Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Patricia Blair, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Patricia Blair, an actress who played resourceful women in 1960s television westerns like “Daniel Boone” and “The Rifleman,” died on Sept. 9 at her home in North Wildwood, N.J. She was 80.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Pimpage: An Occasional Feature in Which I call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: Corrosion eBook: Jon Bassoff: Kindle Store: A mysterious Iraq war veteran with a horribly scarred face…A disturbed young man in a strange mountain town…A masked preacher with a terrible secret…
Amidst a firestorm of violence, betrayal and horror, their three worlds will eventually collide in an old mining shack buried deep in the mountains. CORROSION, the shattering debut novel by Jon Bassoff, is equal parts Jim Thompson, Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner, and an unforgettable journey into the underbelly of crime and passion. Drawn from the darkest corners of the human experience, it is sure to haunt readers for years to come.
Pimpage: An Occasional Feature in Which I call Attention to Books of Interest
Amazon.com: Down the Hatch: One Man's One Year Odyssey Through Classic Cocktail Recipes and Lore eBook: Vince Keenan: Kindle Store The acclaimed essays featured in Slate and USAToday.com collected for the first time The product of a teetotaling home, Vince Keenan didn’t have his first serious drink until he was in his thirties. But when he fell, he fell hard. And started writing about it. The result is a love letter to libations and a celebration of the joys of a good barroom.
In bright and entertaining style, Keenan chronicles a year’s worth of cocktails. Each week brings a new beverage, prepared at home in a modestly stocked bar. He makes mistakes, finds concoctions he doesn’t care for, perfects his technique. Above all, he keeps experimenting.
While telling the story of how discovering cocktails broadened his world, Keenan also delves into the stories behind each drink, introducing a host of characters from bartenders past and present to a lazy lightweight boxer, a two-fisted screenwriter, and a suicidal Olympic swordsman.
Written with passion and curiosity, Down the Hatch is a book for the cocktail enthusiast and amateur alike.
With over 50 recipes
Pimpage: An Occasional Feature in Which I call Attention to Books of Interest
Only 99 cents! You can't go wrong!
Amazon.com: The Shamus Sampler eBook: Sean Dexter, Reed Farrel Coleman, Keith Dixon, J.L. Abramo, Bill Crider, Jochem Vandersteen: Kindle Store: An anthology full of exciting PI fiction and an essay written by popular names like Reed Farrel Coleman, Bill Crider, James Winter, Fred Zackel, J.L. Abramo, Keith Dixon, Jochem Vandersteen, Sean Dexter and some newer names like Kit Rohrbacher, Peter DiChellis and others.
This is the perfect anthology to pick up if you want to get introduced to all the great PI writers out there, all recommended by Sons of Spade (http://sonsofspade.blogspot.com) blogger and author Jochem Vandersteen.
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Ghost Gone Wild (A Bailey Ruth Ghost Novel): Carolyn Hart: 9780425260753: Amazon.com: Books: Carolyn Hart’s “irresistible cozy sleuth”* is back—good-hearted ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn just can’t say no to an earthly rescue, even when maybe she should…
Free for Kindle for One Day Only
Overlooked Films: The Zombies of Mora Tau
The plot is simple. There's a sunken ship with treasure aboard. A group tries to salvage it, and they discover that the ship is cursed and that a zombie crew guards the treasure. Undersea zombies? Wasn't that in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie? Maybe it was a tip of the hat to this one.
You should watch the trailer if you haven't already seen it. That way you'll get an idea of the quality of the whole thing. Some of the actors did a lot of B-movies and TV, but their names are pretty much unknown now. Ray "Crash" Corrigan is in it, way down on the cast list. If this one wasn't on MSTK, it should've been, but I still have a soft spot for it.
Aside: Nostalgia is a terrible thing. Let me tell you one of the things I remember most clearly about going to these movies. It's the sound of plastic earpieces clicking as every girl in the theater who wore glasses took them off and put them away at the end of the movie before the house lights went up.
Monday, September 30, 2013
James Street, R. I. P.
QB James Street, who was national champ at Texas, dies: Former Texas quarterback James Street, who took over the Longhorns' wishbone offense and led them to the 1969 national championship, has died. He was 65.
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PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
The Chocolate Book Bandit: A Chocoholic Mystery: JoAnna Carl: 9780451239549: Amazon.com: Books: When it turns out a member of Warner Pier’s library board has been living on borrowed time, Lee is determined to discover who wrote the victim’s final chapter…
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
Marching Band's Halftime Show Results In Six-Sousaphone Pileup
Hat tip to Art Scott and Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Art Scott and Jeff Meyerson.
50 Flop Movies that Deserved Better
Okay, so it's an annoying slideshow. However, some of my favorites are on here, and since I think they deserve better, I'm linking to it. Anytime somebody has something good to say about Cutthroat Island and Joe vs. the Volcano, (not to mention about a dozen others) I'm willing to listen.
Writing Competitions
Writing Competitions: First Crime Novel Competition **The 2014 competition is now open!**
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
If you like YA novels, give it a try. Hey, it's free.
