Balladeer’s Blog
THANK YOU once again to all of you readers for making Balladeer’s Blog so enjoyable to write. As I always say, the unusual and controversial items I sometimes churn out here mean that readers have to be open-minded and very secure in their own beliefs not to just take offense and leave. You folks are the greatest!
Here are some of my most popular blog posts from the past 12 months.
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – Burt Reynolds and Darren McGavin’s western series RIVERBOAT (1959-1961), Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Five Tomorrows (1970) and Between Time and Timbuktu (1972), Heimskringla! (1969), Peter Pan (1976), Thirteen Against Fate (1966), The Man Hunter (1973), City Beneath the Sea (1962) and Secret Beneath the Sea (1963), Shirley Temple’s Storybook (1958-1961), Desert Crusader (1968), Frightmare Theater (2015-2022).
AMERICAN REVOLUTION – Neglected battles of: Late 1781, March 1776, PLUS Thaddeus Kosciuszko.
FORGOTTEN GUNSLINGERS – Comanche Jack, Jim Leavy, California Jim, Ferd the Dandy, Long Henry, and Temple Houston – Sam Houston’s Son.
SILENT MOVIES – Since last year I reviewed: Theda Bara’s Movies, The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Metropolis (1927), Conrad Veidt: Silent Horror Film Star, Douglas Fairbanks’ 1916 drug comedy about “Coke Ennyday,” The Man from Painted Post (1917), A Modern Musketeer (1917), Alfred Hitchcock’s Silent Movies, Harry Houdini’s Silent Movies, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, Teddy the Great Dane, and Dick Turpin (1925).
ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION – Life in a Thousand Worlds (1905), The Monster Maker (1897), Land of the Changing Sun (1894), An Automatic Enigma (1872, 1878), and Another World (1873).
SPAIN’S HOMEMADE SUPERHEROES – A look at the incredible characters and storylines from Iberia, Inc. in the 1990s. Click HERE.
QUALITY MOVIES – The 14 Amazons (1972), The Elusive Avengers (1967), The White Reindeer (1952), The Fourth Reich (1990).
THE BLACK WESTERN THOMASINE & BUSHROD (1974) – Click HERE.
FOOL KILLER: THE KLARENC WADE MAK VERSION (1917-1918) – Click HERE.
THE ABSOLUTE BEST EVER NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOON ROUNDUP FROM JUNE OF 2023 – Click HERE. Continue reading
PART FIVE – Horn recounted an incredible event he attended in Angola, which was not yet the name of the country, just a populated region. He and his subordinate Trade Agents were guests at a conjo – a performance of traveling entertainers called the Akowas.
JANUARY 1910 – James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 into the 1920s. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century.
Pearson’s Fool-Killer was the mascot of the entire publication, which was merely 4-6 pages anyway, not simply the supposed author of letters regarding his body count of “fools.” Think of this Fool Killer (I prefer no hyphen) as the written word equivalent of Puck (1876-1918), the political cartoon mascot of the humor magazine of the same name.
*** Frederick Cook, who, the previous December, had seen his claim to have reached the North Pole ruled invalid and possibly fraudulent by the University of Copenhagen. (The Fool Killer was unable to locate Cook, however.)
THE FEARSOME ISLAND (1896) – Written by British author Albert Kinross. An unusual work with a multi-layered narrative. The entire novel was penned by Kinross, but it is one of the countless works of fiction presented as if it is a rediscovered manuscript relating the “true” adventures of Silas Fordred from the 1500s. Kinross adds another layer by explaining the sci-fi devices that Fordred could not comprehend and put down to sorcery and the supernatural. 
BLACKE’S MAGIC (1986) – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, GENTLEMEN! Last Father’s Day I reviewed the neglected television series 
Hal Linden played Alexander Blacke, a big-name, big-money stage magician. While investigating the seemingly impossible murder of an old friend, Alex gets help from his former conman father Leonard, portrayed by Harry Morgan. 
REQUIEM FOR THE DREAM – CAITLYN CLARK and the INDIANA FEVER (4-10) welcomed the ATLANTA DREAM (5-6) to Gainbridge Fieldhouse in this game. 
DAZZLER Vol 1 #1 (March 1981) 
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