All posts by Machine Trooper

Military

Spec Ops Head to Head 2

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But wait–there’s more! (Be sure to check out Part One.)

This time the original (not counting the OSS) specops warriors throw their ego into the ring to show they can trash talk too. That’s right–the SF “Green Berets.”

And in this corner…the new kids on the block…the USMC MARSOC!

Again, this will require the expert analysis of my elite piss contestants review panel. Let’s start with you, Rick.

RICK: Well Hank, not counting the limp-richard wannabes in this video, I just have to say the SF soldiers are totally un-sat. Their haircuts are UNACCEPTABLE! And the face armor? What a bunch of pogues! You gotta hand it to the Marines, though–they always look strac. High and tight, faces smooth as a baby’s fourth point, they’re just squared away.

THAD: I don’t necessarily believe this debate can be decided on the basis of grooming standards alone. That being said, both parties in this video are unshaven and disheveled.

DUANTE: Yo main, ya’ll white boys need to shave that mess, yo. Your hair be stickin’ all out of your faces at whacked angles…look like the Shaggy D.A. or somethin’. And my second point is, this is another racist video. Where the brothers at? This is like a good ol’ boy all white fraternity or somethin’.

SYLVIA: Yes, absolutely. Where are the people of color and where are the female soldiers? Where are the gay, lesbian and transgender soldiers?

RICK: As for the last three categories, I think they all transferred to the Bureau of Land Management. …Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THAD: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

DUANTE: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THAD: Now, going into this rap battle, the Special Forces have the obvious advantage of experience and reputation, and I think they sort of put MARSOC in their place.

RICK: UNACCEPTABLE! Look, I’ll knock some points off for the Marines’ gay-ass sleeve-rolling techniques, but they hit SF with two devastating shots in quick succession. First the line about force multipliers, then they burned ’em with the zinger about the National Guard. They drew blood, big-time.

THAD: But come on, now. I thought that was effectively countered with “hey diddle diddle; straight up the middle.”

RICK: What’s wrong with a frontal assault, candy ass? What are you, queer? …Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

DUANTE: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THAD: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

SYLVIA: Hey, I didn’t get a “not that there’s anything wrong with that” out of Hank Brown!

HANK: Huh? Oh, sorry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

SYLVIA: You better watch your ass.

RICK: The point is, I’d PT that pogue into the ground.

THAD: Who’s that–the MARSOC guy?

RICK: Him too. I’d smoke both their asses in the PT pit.

DUANTE: Yo, hey now, let’s get back on point, y’all. 1) this is totally racist, and B) white folks can’t rap for shit! Damn pink toes couldn’t find the beat with a road map, main. And 3) who taught y’all white boys how to handle guns, anyway? Don’t you know you’re supposed to turn the gun sideways?

RICK: Only if you’re shooting with your protective mask on, numb nuts.

DUANTE: Y’all look like a bunch of punks.

SYLVIA: And once again, the only females represented in the video don’t wear uniforms, but bikinis.

DUANTE: That is a ho’s uniform.

THAD: That was a female? I wasn’t sure, with all the tattoos…

Military

Spec Ops Head to Head 1

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Okay, some of you clowns over at SOFREP and Kit Up (fans of Deadliest Warrior or some similar drivel, I’m sure), etc., have been in a pissing contest for years about who the baddest dudes are to wear a uniform…and who is truly an “operator.”  Finally, we’re about to settle the matter once and for all.

The pressing question of whether Rangers or SEALs stand atop the Great Zigarat can’t be settled by a wargame or other field evaluation. We are indebted to urban gangsta culture for providing the most empirical, objective venue for separating the hardcorps from the pogues: a video of both sides trash-talking to a beat.

Folks, this one’s too close to call. I’m gonna have to turn this over to my review panel for thorough analysis. Let’s start with you, Thad: What’s your initial impression of who the victor is?

THAD: Well Hank, first of all it’s important to remember that everyone is a winner in a contest like this, just by virtue of being here. Having said that, it just seems to me that the Navy SEAL had more bragging rights, and came in firing the bigger guns, if you will. The Ranger just never recovered after that first strike.

RICK: UNACCEPTABLE! This whole video is un-sat, and what the hell do you know Thad, you leg civilian bitch? The Ranger body-slammed that fuzzy-faced little seaman stain, even with one hand holding his coffee cup.

SYLVIA: The real loser in this video is all of womankind, as one of our own was stripped of her dignity, and her clothes, transformed into a sex object and paraded before the camera on the altar of male gratification.

THAD: While I agree with you in principle, Sylvia, I’m obligated to point out that a bikini is considered clothing. And it could be argued that the men in the video showed as much skin, or more, as the female.

DUANTE: Yo main, hold up. Hold up. This ain’t about whether some little flat-booty white chick showed too much skin or if a forest ranger can save the baby seals. This just another example of subliminal American bigotry. Not one brotha in the video, first of all. Not one. And did you catch that slur about the Oreo cookie?

RICK: You’re a no-go as usual, Duante. Pull your head out of your fourth-point and lock on. It’s not “baby seals” and “forest rangers,” first of all.

THAD: As much as I hate to agree with Rick, I’m afraid he’s right. The Oreo cookie comment was a pun referring to “black ops.”

DUANTE: Fool, we all know what they really mean when they say “Oreo.” And he even admitted, right in the video, that he wants to make it all vanilla! If that isn’t white supremacist, I don’t know what is.

THAD: Again, this was all a joke about the term “black ops,” referring to military missions of a clandestine nature. Like assassination, sabotage, or military kidnapping…all of which are within the scope of a unit like the SEALs, whereas the Rangers are simply a force of light infantry, designated for patrols…

RICK: UNACCEPTABLE! Did you pull all of that out of a book, Thad? “Whereas” you’re a dumbass civilian pogue who couldn’t hang with a girl scout troop on a three-klick march to the chow hall!

SYLVIA: What’s that supposed to mean, Rick?

RICK: Black Hawk Down, bitches. Just like he said in the video. You wanna talk military kidnapping?

DUANTE: Yo, and that’s another thing: why’s it gotta’ be “black” ops? Any time they be assassinatin’ or sabotagin’ or any kind of kidnapification, you gotta call it “black.” You don’t see that? You don’t see how the black community suffers guilt by association any time whitey gets to play with the language?

SYLVIA: You’re all missing the point, here. This video is just another instrument of oppression in the patriarchy’s toolbox. It sets us back 50 years. All over the world tomorrow, when womyn arrive in the marketplace, they’ll be subconsciously compared to this… this Stockholm Syndrome blonde sex object with the artfully displayed mammories.

THAD: Sylvia has a point: this actress has entirely too feminine a physique for 2014. The breasts are aesthetically appealing I admit, but would look better on the body of a high school football wide receiver. Or a horizontally challenged womyn.

RICK: Is that code for a fat chick?

DUANTE: Code? Oh, you wanna talk code? How about that reference to Osama Bin Laden? Here’s a dark-skinned man with a non-western philisophical worldview, killed by gun-happy rednecks in camouflage, and we supposed to laugh about it.

THAD: We need to get back on track. So Duante, who would you consider the winner?

DUANTE: Fool, please. Both these crackas got white man’s disease; couldn’t rhyme their way out of Sesame Street. It’s no wonder they didn’t even try to settle it with a break dance battle.

THAD: Granted, but what we’re here to determine…

DUANTE: I mean like “training” rhymes with “Peyton Manning?” Come on now, y’all. Ain’t nobody got time for that. But I guess, when it comes to bustin’ a rhyme, the forest ranger was worse. He either tried to put too many syllables into each verse, or not enough. Ain’t never got it right, main.

THAD: I was referring more to substantive content in…

RICK: UNACCEPTABLE! Too many syllables? Not enough? Wake up and move your ass out, Duante! You think Ice Cube is the man, then you turn around and complain about this guy’s rhyme scheme? And he’s not a forest ranger, asswipe.

