Shoot the Moon Cover and Blurb Preview!

CRAG BANYON: WHEN THE MOON IS HIGH, SO IS HE

Find a missing book. What could be easier? Not so easy when the book is the sacred Gypsy bible and the P.I. hired to track it down is Crag Banyon, for whom "luck" is a four-letter word spelled B-A-D.

The case turns out to be a real page turner, with more thrills, chills and spills than a midnight trip to the men's room of Banyon's favorite watering hole. And closing time has never been so deadly, now that a mysterious four-legged figure has set its sights on one particular hapless investigator whose knack for figuring out plot twists and polishing off cocktails has gotten him banned from every church book club in the tri-city area.

Why are the latest murderous rampages to terrorize the town exquisitely timed to fall between the rising and setting of the moon, and what does it all have to do with a leggy Gypsy dame, a gaggle of Gypsy hags, their AWOL Gypsy king, and the musty misplaced manuscript that holds all their tribe's deepest, darkest secrets? That's for Crag Banyon to find out, assuming he doesn't lose interest or get slaughtered before either the last page or the check clears.

RATES COMMENSURATE

Critical Blast

Critical Blast.  No, not a new Destroyer title. It's the name of a website which "is dedicated to delivering news, reviews, opinions and interviews from the field of entertainment and pop culture."  One of the contributors is Destroyer fan and book reviewer R.J. Carter.
Many of his Destroyer articles appeared in The-Trades. Unfortunately, the site's owners decided to stop running it, so that site is now defunct. But R.J. and some of the other contributors got together and started Critical Review. Go check it out and "like" the site's Facebook page as well.
Fortunately, R.J. managed to save some Destroyer and Legacy reviews and interviews, including this one with Warren Murphy and James Mullaney.

Red on the Menu now available

The Red Menace #5: Red on the Menu, is now available from Amazon and also on Smashwords for epub, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb,  txt and html.

HOLD THE PICKLE, HOLD THE HOMICIDE!

Something fishy is going on at famous Franklin Morrow's Restaurants. Why is the most successful chain of eateries in the U.S. suddenly catering to the murder and mayhem crowd, and who exactly is the mysterious man in the ten gallon hat with an all-you-can eat appetite for death and destruction?

All signs point to something big and bad being served up soon, but the CIA, FBI and Pentagon are all out to lunch, leaving only one of America's intelligence agencies to chew around the edges of a vast and horrifying terror plot.

When one body too many surfaces, MIC Director Simon Kirk has finally had a bellyful of bad bistro news and decides that someone is in need of some just desserts. And, of course, who else but Podge Becket and the brilliant Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright would be dispatched to act as the ultimate antacid?

As always, how does America spell relief? R-E-D M-E-N-A-C-E!

BREAKING DESTROYER MOVIE NEWS:

SHANE BLACK TO DIRECT “THE DESTROYER” FOR SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT, ATLAS ENTERTAINMENT, AND CURRENTENTERTAINMENT TO PRODUCE

Jim Uhls & James Mullaney Penning the Screenplay Based On the Long-Running Book Series

LOS ANGELES, CA, AUGUST 21, 2014 – Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today Shane Black will direct the film adaptation of the popular adventure book series THE DESTROYER by Warren Murphy. Penning the screenplay are Jim Uhls (Fight Club) and James Mullaney; Mullaney co-authored and became the sole writer of THE DESTROYER until the series’ end in 2008. Charles Roven, Steven Chasman, and Andy Horwitz will produce. Michael De Luca and Lauren Abrahams will oversee for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

THE DESTROYER is based on the series of paperback novels in which Newark cop Remo Williams is framed, sentenced to death, then resurrected following a botched execution.  The reason?  To serve as enforcement arm for CURE, a top-secret, extra-Constitutional arm of the U.S. government.  Along with a seemingly ageless – and often hilarious – Asian assassin known only as Chiun, Williams sets out to "clean up" and take out those who oppose America’s interests.  The surprisingly-heartfelt stories combine edgy old-school suspense with Eastern mysticism to produce unique, rapid-fire capers full of slick banter, social satire, and sudden violence.

