Roger O Green

Book review: The Chilling Killing Wind

John Lazarus isn’t expecting “closure” with Roy Edgar Chalmers’ death.

There’s this guy in western New York named Kelly Sedinger who has been blogging regularly since early 2002. I have no real idea how I came across Byzantium’s Shores, but it would have had to have been after I started my daily prattling in 2005. For most of the time, he used the nom de blog Jaquandor, but much less so now.

Besides his now-tempered following of the Buffalo Bills football team, his exquisite knowledge of classical music, and his odd attraction to a pie in the face, Kelly’s driving force has always been the power of the written word.

In 2014, he not only wrote but published Stardancer, which he sent to me. I enjoyed it, but have not yet gotten to the other books in the Song of Forgotten Stars Trilogy.

Yet, when I read the prologue to his supernatural thriller, The Chilling Killing Wind, I was compelled to immediately buy the book, a Christmas present from me to me.

It is about a guy named John Lazarus, who had attended the executions of two of the murderers of his wife Michelle and was about to attend the third, and final, one, that of Roy Edgar Chalmers.

Lazarus is a professor and an ex-cop, now living with his fiancee, Ellen, still negotiating the relationship vis a vis the memory of Michelle.

John isn’t expecting “closure” with Chalmers’ death, any more than he felt it after the executions of Luther Mayhew and Raoul Serrano before. He doesn’t know how little closure until a string of murders rock the small Michigan town where he lives.

I received the book on a Friday and finished it by Tuesday. It was a compelling read. I don’t read murder mysteries, but my daughter has begun watching certain TV procedurals, and without getting too much into it, he seemed to follow the form without being formulaic.

Kelly seemed to think his YA sci-fi was something my daughter would enjoy, and she might if she gave it a chance. But I gather she’ll almost certainly enjoy The Chilling Killing Wind. There are minor issues I could note, including at least one typo, but I was glad to have read this.

I’m not sure where Kelly goes from here, though. He has proposed a John Lazarus series, and I’ll be curious how that will shake out.

Movie review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Lee Israel was a biographer of Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Estée Lauder.

What is extraordinary about Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which my wife and I saw at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany recently, is how one manages to care about the protagonist, very much in spite of herself. This is based on a true story, generated from Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir.

Lee (Melissa McCarthy) was a biographer in the 1970s and 1980s of actress Tallulah Bankhead, journalist and game show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, and cosmetics tycoon Estée Lauder. The Kilgallen book appeared on The New York Times Best Sellers List, but the Lauder book was a disaster.

By the early 1990s, her work had dried up, her agent (Jane Curtin) ducked her calls, and she was having difficulty making ends meet. The veterinarian wouldn’t even treat her cat. Moreover, her personality, fueled in part by alcohol consumption, tended to be abrasive.

Lee sold a couple genuine letters of famous people to Anna (Dolly Wells), a sweet young woman who inherited her bookstore owner and was interested in Israel’s talent and persona. For the money, Lee starts to forge letters of deceased writers and actors and selling them to Anna and other dealers. She also started to steal actual letters of famous persons from archives and libraries, replacing them with forgeries.

Israel coincidentally runs into an old acquaintance Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant) at a local bar. To her surprise, they become not just drinking buddies but actual friends. It’s the core relationship in the movie. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is not a fast-paced story or overwrought drama but a too-believable tale of what one will do to survive.

Julianne Moore was initially attached to the role of Lee Israel, but Melissa McCarthy, mostly known for her comic portrayals, was excellent in the role. It is unsurprising that the film received 98% positive reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but only about 83% from audiences.

The Lydster: the late Johni Dunia

It made me painfully aware of how scary the world can be.

Johni Dunia Greg, one of the first people I met online when I started blogging in 2005, wrote a provocative post on Facebook. He noted that his eighth-grader told him and his wife that a student brought a gun to school.

“Apparently it wasn’t a gun, just a facsimile, but still. He brought the replica… because he sold weed to somebody who refused to pay and he wanted to intimidate the kid. This is a regular public school in a perfectly fine neighborhood, mind you.”

Greg’s takeaway is that you should “talk to your kids about “adult” stuff even if you don’t think they’re old enough.” It reminded me that I had this notion that my daughter was in the other room doing something else when I watched the news. But she was listening, paying attention. She is, not to brag, one of the most politically savvy kid in her class, and has been for the past four or five years.

Of course, it made me painfully aware of how scary the world can be. I recalled the daughter learning whatever terrible things that were going on in 2012 (e.g., Newtown). Yes, you can’t protect them, but I’m terrified we’re leaving them a sucky world – the pollution issues alone bring me to despair.

