Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels – Page 9

How Rubble from Bristol, England Became Landfill in New York City

November 8, 2014/0 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels /by Philip Turner

Who knew? Not me, but British urbanite Tom Scott did. Rubble from Bristol, England comprises the landfill for Waterside Plaza on the east side of Manhattan. Post-WWII the British city had many bombed-out buildings, material that was brought back to the US from the UK in ships that used it as ballast. I was at the plaza a couple years ago for a conference, though I had no idea then that the example of modern architecture has this unlikely origin. Check out the video by Tom Scott. H/t my English friend Garry Benfold who brought this cool city story to my attention.

Growing up w/Ghoulardi, Cleveland’s Great Horror Movie Host

The favorite scary character of my youth was the TV prankster Ghoulardi (real name Ernie Anderson, the father of film director Paul Thomas Anderson). The interesting doc here—based on the 1997 book, Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland’s Wildest TV Ride, brought out by Gray & Company, an enterprising Cleveland publisher doing books of local interest—shows how Hollywood studios’ rediscovery and repackaging of their old horror classics for local TV stations in the late 1950s and early ’60s prompted many local TV stations to program horror movie shows, often known by names such as “Shock Theater.” In Cleveland, where I grew up, we were fortunate to have one of the most colorful and interesting of these early horror film hosts. Ghoulardi. Watching him during my childhood, though it be would be many years until I ever heard the term “meta,” I instinctively loved how he inserted himself in to whatever monster or horror film he was showing, somehow putting his own image on to the TV screen, jousting with, say, “Cyclops,” trying to subdue the creature with his a cane and rancorous insults. His outrageous schtick—in a a gray sweatshirt and scraggly goatee, with dangling cigarette-holder—made him an early iconoclast of ’60s pop culture. Ghoulardi was a kind of low-rent Professor Irwin Corey, if you remember “The World’s Foremost Authority,” some before years Corey, turning 100 this year, took his act to the Tonight Show.

As with the attempted bans of comic books, chronicled in David Hadju’s Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America, Ghoulardi was condemned by goo-goo parental groups who tried getting him off the air. Despite this, his usual Friday night slot, coming after local news, around 11:30pm, grew to include a Saturday afternoon show. The decency crowd might have succeeded in sidelining him, during this pre-cable era, with only three TV stations in Cleveland, but he was so popular with kids, and his audience was so large, there was no way the station would’ve dropped his show in its prime. When Ghoulardi did finally go off the air, it was because Anderson moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in TV with his longtime pal, and earlier sidekick, Tim Conway, later of “McHale’s Navy.”

Flashing Back to a Moment When I Encountered a Near Namesake of Mine

October 23, 2014/4 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels, Urban Life & New York City /by Philip Turner

Walking with my good friend Karl Petrovich in the NYC nabe of Soho almost thirty years ago, I spied this handsome panel truck that had a version of my name painted on it, only I spell my first name with just one ‘l’ and my middle initial is ‘S,’ not ‘C.’ It was an odd doppelganger moment—evidence of someone like me, but not me. Karl had a camera, and we snapped a pic of me in front of the truck, emblazoned with this PCT’s architectural practice, with outposts in NYC and strangely, in far away Tulsa. It was a memorable, weird, modern moment, pre-Internet. As a grace note, here also is a picture I took of my pal Karl, sadly now deceased. We were classmates at Franconia College in the 1970s.

More Weasel Words on the Affordable Care Act

October 21, 2014/0 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels /by Philip Turner

Post by Philip Turner.

“Baby, I Can Drive a Car!”

October 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels /by Philip Turner

As a Manhattanite I don’t get behind the wheel much these days, but I sure enjoyed it when I was younger, growing up in Cleveland. I remember the sneakers I had on—I pedaled the little car with them, Fred Flintstone-style. “Yabba-dabba-do!”

What’s Keeping Me Busy These Days

October 9, 2014/0 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels, Philip Turner Book Productions /by Philip Turner

For any readers who’ve been wondering about the relative (in)frequency of my recent posts here and on Honourary Canadian, I want to explain that since Labor Day my business, Philip Turner Book Productions, has gone full bore and I am busy with such paying assignments as reading and reporting on a suspense novel for an author who hired me to assess his manuscript; editing the professional memoir of a retired corporate executive; editing website copy for a financial and retirement planner; meeting with the operations director of a website to discuss me providing book-related content for them; as an agent, I’m working on the contract for a Spanish novelist whose book I recently licensed to a US publisher; and pitching a terrific pirate-themed trilogy that’s already a self-publishing success, to major US publishers. I love writing and curating the two blogs, but they sometimes take a back seat to other work, especially work that is directly remunerative.

And in honor of Autumn, and the Winter that is surely coming, I’ve grown back my goatee, a facial accoutrement I’ve maintained periodically over the years.

Thanks, as always, for checking back here to see what is new, or for that matter, what’s old—in the three years I’ve been writing these blogs, I’ve published almost 900 posts, so there’s bound to be material you haven’t noticed before, on books, publishing, media, music, culture, and current affairs. Also, remember to look for me on Twitter where my handle is @philipsturner, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and the other social networks shown at the top right corner of this site.

Hoping You Have an ‘Easy’ Fast

October 3, 2014/0 Comments/in Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels /by Philip Turner

Post by Philip Turner.

One More Time—A Happy Hobbit Birthday!

September 22, 2014/4 Comments/in Books & Writing, Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels /by Philip Turner

I published the piece below two years ago on this date, my birthday. I’m happy to share it here again today, as I turn 60!

As this day, September 22, 2012, stretches toward midnight, it happens to have been my 58th birthday. Growing up, of course I always enjoyed this day, but as I prepared to turn 13 back in 1967, my appreciation of my own birthday had taken a new turn. For earlier that year I first read the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and discovered that all the key action in The Hobbit, and the first book of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was triggered at the birthday parties of Bilbo Baggins,and his nephew Frodo Baggins. And for reasons unknown to me—and so far as I know, never analyzed in all the criticism on Tolkien and Middle Earth—the birthday of uncle and nephew Baggins was September 22. The sharing of my birthday with the brave and indefatigable hobbits was a source of great strength to me during my adolescence. When difficult times arose, I took comfort in the knowledge that I had some sort of kinship with the creative imaginings of such a great writer as Tolkien. His books have been with me at many junctures in my life. Seeing Tolkien’s hobbit protagonists at the center of his sagas made me believe I could be at the center of my own life narrative.

I’ve always liked the fact that the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana, falls around roughly the same time as my birthday. This year it was just last week. I like that the new year is said to begin in autumn–counter-intuitively–just as life in nature is beginning to fade and die. It sobers one up a bit, reminding us all that we’re not here forever. I don’t need too much reminding of that fact, in as much as starting in my late 30s I lost my father, then in my 40s, two best friends from college—Rob Adams and Karl Petrovich—and in my 50s, my mom and then my brother, Joel. Still, it seems salutary to take note of the leaves falling just as we prepare the turn of another year, as well as the turn from summer into fall.

With Tolkien in mind, my observance of my own birthday this year got off to a good start yesterday when I saw in Shelf Awareness, the bookselling daily e-newsletter, that Tolkien’s US publisher is publishing a new edition of The Hobbit, tying in with Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” prequel, premiering December 14. When the movie opens in a few months, I’ll sort of feel as if it’s almost again, albeit out of season. Meantime, today’s been a good day, thanks to family, friends, and J.R.R. Tolkien.