My thousandth, and what is there to read around here?

It’s post number 1000 for Insomnia Notebook, which began its humble life as Paranoia Strikes Deep in April, 2006. My original intention was to write about what makes one paranoid. I had been going through a lot of it for over ten years, both my own and living with my mother’s overwhelming paranoid delusions.

My first posting was about a drug test I had to take, and reeked with paranoia: Paranoia Strikes Deep. When I retired most of the things that made me paranoid stopped. I understand now how much of my paranoia came from my job, and specifically my boss. I can’t say I’m totally free of the feelings, because there are still things that bother me. Even if I was totally free of it I’d still remember the bumper sticker, “Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Now that I’ve congratulated myself for sitting down at my keyboard long enough to produce one thousand entries for this blog, it’s time for a semi-regular feature, which is showing what I’m reading right now. Since I have a short attention span I jump around in my reading. I’ve always done that. I read a few pages of a magazine or a chapter or two of a book, then go to something else and come back later to the other, then try to keep everything straight in my head. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t.

John Ball is a favorite mystery writer, and of course Virgil Tibbs (In the Heat of the Night) is a great character.

I've been picking up graphic novels, both at thrift stores and library sales. When I sent this cover scan of the Battlepug graphic novel to my friend Dave, I noted that it was in a library sale, amongst the picture books for young readers. I said, “Maybe the librarian didn't see the naked girl on the left of the cover.” The book is done lengthwise. I haven't read it yet.

Marvel Comics does more than superheroes. Here's an adaptation of the Dumas novel. The Classics Illustrated versions of classic books (i.e., in public domain) has been around since comic books were invented.

Whoo! Watch out for Spinecrawler! Sex, violence and extreme creepiness. Right under the cover is a sample page. 

House of Mystery was a DC Comics title for decades. I love the Halloween cover.

Another intriguing graphic novel is Kill Shakespeare.

Getting away from graphic novels into traditional novels, this is a book that Collins completed for Spillane after his death. It lay unfinished in Spillane's files for decades.

I think it's nothing short of blasphemy for Tales From the Crypt to go from the ne plus ultra of fifties horror comics, controversial and then banned, into this kind of kiddie-parody book. Stinky Dead Kid isn't bad, but doesn't belong in anything called Tales From the Crypt. Why did they license that title to this publisher for this series? And the ad for The Hardy Boys Crawling With Zombies is appalling! Frank and Joe, what have these cretins done to you?

I can find American Heritage magazines in local thrift stores, usually for about a dollar. Done in hardcovers with sewn signatures, these issues were designed for permanence. Interesting article in this issue about Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian anarchists put to death in an American prison.

I'm interested in the article, “Mitt Romney's Mormon Ghosts,” from the latest issue of Rolling Stone. “Rod Stewart’s Wild Memoirs” also sounds like something I’d be interested in. I’m less interested in anything about Taylor Swift, except her pictures. I felt like a dirty old man looking at pictures of her when she was 18 or so...now she's legal, in her twenties and I can be a dirty old man if I want to.

Funny cover by Koren, his hairy people lining up for the New York marathon. There's also another of the New Yorker God cartoons to add to my collection.

Who's your favorite James Bond? I didn’t think anyone ever played him as well as Sean Connery, but after seeing him as Bond I believe Daniel Craig is playing him very well. He'll never overtake Connery in my mind, but he'll be a strong second place.  I was never a fan of either Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan, but I imagine they have many fans. Maybe amongst the cognoscenti even Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby might have a vote or two for best Bond.

Richard “Dick” Lupoff was a longtime science fiction fan-editor, doing the fanzine Xero for many years. He's had a long career as a novelist, also. I love this book because it’s full of pop culture references, and I'm familiar with the locales he uses, in and around Berkeley, El Cerrito, Oakland, cities across the Bay from San Francisco. There's even a heart-tugging pang from the lead character, Hobart Lindsey, for Cody's, the world famous Berkeley bookstore that finally went out of business in 2008. The Emerald Cat Killer is from 2010.

“…it’s all about those sonsabitches with all the riches…”

The campaign for president of the United States is fast coming to a close. Not fast enough for me. The steady and relentless coverage of this campaign has apparently deadened the senses of the electorate. The polls have shifted in Mitt Romney’s favor for reasons unclear to me. It’s as if those remarks he made to a bunch of filthy rich contributors about the “47% who depend on government” didn’t register with the public, or if they did, have been forgiven. American voters have short attention spans, not to mention selective memories. They are also suckers for slick con men.

