Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Claremore (Page 108 of 115)

Lord ha’ mercy.

I thought about my high school days the other evening, catching an episode of Two and a Half Men. Young Jake was pouting in his room, guitar in hand, shaking the house with an overly-amplified version of Smoke on the Water.

It occurred to me what an enduring song that has been.

Maybe it isn’t played all that often on the radio anymore. It might be more of a cultural reference now, I don’t know. It seems to me that the song – along with several others – pretty well defined an era of rock music.

Hearing Jake thump out the three or four notes, bum-bump-bummmm, bump-bum-ba-bummmm… made me think about way back when. Those things tend to make me feel older, since I realize that younger people probably don’t care one whit about the song or that time.

Today’s news made me feel even older (with all due respect to my youngish octogenarian friends and customers).

Jon Lord, the keyboard player for Deep Purple and a co-writer of the song, has died at age 71. Perhaps because I was high school age when the song was released, I have retained a mental image of the band members as young men. Maybe I thought they had found the Fountain of Youth.

They didn’t.

In fact, Jon Lord was quite a bit older at that time when I assumed he was near my own age.

He never slowed down, even after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer some years back. When Deep Purple disbanded, he played with 80’s rockers Whitesnake. Deep Purple reunited later, but in between Lord kept busy. He even had a classical work that was performed at Royal Albert Hall in London.

I’m sure there will be plenty of hits on YouTube this evening, bringing up videos of concert performances.

Jon Lord – a big part of the music scene of that time – will live forever in that venue.

They’re everywhere!

They are all around you. Possibly in the room with you right now.

Writers.

The passion for putting words on paper (as if we all do that still…) is either a blessing or a curse. Sitting in front of a word processor, typewriter (you know who you are!), or notebook with pen in hand, the practice of piecing together sentences and paragraphs to make something pleasing to read is a solitary endeavor.

Even if the work is done in collaboration with others, the actual writing is generally done independently. One person. One word at a time.

Knowing a little of the process, it makes me cringe to see scathing reviews of published works. There isn’t a book in print that doesn’t represent hours and hours of the author’s dedication and hard work. To have the end product of that labor dismissed by a heartless critic pains me, and in the several reviews I’ve done over the years, I try to keep a positive tone.

I also like to do my part to give writers a little recognition for their efforts, keeping an area to display the books of local and area authors, a little promotion and the opportunity to have someone buy and read the book.

Not everyone is a New York Times bestselling author, but there are writers in the Tulsa metro area that have had books optioned by filmmakers and movies made of their works. Probably the best known are those of Susan Eloise Hinton, more familiarly known as S. E. Hinton – the author of The Outsiders, Rumblefish, That was Then, This is Now – and others. The Outsiders was not only set in 1960’s Oklahoma, but brought Hollywood movie directors and stars to the state for the filming.

Jay Cronley’s humorous novels have been adapted into movies that starred A-list actors like Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

There are other examples, such as the bestselling House of Night series by PC Cast and her daughter Kristen Cast, reportedly in the works as a major film project.

Then there are those works of fiction and non-fiction that represent a similar amount of work and dedication which have not caught the attention of Hollywood. Famous or not, they are deserving of attention, like the beautiful photography included in William Collins’ work – The Rucksack Accessories – currently among the feature titles at McHuston Booksellers.

There is a space here for your work, too! We’re proud to support local authors!

Here now, the nooze.

Fights at the Friendly Tavern? Are they pillow fights? I had to know more.

I sell words bound in volumes. That’s probably why I have such a tough time with the quality of writing on the internet, much of which is horrendous (including most of the columns here).

That’s not to say that bad books don’t exist, but normally an editor is involved to some degree in book publishing.

This example from Tulsa’s Channel 8 website should not have escaped a junior-high English class.

Man Stabs Wife at Bar

As a headline, this is totally acceptable. As an example of spousal affection, it is totally reprehensible.

A woman is stabbed by her husband at an east Tulsa bar.

A woman is stabbed? A woman is beautiful, maybe. A woman is wealthy. A woman is intelligent. A woman is elderly. A woman is stabbed? Sounds a lot like a CSI recounting of an event.

CSI Rookie: Okay, here’s how I see it. Some whiskey is consumed. Some words are exchanged. A woman is stabbed. A man runs off. We got ourselves a murder.

CSI Veteran: She ain’t dead, Frank.

CSI Rookie: Oops. An ambulance is called.

Back in the days when teachers taught students to diagram sentences to show the various parts, the above example would have proven difficult. A few years ago, some consultant told broadcasters to write in the present tense to make it sound more urgent. Here’s a news flash. It doesn’t work. The practice just makes for bad English. Channel 8, I believe, is the leading practitioner of the style. Present tense? How about: A woman is expected to survive after being stabbed at an east Tulsa bar. If you are talking to a friend (and hopefully Channel 8 newsfolks consider us as such) wouldn’t you just say:

Friend: A woman was stabbed by her husband.

Pal: An ambulance is called.

Police were called to Friendly Tavern on east 31st Street around 1:30 Wednesday morning.

Despite the admonitions of the consultant, our author has reverted to past tense for the second sentence/paragraph, which reads just fine but suffers for punctuation. The AP Stylebook advises the capitalization of directions when used as part of a street address: “on east 31st” should have been written “on East 31st.” But that’s nitpicking, and forgivable. The injection of irony is also admirable.

Friend: Where did the man stab his wife?

Pal: Friendly Tavern.

Friend: Sure it is, but where was she stabbed?

Pal: Oh. In the back. An ambulance is called.

Officers tell KTUL.com that the man stabbed his wife in the back and ran off. It’s unclear if a fight lead up to the violence.

Moving back to present tense, the “Officers tell” rather than “Officers told KTUL.com…” which is only an issue in that – from a continuity standpoint – it might better serve the readers if the author could pick a tense and stand by it, rather than stab it in the back and run off.

As to the second part of the paragraph, I have a suspicion that most stabbings are the result of a fight between two parties. In fact, I believe it to be true (although not researched formally here) that – without the violent fight aspect – a stabbing is called impaling. I suppose there are accidental stabbings, after which the knife-wielding party always runs off.

As to whether “a fight lead up” to the violence: When you’re hit over the head, the instrument could be a “lead” pipe. But when it’s a verb, “lead” is the present and “led” is the past tense. The problem is that – in broadcasting – the past tense is pronounced exactly like the above-mentioned plumbing material, so people – including broadcast writers – often confuse the two. In a sentence like “She led us to the scene of the crime,” or “It’s unclear if a fight led up to the violence,” always use the three-letter spelling.

The man surrendered to police later in downtown

Sticking to past tense, our author achieves a credible relating of fact here, although, lacking a sentence-ending period, the reader cannot be certain if the man surrendered to police later in downtown Oklahoma City or downtown Tulsa. If the location is assumed to be Tulsa, perhaps the sentence would have been better served by omitting the word “in.” The man later surrendered to downtown police. Even if that doesn’t work exactly – there should have been a period. Markings are important, even in broadcast media. Try reading this without the appropriate punctuation:

a woman without her man is nothing

The stabbed woman certainly won’t agree with the implied sentiment there, but add a little punctuation…

A woman: Without her, Man is nothing.

You see, the little marks make a big difference.

His wife should survive her injuries.

We’re back in the present, and – although tense – even the recovering wife might approve that sentence.

There are a number of ways that the story could have been correctly written, and I’d offer some examples – but at this point, the story is old news and doesn’t require repeating.

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