Episode #288: We Be Reviewing A Pop Culture Icon

Found this at my local Savers store (thrift store that's a slight cut above the Salvation Army) for about $6. This was the best of a not so good shopping expedition that day.

Even if you've never read the books, not seen the animated series (2006-22) nor the movie, chances are that you've heard of Curious George and his "owner" the Man With The Yellow Hat in some way, shape or form.

Curious George is a pop culture icon, much like Bob Ross is, in that all you have to hear is a particular phrase and presto! you instantly know who they're talking about.

On a personal level, I have very mixed feelings about Curious George. On one hand, I do believe I made a genuine attempt at reading the school age books  but quickly realized that while the illustrations were good, the story simply didn't keep my interest (I think at that point I was already reading way above my age level). But on the opposite side of the equation, the name was used as a bullying epithet that was directed at me during my late elementary/middle school years.

The end result of this potpourri of feelings is that as an adult, I've been very....meh...about Curious George. I mean, I don't go out of my way to be nasty about it, I haven't the need to defend it like Babar (another pop cultural icon), because most of the world doesn't have a problem with him on a cultural/revisionist basis. I certainly don't regress back to my childhood when other things are created from the IP like other types of IPs (e.g. Harold and the Purple Crayon cartoon series springs to mind).

But I do find it to be quite the blast from the past whenever I come across something that involves the IP, like the aforementioned commercial lithograph that was originally part of series carried by Target. Because even to this day some 50+ years later, it still strikes a (mostly) positive chord whenever I see or hear something about Curious George.

In conclusion, while I remain mostly ambivalent about Curious George, I have no qualms in recommending this particular blast from the past to others who might be curious, in a gentle George kind of way, about children's literature from their parent's childhood. After all, everyone needs to revisit something that was considered to be magical when they were a kid, right?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #287: We Be Reviewing Library Books

I've always been an avid reader as far back as I can remember. Not really having many friends as a child/tween/teen/young adult/adult, I would turn to the one thing that gave me comfort: reading. Didn't matter what the material was (start with newspapers and you'll pretty much have an idea on what I liked to read), I devoured it voraciously. Eventually, and probably due to the amount of newspapers that I read, I narrowed down to two polar opposites when it came to favorite reading material: true crime and memoirs/biographies.

I've always enjoyed reading the life story of well known people from all walks of life. I've more than read my fair share of good/bad/fugly bios/memoirs over the preceding decades, but maybe for the past 10+ years I've been more discerning. After reading two good bios that didn't have the participation of the subjects involved (Paul Simon & Robert De Niro), I decided that reading bios that didn't have the participation of the subject involved weren't for me (example, bios of Ringo Starr and John Prine).

I've read good bios/memoirs from an eclectic group of people such as Erik Roberts, R.E.M., John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Tom Petty, Freddie Mercury, Sissy Spacek, Dean Butler (Little House on the Prairie) and Steve Boone (Lovin' Spponful). I've also read a few that left me either confused (Michael Neismith) or highly annoyed (Neil Patrick Harris did his as an "choose-your-adventure" book).

This past week at my library, I found this memoir by one of the founding members of The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell. 

He does an incredibly fantastic deep dive into his friendship with Tom Petty as well as his music career, and leaves no stone unturned nor untossed, either at others or at himself.