“Shane has been a fan of the original DESTROYER book series since its inception and he has an incredible vision for this film. Atlas couldn’t be more fortunate to be working with this talented director on this material,” said Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment. “The narrative Jim and James have created is incredibly rich and while it’s a story rooted in adventure, it is also very much character driven.”
“The Destroyer is a two-fisted classic and deserves no less than the genius of Shane Black,” said Michael De Luca, president of Production for Columbia Pictures.“We couldn't be more excited about his vision for this character.”
Shane Black is currently attached to co-write and direct DOC SAVAGE, based on the hero of pulp novels, films, and comic books, for Columbia Pictures.  Black most recently wrote and directed IRON MAN 3, which became the fifth highest grossing film of all time worldwide. He began his career in screenwriting, making his mark with LETHAL WEAPON and collaborating on its sequel. Black’s directorial debut came in 2005 with his critically acclaimed KISS KISS BANG BANG starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer.

Jim Uhls is best known for having written the screenplay for the classic film FIGHT CLUB directed by David Fincher. Subsequently he has written a number of films and television shows, having worked with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Doug Liman, and Shane Black, to name a few. Jim began his career as an original member of The Actors Gang when it was founded at UCLA.

James Mullaney is a Shamus Award-nominated novelist who has written 37 books, as well as comics and short stories. He is author of the Red Menaceseries of spy thrillers and the comic-fantasy-noir Crag Banyon Mysteries detective series.

Black is represented by WME and David Greenblatt of GreenLit Creative. Uhls is represented by Paradigmand Anonymous Content. Mullaney is represented by David Greenblatt as well.

ABOUT SONY PICTURES:

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE's global operations encompass motion picture production, acquisition and distribution; television production, acquisition and distribution; television networks; digital content creation and distribution; operation of studio facilities; and development of new entertainment products, services and technologies. For additional information, go to http://www.sonypictures.com.

ABOUT ATLAS ENTERTAINMENT:

Atlas Entertainment, led by founder Charles Roven, produces blockbuster films as well as critically acclaimed features. Atlas Entertainment’s films have generated billions of dollars in revenues. Atlas is currently in production on the highly anticipated feature film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for Warner Bros directed by Zack Snyder set for release on March 25, 2016. Also upcoming, Atlas Entertainment is in post-production on Duncan Jones’ Warcraft from Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures with a March 11, 2016 release. Atlas Entertainment is also filming the SYFY series 12 Monkeys, a drama series based on the 1995 Universal Pictures film directed by Terry Gilliam and produced by Charles Roven’s Atlas Entertainment, slated to premiere January 2015. The Atlas team most recently collaborated with David O. Russell on the critically acclaimed box office hit American Hustle which has grossed more than 250 million dollars in world wide box-office.  Among its many accolades, the film won 3 BAFTA awards, was nominated for 10 Academy Awards ® including a Best Picture nomination for Atlas’ producers Charles Roven and Richard Suckle.  It also received seven Golden Globe® nominations, winning 3 including Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical.

ABOUT CURRENT ENTERTAINMENT:

Current Entertainment, founded by Steven Chasman, has specialized in producing cutting edge action films.  Chasman’s latest production Wild Card, based on the screenplay and novel Heat written by Academy Award-winner William Goldman, and starring Jason Statham, Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis and Sofia Vergara, will be released worldwide in the first quarter 2015.  Chasman and Current Entertainment have also produced a number of films with Luc Besson, including the highly successful Transporter Trilogy starring Statham, the Jet Li-starring films Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed, and Taxi starring Jimmy Fallon.  Some of Current Entertainment's other productions include: Taylor Hackford-directed Parker based on the series of novels by Donald Westlake, which starred Statham, Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte, Blitz based on the novel by KenBruen, Killer Elite based on the true story written by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, starring Statham, Robert De Niro and Clive Owen, and alongside Charles Roven/Atlas Entertainment, Roger Donaldson’s critically acclaimed The Bank Job, starring Statham and based on the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery.

