NOT the actual cover. Just a mock-up. |
So my big news is out. Coming late this spring is the publication of the next volume of my memoirs, Tallyho Talulah. This is the biggest publication news of 2012, that and for Halloween, the final volume of The Tallulah Trilogy: My Gruesome Life, will also become available for your eBook readers and Print-on-Demand hard copies.
Of course, credit-hog Little Dougie is listed as the "author." I must start looking at my contracts sober, if I could only figure out when? Readers of my earlier memoir, My Lush Life, will recall that one chapter titled "The Seventies" was but a single blank page. This is because I can't remember anything from 1969 to 1980. I'm told this is common. Well Little Dougie was poking around in my attic one day, and he found a typed manuscript of a memoir I dictated into a tape recorder for a personal assistant to type up each day, of my adventures in the California beachside town of Alta Caca, CA, in the summer of 1974. Reading it, the story was as new to me as it will be to you.
I had gone to Alta Caca to star in a summer-musical theater production of a new musical based on a classic Bette Davis-Joan Crawford movie. I was also teaching a master class in acting for virile teenage boys. While I was there, stuff happened, and there were shenanigans. I made friends and enemies, I had sex, and also got married to yet another husband (at the same time!), I had adventures, and I drank rather a lot. I met some sweet surfers who "hung ten" at sea and on land, I met a very unhappy music man whose wife disappeared mid-summer, and I had some magnificent martinis. It was so lovely there, even the Headless Indian Brave, fell in love.
And, as it turned out, Little Dougie found out that my visit had implications beyond anything I knew. He interviewed the other survivors of that summer - those that can hear my name mentioned without SCREAMING! - and has enlarged the narrative beyond what I remembered, which is easy, because I remember none of this. Tallyho Tallulah will be the best beach read you'll ever get greasy with suntan oil. [Note. The above cover is just to give you the idea. This will not be the cover design. However, the cover of My Gruesome Life below is final.]
This IS the final cover for this book for Halloween. |
Let me be clear, My Gruesome Life is not about me. But you may want to read it anyway. Oh, I am in it. They want people to buy it after all; but I merely make cameo appearances in the mid-sections, where I steal the narrative from everyone, upstage the main characters shamelessly, and of course, have yet another new husband unmentioned in My Lush Life or Tallyho Tallulah. I never can keep track of how many husbands I've had, not even when I limit it to just my own husbands.
My Gruesome Life is the autobiography of Guy Thanatos, the famous horror movie icon known as "The Man Who Gave Evil a Bad Name" when he ruled the horror screen along with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Sir Christopher Lee back in the 1960s. Dougie spent months in 2004, sitting in Maison D'Thanatos, Guy's mountaintop lair/movie star mansion, listening as Guy told Dougie his amazing, terrifying, hilarious life. Think "I, Claudius" set in Hollywood in the 1960s, told as a Vincent Price black comedy of murders. Or think Kind Hearts and Guillotines. It's either the scariest comic novel ever written, or else the funniest horror novel you'll ever read.
I know Guy Thanatos terribly well. I was in his very first movie when he arrived in Hollywood in 1939, East vs West. Later we appeared together in one of his 60s mad scientist/monster movies (He played The Scientist, I had the other main role), Doctor Scary, while I was romancing Al Steele. Guy is mentioned a couple times in My Lush Life, but here he takes center stage. It's a lot of fun, in a sick twisted way of course. So 2012 is the year of Little Dougie in bookstores and online. Exact release dates will be announced here when I have them. The Tallulah Trilogy shall sooon be complete. What awaits? Tallulah Morehead and the Deathly Complexion?
Now for some bits and stray random thoughts from lately.
Nothing says "Christmas Cheer" like Christmas at The Addams House. |
Mel Gibson's days of worrying that gay guys are mentally undressing him are all over. These days, gay men mentally dress him. |
This picture of Paul Newman is just to cleanse your mental palette of the photo of Mel above. |
In a Huffington Post article by the screenwriter of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the author wrote: "[The director] told me that world should have the color of an old man's foreskin. I haven't actually seen an old man's foreskin, but I took the point."
Since old men's foreskins is not on my menu very often, I asked Little Dougie about this quote. He replied: "WHAT point? I see an old man's foreskin every time I go to the bathroom or change my clothes, and trust me, it's the exact same color it was 60 years ago."
I didn't dare ask him what color that was.
Now shooting his third James Bond movie, Daniel Craig has a firm grasp on his most-important part. |
Actual headline in US Weekly: "'At Last' Singer Etta James is Terminally Ill." Gee, I'm - ah - "glad"? - they're so happy about it. Sorry if she kept you waiting. Some of us were sad about it.
