I’m still working through rereading Robert Crais’ novels in order. A rainy weekend gave me time to finish L.A. Requiem and The Last Detective. I started The Forgotten Man.
I am not very far in and so far they are vague about exactly where it was but the implication is that it covered most of Europe and Western Asia and basically replaced the Roman and Byzantine Empires and has aspects of both. It is just refered to as The Empire. I think the book (which I didn’t realize until I started reading was actually written in 1971) was interested in mimicking the pastiche of history non fiction books than the reality of the subject itself but that may change as I read more.
Busy Weekend. I finished up the Isaac Asimov book I’d been reading ( From Earth to Heaven, a 1966 collection of his essay from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) and started another, The Solar System and Back. More on this later.
I picked up a copy of Mark Twain’s A Pen Warmed up in Hell, a 1972 anthology of his critical and satirical writings that I’ve wanted to read for some time. I’ve read some, but not all, of the pieces. I zipped through it, faster than through Asimov.
I also picked up a used copy of Tip of the Freberg, a four CD plus one videotape collection of the works of Stan Freberg. I knew Freberg as the creator of some of the funniest commercials of all time – the Sunsweet pitted prune ad, the Jeno’s Pizza roll ad (a parody of the “Show us your Lark pack” cigarette ad), the Great American Soups ad. I had also heard his “St. George and the Dragonet” piece on Dr. Demento, but I was unfamiliar with his other work. There was also a book describing the works, by Freberg and others. This I promptly devoured.
Thoughts
1.) I had realized that there were two other “Dragonet” parodies. Great stuff ("This is the story of Little Blue Riding Hood. Only the color has been change, to prevent an investigation.)
2.) I’d heard about Freberg’s bit about Radio and the Power of the Imagination. Both Stephen King (in Danse Macabre and David Mamet cite it, although Freberg says they both got details wrong. In it, he describes how Lake Michigan was drained and filled with Hot Chocolate, then they got the Navy to top it with a huge amount of Whipped Cream and the Air Force to drop a several ton maraschino cherry on top, all accompanied by appropriate sound effects. “Try that on your TV” says a gloating Freberg. I remarked not long ago in another thread about the Captain Crunch commercial where the drained Lake Michigan and filled it with fresh milk. I hadn’t realized that Jay Ward was steaking from Freberg. Also, the answer to Freberg is that with animation, you can show that on TV. The four-disc CD set includes a second take on the advertising spot, and also a much, much later update of it.
3.) David Letterman’s disastrous “Oprah/Uma” joke at the 1995 Oscars (which was described as “the gold standard in Oscar bombing” by The Atlantic in 2015) is apparently a direct steal from a Stan Freberg routine of modern showbiz names, contrasting Uma Thurman with Yma Sumac. It was funnier when Freberg did it.
4.) Nevertheless, although there is much funny stuff there, his earlier stuff is dazzlingly unfunny – at least to me. Some of it is my not being Of His Time and lacking context. The “Yes Arthur” bit was a commentary on how TV god Arthur Godfrey required toadying subservience from his staff and cast. But other stuff simply goes on too long without a payoff. and some stuff seems to be Freberg’s own lack of understanding or empathy. His song about not being able to tell long-haired boys from girls seems ridiculous to the generation beyond his. Dave Barry reviled that kind of humor in his own books. His parodies of 1950s musical styles are the reactions of an earlier generation to the new stars, and don’t wear well. In particular, those parodied by Freberg generally resented him for it. (Weird Al Yankovic, who admitted Freberg was an inspiration to him, and who had him on his own short-lived show, got permission from those he parodied). Freberg’s parody version of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O/Banana Boat Song” feels like an Old White Guy not getting it. (even though Freberg wasn’t very old at the time). Not surprising that Belafonte didn’t care for it.
I’m curious about Freberg’s two-disc opus, The History of the United States (the first half released in the early 1960s, the second part, intended for 1976, but not released until 1996), but I know from what I heard here that the first disc, at least, is going to sound wildly un-PC.
Freberg’s commercials (this is the first time I’ve heard his radio commercials) are great, though.
Regarding Asimov’s The Solar System and Back, my comment is that, while Asimov’s writings on basic science, math, and science history are still well worth reading, you have to take his writings about astronomy and cutting-edge science with caution. The book is over half a century old, I admit, but I was startled to read things rooted in the history of science that are, in fact, no longer true.
