Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 53 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Brian J.’s Favorite Soundtracks

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

So last week, Severian posted a Nerd Fight post about the best soundtrack and invited his commenters to hash out the best soundtrack albums for movies.

Well, we here at MfBJN have owned a soundtrack album or two, and although I did not contribute at his blog, I thought I would steal the theme.

Now, he talks a bit about the history of a soundtrack, but in my post here, I’m going to specify that a soundtrack for my consideration:

The songs must have been relatively new for the soundtrack. I mean, you could look at the discs released for Forrest Gump and Sleepless in Seattle. They’re full of good songs, but they were earlier hits collected for the film. Not going to count those.
Film scores do not count either. And that’s not just Last of the Mohicans or Lord of the Rings or even Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Star Wars with their soaring classical themes and whatnot but also the works of Henry Mancini (yes, I have both of the Peter Gunn soundtrack albums, and I listened to his work for Charade within the last week. But when I think of soundtracks, I think of collections of vocal music.

Also, this is not a “best” collection, but rather the ones I like best over time.

So here they are, not ranked:

Pump Up The Volume
I have mentioned before that I have this soundtrack which does not have Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” on it). But I have not mentioned that I might have worn out a cassette copy of this soundtrack and bought another before buying a CD of the soundtrack in the 21st century. I have mentioned over and over about the main period when I watched films over and over in my youth (living in a trailer in rural Missouri with nothing but Showtime to keep me company, which oversimplifies it). But when I was in college and had a paycheck, I’d sometimes hit the mall on Friday nights and visit Suncoast and buy videocassettes. Which I would then watch over and over. I watched this movie over and over in those college years when I only had a VCR to keep me company (which oversimplifies it, but my video library was much smaller then). This cassette was one of the ones in heavy rotation in my cheap (but unreliable!) Nissan sports car in 1994-1995, so I heard the soundtrack a bunch, too.
Shaft
I mentioned just recently that I bought numerous blaxploitation films’ soundtracks a decade or so ago. I am not sure whether I saw Shaft and then got the soundtrack or vice versa (I’ve seen all four Shaft movies). I was pleased when I picked up this album on vinyl, too, which I have listened to within the last month. Based on the strength of this album, I’ve bought other Isaac Hayes albums on CD and vinyl.
Across 110th Street
The title song by Bobby Womack plays over the titles of Jackie Brown, so it’s probably on that soundtrack as well. But after watching Jackie Brown, I looked up the song and then bought the soundtrack to the original film (which I have not seen). The title song is on my gym playlist, and I have bought several other Bobby Womack CDs and then records based on his work on this soundtrack.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
It’s a bit thin on the content; a lot of the songs are silly and light (and like a minute long). But it’s one of the more recent soundtracks I’ve bought on CD.
Fletch
C’mon, man, I’ve already talked about this album at length. I will still throw it on when I find it in the disorganized Nogglestead record library. I’ve not bought it on CD, though, as part of the joy of it is in playing the record and remembering what would happen when I did. Maybe if I see it for a buck at a sale I’ll pick it up on CD.

So that’s the top five soundtracks for me, not based on quality, but based on the films and/or where I was when I listened to them a lot.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Ninja Scroll (1993) / Ghost in the Shell (1995)

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

After watching a couple of martial-arts / Eastern-produced movies (The Forbidden Kingdom and Jade Warrior and Blind Fist of Bruce) and having my fill of them for the nonce, I took Ninja Scroll out of the cabinet and saw mention of Ghost in the Shell. Which I also had in the cabinet. I picked both of them up at garage sales before I started tracking film purchases on the blog here, but I am pretty sure it was in the Casinoport or Old Tree days when I thought I’d familiarize myself with anime since the young people (then) were into it. I can’t help but note that the young people with whom I work now–people in their early 30s, so teens or so when I acquired these videocassettes, don’t seem to be into anime–it’s for people ten or twenty years older than they are (but not me, as we’ll get to by-and-by).

Book cover When I popped in this videocassette, I thought it would be a short, maybe 30- or 60-minute cartoon, perhaps like an episode of Robotech, one of which I actually watched with my boys sometime after readingRobotech: Genesis/Battle Cry/Homecoming (my young boys were underwhelmed with the story and/or animation). But, no, this is a full length movie. I then noted that its animation was about what you would have seen in imported Japanese cartoons that appeared on television in the late 1970 like Battle of the Planets before the American toy-based cartoons like G.I. Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Transformers took over in the middle 1980s. And I have to admit that, when I was a lad watching cartoons after school, I probably never thought, “You know what this cartoon needs? Gore, nudity, and sex!” Because this film has them.

In it, a mercenary ninja is hired by a wizened old Tokugawa government spy to help learn the fate of a village that died after an apparent plague arrived there. Meanwhile, a local clan leader sends a ninja team also to investigate, and they, too, are killed, except for one woman who reports back to the clan leader. She is sent back, where she encounters a devil who tries to rape her, only to have the mercenary ninja save her. Together, the trio uncover a plan by another clan to overthrow the government and they must face eight ninja with supernatural abilities to do so.

So it’s laden with intrigue and gore and nudity and whatnot. It was okay, I suppose.

Book cover After watching Ninja Scroll, I (re-) discovered this film in the library, and I figured I might as well watch it right away whilst my brief interest in anime was at its peak.

In it, a cybernetic government agent and her team (and directorate) investigate “ghost” hacking incidents where humans are “hacked” through maniuplated emotions to do actual hacking on behalf of a shadowy figure known as the “Puppetmaster.” She and her team discover that it might be a computer program another directorate created who has become sentient and wants to procreate.

The film dwells on some heavier themes than Ninja Scroll, including the nature of consciousness, the soul (the “ghost” in the “shell” of a physical body). Not too heavily–man, I am reading a particularly talky book that touches on Great Themes–but enough to maybe make you think.

