Some bright spark – with time on their hands (I am so buoyantly glad, as it turns out, that whoever this dead-set creative genius is, HAD the time on their hands) has gone and created an Alfred Hitchcock mash-up video that truly must be seen to be believed.
Murder/death scenes from 36 of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies have been spliced together and synchronized to climax in unison. A little on the grisly side perhaps but full points for the breath-taking creativity and technical smarts it took to pull off a trick of these proportions.
Lights – Camera – Action – Mayhem!
For the film buffs, here’s the breakdown of the individual movies these scenes were taken from –
You mean, that’s all? A blog post devoted to just one three-minute video?
Almost doesn’t seem right, does it? And for that reason, here’s one more video to end things off on. Completely unrelated topic but huge in the creativity department as well. Hope you like it.
FOREST LAKE. It’s the place SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK calls home.
True to name, this suburb does feature a lake. And, if you can call collections of trees grouped together in grassy open areas a ‘forest’, then I guess, at a stretch, FOREST LAKE has one or two of those as well. What it definitely does not have is a mountain. Surrounding suburbs are likewise as flat as your hand.
Cyclists – an athletic-sounding term I’ve recently grown fond of attaching to myself in the company of folk who have maybe never met a legitimate one – crave mountains like a dentist longs for an open mouth (I experienced the adrenalin-rush of a prolonged wisdom tooth extraction recently so at a stab, I’d say that’s where that analogy sprang from). So what’s a two-wheeled ‘roadie’ to do?
If the mountain won’t come to Glen, then Glen must go to the mountain.
And that’s exactly what I do… early every Sunday morning, if by ‘every’ we can agree to mean the last nine Sundays in a row. Bike goes in the back of the car the night before and then in time for the hues of a new day, it’s a 22 km drive to the foot of Mt Cootha – elevation: 302 metres above sea level and the highest peak in the city of Brisbane.
Pedaling up is a hard slog form of torture that gives fresh meaning to the expression ‘breathtaking views’ (easy breaths being in pretty short supply on the merciless incline). Once you reach the summit however, a whole new feeling takes over. Cue old mate Rocky…
Sidenote: That little bit of snow-capped inspiration came from the movie ROCKY 4,, which any one old enough to remember, would know came out in 1985. That just happens to be the same year when I last rode up Mt Coothaon a pushbike. Just sayin’!
Hurtling down the mountain, on the other hand, at bobsled-like speeds on impossibly thin racing bike tyres is a white-knuckle ride par almost none that has been known, on some occasions, to spontaneously flash into my mind the following cartoon –
Cheese-factor wise, I can confirm the rumours claiming that some weeks I play the song KING OF THE MOUNTAIN by Australian group Midnight Oil prior to my Sunday morning mountain treks, for a little bit of, you know…vibe and motivation… are completely, 100% true!
Wouldn’t say I’m a great fan of this video – although I note it has had in excess of 4 million views and attracted over a thousand comments – but the song? It’s a winner for me, and so very, very Australian.
For anyone unfamiliar, the bald-headed larrikin you see doing his lead singer cavorting thing in this video used to be a member of the Australian Parliament for 10 years and a Government Minister (Environment:2007 – 2010 & Education: 2010 – 2013) for seven. Interesting, huh?
Back on the topic of cycling, as important as safety should be to a cyclist, as they are rocketing down a steep slope or snailing up it, is what I’ll call the ‘look’. Cyclists know what I mean.
I used to mock those lycra-clad bicycle riders kitted out to look more like high-wire circus acrobats. That was back in the eighties. Now I’ve become one of them. Kind of.
An ex-mate of mine donated a couple of his used jerseys as well as a pair of padded bicycle pants a few years back; to get me up and on the road, so to speak. That kit’s been working well. But like a lot of things, once you’ve got your confidence up, next level comes calling soon enough.
Meet the next level…
Looking at the price tag, I think you can see why I’m not in charge of finances at my place.
