My older brother doesn’t like looking at his early comic strips because when he does, all he sees are flaws. One of his concerns when he gave me permission to put his newly-found “Calloway the Castaway” comic strips on my blog was that a few of the episodes had humor that might be considered sexist today. Even though I might not be thought of as the best person to judge, I think the sexism (if it’s actually there) is somewhat mild, especially compared to 1970s standards.
The sexism (if it’s actually there) is probably mild compared to today’s standards too, but I’m not sure what today’s standards are. Anyway, when this comic strip was published back in 1979, the weekly local newspaper received no backlash, at least none that we know about.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 10.
Back in 1979, the most popular video games in the arcades were Space Invaders, Asteroids, and some regular pinball machines that all looked alike to me. These games seem ancient when compared to what’s available today, but they’re still fun (and frustrating) whenever I find them in backroom arcades with the old, good stuff.
If the arcade game in the comic strip below looks archaic, that’s because video games looked like that in 1979 when my older brother’s comic strip came out in our local weekly newspaper. Those of you who were around back then, you probably remember some of those games.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway”: Episode 9.
Television ads for the movie version of The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid in the 1970s. Looking back on the ad now, it’s really cheesy, but keep in mind that back then there were only three television channels, with no cable/streaming, no internet, and no social media. Kids weren’t exposed to as much as they are now.
The tv ads were on in the afternoon when kids were watching syndicated cartoons after school. Even back then, advertisers were warping the minds of children.
CHEESY MOVIE TRAILER ALERT!!!!
At any rate, I never read the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey until this week when I saw an old copy at a used book store, and I decided to face my childhood fears. It’s tough to give a fair review of a book like this, though, because I automatically don’t have a favorable view of it.
In The Late Great Planet Earth, the author interpreted a lot of Biblical verses, including several from the book Revelation, and made a bunch of predictions based on his interpretations. When it comes to interpreting The Holy Bible, I’m not a Revelation kind of guy. Revelation causes a lot of arguing amongst people who probably don’t even know what they’re talking about, so I stay out of that stuff.
Instead, I’m a Sermon on the Mount guy. It’s short, and it’s clear in a lot of ways. Basically, I’d rather work on myself and not worry about judging others too much. If these ARE the end times, then I still need to behave properly during them, and I can’t control much (if anything) of what’s going on around me anyway.
Of course, the apocalyptic predictions in The Late Great Planet Earth didn’t come true (or haven’t come true yet). I could just make fun of all the predictions that haven’t come true, but I won’t because I don’t want to jinx anything. I’d feel really stupid if I made fun of The Late Great Planet Earth, and then the next day all of the author’s predictions came true, just 50+ years later.
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of arrogant (or paranoid) to think that you’re the generation that’s living through “the era of the Anti-Christ” (whatever that even means). Out of all the generations that have lived since the Christ walked the earth, and all the generations after us, WE’RE supposedly the THE generation that will see the… Ugh, I don’t even want to get into it.
I have to admit, though, this book is kind of entertaining, and I can see where Lindsey was coming from because a lot of people think/thought the 1960s and 1970s sucked from economic, social, and foreign policy points of view. A lot was going wrong in the United States when this book was selling millions of copies. Riots across the country. Politicians were getting assassinated. The Watergate scandal added more political instability. Saigon fell to the communists, making the Vietnam War a giant waste/failure. Both inflation and interest rates were high. At the end of the decade, President Jimmy Carter even said the country was in a “national malaise.” The 1970s was a great decade for a book like The Late Great Planet Earth.
I actually don’t mind a little fear mongering with my first cup of coffee. Times have always had the potential to go really bad, and times will always have the potential to go really bad. I’m just wary of people who try to make money off that fear, and this book (along with its low budget movie) seem to have been doing that.
Maybe right now is a great time for another book like The Late Great Planet Earth, but I’m not going to be the guy who writes it.
DYSFUNCTIONAL BOOK REVIEW:
I had fun reading The Late Great Planet Earth. And I’m not scared of it or the movie trailer anymore. I have faced my fears!
*****
Here are more more Dysfunctional Book Reviews:
Is This Self-Help Book Still Relevant? How To Win Friends And Influence People
A Time To Kill vs. To Kill A Mockingbird
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby
It by Stephen King and The Novel by James Michener: A Conversation
Literary Glance: The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen
*****
And here is my one novel!
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my older brother’s comic strip “Calloway the Castaway” came out in 1979, inflation was a major financial issue in the United States, maybe even more so than it is now. I’m not sure how I feel about inflation also being an issue on other planets. I guess some human problems are universal.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 8!
Middle-aged men seem to like my one novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. This makes sense since I’m a middle-aged (or slightly older) guy and the narrator is a middle-aged man looking back on an event from decades ago. That approach might not appeal as much to women who seem to read most romantic comedies as it does for a middle-aged man, but I understand that.
I know The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy has some appeal to middle-aged men because middle-aged men have finished reading the book and sometimes finish it kind of quickly. They’ve also been initiating conversations with me about it after they’ve read it.
