Dragnet Foodie Database

There is nothing special about the final episode of Dragnet (1949 – 1955) – nothing in particular about it to stand out, there are no summarizing words – it simply does what most of the 318 original radio episodes do – it delivers, from 69 years ago, solid, professional, thoroughly dependable entertainment. (Dragnet would continue…

Movies List for 2022-2023

The 10 Best/Most Enjoyable of 211 Movies I Watched (at least partially) between November 14 2022 and November 15 2023 Movies I watched this ‘year’ which have been released since the year of my birth: 69 (32% of films watched) Re-watches – 80 or so, (38%) but I haven’t been marking rewatches consistently so I…

The Mammoth Book of Westerns – with a foreword by Rick Bass; Edited by Jon E. Lewis

This book of 500 pages+ has been sitting on my bedside table for over a month as I’ve tried to find the time it demands to re-read it. I must confess I skipped most of the novel excerpts, which I don’t think belong in an anthology that is otherwise all short story. Another confession –…

Noirvember Film Recommendations

Hello darlings. I am not so secretly also a fan of film noir, and November is unofficially the month to celebrate this genre which is not a genre. (It's like pornography, you know it when you see it... and then you can have discussions about what you're seeing versus what that next person is seeing…

The Sharpshooters – Fargo series, number 9 – by John Benteen

Well, the cover is kind of fun, although I apologize for my poor camera skills at this time. I am mashing out this review on a rainy Monday afternoon after reviewing two more rejections, after about twenty rejections already, on a western short story of mine that I've now reviewed and re-jiggled for the fifth…

Poor Sgt. Harris

I was still holding out hope for my contest entry of three episodes of The Adventure of Sgt Harris, as I was trying to believe no news was good news after Sept. 15th (when decisions were starting to be announced on entries.) However, I now have official word that my entry will not be advancing…

The Beast of the East by Ken Wolfson

Edited to add a note: Mr Wolfson was kind enough to send me a thank you note following the posting of this review, in which he makes clear that the Deckard thing is a complete coincidence. Sorry about that assumption, Mr Wolfson! He also stated the formatting issues I mention in this review should be…

(Almost) 39

Hello everyone. It's my birthday weekend. (As I've insisted on already telling many of you, it is also Alan Ladd's birthday weekend. I intend to spend a few hours listening to and watching his work - any excuse is good enough for me, and this is a pretty good excuse!) I am turning thirty-nine! This…

Dictation – Notebook Snippets

I've been trying to get the I've-already-paid-for-it dictation function on my computer to... function, since I often start short stories and write whole poems by hand and it would make things a little faster if I could speak them on to the computer for editing purposes. However, it is definitely a bit... finicky. Here are…

Bucky O’Connor – A Tale of the Border by William MacLeod Raine

It's a great fad, this outdoor sleeping. The doctors recommend it strong for sick people. I read this book back in June while camping after a forest fire "trapped" me at a campground for an extra ten days or so. Fortunately I had this on my Kindle, because otherwise I would have been out of…