I’ve never bothered with American Idol. But Carrie Underwood almost makes me wish I had, at least that season.
The first video you’ll need to click through to watch on YouTube. It’s worth it.
Author Archives: Tim Byrd
Bill Maher Issues Warning On Birthers: They Can Take Over “Like Crab Grass Or Cirque Du Soleil” (VIDEO)
Everything That Glitters Is Not Gold
A live version of an old favorite, one of the more heartbreaking songs I know.
Ferguson’s marvelous rant: ‘Why everything sucks’
Listen when a wise elder speaks.
“Livin’ the Lie” (aka “The Republicans’ Pants Are On Fire”)
A Rant. I say mean things about Republicans. If you’re a Republican friend of mine, rest assured I’m not talking about you. Or at least I hope not.
♦
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (Ron Suskind, NY Times, quoting a senior Bush administration official in summer 2002)
We all know that politicians lie. Left, right, up, down, didn’t have sex with that woman, Iraq was involved in 9/11, God hates the gays (except, maybe, the ones getting head from self-righteous congressmen)…liars. All of ’em, to some extent. Continue reading
Don’t Let The Fearmongers Screw You Out Of Improved Healthcare
[UPDATE: The original video went away, so I found another source. The link to it is below.]
You may not know who to listen to in the healthcare debate. But I’ll tell you who not to listen to: anyone who is obviously and cravenly feeding you bullshit in order to scare you.
How stupid do you have to be to buy into this nonsense?
So. Who’s Speaking For YOUR Political Views, hmm?
Doc Wilde like “the old fashioned adventure shows from the 1930’s and 40’s…” (review)
Film producer Sajie reviews Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom at her blog:
This book reminds me of the old fashioned adventure shows from the 1930’s and 40’s like Tarzan, Superman and Flash Gordon. Lots of adventure, a little over the top, but fun.
I loved the relationship between Dr. Wilde and his kids. Concerned and caring, but also trusting them to be able to take care of themselves….
The rest is here.
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The Perfidy of Nostalgia… (A Warning Re: Doc Savage/The Shadow Reprints)
On the recently raised subject of Sanctum Books’ pulp reprints, Anthony Tollin of Sanctum recently released the following statement about their previous association with Nostalgia Ventures, and the unfortunate fallout of that association:
An open letter to the pulp community:
For those taking advantage of the discounted SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE volumes at Half-Price Books, please be aware that Nostalgia Ventures began remaindering these books last summer in direct violation of its sub-contract with me. Also, as of today (July 22, 2009), Nostalgia Ventures has still not paid royalties to either Condé Nast or me for any books it has sold since July 1st, 2008. (A semi-annual royalty payment was due back in February, and another six months of royalties are coming due in August.)
There is a very good reason why Nostalgia Ventures/Nostalgiatown is no longer co-publishing these books, and it involves a continuing series of contract violations.
And for anyone who may not be sympathetic because Condé Nast is a huge corporation, please be aware that Condé Nast has chosen to continue the oral agreement it had for decades with Walter Gibson, and is splitting its royalties for the SHADOW reprints with Walter’s family. This is an extremely rare and decent act that is quite unusual in the publishing world.
I think my SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE double-novel trade paperbacks are a great value at the $12.95 cover price. Obviously, the books are an even better value at discounted prices. However, please be aware that purchasing these books from either Half-Price Books or Nostalgiatown does nothing to encourage the continuation of these series. And since Nostalgia Ventures still hasn’t paid its contract-required royalties for any of the books it has sold during the past 12 1/2 months, the money from Nostalgia Ventures’ and Half-Price Books’ sales also hasn’t been continuing on to Walter Gibson’s family.
It’s not necessary to purchase THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE directly from Sanctum Books to support the ongoing publishing operation and encourage the continuation of these reprints. Bud Plant Comic Art, Adventure House, Mike Chomko, Vintage Library, Girasol, Edge Books, The Mysterious Bookshop and any comic specialty shop that orders its books from Diamond Comic Distributors all get their books either directly or indirectly through Sanctum Books (which continues to make its regular royalty payments to Condé Nast and would like to continue publishing these reprints for many more years).
Please feel free to forward this message on to other pulp-oriented email groups.
