RAYMOND EMBRACK

Murder Beach TV

2012-03-02T21:37:00.002-08:00

In 2008 this film won the Palme d'Or at the Chuck Zito film festival. It is required viewing by both the Cosa Nostra and the Hell's Angels. The Crips and Bloods have warred over its themes. In 2010 it was seized by the DEA as an illegal steroid. It made Steven Seagal weep.

Embrack Express

2012-03-02T01:28:00.000-08:00

Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. The happiest place in Disneyland is the locker room where Snow White deals meth. That was when Aziz got America. So Aziz used the C4 on the beards instead.

Copyright 2012 Raymond Embrack

Book Report

2012-02-29T17:46:00.001-08:00

Shug is fresh out of prison with a simple plan, collect his stash and go to California. When it begins with a stolen car and a hostage, it's clear that no plan stays simple for Shug. This is one example of the perfect novella. You know one when you read it. It doesn't reinvent the crime story, it tells the story with believable characters with natural dialogue, perfectly paced scenes. Ray Banks writes like there is not one wrong word from start to finish. California starts strong and I was instantly hooked. Then while reading this I reached a sweet spot when it became clear that each scene would be stronger than the last until hitting a killer ending. That's what perfect novellas do.

Big Superhero Action 7

2012-02-23T21:02:00.002-08:00

They took seats in the kitchen, munched on grilled cheese. It tasted like it smelled and wanted to be served on a daily basis and again after midnight.

“How long could you fly?”

“I discovered it a year ago.”

“How?”

“I heard the song ‘Heroes’ and I could fly.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. I’m into ‘Heroes.’ Heard it for years. Then from that one time on it made me could fly. Could make me fly. Only that recording gives me the power of flight. No covers, only the Bowie original. I can fly for over an hour off one play of the song. Then I play it again for a refill.”

“That’s just dumb.”

“Yet it works. I can fly, I can make a Delta 88 fly, any vehicle and size. But I’m not The Carousel.”

“Meaning what?”

“The Carousel’s only superpower is not being a superhero.”

“No,” Spector said. “He creates them. I take it flying to classic rock changed your life.”

“It changed everything. I never exactly fitted in as an ordinary person anyway. Now reality is like being inside a dream. Like I found my natural state and this is it.”

“Now what?”

“Now I become a superhero.”

“Why become a superhero?”

“You want the real answer? I’m obsessed with a superhero.”

“Who?”

“Teenage Cleopatra.”

“You’re after her?”

“I am. And I don’t have a chance without being a way better superhero than this. That is my goal in life.”

“You got a name?”

“Duff Nash.”

“Okay, here you are, Duff Nash. Why should I trust you?”

“You know why. You can tell who you can trust. You can tell I’m kosher.”

“That is true. But if I turn out to be wrong, your life ends.”

“Intense but deal.”

“Now what have you gained from the deal?”

“We can talk openly about stuff.”

“You talk,” Spector said. “I’ll edit what we talk.”

“Martian Justice took out the Motorchrists alone. I thought you…he was dead as fuck. Then he got up and blew their fucking heads off. You blew their heads off but they didn’t die. Somehow you…Martian Justice does that.”

“Okay, first off: stick to third person. MJ uses regeneration disruptor cells. Their heads grow back. The gun doesn’t blow off heads, it grows a new one. The brain is childlike but harmless and eventually it grows to full adult size.”

“How?”

“KM technology.”

“You started AXIS,” Duff said.

“I won’t deny that statement.”

“AXIS is a force for good?”

“It’s a force that is anti-OSD.”

“The Order of Social Domination.”

“Correct.”

“What does AXIS stand for?”

“AXIS doesn’t stand for anything. It takes a word associated with evil, cleans it up and owns it.”

“Why start AXIS?”

“The OSD, that’s why. The OSD has to be stopped before it finds the key.”

“How do we know the key exists?”

“AXIS has confirmed the existence of super powers outside Brutalia. That indicates a key that will release super powers to the rest of the world. AXIS must find it first. If the OSD finds the key first the world as we know it is fucked. Dr. Playground will wipe his ass with every military on the planet and put everyone into a uniform. Except the children, who he will dress according to his sexual fantasies. The OSD will end inequality because everyone will be slaves. For now only AXIS can stop the OSD.”

“What makes Dr. Playground that evil?”

“That’s what he wants to be. He has the almost unlimited power to be whatever he wants to be.”

“How many superheroes are in AXIS?”

“The number is a secret.”

“Are all of them…you?”

“The membership is secret.”

“How many superheroes are you?”

“I talk about myself in the third person. There’s reason for that.”

“Okay.”

“It’s like this. The Carousel is a superhero who takes turns being an unspecified number of superheroes. They spin like the monthly comic books in the comic book carousel in the corner drug store. The Carousel picks one of them at a time to become.”

“How does that work?”

Big Superhero Action 6

2012-02-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

The 60 Minutes intro painted him with broad strokes, showed a clip from the SNL sketch with Andrew Thorne played by Alec Baldwin.

The stone-faced 60 Minutes guy held up the photo of Mayor of Brutalia Andrew Thorne in mask and cape, a Bible in either hand. “This has become your defining image. Any comments?”

