Confuzed.

 Had an amazing run out at the bootsale today. A lot of people dumping stuff so my haul was literally, two bags full today.

Got a lot of new records to scan and upload, but highlights of this has to be Powell Fizz, Florian Kupfer Evolva, and a few obscure tracks on the Supertronics label. Finish it off with a box set of NCIS (season 1) and a fuck load of books, Martin Lewis Supertips dumped out and Celebrity cats. With crime writer Ruth Rendell holding a grey Weedle type, is my favourite obscure  cross over.

 Also been thinking about long forgotten ads and stuff, my current favourite is the one that says what is a man but sadly doesn't go into Dracula's quote from Symphony of the Night. 

What I was really remembering was an old Confused. com sponsorship post for early evening ITV2, back in like 2010, that used music from SaGa Frontier 2, I think its this which is map screen music. I should really do a video on The Children's Channel stuff, like Jack in the Box or Stories without words. But I'd have to get a robot to narrate as I hate the sound of my own voice.

Grave of the Fur flies

 Apologies for the bad pun in the title, though I guess it is kind of apt. Have been wading through a ton of spam in my inbox (the usual suspects here, and for some reason Norton which I've not used for over a decade) and reading books.

Sky Sabotage, which you'll probably get, soon, Private Eye's SARS 2 electric boogaloo casebook, about what should have happened when the coof arrived. And Meeting in Japan, Fosco Maraini, which the heading pertains to.

August time, so I'm guessing O-bon festival, it talks about Buddhist remembrance festivals for the fish taken and something about cats and Hachiko the Dog, bravely waiting for its master down at Shibuya.  Can remember bits from The World Ends With You where its implied he only stayed there because people gave him tidbits to eat.

Anyway, before I digress further, the cat bits and fishlore I've not heard before and as it was written in the late 50's (Italian Original) or early 60's (English Translation) maybe its the last gasp of old Japan, before the new Showa era wiped it out.

In August Buddhist monks and laymen go down the Sumida river in boats, both to say prayers for the drowned and to apologize to the fish of the river for having taken their lives with rod and line, spear, and net. At the Oizumi cemetery, and in many other places, impressive services are held for the souls of dead cats and dogs and other animals, sometimes including insects. On such occasions many people visit the graves of cats who became famous for saving their master's lives, often in highly dramatic circumstances; the celebrated Gokoku-ji and Eko-in cats, for instance. There is a bridge in Tokyo, the Nekomatabashi, dedicated to a cat which, with a somewhat under-developed sense of private property, tried to relieve the poverty of its sick mistress by stealing small gold objects from a neighbouring moneylender. 

The paragraph goes on to describe loyal doggo, Hachiko, waiting for his master's return.

Looking at English sources for this I've found very little about this gift giving cat, only that the bridge was in Koisihkawa ward in Tokyo (home of the Tokyo dome) and that the area is mostly unscathed from quakes, WW2 firebombing, and other disasters. It's also home to some impressive Tokugawa Shogunate graves too.

A monster cat lived there (Nekomata) and people were scared to cross it. There is also an Ukiyo-e print of a demon Weedle, from that area, too. I know it best from Megaten. 

There are plenty of tales of cats dragging stuff back to their owners, so maybe this is some postwar version from Japan. 

Edit. Found out what Eko-in is about, there's a shrine to cats and dogs there. Gokoku-ji is probably Gotokuji, as linked above (another cat shrine).

Figures in hiding.

 Here's a strange thing, been reading through and formatting A Figure In Hiding by Franklin W. Dixon, one of the original canon books that was extensively rewritten. 

The rewrite version of this is crazy, it involves the bad eye syndicate, a health farm and a big glass eye used as a shortwave transceiver. The original on the other hand...

Has someone attempt suicide. I'm not kidding, the boys are helping Fenton out by eavesdropping on some suspects in the hotel room. The daughter of the main suspect Rip Sinder, tells them to stop doing what they're doing, before its revealed that she's an orphan that Rip is looking after.

The next thing, she's running from the hotel and driving off toward the Willow River. The car goes over, but not before the boys pull her out and prevent her from topping herself, as she's nothing left to live for.

I've yet to find out what the gang is doing in that hotel room, or how it ties into a cinema robbery. The remake has Sinder saying very little, he's a big ex boxer who's taken a whack to the throat and cannot speak much more than grunts.

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.