Two-Fisted Sentences and Hard-Boiled Covers: Mickey Spillane’s pulp fiction
‘I, the Jury’ (1947). Mickey Spillane said he was a writer, not an author. “Authors want their name down in history; I want to keep…
Books
The wonderfully weird illustrations of Artuš Scheiner
City dweller, successful fella, worked in a bank as a clerk but he thought to himself, “I want to live a life that’s a lot…
‘The Cocaine Consumer’s Handbook’: Useful guide to your white lines is the most ’70s thing ever
The heyday of cocaine in our nation’s history was arguably the late 1970s through the early 1980s. In the summer of 1980 Richard Pryor set…
The Internet, now in book form: LiarTown
LiarTown USA (or just LiarTown, for short) has been, since 2013, a consistent source of Internet comedy gold, all springing forth from the warped mind…
The sci-fi comic book story that inspired ‘They Live’
Ray Nelson’s short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning,” on which John Carpenter based They Live, was first published in the November 1963 issue of…
Austin Osman Spare: Weird occult illustrations from ‘A Book of Satyrs’
In 1907, the artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare published his second volume of illustrations, A Book of Satyrs–or rather satires. Spare believed the word…
Salvador Dalí’s hilarious lesson in proper English speech
Echo number four (via Discogs) One of the nice people I met at the Revolting Cocks and Meat Beat Manifesto show last weekend kept telling…
There’s a book of ‘beautiful’ (but strictly unauthorized) poetry by Donald Trump and it’s a hoot
Apparently, Donald Trump has unwittingly produced a book of poetry. Not just your run-of-the-mill rhyming couplets or iambic pentameter, but short sentences artfully clipped from…
Theres a new edition of Dali’s ‘The Wines of Gala’: The modern wine bible you never knew you needed
This month, publisher Taschen is following up on its successful re-publication of Salvador Dalí’s Les Dîners de Gala with his long out-of-print companion volumeThe Wines…
Raymond Chandler’s guide to prison, street, and Hollywood slang
Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s film version of Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Long Goodbye.’ Raymond Chandler wanted to call his second Philip Marlowe…