29 June 2012

Gibby's nose! Did he inherit the Demers nose? Only time will tell...

This week I have been listening to a work which I have never before explored: Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. I've known of it for decades, but have never given it a concentrated listen before now. I picked up the CD at - where else? - a yard sale.

It's not quite what I expected... I suppose I fell into the trap of thinking that it would sound something like his Pomp and Circumstance marches, but it doesn't - not at all. I have grown to like it. It's a very English work; the doleful theme which opens the piece sounds like it could have come fom Purcell's King Arthur. And they say the English aren't a musical nation... what rubbish!

The Enigma Variations is in theme and variation form, with each variation depicting some friend of Elgar's who is described in the program named by his or her initials. But that's not the enigma of the title. Somewhere, somehow, within the piece there is a theme for the listener to guess at. Elgar died and took the secret to his grave, and it has been a source of musicological puzzlement ever since. The clues are that the theme is a "dark saying," it is well-known and that it is not played within the piece. Mysterious!

Variation IX, called "Nimrod," is of special significance to the British as it is the music played each year as Elizabeth II presides at the war memorial ceremony at the Cenotaph in London. An adagio, it is quite pretty. (Youtube performance of it here.) For the British, this piece has the same significance that Barber's Adagio for Strings has for we Americans. You may recall that Barber's piece was memorably used in the 1986 film Platoon. I am guessing that "Nimrod" will be played at the 2012 Olympics in London at some point.

(Why is this piece subtitled "Nimrod?" The piece refers to Elgar's friend Augustus J. Jaeger; Nimrod was an Old Testament patriarch described as "a mighty hunter before the Lord" - the name Jäger is German for hunter.)

During the course of looking up information about Elgar's celebrated enigma I stumbled across information concerning the curious 1897 Indiana Pi Bill, wherein a state in the United States once attempted to pass a law establishing a scientific truth. The bill purported to disclose a method to square the circle, a geometrical puzzle known since ancient times. ("Squaring the circle" is a challenge, using only a compass and straightedge, to establish from a circle a square of exactly the same area.) The impossibility of doing so was mathematically proven in 1882 - yet Indiana plowed ahead with the bill, oblivious. The bill never became law.

The only kind of pis Indiana or any other state needs to be involved with have flaky crusts and fruit filling.

Despite my previous vow to quit reading books about the Beatles, I started on a biography about Paul McCartney. (The book was in such good shape at a library sale I couldn't resist.) It begins by saying that these days, Paul's hair is "preternaturally brown," which is a graceful way of saying that Paul has been dying his hair for quite some time. He started to go gray in the early 1980's. Sir Paul is seventy, but not one strand of gray do we see.

I stepped on the bathroom scale this morning and was happy to see that I had lost three pounds since last Friday; a result of not being on restaurant food while away from home. So I'm more or less back where I was before I left.

Yard sales in hell! The D.C. 'burbs forecast tomorrow is for 100 degrees with high humidity; I can't imagine too many people will want to be sitting behind a table in their front lawns for that, but we shall see.

Have a great weekend!

28 June 2012

I had a dreadful dream last night. I was leading people around on the Home Tour (you know, where you trot visiting guests from room to room to see the drapes and decor, etc.), except that everything was in disarray, dirty and/or badly in need of repair. I was embarrassed and humiliated. My house was not in order; a dream with a meaning perfectly sensible to me.

Yesterday's Gibson photo from my son Ethan had a terse caption: "He's mocking me." I wrote him back with what I thought was a cheering tone, "Isn't this fun? Now you have a little pal the way I did with you." Ethan's response: "Last night wasn't so fun. He was awake from 1 AM to 5 AM." It's called payback; as a baby, Ethan was Mister Late Night Party.

The episode of An Idiot Abroad I watched yesterday was an end of season summing-up kind of thing. In it, the not-so-intrepid world traveller Karl Pilkington discusses what he saw and did with the show's executive producers Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Gervais: "You are the strangest man on the planet."
Pilkington: "You haven't been to China."

During this, he describes what constitutes what used to be considered a fun holiday time for him when he was a kid, a somewhat dreary campsite in Wales. He's shown poking around his old vacation haunts. I got the distinct feeling that, despite his xenophobia and reluctance to experience new things, he's a changed person. Broadened in outlook, perhaps.

It's true, travel does broaden the mind. I'd like to be able to do more of it. In fact, of all there things there are in the world that I could have - a bigger house, a nicer car, a better job, electronic gadgets, etc. - the thing I'd like to be able to do most is travel. You can pretty much keep the rest. I want to see new things and visit new places. That's now my idea of fun.

Well, that and Gibson, the new grandson!

I also watched the episode where Pilkington visits Egypt to see the pyramids. As far as Egypt is concerned, there are three things I'd like to see: 1.) Those pyramids, 2.) The Sphinx and, 3.) The Cairo Museum. I have been told by people who have been there that, contrary to what it looks like, where Cairo ends and the pyramids begin is a disappointingly narrow space. There is one memorable shot of Pilkington eating at a Pizza Hut - the nearby pyramids framed in a window. (Gettysburesque!) Another profoundly odd sequence shows him at a KFC, ordering his food from a deaf staff in a Community Outreach oriented franchise (the signs for which are in English). In Egypt?

Pilkington seemed more or less unimpressed by the pyramids. When he visited, some wind storm/dust devils kicked up the trash and debris found on the sands. "Look, there's a a dirty nappie flying through the air - they don't tell you that in the tourist brochures." Yes... that will indeed reduce some of the mystique of those ancient structures.

As for the Cairo Museum, and at the risk of sounding like Pilkington, I have lately been thinking that as I've seen the spendid collections at the Prussian Egyptian Museum in Berlin and the Egyptian section of the British Museum as well as a travelling exhibit in Los Angeles, this may be about as much of the stuff as I really care to see. There are also now political considerations with Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia Law In/Tourism Out, I'd imagine. I can't imagine Americans becoming excited about visiting the place any more with those fanatics in charge.

But then, this thinking doesn't keep people from visiting Salt Lake City, ha ha!

Big day in D.C. thirteen miles north of me today: SCOTUS (aka the Supremes) rule on the constitutionality of ObamaCare and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder finds out if the House will vote to find him in contempt of Congress, two politically charged events. In a phrase the newsies seem to love (especially during general elections), all eyes are on D.C. today. So how important is Washington D.C.?

I once read a wikipedia account of what constitutes major cities, or Global Cities; what kind of ranking system there is for dominance and influence in the world. New York and London are unquestionably first ranked cities, and in the wikipedia article are ranked "alpha++." No surprise there. One might suppose that the capital city and governing center of the world's only superpower is an alpha++ city, but Washington D.C. isn't. It's an "alpha" city - the same as Los Angeles or even Milan. Hm.

