“Time to Man Up!”, or: Mother’s Escaped to a New Dimension and Here’s What I’ve Read in the First Six Months of 2024 (three months late)

My mother’s end was sad and pathetic, and very painful to me. Don’t get me wrong—I hated her guts—it’s best she’s gone—but it’s still painful.

The death of the Parasite lasted basically the first half of 2024 (parasite is what I started to call her at the end; she’d burned all her bridges with her preference for drugs and mental delusions over family and friends—I was the last one left who tolerated her—she probably had longer conversations with the pawn broker than her own flesh and blood). She died May 6, then the rest of May and June was spent dealing with the mess she left behind—not just the sizable physical mess (the loon hadn’t thrown away her junk mail for the last five—at least!—years), but the physic, legal, metaphorical, etc. messes left behind as well. 

She was someone who loved to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory just to prove she was right. But she was a dopefiend, and that ALWAYS guided her thought patterns—which were already scrambled; although I’m glad she was half in the bag most of the time: It allowed me to escape from her clutches and live the rich and rewarding life of a feral latchkey child. Did you know I taught myself to make gunpowder at the age of eleven? (Thank you, Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments!) 

[Stuff about books after break...]

The Best Reading of 2023 (About Three Months Late...)

Oh, dear…  Looks like I haven’t posted in more than a year…

Yep, I’ve been busy.

The Best Reading of 2023
[*) = reread]

I look at my selections of Top Books Read for 2023 (as well as the larger list of what I read, and yes, everything I read last year eventually gets reviewed here, so hang on to your hats), and I try to assess patterns. I will tell you, I’m not really one for the “Quality Lit Game” or “Contemporary Literature,” whether snooty NYTimes bestseller, or the YA crowding the book department at Target, or the action-packed Bourne/Reacher-rip-off techno-thriller you’ll find in the last places that still sell mass-market paperbacks. And the things that usually interest me are hardly the norm…

Trip City Overdrive—The Bestest Books of 2022 (which is the clickbait title since it really should be titled “The Best Books That Ivan Read in 2022, Which May or May Not Actually Include Books Published in 2022”)

Two great cosmic explorers and
authors; one of them is
William S. Burroughs

BEST BOOKS [that I read] of 2022:

All these books are trippy (in some vague way—at least to me)
Jouuuuuurneys of Self-Discovery! [Echo effects included]

The essay portion is below the break; up top, this is just a delicious listicle! (Which sounds kinda gross, actually…)

BESTEST Book of 2022!!!—
— The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes by Tim Lucas (based on the original screenplay by Tim Lucas & Charles Largent with Michael Almereyda & James Robison) (2022) 

The Rest of the Best (listed by year published)
—Against Nature (À Rebours) by J.-K. Huysmans (1884)
—Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung, edited by Aniela Jaffe (1961)
—Billion-Dollar Brain by Len Deighton (1966)
—Downward to the Earth by Robert Silverberg (1969)
—The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe, with anthology edited by Tom Wolfe and E.W. Johnson (1973)
—True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise by Terence McKenna (1993)
—Huế 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden (2017)
—Rated SavX: The Savage Pencil Skratchbook by Savage Pencil (Edwin Pouncey) (2020)
—The Strange Death of Alex Raymond by Dave Sim & Carson Grubaugh (2021)
—Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross, based on characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (2022)

Honorable Mention:
—The Yage Letters: Redux by William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg; edited by Oliver Harris (1963; 1975; 2006)

BEST REREAD:
—*) Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth! by Jack Kirby (1972-1976; #1-#40)

More details below! Read on, MacDuff!

Roger Corman and His Search for Legalized Spiritual Development: A Review of "The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes" by Tim Lucas

A book I’m proud to own—and am sure that I will reread soon—The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes by Tim Lucas cannot be recommended enough. 

