Scott Cupp and Willie Siros, who always have a table in the dealers' room have sold me books ever since 1980 and been friends as well. And let's not forget fellow blogger Jayme Blaschke.

For me, spring doesn't really begin until I've been to Aggiecon, so spring is coming late this year. Every other year since 1980, the convention's been held on the last weekend of March, but this year Easter fell on that weekend and the con was postponed. The guests of honor this year are Michael Moorcock and Elizabeth Moon, so I'm hoping for a good crowd. I'll give you a report when we get back home.

Pleading with Oprah

View Letter: "Word of Mouth, an Association of Women Authors, invites you to read the letter below addressed to Oprah Winfrey, which thanks her for championing contemporary writers and respectfully requests that she consider focusing, once again, on contemporary fiction in her Book Club. After our members drafted and signed the letter, we circulated it throughout the American literary community. The response was overwhelming: distinguished contemporary writers from every part of the country enthusiastically greeted our appeal and added their signatures to the letter. The letter was delivered to Oprah Winfrey on April 20, 2005."

If you'd like to sign on as a supporter of the letter, there's a link for that. As for me, I figure my chances of selling even one book as a result of this are about zero. Besides, tough guys don't beg.

San Jacinto Day

April 21 might not be a big deal to you, but it is to Texans. It's the anniversary of General Santa Anna's defeat by Sam Houston at San Jacinto, located only a few miles from where I'm sitting. The Houston Chronicle has an article about the battle today, the gist of which is that Houston won because of superior firepower. The Mexican troops were using "surplus British East India pattern, smoothbore Brown Bess muskets." According to a fellow named James Mitchell, "The British weapon had a hitting range of 25 yards. Maybe you could hit a target at 50 yards. Beyond that, it's anybody's guess. On the Texas side, it's hard to know what the percentages are. There were Springfields in Houston's army, muskets of various manufacture, maybe even a few Brown Besses. But the vast majority, probably over 500, carried the weapon of choice — the American Kentucky rifle."

And the difference? Well, "the Kentucky rifle was accurate to up to 200 yards in ideal conditions. But even in the chaos of battle [Mitchell said], it was a sure killer at 50 yards."

You can read all about the battle, the San Jacinto Monument and Museum, and a lot of other stuff here. And there's a swell photo of the monument here.

Groovy Joe Poovey

dallasobserver.com | Legendary stardust cowboy | 1998-10-15: "Legendary stardust cowboy
'Groovy' Joe Poovey dies just as his Greatest Grooves are set for release"

The link leads to an article that's seven years old. I found it because yesterday I was looking at a list of new CD releases and saw one by "Groovy" Joe Poovey. When Judy and I were just married and living in Denton, Texas, we listened to the country station (probably KPCN, judging from the article) where Groovy Joe was a DJ. He played some great music, including, now and then, some of his own. I hadn't heard much about Groovy Joe in the intervening years, but according to the article I've linked to, he was a Texas music legend. I know one thing: he had a great name. I'm sorry to see that he's no longer around, and I hope the new CD does something to bring his music to a new generation. Apparently he's always been popular in England, where they have better taste in music than we do here. The song of his that I remember best is "Ten Long Fingers." Should've sold a million.

Yet Another Celebrity Birthday

Johnny Tillotson is 66. Yes, Johnny Tillotson, the guy who recorded "Poetry in Motion" and a number of other big hits. You couldn't call him a hard rocker, but he did some pleasant songs. When I looked at his homepage, I clicked on the "Where Johnny's Appearing" link and discovered that tonight he'll be at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in a tribute to Pat Boone's 50th anniversary in show business.

Digression: As we all know, Pat Boone has never been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I consider this an example of snobbery at its worst. I know all the arguments against his induction, such as the fact that he didn't rock and he didn't roll, but who cares? The truth is that Pat Boone is as much a part of R&R history as any artist in the hall. I don't think there's any argument against that.

Return of the Emperor

eFanzines.com - Earl Kemp: e*I* Vol. 3 No. 4: "Fred Fixler – Mystery Artist at Last Unmasked"

Check out Art Scott's illustrated article in the latest issue of Earl Kemp's efanzine and discover the identity of a heretofore nameless Brandon House cover artist. You'll have to scroll down, but you'll probably be distracted on the way any number of other pieces (so to speak) including Charles Nuetzel's comments on Queen of Blood, Kemp's footnote to the article, Forrie Ackerman's remarks (with great photos), and so on. The whole issue is don't-miss reading.

Hardluck Stories

Hardluck Stories - Best Hardboiled and Noir fiction

The new issue of Hardluck Stories has hit the stands. Or the monitors. Or whatever it is that e-zines hit. This is the "bank job" issue, and in addition to stories related to that theme, there's even a 21-page noir comic book, along with interviews and other features. Check it out.

Brave, Courageous, and Bold

I had a look at the celebrity birthdays in the paper this morning, as I always do, and I saw that Hugh O'Brian is 80 years old today. I hope he can still lift that Buntline Special.

And Elinor Donahue is 68. She was, of course, Betty Anderson on Father Knows Best, not to mention Ellie Walker, one of Sheriff Andy Taylor's girlfriends (pre-the Miss Crump days). I didn't know that she was in The Princess Diaries 2 last year, not having seen that one for some reason.

Jory Sherman's Blog

Jory Sherman's Blog

Writer Jory Sherman (you've read his books, right?) has begun a new blog, and he's off to a roaring start. Click on the link and get in on the ground floor.

Roger Ebert Meets the Emperor of the Universe

:: rogerebert.com :: answerman: "Q. In your 'Sahara' review, you refer to Bob & Ray's 'Blake Dent, Boy Spotwelder.' Bob & Ray fans near & far are, I'm sure, letting you know that it's 'Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder' ('Over here behind the duck press, Todd.'). With hundreds of hours of B&R indelibly etched in my brain, I cannot recall a Blake Dent in any context.

Art Scott, Livermore, Calif.

A. You are absolutely correct and win a year's supply of Parker House rolls with rich creamery butter from nearby farms. I was delighted to learn that virtually the entire Bob & Ray archive is available at www.bobandray.com. Not many people know that when you solve the Da Vinci Code, that's where it leads you, right there to the archive's friendly front parlor, where on a good day you might meet Kent Lyle Birdley, Wally Ballou, Charles the Poet, Dean Archer Armstead and Mary Backstayge.

Just the other day I dropped in and overheard a scintillating conversation:

'Golly gee whillikers, Mr. Science! What's that long brown object?!?'

'That's known as a board, Jimmy.'"

Those of us "in the know" refer to Art Scott as The Emperor of the Universe. I'd tell you why, but then I'd have to cut your tongue out. And if you can write, I'd have to chop your fingers off. Our humane belief system doesn't permit us to kill anyone, however. At any rate, the EOTU (or, if you know him well enough, The Emp) is quite the Bob & Ray expert, as Roger Ebert has discovered. And now you know it, too.

Striking Images

LJ Images

And speaking of striking images, as I was just below, this is a site that Ray Banks mentioned at The Saturday Boy. Some very interesting random stuff here.

Spammer Names

Who makes up the names that come on spam e-mails? I particularly like the ones with a first name, a last name, and a middle initial. I've been saving them for a week or so, and here are a few examples:
Creeper O. Moralizing
Crimean R. Perigee
Customer V. Pragmatism
Dakota H. Scaled
Decadence T. Dispassionate
Defamatory L. Instinctively
Deletes C. Effect
Dependents G. Fidgets
Devonian S. Edna
Diagonals S. Emasculation
Dill P. Germinal
Dirtying G. Kamchatka
Discolors U. Philology
Disrobes S. Fixity
Drywall A. Bombshell
Education U. Pentecost
Election C. Outgrowth
Elocution V. Firmest
Emacs Q. Sapping
Emulations V. Earring
Encyclopedic L. Rills
Ended S. Apotheoses

I remember vinyl records

HoustonChronicle.com - Record factory closes as vinyl spins slower: "April 16, 2005, 6:30PM
Record factory closes as vinyl spins slower
As workers await their final shift, much of the talk is turning from nostalgia to anger
By HART SEELY
Syracuse Post-standard

GLOVERSVILLE, N.Y. - She started the job on a Friday, 49 years ago. She found herself pressing the music of Bill Haley and the Comets into a 78 rpm record, and she knew her world would never be the same.

'I remember my mother-in-law telling me, 'Never start anything on a Friday,' ' Verone Hulbert recalled. ''If you start something on a Friday, it never ends.' '

But the end is near for Universal Music Group's record-pressing plant in Gloversville.

Early next month, the plant will close, 112 union workers will lose their jobs, and another icon of the 20th century — the vinyl record — will edge one track closer to extinction."

I still have a big box of my old vinyl 45 rpm records. The Big Bopper on "D" records from Beaumont, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters doing "Sexy Ways," Dion and the Belmonts singing "I Wonder Why." And so on. I know they're not good for anything, and I never play them anymore, but I can't quite bring myself to get rid of them. There was something about those records that was magical to me. A CD just isn't the same. (Probably a sure sign that I'm a confirmed Old Fart.)