Thanks to Randy Johnson for his review of Flying Blind.

Randy's Blog: Not the Baseball Pitcher

And the review on Amazon is HERE

If this review gets you interested in Banyon, please follow Randy's lead and review the books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or anyplace you can get the word out. Reviews help sales and keep a poor writer in gin and printer ink.

It's here! The sixth Crag Banyon Mystery, Flying Blind, is now live on Amazon's Kindle:

The last Banyon will soon be joined by the next Banyon (Flying Blind). While you wait for the next one, pick up your copy of the previous one. There's a leprechaun, a plucky girl reporter, and a river of booze.

 

Personal Stuff

I don't write about personal stuff online. Sharing details of my life with the world isn't my bag, baby. But I'm making an exception here because it might be important for someone who might stumble upon this post. More on that in a minute.

About a month ago, my mother started acting a little goofy. Just small things, but over the course of a few days they added up to a pattern. You've all probably heard that a urinary tract infection can cause clouded thinking, slurred speech, etc. We hadn't. She was put on the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin. Way down the list of side effects is a long list of psychiatric side effects. My mom got the works: hallucinations, anxiety, depression, depersonalization...a half dozen more. She basically went nuts. She was hospitalized for two weeks. Nearly every doctor was worthless. Some, in fact, made her worse. They began looking for stuff it wasn't, and a lumbar puncture left her unable to walk and she wound up with pneumonia. The reason for her sudden behavior change was simple to us, because we did the research. She had gone from common UTI symptoms and then took six hits of acid.

I'll be writing a lot more about this at some point in the future, because the details will appall you, but I'm writing this Reader's Digest version now because maybe somebody out there right now -- this very morning -- is going through what we went through this past month.

For nearly a month, my mother has had something people online very accurately refer to as "brain fog." She'd answer questions, but she wasn't all there. On a good day, half her brain was with us, but the other half was somewhere beyond Neptune. Thank God during this time we met two people whose mothers had the exact same reaction to Cipro. They told us the fog would last about a month and that it'd take two months for it to completely clear. No doctor told us this. On Thursday, my mom's head began to clear. This was 25 days after her last Ciprofloxacin pill. By Thursday night, she was maybe 90% herself again. We were worried that she'd drop back into the fog the next day, because that can and may yet happen. She didn't, and she hasn't, and she's remained alert and herself since Thursday. She's smiling again, cracking wise, and she engages in conversations rather than stares at the wall like a zombie.

Like I said, I'll be writing more about this later on. (You'll especially love the part about the doctor who casually assured us very early on Thursday morning -- the very day my mom woke up and finally broke through the fog -- that she wasn't getting better, that she was in fact getting worse, and that she'd be dead in six to eight months. I carry around a list of Cipro's psychiatric side effects in my wallet now, and when I tried to show them to this moron he wouldn't even read them.) I'm writing this now because online research was only semi-helpful. What helped most of all were the two people we met who told us that the exact same thing happened to their mothers on this drug and that it would take a month for the brain fog to clear, and another month to get back to normal.

I don't tell people to share my posts, but this one might be a good one because who knows? Maybe somebody on your list or somebody on their list or somebody on somebody else's list you don't even know is right now going through what we went through, with unhelpful doctors ignoring documented side effects and equally unhelpful Internet Web sites that shriek "CIPRO IS POISON!" It's not. It's medicine that works well for most people. But when it doesn't work...brother, it don't work. But for those of you out there right now whose loved ones are in the .1 to 1% who've won this rare, terrible side-effects lottery: give it a month. As terrible as it is, it does get better.

Red on the Menu Blurb:

I've been unexpectedly delayed completing The Red Menace #5, Red on the Menu, but I managed today to carve out a few minutes for the back cover blurb:

HOLD THE PICKLE, HOLD THE HOMICIDE!

Something fishy is going on at famous Franklin Morrow's Restaurants. Why is the most successful chain of eateries in the U.S. suddenly catering to the murder and mayhem crowd, and who exactly is the mysterious man in the ten gallon hat with an all-you-can eat appetite for death and destruction?

All signs point to something big and bad being served up soon, but the CIA, FBI and Pentagon are all out to lunch, leaving only one of America's intelligence agencies to chew around the edges of a vast and horrifying terror plot.

When one body too many surfaces, MIC Director Simon Kirk has finally had a bellyful of bad bistro news and decides that someone is in need of some just desserts. And, of course, who else but Podge Becket and the brilliant Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright would be dispatched to act as the ultimate antacid?

As always, how does America spell relief? R-E-D M-E-N-A-C-E!

Late Night TV Hosts

Everybody talks about all these late night TV hosts like they aren't awful. Well, they are. All of them for the past twenty-plus years were and are terrible, except one. The one exception gets very little notice and is laugh out loud funny, and if I were an insomniac or a maniac with a fetish for pantomime horses I would watch him every night. Craig Ferguson is easily the #1 guy in late night. He can make me laugh while the others can't even get me to smile.

More than halfway through writing the latest Red Menace, "Red on the Menu." Just read a line of dialogue I forgot I wrote while exhausted late last night that made me laugh out loud, which is always a nice surprise. If you aren't yet acquainted with the Red Menace, what's wrong with you? Any of the books will do for a start. Here's a good one: 

A Red Letter Day (The Red Menace #4)

New Review for Sea No Evil

Thanks, Julia Hopkinson, for your review of Sea No Evil at Readers' Favorites.

On Sale at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords

Importance of Reviews

I just wrote a great big February newsletter filling in subscribers on the importance of Amazon reviews. I figured The Red Menace and Crag Banyon pages would be the best place to find the biggest fans. I'll post this to both pages.

In a nutshell, Amazon reviews make or break a series. You might think that books from your favorite authors will keep going on without your help. They might not. This isn't the old days, with series books clogging the shelves of the corner bookstore. A couple of minutes of your time over on Amazon could mean the difference between life and death for The Red Menace and Crag Banyon. It really is that simple.

If you've read and enjoyed only the most recent books -- A Red Letter Day or Bum Luck -- or just the first books in each series -- Red and Buried or One Horse Open Slay -- it doesn't matter. Review one book, review them all. Obviously I'd prefer all, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. I need your help, folks, and so do Podge Becket & Dr. Wainwright and Banyon, Mannix, Doris and all the rest. If you wait, you'll forget, do it now. Thanks in advance.

Thanks to K.S. Brooks and the folks at Indies Unlimited for featuring my latest Banyon Mystery, Bum Luck, in their Fun Titles for February post.

Bum Luck Cover

The cover of Bum Luck (the Crag Banyon Mysteries #5) is finished.  Thanks for the great job, Micah Birchfield:

Bum Luck (A Crag Banyon Mystery #5)

For you Banyon fans out there, a quick update. The fifth Crag Banyon Mystery, Bum Luck, is ready to go and is only awaiting final work on the cover art. Once that's ready, we'll be good to go. In the meantime, Banyon #6 -- as yet untitled -- is nearly finished. Then on to the next big project.

There will never be enough time in this life to write all the stuff I want to write.

I just read a very questionable statistic that claimed an average adult laughs 15 times a day while a kid laughs 400 times. Maybe. If that kid is wearing greasepaint and trying to take over Gotham City.

Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "The Changeling"

This week's Star Trek episode is a result of a tear in the space-time continuum through which the script to Star Trek: The Movie fell backwards ten years and was turned into a cheap 1960s TV show.  Either that or the movie people just copied the same exact plot ten years later in 1978 and threw 50 million bucks worth of movie lipstick on an aging, anorexic TV pig.  (No, not Uhura.  I said "anorexic.")

