It’s crunch time for the Buffalo Bills . If they want to make the Playoffs, they’re going to have to beat some Good Teams…like the 9-1 Eagles. The Bills are 3 1/2 point underdogs. The Eagles are coming off a big win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football. Will the Eagles experience a Let Down? Bills fans can only hope. How will your favorite NFL team perform today?
I’ve watched the previous four seasons of Fargo so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: Weirdness and Violence. Noah Hawley writes a series of stories that follows the structure from the Coen Brothers’ classic movie, Fargo. Only Hawley amps up the weirdness and violence. For example, the first episode of Fargo, Season 5 (the first of 10 episodes) opens at a School Board meeting in a suburb of Minneapolis in 2019 that breaks into a riot. Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple who starred in Ted Lasso) gets arrested and that event triggers a violent home invasion.
Dot is hiding her past which involves a dictator-like Sheriff (played by Jon Hamm) and his psycho son, Gator (Joe Keery), and a kilt-clad mercenary, Ole Munch (Sam Spruell). The violence follows Dot as she tries to protect her loving husband, Wayne Lyon (David Rysdahl) and her daughter, Scotty Lyon (Sienna King).
Will Dot be able to defend herself and her family from the killers coming after her? Can she outwit her wealthy mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who despises Dot? I’ll be watching to find out! GRADE: INCOMPLETE (but treading towards an A)
David Geherin’s The American Private Eye: The Image in Fiction (Unger, 1985) delivers a quick and breezy history of Private Eye fiction in America. He takes a few unexpected turns that I appreciated. For example, I can’t remember many histories of Private Eye fiction that included Jo Gar, a hard-boiled detective whose cases in the Philippine Islands crackle with violence. Jo Gar, of Filipino-Spanish descent, stars in 24 stories that Raoul Whitfield wrote for the pulps. Whitfield, best known for his mysteries Green Ice and Death in a Bowl , produces his best work in his Jo Gar stories.
I also found Geherin’s analysis of Bill Pronzini perceptive. Like some of the other writers Geherin includes in this book like Frederick Nebel and Norbert Davis, Pronzini deserves more attention and readers.
Once again, Geherin neglects to include any female private eyes. But, for the range of this book, there’s plenty of information and analysis worth reading. If you’re a fan of Private Eye fiction, The American Private Eye is worth a look. Do you have a favorite Private Eye? GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword: Galahad for hire — ix
1. Birth of a hero — 1
Race Williams (Carroll John Daly) — 8
The Continental Op (Dashiell Hammett) — 16
2. The pulpsters — 26
Jo Gar (Raoul Whitfield) — 30
Tough Dick Donohue (Frederick Nebel) — 36
Jack “Flashgun” Casey (George Harmon Coxe) — 42
Steve Midnight (John K. Butler) — 46
Max Latin (Norbert Davis) — 50
Dan Turner (Robert Leslie Bellem) — 56
3. Life beyond the pulps — 63
William Crane (Jonathan Latimer) — 64
Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler)
Rex McBride (Cleve F. Adams) — 78
Mike Shayne (Brett Halliday) — 84
4. Postwar P.I.s — 93
Paul Pine (Howard Browne) — 95
Max Thursday (Wade Miller) — 103
Carney Wilde (Bart Spicer) — 110
Shell Scott (Richard S. Prather) — 115
Mike Hammer (Mickey Spillane) — 120
5 . The compassionate eye — 132
Lew Archer (Ross Macdonald) — 133
Mac (Thomas B. Dewey) — 140
Brock Callahan (William Campbell Gault) — 147
Dan Fortune (Michael Collins) — 155
6. After Archer — 163
Spenser (Robert B. Parker) — 164
Nameless (Bill Pronzini) — 166
Albert Samson (Michael Z. Lewin) — 172
Dave Brandstetter (Joseph Hansen) — 176
Jacob Asch (Arthur Lyons) — 183
Matt Scudder (Lawrence Block) — 190
7. An enduring hero — 197
Notes — 203
Bibliography — 211
Index — 223
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family! Patrick, Katie, and their friends prepared a wonderful Holiday feast: chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, two different stuffings, pierogi, latkes, green beans, broccoli, pumpkin soup, homemade rolls, and cranberry jello salad.
Desserts: pecan pie, apple pie, banana cream pie (with a peanut butter crust and Carmel drizzle), homemake chocolate chip cookies, charcuterie board, and four different mini-cakes.
We had a great time on Thanksgiving and hope you did, too!
In 1964, Ballantine Books published Future Tense, a short collection of stories by Jack Vance. In 1981, DAW Books reprinted the collection under the title, Dust of Far Suns.
The first story in both books is “Dust of Far Suns,” one of Jack Vance’s most famous stories. A curmudgeonly old man named Henry Belt is assigned a small group of eight young men . These Cadets have signed up for a 2-year space voyage with Henry Belt who will test them for their ability to deal with the demands of space travel. Henry Belt’s tests are clever and diabolical!
In “Dodkin’s Job,” a young man named Luke Grogatch tries to fight a dysfunctional bureaucracy. After many failure, Luke tries a completely different strategy.
“Ullward’s Retreat” is another of Vance’s well known stories. Jack Vance admitted that “Ullward’s Retreat” was one of his favorite stories. On an overcrowded future Earth, privacy and living space is in short supply. In order to impress his friends, a vastly wealthy man named Ullward leases a continent from a spaceman who has laid claim to an entire habitable world. But Ullward finds more problems with this arrangement than he had considered.
“The Gift of Gab” is a mystery story. A group of prospectors search for minerals on a planet that is supposed to be devoid of intelligent life. But when a couple of the prospectors disappear, some of the prospectors start to suspect that the decapods, a creature similar to a squid, could have intelligence higher than expected. The solution to the mystery resolves some problems but creates others.
