Shug Pops His Isle O'Foam© Cherry! Dept. - Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman's Bedside Books

Shug Hanlan files screed from his local flat-roof pub deep in Manchestershire's leafy Moss Side, and in so doing earns this Swell Trading Card! [left - Ed.]

In my rough-hewn but comfortable log cabin [smirks insufferable Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman - Ed.] I normally have four or five© bedside books going at any one time.

I read hardly any 20th Century nautical poetry but The Love Boat Book Of Verse, set amidst the cruise ships of the mid-1970s was, I found, strewn with a giddy, quasi-erotic tension. The ship boutique manager's seductive and satisfying sonnets which find him self-consciously wrestling with the ferociously complex predicament of finding that his ex-fiancés (all three of them!) have stowed onboard during a trip to the Caribbean, were profoundly appealing.
 The Yeoman Purser's deliberately artless haiku:

 Andy Warhol's 
Due On Board In 15 Minutes 

is a modern classic.

 


Short Walks And Fragments by Jake and The Fatman was fabulously readable. The intimate photographs of William Conrad in a doughnut shop researching for his role as "Fatman" McCabe alone are worth the price. An extraordinary glimpse of Conrad's trailer reveals with trenchant realism an inner world one would not normally associate with the mismatched crime-fighting duo; briar pipes, a box of Smokies, several glass knicknacks and a well-thumbed copy of Gravity's Rainbow. However, the lack of a good editor is keenly felt [yeah - tell me about it, Shug! - Ed.].

A lesser team of oddball soldiers of fortune may have simply decided to dwell on their Vietnam War experiences and later TV adventures, but in the haunting and accomplished anthology The Parents That Made Us, The A Team (Smith, Baracus, Peck and Murdock) have fashioned something much more profound.
 Col. John "Hannibal" Smith's initially wistful evocation of his early love of theatricality and extended family outings, when each child was initiated into the mysteries of disguise, becomes a truly gripping read when, much later, he successfully impersonates Le Duc Tho during a particularly tense moment of the Paris peace talks. Born into an extremely wealthy, but borderline insane, family, Capt. H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock sits at his mother’s knee and is instructed in the occult, painting upon glass, saturation bombing missions and method acting.
 Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck's father is revealed as a strongman with unorthodox opinions on soldiering, codes of conduct and chivalry, insisting that his son become "the Green Beret's most handsome nonentity". Long before he became a Mohican-haired mechanic or appeared in any Rocky movies, Sgt. Bosco "BA" Baracus travelled with his itinerant family through rural areas of Greater Virginia spreading a brand of militant black Methodism. Baracus seems fully aware that his quick temper and "Bad Attitude" stems from his favouring action and fiery preaching over rational argument.
   

Like other famous medical men such as Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, and of course Quincy M.E., Dick Van Dyke's brilliant collection of stories, inspired by the scripts of Diagnosis Murder, offer cold, magisterial judgements on the human condition while maintaining close attention to the details of ordinary life. There are so many minor characters one so wishes to read more about, such as the trio of high-class pickpockets who contract a deadly disease from dipping the pocket of an ailing mafia chief and later return as astral projections to guide the cops to a store of drug money concealed in a collection of Quaker furniture. Or the junior members of the Van Dyke clan, all gifted actors and medical students, who perform a Medicare version of The Blair Witch Project in which they highlight the importance of socialized health care for teens.
    

Little Hair Salon In The Prairie is a wry and deftly layered vision of a couple struggling to cope with the random ride-by scalping of their only child. Even though their marriage and private lives are spiraling out of control they continue to work at improving their business. Little Hair Salon In The Prairie may be primarily concerned with loss and grief but it is also by far the best book written about the problems of dealing with split ends during the Texas Cattle War of 1883.
    

Finally, when folks ask me that age-old question, bookmark or page-fold? I just do a little-old smile and say I much prefer to use a lock of my long, luxuriant hair. 



[Shug Hanlan is Senior Aisle Hygenist at a major Big Box store. In his spare time he tortures Hummel© figurines in a tiny custom-built briefcase dungeon - Ed.]