I am a bit disappointed to see that Burbank, CA isn't even a "gamma-" city. As any Los Angeleno knows (but may not admit), it and not L.A. or Hollywood is functionally the entertainment capital of the United States. So... what's under "gamma-?"

The wikipedia article, citing a Citibank published study, gives an interesting table at the end of the article. Did you know there are more billionaires in Moscow than in New York City? And that the city with the highest percentage of foreign born population is not NYC, L.A., Burbank or even Springfield, Virginia where I live (could have fooled me)? It's Dubai. New York City isn't even in the Top Ten!

27 June 2012

Cute grandson photos! (Yes, this will be an endless stream.) Gibson's first photographed smile? I can't tell for sure. Also, the wise stare of Gibson and Put up yer dukes!

Last night I tried to watch a MST3K stinker: Operation Double 007 (aka Operation Kid Brother, from 1967), an Italian production starring Neil Connery. An oddity among James Bond films, this one includes not only Sean Connery's brother Neil, but Bernard Lee (M) and Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny) from the legitimate franchise. Adolfo Celi, who played the baddie Largo in Thunderball is in it as well. It's unwatchably awful, despite the MST3K jokes. I gave up after about a half hour.

I also looked over all those photographic prints I mentioned sorting through yesterday, and pulled some out for various friends who appear in them. Some I mailed, and some I scanned and posted to Facebook pages. My prints are now fully organized, a little task that was decades in the making.

One curiosity: I had come across a series of photos a friend took of me at home in 1977 while I was in the Marines. I call them the Orange Photos because they are shot with daylight film lit only by incandescent light; when I got them I looked at them quickly, realized my mistake and threw them into a pile. Print dye shifting over the past 35 years has only made them worse. Grayscaling one of me playing my cheap Fender copy bass, however, and adjusting the levels makes for an interesting compostition. I like the mystery lighting.

I still have that homemade fishing tackle box I'm sitting on, by the way. My mom got it circa 1973 at a yard sale. It's been our basement coffee table ever since; I keep various audio cables and adapters in it.

There's another odd double exposed shot which appeared on a badly exposed print: Me at Marine Corps Day at Disneyland, 1976. Once again, due to fading and dye shifting, it only looks sensible in black and white.

My son gave me episodes from the Sky1 British series An Idiot Abroad, a perverse sort of travel documentary starring Karl Pilkington (shown above). The premise is that comedy producers Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant send their mate Karl to various places around the world to see the sights in the hope that he'll become more broad-minded. In actuality, however, the purpose is to see this judgmental Brit become miserable in foreign places and complain; Gervais says that there is nothing funnier than taking Pilkington, shoving him into a corner and poking him with a stick. Pilkington has an extremely restricted comfort zone, doesn't really want to travel and doesn't take to foreign ways very gracefully - hence the humor. Video trailer of the show.

Pilkington's views are curious. For instance, he can look at the Taj Mahal, be told that it was built in honor of a deceased wife, and reflect that the whole effort was too late - the fellow should have simply have said "I love you" when she was alive. Or reflect that The Great Wall of China isn't really worth seeing because the tourist sections were rebuilt in the 1980's. Or he can look at the massive rock-carved palatial facade in Petra, Jordan, and consider that the view is probably better from the cave across the way, where you can see the wonder rather than have to live in it. (He comes to find that a Jordanian cave hotel isn't too bad after all.)

In fact, Pilkington reminds me a lot of my son Ethan's best friend Sean, who has a similiarly underwhelmed view of things. We are convinced that Sean might have a credible career as a stand up comedian.

Frankly, I find Karl Pilkington to be a sympathetic character, which I suppose may be a reflection of my own xenophobia. I don't care! Am I supposed to be annoyed when he expresses disgust at seeing a dead cockroach near the food in a Brazilian pantry, dry heaves after swallowing the worm in some Mexican liquor, balks at eating a goat's head in milk or complains about the stench of a poorly maintained Indian toilet? No... I agree with the guy. In one episode he gets raging diarrhea from the local food, loses sleep due to constant street noise and subsequently becomes morose and unenthusiastic. Well, of course.

While the Third World may have its share of wonders and charming customs, there is much to be said about the basics of life in the First World, thank you very much. (It is also significant, I think, that the Third Worlders are banging down the doors to live in the United States.) Watching episodes of this show, my wife and I are happy to confine our someday-in-the-future travel plans to places which are other than squalid hellholes.

Thank you, Karl.

26 June 2012

I have a number of nicknames; one of them is “Chronos,” due to my interest in clocks, watches and timekeeping. It is mortally offensive to me to own a watch with an expired battery, so yesterday I replaced the big ‘ol 2025 cell in my 2003 Timex Ironman Triathlon. The battery was $7! When I got into the watch I had the sneaking feeling that once the cell goes out in this plastic-encased throwaway watch, it is simply pitched into the trash.

Nevertheless I persevered and got the cell in place and the watch working once again for another eight or nine years. Why do this at all? Because this watch is the one I wore when I completed a marathon run in 2004, so it has some sentimental value. Also, it can do interval timing, that is, I can set it to beep at five minutes (jog) and a minute (walk). I appreciate that kind of complexity.

Yesterday, for some strange reason, I pulled out hundreds of photographic prints from four boxes and compulsively started sorting them: 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000 and on, USMC, reenacting, underwater in pool (I used to buy a special camera each year), wedding, kids sitting in the blue chair photos, Dad's WWII shots, etc. Now I have them all sorted out in the boxes and can more quickly put my hands on what it is I might be looking for. This kind of activity brings satisfaction to my soul on a molecular level. I really do think sometimes that I was designed to be a librarian.

I watched Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) last night, a well-regarded film which I found preposterous and silly, but still amusing. The plot: A gigantic U.S. defense control computer becomes sentient, takes control of itself and establishes contact with its Soviet counterpart. Together, they rule the world. It reminded me of a similar story line in a classic Star Trek episode. Again I wonder, why does no one ever think to install an effective kill switch in sci-fi plots of this type? And who, outside of a character in a story, would ever turn over launch authorization of nuclear missiles entirely over to machines?

One strange feature of this film were the occasional smiles, jokes and humor by scientists as they begin to realize that the machine is thinking for itself and becoming taciturn over the commands being given to it. Is this cause for hilarity? I don't think so. It also has a scene duplicated in many sci-fi productions: scientists anxiously twiddling knobs on oscilloscopes. I can appreciate that this is appealing on a visual level; a scope makes a wave that is varied somehow when somebody changes a time or amplitude setting, but it makes very little technical sense. Far more accurate would be people nervously typing away at VT-100 consoles - but that's visually boring.

