Playboy August 1969

Playboy 

August, 1969

August, 1969. Atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, we have the Rolling Stones and 'Honky Tonk Women.' Also on the chart are some country (Johnny Cash), some psychedelic-flavored pop (Tommy James and the Shondells), straight up pop (Neil Diamond), and the sci-fi single of the decade, Zager and Evans with 'In the Year 2525.' All good stuff !

 

The August issue of Playboy is on the stands, with model Penny James again on the front cover. In 1969 Playboy is a thriving periodical, over 220 pages in length. The lineup of contributors includes some of the more celebrated authors of the era.........

Being obtrusive with a two-page advertisement is Ralph Ginzberg (1929 - 2006), one of the more accomplished hucksters of the postwar era. Ralph excelled at positioning himself as a martyr for free speech and creative expression, all the while slyly selling a higher class of 'erotic material' to the goyim. Back in the 60s and 70s it wasn't unusual to see these ads from Ginzberg in national-circulation periodicals like Playboy and Esquire.

One thing about this August issue is that the photography is badly underexposed. A portfolio featuring 'Bunnies of Detroit ' (which isn't as bizarre as it would seem - Detroit in the late 60s still was a habitable city) nearly is illegible, perhaps because the art director was adamant about Earth Tones. I had to amp up the Brightness when working with these scans.

 

 

 

 

 

There are some pop culture touchstones in the book and film reviews. 'The Andromeda Strain' gets a good reception, as does Midnight Cowboy. Sadly, the music reviews are hopelessly fuddy-duddy, dealing with classical, jazz, and country LPs. Rock just didn't rate that high for Hef.

The August issue features a sci-fi short story by Robert Sheckley, about a young housewife who discovers her new vacuum cleaner does a lot of unexpected, but pleasurable, things.

 

Another short story, 'Quick Hop' by Brock Bower, is the rather lame tale of a louche woman who hires a banner-towing pilot to do some advertising for her 'unique' services. 

The second installment of a serialized novel, by Donald E. Westlake, titled 'Somebody Owes Me Money,' is markedly better than 'Quick Hop.' 

 

I grabbed the July, 1969 issue of Playboy (which ran Part One) so as to complete the novel in a couple of sittings. It's an entertaining tale of a hapless New York City cabby named Chester Conway who gets a tip, not in monetary form, but as a suggestion for a winning pony. Chester plays the pony, wins big, and winds up in all kinds of trouble, but there is a swell dame waiting along the way. If you like Westlake's stuff, it's worth looking up the 2011 reprint from Hard Case Crime.

 

Rather less impressive is the fourth fiction piece in the August issue, 'The Fire Fighters,' by Earnest Taves. It's about conflict on a U.S. Army base in postwar Japan, and struggles to say something Profound about the Human Condition. For me, it just signaled that serving in Asia in the employ of the Army is something earnestly to be avoided. 

 

There are some cartoons that would, perhaps, offend those in the modern-day LGBTQ Community. 

 

The personality profile, 'St. Thomas and the Dragon,' in this August issue deals with Tommy Smothers, who, along with his brother Dick, was a pop cultural icon in the late 1960s. The profile portrays Tommy as a liberal dedicated to warring with CBS over allowing progressive content on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969). 

 

What impressed me most about 'St. Thomas' is the fact that Smothers was in regular pain and distress from a stomach ulcer, something that colored his entire life at the time. Helicobacter pylori would not be identified as a cause of ulcers (a discovery leading to an effective treatment for this ailment) until 1983. So back in '69, about all medicine could offer the hapless Smothers was supportive treatment (in other words, Pepto-Bismol).

 

Let's go ahead and close with the August Bunny, a groovy 21 year-old hippie chick named Debbie Hooper. We learn that Debbie is something of a free spirit when it comes to relationships, exactly what the middle-aged male readership of Playboy, looking on with envy at the Sexual Revolution, wanted to hear.........

 

 

 

 

 

And that's how it was, in that Summer of '69...........!

Book Review: Odd Corners

Book Review: 'Odd Corners' by William Hjortsberg

3 / 5 Stars

'Odd Corners' (266 pp.) was published by Shoemaker Hoard in 2004. This book is a trade paperback, sized a little bit bigger than a mass-market paperback. 

