Brian J. Noggle – Page 209 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Book Report: End of the Tiger by John D. MacDonald (1966)

June 5, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book is a collection of short stories MacDonald wrote for various slicks throughout the 1950s. Although some of them feature a crime, others do not, so they show the range of things MacDonald could make interesting.

The collection includes:

“Hangover”: As a man awakens from a night of overindulging at a corporate function, he remembers the events that led up to his firing and worse.
“The Big Blue”:An experienced fisherman regrets agreeing to sharing a charter boat with two companions, a blowhard and a weak young man who can’t shake the blowhard. Very similar to Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.
“End of the Tiger”: The courtship of a coarse young man and a woman ends after his cruelty to the family’s chicken.
“The Trouble with Erica”: A business partner protects his young partner from a disastrous courtship with a woman prone to seduction by seducing her.
“Longshot”: A clerk at the horse track watches as another crooked clerk runs into trouble when betting out of the drawer.
“Looie Follows Me”: A young man in the country has his world turned upside down when his parents take in a troubled youth from the city for a couple of weeks.
“Blurred View”: A man who murdered his actress wife is caught when her film making friends recreate the murder in blurry photographs and pretend to blackmail him.
“The Loveliest Girl In The World”: A married middle-aged photographer breaks off contact when he gets to close to one of his models.
“Triangle”: A businessman encourages a female colleague with whom he’s too close to confess to his wife her attraction to him to convince his wife they’re not having an affair; this is to cover his actual affair with another woman.
“The Bear Trap”: A man on a road trip with his wife and children remembers his girlfriend from his youth who was killed by a bear in a cage.
“A Romantic Courtesy”: A rich rancher meets a woman he wooed in his youth who abandoned him for a man with prospects and an unhappy marriage.
“The Fast and Loose Money”: A pair of skimming angle-shooters are caught by their former commanding officer who is now a Treasury agent.
“The Straw Witch”: An assassin thinks of a folk tale told to him by a dying comrade a long time ago as a difficult assignment goes bad.
“The Trap of Solid Gold”: A young up-and-coming corporate man finds himself caught up in a vicious fiscal tailspin while trying to keep up the appearance of successful executive on the small salary he makes.
“Afternoon of the Hero”: A famous comedian, atop the world, reacts to a story about him in the media that says he’s very afraid by making light of it, hiding his actual fear.

The collection is very solid, and MacDonald makes the main characters in the stories very approachable. It’s been far too long since I’ve read MacDonald (2012? Really?), but it won’t be long until I read more. He’s a joy to read, and the length of his books don’t make you think about how long they are. He balances description, plot, and dialog better than most writers I can think of, and his stories–even his short stories–have pretty interesting plots.

Recommended.

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Help Settle A Marital Dispute

June 4, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

There’s a little contention at Nogglestead about which version of the song “Radioactive” is the best.

First, the original by Imagine Dragons:

Second, the cover by Within Temptation:

My beautiful wife thinks one is the definitive version, and I think the other is.

Please, let me know which you think is the better.

I don’t want to bias you, but clearly one version is slower and building, which is appropriate pacing for a song about waking up and reinvigorating, and one is up tempo and nice and all, but it doesn’t convey that same sense of awakening.

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Why Daddy Says It That Way

June 1, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

So I bought my children some bagged breakfast cereal because I’m a miser sometimes:

Dyno Bites

And whenever I serve it to them, I call them “Fruity…. DY-NO-BITES!”

Because J.J.:

Back in the latter part of the 1970s and the early part of the 1980s, I lived in a housing project myself, which explains why I identified more with J.J. and Dwayne from What’s Happening!! than any suburban-based sitcoms from the era.

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A Common Theme

May 31, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This year, my children and I went to the annual ArtsFest on Historical Walnut Street in Springfield, Missouri. We parked a little ways down unhistoric Walnut Street and walked down the block.

As we neared the festival, we came upon a house. “Is that a pig?” I asked. Indeed, it was a pig statue in the front yard.

We walked to the next house, and there’s a more modern piece of art out front:

“And there’s the bacon!” my eight-year-old said.

I’m not sure if that’s intentional, but that is certainly the effect.

Here they are on Google Maps:

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Book Report: Mad About Town by the staff of Mad Magazine (1983)

May 30, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book dates from 1976, but it was still in print seven years later. It collects Mad magazine bits from the early 1970s, including the send-up of All the President’s Men. As such, it might not relate well to today’s youth. I’ll have some first hand knowledge of this when my oldest boy absquatulates with this book.

I’ve moved out of the middle 1970s Mad demographic these days; while some things were amusing a bit, I only laughed out loud at two bits. One was about a boy who turned everything into a gun given a bat and a ball and told to go outside to play, and the boy promptly turns the bat into a gun (and, left unspoken, the ball into a grenade). I’ve got boys, and this is true. The second was about a man recounting an argument with his wife, and the punchline was very good indeed.