Ostensibly the “Making of” Roger Corman’s 1967 cult/camp classic The Trip, this is a Non-Fiction Novel about one of America’s greatest and weirdest artists at a crucial juncture in his life, trying to solve a personal spiritual crisis, and doing so through art, friendship, and serious mind-bending drugs. 

Featuring a cast of highly recognizable characters (I mean, they are movie stars), often sidesplittingly funny, and with a fabulous, perfect ear for dialogue, The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes recreates the time and place magically. It’s easy enough to imagine this being lensed in that delicious late-1960s Technicolor, the type where neon at night simply crackles, and everything is just a tad grainy—but that graininess on the edges? It’s perfect when you’re entering the realm of describing the LSD experience…

Released in Spring 2022, the book is published in the UK by Electric Dreamhouse/PS Publishing, and is available in the U.S. via mail-order (through the usual suspects). 

Buy it now! 

[more of The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes review below!]

COSMIC!

 

In Hyperspace, You Can Hear Everyone Scream....for Ice Cream

 

Whaddya say? Let's WING IT!

“Ivan! Where Are You?” (In Hyperspace…?)

 

“Ivan! Where are you?”

THAT is a good question, Natasha, when regarded metaphorically. In relative space-time, I’m in the basic NYC area—take your standard 50-megaton Hydrogen Bomb, and using the Empire State Building as Ground Zero (a la Blackie in Fail-Safe), you’d vaporize me along with the rest of Manhattan.

But where is my spirit, my drive, my energy aimed? Kinda animalistic in that I’m in total job hunt mode—and I still whip myself for not doing enough.

BASTA! I’m not letting this turn into “Fear & Self-Loathing in Hyperspace”—

Let’s talk about T-shirts and collages!

Talkin’ ’Bout T’s (Filler? Or, Showing Off?) [Designing My Own T-Shirts to Stay Sane]

THE FEAR has planted its big old self into my life, and there’s only one thing that will get rid of it:
MONEY! Got any extra lying around? Where’s Guy Grand when you need him? Why wasn’t the utter and total pursuit of filthy lucre not my raison d'être when I was younger?

SIGH…

I’m doing what I can to combat THE FEAR (got a job for me? I can keep secrets!), but it is quite the drain on the intellect and the spirit. 

But brief joys can be found at our own fingertips… Like these keeee-RAY-zee designs and collages surrounding this excessive verbiage? I made ’em! Taught myself Paint 3D and some of the Gimp system (yeah, I know, rah-rah: big deal), and as I mentioned the last time I posted, I’ve been turning them into T-shirts!

Read on, Macduff!

Psychedelic Conspiracy: COVID Collage Hijinx (and my personally designed T-shirts—sort of…)

 March 3, 2021

Jeez, unemployment and COVID social distancing/isolation has driven me KEE-RAY-Zeeeeeee; some of my creative outlets were criticized mercilessly, and I was quite depressed for a while. Jumpstarting my creativity, I’ve been making collages and designing T-shirts—I’ve been literally ITCHING with the desire for retail therapy—but why buy T-shirts when I have enough already? Any I’ve gotten tired of advertising for someone else…

So thanks to the awesome fellows at Maximum Graphics (on Amsterdam Avenue), I started creating my own shirts. 

Seditionists, Hitlerites, Insurrectionists, Terrorists: I saw the worst minds of my generation spurred on by presidential madness, overfed hysterical LARPing, knuckle-dragging themselves through the white supremacist streets at dusk looking for some meth and then blaming Antifa

Ummm, so I gotta ask, how many “let them eat cake” moments do we need?

Lock these
fuckers up!

This is my roundabout, ranting Leftie armchair quarterback way to look at the Invasion of the Maniacs in Washington, D.C. this past week. I’m hoping for the best (round up all the Fascist and bring back the firing squad—
said the man complaining about fascists), but not expecting much of anything.
And Damn it! Don’t they know they’re fucking up the stock market! That makes me pissed!