One of the events that I was really interested in finding out, was the entire story surrounding the band threatening (not actually) to file bankruptcy in order to get out of a truly bad contract. For those of you who may not listen to regular commercial radio anymore, most jocks would always lead in with the tired tidbit of the band filing for bankruptcy. He gives the entire complex backstory and tells it in such a way that makes you take what little rose colored glasses about the music industry you may have and destroy it to smithereens. Highly, highly recommend this memoir.

~~~~~

True crime was the other go-to genre of mine, now going on 50+ years. After I had gotten tired/over-exposed to books that covered the same 40 people, I started branching out to other sub-genres of true crime to satiate my thirst for true-crime knowledge. Eventually, even those sub-genres weren't doing it for me anymore, so I moved on to getting my fix to other sources that covered crimes that MSM didn't cover. I now listen to podcasts such as The Casual Criminalist (covers true crime from around the world), Park Predators (covers true crime in the US National Park System), Dark Down East (covers true crime in New England) and Small Town Dicks (covers true crime in the smaller areas of the US, as well as Canada and Scotland).

At the age of 60, the only way I now dip my toes into revisiting a historical true crime (e.g. serial killers) event, is if the event is approached from a different angle that hasn't been covered before. I came across two such books in the month of July, one is about serial killer Dean Corll, which was written by a forensic researcher who is trying to identify his remaining unknown victims.

The other is pictured on the left. There have been a lot of books written about the man in question, but this one was written by the daughter of the woman who was childhood friends/co-worker/classmate with his very last victim, and was the one that helped jump-start the investigation that led to his arrest/conviction/execution.

This was quite the poignant read, as it does an extensive deep dive on not only how her mother was affected, but how the entire community was affected by this man. She does a great job of interweaving here mom's teenage years with her young adult/adult years as she revisits her mother's hometown with her.

I highly recommend this book, as there aren't too many true crime books that are written from the p.o.v of the victim's family/friends in such a personal way. Added bonus is that a Netflix documentary was done from the p.o.v of her mother and the last victim's family as well.

I hope to make this a semi-regular feature in the coming weeks, as the bulk of my book reading involves the extensive collection of my local public library, with the remaining sliver involving actual purchases of books from people that I've either met online or have talked to in person (like at a local fair). 

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #286: July Was....Very Interesting

My best bud, Mr Squirrel (I call him "Mr" because he has, somewhat begrudgingly, earned my respect over the past several years) once again chillin' out underneath the bird feeder. He was kind enough to let me take a few photos while I was about to go on my daily walk.

July was a very interesting month for me as it pertained to writing. It was also interesting because I saw, albeit briefly, a well known social media influencer/businessman get absolutely wrecked/cancelled in real time for using a word that is now considered to be "racially insensitive".

In regards to my writing, as I mentioned a few posts ago, trying to release a book in July is an exercise in aggravation (aka the 5 P's.). But the good news is that all of the pieces are about 98% in place, as the only thing that I'm waiting on now is the print cover. Which means that the July release that I really wanted will realistically become an August release.

Now because of the abnormal length of time it took to get everything ready (again, the 5 P's come into play here) I need to stay occupied. Which I attempted to do by writing another novella. As I mentioned previously, I had written a short story that was a perfect ending to a novella/novel, so I decided to write a story that would finish at that short story, albeit in a slightly different form.

We performed a full body dive into the deep end of the pool with this story. Things started off exceptionally well, but soon, it became abundantly clear that my enthusiasm for this story was not going to carry the day like it did with the others. In fact, after that first chapter, my enthusiasm began vanishing until it got to the point where it took me nearly a week to write an eight page chapter.

Long story short, we gathered up all the components (binder with completed chapters and chapters waiting to be transcribed), made a tidy little pile on my writing tray and spent the rest of the evening and the next day giving serious contemplation to moving the entire mess to my "slushle" box.

Later in the evening of the next day, we came to a dual concrete conclusion: I need to restart the beginning and channel my inner sociopath in order to properly do this story justice, and that I needed to switch from being a "pantser" (aka no real conceptual plan for the story) to writing a good basic outline so that I have an above average idea of how I really want the story to unfold.

And finally, I'm on the search for another FB writing group that's a cut above the previous one that I was in. I have a couple via the suggestions of FB algorithms, so I'm going through each group's guidelines to see which one is the better fit for me. To be completely honest with everyone, I'm much too old to deal with various issues/nuances that my previous group seemed to have. Give me concrete guidelines on what I can and cannot do, don't carve out exceptions to the "cannot" guidelines, don't have a plethora of admins (too many admins means poor communication) and you'll have a very happy member who will not rock the boat inside the group.

Remember, the weekend is always the cure to whatever ails you during the week, so make that your ultimate goal.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #285: You Lie Like A Puddy Tat!

Taken in early July during my one, and it seems to be my only hike, up to the proverbial top of Cedar Mountain. I say "only" because I heard a rumor that a homeless person made themselves home in the back end of the closed Cedarcrest hospital near the fenced off area of the mountain.

There are very few words/phrases that can immediately change the direction of a given conversation/situation, whether in fiction or in real life, the moment they are uttered.

For example, "no", is a complete sentence that always changes the course of a given conversation/situation. Same goes for the "F"-bomb (there's a popular meme that periodically makes an appearance that describe all the wonderful ways grammatically it can be used (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc).

But my favorite phrase that I love to use for a given scene in a story is but two words in length, which can be divided into two sentences that can instantly change the direction/tone of a scene in a myriad of ways is, "you lied". Or as I often like to use it, "You. Lied."

I absolutely adore that nifty two word sentence because of the way it can be weaponized to move a story along in ways that can be totally unexpected. But, I never had to use it in real life, because unlike using it in fiction, there can be actual consequences when you use it in real life.

Until now.

As most of you know, I can be quite provocative with my blog posts, sometimes to the point where in 2021 I caused a rule change in my now former FB writing group after posting it (it was political in nature). So from 2021 until now, I had refrained from writing anything political, on any level (local/state/federal) on my blog. But I was inspired to write last week's post about the US Constitution, so because I used my former writer's group to post weekly blog links, I checked two days prior to writing with the admins for what kind of parameters would be required to post it.

I spend the day conversing with one of the admins (he lived in the UK, so five hour time difference) and hammered out what I thought was a solid compromise: direct people to my profile for the post in question. For an added bonus, I posted a link to an 8 year old blog post from one of my previous blogs.

So I post the link and directed people to my profile and all is good. Right?

Wrong. I come back three hours later to find my blog post gone. I eventually find it a queue for admin approval, which really annoyed me, because I had no DM telling me that my post was pulled. So naturally I came to the logical conclusion that I was lied to. Or in modern parlance, gaslighted. And as an added bonus, when I decided to make my annoyance known prior to leaving (after deleting the post in question), I found that my post was put into the queue for admin approval as well.

So not only was my post pulled AFTER getting approval for it, I was suspended (at least it seemed that way to me) and no one was going to clue me in as to why I was suspended or why my blog post was pulled for approval after receiving approval nor why my last post complaining about their censorship needed approval. In fact, as of the date of this post, no one has reached out to me from that writer's group to explain their actions.

As most of you know, I have major issues in being censored/lied to for/about my writing(s) over the years, both in the digital world and the real world, so I have a tendency to get quite upset when people choose to shoot first and ask questions later.

In the short term, I am looking for another writer's group in which to participate, one that is consistent on having sensible rules, with the occasional exception, as well as being honest about what they say. In the long term, while I haven't burnt any bridges with the half dozen friends that I have acquired through that group, I am being careful on how I go about broaching this particular issue with them.

Presently, that scene from the original Star Trek show, where Kirk says to Norman that whatever Harry Mudd says is a lie. Harry Mudd proceeds to say to Norman, "I lie". Norman ultimately cannot reconcile what Kirk said and what Harry Mudd had said and blows a chip, is how last week has gone in regards to my blogging.

Here's to telling the truth and learning how to say "no" without being wishy-washy about it.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved