THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 2024

I’ve always been fascinated by eclipses. I’ve witnessed several good ones in my time, but nothing as amazing as the one today. I had actually pretty much given up any hope of being able to see this one. Despite all the media hype I never tried to acquire the necessary sunglasses required to view a total solar eclipse. And I had promised to take my wife to her eye doctor appointment, scheduled the same time as the solar event. She’d had knee surgery and is temporarily unable to drive. It was unfortunate, because, like I said, I’ve always been fascinated by eclipses. An eclipse has appeared in several of my writings, particular in the climactic, cataclysmic conclusion of my novel, “Tragon of Ramura.” I didn’t expect that anything like the end of the world was going to happen today. So I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over missing this one.

But fate intervened. At the eye doctor I got bored after cooling my heels for half an hour in the waiting room and decided to go downstairs and wait in the car. I was surprised to see a small crowd of people standing in the parking lot, clad in eclipse sunglasses, all staring up at the sky, with men and women alike exclaiming out loud at what they were seeing. “Oh, wow!” “Look at that!” I walked over toward them marveling at their reaction. Then one kind woman in the crowd asked if I’d like to borrow her glasses. I was surprised but somehow there was this strange feeling of openness and a kind of euphoria over everybody as they gazed upward. Like we were all friends somehow even though we didn’t know each other. I put the glasses on and was kind of shocked. The lenses on the glasses are so dark you can only see black–like the darkness of space. I moved into position and there was the orange sun, mostly covered by the black shadow of the moon.

The moon had covered about 90 percent of the sun’s circumference. I felt really strange, small. I was conscious for the first time how really small I was, how we all were, and at the same time BIG, so big that we were all part of this enormous cosmic event. We take our earth bound existence for granted. We think it’s all there is, all there will ever be, but seeing the life-giving sun momentarily blacked out by the cold and lifeless moon, and that we’re living on a giant ball spinning in space amidst a universe of other balls– well, it gives you pause. It makes you think and it’s all too big to really comprehend. All you can do is go on as if everything is the way it was before you looked through those glasses. But you can’t help realizing for the first time that its all in motion, everything, all around you. In a way, the world did end.

And so it is this April afternoon. . .

The Oscars

The 2024 OSCARS broadcast on ABC TV was a total bore. For once I actually agree with Trump. Jimmy Kimmel should never host another Oscar show. He’s got no class and he ain’t funny. The new 7 pm EST starting time didn’t help anything. They had a new gimmick. They got five former winners of each of the major awards and had them come out on stage and tell the five current nominees how wonderful they are. Sheer waste of time and nothing is more sickening than watching five old narcissists stroking the egos of five young narcissists.

At least the Academy did a good job picking the winners. Oppenheimer won the biggies, best pic, best actor and supporting actor. Photography, leaving Barbie in the dust where it belongs. Most of the films don’t sound that interesting. Poor Things– Emma Stone got best actress but the story sounds pretty morbid. I’ve seen the director’s other films and they’re pretty weird.

Fuck up of the night was Al Pacino who failed to read the list of nominees for Best Picture. He just opened the envelope and said “I see Oppenheimer.” Dementia? Hey, at least it saved some time, so good one for Al!

I used to be a Billy Eilish fan but I hated the song from Barbie that she wrote and performed. I’m tired of her monotonous one note drone-style of singing.

The saddest part of the show was watching the end of an era of filmmaking, as this time, the Oscars totally shut Martin Scorsese out. The gritty, hard hitting style of films, that seek to convey some truth about the reality we all live in, is over. The look on Scorsese’s face when they gave it to Christopher Nolan, showed the grim realization he had to be feeling at that moment. Here’s hoping Marty shrugs it off and moves on to the next project.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

Happy Valentine’s Day! To show my appreciation for the support my writing has received over the years, I’m giving away Kindle ebook copies of the latest Mordecai Slate story free. Today only. Don’t say I never gave you anything. Just click on this link. Have a great Valentine’s Day!

Kutseena (pronounced Kuh-Tsay-Nah)

It’s been a while since I published anything in the world of fiction, so I thought it was time to get something new out there. The two best selling books that I’ve written have been the Mordecai Slate books, “Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto,” and “Hunting Monsters Is My Business.” Mordecai is a 19th Century bounty hunter who roamed the West with a Colt 1855 Revolver Rifle and Colt pistol, both loaded with .45 caliber silver bullets. He hired out to rid the world of various supernatural villains. For a thousand in gold he’d rid those who paid him of such evils as vampires, zombies, and werewolves, which, while it may not be recorded in history books of that era, were quite plentiful.

The Slate books continue to sell since they were first published over 10 years ago. From time to time no in someone asks if there will ever be another Mordecai Slate story. Just so happens I had written a story called “Kutseena,,” which was about to be published in Skelos before it folded. “Kutseena” is about Slate’s encounter with an infestation of monstrous Killer Coyotes. “Kutseena (pronouncd Kuh-Tsay-Nah) is Comanche for Coyote. It starts like this:

“The hard-packed clay rose uphill into the darkness, crumbling under his boot as he climbed. Mordecai Slate didn’t know what he would see when he got to the top, but the sounds of the human screams mixed with the nightmarish sounds of bestial growling told him it wouldn’t be pleasant. It was gunfire that had led him here. But now the guns were silent.

He looked down under the starlight into a crater-like valley. There were two covered wagons below, about a hundred yards away; one of the wagons was on fire. Bodies lay on the ground. There were things moving. Dark shapes, shadows.

Slate grabbed the Army binoculars hanging from his neck and looked closer. As the glasses came into focus he saw the head of something resembling a coyote hovering over the face of a man who lay flat on his back. It was not like any coyote he’d ever seen. It was larger, and its eyes shone with a strange, yellowish light. The animal’s jaws opened and snapped shut a few inches away from the man’s face. Slate could hear the man begin to gibber. The animal pulled its head back and its mouth half-opened in what looked like a sort of grin as it peered intently into the man’s eyes.

A shiver ran down Slate’s spine as he realized the creature was playing with its quarry, enjoying the man’s fear. Slate lowered the glasses and pulled his Colt Revolver Rifle up.  But before he could fire, the animal’s jaws snapped again. The man’s whole body stiffened and trembled as the animal lifted him up by the head and shook him all around.”

That gives you the idea of the story, what it’s all about. It’s not a very long story. About 12 Kindle pages, but I think it’s got enough chills and a shocker of an ending to make it worth reading if you’re into that sort of thing. Might make you want to read the two earlier, much longer stories.

Here’s the Amazon link to “Kutseena,” in case you’re interested.

The Marlboro Man Lives On

Hey, gang! Here we are in a brand new year. How’s it going so far? Yeah, that’s what I thought. But who knows what lies ahead in the 365 days of 2024? What great exciting things will happen to this crazy world and all of us here on planet Earth? Some of it may be cool, some of it not so cool. But one thing’s for sure. It’s all on its way, bringing new ideas, new problems, new ways to be.

But what strikes me as peculiar to our time– the time we’re living in– is that as the future comes rushing toward us, it is accompanied, and maybe even overwhelmed at times– by our need to remember the past. As we rush further into the 21st Century, we’re also keeping one eye on the rear view mirror.

Nowhere is this more evident than the flood tide of old TV shows and movies of 40 and 50 years ago that you’ll find on any number of new “streaming” channels. By now everyone has a “smart” TV with streaming capabilities. And most of these channels are filled with reruns of Carol Burnett, Gene Autry, Peter Gunn, Route 66, Naked City, on an on. Don’t get me wrong. I love these shows and you’ll find me as likely to be tuned into ROKU TV with its vintage programs as much as HBO. But I find it curious that we’re sitting in our living rooms in front of a highly sophisticated piece of video and audio equipment, capable of showing movies with a picture and sound better than most neighborhood theaters, tuned to a mushy black and white video with poor sound quality and black bars on the sides of the image, watching Craig Stevens solve a case with Henry Mancini’s jazz score in the background. Or Hugh O’Brian cleaning up Dodge City with the Ken Darby singers in the background. But then that’s part of the experience– a Twilight Zone “Kick the Can” thing– taking us back to the days of our youth.

