TRUE PULP

Real life murder and mayhem dominated the last week.

Real-world pulp is everywhere you turn these days. And since our mission here at Pulp Intl. includes not just showing you wonderful pulp art from days gone by, but charting modern day pulp incidents wherever and whenever they occur, here’s a little roundup of the previous week, a seven day span that included the shooting death of another boxer, the arrest of more than forty people—including rabbis and Democratic officials—for fraud, and the clandestine peephole recording of sportscaster Erin Andrews, who later admitted the blurry nude steaming up the internet with a hotcurler and a fresh bikini wax was indeed her.

Vernon Forrest’s murder brings to three the number of ex-athletes killed in July. Steve McNair ran afoul of a disturbed lover, and Arturo Gatti is thought by Brazilian police to have gotten similar treatment from his wife, but Vernon Forrest seems to have been killed for money. The former welterweight and light middleweight champ reportedly was at a gas station putting air in the tires of his car when a man approached and asked for money. Nine of ten people probably would have freaked in that situation, but what did a former boxing champ known as the Viper have to fear? So he took out his wallet—which the man promptly snatched and bolted with. Forrest gave chase, and at some point exchanged gunfire with the robber. Either during that exchange, or a few moment later as he fled back toward his car, he was shot multiple times—and the world lost yet another great athlete who had provided so many thrilling memories.

We move to the subject of Erin Andrews, the popular ESPN sportscaster who was illicitly recorded nude in a hotel room. Yes, we analyzed the dirty little .avi file, and we have to wonder why she didn’t just deny being the figure in the recording. To our discerning eyes it does appear to be her, but there is no way to be 100% sure. If she had denied it, the official record on the story would have read “hoax,” and that would have made anyone claiming otherwise a crackpot by definition. Don’t get us wrong—we’re not among those who think the whole thing was a publicity stunt. We’re pretty sure we know those when we see them. Besides, just watching Andrews fret over her body and do those weird semi-squats is enough to convince us she truly thought she was unobserved. But having been recorded in such poor quality, why not deny it? Perhaps she’s simply honest—to a fault.

For a good example of people whose fault is dishonesty, observe the New Jersey 44 (™ Pulp Intl.). Several of those snared have already professed total innocence, though it’s hard to manage an effective denial when one of your crowd has already admitted trafficking in human kidneys for more than ten years. We think it’s safe to say the dominoes in Jersey will soon begin to tumble, and when they do, the line of crooks outside the Newark prosecutor’s office waiting to turn state’s evidence will look like the Late Show queue outside the Ed Sullivan Theater. The whole situation is ripe for ridicule, but frankly, we’ve exhausted ourselves making fun of Rod BlagojevichSilvio Berlusconi, and Sarah Palin, so let’s just put the New Jersey 44™ in the UFC octagon and see who survives. The blood drenched winner receives a full pardon, a lifetime supply of Oxy-Clean, and dibs on all the salvageable organs.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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