Oh, really? That sounds interesting. (I posted my thoughts on that somewhere, sometime, but I don't recall where it is or what I said.)
JD DeLuzio > Jeff of Earth-JJanuary 15, 2025 at 8:51pm
Right. The novel and one of the TV episodes establishes that the movies exist as movies based on the moviemakers' understanding of who the Doctor is (since the public seems to have some awareness that there's a Doctor out there).
Oh, yeah... I kinda remember that: that the movies themselves exist within the "Whoniverse." I think my "explanation" tried to account for them in continuity.
Finally finished An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke. A page-turner, it was not, but there were some interesting ideas in it. The bit that most stood out for me was the section where Locke discusses why he thinks that having "microscopical vision" would not be of that much use to a person. Not something that I would have predicted!
I'm about two-thirds through Horace McCoy's original novel of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? We recently saw the movie.
The book is worthwhile, and quite gritty. The only concession to the sensibilities of the time is writing "f----" and "f----ing" rather than write the word in full.
(I realize that the 1930s were a very gritty time, but the popular literature sometimes softens those elements).
Just finished Earthlings, by Sayaka Murata. interesting story about a woman who comes to believe that she is an alien. Good booik, but there's some really weird stuff in there.
Rick Parker's Drafted: A Darkly Humorous Memoir in Words and Pictures
Review by Mark Leepson
(Review from VVA Veteran magazine. I became aware of this book courtesy of Rob Staeger.)
As a kid growing up in Savannah, Georgia, in the fifties and sixties, Rickie Parker was enthralled by newspaper comic strips. So much so, he later wrote, that he knew “it was just a matter of time before someone did a comic strip about me.”
It took more than a few decades, but that belief basically came true last year with Parker’s graphic memoir, Drafted (Abrams Books, 256 pp. $24.99, hardcover; $11.99, Kindle), an offbeat, clever, often slyly humorous gem that centers on Parker’s brief but event-filled military career.
A much-heralded artist, writer, and cartoonist, Rick Parker is best known for his work as the artist on MTV’s 28 Beavis and Butt-Head comic books. He also spent fifteen years at Marvel Comics doing lettering and production work on Spider Man, Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Star Wars, and many other comic books.
Parker’s short military career began inauspiciously after he was drafted into the Army at 19 in 1966 a few months after flunking out of college. His book is chock-full of engaging words-and-picture depictions of what millions of us who entered military service during the Vietnam War went through: the induction center, basic training, AIT, and then, in Parker’s case, OCS and an assignment to a Pershing (Nuclear) Missile Detachment at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Parker landed at White Sands after a series of ups and downs during training. When he did, it dawned on the young LT that, as he put it, he “was not cut out for the Army.”
There were plenty of other hints along the way. That includes getting assigned just prior to OCS as an acting jack buck sergeant in charge of a Holdover Platoon for a couple of weeks. Said platoon, as Parker notes, was “comprised of a motley assortment of individuals deemed unfit for military service for one reason or another” who were “awaiting orders to be mustered out of the service and released back into an unsuspecting civilian population.”
Parker’s five-page depiction of that experience brilliantly illuminates that weird, thankless job. The same is true with other set pieces in the book, including his nightmarish time going through the escape-and-evasion course at Fort Sill, complete with a simulated POW camp and torturous interrogations; the ridiculously chickenshit hazing of OCS trainees, especially at mealtimes; Parker’s sardonic take on his first “art show” at the rudimentary White Sands Officers Club (a tent), which consisted of three “dirty pictures” done in pastels, despite the fact that—as he sheepishly writes—he “had never seen a naked woman; only a picture of one in a magazine”; and an emotionally harrowing stint directing military funerals for servicemembers who lost their lives in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas.
Parker signed up for OCS, he says, “not out of any sense of duty or patriotism, but out of self-preservation.” He thought that, if he went to the warzone as an artillery officer, his “chances of survival would be enhanced.” But during OCS, after Parker “shamefully confessed” that to one of his fellow trainees, the guy set him straight.
“It’s actually quite the opposite,” his fellow trainee said. “Forward observers have one of the highest casualty rates among all our troops in the field.” That news, Parker says, “instead of alarming me, made feel somewhat better and actually relieved my guilty conscience.”
As it turned out, even though two-thirds of the guys in his OCS graduating class received orders for Vietnam or to units about to deploy there, Parker underwent eight more weeks of training in guided missiles and spent the rest of his enlistment at White Sands.
Despite his rocky three years, one month, and five days of military service, Parker says that going through all of those “highly intense shared experiences with others” had a profound influence on his life. Doing so, he says, “especially when being pushed to the limit, I began to learn more about myself, and my fellow human beings.”
Drafted, Parker tells us, is the first “work of any significance” during his fifty-year artistic career that he both illustrated and wrote. Here’s hoping it’s not his last.
