Ed Gorman's Blog, page 214
January 5, 2011
James Frey's Controversial Fiction Factory Hits Big
[image error]
****************************
This is from Jacket Copy, the Los Angeles Times
The first fruit of James Frey's fiction factory
January 3, 2011 | 8:13 am
James Frey achieved a strange fame with his bestselling memoir that proved not entirely true, "A Million Little Pieces." After going on "Oprah" to promote his book, he was brought back to face her displeasure about its exaggerations.
He moved to New York and wrote a big book set in Los Angeles. "Bright Shiny Morning" came out in 2008; David L. Ulin, who was then L.A. Times books editor, wrote it was "a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read."
But a little literary criticism wasn't going to slow Frey down. As New York magazine reported in November, Frey has created Full Fathom Five, a company that recruits young MFA students to co-write novels with him -- for as little as $500, $250 or even nothing -- in hopes of sharing in the profits of their eventual blockbuster sale. The writing duties fell almost completely to the young writers: Frey would provide story ideas, writing guidance or polishing, and the connections to get the work published and in the right hands.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
for the rest go here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacke...
This is from Jacket Copy, the Los Angeles Times
The first fruit of James Frey's fiction factory
January 3, 2011 | 8:13 am
James Frey achieved a strange fame with his bestselling memoir that proved not entirely true, "A Million Little Pieces." After going on "Oprah" to promote his book, he was brought back to face her displeasure about its exaggerations.
He moved to New York and wrote a big book set in Los Angeles. "Bright Shiny Morning" came out in 2008; David L. Ulin, who was then L.A. Times books editor, wrote it was "a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read."
But a little literary criticism wasn't going to slow Frey down. As New York magazine reported in November, Frey has created Full Fathom Five, a company that recruits young MFA students to co-write novels with him -- for as little as $500, $250 or even nothing -- in hopes of sharing in the profits of their eventual blockbuster sale. The writing duties fell almost completely to the young writers: Frey would provide story ideas, writing guidance or polishing, and the connections to get the work published and in the right hands.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
for the rest go here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacke...
January 4, 2011
Roger Ebert on SF Fandom
[image error]
***************************
Ed here: I ran across this piece by accident, Roger recalling his days in science fiction fandom. We'd both been publishing fanzines for some time. Roger was the best writer of our group. He already had great style and humor. I lived in two worlds. After I cleaned up my act and decided that being a thug was not a worthy goal, I got seriously involved in fandom. I wrote for any zine that would have me. I also published a zine called Ciln (I have no idea what the title meant) and managed to cadge Roger and Bob Bloch and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Greg Benford among others to contribute to my truly humble enterprise. Here's Roger writing about his own days in fandom.
This is one of the finest pieces I've ever read about being a science fiction fan in the late fifties and early sixties.
ROGER EBERT:
A year or so after that I joined Tucker and Ed Gorman, a fan from Cedar Rapids, on a trip to the MidWestCon in Cincinnati. We drove in my family's Dodge, nearly skidding off a road in Indiana, talking all the way about fandom in a giddy rapid-fire exchange of inside jargon. At a motel in Cincinnati, I made people laugh with my reproductions of Bob and Ray routines, and drank a little beer, which felt like a lot of beer to an inexperienced drinker, and–here is the earth-shaking part–I actually met Buck and Juanita Coulson, Dick and Pat Lupoff, and Harlan Ellison! The Coulsons struck me as two of the nicest people I had ever met, the kind of people where you would like to move into their spare room, and the astonishingly long run of their Yandro was one of the monuments of fandom. The Lupoffs were enormously funny and smart New Yorkers–that city that the novels of Thomas Wolfe had forever colored in my daydreams. Harlan was–how old? Twenty? Young and cocky, with the color proofs for the cover of his new paperback that Berkeley Books was about to publish, and as he showed me the glossy reproduction, I knew envy of a desperately sincere kind.
(more)
These meetings, these connections and conversations, were important because they existed in an alternative world to the one I inhabited. Fandom grew out of and fed a world-view that was dubious of received opinion, sarcastic, anarchic, geeky before that was fash-ionable. In those years it was heretical to take comic books or "Captain Video" seriously. Pop culture was not yet an academic subject. From Lenny Bruce, Stan Freberg, Harvey Kurtzman, Mort Sahl, and Bob and Ray we found an angle on America that cut through the orthodoxy of the Fifties and was an early form of what would come to be known as the Sixties.
(more)
From time to time I've heard from friends from those days. I spent time with Ed Gorman during a visit to Coe College; he became a mystery writer and wrote a novel about two movie critics who had a TV show. Harlan Ellison and I have had dinner in Los Angeles–once in the home of the eccentric film collector David Bradley, who had a concrete bunker filled with prints behind his house, and showed us the rare early cut of "The Big Sleep." I ran into Dick Lupoff in San Francisco during a book tour–he has a show on Pacifica Radio–and we remembered that New York visit, when he and Pat seemed so incomprehensibly metropolitan to me. I actually sold two stories to Ted White when he was editing Amazing and Fantastic, circa 1970.
for the rest go here:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0501/th...
Ed here: I ran across this piece by accident, Roger recalling his days in science fiction fandom. We'd both been publishing fanzines for some time. Roger was the best writer of our group. He already had great style and humor. I lived in two worlds. After I cleaned up my act and decided that being a thug was not a worthy goal, I got seriously involved in fandom. I wrote for any zine that would have me. I also published a zine called Ciln (I have no idea what the title meant) and managed to cadge Roger and Bob Bloch and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Greg Benford among others to contribute to my truly humble enterprise. Here's Roger writing about his own days in fandom.
This is one of the finest pieces I've ever read about being a science fiction fan in the late fifties and early sixties.
ROGER EBERT:
A year or so after that I joined Tucker and Ed Gorman, a fan from Cedar Rapids, on a trip to the MidWestCon in Cincinnati. We drove in my family's Dodge, nearly skidding off a road in Indiana, talking all the way about fandom in a giddy rapid-fire exchange of inside jargon. At a motel in Cincinnati, I made people laugh with my reproductions of Bob and Ray routines, and drank a little beer, which felt like a lot of beer to an inexperienced drinker, and–here is the earth-shaking part–I actually met Buck and Juanita Coulson, Dick and Pat Lupoff, and Harlan Ellison! The Coulsons struck me as two of the nicest people I had ever met, the kind of people where you would like to move into their spare room, and the astonishingly long run of their Yandro was one of the monuments of fandom. The Lupoffs were enormously funny and smart New Yorkers–that city that the novels of Thomas Wolfe had forever colored in my daydreams. Harlan was–how old? Twenty? Young and cocky, with the color proofs for the cover of his new paperback that Berkeley Books was about to publish, and as he showed me the glossy reproduction, I knew envy of a desperately sincere kind.
