Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Running Around

Today was one of those days that involved lots of driving from place to place and getting in and out of the van in heat, humidity, and a Level Red pollution alert. That said, it was tiring but not too bad. We had to go to a couple of libraries to return books (and get more, including Robert B. Parker's new Western, APPALOOSA). We also stopped at Half Price Books and I found a book called THE UNEXPECTED, an early Sixties Pyramid Books anthology of short stories originally published in WEIRD TALES. This was edited by the semi-legendary Leo Margulies, who edited several other paperback anthologies of WEIRD TALES stories that I've read and enjoyed. One of the previous owners of this particular book wrote "Very Funny" on the Table of Contents page under the title of the Robert Bloch story. I'll probably agree, since I usually like Bloch's stories. We also went to Wal-Mart, where I picked up a couple of boxed sets of old Western movies from the bargain DVD bin. One set has eight Gene Autry movies in it, the other has an assortment of Three Mesquiteers, Cisco Kid, Ken Maynard, etc. I'm not a big Gene Autry fan -- I always liked Roy Rogers a lot better -- but most of Gene's movies are watchable if you can forgive the fact that he couldn't ride very well and had a hard time with the action scenes.

1 comment:

kelsci said...

There was one Gene Autry film in which he played a dual role of which he had to be the stuntman for the actor who looked like him. I never knew he could not ride well; he always seemed comfortable on champion and it appeared that it was he who was doing alot of riding in his films. I mean how much could Yakima Canutt subsitute for every actor in those days? I have noticed some more of the Mesquiteer films available on DVD as of late.