Take Another Road to Another Time

JOHN CARTER (of Mars!) for book lovers

2012-01-28T13:10:00.000-05:00

Been busy the last month -- too busy to really blog. My agent, the estimable Andrew Zack, asked me to do some formatting of my manuscript in order to send it to editors; did that, did some other things, had a sleep study performed (apnea woke me up, on average, 59 times an hour! No wonder I wake up in the morning feeling completely worn out!) and did the daily work thing.

The result: just like I have to make time to read, I now have to make time to blog. Just how and when, I'll let you know. For now, it's right now; and right now, let's talk about a subject near and dear to my ink-stained, bibiloholic heart: the Red Planet.

I love the rings of Saturn.

I am astounded by the Red Spot of Jupiter, and especially by the gas planet's two moons, Europa and Io, where volcanic activity far beneath their frozen surfaces give rise to the possibility of alien life.

But it is Mars, the Angry Red Planet, the World of War, that has not only captured my imagination since I was thirteen, but has held the imagination of countless others in thrall, especially since the canali of Mars were "discovered" by Schiaparelli in 1892 and expounded upon later by Percival Lowell.

When I was thirteen, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, Captain John Carter of Virginia, Dejah Thoris, an incomparable princess of Barsoom, and Woola, carter's faithful Martian dog -- and my life has never been the same.

Burroughs wrote his last Martian story in the mid-1940s. Since then, not a single original story has been published in book form continuing the adventures of John Carter, Warlord of Mars. (I'm not counting stories published in comic books or as fan fiction.)

Until now.

I've been waiting just about 37 years for new stories about Burroughs' Mars to be published, and this new anthology is being released to coincide with the release of John Carter, Disney's hugely budgeted and long-awaited version of Burroughs' first novel, A Princess of Mars.

Under the Moons of Mars takes its title from the original appearance of the first John Carter tale, in All-Story Magazine, February, 1912. This "scientific romance" featured a Civil War veteran transported to Mars, giant, green, four-armed, tusked warriors, and a human race who walked around naked, except for swords and leather harnesses. Weird stuff in 1912 -- and it was that reason why Burroughs used a pen name, Normal Bean, to indicate that the writer was, indeed, normal.

He needn't have bothered. The story was immensely popular, and with his second and third novels, The Outlaw of Torn and Tarzan of the Apes, the Burroughs name became the gold standard for adventure. The novel was published in hardcover five years later, with its subsequent and classic title, A Princess of Mars.

This anthology is like any other anthology: a grab bag of stories of wide and varying quality. Editor John Joseph Adams has brought together some good and popular writers, but they don't necessarily provide the best stories. Peter Beagle is a great fantasist, but his version of John Carter comes across as an angry and violent apologist for the Confederacy, and his Dejah Thoris flirts with Tarzan after the jungle lord has been transported to Mars. It doesn't ring true at all. Joe Lansdale's story is firmly true to the Barsoom oeuvre, but, as such, is a good introduction to Barsoom, but not very original at all.

There are three A stories here. The first is a surprise, the second tale in the book, by David Barr Kirtly. It features a green warrior and a young woman from Earth, and how they cope with a new existence on Mars. I'd really like to read more about both, especially about Suzanne Meyers from a place called New York.

The final story, "The Death Song of Dwar Guntha," by Jonathan Maberry, is also an A story -- a melancholy tale of a Barsoomian Light Brigade. Usually, the last story in an anthology is the best story; but not this time. Its placement here is absolutely appropriate, as it serves as a thoughtful, lingering conclusion to the book that leaves the reader wanting more.

(Honorable Mention goes to "Woola's Song," which looks at the adventures of John Carter and Dejah Thoris through the eyes of Woola, his loyal calot. Woola has always been my favorite dog in fiction -- Krypto is a close second -- and here he finally gets his due.)

The best and most original story is by seminal comic book writer Chris Claremont. "The Ghost that Haunts the Superstition Mountains" takes our Barsoomian champions and places them in an adventure on earth, during the days of Cochise and the southwestern Apache wars. Claremont gives us Chapter 11 of this story, which is self-contained, placing us firmly in the grip of pulp convention: get the story started right in the middle of the action. I wish that he would write the remainder of the novel -- Barsoomian tales, I think, are best at novel-length -- and this single story could absolutely lend itself to a lengthy ten chapters before and ten more behind.

Claremont, with a change of setting and a realistic writing style -- plus an obvious reverence for the characters -- knows how to pace and knows how to tell an adventure story. The characters are written pitch perfectly, and the star of the story, green Thark Tars Tarkas, shines as he's placed in the alien environment of the American West. "Ghost" is simply invigorating -- a new beginning for Barsoomian tales in the 21st century -- and I want more. A lot more.

This book comes out in February, just in time for John Carter to hit the movie screens. Read it for a quick Martian fix at Amazon. And here's the movie trailer.

Last-Minute Christmas Presents for Book Lovers

2011-12-20T10:05:00.001-05:00

For fans of Arthurian literature:

Le Morte D'Arthur, Thomas Malory's epic prose poem, is the primary source for almost every Arthurian tale written since the 16th century.

It's the same case here, with The Death of King Arthur, a new retelling in modern English and dramatically restructured, by novelist Peter Ackroyd. Ackroyd is a hell of a writer and historian, and he's taken the best parts of Malory's dense prose and smoothed it into a story that both reflects the essence of Malory's 15th century prose and updates it for our contemporary, attention deficit disorder audience. In other words, Ackroyd has done well.

T. H. White's classic retelling of the legend of Arthur is once again in print. The Once and Future King was the basis of Disney's 1964 The Sword in the Stone, and White's adaptation of Malory remains, perhaps, the best, and certainly the most dramatic. Arthur -- Wart -- and the major figures of Arthurian legend have never been fleshed out more charmingly, and it deserves its place high among the chronicles of the King.

THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING

For fans of Sherlock Holmes:

A new and innovative anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories has been needed for years. But this isn't a traditional anthology continuing their adventures -- many of these stories don't even have Holmes as Watson as characters. Instead they use Doyle's oeuvre -- the very concept of Holmes and his literary legacy -- as the primary idea. The authors here range from mystery writers, thriller writers, fantasists -- all sharing their unique perspectives on the Master Detective. There's even a story told in graphic form. With stories by Neil Gaiman, Lee Child and Jacqueline Winspear, you can't go wrong -- and each tale looks at Holmes from a point of view you've probably never thought of. The tale's afoot!

A STUDY IN SHERLOCK

For fans of Chris Van Allsburg:

When The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was published in 1984, author/artist Chris Van Allsburg probably had no idea that his slim little children's book would be so inspirational. The Chronicles of Harris Burdick takes the mysterious art from the first volume, and allows writers to explore exactly what happened in each beautiful black and white sketch. There are no bad stories here, but my favorite -- and perhaps the best of the bunch -- is the final story, by Stephen King. For me, the art and their enigmatic captions will remain, and I can still write my own stories for each drawing. Highly recommended.

THE CHRONICLES OF HARRIS BURDICK

For Horror fans:

I think I'm giving up on horror from now on. Not that Those Across the River or The Night Strangers are bad -- they aren't at all -- but I am a fan of a type of horror story that just doesn't get written any more, except by King and a few others. I like horror. I like scares. I like ghost stories and roller coasters and Hammer horror. I like King's 3 Rules: Blood must be spilled; The innocent must suffer; and Evil shall be punished. But these two new novels are way too . . . I guess unsettling is the word.

These are way too nihlistic for me.

Those Across the River takes a while to build, but when it does, the astute reader will realize it's a new and savage take on an old horror trope.

The Night Strangers also takes a standard trope of supernatural horror and twists it in a way where nature becomes supernature.

Both novels are well-written, almost literary. Both are filled with auras of unease and ancient terrors -- and while I certainly recommend them for horror fans today, these two books are not for me. They're for the generation raised on gore and splatter, who laugh at ghosts and goblins instead of hiding under the covers with a flashlight. This is horror for the iPod generation.

THOSE ACROSS THE RIVER

THE NIGHT STRANGERS

For fans of space opera and hard sf:

McDevitt is still the best at what he does -- serious space opera that evokes the wonder of the stars.

Firebird is the latest in the Alex Benedict series, where Alex, an antiquities dealer 11,000 years in the future, and his Watson, Chase Kolpath, solve outer space mysteries and seek galactic artifacts. Like most Benedict novels, this one starts out with a MacGuffin -- which is never solved. But it serves the reader in that this intro propels us into the story, starting with the past disappearance of a starship and how it relates to the disappearance of Christopher Robin forty years before the events of this novel.

Firebird is superior to McDevitt's 2010 Benedict novel, and I anxiously await the next installment in 2012.

FIREBIRD

For Dexter fans:

I don't get Showtime, so I've never seen an episode of Dexter; but the show began with the Dexter books by Jeff Lindsay, about a serial killer who hunts serial killers.

Dexter's world is in Miami, a very real and suburban Miami, yet is filled with unseen evil and weirdness living on the fringes. There are hints of supernatural forces in the books, especially in the second book; but in the new novel, Double Dexter, reality is in the forefront when Dexter is seen making one of his kills . . . and it turns out the witness is a fledgling serial killer who wants Dexter to pay for his crimes. The books are different than the show, so the author says, but the basics are the same, which is why I believe tv viewers like the show so much: They're graphic, darkly funny and highly recommended.

DOUBLE DEXTER

For fans of Hugo:

If you enjoyed The Invention of Hugo Cabret -- or Martin Scorsese's film adaptation, Hugo -- you'll probably like Brian Selznick's newest illustrated novel, Wonderstruck. It's just as heavily illustrated and as evocative as Selznick's Hugo, this time telling the story of a deaf girl who falls in love with museums and Cabinets of Wonder. Hugo has a little more action and more of a solid story, but Wonderstruck is embued with a sense of awe and fairy tale wonder that Hugo lacks. Both books are absolutely magnificent, and are Highly Recommended.

WONDERSTRUCK

For fans of Steven Spielberg:

I think I have all the books written so far on the making of Spielberg's Jaws back in 1974, but this one is wonderfully unique. It's a coffee table book, filled with photos taken by the residents of Martha's Vineyard, that captures the intense few months of filming that basically involved the entire island. There are so many photos here that I've never seen before -- it blew me away. This book is a must have for film fans and Spielberg junkies.

JAWS: MEMORIES FROM MARTHA'S VINEYARD

For fans of Stephen King:

I saved the best for last.

11/22/63 is Stephen King's finest novel in fifteen years. It's a time travel novel where everything goes right and everything goes wrong, and it's a story only Stephen King could tell.

I'll say no more and just let King's writing do its job. Forget Christmas presents -- go out now and get this book for yourself.

11/22/63

My Bud, Shecky

2011-11-29T17:01:00.002-05:00

Meet my bud, Mike Speller. I call him Shecky.

We've been friends now for twenty years -- You believe that, Mikey? -- since the days I was a regular at the Adventurers Club in Orlando, and Mike was one of their first and best actors; and although we're separated by miles, I know we're connected through our foul, telltale hearts.

Mike is a professional actor, having performed in tv's Welcome Freshman and in such films as Passenger 57 and my personal favorite, The Night Becomes Charlie. Became Charlie? Can't remember. His role in that fine film was "Man in Road." Oscar-worthy work. Check it out on Netflix.

Today Mike is a professional storyteller, wandering around the semi-frigid climes of Chicago and the midwest like a zombieified Jack London. You can go to his site here and see all about him, or even book him for a performance. But this post is all about Mike's newest venture: blogging.

If you'd like insight into acting, comedy, storytelling, or if you'd just like to get to know an all-around nice guy who's also one of the most intelligent guys I've ever met, he's posting here on Blogspot. He's way too modest, but throw him a cookie, and maybe he'll tell you about the time he, Darin DePaul and I helped an adventurer save Christmas.

Santa still owes us.

More on the Slow, Impending and Eventual Doom of Newspapers

2011-11-10T17:29:00.022-05:00

As lascivious, corporate greed and the fall of the American economy both continue unabated, the bowties in their towers built upon strata formed by ink, hot type and pulp look down upon their megacorpconglomeranational empires and, merely, wait. They abide. For they know, no matter what happens to the newspaper industry today, tomorrow, or by 2017, the year when the last major American newspapers are predicted to have died, that there is absolutely nothing they can do. At all.

They also know their executive bonuses and perks are safe, no matter what happens.

They'll never admit this. Ever. Right now, even though newspapers are closing and layoffs are massive, print newspapers bring in more revenue than their online counterparts. And it's predicted -- accurately, I believe -- that their online counterparts will NEVER bring in an equal amount of revenue.

The bowties will never admit any of this because it will devalue their stock even more than their stock is devalued now.

It is, after all, not about news, not about journalism, not about loyal employees, and not about what the community needs.

It's all about money.

The question remains: How can they stay in business?

The bowties already know the answer to this one. Hell, it's as simple as an answer can get:

They can't.

Warren Buffett summed it up for them.

"Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

I've written about Jeff Jarvis before, and I think he's usually on point about his predictions and trendspotting for the newspaper business. He's written a piece you should read, that gets to the heart of the issue: deliberately shutting the newspapers, firing thousands, and moving on . . . but to what?

"To take advantage of bankruptcy, a company has to have courage and bold visions of the future. Do newspaper companies? So far, we haven’t seen evidence of it."

His facts jibe with Papercuts, a site that's keeping track of the layoffs at newspapers across the country.

The countdown has begun. 2017 is right around the corner.

The bowties better get used to wearing sweat-stained t-shirts and dealing crystal meth out of their doublewides.

2011-11-09T17:31:00.021-05:00

Here's a brilliant but BRIEF RANT by Bret Victor, a guy who knows his way around graphic user interfaces. His thesis is that our current wave of handheld devices, as exemplified by ereaders, smartphones and tablet computers, is merely a sidestep in a technological evolution that actually leaves out a valuable part of human experience.

It's justification, as far as I'm concerned, that what I've said for a few years now will become the future -- the future of books. Victor doesn't come right out and say it, but the point of his essay is, ultimately, the reason that books will never be replaced, no matter how many varieties of ereaders eventually tsunami the market.

Books, simply, work.

Two Tomes from the Tomb of Terror!

2011-10-29T23:08:00.001-04:00

For my fellow Halloween lovers, here's a look at two new editions of two classic tales of terror and the supernatural.

Dracula, the scion of every vampire story since its publication in 1897, is reprinted here by Intervisual Books. There's no need for me to review Bram Stoker's novel itself: it is the standard to meet and beat. It is the single best vampire novel ever written, even now, after 114 years of its unparallelled influence on popular culture.

So let's review this particular edition of Dracula.

As far as I'm concerned, each new edition of a classic should try to do something new, different and innovative. Maybe one edition has a brand new introduction by a Dracula scholar, a vampirologist, or a writer of horror. Maybe another has great interior illustrations or extremely cool cover art. Since the book was written generations ago, maybe another edition could be heavily annotated to bring today's reader up to speed with the world of the Victorian era and fin de sicle London.

On the surface, this edition by Intervisual is beautiful. From the small photo of the cover above, you can tell it's kind of cool, kind of sinister, maybe even a bit modern. The hardcover binding is a black leatherette, which is always classy; and they've provided each copy with an embedded ribbon marker of scarlet satin. Not bad.

Unfortunately, beyond the superficial beauty, this edition doesn't really offer anything original at all. It's completely derivative of other editions -- and even of other, tangentially related sources.

The cover typeface, for instance, has been used in countless vampire books since the 1980s. The introduction is basically a one-page biographical sketch of Bram Stoker, offering no insight into the man, or, especially, into his best work.

The cover art, at first glance, is certainly evocative. At a distance, it looks appropriately sinister -- it's all shadows and swirls of smoke or blood.

Take a closer look. Is Dracula bald, or is he wearing something cowl-like on the top half of his head? Is that a cloak of darkness, or a very familiar black cape? And the clasp holding the cape together . . .

Take a step back and look. The artist didn't create a portrait of the lord of vampires. He stole the comic book image of Batman, cut off the pointed ears, and put in a fang. (And just one fang, at that.) And the clasp? It's Batman's insignia, in the same spot the shield is on his superheroic chest.

I don't believe the combination of Batman and Dracula is a coincidence -- Dracula is the original bat-man and anti-hero; and Batman is the anti-Dracula.

It's interesting, but this edition is for kids and teens, as far as I'm concerned. Dracula fans should buy it only to complete their collection. If you want the best and most illuminating versions of Dracula:

* * *

Let us talk now of serious fear. A story that has made grown men tremble long after the covers were shut, long after the credits flickered off the screen.

The Exorcist is a story sui generis. It stands alone, and deservedly so.

William Peter Blatty had a hell of an idea: to take a newspaper article about a boy's "possession" in 1949 and rewrite it as a story taking place at the cusp of the 1970s.
(Does that sound familiar at all? A few years later after The Exorcist, Stephen King would take Dracula and rewrite it, placing the setting in 1970s Maine, as 'Salem's Lot.)

As a novel, The Exorcist is not particularly literary, not exceptionally well-written, and many of the characterizations are quite thin.

What it is is a good story, told for impact in both literary, non-literary and dramatic fashion. There are grammatical errors, made deliberately, in order to have impact with the audience.

I say all this because of a writing instructor I had at Old Dominion University. Tony Ardizzone is a fine writer and a fine instructor of writing and English. I learned a hell of a lot in the writing workshops I took with him, and he was primarily responsible for my understanding and 100% acceptance of non-rebuttal criticism. I might explain that in a later post, but what I mean is, I accepted the classes' criticisms without argument, no matter what they said. It's a hell of a way to figure out that, yes, your shit certainly can stink.

At some point while Tony Ardizzone was in college or grad school, they dissected The Exorcist in one of his writing classes, and skewered it. I can understand this on one level: it was a non-literary bestseller, and bad writing deserved to be excoriated.

The other level, and the one I agree with: The Exorcist was a story, well-told, but not told in a literary fashion. It was written as a story, structured to have impact on the reader, and even the language and the grammar (or the lack thereof) was constructed for maximum impact. It was not meant as "literature." It was a story told the way it needed to be told.

Wow. That's a hell of an idea. Break the rules to actually have an impact. Follow the rules? Less impact, but official acceptance.

Tony's literary-based college environment could not accept The Exorcist, and so crucified it.

Sorry, but a story is a story is a story. The Exorcist is pure story, and it's powerful. 1973's film version rightly distilled the finest elements of the novel into their purest, most visual forms. The movie remains one of the very few films that are better than the novel upon which it was based.

This edition offers a polishing by the author, William Peter Blatty, and an original scene with a new character. It doesn't add much, but it certainly is a nice touch, and I recommend you buy this and enjoy it immediately. Then watch the movie again -- the enhanced version with the spider-crawling scene added in.

The sow is mine.

Love it.

Book.
Movie.

Occupy Richmond Needs to Look at the Local Media Giants

2011-10-24T17:30:00.002-04:00

A too-true and fascinating article came out today over at the New York Times, and I urge you to read it because it explains in detail -- mostly via a glimpse into the inner workings of the Gannett Company -- how the CEOs and principals of our media interconglomeranationalcorporations are screwing their own companies, their loyal employees, and the overall state of journalism in order to rake in obscene bonuses and payouts, no matter who else is hurt.

The article may be about Gannett and Tribune, but it's also about ALL the media companies -- and even about our local, most notable Media Giant. This piece from June 2011 is just the tip of the Richmond iceberg. And this article, from just five days ago, shows how truly committed the bowties are to cutting costs -- at the expense and damnation of everyone and everything else.

Finally, some Wall Street dude, in "This Pig Might Fly," suggests buying stock in Richmond's Total Disgrace because the parent company is at such an incredible, all-time low. I'm sure this paragraph must have had the bowties shitting in their executive wide-ass Pampers:

Horrific management and governance: MEG's management team is awful. CEO Marshall Morton has led MEG's overpaying acquisition spree in digital media, acquiring Blackdot and DealTaker in recent years. DealTaker recently suffered a big set back in February 2011 when Google altered its search algorithm. Since then, MEG is blowing money on consultants to help fix this issue but as of Q2 2011 has nothing to show for it except continuing declining sales and negative cash flow for this segment.

And people wonder why newspapers are failing. Hmm.

Take a Good Look at the Last Trek

2011-10-21T18:49:00.000-04:00

I've had it.

Seriously. I have to draw the line somewhere, and this is it.

One of my guilty pleasures, along with cheesy '70s horror movies and comic book superheroes, has been Star Trek. All things Star Trek.

I attended the 2nd ever Star Trek convention in NYC in 1974.

I saved all my magazines and comics and posters.

I read and collected all the books, from the first tv show adaptation --

-- to the first original Trek novel --

-- to the first original Trek novel (1981) after Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1978 --

-- to the 1979 limited edition of the movie's novelization, signed and numbered by Gene Roddenberry (although the real writer was Alan Dean Foster, uncredited).

In all that time, decades of Trekking, never ONCE have I loved a Star Trek novel. Never once have I sat back and said, "Damn, that was a good book."

But I have, on occasion, kicked a Star Trek novel across the room because it was so bad. And I have, in the past, told myself that I will never buy a Trek novel again because they are never any good. They're not even fun any more. The worst are tedious and dull. The best are...tedious and dull, because there is no best.

But, because I'm innately optimistic, because I'm a born reader, and because I am a Trek guy in my soul, I have held out a hope, a glimmer of optimism, that a good novel would come along and surprise me.

I hereby, officially, pronounce that that sense of hope is dead, killed by phaser fire while wearing a classic red shirt.

A paperback just came out that gave me hope -- a story about the early years, classic Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I read the first paragrahs and skimmed the first chapter...and I gave it a chance.

It toyed with me. And now I hate it. It tasks me, and vengeance will be mine.

I recommend A Choice of Catastrophes in order for anyone even remotely interested in either science fiction or Star Trek to read, read the whole thing, devour the brain-dead son of a bitch, and learn -- learn exactly how good science fiction and good Star Trek stories can be absolutely ruined by dull writing and by padding -- that is, stretching a story out interminably with the literary equivalent of bullshit.

I gave it a shot. I read the whole damn, misbegotten thing.

And it has moved me.

This, I swear: I WILL NEVER BUY A STAR TREK NOVEL EVER AGAIN.

Now, of course, if Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Jack McDevitt or any single good writer were to write a Trek novel -- if you could reanimate the corpses of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald and Asimov and Burroughs and Heinlein and get their zombified husks behind a keyboard --

I WOULD NOT BUY IT. Now, I might borrow it, get it from a library, or even steal the thing from Barnes & Noble after I rip the magnetic strip out, and then ask it to do it's magic on me; and if any of those writers were to write a Trek story, I can guarantee you it would fill your mind with the wonders and magic of a night sky in the spring, no moonlight, just a velvet drape of darkness filled with tiny pinpoints of light, around which circle an infinite number of worlds where people like us could be looking at our own little star, dreaming...

Pocket Books, do you understand?

You have screwed a Trek lover, a Trek loyalist, for the last time. You have given us dreck, you have given us formula, you have given us endless exposition and mind-numbing, repetitive space opera that has no worth, no merit.

My phaser is on kill, and I'm aiming for the Trek shelves.

Star Trek novels must die!

The Official Dick Van Dyke Book

2011-10-14T18:17:00.000-04:00

It is certainly appropriate that TV Land held a marathon of The Dick Van Dyke Show all last week -- October 3 was the 50th anniversary of the series premiere on CBS. It's also appropriate that the show is now on at a regular time: 7:00 pm each weeknight. It is also certainly appropriate -- and much deserved -- that a new and revised edition of The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book has been released in time to celebrate the show's golden anniversary.

This is a big anniversary -- seriously, in the short history of television and entertainment, this one show has influenced more people than I can imagine -- including myself -- and I suggest that you visit the blog of Mark Evanier, an L.A. writer, who not only loves The Dick Van Dyke Show, but understands how important it has been in the scheme of things. His blog is here, and his recent Van Dyke-related sites are here and here.

This book is is the best and most comprehensive book that I wish every good tv show could have. Twin Peaks deserves this treatment. Hill Street Blues, M*A*S*H, Twilight Zone, The Avengers, Dark Shadows -- the best and the most-loved all deserve books as thorough and as sheer fun as this. Author Vince Waldron has surpassed this book's previous incarnations, including in its contents the words to the show's theme song (written by Morey Amsterdam), a bittersweet account of the show's emotional final days, a comprehensive episode guide, and even a few paragraphs about the 2004 reunion show.

In short, this is the perfect book for the tv comedy geek in us all. Get it here -- but not at Barnes & Noble . . . and I'll tell why in a later post.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu

2011-09-29T07:32:00.021-04:00

I made it to the land of the Maya a few years back and checked off one my bucket list items: experiencing Chichen Itza.

The site is magnificent; the architecture is awe-inspiring; the history is bloodthirsty and regal and primitive and mythic.

Part of the appeal is the romance of ruins (to borrow a title), and the enigmas inherent in abandoned temples, sacrificial ceynotes, and broken glyphs carved into moss-covered stelae.

There may perhaps be no more inaccessible ruins than those of Machu Picchu, an abandoned Incan citadel situated high in the Andes, hidden amidst the clouds. I think it's next on my bucket list -- but you actually have to do a little adventuring to get there, and my kind of adventuring is really more like reading about adventuring while sitting by the hotel pool, as multiple gin and tonics are brought to me by tanned, bikinied waitresses.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu is a hell of an adventure book, the narrative of Mark Adams and his quest to follow the trail blazed by Hiram Bingham in 1911, when he "discovered" Machu Picchu and brought knowledge of its existence back to Western Civ.

Hiram Bingham in 1931, then a senator, posing on the wing of an honest-to-God autogyro -- the preferred mode of travel by pulp heroes and cloaked avengers. No idea who knickers dude is.

This story is told pretty much in alternating chapters of how Bingham found not only Machu Picchu, but three other important Incan sites, and how Adams, almost a century later, braved the Peruvian jungles for insight into the true meaning of the city in the clouds. Plus, it's a travelogue with a sense of humor. Adams doesn't hesitate to show just how much a city boy he was, trudging through the tropical jungles with coca-chewing natives, wild llamas and experiencing living in a tent for the first time. It's his wry humor and his self-deprecating fish-out-of-water story that give personality and charm to what could have been a dull travel book.

I know for sure now that I want to go to Peru and walk the Inca Trail in the shadow of Bingham. Until then, I'll have to settle for Mexican restaurants and ice-cold Tecates.

It could be worse. And I hope there's a Machu Picchu Hilton. With a pool.

Go here for general info on Machu Picchu. Go here for the book. Have a great trip!

Some Completely Unrelated Reviews of Good Books . . . and Some Bad

2011-09-12T19:58:00.000-04:00

Right. Let's save the best two for last.

First, a good one: The Rude Pundit's Almanack is a hell of a collection of essays and blog posts by Lee Papa, who blogs under the sobriquet of the Rude Pundit (whom I have written about before). And he is refreshingly rude. He accurately calls out the liars and the hacks on the right wing who are fucking up this country for their own political gain. He doesn't hold back.

I love it.

About Bobby Jindal, gov. of Louisiana, who once thought about running for President:

He'll lose when everyone realizes that Stephen Hawking has a stronger spine.

On Dick Cheney:

In 1990, when he was George Bush the Smarter's secretary of defense, Cheney was an advocate for the policy of arming the "rebels" in Afghanistan. Also financing and arming the mujahideen was a Saudi from a wealthy family, Osama bin Laden, who got fighters from mosques around the globe. So Dick Cheney and bin Laden once, more or less, worked together. After the war with Afghanistan helped destroy the Soviet Union, various mujahideen groups became the Taliban and Al Queda.

In other words, Dick Cheney's actions led directly to 9/11.

The fact that Cheney is a free man, decaying from his dessicated heart to his gout-ridden legs in his huge houses paid for by oil profits, speaks of just how feckless and corrupted our body politic has become.

And about Glenn Beck's ghost-written holiday story:

I would rather have my balls waxed by a beautician with hooks for hands than have to sit through Glenn Beck's performance of The Christmas Sweater again.

Yeah, that's good shit.

The Rude Pundit's blog is here. Follow the links to buy the book.

* * *

Here's a weak one: Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory. Loory is a hip, current writer, which means he's glorified by the literati in NY and LA and small presses that publish writers no one has ever heard of. Reviewers on Amazon even compare him to Ray Bradbury.

No. Wrong. Bradbury has always known how to tell a solid story.

Solidity is definitely missing here.

This collection contains some good ideas -- and Loory can certainly write, I'll give him that -- but every single story reads like flash fiction, like they were written on the spur of the moment, with the germ of an idea, but then they eventually lead to nothing of importance, usually providing resolutions that are unsatisfying, to say the best. The title is derivative of the classic television anthology series, the Twilight Zone, and its "middle ground between light and shadow."

This collection is the Twilight Zone for the ADHD generation. Short attention span fiction. Light, shadow, and nothing of substance. You have been warned.

* * *

This one had so much promise . . . so why was I so bored?

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a quirky little novel, published by the quite respectable publisher of absolutely gorgeous books, Quirk Books. The book design is beautiful and impeccable. The photographs, strange and wonderful, used throughout the novel, are well-integrated into the text.

I love books that combine text and art, and I keep waiting for one that will absolutely enthrall me. This one gave me hopes -- the story of a boy looking for the truth of his grandfather's past on a Welsh island. Combine a coming-of-age quest with good graphic design, and I'll give you a shot.

Unfortunately, the novel itself left me cold, and I had really wanted it to kick my ass. I go into novels -- every damn novel -- with the expectation of, "Okay, here I am. Do me."

The story here, however bordered with the sparkly trappings of magic, oddity and wonder, is told in the universally-weak language of telling, not showing. The opposite is a mark of excellent storytelling -- a good writer shows or evokes, not merely tells.

This is a long story that needs so much development. Instead, it's told in shorthand, perhaps for a juvenile or non-discriminatory audience. I can't recommend Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for any reader looking for the next novel filled with Harry Potter-like wonder and magic. And that's a shame, because I really thought it had a shot.

* * *

This one is for men who like to read. Ladies, you can read and enjoy this, too -- but I'm talking to the boys out there, especially the ones who read before they go to sleep.

The Gentleman's Bedside Companion is a compendium of facts, information and trivia written in fifteen-minute snatches -- just enough for a guy to read in bed while he's waiting to fall asleep. From quoting the Batman TV series of the '60s to the story of heroin, from a glimpse at great war movies to the Best Ever Book Titles (such as The Day Amanda Came and Invisible Dick).

There's so much here, and it's all fun. Enjoy -- and get a good night's sleep.

* * *

These last two will keep you up reading way past the point of no return. Finish the books, call in to work, and sleep the rest of the day.

The Magician King is Lev Grossman's sequel to The Magicians. The first book was Harry Potter for grown ups. This one reminds me more of Michael Moorcock and J. R. R. Tolkien mixed together with some realistic New York snark and an anti-Hogwarts magic school. It continues the story of Quentin's inner turmoil as a man, magician and king -- king of Fillory, a Narnia-esque land of enchantment -- and the journey he undertakes to save his friend, Queen Julia.

But you and I know that journeys and quests are really about the journeyer, and The Magician King is the story of Quentin's all too real ennui in fantasyland -- and how he grows to become the hero he always wanted to be.

I liked the first novel better than this one -- beginnings and origin stories are almost always better than the second book in a series -- but I'm waiting for Book 3 nevertheless.

* * *

Anno Dracula is a sprawling evocation of the Ripper's London, built upon the idea that Bram Stoker's Dracula was a nonfiction book, and that the immortal vampire lord succeeded in conquering England. Dracula has become the Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, and vampires and humans across the world mingle like hunters and cattle.

This is novel set the stage for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in that author Kim Newman took the general conceit of an alternate sequel to Dracula and populated his bloodworld with numerous vampires of fiction and film. Count Iorga is here, as is the original Nosferatu; Barnabas Collins does things his own way across the pond, and Lord Ruthven seeks power and prestige in the court of Dracula.

This is a wonderful novel, one of the best vampire novels since King's 'Salems Lot. You can get it here . . . and just for curiosity's sake, here's the Italian cover.

Rec-i-pes from Boy-ar-dee

2011-09-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

I didn't know what to expect from a cookbook by the granddaughter of the famous/infamous Chef Boy-ar-dee family, but now that we've tried it out, the book is KILLER.

It's Delicious Memories by Anna Boiardi and Stephanie Lyness.

So. You guess who provided the recipes, and then guess who actually wrote the book.

Forget roni, beefaroni, noodleroni, shitaroni. This is an incredible cookbook by the big guy's granddaughter and Stephanie Lyness, who knows a lot more about good food for the American family than the megacorpconglomeranationalbizshizzle that bought them out years ago.