This film has a different look than Ninja Scroll–the animators have a more Japanese traditional art influence (more straight lines and strokes) as well as the scene selection to animate was heavily influenced by traditional noir scenes. So more interesting to look at at times, but to be honest, I was a little lost on a main plot point when one pivotal character looked a lot like an earlier character who was unrelated–I got confused and just rolled with it, but better discernment on my part would have made a bit of it more comprehensible. Although I suppose with more experience and exposure to anime, I could get better at it.

But, no. I would have enjoyed these films more as actual films with actors and stuff, maybe, but I’m too old to be watching a lot of cartoons. And I’m not in my teens or early twenties, latching onto this particular “art” form to differentiate myself from the rest of mass consumer middle-brow taste at the end of the period that actually had mass consumer middle-brow taste.

Buy My Books!

Book Report: George Burns: The Hundred Year Dash by Martin Gottfried (1996)

March 17, 2024March 14, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover Not to be confused with Bob Greene’s The 50-Year Dash which came out at roughly the same time. This boko, which I bought in 2008 (closer to its publication date than to today). Jeez Louise, it’s amazing how I can remember that book sale at St. Martin’s fairly clearly, but I don’t remember things from recent years. Mostly because most things in recent years have not been memorable, I reckon. But let’s not get maudlin and introspective again (or still) here.

This 329-page (with index) biography of George Burns tells in great detail, based not so much on Burns’ own (often ghost-written) accounts (in his other books) but on interviews with people who knew him and other primary written sources. It’s not a hagiography–it does not omit Burns’ frequent infidelity to his wife nor shy away from exposing, indirectly, the man’s insecurities which drove him. But it doesn’t make his flaws the center of the story, which is of a man who liked show business and wanted to get into it, succeed in it, and to continue in it his whole long life.

I mean, Burns’ career had so many different stages. He started in vaudeville and struggled as a solo act; he met with Gracie Allen and was part of a successful vaudeville act; he and Allen did some movies in the 1930s, usually short reprising of their vaudeville routines; they had a successful radio show which transitioned into a successful television program (the television show beginning when he was 54 years old); when Gracie retired and then died, Burns tried unsuccessfully to work on television with a number of series and continuing his nightclub act, neither of which worked (as nightclub acts were in decline as entertainment, perhaps due to television), leading to a fairly fallow artistic decade or fifteen years where although he was still producing and making money on business deals, he was not a popular entertainer; but in the 1970s, (at 79 years old), he takes a role in the film The Sunshine Boys and wins an Oscar as the Best Supporting Actor for it, leading to a resurgent career that saw him publishing books, appearing on television frequently, and starring in movies like the Oh God! series–strangely enough, I saw the first one a couple of times on television and the third one a lot because it was on Showtime when I was in the trailer, but I never see it on videocassette or DVD.

I found Burns’ resilience and longevity inspirational. I came to the part of the biography dealing with the death of Gracie Allen when Burns was like 68 years old, and the biography had 100 pages left.

You know, I’ve been letting the old man in a bit lately, and I’m inspired a bit by how Burns had whole decades short of success and carried on and succeeded.

You know, I am not much of a book collector these days, but I do have the urge to seek out Burns’ filmography. I know that only a few episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show survive–and they’re packaged not only on dollar DVDs you could buy in the grocery store twenty years ago but also in expensive collectible sets in collectible tins on Amazon. But maybe get some of the later films if not Damsels in Distress where they danced with Fred Astaire.

At any rate, this particular edition is not a collectible, but it is an oddity in my collection. Not only is it an ex-library book, but it’s also a BookCrossing book. Which looks to have been (and apparently still is) a Where’s George? (which is also apparently still a thing) for books. Or maybe it’s not still a thing–although the Web site has an up-to-date copyright date, clicking around in it yields a number of “no results” and stack traces. At any rate, it is or was a way to label books so that when you put them in a little free library or leave them lying around, the next person to pick them up can enter or could have entered a code into the Web site so you could see that it was being read and maybe where. But the ultimate result is that the book has a couple of extra labels on it with the penultimate owner’s user name (presumably penultimate as I bought this book and BookCrossing books are philosophically to be given away freely) and two or three little fliers in the pages like blow-in cards in a magazine.

Well, this book has been in my stacks for sixteen years now, so it has been out of circulation and will be until my estate sale. Note that these cards cannot be classified as Found Bookmarks because they were not actually used to mark the previous reader’s place.

Oh, and one more anecdote about this book: On my way to a book signing at ABC Books last weekend, I brought my sons and a friend of theirs along (they were along for a promised lunch at a buffet), and he and I got to talking about what we were reading. I told him about this book, and prefaced it by asserting that he would not know who George Burns was. And he did not. He’s a couple weeks short of turning 18, and George Burns, although an interesting figure in the history of 20th century entertainment whose career spanned every major genre of entertainment except video games, was in prehistory for a teen today. I mean, he was not even from the 20th century. He was born in the 19th century, which is not even covered in modern school history classes (I presume). So I was an old man talking about an old man. To be honest, I mostly talk about old or dead men, so this is not actually a variation on my theme.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1979) / Blind Fist of Bruce (1979)

March 16, 2024March 13, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover After watching The Forbidden Kingdom and Jade Warrior, I thought I would throw in this DVD which I bought in June 2021 in Branson. I mean, I knew one of the films starred Bruce Li who was supposed to be a successor to Bruce Lee, but what did I just watch?

Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is not a Bruce Lee film. It was made after he died, and one of the currents is questioning whether he was murdered. I don’t know if the film makers were influenced by Kentucky Fried Movie or similar influences, but this is a jump-cut mockumentary (?) comedy (?) (it’s not funny though) centering on a karate tournament in Madison Square Garden in 1979, where the winner might be the successor to Bruce Lee. You’ve got Fred Williamson playing himself; you’ve got interview excerpts with Ron Van Clief (I’m familiar with both from the Urban Action Cinema Collection). You have a couple other martial artists who might be real or might be actors doing demonstrations. You also have a sparring match for the title at the end. In the middle, you have a fictionalized “biography” of Bruce Lee based on two films chopped and redubbed: one a samurai film purportedly depicting Lee’s Chinese samurai [sic] great grandfather, a mighty warrior, and the second a film starring a young Bruce Lee redubbed and cut to show him studying kung fu against his parents’ wishes. All of it is narrated by a sports reporter Adolph Caesar who does not appear to have been a sports reporter.

