Calvin and Hobbes

I actually sat down (or laid down in bed more often) and re-read all of Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" compilations for the first time in a fair while. It's a little much to read ten years worth of a daily strip in a go but it was interesting and ultimately a bunch of fun.

Sure you get to see a a couple of gags get recycled and played around with a bunch of times of the strip's daily run but it only proves tiresome once in a while. But as way of recompense there's lots of dinosaurs, space aliens and insane sleigh rides.

Along the way you can clearly see the strip's evolution both graphically and writing wise. Over time the artwork becomes more refined (in the best sense) and more expansive. When Watterson gained the upperhand with the syndicate and papers he was able to draw his Sunday strips in great big panels and he let loose like a latter day George Herriman.

The stories become less gags and Dennis the Menace on steroids and take on a more surreal tone as well as direct commentaries on modern life. The strips ridiculing much of modern art and literary academia are priceless.

"Calvin and Hobbes" is often place in a triumvarate of daily strips that marked the last great age of daily comics. The other two were "Bloom County" and "The Farside". Try rereading "Bloom County" and I dare you not to be somewhat ashamed you loved as much as you think you did. I know I am. It's also hideously dated and I'm less willing to cut its deliberate "Doonesbury" stylistic ripoff much slack. "The Farside" still holds up as extremely funny (though I've read enough Kliban books to see some strong similarities), but it's pretty much a miss in the graphics department.

Rereading Watterson's collections reminds me how much I miss his daily bit of humor in my paper, particularly in a time when "Boondocks" is held up as some sort of work of brilliance and "Cathy" and "Garfield" still haunt us. Last year they released a great big collection of all the "Calvin and Hobbes" strips and I sort of want to get them. Till I take the monetarily stupid plunge I'll hold on to my time and use worn collections. Besides, with title like "Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat" and "Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"" I don't really want to give up those individual books.

"The Jungle Book" - Rudyard Kipling

Forget singing bears and monkeys and think monkeys being eaten by snakes and limping man-eating tigers and sniveling jackals. Think brave little mongooses, brave horses and noble white seals. That's the reality of Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and not Phil Harris and Louie Prima. The real Shere Khan's nowhere near as silkily evil as George Sanders.

"The Jungle Book" is really a collection of short stories; 3 about Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves and 4 others about the lives and opinions of other animals, most notably Rikki Tikki Tavi the Mongoose. For all the anthropomorphization inherent in talking animals these creatures live in the real world where nature's "red in tooth and claw." There is death, both justified and simply as a matter of fact in the daily course of nature. Some of the tales are also interesting insights into life during the Raj.

The stories are exciting and beautifully told. Kipling has too often been dismissed as just a stooge for imperialism but here's a place where that arguement won't even come up. If you only know the story from the Disney movie do your self a favor and read the originals. They're true children's stories from a time when children weren't just spoon fed self congratulatory crap.

Led Zeppelin - DVD

In the early part of this new century Jimmy Page collected and sorted through tons of official and bootleg live footage of Zeppelin stretching from the early days to their last shows in London in 1979. He was even forced to recreate obsolete playback equipment so he could transfer some of the bootleg material. The resulting two DVD set was simply called Led Zeppelin.

It's an amazing collection showing the band evolve over ten or eleven years from a great little hard blues band into a staggering juggernaut. Robert Plant goes from being this almost gawky kid of 20 into a swaggering "blond god of phallic rock" as he once dismissed himself. Jimmy Page starts as an assured session man and ends as an hypnotic, heroin emaciated guitar playing icon. John Paul Jones always look above everything and John Bonham really does come across as pretty much nuts.

Most of the hits are here as well as great album cuts like "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Nobody's Fault But Mine". There are some over the top bits like way too long versions of "Dazed and Confused" but the final footage come from their 1979 Kenbworth show in England and has "Achilles Last Stand" followed by "In the Evening", "Kashmir" and and great version of "Whole Lotta Love" (a song I don't particularly like). I haven't seen such a monstrous and perfect live performance as in that sequence ever. Dang.

The DVD was released in conjunction with How the West Was Won, a three CD set creating an "entire" concert out of various pieces of two West Coast shows from their 1972 tour. That means you only get songs up to "Houses of the Holy" but who cares? The version of "Stairway to Heaven" is the best I know and "Going to California" and "The Ocean" are outright beautiful.

In these days of crappy pop music Zep's a band to wash out all the bad tastes with. There really wasn't anything else like them and there sure isn't these days.

