Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 2 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Book Report: Able Team #9: Kill School by Dick Stivers (1983)

March 12, 2026March 12, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover As I am deep in some thicker books which I am not really enthusiastic about reading, so I picked up this bit of pulp for enjoyment, kind of like having a bite of the sweet corn whilst eating the liver. I picked this book up in 2012 at Hooked on Books–a year later, I would really pad out my collection of the books in the Executionerverse, which includes the next title in the Able Team series, but who knows how long it will take me to get to it.

Able Team is three of the members of the Stony Farm team that helped Mack Bolan, the Executioner, out on occasion. Note that the Stony Farm series is a separate line in the Executionerverse, and who knows when I will get to them–since I finished the last of the Executioner books I accumulated in 2022, I’ve been slow to really delve into the men’s adventure paperbacks. Maybe I’ve gotten old and switched to Westerns. Anyway.

So Able Team is sent to El Salvador to hunt for a guy who has eluded their grasp in the United States, a big drug dealer or what have you, not part of the government but a powerful man with his own private army nevertheless. It’s a story ripped from today’s headlines, where today is almost forty years ago. The El Salvador civil war was going on. Is it still? Maybe. Central and South America, neh? Although they find help from various rebel groups with their own agenda, they find that the hard site is too hard for their small band, and the bad man has gone to a meet-up in Honduras with other similar fellows from across Central and South America who are looking to bring about a Fourth Reich. It’s a story ripped from today’s pulp fiction forty years ago.

You know, strangely enough, the plot is not necessarily that dated. Not that there’s a great swell of Naziism, but it never really went away in thrillers, did it?

At any rate, it’s an ensemble piece with characters who are almost ciphers, just bundles of characteristics, whose characterization, I guess, takes place over time. The book alludes to events in previous books, and the bad guy gets away again, which means I can guess what Able Team is doing in their next book. Which I’m not sure when I will get to. Unless, of course, I dawdle in the thick books stacked beside my chair for any length of time.

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Good Album Hunting, Monday, March 9, 2026: Relics Antique Mall

March 10, 2026March 9, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

On Saturday, Brian J. was a good, good boy and completed all of his weekend chores, which included dusting and vacuuming the common areas of the house and doing a quick, expensive wipe of the hall and foyer. After a martial arts class, too.

So I thought I would head up to Relics and buy a couple records using the gift certificates I received for my birthday (like I did the previous weekend). However: Relics had an event of some sort, and parking was at a premium, so I did not go in.

But: I had an errand (coincidentally!) that took me to the area yesterday, so I stopped in for twenty or thirty minutes, just pawing through the same booth, and picked up 9 records.

I got:

Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. The song from The Exorcist. Looking at it now, I think I might already have it. Which so often happens. But generally not at these prices.
The Baddest Hubbard by Freddie Hubbard.
Surprises by Herbie Mann featuring Cissy Houston.
Μαζί Με Τον Σταμάτη by Σταμάτης Κόκοτας. Because I cannot tell the difference, at a glance, between Hebrew and Greek. I thought I’d troll my oldest who is steeped in podcast politics and would be scandalized by a Jewish album. But this is Greek folk music by Stamatis Kakotas.
Low Ride by Earl Klugh.
The Changing of the Gard by Stargard. I told the young lady ringing me out that buying this made me the biggest Stargard fan in Springfield.
The Beginning and the End by Clifford Brown. Hard not to type Jr. behind it, but this is the DJ’s father. Apparently, the booth was not rife with them–this is the only record they had.
Reunion by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.
Land of the Midnight Sun by Al Di Meola.

A couple of trumpeters, a couple of jazz guitarist, a flutist. Left behind: A couple of Moody Blues records. A couple of David Sanborn records, as I mentioned. No further Billy Joel records in evidence.

The total was $73 and change, which is the perfect amount in one sense: As it was just under the total of the certificates I had, I paid two gift certificates plus some cash. But I don’t expect to go next weekend. Let’s let the stock turn over for a month or two. Or I can find another booth and give myself permission to spend more than three dollars a record.

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A Brief Note On Consumer Art

March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

As you might know, gentle reader, for major pieces of wall art, I’ve favored prints of master works from, er, the masters, starting with three prints I bought in college on a fresh new credit card in 1990 (The Man with the Golden Helmet by Rembrandt, Christina’s World by Wyeth, and A Saturday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat) which I got a deal on (3 for $18–and by the time we paid them off, in probably a decade later if we consider the money paid to the credit company first-in, first out, we probably paid $100 each for them including interest). Or personal relics which were gifts and/or inherited from family members now likely departed. My beautiful wife, however, favors consumer art which is mass-produced art of a topical theme, whether it’s the mere decorative squares and textures, Mediterranean landscapes, or Mediterranean cafes.

