This Saturday is the 78th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s time to celebrate the most famous book and movie adaptation set before and during the attack. Even in a crowded field of war novels, James Jones’ book stood out. The movie was pretty darn good as well.
Since my Now Be Thankful post has migrated to Bayou Brief, it’s time to get back to the basics with a book cover that ran in 2015 and 2016:
As urban commie pinkos, we here at First Draft believe in recycling. This post is a rerun from last Thanksgiving with some lagniappe at the end:
If your crazy right-wing Uncle who watches too much Fox News goes off on you today, please do not re-enact this book.
How about some cheesecake for dessert?
When I promise lagniappe, I mean it. So do Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. This is the first time that exceedingly odd couple cooked together on teevee:
The impeachment hearings ate my week. At least I’m not charred:
This post is dedicated to my friend and fellow pulp fiction aficionado Kevin Allman. He’s leaving Louisiana and returning home to California. Happy trails, amigo.
The last word goes to Emmylou Harris:
It’s the first time dinosaurs have taken the starring role on Pulp Fiction Thursday. Will it be the last? Only T Rex knows for sure.
By T Rex, I meant the glam rock band:
It’s time for another seasonal book cover. The Halloween Tree is a 1972 fantasy novel that Ray Bradbury later adapted for an animated teevee flick. The cover is by Bradbury’s frequent collaborator Joseph Mugnaini.
The Fall Guy theme continues. This time without Lee Majors or Rick Perry.
Could this vaguely Slavic looking gent be Rudy’s bag man?
The Bird, The Cage & The Forest by Max Ernst.
This is the first time since the infancy of this feature that I’ve used the same featured image two weeks in a row. It captures my mood.
We’re attending a memorial service this morning for Gligamesh Homan who died in a horrible accident last week. He was the son of some old friends and was in his freshman year at LSU. I’ll have more about Gil in our second act. Suffice it to say that there’s an open wound in my circle of friends right now.
I’m not feeling very expansive today so I’m going to keep this week’s outing relatively brief.
This week’s theme song was written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin for Lefty Frizzell. It’s become a staple of the country music repertoire and has been recorded countless times.
We have three versions of Long Black Veil for your listening pleasure: Lefty Frizzell, Gillian Welch, and the Chieftains with Mick Jagger on lead vocals.
Try not to trip over your long black veil as we jump to the break.
It’s time for an encore performance of a 2016 post with a twist. This time we have a triptych of covers:
Blood Money is late period Hammett. The covers are a bit dogeared but that’s okay so was Dash in 1951.
Speaking of money, it’s our annual fundraiser. If you like this feature, please throw a few bucks our way.
The last word goes to Pete Townshend:
You’re not seeing double. The theme song for Town Without Pity was indeed the theme song for the last Saturday Odds & Sods. I did not, however, include a movie poster or book cover. Here they are:
Here’s the trailer for this underrated Kirk Douglas classic:
Finally, one more version of the theme song; this time an instrumental.
Nelson Algren was known for his gritty novels. A Walk On The Wild Side was set in and around a New Orleans bordello. It was turned into a movie with an all-star cast in 1962. The producers dropped the A from the title. I did not.
The last word goes to Lou Reed with a song that has nothing to do with either the book or movie. It’s also not PC in 2019 but it’s still a good song:
Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer.
Since we have something of a nautical-as opposed to naughty-theme I thought we’d dive right in without any dockside formalities. I won’t invite you into my stateroom because this might happen:
I would never take a cruise. The thought of doing so reminds me of the not so great Poop Cruise of 2013. Hell, I get seasick contemplating the Winslow Homer painting above.
Let’s move on to this week’s theme song. Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly is often called the Bob Dylan of Australia but he never broke through stateside. Kelly co-wrote Deeper Water in 1994 with Randy Jacobs of Was (Not Was) in case you was (not was) wondering.
We have two versions for your listening pleasure. First, the 1995 studio version that was the title track of Kelly’s tenth album. Second, a 2013 live version from a show Kelly did with Neil Finn. For some reason it’s listed as Deep Water but it’s the same tune. Wow, that’s deep, man.
I hope we’re not in over our heads. Let’s mount the diving board and jump to the break.
The guy on this cover looks like a regular guy circa 2019. Times have changed.
I wonder if the Hippie Doctor was at Woodstock? They needed help with the brown and flat blue acid, man. He looks tough enough to subsist on apples, gruel, and JCC sammiches, man.
The last word goes to CSNY, man:
Dr. A and I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood last weekend. We both loved it. I thought it was his best movie since Jackie Brown.
Anyway, Sharon Tate is a character in the movie and went to the cinema to watch her own movie, The Wrecking Crew. Here’s a side-by-side image of Donald Hamilton’s book and the poster for the Dean Martin movie.
It’s trailer time:
The Wrecking Crew became the nickname of a group of elite LA studio musicians. They were celebrated in a documentary of that title in 2015:
You’re not seeing double. This Salome is Oscar Wilde’s play with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. You know, the book that provided the book for the Strauss opera featured yesterday. The mind still reels.
Salome With The Head Of John The Baptist by Aubrey Beardsley.
My first day of jury duty was uneventful. We waited to be called for voir dire but the call never came and we were out of there by 11 AM. They’re trying fewer cases at Criminal District Court since the DA’s office stopped prosecuting possession of small amounts of weed. An odd but effective move by our old school tough-on-crime DA. Ironies abound.
This week’s theme song was written by a very young John Hiatt for his 1979 album Slug Line. It was so long ago that he had a full head of hair as well as a unibrow.
We have two versions of Washable Ink for your listening pleasure: the Hiatt original and a cover by the Neville Brothers.
Let’s check if this spilled ink is really washable. Color me skeptical: black, red, or blue.
Do they still call newspaper reporters ink-stained wretches? Probably not but it was swell slang.
Time to ink up and jump to the break. I’m not sure what ink up means in this context, but I’m always talking shit. Y’all should know that by now.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways is technically not fiction as it’s a memoir. But like most memoirs, it takes substantial liberties with the truth, which makes it faction but not factional. It’s definitely pulpy.
I chose Flynn’s memoirs because I’ve been watching some of his classic movies lately, I saw Dodge City for the first time the other day. A major omission as it’s the town-taming movie that Blazing Saddles parodies along with Destry Rides Again.
I guess that covers it. Here are the book covers.
This week’s selection is inspired by Muellerpalooza:
