PULP OPENINGS

I'm a huge fan of 30s pulps (random covers above and below), and my favorite part of those stories is usually the beginning. I just can't believe how quickly pulp writers could establish a mood and get the reader involved. Fans wanted their thrills as quickly as possible, and publishers were eager to comply. I thought you might like to see a few examples, sooo.........

What do you think of this opening from "Return of the Death Master" by Curtis Steele?

"The subway moved through the ground like a snake in a tunnel. It slid smoothly across the tracks, its single nose light stabbing outwards like a glowing Cyclops eye. It was the only light anywhere in the train. Inside, everything was dark."


Wow...a Cyclops of a train speeding through the night time subway tunnels...and the inside is dark. Why? Is it a runaway train? Is it controlled by a madman? Four short sentences and you're sucked in.

Here's (below) the opening of another train story, 'Corpse Cargo' by Grant Stockbridge. This one starts a little slower:

"Within the train all was peace and quiet. The overhead lights were dim and the green curtains hung heavy and dark, swaying now and then to the rhythm of the speeding Island Limited. The gray-haired conductor walked slowly through the dimness, stopped a moment in the doorway of the men's smoker and glanced in at the white-coated porter busily shining shoes. 

The conductor pushed on along into the car proper and looked weary-eyed along the swaying aisle. Somewhere a baby, awake in the night, gurgled. A mother murmered soft, lulling words---as on the hill the woman gripped Bolo's arm and hissed, 'Now! Now!'


The conductor was smiling, his ears filled with the mother's soft humming when, like the fury of hell, the green fire struck! It struck like lightning, like a bolt from blue, cloudless skies. The dim, sleeping aisle of the pullman glittered suddenly with liquid light. Green-white chains of flame that struck like vicious snakes stabbed out from every metal thing upon the train, from the steel sides of the coaches.

 The old conductor's face twitched convulsively and the chained lightning of the killers danced in fiendish glee. In the smoker the negro porter writhed upon the floor. In their berths, men and women and children tossed and jerked in the torturing grip of incredibly powerful voltage. And everywhere through the train the green, horrible light wavered and danced."


Nice, very nice.

What do you think of this one (below)?

"Night, black and rain-swept, shrouded the Kirty Institute for the insane. Gusts of howling wind attacked the ugly gray buildings like seas pounding some bleak, rocky coast. There was the same impression of desolation, of a savagely forbidding place that humans shunned.


A small car lurched to a stop in front of the guardhouse at the gate. Two men got out, collars upturned, hats pulled low."


Geez, this (above) set the mood in the very first sentense!

I'll end with a story that starts in the middle, so as not to waste a single moment of the reader's time.


"A faint, almost imperceptible, click sounded in the room. The floor beneath Conners' feet dropped like a gallows trap. What had been solid, shining mahogoney was suddenly a gaping black void. The white man stumbled forward. His gun fell from his grasp as his arms shot upward, then he shot through space. Down, down, into the darkness below. 


The native servants stood blandly silent. The vagaries of their master were not new to them. From the opening in the floor there came a horrible scream of terror, that echoed ominously through the room like a banshee's wail.


'For God's sake take me out of here! What is this thing? God, it's coming close to me!"  It's----' "

Nifty, eh?

A VALENTINE CARD

Oooooohhh! I can't believe I forgot that Valentines Day was coming. If I'd remembered I'd have done something special for the occasion because I believe in it. It's important. It's a holiday that actually carries philosophical weight.

Romantic love, as the troubadours sang about it in the Middle Ages, helped to establish the modern notion of liberty. If your feelings for another person are recognized to be equal to, or sometimes even transcend your obligation to the state, then your happiness acquires political importance. Whether the troubadours knew it or not, they were planting the idea in peoples' minds that individuals were important, that they had a right to pursue their own happiness. Romantic love is a powerful assertion that you have a right to live for your own sake, and that states have to recognize that.

