Thursday Music Question: is there an album or recording that simply doesn't hold up for you?

Who Charted? the podcast asked their guest this week that question, in choosing the question among those submitted from their listeners.

I'm not sure that there's a record I genuinely loved that I don't much care for any more, at least anything I've discovered for myself since about age ten. Even the likes of "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" by the Brownsville Station, the first 45 rpm single I bought for myself, while it strikes me as energetic and sophomoric (by every intent) now, struck me as energetic and goofy then (hey, I was as ready for punk rock as anyone, I guess--I certainly never could take KISS nor Sweet seriously, nor Led Zep nor Queen, which last at least didn't take themselves Too seriously...which didn't make them, nor, say, Meat Loaf, any more exciting).


Perhaps as close as I get would be my somewhat lesser affection for the Tijuana Brass and such imitators as The Brass Hat compared to how I felt in 1974, but I don't actually dislike their cheerful kitsch even now (I might even find the more adventurous records by the likes of Enoch Light--particularly with percussionist Terry Snyder--slightly better now).

Anything you've found you've utterly or at least somewhat outgrown?

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

This Property is Condemned

Below, the links to this week's reviews and citations As always, please let me know in comments when I've missed yours or someone else's...and, as always, thanks to all our contributors and to you readers...unsurprisingly, some thoughts about Robin Williams this week, and (more surprisingly) the second week running with an Another Dawn review.

And we'll also dedicate this week to the memory of Lauren Bacall.

Anne Billson: How to Spot a Goth Girl Heroine

I Married a Monster from Outer Space

Bill Crider: I Married a Monster from Outer Space  [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Robin Williams

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Comedy Film Nerds: I Am Road Comic, et al.

Phantom Lady

Curt Evans: Without Honor; Blackout

Doug Loves Movies: Kulap Vilaysack, Howard Kremer, Marc Maron and Kumail Nanjani with Doug Benson on Robin Williams (and not playing the Leonard Maltin Game, etc.)

Ed Lynskey: Farewell, My Lovely

Elizabeth Foxwell: Suspense (tv): "The Mallet"; Spycast

Evan Lewis: Philip Marlowe, Private Eye: "The King in Yellow"

Steve Allen's steady (and jealous) date

George Kelley: The Last Days on Mars; A Most Wanted Man

Iba Dawson: best current television

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Between the Lines (1977 film)

Jackie Kashian: Andy Ashcraft and Ed Baraf on game creation

Jacqueline T. Lynch: I'll Never Forget You

Jake Hinkson: Phantom Lady

James Reasoner: This Property is Condemned

Jerry House: Robin Williams: Live on Broadway

John Grant: Emil und die Detektive (aka Emil and the Detectives) (1931); The Bushwhackers; romantic countdown

Jonathan Lewis: The Law and Jake Wade; Fog Over Frisco; Wichita; The Spoilers

Kate Laity: LonCon and ShamroKon

Kelly Robinson: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; The Monkey's Paw; The Great Gatsby (silent)

Kliph Nesteroff: Don Adams, Joey Bishop and the Steve Allen Scandal: Television Comedy in the Mid '60s

Laura: Torpedo Run; The Sniper; Robin Williams

Lucy Brown: The Stars Look Down

The Sniper

Marty McKee: Striking Distance

Michael Shonk: Columbo: "Undercover"

Don't Bother to Knock

Mystery Dave: Lizzie Borden Took an Ax

Patti Abbott: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Randy Johnson: The Immortal;  Little Rita of the West

Rick: The Hallmark Hall of Fame; The Pleasure of His Company

Wagon Tracks

Ron Scheer: Wagon Tracks

Sergio Angelini: Don't Bother to Knock; My Friend Maigret (on French television)

Stacia Jones: The Girl and Death; Another Dawn

Stephen Bowie: Jim Aubrey, the Smiling Cobra

Steve Lewis: Bad for Each Other

Walker Martin: Pulpfest 2014  
(Pulpfest proceedings recorded)

...And, from a 1986 American Playhouse (PBS)-sponsored adaptation of the Saul Bellow novella:
Seize the Day

Friday's "Forgotten" Book: Robert Arthur, editor: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME (Random House, 1963)

From the handsomely-done Alfred Hitchcock Wiki (which in turn all but credits ISFDB and Zybahn's Casual Debris for information):
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me

• Published in 1963 in the USA by Random House (hardback)
• Edited by Robert Arthur
• 401 pages