MISTY. In full.

pooloflife1

From Planet of the Sardines via Groovy Age of Horror comes a link to every single issue of Misty, available on-line in actual size. Check it out.

Women in Crime/Homicide Johnny

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

You never know what kind of images will turn up on the site linked above, but you can bet they'll all be striking in one way or another. Click on over and scroll down to the cover of Women in Crime, for example, and the cover of the Popular Library edition of Steve Fisher's Homicide Johnny. Compare and contrast.

3 TO KILL -- Jean-Patrick Manchette

Some of the members of rara-avis have been singing the praises of Jean-Patrick Manchette for a good while now, and I decided it was time to give his books a try. I ordered two of them, this one and The Prone Gunman. I still haven't received TheProne Gunman, and I'm wondering if I ever will. At any rate, I read 3 To Kill with high expectations. It almost lived up to them.

It's the story of a businesman named Georges Gerfaut who helps an accident victim and then finds himself targeted by hitmen. He has no idea why the men are trying to kill him, but he proves to be a lot more resourceful than they expected. He escapes them and hides out in a small village (but not until after he suffers considerable physical and emotional damage). Eventually he's tracked down, and there's a violent shoot-out. There's a bit more violence later on, and then Georges returns to his humdrum life. He's not quite the same, of course.

This is a very short book, and it has some things in it that I liked a lot. For example, I loved it that one of the hitmen is reading a French translation of a Jack Williamson book. I also liked the speed of the narrative and the straight-forward storytelling.

A couple of minor things bothered me. There's a lot of jazz music in the story, and every reference might be entirely accurate, for all I know. Jazz is out of my territory. However, on page ten I ran across this bit about Georges's taste in vocalists: "syrupy American popular singers: Mel Torme or Billy May." Something like that takes me right out of the story. For one thing, I don't think of Mel Torme as being "syrupy." For another thing, Billy May wasn't a singer at all. He was an orchestra leader and arranger. Did a lot of albums with Frank Sinatra. So I start to wonder. Is this the translator's error? Or Manchette's? And why, after several editions of the book, hasn't somebody stepped in and fixed it?

Even more minor is the line on page 84, where "Gerfaut said he could care less." I guess those French are as careless in their speech as Americans.

Sahara

Judy and I went to see the lastest movie titled Sahara this afternoon. I kind of like the old one with Humphrey Bogart, but this one's nothing like that.

There are more explosions in the first five minutes of this one than in anything else I've seen this year. I figure it might hold the record for most explosions ever, but I'm not sure.

I am sure that it has just about everything you could want in an adventure movie. There's a fine cast, including the hot chick (Penelope Cruz), the high-spirited adventurer (Matthew McConaughey), the zany sidekick (Steve Zahn), despicable villain #1 (Lambert Wilson), despicable villain #2 (Glynn Thurman), the stalwart Old Man (William H. Macy), the other zany sidekick (Rainn Wilson). You have lost treasure, toxic poisoned wells, a Threat to the Entire World, a ticking clock, the flight of the phoenix, guys (and a gal) jumping onto a moving train from the backs of running camels, a Civil War ironclad in the African desert, a neat old car, and I'm sure I'm forgetting eight or ten other things. I didn't see a kitchen sink, but I got the feeling that any minute one could come flying onto the set. And explosions. Did I mention the explosions?

I was curious about one thing. Was it possible that Penelope Cruz (who looks great on camelback, by the way, but then she always looks great: dressed up, disheveled, sheveled, robed, disrobed (but only down to a bikini in this movie) could turn in a performance (she plays a doctor for the World Health Organization) to equal that of Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is Not Enough? The answer is: Yes. I was absolutely convinced. Of course the members of the so-called Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences, in their overweening envy will never nominate her for the Oscar she so richly deserves, just as they have denied Denise, not only for her performance in the above-mentioned James Bond movie but in the classic Wild Things.

McConaughey and Zahn seem to be having a heck of a good time, as if they both know how outlandish the whole thing is and just don't care. Zahn's there to provide laughs, but he more than holds up his end in the action scenes. (There are hardly any other kinds of scenes in the movie.)

And McConaughey can deliver the required dialogue in just the right spirit. I found myself smiling along with him when the Old Man says, "You know I can't ask you and Al to do this alone," and McConaughey replies, "That's what makes it so good, Admiral. You don't have to." And of course in the next scene, he and Zahn are speeding away to take on hordes of bad guys all by themselves if need be.

So if you like the kind of Boys' Own Adventure movie that doesn't care in the least that it's totally preposterous, if you're willing to go along for the ride and the laughs, you should have a great time at Sahara. I did.