So is it a comedy? A quick cash-grab made for small theaters? That doesn’t matter. This film was a thorough waste of time except for the stories of some of the awful films I’ve watched. And this is not bad in a fun way that I’ll want to rewatch.

Blind Fist of Bruce, originally Mang quan gui shou, is a straight-forward kung fu film. Bruce Li plays the owner of a small town bank who is being taught kung fu by a pair of clowns whose tutelage has not actually taught the youth much. They stage an attempted bank robbery which proves the safety of the bank and the owner’s martial arts skills. However, when a real group of criminals moves into town, they shame him until he finds that the blind beggar is a kung fu master who can teach him how to really fight. He then bests the leader of the criminal gang, but they call in a favor, seeking a really bad guy called Tiger who was originally the student of the blind beggar–and blinded the beggar years before.

I guess the film is more of a straight-forward kung fu movie at the tale end of the 1970s resurgence–right as Jackie Chan was turning the genre into light comedy and before the wire work and CGI made it into video games. It was okay–you know, we thought films like this were great when we watched them at 11:30 on Saturday nights in Milwaukee, but now I look at them with a bit of experience, and when I see people blocking sticks with their hands or arms, I think, “Well, this fight is over,” but these things are filmed for how they look, not how they actually are.

I think this exhausts most if not all of the Chinese films in the library currently, and even if it has not, it has rather tamped down my interest in watching another such film any time soon.

Buy My Books!

Did Someone Forget Some Paperwork?

March 16, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Imagine you’re a kid, excited that you’re going to be on the front page of the newspaper, but your mom forgot to sign and return the release form.

And now all the kids at school call you “smiley” or “Walmart-savings-face.”

My beautiful wife speculates that the child might be in a foster home or something. I would extend that to perhaps hiding out from the mob like Jon Cryer in Hiding Out by acting like she is an elementary school student.

You know, I’ve never seen that film, and I don’t remember seeing it on physical media in the wild. I do remember the television commercial briefly. At least Jon Cryer sitting in a school desk (the school kind, so, yes, in the desk and not at the desk), smiling and raising his eyebrows (I forgot the wink, though).

Where was I?

Oh, I don’t know. Riffin’. Riffin’.

Buy My Books!

Pikachu, I Choose Hu

March 15, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

I had not realized I could select “Hu” as a pronoun.

I would choose that as my pronouns except I fear it would be denigrated as cultural appropriation rather than cultural appreciation of Mongolian throat-singing metal:

Also, just to be pedantic, but:

Let the employer know what pronouns you use so they can address you correctly.

He/him, et ab., are third-person pronouns. They’re used when people are talking about you. My employer can address me by name or by “you.”

Meanwhile, I sometimes wonder if I’m not being considered for positions because I have twenty-plus years’ backlog on this here blog not taking wrongthink and rightthink seriously.

As this question was marked optional, I did not answer it on the online application, which scored me in some fashion in the omission.

Buy My Books!

Book Report: The Widow’s Ring by Mary Schaffer (2020)

March 15, 2024August 20, 2025 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This book is one of two that I bought by this local author in Heber Springs, Arkansas last year.

I have to say that I am not sure that I have read a book that more closely matches an episode of a television cop show than this one. Inside the front material, it says it’s a novel featuring Lt. Al Stimpson, but apparently it never evolved into a series.

The book begins with the prologue of how the killer came to be the killer: His abusive mother kept his father and his siblings in line until the father died, whereupon the mother tried to assert dominance, but the older brothers left, leaving the future killer and his younger sister. His mother begins an incestuous relationship with him and hates on the daughter who is young as she is no longer. When the mother kills the daughter, the son kills the mother and cuts off her finger. Which becomes his MO when he starts killing low class women after being triggered by a mother/son porn (probably porno to the author). I’m not spoiling the surprise for you; like a television program, it’s all up front, and the real tension is how the police will find the fellow.

This is not a piss on Missouri book or even a piss on Arkansas book as the original crime takes place in Oklahoma and other crimes take place down south which is rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina (even though it was published in 2020, the book is set years earlier).

So, for the cops, we have a deputy in Oklahoma who just recently discovered the mother’s and sister’s bodies when someone was building on the abandoned mobile home site. She’s a hire for political reasons, but she doggedly pursues leads when the sheriff can’t be arsed. We have Lieutenant Stimpson and his partner: he is white, and she is black, and some are surprised they work so well together (the book says in pretty much those words). And we have a couple other ciphers of characters, such as a stock FBI profiler who makes an appearance or two to say stock FBI profiler things. Most of the other characters are just names and occupations, and many of the scenes in the book are not actual investigations, but instead meetings and reports of investigations. Like you might see on a television program with a small location budget.

I mean, the writing is pretty good, and the book moves along quickly (and it’s only a bit over 130 pages). So if you’re in the mood for something like this–something with the heft of a 21st century equivalent of men’s adventure paperbacks–I guess it could be your thing. But it’s ultimately not mine. I was going to pick up the other Schaffer book right away to complete my tour of her work, but I decided against it at this time. It is one of the “series” where “series” means a couple of books with the same investigators, but its 200+ length daunted me. So I’ll save it for another day.

Buy My Books!

Story Time for Muad’Dib

March 14, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Our most recent arrival is not much of a lap cat, but if I sit in the parlor to listen to records and read newspapers or magazines, he’ll hop up.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Jade Warrior (2006)

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover After watching The Forbidden Kingdom, with its Jade Emperor and Jade Warlord and mention made of a Jade Warrior, I looked into whether this film was related to it. And it is not; the jade in the title merely reflects the association of jade with China.

Like Kung Fu Yoga was supposed to be, this film is a joint production between Chinese and Finnish, as in Finland, production companies. So it has subtitles from both Mandarin and Finnish. The joint nature of the production gives it a bit of a tortured plot device to shoehorn Chinese actors/settings and Finnish actors/settings into it.