Andrew Thorne was prepared for the gotcha moment. The tight face shot showed him flash a confident smile. He answered, “It’s a good shot. I think it’s overused but I understand how mass media works. One picture is easier than a thousand words.”

“You have said that Brutalia is a city created by God.”

“Do you know what ‘God’ means? Getting Onto Destiny. This is a city created by God. God’s hand is in the functioning of this city.”

“How so?”

“The success of this city is due to God’s will. We operate this city with God-consciousness.”

Past that point Thorne set up a verbal checkpoint. It was to not-say too much about the functioning of the city.

Privately Thorne spent one hour each night typing his memoirs. It began with the existence of his administration. The exact point when he had become mayor. It was the day God appointed him.

Before that…in the year 1999 two rented tour buses left the church in Amarillo, Texas. He was the pastor and the driver, behind him 23 pilgrims going to see the Coming of the Lord for the new millennium. The first bus had the pilgrims, the second carried the dead, from ages 15 to 97, eleven loved ones to be resurrected in God’s city. Back then you could drive to Brutalia by freeway without Army checkpoints. Busloads of pilgrims headed there. There were pilgrims from churches, there were the handicapped and the sick and the dying. You saw it and drove toward it, a skyline that lined the horizon with skyscrapers without end. The sight filled your bones with terror and thrill as you rode toward God’s judgment made more vivid from the distance of a freeway, a vision beyond the steel girders of a bridge. It affected the people around you on the bus. A head rocked then the hair turned white. Someone started speaking in tongues. More heads turned white. Grown men rocked in the aisles crying.

“The federal government is seeking to shut down all travel to and from Brutalia. It classifies the city as unsafe and a risk to public health and safety.”

“That is only a fear-based reaction to the unknown. We are in a dialogue with the government to avoid such measures and keep transit and air travel open. We work to create the understanding that there is nothing to fear from Brutalia.”

“Are you saying the coldwave power plants pose no danger to the public?”

“The NIH has confirmed that.”

“The State Department sees Brutalia as a rogue entity run by the OSD.”

“Completely false. The OSD is contained. Legal authority rules.”

“How do you account for the paranormal activity occurring here?”

“These are various forms of direct experience with God occurring. You see it in the rise of enhanced human abilities and medical and scientific innovation.”

“Yet these effects only exist inside city limits. The Brutalia Limit. Why is that?”

“That is one of the mysteries of this city. I would venture it is not a ‘limit’ as much as it is a defining perimeter. It exists to make clear this city is the source of these effects. The people in this city are the language God uses. This city has been chosen as God’s medium of direct communication to mankind.”

“Why Brutalia?”

“To be honest, it is a mystery. Why this city? It was put here to serve a purpose.”

Big Superhero Action 5

2012-02-22T21:35:00.001-08:00

Sonny Ditlow’s cousin ran an auto body shop in Deltville, its sign reading Sure-Fit Equip. The outside wall was painted ‘80s van style with fantasy chicks and gold panthers. The Blue Boss Mustang parked in front. In forty seconds the Blue Boss Mustang exoframe folded and exo-formed into the Blue Boss exoframe, a gleamingly detailed exterior in three shades of blue.

The Blue Boss walked around a maze of grimy cars. The cousin’s name was Dwight Vink. There were two guys and a boom box playing Metallica and one of them was Dwight Vink’s mug shot, the shrimp with mullet hair and sideburns, limp mustache, looked maybe a week out of Folsom. The other topped six-five three-fifty. They gave him that look wrong guys had when seeing a superhero in person.

The Blue Boss said: “Dwight Vink?”

The shrimp took it like a frozen shrimp on lithium. “Uh-huh, yeah, man.”

“I’m looking for Sonny Ditlow.”

“Forget it,” he said. “Not happening. ‘Bye.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Thank you,” he said. “‘Bye.”

“Were you frightened by a superhero in your childhood?”

“I’m telling you to leave.”

“Tell me where to find Sonny Ditlow.”

The other guy spoke up. Of the two, he looked like the punch-out artist. “Get outta here.”

“What?”

“Get the fuck outta here.”

The Blue Boss said, “Excuse me? You want to say that again?”

“I told you to fuck off. That means disappear, you’re not needed around. Or do you want a piece of this? Superhero or not, I’ll fuckin’ cripple you.”

“Please cripple me.”

The weight shifted on the taller man’s boots as he was about to punch out the Blue Boss. The Blue Boss put his right index finger one inch from his chest. The big guy’s eyes refocused on the finger. His mouth went slack but stayed silent, the hostility in his eyes replaced by intense concentration where the finger had been. Then he puked on his boots.

The Blue Boss said, “You still there, Dwight?”

Dwight went very cautious. “Let’s keep it cool. Just be cool.”

The Blue Boss: “Want to see how many fluids can I make him chuck? Can I turn your hero into a Leroy Neiman?”

“Let’s keep it cool,” he said. “Be cool. Just be cool, okay, man?”

“Fuck cool.”

“Be cool.”

“You be cool.”

“Okay. We’re cool. What do you want?”

“Let’s take a ride.”

