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Post by helrunar on Apr 9, 2018 20:40:26 GMT
I'm a 59 year old veteran male homosexual, and "a player of the pink oboe" is new to me. I guess I have no culture.
As Liberace might have said... sincerely yours,
Helrunar
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Apr 9, 2018 20:44:55 GMT
I'm a 59 year old veteran male homosexual, and "a player of the pink oboe" is new to me. I guess I have no culture. As Liberace might have said... sincerely yours, Helrunar Have you Google, perhaps?
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Post by helrunar on Apr 9, 2018 20:54:29 GMT
Because I just love passive-aggressive conversions--from the Urban Dictionary website, sub pink oboe:
Another name for the penis. Made famous by the late Peter Cook's 'Here Comes the Judge' speech.
Also a name given to the public houses and bars frequented by gay clientele.
[Examples:] Horace said to Walter, 'I would like to suck on your pink oboe'.
Walter suggested they both go to the Pink Oboe for a Campari and soda. (end)
Haven't a clue about Peter Cook's 'Here Comes the Judge' speech--that makes me think of an old Flip Wilson routine, circa 1968.
I think chewing pillows refers to the good old practice of "taking it up the bum" though whether this relates to an old Dudley Moore routine may be beyond the power even of the google oracle to divine.
cheers, H.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Apr 10, 2018 10:03:27 GMT
JoJo, that dialogue passage is almost literally incredible. My jaw is dropping. Mine did not. I did raise an eyebrow slightly, though.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 10, 2018 15:29:20 GMT
It also strikes me that having the love of one's life be someone who has taken the veil might easily be code for something else. But I may be reading too much into this, and shall stop now. . I guess at the time this was a popular trope. Didn't loose Poirot also his love in the youth? On the other hand, this is very Dumas. The fair maidens there always were in danger to get thrown into a convent by the nefarious villians. On the other hand, I don't think Quinn's fans wanted to read about De Grandin chasing the ladies. Compared to the shudder pulps relationsships never were a big thing in Weird Tales. Also De Grandin was rather old. Love seemed to be only for the young in these tales. With 40 you were already standing with one foot in the grave The cerebral detective, far too intellectual to be bothered with all that sex nonsense, is also a standard type - at least as far back as Sherlock Holmes. If you want something a bit more exotic, then also make him "European" and a bit effete - like Hercule Poirot. I haven't read much Jules De Grandin, and what I have read didn't leave much impression on me - but I think I prefer my occult detectives a bit more human. Haven't a clue about Peter Cook's 'Here Comes the Judge' speech. Here you go - read the background first though. www.thejudge.me.uk/Raves/Raves_20091229.htm
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Post by helrunar on Apr 10, 2018 18:03:55 GMT
Thanks, Dr Strange. That was really helpful, particularly the glossary. There was one reference that wasn't included when Judge Cook offered the opinion that people who would take somebody's testimony seriously were in need of psychiatric help of the kind provided by--a name or names was mentioned and it was clearly another sly allusion to somebody "in the news" of the time, but I couldn't catch it.
I remember hearing the name Jeremy Thorpe at the time but I was a college junior and fearfully busy, and had only the vaguest impression of this case. And in those benighted days, one had to go to the periodical reading room of the library to see papers from the UK.
cheers, H.
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Post by andydecker on Apr 10, 2018 18:34:09 GMT
Do you know the old Ellery Queen novels, where they played fair with the clues and the reader had a chance to solve the case fpr himself before reading the conclusion? I read a few of those rather late and thought them mostly boring, and of course never solved the case. I never was a big fan of the cerebral detective, even if I still love my Holmes and most of its incarnations. Elemenary is a must see. But I also prefer my detectives a bit more human, be they occult or not.
