Please come to my party Friday afternoon from three to five-thirty and be the head with me.JOHNNo present, please M.E.W.
Saturday, October 9, 2021
Halloween postcard: "be the head with me"
Friday, October 8, 2021
Book cover with creepy keys:
"Never the Same Door"
- Title: Never the Same Door
- Author: John Rankine (1918-2013, a native of Wales)
- Designer of creepy cover: Richard Weaver
- About Richard Weaver: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states: "Almost nothing is known about this artist, who created numerous covers of sf books for the British publisher Dennis Dobson from 1965 to 1980 and apparently did no other genre work. His covers sometimes seem minimalist, products more of graphic design (such as collaged clip-art) than of studio art, though others are more conventionally pictorial."
- So, where did Weaver get those keys? We'll never know.
- Are they real keys, or is this some kind of photo manipulation? We'll never know.
- Whose faces are those? We'll never know.
- What if I search Google for skeleton keys with human faces? Very little that's relevant turns up. And, frankly, you should be glad about that.
- Publisher: Dennis Dobson/Dobson Books/Dobson Science Fiction
- About Dennis Dobson: Wikipedia has this curious tidbit: "Dobson died in 1978 aged 59, after suffering a brain haemorrhage on the train returning from the Frankfurt Book Fair. After his death the publishing company was wound down and his widow bought and restored Brancepeth Castle [in England]."
- Wait. She bought a castle? Yes, and the Dobson family still owns it. And it gets better. Wikipedia adds that the widowed Margaret Dobson bought the castle specifically to store the stock of books from her late husband's publishing company. She restored the castle over many years and hosted craft fairs and Shakespearean performances there. But, to be clear, she first bought the castle in order to store books in it. That's a pantheon-level achievement right there. Also, consider this: If those skeleton keys with human faces exist, they might just be in that 12th century castle, which by the way is open to the public on certain days of the year.
- Ok, phew. Let's get back to the book: OK.
- Publication year: 1967
- Pages: 173
- Format: Hardcover
- Price: 18s
- Dust jacket excerpt: A man does not step into the same river twice. He never goes through the same door. To Kurt Yardley, this is amply borne out by the train of circumstance which follows the forced landing of his freighter Charib on the bleakly inhospitable plains of an unlisted planet.
- First sentence: Commander Kurt Yardley of the freighter M.M. Charib cleared an ivorine tablet and began again.
- Last sentence: 'Check.'
- Random sentence from the middle: 'O.K. Let them get well down into the valley and given them a high-power raspberry.'
- Rating on Amazon: 5 stars out of 5, but with just one reviewer as of this date.
- Rating on Goodreads: 3 stars out of 5, but with just one reviewer as of this date.
- Does anyone have anything to say about this book? Apparently not. There are plenty of blogs that review piles of science-fiction books from the 20th century, but it doesn't seem that this one has made it onto anyone's "to do" list. If you're reading this and have thoughts on Never the Same Door, send them my way and I'll post them.
- But what about those keys? We'll never know.
Mystery snapshot: A girl, a carriage and a carved pumpkin
Thursday, October 7, 2021
Nostalgia lane: "Lonesome Ghosts" on the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer
There was, however, one thing that gave us control over nearly every aspect of what we were viewing:
The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer.
I didn't have one, but I had multiple friends who did, so I was well-acquainted with its greatness. I was fascinated with it, which might have been an early hint of my later cinema fandom (ahem, nerdness).
The Movie Viewer, which was introduced in 1973 and required no batteries, just a light source, allowed the viewer to control the speed of the film. You could crank it up to Keystone Cops (or Benny Hill) levels. Or you could slow it down and literally watch it frame by frame, to see how the filmmakers or animators did their job. And you could watch it backwards, too. All of these features allowed for Antonioni's Blowup or Stone's JFK levels of examination (without the need to solve a murder). It was YouTube long before YouTube.
For me, and appropriately for its discussion during Mild Fear 2021, one cartridge stood above the rest: Walt Disney's Lonesome Ghosts. The original cartoon is eight minutes long and was released in late 1937. It's an abridged version that appears on the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer cartridge. And it's basically Ghostbusters, a half-century before the Ivan Reitman comedy. Three "ghost exterminators" (Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck) are called out to investigate a haunted house. Hijinx ensue, because the ghosts mostly have the upper hand over the bumbling investigators.
I spent ridiculous amounts of time watching this short. Going back and forth over its animation frames to see how it was lovingly drawn and how the jokes were put together. I'm not otherwise a huge Disney fan, as television made me more of a Looney Tunes/Hanna-Barbera kid, but this was one product of the House of Mouse that I adored, thanks to Fisher-Price.Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Syd Hoff's "The Witch, the Cat, and the Baseball Bat"
"Once there was a witch who didn't like baseball simply because if there's one thing a witch doesn't like it's a game that gives people pleasure."
There aren't many mentions of this book online, and only a few lackluster reviews on Goodreads. Did it leave a lasting impression with anyone? Well, I nosed around and found a 2019 post on the blog CJ & Ink. CJ asks the question: "Did you have a favorite book, story, or movie that you loved as a kid?"