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Monthly Archives: June 2009

June 2009 Book Round-up

30 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

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AD: 81: Captain America: The Great Gold Steal -Ted White introduction by Stan Lee

TH: 82: Cemetery Dance – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

MY: 83: Rough Cut – Ed Gorman

MY: 84: New, Improved Murder – Ed Gorman

WE: 85: Blood Bond: Deadly Road To Yuma – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

WE: 86: The Last Gunfighter: Slaughter – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

WE: 87: Sidewinders: Cutthroat Canyon – William W, Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

WE: 88: The Tarnished Star – Jack Martin

WE: 89: Six Ways From Sunday – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

AD: 90: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Coin of El Diablo Affair – Walter Gibson

SF: 91: Flinx Transcendent – Alan Dean Foster

TH: 92: The Midnight Room – Ed Gorman

WE: 93: Sundance: The Comancheros – Jack Slade

WE: 94: Sundance: Renegade – Jack Slade

WE: 95: Sundance: Honcho – Jack Slade

SF: 96: Los Angeles: A. D. 2017 – Philip Wylie

WE: 97: Sundance: Canyon Kill – Jack Slade

WE: 98: Sundance: Blood Knife – Jack Slade

TH: 99: The Doomsday Key – James Rollins

WE: 100: Death Ground – Ed Gorman

WE: 101: Blood Game – Ed Gorman

June 2009 Movie Round-up

30 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

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Dr. No(1962)

From Russia With Love(1963)

Goldfinger(1964)

Thunderball(1965)

A Pistol For Ringo(1965)

Django(1966)

The Man From Nowhere(Arizona Colt)(1966)

Johnny Yuma(1966)

Day of Anger(1967)

The Great Silence(1968)

The Mercenary(1968)

Cannon For Cordoba(1970)

Companeros(1970)

Jaws(1975)

Keoma(1976)

The Fugitive(1993)

Blue Demon(2004)

Sukiyaki Western Django(2007)

Cannon For Cordoba

29 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

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Tags

George Peppard, western

CANNON FOR CORDOBA was released in 1970 and starred George Peppard as Captain Roderick Douglas, an officer with Blackjack Pershing(John Russell). The time is 1912 and the border with Mexico is aflame with bands of outlaws, self-styled revolutionaries. General Cordoba is the worst, a deserter from the Mexican army with a mountaintop fortress two hundred miles deep into Mexico from which he launched raids into American territory.
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Douglas and two of his men, Jackson and Adam Harkness, two brothers, split up to infiltrate Cordoba’s army for intel on the man’s plans. Adam, the youngest, mamages to get himself caught and tortured to reveal a stop of Pershing’s train. Cordoba had seen the train leave with six field pieces on flat cars and decided he wanted them for his fortress.

Douglas and Jackson stand and watch the torture and murder of Adam(Jackson has to be bullied into it) to remain unknown. The rest of the film, Jackson does his job, but promises Douglas “My time, my place!”

When they hit the town, Douglas needs to get to Pershing and warn him of the coming attack. Cordoba’s lieutenant, Svedborg, keeps sidetracking him, setting him up with a prostitute. Not much time left when he gets away, he passes a message of warning to Pershing via a captain. It never gets there as the man is waylaid and murdered.

Cordoba steals the train, kills thirty-two of Pershing’s men, and escapes back into Mexico.

Douglas’ new assignment: penetrate that mountaintop fortress, destroy the cannon, and bring Cordoba out alive, The Mexican government wants him to stand a public trial. As always in this type of thing, Douglas is on his own. The U.S. government can’t invade Mexico. He’s on his own without orders. If captured, oh well…

Six of them, Douglas, guitar playing Andy(Pete Duel, of Alias Smith and Jones fame), Jackson(Don Gordon, formerly of Combat!), Peter(Nicos Minardos). a Greek intellectual type, Gutierrez(Gabrielle Tinti) a Mexican officer from Cordoba’s old outfit out to avenge the stain on honor, and Lenora, a woman with her own personal hatred of Cordoba for a past rape and murder of family.

I enjoyed this western filmed in Spain with a score by Elmer Bernstein. In some ways, this looked like Hollywood’s attempt to cash in on the spaghetti western craze, at it’s height at this time.

I’d never seen it before, but I do think I remember seeing a tie-in novel way back then.

Worth checking out.

More Hollywood Squares Laughs!

29 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Humor

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hollywood Squares

I ran across these clips on Youtube while looking for something else.

Enjoy:

The Doomsday Key – James Rollins

28 Sunday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 3 Comments

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James Rollins, thriller

James Rollins started his writing career in 1998 with a fantasy novel under the pseudonym James Clemens. The Rollins pen name came in 1999 with the publication of his first thriller. Since then, he’s basically produced two novels a year, one fantasy and one thriller. He’s not published a fantasy since 2007, so one wonders if he’s concentrating on thrillers now. Two last year(one the Indiana Jones novelization) and there will be three this year.
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For myself, he could leave the high fantasies alone(not a great fantasy fan in general) and do thrillers. But that’s just me.

THE DOOMSDAY KEY is the latest in his Sigma Force(the sixth) series, that shadowy government agency run by Painter Crowe.