I also believe in romantic love because I think it's the best way for most people to find happiness. I'm well aware that there are people who do just fine without it, and other people who've actually come to grief because of it. Nevertheless, for the average man its the golden path to companionship, family and peace of mind. I'm tempted to add intellectual vitality to that list, but that would be a controversial assertion that I might not be able to defend in a short post.




Here's (above) a clip from the 1968 film, "Romeo and Juliet." I love how it shows the lovers tuning everyone else in the room out. I love the way two people who were strangers only fifteen minutes before, would now risk their lives to be with each other. I'm a big believer in love at first sight. When you meet the person who's right for you, it hits you like ton of bricks, and the film managed to capture that. The clip starts a bit awkwardly, so give it a minute to find its pace.

I'll end with a quote from "Moonstruck," a terrific film by Norman Jewisson. Nicholas Cage delivers this line to Cher:

“…I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either — but love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves, and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!”


Wow! There's lots to discuss there, maybe sometime in the future. 

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON FASHION

Boy, women (above) sure like fashion! 

What's in now are thick eyebrows and unibrows. You see them everywhere. Some people attribute that to the influence of Joan Crawford in the forties. Maybe, but my guess is that it started big time with the rediscovery of the feminist communist painter, Frida Kahlo (above). Kahlo did a zillion portraits of herself which not only emphasized bushy eyebrows but also her girl mustache and jaw line hair.

That's Kahlo in real life (above), proudly displaying her mustache.

The Kahlo mustache failed to catch on but, as I said, thick eyebrows are everywhere.

Imagine how that makes girls like this one (above) feel. Lots of girls permanently removed their entire eyebrows thinking that thin, painted on brows were the height of chic, and would be with us til the end of time. Aaaargh! Fashion can be cruel. 

On another subject, I observe that a lot of women still like to knit (above).

And they still knit for their boyfriends (above), too.

On yet another subject, here's an outfit (above) that was around when I was a kid: bottle cap hat, loose top, ultra-tight calf-length skirt, and long, long cigarette holder. It was the "Pepsi Generation" look.

This (above) was around at the same time: Scoop-back dresses with face fish net festooned with little black balls or cloth bugs. John K is obsessed with these bug nets.

The latest fashion is sneakers with toes. They make everybody's feet look like Goofy's. This (above) is the most popular brand: "Vibram Five Fingers." It started as something for barefoot runners but now they're regarded as chic, and even couch potatoes have them. They require socks with toes.

Interesting, eh?

KIDS WHO STARE AT YOU

While I'm on the subject of little girls (see the previous post), don't you hate kids who stare at you in restaurants and trains? The last time that happened to me I got the idea of taking out a piece of paper and quick sketching a little wordless story for the kid, where I show him every drawing as I draw it. The story would be me beating the kid up for staring.

I didn't do it, but I made a note to try it one of these days. Yeeesh! Suppose the kid grabs the drawing and shows it to his dad?

A VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT SUGGESTION

What do you give a wife or girlfriend for Valentine's Day? Flowers? A restaurant meal? Sure, why not...but something else is needed, don't you think? Something cool like....a tea party! Yes, a tea party, a real little girl's tea party with a real little girl (or girls) hosting the Valentine couple. Imagine the charm of sitting at the little table with your significant other, surrounded by dolls, and chatting with a little girl...maybe the child of a relative or friend...while she pours tea and serves bisquits. Your present to your girl would the gift of witnessing childhood charm.

I was surprised to find that the thought of a tea party held no appeal for the adults I talked to. Maybe that's because the Disney Princess people took over the idea. These days a lot of formal kid birthday parties are built around this Disney theme. I guess it's a chance for girls to wear the princess costumes they bought at Halloween. There's nothing wrong with that, but I prefer something on a smaller scale....



...something like this (above). These kids know how to celebrate.



How old should the kid host be?  Maybe as young as this girl (above). Boy, she really has the tea party spirit. I like the small scale of the furniture and the tiny plastic tea sets. The chair should be so low that an adult sitting in it has his knees almost up around his chin.

Of course a tea party requires ritual. Maybe a little kid has to have witnessed an adult tea party in order understand the ceremony.