To apocryphally quote Judge Roy Bean, “I know the Law, because I have spent my entire life in its flagrant disregard!”
I understand the country because the country is like me: an immature mess who’s too smart for its own good, has too many bad habits to count, who’s been so damn lucky so damn often that we’ve started thinking that maybe we’re charmed and that the Really Big Break is just around the next corner, and who should really, really, really know better.

I really want to be impressed, I want to see politicos acting like they mean it, I want to see asses get kicked and names taken, I want the forces of good to overcome, I want redemption for my goddamn patience!

There’s so much I want to see in the wake of this Grand Shriek of the Batshit Crazies…but I’m not holding my breath….

2020 Hindsight: Yes, PLEASE! Having That Year in the Rearview Mirror Would Be a Massive Relief! ☹

Regarding this recently-paced, mere hours ago, year, immediately around July 1, 2020, I wrote the following: “I’m expecting the Love-Child of Godzilla and Cthulhu to show up at any moment now.”

Lately though, I’m just depressed and exhausted. The election of Uncle Joe relieved the depression, but only somewhat… But I do feel at least symbolically rejuvenated by the calendar clicking over to January 1, 2021.

Maybe the days will stop blurring into one another, maybe a center will hold, maybe we will get ourselves a new prescription for our third-eye-glasses…

“…[B]y just about any measure, 2020 was a clusterfuck inside a shit sandwich covered in stupid sauce.”

That pithy and succinct description of the 365 days from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020 (actually January 20, 2021—don’t be coy; you know what we’re talking about) comes to us from the fab political blogger Rude Pundit. He’s worth bookmarking!

Going forward…
No longer will “Twenty-Twenty,” or, if you prefer, “20/20,” ever again mean having perfect vision, or a long-running news program on ABC-TV. It will mean…

“I’m gonna get twenty-twenty on your ass!”

“Our relationship totes went twenty-twenty; she even took the dog!”

“Five-Oh is twenty-twenty twenty-four-seven!”

“Blowtorches and vice grips on the testicles? How deliciously twenty-twenty …”

NUKE ME SLOWLY—Stealth Science Fiction Films: If it’s a realistic depiction of the End of the World, it’s probably science fiction [PART THREE of THREE]

As we end this three-part series (Part One HERE; Part Two HERE), we also look at the end of the world. Kind of timely with the end of the year…and a plague sweeping the land…

If a movie has an atomic bomb explode, and mutants appear, everyone knows the film is science fiction. But if a film has generals and soldiers trying to stop an atomic war, whether they succeed or fail, if the film stays in the realm of the realistic, viewers hardly consider it SF. But it is! (Especially if a doomsday machine is somehow involved…)

The LENTIL SOUP RECIPE: Actually Lentil-Cabbage Soup, with Kielbasa on the Side (Although it could all really be about cabbage…)

My delicious lentil cabbage kielbasa soup!

During the Spanish Civil War, the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who were taken prisoner of war were fed only lentil beans. When many of them got home, they swore they would never touch lentil beans again. 

But we’re talking almost one hundred years ago, and some things have changed….

Fave Sci-Fi Mass-Market Paperback Covers

 

My love of mass-market paperbacks is strong, and they are my preferred delivery system for literature. I love the books' size, and their covers tend to trend on the lurid or psychedelic, especially with the New Wave Science Fiction I love so much. These books tend to be difficult to synopsize easily, and would often get themselves Yves Tanguy-style paintings. 

I thought I'd share some with you; they've been on my mind a lot, and I have been going to them for inspiration. 

Enjoy (continue past break)

Stealth Science Fiction Movies Two: Electric Boogaloo (Will That Joke Ever Get Old? Never!): SF Movies That People Don’t Think of Immediately as SF Movies Because There Aren’t Any Kilbots or Xenomorphs or Wormholes or… [PART TWO of THREE]

Ivan in the Infinity Room:
science fiction has taken over real life. 