One plot device was downright weird: In order to secretively meet to discuss how to thwart the computer, two scientists have to pretend that they are lovers to convince Colossus to shut down its video and audio monitoring for four nights each week ("Colossus, humans require privacy during sex"). Naturally, this being a 1970 film, they do in fact become lovers.

I said I watched this film - this isn't quite true. In a bit of classic irony, the Netflix DVD, being the wretched failure it often is as a rental medium, caused me problems such that I couldn't watch the final ten minutes. This sort of thing happens rather often with DVDs. With as many VHS tapes as I have rented since 1981 or so, I can only recall it happening once or twice. DVD: A technology that is not as promised. (And yes, I know, I can request another DVD from Netflix, but the end of this film was no payoff and the underwhelming conclusion was easily learned via an Internet search for information.)

Hmf... so much for machines taking over the world. They can't even play a 100 minute movie.

Baby Gibson is beginning to resemble his father.

I did a lot of odd things when I was in the Marine Corps. One of them was to balance myself atop a monumental pyramid in a Glendale cemetery. Shirtless. Wearing bell bottoms. An odd photograph.

25 June 2012

Stonewall Jackson's Arm Has Gone Missing! Well, at least that's what I've read, anyway. My article on the matter is here; the link about the missing arm is at the bottom. If you ever visit Historic Ellwood in the Wilderness Battlefield Park, bear in mind that the marker in the family cemetery may be displaying an untruth.

"You have lost your left arm, but I have lost my right." - Robert E. Lee's note to Jackson upon hearing of the amputation. Now the Park Service has lost the left arm.

I have posted more videos of the most adorable baby in the known universe, my grandson. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking, "Another grandfather crazy nuts about his new grandchild." True, but it's so much more than that. Observe this photo. This baby is so advanced that my kids have been able to train him to hold his own pacifier although he's only a week old. I hope he uses his powers for the good of mankind, like Doc Savage.

Gibson video: Ethan and Gibson. Father and son moments.
Another Gibson Video: Face Time with Baby Gib. Includes a discourse about thumb-sucking.

Gibson Picasa photo album, the repository of All Things Gibson, so that future generations may see that he was not just a legend, he was once a mere baby.

I hate, hate, hate it that we're 2/3rds of a continent away from that baby. This is a very unsatisfactory situation. Now I know how my Mom felt, living in New Hampshire when the grand kids were in Maryland. But at least we have Apple Face Time, which works quite well.

Yard sales last Saturday were good. I got three CDs (Christopher Cross' Greatest Hits, a Time-Life R&B collection and a Canadian Brass CD), a deluxe two DVD set (Troy) and a book (about historical plagues). All for under two dollars. It's hard to top the tertiary market for value

I got released from my Webelos Den Leader calling yesterday, after serving for two and a half years.(3 1/2 years in Scouting, if you count the time I spent as the Eleven Year Old Scout Leader the year before.) I'll miss the crazy energy that comes with being in a room with a bunch of ten year old boys; the noise, not so much. I agreed to help out during July while my replacement prepares. Onto the next thing the Lord wants me to do, whatever that is. I do admit feeling somewhat apprehensive about this...

Since I keep records of all my activities, I have noted that I have spent a total of eleven and a half years in Scout callings (Cub and Boy Scout) since 1988. 11 1/2 years! How time flies.

I mentioned that I am now reading a Doc Savage adventure, The Lost Oasis. I wonder how I got through 30+ of these as an eighteen year-old. I must have been a lot less discerning than I am now. This being classic pulp fiction, it's written in a breathlessly enthusiastic style: "Doc's amazing strength enabled him to climb the thin cable in no time!" or, "Doc's honed bronze body swerved in time to miss the oncoming bullet!" or, "His incredible hearing caught the entire whispered conversation!", etc. It's kind of like reading a comic book! Everything, even the most mundane statement, is followed by an exclamation mark!

(And no, Mike, don't apologize for giving these to me! It may not seem like it from the foregoing paragraph, but I am enjoying reading them! Honest!)

I watched a couple of documentaries recently:

The Buried Secrets of the Bible (a PBS NOVA show) - No, not Dan Brown bogus esoterica, although I think that's the audience they were going for. This was a somewhat dry account of how the first five Biblical texts align or don't align with history as recounted from other accounts. Known as the Pentateuch, the first five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are traditionally ascribed to Moses. But were they written by him, really? Probably not. Am I losing my faith because of this? No.

By the way, my pal Mike and I share a common ability: We can sing the names of all the books of the Old and New Testament to the tune of Scotland the Brave, thanks to an obscure song by an obscure musical group named The 3 D's. I, myself, can sing Chocolate Rain a full octave below Tay Zonday. But I digress.

The Vikings (another NOVA production) - I've seen a number of productions of this type, which assure us that the Vikings were not merely the blood thirsty barbarians that the victimized chroniclers claim they were in historical accounts. No, they were surprisingly cultured and had the benefit of superior shipbuilding technology. Small comfort that was to the Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Slavs and Arabs who were terrorized by their raids...

That's all.

22 June 2012

Here's a fifteen minute video summary of my time spent in Utah, minus the various family dramas. It covers 6/13/12 to 6/20/12: Cabelas, an audio-animatronic George W. Bush, observation deck view of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City Bees game, BYU Rugby, aerial shots of Utah, Maverik gas station decor, Squaw Peak Overlook, JetBlue, Long Beach's Rosie the Riveter Park, City Creek Park, Brigham Young's grave, Sundance, and last but certainly not least, Gibson Wesley Clark (who gets his very own videos).

And yes, I learned that "javelina" is pronounced as if the "J" were an "H."

Baby Gibson: What color are his eyes? (Executive summary: Blue. For now, anyway.) And is there any such thing as too many Gibson Wesley Clark videos? I think not. The Very Early Days. In it I reveal the longtime family persistence of the moniker "Wesley." Established c. 1814. So for nearly 200 years there has been a Wesley Clark or a Something Wesley Clark in my direct male line. Gibson is the seventh.

It was very hard getting on the plane and leaving that baby. Now I know why grandparents are fond of saying, "If I knew how much fun grandchildren were I'd have had them first." When you have a child you feel a sense of responsibility: You have to raise it, and you're responsible for it. How will he or she turn out? You can take the credit and you can never quite wash your hands of the result. He or she is a joy, but he or she is also a major emotional life burden. A grandchild is a different matter. You can coo at him, perch him on your shoulder or cradle him in your arms and you know that, despite all the other problems, all is still right with the world and, demonstrably, life goes on. He or she is somebody else's life's work. A grandchild is a reassuring affirmation of life in a way that a child is not. A legacy in a onesie.

