Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I got this book fresh on the heels of reading The Joy of Junk. This book pales in comparison.

Apparently, it’s some sort of annual compendium, as it bears the number 8, but I’m not sure what it’s collected from. What it represents is a collection of projects that use things you might throw out to make kitschy little crafts.

Frankly, they could have called it Trash to Painted Trash You Can Give For Gifts. Most of the projects end up with a final product that you look at and say, “Oh, that’s a clever use of a .” That is, most of the things don’t transcend their origins. If you make anything out of an old coffee can, for example, you end up with something that looks like a repurposed coffee can. I prefer my projects to transcend the origin of the materials.

It’s not my bag. Maybe if you’re into the country style or whatever style relies on cutesy sayings and homespun appearance, you’ll get more than I got from the book. Me, I got one project idea and the recognition that aluminum cans are a good source of serviceable metal to use in crafts.

This book follows Arizona Ambush in the series, so I get to feel like somewhat of an insider when Bolan refers to the events in Arizona and I know what he’s talking about.

Unfortunately, this book ropes in a large number of other characters from preceding novels, characters who now work with the government in a special group targeting the Mafia. So the reader who comes to the series late (me) is left outside a little, and the book spends whole chapters filling in expository backstory rather than shooting-em-up. So the book is not the strongest entry in the series. I understand from Wikipedia that Bolan eventually works with this group, so the whole “what is the agenda not only of the Mafia, but also of the bureaucrats and lawmakers on the good guys’ side?” intrigue will probably grow, too.

That said, the plot of the book gets a little short shrift. Bolan goes to Memphis and Nashville and works with SOG (the special operations group) to rescue a couple of members in an attempt to infiltrate the drug-running arm of the mob. In doing so, he meets a country-and-western song maveness married into and under the thumb of the local boss and uncovers a plot to blackmail powerful politicians.

Overall, a weaker entry in the series. I really ought to try to get some of the earlier work. Definitely in the middle of the three I’ve read recently.

I read this book because I watched a television program, Criminal Minds, because it had Green Bay Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings making his acting debut in it. Well, I watched enough of the program to see Greg Jennings appear, which was about half. And in that half, the program referred to The Illustrated Man twice. I’d passed over this book a couple times recently when picking over my to-read shelves for something quick to read. So when Greg Jennings, indirectly, encouraged me to read it, I complied.

Like The Martian Chronicles, the book creates a sort of wrapper into which Bradbury inserts his existing short stories. In this case, it’s a tattooed wanderer whose tattoos move and tell stories of the future at night. A camper encounters the illustrated man and watches the stories. In the beginning, we get some italicized addition to each story to keep the thread of the book going, but Bradbury abandons it by the end, although the epilogue returns to the frame story.

I haven’t read Bradbury in a number of years (before the blog, but within the last decade, I think I reread The Martian Chronicles). I liked him well enough in my youth, but in my middle age, I find him a little bleak. Many of the stories deal with death, aliens triumphing over men (or men triumphing over aliens with their consumer culture, still an indictment of humanity). Reading this, I cannot help think that Bradbury could have written Avatar since he shares a lot of thematic ground with Cameron. Maybe these themes were challenging sixty or seventy years ago when Bradbury was writing the stories, but now that they are a prevalent part of the modern mythology/culture, they lose resonance and fade really into the background. I need to rinse my science fiction palatte with some Heinlein soon.

A little note: in the television program, one of the people says that the illustrated man has a blank spot on his back to show the future in the film version of the book, but not the book. Untrue. The book does have that spot.

This book represents the second Mack Bolan book I’ve read in the last year; the first, Missouri Deathwatch was a later entry in the series. This book is far earlier in the series and represents a better piece of work. The writing is tighter and snappier, and it doesn’t rely so heavily on the repetition of conventions.

In this book, Bolan goes to Arizona to tackle some drug trafficking, and he uncovers a military-type unit comprised of several fellows with a score to settle with Bolan from some unpleasantness in ‘Nam. This unit is part of an internecine war among the mafia whose stakes include an owned U.S. Senator. Bolan shows up and muddies the water, pretty much playing both ends against the middle and eliminating this particular bunch of bad men. As he does.

A better entry in the series, as I said. Although let’s talk about Bolan’s Warwagon. It took the book a long time to mention it’s actually an RV, which was a shame because I spent a lot of time trying to imagine a GMC that can support a full rocket battery, communications center, arsenal, and can unobtrusively tail a bunch of scared mobsters. Come to think of it, I still can’t, but I’ve never seen the Arizona highways. Maybe the desert is hilly enough that they would not see the RV that followed them from Tucson to their desert lair turn just a mile down the road and parallel their course. Maybe. But that’s the only real “Huh?” bit in the book.

This book is kinda like reading a collection of episodes of Creative Juice in that it provides as examples a number of step-by-step projects using old cast-offs to make new decorative things. One can make a jewelry box from a craft box and some old drawer pulls for legs, for example, or one can use the pages of books (perish the thought!) to create decoupaged storage boxes. Really, the most use of the book is in the tips for what sorts of cheap raw materials you should look out for at garage sales and the different ways of looking at and using ordinary things as parts of crafts. The more exposure to that one gets, the more crafty in an arts-and-crafts sort of way one can become. So the book is worth flipping through for that alone, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Okay, now I feel kinda dumb. Not only did I slog through a contemporary political screed book, but when I sat down to review it, I find I’ve already read it and reviewed it in 2006. I didn’t remember it. That should be an indicator of what I thought of it this time and, apparently, what I thought of it then, too.

A simple book to write, it’s a list blog post stretched into a couple hundred pages. It does call out some liberal influences that you might not be aware of (and which you’ll forget soon after reading, as I apparently did), but Goldberg is a little abrasive and name-calling even while attacking certain liberals for being abrasive and name-callers.

A difference in reading it today versus 2006: Three of the hundred are now dead. Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson died from the very lifestyle excesses for which Goldberg pillories them. It seems gauche now to read someone speaking ill of them. The third is Teddy Kennedy, and Goldberg focuses on his political career, so it’s less unseemly to read harsh words about him.

I doubt the book will get any better with age, but these sorts of books aren’t supposed to have any longevity. On the plus side, I will remember now that I have read it. Twice.