(more)
These meetings, these connections and conversations, were important because they existed in an alternative world to the one I inhabited. Fandom grew out of and fed a world-view that was dubious of received opinion, sarcastic, anarchic, geeky before that was fash-ionable. In those years it was heretical to take comic books or "Captain Video" seriously. Pop culture was not yet an academic subject. From Lenny Bruce, Stan Freberg, Harvey Kurtzman, Mort Sahl, and Bob and Ray we found an angle on America that cut through the orthodoxy of the Fifties and was an early form of what would come to be known as the Sixties.
(more)
From time to time I've heard from friends from those days. I spent time with Ed Gorman during a visit to Coe College; he became a mystery writer and wrote a novel about two movie critics who had a TV show. Harlan Ellison and I have had dinner in Los Angeles–once in the home of the eccentric film collector David Bradley, who had a concrete bunker filled with prints behind his house, and showed us the rare early cut of "The Big Sleep." I ran into Dick Lupoff in San Francisco during a book tour–he has a show on Pacifica Radio–and we remembered that New York visit, when he and Pat seemed so incomprehensibly metropolitan to me. I actually sold two stories to Ted White when he was editing Amazing and Fantastic, circa 1970.
for the rest go here:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0501/th...
January 3, 2011
TTA Press
[image error]
[image error]
Ed here: This is an outright plug for one of the most interesting and innovative small publishers in the world. TTA Publications. Black Static is horror-oriented with cutting edge fiction and numerous columns, most notably by the always enlightening Christopher Fowler. One dazzling issue after another.
Crimewave is one of the most consistently rule-breaking collections of crime fiction being published anywhere. Last night I started reading it but had to stop after reading the first story, Plainview by David Hoing. I stopped reading because the story is so good, so rich, so lyrically told reading anything else for the night would have been a waste of time. When I went to the back for the author bios I found that Hoing lives in Waterloo, about seventy miles from Cedar Rapids. I just got off the phone with him. I'm sure I sounded like a fan boy.. He's done quite a bit of science fiction, he told me, but this was his first attempt at mystery. What can I tell you? His story is so good I almost decided to quit writing. What's the point? THIS IS HIS FIRST MYSTERY STORY!!!!!!!!!
Get to know your local TTA Publications dealer. They've got the real stuff.
Crimewave
Crime & Mystery Crimewave 11 out now
Current Issue
Crimewave 11: Ghosts Out Now
18th Nov, 2010
Cover Art:
The evocative wraparound cover art is by Ben Baldwin.
Stories:
Plainview Part One: The Shoe Store by Dave Hoing
Friday, November 28, 1975
• The owner of the shop, a local eccentric named Kohlsrud, had liver spots on his hands and nicotine stains on his fingernails. He held the shoehorn in his right hand and cupped it over Leslie's lower calf before slowly sliding the metal down to her heel. His wrist brushed against the smooth and supple contours of her leg. As he guided her foot into the loafer she noticed several scabs on the top of his head. What little hair he had was wiry and longish and white.
Wilkolak by Nina Allan
Kip knew the man was the monster as soon as he saw him. He was coming out of the convenience store attached to the garage at the bottom end of Lee High Road, his shopping in an old Tesco bag. Kip uncapped the Nikon and took his picture; the click of the shutter release sounded loud to him, even above the noise of the passing traffic. Kip lowered the camera, suddenly afraid the man might turn and see him, but that didn't happen. Instead, the man crossed the garage forecourt, ignoring the cars parked at the pumps and heading off up the road in the direction of Lewisham. He was of medium height, but skinny, with gangling limbs and a jutting Adam's apple and reminded Kip of Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He wore tatty old Levis, and an army surplus jacket that was too big for him around the shoulders. He seemed lost in thought, cocooned in it, shut off from his surroundings, from Kip, from everything.
The Conspirators by Christopher Fowler
At the next table of the hotel restaurant, three waiters took their places beside the diners, and with a synchronised flourish raised the silver covers on their salvers. A fourth appeared, bearing a tray containing a quartet of tiny copper pots. Each waiter took a handle and proceeded to pour the sauces from the pots onto the salvers from a height of not less than eighteen inches. They might have been tipping jewels into coffers.
Who's Gonna Miss You When You're Gone? by Mikal Trimm
The trailer sat at the end of an unpaved stretch of hard-packed red sand and crushed oyster shells. Desmond Fells drove slowly through the gulf-spat detritus that served as dirt in the Florida panhandle, taking home the groceries in his parent's ancient International Harvester station wagon. The shocks screamed in protest as he hit another hole in the road. Something clinked ominously against the hatch.
Holderhaven by Richard Butner
In 1911, Nerissa and Jorn Holder move into Holderhaven. • In 1966, Nerissa Holder dies, having outlived her husband, both sons, and a son-in-law. • In 1983, Holderhaven opens as a country house museum. • In 2003, Rudy needs a summer job. His friend at college, Bill Mills, says he can pull some strings. Bill does not need a summer job. Bill's family is not quite as wealthy as the Holders had been, but they are rich enough. Bill's father is Ol' Dick Mills. Dick Mills' house does not have a name. It is much smaller than Holderhaven, but it still has a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a separate climate-controlled warehouse for his collection of vintage Jaguar convertibles. Ol' Dick Mills knows everyone in the county. Everyone who matters, at least. He places a call to Harriet Diamond, supervisor of operations at the Holderhaven House Museum.
Eleven Eleven by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero
Of course the old man should never have sold Alsie the gun. She was twelve years old today. She had no ID. But she had often hung around in the pawn shop when it was really cold outside, and the old man had let her stay because he was a kind man, even if he did take all kinds of bad things in for pawn and never asked where they came from.
Where the Bodies Are by Ilsa J. Bick
There'd been snow the night before, heavy and wet, another twelve, thirteen-inch dump added to the two feet already on the cemetery. Gulls screamed against a pewter sky, and the keen tang of crushed alu minum promised more snow on the way. Blades of an icy wind off Lake Michigan hacked Miriam's cheeks, cutting tears. • An engine grumbled to her left. Blinking against salt-sting, Miriam watched as a mud-spattered flatbed skidded off thick slush before passing through a gate that was never locked. The truck was Stan's, the Hebrew cemetery's gravedigger-slash-maintenance-guy – and Miriam thought, with all apologies to Queen: And another one bites the dust.
Neighborhood Watch by Cody Goodfellow
This is a nice neighborhood: the houses upper middle class, postwar modern villa styles, big backyards, meandering drives up and down gentle hills that promise a spectacular view from any window. Quiet. To look at it on paper, you might think it was just another anachronistic suburb long since swallowed up by the city. The city peers over the low roofs and eucalyptus-lined avenues, but nothing bad from outside gets in, nothing but a hushed whisper from the freeway, so far as anyone who lives here knows.
K Love by O'Neil De Noux
Jodie Kintyre found the suicide note in a clear, plastic sandwich bag in the right front pocket of the jumper's faded jeans. She carefully opened the bag and removed the handwritten note, laying it on the hood of the Humvee that had driven her to the scene. She put her useless portable radio on the note to keep it from flying away in the post-Hurricane Rita gusts that still blew across New Orleans. Behind her the three National Guard MPs, fresh-faced youngsters from Connecticut, stared curiously at her. They'd kept their distance from the body in the center of Bourbon Street.
