High Risk 4.4

Previous    First

[Concluding chapter four]

Lily had disappeared by the time he had oriented himself and started looking for her. Hope she’s okay, Casey thought. Then a cool breeze tickled his face and thoughts of Lily Cross faded; he ran his fingers through his hair to lift it away from his sweat-soaked head, and gave himself over to the pleasure of the cool night air and the relative quiet of the patio. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of the evening here, he thought. Getting back to Glendale might be a problem, but he’d deal with it when forced to and not worry about it until then.

“I do believe that’s Casey,” drawled a low, familiar voice. “Why don’t you come and join us exiles over here, Casey?”

“Miss Farrell,” Casey said, swallowing and trying to keep his voice steady as he looked for the source of the voice. After a moment he gave up. “Where are you?”

“In the dark, of course,” she said. “If someone could see me, someone could ask why I’m not inside sharing my life’s wisdom.” Now Casey could see the glowing tip of a cigarette hovering over a spot on the lawn some distance away and well out of the light leaking from the French doors.

High Risk 4.3

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter four]

“Casey! Good to see you, young fellow.” Jerry Straebo grabbed Casey by the shoulder and pulled him into the room. “I have been looking for you this evening, ever since I heard that Hart had brought you.”

Instantly on his guard, Casey asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Straebo?” Someone else had evidently been talking with Straebo; Casey saw a black-jacketed man slip behind him and out the door. There was something familiar about the man’s face, but then again there was something familiar about at least half of the people he’d seen this evening.

“Call me Jerry, for starters.” Straebo waited a second, then plunged on. “I won’t waste time. I want you to come to the studio tomorrow, Casey. Do you know why?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr.—Jerry.”

“I want to make a screen test, Casey. Of you.”

“A what?”

“I want to film you, talking with an actress from our company. I need to see how well your voice records, though I’m sure it will sound fine.”

Casey remembered this afternoon’s filming, and Straebo’s relentlessly minute criticisms of Richard Armstrong’s voice during some takes and his complete absence of comment following others. On the evidence, Straebo was no judge of how a voice was supposed to sound. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” he said.

“I was looking at the rushes this evening before coming up here,” Straebo said. Noting the look of confusion on Casey’s face he said, “Oh. That’s a word for the day’s filming. We also call them dailies. Well, one of the cameramen kept cranking after your crash—which was splendid, by the way. I hope you’re feeling better.”

Casey was by this point feeling no pain at all, so he waved off Straebo’s concern with a smile. “I’m glad,” Straebo said. “Now, at the very end of that footage is a close-up of you as you’re talking to Hogan. I think you look pretty good in that close-up, Casey. And it’s my job to judge this sort of thing well. So I think it might be worth putting you into the picture, in a small role, so that we can add some sense of the truth to the story we’re trying to tell. What do you say?”

“I’m not sure,” Casey began. “It’s flattering, I must say. But my real interest is flying, you know.”

“Of course,” Straebo said. “And you’d continue to do that. This wouldn’t take you away from your flying duties. I’ve already taken care of that with Hogan. Oh, and of course your salary would increase.”

Now Casey was interested. “By how much?”

“Enough, I should think.” Straebo stared into Casey’s eyes. “We normally sign newcomers for about a hundred dollars a week. Because you’d also be flying for us, I’ll give you a hundred and fifty dollars.” As Casey started to grin, Straebo hastily added, “All of this is dependent on your doing a good test, of course. Since tomorrow’s Sunday I won’t expect you at the studio too early. Let’s make it eleven o’clock, shall we? I’ll inform the guard at the gate; he’ll see that you get to where you’re supposed to go.”

By the time Casey got himself free of Jerry Straebo he was feeling more than a little disconnected from the small fragment of the real world he’d been able to hold onto since moving to Los Angeles. He supposed he ought to be excited about the possibility of becoming a movie actor. Since it was never something he’d even remotely entertained as a desire, he couldn’t make himself enthusiastic about anything beyond the fiscal promises held out by the salary Straebo had offered. At a hundred-fifty dollars a week, if he lived frugally he’d be able to buy his own plane within a year or two.

The room in which he found himself, when he returned to paying attention to his surroundings, was an astonishing hodge-podge of decorative styles: animal heads (or just their horns) were mounted around a huge stone fireplace; at one end of the room was a classic zinc bar of the type featured in Parisian brasseries; and the furniture was a mix of colonial and the latest European designs. The room, like most of the others he’d been in, was jammed full of people being witty at the tops of their lungs. Hearing the din, thinking back to the singing, Casey wondered again at the strange resistance so many Hollywoods had toward the new talking pictures.

There was a set of French doors at the far end of the room, opposite the bar: freedom beckoned. Casey made his way toward the doors, only to find his way suddenly blocked by a couple locked in a vicious pas de deux. Richard Armstrong’s eyes were glazed, but his body veered aggressively toward Lily Cross, who fended him off both with her hands and with a voice as shrill and violent as Armstrong’s. The overall din made it impossible to hear what they were saying to one another, but Casey was sure that the actual words were irrelevant given the obvious anger at work.

Before he could reach them, Armstrong made a grab for Lily. She broke his clumsy grip with ease and fled—a trifle unsteadily—through the French doors. Armstrong started after her, but took only a couple of steps before collapsing to the floor. Casey decided to let someone else look after the man, who had in a few seconds had managed to destroy any sympathy Casey might have felt toward him after the afternoon’s events; instead, Casey followed Lily through the open doors and onto a broad patio.

Next     Prologue    Chapter One    Chapter Two    Chapter Three    Chapter Four

High Risk 4.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter four]

Casey shook his head slowly as he watched Lily disappear into the crowd, presumably to work her way to the dining-room door not currently blocked by Jerry Straebo. After she'd gone, he realized that she was one of the few people he'd seen tonight in what he'd consider reasonable dress for a Saturday night in Los Angeles.

