Steve Perry's Blog

 

My standard book review for writers I follow usually runs something like this:
If you are a Joe Lansdale fan, all you need to know is that Petrified Dreams, the next — and likely last — Hap and Leonard novel is out.
If you aren’t a Lansdale fan? You should be. Nobody else writes quite like Joe, he’s terrific, tells punch-in-the-gut stories, and since he’s also a long-time martial artist, I like that, too. I am most fond of Hap and Leonard, been reading about them for decades, but that’s not all Lansdale does, there are a bunch of books available.
If you are going to start with the Hap and Leonard books — which feature a white liberal redneck and a black gay Republican — go back to the first one and read forward to the new one, you’ll appreciate the experience more.
Warning: Joe’s stuff is not for the faint-hearted nor weak-stomached. Along with mysteries, he also writes horror, and some of that latter seeps into his other stuff — human monsters rather than supernatural ones. He’s done books, short stories, television, comics, and his works have been made into a TV series and several movies.

Part of the new Hap and Leonard novel takes place in the Louisiana swamps, and speaking as a native of those parts, he nails both the setting and the characters. The villain here is seriously nasty, maybe the worst one Hap and Leonard ever faced, and it is an E-ticket ride. 

Watched an old documentary on Frank Sinatra. He was a poor kid from Hoboken who eventually became an American success story — most-popular teen-age heart-throb singer, a song-and-dance comedy actor, rich, and famous. His popularity faded in the Fifties, he got a job as a dramatic actor, won an Oscar™, and had one of those rare things in America, a second act, surging back to the top.

He was early on a liberal, he fought racism; he was a womanizer who chased every attractive woman he desired; a father, but so-so at it. He had ties to Italian gangsters, hung out with JFK, and had a career that lasted well into rock-and-roll, which he hated, though as a businessman, he saw enough light that he sang a duet with Elvis, to stay relevant. He got more conservative with age, and hated the press as much as he did rock music.
It’s a pretty good two-part documentary, mostly positive, but it did touch on his flaws enough to give a viewer a pretty good idea of who he was.
He was talented, rich, famous, and entitled.
I was kinda hoping to see a reference to the Gay Talese article in Esquire Magazine in 1966.. Called “Frank Sinatra has a Cold,” it was one of the New Journalism pieces, was, and is, considered one of the best magazine celebrity profiles ever. Talese could write.
By then, Sinatra’s star was again in decline — he was fifty, dating Mia Farrow, who was twenty, and the Beatles were leading the British Invasion to the U.S. and blowing Sinatra and his aging crooner cronies off the charts. Old Blue Eyes’s dislike of the press was also in full swing, and he refused to allow Talese to interview him. Undeterred, Talese followed Sinatra around for months, interviewed people wherever Sinatra went, and used his own eyewitness-accounts to verify those interviews.
The article starts out with Sinatra and his entourage in a private club in Hollywood, and to set the tone of how that group was behaving, there is this passage:
“Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy.”
Sinatra drifts into a room where men are playing pool. He spies a little man dressed in what he considers outlandish fashion (knee-length boots, rolled down, tight cord pants, a loose blouse fastened with leather laces, and he starts to rag on the fellow. “Those Spanish boots?” he says.
The pool-player says, “No.” Continues to play.
After a time, Sinatra says, “Italian boots?”
“No.”
“English boots?”
The player, who has caught on to being fronted looks at him: “Why are you talking to me? Do you know me?”
“I don’t like the way you dress.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like the way you dress.”
Having deliberately buried the lede, I should mention here that the short pool player was Harlan Ellison, a well-known science fiction and fantasy writer, and a man who didn’t take any shit from anybody, at anytime, anywhere, all five-feet-five and a hundred and twenty-odd pounds of him. 
Talese’s version has this back-and-forth going on for a few more exchanges, with Sinatra becoming more and more irritated, and ends with Ellison leaving.
Ellison’s retelling of the story is ever-so-much-more fun and interesting, and the link herein takes one to a twenty-three minute video that is well worth watching, trust me.
I must add a caveat to the video: I knew Harlan a little. We were not buddies — I bumped into him on panels at several conventions, shared a group meal at one, and talked to him by phone. We had a couple email exchanges when I wrote reviews of his work for the local paper, and I was on his web-discussion group, during which we had some, well … spirited exchanges. He called me a douche once, then apologized for that. I liked the man, and adored his work.
I knew Harlan well enough to know that he was a world-class story-teller, and that he never let truth stand in the way of telling one. He was capable of holding two contradictory-opinions at once, and you never knew which you would get. 
That said, I think the gist of his recall is true, and I like his recollection of the event with Sinatra more than Talese’s … 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHf_DtcxhpE

Mystery:

In 1967, I was working at a metals company in SoCal, Pioneer Aluminum. Of a Saturday morning, I was with several other co-workers in the office doing some overtime — inventory transfers, i.e. logging numbers into a Cardex system, handwriting them. Five of us, I think.

At some point I went into the warehouse to get a Coke from the machine. I noticed a couple guys apparently taking inventory, standing in one of the aisles, looking at a rack full of aluminum extrusions. One of them, in a blue shirt and jeans, had a clipboard. I didn’t speak, and they didn’t seem to notice me. 

I went back to the office, and mentioned to my boss that I’d seen the warehouse guys.

He shook his head. Nobody is here but us, he said. Warehouse is closed.

Really? I saw two guys at the small-parts extrusion rack.

We went to look.

Nobody there. Nobody anywhere in the warehouse, which, save for the door into the office, was locked. The operation was shut down. Nobody had come or gone into the warehouse but me and my boss.

I saw them, I swear.

The place had a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire around it and a guard at the gate, we checked with him, and no one had come or gone, save those of us working in the office.

So. What did I see? Some kind of apparition? An illusion? Two guys who hopped the fence, broke into a locked warehouse, then disappeared three minutes after I saw them?

Understand, I was twenty-years-old, had never done any kind of recreational drugs, didn’t drink anything other than an occasional beer, and was not prone to hallucinations.

And yet I saw two guys in work clothes who weren’t there.

* *

Fourth of July weekend, 2001, Westercon, Portland, Oregon. 

I was on a panel, had gotten there early, and the room was empty. I went up to the table in front, sat, was fiddling with some notes. 

People started to arrive, and the first one was Poul Anderson, the writer. He sat out in the audience, smiled, I smiled and nodded back — we had been bumping into each other for twenty-odd years, but had only a passing acquaintance. Been on a couple of panels together, like that.

More people arrived, the panel cranked up, we did our thing, finished, and I left. Thought no more about it. (Didn't think anything of it at the time, actually, no reason to have done so.)

A few weeks later, an online note: Poul Anderson had passed away, on the 31st of July. 

Crap, I should have gone over and spoken to him. He was a nice guy, and I much admired his writing. A shame. 

Then there came the obit in Locus and assorted places, and apparently, Anderson had been ill for some time, and had died at home, in hospice care, after having spent the last month in the hospital.

So he couldn't have possibly been in Portland, Oregon at the convention if he was dying in the hospital in Orinda, California ...

Poul Anderson was not a man I'd mistake for anybody else; I'da been willing to swear on anything anybody considers holy, had anybody asked, that I'd seen him in that room before that panel. I could pass a lie-detector test, I'm sure.

No reasonable explanation I've come up with for this, or the previous event in L.A.. Hallucinations? Cosmic ray hit a dendrite? Some kind of  phantom projection? A glitch in time, maybe?

Dunno. No way I'll get to Heaven, but I'll ask the Devil if I see him ...

When I was in LPN school, we did a rotation through the state mental hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. (Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.) We just called it “Jackson,” and it was a scary place. There was a lock-down forensic section with steel-barred cells painted in pastel pink and blue, which was supposed to calm people already zonked out on enough Thorazine to stone a team of Clydesdales. I never went anywhere behind the locked ward door that I didn’t have several of the student nurses sticking close to me. By that point, there were only two men left in the class, and the other guy was pint-sized.

One of the patients with whom I interacted was a fellow who had been shipped -- with an escort -- to Louisiana on a bus from New York City. He had threatened to kill the woman psychiatrist treating him in the Big Apple, and she wanted him somewhere far away. Let's call him “Roy.”Soon as Roy stepped off the Trailways Swampland Express, he was scooped up and sent to Jackson.
In those days, getting involuntarily-committed was routine and easy, and he was an example of why.
Roy spent much of his time cutting out pictures of people from old magazines (using Kindergarten-style dull and rounded scissors) and pasting them into a scrapbook.
Something I noticed when looking at his book? 
He'd cut the heads off all the images.
There was a furlough-system for long-time patients who seemed to be improving that allowed them to leave the hospital and spend two days in a halfway house. The patients had an interview with the resident psychiatrist and if that went well, got a pass.
So Roy had the interview, and several of the nursing students, including me, got to sit in and listen to it.
Understand that patients really wanted the time outside, and they talked to each other, sharing the details, coaching each other, regarding what needed to be said to get the pass.
Roy came in, and he was more affable than Butch Cassidy: He smiled, he was polite, he said, “Yes sir,” and “No, sir.” His answers were careful and measured:
“So, Roy, how are you feeling?”“Oh, I feel much better, sir.”“Not angry?”“Oh, no, sir. I realize that my temper got the best of me, and I’ve been working in the sessions and I have it under control.”“That’s good, Roy.”
This went on in such a vein for ten minutes. Butter would not have melted in Roy’s mouth he was so calm and cool.
The interview wound down. Roy asked, “So, do you think I could have a pass, sir?”
And the shrink said, “Well, I don’t believe you are quite ready this time.”
The moon blinked full-on. Aaaoooh!
Roy shot to his feet, screamed “Go to hell, you fucking bastard!” and stomped out of the room.
One of the other students who hadn’t dealt with Roy asked the psychiatrist, “What, uh, is wrong with him?”
“Oh, he’s crazy,” the shrink said.
Always remembered that. Now, there is a diagnosis …
Now, the segue: Every time I read a verbatim text of a conversation with Orange Tiny Appendages? I am reminded of Roy. 
Somebody should be given a pair of plastic scissors and a stack of old magazines and put into a room with a double-deadbolt-door.

 

Berenger held his cards close to his vest and slowly spread them into a tight fan. As he looked down to see what he draw had given him, the boat swerved a bit to port, sloshing the last quarter-inch of his warm whiskey in the glass, but not spilling any. 

Three nines, an ace and a trey. He'd kept the pair, drawn three cards, not bad.

Drowned Man Point, he figured. The new pilot had let The Creole Belle II drift too close to the western shore and had to swing out to avoid the big snag that jutted from the shoal into the channel. It came up fast when going down river in high water.

Almost noon, then.

The steward would ring the luncheon bell soon, and they would pause the game and go enjoy the new chef's offerings. The man, who had worked at a New York hotel restaurant during the War, was an excellent cook. The smell of roasted game bird wafted through the main cabin as the waiters brought food in. Quail, shot by the hunters this very morning at the woodlot six hours upriver.

Berenger liked this steamer right enough. She was a tad more garish than the first Belle. There was a lot of stained glass, with depictions of troopers slaying Indians, and herds of bison; the carpets were scarlet, and the table whiskey was a higher grade than it had been on the original Belle. He'd been on her and winning a goodly sum when one of her boilers exploded as she was putting ashore on a cold November a couple years back, near Baton Rouge. He had gotten clear without getting his feet wet, and watched her burn to the waterline. Risks of the trade, that.

And, the food was better on this vessel; still, his luck had run warmer on the old boat most of the time.

Across from him, O'Herlihan, the Irishman, stroked his mustache with his free hand and tried to hide his glee.

O'Herlihan had drawn one card, and he never touched his mustache unless he had a winning hand. Could have filled a straight or a flush, except that he had opened, so he had to have better than a pair of knaves to start; maybe turned two pair into a full house. Maybe even four of a kind. Didn't matter; Berenger's three nines weren't worth a plugged picayune.

Well, shitfire and damnation. Might as well erect a marquee, he thought, wishing ill health on the Irishman. 

Then again, being Irish was unfortunate enough, wasn't it?

About eighty dollars in the pot. 

The bet was to O'Herlihan, and he tossed a five-dollar chip onto the green felt surface, trying to suck in more money.

Next to him, Barber called.

Ticonderoga Griffith raised ten.

Berenger shook his head. No point in throwing away any more money on this hand. "Fold," he said. The potato eater didn't know how to bluff, it was his pot.

Barber hadn't gotten the missive. He called.

O'Herlihan grinned like a demented baboon as he turned over a full boat, Kings and tens.

Win some, lose some, and Berenger was up one-fifty on the voyage so far, he couldn't complain. A nice meal, a good cigar and a splash of brandy, he would be fit as a fiddle when the game resumed. It was a ways to New Orleans, and Dame Fortune could choose to favor him even more as they churned along. And that comely young widow, the Missus Tracy? She had been giving him the eye from behind her ivory-ribbed fan ever since St. Louis. There was carnal company to be had there, he knew the signs.

There were worse ways to make a living ... 

This scene was an homage to Rustler’s Rhapsody. True fans will recognize the names of the actors and players. 'Tis from a novel in progress with Dan Moran, and that one’s on a slow boat from China …

 

Science Fiction/Double Feature 

The Rocky Horror Picture Show 

Ukulele Chords:

Barres, walk down toward the nut: 

E 7th fret, D, C, B, A on the 1st fret  (not a barre)

repeat for each line

1.

Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still

But he told us where we stand

And Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear

Claude Raines was the invisible man

Then something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong

They got caught in a celluloid jam

Then at a deadly pace it came from outer space

And this is how the message ran:

Chorus

1st fret A (no barre), then barre B, E, G#dim 

repeat, hold E on the last word of the chorus

Science Fiction - Double Feature

Dr. X will build a creature

See androids fighting Brad and Janet

Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet

Oh-oh at the late night, double feature, picture show.

2.

I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel

When Tarantula took to the hills

And I really got hot when I saw Janet Scott

Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills

Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes

And passing them used lots of skills

But when worlds collide, said George Pal to his bride

I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills, like a:

Chorus

Science Fiction - Double Feature

Dr. X will build a creature

See androids fighting Brad and Janet

Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet

Oh-oh at the late night, double feature, picture show.

I wanna go, oh-oh, to the late night double feature picture show.

By RKO, oh-oh, at the late night double feature picture show.

In the back row, oh oh oh…

(Slow down the last line)

at the late night double feature picture show.

Outro:

Repeat verse walk-down

E, D, C, end on B

 

Buddy Steve pointed out something from S4 E4 of Reacher. I thought it was amusing. 




SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERSPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERSPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERSPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
The bad guys show up to do bad things to two Indonesian women in a hotel where they've been hiding. 
The women arrive at the room to find their bodyguards have been killed, stabbed, throats cut.
Bad guys appear: Give us the drive or die. They pull knives.
The younger woman says. “Ah. Knives. Don’t want anybody hearing the gunshots.”*
Bad guys nod. Four of them, two women. 
Meanwhile, Reacher on foot, is a couple blocks away and hauling ass to the hotel.
Back in the room, the woman smile and pull kerambits. Which, if you didn’t know, are short, curved knives with a ring in the handle, and traditionally considered women’s weapons in Indonesia.
Smash cut to Reacher running up the stairs, arriving at the room, and finding bodyguards and thugs’ bodies hither and yon, and the women, whom he has been helping, gone.
It’s a fun scene. Mindful violence, and imagined rather than shown

…
* This is an example of what we in the writing biz call “hanging a lantern on it.” Some event happens that is unlikely, such as murderous thugs pulling knives instead of guns, so the writer points it out in an effort to explain why they’d do that. Means the writer knew it made no sense, and did it anyway. 

 

Over the years, my supplements changed as I learned more about such things. Now and then, I discovered new research showed something I was taking was less effective, or had undesirable side-effects, so I dropped those.

My current stack is based on research studies I’ve read — and I have to point out these are things I think useful for me and what I’m trying to do, and not for everybody. For instance, creatine seems to be helpful for almost everybody; HMB seems to work, to a degree, for old folks, or people with muscle-wasting illnesses, but not younger and healthy people.

Some of the elements can be gotten in sufficient quantity through a healthy diet, some are more useful for offsetting deficiencies in food-sources. A couple of these below were recommended by my doctors.

