Yet another one of my childhood icons has passed away. I remember sitting in front of the TV watching Evel Knievel on Wide World of Sports and even in prime time shows jumping over cars and RVs. He'd gun his motorcycle back and forth to build the tension, then maybe get off the bike to talk to his advisers, hop back on and speed down the track, up the ramp and over the parked cars before landing or more often than not spilling off his bike as he came down and his crew would run out to make sure he was okay. I remember his foolhardy attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in a little jet propelled rocket. And I recreated his stunts over and over again with this very toy. (Just mentally photoshop my 6-year old frizzily afroed head onto this moppet's body. But pretty much with the same expression on my face)
Our house was at the bottom of a hill. Rev. Smith lived across the street and had a nice steep driveway so his house was the launching pad for any toys that needed to get up a head of steam. If I angled Evel just right, he'd run down Rev. Smith's driveway, streak down the hill and across the street and into our driveway, usually crashing against my Dad's blue Ford Gran Torino. The toy was so slow that we would actually run along with it; we didn't have to run fast to keep up.
I'd heard that Knievel had been sick for a long time. Every time you read about him in the news, the story would mention the factoid that he'd broken almost every bone in his body. And in a weird way, he'd just come back into public view for a new generation due to his spat with Kanye West.
Godspeed, Evel! And I'm off to eBay. Rev. Smith died years ago, but his daughter lives in their house now and I think she'd let me use their driveway. I bet I can still find a little rubber mark there to show me just the right angle for the cycle.
You've gotta love the folks at Progressive Boink, who have vented hilarious spleen all over Rob Liefeld. Sure, there's no challenge to picking apart Liefeld's ouvre, but they do it with such feeling (and such fun) that I am powerless to resist:
The most important thing you need to know before reading about all the terrible things Rob Liefeld has drawn is that he has never seen or talked to a woman in his life and has no idea what they look like or how their bodies operate. If you asked Rob Liefeld to draw a diagram of the uterus he'd put on a pair of gauntlets and punch the shit out of your chalkboard. This is how the man operates, and though I know it sounds like a lot, you have to believe me. I don't want you looking at the stuff he's drawing and think he's a conscious adult male with a creative job who can and has influenced the minds of young artists. The man is a pair of blue jeans with a face. He has on a backwards cap, and when he turns it around, it's still backwards.
Got it?
Okay. The #40 spot is a catch-all for "any time Rob Liefeld has ever drawn a woman." We get more specific from here, but if we didn't lump these together the entire list would be broken spines and colossal hooters.
In celebration of the venerable magazine's 85th anniversary, the editors of Weird Tales are compiling a list of the 85 weirdest storytellers of the past 85 years and they need your help. And they are looking far afield from the magazine.
We’re NOT just talking about WEIRD TALES authors, though they’re certainly eligible; no, we’re thinking bigger than that. Who do you think has made the weirdest fiction, the weirdest movies, the weirdest plays, the weirdest narrative art, the weirdest poems and songs, since 1923? That’s the list we’re after: the greatest talespinners of the weird, unearthly, and bizarre, working in every imaginable storytelling form and medium.
We’re going to take suggestions from our readers and contributors through Dec. 31, 2007. Email your ideas to top85 (at) weirdtales (dot) net. Suggest as much and as often as you like — just make sure you give us the NAME of the creator you’re nominating, as well as the REASON you think they should be on the list. In January, five randomly drawn participants will win a free copy of Weird Tales: The Twenty-First Century, Vol. 1 (or another book if they’ve already got that one).
"The big thing was Lili's connection to Marylin Monroe. There had been a lot of speculation about that because of Ted Jordan's book [Norma Jean: My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe]. You want it all to be true because of course it's going to grab headlines and sell books. Some of it was true, but his claims that the two of them had a lesbian affair [are false]. I'm not Lili St. Cyr or Marylin Monroe so I can't yell you 100% for sure that it didn't happen, but I don't believe it happened. I don't think it happened." Continued...
Family watches fatal exorcism By JENNY LING and EMILY WATT - The Dominion Post | Monday, 12 November 2007
A Wainuiomata woman was killed during her family's attempt to exorcise a Maori curse, with the mother of two drowning in a lounge as up to 40 relatives watched. Continued...
and...
Teenager nearly blinded when eyes gouged to remove devils Nov 25, 2007, 23:27 GMT
Wellington - A 14-year-old New Zealand girl was nearly blinded when relatives gouged her eyeballs to remove the devil in a Maori exorcism ceremony, a newspaper reported on Monday.
Her family believed that they saw the devil in her eyes and tried to scratch it out with their fingers, Wellington's Dominion Post reported.
The girl was reported to be a cousin of Janet Moses, 22, mother of two, who died during an exorcism ceremony performed on at least seven members of the family to lift a Maori curse reportedly imposed after a stone statue of a lion was stolen. Continued...
These strange true stories sound like some of the fiction we might read for the book group.
The first article concludes with an informative Q&A about makutu:
Q&A
WHAT IS A MAKUTU? Put simply, a makutu is a curse placed on somebody, usually in a spiritual manner such as prayer.
HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN USED? Makutu is believed to have been practised for centuries. Warriors used curses against their enemies. A tohunga (expert practitioner, often religious) would be employed to create or remove a makutu, though others had the potential to create a curse.
WHAT CAN IT DO? In extreme cases a makutu is believed to kill its victim. A victim who is told, or believes, that ill- health or bad luck is the result of a makutu would seek its removal.
HOW IS MAKUTU LIFTED? The lifting of a makutu varies with each case, Anglican minister Hone Kaa says.
The process involves a lot of talking to understand the family's history and "depth of the makutu".
Removal includes prayer, and ceremonies often use water to cleanse – though usually in small amounts. Ceremonies usually involve numerous participants, including kaumatua. There can be a physical element, with the victim needing to be held in place as the spirit fights against its removal, Dr Kaa says.
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples said he had witnessed the successful removal of a likely makutu after a child started barking like a dog. "It's not for me to say that it's all supernatural and there's nothing in it.
"With the right karakia (prayer), the right chanting . . . (the curse) can be lifted by their own family."
As the year ends, we get inundated with best of lists. Here's one that always makes me feel like an illiterate piker, the New York Times' 2007 100 Notable Books of the Year. This year I did worse than usual. So far, I've read a grand total of four--and one of those is Deathly Hallows, which I suspect the Book Review included just to keep common folks from getting shut out.
Normally, they throw genre readers a few bones with a Stephen King or Walter Mosley's latest, but this year the NYT went strictly hardcore. No sf, mystery, or horror fiction and one graphic novel, Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings. As a result, not only is there not much on the fiction list that I have read, there's not much on there that I think I want to read. I love Richard Russo and Bridge of Sighs is waiting on my shelf. I'm sure I'll eventually read Chabon's book. Maybe the Ha Jin book when it comes out in paperback. In non-fiction, I've heard great things about the Ralph Ellison biography. That's about it. I'd be fascinated to meet someone who'd read a significant amount of the fiction listed here. To be fair, the non-fiction seems a bit more mainstream.
Are any of you reading what our New York Times overlords are telling us to read?
(Next up is the People Magazine year end best book list, which I always use to make myself feel smarter. And just for the record, the other books on the NYT list I'd already read, each of which I can recommend, were Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis' biography of Charles M. Schulz' surprisingly melancholy life, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross' (not that Alex Ross) history of modern classical music, and The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson's history of the Allied invasion of Italy in World War II. Two Leni Riefenstahl biographies came out this year and of course I read the one that didn't make the NYT list. But it was pretty good and one is enough).
Take a look at this half time performance by Cal Berkeley in the fine "marching band too smart for its own good" tradition of Rice's MOB. My favorite band is still Texas' own Prairie View A&M Marching Band (The Storm!) but this here is undeniably good. I'm guessing it will be a cold day in hell before we see or hear something similarly witty from the Show Band of the Southwest.
Given Paul's recent post about The Big Book of Pulps and our groups general love of noir, I thought y'all might find this interesting.