We learn at the start of the show that four billion people have been killed in a star system, and the near total apathy of the bridge crew suggests that they didn't really like those four billion people all that much.  I mean, it's not like one of those four billion people was Chekov or somebody whose death always makes Kirk sit up and take notice every time he's killed.  Maybe those four billion people kept Kirk's Frisbee when he threw it in their solar system when he was a kid, or maybe they played their music so loud they kept everyone else up in the Milky Way all night long.  So good riddance, four billion anonymous people.  I'm sure you were all guilty of something.

After not caring that four billion people are dead at a writer's whim, a green blob suddenly flies at the Enterprise and everyone starts falling all over the bridge because it still hasn't occurred to anybody to install seat belts.  All they've got is that little fence running around the bridge that everyone is always falling into and grabbing onto, and I wonder if Starfleet has to put up a disclaimer about chipped teeth like those security bars in parking lot traveling carnival roller coasters.  The janitor must have to come in after every alien encounter with a huge mop like those kids use in supermarket aisles to sweep up Sulu's teeth.

Spock says the energy attack of the green blob was equal to 90 photon torpedoes.  The Enterprise is usually bouncing back and forth with panels exploding and smoke coming out the computer consoles with only one or two photo torpedo hits, so I'd think 90 would leave nothing but a crater in space where Shatner's ego used to be. 

The Enterprise's shields are down to 20% and Spock says that they can withstand three more such attacks.  I'm not the best mathematician in the galaxy or a great big super-brain like Spock, but let me have a dummy human whirl at this.

1 energy blob = 90 photon torpedoes and resulted in an 80% loss to the shields.

3 more energy blobs = 270 photon torpedoes and would result in another 240% loss in the shields.

Since you'd only need 101% total green blob energy -- 100% to collapse the shields, 1% to blow up the ship -- by my back-of-the-matchbook calculations, 1 more energy blob would be sufficient to destroy the Enterprise completely with 59% green blob energy left over to vaporize Kirk's toupee just in case he panics and tries launching it out an escape hatch at the last second.

Spock is pretty much as good at ciphering as TV contemporary Jethro Bodine.

The Enterprise fires a torpedo at the thing that shot at them, and Kirk is stunned when it is able to absorb all that energy.  Hey, Captain Genius, your ship just absorbed ninety times that much energy.  Or maybe he's distracted because he's still trying to do Spock's complicated "goes-into-ing" in his head.  Naught, naught, carry the naught...

Kirk finally decides to try to talk to the thing that killed four billion (I'm sorry, vaporized corpses, I just yawned) people, that just tried to kill them, and which he's just tried to blow up.  I'd think saying "hello" would be pretty much the first thing you'd try to do every time you met something new up there in the great unknown of space, although I suppose as a diplomatic gesture trying to blow the hell out everything first works too.

The thing that just tried to kill them agrees to beam aboard the Enterprise, and everyone is so distracted that nobody but me notices that the actor extra in the transporter room wearing the red shirt is the same extra who was up on the bridge a little while ago wearing a blue shirt.  Maybe he spilled mustard on his red shirt.

The thing that killed four billion people (sorry...yawned again) and tried to blow up the Enterprise is a tin gas can with a trash compactor on top.  I guess it must have set those four billion people on fire then ground them up.  I hope none of the four billion people put a spoon down it, because Kirk will have to call a plumber, and they charge a fortune for space calls. 

The special effects team really went above and beyond the call of duty with the ultra-realistic string that floats the alien device off the transporter deck and bounces it around the ship.

The Enterprise senior officers all seem pretty surprised that the thing can move around.  I'm not, since I'm apparently the only one who remembers that two seconds ago the thing was outside flying at warp 15 on a friggin' string.

The thing is called Nomad, it was launched from Earth in the early 2000s and was subsequently damaged and then repaired with alien technology that corrupted its original programming and is now traveling back to Earth to find its creator while in the meantime it's whiling away all those boring in-between hours in space by killing biological infestations.

