Thursday, July 31, 2014

Oh My God, I say Something Nice about Orca Tate!

Orca has written a book.  Well, published it.  She did so while I was on sabbatical, fighting crime in the Netherlands.

This will be the Col's attempt at a review.  Since I am a defrocked priest and a disbarred attorney I feel it is necessary to try to be a good journalist even though journalism died with the birth of the internet.  Therefore I reveal that I personally think that Debra Tate is a horrible human being who was disowned by her family before they died and that she is holding her dad's ashes hostage from a proper burial out of spite. 

Thank you.  Now on to the review.  We shall divide it up to three parts.  Good, Bad and By the way.

GOOD

- There are photos in here I have never seen and they are lovely
- It does seem that Orca or someone actually cleared the photos contrary to my expectations or the book wouldn't come out
- A lot of people say a lot of nice things about Sharon
- It is well put together.  It feels and looks like a coffee table book should
- Sharon was a beautiful lady

BAD

- Debra pretends that her sister Patti and her family almost doesn't exist
- Essays that should take up an eighth of a page are in this giant font and take up two pages
- Most of the nice things people say are not new unless somehow Postman Orca talks to the dead, something she might believe when she talks to PJ Tate's Urn every night
- A lot of credit for God knows what is given to Debra's X-Men Villian Daughter Arieana who looks like this---

I continue to feel bad for people who hate themselves so much they try to alter every inch of their body.

BY THE WAY

- The book loots a lot of the "Tate Family Photo Album".  But as a confused lawyer from Torrance I can see a lawsuit if someone wants to file.  The copyright to the photos belong under the law to whomever took them, unless they signed them away.  That would be in 99% of the cases Paul Tate or Doris.  Doris died and left her estate including copyright to Paul.  Paul died and left his estate to the grandkids.  So unless Orca and lawyers got Brie etc. to sign shit, this is a Bozo no no.   Although probably no one will sue since the book isn't selling. I missed Debra signing the book with a sex offender pal of hers at Book Soup on Sunset because I was working for a living or I could have asked her myself.

- The author photo was taken by someone using a Tardis that travels back decades. Or photoshopped.


VERDICT

Well worth buying in six months from the remainder bin for $7.99.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Where are you Going, Where have you Been?

The answer to these questions are not easy ones.  It has been a hard three years, with the hardest being the early part of this year in many ways.  August 11 is now the anniversary of an event I never wanted to  have happen.

But while I was on hiatus the last little while, before I was challenged by Matt to return to the ONLY official TLB blog, something interesting did in fact happen.

I read and I did some out of body floating and I actually DO believe that Tex Watson knows why the murders happened.

I wasn't sure when I started Blogging oh so long ago that ANYONE knew.  But I believe Tex does.  That's why he wants to shut down those tapes of his.

One of the most poignant things I remember from this case material, going back to the way back days, was reading in WILL YOU DIE FOR ME about little Tex screaming at his mother that he killed a pregnant lady.  He doesn't want to be that guy any more I think.

The TLB killings continue to be blamed on Charlie.  They should be called the Watson gang killings.


Anyway, I am back.  Fucking Matt can eat a dick.  Let's blog shall we?

Noted Co-Author of Bugliosi Novel is Dead



Curt Gentry, 83, Co-Author of ‘Helter Skelter,’ Dies

Curt Gentry, an author and well-regarded biographer of J. Edgar Hoover who had his biggest commercial success when he teamed up with Vincent Bugliosi to write the 1974 blockbuster “Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders,” died on July 10 in San Francisco. He was 83.
His brother, Pat, confirmed the death, saying Mr. Gentry had been in hospice care. No cause was given.
Mr. Gentry had written books about California history and culture when he teamed with Mr. Bugliosi, who as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles had prosecuted the Manson case, among the most sensational of the 20th century.
Mr. Manson and his followers were accused of the gruesome murders of seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the director Roman Polanski, over less than 48 hours in Los Angeles in August 1969.
As the prosecutor, Mr. Bugliosi was in a position to deliver an authoritative, exclusive account. He provided the facts and the documentation; Mr. Gentry, the driving narrative.
The book’s title was taken from words written in blood at one of the crime scenes, a reference to the title of a 1968 Beatles song that had resonated with Mr. Manson. He and his followers were convicted; Mr. Manson, now 79, remains in prison.
The book became one of the best-selling titles of the 1970s, helping to elevate true-crime narratives into the mainstream. In 1975, it won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime book.
The success of “Helter Skelter,” and the royalty checks it provided, gave Mr. Gentry the time to research and write “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets,” published in 1991.
With nearly 850 pages of text and documentation, including previously undisclosed internal documents, the book, a 15-year project, shed new light on the man who led the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years.
“Mr. Gentry has illuminated his unrelentingly harsh profile in vindictiveness and egocentricity with fresh details,” David Johnston wrote in The New York Times in 1991. “He discloses that in the attic of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. ran a school teaching agents how to conduct break-ins. In a basement ‘blue room’ Hoover entertained select aides with screenings of surveillance films and pornographic movies.”
Mr. Gentry claimed that Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan had both provided information to Hoover — Ford while he was a member of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Reagan when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Unlike some biographers, Mr. Gentry drew no conclusions about Mr. Hoover’s sexual orientation — an issue because of Hoover’s preoccupation with investigating the sex lives of others. “I could never find anything definitive,” Mr. Gentry told The Times. “He had very little human contact. He seemed to have no human feelings.”
Curtis Marsena Gentry was born in Lamar, Colo., on June 13, 1931. His father was a city clerk and his mother, who came from a long line of ranchers, worked in a bank.
Mr. Gentry was a reporter for several newspapers as a teenager and briefly attended the University of Colorado before serving in the Air Force during the Korean War. After moving to San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) and wrote freelance articles and a travel guide to the city.
In a 1964 book, “The Madams of San Francisco: An Irreverent History of the City by the Golden Gate,” he used a history of prostitution to explore the city’s social and cultural shifts since the gold rush days of the 1840s.
In 1970, Mr. Gentry collaborated with the American spy Francis Gary Powers on “Operation Overflight,” the story of how Mr. Powers was shot down in the Ural Mountains in Russia in 1960 and spent 21 months as a Russian prisoner before he was returned to the United States in a prisoner swap.
His other books include “Frame-Up” (1967), about two California union leaders who spent more than two decades in prison for a bombing that killed 10 people in San Francisco in 1916 before being pardoned; and “The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California,” a novel that predicted a devastating earthquake.
For many years, Mr. Gentry was part of a circle of writers, including Evan S. Connell, Richard Brautigan and Don Carpenter, who ate and drank together at Enrico’s restaurant in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.
His brother is his only immediate survivor. His first wife, the former Laura Spence, died many years ago. His second marriage ended in divorce.
Correction: July 22, 2014
An obituary on Monday about the author Curt Gentry misstated the year a plane flown by the American spy Francis Gary Powers, with whom Mr. Gentry collaborated on a book, was shot down in Russia. It was 1960, not 1962.