A quoi ressemblerais la meilleure réplique du meilleur film de Série B de tout les temps s’il était retranscrit sur Google Wave? A ça, et je like, surtout que c’est un des plus gros buzz du moi dernier!

A few weeks ago, RvR writer Lester Square gave a rundown of his favourite guilty pleasure movies. Now he reveals the movies he’s been told to love but just can’t help hating. Not sure he feels too guilty, mind…

By Lester Square

I blame Australia.

For years a friend told me I had to visit - it was the best country in the world, he said. So I did, had a nice few weeks, came home. End of. Except it wasn’t. On returning to Lester Square Towers, I found I was continually questioned if I thought Australia was indeed the best place I had visited. ‘Isn’t it great?’, I was asked. Such lovely people, beaches, surfs, big rocks etc. All true, but one thing nagged and nagged - it wasn’t my favourite place and everybody asking me was expecting me to say it was.

So, bravely, I did the only thing I could.

I lied. Then I lied again. Then lied some more. Yes, it was the best place I’d ever seen as a tourist. I said it so often I started believing it. But it kinda got me thinking *looks out of window in a Carrie Bradshaw-type fashion*… What happens when you don’t agree with the people, when you guiltily dislike what they love? And not just Australia, but movies?

Who is wrong, them or you? It is them.

5. Life is Beautiful (1997)

Some things are not funny. The latest series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Little Britain, the Holocaust. Not to get all moral on your ass but pretending it was a little game, whatever the intentions, was tactless, strange, bonkers. And no-a disguising it in-a accents makes it good. It won two Oscars. The main character’s surname is Orefice.

4. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Yes, it had some great music, a couple of good lines, and they had a hell of a time making it. But it is tedious. And hackneyed. Find Kurtz? I’d rather wait for Godot. And he wasn’t much fun either.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Reservoir Dogs was magnificent. This was sixth-form nonsense in comparison. Contrived to the point of desperation – the Gimp, the wincing dialogue between two men off to kill someone, the kooky French character – it is the kind of film only a student could love.

2. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Not being the Grinch here: it is a good movie, but Capra and Stewart made a better film together than this, Mr Smith Goes To Washington. And it is less sentimental. Funny in retrospect that the Big Bad Guy is a banker. But just, just, a little too white picket fency.

1. Star Wars (1977)

A fairytale in space - no more, no less. Watched it, shrugged my shoulders, never remotely cared what happened to Luke, Darth or the big ape. Or Chewbacca. The effects are good but if I want my film viewing to be judged by that, I would have gone into IT. Am I alone, does nobody else think this? If I am, I promise to sit down and watch all prequels and sequels in one go (and still think it ordinary).

WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT ARE YOUR GUILTY DISLIKE MOVIES?

TOP FIVES ARCHIVE

Pulp Fiction’ın yazarlarından Roger Avary, hapisteki günlerini Twitter’dan takipçilerine aktarıyor ve büyük ilgi çekiyor.

1994 yılında beyazperdeye gelen Quentin Tarantino şaheseri Pulp Fiction‘ın senaristlerinden Roger Avary, Twitter‘ın en ilginç kullanıcılarından biri. Zira Avary, geçtiğimiz sene içerisinde arabasıyla yaptığı kazada bir kişinin ölümüne ve karısının da yaralanmasına sebep olduğu için hapse mahkum edilmişti. Şimdilerde hapishanede bulunan Avary, burada da Twitter kullanmaya devam ediyor. Üstelik 10.000′den fazla takipçisi mevcut. Avary, hapishane içerisinde yazdıklarıyla, hapishanede not tutan mahkumların modern halini  tasvir ediyor.

Roger Avary, parmaklıklar ardında olmasına rağmen yazma hobisinden vazgeçmedi ve Twitter’dan 10.000′lere seslenmeye devam ediyor. Roger Avary’nin Twitter hesabı, kendisine ait olarak doğrulanmamış olsa da, Avary’nin en yakın arkadaşları bu bilgiyi doğruluyor. Avary’nin hapiste nasıl bilgisayar bulup Twitter’a girdiği ise ayrı bir gizem. Zira Twitter’a yazdığı iletiler “Web”‘ten geliyor diye gözüküyor. Yani cep telefonu ile kullanmadığı ve halka açık bir bilgisayardan kullandığı kesin.

