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Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer, The

By Douglas C. Jones
ISBN: 0-684-14738-6

Publication Year: 1976

Tags: Historical Fiction, What-If, Native American, Military History

Rating: ★★★☆☆

George A. Custer, ranked as a General in the War Between the States but who was returned to the rank of Lt. Col. during his time commanding the 7th United States Cavalry, died at Little Big Horn. This what-if historical novel considers the question of Custer’s survival, and what a court-martial might find of the evidence presented to it of Custer’s actions that lead to a head-to-head battle of several hundred cavalrymen against several thousand Native Americans — or as they’re called in this book, with both historical accuracy and a conqueror’s prejudice, “Indians,” “renegades,” or “criminals who wouldn’t stay on the reservation”). Continue reading “Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer, The”

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We Are Not Bemused

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

 

Language is not a stagnant thing; it grows, changes, and evolves, as long as there are people around who still use it regularly enough to need it. Latin is called a “dead” language in that there are no new words being made. Sometimes, a language can be infiltrated by uses of certain words or inclusions of words from a language different from their own, creating what is called a patois or a vernacular. There are times, however, when language seems to undergo bits of mutation that serve only to wear down the value of the language itself. When these monstrous word-creatures take over a language sufficiently, we get what is termed a dialect. As Professor Henry Higgins notes in the musical My Fair Lady, “There even are places where English completely disappears; in America, they haven’t used it for years.” (The play on which the musical is based, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, was published in 1913.) Continue reading “We Are Not Bemused”

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Songs Without Words

Dudley Moore (guest artist: Kenny G on “Brogan” and “Faithfully Yours”)

Tracks: 1—Six Weeks, Part 1; 2—Waltz for Suzy; 3—Patrick; 4—Thank You, Ilich; 5—Anemone; 6—Six Weeks, Part 2; 7—Brogan; 8—Faithfully Yours; 9—Skylarking; 10—Three Blonde Mice; 11—Satie; 12—Show Biz; 13—Theme in F Minor

Release Date: October 29, 1991

Tags: Instrumental, Light Jazz, Piano, Blissful

Rating: ★★★★★

I had originally reviewed this album in 1992, a year after it came out, and I still stand by what I wrote…

I read somewhere that his agent referred to Dudley Moore as “The Wee Wonder.” Moore, who didn’t quite come up to five and a half feet, proves that the most magnificent gifts do indeed come in small packages. With an acting range that ran from the comedic Crazy People and 10 to a brilliant romantic/dramatic role in Six Weeks, Moore was less known for his musicianship. His exceptional talent as a pianist won him a “co-starring” role with Sir Georg Solti in the documentary Orchestra! Whereas he previously had Victor Borge-like comic appearances on The Muppet Show and various talk shows, it took him until later in his life for him to be recognized for his musicianship. His film soundtrack work includes Staircase and Six Weeks, and this album is a tribute to a beautiful soul. Continue reading “Songs Without Words”

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Phenomenon

(1996, PG) John Travolta (George Malley), Kyra Sedgwick (Lace Pennamin), Forrest Whitaker (Nate Pope), Robert Duvall (Doc), Jeffrey DeMunn (Professor Ringold), Richard Kiley (Dr. Wellin), David Gallagher (Al), Ashley Buccille (Glory), Tony Genaro (Tito), Brent Spiner (Dr. Bob), Ellen Geer (Bonnie). Music: Thomas Newman. Screenplay: Gerald DiPego. Director: Jon Turteltaub. 123 minutes.

Tags: Uplifting, Love Story, Possibility

Notable: Brent Spiner cameo for comedic effect; Robert Duvall’s butt

Rating: ★★★★★

George Malley (Travolta) is a small-town simple guy – not stupid at all, just basic, direct, what a lot of people would call “ordinary.” On the night of his 37th birthday, he is suddenly struck by what seems like some sort of light from the night sky and is transformed into something beyond a genius. He no longer sleeps, reads several books every day, can absorb a language in minutes. He discovers that, as his gift grows, his old friends in town start to pull away from him; he becomes feared, isolated, and ostracized. The FBI, the colleges, the doctors, the intelligence services, the desperate, the angry, all target him in one way or another, trying to stop him from continuing or to get something from him. The one thing he knows is that the journey he’s on will not let him go, and that he must see it through to whatever end it may bring. Continue reading “Phenomenon”

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Beyond the Boardwalk

By Rod McKuen
ISBN 13: 978-0-9103-9801-8

Publication Year: 1976

Tags: Poetry, Beat Poets, Lamentations

Rating: ★★★☆☆

My paperback copy of this book has McKuen’s autograph, from 1976, displayed in prominent Magic Marker (and dated) on the front cover. My friend, who was working for the now-defunct Waldenbooks chain, got the book and autograph for me when the poet toured; Russ knew that I’d been a fan since I first discovered McKuen’s work in 1968 (I was 10 at the time). I only recently re-discovered it – I had preserved it so carefully that it was lost in some of my older boxes.

This is the first of McKuen’s works (to my knowledge) to comment on his then-newfound fame in the Introduction. He observes, “If I sell five copies of a book, [critics] are unanimous in their praise. If I sell ten, I can expect one dissent. If the number grows to ten thousand, my reviewers will always be ‘mixed.’ At ten million, I have detractors of every persuasion, most notably those reviewers who read the statistics not the books. …I say again, the poem is me. I lived, or am living it. I accept no advice on how it could or should be lived.” (p.11 of this edition) Continue reading “Beyond the Boardwalk”

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Why Write Furry?

“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reason.”  —Robertson Davies

The genre of furry, or anthropomorphic, fiction deserves a few specific comments as to the how, why, what, and so on. I’ll start right at the beginning and answer the question on most writers’ (and readers’) minds: Why write furry? Continue reading “Why Write Furry?”

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The Andromeda Strain (1971)

(1971, rated G “but may be too intense for younger children”) Arthur Hill (Jeremy Stone), James Olson (Mark Hall), Kate Reid (Ruth Leavitt), David Wayne (Charles Dutton), Paula Kelly (Karen Anson), Ramon Bieri (Maj. Manchek), Kermit Merdock (Dr. Robertson), Eric Christmas (Sen. Phillips), Ken Swofford (Toby). Music: Gil Mellé. Screenplay: Nelson Gidding (based on the novel by Michael Crichton). Director: Robert Wise. 130 minutes.

Tags: Sci-Fi, Suspense, Alien Contact

Notable: All of the tech that you see was directly from then-current-day laboratories, showing we’re further ahead than we all thought before; actor Arthur Hill really used the mechanical hands himself; James Olson, usually cast as a “bad guy,” gets to be the hero for a change.

Rating: ★★★★★

A NASA probe, Scoop VII, has crash-landed near the tiny town of Piedmont, New Mexico (Population: 68). An Army team of two sent in to find and retrieve the satellite finds a town full of dead bodies, and they too are swiftly killed through no identifiable means from a distance. A biological agent is suspected, creating a “Wildfire Alert” – an immediate priority to scramble a specific team of scientists to gather at a huge underground facility specifically created to combat a biological emergency of this type. Jeremy Stone (Hill) petitioned the government to create it a few years earlier, citing a failure to avoid contamination at the NASA lunar lab; now, the facility, and the scientists who have been called, are about to be put to the test. Continue reading “The Andromeda Strain (1971)”

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Nerve Net

Brian Eno (Guest artists include Robert Fripp and Roger Eno)

TRACKS: 1—Fractal Zoom; 2—Wire Shock; 3—What Actually Happened?; 4—Pierre in Mist; 5—My Squelchy Life; 6—Juju Space Jazz; 7—The Roil, The Choke; 8—Ali Click; 9—Web; 10—Web (Lascaux Mix); 11—Decentre

RELEASE DATE: September 1, 1992

TAGS: Electronica, Horrible, Painful, Fuggeddabowdit

RATING: ☆☆☆☆☆

In the liner notes, Eno says, “This record is: like Paella, a self-contradictory mess, off balance, unlocked, dissonant, frenetic, evanescent, overheated, godless, clockless, reckless, squelchy, un-American, technically naïve, far too vague, derivative of everything, post cool, post root, crunchy, bluff, post world, post man, too much, not enough, revisionist, shamelessly exhibitionist, untailored, uncentered, clearly the work of a mind in distress, where-am-I music.” He is wrong on two counts: He left out “appalling,” and it certainly isn’t “music.” Continue reading “Nerve Net”

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The Boy on the Bus

BoyOnTheBusCoverBy Deborah Schupack
ISBN 0-743-24221-1

Publication Year: 2003

Tags: Pretentious, Avoid-At-All-Cost, Pointless

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

A Vermont housewife finds that the last boy on the bus, the boy who hasn’t left the bus because he doesn’t seem to know that he’s arrived at his home, both is and somehow is not her son Charlie. He looks mostly right, sounds mostly right, but he is different; rather than being a severely asthmatic weakling, this boy seems more robust, even more mature. No one — not the bus driver, the sheriff, the neighbors, the husband, the older daughter — can tell if this is really Charlie. Each falls back upon the strange, perhaps inexplicable observation, “You’re his mother; you should know.” Continue reading “The Boy on the Bus”

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Writing — The Ten-Minute Warm-Up

For all you writers out there who are toiling under the misdirection of the so-called experts, I’ll let you in on a little secret: There’s no such thing as the “correct” way to write a story. In some instances, you don’t even need sensible grammar and punctuation (witness the “Benjy” section of Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury, or any reasonably long segment of James Joyce). As a rule, unless you intend for the narrator or the book to be taken as being written by someone for whom the English language is a bit of a mystery, you should observe proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling (or GPS, as I frequently refer to it). Other than that, you’re free to do just about anything you want when telling a story. Continue reading “Writing — The Ten-Minute Warm-Up”