Dave-El's Book Report: Five Gears In Reverse

It's been awhile since I've done a book report post. 

The Thursday spot has been dedicated to comics.

You might argue that since the book in question is told with pictures of people talking in word balloons, it's still comics.

Since this is a new hard cover production from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, I will insist this is a BOOK and if you wanna call it comics, well, you can fuck right off.

Let's get into Five Gears In Reverse.

This latest installment by Brubaker & Phillips takes place in their Criminal universe of mobsters vying for supremecy in Bay City and the hapless luck deficient Lawless family who flit along the edges of the crime families who run things.  

The focus falls on Ricky Lawless, son of the near legendary Teeg Lawless. Ricky has inherited his father's unfortunate knack for getting into trouble but Ricky is deficient in Teeg's luck for getting out of that trouble.    

Karl calls Ricky.  He wants his goddam money.  

Ricky's in the hole to the bookie for 25 grand.  Karl gives Ricky a tip on a job that will more than net the money he owes. 

All Ricky has to do is show up at the right place at the right time and a big satchel of money will fall right into his lap.

Of course the job is too easy and after many, many questionable decisions by Ricky Lawless, the job goes down with considerable violence ending in murder.  

Without Ricky getting the promised haul.  

With girlfriend Mallory in tow, Ricky robs a liquor store that is a front for the Santini crime family.  

Once more, the old Ricky Lawless bad luck kicks in.  Ricky's score is lost, Mallory gets badly injured and Ricky winds up in the crosshairs of the big man Arno Santini himself.

In order to save Mallory and himself, Ricky takes a low effort,high risk job out of town on behalf of Santini to deal with a rival syndicate. 

Well, that goes badly. 

Looks like Mallory and Ricky are gonna die but Ricky pleads for one last chance to do something for Santini to spare their lives.

So it turns out there is some business Ricky can help Arno Santini take care of.

Ricky takes a high effort,even higher risk on behalf of Santini to take revenge on Sebastian Hyde, Bay City's other, bigger and badder mob boss. 

All Ricky has to do is murder Chester, Hyde's top enforcer.

Chester didn't make it to the top of Sebastian Hyde's criminal network without being very good at what he does.

Ricky weighs his options and decides his best chance of keeping Mallory and himself alive.

Is to make another deal.  

SPOILER:  Ricky and Mallory will escape Arno Santini.

SPOILER #2: Arno Santini will not escape Chester's wrath.

And the book ends with Ricky and Mallory safe and sound despite their misadventures rife with bad decisions and lousy luck.

Except....

Karl calls Ricky.  He still wants his goddam money. 

Well, fuck! 

With Five Gears In Reverse, Ed Brubaker writes a tight, twisted tale of Ricky Lawless in a cycle of ever escalating peril fraught with bad luck, bad decisions and bad impulses.  

While the focus is mostly on Ricky, Brubaker does spend some time on Mallory's backstory, a terrible tale of torment and loss. Mallory is the best thing to ever happen to Ricky but any positive influence she has on Mr.Lawless is mitigated by her own propensity for bad luck, bad decisions and bad impulses. 

Brubaker has an amazing gift for dialogue and internal narration. Brubaker's script is laced with flashes of dark humor as he paints a picture of growing danger and despair.   

Artist Sean Phillips is on point with some of his best artwork, conveying the dark moods of a classic film noir.  With his son Jacob providing color, Sean conveys intensity in people talking as well as explosions of graphic and brutal violence.  

Over the course of various Criminal books, we've watched Ricky Lawless grow from a child to an adult, trapped in the same spiral that consumed Teeg Lawless, his father.  

With Five Gears In Reverse, we witness the epitome of Ricky's evolution into truly his father's son.  

Only with even worse luck than dear old dad.

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The world of Criminal will be moving from graphic novels to television with a new TV series set to debut on Amazon Prime later this year with Ed Brubaker as writer and producer. 

The TV series will continue to explore the criminal underworld of Bay City and more misadventures of Ricky and Mallory. 

Canine Expansion Pack

Last week, Andrea and I received a visit here at the Fortress of Ineptitude from our granddaughter, Rosie the Dog.

If Rosie looks a bit pensive here, well, she's under a little bit of stress.

She brought her emotional support humans, son Dean and friend Jan.

She also brought her new sister.  

Meet our newest granddaughter, London the Dog.

On one hand, London will sit on her hind legs and quietly look up at you with wide open eyes and a quizzicle expression as if to say:

I DARE YOU NOT TO LOVE ME!!!!

She is so friggin' adorable when she does that! What a CUTE li'l puppy she is!  

On the other hand...

She is overloaded with energy, whizzing and whirling about, testing everything and everyone as potential sources of food.

London can be a lot.

London is a puppy with puppy energy and a whole range of puppy behaviors she still needs to learn to control.  

And Rosie is not quite ready to deal with that.

When we first welcomed Rosie to our family, we got a slightly older, more docile creature.  

Like a true member of the House of El family, Rosie is a quiet creature of habit who has gotten used to years of being the only child.

Rosie: "I am NOT dealing with this!"
London: "Will you be my friend?"
Rosie: "I'm not listening!"
London: "Will you be my friend?"
Rosie: "I did NOT agree to any of this!"
London: "Will you be my friend?"
Rosie: "Can I go back to the shelter?"
London: "Will you be my friend?"

Dean and Janna were not planning on being emotional support humans to another dog. But when they found London abandoned by the side of the road, what else could they do? 

Welcome to the family, London! 

And Rosie, you're still top dog in the familial hierarchy.  

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Stuart Fails To Save The Universe

Big Bang Theory is dead.

Long live Big BangTheory!

Let's take a look at Stuart Fails To Save the Universe. 

Let's start with the theme song composed by Danny Elfman.

The comments on You Tube dismiss the opening as A.I. slop. I think this may be just trolls engaging in "haters gonna hate" or hell, the comments may be A.I. slop.  It does seem to be the go-to insult to to dismiss anything as A.I. slop whether it is or not.

God, I hate having to always be on guard if something is A.I. or not. I can't always tell even though I am a genius as certified by  Cracker Barrel Inc. 

Me, maybe I'm just dumb but I liked the opening and I hope it's not A.I. slop.   

Anway, that's the intro from episode one.  The opening changes with each episode with Elfman providing variations to the arrangement each time.

The naming convention for episode titles is "Spoiler: _____"

For episode one, it's "Spoiler: Gary Dies".

Who's Gary?

He's just this guy who.... don't get too attached because, well, he dies. 

OK, he is in episode two because as Stuart correctly identifies, "You're some kind of running joke in this nightmare."

So what the hell is going on in Stuart Fails To Save the Universe?

OK, here's the deal,sparky! 

Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter and Howard Wolowitz have created a quantum entanglement doohickey that has gone wrong and fractured reality.

Comic shop owner Stuart Bloom is tasked with recovering the device and averting a resulting "multiverse Armageddon".  The device sends Stuart skipping across different realities encountering variations of himself and his friends with different worlds operating under strange and distinct rules.   

The core of the series features: 

• Kevin Sussman as Stuart Bloom 
• Lauren Lapkus as Denise No Last Name* 
• Brian Posehn as Bert Kibbler
• John Ross Bowie as Barry Kripke 

*It looks like Denise might be in for a repeat of the gimmick of Penny on Big Bang not having a last name. But the name on the door of her apartment building in episode 2 shows "Denise Jeffries".  But that's just in one of multiple realities so it might not stick and become "some kind of running joke in this nightmare." 

Also making cameos: 

• Kunal Nayyar, Kaley Cuoco, Melissa Rauch, Joshua Malina, Wil Wheaton, Christine Baranski and Riki Lindhome are among the ones we know about.

During some recent interviews, Jim Parsons made a point to say how miserable he was playing Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang Theory and has no intention of being Sheldon ever again.

Doth the man protest too much? 

Nobody's heard from Johnny Galecki.  As for Howard, Simon Helberg's been quiet as well but I can't see Simon saying no to this.

Stuart Fails To Save the Universe is an amalgamation of comedy and sci-fi adventure.  While rooted in some obvious Big Bang Theory nostalgia, this show also far removed from BBT.

For example, instead of appearing as Beverly Hofstadter, Christine Baranski appears as "noted film, TV and theater star Christine Baranski" as the host of a training film at a rehabilitation camp. Will the rehabilitation be painful? as "noted film, TV and theater star Christine Baranski" says, "It will hurt like a motherfucker" and then she laughs.

Oh yeah, they get to cuss on this show.

As Stuart says in the pilot, "Shit's about to get weird."  

