Oct 07
Click for full imageTom Hering Comments: Chapter One, paragraph one – “Outside the bedroom window rain dripped steadily from the tall Douglas firs. Isobel Dempster did not have to raise the blinds and look out to know what kind of a day it was. It was wet. It was the first day of June, when the whole world should be bright and sunny, but not the Skagit Valley in the state of Washington. Here it was wet. It was wet here yesterday and would be wet tomorrow, and barring some miracle it would be wet next week too.”
Published 1975
(Average: 8.45 out of 10)
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October 7th, 2013 at 9:57 am
Sequel: #2 The Tight Perm.
October 7th, 2013 at 10:00 am
Nobody in the background has quite mastered the rules of pinata. And who’d have an affair with an aardvark? Surely the wife would notice all the clawmarks on the bed?
October 7th, 2013 at 10:28 am
RT @GoodShowSir: New Book Cover: The Big Brain #1 The Aardvark Affair http://t.co/6XRz0A87G2
October 7th, 2013 at 11:04 am
Is that Magnum P.I. having a bar fight in the background?!!
October 7th, 2013 at 11:42 am
That’s not a brain, that’s a sad spaghetti accident.
Unless all three scenes are going on in the same room at the same instant, I can’t say as I’m interested.
October 7th, 2013 at 11:56 am
Those eyes are saying: “Don’t hate me because I’m smarter than you!”
October 7th, 2013 at 11:59 am
Don’t miss these other exciting BIG BRAIN titles:
#2 The Catfish Capers
#3 The Crocodile Crisis
#4 The Bloodhound Bluff
October 7th, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Well, you know the saying: Big brain, tiny… gun.
October 7th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
“Cheech. Chong. Stallone. THE BIG BRAIN. Sly as you’ve never seen him before.”
“Yo, Adrian! I can’t wait to explain Wittgenstein to you!”
October 7th, 2013 at 1:50 pm
LOL oh man i love this cover!! Especially the hawaian shirt battle in the background, you can almost see the “POW!” flashing on the screen.
Also whats up with the Mexican gunslinger/superior court judge/mariachi band member using a gavel as a weapon? Or is he trying to free that woman?? Judging from his body position, he is going to miss badly (probably drunk on margaritas) and fall flat on his face.
I am with SI, all i hear is the magnum PI theme song playing when I look at that sexy brain. Where is the moustache??
October 7th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Faster than a computer! Deadlier than a laser! Skull thinner than paper! – 25 in melee combat! Smack him in the noggin with a ping pong ball and watch him go into a coma!
October 7th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Shouldn’t that be “Faster than a laser! Deadlier than a computer!”?
Anyway, with all these swell attributes, and a transparent skull to boot, why on earth does he need any sized gun?
He looks a little like Illya Kuryakin from the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. series.
October 7th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
@ Rags, I think that’s a hatchet. Maybe he wants to see her brains, too?
@ Admin, how am I ever going to be famous if people keep misspelling my name?
@ Tag Wizard, what’s the Big Brain wearing? 🙂
October 7th, 2013 at 3:45 pm
If you can solve all of your problems with a smoking gun why have a big brain at all? Or any brain for that matter.
October 7th, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Cheers Tom! Do you happen to have the cover to hand, for the solving of the hatchet / world’s tiniest sledgehammer mystery?
Like Biblio I am doubting Big Brain’s credentials, here caught in the act of holding a smoking gun. A novice error. Deduction: it’s just a fancy cranial tattoo.
October 7th, 2013 at 4:34 pm
@ Tag Wizard, I picked up mintier-than-mint copies of Big Brain #1 and #2. So, I grabbed my magnifying glass (necessary) and yes, it’s a hatchet for sure.
I’ll send #2 to you soon, and your question about whether or not that’s a real exo-brain will be answered.
October 7th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Either a cranial tattoo, or a VERY THIN – translucent – cranium.
October 7th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Thanks much, Tom.
Then, crazy shadows tag added!
October 7th, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Turtleneckier than a turtle that’s wearing a turtleneck!
October 7th, 2013 at 6:28 pm
‘That cycad has grown the HUGEST orange in the WHOLE WORLD…gonna smash it…’
‘NO! If you take away the orange, who will EVER come to my patio bar?’
‘Get outta my way, man!’
‘Take THIS!’
BIFF! POW! SMACK! WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA!
October 7th, 2013 at 6:41 pm
He has a turtle-neck over another turtle-neck, and he pulled them on over his naked, damp, sloppy cortex. Self-inflicted sartorial lobotomy. Not so smart.
October 7th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
And if you’re going to fire straight up into the air and then stay stood where you were, at least wear a hat to maybe stop the falling bullet.
October 7th, 2013 at 7:35 pm
My goodness you are correct, Tag-W: none of the shadows matches the objects casting the shadow! Hatchet-man’s shadow is bent forward much farther than his actual body, and the poor tied up woman’s shadow seems to show her slumping to avoid whatever blow he is bent to deliver.
Maybe such a Big Brain sends out brain waves that warp the time continuum so that the shadows show, not where things are, but where they will momentarily be. That this is fairly useless information probably doesn’t bother a Big Brain. “I knew that,” he’d no doubt reply if you told him.
October 7th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
I just discovered that if you use the word “bondage” in a post it gets bounced back. Well, we’ll see . . . .it seem if you put it in quotes it’s ok. I think I am having post-modern moment. If only I had a Big Brain I could figure out what’s going on.
October 7th, 2013 at 8:25 pm
That’s pretty funny, Mr. C, “bondage” comments aren’t even getting into the spam queue. Good Show Server does not approve!
October 7th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Very puzzling, Tag, sir. I kept getting an “access forbidden” and something with the word “Apache” in it and couldn’t figure out why until I just tried replacing “Bondage” woman” with “tied up woman and then it went through. Six of one, seems to me, but who am I to question the interwebs?
Wow, it just happened again. Ok: I can’t literally show this b/c it won’t get through but if you use the word “bondage” and hyphenate it to the word “woman” the post is bounced. Obviously the work-around isn’t too difficult to figure out, but this narrow usage is verboten.
October 7th, 2013 at 9:28 pm
@Monsieur Chiclitz:I ran into the same problem on another page with ‘Elvis’. Those darn U. K. servers and their Victorian morals.
October 7th, 2013 at 10:23 pm
Human-coral hybrids never end well.
October 8th, 2013 at 12:18 am
@TW, BC: Whenever I try to post ‘Toni Weisskopf covers her product with such elegant, tasteful covers’ the server slaps me around a bit with a large trout. 🙁
October 8th, 2013 at 3:45 am
@DS, FoM, Tag-W—I appreciate the helpful commentary on my dilemma. I must confess that despite my advancing age I am a bit of a naif in these techno-realms. I could never match, for example, Bibliomancer’s amazing creative skills. Truth to tell, I am a soft Luddite, hence apt to be taken aback by phenomena ya’ll take for granted and with good humor. Well well, another rite of passage pour moi. And another reason to love this site so well. Good thing we aren’t commenting on Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. I’d be tempted to add the hyphen and the word “woman” and then, here comes the trout! 🙂
October 8th, 2013 at 9:01 am
@B. Chiclitz – We can blame the server master… otherwise known as “The Great Annoyance!”
We have a spam filter that sits in the realms beyond WordPress and does what you see with certain words in an effort to stop spam.
Obviously if you continue to see a problem with the words you are trying to comment about let me know and I will bug him constantly to remove the “bondage” filter so we might never be censored! 😉
October 8th, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Thanks for the helpful tip, Admin. The price we pay for our freedom fries!
Probably more fun to think of ways to fool the filter—like referring to “bandage-woman,” “bendage-woman,” “bundage-woman.”
October 8th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
This cover is epic. I want to know who the woman is who is defying dastardly men with sombreros while wearing high heels. I have no doubt that Magnum will come and rescue her when he’s done fighting that other guy in the bar. (I thought for a moment his opponent had nun-chucks but it’s just weird shadows. And what IS that thing that looks like a wooden shield?)
I have a theory…maybe the man with the big brain just appears to have a transparent skull because the viewer has been gifted with x-ray vision by virtue of reading this book! Anybody second me?…Okay, I’ve read way too much SF…
October 10th, 2013 at 5:36 pm
I know crazy shadows were mentioned, but aren’t those guys in the background casting shadows ON the sun itself?
