Of Hawks and Hoods.

 Time for another book upload. This time its the Hooded Hawk mystery, a strangely current mystery involving falconry, kidnapping and Indians coming over in a boat.

Despite the title of the story, at no time is there a hawk, what they do get sent to them is a Peregrine Falcon, one of the fastest birds in the world. But still not a hawk. there is a Goshawk owned by Prince Tava (or just Tava in the remake) and yes its a proper, member of the hawk family. BUT and I paraphrase a Peregrine is a Falcon and not a member of the hawk family.

Rant over, I'll now give you a recap on the main story and a few differences between the two.

The Hardy's receive a Falcon in the mail, Fenton is working on a case involving Illegal Immigrants being smuggled into the states via small boats and the kidnapping of prominent Indian Nationals son, Tava Nayyab.

In the meantime, the boys learn how to handle her, freak out Aunt Gertrude and on a trip out to Chet Morton's farm, they intercept a pigeon carrying rubies in a capsule around its leg.

After a bit of sleuthing for their dad in the Sleuth, their boathouse gets bombed. Later Chet Morton invites them to his farm for a fish fry, they find a mysterious cabin in the woods, and a young Indian with a Goshawk. When they investigate the Hardys and Chet get whacked.

Much later they find a poisonous snake (a Krait) and more clues that it was leased by Indians, which leads them to a boat called the Daisy K. After more shenanigans, an assailant lobs a bomb that blows up the Hardy home and steals their falcon (after a few unsuccessful attempts). Getting Sam Radley to look out for them and provide back up leads the boys to an island in Barmet Bay to break up the illegal ring and a showdown on the mountain to recover Tava from his kidnappers.

This is not a bad book really. The story feels current, especially with the current asylum seeker crisis in the English channel, involving small boats, and this is one of the few books with foreigners as the bad guys. Demoting Prince Tava to the son of a wealthy industrialist is actually pretty genius. there are rich Indians, and India is now something of an emerging economy. It makes sense.

The original isn't bad, and you are largely spared people talking in accents, here, just the Hardy's Italian gardener which is altered to non accented speech in the remake. It's the usual later book, directors cut edition. Complete with Krait encounter in the woods and an expanded encounter on the mountain where the boys grab (illegally) a falcon fledgling with the help of another falconer.

Finally the cryptic thanks to Professor John Craighead, lead to a page on Wikipedia about prominent ecologists Frank and John Craighead, who did indeed write on Falconry and about living in India with an Indian prince in 1940, as well as conducting long running studies on ecology (largely on Grizzly bears). Maybe have to see if its worth reading and see how it influenced the book.

Anyway both are up now so Original. remake for your reading pleasure.

 

World of Crap gets cancelled.

So, its come to pass. That a popular non political, twitter page and blog about Rainbow, I follow, has come out in favour of Trump in the most mildest way possible. A milquetoast argument about having a fair election has predictably descended into the usual "she must be a Nazi, shut her down."

There is an opinion piece up on Russia's Toady setting out that it is the media that defines wokeness, and cancel culture is a symptom of this, plus a demonization of the working class.

There is general don't let the proles speak about this from the trendy London media set (though as a Londoner far away from the general Hampstead and Islington ponces that they're actually describing, my opinion counts for less). 

Also there is a few bits and pieces about how the Labour party (which I've voted for in the past) has lost the working class from its demographic focusing on race, gender and other middle class issues.

My own views are a match to this, to some extent. I swing more rightwards and am a liberal voter normally, albeit one that wants Brexit and some dialogue about immigration that doesn't get bogged down in feelings or accusations about being a Nazi, because bad people get deported.

I don't know who is behind the explosion of far left views, possibly academia, possibly not. I've been part of this for 5 years now, since gamergate. I know, I know, flogging that old, dead horse, but its a slow slide into politicizing everything, and you cannot dissent, or put a foot wrong (and as a monumental fuck up, this scares me more, I'm human I make mistakes.) or the left will eat you.

It's not just the left mind. There is a certain snowflakery about the right too. All Jesus freaks and god weirdos. Plus Trumps outburst and general unsportsmanlike refusal to concede in an election he lost fair and square, finally put him off me, more than any of his racist, sexist shit he did. Which means that all you see from them now is, count the ballots, and the election was stolen from us.

