Stuck in the Middle with You
Posted on June 29, 2005 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
Ron Hogan here, your Wednesday guest host. Scalzi and I used to fight pirates on the open seas of Usenet back in the mid-’90s; ahhh, those were the days, when people not only still spoke about “Generation X,” but were actually willing to identify themselves as part of it… I stumbled onto Whatever a few months ago, when I recognized his name on the book jacket of Old Man’s War, and it was a joyous reunion for us two great tools of the liberal media empire. Today, I make my contributions to the decline of western civilization from Beatrice.com, where I blog about books and authors in the news and my own adventures at New York City literary events. I’m also updating my Gen X credentials by publishing my first book this fall, a pictorial tribute to ’70s films called The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane. As you can imagine, there’s a really sweet Karen Black pic on the cover, with about 300 more photographs inside. Not all of Karen Black.
Mmmm…. Karen Black….
Just as long as you don’t omit photos from Trilogy of Terror. Now that’s pure Black goodness!
I would like to take a moment here to point out that Ron is the only one of the guest bloggers to have ever spent a night on my sofa.
OK, two things:
1) I’ll cop to not knowing who Karen Black is, but linking to an Amazon page where the cover art is “Image Not Available” – that’s just not fair…
2) Usenet, eh? I think Google Groups is to writers what “The Lost Episodes” was to The Honeymooners. I’m off to read some “Classic Scalzi”, including “Hey, the Milky Way is off course!!!” (3/21/94), “Reality: Does It Bite?” (5/17/94), and “I Love Moira Kelly” (5/29/94). Fun for the whole family!
So Sue, are you saying you allowed the rest of them in your bed? What’s wrong with Ron that you discriminate so indiscriminately?
Inquiring trolls want to know…
I think Sue and the Sweetie were just trying to cripple me to impede my escape; there’s a huge broken spring in the middle of their sofa bed mattress, right where my tendons were.
I wish the cover were up on either Amazon or the Time Warner Book Group site, but no such luck. Because it’s pretty sweet. I’ve got a JPG floating around someplace; maybe I’ll get it into one of my Wednesday items. (Yeah, let Scalzi host my honking big image files!)
And sorry, but no Trilogy of Terror–the decision to omit TV-movies was tough, because it also meant I couldn’t include the heartwrenching hospital scene from Brian’s Song, but those were the rules.
A lady never invites someone to her bed and then tells about it, Wil.
We never did manage to capture anybody with that sofabed. Thankfully, we’ve been able to replace it with much more comfortable sofas since then and now, having sold our shoebox-sized home in California and moving to the Land of Cheap and Plentiful Land and Homes, we even have a guest bedroom. With a real bed in it. Thank God for the insane California real estate market!
(just adding comment to keep this comment thread open — for whatever reason threads less than a week old turn into moderated threads at the turn of the month)