Roger Avary’nin Twitter sayfası

A great piece of pop cultural writing by Bridget Johnson was recently offered up to me like something deep fried on a stick.  In “Watching Pulp Fiction With Quentin Tarentino“, she delves into what the legendary film could have become.  Some of the more interesting tidbits include:

There was originally a scene of Mia Wallace’s pilot, Fox Force Five, in the script, the third story was at one time completely different, bringing in new characters, Paul Calderon, who had a short scene as the bartender, was Tarantino’s favorite to play Jules Winnfield, Miramax kingpin Harvey Weinstein had plans to open a chain of Jack Rabbit Slims in the wake of the movie’s success, Vincent Vega was supposed to be the brother of Vic Vega (Michael Madsen) in Reservoir Dogs (though this is pretty much common knowledge to any Tarentino fan), Butch the boxer (Willis) was written for Matt Dillon, and Daniel Day-Lewis was interested in John Travolta’s role.

Oh my… Secrets nearly as juicy as a Big Kahuna Burger.  If you read the ARTICLE, scroll down to the comments.  It’s nearly a 50/50 split on QT lovers/haters.  He’s a polarizing film-maker, no doubt.  So was Orson Welles and Fritz Lang though.  So… ya know.

-Sonny

I was previously impressed with Jerry M. Goff, Jr.’s Thrill Crazy and Wanton Wench! and continue to be so with Tropic of Carla.  I have been amassing all his other books for future reading.

His novels aren’t perfect by any means, and have any number of flaws that many books like these do, but there is a certain assured quality of story-telling, mixed with good manly two-fisted hardboiled-ness typical of Merit/Novel Books, that tickle my noir funny bones.

Wanton Wench! was about a sea diving bum getting into some trouble because of a rich woman; Tropic of Carla is about a pilot bum getting into trouble because of a rich woman, Carla Lopez.  The narrator, Dino Shawn, muses on it:

I had been in boxes before, but never like this.  And all because of a beautiful woman with a fantastic figure.   But what the hell? I thought. Life without beautiful women and fabulous builds wouldn’t be worth living. I had no other choice but to do General Lopez’ bidding. (p. 81)

Dino had been forced to fly a fighter plane for a small banana republic dictatrorship, a fictional Latin American country, Tammara…

One day in an airport bar in San Antonio, Texas, 37-year-old Dino is having a few drinks and lamenting that there are no character flights for his small plane so he can make money.  In walks this Latina vixen, Carla, looking for a pilot.  She has found Dino.

Carla lives for the kicks and thrills — driving fast, jumping out of planes and not pulling her chute until 800 feet from the ground.  She is also a hellcat in bed, where se takes Dino only an hour after meeting him.  Dino is too pussy-struck to figure out he’s being played.

Flying to Houston to pick up a charter, Carla pulls out a .45 and tells Dino they are flying to Tammara instead.  She tells him she is married to the country’s dictator, General Jose Lopez, and they need a third pilot with air force training to fly a fighter/bomber plane, refurbished from the American Air Force.  The other two pilots are her and the General.  They intend to quash the growing rebel faction that are set on a coup by bombing the hell out of them.

Dino bas no other choice. Plus he’s being offered good money.  But he knows he will not leave Tammara alive, they’ll kill him when the job is done.

The General provides a palace “dancer,” Mena, to occupy his bed at night, forbidding anymore hanky-panky between his wife and Dino, even though the marriage is for show only — Carla is like Evita of Argentina: the people religiously love her, except for the rebels.  But Mena is a girl from the hills, with rebel contacts; she gives Dino information and plans to help him escape and plot the murder of the General and Carla, even if it means her own death — all for the cause of democracy!

A good adventure yarn, like a low-budget action flick for a once-famous flopped actor, say a younger Rutger Hower or Don Johnson.

Not a perfect book, and not as good as Wanton Wench!, but a fun read, an a good example of Merit’s list and Goff’s range.  Just as Wanton Wench! had deep details about sea diving, Tropic of Carla has the same details about parachuting and flying small planes, so much so that Goff must have been a pilot and diver, or knew them well enough.  The devil is in the details, they say, and makes these “sleaze” action books all the more…authentic, if that’s the right word. You buy into the situation, even if it is outlandishly illogical.

But anything can happen in the sleazecore universe…

I’m curious, now, about the more explicit novels Goff wrote for Neva/Playtime as “Jerry Lane.”  I have one: Call Box.

When I previously examined Adam Snavely’s The Big Flick, I was impressed and wondered who this guy was, or whose pen name it was and to date I still don’t know (I have heard Adam Coulter, but I don’t know who that is either).  “Snavely” published seven books with Kozy, the rest are Bait, 2-4 Sex, Love Drive, Pool Side Pushover, and Split Level Love. I will get to them all eventually — they are all set in Los Angeles, so that’s one clue; the writer was probably L.A.-located.

Wine, Women and Love is a subtle suspense thriller involving domestic espionage, blackmail, and a group of shady government operatives.  The protagonist is a woman in her mid to late 20s, Peggy Porter; the first chapter opens with her in bed with some drunk man, a man who is important in some way.  She has lured him to her hotel room.  Just as the clothes are off and they are in the middle of coitus, several men burst into the room and start taking photos.

The intention here: blackmail the guy.

At first you think they’re grifters targeting rich men, or private eyes, but we get the sensation — it’s never quite said, only hinted at — that Peggy works for these government agents who target certain “key” men in Los Angeles with blackmail and extortion, to make use of at a later date. The group is headed by a sleazy suit named Al Manning, who seems to be power hungry in the political arena.  Is he an operative of . Edgar Hoover?  The operation sounds like the sort of illegal doings Hoover had FBI agents do in the 1950s-70s.

Peggy isn’t an agent; she seems to be a woman with some sort of criminal entanglement,  possible conviction, and she herself is under extorted measures:  she is doing this to keep out of prison.  She’s not the only one; the group has several women working undercover to get dirt and sleaze from various people….

We don’t learn about her past until half-way through the novel: she was a high school teacher and there was a scandal with three teenage boys, perhaps sexual, something about “corrupting minors.”  She was also seen going to meetings of “dangerous liberals,” some who were once connected to Communist groups, so a bit of McCarthyism Cold War red scare is at play.  Such information could ruin a person’s reputation and/or job, such as a scientist she’s been dating and going to meetings with.

These gov spook agents seek out women who are on the verge of incarceration, for connections with Communist groups to prostitution and embezzling.

For Peggy, it’s the combo of the school sex scandal, the meetings, and threatening the cushy scientist job her boyfriend has.

The story centers on Monte Rhone, a scuzzy guy in a leisure sit who owns several nightclubs in Hollywood.  Her assignment is to get a waitress job in the more ritzy club, The Split-Level, frequented by Hollywood stars, millionaires, and politicians.  Rhone is known for hiring only women who will succumb to his sexual desires. Peggy, being leggy and busty, is fir for the job.  She hates it but goes through with it, as she seems to have no choice: do it or head off to the pokey, have her name smeared, and have the scientist’s career ruined.

She learns of the humility and depravity that Manning has other women in his grip do, such as putting on sex shows at parties in mansions.  She knows she has to get out of this racket before something bad happens.  Rhone would probably have her killed if he knew she was a spy.

It’s not certain why the spooks want Rhone in their pocket — he has influence, money, or perhaps it is his access to important and rich people in L.A.  She later learns that Manning’s group is called the Constitution Protection Committee — hmm, sounds like Homeland Security.

