Last CD you bought/ Book you read
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Gerard K H Love
Appreciate your friends
Who are you, Stavrogin, and what does Stavrogin mean?
weird, I always read it as "starve again"... Just finished " Reflections in a Golden Eye " Carson McCullers.
nervas
more crickets than friends
Just finished Romo by Bill Romanowski. Easy read, and I found it at the .99 cent store a while ago. I never really gave deep thought to the injuries and punishment NFL players put themselves through. At the end of the book, doctors tell Romo he has a pretty good chance of ending up in the same condition as Muhammed Ali, years from now. Pretty scary stuff.
Black Swan
Abord the Yorikke!
I know that Stavrogin is a Dostoevsky's character in the novel The Possessed. Any relation?
Johannes
Founding member
Ah, I've read this one too, Hosh! Good novel. Did you know that Fallada wrote it while being imprisoned?
He had to scribble it in this tiny tiny writing and use the paper twice over, because there was so little, if I remember correctly. Which made it almost illegible. Also he had to hide it from the other inmates. Lots of history there.
Fallada was a tough motherfucker.
He had to scribble it in this tiny tiny writing and use the paper twice over, because there was so little, if I remember correctly. Which made it almost illegible. Also he had to hide it from the other inmates. Lots of history there.
Fallada was a tough motherfucker.
Hosh
hoshomccreesh.com
Yeah--he's an interesting guy (what little I've read about him so far), and they originally thought he'd written in some secret code because the pages we so thick with text.
At one point he calls his wife a "nattering old cow" and wishes she'd just disappear...& I nearly did a spit-take! It instantly reminded me of John Fante's Arturo Bandini...which I consider mighty high praise.
At one point he calls his wife a "nattering old cow" and wishes she'd just disappear...& I nearly did a spit-take! It instantly reminded me of John Fante's Arturo Bandini...which I consider mighty high praise.
Currently reading: An Assassin's Diary by Arthur Bremer.
Last CD: Monte Cazazza.."The Worst Of.."
Last CD: Monte Cazazza.."The Worst Of.."
nervas
more crickets than friends
I just read Phillip Carlo's story of Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, the serial killer that terrorized Los Angeles in the hottest summer in 100 years, 1985! I was 10 years old at the time and living in Pico Rivera with mom, aunt and grandma(no men in the house.) Pico was also the same city the lead detectives mother lived in. I still remember neighbours saying, don't worry, GIL will catch this nut! The Night Stalker killed someone in basically every single neighbouring city including Whittier, where I lived the next summer. Anyway, the most vivid memory of the summer of 1985 was that we just didn't sleep with the windows open! Holy shit, what a weirdo, but a pretty good descriptive book on the events.
nervas
more crickets than friends
Exactly. According to the book, when he was arrested and taken in, detectives wanted to question him immediately. At first Ramirez did not want to talk and instead began singing Night Prowler to the cops, friggin' idiot went all American Idol on the detectives! Though, of course American Idol did not exist. In any event, if you lived anywhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles at the time, it really became quite terrifying everytime you went to bed. He was also so crazy going in and killing any men in the house first! I'm not kidding you, being 10 years old and the only male in the house, I really would sit there staring at the walls, thinking as logical as a 10year old can, that if he picked our house, I'd be the first to go! Through all the accounts though where there were children in the house, he never hurt any of them. He did lock a 7yr old boy in the closet, but in a few of the homes he encountered everything from newborns to teenagers and all but one(a 16 year old girl) went unharmed. Though he did not kill the 16 year old girl. I just can't believe he has been in jail 25 years this month and he's still alive? Never made it to the chair yet, and no one in prison has killed him ala Jeffrey Dahmer. I guess Ramirez is in pretty tight protective quarters, away from other prisoners.
mjp
Founding member
After they took him to the jail doctor, I assume. Didn't the people who cornered him in East L.A. kick his ass pretty badly? To save LAPD the trouble...
nervas
more crickets than friends
They did beat him pretty good, which he was always extremely upset about. Well not about being beat up, but from who he received the beating. He always complained he could not believe his own people(mexicans) turned him in. He had several large gashes to the back of the head. One of the guys beating him with a pipe, kept screaming at his 17 year old son to go get his gun. By the books account, the son was on his way and his mother refused to let him take the gun. From other accounts I've read or watched, the people there were pretty much ready to beat him to death, but the cops arrived. Even once the cops were there, they had to leave the scene pretty quickly. The police said the crowd was growing by the minute and seemingly was minutes away from turning into an out of control mob! First thing he said from the back of the cop car as they left was, why didn't you let them kill me, you should have let them kill me.
Hmm, let's start with the hard one. CD i bought? I know recently I went out and went a little mental in a record store and bought a few things... Neil Young's Zuma, 13th Floor Elevators Easter Everywhere and Temptations Psychedelic Soul. All GREAT and the last book I just finished reading is Poe Ballantine's Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire. A really good read but I think I prefer his non-fiction material, my personal fave is still Things I like about America. Anyone else read Ballantine? Opinions...
nervas
more crickets than friends
I'm on some sort of serial killer kick lately. Hopefully the FBI isn't keeping track of all the books I buy. Anyway just finished Ann Rule's Stranger Besides Me. It's her account of the Ted Bundy killings. Though, she has quite a different approach, since she was a friend of Ted Bundy's for years on and off, never knowing he was thee Ted the FBI was after for years. The book spares a lot of the gory details etc that the Night Stalker book I just read thrived on. However Ann Rule is certainly a better writer than Phillip Carlo. All in all, it was a page turner, one I couldn't put down. I guess I'm onto the Killer Clown, Gacy, next.
I've seen the movie version.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Ann-Rule-Presen...?pt=US_DVD_HD_DVD_Blu_ray&hash=item1e5db3e9fa
Just checked youtube:
nervas
more crickets than friends
I love Danger Mouse. I think the albums he produced for the Black Keys and Beck are two of those artists best albums. He had a lot to do with the direction and sound of both albums. Of course his work on the mash up of the Beatles White Album/Jay Z's Black album was also brilliant.
a bit dry in spots, but overall a very interesting look at the banning of Steinbeck's book, as well as the social and political environment at the time.
The most recent cd, well parcel, that I bought that I can remember was Mogwai's Special Moves two LP, CD and dvd of Burning in a boxed set. Great live album and worth checking out. I might have bought more recently, but I can't remember.
I just finished Fante's The Brotherhood of the Grape and rereading the Guy Delisle comic, Pyongyang, and now I'm rereading South of No North and starting Wait Until Spring, Bandini. :)
I just finished Fante's The Brotherhood of the Grape and rereading the Guy Delisle comic, Pyongyang, and now I'm rereading South of No North and starting Wait Until Spring, Bandini. :)
Bukfan
"The law is wrong; I am right"
I just read, "Dry Guillotine" (1938), by René Belbenoit. It's an autobiography about the 15 years he lived as a convict in the penal colony in French Guiana and his several escape attempts until he finally succeeded in escaping. It's a very exciting book and much better than, "Papillon", by Henri Charriere.
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Damn, I've read Papillon several times, and I stupidly left my beat up old copy on a plane when my wife and I went to New Orleans back in September. I'll have to check this out. Thanks, Bukfan.
Bukfan
"The law is wrong; I am right"
Yes, they changed the title in the 1949 paperback edition. There's also two other paperback versions as you can see.
Belbenoit wrote a follow up book called, "Hell On Trial", which I also just read.
No wonder people say Papillon "borrowed" some of Belbenoit's adventures. When you read, "Dry Guillotine" you see many similarities between the two books, such as Belbenoit's 7 months stay with the Indians in Panama, which in, "Papillon", becomes 6 months with the Indians on the border between Columbia and Venezuela.
Also, Belbenoit went to the lepers island to get hold of a canoe for his escape, and who does the exact same thing? Papillon!
And you probably remember Papillon's sidekick, Dega (played by Dustin Hofman in the movie), who was convicted for forging national defence bonds. Well, he's in Belbenoit's, "Hell On Trial", too. Only, his real name is Degras and he did forge national defence bonds. There's other similarities too, so either both men experienced the same kinda things and people or Henri Charriere (Papillon) "borrowed" some of Belbenoit's adventures.
One thing is certain, some of Papillon's experiences are not true. There's been written books about him in France (unfortunately, not translated into English), where they've looked at his prison records. For instance, he did'nt escape from Devil's Island on a bag of coco nuts by throwing himself off a cliff. There's no cliffs on Devil's Island, and no record of anybody ever having escaped from the island, but he did stay on the Island for a few months before he was transferred to the mainland, where he became a nurse in the hospital at the Cascade forest camp, from which he escaped in a boat with a couple of other prisoners.
It's too bad he boosted his adventures because he did really experience a lot. It's true he was locked up in solitary confinement for years on Saint Joseph Island and then spend 5 years at Royale Island. He was transferred to Devil's Island at the end of 1942, and then he was transferred at April, 29, 1943, to the Cascade forest camp on the mainland, from which he escaped the night between March 18-19, 1944. After reaching Venezuela, he was imprisoned, but he finally reached Caracas in 1946 as a free man and became a Venezuelan citizen at July 5, 1956.
If only he had concentrated on his own experiences instead of "boosting" them.
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Black Swan
Abord the Yorikke!
I picked this one at a garage sale for a quarter.
I had read Crime and Punishment, now Notes...
I had read Crime and Punishment, now Notes...