BITS & PIECES

 

Openers:  You walk into the bookstore and you keep your hand on the door to make sure it doesn't slam.  You smile, embarrassed to be a nice girl, and your nails are bare and your V-neck sweater is beige and it's impossible to know if you're wearing a bra but I don't think that you are.  You're so clean that you're dirty and you murmur your first word to me --hello -- when most people would just pass by, but not you, in your loose pink jeans, a pink spun from Charlotte's Web and where did you come from?

You are classic and compact, my own little Natalie Portman circa the end of the movie Closer, when she's fresh-faced and done with the bad British guys and going home to America.  You've come home to me, delivered at last, on a Tuesday, 10:06 A.M.  Every day I commute to this shop on the Lower East side from my place in Bed-Stuy.  Every day I close up without finding anyone like you.  Look at you, born into my world today.  I'm shaking and I'd pop an Ativan but they're downstairs and I don't want to pop an Ativan.  I don't want to come down.  I want to be here, fully, watching you bite your unpainted nails and turn your head to the left, no, bite that pinky, widen those eyes to the right, no, reject biographies, self-help (thank God), and slow down when you make it to fiction.

You.

-- You by Caroline Kepnes (2014)

She's an aspiring writer and bookstore clerk Joe Goldberg googles the name on her credit card.  She's Guinivere Beck and she's on Facebook and tweets incessantly, telling joe everything he needs to know to arrange a "chance" meeting.  Insidiously, Joe begins to remove obstacles in her life that would stand in their way.  Joe has to ensure that Guinevere will end up in his waiting arms -- even if it means murder.

This chilling tale of psychological suspense and terror is a first novel, followed by three sequels and a Lifetime/Netflix television series based on the books.  In addition she has published a "romance-suspense-thriller with supernatural overtones" (think Dexter meets H. P. Lovecraft) and has been a staff writer on several television series. 

You showed up on my doorstep several months ago from Amazon.  I did not order it, nor was there any indication it was a gift from someone.  Why it was sent me, I dunno.  (the author was born and raised on Cape Cod, near where Kitty's family has a summer cottage, but I don't remember ever meeting her and I doubt a Cape Cod connection explains why the book came ti me.  It's a mystery.)

Anyway, the book sounds interesting and has garnered all sorts of praise-worthy quotes from Stephen King, People, USA Today, Publisher's Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, and many more of the usual suspects, so I think I'll read it sometime soon.  Maybe this year..

Incoming:

