Paperback 799: Zingers from the Hollywood Squares / ed. Gail Sicilia (Popular Library 00221)

Paperback 799: Popular Library 00221 (PBO, 1974)

Title: Zingers from The Hollywood Squares
Editor: Gail Sicilia
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The pink.
• Blue orange pink yellow. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted with color in the mid-70s as long as it was bright. Or earth toned. Or avocado.
• Lamont!
• I know who all these people are (ugh, old). Except the dude in the upper left, and possibly the 'fro'd guy underneath him, who looks like Jackie Mason, but can't really be Jackie Mason. Nope, it's Marty Allen. I have no idea who he is. His hair is righteous.

Best things about this back cover:

• Paul Lynde with the gay joke FTW!!!!
• Rosemarie looks like Amy Sedaris in "Strangers with Candy."
• What the hell kind of hat is that, Charley?

Page 123~

19. You have just scolded your gorilla for being a bad boy. Might he stick out his tongue at you to show his anger?

Paul Lynde: Was that his tongue?

Paul Lynde with the gorilla dong joke FTW!!

~RP

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Paperback 660: The Plague of Sound / Con Steffanson (adapting Alex Raymond's story) (Avon 19166)

Paperback 660: Avon 19166 (PBO, 1974)

Title: The Plague of Sound (Flash Gordon 2)
Author: Con Steffanson (from orig. story by Alex Raymond)
Cover artist: G. Wilson

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "You call that a Bach organ fugue!? Argh, your sound plagues me! Get out of my space church, Redbeard!"
• "It's OK, honey. You're safe now," he said, after bravely firing at nothing.
• I proclaim that to be the thinnest shirt ever worn by man or beast.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, that is one awesomely self-parodic damsel in distress. She's got the dramatic arms and the proud, heaving bosom and the blow-up doll mouth and everything.
• That first paragraph may as well say: "First, a bunch of random shit happens..."
• In the future, there will be sciences. Plural. Be there!

Page 123~

Sawtel's stunpistol flashed out of his tunic and quietly whirred.

Hmmm. Is that a whirring stunpistol in your tunic or are you just glad to see me?

~RP

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Paperback 637: The Way the Cookie Crumbles / James Hadley Chase (Pocket Books 77922)

Paperback 637: Pocket Books 77922 (1st ptg, 1974)

Title: The Way the Cookie Crumbles
Author: James Hadley Chase
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Is the drug in the needle gonna make the mimes go away? If so, shoot me. Now.
• I'm sorry. I said "mimes." What I meant was "mimes hovering over my death bed."
• I don't know what corner-mime is miming, and I really don't want to know.
• Design team leader: "Well, the title refers to cookies, so I'm thinking... chicks, drugs and mimes. What do you think?"

Best things about this back cover:

• JAIL BAIT. Sure, sounds good. There's been no image continuity or discernible theme so far, so why start now?
• If her morals are ripe, shouldn't they be at their peak? Is she chaste? Is that what you're saying? I don't think that's what you're saying.
• Aaaaaand ... a murderous dwarf. Of course. Perfect. OK, I think we're done here. Unless there's a kitchen sink someone wants to shoehorn into this plot somehow.

Page 123~

"Oh, never mind. Why didn't you get yourself some clothes, Jess? I sent you enough money."
"What the hell do I want clothes for?"
"Paradise City isn't New York. You can get picked up by the cops for looking the way you do."
"Frig the cops!"

If you ever wondered where N.W.A. got their inspiration for "Fuck Da Police"—well, now you know.

~RP

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Paperback 632: Tell It To the Birds / James Hadley Chase (Pocket Books 77764)

Paperback 632: Pocket Books 77764 (1st ptg, 1974)

Title: Tell It To the Birds
Author: James Hadley Chase
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• You've got a little spinach in your teeth  there ... on your right ... *your* right ... here, I'm a mirror ... that's it.
• The '70s brought us a lot of wacky mail-order products: Ginsu knives, Mr. Microphone, and, of course, SureShot, the all-in-one handgun/hairdryer: "SureShot: It'll Blow Your Hair Away!"
• Don't laugh at the "blood." It took a bunch of industrious 7th graders a long time to make that "blood."
• "We should superimpose the bloody hand onto her hair, because that would ... suggest ... ah fuck it, who cares *why*, just do it!"
• I don't have a lot of '70s paperbacks in my collection, but I'm thinking of moving in that direction—they have none of the beauty of the fully painted covers of the '40s-mid-'60s, but they have a Cheese Factor of a million, which I can also admire.

Best things about this back cover:

•  Is he wearing an orchid!? Because of his novel No Orchids For Miss Blandish??? Man, that is foppish in extremis.
• Meg Barlowe spoonerizes to Beg Marlowe, which is what Maddox should've done if he wanted to know how to be a real fucking detective.
• I have not read Chase. I do not hear good things. Hence, I have not read Chase.
• Center page of this book is a cigarette ad on stiff paper—Kent cigarettes on one side, Kent Menthol on the others. The cigarette ad insert is a not uncommon feature of cheap '70s thrillers.