What turns Stuart Fails To Save the Universe on it's head from being a mere nostalgia trip is seeing how returning actors from Big Bang are NOT exactly playing the characters we remember.

Episode two is "Spoiler: Zack Is In This One"

Hey BBT fans! It's everyone's favorite Penny's pre-Leonard dumb boyfriend, Zack!

Actually, Zack is not the best example of "the same but different".  Zack's still kind of dumb.

But Kaley Cuoco shows up as Penny but NOT the Penny we knew but a dark haired hard ass leader of a resistance movement against a planetary fascist A.I. regime. 

While Stuart Fails To Save the Universe defies our expectations from Big Bang Theory canon, it also defies our expectations of a sci-fi adventure series. 

Stuart Bloom is still pretty much the weak willed nerd comic shop owner from BBT but he's genre savvy enough to know he needs to step up to this challenge he's been thrust into. Too bad he's not a stronger, smarter person than he is and thus, as it says in the title, Stuart is destined to fail.   

That seems a bit of a pessimistic premise to hang a TV series. I don't know, maybe Bert or Denise will have better luck.

Spoiler: Barry Kripke is NOT to be trusted. 

As befits a series set around a comic book store owner, Stuart Fails To Save the Universe will be part of a series of variant covers from DC Comics.   

Jason Badower

Serg Acuna

Sean Izaakes

By the way, there is an official Stuart Fails To Save the Universe podcast that goes live after each episode drops.  It's hosted by Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day and the podcasts are longer than the episodes they're talking about.

And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Coming up on the Touchbase: The Librarians are back as the next chapter resumes with season 2.  

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

The Vandalism Reflection

Justice was coming for the vicious vandal David Hearn, the epitome of evil amongst Olympic canoeists.

This vile fiend dared to deface the iconic Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and he must PAY!  

District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro was most emphatic that David Hearn was not just guilty but absolutely, positively, 100% guilty! Defininitely and definitively GUILTY!  

Evidence? You want evidence?  

Pirro was firm there was evidence! You just wait! When this case goes to trial you will see ALL the evidence that the dastardly destroyer David Hearn was guilty, guilty, GUILTY!!!!!

Except...

On Friday, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the criminal case against David Hearn due to a lack of evidence that he done did the thing he was accused of having defininitely and definitively done did.   

Here is some of the text from Jeanine Pirro's filing: 

Pirro cited her office had received information “showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by Department of the Interior."

So that throws DOI Secretary Doug Burgum under the bus.

“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed."

So Donald Trump joins Burgum under the same bus. 

“A recent visual inspection showed damage throughout the Reflecting Pool, even in the middle of the pool, where a vandal would not likely attempt to peel the lining. Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt."

It's getting crowded under that bus as Jeanine Pirro was VERY insistent that David Hearn, that pinnacle of perfidity amongst Olympic canoeists, was guilty, guilty, GUILTY!!!!!

“This is a case with tremendous evidence,” Pirro said when the charge against Hearn was announced.  

This is not the first time Pirro has gone in HOT to achieve a full bore maximum force prosecution to appease der Führer and his delusional obsessions. 

And it's not the first time Pirro's appeasement of der Führer has run afoul of that pesky bugaboo known as "facts".  

I want to take issue with this part of her filing: newly discovered information.  Newly discovered? This is Pirro trying to give herself some cover. There was nothing about this farce of a prosecution that wasn't clear and obvious from day one.

David Hearn did NOTHING to warrant the accusation of vandalism.

And it was clear to anyone with functioning eyes and a couple of working brain cells that what was happening to the reflecting pool was not vandalism.  That the problems with the pool were the result of (in Pirro's own words) "hasty and botched work" was not newly discovered information but was fucking obvious from the first day of the first algae bloom and the first piece of paint floated to the murky surface.   

Even as devoted a loyalist as Jeanine Pirro can't make a case happen without facts unless she wants to join Rudy Guliani in the Disbarred Lawyers Club.

Which should be the end of that.

But....

Of course Li'l Donnie weighed in with his goddam opinion.

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

OK, so the "86 47" on the grass was a seperate issue from the reflecting pool and David Hearn, that zenith of sinfulness  amongst Olympic canoeists, was only charged with vandalizing the pool. But who knows why evil men do what they do? Does Trump think that Hearn hacked and slashed the bottom of the pool and then peed on the grass to create an 86 47?  