Brett Kerry, on the other hand, looked like—well, a lot like Casey did: threadbare sweater over stained white shirt, and trousers that might have been dressy before their encounters with oil and dirt. He approached Casey grinning, then made a point of holding up Casey's arm and laying his own alongside it. "I win," he said. "Mine is without doubt the filthier of the two."

"I'll bet yours didn't get dirty the same way," said another man, and Casey realized that the two men behind Kerry were actually accompanying him.

"We've been looking for you, Casey," Kerry said. His voice had an alcoholic lilt to it that reminded Casey of every mess-room binge he'd ever joined. "This is someone I want you to meet."

Kerry stepped aside as if to present a lady being sawn in half, or possibly an elephant. What stepped forward was a tall, tanned, ridiculously good-looking man with an athlete's build and a good deal too much Scotch in him. "It is a pleasure and an honor, sir," the man said, extending his hand. His voice slipped and nearly fell trying to negotiate the sibilant sounds of the greeting.

"Casey," Kerry said grandly, "allow me to present John Monk Saunders, late of the U.S. Army Air Service and currently of First National Studios. Saunders, this is Casey, first name or last or possibly both, late of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force." Casey, trying to remember where he'd heard the man's name before, shook the offered hand.

"You certainly look like an actor," Casey said, hoping it would be taken as a compliment.

"Doesn't he just, though?" Kerry said. "He is in fact a writer, though, which means that he is despised by actors everywhere."

"And most producers too," Saunders said. "The writer's lot is a tragic one."

"You look like you're suffering, old man," the third member of the party said. "You really do."

"This fellow," Saunders said, bringing the third man forward, "is a scion of Hollywood royalty, Casey. You should bow down or genuflect or some such in front of him."

"Balls," said the third man. "If I wasn't utterly beholden to you, Saunders, I'd thrash you for that."

"It's ridiculous that I should have to beg for you to get that part," Saunders said. "I do not want you to be—I do not want you beholden to me." He shook his head, slowly, as if uncertain of his ability to stay vertical. "Damn, but this erudition takes a lot out of a man."

"Or is it what Tony Cornero's gin puts into him?" Kerry asked.

Casey extended his hand to the third man, a younger fellow with a somewhat lean, triangular face and chiseled matinee-idol looks. "We could be standing a while if we wait for Mr. Saunders here to complete the introductions. I'm Casey. I'm just a pilot."

"I'm Doug Fairbanks, Jr. I'm just an actor, and not much of one at that."

"My turn to say 'balls' now," said Kerry. "You're a fine actor, Doug, with a great voice. Now that everyone's making talkies you're going to be a star."

"Not at the rate I've been working. With the parts I've been getting lately I'm thinking I might as well go back to Paris."

"Nonsense." Saunders clapped a hand on Casey's shoulder; the resulting shock sent a small tidal wave through his champagne, most of which wound up on the dining-room rug. "Casey, I'm trying to get Doug here a part in a movie I'm writing. It's a pip of a role—not the lead, of course, Dick Barthlemess is doing that. But it's a splendid part, even if I did write it myself. Now, Kerry here tells me you were at the front during the War. I'm thinking—"

"That a chat with me would help Mr. Fairbanks land the role?" Casey was about to ask why Saunders couldn't provide the insight himself when it occurred to him that if they wanted his advice about a movie role, that movie must involve flying. That could mean another job. Making friends with Hollywood types, he decided, was sound strategy. So instead of begging off he said, "Why not? It wouldn't hurt to have a realistic portrayal of what war flying was like."

"Wasn't Wings realistic?" Kerry asked, stifling a giggle.

"In parts," Casey said. "I thought a lot of it was overdone and sort of stupid. Since you asked."

"Ouch," Saunders said, doubling over as if he'd been shot.

Seeing the man's tortured expression, Casey shut his eyes and groaned. Images of Howard Hughes flashed before him. "From now on," he said, "I'm just going to keep my damned mouth shut. That, or just say that I loved it whenever anyone asks me anything about a movie."

"A splendid survival tactic," Kerry said.

"Mr. Saunders, of course, wrote Wings," Casey said. "Right?"

"Right," Fairbanks said. "In the sense that it was based on his novel—his unfinished novel, I should add. But he oughtn't complain. Paramount paid him so much for that picture that he'll never have to work again."

"As if money was everything," Saunders said. He sobbed theatrically.

"You mean it isn't?" Casey asked. "Would you mind telling my creditors that? So long as you don't tell them how to find me, that is."

"I think that we're going to get along famously, Casey," Fairbanks said. "Let's have another drink and get started on the lesson."

The lesson quickly degenerated into an impromptu concert of Flying Corps drinking songs. Several glasses of champagne later, Casey found himself at the centre of a choir that included—Fairbanks informed him—not only their host but several of Hollywood's rising stars. Young men named Gary and Buddy and Charlie added their voices to the wailing, as did a completely inebriated jug-eared fellow with a bizarre name who sang beautifully. That stood to reason since jug-ears was, someone said, not an actor but a singer making a movie with the band-leader Paul Whiteman.

The dining-room was beginning to feel uncomfortably crowded, so when the choir abruptly shifted from "The Dying Aviator" (“take the cylinder out of my kidney/The connecting rod out of my brain (my brain)/From the small of my back take the crank-shaft/And assemble the engine again”) to an extremely vulgar variant of the endless song about the mademoiselle from Armentières, Casey slipped away from his erstwhile companions and out of the room. His hair was plastered to his skull by sweat, and the heat generated by all of the milling bodies was making him uncomfortably aware of the sweater he was still wearing. He decided to go outside until he'd cooled off.
He got as far as the billiard room.

