Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kenneth Hite's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, July 4th, 2009
3:55 pm	[RECIPE] Too Good For Facebook Every so often, I'll post an abbreviated menu to Facebook, usually while in a state of self-satisfied repletion. But this recipe is what it says up there on the tin. In honor of picnics in honor of the Fourth, here's the best deviled egg recipe I've ever made, by far: DEVA'D EGGS 12 eggs, hard-boiled, halved, yolks separated 6 TBSP mayonnaise 1 1/2 TSP curry powder (we're dangerously low on Penzey's Maharajah blend, and I may have to devote an afternoon to cloning it. Or break down and buy another jar) 3/4 TSP garlic paste 1/3 TSP celery salt 1/2 TSP salt (or more to taste) 1/4 TSP fresh ground black pepper (or more to taste) 1/2 TSP lemon juice (or more to taste) Dump your yolks in a big glass bowl, and mix in the next four ingredients. Then comes the slightly tricky bit with the salt and pepper -- don't over-salt the things; over-peppering them is more forgivable because the curry powder will give you some breathing room there. Once you've got the saltiness where you want it (or just a little below that, ideally), add lemon juice to brighten the flavor -- there will be a kind of hole in the top notes that slowly adding lemon juice will fill. If you over-lemon it, you can add another TSP or so of mayo to smooth it back out in the middle register. Then take your little spoon and moosh the filling back into the hard-boiled whites, making sure to accidentally split one or three of them so that you have to eat the failures. (I usually have mollpeartree do this part -- only the willpower of someone who's quit smoking is up to the task of filling deviled eggs. If it were me doing it, this dozen egg recipe would result in about five eggs left over for company.) One could, I suspect, make a slightly lighter version of this with olive oil in for the mayo, though you'd want to cut the amount by half or more, and you'd risk making it too sweet -- maybe some chili pepper would cut through that, but by now, you're talking about a whole different recipe, really. So I'd just stick with the mayo, myself. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
4:55 am	Twenty Tales Presented for discussion and disputation; the order is approximate, and the titles are not final. But they're damn close. 10 Best Stories About Cthulhu Not By H.P. Lovecraft “Nethescurial,” by Thomas Ligotti “Worms of the Earth,” by Robert E. Howard “The Deep Ones,” by James Wade “The Terror From the Depths,” by Fritz Leiber “Recrudescence,” by Leonard Carpenter Strange Eons, by Robert Bloch “Only the End of the World Again,” by Neil Gaiman Move Under Ground, by Nick Mamatas An Evil Guest, by Gene Wolfe “Final Draft,” by David Annandale 10 More Best Cthulhu Mythos Stories, Not By H.P. Lovecraft, Not Necessarily Involving Cthulhu “Sticks,” by Karl Edward Wagner “Than Curse the Darkness,” by David Drake “Details,” by China Miéville “The Franklyn Paragraphs,” by Ramsey Campbell “Black Man With a Horn,” by T.E.D. Klein Résumé With Monsters, by William Browning Spencer “The Seven Geases,” by Clark Ashton Smith “The Courtyard,” by Alan Moore “The Perseids,” by Robert Charles Wilson “The Thing That Walked on the Wind,” by August Derleth (50 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 29th, 2009
10:29 pm	Columbus Daze Back from Origins today, and between my aching feet, piled-up work, and general sleep-dep, tonight was all about lying around with mollpeartree and watching Wanted. Oh, Angelina Jolie -- how you taunt me. But even better than Angelina Jolie in tight leather on the top of a speeding El car in Chicago shooting around corners was winning the Best Non-Fiction Work of 2008 Origins Award for Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales. This was especially gratifying, as it's my first Origins Award for a project that was substantially my work -- although I have no delusions about righteousfist's crucial role in the book. And, indeed, I also owe many thanks to you kind folks, for reading the Tour in its initial form in these pixels, commenting, improving those posts with suggestions, and (speaking of suggestions) suggesting I collect the blog Tour into a book in the first place. So thank you all very much. You can see a short film by wordwill on the Award here. It's a delicate little tone poem of a piece, and speaks volumes of the quality of his friendship (and his narrative skill, even in such glancing, almost calligraphic form). Given that wordwill and jtidball were also nominated for their superb ludoparemiography Things We Think About Games, I can't tell you how much it means to me that he put this together. I was also deeply touched by my warm reception at the "What's New With Pinnacle" seminar, which Shane Hensley generously invited me to attend. I am not used to being applauded for thanking potential customers and making a potential product announcement. (Not even for anything specific, just: "Day After Ragnarok won't be my last Savage Worlds setting.") Savage Worlds is a