Apropos of Nothing: December Reading And Attendant Guilt

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…A look at what I’ve been doing in my free time this month, as compared to the vision in my head of some perfected J.A.:

The Thing I Read: Don’t Dare a Dame by M. Ruth Myers

This is the third book in a hard-boiled detective series starring young Maggie Sullivan, a P.I. trying to make her way in 1930s Dayton (at some point, Ohio seems to have become the new Chicago as far as the detective novels I read are concerned). Maggie and her friends and helpers are beautifully written, the historical setting is interesting, the mysteries are excellent, and if she doesn’t give her possible love interest a break I am going to explode from frustration. The man can play a penny whistle and catch bad guys, for god’s sake.

What I Should Have Been Reading: I just bought a three-in-one volume of Philip Marlowe novels after seeing The Big Sleep for the first time this summer. Until then, I’d just assumed there were Hammett people and Chandler people in the world and I was clearly Team Dashiell; if I can ever stop reading about Maggie Sullivan, I’m going to put that hypothesis to the test.

Chandler even seems to be looking at me reproachfully from the book jacket.
Chandler even seems to be watching me reproachfully from the book jacket.

(On a side note, any fellow mystery/movie buffs who are reading this: isn’t The Big Sleep odd? I can’t think of any other movie I enjoyed so much that seemed so much longer than its actual runtime.)

The Thing I Read: Weird Romance: A Sparrow & Crowe Anthology by various authors, including the creators of the Wormwood podcast that originated the characters

I came late to podcasted dramas after a few years of subscribing to the driest “Boring Fact of the Day”-type podcasts you could imagine.  I was therefore probably the last to know about Wormwood, a sort of supernatural(…er) Twin Peaks in which a vision leads booze-swilling former psychologist/current sorcerer Dr. Xander Crowe and his technomancer assistant Sparrow to the titular town. When I did find the 2007 series, I promptly put off listening to the last season for months on end because I didn’t want Wormwood to stop. Fortunately, there’s also a comic book series and two short-story anthologies to keep fans of Crowe and Sparrow from languishing. The book badly needed more proofreading, but the stories are often excellent as two of the most entertaining misanthropes in fiction take on demons, mythical creatures, themselves and each other.

What I Should Have Been Reading: I’ve been on a weird-fiction kick of late and took a chance on a book of Thomas Ligotti stories. I’ve paused halfway through, but the man is a master of elegant prose about horrible things, and I can’t believe I’d never heard of him before this year. I suspect this is how I’m supposed to feel about Raymond Carver but don’t.

I should also start re-listening to Wormwood, for that matter.

The Thing I (Re)Read: Various portions of the Addison Holmes mysteries by Liliana Hart

These books have a special place in my heart—extra-special, considering I’ve read four of them and can’t decide if I like them, and I’ll probably buy the next one and feel the same way. It might be more accurate to say they have a special place in my wallet. But the Addison Holmes books are the story of one woman, not particularly suited for the job, becoming a private investigator—a subject I’m currently trying to write about myself. Watching Addison train and deal with an increasingly demanding vocation when she starts out as a schoolteacher is, dare I say it, educational.

What I Should Have Been Reading: Oh, maybe something from this nice collection of mystery-writing books I have?

Is there a group called "People Who Haven't Worked Out Which Gun Their Fictional P.I. Carries Anonymous"?
Is there a group called “People Who Haven’t Worked Out Which Gun Their Fictional P.I. Carries Anonymous”?

Additional Warning About The Dangerous Ease of Buying E-books: I own Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead on Nook? When the hell did that happen? You should pick it up, though; it’s really good.

 

Next time: What anybody who was all Frankensteined out for the year would do: watch Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein for the first time since the oughts.

 

The Quest For Monday! Is Delayed Again

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"Again?"
“Again?”

