It hasn't been a good week.
I'm not talking simply about the elections, although those were pretty brutal; when the closest a party can come to triumphant vindication is Tom Corbett being given his walking papers by the disgusted populace, one is forced to conclude that something went very, very wrong. The IPCC climate report was grim, a Navy SEAL decided to grab some glory and be damned to the rules, the Fourth Circuit did a fine imitation of King Canute commanding the waves, and Joni Ernst, Mia Love, and several other public-spirited citizens will be filling Michelle Bachmann's size 8 Manolos come January.
None of the above was a good thing, even if late night comedians are smacking their lips at the thought of Senator Ernst reading her prized hog-gelding techniques into the Congressional Record. If that weren't enough, I made my own inadvertent contribution to the ugliness by speaking without thinking or doing my homework, and the result was a richly deserved timeout and something of a gut check.
To say that the last few days have been brutal is to speak nothing but the truth.
That's why tonight's diary is short on words and long on visuals. We all need a laugh, something to clear the air and raise our spirits. A good, long, clutch-your-sides-and-gasp-for-breath-before-falling-off-the-Barcalounger-onto-the-nearest-pet-and/or-bowl-of-snack-foods guffaw will do us a world of good, and it is my sincere hope that what lies below the 0.5 Orange Kaiju will serve.
Tonight I bring you not books, but book covers. I know I've done this before, often with excellent results, but this time I'm not just linking to what ten art directors thought was an acceptable way to entice readers to their wares, but actually including the images. Some are reimagined classics, others the crassest sort of exploitation, but all have that certain something that qualifies as Cover Art So Bad It's Good.
Warning: what you are about to see may result in damage to your respiratory system and/or alimentary canal if you're silly enough to be eating or drinking anything. Your pets may be injured, or at least extremely bewildered, if you topple out of your Barcalounger on top of them. Your spouse and family may call the nice young men in their clean white coats to haul you off to McLean Hospital or the nearest equivalent. Your chip & dip set may never be the same.
Yes. Really.
Our first selections tonight are two highly praised, highly popular, highly influential books, both with brand new covers that completely miss the mark:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl - we all know the story of Charlie Bucket, his Grandpa Joe, and their journey through Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. We all know about Oompa-Loompas, Veruca Salt and the squirrels, Augustus Gloop going for a swim in a chocolate river, and "Violet! You're turning violet, Violet!" But am I alone in wondering what hyper-realistic vinyl dolls have to do with this book? Or why Charlie and Willie Wonka (and even Grandpa Joe) have been replaced by the said hyper-realistic vinyl dolls with dead eyes and artificial hair?
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath - Plath's only novel is a grim, almost claustrophic story of a gifted young woman ground down and nearly destroyed by late 50's sexism. A cover that makes it look like yet another ripoff of Helen Fielding or Lauren Weisberger is not only ridiculous, readers expecting a nice fluffy bedtime read would be justified in demanding their money back.
The above two may be inappropriate, but at least alert readers will know that something has gone terribly wrong in the art departments at Penguin and Faber & Faber. But how are we to judge whether the following trio are inappropriate or simply inexplicable relics of a time when cover art was supposed to remind readers of an acid trip?
Our Friends From Frolix 8, by Philip K. Dick - I don't know about you, but my friends usually don't include clones who dye their hair with Kool-Aide and dress like outtakes from black light posters.
Trouble with Lichen, by John Wyndham - What precisely does lichen have to do with blue willow ware dishes? Or splotches of ink floating in water? Or anything except, y'know, trees and cement and maybe some fugitive purple dyes?
The Man with the Strange Head, by Miles J. Breuer - one of my favorite episodes of the old Dick van Dyke Show involved Dick having nightmares about Danny Thomas, walnuts, and aliens with eyes in the backs of their heads. It's hilarious, especially when Mary Tyler Moore lifts her hair and cries, "I seeeee you!", and I've never thought of walnuts in quite the same way. I also very much doubt that it inspired this goofily disturbing cover of what may be a man, or simply Senor Wences in a bald cap.
Then we have titles so bad that it's hard to blame the artists if the cover art is a mess:
Horses' Asteroid, by Charles E. Fritch - one of the least attractive things about SF fandom is the average fan's love of lousy puns. Spider Robinson built his career on them, Reginald Bretnor's "Ferdinand Feghoot" series named an entire genre of "humor," and "Punday Night" contests have been a staple of conventions for years. None of the above excuses this title, which manages to combine borderline vulgarity with speculative fiction in ways that make me want to track down the author and smack him upside the head with a wet fish.
How to Train Goldfish Using Dolphin Training Techniques, by C. Scott Johnson - this slender guide to teaching one's drugstore pet to do loop-the-loops and play "basketball" before their inevitable appointment with the nearest water closet fills a need that the average pet owner never could have foreseen. Even better, it assumes that goldfish, which have brains the size of peas (I think), can and should be trained using the same methods that kept Flipper from massacring his trainers and heading for the open ocean. Fascinating, no?
I usually avoid religious and psychological texts in these diaries, but I'm willing to make an exception:
The Creation of Human Ability, by L. Ron Hubbard - L. Ron Hubbard, the greatest pulp SF writer/religious prophet/screaming lunatic/grifter in literary history, was many things to many people. But who knew he secretly had a fetish for dressing up like a bear while munching on Thanksgiving leftovers?
Finally, we have definitive proof that exploitation is just as prone to attract bad art as the classics:
Sex-Happy Hippie</em>, by "R. N. Elson" (if this is the author's real name I will gladly eat a peck or two of quadrotriticale, tribble scat and all) - I was only a kid in the 60's, but I sure don't remember Freddie Mercury Frank Zappa, as several of you have pointed out, Ben Vereen, a schoolmarm in a captain's hat seemingly stolen from L. Ron Hubbard's "Sea Org," and girls with exceptionally large, exceptionally perky breasts rolling around in a vat of red dye to get their ya-ya's off.
Butcher Shop Swap, by "H.C. Hawkes" (almost certainly not the author's real name) - this forerunner to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems to be about wife swapping, or possibly corpse swapping, or homicidal maniacs disco-dancing, or something. It certainly doesn't make any sense, although the blood spatter is most artistic for a crappy stroke book cover.
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Did you have a terrible week? A mediocre week? A really good week that I just ruine with these covers? Come share the misery, my friends, and let us rejoice that tomorrow is another day....
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