Big Superhero Action 4

2012-02-22T21:32:00.001-08:00

That night Chase flew drunk, landed on a beach somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard outside of Brutalia. He needed a superhero name for himself. He had two powers, he could fly and he could see himself from any angle. He had pale skin, sleek blonde hair in bangs, a skimpy stringless black eye mask over a delicately pretty face. He had the private school blazer over jeggings. For now that was his costume. And his one mission was to somehow locate Kieran. He closed his eyes and saw his Canadian Kieran, his heart twanging the sweet conspiracy that was a love affair, two against the world in a secret hiding place made of dreams. He had to get back there.

His head was plugged into the iPod but it was turned off. He sat on the sand. He had drunk the entire bottle of Her Blue Majesty’s champagne, a Bollinger Blanc de Noirs Vieilles Vignes Francaises 2001 at $600 a bottle. The night rolled over him like a lost highway. He lie back on the sand, let the sea breezes wash over him. He gazed at the star points way up there. His eyes closed. Time passed.

The iPod was growing with the songs that gave him flight. It held an eclectic range of picks from Ravel to Rufus Wainwright. He didn’t pick the songs, they picked him. But he had to discover them first. Then he had to learn how to control them so he could recharge his flight power at will. But the day had been long and gross. He had too many enemies. Too much had gone down. There was no going back home, no going back to school. There was no warm bubble without Kieran. He was exhausted and he was drunk. Right now Beethoven at top volume wouldn’t get him off the sand.

Big Superhero Action 2

2012-02-20T21:43:00.003-08:00

JKM got off the bike. Jack Kirby Man had a Jack Kirby-drawn physique etched in a purple-black costume. They watched him, some intense, some smiling to themselves. He had no time to be intimidated. Rocking the superhero way got done only because the focus was compressed into a space so small there was only enough room to cram the next two seconds of consciousness. The concept of a third second was out of range until you needed the Hubble telescope to see it.

Nine of them were now off their choppers.

Motorchrist spoke. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m JKM.”

Motorchrist stared at him. “What the fuck you want?”

“I’m a superhero. I’m here with one message. Motorchrists: get the fuck out of this city.”

Mystified at the costumed figure in front of him, Motorchrist didn’t even look at the bikers as he spoke to them. “Beat him to death and take the bike.”

They came at JKM expecting it to be easy but JKM took them on like a human bulldozer until it was a mash of bodies until nine bikers buried him in a tableau of outnumbered superhero. His back was pinned to the mud, his chest under their boots. A gun barrel lowered to his forehead. Death was one twitch of index finger away. JKM waited for it without regret.

From the jungle came a stirring of Martian dread. The boots stepped off his chest. JKM got back on his boots, saw Martian Justice emerge from the trees, eight feet of green megaroided freak armed with two soundless matter disruption guns. He started laying down fire.

Motorchrists took to their bikes returning fire with Mac-10s. Leaves were blasted into spray, the spray hanging in the air.

Martian Justice swung behind the guns, blasted one Motorchrist firing

from his chopper, splattered the head. The body tumbled off, hit the leaves. Choppers ripped, bikers escaping up the jungle trail.

In seconds the Motorchrists were gone. One fallen biker left behind. They left no trace. It was absolute quiet again. JKM checked his digital glove. It told him since his arrival four minutes had passed.

JKM turned back to Martian Justice. Amateur superheroes and pro superheroes rarely crossed paths. When they did it never went well. The megaroid-altered growl of Martian Justice spoke.

“My advice? Find a new hobby. And commit suicide on your own time.”

“Thanks for fucking that up.”

Martian Justice turned the gun on him, seemed to change his mind. JKM blinked. Martian Justice was gone. That was another difference between amateurs and pros. Amateurs had to wait for the other guy to turn his head before they could make their surprise exit. Pros could do it in an eye blink.

Big Superhero Action

2012-02-20T21:43:00.002-08:00

57,000 word novel. The first in the new Alien Comics series of novels. Brutalia, USA is the only city where superpowers exist. There the superheroes of AXIS battle the supervillains of the OSD (Order of Social Domination) headed by the evil Dr. Playground. Brutalia is teeming with superheroes like Martian Justice, the Blue Boss, Mermaid Gangster, the Kid in the Picture, and others for whom being a superhero is more than a job; it is taking on the riddles of doomed romance and the puzzle that is Brutalia. This is an adult novel with twisted sexual content, grossness, and pitch black humor. BIG SUPERHERO ACTION is somewhere between a new Space Age comic book brand and dark urban science fantasy.

Big Superhero Action 1

2012-02-20T21:43:00.001-08:00

They all had the stylish little S on their foreheads, Gingiri too. Siren wear was a fusion of Goth, sailor manga, ‘90s kinderwhore and the movie Sucker Punch. They were pierced and tattooed between the bangs and the spike heels.

Girlfinger was the scientist of the Siren Syndicate. She wore the lab coat. She had invented Siren Six, upgrading the recreational drug every six months. She handled the beakers, drew the montage of spinning nuclei and chemical compounds, ended with the seawater-green powder that became the end product.

Kafka Kardashian invented the weapons, the Siren guns, the Siren explosives and laser grenades, the Siren sword and handbag-sized samurai blade. With Girlfinger she had invented the compound that turned the blood of Sirens when spilled into a poisonous weapon. Mermaid Gangster always had her working on a faster-working compound.

Captain Madame X specialized in vehicles, engineering and design, built the Siren cycles, did the maintenance on the Hummers. On her drawing board were the Sirenwing and the Sirenmarine.