Next     Prologue    Chapter One    Chapter Two    Chapter Three    Chapter Four

High Risk 4.1

Previous    First

FOUR

“Alan Marshall is a cowboy star,” Casey said. “You weren’t joking or anything.”

“Of course not.” Conrad Hart gave his hat to a young woman, who whistled her appreciation at his pajamas and dressing gown. “Why would I joke about something like that?” He led Casey into a large room that seemed incredibly small, mostly because it was jammed with weirdly dressed people.

“This house!” Casey had to shout now if he wanted Hart to have even a hope of hearing him. “This isn’t exactly what I envisioned a cowboy living in!” Alan Marshall evidently didn’t hold with the mock-Andalusian architectural motif that dominated the wealthy suburbs of Los Angeles. The exterior of his house looked like a Hollywood art director’s idea of something Shakespeare might have called home.

“Perhaps it would help if you knew that Marsh was born in Connecticut and that he learned to ride a horse as a show-jumper!” Hart grinned. “He’s only a little more of a cowboy than you are!” Hart grabbed a glass from a passing tray and handed it to Casey. “You’ll be jake on your own, right? I see some people I have to talk to.” Without waiting for a reply, he waded into the crowd.

Sour Patch Kids
Well, this is something new. Not often you can say that in the kiddyrot sphere.

Overall Rating: 78/39*
It's a wake-up call in more ways than one!

Image from the Institute Collection
(courtesy of Jannie Shea, who really
ought to know better...)

Appearance
We didn't think it was possible to build a cereal more blinding in appearance than Froot Loops, but danged if Post hasn't done the trick. Ignore for the moment that the individual pieces, which we think are supposed to represent some sort of gummy candy, actually resemble model bacteria from the Junior Mad Scientist's Be Evil At Home kit; the colours are stunning. Forget eating this stuff; you just want to pour out a bowl and then stare at it.

Taste and Texture, Dry
Surprisingly light and crisp, especially when you consider that this is a blend of three flours, including the dread oat. The flavour is a bit reminiscent of Adams's description of the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: these pieces taste as if you've been double-dipped in vinegar while snorting powdered sugar. Flavour? There is no flavour, just an acetic sensory assault followed by a sugar-blast to the back of the brain. On the negative column of the ledger, the individual pieces are on the small side (there's that bacterium thing again) which makes snacking out of the bag a sticky chore.

Taste and Texture, With Milk
We're not at all sure that vinegar and milk are a solid combination. The best that can be said about this product's performance after encountering cow-juice is that if you let it sit for a little while the worst of the acid leaches away, leaving a more-or-less standard sugar-milk combination. Trust us, this is easier to get through than trying to eat the unmediated acid blast straight from the box.

Conclusion
Who knows? Maybe Kids These Days™ are more enthusiastic about vinegar than (Talkin' About) My Generation. Now that we think on it, this likely explains the vogue, in some circles, for saisons, sours and other beers that taste as if they've been left in the sun too long.

[May 2019]

*Higher score is for those who enjoy sour flavours that are still somehow cloyingly sweet, like really bad American Chinese takeout. Lower score is for everybody else. And yes, this is the first split score in the Institute's long and storied history.

High Risk 3.4

Previous    First

[Concluding chapter three]

It being Saturday, when work wrapped for the day the week's pay was handed out. Casey, having worked just two days, got only twenty dollars and an apologetic look from the woman who gave it to him. But the smile Casey gave her in return was genuine: it had been plenty long since he'd had as much as twenty dollars in his pocket.

He was trying to decide what to do with the money when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see Conrad Hart grinning at him in what Casey could only think of as a conspiratorial fashion. "You wouldn't by any chance be looking for something to do with yourself this evening," Hart said.

"Might be," Casey replied. He remembered Hogan's warning about getting too involved with the Hollywoods and tried to be skeptical about Hart's motives in speaking to him.

High Risk 3.3

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter three]

When Casey returned to the set a false wall had mysteriously appeared, surrounded by reflectors and lights. This time there were two microphones, suspended from overhanging poles, instead of the one that had served the last piece of filming.

The reason for the second microphone became clear when Desiree was joined by not just Conrad Hart but Eve Adams, Brett Kerry, and Richard Armstrong. The five actors jostled one another for a minute as they found their positions in front of the false wall. Then they stood for several minutes longer while a variety of technicians fiddled with microphone placement, flashed lights on and off, and made invisible adjustments to various articles of clothing. One man in particular seemed to hover around Desiree, occasionally shifting his interest to Miss Adams. At this man’s instruction the light bathing Desiree’s face shifted in subtle ways, amid confusing calls for more silks, a little more or less barn door on the inkies. After a final “Give me a gimmick right here”—accompanied by a finger-tip placed on one of Desiree’s cheekbones—the man said, “Okay. We’re ready here.”

High Risk 3.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter three]

"What the hell happened?" Hogan sounded brusque, but he couldn't quite keep the grin from his face.

"I think I crashed," Casey said. "How'd it look?" Casey was propped on a mixture of blankets and cushions that had been set against one of the location crew's heavy wooden boxes, to the side of one of the hangars at the Glendale field. He'd been brought back by a studio truck and had only just settled down when Hogan's DH-4 sputtered to a stop a few yards away. Several of the cast and crew had accompanied Casey to his makeshift infirmary, and Jerry Straebo was on the way over from the production office as Casey returned Hogan's grin.

"It looked beautiful," Hogan said. "I pray that the film is all right. But seriously, what happened up there?"

Alchemy and Artifacts Cover

Image courtesy of Hades Publications, Inc.

My short story "Where There's a Goal" is now available for pre-order as part of Alchemy and Artifacts, the latest Tesseracts anthology (Number 22 in the series).

