Sunday, December 18, 2011

Stuff I shouldn't be eating: sandwich cookies


Well, I suppose there's no harm (except calorically) in eating the sugar-free sandwich cookies offered by Kellogg's Murray division (aside also from the possible deleterious effects of the artificial sweeteners and other ingredients, taken in too much haste particularly)...but aside from the only three (3) flavors (chocolate, vanilla and lemon) offered by Murray, when you can find even all three of them on a market shelf, the flavor variety of their sugary competitors is rather compelling in comparison. Kellogg's itself (through the kinds of mergers and acquisitions that seem to be the trend among successful medium-to-big-sized companies over the last several decades--in this case, Kellogg's thus becomes too big to crumble) manages to offer both Keebler and Famous Amos cookies, the latter's chocolate-wafer sandwich the more-or-less closest equivalent available to the Sunshine Hydrox of yore, moderately famously loved by such folks as blogger Kim Burton and writer Harlan Ellison...the Amos wafer part of the cookie, like the Hydrox though perhaps a bit less so, tasting more cake-like and less candied than that of Hydrox's younger rival, Oreo, which managed to outmuscle Hydrox over the decades in the marketplace (Sunshine's Vienna Fingers, however, were dominant in that arena, and Keebler and Kellogg's have kept them available). The sugar and fat white stuffing of both the standard Amos and Oreo are perhaps the weak point, which is where Keebler made much of its early mark, with chocolate-"creme" slathered between its wafers as "E. L. Fudge," and the original "Grasshoppers," with chocolate wafers and spearmint filling (the more recent imitation-Girl Scout-cookie Grasshoppers of the last couple of decades are less worthwhile, but have allowed various competitors to rush in with their products).

Trader Joe's "Joe-Joes" brands offer several flavors (including the distinctive peppermint, then candy-cane, flavor that seems to excite people to Hydrox levels of lust), but the champeen of flavors among the national brands seems to be Newman's Own (particulary the ginger sandwich), despite the Nabisco attempts to do all sorts of things to excite us further about Oreos (including ridiculously overpriced sugarless ones, disgusting "Cakesters" and the not-bad not-quite vanilla "Golden" Oreos) and a few sustained offshoots, such as the less sugary Nutter Butter peanut-butter sandwiches. Famous Foods of Virginia, if I remember correctly, used to offer rather good oatmeal-cookie and chocolate-chip-wafer sandwiches that no one else seems to be marketing these days...rather a pity (the same folks used to have something exactly like the Girl Scout-cookie "Samoa"...which only made sense, as FFV at that time apparently was the baker of GS cookies). And perhaps the Whole Foods (aka Whole Wallet) "365" brand chocolate and vanilla wafer sandwiches are the best of that ilk, among the national brands.

Friday, December 16, 2011

FFB: COMIX, and THE BLACK CASTLE and its sequels, by Les Daniels; DYING OF FRIGHT, edited by Les Daniels


Les Daniels died on 5 November, and I hadn't gotten around to mentioning that on the blog yet...Kate Laity, who's been a congoer to a much greater extent than I have, got to know him as a fixture at Necon, the small horror convention which takes over a college dorm and is often tabbed Camp Necon by its regulars, where Daniels enjoyed taking on all comers in the annual trivia fest in costume. The New York Times obit, and the Locus obit.

His Living in Fear, both a history of evolution of horror fiction and drama and related matters and also an anthology of short fiction, meant a lot to me as a young reader...it wasn't the first item of literary history and criticism that I'd read as a kid, but it was easily the most compelling to date when I came across it not long after it was published, as noted in a previous FFB entry. I read his Comix next, and, when it appeared, the more straightforward anthology Dying of Fright, a fine anthology in similar coffee-table format to Living in Fear (I managed to completely miss his third and last such book, an even better selection in some ways).
Comix wasn't the first history of comic books to be published, but might've been the best book-length study by a single writer published by 1971 (as usual, the Times manages to not quite get it right), and it was certainly the first run through the complete history of comics I was to read, and it did introduce me to Help! magazine and the late '60s underground scene, some of whose participants were, by the latter '70s, moving into more "above-ground" arenas or at least getting some current national newsstand exposure in the likes of National Lampoon and its offshoot, Heavy Metal, among other magazines and collections.