Nice family, nice history, nice recipes. The recipe for Bucatini Amatricana with Roma tomatoes and bacon is worth the price of the book. Enjoy it with a Sangiovese around $10 a bottle. EXXXcellent!

Here.

It's Not About the U . . . It's About all of Them

2011-09-05T16:54:00.001-04:00

Yes, I am ready for some football. And the football season begins, for me, with tonight's Miami game.

It doesn't matter who they're playing, because it IS all about the U, at least for me. I was in grad school at UM during 1981-1983, and even though I only went to one game while I was there -- Bernie Kozar was quarterback -- I carried back to VA a love for UM, Miami, Coral Gables, Shorty's Bar-B-Cue, and the 'Canes (and, by extension, the Dolphins) that will never, ever die.

Let me recommend two books you should read if you want some insight into both football and Miami ball: North Dallas Forty and 'Cane Mutiny. North Dallas Forty is the seminal football novel, written in the '70s by an ex pro player. 'Cane Mutiny is nonfiction -- a history and a no-holds barred expose of how the Miami Hurricanes became such a powerhouse.

I mention these titles here because if any football books have captured the essence of contemporary football, these two have; and you should read them not because one is about Miami and one is a good story, but because these books illuminate a much larger truth about what has become Professional Football.

And make no mistake: it may not be the NFL, but College Football is now, in every way, Professional Football. It is just as tough, just as aggressive, and certainly just as dirty.

The recent booze, sex, cash and partying allegations against players on the Miami team from 2002-2010 are nothing unusual. The players at Miami have had a long history of bending the rules. Hell, while I was there, the players weren't living in dorms -- they had large on-campus apartments, complete with patios and charcoal grills. Rumors talked of kick backs, free cars and hookers -- rumors that, apparently, were true after all.

They were, after all, our version of royalty. They were Miami's stars.

And they still are.

The Miami situation became so visibly bad that Sports Illustrated published an open letter to UM President Tad Foote ("...and that foot is me...") in 1995. It remains a razor-sharp reprimand to Miami's players and their both criminal and Bacchanalian excesses -- and to the boosters, professors, coaches, cheerleaders, administrators and all the others who coddled and catered and drew their luxurious baths.

Honestly: I have no doubt that UM's players took advantage of the many and anonymous gifts they were given. What bothers me is that much of America now believes that Miami is the only school whose players are corrupt, or criminals, or worse.

They're not. Every single school has this problem, which is why the NCAA has powerful rules against it.

For every high school ball player UM scouts have courted, Notre Dame and Oklahoma and Ohio and VT and UVA and every other big school has done the same thing: offered potential players and their families substantial perks, and continued to spoil them throughout their marginal-college-education, optimal-college-football careers.

To play football, you have to be tough. Tougher than others. Mean. A fighter. Unmerciful. In the late '80s, Bernie Linciome wrote in the Chicago Tribune

This is a grubby bunch, this Miami menagerie, about as far from the college ideal as a tire iron is from an ear swab. And this is the best college football team in the nation . . . I am not without some gratitude for Miami collecting dangerous young thugs and giving them a place to be angry. Better in Coral Gables than on public transportation.

Gentility is not a virtue when you're talking about football players. The Rule of Excess is the norm at all the universities -- every damn school -- across the country. Peter Gent, author of North Dallas Forty, knows this is true. In the introduction to the 2003 edition, Gent admits

I loved writing North Dallas Forty because it allowed me the rare pleasure of sinking myself in the ocean of memories from those years -- a hard, violent and painful life. I spent it with 40 of the most fascinating, intelligent, cunning and dangerous men I ever had the pleasure to be around before or since. They were football players.

Anybody who makes it as a professional football player has survived the horror of real violence, facing the monster that lives in his heart -- these men were true gods in ruins. Whether he stays a man is still a question of fate because the monster is always straining to be loosed again.

We should not be surprised that college ball players are of the same mettle. The stakes for college ball are the same as pro ball: it all boils down to money, and being able to buy the meanest, biggest thugs to cross that goal line and beat the other guys senseless. Money buys players who win; and winning teams bring in millions of dollars in revenue for the schools.

The thuggery and meanness are built into the football machine, and it's just as inbred and professional in college ball as it is in the NFL.

You can blame the Miami players for being who they are -- but when they're no different than the other teams, you're just lying to yourself about the system.

It's not about the U. It's about every team.

The system breeds rule-bending and body breaking -- because the players have to bend and break to show the world just how tough they are.

This is war, after all.

Goodnight Irene

2011-09-03T17:01:00.002-04:00

We had it better than most.

When the power went out, it was Saturday at 8:30 pm. We played a game of Life by candlelight, trying to remember the box-top rules that we had forgotten thirty years ago. I had a few beers out of the cooler. We played Electronic Clue, a battery-powered reinvention of the original. We went to bed early, after a game of War, after watching the winds bend the little tree in the front yard, and after much worrying how long we'd be without power and how much of our food we would have to throw away. I worried how come I was such a loser at Life and Clue. And I have to do something about the tree out front, which is now leaning precariously to the left.

The power came back on Sunday at 11:30 am. We were hardly inconvenienced at all, and I credit our location near a CSX and Amtrak railroad crossing as the reason we got power before the subdivisions did only 1000 feet away. We were on the right grid.

It has been a week since Irene came by for a quick little "How do you do?" and some of my friends in Richmond are still without power. I feel for them, because even though Irene was nasty, Isobel a few years ago was worse, at least to us. Five days without power or a bath can lead to murderous cabin fever. Have you ever tried to cook spaghetti outside on a gas grill?

What is it with hurricanes that begin with I?

Irene did hurt me where I needed it the least. The bitch kicked me in the digital nuts! When the power came back on, it fried the power supply in my computer. I know, this is, at most, an inconvenience; computers can be fixed. And a friend has graciously volunteered to fix it for me when the new power supply I ordered arrives in my mail box. (Thanks, Jason!)

But my problem stems from being in the middle of manuscript revisions. My novel, The Enigma Club, is thoroughly illustrated, and my agent asked me to add whatever illustrations I already had into the manuscript. Nowadays, it seems, editors at all the major NY publishing houses read agented manuscripts on their iPads or Kindles, and my agent wants to send out a Word .doc that is as representative of my intended product as possible.

I can't do that without my computer.

So as I wait for my part to arrive and I can then get on with my life, I'm forced to look at my email and Facebook and do some blogging on my sister-in-law's laptop (Thanks, Jenn!), an HP PC that is absolutely gorgeous to look at, but a machine that I absolutely detest.

I'm a Mac guy -- always have been, always will be. Macs work with you, not against you. For instance, I have been at this PC keyboard, blogging, for about 15 minutes. Within that time span, the screen has changed size on me no less than five times. I realize it has something to do with the track pad and my finger placement, but I have tested the damn thing several times and I still have no idea why the pad gets "sticky" or how the errant touch of a fingertip can make the screen almost unreadable. In Firefox, Windows open all by themselves if the cursor simply hovers over a link. WTF?

So Irene, please go straight to hell. I banish you to the Poor Farm in Rusty's game of Life. We will all survive your blind wrath eventually, but your after effects linger like Wal-Mart perfume.

Bitch, you smell like ass.

And give me back my Mac!

News and Views (to Peruse, Use and Abuse)

2011-08-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

I thought I would do this on a weekly basis, maybe call it my Freakend News Update. But apparently I see a lot more out there than I ever knew . . .

The true story of the darkest exoplanet found (so far). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811105115.htm

The GOP's Ten New Commandments. It's nice to know that the American people come first, as usual. Insert irony here ____.

My novel, The Enigma Club, is heavily influenced by the pulp magazines and stories from 1911-1953, primarily the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs. There are a lot of pulp resources on the Internet, but Coming Attractions keeps me informed every week of new books and products coming out -- more than I was ever aware of before. Check it out. Buy something.

Stupid people don't realize they're stupid. Sure, that's something a lot of us have thought about before, but where's the proof? And am I stupid for even thinking such a thing?

Looks like I'm going to be busy this coming weekend. Five great tiki cocktails to try! (Sorry, it's a slideshow)

Romney, Palin and Paul: complete, unadulterated, certified idiots.

If you love creative nonfiction that's as long as the story demands -- I mean, the longer, the better -- then longform is for you.

Now, I LOVE me a good ghost story . . . but I'm smart enough to know that shows like "Ghost Adventures" stretch the truth a tad too much. I mean, come on. You knew that, too. Right? Right?

This guy Paul Krugman is pretty smart. Sound advice on why we should ignore the GOP-manufactured Debt Crisis and instead concentrate on solving the GOP-created Jobs Crisis.

Eerie pictures of Six Flags in New Orleans, in the long aftermath of Katrina. Spooky stuff. "The pleasure of ruins . . ."

Three losers on a joy ride. The chick's a stripper. They're proud to be rednecks. "Criminal behavior is a Dougherty family tradition. Ryan, the youngest at 21, has 14 felony arrests for everything from burglary to a hit-and-run to texting an 11-year-old girl more than 200 sexually explicit messages. Grace, the eldest at 29, is a perennial hit-and-run offender and perhaps as a hint of what was to come, she viciously fought police when arrested. Once she tried to bite a police officer, and another time she head-butted a state trooper—after she was handcuffed." Sweet girl.

A bunch of reasons why I despise all homeowners' associations -- and the dumb asses who think they're wonderful. What a bunch of tools.

Look What I Found! 8.12.11

2011-08-12T12:31:00.001-04:00

Hey! Look what I found! This is the first installment that I plan to make every Friday, if luck is with me. I've long toyed with the idea that, if I had the cash, I'd make copies of articles that I liked or found immensely interesting and mail them to my friends. Well, linking from my blog makes that idea obsolete. So, instead, look what I found!

• Time for a perfect Mojito!

• Compassionate Conservatism in the midst of our Jobs Crisis? Right . . .

• From the Department of Pinocchio's "I Got No Strings on Me" comes this political puppet's number one hit. Make sure you watch the video -- he's as condescending to the audience as a holier-than-thou tv preacher.

• Who supports higher taxes to reduce the deficit? America does.

• A wonderful online graphic novel about censorship in small-town America. Read it now for free . . . it's almost finished!

• Do you miss Twin Peaks? Go here to sign the petition to restore all the deleted scenes to Fire Walk With Me, and to simply keep up with giants, dwarfs, the owls, and other assorted major weirdness.

• Speaking of major weirdness . . . how about Michele "Cross-eyed for Christ" Bachmann? Here's an in-depth look at her major influences, published a few days ago in the New Yorker. And how about this piece from Rolling Stone? "Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government." Complete article is here. Also, here's a report about how this loony tune believes that "public education would spark [a] new Holocaust."

• Whatever happened to the intelligent and hilarious Buck Henry?

• With banks reporting record profits (but not because of any dubious practices, oh, no, never!) and the American people getting poorer and poorer, this guy gets it absolutely right (it's a video). So, do you need proof he's right? Here, read this one first, and then read this one.

• Not all the news is bad. Has science found a cure for the cold . . . and perhaps every viral infection? Wow! Has science found a cure for leukemia? Double Wow!

• A writer, Harlan Ellison, when asked by a stupid interviewer, "Where do you get your ideas?" replied, "Schnectady." Mike Huckabee must get his ideas from an alternate Earth . . .

Romancing the Vampire

2011-08-04T23:47:00.000-04:00

Apparently this slipcased book looking at the vampire phenomenon came out in 2009. I found it today at Borders in Fredericksburg. Borders, as you may know, is going out of business due to bankruptcy. Some of the Borders stores are still open, offering discounts (currently) between 25 -50% off.

This book is lovely and captivated me the moment I saw it.

It. Is. Fucking. Beautiful.

If there is a Borders still open near you, go find this book. Original price: $49.95. Borders' remainder price: $4.99.

Take off another 25% discount for going out of business, and this beautiful thing is about $3.75 or so.

Go. Tell 'em, "Fangs for the memories."

What to do with that last comma? Yeah, you know the one I mean.

2011-06-29T18:38:00.001-04:00

Keep the comma, add something else to the list, or trash it altogether? OR I could think about it some, get another beer and relax.

That second comma in the first sentence is called an Oxford comma. Hey, I'm with you -- never heard of it until today. But for years the necessity of that comma -- the final comma in a list -- has been debated not only by grammarians, but by the geniuses in Marketing. See, they want that last comma tossed out -- to make their crap easier to read by the Great Unwashed and Unedjumacated.

But, lo! Today this article appeared, and I suggest you read it for your entertainment, enlightenment and, um, edjumacation.

F*** 'Em if They Can't Take a Joke

2011-06-28T17:45:00.007-04:00

The backlash has begun.

It's a book for grownups -- a parody of a child's picture book, with a sentiment that parents are sure to sympathize with.

If you have kids, come on, admit it: you've thought this very thing. Now Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortés have put your thoughts to paper.

Go the F*** to Sleep is hilarious. The New Yorker loved it. Samuel L. Jackson narrated a portion of the book on Letterman. Even websites for kids and families, such as Kidlantis, love the book. And what parent with a sense of humor wouldn't appreciate a verse such as

The cats nestle close to their kittens now.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the f**k to sleep.

But, oh nooooooo, the mundanes -- the muggles -- are up in arms, trying to protect their precious little snowflakes from such unholy filth.

Karen Spears Zacharias is a good, Godfearing nonfiction writer, or, as she describes herself on her site:

Author/Journalist/Speaker on a life-long quest in search of God's poetry and presence.

How the hell did this suburban Khrist Krispie ever find a pulpit on cnn.com for her brand of over-protective, ultra-religious bullshit? This piece of WE-HAVE-TO-PUT-THE-CHILDREN-FIRST tripe is the first article I've seen -- and certainly won't be the last -- by self-righteous, humorless know-nothings whose mission in life is to stand up for little Suzy and Timmy and the other little snowflakes who could be harmed -- Hurt! Injured! Maimed! Irreparably damaged by the power of words and ideas! -- by imaginary violence that "could" be induced by this slim book of humorous verse. With Go the F*** to Sleep, she somehow puts two and two together to come up with pi. Pi, in this case, is commensurate with infinite insanity.

"Go the F*** to Sleep" mocks the parental frustrations of trying to lay a child down to bed. Crass in concept and execution, this is an expletive-filled bedtime story intended solely for the amusement of parents.

Joan Demarest is an attorney in Corvallis, Oregon, and the mother of three young boys. Demarest told me that initially she thought the book was funny. That was before she read it. "Now I find it unsettling. I don't like violent language in association with children."

When the censors come out, it's always for the sake of the children. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. Especially when it's a book for adults, not kids.

Zacharias nutballs it from the very beginning of her essay. This book doesn't mock parental frustrations. It admits they exist. This is a book reflecting, in a very funny and extremely clever way, how a lot of parents feel -- if not every single one of them, at some point -- about their kids who just won't fall asleep when, well, you know: when they need to go the fuck to sleep, and right now, damn it. Then she brings in the hovering spectres of child neglect and abuse -- even though this book doesn't imply abuse, wish for it, urge it, nor indicate it at all. Then she tries to backpedal:

Nobody is suggesting that there's a connection between Adam Mansbach's book and child abuse or child neglect. Still, there's no denying the reason "Go the F*** to Sleep" should be kept out of reach of children is because of its violent language and because of the way it demeans children.

Yeah, Karen, that's exactly what you're doing: suggesting books like this promote neglect and abuse, although you deny the specific connection (in case there's a lawsuit, perhaps?).

For a supposed Christian, the author is, basically, lying -- creating connections where they don't exist in order to convince us that her holier-than-thou point of view is correct, and that Go the F*** to Sleep is EEEEEEEVIL. (She and Michele Bachmann need to huddle together in a faith-based lesbian frenzy. I hear the crazoid needs a running mate...)

Yes, the language is crass . . . and that was the author's intent. This whole book is one big joke that most parents are in on. They get the joke. Zacharias obviously doesn't. And the execution of the illustrations, the satire -- the whole book -- are far from crass. The workmanship is professional, and the art is a parody of classic children's picture book illustration.

It works -- and it's funny. And that's why the zealots will always hate it.

Because, at it's core, it's true. It's 100% honest.

Go the F*** to Sleep is a joke that mundanes and God-thumpers will never get.

And you know what we say about the uptight asses who don't know what's funny...

You can buy the book from Amazon here. Get a lot of copies and really piss off the right-wing soccer moms who still haven't graduated from their evangelical community colleges.

Places I'll Never See

2011-06-27T17:45:00.001-04:00

It’s a stark and simple book, yet elegant and evocative in its sheer depiction of isolation. And it’s absolutely beautiful.

The Atlas of Remote Islands, subtitled Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will, is a slender volume, mostly one-page descriptions of faraway islands, each accompanied by a stark and charming topographical illustration by the author.

This isn’t much of a review, simply because there’s not much to say besides: There’s no other book like it. It’s wonderful and clean and artistic and completely beyond the simple aesthetics of other illustrated books. It is the achievement of a lifetime of cartographic love, embodied in the author’s concluding sentences in her introduction:

Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world.

This is a book to be explored over countless evenings, with a glass of cognac beside you and a fire on the hearth.

This is a book to be loved.

ATLAS OF REMOTE ISLANDS by JUDITH SCHALANSKY

Robert J. Sawyer is a HELL of a Writer

2011-06-13T21:19:00.001-04:00

And I mean that. I waited, book by book, to finish his last SF trilogy, a what-if concept that explored both the human and the humane -- via the unhuman: What if we opened a doorway onto an alternate 21st-century Earth where the dominant race was the Neanderthal?

His latest trilogy poses another, more idée du jour: What if the aggregated accumulation of knowledge within the World Wide Web created a conscious intelligence?

The WWW is the father; the child is Webmind, the first artificial intelligence; and the unknowing mother is a sixteen year old blind girl with an experimental visual device -- a device that opens a window, for both she and Webmind, onto the real, wide world.

The trilogy consists of WWW: Wake, WWW: Watch, and the latest, WWW:Wonder. It's a story of growth -- sight and insight -- for both child and mind. As Webmind wakes to see the world it lives in, so does Caitlin Decter. They see. They discover love, relationships, knowledge, deceit, politics . . . and, most importantly, how to survive and still be true to yourself, and be true and good to the wide world.

Our popular culture has been subjected for too long with the stereotypes of mad scientists, deadly robots, omnipotent computers and technological dystopias. Sure, they're fun -- but, personally, I think it's time to turn the page and start exploring where we should go, instead of concentrating on the fears of exploration and science. Sawyer's WWW trilogy is a beautiful exploration of the meaning of truth and knowledge in a contemporary world where distrust and hatred are the norm.

I haven't even mentioned the character that steals the trilogy: Hobo, an ape who has learned sign language, and is Webmind's simian avatar in human society.

Coming to know Hobo is worth the price of the books. He's more human -- and more interesting and charming -- than most of the human characters, which also makes me wonder: is this Sawyer's unconscious nod to Cornelius and Zira of Planet of the Apes?

Buy the books here.

Notes About "Network"

2011-05-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

Network is an unparalleled skewering of American television and society. It was released in 1976, and although slight aspects of the film seem a little dated today, the film's heart still beats strongly, and says a lot about today's television that Paddy Chayefsky could only imagine . . . and successfully, I might add.

The New York Times has an article all about Chayefsky's preliminary notes for Network and they give an amazing insight to a writer's creative process. I don't know if this material is enough to make a book out of, but I'd love to read it.

A True Gentleman in Detroit

2011-05-16T09:06:00.000-04:00

There's a funeral home in Detroit run by one Joseph Norris. Never met the man, but after reading this blog post, also by someone I've never met, I commend him for his respect and for his sense of honor.

Screw Smallville

2011-05-13T22:25:00.000-04:00

I was raised on comic book heroism.

My mother taught me to read using comic books. I could read when I was 3 1/2 years old.

Richie Rich. Casper. Wendy and Little Lotta. Archie. Then suddenly, Batman on ABC-TV. And Spider-Man.

I worship sequential art.

Smallville was a combinatory product of comic books and tv. Never a perfect combination, but always the tv aspects were referential to the comic book aspects.

And the end, a decade later -- tonight -- was a whisper -- a pale shadow of the make-believe legend.
Smallville. What the fuck? It took ten years to wear the suit, finally fly, and we didn't get a clear shot of Superman in action? Sounds like a contractual situation to me. WB, Warner, DC -- whothefuckever. Thank you all for absolutely nothing. Corporate Superbastards in action. You have screwed the public. That is, SuperScrewed. And the entire 10 years of Smallville have been a superheroic exercise in Kryptonian masturbation.

Superman lives. Kal-El lives. The heroic legacy lives.

Smallville . . . why did you waste my time?

Rusty's Cubano Sandwich

2011-05-04T17:36:00.000-04:00

I always heard raves about the classic Cuban sandwich, and when I finally had one a few years ago in Florida, at Gloria Estefan's Bongos at Disney World . . . well, sorry, but I was completely underwhelmed.

Maybe it wasn't Bongos' fault. Maybe it was mine. I thought Cuban food was supposed to be exotic and spicy. I had expected an explosion of flavor -- a sandwich that tasted wonderful and magnificent and magically different than the rest of the crapwiches I could get anywhere else. And of course . . . it didn't.

Crusty bread. Sliced pork. Sliced ham. Swiss cheese. Mustard. Pickles. Grilled.

That's it. No spices, no exotica. Nada.

BOOOOORing!

But, the fault may have been Bongo's. I've seen on cooking shows how Cuban sandwiches are supposed to be made, and my sandwich was neither grilled nor pressed, nor smeared with butter.

So here's my take on the classic Cuban -- not much different, but different enough for this gringo to make me go "Yuuuuuuum." yeah, it's a bit of a Dagwood, and it's wonderful.

• 1/2 loaf French bread; Cuban bread if you've got it [1/2 a loaf of French = two big sandwiches, ideal for dinner.]

• 9 slices cooked Virginia Ham

• 2 boneless, cooked & smoked pork chops (prepackaged from Smithfield, nice and not too thick)

• Swiss cheese slices to taste

• Dijon mustard

• Yellow mustard

• Claussen dill pickles, thinly sliced

• Butter

• Cumin, pinch

• Chili powder, pinch

1. Cut open that bread and get ready to pack it.

2. Smear both types of mustard to taste inside the bread.

3. Place two (probably) pork chops on the bun. More if you need.

4. Sprinkle a good pinch each of chili powder and cumin on the pork chops. To taste, of course.

5. Layer on the sliced ham.

6. Layer on the Swiss cheese.

7. Lay thin pickle slices fully over the whole sandwich.

8. Put the sandwich together. Butter both sides of the crust.

9. Put it in a frying pan over medium heat.

Now, this is what I do to actually cook the sandwich . . . because it has to be pressed. Flattened.

Shmushed.

I don't have any bricks wrapped in tin foil -- besides, they wouldn't be big enough. I cover the sandwich and frying pan with a loose sheet of tin foil. I fill up a stew pot with water, and I place it on top of the sandwich, press down hard and evenly, and I cook the sandwich with the pot on top. This keeps the bread flat and the ingredients get hot and meld together.

Check the bottom of the bread after perhaps four minutes. It's ready to flip when it's slightly blackened and hard. (Snap your finger against it.)

Flip it over and cook it the same on this side. When it's finally flat (check the picture), brown and snappy, take it out of the frying pan and enjoy it immensely.

The Right's Lust for Lust

2011-04-18T17:30:00.007-04:00

I shouldn't be surprised about the Right's blatant hypocrisy about the intrusion of government, but it always gets me.

I mean, from art, to books, to comic books, to movies -- it's always hate this and ban that. The far right tried to ban nonfiction about birth control in the 1800s. Shakespeare is still censored in today's high school texts. Tarzan novels were banned from several libraries in the 1930s because Tarzan and Jane weren't married. (Actually, they were, way back in 1913 in The Return of Tarzan.) The ultra right tried to destroy the comic book industry in the '50s. And watching Elvis gyrate on "The Ed Sullivan Show" was an obscenity the cameras could not show.

With one hand -- the hand the right-minded magicians want you to keep your eyes on -- they point at taxes, and they wave the flag of Freeeeeeedom and proclaim at the top of their lungs, "No more government control! Stay out of our lives! We're the good guys!"

With the other hand -- the hand that's actually pulling the bait and switch, the sleight of hand you're not supposed to see -- they point at Eeeeevil books and dirty, filthy movies, and they whisper for "More government control! We need you to control our urges! We're the good guys!"

Of course, their reasons are all wrapped up in the American Flag, and at the top of the flagpole is a shining, golden cross, for that conservative parade has behind it the taint of so-called morality. Their morality. One-sided morality.

And, of course, the Left is the bad guy -- for wanting the government -- all governments -- to stay out of our bedrooms and our minds.

Bedroom? The Men in Black can stay the hell out of my whole house. The First Amendment comes first in the Bill of Rights because it is the most important -- it is the single most valuable guarantee of our rights as individuals.

Groups don't decide what we can read. Mob-mind morality doesn't choose what we can watch.

Stay out of my mind's library. I really don't need a Big Brother.

An Anti-Obama Bumper Sticker that Comes Right Out and Says It

2011-04-01T00:07:00.000-04:00

I saw this bumper sticker yesterday on a beat-up old truck in the slow lane of I-95. I figured the driver had to be an old white guy who wants those damned kids to stay out of his yard -- there I go, stereotyping again! -- and of course, the driver was an old, white shitkicker, plaid shirt, snow-white wavy hair combed straight back in a style from the '60s, and doing 50 in a 70 zone -- a speed probably commensurate with the ever-slowing beating of his poisoned heart.

HELL YES I WANT OBAMA TO FAIL!

Well, at least the redneck wasn't hiding it. (He was, however, hiding all the useful commas that good grammar demands.) Not that his opinion really matters anyway, because, frankly, there isn't a single iota of conscious thought, of intellect, of rational cogitation, nor reason in that Radical Right Refrain from Rush.

Opinions are like assholes, people like to say, usually in a way that makes them feel superior to the assholes to whom they're referring. You know, the other ones. They'll wink, You get the joke, right? because, of course, You ARE one of us, right? But in fact people who use cliches like Opinions are like assholes are simple-minded parrots who have no idea what the fuck they're spouting off about. They're followers. They get their opinions from TV or they're handed down from their parents or their grandparents or whomever, because we live in an anti-intellectual America that doesn't respect facts, that doesn't respect smarts. They think they're smart, because Rush said it, Rove wrote and directed it, they believe it, and that settles it.

It's really sour grapes. It's the last gasp of the Party of Sore Losers. I wrote about the sore losers here, once upon a time, and it seems that they're still shambling toward us, the living and the thinking, hungering zombie-like for the braaaains they simply don't have. Their hatred, their venom, their teeth-gnashing, Tea Partying, bloodspitting just won't end . . . because they lost to Obama.

Even more importantly, because they know that their guy previously in the White House fucked everything up.

And then a black guy came along to fix things.

Unspeakable! Heresy! Anti-Christ! Nazi!

Every asshole has an opinion -- but the only opinions anybody smart should listen to are informed opinions.

I love the Rude Pundit. Lee Papa has a blog here on blogspot, usually updated daily (he's much more reliable about that than I) and I urge you to read it and feel the burn. Let the anger rise like acid reflux at his words, his insights, at the hate and the crimes of right-wing ringmasters -- the rabble-rousers of the great uninformed.

I'm reading his book right now, loving it. The Rude Pundit's Almanack. He knows of which he speaks. He uses reason, rational argument. He uses humor. He uses angry, dirty words. He calls uber-Right nutjob Rick Santorum as "Crazy as a weasel orgy."

BUY THIS BOOK.

Here's a steal from the Rude Pundit's blog. The words are so good, so right, that I quote the post in its entirety. He uses part of this in his book, but I wanted to use it to show that I'm not making up the right-wing poison. I'm not exaggerating it. I see it, I hear it, almost every day, from people who want to share racist Obama jokes, to friends who truly believe an anonymous note on Facebook that Obama canceled the National Day of Prayer. (Just so you know, he didn't.)

This is informed opinion. It should be listened to. It should make you angry enough to do something about it.

1/28/2009
Regarding Motherfuckers (Republican Edition):
Here's something one hopes the Obama administration has learned from the past couple of days: You need to expect that motherfuckers will fuck their mothers. It's just what motherfuckers do. They fuck their mothers. It's right there in the word. If you put John Boehner's mother in front of him, he will fuck her. Because he is a motherfucker. It's what he knows. It's what all Republicans know. It's their nature.

You can't just think that you'll walk into a group of 'em and say, "Aw, c'mon, stop fucking your mothers." They won't listen. You can appeal in any way you like - it's wrong, it's immoral, their mothers' asses are bleeding. It won't make a whit of difference. The motherfucking will continue, right in front of you. No, you just have to accept that a motherfucker will always fuck his or her mother every chance they can. That they live to fuck their mothers. To expect anything else is to be foolish. And once you accept that motherfuckers were, are, and will always be motherfuckers, you need to act accordingly. You need to treat motherfuckers like the motherfuckers they are.

We don't know what Barack Obama actually said to Republican members of Congress in his closed-door meetings with them yesterday regarding his stimulus plan. But we do know one thing for sure: it accomplished nothing. This is the way it's gonna go, and if you've paid attention at all, you know the steps: Obama will concede shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they already got more tax cuts than anyone fucking needs), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more (even though they're gonna get the family planning funding taken out), Obama will concede more shit and Republicans will ask for more, and then when the vote comes, Republicans will vote against it, saying that no one listened to them and fuck that Obama for lying about bipartisanship. Yet the legislation will have passed in a watered down form from the deep infrastructure and other spending so desperately needed to, you know, create jobs, which will, you know, create taxable income, which will, you know, help actually pay for shit some day.

Obama better know a simple fact: they fucking hate him. Right now, Obama represents the fact that everything they believed was a complete failure. For making that clear to the American people, they fucking despise him. They hate his majority, they hate his coattails, they hate that all over the country people are supporting his ideas. Republicans have nothing right now, which means they have nothing to lose by trying to drag Obama into their pit of shit. They'll smile and say it was a good conversation, but they're waiting in the back halls of the Capitol to fuckin' shiv Obama and laugh while he bleeds. And try to force Americans back into their crooked arms.

That's the thing about motherfuckers. You can tell them, "Okay, you can fuck your mothers, but only for an hour a day." They might agree, but sure as you're reading this, the second they walk away, they will...well, by now, you know.

Keep kicking ass, Lee.

Keeping our Internet Free

2011-03-21T17:18:00.000-04:00

If you wonder what all the big deal is about Net Neutrality -- or if you don't even know what it is, but you hear all the kidz talkin' about it -- here's a speech from Senator Al Franken that he gave last week at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. These are smart words, and they ring with the true spirit of American freedom. Too bad big business and their puppet politicians think that too much freedom is . . . unprofitable.

All the places where it's YOU VS. FOOD

2011-03-18T17:56:00.013-04:00

I watch Man Vs. Food occasionally, and I usually enjoy it, especially when host Adam Richman goes somewhere I've never even heard about, such as Black Sheep here in Richmond, which looks just incredible.

My problem with the show is that every episode is 100% formulaic. And it doesn't matter to me if he eats the whole giant dish at the end or not. It's all just rote. I know that, in every episode, he will come up against his "food wall," he'll drink milk to counter the spices in hot stuff, and then a couple of people will ask some banal questions about the challenge when it's over.

It's just a show, and a simple one, at that. The thing is: I like seeing the food. And sometimes, the amounts certainly get crazy.

I have absolutely no desire to rip away my stomach lining with nuclear-hot chicken wings, nor stuff myself until it hurts with a 3-6 lb. hamburger. Hell, I already have acid reflux -- I don't need to bust my gut any worse in order to be a macho man. But if you'd like to see who'd win in the challenge between YOU VS. FOOD, here's a list of 83 restaurants across America and their culinary challenges. Man Vs. Food has been to some of them already, but there are a lot of places where the challenges still haven't been met.

Good luck . . . and, as Monsieur Creosote once said, "Bucket!"

A Tattoo for the Literate

2011-03-15T17:30:00.002-04:00

Found this over on io9 today. I'm not a tattoo kind of guy, but if I were, I'd get one like this, that merges text and art seamlessly. Click the photo to see more...

Stargate Noir

2011-03-01T18:17:00.001-05:00

i09 posted online a few sample chapters of Cowboy Angels, the new SF novel by Paul McAuley, and after engulfing them hungrily, I thought I'd finally found a science fiction writer comparable to the mainstream's James Lee Burke.

