A definite mixed bag of stories from early in Harlan Ellison's career to the early-'60s (when the book was originally published), "Ellison Wonderland"A definite mixed bag of stories from early in Harlan Ellison's career to the early-'60s (when the book was originally published), "Ellison Wonderland" is vintage Ellison. The stories range from absolutely silly and nonsensical ("Gnomebody") to beautiful and perfect exemplars of great science fiction ("In Lonely Lands"). All of them also give a glimpse into Ellison's worldview. Ellison was a social justice warrior long before it was "cool", but he often hid his views behind outrageous humor or cynical and angry diatribes against "the System/the Man". He still remains one of my---if not the top---favorite writers of all time....more
I never attended a military academy, and I never wanted to. Indeed, military schools are, in my mind, the punishment desperate parents dole to their uI never attended a military academy, and I never wanted to. Indeed, military schools are, in my mind, the punishment desperate parents dole to their unruly male children. Or they are the punishment given to rich kids when their wealthy parents want absolutely nothing to do with parenting. In either case, it’s punishment.
Pat Conroy has a love-hate relationship with military academies. Well, one military academy in specific.
The Citadel, located in Charleston, South Carolina, is a gorgeous sprawling campus that has, over the years, consistently garnered high academic rankings. It has also provided the military with many young soldiers, and, in fact, during the second world war, it had the distinction of having the highest percentage of its student population go into military service. It officially became racially-integrated in 1966, and it ended its male-only admissions policy in 1996.
Conroy attended the Citadel from 1963 to 1967, graduating from the school. All graduates are given a ring that is as highly cherished as a wedding band. Indeed, the famous first sentence of Conroy’s now-classic 1980 novel “The Lords of Discipline” is “I wear the ring.”
There is an almost contradictory sense of loyalty and loathing that Conroy writes about regarding his feelings toward the Citadel. He has nothing but compassion and love for his fellow brethren of the Class of ’67, but he also clearly has distinctly negative feelings toward what was called “the plebe system”, the strict and, in many ways, abusive, honor code system lorded over by upperclassmen as a way to, ostensibly, build young boys into men. In reality, it was more of an excuse for upperclassmen to torture and abuse underclassmen.
The novel follows Will McLean, a young man from a lower-class Southern family, through his four years of attending the academy. A poet at heart who wants nothing to do with the military, McLean learns to navigate his way through a system that he finds abhorrent. Along the way, he learns a lot about himself, what it means to be honorable, and what it truly means to be a man.
There is much to love about this novel. Besides Conroy’s gorgeous prose stylings, the novel touches on a plethora of themes—-friendship, loyalty, class distinctions, racism, male-female relationships. There is also a mystery, of sorts, at the heart of the story, as McLean and his roommates stumble upon a secret society within the Citadel; a discovery that will have major repercussions on McLean’s tenure at the school, as well as his life and the lives of his friends and loved ones.
As always, Conroy transports the reader to another world through his gorgeous, almost ethereal, writing. In this case, it is Charleston, South Carolina of the late-1960s, a somewhat alien world to 21st-century readers but one that—-if looked at closely—-isn’t all that different from our own....more
Genocide: (n) The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or grGenocide: (n) The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
It is a sad irony that a nation-state built primarily for a group of people who suffered a near-successful genocidal campaign by a psychotic world leader in the 20th century has, in the 21st century, engaged in a similar genocidal campaign against another group of people, an almost-perfect textbook example of the oppressed becoming an oppressor.
Please don’t twist my words, either. I am not being Antisemitic in that statement. Criticizing the colonial policies of the Israeli government should not imply a hostility or hatred of the Jewish people. Unfortunately, the world being what it is, such a statement will inevitably be misinterpreted.
The truth, though, is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the Israeli-Hamas War that started on October 7, 2023 as the impetus to continue a deliberate ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip that began roughly more than a hundred years ago.
Rashid Khalidi’s 2020 book “The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine” is an immensely eye-opening history of the conflict that has turned an area of the Middle East that is considered sacred by three of the major world religions into a profane killing field.
Blaming Israel is disingenuous, of course, as British Imperialism is as much at fault as the popular Zionist movement at the turn of the last century for creating the Palestinian displacement. In what has now become known as the Balfour Declaration—a single sentence recorded in a November 1917 cabinet meeting by the secretary of state for foreign affairs, Arthur J. Balfour—-Britain essentially declared its support for the eventual creation of a Jewish state in what was the country of Palestine. Perhaps nothing more than a statement to appease the growing number of Jews supportive of the Zionist movement in Europe at that time, this statement threw open a door that led directly to the creation of Israel many years later, a prospect that many indigenous Palestinians feared.
Jewish settlements, with the support of Britain, began to appear in Palestine after the First World War, bringing an already-existing Jewish population of roughly 6% of the whole to roughly 18% by 1926.
In 1947, The United Nations General Assembly voted for the partition of Palestine. Known as resolution 181, the plan provided an area of the country (42%) for the Arab population, an area of the country (56%) for the Jewish population, and the remainder (2%)—-an area comprised of the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and surrounds—-designated as an “international zone”.
It was only a year later that Israel officially became a country, under David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency. Helping to establish legitimacy was U.S. President Harry Truman’s recognition of the state on the same day it became the State of Israel, May 14, 1948.
Almost immediately, the violent upheaval that resulted in roughly 750,000 Arab Palestinians expelled from their homes began in earnest by the new Israeli government. Called the “Nakba” (an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe”), this ethnic cleansing of Palestine ushered in a new era of violence on both sides.
The Israeli narrative of this event vastly deviates from the Palestinian perspective. The tendency by some Israelis even today to downplay, ignore, or completely refute the violence committed by its own government during this time period ironically earns it the expression “Nakba denial”.
Palestinian militancy grew stronger in the subsequent years, eventually culminating in the foundation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), initiated by the Arab League (comprised of the seven countries of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, North Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Transjordan), in May 1964. This was the first organization to officially represent the Palestinian people.
The group Hamas was formed many year later, in 1987.
The late 1960s was the beginning of what Khalidi refers to as “the classical period of the Arab-Israeli conflict”, in which the United States and Israel became unofficial “partners” during the Cold War against Russia, which “unofficially” offered support to militant Palestinian groups.
Amidst the violence perpetrated by Israel and militant Palestinian groups, it is important to keep in mind the vast number of innocent Palestinian people—-children, especially—-caught in the crosshairs of this conflict. Just as it is wrong to lump all Israelis together as anti-Palestinian, it is equally wrong to lump all Palestinians as terrorists. Unfortunately, this is essentially what happened.
Over time, the PLO denounced many of its own militant tactics, such as suicide bombing, and became simply a political arm of the Palestinian people. Many times, the group came close to getting countries such as the U.S. and Israel to recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian people as a nation-state without a nation. But a two-state solution has never been adequately devised.
If any progress was made with the countless talks and accords over the years (and, frankly, there hasn’t been much), President Donald Trump set the conflict back considerably with his proposed peace plan announced in 2020, a plan rejected almost unanimously by Palestinians.
Then, October 2023 happened, where Hamas launched a full-scale attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip. According to recent data, roughly 1,200 Israelis have been killed and 5,341 injured; roughly 35,091 Palestinians have been killed and 78,827 injured.
Khalidi’s book is a good start if you want to understand the situation overseas. He lays bare his own personal history, one that divulges some of his own potential biases, but his book manages to be as objective an account of the last hundred years as is possible....more
Are you there, God? It’s me, Squeaky Fromme. I know you’re not there, anyway, because God ain’t real, but Charlie is, and Charlie is Jesus and the DevAre you there, God? It’s me, Squeaky Fromme. I know you’re not there, anyway, because God ain’t real, but Charlie is, and Charlie is Jesus and the Devil all rolled up in one. He’s so dreamy.
It’s okay being, like, the house-mother here on the Ranch with all these other girls, but sometimes it’s so boring. At least I get to stay in the Big House, with the old man, George. All I got to do is make him flapjacks in the mornings and watch “The Big Valley” and “F Troop” with him and occasionally give him a blow job.
It’s kinda lonely here in the Big House, though, which is why it’s kinda nice when the girls all come up here to hang sometimes. All they talk about is the fancy clothes they see being worn on those beautiful women walking down the sidewalks in L.A. and their hairstyles and makeup. They spend so much time comparing boob sizes and how big their butts are. I try not to encourage ‘em too much (Charlie don’t like it when the girls talk too much anyway), but deep down, I kinda wish I could join ‘em. Just once I’d like to go on a food run or a creepy crawl. Hell, I would a liked to have seen Charlie and the other guys kill that dumb ranch-hand and chop him up in little pieces and bury him down by the creekbed. That woulda been fun.
Anyway, God, I got to tell you about this new girl. Her name’s Emma, and I’m getting kinda a bad vibe about her. All the other girls—-especially Susan—-seem to like her. She’s young and pretty and looks like she should probably be going to one of them hoity-toity private schools where they wear pressed uniforms and shit.
She asks a lot of questions. Says she’s going to write a book one day about the Ranch and Charlie and all the girls and stuff they do. Charlie likes her, too, but I can’t see why. Then again, Charlie’s “liked” all of the girls here, at least once, if you know what I mean…
Anyway, God, I snuck into the new girl’s bunk one night, after she got knocked out from all that wine and weed, just snoring away. I scrounged through her book bag and found a notebook. It had “A Journal by Emma Cline” on the inside cover. It was filled with writing. I read some of it. Wasn’t bad, but I could tell: this girl didn’t have the heart or head for the kinda shit Charlie wanted us to do. She wasn’t like the other girls. Almost made me feel kinda sorry for her, but that thought passed quickly. Then I just wanted to take out my switchblade and gut the little pig right then and there, but Susan woke up, and I got the hell outta there.
In August, Charlie sent Susan, Linda, Patricia, and Tex to the house on Cielo Drive. Emma went with them, but I guess they dumped her out at a gas station before they made it to the house. You’ve probably heard about it, God. They made all the papers and the TV news about it. Charlie was so fucking proud of them.
Emma never did come back to the Ranch. But she ended up writing that book. It was called “The Girls”. I saw it in the prison library one day and checked it out. It was okay. She kinda told it like it was, the little bitch pig. Then I took a nice hot shit right on the book and shoved it down the toilet…...more
Sergeant Mack Bolan, a sniper with 95 confirmed kills, returns home from his stint in Vietnam to find that his entire family is dead. The local mafiosSergeant Mack Bolan, a sniper with 95 confirmed kills, returns home from his stint in Vietnam to find that his entire family is dead. The local mafiosi is to blame. Upon further research, Bolan discovers that the mafia has ruined a lot of local families, destroyed a lot of lives, is responsible for many unnecessary deaths. Bolan thought the war—-for him—-was over. He now knows that it’s just getting started.
Don Pendleton wrote “War Against the Mafia” in 1969. It was the first of nearly forty books in his series featuring Mack “The Executioner” Bolan. In all of them, Bolan wages a one-man war against all domestic enemies: mafia, drug dealers, pimps, crooked cops, deranged hippies, militant feminists, overzealous environmentalists. (Okay, I just made those last three up, but Pendleton’s political vibes seem to lean to the Right, so I’m guessing that those could be viable enemies.)
If this sounds familiar, especially to comic book fans, it’s because Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, was a blatant rip-off of Pendleton’s long-running paperback hero. (The Punisher’s first appearance in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #129 was 1974.) The creators really didn’t hide the fact that it was a blatant rip-off, either. One of the co-creators, Gerry Conway, has admitted to the fact numerous times in interviews. Pendleton himself was even interviewed in an issue of the comic book series, clearly indicating that he seemed to be okay with it.
“The Executioner” series ran for almost fifty years, ending in 2020. After Pendleton wrote the first 39 books, a team of writers took over the series. Bolan himself changed from a vigilante outlaw to being recruited by the government to fight the Russkies and Muslim terrorists. Apparently, it pays to be a vengeful psychopath.
Despite its questionable morality, Pendleton’s series is actually pretty damn entertaining, which could explain its fifty-year popularity. Strangely enough, a Mack Bolan movie has never been made, despite several attempts over the past half-century. Actors like Steve McQueen, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper have all come close to making a Hollywood adaptation but nothing ever got green-lighted.
As men’s action-adventure, this is pretty boilerplate. Bolan himself is somewhat lacking in personality. He’s humorless and, other than a few rolls in the hay, doesn’t seem to have normal masculine needs. He’s obsessed with guns.
I’ll probably read more of these, but I much prefer the other long-running men’s action-adventure series, “Longarm”, a western series featuring a much more likable U.S. Marshall who spends more time bedding the ladies than shooting bad guys. I’ll take the happy horn-dog over the clinically-depressed gun nut any day....more
Quentin Tarantino wowed me with his book “Cinema Speculation”, a wonderful nonfiction book about the movies that made Tarantino the man and the directQuentin Tarantino wowed me with his book “Cinema Speculation”, a wonderful nonfiction book about the movies that made Tarantino the man and the director he is today. It was a gorgeous thought-provoking love-letter to cinema of a specific era, that era being the late-‘60s and early-‘70s.
I picked up his novelization of his film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, but I honestly didn’t think I was going to like it, for two main reasons: 1) I honestly believed that Tarantino’s brilliance in “Cinema Speculation” was a one-off, not necessarily because I didn’t think he could pull off another excellent book or that he couldn’t possibly be as talented of a novel-writer as he was a screenwriter or director, but simply because I thought that “Cinema Speculation” was so good that it would be hard for him to replicate it. (Never mind, of course, that “OUATIH” was published a year BEFORE “Cinema Speculation”, but whatever…) and 2) I had seen the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and, while I enjoyed it (I’ll be honest: there hasn’t been a Tarantino movie I haven’t enjoyed), I felt that it was his most flawed film to date and I had problems with the ending, that being the “fairy tale” alternate reality ending in which the lovely Sharon Tate et al. at 10050 Cielo Drive, Los Angeles, CA were not brutally murdered by four brainwashed hippies under the insane orders of Charles Manson. Honestly, I shed a few tears at the end, knowing that Tarantino’s ending was bullshit but also knowing that I wish it had happened the way Tarantino envisioned it, which, I know, was most likely his point.
So, I read the novelization.
I need to say it: it’s excellent. Fucking brilliant. And it’s also not a novelization. It’s a novel, and a damn good one. It also has very little resemblance to the film. A few scenes from the film made it into the book, but there were a lot of scenes I don’t remember seeing. (I have a feeling some of these scenes show up on the DVD bonus features or in a “Director’s Cut” version that I have not seen yet.)
The book is so different from the film that they are almost two separate entities with only the barest of similarities. This is, in my opinion, a positive.
Tarantino has written a novel that tells a beautiful story about the death of Old Hollywood, the big-studio machine that essentially controlled and helped create the City of Angels. He tells it in the story of has-been actor Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film), stuck in the weird limbo period of the late-‘60s when big-studio Hollywood was transitioning to the New Wave of the ‘70s, in which a slew of independent and European filmmakers would reshape the market and the entire film industry in less than a decade.
There’s little to no room for old-school actors like Dalton, condemned to playing guest appearances as villains on TV westerns and cop shows. His alcoholism doesn’t help. Thankfully, he has Cliff Booth, his former stunt man/current driver/best friend (played by Brad Pitt in the film). Cliff is a good guy, if one can forgive his past transgressions, which include murdering several people including his wife and getting away with it.
Both men represent a dying breed, struggling to hold on to the only world they know and pushing back against all the crazy changes they see in the world around them, changes that they secretly know that they need to embrace in order to keep going in Tinsel Town.
