Johnny Dollars Goes All Huffington On Me

My friend John Donald Carlucci has a new political blog-

http://www.democracyhypocrisy.com/

Please give it a gander.

Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue

Everybody remembers actors for their best roles, yet I remember Paul Newman not only for his great roles, but for the way that he always transcended his material. There were a lot of movies he did where he was the sole redeeming factor in a sea of dreck and he just rose above it all. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever watched TV back in the 70's, or HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax.

You would sit there and right about twenty-five minutes into this video torture by lazy network or local programmers you would say to yourself, "you know? I think I'm only watching this because of Paul." Do you doubt me? AMC will surely run "The Towering Inferno" often these next couple of week and you will see a raging tower of suck, yet I always watch the thing for five minutes (and only for five minutes) because of Newman and Steve McQueen.

"The Drowning Pool?" A big bowl of meh, but Paul virtually walked on water. Almost everything recently this side of "The Verdict" with the exception of "Road To Perdition" was mediocre at best (I liked "Hudsucker," few do), yet you know he was a consummate professional and a master thespian.

In this day and age, we still have plenty of character actors that are great thespians, but rare now is the lead man that doesn't let his looks or ego hinder his role. Even rarer still is the actor who is dedicated to each and every role that portrays, no matter the caliber of the film or stage.

The Screenwriter Always Rings Twice

You can't trust writers. Anything you say or do is fair game to us. We dress you up in a different gown and use your words and your hair and your eyes and steal your soul.

from "Robbie's Wife" by Russell Hill.

"Robbie's Wife" was a good read, a bit of James M. Cain goes to England if you will, and I mean that in the best possible sense. And while that quote is a little too on the nose and that character literally writes down each and everything that he experiences, it made sense within the plot.

Of course I can't imagine an actual screenwriter (the protagonist's profession) this side of Joe Ezterhas at his most self-indulgent, writing every other thing down in an almost verbatim fashion. So trust me when I say that unlike the police, I will not hold everything you say against you...

...unless it's juicy enough. Then, I'm at least going to change your gender and ethnic origin.

This Is A McGuffin, Right?

The Missus and I saw "Burn After Reading" yesterday, we are talking good Coen Brother hi-jinks. Brad Pitt surprised the both of us just to how funny he was and while this film was not up there with "The Big Lebowski" or "O Brother, Where Are Thou," it was still very enjoyable.

Just right now, we were watching "Witness For The Prosecution" before it was preempted by The Kid's show and I was wondering about something. First, please don't tell me the ending (though I bet I have that figured out already) or discus the film, that's not what I'm concerned about.

What I want to know is this: Tyrone Power's character allegedly built a better egg-beater that he demonstrated to the Widow French. The Widow French asked more or less if the beater used centrifugal force and he said "no, it uses specific gravity." Now, I Wiki-ed it and while I don't claim to know the first thing about science, an egg-beater that uses specific gravity is just a McGuffin, right?

Is That So Wrong Goes To The Movies

For the 46th Annual New York Film Festival, Is That So Wrong has screen some of the upcoming films that will be shown at the Lincoln Center. The first being Wendy and Lucy with Michelle Williams. Pop on over and take a gander.

Where Have You Gone Cormac Brown?...

...a nation turns its bored eyes on you (woo, woo, wooo).



Unrefined video crack, Sid Meier-style.

Goodbye family.
Goodbye social life.
Not goodbye to bathing and toothbrushing, but virtually everything else.

That's the good video crack, Jack!

John Puts Our Lives In Perspective

John puts most of our lives in perspective with this post.

P.S. after you click it, you have to scroll down the page to see it.

Always The Bride's Last Fling...

...never the groom.

On Wiki-tangents And "Monkey Island"

The beauty of the Internet is that all this information is available to anywhere you have a connection, any time of the day that you need it. The bad part of it is the dilettante aspect where you retrieve just the information you need and only the information that you need, as well as wiki-tangents (Wikipedia + tangents = wiki-tangents).