In the fair dinkum department, as attractive as that cycling jersey is, the posh-stink, gourmet price tag makes the decision not to buy an easy one. I don’t want it THAT badly.
So how bout something a quarter of that price and… funnier?
Cyclists can tend to take themselves a tad too seriously at times, but while wearing these designs, that might be made a little more difficult...
If I had to choose just one of those whacked out designs above, it could just as well be the WORLD’S OKAYEST CYCLIST ’cause, well… THAT IS ME!
And if none of those designs grabbed you, well I guess you can always just throw a good old fashioned hissy fit…
Before this topic cycles off into the sunset completely and before the guy above us gets any frothier, I will mention these –
Reads delivered to your email inbox twice a month.
Confession time: for the last three and a bit years I’ve been moonlighting with a second blog I named LOST IN SPACE FIRESIDE. It’s been a passion project dedicated to reliving memories of one of my very favourite shows from childhood, LOST IN SPACE.
Inspiration came from a transgender blogger based in the U.S – KNIGHT OF ANGELS, who is no longer with us, internet speaking-wise. She/he created an on-line, episode by episode monument to a television show close to her/his heart, STAR TREK. I admired the intellect and enthusiasm this writer brought to their subject and wondered if I could do the same.
STAR TREK (1966 – 1969) ran for 79 episodes. LOST IN SPACE (1965 – 1968) for 83 episodes. Length-wise, they were in the same ballpark. This person had done it. I wondered if I could likewise go the distance and re-watch and review all those episodes, sustaining the energy and passion needed along the way.
LOST IN SPACE FIRESIDE‘s debut post, profiling the very first episode of the classic 1960’s tv series was published on October 27th, 2018. Last week, the curtain came down on three years of work when episode # 83 finally took its place under the FIRESIDE microscope. Cliché alert: it’s been quite the journey! Quite the electrifying journey.
Along the way I got to connect with a whole lot of Facebook groups and fans dedicated to the show, personally ‘met’ on-line Angela Cartwright, the actress who played ‘Penny’, and accumulated a bunch of nerdish collectibles (see photo below) that to any non-fan would be considered a scandalous waste of money.
Would you believe me if I said this wall was chosen as the backdrop of this photo because the aesthetically-challenged wallpaper resembles space-themed planets and or meteorites?And you thought the wallpaper was handpicked from the Covid-19 inspired range!!
Most rewarding of all I got to 2nd-life cherished perfect memories from a more innocent age and a more innocent me. Inevitably, some things from childhood holdup better than others when glimpsed again in our adult world. Sometimes, in-fact maybe a lot of the time, we wonder “What did I see in that?”. Thankfully, my experience this time around was “I know exactly what I saw in that… because I can still see it.”
Summing up this great re-watch project of the last three years, as if somehow on cue, the opening words of the film WW84 (2020) descend magically into view –
“Some days my childhood feels so very far away. And others? I can almost see it; a magical land of my youth, like a beautiful dream of when the whole world felt like a promise and the lessons that lay ahead yet unseen. Looking back, I wish I’d listened. I wish I’d watched more closely… and understood. But sometimes you can’t see what you’re learning until you come out the other side.”
…
So there you have it. Another literary life chapter done and dusted. LOST IN SPACE FIRESIDE will now officially be… I can’t bring myself to say the word ‘mothballed’, so instead I’ll use the term grandfathered – ’cause you know… a little more leather-elbow-patch-wearing school of dignified and all.
If you cared to pop over one last time or maybe for the first time, well… that’d be real nice of you. Click HERE to travel. For anyone that doesn’t make it over, here’s a couple of final clips dedicated to two main characters from the show – Major Don West and Professor John Robinson.
Little known piece of trivia: today is National Trivia Day. That is, if you’re in the United States. If you’re not, well… here you go anyway.
These bits of investigoogle twaddle crannied up from the nearest wiki bazooka wormhole range from verifiable facts to the more head-scratching ‘How could anyone know or prove that?’