Alchemy and Artifacts will be released in ebook form on 10 June (available from the usual suspects in the usual formats); the hard-copy will be available on Amazon as of 24 June; there is an official launch scheduled for 2 September (though I don't know, as yet, what this entails).

According to the catalogue page, the new book is a collection of twenty-three amazing stories based on historical artifacts combined with fantastic historical fiction.

The stories meld culture, concept and incident into a rich collection of 'what if' speculations that provide warnings yet revel in the cultural celebrations we continue to observe today. They are the touchstones that resonate with all who listen to and learn from the past.

(I feel compelled to warn that my story is not quite as serious-minded as the other pieces in the book...)

I've had a very long and successful association with Tesseracts, with stories published in the second volume and a bunch of subsequent iterations (which I'm too lazy to look up just now). In addition, Lorna and I co-edited the fourth volume in the series. (It was very interesting to gain the editorial perspective on the writing process; the restraining order prohibits me from saying anything more...)

Anyway, I am very much looking forward to seeing "Where There's a Goal" in print, and I hope the book does very well. And not just for selfish reasons. Absolutely not.

High Risk 3.1

Previous    First

CHAPTER THREE

The set-construction people had put up some facades and tents that were supposed to suggest airfield buildings. Looking at the flimsy constructs, Casey couldn’t believe that they’d every persuade anyone. The cast and crew of High Risk were busily occupied around the set, which had also been decorated with a couple of the airplanes not being used today.

Casey was as far from the set as he could be and still be on the airfield. He was uncomfortably aware of how close to takeoff time it was getting, but he intended to stay out here for as long as he could get away with it. His stomach already seemed to be airborne, and he found himself staring blankly ahead at nothing, unable to keep his thoughts on anything for more than a fraction of a second. He hadn't been this nervous since his first solo. Except maybe the first flight after the accident. No, he didn't want to think of the accident. What he was about to do was frightening enough.

Reese Puffs Bats
This may have been a limited-edition release for Halloween. Well, here at the Institute every day is Halloween.

Overall Rating: 88
Note that the high rating is conditional on your liking the taste of peanut butter. As the saying goes, Your Mileage May Vary. On the other hand, it's a pleasure to detect the actual flavour of peanut butter in a Reese's cereal product.

Image from the Institute Collection

Appearance
Well, here we go again. It's probably a good thing children have such active imaginations, because it surely requires a more-than-willing suspension of disbelief to see nature's greatest flying mammal (and a totem animal of the Institute) in these deformed monstrosities (and we don't use "monstrosities" in any Halloween-positive sense). You know you're in trouble when the shapes of these cereal pieces not only don't resemble the objects they're supposed to represent (that would be bats), they don't even resemble the sample pieces shown on the box (that would, apparently, be a corn-based model of an over-inflated, deformed pig's bladder). The only positive thing you can say about this is that the misshapen protuberances on the individual pieces make them easier to pick up from a bowl.

Texture and Taste, Dry
Imagine our surprise when, on first sinking a fang into one of these, we encountered the actual flavour of peanut butter. This ought not to have been such a surprise, but our previous encounters with Reese's cereals have been underwhelming in terms of flavour. (The benchmark for peanut butter cereals was, and remains, Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch.) With this product, at least, Reese have upped their game, which makes us happy.

The cereal is a single-varietal product: corn is the only grain used. This makes for a light, pleasing snap on first bite (cue the vampire jokes) and a minimal amount of cloying stickiness. You'll still want to brush your teeth after this, or they will stick together, but this product makes for a most pleasing snack out of the box.

Texture and Taste, With Milk
There's a reason kids like a glass of milk with a PBJ sandwich, and the same applies to this PB cereal. (In theory chocolate is involved as well, but this product has even less "chocolate" flavour than any of the others the Institute has sampled.) The corn holds up to the dairy quite well (as is usually the case with corn cereals) and for the real peanut butter fanatics out there, the product won't have a chance to go soggy before it's all been snarfed up. It's interesting: the peanut butter flavour seems stronger at the end of a spoonful than at the start. That's probably what was intended, though: the strong finish encourages you to dip your spoon once again.

A few points are lost because of the non-existence of the chocolate, save for the provision of some questionable colour variation, and because of the way the flavour takes a while to declare itself when taken with milk. But with this product a second bowl is a strong possibility.

Conclusion
We'll be honest: this was a pleasant surprise. The product was purchased on sale, well after Halloween, but it held up quite well. Not everybody out there is going to be a fan of peanut butter, in cereal or otherwise, but if you are, this is a positive choice. Plus, the things are so horribly misshapen that you really could use this product to terrify tiny tots next Halloween. [May 2019]

[Posted a day later than usual in honour of the Victoria Day long weekend.]

High Risk 2.3

Previous     First

[Concluding chapter two]


“What do you suppose she’s up to?” Tennant asked Kerry.

“Haven’t the slightest. I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Jerry Straebo, though. She told him that she was going out with me tonight.”

“Brett Kerry, boy decoy,” Tennant said. “Hope she’s worth it.”

“How the hell should I know?” Kerry laughed. “Straebo obviously assumes I’m no more threat to her than Desiree is.”

“You mean you haven’t made her?”

“Are you saying you have?” Kerry dropped down into a chair, throwing a leg over one of the upholstered arms. “Time to tell all, dear boy.”

High Risk 2.2

Previous     First

[Continuing chapter two]

Conrad Hart lived in Silver Lake, one of the new neighborhoods that had sprung up to the north and west of Los Angeles to accommodate movie and oil money. As Tillman’s Chevrolet negotiated the gently curving streets, Casey couldn’t help staring at the golden palaces, glowing in the light of the setting sun, each of them worth more money than Casey had earned in his lifetime.

“This is nothin’,” Tillman said, noting Casey’s expression. “You should see the dumps in Whitley Heights and Beverley Hills.”

“This is enough,” Casey said.

Hart’s house was a mock-Spanish two-storey that was very carefully built to not stand out amongst its neighbors. At first glance it seemed to Casey as impressive as all of the other houses he’d been staring at. On closer acquaintance, though, tiny frauds began to appear. The roof appeared to be of red tile, but a second look revealed painted metal. The second-floor balconies, faced with shiny, black, wrought-iron, promised a view of Silver Lake itself—did they not seen so narrow that no normal adult would be able to stand on them without pitching forward over the rails. For that matter, the lake itself was no more genuine than the house, being a water storage reservoir for Los Angeles, glorified by the presence of those who were eager to live around any body of water in this near-desert place. Casey had expected to see a wide, curving drive on which visitors could leave their Rolls-Royces and Deusenbergs, but instead the house was fronted with a lawn that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Toronto suburb. A narrow drive along one side implied a garage at the back. Tillman parked on the street.

Credit After the Fact

When Warner's remake of The Dawn Patrol premiered on Christmas Eve, 1938, the closing credits featured one of the more unusual acknowledgements in movie history. I noticed this myself only recently, when I re-watched both the 1930 (Howard Hawks) and 1938 (Edmund Goulding) versions* of the movie, and I saw a name I wasn't expecting to see.

High Risk 2.1

Previous    First

Casey spent the rest of the day trying to stay focused on his work. This wasn't easy: he was continually distracted by a compulsion to calculate the odds against his actually receiving any money for the work he was doing. The conversation he'd overheard made High Risk sound like a dodgy prospect, and he hated the desperation that had forced him to take the job without even taking the time to check out Monarch's reputation. The only certainty was that he had no way to force any money out of the studio if "New York" decided to shut down the production. Going to the law was out of the question: he couldn't afford a lawyer. He could scarcely afford to keep himself dressed and fed.

He was allowed to approach within a few yards of Desiree Farrell at lunch, when he and Mitch were allowed to grab stale cheese sandwiches and truly awful coffee from a board-and-sawhorse table the film crew had set up. But if she remembered her promise to tell him about this movie's relationship with Howard Hughes, she didn't let on. Instead, she allowed her attention to be monopolized by two of the actors, young faces Casey didn't recognize. Maybe later, Casey thought. He was surprised to find himself looking forward to talking with her. From her look and her clever mouth she seemed someone you could learn something from, if she could only keep her mind and mouth out of the gutter. It had been a long time, he realized, since he’d looked forward to talking to someone. In the meantime, he satisfied himself with sneaking a couple of extra sandwiches, to serve as supper.

Maizoro Cocoa Flakes

Overall Rating: 61

Well, here’s something different. In honour (ha) of the USAMCA (this really should be a song by the Village People) we present a Mexican kiddyrot cereal. Well, the price was right, anyway: $1.00 CAD per box.

Image from the Institute Collection

Appearance

What can you say about flakes? Well, what can you say that Kellogg’s hasn’t already appropriated for their current ad campaign, or that doesn’t violate this blogging system’s terms of use? These flakes are smaller than the norm (a problem in the manufacturing process?), which means less surface area on which the sugar can sit, which is not a good thing.* Their colour is an unfortunate unterderminate shade, more burnt sienna than chocolate. Given Mexico’s long and fabulous history with chocolate, this does not bode well.

Texture and Taste, Dry

Starts off rather well, with sugar readily apparent and a pleasant hint of cocoa. The smaller size of the flakes works to their advantage here, since they have just the right size and mass (they’re heavier than most flakes, and would be even without their sugar coating) for easy picking up from the bag or bowl. Unfortunately, the makers have chosen a most unfortunate artificial flavour in their attempt to boost the “chocolate” flavour, and Maizoro dry very quickly begins to taste like a particularly repellent cough syrup. The first mouthful is fine, but Sucrophile heartily recommends you stop there.

Texture and Taste, With Milk

The medicinal flavour is almost completely masked by the milk, which is good. But that leaves virtually no chocolate flavour, which is bad. But the flakes so massive they resist sogging for an incredible length of time, which is good. But because they are so massive, a bowl of this cereal is heavy enough to be used as a weapon in certain Asian martial arts, and that’s bad (except possibly for certain segments of the population, which we do not want to meet in dark alleys or even shopping malls). Your teeth and jaw muscles will certainly get a workout eating this. Of course, you can accomplish this by chewing the carpet, too.

Conclusion

This is a Man’s cereal, or at least it would be if it weren’t for the sissy sweet stuff. At best, Maizoro sends out mixed signals. This is just a poor cousin of Chockles, we’re afraid. [March 1993]

*We probably violated some scientific law about inverse square ratios or something here, when it comes to overall sugar density. We don’t want to hear about it.

High Risk 1.4

Previous    First

[concluding chapter one]

Hogan was as good as his word. Casey was for the most part able to avoid thoughts of Desiree Farrell and Eve Adams, if only because he was so busy he didn’t have time for thought. He spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon helping Mitch check out the half-dozen biplanes Straebo and Hogan had between them assembled for the High Risk shoot. Mitch's knowledge of the machines was truly encyclopedic; it even extended to the rigging of the Tommies and Bristol. In France, a squadron had employed different groups of specialists to look after the mechanical and rigging aspects of keeping machines flight-worthy, but here in Southern California Mitch did it all, and with a cheerful efficiency that helped Casey forget that he hadn't worked this hard in years.

Casey also met the other pilots Hogan had hired for the High Risk shoot. Barrett Tillman was ex-Navy, a torpedo-bomber pilot who claimed that landing giant Martins on aircraft-carrier decks wasn't exciting enough. Scott Hamilton had been an airmail pilot; he came to Hollywood, he said, after one too many nerve-wracking bad-weather flights. Both men were in their mid-twenties and seemed to know their way around airplanes. They didn't seem all that thrilled to have Casey among them; perhaps, he thought, they'd overheard Hogan's comments about their flying ability.