Honestly, I was expecting to get no reaction from people who bought (or were given) my book. I figured most people were being polite and would just put the book someplace and let it disappear after a while.
Now that I’m sure that The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy has a target audience, I wonder how to get more middle-aged men to read the book. As much as I like my orange book cover, I can see that it might not have the greatest appeal to the average middle-aged (or slightly older) male reader.
I was thinking of maybe changing the cover illustration to a more Frank Frazetta-ish style.
Frank Frazetta was an illustrator known for his paintings of heroic fantasy images. Most of my favorite fantasy and sword & sorcery books that I bought in the 1970s and 1980s had Frank Frazetta covers. Sometimes I would knowingly buy a crappy book just because Frank Frazetta had done the cover. Most of the middle-aged (or slightly older) men who’ve read The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy know who Frank Frazetta was… but I don’t think it’s necessary information for you to know in order to enjoy reading The Sunset Rises.
Frank Frazetta died about 15 years ago, so I can’t hire him to illustrate a new version of my book cover. Even if he were still alive, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford his services. I’m doing okay financially (for now), but I’m not sure I’m doing that okay.
Even though a Frank Frazetta type cover might attract a subgroup of middle-aged men (and maybe even some young men), it would probably turn off a bunch of potential female readers. I’m not 100% sure of that, but I’m pretty close to sure. A few women have read The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy, and the response has been more mixed (a combination of no reactions, positive reactions, and a couple accusations of my being misogynistic). Since middle-aged men have been more consistent, I’m confident they could be my target audience.
Just so middle-aged male readers know, there are no explicitly sexual scenes in The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. I’m sorry if that disappoints any potential readers. There is one ‘turn off the lights’ scene that almost gets explicit, and there are a bunch of sexual references and innuendoes, but I’ve seen worse (‘worse’ might not be the right word, but you know what I mean) in mainstream romance novels. And don’t get me started about what I’ve seen in ‘romanticies.’
I probably should have figured out my target audience before I published my book, but I do things out of order sometimes. The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is probably the only novel that I’m going to write, so I have the rest of my life to market/sell it. It’s not like I’m moving on to another novel that I’m selling in six months. This is a one-of-a-kind book, so I can take my time.
By the way, I’m probably not going to change my book cover.
Hey middle-aged (or slightly older) men, you might like my one book, The Sunset Rises, A 1990s Romantic Comedy!
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy! My handwriting is actually legible! Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
Wednesday afternoons in 1979 were great because that was when the local convenience store would get its weekly supply of new comic books (this was before comic book stores were a thing). For a brief time in 1979, my older brother’s comic strip Calloway the Castaway also appeared in the local newspaper which also came out on Wednesdays. Even though I hated 8th grade, I always looked forward to Wednesday afternoons.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 7!
As an introvert, talking to other people is exhausting for me, but it doesn’t help that most people think I’m boring. People aren’t usually bold enough to tell me to my face (only a couple individuals have ever done that), but I can tell. My voice is monotone. I can belabor a topic. When I start talking, people around me start yawning (or try to suppress the yawn).
Since I’m aware that I’m boring, I have consciously figured out ways to NOT put people to sleep. That’s an advantage I have over other boring people. A lot of boring people aren’t even aware of their dull nature. I’m not the most scintillating conversationalist, but I at least pick up on the non-verbal signals of those around me. I notice the yawns and see the glances at watches and cell phones. And I take those cues as unintended insults. So when I have to make small talk, I have four techniques that I use to try to hide the fact that I’m boring.
ASK QUESTIONS
People love talking about themselves. Whenever I see an acquaintance nodding off during a conversation, I ask a question. A question, even a stupid one, keeps people’s attention. “How are you today?” is a boring question, so I replace it with something topical like, “Did the traffic suck today, or what?” I also ask “What do you think about ____________ ?” questions. For example, I might ask:
“What do you think about that rigged NFL game last night?”
“What do you think about that new James Patterson book with the one-page chapters?”
“What do you think about that modern remake of Welcome Back, Kotter?”
That’s the good thing about questions. Once I ask a good question, I usually don’t have to say anything else. Nobody knows I’m boring.
Asking questions also makes people think that I’m interested in them. I’m not, but it helps if they think I am. People are more tolerant of a boring guy if they think the boring guy is interested in them.
KEEP IT SHORT
People have short attention spans, and it gets worse when you’re a naturally boring person.
When I start to lose somebody’s attention (and I’ve already asked my good question), I just say something like, “I’ve got to get something to drink,” and move on. That way I don’t have the chance to be boring.
Supposedly P.T. Barnum said, “Always leave them wanting more.”
P.T. Barnum wasn’t a boring guy. For me, it’s, “Leave them before they get bored.”
TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL
In school, I was a borderline social outcast until I learned to start talking about football. Once I did, I became accepted by jocks, wannabe jocks, and nerds too. Well, I was always accepted by nerds because I was one, but that’s not the point. Even though I still wasn’t invited to the cool parties, I could show up without getting kicked out… as long as I talked about football (and NOT about comic books or role playing games).
If sports aren’t your thing, you can substitute movies, television shows, or even… politics… if you want to throw a stink bomb into your social situation. But don’t talk about books. Most people think books are boring.