Frankly, some of these trivia claims are on a par of believability with that ol’ chestnut about ALL OF US having a one in 200 chance of being related to blood-spilling 11th century warrior Ghenkis Khan. Considering he was Chinese and I’m most definitely not, I’d venture whoever came up with those ridonkuously generalized odds wasn’t necessarily thinking of me at the time.
Anyway, make of the following what you will. Hopefully there’s a few morsels of geunine power-glove info-tainment thrown in along the way.
And now, can I guess your reaction to any and all of that?
Entertaining word whack delivered freetwice a month.
Australian Music Promotor Michael Gudinski (March)
Former Australian Rugby League Captain Tommy Raudonikis (April)
Australian TV Host Bert Newton (October)
For eighteen days back in October/early November, the country held it’s breath as we waited for news of the disappearance/abduction of four-year-old Cleo Smith who vanished from a family campsite near Carnarvon in Western Australia. Incredibly, this story had a happy ending that sent headlines around the world and resulted in this triumphant and all-round heart-fluttering picture…
Merriam Webster Dictionary Word of the Year – ‘Vaccine’
Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year – ‘Strollout’
Dictionary.Com Word of the Year – ‘Allyship’
Oxford Languages Word of the Year – ‘Vax’
Collins Word of the Year – ‘NFT’ (Non Fungible Token)
Collins Word of the Year Runner Up – ‘Pingdemic’
Scenic Writer’s Shack Word of the Year – ‘Metox’ (to take a break from self-absoption)
Best book read by SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK in 2021 – MY FRIEND FOX (published September 2021) by Heidi Everett. Read a personal recommendation HERE.
If there’s a better, more poetically written book out there on the subject of mental health – from the ‘patient’s’ point of view – I’ve not read it.
Marched through 37 of ’em this year. Best time? You’re looking at it in blue. Best location? That’s an easy one. Cairns Esplanade. Hands down.
This salute to the need for recognition appeared in the October 22, 2021 edition ofNEW YORKER Magazine.
Around this time of year, every man and their neapolitan mastiff is telling you what their favorite reads have been, over the previous twelve months. These guys included –
That’s it. There are no more words for 2021. SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK will return in 2022 – bigger, better and bolder, with some truly nut-cracking surprises in store. Until then…
I did say “No more words” didn’t I? I meant after this. ‘Cause there’s one more thing I need to tell you. And it happened at my place just this morning. I put up a world map on a wall in our kitchen, handed my wife a dart and said “Throw this and wherever it lands—that’s where I’m taking you when this pandemic ends.” Turns out, we’re spending two weeks behind the fridge.
And now it’s time to go edgy, free-spirited and giga-awesome all over again.
In what can sometimes resemble a sea of tin-plate dinghies, these book covers are all daringly different cruise ships.
Cue the eye candy…
(A) Approaching headlights through a rainbow-tinged fog? Throw in the title and the reader’s got a genuine mystery on their hands.
(B) The torn paper / speech bubbles effect looks raw – kind of like how ‘To be honest’ feels.
(A) Bad-paint-job dripping clouds over a standard suburbia scene? Something’s up in this neighborhood.
(B) It’s a package wrapped in brown paper for a novel titled THE DELIVERY. Get it?
(A) Given the title, I guess the publishers would have been well in their rights to feature some breed of grass-chewing goat on the cover. A crucifix-stealing black crow on the other hand is way more intriguing.
(B) A book whose pages reach out to grab the reader – or at least point at them – while not holding but balancing a gun. Clever weird that.
(A) Icons. Icons. Icons. Bonus points for sneaking in a pair of breasts.
(B) Scores big in the insanity department this one.
(A) Love everything about this ‘big reveal’ concept – including the small title.
(B) The story of the Three Little Pigs? No, naturally enough it’s the story of family, feminism and treason – and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard those three words mentioned in the same sentence before (though they probably have somewhere).
(A) A few simple, hand-drawn lines can indeed be so evocative.