Kids have a limited attention span, and the tea party probably won't last long. Maybe you can stretch it out by baking scones with the kid, following her directions.  Scones are fast and easy to make.




Maybe the thing to do is to build up expectation for the eventual arrival of...The Queen. Maybe the Queen is an adult who comes in amid much fanfare and agrees to take tea with everyone for a while. Here's (above) the way the Rennaisance Faire handles the Queen's entrance.

THE FUNHOUSE (PART ONE) (WORDLESS)

  

TO BE CONTINUED........

AN ABUSIVE CORNER MAN

The pictures here are all from a different era. I couldn't find anything on the net to illustrate the particular modern fight I have in mind. Oh well, they're kind of interesting for their own sake.

Anyway, It's tough being a corner man in mixed martial arts. How do you stand out on TV and make a reputation? It's a job that everybody takes for granted...until now. I saw a fight on John's HD Net on Friday night where the corner man stole the show.

The man cornered for an African American guy...I wish I could remember the name. he was a terrific fighter, but had the handicap of being a gentle intellectual who'd rather be with his books. You could tell he deeply regretted the necessity of hurting other fighters.  He was like Ferdinand The Bull, if you know that story. The other guys on the bill all strutted in to the tune of gangster rap. This guy entered to classical music. I didn't recognize it, but it was something pastoral that suggested sniffing daisies in a meadow.

At the entrance to the ring his corner man, who was huge, turned around and began to insult the fighter. Right there on TV they got into a nose-to-nose shouting match. I'm not sure, but the corner man might even have slapped the fighter. The fighter got madder and madder, til he pushed the corner man aside and stomped into the ring, ready to tear apart anybody who got in his way. It looked to me like the corner man deliberately provoked him.

Like I said, the formerly gentle fighter was skilled, but his opponent was even better. At the round breaks the battered gentle guy would slink back to the corner where the derisive corner man would reinvigorate him by insulting him some more and throwing Gatorade in his face.

Regretfully the gentle man lost. I thought the whole drama was over, but there was one more act waiting to play out. His cocky opponent, the winner, came over to our guy's corner, put his arm around the corner man, and proceeded to chat the corner man up. I couldn't believe it! It looked like he was offering the corner man a job working for him. Our guy sat on the stool watching all this and was completely dumbfounded.

I know what you're thinking...that this was all staged to get a laugh. Maybe, but I don't think so. It looked like a real fight.

I ALMOST BECAME A SHOE SALESMAN!

When I was a kid shoe salesman was a high status job.

 The shoe salesmen were all well spoken and impeccably dressed. TV ads always portrayed them as consummate professionals. In some stores they even operated X ray machines called fluoroscopes which were specially designed for feet. I loved getting new shoes because that meant I got to look into the machine's viewer and watch my own skeletal feet.

Geez, that was dangerous radiation. I hope I don't wake up some morning with an extra head on my shoulders.

Parents had to be careful with money in those days, so they always got over-sized shoes that their kids could grow into. I guess that made the salesman's job easier.

Like a lot of kids in my time, I considered selling shoes as a possible career. Ads in magazines gave me the impression that only beautiful women bought shoes, and I was prepared to do my best for them.

I was aware of the hazard presented by dealing with beautiful legs all day. Even as a little kid I fully expected a lot of customers to throw themselves at me. I anticipated that I'd have to deflect their advances, and I was determined to do it with humor and savoir-faire. After all, a shoe salesman is a professional and must maintain a professional detachment.

I can't remember what changed my mind about selling shoes. Was it Bundy's horror stories about the job in "Married With Children?" No, that came much later. I guess I just got interested in other things, like being a pilot or a general....or a cartoonist.

 Occasionally I come across a veteran shoe salesman from the old days. These guys still dress like Cary Grant and still treat their customers as if they were lordly aristocrats. They still handle quality leather shoes as if they were marvels of technology and craftsmanship. I'm always tempted to ask them what it was like in the good old days. Ah, the stories they could tell!