Dead Soldiers Update

When I posted the cover of Dead Soldiers the other day, I used a scan of the hardcover edition, as I assumed that Five Star would use the same cover for the trade paperback. They didn't, and boy, am I glad. The new cover is a huge improvement, and it even has something to do with the novel. I like this cover a lot. And remember: the book is "unerringly entertaining."

Stacked

I've already received an e-mail asking why I haven't posted anything about the new Fox TV series Stacked. So I'd better say something about it. I watched it because it was set in a bookstore. How could any booklover resist a comedy series set in a bookstore? It stars Pamela Sue Anderson, a bunch of people I never heard of, and Christopher Lloyd. And it was actually pretty funny, better than I thought it would be. Anderson has fun playing a sort of parody of herself (if that's possible), and some actual incidents from her life were used in the script. The rest of the cast is appealing enough (I always like Christopher Lloyd), and if they're stealing a little from Frazier with the ex-wife character, at least they're stealing from a pretty good show. I'll definitely watch this one again to see where it's going. After all, I just can't resist a show about a bookstore. (And in case you're wondering, the photo above isn't from the show.)

Open Season on Cats? (Update)

My Way News: "MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats is not going to succeed, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

'I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats,' said Doyle, a Democrat who neither hunts nor owns a cat. 'What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now.'"

My original post on this is here. I'm glad to see that saner head prevailed.

Even More about Bomba!

This just in from Jeff Meyerson:

Your blogging about Bomba the Jungle Boy reminded me of a thing Pete Hamill wrote about the series. I found the following excerpt from Jim Trelease's THE READ-ALOUD HANDBOOK:

If you think today's best writers were all reading the classics as children, guess again. A few years ago at an event at the Museum of the City of New York, two men were huddled in deep conversation. There were perhaps no two people in the room more disparate than they.
One was Louis Auchincloss, son of a corporate lawyer and one himself, Yale graduate, novelist, biographer, essayist, and president of the Museum of the City of New York. He's been described as the closest thing this age can offer in the way of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Anthony Trollope.
His partner in conversation was Pete Hamill, eighteen years his junior, son of impoverished Irish immigrants, college dropout, sheet metal worker, advertising designer, journalist, and New York newspaper editor. While Auchincloss spent much of his life writing about boardrooms and bankers, Hamill won awards for writing about the Bowery and boozers. Yet here they were, deep in conversation. About what? If you'd been close enough to eavesdrop, you'd have heard them discussing the fact that Auchincloss had just found a used copy of Bomba, the Jungle Boy at the Death Swamp, the favorite series from both of their childhoods.(This scene was recounted by Hamill in Ronald B. Schwartz's book, For the Love of Books (Grosset/Putnam, 1999).

"Johnny B. Goode" R.I.P.

Blogcritics.org: "Johnny B. Goode" is Dead: "'Johnny B. Goode' is Dead"

When I was a teenager, Chuck Berry was at the top of his game. "Maybellene" and the rest of his hits are part of the soundtrack of my life. I didn't realize until now that it, along with the others, was co-written with Johnnie Johnson.

So, would you like to talk to space aliens?

TalkToAliens.com -- The World's First Intergalactic Communication System.

Or maybe you'd rather just e-mail them. You even get a FREE "Certificate of Interstellar Broadcast." How can you resist?

E. C. Comics

news from me - ARCHIVES: "Here's an easy review: If you have any interest in EC Comics, you need a copy of Foul Play, a fine new book by . . . Grant Geissman."

There's more to the review over at Mark Evanier's News from Me. Just click on the link.

Amateur (wink, wink) Athletics

ESPN.com - NCF - NCAA panel OK with 12th night (or day) game: "INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA Division I Management Council has backed legislation that would allow Division I-A and I-AA schools to add a 12th football game starting with the 2006 season."

When are we going to admit that college football is really just a farm system for the NFL? Why keep on pretending that the players are in school for an education? I mean, have you ever heard an NFL player talk? Time to face up to the facts, pay the guys, and stop making them attend those bothersome classes.

Bomba, Again

After posting about Johnny Sheffield, and after reading Juri's and Frank's comments, I just had to have a look at a Bomba book or two. So I went to the shelves. Naturally I grabbed one with a croc on the cover. Here's the opening paragraph: "A jagged streak of lightning shot athwart the sky, followed by a deafening crash of thunder." How long has it been since you saw the word "athwart" used in a novel? A little farther on we have Bomba "ever and again sending a glance aloft at the lowering skies." Hard to imagine a little ten-year-old kid these days reading a book with a vocabulary like the one "Roy Rockwood" uses. Great stuff.