There’s a great deal of paranoia in the book. Peggy is never sure what is what, why she’s being followed…people she knows are turning up dead, made to look like suicide: another woman who wants to get out under Manning’s control, and then the scientist she once loved…

Mysterious deaths by suicide — sounds familiar.

The ending is subtle, like The Big Flick had — and like that other Snavely novel, both of these do not seem to have originally been written with the sleaze paperback in mind.  I’d dare say that Snavely or whoever wrote these couldn’t sell his manuscripts to mainstream publishers so turned to Kozy, maybe adding in a couple sex scenes.  The sex in both is arbitrary, but fits: The Big Flick being about Holltywood movie makers, Wine, Women and Love (a title that doesn’t really fit) about a woman using her sex appeal to entrap men in blackmail.

Definitely looking forward to the other Snavely novels, if they are written by the same person. The name could be a house name — for instance, Love Drive was credited to Orrie Hitt in the ozy catalogue, and on the title page of the book, but has “Adam Snavely” on the cover.  But is it Hitt or was it a printing mistake?

Brought to you by our friends at Conservative For Change, President Obama just can’t seem to stop bowing to leaders of the world.  http://www.conservativeforchange.com/2009/11/obama-bowing-before-more-royalty.html

Just couldn’t resist sharing a bit of humor.

Open wide, say ahhh and check out more posts from Ahrcanum including our Swine Flu report that started  in April and is updated regularly at http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/swine-flu-report/

SUBSCRIBE NOW for further updates in the top right margin.

John Avary

Roger Avary, the Pulp Fiction story writer, is tweeting observations from behind bars.

Sentenced last month and currently serving a year’s prison sentence for driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter, Avary’s musings could be seen as inspirational to most fledgling writers. In fact, The Scribbler would like to think Avary has already bagged half a dozen ideas for new writing projects.

There are many theories about how Avary is managing to Tweet from Ventura County Jail. One suggests that while serving a year’s custodial sentence and five probation, the Californian justice system saw fit to grant Avary a work furlough allowing him to work on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, his current film project based on the hit computer game, before returning to prison at night. If this was the case we’re sure it would be more widely publicised.

Other reports suggest he’s using his telephone call to phone his 140 character Twitter update to a friend who then updates his profile for him. Or a third idea is that he is microblogging using a mobile phone application. Regardless of how he is doing it, one thing’s for sure, Avary’s Tweets are gradually building a very vivid picture of what life is like inside a correctional institution.

Roger Avary’s other writing credits include; Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Killing Zoe, Rules of Attraction, Glitterati and Beowulf.

Follow Roger Avary’s Twitter account here: @AVARY Let us know if you find it good reading in the comment box below. His website can be found here: www.avary.com

Also follow The Scribbler on Twitter here: @ScribblerBlog

Feast your eyes on a famous example of Roger Avary’s talent below. A drug induced scene from his film Killing Zoe:

Discussion:
What do you think of Roger Avary’s Twitter? Has it inspired you in any way? Is it a good resource for research in life from behind bars? Are you now bitten by the Twitter bug? How can social networking benefit the writing process? Please do discuss below

Words: Dean Samways

Quentin Tarantino may be many things — perverted, profane, whipsmart, cocky, a little too enamored with his own cleverness — but subtle he is not. He’s not even in the ballpark. Matter of fact, if that ballpark blew up, he wouldn’t hear the sound for another three days. Nah, Tarantino’s a guts-glory-chicks-and-explosions kind of director, and that imagination of his? In the name of Le Royale with Cheese does it dream up some wild-n-twisted trips.

Mark ”Pulp Fiction” down as one of the wildest. Every nanosecond of this humdinger’s 154 minutes contains something warped/crazy/effortlessly cool to behold: philosophical discussions about foot massages, the nature of miracles and a gold watche that has been places no watch should go; murders both coolly calculated and comically accidental; a frightful drug overdose; kinky sex (think S&M with an Alabama drawl and a gimp); and, last but not least, a sinfully delicious $5 milkshake. Random as this catalogue seems, Tarantino’s film is far more scattershot. The action doesn’t adhere to a simple timeline; instead, there are three stories that run parallel, then smash together, then diverge only to reconnect in ways that boggle the mind upon repeat viewings. “Pulp Fiction” is a genius noir/gangster combo that keeps us guessing. Guess long enough, though, and patterns start to emerge from the madness.

Sort of. Since Tarantino makes it nearly impossible to understand how these stories pool into a cohesive ending, let’s tackle one beast at a time. First, there’s “Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife,” the tale of L.A. hitmen Vince (John Travolta) and Jules (a perfeclty cast Samuel L. Jackson) heading to do a job ordered by their loose-cannon boss Marsellus (Ving Rhames). Since Marsellus recently threw a guy out a high-rise window for giving his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) a foot massage, Vince has the jitters about taking her out on the town. His plan is simple: “Chew my food with my mouth closed, laugh at her fucking jokes, and that’s it.” Of course, trouble has a tendency to follow Vince, so things don’t go that smoothly.

Smoothness doesn’t much like Butch (Bruce Willis) either, which we discover in ”The Gold Watch.” A talented boxer with a sweetly innocent girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros), Butch shovels some dirt on his own grave by winning the fight Marsellus paid him to throw. But his neat double-cross turns messy through a series of freak coincidences, the most interesting involving two pawn shop owners who plumb forgot to pack their manners (not to mention their morality) when they left the Deep South. ”The Gold Watch” leads into “The Bonnie Situation,” a conclusion of sorts where Tarantino himself shows up as Jimmie Dimmick, a pal of Jules who begrudgingly agrees to help him clean up an accidental hit (“my gun went off! I don’t know why!” insists the a brain matter-spattered Vance) with help from Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel). What’s on Wolfe’s business card we can’t be sure, since the terse mystery man only offers “I solve problems” as his job description.

It’s offhand comments like these that demonstrate one of Tarantino’s greatest strengths: revealing character traits with one or two stray lines of dialogue. He’s a student of human nature, and he knows the ways people fill time by arguing over whether foot massages are sensual or wondering what cheeseburgers are called in France (see above). And yet everything these characters say tells us something about themselves or the story. Christopher Walken, in his lone scene, delivers a howling-good speech that seems like comic relief, but the subject — the gold watch — comes back into play. Jules spouts a nonsensical version of Ezekiel 25:17, but it reveals his own moral code. Thurman, who finds jumpy loneliness in Mia, parlays a terrible joke about tomatoes into a real connection with Vince. Haphazard though they seem, these lines are the threads that knit everything together.

What else dazzles about “Pulp Fiction”? There’s the abundance of lurid violence — much of it comical (including an uncomfortably funny rape scene), some of it truly shocking, none of it gratuitious. Jackson and Travolta are one hell of two-man team, while Willis registers a pulse and Eric Stoltz has wit to burn. Ultimately, though, it’s the manic, fearless force of Tarantino that makes “Pulp Fiction” a sweet, sweet joyride, indeed.

Grade: A

I’ve been meaning to get to John B. Thompson for a while here, and have been amassing a number of his books.  I tried reading Male Virgin and it was a bit comical and I wasn’t in the mood — it didn’t seem bad, about a stuffy shirt college prof shown the wild ways by a wanton nymph studet. It was co-written by Jack Woodford, or from the cover of the 1950 Arco edition co-written by Thompson, although in the second and third editions from Beacon, Woodford’s name was taken off ditto on Trapped by Orrie Hitt, co-written with Woodford as Lease in hardcover).

Apparently Woodford had a number of “students” that he “trained” to write in the Jack Woodford style, specifically for The Woodford Press.  Thompson did quite a few with Woodford, as did a number of other writers.  Looks to me that they took an outline or unfinished manuscript of Woodford’s and finished/fleshed them out.  I don’t know Woodford’s work much but from what I have seen, seems to be on the comical and whimsy wide of softcore.  While Woodford seems to have dominated that market in the 1940s-50s, his type of softcore did not bode well in the 1960s boom.

On the back cover of Kiss or Kill, it’s stated that Thompson

was born on a large Louisiana plantation, spending his childhood and early manhood in the woods and bayous of this lush land…Thompson became a writer the hard way, having studied engineering at college. He says, “I flunked dismally and I’d glad I did.  The cold logic of the side rule was a little offensive.”

Indeed, seems many of his books have a southern, swampy setting and feel…

Olympia Press has issued an e-novell called The Perverts by Louis Kahn Nin, great-grand newphew or son of Anaias Nin.  Truly torrid stuff like the 1970s hardcore from Greenleaf.

At Kindle here.

Louis Kahn Nin also has some weird connection to Andrew Vachss and Cyberpsychos AOD magazine, or so I heard somewhere, I forget now.

Reviewed here.

The story of an unintentional union boss, written with that Orrie Hitt insider’s view of the common working man…or insurance agent…no, this isn’t another Hitt insurance agent novel, but about an outsider who forms a union of the thousands of Great Western insurance agents across the country.

The narrator is Paul Jackson, early 20s, a meager hotel worker whose union of hotel employees is on strike.  His father is an old hat insurance agent.  One day, near a union hall of insurance agents, his father is accidentally run over by the head of the union and killed.

Now Paul has a beef with unions — he’s broke and out of a job because of one, his father dead because of another.

Seems the union leader, Sam, was not driving his car, was someone else, and he feels bad.  He tells Paul that his father was a secretary in the insurance agent union and believed in the goals.  He offers Paul a $125/week job, to go out on the road as a union organizer and carry on his father’s ideals.

He takes the job for the money only. He could care less about unions…but he gradually does become concerned with the plight of the working man against the child company that is holding out on sharing the profits with those who work hard to bring in the profits.

Sam also has a beautiful 20-something daughter, Lucy — another Lucy — that he falls for.  Problem: he is engaged to Ellen, whom he’s dated for two years.  But Ellen doesn’t like how he’s away all the time, and breaks up with him.

Sam gets sick, and then dies in surgery. Paul takes over as leader. The union grows.  Sam uses unorthodox methods like hiring groups of prostitutes to mingle at the delegate parties (the dolls) to increase union membership (the dues).

The third woman in his life is Beverly Clarke, the spoiled rich girl daughter of Great Western Insurance’s president.  Going to the prez’ country estate for a meeting, he meets her, they fall in love, and run away to elope.  Does this seem odd?  The union boss marries the enemy’s daughter?  Her parents are none too pleased, and Lucy’s heart is broken.

Problem: Beverly is used to a $50,000 a year allowance; her parents have bought her cars, furs, vacations in Europe.  How is she to now live as the wife of a man who makes $200 a week?  She tries, but she keeps buying things on credit.

Soon Paul is “advancing” himself pay checks, or “borrowing” money from the union bank fund, or giving himself hefty raises, to keep up with his nw wife’s spending status.  She’s also pregnant, and won’t let him have sex with her anymore because she is afraid the baby fetus might get hurt.  So Paul turns to the whores he hired before, for physical needs.

It’s all going to end badly, especially when he takes a $50,000 check from his father-in-law to call off a strike that has gon on for many weeks and is breaking the insurance company’s profit.  This all comes out later in a senate hearing on rackateering.

This one may have been too big a task for Orrie to tackle, as matters are skimmed and not clear.  How does he really get away with misusing all that union money?  Or get called on using hookers earlier?

Still, it’s an interesting novel on how unions are organiazed, and how they force companies into employee deals.  In that resepct, this is a social and politucal novel on labor and big business.  Hitt is better with the small business and the struggle to keep afloat, as in Bold Affair and Bad Wife.

An ambitious novel with flaws. On the Hitt Scale, a 7.5.

