wrathofkublakhan

Oh man ... thank you for that! It's been years since I've seen that clip - it's the best one with those insane leaping splits!

Cowboy books, pardner. Yep, straight into the sunset and who was that masked man. Happy trails!

Indeed! Add the Nicholas Brothers and we've got a show!

I've read buckets of fantasy and while I'm not much of a dragons and unicorns kinda guy, on occasion I've enjoyed them (The Pern books and the Nine Princes of Amber come to mind). I like the fantasy era when people still used staves, bows and arrows, swords and rode mountain ponies that seemed to have a mind of their own. Where you could visit a chandlery to buy water proof saddle bags, candles and some wax covered cheese. Where a woman might disguise herself as a man when traveling, where one spins yarns around the campfire and the guy sitting next to you might be 400 years old. Where legends still walk the land, finding a hint at destiny and a Greater Power ... a plan, dammit. Let me escape from my Honda Civic with my "all news all the time" radio stations. Let me forget, for just a moment, that rent is due. Deliver me from dirty dishes, grading papers, watching theater and HBO -- oh, to just get away.

Three out of four are Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. Might as well toss in Phantom and JCSS as well. I would love to see Wicked! I own the soundtrack and have even read the book even though it was very very different. So if you care to find me Look to the western sky! As someone told me lately: "Ev'ryone deserves the chance to fly!"

Oh my ... tell us more about your writing! and .................welcome to the forum.

Welcome, awriter ... indeed, this IS a very good place to be. Three books! Goodness gracious - what is the genre in which you write? Peace!

Two books bundled: Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat Author: David Markson First Published: 1959 New Publishing: 2007 Publisher: Shoemaker and Hoard (Avalon) Billed as The Harry Fannin Detective Novels, this is a love letter to the "hard boiled detective-noir" genre. The back cover claims that this author wrote these before becoming a serious novelist to pay the rent. I don't know if I'm offended by this, but the only book on his list that I've heard of is Vanishing Point. The two books take place in Greenwich Village in the 1950's. New York City during the beatnik generation; Harlem, jazz, poets, heroin, pot, hustlers, homosexuals, writers ... and obviously: tramps and dead beats. Our hero is a PI with a Magnum, a love for whiskey, an ex-football player and a love for Thomas Hobbs, Thelonious Monk and obscure authors. It's a comfortable genre with the same trappings of Sam Spade -- tough molls, rough cops, punk kids and a ton of similes. "She folded like a cheap deck chair" or "he discarded his tissue like Billy Graham giving up on Las Vegas." This is the true treat of these two books, this author lovingly wraps his words around the simile using literary, music, sports and pop culture references! It is simply gorgeous to read. My take is that he is having a ball writing these books and filling them with wit, humor and just plain fun. Be warned - it was written in 1959, there are a ton of cultural references you may or may not understand. It is rife with wit and humor. Here is a brief sample that I personally enjoyed, they were chasing a punk and shot him - the punk falls through the window of an antique store: I got over there. It was an antique store and there was a lot of junk on display. Furniture mostly. A couple of tall stiff-backed old chairs which looked almost as good as new because nobody for a dozen generations had been quite tired enough to sit on them. Two or three nervous-looking little tables on legs carved so delicately they would probably collapse under the weight of an empty shot glass. A set of yellowing bone china which Pocahontas had gotten as a shower gift from the girls at the wigwam. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's favorite bronze candlesticks, the ones he wrote Hiawatha by the glow of. And another, this is a musician speaking: Man, how can I blow this tune if you keep standing on the score? Like sure, I saw Leeds again. But, man, I ain't come to that part yet. Chapter three, book sixty-four, verse nineteen, brought to you by Welch's Grape Juice. You know? Like I say, first she blasts off in the MG bomb. I'm maybe five pads up the block, and I'm debating. If Leedsie flubbed the dub with the chick, maybe we can dig that Mills record one more time. I'm still giving the matter considerable ratiocination when he bounces out the front door like some cat set fire to the joint and who's got the gauze, you know? He's got his Dodge across the road and zoom, he's off like a tall bird. And I am alone in the still night. I recommend these books if you love the written word and it's craft, if a decent well-paced Tough Guy detective novel appeals to you and if you enjoy a light romp through Greenwich Village and it's Hep Cats. Expect loose dames, plenty of booze, some beatings, pop culture references, literary and historical references, a fast pace and some laugh-out-loud moments. There is no swearing, no graphic sex and no dull moments. "She couldn't say no, not even to murder"