Living Arrangement by Steve Rasnic Tem
Monte had never been a good father, in fact he had been pretty lousy by anyone's standards, but after he lost his job and became too ill to work and the arthritis made it so he could hardly move his legs, his daughter pretended otherwise and asked him to come live with her, her young son, and the current boyfriend. "You always took care of me," she said. "Let me do this for you."
4am, When the Walls are Thinnest by Alison J. Littlewood
Stumpy Ellis told a lot of stories about how he lost his thumb, and they always seemed to involve violence, and grinding, and eyes. I was the only one who heard the real story, and I never would have told. Stumpy had a temper, and a man with a temper in prison is like a powder keg in a room full of lit matches.
The Hostess by Joel Lane
Not long after I moved to Birmingham in the 1980s, a family feud led to one of the worst crimes in my experience. It happened in Digbeth, an old industrial district now taken over by warehouses and wholesale businesses. The narrow backstreets and rotting factories hid a multitude of stolen goods. But most of the actual crimes happened elsewhere. The Digbeth police station was busier with drunks fighting in the Barrel Organ and the Railway Tavern than with professional villains.
We Are Two Lions by Luke Sholer
I guide the clipper up my skull, going against the grain. Hairs fall into the bathroom sink. Outside, a lean rain dusts the asphalt. People say you're on your way. • I let the blade-guard ride the contours of my head, imagining you're doing it, like you used to, your chest grazing my back. If it has to happen, I want it like that. Your lips and then the muzzle against my skull.
Plainview Part Two: The Blood Cools by Dave Hoing
Friday, July 3, 2009
• Mike Alexander and his wife Beth joined in singing hymn number 474 from the old green Book of Worship as the Frischel girls followed the casket of their mother up the aisle and out of the church. The girls were hardly girls anymore – Lindsey, the youngest, must be nearing forty by now – but Saint Andrew's Lutheran Church hadn't changed a whit since Mike left town in 1976. In fact, the pew in front of him still bore the marks he'd carved into the wood on his last visit, the now immortalized initials of his special girlfriends at the time, VK72 + LF75 + ML76. Thirty-three years later, no one had replaced the pews, no one had sanded the old wood, and no one, as far as he knew, had taken much notice of his handiwork. All somebody had done was to apply layer after layer of varnish until the etchings were smooth and shallow indentations, barely visible except to those who knew where to look and what to look for.
What People Say About Crimewave:
"Publications like Crimewave make me want to move to England"
— Bookgasm
"Crimewave goes further, and the quality is higher"
— The Times
"A must-have collection of the hottest crime stories around"
— Ian Rankin
"The best in cutting edge crime fiction"
— Ed Gorman
"Head and shoulders above every other mystery magazine in look, content and tone"
— Ellen Datlow
"The best crime magazine ever"
— Mystery Scene
"There truly is no other magazine that brings you the kind of stories you see here"
— SF Site
"You absolutely cannot hope to find a better collection of razor-edged roses anywhere on the planet"
— The Agony Column
"Absolutely outstanding, and deserves to be brought to wider attention. Be it as an anthology or a magazine, Crimewave 11 is something to be looked forward to"
— Suite 101
Format of Crimewave 11: Ghosts
Crimewave is published as an Americal Royal (229mm x 152mm) paperback, 240 pages on cream bookwove plus colour laminated cover.
How To Buy:
The cover price of Crimewave 11: Ghosts (ISBN 978-0-9553683-4-9), a limited edition large format paperback, is just £9.99. However, it might be difficult to find in your local shop. Therefore we recommend that you subscribe to four issues for just £26 (plus a little p&p for overseas readers) which gets you this 240-page book for just £6.50 as well as helping to ensure the continued existence of the series. Alternatively you can buy Crimewave 11 by itself. Click on the link below, the 'buy now' button top right, or the Shop link in the top bar.
Please help spread the word about Crimewave. Thanks for your support!
Subscribe to Crimewave/Buy Crimewave 11
Ben Baldwin
Dave Hoing
Nina Allan
Christopher Fowler
Mikal Trimm
Richard Butner
Cheryl Wood Ruggiero
Ilsa J. Bick
Cody Goodfellow
O'Neil De Noux
Steve Rasnic Tem
Alison J. Littlewood
Joel Lane
[Permalink]
Crimewave issues by date:
previous next
Older news items can be found in the archive.
© TTA Press unless otherwise credited | Privacy Information | Accessibility | Site created by Paul Drummond
[image error]
Ed here: This is an outright plug for one of the most interesting and innovative small publishers in the world. TTA Publications. Black Static is horror-oriented with cutting edge fiction and numerous columns, most notably by the always enlightening Christopher Fowler. One dazzling issue after another.
Crimewave is one of the most consistently rule-breaking collections of crime fiction being published anywhere. Last night I started reading it but had to stop after reading the first story, Plainview by David Hoing. I stopped reading because the story is so good, so rich, so lyrically told reading anything else for the night would have been a waste of time. When I went to the back for the author bios I found that Hoing lives in Waterloo, about seventy miles from Cedar Rapids. I just got off the phone with him. I'm sure I sounded like a fan boy.. He's done quite a bit of science fiction, he told me, but this was his first attempt at mystery. What can I tell you? His story is so good I almost decided to quit writing. What's the point? THIS IS HIS FIRST MYSTERY STORY!!!!!!!!!
Get to know your local TTA Publications dealer. They've got the real stuff.
Crimewave
Crime & Mystery Crimewave 11 out now
Current Issue
Crimewave 11: Ghosts Out Now
18th Nov, 2010
Cover Art:
The evocative wraparound cover art is by Ben Baldwin.
Stories:
Plainview Part One: The Shoe Store by Dave Hoing
Friday, November 28, 1975
• The owner of the shop, a local eccentric named Kohlsrud, had liver spots on his hands and nicotine stains on his fingernails. He held the shoehorn in his right hand and cupped it over Leslie's lower calf before slowly sliding the metal down to her heel. His wrist brushed against the smooth and supple contours of her leg. As he guided her foot into the loafer she noticed several scabs on the top of his head. What little hair he had was wiry and longish and white.
Wilkolak by Nina Allan
Kip knew the man was the monster as soon as he saw him. He was coming out of the convenience store attached to the garage at the bottom end of Lee High Road, his shopping in an old Tesco bag. Kip uncapped the Nikon and took his picture; the click of the shutter release sounded loud to him, even above the noise of the passing traffic. Kip lowered the camera, suddenly afraid the man might turn and see him, but that didn't happen. Instead, the man crossed the garage forecourt, ignoring the cars parked at the pumps and heading off up the road in the direction of Lewisham. He was of medium height, but skinny, with gangling limbs and a jutting Adam's apple and reminded Kip of Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He wore tatty old Levis, and an army surplus jacket that was too big for him around the shoulders. He seemed lost in thought, cocooned in it, shut off from his surroundings, from Kip, from everything.