Sailor Star was the Siren sensei who invented Siren martial arts and trained the Sirens until they could spar in their sleep. She believed a martial art should first look sexy.

Gingiri was the psychic Siren. She could read guilt or innocence. She was the one with the superpower of flight. She was the one with her own connection to the city. She was the one who translated the city for them. The city had a language and she could hear it and it told her where to find any person within the city.

Mermaid Gangster had the fastest regeneration powers of the six. A Siren could take a .357 in the chest and it would be three days of breakfast in bed and daytime TV. MG, in one minute it was a sunburn. She was the head of Siren operations. Her name was more than a sense of style it was both her psychological profile and her resume. In her child state she had turned shoplifting into an operation where she delivered whatever the client ordered to order. She had specialized in top designer labels swiped from the top showrooms or off the trucks from New York. In the fashion trade the extremely hip knew to talk to her first. She had a wardrobe that was ahead of the curve for NYC runway models.

Mermaid Gangster started the Sirenitude.

“Six girls in six pools. One shockwave, six shocks. Six girls in one coma for six months…”

Gingiri picked it up, “…Six girls sleep, six sirens wake…”

“…Six sirens wake as super sirens …”

“…Super sirens wake with six super powers…”

“…and six are one as one is six. We waited.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“Every night?”

“Since you called.”

“I just flew in.”

“We know. The moment you entered Brutalia air space we turned back.”

“Me too.”

Mermaid Gangster said, “How did you stand it?”

Gingiri: “I don’t know.”

“You still scared of the city?”

“That wasn’t it and you know it. It almost killed me.”

“Nobody’s ever seen or heard of any little yellow war. It must be in your head.”

“Fucking duh. I’m a psychic. That’s the point.”

“Nothing will happen to you. We will kill your enemies.”

“Whatever,” Gingiri said. “I’ll take my chances.”

“See? Once you go super you can’t go back.”

“Guess not.”

“Meanwhile we spend two years being twelve again. Fuck you, Gingiri.”

“Not my problem, MG.”

“Your head is wanted.”

“Except you can’t have it. So say hi to tampons again and shut the fuck up.”

Mermaid Gangster took a handful of Gingiri’s face, shoved her back against the brick mall wall. “You have to earn your way back.”

“Then forget it,” Gingiri muttered around black leather glove. “I’m not on the team.”

Mermaid Gangster let go her face. “Don’t be stupid, stupid.”

Gingiri heard that, laughed.

That made Mermaid Gangster laugh. The tension broke and the others landed on Gingiri with shoves and hugs until they were all wet-eyed and pink-nosed.

MG said, “If you leave again I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe I will, maybe you won’t.”

“Better not.”

Kafka Kardashian said, “You need clothes.”

Sailor Star: “You must be starving.”

“Now we can eat,” Mermaid Gangster said, “and never gain weight. Miss that, bitches?”

They took Gingiri to where their camo pattern paisley and coral pink Hummer 3 was parked across two spaces, where mall security and everyone else kept their distance.

Big Superhero Action 3

2012-02-20T21:42:00.001-08:00

Her other role was as Dr. Playground’s analyst. Her specialty was superheroes. After superheroes there was no going back to the ordinary patient. For their sessions he wore no exoframe. The psyche of Simon Stranko was equally psychiatry and archeology. He appreciated the irony of the patient-on-the-couch cliché applied to a supervillain. What had been determined about him so far: he was neither pedophiliac nor homosexual. But he had a strong attraction to acquiring the orientation of pedophilia. Mentally she reviewed the later part of their last session.

“I need to be something don’t I?” he said in his corrupt sense of playfulness. “At least allow me to talk like a pedophile. You should have made me one by now.”

“Rebuilding your sexuality takes time.”

“It takes strength to be a pedophile. If I had to be something, I would pick that. So I picked that. My psyche is waiting. Let’s go.”

“Again, science can’t change your sexuality until it has been located.”

“Are you closer to extracting the programming?”

“Your psyche is still too protected.”

“So how do you know I’m not actually a pedophile?”

“The statistical odds are against it.”

“My fault. I’m thinking it might be fun to beat-off once in a while. A guy likes to know whether he’s hetero or homo, kind of get the nuances of his wetness.”

“That part of your psyche is missing. Yet you are capable of missing what you don’t know. Interesting.”

“Glad to be fucking interesting to you. Any new information drilled from this fucking well in my brain? Give me a drop of oil to lube with. Something.”

“I can give you stronger erotropics,” Xoir said. “But have no fear. You are not a pedophile, Doctor Playground. But your intent to become one speaks to pedophilia as the bright sunshiny surface on the incredibly deep underground water table of what you really are.”

“You promise?”

Book Report

2012-02-18T01:41:00.001-08:00

The book cover shows one of the accidental mishaps of the Morgan brothers during a burglary where their tactic is to tell the girl they are badly burglarizing they are members of the IRA. The brothers are two congenital fuck-ups who leave Belfast to get out of trouble but trouble follows them while they create more trouble wherever they go. One brother is a wannabe rising gangster, the other a guy just looking for less trouble in his life. Instead he gets a trouble-prone brother, vengeful gangsters, even worse gangsters, their thugs, and true love with a nice but slightly unbalanced girl who tends to leave her own trail of violence and mayhem.

