Mixed media artist Natalie Shau should have been featured in one of Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebrations of Halloween by now. Unfortunately, I’m late to the game when it comes to Shau’s dark, haunting and disturbing works of art.
If you’re squeamish then the images conjured up by this Lithuanian-born artist are not for you. She’s like a one-woman Deviant Art site. Some examples of Shau’s art: Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season, opinion
NAIA
DOWN GOES NUMBER THREE – The BENEDICTINE COLLEGE RAVENS welcomed the number 3 team in the nation – the WILLIAM PENN UNIVERSITY STATESMEN. The Ravens built up a formidable 40-28 lead over the Statesmen by Halftime, then followed through with a 97-91 Upset. Matt Austin led Benedictine College with 27 points.
OTHER UPSETS IN THE RANKINGS – The VANGUARD UNIVERSITY LIONS traveled to face the 18th ranked HOPE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY ROYALS and defeated them in a 62-61 Instant Classic ### And the CENTRAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE OF KANSAS TIGERS notched a 78-75 Upset of the home-standing (19) TEXAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY RAMS.
CENTURY CLUB – Teams scoring 100 points or more in Regulation: The UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & ARTS OF OKLAHOMA DROVERS visited the SOUTHWESTERN CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY EAGLES and knocked them off 102-92 ### And the WAYLAND BAPTIST UNIVERSITY PIONEERS utterly annihilated the visiting BACONE COLLEGE WARRIORS to the tune of 104-47. Continue reading
Filed under College Basketball
It’s no secret that America’s career politicians are basically career criminals. White-collar criminals, of course, but career criminals all the same. We need Third Parties.
Peter Schweizer’s latest book exposing some of the uglier activities of American politicians has already become a bestselling sensation. Schweizer doesn’t rely on the “unnamed sources” approach that America’s corrupt corporate media has made synonymous with partisan cheap-shots. Instead there are volumes of documents and legal filings regarding the exposes in Profiles in Corruption. Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
FOR PART ONE OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF THIS OLD, OLD MARVEL COMICS STORYLINE CLICK HERE The revisions I would make are scattered throughout the synopsis below.
KILLRAVEN GRAPHIC NOVEL (1983)
Chapter Two: Cocoa Beach Blues
SYNOPSIS: Killraven and his Freemen continue their guerilla war against Earth’s alien conquerors. It’s February 2020, or “37 years in the future” as it would have been to 1983 readers. As we ended Chapter One last time around, an older but not quite elderly woman with a plasma-ray rifle entered the camp from which the Freemen were planning their assault on the alien-updated Cape Canaveral. She identified herself as a surviving astronaut from the era before the alien invasion 19 years earlier. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
A MODERN DAEDALUS (1887) – By Tom Greer. No, the title’s not referring to James Joyce’s character Stephen Dedalus (sic) but this tale IS about Ireland. The main character is a young man named Jack O’Halloran, a recent college graduate who returns to his native Ireland.
Jack has dreamed about flying since he was a child and now he uses his genius to create a winged apparatus that can be worn by a single person to take to the skies. Our modern Daedalus flies around at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour with his new invention. Jack is thrilled but complications arise when he shares the news with his father.
Old Man O’Halloran wants to use his son’s winged apparatus to wage aerial warfare against the hated British and thereby win independence for Ireland. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
PEOPLE WHO HATED TRUMP STILL HATE HIM, PEOPLE WHO LIKED HIM STILL LIKE HIM
This could and should be the headline for every impeachment news story going forward.
Yaaaawwwn!
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
Balladeer’s Blog is telling you this: From now on, instead of BC and AD, years will be recorded in terms of BCG and ACG, as in Before Cash Grab and After Cash Grab. Well, maybe not. But you will always remember where you were and what the weather was like and what you were wearing when you first heard about Cash Grab: The Graphic Novel by Cecil.
Cash Grab, by internet cult figure Cecil of Cecil Says fame, has launched on Indiegogo. Reserve your copy now! If you miss the kind of gloriously irreverent – some might say sickening – humor of Mad Magazine or Marvel’s Teen Hulk from Crazy, you can find it in this graphic novel. Continue reading
Filed under humor, opinion, Superheroes
THE SPIDER OF GUYANA (1860) – Written by the team of Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian. Balladeer’s Blog’s previous looks at ancient works of science fiction have established how far back the “big bug” trope goes. Creature Feature movies were far from the first appearance of oversized insects and arachnids. And atomic radiation wasn’t needed to justify such outrageous mutations.
This story is set in Spinbronn, a resort town in the mountains of Germany. Sufferers of gout and other afflictions flock to Spinbronn to soak in its healing waters as prescribed by their physicians. Disappearances begin to plague the area. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
Per the Glitternight Index:
Filed under College Basketball
Balladeer’s Blog is all about responding to reader questions and requests. Some of you have mentioned that you’d like to see me write about what revisions I’d have made to the Star Wars sequels in the same way I write about revisions I’d have made to old Killraven stories or how I’d have handled the unfinished Harry Flashman novels.
I have only ever been a casual (at most) Star Wars fan so it’s possible that lets me approach the subject with a certain detachment that many others lack. I have no favorite characters and I’m not really invested in the story or its universe outside of the original lightning-in-a-bottle 1977 film.
My take is that the sequel trilogy is too much of a mess and has nothing worth salvaging. However, since there is more and more talk about recasting the major roles like Luke, Han and Leia for a potential reboot or tv series I figured THAT’S what I’d look at.
The original 1977 Star Wars is about as close to perfection as you can get in terms of a movie succeeding at what it was intended to be: in this case a fun, uncomplicated valentine to the days of simpler storytelling as a nice antidote to the glut of self-consciously “deep” movies by that point in the 70s.
There’s nothing wrong with deep or introspective movies, of course, but by 1977 it seems that audiences were VERY hungry for a movie that didn’t wallow in unsolvable problems and was instead sheer feel-good spectacle. (I often speculate that if the Robert Shaw film Swashbuckler had come out after Star Wars instead of before it, it might have been received much more enthusiastically.)
My own take on potentially casting a new Luke, Han & Leia and starting over would be that the original Star Wars should remain untouched. Begin the reboot AFTER that film but eliminate the overrated twist in which Darth Vader turns out to be Luke’s father and Leia turns out to be his sister. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, opinion