The Violent World of Parker - Richard Stark

Starting in the early sixties crime writer Donald Westlake, using the pen name Richard Stark, created the character of Parker. He's a cold, utterly ammoral thief who does whatever is needed to pull off his heists and deal with the people around him. If it includes murder or kidnapping, so be it. The books were written in a terse, taut style and are brutal and violent.

I finally read the first two (there are 16 original books from the sixties and seventies and a further seven from the past decade or so), "The Hunter" and "The Man With the Getaway Face" and was blown away. I'm on my way to read the third, "The Outfit" as soon as a I finish this. I've never really read anything quite like them before and am looking forward to reading the seven I've got.

These books are models of economy. They're short (about 150 pages each) and tight. The move swiftly and violently and no matter how bad Parker is, which is pretty awful, you want him to succeed. I'm not giving away any of the plots so you can be fully surprised when you open them for the first time. Truly amazing books.

Their biggest problem is that they are hard to come by. The early ones were reprinted but only the first six or so. They can be purchased through ABE or Amazon but they aren't cheap. I just got the third and sixth ones for 15 bucks apiece and am looking to spend even more for some of the later volumes. If you can find them in a used book store grab them when you can because they are absolutely worth it.


Note: "The Hunter" has been filmed twice in the past forty years. Firt as "Point Blank" by John Boorman starring Lee Marvin and the second time by Brian Helgeland with Mel Gibson as "Payback". Both movies have their decent points, particularly "Point Blank". It's a great sixties artifact merging new wave film/storytelling techniques with real hardboiled American style. Lee Marvin is great, though far too warm and fuzzy to really be Parker.
"Payback" stays closer to Stark's novel and is much more brutal and ammoral in tone. Gibson, though, apparently forced cuts to make his character less outright evil and more approachable. There are even moments of outright humor that just don't feel right. Still, they get the opening scene dead right from the book and it's striking.

"The Da Vinci Code" - Dan Brown

So as some sort of penance before Easter I decided to read this amazing book. When done I was struck by the similarity between it and something a retarded monkey might have done stuck in front of a typewriter.

First off, it's fundamentally anti-Christian and specifically anti-Catholic. I can handle that. My faith is not dependant on someone elses. However, if you're going to write a thriller you claim is based on true historical theories and events you should actually do so.

His theory that the holy grail (and I'm not really giving anything away. His great secrets are pretty much disgorged in the first few chapters. In fact they're portrayed as things everyone already knows) is really the bloodline of the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene are based on deliberate frauds that only conspiracy theorists maintain are valid. Brown holds up the Priory of Sion as an ancient secret society bent on protecting the true grail when it was founded by several French conmen in the forties.

He claims that the Templars worshipped an androgynous fertility deity called Baphomet (which seems to simply have been a French corruption of Mahomet) when it was just one of the charges brought against them to destroy them. And it goes on. There are dozens of little errors and bunches of big ones. I want to track down all the reviewers who mention Brown's tremendous historical research and smack them. Can't they spend ten minutes on Google to at least get a glimpse of the nonsense he's claiming historical verity for?

Finally, the book simply stinks. If all his goofy theories were true "The Da Vinci Code" would still count as one of the absolute worst pieces of crap I've ever read. I like junky pulp thrillers. They're a great way to turn off the brain and take a quick thrill ride. Not here. There's little real suspense despite every chapter ending with a cliffhanger and there are no real characters. Everyone exists to spout exposition and make claims that don't bear up to the light of day.

Heck, he even claims radicals bear the epithet leftist because the feminine (and therefore outcast) things were characterized as being left (sinister). No. No. That came from the Estates General during the French Revolution where radicals sat on the left and royalists on the right. If something so basic and elementary is wrong what else is?

Am I taking this all too seriously? Probably, but I couldn't help it. It's so miserably bad a book I couldn't help myself from ranting.

Sam Peckinpah Westerns Collection

Sam Peckinpah made some pretty awful movies, particularly in the last days of his career, and he made some pretty pedestrian ones, but he also made some amazing and beautiful ones that stand up to the dross being spewed out of the studios today.

This collection (reasonably priced at Best Buy for about $43), includes "Ride the High Country", "The Wild Bunch", "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". They're all sad, melancholy looks at men's loyalty to each other, the prices we pay to discard that loyalty and place of violence amongst men.