October 10th, 2013 at 7:13 pm
After this, I’m wondering if this series ever made it to book #2…
October 10th, 2013 at 7:47 pm
@Yoss: Wow, you’re right, I hadn’t noticed that before. Unless that’s some sort of decorative four-foot orange helium balloon floating around this tiki bar. Which is always possible.
October 11th, 2013 at 11:00 am
I’ve done the work so you don’t have to.
THE BIG BRAIN #2: The Beelzebub Business
I particularly like the fact that his brainy head is on this cover not once, but twice, by way of a cut-and-paste job that includes the dagger tip of the conveniently undersized comic book cliché villain on his chin.
Of course it won’t help, because we all know that the big Monty Python foot will come down on him before he can thwart said villain’s evil plans with the helpless wench. But still.
October 11th, 2013 at 1:51 pm
@ Jaouad — Awesome cover. I wonder if the nonexistent “The Big Brain #3: The Cthulhu Conspiracy” would have had three Big Brain heads on the cover?
October 23rd, 2013 at 11:05 pm
“Can the Big Brain outsmart the Devil when Washington’s chief foreign policy maker signs a pact with Satan?”
I for one feel, nay, DEMAND, that “The Beelzebub Business” get a Good Show post of it’s own.
A post where in all probability one or two jabs at current American-international relations will be made…
January 8th, 2014 at 6:40 pm
I don’t think that the two guys in the background are fighting at all. It looks more like one guy trying to prevent his friend from drinking himself into a stupor.
Carlos: “No Pedro, don’t do it. You are killing yourself!”
Pedro: “I can’t take it anymore Carlos, my wife is into weird stuff like being tied up and having a weird bald guys watch her while some dude insults her while holding a hatchet….*hick*”
May 22nd, 2015 at 10:01 pm
Clearly, this man has decided that a badly-executed cranial tattoo of a brain, coupled with presumed laser surgery to remove the possibility of having hair obscure it, is THE HEIGHT of handsomeness.
He can’t have a transparent skull and scalp because living brains are sensitive to light – he’d be all kinds of dead.
Pulp books – I never cease to be amazed.
May 23rd, 2015 at 9:53 am
Faster than a computer!
Deadlier than a laser!
THE SWIMMING CAP
May 14th, 2018 at 5:40 pm
Bondage-woman.
Just sayin’.
September 17th, 2020 at 12:28 am
I really don’t know how this is all supposed to fit together.
Aardvarks aren’t indigenous to Hawaii, where Magnum’s in the bar fight. Nor to Mexico, where bondage-woman is being menaced by a hatchet-wielding stereotype.
And then there’s visible-brain himself, wearing a turtleneck that’s inappropriate for the weather in Hawaii, Mexico, AND sub-Saharan Africa. Though it might be good in paragraph 1.
September 17th, 2020 at 12:52 am
I wonder what Samuel L. Jackson would have to say about this.
September 17th, 2020 at 8:40 am
We seem to have wandered a bit far afield from the ominous floating balls. Good Show Sir not producing enough content for y’all?
Maybe it’s a golden aardvark or something, like the Maltese Falcon.
@Anna T. back in 2015: brains can be killed by daylight, brains use an excessive supply of blood, brains have strange mental powers….are brains vampires???
September 18th, 2020 at 1:42 am
Were there many books in this series – did it get as far as #26 The Zombie Zone or did it end way before then, maybe at #5 The Evil Experiment?
September 18th, 2020 at 5:30 am
@THX: “There are mofo snakes on this mofo’s head!”
September 18th, 2020 at 9:52 am
@GSS x-n: Not “Check out the big brain on, er, the aardvark!”?
September 19th, 2020 at 3:07 am
Gotta say, that’s a real Bulwer-Lytton award [1] first paragraph.
[1] https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
September 19th, 2020 at 4:18 am
For true Bulwer-Lytton it’d all be one sentence.
Once at a con the guy who runs that did a panel. Some of the entries ended up in one of the books. I particularly remember something about “knowing the long nuclear winter had ended when the lawn had trapped and eaten the first robin of spring.”
October 9th, 2023 at 2:51 pm
If I was a crazy facist Tory billionaire I’d finance Laurence Fox to multiple Oscars.