Speaking of ROKU TV, I’ve found some interesting stuff on that streaming service. One of them is Channel 300 Universal Monsters. The station plays the original classic Universal pictures horror and sci-fi classics, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and Dracula, The Deadly Mantis (speaking of Craig Stevens). You can turn it on any hour of the day or night and watch until you’re googly eyed. That is, if you don’t’ mind commercials.

Now I think I know a lot of TV trivia, having grown up in the fifties, in the first family in our neighborhood to own a TV set, but ROKU occasionally come up with something that I had never heard of. Such was the case the other night on the XUMO WESTERNS channel. Did you ever hear of a 1960 TV Western series called TATE? I’d be surprised if you did. The show was written in part and produced by Harry Julian Fink, an old pro from that era. He produced HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, and later wrote the script for DIRTY HARRY, among many other things.

TATE is a show about a gunman who only has one arm. He got his left arm shot off in the Civil War. It’s not enough that the arm is missing, but he has a wooden left arm that rests in a sling. The really shocking part of this s tory is that the character of Tate is played by a fellow by the name of David McLean. You may never have heard of him, but then again you might have. His biggest claim to fame is not the TATE series, but the fact that he was The Marlboro Man in all those Marlboro TV cigarette commercials . He was the guy on the  horse riding along on the plain stopping at the appropriate moment to light up a filter-tipped Marlboro. I guess he got popular enough to get himself a series. Unfortunately not popular enough to make it a hit. It lasted for only 13 episodes.

The really sad irony of his life is that, as the Marlboro Man, the tobacco company provided him with all the cigarettes he could smoke for free. And after puffing on all those Marlboros he eventually learned in 1994 that he had contracted lung cancer. He died of the disease in 1995.

So let’s pause to remember David McLean, and Tate, one of the many riders of the plains, who have ridden down to their last sunset. And all the others who marched before us, down through the annals of time, now only distant memories. Meanwhile we march in our own parade, our own banners flying, with our own hopes and dreams. Just remember, as you deal with the “Great Vicissitudes of Life,” the words once spoken by the Wise One himself. “Keep your knees loose, and your duff close to the ground!”

SEASONS GREETINGS

[In the spirit of the season, here is an excerpt from HUNTING MONSTERS IS MY BUSINESS. Hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Mordecai Slate, Doc Washburn, and the Reverend Powell rode on through the snow, the memory of what had occurred in Rio Muerto still blazing in their minds. The thick New Mexican snowflakes stung Slate’s cheek as he kept Dutch, his buckskin horse, set on course due north on the Camino Real. The doctor and the reverend followed in the wagon.

An hour later — the snow heavier, visibility almost zero — a dark shape loomed up ahead. As they approached, Slate saw it was a small lean-to built on the side of the road–a dilapidated relay station. There was someone inside. Two small figures huddled together, hidden in the dark interior of the lean to. They were behind a feed trough filled with straw. Two homeless Mexicans caught in the storm. Slate saw a baby wrapped in a blanket, lying in the straw.

He dismounted and the other two men climbed down from the wagon. Slate saw that the Mexicans, a man and a woman, were very young, and the baby was newborn.

Slate and his companions stared down at them in silence. As poor and desperate as they were, there was something about them. Some kind of peaceful feeling seemed to surround the lean-to. After all that they, Slate and the others, had experienced in Rio Muerto, it was like a soothing balm that healed.

Slate took some of the gold coins Don Pedro had given him for hunting down Kord Manion and dropped them in the woman’s lap. Doc Washburn opened his bag and examined the child. He gave the woman some medicine for colic.

Reverend Powell stood over them, making a sign of the cross. The wind and snow howled mercilessly outside all around them.

60 YEARS SINCE THEY KILLED JFK

60 years since JFK was assassinated.

Guess it’s a sign of old age, but I swear it seems like it was longer ago than that. A lot longer ago. So much has happened since then, so much has changed. Almost feels like I’ve been time-shifted to another planet, where everything is different. The way people think, or maybe have given up thinking. The way they live. Attitudes, values, (if you can call them that) –all different from the JFK era. It was the New Frontier and we were asking what we could do for our country, not what our country could do for us.

“Route 66” was a vibrant TV series of that time that, while ultimately optimistic and hopeful, didn’t shy away from exposing the cracks in the facade, the unrest lying beneath the surface. The series producers planned to air the episode “I’m Here to Kill a King,” on Nov. 29, 1963. It was a story about a political assassination that takes place near Niagara Falls, It had to be replaced with another show, because it was too close to the reality that had happened Nov. 22. This day in a way, was the turning point, a detour off the Mother Road, an off ramp that should never have been taken. The Corvette that took Tod, Buz and Linc into the towns and cities of America’s New Frontier, found itself traveling on a road with a different landscape. A darker, more sinister place, where evil lurks in unsuspected places, and men with political agendas of their own, or men simply insane with obsessions of power or ideology, can change everything with the squeeze of a trigger. The New Frontier became a shattered dream, twisted into a nightmare from which we still have not awakened.

In fact the political situation is worse today than it’s ever been. Nations around the globe are putting themselves under the rulership of right wing authoritarian leaders, all of whom have dreams of ruling the world. And the 2024 US election will be decision time for a country that must decide if it wants authoritarian or democratic rule.

Maybe there is still hope. Today, there are reports that some of the Israeli hostages will be released tomorrow, Something to give thanks for on Thanksgiving Day. But thunder rumbles in the distance. Just hours ago cable news reported that a vehicle exploded as it was moving through the U.S./Canadian border. No details available yet. Nobody knows if it’s connected to terrorism or not, but it’s the first thing you think of, and security has been heightened at airports and other transportation hubs. It’s just an odd coincidence that it happened at Niagara Falls. Isn’t it?

NOW AND THEN EVER THE SAME

I’m watching the conflagration in the night sky over Gaza on my TV, while listening to John Lennon’s resurrected last song on my phone. What is this world becoming?

THE BIG SHUTDOWN

“The Big Shutdown,” published in 2015, is the complete Jack Brand saga, as originally told in the pages of Ray Gun Revival in 2006-2007.  Set in the  late 23rd Century, it tells the story of ex-Army Ranger and former Tulon Security Force Officer Jack Brand and his years-long search for his sister, Terry. Terry was kidnapped by a gang of dune-buggy riding Nomads on the planet Tulon, after he led her and his tactical squad into an ambush. Feeling responsible for her capture and the loss of his men, Brand has vowed to find her, dead or alive, no matter how long it takes. But the Energy Conglomerates of Earth who control the planet have decided to pull the plug on Tulon. Its rich oil deposits are no longer needed since the development of alternative fuels. The planet will be abandoned as The Big Shutdown is implemented and the last ships leave for earth.

Brand’s search for Terry leads him from one exotic location to another, including a domed city in the desert controlled by gangsters, and underwater kingdom ruled by a beautiful mermaid queen, and various outposts of what’s left of Tulon’s civilization.

Along the way, Brand meets the unforgettable Christy Jones, a woman as dangerous as she is beautiful. She saves Brand’s life but nearly at the cost of her own. His mission to find his lost sister separates them, but fate brings her back into his life later in a cruel, and unexpected way, as the wife of another man. They separate again, but they both know it will not be for the last time.

It’s sci-fi adventure seemingly inspired by Flash Gordon and the Martian stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and some elements of the gritty westerns of the late sixties, especially those of Sam Peckinpah and Randolph Scott. Perhaps the biggest influence on “The Big Shutdown” was the classic TV series “route 66.” You’ll find some characters in my book who seem to be in search of something–themselves or some kind of meaning in life, something to make it all worthwhile. They are a lot like the people “route 66” creator Stirling Silliphant wrote about. The only kind of people worth writing about.

With “The Big Shutdown” I resisted the current trend to write a book with a cliffhanger ending as a tease to sell a potential series. The story has a beginning, middle and an end. There are no loose ends that leave you dangling. Not to say that Brand, and Christy Jones could never show up in another book, but if they did, it would be a completely new adventure.

I think you’ll find that reading a story that resolves all of its tensions and conflicts an uncommonly satisfying reading experience . Give it a try. Here’s a trailer for the book. You can order it here.

The Dark Id Rises Revisited

(It’s been thirteen years since this tragedy occurred. I blogged this piece back then. Since then the shootings have continued with no end in sight. Seems appropriate to repeat it now.)