The only one with any sort of real notoriety is "The Wild Bunch" which was groundbreakingly violent for its time and turned him into an international sensation with the ability to make a few more movies as he saw fit. With a cast of old stars (Robert Ryan and William Holden) and the cream grizzled character actors (Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, LQ Jones, and Strother Martin) Peckinpah assaults viewers with deep betrayal, casual as well as epic violence and serious questions about living with dignity. The movie, set along the US/Mexican border during the Mexican Revolution, is epic in scope and brutality. Even to this day its violent finale goes pretty unmatched.

"Ride the High Country" is very much a traditional western with none of the graphic violence Peckinpah started using in "The Wild Bunch". Instead it looks at a pair of tough, old men who've lived past the end of the West that let them become notable. It stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, both of whom had been notable Western stars for decades. Both came out of semi-retirement to make this movie as a clear meditation on age and the end of the frontier. Supposedly both felt it served as a fitting cap to illustrious careers and a fitting commentary on the Western as a genre. Scott fully retired and McCrea only made a few minor appearances aftewards.

"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is fascinating and works similar ground to "The Wild Bunch". Sherrif Garrett (James Coburn) is forced to track down his friend, Billy Bonney (Kris Kristofferson) as the increasingly settled and civilized Lincoln, New Mexico can't stand for his outlaw behavior any more. It's a slow moving film that was butchered by the studios and has been restored from Peckinpah's notes and original cuts. There are some amazing sequences (Slim Picken's and Katy Jurado's short appearances as a sherrif and his wife is one of the most moving things I've seen in any movie lately) but it does suffer from a slackness at times that is disappointing. Bob Dylan appears as one of Billy's men and he composed a great country folk score.

The last movie included is "The Ballad of Cable Hogue". It stars Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner and has none of the violence people (and the studio) expected from Peckinpah in the wake of "The Wild Bunch". Again, Peckinpah presents us with a movie about age, obsolescence and revenge. This time it's done on a small scale with sweetness and a gentle touch.

If you have any interest in Westerns or just like downright great movies you could do much worse than buy this collection. There are three great films and one pretty dang good one.

Meanwhile....

I'm slowly reading "The House of the Seven Gables". Slowly because, as usual, I'm detouring through the papers and magazines bought each day and the early issues of "Hellboy." Of the latter, if you haven't read it or just seen the movie, check 'em out. I'm unsure if Mignola's a better artist or writer but it's surely a close call. Beautiful and smartly put together. The first story's a bit weak but things only get insanely better right away.

Also, I've been reading in bits and pieces David Thomson's"Biographical Dictionary of Film" and Phillip Lopate's "American Movie Critics: From the Silents Until Now"

Borders' Cowardice

The corporation that owns Borders and Waldenbooks has decided not to carry the upcoming issue of the Council for Secular Humanism's magazine "Free Inquiry" because it will contain 4 of the Danish cartoons about Mohammed. Their mealy mouthed statement about it reads "We absolutely respect our customers’ right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment,” Bingham said. “And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We’ve just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores"

Originally I was going to try and write something nuanced and at least a little respectful of Border's parent corporation for siding strictly on the side of its employees' safety. The heck with that.

Seems they have a series of ads claiming they've never met a banned author they didn't like. I guess that only matters when it offends the non-violent majority. The minute some group offer violence as the solution to material it finds offensive they crumble. You can't use fighting censorship as a marketing ploy and then not expect at least some of your customers not call you to task for skimping on it over an issue that's incredibly important. Imagine the indignant laughter if Catholics asked Borders not to carry "The Da Vinci Code" or liberals didn't want anything by Anne Coulter stocked?

This isn't a question of anti-Islamic sentiments but of moral cowardice in the face of threatened violence. This isn't a question of blaspemy as there's no hard and fast Islamic law about depictions of Mohammed, but about a refusal to brook any sort of criticism. They were even carried in an Egyptian paper without any problems. This inability to face criticism (and for the record, many of the cartoons were actually attacks on the soliciting editor for staging what was seen as simply a stunt) when it's being heaped on me and my values all the time is disheartening.

This is a manufactured crisis that demands to be able to be examined objectively. Cowering in fear is not the way. If respect for different traditions is demanded I expect it to be accorded to my traditions as well. I don't see that happening any time soon so I guess I'll just go about my way which includes free speech, a free press and the ability to display satire without fear for my life. I also expect firms that make their money off those values to actually abide by them and stand up for them.

Peter Jackson

So I just watched "King Kong" and was surprised how unbloated it felt for such a bloated movie. There are some truly amazing action sequences, some really creepy bits and some downright beautiful bits. None of it looks anymore real than the claymation/minatures of the original, despite the cgi, in fact because of the crystalline clarity of the cgi, but I'm not sure that wasn't the intention. All in all, a fun, albeit long, movie.

It also made me go back and start watching the Lord of the Rings movies. As a fanboy of longstanding (my dad gave me the books to read when I was nine or ten and I've read them every few years since then) I have huge problems with the liberties taken with the texts and tremendous redirection of motivations by Jackson and company. I still love the movies. There well done, well crafted and perfect visualizations of Middle Earth (via Alan Lee's illustrations).

I'm bothered, though, with something I only started thinking about lately. Aragorn, as portrayed in the books, is utterly heroic and nigh flawless. He's was a warrior of renown under many names for almost a century before the story's opening and he's hardened to battle and loss. He's been bred to the throne he claims and has no doubts about his right or fitness to take it upon Sauron's defeat. He knows his destiny in his bones and isn't scared of it.
As characterized by Jackson he's less sure and somewhat reluctant. He tells Elrond he doesn't want to be the one wielding the power of Isildur's sword and what it represents. He displays doubts throughout the series and less than surety of his destiny.
We seem to have entered a time where any display of heroism bereft of doubt is seen as unrealistic or unbelievable. I've read enough history to know that's a simplistic few of the condition and in a work of heroic fantasy I find the suspicion it's treated with disappointing.
Maybe Jackson only changed Aragorn (and the Rohirrim and Gandalf and Elrond) because he felt the introduction of uncertainty and doubt provided more dramatic tension but I suspect not. Boromir provides that element as does the struggle between Gandalf and Denethor in Minas Tirith. I think that Jackson succumbed to the easy cynicism of the age that is trouble by clearcut displays of heroism and needs to cut it with moody introspection.
Still, the movies do work on their own terms and Jackson's the master of large scale mayhem and special effects. He's able to work with a large cast of characters, keep them straight and maintain enough dramatic tension to keep views absorbed for over three hours at a clip ('cause you know I'm watching the fanboy friendly extra long director's cut DVDs).

Weekend Marches

So illegal immigration is finally going to take center stage in American politics. I predict this will be a bloody (perhaps literally) battle with no easy resolution and with hard battle lines emerging quickly.

I don't know what will happen next. The problem is that the illegals in and of themselves are simply hard working folks trying to make things better for themselves and their families. For the most part they keep to themselves, and just go about working like dogs. In response, most native Americans don't pay much attention to them except when they need the lawn mowed or a table bussed.

So why do they exist in such huge numbers? We're told that they're simply doing the jobs Americans won't but we still want done. The reality is that business simply won't pay wages that really reflect the work being done and the rest of us don't want to have to pay for the wages with higher costs of products and services. The vast influx of low skilled low wage laborers lets industry keep salaries low and thus discourage native born Americans from taking those jobs. Americans always did crappy jobs in the past because they could make a living off them. Illegals can survive because they're simply more willing to put up with crap conditions and wages because it's still more money than they made back home.

On the other hand, Mexico does nothing to discourage illegal immigration and in fact attacks any efforts on America's part to limit the exodus because it's a pressure release. If Mexico actually had to address the problems of its government, economy, and corruption, Mexican might be able to stay home and make decent livings in their own homeland and not have to risk border crossings and deportation once in the US.

So where does that leave the US? Mass deportations are logistically impossible, callous beyond all belief and would destroy families where some members are legal residents or full citizens. Simple amnesty is something the vast majority of Americans opposed. I'm not sure we're ready to pay a couple of dollars for an orange.

On the other hand, half a million people waving Mexican flags and demanding the nation cease all efforts to curb illegal immigration will just make things worse. I know the image makes it easier to harden my own heart. What it does to the real red-meat illegal crowds I can only imagine.

"Billy Budd" - Herman Melville

What an odd and moving little story this is. "Billy Budd" is about a merchant sailor impressed into service on the HMS Bellipotent during the Wars of the French Revolution. He is described as being so beautiful he would be able to pose for a statue of Adam prior to the Fall and the sort of man to whom all other men willingly turn their attention and devotion. He is so good natured he bears no ill will towards the naval vessel's officers when he's forced off his comfortable merchant ship and forced into his new service.