It’s a good reminder of how much most humor is rooted in its time, and how very little humor really hits upon the major themes of humanity that can extend across mere decades. But the best of it can do so without footnotes, and unfortunately, this book would probably need some if it were held up as a classic. As it is, it’s an amusing browse for an hour or so for old men like me.

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Not The Camus Quote I’d Have Gone With

May 22, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

So I’m three or four years behind on my reading of Birds and Blooms Extra. Which, to be fair, is not a magazine you’ve probably heard of nor one you’d expect me to read. But there was a time, long in the past, where I was interested in, if not birds, at least pretty flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. But that was before I moved to this Cthulhu-forsaken bermuda grass jungle. But I digress.

In an autumn issue, we’ve got an autumn-themed full page image, prints available for sale. And they’ve got a quote by Albert Camus on them.

I’m not sure if that’s a real Camus quote or not. To be honest, I haven’t read all of The Myth of Sisyphus yet. Maybe it’s from that. But I can’t imagine how it came to be that this quote was appended to this image. Did an editor say, “Quick! we’ve got a picture of autumn leaves on a fungus! Get me an Existentialist quote, stat!” Did a passive-aggressive copy editor with a literature degree titter over his keyboard when he threw this quote on the picture, expecting no one would get it? Or, more likely, did someone do an Internet search for autumn quotes and find a result he or she liked?

Yes.

I, on the other hand, might have selected “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” Which is why I am not in charge of putting quotes on pretty pictures for a national magazine targeted to older people in the northern Midwest.

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Wherein Brian J. Is Saddened By The Pop Culture News

May 21, 2015August 28, 2016 Brian J. Noggle

What, the Lettermen won’t perform any more?

Truly a tragic turn of affairs!

At least the Four Freshmen are still together.

Sonny, they don’t make music like that any more.

(Exit question: Is the Lettermen version of “Going Out of My Head” better than that of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66? Of course not. I withdraw the question.)

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Book Report: Poor Richard’s Almanack: Benjamin Franklin’s Best Sayings edited by Dean Walley (1967)

May 21, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book was printed by a greeting card company (Hallmark) as a cheap gift you could pick up for someone as you were picking up the card. Pause a moment to reflect on the decline and fall of these sorts of books. From truisms, aphorisms, and self-helping little nuggets in the 1960s to feel-good and self-affirming poems to…. Do they even do these any more?

At any rate, this book collects some of Benjamin Franklin’s pithy sayings from his periodical and presents them with some period woodcut images. It’s a lot like reading a Twitter feed (or the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, for that matter). Some of the sayings are humorous descriptions of life, some are prescriptions for self-discipline and self-improvement, but all are worth reflection. It’s best not to try to read this as fast as you can–which is pretty fast indeed, as it’s sixty pages of three to five sayings per page–but instead to savor them, maybe even to read them aloud unless you’re in public (or perhaps even then).

Worth a look, and in book form, it’s more resonant than a collection you’d find on SmartyQuotes.com or whatnot.

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Public Service Announcement

May 20, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

A father comes into his child’s bedroom and turns down the son’s radio. The father holds a number of empty candy wrappers in his hand. He displays them to the child, who looks startled to see them.

Father: These yours?

Son: No, I….

Father: Your mother said she found them in your closet.

Son: I dunno, one of the guys must have left….

Father: Must have what?

Son: Look, Dad, they’re not mine….

Father: When did you eat it?

Son: Dad, I….

Father: Answer me! Who taught you how to sneak this stuff?

Son: You, all right! I learned it by watching you.

Father looks guilty, wipes the chocolate remnants of a Hershey’s egg from his lips.

Voiceover: Parents who sneak their children’s remaining Easter candy have children who sneak their remaining Easter candy.

Continue reading “Public Service Announcement” →

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Book Report: Under the Dome by Stephen King (2009)

May 19, 2015May 18, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

So I’ve tucked it under the fold for your protection. Unless you come from a social media site or feed directly to this page, in which case there is no fold. TURN BACK NOW, YOU FOOL.
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Book Report: The Avengers #2: The Laugh Was On Lazarus by John Garforth (1967)

May 18, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book did not have Iron Man in it. I guess Robert Downey, Jr., wanted too much to do it.

I guess not; this is the wrong The Avengers. This set is the 1960s British Secret Agents, mod 60s woman Emma Peel and staid John Steed. I’ve never seen the series, and I even missed the almost twenty year old film starring Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes, so I didn’t really know what to expect.

It’s a slightly silly, disjointed book. A biotech company can raise the dead, and there’s a priest, and zombie American servicemen who can remember how to fly a stolen plane to the Pentagon. Or to New York.