My fellow Americans, to me the 2012 presidential election boils down to one thing: the Republicans wish to keep a status quo that ensures that the richest Americans will keep all their wealth and pay less in taxes than the rest of us. We will continue to support their privileged lifestyles by taking cuts in our social safety nets, including Social Security and Medicare. But do voters, even voters in my Social Security and Medicare-receiving age group, care? Judging by a surge in the polls for Romney, I guess not.

I can’t be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness of this election. Surely many others my age — and those who will one day be my age — do not think it is okay for the gilded group to sit inside their mansions bought with money gained through unfair tax rates, while we hoi polloi, our entitlements taken from us, stand outside with hats in hand and faces pressed against the iron bars of the fences that separate us.

If there are those who feel the same as me, then why is there not a roar, a deafening, ear-splitting scream of outrage coming from the 99% of the citizens of our nation to hold the bastards upside down and shake them until their fair share falls out of their pockets? I’m afraid that if any million-billion-or-zillionaires are at this moment shaking in their shoes in fear of their favored tax status being extinguished if their pal Mitt doesn’t take the oath of office, then with his election they will suddenly relax and settle back into their leather armchairs, snapping their fingers at their servants to bring them a mai tai. Perhaps, in some extreme and condescending way, they will drink to the damned dumb lumpen masses who have given them a fresh chance to enjoy a life of luxury, free from care for at least another election cycle.

What we should be doing is attending Mitt Romney rallies with a fury, like villagers waving torches at the castle of Frankenstein. We should not be placidly standing by, then voting for a man whose whole life has been one of extreme privilege, and who has nothing to give the American people but another four years of Reaganomics. They didn’t work thirty years ago, and sure as hell won’t work now. It will just further divide the 1% from the 99%.

Happy birthday, Michael McKean

Michael McKean is 65 today. Here are some clips* with him singing lead from the brilliant mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap.

“Gimme Some Money” by the Thamesmen:



“Listen to the Flower People” by Spinal Tap



“Big Bottoms” by Spinal Tap



Happy birthday, Michael!

*My standard disclaimer: If you find a black screen and no video it’s because YouTube pulled it. It’s their fault, not mine.

JFK and Jackie: a bright spotlight and a long shadow

On a September day in 1953, John F. Kennedy, former two-term congressman, and at the time of his wedding a first term U.S. Senator, married Jacqueline Bouvier. It was the society event of the season, if not the year.

As the story states, “600 diplomats, senators and social figures,” and “2,000 society fans,” who had rolled up in chartered buses to see what they could, added to “900 guests at the reception,” made for a huge event. The grand affair garnered a story in the September 28, 1953 issue of Life.

Just nine years later President Kennedy stood on the precipice of nuclear war with what is now called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The threat was real, and the stakes were high. A year after that he was killed in Dallas, and from that moment on everything his wife and family did was news, fed in near daily doses to a never satiated public.

John F. Kennedy was a special person and will be remembered by future generations of Americans. Sometimes a story like this, which was probably something Life editors thought of as human interest, or maybe just a frou-frou type of thing: millionaire former playboy, now senator, marries high society gal, has a short life span, forgotten by the next issue.

But now, when we know what is to come, the story has additional meaning. It has that air of drama not then foreseen, and a long, long shadow that falls over the events of a decade hence.

Life goes to a screening: “The Tell-Tale Heart”

An article in the September 9, 1953 issue of Life magazine gives some publicity to this vivid and animated version of the Poe classic, “The Tell-Tale Heart" by studio UPA.

After the article, the film itself from YouTube.

Copyright © 1953, 2012 Time-Life

The wealthy have a heart, after all

My problem during the 2012 Presidential election cycle has been with the Republicans and their support of the richest one percent, to the exclusion of us ninety-nine percenters.

In this short tale, a very rich couple is retiring, closing their four-story mansion, and moving to smaller quarters. It leaves them with a problem, the servants. They have a couple who have been with them for many years, and don't want to just dismiss them and send them off to be old and homeless, so they do the right thing.

The right thing for the rich, of course.

What's it all about, Alfie? Some Alfred Hitchcock paperback books

From 1959 until the mid-'60s I bought Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and had a stack of dozens of them. In the early '70s I traded them to a used paperback store for store credit. Big mistake! The magazines are hard to find and when I find them they cost $$$$.

