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The Doctor can never be alone. He is always supported by a
companion. After the success of The Villains of Doctor Who, the
editors of that book turn their Tardis towards the Companions of
Doctor Who. Popular characters in the world of Doctor Who including
Donna, Clara, Amy, Ace and Sarah Jane are all covered by a diverse
group of writers who all love and study Doctor Who. Each writer was
given the choice of which character to cover and then writes an
essay about what that companion brought to the series, the fandom
and to the Doctor.
Stranger things do tend to happen in Schenectady—once a booming
metropolis nicknamed the “City That Lights and Hauls the World”
thanks to the dominating presence of General Electric and the
American Locomotive Company, though those days are ancient history.
GE has nearly abandoned the city, and ALCO closed up shot over
fifty years ago. Hence, the title of this book: Forget It, Jake,
It’s Schenectady: A Police Department Under Siege, and the Man
Who Led It, a nod to the bleak conclusion of the classic film
Chinatown, one of cinema’s most devastating expressions of abject
resignation and defeat.A chance meeting between onetime Schenectady
Police Chief Gregory Kaczmarek and author David Bushman in a Lyft
car that Kaczmarek was driving was the genesis of this book,
originally intended to track the rise and fall of a veteran cop
with what appear to be two defining traits—an almost inhuman
capacity for perseverance and a truly remarkable ability to attract
notoriety and criticism. However, as the author’s
research—including interviews with over two dozen people who
lived through the events depicted in these pages—progressed, the
book mutated into something else: a consideration of the recent
history of the entire department—both its failures and
successes—especially during Kaczmarek’s six-year reign as
chief, but also involving such celebrated cases as the arrests and
convictions of child killer Marybeth Tinning and serial
rapist-murderer Lemuel Smith, who claimed to be controlled by the
spirit of his deceased brother.In one of the more notorious cases
of police corruption in New York State in recent times, the FBI set
its sights on the Schenectady PD in 1999, launching an
investigation that would eventually result in the imprisonment of
four officers, the suicide of a fifth, and the resignation of
Kaczmarek, who himself would wind up behind bars ten years later
after copping a plea to criminal possession of cocaine. The events
of this period loosely form the basis of the 2012 crime drama The
Place Beyond the Pines—a literal translation of the Mohawk word
“Schau-naugh-ta-da”—which starred Ryan Gosling, Bradley
Cooper, and Eva Mendes and was cowritten by Ben Coccio, who grew up
in Schenectady, and Derek Cianfrance, who also directed, and whose
wife likewise passed her wonder years there. Much of the blame for
these catastrophic events was leveled then—and still is—at
Kaczmarek, who spent twenty-seven years on the force, serving as
chief from 1998 to 2002 before resigning in the wake of the federal
investigation. Kaczmarek—”Kacz” to friends and to enemies,
and he had a plethora of both—is the son of a longtime
Schenectady police officer who, late in life, married the daughter
of a local bookmaker. When Greg Kaczmarek was appointed chief, he
was ordered by the mayor, his political benefactor, to hold a press
conference publicly denying long-swirling rumors that he was a drug
user—which, he insists to this day, he wasn’t at the time,
notwithstanding his eventual arrest for possession of cocaine,
purchased from the head of a major drug ring who also happened to
be a close friend of his stepson. Here you’ll meet quite an
assortment of colorful characters—law-enforcement who broke the
law, and others who—heroically—didn’t; attorneys who defended
the city, sued the city, or built a career on prosecuting those
responsible for protecting the city; a public safety commissioner
who charmed some, infuriated others (including the mayor, who
eventually squeezed him out, reportedly because he was jealous of
his popularity), and eventually perished in the September 2001
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center; mobbed-up gamblers who
paid off cops while battling to up their piece of the pie; drug
dealers with names like Slim and Misty Gallo who ran their product
all over New York’s Capital Region before finally being taken
down by wiretaps.
Smart, quirky, female-centric, drenched in pop-culture
references—Amy Sherman-Palladino's singular TV voice has won her
legions of fans and critical appreciation over the past two
decades, thanks to shows like "Gilmore Girls," "Bunheads," and "The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Sherman-Palladino—the first woman ever to
win Emmy Awards for both comedy writing and directing in a single
year—may write about different decades and milieus, but her
sensibility is unique and unmistakable throughout. Her greatest
contribution may be her pantheon of unforgettable female
characters, including Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), Rory Gilmore
(Alexis Bledel), Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy), Michelle
Simms (Sutton Foster), Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), and Miriam
"Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan). In The Women of Amy
Sherman-Palladino, writers from different walks of life—scholars,
critics, writers, comedians, dancers—take us on a journey through
the worlds of these characters, and how they have influenced their
own lives. This is the second book in "The Women of" series, after
The Women of David Lynch, published in June 2019. This unique
series, covers great female characters in television and film.
“One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an
angel”—Jean-Antoninette (“Reinette”) Poisson, aka Madame de
Pompadour, “The Girl in the Fireplace” What a world of demons
Doctor Who has presented us with over the past seven decades: from
Daleks and Cybermen to Weeping Angels and the Silence, the greatest
villains of the Who-niverse have achieved an iconic status all
their own, cementing themselves in the minds of millions of viewers
(why else would Parker Brothers have devised a version of Monopoly
after them?). If, as the Seventh Doctor once said, "You can always
judge a man by the quality of his enemies,” the Doctor is great
indeed, rescuing the universe time and again from some of the most
formidable and terrifying villains in science fiction history. Now,
for the first time, an entire anthology of essays is dedicated to
deconstructing this gallery of blackguards. Who are the greatest
Who villains of all time? Why are they so frightening?
And—apologies to Shakespeare—what do they tell us about the
villainy of our own fears?
A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten
century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive
mysteries in the history of television and film. In 1908, Hazel
Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to
death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost
stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks.
Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of
personalities-a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the
even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from
her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in
the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed
her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her
brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and
unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did
they bury them to protect the guilty? The likely answer is revealed
in an absorbing true mystery that's ingeniously reconstructed and
every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired.
Few contemporary television shows have been subjected to the
critical scrutiny that has been brought to bear on David Lynch and
Mark Frost's Twin Peaks since its debut in 1990. Yet the series,
and the subsequent film, Fire Walk With Me, are sufficiently rich
that it's always possible for a close analysis to offer something
new - and that's what Franck Boulegue has done with Twin Peaks:
Unwrapping the Plastic. Through Boulegue's eyes, we see for the
first time the world of Twin Peaks as a coherent whole, one that
draws on a wide range of cultural source material, including
surrealism, transcendental meditation, Jungian psychoanalysis,
mythology, fairy tales, and much, much more. The work of a scholar
who is also a fan, the book should appeal to any hardcore Twin
Peaks viewer.
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