'Odd Corners' collects various pieces author Hjortsberg (1941 - 2017) first published in the 1970s.

 

The anthology leads off with an Introduction in which Hjortsberg imparts some interesting observations about trying to make a living in the early 1970s as an author, particularly an author of science fiction, which at that time (despite the success of the New Wave movement) still was considered juvenilia by the literary world.

 

Despite this, Hjortsberg was able to get his sci-fi novel 'Gray Matters' (1971; included in 'Odd Corners') published in both hardcover and softcover, to critical acclaim (John Cheever sent Hjortsberg a letter praising the novel). My review of 'Gray Matters' is here.

Also included in 'Odd Corners' is the novelette 'Symbiography,' first released in a small press edition in 1973. Hjortsberg later had a truncated version published in Penthouse magazine in February 1979. The longer version, aka 'Symbiography,' is the better incarnation and the best entry in 'Odd Corners.'

A story fragment, titled 'Homecoming,' has never seen print until 'Odd Corners.' Hjortsberg composed it as part of a strange, early 70s effort by Playboy to print science fiction-themed illustrations in the back pages of the magazine, likely as replacements for the 'Little Annie Fanny' comic strip. Writers were asked to contribute short essays designed to accompany the illustrations. Hjortsberg was asked to provide an essay for an illustration by none other than Philippe Druillet of 'Lone Sloane' fame. As intriguing as this idea sounds, ultimately it never came to fruition.

Rounding out the contents of 'Odd Corners' is 'The Clone Who Ran for Congress,' which originally saw print in the May 31, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine, under the title 'Goodby, Goodby, Goodby, Mr. Chips.'

 

This is probably the only science fiction story ever to see print in SI. 'The Clone' is a clever, satirical look at sports culture and the marketing of athletes, and retains its impact almost fifty years after first seeing print. 

 

[ Looking through those old issues of SI from the mid-70s is a reminder that, back in its heyday, more than half of the contents of a given issue of the magazine would be given to topics other than major league sports, something that was permissible in that long-ago, more literate era of our popular culture. ]

 

If you are interested in the works of the New Wave era of sci-fi, then you might want to keep an eye out for 'Odd Corners.' 

My Woodstock, 1969 Story

Woodstock

August, 1969

So, here's my own Woodstock story:

 

In August, 1969 (it may have been the 15th or 16th), I was 9 years old and riding in the car with my father. We were returning from a trip 'downstate,' to New York City, and heading for my hometown 'upstate,' in Delaware County. 

 

Back then, when returning from the City, such a trip involved taking route 17 north up to Monticello, then taking state road 178 northwest through Bethel to Callicoon, and then north from Callicoon to Hancock.

It was afternoon, and well before reaching Bethel we were astonished when traffic slowed to a crawl. As we puttered along, we saw young people - 'hippies' - streaming along the sides of the road, where cars were parked front-to-bumper. What on earth was going on in this little patch of the Catskills ?! It took us a long time to drive clear of the congestion and continue on our way.

 

There was no internet back then, so it was only when my father consulted the New York Daily News that we learned that we had passed through a massive music festival called 'Woodstock.' The New York Times had a story on the festival, too.

And that was my brush with an iconic pop culture event, way back in the Summer of '69......  

A box of paperbacks from Etsy

A Box of Paperbacks from Etsy

Back 14 -15 years ago when I started this blog, I would order 'wholesale lots' and collections of sci-fi and popular interest paperbacks from eBay. You could get a box of books for under $50, back then. In the last decade I've rarely done this, as I have accumulated more than enough paperbacks to take up my reading time. However, recently while perusing Etsy I came across an offer for 40+ paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s.

There's something about opening that heavy cardboard box, and catching that first musty whiff of aged paper, that makes the Paperback Fanatic treasure his or her pasttime........

I'm not familiar with any of the books in my Etsy lot, but I'm hoping some are promising. I'm mindful that in general, the covers always are more exciting than the contents. Particularly with paperbacks from this era, which often took dull novels from the 50s and early 60s and dressed with up with lurid covers to entice people to buy them.

