Again with Hagashi

Dear Counsel,

My name is Hiro Hagashi. I provided a business partner of mine Mr Mark Riley a business loan in the amount of $285,000.00.

He needed this loan to buy some equipment for his business in 2008. Mr Riley is based in your Jurisdiction. The loan was for 24 months and at an interest rate of 8.75%. The capital and interest were supposed to be paid on April 15th, 2010 but he has only paid $92,100.00.

Please let me know if this falls within the scope of your practice so that I can provide you with the loan documents and answer any other questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Hiro Hagashi
10, Shinji-Yokohama,
Kohoku-ku, Yokohama City

Book Review: Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

There is nothing more magnificent than a really good book.   Maybe This Time is a really good book and it is a Gothic ghost story  and that just makes it that more delicious.   I don't usually read romances.  I find them artificial and boring, but the characters in this book were real enough to make the romance interesting and the ghosts were more than interesting enough to make up for the kissing.  Of course, the kissing lead to sex, which makes the romance much more palatable for me as well.

Maybe This Time is the story of a woman, Andy,  in her thirties who is haunted by her first marriage. She's been divorced for ten years and she wants to move on.  She's  found a man she wants to marry and all she has to do is cut the final cord that attaches her to her ex-husband.   Her ex-husband keeps sending her money and she hates it.   She summons all her courage and goes to him to demand that he stop sending her money, only to be suckered into doing a job for him.  He wants her to go down to Southern Ohio to check on his orphaned niece and nephew who live in an old mansion that was moved from England to the states over one hundred years ago.   The children have been abandoned by two nannies, one aunt, and their father.  Death hangs over their head like a noose and the children themselves are more than a little odd.

Andy goes down to Southern Ohio on the condition that her ex never contacts her again after she does this for him.  He's also going to pay her enough money to financially liberate her forever.   Andy's plan is to get things back together and get the kids out of the house in less than a month.  Unfortunately,  the children are held to the house my some particularly malevolent ghosts and Andy is going to need help from her ex-husband and everyone else to deal with the evil lurking in the shadows of the old house.  She also has to confront her own demons and awaken her lost love to free the children from the ghosts.

Maybe This Time was not only a good ghost story, but a very well written novel with an engaging plot.    I would recommend it to anyone.   St. Martin's press has also offered to give one free copy of this book away to one of my readers.  So, if you would like to read this wonderful Gothic romance,  comment below and I will enter you in the contest!

Let's Applaud The Writer

My last post called into question the abilities of some of our most successful sitcom writers. This wasn't really the intention. It was just a talking point. So now I thought I would turn the argument on its head and defend the scriptwriter.

This time I'm talking about live performance. It has always irked me when people are only interested in going to the theatre when there is somebody famous in the cast. They go along to see a play with a perfectly good plot and excellent dialogue but only because so-and-so off Emmerdale is in it or what's-his-name who used to be in Casualty plays the lead. It's particularly upsetting when the 'star' of the show pulls out for one reason or another, audiences go into decline and the rest of the cast and crew are out of a job.

Here in Nottingham the Theatre Royal puts on a Classic Thriller Season every August. It is the same company every year and they put on a different play every week for four weeks. Members of the cast have served their time in various bits of TV, radio and theatre so they are no mugs. The point is – the actors are not household names but the playwrights are. They put on plays by the likes of Agatha Christie, Brian Clemens, J.B. Priestley etc. and it is excellent entertainment. They wouldn't keep getting invited back every year if it wasn't would they?

Each Spring the Nottingham Playhouse puts on a musical by a local operatic group. I went to see The Producers one year and was blown away. The brilliant acting, the flawless musical numbers and the slick scene changes proved that, although their status was amateur, the production standards were professional and no TV star could have enhanced the performance.

I suppose all this is just an extension of the celebrity culture we have nowadays. People are famous for being famous and seem to attract the attention of the masses. So what do I expect to be done about this? Just for people to think more about the entertainment that's on offer and less about the performers.

Let the Halloween Hauntings Begin!

Over the next two months the world will paint itself in black and orange for Halloween.  All sorts of haunted houses and attractions will awaken from their ten month slumber to scare children and adults and remind us of the things that scare us in the dark.  As these things crawl out from their shadowy depths,  I will explore them and discuss them, because although I love real haunted places,  I also love the artificial ones that pay homage to the real ones.  I went on my first Halloween exploration today!  I know, it keeps starting earlier and earlier and that just tickles me.  Today, I went through Huntsville Botanical Garden's Scarecrow Trail and explored the terrifying and silly scarecrows and the other seasonal nonsense they put up.  It doesn't get any more fun or family friendly than this Alabama Halloween attraction.  

Ghost Busting Scarecrow!

The White Lady of the Philipines

It is probably no surprise that I love Halloween.  I wait all year for Halloween, so I was thrilled when my Halloween costume came today.   I ordered this one and in order to celebrate my love of ghost stories,  I am going to be a white lady this year for Halloween.  White Ladies are my favorite ghosts.   They are tragic, romantic figures wandering the shadowy realm between this world and the next.   White Ladies are the ghosts of young women who died tragically, often times for love.  They are always seen in long white dresses.   Every culture seems to have these white lady phantoms.   Carl Jung would have loved them.   It is no surprise that they are popular in the Philippines, as they seem to be popular everywhere.  My father is Filipino, so when I found this story, I couldn't resist putting it here as one of my favorite white lady stories.