Jack Vance, known for his Demon Princes novels, shows in this collection he’s equally adept at writing compelling short stories. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Dust of Far Suns — 7
Dodkin’s Job — 37
Ullward’s Retreat — 78
The Gift of Gab — 104
I found this DVD set at a local thrift store for a dollar. I’ve seen all of these movies multiple times but The Good, The Bad and The Ugly stands out from the rest. Are you a Clint Eastwood fan? Do you enjoy Spaghetti Westerns? GRADE: A for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, B for the rest
Roz Chast is my favorite cartoonist in The New Yorker. I also enjoy Roz Chast’s books. I loved Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant (you can read my review here) which deals with Chast’s aging parents in both a funny and poignant way.
I Must Be Dreaming, Chast’s new book, is pure silliness. Chast’s dreams feature Ted Less-So and a romantic interlude with Danny Devito. (see below). Chast makes browsing her dreams easier by grouping them by themes in her chapters.
Do you remember your dreams? Do you have reoccurring dreams? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION — 1
I Must Be Dreaming — 13
Recurring Dreams — 15
Lucid Dreams — 18
Celebrity Dreams — 22
Cartoon-Idea Dreams — 37
Nightmares — 45
Body Horror — 51
Food Dreams — 59
Everyday Dreams — 67
Dream fragments, or Ones That Got Away — 91
A Note about The Dreams — 95
A Brief Tour through Dream-Theory Land — 97
Recommended Reading — 118
After the Buffalo Bills’ disastrous loss to the Denver Broncos–24-22–on Monday Night Football, Head Coach Sean McDermott fired Offensive Coordinator, Ken Dorsey. The Bills Offense has struggled for two months and the terrible plays on Monday night sealed Dorsey’s fate.
But, Ken Dorsey was not responsible for the 4 turnovers in that game against the Broncos. Dorsey was not responsible for the 12-men-on-the-field penalty that seized Defeat from the jaws of Victory. This Bills team has many, many problems and seems doomed to missing the Playoffs this year. Yet, for some bizarre reason, Vegas has made the Bills 7-point favorites over the Jets! Ridiculous!
How will your favorite NFL do today?
There are 33 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) owned by Disney. But, in a recent interview, Bob Iger–the CEO of Disney–stated that going forward there will be fewer movies, but the quality will increase. Given the flop of the latest MCU movie, The Marvels, this sounds like a sound strategy. The Marvels cost $220 million to make but only took in $47 million during its opening weekend–marking the worst domestic weekend debut in MARVEL franchise history.
The other concern for Disney revolves around the unsettling prospect of “Super Hero Fatigue.” Are audiences abandoning MARVEL movies the way they abandoned Westerns and Rom-coms?
Joanna Robinson, David Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards provide a detailed history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from its start to it current state. To make these Special Effects movies costs a lot of money. If audiences don’t respond, Disney is looking at huge losses. Are you a fan of MCU? Do you have a favorite Super Hero movie? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
MCU Timeline x
Prologue: Origin Story 1
Chapter 1 Phoenix Saga 13
Chapter 2 Gifted Youngsters 27
Chapter 3 Once Upon a Time in Mar-a-Lago 43
Chapter 4 Plausibility 57
Chapter 5 Proof of Concept 73
Chapter 6 Post-Credits Scene 86
Chapter 7 Extraordinary Levels of Toxicity 96
Chapter 8 Some Assembly Required 111
Chapter 9 Demon in a Bottle 122
Chapter 10 No Strings on Me 136
Chapter 11 Our Brand Is Chrises 147
Chapter 12 The Runaways 164
Chapter 13 Earth’s Mightiest Heroes 175
Chapter 14 House of M 191
Chapter 15 The Forbidden City 202
Chapter 16 Remote Control 215
Chapter 17 On Your Left 229
Chapter 18 We Are Groot 241
Chapter 19 Where’s Natasha? 253
Chapter 20 Marvel Studios vs. The Committee 262
Chapter 21 Wright Man, Wrong Time 278
Chapter 22 Tangled Web 293
Chapter 23 Long Live the King 309
Chapter 24 Higher, Further, Faster 322
Chapter 25 Snap 336
Chapter 26 A Year without Marvel 357
Chapter 27 Department of Yes 370
Chapter 28 K.E.V.I.N. 385
Chapter 29 The Clone Saga 395
Chapter 30 Into the Multiverse 406
Epilogue: How Much We Have Left 427
Acknowledgments 431
Notes 433
Index 481
The logical question for David Geherin is: Where are the daughters of Sam Spade? No Sue Grafton, no Sara Paretsky, no Marcia Muller. And, did Sam Spade only have three sons in the Seventies?
David Gerherin does a nice job with his choices of the three Private Eye novelists from the 1970s: Robert B. Parker, Roger L. Simon, and Andrew Bergman. Sons of Sam Spade was published by Unger in 1980. No Joseph Hansen, whose Dave Brandstetter–a gay private eye–broke new ground in the 1970s. No Lawrence Block with his unconventional private eye, Matthew Scudder. And, don’t forget that Ross Macdonald published three Lew Archer mysteries in the 1970s.
If you’re a fan of the Private Eye genre, you’ll enjoy this brief survey of three popular writers of the 1970s. GRADE: B
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments — vii
Introduction — 1
ROBERT B. PARKER –5
The Godwulf Manuscript — 9
God Save the Child — 23
Mortal Stakes — 39
Promised Land — 54
The Judas Goat — 69
ROGER L. SIMON — 83
The Big Fix — 86
Wild Turkey –– 101
Peking Duck –– 115
ANDREW BERGMAN — 129
The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 — 130
Hollywood and LeVine — 140
Notes — 155
Bibliography — 159
Index — 163