You know where you study one subject and you click a link to another, and by the end of it, you need to click your Internet history to find out just exactly what it was that you were originally searching for? Yeah, that writing black hole. As an example, I have a good story all written up and the only problem with it is that it doesn't have a middle. It literally has a few sentence fragments and nothing more. So I have to fill those sentences in, while staying clear of the borders of Anachronism Land.

The first wiki-tangent yielded actual useful information, though I wasted a good amount of time because a video of the shell that was Bonnie and Clyde's death car, wouldn't load for shit with my dial-up. Ehi, I had to surrender. The second thing that amazed me was when I was researching orange groves in the San Fernando Valley and I found out about a place back in the day called "Monkey Island." Try to put something up that abysmal today and the PETA people will hound you to the ends of the Earth...where they will torture by feeding you a tofu effigy of yourself and singing really crappy folk songs off-key.

If you click the link, please scroll up and down. You'll find other quotes about the San Fernando Valley by Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler, Robert Redford, and many others. Now, if only I can figure just what exactly is my fascination with Mulholland Drive, despite never having drove or set foot on it, then I can get some sleep.

Quoth The Lovecraft

"At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night."

– H.P. Lovecraft, from the Creative Screenwriting Weekly Newsletter

The Road of The Shaken

An old Cormacism, but a goodie-

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And got stuck behind an old lady in a Cadillac...all the way from Portola to Monterey, g*dd*mn it!

"Heads You Lose"

"A conscience is a luxury no private dick can afford."

Mike Shayne from "Heads You Lose," page 46.

Before "Hammer" became the detective name most synonymous with "Mike" and way before Horatio Caine perpendicularly sidled up to people, to pelt them with bad puns and clichés, there was another Mike that had the red-headed crime fighting market cornered, Mike Shayne.

This book was given to me by the Baroness and "Heads You Lose" is a reprint of the 1943 story "Blood On The Black Market." This was the eighth Mike Shayne story to be printed, according to the Brett Halliday forward. So in a sense, the 1950's cover can throw a reader's expectations off, though not me, I read it with open mind in terms of wanting to soak up the era.

The history buff/dilettante in me feasted on all the details of WWII black outs, gas rationing, the old speed limits (which would've drove me out of my skull, 35 mph on Florida's highways???) and black marketeers.

Mike Shayne likes a sip of cognac...or four and he tugs his earlobe in this book, almost as many times as Carol Burnette typically did in one season. You can see Dashiell Hammett's influence on Halliday. Shayne puts the booze away like Nick and Nora did, though unlike them, he didn't have quite as many quips, bon mots, and he was lacking a dog. He made moves on one character's wife while that character was still in the room, just like Ned Beaumont. And Shayne tried to pit good and evil against each other...though he didn't manage with quite the same finesse as Ned did.

Other observations-

In "Heads You Lose," the Miami Dade Police Department sure has absolutely no reservations about drinking while on the job.

Everbody in this book seems to have a two cigarette pack-a-day habit.

Bad editing strikes again! Cointreau is not wine, mon Dieu!

Spoiler! You have to highlight it with your mouse to read it(cool, a "The Usual Suspects" ending!)
My second favorite bit of dialogue is...

"You're a fool," she said drearily. "We could have had so much, but you're afraid to believe in anything. You're cursed with the need to look beneath the surface for a hidden motive. I feel sorry for you."

Shayne's laugh was sardonic. "Hidden motives are my meat," he confessed.

"Poker Face"

"Poker Face" originally appeared in Powder Burn Flash

Well, there are curveballs and there are curveballs. And this? This is like the other seven guys on the playing field have decided that they want to pitch too…

…All at once.

…While the catcher is tying the batter’s shoelaces together.

“This was supposed to be easy pickings,” Pratt curses. He knew from the other kids that went to the same privileged high school as he did, that almost half of this neighborhood was spending Christmas vacation in Tahoe and the other half was in Hawaii . Pratt guessed that nobody explained that to the man of this house, Dougray Hiatt, that he should be some 2,300 miles away in Kauai.