Don't confuse this with V'ger from Star Trek: The Movie, which was launched from Earth in the late 1900s and was subsequently damaged and then repaired with alien technology that corrupted its original programming and will be traveling back to Earth to find its creator while in the meantime it will while away all those boring in-between hours in space by killing biological infestations.  That time will be much different because it'll be ten years later, 50 million bucks richer and there'll be a bald chick.

Gee, I hope Spock logs all the files on this Nomad encounter in the right spot in the computer, because you wouldn't want to mix up these once-in-a-lifetime alien encounters.

Stop being a better actor than me!

The brilliant machine is so stupid it thinks Kirk is its creator, a guy who in an incredible coincidence just happened to have been called Dunkirk or Poonkirk or SomeotherKirk.  Isn't it amazingly serendipitous that it just so happens that first syllable was erased in whatever -- (possibly a spoon, the jury is still out) -- it is that damaged Nomad?  Isn't it also unbelievably good fortune that the guy who beeps once for yes and twice for no isn't still the captain of the Enterprise?  Figure the odds, Spock.  No, wait, we don't have time to wait for you to take off your shoes to do all that highly advanced ciphering.

Uhura turns on the intercom and starts subjecting the entire ship to her singing.  I'm not kidding.  So if some bored crewman down on Z deck feels like broadcasting fart noises to the whole ship, he can do so just by flipping a switch.  It would also sound better than Uhura's singing.

Nomad hears Uhura shrieking over all the loudspeakers and floats out the door on its string to see who is skinning live cats.  It floats up to the bridge where it sends a blue beam into Uhura's face and gets her to stop singing.  If Nomad can get her to never fan dance again, he'll be my favorite floating tin bucket with a trash compactor on it in the whole wide world. 

V'ger -- oops, I mean Nomad -- kills Scotty, and medical man Bones stands over the body and announces, "He's dead, Jim."  I'd say he's the crummiest doctor in the universe since he doesn't even make any attempt whatsoever to revive him, but simple CPR was probably disinvented somewhere in the 22nd century, so that makes Bones not an incompetent quack I wouldn't trust to put on a Band-Aid.

Nomad says it can fix Ilia...oops, I mean Scotty.  All it needs is some crackers with anatomy books on them and a cheddar cheese scalpel.

It fixes Scotty just by bouncing around on its string next to his bed in sickbay.  It doesn't even send out a beam or a tumescent antenna like it did an embarrassing few minutes ago when it was tracking down Uhura.

Once Scotty is alive again -- no thanks to the ship's chief surgeon who was afraid to perform the kiss of life because it'd make him look gay in front of Sulu --  they tell Nomad to fix Uhura.  It says it can't fix her because her brain was wiped clean, so Spock says they can reeducate her and Bones plasters on that disturbing wax smile that always looks like he's trying to grin his way through a proctological exam.  I'm glad the compassionate doctor is so happy that Uhura's entire memory -- which would include her family, friends, and every life experience to date -- was washed away like a wet sponge across a blackboard.  Hey, just as long as it's not you it's A-okay, right, Albert Schweitzer?

Two minutes later Uhura is somehow already reading at a kindergarten level, and Bones and the homely nurse laugh when she mispronounces "blue."  And the compassion train just rolls on and on in Dr. Mengele's Zany Ztarship Zickbay.

Spock does a mind-meld with the garbage disposal top part of Nomad and figures out that Nomad was originally supposed to sterilize dirt samples but has decided to branch out to include people.  Personally, once I got it to lower its shields I'd have chopped it up with an ax, but feeling it up is okay too, I guess. 

Spock also is able to find out Nomad's history and how it was rebuilt after it was damaged when it joined with an alien probe.  Okay, I can accept that a small pile of scrap metal can travel at warp 15, that it can wipe out entire planets and send out photon torpedoes that are 90 times more powerful than those on the Enterprise even though there is no evidence of any kind of rocket launcher out of the thing's tin bucket, and that it can perform CPR without ever leaving its string, but how is it that Spock can read the computer records in its own garbage disposal head when it can't access those exact same records?  I'm starting to think they maybe didn't think this episode through clearly.  Gosh, I hope they do a big screen remake one day that fills in all the blanks.  (Also that costs millions of dollars more, is as boring as watching snail races on CBS, and that Scotty won't die in that version and will have a mustache.  That would be sweet.)

Nomad punches out the homely nurse, zaps a couple of red shirts, and goes to engineering, which is so modern that it is run entirely with Lite Brites and plastic bowling balls.  I think it's going to gas everybody on the ship or something.  Who cares?

Kirk tells Nomad that he is a biological unit.  Nomad's entire raison d'etre is killing living things and it didn't bother to check Kirk's pulse?  What adorable innocence in a probe that's killed at least four billion people.

Kirk tells Funnybot that everything that is in error must be destroyed and that Nomad was in error, so Nomad naturally starts smoking like an ashtray at a Dean Martin celebrity roast and Kirk and Spock toss it out the window where it blows up.

At the end, we learn that Uhura is already back to college level and will be back on the job in a week.  Apparently reeducation is a snap for a gal who has nothing on her brain but "hailing frequency open, captain" and pie.  Too bad she'll call the cops on her parents when they show up at her apartment unannounced on Christmas because she'll have no memory whatsoever of them.

Goofball Review of Goofball Star Trek Episode "Amok Time"

At the start of this week's Star Trek, Kirk and Bones are trying to figure out why the Enterprise just got a million dollar phone bill for one of those sexy logic-talk chat lines and why the ship's computer hard drive is loaded up with Vulcan porn.

The homely nurse sees them in the hallway and tells them she's made Spock some pumice soup, since he's spending all his time moaning in his quarters lately for some mysterious reason.  He's also developed acne, gotten all moody, his voice is changing, and he is awkward around girls, but no one can figure out what could possibly be ailing the Vulcan hornball.

Spock has a temper tantrum and throws the soup and the homely nurse out into the hallway, yelling that she can't even cook, which means she has absolutely nothing going for her.  He also tells Kirk that he's a fat, fat fatty, says he hates living on the Enterprise, tells Bones he's a stupid-face, and slams his bedroom door so hard he knocks Great Aunt Tillie's picture in the silver frame off the credenza.

Our little Vulcan is growing up.

Bones says Spock will die if he doesn't get some.  Forget everything bad I've ever said about him: Bones is the best doctor ever.

Chekov's wig looks like it was stitched together using live rats by blind maniacs in a Peruvian insane asylum, but it's still more realistic than his Russian accent.

Spock tells Kirk that he's going through something called "Poon-Fart," which is a special time in a young Vulcan's life when he is ruled by his underpants, and that he's so far gone even the ship's Quasimodo nurse is starting to look not half-bad.  He says marriage is the only way to not go crazy and die, so he must go back to Vulcan and -- employing a 1960s TV euphemism to keep the censors happy -- "take a wife."  Obviously Spock is a lot more naive than we thought, since every guy knows the best way to not "take a wife" ever again is to get married.

I notice that during his whole big Poon-Fart explanation to Kirk, Spock has herpes on his lip, so he's apparently "taken a wife" in at least one spaceport already.

The Enterprise is due at some big ceremony on the other side of the galaxy, but if there's one thing James T. Kirk appreciates more than duty it's some good, old-fashioned alien screwing, so he risks his career in order to change course to fly his randy first officer to the nearest Vulcan whorehouse.

At Vulcan, a dame called Titring appears on the monitor and Spock says she's his wife, so Kirk wasted all that gas, will probably get fired by his boss at Starfleet, and now won't even get sloppy seconds at an alien bachelor party, which is pretty much the only reason he flew all the way out there.

Kirk, Spock and Bones beam down to the plywood Vulcan Stonehenge and Spock bangs a dinner gong which is the start of a ceremony called "Canuck Colored Feet."