We have two such works in the bedroom, and, gentle reader, they are the same picture.

Cafe facing out: ✔
Alley upstage right: ✔
Shopfront on right facing left: ✔
Covered cafe tables: ✔
Flowers: ✔
Awnings: ✔

Basically, the artistic expression difference is packed dirt vs cobblestones, ainna?

Ah, I cannot talk; I inherited two H. Hargrove prints from my aunt and then bought another at a garage sale, and we still have two on the walls (one has been stored to make room for one of the cafes above). So they come from a personal relic source and not just a catalog or home goods retailer.

Because I like to look at them and think about them, not just have them as visual background music. But maybe that’s just me.

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How To Spot A “Who?”

March 9, 2026March 8, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

I am probably slow to discover this, but newspaper stories about death announcements, especially on the front/home page, come in to flavors.

“Neil Sedaka dies” (and for or five news items about it), and “Iconic Folk Singer and Woodstock Legend dead at 84”:

It’s Country Joe MacDonald who passed away. Have I heard his name? Probably. Would I consider him some sort of legend or icon? Eh….

It’s all about the click-through rates, no doubt. When the name is known, people will click to learn more. When the name is kinda known, maybe, the key is to hype up the person’s fame to get us to click through to find out more.

I wonder if there’s a scoring algorithm for the dividing line, or if it’s still a gut feeling by an editor somewhere.

But, hey, it worked on me. Not often, and mostly in this case because I wanted to write this post.

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I Brought This Upon Myself

March 8, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Well, after watching all those Bruce Lee movies, I planned to go into my martial arts class yesterday morning and say that I’d watched them and picked up some bad new habits for sparring:

A lot of kung fu kata peacocking between strikes.
Happy feet making like Irish dancing before beginning.
Making single strikes instead of combinations, and making them big so the people in the last row can see them.
Using my forearm to block everything: Spin heel kicks, bo staffs, sticks, speeding trucks, anything. And the forearm stops them cold.
Hooting when I strike. You’re supposed to exhale to tighten everything up, which leads to the “hi-ya!” Which my school has seemingly stopped emphasizing. As it stands, I already make martial arts sound effects a lot of times when I strike.
Thumbing my nose mid-bout. Although it will be harder to do with boxing gloves on.

At any rate, I didn’t get to lay the spiel on anyone since renshi asked me what I was listening to (my question to him often is “What are you listening to?” because, in the past, he’s been in charge of the martial arts playlist and picked out metal). So I had to talk about the new Frozen Crown CD instead.

And, as part of our warmups, we had to run to the edge of the mat, do a couple pushups, and then run back. Across the room, kyoshi joked with someone about doing them on fingertips like Bruce Lee, so down on my side of the mat, I tried it. And I could.

So that has been delighting me and bringing a smile to my face since. Because, you know, I am just like Bruce Lee. Although I will likely never get to one finger pushups because I do not have kung fu hands.

And, the same day, I was listening to my workout playlist whilst dusting the lower level, and Eminem’s “Monster” came on, and it mentions Bruce Lee.

Fame made me a balloon ’cause my ego inflated
When I blew, see, but it was confusing
‘Cause all I wanted to do is be the Bruce Lee of loose leaf

Again, it’s an illustration about how outsized an influence Bruce Lee had. The man only made a couple of movies, but what an impact on the culture that he’s mentioned fifty-some years later in a martial arts class.

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Movie Report: Game of Death (1978) and Game of Death II (1980)

March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover These are the other two Bruce Lee films from the box set I bought (The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and Way of the Dragon were the first three). Bruce Lee only made three films–the previously noted titles–and although he started Game of Death in 1972, it was re-imagined after his death using footage they’d filmed and “doubles” for him. The second one was made using body doubles and clips from other films. So when I watched Fist of Fear, Touch of Death in 2024, I didn’t realize that there was a whole industry of remixing Bruce Lee material into new movies.

So, in Game of Death, Bruce Lee is Billy Lo, an international martial arts film star whom the syndicate wants a piece of. I say “is” instead of “plays” because the scenes he shot were apparently for a film with a different plot entirely, and it’s only in the remixing that they got meta with it. The confrontations with the syndicate become serious so after he is shot, Lo fakes his own death to get revenge and to protect his girlfriend played by Colleen Camp (whom we saw in DARYL and who contributed a song to the soundtrack, I think). Also, parenthetically (but I already used parentheses in the previous sentence, so I have to just say parenthetically in this sentence), although she has scenes with Billy Lo, she did not have any scenes with Bruce Lee because he was long dead. At any rate, the climactic scene finds Bruce Lee ascending the levels of a Chinese restaurant to get to the big boss, and one of the level bosses is played by Kareem Abdul Jabbar. So if you’re keeping score, Lee defeated Kareem, and it was Arnold Schwarzenneggar who defeated Wilt Chamberlain in Conan the Destroyer.

So part of the film was, again, meta as I was watching to see where Bruce Lee actually appeared. And it’s in several of the fight scenes, including the final assault on the Chinese restaurant. But otherwise it was (apparently) two other martial artists playing in disguise, filmed from behind, and a variety of other tricks to try to hide that it wasn’t Lee.

Game of Death II has Lee as Billy Lo again, but not the same Billy Lo. He’s friends with a martial arts master, Chin Ku, who is getting challenged to fight to the death a bunch recently as is Lo. Chin dies, and, at the funeral, a helicopter flies over with a Skill Crane cage and snatches the coffin, and Lo leaps onto it, but falls to his death when struck by a dart. Which is how they turn the film over to Lo’s younger brother, a ne’er do well who was not studying kung fu very dilligently. He goes to the compound of a rival martial arts master, who is a suspect but is cleared by getting killed in his sleep. Lo suspects the one-armed valet, whom he finds at a nearby temple and discovers the man has two arms after all–and the temple is the entrance to the Tower of Death, which is an futuristic underground bunker. Lo2 fights his way in, discovers Chin faked his own death because he’s a drug kingpin whom Interpol was closing in on, and they have a long fight where Lo triumphs.

Wow, this really was a cash-in. And low budget. We get scenes where Bruce Lee is talking to a mentor, and then they switch to a closeup of the mentor delivering lines pertaining to this plot, and it’s obviously a different guy. We get some of the filmed-from-behind, big sunglasses, and distant shot scenes to fill in gaps in the Billy Lo portion of the program. We get the changing shirt colors on Bruce Lee when two different films are spliced together. We get a lion attack where it’s obviously a guy in a lion costume. Jeez, Louise, I should have waited to watch Kung Pow: Enter the Fist until after I watched this film so I could see exactly what they were spoofing.

At any rate, I feel some sense of accomplishment in finishing the boxed set, and I’m kind of glad it wasn’t an Urban Action Cinema Collection kind of thing where I had to get through 15 movies. I like martial arts films, but watching too many of them in a row gets a little tedious. But, as I said, I feel a sense of completion from making it through the set, and I could use that.

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Whom Do I Know On The News Today?

March 8, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

It’s better than looking at crime stories and finding someone I know, which happens, but I watched this story expecting to see someone I knew: Nixa, Mo., Dungeons & Dragons event raises awareness for multiple sclerosis

And I did, sorta: Christopher Wilson, author of The Wards of Iasos Book 1: The Leftovers, makes an appearance.

This story was easier: On Your Side: Conduent Data Breach: What to do if you got a letter–my oldest son makes an appearance, and he was very excited and told me so.

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One Of These Things Is True

March 7, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Walmart switching to digital shelf labels nationwide:

Walmart said the digital shelf labels are controlled through a centralized system and will allow for faster price changes.

The digital labels will also help employees stock shelves and fulfill online orders more quickly.

It’s not about the stocking, and it’s not about the picking.

Hey, did you notice that the aisles in Walmart are wider these days? Remember when they narrowed a few years back, which made it hard for us to get through them, but now they’re wider? I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the giant carts that the online ordering employees have started wheeling around? Of course it has. For your convenience.

You know, an aunt of mine by marriage got a promotion out of being a checker at Walgreens in the 1990s into being a Price Administrator. It was her full-time job, in a Walgreens (not a large department store), to adjust the prices of sales items for the week and to audit the prices on the shelves to make sure that they showed the actual price for the item. A full-time job. The electronic tags would eliminate that position, if it hasn’t already been eliminated.

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Movie Report: Way of the Dragon (1972)

March 7, 2026March 6, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This is the third of the Bruce Lee movies in the boxed set I bought in 2025 (The Big Boss and Fist of Fury were the first two), and it’s the last one he finished before he died. “Last one” makes it sound like he made a lot of movies, but he really did not–they just made a lot of movies with him in them.

So: In this film, Bruce Lee plays a young Hong Kong man sent to Rome to help with some ex-pats who have started a Chinese restaurant but are running into trouble from “the syndicate” who are trying to muscle in. The young men who work for the restaurant are trying to learn karate to protect the restaurant, but Lee’s character shows them that kung fu is better. So we have some confrontation with various toughs of the syndicate culminating in the well-known–well, among people who watch martial arts films–fight between Lee and Chuck Norris at the Colliseum. Which Lee wins, but it helped Norris break into film, so really, we’re all the winners, ainna?

It was the last on he finished according to the Internet–he’d taken a break from The Game of Death to film it but died before resuming that film (we’ll talk about that by and by).

So, yeah, if you’re into martial arts films, you really probably ought to see it. I’ve seen assertions that Lee’s films defined or redefined the genre, and I won’t argue the counterpoint.

I do want to point out that all three films to this point have starred Nora Miao as the love interest such as they were.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Way of the Dragon (1972)” →

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Like a Frozen Lazy River

March 6, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Red Arrow Park could see changes, with skating path replacing rink:

Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park could undergo big changes – including replacing its skating rink with a “skating ribbon” running throughout much of the small downtown park.

Not sure how that’s an improvement over a traditional skating rink, but.

You know, I have good memories of that park. I might have been taken there ice skating with my aunt and uncle when my brother and I were very young. I do remember sitting in the coffee shop next to the park on a couple of occasions in the winter, with a fire roaring in its fireplace, watching the skaters. I probably started a poem about it, once. When I was young.

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Book Report: The Judge’s List by John Grisham (2021)

March 6, 2026March 5, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I got this book for my birthday this year, and after kinda sounding like I was slagging on the gifts, I decided I’d prioritize reading the books. So I picked up this book, the first of the two Grishams; my son thought I was a Grisham fan, and although I listened to one of the early books–A Time To Kill? It’s the one with the attorney in it. You know, aside from reading Perry Mason books from time to time and in bulk in my youth, I never really got into legal thrillers. I mean, I probably have read some Scott Turow, too, but I’d be hard pressed to remember, and it would have been a long time ago.

So: A woman on the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct is getting bored with the job which is getting starved of funds. The BJC investigates judges suspected of wrongdoing–and in a previous book, she’s nailed one such judge for corruption, but not without cost. An attention-averse woman approaches her with knowledge and some circumstantial evidence that a local judge is a serial killer with a list of victims going back several decades. As they begin to investigate, the judge kills again, but makes a mistake. Which leads them to more investigating, and going to proper investigators in the FBI, but….

Okay, so the first part of the book deals with the investigator’s doubt about the woman bringing her the information, but eventually she gets going on looking into it. The second part of the book introduces the judge as a character, so we get into his mind as he prepares his crimes–he’s hopped up on bennies, a hacking genius, a compulsive type who cleans enough to make the guy from Gattaca look like a slob, and kind of unbelievable. Then, after he makes his kill and has to kill a witness (which I guess is the turning point?), he figures out who the woman who intially discovered him is, and he gets the drop on her even though she’s supposed to be almost as paranoid as he is (his super hacking helps), and he sets a trap for the investigator. But deus ex machina thwarts the trap, deus ex machina saves the kidnapped girl, unsatisfying resolution to the pursuit of the judge, and a denouement which includes the winding down of the team (not an unexpected twist to the unsatisfying resoluton to the pursuit of the judge which would have been unsatisfying in itself, but it’s somehow worse without) and a lot of jibber jabber, talking to families of victims to offer them resolution, which is jibber jabber and not a shoot-out where the good guys triumph.

Ach, this is a chick book. Not sure if JG has a girl ghost writer or if he just knows the market that gets him forty-something consecutive bestsellers, but the book has a lot of talking, self-doubting, other-doubting, and then more talking as though the talking and overcoming self-doubting were heroic in themselves. But, uh, yeah. Not making me want to delve into the backlist (except where gifted).

But, ya know. He’s sold more books than I have books, apps, t-shirts, related CafePress sundries, blog traffic (including bots), and social media impressions that I’ve gotten in a comparable time. So take it for what it’s worth, but in my opinion, he’s no John D. McDonald.

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Brian J. Gets Funneled

March 6, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Ah, gentle reader. I fell into an Internet lead generator and feel dirty.

I’ve worked for one, and I might again, but I try to avoid them when I can because I don’t like someone making money off of my contact information since I’m not making any money of my own. And my experience with what I thought was a real company that had subcontracting appliance repairmen but was probably just a lead generator where independent contractors bought my job took a turn for the worse when a repairman drove down from Marshfield, an hour or so away, to give me an estimate which was more than the washing machine cost. So when I need something, I don’t do an Internet search only to see that the six or eight (or more) top results are funnels. I do the right thing: I remember who advertised on the radio or whose trucks I have seen nearby (but the cost of buying leads might be built in).

So: We need a new roof at Nogglestead, and given our current circumstances, we were going to need to finance it. I called the roofing company we’d selected, and I expected the estimator to come with application paperwork because the last time we did something like this–but that was probably 25 years ago. The adjuster told me I could use the Web site to apply for financing through their partner.

So I got on the Web site, and the link in the heading navigation to financing was broken–it led to a 404 error on the Web site of a local bank. So I thought the “partner” was the fancy tool used by that bank. A little later, I got to exploring the Web site a little and found another financing link which led to a form with the tool’s name on it. I entered basic information, and….

Immediately I was presented with a list of 400 different loan offers from Internet lenders of various stripes. And my inbox was immediately blitzed by marketing emails from the tool and from the people to whom it had sold my information.

Aw, hell. So now my name and Social Security Number are everywherer on the Internet again.

So, yeah, no. I went back to what I should have done in the first place: Go to my various banking institutions and see what their offerings are.

I don’t know why I’m so averse to lead generation and management. It does, almost, make one’s life easier if one doesn’t want to research services in their area. But the cost of buying leads is now priced into services everywhere, so it’s not helping me enough to offset that.

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The Best Intersectional Italian/German Pun You’ll See All Day (Perhaps)

March 5, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

So I am listening to Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition and got to the lecture on Michel de Montaigne, and he quotes Dante in it (from part of The Divine Comedy which was not quoted in the lecture on Dante) which led me to post the following on LinkedIn, which has belatedly replaced Twitter for my brief “wit” as well as the occasional longer professional blathering.

But here’s what I posted:

“…doubting pleases me no less than knowing!” — Dante

Bitte.

I guess it works better read, because Dante is not really pronounced like danke (German for “Thank you”). Bitte is German for “You’re welcome.”

I read a couple of books that dropped German into the text for the Winter Reading Challenge (An Amish Marriage Agreement and 1632), and I feel like I’m qualified to make German puns. Or Italian/German puns. Or whatever it is I do here.

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Latest Exercise In Invisibility Plus Practicing A Rant

March 4, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

So I have released two apps to the Apple App Store this week:

Goal-Task-Chore is a to-do list app which not only lets you add one-time tasks to the list and to mark them off but also lets you create multiple-time chores which can appear on the list at intervals you set and Goals, which are groups of step tasks working toward a larger outcome. You can find it on the App Store here. I use it every day, and to be honest, I’m sometimes not pleased with it because there’s always something to more to do.

PhrazeMaze: Proverbs is like a word search except you have a whole phrase or sentence to find in the letter grid. This particular app has 120+ puzzles from the book of Proverbs in the Bible. You can find it on the Apple App Store here. If it proves to be popular, I can easily build similar apps with different puzzle phrazes.

So, to launch them, I announced them on LinkedIn and Facebook (and here, obviously). And if they sell four copies each (total to me: $5.60), they’ll be the biggest selling apps I’ve produced.

I’ve been attending this weekly entrepreneur meeting which features a presentation from a new businesses on Wednesday mornings. One of the questions that the audience, generally coaches and other service professionals who would sell to the presenters who are generally coaches and other service professionals trying to sell to the audience, one of the questions that the audience often asks is “What is your social media strategy?” Because someday I might pitch my apps to the group, I’m preparing my ~~answer~~ rant in that regard:

You know, I had an email newsletter in 1997 which got me…. nothing.

I had one of the top 500 blogs in 2004, and after many years of posting, often multiple times a day, when it came time to sell books, I sold…. What, 100? 150? Mostly on Kindle, and certainly not enough to pay for the cover of the book (professionally designed) or the outlay on books I sent to magazines and various bloggers for review and comment–not to mention 16 years of hosting (starting with the move from Blogger in 2010.