200 Noirs
Compiled by Allan Guthrie
A couple of years back I was asked to provide a list of my top 100 noir novels for the now sadly defunct magazine, Bullet. Recently I've had a few requests to ask if I would consider republishing the list, so I dug it out and had another look. I was horrified by some of the omissions, but my excuse is that 100 just isn’t nearly enough.
So I've taken this opportunity to add another 100 to the original list. And I've cut the list off at 1997 or there'd be 100 more. Continued...
There were two surprising things about the list. The first was how many books I hadn't read. Some 32 of the 200 listed. The second was the noticeable absence of Raymond Chandler. How do you compile a list of 200 noirs with no Chandler?
While I don't always agree with Guthrie's assessment (L.A. Confidential? His earlier noir Black Dahlia is a much better book), and even with the Chandler oversight, Guthrie compiled an excellent list that is worthy of discussion. And a great resource for future reading.
This dictionary sized book of pulp fiction came out last week and I've been exercising my biceps lugging it around.
It's divided into three sections--The Crimefighters, The Villians, and The Dames. I can't say I've even navigated through a third of it. The book is filled with the usual suspects like Chandler, Hammett, and Woolrich, but it is more interesting to me for the authors included that I've never read (or never even heard of). The standouts for me so far are Steve Fisher's Leopold and Loeb riff "You'll Always Remember Me" and the night from hell Raoul Whitfield describes in "About KId Deth."
I mean, look at that cover. At only $25, a must buy.
The movie did nothing for me. I didn't hate it, nor did I love it. I found it mediocre on all counts. I didn't engage with any of the characters, rodent or human, on any level. Their story didn't interest me and there seemed, with one notable exception, to be no character growth. While there were some occasionally funny lines, the script seemed to flounder with no real direction. Sub-plots that would have made for great quick asides (the frozen food line) were overplayed, while others that could have been steadily built up (the health inspector) seemed to be thrown in at the last minute.
More than a movie about food, Ratatouille explores the well-trodden territory of characters reaching beyond their limitations and with a little help from their friends overcoming the obstacles to their dreams. Remy's relationships with his huge extended pack as he struggles with his dream of being a chef and Liguini overcoming his fears of, well, almost everything form the core of this charming film.
We also held opposing views on the rat protagonists and the animated short "Your Friend the Rat".
Alan:
Rounding off the DVD is a short piece of propaganda in support of genus rattus presented by two of the movie's lead characters. Your Friend The Rat vainly attempts to set the historical record straight and explains why we should embrace the existence of rats rather than try to exterminate them.
It didn't work. I still don't like rats.
Me:
Not only does Ratatouille include the animated short "Lifted," which originally appeared with the movies's theatrical release, but also features the highly entertaining original short "Your Friend the Rat." Rendered in a combination of traditional and computer-generated animation styles, Remy (Patton Oswalt) and his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) recount the history and occasionally positive aspects of rat-human relations. Did you know that the black rat (rattus rattus) first arrived in the West after hitching a ride with the Crusaders? Or that rats weren't the cause of the plague but rather it started with fleas? Remy and Emile present these fascinating facts and a lot more in a friendly, non-icky way, successfully showcasing the more appealing aspects of the vermin.
There was one area of the DVD that Alan and I agreed upon: the deleted scenes.
Alan: "The so called feature movie related bonus materials consist of three deleted scenes that add nothing to the story, nor offer any fresh perspective..."
Me: "As per usual, the deleted scenes accompany the movie and add absolutely nothing of consequence to the original film."
It's always nice when friends can agree on something.
My review of Kelly DiNardo's Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique appears in today's Austin Chronicle.
The most popular burlesque star throughout the Forties and Fifties, Lili St. Cyr influenced Marilyn Monroe, performed with Dean Martin, and danced well into her 50s. Author Kelly DiNardo recounts the fascinating life of "the queen of striptease" in the well-researched and superbly written Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique. Continued...
I suppose it's possible to sound like more of a grumpy old tool, but you'd have to work at it.
Basically, Simmons blames the death of the music industry(?!) on college kids and the internet.
The thing is, even if he's right (he's not), whining about it foxes in the henhouse now is shutting the barn door after the cows are gone (Hey, he gets to use farm metaphors, I get to use farm metaphors). The sea change has happened; the key now is finding a way to make it work for you, or taking your toys and going home.