And his Don Sebastian vampire novels, which I would catch up with long after the first publication of the first, The Black Castle, in 1978 (I began reading them a decade later, as I recall), are a fine series of historical horror adventures, not quite the utter literary and pop-culture historian's delight that Kim Newman's later and not altogether dissimilar Anno Dracula series of novels and stories is, but well-written and rather deft at making their point that the evils Sebastian finds himself among, including the invasion of "the New World" by the Conquistadors or the London of Jack the Ripper, are often at least as great as any that can be encompassed by a vampire, no matter how mythically dangerous (and Sebastian is not to be trifled with)(and the Daniels novels are more consistent than the Newmans, where The Bloody Red Baron, recently reissued, is not quite up to the novel it follows nor most of the work which follows it).

Daniels only began publishing short fiction nearly a decade after his first novel, but the stories in such key anthologies of original fiction as Dennis Etchison's The Cutting Edge and Skipp and Spector's The Book of the Dead were witty and, as much as their content would allow, charming.

I'm very sorry I didn't get around to telling him directly how much his work meant to me.

from Tabula Rasa: Living with Fear: An Interview with Les Daniels

Les Daniels Bibliography


Comix: A History of Comic Books in America, 1971.
Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (aka Fear), 1975.
Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre, ed. 1976.
Thirteen Tales of Terror, ed. with Diane Thompson. 1977.
The Black Castle, a Novel of the Macabre, 1978.
The Silver Skull, a Novel of Sorcery, 1979.
Citizen Vampire, 1981.
Yellow Fog, 1988 (this work originated in a novella published as a hardback special edition in 1986).
No Blood Spilled, 1991.
The Marvel Story, 1991.
The DC Story, 1995.
Superman: The Complete History, 1998.
Batman: The Complete History, 1999.
Wonder Woman: The Complete History, 2000.

from ISFDb:

Title: Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre
Editor: Les Daniels
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons

The Adventure of the German Student • (1824) • shortstory by Washington Irving
The Masque of the Red Death • (1842) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (aka The Mask of the Red Death)
Ethan Brand • (1850) • shortstory by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Squire Toby's Will • (1868) • novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [as by J. Sheridan Le Fanu]
The Upper Berth • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford
Lost Hearts • (1895) • shortstory by M. R. James
History of the Young Man With Spectacles • (1895) • shortstory by Arthur Machen
The Yellow Sign • (1895) • novelette by Robert W. Chambers
The Red Room • (1896) • shortstory by H. G. Wells
Oil of Dog • (1890) • shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
The Willows • (1907) • novelette by Algernon Blackwood
The Voice in the Night • (1907) • shortstory by William Hope Hodgson
August Heat • (1910) • shortstory by William Fryer Harvey [as by W. F. Harvey]
The Exiles' Club • (1915) • shortstory by Lord Dunsany (aka The Exile's Club)
The Call of Cthulhu • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1928) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
A Visitor from Egypt • (1930) • shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
The Graveyard Rats • (1936) • shortstory by Henry Kuttner
Rope Enough • (1939) • shortstory by John Collier
They Bite • (1943) • shortstory by Anthony Boucher
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper • (1943) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
Homecoming • [The Elliott Famil] • (1946) • shortstory by Ray Bradbury (aka The Homecoming)
The House in Goblin Wood • (1947) • novelette by John Dickson Carr [as by Carter Dickson]
The Man Who Never Grew Young • (1947) • shortstory by Fritz Leiber
Born of Man and Woman • (1950) • shortstory by Richard Matheson
Levitation • (1958) • shortstory by Joseph Payne Brennan

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

Thanks as always to all contributors and all readers of this weekly collection of reviews and citations of insufficiently remembered (and occasionally insufficiently notorious) films, television, radio, stage presentations and other largely narrative performing arts...there might be a few stragglers this week. Please let me know if I've missed yours or someone else's citations in comments, and thanks again...