For example, there's 'Love Me Little,' by 'Amanda Vail,' which first saw print in hardback in 1957, before being reissued as this salacious mass-market paperback in October, 1967. Hubba-hubba, baby ! Let's ball !!!!!!!!!  

Then you've got 'The Touch People,' by Froma Sand, issued in December, 1973. The back cover tells us that it's all about the Castlemont Institute hosting a naked encounter ! I'm guessing that we'll be given much tedious psychological posturing, and very little nudie action.......

But I have high hopes for Paul Gallico's 'The Poseidon Adventure,' a foundational novel for the 70s genre of disaster movies.

My Etsy purchase included several potboilers, each over 450 pages in length, those pages being crammed with smaller font. I don't know how likely I am to sit down and read those books.

 

 

 

At the end of the day, when you buy a box of old paperbacks, it's all in the spirit of what you may find. That's what drives the Paperback Fanatic !

Book Review: Zodiac

Book Review: 'Zodiac' by Neal Stephenson

3 / 5 Stars

'Zodiac' (308 pp.) was issued by Bantam Books / Spectra in July, 1995, with cover art by Bruce Jensen. The novel first was published in 1988 (making author Stephenson a 'first generation' cyberpunk) by the highbrow Atlantic Monthly Press. Later, after Stephenson's 1992 novel 'Snow Crash' and his 1995 novel 'The Diamond Age' broke big, Bantam prudently acquired the mass-market paperback rights to 'Zodiac' and got it into print to capitalize on the wave for all things Stephenson.

I should state at the outset that 'Zodiac' is very much a 'Boston' book. Most of the action takes place in that city, both on land, and on the water (the title refers to the rubber boat beloved by commando teams). I'm not at all familiar with Boston so I imagine I'm missing out on the way in which the novel ties into that city with mingled affection and annoyance.......

The novel is set in the late 1980s or so, and features as its protagonist one Sangamon Taylor, a 27 year-old environmental activist and (in Stephenson's own words) an utter asshole.

Taylor works for a nonprofit called GEE International (the CEO or founder of GEE never is disclosed, but presumably he or she is an altruistic capitalist). The organization has a handsome budget, one that allows its employees to purse environmental causes full-time, often from the decks of various watercraft. In between campaigns to identify and expose polluters, the GEE staff enjoy recreational drugs, bouts of fornication, meals in the better restaurants in the Boston area, and the knowledge that they are just too hip, to even be hip (i.e., they do things like order Singha beer when in Thai restaurants).

Taylor specializes in benign vandalism of polluter's discharge pipelines and toxic waster dumps, and in bringing these acts of vandalism to the attention of the media. Chemical corporations in the wider Boston area, indeed, in the USA proper, don't like Taylor. 

The main plot of 'Zodiac' doesn't arrive until page 93, and it involves Spectacle Island, and a legacy of the dumping of PCBs in Boston Harbor. Taylor is interested in seeing if the legacy PCBs can be detected in the muck under Spectacle, but soon he's running into some peculiarities in his sampling scheme. The PCBs are there, but only for a brief time, something unlikely with a persistent organic pollutant. Could the strange distribution of PCBs have something to do with the actions of the newly founded biotech firm Biotronics ? Laughlin, the CEO of the firm, would like to co-opt Taylor into endorsing Biotronic's plan for the future: eliminate toxic waste via biological processes. But Taylor isn't so sure Laughlin is the nice guy he makes himself out to be.

Complicating things is that the dumping of PCBs likely was done by the Basco chemical company, whose former Senior Engineer, Alvin Pleshy, now is running for the Presidency, as a standard-issue, white liberal male with (at least on the surface) a deep concern for the welfare of the environment.

As the novel progresses, Taylor discovers he has made enemies of some very powerful and avaricious people. People whose adversaries tend to die in 'accidents.' So, it's up to Taylor, Boone, a renegade environmental justice warrior, and Jim Grandfather, a down-at-home Native American, to risk their lives to discover the truth behind the poisoning of Boston Harbor..........