This semester, a young man named Johni Dunia, 17, a student at my daughter’s high school, “entered into eternal life on Friday, November 16, 2018.” He was shot numerous times, allegedly by a 22-year-old, on a bike trail in mid-November.

Ironically, his family left their war-torn homeland of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his mother said, for the United States because it “offered security and safety.” Johni “is lovingly recalled as a person with a large and kind heart who never showed anger. He loved his family and was very dedicated to his mother and his brother and sisters.”

At this point, there is an arrest but no motive provided yet. “The suspect and victim knew each other, according to police.”

Paradox of Christmas: For unto us a child is born

And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace

Keep Christ in Christmas In the sermon for the first Sunday in Advent, one of my pastors hit on something that I could relate to. My takeaway is that there is a paradox of Christmas.

A child is born, yet the Scripture that day was of the adult Jesus anticipating the cross. So Christmas is about the infant AND the Savior.

That message is encapsulated in the Hebrew text from Isaiah, in what is usually called the Old Testament:

Chapter 9, verse 6 reads: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

A lot of potentiality in that kid.

Merry Christmas.

Unsurprisingly, For Unto Us A Child Is Born from Handel’s Messiah

Sir Colin Davis conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and the Tenebrae choir

A more sprightly take

I’ve listened to the entire Messiah this autumn and was newly enthralled by the piece that reportedly took only three weeks to compose. If you are so inclined, the whole magilla:

Collegium 1704, director Vaclav Lucs

London Philharmonic

Year 2019: those turning three score and ten

Shelley Duvall, Shelley Long, and Michael Richards have the same birth date!,

I really can’t wait for 2019. I anticipate that the first quarter will be a pain, the second chaotic, the third mildly uncomfortable, but the fourth quarter inspiring. If that isn’t cryptic, I don’t know what is.

I’ve actually started figuring out what I’m going to write about. Not surprisingly, as I begin my (slow) approach towards 70, there is an increasing number of famous people who will be hitting three score and ten. I’m going to write about nearly two dozen of them.

But here are some other folks ALSO turning 70 in 2019 – or would, if they were still alive – that I decided NOT to write about. Well, unless you force me to by invoking Ask Roger Anything. Then I WILL write about that person, BUT I maintain the right to postpone it to a date near their actual natal day.

January:
17 – Mick Taylor, first substitute in the Rolling Stones after Brian Jones’ death
22 – Steve Perry, former lead singer of the band Journey. Don’t expect a reunion
28 – Gregg Popovich, NBA basketball coach

February:
9- Judith Light, actress- best known on the TV show Who’s The Boss. I last saw her on a short-lived TV lawyer show Doubt (2017)
20 – Ivana Trump, ex-wife of Donald

March:
16 – Erik Estrada, actor – best known for playing the California Highway officer Ponch on the TV show CHiPs (1977–1983)
17 – Patrick Duffy, actor – from the TV show Dallas, in which his character apparently died, then didn’t

April:
13 – Christopher Hitchens, author – since he died in 2011, I passed, but I AM writing about folks who died earlier
20- Jessica Lange, actress – in a LOT of worthy material, but I believe I’ve only seen her in Tootsie, Cape Fear and All That Jazz

May:
26 – Pam Grier, actress- the film Jackie Brown, among many credits
28 – Steve King, United States Representative (R-IA) – blowhard

July:
8 – Wolfgang Puck, chef, restaurateur

August:
23 – Rick Springfield, TV soap opera actor, singer (Jessie’s Girl)
25 – Gene Simmons, musician – from the rock group KISS

September:
10 -Bill O’Reilly, talk show “personality” – formerly with FOX

October:
3 -Lindsey Buckingham, singer, musician- until fairly recently, in Fleetwood Mac
4 – Armand Assante, actor
21 – Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

November:
3- Anna Wintour, magazine editor, fashion journalist
30 -Shelley Duvall, film Actress, television actress – best known from the movie The Shining (1980)
30 – Shelley Long, actress -best known as overeducated barmaid Diane Chambers in the TV comedy Cheers (1982-1987, 1993)
30 – Michael Richards,, television actor, comedian – best known as Kramer on the TV comedy Seinfeld

December:
1 -Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord) – died in 1993
15 – Don Johnson, actor – I did watch him as Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice (1984–1990), but eschewed his music career

What will YOU write about, or not, in 2019?

For ABC Wednesday