Regardless I have become a fan of Poirot and Christie. In my 20s and 30s crime fiction couldn't be hardboiled enough, not to mention occult detectives - Sabat was my hero -, and I wouldn't have read Christie for free. Nowadays I still re-read my McDonald or Chandler, but I have come to like Christie.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 10, 2018 20:52:41 GMT
I remember hearing the name Jeremy Thorpe at the time but I was a college junior and fearfully busy, and had only the vaguest impression of this case. And in those benighted days, one had to go to the periodical reading room of the library to see papers from the UK. cheers, H. Jeremy Thorpe's resignation is among the events commemorated in Denim's glam punk masterpiece, Osmonds *. Anyway, here's another from the 'Hellfire files of' Jules de Grandin, town drunk, xenophobe, misogynist, closet homosexual, sadistic transvestite, skirt-chasing celibate, cushion gnawing necrophile, cold-blooded murderer, & Co. Hugh Rankin Seabury Quinn - Restless Souls: ( Weird Tales, Oct. 1928). A tale of Jules de Grandin - a weirdly beautiful vampire-story, through which runs a red thread of horror. "Interesting pallor". When Alice Heatherton rejects Joachim Palenzeke, he picks an argument with her brother, Ralph, shoots him dead, and flees to the swamp where, squatters later report, he kills himself. Alice is on her way to the morgue to claim Ralph body. Driving past the swamp, her chauffeur is attacked and beaten unconscious by the newly Undead Palenzeke, who rapes Alice and plunges his fangs into her throat. She returns from the grave, completely in thrall of her evil master. A Halloween party at the Café Bacchanale . Alice the vampire meets Donald Rochester, a young man, terminally ill, who has made up his mind that tonight to be his last on earth. It is love at first sight. Also present, de Grandin and Trowbridge, who, of course, can't help but make it their business to learn everything about the melancholy couple. Trowbridge, stickler as he is for the American way, is a bit put out, de Grandin heartily condones their unconventional relationship - Alice nightly feeds from her lover (minimal doses) - but even he is unable to prevent an enraged Palenzeke from murdering Rochester, and again enslaving Alice who, by now, only wants to die. It's Seabury Quinn, so we can trust de Grandin to destroy the diabolical Palenzeke ("You stinking truant from the charnel-house"), but that's the easy part. What is to be done with a problem like sweet Alice? In The Monster With A Thousand Faces, Brian J. Frost writes of Sonia Tanis ( Satan's Stepson) "no heroine since de Sade's Justine has suffered as much as she," but I reckon it's Alice Heatherton deserves the dubious accolade. When Seabury does sad the results can be sickening, but here he's on top of his game. *: For more of dem's drunk karaoke repertoire, see ... on second thoughts. Don't.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 12, 2018 17:45:24 GMT
There was one reference that wasn't included when Judge Cook offered the opinion that people who would take somebody's testimony seriously were in need of psychiatric help of the kind provided by--a name or names was mentioned and it was clearly another sly allusion to somebody "in the news" of the time, but I couldn't catch it. I'm not sure... it sounds like "Dr Gleedle & The Gleedletones", but it might have been something Cook just made up. OTOH, Cook underwent treatment for alcoholism with the psychiatrist Dr Max Glatt, and I think it was just a few years before this - so maybe it's a reference to him. Apparently there is a 3-part TV mini-series based on the Thorpe scandal coming up in the next couple of months - written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Stephen Frears, and with Hugh Grant playing Thorpe, it's called A Very English Scandal.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 12, 2018 19:08:21 GMT
Thanks again, Dr Strange. I hope the new series is good. The word "scandal" in and of itself seems so terribly English, somehow--to this Yank, at least. Of course, I'm the one who lives in the country where one President was nearly impeached for receiving oral service by somebody other than his spouse in the Oval Office, while another Prez married one pornstar and has had affairs with multiple others... it's all just a gay degringolade.
cheers, H.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 22, 2018 6:04:09 GMT
Hugh Rankin
Seabury Quinn - Body And Soul: ( Weird Tales, Sept. 1928). Jules de Grandin, the little French ghost-breaker, runs into frightful danger while unravelling a hideous mystery. "..... At the moment of your execution you will concentrate all your will upon entering the body which will be waiting at my home to receive your soul."Another experiment in soul-migration, this one pre-dating Arlton Eadie's no less implausible The Scourge Of Egypt[/i] by thirteen months. Urban Kolisko, former Professor of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, hypnotises Adolph Heschler, a condemned cop-killer, ostensibly to help him overcome his dread of impending execution. Kolisko insists that, with what little time he has left, Heschler concentrate solely on the opportunity to live on in a substitute body. It falls to Kolisko's brother, Michel, an Egyptologist, to procure the best possible corpse for the occasion. Failing miserably, Michel raids his private museum for a woeful alternative. The Professor, confident of demonstrating the the fallacy of "immortality,' is not best pleased when the experiment proves a success. As Heschler fries, his soul transfers to, and animates, the miserable shrivelled mummy provided him by Michel. Horrified at his lot, Heschler makes his displeasure known by first snapping Prof. Kolisko's spine, then breaking into the home of a harmless old woman and draining her blood dry! Jules de Grandin is first alerted to the menace when Dick Ratcliff - much the worse for drink after a night's jitterbugging or whatever it is these young fools get up to - is attacked by something lurking inside the Park Gate. Obviously this must be connected to the murders and, in less time than it takes to tell, the Phantom fighter identifies the culprit - an insatiable vampire Egyptian mummy! He even has the gall to berate Trowbridge for his stupidity in failing to work it out for himself. The scene is set for a final confrontation at the Kolisko cottage. "Killing that which is already dead is no small task" and the occult detective, taking no chances, improvises a crude lethal weapon for the occasion. There may well be dozens of vampire mummy supernatural tales, but offhand can only think of E & H. Heron's The Story of Baelbrow. Terrific face at the window sequence early doors. Story atypically bereft of nude flappers in peril (presumably Quinn was still exhausted from penning the previous month's run-in with The Serpent Woman). All-action finale deserving of 'sixties Hammer Films treatment. Sergeant Jeremiah Costello features prominently ("Howly Mither! Will ye be lookin' at th' awfulness o' him, sors?") though I realise some readers may not take this as a recommendation. Dismissed by E. F. Bleiler as "routine," etc.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 4, 2018 23:48:57 GMT
BTW, for those interested, the third volume of the Nightshade Books de Grandin reprints, "The Dark Angel" is now out; my copy arrived yesterday. It covers 1931-33 stories, and includes both the novella "Satan's Stepson" and the novel "The Devil's Bride". It's interesting that these were published sequentially - it's almost as though they exhausted Quinn's capacity for - or perhaps interest in - longer De Grandin adventures, as afterwards he returned to producing stories that were at most of novelette length. I suspect it may have been simpler and more profitable for him to write in that format. And now the fourth volume, A Rival from the Grave, is out. Content from the Nightshade site: Introduction—George A. Vanderburgh and Robert E. Weinberg Keeping the Golden Age Alive—Mike Ashley The Chosen of Vishnu (Weird Tales, August 1933) Malay Horror (Weird Tales, September 1933) The Mansion of Unholy Magic (Weird Tales, October 1933) Red Gauntlets of Czerni (Weird Tales, December 1933) The Red Knife of Hassan (Weird Tales, January 1934) The Jest of Warburg Tantavul (Weird Tales, September 1934) Hands of the Dead (Weird Tales, January 1935) The Black Orchid (Weird Tales, August 1935) The Dead-Alive Mummy (Weird Tales, October 1935) A Rival from the Grave (Weird Tales, January 1936) Witch-House (Weird Tales, November 1936) Children of the Bat (Weird Tales, January 1937) Satan’s Palimpsest (Weird Tales, September 1937) Pledged to the Dead (Weird Tales, October 1937) Living Buddhess (Weird Tales, November 1937) Flames of Vengeance (Weird Tales, December 1937) Frozen Beauty (Weird Tales, February 1938) Incense of Abomination (Weird Tales, March 1938) I've only read of a few if the stories in this volume ("The Jest of Warburg Tantuval," one of the best in the series; "Frozen Beauty"; and "Incense of Abomination") so I was unable to resist ordering it.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 5, 2018 0:12:35 GMT
Looks really good. Not read too many of these, either. Agree that The Jest of Warburg Tantavul rates among his most accomplished. Malay Horror is absolutely barking mental!
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 11, 2018 22:22:31 GMT
The first story in A Rival from the Grave is no lost gem. "The Chosen of Vishnu" rips off Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," of all things, and has aged poorly for reasons that shouldn't be too hard to guess from the title. Apart from a bit of rope trick and a phantasmal tiger, there's not much going on in this one. Easy to see why Weinberg left it on the cutting room floor when he put together the Popular Library series.
I have higher hopes for the likes of "The Mansion of Unholy Magic" and "Satan's Palimpsest."
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Nov 12, 2018 12:45:57 GMT
Malay Horror is absolutely barking mental! "Malay Horror" may have some cringe-inducing parts (Ah Kee's dialogue actually made me long for Sergeant Costello's, and Trowbridge is as useless as ever), but it's far more exciting than "The Chosen of Vishnu." Quinn milks the penanggalan legend for everything it's worth. Hard to go wrong with a vampire woman who's a floating head trailing her own esophagus and stomach. There's a good action scene--thorns and knives versus penanggalan teeth--and the surgery de Grandin performs at the end is so over the top that I had to smile. It's also fun to see Quinn work in some background from his day job as a funeral home director.
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