Bill Crider: A Rage in Harlem

Brian Arnold: "Christmas in July" (Punky Brewster animated); "Miracle on 34th Street" (The Twentieth Century Fox Hour, 1955)

Chuck Esola: Stop Me Before I Kill!

Eric Peterson: Off Beat (1986)

Evan Lewis: The Sign of Four (1932)

Iba Dawson: Away We Go (2009)

Jack Seabrook: Robert Bloch on TV: "The Changing Heart" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents:)

James Reasoner: Time Again

Jerry House: Tuba Christmas

John Charles: Terror Circus (aka Barn of the Naked Dead; aka Nightmare Circus)

Juri Nummelin: Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Kate Laity: The Long Kiss Goodnight

Mike Toomey: "Back for Christmas" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents:)

Patti Abbott: The Knack...and how to get it

Philip Schweier: I Wake Up Screaming; I Walk Alone

Randy Johnson: Two Flags West

Ron Scheer: High Plains Drifter

Scott Cupp: Supergirl

Sergio Angelini: Maniac (1963; aka The Maniac)

Stacia Jones: Nana (1926)

Steve Lewis: Black Moon (1934); Illegal Entry; Offbeat (1963)

Todd Mason: Why Do You Write Horror Fiction? Gahan Wilson, Joseph Payne Brennan, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long and Manly Wade Wellman at the First World Fantasy Convention, 1975 A convention panel (paired with one on fantasy publishing featuring Bloch, Wilson, Donald A. Wollheim, Elsie Wollheim, and [I think] Lester del Rey) that allows us to hear these worthies...all but Wilson now deceased...discussing what drew them into the field, how they think the literature should be marketed and how it is marketed, and basically how they came to be at the first World Fantasy Convention. Unfortunately, the recording stops abruptly on the first panel...in his First World Fantasy Awards volume, Wilson recalls Wellman eventually deciding that why he wrote horror fiction was simply...he enjoys the thought of his audience's eyes bugging out. (Wilson also mangles Vonnegut's urinal metaphor in the KV essay "On Science Fiction," where Vonnegut mentioned that the "drawer" labeled sf is too often mistaken for a urinal, particularly by uninformed critics and readers.) While Frank Belknap Long can be a bit windy, and Joseph Payne Brennan a little less so since also feeling a bit timid, it's still a good piece to hear, as is the marketing discussion which follows. (Recording uploaded to Archive.org from a cassette supplement to fanzine Myrddin 3, 1975)

Walter Albert: Nightmare (1956)

William I. Lengeman III: Mr. and Mrs. North (1942)

Yvette Banek: The March of the Wooden Soldiers

Related Matters:

Dan Stumpf: Jackie Chan: 5 Films

Frederik Pohl: Harlan Ellison (and Long John Nebel)

George Kelley: Jackie Chan: 4 Films; John Le Carre narrates his Absolute Friends

Jackie Kashian interviews actor/Planet of the Apes superfan/collector Brian Peck

Paula Guran (courtesy Ed Gorman): Behind the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch

Prashant Trikannad: World War II movies

Friday, December 9, 2011

FFB: DANCING NAKED: THE UNEXPURGATED WILLIAM TENN, V. 3, by Philip Klass (aka WT), edited by Laurie Mann (NESFA Press)