(B) Green tears get me every time.
(A) Look up ‘visually popping book cover’ in the dictionary and there’s a good chance you’ll come across this image. I bags the top floor penthouse.
(B) Look at those teeth! So white. So straight. So… letterish. As covers go it’s a weirdy but a goody.
(A) Redder than red. With 1950’s housewife hands thrown in for extra whack.
(B) Reminds me of the old joke about a zebra crossing. The U.S flag stands atop of a yellow cone hat. I wish I knew what the other flag was.
(A) And a cheeky touch it is.
(B) Positively dripping with creativity. Sorry.
(A) Take a happy pill they said. While you’re at it take a few. In fact, down a whole face full. Then put it on a book cover. Top it off by humorously titleling it ALL’S WELL. That’s what they did.
(B) A rip-snorter of a cover with cutting-edge originality to burn? Tick.
(A) A book cover in the form of a scratch-off card? Novel indeed.
(B) It looks like a screen protector for an iPhone. But the real question? Is that an exhausted stick figure or a dead stick figurelying on the table?
(A) Facebook with hyper-realistic water droplets! What a mood.
(B) Take one simple image — a pattern of poppies on black— and make it disquieting by slicing it into sections and misaligning the edges.
(A) When do letters become old-skool string marionettes? When they look like this. The real genius though, is the inclusion of the shadow created by the words “a novel” (and no other shadows).
(B) When something that looks like its from granddaddy’s old back shed makes it onto the cover of a newly-published novel, well… I think in some parts they call that ‘rustic charm’.
(A)The tri-color text against black? Tacky. The cocktail girl? Tacky. The ’70s food ad font? Tacky. The whole thing? Iconoclastically brilliant.
(B) That falling eye gets me every time I look at it.
(A) Nice profile. But which is her better side?
(B) The genie is out of the bottle. And so are the fireflies. Whoever left the cap off has got some splainin’ to do. Or did the super ‘bright’ insects somehow jimmy it themselves?
Lockdowns, as pandemic-stricken cities across the world in recent times know all too well, are few people’s idea of a good time.
Equally, lock-ins have got to be up there on the universal ‘least enjoyable experiences’ list.
That’s ‘lock-ins‘ as in the sealed-bank-vault-possibly-die-from-suffocation meaning of the word.
Yet these people have lived to tell the tale.
Here are their stories…
On the afternoon of August 26, 1947, Bruce Heydon and Andrew Thompson, employees of the Repatriation Department located in Perry House in Brisbane’s CBD, had been placing records in the strongroom when the door accidentally closed behind them.
Unfortunately there was only one key, and that sole key was in the possesion of the trapped men.
The fire brigade, police and ambulance were summoned to the scene to effect the rescue. It was decided to use a oxyacetylene torch to cut a hole through the door so the key could be passed through to the rescuers.
As a precaution the building’s sprinkler system was first turned off to avoid damage to the building and its records.
“Through the first small hole, he said he could see the Town Hall clock, and when the torch finally cut a hole large enough to allow the key to be passed out, the two trapped men chorused ‘You Beaut’“, reported the local newspaper, The Courier Mail, at the time. The men’s ordeal lasted an hour and a half.
The experience of trapped bank clerk Charles Di Giacomo in Peterson, New Jersey, Us. on March 8th, 1923 was far more traumatic.
Just prior to closing time, Di Giacomo had been filing documents in the strongroom when his colleague jokingly called out to him to hurry up or “I’ll lock you in”.
As a prank the colleague pretended to close the vault door, only for it to actually close and automatically lock. The airtight strongroom was set on a time lock and would not reopen until the next morning. The pressure was on to rescue Di Giacomo before he suffocated due to lack of oxygen.
Teams of rescuers labored for five hours, attempting to drill their way in through the roof. When they finally broke through, Di Giacomo was found unconscious. He later recovered in hospital.