In retrospect AHMM was one of the finest magazines of its type anywhere, and stories from its issues have been reprinted and used in movies. The authors’ names hold magic and nostalgia for me: Arthur Porges, Talmage Powell, Edward D. Hoch...the list goes on, including names like Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, Donald Westlake. It was where I learned to recognize the names of writers that I still look for.

After trading away my original magazines, and suffering the remorse of a compulsive collector, at some point I turned to collecting the paperback collections. They skimmed the cream of the magazines. Every few years I take out a few of the books and re-read stories.

Sometime within the last few months I saw a man on television who had some of the original paintings for the covers. He said he worked for the publisher and they were going to throw them out, so he took them. I was immediately envious. But I'd ask why a publisher would throw out any paintings or illustrations in these days of auction houses looking for such cool stuff to sell? I guess the folks who had the paintings saw them as junk piling up in a back room or something. Their loss.

These are some of the books from my stacks:

One of the best covers I have is from a German paperback edition:

Enlarged to show details:

 

 Hard to see the subjects of the paintings until the cover is enlarged:

 Alfred Hitchcock's name was also used on books for young readers.* The two pictured below are reprints of deluxe hardbound books, sold in the 1960s and '70s. I have all of them and there will come a time to show them, also. The cover artists are listed for these 1982 editions: Hector Garrido did Monster Museum, and Joe Burleson painted Daring Detectives.

*Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators was a very successful young detective series.

“Where are my eyes?”

Kids like scares, and they don’t need Halloween as an excuse. They like creepy stories, books and movies. That was true of me when I was a kid, too. I paid for it in nights where I couldn’t go to sleep, worried that some moaning specter or the Headless Horseman would suddenly appear. It didn’t stop me from reading scary stories, though. And even now I sometimes pick books for young readers just to read what kinds of chills authors of this media-saturated age can deliver.

I just read The House on Hackman’s Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon, published by Scholastic Books in 1985, At 126 pages, it’s a perfect length for an elementary school reader level. For an senior reader, like me, tired of plowing through bloated 600-page novels for adults, it was a good, fast read. It's out of print, but still available from Amazon.com.

I thought the story told by Ms Nixon was perfect in setting up a situation a kid could identify with. During a raging snowstorm two youngsters, Jeff and Debbie, are trapped in a large haunted house, deserted for years. Over the years, as they have heard from a Mr. Karsten, anyone who has tried to stay in the house has run out screaming that there was something there.

The owner, who had disappeared years before, had illegally obtained a mummy with jeweled eyes, and stashed it in the basement. The kids see a man-sized statue of the Egyptian god, Anubis, in the foyer, then go into the basement and find the mummy. Then their troubles really begin, as this creepy sequence shows.

“’We’d better get them right now,’ Jeff said, as he snapped off his flashlight. He had one hand on the doorknob and one hand on the key, ready to turn it, when they heard measured footsteps coming toward them, up the stairs!

‘Who’s here?’ Jeff croaked, and it frightened him even more to know he was following so closely the story Mr. Karsten had told them.

The footsteps stopped.

Jeff remembered the little desk chair. Trying to tiptoe, but stumbling and tripping, Jeff grabbed the chair and quickly shoved it under the doorknob of the door, making sure it was wedged tightly.

Again there was silence, until a board on the stairs creaked, and the slow footsteps began again.

Neither Jeff nor Debbie moved as the footsteps came closer and closer, then stopped outside the door.

There was a pause, as though someone was listening. Then a light scratching began on the other side of the door.

Debbie gasped. Jeff’s knees wobbled. He backed up and plopped down on the bed, sending up a cloud of dust.

He knew Debbie was going to say it, and he shuddered, knowing what the answer would be.

‘What do you want?’ Debbie whispered.

And a voice whispered back, ‘Where are my eyes?’”

I believe Ms. Nixon would have her young readers panting with fear, identifying with her characters on the other side of the door from a walking Egyptian god. She helped them visualize it with her vivid writing.

There’s a name written in childish handwriting on the inside front cover of the book, “Rachael.”

I wonder if Rachael felt a chill go down her spine when she read that. Did she lie awake in bed that night waiting for a scratching on her door and a whispered voice? If so, then the author succeeded.

Picture this...

Dr. David will give you a whole new look!

