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Kirk Alex
Instead of boring you with a bunch of dull background info, how about if I mention a few films/singers/musicians and books/authors I have enjoyed over the years.Am an Elvis Presley fan from way bac...view moreInstead of boring you with a bunch of dull background info, how about if I mention a few films/singers/musicians and books/authors I have enjoyed over the years.Am an Elvis Presley fan from way back. Always liked James Brown, Motown, Carmen McRae, Eva Cassidy, Meat Loaf, Booker T. & the MGs, CCR. Doors are also a favorite.Some novels that rate high on my list: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Hunger by Knut Hamsun; Street Players by Donald Goines (a street noir masterpiece, a work of art, & other novels by the late awesome Goines); If He Hollers Let Him Go by the incredible Chester Himes. (Note: Himes at his best was as good as Hemingway at his best. But of course, due to racism in the great US of A, he was given short-shrift. Had to move to France to be treated with respect. Kind of sad.Am white by the way, but injustice is injustice & I feel a need to point it out. There were so many geniuses of color who were mistreated and taken advantage of. Breaks your effing heart. I have done what I have been able to support talent (no matter what the artists skin color was/is) over the years by purchasing records & books by talented folks, be they white/black/Hispanic/Asian, whatever. Like I said: Talent is talent, is the way I have always felt. The arts (in all their forms) keep us as humans civilized, hopefully). Anyway, I need to get off the soap box.Most of the novels by Mark SaFranko (like Lounge Lizard and Hating Olivia; his God Bless America is one of the best memoirs I have ever read, up there with Ham on Rye by Buk);The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; A Farewell to Arms also by Ernie; Mooch by Dan Fante (& other novels of his); Post Office by Charles Bukowski; The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; the great plays of Eugene O., like Iceman Cometh, Long Days––this system has a problem with the apostrophe, so will leave it out––Journey Into Night, Touch of the Poet; Journey to the End of the Night by Ferdinand Celine (not to be confused by the Eugene O. play); Postman Only Rings Twice by James M. Cain; the factory crime novels of Derek Raymond (superior to the overrated Raymond Chandler & his tiresome similes & metaphors any day of the week; Jack Ketchum; Edgar Allan Poe; The Reader by Bernhard Schlink; Nobody/s Angel by Jack Clark; The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, et al.Filmmakers: Akira Kurosawa (Ihiru; Yojimbo); John Ford (almost anything by him); horror flicks: Maniac by William Lustig and Joe Spinnell; original Night of the Living Dead; original Texas Chainsaw Massacre; original When a Stranger Calls; The 400 Blows by Francois T.; the thrillers of Claude Chabrol; A Man Escaped by Bresson; the Japanese Zatoichi films;Tokyo Story by Ozu . . . and many other books, films and jazz musicians like the amazing tenor sax player Gene Ammons; Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Jack Sheldon, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond; singers like the incomparable Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Horn, Dion Warwick; Al Green, Elmore James, Lightnin Hopkins . . . to give you some idea.However, these days though, tv does not exist at all for me, nor do I care for most movies, in that I would much rather pick up a well-written book. I get more of a kick from reading than I do watching some actor pretend to be something he is not.Having said that, I confess that as a young man I did my share of wasting time watching the idiot box and spent my share of money going to the flicks. But those days are long gone, in that there is no interest in movies (be they cranked out by the Hollywood machine, or elsewhere).Final conclusion when it comes to celluloid? Movies are nothing more than a big waste of time (no matter who makes them). Reading feeds the brain, while movies puts the brain to sleep. There it is.view less
Books by Kirk Alex
Paycheck to Paycheck: Chance "Cash" Register Working Stiff series, #1 Hush-Hush Holiday: Edgar "Doc" Holiday, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Tango in the Old Pueblo & Pushin' da Pushbroom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCalder's Last Gasp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou're Gonna Have Trouble Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThrowback & Backlash: Love, Lust & Murder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZiggy Popper at Large: 14 Tales of General Degeneracy , of Mayhem & Debauchery –– for the Morally Conflicted & Borderline Criminal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollow-Point Holiday: Edgar "Doc" Holiday, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lustmord: Anatomy of a Serial Butcher: Lustmord: Anatomy of a Serial Butcher, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHubba-Hubba Holiday: Edgar "Doc" Holiday, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings