The Home Computer 2004

Jayme Lynn Blaschke's Gibberish

The link is to a great photo of the Rand Corporation's 1954 vision of what a home computer would look like in 50 years. Pretty cool.

The Java Jive 

Coffee

I don't drink it.

Many mornings when I was teaching, I'd watch the coffee drinkers lined up in front of the urn in the faculty lounge as the coffee perked, their hands shaking as they held their cups, their feet tapping as they tried to urge the brewing process on to greater speed. I never quite understood it.

Oh, I could appreciate the ritual aspect of it, all right. In fact, I sort of envied the coffee drinkers for the many days, weeks, years, of pleasant morning ritual that I would never be a part of. But actually drinking coffee was a price I wasn't willing to pay. I don't like the taste.

I tried, God knows, I tried. When I went to college, everyone drank coffee. The ritual in those days was to stay up all night to study for exams, drinking quarts of coffee along the way. So I tried to learn to like coffee. I bought the best brands. I tried all the brewing secrets.

Didn't work. Not only did I not like coffee, but I didn't like staying up all night, either. At least not to study. As usual, I just didn't fit in.

After I got married, I tried again. Judy loves coffee. She has it morning, noon, and night. (She used to drink so much of it that I actually had to hold an intervention, but that's another story.) Because she likes it so much, I gave it another try.

Didn't work. I still don't like the taste. I get my caffeine in other ways, Dr Pepper and Pepsi One being the preferred methods. But when it comes to coffee, include me out.

The Incredibles 

The Incredibles

Last night Judy and I went to see The Incredibles. We both liked it a lot. I've seen complaints that it rips off the plot of Spy Kids, to which I respond, "So?" And I've even seen complaints that the villain's lair rips off James Bond movies. Hey, what kind of lair would you expect an incredibly wealthy fanboy villain to have if not one modeled on James Bond movies? What matters is that The Incredibles has humor, heart, and action. Or maybe that should be action! It's the best superhero movie I've seen in years, maybe since the first Christopher Reeve Superman. In fact, for my part, Hollywood can just turn all future superhero movies over to Brad Bird and Pixar.

One thing that really got me about the movie was that by the time it was over I'd pretty much forgotten that I wasn't watching real people on the screen. The animation is that good. I'm scared to think where movie-making is going next, but then I haven't even seen The Polar Express yet. I'd love to see it in IMAX 3-D because I'm sure it would be an amazing experience.

Addendum: Jayme Blaschke has a comment below that's worth reading, and I put a link in my reply to his more complete review of the movie. But that link's not clickable. This one is.

Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver 

Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver

The other day I mentioned that when some of the office bookshelves collapsed, I found my copies of three books by Jack Douglas that I'd been looking for. I discovered Douglas's books back in 1959 or 1960, and at the time I thought they were hilarious. So last night I decided to see if they were still funny after 45 years or so and picked up Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver. The title is either funny or sage advice. Or both.

The cover has a pretty good likeness of Douglas on it. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show back when Jack Parr was the host, so I remember what he looked like. And the book is just as strange as I remembered. It's very short, only 116 pages, and some of the pages have very little written on them. Chapter 42, for example, is nothing more than a sign that says, "This is your Submarine. Keep It Tidy." And in fact, chapter might be the wrong word, as it implies some kind of continuity. There's no continuity in the book. Each "chapter" is a separate entity containing things like notes, playbills, diary entries, reminiscenses, one-liners, and so on. My favorite chapter begins with another sign: "Kick the Happiness Habit -- Become a Writer."

So does the book still make me laugh? Sure, in places. It's not as funny to me as it was long ago, however, which is a shame. I figure the book hasn't changed. So it must be me.

Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in KISS ME, KATE. 

