BUY EAST, YOUNG MAN

THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES:
New Art From China
Saatchi Gallery
hardcover, 2008
60.00

Ten years ago, the passenger seated next to me on a 14 hour flight from Bangkok to London advised me to look toward asia if I had any interest in playing the big-money art game.

Charles Saatchi, one of the savviest figures in the contemporary art scene, has built an unparalleled collection of new Chinese art, unveiled to the public in 2005 for the opening of his Chelsea, London gallery. Presented here in glorious color reproductions, this is first book to bring contemporary Chinese art into focus.

LIVIN' THE LIFE

GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE:
A Year in the Life of a Pimp
Bob Adelman & Susan Hall
hardcover, 2006
35.00....sale 16.95

Meet Silky and his ladies - Lois, Linda, Kitty, Tracey, and Sandy - visit his tailor and friends and family in this new edition of photographs and interviews first published in 1972 when fascination with the pimp lifestyle was in its heydey and the subject of glorification in the rising genre of blaxploitation cinema (Superfly and The Mack, etc).

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 2

BLACK LIKE ME

1964
James Whitmore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Will Geer, Al Freeman Jr.
dir. Carl Lerner

dvd import
b&w, import
$19.95

After 40 years, this films still hits home. The true story of a northern white journalist's journey through the Southern U.S. in the guise of a black man. Shot on a sparse budget by the film editor of such classics as Klute, Twelve Angry Men and The Swimmer -- his only feature as writer and director.

Not available in the U.S. on dvd or vhs.

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 1

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI
1965
Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker, Susannah York, Harry Andrews
dir. Cy Enfield
dvd import
colour, widescreen
$19.95

Not available on vhs, dvd or even TCM, this British survival story from the director of Zulu, has virtually vanished from the cinematic radar. Six men and one woman survive their plane crash in the South African desert and wind up battling against the elements, each other, and a tribe of man-eating baboons.

Tough, sweaty, suspensful and a great entertainment on par with such similar fare as The Flight of the Phoenix (the original, not the pointless Dennis Quaid remake) and The Naked Prey.

GIRLS ON TOP

EXQUISITE MAYHEM
The Spectacular & Erotic World of Wrestling
Theo Ehret
hardcover, 2001
$50.00

In the early 70's, photographer Theo Ehret began staging female wrestling scenarios in his studio for various erotic and fetish magazines. This mammoth (400+ pages) coffee table book documenting the golden age of wrestling and Ehret's "apartment wrestling" work , now out of print (although we've got a few copies hidden away), remains the best book on both subjects.

MYSTERY MEN

THE GLORIOUS DECEPTION
The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Ching Ling Soo
Jim Steinmeyer
hardcover, 2005
26.95 sale 10.95

Steinmeyer unveils the secrets behind the most enigmatic performer in the history of stage magic, Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer." Soo’s infamous and suspicious onstage death in 1918 mystified his fellow magicians: he was shot during a performance of "Defying the Bullets," in which he attempted to catch marked bullets on a porcelain plate. When Soo died, his deceptions began to unravel. It was discovered that he was not Chinese but a fifty-eight-year-old American named William Ellsworth Robinson, a former magicians’ assistant and the husband of Olive Robinson. But even William Robinson was not who he appeared to be, for he had kept a second family with a mistress in a fashionable home near London.

A great read. Fascinating as biography, mystery and chronicle of early vaudeville and the world of magic at the turn of the last century.