I’m not sure why Tarantino chose to downplay the violence and the emphasis on the Manson Family in the novel, but it was, in the end, the right decision. This book is not about Charles Manson or the murder of Sharon Tate. It’s about Rick and Cliff.
I don’t care what the fuck Tarantino writes about in his next book, but I sure as fuck look forward to reading it....more
Holy crap, where do I start with this? First off, I’ll say that Tom O’Neill’s 2019 book “CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of theHoly crap, where do I start with this? First off, I’ll say that Tom O’Neill’s 2019 book “CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties” is so fascinating of a read that there were times that I was tempted to call off work just to finish it. I didn’t, of course, because I’ve used up all my sick time already, and I actually like my job.
There is literally too much to unpack about this book, so I won’t do it, mainly for my mental health. I could gush for pages and pages about this, which is basically what O’Neill does, for 436 pages. Just read what he wrote.
This book is basically what happens when an intelligent journalist falls into a rabbit hole of investigative journalism about the Manson murders and uncovers 30-year-old conspiracy theories that flip on its head nearly everything we think we know about the Manson murders. Through hundreds of interviews and countless uncovered documents, O’Neill has pieced together a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle that’s unfortunately missing a couple thousand pieces, but it still shows us a pretty clear picture.
Consider this a companion piece to Vincent Bugliosi’s 1974 “Helter Skelter”, which is still considered the definitive account of the Manson murders. O’Neill’s book is, however, more than just a companion piece. He literally excoriates and destroys Bugliosi’s account by more than implying that Bugliosi (prosecuting attorney for the Manson trial) suppressed vital information, lied under oath, and created a completely horse-shit motive for the murders. That, and he was a pretty horrible human being, and O’Neill had police reports to prove it.
That’s not even close to the tip of the batshit crazy iceberg, though, as O’Neill somehow (plausibly) connects the Beach Boys; J.Edgar Hoover’s illegal COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program) of the late ‘60s; the CIA’s campaign to discredit and dismantle the anti-war movement via an operation called CHAOS; and rogue free-clinic doctors conducting LSD experiments on unwitting patients, especially a certain group of hippies living out in the desert led by a charismatic ex-con who may or may not have been an LA county sheriff’s or federal informant.
This book is wild. I’d almost write this book off as nutso conspiracy theory nonsense, except I’ve just lived through the past 10 years in which some asshole New York real estate douchebag who once did a cameo in “Home Alone” actually became president and contributed to the untimely death of millions of Americans because he thought injecting bleach into the bloodstream was a good idea and then fomented a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol because of a bullshit lie that the 2020 elections were stolen and that a couple million Americans still think this idiot should run in 2024. So, yeah, the idea that Charles Manson may have been a federal informant and/or a pawn in some illegal CIA experiment trying to make hippies into violent psychopathic killing machines using LSD and methamphetamines honestly isn’t that hard to believe. ...more
Anyone who lived through the late-1960s will probably recall—-if not in detail then surely in impact—-the brutal murders at 10050 Cielo Drive, Los AngAnyone who lived through the late-1960s will probably recall—-if not in detail then surely in impact—-the brutal murders at 10050 Cielo Drive, Los Angeles, California on August 9, 1969. It didn’t matter if you lived in San Bernardino, the Bronx, or Gary, Indiana: you watched the news, saw the headlines, heard people talking about it at work. It was on everybody’s radar.
The five victims (six if you count the unborn fetus of one of the victims) were Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, and Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her child, Paul, whom she’d had with her husband, Roman Polanski. They were murdered viciously and seemingly randomly. A home invasion ending in bloodletting.
The murders, later lumped into a group with other murders that occurred the day before and the day after, became known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. Later, as more facts came in and the identity of the perpetrators became known, it became more commonly known as the Manson Murders.
The perpetrators were three females and one male. They were young hippies living in a commune out in the desert called Spahn Ranch, a place that was once a famous Hollywood landmark where many western movies and TV shows were filmed. It had been overtaken by a community known as The Family, led by a patriarch named Charles Manson.
The subsequent trial was, at the time, the longest (nine months) and most expensive criminal trial in American history. It required its jury members to be totally sequestered for nearly a year. It was, at the time, one of the most highly publicized trials ever. It also helped to catapult the career of Vincent Bugliosi.
Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the trial. It was his job to convince the judge and jury that Manson, despite not being present during the actual murders, had planned, choreographed, and ordered the murders via his followers, who—-Bugliosi was convinced—-would do anything that Manson asked them to do. Bugliosi painted Manson as a charismatic Jim Jones-like cult leader who had brain-washed his followers into believing that he was not only the reincarnation of Jesus Christ but, oddly, Satan as well. He was Christ and Satan in one embodiment.
He also had to convince the judge and jury that Manson’s motive was a highly complex and bizarre attempt to set off a global race war between blacks and whites, a plan devised by Manson based on Manson’s own mystifying interpretation of the lyrics of The Beatles’s songs on The White Album, and, specifically, the song “Helter Skelter”. In the end, Bugliosi succeeded. The jury eventually found all defendants—-including Manson—-guilty of first-degree murder. They were all sentenced to death, but California ended the death penalty several years after the trial, so everyone involved received life sentences. Manson died in 2017.
