The 37th Parallel

The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway by Ben Mezrich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chuck Zukowski is obsessed with UFO sightings. This is his story.

Despite the pandemic, we flew my sister-in-law and brother-in-law into town for Miles' first birthday. Before they left town, Marc pushed this on me. My in-laws are much more into UFOs than I am but I resolved to give this a read.

I was huge into UFOs as a kid but have gotten increasingly skeptical over the years. As a result, I approached this as a work of fiction but reserved the right to change my mind later.

This reminded me of James Renner's True Crime Addict more than anything else. It was written in an engaging style and felt more like fiction than a factual work.

The 37th Parallel chronicles Chuck Zukowski sojourn into the world of UFOs, starting with cattle mutilations and eventually leading to a dig at one of the Roswell crash sites and beyond.

I'm not going to debate the existence of UFOs here. I'm sure there's life elsewhere but the thing about space is that it's quite big. Anyway, this book can be interpreted in two ways: either it's a very engaging piece of fiction with a shitty ending or an account of one man's wild goose chase.

If you take it as a work of fiction, this is some gripping stuff, although I found the time jumps annoying. If you take it as fact, Chuck's wife should have divorced his ass decades ago. Yeah, I get the pursuit of truth and I understand his obsession at times but was it really worth all the sacrifices along the way?

At the end, I guess I'll say I was very entertained by this and possibly a little convinced Chuck isn't wasting his time. Four out of five little green men.



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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is the story of Caitlin Doughty's ruminations on death and dying interspersed with her own journey from death touched little girl to licensed mortician.

My wife and I are big fans of Caitlin Doughty's Ask a Mortician series on Youtube and I bought this for my wife, who gave it to me as a reading assignment upon her completion.

Caitlin's writing has a funny yet respectful tone, much like her Youtube series. She details death practices and beliefs from around the world but the really interesting bits where about Caitlin herself. The funny tone makes a topic a lot of people find distasteful easy to digest and I kinda wish she'd try her hand at writing some crematorium based mysteries or something.

Raised in Hawaii, Caitlin saw a little girl fall from an escalator and die in a mall when she was a kid, forever changing the trajectory of her life. From there, she went from goth to crematory operator to mortuary school, pondering death the whole way.

There are darkly humorous stories, like molten fat gushing out of a cremation machine like something in a Three Stooges short, to poignant moments like Caitlin having to cremate a box of babies from the local hospital. She also pulls back the black curtain shrouding the funeral industry, an industry full of lies and pressure to upsell. Shady shit.

If you've been entertained by Caitlin's Ask a Mortician videos, this is a must read. Four out of five cremulators.

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Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death is a collection of questions asked by children and their answers from Caitlin Doughty's book tours.

Until fairly recently, my wife entertained the possibility of being a funeral director. As a result, we've watched about 80% of Caitlin Doughty's Ask a Mortician videos on Youtube. I bought her all three of Caitlin's books and now I'm reading them as some sort of homework assignment.

In this volume, Caitlin addresses such topics as what happens to an astronaut's body in space, port-mortem pooping, do mummies stink, and can you be buried with a beloved pet, among other things. Caitlin addresses the topics with respect but also with her dark sense of humor, making for an entertaining read.

Any complaints? Nope. If you've been entertained by Caitlin's Ask a Mortician videos, you know what you're getting. This is class A death knowledge.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs is a good source of info for kids and necromancers alike. Four out of five caskets.

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Cryptozoology A to Z

Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras & Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature by Jerome Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cryptozoology A to Z is an encyclopedia of cryptids, cryptozoologists, and things of that nature.

Not long after I first learned to read books on my own, I was super into ghosts, UFOs, and monsters, specifically Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, and the like. When you're young, the world is huge and there's still room in it for dinosaurs and such. Anyway, now I'm into stuff like this for entertainment purposes, though I made my wife go with me to the Cryptozoology museum in Portland Maine and think there's a good chance there are relict populations of Tasmanian Tigers out there.

Anyway, this is breezy, fun dive into the world of Cryptozoology, detailing such characters as Tom Slick, Loren Coleman, and Ruth Harkness and creatures such as Orang Pendek, Almas, and the Mongolian Death Worm, in addition to the usual suspects like Bigfoot and Nessie. One of my favorite parts of this book is an account of the Lawndale Incident when a giant bird allegedly tried to carry off a young by in an Illinois town in 1977.