But it's on page 11 that we get to the kind of thing I remember most fondly from the Bomba series. Ever and again Bomba finds himself in real pickles. In this case a jaguar is about to spring at a man hanging from a tree branch. Bomba is about to draw his knife to attempt a rescue: "While from that belt the jungle boy was drawing his razor-edged machete it may be well, for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this series, to tell who Bomba was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story opens."

Yes, as I recall, that's what happens in every book. There's tension you can cut with a machete, and the author steps in to interrupt the story and recall for us the tedious history of Bomba's origins. As I say, I remember this device fondly. I came to expect it and to depend on it. I'm indeed a sad case.

Another thing you could count on with Bomba is that there would be plenty of action to interrupt. By page 11 of the book I'm looking at, lightning has split a nearby tree in half, and Bomba has fought off a savage puma (with the aid of another puma, friendly to Bomba, but still savage). Almost immediately after that, the jungle boy is swept away by a wall of water, and as soon as he escapes drowning, he spots the man dangling from the tree limb and the threatening jaguar. A thrill a minute! They truly don't write 'em like that anymore.

Happy Birthday, Bomba!

I noticed in the "celebrity birthdays" column today that Johnny Sheffield turns 74 today. I, of course, remember him from many Saturday afternoons in the Palace Theater. First, he was Boy in the Tarzan movies, and then he was Bomba the Jungle Boy. And then he pretty much disappeared completely.

When I was a kid, I read as many of the Bomba books as I could get my hands on. I'm sure they were wretched stuff, but I loved them. (I've always had pretty low taste in literature. Movies, too, I guess.) I couldn't find all the books in the public library, so I even managed to buy a couple. But I never managed to complete the series.

Australian Vintage Paperbacks

Australian Vintage Paperbacks: "This website, produced by Graeme Flanagan, author of Australian Vintage Paperback Guide, is devoted to several series of Australian vintage paperbacks, including the long-running Carter Brown and Larry Kent series, as well as the unique and fascinating Phantom Books series. New cover scans will be added on a regular basis. Click on any of the images below to enter different parts of the website."

I should have mentioned this site long before now. There are some great covers here, many of them the same as on the U.S. digests, but plenty of different ones. Highly recommended browsing.

A Message From the Kinkster

THE BRAZOSPORT NEWS: "A message from Kinky Friedman"

Over at the Brazosport News (link above), Banjo Jones has the latest on Kinky Friedman's campaign to become governor of Texas. Here's a link to Kinky's website if you want to have a look at one thing he has planned.

Bye-bye, MGM

CNN.com - Bye-bye, MGM - Apr 8, 2005: "Bye-bye, MGM
Famed studio, and UA partner, swallowed up in purchase"

The summer after I graduated from college, I drove back to the campus to take the Graduate Record Exam. While I was there, I walked around to have a look at some of the places where friends of mine had lived and where I'd spent lots of hours goofing off. Mike Leary and Allan Rast had spent their freshman year at a place we called the Newman Club, a Catholic rooming house. When I went by that summer day, there was nothing left of it but a few boards and a couple of bricks. A sign in front said, "Another Building Demolished by Prather and Sons." I've thought about that sign a lot in the ensuing years. Seems as though the older I get, the more I think about it, dagnabbit.

Now Available in Trade Paperback!

Yes, folks, it's time I plugged my own books again. So I thought I'd let you know that Dead Soldiers is now available in trade paperback format. Not noir, not hardboiled. But here's what Booklist had to say: "Crider, known for his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, unerringly re-creates the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small-town university, leavening his tart plot with humor and a simmering sense of the absurd. Unerringly enjoyable." You can't beat "unerringly enjoyable," can you? I don't think so.

The Shame of Alvin, Texas

THE BRAZOSPORT NEWS: "The shame of Alvin, Texas"

Banjo Jones has a photo of the Nolan Ryan statue that stands in front of the Alvin City Hall. Unfortunately, the statue hasn't been treated with the proper respect by the local bird population, and on one has seen fit to do a clean-up. I guess I'll have to go down there and take care of it myself.

From Andy Jaysnovitch

Andy Jaysnovitch has a comment on Errol Flynn below, but some people don't read the comments, so I'm reprinting it here.