Bugliosi published his book “Helter Skelter” in 1974, and it quickly became one of the best-selling true crime books ever. It has become the go-to source of Manson lore, despite the fact that dozens of books have been written since that offer a more in-depth look at Manson and the Family. He has also been the subject of controversy, as Tom O’Neill, in his book “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties”, more than implies that Bugliosi may have intentionally or unintentionally suppressed vital information during the trial.
Despite all that, “Helter Skelter” holds up well, if only as an important historical document of the late-‘60s and early-‘70s. The late Joan Didion famously remarked that August 9, 1969 marked the official death of the 1960s. It was, in her opinion, a death of innocence for the country. Bugliosi may disagree. At one point in the book, he makes the legal distinction between the words “innocent” and “not guilty”. They are, under the law, two very different things.
According to Bugliosi’s logic, the ‘60s may not have been guilty of the paranoid conspiracies or the anti-government sentiment or the greed and violence that swept the country in the subsequent decades, but it certainly wasn’t innocent either. ...more
“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loya“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics… You’re fighting a war. A war for power… What we really need are people who are willing to stand up in a slug-fest.” —-Newt Gingrich
“[Trump]’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture. So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent.”—-Ruth Ben-Ghiat, history professor at New York University
“The professors are the enemy”—-J.D. Vance, Republican Senator from Ohio
“A recent ABC/Ipsos poll had found that 52 percent of Republicans believed the people involved in the January 6 attack had been “protecting democracy”. That meant that half of the GOP electorate saw the violent extremists who had assaulted law enforcement officials, threatened to kill the vice president, and tried to overturn a legitimate election as heroes. The party was cracked. (P. 336)”
In truth, Donald Trump didn’t have a monopoly on crazy. Nor did the Republican Party. It can be said, however, that at no other time in history did a president or a party fully embrace and encourage the fringe and the batshit crazy the way Trump and the Republicans did in the past decade.
As David Corn writes in his excellent history of the deterioration of the Republican Party from within, “American Psychosis”, the far-right fringe and the just plain fucked-up have always been kissing cousins with the GOP. Most of the time, the party was just able to hide it better.
Trump said “fuck it!” and let his far-right freak flag fly. Hence, the cadre of misogynists, racists, homophobes, anti-semitic white nationalists, and extremists he called his friends and close advisors.
Corn’s historical overview is a fascinating and disturbing look at how the far-right has crept into bed with the Republicans via organizations like the John Birch Society and the Heritage Foundation, groups that try to pass themselves off as legitimate “think tanks” but are nothing more than right-wing propaganda machines.
Corn illustrates how each Republican president, starting as far back as Theodore Roosevelt, was forced to at least kowtow to extremists within their own party as a way of ensuring the votes. Even Eisenhower, at certain points in his presidency, was known to turn a blind eye to fringe groups within his own party.
With Nixon and Reagan, the Republican Party began to deviate as far-right as possible with their total submission to Christian fundamentalists and very public political alliances with nutballs like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
The rise of right-wing media stars such as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and the popularity of the ultraconservative FOX News network helped to bolster some of the right-wing extremists in the party, like Newt Gingrich. Movements such as the Tea Party and Q Anon helped to merely solidify the absolutely toys-in-the-attic loony toons and made a Trump presidency inevitable.
There’s a long list of Republican demagogues that have helped to create the violent extremism in the current GOP—-Joseph McCarthy, Spiro Agnew, Mitch McConnell, Phyllis Schlafly, Sarah Palin, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, just to name a few—-and Corn gives credit where credit is due for events leading to January 6.
“American Psychosis” is a must-read for any rational-minded person looking to see how the once-proud party of Lincoln has gone off the rails....more
While I wasn’t particularly in love with the ‘60s “Batman” TV show starring Adam West, I certainly didn’t hate it, and it was, more often than not, goWhile I wasn’t particularly in love with the ‘60s “Batman” TV show starring Adam West, I certainly didn’t hate it, and it was, more often than not, good for a few laughs. I’m not sure, but it may have been my first real introduction to the character as a kid. The Dark Knight it so wasn’t.
DC, having ridden the nostalgia wave for all things ‘70s and ‘80s (“Superman ’78”, “Wonder Woman ’77”, “Batman ’89”) simply couldn’t stop there. In 2014, “Batman ’66” came out, resurrecting the cheesy Technicolor silliness of the classic series.
Writer Jeff Parker has captured the zaniness and the camp, which, honestly, gets pretty old by the midway mark, but the team of contributing artists must be commended for a contemporary interpretation of Golden Age-style comic book art. Seriously, if anything, this series is worth it just for the pretty and super-colorful drawings....more
Maybe I’m just a sucker for stories about dogs and monkeys, and an even bigger sucker for stories about talking dogs and monkeys, but I absolutely adoMaybe I’m just a sucker for stories about dogs and monkeys, and an even bigger sucker for stories about talking dogs and monkeys, but I absolutely adored “Primordial”.
When I heard that the team who created one of my favorite sci-fi/horror graphic novel series in recent years, “Gideon Falls”, was coming out with a new series, I was excited. Writer Jeff Lemire and artist Andrea Sorrentino are a tremendously talented duo, and “Primordial” just confirms for me that anything that has their names on it is worth reading.
It helps to know a little history about the space program for this one, although the events in “Primordial” deviate from actuality into an alternate history.
