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Quote of the day.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

I have loved that quote ever since I first read it in Martin Gardner’s annotated The Innocence of Father Brown. Gardner carries the quote out a bit more:

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

When somebody says something like “I’ve never understood why horror films exist at all.” it kind of bothers me. And this quote is why: this is what good horror does. It reminds us “these limitless terrors had a limit”.

Likewise, I remember people arguing that “Boyz in the Hood” deserved an Academy Award more than “Silence of the Lambs” because “‘Boyz in the Hood’ is about something.” You know what? “Silence of the Lambs” is about something, too: it’s about that Chesterton quote. Buffalo Bill is the bogey man, and Clarice Starling is the knight of God. Even the climax reflects this idea: “…there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

Posted in Books, Movies | Comments Closed

Thematically appropriate Twitter.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2018

Thematically appropriate for Halloween, anyway.

I have at least a passing familiarity with modern horror, mostly from hanging around with Lawrence. So this Twitter thread would have had me snorting beverages out my nose if I had been unwise enough to be drinking at the time.

Sample (scroll up and down in the thread to catch them all):

(I know this is a few months old, but hattip to Morlock Publishing who retweeted it yesterday.)

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Obit watch: September 23, 2018.

Sunday, September 23rd, 2018

Over the weekend, I was rewatching parts of “Project Grizzly” and I got to wondering what Troy Hurtubise was up to. I’d kind of lost track of him after the whole “Angel Light” thing.

Sadly, and completely unknown to me until yesterday, Mr. Hurtubise passed away in June, as the result of an automobile accident.

This is a damn shame. I’m extremely skeptical of “Angel Light” and “R-Light” (for obvious reasons), but Trojan armor seems like a logical extension of both the Ursus suits and the protective gear worn by bomb squad technicians. Firepaste doesn’t strike me as being too out there, either. I remember reading a book a while back about a famous magician who helped the Allies develop deception tactics during WWII. In his spare time, this guy also invented something that sounds very similar to Firepaste: the intent was that aircrews who anticipated a crash could apply the substance to exposed flesh and ideally get a little more time to flee a burning aircraft.

We extend our belated condolences to his people, and will pour out a 40 of something Canadian in his memory.

Anne Russ Federman, the last of the three daughters of Joel Russ, founder of Russ & Daughters (formerly Russ’s Cut Rate Appetizers).

Waxing rhapsodic in The New York Times Magazine in 2003, the editor and publisher Jason Epstein wrote that Russ & Daughters was “New York’s most hallowed shrine to the miracle of caviar, smoked salmon, ethereal herring and silken chopped liver.”

I’ve been reading Mark Federman’s book about Russ & Daughters, and I love the story behind the store. I also, as it happens, love me some smoked salmon, and I could go for a little herring, too. Next time I’m in New York City…

Posted in Books, Food, Geek, Obits | Comments Closed

Book news.

Saturday, September 22nd, 2018

NYT headline:

Would You Like Some Sausage With Your Novel?

After reading the article, the surprising (to me) answer is: yes, I do want some sausage with my novel, and I want to visit Bad Sooden-Allendorf, shop at the Frühauf’s bookstore, and get a couple of rolls to nibble on.

In other book news, I just discovered that Silvertail Books has reprinted Under an English Heaven.

I’m sure I’ve written before about the amazingly prolific Donald Westlake, mystery author and screenwriter. (Fun fact: “Westlake co-wrote the story for the pilot of the ill-fated 1979 TV series Supertrain with teleplay writer Earl W. Wallace; Westlake and Wallace shared “created by” credit.”) If you know anything at all about the mystery genre, you know Westlake.

But as prolific as he was, he only wrote two non-fiction books: a biography of Elizabeth Taylor under one of his pen names, and Under an English Heaven about the Anguillan “revolution” and “occupation” of the island by British troops. Rumor has it that this is a very Westlake-ian book, even if it is non fiction: more Dortmunder in tone than Parker. This is one I’m actually excited about: review (possibly) forthcoming.

Posted in Books, Food, Travel | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 16, 2018.

Sunday, September 16th, 2018

Some from the past day or two:

David Yallop, author and journalist. He was perhaps most famous for In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I which argued that the Pope “had been poisoned by a cabal connected to a secret Masonic lodge that had infiltrated the church and the Vatican Bank.”

