Category: Barflies

The Bastard Son of Lee Marvin

Happy heavenly birthday to the great Lee Marvin!

The city of Pasadena, CA used to host an insane response to the staid and conservative Rose Parade with a free-for-all called the D0o Dah Parade which was populated by crazy groups each trying to outdo each other in outlandishness. One of the most outlandish was called The Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, which was a group of precision marchers supposedly made up of the illegitimate offspring of Oscar winning actor Lee Marvin following a hearse carrying the corpse of their beloved father.

There is still a parade by that name in Pasadena but ever since corporate America got its hooks it in, it devolved into a shadow of its glorious past. Hack once attended the event in its heyday and awoke later that afternoon in a dumpster clutching the manuscript to this novel in his trembling hand.

Erectile Dysfunction of The Thin Man

Happy heavenly birthday to William Powell.

This book is a sequel to The Thin Man’s Wife but since Nick Charles was murdered at the end of that novel, Hack began this one with the classic writers cop-out that the previous story was all a dream. This is one of Hack’s most carefully researched novels since he used his own extensive personal experience with alcohol-related impotence in writing it. The result is a book that is honestly pretty uncomfortable to read, although the many anal sex scenes between Detective Jonny and Nora Charles are diverting.

Yammering Yenta

An excerpt:

Dating the Yenta was like dating a loaded .45 — aimed at your own head. You never knew when it would go off. You just knew it would be messy when it did. And the odds were better than 50-50 they’d be scrapping your brain and guts off something, even while her mouth was still running.

“It will be fun,” she said. These were the words she always said right before I would be sucker punched in the gut by someone whose life and conduct she couldn’t help critiquing. In this case, “It will be fun” was said while gazing at the door of a dive bar whose clientele had spent most of their food stamp money this week on MAGA apparel.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

But then I saw that grand canyon of a mouth start to open, and I knew I had no choice.

“Sure,” I continued. “Let’s check it out.”

My spleen and my teeth would be the least of my losses that day. So sit back, and hear the story of how I ended up on Death Row, while the Yammering Yenta became the widow of one Rudy Guiliani, and then the lover of one E. Jean Carroll. But I’m getting ahead of myself.