The Conspirators by Christopher Fowler
At the next table of the hotel restaurant, three waiters took their places beside the diners, and with a synchronised flourish raised the silver covers on their salvers. A fourth appeared, bearing a tray containing a quartet of tiny copper pots. Each waiter took a handle and proceeded to pour the sauces from the pots onto the salvers from a height of not less than eighteen inches. They might have been tipping jewels into coffers.
Who's Gonna Miss You When You're Gone? by Mikal Trimm
The trailer sat at the end of an unpaved stretch of hard-packed red sand and crushed oyster shells. Desmond Fells drove slowly through the gulf-spat detritus that served as dirt in the Florida panhandle, taking home the groceries in his parent's ancient International Harvester station wagon. The shocks screamed in protest as he hit another hole in the road. Something clinked ominously against the hatch.
Holderhaven by Richard Butner
In 1911, Nerissa and Jorn Holder move into Holderhaven. • In 1966, Nerissa Holder dies, having outlived her husband, both sons, and a son-in-law. • In 1983, Holderhaven opens as a country house museum. • In 2003, Rudy needs a summer job. His friend at college, Bill Mills, says he can pull some strings. Bill does not need a summer job. Bill's family is not quite as wealthy as the Holders had been, but they are rich enough. Bill's father is Ol' Dick Mills. Dick Mills' house does not have a name. It is much smaller than Holderhaven, but it still has a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a separate climate-controlled warehouse for his collection of vintage Jaguar convertibles. Ol' Dick Mills knows everyone in the county. Everyone who matters, at least. He places a call to Harriet Diamond, supervisor of operations at the Holderhaven House Museum.
Eleven Eleven by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero
Of course the old man should never have sold Alsie the gun. She was twelve years old today. She had no ID. But she had often hung around in the pawn shop when it was really cold outside, and the old man had let her stay because he was a kind man, even if he did take all kinds of bad things in for pawn and never asked where they came from.
Where the Bodies Are by Ilsa J. Bick
There'd been snow the night before, heavy and wet, another twelve, thirteen-inch dump added to the two feet already on the cemetery. Gulls screamed against a pewter sky, and the keen tang of crushed alu minum promised more snow on the way. Blades of an icy wind off Lake Michigan hacked Miriam's cheeks, cutting tears. • An engine grumbled to her left. Blinking against salt-sting, Miriam watched as a mud-spattered flatbed skidded off thick slush before passing through a gate that was never locked. The truck was Stan's, the Hebrew cemetery's gravedigger-slash-maintenance-guy – and Miriam thought, with all apologies to Queen: And another one bites the dust.
Neighborhood Watch by Cody Goodfellow
This is a nice neighborhood: the houses upper middle class, postwar modern villa styles, big backyards, meandering drives up and down gentle hills that promise a spectacular view from any window. Quiet. To look at it on paper, you might think it was just another anachronistic suburb long since swallowed up by the city. The city peers over the low roofs and eucalyptus-lined avenues, but nothing bad from outside gets in, nothing but a hushed whisper from the freeway, so far as anyone who lives here knows.
K Love by O'Neil De Noux
Jodie Kintyre found the suicide note in a clear, plastic sandwich bag in the right front pocket of the jumper's faded jeans. She carefully opened the bag and removed the handwritten note, laying it on the hood of the Humvee that had driven her to the scene. She put her useless portable radio on the note to keep it from flying away in the post-Hurricane Rita gusts that still blew across New Orleans. Behind her the three National Guard MPs, fresh-faced youngsters from Connecticut, stared curiously at her. They'd kept their distance from the body in the center of Bourbon Street.
Living Arrangement by Steve Rasnic Tem
Monte had never been a good father, in fact he had been pretty lousy by anyone's standards, but after he lost his job and became too ill to work and the arthritis made it so he could hardly move his legs, his daughter pretended otherwise and asked him to come live with her, her young son, and the current boyfriend. "You always took care of me," she said. "Let me do this for you."
4am, When the Walls are Thinnest by Alison J. Littlewood
Stumpy Ellis told a lot of stories about how he lost his thumb, and they always seemed to involve violence, and grinding, and eyes. I was the only one who heard the real story, and I never would have told. Stumpy had a temper, and a man with a temper in prison is like a powder keg in a room full of lit matches.
The Hostess by Joel Lane
Not long after I moved to Birmingham in the 1980s, a family feud led to one of the worst crimes in my experience. It happened in Digbeth, an old industrial district now taken over by warehouses and wholesale businesses. The narrow backstreets and rotting factories hid a multitude of stolen goods. But most of the actual crimes happened elsewhere. The Digbeth police station was busier with drunks fighting in the Barrel Organ and the Railway Tavern than with professional villains.
We Are Two Lions by Luke Sholer
I guide the clipper up my skull, going against the grain. Hairs fall into the bathroom sink. Outside, a lean rain dusts the asphalt. People say you're on your way. • I let the blade-guard ride the contours of my head, imagining you're doing it, like you used to, your chest grazing my back. If it has to happen, I want it like that. Your lips and then the muzzle against my skull.
Plainview Part Two: The Blood Cools by Dave Hoing
Friday, July 3, 2009
• Mike Alexander and his wife Beth joined in singing hymn number 474 from the old green Book of Worship as the Frischel girls followed the casket of their mother up the aisle and out of the church. The girls were hardly girls anymore – Lindsey, the youngest, must be nearing forty by now – but Saint Andrew's Lutheran Church hadn't changed a whit since Mike left town in 1976. In fact, the pew in front of him still bore the marks he'd carved into the wood on his last visit, the now immortalized initials of his special girlfriends at the time, VK72 + LF75 + ML76. Thirty-three years later, no one had replaced the pews, no one had sanded the old wood, and no one, as far as he knew, had taken much notice of his handiwork. All somebody had done was to apply layer after layer of varnish until the etchings were smooth and shallow indentations, barely visible except to those who knew where to look and what to look for.
What People Say About Crimewave:
"Publications like Crimewave make me want to move to England"
— Bookgasm
"Crimewave goes further, and the quality is higher"
— The Times
"A must-have collection of the hottest crime stories around"
— Ian Rankin
"The best in cutting edge crime fiction"
— Ed Gorman
"Head and shoulders above every other mystery magazine in look, content and tone"
— Ellen Datlow
"The best crime magazine ever"
— Mystery Scene
"There truly is no other magazine that brings you the kind of stories you see here"
— SF Site
"You absolutely cannot hope to find a better collection of razor-edged roses anywhere on the planet"
— The Agony Column
"Absolutely outstanding, and deserves to be brought to wider attention. Be it as an anthology or a magazine, Crimewave 11 is something to be looked forward to"
— Suite 101
Format of Crimewave 11: Ghosts
Crimewave is published as an Americal Royal (229mm x 152mm) paperback, 240 pages on cream bookwove plus colour laminated cover.
How To Buy:
The cover price of Crimewave 11: Ghosts (ISBN 978-0-9553683-4-9), a limited edition large format paperback, is just £9.99. However, it might be difficult to find in your local shop. Therefore we recommend that you subscribe to four issues for just £26 (plus a little p&p for overseas readers) which gets you this 240-page book for just £6.50 as well as helping to ensure the continued existence of the series. Alternatively you can buy Crimewave 11 by itself. Click on the link below, the 'buy now' button top right, or the Shop link in the top bar.