As many of you no doubt know, the long-awaitedLeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier was released today. I received a review copy and have read roughly two-thirds of what is easily the densest and most complex League tale yet attempted.
Written and drawn in a variety of styles, the Black Dossier is essentially the hidden history of the League and hence the world. In the first 2/3, I discovered the origins of James Bond's boss "M", "Q", Orlando, the very first League, the 1910 German (lead by Dr. Mabuse!) and the 1911 French incarnations of the league. I learned how Mina Murray first met Nemo (remember they are both part of the team in the first issue.) Also, there is an excellent piece on occult history by Oliver Haddo that ties Melniboné, Hyperborea, and the Great Old Ones into our reality. Allusions to 1984 abound. How exactly do Gloriana, Fanny Hill, Harry Lime, and Shakespeare tie into the tale is quite amazing... and let us not forget Wilhelmina Murray and Allan Quartermain. I'm not even done with the book yet.
Thankfully in an attempt to make sense of it all, Jess Nevins has already started his annotations. The accompanying book will be published next Summer from Monkeybrain.
Not that the tome was published without some controversy. Comicscape discusses the controversy, Black Dossier, and the League in general in this fascinating interview.
Though plans are afoot for an Absolute edition, rumor has it that there will be NO paperback version. Since this hardback includes various paper stocks, a Tijuana bible insert, and a 3-d story (including glasses), a paperback would probably be in the $25 range. Given the excellent quality of the art and story combined with the fact that The League of Extraordinary Gentleman stories need to be re-read, at $30 this book is a steal. It will be the best $30 you've spent on a book in a long time.
Since I usually trash Wal-Mart, I feel I should point out when they actually do something good.
Roughly one week ago, Wal-Mart introduced Everex's TC2502 gPC, the first mass-market under $200 desktop computer. The low-cost PC features gOS, a custom distribution of Ubuntu Linux. The specs for those that care: 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU embedded in a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive.
From accounts, the new computer has completely sold out at the 630 Wal-Marts that offered the product. It is still available from the online Linux retailer ZaReason.
The feedback at the Wal-Mart site has been overwhelming positive. And the initial reviews of the Google-centric gOS have been very good.
There is even talk of Everex releasing sub-$300 gOS notebooks next year. Never thought I'd say this but *GULP* "Go Wal-Mart!"
Smoke this! Are kids across America really getting high on fermented feces, or has our national drug panic finally gone too far? By Jamie Pietras (Salon, Nov. 9, 2007)
Nov. 9, 2007 | Forget about huffing gas or chugging cough syrup. This week, Midwestern TV news crews warned viewers about an even cheaper, more nauseating way for kids to get high. "Dirty New Drug Threatens Youth," KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, reported Nov. 2. Three days later, WIFR-TV, in Rockford, Ill., cautioned parents about a "pretty horrific new drug becoming more and more popular in schools across the United States." By yesterday, Austin, Texas, station KXAN was reporting that the city's police department is training officers to deal with the dangerous new drug.
Just how horrific is jenkem, the newest narcotic peril? They say a good dish is only as good as its ingredients and, well, according to a confidential Collier County, Fla., sheriff's office bulletin that somehow made its way to media outlets, jenkem is made up of only two: "fecal matter and urine."
But it is actually an Internet hoax...
There, a user operating under the pseudonym "Pickwick" famously staged the jenkem-huffing scene back in June (or so he says; he came clean in September, claiming that his "jenkem" consisted of little more than dough rolled in Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread).
To those with an Internet connection, piecing together the images' shaky origin wasn't that difficult. The bottle's label clearly depicted the words "Jenkem, Pickwick, Totse."
Or is it?
Nevertheless, just as the jenkem story was about to be laid to rest alongside the "Life Is Beautiful" virus, the missing girl Ashley Flores and other legendary Internet ruses, an unnamed DEA spokesman dropped this bombshell: "There are people in America trying [jenkem]," the source told Washington Post blogger Emil Steiner. DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney did not return a call from Salon. Nor did the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which spearheads federal narcotics education and strategy, or the Collier County Sheriff's Office in Naples, Fla.
