So the terrorists are coming, eh? That’s what the Department of Homeland Security is saying today. Intelligence chatter indicates something big is scheduled for later this summer, maybe involving chemical or bio-weapons. Isn’t that just swell?
Man, I hate how these things always seem to happen in cycles — you go for a while without hearing about anyone dying, then all of a sudden one day, familiar faces from our extended TV-and-movie family are dropping all around us. Today I read that actor Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin on the TV series Babylon 5, died suddenly over the weekend. If you’re a fan of that show or of Mr. Biggs, you can read more about his passing here. I have to admit that I was only an occasional viewer of B5; I just never seemed to find the time for that one. But from what I saw of him, Franklin was a good character, a flawed man with an essential core of decency, and Biggs did a consummate job of bringing him to life. He was only 44 years old, just ten years older than myself. A damn shame.
If anyone out there is wondering what I thought of the President’s speech last night about the present and future of Iraq, I have to be honest: I didn’t watch it. I don’t know what he said and I have no opinion about it at the moment. I spent the evening stuffing myself with Italian food in honor of my friend Amber’s birthday, and, aside from a little good-natured ribbing of the one and only fan of GeeDub who was present at our table, politics was the farthest thing from my mind. This morning, however, I have heard that Bush called for the demolition of the Abu Ghraib prison and the construction of a new facility, untainted by the memory of either Saddam’s atrocities or our own. That’s absolutely the correct move to make, symbolically speaking. It’s just too bad that it’s being done now instead of a year ago when the symbol would have been seen as a proactive gesture instead of damage control. Now it’s nothing more than a classic case of closing the barn door after the cow has escaped.
For those who may be keeping a list, another of my random interests is architecture. I’ve never taken any classes in the subject and don’t have the vocabulary to articulate many of my ideas about it, but I nevertheless have some strong opinions. I tend to approach the subject like I approach art — I may not know who painted something or why it’s considered important by the initiated, but I can tell you whether or not I like it, and whether or not I’d want it hanging in my home. And I have to say that, for the most part, I don’t like what passes for public architecture these days. (I’m not too keen on modern domestic architecture either, but today I’m talking about a public building.)
I’m sitting here watching the nightly news and my stream-of-consciousness is more active than usual, so I’m going to blog some of this stuff. I can’t guarantee that this will make a lot of sense, so consider yourself warned…
I’m about to reveal levels of geekery that few people know I possess — once upon a time, I was a fan of Dr. Who, the longest running science-fiction television series of all time. If you’ve never seen Who, I won’t be able to explain its appeal. And if you have seen it… well, I probably still won’t be able to explain its appeal. Made in England on a budget of about $1.98 per hour of screentime, the show is largely an exercise in cheese — cardboard sets, silly storylines, dialogue consisting mainly of doubletalk and nonsense, and really, really primitive visual effects. I’m talking an extra-grande Pizza Hut CheeseLover’s Stuft Crust job here. However, there are times when it feels really good to eat one of those artery-clogging babies, and Dr. Who is much the same. If viewed with the proper mind set, it’s really a fun show.
[Ed. note: Yesterday I was gushing enthusiastically about the futuristic concept of human spaceflight. Today I’m going to wax nostalgic about ancient airplanes. Hey, it’s these little contradictions and paradoxes that make people interesting, right?]
Among my assorted interests, enthusiasms and oddities is a love of old propeller-driven airplanes, especially the “warbirds,” the combat aircraft of World War II. People who are familiar at all with that term usually think of the fighter planes of the era, but in my usual non-conformist fashion, I prefer the bombers.
In addition to the rocket launch I mentioned in the last post, there is also sad news on the ‘net today. One of the faces I grew up with, the terrific Tony Randall, has passed away. Randall is best known for playing neat-freak Felix Unger on the TV version of The Odd Couple, and it’s mostly from this show that I know him. I fondly remember watching TOC with my folks. Randall inhabited the role so successfully that when I saw the original Odd Couple film in later years, I had a hard time accepting Jack Lemmon in the role. I recently saw a few re-runs of TOC and was disapppointed to find that they don’t play as well now as I remember them — this is always a problem with seeing something that you loved as a kid, and if you don’t believe me, just try sitting through an episode of Gilligan’s Island these days — but Randall was still funny.
It is an exciting time for space enthusiasts. Last week’s flight of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne caught my attention and started me thinking about the possibility of civilians doing what NASA has been unable to do, namely establish a significant human presence beyond the boundaries of our home planet. Today I see that Rutan isn’t alone in this venture. According to the BBC, an unmanned, amateur-built rocket has successfully reached an altitude of 100 kilometers (a little over 62 miles high), becoming the first amateur rocket to enter space.
Yesterday Anne and I wanted to break our usual weekend routine so we took a field trip to the Springville Museum of Art. It’s a place we’ve known about for some time and have often threatened to check out, but we never managed to make it down there until yesterday. If you live in the Salt Lake or Provo area and are interested in visual arts, I highly recommend this little-known treasure.