Philip Klass (1920-2010), who never quite 'fessed up to wanting to run a pun on the name "William Penn" with his pen name for much of his fiction and nonfiction writing (including some of the best and most influential satirical sf written so far, not least such short stories as "Child's Play" and "The Liberation of Earth"), was a genteel man, open and friendly and in all the good ways professorial, in meeting even bumptious long-term readers such as I...and, as this collection mostly of his nonfiction writing (with some early campus-magazine fiction and other bits) informs us directly and indirectly, who'd learned a few skills in the presentation of himself, as a man of great passions, over his years of teaching at Penn State (a university currently more famous for harboring an accused serial child-rapist for years, because the pampered head football coach thought the other guy useful) and elsewhere. The previous two volumes in this series from NESFA Press collected his fantasticated fiction; while this one by no means gathers all of his nonfiction, it seems a fair representation, including such reasonably famous highlights as his PS magazine essay "The Student Rebel: Then and Now" (an essay with new relevance in these de-Occupied times) and "The Bugmaster" (about electronic surveillance), apparently commissioned by Esquire or some comparable magazine but then spiked in favor of a similar staff contribution, which became probably the only piece ever published by the men's sweat magazine True to be collected in the then-equivalent of Best American Essays, in 1968. Also, such outliers as his short story "Murdering Myra" (from the cf magazine Suspect), a 1901 E. E. Kellett short story Klass suggests, in the essay that precedes it in the book, might've helped inspire Shaw's Pygmalion, an introduction by Klass writing student David Morrell, and an essay by Klass's brother, Morton Klass (a writer, editor and professor in his own right) help round out the book, which also includes excellent long interviews with Philip Klass by Josh Lukin and Eric Solstein.

This is a book which "jumped the queue"...I'd meant to read others this week, but in my typical time-crunch I kept turning back to this one, with its autobiographical essays about the early life of this British child-immigrant, his Marxist father having been an illegal alien here for decades after fleeing England for daring to volubly oppose WW1, and Klass himself only becoming naturalized, back in London no less, after entering WW2 military service; the continuing point of amused pride that he, Klass, had never managed to obtain a Bachelor's degree in his campus career yet served for decades as a full professor at PSU; his adventures in Greenwich Village in the '50s, hanging with Calder Willingham, Theodore Sturgeon, Judith Merril, Dylan Thomas and others; and the less happy duty of memorializing old friends (a selection of his obituaries is included, along with several of his introductions to his anthologies and the collections of others).

One of the few books I've cited in this series which is not out of print (though not nearly as well-known as it might be), and worth looking into even for those casually interested in Klass and the subjects he deals with.

from the Locus Index:
Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn William Tenn (NESFA Press 1-886778-46-9, Sep 2004, $29.00, 427 + vi, hc, cover by Bob Eggleton) Non-fiction collection of 36 articles and essays, many autobiographical, published to commemorate his being GoH at Noreascon 4, Worldcon 2004. Includes a bibliography of the author’s work. Introduction by David Morrell. Available from NESFA Press, PO Box 809, Framingham MA 01701; [www.nesfa.org/press]; add $2.50 postage.

