From young Michael Padgett and his girl friend sharing a soda at the Malt Shop on the cover of The Fabulous Fifties: Great Moments (2000) to Elvis singing one of his great songs, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” this compilation CD presents some of the hits that makes the Fifties one of Michael’s favorite musical decades.

I started listening to music on a radio on a regular basis around 1956 (I was 7 years old). And watching musical acts on the Ed Sullivan Show. But it would be years before I bought my first vinyl album.

To me, the best song on this CD is Nat King Cole’s iconic “Unforgettable.” I always liked Paul Anna’s “Diana.” I prefer the Righteous Brothers version of “Unchained Melody” to Al Hibbler’s.

50’s Sock Hop from 1991 features one of my favorite songs by the Everyly Brothers: “Wake Up Little Susie.” Other classics include the Dell-Vikings’s “Come Go With Me” and “To Know Him Is To Love Him.” “”To Know Him Is to Love Him” is a song written by Phil Spector, inspired by words on his father’s tombstone, “To Know Him Was to Love Him.” It was first recorded by the only vocal group of which he was a member, the Teddy Bears. Their recording spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1958,^[4] while reaching No. 2 on the UK’s New Musical Express chart.  Peter & Gordon and Bobby Vinton later had hits with the song, with its title and lyrics changed to “To Know You Is to Love You”. In 1987, the song was resurrected by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, whose Trio recording topped the U.S. country singles chart. The song is in 12/8 time.” How many of these songs do you remember? Any favorites? GRADE: B+ (for both)

TRACK LIST for The Fabulous Fifties: Great Memories

TRACK LIST for 50’s Sock Hop:

Izumi Suzuki, who died in 1986, wrote stories full of black comedy. In Hit Parade of Tears, just published by Verso Press, Suzuki delivers a series of mind-bending stories. I loved “Trial Witch” where a woman is given powers to transform people and things into radically different objects. I also liked “Full of Malice” which explores the possibility of a woman falling in love with an extraterrestrial.

That theme gets more play in “The Covenant,” a story about adolescent girls whose lack of emotions leads them to believe they may be extraterrestrial rather than human. The male characters in these stories are typically drones who cheat on their girlfriends and wives.

Suzuki’s misanthropic view of human relationships powers these narratives of women whose placid lives are impacted, sometimes comicly, sometimes disastrously, by weird or supernatural incidents. If you’re looking for something different, you’ll find it in Hit Parade of Tears. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

After four seasons of biting humor, the vampires in What We Do In the Shadows return in Season 5 with several intriguing plot lines. Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nandor (Kayvan Novak), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) are back to their argumentative selves. Energy vampire (he sucks energy, not blood), Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), returns to normal after a season-long rebirth and is now working in the service industry. And all the vampires are ignoring Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Nandor’s loyal familiar.

The Big Change is that Guillermo, after losing patience with Nandor who kept delaying his promise to make Guillermo a vampire, has a vampire friend bite him. However, the transformation to a vampire doesn’t go as planned for Guillermo. I do like Guillermo’s occasional bat ears! Dealing with a botched transformation should prove pivotal in these Season 5 episodes!

Nadja, whose vampire night club failed, is brooding over all the things going wrong in her Life. Then, Nadja discovers that her problems are being caused by a hex put on her. It will be fun to see how Nadja deals with that!

My favorite moment in the two opening episodes is the scene where Nadja’s ghost doll tries to get a new body she can have sex in — from a Build-a-Bear Workshop! Who saw that coming?

Are you a fan of What We Do In the Shadows? GRADE: B+ (so far)

Patti Abbott recently wrote that Tom Cruise is the last movie star. And, Cruise has done his share of action movies, especially the latest Mission Impossible–Dead Reckoning, Part One. But Nick de Semlyen’s focus is on the action heroes from decades ago in The Last Action Heroes.

“The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat—Stallone once threw a bowl of flowers at Schwarzenegger’s head, and the body count in Schwarzenegger’s Commando was increased so the film would “have a bigger dick than Rambo”—the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace.”