DUANTE: Fool, what you know about Ice Cube?

SYLVIA: Not one of you neanderthals has even attempted to justify the ruthless exploitation of the womyn in this video! It so obviously panders to heterosexual males.

RICK: It panders to the Navy too. After all, you got a shot of a cross-dressing SEAL in there. …Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THAD: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

DUANTE: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

THAD: I’m afraid we still haven’t come to a consensus on who won.

SYLVIA: You can try digging yourself out of this hole with all your bone-throwing to the gay/lesbian community. But what this video boils down to is nothing more than a thinly-veiled phallic comparison. I mean, really…brandishing big guns in every other shot, infantile references to your genitalia…

RICK: Those were weapons. This is my gun.

SYVIA: AAAAAAAAAAAAH! Put that away! That’s disgusting!

RICK: Just throwing you a bone, Sylvia.

DUANTE: That’s not a bone. That’s a splinter, white boy. This is a bone.

RICK: UNACCEPTABLE! Hahahaha!

SYLVIA: AAAAAAAAAAAH! I’m being oppressed! This is the worst atrocity since Tailhook!

RICK: What is that, Duante? Looks like a penis, only smaller.

DUANTE: Fool, please. If Sylvia wasn’t a typical frumpy-ass white bitch, you’d see. In fact, back that video up to the bikini snap.

RICK: HOO-WAH! Rangers lead the way!

THAD: Um, I suppose we should wrap up this discussion…

RICK: “Get to the chopp-ah!”

Politics/Current Events

Old West Meets New World Order

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If you allow the mainstream media to educate you on current events, then what you know about the standoff at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada goes something like this: Right-wing fanatics, including environment-hating greedy ranchers, are trespassing on federal land, oppressing poor little desert turtles, owe a million bucks in unpaid fines, and tried to pick a fight with heroic federal agents determined to save the turtles. But because federal police are always so reluctant to butcher American citizens, they defused the situation before it got out of hand by pulling out.

It’s actually a wisely selected point of contention for the globalist henchmen to confront law abiding American citizens over: they’re not stealing private property outright, like they usually do. This dispute has to do with public land, and the cities full of boob tube zombies know nothing about history, much less grazing rights.

 

If you’re familiar at all with the western genre, then too many times to count you’ve read books…but even more frequently watched movies…with the New Deal range war plot: Greedy ranchers (capitalists) want to increase their own empires, so they hire mercenary gunfighters (union busters) to bully, abuse and murder freegrazers or homesteading farmers  (the proletariat) in order to cheat them out of their claims (welfare, unions, etc.). Usually justice wins out and order is restored when a US Marshal (the savior of federal government) arrives to set everything right,  against heroic odds facing the rancher’s gun-happy private army. Change the names,  actors and some minor plot points and right there you have the “open source” script for three out of five westerns ever filmed.

I can count on one hand…actually two fingers…the range war westerns that don’t follow this formula: The Curly Wolf and Showdown on the Hogback.

Marxist propaganda is nothing new. It helped condition the voters to elect FDR and his fellow travellers to four terms. That crew didn’t let a crisis go to waste, either. The fact that their socialist bedfellows created the crises in the first place was no big deal, considering that they would also write the history.

Fellow travelers have also scripted the narrative for the Bundy Ranch conflict. But in reality the Nevada ranching families started out as homesteaders themselves in the 1800s. About four dozen ranch families have been bullied off their grazing rights by the feds (whose job it is to protect the rights of states, and individuals), but the Bundys refused to sell theirs. So the feds rustled what Bundy cattle they could, stampeded the rest in 90 degree heat to separate calves from their mothers and overheat them. All the crocodile tears shed over the desert tortoise dry up when “land managers” kill off the calves en masse.

What the confrontation above was about was the Bundys and their supporters finding out that the dump truck protected by the paramilitary convoy was full of tools feds use to destroy the irrigation system built by private ranchers over the last 140 years. This is a siege strategy to dehydrate and starve (no water=no grass) the cows to death.

