Holy wokeness Batgirl!

Do you remember Batgirl? The delightful milk fed Yvonne Craig.  A nubile and sweet example of the American woman circa 1965. She was a part time player on the Batman TV show which as you were a camped-up version of the DC Comic. A corny as it was it is still a big part of the cultural zeitgeist to this very day.

Now it is 2022 and this is the new Batgirl. Actually, Batwoman since you are not allowed to call anyone a girl anymore for some fucking reason:

She is a Black lesbian as part of the continuing movement to replace all white superheroes with women. Or gays. Or gay women. Or trans theys or thems or whatever the fuck. This CW TV show is famous for two things. The hatred of the comic book fans and the extremely low ratings. The worst ratings for all of the Superhero shows on the CW by far. This is endemic in the comic book and movie industry. They are constantly swapping the race and gender of characters to empower women or the poor discriminated against POC's that are suffering like they were still on a plantation somewhere. The net result of which is lower ratings and diminishing box office. As the saying goes "Get woke go broke." Except that really isn't true. The momentum of these giant corporations like Disney and Amazon and Netflicks and the NFL are such that they can shove these knats off and continue on their politically correct way while destroying our memory of the source material be it books or comic books or even older movies and TV shows.

I know Mama M thinks I should get over it. That complaining about it is not useful and it seems like it is the only thing I do these days. I don't care. I don't want to try to amuse myself with something else. Too many of us do that. I try to not support these venal corporations as best I can. In the meantime, I can at least point out things for us to avoid if it is all possible.

Which brings me to the point of this diatribe. 

You have heard me talk about Robert B. Parker and his greatest creation Spenser. The subject of 51 books, several TV movies, a feature film and a couple of TV series, this series was the epitome of hardboiled detective fiction. It put Parker on the Mount Rushmore of mystery writers with Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block. When Parker passed away, they brought this guy Ace Atkins on to continue the series. 

The first couple of books were Ok. Nothing to write home about but somewhat enjoyable. A workman like effort that many writers could have done. He simply copied Parker's style. Hell, even a talentless hack like me can cobble together some halfway decent pastiches of his work. However, with the last book that was issued yesterday he screwed the Pooch. 

The plot of the story is that Spenser is hired to guard a congresswoman who is a doppelganger of AOC. Ultra-liberal communist bitch who is being threatened by the nonexistent white supremacist right wing gangs that are the staple of every movie, book and TV show these days. It is the worst kind of virtue signaling bullshit that ever polluted the memory of a great writer. I mean I bet Elmore Leonard was a lot more liberal than me, but I never knew it from reading his books. If this ass wipe wrote a new Raylan Givens novel, he would be joining Antifa and putting away his six shooter for a bowl of tofu.

It is a betrayal of Parker's vision. Spenser was a cynical wiseass, and he would have recognized the hypocritical excess of the socialist sensibility that is AOC. Not turn into a fan boy. This is typical of the new style of insulting your core audience. Who reads these books? Not women or soy boys. Most of his audience is hard boiled crime fiction fans like me. Atkins is directly insulting me and using the source material of a classic detective to push his liberal agenda. 

There are several reviews on Amazon that point this out. I am going to put one up too. In fact, I am going to spread the word everywhere I can to warn people about this shit. It is too late for me because I have already purchased the book the minute it came out. In fact, I preordered it, so I am fucked. I wish I could get my money back, but it doesn't work that way. 

Still and all give this crap a pass.

The Broken Scarlet Sky

 "So tell me about your friend."

"He lives a couple of slips down from me at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale. He has a small motor boat stuffed with books. We have been friends since the sixties. He is like a big amiable bear. Hairy and clumsy and comical in some ways. But a good friend none the less. The smartest man I know. Well book smart."

"Not street smart?"

"No. Not in the least."

I sat back in my chair for a moment. McGee sat still in my client chair. Confident and still. He didn't feel the need to fill the conversational void. I think we know some of the same things. Susan would shake her head and be amused at what she would call macho posturing. Still it was true none the less.

"So you think he walked into something that he couldn't handle?"

"Without a doubt. Look Meyer was a smart guy. He had developed a couple of algorithms that could predict how stocks would behave. When to buy and when to sell. Something like that would be worth a lot of money."

"So he went to MIT to sell it?"

"No I don't think so. Who would have the money to buy it there? He either went there for the last piece of the puzzle from one of his fellow math geeks or to connect with one of those Silicon Valley types who had the dough to buy the algorithm and do the real work of putting it to practice. I think he wanted to sell it. Look we have a great life down in Florida. We are retired. Do a little fishing. A little partying. At least as much as we can these. Meyer is even older than I am. Somehow it didn't happen. Somebody else must have gotten involved. I need you to find out who."

I thought about that for a minute. I didn't know anybody who had any connection to MIT. Susan was wired into Harvard not MIT. But that wouldn't be a problem.

"I guess we have to talk to someone who knows something about MIT. Luckily enough I know somebody who has connections there."

"Who a professor?"

"No. A leg breaker."

From Page to Screen Part Two

It is unusual to see a faithful adaptation of one of your favorite books. The director and the producers get involved and they always want to “improve” it in some way that makes you hate the movie. The fact of the matter is that pulp or genre fiction usually adapts well. The types of directors and actors drawn to it just like to tell a good story. They are not all up in their artsy fartsy heads about it.

Two of the best book to screen adaptions that I have seen came from the works of one of my favorite authors and role models Elmore Leonard. “Get Shorty” was an almost perfect rendition of his novel. Of course “Justified” was a sublime manifestation of his Raylan Givens stories. Elmore Leonard and his son worked very closely with the production and actually wrote several episodes. In fact one of his last books contained a couple of stories about Marshal Givens that actually used new characters that originated from the TV series. That is quite unusual. You know. That TV writers influence the author of the original work. Talent will out.

I was very disappointed in the various video interpretation of Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” novels. The original TV series with Robert Ulrich was a good effort but really missed the boat. The various TV movies really sucked. Joe Mantegna is not any reasonable embodiment of the protagonist in those novels.

The series of Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck were excellent if a little dreary. I think they thought film noir means depressed or something. Still it was a worthy effort and they should get kudos. It is the only filming of Parkers work that is worth a shit.