Happy Festivus! (a fun post)

This year, we have decided to embrace the spirit of Festivus.  This is because, I am the quintessential Canadian mutt.  Four parts Italian, one part Irish, one part English, a touch Chippewa, and the final bit was confusing. 

The Italian part is easy to explain.  Every year, my Sicilian grandmother put the plastic lighted crucifixes (made in Japan) in glaring rainbow colours, on the Christmas tree.  I was a bit confused by that, not only because it was gawd-awful tacky and fought with my budding interior designer.  But the part in the 10 Commandments about ‘no graven images’ seemed to be at risk here.

Nevertheless, we all looked forward to the blazing orange, green and red crucifixes, unaware that it was a sort of macabre thing to do to a Christmas tree.  Did I mention Halloween is my favorite holiday?

The Chippewa part was a tad more elusive.  I first got a hint that there might have been First Nations blood in our family when someone asked why we put ground venison in our traditional Christmas Eve spaghetti sauce.  True, we had a freezer full of deer, moose, salmon, and not much else.  Later, it occurred to me that I actually hadn’t tasted beef until I was ten, when for my birthday, Dad took us to the A&W for a real treat.  “This tastes weird,” I said, wrinkling my nose.  “It’s made from cow,” Dad said.

Of course, if I had been more on the ball, there were other clues.  But at the age of six, you don’t necessarily see things as out of the norm.  That summer in Toronto, I loved day camp.  They split us kids into groups named for First Nations tribes.  By happy coincidence, I got placed in the Chippewa tribe.  When I got home and announced this, the reaction was: “Thank God it wasn’t Mohawk.” 

The camp leaders were really impressed with my almost-authentic costume.  (Everyone else was wearing painted pillow cases.)

There's more, but it can be nicely summed up by saying that someone in the extended family always managed to put Halvah in my Christmas stocking.  The tradition continues. Talk about confusing...

So this year, I will put beef in the Italian spaghetti sauce, we’ll put up a Festivus tree, and there will be Halvah.  Happy Festivus to all!

Melodie Campbell celebrates Festivus on the shores of Lake Ontario, where she continues to write silly stuff for unsuspecting publishers.

 

 

Get Up. Fall Down. Get Up Again.

I will admit that I, too, thought "The master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted" was a Chinese proverb. Apparently not – most sources give Stephen McCranie, the comic book artist, credit. Regardless, it's my favorite aphorism and at this point I've probably said it more times than McCranie.

Because I fail a lot.

When I was young, I dreamed of being a lab researcher, but a stint at the National Institutes of Health put paid to that.

I still cringe when I think of the way chimpanzees were housed in tiny crates in the labs, how experiments were scrapped and living animals "sacrificed" by the scores because the scientists wanted to attend a wedding or hit the slopes.

It would have been a dream job for some – I reported directly to two Nobel Laureates. But I was miserable and gave up my plans for a career in science.

I modeled for a time and I was terrible at it. I had the height but not the élan. I couldn't wear contact lenses so I had to whip my thick glasses on and off continually for pictures. I was clumsy in heels and once stepped right off a runway. Oops.

Acting was fun and I was good at it. So were a thousand other young actors with thicker hides than mine. Failed again.

I was doing pretty well as a soft-news journalist. I wrote a snarky and very popular column for Buzz, then a hot new magazine billed as "the talk of Los Angeles." I covered parties for InStyle and scandals for Redbook and the other "seven sisters" magazines.

Then I stepped away for a hot minute to have a baby and when I was ready to get back to work, the editors who had once supplied me with a steady stream of assignments had moved on. Nobody knew my name. Failed again.

My first novel was a chapter book for kids published by Bantam Skylark. The acquiring editor left the house before Dog Magic came out. Death knell. Same for my next two books, one horror and one suspense, both from a major house, and both "orphaned" before their debuts.

When a book is orphaned, there's no one at the publishing house to schmooze buyers at book fairs, treat drinks, and fight for you to get reviews. They save those efforts for their own discoveries, for understandable reasons. The results were predictable. There's that F word again.

I abandoned writing and decided to become a teacher. With no credential and no training, I landed a job at at a yeshiva, then segued that into a spot at a top independent school. Then another. After classes, I worked on a young adult novel I called Big and Bad and How I Got My Life! Back. That book was so damned good. I knew it would be a hit and I would join the ranks of superstar YA authors John Greene and Laurie Halse Anderson. I sent Big and Bad off to one publisher, who rejected it. Then I tossed it in a drawer and sulked for the next fourteen years. Not kidding.