I don’t know what to make of the story, how it relates to the others in the series, or to the television program. The book has a lot of interior Steed attracted to Peel but unable to say, and I don’t know if this is something that showed up in the program or if it’s a bit of the author’s own invention, thinking that Steed would because what man is not hot for Diana Rigg in a cat suit? I’ve seen that sort of thing before in books, although I cannot recall in which television series or movie novelization book report I remarked on it.

At any rate, of the two period television shows whose tie-in books I’ve read recently, the Kung Fu books (here and here) are better.

But I’ve got a couple more from The Avengers; maybe they’ll grow on me since I’m not going into them cold.

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I Admit, I Laughed Out Loud

May 17, 2015May 17, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

I opened the most recent copy of Garden & Gun magazine, and I laughed out loud. Not at the Roy Blount, Jr., humor piece it contained. Not at a joke or intentionally humorous piece, actually. At the ensemble in the Table of Contents:

Go ahead, if you dare, and click for full size. Then, note in the lower left corner, this text:

Crop top, $3,990, and skirt, $9,700, by Zuhair Murad, at zuhairmurad.com.

That yellow outfit costs as much as a car.

I wonder how much more expensive if the top had sleeves and covered the belly completely.

I can’t talk, of course, as I’m a bit of a clothes horse myself these days. Why, just two weeks ago, I bought a new shirt at Walmart for $9 because the shirts I’ve received as inheritances from my father-in-law (fifteen years ago), uncle-in-law (seven years ago), and mother (six years ago) are starting to show some wear. And I’m outgrowing them as I continue to triumph over being underweight.

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Book Report: Renegade Agent by “Don Pendleton” (1982)

May 17, 2015May 16, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book is a tedious, wordy little side-scroller of a men’s adventure novel.

The plot is exceedingly similar to Paramilitary Plot mashed up with Terrorist Summit: An ex-CIA agent is looking to put together a super-network of extra-national intelligence professionals and arms smugglers to help fund terrorists. Bolan has to find him and to rescue a prisoner–in this case, Toby Ranger, a recurring character from the War on the Mafia days.

Unfortunately, in the worst entries in the series, the writing does little to mask how similar these plots were to one another. This entry is particularly week, as entire chapters are chewed up in the musings of Mack Bolan. Where Pendleton would thicken/leaven his stories with a bit of philosophy, later authors simply rehash what Pendleton did and use it as padding to hit word count. This book often features a chapter or two of the musing/exposition, a chapter of Stony Brook team members getting information and thinking about it and the danger Mack Bolan is in, and then a chapter (maybe) that’s an action set piece. Then it repeats. Sometimes, we get a couple extra chapters of philosophy thrown in.

Not worth a read unless you’re compelled to read books on your to-read shelf as I am.

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A Bonus From This Was Cicero

May 16, 2015May 16, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

As a bonus, This Was Cicero included a blow-in card for the Classics Club:

Click for full size

As you might know, gentle reader, I collect Classics Club editions (and a variety of other series published by Walter J. Black).

And although I’ve already invited the three fellows (Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius) mentioned in the flyer into my home, I’ve only so far spent time with Marcus Aurelius.

Also, note in the flyer that the spines only say the name of the author; in reality, the spines also contain the titles. At least in the ones I’ve seen they do.

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Book Report: This Was Cicero by H. J. Haskell (1942)

May 16, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

This book is nominally a biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero, but in reality, it’s a history of the fall of the Roman republic wherein Cicero sometimes makes appearances. I guess the author was working from a lot of Cicero’s letters (as do so many historians from Plutarch on), so he focused on Cicero. But there are huge stretches of the book where Cicero is not mentioned at all, including the first couple of chapters.

The author is a Marxist, of course. He refers often to the proletariat in Rome; he defends Catiline because Catiline was in favor of redistributing the wealth; he name-checks the poor oppressed Sacco and Vanzetti; he touches upon themes and books mentioned in Books That Changed America (namely, conservative opposition to public schools and The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by Alfred T. Mahan referring to either Pompey or Caesar’s understanding of naval transport of armies); and he often equates good with progressivism/Marxism and bad/corruption/know-nothing aristocracy with “conservatives.” But he’s an early twentieth century Marxist, so it’s lacking in the invective you get in later works.

As I mentioned, the author spends a lot of time talking about things other than Cicero, and he spends a lot of time equating the lives of Roman citizens in Cicero’s lifetime to different periods in history, including seventeenth century England and modern (~1940) America. The comparisons are probably too facile, especially when trying to equate the political groups of the period to modern equivalents (which boils down mostly to Tories/Republicans/Old Senate Factions = bad, Democrats/Redistributionists/Caesar and anyone shaking up the order to make it fairer for the proletariat = good). However:

This is still a pretty good book to read. It is pretty in-depth coverage of Roman history during Cicero’s lifetime, which includes the First Triumvirate and the Second Triumvirate and the Civil War from a different perspective than Julius Caesar. It’s the story of one man with hopes of a restoration of the Constitution that never comes and the slow, continued dissolution of the ideal of the Roman Republic from an ideal state that probably never existed to the seeds of empire based on strong, charismatic men with armies ruling.