I am now reading a 1965 Doc Savage paperback my pal Mike salvaged from a dumpster behind a Burbank library: The Lost Oasis. I first read it back in 1974, when I used to stop at the little newsstand next to Bill's Ranch Market to buy these. I read about thirty of them and finally decided to quit when I realized that it was essentially the same story told over and over again - like the Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows novelizations.

Doc Savage, you may recall, is an adventurous uber-mensch from the 1930's, the perfection of mind and body. He seems a somewhat Nazi construct nowadays, but he was All-American. He used to look like a product of the 1930's, but then, with the 1960's paperback reprints, a new artist and look was chosen to stimulate sales. Much like Captain Kirk, he went through a lot of shirts. Actor Steve Holland, whom I recently saw in some old West German Flash Gordon episodes for television, was the model for the new look Savage. A somewhat odd looking guy - otherworldly. Too handsome, in a way.

I'd use Holland for today's image - but I'm really fond of that nice family shot I took a couple of days ago: Baby is nestled on grandmother's shoulder, she's happy, father Ethan is watching TV and mother Sarah is posting photos on Facebook. More photos to be posted to a Picasa web album when I get around to it. Today's creative efforts were the videos.

Last night I watched a PBS Nova special about the Hebrew Bible, and how it does and does not predict and conform to the history found in archeology. Interesting. In general, I believe that literary works and traditions reflect at least some actual history: the Old Testament, Robin Hood, the Iliad...  I sort of lost my religion about the Arthurian works, however. I am now inclined to believe that there was not an actual historical Arthur. Michael Wood did an investigation, and presented a very compelling summary. Sigh. I wanted so to believe.

I get my wife back tonight; she flies in around 11 PM. She's been in Utah for three weeks - despite Gibson's late arrival (about two weeks) she got to help with some household logistics, at least. It will also be hard for her to say goodbye to that little chap, I predict.

Weight: Gahhh! I gained 3 1/2 pounds last week! That's what comes of restaurant food and no exercise. Back on the regimen.
Yard sales tomorrow - have a great weekend!

21 June 2012

Too tired/jet-lagged/busy to post. I'll do a good one tomorrow, I promise.

20 June 2012

A travel day. I bid my grand baby a fond farewell and fly back to Virginia. I've only known the little guy since Monday night but I've grown very fond of him. Oh well... There's Apple Face Time.

The heat and humidity in Virginia is equatorial today and tomorrow. I have dinner with my pal Mike during my three hour layover in Long Beach. We plan to inspect a Rosie the Riveter interpretative park which really should be in Burbank.

19 June 2012

Another baby video!

Baby Clark now has a name: Gibson Wesley Clark. Father: Ethan Wesley Clark; Grandfather: Wesley Harry Clark, Jr. Great-grandfather: Wesley Harry Clark, Sr. Great-great-grandfather: Harry Wesley Clark. 3rd great-grandfather: John Wesley Clark. 4th great-grandfather: Wesley H. Clark (I don't know what that "H." stood for.) The name "Wesley": A tradition since 1818!

One of Ethan's friends wrote: "Glad you finally got a Gibson." I prefer Fenders, myself.

Today we are Daughter-in-Law Support Personnel: running around town buying and fetching things, getting lunch for my son, etc.

At some point I will upload 2,347 photos, but I haven't done that yet.

18 June 2012

Baby Boy Clark is born; I am a grandfather!

21 1/2 inches long, 8 lbs. 5 ozs., born 7:36 PM MDT in Orem, Utah.

We were in a Provo pizza place when the text message came to us that he was born. My son's comment was, "Hair!" Grandma has since styled it into a fauxhawk.

This is Paul McCartney's 70th and my (deceased) mother's 91st birthday. We were thinking t'was she who held up the birth, in order to ensure that her birthday - and she - would be remembered. As if anyone could forget HER!

13 June 2012

Sorry, folks. No updates for a while.

12 June 2012

Here's my video of miscellaneous Smithsonian American Art Museum sights (5:34 in length), including some folk art. I like folk art, especially weathervanes. We once had a church talent show where we were encouraged to present things we had handcrafted. There were a lot of knit goods from women, of course. I think Cari made one of her magnificent blueberry pies.

My contribution was a collection of smaller reproduction historical weathervanes I made out of pine; I called it "Heritage Above" after a book I once read on the subject. I thought that was pretty cool.

But perhaps I was mistaken.

That impressive statue of the sad young woman in the cloak seen in my video is the Adams Memorial, sculpted by Auguste Saint-Gaudens, one of America's greatest artists. Wikipedia link here. What's in a name? "Saint-Gaudens's name for the bronze figure is The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but the public commonly called it Grief - an appellation that Henry Adams apparently disliked. In a letter addressed to Homer Saint-Gaudens, on January 24, 1908, Adams instructed him: 'Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption - Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Mens' Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx.'"

Hmmmm. The man who answered the Sphinx was Oedipus; it was he who solved the riddle (see image above), caused the Sphinx to kill herself and thereby became the King of Thebes. While he was indeed cursed, it was because he murdered his father and married his mother, not because he answered the Sphinx. That was a triumph. As we all know Oedipus gouged out his eyes in despair. What most do not know, however, was that this pitiable figure settled in Colonus (outside of Athens), and, when he died, his grave became sacred to the gods.

I made a somewhat disturbing video using the same Penderecki music (De Natura Sonoris II) I used for my Sollie 17 video: The Art of Marshall Arisman (2:25 in length). I have blogged about Arisman's art before. It appeals to me, which tells you a lot about my warped aesthetics. I like ugly representations of humans but dislike ugly modernist buildings, go figure.

Yesterday I was able to reunite a medical doctor with a fond childhood possession: a gumball machine skull whose eyes and tongue poke out. He bought it off e-Bay for no less than $30.

I bet Medicare will end up paying for it.

11 June 2012

Yard sales kind of sucked this past Saturday morning... I got two books, one I paid a buck for for a friend, the other free. That's it. C'mon, people!

In the afternoon I traveled up to D.C. to tour the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery and American Museum of Art, and, as is my creative wont these days, I made some videos:

A Visit to the Hall of Presidents - (almost eleven minutes) You get some of my half-baked political commentary. My Numero Uno is Abe Lincoln, I think.

Hiram Powers Busts and Sculptures (3 1/2 minutes) - These should be better known than they are. They are exquisite. Perfection in marble. Lovely. The most beautiful women in D.C., when my wife isn't in town.

Some Civil War Art (about two minutes) - I love those John Rogers figures. I've seen them elsewhere and have always admired them. I wish I owned one.

