HYMN TIME

In these perilous times, it can help to hold onto the old songs.  Here's Horace Trahan.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1213179073765907

THE MAN WHO STOLE YOUR VOTE (NATIONAL RESEARCH BUREAU - UNDATED)

No.  The Man Who Stole Your Vote is not Donald Trump.  Not yet, anyway.

This is a  sixteen-page comic booklet explaining the importance of voting...and the perils of not voting.  The basic facts are true, although some of the underlying conclusions are shaky.

Fred All-American is napping in his easy chair when a masked man comes in and orders him out of his home.  Fred All-American tries to call the police, but the police are with the masked man -- as are the governor and the senator.  All of them owe their jobs to the masked man.

How did Fred All-American get into this mess?  Simple.  He and his wife did not vote that day because the weather was bad.  And the masked man stole his vote, and that of his wife.  By not voting he essentially gave their votes to the masked man; the masked man's vote was then worth three votes -- his, Fred All-American's and Mrs. All-American's.  in fact, only 13 people out of a hundred had come out to vote, which meant that the masked man and 12 others decided for 100 people who would be governor, who would be senator, and who would run for president.  "While all you stay-at-homes sat comfortably your future was decided by a handful of people who went to the polls.!"  And that handful could be a jerk, or a politician (honest or otherwise), or an actual nice guy, or "the dumb blonde in the office" (yeah, the pamphlet went there!).  The fact is that they -- the few that voted -- are now Joe All-American's bosses!  And low voter turnout opens the strong possibility of graft!

And in this case:  "Well, the machine has won again in our town.  Of 100,000people who could have voted in this election, only 13,000 went out to vote!  the candidates [sci] majority was won by a small majority of 3,000 votes.  If just 3,000 and 1 more people had gone to the polls and voted for the opposition, the political story in this state would have been quite different."

So there's a bit to unpack here.  A majority of 3,000 in a field of 13,000 is not a "small" majority -- it means that nearly two-thirds of the voters voted for the "machine."  And when did an extra 3,001 votes ever supported a single candidate or platform?  I gt the point they are trying to make here, but Geez Louise.

The actual point -- a valid one -- is that 87-000 voters gave up their right to choose their government for the next few years.  The people who do vote, right or wrong, are the people who decide.

The booklet then goes on to play fast and loose with numbers to make their point.  In this comic book world, "1 person in 13 voted in primaries, where candidates are selected; 1 person in 8 voted for senator, representative, mayor or governor; less than 1/2 of the registered votes helped to choose their president."  Pay no attention to the numbers they present here, folks; pay attention to the oiint they are trying to make.

YOUR VOTE IS IMPORTANT.

The Fred All-American wakes up and is determined from now on to vote!

Following the comic book portion of the pamphlet, we get the Eight Commandments for Voters:  Keep Informed, Study the Candidates, Participate, Offer Your Services, Encourage Those with Character, Always Express Your Preference, Stimulate Others to Vote, and Consider It Your Moral Obligation= to Vote.  Can't argue with any of these.

This was one of four pamphlets in the Good Government series published by the National Research Bureau, a non-partisan group.  The other three were The Price You Pay for Graft, If Your Kids Could Vote, and The Next Four Years, each available for purchase for five dollars per fifty copies; for a slight extra fee you could get your name and address imprinted on the back cover of each booklet.

The booklet leaves with this little quote, citing John Nuveen ("investment banker and former WTB* and ECA* official):  "...that 90 percent of Americans are politically illiterate.  And he warns the political illiteracy of America is a greater menace to the world than the ordinary illiteracy of the masses in the path of the communism overseas."

Bottomnline:  your informed vote is important.  Don't throw it away!

*Nowadays, WTB and ECA could mean just about anything.  I imagine in the 50s and 60s (when this booklet was most likely published), they meant something important.

THE CISCO KID: DISAPPEARING BULLET (JULY 22, 1952)

The Cisco Kid and his sidekick Pancho rose into weekly adventure over the airwaves, courtesy of the mutual Radio Network, beginning on October 2, 1942.  Jackson Beck played Cisco and Louis Sonn was Pancho, with Michael Rye announcing.  In 1946 it shifted to a thrice-weekly series on the Mutual-Don Lee reginal network; this time with Jack Mather in the title role, and Pancho being played by, first, Harry E, Lang, then after Lang's death in 1953, by Mel Blanc.  

