This is a strange and mysterious week. Great secrets shall be revealed! But only on Wednesday. Today and tomorrow, we exist in a state of nebulous uncertainty, passengers in this archaic medium.

Archaic? Yes, hand-rolled websites written in Dreamweaver, with ancient conventions that date back a quarter century. But as the above picture suggests, the old ways had their virtues. Including a voluntary dress code, it seems.

So: let's revisit a Free Book rack outside Dinkydale.

The what? The Dinkydale.

This picture is from years ago - but the Free Book cart is there.

It was the Old College Inn, an ancient hotel, rehabbed in the 70s as a small shopping arcade. I went here every Monday-through-Friday for lunch, or a morning bagel, or my trademark sandwich. It was on the menu. The Small r. Sliced chicken, pepper jack, mustard. Delicious. Close as I’ll get to having my caricature the wall of a restaurant.

Anyway. The rack had some books for which no one would ever pay money.

Well, some of us did, once.

This was all we had, for a while.

They were novelizations of episodes. We know how it ended. But if you were in the period between the end of the show and a run of syndication, you seized on these. Star Trek Lives! to use the nerd parlance of the time. I remember seeing Frodo lives! in graffiti in 1976 and thinking no, he doesn't, and the guy who wrote the books is dead, too. But it was a way of saying the fandom persists.

They looked cooler than the show.

Blish was a serious sci-fi writer, and regarded this as dangerous hack work. You could get pegged with a rep for things like this.

But he took the job. Paid well.

Two grand a book.

He didn't write this one.

From this site:

Blish, in Josephine Saxton's words, 'affected to despise Star Trek' and, in fact, he had not written Star Trek 10. Judith Blish has revealed that Star Trek 6-11 (all of which appeared under Blish's name except the last where J. A. Lawrence appears as collaborator) were essentially written by Judith Blish and her mother Muriel Lawrence.

Hah: I did not know this, or had forgotten.

Writer Jacqueline Lichtenberg had begun research on the Star Trek phenomenon and fandom in the early 1970s. Her intention was to write a newspaper feature on the subject, but her research amassed enough material for a reference work. A query package was assembled and submitted to the major publishers, but the query was rejected by all, including Bantam Books. Following a delay in the production of a new novel from James Blish, Frederik Pohl acquired the query.  After two years of additional research, drafting and rewrites, Star Trek Lives! was published in 1975. A sequel has been suggested by Lichtenberg, but has never been realized.

Star Trek Lives! was a bestseller.

See what I mean? It lives! But that was cons and zines. Oh, it would live again, thought.

Thanks to cons and zines, in no small measure. 

Ellen Whalehooey?

MINNEAPOLIS! Took a year, but they got around to us.

Serial time!

This is an interesting noir, and no, we’re not here to review it. We’re here for the meaningless details and inadvertent documentary.

The writing credits: okay great fine hurrah for you all, now get out of the way so I can see the neon!

What do you see on the upper left?

I’ll always notice those, because the logo shone in neon at the Northport Shopping Center by my house when I was growing up.

He loses money the old fashioned way, by producing indepedent films:

I’m looking at that sign on the right.

We got an ENVER, now this. Any ideas?

Yes, it’s the Denver Dry Goods chain, and that would fix this location exactly if I had access to an old directory, because they didn’t seem to advertise. My newspapers searches come up with the big zilch.

I’ll just put this one out there and let the clever clogs in the audience tell me what this brand is:

Anyway. The movie is about cops . . .

But not that one. This one.

I’ve always liked Robert Ryan. His characters were big and cruel and unpredictable, but had something broken, and almost pathetic inside. This is one of the latter roles. He’s a mean, mean cop, but he doesn’t want to be, and it really eats at him when the sniveling little bastards taunt and goad and make him get out the canned hams.

There was something about this sequence that made me think of a famous role from the 60s. Any guesses who I’m thinking about? (UPDATE: I wrote that months ago, and now cannot remember what memory it tickled.)

That’s Gus Shilling, who played twitchy nebbishes when you couldn’t afford Burgess Meredith. The frail is Nita Talbot. She would have been 20 at this point.

After this the movie goes to the frozen countryside, and I won’t spoil any of that, as obvious as it actually is. It’s a fine movie. That's all.

But what I wouldn't give for all the film they shot for the credits.

		That will  have to do. Matches await!