Only Donald Trump dares to conceive of the dastardly depths of David Hearn's depravity.

While Jeannine Pirro's inclination for supplication to her beloved der Führer ran up against the implacable wall of facts, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum persisted in his syncophancy toward's his dear leader's delusional directive of vandalism.

"Some of these acts were even caught on camera. We also provided the U.S. Attorney's office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool.

@POTUS cares deeply about protecting our sacred national monuments and his leadership has led the restoration of our Nation's Capital by Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Again.

Intentional damage done to the Reflecting Pool is no different than defacing any one of our other national monuments.

We won't back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments."

For the record, these "acts... caught on camera" were blurry CCTV images of people reaching into the pool to retrieve pieces of the floating paint sealant. There is NO video footage of anyone hacking and slashing at the pool's base. 

Despite Trump's insistence that someone made a gashes in the paint, ranging from 200 to 350 feet long.  

When the pool was drained to fix the damn thing, guess what could not be seen? That's right! Any evidence of this alleged vandalism. 

What we have seen from this debacle of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is a near perfect distillation of Donad Trump's greed, ego, incompetence and his delusional obsessions. 

In a world that is on fire from a war Trump started with no clear path to success or completion, the issues with the pool seem petty and insignicant. 

But in a nation where citizens are struggling to afford food, gas and healthcare, Trump decided this vanity project was a priority.  

The pool project made Li'l Donnie look bad and that is what makes him mad.  Your suffering, he does not give one goddam fuck about. 

For more on the reflecting pool debacle, click here.  

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For a comprehensive look at all the fuckery Donald Trump was up to last week, here's Dave Columbo with "The Week In Trump".  

So much shit, so little time. 

Thanks, Dave, for your sacrifice.  

StarTrekking: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 4 - “The Griffin Incident”

We're up to the 2nd episode of the 4th season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.  

The innocuous, mundane title of "The Griffin Incident" belies the intensity, the horror that awaits.

Seriously...

What the hell was that?

On a shuttle trip from a Starfleet conference, La'an, Spock and Jim Kirk happen across the USS Griffin.  The Griffin is a bit of a legend in Starfleet, having vanished years prior under mysterious circumstances.

La'an, Spock and Kirk beam over to find out what's what.

Then shit gets weird.

The trio are haunted by various "ghosts" who torment and torture them based on their respective fears.

Kirk is haunted by the persistent crying of a baby which Kirk thinks is his infant son David.  Jim is estranged from Carol Marcus and has been feeling bad for missing out on time with his son.

Spock is bedeviled by T'Pring who is threatening to cut out his pesky Vulcan bits.  Like lobbing off the tips of his pointy ears.

And there's La'an who has uncovered logs made by Harper, the Griffin’s security chief.  Harper was all stressed out that the ship's crew is descending into madness and hurting each other and there's fuck all she can do about.  The Griffin's descent into madness feeds Harper's own madness.

And Harper's obsessions become La'an's. To the point La'an brutally stabs Kirk, miraculously not killing him.   

After last week's episode where La'an punched a dinosaur, she's becoming concerned her augmented DNA is beginning to assert itself.  She is a Noonien-Singh, a line known for it's world conquering tendencies.  

Long story made short, the Enterprise is able to rescue the trio and while Kirk and Spock have made it past their respective encounters with their demons of fear and guilt, La'an remains haunted by Harper.   

After last week's full on sci-fi geek out with space stuff AND time travel, "The Griffin Incident" is a full tilt journey into horror, a genre that Star Trek has attempted before with varying degrees of unsuccess.  This episode of SNW rates, IMHO, as a success.

I for one was horrifed.

SIDE NOTE: the episode was written by Robbie Thompson who knows a thing or two about horror as a writer for Supernatural.

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Since this is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, that means it's the 30th anniverary of the 30th anniversary. 

30 years ago, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine celebrated the 30th anniversary with "Trial and Tribblelations" which saw the DS9 crew integrated into the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles".

Star Trek: Voyager joined the 30th birthday festivities with "Flashback" which interacted with events from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country with Tuvok serving on the Excelsior with Captain Sulu.

Below is a short video that looks back on these two episodes. 

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Next week's SNW episode is "Human Best Friend".  After the moral quandries of episode 1 and the horrors of episode 2, I hope we're in for something a bit more fun.

Until next time, live long and prosper.

Movie Time: They Won't Believe Me

After this past week's Tuesday TV Touchbase focus on Spider Noir, let's turn back to the clock to 1947 for a film noir about adultery, greed, deception and death. 

It's... Movie Time! 

Released in 1947, the film is called They Won't Believe Me, starring Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Jane Greer and Rita Johnson.

The film producer was Alfred Hitchcock's longtime assistant and collaborator Joan Harrison, a rare thing in that era for a movie to have a female producer.  

The movie begins with a man on trial... for murder! 

As we will discover, the man is guilty of many things.

Is one of them...murder? 

They Won't Believe Me begins with a murder trial. 

The prosecution has rested it's case and it's time for the defense to take it's turn, 

The defendant, Larry Ballentine, is called to the stand to testify and tell his story.  

It's a long story. I hope the jury is getting the digest version.

We begin in New York City: Larry is married to Greta, a marriage held together more by money and security than by love or at least that's how Larry tells it.

Writer Janice Bell has become Larry's confidant and more. Tired of being the other woman, Janice is ready to start over in Montreal.  

Larry tells Janice he is prepared to leave Greta and run off with Janice to Montreal. 

But Greta has other ideas. She knows about Janice and isn't prepared to give up on Larry without a fight. She's purchased a home in Los Angeles and secured him a position with a brokerage firm there. Larry has no choice but to abandon Janice (with no good-bye or explanation) and stay with Greta.

In Los Angeles with his wife in a new home and a new job, Larry tries to behave himself.  

Until brokerage employee Verna Carlson comes sniffing around. Larry gets into some trouble with his business partner Trenton over a client but Verna bails Larry out.  

Verna does not hide her aspirations: she admits to being a gold digger and she has her eyes on Larry. Yeah, Trenton has more money but Larry is younger, more handsome and he does all right for himself.  

Verna is seducing Larry.

Larry lets her. 

And Larry enters into another adulterous relationship.  

Which Greta finds out about and gives Larry another ultimatum.  She's moving from L.A. to a ranch house in the mountains. Larry can follow her or stay in the city with Verna.

Larry once more choose money and security over his passions and abandons Verna for Greta and a life of solitude in the mountains.  

Which sucks. 

Maybe Greta is all up for horse riding along the ravine or planting her garden and what all but Larry is bored. 

Larry gets itchy for Verna. They hook up with a plan to steal money from Greta and start life over somewhere else. Larry promises to get a divorce from Greta and marry Verna. He even jumps the gun and puts a wedding band on her finger.

While driving down a highway at night, an out of control oncoming truck causes Larry's car to spin out and crash. Larry is able to extricate himself from the wreckage but before anything can be done to help Verna, the car explodes in a big ball of fire. 

Waking up in a hospital with a concussion, Larry learns the authorities assume the horribly burned remains in the car was his wife Greta since all they could recover from the bones and ashes was a gold wedding ring.   

Larry doesn't correct this assumption. 

Larry returns to the ranch house to eliminate Greta before anyone knows she's still alive.  

While he was gone, Greta fell down a steep ravine near the house and died. So he doesn't have to murder her. But there's the problem of the body which he dumps into the river.  

Larry books it to South America where he just happens to run into Janice Bell.  They reconcile and hook up, returning together to Los Angeles. 

Where Larry learns running into Janice was not a coincidence. She's working for Trenton who's wondering what the hell happened to Verna and just knows Larry is up to shit.

Trenton calls the police and they start poking around, finding Greta's dead body in the river. Except since the official account is that the burned up body of Verna from the car wreck was Greta, the police assume the body of Greta is Verna.

Everybody got that?

And we're back in the present where a spent and weary Larry Ballentine has ended his tragic tale of stupidity and deception (but not murder). It's time for the jury to deliberate.

Back in court the next day, the verdict is about to be read.

When Larry makes a break for it to jump out the open 12th floor window.  A courtroom guard runs over to the window to pull him back in shoots him.   

Larry Ballentine is dead.

And the verdict?  Not guilty.

And we've reach... THE END! 

What the hell? Really? That is how it ends? C'mon! You gotta be kidding me! 

In the novel on which this movie is based, Larry does jump out the window to commit suicide. He may not have been guilty of murder but his actions still led to the deaths of two women.

And all the sordid details of his life,the adultery, the lies, the fraud have been exposed and he is not prepared to live with it. 