The most popular Filipino white lady is the White Lady of Balete Drive. Like most white ladies,  this white lady appears as a long haired beauty in  lovely white gown.   During World War II,  the Japanese occupied the Philippines and were particularly cruel and brutal to the locals.   This is no surprise.  The Japanese atrocities during World War II were legendary and never were they worse than the Rape of Nanjing and the Rape of Manila, in the Philippines.  They called what the Japanese did to these two cities rapes, because they not only committed genocides, but did particularly perverse and sexually deviant things to the city's residents before they killed them.  Although this white lady is not from Manila, she was a victim of rape at the hands of Japanese soldiers during  World War II.   According to legend, she was raped and killed by Japanese soldiers during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II.   Most of the stories associated with her are told by taxi drivers who have seen her on the road late at night.   Other drivers and travellers have also seen her wandering the lonely moonlit road of Balete Drive.  She is often blamed for the accidents along this road.  that Most of the stories that have come out about her were told by taxi drivers doing the graveyard shift.   One taxi driver even claims she asked him for a ride.

I found another interesting Filipino white lady story at http://www.castleofspirits.com/whitelady.html .  This is a first hand account of an encounter with a white lady and as I could not do the story justice by retelling it,  I thought it was more appropriate to put a link.  As I get ready for Halloween,  I will be thinking of these tragic white ladies.  I hope my costume does them justice.  My dress is above.

The Ghosts of the USS Alabama

I thought I would return to where I started tonight.   My first few blogs were about Alabama and the places I had been in Alabama.  The USS Alabama is one of my favorite Southern haunts.

The USS Alabama is a large and impressive ship that is a major tourist attraction for Mobile, Alabama. It has been retired and docked in the Mobile Bay and sees thousands of visitors every day. At night, the ship hosts many cub scout camp outs so the battleship is rarely empty or quiet. Despite the fact that officials claim the ship is not, nor has ever been haunted, many claim to have seen ghosts on this ship. There have been reports of phantom foot steps and odd noises. It is said that late at night bulkheads open and close by themselves and odd tapping noises can be heard throughout the ship.

The Battleship Alabama’s first two deaths were of men who were in the Norfolk shipyard as she was under construction. She was finished in 1942 and served 37 months without any deaths due to enemy fire. As for death under friendly fire, however, there were 8 deaths on gun mount #5 when gun mount #9 fired upon them. It seems that the safety feature that was supposed to prevent the turrets from firing upon each other had failed. The men were completely destroyed; the only thing left of the gun commander was his boots.

The USS Alabama staff does not allow anyone interested in the paranormal to spend the night on the ship, so few people can tell stories of what happens when night comes aboard this old bit of history.  My boys, however,  were fortunate enough to spend the night on this wonderful ship last summer. As cub scouts, they were able to camp out on the ship.  Women are not allowed on the ship after dark, so I had to abandon my men to the shadows and wait for their stories.  Both of my boys claim that they saw and heard ghosts the night they stayed on the ship. My oldest son says he saw a barefoot ghost by turret five.This is particularly interesting, because he didn't know about any ghost stories associated with ship or about the man who lost his boots at this turret.   I have attached a picture of their overnight t that shows an orb by one of the turrets. The orb is directly above my son's head.  I know orbs are nothing like hard proof of the paranormal,  but it is still an interesting picture especially since it was taken my gun mount # 5.

Are You Having A Laugh?

I recently wrote a pilot episode for a sitcom and had someone take a look at it. The guy has worked on several television programmes and once had his own series back in the early nineties so he knows what he's talking about. He filled four pages of A4 with his comments telling me that the basic idea was good and it was funny but that it needed a lot of work. I've almost finished the rework and it got me thinking about classic comedies. Was the writing as good as we think?

Now I'm not going to question the undisputable talent of the likes of Galton and Simpson, Croft and Perry, Eric Chappell etc. But would their shows have enjoyed the longevity without the comic geniuses that starred in them?

My particular favourites are Dad's Army and Rising Damp and they still make me laugh. But when I watch them now for the millionth time I begin to wonder whether the script is really all that funny. Is it just the brilliant comedy actors that are turning poor jokes into pants-wetting crackers? In other words – is it the way they tell 'em? And just because someone has had a successful series are they allowed to get away with substandard stuff the next time? Because there have been a few turkeys on the telly lately.

I personally think Leonard Rossiter was in a league of his own and could probably make the telephone directory sound funny. So where does that leave us budding John Sullivans? We can't approach the BBC and say 'I know this script is crap but get David Jason and Julie Walters in it and it'll be a BAFTA winner'. For us unknowns I suppose we just have to try and make the first few pages catch the attention of the reader so that they are encouraged to read on and give us a chance. Just one chance... just a little bit of encouragement... please... the blokes down the pub think I'm funny... my mum says I was always making people laugh...