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Jack the Ripper's Sandcastle

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Jack the Ripper's Sandcastle

Tag Archives: Monday Blogs

Of Memories great and small…

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by mordmcghee in Author, Family, memories, Uncategorized

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'Nam, 1980s, 80s, Abbott and Costello, Alien, arcade, Authors, big data, bigots, bikes, Card Catalog, celebrities, Coffee, Cold War, common cold, conventions, Custom Car Shows, David Bowie, Dewey Decimal, Donkey Kong, Fonzi, Freddy Mercury, gps, Heavy Metal, Henry Blake, history, Jaws, Jimmy Page, Kurt Cobain, Led Zeppelin, libraries, Madonna, MC Hammer, Monday Blogs, organic, Ozzy Osbournse, Pacman, Peace, primetime, Prince, purple heart, Queen, Rock Hudson, Saturday mornings, smoking, space shuttle, space shuttle disaster, Star Wars, steel, streamofconscience, teachers, The Car, The Shining, Twin Towers, VCR, violence, world hunger, World Trade Center

Once, I sat with my Great Aunt Hilda and she told me of days gone by. She was in her nineties, no small feat for a woman who had spent most of her years in the grip of the Twentieth Century. Allow me to sit with you for a moment, sip coffee made in thirty seconds on a Keurig so I can share tell a few things I remember…

I remember drip percolators brewing a fresh pot in twenty minutes or so, as the family talked (occasionally yelled) about steel jobs going to Japan and trolleys being far better than bus transit.

I remember Saturday morning cartoons and Abbott and Costello on good days, walking half an hour to cut my Grandfather’s grass on the very best.

I remember before we got a VCR and live prime time.

madonna80.jpeg

I remember the Car, the shark, and the Shining being scarier than the zealot.

I remember when my pay check wasn’t correct and there were real humans who had the sole purpose of making sure people were paid for hours worked.

I remember when the common cold was simply that.

I remember when we were the good guys.

I remember peace-time.

I remember when U2 sang about terrorism.

I remember taking a bus and going to record, comic, hobby, and book stores with my friends with two bucks in my pocket.

I remember libraries for more than toddler’s story time… and learning the Dewey Decimal System.

I remember riding my bike to an arcade and playing Pacman and Donkey Kong after exercising.

I remember the World Trade Center and not gasping every time I see it in a movie.

I remember hard love and disappointing my parents.

I remember when everything was organic.

I remember the milkman and knowing my mail carrier’s name.

I remember Kurt’s voice blowing my mind, Prince’s guitar shredding bubblegum into something legitimate, Jimmy’s haunted castle where the Devil wrote sexy lyrics backwards, Ozzy biting bat heads, and laughing at my little brother’s MC Hammer phase.

I remember Freddy and Rock, the whispers of unashamed bigots and a new thing called AIDS.

I remember the space shuttle Challenger.

I remember the time before big data and global positioning.

I remember friends showing off their older sibling’s Purple Heart from ‘Nam during show and tell.

I remember seeing Bambi, Star Wars, and Alien at the drive-in theatre.

I remember before trickledown economics.

I remember cigars, cigarettes, pipe tobacco, and alcoholic beverages in all settings… ashtrays in the classroom and hospital.

I remember department stores before shopping malls.

I remember violence as a bad thing except in self-defense.

I remember things I’m afraid to talk about openly, for the first time in my life.

I remember when we cared about world hunger and the homeless.

I remember the Cold War and how close we were to pushing big buttons (oddly enough for the same colors as Bloods and Crips).

I remember when the Custom Car Show was the only convention to get celebrity autographs for five bucks.

I remember crying when Henry Blake died.

I remember Fonzi jumping the shark.

I remember enough things to write this blog every day but I also remember it’s a bit boring until you too begin to reminisce of memories great and small.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK… When “way in the future” was 1997

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by mordmcghee in HORROR, Science Fiction

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9-11, Action, Anti-Heroes, Classic SciFi Movies, Hollywood, John Carpenter, Kurt Russel, Monday Blogs, Never Forget, New York, scary movies, science fiction, September 11, Snake Pliskin, Television

I sat down Saturday night and put the Sci-fi classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK on for my teenaged son to experience for the first time. Here’s a picture in case you forgot good ol’ Snake Pliskin.thMIDM5MKRJohn Carpenter is one of my heroes. I like to think that his brand of horror-laced science fiction is one of the reasons I like to read and watch and write the very type. Let me give a brief introduction to the movie if you haven’t seen it in a while:

A terrorist (homegrown, working for a group that opposes government oppression) hijacks Airforce One and turns it off its flight path while spewing hate over the airwaves from the cockpit. Then the terrorist flies the plane straight at Manhattan… into the building next to the World Trade Center. The President of the United States was on board and managed to escape. The race begins.

The bad guys find him first. Oh yeah, I guess now that we’ve gotten past the shocking, eerie similarity to September 11, 2001… I should tell you that in the movie Manhattan was turned into a wall-encased, free roaming prison in 1988. It flashes forward way into the future; 1997. The government goes to extreme measure to rescue the President and a mysterious briefcase handcuffed to him. The extreme measure is a wild man named Snake Pliskin. The movie holds up despite the setting and technology looking a bit dated to my teenaged son in 2015. Now SNAKE PLISKIN… he’s an anti-hero that still rocks. Snake lands on top of the World Trade Center and all s%&t hits the fan.

I’ll end my blog for this Monday with a promotional movie poster from the 1981 release of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK so that you can visit an old friend, just like I did. I remember it like yesterday, not the movie… 9-11.thM9X6TUV5

IT’S HARD TO HOLD A CANDLE IN THE COLD NOVEMBER RAIN…

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by mordmcghee in Family

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love, Monday Blogs, Snow

heartRed Tuesday, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. This is the last of all three, today being #MondayBlog  as well. So what does one blog about on Cyber Monday? I could choose the “Hands up, don’t shoot” show of support by St. Louis NFL players. I could mention disappointment that the players chose to not perform a similar spectacle to show support for domestic violence victims. I could talk about umpteen subjects on the news, each heavy and requiring much thought.

You may ask: SO WHAT THEN, MORD? I MEAN HONESTLY… IT’s ALL VERY IMPORTANT AND PERTINENT.  

WELL, I’m thumbing my nose at the heavy and pertinent! 

If you haven’t gone away on a retreat, spiritual… mental… health, etc. This time of year is highly recommended. It does the mind, body, and soul something wonderful to just chill. I was lucky enough to be trapped in a small retired monastery on a lake with a loved one. We had no choice but to sit, catch up, play board games like CLUE, 80S TRIVIAL PURSUIT, YAHTZEE and FARKLE… and play in the snow. We laughed and our game of chess ended up with the pieces forming a heart. If only all games, and the conflicts such as Chess, ended in LOVE…

The snow storm is over and now we’re left with the cold November rain.

That is all.

Now hug and kiss…

You’re in for a shock… you’re in for surpise

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by mordmcghee in Uncategorized

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Advanced Reader Copies, Award winning, bloopers, Bonus Content, books, horror, hotly anticipated, Jack the Ripper, Monday Blogs

Murder Red Ink is done.

Everything you know about Jack the Ripper is about to be sliced from ear to ear.

That being said… let me poke a little fun at myself. I spent Saturday with my son and wife making a bloopers reel of video takes trying to make a cool and creepy promo to put on a fan page as a freebie for Halloween. Well, we laughed. A LOT.

We had a camera slip and flip, songs play that didn’t match, chipmunk speed instead of fade out, guitar string snappage, impossible lighting combination, invisible lights, networking issues… YOU NAME IT.

End result, I’ll leave it where it is. But I am still going ahead with the primary plan to put something unique on the facebook.com/mord.McGhee fansite for a few days on Halloween. It’s cool and will give something different to consider while waiting for the copies to hit the stores.

Advanced Reader Copies have been ordered by TSPress.

Hopefully a date for shelf is next.

Anyway, I’ve been having a good time with Lotro’s Fall Festival.

See you in the shadows of Murder Red Ink!

~Mordy

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