In it, a Finnish woman leaving her boyfriend brings some of his junk to an antique dealer, including a MacGuffin. The antique dealer recognizes it as a Chinese artifact and contacts the boyfriend, a down-on-his-luck fellow who has taken up smithing as a hobby. The MacGuffin opens a bit and reveals to the young Finn how, in a past life, he was a great warrior-monk who defeated a demon who was building a device to open the gates of hell.

In past China, the warrior/monk was destined to Kill the demon which would give the warrior to Nirvana when he dies–he won’t be reincarnated in other words, but he has fallen for a warrior woman played by Zhang Jingchu–who falls in love with him as well, but her long-lost first love returns–the warrior’s companion Cho. Instead of killing the demon outright, he locks the demon’s head in the MacGuffin box, but the demon tells him that in all the warrior’s future lives, he will fall in love with Pin Yu, but she will not love him or will love another more than him. Jeez Louise, that is a hell of a thing to contemplate much less to endure. The warrior, who is half-Finnish (of course), takes the MacGuffin to Finland.

In modern Finland, an antiques specialist whose archeologist/anthropologist partner has discovered a preserved body holding the MacGuffin. When it is partially opened by some dust from the Finnish woman’s boyfriend’s things, the MacGuffin opens just enough to allow the demon to possess the antique dealer. He seeks out the woman’s boyfriend and tricks him into completing the gate to hell as the modern Finnish man rediscovers memories from his past life. He kills the demon, which means that when he dies, he will reach Nirvana, and he decides to try to win the heart of this incarnation of Pin Yu, the leaving girlfriend, anyway. And finis!

It tells the two stories in parallel as the modern Finn smith recovers the memories from his past life as well as hints from an archeologist/anthropologist who discovered the remains of Cho and Pin Yu in Finland and a bit of a coda that explains how they got there after the Jade Warrior (presumably the half Finn/half Chinese guy was the titlular character) killed himself to begin his next pursuit of Pin Yu. Cho and Pin Yu went to protect the MacGuffins or something.

An okay film, a bit odd in its artificially grafted synergy. But it did have Zhang Jingchu (or Jingchu Zhang, depending on where you put the family name relative to the personal name) as Pin Yu.
Continue reading “Movie Report: Jade Warrior (2006)” →

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

March 13, 2024March 12, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover When it came time to delve back into the movies in or on the to-watch media center, I picked up this film. It must have looked interesting to me, as I bought it twice last year: once at the library book sale in April (although I called it The Four Kingdoms in that post) and once in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, in June. Also, note that this doubled my odds of picking the film. Well, it would have, except that I had previously noted the duplication and put the copy with the Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, library sticker into the Little Free Library at the park in Battlefield. Perhaps whomever picks it up will wonder how that DVD got from Fairfield Bay to Battlefield as I often wonder how books and whatnot make their way to the Springfield area. I alone know the secret. Well, I guess my family, too, and given that Fairfield Bay is a “resort community,” whoever takes the DVD (if anyone) can probably assume a visitor to the resort there from the area did it, but it’s less romantic/heroic when you put it that way.

At any rate, the film features both Jackie Chan and Jet Li (both older by now/then) in dual roles, and neither is the true protagonist. Instead, a South Boston white teen named Jason Tripitikas travels to Chinatown (Boston) often to visit a pawn shop to look for kung fu movie bootlegs. He’s come to know the owner, Hop, during his visits. One day, he catches a glimpse of a staff in a back room and asks about it. Hop tells him that it’s waiting for a man to come to return it to its rightful owner, and that Hop’s grandfather, father, and now he waited for that man. When a bunch of thugs who bully Jason find out he knows the pawn shop owner, they force him to help get them into the locked shop for a robbery, and they shoot Hop. Jason grabs the staff and tries to fight them off, but ends up running to the roof, and he falls, and…..

He is transported to ancient, mythical China with the staff just outside a village being raided by the warlord’s men. A drunken martial arts master (Chan) saves him and starts to tell him the story of the Monkey God, a bit of a prankster martial arts master who invaded a ceremony held for the Jade Emperor and who embarrassed the Jade Warlord. The Jade Emperor only returns every couple of centuries from his meditation, and the Jade Warlord is in place while the Emperor meditates. The Jade Warlord challenges the Monkey God to a fight and tricks him into laying down his staff, and then he (the Jade Warlord) entraps the Monkey God in a statue. Before he’s completely encased, the Monkey God sends his staff far away for protection as it is the thing that can free him.

So Jason and Lu Yan (Chan) head off so that Jason can learn kung fu to handle himself as he is off to return the staff to the Monkey God. Along the way, they link up with a monk (Jet Li) and a young woman sworn to kill the Jade Warlord, who has taken the time to brutally conquer and suppress, etc. Then they get to the stronghold of the Jade Warlord, chaos and kung fu ensue, and….

Well, not finis. Jason returns to his own time without the staff, but uses his knowledge of kung fu to fend off the thugs and meets someone who looks just like the Golden Sparrow, the young woman whom he had to leave behind in ancient, mythical China.

You know what? I’ve been harsh on some Chinese and Chinese/American or Chinese/Elsewhere movies of the 21st century because they feature Chinese heroes fighting against Westerners who want to steal China’s treasures. This one does not ring the Chinese jingoistic or propaganda bells–although, note that the Western hero is bringing a Chinese treasure back to China. So I was pleasantly surprised by the film, and I enjoyed seeing Jackie Chan revisit the Drunken Master set (Lu Yen is an immortal, but his elixir, required to keep him ever young or strong or something, is wine), and Jet Li chews the scenery a bit in his dual role as the monk and as the Monkey God.

So, overall, a good way to pass an evening.

And then there’s Liu Yifei as the Golden Sparrow. Continue reading “Movie Report: The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)” →

Buy My Books!

Book Report: A Pound of Paper by John Baxter (2003)

March 12, 2024March 11, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover If I had found this book in time for the 2024 Winter Reading Challenge, perhaps I would have stretched the Library/Bookstore Setting category enough to include this book. Although it is not specifically set in a book store, it’s a book that is part biography of the author, but it does center an awful lot on his book collecting.