This one is a boss read without a slow moment, bloody and romantic and funny and unpredictable. Read it and dig it. But don't wind up like Charlie.

Plug of the Week

2012-02-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

Meet Ethan. Stroke survivor. Scientific student supreme and the first to fabricate genetic identity, a discovery that will change humanity forever. Headhunted and financed by the Baron Vladimir Medvedkov, Ethan is given his chance to shun the scientific community and stun the world with his work. As intellectually wired as young Ethan is, he never suspects that the string of unusual murders rocking the city is linked to his cherished research. Because his only true aspiration is to find her. But is the reason he can't more frightening than losing her in the first place?

This Devil's Dice is a psychological thriller that spins out the consequences of the choices we make within the circumstances we're dealt. Rather than conventional chapters, this novel is divided into six sections. Alternative and unique in look, style and feel, it is delirious with description, subdivided by ink-stained visuals, and self-reflexive as it gets.

This Devil's Dice is now available as an ebook on Amazon.com.co.uk.de.fr etc for Kindle, Apples Ipad on the IBookstore, Kobo, Barnes&Noble Nook , Sony Reader, Diesel ebooks and Smashwords.

Murder Beach TV

2012-02-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

Plug of the Week

2012-01-27T01:18:00.001-08:00

LIGHTMASTERS: NUMBER 13 by MG WELLS

Jessica is a smart, bold courageous teen who discovers she has amazing powers on her 13th birthday. After her parents’ sudden death, Jessica is stuck living with her weird, gassy grandparents in a small town in upstate New York. Constantly bullied by her harsh schoolmates, this Georgia girl feels like a total loser and outcast. Angry about being forgotten on her 13th birthday Jessica is lured into the forest by a strange spiral light. In the woods she encounters three magical beings, who call themselves Lightmasters. The leader, Dragateen, tells Jessica she has special powers. Intrigued, she agrees to be transported to another dimension where she is tested for her courage, strength and ability to overcome intense obstacles. Life changes drastically when Jessica returns to earth. During school the next day, her reality shifts and people start turning into repulsive, reptilian monsters. Course, it doesn’t help that it’s Halloween, which makes it even more bizarre. Dragateen explains to Jessica she's needed by the Lightmaster alliance to defeat an invisible alien beast, who feeds off fear. Follow Jessica on a wild adventure as she learns to empower her mind, conquer her own fears and help rid the world of a wicked alien enemy who hates humans. www.LightMasters13.com

Dateline Embrack

2012-01-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

BARRACUDA is nominated on the SPINETINGLER magazine award list of best crime fiction novellas of 2011. The list is here: http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2012/01/16/2012-spinetigler-award-best-novella/

Book Report

2012-01-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

In the Northern California city of Stagger Bay, Markus is a man with a criminal past now doing his best “pretending to be a stone cold citizen.” Then things go wrong. The novel opens with him taken from his home in handcuffs, busted for the perverted slaughter of every member of the Beardsley family including the pets. Evidence points to him. He is now the most hated man in Stagger Bay. But he had no part in the murders. As Markus puts it, “That’s when I had a sneaking suspicion I was royally fucked.”

This novel is no fun-fest for Markus. He spends seven years in prison, loses his family, and when he gets out he returns to Stagger Bay. For all that, this is no pity-party for Markus. His philosophy is “…this world is designed to crush you like a bug, but that is no tragedy.” Markus is a hard man who can take whatever he is dealt.

Stagger Bay is being terrorized by a serial killer known as the Driver, only seen stalking the town in a Mercury Cougar. Soon the Beardsley murders and the mystery of the Driver are parts of a larger case of even more perversity, corruption, and bloodshed. What could have been another find the real killer and clear his name plotline becomes something more ambitious and complex. Like a pale rider in town Markus has to save Stagger Bay itself.

Now from the first sentence you're caught up in this to the last page. With hardcore authenticity Pearce Hansen writes about the darkness at the edge of town and the darkness the town is built on. Except the cynicism has a shaky coexistence with idealism. Hansen's writing is cinematic, incapable of a false note or a dull moment in a novel that fuses cutting edge gritty street level noir with the classic western.

Murder Beach FM

2012-01-18T00:24:00.000-08:00

"Peter Gunn Theme," Henry Mancini

Book Report

2011-12-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

Patsy Burke is a famed sculptor, an Irishman living in Paris. Back in the days of the three-cornered hat the word for him would have been libertine. He is a womanizer, a drunk, a raging bull who has left a trail of teeth and bitten-off ears on the floors of the most dangerous bars in Paris. One day he awakes to find himself bloody after a night of which he has no memory. He has only the information that someone was killed.

The novel is told by the variously named and contradictory "voices" in Burke's head ranging from the good altar boy to the Romantic to his Nietzchean inner satyr to his inner Jack the Ripper and beyond. These are voices that seek to control him, reubke him, or just observe him. Will the bloody truth about that night lead to his ultimate transformation, the redemption to cleanse the poisoning of his art, or a final descent into utter madness? No simple interpretation of where this goes is recommended.

This is a trip where the ride is the main attraction. Gaynard prodigiously tours the highs and lows of Paris, Europe, religions, Marxism, and anywhere else a restless intellect might travel. The writing is brilliant, tactile in its detail, both intellectual and sweaty. There is a bar fight written in a one-page sentence that reads like it was directed by Fellini in one long shot. Sex and violence are this novel's two food groups and this is a buffet. This is airport reading only if you're flying to Sodom.

Murder Beach TV

2011-12-18T00:43:00.001-08:00

Book Report

2011-12-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Eccentric LAPD Detective King Leary and his partner Millionaire Adler investigate the death of semi-legendary Punk Rocker Buzzy Motorola. On the way, they encounter crazed musicians, and a serial killer who calls himself the Angel of Righteousness. On top of that, sometimes Leary sees dead people.

Beyond that everything is a spoiler. King Leary and the Millionaire investigate Buzzy Motorola and the series of deaths that follow in a tour of L.A. from K-Town to Knott's Berry Farm, from punk to rap. This reads like a hipster CSI with cops who know their way around a wisecrack and the smart dialogue keeps you reading. Spookiness hangs around and there is a touch of DaVinci Code. With appearances from Tom Mix and his wonder horse, an eclectic playlist, and a band named Silent But Debbie, this is not the typical police procedural.

Murder Beach TV

2011-11-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

Murder Beach FM

2011-11-23T23:14:00.001-08:00

Coffy X

2011-11-11T02:41:00.000-08:00

The real Coffy X wants it known she is not the skinny white chick in Barracuda but is thicker than the mermaid.

Murder Beach FM

2011-11-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

The Barry White Love Unlimited Orchestra, "Strange Games and Things"

Murder Beach FM

2011-11-11T01:38:00.000-08:00

David Bowie, "It's No Game"

Embrack does late night TV: a true story of drugs, bad erotica, and madness

2011-11-10T01:06:00.001-08:00

E-mail from Dr. Susan Block 12/1/2002:

Raymond, thanks so much for being our feautured guest on the show last night.

I know it was last minute and I really appreciate your coming down here. We didn't think we had any guests yesterday morning then after we made arrangements with you all these others started calling.

I'm so glad you enjoyed Melanie's topless dramatic reading, we enjoyed talking with you about your book and all the other assorted topics. You have a great sense of humor and the robe was a nice touch!

Sorry I didn't say good-bye (I actually thought you might stick around a little longer) but I had my bed full!

The sexologist Dr. Susan Block reviewed my book on designer sex and that gets me on her public access cable TV show. For some intuitive reason I go wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. Embrack knows good television.

The time is late Saturday night and the location is deep in downtown Los Angeles in a building with a security dude at the lobby end and an elevator up to the studio. From there it is a kind of dark purple world with sofas where a TV show is being shot at one end of the room. This is the purple adult vivid darkness where you imagined Saturday nights lived past your childhood bedtime. But this is not like doing Charlie Rose and I'm not Gore Vidal. There is zero pre-interview and no one says anything to me, leaving me on my own making my first TV appearance. There is a very nice chick who serves non-stop drinks to the guests while we wait to go on. Serve me free drinks while I wait to go on I get hammered as fuck.

Then I go on. The set is a bed large enough to hold me and at least five semi-nude females. Dr. Susan Block in person looks excatly like she does on TV if not even more awesome. She owns awesomeness. Meanwhile at the time I am a 200 pound Unabomber profile living a in a rodent-infested shithole in Thai Town. I'm hammered on purple vodka drinks and in a bathrobe while Dr. Block has a naked woman read a passage from my novella Zex. That is still the high point of my career.

I never saw the broadcast, never want to, would rather watch my mother in a hardcore porno with Ron Jeremy than see one frame of it. Okay maybe not, but a makeout session yeah I could go there with 3D glasses.

Now Dr. Block is asking me interview questions. She figures out I am writer of crime fiction and that changes her outlook on my book's mixture of sex and violence as not being the product of a sexually maladjusted prick but the natural product of a crime fiction writer who is also a sexually maladjusted prick. I don't offer an unequivocal answer as to whether or not sex is evil. Soon the next semi-nude chick gets on the bed and takes my spotlight. But I'm still on the bed. I spend the time putting a pair of panties on my face. I may be hammered but Embrack knows good television.

I would hang out after the show but I leave with a redheaded Wiccan with the thighs of a 1917 French postcard. I have the cannabis indica and she has the loft in Silverlake. I barely got on the show as it is, my late night TV career gets exactly one shot so why let it go to waste?

Murder Beach TV

2011-10-27T22:25:00.001-07:00

Murder Beach TV

2011-10-27T00:48:00.001-07:00

Murder Beach FM

2011-10-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Murder Beach FM

2011-10-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Tom Waits, "Russian Dance"

Murder Beach TV

2011-10-25T01:36:00.000-07:00

My Favorite TV Show

2011-10-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

Murder Beach FM

2011-10-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

Link Wray, "Rumble"

The Art of the MF

2011-09-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

In 2008 I had the singular honor of having a blog post picked up by a blog devoted to Dean Martin. The post was a montage of choice writings about Dino I had collected. You can dig the post at the link below. You can go to the site's front page by clicking Dino himself.

http://ilovedinomartin.blogspot.com/2008/11/dinoinsighted-collected-from-internet.html

On that same night of July 13, as Kennedy's nomination was being announced, Dean opened at the Sands."I'd like to tell you some of the good things the Mafia is doing," he said. There was a momentary hush, then a long, slow wave of rising laughter.