The endangered turtle plot device is a convenient excuse for just another federal land grab, which is just one front in their accelerating national power grab. The governor and local sheriff both have the legal authority to kick the feds out of where the federal government has no Constitutional jurisdiction (as in every state), but the sheriff is worse than useless and the governor is most likely just another tool owned by the same puppetmasters who own Congress and the White House.

The feds returned the stolen cattle after backing down from the confrontation. But the sympathizers who showed up to support Bundy will have to go back to work eventually, while the federal storm troopers can wait it out, massing forces and reviewing intelligence (all on the taxpayer’s dime) while the media obediently demonizes the victims for them, conditioning the populace to believe that whatever happens to these enemies of the state is deserved.

Here’s one of the things that’s been happening behind the various media smokescreens: Washington is ballooning our already unsustainable debt by borrowing billions from Red China. They then turn around and give those billions back to Red China in the form of foreign aid, which the Chinese then use to buy up our vital national resources (sea ports, highways, copper mines, coal mines, oil fields, etc). I’m simplifying the process here, but that’s the truth of it in a nutshell.

The Chinese want to build a solar energy farm on the free graze the Bundys use. Chances are it is none other than Harry Reid who wants to sell them the contested land at less than half its value (and the Chinese will buy it with money confiscated from your paycheck and mine). They probably intend to use fracking to get oil out of the ground as well. How much do you want to bet that we won’t hear a peep about the poor desert tortoise once the Chinese control the land?

By the way, all this is happening while beef prices are at an all-time high, and getting worse every week. Have you ever stopped for a second to consider whose interests the crew in Washington is looking out for?

The federal troops will be back, to be sure. Now they have a much better idea of enemy (American citizens) strength, arms/equipment, location and organization. They have wire tapped conversations, UAV spy footage, and intelligence gleaned from Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to fill in the picture for them. With a big protest rally in DC planned for May, some speculate that the feds will move back on the Bundys while that diversion is going on.

They will be back at some point–and probably not just for the Bundy’s cattle. You can bet that they’ll have a neatly-wrapped narrative prepared for mass consumption, and the lapdog media will regurgitate it faithfully. Whatever variation of the old New Deal range war narrative they adopt, you can bet the villains (“domestic terrorists”) will be gun owners (as usual), property rights advocates and pretty much everybody who esteems the Constitution (which, ironically but obviously, excludes those who are required to take an oath to uphold it as a condition of their employment) as the law of our land.

Fantasy, Reviews

A Battle of Sorcerers

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Jim Morris, after returning from Vietnam, became an author of fiction and non-fiction. After playing catch-up on the sex, drugs and rock & roll he had missed out on during his three tours in the 1960s, he began exploring Toltec spiritualism in the mid-to-late 1970s. It is that background which informs this supernatural tale, much the way Star Wars was built upon George Lucas’ understanding of spiritual forces which began after suffering a car accident in his youth.

Morris is not just an author, but an experienced editor as well, and knows what makes a story sing. His humor has appealed to me since my first encounter with his work, and many of his experiences as a soldier resonate with me as well, even through fictionalized sequences in his novels. And as an adroit storyteller does, he built this yarn around a strong character: Dave Perry.

Parry (like Morris) is a Special Forces veteran, as well as a current DEA agent. His heredity is partly from the Cherokee Nation, which is why he’s given an undercover assignment in Talequah, Oklahoma to bust some alleged Peyote users as part of a local political struggle involving a quid pro quo arrangement between the FBI and the Tribal Chief. Of course, as the title indicates, Dave gets waist-deep in a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Dave Perry has a strong resemblance to the title character in Silvernail, which is to say heroic and likeable, without being a boy scout.

 

I’m not sure how Jim would feel about this, but I could probably argue that Battle of Sorcerers completes a trilogy of sorts, with John Silvernail representing the hero’s condition prior to spiritual awakening, Dave Perry begins the transformation, and Spurlock is the completed guru/shaman/witchdoctor with his physical and spiritual selves mutually aware.