For reasons specifically unknown (though what they might be are discussed at length by the narrator), the Master at Arms of the ship decides to destroy young Billy. Over the space of a few pages their conflict comes to a head and is resolved. The intensity and suddeness of that resolution is downright disturbing.

The followup to that conflict takes up the greatest portion of the tale and that's where Melville's greatest questions are put to the reader. I don't want to go into much detail about them because I want you to go read the story if you haven't. It's one of those books you always hear called a classic but don't know of anyone who's actually read the thing.

I will say that the questions involve duty and order in opposition to mercy and benevolence. As a younger man I would have sided with the latter but in my aged state (heh) I find myself on the side of the former and authority. It's an interesting observation I'm able to make of myself and not one I can see myself always being satisfied with.

"V for Vendetta" - the Wachowskis

So I went to see the movie this past Sunday. I have to admit that the comic I dismissed the other week is actually a paradigm of subtlety and nuance compared to this hunk of filmic crap. There are flashes of special effects brilliance and the mask is great, but the movie's a pile of waste matter.

For the unaware, "V for Vendetta" is about a Guy Fawkes masked bomb thrower and the waif he rescues from rape and death at the hands of the secret police taking on the government and social apparatus of a near future post-war fascist England. The original comic was Alan Moore's cry of rage against Thatcher. The movie is a limp cry of dopeyness against Bush and Blair. Moore had the temerity to examine his posited world as it was beset by real war and chaos. The Wachowski's set their version in a world of smoke, mirrors and fake villains.

I know people don't believe me when I say lefty anti-American stuff doesn't bother me if done well, but that's the truth. Whatever. Moore has the sense to allow his dictator possess real awareness of the weight of his horrific actions in the service of national order.
The movie's villain is called ADAM SUTLER (hint hint) and has a Hitler part in his hair. And he's played by John Hurt, once of the exquisitely brutal and moving "1984." That's the depth of subtley for the entire movie.

The extent of it's radicalism is that blacks, liberals, gays and Muslims weren't bad people and they shouldn't have been exterminated. The movie provides no rationale for why or how that could've happened or how a fundamentalist version of the Church of England reemerged in secular England. At least Moore portrayed this happening in the wake of famine, plague, flooding and war.

Some of the reviews hold up the canard that the it demands you decide for yourself if V is a hero or a terrorist. I'm not sure if they're dumb or blind. There's no question that V's a freedom fighter and everyone arrayed against him is utterly evil. Again, not a problem if done well. It wasn't.

As also wrote earlier, Moore kept his name from appearing on the movie. I wish I had heeded that warning and avoided it myself.

"Dennis the Menace 1951-52" - Hank Ketcham

Continuing the trend of beautifully rendered collections of old daily strips, Fantagraphics has started treating us to the original "Dennis the Menaces". I grew up reading the strip in the paper and some early collections my dad had bought but I hadn't seen the earliest ones from 1951. They are simply great and very funny.
Don't let memories of the somewhat neutered and very formulaic strip from recent memory or even the old Jay North tv show deter you from checking out this book. The early Dennis is truly a menace, driven by ego and sheer spite and malice much of the time. He's a definite precusor to Calvin and much more possessed of a willingness to wreak havoc on his surroundings.
Thank you Fantagraphics and thank you for volume 2 coming out next month.

"The Death of Adam" - Marilynne Robinson

This collection of essays by the author of "Housekeeping" and the current "Gilead", contains defenses of Calvinism, several investigations into the reasons for the coarsening of society and support for evironmentalism as well as a history of the McGuffey Readers. They are densely written and sharply argued and even where I disagree with her she makes me believe there's some underlying validity to her points.
She is politically liberal (in the sense of defending the weak and comforting the poor and infirm) and unabashedly Christian (and not some weak willed apologetic one). Her faith and Calvinist theology are the explicit subject of most of the book and the rationale for the rest.
If you're not religious I still suggest checking out the book. Her historical analysis of Calvinism and Puritanism is fascinating. By actually reading the works of those two strains of theology she does much to dispel the picture of them as dark, brooding things lingering over New England. Instead they were liberating as well as responsible for instilling a deep sense of personal accountability into their adherents' actions. The very fact that they were the wellsprings of town meeting based government and abolitionism makes me think she's more right than much of the history I've learned.
So pick it up. It's just returned to print and is readily available.

Moore's Vendetta

Decent length article in the the Sunday NY Times about Moore and his relationship to Hollywood and the movies (none) made of his books. Lloyd sounds disappointed with the whole thing but Moore's perception of the studio's attitude towards him and his work made him leave DC yet again, though seemingly for good this time.

The Vendetta Behind 'V for Vendetta'

"V for Vendetta" - Alan Moore and David Lloyd

So I dug out my old copy of this comic in preparation for the impending Wachowski Brothers' movie. Rereading it reminded how little respect I have for Alan Moore and how bad that movie's going to be.

For those not in the know, "V for Vendetta" details the exploits of a Guy Fawkes masked vigilante wreaking havoc across a post-nuke holocaust fascist England. In the days after the war the England's nazis came out from under their beds and began rounding up the blacks, Pakistanis, gays and leftists and put them in concentration camps. In some camps horrible experiments were undertaken and one of the victims escaped and is now seeking his personal as well as societal revenge.

There's more stuff - a rescued teen girl taught about freedom, a cop who feels deep guilt over what England's become and various fascist functionaries. Unfortunately it's undercut by the childish politics undelying the book that might as well have been written with crayons on looseleaf paper.

I'm not annoyed with the political sympathies of the books (even though they're not mine), but with their facileness. There might have been a lot to be said about Margaret Thatcher but she sure was no nazi. We're told the main thing people should've done before the war was prevent the deployment of missles in England (a big issue in the early 80's and one that's been shown to have been a big element in the collapse of the Soviet Union). A country that laughed at Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists in the thirties is depicted as a nation just waiting to slip on the nazi bridle when things get hard.
There's just lots of trite crap. When the cop rhapsodizes about the his love of the varied skin colors of the murdered blacks and Asians and the long lost gay pride parades I dare you not to laugh. Comics ain't always subtle, in fact their lack of subtlety's often one of their selling points to me, but criminey this book's dopey.

Simply taking on the cloak of politics doesn't mean you've got the brains or talent to make anything interesting out of it and "V's" the proof. I have lots of problems with "Watchmen" but it's a vast improvement over this overblown piece of subpar agitprop (yeah, think about that prospect for a moment).

Beyond all that stuff the book's just dull. Too much psychobabble claptrap between V and Evey and nothing happening that's attention holding. The art's sort of crappy and the story's blah. When I finished it I put in on the growing pile of stuff I'm planning to dump at a yard sale this spring.

Since Matrix II had lots of crappy bits and Matrix III is an utter laughable abomination I don't hold out much hope for "V for Vendetta" as movie. I'm really expecting a stinking pile of garbage.

Herman Melville

I actually dug out the Mastodon album because I'm reading Melville's "Billy Budd" right now. I figured what the heck, a little mood music can't hurt.

It's an odd little novella so far, replete with the humor I remember from "Moby Dick" (without doubt one of the funniest and awe inspiring things I've ever read) and the acute examination of our dark selves and what motivates us. More later.

Band: Mastondon Album: Leviathan

So I'm listening to this now. It's extreme metal with a little too much of the guttural vocals too common these days but it does rock pretty hard. So far the stand out track is "Seabeast." Pretty cool for a metal concept album about "Moby Dick."

Mastondon plays "Leviathan"

John Bellairs' Lewis Barnavelt books

Something made me reread these decent childrens' fantasy books the other day. I remember loving them as a kid, liking them as a younger adult (younger than I am now)and now I just sort of like them.

The first is "The House With the Clock In Its Walls" and is followed closely by "The Figure in the Shadows" and "The Letter, the Witch and the Ring". There are several more and then there are the Johhny Dixon books and the Anthony Monday ones. I haven't read any of the second two series but I imagine they pretty similar to the Barnavelt books. Somehow, whether by accident or happenstance the hero gets caught up in dangerous supernatural situations. That's really about it.

There's great bits about Lewis and his worries as the geeky fat boy and his relationships with his friends but after the second books things get a little too samey.

But you know what? They're real short, you can read them pretty quickly and they're not that bad. Just don't read them all at once.

I also found this cool site about Bellairs and his books. Very well done with some great pictures. John Bellairs Site

New York Public Library - Digital Library

NYPL Digital Library

Go here and do a search on Staten Island. You can waste your time and look at the other boroughs, but why? You can also refine your searches for neighborhoods, churches, schools, whatever. Very worthy and very cool. Thanks NYPL.