Terror Trailers - Slither

When I noticed a movie on the horizon was named Slither, I thought at first of an old paperback horror thriller by John Halkin. The American edition featured green snakelike creatures making their way up through a drain. Apparently there are two sequels I didn't notice on the racks.

The film seems to be an original from James Gunn of the new Dawn of the Dead and live action Scooby Doo flicks.

Looks slimy
Gunn is great at blending humor and horror, and the trailer suggests Slither might be one of those winning mixes of gross-out horror and laughs.

It stars Nathan Fillion of Serenity and Firefly, and a cast of a lot of slugs.

View it here.

Recommended Reading - Free Mystery and Horror Books for iPod

I never paid much attention to the wealth of free e-texts out there until I started using the "Notes" feature on my iPod in conjunction with the iPod Library program. Whatever your e-reader of choice , there are some great free books - pre 1923 volumes available on sites such as Project Gutenberg.

Here are some recent ones I've enjoyed:

1. The Green Mummy by Fergus Hume - The mummy of the title has South American origins. It's stolen after being purchased by a British researcher and the man he hired to deliver it is murdered. Much of the plot revolves around family and romantic relationships and the like, but I still found it engaging and fascinating.

2. The Beetle by Richard Marsh - Three interconnected stories chronicle this tale of a hellish creature seeking vengance for the desecration of a tomb in Egypt. It's a great horror-gothic.

3. Three John Silence Stories and Three More John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood - Six great horror mystery stories featuring one of the early psychic detectives. It's a Victorian X-Files. Silence battles fire demons, survives haunted houses and investigates strange towns with mysterious histories - all great reads.

4. Dr. Who by various authors - Tales of many different Doctors from the BBC. Some are in more readily downloadable formats than others, but with a little patience there are great selections.

5. Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce - A collection of great stories including "The Damned Thing."

Looks like we didn't win

Our poster's not among the finalists in the imdb.com Pitch Your Picture Contest.

I told Patrick, graphic artist extraordinare, we'd try to enter earlier next year. I think the amount of display time was a factor. We entered on deadline because I didn't notice the contest until a few days from deadline.

It was fun, though, and I'm pleased with our entry. I think I'll print a version for my office.

What's on the iPod - Week of Oct. 31, 2005

Years ago - 1981 in fact, the year of the werewolf when Wolfen, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London debuted - we got one of the coolest teaser trailers ever.

The weekend before "An American Werewolf In London" opened, the preview began with "Bad Moon Rising" from Credence Clearwater Revival playing in the background.

"Next weekend," the annoucer intoned, "on the eve of the full moon..." Then the screen was filled with a werewolf's foot as it stepped into a pool of water and alerted everyone to the release of AAWIL.

I don't think John Fogarty and company were thinking of werewolves when they first recorded their dire weather forecast in 1969, but it fit perfectly with the movie's dark humor.

Perfect for today
Bad Moon Rising is a perfecct tune for today - it fits Halloween to be certain, and it ties in with contemporary anxieties as well.

Most of all today is a good day to listen to CCR tunes because CNN is reporting Fogarty has settled differences with Fantasy Records and a new 25-song collection is coming.

That ain't a bad moon rising, but good news.

Movies I'm Looking Forward To

1.Dark Corners. Apparently this one is filming in London and stars Thora Birch as a girl who wakes to discover she's someone else. That's scary enough but the "someone else" is being chased by strange creatures.

2. Full Moon Fever - So far I've only read of the script deal being signed. Based on a graphic novel, it's about workers on the dark side of the moon plagued by werewolves.

3. Whisper - Convicts take a hostage who turns out to have supernatural powers. Josh Holloway of "Lost" is in the cast. Official site

4. Next - One of the latest Philip K. Dick adaptations, this one with Nicholas Cage as the hero, a man who can see the future.

Great Halloween Horror Movie Reference

Entertainment Weekly has a great feature on zombie movies online today. It's a guide to distinguising between all of the Night of the Living Dead offshoots, remakes and divergent tributaries such as Return of the Living Dead. How'd that one get to be 20 years old so fast?

Happily they include the wonderfully wild and high-energy Shaun of the Dead, a very worthy choice for Halloween viewing.

Check out the EW article here.

Halloween Midnight Madness

We helped host a Midnight Movie Madness event last night. It's the first year and was put together pretty quickly so we had a modest turnout, but I think it was a good start.

Apparently there were no prints of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to be had, so the theater booked a couple of pretty good horror films instead.

Volunteers were basically ornamental greeters. Christine and I were pretty much suburban Goth, I think, all black clothes looking relatively harmless. Christine made me leave off some black leather biker gloves--the kind with no fingers. (She took a somewhat uninspired picture of me, so the shot accompanying is self portrait.)

We had a pretty cool Dracula, some dead geishas and a Jasonesque person and a pimp in purple velvet.

Some of the patrons dressed up and some didn't, but of those who did had some cool looks.

I was dreading it all a little bit, but in the end it wound up being fun. Next year, I think I'll go as Pinhead.

What a cool - iPod report

The iPod Mood Ring on Mooville.com is one of those fun and cool things to check for no good reason.

The blogger regularly reports the top 5 songs on his iPod.

Does it matter? Well in the blogosphere, yeah.

Goth types

I've been asked to dress all in black as one of the volunteers at a charity event this weekend. We're supposed to look vampirish. I Googled "male Goth" to get some ideas for accessories and nuances that don't require piercings.

I didn't know how many Goth options were out there. I ran across this listing. Hopefully with black jeans, a black leather jacket and maybe a few other accessories I can just do something basic Goth. I don't really want to be Lestat or anything.

The vampire I met once really wasn't that decadent. I think he was wearing jeans and t-shirt, not even black. That was kind of disappointing.

Dark characters
I was applying my literary knowlege and research skills at a library at the time. The vampire was one of many offbeat characters I met, although one of only three that might have inspired Aurora model kits.

He strolled it one morning. Yeah, it was daylight, but outside Hollywood vampires are just weaker during the day. The sun doesn't turn them to ashes.

"I'd like to do some research on vampires," he said. Didn't sound like Bela Lugosi at all. Had kind of a Southern accent. "I want to know more about my nature."

I helped him look up some websites and he hung around a while and then eventually drifted away. I didn't hear bat's wings. That was pretty much the extent of the encounter.

We had a witch who came by from time to time also. She wasn't a Wiccan or anything. She just threatened to put spells on people now and then.

Reincarnate
Our other colorful visitor with a supernatural touch walked in to ask about a Civil War battle. "I died there in 1862," he said.

Should I question what these people told me? I'm not sure what drove them to drop remarks with shock value.

I guess costume parties and other roleplaying, the wearing of masks in varying degrees, is a method of escape.

I don't usually go for outward masks, but hey, for charity, I'll give it a try.

More Halloween Stories - New Orleans, Voodoo and More

I have great memories of New Orleans, and I continue to hope the recovery goes well. I read a great AP story about the legendary ghosts of New Orleans once upon a time and saved it for many ages.

It talked of course of Madam Lalaurie House, a torture tomb of a place in its day where the ghosts of Dephine Lalaurie are said to continue hauntings to this day.

I wrote a story for a now hard-to-find collection called Erotic New Orleans Stories. Called "Repast" it doesn't deal overtly with Madam Lalaurie's victims but I've always considered the female lead in the story to be a modern offshoot of the notorious society matron.

Voodoo Tour
I went on the voodoo tour once upon a time also. We went through Congo Square where early voodoo ceremonies were held, and I visited the graves of Dr. John and Marie Laveau, although her bones no longer rest in the above ground crypt marked with Xs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Her bones are considered to be powerful magic and thus had to be hidden less voodoo practioners steal them for rituals.

I hope I'll get to go back again some Halloween. There are a couple of places I haven't visited including the Sultan's Palace, site of an unsolved mass murder, where the ghosts of the victims are said to be seen.