'Zodiac' advertises itself as an 'Eco-thriller,' and it is indeed ecological, but as a thriller, well.....I can understand the need for a thriller to have some improbable plot developments, but in 'Zodiac', these improbabilities come so fast and so furious in the last 100 pages that they undermine the narrative's credibility. All sorts of fortuitous coincidences pop up, with such regularity that I felt there was no way for Taylor and his brave Eco-warriors to lose. In its favor, 'Zodiac' has an easygoing prose style, a sort of breathless hipster stream-of-consciousness that flows smoothly all the way to the end page.

Summing up, 'Zodiac' is (arguably) one of Stephenson's more accessible novels; it's relatively brief, and goes light on the pedantic discourses that occupy his more recent works (like 2008's 'Anathem,' where he devotes something like two and one-half pages to describing the mechanism of a timekeeping device in a monastery, presumably an allusion to the real-world 'Clock of the Long Now' project......). If you are willing to overlook the frantic pacing of the final third of the novel, you may find 'Zodiac' rewarding.

Video Jack

Video Jack

by Cary Bates (script) and Keith Giffen (art)

Epic Comics (Marvel) 1987

 

'Video Jack' is a six-issue series, published by Marvel Comic's Epic imprint, over the interval from September, 1987, to September, 1988.

'Video' is set in the small Midwestern town of Hickory Haven. Normally a quiet place, as the story opens, Hickory Haven is in something of an uproar, for the corpse of a young woman has been found stuffed in the branches of a tree. Is a serial killer at work in the area ?!

The eponymous Jack is a teen-aged boy named Jack Swift. Jack's father walked out on Jack and his mom years ago, and Jack was raised as much by TV, as by his overburdened mother. 

 

Indeed, Jack lives to watch TV, whether it's live, or on VHS. There's nothing Jack would like better than to be the owner of a top-of-the-line, 27-inch, cable-ready color TV, but at $800, it's out of his league, price-wise.

 

 

Girls in Jack's High School class just don't appreciate his love for the art and technology of video:

 

Jack's best friend is a juvenile delinquent named Damon Xarnett. Xarnett's Uncle Zach is a strange man, from Romania, who likes to mutter to himself. Uncle Zach has a remarkable, high-tech video studio nestled inside his gothic mansion. 

As the first issue's plot unfolds, Uncle Zach's plan to use his video setup to bring a 'cleansing' of 'vice....depravity...filth....perversion' from Hickory Haven. Damon and Jack decide to mess around with Uncle Zach's setup at the worst possible time.....

Subsequent issues reveal that Jack and Damon can be teleported into alternate realities, each reality derived from a different TV show, simply by clicking the channel selector on Uncle Zach's strange, otherworldly remote control. Things can be hazardous in these realities, especially if it's a reality based on a well-known science fiction film.........

Will Jack and Damon ever find the means to return to their own reality ? And if they do, what evil of Uncle Zach's design will they have to confront ?

 

 

I picked up the six-issue run of 'Video Jack' hoping it was one of those underappreciated gems that came from the Epic imprint in the 1980s. Sadly, 'Video Jack' is really, really bad.

 

The writing is too ad-libbed to be very engaging: Bates and Giffen can't seem to decide if the narrative is to be comedic, an action-adventure, or some crazed amalgamation of both. This gives 'Video Jack' a cobbled-together sensibility. Efforts by these writers to satirize Hollywood and its video culture more often are lame and contrived. It doesn't help matters when Archie Goodwin, editor of the Epic imprint, shows up in the pages of the comic to lend some humorous asides. The result is nothing but severe cringe.....

The final issue of 'Video Jack' is so bad I struggled to get through it. Marvel evidently decided to draft some of its artists to contribute one- or two-page segments, evidently to rescue Giffen from imminent deadline problems. The result is cheesy and inane, falling far short of what I would expect even from a 'Little Archie,' or 'Richie Rich,' or 'Casper the Friendly Ghost,' comic.

Summing up, while Epic's holy mission of promoting 'creator-owned content' may have been meritorious, the truth is much of that creator-owned content was pretty shitty. 'Video Jack' can be passed by without penalty ! 

 

P.S. you can get another take on 'Video Jack' at this link.