One day I came across the manuscript on my hard drive, read it, and liked it a lot. I polished it up and shipped it off to a contest sponsored by Texas Review Press. Big and Bad came in second but they published it anyway, and the following year it won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Big and Bad got a rave review in School Library Journal, which is the go-to nearly all schools and libraries consult when stocking their shelves. Shoulda been a contender - but that dang pandemic thing got in the way. Since you're all writers, I don't need to explain. No stock, no ship, no shelf, no sale.

So. Teaching. I love teaching and I love kids. I don't love schools and I can barely abide administrators. I've been fired from more schools than some states have in their school system. In fact I've been fired from almost every job I've ever held, although a couple of times I managed to squeak out a quick I quit before they could lower the axe.

So you're picking up a theme here, right? Failure after failure, sometimes my fault, sometimes just the way the cards were dealt. But every single failure taught me something. Lots of things, actually, and I use all of those things in writing fiction and poetry.

When I was a kid, my sister and I would fight over Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock when they arrived each month. (Yeah, it was a long time ago - they were both still monthlies!) I can truly claim to be a life-long fan, but it didn't occur to me to try selling a story to Ellery Queen until I was sixty years old. Sixty! According to Guardian Life Insurance, the average American retires at sixty-two - and here I was trying something brand-spanking new. Scary!

Janet Hutchings rejected my story, of course - it was all wrong for Ellery Queen. She rejected the next one, too, but then she bought Krikon the Ghoul Hunter, and then a whole bunch more.

My stories from Ellery Queen have been recorded in podcasts, nominated for awards, given prizes, published as a collection, and selected for "Best Ofs." And of course I publish elsewhere, too - sometimes in the strangest places. I've published a poem in Fungi Magazine (yes, all about mushrooms!) and a story I wrote for The Saturday Evening Post is part of the national high school curriculum of Fiji. Yep. The island nation. Don't ask. I'm just grateful.

It's a crazy writing life, this one. Some mystery writers my age have been publishing short stories for fifty years, not seven years. I'm kind of a newbie. My heart still beats fast when Jackie Sherbow tells me she'll take a story for EQMM, or when an editor asks me to write a story for an anthology, or a literary journal picks up a poem, or a university professor tells me he's teaching one of my poems or stories. I still sulk when a piece gets turned down, and I have cried more than a few late-night tears over rejections from editors I thought adored me.

I'm still trying, and I'm still failing. I've failed a lot.

And I've succeeded a lot, too.

Because that's the only way to get anywhere in this world. Try, and fail. Then try and fail again. Because the master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted.

Christmas Movies for the Ages — at Our House At Least

(This first appeared 10 years ago, but I think it's always good to look at (my) classics again!)

I love a good Christmas movie or story, but I take my entertainment with a little salt, thanks. Or at least a shot glass. And a little murder just adds to the fun.  Here's a list of my favorite Christmas movies, the ones my husband and I watch every year, and yes, we know the lines by heart:

We're No Angels, 1955

I first saw this when I was ten years old, back in the 60's, watching it on a black and white TV set, all by myself. I laughed until I cried, and I remembered lines from it for years afterwards. It warped me for life.

"I read someplace that when a lady faints, you should loosen her clothing." - Albert (Aldo Ray)

Three convicts escape from the prison on Devil's Island on Christmas Eve. There's Humphrey Bogart as Joseph, a maniac and master forger, Peter Ustinov as Jules, an expert safe-cracker, in prison only because of a "slight difference of opinion with my wife", and Aldo Ray as Albert, "a swine" of a heart breaker who only fell afoul of the law after asking his uncle for money (the illegal part was when said uncle said "no" and Albert beat him to death with a poker – 29 times, mam'selle). Oh, and their fellow-traveler, Adolphe - or is it Adolf?

"We came here to rob them and that's what we're gonna do – beat their heads in, gouge their eyes out, slash their throats. Soon as we wash the dishes." – Joseph

Anyway, these 3 convicts need money, clothing, passports - and they find it all at Ducotel's General Store, the famous Ducotel's, "the one who gives credit". Along with Felix (Leo G. Carroll), the most inept, innocent, and financially challenged manager in history, his beautiful wife, Amelie (played by Joan Bennett), and their daughter Isobel (Gloria Talbott, in full super virgin mode).

