And now, a moment of inspiration.
Ronald McDonald, matchmaker
Originally broadcast on a Twin Cities TV station, this story comes from Neatorama. The McDonald’s in question is about three miles from my house.
Fifty years ago, then 16-year-old Steve Rydberg was working at a local
McDonald’s. Since he worked at the grill, his co-workers developed a code
to let him know whenever a cute girl walked in the restaurant.Here’s a wonderful story of how Steve met his true love back then and
how he surprised his wife on her birthday fifty years later at the same
McDonald’s:
The Untamed, by Max Brand
Dan was laughing. At least that chuckling murmur was near to a laugh. Yet there was no mirth in it. It had that touch of the maniacal in it which freezes the blood. Silent halted in the midst of his rush, with his hands poised for the next blow. His mouth fell agape with an odd expression of horror as Dan stared up at him. That hideous chuckling continued. The sound defied definition. And from the shadow in which Dan was crouched, his brown eyes blazed, changed, and filled with yellow fires.
If the passage above, taken from Max Brand’s novel The Untamed, seems a little turgid to you, I am in agreement. The book was free for Kindle, and I’d never read any Brand, so I thought I’d give him a try. I don’t think I’m going to be a fan. The prose is labored, and dialogue (though the slang is probably authentic, since the author actually worked as a cowboy for a while) clunks like a counterfeit double eagle.
And yet… considering how literary tastes change, I could see how this could have been an extremely popular book in its time. There’s a mythic quality to it, especially toward the climax, where the image of a mysterious rider in the dark, whistling a weird melody as he approaches with death in his hands, evokes a scene that could have inspired Sergio Leone. Continue reading The Untamed, by Max Brand
Certain Words Need Not Apply
We’ve talked about censorship here before. We’ve noted often that when a government stops a book from being printed or distributed, that’s censorship, but when a parent complains about the appropriateness of a book for her child, that’s not. We hope parents are actually morally and reasonably when they question some of the recommended reading at school. Doesn’t always happen, of course. Recently a teacher was investigated by school and community law enforcement because a parent complained that Ender’s Game is pornographic. Help us.
BTW, you can buy Ender’s Game (with cool cover art) here
But we usually don’t talk about bookstores that won’t sell perfectly good books because of one or more select words. Caryn Rivadeneira writes about a few of these examples, particularly an argument author Rachel Held Evens had with her publisher. In short, Thomas Nelson wouldn’t let her use the word vagina.
Rivadeneira notes the difficulties. “They are businesses after all, and to be successful, businesses need to sell products their customers will read without getting up in arms. The problem with Vagina-gate and similar forms of “censorship” is that, in an attempt to protect customers, publishers and bookstores are making it a lot harder for writers to tell the stories God has called them to write. And when Christians are barred by other Christians from serving God, it dishonors God. In fact, it’s sin.”
I think she’s right.
BTW, you can pre-order Evans’ book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master
Old Words
The verb unfriend was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1659. I wonder what citizens of Jamestown, Virginia, 1659 AD, would have thought a facebook was.
The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, by Loren D. Estleman
I’ve always had a fondness for tales of early Hollywood. It was an amazing time and place in history, in a sense the culmination (as author Loren D. Estleman himself argues in this novel) of the American Wild West. There, in the dusty hills of sleepy Los Angeles, a dysfunctional aggregation of eastern Jewish businessmen, stage actors, vaudevillians, European artistes, and ordinary cowboys improvised like mad to create an art form that had never existed before, and so had no rules or traditions to which to appeal.
Loren D. Estleman is best known as a mystery novelist, but he also writes good westerns, and The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association contains elements of both genres. It’s a fun book, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Presented in the form of three long flashbacks, interspersed with vignettes describing the main character’s (and Hollywood’s) later history, TRMMPA tells the story of Dmitri Pulski, who when we meet him in 1913 is working for his father, an ice merchant with an operation in northern California. His father, who has received a huge order for ice from the titular Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, has grave doubts about the likely solvency of such an enterprise (“Moving pictures are a fad,” he explains, “but people will always need ice.”). So he sends Dmitri south, along with a Russian immigrant co-worker, in a Model T to investigate. Continue reading The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, by Loren D. Estleman
How To Do a Review
Maxine talks about book reviews after getting some criticism that her review was a plot summary, not a review. She says, “I find it hard to judge whether to read a book if ‘random reviewer’ states a view on the writing quality, the plot, etc, rather than giving the reader some degree of objective information (which I do not think is found in the official “blurb” of the book, as in crime fiction these blurbs tend to summarise key, late plot points and so remove suspense and even in some cases any point in reading the book).”
It’s True, Despite Lies
What is truth outside of the facts? If someone writes a memoir describing his remarkable experiences, drawing from these profound truths about the world, do people not treat this differently than a novel? If it is learned that his experiences were completely fabricated, do we not see the book in a completely different light? And if an author writes fiction but claims it is fact, is he not appealing to the evidence of reality which he can’t do in a novel? He is, and yet some will still argue that his intentions outweigh his lies.
Mike Daisey has a one-man show called, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Mike D’Virgilio writes, “Daisey conveys his experiences on a visit to China of seeing the allegedly deplorable working conditions in Apple’s production facilities. It turns out much of what he speaks about in his theatrical monologue and on the ‘This American Life’ episode about it, never happened.” That liberals will defend this non-factual account which purports to get at the truth is typical of them, D’Virgilio argues.
Kudos to Ira Glass for rejecting lies presented as truth.
Christians Are Starting to Make Good Movies
“The aggregate product coming out of Hollywood is something that can be deeply offensive to people like myself, and I think Christians have sat back. … Now we’re realizing instead we need to engage, and we need to make quality work,” says Jon Erwin, director of October Baby, currently in theaters.
Film Review: “John Carter”
It’s all very strange. All I keep hearing is that Disney’s John Carter movie is turning out to be one of the greatest flops (in terms of profits vs. costs) in history. And yet I’ve yet to see anyone actually say they hated it.
Of course my web surfing is mostly limited to conservative sites, but several of the bloggers I read have reported on seeing it, and every single one of them likes it.
So I went to see it too.
I liked it.
Not a perfect film. But a good afternoon at the movies, suitable for most of the family. Continue reading Film Review: “John Carter”