• Charles Ardai, Death Comes Too Late.  To mark the 20th anniversary of Hard Case Crime, founder Charles Ardai has assembled this collection of 20 of his most unforgettable stories.  "From Brazil at Carnival to Times Square at midnight, from Tijuana, Mexico to history's first gunshor in 11th-century China, Ardai will take you to some of the most dangerous places in the world -- and the darkest corners of the human heart."  Both Ardai and Hard Case Crime have become essential reading over the past two decades.
• "John Blaine" (Harold Leland Goodwin) - Four books in the Rick Brant Science Adventure series -- Sea Gold (#3, written with P, T. Hawkins), 100 Fathoms Under (#4), The Ruby Ray Mystery (#19), and Danger Below (#23).  The popular juvenile series ran for 23 books from 1947 to 1968; a 24th book, previously rejected because it contained supernatural elements, was published in 1990, three months after Goodwin's death.  The early books were first marketed as Rick Brant Electronic Adventures, and were then tagged "Science-Adventure Stories," before settling on "Science Adventures."  Rick is a teenaged boy living on Spindrift Island where his father runs the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists.  Rick's friend is Scotty, an ex-marine.  Other characters include Rick's younger sister Barby, the Indian youth Candra (who has learned everything he knows from reading the World Almanac), and Dismal, the Brant family dog.  Nostalgia, thy name is Rick Brant.
• Matt Costello & F. Paul Wilson, Faster Than Light:  The Story Behind the Sci-Fi Channel's FTL Newsfeed by Its Creators, Volumes One and Two.  Before there was Sy-Fy there was Sci-Fi and it had as its only original programming a daily one-minute newsblurb from 150 years in the future called FTL Newsfeed.  Here's the full scoop from the two creators'
• Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos, Serpent.  Thriller, a novel from the NUMA Files.  "On the bottom of the icy sea off Nantucket lie the battered remains of the Italian luxury liner, Andrea Doria.  but few know that within its bowels rests a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity -- a treasure that now holds the key to a puzzle that is costing people their lives.  For Kurt Austin, the leader os the courageous National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA) exploration team, the killing begins when he makes a daring rescue of a beautiful marine archaeologist.  The target of a powerful Texas industrialist named Halson, Nina Kirov was attacked off the coast of Morocco after her discovery of a carved stone head that may prove Christopher Columbus was not the first /European to discover America.  Soon Kurt and Nina embark on a deadly mission to uncover Halcon's masterful plan -- an insidious scheme that would have him carve out a new nation from the Southwest United States and Mexico, and ride to power on a wave of death and destruction,  With Austin's elite NUMA crew attacking the murderous conspiracy from different sides, an extraordinary truth emerges:  that Columbus may have made a fifth, unknown voyage to America in search of a magnificent treasure,  And now that silent, steel hull of the Andrea Doria not only holds the answer to what the explorer may have found -- but the fate of the Unite States itself."  I have never read any of Cussler's many novels, but I am a big fan of Kemprecos's writing.
• Harlan Coben, Darkest Fear.  A Myron Bolitar novel.  "It all begins when Myron Bolitar's ex tells him he's a father...of a dying thirteen-year-old boy.  Myron never saw it coming.  A surprise visit from an ex-girlfriend is unsettling enough.  But Emily Downing's news brings him to his knees.  Her son Jeremy is dying and needs a bone-marrow transplant -- from a donor who has vanished without a trace.  The comes the real shocker:  The boy is Myron's son, conceived the night before her wedding to another man.  Staggered by the news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor.  But finding him means cracking open a dark mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and the FBI.  Somewhere in the sordid mess is the donor who disappeared.  And as doubts emerge about Jeremy's true paternity, a child vanishes, igniting a chain reaction of heartbreaking truth and chilling revelation."
• Steve Fisher, The Hell-Black Night.  Thriller.  " 'Kelly Saunders, a divorcee around whom and because of whom the murder would be committed, had climbed into her bed only an hour or so before, and for a while was unaware of the storm, of life, death, sex, her tormenting problems -- of anything.  Kelly was a beautiful blonde, not yet thirty-three years old.  She had gone to bed before midnight because it seemed despite all her recent wild telephone calls and weird longer-range scheme not a single. solitary thing was working out...' "  In this novel, "you will meet Kelly Saunders, the acquisitive and cunningly shrewd heroine who drives men beyond the edge of endurance.  You'll share 24 hours of Kelly's life, and know rather quickly that it is a terror-ridden, tense experience in fear and desperation that could very easily happen to a woman today."  Pulp writer turned novelist and screenwriter Fisher is best known for his chilling novel I Wake Up Screaming and for his screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake
• Joe Gores, Dead Man.  suspense novel.  Life is a wondrous game for twenty-eight-year-old Eddie Dain.  There's phone chess with his beautiful wife, Marie.  There's the joy of his three-year-old son.  There's his career using software to ferret out soft-core bad guys without ever leaving his computer.  But when Eddie decides that a seemingly accidental death was no accident at all, it all blows up n his face.  A new and shadowy enemy sends out two killers with shotguns.  When they are through with him, Eddie has to be reborn,  As a dead man.  He is dead to joy, dead to his past.  Loveless and obsessed, he goes by the single name Dain, lives with a cat who won't purr, and thumbs through a blood-stained copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Building up his body and an arsenal of lethal skills that Eddie never had, Dain hires himself out as a manhunter -- because somewhere out there in an underworld of criminals and contract killers are the two men who destroyed his life."  Like Dashiell Hammett, Gore was a San Francisco private detective for a number of years, something he put to good use in his biographical thriller Hammett.  Considering the author's ties to Hammett, I wonder if it is a coincidence that the protagonist's name is Dain.  Also, Menaced Assassin.  Thriller.  "In a university auditorium a paleoanthropologist expounds on the nature of life itself: creationism, Darwinism, and human and primitive violence.  in the audience is Organized Task Force detective Dante Stagnaro.  Run ragged by a killer who calls himself Raptor, Stagnaro knows that the end  of his long hunt is here, in this auditorium.  The speaker is the last man on Raptor's hit list.  It began with the murder of the professor's beautiful, adulterous wife.  Then a corrupt cop was gunned down in a phone booth.  Thereafter, Raptor moved through a list of players, playboys, and mobsters from Palm Springs to Minnesota, killing with cheap handguns, a sniper rifle, even in-close, wetwork weapons.  And after each hit came the phone call to Stagnaro, in Raptor's disguised, taunting voice,  Stagnaro knows the Raptor's victims share a common bond.  He is sure the professor's wife died for what she knew about the others.  but as Raptor keeps killing, Stagnaro has only the jagged, broken pieces of a menacing puzzle.  Now the cop, a man of of the earth and of the hunt, listens to the professor addressing the auditorium, peering into the soul of mankind and the eye of God Himself.  And, as he listens, he wants for the Raptor to strike one last time."
• Frank Harvey, Jet.  An almost science fiction collection if you take off your glasses, and squint real hard while in a very dark room.  Seven stories originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1954 and 1955.  "With the speed-past-speed of the incredible planes he knows so well, these fine stories by Frank Harvey zoom the reader right into the middle of the Air Force.  The present-day up-to-the-minute air Force -- in which the P-38's and the P-47's of World War II are already memories...It's a book for anyone who ever craned his neck when a jet flew by overhead." A follow-up collection. Air Force!, touches ever-so-slightly more into science fiction territory, but you still have to squint.
• David H. Keller, Women Are That Way:  The "Amy Worth" Stories.  Keller (1880-1986) was a physician and psychologist who was an important science fiction and fantasy writer of the mid-2oth century.  His "Amy Worth" pseudonym was basically used for stories published in 10 Story Book, 1929-1933; he scrambled the pseudonym once as "Yma Rowth" for the January 1930 issue because it already had an "Amy Worth" story -- I doubt if readers were fooled.  This book is for Keller enthusiasts and completists only.
• Joe R. Lansdale, In the Mad Mountains:  Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.  Collection of eight stories of cosmic dread, East Texas style by hisownself.  "A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails.  In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverse the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Isle.  In the Weird Wild West, Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky.  Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicron.  Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale's twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread."  Pre-ordered.  Due October 15.
• John Mortimer, The First Rumpole Omnibus, The Second Rumpole Omnibus, and The Third Rumpole Omnibus.  Everybody's favorite barrister at law, Horace Rumpole, in eight collections and one novel -- Rumpole of the Bailey, The Trials of Rumpole, Rumpole's Return (the novel), Rumpole for the Defence, Rumpole and the Golden Thread, Rumpole's Last Case, Rumpole a la Carte, Rumpole on Trial, and Rumpole and the Angel of Death.  fifty-two glorious cases, one a week for a full year!
• Jonathon Santlofer, editor, Inherit the Dead.  A "serial novel," a collaboration of 20 bestselling mystery and thriller authors -- Mark Billingham, Lawrence Block, C. J. Box, Ken Bruen, Alafair Burke, Stephen L. Carter, Marcia Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, Max Allan Collins, John Connolly, James Grady, Heather Graham, Bryan Gruley, Charlaine Harris, Val McDermid, S. J. Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, Dana Stabenow, Lisa Unger, and Sarah Weinman.  "Pericles 'Perry' Christo, a one-time NYPD homicide cop, has been struggling since he lost his badge -- and his marriage -- in a corruption scandal.  So when wealthy Manhattan matron Julia Dusilla needs help finding her aimless daughter Angelina, he jumps at the chance to make some easy money.  But the case is anything but easy, as Angelina's father, best friend and boyfriend all have hidden agendas that Perry is coming dangerously close to uncovering..."  Any profits in excess of editor and contributor compensation  will be donated to Safe Haven, the leading victim assistance agency in the country.  These collaborative novels seldom rise above the sum of their authors, but with so many great talents in the lineup, how could I resist?
• F. Paul Wilson, Lexie.  Horror thriller, Book Two of The Hidden; following The Upwelling.  "The survivors of what has come to be known as The Catskill Cataclysm are not out of the woods yet.  As the last known members of The Hidden, they are marked for extermination.  Their allies -- Chan and Dani, and the Troika -- are hunting them as well, but the hidden do what they do best:  hide.  Something new surfaces in the South Atlantic:  a Manhattan-size iceberg.  And embedded within is a long-lost Nazi U-boat.  Back in the day, the Third Reich claimed part of Antarctica for its own.  Was the sub on an exploratory mission?  It carried a strange artifact that it was carrying home when it was trapped in the ice.  The bodies of the crew are perfectly preserved from the subzero temperatures...but they were all murdered.  Could the appearance of the sub have any relationship with the Catskill Cataclysm?  Unlikely.  But then, there are no coincidences."  Pre-ordered.  Due September 3.