High Risk 1.3

Previous    First

[continuing chapter one]

Mitch was good at his job, and the Le Rhone started on the first pull of the prop. Casey was pleased to see that he'd forgotten none of the tasks needed to get a rotary-powered plane airborne; Mitch and Hogan only had to hold the Tommy back for a couple of seconds before Casey had the fuel-air mixture set to keep the engine purring like a giant cat. He pressed the blip-switch a couple of times to make sure that it cut the ignition properly, then waved Mitch and Hogan away and let the engine go to full power. A check of the flag to show wind direction, and he was off, rolling down the grass field.

Casey kept the tail down until the airspeed indicator reached fifty. That made for a bumpier takeoff run, but it also made controlling the Tommy easier. Rotary engines generated a terrific gyroscopic effect, and if you weren't careful it could twist you into a ground-loop.

Tail up, and the Tommy lifted from the ground as though bouncing on springs. Automatically, Casey adjusted the fuel-air mix, then checked ahead. Lots of distance to the trees, and he'd clear them with altitude to spare. He grinned.

High Risk 1.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter one]

The weird Jenny that had dusted Casey's head a few minutes ago sat just inside the hangar to which Hogan took him. The pilot was apparently long gone, but a mechanic was crouched by the machine's nose, carefully removing and wiping down the engine's sparking plugs. The engine, revealed in full by the removal of the round cowling, showed itself to be a Gnome as Casey had guessed.

"Morning," Casey said to the mechanic's back. "I have to ask: what the hell is this?"

The mechanic backed away from the exposed engine before standing and turning. He wore aged, grey coveralls whose grease-stains suggested one of Whistler's more abstract paintings, and when he gave Casey the once-over he smiled a smile of recognition that acknowledged shared experience. I think I'm going to like this guy, Casey thought.

"It's exactly what it looks like, friend," the man said. "A Jenny with a Gnome bolted on. Who'd believe it, hey?"

"Not me," Casey said. "And what's with the rudder? This looks like somebody tried to gimmick an Avro."

"You're a quick study," the mechanic said. "That's exactly what they did. This is one of the fake Avro trainers that Hughes had made for Hell's Angels. And now I hear he's not even going to use that footage."

"Oh, shit." The words were out of Casey's mouth before he could think. "Howard Hughes? Please tell me that Howard Hughes isn't involved in this production."

High Risk 1.1

Previous

CHAPTER ONE

Casey waved his thanks to the driver as the truck rattled away down Riverside Drive, leaving a cloud of dust to mark its passage. He'd been lucky in catching a ride; if he'd waited until the Red Car started running, he'd still be on his way here right now. The duffel bag thumped softly against his hip as he crossed the dirt road to the Glendale Airport's grass field. The bag held his every possession; he'd had to abandon his room in Santa Monica. Once he got paid he'd make sure Mrs. Decker got the three weeks' rent he still owed her. Of course he would.

At the far end of the field, a group of hangars and haphazard buildings clustered together as though seeking mutual support against their own shoddy construction. Somewhere in there was the production office for the location shoot of High Risk, the film he'd been hired to fly for.

Or that he'd been invited to audition for; the phone call hadn't made things exactly clear, though Casey had actually received a contract in the mail late last week. It had been six long, painful months since his last flying job. That one day's work had been the only time he'd even been near an airplane, much less flown one, in the year since his last, disastrous encounter with Howard Hughes. What little work he'd been able to find lately had involved repairing cars in a garage that he was convinced was being used as a bootlegger's roost. That, or as a workshop for disguising stolen vehicles.

A Musical Truth: "Singin' in the Rain" as Documentary

Low-res image from Wikipedia.
Trademark owned by Turner
Entertainment; I'm claiming a
fair-use exemption.

Many people regard MGM's 1952 Singin' In the Rain as the best musical ever made. (It's not my favourite, but that's beside the point.) What I like about the movie is the way it manages to tell a fairly accurate story of what it was like to work in Hollywood during the often chaotic transition from silent to sound movie-making.

The history lesson begins at the party hosted by studio head R. F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) celebrating the premiere of his latest picture, The Royal Rascal (the clips we see are very reminiscent of the 1920s work of Douglas Fairbanks): Simpson shows his guests a demo reel of a "talking picture" system, presented by an unnamed gent played by vaudevillian Julius Tannen.* This sort of demonstration happened a fair amount in the early and mid-'20s—and in fact the first synchronized-sound feature film appeared in 1926, before The Jazz Singer, which is referenced at the end of this scene.

A few scenes later, production of a new picture is abruptly shut down because  the Jazz Singer is a huge hit and Simpson has decided to convert his studio for sound production. This change happens off-screen, which is probably the only way it could have been done.

High Risk 0.1

PROLOGUE

The sound was like the noise of an angry wasp boomed through a loudspeaker.

Casey, late arriving to work, heard the familiar ratcheting snarl of the rotary engine and smiled, as he always seemed to smile these days at that sound. There was nothing in the world like the sound of a rotary engine. And there was no place he’d heard that sound so frequently, since the war’s end, as on this improbable field in Southern California where Howard Hughes was making the most expensive movie ever produced.

Casey waited for the “blip” sound that would signify the pilot cutting the ignition as he taxied for takeoff. Like the proverbial other shoe, though, the engine revs never dropped. Another ten-dollar stiff who can’t fly a rotary, he thought. Sighing, Casey turned to look. Nobody else on the Hell’s Angels set seemed to be working, he noticed; they all watched the Thomas-Morse Scout as the tiny biplane dashed away from the hangar line and bounced along the rough grass rectangle that was Mines Field, the Inglewood airport. Abruptly the Tommy lifted from the grass as though tossed upward—and as abruptly it darted down and to the right, plowing a furrow into the grass and raising a huge cloud of dust. A second later the sound of the crash reached him.

