Terribly good puzzle

Yay! I got my Sun puzzle fix today. It's a good one too, but then again I'm a sucker for a good oxymoron. Let's do our ever-popular SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

Opening Arguments is from Lee Glickstein, and each of the themed entries start off with two seemingly-contradictory words:

20A: Site of Custer's last Stand (LITTLE BIG HORN) Besides being the site of Custer's demise, it also inspired the title of Dustin Hoffman's "Little Big Man" and country band Little Big Town.

28A: 1957 hit for the Dell-Vikings (COME GO WITH ME). Besides this catchy doo-wop number the Dell-Vikings AKA the Del-Vikings, Dell Vikings del Vikings and just plain Vikings are also famous for being one of the few integrated bands back in the segregated 50's. Speaking of doo-wop 31D: Doo-___ (WOP) crosses this entry. I wonder if that was accidental or intentional.

36A: State song of the Granite State (OLD NEW HAMPSHIRE) This one gave me more trouble than any other. I'm far from perfect on my state nicknames -- especially Yankee states -- and when I had _ _ _ NE I put in MAINE, thereby slowing progress for some time.

44A: Neglected (OUT IN THE COLD)

54A: Digressing from the main topic (OFF ON A TANGENT)

Other opposites in the puzzle (albeit not in the same answer):

35A: Astronaut's affirmative (A-OK) and 46D: "You cheated" (NO FAIR)

5D: Level (BULLDOZE) and 67A: Do a nursery task (REPOT)

43A: Remove the skin of, as an apple (PARE) and 52D: Like movies on pay-per-view (UNCUT)

6D: Wearer of mini-skirts (BARBIE) and 55D: Dreaded person (OGRE)

As already noted by the great Rex Parker, on whose website there was a lively discussion about the word "nerd", it's kind of interesting that FONZ ("Happy Days" character, with "the") who used the word a lot and 13D: Dr. Seuss's "If I Ran the ___ "(ZOO) (which is where the word first appeared) both show up on the Sun puzzle today.

26D: Brand of tomato paste (AMORE) would have been easier for me if they'd clued it as Italian word for love.

15A: Company that produces wrap sheets (ALCOA) refers to Reynolds Wrap and other fine products.

33D: Other than Graham Joyce I try to stay from horror fiction, so 33D: 2003 Dean Koontz bestseller (ODD THOMAS) was unfamiliar to me. It must be pretty good though, since it's already spawned two sequels, Forever Odd and Brother Odd.

Your health tip of the day is at 61A: Stress and smoking, for two (AGERS), and your culinary tip of the day is from me, despite what 60D: W. Somerset Maugham's "Cakes and ___" (ALE) would have you believe, milk is a better beverage to consume with cake.

I've got to go back to work. See ya Wednesday.

More books I've read in 2007

I don't know why the Sun puzzle never came out today, but it's almost my bedtime and I can't wait any longer, so this one will have to be passed down to posterity sans Green Genius commentary.

Before I go, a couple of books I've recently read:


The Lives of the Muses from Francine Prose. I enjoyed this book very much even though I can only stand so much history without running screaming for the nearest novel. The two main thoughts I came away from this book were 1.) Muses aren't always good for you or for your art; see John and Yoko 2.) Alice in Wonderland is a masterpiece, one of my favorite books, but there's no way I would let my daughter hang out at Lewis Carroll's house, the Victorian equivalent of Neverland Ranch.

My Life in Miniature by Gail Simone. When I was a kid reading comic books, I was blown away on a regular basis, but it doesn't happen much anymore. I've become unfortunately immune to many of the wonders of the four-color world, but every month in the pages of "The All-New Atom" Gail Simone makes me feel like a kid again. Her stories are funny, scary and full of the sense of wonder I try to nourish and protect. Ryan Choi, the new Atom, has to deal with being caught in the middle of a war between science and magic, the great cancer god, a thirty-foot tall naked woman on the rampage, and teaching college courses to uninterested students. Great stuff. I wish Ms Simone was going to be at the Charlotte convention this weekend. I'd like to shake her hand and thank her.

And we're still. . .

Waiting for the Sun

What I bagged on the book hunt

There's not much I enjoy more than a good book sale. Rummaging through the stacks clears and focuses the mind and relieves stress better than any meditation technique I've ever tried. And when it's over you have a more tangible reward than inner peace -- although you usually have that too.
Today I went to a going-out-of-business book sale. Now I hate to see any bookstore close its doors, but it was probably inevitable with this one. Nice people, but not good businessmen. They were in a bad location. Old book and new books were mixed together. Way too much Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel type stuff for my tastes. Still I'm sorry to see them go.
But I do have some consolation, like this book autographed by one of my favorite mystery writers. Sharyn McCrumb can do it all. She can write suspense and she can be very, very funny as she is in my favorite (so far) of her books "If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him."
I also picked up this autographed beauty from George Plimpton, and to paraphrase Will Rogers
"They ain't making any more of them." :
I also got this Wizard of Oz book I've been wanting:
This art book:
(What? It's art!)

I also picked up Frank Sinatra: My father by Nancy Sinatra, The Atlas of Past Times by John Haywood, one of the few P.J. O'Rourke books I don't have, If You Want to Write by Branda Ueland, a golf book for either my brother or my father, a beautiful 100th anniversary edition of East of Eden, Mark O'Donnell's novel Getting Over Homer, three really nice baseball books including this one:First Words: Early Writings From 22 Favorite Contemporary Authors from Paul Mandelbaum, When I Was Your Age: Remarkable Achievements of Writers, Artists and musicians at every age from 1 to 100, and The Billiard Table Murders from Glen Baxter, whom I'd never heard of, but it looks like I've been missing out.
Oh, and an official Spalding Baseball score book.
And finally, I'm usually pretty persnickety about the condition of the books I buy. All the books other than this one are new or at least look new. This one's a little beat up and it's got an inscription, but I couldn't resist:
I was kinda surprised that there was a 77-page manual on such an activity, but obviously there's a lot about it I don't know.

And I got all of these books for 26 bucks. Talk about nirvana.

Then when I got home, this was in my mailbox:
That one I got free from Book Mooch, one of my favorite websites, both as way to get new books and to find good homes for books of mine that are ready to move on.
Next weekend is the Heroes Con where there will be a whole convention center full of books and comics to rummage through. I'll be so innerly peaceful I may ascend.

Weekend Warrior 6-8-07

Now that its been brought to my attention that the "themeless" Thursday and Friday Sun puzzles actually do sometimes have a mini-theme, I'm looking for one in today's puzzle by Patrick Berry. I'll share what I found right after this SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

I found a bunch of mini-themes -- well, I guess some were more like micro-themes -- starting with homophones -- 9D: "Go!" (SCAT) and 35D: Game in which the lowest card is a seven (SKAT); and moving on to rhymes -- 54D: Modern address ending )NET) 51D: adjoined (MET) and 23D: Be a wheelman for (ABET); and then names (of writers) that look like they should rhyme but don't -- 13D: Author of "A Life on the Road" (KURALT) and17A: French author Charles who wrote fairy tales (PERRAULT).

What about grandmothers? -- 37D: Adviser on child-rearing, maybe (NANA) and 12D: Grandma Ida's portrayer on "Malcolm in the Middle" (CLORIS) (a role for which Miss Leachman won two Emmys.) -- or exotic actresses with three letter names -- 43A: "Wayne's World" co-star of Mike and Dana (TIA) and 6A: "Ally McBeal" actress (LIU) and I can just hear Rex Parker howling now. He is a crusader for the "stop-referencing-Ally McBeal" movement, a movement I can't say I support since I watched "Ally" and can usually remember enough about it to get these clues. Lucy Liu is better known for "Charlie's Angels" and "Kill Bill."

