I've never been a huge fan of bikers sporting clothing, tattoos, patches, medals, or other accoutrements evocative of Nazi Germany; but I saw one such over the Memorial Day weekend just past that really made me scratch my head.

I saw a black biker wearing a Stahlhelm.

*PauseA black man -- wearing a motorcycle helmet modeled after a helmet ( Read more... )

I still haven't read any of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), but, what with the 23 December release of the U.S. movie adaptation of the first book, directed by David Fincher (Alien 3, se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin ( Read more... )

From Sunday, 18 December to Thursday, 22 December, I read Robert B. Parker's Passport to Peril (NY: Hard Case Crime [Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.], 2009 [copyright 1951]; Hard Case Crime Book Number 057; ISBN: 0-8439-6119-8; 254 pps. [incl. a 5-pg. afterword by the author's daughter, Daphne Wolcott Parker Hawkes), which I checked out from my ( Read more... )

From Monday, 25 April to Friday, 29 April, I read the sixth book (of seven, thus far) in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series (the first three books have been collected in omnibus format as Berlin Noir: March Violets, 1989; The Pale Criminal, 1990; and A German Requiem, 1991), If the Dead Rise Not (originally published in the UK in 2009 by Quercus ( Read more... )

From Tuesday, 19 April to Thursday, 21 April, I read the fifth book (of seven, thus far) in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series (the first three books have been collected in omnibus format as Berlin Noir: March Violets, 1989; The Pale Criminal, 1990; and A German Requiem, 1991), A Quiet Flame (originally published in the UK in 2008 by Quercus; 1st ( Read more... )

Adam Gopnik really outdid himself in the current issue of The New Yorker (the 30 August 2010 issue, though published on Monday, 23 August): his survey of Winston Churchill's career zenith as prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, in the form of a New York Review of Books-style multiple book review essay ("Finest Hours: The making ( Read more... )

Finally saw Inglourious Basterds, the long-awaited WWII action/Jewish revenge/Italian genre movie homage film from writer-director Quentin Tarantino, the other night (Friday, 4 September). In lieu of an organized review, I thought I'd throw some thoughts up against the e-wall and see what sticks:

( Scalphunters on parade )

( Read more... )

• I didn't remember that he, alone of all authors of my experience (or increasingly dodgy memory, it seems...), spelled "okay" as "okey." Why did he prefer this variant spelling? *Shrug*
  
  
• I didn't remember the amount of racial epithets and ethnic slurs slung around not just by the riff-raff but by Chandler's white knight (and, arguably, Mary Sue ( Read more... )

BBC Radio 4's Archive Hour programme last Saturday, 19 April had a fascinating episode about the anti-fascist (and anti-anti-Semitic) 43 Group battling Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF; amalgamated with Jeffrey Hamm's British League into the Union Movement [UM] in 1948) in the streets of London after World War II: "A Rage in ( Read more... )