I admire Will Murray for his encyclopedic knowledge of Doc Savage and the boldness to write more books in the Doc Savage series. This latest adventure from Altus Press blends the iconic Doc Savage with the even more iconic King Kong. Murray captures the same style as Lester Dent (who wrote most of the Doc Savage novels) yet brings his own sensibility to the story. I love the cover! If you’re a Doc Savage fan, this is a must-buy. If you’re new to Doc Savage, Skull Island is the perfect place to start experiencing true adventure fiction. You can read Bill Crider’s wonderful, more detailed review of Skull Island here.

Stephen Stills has had a long and successful career. Stills was part of the groups Buffalo Springfield, Manassas and CSNY with David Crosby, Graham Nash and Neil Young (I always thought Crosby Stills Nash & Young sounded like a law firm). On this just released four-CD set, the entire 50-year scope of Stills’ career is represented with 82 tracks (25 of them previously unreleased). If you only know Stephen Stills from “Love The One You’re With” or “Southern Cross” you’ll find plenty of other great songs by this gifted artist in this box-set. You could also buy this box-set because it also contains the best of Buffalo Springfield and CSNY. The remastered sound is great!
Track List:
Disc 1
1 Travelin’ (2:19)
2 High Flyin’ Bird – The Au Go-Go Singers (2:34)
3 Sit Down I Think I Love You – Buffalo Springfield (2:32)
4 Go and Say Goodbye – Buffalo Springfield (2:32)
5 For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield (2:38)
6 Everydays – Buffalo Springfield (2:42)
7 Pretty Girl Why – Buffalo Springfield (2:27)
8 Bluebird – Buffalo Springfield (4:30)
9 Rock & Roll Woman – Buffalo Springfield (2:47)
10 Special Care – Buffalo Springfield (3:32)
11 Questions – Buffalo Springfield (2:55)
12 Uno Mundo – Buffalo Springfield (2:05)
13 Four Days Gone – Buffalo Springfield (3:47)
14 Who Ran Away? (2:20)
15 49 Reasons (2:44)
16 Helplessly Hoping – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:40)
17 You Don’t Have To Cry – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:44)
18 Suite: Judy Blues Eyes – Crosby, Stills & Nash (7:26)
19 4+20 (2:11)
20 So Beings the Task (3:29)
21 The Lee Shore (2:58)
22 Carry On/Questions – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (4:26)
23 Woodstock – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (3:52)

Disc 2
1 Love the One You’re With (3:06)
2 Old Times Good Times (3:41)
3 Black Queen (5:29)
4 No-Name Jam – Jimi Hendrix (2:40)
5 Go Back Home (5:56)
6 Marianne (2:29)
7 My Love is a Gentle Thing (1:23)
8 Fishes and Scorpions (3:17)
9 The Treasure (4:14)
10 To a Flame (3:10)
11 Cherokee (3:26)
12 Song of Love (3:26)
13 Rock & Roll Crazies/Cuban Bluegrass (3:31)
14 Jet Set (Sigh) (3:44)
15 It Doesn’t Matter (2:30)
16 Colorado (2:53)
17 Johnny’s Garden (2:46)
18 Change Partners (3:17)
19 Do for the Others – Steven Fromholz (2:47)
20 Find the Cost of Freedom – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (2:25)
21 Little Miss Bright Eyes (2:11)
22 Isn’t It About Time (3:01)

Disc 3
1 Turn Back the Pages (4:04)
2 First Things First (2:22)
3 My Angel (2:36)
4 Love Story (4:15)
5 As I Come of Age (2:37)
6 Know You Got To Run (2:58)
7 Black Coral – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (4:25)
8 I Give You Give Blind – Crosby, Stills & Nash (3:20)
9 Crossroads/You Can’t Catch Me (6:39)
10 See the Changes – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:58)
11 Thoroughfare Gap (3:33)
12 Lowdown (3:48)
13 Cuba Al Fin (4:53)
14 Dear Mr. Fantasy (6:21)
15 Spanish Suite (11:20)
16 Feel Your Love – Crosby, Stills & Nash (4:27)
17 Raise a Voice – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:32)
18 Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:29)

Disc 4
1 Southern Cross – Crosby, Stills & Nash (4:42)
2 Dark Star – Crosby, Stills & Nash (4:52)
3 Turn Your Back On Love – Crosby, Stills & Nash (5:19)
4 War Games – Crosby, Stills & Nash (2:19)
5 50/50 (4:21)
6 Welfare Blues (2:02)
7 Church (Part of Someone) (3:42)
8 I Don’t Get It (3:38)
9 Isn’t It So (3:08)
10 Haven’t We Lost Enough? – Crosby, Stills & Nash (3:06)
11 The Ballad of Hollis Brown (4:08)
12 Treetop Flyer (4:55)
13 Heart’s Gate (2:59)
14 Girl From the North Country – Crosby, Stills & Nash (3:46)
15 Feed the People (4:32)
16 Panama – Crosby, Stills & Nash (4:14)
17 No Tears Left – Crosby, Stills & Nash (4:54)
18 Ole Man Trouble – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (5:03)
19 Ain’t It Always (3:31)

I read Richard Teleky’s moving essay, “On Solitude: Rereading May Sarton’s Journals” in the March 2013 issue of THE NEW CRITERION. May Sarton wrote 20 novels and almost as many volumes of poetry. But in the early 1970s, Sarton started writing a journal. Sarton shares her thoughts about her craft, her friendships, her loneliness, her need for solitude to do her writing, her lesbian life-style, her lovers, and–without meaning to–growing old. May Sarton wrote eight journals. I’m not sure I’ll read them all. May Sarton suffers a stroke and records her post-stoke life in the later journals. But this first journal is full of life and artistic indecision and honesty. Here’s a sample:

I am an ornery character, often hard to get along with. The things I cannot stand, that make me flare up like a cat making a fat tail, are pretentiousness, smugness, and the coarse grain that often shows itself in a turn of phrase. I hate vulgarity, coarseness of soul. I hate small talk with a passionate hatred. Why? I suppose because any meeting with another human being is collision for me now. It is always expensive, and I will not waste my time. (p. 22)

I finally found time to watch Tina Fey being interviewed by James Lipton on BRAVO’s Actors Studio. You can find the interview here. Tina Fey may be the smartest actor ever to appear on Actors Studio. If you find yourself wanting more (like I did) after the Tina Fey interview, there’s a bargain 3-DVD collection INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO: LEADING MEN: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Sean Penn and Russell Crow. Fascinating viewing!

I’ve been using TURBOTAX to do my taxes for over a decade. I’ve liked some versions better than others, but TURBOTAX beats doing taxes the Old Fashion Way. Actually, I think it took me longer to install TURBOTAX on my computer than it did to actually do our taxes. We have a very simple return. No foreign bank accounts, no second home, no RV, no mortgage, no pets, no exotic deductions. We have to pay the Feds $787 and NY State $870. I like to break even so this is as close as I could make it this year. I love the eFile feature in TURBOTAX. No more standing in line at the Post Office to mail our taxes! Hope you all get a nice tax refund!

Tina Fey plays an admissions official at Princeton University. Paul Rudd plays a nomadic teacher at an alternative high school. Rudd hopes Tina Fey will help an unusual student get into Princeton. Fey has admissions of her own: her troubled relationship with her mother (played by Lily Tomlin), her unfaithful lover, and her college secret. One of the friends I saw Admission with commented after the movie: “I thought it would be funnier.” The chemistry between Tina Fey and Paul Rudd is real. But the script doesn’t do much with that chemistry. Admission is based on a novel, but I suspect plenty of changes were made. GRADE: B-

Way back in the 1994, my son Patrick and I bonded while playing a computer game called X-COM: UFO DEFENSE. By today’s standards that first X-COM game was crude, but it was an effective strategy game. The sequel, X-COM: TERROR FROM THE DEEP (1995), was even better with upgraded graphics and an improved AI. It was also a challenging strategy game. Several other lame X-COM games appeared in the years that followed, but none of them had the right balance of strategy and design until XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN appeared last fall. It harkens back to those original X-COM games with its strategic elements: building a base, equipping your troops, deciding on which Research to pursue, and what items to manufacture. However, this X-COM game is also the most annoying computer game I’ve ever played. There is no user’s manual. Going online to find information about the game is tedious. Much of the game, I had to resort to trail-and-error to figure stuff out. For example, it took me a couple of weeks to find out how to build a satellite (essential component to defend Earth). Satellites were stuck in the menu for building interceptors for some weird reason. However, that being said, I’ve found XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN an entertaining game that has eaten up too many hours of my time as I defend you all from those dastardly space aliens. But, I can’t wait for the next XCOM game! GRADE: A-

About a month ago, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about fabulously successful Gerard de Villers who writes a series of spy novels (you can find it here). I remembered that in the 1970s and early 1980s, Pinnacle Books published English translations of some of de Villers’ books but then dropped the series. I dug around in my basement and found Checkpoint Charlie, Number Nine in the series (de Villiers’ spy series is now over 200 novels). Malko is a contract agent with the CIA. His assignment in Checkpoint Charlie is to get a Nobel Prize winning scientist past the East German guards into free West Berlin. The Berlin Wall, with all its minefields and obstacles, presents a bit of a challenge, but Malko is up for the job. The New York Times Magazine article stresses that de Villiers does intense research before he writes a book. It’s obvious in Checkpoint Charlie, especially East German border procedures. I’ll be looking for more of these Malko adventures.

Imagine the Whoopi Goldberg movie, Sister Act, with all new music and plenty of dancing. There, you’ve just grasped the concept of Sister Act: The Musical. A lounge singer witnesses her gangster boyfriend murdering an informant. The police stash the lounge singer in a convent until the trial. The lounge singer, who pretends she’s a nun, teaches the real nuns how to sing disco and fill the church with enthusiastic parishioners. The nuns are going to sing for the Pope! But the gangster finds how where the lounge singer is and… Anyway, you get the idea. Take a listen below. Fun and frothy entertainment. GRADE: B+
SET LIST:
1. Sister Act, musical: Prologue
2. Take Me to Heaven
3. Fabulous, Baby!
4. Here Within These Walls
5. How I Got the Calling
6. When I Find My Baby
7. Do This Sacred Mass
8. I Could Be That Guy
9. Raise Your Voice
10. Take Me to Heaven (Reprise)
11. Sunday Morning Fever
12. Lady in the Long Black Dress
13. Bless Our Show
14. Here Within These Walls (Reprise)
15. The Life I Never Led
16. Fabulous, Baby! (Reprise)
17. Sister Act
18. The Life I Never Led (Reprise)
19. Sister Act (Reprise)
20. Spread the Love Around

The New York Times Book Review had a positive review of The Devil in Silver and my local public library just happened to have a copy. If you’re read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest then you know what you’re going to be in for with The Devil in Silver. A man named Pepper finds himself admitted to a mental health facility after an altercation with police. But his 72-hour stay for “observation” turns into weeks and then months. Pepper becomes a permanent resident of the mental health system with all of its bureaucracy and its callous treatment. Very frightening and Kafkaesque! GRADE: B