In “Little Lost Satellite”, he writes about the asteroids, paying particular attention to the four largest – in order, Ceres (mean diameter 470 miles; 10 percent of total asteroid mass), Pallas (300 miles, 2.6 percent), Juno (120 miles, 0.2 percent), and Vesta (240 miles, 1.3 percent).
Modern tables give a different story. The four largest are
Ceres 939 km = 583 mi Still 10% of total asteroidal mass
Vesta 525 km = 326 mi, now about 9% of total
Pallas 512 km = 318 mi
Hygeia 434 km = 270 mi
Juno’s gone altogether, Hygeia taking its place. And Vesta’s been bumped up to second place.
Obviously newer measurements supplanted older ones, but I’m surprised that the earlier ranking – in the 1960s – was so far off. I’ll have to look into the history of this.
Juno, by the way, is now listed at twelfth largest. All the other ones were discovered long before Asimov’s column was written, and all but one are Belt asteroids (Hektor is a Trojan).
Was there some significant development that recalculated asteroid masses and sizes since the 1960s?
Finished The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, by Lewis Hyde. Meh.
Now I’m reading Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin.
Fevre Dream is awesome. Loved it - almost as if Bram Stoker and Mark Twain wrote a book together.
Quimby, thanks for the info on The Empire.
Oh no! Amazon failed to deliver my King book today! I am devastated. The worst part is, I actually saw the delivery guy driving away from the gate. It was so close! 
“Take an Indian to lunch this week.
Show him that you care a bunch this week.” 
The best part is in the first sketch, where Columbus and King Ferdinand are arguing on the ship en route to the New World:
“It’s as round as a ball!”
“It’s as flat as your head!”
A friend and I still use the “French horns” joke from time to time.
Damn!
Mine was on my kindle. Can’t beat electronic delivery.
Phew! It came today. I tell you what, I was fixin’ to get impossible to live with. 
Finished Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin, which I thought was okay.
Now I’m reading Benchmarks Revisited: F&SF “Books” Columns 1983-1986, by Algis Budrys. I’ve been holding off on reading it until I finished a couple of books (including Fevre Dream) which he reviews, because he includes spoilers.
Fevre Dream, just… okay? Sorry. Guess I liked it a lot more.
I finished **The Railway Man ** by John Dean. It was a fairly fast read. Nothing terribly deep or twisty, but I enjoy the utter lack of twee in this series set in the north of England.
I just finished an audiobook of Stephen King’s thriller The Dead Zone, which I once again enjoyed, having not read it in quite awhile. James Franco does well as the narrator. I noticed a passing reference to a prep school in the fictional town of Stovington, Vt.; the town was also home to a CDC annex in The Stand, which was a nice cross-reference by King.
I’ve resumed Shattered Sword by Anthony P. Tully and Jonathan Parshall, about the 1942 carrier battle of Midway. It’s mostly interesting but sometimes plods a bit.
One of my sons and I are reading aloud from Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, a pretty good sf novel about the settlement of a terraformed world which holds some nasty surprises.
Haven’t got much deeper into Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield, about the world’s enduring love for the Fab Four.
Jack Torrance of The Shining also taught at that school. 
Ah, thanks, I missed that! I see it has a Christine connection, too:
Continuing to read Robert Crais novels in order. Finished The Forgotten Man where Elvis is nearly killed (again).
Really enjoying this. I’m starting The Watchman even though Stephen King’s Fairy Tale is beckoning.
I finished ** We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence** by Becky Cooper. The book is highly readable, though the author is a bit prone to wandering off on tangents, particularly in the first part of the book, and gets rather repetitive with returning to the crime scene and the initial investigation multiple times over the course of the narrative.
FWIW, Budrys thought Fevre Dream was great, too, in his review in Benchmarks Revisited: F&SF “Books” Columns 1983-1986, which I just finished. I also thought this collection was okay, and might have liked it more except for the major spoilers it included, including several for Fevre Dream. (Which is why I make sure to read any books I think I might want to read that are in Budrys’ reviews before I read the reviews.)
Now I’m reading Grand Union by Zadie Smith.
Finally finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amir Towles. Interesting premise and well-written, but far too long of a story which didn’t contain a whole lot of drama or action.