Journal of No. 118

The one-and-only richardabecker kindly sent me this book some weeks back, and I finally got around to it. Set primarily in 1920's San Francisco, the book takes Carter the Great, the death of President Harding, and a somewhat silly MacGuffin, and mooshes them into a pulpy action-mystery with stage magic, escape artistry, Feds, thugs, pirates and a thousand elephants (well, one or two).
Definitely a fun book, and lots of interesting detail on the stage magic of the day. The MacGuffininess of the MacGuffin and some of the other elements of the uberplot are a little hard to swallow, but if you leap into it with two pulpy fists swinging, err... eyes reading? then that won't bother you too much.
Makes a good fictional counterpart to Hiding the Elephant, which I adored.

Oh, and I kicked ass at the office football pool this week. I picked 13 of 14 games. If the spread made each choice 50/50, then the probability of doing that at random is 0.0854492188%.

The LA Opera is selling costumes on Saturday:

"Pieces for sale will include everything ranging from complete “merry peasant” and “medieval courtier” costumes to individual pieces such as capes, hats, shoes and fans."

I seem to be posting like crazy today, but this one's at least in a good cause. I've updated my DonorsChoose list of projects to aid classrooms:

Check it out.

The "Classic Graphic Novels for Middle School Students" project looks more like they'll sit on a shelf rather than be part of the curriculum, but it would put two copies of "Graphic Classics, Volume 10: Horror Classics Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith" within a few feet of small children!

Other projects put Bram Stoker, HG Wells, or Greek mythology in the classrooms. Art boards for sketching downtown LA, croquet sets for physics... I can satisfy all your giving needs. Or if I can't, you can search the site for projects you like even more.