Introducing HIGH RISK

The U. S. economy is booming. So is Hollywood, as studios at last come to grips with the technological revolution that is synchronized sound. From the perspective of early October 1929, the future is as bright as a switched-on Klieg light.

Not everybody is singing in the rain, though. Casey, an ex-fighter pilot and Great War veteran, is still living with the repercussions of a very hostile encounter with a very powerful—and short-tempered—young man: the 23-year-old Howard Hughes. When your only marketable skill is flying, you can't afford to piss off the millionaire who is making the most expensive aviation movie ever.

But the mercurial Mr. Hughes turns out to be the least of Casey's problems. When flying for a low-budget Poverty Row studio is the only work he can get, Casey soon finds more than his career is at stake. A duplicitous director, scheming or desperate stars, a crooked criminal justice system, and good old-fashioned murder threaten to bring Casey down in a crash he won't be able to walk away from.

High Risk is a murder mystery that, like its hero, explores the low-level fringes and the elevated heights of Hollywood at the beginning of its golden age. Chapter One appears on this website on Monday, 6 May 2019.

Movie Stunt Pilots of the 1920s and 1930s

Image from Wikimedia Commons

These days, flying sequences in movies are mostly done with computers, though there may be some actual flying involved before the CGI takes over. (For a solid example of how not to do this, see the execrable 2006 Flyboys.) During Hollywood's golden age, however, what you saw on the screen was real airplanes being flown (and often crashed) by real pilots.

It's the world of these pilots that forms the backdrop of the next novel serialized from the Herridge Lake Public Library: High Risk. The serialization begins tomorrow (all things being equal) but I wanted to post a little something about stunt flying in order to provide some information to readers who might not be as obsessed as yours truly with, say, the differences between the two different versions of The Dawn Patrol. (You did know there were two different movies, didn't you?)

Motion picture stunt flying in some senses predates Hollywood itself: dummy aircraft on prop stands, or real aircraft suspended from wires over moving scenery, were used to simulate flying scenes as early as 1912; the earliest films of flying known date from 1905, when the movie capital of the U.S. was Long Island.

Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries

Overall Rating: 79

The cap’n seems to have mellowed a bit; a mouthful of these used to weld your teeth together better than any cyanoacrylate glue. Now it’s merely sickly-sweet. But hey, these are the ‘90s. [So they were -ed.]

Image from the Institute Collection

Appearance

A part of this evil breakfast. The crunchberries glare out of the bowl at you like so many pink, baleful rats’ eyes. Cap’n Crunch itself is a sickly yellow-gold pillow, bathed in enough sugar that you can see it. This is our idea of what a breakfast cereal should look like.

Texture and Taste, Dry

The “berries” are a brilliant addition to what was already a pretty psychosis-inducing cereal. These round, pink nuggets taste like cotton candy made from raspberry cordial, and each berry seems to contain an amount of sugar equivalent to a year’s harvest from one of the larger fields in Cuba. This product is the perfect size for picking up from bowl or bag, and the modifications to the original cereal that keep it from fusing your teeth together make it ideal for snacking. Or they would, were it not for the fact this stuff is so sweet it’s been proven to induce diabetes in lab rats simply by being stored in the same time zone.

Texture and Taste, With Milk

While not quite up to the standards of our youth, Cap’n Crunch is still a massively toothsome bowl o’ sweet, even with milk added. Not even the more-absorbent crunchberries can tone down this product’s superior snap. The overwhelming sweetness of the crunchberries is at first held in check―a little―by the milk. It quickly begins to reassert itself, however, and by the end of the first bowl your pulse should be racing. You won’t want more than one bowl.

Conclusion

This product is the Mount Everest of breakfast cereals. A fellow-sucrophile on the west coast had to give up writing cereal reviews after spontaneously developing 187 different allergies to all the artificial colours in this product. Actually, this stuff is fairly safe, since it contains its own limiting device. You’re prevented from overdosing by the sheer amount of sugar in this: if you manage to down more than one bowl, you have to have your stomach pumped. [March 1993]

Dixie's Land: Epilogue

[As with the prologue, this was written in response to editorial notes. Part of the purpose served by these two items was to tie Dixie's Land more closely to the short story, "Near Enough to Home," posted previously. Please note, however, that the prologue and epilogue are addenda and will not be part of the published novel. -MS]

EPILOGUE

4 July, 1851

Dearest Annie:
The Trent will be sailing within the hour, so I am taking advantage of this last opportunity to write you. God willing, you will receive this before I reach Liverpool—and you will have me back with you, and the dear little ones, before the harvest is in.

It breaks my heart to have to leave you so soon after our reunion, but I know you understand. This fellow Chesterton in London is reputed an artist with artificial limbs, and his feet are supposed to be particularly good. His agent in New York assures me that, by having Mr. C fit me himself, I will be able to appear to all intents and purposes to be able-bodied.

I know my decision to travel to Britain came as a shock to you, and the brief note I sent from my hospital provided little in the way of explanation or justification. I will try, in these pages, to make you see why I felt it necessary to cross the ocean to have a clock-work foot attached to my flesh-and-blood leg.

My ambitions, Annie, have never been secret from you. I have always believed that I had a gift of strength that could be of use to our country. I thought the nation’s need was great when the Texas crisis bedeviled us. But now that need is much greater—because our country is broken.

As I was broken.

And as I am being healed, so I hope to be able to play a part in the healing of our country.

I am aware of the irony in my writing these words on a British ship, ready to sail for a British port. The country that has contributed so much to the breaking of the United States is also prepared to help repair the damage to my poor battered self.

