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137. Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman — Backlisted

First heard it on my fave podcast, w. Steve Coogan as guest. Many podcasts annoy me w. stoned/drunk rambling from punchable dudebros. #Backlisted isn’t like that. Smart bookish Brits w. BBC quality voices, polished delivery & genuine wit. www.backlisted.fm/episodes/137...

backlisted.fm

Published in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767, and usually abbreviated to Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne's cock and bull story - has entertained, baffled, enchanted, infuriated and inspired...

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Great filthy 18th century song about Sterne’s novel. “He tells a story about his homunculus, so droll no maid can help grinning at him” youtu.be/BLOsLNsMd28?...

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She loved Jaws, Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Dressed to Kill, Empire Strikes Back, Flash Gordon, 1977 Kong, The Warriors & Re-Animator; hated Star Wars, Road Warrior, 2001, Sound of Music, Vertigo & Shoah. Was pilloried for loving “trash” but her % of praise was higher than that of most critics.

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Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Our closest relatives, real chimps are the most violent great apes & most likely to eat meat. They have been documented hunting adult Colobus monkeys and baby gorillas, and have occasionally killed and devoured children. youtu.be/ffRJaDSzNeU?... #EscapeFromThePlanetOfTheApes #TCMparty

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The bulk of #84 is Bruce Wayne as an OSS agent in 1944 London and France. So Batman was at least 45 in 1969, despite looking 30 both then and 25 years earlier.

The Unquenchable Thirst Of Dracula

This BBC radio play is based on the 1977 draft of Hammer’s unmade Dracula in India film. Anthony Hinds had affection for India, and his final script reflects this in a way the 1970 draft did not. Dracula is destroyed by the combination of a traffic jam and vultures. archive.org/details/the-...

archive.org

Unmade Movies: Hammer Horror's The Unquenchable Thirst of DraculaFirst broadcast: Sat 28th Oct 2017, 14:30 on BBC Radio 4 FMDracula travels to 1930's India in this celebrated unproduced Hammer Horror ...

E. Hoffman Price claimed that Howard’s income, which had been about $2000 a year in 1932-34, spiked to about $6000 at the end of 1935. I don’t know if this is ever been verified.

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Howard made $6000 in 1936. That’s $144,595 in 2026 money. What comics writer made that kind of money before some British and European ones in the 1960s?

Not Barry’s best work, but 1st comics panel by anyone to deeply move me. He was 22, I was 14, and it was a bittersweet feeling to fall on love with the work of someone saying goodbye.

Nightmare Alley, which I love, was 1st novel I was able to read after my 2016 brain injury. Favorite books I read before the accident include Prisoner of Zenda, Amis’s The Green Man, The October Country, The Last Unicorn, True Grit, The Jungle Books, The Bloody Chamber & Haunting of Hill House.

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Chemo hit me less hard, at least after the first 3 weeks. In the cancer center I read & enjoyed the complete Y the Last Man. But the only prose fiction I enjoyed were classic English ghost stories.

After my first near-death experience in 2012, the only things I enjoyed reading were individual issues of Hawkeye. Even graphic novels & collections defeated me. 1st novel I was able to complete after kidney failure was Donald Hamilton’s brutal Death of a Citizen. Took me 5 weeks.

Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Wire is #1 for me, although I largely missed the first season. After that, Deadwood and Mad Men. So only one of my top three had commercials. It was a while after my 2012 kidney failure, 2013 leukemia & 2016 brain damage that I could read anything longer than a 32-page comic.

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I shared my article on how the late Carolyn Allen changed narrative of the 1979 #GreensboroMassacre. Someone asked for more info. The official Reddit #CookOut account had a blunt answer. www.reddit.com/r/gso/s/fCnn...

Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It is indeed. So is Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, which @superamanda.bsky.social & I watched on the Criterion Channel the other night. The story is the basis for her friend Anna Biller’s new film The Face of Horror.

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Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I need to read this. Had a roommate obsessed w. Showtime adaptation. Whenever it was on, he chugged 4 Mickey’s Big Mouths, danced to Steve Miller, vomited in his trashcan & passed out. He reacted this way to any movie or TV show with a drunken driving scene.

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Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗣𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘆 My Anne Bonny novella, which originally appeared in ASIMOV'S & was reprinted in the SF Book Club’s Best Short Novels: 2005 is $2.99 on Kindle. (Need new laptop to remove a predator’s blurb, as Kindle Create doesn’t work on IPad). www.amazon.com/dp/B07FK5JMY...

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Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Chud who identifies with Holden Caulfield claims “horror has always had a predominantly male audience/fan base.”