Apparently Spock isn't technically married to Titring yet, so they must be like one of those couples on Judge Judy who have five kids and have lived together for ten years but never bothered with the piece of paper.  "We don't like to define what we've got, so stop imposing your, like, rules on us, man."

Titring stops the Canuck Colored Feet wedding ceremony because she's been two-timing Spock with a guy with even bigger ears and a Mercedes.  The Vulcan high priestess who was carried in on two sticks by a bunch of gay Vulcan strippers says Spock is in a blood fever called "Plaque Tower," which is pretty much the Earth equivalent of what a guy feels like when he learns his wife is running off with the garage door repairman.

Titring is eyeballing her big-eared paramour, who is wearing a tinfoil apron, a crocheted Dr. Who scarf around his waist and whose name is Stun.  Stun demands to fight Spock, because the men in a purely logical race naturally decide who gets the broad by beating the hell out of each other. 

The old lady priestess hollers and Spock gets a pretty purple scarf tied around his waist.  These people are somehow heralded far and wide as smart and logical even though everything they do is stupid and makes no sense.

Titring chooses Kirk to be her champion to fight Spock because...oh, who cares?  Cut!  Bring in the doubles!

Kirk's and Spock's stunt doubles fight with stick weapons that look like a flattened, sharpened hubcap on one end and part of a punching bag on the other.  The weapons are apparently effective for the sole purpose of ripping Kirk's shirt in the first two seconds of the fight.

 Captain, no means NO!

Spock is so out of his mind with rage over the garage door repairman nailing his fiancee that he nearly murders his innocent best friend.  Hey, somebody check a Vulcan dictionary.  Maybe all these years "logical" has actually meant "retarded."       

The fight to the death is stopped briefly so that Bones can give Kirk an injection that isn't mysterious at all, so don't pay any attention to it.  Also, Spock and Kirk are each given a pair of suspenders to fight with by a guy in a football helmet and tinfoil apron.

Spock's suspenders break the dinner gong, so no delicious pumice soup for the field hands tonight.

Spock shoves Kirk into an artificial barbecue pit and for a few seconds all of Vulcan smells like a pig roast, then he strangles him with his suspenders.

If Vulcan is so hot and the air is so thin, shouldn't the temperature and extra oxygen back on the Enterprise make Spock freeze and high all the time?

Bones pronounces Kirk dead, which is funny because I could have sworn he was in all the movies.  It must have been some other fat guy in a wig.  I always thought Kirk looked a little like that guy T.J. Hooker, so maybe they hired him.

Titring explains why she set this whole thing up, the upshot being that she's a two-timing whore. 

Spock calls Titring a logical slut.  Not exactly in those words, that's the Cliff's Notes version. 

Spock tells off Stun over Titring, telling him that having something isn't the same as wanting it.  I figure Stun will find that out himself when she's nagging his big ears off about not making enough money at the tinfoil apron store and then goes out and hires a garage door repairman who mysteriously takes three months to hang the only door in their one-stall garage.

Up on the Enterprise, Spock is so happy to find that Kirk isn't dead after all that he shouts "Jim!" and jumps up and down on the bed like the Hobbits at the end of The Return of the King.  Then he clams up and gets all cigar store-Indian again.

Bones says the injection he gave Kirk to help in the fight was actually a mickey that knocked him out, which is a brilliant idea except for the fact that Spock was a rampaging maniac at the time with several times the strength of an ordinary human and McCoy's genius idea was to make it so Kirk couldn't fight back.  No, nothing could go wrong with that plan.  I take back what I took back up top about Bones' doctoring skills.

The Enterprise flies off into the sunset having learned the valuable lesson that apparently all they have to do to help Spock the next time he gets horned up is let him murder somebody, which is the main theme of Dating Tips for Vulcans by Ted Bundy.

Reviews

Thanks to Tractor45 for the great review of A Red Letter Day, The Red Menace #4. What more can a writer say about a review that ends with a line like that other than thank you?