(Kell is so awesome) Brrrr ... horror! I was buying Anita Blake books, one after the other, in the Sci-Fi section of my book store. The books were dealing with vampires, werewolves and; as a vamp-bounty hunter, Anita dealt with a lot of gore. Let me re-phrase: a LOT of gore! Walls splattered with blood, bath tubs full of dead torn up bodies, she's trying not oh-so-hard to puke on a crime scene. One day I went to a different book store and I was shocked to find them in the Horror section! Me? Reading horror? Unbelievable! As a broad generalization, I believe that what you put into your mind will manifest itself in some way in your life. I don't really want creepy dark evil thoughts running through my head or, even worse, super-imposing that type of thinking upon someone else, making me more and more paranoid - sitting in my apartment listening to the empty hallway. I'm not sure what horror is to be honest. Anne Rice and her Lestat? I read all of those. Dean Koontz and his Frankenstein? I've read the first two. Constantine (the movie with Keanu) was pretty good. Color me naive, I guess I don't want the hero of my story to be evil. If we are fighting the baddies who slink about the corners and skulk down the shadows - I'm all for it.

Hello Karen, Whatcha reading right now? ....and welcome to the forum.

I've never read Don Quixote but I know the musical, Man of La Mancha is a story within a story -- it takes place in a prison and the story within takes place outdoors and a-tilting at windmills and the lovely Dulcinea. Also, I may be askew, but I think some of The Bard's plays are "story within a story", I seem to remember Taming of the Shrew opening with this drunk guy who falls asleep and dreams the entire play, then at the end wakes up and decides to go home and tame his wife, which we all know -- he's not got a chance! AND .. while we are on the subject, consider the following.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_within_a_story

I agree with Kell, in that the genre isn't nor can be easily defined - which is why I used such a wide net of examples. I don't think we can simply say "a problem with fantasy" at all. From this viewpoint, I think Andy is really saying "super-natural", a sub-set perhaps of fantasy. Books like Frankenstein, Tarzan, Dracula and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir are rejected by Andy. This makes much more sense to me - I get queasy trying to crack a unicorn book. In the theater we use a term called "willful suspension of disbelief." It requires the audience to take the first step, otherwise the experience can not happen: no matter how brilliant the production. The same can be said for any foray into the fantasy ilk, the onus is upon the reader to eagerly turn that first page.

Well, I'm glad I don't have to defend my love of fantasy -- I see on the top ten all time box office for movies that nine out of the top ten have fantasy elements -- Star Wars, Shrek 2, ET, Star Wars 1, Pirates, Spider-man, Star Wars 3, LOTR and Spider-man 2. The number one all time is Titanic. Lot's of great movies have fantasy elements that we don't think of as unicorns and dragons, the movie with Tom Hanks, Big is a fine example. Which part of fantasy annoys you? Could it be time-travel in the Time Travelers Wife? Or the practically perfect Mary Poppins? Maybe it's just that damn feather in Forrest Gump. For me, the appeal is the same in fantasy that I might find in a Sherlock Holmes book - an exceptional individual in interesting circumstances. Certainly not my world - it is an escape from my dreary grounded existence. Maybe I am too old now to think, "what if I were special", what would it be like to have a destiny, a dream, a wish .... a hope. I like the idea of "true love" in the Princess Bride. I like the futuristic ideas and the allegory in The Matrix. I like the fun ideas of secret societies in the Da Vinci Code. I like the idea of the "superman" in Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. I like Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, haunting stuff. Brave New World, 1984, Midsummer's Nights Dream, Siddhartha, Gulliver's Travels, Oedipus Rex -- the list goes on and on -- fantasy, each and every one. The needle of fantasy threads it's way through plenty of great literature, coloring the pattern woven by a skillful craftsman; it brings comfort in a cold and cheerless world.