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Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Striking minimalist design for the first appearance of George Langelaan’s “The Fly” in the June 1957 Playboy. #Svengoolie

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I’d love anything you did with him regardless of what famous shootists he might meet. I just also wanna see someone depict Doc teasing Wyatt about going to Temple. I also think there’s a story in Doc voting Republican for the 1st time, which meant the opposite of what it does now.

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I knew which one I was referring to. I’m not particularly interested in Sonja, but very interested in Sonya. She and Gottfried make a fascinating duo because of his flaws and her exasperated need to keep him out of trouble.

I’d love a Bat Lash mini, maybe about him trying to patch up things between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday after the latter teased his hot-tempered former whorehouse bouncer friend too many times about converting to Judaism.

I’d love any of these, but also a miniseries about Sonya seeking to settle her score with Roxelana while constantly saving Von Kalmbach’s ass. With your skill at facial expressions, you’d excel at depicting her exasperated affection for the lazy drunken lug, whose flaws make him interesting.

@patrickzircher.bsky.social, my love @SuperAmanda.bsky.social will be unhappy if anything happens to your magnificently depicted Panthera leo leo.

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Despite the softened ending and the unavoidable censorship, I prefer the 1947 version with Tyrone Power, Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell & Helen Walker. There’s a Criterion Blu-ray.

Wish I could find an affordable copy of Monster Midway.

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The New Beverly should do a double feature of this and Shadow Lands, although that might set Lewis and Gresham spinning in their graves.

It’s wonderful, like a combo of Bradbury and James M. Cain. I might argue that, once Stanton starts his church, it’s not as compelling as the carny stuff, but it all picks up when he goes on the run from the industrialist who who isn’t even looking for him.

Cast a role, other than the actual casting. Jean-Paul Belmondo & Claudia Cardinale as Valérian and Laureline

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Sophia Loren as Modesty Blaise & Michael Caine as Willie Garvin

Hayward is a fascinating Saint, very different from Sanders or Moore. He’s like a slim Orson Welles w. Cagney‘s athleticism & killer smile. He terrifies the Mob as much as the Shadow did, quoting Christina Rosetti before murdering them. How did this get by the Code?

Greatly enjoyed this 1935 novel & 1938 film (the only adaptation to capture what a flippant but deadly badass Simon Templar is). He comes to NYC to wipe out the mob for fun. Body count to match The Punisher, but he does it w. style & charm. Film version plays like a Precode.

When I mocked the Sad Puppies for not writing genre fiction 1/10th as well as Leigh Brackett, Ian Fleming, CS Forrester or Donald Hamilton, couple of the dumb sumbitches responded “who?”

YouTube video by HiTechFX

There’s also this entertaining semicomic thriller where an ordinary bloke has to impersonate Drummond. Ralph Richardson is wonderful as the Moriarty-esque villain. youtu.be/DOtF7op64Ek?...

youtu.be

Bulldog Jack 1935

Wasn’t it originally a play? Then an 80s film.

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Some are less so than others. The Avenger had heroic Black members of his team who kicked ass. Hammett, who began in the pulps, generally avoided racism. Howard was complex. Some very racist stories, but also some w. Black heroes.

The Ronald Colman film is fun & innocuous. Too bad the Ralph Richardson film is the only one to keep the fascism. Richardson is typically great, and it lets him indulge his real life passion for fast cars & motorcycles.

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I was annoyed by Alan Moore portraying Drummond as morally superior to 007. He’s a fascist, racist, antisemitic sadist in a literal brownshirt. Being a creation of the 1920s doesn’t make him more palatable. For Jazz Age adventurers, I’ll stick with the Saint, who’s awesome.

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In Kingsley Amis’s The James Bond Dossier, Amis, a great writer who even then was becoming increasingly conservative, was clearly repulsed by Drummond. In his chapter on Bond’s literary predecessors, he basically says “no, Ian Fleming was not a fascist, but Sapper sure was.”

Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Stenstrum & Maroto did a nice Leiber homage for Warren, “Deep Brown & Jorum” in EERIE #56. Marred by one homophobic vignette & du rigeur downbeat 70s conclusion (why do an affectionate homage that ends with an apocalyptic drought & death of one of the heroes?) but still a sweet tribute to Fritz.

Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Several issues of DC’s Sword of Sorcery did right by Fafhrd & the Mouser, particularly #1, w. Adams, & Wrightson inking Chaykin, & #5, with Simonson drawing “The Sunken Land.”

Ian McDowell @ianmcdowell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

At 14, I was blown away by the 1972 Kung Fu pilot. If the Green Hornet was in local syndication, I might have realized how much better Bruce Lee looked in action, but my memories of Kato were dim & Caine killed armed posses w. his bare hands. (The resulting show was much less violent.)