Amazon.com: The Girl Who Has Everything eBook: Jennifer J. Stewart: Kindle Store: Phoebe Marchant isn’t your average poor little orphan. In fact, as heiress to her father’s fortune, she may be the richest twelve-year-old in America.
But life isn’t always easy for Phoebe. Along with Poppy’s fortune, she’s inherited a big problem, Vicki-with-two-i’s, the last and luckiest in her long string of stepmothers.
Luckily, Phoebe’s a professional when it comes to getting rid of unwanted stepmothers. She’s also used to getting her own way. But Vicki comes equipped with her own set of tricks and has a different idea about what it means to be “The Girl Who Has Everything.” Do this wicked stepmother and her conniving orphan charge have more to learn from each other than they realize?
Vintage Pop up Books -- Great Videos
Vintage Pop up Books - Children's Bookstore: Vintage Pop up Books
Welcome to our video library of vintage pop up books. This library contains pop up and moveable books from the second-half of the 19th century to the late 20th century. We have these beautiful titles in our collection at the store and decided that they don’t do the world a lot of good stored in a safe. So, we pulled them out and carefully filmed each one. Each book has been carefully documented in both its description and its video. Each video includes embed links so that you may select those videos of highest interest and embed it directly on another web page. We encourage you to embed these videos and share these beautiful works of art with the world.
Tarzan's fight with the giant croc is highly recommended!
New Poem at The 5-2
The 5-2 | Crime Poetry Weekly, Annual Ebooks - Gerald So, Editor: Nancy Scott
AT HOME IN ABBOTTABAD, PAKISTAN
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Impossible Monsters -- Kasey Lansdale, Editor
Neal Barrett, Jr., is as hilarious and inventive as ever with "Bloaters," which is sort of vampires in reverse. David Schow's "Blue Amber" begins with a human skin hanging on a fence. The Border Patrol has never before dealt with aliens like the ones in this story. Neil Gaiman's "Click-Clack the Rattlebag" is a short and expert chiller. Joe Lansdale's "The Case of the Angry Traveler" is in the classical adventurer's tale vein, with the kind of underground scenes I can't resist. Selena Rosen's "Nathan" is as blood-spattered a tale as anybody could ask for. There are a lot more stories here, by Big Names, that I haven't gotten to yet, but you can bet I will. This is a fine anthology, and a great start for another Lansdale's literary journey. Check it out.
Charlie Stella Interview
Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room: Jessy asks Charlie Stella rude and inappropriate questions
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Philip Roth Update
Expatica France: France has awarded the US writer Philip Roth its highest decoration, the Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), with the country's foreign minister bestowing the award in New York.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Alvin, Texas, Not Included
Social Experiment Reveals The World's Most Honest Cities
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Annoying slideshow alert.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Annoying slideshow alert.
Whac-A-Mole Update
The Guy Who Invented the Whac-A-Mole Accidentally Blew Up A Florida Warehouse: No humans were hurt in the explosion, but robotic limbs smoldered among the wreckage. . . . "It was weird," Tim Roth, an office workers who rushed into the building, tells the Orlando Sentinel, which described the interior as the "Joker's Lair."
Hat tip to Art Scott.
Hat tip to Art Scott.
Another Day, Another Jack the Ripper Update
Mail Online: Has this locket finally unmasked Jack the Ripper? Descendant of fifth victim claims tiny photo proves serial killer was Queen Victoria's surgeon
Forgotten Books: Master of Life and Death -- Robert Silverberg
Sorry, folks, no Patricia Highsmith here today. One reason is that I just can't leave a book in the store. The other day I was in a thrift shop and saw the Avon reprint of Robert Silverberg's Master of Life and Death, which I read first as half of an Ace Double 'way back in the '50s. I probably thought it was pretty cool then. Now, it seems I've changed, and the book is a bit worrisome.
Roy Walton is the title character, since within a few pages of the novel's opening he's become the head of Population Equalization (or Popeek) and is charged with being sure that Earth's population is equally distributed, a process that involved euthanizing children who might be disease carriers or otherwise bad for the gene pool and distributing people from heavily populated areas to places where there's more room. He seems to have unlimited power to execute people (give them the Happy Sleep) or imprison them, and eventually he adopts the motto that "the end justifies the means," something he repeats a number of times. The means include some pretty rough things. Let's just say that being his brother doesn't exclude you from punishment if you stand in his way.
Things happen fast in this short novel: bang, bang, bang. Some of the plot threads seem to go nowhere, but most of them are resolved in the end, at least a couple of them by space aliens ex machina. Walton is ruthless, but then he claims that he has to be. After all, the end justifies the means.
Here's something interesting. The world of the novel is hugely overpopulated, so much so that things are falling apart and that Popeek is the only salvation. Silverberg uses a specific figure: Seven billion. Just out of curiosity, I looked at the current world population figure. You can see it here. Notice the figure? We're well past the seven billion and climbing.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Paris Hilton Update
He Said/She Said: Nick Carter Vs. Paris Hilton: After the Backstreet Boy called the heiress “the worst person in the world for me to hook up with” due to his struggles with drugs and alcohol, Paris has now responded.
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