News of the Week: Fall Books, Peanuts Stamps, and the Refreshing Taste of Liquid Death

Read This!

Sorry, you just missed Amazon’s big two-day Prime event, but you can still order these six new books from them (or your local bookstore, of course).

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations by Geoffrey O’Brien and John Bartlett. Sure, you could go to the website, but Bartlett’s is one of those books you need in physical form, like a good dictionary or the Bible.

Madly, Deeply by Alan Rickman. The late actor kept journals for over 20 years, and they reveal his thoughts about life, his profession, and his opinion of many of his co-stars.

The Ray Bradbury Collection by Ray Bradbury. This collection from the Library of America focuses on Bradbury’s short stories and is 1,889 pages long.

The Bigger They Come by Erle Stanley Gardner. People know Gardner for his Perry Mason stories, of course, but he also wrote 30 entertaining novels featuring the detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. This is the first one, in a new edition from American Mystery Classics.

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken. This novel is described as being about “a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother, and about the very nature of writing, memory, and art.” It’s getting a lot of great early reviews.

Go-To Dinners by Ina Garten. I’ve lost count of how many books Garten has but she has a way of being fancy and down-to-earth at the same time, so I bet this one is good too.

75 Years of the Hollywood Blacklist

Wikipedia actually has a thorough look at how the blacklist started, what happened to the ten men on the list, and how Walt Disney may have gotten the ball rolling several years earlier with an ad he took out in Variety.

New Peanuts Stamps

Collecting stamps is one of those activities I wish I had started many years ago. But it all seems too complex and overwhelming to get started now, though these new Peanuts stamps are something I might get, just in time for all of their holiday TV specials.

There’s a Brand of Canned Water Called Liquid Death

And the company is currently valued at $700 million.

It’s water that’s sold in a can with a logo that looks like something a heavy metal band might have.

There’s No “Texas” in Texas Pete

A man has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company that makes Texas Pete Hot Sauce because he found out it’s not made in Texas, it’s made in … North Carolina.

Good point! I would also like to point out that Bush’s Boston Baked Beans are made in Tennessee, the New York Giants play in New Jersey, and Star Trek was filmed on a soundstage in Hollywood, California.

My Favorite Commercial of the Year

I saw the short version of this ad last week. This is the director’s cut.

Discovery of the Week

Stuff like this fascinates me. Contractors working on a Texas school found inside the walls a purse from 1959, owned by a teenage girl named Beverly Williams. Here’s what was inside.

RIP Angela Lansbury, Bernard McGuirk, Peter Robinson, Anita Kerr, Michael Callan, Nikki Finke, Eileen Ryan, Art Laboe, and Patricia Marvin

Angela Lansbury was best known, of course, for her role as mystery writer/amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the long-running CBS drama Murder, She Wrote, but she had a Hollywood career before that too. She appeared in such classic films as The Manchurian Candidate, Gaslight, National Velvet, The Three Musketeers, The Harvey Girls, Samson and Delilah, Death on the Nile, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the ’90s she reached a whole new generation with her voice work in Beauty and the Beast. She was the winner of five Tony Awards and an honorary Oscar. She died Tuesday at the age of 96.

Bernard McGuirk was a veteran radio host at WABC. He was also the producer of the Imus in the Morning show for many years. He died last week at the age of 64.

Peter Robinson wrote the Inspector Banks crime novels. He died last week at the age of 72.

Anita Kerr wrote arrangements for many Nashville artists and sang backup vocals on such songs as “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, “I’m Sorry” by Brenda Lee, and “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison. She died Monday at the age of 94.

Michael Callan was in the original stage version of West Side Story and starred in the TV show Occasional Wife. He also appeared on Superboy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Murder, She Wrote, as well as in movies like Cat Ballou, Mysterious Island, and Gidget Goes Hawaiian. He died Monday at the age of 86.

Nikki Finke was the controversial Hollywood journalist who started the entertainment site Deadline. She died Sunday at the age of 68.

Eileen Ryan appeared on such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, The Detectives, Bonanza, NYPD Blue, and ER, as well as movies like At Close Range, Magnolia, and Parenthood. She was the mother of Sean Penn. She died Sunday at the age of 94.

Art Laboe was a radio DJ and host for 79 years, one of the first to play rock ’n’ roll on the West Coast, and pretty much invented the “oldies” format. He died last week at the age of 97.

Patricia Marvin was one of the people who helped start the Butterball Hotline, and she worked the phones for 22 years (and she was allergic to poultry!). She died in August at the age of 96.

This Week in History

Fox Network Launches (October 9, 1986)

The first show on the network was The Late Show, the late night talk show hosted by Joan Rivers.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Born (October 14, 1890)

Before becoming president, he was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II.

This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 11, 1952)

According to the editor’s note in this issue, you could have gotten a copy of this Norman Rockwell portrait on extra-heavy stock for only 10 cents. (Note: This offer is no longer valid.)

World Bread Day

It’s this Sunday. I’ve never made my own bread, but here are five recipes to try.

Here’s our recipe for Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and here’s AllRecipe’s Traditional White Bread. King Arthur has a recipe for Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread, while Sally’s Baking Addiction has Homemade Cheese Bread (Extra Soft).

And I don’t know if this is cheating or not, but it does have the word “bread” in it: our recipe for Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips.

Next Week’s Holidays and Events

National Waiters Day (October 20)

This is held in the United Kingdom, but we have one here in the U.S. too. It’s on May 21 and called National Waitstaff Day.

Sloth Day (October 20)

This is for the slow moving animal that hangs from trees, not for humans who just hang out on the couch and don’t move at all.