The Bears Discover Planking

The bears tend to be a little behind on Internet memes, but they discover them, they go all in.

Maureen isn't pleased with their planking. As me, I find it mildly amusing but figure it doesn't really impact me much.

Agatha Christie - Reading the Dame Part5: The 1960s

Reading the Dame Part5: The 1960s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 79 Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work but also my middle-aged thoughts inspired by reading (or in some cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The first half of 1940s
Reading the Dame Part 3b: The second half of the 1940s
Reading the Dame Part 4a: The first half of the 1950s
Reading the Dame Part 4b: The second half of the 1950s

I’m starting to hit the home stretch now. With her down to only publishing one book a year, I’m knocking out the decades much faster and the frequency of my posts are increasing.

I believe I have read almost all of these before, since they were the most current (about as old as me) when I originally started reading her books back in my teens. Being the most recent at the time, they were also more numerous and readily found at the library.

I wrote this post over several months. When I set it up with all of the books for the decade, I started writing what I recalled of the ones I read previously. Some I updated as I reading them and then I came back and wrote more everywhere. So the tense shifts from past to present and then back. For that I’m sorry, sort of. I think it sort of works, so I’m leaving it this way.

For this segment Agatha Christie is in her 70s. Her pace is now a single book per year. Her life and places of residence revolve around her writing schedule. She is still in solid form, though showing her age. She’s an old lady who doesn’t quite get the present day.

“Vouchsafed” makes an appearance or two, as do pinc-nez.


1961 The Pale Horse
This an interesting one. Mrs. Oliver is in it, but Poirot isn’t. Instead this time her friend is a 30something archaeologist who is writing, or trying to, write a book. The archaeologist stumbles on a what seems to be a murder for hire business. Murder for hire by witches. It sounds really out there but Christie makes it all work. A good read.

While Teddy Boys, like the Bright Young People from the 1920s, make an appearance, this book is fairly timeless. The mystery is sort of mostly solved before the ending. The ending while surprising to me shouldn’t have been.

As usual the single protagonist gets paired off by the end. Another good one.


1961 Double Sin and Other Stories
This collection of short stories, starts off with the title story, which dates from 1929, and features Poirot and Hastings. It’s a bit of a disappointment to fall back through time. It was even more disappointing that Double Sin is an especially poorly executed story. I had little idea what happened and didn’t care enough to go back over it. Even the title of the story, Double Sin, is pointless. No wonder it didn’t make it into book form until 1961. The real mystery is why they picked this story, easily the weakest in the collection, to be the title story.

The second story, The Wasp’s Nest, is from 1928 and in very much in style of her 1920s short stories. It’s also a weak one and not surprising to have been omitted from being compiled in book form for so long.

The third story, The Theft of the Royal Ruby, dates from 1960 and it’s pure gold. Poirot, Christmas, an English country house, a murder, missing jewels... it’s all of Christie’s themes and motifs in the one tightly wrapped little package. If you wanted to give someone a brief introduction to Agatha Christie, this story would be it.

The Dressmakers Doll, from 1958, is a bit of supernatural, something Christie never really did much of, or did well. That didn’t change with time. Not bad but not great either.

Things pick up again with Greenshaw’s Folly, from 1957. It’s a well executed Marple story.

The Double Clue is a Poirot/Hastings story from 1925. It’s rather good but suffers from being in the same book with later, much better stories. in comparison.

The Last Seance, from 1926, is another supernatural story rather than a mystery. As I mentioned above, she never did these well. Rather well written and readable but quite unbelievable.

And then back to the 50s with 1954’s Sanctuary. Another super solid Marple story; it brings back a lot of characters and places I should probably remember from past books but didn’t really.

The juxtaposition of old and new stories here really shows how much Christie grew as an author. So while the older stories do a great job of illustrating that, they do sort of extra suck in comparison.


1962 The Mirror Crack'd
We left 1959 with a Poirot book, since then there was a Poirot-less Mrs. Oliver book, and a collection of short stories, so we are due for a Marple.

Miss Marple here is feeling her age, which is in her 80s at this point. Not allowed to garden and forced to have a very tedious live-in companion,. Miss Marple is not having the time of her life. Lots of characters and places from past stories are mentioned. Some I remembered, some I didn’t.

I recall when this came out as a movie in the 80s with Elizabeth Taylor; I didn’t see it. One of the characters seems to have been sort of based on Liz Taylor, so you have to give Liz credit for being a good sport. After I finish reading this, I’ll see if I can Netflix the Liz Taylor movie through the Wii. (I didn’t, but maybe I will now that I’m rereading what I wrote a few months ago).

We saw the Mystery version of this a few months before I read it, but I might have drifted off during it. I needed Maureen to remind of the ending. Turns out it was pretty faithful to the book.


1963 The Clocks
I recall reading this one in high school over summer break. Maureen and I saw the Mystery version last week. It was a particularly good adaption. The TV version takes place before World War II, while I sort of recall the book taking place in the time it was written (1963). It will be interesting to see if the book is closer to my memories of reading the book 30 years ago (Jesus, 30 years?) or closer to the TV version I just saw. Definitely closer to my memory but quite different too. I may have lumped it together with an other book from the 60s or 70s in my memory.

Turns out the Clocks was set in then present day. Maureen was surprised that all of Christie’s books took place in the then present time. That just seemed natural to me reading them, but in retrospect, setting some of them in the past would have let her have some fun with Poirot as a younger man in Belgium.

It is also odd that with all the traveling she did and of all places she set her novels and short stories, none ever took place in Belgium. It’s as though she never even visited there. I know she wasn’t a drinker (neither beer nor the harder stuff), but besides great beer, Belgium has chocolates and waffles too.


1964 A Caribbean Mystery
This was rare late Christie that I hadn’t previously read. Miss Marple’s successful writer nephew and his wife send her to the Caribbean for a holiday. As usual, it’s not good to have Marple around since someone gets killed. And as usual then someone gets it as well.

An interesting read. Now that Christie in her 70s, she obviously isn’t getting around as much. Her vacations which later become scenes for her mysteries become less exciting.

After being less obvious of the last few decades, class still plays a part in this one, as one character, a valet/nurse, is generally snubbed by most of the rest of the characters, including a widow who’s working for the same boss as a secretary. She considers herself superior to him even though she is treated as inferior by pretty much every one else staying at the resort.

Definitely an interesting mix of characters, and good plot.


1965 At Bertram's Hotel
This is rare, back to back Marples. This time her rich writer nephew and wife send her to a hotel in London. They wanted to send her to a seaside resort, but she requested a London hotel she stayed in as a girl, if it wasn’t too expensive and it still existed. Surprisingly the hotel still existed and even more surprisingly it hadn’t really changed at all. Maybe too surprising.

I read this one long ago and it sort of stuck with me. Bertam’s is a very expensive hotel. I was a poor student at the time and a pricey hotel seemed very exotic. I had yet to stay at a pricey hotel, and this book sort of colored my expectations for a Ritz or Plaza style hotel for over 25 years. So it was a little odd, rereading it now, after all these years and few nights in a couple of pricey hotels (which don’t really suit me anyway).

As I was reading this book, it occurred to me that, our Miss Marple never worked a day in her life, and usually had a servant. How amazing that England could have supported such a large number of gentle people who were, to be honest, very useless for so long. Over the 40+ years of Christie’s work so far, this class has had to finally start taking care of themselves. Or have a rich nephew.

An old man mentions The Beatles in a list of confusing present day things.


1966 Third Girl
The note in front says I read this 19 years ago in the summer of 1982. That would have been between my junior and senior years of high school. I started work at Chuck E Cheese that summer and went to the swim club that my family was members of. I probably mostly read this book there. I don’t remember any of it.

Rather a good read and I figured out most of it. The plot held together well.

Again an old man refers to The Beatles but in rather confused way. I was a big Beatles fan at the time as was wondering if they would get a mention in an Agatha Christie book of that era, and they did.


1967 Endless Night
This is rare late Christie that I hadn’t previously read. Maureen and I were supposed to watch the Mystery version of this one, but it may have gotten deleted for space before we watched it.

I am about 3 chapters in and this book is pretty fascinating. She writes this book in the first person from the point of view of a 22 year old working class male. At the time, Christie is 77 a year world famous author and a Dame of the British Empire. This should be an utter disaster but three chapters in, it’s utterly believable. At least so far.

So how did Christie write so believably as 22 year old man in 1967? It made me wonder how old her grandson (and eventual sole heir) was at the time. It took a little googling. An archived People Magazine article has Matthew Prichard the grandson as 34 in 1977, which means he was born in 1943, which made him around 23 when she was writing the book. I suppose Christie must of chatted a lot with Matthew and/or his friends. Maybe reading all of these Agatha Christie mysteries has taught me to both figure out the questions and find possible solutions.

A little more googling.... oooo this is neat (well at least to me, hopefully you will find it interesting too). Matthew Prichard was asked by something called “The Browser” to choose his favorites of his grandmother’s books. His first pick was Endless Night. He says:

The book is about three young people; my grandmother was well into her 70s when she wrote it. As a young person myself in the early 1960s, I saw more of my grandmother than at any other time because I was studying at Oxford, not far from where she lived and worked at the time. I used to take my friends to see her, often for Sunday lunch, and I think I even took my first girlfriend. She didn’t seem like an old person at all. She was always interested in what we were doing and fascinated by our relationships with each other. She never judged us.

There are, fortunately, no characters in Endless Night that she ‘copied’. But she does say somewhere in the book that it’s all about relationships. To me, it’s an astonishingly modern and human book. To write about people 50 years younger than herself was a tour de force.

I am a good detective! Anyway the full article is here.

Prichard says his grandmother had a good sense of humor. This is frankly surprising as her books are devoid of any real laugh out loud humor, unlike say Dickens or Twain who remain funny in print to this day.


1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
I remember this one. It’s a Tommy and Tuppence story, and it was my introduction to these characters, who by this point are in their 60s. At the time, I wound up reading The Secret Advisory shorty after, when Tommy and Tuppence make their debuts as 20somethings. Experiencing the characters at such different stages in their lives so close together may be what really endeared them to me. Catching them later in their 40s (pretty much my age now) when I read N or M? for the first time as part of this project was fun too. After not having any news of them since, I look forward to rereading this one. All is recall of it is that I really liked the characters when I read it high school.

Now that I’ve read it, it has held up. Not Christie’s best work, but solid.


1969 Hallowe'en Party
I recall reading this one back in the 80s. Maureen and I just watched the Mystery version. When I started this post in late June while reading Double Sin, looking at my spreadsheet of Christie books and when I read them, I estimated it would take 3 months to get around to reading this book. I finished it in late September. My reading speed seems rather constant.

When I first read the book, I just assumed hallowe'en was the English spelling. Doing a little Googling, the spelling difference seems to be more due to time than nationality.

Not a bad one. Mrs. Oliver and Poirot again. The TV version wound up being very similar to the book.

Two kids die in this one. I read somewhere that Stephen King regretted having the dog kill the kid in Cujo and that he wouldn't do ever that again. Christie had no problem killing off kids in her books.

A Lucky Escape

I met Maureen for a Restaurant Week dinner at Amada last night. I got there early to check out the temporary Greenhouse exhibit at the American Philosophical Society, but it is closed on Mondays, so I was just ambling around leisurely until it was time to show up at Amada. It was a little after 5pm, when the work day ends for most people with normal jobs.

The large insurance company I used to work for is located in that part of town these days. As I was walking (ambling) I passed a woman who looked a lot like someone I used to work with oh so many years ago. She looked much older. I was thinking of saying something but let her pass by instead, leaving the past the past.

Later as I was sitting on a bench another former coworker, or someone who looked like a former coworker passed by. He must have 30+ years in at that company now. He seemed "old" when I got hired there at age 23. He wasn't a great boss which may or may not be why I especially didn't want to be recognized this time. It wasn't a problem; to him I was just another guy sitting on a bench reading. I allowed being out of context work to my advantage.

At Amada, we were seated near their private room where a very large party overflowed out of the room and into the area around us. A guy in suit with three ID badges on it was acting the host and greeting people. I mildly pondered the mystery of why he would have three photo ID badges of various sizes on a single clip on his lapel. Like Prius guy, it is a mystery that I will never know the solution to. Another thing I have to live with.

The private party of business people seemed such a dull thing to attend, but the guests seemed to be happy - Amada can easily do that to you. I felt extremely thankful that I was able to make my escape from the Fortune 500 business world over 17 years ago. Pretty much any day that I'm not in a cubicle is a good one.

I went to a Chamber of Commerce business card exchange once in recent memory. It was boring and strange and I didn't know why I was there. I suppose I'm a businessperson, probably even more than most businesspeople, but I'm definitely not a suit. At least not anymore. I'm free.

The host eventually took off his suit jacket. I was worried that he was going to have existential crisis. If your three photo IDs are on your jacket and you take it off, do you still know who you are? It turned out not to be a problem for him. Maybe the big glass of wine in his hand helped.

RIP Awesome Cargo Shorts

My favorite pair of cargo shorts had their last wearing yesterday. They've been a little ratty but acceptable for a year or two now. At that point they went from being dressy to ultra-casual.

I'm a dude; I can get away with that, at least up to a point. From my wife's perspective they probably stopped being acceptable four years ago, but being the saint that she is, she didn't say anything. She will likely be happy to read this posting.

They were the perfect shade of stone grey to go with pretty much anything I care to wear during the summer. And they had the requisite cargo pockets. The Agatha Christie Project (check prior posts for more info) made me appreciate cargo pockets even more; books fit great.

I bought them off the Abercombie and Fitch website about 8 years ago if my memory and calculations are correct. I would have been about 38 years old. Most of Abercrombie's stuff for is for frat boys and not really for me at this time of life, but they do have some acceptable stuff for middle aged people too.

These shorts were top quality; they served me for 8 years. And they got pretty heavy use, being one of favorites. As I get older I appreciate less being more and am willing to invest in good clothing that I really like that will last.

Another part of being a dude is attachment to clothing that we like. The inevitable passing of beloved article of clothing is always a minor deal for us, especially if we have had them for years and live in a four season area. With the change of seasons, it's like rediscovering an old friend every year when the weather changes. I had seven seasons of rediscovery of this part of shorts.

Unlike some dudes, I accept when it's time to retire some clothing. Good bye old friend.

As I write this, I am wearing what is now my new favorite pair of cargo shorts. They are still in the dressy stage. Hello new friend.

If your thrills have become regular, are they even thrills anymore?

Last Night's Spam

Some of the directed spam I get is so moronic, it angers me. This was sent from a @verizon.com account.

Dear The Grey Lodge Pub

"Dear The Grey Lodge Pub", so personal. I feel warm and fuzzy already.

Customers are the life blood of every business... what are you doing to develop and maintain an effective and profitable relationship with each and every one of them?

What am I doing? Facebook, Twitter, daily blog updates, monthly emails. Some idiot from Groupon asked via spamming phone call if I marketed my business. I went off on her. How effing insulting. Do I market my business? Eff you, look at our effing Website and then ask me that question. How about I call you and ask you idiotic questions? Anywho back to iZigg.

We are iZigg, the most powerful brand in Mobile Marketing.

So powerful they don't even have to use @izigg.com for their emails.

We own the most popular short code in the business, 90210.

Yes, a TV show from 20 years ago. So relevant and powerful.

At iZigg, we are showing businesses like yours how to use our service to generate a return on their advertising investment of as much as 2,200% and more... simply by employing a strategy that employs a tool that is used by almost 300 Million people in the USA every day.

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Many refer to it as “a text.” We call it “Instant Personal Communication.”

Many refer it as a "turd". We call it "Personal Smelly Mud".

Give it a try to see how it works…

Text - KillerBBQ to 90210 on your cell phone.

Do it now! Actually I would advise you not to, there's a catch.

When you sent the text “KillerBBQ” to 90210, 2 things happened.

1) You got an automated response that we created in our “Mobile Auto-Responder.”

2) We added your cell phone number to our KillerBBQ VIP List.

What?!?!? I just opted into your farking list? You didn't warn me that was going to happen.

At this point, we can now communicate to you and every other customer on our “KillerBBQ List” with special offers and deals via “Instant Personal Communication.”

Oh look Dylan just sent me an "Instant Personal Communication"! I wonder what he and Kelly are up to. No wait, it's just spam.

Just think, you can literally keep in contact with every customer who opted in to your own keyword at 90210. This is the most effective business generation and customer retention tool available today.

The most profitable business is repeat business. It is said that even a 5% increase in customer retention can increase business profits by 25% to 125%! With iZigg Mobile Marketing, you have the power to maintain a relationship with every one of your customers at the push of a button.

If close personal and profitable relationships with your customers is something you want in your business,

Just think, you can literally spam your best customers' cell phones and have them pay for it.

They have a word for those sorts of relationships: "abusive". And nothing says "personal" like mass texting,,, oops sorry, mass instant personal communicating.

I invite you to watch this short, 10 minute video that will reveal this method in detail and change the way you market to your customers forever.

No thanks.

Why Do So Many Paul McCartney Solo Songs Suck?

I was out somewhere last weekend and Paul McCartney's Jet came on the in background. Click below to refamiliarize yourself, if you dare.



This song quite sucks. Not the over the top WTF suck of Wonderful Christmastime, but sucky none the less. ("WTF suck" - I like that). The song even starts off sucky. "Jet, woo hoo woo woo JET!" - woo that's deep.

And then we get "And Jet, I thought the major was a lady suffragette!", which comes out as was a lady sufferaJETTT!!!! It wouldn't be so bad, but that line appears four times in the song, so just when you forget how damn annoying and insipid it is, it comes back to remind you, and then remind two more times.

The song Jet does have some good qualities, the music and background vocals are really quite good. So it's a mixed bag, which is pretty much the story of McCartney's solo work. For every great song, there is a stinker, often even in the same song. Which annoys me because being a big Beatles fan, I want to be a Paul McCartney solo fan, but I can't because so much of it sucks.

To end up on a positive note, here's a Paul McCartney solo song that is pure gold. I love the trumpets on it. I could listen to this song over and over for hours. With the exception of the somewhat forced title track, Tug of War is a McCartney album with no clunkers. The clunker being Ebony and Ivory, a song that seems good but doesn't hold up to repeated listenings, or maybe even the second listening.

Anyway to end up on a positive note, hit stop on Jet*, if you haven't already, and play Wanderlust.

A little bit of trivia, Wanderlust was the boat on which Paul recorded the album London Town, and on which there was one of Paul's many high profile marijuana busts. Captain says they'll be a bust.

Maybe this gives us a clue, could it be the reefers that make Paul write so many sucky songs? I'd argue that it could be the opposite, that maybe Paul isn't smoking enough. The Beatles, it is told, smoked pot like crazy while recording Rubber Soul, the CD (and English LP) version of which is my favorite Beatles album. Maybe Paul should write and record all future albums in Amsterdam.

* If you were like me, you stopped Jet at the second lady sufferaJET.

South Broad Street Hike

Last week or so, I was at an afternoon ballgame and was meeting Maureen in town later that night for a dinner and play. I had 90 minutes between the game and meeting my wife, I so hiked up Broad Street which would take about an hour, giving me 30 minutes to chill out in Rittenhouse Square.

Street hiking is a hobby of mine that I really enjoy. South Broad is one of Philadelphia's main streets and is the backbone of South Philly. I've been in a car on South Broad quite a few times, but haven't really walked much of it, until a week or so ago.

The best way to see anything is on foot. Click below to see some of what I saw. My various thoughts are in the captions.

Conclusion: South Broad is rather strange. It's very South Philly but has pretty much none of the landmarks that have made South Philly so legendary and cool. It's a neat walk, but most of the other number streets to the east would probably be more interesting.

The pictures, with captions, are here.

Reading the Dame Part4b: The second half of the 1950s

Reading the Dame Part4b: The second half of the 1950s

This a continuation of my series of posts about my project to read all 80 somethin

g Agatha Christie mystery books in order of publication (more or less). As usual, this is not just summaries of Christie’s work but my middle-aged musings inspired by reading (or in so

me cases re-reading) these books.

The other parts of the series:
Reading th Dame Part 1: The 1920s
Reading the Dame Part 2a: The 1930s
Reading the Dame Part 2b: The 1930s continued
Reading the Dame Part 3a: The 1940s
Reading the Dame Part3b: The second half of the 1940s
Reading the Dame Part4a: The first half of the 1950s

There are only 5 books in the segment. She has downshifted to publishing just one book a year, a frequency she will keep up until her death, which still almost 20 years way. For this segment she is between the ages of 65 and 69.

As usual my text for each book will discuss the book itself as well as other observations and memories about the book that are not necessarily related to the story.


1955 Hickory Dickory Death
As I read the first page, I felt I had read this one before. Looking at my note inside the front cover, I see I read it back in May 2005, almost exactly 6 years ago, just a few months before my 40th bir

thday. In May of 2005, Maureen and I were living on Passmore Street. I had been working at the Grey Lodge for 11 years and was still taking the el to/from a part time job two days a week. It’s interesting to think about how some things have changed and others have remained the same for me in these 6 years.

Thinking back after reading just the first two pages, I am recallin

g the story and some of the characters. I recall liking this book. It will be interesting to see how I feel after reading this one again.

This is a neat one. It takes place in a hostel for students, many of them foreign. The characters are very well drawn and the plot is very well woven. Having now read this three times, I still have a high opinion of it. Christie has gotten much nicer in her old age. Whereas in the 1920s, the characters would have mildly offensive stereotypes, here the foreign characters are pretty respectfully done.

She focuses again on young people here as she did 3 years earlier in Murder with Mirrors. The young folks here like to go on hitchhiking trips with nothing more than can be kept in a rucksack. Quite a change from her early works, where everyone traveled with heavy luggage.


1956 Dead Man's Folly
I recall reading this one while in hi

gh school and determining that a folly was a gazebo sort of structure. In this one Poirot is called down to a country estate by mystery writer Mrs. Oliver, a recurring c

haracter. With her woman’s intuition, she suspects something is wrong, and it indeed it is. Mrs. Oliver’s husband has yet to mentioned. All we know is she eats apples, writes mysteries, and changes her hair style a lot. This continues the trend of her reoccurring characters being underdeveloped.

Once again set on an English estate. This estate had been bought by a wealthy man and restored its pre-war glory more or less. The former lady of the estate has been reduced to living in the lodge by the front gate.

Young folks, international students with rucksacks again play a part. The mystery is well constructed and had me guessing right up to the end.


1957 What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
I am almost through this one with Miss Marple. I have only the last chapter let to read and I still can’t figure it out totally. I have a good hunch as to who the murder is, but no motive for the original murder.

She returns to the English country estate again but with a 1950s high taxation twist. This time, the estate is surrounded by a city that has grown up all around it. It’s semi-dilapidated, with no butler, no house maid, just two village women who came in part time, one ancient gardener, and a spi

nster daughter to act as housekeeper.

Well developed characters and a well constructed ending that had me guessing until the end.


1958 Ordeal by Innocence
A rich woman was murdered. One of her five adopted children was convicted of the crime. He died in jail before he could be cleared of the murder even evidence finally comes out 2 years later. Everything was settled but now everyone is under suspicion again. And with the trail cold, they may all remain suspect forever. Christie remains at the top of her game on this one. . A good number of well developed characters. A plot with a very satisfactory ending. As with many Christie stories there is a happy romantic ending, except in this case three happy romantic endings.

This is neither a Poirot nor a Maple mystery.


1959 Cat Among the Pigeons
I recall reading this one in June of 1982. I was an 8th grader about to graduate, about to put 8 years of St. Jerome’s grade school behind me. It was the final week, classes were done, exams were done. School that week was a leisurely limbo with lots of downtime for reading. Besides my personal memories (which may or may not be accurate), all I remember of this book as I write this before re-reading it is the title and that Poirot is in it.

Now that I’ve read it, turns out I did only remember the title. Maybe I started reading it when I was 13 but got bored and didn’t finish it. At 45, it easily held my attention. As I look back on 40 years of Christie books read over the last 22 months, it’s amazing how many I remember. I would have thought they would start to run into each other.

Christie had mentioned people listening to the radio several times over the years, but this is the first time television gets a mention. She even mentions it twice. I was wondering when this ubiquitous device would become ubiquitous in a Christie story.

I have read 63 of 79 books. Onto the 1960s.