Dean Martin did what he wanted -- drink, screw around, play golf, make a bundle. He took plenty from everyone and didn't give back much but a kind of low-level radiance. He was a gambler, yes, but even more a dealer. I control your destiny and I don't give a damn.

In its way, Martin's is an exemplary American story: how to succeed without really caring. And America loved the ease with which he held an audience, even if he held it in contempt. But is this an exemplary life? Is Dino worthy of Nick Tosches' big, reckless new book?

Biography usually quests for an existence that makes a difference. Dean's specialty was indifference. His TV show was flash encircling stupor: the Golddigger chorines did their cooch; the cue-card girl had the script written on her bare midriff. And in the middle, so laid-back as to be supine, was Dino -- on the cutting edge of lumpen-American mediocrity.

This is just what Tosches sees as crucial in Martin's life: that he was the signal showman of an America that was "fulfilling its destiny as the chrome-crowned glory of post- literate, polyvinyl civilization." Dino was what we wanted and deserved. Just about everybody liked Martin but, as Dino warned a TV producer, "nobody gets to know me." Even Martin's most expert appraiser, his long-suffering wife Jeannie, says he's an enigma. "He's either the most complex man imaginable or the simplest," she tells Tosches. "There's either nothing under there or too much."

Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, in emptiness itself.

First of all, Dean Martin was Italian and, if you don't think that's a big deal, you must be Sicilian. I learned a couple of very interesting Italian things from "Dino." Like, right here - I can't believe I never heard of this before - "Lontananza", that's the Italian word for the distance a guy keeps from other guys cause other guys . . . Well, what fuckin' good are they? Who the hell needs em?
"The sum of Dino's instinct had to do with the old ways, those ways that were like a wall, ways that kept the world lontano , as the mafiosi would say: distant, safe, and wisely at bay."I learnt another good Italian word from this book - Menefreghismo, the quality of a Menefreghista - "one who simply did not give a fuck"!

Dean Martin was the ultimate Menefreghista. "One wondered, watching Dean," a critic wrote "whether he cared whether his show went over or not." Yeah, who gives a fuck about these silly ass songs and this crappy show in this slimeball nightclub? How else could a guy as cool as Dean be in the same act as a doof like Jerry Lewis? "Yeah, go right ahead and come into the club dressed up as a waiter and spill a tray full of drinks right in the middle of my goddam song - I could give a rat's ass what you do."

Still, no one filled or fulfilled Dean; as Jeannie Martin notes, "He was always content in a void." Eventually the drunk act ceased to be an act. His chilling apathy is the only bodyguard he needs.

Murder Beach FM

2011-09-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

P.J. Harvey, "Working for the Man"

Murder Beach FM

2011-09-24T00:51:00.000-07:00

Pete Moore, "Catwalk"

Murder Beach FM

2011-09-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Wax Tailor, "Que Sera"

A Cat Named Shaft

2011-09-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

A development meeting in L.A, 1999.
"What ’70’s remake can we franchise next?"
"Shaft?"
"Which one’s that?"
"Blaxploitation. Black private dick, sex machine to the chicks."
"Blaxploitation reboot? No good. No mainstream appeal."
"We mainstream it."
"Have him protecting a white murder witness."
"Check."
"What’s a private dick? Is that like a cop?"
"Right."
"He can be a cop or he can be a cop."
"Then we’ll make him a cop."
"Except Shaft isn’t a cop. If Shaft is a cop but Shaft isn’t a cop, what is he?"
"Shaft is a cop, yet he isn’t a cop."
"Therefore, Shaft isn’t Shaft. How can Shaft not be Shaft?"
"Make him Shaft’s nephew."
"Needs female appeal. Give him a female partner."
"A female of color."
"Black?"
"Or Latino."
"Make it a Latino played by a black actress."
"Check."
"The bad guy: white or black?"
"White is too blaxploitation."
"Black is too black."
The result:
"It’s Giuliani time," says Samuel L. Jackson as Shaft’s nephew while blowing away Puerto Rican bad guys.

Cop to Shaft: "What did you get?"
Shaft: "I got laid."
The movie Shaft (1971)

In Hollywood, Shaft was on a losing streak. Now three pictures had tried to match the heat of the first Shaft, the one with the Issac Hayes theme song about the man who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. A brief ‘70s TV series alternating with a James Stewart lawyer show had been only about toning down the BMF (he lost the black leather) and making him safe for the squares in sub-QM plots.

The third film was Shaft In Africa , a three-word pitch in a development meeting that could only have happened in the ‘70s. Not as bad as it sounds but so far from the source you feel the slippage. Shaft’s Big Score was closer to the source, cold, funky, had bigger guns and bigger explosions. But it’s strictly sequelville, baby.

The movie Shaft has everything. It has the song, the black leather, the white chick Shaft has to get rid of in the morning, the immortal line delivered by Gangster Willy: "Cat say he gonna be here, he should be here." Directed by LIFE photographer Gordon Parks, it’s also one of the great New York pictures of the 1970s, a time capsule so specific it keeps a huge wall calendar behind Shaft’s desk (January 1971).