Ew, or, as he's known at Disneyland, "Captain Ew." |
Speaking of creepy Santas...John Waters! |
“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them!”
— John Waters
That said, though I have lots of books, a few of them by John Waters, I definitely do not want to have sex with John Waters. (Even I have some standards- well, a few - well, one.) So I guess if John ever comes over, I'll have to hide all my books. That'll take some doing. (I love you, John, just not that way. There had to be somebody, and it turned out to be you.)
THE HORROR OF LAUREL & HARDY! #1. Stan & Ollie at The Bates Motel. |
THE HORROR OF LAUREL & HARDY! #2 Laurel & Hardy Meet Frankenstein. |
No, Laurel & Hardy never "met" Frankenstein, much as I would have enjoyed that. Boris Karloff is here menacing them in their prison picture, Pardon Us, where he played "The Tiger." (I assume "The Tiger" is a renegade Time Lord.) The thing is, Karloff is only in the French language version. Walter Long plays The Tiger in the English language version. I guess The Tiger regenerated. See? I told you. Time Lord.
Charles Gemora, out of make-up. |
Governor Gleep of Mars has decided to throw his space helmet into the Republican presidential ring. His problem is he's been known for years to have trouble keeping his suction cups off of his female employees. And then there's the human woman he's been taking to Mars for long weekends. He says there was no sex, and since Martians have no penises, he may be right, but then, what were they doing? Plotting the conquest of earth?
But Governor Gleep did turn the Martian economy to dust. Look at the lifeless desert that is Mars today: Reaganomics taken all the way. Gov. Gleep's tax plan? "3 - 3 - 3"
And he's better than Blagojevich.
The Martians break up the Occupy Earth protests. |
Vanessa Redgrave knows how to give Jesus a REALLY happy birthday! |
"Are we there yet?" |
Worst Episode of The Love Boat Ever!
Click on this image. Trust me. |
When they changed Dumbledores, they had an excuse; Richard Harris was dead. Good lord! Is that it? Did the original Baby Harry Potter DIE??? I can think of no other reason. What's next? Using fake alcohol in drinking scenes? SIMULATED sex in love scenes? I am an ARTIST! Give me real booze and a real penis, and I'll give you Art - eventually! And Art will be smiling.
Is this the impostor? Or is it the other one? |
This is when Christmas was Christmas! |
Nothing says "Christmas" to me as much as cigarette ads with Santa smoking. These ads were products of what Tom Brokaw relentlessly calls "The Greatest Generation." (The date on this ad is "December 15, 1951," Little Dougie's second Christmas.) Yes, the best people ever, and they used Santa Claus to sell smoking to kids. (Thanks to Samurai Frog for finding this gem.)
"Let a carton of Pall Malls say 'Merry Christmas' for you." (And what will say: "Have a cancer-free New Year" for you?) And they are MILD! (As in, you die of "mild" cases of cancer and emphysema.)
A Hungarian Jew disguised as a Japanese Shinto man dressed up as the Nordic Christian Santa, all played by one of the scariest men in the movies. That says "Christmas in Hollywood" to ME! |
Cheers darlings. Read some good books this year!
6 comments:
So glad to hear about the books coming out next year - I'll buy some for me and give more as gifts, I promise.
Thanks for making me smile this year, and I look forward to a deepening friendship with Doug and Tallulah.
PS - I forgot how yummy Paul Newman was. Meow.
Paul Newman's yumminess is eternal and immortal. Happy reading to you and your friends.
I just don't know what to say; this is all so thrilling -2012 is looking very bright and I can see by the actual number of photos; you feel it too.
Nothing got by me; but the trust part was touching. Exciting!
Congratulations! I can't wait to read Tallyho, Tallulah (good thing that cover is a mock-up: "Douglas McEwan" is in letters almost as big as yours). My Gruesome Life - taking place in Hollywood of the 60s? Can't wait for that one either.
A treat of a post. Seeing Laurel and Hardy reminded me of recently watching "Habeas Corpus" which I hadn't seen before. Can't remember the last time I laughed so much - except for finding "Dame Edna cooking sausages..." on YouTube. I went in search of the Dame after you had listed her as someone you were thankful for in a previous post.
Wishing you and Little Dougie a terrific 2012.
PS: So if you went home with Hugh Jackman and he didn't have books, you would march out the door? Oh honey let's get real.
December 31, 2011 3:48:44 PM PST
I'd give Hugh Jackman one of MY (signed, natch) books and then jump on him.
Besides, Hugh and I would be at my place anyway. He has that stalkerish "wife," and those - ah - what are they called? - oh yes - kids at his place.
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