Download or read book Ghosts and Ballyhoo written by Thomas Wictor and published by Schiffer Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghosts and Ballyhoo: Memoirs of a Failed L.A. Music Journalist chronicles Thomas Wictor's ten years in the Los Angeles music industry and his quest to free himself from the past. Ostensibly a memoir, Ghosts also asks – and possibly answers – provocative questions about fate, destiny, and life after death. The book is structured as a collection of anthologies rather than a continuous narrative; the seven anthologies detailing Wictor's failed career are separated by six interludes with the Collateral Ghost, one of the most brilliant, yet unsuccessful, musicians who ever played – former Frank Zappa bassist Scott Thunes. Thomas Wictor's experiences include multiple failures across multiple spectra and an endless series of coincidences that always returned him to the notion that there is a Plan. Losing nearly everything he loved gave the author clarity, enabling him to see patterns of guidance and sustenance visible everywhere once he was no longer blinded by rage and negativity. This clarity exorcised Thomas Wictor and brought him peace of mind, which allowed him to transform the anger over what he lost into gratitude for what he once had. Written with profane humor and no self-pity, Ghosts and Ballyhoo includes previously unpublished articles, excerpts from interview transcripts personal correspondence, and photos.

Download or read book Beyond Ballyhoo written by Mark Thomas McGee and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Castle, for instance, was a master promoter. In one scheme involving The Tingler, Vincent Price warns in the movie that "the only way to stop the monster is to scream. That's the signal to the projectionist to throw the switch. Under ten or twelve seats were some electric motors, war surplus things that Castle got a bargain on. The motors vibrated the seat, in the hope of scaring a scream out of someone. Just in case it didn't Castle planted someone in the audience to get the screams rolling." This book is about flamboyant promotion, the con artist side of the movie world--everything the ballyhoo boys did to separate the customer from the price of a movie ticket--Emergo, HypnoVista, 3-D, Wide Screen, Cinemagic, Duo-Vision, Dynamation, Smell-O-Vision, plenty more. Supporting the text are 107 photos and illustrations, some never-before-published, and a filmography.

Download or read book Joke Riddle Ballyhoo written by Jacqueline Horsfall and published by Union Square & Co.. This book was released on 2009-10-29 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beastie bloopers, fiddle-de-riddles, creepy critters, tongue twisters, and so much more! Filled with hundreds of jokes of every type, this hilarious compilation is sure to tickle the funny bone and have kids screaming with laughter for hours on end. What do you call a lazy kangaroo? A pouch potato. What should you wear when you go to the beach with a monster? Sunscream. What did the skeleton say to the doctor? "This will cost me an arm and a leg!" Give this riddle a try: I have many teeth but cant chew. What am I? (A comb.) How fast do happy bikers ride? Ten smiles per hour--and there are even more smiles than that in here.

Download or read book In Cold Sweat written by Thomas Wictor and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book contains a full discography for each of the artists, and every interview - illustrated with striking, often candid photographs - includes an introduction and a postscript that together serve to recognize the artist's accomplishments and define his place in the current pop scene."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book The War of the Ghosts and Machines written by Mike Hockney and published by Magus Books. This book was released on with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you a ghost or a machine? You don't need to be a superstitious believer to support the side of the ghosts. Machine people reduce everything to lifeless, mindless, purposeless atoms of matter: the ultimate little machines. For "ghost" people, reality reduces to dimensionless, mathematical singularities, which are none other than the hyperrational monadic souls posited by Pythagoras and Leibniz. Ghost people subscribe to atoms (minds) with atomic number zero, i.e. minds/souls are made of massless, dimensionless photons. Machine people start with hydrogen atoms, with atomic number one. All "ghost" entities are associated with zero and infinity. All machine people deny the existence of zero and infinity. Mathematically, these are the two numbers where the ghosts and the machines collide head on. This book is all about demonstrating that there are indeed ghosts in the machines.