I wish. Unfortunately, the quality seen in Paul McAuley's early chapters drops with each twist in the novel's convoluted plot, and what we have left in Cowboy Angels is the first novel in what I assume will be a thriller/SF trilogy about a special ops agent repeatedly chasing his best friend and former agent through "Turing gates" -- transporters/windows into parallel universes that were first created in the 1960s. (This discovery was made in the novel's base reality, called The Real. Parallel universes are called "sheaves" -- and this, perhaps, is the most interesting twist to me: the author does not use our reality as the Real or base universe. Our world is known as the Nixon Sheaf, which amuses me greatly.)

The story begins with a cool murder mystery: someone is crossing into parallel worlds and killing the same woman in each sheaf, and our protagonist, Stone, must stop the killer.

Great premise -- but it goes downhill after a lot of universe-hopping that is just way too confusing. And there is one overall flaw: it's the idiot plot. To keep the plot of the book moving forward, the protagonist has to be an idiot and keep playing his friend's mind games ("Just trust me," he keeps saying). Add to this a semi-sentient time-traveling machine that comes out of nowhere, almost deus-ex-machina-like, and you have a muddle of a story that, frankly, I will not continue on to Book Two.

It was a great idea. Too bad it got messed up in the storytelling.

UPDATED: The United States of CorpAmerica ™

2011-02-13T14:08:00.000-05:00

UPDATE 2:07 pm Feb 13, 2011: They're nickel and diming us to death. That's where it starts; that's where it's personal. They know, more than us real people, that mere pennies add up, especially when you're getting pennies from everyone and for everything. Here: this is the most recent thing I've discovered -- just a few minutes ago, as a matter of fact -- that shows how our corporate overlords really think of us.

* * *

Corporate greed is the reason I need a new pair of glasses.

The pair I'm wearing is a replacement pair for glasses that, three weeks ago, had just been delivered to the Grove Avenue Eye Center. That pair distorted my vision and was unusable; this pair, it was promised, would be perfect.

And they are. A perfect waste. They distort my vision even more. It turns out that DavisVision, my vision insurer, makes the lenses themselves. In what fashion, with what primitive grinding and polishing instruments, and with what neanderthal-like technicians in gruel-stained lab coats, I don't know -- but my doctors don't like DavisVision (they say this with eye rolling and wink-winks) as they cannot vouch for their "quality."

I can.

They suck.

So I'm waiting for another new pair of bifocals so I can use a computer with the upper, intermediate lenses, and read what's on my desk with the lower lenses. Right now, the lower lenses make it appear as though I'm reading through a pane of rushing water that distorts the letters when I move. (Distort. I used that word describing the effect to the glasses technician. She didn't understand the word.) DavisVision, according to the woman who cut the lenses -- here in Richmond -- from the pieces of glass Davis sent them from wherever in DavisHell, actually changed my prescription because they did not have an upper and lower set that would match what my doctor prescribed.

Quality costs money. And spending money on their customers is one thing corporations don't want to do.

So I'm reading this wonderful new anthology, Brave New Worlds. It's a collection of dystopian short stories, all about presents- and futures-imperfect, where life and civilization have gone all wrong. Sexuality is legislated, the military runs the government, babies are revered but adults are killed, books are outlawed, chips in our brains control our minds -- fictional, of course, dystopian Americas that we, as a people, know just can't happen here. That's all just make-believe.

In the introduction, the editor, John Joseph Adams, writes

Whether or not a society is perceived as a dystopia is usually determined by one's point of view; what one person may consider to be a horrible dystopia, another may find completely acceptable or nigh-utopian.

Later, in the introduction to "The Pedestrian," a story written by Ray Bradbury in 1951, the editor writes

One marker of a dystopian society is its lack of fairness. For some people, the field isn't just unlevel -- it's hideously slanted, and there's no way to get a hand up it.

We're in a future that was predicted in the '70s in Rollerball -- that's the first time I can remember thinking that our present situation could seriously come to pass -- and somewhat in the '80s with Blade Runner.

It's a dystopian future where corporations have a stranglehold on the government. They've bought the politicians, they're going for the courts, they're ripping the money out of our pockets by nickel and diming us with fees and surcharges and obscene interests and price-gouging and ticket scalping and Planned Product Obsolescence. People aren't important, except to be used as a working class -- all of us, working for the corporations, and the executives at the top of their golden pyramid schemes, firing our workers to find cheap labor overseas, while annually raising prices that we just can't meet without credit here, credit there.

This dystopia exists here in America, right now. And I really don't think people are looking at it like that. I think conservatives, especially the tea partiers, in the lower and middle class still think, still believe in their innermost hearts, that by working hard and struggling every day and being honest (well, mostly, because the boss will never notice if I take home one of these pens or a notebook, right?), that they will make it, that they will eventually join the higher echelon of financial security -- the Upper Class.

Ain't gonna happen.

This is the lie that they want us to believe: Work hard and you will get everything you want.

Yeah. I heard this before in history class.

Arbeit macht frei.

21st Century America isn't in a science fiction dystopia. It's an all too real economic armageddon that right now affects every single American. The root cause is not the deficit, the cost of war, the price of gas, the frosts in Florida, the mortgage crisis, or industry bailouts.

The root effect is personal, forcing middle class wage-earners to scrimp and crawl just to live paycheck by paycheck; and the root cause is greed, corporate greed -- that's what has brought us as a country -- and especially on an individual level -- to this financial apocalypse.

And, hell, we've all bought into it. We believe what the bought politicians are telling us. We believe the talk radio fat cats. We respect men who wear ties and snap flag pins on their lapels. We follow the rules because we want to be led, we need rules to keep things right, keep things moral! And the corporations would never do anything to us, never! The business of America is business!

Yeah.

Rollerball has come true.

We are in the midst of an American dystopia -- brought about by the fear-mongers who are already billionaires and want more money and more power --and I'm not sure anybody can see it. There are too many trees in the way, and we can't figure out we're in a freakin' forest.

Brave New Worlds. The book is fiction, like Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. But the stories -- the dystopias -- could come true.

If they haven't already.

I'm going for a third pair of new glasses on Monday. Do you really think DavisVision gives a damn if they get my prescription right?

Read the book. It could happen here.

Book Review: UNKNOWN

2011-02-10T19:20:00.001-05:00

By now, I'm sure you've seen the trailers for Unknown on tv. Liam Neeson looking pensive, running somewhere in what appears to be Europe. The premise: Just out of a coma, Liam -- Martin Harris -- comes home to find that his wife, Liz, doesn't recognize him, his neighbors don't know him, and there's another man living with Liz: with Martin's name, Martin's lifetime of memories, and Martin's wife.

Waking up with amnesia is one of the tropes of thriller fiction, as is a subset: waking up with with an identity that no one says exists. I loved the computer game from the late eighties, Deja VU -- all about a guy who wakes up with no memory of who he is. (By the way, you can probably download a free, working copy of Deja Vu online if you Google it. And make sure you get it's supernatural equivalent, Uninvited. Even better! Not to mention hours upon hours of thinking...)

This movie looks fun, and that's why I took the offer to read this book and review it.

Unknown is a good book, but not a great one. It's a book that feels like the first Bourne movie did: a few action sequences wrapped around a story that was mostly about being chased, talking on the phone, reading computer screens, a clue here and there -- all the basic tropes of thriller movies nowadays.

Unknown, a French thriller written by Didier van Cauwelaert, is short. Scenes seem truncated; character development is pretty nonexistent. It was an ideal choice for adaptation into a film, and it is certainly an interesting story. But I think it may prove to be anomaly: I have a feeling the movie, in this case, will be better than the book. The plot is a little derivative of other memory-wipe tales, and the writing here is not convincing to me. By the end I had a hard time buying the premise at all. But on the screen, I think a talented writer, director and cast can mold a bare bones thriller into a fully-fleshed film, and their dramatic enhancements will bring the story alive.

At least, I hope so.

If you like thrillers, go buy it. If you're only mildly interested, however, hit the local library.

Rusty's Cocktail Sauce for Shrimp

2011-01-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

Can you guess what I'm having tonight for dinner?

There are no measurements in this recipe -- make it to your own tastes. Just to give you an idea, though, I've included the way I prefer it.

• Pure horseradish (I like a lot)

• Ketchup (about 75% of amount of horseradish)

• Worcestershire sauce (splash or two)

• Fresh lemon juice (two squeezes)

• Your favorite hot sauce (splash it in to taste)

• Salt

• Fresh ground pepper

Mix it all up, for however many people you're serving, and if it's too spicy for them, add some ketchup to theirs and only theirs. We purists like it hot.

Blind Kiwi Hoover Makes Chili...

2011-01-25T17:25:00.012-05:00

Mi amigo, guitarist and soul singer Blind Kiwi Hoover, who maintains his own down to earth blog right here, decided to take my chili recipe -- which is a Manhattan Chili Co. recipe, Texas Chain Gang Chili, only doctored up a little -- and then he doctored it up some more.

Here's Blind Kiwi Hoover before he made the chili, probably listening to some obscure '60s rock tunes emanating from his computer:

Here's Kiwi's recipe, as given to him by his old, sweet Aunt Nasty, and quoted here in his own down-South words IN GREEN:

Texas Chain SAW Chili:

(from Aunt NASTY)

This is NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.

* * * * * * * *

1/4 cup olive oil or rendered bacon fat CUT THE FAT KEEP THE EEOO

2 large yellow onions ONE ONION GOES A LONG WAY

8 medium cloves garlic minced (I like garlic, so I used large cloves)I DON’T LIKE GARLIC MS. RAY

4 jalapenos stemmed and minced SIX FULL JALAPENOS WITH SEEDS

2 RED PEPPERS FOR TEXTURE (LESS ONE ONION)

2 HOT PEPPERS FOR TASTE (Uncle Wimply left these out)

1.5 lbs ground beef YEAH, OK, DEAD COW GROUNDED UP

1.5 lbs beef chuck, cut in 1/2" cubes SOAK OVERNIGHT IN BEER

2 tsp salt (I use 2.5)WHO MEASURES?

5 Tbsp chili powder ~~(or fresh/dried ancho chili pods)~~ (Ancho chili pods are NOT in the original recipe. I used 6 tbsp of chili powder. I like chili powder.)FISTFULL ON THE MEAT, FISTFULL IN THE POT, FISTFULL IN THE BOWL

2 Tbsp cumin I AIN’T CUM’N IN MY CHILI

2 Tbsp oregano IT SMELLS GOOD SO THROW A BUNCH IN

2 tsp Cayenne pepper to taste. (Aunt Diane left this out. CRAZY! By the way, after refrigeration, a lot of the heat disappears. PUT IN THE CAYENNE!)

SHOVEL IT IN. APPLY TO MEAT BEFORE COOKING, DUMP IN THE MIX AS IT COOKS. THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH. ALSO ADD WHITE PEPPER AND PEPPER CORNS.

1 28oz can crushed tomatoes drained and well-crushed NEXT TIME I MAY TRY FRESH TOMATOES. JUST DUMP THEM IN.

4 cups beef stock (Aunt Diane changed it to 3 cups.)FORGET THE WHIMPY STOCK – ADD DARK BEER. AND WHAT AUNT DIANE DOESN’T DRINK, KEEP POURING IN EVERY MINUTES

2 16oz cans dark red kidney beans rinsed and drained. (I consider beans OPTIONAL, although they are included in the original recipe. Authentic chili doesn't have beans.)BEANS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR HEART, THE MORE YOU EAT…

* * * * * * * *

* Sauté onions, ~~garlic,~~ jalapenos.

* Cook beef ~~separately and drain~~.YOU WANT FAT? COMBINE AND BRING TO A SIZZLE. DON’T OVERDO, IT WILL HAVE HOURS TO GO

* ~~Combine spices, garlic, meat. Cook 5 min~~. JUST THROW IN SOME HOT SAUCE

* Add tomatoes and ~~stock~~ BEER and bring to boil.

* Slow cook for a couple hours. (Stir occasionally.)ADD A BOTTLE OF BEER EVERY 30 MIUTES.

* Add beans about five minutes before finished. (Naaaaah.)UNCOOKED BEANS, ADD WITH THE MEAT. COOKED BEANS EAT OUT OF THE CAN.

* LADLE INTO A LARGE BOWL, TEAR OFF A CHUNK OF CRUSTY BREAD, TOP WITH HOT SAUCE, WHITE PEPPER, RED PEPPER FLAKES, AND A DOLUP OF SOUR CREAM.OPEN ANOTHER BEER AND GRAB A BIG SPOON. DIG IN!

(IF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD IS NOT SWEATING WHEN YOU FINISH A BOWL, YOU DID IT WRONG)

i think it was a little watery (beery) so the next time I will allow some of the liquid to cook off. it was good for 5 days.

And here's Blind Kiwi Hoover after his chili:

Enjoy the rocket fuel!

A Recipe Restored: TEXAS CHAIN GANG CHILI

2011-01-17T18:09:00.000-05:00

The chili recipe below is easily available from a ton of sites on the Internet. But here's a little background on the original version, and a personal story, which explains why I'm reprinting it here -- besides it being absolutely delicious.

About a year ago a friend in Texas, Ana, lost her copy of a recipe for Texas Chain Gang Chili. She wrote to me, because it seems that I gave it to her, and she claimed it was the single best chili recipe ever.

To this day, I have no knowledge of ever giving her a recipe for anything. But, she says I did, so I believe her. . . . must've had one too many Coronas . . .

I immediately went to my own cookbooks -- and my wife's -- and could not find the recipe. (I'm stupid, I guess, because I later found it in one of the books I originally looked through.) I searched on the Internet a few days later, but forgot what the recipe was called, so I had to write Ana back and ask again. By this time she had found her own copy -- but I was determined to find out exactly what I had given her years beforehand.

I found it on the Internet, and on many sites. It looks like all the sites that have it copied it from one man's site, because all the recipes mention the guy's Aunt Diane.

I have no idea who Aunt Diane is, because she didn't come up with the recipe. She copied it from a cookbook, changed it a little, her nephew copied hers, and now the whole recipe collection network on the Internet has copied it.

Don't thank Aunt Diane -- thank the Manhattan Chili Company for publishing it in their great Manhattan Chili Co. Southwest-American Cookbook back in the dim, dark year of 1986.

So, after not finding, then finding, then losing the recipe, I waited, and waited, and finally my yearning for homemade chili overtook me just a few, frigid weeks ago. Again, I couldn't find the damn cookbook (it was in the bedroom hiding in a stack -- I never would have looked there!) so I went online and got the recipe.

Made it. It was too thick. Added a cup of water, some more chili powder, a little garlic powder. Nice. But not hot enough.

Then I found the cookbook yesterday while tidying up, and my instincts were dead on: Aunt Diane had changed a couple of things to take out some of the original's heat and make it thicker.

Not good, Diane. You wussed it down.

So here is the authentic recipe, although I'm copying the version from the Internet, but restoring the intent and ingredients of the original. The Internet recipe is most easily found here, and this is where I believe all the copycat sites found it originally. My comments, and the differences between the original recipe and the 'net version, are in red. Personal comments are in parentheses.

By the way, I urge you to get the real cookbook. You can order it here. The restaurant can be found here -- and I'll let you guess in what city . . .

Texas Chain Gang Chili:
(from Aunt Diane)
This is spectacular.
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
1/4 cup olive oil or rendered bacon fat
2 large yellow onions
8 medium cloves garlic minced (I like garlic, so I used large cloves)
4 jalapenos stemmed and minced
1.5 lbs ground beef
1.5 lbs beef chuck, cut in 1/2" cubes
2 tsp salt (I use 2.5)
5 Tbsp chili powder (or fresh/dried ancho chili pods) (Ancho chili pods are NOT in the original recipe.  I used 6 tbsp of chili powder.  I like chili powder.)
2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp oregano

2 tsp Cayenne pepper to taste.  (Aunt Diane left this out.  CRAZY!  By the way, after refrigeration, a lot of the heat disappears.  PUT IN THE CAYENNE!)
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes drained and well-crushed
4 cups beef stock  (Aunt Diane changed it to 3 cups.)
2 16oz cans dark red kidney beans rinsed and drained.  (I consider beans OPTIONAL, although they are included in the original recipe.  Authentic chili doesn't have beans.)
 *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


* Sauté onions, garlic, jalapenos.
* Cook beef separately and drain.
* Combine spices, garlic, meat.  Cook 5 min.
* Add tomatoes and stock and bring to boil.
* Slow cook for a couple hours.  (Stir occasionally.)
* Add beans about five minutes before finished.  (Naaaaah.)

Remembering NATIONAL LAMPOON

2011-01-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is the best book of 2010.