A far cry from the murderous outlaw in O. Henry's story "The Caballero's Way," the Cisco Kid of radio, film, television, and comic books was the "Robin Hood of the Old West,"

In this episode, a crooked card dealer scams young rancher Bob Hilton out of his belongings.  This leads to violence, with Hilton being accused of murder, and a disappearing bullet.  It's up to Cisco and Pancho to set things straight.

When I was very young, The Cisco Kid held my heart second only to Hopalong Cassidy; as I got a bit older, Cisco easily slid into first place.  It was my considered opinion that, on  television, no one could hold a candle to Duncan Renaldo.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx6L0yPnnc4

OVERLOOKED CAMPY OATER: THE FASTEST GUITAR ALIVE (1967)

 Overheard sometime around 1966:  "Y'know, Mike, what we need is another bad movie movie to foist on the public."  "Great idea, Sam, but what can we do?  All the bad ideas have been taken."  "Yeah, but, what if...what if we combine a bad movie with a really bad actor? Someone who's never been in a movie before?  Maybe someone with a big name in another field?"  "Great idea, Sam!  I guess that's why they pay you the big bucks!  But who can we get?"  [...Meanwhile, in the background, we can hear, ever so faintly, a radio playing the song "Only the Lonely"...]

Even though this is one of the very few bullet-shooting guitar western's ever filmed, it is not a good movie.  A singing southern spy is tasked with stealing gold bullion from the San Francisco Mint to help finance  the Confederacy.  The plot is weak, the writing is terrible, the direction is pitiful, and the acting is on the par of a second grade class play about the importance of the food pyramid.  But Roy Orbison sings seven songs.

Roy should have stuck to singing, which he did afterwards.  This was his first and only film.  To show how unqualified he was as an actor, please consider that he was actually proud of this flick.

Enjoy the songs, if nothing else.

Roy Orbison is THE FASTEST GUITAR ALIVE (1967) remastered sound western free full movie

ERIN'S FAMILY BOOK CLUB -- JANUARY: A GOD IN THE SHED

 How it works:  We each suggest two books, then one is chosen at random.  This most book was suggested by Kaylee's wife, Ivy..

A God in the Shed by J-F. Dubeau  (2017)

Book One of a trilogy.  The second book, Song of the Sandman, was published in 2020, while the third was scheduled to appear in 2025 but was held back, evidently for "editing."

In brief:  The small Canadian town of Saint-Ferdinand has been the scene of multiple murders and disappearances for the last eighteen years.  Police inspector Stephen Crowley thought that would all be put behind him when he apprehended the serial killer, who confessed.  Unexpectedly, the town's horror had just begun...

We go back to 1873 when the "small village of Saint-Ferdinand was little more than a crossroads encircled by a handful of farms and orchards.  All told, a little over a hundred individuals inhabited the region."  One of those individuals was twelve-year-old Nathan Joseph Cicero, who was to be sent to boarding school in the fall and wanted to enjoy his one last summer in the woods surrounding the village.  Cicero is joined by three of his friends and they spend their days exploring the parts of the first that were unknown to local hunters and trappers.  They came across a strange clearing that had absolutely no animals.  In the clearing there was a dark hole in the limestone, framed by a tall oak tree.  Other than the tree, there was no vegetation.  No animals, no plant life, just silence.  But there was something in that dark hole...a pair of strange eyes.  Then a creature emerged.  Small, humanlike but not human, naked but neither male nor female.  Then it spoke to them.  It has evidently never met people before and was eager to make friends.  The four boys spent much of the summer playing with the creature (never named)...tag, hide and seek, and all the other games that young boys were prone to.  They did not seem to be too upset when they saw the walls of the cave where the creature lives were decorated wit the bones and viscera of animals.  (No wonder there were no animals in the area.)  The creature believed firmly in the rules of the various games.  It got upset when one of the boys bent the rules.  It eventually attacked one of the boys for breaking the rules...

We shift back to the present day (although the year is not mentioned) and Sam Finnegan, an old man who lived in a run-down trailer hidden in the woods, has confessed to being the serial killer.  Surrounding his trailer are nearly two dozen old refrigerators and in each is the body of a person who had gone missing from Saint-Ferinand, horribly brutalized and dissected, all with their eyes missing.  their eyes had been placed on sticks, and all of the sticks were facing the cave.  One refrigerator, however, had a body that had not been desecrated:  the body of eight-year-old Audrey Bergeron, a child who had been well-love by everyone on Saint-Ferdinand; she had always been in poor health and her heart seems to have gone out, perhaps before or perhaps after she was place in the refrigerator.

The town is in morning.  Audrey is buried.  On her grave, her parents place her favorite teddy bear.  Later that night, the local medical examiner secretly uncovers the grave, pounds iron nails into Audrey's feet, then pounds large iron spikes into her eye sockets.  He places the teddy bear inside the coffin and reburies Audrey.