Peter Donat, character actor. He was Mulder’s father on “The X-Files”, but he also did a lot of theater: “Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.”

Also:

He worked regularly in television, guest-starring on series like “The F.B.I.,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” McMillan & Wife,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Murder, She Wrote,” on which he played three different roles over several seasons. On “Dallas,” he portrayed a doctor who treated the notorious Texas oilman J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) after he had been shot in a famous cliffhanger episode in 1980.

Walter Mischel, of “marshmallow test” fame.

In a series of experiments at Stanford University beginning in the 1960s, he led a research team that presented preschool-age children with treats — pretzels, cookies, a marshmallow — and instructed them to wait before indulging themselves. Some of the children received strategies from the researchers, like covering their eyes or reimagining the treat as something else; others were left to their own devices.
The studies found that in all conditions, some youngsters were far better than others at deploying the strategies — or devising their own — and that this ability seemed to persist at later ages. And context mattered: Children given reason to distrust the researchers tended to grab the treats earlier.

…

In the late 1980s, decades after the first experiments were done, Dr. Mischel and two co-authors followed up with about 100 parents whose children had participated in the original studies. They found a striking, if preliminary, correlation: The preschoolers who could put off eating the treat tended to have higher SAT scores, and were better adjusted emotionally on some measures, than those who had given in quickly to temptation.
The paper was cautious in its conclusions, and acknowledged numerous flaws, including a small sample size. No matter. It was widely reported, and a staple of popular psychology writing was born: If Junior can hold off eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in preschool, then he or she is headed for the dean’s list.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Geek, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 13, 2018.

Monday, August 13th, 2018

V.S. Naipaul, noted author.

Dr. Richard Jarecki. He was most famous for hacking roulette:

He and his wife honed his technique at dozens of casinos, including in Monte Carlo; Divonne-les-Bains, France; Baden-Baden, Germany; San Remo, on the Italian Riviera; and, briefly, Las Vegas. He became a regular in San Remo, where he had lucrative runs over several years.
By 1969 he had become “a menace to every casino in Europe,” Robert Lardera, the San Remo casino’s managing director, told The Morning Herald.
“I don’t know how he does it exactly, but if he never returned to my casino I would be a very happy man,” Mr. Lardera said.

According to the NYT, his technique basically amounted to painstaking long term observation of thousands of spins, looking for roulette wheels with biases, and then exploiting those biases.

“If casino managers don’t like to lose, they should sell vegetables,” Dr. Jarecki told The New York Times in an article about his win streak in 1969.

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Obit watch: July 20, 2018.

Friday, July 20th, 2018

Adrian Cronauer, the inspiration for “Good Morning, Vietnam”.

Mr. Cronauer, who in reality was not quite the wild man the film suggested — later in life he worked for Republican causes and became a lawyer — admitted to some unease when he first saw the screen portrayal. But he got over it.
“Finally I said: ‘Wait a minute. It was never intended to be a biography. It’s a piece of entertainment. Sit back, relax and enjoy it,’ ” he said. “And that’s what I did.”

Annabelle Neilson. I can’t stand celebrity for celebrity’s sake, and I don’t worship celebrities in general. But there’s something about this story I find touching.

Ms. Neilson was severely dyslexic and, after being badly bullied, left school at 16. A vicious assault during a gap-year visit to Perth, Australia, left her with injuries requiring reconstructive surgery, and she soon began struggling with drug addiction.

She eventually got over her heroin problem, became a model, and was introduced to fashion designer Alexander McQueen. She went on to become his model, muse, and girlfriend until his death in 2010.

In 2014, Ms. Neilson became a star of the Bravo television series “Ladies of London,” and for two seasons viewers watched her recovery from a 2013 horseback riding accident that had left her with a broken back and pelvis.

She also wrote children’s books. Ms. Neilson was 49 when she died.

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 18, 2018.

Wednesday, July 18th, 2018

John A. Stormer, author of None Dare Call It Treason.