–Anthony Tollin, Sanctum Books
“The Whisperer: The Dead Who Talked” Book Review (Updated)
I’ve long been an avid supporter of Sanctum Books’ reprints of classic pulps, specifically the ongoing series of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Each volume is a magazine-sized paperback containing two novels, using the cover art and interior illustrations from the magazines published originally in the 1930s and ’40s. They’re lovely, and I’ve been greatly enjoying immersing myself in this literature that has been so influential not just in popular culture, but also in my own work.
Until recently, Sanctum was reprinting the two series on a monthly basis, which was great. Then they announced that they were throttling the stream a bit, and would be publishing (if I remember right) only eight Doc Savage and eight Shadow volumes a year, with the off-months now to be filled with alternating volumes of two other pulp hero series, The Avenger and The Whisperer.
The Avenger I knew. I had a handful of paperback reprints from the ’70s, and they were great stuff. So if Sanctum was reprinting the full run of Avenger tales, I was definitely going to add them to my collection. The Whisperer I didn’t know. But Will Murray (pulp historian, Doc Savage novelist, and endorser of Doc Wilde) wrote “Personally, I consider The Whisperer one of S&S’s [pulp publisher Street & Smith] best series. I like it better than The Avenger. But then I really like Laurence Donovan, and I’ve really enjoyed reading and rereading The Whisperer this last month. The parallels to Batman and The Green Hornet are amazing.” So I figured I’d give it a try. Continue reading
Doc Wilde: “The guy every man wants to be, and every woman wants to be with.”
Today’s review has me pegged:
Tim Byrd is a man who read way too many pulps as a child, and realized the death of that subgenre was a loss to the world…
Thus begins another very positive review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, this time from writer Ian Randal Strock for SF Scope (“your source of news about the speculative fiction fields”).
Doctor Spartacus Wilde is the modern man of bronze. Very modern. Oh, he’s fabulously wealthy, handsome, gifted in every field of endeavor, universally recognized, and surrounded by devoted friends and helpers (sort of like Buckaroo Banzai, but without the rock band). But Doc Wilde differs from his dashing forebears in one important way: family. Doc’s family is an intimate part of his world, first and foremost his not-quite-pubescent children, Brian and Wren. They’re miniature versions of their father, from the blonde hair, bronzed skin, and omnivoracious mental appetite, to their incredibly physical training and stamina, and on to the adventurers’ vests containing every conceivable tool they’ll need for any adventure…
Doc’s the guy every man wants to be, and every woman wants to be with. But this is a book for kids (just about the ages of Brian and Wren, 12 and 10), so those women don’t enter into the story…
Well, not this story. But Doc, a widower, will have some opportunity for romance at some point in the future. And, as we’ve established very well by now, lots of grown ups are enjoying the book. But I quibble. ;)
I really like “omnivoracious mental appetite.” That’s wonderful.
…So Doc and the kids (along with their faithful aide Phineas Bartlett and their driver/strongman Declan mac Coul) take to the autogyro and head south. In the primordial rain forest, they’ll encounter powers so strong as to change a man into a, well, man-frog. They’ll deal with political intrigue and religious hysteria. And they’ll eventually face down a god, trying to break down the barriers between alternate realities in an effort to swallow ours. Naturally, our heroes are heroic, and they’ll find Grandpa Wilde before their work is done. But getting there is all the fun…
…The party will be forcefully separated, death will be threatened, danger will loom, unexpected (but completely logical) skills will reveal themselves to aid in the saving of the day, and things will seem darkest just before they go completely black. But never fear: the Wildes are here.
This review makes my day. Read it in its unabridged (and not spoilery) wonderfulness here.
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An Armchair Review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom
Today’s review:
Alex McGilvery at Armchair Interviews gives Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom a damn good review:
Tim Byrd writes with an infectious enthusiasm…The characters of the family are well enough developed to gain the reader’s sympathy, but there is plenty of room for the occasional surprise…
Any book that introduces the Frogs of Doom has to have a sense of humor. Tim uses both over-the-top storytelling and understatement to keep the reader chuckling through the book.
This is a book for both young boys and girls to enjoy.
The book is clever and well written, the characters engaging, and young readers may accidentally learn something along the way.
Go here to read the rest (it’s all good).
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Doc Wilde, A Book To Corrupt The Young (Review)
But corrupt ’em in the good way.