The single mother of Penny, a sixteen-year-old girl, is waylaid and butchered one her way home from work.  Penny's best friend is Venus fifteen-years-old and a bit of an outcast because her parents are considered "hippies" in the conservative community.  During the long period of the serial killings, Venus was the only "free-range" child in the village.  Penny goes to live with Venus and her parents while th authorities try to determine what to do with her.  In a corner of the shed in the back of Venus's property is a nest with fledgling birds; Venus sets up a remote camera to capture their activity.  What she also captures is the creature, violent and hateful to all life and all mankind.  The creature now considers itself a "god of hate and death," and has many powers, bit it can only move when it is not observed, as if it is following a child's game of Statue.  The creature pleads to be set free, but Venus is afraid to do so, knowing that she or her family will be harmed.

The creature can influence animals, though, and when they come close he kills them and decorates the walls of the shed with their body parts.  Venus wishes that some teenage bullies would stop harassing her, and one of them is horrifically murdered.  More people are killed and long-held town secrets begin to be revealed.   Cicero, now incredibly old, returns to town with a circus he has formed; a performer in the circus is a fortune-teller who also has old ties to the town and is able to predict the deaths of all the characters, except Venus.  The is a former farmer who is now an artist who paints picture so real they literally come alive.  The medical examiner finds himself jailed for to murder and gets free (of sorts) by mind melding with Penny.  And Inspector Crowley is slowly going mad and begins killing people.  And all long we are told the creature cannot be killed and is promising destruction to the town (and possibly the world).

So there's a lot to unpack here and the author seems to be throwing everything he can into the mix, often without explanation or logic.  Time has not been taken to flesh out some of the important side characters, to the book's detriment.  I hope that much that has been unsaid or is confusing will be made clear in the second volume, but, even so, they could have been handled much better here.

What we have is a book with many flaws, but with a narrative drive that pulls us (sometimes unwillingly) along.  The novel was published by Inkshares, which touts itself as a "reader-driven publisher" whose "books are selected not by a group of editors, but by readers worldwide."  I just wish they has spent more time with a group of editors, then the book may not have been merely readable, but outstanding.

The February selection of Erin's Family Book club is The Fear Index, a "financial thriller by Robert Harris, selected  by Amy's boyfriend Gavyn.

HYMN TIME

With the recent executions/murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti we are now entering an unprecedented phase of a war on the American people and on our Constitution, a war which is attempting to weaponize fear and intimidation.

It seems that now is a good to to remember this song, which started out as a hymn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duvoETGVvYU

RUSTY, BOY DETECTIVE #1 (MARCH-APRIL 1955)

"Introducing the three new musketeers of crime detection -- the three most dauntless hawkshaws who ever put a sneakered foot into a murderer's death trap -- only to kick the murderer in the teeth...Rusty, Tubby, and Spunky!  It has been said that a boy can't do a man's job...but the kind of job the Boy Detectives do on law-breakers would arouse the envy of a Sherlock Holmes and a J. Edgar Hoover!  From the beginning, their teamwork and affection for each other welded them into this country's youngest, funniest, and most effective -- for their size and age -- anti-crime unit!"

Rusty is Rusty Adams, a ham radio operator who also likes to listen to the police radio; not sure how old he is but he drives an old jalopy.  Spunky is Spunky Smith, a pint-sized orphan who hopes to get away from his Aunt Sabrina and Uncle Lem  by joining the carnival.  Tubby O'Toole is working for the carnival, bringing water to the elephants.  The three meet and join forces as the Boy Detectives when Mushy and Al, two crooks, attack Knocky, another crook for money Knocky has had hidden. 

This first issue (of six total) details four cases of the young sleuths.

"The Haunted Mill"  The boys investigate a Haunted Mill on the edge of town and encounter a sheet-wearing ghost.

"Mystery Man in the Clubhouse"  An escaped convict hides in the clubhouse and tries to convince them he's innocent of bank robbery.

"Mystery in the Cave"  A two-page text story.  the boys find a half-starved Newfoundland dog and her five new-born puppies in a cave.  They recue her and return her to her owners.

"Mystery of the Indian Arrowheads!"  The team befriends a boy whose land contains arrowheads and a dark secret.

As far as children's detective stories go, these are pretty good.  The issue was written and drawn by Carl Hubbell, and published by Good Comics, a minor publisher which exited for only one year and whose only other title was Johnny Law, Sky Ranger.