Jamie Mosbach, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, told ABC News, "We have had no confirmed cases. It came through an anonymous tip after someone saw something on the Internet and heard something about it from their child at a local high school. We just thought we'd inform our deputies in case they saw something."
And though the buzz on jenkem has spread like a viral marketing campaign -- one drug counselor quoted by Austin's KXAN advised parents that "if there is a very funky smell or odor, ask" -- the question of whether the dubious drug menace ever existed is now being replaced by a fear of copycat behavior, courtesy of all the ratings-grabbing hyperbole.
Click on image to enlarge
Perhaps not...
Psychedelic researchers are unconvinced that huffing fecal fumes ever caught on in the U.S. "It is potentially believable to me that a handful of extremely experimental people have tried this, but it is also quite easy for me to believe that no one in the U.S. has actually produced and inhaled sewage gas of their own," says Earth Erowid, co-creator of Erowid.com, a repository of documented narcotic experiences, in an e-mail. The communications director for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Jag Davies, is equally skeptical. Davies says no one at MAPS, which supports research into the medical use of hallucinogens, has heard of jenkem use and certainly not jenkem research in the United States.
If Americans have experimented with jenkem, as the DEA evidently suggested, they have also evaded the radar of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "No one is familiar with it," says PDFA public affairs representative Candice Besson. "It does kind of have the basis of an urban legend," Besson says. "But then again sometimes urban legends are based on truth."
But then out of Africa...
The truth about jenkem, at least as it's been reported internationally, harks back to Lusaka, Zambia, where poverty, AIDS and other social problems created tens of thousands of street children, some of whom turned to cheap, dangerous highs. "Initially, they used to get it from the sewer, but they make it anywhere," explains John C. Zulu, director of the Ministry of Sport, Youth and Child Development in Zambia. "They say it keeps them warm and makes them fearless," he says.
According to an Aug. 25, 1995, article from the Inter Press Service report, Zambian teens reportedly "scooped [sewage] up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers which are covered with a polyethylene bag and left to stew or ferment for a week."
"Old man, this is more potent than cannabis," one fifth-grader told an IPS reporter of his jenkem usage.
Any way you look at this, it's gross, disgusting, and utterly fascinating.
Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else By Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 9, 2007, 5:41 PM PST
New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.
The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.
This is absurd. Punishing the universities because students are using their bandwidth is akin to punishing the cable company because a subscriber records a pay-for-view movie then shares it with their friends. Or holding the internet provider responsible for pirated software. Or the federal government at fault for speeders on freeways.
And exactly how does withholding education address this problem?
It is appalling the short-sighted avenues that the music and film industries are using to address this problem. Instead of attempting to create even harsher penalties, many of which affect far more than the guilty parties, the industries should embrace the p2p models and figure ways to use these new technologies to their advantage. The sharing of music and film will not go away. Get use to it.
Weekend Edition Saturday, November 10, 2007 · These days, rampant cell phone use means people are forced to listen to other's personal conversations. Some people are resorting to cell phone jammers, even though they are illegal. Matt Richtel of The New York Timestalks with NPR's Scott Simon.
I would love one of those devices. Movie theaters should use the jammers inside the theater so no one could use their cell phone while the movie is playing. If talking on the phone is so important then don't go to a movie. Course, there is that matter of the potential $1100 penalty!
Now if they could develop a device for screaming children...
Just noticed on the BenBella Books site that they are have started listing Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City the upcoming essay collection on the Dark Knight that includes my piece The Dubious Origins of The Batman - Who Did What - and Does It Really Matter?
The on-sale date will be 1st March 2008, but you can pre-order it here or here.
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So it's looking like I will have a steady stream of work hitting the book and comic stores over the first few months of 2008.
mid-January: Back Issue #26, January 30th: The Unofficial Guide to the Novels of Terry Pratchett. February 12th: James Bond 007: Shark Bait March 1st: Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City
Today would have been my grandfather's 97th birthday. In celebration of the event, I am posting, under the Creative Commons license, my previously unpublished article about Irving Klaw's film career
All About the Tease
by Rick Klaw
As a child all I knew of my grandfather was that he was a pornographer, albeit a very tame one. My mother's exact words were, “They show worse things on Cinemax.”
