The Explorers Club
№ CCXXXV - Jochen Rindt (1942-1970), winner of the 1965 24 Heures du Mans & posthumous winner of the 1970 Formula One World Drivers' Championship.









The Queue
One of the irksome things about XPD is the repetition of character names from the Bernard Samson decalogy. Rather, since XPD was written first, the repetition of character names in the Bernard Samson decalogy. There is a character named Bernard "Bernie" Lustig, calling to mind Bernard "Bernie"/"Bernd" Samson; fortuitously, Lustig is murdered in the early going. Billy Stein, the son of one of the principal characters, calling to mind Bernard Samson's son Billy Samson. There is a Max Breslow, but that isn't too much of a bother since Max Busby is a fairly minor character in the decalogy, already dead by the time of Berlin Game, seen alive only in flashbacks & the prequel volume, Winter. There is a Koch, but again Lothar Koch is a bit player in the decalogy, most prominent in Berlin Game & as a younger man in Winter. The last case is the British spy Boyd Stuart, sharing with Bernard Samson both a career as an S.I.S. agent (M.I.6) & the initials B.S. Despite these & other similarities, though, there's no mistaking Boyd Stuart's world with Bernard Samson's. I'll read more Deighton after XPD, but I'm coming to the conclusion that the Bernard Samson decalogy is probably the masterpiece; I've read the best, now I'll try the rest.

Recently
Steve Matchett, The Mechanic's Tale: Life in the Pit-lanes of Formula One
Karen E. Olson, Driven to Ink
Len Deighton, XPD

Currently
John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy

Presently
"Richard Castle," Heat Wave
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Drew Karpyshyn, Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau
E. W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman (Raffles, vol. 1)
John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Fountains of Wayne, "Joe Rey" from Fountains of Wayne (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "He's cool, cool-cool-cooler than I am."

Samstag, 14 Mai
Edwin Astley, "Danger Man (Half Hour) Closing Titles" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: I loves me some spy fiction, but Danger Man… holy smoke! It's espionage… played straight! Not campy, not grim & gritty, just straight. It's Burn Notice only British, globetrotting, & made forty-five years earlier. Danger Man (broadcast in the U.S. as Secret Agent)!

Freitag, 13 Mai
Broken Social Scene, "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (T.L.A.M.)

Donnerstag, 12 Mai
The Forces of Evil, "Mistake" from Friend or Foe? (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The Forces of Evil, a side project of several of the Reel Big Fish, another of the deserving ska bands for which there just weren't enough days in SKApril. Next year!

A pair of R.B.D.S.O.T.D. already posted, only to be maliciously deleted by the Blogger organization, itself a branch of Google's vast conspiracy to achieve world conquest.

Mittwoch, 11 Mai
David Bowie & Queen, "Under Pressure" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Dienstag, 10 Mai
Fountains of Wayne, "Red Dragon Tattoo" from Utopia Parkway (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The ninth anniversary of my first tattoo, the skull-&-crossbones that so many people seem to find out of character.