You can see where this is going: they get hired, they get interested, they get all warm fuzzy, they change their ways, everyone is happy. Right? Well, not quite. Because the big fat plum in this pudding is Basil Rathbone as Andre Trochard, who owns Ducotel's, and has come to Devil's Island - with his sycophantic nephew Paul - to do the books on Christmas Day. I love a good villain, and Basil Rathbone is as snooty, snotty, sneering, vindictive, scheming, insulting, arrogant, belittling, and generally nasty as they come. ("Your opinion of me has no cash value." – Andre Trochard.) He makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a warm pussy cat.

Andre Trochard - "Twenty years in solitary – how's that for a Christmas present?"

Jules – "That's a lovely Christmas present. But how are you going to wrap it up?"

There's no Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Future in this one; no "God bless us, every one"; no Tiny Tim; but there's theft and forgery, fraud and deceit, murder and mayhem, all done with sharp, hilarious dialog. Go. Rent it now. Pour a Chateau Yquem (you'll understand later) or its equivalent, pull out a turkey leg, and enjoy! Merry Christmas! Compliments of the Season!

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Monty Wooley, Bette Davis, Jimmy Durante, and more. The worst house guest in the world is also the most erudite, witty, arrogant, and popular man on the planet. Sheridan Whiteside was Kaufman and Hart's masterpiece (especially as played by Monty Wooley), based on (of course) the real Algonquin Club's founder, leader, gatekeeper and spoiled child, Alexander Woollcott.

Jimmy Durante, Mary Wickes (in her breakthrough screen role), and Monty Wooley

The play - and the movie - are chock full of characters who were based, almost libellously, on real people. Banjo = Harpo Marx. Beverly Carlton = Noel Coward. Lorraine Sheldon = Gertrude Lawrence, of whom Beverly Carlton says, in my favorite movie line of all time,

"They do say she set fire to her mother, but I don't believe it."

And Mary Wickes as Nurse Preen, who has to nurse the impossible Sheridan Whiteside:

"I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on , anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!"

Somebody had to finally say it.

A/k/a Reborn (1981). Directed by Bigas Luna, "starring" Dennis Hopper as the snake-oil selling Reverend Tom Hartley, Michael Moriarty as Mark (a thickly-veiled Joseph), and (I kid you not, spoiler alert!) a helicopter as the Holy Spirit. While it has horrible production values, and was obviously made (in Italy, Spain, and Houston, TX) on rather less than a shoestring (I think all the money was spent on the helicopter), this may be one of the most interesting versions of the Nativity that's ever been done.  

"You're going to have a baby? I can't have a baby! I can't even take care of myself, much less a baby!" Mark.

The Thin Man (1934). William Powell and Myrna Loy. Machine-gun dialog, much of it hilarious. A middle-aged peroxide blonde and an incredibly young Maureen O'Sullivan. More drinking than anyone would dare put into a movie today, at least not without a quick trip to rehab for somebody, especially Nick Charles. And mostly true to Dashiell Hammett's plot.

"Is he working on the case?" "Yes, a case of scotch!"

Okay, a quick break for myself and the kids and the grandkids: A Muppet Christmas Carol (with Michael Caine), A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (narrated by Boris Karloff) A Christmas Story. Love, love, love them ALL.

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

Okay, back to more adult fare:

Love Actually (2003), mostly because I start laughing as soon as Bill Nighy starts cursing. (What can I say? I'm that kind of girl.)

"Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free!" Truer words are rarely spoken in a Christmas movie…

© IMDb

Totally NON-secret NON-guilty pleasure: Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988). Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder), Tony Robinson (Baldrick), Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent and Miram Margolyes as Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, and Robbie Coltrane as the Spirit of Christmas…

© IMDb

"Mrs. Scratchit, Tiny Tom is fifteen stone and built like a brick privy. If he eats any more heartily, he will turn into a pie shop." God bless us, everyone.

Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) (1951). Alistair Sim. This is my favorite version, mostly because it feels like Dickens to me, because I love Fezziwig's sideburns, because of the hysterical charwoman, but mostly because Mr. Sim's Scrooge really ENJOYS being a hard-hearted miser from hell. Which makes his delight, after coming back from his Christmas travels among the spirits, more believable. Or at least I always find myself grinning from ear to ear...

"I don't deserve to be this happy. But I simply can't help it!"

Hey, there's 12 Days of Christmas, and this is only the first one – there's PLENTY of time to watch them all!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Butterfly

I’ve been watching Butterfly, on Amazon Prime.  It only runs six episodes, unfortunately, ending in a cliffhanger, so that’s discouraging.  The ratings fell off, and the show wasn’t renewed.  I happen to like it a lot, but I admit it doesn’t break new ground.  You might find it similar to Citadel, for example.  My opinion, Butterfly is sharper and better acted, but it’s still slight, not chewy. 

Premise.  Private security contractor, with lethal skills, wants out.  Fakes his death, and drops off the radar.  Some ten years later, he resurfaces, to rescue his abandoned daughter, who’s now – you guessed it – an assassin for the same murder-for-hire crew the hero tried to shut the door on a decade before.  He makes contact, but of course her assignment from corporate is to kill him, and drop his body into a deep hole in the ocean. 

That’s the set-up, and what ensues is a lot of escape and evasion, awkward attempts at familial reconciliation, and a plethora of blood squibs.  So, yes, a little too familiar.  On the other hand, the production values are very high, terrific camerawork and fight choreography, very lucid and graceful, and physically intuitive.  The two leads are extremely effective, Daniel Dae Kim (Lost, among others - and he exec produces) and Reina Hardesty, but despite their chemistry, the material is too thin to sustain.

As it happens, there’s a newly restored and marvelously crisp new print of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986) out on Kanopy.  [Kanopy is a streaming service available through local public libraries, and probably available through yours; check it out.  Many hard-to-find titles, and art pictures, like Criterion, but free.]  If you’re not aware of the who and what, John Woo was a Hong Kong moviemaker who came to Hollywood in the early 1990’s, but was already an influence on Scorsese, Sam Raimi, and Tarantino.  The producer/director Tsui Hark put together the money for A Better Tomorrow, and it wound up at the top of the box office. 

A Better Tomorrow is the template for the Hong Kong action pictures that came after it.  It doesn’t have the polish or discipline of the feverish Hard Boiled, from 1992, but it established John Woo and made Chow Yun Fat a bankable star.  The stylized, kinetic violence is vivid and visceral, and sets off the quieter, more emotional scenes of male bonding and domestic fracture.  The trope of doubling, or twinning, two main characters who mirror each other, in spite of their antagonisms, a staple of later John Woo films, is fixed here, first.  (It also shows up in many other Hong Kong policiers, such as the Infernal Affairs trilogy, the inspiration for Scorsese’s Departed.)  Like the conventions of Westerns, or screwball, they’re self-referential.

Not to speak disrespectfully of A Better Tomorrow, which was astonishing and original when it came out, but the reason I’m bringing it up, with reference to the more recent Butterfly, is that its execution was head-spinning, it announced a director who was reimagining the way a movie told a story, fragmenting the frame.  (Hard not think of Sam Peckinpah, of course, and hard to imagine John Woo without Peckinpah’s vocabulary to draw on.)  Butterfly is imitative, heated execution and undercooked ideas.  Not the worst thing, of itself, but it suffers by comparison.

2025 Year in Review: Editing

I’m splitting my 2025 Year in Review post into two parts. I’ll discuss writing and other things next post; this time I’m concentrating on editing.

This year saw the release of one issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine (issue 16); 52 issues of Black Cat Weekly, for which I serve as an associate editor; the second six episodes of the serial novella anthology series Chop Shop; and three original anthologies and one reprint anthology I edited or co-edited.

The original anthologies include:

Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties (Down & Out Books)

Malice Domestic 19: Mystery Most Humorous, co-edited with John Betancourt and Carla Coupe (Wildside Press)

Trouble in Texas (North Dallas Chapter of Sisters in Crime)

The reprint anthology was the first in a new best-of-year series for which I am the Series Editor:

The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025, Matt Coyle, editor (Level Short)

Outside the mystery world, I edited six issues of Texas Gardener, a bi-monthly consumer magazine, and 52 issues of Seeds, a weekly electronic newsletter for gardeners that, incidentally, published three short stories.

Adding all the editing projects together, in 2025 I had the honor of shepherding or helping shepherd 87 short stories and novellas through to publication.

