PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

What I Read In September 2007

Nine books for the 9th month. I actually finished Footprints under the Window by Franklin W. Dixon is this month. That's the Hardy Boys book that has the brothers dress up a chinese guy as a girl to keep him safe from the bad guys. And he looks good. Chet is interested in meeting her, she's that hot. The bad guys are smuggling Chinese into the USA. That isn't in the re-write that they did in 1959. The new story is changed to catching crooks who steal a part vital used in the space program. Hipper, I guess. I personally prefer the original, less PC version, with pidgin talking Chinese. And partly I view that from a time and cultural perspective. I always say that fiction gives one a great view of the past and often it's fairly detailed. I really like the cover on the old book. Great use of color. Too bad they haven't a picture of that chinese guy dressing in drag. That never gets old.

Lisa Chippendale's Triumph of the Imagination: The Story of J K Rowling is part of a series of books about people Overcoming Adversity from Chelsea House. It's right there on the cover. Inside the book there are 30 or more titles in the series. Lots of celebrities and famous people. It's 30 bucks on Amazon. I got one remaindered at Half Price Books. I think it was 5 bucks, maybe $7. The book is only about 100 pages and there are lots of large B&W photos. Most of them seem to be publicity shots, or taken from the web, and often have nothing to do with the subject. There's a photo of a train, just a common commuter train, and the caption explains the idea for Harry came while JKR was riding a train from Manchester to London. There's nothing to indicate that the train is on a run from one of those towns to the other, and I am suspicious of the boats and water near the tracks. Helps pad out your book when you make the photo fill three quarters of a page. The text is pretty much a rehash of previously published material. I don't think Lisa interviewed Jo. You know. The book is from 2003 and it just covers the first 4 books. Nice picture of JKR on the front. but really only for the dangerously addicted.

Next I slammed back a four pack of The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon. First up While the Clock Ticked. There's a crazy man who comes to the house and accuses the boys father of cheating him. Raymond Dalyrymple also comes to see the boys dad. He's got a mystery up at his mansion, but he really wants Fenton Hardy, who's not there. The boys are heading out for a hike and he suggests they look over the Purdy place. Purdy's the crazy man. They do, but don't see anything. Bayport is a small town and the boys are often traveling on foot or motorcycle. Their boat figures into many of the stories. They have a car too. On the way home the boys meet up with Mr. Applegate, a returning character from the first book, who's had some stamps stolen. Valuable they were. You don't see stamps figuring in stories much anymore, unless people are making fun of someone. Of course the hobby is fading so you can't expect much. I wonder if it's still more popular in Europe and Japan. Back in Bayport Mr. D is having a bit of a problem with that crazy guy. On top of that someone is getting into his mansion's time-locked secret room and it's scaring him. The brothers stay over at the mansion to catch the crook. There's a clock that figures in the story and the covers of the later books give a big plot point away by showing you the person sneaking through the clock front. It's a big clock. I liked this cover from the first edition. You can see someone is getting kidnapped. That seems to happen often enough in the series. It's the brothers in this one. They get freed by yelling. Cops in a canoe hear them. They catch the crooks red handed, and free the boys. There's still the stamps and the third part of the story to tie up and you bet they do. All wrapped up in a neat bow.

What Happened at Midnight was next. The Hardy boys stay up late and have a good time breaking up the Taffy Marr jewel smuggling ring. The boy's "portly" friend Chet introduces the brothers to the new dining sensation in town. The Automat has come to Bayport, and Chet, a prodigious eater and comic relief machine, is armed with nickels and an appetite. He'll gladly get a stomach ache if he can eat his way there. There's a party out at Chet's place, with lots of food, and Joe gets kidnapped. Told ya. They don't know it at first. Joe walks out by the road running in front of Chet's family's farm and doesn't come back. He's caught by criminals. It puts Frank and some of his friends on the hurt. By car and by boat Frank soldiers on, collecting a clue here and a tip there, looking for his brother and unraveling the mystery of the Tammy Marr suggling ring. There's a lot of smuggling going on in Bayport. This one a jewel ring. Joe is eventually rescued and Chet has some more to eat. On the trail of the gang the brothers jump a train, after buying a ticket, and head to New York City. I know, they get to carry guns too. They learn some more and Frank gets pickpocketed. All their money is gone and they can't get home or eat. That would be bumming Chet out, huh. Our boys catch a couple of clues and a snooze in Central Park. No one killed them. It is 1931 in the book. They take the subway to the edge of the city and try hitching, but have no luck. After walking a while they wash dishes for some breakfast at a roadside diner. The cook gets them a ride from two young men who turn out to be secret service agents on the trail of, you guessed it, Taffy Marr. Next day Frank figures out where Taffy is and the chase is on.

I read WHAM and The Sign Of The Crooked Arrow the same day. The novels aren't that long and there aren't many words on a page. It takes me longer to write this big ass essay than read one of the books. I don't really know how long each takes but I'm guessing I'm right. The Sign Of The Crooked Arrow has the Hardy Boys out west searching for clues about the gang of baddies that are using phony cigarettes filled with knock out gas to rob people. "Hey, buddy. Got a light?" Next thing you know you wake up without your wallet. Then Mr. Hardy gets hit in the leg by an arrow. Since he's laid up in the hospital for a while he sends the boys to New Mexico to help their cousin Ruth. She's been having trouble at her ranch. The boys take Chet along. He's been learning judo, and eating cake. What a guy! More clues are found. On the way to the ranch Chet and the Hardy boys are followed by a strange plane and nearly crash when their chartered plane conks out. Cousin Ruth's ranch hands are a mixed lot. The boys make friends with some of them. They also make friends with an Indian name Pye. Frank nearly gets hit by an arrow. Then there's a fight with some of the ranch hands, followed by a flash flood. Then Chet and Frank get captured by the bad guys. They aren't being feed and Chet is frantic. Joe and Pye help them escape and the day and the ranch are saved. Yippee-ki-yay... anyway on to the next book.

The Mystery Of The Flying Express has the Hardy boys detecting on a train. A weird old man bugs the Hardy home and snoops on their conversations. This leads them to a spy ring and a lot of running around. Their father appears more in this book than most and often in disguise. There is the usual danger and excitement, with the added bonus of being on a train. At one point they have to fly to catch the train, so you've got planes and trains and spys. Can't get better than that. I got these last two Hardy Boys books, and two others, at HPB for $2 each. This was the only one without a dust jacket. I couldn't find good enough scans so I took pictures of the books I own. I'll read those two in October. There's a blimp in one.

I read the first two books in The Wyrd Museum Trilogy and while they were ok, I just didn't like them that much. Robin Jarvis is the writer and he's one blood thirsty mother. The first book is The Woven Path and in the first chapter Jarvis has a US airman gunned down in the streets of London during World War II. MP's found the airman standing over a bloody corpse and holding a bloody knife. No, bloody not bloody. Yep, both the corpse and the knife are covered in it. Bloody, hell! Then they blast him. There's a long envolved story that starts with a kid and his family. Neil's dad is a bit useless and he needs a job. He's divorced and has two boys. The younger boy is Josh and the dad is Brian. He takes the position as caretaker for The Wyrd Museum. It's run by an old lady who, with her two sister, lives on site. The place is rarely visited and it's filled with ill kept artifacts. Turns out the three old ladies are the fates and Woden is trying to kill off the tree of life. It gets more complicated. I think the Amazon review is pretty spot on:

Gr 8 Up-Neil's father has accepted a live-in job as the caretaker of the Wyrd Museum, an old house full of strange and macabre objects that is owned by three elderly sisters who are as disconcerting and fearful as the exhibits. While roaming in the Special Collections Room, Neil encounters a talking teddy bear that blackmails him into traveling back to the Blitz in London in order to rescue his four-year-old brother, Josh, who had been tricked by the magical bear. As Neil and Ted maneuver around London, meeting American soldiers, local people, and even a German spy, a demon breaks loose from the museum into the past as well, and, suddenly, in order to save the future and change the past, they must recapture it. Jarvis tries to do too many things with this story and ends up not doing any of them well. Time-travel fantasy and family drama are mixed in with horror-the descriptions of those killed by the demon are very graphic-and a dose of Nordic mythology and sentimentality. Hints are dropped about the origins and identities of the museum's owners, but only readers with a background in mythology will understand the references to weaving that they make. The plot involving Josh is dropped almost completely until the book's end when he magically reappears, and making one of the female characters an ambitious German spy pushes the whole thing just too far over the edge. Lisa Prolman, Greenfield Public Library.

Raven's Knot is the second book, and it pretty much continues where the first left off. The trilogy is really one long book. Woden brings back two of his raven's, Thought and Memory, as well as the murderous valkarie. He makes the latter by enchanting women. He sends them off to kill. One of them turns out to be Neil's mom, but nothing is ever made of it. Woden attacks the museum, it's the gateway to the tree of life, but he still can't get in. Several people die grissly deaths. A priest is tricked by Woden into committing mortal sins. He's later ripped apart by the valkaries and we are there in his head. Nice. Parts of both books are pretty good, and other parts I just didn't like. Too many of the later. I got tired of reading them. It took me 5 days to finish the first one. That's not too bad, but the two weeks to finish the second one, that's not too good. Other people seemed to like them in reviews I did see. I picked up the lot at HBP during a 20 percent off sale and I don't think it cost more than $6.50 for all three. I mostly got my value. I just won't keep them.

During the time I wasn't reading the above I was re-reading the last Harry Potter novel. I just can't get enough I guess. Maybe it was to wash the taste of Robin Jarvis out of my head. It's always better to end the month with a good book. Hell, end any day. Good luck finding one.

Friday Night Movies 141

I watched three zombie movies today. I got home just in time to catch Revenge of the Zombies on Turner Classic Movies. It's part of the current friday night horror series in honor of Halloween. It's a 1943 movie with John Carradine, Mantan Moreland, and Bob Steele, who some of you might remember as the evil Lash Canino in The Big Sleep. The scene where Canino forces Elisha Cook Jr's Harry Jones to drink poison is one of the most chilling scenes I have ever seen. It's so understated. You can really cheer when Canino is gunned down later in the movie. Unfortunately there's nothing very chilling in ROTZ. John Carradine is a doctor who has a dead wife that won't stay in the coffin. Doc's got some zombie workers on his plantation and Mantan supplies the comic relief. After that I watched a couple of episodes of The Saint. I like the 60's Roger Moore action show. I am dubbing the few episodes that I have on tape to DVDR. They are the old black and white ones. Then it was time for movie night.

Planet Terror is Robert Rodriguez's Instant Classic, at least according to it's box. Some super secret toxin gets out and starts turning the people into flesh eating zombies, or something like it. You need to shoot 'em, no matter what they're called. There's a great bunch of characters in this dark and lazy Texas town. There's a stripper, a sheriff, a BBQ chef, a tow truck driver with a past, a bunch of military, lots of creeps, a scientist, some doctors, a couple of fiesty babysitters, bumbling deputies, and several I forgot. Oh, and the infected. They are pretty nasty, all goin' for your throat and all, the pus and flesh dripping off of their bodies. You can read a blow by blow of the story here. I enjoyed it. The movie heaps more and more bad shit on the cast as they fight their way through the zombie horde. The violence, and practically everything else, is pumped up, and it does kind of look like a 70's grindhouse kind of film, but those old films never had so many good actors, nor so many explosions. Everything seems to blow up. It's like that town is made from kerosene. There are lots of jokes and gore and more stuff blowing up. The effects are pretty good. There's a lot of CGI blood. Some of the zombies seem to turn to juice when they are hit by a truck. Even the dog gets run over. Planet Terror was released in the theaters under the Grindhouse title along with several fake trailers and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. The DVD version is a bit longer and only the Machette trailer was included. That's a great trailer. Danny Trejo as a mad machette weilding Mexican bound for revenge. It's got some fun stunts and really sets the mood for Planet Terror.

My third zombie feature was called FIDO and I hadn't heard of it until Greg mentioned it. He'd read about it, something I am lazy about, and picked one up when they came out tuesday. It's a weird 1950's like USA and people are in the middle of a zombie infestation. Space rays are turning dead people into zombies. It happens right away. Fall down dead and seconds later you jump up looking for some flesh to feast on. Kids learn to shoot in grade school, but you have to be 12 for a pistol permit. Timmy's mom gets the family a zombie to keep up with the new neighbors who have 6, and Timmy is scared of him at first. After the zombie saves him from a couple of facist bullies, Timmy warms to him and dubs him Fido. Billy Connolly is Fido and he's pretty darn good at grunting. Zombies can't speak. The neighbor is head of security at Zomcon, a zombie containment and retraining company, and he's got a pipe and a wife and a daughter. He treats the pipe better than his wife and kid. Same goes for Timmy's dad, only he likes his golfing more than his family. He's a real-have-no-feelings kind of jerk. Zombies are sold to the public to use as cheap labor. You don't have to do much with them, and they are your willing slaves. Just real slow at doing anything. They wear a collar that keeps them from killing their human masters/snacks. There's a real mix of themes here and for the most part they blend together fairly well. If you see it you can pick them out for yourselves. Mostly I laughed at the jokes, many of which are rather dark. It even has a happy ending, for all the nicer people, and they are less screwed up at the end. You don't see that enough.

More Planetoids and Mega Space

About the time I bought that other Planetoids set that I was talking about, Toy'r'us had two more sets on clearance. I just can't resist a chance to waste some money, so I bought those two.

 

The one on the right is the Repzyllian Battleship and the one on the left is the Cyborian Cruiser. Both are made with domes. In both colors. As you can see they are rather unattractive. As Joel used to say on Mystery Science Theater 3000, "when you have lemons, make lemonade". Unfortunately, these are more like turds and no one wants to drink turdade. Like the other City set I tried making something out of these sets. I couldn't make anything very interesting. I used one of the green domes for an equipment hut by a communications tower. They have a vague quonset hut feel, though less round. I think I have some pictures of it somewhere. I didn't get very far with that project. It was about the time that I moved my bedroom downstairs and the toys upstairs. Then I built the LEGO worktable, a 3 by 6 foot sheet of 3/4 inch plywood set on 4 shelf units, there wasn't much room in that bedroom what with all the boxes piles around the walls. That was nearly 8 years ago and there's more stuff in here now. Some is going away. Like these three playsets. I found some unsuspecting kid to palm them off on.

There you can see the Battleship. What a piece of crap. The red markings on the dome in various places are stickers. They are ugly. The domes open so you can play in the space. There's a closeup  of one of the domes open. That's some sort of vehicle sitting there. I found that photo on ebay. Someone was trying to sell a set. Now that picture does do the green color justice. Still, kids like those bugged out colors. I hope. I don't want to get these back. On the right you can see other ways to use the bricks. They seem especially good for making houses without walls. And you know that's where we're all gonna live in the future. After the apocolypse, it'll be harder to get building materials than it was after Katrinia. Just kiddin'! We'll all be dead.

   

If you can bear it, throw your eyes upward, and take in the Cyborian Cruiser again. I know it's hard. Here's a couple of pictures of the inside. The white floor plates come out. The last is the little space ship that goes along with the set. 1010 pieces between the two of them. The two sets share the same 7 figures that the City set has. In the next ten years Mega Bloks would improve their figures quite a bit. They made some nice figures for the Dragons sets. They have improved their basic bricks but they still do not have the subtlety that LEGO has. The Danes have a plethora of small pieces, and an anal retentive laser like attention to detail. Mega Bloks look like they were designed in Russia during the cold war, by someone who was no Raymond Loewy. Occasionally Russia would shine in their print material. Some of their stamps are pretty darn good. But the really cool stuff dries up by the cold war. Here's some shots from a 1994 Mega Bloks set called Galaxy Space Station.

   

You can see it's even more of an open design than the Planetoids sets. There's a little landing pad and a walkway and something that doesn't look like living quarters. Where do those guys sleep? I like the look of that kid in the third picture. Gleefully blasting aliens through his little surrogate. Or just feeling him up. I don't know. This set has a huge base plate with studs that you can build up from and a little bunch of hills. "Hey! Look! I'm on the moon". Here's a couple of shots of that base.

   

I actually like that big slab of gray plastic. It's hard and unyielding. And smooth. Real smooth. You could kill a man with that. The little guys that man the station are kind of cute. I have some of the characters from the extreme sports series and they are similar. When Mega Bloks did the Dragons sets they started making the figures a lot differently. They changed again for the Pirates Of The Carribean and Spider-Man sets. I bought one Spider-Man set but probably will give that away too. I am keeping some of the Dragons set stuff. I like their dragons and will keep one each of those. I might build a big castle before I get rid of the rest of the stuff that I don't want to keep but that's less likely as the year goes along.

Planetoids LX-009 City

That's the front of a Mega Bloks building set from 1997 that really sets the building hobby back 25 years. Mega Bloks were made by Ritvik back then, they later called themselves Mega Bloks, then Mega Brands. Some family in Montreal started the company, which is now publicly held, and currently run by two of the founder's sons. I picked up three of the Planetoids series on clearance. This one is called LX-009 City. It's a huge box 28 inches wide, 17 high and nearly 5 inches thick. And it's friggin' ugly. It's got a thousand pieces. I never counted 'em. Just looking at them was more than enough. That icky green color is really something, isn't it,  especially mixed with the purple. My picture just doesn't do the colors justice.

And this playset doesn't do a city justice. Three ugly buildings and a road that goes nowhere, just round and round, doesn't even make a crappy neighborhood. It sort of looks like a road race but there aren't any controls, and there's only one stupid lookin' car. It fits in the single slot that goes round and round the track. Here's a better picture of the layout. The second shows the car. That light coming out of the purple shape on top is really a light. It's just an oddly shaped penlight. I bet if you turned on the light on the car and ran it around the track in the dark it would be exciting. If you were a dog. And the car was covered in bacon grease. The kid below looks like he's having some fun, huh. He's gettin' paid, why wouldn't he be happy. The third picture is an over head shot of the 10 feet of Sky Track. You can see it loop round and round the three structures.

 

The universe is populated by ugly robots and aliens. There's one human guy. They have cutesy names too. There's a better shot of two of the buildings.

 

I call those large green pieces domes. I don't know what Ritvik calls them. They are wonderfully unattractive. I can't even imagine what the designer was thinking. I'm imagining he or she was thinking how versitile it would be. "You can make anything out of it." Anything ugly. Who would want that green for anything. Here's a couple of pictures of the dome and one of the car motor works. You build the body onto that red brick with wheels. I'll show you some more sets with that dome in them. As you can see it comes in green and dark blue.

I never even bothered to build the set. Some parts are still in their plastic bags. No one would really want these, so I'll find a home for them with some unsuspecting kids who think they are getting something. Toughen them up for the real world. Yeah, kid, LEGO imitators just aren't as good. Mega Bloks sets are better in 2007 but they still are not as good as a LEGO set.

Fill 'er Up, Pooh

   

Back in 1988 I got this building set from Sears. Winnie the Pooh's Gas Station. I know, it makes nearly no sense. I don't remember any cars in the Hundred Acre Woods, but, many of the Disney characters have worked in gas stations, so maybe, this is the case. Clutchin' at straws here, Walt. What up with that! It might be a bad cartoon where Winnie and Tigger run a gas station. It could happen. A fat guy and a goof running a gas station. Sound familiar? That's Disney Magic!  As a matter of fact. It's a Disney Magic toy. I'm just guessing it's some sort of whacky alternate dimension, or some shit. It was a set sold exclusively by Sears. Common enough practice still. Target had an exclusive Harry Potter Lego set in 2005 that had extra figures in it. Missed that I did.

   

This set was made by Tandem, who were a second rate brick company that tried to compete with LEGO. They failed, which is probably why I couldn't find anything about them on the net. I did find a lady who was selling an 800 piece bucket on ebay. It was up to 99 cents and 6 bucks for shipping. No one much wants them. I bought a bunch of sets and gave most of them away to other people's kids. The bricks aren't anywhere near as good as LEGO. In many ways. Their people figures are very LEGO-like, except for the head, big weird heads. Creepy.

   

The side panel of the box has a long paragraph that promotes the toy and it ends with: And since these bricks are compatible, they can build many other things. I liked that, but I am having a hard time getting those two thoughts to join together in my head. Of course you have to think of something to build before the bricks can be formed into your vision. And they are not as compatible as they would have you believe. The studs that do the connecting of the bricks, top to bottom, have weaker clutching power when used with a different brand, but work better with their own brand. The worst, like Best Lock, barely work with themselves. I have ten thousand pieces out in my garage, banished from the attic, in shame. Still the imitators usually are much cheaper than LEGO and that offers low income havin' folk a chance to build. I've always thought someone could sell a building set with pieces of metal and cardboard. So you can build a slum. You get pieces of balsa wood. No piece the same as another. They give you paint, many colors, but never enough to paint any one structure the same color. You get the idea.

   

During the recent sorting of the toys I found the Winnie the Pooh and Tigger figures. I couldn't remember what they were from. Last week I found the box and most of the bricks from the set. They weren't lost so much as neglected and ignored. I think I built the model on the front of the box. I usually do. At some point I had taken all the pieces and stacked them up by type and somehow or another I had arranged them on the large plates into a sort of city scape. I was into building buildings in those days. Karen liked it, I had no other use for the bricks. so I left it. It stayed like that on a shelf for ages. Then it got packed away in a box. Now I'm debating. Keep, no keep.

The whole Ukrainian cover

Here's the whole cover to the Ukrainian Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you look at it you might learn something about the story. I don't believe it matters to me to know something about the story before you see or read it. I know some people think the opposite, but for me I like to know what I can. I speculate why but mostly nosey I guess.

Perhaps it's because I don't like to go on adventures myself anymore. I like 'em in books. "What are those people up to?' "Let's have a look then." The kind of adventure I like is going down to Target and finding LEGO at 75% off, or a nice 50% off coupon at Half Price Books, which means I have to brave the Mississippi River and travel to St. Paul. It's almost as bad as going to Mordor, but there's a nice bridge.

Damn, Kitty.

That sure made me laugh. You can read more about Big Gay Albus everywhere else.

Friday Night Movies 140

Well, the only thing that the movies had in common was plateau's. The first movie was on 'em and the second, just near 'em. They also had white devils comin' up 'round your place and fuckin' with your lifestyle.

Irwin Allen's 1960 The Lost World is a remake of the 1925 silent film, and it's almost as bad as that poster. Who thought that was good enough to pay for, let alone commit to print. The 2oth Century Fox DVD has both films, each on their own disc. This set's version of the 1925 film is different from the Image release of a few years ago. I have a crappy copy of the old one in one of those cheap movie compliations. In this new color talkie Professor Challenger tells the Zoological Institute that he's seen real dinosaurs on a plateau near the Amazon River. They poopoo the idea but he sticks to his guns and gets up a party to take a look. It's a dumb ass bunch that joins him. A big game hunter, a reporter, a sad old explorer, an annoying rich girl and her brother. Oh, and her poodle. What an ugly fuckin' dog. Which sadly does not get eaten. So...disappointing. This group of misfits head for South America where they pick up a weak ass toadie and a big handsome helicopter pilot. It gets worse from there. You can read a blow by blow of the movie at the link above. As usual the white devils come, bringing their boomsticks, and fuck up life for the natives. At the end of the movie the plateau blows up and it just might be their fault. The dinosaurs are really lizards with horns stuck on them. Their fights are none too good. It's got a weird score. Several scenes have music that just doesn't make any sense. The story execution isn't very good, and the dialog is pretty corny at times. The movie seems to be set in the 60's but people act and talk like it's further in the past. It doesn't feel modern, even for 1960.

Jet Li's Fearless barely feels like the 20th Century. It's starts in 1910 China and meanders back through time to take a look at the life of the character that Jet Li plays. The movie, loosely based on a real character, Huo Yuanjia, starts with Jet fighting 3 white devils. He beats them. Before he gets to the final match we plunge into his eye and that starts the flashbacks. He's a spoilt kid in one, a headstrong man who doesn't listen to his mother in another, and after an inappropriate fight he's a beaten and lost soul. He's saved by farming and after his recovery he finds his way back to his home town. He starts fighting for the Chinese people's honor, instead of his own glory, and with the help of an old friend he starts a Wushu School. There was a Russian guy who call the Chinese "the sick men of Asia". He gets his ass kicked royally. Around the turn of the century the white devils, and many other pals, were pouring into China to help run the country. China is a country that sure has had a lot of troubles. Even their happy movies end with most of the people dying. This gets a little heavy near the end. The Wikipedia says that the family of Huo Yuanjia demanded an apology from the filmmakers for the inaccuracies in the film. I looked Huo on the Wiki, see link above, and there are some changes to the story, which is rather vague to begin with, but that's the sort of thing that one comes to expect froma movie bio. It's mostly a sad story, I'm not going to be rushing to watch it again. I'd rather watch a Jet Li movie with a happier ending.

A-ba-ba-ga-la-ma-ga Covers

   

 

What I Read In August 2007

     

I didn't feel like doing anything about the house, or watching tv, and I needed to cook some chicken I had defrosting. I "do up" a stack of breasts at one go, then I don't have to cook for the next few days. I can make chicken salad or BBQ chicken sandwiches, or cut up a breast and put it on salad. Quick and easy meals, that's the goal. I still am using that George Forman grill I got in the spring. So while I am tending that cookin' stuff I put on Bernard Herrmann's Mysterious Island score and sat down at the PC to see what I read in August. It's a shorter list than last month. Only 7 books. Right after the Gregor book I felt I needed to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. In the original language. My copy of the UK edition had finally come from Amazon UK. They're great, give 'em some money and they send you some books from a whole 'nother country. The ironic thing is I decide I really want to have less books just as the internet opens up the whole world for easy and pain free shopping.

I like the UK books because they are smaller and lighter. That's the only reason. The US editions are by far the nicest books I have seen so far. They get top marks just for the Mary Grandpre covers and illustrations. I do like the back cover to the UK edition of HP7 and there are several publishers that have interesting art on their editions. I particularily like the Ukraine editions from A-ba-ba-ga-la-ma-ga. Here is an interview with the publisher. The nice illustration below is from the A-ba-ba-ga-la-ma-ga version of The Snow Queen. Here's an 2005 article that mentions artist, Vladyslav Yerko, who did the Ukrainian Harry Potter covers, and another about the release of Ukrainian edition of HP and the DH. The Ukrainian title is Harry Potter i Smertelni Relikviyi. Here's a Ukrianian Harry Potter fan club site. 

Since I was in no hurry to find out what is going to happen next in Book 7 I went much slower this time and it took until the 10th to finish. Five times longer than the first time. Shows maturity, huh. Comes with age, I guess. A couple of days after finishing the book the first time I went back and read the end of the book again. I read the epilogue a couple more times since. I'm in the camp that really likes the epilogue. Likes it a whole lot.

I was sorting my toys for the garage sale about this time. That was cutting into my reading time. I was also sorting and building some old LEGO sets up in the attic. Sets I had broken apart over the years. For some reason things that belong together often get put into different piles and boxes. There are many reasons for this, but over all, I seem to have some inborn urge to disassemble things that come into my possession. I personally have torn thousands of magazines apart with my bare hands. I saved some of them, tossed the unwanted pages out and stored the clippings in boxes around the house. There were boxes of paper on every floor and in every room but the bathroom. This last winter I tossed out over a thousand pounds of paper. I never did get around to doing anything with that paper. Time to go-go.

Like those magazines, my LEGO sets were pretty much broken down into piles of parts. I just didn't toss much out. These parts were then bagged or boxed by type. Sometimes bags were put into boxes. Like all the vehicle parts being all together. I kept most of the instructions and most of the boxes. Some were still turning up a couple of weeks ago. I want to get rid of some of the LEGO that doesn't go with my wanting to build HP themed stuff. I'm not interested in trains, or city scapes, or space ships and robots. I am interested in HP and buildings. This is a perfect way to tie the two together. I still think I want to build an nice Asian temple of some sort. So now comes the Herculean task of putting all the sets back together. Sometimes I would look for hours for one little LEGO part. I think I must have nearly 200 thousand parts up in the attic. After I sort everything then I might have some idea of the quantity. I am making an inventory of all the sets that I have or have had. I only plan to keep a few sets intact. Those Streetsweepers I mentioned before, some recent Castle sets for the Dragons, and one each of the Harry Potter sets. I put all the HP sets together and made sure I had all the parts. Then I packed most of them into the boxes they came in and stacked those up. Several square feet of HP, which I will keep seperate from the rest of the LEGO I am keeping. I managed to buy a lot of the HP sets at discount prices. Ever heard of BOSCOV's? I hadn't, but they were selling HP sets on the internet a couple of years ago. They had lots of sets on sale and they were cheap. KayBee Toys in the Mall Of America had sets on sale. I bought a bunch there. They went out of business at that location and the toy store that fills the space sucks.

About now Bernard ended his assault of the Mysterious Island and I put on the Earth Girls are Easy soundtrack. There are some great songs on there by Julie Brown: I Like 'em Big and Stupid ( 3 versions), her version of Earth Girls are Easy, the wonderful Brand New Girl and my favorite "Cause I'm A Blond. I like Depeche Mode's Route 66, even though I am not a fan of the band for the most part. They came in on the end of the period of my life where I cared about bands. After getting too many cd's with one good song, the remainder a crapfest, I stopped buying CD's by bands and started focusing on scores and soundtracks. They yield a much greater ratio of good tracks per disc. Often the whole CD is enjoyable to listen too. I normally prefer scores to soundtracks and don't buy many of the latter. I'm usually not interested in most of the bands. But this one? It's fun! It's got a nice mix of pop stuff, with a couple of odd things thrown in. There's a wonderfully dark version of that great Quicksilver Messenger Service song Who Do You Love by The Jesus and Mary Chain. You feel like someone might get stabbed in that place. Stabbed real easy and often. I played the original Quickmessenger version over and over when I was younger. I liked that whole Happy Trails album. The movie is great too and by great I mean highly enjoyable for me but some people won't like it. It gets a 4.8 on IMDb and I would rate it higher than that. And who doesn't like that spaceship? A spaceship in a pool and Geena Davis in a bikini. Maybe it's a guy thing.

It took me ten days to read Angry Lead Skies by Glen Cook. I liked the book but not as much as the previous ones. It's number ten in the series. Garrett's friend Playmate draws him into a mystery with some sort of "silver elves". Those odd elves have some sort of ray guns and "magical" powers. They have metal ships that can fly. In the sub plot Garrett puts together a business deal with some of his other friends and they build three wheel bikes that are selling like hotcakes to the upper class folks. It's a mix of good and bad for our hero but that's Garrett's lot. One of the silver elves steals the god damn parrot, which makes Garrett almost as happy as when he gets seduced by the two female silver elves. There's more social commentary in the book, for better or worse, as the war vets pour home. They find more trouble than jobs. Still a good read.

I finished the 11th and latest book in the Garret series by Glen Cook in 5 days.  Whispering Nickel Idols was the book I was reading the day I had my second garage sale. I finished it and most of another book that saturday. Garrett has some more crap fall into his lap. This time there are some cult guys who come and magically burn people up. At least that's what it looks like. It gets complicated and some people get killed before it gets over. Dangerous times for Garrett. He spends a large part of the book sick from poison. He coulda died. He didn't. He'll be back. The reprinting of the series continues, I think they are up to 5 now. For some reason I don't care for the current bunch of covers to the series. They aren't bad or awful but I'm not clicking with them. That the way it goes.

The book I started while sitting in my garage was Benny and Omar by Eoin Colfer. I am unabashedly happy to plug his books. I like the Artemis Fowl series pretty much to a book and I have liked his stand alone novels. I'd re-read most of them. Benny and Omar is Colfer's first book, from 1998. It's a novel about an Irish kid who goes to live in Tunisia. Dad's job goes there, and so does the family. Benny plans to hate the place and he's got issues and there's some yelling and some running around. He makes friends with Omar, a homeless boy, and that leads to trouble. It's  not a greatly happy book, there are hard lessons to learn, but it's still pretty enjoyable. Mostly it sucks to live in Tunisia if you're poor.

Nancy Farmer's The Warm Place was about a giraffe who is kidnapped in Africa by some poachers. She's sold to the San Francisco Zoo. She makes friends with a rat and a chameleon. They escape and head back to Africa. It's an interesting trip. It's a short novel but an interesting one. Full of weird surprises, but not too weird, kinda magical in fact. All of Nancy Farmer's books are different and so far all are enjoyable. I have a couple of them left to read and I see the sequel to The Sea of Trolls out. Waiting for that to turn up at HPB. She's pretty popular, there will be picken's soon enough for me.

I finished off the month with The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene and Footprints Under The Window by Franklin W. Dixon. In the first Nancy Drew helps a couple of old ladies that are being scared out of their house by ghosts. Not only is there a hidden staircase, there's a hidden tunnel too. The Hardy Boys help a chinese guy dress in drag to escape being killed. It's got some pretty un-pc parts that were changed in the 1959 rewrite.