Lurid Years

Four mental patients, the products of illegal medical experiments, escape from an institution in Britain's rural Lake District. Armed with a stolen axe, they kill a game warden and mutilate a dog before encountering a broken-down bus. The vehicle's stranded female passengers search for a place to spend the night, unaware that the psychopaths are right behind them. Anthony Forrest and Tom Marshall star in this notorious 1970s British slasher.

Lola Montès is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts the course of Montès’s scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she has ended up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola Montès is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

This book recounts the experiences of the author while he lived in Kiribati. A few names have been changed, either because the author, who is very bad with names, couldn’t remember what they were, or to protect their privacy. Also, since we’re disclaiming here, the author wishes to acknowledge that in a few incidents recounted herein, he has played a little fast and loose with the space-time continuum. He has done this for you, the reader.

Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bobby Jones, and Bill Tilden were the legendary quartet of the “Golden Age of Sports” in the 1920s. They transformed their respective athletic disciplines and captured the imagination of a nation. The indisputable force behind the emergence of professional tennis as a popular and lucrative sport, Tilden’s on-court accomplishments are nothing short of staggering.