It’s Bigger Than NPR’s Katherine Maher
6 days ago
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Furman Bisher, RIP
A sportswriting lengend, Furman Bisher was the voice of Atlanta sports for decades. THose of us who grew up reading him were lucky indeed.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
AJC gets new publisher
UGA grad Glennon to take over. Maybe she will ditch that hideous redesign and hire back some of the good reporters they ran off. And maybe she'll expand coverage of the whole state and enlarge the distribution area. And maybe purple monkeys will fly out of my ass.
Book review
I've had "Masters of Horror" lying around the house for years and finally picked it up to read the other day.
It was a good decision.
The book is a collection of nine short stories, including short works by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and Ray Bradbury. There's not a bad tale in the lot and I judged four of them to be exceptional.
My favorites were "The Were-Wolf" by Clemence Housman, "The Women in the Wood" by A Merritt, "Blind Man's Buff" by H.R. Wakefield and "The Candy Skull" by Bradbury.
Book editor Alden Norton declares "The Were-Wolf" to be the best lycanthrope story of all time and I would certainly put it at the top of a rather small list. "The Candy Skull" is one of Bradbury's stories set in Mexico. a favorite locale for the great author. "Blind Man's Buff" is a nifty ghost story with a lot of tension jammed into five pages. "The Women in the Wood" is an odd fantasy piece with a brutal touch.
"Dracula" author Stoker is represented by the short "Dracula's Guest" which was originally the first chapter of the great novel. It was edited from that book and Stoker salvaged it as a short story.
I see "Masters of Horror" at a lot of used book stores but I am sure it can be had cheaply on-line as well.
It was a good decision.
The book is a collection of nine short stories, including short works by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and Ray Bradbury. There's not a bad tale in the lot and I judged four of them to be exceptional.
My favorites were "The Were-Wolf" by Clemence Housman, "The Women in the Wood" by A Merritt, "Blind Man's Buff" by H.R. Wakefield and "The Candy Skull" by Bradbury.
Book editor Alden Norton declares "The Were-Wolf" to be the best lycanthrope story of all time and I would certainly put it at the top of a rather small list. "The Candy Skull" is one of Bradbury's stories set in Mexico. a favorite locale for the great author. "Blind Man's Buff" is a nifty ghost story with a lot of tension jammed into five pages. "The Women in the Wood" is an odd fantasy piece with a brutal touch.
"Dracula" author Stoker is represented by the short "Dracula's Guest" which was originally the first chapter of the great novel. It was edited from that book and Stoker salvaged it as a short story.
I see "Masters of Horror" at a lot of used book stores but I am sure it can be had cheaply on-line as well.
At the movies
"The Battle of the River Plate" was helmed by the great director Michael Powell but is far from great film. It is a mildly entertaining and fairly accurate retelling of the destruction of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
The fast, powerful German battleship was stationed in the South Atlantic just before the Germans went to war with Britain and France. Within days of the war's beginning it had racked up nine kills of lightly armed merchant vessels.
The British moved quickly to counterattack which they did with three small cruisers, the Exeter, Achilles and Ajax. Although outgunned by the Graf Spee, the trio of British ships attacked and inflicted heavy damage on the German battleship.
However, the British vessels were even more ravaged.
After the battle, the Graf Spee put in to the port of Montevideo, Uruguay, a neutral country but one that favored the British.
British naval intelligence did a superb job of planting false information about a large fleet assembling off the coast to await the Graf Spee, which was forced by international law to move out of the safe harbor in a short time.
Convinced the Brits had been heavily reinforced and unwilling to see his crew slaughtered, the German commander had his ship scuttled.
Today, parts of it can still be seen in its watery grave off the coast of Uruguay.
The movie gets the main facts right but doesn't go much beyond that level. The performances are solid but no one really stands out. Peter Finch is properly grim but little else, as Capt. Langsdorf, the German commander.
That is a very young, very skinny Christopher Lee as a bar owner in Montevideo and yes he looks just like a young Nic Cage.
The battle scenes are particularly disappointing, cheap and repetitive.
A nice bit of detail is the presentation of the carnival-like atmosphere many local people took during the standoff. A crowd of 20,000 looked on as the Graf Spee was destroyed by its own captain and crew.
Also known as "Pursuit of the Graf Spee," this is a watchable but disappointing movie.
It's available at Netflix.
The fast, powerful German battleship was stationed in the South Atlantic just before the Germans went to war with Britain and France. Within days of the war's beginning it had racked up nine kills of lightly armed merchant vessels.
The British moved quickly to counterattack which they did with three small cruisers, the Exeter, Achilles and Ajax. Although outgunned by the Graf Spee, the trio of British ships attacked and inflicted heavy damage on the German battleship.
However, the British vessels were even more ravaged.
After the battle, the Graf Spee put in to the port of Montevideo, Uruguay, a neutral country but one that favored the British.
British naval intelligence did a superb job of planting false information about a large fleet assembling off the coast to await the Graf Spee, which was forced by international law to move out of the safe harbor in a short time.
Convinced the Brits had been heavily reinforced and unwilling to see his crew slaughtered, the German commander had his ship scuttled.
Today, parts of it can still be seen in its watery grave off the coast of Uruguay.
The movie gets the main facts right but doesn't go much beyond that level. The performances are solid but no one really stands out. Peter Finch is properly grim but little else, as Capt. Langsdorf, the German commander.
That is a very young, very skinny Christopher Lee as a bar owner in Montevideo and yes he looks just like a young Nic Cage.
The battle scenes are particularly disappointing, cheap and repetitive.
A nice bit of detail is the presentation of the carnival-like atmosphere many local people took during the standoff. A crowd of 20,000 looked on as the Graf Spee was destroyed by its own captain and crew.
Also known as "Pursuit of the Graf Spee," this is a watchable but disappointing movie.
It's available at Netflix.
Monday, March 5, 2012
News bidness
Digital advertising doesn't cover lost print revenue.
My experience with this is ad staffs I have worked with, particularly Dalton, had little interest in selling digital and very little training. Online advertising is a different beast, but the management at CNHI wanted to sell it the only way they knew how and it has failed miserably.
My experience with this is ad staffs I have worked with, particularly Dalton, had little interest in selling digital and very little training. Online advertising is a different beast, but the management at CNHI wanted to sell it the only way they knew how and it has failed miserably.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Davy Jones, RIP
60's icon passes away in Florida. I loved that old TV show and some of the band's songs still sound terrific. Monkees haters are usually a sad lot and I've already started hearing the jokes about Jones. Too bad. For a lot of us he was a very fun figure.
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