It's not just the pantheon of writers and artists that created the best American humor magazine ever. It's not just the special editions they published every year, along with the monthly mag.

It's not just the writers who acted in or wrote the Lampoon movies.

It's not just the single best parody of high school yearbooks.

It's not just the topical humor or skewering covers.

It's not just Mr. Mike, who went on to SNL during the heyday of Lampoon.

It's not just the second best Lampoon movie.

Or the best cover.

Or the best Lampoon movie . . . for years the top-grossing comedy ever made.

It's an aggregate. It's the whole. It's everything.

For a brief shining moment -- okay, a long, shining moment that lasted just over a decade -- Lampoon kicked America's collective ass. Lampoon lasted longer than that -- technically, products are still appearing with the Lampoon name on them -- but it was 1970 until about 1983 that Lampoon had a stranglehold on American comedy -- and then, suddenly, it was gone, never again to return to its sacrilegious, sophomoric glory.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is as close to a comprehensive The Best of Lampoon book that we're ever going to get. It looks at the magazine not as one big collective volume, but as the product of singular individuals -- and here the best pieces from Lampoon are presented chronologically -- mostly -- by author or artist, the true foci of this book. It's all about the creators and what they did --the subtitle is The Writers and Artists who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great.

And that's the whole truth. The whole is better than the individual pieces (although there are certain pieces that I'll never forget, especially Letters from the Editors, the Tales of the Adelphian Lodge, Kit and Kaboodle (the precursors to Itchy and Scratchy), and the original "Vacation" story by John Hughes, which is not about Roy Wally, but about Walt Disney). And this book celebrates the whole through the lens of each individual creator.

If you were a teen in the '70s, you know exactly what impact this magazine had on our generation, not to mention our culture. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead captures the long gone magic, the forgotten heresies, the rudeness, the nudeness, the 100% absolute funny. The '80s are not so much highlighted -- hell, John Hughes and "Vacation" aren't really mentioned -- because the '70s is where it all really happened. Doug Kenney, Animal House's Stork, who "walked off a mountain" in Hawaii. Michael O'Donoghue, the guy on SNL who did impressions of Sinatra, Presley and Tony Orlando and Dawn . . . with "steel needles, say, um, fifteen, eighteen inches long -- with real sharp points," jabbed into their eyes. Gahan Wilson, legendary Playboy and NL cartoonist of the macabre. Sam Gross. Sean Kelly. Ann Beatts. Tony Hendra. P. J. O'Rourke. There are so many, most of whom you've never heard of, but who still write and produce almost anonymously, and wonderfully.

They're mostly all here in a celebration of satire, the likes of which will never again be seen on a monthly basis. Hell, even Mad has gone quarterly now.

The Seventies.

It was the worst of times --

-- but Lampoon made it the best.

Books from the Outer Rim: FULL DARK, NO STARS

2011-01-11T19:32:00.002-05:00

Like every anthology, Stephen King's latest book, Full Dark, No Stars, is a mixed bag of dark wonders. Not one of the four stories included is as lyrical or evocative as the book's title -- and that's a shame, because I've seen King write sentences that shook me to the core or nailed me with perfection. There are some shining moments here, certainly; but they do not shine half as brightly as "The Mist," "The Body," or any of the stories in King's first and uber-primal collection, Night Shift.

Reviewers are calling these four stories brutal, and King himself refers to them in his Afterword -- the best part of the book -- as harsh and visceral. He's accurate. Only one of these stories involves the supernatural, and all of them revolve around horrors and deeds that are as real -- and as visceral -- as blood spurting from a gaping wound, or rats gnawing through rotting flesh.

Madness and death. That's what the stories in Full Dark, No Stars are all about. Can you get more brutal than that?

Like most anthologies, this one follows a very basic structure. Actually, this one is perfect -- it only has four stories, and they exemplify the structure of a typical anthology:

Story #1 "1922" B+

Story #2 "Big Driver" C+

Story #3 "Fair Extension" C

Story #4 "A Good Marriage" A

As you can tell, the best story is usually saved for last, but anthologies still have to open with a very strong story to hook the reader. The middle stories, no matter how many, are usually structured in a rising/falling format, like a staircase, all leading up to the A story -- the Big Finish. (Personal note: I think the story titles here are pretty dull. Steve's done much better, titlewise.)

Story #1, "1922," is strong. Really strong. Actually, I consider it the best tale in the book; but King, obviously, disagrees, by placing it at the opening. "1922" takes place in rural Nebraska -- in a town King used to great effect in The Stand, and which, I suppose, ties this story to that universe of evil and supernatural armageddon. But there is no supernatural in this tale -- only death and madness, and slow, Midwestern lives as empty as the Nebraska plains. This is King possessed by Poe, and the stark setting is a much a character -- perhaps even stronger -- as the protagonist, who, in the first paragraph, confesses to murdering his wife.

There's a good moment of freak out in "Big Driver," when the main character, a rape victim, is left for dead in a roadside culvert. Otherwise, this is a typical story of revenge -- typical in the way that King's most recent fiction has turned: realistic and fairly predictable, with characters that are rounded out just enough to satisfy short attention span readers.

The only story to turn into King's trademark world of living dead girls, ghosts, psychic children and otherworldly beasts from beyond our ken is "Fair Extension," a deal-with-the-devil tale that isn't very original, nor memorable. The devil guy is named . . . Elvid.

Come on, Steve.

What would you do if you discovered a box of trophies in the garage that proved your spouse was a serial killer? That's what happens to Darcy Anderson in the final story, "A Good Marriage." It's a hell of a premise, but it's not much of a story. From the opening sentence, King fills the action with background and unnecessary exposition that do nothing to move the story along. It's modern King at his weakest, and it screams that he needs a good editor who isn't afraid to cut.

Full Dark, No Stars isn't bad. It's just weak. The light seems to be going out. Read 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Carrie and Night Shift for King at his most primal, most energetic -- and his most brilliant.

Books from the Outer Rim: U.S.S. ENTERPRISE OWNERS' WORKSHOP MANUAL

2011-01-10T18:31:00.002-05:00

The real star wasn't Kirk or Picard or even Spock.

The real star received more fan mail than all the actors combined.

The real star of Star Trek was and still is the Starship Enterprise -- and what she represents to the earth-bound viewers who dream about sailing on her across the seas of space.

The first official book (official meaning licensed by Paramount) was the Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual, which blew away Trek fans when it appeared 36 years ago. It was filled with diagrams and schematics of the original Enterprise of Kirk and Spock, cutaways of tricorders, phasers, McCoy's medical equipment, Uhura's earpiece . . . In short, the book filled a void in the years between 1969 and 1979, when original Star Trek stories were few and far between.

published in 1975

We've had many other books and products since then. The original Manual is now looked at as apocryphal and completely unofficial.

This title, however, was just released, and it struck me because of the packaging and the concept's sense of humor.

I worked retail at Waldenbooks way back when -- when malls were the big thing -- and I remember the shelves of Haynes repair manuals for Mustangs and VWs and even Pintos. The people behind this newest Trek book have done a good job using the Haynes template as a base and evolving the rest of the contents for the 24th century starship fan. The graphics are excellent, including cutaway diagrams and CGI that fill the book with beautiful and -- okay, I'll say it -- fascinating -- color illustrations.

The book covers all the starships called Enterprise, and even though a lot of the material here is available elsewhere, the graphics are what make this book perfect for casual Trek fans and completists.

It's just fun -- and . . .

Books from the Outer Rim: THE SHERLOCKIAN

2010-12-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

It doesn't say anything good about a book when the best thing you can say is, The dust jacket is great.

But that's the situation with The Sherlockian, a novel by Graham Moore, told in alternating chapters between a 1900 mystery involving Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and a present-day mystery involving incoming Baker Street Irregular Harold White.

The dust jacket is evocative of the traditional Holmes oeuvre, yet also contemporary with a die-cut bloodstain, giving a hint of the hidden, crimson silhouette of Holmes embossed on the front cover. Good stuff.

It's a shame that the novel, however interesting if you're a true Holmes fan, is simply non-engaging -- and I'm a Holmes fan. Two pairs of the Holmes-Watson dynamic, their intertwining narratives taking place in both 1900 and today, do not add up to the originals, or even to the derivative Holmes novels of Meyer, Estleman or Saberhagen. And the nods to both the historical facts regarding Doyle's lost diary and the basic tenets of the Holmes stories are fun, but aren't good enough to either demand a sequel, or to consider this a groundbreaking pastiche or homage -- whichever you prefer.

Bottom line: The Sherlockian did not meet my expectations. But I do ask a lot of fiction. If you're a diehard Holmesian, read it -- and I hope you enjoy it.

I just wish I had.

Poster Parodies for the Holidays #9: AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

2010-12-24T15:24:00.000-05:00

The last movie mashup before Christmas, from my friend, Tom Gale . . .

Time is always against us and no time is this more apparent than during the holiday season. It is ironic that the busiest holiday should fall so close to the shortest day of the year. What's up with that? Wouldn't it have been so much more sensible to put this time of year into summer when the days are long and there is plenty of extra sunlight around to make holiday preparations so much easier? And without school in session and people already taking vacations, there would be plenty of time for being together and visiting and traveling and taking the holiday at a leisurely pace. Someone messed up when they put Christmas on Christmas Day, or rather when they put it all in December and then to make matter worse stuck Thanksgiving right ahead of it, making this four weeks of hustle, bustle, and something else that doesn't rhyme with either. Sometimes it would be really nice to posses Kris Kringle's apparent ability to fold the very fabric of space time to allow the localized black hole that would be scientifically necessary for delivering gifts to all the world's households in a single night (and that's assuming that the jolly old elf happens to have a completely accurate census of every corner of the Earth). Federal bureaucrats take note: save money next census and just buy Santa's list outright; I'm sure he'd be happy to black out the nice/naughty entries in the interest of protecting the innocent and an additional income source is always helpful even for Santa's manufacturing and delivery operations.

The bottom line, though, is that the whole Christmas season is chock full of mystery, miracle, and magic. Whether you are focused on the more secular elements of gift-giving and family and feasting and friendship, or the more religious elements of light in darkness and the birth of a soul savior so long ago and praise for the miracle of life out of death this is after all a fitting time of year for it reminds the heart that despite the long dead winter ahead new life is always waiting for us if we keep our doors open to it. Such elements would cease to have meaning in the midst of the long indolent and comfortable summer; they best serve us when we are looking the cold, harsh future square in the face as we do around this time of year.

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Poster Parodies for the Holidays #8: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

2010-12-20T13:39:00.000-05:00

With this Christmas mashup, my pal Tom Gale plays with a movie -- and a simply magnificent poster -- that I absolutely adore . . . so much so that I even refer to this film's Amazon boat in the novel I just completed (The Enigma Club, which I'm circulating to agents; so if you're an agent, "Hi. Call me."). This movie is a certified Universal classic, and I hear it's slated to be remade and updated for the 21st century ADHD generation. I liked the new Wolfman, so I hope they make this reboot equally as good -- hell, I'll give it a shot, no matter what.

Here's Tom:

Had to take a few days off from the series to concentrate on our annual Nutcracker* which took up a few long days and nights, and then try to get our own Christmas dressings from storage so we could finally begin to see some of our own Christmas spirit around the house. As always seems to happen, we get so busy this time of year producing holiday celebrations for everyone else that sometimes we lose sight of the very thing we are celebrating and succumb to a bit of humbug ourselves. From the middle of October straight through to Christmas break, we are usually overwhelmed with responsibilities and an array of things we have to do; concerts, recitals, plays, meetings, events we produce and even on nights off, events we turn around and attend. By now we are feeling a bit out of breath and short of spirit.

But this year with time and money short again, we resort to what is nearly becoming a tradition, of keeping Christmas itself a low-key, economical, and hopefully family oriented observance. We keep present giving to a single small gift and numerous inexpensive and often humorous stocking stuffers. We will attend Christmas Eve service, then drive around the neighborhoods playing Christmas music in the car and looking at all the holiday light displays. Home to hot chocolate and perhaps a gift, then off to bed for some well deserved sleep. In the morning it's time to lounge in our pajamas, drink coffee, eat orange rolls fresh from the oven, and laugh at our stocking gifts; we might even watch a Christmas movie or two. What will be most important will be that we will be taking time to be together, just the three of us, for a time; to celebrate what it means to have a family (whether large or small) that loves you no matter what else is going on outside the walls of where you call home; be it a bungalow or an apartment, or a manger.

Presents? Sure, they're great. But if there is one thing that Christmas must surely teach us is that a gift from the heart can be nearly anything and usually something that money can't buy; the smell of fresh baked bread in the air, the feel of a hand-made comforter as you sip your coffee, a story read aloud, the lingering tingle of a special kiss. In a season full of opening things, perhaps the best thing we can open is our hearts. Like the Christ Child, such wonderful miracles may come from such a little thing.

Merry Christmas,

Tom

PS. Those who know me well have known all along that I would never be able to complete this series without using this poster. I try not to disappoint.

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* Tom Gale is the managing director of the Center for the Arts at River Ridge in New Port Richey, Florida. I urge you to friend the Center on Facebook . . . and support your locals arts organizations.

Poster Parodies for the Holidays #7: THE 39 STEPS

2010-12-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

This time, during the Christmas season of the 50th anniversary of Psycho, mi amigo Tom Gale takes a holiday look at the poster for one of Hitchcock's earlier films . . .

It's tough to stay away from Hitchcock films in a project like this because, besides the fact that the films themselves are so good, the poster designs for even his early films are vibrant, dramatic, and well composed; perfect vehicles for a little holiday parodying. "The 39 Steps" is a particular favorite film of mine in a vein similar to "The Thin Man"; a terrific pairing of leading man and woman with great chemistry amidst a fast-paced and well written script. The movie introduces one of Hitchcock's favorite themes, the innocent man on the run, and like "North by Northwest", the character is "forced" to share his journey of discovery with a beautiful stranger. Not the stuff of tragedies when you get a look at the companions.

Still in all, Robert Donat, the hero in "The 39 Steps" certainly doesn't have an easy time of solving the mystery in order to save his freedom, his life, and the British government as well. Despite being handcuffed to the beautiful and strong-willed Madeleine Carroll, his quest is fraught with danger and discomfort, although punctuated with just the right amount of humor. My favorite scene is when Donat runs into a meeting hall to escape the police only to find himself mistaken for the principal speaker and forced to give an impromptu speech of support for a political candidate he doesn't even know. The fact that the audience is none the wiser throughout the speech makes for a terrific tongue in cheek poke at provincial politics.

The movie is very loosely based on a book by John Buchan, which I read as part of a hard cover mystery series I bought a forgotten number of years ago, but which still are removed occasionally from their packing boxes for an unhurried and unstrenuous visit. If the movie doesn't quite follow the book, it does have the advantage of making Buchan's tenuous plot a bit more believable by resolving several all too convenient coincidences with some sensible plot development. Hitchcock was too good a director not too fix some of the novel's irritating problems.

That said, I heartily recommend "The 39 Steps" for some easy and fun Christmas mystery viewing. Be careful, though, because a number of DVD releases of this film are taken from inferior film prints with soundtracks that make it harder than need be to understand the dialogue. I have read that the Criterion restored version is superior in both video and audio quality, although I haven't had a chance to see that version. If you want to enjoy this film, don't settle for less.

Merry Christmas!

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Books from the Outer Rim: THE AVENGERS - A CELEBRATION

2010-12-13T18:30:00.228-05:00

Whenever a new book about The Avengers comes out, I have to get it.

I don't mean Marvel's supergroup. They are nothing. They aren't real heroes. Not to me.

I mean the British Avengers. Agents extraordinary. Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.

John Steed, top professional. Emma Peel, talented amateur.

When I was a kid, I watched reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club and Superman, and the first run of the Adam West Batman, and loved them all. But when I was seven or so, The Avengers popped up on ABC, and it captivated me in a way nothing ever had before.

It appealed to me, I think, not just because of the stories, but because it was intelligent and suave and good. It was the first show that I knew was smart, and, somehow, I responded to it.

It disappeared from the national airwaves a couple of years later, but I always remembered Steed and Peel, their sense of humor, their flirting, and, especially, Steed's 1920s Bentleys.

It took 14 or 15 years for the show to get to Hampton in syndication, but I had never forgotten my favorite spies. And when WVEC started showing all the Dianna Rigg and Tara King episodes at 1:00 am -- or later -- every Saturday, I stayed up, and my Betamax was ready.

