Author: DOuG pRATt

Monte Schulz moves into ‘The Big Town’

After the craziness of the Iowa straw poll, where the ostensible winner lost and the GOP front runner didn’t participate, KRUU-FM in Fairfield, IA does something more reasonable and interviews novelist Monte Schulz.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Aug/monteschulz.mp3|titles=Monte Schulz interviewed on KRUU]

According to Amazon, Monte’s next book, The Big Town, will be out in February. Nice cover!

I’m comfortable having a couple of non-fiction books going at the same time, but novels I prefer to read all the way through to avoid spoiling the mood, and I’m starting Monte’s current novel, The Last Rose of Summer. Monte has a knack for defining distinctive characters, and in the first book of his 1920’s Americana series, This Side of Jordan, Chester is as chilling a cold-blooded killer as any villain you’d never want to meet. The funniest moment in the story for me is Monte’s nod to his father that I wrote about at this link.

Eating you out of House and home

Long before Hugh Laurie’s Gregory House, there was House, a bizarre 1977 Japanese movie about a haunted house that eats unmarried girls. House adheres to the Japanese Pop culture obsession with schoolgirls, and it’s essentially a ghost story, but with an amazingly varied, unrelenting series of creatively twisted, comic-horror images.

Because the movie is so utterly strange, it’s no surprise that on Amazon the customer reviews are all over the place. Watch the trailer and you’ll know whether or not you want to see the whole thing.

Garage garbage

Spent most of the day with Eric, cleaning out the garage. It should have been a Spring job, but it’s done. We took everything out, including from the always interesting loft (looks like a mouse and/or a squirrel was up there), gave the place a thorough sweeping and shop-vac, threw out a lot of stuff, and got everything back in, nice and neat.

In the loft I found the kiddie-sized resin chair Eric used when he was little. He sat in it for a moment as a joke and said we could throw it out, but I said keep it, in case a family with small children wants it. A few minutes later, a new family in the neighborhood with two small children walked by, and I offered the chair to them. They were happy to take it, and the father put in it the wagon he was pulling. It was one of those moments, that Eric doesn’t always appreciate, when I was able to say, “See? I told you.”

Back inside, I’m playing with the Squeezebox Touch I got for half price on a special deal from Logitech. The software still needs a few fixes, but that’s always the way with Logitech, and I have no buyer remorse with this purchase.

Happy birthday, Elvis?

August 16, 1977. Elvis Presley is born?

http://youtu.be/i57OqxAJlK8

At this link is Michele Bachmann’s other misstatement, about the battles of Lexington and Concord being in New Hampshire. Both of these examples can be brushed off as inconsequential, but in my experience people who are chronically careless about details are usually also weak on the fundamentals. In Bachmann’s case there’s the further issue that her positions on issues are filtered through her religious views. For example, the acceptance of evolution isn’t as controversial between scientists as Bachmann claimed here.

It’s valid to debate whether or not it was right to drop atomic bombs on Japan, but it’s not valid to argue whether or not nuclear fission works. By way of analogy, Bachmann and many in the Tea Party would have us think that nuclear fission isn’t a certainty.

But none of this matters, because I bet Bachmann won’t be nominated, let alone win the White House. Remember what happened to Ted Haggard? I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens to Marcus Bachmann. At some point an old rendezvous buddy will show up and Bachmann won’t have plausible deniability. Being gay isn’t the issue. It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.

P.S. I forgot Michele’s other celebrity gaffe — the one about John Wayne.