The holidays seem to be making me too scattered to lead our little expeditions, but the Po-Ho have agreed to cease doing anything interesting until the new year. Fridays will continue as usual, and there may be another Apropos(t) of Nothing or two.

Found-Again Friday: Friday The 13th: The Series, Seasons 1 & 2

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Why Found-Again? Friday the 13th: The Series was my favorite of a trio of shows I watched as a teen with the express purpose of scaring myself witless at one a.m. (the other two were Monsters and Freddy’s Nightmares, the Nightmare on Elm Street anthology series). When I found out Amazon has the show streaming for Prime members, I knew two things:

  1. This would more profitably use time spent on my other weird Amazon streaming interest, which is finding the cheesiest made-for-TV detective movies I can and watching them anyway;
  2. This was going to be a Found-Again Friday post in a hurry—better yet, a Found-Again Friday post about something I don’t hate. Whew!

The Premise: Cousins Ryan and Micki find that they’ve inherited their creepy, evil uncle Louis’s* cursed antique store. Not being evil themselves, they embark on a quest to retrieve all the murderous antiques Louis sold over the years and store them safely (we hope) in the store’s vault. They’re hindered in this by both the artifacts and the occasionally not-dead-enough uncle, and helped by Jack Marshak, a man who never lets the fact that he is an actual SORCERER get in the way of being overpowered by bad guys at dramatically appropriate moments.

Aside from the quality issues inevitable for a show in a then-undervalued genre made in the weird dark age right before CGI started catching up with the human imagination, Ft13:tS has only one problem: the character of Ryan. He’s a lot like his partial namesake Richie from Highlander: The Series—so much so that I find myself wondering if all Canadian shows were once required to have an annoying, supposedly street-smart guy as a main character. (Both shows still beat Forever Knight, in which I’m pretty sure that guy is the titular protagonist, but that is a Found-Again Friday for another time.)

The Verdict: With a few exceptions, Friday the 13th: the Series is one of the purest monster-of-the week shows ever—I’m hedging only because Kolchak might have an unbeatable lead there. Yes, it’s cheesy—among other things, you’ll encounter a creepy doll, voodoo snakes, a riff on The Phantom of the Opera, chanting Satanists, Jack the Ripper’s blade, and an amusing reference to Boris Karloff.  But the show is also great fun, even when the plot is so obvious you could swear it was lit by a cursed antique lamp.

 

Might go well with: Red wine, anything you have to cut up with a knife.

*His last name is Vendredi, the French word for “Friday.” What is it about the name Louis that brings out the scamp in some writers?

 

Apropos of Nothing: My Writing Tics

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A list of things I’ve noticed in my stories and should probably shake up:

  • The use of “…well” in the same way movies use a fade to black to indicate a sex scene. I see I’ve even managed to put this one in a story I started specifically to practice sex scenes. That’s …welled up, as it were.
  • At some point a character will glare at someone and say “Oh, good” in tones of doom.
  • My main characters are very considerate: after they bop someone in the head, they always check to make sure they’re still breathing, even if running the hell for safety would be a smarter option.
  • The furniture’s usually pretty good.
  • So’s the food.
  • Someone will get a main character’s name wrong in what I hope to god isn’t a Bewitched-level event.

There are probably a lot more, sad to say.

The Quest For Monday! Part 11: Monkey Business

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(Episode: “Pursuit of the Po-Ho”)

Synopsis: A scientist friend of Dr. Quest is kidnapped by credulous Amazon tribespeople who wish to sacrifice him. Dr. Quest ends up captured too, and it’s up to Race Bannon to do the silliest thing he can in this vaguely racist cartoon in order to save everyone.

Tip 11: This is the most important animal you will ever see (in the Jonny Quest universe, anyway):

 

 

Cebidae ubiquitous jonnyquestensis
Cebidae ubiquitous jonnyquestensis, this time found in the Amazon.

Don’t bother looking for him again—we’ll find him. He’s quite the globetrotter.