Card games is a pretty obvious one: 32A: Trick-taking game (HEARTS) and 14D: (SPADES) (same clue) along with the aforementioned SKAT, but what if Hearts and Spades were suits instead of games, would that work? Well, Lady LOU (10D; iconic Mae West role) was originally named Diamond Lil in a play by the same name, but both were changed when they filmed it, Lil to Lou, and "Diamond Lil" to "She Done Him Wrong". Among Mae's memorable lines in that movie were:

"Diamonds is my career."

and "It was a toss up between whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost."

So that only leaves clubs. And that's where it came to a halt. If the DARLA of 4D referred to the "Little Rascals" instead of "Finding Nemo" I might be able to convince myself that Spanky and the gang was a club, but as it is, I'll have to settle for incomplete micro-theme.

My favorite mini-theme is this one: OLYMPUS (38D: Fuji alternative) was the TOPMOST (39D: Culminating) mountain in GREECE (25D: Truman Doctrine beneficiary) and mythological home of the TEMPLE (31A: The rite place?)of the gods, such as POSEIDON (52A: 2006 remake of a 1972 film.) I think that definitely qualifies. Poseidon might also work with 46D: He played Austin Powers's father in "Goldmember" (CAINE) if we do ill-fated ships as in "The Caine Mutiny".

It occurred to me I might be stretching things past the breaking point when I thought maybe there was a connection between 15A: Field for upwardly-mobile types? (AVIATION) and 11D: It's not seen in musical performances (AIR GUITAR), but after exhausting all the connected entries there's not that much to talk about.

My old friend Mata HARI shows up at 24A. She's clued as "1917 Paris arrest report name" and I can't argue with that, so no "she was framed" rant this time.

23A: Mach3 predecessor (ATRA) You know crossword constructors hate to see some things -- like Atra razors and SSTs and lira --

go the way of the dodo. Maybe they should look for new ways to clue such entries.

Have a great weekend!

Maybe I'm a schmuck. . .

Well, this one really wasn't geared toward me, was it? A Carolina country boy can't be expected to know much about Hebrew culture, can he? I solved the puzzle but only one of the themed words could I define, and that one only vaguely. If you're fluent in Yiddish, you were probably slapping your knee when you finished this puzzle; I was headed toward Dictionary.com.

That's okay, I always enjoy learning new stuff.

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.


"Puzzle Tov" is by Jack McInturff and the conceit here is a play on words from Jewish or Israeli culture, like so:

18A: Where Elijah's cup and the Haggadah are stored? (SEDER CLOSET) Seder is "a ceremonial dinner that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and includes the reading of the Haggadah and the eating of symbolic foods, generally held on the first night of Passover by Reform Jews.". This is the one I knew. It was downhill from here.

34A: Tale about a round dance? (HORA STORY) a traditional Romanian and Israeli round dance.

39A: Journeys to get chocolate Hannukah candy? (GELT TRIPS) This one really had me scratching my head. The only time I've heard the word "gelt" it was the past tense of "geld" and that is one journey nobody wants to take. My old friend Dictionary.com said it was also Yiddish slang for money. What did that have to do with chocolate candy? A little more research revealed another meaning of gelt -- chocolate that looks like money. I'd never heard this word before, but I'd seen gelt before. I think the Easter bunny may have brought me and my siblings some, but we didn't call it gelt, we called it chocolate money

55A: Fruity beverage served in a hut used in Tishri? (SUKKAH PUNCH) Sukkah is a booth or hut roofed with branches, built against or near a house or synagogue and used during the Jewish festival of Sukkoth as a temporary dining or living area. Tishri is the first month of the Jewish calendar. As much as I love corny jokes and wordplay, I have a feeling that if I did know Yiddish this one would've cracked me up.

Actually, the one that made me laugh the most was due to a misunderstanding, I thought 4A: Position that an up-and-comer is unlikely to take (MCJOB) was an emcee job and I couldn't see why an up-and-comer wouldn't take such a position. Aha! Mental repunctuation, as Richard Maltby reminds me every month in Harper's Magazine, is the key to solving the puzzle. McJob is a dead-end, low-paying position that an up-and-comer would wisely avoid.

Other entries of interest:

Losing pitcher to Don in his World Series perfect game (SAL) In the 1956 World Series Don Larsen of the Yankees threw what is still the only no-hitter in baseball postseason history -- and it was not only a no-hitter; it was a perfect game, where no one on the opposing team reached base by any means. His opponent that day was the Brooklyn Dodgers' Sal (The Barber) Maglie, so called because of his tendency to throw inside and up, giving batters a close shave, as it were. Don Larsen seems an unlikely choice to throw a perfect game under such pressure. He started game 2 of the '56 Series and only lasted two innings. his nickname was Goony Bird. On the same day as he threw the perfect game, his wife filed for divorce.
I am by no means a Yankee fan but that is cool -- the perfect game I mean, not the divorce.

The only other Yiddish word is in the clue at 17A: Schmear topper (LOX).

Christianity and Islam get equal time at 31A: He was affiliated with Peter, Paul, and Mary (Jesus) and 4D: Eid observers (MOSLEMS)

I love my tea, but I'd never heard the word "bohea" before -- 45D: Bohea's better alternative (PEKOE), bohea, it turns out, is an inferior grade of tea grown late in the season.

45A: Arroz con pollo tidbits (PEAS) Arroz con pollo is rice and chicken. Peas are optional, but add a nice touch of flavor and color.

9D: Wizards, formerly (BULLETS) before the NBA team moved to our nation's capital, they were known as the Baltimore Bullets. I read this clue too fast and was looking not for a former term for wizards but a formal one.

That's all for today. Shalom!

Wednesday 6-6-07 Steven Kahn

"Gaming Names" is by Steven Kahn. I'm not sure I understand the title since only one of the people named in the themed entries can be said to have anything to do with games. Maybe it has something to do with the baseball subtheme -- and maybe I'm just missing something.

This is an interesting midweek puzzle and we'll get to it right after this SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

4D: Arnold Schwarzenegger? (ACTING GOVERNOR) I'm in a good mood so I won't quibble over Ahnold's "acting" abilities, merely point out that other actors who went into politics include Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, Shirley Temple and that guy who played "Gopher" on The Love Boat.

And speaking of politics, 17D: Charlton Heston? (SHOOTING STAR) At first I thought, wait a minute, Heston didn't do that many westerns (sorry, I mean "oaters") but then I remembered he was the President of the National Rifle Association. He was also president of the Screen Actors Guild and he campaigned for John Kennedy and marched with Martin Luther King back in his younger days. "Ben-Hur" and "The Ten Commandments" were classics, but my two favorite Heston flicks are "Soylent Green" and "The Omega Man."

My favorite theme answer is 18D: Iván Rodríguez (CROUCHING TIGER). For those of you who don't follow baseball, Rodríguez (AKA Pudge or I-Rod) is the catcher for the defending American League champion Detroit Tigers. Catchers crouch, see? So far Rodríguez has stayed out of politics.

Other baseball clues in the puzzle include:

44A: Cap in the Baseball Hall of Fame (ANSON) That's Cap Anson, who retired in 1898 but still holds several Cubs team records, including most including most hits, singles, doubles, runs and RBIs, which I guess says something about how well things have gone for the Cubs in the last 109 years. In keeping with this puzzle's sub theme, Cap was elected city clerk of Chicago and later ran unsuccessfully for sheriff.

63A: Retiring the side makes it go down (ERA) That's earned run average, the average number of runs a pitcher allows per nine innings pitched.

39A: Indians home (CLEVELAND)

53D: ____ Park (home of the San Diego Padres) (PETCO)

And since what's a day at the ballpark without a cold one: 23A: Chinese beer brand (TSINGTAO)

Other entries of interest:

32D: Vintage Fords (MODEL AS) I had the final LAS and put in IMPALAS, not knowing that Kahn had a much older vintage in mind (and forgetting that Impala was made by Chevrolet.)

35D: Moxie CrimeFighter's magician father (PENN) That would be Penn Gillette, the taller, less-silent half of Penn and Teller. He seems to give a different reason for giving his daughter that name every time he's asked. My favorite was so that if she's ever pulled over for speeding, she can tell the cop "We're on the same side; I'm a CrimeFighter too."

7A: Research room (LAB) Thank goodness it wasn't about dogs, those "lab coat with fleas" clues get me every time.

55A: Alternatives to Yodels (HOHOS) they don't sell Drake's Cakes in South Carolina, and my cupcake days are mostly behind me. I've never had a Yodel -- or a Devil Dog or a Yankee Doodle or a Sunny Doodle or a Ring-Ding or a Funny Bone. If they're not any better than Hostess or Little Debbie I ain't missing much.

That's all for today. See ya Thursday.

A Tuesday Tail

You don't have to be a contortionist to enjoy Sean O.F. Smith's "Turning Tail". A taste for wordplay and the ability to spell a few simple words backwards are all you need.

Let's get started with our new and improved SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times check this out. Or if you'd rather decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

I think this is only the second Sean O.F. Smith puzzle I've seen, and I liked this one as much as I did the first one. What he's done is taken four common phrases, reversed the spelling in the last word of each and come up with an interesting definition for the resulting new phrase.
Like so:

17A: Bill paid with blood money (VAMPIRE TAB) When it's time to settle up with the bartender for all those bloody Marys.

25A: Prenup demand from someone with religious convictions? (LOVE ME LOVE MY GOD), the weakest of the themed entries IMO. Too many people actually do make this a condition of their marriage acceptance. I prefer my themed entries a bit more off the wall.

Like 46A: Scanty second salsa servings? (ITSY BITSY REDIPS) Love the word "redips" which I've never seen as a noun. I also love the alliterative clue.

59A: What resulted from a levee collapse? (BIG BAD FLOW)

Other entries of interest:

1D: What Dr. Seuss's Mrs. McCave named all 23 of her sons (DAVE). If you want to get off on the right foot with me, start the puzzle with a Seuss reference. Mrs. McCave must have liked the sound of Dave McCave but she soon regretted the decision to christen all of her kids with the same name. Now she wishes she had named one of them

. . . Bodkin Van Horn. And one of them Hoos-Foos.
And one of them Snimm. And one of them Hot-Shot.
And one Sunny Jim. And one of them Shadrack.
And one of them Blinkey. And one of them Stuffy.
And one of them Stinkey. Another one Putt-Putt.
Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt.
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt.
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate.

I don't know, I think I'd rather be named Dave like all 22 of my brothers than be named Stinkey or Soggy Muff.

21A: In need of a fix (BROKEN)

23A: Semi-homemade cooking" proponent Sandra (LEE) I'd never heard of Ms. Lee, but evidently she's got an empire approaching Martha Stewart-like levels. I only have room for one shortcut-taking TV chef in my life and I'm sticking with Rachael Ray.

16A: He filled his boat with pairs (NOAH) Well, not exactly. God actually told Noah to bring seven of all the clean beasts and two of all the unclean beasts. Evidently fowls are clean because he specifically says to bring seven of all the birds. (Genesis chap 7, verse 2 & 3). I had a duck when I was a kid and that was the most unclean beast I've ever seen. He literally pooped with every step he took. Noah was a God-fearing man and at age 600, too old to argue, but I think I might have (politely) pointed out that maybe two ducks was plenty.
Hell, no ducks. They can swim, can't they? Why do I need ducks on my ark?

4D: Put a fork in (IMPALE) I particularly enjoy the fact that IMPALE intersects VAMPIRE and my favorite movie Dracula Christopher LEE.

10D: Fast and loose, for example (ANTONYMS) Hey, they are antonyms. How did they come to be linked together?

22D: _____ Lama Ding Dong (RAMA) They don't write'em like that anymore.

37D: Bogart/Bacall film of 1948 (KEY LARGO) Great great movie. If you haven't seen it, stop doing so many crossword puzzles and check it out.

42D: A bases-loaded triple earns you three (RBIS). I had RUNS at first. Both are correct in the baseball sense.

54D: Rosemary's husband in a 1922 Broadway play (ABIE) "Abie's Irish Rose," about the courtship of a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl, was a popular Broadway play in the 1920's and was filmed twice (in 1928 and 1946) but it's likely it would have faded into semi-obscurity were it not for the fact that crossword puzzles won't let it rest.

I Don't Care if Monday's Blue

Ya know, I try to be a positive person. I don't want to hate Mondays, but these Mondays where I have to wait for the Sun are a pain. I never know what time they're going to be posted, but I know I'll be at work. And although my priorities are in order and I'm not going to let my job interfere with my crossword blogging, still the cursing from my boss and the whining from my co-workers can be distracting. Scanning is a major operation, and Blogger is often wonky on my work computer.

And I see they only put one week's worth of puzzles, so I'll have to do this again next Monday.

Oh well, let's do the SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times, and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. You can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

I realize it's just because I'm crotchety, but 1 Across seems pointlessly verbose -- Hits hard, as a fly (in the insect or baseball sense) (SWATS). Wouldn't this clue work just as well on a Monday without the part in parentheses? I mean if I interpret "Hits hard, as a fly" to refer to insects and you think baseball and we both get "SWATS" out of it, why say more? Also, I think if I hadn't had to wait for this puzzle, the crossing of ET AL (8D: endnote abbr.) and EL AL (21A: Airline with the Israeli flag on its planes' tails) might not bother me but today it kinda does, and so does being reminded that there was a Yankee player on the baseball stamps from a year or so ago (37A: Player honored with Campanella, Greenberg, and Mantle on "Baseball Sluggers" postage stamps: OTT).

Enough negativity. I actually liked "Noteworthy Reminder" by Gary Steinmehl. The theme here is "Every Good Boy Does Fine" is a mnemonic for EGBDF, the lines of the treble clef.

17A: From time to time (EVERY NOW AND THEN)

26A: What the road to hell is paved with, according to a saying (GOOD INTENTIONS)

38A: Young studs (BOY TOYS)

48: Robot's response, maybe (DOES NOT COMPUTE). Slight quibble here. Every robot I've ever known speaks in complete sentences without understood subjects, so I think they would say "That does not compute.)

63A: Manipulatives help develop them (FINE MOTOR SKILLS)

By the way if you don't like "Every Good Boy Does Fine" here are some others that might help you remember your treble clef:

Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet

Elvis's Guitar Broke Down Friday

Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips

Even George Bush Drives Fast

Every Good Bird Does Fly

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Every Good Boy Deserves Football

Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Every Good Boy Deserves Fun

Every Green Bus Drives Fast

My favorite clue was 10D: Cat burglar's target (PET SHOP) but I also appreciated being reminded of one of my favorite movies 6D: Gum-chewing girl in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (VIOLET) and less so of one of the most overrated movies of all time 16A: "_____ Rider (1969 Dennis Hopper Film) (EASY).

Gotta get back to work. I might add a couple more thoughts or a scan if I get a chance. Otherwise I'll see you on Tuesday.

My contribution to Russian Literature

Yesterday I asked my wife Kim if it was possible that we were living in a horror movie. And the reason I asked her that was because I received in the mail -- with no return address (postmarked London, England) and no explanation inside -- this scary-looking book in some bizarre-looking language:

Next I figured all sorts of tragic and unexplainable events would begin to befall us, and no matter what we did -- burn it, bury it -- we could never get rid of the cursed tome.

