Jerry's House of Everything

Sunday, July 1, 2012

HYMN TIME

I spent yesterday without cable or the internet, but the electricity did not go out. Unfortunately, there's a lot of folks who are still without power in the middle of this heatwave. My thoughts are with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVr0M7WCBu4

Friday, June 29, 2012

FORGOTTEN BOOK: JOURNAL OF THE GUN YEARS

Journal of the Gun Years by Richard Matheson (1991)

Matheson's storied career covers a lot of ground: television, movies, mystery, suspense, fantasy, science fiction, horror, war, metaphysics, and -- of course -- westerns. Before the appearance of this novel, however, few realized that Matheson had an interest in the West, although he had previously published stories and had written scripts in the genre. Journal of the Gun Years brings out all of the author's strengths: tight plotting, vivid atmosphere, mythic elements, suspense, and pitch perfect characterization.

    Journal of the Gun Years opens with the death of the book's protagonist, shot at age 31. Clay Halser's legend as a Western hero equalled that of Wild Bill Hickock Instead of the young, handsome, cocksure Halser of the past, he is now looking old, tired, haggard, and dishevelled. Clay is called out by a young man and, when his gun misfires, is fatally shot. The witness to this is Frank Leslie, a friend and reporter who had chronicled Halser's life over the past dozen years. Halser had left behind a stack of jounals, which -- edited by Halser, who adds some commentary to flesh out the tale -- make up the book.

     Halser's first journal was one he took off the body of a Confederate soldier. At nineteen, Halser finds himself facing nineteen rebel soldiers. All fear leaves him then as he quickly fires his rifle again and again, killing eleven men and causing a rout that led to a Union victory. Halser is unwounded, somehow protected from the enemy fire. This event led to positive newspaper coverage and to Clay's determination to lead an exciting life.

     But an exciting life was not in his immediate future. When he goes home to his mother's farm, it's a life of boredom and drudgery for Clay, who is the support for his nagging mother and his six younger siblings. He finds himself engaged to a local girl and wonders how he can ever have the exciting life he wants. Fate intervenes when the son of an important businessman pulls a knife on Clay during a card game. Clay kills the man in self defense, but realizes that the dead man's father's wrath is enough to railroad him to jail and worse. Clay Halser flees, heading west to his destiny.

     Clay has both pride and a quick temper, a combination he tries to keep in check.  When he rides shotgun on a stagecoach he receives an arrow in his leg during an attack by Sioux Indians. While his valor and skilled shooting during the attack draws more attention to Clay, his wound curtails his stagecoach job. The company places him as an assistant at one of their way station while he recovers. There is little recovery for him there, however; his boss is a large, bullying, sadistic homosexual/pederast who overworks and tortures Clay, allowing no time for the leg to heal.  The boss viciously attacks Clay with a whip -- an attack that will blind him at best, kill him at worse. Clay is forced to kill the man. Although the act was clearly self defense and there were many witnesses willing to testify to that, Clay is arrested, rushed to trial, sentenced to hang, and finds himself sharing the jail with a sociopathic, amoral murderer.

     Breaking out of jail, Clay follows his destiny throughout the west, taming towns, fighting range wars, and building a reputation that is enhanced to mythic proportions by the press and by the yellowbacks supposedly based on his true adventures. Along the way many people die and Clay begins to believe his own press.

     In Clay Halser, Matheson gives us a deeply flawed person who, in his own mind, at least, tries to do the right thing. Part hero, part outlaw, part bully, part peacemaker -- Clay Halser is an American tragedy whose character maps out his ultimate destiny. As we Halser's career, we also gain an insightful look at a fascinating time and place.

     Journal of the Gun Years went on to win a best novel Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

     Highly recommended.

**********

Todd Mason is filling in for Patti Abbott this week, collecting today's links at his indispensible blog sweetfreedom. Stop by for more of Friday's Forgotten Books.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

FORGOTTEN MUSIC: HARRY BELAFONTE

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

BAD SHAKESPEARE JOKE WEDNESDAY

(954 years ago Siward invaded Scotland and defeated MacBeth, which is enough of a reason for me to post a Shakespearean joke.)