Movie Poster Contest Entry

My buddy Patrick Freden and I have won some advertising awards for movie poster parodies. We did them for slide shows that appear before movies start. He is the graphic artist (and web developer) extraordinaire who makes magic from my notes.

When I saw that one of my favorite websites, the Internet Movie Data Base, was having a movie poster contest, I knew we needed to enter for the fun of it.

The Pitch Your Picture contest's challenge is to convey a movie concept in poster form with a tag line. That's our entry to the left. My other buddy, photographer extraordinaire Robert Langham, shot the picture of me as the hapless hero of our story. That's Patrick again as the villain in the background. (He did a one-page website so there really would be something at the web address the poster teases to: www.thepodcastmovie.com.

Does seem like one of those direct-to-video thrillers, doesn't it?

Wonder what would be on that killer podcast?

What's on the Pod? - Week of Oct. 24 -- Halloween Songs

What better tunes for the approach of Halloween than those of The Gothic Archies? I paid for several songs on the New Despair EP a while back with Pepsi caps. With October's gray days and crisp air, tunes like "The Abandoned Castle of My Soul" seem a perfect soundtrack. They're definitely Halloween Songs

Discovery
I discovered the "group" on Lemony Snickett's celebrity playlist around the time iTunes introduced celebrity playlists. It's all twisted fun--grim tones and slightly goofy lyrics.

One dead on the money review invokes the word despondent, and I think that fits perfectly both the lyrics and the music. Ghostly white fingers, a bottomless emotional abyss -- heck, check the lyrics here.

Apparently the Gothic Archies are featured on Lemony Snickett audiobooks also and a new album will emerge from that effort. It's all in the Wikipedia article linked above.

Dark Country
In a similar vein but with a different sound, I've also added Lefty Frizzel's "Long Black Veil" to my playlist.

It's a grim if not ghostly crossover tune of death with imagery of graveyards, icy winds and an emotional if not legally wed widow in black.

Frizzel's soft, haunting rendition has stayed with me after I heard it on a radio program about story songs that I stumbled across on a long drive one Sunday afternoon.

Going dark
One other even darker Halloween-season song comes to mind though I don't have it on the Pod. It's on a collection I have only on cassette, which suggests how old it is.

If you've never heard The Buoys' "Timothy" it's a dark, tongue-in-cheek novelty hit about cannibalism, which I believe Rupert Holmes wrote with a plan toward getting banned. I seem to remember on a talk show he noted that he was listening to "Sixteen Tons" at the time he penned it. You know "muscle and blood and skin and bones."

Happy chills.

The Mother Hubbard Man - Another Ghost Story?

The Halloween we did the feature on Central Louisiana ghosts, I threw in a mention of the Mother Hubbard Man, not a ghost story exactly, but strange and mysterious and almost forgotten. Googling it reveals no entries.

In Gumbo Ya Ya
I'd read a mention about the figure in Gumbo Ya Ya, a hefty compilation of Louisiana folk tales put together during the Depression by the Louisiana component of the Federal Writer's Project under the direction of Lyle Saxon.

I believe it was in the same chapter that discussed feared New Orleans needle men, believed to be agents of doctors in need of subjects for human experiments. Needle men were said to prick unsuspecting pedestrians with tranquilizing agents, then haul them away.

The Mother Hubbard Man's motives when he appeared in 1915 seemed to be less sinister but overtly racist. He got only one line in Gumbo Ya Ya, mentioned in the same literary breath with other ominous pranksters as well as the Ax Man, a New Orleans serial killer who was never officially identified.

Records check
I called the police chief of Alexandria at the time I was writing the article to see if records from 1915 were still around. They weren't, and I didn't scour nursing homes in search of residents who might recall 1915. It seemed unlikely and I was on deadline with limited indulgence from editors to live out a Kolchak fantasy.

I did pull up microfilm of the newspapers of the day, however, and I located at last what seemed to be a second article about the Mother Hubbard Man. It referenced a previous appearance of the cloaked figure in evening clothes, but I was never able to backtrack and locate an earlier article.

The Mother Hubbard Man's Appearance
In his frightening garb, he put in appearances in what the paper at the time identified as the Sonier Oil Mill Quarters, a predominantly African American part of town.

He apparently lurked around the shadows and leaped out at passers by to frighten them. If he made more than two appearances it's not known.

Police never found him, or at least it wasn't reported in the newspaper. Likewise no published reports indicate that he did any physical harm.

Who was he?

A teen age prankster?

An adult racist?

A ghost? OK that’s a stretch.

Someone covering a darker purpose?

It's not the greatest mystery of our time, but that one tantalizing line in Gumbo Ya Ya has always made me wonder.

Second Hand Ghosts

When I was a feature writer, we decided to do an article on regional ghost stories one Halloween, and one of those Central Louisiana tales has stayed with me. Seems worth recalling here since Halloween is approaching again.

I found a gentleman near Winfield, LA, I believe, and we talked on the phone and he recounted a gentile ghost story. No rattling chains or bloody hands, yet eerie in its way.

I'm not sure of the house that was supposed to be involved, but it was a Southern mansion and a young man came to stay. He was given a room on an upper floor. It had a window that overlooked an area beneath one of those majestic trees that stand on the lawns of Southern mansions.

A moonlight gathering
Sometime during the night, he woke up and looked out to see a gathering in the moonlight. Some sort of party was going on beneath the oak, a huge gathering of people.

I think I've always imagined them in 18th century finery, I don't know that that's really part of the story, but I always picture hoop skirts and parasols.

Apparently the visitor was not terribly disturbed by the scene. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

Over breakfast
It was over breakfast the next morning that he brought it up to the host. "Why didn't you tell me there was a party last night?" he asked and described the scene.

"There wasn't," his host answered. "There were no people out there, but that's where they used to hold parties in this house's heyday."

Then, both I'm sure were suitably chilled.

What about ghosts?

As Halloween approaches, water cooler conversation inevitably turns to ghosts and spirits and more "Do you believe?" queries like I mentioned yesterday.

I failed to touch on that in my dissertation on not believing in Bigfoot any more.

Do I believe in ghosts?

Well on ghosts, I'm willing to say: "I don't know."

Publishers divide writing into categories. Fantasy and horror are built on magic and the supernatural. Science fiction and suspense and grounded more in--as the narrator on the fabulous old Tales from the Darkside series used to put it--what we "perceive to be reality."

Of course magic is only magic until someone develops a scientific explanation for it, whether it's fiction of folklore. The fairy abductions of which our ancestors whispered would get categorized as fantasy. Alien abductions, to which we more rational minded folk today might at least give a tip of the anxiety hat, would be classified as science fiction, if written as say a novel and not a personal experience, in which case it's Communion.

Back to ghosts
Anyway, back from that ramble -- ghosts. Right now, we don't know. Are they spirits of lost relatives or hallucinations, folk tales or phenomenon.

I've never seen one, but the newspaper where I wasted my young life was housed in an old J.C. Penny's department store building. The photography department was on the second floor. I'm not sure what it once had been. The executive offices were where my mother once browsed spring fashions and I pissed off sales clerks by playing hide-and-seek in the aisles.

On the way to the dark room
A long flight of steps led up to the dark room. I'd get winded in my twenties climbing them.

Reporters working late at night to fill column inches swore disembodies footsteps moved up and down the steps, perhaps looking for lost dressing rooms or bargain racks.

The offices of the library where I worked were in an old family home, probably a mansion back in the day. People working there swore the home's original owner breezed through the living room every now and then.

The restless departed? Tricks of the eye? The ex-J.C. Penny's settling?

I don't know. With Bigfoot, the absencse of a corpse, skull, legitmate footprint or, as biologists might put it, scat, it's pretty much a no.