great game, and if the audience at that seminar was any indication, it breeds great fans. And there was a song. Two songs. Let's see, what else? You saw righteousfist and the game playwrights at the fantastic Burgundy Room, where I think the highlight this year was probably the Roasted Lamb Lollipop with Lemon-Fontina Enriched Risotto, Black Walnut Pesto and Red Pepper Relish. Unless it was the Asparagus, Pattypan Squash, Baby Zucchini, Raddichio and Smoked Mozzarella Ravioli with a Madeira Reduction. I got some more half-price Osprey Books, did a podcast and a bit, helped out at the Hero Games booth (and as always, many thanks to dtwatts for his hospitality at booth and hotel), and chatted with a host of good friends. I love this convention, and after four successive lunches at North Market (with Jenni's Ice Cream for dessert each time), and a pint mojito or two with rockin' yukon_jack, I love this city. Can't wait to go back next year. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
5:05 am	Putting the "Art" Into "Antarctic" * Have I mentioned my next children's book here? I think I may have -- it's The Antarctic Express, a mashup of At the Mountains of Madness and The Polar Express. Well, you can see a lot of the art for the book, in various stages of completion, at the blog of the book's artist, Christina Rodriguez. I have been extraordinarily fortunate with the artists on these books, I gotta say. * Speaking of art, I've got Mike Perry sketches from Day After Ragnarok to show off, too. * Also, the energetic Aron Head at the blog Ideology of Madness (where, "If we geek about it, we speak about it") has not only posted an interview with me, but is hosting a contest to win a copy of The Day After Ragnarok in PDF and print. There's some Nathan Furman art from that book there, too, if you're unsated. The giant is particularly neat, methinks. * And I don't think I've mentioned the map in these pixels yet, have I? The final version has a few tweaks and modifications in it (Yes, I know "Okhotsk" is spelled wrong...) but this should give you a nigh-finished taste. Plus, I do so like linking to maps at the end of a bunch of asterisky plugs. (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
10:31 am	No Time For Love, Doctor Jones It's been a busy fortnight here at the Ambipartisan Manse. We've had visits from the delightful schlafmanko, my Mom, the Un-Maker, and the Best Plumber in the World. We've had frustratingly fewer visits from the Muse, as it's been catch-as-catch-can on the writing time around here. All of which takes its toll on LJ posting. I am not insensible of the pain this causes you good people. So here are the titles of the posts I would have posted over the last fortnight or so, if this June weren't shaping up to be so very much like my average May -- namely, horribly busy and over-committed. Actually, Paramount Marketing Division, That Pretty Much Was My Father's Star Trek. Today, I Am Canadian (Letting people who care know that I'm on Facebook. So far, I'm still resisting Twitter.) Tori Spelling's Cthulhu Actually Kind of Horrific, But Not In The Way You'd Think Watch Alien Raiders Now Or The Kid Gets It With Up, Pixar Demonstrates An Uncanny Ability To Blend Tone While Maintaining A Powerful Thematic And Narrative ... Squirrel! (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
2:22 pm	Ragnarok Available At the Touch of a Button Which is to say that I know I owe you good people many, many posts, but I'm happier than I can tell you to announce that my "Conan the Barbarian: 1948" meets "Quatermass and the Giant Snake" Savage Worlds setting, The Day After Ragnarok, is finally available from Atomic Overmind. The print version will be at Origins, we devoutly hope, but surely you all are the kind of savvy, Web 2.0-enabled consumers who will rush right out and get it in PDF. (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
11:54 pm	So, A Month Ago, I Was In Paris What with one thing and another, I never did post about Actual Paris here, did I? (Although Montreuil, where the convention was held, is RightNext to Paris, so much so that we ate in Paris on the Friday night by dint of walking five blocks. So "I know a little place in the 20th." Anyhow...) Monday was Walk Around In Paris day, with the able aid, guidance, and companionship of gbsteve. Our initial target was Nicolas Flamel's house in the Marais, somewhere or other. We alit at the Bastille Metro stop, where they don't have the Bastille any more, of course, and started walking. The first statue we ran across turned out to be that of Beaumarchais, who combined a busy career as a playwright with illegal arms smuggling to America -- if you're looking for Frenchman Zero to thank for our independence, he's the guy, since he shipped us arms before we had any powder mills up and running. So I thanked him, and off we set. It took a good bit of a while to find Flamel's joint, and I think we were both thinking very fond thoughts of Baron Haussmann as we navigated the literally medieval street layout. We finally found it, but Nicolas and the Mrs. had stepped out