It would be difficult to ignore the mystical undergirding of this book. Although presented with the Cherokee accent, the religion of the eponymous sorcerers is decidedly Eastern.  There is no good and evil, per se, but white and black magic/light and dark sides of the Force/Yin and Yang. Or “love and bullshit” as John Sky, the master shaman/Messiah figure of the novel (with the same chi as Quetzalcoatyl) frames it .

Here is one of the funniest parts in Sorcerers, after Dave decides to become the disciple of John Sky (who in this scene is working on a pickup truck):

“Here’s your first lesson in Indian Medicine,” he (John Sky) said. “Get over the idea that you are your body.”

He nodded toward a wrench on a wooden stand near Dave. “Then hand me that wrench.”

“With what?” (Dave asked.)

However you feel about the religious component to the story, Battle of Sorcerers is a fun, entertaining, and well-written novel. Jim says he has trouble categorizing the genre. I would call it a “feel-good supernatural thriller.”

Non-Fiction/Documentary

Amazon Reviews For Dummies

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I just had to excerpt from Larry Correia’s rant over on his blog. He put voice to some of the frustration so many authors have to swallow. Looks like the straw that broke the camel’s back was some jerk who admittedly didn’t even read the book he posted a review for, but gave it two stars because he didn’t like the price.

(For the record, Mr. Correia has no control over price-setting, since he is traditionally published.)

Here’s part of the rant:

“I didn’t like the color of the box the book was shipped in. ONE STAR!” “I bought this book that is clearly not in the genre I like, so it gets ONE STAR for not being in the genre I wanted because I’m too fucking stupid to read the back cover blurb!” On and on. Holy shit, there should be an IQ test before people are allowed to use the internet, because you are really pissing off the rest of us who don’t sleep in helmets.

Authors simply love having our average ranking pulled down for bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual book. “I do/don’t like sci-fi. This book has/doesn’t have sci-fi in it. ONE STAR!” “I don’t like whales. Whales are stupid and fat and so is Herman Melville! Moby Dick gets ONE STAR!”

It would be difficult to capture the attitude of this type of reviewer more accurately than these two paragraphs do.

I’ve seen quite a bit of this kind of garbage on Amazon, but I don’t really have a solution for it. The fact that Amazon makes it so easy for their customers to leave reviews is a plus. 95% of people who read a book never leave a review; and it’s too bad that that percentage does not include all the idiots, petty vindictive harpies and PC thought police.

But alas, the 5% who do review has a strong representation from those demographics. Larry is spot on with his lampoon of the individuals who read outside their genre boundaries, then pan the book for not being in the genre they prefer.

I’ve got a hunch some of the drive-by reviews I’ve seen are written by authors (or wannabe authors) hoping to elevate their own reputation by slinging mud at the competition.

As semi-prolific Amazon reviewer myself, I often err on the side of being too generous with the star rating…especially for indie authors. I figure indies need all the help they can get, so I’ve given a lot of 5-star reviews on Amazon when I normally would have been a bit more critical. I usually don’t post a review at all when I think a book only deserves 1 or 2 stars.

And y’know what I’ve noticed? I get a lot of “not helpful” votes on the rare occasion that I do post a tough review. Right up to and including 4-star reviews! I take my time to convey what the book is about, careful not to give away the ending or too many spoilers, and point out what I liked about the book (all for no compensation and often not even reciprocation)…only to have the author and/or their fans vote my review down.

One change I do see as positive is the removal of tagging.

So far as I know it never helped either authors or readers anyway, it was abused as a marketing tool…and then there was my own experience.

I noticed somebody had tagged another author’s book “anti-Semitic” and a few other shocking accusations. I had read the book and knew this was total BS, so I blogged about it. Next thing you know, my own debut novel got tagged “anti-Semitic.”

Now, anyone who has read Hell & Gone knows that was BS, too. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if my name was only a couple spaces down from Salmon Rushdie’s on the Islamic Hit List for how Zionist a couple of my heroes are.  And I’m sure the Neo-Nazis would include me on a list of their own (assuming they could read or write).

This is how easy it is to malign the character of an author (or anyone) in the Information Age. An accusation is all that’s needed to wreck somebody’s reputation, because most people’s knees will obediently jerk without them ever checking (or thinking) for themselves to find out if there’s any truth to it.

This is one of the costs of freedom: one or two assholes can ruin a good thing for everybody.

Action, Reviews

The Condemned

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I love watching good movies (and reading good books) and am usually motivated to tell others about them. (Most of my Amazon reviews are four or five stars because I’m more motivated to share my reactions when I enjoyed the experience than when I didn’t.) However, I kinda’ consider it my job here at VP to also warn you about the stuff I don’t think is so good. Here is one such review.

Somebody lent me the Condemned DVD and, with no internet connection in the crib at that time, I burned up a couple hours watching it.

It’s a scenario I’ve seen before: evil rich guy throws a bunch of desperate cutthroats into an elaborately controlled environment and has them fight to the death (Similar to The Running Man, in a way). The “twist” this time is that they’re all death row prisoners from around the world. Evil Rich Dude’s logic is, “They’re gonna die anyway, so why can’t I make a buck off it?”

OK–sounds logical, I guess. And there were some nice touches throughout the flick. But amidst all the splattering blood, the film makers kept going back to the theme of how inhuman the spectators can become in spectator sports. Sort of like the original Rollerball, only subtle.

As subtle as a 12-pound sledgehammer.

There were some real douche-bag characters in this flick, and the director employed all the usual tactics to make us want to see them suffer the same kind of torture and horrific deaths that they inflicted. And then we were supposed to feel guilty about it. “OMG! We’re just as bad as the 40 million people paying to see this snuff circus on the internet! Maybe we’re almost as bad as the eeveel capitalist scum that’s getting rich off the whole thing!”

Yawn.

OK, whatever. Let’s get to the fighting, since that’s really the appeal of this kind of film, ironic guilt messages notwithstanding.

Steve Austin…wasn’t he an astronaut who suffered a terrible accident, then wound up with bionic legs, arm and eye?

…A man barely alive.

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

We can make him better than he was. Better…

Stronger…

Faster…”

Ahem.

I like old western movies, alright?

But even so, I admit they had some of the most ridiculous fight scenes ever filmed: 20-minute bare-knuckle brawls. Punches telegraphed from two miles away. Men on the receiving end of those dramatic haymakers standing around waiting to get hit (when it was their turn). Heros flooring villains with said haymakers, then stooping down to pull the villain to his feet in order to hit him again.

Well, the fight coreography in this flick was that bad. Not just with fists, either. The sadistic, murderous ex-SAS dude was given a bow with arrows. Twice he had our hero dead to rights, but didn’t take a shot. One of those times, rather than launch an arrow into Austin’s considerable target area from his protected position on high ground, he jumps down to Austin’s level to menace him with the bow at melee range. (Evidently the director of a few Arrow episodes was inspired by this flick.)

I guess classic westerns have some stiff competition for Most Ridiculous Fight Scenes in “professional wrestling.” That’s where I think Austin came from and probably what influenced the stupid fighting.

Movies like this are hard to pull off, I guess. Especially when they take their hackneyed message too seriously.

Nevertheless, you can find it here if you refuse to heed my warning.

Reviews, Sports

The Champ Has a Glass Jaw!

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I’m doubling up the jab, here. My last blog entry was about boxing fiction; this one is about a boxing game. It may be an “old” game, but it’s still a fun action game to play. So nyah nyah.

Well, let me qualify that: Fight Night was fun to play.

Round Two was an improvement on the original. Round Three was arguably an improvement on Two. Then Round Four stunk so bad that EA Sports evidently gave up on it (until Fight Night Champion, which redeemed them to an extent I guess).

It seems that the design team used up the entire budget improving the graphics for Round Four, then had to outsource the game play programming to pro bono data entry clerks. Aside from adding long-overdue fighters like Mike Tyson to the pantheon…

…Round Four took every weakness of the earlier versions and concentrated on making them even worse.

  1. EVERY BOUT RESULTS IN A KNOCKOUT. This is a case of entertainment-over-realism (real fights often go the score cards even when two punchers are matched). Not so bad by itself but a related issue is:
  2. EVEN FEATHER-FISTED DANCERS ARE KNOCKOUT ARTISTS IN FIGHT NIGHT. Some attempt at capturing the style of the real fighters was made–the AI version of Ray Leonard has an incredible defense, for instance. But everyone’s a power-puncher.
  3. THE TRAINING GAMES ARE EVEN MORE DIFFICULT WITHOUT BEING INTERESTING. This was already the trend by Round Three. Four put the trend on steroids.
  4. YOU HAVE TO BE A COUNTER-PUNCHER TO WIN. According to this game, the only time one boxer can inflict serious damage to another is after blocking a punch. Whose idea was this?
  5. AN EFFECTIVE PARRY RENDERS THE BOXER WHO THREW THE PUNCH UTTERLY DEFENSELESS. C’mon, have you guys ever even watched real boxers in a fight?
  6. SUFFER ONE KNOCKDOWN AND YOU’LL PROBABLY NEVER GET UP. Your character might still have plenty of juice after a flash knockdown, but that won’t help you without the Magic Sequence of Controller Input. In the Fight Card Round Four Universe, Buster Douglass would lose in Tokyo; Jersey Joe Walcott retains the title after Marciano’s challenge; and Joe Louis loses half his fights.

But Round Four introduces some brand new sucky features, too.

  • There’s a delay between control input and screen action that makes spastic brainless button-mashers invincible against those who attempt to use skill and strategy.
  • The cut man is of little significance.
  • Human-controlled fighters plateau in abilities after about 10 fights, while AI characters keep improving.
  • Button configuration was designed for an epileptic octopus.

If you’re like me and enjoy fun games regardless of their vintage, I strongly recommend Fight Night Round Two or Round Three, or perhaps Champion, which adds a storyline, but duck Round Four like it’s Sugar Ray Robinson with something to prove.

Crime, Reviews, Sports

Paul Bishop’s Felony Fists

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After Paul Bishop read Mel Odom’s retro-boxing novel Smoker, he found Odom’s website and looked up his contact info.

“We hit it off immediately,” says Bish. “We had a ton in common including a shared love of the fight pulps.”

During their first phone conversation, the brainstorming began for a new sports fiction series. The series is called Fight Card. It is a throwback to the boxing pulps of yesteryear.

Felony Fists was the first Fight Card instalment by “Jack Tunney.” For you armchair fight historians out there, that nome de plume is exactly what you suspect it is–a fusion between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, though the series takes place in the ’50s, not the ’20s (when those two were heavyweight champs). Several different authors in the Fight Card stable are writing under that amalgamated name.

The Fight Card series consists of monthly 25,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sittings. The stories and stylings are inspired by the fight pulps of the ’30s and ’40s – such as Fight Stories Magazine – and Robert E. Howard’s two-fisted boxing tales featuring Sailor Steve Costigan. – Paul Bishop

Patrick “Felony” Flynn is an LA beat cop who is also possibly the world’s most seasoned amateur middleweight. He’s offered a spot on the detective squad if he’ll help knock gangster Mickey Cohen out of boxing. That means he has to move up in weight to light-heavy, turn pro, and arrest Cohen’s fighter Solomon King’s ascent toward a title shot against Archie Moore. A middleweight moving up to fight a badass light-heavyweight is a monumental chore all by itself, but in case the reader doesn’t appreciate that, the pressure is heaped upon Felony Flynn increasingly right up until the last chapter.

During all this time, Flynn becomes partners with another rookie detective, Tombstone. A black detective on an historically/notoriously bigoted force like the LAPD must be exceptional, and Tombstone is. This subplot, a counterfeiting subplot, and the fight plot all come together and are tied off nicely. The writer set out to tell a retro-style pulp boxing yarn and I’d say he did a good job.

For my taste, Cohen’s tactic to get Flynn to throw the fight was overkill. The stakes were plenty high already, as were the odds against Flynn in the fight. For Cohen to be so scared of an Irish brawler with one professional fight (against an over-rated has-been) presenting a threat to a contender who consumes talented pros for breakfast (and who Archie Moore is worried about) was just too much. In Flynn’s other fights, he never was 100% on. He was either distracted, or careless…something to put the outcome in doubt. I really would have liked to see Flynn go to war from Round One in the climactic fight, and let the tension come from the fact that he’s overmatched, and making it through 15 rounds with Solomon King requires a superhuman effort. Plenty of tension that way and far more realistic.

Speaking of realism, I just have to provide the following advisory about boxing technicalities:

In boxing, a right-handed fighter does not have a right jab or a right hook. He jabs and hooks with the left. He throws straight rights or a right cross. (Everything I’m saying is mirror-opposite for a southpaw, of course.) What some people call a right hook from a right-hander is actually either an angled right uppercut or a roundhouse right–an ill-advised punch 99% of the time, though I did see Lennox Lewis score a knockout with one.

I don’t know how many other readers would notice or care about getting these fundamental details right, but for me it was an annoyance in what otherwise was an enjoyable read. To be fair, a LOT of authors who write about boxing make these kind of mistakes. (One exception is this book from the Fight Card series.)

Paul Bishop retired from the LAPD, so he knows a thing or two about the crime angle. That and his hard-hitting, fast moving prose in Felony Fists makes this a great read, and one of many highly entertaining Fight Card books.

P.S: Check out this trailer for Fight Card: Front Page Palooka below!

Historical

The Piccadilly Cowboys Ride Again

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iconThe novels of David Whitehead – aka: Ben Bridges – dominate Amazon’s western bestseller lists, but it’s not just his own novels keeping fans of fast action westerns on the edge of their seats. In the 1970s, numerous violent, pulpish, western series, concocted by a revered group of writers known collectively as the Piccadilly Cowboys, filled the paperback spinner racks of their day. These lost gems have now been given new covers, new formatting, and new life under the Piccadilly Publishing umbrella.

Piccadilly Publishing began as the brainchild of Dave’s saddle-pard, Mike Stotter (himself no slouch when it comes to writing successful westerns). Let loose to ride the publishing range again, Herne The Hunter, Crow, Caleb Thorn and many other rough, tough, six-shooting characters are thrilling fans around the world again.

Recently, Piccadilly Publishing has expanded their range to include two of the top western series of all time, Fargo and Sundance from John Benteen, as well as more contemporary pulp titles – such as the classic WWII series The Sergeant and spy series Butler from Len Levinson.

Taking time out from his busy schedule (which also includes installing the flooring in a new residential conservatory), David (“the good-looking half of the partnership”) answers some pointed questions about the current state of publishing …

FIRST, PLEASE GIVE US THE LOWDOWN ON DAVID WHITEHEAD, AKA: BEN BRIDGES. HOW DOES AN ENGLISHMAN COME TO RIDE THE RANGE?

I grew up at a time when western movies were still big box-office, and western TV shows were still very popular. In addition, my dad was a big western fan. He took me to see all those movies, and we never missed a single episode of any of those TV shows. He worked a lot of graveyard shifts as a security guard, and when I was very young he sometimes spent his days (while I was at school) making up and recording his own western stories into our reel-to-reel tape recorder. That way he could still tell me a bedtime story, even though he was at work! He used to wiggle his fingers in a bowl of water to denote outlaws fording a stream, and burst balloons to simulate gunfire.

I myself was always a natural writer—it’s all I ever wanted to be. So I guess I was steeped in the Old West right from the word go.

Next year, I celebrate thirty years as Ben Bridges. My first book, The Silver Trail, was bought in 1984, but not published until 1986. What I hope to do is write a new story in all my old series, just as a thank you to the good folks who are still reading them all.
Read the rest of the interview over at Bish’s Beat!