PICK YOUR BRAIN WITH THIS NUKE WAVE/UK PUNK RARITY -- CLASS OF 1980.
PIC INFO: Spotlight on a great shot of Mike "Clay" Stone, producer, founder of Clay Records (label & record shop), and pretty much the man who bankrolled DISCHARGE into the future of UK punk and beyond, photographed alongside vocalist/lyricist Kelvin "Cal" Morris, Stoke-on-Trent, UK, c. early 1980.
PIC #2: Another shot of Mike Stone with Cal Morris, Stoke on Trent, UK, c. mid 1980s.
That Man Bolt will be released on Blu-ray on February 7 via Kino Lorber. The 1973 blaxploitation action film comes with a slipcover featuring alternate artwork.
Henry Levin (Journey to the Center of the Earth) and David Lowell Rich (The Concorde... Airport '79) direct from a script by Ranald MacDougall (Cleopatra) and Charles Eric Johnson (Hammer). Fred Williamson stars.
That Man Bolt has been newly mastered in 2K from an interpositive. Special features are listed below.
Special features:
Interview with actor Fred Williamson (new)
Theatrical trailer
Fred Williamson is That Man Bolt—the highest-flying, toughest-talking, hardest-hitting dude the world has ever faced. When you need a real man of steel, martial arts expert Jefferson Bolt is the high-priced pick for the job.
Bolt's latest client, a mysterious British man with a cool million in cash, has an offer Bolt can't refuse: transport his money from Hong Kong to Mexico City or be sent to prison on phony charges. But halfway to his destination, Bolt discovers that the money is funny, and he's been set up to take the fall. With a price on his head and nowhere to turn, Bolt sets out to destroy the crime syndicate that dared to take him on.
QUEENSRŸCHE Release Fully Generated AI Video For 'Tormentum'
Always thought-provoking and eager to explore new avenues QUEENSRŸCHE are releasing a fully AI generated video for the song “Tormentum”, taken from their latest album, “Digital Noise Alliance”. The video was directed by Above The Void (https://www.abovethevoid.com/)
The band about the song and concept of the video: “Driving straight into the horrors of crimes against humanity and the rules of the…
"Clob" by Michael Stone (Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre)
This one is painful
First, I must say that if Michael Stone is still alive and comes across this, I like Michael. Michael worked with me on this story and then he offered me the chance to publish the first decent Dybbuk Press collection which was BADASS HORROR. I mean he approached me because he had edited the collection and needed a publisher, but he was definitely a better editor than me. I don't know if he was actually offering money at the time but somehow he got five great stories (and one crappy one) before he proposed sending it to me. And unlike this collection, almost every writer in BADASS HORROR is still working.
But as a writer, oh boy. There are several problems with this story. First, it's the SECOND story in the collection with a funny magic sidekick. And unlike the magic crab one, Clob (who is either a talking fish or a pig) doesn't have much of a plot.
For some reason, I really liked stories about little magical (possibly imaginary) creatures who speak with heavy accents or local anachronisms. But was that really an excuse to buy this story?
I mean, ok, ultimately it turned out great as BADASS HORROR was a pretty damn good book, but this story is a nothing story where a guy is sitting in the breakroom of a hospital. He has no real character beyond having an imaginary friend. I don't even know what he does in the hospital. Is he a nurse? is he a doctor? The janitor? A transcriptionist?
Anyhow he has a crush on a nurse and the nurse has a crush on a doctor and the doctor is French and speaks like Pepe LePew so he tells a romantic story. The nameless narrator just kind of listens and then Clob gets the doctor to reveal that his romantic story was just to get into the girl's knickers (this phrase is used a couple times). So she is now into the narrator. Who is pretty nothing.
I wonder if this was a problem that I was working through at the time. Can I write a first person character that's interesting? I mean in first person stories there are two major traps to fall into - boring cipher or Holden Caulfield. A boring cipher is fine if they aren't the main character (like Nick in The Great Gatsby who starts out the book with one of the oldest cliches as if it's profound wisdom from his father) but if we are supposed to root for the guy, then why make him the dullest character in the book.
Unlike most of the stories that are half-formed stories that should be longer and more fleshed out, this is a ghost of a story, a rough outline of what could be a decent story if only the characters weren't so cliche. A man's imaginary friend messes with his crush's crush sounds like it might work, but if the crush is boring (she's a vegetarian and probably a "good girl") and the narrator is boring (he went through a lot of therapy) and even Clob the whacky imaginary friend is boring (he's an id so he makes a lot of dick jokes).
I wonder what Michael is doing now. It's been a long time since he's published anything. His novel came out in 2012 and it looks like it was self-published. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Michael_Stone is the bibliography.
So hopefully Michael Stone (or Mike Stone) is still around. Don't know if he needs to be writing but he seems to enjoy it and he introduced me to some pretty good writers.