This is a significant reduction from 2024, in part because Down & Out Books closed, leaving a couple of anthologies and several novellas in the Chop Shop series unpublished; production delays at Level Best pushed some projects into 2026; and I downshifted from editing a story a week to a story every other week for Black Cat Weekly.

RECOGNITION

This year, two anthologies I co-edited were recognized:

Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology (Level Short), co-edited with Barb Goffman, received a Derringer Award for Best Anthology and was short-listed for an Anthony Award for Best Anthology

Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House (Down & Out Books), co-edited with Stacy Woodson, was short-listed for an Anthony Award for Best Anthology

Also, several stories from projects I edited or co-edited were recognized:

Thielman, Mark “The Kratz Gambit,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls, was short-listed for a Derringer Award, Short Story

Euliano, Tammy “Heart of Darkness,” Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked, received a Derringer Award, Long Story

Welsh-Huggins, Andrew “Cold Comfort,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls, was short-listed for a Derringer Award, Long Story

Milani, Tom “Barracuda Backfire," Chop Shop, Episode 4, was short-listed for a Derringer Award, Novelette

Woodson, Stacy “The Cadillac Job,” Chop Shop, Episode 1, received a Derringer Award, Novelette

Taylor, Art “Two for One,” Murder, Neat, was short-listed for a Macavity Award

Proctor, M.E. “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Aerosmith, was short-listed for a Shamus Award

The Best of Mystery Stories of the Year

The following stories were selected for inclusion in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025:

Falenwolfe, Tracy “Jamming at Jollies,” Black Cat Weekly #151

Larsen, Tom “The Other Brother,” Black Cat Weekly #168

McClusky, Sean “The Secret Menu,” Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked

McMahan, Rick “Mr. George,” Black Cat Weekly #137

Walker, Joseph S. “Run and Gun,” Chop Shop, Episode 2

Honor Roll:

Lundin, Leigh “Razing the Bar,” Murder, Neat

Best American Mystery and Suspense

The following stories were selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025:

Aptaker, Ann “Neon Women,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Brown, Susan Love “In Kind,” Malice Domestic 18: Mystery Most Devious

Phillips, Gary “The Darklight Gizmo Matter,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Other Distinguished:

Milani, Tom “Barstow,” Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, Vol 5

Plakcy, Neil S. “The Missing Delegate,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Woodson, Stacy “The Cadillac Job,” Chop Shop, Episode 1

The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025

The following stories were selected for inclusion in The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025:

Plakcy, Neil S. “The Shandiclere,” Black Cat Weekly #150

Powell, William Dylan “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting,” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Proctor, M.E. “Drop Dead Gorgeous” Janie’s Got a Gun

Thielman, Mark “The Kratz Gambit” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Wiebe, Sam “Broken English” Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 5

Also Walking the Mean Streets:

Aptaker, Ann “Neon Women” Private Dicks and Disco Balls

Lawton, R.T. “Leonardo,” Black Cat Weekly #148

FORTHCOMING

Misti Media picked up my unpublished Down & Out anthologies for its White City Press imprint, including the Chop Shop and Mickey Finn series, and I’m editing a new anthology for them.

Level Best should release some or all of the anthologies I’ve already delivered.

And I anticipate continuing with Black Cat Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly.

On the other hand, given all the turmoil impacting the publishing of short crime fiction (see “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”), I’m not actively seeking new editing opportunities, and likely won’t until things settle down. Next time: I review what happened with my writing in 2025.

 * * *

“Beehive and Bouffant Beauty Blowout” appeared in Von Stray’s Crimestalker Casebook, December 2025

“Field of Bodies” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #224

The Pretty Good Shepherd

 Occasionally one of us SleuthSayers needs a day off and we have to find something to fill the slot.  Today was one of those moments.  I was looking for something to entertain you with and then I noticed today's date.  For reasons that will be clear at the end, it made me remember this piece which I wrote many years ago for Criminal Brief.  I hope you enjoy it.  - Robert Lopresti

I was a kid, see … Christmas Eve, 1964. In a house in suburban New Jersey ten-year-old me, too excited to sleep, lay in my bed, trying to find something interesting on my AM radio. Suddenly, I hit the jackpot.

