Rejoicing with the Truth

More Mutt-ley pictures here: The Singing Marine, Part 2

So Monday I received a pudding a beautiful present, made of a suitable material, from the Tree herself.  (That is, beloved_tree.) Thank you, dear! :D And your card arrived yesterday!

By the way, I don't think I ever thanked you for sending those two books earlier this fall - Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow and the I Spy book.  And thereby hangs a tale. Because I've heard about the I Spy books, that they're really pretty good, and the author always wished that he'd written under his own name instead of under the pseudonym John Tiger.  I'd been intending to track one down but just haven't made it.  Well... frankly, it was so cringe-worthily-awful it was downright unbelievable! (Well, it wasn't that bad.)  Considered just as a story, an adventure-spy story, it was slow, wordy, and very lacking in action.  As a companion to the I Spy TV show, it was a huge failure.  It had no mood at all, much less the quick-changing humor and concentration and even anger of the show, besides being slow and wordy and action-less (all very unlike most I Spy).  Only in a few conversations did it approach the brilliant, ad-libbed repartee between Scotty and Kelly. And the epithets drove me up the wall!  How many times can you repeat "the Rhodes scholar" or (this is awful) "the agent with the face of a movie star"?!  I have never cringed like that before.  And when he wasn't using epithets (which was rare), they were "Robinson" and "Scott."  Sorry, but nobody thinks of them that way. They're "Kelly" and "Scotty" and always will be. Aaah!

But anyway, Aspen dear, Thank You! :D  I really appreciated (besides the fact that you saw it and thought of me! Squee!) the opportunity to read one. And now I know for sure, I certainly do! I may try another again, of course; I still love those guys. I'm also still in disbelief that I found it that bad, I who so thoroughly enjoy Captain Future, etc., AND adore I Spy!  *giggles a trifle hysterically*

 

The Daily Diamond

[phone rings]
Rick: Diamond Detective Agency, homicide made easy. With us it’s the corpse that counts.



I'm not as sore as I might be, from all the ax-swinging I did yesterday.  I would've done more today regardless, but Bro. No. 1 broke the new handle last night.  Oops.

Keeping with the new trend of personal damage, I did manage to burn myself twice this afternoon while trying to get the fire going.  It took about three hours for it to really catch.  There was practically no wind, and without wind our chimney doesn't draw well at all.

Um... I've read nearly two more John Carter of Mars books.  The current one, The Master Mind of Mars, is quite good.  It starts out with a new protagonist and a very different mad-scientist-sorta storyline that was quite absorbing.  It has the benefit of a very unusual heroine.  Not only does she not irritate me, I thoroughly admire her.

Bro. No. 1 was gone at a coin show most of the day.  (Come to think of it, I wouldn't have gotten much chopping done today anyway; we have a rule, No ax usage when you're home alone.)  When he got back he turned on "In the Navy," with Abbott & Costello and Dick Powell.  I didn't really watch this time, but I heard most of it.  I really do think it's one of their best early films, since it's got the required hilarious high-jinks, but the plot is actually quite good.  Perhaps this is because A&C were still so early in their careers that they were a [large] comic relief element.  The sub-subplot with Lou and Patty Andrews is really quite funny in its own right.

I suspect that Dick found "In the Navy" quite appealing, considering the parts he usually got and the career shift he made in the next few years.  He plays a singing superstar who, disgusted with the cloying atmosphere of adoration, pulls a disappearance and joins the navy under another name.  He's quite determined to leave the old life and image completely behind.  This one was made in 1940 after I-don't-know-how-many years of playing pleasant, bubbly young romantic musical leads; and in 1944 he took off in a completely different direction with Murder, My Sweet.  I am admittedly very partial because of Marlowe and Richard Diamond; but "In the Navy" stands well on its own feet and the background on Dick Powell just fascinates me.  Story-wise, the contrast between "The Singing Marine" and "In the Navy" is almost surreal.  They were made within a few years of each other, and both center around a singer in the military and his changing attitude toward fame.  Each takes such a different direction!

Despite these desperate distractions, I've managed to study some more accounting and I think I'll do decently on the test.  I hope I can get through another practice test tonight.  Tomorrow:  Forget studying, I'm going to finish me a red flannel petticoat!