Papillon. The Outlaw Josey Wales. Kelly's Heroes. A thug or uncle on every television show ever made starting in 1949(!), culminating in his best-known role, "Uncle Leo" on Seinfeld.
Ladies and gentlemen, Len Lesser does the cover.
An overview of Mr. Lesser's credits from a truly remarkable career in film and television can be found here.
Black Cracker by Josh Alan Friedman is available NOW from Wyatt Doyle Books/New Texture; signed copies are available here.
A rather unconventional "open sale" has been announced. The item in question: the first typewriter owned by iconic writer Harlan Ellison.
Per sale broker David Silver:
"Harlan Ellison's little Remington "noiseless" typewriter, his genuine first typewriter upon which he began his stellar career, is available for sale right now. Included with the machine, Harlan will provide corroborative proof of its authenticity so there will be no future issues of provenance for the eventual owner. What's more, if the buyer wishes, Harlan will scroll a final piece of paper into the machine, type a final half page of something for posterity, and leave it there just so."
Full details and contact information are available on a web page dedicated to the sale, here.
"The author of this letter holds a special status in the personal mythology of my teenage years. For starters, he is a hero for standing his ground against all those forces that once condemned comic books. Marvel helped him survive childhood, which he did just barely, considering the entire school system seemed as if it were constructed, by design, to fuck him up and keep him down..."
The above video was sent to me by a loved one, headlined with a quote from the video: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?" With so many Americans inflamed by an controversy any child with a cursory understanding of our Constitution could resolve definitively, I might ask the same thing.
To me, there is only one response:
He's wrong. The question isn't whether the Cordoba Center is in "good taste," or if allowing it to exist is somehow "pandering"; the only question is, do we or do we not stand behind our Bill of Rights? If we do, we must accept that we will sometimes find the ways our fellow Americans choose to exercise those rights upsetting, offensive or distasteful. And registering our displeasure about that is another freedom afforded us by that same Bill of Rights.
As a proud and patriotic American, I'm not willing to allow any religion, philosophy or popular movement to subvert that excellent document—directly or indirectly—by dictating which specific Americans those freedoms should or should not be guaranteed to. Bow to those pressures, and our freedoms lose all meaning.
Papillon. The Outlaw Josey Wales. Kelly's Heroes. A thug or uncle on every television show ever made starting in 1949(!), culminating in his best-known role, "Uncle Leo" on Seinfeld.
