Friday finds

Get ready for Charles Darwin: A Graphic Biography. Every time you buy a copy, you’ll make a creationist cry.

How about that — a place in the universe where Samuel Johnson’s admirers can intersect with Harry Potter fans. The item in question plays a small but significant role in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The oldest library in America may have to close. Want to help out?

John Mortimer is dead at age 85. As a novelist he created Horace Rumpole, and provided a career-defining TV role for actor Leo McKern (pictured at left, in his wig, with Mortimer), who owned Rumpole the way Helen Mirren owns Jane Tennison. As a barrister, Mortimer defended Linda Lovelace and the Sex Pistols, reflecting his taste fior cases that were, as he put it, “testing the frontiers of tolerance.” To distinguish oneself in a single field is hard enough, but to claim such dual achievements . . . how very cool.

Another tribute to the late Thomas Disch, this one from John Crowley, another genre heavyweight.

You wanna know what “snarge” is? Of course you do — especially if you’re a pilot.

You’ve heard of sword and sorcery? Get ready for sword and soul.

A new Bob Dylan studio album? Bring it on, baby. I just hope it’s not another snifter of chloroform like Modern Times.

Patton Oswalt, my current favorite stand-up comedian, talks about Blue Collar, a largely overlooked Paul Schrader drama from the Seventies that offers one of Richard Pryor’s best straight performances.

Another Stanley Milgram research study bites the dust. Apparently all that business about six degrees of separation is bunk. I still like the movie and the Kevin Bacon game, though. Thanks to Bernie Madoff, looks like there will soon be fresh material for “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

Unless you’re a Geek of A Certain Age, the name Charles H. Schneer probably doesn’t ring any bells. All right, how about Ray Harryhausen — does that name work? Well then let the Geek’s Geek tell you about one of the unique creative partnerships in American filmmaking.

Kanawha — the only state to successfully secede from the United States.