Sollie 17 (2 minutes) - I have seen a number of works about aging, but this is the one which pushes my buttons. (I have blogged about it before.) When I'm really depressed I envision myself forced to live like this in my final years. It kind of reminds me of a place I knew when I was a kid, the Burbank Hotel for Men. I always envisioned the interior looked like this... I'm pretty sure I've seen that bleak view outside the man's window in a film noir at some point.

I also watched some movies this past weekend:

Heartless (2009) - An urban horror film about a young man with a birthmark on his face who makes a Faustian deal and finds that Satan breaks the rules. Not a bad film, but still, at the end I wondered "Why did I bother watching this?"

Back to the Future II (1989) - Good. I enjoyed it. Almost as good as the original, which I saw and liked when it came out in 1985. It only took me 23 years to see the sequel. On that schedule I suppose I'll see the third installment when I'm 79, in 2035.

Alfie (1966) - A better film than I thought it would be. (Mercifully, Shelly Winters' scenes are few. I can't stand her.) Still, listening to Michael Caine in this for an hour and a half makes me wonder about the GEICO Gecko. Is he supposed to be a cockney or an Australian? The GEICO people refuse to say. He sounds like he's doing an imitation of Michael Caine, so I suppose he's a cockney.

Himalaya (1999) - An excellent, classy film about a yak drive, and about a power struggle within a Nepalese village. Roger Ebert makes the point that it seems inconceivable that people still live the way these people do, but apparently that's the case. As least I think it is - this film isn't given a year for when the action occurs. An epic production with gorgeous scenery.

My Best Fiend (1999) - An entertaining Werner Herzog documentary about the difficult relationship between himself and his raging, half-crazy star Klaus Kinski. They somehow managed to work on five films together; the wonder is that one of them didn't murder the other. There are some amazing tales told during the course of this film. On one shoot (Aguirre? Fitzcarraldo? I forget), which took place in the Amazonian jungle, one Indian extra was bitten on the foot by a deadly snake whose venom was especially toxic and invariably fatal. The Indian looked at his foot for a moment, then took a large machete and sliced off his foot before the venom had a chance to kill him. Well... that's the story Herzog told, anyway. Made an impression on me, I can tell you. Another anecdote: Kinski's screaming rages upset the Indian extras working on the set, who were gentle and quiet folk. The chief among them approached Herzog one day and offered to murder Kinski for him. Herzog's response was typical: "How then would I finish the film?"

There are some scenes where Kinski - a first order egotist - is on the set, raging in a Hitleresque fashion at some poor set manager... incredible. What a creep. (Video segment.) Herzog said that it was common to have Kinski in his face screaming for an hour or so.

Herzog shows a scene from Fitzcarraldo where Jason Robards and Mick Jagger (who were originally cast for the film but later replaced when Robards developed health problems) are in a bell tower, madly ringing a bell. It's okay. The same scene, however, with Kinski, is a completely different matter - much more powerful. He was a raging lunatic... but in some parts in some movies, a raging lunatic is absolutely right for the role.

My grandchild still hasn't arrived and so Cari has extended her stay in Utah; she now returns on the 19th. Bachelor Hall continues its slow and inexorable progress to complete entropy. Yesterday something in the fridge started smelling bad. I couldn't determine exactly what it was until I started to prepare the chicken sausages... yowser. Into the trash. In the process of smell testing the freezer I dumped all the frozen peach slices on the kitchen floor. Threw those out, too.

I bought a used treadmill over the weekend. I can thereby continue my walking regimen during the hottest and most humid days in the air conditioned comfort of my basement. I like walking.

1.) I once read that walking gives you most of the cardio and fat burning benefits of jogging, but without the high impact on the joints.
2.) All you need to walk is a reasonably good pair of sneakers.
3.) On a treadmill you can read a book while walking.
4.) John West Haley - my literary Civil War veteran hero of the 17th Maine - was an avid walker later in life and lived to be an old man.
5.) It was the cardio-vascular exercise of choice for my farmer ancestors.

So walk I will.

8 June 2012

I went into Richmond yesterday, to see some things I haven't previously seen: Tredegar Iron Works, Belle Island, the canal walk, Chimborazo hospital museum, St. John's Episcopal Church (1741), the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Drewry's Bluff... Richmond is a great town! Lots to see if you like history. Video here - 20 minutes.

On Broad Street I saw a black woman standing on a street corner holding a sign which read "Don't Vote For Obama!" I was going to roll down the window and ask her why not, but the light changed. The sign's religious reverse message suggested that it had to do with his support for same sex marriage. I suspect he shot himself in the foot on that issue...

I watched a good independent film last night: Boy Wonder (2010). The title, of course, suggests Dick Grayson - Robin - Batman's faithful side kick; so does the plot. This movie is basically a reworking and variation of the Batman origin story: a boy (played by Caleb Steinmeyer, who bears a passing resemblance to Conan O'Brien!) sees his mother brutally killed, and grows up determined to hone himself scholastically and physically to become a vigilante, preying upon the physically violent. He lives with his father but there are issues. There's even a Commissioner Gordon character: a female cop who's on to him.

This isn't a comic book world depiction of comic book characters, however. This film is a darker, grittier and more psychologically driven work. It's a more realistic and plausible Batman variation where the Comics Code Authority was never in place to smooth out the brutality. I recommend it to fans of Batman as a kind of real world depiction of the character.

By the way, speaking of Robin, I get a kick out of this image. As a kid collecting comics I had seen enough of Shelly Moldoff's Batman covers to realize that Robin's being included in the corner of the cover was a visual cliche. Shelly Moldoff, who did the art during the late 50's/early 60's era of Batman, drew the character in a stiff, undynamic fashion, legs and arms splayed out unrealistically. But, like most other kids, I was reading Batman because he was Batman - not due to the quality of the art. I yearned for the darker, more sinister and more deadly early 1940's incarnation of the character. The one with the pointier ears.

Funny thing about Shelly Moldoff, however... In the 1940's his artwork didn't suck. Later on, when I realized that "Bob Kane" was really Shelly Moldoff, I was surprised to see a 1940's Hawkman story drawn by Moldoff and couldn't believe that it was the same artist. Compare this - Shelly Moldoff's Golden Age Hawkman - with this - Moldoff's Silver Age Batman. What happened? When precisely did he start timing himself to see how quickly he could draw comic book panels?