But then, enemies and outsiders have played their part in seeing me through the worst of my troubles. You already know of the Canadian policeman who saved my life in Kentucky. I did not tell you, though, that it was a Confederate captain who saw me safe across the Ohio at the conclusion of my frightening adventure. Captain Stewart did not have to make that effort, and I respect him for doing so.

Speaking of that young gentleman, I have some gossip for you, my love. Do you remember General Grant, with whom we were briefly acquainted last year? He is a fellow-passenger on the Trent! We spent last night talking and sharing a cup or two, and if you think that my life has been a misery these few months, you will be horrified to hear of what poor Grant has gone though. Like me, he was captured in his first battle (of this war, at least). Like me, he encountered young Captain Stewart, CSA. Twice, actually.

Unlike your husband, however, General Grant was treated shamefully—not by the Confederacy, but by our own government. So he has resigned his commission and taken up an offer from no less than the Holy Roman Emperor. Sam Grant from Galena, Illinois is now a white-clad general in the Austrian Army. He tells me that he is looking forward to tasting the coffee in Vienna, but not to having to learn German.

I won’t pretend that Sam Grant’s shoddy treatment is the reason for my determination to travel to Britain. But it is emblematic of it. That our country could look at this man and see a rough, un-presentable fellow, where the ambassador of the Empire saw a general, dismays me no end. I believe that the men currently prosecuting this war are as blind to the question of our country’s survival as they were to Grant’s admittedly rough-hewn excellences. If we do not find within ourselves something of the courage and spirit that birthed our country nearly four-score years ago, then the United States will leave no greater mark on the long history of the world than did the French republic or the Prussia of Frederick the Great.

I know, Anne, how little you care for Washington. (And you thought you could keep secrets from me!) I am sorry to tell you that you must learn to live with the place. Because it is my intent to return there, sooner rather than later and as something more exalted than a congressman.

Just as Sam Grant feels himself driven away by the army he wanted to serve, so I have undergone my own crisis of faith. God knows I respected Henry Clay, and while he lived I fought for him. But the men he left behind when he died are not fit to speak his name—or of Hamilton. The Federalist party I loved is now a destructive, corrupt mockery of itself.

So I am leaving it. There is talk abroad of a new political party forming, one that will take as its purpose the restoration of this great nation. Our country is engulfed in fire, but from that crucible it can—it must—emerge, forged anew and with a fresh conception of liberty.

I can no longer bear arms, but it is undoubtedly too late anyway for a battlefield solution—the Confederacy is, I think, but one more victory away from recognition of its independence by all the Powers.

But there are other ways to fight. I am traveling to London, my dear Anne, to fit myself for the political struggle that our nation is about to undergo. The election next year is too near for this as-yet unnamed party to have much impact. But we will be stronger with each passing year. And when I can walk again without crutches, I will go anywhere and debate anyone if it will restore our nation to wholeness.

I am going to run for President, Anne. I know we have joked in the past about my ambition, but what I have seen this year has soured my humor more than a little. I am in deadly earnest now, and I pray that you will support me in this as you have in all else.

And do not despair, Anne. We will have time to rebuild our own lives before I set out to rebuild the nation. My best chance, I have concluded, will come in the presidential election of eighteen-sixty.

I promise that both before and after then I will remain

Your loving husband,

Abraham

Operatorious: Word of the Day

Operatorious, a. Obs. rare [f. operatory, producing, or capable of producing, an effect + OUS]

1555 BRADFORD Serm. Lord's Supp. Wks. (Parker Soc.) I. 25 No less ... their words spoken of the bread are operatorious and mighty to transubstantiate the bread ... which is absurd.

Near Enough to Home pt. 3

[Concluding the short story "Near Enough to Home"]

You can say this much for being tied up, Sanderson thought. At least I didn't have to haul that thing down to the river. The boat was a big, ugly, flat-bottomed thing that must have weighed nearly a thousand pounds. It didn't look like something that should be used on a river in flood.

Across the Ohio and downstream a little were the ramshackle docks and warehouses of Cairo, the Illinois town from which the Federals had launched their futile attempt at keeping western Kentucky in the Union. Further west, and rendered invisible by the low cloud and haze that persisted though the rain had stopped, was Thompson, on the Canadian side of the Mississippi just south of its confluence with the Ohio. Sanderson thought again about is chances for getting back there. They hadn't improved, he decided. In fact, they were probably worse, since his captors could easily decide to turn him over to the Federal authorities across the Ohio. With no one to vouch for his mission, he'd be all too easily condemned as a spy. And me not a single step closer to finding Scott.

"I suppose this is where we say good-bye," the sergeant said to him. For one brief moment Sanderson hoped he was going to be released. But as soon as he thought it, he knew the hope was misplaced. The deserters had decided they didn't need him any more, that's all.

Near Enough to Home pt. 2

[continuing the short story "Near Enough to Home"]

"What do you think of our chances, constable?" The question was pitched quietly enough that Sanderson nearly didn't hear it over the rustling of the foliage.

"Not good, I'm afraid," he said. He twisted himself around in the hope that by talking back at the colonel he could avoid being overheard by the deserters. They had turned him into a draft animal, crudely harnessing the stretcher to his shoulders so that he could drag the colonel while their captors took turns riding the mule. "Your chances are better than mine, though. If they're hoping to use me to get them past any Confederate patrols, my usefulness ends as soon as they get to the river. You probably gain in value the closer they get to Ohio or Indiana or wherever it is they decide to go."

"A cruel assessment, but probably accurate." The colonel laughed bitterly. "That makes me wonder something, though. Not to pry, but Canada and Britain are allied with the Confederate states now.* So why would you have been in a prisoner camp without an escort? I'm assuming that you were captured because you were alone."