But then I started thinking, ya know, that dragon doesn't really look all that scary. And from there I was able to figure out the mystery.
I had a short story published in the June 1999 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was called "Sing a Song of Sixpence, a Bottle Full of Rye" and it featured my fish-out-of-water detective Jack B. Goode who has since appeared in a couple more stories in that fine publication. In this story he was investigating the attempted murder of Prince Charming at the behest of Princess Cinderella. That story was later anthologized in this book:
There was also a British version of the Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy which I received at the same time as I received the above American version. That was a couple of years ago and I kinda figured that was it as far as that goes, until it dawned on me that this was the Russian version of the Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy. I can't read a word of Russian, but I was able to pick out my story because it was prefaced by an italicized nursery rhyme:

If you are not handsome at twenty,
If you are not strong at thirty,
If you are not rich at forty,
If you are not wise at fifty,
You never will be.

And because my simple hard-boiled nursery crime story requires footnotes in Russian. For some reason, the word being footnoted is in English, and Prince Charming's brothers Winsome and Alluring are explained as are the words "nimble" and "quick," the expression "to eat crow"
"Simple Simon" and the word manqué (which is a word I like and it pops up a lot in my writing -- heck, it was in the column I just wrote, see previous entry) And at the end of the story is three pages going into detail about such concepts as "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" and who in the heck Tom, Tom, the piper's son was.
Somehow I have some concerns about how well the humor survived the translation.
Oh well, it was cool to see my name in Russian and to know that this same book was sent to Neil Gaiman.

My new column

I just sent off my new column to Country Standard Time magazine. It's either very late or editor Jeff Remz knows he needs to give me a hard deadline a little in advance of when he actually needs the piece. At any rate, here it is:

HOW I WISH DALLAS WAS IN TENNESSEE

I doubt this will surprise you, but musing on all things country here in CST doesn't put bread on the table much less pay the mortgage, so until Jeff Remz loosens up the purse strings in a BIG way, I'll have a day job.
Which means I'll have co-workers – or co-worker, since where I work is basically a two-man print shop. My previous co-worker was a young man named Bubba – (That's right, Bubba; and yes, I do live in the South, why do you ask?) – and we got along fine except that we couldn't agree on what radio station to listen to. I like country, and he liked 90s hip-hop, the Beastie Boys and other causes of cochlear-bleeding.
Bubba has moved on now. When I heard that my new co-worker was a man with the first name Dallas and the middle name Tex, I thought that maybe this was a guy who appreciated country music and there would be no more arguments over the radio. When during our first conversation he mentioned how much he liked Conway Twitty, I knew I had found the perfect co-worker.
But the honeymoon was a brief one. The first sign of trouble was when Dallas made a disparaging remark about an upcoming Merle Haggard concert. Then he insulted Dwight Yoakam. I guess I've always known that there are two types of country fans. I've made a vow to be less disparaging of divergent opinions, so I'll just say Dallas is one of the other kind. After Conway Twitty we don't have much in common. His second favorite country singer is Travis Tritt, who has always seemed so outlaw-manqué that he represents to me the time when country lost its authenticity. And he also loves Rascal Flatts, who I don't hate, but they're just another part of the bubble-gum-ization of country and I resent them for that.
So we don't agree on what radio to listen to either. He wants it on the mainstream country station, I want it on classic country or on the Braves games when they're playing.
But it doesn't really matter. Print shops are loud places and you can't hear much anyway. But Dallas shuts everything down whenever Tritt or some song he likes comes on – even if it's coming on for the 10th time today. And I've told him if I hear that damn "I'm your buckaroo, Dad, ain't that cool" song one more time I'm going to fling the radio into the river. I mean it too. Tolerance of divergent opinions be damned.
You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I kinda miss Bubba and the Beastie Boys.