But the motion picture production code mandates that a character cannot escape punishment by the state for his crimes so the ending was changed to have the courtroom guard shoot Larry.  

Even though the guard had more than enough time to cross the room and physically stop Larry from tumbling out the window. 

It's not 2026 and he's not an ICE thug. It's 1947 and he's a courtroom guard, for crying out loud. 

Let's take a look at who starred in this fershlugginer thing. 

Robert Young who played Larry Ballentine was one of the three Bobs in Crossfire along with Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum.  

The role of Larry Balletine was a rare outing for Young to play a total cad.  Most of the time, he played friendly, genial characters. This was especially true of his time on TV in such shows as Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby MD.  

Robert Young told Dick Cavett in 1968 that the one film he made that was a flop was when he played an unlikeable character in They Won't Believe Me.  

Susan Hayward was Verna Carlson.  Susan appeared in this blog before co-starring with Robert Mitchum (him again) in The Lusty Men.   

Jane Greer was Janice Bell, Larry's writer friend and first illicit paramour at the start of the film.  Jane is another (one more time!) Robert Mitchum co-star in the film noir Out Of the Past where she embrace the role of the classic femme fatale archetype.  

Greta Ballentine was played by Rita Johnson who had a tragic back story worthy of it's own film noir. 

Rita Johnson suffered a head trauma on September 6, 1948 that required brain surgery. The cause of the injury was subject to gossip and speculation, including her boyfriend had beaten her.  Rita herself claimed a large, industrial-grade hair dryer at her apartment had fallen on her.

She was in a coma for two weeks and it took over a year after that to recover.  Her left side was paralyzed temporarily and she had to re-learn how to walk. Her subsequent film career was severely curtailed due to reduced mobility and lack of mental focus.  

Johnson struggled with alcoholism. She died of a brain hemorrhage on October 31, 1965, at age 52.  

Back to the movie...

Writing for Time magazine in 1947, critic James Agee was a ready to pronounce a moral judgement on the film, a not uncommon trait among movie reviewers of the era.   

"A skillful telling of a pretty nasty story ... Thanks to the fact that the ice was broken with ... Double Indemnity, Hollywood can now get by with filming this kind of shabby 'realism'. The blessing is mixed ... in this, as in most such 'adult' movies, the semi-maturity is well mixed with trashiness."

A lot of people of the era were not prepared to deal with the moral ambivalence of film noir. The protagonist is not necessarily a heroic character.  Even a private eye or a police detective who is not on the take will be flawed and make some ethically questionable choices.  

They Won't Believe Me turns that premise competely on it's head. Larry Ballentine is nothing but ethically questionable choices, blatantly using women for money (wife Greta) or sex (Janice and Verna), betraying them when the lure of one thing (money or sex) is stronger than the other.  And his cowardice follows him as he fails to follow through on any commitment to his desires.

The only redeeming thing about Larry Ballentine is at the end of his confession to the jury and exposed himself of the self serving cad he is, he sees himself for who he is and he doesn't like it.  But even then, he reveals himself once more a coward as he seeks to take his own life rather than face the consequences of his actions.  

They Won't Believe Me is an intriguing case study in the human damages of one bad decision after another. 

Your Friday Video Link: Hindley Street Country Club

 

About a week ago, I was bopping around on You Tube and stumbled across what might now be my favorite cover band, the Hindley Street Country Club.

Your Friday Video Link#1 is  HSCC covering "Something About You" by Level 42.

Who are these people? Hindley Street Country Club (HSCC) is an Australian music project that has become one of the most widely viewed cover music acts the world over with over one billion cumulative views across various platforms.   

HSCC was established in 2017. So how come I'm only NOW hearing about this group?  

Next up is Your Friday Video Link#2  fearturing HSCC version of "Easy Lover" by Phillipo Bailey and Phil Collins.

The Hindley Street Country Club derives its name from Hindley Street in Adelaide, South Australia which had a thriving live music scene in the latter part of the 20th century.

The band has been made up of a rotating lineup of local musicians, depending on what is required to reproduce the original song.

Would HSCC dare to cover a classic by Boston? Your Friday Video Link#3 is these guys doing just that with "More Than A Feeling"  

These are just three selections by the HSCC. The group is quite prolific and now that I've "discovered" them, You Tube is constantly feeding me another fantastic cover by the band. 

That is that for this week's post of Your Friday Video Link. Remember to be good to one another and to always keep the music alive.