Nick de Semlyen describes the success of Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed movies. Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan brought their own unique styles of action to the screen., Tough guys like Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal developed loyal audiences of action movie fans. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis blended humor and action to differentiate their movies from the other action movies.

Nick de Semlyen argues the era of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts, or the perfect weapon to save the day began to fade in the 1990s. “When Jurassic Park trounced Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero in 1993, the glory days of these macho men—and the vision of masculinity they celebrated—were officially over.”

I’m a fan of action movies. One of my favorites is Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Do you enjoy action movies? Do you have a favorite action hero? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prologue — 3

1. The Stallion — 11

2. The Tank — 27

3. Tooling up — 42

4. The cowboy and the cannonball — 58

5. Maximalism — 72

6. Knock knock — 88

7. The Alien — 105

8. Foreign policies — 117

9. The Great One — 134

10. Welcome to the party, pal — 147

11. Supercops — 161

12. Funny or die — 174

13. Double impact — 188

14. Planet Arnold — 202

15. Old habits — 218

16. Born again — 232

17. Oil and water — 245

18. The ice age — 260

Epilogue — 277

Acknowledgements — 287

NOTES — 289

INDEX — 319

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Cartmel’s Vinyl Detective series for years (you can read my reviews here, here, here, here, here, and here). The Vinyl Detective hunts down rare and expensive vinyl records and solves crimes along the way. In the new Death in Fine Condition, Cartmel introduces a new character, Cordelia, who loves vintage paperbacks. Cordelia searches for rare paperbacks in charity shops, thrift stores, and jumble sales in suburban London looking for treasure.

And, Cordelia finds it: a complete collection of rare and valuable Sleuth Hounds. But, somebody else owns them. So Cordelia steals them!

Cordelia, The Paperback Sleuth, gives the reader a whole different sensibility as to what a paperback addict will do or say. Of course, a couple of deaths complicate things and Cartmel mixes in some surprises to accelerate the action. If you love paperback books and wacky crime novels, you’ll love Death in Fine Condition! I sure did! Perfect Summer reading! GRADE: A

Christopher McQuarrie directs the seventh installment of the franchise which like many Hollywood movies is presented in two parts to make more money (the new Spider-Man movie is another  example). In the past Mission Impossible movies, Tom Cruise and his team fought terrorists and evil geniuses. This time–and possibly prophetic–the IMF team takes on Artificial Intelligence. “The Entity,” a powerful AI program that has already infested all of the world’s online security systems and can not be stopped–except for the movie’s MacGuffin: a key that can turn the Entity off.

The U.S. government, and all others interested parties in World Domination, believes they can form an alliance with the Entity and control the entire world. But Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) vows to use the key to destroy the Entity. It’s always fun when Cruise and his techie teammates–Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg)-use their computer trickery to stay one step ahead. Hunt’s sometime friend, sometime rival from the British secret service, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), who also joins the action, as does a new character, a gorgeous pickpocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell).

As usual, the action moves around the world from Africa to Venice to a ride on the Orient Express. The new Indiana Jones movie features a fight on top of a moving train. But the deadly ballet on the top of the runaway train in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One puts that to shame! Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part Two is scheduled for June 2024. I’ll be there! GRADE: Incomplete…but trending towards a B+

In his introduction to The Naked and the Deadly, Lawrence Block discusses how he got into writing for men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) and how that led him to the eventual writing career he’s practiced for 65 years.

I’ve read a more than couple dozen of Lawrence Block’s books over the years, from Evan Tanner to Matthew Scudder to Chip Harrison to Keller to Bernie Rhodenbarr. I’ve always considered Block a consummate professional and a craftsman. But the stories in The Naked and the Deadly are examples of a young writer learning how to tell a story. You’ll see gradual improvement in the quality of the stories as you go from the Fifties to the Sixties. Eventually, Block abandoned the MAMs market and concentrated on crime fiction where he achieved success.

If you want to experience a sample of the early writings of an excellent writer, check out The Naked and the Deadly. Are you a Lawrence Block fan? GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Tricks of the Trade by Wyatt Doyle and Robert Deis — 9
• Introduction by Lawrence Block — 17
• “Queen of the Clipper Ships” from REAL MEN April 1958 — 24
• “The Greatest Ship Disaster in American History” from REAL MEN April 1958 — 37
• “She Doesn’t Want You!” from REAL MEN June 1958 — 45
• “Pleasure Cruise for 137 Corpses” from REAL MEN November 1958 — 53
• “They Called Him ‘King of Pain’” from ALL MAN September 1961 — 61
• “Killers All Around Me” from ALL MAN September 1961 — 71
• “The Naked and the Deadly” from MAN’S MAGAZINE October 1962 — 81
• “Just Window Shopping” from MAN’S MAGAZINE December 1962 — 153
• “Stag Party Girl” from MAN’S MAGAZINE February 1963 — 159
• “Twin Call Girls” from MAN’S MAGAZINE August 1963 — 228
• “Great Istanbul Gold Grab” from FOR MEN ONLY March 1967 — 294
• “Bring On the Girls” from STAG July 1968 — 368

My youngest sister Paula and her husband from Florida came to visit us so Diane and I decided to celebrate Paula’s recent retirement (she was an Elementary School teacher for decades) and Diane’s Birthday. One of our favorite restaurants is the swanky Russell’s Steaks and More. Paula and Steve had never been to Russell’s so it was an extra special treat for them!

This was the first collection of Robert Silverberg’s short stories to be published. I bought this ACE Double in 1962 and loved it. The stories were written early in Silverberg’s career, from 1954-1957. “Slaves of the Star Giants” is pure pulp as you can tell from the over-the-top title.  Lloyd Harkins finds himself mysteriously transported to a far future when civilization has collapsed. Mutated, primitive humans live underground in isolation. Ancient robots (check out the EMSH cover above) left over from the Time of Cities still roam the jungles randomly. Can a man from the Past save the Future?

From time to time, ACE would feature a Double devoted to one writer. On one side, the book would include a short novel–in this case it’s The Seed of Earth first published in Galaxy in 1962. “It’s a story of a group of individuals, selected randomly by a government-sponsored lottery, who are forced to leave Earth and establish a colony on a distant world. Once there, four of the colonists are abducted by the planet’s native inhabitants, and must put aside their differences and work together in order to survive.”

ACE Doubles in this format introduced a writer both through short stories and short novels they’d written. I had read several of Silverberg’s novels and stories before this one, but it remains one of my favorites–partly because of the cover artwork. Are you a fan of Robert Silverberg’s work? GRADE: B (for both the short stories and the short novel)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Slaves of the Star Giants • novella — 5
The Songs of Summer • short story — 48
Hopper • novelette — 66
Blaze of Glory • short story — 87
Warm Man • short story — 102

Last week, Netflix released five of the ten episodes of The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 2. The next five episodes will be released on August 3. I enjoyed The Lincoln Lawyer Season 1 (you can read my review here). The first season dealt with Mickey Haller’s (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) return to law after a lengthy absence and addiction to prescription painkillers. Haller is a clever lawyer, but his past continues to complicate his life.

As usual, Haller juggles several law cases at the same time. The big case is a murder trial where Haller is defending a chef, Lisa Trammel (Lana Parrilla), who owns her own restaurant who is accused of murdering a real estate developer. The events in The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 2 are based on Michael Connelly’s fourth Mickey Haller novel, The Fifth Witness (2011). Haller’s first ex-wife, Maggie (Neve Campbell), presents both opportunities and problems. The problems center around their teen-age daughter, Lisa.

And then there’s my favorite character, Lorna (Becki Newton), Mickey’s second ex-wife. Lorna is now running Mickey’s new office and pursuing her own law school degree. Lorna’s relationship with her fiancé Cisco (Angus Sampson), the firm’s investigator and former biker, becomes complicated as their wedding approaches. Cisco’s past now produces more problems.

I’ve watched the first five episodes and can’t wait until Netflix drops the next five episodes. GRADE: A