TELL STORIES
Even people who are bored by tedious details will listen to stories. The great orators use narratives as metaphors for the points they’re trying to make. The stories are almost always lies, but the audience usually falls for them. Before I got married and had kids, I used to tell outrageous stories about my personal life, and I was stunned by how many people actually believed my stories were true. I guess it’s tough to tell when a guy with a monotone voice is lying.
So basically, if you tell really short stories about relationships and ask a question every once in a while, then you probably won’t be boring. When I got married, I stopped telling outrageous stories about my personal life, but now that I’m on my own again, I might have go back to them.
Speaking of outrageous stories, here’s my latest.
*****
Every once in a while, I check to see if I’m still a boring guy. I deviate from my own rules and just start talking about what I want to talk about. Sure enough, within seconds people around me start yawning. I just have to accept that I’m a boring guy when I talk. The best that I can do is follow my four tips and hope that nobody realizes I’m a boring guy. I guess it’s okay to be boring as long as nobody else knows about it.
*****
Here are more Introvert’s Guides!
The Introvert’s Guide To Protesting
The Introvert’s Guide To Talking Politics
The Introvert’s Guide To Reading During The Holidays
The Introvert’s Guide To Dating
The Introvert’s Guide to Partying
The Introvert’s Guide To Saying No
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
My older brother was probably the biggest influence on me during my childhood in the 1970s. He collected comic books, so I started collecting comic books. He read science fiction and fantasy, so I started reading the same genres. He liked drawing, so I started drawing.
When my brother became fascinated with the four-panel comic strip, however, I just kept on drawing other stuff like superhero poses and miniature comic books. I liked four-panel comic strips. I read them every day in the newspaper, and I bought the occasional Peanuts paperback or B.C collection. But I never tried drawing four-panel comic strips.
When he was 20, my brother drew a comic strip for our local weekly newspaper. Even though I thought it was cool, I never tried to do my own comic strip. Coming up with a four-panel joke/story was too complicated for me. But that’s for another blog post.
Come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 6.
For more “Calloway the Castaway,” go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
I don’t condone Artificial fiction, but if I did (and I don’t), I’d like to see what A.I. could do with the works of 1930s pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard.
Robert E. Howard was hitting his stride (in my opinion) as a writer when he died in 1936 at the age of 30 (and I’ll leave it at that). Reading his stories can be frustrating because readers can see flaws in his writing but a lot of potential, and we wonder what he would have accomplished if he had lived ten or twenty or thirty (you get the idea) years longer.
Robert E. Howard’s most famous character is Conan the barbarian (or Conan the Cimmerian), and over the last several decades, many authors who are not Robert E. Howard have tried writing their own Conan stories. Some of these stories aren’t necessarily bad, but any Conan story that isn’t written by Robert E. Howard is just about some other barbarian who happens to also be named Conan. Even the Conan in comic books isn’t quite the same as Robert E. Howard Conan.
Robert E. Howard wrote some decent adventure stories and horror stories and boxing stories and even some westerns. My favorites, though, are his sword & sorcery stories. Very few authors can get the right combination of adventure, battle, horror, and magic/sorcery (and sometimes sexuality) necessary in a good sword & sorcery story (I think Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories come the closest).
I’m not saying A.I. would do a good job with Robert E. Howard. I’m betting the A.I stories would be a mess. To be fair, many of Robert E. Howard’s stories were messy, written more like rough drafts than final copies, but they were still definitely Robert E. Howard, and the stories were still entertaining.
I’m not sure there’s any other story quite like “Red Nails.” The same goes for other Robert E. Howard Conan stories like “Beyond the Black River” or maybe even “The People of the Black Circle.” Even some of his non-Conan stories are unique (as far as I know). I don’t think there’s anything else quite like “Kings of the Night” or “Worms of the Earth.” I’d be interested to see what A. I. could come up with if it spun together a new Conan story or even a new mash up of all of Robert E. Howard’s genres.
Of course, it would be a mess. But I’d still like to read it.
As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not a fan of Artificial Intelligence being used in fiction. I don’t want A. I. to steal from current authors because they (and their corporate publishers) should benefit from the authors’ hard work. But dead authors whose copyrights have expired or whose rights are owned by corporations that had nothing to do with the original work? Let’s see what happens! It could be kind of fun.
For more about Robert E. Howard and/or sword & sorcery see…
The Famous Author Who Thought His Stories Were Junk
Robert E. Howard’s Letter to Two Nerds in the 1930s
What was the deal with…? Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner
****
Was my novel A. I. generated, or did I write it myself? There’s only one way for you to figure that out.
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my older brother found the original artwork from his 1979 comic strip “Calloway the Castaway,” a few of the originals were missing. Fortunately, my brother had clipped out his comic strips from the local weekly newspaper back then and made a mini-scrapbook of them, which he also boxed with the originals. Without this scrapbook, we would be missing key episodes in his short comic strip run.
This explains the yellowish color of the next couple episodes.
For more “Calloway the Castaway,” go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 5!
Dysfunctional Literacy 