Traveler’s tales are still forthcoming, but first, I’d like to provide a little educational service for my recent traveling partner, Cranky Robert, whose knowledge of all things pop-cultural is somewhat, shall we say, less expansive than my own. He is especially lacking in the areas of B-movies, comic books, and pulp sci-fi novels. You know, the crap I grew up on. Makes you wonder what they’re teaching those literature PhDs these days, doesn’t it?

In any event, we were sitting in a Washington Starbucks one night discussing — go figure — the sorts of women we find attractive, and somehow my memory banks kicked out an image of the actress Pam Grier. I was surprised to learn that Robert had never heard of in spite of her frequently being credited as the first female action-movie hero. That’s right, kids, there was a butt-kicking woman on the big screen long before Ripley told the Queen Mother Alien to get away from that little blond girl.

Pam may not be a household name, but she’s had a long, more-or-less steady career in film and television, beginning with women-in-prison schlockers made for the drive-in and grindhouse circuit, then finding her first surge of fame in a pair of classic blaxploitation flicks, Foxy Brown and Coffy. In the ’80s, she had a recurring role as Rico Tubbs’ old flame on Miami Vice, then in the ’90s, Quentin Tarentino gave her the lead in his Jackie Brown (no relation to Foxy Brown, as far as I know, but then I’ve never seen it). In between those landmarks, she’s appeared in a slew of movies and television roles. According to Wikipedia, she’s most recently been a regular on a cable TV series called The L Word.

But enough introductory blather… the point here is really to post up a couple pictures of Pam, to show Robert who I was talking about and also to amuse myself with photos of a beautiful woman.

Here she is in her blaxploitation heyday:

And here she is a couple decades later, looking classy in Jackie Brown:

I really need to rent that one, I think…