RIP, Bob Newhart:  Ladies and gentlemen, a genius has left the room.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XDxAzVEbN4

Bad Analogies:  Here are some bad analogies, supposedly written by high school students; they showed up on my Facebook page nine years ago:

• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big blacks dots in the center.
• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
• He was as tall as a 6'3" tree.
• From the attic came an unearthly howl.  The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
• John and Mary had never met.  They were like two hummingbirds who had never met.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended on slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• He was as lame as a duck.  Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame.  Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• She grew on him like she was a colony of E coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
• The revelation that his marriage of thirty years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
• The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

Happy Traum, 1938-2024:  Folk music legend Happy Traum died last week at the age of 86.  Self-taught on guitar and banjo,  Traum became an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene in the 1950s and 60s.  In1963 he took part in a landmark recording session with Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and others that resulted in the seminal folk album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1; for that album, he recorded the antiwar "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" with Dylan (who used the pseudonym Bling boy Grunt).  Traum later joined the New World singers folk groups, who were the first to record Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"; the group also put out the first recording of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright."  Traum and his brother, Artie Traum, performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and later toured internationally; they released five albums together.

The New World Singers -- Blowin' in the Wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXB2fc2I6qg

The New World singers - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14PNALF_aZU

Careless Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P261Gi0vtFc

With Artie Traum - Jackhammer Blues (Jackhammer John)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv7Zvap6w3M

Let Me Die in My Footsteps (I Will No Go Under the Ground)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpLKMOC3vX4

Buckets of Rain

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

With Jim Kweskin - Sitting on Top of the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RyQ2grinfA

I Am a Pilgrim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZNtEHd9tQM

Ashokan Farewell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xICQH0Coy8

With Artie Traum -The Hungry Dogs of New Mexico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY9XVzuGA98

Things Are Coming My Way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kshPcHs3iVg

With Bob Dylan - You Ain't Going Nowhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC6Kv_Dj9Z8

He Was a Friend of Mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQimw-mOa4g

Relax Your Mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9_ozZceXM

Rapunzel:  The passing of Shelley Duvall has left a big hole in the entertainment world.  Here she is in an episode of Fairie Tale Theatre from February 5, 1983.  Also starring Jeff Bridges and Gena Rowlands, with Roddy McDowell narrating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVmPr8_VKVM

Garfield Rejoices:  Today is National Lasagna Day!  Lasagna should be treated with respect and reverence, and it should be scarfed down wolfed down shoved into your gullet eaten with an appreciation for its history.  

Speaking of the history of lasagna, here's a 14-minute introduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJYhIWwfD0I

And a look at the lasagna family tree:

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

And here's a nifty recipe from the New York Times, with video:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/9530-lasagna

Yum.

(And, as a nod to my youngest, who figures a day without chicken wings is a day without sunshine, I should also mention that today is BOTH International Chicken Wing Day and  National Chicken Wing Day.)

Longest Reigning Monarchs:  Need a topic of conversation to liven up boring get-togethers?  How about boring thrilling everyone with a list of longest ruling monarchs in history.  you will soon be able to count the people listening with rapt attention on one hand, or perhaps less.

• The Number 1 spot gores to...(drum roll)...Loius XIV of France, who ruled for 72 years, 110 days, from 1643 to 1715
• Lagging behind by just 602 days, Queen Elizabeth II of England takes second place.  She and her corgis ruled for 70 years, 214 days, from 1952 to 2022
• Thailand's little-known (look him up) Rama IX rolls into third with a reign that lasted 70 years, 126 days, from 1946 to 2016
• Liechtenstein's Johann II held the reins of that tiny country for 70 years, 91 days, from 1858-1929
• We have to dig deep into the past to round out the top five.  K'inich Janaab' Pakal I (lknown to his friends as Pacal the Great) was the awaj of the Maya city-state of Palenque (think Mexico) from 615 to 683 A.D., ruling for 68 years, 33 days (at least that's the best that modern scholars can figure).  Paleque had been sacked twice by the Mayan city-state Calakmul  and by its awaj, who is known to historians merely as "Scroll Serpent," leading to the deaths of Palenque's awaj and his heir.   That led the way for Pacal to assume the throne at the age of twelve, after an interim regency by his mother, Lady Sak K'uk.  Pacal is best known for expanding the power of Pelenque over the western Mayan states and for initiating a building program that produced some of that civilization's finest art and architecture.  After his death at age 80, he was deified as one of the ancient gods of Palenque.  In his highly imagined book Chariots of the Gods?, Erich von Daniken submitted that the carving on the lid of Pacal's sarcophagus as "proof" that ancient astronauts had visited Earth.  (**sigh**)