Now all the Steed and Peel episodes are available on DVD, and Maria and I watch them religiously. There's one we watch every December, "Too Many Christmas Trees," that is lovely and silly and Christmasy and wonderful. These DVDS make up for the awful, awful 1998 movie they made with Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes; so get the DVDs . . . and I suggest you try to find a used copy of the 1990 novel, Too Many Targets, which is the newest original Avengers story, and a good one, too, co-written by a veteran novelist and THE authority on all things Avengers, Dave Rogers.

I think this was the British cover.

2011 is the 50th anniversary of The Avengers, and a new book from Titan is a photographic scrapbook of the original Avengers, filled with trivia and ultra-rare photos that every Avengers fan need to own.

The Avengers: A Celebration covers the first years as much as possible. It was Steed and Keel, then -- Keel was Dr. David Keel, played by Ian Hendry, just off of the British show Police Surgeon. Unfortunately, most of the Steed/Keel episodes are now lost, but this book has published as many stills -- both onstage and behind the scenes photos -- as the author, Marcus Hearn, could find.

Hendry was replaced by Pussy Galore. Honor Blackman stepped in as Steed's first female partner, Cathy Gale -- and the chemistry between the two caught the attention of the UK. (Coincidentally, in the Christmas episode I mentioned earlier, Steed gets a Christmas card from Mrs. Gale, who was then at Fort Knox. This was an in-joke: Honor Blackman was then filming Goldfinger, part of which took place at Fort Knox.)

Never seen this photo before. Looks like it could have been taken yesterday -- just substitute a very young Diana with Katy Perry, Lindsey Lohan or any Victoria's Secret model.

The Avengers that most people remember, however, are the Diana Rigg years. Mrs. Emma Peel -- named because of the character's planned appeal to men . . . M appeal -- quickly surpassed Mrs, Gale's popularity and became the standard of style and sophistication on British TV.

The Avengers: A Celebration lavishly showcases the Rigg years as "The Avengers that modern audiences know and love." And deservedly so. These were the years that surpassed what had gone before and what would come later. Everything about it meshed, and the smiles, the lines, the comedy, the action, the sexual tension between the characters, and the sheer joy that could be seen on the screen, propelled The Avengers into cult tv legend.

There are other, more thorough books about the show -- look up Avengers or Dave Rogers on Amazon and turn over your charge card. But this volume is the only one that gives us an insight into the day-to-day filming, along with a multitude of wonderful, never-seen-before photos that capture a slice of 1960s tv/film production. along with a heavy dose of '60s pop culture. The Foreword by Patrick Macnee is a lovely reminiscence from the singular star of the show, and I suggest that, if you have an Avengers fan in your family, order this book now from Amazon or Barnes & Noble so that it's delivered in time for Christmas.

This is the perfect coffee table book for every man who's a secret, debonair spy, and for every woman who longs to wear a black leather catsuit.

The Avengers are still very much missed. It's been twelve years since its unfortunate revival.

Isn't it time for the bowler and brolly to return?

Poster Parodies for the Holidays #6: AN INDIANA JONES XMAS

2010-12-12T17:57:00.000-05:00

This time around, my friend, Tom Gale, doesn't have much to say. I guess he put it all in the artwork . . .

Halfway through the 12 Greetings of Christmas. I may actually make it all the way to twelve this year.

I doubt there is really anything I can add to this greeting other than to say, " May everyone have a peaceful and meaningful Christmas this year. And God bless us everyone."

Merry Christmas.

Tom

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Poster Parodies for the Holidays #5: The City that Never Sleeps

2010-12-11T09:58:00.002-05:00

The fifth in Tom Gale's series of Adapted-Just-In-Time-for-Christmas movie posters!

What is the city that never sleeps? Various cities around the world have claimed the title including Las Vegas, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, and Bangkok. But the one that most Americans know by that title is our own New York City, The Big Apple itself. Of course a city of any size can realistically lay claim to the idea that it never rolls up the pavements, but NYC is somewhat unique in its wide variety and scope of things to do around the clock. More than just a corner pharmacy stays open 24 hours in that town. New York's insomnia has been referenced in song (Frank Sinatra) and cinema (1924 The City That Never Sleeps directed by Jame Cruze). Even as early as 1912, the phrase was popularly connected to New York enough to be referenced in a Fort Wayne News article describing the city's grand new gas plant that would also make it the city that never grew dark.

So it's a bit of a surprise that the 1953 film of that name, starring Gig Young and Edward Arnold, referred not to NYC but to Chicago. No other connection between The Windy City and that moniker seems to exist which may suggest that the film wasn't the biggest box office smash of 1953. If you are interested, two films tied that year for the biggest box office grosses. They were The Robe and Peter Pan. Reviews that I found were not very complimentary, calling it at best "whimsical" and at worst, "hardly more than adequate". So it's not a memorable example of the noir genre of gritty realism, dirty urban settings, and despicable characters. The story follows a cop who is weary with the world through which he wanders listlessly and planning to make a break to a new life (which the audience immediately knows is an act of shallowness that will haunt him should he act on his impulses). As luck, or fate, would have it, his intended last night on the job turns out to lead him to self-realization (much like the far more noble George Bailey of It's a Wonderful Life) and a reaffirmation of the seed of goodness that had been push down deep into his heart.

This season seems to be one time of year, no matter which of the seven major holidays are being celebrated, when redemption and forgiveness are traditionally looked to for the re-invigoration of tired hearts and souls. That every story of this season has, as its villain, an unrepentant humbug who must first learn to forgive himself so he can accept the forgiveness of others, shows the remarkable resilience of this theme in western culture and certainly in modern times. Most of these antagonists are not evil but simply those who have forgotten what is important in life. It is the nature and indeed the reason for this season to serve as a reminder of just that. It is no mistake, I think, that the Christmas season begins with Thanksgiving, for how can we truly give and forgive without first understanding how thankful we must be for what we have? Even George Bailey forgot how much he truly had because he became too wrapped up in what he had "lost".

City That Never Sleeps may not be a great tale, but even in its mediocrity, it can serve to remind us that redemption is simply a matter of viewing life as a collection of gains rather than as a collection of losses. Meaning cannot be imposed upon us as Ebeneezer Scrooge discovered; the ghosts of Christmas did nothing but to show him what was already all around him so that he, by his own volition, could discover what was inside. The dark and gritty landscape of the big city may seem impossible to navigate, but in truth, everywhere you turn is a door behind which is a warm, well-lit room waiting to welcome and forgive. And the first door, is always your own.

Merry Christmas.

Tom

Now go to sleep.

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Books from the Outer Rim: THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK

2010-12-10T17:41:00.025-05:00

The advance praise heaped upon Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is more than impressive. It's incredible. One of my favorite fantasists, Michael Moorcock -- a writer I think is better than Tolkien ever was (I know: HERESY) -- called it "the best debut novel I have read in ages."

Excerpts from other reviews:

glorious amount of detail

worldbuilding

wacky inventiveness

genre to a new level

what Steampunk is or should be

Right.

Hyperboblurbs.

Why, then, is this novel so undeserving of the praise?

Simple.

Its superficial and unique beauty masks its utterly flawed nature.

In short, it's pretty, especially to fans of the steampunk genre. But it just doesn't mean much in the end, and it takes forever to get there.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is the first in a series that takes the historical figures of Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne, places them in an alternate Victorian, steampunk Earth, and gives them the roles that would normally be filled by Holmes and Watson. The strange affair they have to solve is based on the historical record of England's Spring Heeled Jack in the mid 1800s. Here, though, it's all given a steam-driven, technological and temporal twist, which is fascinating to sf, fantasy and steampunk fans -- and perhaps the concept is much more interesting than the finished product.

The narrative is overwritten, and is much more interested in Victorian-era language and atmosphere than in anything else. Characterization, especially through the use of dialogue, is heavy-handed and amateurish. This certainly reads like a first novel, and one that could have used considerable editing, especially in regard to the "glorious amount of detail." Elaine P. English, a literary agent, wrote recently in her blog about the awkward placement of history in fiction:

The main mistakes I see with this type of writing are stories with too many historical details inorganically inserted throughout the text, so concerned with sounding authentic that the overall tone is very distant and, frankly, rather boring to anyone who’s not a diehard history fan.

Spring Heeled Jack is guilty of too much fictional history -- of too much worldbuilding. Ordinarily, this would be a good thing. But here the worldbuilding and the atmospheric language -- pseudo-Victorian verisimilitude -- detract greatly from the story and the plotting. It gets in the way of the action, muddying scenes like the proverbial London fog.

Hodder has come up with an intriguing concept, and one that I was eager to read. I like some of his "wacky inventiveness" -- the foul-mouthed parakeets, the character of the Beetle -- but these are decent ideas that don't propel the story -- and too much of it simply bogs the story down. There's too much verisimilitude and too little of worth.

I need my stories with more . . . well, story. This will most definitely appeal to ardent steampunkers, but if inventiveness is what all "Steampunk is or should be" then I don't need any more of it.

It was a chore to read -- and reading should be a pleasure, not work.

Poster Parodies for the Holidays #4: 2001

2010-12-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

So far, this is my favorite of Tom Gale's Christmas posters, which twists classic movie posters into a little something for the holidays. In true form, Tom also makes you think -- and his comments below have made me think so much, I'll blog my own comments a little later.

Here's Tom with a science fiction classic . . .

Somehow I managed to see Star Wars AFTER I saw Close Encounters of a Third Kind. In fact the only reason I saw Star Wars was because Richard Burton's Equus was sold out that night and Star Wars, which had been running forever by that time, was in the next theater and I thought, "What the heck." OK, so I almost missed being in on the biggest space movie craze of all time; but I had good reasons. I was still heavily into science fiction at the time and felt, wrongly but honestly, that worthy films in the genre were the strictly serious ones. It had all began, of course, with "2001: A Space Odyssey" a few years before. Soon after it was "The Andromeda Strain" then "Silent Running" sometime in the mid-seventies and finally "Close Encounters" just weeks before I encountered the Star Wars phenomena. So I was wrong about "Star Wars" and thankful I was dragged in to see it on its first run. But "2001 A Space Odyssey" still holds a special place in my heart as a uniquely disquieting and utterly beautiful "serious" movie experience.

I admit that Kubrick film, perhaps like my writing and accordion solos, is an acquired taste. Slow going in many places to the point of torpidity, the film seems to crawl through vast distances of silence to a place that ultimately leaves us pondering the fact that the more we know the less we seem to understand. I remember many people leaving the theater after "Space Odyssey" either a bit miffed or outright puzzled, "What the heck was THAT all about?" But I had already read the book, so I went into the theater with an advantage and could settle back to just experience the film without having to make sense of it. I already knew somewhat where it was going. And so I settled back to enjoy the piece as spectacle and was simply bowled over. On the big screen it was staggeringly beautiful and its slow pace was exactly what made it majestic and overwhelming. Somewhat like "Koyaanisqatsi", the stunning and somewhat impenetrable film scored by Philip Glass, "2001" is a movie that you sit back and soak up as an experience of sight and sound. Leave the hustle bustle of life at the door; you can't hurry through this one.

But if you take the time, "2001" is extremely satisfying. And if you prefer your movies to have easier answers, then immediately after, watch Peter Hyman's more accessible and faster paced sequel, "2010: The Year We Make Contact." It's a completely different experience but it does fill in some gaps and has Roy Scheider and Helen Mirren who are always great to watch.

Of course this is a great metaphor for the season. The holidays are not to be rushed or hurried through, even though that's exactly what so many of us do. If we want to get the most out of the season, we need to experience it like "2001", slowly and thoughtfully, allowing the meaning of our celebration percolate through us and giving us time to savor and absorb. So try to find some time to slow down this holiday and leave the daily travails outside the door. Bundle up with your loved ones and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" then stick in "2001 a Space Odyssey." You can make a connection between the two if only you remember to keep focused on the stars.

Merry Christmas,

Tom

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Poster Parodies for the Holidays #3

2010-12-05T22:15:00.000-05:00

I took a film class with Tom Gale back at ODU in the dim, dark '70s, but I don't remember seeing this film there. Nevertheless, Tom has fond memories of it, and has had fun with the poster. Here's #3 in Tom's Christmas poster parodies.

For most of us there are certain movies that you get to see only if you frequent thoughtful repertory movie theaters, happen to be a movie history geek, or take a couple of film appreciation courses at the local community college. I saw "The Grand Illusion" while at Old Dominion University in the same film class where I saw "The Battleship Potemkin", Ingmar Bergman's "Persona", "Women in Love" and a host of other unforgettable examples film as art. The very fact that the common term for a film work is the diminutive "movie", (a way of denigrating the status of something by making it sound childish and unimportant, like "talkie" or "techie"), suggests that on average we look to the cinema for light escapism rather than meaningful contemplation. Of course there is not a thing wrong with great mindless entertainment as evidenced by the number of action and comedy flicks we have in our home DVD collection. I like Bruce Willis too! But it is a good practice every now and again to choose a film for an experience that involves us in the very best that cinema as an art form can achieve; make us ponder a larger reality and teach us something about ourselves.

Renoir's "Grand Illusion" is a film that not only earns its reputation as serious cinema, but exists in modern form as an example of miraculous restoration luck. The original negative, long considered lost to the destruction of World War Two, was still missing when Renoir himself helped remaster the film in the 50's using available prints. It was not until a film exchange between Russia and France in the mid-60's did the original finally surface and was available to use for the most current Criterion remastering. To watch the film in its contemporary format is to see it, as many were not able to, in as close to its original visual condition as possible. If ever there was an argument for having a large screen TV, this is a great one.

The poster, by the way, is not one of the few usually associated with the film. I think it is from an Italian release of the film, but it is, in my opinion, the best of the posters, graphically. Without this poster version, "The Grand Illusion" might have been overlooked for inclusion in this series. That would have been a shame. Please enjoy the review below found on the Rotten Tomatoes film review site where it enjoys a 97% fresh rating from reviewers and a 93% from viewers like you and me.

Perhaps this would make a perfect holiday gift for that special, thoughtful person in your life. Who says a date movie has to be about romance?

Merry Christmas,

Tom

"Perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Jean Renoir's ("The Rules of the Game") subdued masterpiece is perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made (some might prefer All Quiet on the Western Front). Uncannily, "Illusion" never showed one battle scene as it reflects on the first Great War in Europe. The first foreign film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar is framed around a simple WW1 POW escape narrative, but it suggests a more careful look at how it's also a pointed study of how upper class backgrounds, even in warring armies, offers a stronger bond of sympathy than even nationality. This is brought out through the deep regard the German commandant, Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), had for his captive, the senior French officer, Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), also an aristocrat and career professional military man.

The film offers a call for universal brotherhood and a plea for sanity in a world that doesn't know how to settle things without going to war. There never has been a time of a lasting peace. The Grand Illusion title, one that can mean many things, most likely is derived from the illusionary nature of the war's slogan that this was "The War to End All Wars." It's based on a true story of men Renoir knew when he was in the French Resistance, who told him of their escapes.

Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels considered this film cinematic enemy number one, and tried to destroy all copies. Fortunately he didn't succeed. The negative was taken during the German occupation of France in WWII and retaken when the Red Army seized Berlin. The Reds stored it in a hidden archive; several prints over the years were released. But it wasn't until recently that it was put together as it was originally intended by Michel Rocher and Brigitte Dutray, who upgraded it through use of modern technology. Criterion put out a fine version on DVD. The version I saw was the updated one, which was recently on TCM.

In 1916 French pilot Lt. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) is ordered by his superior, Captain de Boeldieu, to fly with him on a reconnaissance mission to get aerial photos. They are shot down and captured by Captain von Rauffenstein and invited by him to a hospitable dinner. They are later transferred to a POW camp for officers in Germany. There they meet Lt. Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), whose nouveau riche banking family sends him regularly food packages which he graciously shares with the others. The French prisoners are digging a hole for the last few months to escape. For relaxation they are allowed to put on a talent show and wear dresses. When Maréchal announces that the French captured the city of Douaumont, the prisoners take a break from their performances and in a grand patriotic gesture stand at attention and sing with pride "The Marseillaise." Afterwards Maréchal tries to escape and is brought back to solitary; he's released in time to be told that all the French officers are being transferred to another camp. When he tries to tell the British replacements about the tunnel, they don't understand French.