There's a great article in the March issue of Classic Images in which Paul Picerni tells of growing up and dreaming that someday he'd be in a movie with Flynn. His dream came true when he was cast as a private eye in Maru Maru opposite Flynn who was playing a salvage diver looking for a lost treasure in diamonds. Picerni (in this excerpt from his upcoming autobiography) tells some great stories about Flynn. Picerni couldn't understand how he could be so dramatic in his scenes while Flynn was being so matter-of-fact and doing virtually nothing. He finally passed his acting course when he saw the film and realized that he was overacting and Flynn was doing it just right. Flynn truly did make it look effortless. Picerni of course is well remembered for his part as Agent Lee Hobson in the Untouchables. He tells a great story (this article is recounted to the estimable Tom Weaver) and he had a previous piece in Classic Images in which he told of being afraid he was really going to get decapitated in House of Wax. Don't miss his book when it does come out!

Errol Flynn

Both Ed Gorman and Vince Keenan have posts today about the Errol Flynn documentary on TCM. I watched the documentary, too, and it reminded me of how many of Flynn's movies I saw as a kid, and how much I enjoyed them. In those days, they "re-released" movies fairly often, so I was able to see them on the "big" screen, though it wasn't really so big.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is probably my favorite, but I'll always have a soft spot for Adventures of Don Juan, the first movie I ever saw at a drive-in, while visiting my aunt in San Antonio, probably around 1950. And The Charge of the Light Brigade is another big one on my list of favorites. Not to mention They Died with their Boots On.

Flynn made acting look so easy that people didn't take him seriously. I think he was a much better actor than he's often given credit for, and I know that his movies gave me as much pleasure as just about any I saw when I was growing up. It's too bad he had such a weakness for booze and drugs and came to such an early and sad ending.

I've had a copy of one of Flynn's novels, Beam Ends, for years and never read it. Now maybe I will.

Twisted City -- Jason Starr

Jason Starr, as we all know, is one sick puppy. So it should come as no surprise that Twisted City is, well, twisted. David Miller, the narrator, seems like a normal enough guy. But he has problems. The recent death of his sister preys on his mind. He's living with a chick who seems a little strange. Or maybe a lot strange. His job isn't going too well. When somebody lifts his wallet, his problems start to get worse. A lot worse. As things go downhill, it begins to seem that maybe Miller's problems aren't all coming from outside himself. (Character is fate, as we all learned when reading Medea in the fourth grade.) There are several nice twists (no pun intended) in the plot, and Starr saves the best one for last. This is primetime noir. Check it out.

Saul Bellow -- R.I.P.

I realize that Saul Bellow isn't the kind of writer I usually mention here, but what the heck. Well over 40 years ago, I read his short novel "Dangling Man." I thought it was OK, but it didn't really make a deep impression. A few years later I read The Adventures of Augie March, which did. And Henderson the Rain King was a staple in freshman English classes when I was a teaching assistant in my grad school days. I read Herzog and liked it so much that I later taught it for a couple of semesters. And I also read and liked Mr. Sammler's Planet. All my books from those days are in storage, but I'm sure I still have them, each one heavily underlined, and no doubt containing pithy comments in the margins. It's been at least twenty years since I read anything by Bellow, but now that he's gone, I kind of miss him.

Zorro's Fighting Legion

James Reasoner has an excellent post on Zorro's Fighting Legion over at Rough Edges. (You'll have to scroll down to find it, since he's already started watching another great serial, Undersea Kingdom.) I've see Zorro's Fighting Legion a couple of times, the first when I was a little kid. I'm sure I've mentioned before how the boys in my fourth or fifth grade class used to march around the playground chanting in a monotone, "Don del Oro. Don del Oro." Many years later, I bought a VHS tape of the serial and watched it again. I let my rotten kid brother borrow the tape, and he never returned it. So when I saw it on DVD a while back, I bought it. And James' post spurred me to start watching it yet again. I was planning to watch only a few episodes, but it's so much fun I'm sure I'll watch all of it. You have your swordfights, your bullwhips, your secret cave hideout . . . what more could you ask for? Maybe a great theme song, and this serial sure has one: "We ride, with the wind/ over hill over dale/ with a spirit that cannot fail/ men of Zorro are we." Hard to top.

From Ed Gorman

Man did that Amazing cover and your piece on Johnny Mayhem take me back. I used to haunt my two closest pb and mag outlets for anything sf or Gold Medal or Ace. But I was a special Ziff-Davis freak. I think it was all those great loopy sexy Valigursky covers. You're right, though. The one thing he couldn't draw was monsters. Half of them looked like Beanie & Cecil outtakes. Between 1949, when he first sold to them, and 1956 Steve Marlowe/Milton Lesser must've written millions of words for them. Then Silverberg took over when Steve started doing pb novels for Gold Medal.

I can still remember the hot September night when I was all broken up over my ninth grade love (well, I was her love; as I discovered she wasn't necessarily mine) and I sat on one of the long bridges that connect the two land masses of Cedar Rapids. It was just before this drug store closed. I decided to go buy a pack of Luckies (kids rarely had trouble buying underage smokes in ole CR) and a bottle of Pepsi so I could sit on the bridge some more and try not to think of jumping in.