I first learned more about him while attending the 1989 San Diego ComicCon when publisher/artist Ray Zone first told me of my family legacy. Initially my grandfather Irving Klaw ran a mail-order business that sold pin-ups of Hollywood stars. He later expanded into pictures and films of attractive women in bondage and other fetishistic poses. Klaw pioneered both the movie star image and adult entertainment industries. His best known model, Bettie Page, was one of the most photographed women of the 1950s, appearing on more magazine covers than anyone else in the decade.
Inspired by the success of Jerald Intrator's 1952 burlesque film Striporama, my grandfather produced and directed Varietease (1954), Teaserama (1955), and Buxom Beautease (1956). The films featured burlesque acts with stripteases, comedy acts, and musicians with famed beauties Page, Lili St. Cyr, and Tempest Storm.
Also during this period, Klaw produced thousands of feet of black and white film loops featuring striptease and fetish acts. These shorts featured only women, either by themselves or sometimes in pairs, in a variety of situations often involving bondage and spanking. The models-- most famously Page-- never appeared terrified and seemed to be enjoying themselves in a non-sexual, no-threatening way. As with his photos, these movies contained only the suggestion of nudity. My grandfather often required the models to wear two pairs of panties so no pubic hair could be seen. Not a pornographer, Klaw was all about the tease.
Thanks largely to his fetish business, Klaw testified before the 1955 United States Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. The subcommittee, one year before, had famously forced the comic book industry to adopt a code to stop the publication of "inappropriate" comic book material. Now they were investigating my grandfather. The New York City press plastered the sensationalistic episode throughout the city, where Klaw became known as the "Smut King."
My grandfather's legal problems persisted for nearly ten years. Federal authorities intercepted his mail and bugged his phones. As late as 1964, Klaw was brought before a federal court on charges of conspiracy to send obscene material through the mail.
With the shifting political and social climate, Irving returned to filmmaking in 1963, producing two "lost" films: Larry Wolk's Intimate Diary of an Artist's Model and Nature's Sweethearts, co-directing the latter. Unlike, his previous films, both pictures featured a lot of topless women.
The legal and cultural ramifications of his twenty year career ushered America from the sexually conservative 1950s to the sexually charged 1960s. His impact on the exploitation films of the 1960s was profound influencing everything from Barbarella to Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!. In his book Sinema, Douglas Brode argues that Klaw's pictures of Bettie Page and "friends" inspired lesbian chic-- the notion of women as "bisexually sensuous"-- in both film and television. Rachel Schteir in the excellent Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (Oxford, 2005) asserts that "[Klaw's] movies did more to spread striptease across the country in this era [the 1950's] than any one burlesque short. [...] What they did was spread striptease, drag strips, and burlesque comedy to a provincial audience. In essence, they were giving these audiences what they might see in Miami, Las Vegas, or some other cosmopolitan city." The contemporary popularity of his movies inspired the current neo-burlesque revival in major American cities.
In late 1955, legendary exploitation filmmakers David Friedman and Dan Sonney acquired the rights to both Teaserama and Varietease for $5,000. Sonney owned burlesque theaters on Main Street in L.A. and earned back the initial investment within a year. During the 1980's, Something Weird Video introduced the movies to a new generation. Both Teaserama and Varietease are currently available on DVD.
At the time of his death in 1966-- sixteen months before I was born-- my grandfather lived in relative obscurity. Few imagined that nearly forty years later, his movies would be considered softcore classics and major precursors to the sixties "nudie-cuties" and the later hardcore porn films. Or that two features (The Notorious Bettie Page [2006] and Bettie Page: Dark Angel [2004]) would be made about Bettie Page with my grandfather as major character and that DVD compilations of Klaw's films are bestsellers. Klaw's work influenced a generation of filmmakers, photographers, and entertainers including Russ Meyer, John Waters, Madonna, Missy Suicide, and others. Ironically, without my grandfather there would have been no Cinemax.
