It’s been a while since I found a good meme, so naturally when I spotted one over at Byzantium’s Shores, I had to gank it for myself. It’s a fairly unique one, too, with no odd-ball questions about my underwear or most embarrassing childhood secret or whatever. Nope, this one is all about my epicurean habits. That is, it’s about what I like to eat…
Read on, loyal readers, and find out all kinds of useless trivia about my narcissistic self!
A good way to make fun of someone who loves the new, super-serious remake of Battlestar Galactica: tell them the show inherently makes no logical sense to you without Muffit, the robot dog. Sci-fi fans are so pissy and serious these days they become infuriated at the mention of anything cute.
Next time I’m called upon to defend my love of the old Battlestar and my utter indifference to the new one (which seems to happen fairly often, sadly enough), I’m going to give this strategy a try. If nothing else, it should be fun to watch those smug Neo-G fans splutter incoherently for a little while…
(Incidentally, if you decide to backtrack to the source of that quote, be warned that SamuraiFrog can get a little… off-color… at times. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Following up on that item from last week about the half-size X-Wing built by some model-rocket enthusiasts, here’s some video of its spectacular (if short) flight:
Looks a lot like what happened to poor old Porkins…
(Porkins: “I’ve got a problem here.”
Biggs: “Eject!”
Porkins: “I can hold it.”
Biggs: “Pull up!”
Porkins: “No, I’m alrigh—yeaaaaaargggg!”)
Update: Here’s another clip from a different angle. Looks like it launched with the S-foils in attack position (i.e., the wings open in the X-shape), something I wasn’t clear on from earlier information. Wonder if that made any difference with the tumble?
An exchange between myself and The Girlfriend at my house Saturday night:
Me: Want something to drink?
The GF: What’ve you got?
Me: The usual… Coke Zero, Caffeine-free Diet Coke, Sprite, water, milk…
(beat)
Me: I don’t know if the milk is still good, though. It’s been in there for a while. The cat seems okay with it.
The GF: The cat licks his own balls.
You can’t argue with logic like that. Anne had a Caffeine-free Diet Coke.
So, I’m just plugging away at today’s stack o’ work in the New Proofreaders’ Cave as a cold front sweeps into the valley and paints the sky the color of lead. I’m listening to ye olde iTunes, a little of my man Rick, and I thought I’d share the one I coming back to:
I look around me and I see what I wanted and what I settled for
Yeah, I’ve got the heart of a Joan of Arc but the soul of a gigolo.
I’ve been good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Anytime I stopped to smell the roses they drew blood from me.
Do you know what I mean?
You never ever get away clean. But it’s alright,
Yeah, touchdown, turn around, flag on the play.
It’s always something, you know it is, it’s always something,
It’s always something, everyday, it’s always something.
When I was a kid the teachers and the priests said,
“Why do you let him run around like that?”
My father said, “If the boy wants to play guitar, I say we let him.”
Through the hard years he was my rock
when I just could not win.
So it goes y’know my father died
just before my leaky ship came in.
Do you know what I mean?
You never ever get away clean. Oh, but it’s alright yeah.
Down one, homerun, your dog steals the ball.
I step up to the table in the middle of my life
and I take my cards and I check them twice.
I’ve got a killer hand and I’m ready to stake my claim,
the cops raid the game.
…it’s always something
That’s a great song, “It’s Always Something” (sometimes rendered as “itsalwayssomething”), from the 1999 album Karma. It’s heavily autobiographical, and not nearly as melancholy as the lyrics alone probably make it sound. The image it conjures in my mind is of a middle-aged guy who’s been seriously knocked around by the universe but is still standing and somehow managing to soldier on. Which is what Rick Springfield is, and I guess it’s what I am, too, at the moment. It certainly seems to fit my mood this afternoon.
My day job has been slightly less overwhelming recently, but I’m still feeling pretty frazzled, and like I’m not accomplishing much outside of keeping the bills paid. Not much of any substance anyhow, as my recent blog entries no doubt demonstrate. There are so few hours in the day, and so many projects both at the office and at home that need my attention, and my attention span seems to be down to about a tenth of a second these days.
None of which anyone cares about, probably. Welcome to the grown-up world, Bennion. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a great song, anyhow. Give it a download, or whatever you kids do these days.
My dad isn’t a particularly well-educated man, but I think he is, in his own way, something of a genius. Over the years, I’ve seen him modify ordinary tools to fit difficult jobs, rather than spending the money on a specialized gadget; improvise repairs to things that everyone else would say are impossible to fix; and, most impressively, build wild flights of fancy for no other reason than he thinks they will be cool and make people smile. There was, for example, the year he transformed my ’63 Galaxie into a reasonably good replica of the RMS Titanic, complete with Ken-and-Barbie versions of Jack and Rose out on the bow, for a Halloween party.
Then there are the ideas he’s had but for one reason or another never brought to fruition. He was always going to cobble together a Headless Horseman outfit and ride Thunder, our old gray nag, through the subdivisions just to see what the trick-or-treaters would do. And when I was a young fanboy, he often thought about making a float with a life-size X-Wing on it for our small-town Fourth-of-July parade. (The idea was that I’d be dressed as Luke Skywalker, riding the float alongside my “ship.”)
I was reminded of Dad’s unfulfilled X-Wing scheme this afternoon when I ran across this:
That’s a 21-foot-long (half-scale?) X-Wing built by a group of model-rocket enthusiasts; they intend to launch it next week, with four solid-fuel rocket motors mounted right where the engine pods would go on a “real” Incom T-65. And here’s the wild thing: the wings are motorized. If all goes well, the ship will “lock its S-foils in attack position” as it ascends. Or maybe the ship will start off with the wings in X-configuration and fold them closed during the flight — the two websites I’ve seen contradict each other on that. Either way, there’s a good chance the whole thing will come apart, but I hope it doesn’t. And I also hope the video of its flight makes it to the web; my three loyal readers know I’ll be posting it if it does!
Read an overview and see lots more pictures here, or go here for an obsessively detailed construction log.
Via Wil Wheaton, the very cool news that George Takei, a.k.a. Sulu in Classic Star Trek, has had an asteroid named in his honor:
An asteroid between Mars and Jupiter has been renamed 7307 Takei in honor of the actor, best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” series and movies.
The celestial rock, discovered by two Japanese astronomers in 1994, was formerly known as 1994 GT9. It joins the 4659 Roddenberry (named for the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry) and the 68410 Nichols (for co-star Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura). Other main-belt asteroids have been named for science fiction luminaries Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.
I’ve had the honor of meeting Mr. Takei on two occasions. The first time was at one of those “meet ‘n’ greet”-style conventions I’ve written about before, those impersonal things where you pay an outrageous admission fee for the privilege of standing in line for an hour or three so you can experience 20 seconds of face-time with your celebrity hero, snap a personal photo (if you’re lucky, anyway; some stars — Shatner, for example — don’t allow those), and walk out with an autographed 8×10 glossy.
The second occasion was much more interesting and satisfying. It was intended to be a big meet ‘n’ greet with a lengthy roster of genre talent, but it wasn’t very well organized or advertised and, well, nobody showed up. To be honest, I wouldn’t have gone myself if a friend of mine who knew the promoter hadn’t gotten me some freebie tickets. My buddy seemed so pleased with himself for doing me this huge favor that I simply couldn’t find a reason not to at least check it out.
At first glance, it was one of the most depressing events I’ve ever attended.
Here’s a sad note on which to begin the week: Lois Maxwell, the elegant lady who bantered with three iterations of James Bond over a period of 22 years and 14 films, died over the weekend. She was 80. The LA Times obit is here.
Maxwell, who played the ever-hopeful Miss Moneypenny alongside Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore, was replaced by a younger actress for Timothy Dalton’s first outing as 007 in The Living Daylights. Maxwell was 58 at the time, and I, for one, have always seen the change as something of an injustice. After all, Desmond Llewelyn played Q until he was quite elderly. Surely it wouldn’t have been too far-fetched for M to have an older executive secretary for a few more installments in the series? Rather than recast her with someone younger, wouldn’t it have been more interesting to change how Moneypenny relates to Bond as Maxwell aged, to make her more of a mothering presence than an object of flirtation? (Or, for that matter, why not be really daring and do both?) Sadly, the producers of the Bond series have rarely shown any true daring in the 40-plus-year history of the franchise, mostly preferring to stick to rote formula.
Nevertheless, I think it’s telling that Maxwell’s face is the one that immediately comes to mind when you hear the name “Moneypenny.” No doubt that can be attributed, in part, to the fact that she played the character for so long and in so many entries in the series. By contrast, her two successors, Caroline Bliss and Samantha Bond (ironic name, eh?), have played Penny in only two and four films, respectively. But I think you can also argue that Maxwell stands out because of a something you don’t see much anymore, an old-fashioned strain of genuine class. No disrespect to Bliss or Bond, but Maxwell simply had that civilized, grown-up, cocktails-and-jazz sort of quality that defined the movie stars of the early Cold War era. You just knew that if Moneypenny smoked (I can’t recall if she did so in any of her Bond movies, but I could be wrong), she would keep her cigarettes in an enameled wooden box and light them with a crystal desk lighter. No crumpled paper packs or disposable Bics pulled from the bottom of a cluttered purse for her. And if you could manage to seduce her, the sex would be anything but casual, even if there were no strings attached.
Maybe Maxwell’s interpretation of Moneypenny is passe now — Bond himself has been reinvented for the 21st Century, and he doesn’t bear a lot of resemblance to the character JFK was reputed to have enjoyed — but her version will always be, for me, the definitive and classic one, just as Connery remains, in my mind, the one true 007. Even if Daniel Craig was damn good…