Please help spread the word about Crimewave. Thanks for your support!
Subscribe to Crimewave/Buy Crimewave 11
Ben Baldwin
Dave Hoing
Nina Allan
Christopher Fowler
Mikal Trimm
Richard Butner
Cheryl Wood Ruggiero
Ilsa J. Bick
Cody Goodfellow
O'Neil De Noux
Steve Rasnic Tem
Alison J. Littlewood
Joel Lane
[Permalink]
Crimewave issues by date:
previous next
Older news items can be found in the archive.
© TTA Press unless otherwise credited | Privacy Information | Accessibility | Site created by Paul Drummond
January 2, 2011
29th Anniversary
[image error]
Twenty-nine years ago today Carol and I were married. The best years of my life. Thanks to her.
Twenty-nine years ago today Carol and I were married. The best years of my life. Thanks to her.
January 1, 2011
Jon Lovitz
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Ed here: I've alway been a big fan of Jon Lovitz and his work. Wednesday the A.V. Club's Sean O'Neal interviewed Lovitz at length about his life and career. As usual with Lovitz there is a lot of anxiety and pain mixed with the sardonic humor. At the end of the piece of I've linked to a You Tube Clip of Lovitz in a scene from the movie "Happiness." He's got the chops. And it's nice to see the lovely Jane Adams be lovely. She's too often in unflattering roles. The trick here is--is Lovitz the good guy or the bad guy? A victim or a self-pitying manipulator?
From The A.V. Club
AVC: When you came back in '97 and hosted, were there any differences that you noticed in that cast as compared to your own?
JL: I didn't sense any tension, and I also didn't sense any camaraderie. It seemed very quiet. I didn't see comedians goofing around. None of that. It was weird. I mean, it was calm, and everybody got along. And Lorne was very nice to me, but I felt like they looked at me like an outsider, even though I had been there. After the show, people come up to the host and say congratulations, and the only one who came up to me was Will Ferrell. He said, "Good show." Nobody else did, which I found very odd.
On Monday, they have a meeting with all the writers and cast. They come in Lorne's office and pitch their ideas. Before the meeting, Lorne said, "Listen, just don't say anything." And I go, "Really?" So they come in and tell me their ideas, and I just go, [Pauses] "Okay." And I didn't say anything! I think they probably thought I was a jerk, but he told me, "Don't say anything." I couldn't say, "Oh, that's funny." They'd say, "We have an idea for a sketch. You're a teacher, and the student brings you an apple." I go, "Right." "And then another comes in and another brings you an apple, and then another brings you an apple." I go, "Then what happens?" They go, "No, that's the sketch. They're just all bringing you apples." I said, "That's not a sketch. That's just a premise." They didn't know what I was talking about. I said, "A sketch is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end. It's like a movie. It's supposed to have a story. You have a who, what, where—the beginning, and the conflict, and it builds and builds. That's how you do improv. You're filling in all those spots to make the scene work. It builds to a climax. Then there's a resolution, which is the ending. It takes hours to write the ending. It's hard to come up with them." They just looked at me blankly.
I think the writers thought I was a jerk, because I was like, "Then what happens?" to all of it. They'd go, "That's it." Maybe they didn't like that. They wrote a first draft, and, "Who are you to touch our brilliant first draft?" Writing is rewriting.
for the rest go here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/jon-lo...
JON LOVITZ ON YOU TUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uod4yW...
[image error]
Ed here: I've alway been a big fan of Jon Lovitz and his work. Wednesday the A.V. Club's Sean O'Neal interviewed Lovitz at length about his life and career. As usual with Lovitz there is a lot of anxiety and pain mixed with the sardonic humor. At the end of the piece of I've linked to a You Tube Clip of Lovitz in a scene from the movie "Happiness." He's got the chops. And it's nice to see the lovely Jane Adams be lovely. She's too often in unflattering roles. The trick here is--is Lovitz the good guy or the bad guy? A victim or a self-pitying manipulator?
From The A.V. Club
AVC: When you came back in '97 and hosted, were there any differences that you noticed in that cast as compared to your own?
JL: I didn't sense any tension, and I also didn't sense any camaraderie. It seemed very quiet. I didn't see comedians goofing around. None of that. It was weird. I mean, it was calm, and everybody got along. And Lorne was very nice to me, but I felt like they looked at me like an outsider, even though I had been there. After the show, people come up to the host and say congratulations, and the only one who came up to me was Will Ferrell. He said, "Good show." Nobody else did, which I found very odd.
On Monday, they have a meeting with all the writers and cast. They come in Lorne's office and pitch their ideas. Before the meeting, Lorne said, "Listen, just don't say anything." And I go, "Really?" So they come in and tell me their ideas, and I just go, [Pauses] "Okay." And I didn't say anything! I think they probably thought I was a jerk, but he told me, "Don't say anything." I couldn't say, "Oh, that's funny." They'd say, "We have an idea for a sketch. You're a teacher, and the student brings you an apple." I go, "Right." "And then another comes in and another brings you an apple, and then another brings you an apple." I go, "Then what happens?" They go, "No, that's the sketch. They're just all bringing you apples." I said, "That's not a sketch. That's just a premise." They didn't know what I was talking about. I said, "A sketch is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end. It's like a movie. It's supposed to have a story. You have a who, what, where—the beginning, and the conflict, and it builds and builds. That's how you do improv. You're filling in all those spots to make the scene work. It builds to a climax. Then there's a resolution, which is the ending. It takes hours to write the ending. It's hard to come up with them." They just looked at me blankly.
I think the writers thought I was a jerk, because I was like, "Then what happens?" to all of it. They'd go, "That's it." Maybe they didn't like that. They wrote a first draft, and, "Who are you to touch our brilliant first draft?" Writing is rewriting.
for the rest go here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/jon-lo...
JON LOVITZ ON YOU TUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uod4yW...
December 31, 2010
Best American Noir of the Century
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Out There in the Darkness by Ed Gorman from Best American Noir of the Century – review
Posted on November 18, 2010 by Spinetingler Guest
reviewed by Steve Mosby
In his introduction to this volume, Otto Penzler claims noir stories "are existential, pessimistic tales … The tone is generally bleak and nihilistic, with characters whose greed, lust, jealousy, and alienation lead them into a downward spiral as their plans and schemes inevitably go awry". While exact definitions of the genre are often debated, it's at least fair to say that Ed Gorman's story, "Out There In The Darkness", matches Penzler's description very well indeed. In fact, its first line alludes to the events that will follow as "the whole strange spiral". And as the tale progresses, the emphasis becomes very firmly on the strange.