Vitamins:

Daily multiple

Areds 2

C

D3

Muscle maintenance:

Creatine

HMB

Other:

low-dose Lithium

low-dose Melatonin

low-dose aspirin

Considering adding:

NMN

Nattokinase

If I elect to add nattokinase, I’ll stop the low-dose aspirin, since both are blood-thinners. Still reading studies on these. Not sure the jury is in on D3's blood-thinning effects at normal doses.

If you are thinking about adding any supplements, two things: 1) Check with your PCP — some supplements can interact with prescribed medications. 2) go online and read legitimate studies. Find these by using the name, then add “research.” This will bring up medical studies, pop-science sites, and folks selling things. Mostly ignore the latter two. See what a supplement will, won't, or might do, and the safety thereof.

An example: “HMB research” shows as the top-five sites on DuckDuckGo, as of now:

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Healthline

pmc.ncbi.nim.nih.gov

myHMB

PubMed

 Been doing some research on Nattokinase, a supplement based on fermented soybeans. Supposedly one of the reasons Japanese people live longer than Americans do, on average.

When I say research, I don’t mean Bob’s Blog — this means reading the double-blind and placebo studies, which, unless you have a medical background, is like wading through mud up your hips. I have a medical background, and even so, the graphs and charts are mind boggling.I found a pretty good general overview, written in more understandable language, with links to the studies, here: https://www.supplementscience.org/supplements/nattokinaseThis includes in vitro, animal, and human studies.
If you are thinking about adding this supplement into your stack, it’s a good idea to read enough to see which claims are legitimate — there are some — and which are pie-in-the-sky.You’re welcome. See less

 A few years back, during a serious heat wave where we hit 116º F., my eighteen-year-old fridge went on the blink. As did a lot of other refrigerators, the repair guy I called allowed. Be a while before he could get here.

The repair guy eventually came out, said he could keep it going for bit, but that I needed to start looking for a new one, because the end was near.
What would you get to replace it? I asked.
As close to this one as you can find. No electronics, no ice or water from the door, no computers. Heat wave like this comes along, fridge is backed up against an outside-exposed wall? The circuit boards fry, and they are hard to come by. Might be weeks before you could get a replacement. 
The current new models are mostly expensive, shitty, might not get five years before they start needing repairs. Stay analog.
My wife wanted one with a freezer compartment at the bottom. We were constrained as to size, the space we had was for an eighteen-cubic-foot model. I shopped around, found one that would work, ordered it, and the old one died while it was enroute. We did a couple days with ice in the bathtub and ice chests.
The new one had some quirks. It made burbly noises, moaned, groaned, probably haunted by the ghost of the old one, but it kept the food cold and -- knock on wood -- still does. I didn’t like the pull-out freezer, but okay.
The biggest quirk? Doors opened and closed fine; however, if you opened one, grabbed something, and closed the door, but forget there was something else you needed and tried to re-opened it immediately?It didn’t want to do that. The seal was so tight it created a vacuum, and it took considerable muscle to break that seal and get the door open. I mean, move-the-whole-fridge force.
YouTube suggested something like Vaseline on the rubber seal, but that didn’t do much. So either you waited thirty seconds after you shut the door to re-open it, or, you gave the handle a mighty tug to break the vacuum.
Which brings us to yesterday’s adventure.
All that mighty tugging on the handle resulted in the top screw of the handle getting loose. After a while, you could see the screw in the gap, and through that, the writing on the wall. Not “if,” but “when.” 
Last night, the screw came out. 
Well, shit. 
And here’s a thing: There is no way to access the Phillips head end of the screw.
So, it was gonna be duct tape or the internet. I got the duct tape out, just in case. Armed with the fridge’s model number, I went looking.
Apparently on this unit, one removes the handle by pressing it toward the door and sliding it up, where the brackets allow it to be removed.
Well, no. Tried that, didn’t work.
Sometimes, the internet said, the thing gets stuck. Pressure and application of a mallet at the bottom might do it.
Yes, that did the trick. Yay!
Getting the tangled screw out of the bracket took some doing, more mallet-work and a screwdriver in the vise. That done, I was able to reassemble the pieces and presto! Handle repaired! Only took an hour.Understand, for most handy folks, this would be a three-minute chore. But for me, a man who has trouble operating anything more complicated than a wheelbarrow? It was a small, but serious victory.
Never a dull moment.