Very cool SBW! The last show I paid to attend was Betontanc: Wrestling Dostoevsky their blurb is :

Brilliant indeed. Easily my favorite of all the Bard's plays. Second place goes to Taming of the Shrew because I just laugh and laugh.

I think some things just have to be cut out of a story when made into film. Movie scripts are typically fairly small; when a director has to be faithful to the book it can become cumbersome. The LOTR movies clocked in at three hours plus - I can't imagine the pressure from fans for that movie. The movie Dune was faithful to the book and dreary beyond belief. The Sword in the Stone (Disney flick) had most of the first 1/3 of the book Once and Future King even though it was an animated story - but still, as ever with Disney, a LOT of stuff was added that was fairly annoying: Merlin time-traveling to Miami for example. What sucks for me is when I've read a book and am now watching a movie anticipating a favorite section - and it's not there!

Ditto for me. Even though I don't lug my Bible around much anymore, mine has a extra wide margin just for notes. Some chapters have been so well used that the constant use has made the pages almost transparent (Ephesians). The front and back empty pages are full of notes, lists and even a bit of poetry picked up over time. Even some trivia, for example II Kings 19 and Isaiah 37 are word for word identical or Ezra 7:21 uses all the letters of the alphabet except "j".

1. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville 2. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 4. Othello by The Bard 5. Silas Marner by George Eliot I too read ahead - reading and stopping at each chapter makes the act of reading dreary and laborious. Making this list is kinda fun because I had no idea my teachers were working us through the classics at the time. On my own reading list seemed to be a ton of "cautionary tales" that flooded the market in my youth warning us of the evils of drug use, drinking and sex. For example, Go Ask Alice was super popular. Pure propaganda.

Okay, I'll play this game.... 1. I love coding HTML by hand, it's <b>calming</b> when I work on pages. 2. I take a secret pride in the famous people I've met. 3. I sincerely believe that I make those around me better people via respectful expectations. 4. I'd like to fall in love again sometime, I'm such a romantic. 5. I'm inspired by this list - I really want to tie a cherry stem with my tongue and/or stuff my foot in my mouth, I'm sure I'd be a hit at parties.

It takes two, baby! One in my home, my main read. One in my car, usually an easy read like a murder mystery.

One of my favorite things is .... descriptions of food! I like a story that makes me hungry or want to go find a certain food. Some authors are great at wrapping bits of the tale around a meal. The current book I'm reading, X-Rated Bloodsuckers by Mario Acevedo (it's about vampires) has kinda gross descriptions - mostly about casually adding blood to everyday food. Ew. Goat's blood on nachos ... ack, I won't be eating nachos for a month! "Coffee, Type O, no cream, one sugar" .... ew, ew, ew! Rats in a blender for fajitas! Good God, is this author grossing me out for fun? Argh!

Indeed I do! That's a great story, thank you for sharing! Of course, now I get to share it with all my theater friends..... we love a good gossip.

That's an interesting idea. I'd wager Modern Classic is much better than an Instant Classic, which might explain my relationship with my Used Car Salesman. If I understand, a Modern Classic might be a popular book from the current era that had an impact on our literary culture. I think the following might be examples -- tell me if I'm on the wrong track. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice spawned an entire 'modern' genre of vampire horror/romance/magic books. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach opened the door for the New Age Novel living on it's own section in the bookstore. Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von D

Well said, PDR!!

Tash is my new best friend. Cayenne rawks my world.