There’s going to be a lot of blame, and finger-pointing in the aftermath of what happened at the Century Theater, in Aurora, Colo., during the premiere showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” when a lone gunman entered the theater, armed to the teeth and shot 70 people, killing 12. Already, amidst the anguished cries of the victims and their families, there are calls for tougher gun control laws. Others want something done about the level of violence today in movies and video games.

It’s true that the violence in most action/fantasy films today is at a level that would have shocked movie goers of past generations. It’s not enough to shoot the enemy down. Now movie heroes seem to be required to shoot them with automatic weapons and to keep shooting them until the ammo is gone. And it’s not enough for the villain to punch a victim once or twice. He’s got to punch him to the ground and pound his face into the pavement until it’s a pulpy mess. In some of the superhero films whole cities are destroyed as computer generated characters battle one another, knocking buildings over like dominos. Kids in their preteens spend endless hours playing games like Call of Duty where the goal is to rack up as many enemy kills as you can, and it’s all shown on screen in bloody realistic detail. And it’s equally true that guns, high-powered automatic weapons, are too plentiful and too easy to get, especially for those who have no business owning a gun in the first place.It’s easy to point fingers at these issues and say they are the reasons that such a horrendous tragedy like the one in Aurora happened. And maybe you could outlaw violent movies and guns and video games. But would it really prevent future incidents of this kind?When the gunman broke into the theater, some of the witnesses and victims said they thought it was part of the show. In a way, they weren’t wrong. In a way, it was like that film Woody Allen made a few years ago, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” when a character in the film Mia Farrow was watching, stepped out of the screen and started messing with her romantic life. In Allen’s film it was what psychologists call a romantic projection from Mia Farrow’s unconscious mind that stepped off the screen into the theater. Last Friday at half past midnight in Aurora, maybe it was a projection of an entirely different kind that stormed into the movie theater and wreaked such havoc.Oh, come on, you say. It was a real living person who fired the shots and killed innocent people. He’s the one that did it, not some psychological phenomenon. But are things really all that simple?By coincidence,Turner Classic Movies aired the classic MGM film, Forbidden Planet on the night of the tragedy.  Swiss psychologist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe how parallel incidents and events that seem coincidental really aren’t. He thought there was meaning to be taken from concurrent, parallel happenings. So maybe it was no coincidence, then, that Forbidden Planet was aired the night of  the rampage.If you recall the plot of the movie a crew of astronauts visits the planet Altair where a team of scientists had disappeared 20 years earlier. They discover that one scientist, Dr. Morbius, survived with his beautiful daughter. We learn that an advanced civilization (the Krells) flourished 2,000 centuries ago, but perished, destroyed by some unknown, unseen monster.  Morbius explains that the Krells were actually destroyed not by some monster outside themselves but by the outward manifestation of their own Id. The Id is Freud’s concept of the basis of the unconscious mind, which contains all the internal rage, hate, lust, and desire for power that our conscious minds cannot acknowledge.Now that the astronauts have arrived, the invisible monster returns and begins killing the space ship’s crew, one by one. Dr. Morbius doesn’t realize until too late that it is his own Id, aroused by the threat to his power posed by the astronauts, that has surfaced and been projected outward and now is attempting to destroy everything and everyone. Morbius was a brilliant scientist and a good man, but he could not see the dark side of himself, until it took an outward form.Just as Morbius couldn’t see the truth, maybe none of us can either. You can blame entertainment violence, you can blame guns and video games for what happened in Aurora and you wouldn’t be completely wrong. You can pass laws and lock up the maniac who pulled the trigger. And you might think you’ve solved the problem. But that’s a very questionable assumption. Maybe there’s something else responsible for the horror of what happened in Aurora, but we just can’t see it.Those images of violence, death and destruction up there on the movie screen, and in those games—what are they but a projection of the things that lurk and lurch inside us but which we aren’t willing to  admit to? Projecting them outward as entertainment has a cathartic value. That’s true. And we  need that outlet. It’s a way to get it out of our system. But maybe until we begin to see the movie screen as a mirror that reflects back to us the dark part of ourselves, a part that’s waiting its chance in each of us to break loose and erupt— until we acknowledge the beast inside— the dark Id will rise again, as it did that bloody Friday night in Colorado.