Rollins is quite adept at taking disparate historical elements and weaving them into a solid story filled with action.

Here we have The Domesday Book(nicknamed the Doomsday Book), an actual historical document commissioned by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century, a survey of his domain for tax purposes. What connection does it have with three murders in the twenty-first century? One in Princeton, one at the Vatican, and one on the African continent, all connected by a circle with a cross dividing it branded into the victims’ flesh.

There’s a biotech company based in Oslo involved, an island off the coast of Ireland, a prison in France, the Svalbard Seed Vault on an Norwegian island. A secret organization known only as Guild to outsiders manipulating things.

Throw in several running gun battles, bombs, burning forests, all to secure the key to Doomsday, whatever that might be. Sigma Force and it’s agents pursue several separate trails trying to, first learn exactly what’s going on, and second stop it.

Rollins is very good at pacing the action, keeping you turning the pages to keep you involved. He’s become one of my favorite writers in recent years. If you like this kind of unrelenting action, highly recommended.

FFB: Los Angeles: A. D. 2017 – Philip Wylie

25 Thursday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Forgotten Books, Philip Wylie, Science Fiction

Pjilip Wylie was an important writer of the mid-twentieth century and is largely forgotten today. Some of his novels covered things unheard of during those times. 1930’s Gladiator is considered an inspiration for Superman. 1932’s The Savage Gentleman was an influence on the development of Doc Savage. The Disappearance(1951) dealt with the double standards between men and women very early in the women’s rights struggle. His Crunch Adams, master of the charter boat Poseidon, stories(briefly a series with Forrest Tucker) apparently influenced the Travis McGee books. He was under house arrest for his 1945 novel, The Paradise Crater, which dealt with a 1965 attempt by Nazis to control the world with atomic power. His two novels with Edwin Balmer, When Worlds Collide(1933)(made into a 1951 film) and After Worlds Collide(1934) dealt with a doomed Earth and the efforts of a group of people to save a segment of humanity.
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Which brings us to the book of this post, LOS ANGELES: A. D. 2017, a novel based on the ninety minute TV series THE NAME OF THE GAME, a revolving three star show set in the publishing world. Tony Francioso played a crusading reporter for People Magazine(before there was a real magazine with that name), Robert Stack was a former FBI agent, now editor of Crime Magazine, and Gene Barry played the publisher of an entire group of magazines.

This book, adapted from an episode that Wylie wrote himself, was considerably different from any other of the series and was directed by a very young Stephen Spielberg. I was reminded of this book when THE RAP SHEET did a post on Gene Barry’s ninetieth birthday.

This is more than just a typical tie-in novel based on a series. It deals with themes that are even more relevant today than they were in 1971. Wylie went beyond just novelizing his script. adding themes and ascribing thoughts to Glen Howard(Barry) that certainly wouldn’t have been accepted on TV at the time.

Glen Howard is returning from a secret meeting of industrialists, scientists, and military men. Ostensibly a meeting to discuss the effects of pollution and global warming on the environment, Howard had come to realize it was really just industry’s attempt to soft peddle the scientists and plan their opposition to the environmental movement.

He pulls over at a rest stop to record his observations and remembrances of their plans to send to the President(he had already secretly informed the man of the coming meeting). After recording for awhile, tired from the long drive, he falls asleep.

When he’s awakened by voices near the car, he finds himself in a nightmare. Two “bubbleheaded” men are looking in at him. Out the window, he sees rusted out cars sitting all around him and an inch of dust on the car.

He’s hustled into a climate controlled “police” van and returned to a dark, tunneled land. He goes through a brief torture session before someone realizes exactly who he is and stops it.

And that’s when the nightmare gets infinitely worse!

Apparently records show the area he was in suffered a three day sandstorm that evening in 1971, the rest stop buried, and no one had seen him since. The date is 2017. forty-six years since he’d gone missing.

The indoctrination begins as he’s shown recordings of all the various environmental disasters around the world that eventually caused the atmosphere to be poisoned. The majority of the world’s population had died and the rest lived in underground bunkers, six hundred cities of varying size(from a few thousand up to fifty thousand). Los Angeles is twelve K.

What’s worse, the country is known as USA, Inc., controlled by business, each city government being the board of directors. Pragmatic, they manage the population strictly. If a person gets old and is no longer productive, has a chronic disease, born with a birth defect, or just a “complainer,” they are “erased.”

Population growth is controlled by computers and doctors, people genetically matched to avoid possible birth defects. Otherwise, sex is wide open, with anybody and everybody from kindergarten age. It’s actually taught and encouraged. This would be some of those themes departing from the television episode, I don’t remember much about that show, it’s been so long since I saw it, but that definitely wouldn’t have been allowed on 1971 television.

Twentieth century Howard is disgusted by it all, but learns quickly that those ideas must be hid. “Erasure,” you know. His publishing empire had survived, though greatly diminished, and he’s expected to join the board and begin running it again. The people must be pacified.

Then Howard discovers there is an underground!

