I start off on a sad note today. Mickey Spillane’s widow Jane lost her mother over the weekend. Ethel was a strong Southern gal who went toe to toe with Mickey, who loved her dearly. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jane.

People always ask me, the day after, how I liked the Academy Awards show (much as they do with the Super Bowl). The last time I sat through that long evening was at a public event in Des Moines the year that ROAD TO PERDITION was nominated for a bunch of Oscars. What I usually do is record the marathon, then zip through on fast-forward looking for good parts. I had heard that all of the James Bonds would be on stage together as part of a 50 Years of 007 celebration. So that was my main reason for recording the thing.

As a STAR TREK fan, I stopped to watch the over-long but fitfully entertaining opening with Shatner as Kirk coming back in time to prevent a disaster of a show due to Seth MacFarlane’s tastelessness. I don’t follow MacFalane’s shows, and skipped his movie TED, but he was pretty good on SNL a while back. The opening was so endless that they skipped Shatner at the punchline. Later, the Bond tribute, introduced by a stunning Halle Berry, offered up not a single Bond (apparently Brosnan, understandably bitter about getting kicked off the series he saved, had refused to participate). But Shirley Bassey brought the superstar crowd to its feet with “Goldfinger” – a song co-written by the unjustly forgotten Anthony Newley, who is one of my heroes.

Barbra Streisand made a surprise appearance (it surprised me, anyway) to sing “The Way We Were” in tribute to the late Marvin Hamlisch, at the end of the In Memoriam reel. Shamefully, Andy Griffith was left out. Richard Zanuck rated a nice moment, with him on screen insisting that the most important thing about a film was “the story, not the script, the story.” This is from the man who, with his son, read ROAD TO PERDITION and recognized its potential. R.I.P, Mr. Zanuck – I owe you much.

There were other fun moments that I stopped to take in, acceptance speeches here and there (in particular Christof Waltz, Quentin Tarantino, and Daniel Day Lewis), Adele singing “Skyfall” (but so upstaged by Shirley Bassey), and it was nice that in a year of unusually good films that the awards got passed around a little bit. And the winners were unusually gracious to fellow nominees. Everybody reading this probably knows I am an Obama man, and usually adore Michelle, but the First Lady giving out the Best Picture Oscar came off weird and gratuitous. The sock puppet (you read right) version of “Flight” was, by the way, much more entertaining that the actual film, which was a lousy, poorly paced Made-for-TV movie about substance abuse, designed to give Denzel Washington an Oscar-worthy part. By the way, has any actor as good as Denzel Washington ever made so many dreadful films?

While the Academy Awards were recording, Barb and I watched Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris in the 1978 adventure movie THE WILD GEESE. We’d never seen it before, and it was terrific. At a theater this week, we took in SNITCH, a very uneven crime film in which nobody seemed worth rooting for. We also watched the last season (three movies) of the great MORSE follow-up LEWIS, on DVD from Britain. As you may gather, I had a fairly lazy weekend.

The blog tour for SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT appears to be winding down. I have an article to write today for the Playboy site, Smoking Jacket, about controversial comics. My Huff post piece on the same topic, with 10 controversial covers, should be up some time this week. So will any number of interviews I’ve done.

Reviews, mostly very favorable, have been rolling in for SEDUCTION. Check out this Book Reporter rave.

And here’s another great one at Fearnet.

Another fine one popped up at The Book Bag.

Comic Hype has this review.

Here’s one from Cult Geek. I love that younger reviewers, at hip cites like this, are digging the book.

Same goes for this review at Geek Hardshow.

And this fun one from (wonderful blog title) Just a Guy That Likes to Read. I wonder if any porn review site out there is called Just a Guy That Likes to…never mind.

Comics Crux has this write-up.

The very interesting, unusual site Noir Whale looks at SEDUCTION in some depth. Cool approach.

Then there are the interviews. I have endeavored to repeat myself as little as possible. Helping me toward that goal are the interviewers, who have come up with their own takes on the book and their own approaches – they are the saving grace of all my yammering.

Here’s one from Comic Book Movie, and if you scroll down to look at the comments, you’ll learn that I appear to resemble Elton John (no, really?) and that I should play “Doc Ock” in the next Spider-Man Movie. Having bought every issue of Ditko’s SPIDERMAN off the stands back in the ‘60s, I am flattered.

Here’s another interview, this one at Gamma Squad.

And a somewhat horror-themed interview at Dread Central.

Here’s another at Terrible Minds.

And now a change of pace – Woody Haut looks at BYE BYE, BABY and TARGET LANCER. He has to strain himself working his suspension-of-disbelief muscle (poor baby), but he seems to like both of ‘em.

And now my favorite web appearance of the week. At the Writing Reader, the first sentence of a novel of mine has been chosen the First Line of the Week. Please check this one out – I’m making you go there to find out what it is.

M.A.C.

Tags: Bye Bye Baby, Interviews, Jack and Maggie Starr, Nathan Heller, Reviews, Seduction of the Innocent book, Target Lancer