My webmaster and cyberspace advisor, Jonathan Wooley, having educated me recently about the importance of website blogging, has now advised me that it’s a good idea not only to regularly add links to other websites, but also to write a bit about the linkees. With that in mind, here’s a little something about the folks behind the web addresses:
–Jim Vance ( http://www.james-vance.com ) has been a very good friend and occasional co-conspirator of mine for more years than I’d like to remember. I will not embarrass him here by relating where we met, but I will say that it was at the world premiere of a local movie in which he had, shall we say, a major part. I will also note that he was the sober one at that meeting. In the immediately subsequent years, we visited a lot of comic-book conventions together, notably Larry Lankford’s late and much-lamented Dallas Fantasy Fairs and Festivals, and entered the independent comic-book market as scripters, with Jim receiving well-deserved acclaim. (Among other things, he won a Harvey and two Eisners for his superb graphic novel with artist Dan Burr, Kings in Disguise , a Depression-era tale told from a boy hobo’s point of view. Recently reprinted by W.W. Norton, it belongs in every American’s library. Honestly.)
Jim continues to turn out great work full of wisdom, compassion, and clarity. I also envy him for his ability to knock out first-class blog entries on his site http://www.james-vance.com, most of them having to do with comics and graphic novels, which is where he’s doing most of his work these days.
— Chuck Ayers (http://www.chuckayers.com ) is the creator and host of a fine radio show called the Red River Jazz Cafe, which I’ve been enjoying beginning at noon Saturdays on radio station KZLI (1570 AM). KZLI is (along with oldies station KRVT, 1270 AM) half of a great northeastern Oklahoma AM-radio combine that’s bravely swimming against the current (forgive the mixed metaphor) by offering programming that couldn’t be different from the soulless corporate effluvia clogging our airwaves.
Chuck’s show is a great example of what I mean. It’s full of laid-back, small-combo jazz – often including something from my favorite, Oklahoma boy Chet Baker — strung together with Chuck’s equally relaxed conversational reminiscences of his younger days in California and Oklahoma. KZLI, for all its wonderful qualities, isn’t exactly a clear-channel flamethrower, so if you’re not in the Tulsa area, pick up the cafâ on Chuck’s website. Heck – you can even order up a show from the menu. Plus, there’s some old-time radio programming and ’50s rock ‘n’ roll available there as well.
And while we’re on the topic of music . . . Broadway, concert, and TV star Sam Harris (Did you catch his laugh-out-loud character on last year’s sitcom The Class?) is working on a new album, and he’s released a track on YouTube. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulqENsff5bw to see “War on War,” an anti-war number that, to me, is a first-class, spirited, re-imagining of the late 1960s, when kids marched for peace and love was in the air. (Following my time as one of those peace marchers, I ended up on a helicopter carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, but that’s another story.) Sam’s song hits all the right buttons, spiritually and musically – there’s a little echo of the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” in the chorus, a Beatles evocation on the bridge, and a nod to Edwin Starr’s greatest hit.
Sam’s organized a music-video contest around the song, so those of you who are into that sort of thing should check it out. So should everyone else – except, maybe, those who still believe that folks like Bill O’Reilly speak for America.
Finally, check out the newest two issues of Fangoria the world’s No. 1 horror-movie magazine, for a couple of pieces I’m proud of. I visited the Oklahoma City-based set of the new movie Soul’s Midnight for my report in Fangoria No. 270. It includes a sidebar interview with director (and stand-up comedian) Harry Basil, who talks about both Soul’s and Fingerprints, a second Oklahoma-lensed feature that’s generated a lot of pre-release buzz.
In Fango No. 271, the current issue, my pal and frequent collaborator Michael H. Price joins me for a look at the underrated 1980 horror film Without Warning, which was undoubtedly an “inspiration” for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The big studios co-opted every good idea the low-budget drive-in filmmakers had, pumped ’em up with money and starpower, and released ’em as major movies, without acknowledging their cheap-film roots at all. The Without Warning/Predator similarities, I think, were a harbinger of this practice, which still exists today, you bet.