Monthly Archives: January 2007

Jan232007

Food for Thought

Science fiction author Steven Brust has come up with an analogy to categorize different types of reading matter according to their “nutritional” value:

Books can be broken down into four classes: popcorn, steak, caviar, and celery.

 

Popcorn is pretty obvious. Anyone here enjoy The Destroyer novels by Sapir and Murphy as much as me? gobble gobble gobble Steak is the stuff you can bite into, chew, swallow, and gain sustenance from. …

 

[Caviar] is a lot of work to get to. You have to open the can, you have to make sure the refrigeration is exactly perfect. You have to have the right atmosphere, and you have to approach it with the proper reverence if you’re going to get anything out of the experience. But if you do, my god, is it worth it!

 

Celery is that stuff you have to chew and chew and chew and, by the time you’re done, you’ve gotten even less nutritional value from than the popcorn. I won’t name any names.

What’s interesting to me about these categories is that they are, to a certain extent, subjective. I think everybody can agree that certain books are “popcorn” — Dirk Pitt novels, for instance — but it seems that one person’s caviar is another’s celery, i.e., the ratio of reward versus effort expended would vary widely depending on one’s education, interests, and tastes. For example, there are folks out there who happily read high-brow postmodernist lit (Thomas Pynchon, anyone?) and find it both entertaining and nourishing, while I myself think it’s a tedious slog from which I take little of value. By contrast, many of Stephen King’s novels qualify as “steak” for me — the Dark Tower novels, in particular, have a lot going for them that some folks might not notice because of the genre elements — but many people dismiss his work as popcorn reading (or worse).

I don’t have much else to say on this subject, I just thought it was an interesting little thought exercise for the day…

(My thanks to SF Signal for the referral.)

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Jan222007

Melvin and Howard

I’ve mentioned before that I’m fascinated by the life of Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator, movie producer, Lothario, and eventual recluse and nutcase. There are many chapters in Howard’s life story that are worth considering, but one of the most interesting to me personally is the epilogue that comes after his death, the tale of Melvin Dummar and the so-called “Mormon Will.”

Continue Reading…

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Jan202007

Score One for Preservation

[Ed. note: this topic is well past its prime — which was way back around the second week of December, if you’re keeping track — but it’s something I still wanted to talk about, so here we are…]

I write fairly often on this blog about the changing face of the Salt Lake Valley, how places and landmarks I’ve known all my life are disappearing, and how difficult it is for me to see them go. I’m not sure why this so-called “progress” affects me so deeply, but it does. Watching yet another familiar old house or historic commercial building fall, or an alfalfa field get paved over to make way for yet another WalMart-Home-Depot-Chili’s-cell-phone-store cluster, fills me with a genuine sense of despair. And it makes me downright angry that the local Utah culture, collectively speaking, pays so much lip service to its heritage by throwing a parade and fireworks every July 24th, but seems so disinterested in preserving any of the tangible aspects of its past, namely the buildings and landscapes of earlier times.

Continue Reading…

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Jan182007

We Only Have 14 Hours to Save the Earth

According to a brief article referenced over at SF Signal, the SciFi Channel is planning a new Flash Gordon series. A full 22-episode run (that’s a complete season for a weekly series these days) has already been greenlighted.

Although I’m normally opposed to remakes on principle, I find that I’m okay with this one. That’s probably because I grew up enjoying multiple (and radically different) versions of the Flash Gordon story, including the campy 1980 feature film that most readers of this blog probably know, the 1930s-vintage serials starring Buster Crabbe, and the comic books published by Gold Key in the late ’70s. Like Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes, Flash seems to endure in part because he gets dusted off and updated for a new audience every 20 or 30 years. So long as the basic premise of his adventures on the planet Mongo and struggles against the evil Ming the Merciless remain intact, I’m willing to give the latest version a try.

My biggest concern is that SciFi’s original productions generally look pretty cheap, and the involvement of Robert Halmi Sr. and his son suggests that this one will, too. Which is a shame. Personally, I’d love to see a Flash Gordon series that’s visually faithful to the original comic strips drawn by Alex Raymond, possibly even beginning as a 1930s period piece before the action shifts to Mongo, but I imagine that such a series would cost more than SciFi wants to spend. We’ll see, I guess. As I said, I’m willing to try it.

Incidentally, if you’ve never seen those original Raymond strips, the Checker Book Publishing Group has recently reprinted them in a series of nicely done hardcovers. I suggest you buy them from this guy, who has always provided me with fast delivery and excellent customer service.

And if you don’t get the title of this entry, you obviously don’t remember the best line of the 1980 Flash movie…

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Jan172007

It’s Really Damn Cold, Too

As if getting ripped off the other night wasn’t reason enough to be in a bad mood this week, the temperatures around here have plunged right through the floor into the god-forsaken darkness below. It’s cold. I mean, really cold. Bone-chilling, record-breaking, taun-taun-killing, frakking cold. It’s Minnesota cold. And that just ain’t right.

Believe it or not, Salt Lake is usually quite comfortable in the wintertime. Nighttime temps for this time of year are supposed to be in the low 30s, sometimes in the upper 20s. Chilly, but tolerable, so long as you have a decent coat. For the last couple of weeks, however, the highs have been in the teens and low 20s, and once the sun goes down, the mercury drops into the single digits. This is the kind of weather in which people die if they get stuck outside overnight. I spent a few minutes in the driveway last night talking to my dad, and my exposed face ended up feeling sunburned.