Why just a minute ago, Pratt was just mulling throwing a party in what he believed to be an empty house and now he is cursing himself for not checking first or even bothering to have a mask on. He knows that his partner John won’t care either way, which is bound to make this tenuous situation even worse.

“You’re supposed to be in Hawaii ” Pratt says out loud. “Because we wouldn’t be here or at least we would be wearing masks” he finishes in his head. His partner John comes into the room holding a laptop inside a gray Tumi bag and is just as startled as Pratt was seconds ago to find someone home.

There Dougray is, sitting in the combination computer and exercise room that was formerly the bedroom of his eldest daughter, Deborah, who was currently in college, but was now in Kauai with his youngest daughter, Dana. He was sitting the same spot some eleven hours ago, but something work-related came up and he had to cut short his vacation. He had four files out on his desk and until Pratt’s intrusion, he was typing away on his desktop computer.

Pratt is trying to figure out just what the fuck is this guy doing at home and why didn’t he heard them come in. The burglar alarm’s chime made an awful racket throughout the two times it took Pratt to disarm it, because he was so nervous, that he momentarily forgot the code. He knew the code well enough; he spent many a night spying on Deborah to have seen it. Then Pratt hears the washing machine and realizes that Dougray probably was putting a load in and didn’t hear them enter.

And when Deborah moved out for college, Pratt’s eyes moved onto Dana as she worked out in this very room, five days a week. He couldn’t help but overhear about the Kauai trip, because Dana’s friends called her about it every three minutes, cutting short her dance routine and his fun. Now Pratt’s fun is cut short again, with a complication that seems completely nonplussed at the fact that he and John are standing in his house at three in the morning.

The silence between them and Dougray’s cool exterior get to John. He thrusts his chest out and pulls his shirt up, exposing the cheap Glock knockoff that was in his waistband of his baggy jeans.

Dougray responds by merely sitting at his desk with a face that any poker champion wishes they could own. He doesn’t seem scared or particularly perturbed; he isn’t happy or grim-faced. As a matter of fact, he is just sitting there with his lips slightly clenched.

Pratt looks over in askance to John as to what should be their next move, and John answers back with a scowl. Pratt winces as John reaches under his shirt with a snarl and pulls the nine millimeter out. Pratt almost pulls his gun out too, but he doesn’t like the math behind this. He wants to run away, but he stands his ground and resigns himself to the fact that nothing good will come of this. Yet Dougray just sits there, blinking every so often.

Pratt wonders if this is just a case of Dougray being as scared as he is and that Dougray is simply too damn scared to move. Finally, Dougray’s nose twitches and a nervous John almost pulls his trigger. His nose twitches again and Dougray takes a few, long, large gasps.

Huh-huh-ah-ah-ah-chooo!

Dougray sneezes hard and his dentures flew across the room, where they land inches away from John’s feet. John and Pratt both look down at the displaced false teeth and that’s when John flies backward into the wall with a crimson hole in his chest. Wide-eyed, Pratt looks at the last bit of life escaping John and turns around to see a still-seated Dougray. He had the same poker face, but it looks pathetic without any front teeth.

A small wisp of smoke escapes the barrel of the silver-plated hand cannon that Dougray has pointed at Pratt and the last thing that Pratt sees is that cannon roaring again.

Dougray shakes his head and thinks, there are sticky wickets and then there are sticky wickets. And this?

This is like the other nine fielders have decided that they want to be bowlers too...

…All at the same time.

…While the wicket-keeper bites your ankles.

Here he is a hit man of nearly thirty years of experience and he has let two amateur burglars get the drop on him as if he still was wet behind the ears. He has to be in Tahoe within the hour to take out somebody that is in the witness protection, before the mark moves to another safe house, and now? He has two bodies in his own house to contend with.

Well, he’ll have to tarp them and leave them in the garage; the paying job always takes precedence.

A Sideways Encounter

I've finally got around to posting my celebrity encounter over at the travel blog.

On another note, Aldo has past the century mark for posted stories! Pop on over to Powder Burn Flash and take a peak!

Why Royalty Rocks

So as we are bringing the groceries up from the car, I see a package on top of the apartment building mailbox. I bring it up and as I open the package...


The Missus: What are you doing?


Me: What do you mean, "what am I doing?"


The Missus: That better be for us.


Me: That's me (I point to the addressee), I am "Mr. Brown." You know, "Mr. Brown can 'moo,' can you?"

The Missus: Oh, I thought it was for (the building's resident schmuck).


Me: No, see the address?


So Ladies and Gentlemen, what is in this wonderful package?

A vintage copy of "Heads You Lose, A Mike Shayne Mystery" by Brett Halliday and this note-

Count Cormac:

For all my experience in the world of pulp fiction, this could be a piece of crap. But I was intrigued by the image of Mike Shayne & the glowing (yet terse) review of the NY Times

Baroness Von Blogenschtern

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an original Dell paperback, in wonderful condition and the jpeg above does not do the cover justice, but this was the largest one I could find.

I am dizzy with elation, thank you very much, Baroness! You are a pulp babe and then some!

And Across The Blogiverse...

Across the Blogiverse...


The Gifted Typist turns two...her blog, that is. If I have to work overtime on Friday nights, her Chronicle Herald columns are my consolation prize. If no work? Then they are the icing on the cake.

John Don joins Quin Browne as a dot com persona, that is his name is his web address. You might know him as one of the editors of Astonishing Adventures Magazine, but I know him as "Johnny Dollars."

Todd Gordon a.k.a. The Moviequill, is back with a "you know that you are screenwriter" series.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part4
and Part 5.

Give 'em a click to see if you have caught the screenwriter bug.

I Don't The Blame Author

I am pages away from finishing "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" and I am thoroughly enjoying it. To me this one is better overall than "My Horizontal Life" in terms of laughs per page and sheer craziness and she truly a Sedaris on steroids.

What I couldn't believe were the mistakes. Chelsea mentions her father back in 1984, having a 1967 Yugo. This would be hard to do, considering Yugos didn’t go into production until 1981 and didn't come to America until 1985. He could've had a grey market Yugo, but it wouldn't have been a '67 model. Chelsea's dad could've had a Fiat, which the Yugo was based on, but it would have been a bigger, though just as embarrassing Fiat.

She also mentions Googling someone in 1996 and uh, Google wasn't official until 1997.

Put the rocks down before you think I am being hard on Chelsea, I don't fault her at all. She is allowed artistic license and the human memory is only so reliable. Not to mention the real intention of this post besides touting an excellent book is to slam the publisher.

You see, the publisher keeps people on staff to check facts and before the thing goes to press, they have proofreaders and an editor or two, that should bother to check up on things. It's what they get paid for, to edit. Before you think I am being too hard on the editors? Go to page 208, the second paragraph and check out the third line and fourth lines...

"I ran out the door and jumped into my dark blue Volvo. I drove to the end of the alleyway, then slammed on the breaks when I saw three young teenage girls wearing backpacks, crossing."

The "breaks?" Are we talking about an old school Kurtis Blow song? Or are we talking about stopping a car?

Note that you will find plenty of misspellings, typos and things that cause Messrs. Strunk and White to spin in their graves on this blog, but you will never find me misteaking (sic) "breaks."

Who Is A Kick Ass Blogger?

Look at that, ain't that pretty? It's a Kick Ass Blogger and guess who got one? That's right, Dale! Wha? No, what do you mean Dale? Yes, Dale got one too, but I'm talking about me! You go talk about Dale on his blog! What do you mean, you want to talk about Dale?

Aarrgh!

At any rate, I got a Kick Ass Blogger Award from Katie Schwartz, because she says that I'm "special." No, not like that! No, I don't want to talk about Dale! Look, so she gave me this award because I kick ass...no "kick...no, it's spelled "k-i-s-s," I said, "kick!" She also said-

This list could easily exceed 50. If you look at my blogroll, you'll see that all of the bloggers I've posted are blogs I love and read often-- they all kick mothah fuckin' ass. I'm only allowed to choose so many, oy to the vey...