iii · Master Class · David Morrell · in (*), 2004
1 · Myself When Young
3 · In the Beginning · William Tenn · ss The Evolution of William Tenn or Myself When Young, Pretentious Press, 1995
5 · Anecdote [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
7 · Eleven P.M. [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
9 · The Apotheosis of John Chillicothe [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ss Apprentice, 1939
15 · Incident Gourmandien [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
17 · Sonnet [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · pm Cargoes, 1935; restores author’s preferred text
19 · Personal Story
21 · Constantinople [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ts U.S. Catholic, 1994
31 · The Enormous Toothache · William Tenn · ts Stories, 1985
41 · The Frank Merriwell Compulsion or Winning the Championship the Hard Way [“Frank Merriwell’s Syndrome”] · William Tenn · ts Rogue Apr ’63
49 · What’s Wrong with My Daughter? [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ts The Reader’s Digest, 1992
53 · My First Deer · William Tenn · ts *
57 · Creative Fiction and NonFiction
59 · Murdering Myra · William Tenn · ss Suspect Detective Stories Nov ’55
69 · 8 Eyes on Strange New Worlds · William Tenn · ms Esquire, 1966
71 · The Bugmaster [“Mr. Eavesdropper”] · William Tenn · ar True, 1968
91 · The Student Rebel: Then and Now · William Tenn · ar P.S. Jun ’66
107 · Notes Toward a History of Science Fiction
109 · On the Fiction in Science Fiction · William Tenn · ar Of All Possible Worlds, Ballantine, 1955; revised from “The Fiction in Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Adventures March 1954
119 · Jazz Then, Musicology Now · William Tenn · ar F&SF May ’72
127 · An Innocent in Time: Mark Twain in King Arthur’s Court [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ar Extrapolation Dec ’74
143 · “The Lady Automaton” by E. E. Kellett: A Pygmalion Source? [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ar Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 1982, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982
153 · The Lady Automaton · E. E. Kellett · ss Pearson’s Magazine Jun ’01
171 · Welles or Wells: The First Invasion from Mars · William Tenn · ar Synergy SF: New Science Fiction, ed. George Zebrowski, Gale Group/Five Star, 2004; revised from an earlier version in The New York Review of Books 1988 as by Philip Klass
183 · It Didn’t Come from Outer Space · William Tenn · ar The Digital Deli, ed. Steve Ditlea, Workman, 1984
185 · Author Emeritus Speech: Given Here Without the Gestures, Intonations and Pauses Which Made It Moderately Funny in the First Place · William Tenn · sp The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1999
193 · Intros and Obits
195 · Introduction to Children of Wonder · William Tenn · in New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953
205 · Introduction to What Mad Universe [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Pennyfarthing; San Francisco, CA, 1978 [Fredric Brown]
215 · From a Cave Deep in Stuyvesant Town—A Memoir of Galaxy’s Most Creative Years [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction, ed. Frederik Pohl, Joseph D. Olander & Martin H. Greenberg, Playboy Press, 1980
219 · Introduction to The Ova Hamlet Papers [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Pennyfarthing; San Francisco, CA, 1979 [Richard A. Lupoff]
225 · John W. Campbell, Jr.: A Memoir [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Pennsylvania English, 1984 [John W. Campbell, Jr.]
231 · Sturgeon, The Improbable Man · William Tenn · bg Bright Segment, North Atlantic Books, 2002 [Theodore Sturgeon]
237 · Judy Merril [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Locus Nov ’97 [Judith Merril]
243 · Poul Anderson [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Locus Jun, 2001 [Poul Anderson]
245 · Dancing Naked: The Interviews—and a Bit of PR
247 · A Jew’s-Eye View of the Universe · Dr. Josh Lukin · iv Para*doxa, 2003 [William Tenn]
279 · Eric Solstein Interviews William Tenn · Eric Solstein · iv * [William Tenn]
403 · Philip Klass: Wit with a Flair for the Incredible · Anon. · ar Penn Stater, 1973 [William Tenn]
409 · Klass Class
411 · Recruiting New “Huddled Masses” and “Wretched Refuse”: A Prolegomenon to the Human Colonization of Space · Morton Klass · ar Futures, 2000
423 · Bibliography · Laurie Mann · bi *

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V


Thanks to all contributors (of the critiques of films that are linked to below...some readers of the notes I send out to various lists have noted today that they are uncertain as to what the names and titles imply when they see the weekly lists) and readers...there will be a few more entries, I suspect, including my own (squeezed by morning meetings and such vagaries...).

Bill Crider: Dark City

Brian Arnold: One Magic Christmas

Chuck Esola: Lisztomania

Dan Stumpf: The 3rd Voice

Evan Lewis: The Rider of the Law

Geoff Bradley: Tough Love

George Kelley: A Perfect World

Iba Dawson: Enchantment (1949)

James Reasoner: Zorro's Black Whip

Jerry House: Rage at Dawn

Juri Nummelin: My Friend Ivan Lapshin (aka
Moy drug Ivan Lapshin)