This book entertained the shit out of me, partly for nostaligic reasons and partly because there's a tiny part of me that still wants there to be mysterious creatures in far off corners of the world. My main gripe with the book is that it could have used a dose of skepticism. I've heard various accounts of how the famous Surgeon's Photo of the Loch Ness Monster was debunked in the 1970s but it was presented as fact here. The writing goes all in on the approach of most of the cryptids being presented as fact, something I don't buy into in a book written for adults. On a related note, how can someone be an expert on a creature that might not even exist?

As long as you don't take it as a serious scientific work, Cryptozoology A to Z is great for a few hours of entertainment and a brief return to childhood dreams of hunting for monsters. Three out of five stars.

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Review: The Eighth Wonder of the World: The True Story of Andr� the Giant

The Eighth Wonder of the World: The True Story of Andr� the Giant by Bertrand Hebert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Eighth Wonder of the World: The True Story of Andre the Giant is the biography of Andre the Giant. Duh.

I haven't been taking on many ARCs since shortly before my son but I had to request this one when it popped up on Netgalley. Plus ECW press offered me an ARC so I was double damned.

The book chronicles the life of Andre the Giant, from his birth in France as Andre Rousimoff to his wrestling career to his death in France while in the country to attend his father's funeral.

Hebert did his homework, dispelling some myths about Andre and confirming some others. Andre's time in the various territories is covered, as are his behind the scenes disputes with Dino Bravo and other wrestlers. I knew the bare bones of Andre's life from being a wrestling fan for decades but Hebert took me for a ride. I had no idea Andre was part owner of the Montreal territory with Gino Brito or how often he went to Japan. I also hadn't heard the story of Andre shitting on Bad News Brown during a match in Mexico.

The book is a little removed for my taste but that is to be expected since Andre has been dead almost 30 years at this point. Hebert must have been researching this for a decade or more. Some of the people he talked to have been dead a few years as of this writing.

As with a lot of good wrestling books, I could have used more content with this one. A giant sized book for a giant sized man, if you will. All things considered, I have no complaints.

The Eighth Wonder of the World is a fitting tribute to a legend of the wrestling business. Four out of five stars

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Review: The Man Who Folded Himself

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Daniel Eakins's Uncle Jim dies, he inherits a belt that allows him to travel through time...

I haven't had a ton of time to read since my son was born. In fact, I'm typing this with him asleep in the crook of my arm. The two or three weeks it took me to finish this are no indication of the book's quality. It was pretty fucking good.

In The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold uses Daniel Eakins to explore the nature of time and of man himself. The way he handles time travel has been used by other writers since this book's original publication: changing the past creates a parallel universe and the time traveler is the only one who knows of the existence of the previous timeline.

Daniel travels through time, meeting other versions of himself, and sometimes having sex with them., sometimes with multiple versions at a time. Is it gay if you're having sex with another version of yourself? Joking aside, Daniel goes on a journey of self discovery and ultimately winds up back where he started, as I suspected he might.

The Man Who Folded Himself may be the best time travel story I've ever read. 4.5 out of 5 tribbles.

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Review: Life Is Short and So Am I: My Life in and Out of the Wrestling Ring

Life Is Short and So Am I: My Life in and Out of the Wrestling Ring by Dylan "hornswoggle" Postl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Life Is Short and So Am I is the autobiography of Dylan Postl, aka WWE superstar Hornswoggle, aka independent wrestler Swoggle.

Shortly after the birth of my son, someone from ECW press hit me up to read this. I said I would and forgot about it until my wife and I were watching Swoggle wrestle Jordynn Grace on IWTV. It was damn good.

Dylan had a rough start, being born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, in addition to family problems. He overcame it all and became not only a pro-wrestler but a WWE superstar.

I have to admit that most of the time Dylan was wrestling, I was on a wrestling hiatus. Still, I found his biography fascinating. His early life was terrible, even without taking his dwarfism into consideration. His journey from the independents to the WWE and beyond held my interest even through my lack of sleep. His account of the inner workings of the WWE was entertaining and informative. A lot of wrestling books skimp on the road stories but this one had a lot of them in it.
Since he's no longer with the company, he was a lot more free with information than current WWE employees. Dylan also isn't afraid to bring his own bad behavior to light, like cheating on the mother of his son.

I almost balked on this since Swoggle is younger than me by a few years but he's got a wealth of great stories. I highly recommend this to wrestling fans. Now, I'll have to track down that Swoggle vs. Joey Ryan match. 4 out of 5 stars.

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