Next time: On Friday I’ll finally stop torturing myself with these things and torture my readers instead, as it should be. The next time I decide to watch Beyond Therapy and An Awfully Big Adventure within months of each other, for heaven’s sake someone stop me.

Next time on TQfM!: Errrrr…

Found-Again Friday: An Awfully Big Adventure

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*Gulp*

Why Found-Again? This was ranked on my old site as the most disappointing movie I’d ever seen—on a list inspired by watching Altered States the first time, and which would likely have either States or Starship Troopers in the top slot were I ranking the same five now. At the time (2005), I said of An Awfully Big Adventure: “this ostensible comedy…treats among other themes war, incest, homosexuality, thwarted love, suicide*, and the despair of growing old as an artist, [and] flops utterly. One funny bit. One. And yet the cover of the video was dotted with blurbs, apparently by people whose idea of “rollicking comedy” is anything more cheerful than an autopsy. I ask you.”

Clearly I didn’t have a good time last time, but it’s just as clear that some of the fault lies with false advertising. So is An Awfully Big Adventure better when you know what sort of adventure you’re in for?

The Premise: In post-War England, an (extremely) awkward and romantic young woman named Stella gets a job with a theatre troupe filled with exactly the struggling, short-tempered, raunchy eccentrics you’d expect from a movie about a British theatre troupe. She falls immediately in love with director/complete bastard Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant), but  when the company’s breakout star P.L. O’Hara returns (Alan Rickman), everything changes.

This movie may hold some kind of record for number of actors who make appearances elsewhere in my DVD collection: Edward Petherbridge (Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries), Alan Cox (Young Sherlock Holmes), Hugh Grant (Bridget Jones’s Diary), Alan Rickman (Truly, Madly, Deeply)—even the actor who plays the heroine’s uncle had a tiny, tiny part in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. Like its fellow countrymovie Love, Actually, I really wanted to like this based on its cast.

The Verdict: …But I still mostly don’t. (Also like Love, Actually, as a matter of fact.)

An Awfully Big Adventure is indeed much better when billed as a “bittersweet coming-of-age story” (thank you, Netflix envelope!) than a comedy, and a chance to look at Alan Rickman in a leather jacket  Lord Peter MFing Wimsey some of my favorites in action is probably never a waste. This time around, perversely, the movie’s heroine was my sticking point. Georgina Cates as Stella is amazing—so amazing that her growing pains and unrequited loves, and the many occasions when people take advantage of her, are sometimes excruciating to watch. I won’t watch it again, but I no longer hold a grudge.

*Special breaking update, and by “breaking,” I mean “Read it on Wikipedia at 3 this morning”: It’s possible that the suicide I mention in the 2005 review was not, in fact, intended to be interpreted as one. You could have fooled me, but of course many things have.

Might go well with: Not popcorn, and I’d rather not say why.

 

Next time: Forward (Po-)Ho.

The Quest For Monday! Part 10: Resolution

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(Episode: “The Curse of Anubis”)

Synopsis: A political plotter thinks he can unite all Arab peoples around a stolen Egyptian artifact. Unfortunately for him, the theft gets the attention of Team Quest and of an ancient mummy, whose animated, revenge-focused existence fails to raise a single scientific eyebrow during the entire episode.

Tip 10: Make allies.

There’s a saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

When the enemy of your enemy is also a fiend born from the darkest depths of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, even better.

Look at that skull!
Look at that skull!

 

Special author’s note: The dialogue in that chase scene with Jonny and Hadji from last week is the most Roger-Moore-Bond thing I’ve ever seen in animation, and that includes all of Danger Mouse.

Next time: The movie I ranked as the worst I’d ever seen in 2005. It’s pretty much got to be better now.

Next time on TQfM! I don’t remember what a “Po-Ho” is, so this should be fun.