So who do I chose? Good gravy, where do I start? I'd like to give one back to Katie, but she would say "don't be a putz."

Quin Browne is still the writer I aspire to be. She does things so effortlessly, with such patience and poise that I wonder if she is actually a bank of IBM Super Computers.

Becky, because let's face it, without her and Talk Soup, I'd have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on the pop culture world. Becky has steeled herself with her Pop Eye, so that she can watch the TV shows that would turn the rest of us to salt. She has been known to rock the Photoshop too.

Some Guys' Blog. Chris is the master of random thought and he somehow fits those random thoughts on to a blog. It takes an architect for that sometimes.

Princess Ladybug is a refreshing breath of fresh air in the cynical blog world and her happiness is contagious.

Speaking of refreshing, Neutron changes it up every day and he turns me on to new blogs as well.

Last but not least is the Baroness Von Bloggenschtern. For her Thoughtful Tuesdays, for her humor and because like Princess Ladybug, she is blogging royalty.

The Bad News In Baltimore, Murdaland

From The Rap Sheet comes some sad news...

Murdaland has gone out of business. It was a good magazine, nice and gritty, just the way I like it. If Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines were a little too "pristine" for your crime fiction tastes, chances are Murdaland was right up your alley. Not that I'm slamming the former two magazines, I am just saying that if you were looking for fiction like the Akashic Noir series, Demolition Magazine and Powder Burn Flash, Murdaland was your mag.

There will be other magazines just like it and it really wasn't around long enough for anyone to get completely attached, but I would have liked to have seen it find the audience it deserved.

"Hi, My Name Is Philip And I Will Be Messing With Your Head

"I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive."

– Philip Roth

From the Creative Screenwriting Weekly Newsletter


"I call "shenanigans!"

- Cormac Brown

Cormacism- "Pro or Anti?"

I'm not trying to divide Blogdom, but are you anti-macssar? Or pro-macassar?

"Peanut Oil" is on Powder Burn Flash!

Cormac Brown's latest story "Peanut Oil" is on Powder Burn Flash and the authors of the world are united!



John Updike says, "Cormac told nine jokes about my last name...none of them were remotely funny."



"Everything that is wrong with both America and men, can be summed up in two words: Cormac Brown," grunts Helen Fielding.

So see today why authors all over the world agree that Cormac Brown is what is "unfunny and wrong with America" at Powder Burn Flash.


P.S. There was an overlap of sorts on the last post. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression of Aldo Calcagno, as I certainly gave him the wrong impression of who I was talking about. He is a straight-shooter and stand up guy.

There is another online editor who held a story in limbo and his format is so unique, that I can't post it to another site other than this one and I would have to expand the content. I thought that Aldo would not get back to me until Monday at the earliest, as he is a busy man.

I'm Not Being Lazy, Honest

I'm not lazy, honest. I've been writing a lot, I just haven't finished anything. I had to work overtime Friday night and my brain is fried, so the new content I wanted to post is not finished. Well one editor has not gotten back to me about a story I emailed to him some two weeks ago. While I realize that he is probably very busy, I would have appreciated a letter saying that story wasn't what that site was looking for.

I don't mind rejection, it's better than having your story sitting in limbo and I would just as soon publish it here, if I wasn't trying to reach a new audience.

So rather than go with nothing for the next three days, let's go back to the beginning of the blog and do a "Best Of, "with "When Gunpowder Gets In Your Eyes" and though I've said it before, I actually mean it when I tell you that new content is coming.

Quoth The Hemingway

"In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused."

– Ernest Hemingway

From the Creative Screenwriting Weekly Newsletter

Speaking of writing quotes, go check out Joesphine Damian's blog of writing quotes, Quote It Write. It's the mother lode!

Bookgasm Turns Three

Bookgasm has just turned three. Yes one of my favorite sources for clear and unpretentious reviews is three whole years old. For you or me, that's the "walking and talking" stage, but in Internet years? That's like eight. Congratulations, Bookgasm and may your site live to be a hundred and ten human years.