And there on the shelf was the new Amazing. I thumbed through it and found my very first fan letter ever published. It didn't help much where my true love was concerned but I felt in the club--Kent Moomaw, Mike Deckinger, Roger Ebert, the whole gang. I still have that issue in my a drawer in my desk. It had a great Valigursky cover with no bug eyed monsters, just an astronaut strapped to an asteroid (I didn't say it was scientifically accurate, did I?) Thanks for the ride on the time machine.

Is Time Travel Possible?

Sure it is. Every spring the lunkheads in the legislature shoot us an hour into the future. Then in the fall they drag us back an hour. I'm here to say: Stop the Madness!

I mean, what good is Daylight Saving Time? Has there ever been a study that proves its usefulness? Not that I'm aware of. There are, however, studies that show an increase in traffic accidents every year on the Monday after DST begins. Yet every time spring comes around, the pussies on the Potomac deprive me of an hour's sleep. Why? There has to be a reason, right? Somebody must be paying them off. So who profits from DST? I have no idea, but there must be someone.

I've heard it said that DST is good because the little kiddies don't have to go to school in the dark. I say: Start school an hour later. The little kiddies would like that solution a lot better, and so would I.

I think it's time that we told the cockamamie Congress to stop messing with the clock and leave it one way or the other. I can live with DST year 'round, though I'd prefer Standard Time (or, as it should be known, God's Own Time). One or the other. But no more changes.

Johnny Mayhem

For some reason Duane Swiercyznski's Secret Dead Men reminded me of Johnny Mayhem. I'm sure only a few of you have ever even heard of Johnny Mayhem. He was a series character created by Milton Lesser (better known as Stephen Marlowe) for Amazing Stories in the 1950s. He began life as Johnny Marlow, "a pariah, a criminal, . . . who had been mortally wounded on a wild planet deep within the Saggitarian Swarm, whose life had been saved, after a fashion, by the white magic of that planet. Mayhem, doomed now to possible immortality as a bodiless sentience, an elan, which could occupy and activate a corpse if it had been frozen properly." Being an elan has reformed Marlow/Mayhem, "who had dedicated his life to the service of the Galactic League because a normal life and normal social relationships were not possible for him." See, that's because an elan can't "remain in one body for more than a month without body and elan perishing." Since you never know when you'll need a guy (or an elan) like Johnny Mayhem, "Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League post, however small, had a body waiting in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required."

I really liked the Johnny Mayhem stories when I was a kid. The one in the November 1958 Amazing is both typical and different. It involves an escaped con and a one hundred member symphony band. All the band members are women. Judging by the interior illo for the story, they all wear really short shorts, tight blouses, and boots, which seems like a good idea to me.

About that cover: there was a time when both Amazing and Fantastic went through a "monster of the month phase." And of course the monster was usually menacing a woman who looked as if she might be headed for an audition for a spot in a symphony orchestra. Ah, the good old days.

Judge A Book... by its Cover

Judge A Book... by its Cover: "I love books. I love the smell of 'em, the feel of 'em, and I love the look of 'em. In fact, I even like to read them, but that's another story. The main preoccupation of this site is the covers of books. Mainly books I've picked up in charity shops, or at carboot sales or jumble sales, even some that I've found on the ground."

The link above is to a site maintained by Jim Barker, clearly a collector after my own heart. He's the brains behind Planet of the Sardines, which I've mentioned previously. Judge a Book has the covers organized by category, and as Jim says, "Here you will find hard-boiled detectives, scantily-clad floozies, unlikely space-ships, grotesque aliens, bizarre religious images, beatnik shockers, hell's angels, skinheads, barbarian heroes, and horrifying monsters... among others." Check it out.

Sin City

Judy and I went to see Sin City yesterday. I tried to explain to Judy that this might not be her kind of movie, but she insisted. When it was over, I asked her how she liked it. She said, "It was about what I expected." I decided not to pursue the conversation any further.

From my point of view, Sin City was great. The B&W (with a few snippets of color now and then) photography is beautiful, and this is the best-looking movie I've seen in a long time. I'm amazed at what Robert Rodriguez can do in his garage in Austin.

The stories in the movie are lifted pretty much intact from Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, and graphic is the right word. There's enough violence to make Mickey Spillane blanch (though I figure Spillane must be a big influence on Miller). There's nudity. There's cannibalism.

