Nov 14
It’s a Two-fer Tuesday – Dem Bones Edition
Gully Foyle Comments: Yahoo! Mountain Dew!
Piper Comments: The cover is very literal: a skeleton solving his own murder with the dog.
Published 1986, 2013
It’s a Two-fer Tuesday – Dem Bones Edition
Gully Foyle Comments: Yahoo! Mountain Dew!
Piper Comments: The cover is very literal: a skeleton solving his own murder with the dog.
Published 1986, 2013
November 14th, 2017 at 10:35 am
1. No, I don’t know any Grateful Dead songs.
2. I don’t want to change the channel. I’m watching “Bones”.
November 14th, 2017 at 12:09 pm
#1 has no spine below the clavicles. This was presumably to keep the final image from looking to busy, but it looks like the neck was growing directly out of the shoulders, in some kind of inverse Mal Meninga shape.
#2 seems to have a severely deflected acromion, but at least it’s not center of the frame.
November 14th, 2017 at 1:25 pm
I knew they shouldn’t have franchised out those Discworld novels…
November 14th, 2017 at 1:51 pm
#1 Even murdering a banjo player won’t make him stop playing.
#2 Does the blurb continue on the back? It reads like there was a hilarious joke on the way…
November 14th, 2017 at 2:05 pm
1. “I had blisters on my fingers!”
2. “If you don’t switch to “Lassie” I’m going to suck all your marrow out!”
November 14th, 2017 at 2:06 pm
@TagW—”Mr. Bonejangles”—great alt.text. See, I do read them! 😛
November 14th, 2017 at 2:15 pm
1. If the title was ‘Hang Nails’ then they could have added a noose.
2. Unless the skeleton is that of Groucho Marx and the dog can talk and knows Kung Fu I’m not interested in reading it, no matter how cute the doggy woggy is on the cover.
November 14th, 2017 at 2:24 pm
@B. Chiclitz – Oh thank you. I was starting to feel ignored and ready to give up and just put “John 3:16” in all the alt-texts.
November 14th, 2017 at 2:36 pm
@fred: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog is my fibula, that damned nuisance!”
November 14th, 2017 at 3:37 pm
2.) Man, that dog took a long time to fetch the remote.
November 14th, 2017 at 4:28 pm
1. When hiring a necromancer to resurrect your banjo-playing relative, don’t go with the one who insists on the “eyeballs” approach.
2. It had been hard for Maxie, ever since his master had become undead. He couldn’t just gnaw on any old bone anymore.
November 14th, 2017 at 4:29 pm
2. The other covers in this series are GSS worthy. Won’t spoil, but – TOAST!
November 14th, 2017 at 5:11 pm
If #2 was titled ‘A Red Skelton in the Family’ I might inclined to read it. How hilarious would THAT be?
November 14th, 2017 at 5:39 pm
Generally, these recall Scotch video-tape adverts from the 80s (which suggest that we’ll still be using VHS in 2021 – good news for us hold-outs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJzRpgXvM2I
‘Dew claws’ really exist but is ‘a skeleton in the family’ a well-worn phrase? I thought it was in the closet. Which makes the deceased watching blokes in leather a bit more interesting.
November 14th, 2017 at 6:31 pm
@JuanPaul: And here is Red in the silent spot.
November 14th, 2017 at 7:44 pm
Actually, scratch that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaXrAax3oU
November 14th, 2017 at 7:52 pm
@JuanPaul – I’d rather read one titled A Skeletor in the Family.
November 14th, 2017 at 8:10 pm
@Raoul—how about A Red Skeletor in the Family?
November 14th, 2017 at 8:54 pm
@B.Chiclitz: but can he dance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHb5W6gH-40
(The sequel’s longer and looks oddly like that episode of Torchwood where Spike from Buffy turned up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PgTjhx1VLw)
November 14th, 2017 at 10:40 pm
@Tat: Having watched those Skeletor adverts, I now completely grok the meaning of “gobsmacked”. For that is what I am.
I remember scoffing at that Scotch VHS tape ad at the time. Because they didn’t hold up that well in the 80’s and nobody I knew bought them for anything they wanted to keep more than a year. Have been going through and dumping old VHS and the TDK tapes have held up well. It’s < 4 more years till 2021 (!!) and I expect those will still be watchable then, particularly the high grade.
1. I don't see any dew claws — the quadruped in #2 would have them. But it's a shame that even death won't release you from banjos. Truly hellish. The eyeballs spanged out seems to indicate he'd had too much of the soft drink Mountain Dew, as opposed to the moonshine. He no longer has innards for it to tickle.
2. Minus what's on his telly, that cover screams "Generic extruded cozy mystery product". The skeleton is a slight twist on the formula. Fido really should be nomming on skeleton, not fetching the remote. And then pose for Doge memes. Much trite, so mystery, wow.
November 15th, 2017 at 10:56 am
Better watch the second author’s book doesn’t burn down, it’s easy done.
November 16th, 2017 at 4:31 am
#2: he can’t get up and change the channel since Fido buried his shins somewhere in the garden.
November 17th, 2017 at 5:25 pm
That second cover suffers from an acute case of Photoshop abuse. Even ignoring the obviously computer-modeled skeleton, there are so many subtly wrong elements pasted in that it creates an uncanny valley effect for the whole room.
Then there’s the amateurish typography — particularly the skewed text that doesn’t quite fit the mantel. This thing is hard to look at.