At first, however, we're presented with a recognisable domestic set-up: "four fortyish men who work in the financial business getting together for beer and bawdy jokes and straight poker". Tonight, it's Aaron, the narrator, hosting the game, joined by his friends Mike, Bob and Neil. Neil has been delayed due to being on patrol; following a series of burglaries and murders, the neighbourhood residents take turns driving around at night, keeping an eye out for trouble. Later that evening, the poker game is interrupted when one of the four men encounters an intruder in the kitchen. It's this confrontation, and how the characters react to it, that sends their lives into a tailspin, as every attempt to salvage the situation only leads them deeper into trouble, morally and legally.
It's a tale of escalation, then, as per Otto Penzler's description – and it's also a story of social conflict: of worlds colliding. The events that unfold play on a kind of middle-class fear of the lower orders, and also on the tension good people feel between actively 'getting involved' and the fear of doing so and what might happen. The four friends are of different races and religions, but all are obviously decent, ordinary, hard-working men, living in a "transitional neighbourhood" and concerned about the growing crime problem. When on patrol, they are meant to call the police rather than tackle anything themselves, but there is debate about whether they should be armed. You sense their frustration and anger, and understand why they might leap at the chance for direct action. But then … it's easy to talk. In reality, the four men swiftly find themselves out of their depth, because, like most people, they are hopelessly unprepared for life in the wild.
In contrast, the criminals are entirely different. At first, that distinction is a familiar social one: the perpetrator of an earlier murder is "typical of the kind of man who'd infested this neighbourhood after sundown: a twentyish junkie stoned to the point of psychosis". Later on, though, these criminals will be described as "vampires", and take on almost supernatural powers as they exact retribution. Rather than a straightforward human threat, the four men are up against what amounts to an implacable force of nature. They have entered a world run on rules they don't understand, and which it is now impossible to extricate themselves from. In the face of that, they're all but powerless. The most telling moment comes when they plan to "buy off" their adversaries. It's a desperate attempt to impose everyday logic onto this alien world, and its outcome undermines our expectations of the story while emphasising just how chaotic the men's situation has become.
"Out There In The Darkness" is a long story, and a fine one. Despite the increasingly otherworldly events, Gorman lets it all unfold simply and believably. Especially good is the interplay between the leads, which, even with its occasional tensions, is convincingly natural and affectionate. "We were friends of convenience," Aaron tells us, "but we all really did like one another". You believe him, and so there is genuine emotional weight to what unfolds. The tale builds to a final note that is as pessimistic and bleak as Penzler promised. It isn't so much a twist as a re-affirmation of the basic idea at the heart of the story: that the veneer of safety in our ordinary, everyday lives is always far more flimsy than we know.
***
Steve Mosby is the authors of Still Bleeding, Cry for Help, The 50/50 Killer, The Cutting Crew and The Third Person.
[image error] ***************************
Out There in the Darkness by Ed Gorman from Best American Noir of the Century – review
Posted on November 18, 2010 by Spinetingler Guest
reviewed by Steve Mosby
In his introduction to this volume, Otto Penzler claims noir stories "are existential, pessimistic tales … The tone is generally bleak and nihilistic, with characters whose greed, lust, jealousy, and alienation lead them into a downward spiral as their plans and schemes inevitably go awry". While exact definitions of the genre are often debated, it's at least fair to say that Ed Gorman's story, "Out There In The Darkness", matches Penzler's description very well indeed. In fact, its first line alludes to the events that will follow as "the whole strange spiral". And as the tale progresses, the emphasis becomes very firmly on the strange.
At first, however, we're presented with a recognisable domestic set-up: "four fortyish men who work in the financial business getting together for beer and bawdy jokes and straight poker". Tonight, it's Aaron, the narrator, hosting the game, joined by his friends Mike, Bob and Neil. Neil has been delayed due to being on patrol; following a series of burglaries and murders, the neighbourhood residents take turns driving around at night, keeping an eye out for trouble. Later that evening, the poker game is interrupted when one of the four men encounters an intruder in the kitchen. It's this confrontation, and how the characters react to it, that sends their lives into a tailspin, as every attempt to salvage the situation only leads them deeper into trouble, morally and legally.
It's a tale of escalation, then, as per Otto Penzler's description – and it's also a story of social conflict: of worlds colliding. The events that unfold play on a kind of middle-class fear of the lower orders, and also on the tension good people feel between actively 'getting involved' and the fear of doing so and what might happen. The four friends are of different races and religions, but all are obviously decent, ordinary, hard-working men, living in a "transitional neighbourhood" and concerned about the growing crime problem. When on patrol, they are meant to call the police rather than tackle anything themselves, but there is debate about whether they should be armed. You sense their frustration and anger, and understand why they might leap at the chance for direct action. But then … it's easy to talk. In reality, the four men swiftly find themselves out of their depth, because, like most people, they are hopelessly unprepared for life in the wild.
In contrast, the criminals are entirely different. At first, that distinction is a familiar social one: the perpetrator of an earlier murder is "typical of the kind of man who'd infested this neighbourhood after sundown: a twentyish junkie stoned to the point of psychosis". Later on, though, these criminals will be described as "vampires", and take on almost supernatural powers as they exact retribution. Rather than a straightforward human threat, the four men are up against what amounts to an implacable force of nature. They have entered a world run on rules they don't understand, and which it is now impossible to extricate themselves from. In the face of that, they're all but powerless. The most telling moment comes when they plan to "buy off" their adversaries. It's a desperate attempt to impose everyday logic onto this alien world, and its outcome undermines our expectations of the story while emphasising just how chaotic the men's situation has become.
"Out There In The Darkness" is a long story, and a fine one. Despite the increasingly otherworldly events, Gorman lets it all unfold simply and believably. Especially good is the interplay between the leads, which, even with its occasional tensions, is convincingly natural and affectionate. "We were friends of convenience," Aaron tells us, "but we all really did like one another". You believe him, and so there is genuine emotional weight to what unfolds. The tale builds to a final note that is as pessimistic and bleak as Penzler promised. It isn't so much a twist as a re-affirmation of the basic idea at the heart of the story: that the veneer of safety in our ordinary, everyday lives is always far more flimsy than we know.
***
Steve Mosby is the authors of Still Bleeding, Cry for Help, The 50/50 Killer, The Cutting Crew and The Third Person.
December 30, 2010
William Goldman meets Richard Widmark
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Ed here: This is one of my all-time favorite pieces from my blog. 2008.
William Goldman Meets Richard Widmark
From Variety
Widmark left indelible impressions
William Goldman remembers the acting icon
By WILLIAM GOLDMAN
I only met Richard Widmark once, and briefly, a third of a century ago, but I'm not going to forget him.
I was in London, working with the director John Schhlesinger on a novel and screenplay of mine, "Marathon Man." Schlesinger, unquestionably brilliant, had won the best directing Oscar a few years earlier for his work on "Midnight Cowboy." He had also been nominated for "Darling" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
And he was, at this time, terrified he was dead in Hollywood. He had finished a movie, "The Day of the Locust," that he was convinced would destroy him. So he accepted "Marathon Man" -- a thriller -- for salvation.
We had a marvelous cast -- Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, William Devane -- and the very great Laurence Olivier.
Who was sick, and maybe dying.
