Month: August 2025

A Towel for Your Thoughts

Joan Blondell was a wonderful actress who inevitably walked away with films like The Cincinnati Kid, Opening Night and The Blue Veil (for which she received an Oscar nomination). But her most memorable work came as the queen of the Pre-Code Era, that period between 1929 and 1935 when the Production Code was adopted by the big studios that effectively neutered any realistic adult content from their films. But in those glorious six years between the introduction of the talkies and the puritanical dictatorship of first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Will Hays, Joan played countless molls to screen gangsters played by Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, guzzling bathtub gin and showing more skin than you ever would have expected to see in the Roaring 30s.

Happy heavenly birthday to the great Joan Blondell!

The Rainbow Report

Hack’s cover artist Jonny M. has a fantasy where his pug Boris goes to the edge of the Rainbow Bridge every night to report on Jonny’s mood to his late pug Winston. When Hack heard about it, he wrote this novel. Jonny threatened a plagiarism lawsuit at first but after he read it, he decided that it was just too damned sweet to keep anyone from reading it.

Happy Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day!

Avenging Angels

Today is something called Be An Angel Day, which inspired Hack to think about his angelic friends Glenn and Julie, and even his cover artist Jonny M.’s late pug Winston (Hack’s dementia has increased to the point where he can’t remember that he and Winston despised each other). It’s kind of a touching book.