jamesenge: (eye)

Last night at the movies: a daring raid on an 24-hour check-cashing place on Halloween night was planned by a thirtyish Laura Antonelli and a middle-aged Jim Backus, who had the Hawaiian shirt of Thurston Howell III and the mannerisms of a sinister Mr. Magoo. (Actually, Howell doesn’t seem to have worn a Hawaiian shirt. My subconscious may have been confusing him with the Hawaiian Punch guys.)

6 photos. See caption for details.
Dramatis Personae.
Upper left: Laura Antonelli on the cover of Paris Match (April 4, 1980)
Upper center: Jim Backus holding a Mr. Magoo doll in his hat.
Upper right: me, at a costume party as Lake Wobegon Vice (circa 1984)
Lower left: the famous Chat Noir poster.
Lower center: Nastassia Kinski and fuzzy friend (circa 1982)
Lower right: the Hawaiian Punch guys (puncher & punchee)

Antonelli had recruited me for the caper. Also figuring in the plot was a goofy black cat with pipe-cleaner limbs who was the only member of the gang that everyone liked, and a Kelly-green velvet frock-coat that was supposed to be part of someone’s disguise for the robbery. 

Antonelli’s plan-within-a-plan was that she and I would freeze out Magoo with the help of her friend (a Cat People-era Nastassia Kinski), who would pretend to be ill. While he was busy tending to her, Antonelli and I would commit the robbery by ourselves. 

Antonelli was acting crazy while Kinski was off roping Magoo, and I told her I was out. She wanted it too much; she was making mistakes; and I had to figure that, if she was ready to doublecross Magoo, she was likely to do the same to me. 

Antonelli was still trying to get me to change my mind when Kinski, on schedule, faked her illness. Antonelli insisted that Magoo take Kinski to the hospital. Magoo declined, looking on us with a kind of genial malice, and said that Kinski was Antonelli’s friend and she should take her—that he and I had things to talk about.

I figured that Magoo had tumbled to Antonelli’s plan, and I was interested to see what would happen next when I woke up.

Moral of the story: don’t watch two old crime movies before bed. Or: stay asleep longer.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

jamesenge: (eye)

A judicious review by Paul Weimer of a great NESFA volume linked below.

I liked this book a lot, but for me the most distinctive feature of this series is the one that I like least: the stories are a mixture of early & late. I’d prefer a chronological ordering, or an ordering by series, or some kind of order. (The ebook only edition of the complete short fiction of Clifford Simak had the same unprinciple, and I didn’t like it there, either.)

On the other hand, you could get hold of all the volumes and use ISFDb to go through them in your preferred order. The “Collected Poul Anderson” volumes are all available pretty cheaply as ebooks from NESFA, so that’s not as flippant a suggestion as it may seem.

https://www.nesfa.org/press/available-books/?ebooks=e

I’ve often wished for a single volume “Best of Poul Anderson” I could hand to or recommend to people. But The old Pocket Book “Best of PA” didn’t really fit the bill; the DAW “BOOK of PA” was a little closer, but was light on fantasy as I recall. And of course they’ve all been out of print forever.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

ΧΑΟΣ

Jul. 12th, 2023 06:22 pm
jamesenge: (eye)

I don’t know if you knew this about me, but I’ll buy a book every now and then. Because I am not a crazy person (anyway, I’ve never been officially diagnosed), before I’ll buy a book I see if I already own it in some form.

My books are organized according to a principle I call chunking and what others call not organized. If I’m looking for a Leiber book, I know I have a chunk of them there, and another chunk over there and a third chunk in another place.

Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

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