“i like to think that i’ve grown into a very well-adjusted skeleton.”
Just when I think I’m going to go and let my Publishers Weekly subscription lapse…
That looks like an absolute hoot.
March 30, 2007
“if it’s not scottish, it’s crap!”
Just a friendly reminder that Tartan Week is just around the corner. Leland was accosted by the setup in Grand Central Terminal this afternoon. I think we might have to get out to the parade this year… anyone up for it?
Speaking of reminders, Leland reminds me that I’m a Celt now. With the name and everything.
I’ve married into the clan… crazy.
March 26, 2007
huzzah!
CITY OF BONES is here!
*cabbage patches*
*raises the roof*
*high-fives everyone*
March 23, 2007
exhuming houdini
This might be the most bizarre thing I’ve seen lately: digging up Harry to find out if he’d been poisoned.
Makes perfect sense, actually. The Great Houdini cut down by a couple of punches? Come on. The dude had quite the six-pack, even if he was in his 50’s. (He meticulously built his own physique to facilitate things like being buried alive.)
The book mentioned in the article really is the best biography of Houdini that I’ve ever read… and I’m not even done with it. Murder isn’t the only bone for conspiracy theorists in the book — apparently, Harry was a spy, too (don’t worry, it was for the good guys).
Again, no surprise there.
Houdini kin wants body exhumed, tested
By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press WriterThu Mar 22, 7:36 PM ET
For all his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini couldn’t escape the Grim Reaper: He died on Halloween 1926, apparently from a punch to the stomach that ruptured his appendix. But rumors that he was murdered have persisted for decades. Eighty-one years after Houdini’s death, his great-nephew wants the escape artist’s body exhumed to determine if enemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead.
“It needs to be looked at,” George Hardeen told The Associated Press. “His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it’s time to take a second look.”
Houdini’s family scheduled a news conference for Friday to give details on the plans. Prominent New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina is helping clear any legal hurdles to the exhumation.
A team of top forensic investigators would conduct new tests on Houdini’s body, said Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini’s brother.
The circumstances surrounding Houdini’s sudden death are as murky as the rivers where he often escaped from chains, locks and wooden boxes.
The generally accepted version was that Houdini, 52, suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach, leading to a fatal case of peritonitis. But no autopsy was performed.
When the death certificate was filed on Nov. 20, 1926, Houdini’s body — brought by train from Detroit to Manhattan — had already been buried in Queens, along with any evidence of a possible death plot.
Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, “Was Houdini Murdered?”
A 2006 biography, “The Secret Life of Houdini,” raised the issue again and convinced some that he might have been poisoned, including George Hardeen, who lives in Arizona and is the chief spokesman for the president of the Navajo Nation.
The likeliest murder suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group’s fraudulent seances. The movement’s devotees included Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a November 1924 letter in which Doyle said Houdini would “get his just desserts very exactly meted out … I think there is a general payday coming soon.”
Two years later, Houdini — by all accounts a man in extraordinary physical shape — was dead. Kalush and Sloman say that “the Spiritualist underworld’s modus operandi in cases like this was often poisoning” — possibly arsenic, which could be detected decades later.
The authors also suggest that Houdini might have been poisoned by “an experimental serum” injected by one of his doctors at Detroit’s Grace Hospital.
Houdini took the Spiritualists’ death threats seriously, but he traveled without security, often accompanied only by his wife, Bess.
“If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini,” the authors wrote, “it wouldn’t have been very difficult.”
The team working on the exhumation includes internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist who has studied the disinterred remains of gunslinger Jesse James and “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo.
Baden, who chaired panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., pointed out a pair of oddities in Houdini’s death certificate: It noted his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right. And the diagnosis of appendicitis caused by a punch was “very unusual.”
Starrs said he was long familiar with the story of Houdini’s death, and believed the fatal injury was the result of an accident until he read the Houdini biography.
“My eyebrows went up when I read this book,” Starrs said. “I thought, `This is really startling, surprising and unsettling, and at bottom, suspicious in nature.’”
The exhumation plan received support from a surprising source: Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of “medium” Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement’s biggest proponents — and one of Houdini’s enemies.
During a 1924 “seance,” Margery channeled a “spirit” named Walter who greeted Houdini with a threat: “I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life.”
