Today in pulp... Milwaukee Magazine: it's the cream of Cream City!
If anyone tells you Wisconsin sucks just ask to see their crummy city magazine. I'M LOOKING AT YOU HERE CLEVELAND! #TuesdayThoughts
The city's most interesting faces*. Milwaukee Magazine, May 1980.
(*no Gene Wilder. He disowned the city after it slated Stir Crazy)
This is what #Bloomsday looks like in Wisconsin. It's what Joyce would have wanted...
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1980.
Where have all the heroes gone? Milwaukee Magazine, December 1985.
Somebody REALLY liked Bonnie Tyler here...
"Oh yes it's ladies night, at the Lucid Light, oh what a night..."
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1984. Oh behave!
"Church man" George Exoo, going medieval on yo pew...
Milwaukee Magazine, February 1994.
Charles Sykes slams the Boomers!
(Plus: the ethnic diversity of bread.)
Milwaukee Magazine, December 1992.
He then got a job managing Blockbusters, and was never heard from again...
Milwaukee Magazine, May 1983.
Sinister theatre cults! Punk palaces! Racketball! Where will this madness end...
Milwaukee Magazine, April 1983.
Boomers be like: "get off the internet, I need to make a phone call! Dawson's Creek is rubbish! I hate Ray Of Light, why can't Madonna play her old stuff!"
Milwaukee Magazine, February 1998.
"I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC..."
Milwaukee Magazine, March 1986.
So let's celebrate Milwaukee Magazine and the great local journalism that keeps it going. It's not just for the metro area: even Waukesha gets a mention!
Racine can go f*ck itself however...
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Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.