in 1418 or so, and the brunch was 18 euro, so we moved on. From there, we set out toward the Seine and I gawped at a river I knew better than any other river I'd never seen. The only comparable experience I've ever had -- of lengthy, culturally reinforced deja vu -- was the first time I went to Los Angeles. Even New York hadn't made such an unexpected impression on my optic nervous memory as Paris had, apparently. From there we angled back east to the Ile St-Louis, stumbling over the Pompidou Center unawares-like, which is not something I'd recommend. It actually looks far worse in context. Given how much of Paris looks like the Belle Epoque, having something that looks like a pile of HVAC spang in the middle of it is just an insult to everyone concerned. Even if it were an Academie du HVAC, much less an art museum. On the Ile, we learned that the old Conciergerie prison, the one that held Marie Antoinette, was the only thing open in Paris on a Monday. No doubt to thwart the treacherous Habsburgs with their habit of escaping on Mondays. But we took a pass and crossed over to the Ile-de-Cite, where Notre Dame was open on Monday. Very, very open; full of people hawking candles and 5-euro tape tours and postcards and everything; enough to make you want to knot up some cords and go to work on 'em. But still, open. So in we went, pushing our way past the money-changers and their ilk to ... ... the spot where the nave and transept cross, between those two rose windows, below the paten of the Virgin, where people's lives have attained meaning for 800 years. The hair stood up on my ankles, ladies and gentlemen. Having thus more than exorcized the Pompidou, off we went to the Rive Gauche to goof around and find the famous Shakespeare & Co. English-language bookshop, which isn't the one with F. Scott Fitzgerald, but the one with William S. Burroughs, though it's named after the one you're thinking of. There, I did not buy a book. I did not buy at least two books, and up on the second story, you can't buy any of the books because they're left there for louche poseurs to read. I fit the criteria, but we didn't have the time for me to read a whole biography of the Mitford sisters. 'Cause we had to re-cross the Seine on the Pont Neuf (or was it Pont Alexandre III a.k.a. "Pont Where Sean Bean Nearly Screws Up The Arms Deal in Ronin" -- we crossed both), past the Tour de Saint-Jacques, which was as unexpectedly delightful as the Pompidou was unexpected and dreadful, and off to the Longue Marche, from the Louvre through the Tuileries and onto the Champs Elysee. In all fairness to I.M. Pei, easily the laziest of the major modern architects, the Louvre Pyramid isn't as terrible as one might think once you see it in proportion. The Jardin des Tuileries was quite beautiful, of course, but the strictly ordered and ranked trees, and the even white dust and lined paths reminded me that Paris is a city permanently stamped by three dictators -- Louis XIV, Napoleon, and Napoleon III. If you had to pick three dictators to shape your city, those are two good ones (and Napoleon can be counted on to loot nice things for you), but it gives Paris a different character than any American city, or London, or Helsinki. It's not un-similar to Moscow in that regard. Perhaps if I got to spend more time there, I'd see what emerges in the negative space that the Bourbons and Bonapartes left. The big delight after the Tuileries was the obelisk of Ramesses II in the Place du Concorde, marking (anchoring?) the spot where the guillotine worked during the Terror, where royal heads rolled. Somehow, I hadn't known that King Louis-Philippe was a Tim Powers fan, but there you have it. And from there, up the Champs Elysee to the Arc du Triomphe. Which was almost the first place where we actually could see the Eiffel Tower; for a 900-foot-tall tower, the iron lady is awfully demure. Digression on Paris sightlines: Everyone knows about the big ley, running from the Louvre basin through the Arc du Triomphe all the way to the Arc du Laptop Metal or whatever they call it in La Defense. But the whole city is set up for them, between Haussmann's boulevards and the low profile of the city proper. Everything except churches is three and four stories tall, built (as I mentioned) in roughly Second Empire style. There's one skyscraper in the whole city, the Montparnasse, and it's homely and I didn't bother getting any closer. Plus, the whole city is laid out in a bowl. So the sky in Paris is huge, like the sky in Omaha or Oklahoma City, except when you look down BANG you're in Paris. Very strange, to this Chicago boy. From the Arc du Triomphe, we gave our aching feet a rest and rode the Metro to the Opera, which is as silly looking as you'd think. ("My Empress, the style is 'Napoleon III'" was the reputed explanation the architect offered to an aghast Eugenie.) Neither of those pictures shows it, but there's a ramp running right up through the front doors from one side, so Napoleon could ride his carriage right into the building. Also, it's too small for opera; it hosts the ballet now. But, on