When I opened the book, it smelled as though it was a new book, and I thought I might have bought it at Barnes and Noble as part of gift card spending at one point, but as it turns out, I ordered it from ABC Books in March 2020 when the government prohibited my going in person. Almost four years ago. The book is in cherry shape, though, so one wonders if I am the first person to have read it. Probably so.

So who is John Baxter? He is an Australian who grew up in Australia in the middle part of the 20th century. He grew up liking science fiction and attended some science fiction meetups of the time, started a fan newsletter (the zine of its time, although “zine” is a pretty dated word itself in the 21st century), worked for the railroad, and when he discovered he could write things that would get published, took his ten-year bonus from the railroad and quit to become a writer.

He wrote some screenplays and some biographies, I think, but most importantly, he lived in London, and he lived in the U.S., and he eventually lived in France, and everywhere he went, he collected books. So we get lots of stories about street book fairs in London, about visiting estates as they’re being sold but not estate sales, and various elements of book collecting, not just book accumulation.

A fascinating book that takes one to different times and places–Australia in the early 1960s, London in the late 1970s, and Paris in the 21st Century–and it splits time between being an autobiography and being a book collector. Of course, I recognized some elements of my own activities in his anecdotes. Browsing through a seedy room of adult magazines to get a copy of Gallery magazine with Robert B. Parker’s “The Surrogate” in it for $1 (I went through the room clockwise, and the magazine was on one of the shelves near the door to the right–is that why I have ever since done estate sales going to the right first?). He also worked as a runner, finding books to sell later, and that, too resonated with me. Finding a first edition of Dune (not a first printing) at a garage sale for $1. Buying a Playboy collection for $300 and selling it in pieces on Playboy.com’s custom auction site for, what, $3000?–not to mention vintage ads on Ebay after. And so on.

You know, I don’t really collect books–up until soon after the turn of the century, I did collect Robert B. Parker books, mostly from Ebay, but not so much these days. I do pick up late 19th century collections of poetry when I can find them inexpensively, but I’m not a collector in that regard….

At any rate, a nice read both as a memoir of a writer from an odd corner of the world and of a book collector.

Buy My Books!

You Could Put It That Way, But….

March 10, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Professional opinionator, liberal (natch): Messenger: Missouri judges allow lawmakers to stay under a shroud of secrecy:

Last week, the Missouri Court of Appeals lifted its metaphorical middle finger to government transparency.

In a 2-1 opinion, judges Janet Sutton and Mark Pfeiffer allowed the Missouri House to keep secret information about who is sending its members emails to influence public policy.

The ruling was badly timed. Starting Sunday, the nation celebrates Sunshine Week, dedicated to shining a light on government transparency laws and the importance of citizens keeping an eye on elected officials.

That’s what Clayton attorney Mark Pedroli was doing back in April 2019, when he emailed certain House members, asking for correspondence from them. Several lawmakers responded to his requests, but they redacted the names and addresses of the constituents who emailed them. The House had passed a rule that allowed them to do so.

Although if one were not eager to bash the Republicans in the Missouri state legislature (and Republicans generally) with any cudgel at hand, one might say Legislature/Judge Protects Privacy of Private Citizens Who Want To Write To Their Representatives Without Getting Doxxed By Activists and Newspapermen Who Disagree With Them.

Buy My Books!

We at MfBJN Know The Rest of the Story

March 8, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Pardon me for Paul-Harveying this, but Stuff Nobody Cares About posted a picture of 1937 St. Louis Cardinals catchers at spring training.

Including Mickey Owen:

Of the three catchers Mickey Owen had the most successful career. In 1937 the 21-year-old rookie played in 80 games for the Cardinals. Owen would become the Cardinals starting catcher in 1938 playing with the team until 1940.

Mickey Owen would eventually play five seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers making the All-Star team four times. Owen played in the major leagues until 1954 and had a career .255 batting average. Owen died at age 89 in 2005.

As we here at MfBJN have mentioned, Owens moved to Greene County, Missouri, after his playing days. He opened a baseball school a little west of here that we passed taking my boy to a basketball game out in Avila (it’s still open), and he later ran for Greene County sheriff and served several terms. I know all this because I bought one of his re-election giveaways for a dime at a church garage sale a decade ago.

It’s just a little notepad. No telling what it’s worth, but given that he played almost a century ago, probably as much as a modern giveaway notepad. So less than the dime I paid for it likely.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Ma and Pa Kettle Back On The Farm (1951)

March 8, 2024March 6, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover After discoursing, briefly, on films that piss on Missouri, I popped this film in right away as I thought it was set in Missouri because Ma and Pa Kettle are yokels, and the Ozarks hillbilly was entering the popular culture about this time. But I was mistaken; apparently, the films are set in Washington state for the most part (although one later entry is The Kettles in the Ozarks). So this is not a piss on Missouri movie at all. And it’s funny, the passage of time; I would have sworn I just bought this film, but it was almost six months ago. Man, I am not watching movies as fast as I’m buying them.

At any rate, this is the first Ma and Pa Kettle movie I watched on purpose and all the way through. I say this because, gentle reader, well… pull up a chair and hear about the Olden Days. When I was a kid, before cable, the UHF stations on the dial and sometimes the VHF stations, would play two or three movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. These tended to include old black-and-white war movies and comedies from series, including the Ma and Pa Kettle movies and Francis the Talking Mule (a couple of series I remember). As a pre-teen boy, I tended to only get into monster movies on the creature feature show. So although I would have had the chance to watch probably everything in this series, I didn’t.

So: This is the third film in which Ma and Pa Kettle and their kin appear. In The Egg and I, they’re secondary characters to the main characters who move from the big city to the farm (and for which Marjorie Main was nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Then the films focus on them with various vagaries (my rigorous research indicates). In this film, the Kettles are living in a modern house with their son who graduated from college and invented an improved chicken egg incubator (the premise of Ma and Pa Kettle). Their son and his eastern wife are about to have a baby, and the in-laws show up, and the domineering mother-in-law takes over, driving the Kettles back to their farm which lacks the modern conveniences they’ve come to appreciate. Prospectors think they’ve found a vein of uranium on the Kettles’ land leading to their presumed chance at wealth. And the mother-in-law eventually drives the new parents apart.