I’m not usually one to complain about the weather, but this is just miserable. I find myself watching the evening re-runs of Magnum, PI and Hawaii Five-0 a bit more wistfully these days…

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Jan172007

People Suck

So, I’m mentioned yesterday that things haven’t been going so well lately. Here’s the reason:

On Sunday night, my car got burglarized as it sat in the parking lot at The Girlfriend’s apartment complex.

It was my own damn fault, because I carelessly left my doors unlocked. Some opportunistic bastard just happened by, saw a victim ready for the exploiting, and took whatever they could find. I’m willing to bet they were in an out of the car in less than 30 seconds.

On the positive side, the car was completely undamaged — at least the thief didn’t break out a window or slash my convertible top to get in — and the total value of the items taken wasn’t much, probably less than $100. But it’s an awful feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize that something’s not right as you’re settling into the driver’s seat. When you start thinking, Hey, I didn’t leave my center console box open like that, did I?, and then the knowledge comes in a cold, stilleto-thin flash that, no, you did not leave the console open. It is a cliche to talk about feeling violated in these circumstances, but damn if that isn’t the first word that leaps to mind. Knowing that there was some… stranger… sitting in my Mustang, sitting in my driver’s seat, rumaging through my stuff… it’s frightening and infuriating and ultimately quite emasculating because there’s not a damn thing you can do about it after the fact. And, in my particular case, it’s also humiliating, because, as I mentioned already, I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Obviously the scumbag who took my stuff had a choice about whether or not to open the door, open the console and glove compartment, and grab someone else’s things. Some of the blame surely belongs with him. (I’m assuming it was a him, and probably a young him at that — I imagine someone in baggy pants, puffy white athletic shoes, and an oversized sweatshirt with the hood up, possibly also wearing a cap with the bill turned sideways — although these days you really can’t tell. It could’ve been a her, or a middle-aged yuppie in conservative clothes. Who knows? But the stereotypes are alive and well around The Girlfriend’s apartment, and apparently in my own mind as well.) Even so, it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been more conscientious about clicking the little remote-control fob on my keychain.

For the record, the items taken comprised two CDs (actually two CD cases, only one of which contained an actual compact disc; take that, you little bastard!), a Mini MagLite flashlight I was rather attached to (it went to Germany and back with me a few years ago), and a zippered portfolio containing the car’s registration and owner’s manual (I suspect the thief grabbed the portfolio because it resembles a CD case). I’ve already bought a new MagLite, ordered a replacement owner’s manual, and obtained a duplicate of the registration, as well as having the car alarm’s sensitivity tweaked by the installer (not that it will do any good if it’s not armed, of course). I still need to pay the my local library for those CDs, which were both loaners, but basically I guess the whole thing is over and done with. However, running all those errands cost me the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday (which I’d planned to spend on creative, non-blog-oriented writing), and I’ve been feeling like an utter bonehead for several days now. Not to mention finding myself considerably more sour towards my fellow man. At the risk of sounding like my father, you used to be able to trust people in these parts.

Just file this one under World, subheading Bucket, Going to Hell in a.

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Jan172007

Life Was So Much Simpler in ’82

I know, I know, this makes three video entries in a row. What can I say? I keep finding stuff that amuses me. Just play the clip…

Ah, Defender… I wasted many hours of my life on that one…

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Jan162007

Feed Your Head

I’ve had a really crappy couple of days, the details of which I intend to blog about shortly. In the meantime, here’s the one thing today that’s managed to bring much of a smile to my face, a mash-up of classic Star Trek footage with Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”:

If nothing else, this reminded me of how much more expressive acting styles were in the ’60s compared to now, how creative and striking the camera work and lighting was on the original Trek, and, most of all, how much drinking and drug usage there was on the old show. Feed your head indeed…

(Hat tip to Chris Roberson…)

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Jan122007

Old-Timey Yub-Nub

Just when I think I’ve seen every Star Wars-inspired bit of lunacy there is out there in the vast, vast Internet, I run across a barbershop quartet singing the Ewok celebration song from Return of the Jedi…

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Jan112007

The End of Standards and Practices?

Man, I must be getting old, because I was genuinely shocked — shocked, I say! — during tonight’s episode of ER to hear one of our hunky, idealistic young doctors called somebody an asshole. I remember when Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H called someone a bastard — which is, to my mind, a far less vulgar and offensive term — and it made headlines. I find myself wondering which expletives still remain on the verboten list for broadcast TV, and how long will it be before that list ceases to exist altogether? And is this a good thing?

I used to think it was cool that TV standards were loosening and that characters were starting to speak more like real people. But now I think this new-found realism comes with a price. You see, these words used to have real power when I was younger, and part of their power was that you only heard them in the movies. You only heard grown-ups use them, and often only under very specific circumstances. Today… well, today profanity just doesn’t accomplish much. For example, a certain four-letter word that starts with “f” has become as common in casual conversation as “you know” and “um,” and it’s just as meaningless. And that bothers me. Not because I’m a prude, but because the word has been drained of its effectiveness. It used to be the ne plus ultra of cussing, the atom bomb of expletives, the one you reserved for extra-special occasions when nothing else was strong enough to make your point. What are we supposed to say now when we’ve just dropped a sledge hammer on our foot?

I’m telling you, the world has gone to hell. And those kids today… I swear.

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