“With people that delusional, you have to question what they’re capable of,’” Thurlow said. “If there’s any circumstantial evidence that Houdini was poisoned, we have to explore that.”
(apologies for the length; Wordpress doesn’t cut nicely like LJ does.)
March 22, 2007
March 20, 2007
yes, the old man has a name
Extra props and snaps and cashew nuts to Boorman for making my talking heads so dang pretty!
Waid stops by the ‘Set on Thursday for a very entertaining and edjumakational (for writers, anyway) interview, so, hang on to your bananas! Or something.
In other news, that coffee Leland made this morning just hasn’t worn off yet…
March 14, 2007
that’s my girl, dawg…
Clean Plate!
Originally uploaded by beetrix.
Now you know where my penchant for a certain kind of cool jewelry comes from…
March 13, 2007
assorted announcements
I know there’s been a bit of dead air around here lately; I haven’t felt very chatty. Usually that only means one thing: I’m deep in thought or hard at work. This time, both. (“Quit bothering me, kid; I’m pondering.” 
)
Anyway, here are a few things that I wanted to share with you all.
First off, go go Gadget ACT-I-VATE! Them cats n’ kittens snagged some insanely great AP coverage that went live today. The whole piece just shines, but of course I get a special glow in my cockles reading Leland namechecked as a “veteran” and seeing his stuff in the gallery. And there’s a little nod to my own crowd of webcomics ruffians, the Chemistry Set. Do check it out.
My next bit ‘o news concerns one of our favorite people, artist and superpeach Rami Efal. 
Rami is another ACT-I-VATE member and worked with my pal Steven Goldman on STYX TAXI and sweet Lady above, do I ever hope to get lucky enough to work with him someday. Not only does he rock the sequentials back n’ forth, he’s an amazing painter, too. And now you can check ‘em out yourself! Rami says:
Through the past two years I have been drawing and paintings to local jazz and blues music spanning Tel Aviv, Tokyo and New York City. Starting March 15th through April 11th 2007, these paintings and drawings will be on display at the Park Slope Tea Lounge in Brooklyn. Come and enjoy a cup of tea or a glass of red wine and view the works. Artwork is for sale and 50% of proceeds will go to Children International in support of impoverished children and those affected by recent floods in central Asia.
A reception will be announced so stay tuned!
Tea Lounge Park Slope @ 837 Union Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues, Brooklyn, NY. Subway: R to Union Street; 2,3 to Grand Army Plaza
March 4, 2007
lazy, pretty sunday
Just finished a tasty, easy Sunday chicken dinner and thought I’d post a few links to my favorite indie jewelry digs, since they’ve been piling up. The Internet is a dangerous place for those of us with the baubles weakness.
First, we’ve got the Valentine’s Day jewelry section of IndieFixx.com. Yes, Valentine’s Day may be over now, but whaddayaknoo… I could shop for it all year.
Then we have Blue-Lulu.com, as seen in the latest issue of N.E.E.T. That scissors necklace keeps callin’ me and callin’ me.
Maize Hutton remains one of my favorite indie jewelry designers. I recently bought one of the vintage inital necklaces (the letter “E”, of course) after admiring them for, oh, about two years. (Whoa! Looks like the price went up considerably. Ah well, it’s way worth it for handcrafted sterling silver work.)
In other news, my days with nary a single Parrish Relics piece are numbered. (An Endicott fave, don’t you know.)
I proudly own one of Ari’s decoupage shell pendants (though none of those what are pictured here — I nabbed my rabbit from her first batch). You can check out more of her lusciousness at The Dreaming Place.
At our last World Fantasy (2005), someone in the dealer’s room brought along a few choice beads from Green Girl Studios. I bought… about half of them? Something like that.
Bethany Cooper has one of the most successful Etsy shops around. It’s not hard to see why (hello, repeat customer, hello).
Ah, the frugal life of a fledgling freelancer being what it is, I really can’t throw down the dough for such things right now, as much as I would like to. However. Next time my ship comes in? Kimberly Baker gets my money. Observe: oooh, lah and lah.
Okay, maybe not all at once. But, y’know.
Speaking of adornment, there is a new tattoo on the horizon… sometime in April. This one will be… harder to hide, shall we say, than the other two.