A time-honored tv trope is having two or more characters locked in a bank vault (or walk-in freezer, meat locker or some other small, contained space) where they’re subjected to extreme cold, lack of oxygen, or both. Death is usually imminent. The characters talk a lot, often coming to a greater understanding of each other. Rescue comes in the nick of time.
HAPPY DAYS did it in a 1977 episode when Richie and the gang get locked in the hardware store’s basement vault. GILLIGAN’S ISLAND had the castaways trapped in a cave. LOST AND SPACE saw bitter enemies Don and Dr Smith briefly entombed together in a final season episode featuring an underground cavern.
For true creativity in the ‘bank vault genre’ however, one need not look any further than the one-of-a-kind 2017 movie THE VAULT.
Starring Clint Eastwood‘s daughter Francesca (most recently seen in the M. Night Shyamalansupernatural beach movie OLD), THE VAULTis a horror movie but not as you know it; a bank robbery flick but unlike any that have come before it.
Two sisters plan a bank heist with OCEAN’S ELEVEN detail. Things turn sinister when they reach the basement vault, however, only to encounter truly evil supernatural forces.
For proof Mel Brooks has done it all in the world of entertainment, one need look no further than his membership of the rarer-than-rare, known-by-its-letters club EGOT. Translated, that means Brooks has been awarded an EMMY (Television) – a GRAMMY(Music) – an OSCAR (Film) and a TONY (Theatre). Now, at the age of 95 comes his long awaited autobiography.
Reading not your thang? Bit late now, you say. Oh well. Eavesdroppers can listen in HERE
Sharing your shelf is sharing a little bit of your self.
SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK asked its readers recently to send in a photo of their home book case – aka a ‘shelfie’.
SWS kicked things off by posting the pic below – taken from inside company HQ. Here, books such as Bram Stoker’sDRACULA – written 124 years ago – are made to share shelf space with cast-signed framed photos from the 1960’s television series LOST IN SPACE.Classic hybrid shelf, in other words.
You guys responded brilliantly to the photo call, generously sharing what was inside your homes, and, in another sense, what’s inside your heads. Here’s a selection of those received –
With finger well and truly on the pulse, Delightful Ebony spotlights a title that has special meaning for her.
Scoping out reader’s bookshelves makes for interesting literary eye-candy, to be sure. But what would you expect from the esteemed book altar of a pro author?
Professional writer Bridget Whelan – https://bridgetwhelan.com/ – based in East Sussex, England and boasting in excess of 7000 internet followers, was kind enough to share home snaps of her not one but four warehouse behemoths.
This is book love on a truly panoramic scale.
The human eye can detect shelf sag as slight as 0.7 of a millimeter – that’s less than the thickness of a plastic credit card.
Wanna see more? You do? Then go ahead and click HERE.
Last month, SWS reported HERE on the books shortlisted in the fiction category of the AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS. Congratulations to American author Jason Mott whose fourth novel HELL OF A BOOK has taken out the top prize.
When exactly will SCENICWRITER’SSHACK cease foisting 5th rate fiction on its loyal readers?
When it’s able to upgrade itself to 4th rate fiction.
In the meantime, you’re stuck with the likes of this… some banter written in response to the monthly challenge offered by the Australian Writer’s Centre. They call it FURIOUS FICTION.
The must have’s in this month’s challenge were –
Whether you label it FURIOUS FICTION or FIFTH RATE FICTION, here’s this month’s four-minute-read, exhibited now before the court of public opinion –
Wanna read the winning entry in this writing comp? Click HEREfor Exhibit A.
For some of us, the idea of reading an entire novel is about as engrossing as being stuck in traffic … at peak hour.
Or spending 10 days in quarantine.
Or worse still, watching the box set of ‘FRIENDS’.
Ok, apologize to fans of that utterly wretched television series but maybe point made. Wading through someone else’s verbose and so often, slow moving fantasy, one that focuses on trifling details your brain simply finds dull no mater how hard you try to give yourself to it, is going to be a deal-breaker for all but the most dedicated, if you’ll pardon the garnished term, literarian.
No matter ’cause help is at hand.
SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK has discovered something better than the novel. Something more focused and to the point than the short story. Something with more bang for your buck than even Antman-sized flash fiction.
That something is the always inviting, often intriguing and frequently misleading plot synopsis; otherwise known as the book jacket blurb. Why spend weeks of your life laboring like a hospital patient hooked up to a ventilator through the word equivalent of an oversized bowl of cold lumpy porridge?
Gin bullocks to that, right?
In a similar vein to the movie trailer’s ability to elevate what might impolitely be labelled fourth-rate witless sludgeinto, at least to the untrained eye, what looks for all the world to pass for dinky-di five star entertainment, so too the novel’s back jacket blurb, in the hands of a wordsmith handed the job of pulling off a transformative act of deceit on a par with passing a dud check – back when folk used to do that – can raise to the level of an artform unto-itself the ability to convince the would-be reader that going ahead and committing to fully reading the book they are weighing in their hands may in any way approach the experience of devouring the thrill-a-second ride of the plot synopsis that has just succeeded so cleverly in whetting their lit appetite.
So… you ready for a couple of these BETTER THAN THE NOVEL ITSELF summaries?
You better be… after a build up such as it has been! These flexy little gems are all from novels published this year…
“The Adler’s seem like the perfect family – successful, affluent, attractive. It’s easy to dismiss the eggs thrown at their house as a childish prank, not so much the smoke bomb on the front lawn or slashed tyres of Thomas’s BMW. As the assaults escalate, Thomas and wife Viv, son Eli and daughter Tarryn grapple with rising fears their shameful secrets could be the reason the family is being targeted.“
“Rebecca Buckfast is the new principal of St Oswald’s school, the first headmistress in its history. She is intent on tearing apart the elite world that tried to hold her back. She has just started to reap the harvest of her ambition when a body is found.“
“Victoria Ford died in the World Trade Centre on 9/11. She had been accused of murder and in a call from the North Tower, she begged her sister Emma to prove her innocence. Twenty years later, Emma is convinced that a tv host can clear her sister’s name. The host digs deep but uncovers a darker mystery.“
And to round things out, here’s one I actually made a start on recently – baited, as it were – by the intriguing plot synopsis. I lasted all of two chapters (and a gleaming two chapters they were!) before skim-reading commenced and put it down for good about 40 pages in. Reviews I consulted HERE. after the fact seemed to largely confirm my feeling.
But the plot synopsis?
An absolute pitch-perfect little ripper.
“Private investigator Trike Augustine may be a brainiac with deductive skills to rival Sherlock Holmes, but they’re not doing him any good at solving the case of a missing gazzilionaire because the clues are so stupefyingly—well, stupid. His sidekicks—Max the former FBI agent and Lola the artist—don’t quite rise to the level of Dr. Watson, either. For example, when a large, dead pig turns up on Trike’s floor in the middle of the night, none of them can figure out what it means. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking as the astronomical reward being offered diminishes drastically every day.“
This LOST IN SPACE themed ‘shelfie‘ shows a section of my humble study-room bookcase. I’m particularly proud of the fact this ramshackle mini-display boasts a book written 124 years ago… namely DRACULA.
For the record, (’cause I just couldn’t resist a bit of unashamed namedropping) the autographed pics are Angela Cartwright (1952 – ) who played Penny on LIS and Francine York (1936 – 2017) who guest starred in one episode of LIS.
So how about you?
What’s your literary altar look like?
I would love, love, love to receive pics of YOUR home bookcase.
I’d like to feature an assortment of photos from readers on this blog in a future post. I’m asking folk to send their bookcase (or dvd collection ‘stacker’ if you’ve got one of those as well) happy snaps to my email address – glenavailable@hotmail.com If you can add in a couple of lines of commentary to go with it that would make it extra special.
You too can become the ultimate armchair critic with this padded seat novelty bookcase.
