Playboy November 1977

Playboy

November 1977 

November, 1977. I remember that Fall being unusually wet and soggy, with rain seemingly every weekend. On the radio, Firefall had a hit with 'Just Remember I Love You,' while England Dan and John Ford Coley had lots of airplay for their single 'Gone Too Far.' Two classics of 'mellow' 70s gold !!!!!!!!!

 

Taking a look at the November issue of Playboy, the somber state of the weather is matched in the men's fashion advertisements, where Earth Tones and muted plaids were very much the 'in' look. 

Contributors to this issue include Ted Koppel and Marvin Kalb. Koppel, still three years away from hosting Nightline, but rocking a major toupee, teamed up with Kalb to compose a suspense novel, 'In the National Interest,' published that same month. An excerpt appears in this Playboy, with a nice illustration by Kunio Hagio.

In 1977 Jimmy Carter, in his first year as President, was burdened (if that's the right word) by his brother Billy Carter (1937 - 1988). Author Roy Blount, Jr. traveled to Plains, Georgia, to hang out with and report on Billy. Blount's portrait of Billy is reasonably kind, although one suspects that Billy - who was quite shrewd in how he presented himself in public - was carefully calibrated when under Blount's scrutiny. 

 

The article does much to present the South as it was in the mid-70s, at a time when Smokey and the Bandit and the Sun Belt and Southern Rock were implanting Georgia into the nation's pop culture.

Playboy features a section of color comics, some of these originating from underground comix artists. Indeed, the 'Grapevine' section highlights Gilbert Shelton of 'The Furry Freak Brothers.'

 

 

 

 

One of the more devious personalities of the 1970s was author Clifford Irving (1930 - 2017), who claimed to have interviewed reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, publishing 'The Autobiography of Howard Hughes' in 1971. The book soon was revealed to be a hoax and Irving served 17 months in jail in 1972 - 1973 for conspiracy. His account of his stay in prison should be read with some degree of skepticism.....

 

Arguably more appealing than Billy Carter, is the 'Bunnies of '77' portfolio.........

 

 

 

 

 

 

No implants, no BBLs, just 'natural beauty,' with those Bunnies of '77..............

Book Review: The End of the Line edited by Jonathan Oliver

Book Review: 'The End of the Line' edited by Jonathan Oliver

 

3 / 5 Stars

 

I don't usually review sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books published after the early 1990s, mainly because there are websites and blogs that do this and do it well.

 

However, several years ago, after claiming I violated their 'community standards,' amazon removed 13 years worth of my reviews. So I figured I might relocate some of those eliminated reviews here at the Por Por Books Blog, rather letting them dissolve into the nothingness of the Aether.......... 

Nowadays I find that most Americans aren't very familiar with the artist George Tooker (1920 - 2011), but back in the post World War Two era he was one of the most prominent artists in the USA. 

 

Perhaps the most famous of his works was The Subway (1950), which shows commuters gripped by existential dread while negotiating the dehumanizing corridors of a subway system: 

The Subway by George Tooker (1950)

Likely taking inspiration from Tooker's sensibility, ‘The End of the Line’ (Solaris, 2010, 358 pp., cover by Luke Preece) features 19 stories all centered on the theme of modern underground transportation as the setting for supernatural encounters. All stories originally were written for this anthology, and, as most of the contributors are from the UK, there is an emphasis on the subway and rail systems of that country.

My thoughts on the entries:

The best story in the collection is Nicholas Royle’s ‘The Lure’ which is not a horror story per se, but rather, a Hitchcockian tale about a young British man who, during a year abroad in Paris, encounters a mysterious and alluring older woman. The story is carefully crafted to deliver a subtle, but powerful, ending. 

Also earning high marks is Simon Bestwick’s ‘The Sons of the City’, a clever updating of the 1973 film Death Line (aka Raw Meat). Al Ewing’s ‘The Roses that Bloom Underground’ is a neat effort at placing a Lovecraftian netherworld within the confines of the subway system.

‘In the Colosseum’, by Stephen Volk, brings graphic sex and violence to a tale of the London CCTV system and decadent voyeurs. It’s splatterpunk stylings give it genuinely disturbing character, that is otherwise absent among the other entries in ‘End of the Line.’

More restrained, but also effective, are James Lovegrove’s ‘Siding 13,’ about the physical horrors of a too-packed subway car, and Mark Morris’s ‘Fallen Boys,' which eschews the subway system altogether and instead places its action within a creepy old mining tunnel. 

Paul Meloy’s ‘Bullroarer’ brings satirical humor  to the story of a downtrodden subway rider who gets a unique chance to rebuff his tormentors.

Natasha Rhodes also injects sardonic humor into ‘Crazy Train’, about an LA rocker who finds himself traveling the city’s subway system in the company of a spooky Goth Chick.

 

Otherwise, the bulk of the stories in ‘End’ settle for Tooker-esque themes in which riders find themselves transported to unsettling stations or stops that lie outside the boundaries of the ‘real’ Underground. There is a emphasis on alienation and unease, rather than frank horror. These entries by John Probert, Rebecca Levine, Jasper Bark, Conrad Williams, Pat Cadigan, Adam Nevill, Michael Marshall Smith, and Christopher Fowler all are competently written, but not particularly memorable. 