Ghosts, well, they're not corporeal. Not leaving physical traces is pretty much their job.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter that much. If we get it figured out that's fine. We'll still tell ghost stories for the same reason, as I mentioned yesterday, I still read accounts of Bigfoot sightings even though I've pretty much let that one go.

It's about mystery and wonder and to borrow a cliche "What if..."

I can live as a pragmatist, a skeptic, but I can also suspend my disbelief to write and to be read to. It's fun, it's escape and it's Halloween time. As Ray Bradbury tagged it - The October Country.

Bigfoot: But it would be really cool

A friend dropped by my desk the other day to ask about Bigfoot. "Is it true you're a fan of Bigfoot?" she asked.

"Fan's kind of a strong word," I countered. "I'm interested in Bigfoot."

"Do you think it's real?"

"Maybe once upon a time, but now, no," I answered. "But, I think it would be really cool if it were."

Then I pulled up photos of the Florida Skunk Ape on the web. They looked a little less like an orangutan in a full body wig than the last time I checked.

In the mid-'70s the U.S. had what paranormal writer John Keel called a UFO flap, tons and tons of sightings. Our local paper had an article every day, which provided great fodder for current events reports.

Bigfoot was in the news now and then also, and in some UFO magazines, and on The Six Million Dollar Man, was linked to flying saucers. Just like Mothman was.

In those days, I wasn't a skeptic. I poured over information and wondered when answers would finally emerge.

Fate today
I still read Fate Magazine from time to time and scan the Fortean Times, but I have more of an open mind not to believe. I was a newspaper reporter a long time, and then I worked in a library where I looked up things for people like the Philadelpia Experiment. Makes you cynical.

The mystery often lasts longer than the solution, but once the Internet came along and I discovered the truth behind Gray Barker, or the smear campaign against him depending on your level of paranoia, it was all sort of downhill.

Aaron Elkins novel The Dark Place includes a pretty good argument against the likelihood of Bigfoot, and The Skeptic's Dictionary pretty much states nothing cool probably ever happened.

No Cottingley Fairies.

Mothman? An owl.

Roswell? Well there's no attribution in that original press release.

Oak Island - overactive imaginations based on a few misinterpretations.

Too bad.

But all that doesn't keep me from reading new reports and perusing new material. Because like I said, it would be fun if it were real.

Return of the Night Stalker

I wanted to watch Kolchak The Night Stalker in 1974 when it came on.

I'd read the paperback novel on which the first TV movie was based, enjoyed The Norliss Tapes, also from Dan Curtis Productions, and talked about it endlessly with my friend who was also interested in scary movies.

But reception was fuzzy on the ABC channel from Lafayette, LA, the only ABC affiliate we could get in Central Louisiana. In those days of rabbit ears, Kolchak looked like it was set in Norway or Finland on my TV.

Managed to catch "The Spanish Moss Murders" but it was really more like listening than watching.

It wasn't until the rebroadcast on the CBS Late Movie in the early eighties that I saw the whole series.

It was destination TV on Friday nights, cool, scary, campy and watched by just about everybody I knew. I discovered that when at a church lock-in the subject of zombie killing came up. "Fill his mouth with salt," everyone answered in unison.

The New Stalker
Someone on one board or another that I was browsing noted the new Night Stalker lacks the original's humor.

I like it, but it's true, it just doesn't have that Kolchak zing. The new Carl has been injected with Fox Mulder's DNA, even as Fox was the offspring of Darrin McGavin's Carl.

The quirky fun is lost in the reimaging. I'm not sure what would have been the right way to do it. In his Night Stalker diary published in Entertainment Weekly, producer Frank Spotnitz notes he considered a modernized version of McGavin's Carl with someone like John C. McGinley or a few others. Might have been fun, but it might not have worked.

In spite of...
In spite of all that, the thing the new show does manage is to overcome the "monster of the week" formula that plagued the original.

It overcomes it with X-Files scripts, but it overcomes. I hope it achieves well enough against CSI to make it to full season. I want to know more about the neo werewolves that got Carl's wife and the mark on his wrist and all that.

At least I get good reception thanks to Dish Network, and I can watch on DVR even though Christine prefers Gil Grissom

What's On the Pod Week of Oct. 17

I'm not into self-help books. I don't believe they really help much, but that said, I'm finding Dark Nights of the Soul--by the interestingly named Thomas Moore--fascinating. Apparently it's a followup to another work, Care of the Soul.

I ran across it in the Eliot Bay Book Company while we were in Seattle, but I decided to get an audio version rather than pick up a hard copy.

Moore on Metaphor
Moore's approach to dark nights of the soul--or those periods of trial that drop into our lives--is mythic. He urges the discovery of metaphors as a way of coping and expressing the deep recesses of the soul in truth beyond words.

It's a concept that deservers more than that paragraph can express.

I was interested in it mostly because I was experiencing an illness a few months back , but it's explorations of meaning span much broader aspects of experience.

It's an enriching book to exprience.

A new guest

We have another new resident at our house. Currently he's known as Gray Kitty. We hesitated in naming him because we spent a good bit of time trying to find his original owner.

He showed up after some bad weather, so we thought maybe he was just lost, thrown off course during the wind and rain. He'd been neutered, which we originally interpreted as female, but, at any rate there was a human willing to pay vet bills involved at some point.

Early thoughts
At first, I saw him at the edge of the yard and thought he was just passing through, but the next morning he turned up on the patio, sharing Oliver's food bowl.

And he proved to be very affectionate, a lap sitter, an ankle circler. Christine granted him a temporary patio visa and I fixed up some towels in a box.

Soon he was keeping Fred the Racoon at bay and giving Oliver orders.

So we have to go through the name thing again. Christine was toying with British authors or Greek gods earlier, but nothing's been resolved.

We're now a four cat family.

More on Ashley (Gray Kitty)

• Ashley's EyesAshley's Eyes II

At the keyboard

I'm reworking a portion of a novel that I've been writing for a while. At last the spark seems to be striking.

If you write, you know what I'm talking about. It's that energy that fuels effort and it comes when somewhere in your psyche you know or at least believe things are going well with a story.

It happens far to infrequently.

New iPod

I got excited about the new iPods, with the revelation of their long-rumored video capabilities. I'm just worried that convincing Christine that I need to upgrade roughly every Christmas is going to be a tough sell.

Guess the fact that you can now buy episodes of Lost through iTunes is good news all around, though. I have more enthusiasm about Lost than just about any other show in a while.

Now I don't have to worry about rainstorms affecting my dish reception on Wednesday nights. I can always pay a buck and change later.

What's on the Pod?

When the air turns crisp and cool, that's when my mood really shifts to horror fiction. It dates back to junior high when I was introduced to the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and the scary stories of Ray Bradbury.

That's because we always got those teen age book club circulars where you could order books for cheap, and in the fall they always offered collections of horror stories from the pulps, Gooseflesh, The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories and Horror Times Ten.

In all of those there were some great stories including Bradbury's "The October Game," about a man's horrifying revenge against his wife with a slam dunk of a last line; August Derleth's "The Lonely Place," spiritual cousin to Stephen King's It; and of course Lovecraft's wonderfully chilling Innesmouth about a man slowly discovering the dark secrets of a small New England town.

Modern Horror
I selected a more modern tale for this October for my iPod, a story from John Saul, who's an occasional read for me. I've enjoyed many of his tales, starting after I read an interview with him in the old "Twilight Zone" magazine which was appropriately featured in an orange-colored October issue way back when.

Midnight Voices, so far at least, is a great autumn tale, set in an eerie New York apartment building that recalls Rosemary's Baby and The Sentinel by Jeffrey Konvitz.

It's read wonderfully by ex-Catwoman Lee Meriwether and offers enough suspense to make me look forward to going to the gym again. That's the goal of my iPod, to keep exercise from getting too tedious.

Staying Lost

Take the quiz: "Which LOST character are you?"

Locke
You are Locke You are the Ambassador of the island. You can be a wierdo at times, but you know more than anyone else.

OK, the world really needs one more post on "Lost," since about a bazillion people watch every week, and about 99% of those spend time online dissecting every nuance of names, numbers and background images. Happily those folks save me the trouble of viewing each episode frame by frame.

But, it is one of the coolest and most tantalizing mysteries in prime time ever. One of the biggest mysteries may take a while to figure out - is it fantasy or science fiction? It's looking like SF, but we'll wait and see.

The quiz
Of course there is a "which one are you quiz?" I love those. Poke back through the archives here and you'll find my Star Trek entry.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find out I'm Locke. In the queen mother of personality tests, Myers-Briggs (questioned by the Skeptic's Dictionary but eerily accurate as far as I can tell), I'm an INFJ, which many who know me would say: "Explains so much."

I don't know that Locke's an INFJ but he spends a lot of time in his own head, as many introverts do.

And welcome to my world. Some people triumph over introversion, summon up outgoing traits and fool everyone.

I don't often manage that. Guess it makes me seem distant at best. Oh, well.

I suppose there are worse things to be than Locke.

What's On the Pod?

I watched On the Beach on cable not long ago. It's a profound and cautionary Cold War-era film about the aftermath of a nuclear war. Gregory Peck plays a sub commander serving in Australia where the end of the world is a little slower to arrive because the holocaust occurred in the Northern Hemisphere. I'd wanted to see it for some time but had just never encountered it nor read the Neville Shute novel on which it's based, though I will soon.

The Land Down Under
Because of the down under setting, the musical score is permeated by elements of Waltzing Matilda as well as a jolly rendition of the lyrics late in the story. I mentioned that here in passing a few weeks back.

In the course of searching for a nice version of "Waltzing" I ran across another tune, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda," a folksy Australian tune. Something about it struck me so I grabbed it too.

I've spent a little more time learning it's origins now. It's tied to remembrances of the Gallipoli experiences of Australians of World War I.

Liner notes from the tune's author Eric Bogle explain his motivation. It was penned after he watched a march on Anzac Day ( Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) to commemorate the soldiers who fought at Gallipoli.

The tune is reminiscent of and is as haunting as the original Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, told from the point of view of young Australian drifter who is coaxed into service and barely survives battle.

He speaks of watching Anzac Day parades and his former comrades marching even though he cannot.

It's a tune that when listened to today resonates for me with new meaning. Perhaps it should too have been cautionary for all of us.

Also on the Pod
Speaking of songs from shows, probably my favorite free tune from iTunes is "Every Ship Must Sail Away" from Blue Merle. I noticed the other night it was used to round out an episode of "Bones" on Fox.

Interesting placement. Bet it was on one of the writer or producer's iPods as well.

Would You Believe?

I was sad to hear of Don Adams' death. I used to watch "Get Smart" with my dad every Saturday night when it was new. (Later, in 1969, it moved to Fridays and conflicted with "The High Chaparral," which became a problem for my dad. Nothing like the internet for archaeology on your own life.)

But anyway, I found a bit of trivia reading the Don Adams listing at the Internet Movie Database.

Apparently in 1982 he played a character named Sidney Williams on an episode of The Love Boat.

Sorry I missed that at the time. That would have fun to know, as it is now.

Stupid Things I Could Do Vol. 3

It's a dark night of thunderstorms. Silver slashes of moisture hammer my car, and on the black horizon rickety lightning bolts cut jagged lines of light. The wipers work furiously and clear off just enough water to give me visibility to keep traveling.

My headlights coupled with the momentary daylight from a lightning bolt reveal the man standing on the roadside beneath the pointless shelter of an oak tree.

I turn down the radio storm warnings and pull over, keying the passenger window. It slides down, and the man leans in, my dome lights glistening on his slick black rain hood.

"Need a lift?"

"God bless you," he says, and I flick the electric lock to let him climb inside.

"Where are you headed?" I ask.

"As far as you can take me or a short a stretch as you can go, either way I get a little further down the road."

"Well, I get you a few miles before I have to turn off."

And the radio plays on
I dial the radio to a station playing soft instrumental music and we get moving.

"Rough weather, eh?" I ask.

"You got it. Worst I've seen in a while."

We travel on, making small talk, until he spots a turn off.

"Can you drop me down that road?"

"Sure."

Down the road
It turns to gravel shortly after I turn on to it. It's nasty mud with all of the rain, and the car vibrates as we move along through what feels like a tunnel of black. The headlight beams soon are bouncing off a pool of water that covers the road.

"That old washout is always there," he mutters.

"Better turn around."

I break to a stop and start to shift into reverse, but in the next lighting bolt that sends slivers of light down through the blackness I see the knife.

It's one from a book cover, a butcher knife, huge, made for chopping though it will serve for a stab as well.

The exclamation never makes it from my lips, only a hot quantity of blood that spills down my chin before everything goes black.

What's on the Pod?

While I was sick, I lay awake watching CNN reports of Katrina sweeping toward Louisiana, my native state, but I never expected the devastation that was to come. Hurricanes have menaced New Orleans before and dumped rain all over the state, but finally the big one arrived.

As I've been recovering I've watched coverage, unable to look away from the horror of it all.

It was one news program or other that plucked "Louisiana 1927" from Randy Newman as the soundtrack for a segment, an obvious but inspired selection.

It's a song I've always liked but somehow managed not to own, but I downloaded it this week. (I think I heard it first many years ago when Newman was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.)

Its chronicle of a past flood, froma reference to the president's visit to the bold chorus fits today's tragedy as well.

May the chorus especially be an anthem to the rebuilding. Waters have tried to wash Louisiana away before, but it's a resilient state.

My heart to all the residents affected.

Prestige

Did you ever notice the things people do to impress other people are usually the things other people laugh at behind their backs?

Ill

Out.

Will return ASAP.

Oliver's rambles

Oliver nee Sad Orange Kitty was missing his collar Monday morning. He slides under our fence and into the wooded area behind our house so I thought he must have lost it there. I walked around the yard and along the fence line looking for it but didn't have any luck, so I put a second collar on him with a name tag I had in reserve.

Last night I got a call from a woman who'd found his collar in her garden. I figured when I called her back I'd find out she lived a few houses down.

"I can probably just walk down," I told Christine.

She didn't live a couple of houses down, she lived a neighborhood away. Not far as the crow flies--which is probably what he was chasing--but I had to get in my car.

That prompted a discussion with Christine about whether he should join us inside.

She doesn't really want another inside pet, but I worry about his safety.

Yeah, I needed more anxiety in my life.

Back on the Novel

I'm back to work on a novel. Put the finishing touches on my other project o' which it's too early to speak, mainly tweaks requested by the editor.

Now, I'm contemplating the content I have so far and honing before continuing the narrative.

I have my main character and most of those he interacts with defined and most the plot worked out.

For the moment it's reshuffling pieces then on to new prose - the part that will probably be more fun.

Nothing profound in that, just a note for future reference.

Naming Rights

I sent Christine a list of possible names that might be right for our outside visitor, Sad Orange Kitty, who is becoming more of a permanent resident. They ranged from the visually appropriate Cheeto to the origin appropriate Rory, which means red warrior.

I arrived at these names from a careful perusal of name meanings. Other contenders included:

• Rojo
• Dante
• Flynn
• Clancy (red warrior apparently)
• Blaze
• Cedric
• Winston
• Leo
• Fagan - he did wander up from the street but it means fiery and small
• Tango
• Tang
• Tigre
• Jabber - he talks a lot
• Shannon - means small wise one

There were others, but those give a sample of the flavor.

"Those are good, but Oliver would be good too," Christine responded almost immediately. We were doing this by e-mail.

More names
I didn't want to cave to Oliver although it seemed OK. I countered with Chester--kind of makes me think of Cheshire and is tied to Cheeto.

"That's not bad, but I still like Oliver," Christine responded. "We could call him Oliver."

"What about Rory, I wrote back. The origins are kind of cool."

"Do you want to be calling for Rory?" she wrote back. "That's kind of hard to say. But you can name him."

Back to the webI went Bow Wow.com and poured over more name origins, seeking a perfect name. Leo kind of emerged again because he struck me as being a little lion.

I polled co-workers who liked that one and took it back to Christine.

"Isn't that a little too much like Cleo?" she asked, producing in my head one of those gameshow sound effects that says "You lose." Sadly she was right. Cleo was a little cat we had who was hit by a car.

I mulled it over a few more days and searched more sites, and contemplated names while he sat on my lap on the patio.

I'd been given naming rights, I wanted to name him. I pitched a few more which Christine shot down.

"He's little and fiery, come up with something that fits him."

"Blaze was on the list," I reminded.

"I said something that fits him, not the name of a stripper," Christine retorted.

I wasn't ready to give up. I pitched a few more names, and we agreed we actually wanted him to have a human name, something dignified since cats are dignified when they're not falling asleep on top of the television and rolling off. Or trying to lie down for the third time on top of a flat panel monitor.

The struggle continues
Sad Orange Kitty got fixed and came back from the vet - they called him Tom Cat for reference purposes.

Still no name. I tried more--Caleb, Calvin, Caesar, Dash, Fritz. Christine vetoed them although had a bit of a soft spot for Calvin. But I had to agree they weren't perfect.

More web searches, more contemplation, more investigation into European name origins especially Celtic since he's a redhead and thus makes me think he's Irish like I am descended from. Nothing seemed to work or at least get past Christine.

Of course, as it all wore on I realized I didn't really have naming rights. It was all a ploy, some clever spin on reverse psychology on Christne's part.

Oliver is starting to adjust quite well to his feeding time and his collar. I call him Ollie when he sits on my lap.

What's on the Pod - Week of August 22

I listened to Tangerine Dream a lot in the eighties. They were doing the soundtracks for cool movies such as The Keep based on the F. Paul Wilson novel and had great albums.

I listened over and over to Tyger, while I was writing Azarius in the wee morning hours. It seemed the appropriate background music as I wrote about angels and demons in spiritual warfare with humanity.

The haunting tones mixed with the poetry of William Blake evoke dark visions.

Squeaking
I owned cassettes in the eighties, so the one I listned to a million times squeaks every time it spins around to the words from Blake's London:

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear...

It was time for an update, so I went for the whole album download since it's not a piece that lends itself to the purchase of a single track.

"Tyger" is not for every taste but it's an interesting work, excellent for late-night listening with the visualization features turned on your PC.

Book on Pod
I searched and searched for a new suspense novel I wanted but couldn't hit on anything, so I wound up getting 1776 by David McCullough. I've always been fascinated by the Revolutionary War era, and by McCullough's work.

I covered a press conference he did for Truman and was enthralled by his tales of his research. He outlined how Truman received word in his office of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt's death and how he ran from his office to the oval office.

Believing it important to retrace those steps in order to understand what must have been going through Truman's mind as the enormous responsibility settled over him, McCullough arranged to run with a couple of security officers through the hallways of the White House. His recounting of the experience was hillarious.

Part of his point was that to understand people you must understand their times, and to understand times you must understand people.

From what I've listened to so far of 1776, he does just that, beginning with a fascinating portrayal of King George.

Guess I'll be busy with that for about 10 hours.

R.S. 500 Progress: 43 songs

Stupid Things I Could Do Vol. 2

I got another flash of how it all might end:

I'm driving back from the movies when I notice an excessive amount of trash strewn against the curb on the well-travelled thoroughfare a short distance from my home.

It looks like an entire trash bag has been opened, or either quite a bit has been tossed from passing windows in a short time.

Disturbed by the mess, I decide to do my civic duty. I pull around the corner and park. Then I walk back to the mess and start to pick it up. Cars whisk past me. One guy honks and shakes a fist.

More passers
I grab some crumpled beer cans and use discarded newspaper to form a container that will hold the litter.

More cars pass, some swerving. A couple of kids in a pickup flip me off.

Ignoring it all, I continue scraping up the mess. I'm so diligent I become more focused on what I'm doing and less on the traffic.

The Logo on the Grill
Suddenly I hear the squeal of breaks and that awful shriek of rubber on pavement. I look up just in time to see the grill of an SUV sliding forward. It's shiny silver with the manufacturer's logo centered.

In an instant, before I can leap away, the logo brands my flesh and hurls me into the air, and it's:

GAME OVER!

Five Things I Could Give a Crap About Plus Five Things That Are Cool

5 That I Could Give a Crap About

1. Britney Spears, Kevin etc.

2. Angelina/Brad/Jennifer

3. Paris Hilton

4. Big Brother 6

5. Prime time on the news channels - are all the shows all alike or what?

OK, six - sites that don't work in Firefox suck.

5 Things That Are Cool

1. The Cowbell Project - Once I complete my iPod playlist of the Rolling Stones 500 Best Songs Playlist (sometime around 2525, you know if anti-aging research yields results) - the cowbell tune list is next.

2. Flickr's Interestingness Last 24 Hours Page - it's artistry at its most inspirational.

3. Speaking of Flickr: The Sinking City Set.

4. css Zen Garden - Web design that seems like magic.

5. Red Eye - Love Wes Craven's work.

Alright, actually six: Battlestar Gallatica and the podcasts.

Oh, and one more - Frank DeFord, who'll happily be featured in "You Write Better Than You Play: The Frank DeFord Story" on ESPN 2 Monday night.

Good ideas that never were

I'm nearing completion on a fairly lengthy project that I can't talk about yet. It feels good to have it almost complete. I'm scrolling through it working out minute details, the least fun but also the least taxing part.

When I mentioned the Miss Daisy mystery story the other day, it reminded me of another sustained idea I had that never played out. Sometimes publisher decisions more than creative issues seal the fate of a project.

Danube: From spy to demon hunter
I was in high school when I first created the character named Danube, who is ultimately the hero my novel Gnelfs (G is silent). I read Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine a lot in those days, and Danube was a spy operating behind the iron curtain, dressed in a black coat and a fur hat. In stories I wrote in English class, he sneaked around Berlin streets protecting scientists from Russian agents or something like that.

By the time I was ready to write Gnelfs, he'd changed into a demon hunter. The idea from Gnelfs came from a talk show where someone warned of the dangers of demonic symbols in cartoons. What if there were symbols put into Saturday morning cartoons unintentionally by artists simply copying old runes? Symbols that could be exploited by those aspiring to evil ends?

Gnelfs emerge
The Gnelfs in my story were demons who took on the forms of cartoon characters with a much more nasty look and style. They were worthy of a demon hunter/occult detective, but I wanted Danube to be a little different. He kept the black coat but wore a priest's garb yet had the ability to cast a spell or two and had some other tricks up his sleeve.

One of my friends at the time kept after me to tell him who Danube really was because the book only hints at it. The notion was that Danube's true identity would emerge over a series of novels, but there were hints about his origins.

Clues and answers
He had red hair, and he had nightmares which involved falling silver coins, and he confessed: "My father betrayed a friend once."

Legend or Renaissance art suggests that Judas had red hair, and I picked up somewhere that a part of the curse upon him was that his children would be vagabonds (You know I may be wrong on that point. In retrospect that may have been Cain's children. I'll have to check the Bible on that. (8/23)

He betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Not the most clever masking I suppose, but I was young and pumped about getting to write books at all.

My publisher at the time had other ideas about what I should write - a series of young adult novels and a couple of other books with young protagonists. I just never got around to finding another adventure for Danube and chose not to drop into comic books because I didn't want to turn him over to a comics publisher.

I don't really regret that I didn't get around to a second Danube tale. I could have written short stories about him, but I moved on to other things.

Maybe I'll resurrect him one of these days, though, so keep his secret under your hat.

What's on the Pod?

Shortly after it was reported, we were talking about the attack on Mark Cohn last week. That led to discussing the Walking in Memphis lyrics. I looked it up on iTunes for a download. I suspect I'm not the only one who did that.

I love song lyrics that have enough meaning that they warrant further exploration, and "Walking in Memphis" certainly does that with references to W.C. Handy, blue suede shows and Beale street. It's a song I've always liked. Once upon a time I owned it, but I lost it in one computer crash or another - so it was time to put it on the 'pod.

Muriel
I realized as we discussed the various references, that I was unsure about the whole Muriel verse. I wound up checking the web for clarification, and happily that's explained in the FAQ on markcohn.org.

I love finding the stories behind lyrics as much as re-examining lyrics. (Some songs you're not meant to understand, I suppose. I also spent a little time humming Waltzing Matilda over the weekend also because it's woven into the soundtrack of On the Beach which I'd DVR'd.) The Muriel references is a great story behind a song.

I think I'll have "Walking in Memphis" at the top of my "On the Go" playlist for a while.

Now if only iTunes would get "Fine, Fine Day" by Tony Carey.

iPod earbuds

I have a problem with the earbuds on my iPod. It's not that they hurt my ears--a complaint of some-- and definitely not that they don't provide good sound quality. Still it's a not uncommon problem since I've seen mention of it on ilounge née ipodlounge.

Miss Daisy and the earbuds
I wrote a story about my cat, Miss Daisy, for Crafty Cat Crimes, an anthology of 100 cat mysteries, in which she solved a mystery along with a fictionalized version of Christine and myself. That was called "Miss Daisy and the Rosary Pea." (As an interesting aside I wrote it in my hotel room the last time I was a guest at CoastCon. That was many ages ago.) The plan, even though I didn't pursue it, was to have her involved in a number of cat/horticulture mysteries. The rosary pea was just supposed to be one of many poisonous plants she'd encounter.

Besides the shameless plug, I mention all that because Miss Daisy actually created a brief mystery not long after I got the sidPod for Christmas. I listened to it before bedtime one night then just rolled over and tucked it under the edge of the bed rather than getting up to put it in a drawer.

Mysterious stretching
The next morning the earbuds trailed across the carpet like the eviscerated innards of a mouse, and the iPod was tugged from its hiding place.

The pod was undamaged and happily the earbuds and their cord were fine, but the little black fuzzy thingy covers for the buds were missing.

The usual suspects
Immediately there were two suspects, well three but I never really considered Christine. Those I liked most for the crime were:

1. Monty - my tomcat who has a criminal history. He was released from the pound into Christine's custody after his picture appeared in a local newspaper. He immediately viewed it as being released on his own recognizance.

2. Daisy - the good cat, who has a brief criminal history, but it was really a misunderstanding. When she was a kitten of about 10 ounces she strayed with her brother-Cleo- into a neighbor's yard while I was at work. Considerate human being that she was, the woman waited about 2 seconds to call the pound and have two tiny kittens picked up. The pound only charged me half the bail because Daisy and her brother were so tiny and defenseless they kept them in one cage.

Anyway, Monty with his roguish background, seemed a likely candidate, just as he did when we had gas logs installed and someone dug in the fake gravel in the fireplace. He was cleared when Miss Daisy strolled into the room with soot all over her face.

Unsolved
The case remained unsolved for a while. I put the second set of fuzzy black thingys on the buds and moved on with life, making sure the pod was stored before bedtime each night. Then one day I came home from the gym and put the pod on the dresser, a tall dresser usually only accessed by the cats if they suspect the Pounce container is up there even though their lack of opposing thumbs usually thwarts their efforts if they manage to steal the container.

I came home, plopped the pod on the dresser and proceeded to take a shower until Christine's shout drew me from the bathroom. Christine frequently prefers to shout and draw my attention to situations rather than deal with them directly, I guess because she believes they somehow have illustrative value.

When I strolled back into the bedroom I discovered:

Exhibit A: The iPod on the floor.

Exhibit B: The earbud cord trailed across the carpet like the eviscerated innards of a mouse.

Exhibit C: The black thingys were missing.

Exhibit D: Miss Daisy stood over the whole scene burping.

After Christine's lecture about taking better care of my toys she berated me for being outsmarted by the cat. I could only answer: "She hardly ever jumps up there any more."

I bought some more little black thingys from a helpful gentleman at Radio Shack. They really do have everything there except a replacement remote control for my old Robie Sr.

Since then Daisy has outwitted me a few more times. She continues her pursuit of eating little black fuzzy thingys every time my guard is down.

She's eaten them from a bowl on the coffee table and from a hiding place under the coffee table and a couple of other spots that escape. She has the uncanny ability to stay on point while I focus on other matters.

The problem I mentioned? My cat eats my iPod's black fuzzy thingys. Currently I'm without black fuzzy thingys on my earbuds and Miss Daisy has a little less fiber in her diet. Moral to this story? Even your good cat will eat the black thingys off your iPod I suppose.

Early morning visitor

We have frequent cat guests in our back yard. I call our patio the cat cafe because I keep a bowl of water in the shade for passing felines. Two of our neighbors have cats that drift over now and then. I've become friends with B.B. from up the street, a coal black fellow with golden eyes. Once I had to get a ladder and get him off the roof because however he found his way up, there didn't seem to be a ready avenue for him to get down.

My cat, Miss Daisy, feuds with my next door neighbor's cat, who we call Gray Kitty. She's a younger, trimmer female so it seems reasonable Miss Daisy who's a tad on the fluffy side doesn't really like her around.

Sad Orange Kitty
Of late we've been seeing a little orange cat. He's thinner than the time he first passed through the yard, so I've decided he must be abandoned. I fed him all the cat food my co-worker gave me after her cats made it clear they would starve rather than eat it.

Then I started him on a diet of my cats' food. They've been turning their noses up on it since a stay at the vet introduced them to finer cuisine.

Sad Orange Kitty has decided he doesn't have to polish off everything I give him in one sitting now. He was devouring it in a starved gobble. I guess not knowing where your next meal is coming from prompts that, even if it's food other cats would rather starve than eat.

Different fur
This morning when I got up to brew the java of the gods, I noticed something furry on the patio, but it was darker fur than Sad Orange Kitty's. My first thought was that B.B. had made a long night of it.

Then I realized the hind legs I was looking at weren't quite catlike, especially as they began to extend a little.

A few seconds later a raccoon was staring into my kitchen. He decided to flee as soon as our eyes met, and I found it a little freaky. Christine, who was still dozing, said my exact words were: "Jesus Christ, Christine, there's a raccoon on the patio."

Previous guests
A raccoon shouldn't have come as much of a surprise, we have frequent rabbits, and periodically an opossum used to show up to sample some bird trail mix Christine put out, and there are crows who sail over as well.

I guess all of them had the run of the place before developers carved our neighborhood out of the forest.

Perhaps my early morning visitor feels I encroached on his back yard more than he has encroached on mine. I hold the deed, but he's a native on this land, and to him I'm sure Sad Orange Kitty's leftovers were very tasty.

Optimism

Some currently-airing ad uses the tune from "Somewhere," one of the great songs from the fabulous Broadway musical and roadshow motion picture West Side Story.

"That's a beautiful song," Christine said when it aired earlier.

"Yeah, but it's kind of sad," I said. "Maria and Tony didn't really arrive at a time or place for themselves, unless it was in the after life."

"It's still a beautiful song," Christine said.

I conceded that point. It is a beautiful song, all about optimism and putting differences aside, although the argument could be made that it's not a particularly good argument in favor of optimism. For all the "look on the sunny side" spirt, things don't turn out that well in the end, destined as Tony and Maria are to repeat Romeo and Juliett's history.

I'm more an optimist than I sometimes like to admit, though always with a touch of cynicism. Sure you get a bigger soda than you used to at fast food establishments now, but the down side, as Morgan Spurlock might note, is you get a bigger soda at fast food establishments now.

I guess I'll give Christine Somewhere and I'll hum Always Look on the Bright Side from Monty Python's Life of Bryan.

What's on the Pod

I'm not a metrosexual, reluctant or otherwise. I'm too big a slob for that, and I think it's edged beyond passe anyway, right. Still, I downloaded a handful of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Podcast Hip Tips yesterday. I like to at least know where I'm falling short on things like exfoliating.

John Prine online
I don't have anything new from John Prine on the 'pod, just the tunes from Prime Prine that I got for Christmas several years ago. I discovered his work listening to NPR on a drive along Louisiana's I-49 once upon a time. I mention all that because a friend sent me some artwork he'd discovered on the Library of Congress website which prompted me to go there and discover they have a lot of stuff!

For example there's a webcast featuring John Prine and poet Ted Kooser. There's also a history of barbecue to watch as well. I might just since I've kind of become peripherally hooked on The Secret Life of... on Food Network. By peripherally hooked, I mean I listen to it out of the corner of my ear if it's on.

Maybe if the rumored video iPods come along, I can snag some LOC content for mobile viewing.

No progress on the RS 500 this week.

Movie Going

The new issue of Entertainment Weekly has a great article about the decline in movie ticket sales. It's based on a reader poll conducted on the EW website, and it's written with real verve that takes the Fantana factor into account. Who, having survived the Macarena-like Wanta Fanta hasn't contemplated waiting for a movie on DVR? Yeah, I mean DVR and not DVD.

It's not so much the pre-movie ads for me, however. It's inertia in my free time. Ticket and DVD sales are really based on how big a hurry you're in to see a movie. Lately I'm more patient. Often before a movie works its way to the top of my Netflix queue it's already on Encore.

There are more and more flicks I'm willing to wait on these days.

Fantastic Voyage to the Core
I was telling my buddy, Robert, the other day that even if I don't have release date information, I can tell I'm watching an off-season movie -- one of those modestly-budgeted flicks for release between January and Memorial Day or in the fall. There's something to be said for a script that has to rely on character and situations rather than pyrotechnics to generate suspense, but for every Memento and Panic Room there's a Domestic Disturbance or a Godsend or The Forgotten.

A lot of weaker movies are churned out these days to keep product on the market and stars in the spotlight. Even really big stars don't mean a movie you can count on any more, and this whole German financing deal means there's no gurantee big, high-concept movies are going to be any good either. (Once upon a time you could tell studios made sure big money movies were watchable if not built to be critically revered. I had this realization watching Starman back in the day.)

What's kept me out of the theater lately? I've noted before when I was a kid Homer Formby was all you got on Sunday afternoon. Now it seems every movie ever made is available at some point during the week if you have the right channel package. Last Sunday I caught The Core, which I thought was a pretty good "blockbuster."

Yesterday afternoon it was Fantastic Voyage - letterboxed and spanking of "1966 prestige release."

I did get out for the new Batman Begins and for The Island, but I have plenty of reasons to stay home - like 80 hours worth on my DVR. Well, a little less since some of those are HGTV shows Christine selected.

What's the answer for movies? Bring back roadshow pictures.

See also:
Hollywood's Death Spiral

My score: Jean Luc Picard

Take the Star Trek Quiz

I'm foremost a Star Trek TOS fan. I can't name every episode today like I once could, but I still get excited when Capt. Kirk outwits his adversaries using those snatch-things-from-the-mouth-of- disaster tactics.

One of my favorites is "The Deadly Years." (I looked it up, OK?) Knowing the Romulans have broken a Star Fleet code, he sends a message in that code (It's Code 3, I do remember that) because he wants them to hear the message and react. When they pull back based on his annoucement that he's going to make the quandrant unsafe for the next four solar years, he seizes that opportunity to warp the Enterprise out of danger. Cool, eh?

I like in Star Trek III when he's warned he'll have to give up his precious captain's chair if he persists in attempting to reunite Spock's spirt with his body against Star Fleet Orders. He doesn't hesitate, he says: "Warp speed, Mr. Sulu." When I discuss that part, Christine always says: "And then you wept?"

Despite my appreciation for Capt. Kirk's brashness, my score on the Star Trek Quiz shows my personality more closely aligns with Capt. Picard's.

Christine's take
Christine said that shouldn't come as a surprise, noting that I'm quiet and thoughtful and a fan of old detective stories as well. I guess Capt. Picard is a good personality score, and I have always admired his ability to achive goals within the confines of the Prime Directive, the Federation's first-do-no-harm rule.

Loved the one when he made contact with the guy who spoke in myths and metaphors and told him the Epic of Gilgamesh

I hope I'm worthy of the Picard banner they give you when you've finished the quiz. At the very least it's something to which I can aspire.

Driving Language

I swear at people in traffic – not just the mild expletive here or there. I provide colorful narratives about other drivers that include genealogical references, lifestyle suggestions and even commentary on flaws that they should have surgically corrected.

It’s lost advice since they’re never able to hear it, yet I find it cathartic. I should point out,
I don’t swear at the random motorist. I swear at those who commit grievous offenses against me.

You know who and they know who they are

You know who I’m talking about. They’re the ones:

• Puttering along slowly with a cell phone welded to one ear while you’re waiting to pull out.
• Stopping halfway through a yellow light to dial a cell phone.
• Slowing to 2 mph then turning abruptly without signaling.
  
• Making random U-turns in front of you after pretending they’re making a left.
• Deciding while stopped in traffic to throw their car in reverse and back toward you.

All of these things have happened to me lately. Watching a Jesus fish hurl toward you above a set of blazing reverse lights really awakens your sense of mortality.

Negative reviews
Christine hates it when I take these people to task. I don’t think she fully appreciates the release it brings. I believe creative use of language within the confines of your own car is a real pressure valve. Used appropriate it can help quell road rage. Maybe along with GPS systems, cars should come equipped with an electronic version of the Dictionary of American Slang.

Anyone who says use of blue language shows a lack of creative expression clearly has a limited vocabulary and should get out more. Clearly they did not read the Dictionary of American Slang in the school library on lunch breaks in high school, either. By getting out more, armchair William Safires, while driving around would experience bad drivers who illustrate the need for expletives. They might also hear a few words that would improve their vocabularies and help them better understand just how creative language can be. Bad words like all words are tools and can be utilized in effective ways.

Family History
I actually have a strong family history of swearing in traffic. My father, who was a sailor after all, did some of his best work on Southern interstates. His admonitions against a driver who would not yield right of way in Baton Rouge, La., one year remain with me still and I cover that rendition on occasion – like the other day when a guy driving along a railroad track almost hit me.

“He had the right of way,” Christine said.

Apparently driving a truck on a railroad track does not set off the crossing lights like a train does. And a truck lacks the lonesome whistle immortalized by Boxcar Willie, so I’m not sure how I was supposed to know he was coming.

“He had the right of way,” Christine repeated when I made that argument after she berated me for the blue streak elicited by almost getting hit by a FREAKIN’ PICKUP TRUCK ON A RAILROAD TRACK.

I knew there were trucks that could drive on railroad tracks. I knew somebody who knew somebody who drove one once, but I really wasn’t expecting one to come cruising along in the middle of the day on his way across a major thoroughfare to reset points--or whatever he was up to. So when he gave me a smug look and a shake of his head like I was a total idiot I said, well use your imagination. I did, and the results were really satisfying.

What's on the Pod?

Last night I downloaded "Our Deliverance" by the Indigo Girls from iTunes.

It was the song that struck me the most at their Seattle concert. Its vivid, haunting imagry seemed to drift out on the breezes from Lake Union. I assumed then it was a more recent song with its mention of soldiers sent to distant places, but it dates back to 2002. Listening now, it seems perhaps more relevant.

Somehow the tune also evokes a memory of Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon."

Both are good songs as starting points for contemplation today.

Also on the 'pod
I've finished the first part of The Traveler.

Scott Brick's growing on me again. I've listened to him reading this tale long enough now that I've stopped recalling Company Man's characters with each inflection.

It's an interesting parable about privacy protections, peppered with action and Highlander-style myth. Only eight more hours to go on that one. I try to listen to novels mainly when I work out. Passes time on the treadmill a little easier.

Building a Playlist
Since the release of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time I've been sifting through my CDs, working on a playlist of those tunes.

The fact that Christine and I bought The Rolling Stone Collection after an infomercial a few years ago has helped a lot. Being Simon and Garfunkle fans has helped also.

So far my RS 500 playlist is: 39 songs long

Tie-dyed spirit

Christine found a tie-dyed shirt for me at the Pike Place Market. (Nice 3-D Tour here, but takes a minute to load.)

I don't know that tie-dyed is me as much as it once was--corporate being that I am these days--but she thought it fit my spirit. Since it's Sunday, I slipped it on this morning. Doesn't make me feel lost in the '60s, but it does make me feel relaxed and laid back.

Touch of Gray
With the sandals I wear on weekends and the gray on my chin, I guess I look ready to trail a Dead tour. Not a bad deal for Sunday. Gotta go by Starbucks and get a cup of chai to complete the ensemble.

0% passive sentences on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Victory again!

Type 'o Blog

In her presentation on blogs at Web Design World in Seattle Molly E. Holzschlag discussed mixing professional and personal blogging, an interesting discussion.

I've always considered both my Opera Journal and now this blogspot an eclectic blog. Sometimes I'm serious, sometimes whimsical, sometimes contemplative -- isn't everyone? (OK, not everyone, but I'm talking here about people leading examined lives.)

Tales from the Dark Side
At the height of publishing horror fiction, people used to ask Christine what I was like. "Is he really dark?"

No, sometimes I'm surprised by how upbeat people think I am, although often not laugh-out-loud funny because people tend to get my jokes later, like when they see the movie I was referencing on HBO. I guess quips can just be a riddle wrapped in a mystery.

Life's not all bad, and it's not all good. I once had a lady at a book signing tell me she couldn't buy a copy of one of my young adult novels for her grandkids unless she knew it had a happy ending. Sorry, lady, no one can always promise that.

Life has many textures. So do my moods, so maybe mine is a textured blog. :-)


0% passive sentences - victory.

Stupid Things I Could Do Vol. 1

While I was kicking alongside the streetcar track on Alaskan Way toward our hotel one afternoon in Seattle, I had a flash of a stupid way I could get myself killed ...

Heading into the lobby - I reach the doorway at the same moment as a graying man a few years older than me in a loose-fitting casual shirt, dress slacks and loafers with a high shine.

We reach for the door at the same moment, words are exchanged, we both get a little red in the face and end the altercation with angry looks.

Later that day...
I'm lounging in my room watching local television news, since that's about all that's different from back-home television. There's a knock at the door. Thinking it's the maid asking if she can clean the room, I answer without checking the peep hole.

Instead, I'm greeted by a couple of guys in sunglasses and nice casual wear--not tee shirts with Jake the stick man from Life is Good, if you know what I mean.

They want to take me on a tour of Elliott Bay, capped off by a view of what's under the waves.

You just never know who you're talking to. Just pays to be nice when those little altercations occur, doesn't it.

Just a flash of imagination. Didn't really happen in case the fact that I'm typing this doesn't make that clear. :-)

Seattle time

I get a breezy vibe from Seattle. It sweeps in off Eliott Bay as I walk along the waterfront and follows me up through the shaded cobblestones of Pioneer Square. After a while I wind up thinking I was born in the wrong place.

I spent a week with some good people in Seattle back in ’98 and it didn’t take me long to sink back into loving the culture. Christine got me a Life is Good tee-shirt before our trip last week, one featuring the stick man named Jake grilling burgers--she said they should probably be veggie burgers to fit Seattle’s true spirit. It helped me assimilate into Emerald City culture, I suppose. I was still trying to get oriented when motorists were stopping to ask me how to get to Smith Tower.

Sight seeing
We hit Pike Street Market our first afternoon off the plane and fit in some sushi, Tully's Coffee, an Indigo Girls
concert at Lake Union and a couple of tours of Eliott Bay Book Company.

It was a cool week and I managed to choose one once again without rain.

What's on the Pod?

I just started listening to The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. It's an interesting science fiction/fantasy.

Here's the down side. The abridged version is narrated by Bill of Kill Bill himself David Carradine.

I usually get the unabridged, and it's narrated by Scott Brick. Only about a month ago I listened to his unabridged reading of Company Man by Joseph Finder. Great book but long. Brick's a great reader but his voice keeps snapping me back to the full immersion of his Company Man reading, and The Traveler is about 12 hours too!

Does Anyone Remember "Parts the Clonus Horror"?

Just saw The Island. Good action movie with some bioethical undertones. Bioethical undertones, simplistic though they may be, are pleasantly unexpected in summer fare. About half the movie is solid science fiction, and about half of it is souped-up action a la director Michael Bay’s Con Air” and The Rock

As I watched, I couldn’t help recalling an old low-budget flick called Parts: The Clonus Horror. It was, I believe, made by the same company who gave us the Giant Spider Invasion featuring Perry Mason’s assistant fighting eight-legged special effects in mink coats.

Parts is probably better known because of its treatment on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” It doesn’t include souped-up action a la Con Air and The Rock.

For example, Ewan McGregor makes a getaway from his pursuers on a police motor cycle with vertical takeoff and hover capabilities. The hero of Parts--this guy who was always on "Adam-12" flees pursuers on a bicycle with a banana seat. Both do escape with fellow clone captives who happen to be pretty, vivacious blondes, a key ingredient for big and low-budget films, I guess.

Budget differences aside, premise wise the stories are the same. Parts and The Island are both about clones being maintained in a remote environment unaware they’re on hand to provide spare parts for the wealthy who have outside lives but unpleasant things like bad liver conditions. Peter Graves is a politician who has a clone counterpart in Parts. There’s an allusion to a presidential clone in Island.

As far as I know The Island is not an official remake, and it goes off in far more exciting, big-budget action directions such as Con Air and The Rock, but I guess you just can’t really escape sequels and remakes in July.

My Site

I have to clean up the code on my personal site. I did a quick redesign a few weeks ago because it had been a sprawling mass of tables with a few wandering links for too long. I’m generally pleased with the new look, but to get the rollovers I wanted created a bloody Javascript mess. I’m going to migrate that to CSS. I keep putting off CSS for my own site for a while mainly because of the learning curve.

Web Design World’s CSS evangelism plus the introduction to the Zen Garden provided a nice kick in the pants to get me going.

I’m kind of pleased with the convergence of metaphors for my site, at least. I mixed in a computer keyboard and a fountain pen along with a Courier-like font suggesting old typewriters. The rollover – just a touch of a wind effect, in the back of my mind, represents text on paper swept by one of those old typewriter erasers. Anyone remember those round white ones with the brush trailing behind it. Yes, I’m a hundred years old now.

0% passive sentences. Yay!

New Digs

I've been keeping my web journal at Opera for a while now, but it seems to be time to move to a new corner of the web and flex a little. I'm just back from Web Design World 2005 in Seattle and I'm propelled by that burst of energy that comes after a cool week of learning and lasts until the first major lava flow back in the real world.

That will probably happen sometime Monday morning, so for now, I'm logging in to new things and ready to post this brief message just as soon as I paste it into Word and check for red squiggles.

Good. None. Unfortunately 33% of the sentences are passive. Got to keep working on that.