Of course, as a kid I didn't know that Bob Kane didn't really draw Batman, despite the fact that it was his name which appeared on the splash panels. The publishers didn't even know! It was Moldoff's art. From an interview: "I worked for Bob Kane as a ghost from '53 to '67. DC didn't know that I was involved; that was the handshake agreement I had with Bob: 'You do the work don't say anything, Shelly, and you've got steady work'. No, he didn't pay great, but it was steady work, it was security. I knew that we had to do a minimum of 350 to 360 pages a year. Also, I was doing other work at the same time for [editors] Jack Schiff and Murray Boltinoff at DC. They didn't know I was working on Batman for Bob. ... So I was busy. Between the two, I never had a dull year, which is the compensation I got for being Bob's ghost, for keeping myself anonymous." Perhaps his crappy Batman was a part of his anonymity.

I lost 2.2 pounds last week, for a total loss of 37.4 pounds in 22 weeks, 1.7 lbs./week average. While I apparently haven't plateaued yet my weight loss is slowing down - which is expected. I'd like to get somewhere in the mid 250's... I'm almost there. A healthier weight is somewhere between 230 and 240, but I don't really think that's doable in middle age without a whole lot of daily maintenance work, more than I want to change my habits to accommodate. And jogging during the summer is O-U-T!

According to my fellow yard saler Jane, there's a community event at Fort Belvoir; she says those are pretty good. I think I'll change my route for it. I'm hoping to find a selection of military history books, which is what I often find, since I live in a Pentagon bedroom community. Maybe D.C. and a museum afterwards.

Have a great weekend!

7 June 2012

I watched an interesting film last night that I thought was going to be a horror film. Turns out it was more of a historical biography: The Countess (2009), directed by and starring the French actress Julie Delpy. It's about the famous Hungarian "Blood Countess" Erzebet (usually Anglicized to Elizabeth) Bathory (1560-1614). Bathory's story is unique in the world of beauty treatments - she insisted upon the blood of young girls to keep her skin soft and ageless. Legend was, she bathed in it. (It reminds me of the old Palmolive ad campaign: "You're soaking in it!") If you do a google image search on her name you can see that this has inspired all sorts of ghoulish art. The one that comes to mind with me is the one you usually see reprinted in legitimate history books, Istvan Csok's impressionist painting.

Well, that's Bathory's legend, anyway. What actually happened is debated. What isn't debated was that an investigation was launched and that she was brought to justice for the deaths of girls numbering anywhere from 36 to 650. Nobody is sure about the actual number, but there is agreement that Bathory was probably the most prolific female serial killer in history. Her sentence was to be walled up in a tower, her food fed to her through a slit. She died after four years.

Delpy's film is entertaining and considerably more tasteful and restrained than I thought it might be; she avoids sensationalism and portrays Bathory as a woman in love with a younger man, determined (and delusional) to keep a youthful appearance in spite of middle age. The scenes of her wiping blood on her face and gazing at he mirror are well-wrought. Nice try, Liz, but age happens to all of us - if we're lucky. There is aging and there is death, the only two options available to us in this life.

One character in the film has a brief line of dialogue about how there is a certain beauty in aging, a sentiment with which I agree. True beauty, after all, is not just a matter of appearance. That's superficial. True beauty is a combination of appearance, demeanor, behavior, accumulated life experience and a spiritual sort of inner glow. There is also the representation of a life well-lived, possibly the best manifestation of real beauty. Can an old, shriveled woman be beautiful? Absolutely.  

I also started watching a documentary about the vampire/voivode Dracula that turned out to really be a very dry account of the life of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. I gave up on it.

I notice that whenever somebody mentions Dracula, they also mention that it hasn't been out of print since it was first published in 1897. An enviable record, but one could say the same for any number of other works: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn comes to mind. I suspect the record probably belongs to Homer; I'm fairly sure the Iliad has been available since it was first written down sometime around 850 B.C. So it's been an in print best seller for 2,850 years!

The other day I mentioned Shirley Temple and her lack of cinematic father figures... I am something of a Shirley Temple expert. (My son tried me by asking in what film did she nearly encounter her father sick in a bed, and I was able to quickly respond that it was in The Little Princess. I'm also one of the relatively few people who know that the Good Ship Lollipop was, in fact, an airplane. Did you know that?) My mother insisted upon watching and rewatching the old Temple films when I was a kid. She loved them. What with her viewing habits and her doll collections, there were times I distinctly suspected she'd have much rather have had a girl than me.

Or maybe the little girl was really my mother. My wife has a novel explanation: my mother's mother died when she was only four - and I am unsure of when her father remarried. My wife suspects that my mother was never mothered herself, and she has therefore perhaps acted out or psychologically been involved in the world of little girls by way of compensation. Sounds logical to me. What is certain is that my mother had a complex personality. To this day I still wonder about why she did some of the things she did.

It runs in the family.

6 June 2012

Decades before Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter there was Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974). A House of Hammer production, I watched this rather unusual flick last night. It wasn't bad... there were enough oddball features to sustain interest and keep it different from the run of the mill vampire flick.

Speaking of vampires, this: Skeletons treated for vampirism found in Bulgaria. Well, now.

I also watched The Big Night (1960), a teen exploitation/JD flick. Nothing much to report here since it wasn't very good. The baddie was played by Dick Contino, who, when he wasn't contributing a general atmosphere of mild Italianate menace in a low budget film was letting his fingers fly across the keyboard of his Stomach Steinway. He also sang. The Video Vault guy and I agreed that there is no such thing as a good Dick Contino film. By the way, the portly fellow with the cigar at the bar in the "Rock Candy Baby" singing clip is Bruno VeSota. His presence in a film is another sure indication that nobody in it will be accepting any Academy Awards.

It's hard to believe, but Dick Contino played "Lady of Spain" more than forty times on the Ed Sullivan Show. Contino is still alive and still performs, so who has the last laugh? Topo Gigio, a homosexual mouse. I hated that act, especially when he requested a goodnight kiss from "Meester Sullivan." Sickening.


Ed Sullivan's speciality was to give his audience something of everything. Dick Contino was there for the folks who mistook the accordion for a musical instrument, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas and other such acts were there for teens, and we kids got...


Another show from the 1960's my parents liked but which left me cold was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, which was principally known for its usual plot. Every week an older guy, the Walt Disneyesque-looking Marlin Perkins, sent a younger guy, Jim Fowler, into situations where maiming or death by wild animals was a possibility. Why? Because they wanted to move anacondas around or something - I was never sure and didn't care. Week in, week out, it never varied. (There was once a Wild Kingdom comic book where this is described quite well and humorously.)

I also got a kick out of the inevitable tortured ad segues spoken by Perkins: "Just as the grizzly must fend for itself in the wild and ensure the safety of its cubs, so must you. Mutual of Omaha offers life insurance which..." or "Life for the Canadian Bull Moose can be difficult and fraught with danger. So can life for us. Mutual of Omaha has plans that can..." Geez.

My bachelor week rolls on. I did a load of laundry last night, whites. Got them sparkling thanks to a gallon and a half of liquid beach added to the wash. (Just kidding, Cari.) In the bedroom my wife's decorative pillows still sit on the floor where they were tossed a week ago.

5 June 2012

I watched Thor (2011) last night. It was... okay. I didn't enjoy it as much as the film treatment of Captain America I saw a few nights ago. It seemed too much like a sword and sandal film or two I have seen before... I don't know... Lord of the Rings, perhaps, or a Hercules film? And am I the only person to notice that a peculiarity of this movie is that the most powerful protagonist in it and the one who can most markedly influence the course of events, Odin, takes an extended nap - the "Odin Sleep" - so that the action can proceed?

Thor is like a Shirley Temple film in that regard. Shirley never had a biological father in any of her films because any trouble she got into would then be easily fixed and there would be no story. She had to struggle and tap dance with Bojangles Robinson on her own, the plucky little thing.

In keeping with Hollywood's de rigueur requirement for diversity Thor's pals inexplicably number among them a black man and an Asian. (Did some Asgardian complain, "There goes the fjord?") And, of course, there's the inevitable warrior female. I suspect that if Hollywood were to do a remake of the 1922 Eskimo epic Nanook of the North, it, too, would now contain a black man, an Asian and a warrior female. Perhaps a Hispanic as well. There simply is no location far enough north to get away from multiculturalism, not even across the rainbow bridge to Asgard.

(Wait a minute... it just occurred to me. No Jews in Asgard? No, of course not - what am I thinking? They're in Florida, where the weather is nicer. Come to think of it, there were no Jews in Star Trek, either. Jews in Space would have to wait for Mel Brooks. But I digress.)

Why is this relentless diversity necessary? Look, I don't care if Kurosawa didn't include an Anglo-Saxon in any of his Japanese samurai films. And I'm not put out if somebody does, say, a film about Dynastic Egypt without WASPs. Or a Bollywood musical sans NASCAR types. I'm no advocate of racial purity, but warrior Vikings with soul, chi or a menstrual period is jarring.

I used to read Thor comics as a kid, back when reading D.C. and Marvel stories constituted my per-literate period, before I turned to books as a fourteen year-old. Stan Lee (who makes a predictable cameo appearance in Thor as a truck driver) always scripted Old High English speech patterns for the Thunder God. Sayest thou? Verily. I'm not sure if anyone in English history actually spoke that way, save perhaps 17th C. Quakers. Chaucer's language is more like French and Shakespeare's English is far more colloquial; I'm certain Vikings didn't sound like that. (They didn't even speak English!) But, hey, it sounded appropriately epic in a comic book setting.

(When I joined the Mormon church and received the discussions from the missionaries I was enjoined to use thees and thous in prayer, to show a proper respect for Diety. I had no problem at all with this usage, having grown up on Stan Lee's Old High English in Thor comics. Thou wilts and thees came easily to me. It's second nature, now, and when I hear an occasional familiar "you" in a public prayer it kind of clangs on the ear.)

I might also mention that when I used to draw my own comics as a kid I had a knock-off character for Thor; mine was named the Mighty Bore. He talked a lot and, like the other one, threw a hammer around. Come to think of it, so did I. A cardboard box wasn't safe from the reach of my mighty Sears Craftsman Mjolnir.

Last night I also watched the programmatic antithesis to fabled realms, rainbow bridges, ice demons, Old High English, gods and demigods: another Rick Sebak documentary, this time about farmer's markets. It's entitled To Market To Market To Buy a Fat Pig (2007). Not being an especial fan of fresh vegetables, I found this one somewhat less appealing than his amusement park, ice cream, flea market and hot dog features.

And there is also this: it becomes clear that along with serving up bok choy and rutabagas, the folks at these open air markets are also dispensing some sanctimony. Comments from one smug fellow - a Californian, naturally - gave me the impression that he'd rather die than take a bite from an apple found in a grocery store.

Watch enough Rick Sebak documentaries and you'll notice that his narration almost always includes a chortle when he comes in after a kid says something funny. He's the chortlingest man on PBS since Jack Horkheimer died.

That's all for today.

Henceforth I think I shall call the little snooze I take when I get home from work the Odin Sleep.

LATE ADDITION

I forgot to mention something in my assessment of "Thor" and its wonderful diversity: the one bonafide Scandanavian in all of it is the estimable Stellan Skarsgård, a certifiable real movie star from the Frigid North if ever there was one. (He was great as a flawed cop in the first "Insomnia," a Norwegian film.)


So what does he do in this? He has a minor role and gets drunk, unable to hold his liquor with Thor. Hmf.

Thor and Captain America cannot get drunk, apparently. It's probably better that way, don't you think?

4 June 2012

Saturday yard sales were okay. I got myself one of those cast iron reproduction animated piggy banks (I have two others); this one is a sail boat that launches a penny into a lighthouse. Nice! A year or so ago, I bumped into my friend Jane from church at a rummage sale; she snagged a coffee table book I wanted, Cameron's Above London (I have several in this series dealing with major cities - the books are collections of captioned photos taken from a helicopter, compared with historical images). Had I gotten to that particular table just seconds ahead of Jane the book would have been mine! Anyway, I found it on Saturday, so all's well that ends well.

I spent the afternoon at the Manassas Battlefield. Video here. And, if you have the appropriate red-blue 3-D glasses, you can check out this 3-D park service video of scenes from the locale. The red-blue information is viable enough on my video to make the images appear multi-planar on your PC. It's eye-popping in person; these 150 year old stereoscopic images look really good!

I watched - or tried to watch - a bunch of films over my bachelor weekend:

Ne Change Rien (2005) - A moody black and white film about a French singer recording torch songs. Normally this sort of thing would be right up my alley, but this film was so dull and listless I gave up on it.

Liverpool (2008) - About a merchant sailor returning to his home in Tierra del Fuego. Even duller than the film above! Excruciatingly slow-paced. Does it really require more than a minute of recording time to see a guy put on coveralls and smoke a cigarette?

R (2010) - A Danish prison flick and, as Danish prison flicks go, a pretty good one. It sucks to be behind bars in any nation, I guess. Tattoos a-plenty; that seems to be a commonality among inmates the world over. I once saw a documentary about Russian prisoners carefully describing what each tattoo symbolized. Interesting.

Born in East L.A. (1987) - Cheech Marin, a Los Angelino, gets deported to Mexico as an illegal alien and must make his way back home to the title locale. Ayyyyy... vato! Wasappinin? This comedy had possibilities and a funny moment or two, but mostly it was pretty bad. I gave up on it as well. I'm convinced that a lot of the humor is this a lot funnier if you're doing the reefer.

Almost Famous (2000) - This one - Cameron Crowe's story of a struggling rock band and a very young Rolling Stone journalist in 1973 - was a lot of fun! Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Lester Bangs, the influential Creem magazine rock critic, whose work I used to read during the Seventies. Bangs was what we would now call over the top: I dimly recall one hallucinogenic essay where he opens the stomach of Elvis Presley's corpse, finds sleeping pills and takes them. (Did I really read that?) Anyway, a superior rock and roll movie.

Amarcord (1973) - A highly regarded Fellini film, but, for me, not an especially engrossing one. I tuned out at the halfway point, which is about where I once gave up on 8 1/2. I have come to the conclusion that I like 1950's Fellini a lot more than I like 1960's and on Fellini. I tried.

The best, as it turned out, was last.

The Mill and the Cross (2011) - A fascinating movie! Try this on for a premise: A painting of Pieter Bruegel, brought to life. Wow. (In fact, I said "Wow" twice in this film. That doesn't happen very often.) The painting in question is The Procession to Calvary from 1564. Rutger Hauer portrays Pieter Bruegel, and this film powerfully invokes the world of the late medieval Low Countries. Visually engrossing, most of the interior shots are lit like paintings by Flemish masters. There is one scene, before the titles, which shows the painter and his friend standing before a live action canvas of the work that is just jaw-dropping.

Netflix reviewers seem to be split between giving this one star and five stars. Many feel it hasn't much of a plot and is slow moving, with very little dialogue, which is true. Fair enough. But it's hard to quibble about this when nearly every scene looks like a compositional masterpiece - which is why viewers like me rate it so highly.

This trailer tells you all you need to know. Simply put, I have never seen a film quite like this one and I'll probably never view a Bruegel painting the same way after seeing this.

See, Hollywood? You needn't resort to making films about comic books, theme park rides, Saturday Night Live skits, 1960's television shows and board games. Just use some originality and creativity.

1 June 2012

I watched Captain America - The First Avenger (2011) last night. I concur with my son's assessment: It was okay. Not as good as I had hoped, not as bad as I had feared. It contained the usual Hollywood tropes - a fisty, aggressive female, an anachronistic, racially inclusive infantry platoon, the usual imperviousness to small arms fire - but given what the entertainment industry thinks of patriotism these days (name a movie star who has seen military service), I suppose it could have been much worse.

Thank goodness for Band of Brothers; perhaps that production set the tone for current film treatments of World War II. Revise America's role or meaning in that conflict at your peril...

Along with Batman, Captain America was my favorite comic book super hero when I was a kid. Circa 1965-1967, when I was reading comics avidly, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were leading a Captain America renaissance: the wonderfully creative Cosmic Cube and Sleepers story lines were part of that, and so were the 1940's issues which were being reprinted in 80 page giants. Since I always associated with my father's G.I. Generation rather than with my own, my interest in Captain America and all he represented was easy and natural. When I read that Hollywood was about to produce a big budget movie treatment of the character, I cringed. But... It wasn't bad. Still, I would have preferred that the Steve Rogers part had gone to that sympathetic young man who plays in the American version of The Office, who was considered for the role. (IMDb to the rescue: John Krasinski.)

I think part of the attraction of Batman and Captain America for me was that they couldn't fly, sear things with heat ray vision, be able to run at super speeds or enjoy invulnerability. They were more or less real. True, Cap was a "super soldier" thanks to a serum and had generally unspecified powers, but these were deemphasized (especially in the 1940's stories) and one had the impression that if one spent enough time in a gym and single-mindedly dedicated one's life to it, one could become a Batman or a Captain America. It was an inspiring thought, especially since I was having any notions of self-worth being beaten into the ground at the time by a miserable teacher. I suppose it's significant that I also enjoyed the Jimmy Olsen comics... once again, a normal human (albeit with a bow tie) who was defined, more or less, by his friendship with Superman and not by super powers of his own. He just wanted to be a good reporter; I sympathized with him.

Last night I also viewed a rather clunky Italian film about the British and German navies in World War II, Under Ten Flags (1960), based on real incidents. The story of merchant raider commander Bernhard Rogge and his ship the Atlantis is interesting... as I have remarked before, there seems to be an never-ending stream of fascinating stories which came out of World War II!

I visited the Newseum in D.C.; I've wanted to do that for years. (Took a video.) The admission was $23 dollars after D.C.'s steep taxes. I'm not sure it was worth it. All in all, I enjoyed my visit to the Manassas Bug Out more. (Yipes! I'm turning into a redneck!)

I think I am again going to find a literary agent for Avocado Memories to try getting it published. Clearly, people like it. I have fifteen years of emails from complete strangers telling me so in terms like "You made me cry/you made me laugh/I just spent the entire night reading this"... that surely must mean something to a publisher, oughtn't it?

I submitted it to an agency back in 1998; they accepted it (they were the first I had tried, in fact) and shopped it around. It was haggled over by Chronicle Books in San Francisco for months, but they finally decided against it. But now perhaps its time has come. I feel certain it can be at least as good as other such books I have seen and read. And I am unaware of a work quite like it. How many graphically narrated home tours from the 1960's/1970's have you seen in book form?

If I spend half as much time promoting this with the time I spend composing needlessly provocative Facebook postings I should get some results.

My wife has only been gone on her Utah jaunt for somewhat more than 24 hours and the house is already beginning to take on the attributes of Bachelor Hall: the trash smells, the bed doesn't have a remote chance of being made (the decorative pillows will be spending their days on the floor until she returns), a fine layer of dust is settling everywhere, disregarded, and the window shades remain closed. The pots, pans and dishes I cannot run through the dishwasher are becoming "clean." Shaving seems optional. I suppose next I'll be buying stacks of frozen pizzas and receiving the knowing, disapproving stares of cashiers. Eventually, if left to my own, I'll purchase a few bottles of Mad Dog 20/20, hop freight trains and, half lunatic, make my home in the weedy, overgrown sections of town tangential to industrial areas with Vietnam vets real and imagined. If such becomes the case, Dear Reader, do not expect blog entries! Perhaps a friend will post the police blotter note of my sad demise to this site as a cautionary warning of the perils of being a man alone.

Hey, I lost 1.8 pounds last week. That's more like it! Perhaps I have not yet plateaued. I have lost a total of 35.2 pounds in 21 weeks for an average of 1.7 lbs./week. I'm slowing down in my race to the bottom! (Wherever "bottom" happens to be.)

It's looking like fine yard sale weather for use of the convertible tomorrow... I may have lunch at Bozelli's and enjoy one of their superlative steak and cheese sandwiches. And then perhaps an historic site, a museum or a battlefield (I haven't decided).

Or a weedy industrial area.

Have a great weekend!