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Hap & Leonard


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I should be immune at this point, but Lansdale's fiction* has apparently not prepared me for the real horror of the Mee-Maw backstory at the start of this episode. I challenge that to not fuck you up bigtime. 

As for the rest of the episode, it's some righteous vengeance. 

* High Cotton and Bumper Crop came in the mail (and are way more insane than I thought they would be)! Thank you OSJ! And also, I'm getting books from Dave Fucking Schow himself after I shoot him some money on Friday. My 12-year old self reading Raving and Drooling articles in Fangoria and finding out what lucha libre is is doing backflips right now. 

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On 3/29/2017 at 0:47 AM, Curt McGirt said:

I should be immune at this point, but Lansdale's fiction* has apparently not prepared me for the real horror of the Mee-Maw backstory at the start of this episode. I challenge that to not fuck you up bigtime. 

As for the rest of the episode, it's some righteous vengeance. 

* High Cotton and Bumper Crop came in the mail (and are way more insane than I thought they would be)! Thank you OSJ! And also, I'm getting books from Dave Fucking Schow himself after I shoot him some money on Friday. My 12-year old self reading Raving and Drooling articles in Fangoria and finding out what lucha libre is is doing backflips right now. 

Dave's a cool guy, we met at a World Fantasy Con in 1986, I was a nobody who had just started a small press and he was already on his way to being a great writer and movie authority and we sat and shot the shit for over an hour. 

Some years later his SO at the time, Christa Faust, Poppy Z. Brite, Doug Winter and myself commandeered the video room at a Con (chasing out the three Dr. Who fans who had been camped out there for two days) and watched tapes of Manami Toyota and Akira Hokuto... Good times. We actually wound up turning on about a dozen people to joshi, so I put this one in the "good deeds" file. As for the Whovians, (and I like Dr. Who as much as the next guy), why the fuck would you spend hundreds of dollars to go to a Convention with lots of interesting people to talk to and things to see only to spend the whole weekend watching a program that's on TV every day?

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Poppy Z Brite? Hadn't heard anything from her for ages, and I used to love her book in the 90s (until she started writing novels about restaurants and wine or something. Wonder what she's up to now?

[checks google]

Oh. Well, you can't say you didn't see that coming. It's not like he didn't give us any clues or anything.

Meanwhile, apparently Christa Faust's last book was called "Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick: Double-D Double Cross". And they say books shouldn't be bought for their titles.

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5 hours ago, AxB said:

Poppy Z Brite? Hadn't heard anything from her for ages, and I used to love her book in the 90s (until she started writing novels about restaurants and wine or something. Wonder what she's up to now?

[checks google]

Oh. Well, you can't say you didn't see that coming. It's not like he didn't give us any clues or anything.

Apparently so. Me reading Exquisite Corpse right out of high school, lended to me by an extremely sexist and effusively hetero prick of a man, makes me laugh. Wish I could go up to him and say, "So, you have this book..."

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On 4/1/2017 at 6:12 PM, AxB said:

Poppy Z Brite? Hadn't heard anything from her for ages, and I used to love her book in the 90s (until she started writing novels about restaurants and wine or something. Wonder what she's up to now?

[checks google]

Oh. Well, you can't say you didn't see that coming. It's not like he didn't give us any clues or anything.

Meanwhile, apparently Christa Faust's last book was called "Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick: Double-D Double Cross". And they say books shouldn't be bought for their titles.

And don't sleep on this one...

51Zf6Ss4quL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

 

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Let me preface this by saying that Poppy, Christa, and Caitlin are dear friends of mine, like the younger sisters I never had... Back in the day, Poppy was getting all the press, but I had a feeling that Caitlin R. Kiernan was the one who would have the most productive fiction career. I think time has proved me right and Caitlin may be our best living author of weird fiction. Poppy's high points were awfully damn high and Christa's got a feel for twisted noir that equals anyone, but Cait's volume of work alone is like twice of both of them put together. Just amazing stuff.

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Whew. New one makes next one look like they are in some reaaaaaal deep shit. This is getting into some True Detective (season one) territory for anyone enamored with that who wants to check it out. 

And after getting through half of High Cotton and Bumper Crop, this is tame for Lansdale

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15 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Whew. New one makes next one look like they are in some reaaaaaal deep shit. This is getting into some True Detective (season one) territory for anyone enamored with that who wants to check it out. 

And after getting through half of High Cotton and Bumper Crop, this is tame for Lansdale

I take it you've read "The Night They Missed the Horror Show"?

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Indeed. All I needed to do was go into the book-room where K-Z are shelved... But I am lazy... I fixed it for future readers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I caught up to the replay of "Pie a la Mojo" (on top of revisiting the crushing bus montage in the previous episode set to "Wayfaring Stranger") and to say it's a kick in the nuts is mild. The only positive closure to be had will hopefully be in the finale, but this whole season was just brutal. Goddammit, Lansdale...

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Spoiler

Well, I have to say, it wrapped up nicely except for

1. They might be indebted to Valentine in some fashion... or not. Or vice-versa. Did Hap and Leonard just jet and the sheriff play it off like an accident? Must've been the case. 

2. Nothing was ever mentioned about what Hanson said to Valentine about the shoes, unless I missed the two minutes or so of the show I spent switching during commercial to watch Rape O'Reilly get mocked on the Daily Show replay. So basically same situation as above.

Of course the Klan robes hanging on the wash in the last scene is the most forbidding thing ever. This episode had two great flips involved character-wise with Valentine and Florida as both reveal their prejudices basically reversed but still the same, as both acquiesce to the cultural climate despite how they feel. It's sad and disgusting in both cases of course but it gives them both an extra layer of character. 

This was a much more mournful trip this time out, despite the humor. Maybe next season they manage to merge the panache of the first with the insightfulness of the second. More than likely they do. Come back soon boys. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bizarre coincidence: I'm sitting at work on break reading Lansdale's Bumper Crop (which is excellent, btw) and I flip to the back to see how old he is since he notes that he's been married 30 years (turns out he's 65, which is older than my folks, who've been married over 30). He doesn't look more than early 40s in his photo but there's no notes on his age. Then I glance down and it says that Golden Gryphon Press, who printed the book, is located in Urbana, IL. 

I was sitting in Urbana, IL right then. 

The next thought I had was, "couldn't I have just walked down the street and found a copy of this instead of ordering from upstate New York via mail order?" 

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17 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Bizarre coincidence: I'm sitting at work on break reading Lansdale's Bumper Crop (which is excellent, btw) and I flip to the back to see how old he is since he notes that he's been married 30 years (turns out he's 65, which is older than my folks, who've been married over 30). He doesn't look more than early 40s in his photo but there's no notes on his age. Then I glance down and it says that Golden Gryphon Press, who printed the book, is located in Urbana, IL. 

I was sitting in Urbana, IL right then. 

The next thought I had was, "couldn't I have just walked down the street and found a copy of this instead of ordering from upstate New York via mail order?" 

Yeah, Joe looks younger than me, (he's six years older), but that's to be expected, he's a black belt in more martial arts than I can count and in phenomenal shape for any age. It certainly would have been cool to visit the offices of Golden Gryphon, Gary Turner is good people, (his older brother who started the company, not so much...)

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Some people just age well, and his writing certainly does. I'm convinced that "Pilots" and the other several I read had an effect on my subconscious because I had some gnarly dreams last night... thankfully I can't remember them (or maybe not thankfully? they could always be my "popcorn stories")

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On 5/6/2017 at 11:28 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Some people just age well, and his writing certainly does. I'm convinced that "Pilots" and the other several I read had an effect on my subconscious because I had some gnarly dreams last night... thankfully I can't remember them (or maybe not thankfully? they could always be my "popcorn stories")

Way back when Joe was starting out his goal was to grind out a story a day. He usually was able to do so and the results were much better than one would expect. After he became a name and could take his time and write whatever crossed his brilliant, but twisted as fuck mind we got masterpieces. 

Me, I don't think I was good until after I hit 45, I really started at about 35, and I was fortunate to have Edward Lee's guidance and collaboration. Don't think I'll ever be as good as Joe, but I'm cool with that. I just don't have the obsessive personality that you find in folks that decide to be truly great at something. Fucking Lansdale was in his late twenties or early thirties when he decided he was going to master martial arts. Fast forward a few years and he's developed his own style that people come from all over the world to study.

Funny story, back in the 1990s, at a World Fantasy or World Horror Con in Providence, R.I. Joe and I went out for a walk to see the sights in the city where Lovecraft and Poe lived. We were probably the only two people in Providence wearing cowboy boots, perhaps the only two people in Rhode Island with such footwear, now that I think about it. I was really sort of hoping that the local thugs would fuck with us, but other than some funny looks nothing happened. ;-) For the record, I am not a badass, (but I look like I might be), Joe is as legit as it gets. The guy could hurt you in places that you didn't even realize were places. (And as you may expect with such a person, as nice and courteous a man as you will ever meet.) 

At the Niagara Falls World Horror, (which was a clusterfuck of epic proportions), they had to cut the autograph party short because the con committee had failed to reserve the room for more than two hours. All the writers left, except Joe. He sat on the floor in the hall for another hour and a half and made sure that everyone that wanted something signed was accommodated. That too is as legit as it gets. I've always remembered that and have never, ever declined to sign something, (even when some shmuck totes a bag of books into the hotel restaurant when I'm having breakfast.) What the hell, he helped make it possible for me to be sitting in a hotel restaurant having breakfast.

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55 minutes ago, OSJ said:

And as you may expect with such a person, as nice and courteous a man as you will ever meet.

He even seems like that in the intros to the stories, so self-effacing. "I wrote this, it got rejected. I think it's good though." Then WHAM, right upside the head. If he's a master of the martial arts he is at short stories as well, absolute black belt. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just checked his WIki and there's  a current pic, I'm happy to say that Joe looks older than I do by about ten years... No other reason for posting other than to save the Hap & Leonard thread from getting lost. I'm not sure which is better, H & L or Better Call Saul, but both are as fine an hour of tv as you can get. Preacher and American Gods are runners up with Walking Dead and GOT.

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  • 8 months later...

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