In 1957, the Soviet Union sent the first living organism into space. Her name was Laika, a Siberian husky-terrier mutt. She was sent up in Sputnik 2, which later reentered the Earth’ atmosphere and exploded. Laika, it is believed, only survived the first two days of the mission, as the cabin overheated to a point that no creature could survive.
In 1959, NASA sent two female monkeys, Able and Baker, into space in their Jupiter program. They both successfully returned alive.
That’s what really happened.
In the history of “Primordial”, both missions officially ended in failure, and the consequence was the immediate scrapping of the space program.
But, as Doctor Donald Pembrook discovers, in 1961, the public was lied to. Laika, Able, and Baker didn’t perish in outer space. They’re still alive, out there, somewhere. And the extraterrestrials that rescued them are learning a lot about humanity.
I’m not gonna lie: this had me choking up in the end. It’s a short series, but it’s an emotionally powerful one.
God, I hope that our first contact happens with a dog rather than a human. Our chances of survival might be a helluva lot better…...more
February is Black History Month, and I decided to read some books by black authors that have been on my (ridiculously long) “to-be-read” list for a whFebruary is Black History Month, and I decided to read some books by black authors that have been on my (ridiculously long) “to-be-read” list for a while, starting with James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”.
Originally published in 1963, “The Fire Next Time” is a short book comprised of two essays that appeared originally in other publications. “My Dungeon Shook” was originally published in The Progressive, and “Down at the Cross” originally appeared in The New Yorker.
“My Dungeon Shook” is in the form of a letter, addressed to his nephew, on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the famous speech by Abraham Lincoln which signaled the abolition of the institution of slavery.
The tone isn’t very celebratory; in fact, it is rather melancholy. It is the tone of a black man writing to another younger black man in the early 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It is a time in our country’s history in which, arguably, racism was at its zenith, because black people in America at the time were finally calling out white people. Black people were finally saying “Enough is enough”, and the white majority didn’t want to hear it.
Baldwin writes about the violent backlash by white Americans. He writes about the truth of the history of black people in this country: “You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence; you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. (p. 7)”
One would expect Baldwin to follow this with advice on how to fight back at the ugliness of white racism. One would probably not expect Baldwin’s advice on how to fight back.
Baldwin’s letter isn’t resentful or hateful. On the contrary, Baldwin—-raised in a religious Christian (albeit dysfunctional) home—advises his nephew to fight back by being better than white people—-excelling in everything, from academia to business to sports.
Baldwin writes, “[T]hese men are your brothers—-your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. (p.10)”
“Down at the Cross” is Baldwin writing about a season of crisis; specifically a crisis of faith. He writes about his complicated relationship with Judaism and Christianity, and then he writes about an eye-opening experience meeting Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam at the time.
Baldwin doesn’t share the tenets of the Black Muslims. He does not support the Black Muslims’ view that complete separation from white people is the only way for black people to survive. Baldwin believes that black salvation lies in finding a way to live peacefully with white people. It is the only way, even if it is the most difficult and seemingly impossible way:
“It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. (p.100)”
Baldwin believes, quite rightly, that if anyone has the right to hate with vigor it is black people. The fact that most black people don’t hate white people is due to the consciousness gifted to black people from centuries of pain and torture. Black people possess a vision of reality that white people do not: “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world’s most virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—-or, anyway, mothers—-know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. (p. 102)”
Everything Baldwin writes in this book has the authority of a loving parent. His words are as poignant today, in 2022, as they were sixty years ago when he wrote them.
Reading Baldwin—-and, in particular, this book—-is the perfect way to inaugurate Black History Month in 2022....more
James Lee Burke is one of my favorite authors. Besides writing riveting crime thrillers, Burke is also a beautiful prose stylist. Indeed, the beauty oJames Lee Burke is one of my favorite authors. Besides writing riveting crime thrillers, Burke is also a beautiful prose stylist. Indeed, the beauty of his writing is something not often found within the genre of roman noir. Very few crime writers attempt it, and of the few who do, fewer still pull it off well. Burke is one of the rare ones.
“Another Kind of Eden”, his latest novel in a forty-plus book career (I lost count years ago), is another excellent thriller by a master. It is also somewhat of a departure for Burke, insofar as he is clearly trying something very different here. I’m not sure if it succeeds completely, but I’m willing to give him credit for trying.
The supernatural has come into play in previous Burke novels but never as a significant part of the story. In his Dave Robicheaux novels, Dave would occasionally receive phone calls from dead people in his past—-friends who died in ‘Nam, his murdered first wife—-and he would occasionally see ghosts of Confederate soldiers walking in the Louisiana bayous at night, but these experiences were almost always explained by the fact that Robicheaux was a raging alcoholic.
“Another Kind of Eden” is one of his series of novels involving the Holland family. These books are essentially contemporary westerns, in which Jeep Wranglers have replaced horses and Mexican bandits have evolved into drug cartels.
“Eden”, however, takes place in the ‘60s in Denver, Colorado. The setting is important as it establishes the story within a temporal crossroads of American innocence. It is the height of the hippy-flower power era of peace and love and simultaneously the start of one of the bloodiest, costliest wars in American history. It is also a transition period in which America was about to suffer the embryonic pains of a decades-long drug war, one that culminates in higher crime rates, the rise of South and Central American cartels, and an opioid epidemic. All of our problems today, arguably, have their roots in the early ‘60s.
The main character, Aaron Holland Broussard, is a distant relative (uncle?, cousin? It’s never mentioned) of the recurring character of Texas lawman Bob Holland. Bob is never mentioned in the novel, as he is a mere child at this time.
Aaron has spent the better part of his adult life riding box-cars and working odd jobs as ranch hands out west despite the fact that, it is implied, he comes from a well-to-do family on the East Coast. He dreams of being a published writer one day, like Steinbeck. He also has blackouts and is plagued with always managing to get into trouble.
He finds work with an extremely kind family that runs a farm and, simultaneously, meets a girl named Joanne that he knows, deep down, will be his wife one day.
He also inadvertently angers a particularly nasty father-son duo, the Vickers. The local sheriff believes that the son is a serial killer who is responsible for the murders of nearly a dozen young girls in the area, and the father may be an accomplice. For some reason, the sheriff thinks Aaron has the potential to be a lawman, despite Aaron’s disinterest.
When Aaron hassles a group of seemingly peaceful hippies, led by a local college professor, tragic events begin to unfold. Rumors of a cultish series of rituals based on ancient Native American lore begin to spread.
This is the point in the book where things starts to get weird. Lovecraftian weird. A recurring figure in a black hood may be the spirit of a dead drug dealer or it may be an ancient prehistoric evil roaming the land. Tall, stick-figure-like bat-creatures are seen crawling in the hills. Aaron thinks he witnesses a gruesome human sacrifice, but no body is recovered.
Is Aaron going mad? Or is something sinister and supernaturally evil going on?
“Another Kind of Eden” is definitely not Burke at his best, but it is nevertheless just as riveting as previous novels, and Burke's "not at his best" is still better than some authors at their best. The fact that Burke is mining for ideas in territory that authors like Stephen King and Laird Barron have staked out is fascinating in and of itself. That he does a passably decent job at it is definitely praise-worthy....more
Vampires in space! The Grey Trader is on the rise! The gates of Hell are about to be unleashed upon American soil!
It’s 1965. American vampires SkinnerVampires in space! The Grey Trader is on the rise! The gates of Hell are about to be unleashed upon American soil!
It’s 1965. American vampires Skinner Sweet, Pearl Jones, and Calvin Poole are on the run from the creeping tendrils of the Grey Trader, the mysterious ancient vampire that guards the primordial beast below, the creature that is the source of all vampires. Now, vampires and vampire hunters must work together to save the planet.
In a plot that involves infiltrating NASA, American vampires must go to space to battle evil Russian cosmonaut vampires. Meanwhile, on Earth, Felicia Book and Pearl must get their hands on a super-weapon known only as Iskakku, but the Grey Trader’s minions won’t make it easy.
Scott Snyder’s American Vampire series is awesome. Volume 8 is the last of Snyder’s series to be published under the Vertigo line, which DC ended in 2020. Thankfully, the series has continued (after a few years hiatus) under the new DC Black Label. ...more
We’ve entered the ‘60s in Scott Snyder’s graphic novel series American Vampire. Volume 7 is, technically, part one of the series’ Second Cycle, but thWe’ve entered the ‘60s in Scott Snyder’s graphic novel series American Vampire. Volume 7 is, technically, part one of the series’ Second Cycle, but that just sounds confusing, so I will just call it Volume 7.
In this volume: Pearl Jones is in charge of a half-way house for young vampires in Kansas; she just brought in a girl named May who appears to be an older breed of vampire; the girl has bites on her back from a breed of vampire that Pearl has never seen; Skinner’s a biker who stumbles upon a horrible secret about vampires; rumors are spreading in the vampire community about a mysterious entity called the Gray Trader; May’s bite seems to have infected her with something that makes her super-powerful and super-vicious; the Gray Trader, it turns out, pre-dates Dracula and even some of the earliest known vampires to walk the Earth and it may even be the First One…...more
Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel “Lovecraft Country” is misleading, to say the least. First off, it’s not really a novel. It’s actually a series of interconnectMatt Ruff’s 2016 novel “Lovecraft Country” is misleading, to say the least. First off, it’s not really a novel. It’s actually a series of interconnected short stories that, as a whole, work to tell a single story.
It’s also misleading in its title. Anyone expecting cosmic horror in the H.P. Lovecraft vein may be disappointed. While there are certainly elements of horror and science fiction scattered throughout, the book is definitely not a straightforward horror novel. It is actually something more nuanced.
Ruff cleverly uses horror and sci-fi to metaphorically explore the American Black Experience during the Jim Crow years.
The story follows the members of a black family that are pawns of a sinister secret society of sorcerers that have been around since the colonial period. The Turner family’s roots are intertwined with this diabolical coven, as the Turner ancestors emanated as slaves belonging to the original patriarch of the white Braithwaite family. Caleb Braithwaite, the descendent, needs Atticus Turner—-a young Army veteran just returning home from a tour in Korea—-to complete a ritual. The last time the ritual was tried, dozens of people were killed, and Atticus’s great-grandmother escaped as a runaway slave.
The novel (in short stories) goes off from there into many different aspects of the black experience, using supernatural horrors to convey the absurdity of racism in this country. Everything from white flight to the Tulsa Race Massacre is brought to light in a unique way.
The problem with the novel is that it’s not great. It has potential, but it never really completely delivers on its fascinating premise. That, and it has been since outdone, thematically, by much better films by Jordan Peele and novels by Colson Whitehead, as well as the Amazon Prime TV show “Them”, produced by Little Marvin.