I asked our producer, Robert Evans, if Olivier was set and he replied: "Is he set? Is Oliver set? He's so set you wouldn't believe it." Then he paused, finished up with this: "Of course he isn't set-set."
OK, I am staying at a hotel, working in Schlesinger's house, and I ring his doorbell on this special day, and he answers, looking very surprised indeed.
"Richard Widmark is coming over -- he wants to read for Szell," the Olivier part.
for the rest go here:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117...
Ed here: This is one of my all-time favorite pieces from my blog. 2008.
William Goldman Meets Richard Widmark
From Variety
Widmark left indelible impressions
William Goldman remembers the acting icon
By WILLIAM GOLDMAN
I only met Richard Widmark once, and briefly, a third of a century ago, but I'm not going to forget him.
I was in London, working with the director John Schhlesinger on a novel and screenplay of mine, "Marathon Man." Schlesinger, unquestionably brilliant, had won the best directing Oscar a few years earlier for his work on "Midnight Cowboy." He had also been nominated for "Darling" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
And he was, at this time, terrified he was dead in Hollywood. He had finished a movie, "The Day of the Locust," that he was convinced would destroy him. So he accepted "Marathon Man" -- a thriller -- for salvation.
We had a marvelous cast -- Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, William Devane -- and the very great Laurence Olivier.
Who was sick, and maybe dying.
I asked our producer, Robert Evans, if Olivier was set and he replied: "Is he set? Is Oliver set? He's so set you wouldn't believe it." Then he paused, finished up with this: "Of course he isn't set-set."
OK, I am staying at a hotel, working in Schlesinger's house, and I ring his doorbell on this special day, and he answers, looking very surprised indeed.
"Richard Widmark is coming over -- he wants to read for Szell," the Olivier part.
for the rest go here:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117...
December 29, 2010
Robert Thom
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Whenever the great B movies of the Sixties are discussed the name Robert Thom is inevitably heard. To name just two of his craziest and best scripts how about Wild In The Streets and Death Race 2000?. His films had the anger, the mordant wit and the anarchic spirit of times. They can be watched today as both great entertainment and as a noisy message from my generation.
Funny that I never bothered to read about Thom. But yesterday by chance I ran across a long piece from the Austin Chronicle about him. Read the whole thing. fascinating tale about a man and the movie business, including a shot at Roger Corman for claiming authorship when the credit belonged to Robert Thom.
Austin Chronicle - by Louis Black
Robert Thom pops up in a variety of places during the course of his unique career. He graduated from Yale, where he was regarded as a promising poet and playwright. He took over writing the play version of Compulsion after Meyer Levin, the book's author, had a falling out with a producer. Two of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to acknowledge the beat generation were written by Thom. He co-authored episodes of The Defenders and the television play The Legend of Lylah Clare, the latter directed by Robert Aldrich and adapted to the screen for one of his odder movies in 1968. The film followed the director's Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte by a few years and was made right after The Dirty Dozen and right before The Killing of Sister George, so the term "odder" is not being used lightly here.
The late Sixties through the mid-Seventies were a time when exploitation drive-in movies were America's true renegade cinema. In many ways, speaking in cinematic language, they were almost as one with mainstream films. In many other ways, however, they were unique unto themselves, combining politics and sex, creating or reinventing genres (biker movies, women-in-prison films), and yielding, both in front of and behind the camera, at least two generations of filmmakers who would mature into some of the medium's greatest talents.
Thom wrote the scripts for four of the most significant and best of these movies: 1968's Wild in the Streets (D: Barry Shear), 1970's Bloody Mama (D: Roger Corman), 1975's Death Race 2000 (D: Paul Bartel), and 1975's Crazy Mama (D: Jonathan Demme).
When I first wrote about Robert Thom for the Chronicle in October 1984, my lead went something like this: "Uptown Beatniks, Hollywood Bohemians, Classic French Literature, American Sub-cultures. Racine and Kerouac, art and Acid. Women, Children and Television, Mothers and Daughters -- Armed and Dangerous, Mothers and Sons -- Incest and Deranged. Music, Revolution, Rock 'n' Roll and Oppression, Outlaws, Politicians, Poets and Perverts. An Hieronymus Bosch vision as conceived by Freud, Detailed by Jung and Rendered in Day-glow, Neon, Blood and Sweat. With Car Crashes, Politics, Sex and Violence, and more Sex and more Violence."
for the rest go here:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyroba...
[image error]
Whenever the great B movies of the Sixties are discussed the name Robert Thom is inevitably heard. To name just two of his craziest and best scripts how about Wild In The Streets and Death Race 2000?. His films had the anger, the mordant wit and the anarchic spirit of times. They can be watched today as both great entertainment and as a noisy message from my generation.
Funny that I never bothered to read about Thom. But yesterday by chance I ran across a long piece from the Austin Chronicle about him. Read the whole thing. fascinating tale about a man and the movie business, including a shot at Roger Corman for claiming authorship when the credit belonged to Robert Thom.
Austin Chronicle - by Louis Black
Robert Thom pops up in a variety of places during the course of his unique career. He graduated from Yale, where he was regarded as a promising poet and playwright. He took over writing the play version of Compulsion after Meyer Levin, the book's author, had a falling out with a producer. Two of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to acknowledge the beat generation were written by Thom. He co-authored episodes of The Defenders and the television play The Legend of Lylah Clare, the latter directed by Robert Aldrich and adapted to the screen for one of his odder movies in 1968. The film followed the director's Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte by a few years and was made right after The Dirty Dozen and right before The Killing of Sister George, so the term "odder" is not being used lightly here.
The late Sixties through the mid-Seventies were a time when exploitation drive-in movies were America's true renegade cinema. In many ways, speaking in cinematic language, they were almost as one with mainstream films. In many other ways, however, they were unique unto themselves, combining politics and sex, creating or reinventing genres (biker movies, women-in-prison films), and yielding, both in front of and behind the camera, at least two generations of filmmakers who would mature into some of the medium's greatest talents.
Thom wrote the scripts for four of the most significant and best of these movies: 1968's Wild in the Streets (D: Barry Shear), 1970's Bloody Mama (D: Roger Corman), 1975's Death Race 2000 (D: Paul Bartel), and 1975's Crazy Mama (D: Jonathan Demme).
When I first wrote about Robert Thom for the Chronicle in October 1984, my lead went something like this: "Uptown Beatniks, Hollywood Bohemians, Classic French Literature, American Sub-cultures. Racine and Kerouac, art and Acid. Women, Children and Television, Mothers and Daughters -- Armed and Dangerous, Mothers and Sons -- Incest and Deranged. Music, Revolution, Rock 'n' Roll and Oppression, Outlaws, Politicians, Poets and Perverts. An Hieronymus Bosch vision as conceived by Freud, Detailed by Jung and Rendered in Day-glow, Neon, Blood and Sweat. With Car Crashes, Politics, Sex and Violence, and more Sex and more Violence."
for the rest go here:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyroba...
December 28, 2010
Happy Stan Lee Day!