Contents

1. Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
2. The Child Who Believed by Grace Amundson
3. Just a Dreamer by Robert Arthur
4. The Wall-to-Wall Grave by Andrew Benedict
5. The Wind by Ray Bradbury
6. Congo by Stuart Cloete
7. Witch's Money by John Collier
8. Dip in the Pool by Roald Dahl
9. The Secret of the Bottle novelette by Gerald Kersh
10. I Do Not Hear You, Sir by Avram Davidson
11. The Arbutus Collar by Jeremiah Digges
12. A Short Trip Home novelette by F. Scott Fitzgerald
13. An Invitation to the Hunt by George Hitchcock
14. The Man Who Was Everywhere by Edward D. Hoch
15. The Summer People by Shirley Jackson
16. Adjustments by George Mandel
17. The Children of Noah by Richard Matheson
18. The Idol of the Flies by Jane Rice
19. Courtesy of the Road by Mack Morriss
20. Remains to Be Seen by Jack Ritchie (as Steve O'Connell)
21. The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles by Margaret St. Clair (as Idris Seabright)

    

    One of Dell's half-the-hc-content reprints

22. Lost Dog by Henry Slesar
23. Hostage by Don Stanford
24. Natural Selection by Gilbert Thomas
25. Simone by Joan Vatsek
26. Smart Sucker by Richard Wormser
27. Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon

UK edition

It's a very close call (due to their consistent excellence), but this might be my favorite of the AHP: volumes that Robert Arthur edited (Harold Q. Masur took up the task after Arthur's death in 1969, till Hitchcock's death in 1980).  Quite a large number of these stories have stuck with me over the years since I first read them, at age nine, in one of the first of the adult "Hitchcock" anthologies I took up, and it is a pretty striking slice through a range of many of the best writers of the time (we'd lost Fitzgerald, but not too many of the others yet) who'd done some sort of work in suspense fiction and related fields...the Jackson, the St. Clair, the Bradbury and the Davidson are (unsurprisingly) memorable horror stories (St. Clair's is her most famous story by some distance, and almost deservedly so);  the Matheson is Just this side of Reality, and not less unsettling (at least to the young reader) for it, even as one key aspect of Theodore Sturgeon's novel about a non-supernatural vampire did inspire some investigation on my part as to what the novel's resolution involved (hint: it isn't altogether unrelated to the previous post on this blog). Even if I mostly remember "The Arbutus Collar" for how puzzled I was as to how pronounce "arbutus"(I recall that the dictionary was not helpful), the balance of the volume, from writers as splashy as Kersh and Collier and Rice and Dahl (to say nothing of the South African Cloete--I wouldn't learn how to pronounce "Clew-tee" for years)  or as simply as assiduous as Hoch and Ritchie (though I didn't know it was Ritchie story till today) or as interesting  though overlooked as Thomas, collectively sticks with me as simply so much enjoyment and revelation, about the nature and range of storytelling one could find in these eclectic volumes.  It's too easy for me to cite a given volume of the various Arthur/AH series for FFB purposes, perhaps, but these books really should be remembered clearly, as an achievement on their own ticket, and as an example of how the task can be done...

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for today's prompter citations.

Wrapping up a conversation with a woman comedian of my acquaintance:

Me:
Well, men's plumbing and hair-sprouting is inherently fascinating in the minutest detail, while women should be keep The Mystery Alive, of course. You sure you have enough makeup on those heels?

As someone who has been living with women almost my entire life, between family, romantically and platonically with Alice, two of my most conservative women friends have been slightly surprised how little questions of women's biology faze me. I can only wonder about the men who've lived with them for years.  "Um, Lucy? Isn't it time for you to go out to the hut for a few days? I mean, we just bought a new gallon of milk."

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

Härmä 

Below, the links to this week's reviews and citations As always, please let me know in comments when I've missed yours or someone else's...and, as always, thanks to all our contributors and to you readers...

Allan Mott: Adrienne Barbeau

Anne Billson: Russ Meyer  (a few slightly NSFW images in the post)

Bill Crider: $ [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Captain America: the serial (continued); The Hallmark Hall of Fame: "Aunt Mary"

$

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Dan Stumpf: Innocence and Art

Ed Gorman: Donald Westlake and Chris Lyons on James Garner and The Rockford Files

Ed Lynskey: Jigsaw (1949 film); A Most Wanted Man

Elizabeth Foxwell: Suspense: "House of Masks" (1949 tv; Dorothy Salisbury Davis, RIP); Selected Shorts: Catherine O'Hara reads "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl

Evan Lewis: The Kennel Murder Case

Francis M. Nevins: Frank Kane, Mike Hammer, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., James Garner, Roy Huggins, Raymond Chandler and related matters

George Kelley: Total Recall 2070

How Did This Get Made?: Sharknado 2

Iba Dawson: 2014 in Film So Far; When the Garden Was Eden 

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Went the Day Well?