The novel departed considerably from the script. I think it was Wylie’s chance to voice some of his own concerns about the world. One suspects, corporations weren’t the villain on the televised version either(or at least soft-pedaled a bit). Sponsors and all, you know.

In rereading the novel for this post, I found one amusing coincidence, considering the previous administration and their policies toward environmental issues. At that first, secret meeting, one of the scientists defending the need to start reversing what we were doing to the environment, quite eloquently, was named Bush.

If one likes dystopian SF, this is worth tracking down just because it’s by Wylie.

New Supergroup: Chickenfoot

25 Thursday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in music

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

rock and roll

Here’s a new supergroup comprised of Sammy Hagar(formerly of Montrose, Van Halen, a lot of solo work), Michael Anthony(Van Halen), Chad Smith(Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Joe Satriani(one of the great guitar players). They just released a self-titled album.

Iron Maiden

23 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in music

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Headbanging, Iron Maiden

I saw these boys in concert with Judas Priest at Norfolk. They were just starting to break big here in America and it was just before they fired lead singer Paul Di’Anno for drug abuse which was beginning to affect his performances. So, though I enjoyed the show, I missed out on Bruce Dickinson with which they had their biggest success.

Here’s a couple of my favorites.

The Trooper!

Run To The Hills

Flinx Transcendent – Alan Dean Foster

20 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

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Tags

Alan Dean Foster, Science Fiction

After thirty-five years, starting with his first novel, THE TAR AIYM KRANG, Alan Dean Foster brings to a close his series involving Flinx and his partner and friend, Pip, the flyng Alaspian minidrag. Fourteen novels in which a young boy with astounding mental abilities, more showing up as he matures, grows into a man.
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Early on, as revealed in FOR LOVE OF MOTHER-NOT, he was just one of a number of street people trying to survive on the world of Moth. Mother Mastiff, a not to honest merchant, is the one who sort of adopts the boy.

As the books progressed, we learn more and more about Philip Lynx, who he is and how he came to be(he is looking for his father and follows the slightest clue). And we also learn about the threat to our galaxy. An unimaginably large evil headed toward the Milky Way that will consume everything in it’s path: stars, planets, all civilizations, then move toward the next.

With the aid of two scientists, Bran Tse-Mallory, a human, and the Eint Truzenzuzex, a Thranx, an alien that resembles nothing more than a six foot ant, he escapes Moth just ahead of assassins from the Meliore Society that created him and want to clean up their mess. This leads to his encounter with the Krang, a weapons platform of an ancient race known as The Tar Aiym.

Along the way, he picks up a ship with an AI known as Teacher, who is almost like the surrogate parent in his life, tending to his every need. He briefly mind-links with an even larger Tar Aiym weapon, one that wanders through the galaxy. This, he comes to believe, is what they need to find in the battle to avert that “evil.” His mental powers keep making contact with something that tells him he is the “key” to stopping it, the only one who can.

Flinx is opposed by a group called the Null, who know of this coming disaster and worship it as a cleansing. They don’t believe he can do anything about it, but why take chances. They want him dead.

FLINX TRANSCENDENT brings all these disparate elements established through the series together, as well as a couple of other novels that surprised me, to bring everything to a conclusion. I’ve been an ADF fan for most of those thirty-five years and add this novel to my list of favorites.

Hollywood Squares Laughs!

20 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Humor

≈ 4 Comments

I came across this elsewhere and thought they were funny. These are supposedly from answers from Hollywood Squares many years back. If they weren’t, they could have been.

Q; Paul, what’s a good reason for pounding meat?
A: Paul Lynde: Loneliness!

Q: Do female frogs croak?
A: Paul: If you hold their head underwater long enough!

Q: Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
A: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily!

Q: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body. What is it?
A: Paul: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn’t neglected!

Q:According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A: Paul: Point and Laugh!

Q: It’s considered bad taste to discuss two things at nudist camps. One is politics. What is the other?
A: Paul: Tape measures!

Q: If you’re going to make a parachute jump, how high should you be?
A: Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking ought to do it!

Q:Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A: Charley: My sense of decency!

Q: Charley, you’ve decided to grow strawberries. Will you get any the first year?
A: Of course not. I’m too busy growing strawberries!

Q: When a couple has a baby, who is responsible for it’s sex?
A; Charley: I’ll lend him my car. The rest is up to him!

Q: Jackie Gleason revealed once that he personally believed in them and had seen them on two occasions. What are they?
A: Charley: His feet!

Q: According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with kissing a lot of people?
A: Charley: It got me out of the army!

Q True or false, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years?
A: George Gobel: It sure seems that way sometimes!(how true)

Q: Can boys join the Campfire girls?
A: Marty Allen: Only after lights out!

Q: You’ve been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A: Don Knotts: That’s what’s been keeping me awake!

Q: During a tornado, are you safer in your bedroom or a closet?
A: Rose Marie: Unfortunately, I’m always safe in my bedroom!

Q: According to Cosmopolitian, if you meet a stranger at a party, is it okay to come right out and ask him if he’s married?
A: Rose Marie: No, wait until the next morning!

Q: In Hawaii, does it take more than three words to say, “I love you?”
A: Vincent Price: No, only a pineapple and a twenty!

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