Download or read book Hallucinabulia written by Thomas Wictor and published by Thomas\Wictor. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hallucinabulia: the Dream Diary of an Unintended Solitarian is a document of disaster and recovery. The third volume in the Ghosts Trilogy, it joins Ghosts and Ballyhoo: Memoirs of a Failed L.A. Music Journalist and Chasing the Last Whale, a fictional black comedy about love and suicide in contemporary, wartime America. Like its two companion titles, Hallucinabulia explores the theme of overcoming a deeply traumatic past by transforming anger over loss into gratitude for what once was. Plagued by chronic nightmares until an incurable illness finally allowed him to achieve happiness, Wictor published this very private record in order to bear witness, banish, and entertain. The healing power of laughter is again demonstrated and affirmed. Wictor's near-perfect recall allowed him to capture some of the most off-kilter, frightening, strange, and funny imagery that a twisted imagination could ever devise. The diary-divided into twelve chapters organized by subject matter-provides context to the memoir and the novel by presenting the nocturnal battles the author fought with his demons, as well as the salvation that his angels conferred. Straight from Wictor's subconscious, the dialog, bizarre scenery, and outlandish situations are preserved in the form of intricately detailed short stories. The characters introduced in Ghosts and Ballyhoo and romanticized in Chasing the Last Whale are finally set free in Hallucinabulia, being no longer bound by law, nature, or even reality. The result is a book that travels an arc from incomprehensibly brutal to indestructibly optimistic, as intense evil gives way to infinite beauty and good.

Download or read book The Cat and the Canary written by John Willard and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book German Assault Troops of World War I written by Thomas Wictor and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers the organization, tactics, weapons, equipment, orders of battle, and uniforms of official and unofficial units, from early raiding parties to formal assault battalions. Rare photos depict badges and insignia not previously known, while primary documents describing regulations and training are provided in their entirety. New information on the origin of shock tactics is presented, gleaned from German archives and not previously published in English. Specific operations on all fronts are included, along with extracts from German army manuals for shock-troop arms such as flamethrowers, mortars, machine guns, grenade launchers, assault artillery, and tanks.

Download or read book Theatre and Ghosts written by M. Luckhurst and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre and Ghosts brings theatre and performance history into dialogue with the flourishing field of spectrality studies. Essays examine the histories and economies of the material operations of theatre, and the spectrality of performance and performer.

Download or read book Mickelsson s Ghosts written by and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critically acclaimed final masterwork of John Gardner: an American novel haunted with macabre and cerebral elements.

Download or read book Ghosts murder mayhem a Chronicle of Santa Fe written by Allan Pacheco and published by Sunstone Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you like to have fun, this tabloid-like investigation of some of Santa Fe, New Mexico's most extraordinary events is for you. Here are "beyond belief" stories of the present and the days of yore that picture many compelling, serious and humorous events that have woven themselves into Santa Fe's colorful history. Many myths and facts are explored, and many bubbles are burst: Billy The Kid, Russian spies, hauntings, UFOs, the Santa Fe Trail, to name a few. This eccentric Santa Fe guide is full of sensationalism, revulsion, truths, lies and pleasant distractions. Written in a "Noir" fashion, the book mixes humor with hard-boiled memorable moments that could only happen in Santa Fe, The City Different. ALLAN PACHECO is a native Santa Fean who has a B.A. degree and has attended Law School. He has many patents (auto tool) and for years was primarily involved in international manufacturing and trade. Allan's love for Santa Fe knows no bounds. Perhaps it's in his DNA since his ancestors were Spanish Conquistadors who helped found the city.

Download or read book The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media written by Sara Pesce and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the age of "complex Tv", of social networking and massive consumption of transmedia narratives, a myriad short-lived phenomena surround films and TV programs raising questions about the endurance of a fictional world and other mediatized discourse over a long arc of time. The life of media products can change direction depending on the variability of paratextual materials and activities such as online commentaries and forums, promos and trailers, disposable merchandise and gadgets, grassroots video production, archives, and gaming. This book examines the tension between permanence and obsolescence in the production and experience of media byproducts analysing the affections and meanings they convey and uncovering the machineries of their persistence or disposal. Paratexts, which have long been considered only ancillary to a central text, interfere instead with textual politics by influencing the viewers’ fidelity (or infidelity) to a product and affecting a fictional world’s "life expectancy". Scholars in the fields of film studies, media studies, memory and cultural studies are here called to observe these byproducts' temporalities (their short form and/or long temporal extention, their nostalgic politics or future projections) and assess their increasing influence on our use of the past and present, on our temporal experience, and, consequently, on our social and political self-positioning through the media.

Download or read book Haunting Legacy written by Marvin Kalb and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States had never lost a war —that is, until 1975, when it was forced to flee Saigon in humiliation after losing to what Lyndon Johnson called a "raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country." The legacy of this first defeat has haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to put "boots on the ground" and commit troops to war. In Haunting Legacy, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United States go to war? The sobering lesson of Vietnam is that the United States is not invincible —it can lose a war —and thus it must be more discriminating about the use of American power. Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another unpopular war. Ford (during the Mayaguez crisis) and both Bushes (Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan) deployed massive force, as if to say, "Vietnam, be damned." On the other hand, Carter, Clinton, and Reagan (to the surprise of many) acted with extreme caution, mindful of the Vietnam experience. Obama has also wrestled with the Vietnam legacy, using doses of American firepower in Libya while still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors spent five years interviewing hundreds of officials from every post war administration and conducting extensive research in presidential libraries and archives, and they've produced insight and information never before published. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and cautionary tale, Haunting Legacy is must reading for anyone trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace decisions of the present, and of the future.

Download or read book ReFocus The Films of William Castle written by Murray Leeder and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an influence felt on directors like Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis and John Waters, this volume reappraises Castle's legacy as an innovator as much as a showman.

Download or read book Her Dream of Dreams written by Beverly Lowry and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South; I was promoted from there to the wash-tub; then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.” --Madam C. J. Walker, National Negro Business League Convention, 1912 Now, from a writer acclaimed for her novels and the memoir Crossed Over, a remarkable biography of a truly heroic figure. Madam C. J. Walker created a cosmetics empire and became known as the first female self-made millionaire in this nation’s history, a noted philanthropist and champion of women’s rights and economic freedom. These achievements seem nothing less than miraculous given that she was born, in 1867, to former slaves in a hamlet on the Mississippi River. How she came to live on another river, the Hudson, in a Westchester County mansion, and in a New York City town house, is at once inspirational and mysterious, because for all that is known about the famous entrepreneur, much that occurred before her magnificent transformation—years that trace a circuitous route across the country—remains obscure. By breathing life into scattered clues and dry facts, and with a deep understanding of the times and places through which Madam Walker moved, Beverly Lowry tells a story that stretches from the antebellum South to the Harlem Renaissance and bridges nearly a century of our history in her search for the distant truths of a woman who defied all odds and redefined conventional expectations. “Wherever there was one colored person, whether it was a city, a town, or a puddle by the railroad tracks, everybody knew her name.” --Violet Davis Reynolds, Stenographer, Madam C. J. Walker Co

Download or read book Step Right Up I m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America written by William Castle and published by William Castle Productions. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nostalgia vies with rollicking good fun in these anecdote-studded memoirs of legendary horror director William Castle. Remember the Lloyds of London life insurance policy that protected moviegoers if they were frightened to death by "Macabre"? Or the theatre seats that buzzed when "The Tingler" came on screen...and refunds for cowards who could not face the last terrifying minutes of "Homicidal"?

Download or read book Deathbird Stories written by Harlan Ellison and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterpieces of myth and terror about modern gods from technology to drugs to materialism—“fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling” (The New York Times). As Earth approaches Armageddon, a man embarks on a quest to confront God in the Hugo Award–winning novelette, “The Deathbird.” In New York City, a brutal act of violence summons a malevolent spirit and a growing congregation of desensitized worshippers in “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” an Edgar Award winner influenced by the real-life murder of Queens resident Kitty Genovese in 1964. In “Paingod,” the deity tasked with inflicting pain and suffering on every living being in the universe questions the purpose of its cruel existence. Deathbird Stories collects these and sixteen more provocative tales exploring the futility of faith in a faithless world. A legendary author of speculative fiction whose best-known works include A Boy and His Dog and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream—and whose major awards and nominations number in the dozens, Harlan Ellison strips away convention and hypocrisy and lays bare the human condition in modern society as ancient gods fade and new deities rise to appease the masses—gods of technology, drugs, gambling, materialism—that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them. In addition to his Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Edgar, and other awards, Ellison was called “one of the great living American short story writers” by the Washington Post—and this collection makes it clear why he has earned such an extraordinary assortment of accolades. Stories include: “Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” “Along the Scenic Route” “On the Downhill Side” “O Ye of Little Faith” “Neon” “Basilisk” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” “Corpse” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” “The Face of Helene Bournouw” “Bleeding Stones” “At the Mouse Circus” “The Place with No Name” “Paingod” “Ernest and the Machine God” “Rock God” “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W” “The Deathbird”