Howard Keel, RIP

CNN.com - 'Dallas' actor Howard Keel dead - Nov 7, 2004: "'Dallas' actor Howard Keel dead"

I always sort of liked Howard Keel. The first thing I remember seeing him in was Annie Get Your Gun, which was a Broadway musical kind of western. And after that there was Show Boat. I was more impressed by Ava Gardner and Kathryn Grayson, though. Keel played another musical westerner in Calamity Jane, and he was good. I mean, if you can accept squeaky clean Doris Day as Calamity Jane, you can accept just about anything. My favorite Keel movie is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and he plays a rugged frontiersman in that one, as well. Not that the movie's intended to be a realistic depiction of frontier life, any more than Calamity Jane was. Another of my favorites is Kiss Me, Kate. Kathryn Grayson is in that one, too, but what really got my attention was Ann Miller's "Too Darn Hot" number. Hubba-hubba! But I digress. On the grittier side, there's a non-musical western called Waco that Keel made about 40 years ago. It's pretty much forgotten now, but worth a look. I suppose most people remember him for his role on Dallas, but I never saw a single episode of that show.

Flying Taxis

BBC NEWS | UK | Flying taxi vision for commuters

OK, this would be cool, but as for myself, I'm holding out for the Commander Cody Rocket Suit.

The Perils of Book Ownership

When we moved into this house in 1983, I took over the smallest bedroom as my office. I attached some rails to the sheetrock walls, put shelf-holders in the rails, and put shelves on the holders. Then I filled the shelves with paperback books. Lots of paperback books.

The other day I was sitting at the computer when I heard a strange noise. I looked up to my right and saw that the top shelf of paperbacks had collapsed onto the shelf below, which had collapsed onto the shelf below that. Since all three of those shelves were double stacked with paperbacks, it was a precarious situation. If they all let go at once, I was going to be buried in books. Probably appropriate, but it would have taken Judy weeks to dig me out. So I leapt into action.

It's too bad that there was no one with a video camera to record subsequent events. I had a low chair at one end of the shelves and a stool at the other. To get from the chair to the stool, I had to run around the computer desk. And I had to move fast. At times, I was standing on both the stool and the chair at the same time. Impossible, you say? Well, I was there, and I know. I'm sure it looked like something out of a Warner Brothers cartoon. Somehow I managed to get most of the books cleared off the shelves and to get the shelves themselves down before there was a total disaster. Books were stacked all over the desks in the office and all over the floor in both the office and an adjoining bedroom.

I discovered the reason for the collapse: the middle rail had pulled away from the sheetrock. So I was off to the hardware store to get a couple of sheetrock anchors to replace the old ones. After I got that taken care of, the rails were back in place, and I put the shelves back up. As of today, the books are back in place, too. If the shelves will hold up for another 21 years, I probably won't care what happens to them.

A good side effect of the collapse was that I found some books I'd been looking for, the first three by Jack Douglas: My Brother was an Only Child, Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver, and A Funny Thing Happened on my way to the Grave.

Peter Rabe

Stark House again comes to the rescue of those of you who don't want to search eBay to find a bargain on Peter Rabe's classic Gold Medal novels. This double book has two fine novels inside, as you can see from the cover. Both are highly recommended, and I'm not just saying this because I had a hand in one of the introductory essays. The truth is that George Tuttle's essay is the one you want to read. It's full of great information on Rabe and worth the price of the book all by itself. The book's publication date is January, so save up a few bucks during the holidays and order it.

Rings

In this somewhat blurry photo are two cereal premiums from my lost youth. On the right is my Lone Ranger Silver Saddle ring. It has a gold saddle, so maybe I have the name wrong, but the ring itself is silver. On the left is one that, I'm ashamed to admit, I can't recall the name of. Part of the name is "signal ring," I'm almost sure. The curved part you can see at the bottom of the ring held a small battery, and you could use the ring (that's the original bulb) to send Morse code, or at least that was the theory. You might be able to make out the scales of justice on the left hand side of the ring. Maybe that's a clue. I think the ring might be connected to Captain Midnight, but I'm not at all sure. Any help?

Late-breaking news. I should've looked on eBay before posting. Here's the signal ring, which might not have been a premium after all. And here's the Lone Ranger Saddle Ring (no silver; I guess I was thinking of the great horse by that name). I don't have the filmstrip with mine.

