Jack Palms Shirt on SethHarwood.com

Last spring I think it was, I ordered a Jack Palms shirt with part of the quote from Raymond Chandler's essay The Simple Art of Murder (1944) printed on the back. Pictured is me wearing the shirt at Lake Tahoe North Shore, a hard man for hard times.

Font of the shirt is done in the style of Jack Daniel's whiskey. It reads,

Jack Palms
Palms
No.2
DADDY
California
HARD BOILED
DETECTIVE

On the back of the shirt is the Chandler quote, the same quote I used for my dojo brochure,

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself necessarily mean, [who is neither tarnished nor afraid.]

People ask about the Chandler quote and I tell them the Jack Palms story.

This picture is also posted on Seth Harwood's website in the User Images section.

Subscribe to Jack Wakes Up and get down with the action. Or if you don't listen to book tapes, read the hardcopy (first edition sold out, to be republished May 2009).

Evenrude E-Tec

Infected Ancestor

Just finished listening to my second Scott Sigler book. Very good writer in the science horror action genre.

Ancestor is a very engaging action book dealing with the ramifications of engineering new animals from the world mammal DNA database in order to raise farm "animals" for human organ transplants.

Infected is almost as engaging but it was quite a tough book to read because the horrible/painful things the character are put through.

Sigler was one of the first authors to podcast their own works. You can download his books from his sight of PodioBooks, free. I learned about Sigler from Seth Harwood, my favorite podcasting author.

Vacuum is working again

We needed a new battery for our Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. It is so nice to have it back in service again. I spend an hour sitting with it on Saturday afternoon practicing my doumbek and whistles in the music room. The floor is so nice and clean now. :)

They have a new model that is super cool, I recommend you get one for your home.

Mountain Mandarin Festival

We went to the Mountain Mandarin Festival for the first time this year. Basically it's a street fair at the Placer County Fairgrounds just down the street.

No animals admitted but the S.P.C.A. had some you could take home if you wanted to adopt one or two.

We met Glenn Schussman, a quilter. He does nice free hand quilting. I liked him and think I'll use him to do the quilting on my next project. 916-487-1443 in Carmichael, clonwntrike1@aol.com.

We met the authors/editors Ric & Jody Hornor of The Golden History Books in their booth and bought The Golden Corridor. These books are well organized writings from the 1800s, illustrated with remastered photographs and sidebars from local paper, letters and journal entries of the time.

The Long Goodbye

I'm watching the Robert Altman film The Long Goodbye this week.

"I have two friends in this world. One is a cat. The other is a murderer."

The first 11 minutes is dominated by an orange tabby, much like Dean, and his insistence on his food, no substitutes.

The Long Goodbye was Morris this Cat's first finicky role.

The Governator has an uncredited scene where he takes his pants off.

The film is based on the the Raymond Chandler book OSN. Doesn't follow the book verbatim and has a different ending. Atlman insisted on keeping the screenwriter's ending by writing it into his director's contract.

New Bond film builds on the previous movie

I took PTO on Friday to see the new James Bond film, Quantum Solace (2008). Good movie if you are into Bond and know the character. I'm not sure if you would completely enjoy it if you are not a James Bond fan (it is not dumbed down for the general audience).

As soon as we got home I put Casino Royal (2006) in the old DVD player and watched it again (5th or 6th time). It is so cool how they brought forward characters and themes from Casino Royal into Quantum Solace.

I recommend you rewatch Casino Royal before going to catch Quantum Solace in the theater, not required.