In a series of humorous set pieces, everything is set aright.

I chuckled at a couple of the things. But I don’t know if I’ll order other films in the series. If I see them, I might pick them up–odds are better to find them here than elsewhere, perhaps. Especially for a buck or fifty cents at the book sale or antique mall.

And I don’t even think this would count as a pissing on kind of movie because it’s light-hearted comedic poking at archetypes. I count pissing on movies as earnest, this is how those lesser people really are kinds of films. Or perhaps I just slap the term around arbitrarily and without being informed about what I’m talking about. This is a blog, after all, and hot takes are often also spit takes.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Highlander: The Final Dimension (1994)

March 7, 2024March 6, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover It seems like I just watched the first two films in this series, gentle reader, but I watched Highlander last January and Highlander II: The Quickening last May. And I watched the series of them in recent memory, recent being within the last decade. Seems I see them priced to move somewhere together and I buy another set of them, and I put them in my unwatched cabinet (or on it). You know, of all the media libraries, the VHS and DVD library is the smallest, so it has a slightly greater chance of being organized some day rather than the LPs, CDs, or books do, and I might learn how many copies of each of these films I own.

At any rate, this film ignores the contents of the second, rightfully so. In it, Connor MacLeod has traveled after his first wife dies in Scotland to Japan to study with another immortal, a Japanese sorceror played by Mako. The sorceror helps the Highlander to fashion his katana and to learn to fight with it. But Kane, a Mongolish looking immortal played by Mario Van Peebles arrives and kills the sorceror who tells MacLeod to run. Because he has booby trapped his lair so that when his head is taken, presumably by Kane, that it collapses, burying Kane and his fellow bad guy immortals.

In 1994, an industrial dig of some sort–the set is, of course, a generic industrial set–unearths the legendary cave of the sorceror and frees Kane. Of course, a beautiful archeologist played by Deborah Kara Unger is on hand to be a love interest after discovering the secret of MacLeod’s past. In northern Africa, the Highlander senses that another immortal is afoot and returns to New York, where Kane heads himself for the renewed Gathering. A couple of set pieces and cinematic sword fights later, Kane and MacLeod face off on another conveniently located generic industrial set of steam pipes and metal stairs and catwalks. Well, the last piece is set in New Jersey, so maybe it’s all like that.

So it’s a grand fun film to watch, especially Mario Van Peebles having the time of his life chewing up the scenery as the bad guy. The budget for these films must have been pretty low, as they didn’t spend a whole lot on set lighting or custom sets, but they’re still more fun to watch than modern action films costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

And in the Highlander film, I mentioned how both Roxanne Hart, as the then-modern Brenda, and Beatie Edney, as MacLeod’s first wife, were pretty. But, boy howdy, Deborah Kara Unger.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Highlander: The Final Dimension (1994)” →

Buy My Books!

Important Measures

March 6, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Legislation to fight trafficking in Missouri passes House with nearly unanimous vote

I know, you’re asking me, gentle reader, how did the preening legislators make the illegal illegaller?

Why, by taking the monumental steps of:

Making a committee. With diverse stakeholders!

The Committee on Sex and Human Trafficking Training would be created and would include diverse stakeholders. The group would meet each year to establish guidelines for mandatory training.
Also make a council.

Additionally, legislative leaders said the bills would establish the Statewide Council Against Adult Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children to coordinate statewide efforts to fight these issues.
Mandate training.

House officials indicated that the legislation would require training on sex and human trafficking for professionals such as emergency medical technicians, nurses, prosecutors, juvenile officers, social workers and peace officers. The move is meant to equip frontline workers with the knowledge and tools necessary to identify and respond to instances of these crimes efficiently.
Create a slush fund.

They would also impose restitution fees for those convicted of specific sexual offenses with funds directed to support anti-trafficking efforts statewide.

So, basically, these bills are giveaways to non-profits and NGOs that make a living advocating, training, and holding meetings about human trafficking.

I’m sorry, but I did not see anything in the article (which uses advocacy terms like protecting the vulnerable over and over again) about funding police.

I used to be so cynical when I was young. Now I have broken through cynicism to what lies beyond.

Buy My Books!

On Lost Worlds of South America by Dr. Edwin Barnhart (2012)

March 6, 2024March 6, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover After watching the Indiana Jones movies last month, I opted to watch the remainder of this video series.

I started listening to this course last June on our way to vacation in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, but when we passed Harrison, the lanes on the state highways narrowed, and I needed all my concentration to navigate the roads, so I didn’t end up listening to it. And once we returned, well, I spend, what, an hour to an hour and a half in the car each week nowadays? It’s hard to maintain the thread of a lecture over a week. So the discs remained in the car until last month, when I pulled them out and brought them downstairs to watch.

And, gentle reader, as I discovered when listening to Unqualified is that listening to audiobooks is a bit of a pain for me these days since I’m not in the car and I’m not often doing mindless things where I can kind of listen and follow something while doing something else. In this case, watching a Great Courses lecture series means dedicating hours across many evenings. This lecture series is 24 lectures, which would be the upwards of 20 evenings given that I would sometimes watch two episodes. It seems like a big commitment–I haven’t completed seasons of television shows, for example, because of the commitment. So time will tell how often I complete these series until such time as maybe I commute again.

But I started watching the lectures in the middle, trying to remember where I had been when I last stopped listening in the car last year. I think I overlapped with a lecture or two, but the first couple of lectures–the first couple of nations/civilizations/worlds were very similar, although in different places.

The lectures include:

South America’s Cradle of Civilization
Discovering Peru’s Earliest Cities
South America’s First People
Ceramics, Textiles, and Organized States
Chavín and the Rise of Religious Authority
Cupisnique to Salinar–Elite Rulers and War
Paracas–Mummies, Shamans, and Severed Heads
The Nazca Lines and Underground Channels
The Moche–Pyramids, Gold, and Warriors
The Moche–Richest Tombs in the New World
The Moche–Drugs, Sex, Music, and Puppies
Enigmatic Tiwanaku by Lake Titicaca
The Amazon–Civilization Lost in the Jungle
The Wari–Foundations of the Inca Empire?
The Chimu–Empire of the Northern Coast
The Sican–Goldsmiths of the Northern Coast
The Inca Origins–Mythology v. Archeology
Cuzco and the Tawantinsuyu Empire
The Inca–From Raiders to Empire
The Inca–Gifts of the Empire
The Khipu–Language Hidden in Knots
Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley
Spanish Contact–Pizarro Conquers the Inca
Remnants of the Past–Andean Culture Today

I say that the lectures were a bit repetitive, and some of that might be because I was listening and not watching the earlier lectures. The professor spoke of the earlier civilizations having similar architecture, but in different locations, and he focused a lot on the common elements–the similar architectural styles/city layouts, the prevalence of the Fanged Deity/Decapitator Deity, and so on–although he did mention the differences–seafood diets versus agriculture based on location and the importance in El Niño cycle in ending some of these civilizations.

But watching the lectures added some depth. One could see the art he was describing, view the maps showing relative locations, and observe the ruins as they are today (Brian J. stopped the series because he was running out of synonyms for see). It proved a little distracting in part, though, as one notices that the shifts from one camera to another were not cut, so when he changes between the two, he pauses, his head turns to pick up the teleprompter or cue cards, he turns his body, and then he starts walking again and speaking. One wonders, is he on a set or is it a green screen behind him? He picks up a stirrup vessel from a table, but was that table always there or was it set before a green screen? Has he always had the remote or controller in his right hand? How many lectures does he wear the same clothes? And so on. Maybe it’s not so much a distraction but just something else to observe and think about while learning the material. So it’s more like the actual college experience.

At any rate, the lectures focus on Andean civilizations mainly because the Amazon has not been explored properly even now–the professor mentions that archeologists don’t generally want to dig in really remote areas–they want to spend years in urban areas where they can drive out to a dig not far away. Which led me to look up the number of uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, and it’s dozens of tribes (I saw a table on one Web site, but cannot find it now). Fascinating. So although Raiders of the Lost Ark was set in the 1930s, one could throw in a couple of drones and set something very similar today.

And although I am briefly able to talk about some of the greater pre-Inca civilizations like the Chavín, the Moche, the Wari, The Chimo, and the Sican–I made a gag at a trivia night a couple weeks ago that if we had such a category, I would be dialed in. But as time passes between now and the future, the details will start to fade, and I’ll only remember a couple of things. Like that the people of the Incan civilization had endured a Civil War prior to Spanish contact, and smallpox had already done maybe the opposite of decimate (whatever the latinate for kill 9 of 10 is) the population. But the civilization was not a utopia, and it expanded by military force (a conscript army of 100,000 showed up and asked if you would like to join the empire). So the lecture series plays it pretty straight in laying out that everything was not rosy, even if the professor argues that the civilizations might not have been as bloody-thirsty and head-hunting as thought. It gives you room to think for yourself and to research further if you can.

So I enjoyed the course, and I am briefly interested in reading some of the primary source material I have here–I have some stories of the Aztec conquest written near the actual events, and I was kind of tempted to seek out some of the primary texts that Barnhart mentions, especially chronicles written by the Spanish. But this will likely pass. And I have recently been researching raising alpacas as the Inca did, and I’m already planning to plant some potatoes this spring. So the course might have influenced me more than most (especially if I end up with alpacas and a couple llamas). At the very least, it triggered passing enthusiasm.

Buy My Books!

A Voter’s Guide Showing Whom To Vote Against

March 6, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Two groups endorse candidates in Springfield school board race:

Two groups, one that represents Springfield teachers and another that advocates for voting rights, made endorsements in the 2024 race for Springfield Board of Education.

Seven candidates seek three open seats on the board. Incumbents Danielle Kincaid, Scott Crise and Maryam Mohammadkhani are running against challengers Landon McCarter, Susan Provance, Kyler Sherman-Wilkins and Chad Rollins. Each voter who marks a ballot on April 2 will be asked to vote for three of the seven candidates.

Kincaid and Provance earned endorsements from both groups: Vote 417 and the Springfield chapter of the Missouri State Teachers Association (MSTA). The Springfield MSTA also chose Sherman-Wilkins, while Vote 417 picked Crise.

A union representing “hero” teachers and a political group with left leanings are a good indicator how I would not want to vote.

But I’m not in the Springfield school district, so I can only watch with amusement. And some horror that it is happening here in southwest Missouri, too.

By the way, I was going to use bellwether which is a word you only tend to see in political articles, but it did not exactly fit, and I looked it up to see if it fit (not exactly). But the origin of the word is that it is the lead sheep with the bell around its neck. So bear that in mind when you see it in print or pixels.

Buy My Books!

Movie Report: Collateral (2004)

March 5, 2024March 5, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This film came out back when we still went to films in the theater–we were still in Casinoport. I had just started working as a consultant for the digital agency, starting my own consulting company and working from home for the first time. Basically, I’ve worked from home ever since except for a year or so when the agency hired me and had an office downtown. Perhaps that was not a film-filled summer–I was not only working full time for the agency, but I’d picked up short contracts with previous employers for in-office night work and white paper writing. So I had knowledge of the film when it came out and since–Foxx was something then, ainna? His Oscar winning turn as Ray Charles would come out a couple months later–and Cruise was in the mid-career doldrums, although his doldrums tended to move better than actual doldrums.

At any rate, the plot: Foxx plays a cab driver who picks up a blond Cruise at a courthouse after dropping off a prosecutor planning for a big case. Cruise has a couple of stops to have people sign papers for a real estate deal, so he engages the cab driver to drive him to all the stops. But, at the first stop, a body flies out the window and lands on the cab, and Max (the cab driver) learns Vincent (Cruise) is an assassin on a mission to… well, it develops, take out witnesses and the prosecutor in a case targeting one of his clients, or related organized crime figures.