the bright side, it has a hideously scarred fiend in the basement. Nearby, gbsteve and I found a bistro where I could eat duck confit (having subsisted on traditional French kebabs and sushi all through the con), and then he deserted me for London. So I gambled a stamp and rode the double-decker tourist bus all around the rest of Paris that I'd missed -- I got to see the Eiffel Tower up close and personal, featuring machine-gun-toting guards, and Rodin's Thinker peeking over the wall at the Musee Rodin (it's out back, up on a big pedestal), and the Trocadero, and the jaw-droppingly handsome Palais de Chaillot. (And yes, I do feel dirty for liking that fascist building so very, very much. But it's just perfect for the site.) By that time, it was getting colder, and I had no boon Anglophone companion, and I was running low on sleep and euro, so I took the Metro back to Montreuil and made an early night of it. I need to return to Paris when I have more euro and Anglophones. Sleep and warm still optional. And speaking of modern architecture that actually works, the international departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport does. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 25th, 2009
12:50 pm	In Memoriam Robert Munroe (Ensign, Lexington militia, KIA 19 April 1775, Lexington Green) Brent S. Cole (CWO, 1st Bn, 82nd CAV Bde, 82nd Airborne Div, KIA 22 May 2009, near Tarin Kwot, Afghanistan) And all in between. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
3:06 pm	In France and Oakland, They Consider Me To Be Literature Just a quickie to post up two more interviews, or rather an interview and a half: * Here's an interview I did at the convention in Paris, with the Scifi Universe website. The questions (from Nicolas Lamberti of SFU) are in French, my answers are in English, and then the doughty gbsteve renders them in la belle langue. It's a video interview, so you can amuse yourself during the French parts watching me twitch and squirm like a Treasury Department official -- I think I may have watched too much Firing Line at an impressionable age. Also, before you ask: no, I don't know what the deal is with my hair. Even for my hair, it's looking remarkably bad. * This one, thank God, is just audio; better yet, it's audio with me, chrishanrahan, foxbat, and Brian Isikoff. It's the second half of that very long 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast we did at DunDraCon way back in the day. So enjoy! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
3:46 am	Night of the Loving Dead Tonight, mollpeartree and I went up to the Angel Island Theater to see Revenants, by Scott T. Barsotti. It's the latest production by Chicago's very own Wildclaw Theatre, which faithful (not to say obsessive) readers of this blog will recall is the company that more than successfully mounted Charley Sherman's adaptation of Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House this winter. Without spoilering anything, I can say that the play is a thoroughly successful melding of the relationship drama and the zombie apocalypse; neither component was bolted on after the fact, and each provides vital momentum and plot turns for the other. WildClaw's Witch House also concerned apocalypse, though interestingly a less personal -- and more cataclysmic -- one than Lovecraft's story. It, also, featured a relationship drama, although one cast as a parallel investigation -- a despairing Thin Man story where Nick and Nora meet only for the catastrophe. Revenants, by contrast, is all about contact -- enforced contact, as Gary and Karen, two survivors of a zombie apocalypse, are hiding out in a basement with Gary's wife Molly and Karen's husband Joe -- both of whom are zombies. (They're essentially chained up, like the experimental subject in Day of the Dead. And while I'm inside these parentheses -- isn't it strange that we now have an essentially universal understanding of a zombie apocalypse? You still can't make a vampire movie without setting it up, but "zombie apocalypse" is apparently like "country house murder" or "Thanksgiving dinner." It's a stock event you set drama against, not drama itself any more.) Joe and Gary are long-time best friends, and Karen believes that Joe is "alive somewhere in there." Karen's feelings toward Molly are far more ambivalent, which introduces only the first unbalanced moment in the steadily collapsing gyre that is common to all good zombie films. Except, weirdly enough, 28 Days Later. Hmmm. Oh, and Shaun of the Dead, which is a comedy in genre and in structure. Revenants, however, is horror in genre all the way -- especially if the notion of missing, broken, or mutilated love is horrific. In structure? Harder to say. Certainly harder to say without spoilers. The WildClaw team does their apparently standard great job with the production -- lighting, set design, blood work, makeup are all well above what you'd expect for off-off-Loop drama. The cast is also good, with the standout being Jenny Strubin's Karen. Brian Amidei is probably the best actor on stage (based on his Witch House chops) but the role of Joe calls for little more than presence, alternately menacing and brutalized. Oh well, nobody takes a part as a zombie for the dialogue. Which, I should point out, is always good -- menacing gutturals, contrapuntal groans and growls, and just the tiniest torturous hints of humanity. The director, Anne Adams, balances the zombies (mostly in the background) and the survivors (mostly in the foreground) deftly -- there's always something going on, and nothing is ever blocked or walked over. There's a gun, which gets used, although mollpeartree thought the immense pair of loppers on the wall violated Chekhovian law. In other words -- go see it; it's playing through May 24. See it with someone you'd shoot through the brain, or chain up in the garage, should it come to that. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 8th, 2009
2:28 am	Free Books Now Too Expensive In the grand tradition of economic journalism (and indeed, of faultless economic theory), I report a sign of the Crash purely based on my own selfish concerns. I'm choking back bitter, salty tears at the prospect of not doing Book Expo this year, despite many kind offers of couches scattered across the Five Boroughs (well, across Queens) where I can crash. My normal hookup for a badge, Chaosium, won't be going, and none of my other expedients have borne fruit. While the cost of a badge is pretty reasonable considering all you get for it, between badge, airfare, and the ancillary costs of meals and trippy Tribeca movies and drinks and such, the total cost of all those beautiful free books tips the scales in this time of Austerity. I shall have to console myself with Chicago in late May, live vicariously through rdansky, freeport_pirate and lemuriapress, and buy Owen Davies' Grimoires: A History of Magic Books with my Amazon Associates money rather than score it from the kindly folks at OUP direct. But it shan't be the same, somehow. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 27th, 2009
12:19 am	Meanwhile, Back In America * I've been hired by gmskarka as line developer of Adamant Entertainment's upcoming line of licensed Call of Cthulhu products. First up: This Scepter'd Isle: Call of Cthulhu in Elizabethan England and Shadows of the Red Hand, a gangland Chicago setting book. So that should be fun. * I've been nominated for two Origins Awards: for Trail of Cthulhu (Best Roleplaying Game) and Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales (Best Non-Fiction). Given the high caliber works on display in both categories, this is one occasion where it actually is just an honor to be nominated. * Topically drifting back to La Belle Cité, tomorrow gbsteve and I go in search of Nicolas Flamel's house. And I, most likely, gawp like a tourist the whole way there. I shall have to dine alone that night, as the worthy Dempsey will be deserting me in the afternoon to go to a creative writing class in London. The Rue d'Auseil will have one last chance to draw me into le void cosmique. (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 26th, 2009
8:48 am	Paris Is Worth A Twelve-Hour Convention Hall Stint Long day at the con yesterday, interspeckled with fine convo with angusabranson, autographing, and discussions of RPG theory with Olivier Caira, who yesterday debuted Jouer avec l'Histoire, a critical anthology on the topic of historical roleplaying. Well worth perusing, I suspect even moreso if you read French. Dinner yesterday was sushi with gbsteve, about which I cannot be negative. The salmon was excellent. I omitted, in my telegraphic report night before last, to note that I ate a dozen escargots. Herbed in olive oil, rather than garlicked; quite quite nice. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
12:03 am	Jules Verne Was Right I am typing this post on my TV in my hotel room. Slowly; laboriosly; and on a French keyboard; but nonetheless; it is being accomplished< My French hosts wanted to get pizza; but I talked them into trying French food instead; whuch worked pretty well in the final analysis< Certainly; the Roquefort sauce on my sirloin worked< Convention tomorrow/ (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
10:30 am	Things We Know About Paris So Far 1. I am in it, or possibly in Montreuil. 2. It is a simply gorgeous day. 3. The existence of lunch can be inferred, but will require a bold solo expedition to confirm. 4. I will be dining tonight with my French publisher Valerie, assuming we can find each other, and assuming I don't eat lunch in the Rue d'Auseil by accident and vanish into the primal chaos. 5. The Romans called it Lutetium. Technically, I already knew that, but this seemed like an extraordinary thin gruel of facts without some padding. 6. More later! If you're planning to attend GenCon France, look me up at the 7éme Circle booth. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
10:03 am	Sic Transit Gloria Vegas Vegas eight months after the Crash is still Vegas, which means it has changed dramatically since last I was here. The construction cranes have pulled back to more easily-defended ramparts like the City Center and the Fontainebleau; McCarran Airport is almost tolerable; drink prices are up a little bit; the Seafood Buffet at the Rio is now distinctly second-rate rather than joyously middlebrow. Waiters, dancers, casino folk -- they all look a little wild-eyed, a little desperate, a little more like the visitors. The Crash has taught Vegas how the rest of the country lives, and they don't like it much. Neither do I; I love this desert Pandemonium, this reverse Arcadia built on tamed water and lightnings summoned up from the bowels of the Earth by Herbert Hoover after the last Crash. What will spring from the alkali this time around? At a distinctly mediocre breakfast yesterday, rsdancey and I speculated about alternate history for a town without history -- what if the Sands had preserved its famous marquee? People already snarl traffic so much capturing 1959 on their cell phones that the city has had to put up a special "scenic overlook" lot for The Sign. What if the Flamingo had preserved one or two or five of Bugsy's original bungalows? How much could they charge for them now, even now? What is coming down, or not being built, that we'll long to remember here, in sixty or fifty years? What happens in Vegas doesn't stay anywhere, especially in Vegas. Last night, I heard M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," with its distinctive droning riff; "Straight to Hell." We're already here, and we just can't remember it. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
4:18 pm	Dave Arneson, RIP My eulogy is here. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
3:46 pm	The FAQ After Ragnarok If you're interested in The Day After Ragnarok, my upcoming "Conan the Barbarian: 1948" meets "Quatermass and the Giant Snake" setting for Savage Worlds, I answer a number of fan questions on that very topic at the Atomic Overmind blog site, here. (There's more previews throughout the blog, too.) Just think! Answers about Ragnarok, and you don't even have to trade your eye to Mimir for them! * Plus, as a special added bonus, 45 minutes or so of me rambling on -- with Brian Isikoff, foxbat, and chrishanrahan -- about DunDraCon, large-format gaming, and the wonderfulness that is Kevin Allen, Jr's Sweet Agatha, is available for your listening pleasure, as the latest 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction has been up for a while now. I've just been delinquent in plugging it. Shockin', I know. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
7:55 pm	Hooking The Hook Having just on the spur of the moment written up "The Hook" for GURPS Horror 4e (both as psycho killer and as tulpa, of course), I should probably get this out of my system so I can dive back in and write up the lilitu. So, it seems to me that Snopes.com is on to something when they suggest a connection between the Hook urban legend and the Texarkana Phantom killings in 1946, despite the inconvenient fact that the Phantom used a .32, not a hook hand. But 1946 is right at the beginning of the AM revolution in American pop radio, and Texarkana is right in the middle of the zone where Brunvand traces the Hook story to before it goes national. (The Hook debuted in a "Dear Abby" column on November 8, 1960 -- talk about your prime-time position for an ambitious young tulpa!) My extremely tentative reconstruction is that some AM night-time DJ (maybe on a religious station; maybe in between "border" records) mentions the Texarkana "Lover's Lane" killings, spreading the "Lover's Lane Killer" meme out across the central U.S. Maybe it's a "border blaster" station, or maybe it's some now-forgotten syndicated show. The meme connects up with the general "sex killers use knives" motif that English-speakers get from Jack the Ripper (Francophone sex-killers, from what I understand, come from Landru, and strangle their victims, so take that, Dr. Freud) and perhaps some now-forgotten paperback, true-crime pulp, or B-movie about a hook-handed killer. Some time in 1955, all that came together: Some kid is about to go necking, and his cool older brother (a true-crime maven -- or just someone who went to a lot of drive-in movies -- and an "underground radio" fan) tells him, "Hey, you might want to watch out for the hook killer. He kills kids alone at night on Lover's Lane." And the rest is history, and Dear Abby. What I'd really like to do is sit down with the Paperback King lemuriapress, and the Midwest's Horror Goddess chebutykin and see if we could maybe get another magnitude of resolution on this, but I shall have to settle for LJ posting it. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
6:38 am	Paris Green (And Eldritch) Just a quick heads-up in between stabs at GURPS Horror 4e -- everybody remembers that I'm going to be at GenCon France, a.k.a. le Salon du Jeu de Société de Paris, oui? It's on the 25th and 26th of April, and I'll be hanging about at the 7ème Circle booth doing Tsathoggua knows what. My Monday the 27th is currently free, so if you're Parisian and interested in showing me La Belle Cité, look me up! (2 Comments |Comment on this)