Inevitably, Ramsey Campbell makes an appearance; here, it’s ‘The Rounds’, about a man who believes he is witnessing suspicious behavior in the Underground. While Campbell has in some respects curtailed the florid nature of his prose style, his story’s oblique ending gives it a flaccid character, and suffers in comparison to the more assured denouements provided by his fellow authors. 

Another contribution, Joel Lane’s ‘All Dead Years’, tries to emulate the descriptive prose approach used by ’vintage’ Campbell and writers like Dennis Etchison and Charles L. Grant. But while ‘All Dead Years’ starts off promisingly, it loses momentum and sputters into an unsatisfying ending.

 

Gary McMahon’s ‘Diving Deep’ with its Antarctic locale, represents one of the more imaginative entries in the anthology; unfortunately it, too, suffers from too vague a denouement.

In summary, like most horror fiction anthologies, ‘End of the Line’ has a few real gems mixed in with some 'average' entries. I'm comfortable with giving it a 3 of 5 Stars Rating.

Terror ! A history of horror illustrations from the pulp magazines Edited by Peter Haining

Terror ! A history of horror illustrations from the pulp magazines

Edited by Peter Haining

 

I've carried a worn copy of this trade paperback around for nearly 50 years now.....I can't remember where and exactly when I got it. But it was one of a number of books on horror and the supernatural published by the indefatigable Peter Haining during the 1970s, in the US and the UK. In those long-ago days, well before the advent of the internet and amazon, books like this one were treasured by genre fans.

 

Issued by publisher A and W Visual Library, in its 176 pages 'Terror !' does a good job of presenting a potpourri of cover artworks, and interior images, from pulp magazines and other periodicals printed from the early 19th century, to the postwar era of the 20th century. 

Accompanying these black-and-white illustrations, in tiny font text editor Haining provides captions, along with some observations on the literary and sociocultural contexts of horror media as it was in those long-ago days. 

 

 

 

I had to take care in scanning pages of 'Terror !' as the binding of my copy is in a fragile condition, but I believe what I was able to scan provides a good sense of the variety and reproductive qualities of the profiled illustrations. The resolution of the images in 'Terror !' isn't superlative, but it is workmanlike, which is about all one can expect from a lower-budget trade paperback issued fifty years ago.........

 

 

'Terror !' has a smattering of pages rendered in full color, these serving as a reminder of the eye-catching qualities of the covers of the pulp magazines in their heyday.

Who will want a copy of 'Terror' ? Well, since its publication it has been supplanted by Stephen Jones's two volumes for Applause Books: 'The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History' (2015) and 'The Art of Pulp Horror' (2020). But I'd like to think that 'Terror' yet retains value in terms of being a source book for information about vintage stories of horror and the supernatural that remain off the radar for genre aficionados. With copies in 'acceptable' and 'good' condition still available for under $20, it might be worth picking up.

 

For what it's worth, in 1985 a UK edition of 'Terror !', retitled 'A Pictorial History of Horror Stories,' was issued by Sphere Books. A pdf of this edition is available at the Internet Archive and thus requires no financial outlay.

Three beat-up Paperbacks from Hell

Three Beat-Up Paperbacks from Hell

So, I stopped in at Goodwill to see if anything interesting was on the used books shelving and I wound up getting these three (rather beat-up) Paperbacks from Hell for $6 total. I'm not expecting great things from these three titles, but as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.........

National Lampoon October 1985

National Lampoon

October, 1985

October, 1985, and sitting at number one on the Top 40 is the Norwegian band A-Ha, with 'Take on Me.'
 

The latest issue of the National Lampoon is on the stands, with the theme of an 'All-Star Music Issue.' The magazine is in something of a transition period; as founder Matty Simmons states in his book 'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog: Life, Laughs, Love and Death at the National Lampoon,' he had fired a portion of the editorial staff, replacing these with his sons Michael and Andy Simmons, in an effort to boost circulation and advertising. This strategy had improved the Lampoon's fortunes somewhat, but the magazine's glory days of the 1970s clearly had passed. 

 

The comics are the best thing about this October issue. We get full color with 'Trots and Bonnie,' as our heroine discovers the reality of forming a band: clashes over creative directions can be challenging to manage.

'First Gig,' by Andy Simmons, Peter Kleinman, and Rob Orzechowski, presents the adventures of Nice Jewish Boy Irwin Nadler, and his rise to musical glory with the Rolling Stones.

 

 

 

Speaking of Nice Jewish Boys, Drew and Josh Alan Friedman take acidic aim at the hapless Frank Sinatra, Jr.

 

In '85, Yuppies were a major target of pop culture scrutiny and the Lampoon provides a centerfold featuring yuppies in quintessential 'preppy' garb.........

A parody of Rolling Stone, Rollin' Home, takes aim at the entrenched worship of elderly, black bluesmen by white, urban hipsters. The faux-interview with bluesman 'Interstate Brickman' is a spot-on mockery of Jan Wenner's editorial attitudes.........
 

 

 

 

In that October of '85 the 'Foto Funnies' still were lively.......

Let's close out our survey of the Lampoon with a cartoon..........

And that's how it was, in the pages of the Lampoon, 41 years ago.........