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I've mentioned Mark Evanier's blog News From Me before. http://www.newsfromme.com/ Mark is one of the finest writers on the internet in addition to being a popular media authority of astounding proportions. He has been a successful writer and producer of tv shows, stage shows, cartoon shows--and he's written extensively for comic books and virtually every other kind of venue over many decades. But what I like most about Mark is his common sense, his reverence for all forms of popular media dating back to the vaudeville of the 1800s--and his unmatched generosity and kindness. He is one of the most decent and compassionate observers of this vale of tears I've ever read. And he's a hell of a lot of fun! Here's Mark noting Stan Lee Day.
Happy Stan Lee Day!
by Mark Evanier
Today's Stan Lee's birthday. You can find out how old he is with about two seconds of Googling but if you've seen him the last few years, you won't believe the number. I saw him about two weeks ago and he still radiates as much energy as any character who ever appeared in a Stan Lee comic.
I enjoy watching him in action these days. He's very, very good at being Stan Lee...very good at being a celebrity, shaking hands, signing autographs. I'm not sure who's getting more of a thrill out of it — Stan or the people he meets. A few months ago at San Diego, I was invited to be on a panel with him and I didn't say a lot. I just sat there on the dais watching the audience staring at him and smiling and thinking how they were going to go home and tell friends — for the rest of their lives, probably — "I got to see Stan Lee in person." Of all the characters he created or co-created, the most colorful is still Stan Lee, himself. He's also the most incredible and I hope he goes on being Stan Lee for a long, long time.
[image error] ****************************
I've mentioned Mark Evanier's blog News From Me before. http://www.newsfromme.com/ Mark is one of the finest writers on the internet in addition to being a popular media authority of astounding proportions. He has been a successful writer and producer of tv shows, stage shows, cartoon shows--and he's written extensively for comic books and virtually every other kind of venue over many decades. But what I like most about Mark is his common sense, his reverence for all forms of popular media dating back to the vaudeville of the 1800s--and his unmatched generosity and kindness. He is one of the most decent and compassionate observers of this vale of tears I've ever read. And he's a hell of a lot of fun! Here's Mark noting Stan Lee Day.
Happy Stan Lee Day!
by Mark Evanier
Today's Stan Lee's birthday. You can find out how old he is with about two seconds of Googling but if you've seen him the last few years, you won't believe the number. I saw him about two weeks ago and he still radiates as much energy as any character who ever appeared in a Stan Lee comic.
I enjoy watching him in action these days. He's very, very good at being Stan Lee...very good at being a celebrity, shaking hands, signing autographs. I'm not sure who's getting more of a thrill out of it — Stan or the people he meets. A few months ago at San Diego, I was invited to be on a panel with him and I didn't say a lot. I just sat there on the dais watching the audience staring at him and smiling and thinking how they were going to go home and tell friends — for the rest of their lives, probably — "I got to see Stan Lee in person." Of all the characters he created or co-created, the most colorful is still Stan Lee, himself. He's also the most incredible and I hope he goes on being Stan Lee for a long, long time.
December 27, 2010
Leno-Conan-Letterman...Vince Keenan
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Ed here: My buddy Vince Keenan just posted one of his always wise reviews. As for the Leno-Conan-Letterman saga I agree with Mark Evanier. These guys are making so much money it's difficult to feel a great deal of sympathy for them, especially in a world struggling to survive.
I don't mind Leno being the gagster. What I do mind is the shallowness of his interviewing style. He runs guests through factory-style. On his own--without his writers--he shows himself to be an oddly cold, disinterested guy whose humor is tainted by high school naughtiness. Conan I never quite got. He's done some funny things but I still have the feeling that he's auditioning for the part. He doesn't ever strike me as comfortable as the star. Letterman is a prick. He could play a convincing sociopath. His ego makes Leno and Conan seem humble. I'm talking about on stage. Off stage Leno and Letterman are tied in the ego wars, though Leno has the edge for pure deviousness. All that said Letterman remains the funnies for me.
I gave up late night TV several years ago. I haven't found any reason to start watching it again, though I do admit to watching some of Letterman the day after on line, especially the Top Ten.
Here's Vince great review. Be sure to read the whole thing because you'll be tested on it tomorrow.
"Conan comes off as funny, decent and somewhat naïve. Leno, meanwhile, reads as hard-working and deeply uninteresting. When he does reveal something of himself, you wish he hadn't; his explanation for why he refuses to take vacations ("I understand how people spend money to buy things they need or like. But spending money on an experience? That seems like an extravagance to me.") seems utterly alien, especially when as Carter points out it's people on vacation who pay for Leno's fabled collection of vintage cars. It's a sign of Leno's lack of presence in spite of his success that his valid take on the situation – fiftysomething guy is forced out of his job, but returns triumphant – never caught on. Letterman, as always, remains inscrutable, while Carter gets plenty of good material from a savvy and scrappy Jimmy Kimmel."
for the rest go here:
http://blog.vincekeenan.com/
[image error]
Ed here: My buddy Vince Keenan just posted one of his always wise reviews. As for the Leno-Conan-Letterman saga I agree with Mark Evanier. These guys are making so much money it's difficult to feel a great deal of sympathy for them, especially in a world struggling to survive.
I don't mind Leno being the gagster. What I do mind is the shallowness of his interviewing style. He runs guests through factory-style. On his own--without his writers--he shows himself to be an oddly cold, disinterested guy whose humor is tainted by high school naughtiness. Conan I never quite got. He's done some funny things but I still have the feeling that he's auditioning for the part. He doesn't ever strike me as comfortable as the star. Letterman is a prick. He could play a convincing sociopath. His ego makes Leno and Conan seem humble. I'm talking about on stage. Off stage Leno and Letterman are tied in the ego wars, though Leno has the edge for pure deviousness. All that said Letterman remains the funnies for me.
I gave up late night TV several years ago. I haven't found any reason to start watching it again, though I do admit to watching some of Letterman the day after on line, especially the Top Ten.
Here's Vince great review. Be sure to read the whole thing because you'll be tested on it tomorrow.
"Conan comes off as funny, decent and somewhat naïve. Leno, meanwhile, reads as hard-working and deeply uninteresting. When he does reveal something of himself, you wish he hadn't; his explanation for why he refuses to take vacations ("I understand how people spend money to buy things they need or like. But spending money on an experience? That seems like an extravagance to me.") seems utterly alien, especially when as Carter points out it's people on vacation who pay for Leno's fabled collection of vintage cars. It's a sign of Leno's lack of presence in spite of his success that his valid take on the situation – fiftysomething guy is forced out of his job, but returns triumphant – never caught on. Letterman, as always, remains inscrutable, while Carter gets plenty of good material from a savvy and scrappy Jimmy Kimmel."
for the rest go here:
http://blog.vincekeenan.com/
Ed Gorman's Blog
- Ed Gorman's profile
- 118 followers
Ed Gorman isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
![[image error]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yhSbsQAYIBQ/TOA7F6IrFmI/AAAAAAAAAsM/kYd33eeElvc/s1600/tsgbanner1-2.jpg){kind=link}
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