How to Succeed in Hollywood Without Really Trying P.S. You Can’t! by Melville Shavelson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a funny book full of tales of wrestling with Hollywood. The latter is pretty typical for a Hollywood book. Difference is, as others try, this one is funny.

This book does have a trouble throughout the entire book of very rarely noting the date or even year any instance happened. The reader is stuck having to figure out just what decade instances are helping. Not helping is Shavelson often bringing up flashbacks and then continuing the linear history. That’s when it’s tough to tell what time period he is writing about. Thus, the overall planning of the book is a bit slipshod. Luckily Shavelson is a good writer to carry through the troubles.

Shavelson revels that he can write whatever he wants due to, basically, self-publishing this book. That begs the question as to why he skips past many of his accomplishments. I’d guess this was his way of avoiding whatever it was he wanted to avoid. Those of us that knows he skips books and movies he worked on will feel short changed. Per chance this is a problem I have with Shavelson films. His films tend to be drawn out too long and seem to miss scenes to keep the film together.

A real plus is a very good index.

Bottomline: I recommend this book. 6 out of 10 points.



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Part two event for Saturday was a volunteer effort for charity.

The child in the photo is brilliant! At 12 he has aced the SAT with something like a 1600 score.
He excels in chemistry.
Of course, he was home schooled! Credit also going to his parents!!!

Then there’s Amy who spoke about her writings and ideas and stumbled into solving a philosophical issue I’ve grappled with for a very long time.

Here’s me and Carey Baker, Lake County (Florida) Property Appraiser. I wish I could always be do jovial! 🙂

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Back entertaining today! The first 2 are Florida History Royalty. Their family goes back to the days Florida opened up to settlers around 1830. They are family to Phillipe in Safety Harbor and the Turners of Turner Creek in Chockoloskee. I hope to speak to learn how that all connects sometime down the road.

This is part 1 of 2 today.

Working hard to clear a slew of projects by the weekend. Is it any surprise one project has kitties in it? 🙂

Here’s the color version of the super elephant I did a few days ago. Bouncing from one project to the other of a wide variety of entirely different subjects and uses. Some I can share and some I can’t. I’ll share what I can. More to come!

Asterix and the Golden Sickle by René Goscinny

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The second Asterix book is Goscinny shoving a ton of little gags in between a very good story of the need of a golden sickle. Fulfilling that need becomes more complicated than planned and the chaos begins. The sickle thing is a bit of a silly plot device to send two pals off to adventure, but it works and the involved story ends satisfactorily.

Better still is the illustration work. The artistry is superb in layout, design and line stroke. Excellent work. Some panels are simply brilliant is construction.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 10 out of 10 points.



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Man of Grace, Andy Capp by Reg Smythe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

• As i continue to read through books related more to my profession….
  I happened upon this at a thrift store last week and that reminded me I need to keep taking in the books of sequential storytelling.
  
  Quite a funny collection of Andy Capp comic strips. Certainly too much for today’s fad of sensitivity. Probably more acceptable in a few more years.
  
  Writer & artist Reg Smythe has a solid style of depiction and great consistency. Simple backgrounds easy to recognize. Mostly all foreground settings for easier effort of knocking out 7 of these each week. I peeked into how those who replaced the new dead Smythe are handling things. Humor is there, but the art is weak. You can see that here: https://www.gocomics.com/andycapp
  
  Worse part of this collection is a problem Fawcett had with many of their printings of comic strips: Bad printers. Some pages, the words and art are hard to see and read. These collections can be very inconsistent involving printing.
  
  Milling this same area over and over and producing these mostly very funny results is impressive since 1957 to the date of publication of this collection, 1974.
  
  Great fun!
  
  Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 out of 10 points.
  
  
  
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Trying to clear away as many projects as I can in case I lose electricity. Here’s one illustration involving a super elephant.

Rarely use a Micron brush. Don’t know why. Worked well.

Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


What a dopey book. Huxley wants to write a play and tucks the play into another story, neither of which make much sense.

I should start by stating I despise science fiction. Especially when it’s a weak dressing for bad philosophizing. I have a great deal of respect for philosophy and science. Huxley should have written this out as a treatise or a study of politics, than this silly bit of fluff.

He presents interesting ideas and retreads his own earlier work and others, like Thorstein Veblen. But the ideas are shackled to the fiction and there’s no supporting data presented to hold up his thoughts. It’s basically one liners encased in dialogue and narration.

He also doesn’t account for what happens if his theories come true. There’s no objective or challenging view points. Huxley writes that all are cowtowed by the setting and he escapes from anything deeper.

The characters are thin to nothing. The settings much the same. The writing is a jumble of OK to badly thought out.

All in all lightweight stuff, much like Vonnegut’s work later.

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 2 out of 10 points.



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Here’s the watercolor painting I did for my step-daughter, Amber, for her baby shower that happened earlier to day in Mount Pilot, North Carolina.

It’s 11″x14″ watercolor on Crescent board. Inked with various brush pens. I sure miss the Arches watercolor board.

Had to do this pretty quickly. Most of the animals shown were also figurines on the cake for her.

Deadheads by Reginald Hill

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is more a series of character studies with a loose story connecting it all. Apparently the police have nothing better to do than chase after a silly story by a stated nut involving conjecture and no empirical evidence. Thus, I found the foundation unbelievable. One of the major characters is at a conference who happens to find himself with one person connected to the non-case case. The book meanders from character to character. It all ends in an interesting way, though likely a surprise to most mystery readers.

Hill ramps up his political hammering of his liberal views with little objectivity. Conisdering the overall book has little solid base, this politically trumpeting is distracting and irritating.

The writing is very good and dialogue very well done and the only reason to read this book.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 5 out of 5 points.



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