AKA: JÁ NÃO SE FAZ, PICTURES ASSIM, TÃO PURAS, TÃO MÁS, TÃO CÓMICAS

Estamos no glorioso ano do senhor de 1966 e Portugal esmaga a Coreia no Mundial desse mesmo ano. Também um dos criadores da famosa Pulp Doc Savage, Lester Dent, tenta levar a grande tela as aventuras do seu famoso herói. Tendo como figura principal essa fera das telas que é Chuck Connors (The Rifleman, meu deus, que saudades). Mas Hollywood, como tantas vezes não se interessa pela ideia. Mas quando Hollywood se apercebe do filão, já Lester é pasto dos vermes e os direitos da Pulp, bem como do argumento encontram-se envoltos num emaranhado de processos jurídicos. George Pal, outra fera atrás das câmaras, compra os direitos da Pulp e tenta levar a tela Doc, na forma de franchise, como James Bond. Baseado na primeira obra e indo buscar pequenos pedaços a outras obras seguintes, Pal tenta criar um argumento que pensava conquistar as plateias. Mas falhou redodamente, muito em virtude de não mostrar a nostalgia dos anos 30 como outras obras o fizeram, bem como por culpa desse objecto de culto chamado Jaws. A sequela prometida no final da fita nunca passou do argumento. Sam Raimi anunciou há 3 anos atrás que entre o Shadow e o Avenger, também vai tentar relançar Doc Savage. De Michael Anderson com Ron Ely, Paul Gleason, William Lucking, Michael Miller, Eldon Quick, Darrell Zwerling, Paul Wexler, Janice Heiden, Robyn Hilton, Pamela Hensley, Bob Corso, Carlos Rivas, Chuy Franco, Alberto Morin  Victor Milla.

Reunião da equipa Eléctrico Girabola das Taliscas antes do confronto com o Desportivo Afiambrado dos Boxinos.

Vale a pena deixar de ver a bola e a caneca da cerveja a aquecer para ver isto

Block was, what, 25-26 years old when he wrote this one, having broken away from his Andrew Shaw persona at Nightstand but still doing books as Sheldon Lord for Beacon and Jill Emerson lesbiana novels for Midwood.

This is young Block truly at his A-game, an excellent con artist caper that looks like a sure thing from the get-go, until–naturally–things go awry, due to a dame, this girl with a long green heart who instigated the grift and has been playing the three men in it, all of whom she’s been sleeping with like some kind of Orrie Hitt whore.

And like Orrie Hitt’s Pushover, the con is a unique one, crossing the same territory as David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross: real estate scams, getting people to guy useless property; not in the Florida everglades, but in the Canadian tundra.

It’s too complicated for me to put down in comprensible words, but it’s a complicated con, started in Vegas when Doug, one of the con men, happens to meet Evie, the girl with the long green heart.

She loves money and wants to marry rich, which she thought would happen with the millionaire she works for and has been sleeping with for several years.  He said he’d marry her when his sick wife died; but after the wife died he didn’t marry her and now she wants revenge, by getting two confidence men to pull a land buy game on him, where she will get $17500 from the deal, enough money to move somewhere and mingle with the well-to-do and land a rich hisband.

Right off I hated this broad, and the type of woman she represents, because let me tell ya, these gold diggers are out there: women who come from the wrong side of the track of medicore middle class, and shift their way into a different class in order to marry rich, the man’s bankbook more important than who he is.

And I knew she would pull the twist, that she was up to something; maybe too obvious knowing Block’s work, and 60s crime noir.  The fun was in trying to figure out her angle and what she’d pull — the clues are all there, you realize this later: you go back and see them, but some were obvious too, like when she gets the narrator, Johnny, to touch a gun and put his prints on it.

Johnny admits at the beginning his one weakness, or vice, is women, women always get him in trouble and could ruin a con, and this is the case when Evie plays him.

My only issue with this novel is that it’s abaut 10K words too long (it closks in aboyt 70K) and gets repetitive in the middle, you want things to mobe faster, enough waiting for this con to come to closure.

You also wonder why such a elaborate and months-long con for $100,000, split 40/30/20.  That was abouyt a million in 1965 money, though, and people today murder for far much less.

Hard Case rerpinted this novel in 2005, with a far better cover than the other two editions, featuring a cool orginal Robert McGuire gal: