The Critic
A brief animated display
of abstract prerogatives with commentary from an audience member.
Bach, Fischinger. Also Klee, Kandinsky, Miro, Albers,
Calder, Man Ray, Duchamp.
This is said to
have been observed by Mel Brooks at a screening of Norman McLaren, whose work
is also evoked.
Ginastera’s
Harp Concerto once produced a comment in a similar fashion, “modern music
always gives me a headache”. Also Emerson Woelffer’s paintings, and
Schwitters’ Construction for Noble
Ladies (“you can really tell that’s what it is”) at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Adventure of the
Chinese Dog
Ellery Queen
The title refers
to the gilded figure of a temple dog rampant on a jewel-encrusted ball. Its
possessor is murdered, but the object is not stolen, and only later turns up
missing from a police evidence locker.
The beauty of
this is that the desired element in a murder for loot cannot be withdrawn from
the crime scene by the killer, because the sheriff has placed deputies guarding
the front and back doors. Therefore, the element is made to be the murder
weapon, and is thus spirited away in an official capacity. The sheriff is in
fact the murderer, and one of the main clues is a pinprick on the
victim’s thumb, caused by one of the campaign buttons tirelessly pressed
on voters by this wearied public servant.
A Long Way from Times
Square
Kojak
Kojak in Nevada,
not Las Vegas, a little place called Santa Flora (the local constabulary lock
him up in Cory).
There’s mob
business behind a phonybaloney drug charge preventing extradition, Greek is
spoken over the phone to New York, “addio,” says Kojak, and
turns to his smug cellmate, “it’s French for goodbye.”
On a clear day
you can see New York like Boswell’s London, there are other ways of
silencing a witness that must be defended against.
“God made
the country.”
The Adventure of the
Blunt Instrument
Ellery Queen
This is very
close to Mike Hodges’ Pulp in its defense of the writer against
literary vivisectionists. A haughty scribbler wins the Blunt Instrument Award
for Best Mystery Writer of the Year, and repines at its lowly status.
He’s slain while talking on the telephone to careless rival Ellery Queen,
whose opinion is given that the prizewinning novel is its author’s best
work.
The suspects all
were celebrating his victory at the author’s home, the bitter crime
novelist whose work, according to the deceased, is “thinly-veiled
pornography”; the secretary set to wed this rival; the publisher who
cheats on royalties and whom the author is ready to flee for his ex-wife’s
publishing house; the mistress of dubious citizenship and morals, an actress of
sorts; and the Chinese houseboy with an Italian name.
The murderer is
the research assistant, who may actually have written The Shanghai Solution,
a Marine Corps veteran with one good leg and two bad arms from Okinawa. The
murder weapon is not as thought the Blunt Instrument Award itself, but a swift
judo kick to the temple, and the motive is a proposal of love to the actress.
“There is
no arguing with Johnson,” according to Goldsmith, “for when his
pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt-end of it.”