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Ann Blyth on stage

"The Sealed Room"

Jackie Kashian: Sean Patton at the Chicago Comedy Exposition

James Reasoner: Sweet Bird of Youth

Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Marvin Zindler

Jerry House: "The Sealed Room"

John Charles: The Dark Power; Alien Outlaw

John Grant: Desyat Negrityat (aka And Then There Were None, the Christie in Russian adaptation); Romantic film countdown

Phantom of Chinatown

Jonathan Lewis: Phantom of Chinatown; Law and Order (1953 film); Man Made Monster; Best of the Bad Men

Kate Laity: Härmä (aka Once Upon a Time in the North)

Kliph Nesteroff: Frank Fay, the Fascist Stand-Up Comic

Laura: Another Dawn; When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide

Lucy Brown: Letter from an Unknown Woman

Marty McKee: Tarzan the Magnificent; King Solomon's Mines (1985 film); Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

Max Allan Collins: Phantom of the Paradise

Mystery Dave: High Society

Patti Abbott: Search for Tomorrow

Rick: Jubal

Desyat Negrityat

Prashant Trikkanad: The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case

Randy Johnson: Unknown World; Sonny and Jed

Sergio Angelini: Medium; The Alphabet Murders

Stacia Jones: Earth Girls Are Easy; A Measure of the Sin

Kenjû zankoku monogatari

Stephen Bowie: Late bloomers (tv series which improved as they went along)

Steve Lewis: Cruel Gun Story (aka Kenjû zankoku monogatari); Framed for Murder

Yvette Banek: Free Fall

A Measure of the Sin

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: the links

Filling in this week for Patti Abbott, who will be compiling the links again next week...if I've missed you book, or someone else's, please let me know in comments...thanks!  -Todd Mason

Sergio Angelini: The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

Yvette Banek: The TBR Pile

Joe Barone: Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein

Brian Busby: The Devil's Due by Grant Allen

David Cramner: Call for the Dead by John LeCarré.

Bill Crider: The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

William Deeck: The Affairs of O’Malley (aka Smart Guy) by William MacHarg; At One Fell Swoop by Osmington Mills

Martin Edwards: Sudden Death by B.C. Skottowe; 10 Best Golden Age Mystery Novels

Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: DC horror comics, ca. 1973 

Barry Ergang: The Man Who Turned Into Himself by David Ambrose (hosted at Kevin Tipple's blog)

Curt Evans: The Case of the Perjured Parrot by Erle Stanley Gardner

Shonna Froebel: Ghost Girl by Helena McEwan

Ed Gorman: The Collected Stories of Stephen Crane

Josef Hoffmann: 20 Detective Novels by Writers Known for Other Sorts of Fiction

Rich Horton: Ladies and Gentlemen, by Irvin S. Cobb

Jerry House: The Other Passenger: 18 Strange Stories by John Keir Cross

Allen J. Hubin: Out of Nowhere by William Marshall

Randy Johnson: Apache Breakout by Louis Masterson

Nick Jones: The Tin Men by Michael Frayn

Tracy K: Faith by Len Deighton

George Kelley: Horror: Another 100 Best Books edited by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones

Rob Kitchin: Casual Rex by Eric Garcia

Marvin Lachman: A Night of Errors by Michael Innes

Kate Laity: Money in the Bank by P. G. Wodehouse

B.V. Lawson: Victorian Tales of Mystery & Detection edited by Michael Cox

Evan Lewis: The Double Take by Roy Huggins

Neer: Prison and Chocolate Cake by Nayantara Sahgal; Forty Years of Test Cricket: India-England 1932-1971 by Saradindu Sanyal

John F. Norris: Murder at the Women's City Club by Q. Patrick 

Juri Nummelin: Already Dead by Charlie Huston

James Reasoner: The Western by Phil Hardy

Karyn Reeves: Four Frightened People by E. Arnot Robertson

Richard Robinson: A Bicycle Built for Brew by Poul Anderson (The Collected Short Stories, V. 6)

Peter Rosovsky: Hopscotch by Brian Garfield

Ron Scheer: Frontier Stories by Bret Harte

Kerrie Smith: The Cartographer by Peter Twohig

Zadie Smith: Crash by J. G. Ballard

Dan Stumpf: Murder Plan Six by John Bingham

Prashant Trikannad: Famous Monsters of Filmland 1982 Film Fantasy Yearbook

David Vineyard: Witchwood by John Buchan

A. J. Wright: The American Child: A Journal of Constructive Democracy