There is an HBOMax TV series based on this novel, produced by J.J. Abrams. I may check it out. ...more
Does Satan exist? A school of thought within some theological circles is that Satan is not a real entity but rather a symbolic concept to help explainDoes Satan exist? A school of thought within some theological circles is that Satan is not a real entity but rather a symbolic concept to help explain evil (little "e") in the world. Certainly, some theologians believe, God exists, but the Devil is a different matter.
Of course, another school of thought is that if one believes in God as an actual entity, then a polar opposite must exist. If God is Good (big "g"), then of course there must a Devil, which is Evil (big "e"). It is simply a natural (or supernatural) flip side of the same coin. If you believe in God, you must believe in Satan.
The late Ray Russell may have been on the fence about this, as the title of his classic 1962 novel---"The Case Against Satan"---suggests. Indeed, it's difficult to classify this as a horror novel, as the horrific events described within all have plausibly scientific or psychological explanations without resorting to supernaturalism.
That said, Russell's novel is, even today, a fascinating look at a significant although still somewhat taboo subject within the Catholic faith: exorcism.
Russell's novel preceded William Peter Blatty's novel "The Exorcist" by nine years. Blatty's novel exploded on bookstore shelves with a popularity that bordered on fanatical, resulting in a phenomenal movie and spawning an interest in filmic exorcism that still exists today.
Russel's novel is probably not as sexy or exciting as Blatty's, which may explain why it's not talked about with as much passion as "The Exorcist". There's no green-pea soup vomit or head-spinning or a little girl telling a priest "Your mother sucks cock in Hell!", all of which apparently make for a bestseller. Still, Russell has the distinction of being one of the first to do it.
And, like "The Exorcist", "The Case Against Satan" is definitely a page-turner. Russell was definitely going more for the psychological aspect of exorcism, and his novel reads more like a riveting mystery crime thriller, with an intrepid but doubting priest and an older-but-wiser Bishop acting as detectives.
Fans of the wonderful TV show "Evil" will enjoy Russell's examination of science-versus-faith and thoughtful (but respectful) criticism of Catholic church doctrine....more
Harlan Ellison’s short story “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream”, first published in 1967, still has the ability to horrify readers. It is, perhaps, eveHarlan Ellison’s short story “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream”, first published in 1967, still has the ability to horrify readers. It is, perhaps, even more terrifying today, given how computer technology—and specifically artificial intelligence (AI) technology—-has exploded almost exponentially since Ellison first wrote it.
First published in a science fiction magazine called IF, “IHNM&IMS” is more horror than science fiction. It certainly straddles a very fine line.
The story is set hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the future, after a vindictive A.I. has wiped out all of humanity, with the exception of five randomly-chosen humans, which the machine keeps alive so that it can torture and abuse them for eternity. Basically, Ellison is describing his version of Hell, and it is truly truly frightening.
It is, of course, a must-read for science fiction fans, as well as Ellison fans, but the 1983 Ace paperback edition also includes six more stories, all previously published in various sci-fi/fantasy magazines. They are some early stories, ranging in publication dates from 1958 to 1967. It is important to note this, as Ellison—-who passed away in 2018—-was a prolific writer who had published roughly 2,000 short stories, novellas, novels, and screenplays throughout his life. Much of it is still surprisingly excellent.
I note this only because I have noticed—-in this “woke”, cancel-culture world—-what I would call a “backlash” against Ellison (and other sci-fi/fantasy writers of a particular generation) for writing views that contemporary critics have dubbed “racist”, “misogynistic”, or “homophobic”.
Insofar as I believe that some complaints may be valid, I believe that it is important to keep in mind that Ellison was writing at a very volatile time in American history. Major social, political, and cultural changes were happening in this country. For the most part, Ellison was on the right side of history. His stories and essays always had a strong social-justice leaning to them. He was pro-feminist in an era when very few other men were pro-feminist. He was an anti-racist calling out racist government policies long before it was considered cool to do so. He was for gay rights during a time when the general public believed that all gay people were either disease-carrying vermin or sinners in need of accepting Jesus Christ. Ellison, a Jewish kid from Cleveland, was also pretty critical of the Church—-as in all of them, as in organized religion in general—-before it was acceptable. He got a lot of shit during his life for his views.
So, it seems to me that accusations of “misogynist”, “racist”, or “homophobic” are clearly coming from a far left contingent of hyper-politically correct ignoramuses who have never actually read Ellison or who are judging him based on superficial evidence. Yes, Ellison sometimes referred to women in stories as “bitches” or “cunts”, and some of his male characters mistreated women. Some of what he described was, by today’s standards, sexual abuse and assault. (And, yes, there were, sadly, different standards then…) Yes, Ellison sometimes referred to black people as “negroes”. The term was, believe it or not, a perfectly acceptable way of referring to black people up until the late-1960s. Yes, Ellison probably threw around terms such as “homo”, “queer”, and “fag”, and I’m certainly not condoning the terms, but literally everyone—-including members of the LGBTQ community—-used those terms in those days.
To judge a person based solely on a brief surface-level examination of his or her work is unfair and prone to inaccuracy. Here’s a good way of getting a clear picture of what Ellison stood for as a writer: read more Ellison. It’s generally good advice anyway....more