A wonderful voice I have never heard before is reading a story  about a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas. Everyone he tells about it — his mother, his teacher — responds the same. As the department store Santa puts it:

“HO HO HO! YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID! HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

It was hilarious. It was like nothing I had ever heard before.

The next night, Christmas, I went frantically down the dial trying to find the voice again. Nothing. Just Howard Cosell Speaking of Sports, and Cousin Brucie playing the Beatles. Where was the magic storyteller?

I found him a few days later. His name was Jean Shepherd and in those days he was on WOR-AM from 10:15 to 11 PM, five nights a week, talking.

Let me emphasize that: talking. This is not what we mean by talk radio today. He didn’t have guests. He didn’t take phone calls. And he didn’t play music, except as occasional background for what he was saying. The man simple talked for forty-five minutes five nights a week. Sometimes on Saturday he added a live show from a club in Greenwich Village. This went on for decades.

The first show I heard was unusual, because he was reading a printed text — his story “Duel In The Snow, Or Red Ryder Nails The Cleveland Street Kid,” which had recently been published in Playboy. More typically he did his show with a few written notes or nothing at all.

He talked about anything and everything but what people loved best were his stories about growing up in Hohman, Indiana (based on Hammond, Indiana and East Chicago, Illinois), and attempting to get an education at Warren G. Harding School. Many people are astonished to discover that Shep really did attend a school named after that bottom-of-the-barrel president. And by the way, the first five words of this column is the way his stories often began. He also told bizarre stories about his days in the Army Signal Corps during World War II (or Korea … the time period for his stories shifted over the years. He lied about his age as he did about so much else.)

Most of you out there never heard Shep on the radio, but some are saying “that story sounds like the movie A Christmas Story.” It should. That film was based on his work (he narrates it and has a cameo). The studio had so little faith in it that it wasn’t in theaters at Christmas, but the thing is a certified classic today. And because of it, Shepherd died a rich man. Radio, the medium which gave him his best canvas, was not so kind to him, financially.

If you dig around on the web you can find recordings of Shepherd, and clips from his TV work — PBS movies, a series called Jean Shepherd’s America, etc. — but since this blog is mostly about writing, let’s talk a little about the words he put down on paper.

They sparkled. Here are a few examples:

It seems like one minute we’re all playing around back of the garage, kicking tin cans, and yelling at girls, and the next instant you find yourself doomed to exist as an office boy in the Mail Room of Life, while another ex-mewling, puking babe sends down Dicta, says “No comment” to the Press, and lives a real genuine Life on the screen of the world. —“The Endless Streetcar Ride Into The Night, And The Tinfoil Noose.”

It was the Depression, and the natives had been idle so long that they no longer even considered themselves out of work. Work had ceased to exist, so how could you be out of it? —“Duel In The Snow …”

(After the Prom we) arrived at the Red Rooster, already crowded with other candidates for adulthood. A giant neon rooster with a blue neon tail that flicked up and down in the rain set the tone for this glamorous establishment. An aura of undefined sin was always connected with the name Red Rooster. Sly winks, nudgings and adolescent cacklings about what purportedly went on at the Rooster made it the “in” spot for such a momentous revel. Its waiters were rumored really to be secret henchmen of the Mafia. But the only thing we knew for sure about the Rooster was that anybody on the far side of seven years old could procure any known drink without question. —“Wanda Hickey’s Night Of Golden Memories.”

Just as MAD Magazine was for many people of my age, Shep was the voice of sanity that got me through early adolescence. The whisper that said: You’re right! The adults ARE crazy! I owe him a lot for that.

But I owe him a hell of a lot more. One day when I was in high school a friend told me that his sister Terri  and one of her friends wanted to go see Shep perform live in Red Bank, and since the girls didn’t have licenses yet, they were asking him to drive. Would I like to go along?

Sure, I said. And the show was so good I wound up marrying  Terri. Today, December 22, is our 49th anniversary.

Thanks, Shep. You changed my life.

Christmas Musical Fun

Today’s venture is short and sweet, combining a great rendition of ‘White Christmas’ and clever animation, a bit of holiday magic from 18 years ago.

Merry Christmas to you.

		credits
music		The Drifters
bass		• Bill Pinkney
tenor		• Clyde McPhatter
animation		Joshua Held
3D version		Karyne Dufour

---

I belatedly discovered a clever 3D update to the original.

Happy holidays, everyone.