No, no. Not that good way! Settle down.
Patricia Scott (aka Dragonwomant) reviews my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, for BSC Reviews:
Fans of pulp stories hoping to recruit a new generation of readers can rejoice. They now have a fantastic pamphlet they can use to corrupt the younger set in the form of Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom.
That kind of corruption. The “turning kids on to classic pulp adventure tales” kind of corruption.
Which was all part of my sinister plan…
I think that this book would be great for [those] who like adventure stories, especially if they’re very fond of Indiana Jones movies or shows about exploring far-flung locales. I also think that this book would be a hoot for reading aloud, it would certainly lend itself well to very animated story telling.
There’s a good deal more, including this great line:
The Wildes are all practically superhumanly good-looking, frighteningly intelligent, and so skilled in combat only large groups of idiots willing to fight them would even think about trying to attack them.
Read the whole thing here.
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It takes a LOT to creep me out, but…
…this makes my skin crawl. He was creepy enough when he was alive.
Michael Jackson will live on as a ‘plastinated’ creature preserved by German doctor Gunther von Hagens.
Von Hagens has caused controversy with everyone from the Pope to the chief rabbi in Israel with his practice of embalming corpses with preserving polyurethane.
Yesterday, he declared: ‘An agreement is in place to plastinate the King of Pop.’…
Von Hagens said that he spoke with representatives of the Jackson family ‘many months ago’ and it was agreed that his body will be plastinated and placed next to Bubbles, his late pet monkey who was plastinated a number of years ago and is exhibited at The Body Worlds & Mirror Of Time exhibition at the O2 Centre in London.
Von Hagens also confirmed it was one of Michael’s final requests to be reunited with Bubbles. [Source: The Daily Mail]
Ew.
Turn Around, Bright Eyes
The latest literalization of an old video. It’s hilarious.
Running Up That Hill
Placebo’s fantastic cover of the Kate Bush classic.
It’s A Hard Knock Life (for Kev and Alice)
Now here’s something you really need to see.
A blog by Robin Burkinshaw relates the poignant ongoing tale of a homeless father and daughter trying to survive in a harsh world. But the harsh world in which they live is inside a computer, and the pair exist only in that virtual realm:
This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes…
I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.
Apparently The Sims has evolved to a point in which the artificial intelligence and social dynamics systems are damned near organic. The Sims have dreams, goals, and emotions and their behavior is driven by those qualities, resulting in complex relationships and interpersonal drama.
This is Kev and his daughter Alice. They’re living on a couple of park benches, surviving on free meals from work and school, and the occasional bucket of ice cream from a neighbour’s fridge.
When you create a person in The Sims 3, you can give them personality traits that determine their behaviour. Kev is mean-spirited, quick to anger, and inappropriate. He also dislikes children, and he’s insane. He’s basically the worst Dad in the world…
His daughter Alice has a kind heart, but suffers from clumsiness and low self-esteem. With those traits, that Dad, and no money, she’s going to have a hard life.
A Clever Review of Doc Wilde
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Travis Jonker, an elementary school librarian, reviews my novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, at 100 Scope Notes, and takes an unusual approach:
Chapter 1
Travis sits down to review the new middle grade adventure Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom. He decides to incorporate the book’s cliffhanger-heavy style into the review when there is a knock at the door. He gets up as the knocking becomes more urgent. When Travis opens the door, he can’t believe what he sees.
He follows with several short “chapters” lampooning the style and structure of the book, but in a fun way (not a mean way). It’s kinda smartass. But from me, that’s praise.
There are some spoilers in the review, so be warned. His ultimate summary is:
Inspired by the Doc Savage pulp adventures from the ’30s and ’40s, Doc Wilde and his family are heroes in the classic sense: smart, athletic, strong, well-traveled, and good-looking. The author, aware of how impossible this is, presents these over-the-top characters with a bit of subtle humor, which every kid won’t pick up on. This fact isn’t likely to deter many, however.
The whole thing is here.
Do you smoke? If so, are you a dick? [updated]
And now, an actual RANT, with SCIENCE!®
Is this YOUR legacy?
One of my pet peeves is people who just toss their cigarette butts around with no consideration for the public weal, the environment, or their own basic human integrity.