Along the way, Max and Vincent develop a bit of a rapport. Vincent shakes Max out of a bit of a habitual, rote existence dreaming of better things (owning a limo company) and gets him to man up and demonstrate some confidence–one scene has Max going into a nightclub, pretending to be Vincent. But, in the end, the rapport is false, and Max has to protect his mother (whom he visited in the hospital with Vincent) and the pretty prosecutor who rode in Vincent’s cab earlier.

So the film has some depth in exploring the relationship between the men and how it evolves, mostly in Max drawing strength and confidence from the psychopath’s influence and ultimate his testing.

However, some of the plot turns are just that, plot turns, and not actual evolution of the situation. I mean, Max could have gotten away on several occasions before Vincent knew about his mother, but did not. And they’re driving around in a damaged cab with a body in the trunk as though they have nothing to worry about–although they are stopped by police at one point, saved only by the coincidence that the police are just then called to the scene of one of Vincent’s earlier crimes. So the plot as played out detracts a bit from it.

The film also features a young Mark Ruffalo as a police detective on their trail and Jada Pinkett Smith as the pretty prosecutor. Wow, she was pretty back in those days. Now, not so much. Not so much because she has aged–everyone has except my beautiful wife–but because her (Jada Pinkett Smith’s) character has been revealed to be reviled.

So an okay film. Not one I will watch over and over again, and not something that entered the cultural zeitgeist to be remembered or quoted much twenty years later.

Buy My Books!

Good Album Hunting, March 2, 2023: Stick It In Your Ear Records

March 3, 2024March 3, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Yesterday, my beautiful wife and I went to a record shop in downtown Springfield where I had permission to buy up to $100 of highly priced records.

You see, gentle reader, I suffered a birthday last month, and my wife often gets me a gift certificate or something for the event. But when she got to Relics the day before my birthday, she found a line winding up the aisle to check out, meaning it would have taken her an inordinate amount of time to purchase the gift certificates. And, as you might have read here, the Relics gift certificate is not the best gift, as it has a six month life span, and it is a gift certificate where you must spend all of the value of it, as no change is given. Instead, she allocated $100 for me to spend on fun stuff, which is kind of funny as I tend to buy what I want anyway.

So I decided to make an excursion of it: She and I, together, would go to the record store, and I could spend $100, and I would pick out a record for her, and she would pick out a record for me.

To be honest, I hoped to fill out my Billy Joel collection. When I was visiting Recordhead over on Hampton in Milwaukee in 1990, Billy Joel records were easy to come by as people were replacing their vinyl collections with cassettes or CDs, so I bought a bunch of them. But, oh, gentle reader, what a fool I was a couple of years later when I sold those very records at garage sales for a couple of needed dollars. I recounted all this when I bought (another copy of) 52nd Street last November. But I thought this would be a good opportunity and excuse to splurge on other Billy Joel records.

Oh, but, gentle reader!

The Billy Joel section was but a couple of copies of 52nd Street and a copy of The Bridge. No Piano Man. No The Stranger. No Glass Houses. No Greatest Hits Volume 1 and 2. Oh, the empires I have lost!

I did get The Bridge, though, which I had not owned previously.

I went through the jazz section, looking for Hiroshima, or Keiko Matsui, or Najee, but nothing. I flipped through the Herbie Mann section, and I said Not today. Well, it was more like let’s see what else I can find, but it turned into not today.

My wife pointed out they had $.99 records in boxes along the wall, so I started pawing through them, but the deleterious effects of a martial arts class arose: I could not crouch at the boxes long, and I really had to pee. So I called a lid on it so we could find a restaurant that offered a restroom after our purchases.

We got:

The Bridge by Billy Joel.
Send It by Ashford and Simpson. I have their earlier album Is It Still Good To Ya? (purchased May 2021). Like previously mentioned artists, Ashford and Simpson had a career spanning 40 years, and I only learned about them by buying their albums and then, today, reading Wikipedia.
Fever! by Doc Severinsen. Maybe this can count as the record I picked out for my wife. It was in the dollar section, and although we have numerous Doc Severinsen albums, I was not certain we had this one. And as I grew uncomfortable, I threw the original terms of the trip out the window. Perhaps this should count as the one I picked out for my wife, as I had expected I would pick out a trumpet album for her.
Alternating Currents by Spyro Gyra. Since learning that they are not, in fact, zydeco, I have been picking up this fusion jazz band when I can.
M.F. Horn 3 by Maynard Gerguson. My wife found this record. I know we have MF Horn 2, and I am pretty sure we did not have this one. We do now.
Walk On by Karen Brooks. A Pretty Woman On Cover (PWoC) record. Going by the titles, I’m not sure if it’s pop, 70s folk, country, gospel, or what. The first song is “Country Girl”, but who can tell? (Research indicates: country.
Lets’ Dance with the Three Suns by, well, The Three Suns.
Super Girls. I didn’t actually buy this one; they have a couple of boxes of “Free with Purchase” up front, and I found the fortitude to paw through them, grabbing this sleeve containing three records. I figured this would be some trashy exploitation band with a couple of extra platters thrown in, but it turns out this is a compilation of girl band hits. With a trashy exploitation cover.

So we didn’t end up spending $100. The records I bought were priced kind of like what you see in antique malls–between $.99 and $10, but the platters themselves were in very good shape, whereas at the antique malls and book sales, they tend to be a little marred.

I did shy away from records close to $20, which means, of course, known and popular acts. Earlier in the week, I rediscovered The Shaft soundtrack in our music library, and I recounted to my beautiful wife how I bought a number of blaxploitation soundtracks about ten years ago and the R&B stars’ other records, such as Isaac Hayes and Bobby Womack, and how I picked them up on vinyl sometimes later. And although I saw Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack. For $50. I passed.

Still, I am thinking about going back and checking out the rest of the dollar records later. Well, when I get downtown again, which is fairly rare.

Buy My Books!