I joined Twitter in 2009 and was active there, professionally (well, sorta) for nine years, posting multiple times a day and getting to around 5000 followers organically. And it yielded me, what, a couple of paid writing gigs and a sub-sub-sub-contractor gig that did not go well. Total business closed in almost 10 years of social mediating? Maybe $2000. Which is the high water mark of the “value” I’ve gotten from it.

I’ve been on LinkedIn for over 20 years, and I’ve written articles and posts on it throughout, and although a recent post got almost 40,000 views–which I’ve been told is a lot–I’ve not actually gotten any work from it, whether it’s responses to job posts or people I’ve met there. I’ve been on Facebook for fifteen years or so, and it was not supposed to be a thing to build “my brand,” and it is certainly not doing that any more. Nor is it really showing me updates from people with whom I’ve connected over the years.

So what is my social media strategy for my yet unnamed app venture? To not.

Because they’re structured so that they will take all the content you want to provide for free and, when you want to share something saleable to your connections, they’ll bury it unless you pay the money to boost it (which is thousands of dollars for “impressions” which will probably not yield conversions). TikTok? Instagram videos? Make authentic videos or silly dance videos? What, spend hours and money to sell a $.99 app? No thank you. Doing that, you’re working for the social media platform, providing free (to them) content which might or might not increase its user engagement.

I get it why some people think this is a way to go: Because it’s fun, and it’s easy. Clearly, I’ve gotten something out of writing a blog all these years (mostly memories that I can scroll through). I had fun with Twitter back in the day (and my other blogs). You can spend hours on it and get some dopamine when people like and respond to your content. But that doesn’t necessarily convert. And I get why so many people promote it–because they work in the space, and they will make money off of it if you hired them to do your social media.

So, what to do, what to do? Continue to show the app to as many people in person as I can stand to (which is probably less than could stand it) and hope that one catches fire. Think up an idea for a brand name and maybe spend a couple bucks on a Web site.

But social media? Nah.

So, if you’ve got $.99 and think they look interesting, give the apps a try. Or my books there in the sidebar, for that matter–you can get them for $.99 digitally, too. And as the Philosophers said, “Thanks for your support.”

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Brian J.’s Recycler Tour, Accidentally Meta In More Ways Than One

March 3, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Fifteen years ago:

I probably did not intend to include a copy error in that post on Facebook. I was just hearkening back to the fact that, in early proofs of John Donnelly’s Gold, the gun also had that special feature–a revolver with a magazine. It also featured a week that was eight days long.

I’m told it still contains three typos. You’re welcome to order it and find out.

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As Has Happened To Me

March 2, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

US track star cost half marathon national title, $20K prize after being mistakenly led off course

Although, to be honest, I was nowhere near the top, but at my first Republic Tiger Triathlon (RIP), when I transitioned from the bike to the run, somebody ran through the transition area and out. I followed him, but he was not a participant, and he ran the wrong way down the trail outside the exit. Loud spectators corrected me, but I got a few extra steps in in my quest to climb from the very lastest to the top 50% of finishers. Which might actually have been my best result ever anyway.

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Good Album Hunting, Saturday, February 28, 2026: Relics Antique Mall

March 1, 2026February 28, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

So I received four $25 gift certificates to Relics Antique Mall for my birthday. If you recall, gentle reader, these are certificates, not gift cards, and Relics does not give change from them. So you have to spend the whole amount (or more), which is why I had four certificates and not one for $100. Also, remember, gentle reader, these have fairly quick expiration dates–six months from issue.

So I made my way to the antique mall, hoping to find a katana in the bladed weapons cabinet since I bought a tachi/wakizashi pair last year and had purchased a rapier that I mentioned caressing in 2023 with some other gift cardery or certificatage. But, as periodically happens, the bladed weapon cabinet was gone. No axes, no sword canes, and certainly no katana.

I’d also thought that I would look through some of the higher-priced record album booths since I have the notion of rebuilding my Billy Joel record set. I’d gotten a pretty good set of the late 1970s and early 1980s works around 1990 from Recordhead in Milwaukee, where records were cheap because everyone was getting rid of them to go to CDs. But I sold them at garage sales in the middle of that decade when I needed dollars more than LPs, and after I’d sold the stereo that had a turntable.

But: No Billy Joel records. Seriously, where have they gone? I have not seen many in the wild–I picked up Songs in the Attic and 52nd Street at some point (Songs in the Attic in 2008, The Bridge in in 2023). But I haven’t seen a lot of them in the wild. Which is odd: He sold a pile of records. So where have they all gone? Do Billy Joel fans have them? Did Columbia Records cheap out on the materials?

Ah, well. At any rate, I was going to just quit and save the certificates for the end of July (right before they expire, where I would be a little less choosy and more driven to spend them) when something caught my eye.

Can you guess what it was?

Yes, Fandango, by Herb Alpert. Which I have on CD, but now I have it on vinyl. I might have mentioned that Herb Alpert is the only 4-media artist at Nogglestead. We have records, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s–albums bought electronically (the CDs have been ripped to the electronic library as well).

So once I committed to, what, $6? I had to spend the remaining $20, so I got two Bob James records (“H”, which also features Grover Washington, Jr., and Rameau) and a David Sanborn record (Close-Up). The booth had a lot of David Sanborn, but records I already have.

So I still have $75 to spend, most likely this summer. And once I have to spend it, maybe I’ll pick up some of the inexpensive Clifford Brown records I saw. I do listen to his son’s radio program on KCSM sometimes.

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Movie Report: Fist of Fury (1972)

February 27, 2026February 27, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover Well, after hearing “Fists of Fury” on the radio, I guess it’s fitting to watch the film which was the second in the five-pack I bought last February (The Big Boss was the first in the set).

This film, which came out the year after The Big Boss, also has a common martial arts theme to it: The rival martial arts school kills/destroys the protagonist’s school. In this case, Bruce Lee’s character, the best in the school, returns from afar to find that his master has died–the authorities say from pneumonia, but Lee’s Chen thinks it was murder. So it happens. The film is set during the Japanese occupation of China around World War II, so the rival school is also a rival power/oppressor. The rival school crashes the funeral to boast of their prowess, but the senior student at the Chinese school, now the master, holds Chen back and does not want conflict. Chen goes and busts up the rival school, though, leading to further escalations. And he discovers insiders poisoned the master at the behest of the Japanese, so he gets revenge on them and, eventually, all the Japanese and a visiting Russian master of martial arts and strongman.

So, yeah, a martial arts film. With Bruce Lee, so a step above, I guess. The most noteworthy thing about it, though, is that the antagonists are not “The West” or “The Americans” unlike more modern martial arts films partially subsidized by the Chinese government (or allowed, perhaps).

Two down, and three to go. I’m kind of spacing them out because they are likely to be very similar to one another and to other martial arts movies from the pre-wire era. Looking at his IMDB page, he really did only make…. four movies in his lifetime? Incredible. He punched above his weight, literally and figuratively.

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WSIE Is Putting Me Into The Mood For Bruce Lee Movies

February 26, 2026February 25, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

I mentioned that I was starting to watch the Bruce Lee boxed set that I bought in 2024. And WSIE, the jazz station out of Edwardsville, is putting me in the mood.

They currently have Kamasi Washington’s “Fists of Fury” in heavy rotation.

Additionally, I heard The Olympians’ “California” and thought it sounded a log like the music in The Big Boss (aforelinked):

I actually ordered the latter’s In Search of a Revival (from Bandcamp, since I’m almost sorta still on an Amazon Tweehad).

The Washington, not so much.

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Good News For Lawn Mowing Season

February 25, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Cardinals baseball finds new Springfield home on 102.1 The Won

As I’ve mentioned, the stubby antenna on the radio-playing headphones still going strong sixteen years after I bought them can pick up, clearly, two stations in all corners of Nogglestead: 92.3 which was country and 105.1 which is now “old” country (see also).

But! 105.1 was also the home of Cardinals baseball. Which meant that while I was on the lawnmower or, sometimes, painting record shelves outside or painting the fence, a song, probably a good one, would abruptly end and “The St. Louis Cardinals are on….” would replace it. And not the game–an hour of pregame interviews and things. Ah, gentle reader, I sometimes scheduled my lawnmowing around the baseball games just so they would not interrupt me.

Sorry. I know some of you (Friar) are baseball fans. But although I did grow up having ball games on in the workshop or whatnot, I’d rather listen to music when I am on the lawnmower. And now I won’t have to worry about it.

As long as 105.1 doesn’t become the greatest hits of the 80s, 90s, and today or, heaven forfend, hot country.

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