Mr. Stormer’s book, published by his own Liberty Bell Press, tapped into a vein of conservative alarm that was still very much present in the early 1960s, even though the Red-baiting era of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had faded in the 1950s.
…
Communists, Mr. Stormer wrote, were bent on infiltrating the American government and had largely succeeded, as evidenced by American and United Nations economic support for Communist countries.
“The Communists have sworn to bury us,” Mr. Stormer wrote. “We are digging our own graves.”

…

The book was heavily footnoted, but its accuracy was quickly called into question. A group in Ohio, the National Committee for Civic Responsibility, did a page-by-page fact-checking and labeled the book “at best, an incredibly poor job of research and documentation and, at worst, a deliberate hoax and a fraud.” A political-science professor in California, Julian Foster, published a monograph cataloging the book’s distortions. He titled it “None Dare Call It Reason.”

…

Though the accuracy of “None Dare Call It Treason” was often disputed, Mr. Stormer was confident he was right, so much so that in the book’s final chapter, “What Can You Do?,” he urged his readers to scrutinize him.“First, you must educate yourself,” he wrote. “Determine that the facts in this book are true.”
Among his other advice was that people read two newspapers a day of opposite editorial viewpoints. He also urged his readers to make God a meaningful force in their lives and to be politically active.

You know, all of that is pretty good advice. But good luck finding “two newspapers a day of opposite editorial viewpoints” in this day and age.

Posted in Books, Obits, Politics | 2 Comments »

More quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore.

Monday, July 16th, 2018

Half-Price Books had another coupon sale this week, and I picked up a few things that I feel like documenting here.

I picked up a lot of “popular culture”…stuff, I’d say, though other people might call it “crap”. Specifically, I got:

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t picked up some gun books, too…

(more…)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Mannix, Movies, O'Connor, TV | Comments Closed

Kermit.

Tuesday, July 10th, 2018

I was 12 years old in 1977. I wasn’t an NBA fan at the time (and I’m still not one) but I remember the punch. It was all over the news.

I thought then that Kermit Washington should have been banned from the NBA for life and faced criminal charges.

Some years later, I read John Feinstein’s The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever. There’s some chilling stuff in there. (Rudy Tomjanovich tells a story about lying on a stretcher and asking the doctor why he had a bitter taste in his mouth. The doctor told him, “That’s your spinal fluid. It’s leaking out of your skull.”)

Feinstein’s book also, oddly enough, made me feel a little more compassion for Washington. When I was 12, I was convinced that the punch was a deliberate and malicious act, and that Washington planted his feet and braced himself before he struck Tomjanovich. After reading the book, I was at least willing to accept the possibility that I was wrong, and that Washington, while he intended to strike Tomjanovich, didn’t intend to do the level of damage that he ended up doing. It seemed as if Washington had been struggling for most of his life not to be defined by that one moment: and who among us wants to be defined by the worst moment of our lives?

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Rudy Tomjanovich never completely got over being punched in the face and nearly killed. The whole story is like a giant pile of sad. Especially now.

Former NBA player Kermit Washington has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in charity donations on vacations, shopping sprees and plastic surgery for his girlfriend.

Somehow, I missed the fact that he was facing criminal charges, but he pled guilty last year to “making a false statement in a tax return” and “aggravated identity theft”. He’s also expected to pay $970,000 in restitution.

Posted in Books, Law, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: July 6, 2018.

Friday, July 6th, 2018

Claude Lanzmann, noted film director (“Shoah”).

Saman Gunan, former Thai Navy SEAL. He volunteered as part of the rescue mission for the trapped soccer team, and apparently ran out of air while delivering fresh air tanks to the cave.

Shoko Asahara is burning in Hell, along with six of his followers.

I’m not very well read in Haruki Murakami, but Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche impressed me, and I commend it to your attention.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Movies, Nazis, Obits | Comments Closed

Quick random shots.

Sunday, July 1st, 2018

I hate soccer.

This is a story about a soccer ball.

Margalit Fox, one of the NYT obit writers, is leaving the paper. And the Times graciously granted her a few column inches to say goodbye.

Today, the subject of the first advance I ever wrote, in 1995 — a major American scholar — is still going strong at 90-something. He remains, blast him, almost obscenely productive, forcing me to update his obituary several times a year.

I have a theory about who that might be…

(Also, Ms. Fox’s new book sounds pretty interesting. I intend to keep an eye open.)

Posted in Books, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

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