Sure, it's all exaggerated, exaggerated to the point of impossibility. In our world. But not in the comic book world were the movie originated. That's the world where you slam a guy in the face fifteen or twenty times with a pistol, and all he needs is a few Bandaids. I think I liked the Mickey Rourke story best, simply because it's the most exaggerated.

I get the feeling this is a movie people will either like or hate. I liked it a lot.

Secret Dead Men -- Duane Swierczynski

And now for something completely different. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that Duane Swierczynski's Secret Dead Men is the goofiest book I've read this year. And I mean that in a good way. I don't think it belongs to a genre. It's sort of its own genre, a blend of SF and mystery like none other I've run across. I'll try to describe it, but (trust me on this) I'm not doing it justice. Del Farmer, the narrator, has the ability to gather souls. That's right. He can gather them from the recently dead, or even the living. (With the living it takes eye contact. And that's all I know about that.) When the souls are gathered, they reside in Farmer's brain, in what he calls the Brain Hotel, a simulacrum of the world of the living. He can talk to them, drink brain Chivas with them, or do anything else he pleases. He can even send his own soul into another body (eye contact again), should the occasion demand it, and you can bet that it will. Del is out to smash "the Association," which he believes to be something like the Mafia, and he's gathering some souls to help out. Things take a detour when one of the souls, from a guy named Brad, refuses to help unless Del solves Brad's murder. And after that, things really get complicated.

This is not your father's mystery novel. It's wild, weird, and very entertaining. PointBlank is going a great job of bringing out books like this, books the Big Boys probably wouldn't take a chance on. But PointBlank did, and you should, too.

The Adventures of Jim Bowie

The Adventures of Jim Bowie is another old TV series now available on DVD for a buck. The only one at my local Dollar Tree was Volume 2, so that’s the one I bought. The quality of the transfer’s not bad at all. The quality of the episodes is something you’ll have to judge for yourself, but I thought they were worth my dollar.

The first episode is “Monsieur Francois,” and like every one of them it begins with the famous Bowie knife thunking into a wooden door. Then Jim comes to pluck it out while the theme song, by Ken Darby and The King’s Men plays. You remember the theme song if you’re my age: “Jim Bowie! Jim Bowie!/He was a fighter, a fearless and mighty adventurin’ man!/He roamed the wilderness unafraid/From Natchez to Rio Grande/With all the might of his gleaming blade/Flashing from either hand/Jim Bowie! Jim Bowie!/He was a mighty adventurin’ man!” The theme song is repeated at the end, and the soundtrack for the show is provided by The King’s Men, who hum annoyingly throughout.

But enough about that. Clearly I’ve digressed again. In “Monsieur Francois” the Bowie knife plays a big part. When Bowie (Scott Forbes) is in a fight with some wharf rats, all he has to do is pull the knife, and the rats run away. (A scene later borrowed for use in Crocodile Dundee?) And the show concludes with a “sword fight,” between Bowie, who uses the knife, and a guy with a rapier. It might have seemed exciting in the ‘50s, but it’s about the lamest sword fight I’ve ever seen. Pathetic, really. It ends with Bowie literally pulling the rug out from under the guy. The plot concerns a young boy who’s trying to find his relatives, and in one scene he’s in Bowie’s bed while Bowie is on the floor. Bowie complains, and finally the kid says, “You may share my bed.” Bowie hops in. I figure this scene could never occur in a current TV show, what with Michael Jackson and all. This episode might have played in heavy rotation at the Neverland Ranch.

The second episode on the disk is “Select Females,” and it’s better, mainly because it’s played strictly for laughs. It deals with a young woman who’s been kidnapped from a “school for select females,” and of course Bowie has to rescue her, with the help of an attractive teacher and the school’s headmistress. It’s corny and the comedy is very dated. But I still liked it. Or maybe that’s why I liked it. This episode is also notable because it marks the first screen appearance of Edd (billed as Edward) Byrnes, who of course went on to have a brief fling with stardom as Kookie on 77 Sunset Strip.

“Spanish Intrigue” is the final episode. Bowie gets mixed up with South American revolutionaries who are buying supplies for Simon Bolivar. It’s notable for its cast of WASPs trying to look and sound hispanic, and not much else. There’s another concluding Bowie knife vs. the rapier fight that’s not quite as lame as the other one.

I have to admit that I enjoyed all of these at least a little bit. They’re bad, but bad in a way that I can enjoy if I’m in the right mood.

A Trip Down Under

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Tales of the underworld

If you saw my post on the Sewergator site, you already know that I have an unhealthy fascination with sewers. The link above will take you to a fascinating (or not) article about a trip through one of London's sewers (no alligators, though). It's long but worth reading, if you're into sewers. (No jokes, please.)