Shakespeare walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, you're not allowed in here! You're bard!"

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

LEGO MY SUPERHEROES! OVERLOOKED FILM: THE TEMP

Amazing Adventures of the Temp, Episode 1 (2003)

What happens when a superhero is unvailable, like when he gets zapped by an overdose of kryptonite?

     You call in a temp, of course, and if that temp happens to be The Temp who happens to have the hots for Lois Lane, so much the better.

     This short film was produced by the Lieberman Bros., who have created a number of "Brick Films" -- short, stop motion animated films using Legos, an area of film-making I did not realize was so popular. Several hundred can be found on Internet Archive. As for the Lieberman Bros., their website is no longer active so I can't tell you anything about them. Nor can I tell you if The Temp had any other adventures aside from a short trailer (38 seconds or so) for this film. The Temp evidently came from a comic book the brothers had written three years before; no idea if the comic book was ever published.

     Without further ado (or much knowledge), enjoy the first (and possibly only) adventure of The Temp!

http://archive.org/details/The_Temp_episode1

For the links to today's Overlooked Lego-less Stuff, stop by Sweet Freedom.

Monday, June 25, 2012

INCOMING

Basically genre stuff this week.

Greg Bear, Heads. SF
Ben Bova, Triumph. Alternate world SF.
Leigh Clark, Evil Recarnate. Horror.
Stephen R. Donaldson, The Man Who Risked His Partner. Mystery. Revised version of a novel originally published as by "Reed Stephens."
Glen Ebisch, Ghosts from the Past. A Roaming New England mystery.
Raymond E. Feist, Shadow of a Dark Queen. Fantasy. Book One of The Serpentwar Saga.
"Robin Hobb" (a.k.a. "Megan Lindholm"), Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny. Fantasy. The Liveship Traders Trilogy.
Edward D. Hoch, editor, Best Detective Stories of the Year -- 1980: 34th Annual Collection. A dozen of the best stories from 1979.
William W. Johnstone with Fred Austen, The Last Gunfighter: Savage Country. Western.
Mercedes Lackey, Burning Water. Fantasy. A Diana Tregarde Investigation.
Mercedes Lackey & Ru Emerson, Fortress of Frost and Fire. Gaming (The Bard's Tale) tie-in.
Louis L'Amour, The Broken Gun and Son of a Wanted Man. Westerns.
Ursala K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Fantasy collection with eight stories.
Paul Levine, Trial & Error. Legal thriller, fourth in the Solomon and Lord series.
Jeff Long, Year Zero. Thriller.
Christine Matthews, editor, Deadly Housewives. Mystery anthology with fourteen stories.
Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey, Dragon's Kin. SF. Another Pern adventure.
Thomas F. Monteleone, editor, Borderlands 2.Horror anthology with twenty-one stories and the world's most unreadable cover.
Mark Nykanen, The Bone Parade. Thriller.
Dennis O'Neil, Justice League of America: Green Lantern: Hero's Quest. Comic book tie-in novel.
Lewis B. Pattern, Death Rides a Black Horse. Western.
David J. Schow, Bullets of Rain. Thriller.
Sandy Silverthorne & John Warner, One-Minute Mysteries and Brain Teasers. Kitty threw this one in the cart. I know she's smart (smarter than me, for sure), so I assume she wants me to exercise the little gray cells a bit more.
Eleanor Sullivan, editor, Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Keep You Spellbound. The hardcover edition of the first in the long-running series of Alfred Hitchcock's Anthologies that AHMM publisher Davis Publications issued. This one, from 1976, has thirty stories published from 1958 to 1969.
Bari Wood, The Basement. Horror.
Douglas P. Wojtowicz, Don Pendleton's Stony Man: Splintered Sky. Men's adventure. Number 97 in the series.

Sunday, June 24, 2012