Evan Hunter, Again

Is there anything Evan Hunter can't write? I first became acquainted with his work nearly 50 (!) years ago when I read his Winston SF juvenile, FIND THE FEATHERED SERPENT, which must have been written about the same time he was doing THE EVIL SLEEP! (Scroll down to see a post on that one.) I wasn't even aware that he'd written a western (or historical) until someone mentioned THE CHISHOLMS to me. It was first published in the latter 1970s, and I wonder if it might have been tied in with the TV series of that name. There's no mention of the TV series in this reprint edition I picked up, however. The book is about a family from Virginia that decides to move west. They leave at the wrong time of the year and so have to travel virtually alone rather than with a wagon train. They run into scamsters, Indians, bad weather, and plenty of other problems. The book's dark tone reminded me a little of Larry McMurtry's novels, and it's certainly just as well-written. I'm in awe of Evan Hunter's abilities.

Roy Barcroft 

Roy Barcroft

I haven't been able to get on Blogger all day. Maybe there were millions of people blogging about the election and clogging the pipeline. Not that I had anything important to say, anyway.

One thing I got along with the Dixie Cup lids was a few B-western trading cards. One of them pictures Roy Barcroft, who played the lead villain (or "brains heavy" as they say in the biz; for the "dog heavies" read L. J. Washburn's dandy novel) in hundreds of Republic westerns. Barcroft played the bad guy so often that the kids in my hometown would start booing and throwing popcorn at the screen the first time he showed up in any feature.

One of my friends thought my father looked like Barcroft, but I never saw the resemblance. Most people who thought my father looked like any movie star at all compared him to Roy Rogers. I was never too sure of that one, either.

Allan Rocky Lane 

Dixie Cup Lids

When I was in first grade, the school I attended was located only a couple of blocks from my house. But on the way, I passed two mom-and-pop stores that sold groceries, candy, and soft drinks. They also sold hamburgers to kids who didn't want to eat in the cafeteria. I usually just went home for lunch, but I loved to stop at one or the other of those stores after school and buy a little cup of ice cream that cost five cents, which also covered the cost of the little wooden spoon you got to eat the ice cream with. We called the ice cream "Dixie Cups" because, I suppose, the company that made the ice cream was named Dixie and because the ice cream came in cups. But nobody really cared about the ice cream, or at least I didn't. What I like was the photos of movie stars on the inside of the cup lids. I had a small but select stack of these that I'd collected, but somehow they disappeared over the years (I suspect that my mother tossed them along with my comic books). Recently I've picked up a few replacement lids on eBay. My favorites were always those of the B-western stars, like Allan "Rocky" Lane, Wild Bill Elliott, Charles (The Durango Kid) Starrett, and it's fun to have them again.

Bloggers Beware?

anniesj: a word to the wise

For all I know, this is a hoax, but any of you political types might want to read it just for fun.

I'd been looking for this book for many years. I'm not sure Falcon Books were very well distributed in Texas, since I've run across very few of them, and I'd probably never have found this one if it hadn't been for eBay. Sure, the book was reprinted by Fawcett Crest in a slightly revised version as SO NUDE, SO DEAD, but I wanted the Falcon. Now I have it, even if it isn't signed, like Richard Moore's copy. I've even read it. It's told from the point of view of a heroin addict who wakes up one morning with a beautiful dead blonde babe in his bed. Not exactly an original idea, except for the addict part. He has to fight his addiction while trying to find the killer. There's a lot of brutality in the book, mostly torture and beatings, and a lot of sex. Ray Stone might be an addict, but he's pretty much irresistible to women. There's some awkward writing. ("Ray," she hissed. "Now!") But the story moves right along, and there's even a mention of Hunter College, which may or may not have been the inspiration for Evan Hunter's last name. Not a great novel, and no fan of Mickey Spillane's will be surprised by the ending, but I'm still glad I finally got my hands on a copy.