The narrative picks up with Maréchal and Boeldieu, after many escape attempts in different POW camps, transferred to a camp where Rauffenstein is the commandant. He has been severely wounded in battle and can no longer be in the front, but to serve his country he reluctantly takes this new assignment he dismisses in confidence to Boeldieu as being only a policeman's job. Rauffenstein is so fond of Boeldieu that he rooms him away from the other prisoners in his medieval castle and provides him companionship by also moving in Maréchal and Rosenthal. The later, Rauffenstein says, so they can eat properly. Rauffenstein treats de Boeldieu's at his word, because he is an aristocrat, but doesn't have the same respect for the working class auto mechanic Maréchal or the Jew Rosenthal.

The trio hide a rope and scheme to escape, but Boeldieu tells Maréchal and Rosenthal he will stay behind and cover for them because the plan would not be possible for all three to escape together. During the escape the noble Boeldieu is shot by Rauffenstein, as he offers himself up as a sacrifice so the two could escape. Before he dies Boeldieu forgives Rauffenstein, saying he did his duty and he would have done the same thing if things were reversed. The war is seen as a changing view of the social order where, according to the German aristocrat, the working class man and the dirty Jew return to freedom while the aristocrat will not because he's a member of a dying breed.

During their escape through the German wintry countryside, the two desperate and hungry men stumble upon an isolated farmhouse of a German war widow, whose hubby was killed in Verdun, Elsa (Dita Parlo) and her young daughter Lotte. Even though they don't speak the same language Elsa and Maréchal fall in love, and make plans to meet after the war if he survives. The men in the last scene make it to safety in neutral Switzerland by crossing the invisible border in a mountain covered with snow.

REVIEWED ON 4/17/2005 GRADE: A+

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ

http://www.sover.net/~ozus

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Poster Parodies for the Holidays #2

2010-12-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

From my friend, Tom Gale:

I haven't actually seen this movie although I have seen a whole bunch of B grade science fiction disaster films in my day. I grew up with them screening most Saturday afternoons along with The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. It was all part of being a generation growing up inside the fear bubble of nuclear war. I even had dreams of worldwide disaster; I'm sure many of us did. The whole 50's and early 60's craze of science-run-amok films grew out of our fears of nuclear destruction. Cinema is just a reflection of society's angst at the moment. And we had a lot to be afraid of in those days. Today we have zombie films. I'd tell you what part of our social consciousness they represent but then I would give away the heart of the doctoral dissertation I'm planning. I'll give you a hint though; it started when McDonald's went global with their first overseas franchise in Australia.

Social comment aside, this movie may actually be worth watching and not just by scyfy freaks (who by the way can't spell). The movie review web site, Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie an 83% fresh rating by reviewers and a 70% by regular viewers. That's good enough for me to put in an extra dollar for some popcorn.

Read the review below if you want or just enjoy the second entry in this year's holiday greetings. Whatever you do DON'T FORGET TO CHECK THE WATER.

Merry Christmas.Tom

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

June 11th, 2004 by Doug Cummings

I haven’t seen The Day After Tomorrow, and given its scathing reviews, I don’t intend to any time soon, but seeing Rialto’s new print of the original Godzilla (1954) last night (certainly a much smoother, dramatically coherent film than its American makeover), I found myself pondering end-of-the-earth films in general, and one my own favorite entries in the genre, Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), in particular.

Available as a superb DVD from Anchor Bay (with a beautiful widescreen transfer and Guest commentary), the movie is an unusually literate and thematically nuanced genre film. Peter Stenning (a sardonic Edward Judd) is a reporter for a major London newspaper who tries to work through emotional turmoil as a result of his recent divorce. His fast-talking coworkers, in a milieu not unlike a Hawks picture, critique his new drinking habit and diminishing job performance while quietly cutting him some slack and offering help whenever they can. As Stenning navigates his inner life and begins a new relationship with a sympathetic but independent woman, Jeannie Craig (Janet Monro), the newspaper staff begins to piece together evidence regarding London’s dramatically-shifting weather patterns that point toward nuclear testing and imminent worldwide disaster.

Val Guest co-wrote and directed the film. He was a competent craftsman within the British studio system with his share of successes (the Quatermass series) and flops (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth), but his early experience working in the London office of the Hollywood Reporter clearly must have inspired the authentic newsroom atmosphere in the film. The award-winning script was co-written by screenwriter/playwright Wolf Mankowitz, and the dialogue is surprisingly witty. When Stenning returns late to his office, his friend, science reporter Maguire (Leo McKern) sarcastically quips, “If you borrow my car at lunch, why bother to hurry back at 6:30?” “I saw my kid today,” Stenning muses. “She lets me see him from time to time, itís my legal right, you know.” Maguire nods, “Sandyís been screaming for you.” “Heís a nice kid, too,” Stenning continues, “remembered me after ten minutes.” Maguire proclaims, “The biggest experimental bang of all time is ten days old, but instead of being proud the public demands we stop it.” “Oh, I donít know,” Stenning shrugs, “the best science man on the street ought to be able to pull off a job like that. Make a trick film, maybe. Yeah, you know, the mushroom goes back into the bomb, the bomb goes back into the plane, which flies backwards over the task force, streaming back into the Antarctic.” “You better start climbing backwards to Sandyís office,” Maguire suggests.

But Guest also manages some visual flair. The film was shot in anamorphic widescreen, and the extended frame is always perfectly balanced with groups of people, city vistas, or detailed settings, whether bustling newsrooms, congested streets, or humid apartments. Although the film’s special effects aren’t particularly noteworthy, matte paintings and the incorporation of real London locations work to good atmospheric advantage (heavy rains buffet the windows; thick, unexpected fog wafts through the city; a raging hurricane crashes into the British coast). Guest also cleverly incorporates stock footage to depict floods and meteorological disasters worldwide. The visual style of the film is straightforward and classical, but each scene is rendered with a great degree of realism and sense of place.

The disaster genre is not generally known for its insights into characters or its clever dialogue, but The Day the Earth Caught Fire is an admirable exception. Its attention to the inner and outer lives of its protagonists makes its physical doom an externalized metaphor for Stenning’s personal life, off-kilter and spinning out of control, both fates equally weighted between hope and despair. My advice for those seeking end-of-the-world entertainment? Skip the multiplex this weekend and rent this intelligent and bittersweet film, fully deserving of a rediscovery.

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Poster Parodies for the Holidays #1

2010-12-01T20:21:00.003-05:00

Every year around this time, I start getting a series of emails from an old college bud who's now in Tampa. Tom Gale, theatrical artisitic director non pareil, usually takes classic pieces of art, Photoshops in a Christmas tree, has maniacal fun with Goya or Picasso or Gainsborough, and makes me laugh.

This year, he's changing things up. Merry Christmas from Tom and from me. I'll be presenting his works as I receive them, and there should be twelve this year, one for each day of Christmas...

So this year will mark a serious departure from the last seven years of Famous Artists Holiday Greetings for a number of reasons. In no particular order I have very little spare time this year for either imaging or background research. I have, for reasons of my own, been browsing through books about famous and infamous movies. This year I've spent a lot of time designing posters and fliers both big and small. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, my principal source book, The Annotated Mona Lisa, has just about fallen apart and I can't yet afford a new copy.

So instead of witty, hip, and topical parodies of famous works of art twisted into idiosyncratic and edgy holiday greeting ecards, this year you will be receiving witty, hip, and topical parodies of famous movie posters twisted into idiosyncratic and edgy holiday greeting ecards. Wow. Big difference.

Don't expect any deeply considered reviews or comparisons with other films or riffs on why the film did or did not make it onto AFI's top 100 films or Leonard Maltin's 100 Must See Movies List or really any list at all. Frankly, as Tommy Lee Jones said so well in The Fugitive, "I don't care." I expect the cards will stand on their own (at least they will if you print them out on heavy card stock and put a crease down the center) and if they make you chuckle or think then great. If they make you go see the movie in question or rent the DVD, even better. I am copying these to all the appropriate studios with a self addressed stamped envelope (who else would I get to address my envelope?) so they can send me royalty checks against all increased sales and viewings of these films due to the influence of my greetings. My business plan is modeled after the current plan for reducing the national debt and lifting the country out of its recession. I also just told Eric that his allowance won't go up for the next two years.

Be that as it may, I hope that these e-greetings will spread a little of the joy, wonder, and bemusement of the season. The heck with the Christmas Parade in NYC or black Friday in October, this marks the TRUE start of the holiday season. The best is yet to come.

Happy Holidays.

Tom

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From the Outer Rim #4: ECHO by Jack McDevitt

2010-11-30T21:45:00.003-05:00

If you read a lot of mysteries, then you already know what a MacGuffin is.

MacGuffin (n.)

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained. (Wikipedia)

There are MacGuffins in a lot of science fiction novels, too, and in Jack McDevitt's latest novel, Echo, the MacGuffin is a stone tablet engraved with indecipherable characters, found abandoned in a yard on a human-colonized planet thousands of years in the future. At this time, our endeavors throughout space have uncovered only one other intelligent alien species, the Muties. So if the tablet wasn't engraved by us or by the Muties, then . . . there's someone else out there. (By coincidence, this story is breaking right now...)

The origin of the tablet is the mystery that propels Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath, antiquities dealers and accidental adventurers, into deep space, and Echo offers us a classic, if not near perfect, MacGuffin -- mysterious, impenetrable, and deeply evocative of the unknown.

Echo is space opera for the 21st century -- a Star Trek that's much less militaristic and where the wonders of future technology are less technobabble than they are the normal workings of everyday life. Homes come with AI valets who answer the comm, read your mail, turn your lights on and off, and do research for you on the interstellar Web. The superluminal starships in McDevitt's Alex Benedict series -- as in his Priscilla Hutchins series -- are also operated via AIs, and require a minimum amount of crew to maintain their operational integrity.

This is a space-faring future where we have attained the stars, and the Milky Way is just a galactic neighborhood.

McDevitt, as a writer, is clear and precise, and his prose is polished and clean. Stephen King has called him "the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke."

He's wrong. McDevitt is a far better prose writer than Asimov ever was, but not yet as visionary as Clarke.

Echo is McDevitt's 2010 novel -- he gets one published once a year, and each one is welcome. But if his books have any one single problem -- especially nowadays -- it's that they have become very comfortable, like a mystery series one comes to depend on for the usual murders, thrills, chills, and satisfying and moral conclusion.

This disappoints me a great deal. I see in McDevitt's sentences a James Lee Burke of science fiction just waiting to burst out. Why Burke? He's a noir writer, and his descriptive passages bring magic into our mundane, crime-ridden world.

Burke creates a world that comes alive through his tactile sense of description. McDevitt writes with almost scientific prose, and is short on evocative description.

He writes SF Noir.

I could be wrong, but I think that a novel a year actually hinders McDevitt's growth as a writer. Don't get me wrong -- having an annual McDevitt story is wonderful. But for all his awards and accolades, I think McDevitt has an epic science fiction tapestry inside of him that could far surpass Asimov and Clarke, if he could nurture it properly. His most recent novels -- Chindi, Omega, Polaris, and the non-series Time Travelers Never Die -- are impeccably written and great space operas. But on a conceptual level they feel . . . minor. Good stories, but somehow missing hugely dramatic heart. Scale.

I'd love to see McDevitt write a huge, sprawling, self-contained epic, whether one book or four.

Echo is a MacGuffin -- just the latest MacGuffin from Jack McDevitt that keeps us rolling with each novel. I think it's time for his next MacGuffin to lead us to realms unknown, galaxies undiscovered, alien races undreamed of and magnificent destinies unexplored.

McDevitt is, I think, better than he knows -- and much deeper and richer than his recent books.

Jack, I say: Time to bring it on.

From the Outer Rim #3: Star Island

2010-11-24T11:35:00.003-05:00

My introduction to the novels of Carl Hiaasen came with the publication of his first book, Tourist Season, in 1986. I was then -- as I am now -- completely enamored with everything that makes up South Florida; and reading a crime/mystery/comic novel about Miami, that also captured the wild kinetics of the northernmost capital of South America, was a natural. And it was supposed to be the funniest novel of the year.

I tried to get into Tourist Season three separate times -- and that was the last strike. It did nothing for me. At all. It was a void. I couldn't read it. At all. And it wasn't funny. At all.

I have only a few rules. Never eat anything at a strip club. Never walk naked into a cold doorknob. Never stand beneath a thirty-foot tall water buffalo. And: The three literary strikes rule.

And so I put it on the shelf, and moved on.

Fast forward to 1993.

Despite my initial disinterest in his writing, Hiaasen had been racking up the best sellers, and I picked up his new Strip Tease in the bookstore and decided to give it my ultimate Should I bother with this book? test.

I read the first line.

Nice.

I finished the first paragraph.

Then --

I stood there and read and read, my neck slowly aching, a big smile widening on my face, and then I burst out in laughter at the end of the chapter and said, "Yeah, I'm buying this one."

Funny stuff. Insane funny stuff.

Strip Tease opened the door for me, and I finally devoured Tourist Season with its angry eco-terrorist, Skip Wiley -- and it was great!

Fast forward to 2010. I've now read all of Hiaasen's novels, save for Lucky Girl and his children's books. Like Tourist Season 24 years beforehand, I could not get into Lucky Girl. It just wasn't very funny. Three times I tried. Three times I put it down.

The Rule.

And now, Star Island -- a wacky, zany ensemble novel surrounding the secret double of Cherry Pye, a Lindsay Lohan-esque starlet, who is kidnapped by a paparazzi. It's filled with unique characters that have become a Hiaasen trademark, such as Chemo, who has a weed-whacker attached to one arm (he first appeared in Hiaasen's Skin Tight) and Skink, a former Florida governor who has gone eco-native, and who appears in about every other Hiaasen novel, much to my delight.

Star Island is sure to engage dedicated Hiaasen fans -- really, it's more of Hiaasen's brand, and that's what fans want: the Brand -- but despite the characters, the crisp dialogue, the presence of Skink -- who deserves his own damn book, Carl! -- and the over-the-top action, Star Island has one major and, to me, unforgivable flaw.

Like its predecessor, Lucky Girl . . . it's just not funny.

Missing is the wicked insight and satire of Native Tongue, which skewers Florida's Disney World mentality. Missing are the set scenes and characterizations that cracked me up in Strip Tease, like Congressman Dilbeck -- "My boots are full of Vaseline," says Dilbeck one night, his only other clothing a black cowboy hat. -- or the opening chapter, where a drunk patron at the Eager Beaver (love it) staggers onto the stage and plants his fingers worshipfully into a stripper's butt cheeks. Missing is the wicked glee the reader experiences as tourists are killed (deservedly?) by strangulation with rubber alligators in Tourist Season.

Star Island is more of the same, yet it's empty of the soul his better novels have: a soul of respect for the protagonists and their causes -- a soul that reaches out to readers and pulls them in.

It's story with little heart -- much like Cherry Pye herself, who is all ADHD action and little consciousness -- and that's Star Island's fatal, empty flaw.

* * * * *

Star Island at Amazon.
Carl Hiaasen's website.

From the Outer Rim #2: Recipes Every Man Should Know

2010-11-23T00:22:00.052-05:00

Last year, Stuff Every Man Should Know was published by Quirk Books. It’s a slender volume of how-to articles, tips and trivia: How to Hold a Baby, Tips for the Grill, How to Read the Stock Index, Facts and Notes About Wine, Jokes for the Office, a Date, and the Kids, and Five Pick-Up Lines in Five Different Languages.

It’s a great little book -- a starter for a bunch of other manly, how-to books out in bookstores, but still very cool in its own right. However, I’m much more interested in its companion volume that just came out: Recipes Every Man Should Know.

Like its predecessor, Recipes is tiny, but it is PACKED with cool little recipes for basic foods that, well, every man should know how to cook. A Great Cup of Joe, Better-Than-IHOP-Pancakes, Popcorn Toppings, Bacon Brownies, Eight Essential Sandwiches, Lobster with Beer and Butter Sauce, Six Classic Cocktails, and Spaghetti and Meatballs, Sunday-Gravy Style, as inspired by the kitchen scene in The Godfather.

The recipes here aren't only inspired choices, but they're perfect for men who don't have a lot of time -- nor the inclination -- to spend their lives in the kitchen. They're simple, down, dirty and delicious. And the graphics for How to Carve a Turkey and Kitchen Tools are exactly what us neanderthal, visually-oriented dudes need.

If this primer to men's cooking leads to other, more thorough cookbooks -- such as Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens and Will Cook for Sex -- then go for it.

This is a great place to start building your Man-Kitchen. Here's the link.