 

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 8

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One of those projects I keep meaning to do but have never done, despite first having the idea back when mix tapes were popular, is making a mix to approximate the rec center dances I used to attend as a young teenager. So let’s finally get it done and party like it’s 1988…or ’89 or ’90! (Some of these may seem a bit odd for that time, but I assure you, they were there.)

And finally, the song I am perversely proud to say was playing when I fell asleep next to a giant speaker at one of these things:

Enjoy!

The Quest For Monday! Part 9: Important Safety Tip

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(Episode: “The Curse of Anubis”)

Synopsis: A political plotter thinks he can unite all Arab peoples around a stolen Egyptian artifact. Unfortunately for him, the theft gets the attention of Team Quest and of an ancient mummy, whose animated, revenge-focused existence fails to raise a single scientific eyebrow during the entire episode.

Tip 9: Motorcycle safety is very important.

Even if you’re making an improvised escape from henchmen, it’s usually a good idea to protect your head.

Bad Jonny!
Bad Jonny!

…Of course, some kind of helmet is more traditional.

Thinking outside the tent...then through it, then outside again.
Thinking outside the tent…then through it, then outside again.

 

Next time: A retro dance mix for your holiday. Needed more “U Got the Look,” but what can you do?

Found-Again Friday: The Bride of Frankenstein

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Everything I thought I remembered from the original Frankenstein should be in here. Let’s find out, shall we?

Why Found-Again? This is part of my push to rewatch a bunch of old horror movies, Universal and otherwise. In addition to Frankenstein and Werewolf of London, which I wrote about here, I’ve also watched the Lugosi Dracula and The Wolf Man, as well as a few less well-known titles.

The Premise: The climax of the original movie must have involved a grossly incompetent angry mob, since both the monster and Henry Frankenstein survive their windmill adventures. The friendless monster stumbles through his surroundings, rejected by all but a blind man; after getting a taste for spirits, cigars and human companionship, he runs into Henry’s old mentor Dr. Pretorius, who promises him the titular mate. It all goes as well as you’d think. (Warning: if you don’t know how the movie ends, don’t look at that. But is that even possible?)

Pretorius is to a large extent the “…and now we can start the party” character in this film. A gin-swilling, grave-robbing unrepentant weirdo with a nose that can seemingly act all on its own, he out-mad-scientists the actual Dr. Frankenstein handily, almost as an afterthought.

The daily grind.
Pretorius’s daily grind.

In a sequence near the beginning, Pretorius shows Henry a collection of tiny, indignant people he has apparently grown in bell jars, which seems to serve as this movie’s equivalent of Asta’s marital troubles in the second Thin Man movie—presumably comic relief, but to whom? It should be horrifying, but a tiny Henry VIII-style king squeaking away just…isn’t.

The Bride of Frankenstein also has one of my favorite things: an Exposition/Greek Chorus character, a meddling maid called Minnie. She turns up in the very first minutes and just keeps going, keeping people abreast of the monster’s movements and/or yelling at them to shoot it.

...And yes, I think she's better at it than Ramirez from Highlander.
…And yes, I think she’s better at it than Ramirez from Highlander. Happier, too.

The Verdict: The only real thing I have against this movie is that I always hate seeing people be mean to Karloff. The monster may hate fire, but by the time Bride of Frankenstein is over, he probably doesn’t feel warmly toward sticks, chains or ropes, either.

Mrs. Elizabeth Frankenstein seconds that thing about ropes.
Mrs. Elizabeth Frankenstein seconds that thing about ropes.

It lags a little in some places, and some of the musical cues during the actual making of the Bride are downright odd in their cheerfulness—see the clip above—but on the whole, this is quite good. (Additionally, if any of my readers are undergrads in need of paper topics, I’ll point out that a search for “Frankenstein movies language acquisition” yields fewer Google hits than you’d think.)

Might go well with: Roast anything, but Cornish game hens would be creepy.

 

Next time: More desert intrigue with Jonny Quest.