Today's Thought:  Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.  -- Birthday boy Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Florida Man:  Here's a brief round-up of stories from the past::

• Florida Man Robert Wilcox, 45, was arrested for pooping in a dead possum in public.  (November 2023)
• Florida Man Michael Marolla, 31, was arrested for having meth, guns, and a baby alligator in his pickup truck; he had been stopped because police recognized him from the numerous times he had been tagged for driving without a license.  (2022)
• Florida Man Carlo Guillen, 27, explained to police that he vaped THC "to get himself ready because Jesus was returning."  (2019)
• Florida Man Lonnie Maddox, 52, was arrested for breaking into a home.  Maddox tried to blame it on his horse, saying the horse broke into the house and her had to get it back.  (The house was entered through a back window that Maddox was caught on camera breaking.)  The horse, by the way, did not belong to Maddox and was returned to its owner. (2019)
• Florida Man Elijah Mills, 27, stopped paying for a rental car and began using it to give Uber rides.   The rental car company had equipped the car with a device that would stop the car from starting, but Mills had a unique workaround-- he kept the car running for three straight weeks.  (October 2023)
• Florida Man Johnny Yates, 41, discovered police were about to arrest him and posted the following message on a dry erase board on his door:  "Johnny Yates does not live here."  It didn't work (November 2023)
• Florida Man Christopher Meader, 20, was arrested for having sexual relation with a stuffed Olaf doll at Target.   It is not known whether alcohol or drugs were involved, nor is it known if the relationship was consensual.  (2019)

Good News:

• Engineering students help ease dog's medical condition      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/engineering-students-heed-call-for-a-chihuahua-in-need-tiny-helmets-for-niblet/
• Move over, Kylie and Coldplay, here comes Cowboy Jack!     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/charity-song-raises-money-for-boy-with-cancer-and-overtakes-kylie-minogue-and-coldplay-in-downloads/
• Alex Trebek postage stamps look like JEOPARDY questions     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/us-post-office-honors-alex-trebek-with-new-stamps-that-look-like-jeopardy-questions/
• The little lynx that wanted to be free      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/german-zoo-honors-little-lynxs-wishes-to-be-free-after-repeat-escape-attempts/
• A blood test that can detect sepsis in ten minutes       https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/blood-test-that-detects-sepsis-in-10-minutes-by-squeezing-blood-cells-hailed-as-the-holy-grail/
• Primary cause of lupus discovered       https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/primary-cause-of-lupus-discovered-and-a-possible-way-to-reverse-it/
• 75 hard-to-adopt kids now have homes in tiny Texas town           https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/families-in-tiny-texas-town-have-adopted-77-hard-to-adopt-kids-inspired-by-their-baptist-church-leaders/

Today's Poem:

Love Lasagna

She plunks down a plate of egg rolls

Man, oh man, do these greasy [pieces of heaven take tolls

On my heart, dear Mama

Shows me love with food piled on tables that never end

Iced tea, Pho, spaghetti, rice and pork chops

Sternly setting bowls down in front of you and encouragin'

To take pieces of buttery garlic bread and mop it up

Love, bestowed upon us in showers of peppered chicken

Spending hours in the kitchen

To prove some affection

In saucers of soy sauce and dumplings that went on for miles

She'd put adoration in soup, spicy reflections

Of passionate motherly love

Mama, she never smiled

Unless someone complemented her style, the swagger

Of her intimate cooking skills, the way she swung her dagger

Of specialties, killing hunger, cravings

All her meals ended with ravings

Of the best kind

Scraped knees and broken hearts are cured with warm chocolate cake, suede

Smooth, mending them better then when they were made

Mama shows fondness through ice cream and cake

Warm dinner plates

Her "I love you" was a big portion of lasagna

Nobody says "I love you" better than my Mama

-- Bella Cardenas