This concept of mine was covered more in-depth last time, but in a nutshell, there is a notion in film appreciation that hasn’t been identified, or at least labeled and codified yet, what I call the
Stealth Science Fiction Film.

Some flicks, the minute you eyeball ’em, you know they’re sci-fi. Alien planets, or monsters, or intergalactic space federations. It’s obvious, whether the flick is high-brow (Arrival) or low-brow (Galaxy of Terror).

Others, not so much… It has to be pointed out that they are science fiction…. Last time, I noted how certain movies strongly avoided the SF label, as that was considered by the “cognoscenti” to be juvenile or indicative of base frivolity, and if you were making a serious dramatic film and wanted to be taken sincerely, letting your movie get called sci-fi might not actually help.

Last time we looked at these Stealth Sci-Fi Flicks:

—Earthquake (1974)
—Dr. No (1962)
—The President’s Analyst (1967)
—The China Syndrome (1979)
—Seconds (1966)

Today, it will be a much more eclectic group, dealing less with the technocratic status quo and its disruptions—and how those disruptions are dealt with by agents of/within those systems (as all of the last entry’s film dealt with to some extent),

This is what Consensus Reality
is all about...

and more with lonely outsiders and how they must deal with the pressures from The Normals and their damnable, vicious Consensus Reality….

Each of this entry’s films is a stand-out, and all are quite political in their own ways. They are all worth seeing if you still haven’t yet.

The movies on today’s list haven’t avoided the SF label so much, as, if anything, they have been mislabeled, or simply overlooked as to belonging to the genre.

In alphabetical order:

—Carrie (1976)
—The Man in the White Suit (1951)
—Punishment Park (1971)
—Repo Man (1984)

*[Yeah, yeah, yeah… SPOILERS, dude.]*

Stealth Science Fiction Movies: SF Movies That People Don’t Think of Immediately as SF Movies Because There Aren’t Aliens or Flying Saucers or Robots or…[PART ONE of THREE]

 

Covering:

—Earthquake (1974)

—Dr. No (1962)

—The President’s Analyst (1967)

—The China Syndrome (1979)

—Seconds (1966)

A concept in film critiquing that I have not noticed as being identified, or at least labeled and codified yet, is what I call the Stealth Science Fiction Film.

If it brings to mind the Stealth fighter and bomber planes of the USAF, good: Those aircraft can sneak up on you without you ever knowing it, and seem to derive more from science fiction than plain old aerodynamics.

These are the films that when they are, say, mentioned in a conversation, don’t immediately leap to mind as science fiction (or “sci-fi” or “SF”).

These Aren’t the Droids You Are Looking for: a review of “Raised by Wolves” (2020)

Raised by Wolves: Season One (2020; ten episodes; created by Aaron Guzikowski; co-executive producer and occasional director: Ridley Scott)

God, I hate these mystery-puzzle-box TV shows! Lost did it, The X-Files wound up doing it, far too many shows have done this!

And now, Raised by Wolves is doing it—after introducing itself as a freebie on YouTube, coming on like a filmed version of a New Wave science fiction book from the late-1960s/early-1970s, something that may have been written by a Robert Silverberg, Samuel Delaney, or Norman Spinrad, or perhaps by authors more on the “fringe,” like Arthur Byron Cover or Chester Anderson....
But it ends like “We Need to Talk About Kevin, Our Hideous Serpent-Leech Metaphor-Monster.”

Such a fucking mess…. (In fact, one commenter at the AV Club called the show “Lost… in space”—a witticism too good not to share!)

Kolchak’s Flying Saucer: In Praise of an Oft-Maligned Episode of "The Night Stalker"

“Kolchak is why I got into journalism,” –Peter L., journalist/writer/bon vivant

Back in the autumn of 1974, the American Broadcasting Company (then, as now, Channel 7 in NYC) did me a real solid. On Friday nights, ABC had scheduled The Six Million Dollar Man at 8pm; Kung Fu with David Carradine at 9pm; and then at 10pm, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It was nerd heaven!

Being allowed to stay up to see these shows was special—until 1975, my bedtime was 7:30pm! It would be summertime, I’d be lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and the sun would still be up, shining bright, and there would be kids screaming in the streets. (I discovered that counting sheep doesn’t work; I imagine a long corridor that is never-ending….) But these shows were on a Friday night, and they were “special:” Genre TV wasn’t as prevalent as it is now—it was quite catch as catch can. And the parental units, themselves of nerdish persuasion, understood. Besides, mom, it’s Friday, and there’s no school on Saturday!

At 10 p.m. EST, Friday, September 27, 1974, the now-considered-a-cult-classic TV show, the horror-themed Kolchak: The Night Stalker, premiered its third episode as an hour-long program: a UFO-centered show titled, “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…”  

The episode’s title was inspired by lines from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1928 story “The Dunwich Horror.” {read it HERE for free!} In it, Lovecraft writes, 
“The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.”

Other segments from the show are more frightening (like “The Horror in the Heights”—written by Hammer Horror vet Jimmy Sangster, probably the best of the series’ 20 episodes), and to many “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…”  is a mess.

But I find this episode a thought-provoking low-budget B-movie mélange of neo-noir (an honest reporter in a corrupt town dealing with a cover-up), Lovecraftian elements (the inexplicable cosmic horror of an invisible alien who sucks out our bone marrow—Ewww!), and UFO/conspiracy lore (aliens, contactees, secretive government agencies, “the Men in Black”).

(And if “mélange” is too highbrow for some, perhaps “mish-mash,” if we want to be egalitarian?)

The Grey That Hid in Plain Sight, or: My Alien Doll

Long story short: About a million years ago, I had a doll that looked like an Alien Grey (see pic above)—but was it really just a doll? Or something else, something more nefarious?

Knowing not to mess with a demonic (or at least potentially demonic) doll is just something all humans know a priori via our collective unconsciousness—that is, you don’t necessarily need to have experienced the trouble a demonic (or demon-possessed) doll can throw into your life—you are not just sussing it out, you are not just sensing it. You KNOW it. That spooky doll is staring at you, plunging you into the uncanny valley, and you KNOW it is bad news….

Comedy, As Black & Cold As Space (a look back at the novelization of “Dark Star” (1974))

 

Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster, adapted from a script by Dan O’Bannon & John Carpenter

First printing/Ballantine Books: October 1974 ($1.25)
Third printing/Del Rey-Ballantine: October 1978 ($1.75)

The intelligentsia have always sneered at mass-market paperback novelizations of popular Hollywood movies (and even more when those read-‘n’-toss books routinely ended up on the NY Times bestseller lists), and perhaps understandably so.

But the novelizations (or box-office tie-in/reprints)—

Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Alien, First Blood, The Black Hole, I Am Legend (The Omega Man), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Make Room! Make Room! (Soylent Green), Jaws (and its sequels), The Island, not to mention Planet of the Apes, the 1970s Battlestar: Galactica, or Star Trek tie-ins—

These (along with comic books) were what really got me interested in reading when I was a kid, so I don’t look down my nose at them. What? You think I found out about Heart of Darkness through one of my teachers? Ha! Apocalypse Now pointed me in the direction of Joseph Conrad (and back in the day, the book fair paperback Heart of Darkness had a sticker affixed to it proclaiming paternity of the film).

These movie/TV tie-ins helped me, and I recognize that—and I am absolutely certain, this sort of media cross-pollination can assist students—I have seen it happen in my own classrooms!

And, So…
(about five or six years before I ever got around to seeing the film itself—
and then it was a 16mm projection in a side-room at a Star Trek convention) probably the first movie novelization I read was Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation of Carpenter & O’Bannon’s cult classic, the black comedy Dark Star.