Michael Shonk: The Best of B.L. Stryker

Mike Tooney: Edward D. Hoch and Hollywood

Patti Abbott: The Pumpkin Eater

Philip Schweier: films of The Shadow

Randy Johnson: The Last Musketeer

Steve Lewis: The Vicious Circle (1957) (aka The Circle)

Ron Scheer: Bend of the River

Scott Cupp: The Laughing Dead

Tina Silber: Nero Wolfe (CBS 1959...never aired)

Todd Mason: Wainy Days

Sergio Angelini: The Mirror Crack'd

Walter Albert: Life in the Raw

Yvette Banek: All That Heaven Allows

Related Matters:

Prashant Trikannad: Lady and the Tramp

Stacia Jones: December Cable Movie Highlights

Friday, December 2, 2011

FFB: HARD LANDING by Algis Budrys...and SFBC's Gary Viskupic covers


Algis Budrys's last novel, which was featured in the October/November 1992 "double" anniversary issue of F&SF and published in both hardcover and paperback by Questar with a remarkably ugly cover design the next year, has been almost criminally neglected (the October issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that year featured a Joyce Carol Oates novelet, "The Model", which I thought a nice parallel...).

His first long fiction to be published in fourteen years (after "The Silent Eyes of Time" [F&SF 1978] and Michaelmas [Berkley 1977]) and the last he would publish, it is a graceful and well-worked-out account of a handful of humanoid aliens, forced to crash-land on Earth in midcentury, and choosing to hide themselves among the Americans they find themselves among. It traces their progress, if it can be called as much, and the investigations of various US/human agencies and plenipotentiaries...a fairly rich situation for Budrys to work through his obsessions with coping with the often puzzling foreign society and attempting to conform, at least superficially, with the stresses of hierarchy and self-realization (both obvious concerns for a child of military/spy/diplomat parents, who was probably the last living citizen, by US State Dept. reckoning, of pre-WW2 Lithuania for a decade or so...he only became a US citizen after Lithuania gained independence again). His graceful prose, his wit, and his informed take on political and media matters are on display, as his characters deal with their specific situation and the larger-world developments of the four decades starting in 1940. Perhaps because of his already having engaged heavily with the Church of Scientology's publishing arm, administering their Writers of the Future workshop and prize (and helping launch its related) programs, this late work was ridiculously underappreciated...as Scott Cupp notes in comments, most of his work from throughout his career is underappreciated, perhaps least the novel that served as the climax for the first decade of his interrupted sf-writing career in 1959, published by Fawcett Gold Medal as Rogue Moon (and finally republished under one of his preferred titles, The Death Machine not long before his death). Budrys seemed a natural for Gold Medal, as his sf novels have the same sort of alienation and sense of contending with fate as the most fondly-recalled of GM's crime fiction, even if they couldn't leave such titles as Halt, Passenger (for "Rogue Moon") or The Iron Thorn (for "The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn," an even more ridiculous meddling).

Speaking of ugly covers, including for Budrys's first magnum opus, I'm not sure we've had a worse run of covers by an artist of some talent (though Kelly Freas's for Laser Books was close) than Gary Viskupic's series of rotten covers for Science Fiction Book Club dustjackets for books with no previous or negotiable hardcover editions for SFBC to reprint covers from:










































































It wasn't as if Viskupic isn't talented...I believe he's still alive, but might well be retired from professional illustration, as these examples of his newspaper work (I particularly like the Andrei Sakharov portrait and the montage to represent the beginning of the 1973 US syndicated run of the Thames Television series The World at War, from Viskupic's primary '70s gig at the Long Island/NYC-area Newsday), and even jacket images from A.E. van Vogt and P. J. Farmer novels attest (even if the Farmer, perhaps well in keeping with the work, seems a somewhat jejunely jokey pastiche of the kind of work Diane and Leo Dillon are most famous for, such as these illustrations for Ellison's work.)
























But then there are all these others he'd done...even given the Del Rey, and perhaps even the Slan, aren't terrible...but I suspect he was given probably very little time to do them, and little incentive to do his best for them.