It also provides a good deal of context for Cicero’s orations and his other works, including the historical details of why and when the pieces were written. Reading a collection of Cicero’s words will get you a little context, but this book fills in all the gaps.

The author does not paint a flattering picture of Cicero, though. The subject of the book, when he appears, is presented as vacillating, vain, vainglorious, and too much in love with his own oratory. Also, Cicero, in this book, seems to think his words alone could counter armed insurrections of various stripes. A tale with modern parallels.

I enjoyed the book and learned a bunch from it. It’s not without its flaws–politics aside, it does give the subject a bit of short shrift and it has a tendency to draw back from a point in time to provide historical context which gives the reader a bit of whiplash–but informative none the less.

Recommended.

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After Music, He Turned To Crimefighting

May 15, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

Sting recovers collection of stolen car titles, keys

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A Common Metaphor

May 15, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

Boy, musicians really like the learning to fly metaphor for self-actualization, don’t they?
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Workouts: An Objective Scale

April 30, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

Here is the official Brian J. Noggle scale of a workout’s intensity:

Decent: You mutter to yourself.

Good: You mutter to yourself in a voice from out of The Exorcist.

Very Good: You mutter to yourself in a voice from out of The Exorcist in Latin.

Excellent Workout: You mutter to yourself in a voice from The Exorist in Latin and invoke curses from the dark tome Bellicis Artibus Idoneitatem et Veneficia.

Last night, I had an excellent workout, and I want to apologize to any instructor who is afflicted with painful boils or whose vehicle is destroyed by a hail of toads.

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Point/Counterpoint: Epictetus vs. Dave Grohl on Stoicism

April 28, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

Epictetus, Discourses Book IV Chapter 7, “On Freedom From Fear”

And, for this reason, if he thinks that his good and his interest be in these things only which are free from hindrance and in his own power, he will be free, prosperous, happy, free from harm, magnanimous pious, thankful to God for all things; in no matter finding fault with any of the things which have not been put in his power, nor blaming any of them. But if he thinks that his good and his interest are in externals and in things which are not in the power of his will, he must of necessity be hindered, be impeded, be a slave to those who have the power over things which he admires and fears; and he must of necessity be impious because he thinks that he is harmed by God, and he must be unjust because he always claims more than belongs to him; and he must of necessity be abject and mean.

What hinders a man, who has clearly separated these things, from living with a light heart and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened? “Would you have me to bear poverty?” Come and you will know what poverty is when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man. “Would you have me to possess power?” Let me have power, and also the trouble of it. “Well, banishment?” Wherever I shall go, there it will be well with me; for here also where I am, it was not because of the place that it was well with me, but because of my opinions which I shall carry off with me: for neither can any man deprive me of them; but my opinions alone are mine and they cannot he taken from me, and I am satisfied while I have them, wherever I may be and whatever I am doing. “But now it is time to die.” Why do you say “to die”? Make no tragedy show of the thing, but speak of it as it is: it is now time for the matter to be resolved into the things out of which it was composed. And what is the formidable thing here? what is going to perish of the things which are in the universe? what new thing or wondrous is going to happen? Is it for this reason that a tyrant is formidable? Is it for this reason that the guards appear to have swords which are large and sharp? Say this to others; but I have considered about all these thins; no man has power over me. I have been made free; I know His commands, no man can now lead me as a slave. I have a proper person to assert my freedom; I have proper judges. Are you not the master of my body? What, then, is that to me? Are you not the master of my property? What, then, is that to me? Are you not the master of my exile or of my chains? Well, from all these things and all the poor body itself I depart at your bidding, when you please. Make trial of your power, and you will know how far it reaches.

Whom then can I still fear?

Dave Grohl counters:

Although Grohl counters that the philosophy of Stoicism could easily crumble when actually confronted with the events in life, Epictetus would not disagree. Throughout his Discourses, he laments the students who come to study Stoic thought to learn it, but not to live it, and he acknowledges that it is difficult and requires discipline and training.

So I think Epictetus and Mr. Grohl are actually in agreement here.

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I Guessed Better The Second Time Around

April 26, 2015 Brian J. Noggle

At OregonMuse’s prompting, I took the Christian Science Monitor‘s Famous Literary Detective Skills Quiz.

When I went through it the first time on my phone, I got a 73%, but when I went through it on my computer preparing this blog post, I got:

77%.

This indicates I guessed one better on the English detective novels on the computer. Note the mobile version of the quiz does not show you the right answers as you go along, which explains why I only did one better guessing the second time around instead of getting them all right to impress you, gentle reader.

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