A part of my guest blogging duties for Jeff Vandermeer's Ecstatic Days blog was to produce three new interviews for his Conversations with the Bookless series. The subjects are all published short stories writers who do not have a book. My first two, Scott A. Cupp and Chris Nakashima-Brown, are well know to our little clique, but not near as well as our own regular contributor Paul O. Miles. As expected, Paul is witty with an interesting tale or two to share. (Any of our book group regulars should not be shocked by this.)
My review of the Chinatown: Special Collector's Edition is in todays Austin Chronicle.
For many, Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski from Robert Towne's Oscar-winning screenplay, epitomizes the peak of Seventies Hollywood filmmaking and perhaps the finest neo-noir ever made. Yet according to the four documentary featurettes on this new special edition, the movie almost didn't get made.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German advent calendar for children has become a hot seller since word got out it has a picture of a notorious serial killer on it.
The cartoon calendar shows Fritz Haarmann, who murdered 24 young men and boys in the 1920s, lurking under a tree with a hatchet next to the door for December 1. Below him, Santa Claus hands out presents to children in a festive-looking Hanover. Continued...
An example of bad Feng Shui. I think even Kafka would get a headache. From Yahoo! News:
Tue Nov 6, 4:23 PM ET
BOSTON - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing renowned architect Frank Gehry, alleging serious design flaws in the Stata Center, a building celebrated for its unconventional walls and radical angles.
The school asserts that the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.
Stanford professor Larry Lessing, one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues and the Chair of Creative Commons, intelligently and skillfully makes the case for creative freedom in today's Internet. Using graphics, humor, and clarity, Lessing successfully sets the current controversies within a fascinating historical perspective.
By JERRY HARKAVY, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 6, 7:36 AM ET
RANGELEY, Maine - Physician-scientist Wilhelm Reich, best known for his claims of a cosmic life force associated with sexual orgasm, died in federal prison, and the government burned tons of his books and other publications and destroyed his equipment.
But half a century later, a small number of scientists and other believers are working to advance the European-born psychiatrist's work on what he called "orgone energy" — a theory largely forgotten in the scientific mainstream. Continued...
Perhaps, it's time to dust off my old Wilhelm Reich comic book idea.
I earn my daily crust in the world of digital publishing. Given the opportunity I will happily talk about all the advantages and cool stuff you can do with digital content. (like post this tomultiple blogs using a single editing tool.) In fact I tend to think that today we are living in the "promised world" that I've been looking forward to in my twenty plus years of being in Corporate Publishing - the technology has at last caught up to the potential. But that's possibly a subject for a whole other post.
Yet when I wear my other hat as a freelance writer it's mainly for print publications. Give me a spare half-hour and you will likely find me hanging out in a traditional bookstore. In fact just last night I was sat in the coffee shop area of my local Barnes & Noble, working away with pen and note pad on a pitch for a graphic novel, while just a few feet away on a nearby shelf sat several copies of the book containing my recent James Bond feature.
I just can't get enough of print. I still read literally hundreds of print magazines a year and average over a book a week. But why, when I spend a large proportion of my life expounding the virtues of digital publishing does ink on paper have such a hold?
Today a print copy of the latest Seybold Report landed on my desk and my eyes immediately drifted to an article entitled "Is Print Sexy?" by Laruel Brunner. In the article Brunner eloquently managed to sum up the appeal of print. Here's a few choice extracts that I think best sum up my own views.
We trust print's permanence and we rely on print to document our world truthfully and to accurately enshrine our most precious values and ideas of the world around us. We believe, rightly or not, that it provides our foundation for fact. It's how we preserve and revere our collective experience and perceptions .......print is uniquely physical. Like all media it expresses concepts, ideas and information, but it stimulates response using more subtle, tactile techniques. We have a singularly intimate and physical relationship with print, because it appeals to virtually all of our senses. The look of a magazine, the smell of a new book.. all stimulate us visually and sensually. We love the look, smell and feel of print and of course its practicality. Print is portable and robust, it's accessible and easy to use...A shelf full of books is a collection of old friends who will never disappoint us and who remind us of who we were and of worlds long gone, showing us how we have become who we are....All of life is about stimulation and response, and print is all about life.