Replies
Oh, really? That sounds interesting. (I posted my thoughts on that somewhere, sometime, but I don't recall where it is or what I said.)
Right. The novel and one of the TV episodes establishes that the movies exist as movies based on the moviemakers' understanding of who the Doctor is (since the public seems to have some awareness that there's a Doctor out there).
Oh, yeah... I kinda remember that: that the movies themselves exist within the "Whoniverse." I think my "explanation" tried to account for them in continuity.
Finally finished An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke. A page-turner, it was not, but there were some interesting ideas in it. The bit that most stood out for me was the section where Locke discusses why he thinks that having "microscopical vision" would not be of that much use to a person. Not something that I would have predicted!
I'm about two-thirds through Horace McCoy's original novel of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? We recently saw the movie.
The book is worthwhile, and quite gritty. The only concession to the sensibilities of the time is writing "f----" and "f----ing" rather than write the word in full.
(I realize that the 1930s were a very gritty time, but the popular literature sometimes softens those elements).
Currently a little over halfway through Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.
A very good book.
Just finished Earthlings, by Sayaka Murata. interesting story about a woman who comes to believe that she is an alien. Good booik, but there's some really weird stuff in there.
Nightmare Alley.
Rick Parker's Drafted: A Darkly Humorous Memoir in Words and Pictures
Review by Mark Leepson
(Review from VVA Veteran magazine. I became aware of this book courtesy of Rob Staeger.)
As a kid growing up in Savannah, Georgia, in the fifties and sixties, Rickie Parker was enthralled by newspaper comic strips. So much so, he later wrote, that he knew “it was just a matter of time before someone did a comic strip about me.”
It took more than a few decades, but that belief basically came true last year with Parker’s graphic memoir, Drafted (Abrams Books, 256 pp. $24.99, hardcover; $11.99, Kindle), an offbeat, clever, often slyly humorous gem that centers on Parker’s brief but event-filled military career.
A much-heralded artist, writer, and cartoonist, Rick Parker is best known for his work as the artist on MTV’s 28 Beavis and Butt-Head comic books. He also spent fifteen years at Marvel Comics doing lettering and production work on Spider Man, Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Star Wars, and many other comic books.
Parker’s short military career began inauspiciously after he was drafted into the Army at 19 in 1966 a few months after flunking out of college. His book is chock-full of engaging words-and-picture depictions of what millions of us who entered military service during the Vietnam War went through: the induction center, basic training, AIT, and then, in Parker’s case, OCS and an assignment to a Pershing (Nuclear) Missile Detachment at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Parker landed at White Sands after a series of ups and downs during training. When he did, it dawned on the young LT that, as he put it, he “was not cut out for the Army.”
There were plenty of other hints along the way. That includes getting assigned just prior to OCS as an acting jack buck sergeant in charge of a Holdover Platoon for a couple of weeks. Said platoon, as Parker notes, was “comprised of a motley assortment of individuals deemed unfit for military service for one reason or another” who were “awaiting orders to be mustered out of the service and released back into an unsuspecting civilian population.”
Parker’s five-page depiction of that experience brilliantly illuminates that weird, thankless job. The same is true with other set pieces in the book, including his nightmarish time going through the escape-and-evasion course at Fort Sill, complete with a simulated POW camp and torturous interrogations; the ridiculously chickenshit hazing of OCS trainees, especially at mealtimes; Parker’s sardonic take on his first “art show” at the rudimentary White Sands Officers Club (a tent), which consisted of three “dirty pictures” done in pastels, despite the fact that—as he sheepishly writes—he “had never seen a naked woman; only a picture of one in a magazine”; and an emotionally harrowing stint directing military funerals for servicemembers who lost their lives in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas.
Parker signed up for OCS, he says, “not out of any sense of duty or patriotism, but out of self-preservation.” He thought that, if he went to the warzone as an artillery officer, his “chances of survival would be enhanced.” But during OCS, after Parker “shamefully confessed” that to one of his fellow trainees, the guy set him straight.
“It’s actually quite the opposite,” his fellow trainee said. “Forward observers have one of the highest casualty rates among all our troops in the field.” That news, Parker says, “instead of alarming me, made feel somewhat better and actually relieved my guilty conscience.”
As it turned out, even though two-thirds of the guys in his OCS graduating class received orders for Vietnam or to units about to deploy there, Parker underwent eight more weeks of training in guided missiles and spent the rest of his enlistment at White Sands.
Despite his rocky three years, one month, and five days of military service, Parker says that going through all of those “highly intense shared experiences with others” had a profound influence on his life. Doing so, he says, “especially when being pushed to the limit, I began to learn more about myself, and my fellow human beings.”
Drafted, Parker tells us, is the first “work of any significance” during his fifty-year artistic career that he both illustrated and wrote. Here’s hoping it’s not his last.
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