Secret Warning's

 Another set of books for you to be getting on with, this time it's The Secret Warning another Hardy boys mystery, and for once both the original, and rewrite are good stories.

The original has the Hardys track down Fenton Hardy's jacket, before getting to the main plot of helping out on a salvage gig off Reeds Landing. The boat is said to contain a fortune in gold and silver as well as a few other bits and pieces. They have access to a wonder camera in this that acts like a portable X-ray and primitive Go-pro all in one, Frank even sets it up as a kind of proto CCTV in order to catch a thief. 

All in all not a bad story at all.

The rewrite, keeps the salvage angle but this time, the ship holds a priceless Egyptian deathmask made of solid gold. There is also the business of Captiain 'Pearly' Early's cane and to top it all off Fenton Hardy is kidnapped.  Like I say, its not a bad rewrite, the mask is an enjoyable McGuffin in its own right and there is the couldn't happen today aspect in both stories (Joe Hardy blacking up as a disguise and Biff Hooper winning a Great Dane as a prize in a competition.) I'll let you work out which era of books those two appeared in.

Anyway Original here and rewrite here.

Wokezards of the Coast.

 I've never played a proper game of Dungeons and Dragons, I've played a few of the SSI games on Amiga, both Eye of the Beholders. And Shadows of Amn on PC, back in the day. But proper tabletop stuff, forget it. 

One of the consequences of this is, WH Smiths used to have issues of Dragon in along with Expert Gamer previously EGM2, and because I wanted to write fantasy on the off chance, got issues every month. Stopped only when Smiths stopped getting them in years back. So around 2003 then.

In fact, the modern game is rather shallow now. Its been taken over by the woke mob, who for instance, maintain that the orc is actually a metaphor for black people,* rather than a pig man hybrid. In a setting where you can heal serious disabilities, there are serious discussions about wheelchair accessible dungeons. Srsly I hope they have spack attack feats in5e so I can role play as Timmy from South Park.

So after some late night reading of all my old issues from way back then, we have a few letters from the dawn of the 3rd Edition, seemingly presaging the whole culture war. 

There is a letter from an Alexander F Simkin Ph.D. in reply to a previous letter. I don't know the contents and have probably binned that issue it was in. But its a long letter saying that political bias has crept in since 2E. I'll not print it in full, but if I remember, scan it and put it as an attachment. But the bullet points are incredible in this day and age.

"If you're not interested in D&D, no amount of appealing to your race, creed, sex, or sexual orientation is going to change that."

"Advocates for political correctness in D&D might argue that it doesn't do any harm and might do some good, so there's no reason to exclude it. They fail to consider or simply don't care that there might be a downside to it"

20 years later, with full Tumblr crowd pandering in effect we're now living in an age where dungeons are wheelchair accessible, and orcs are now perceived as being monsters of colour.

 

The Kids Are Alright.

 Here is something, I've been meaning to write about for ages now. I guess this falls into the whole lost media, rabbit hole thing, along with The Children's Channel Hennapippa (which I'm convinced was done in house now), and Geronimo by Axel F (not that Axel F)

For this you'll need to have read old dance magazines back in the day. Such as DJ Mag, Muzik, Generator or Mixmag. They would do a genre by genre breakdown of the new releases, and I'd scan through the house and techno bits looking for anything that caught my eye. 

One issue in the late 90's I came across, they had a release by a DJ paedofile called the Kids Are Alright. It was a purple sleeve with some ABC blocks on the cover. I was convinced it was an April fools joke, and thought no more about it. But over the years it would sneak back at random times, that was this, A. real and B. If so, was it ever released. 

I was convinced it was a mock up for ages. Then I decided the real acid test today, if it was a mock, to see if it has a Discogs listing. It does.

I also, for some reason, though it was a house track, but it seems to be breakcore. Which is a double bonus.

Edit, looking through the comments on the video there, and its got it's own bandcamp page. Well of course it does.

Pirates Hill

This is the first one of these of the year. And yes there is some irony that these pirate version's here are also "pirates".

The Secret of Pirate's Hill is one of those three way splits, in which the Original version is the best with a slightly edited down version for the UK and a much revised edit put out later on, when the books were updated in the mid 60's. 

It's not a bad story TBH. The boys are attacked whilst scuba diving off Pirates Hill, and when they get back to town, a geezer by the name of Bowden has a job for them. Looking for an old cannon, supposedly to form part of a parade down in Florida.

There are a lot about cannons in this book and you will get to hear the word demiculverin over and over by the time you're done. It's not just Bowden after the cannon, there is an ex con called Latsky who also wants it and another guy called Tim Gorman who also wants the cannon for his own ends.

There is a nice exchange up on the Napoli, Tony Prito's boat, where Frank and Joe's unconvincing girlfriends. Iola Morton and Callie Shaw, take a shine to Tim much to the boys chagrin.  This maybe cut for space in later editions. 

Also the boys actually do some sleuthing, making a plaster cast of a facial impression in the sand. It's not all dumb luck and such. 

Anyway you can read them here.

Original, UK, Revised.

Well here is an odd postscript. There is a TV show that is tangentially related to Pirates Hill. Watching Expedition Unknown over dinner, episode 6 from series 7, specifically, is about the search Jose Gaspar's treasure, and has details of the Gasparilla pirate parade mentioned in the books. Mostly correct, except it's down in Florida instead of off the coast of New Jersey.