I’ve been known to toss smoldering butts back into car windows, or to politely return a butt to a smoker afoot with a comment along the lines of, “Hey, you dropped this. Figured it was an accident ’cause you look like you have more class than those assholes who just toss butts on the ground.”
People respond either belligerently or sheepishly, depending on whether they give a damn about anything outside of themselves or whether they at least don’t want people to think they’re trashy.
I’m sure some of you reading this are smokers. Some of you are smokers and also friends, maybe even good friends. If you’re my friend and a smoker, rest assured that I’m very concerned about your health (though I’ll never broach the subject, since you’re not an idiot and know it’s bad for you). And I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you toss your coffin nail remnants into an ashtray or bin where they belong, rather than treating the world as your goddamned ashtray. I think well of you, and just assume you’re better than that.
It’s not just a matter of litter, as ugly as the scattered constellations of dirty cigarette butts in the street, or in a park, or just along the highway, are. It’s actually bad for the environment. Really bad.
A doctor once told me that a single cigarette butt contains enough nicotine to kill an infant. And now this is in the news:
One of the most common forms of litter are cigarette butts. Once these butts enter waterways, they become toxic to fish. According to a new study by San Diego Sate University (SDSU), filter-tipped cigarette butts are deadly to marine and freshwater fish. In fact, researchers would like to have the butts classified as hazardous waste.
Cigarette butts are not biodegradable. The filters are made up of 12,000 plastic-like cellulose acetate fibers that trap nicotine and tar. There’s enough nicotine trapped in 200 used cigarette filters to kill a human! An estimated 1.69 billion pounds of butts are littered each year worldwide, so you can imagine the negative effects these butts have on aquatic life when they wash into streams and oceans.
SDSU Public Health Professor Tom Novotny explains, “It is toxic at rather low concentrations. Even one butt in a liter of water can kill the fish in a period of 96 hours…”
Professor Novotny continues: “When they unconsciously throw their butts onto the ground, it’s not just litter, it’s a toxic hazardous waste product, and that’s what we’re trying to say. So that may be regulated at the local or state level. And we hope people will be more conscious about what they do with these cigarette butts.” [Source: “Cigarette Butts Kill Fish According to New Study,” Blue Living Ideas]
There’s also this article from KPBS at San Diego State University, and likely a bunch more.
So, if you smoke, keep this stuff in mind. You can smell bad if you like, but please don’t be a dick.
UPDATE: A very good friend who’s a vet tells me “One single cigarette butt consumed can kill a dog or a cat according to the National Animal Poison Control Center – nasty !!”
So just think, worst case scenario, a single butt you throw on the ground could kill a dog, a cat, or a baby. Nice work, kemosabe.
More Kudos For Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom!!!
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As blogged yesterday, I’ve been on a net vacation of sorts driven by my fine Celtic melancholy (that’s a poetic way of saying my shifty brain chemistry and the crap I went through in my formative years). During that time, there were a few stars sparkling out of the blackness, one of the main ones being the continued excellent critical response to my novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom.
I have a short backlog of reviews I haven’t blogged about yet, but I don’t want to toss them all out at once because that might be tedious for folks reading. So I’m going to parcel them out over a week or so.
Today’s comes from MyShelf.com, and is by writer Janie Franz (author of Freelance Writing: It’s a Business, Stupid!).
Move over, Doc Savage. Get out of the way, Indiana Jones. Make room, Artemis Fowl. There’s a new adventure hero / family in town!…I was thoroughly excited by Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom…Not only was there non-stop adventure but there were interesting characters…I can’t wait for more adventures from Doc Wilde and his intrepid family.
She also reinforces other folks who have pointed out that the book isn’t just for boys…
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is a great read for kids. Though some of the blurbs on the back of the book tout this as an adventure novel for boys, its appeal is certainly not restricted to them. Wren is definitely a very clever and capable little girl and just as courageous as her brother, Brian. This story will most certainly appeal to girls who are as enamored of narrow escapes, crazy gadgets, and unusual creatures.
At this point, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from several young readers (and even more grown-up readers) who loved the book, and I’ve actually heard from more girls than boys (a fact with no actual statistical bearing, I’m sure, but the girls who read it dig it as much as the boys).
I’ve quoted only part of the review, as usual. The whole thing is at this link.
Under An Outlaw Moon 