Sally handed me this ad from one of those mailers full of coupons and local advertisements that fill up our mailbox. She was giggling over the pictures of the snaggle-toothed people, turned into pretty people with flashing white teeth. We thought that not only did they get new teeth, they got new faces! The man went from having limp blond hair to a full head of dark hair, the girl became a beauty queen.

Then I noticed the asterisks, and read at the bottom, “Not actual orthodontic patients.” Well, there went my fantasy. I was about to call Dr. David to see if he could turn me into George Clooney, or a reasonable facsimile. The age of that kind of miracle is not yet upon us.

Mitt back on his White Horse!

Another image of Mitt on a white horse showed up in my local newspaper yesterday. It might have been inspired by the New Yorker cover, which I have joined with the editorial cartoon, after posting it here. It might be alluding to what I suspect the Barry Blitt cover was making reference to, that “White Horse prophecy” of a Mormon saving the Constitution, which is “hanging by a thread” until he comes along to rescue the nation. As I've mentioned before, it is not a universally held belief by Mormons, and Mitt Romney is specifically quoted as saying it has nothing to do with him running for president.

Notice what is coming out of the horse, piling up at President Obama's feet. That's a pretty fair assessment of how most Democrats saw Romney's performance at the first Presidential Debate this past Wednesday night.

Mr. and Ms. Hitler

We're back to the New Yorker again. The startling ad to the right is the back cover of the October 8, 2012 issue, It looked familiar. Sure enough, when I Googled images of Adolf Hitler I saw the resemblance. (The conjoined pictures were conceived and done by me.) Is the intent of the ad to draw a comparison to Der Fuehrer, or is it just a coincidence? According to the books, Subliminal Seduction and Media Sexploitation, by Wilson Bryan Key, which I wrote about in 2008 in a post called “Sexing it Up”, there are no coincidences in advertising. Millions of dollars go into ad campaigns. Did someone along the line say, “This girl has a Hitler haircut,” or was that the advertiser's intention to get attention? I don't know. It's interesting to speculate, though.

Walt Kelly's “Bloody Drip”

A couple of weeks ago I had a posting that showed an early article about the phenom of Mickey Spillane, and his hard-boiled crime fiction. You can see it here.

According to Life, Walt Kelly, creator of “Pogo,” was inspired by that same article to do a Spillane satire. His own hardboiled detective, Meat Hamburg, is played by Albert the Alligator in a strip for the book, Uncle Pogo’s So-So Stories, published in 1953 Here's “The Bloody Drip” by “Muckey Spleen.”

The Pogo comic strip, a phenomenon in its own right, was featured a year earlier, also in Life, in a feature drawn especially for that magazine.

With Pogo's personal popularity, a run for president was called for. Here are a 1952 campaign button and a later poster.

At Insomnia Notebook WE GO POGO!

Pirate raider Mitt

Before watching the first debate tonight between President Obama and Mitt Romney, I suggest you take the time to read a couple of online articles on Mitt from Rolling Stone magazine.

”The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital”.

”Mitt Romney’s Real Agenda”

I don’t know how else to describe what Mitt’s company, Bain Capital, does except call it old-fashioned piracy. Since it is technically legal to raid a company for all its wealth and then scuttle it so it ends up in Davy Jones’ locker we could be polite and call it “privateering,” but despite the veneer of legality, it’s dirty, it’s immoral, and to me it’s piracy.*

The idea, as explained in the article, is to take a little money, say $5 million, get a bank to put up big money, say $500 million, to buy controlling interest in the company. After that loot the place, saddle it with the bank debt (interest alone is enough to sink the company), then walk away with maybe hundreds of millions, and all you’ve had to put up is $5 million!

Pirate Raider Mitt, operating Bain within the law, doesn’t see anything he did as bad, but I’m willing to bet that he has left a wake of ruined lives, and maybe even deaths, behind him, and he’ll never see a day in prison, nor hang from the highest yardarm.

It’s a good idea when assessing the man and what he says in the debate tonight against that background, and wonder what his plan is if elected Pirate in Chief.

*The Mafia calls it a “bust-out.” They don’t even put up the money. They just force their way into a company, saddle it with debt and ruin its credit by buying merchandise to sell out the back door. When the company is bankrupt they torch it and collect the insurance. A win-win…for the Mafia.  Because it’s considered racketeering it’s against the law, but in effect it’s just a cruder version of what Mitt, in his $150 haircut and $3000 suit, did every day with Bain.