At the highest level of badassery, private eyes are known for their theme songs. There’s a Muzak version of the Shaft theme. There’s a reggae version. Sammy Davis Jr. covered it adding lines like: "Shaaft…Shaaaft is The Maaan….can you dig it?"

But we still haven’t reached the source.

America used to be a nation of Lee Marvins. Postwar badass came and went. Today it’s as gone as the hat band. Ernest Tidyman was so post-war he died in ’83. He had written the screenplays for The French Connection and Clint Eastwood’s coolest western, a twisted version of High Noon named High Plains Drifter. He was a white guy who created "the man who would risk his neck for his brother-man". He wrote six Shaft novels. There was a time when you could find Tidyman on every paperback rack. I first found him in a supermarket. But when Tidyman went out of print, the books went with him.

Why the hell had he gone to Jamaica, anyhow? The pussy was neither better nor more plentiful. He sure as hell didn’t need a suntan and, in fact, his black-brown coffee bean skin was more sensitive than that of most whites to the burning Caribbean glare. Vacations are middle-class bullshit, he thought. The only things that made him tired were drinking, smoking, and screwing—and he never let work interfere with them. Shaft’s Big Score (novel 1972)

The Shaft novels are paperback rack thin, fitting easily into a marine’s pocket. The read, quick and intense. But the plots are thin enough to leave lots of room for drinking, smoking, and screwing with room left. When done by space age hacks, books like these were disposable reading between rest stops. When done by someone like Tidyman, they are perfect things of their kind.

A "big, perfectly proportioned, keenly conditioned coffee-brown slab of a man" in his early thirties, John Shaft had grown up on the streets of Harlem then went to ‘Nam to stay out of prison. He carries scars from the gang rumbles of his youth, from the war, and a few bullet scars taken in the private eye field. His office is in Times Square. His bachelor pad is in Greenwich Village, across the street from his hangout, the No Name Bar.

Unlike the movie version, Shaft has no facial hair; to him, men with mustaches are "unsanitary assholes". He isn’t picky about his cases, but he has an extremely low tolerance for bullshit.

"The ripping sound you’re gonna hear, cocksucker, is your arm coming out of the socket. "Shaft Has A Ball (novel, 1973)

To go with the sex and violence, Tidyman has a taste for the absurd. In Shaft Has A Ball, the crew robbing a luxury hotel of mob money pulls the job during a "fag convention" dressed in drag. Shaft Among The Jews opens with Shaft sitting in his redecorated office after letting his latest chick talk him into hiring a decorator, now "paying the price of pussy" with an office that was like "an old friend had been murdered in his sleep". Then seven Orthodox Jews walk into his office with a case.
In Shaft’s Carnival of Killers, Tidyman starts to subvert the BMF image. On a Caribbean vacation that turns into intrigue, the sex machine takes a break to score a threesome with two chicks from New Jersey in his hotel room, pretending he doesn’t speak English. The book climaxes with a self-consciously overweight Shaft chasing the killer while wearing a too-small bullfighter costume.

Goodbye, Mr. Shaft takes him to England to bodyguard two little rich boys—as un-Shaft as he gets but still a BMF. It ends with Shaft in a hospital bed looking like a mummy and near death. Reading that one, you can almost feel the end coming. Tidyman wrote seven Shaft novels if you count the one no one’s ever seen, The Last Shaft, which ends with Shaft dead. As though he could see the future of the BMF: meetings.

Sometime after the movies and the paperbacks, The Last Shaft was just barely in print. (Just in case you come across this extremely rare read, past this point spoilers follow.)

This is the one where he kills off John Shaft. Tidyman knocks it out like a fart after lunch with the agent. (Full disclosure: I don’t relate to successful authors killing off their guy. Even worse than continuing to crank out your guy is the vanity of killing off your guy.)

Barely completing the complete Shaft bookshelf, The Last Shaft is the weakest read in the series with the laziest, most disposable premise. A mob accountant kept a box containing the secret records of transactions that could bring down everyone from the New York mob to City Hall. Just as Shaft is contemplating how much he hates New York City, he winds up with the box. Everyone is after the box. When they blow up the car of Shaft’s cop buddy Captain Victor Anderozzi, it’s payback time. Then the NYC mob goes after Shaft. Shaft goes on the lam. Shaft happens to check into a hotel where the manager happens to recognize him and happens to take his side. The manager happens to be a geek who happens to be a wannabe one-man A-Team who happens who have all the munitions and anything else Shaft could possibly need to take out the Mob. He becomes the sidekick.

SEX MACHINE COUNT: 1. The badass black sex machine still finds time to bed the mob accountant’s sexy widow only because it’s her husband’s missing $$$ that gets her wet. With her help, Shaft turns the tables on the mob, locating their bases of operations and quickly reducing them to rubble, leaving NYC littered with dead or maimed Italian-Americans.

Shaft comes out on top, wipes out the NYC mob and brings in the box to the D.A. Then in the last paragraph the creative nihilism of random violence strikes. Shaft gets mugged. Before the mugger shoots him dead, an extremely pissed Shaft’s last words are: “What is this bullshit?”

John Shaft left behind a theme song and the 1970s.

Copyright 2011 Raymond Embrack

Relevant link:
http://thecia.com.au/reviews/s/shaft-1.shtml

Murder Beach FM

2011-09-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

City of Prague Philharmonic, "Get Carter Theme"