Which it wasn't though.  

Cactus club.

 So its with great sadness that I report that we lost our club treasurer this past week. Its been a horrible year for me getting out and about, but club has been reduced to monthly zoom meetings, which as I hate webcam shit with a passion I've not been taking part.  Seriously my cam has been taped up since I bought my current laptop and have no intention of ever removing said tape.

We stay in touch through monthly emails and this came out of the blue yesterday, I kinda know the guy through facebook, from a Lithops forum of all things. If you're part of the MSG (Mesemb Study Group,) he was in charge of the seed list, so you may know him from there.

He grew a lot of mesembs and used to share photos online on the group I'm part of (yes I'm a fan too.) But trailed off a while ago. I knew he had a site up somewhere he'd link off to. Site is here if you would like to see what he grew or are just a mesemb fan then please have a look.

Bill Wymans Mobile Recording Studio.

 So America has a new president, and Trump is predictably being a cunt, not budging from office. So what the world right now needs is... The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio or rather an old BBC programme about it.

Bill Wyman set up a project called AIMS and set off around the country to find local talent and give guidance and more importantly, a recording gig in the mobile studio. The culmination of this is whittling the acts down to a manageable amount and a charity concert at the Albert Hall in South Ken. in aid of the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The tape I have is the legendary "Gostbastes" tape which does indeed contain Ghostbusters but also has quite a bit of music on it. There is the back half of the Montreux rock festival 88 with Gary Davies as host. And this, AIMS project.

It takes in the East Anglia leg of the tour with a lot of local acts from Norfolk and Suffolk. We get a genuine look at the studio which has the mother of all mixing desks along with 1" tape and two engineers straight out of Rockstar Ate My Hamster.

In fact its a lot like that with a few local rock bands and a rather good Christian band called Supafrutas which is surely an oxymoron. No Christian rock is good especially one with a choir of kiddies.

There's a dutch guy going by the name Mola Mola who was one of the winners as such. Had a video made of his track, with some blue screen trickery and a spot at the titular gig at the Albert Hall. 

Along with all the guitar wankery there is a lingering shot of them programming a Yamaha DX7, the old techno workhorse, and some Simmonds drums, which you might remember from Italo Disco, which begs to mind, what tracks did the Stones use a DX7 on.

At 30 mins its too big for my Youtube channel but will upload to Archive.org so at least it'll be archived, though the tape isn't that hot in places as its quite jumpy and jittery.

Finally we are halfway through Hooded Hawk's book encoding. The original is all formatted and we are currently editing it down against my original UK edition so it scans nicely.

Anyway Bill Wyman AIMS tour uploaded, here.

Updates of a sort

 Finally have a few bits on from last weeks, excitement when I found a tape of some obscure Mario game show. 

The tape has predictably calmed down and turned into a Olacak A Kadar a Turkish comedy show. The Travel Channel tape largely contained something from Cirque Du Soleil, and "Gostbastes" did indeed contain Ghostbusters, but mainly it's quite a bit of the Montreux Rock Festival from 1988.

Nothing really to write home about, though its hosted by Ooh Gary Davies, with a bit with Steve Winwood in an interview. Your acts are;

The Sisters of Mercy, Lucretia

Double, Gliding 

Then Jericho, 

Londonbeat,

Sabrina and yes it is Boys Boys Boys.

Mica Paris (Sadly interrupted)

Blue Mercedes

And that is as far as I've got, though looking online there's live bits of Run DMC too, so this is cool.

Anyway, along with the usual guitar bands there is a DX7 there and an Oberheim is used at one point. Whether its live, I have my doubts. There is a bit of Yazz and Coldcut from the top of the pops earlier. There is a black dude on stage to perform the jazz scat samples that Matt and co have sourced for their track.

Memory has it there is either an Orbital or 808 State clip of them performing in front of a big modular synth set up, which is totally fake of course.

I wouldn't mind seeing the top of the pops, where they played the Plasitkman mix of Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode, when it was at no.1 for the fourth week, also but I reckon that is memory holed into oblivion.