Page 123~

"She kept the house like a pig sty. If a woman really loves her husband, she makes an effort to keep his home decent."

Well, now we know whom she shot and why.

~RP

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Paperback 612: Martinis, Manhattans or Me? / Barbara O'Brien (Zebra 0013)

Paperback 612: Zebra Books 8468-0013 (PBO, 1974)

Title: Martinis, Manhattans or Me? 
Author: Barbara O'Brien
Cover artist: Boobshot McGee [photo cover]

Yours for: $75


Best things about this cover:

• Um, I'm gonna have to try them all and see...
• What's truly awesome about this cover is how normal-pretty she is. She's not all fakely sexed-up, the way you might expect on a cover of this nature. Cleavage, sure, but that's practically modest by today's standards. 
• I really want to hear what's being said in that background conversation between Cap'n Blue Tracksuit and Missy Surprised Drunkface.
• Font! Those dots on the Is are the best I-dots ever—martini-shaped!
• This book is apparently pretty rare. It's also in wicked good condition. Hence the $$$ it would take it to pry it from my hands.

Best things about this back cover.

• I'm pretty sure I will guess, and I'm pretty sure I'll at least be in the ballpark.
• Prince should write a song called "Lady Bartender."
• You can tell "how much man you're getting" by the drink he orders??? Is this on the Zima-WhiskeyNeat scale?
• If this website ever hosts some kind of Mid-Century Paperback Insanity-type party, I promise to make drinks from this book.
• I opened to a random page just now and the first line I saw was "Sounds kind of groovy." Also, quick thumbing through revealed words such as "sumbitch" and phrases such as "withdrew his cock," so ... literati, take note.

Page 125~ (much better than 123, trust me)

Karen was a really bigger-than-life Great Fuck. Another reason for her immense popularity with customers was her agreeable attitude toward sex. Karen simply adored going to bed. She dug fucking. She liked it, enjoyed, desired, and gave her single-minded concentration to the act of fucking.

"She was indifferent to many things; fucking was not one of them. No fuck-hater, she. Etc."

~RP

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Paperback 604: Alien Horizons / William F. Nolan (Pocket Books 77928)

Paperback 604: Pocket Books 77928 (PBO, 1974)

Title: Alien Horizons
Author: William F. Nolan
Cover artist: Vincent DiFate

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Yo ... little help?"
• I'd like to humbly request a reverse-angle version of this painting, thank you.
• "This book will ram your brain like a runaway shopping cart"—Ray Bradbury

Best things about this back cover:

• "Where's the 'z' key on this thing? ... oh, well, I'll just use '2' ... looks fine."
• Rod Serling liked to SCREAM his blurbs.
• There are a suspicious number of ellipses in these blurbs ...

Page 123~

Fred Baxter stared at the cat, who stared back at him from the damp yard, its head raised, the yellow of the night moon now brimming in the creature's eyes. The cat's mouth opened.

"It's sucking up the moonlight," Fred whispered.

Fred's wife nodded slowly and turned toward the bed, despair filling her heart as she realized Fred would fail his veterinary board exam yet again.

~RP

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Paperback 389: Yoga For Physical Fitness / Richard L. Hittleman (Warner 91-281)

Paperback 389: Warner Books 91-281 (14th ptg??? 1974)

Title: Yoga For Physical Fitness
Author: Richard L. Hittleman
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: not for sale


Best things about this cover:

• There is only one word I can think of when I look at this. Junk. JUNKJUNKJUNKJUNKJUNK. Dorothy Hamill's crotch isn't faring much better, frankly.
• "First, lay your junk on the head of a seated young woman..."
• God bless the people who invented non-obscene yoga clothing. I could not / would not practice in whatever that guy's got on.
• I had no idea there were "famous yoga instructors" in the U.S. in 1974.
• I guess they're forming the letter "Y." I'm really glad I don't have to see them do the "MCA" part.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hey, that crotch looks familiar ...
• "Tied to the kitchen sink?" That's either kinky or cruel.

Page 123~

This firming exercise is self-explanatory.

~RP

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P.S. thanks to Jami for the book...

Interlude—people send me books sometimes

After buying a book from me, reader JamiSings was inspired to send me a bunch of campy old paperbacks: several Agatha Christies, a romance novel, and a couple of sex books ("Sex Games that People Play" —about the unsexiest book I've ever briefly looked at—and "The Sensuous Woman" by J, which I've heard of and which is quite graphic in places). Of these six, I thought two of them deserved special notice.

First, the harrowing tale of Vincent Price's elaborate scheme for revenge against those bastards at Godiva Chocolate:



And second, the touching story of a woman with a secret passion for dry-humping enormous cloves of garlic:


~RP

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