Monthly Archives: May 2011

May132011

And Another One…

Again, from the Adventureblog Annex, a nifty pic of Han Solo killing time in Mos Eisley:

han-solo_western.jpgI love the feel of this, so much like much the opening credits of the old Wild, Wild West television series. I have no idea what’s happening in the background… looks like Chewie just set off a small tactical nuke. I don’t seem to recall that happening in any of the stories I know, but then I have been out of the Expanded Universe loop for a while.

The artist is a chap named Skottie Young, who apparently shares a blog with another gent named Scott Morse. Some interesting interpretations of many beloved characters over there. Give it a look, if you have time to kill this afternoon…

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May132011

Isn’t That Always the Way It Goes?

You’ve just managed to talk a girl out of her clothes when in barges her father, er, a giant, four-armed dude with the head of a gorilla, or maybe it’s a lion, or some damn thing, and he’s seriously pissed that his little girl is standing there nekkid in this bachelor pad of yours with the suggestive carvings on the walls, and you’ve got a pitcher of something that probably isn’t Hi-C sitting at your feet, and well, he’s just spoiling for a fight. If you’re like me, that’s going to seriously cramp your style. It’s such a drag, man.

john-carter-of-mars_reed-crandall.jpgOn a more serious note, I apologize for throwing up another lame image post instead of something worthwhile — well, as worthwhile as my drivel ever gets — but I just haven’t felt much inspiration to write this week. I guess I’m still picking through the emotional knots surrounding my uncle’s death, or maybe it’s just one of those periods when I don’t have a lot to say. In any event, I hope all you Loyal Readers out there are at least enjoying the cool pictures. There are so, so many of them to be had out there in the vastness of the InterWeb. This particular one is a book illustration of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immortal hero John Carter of Mars and (I presume) his mate, the lovely Dejah Thoris, being menaced by… well, some freaky thing or other. It’s been a long time since I read the Barsoom stories so I don’t really recognize who or what that’s supposed to be. The artist is a gentleman called Reed Crandall, who was a mainstay of the infamous publisher EC Comics (the one nervous Senators, prudes, and scolds feared was corrupting America’s youth with Tales of the Crypt back in the lily-white 1950s); you can see a gallery of Crandall’s Burroughs-related work here. It’s beautiful stuff, in my humble opinion. I especially like this one. But then, I was corrupted myself as a kid by rock-and-roll album covers and TV shows like Three’s Company.

In any event, credit where it’s due: I spotted this image over at Michael May’s Adventureblog Annex, which is one of those Tumblr thingies Michael set up so he could move this sort of thing off his regular Adventureblog. That’s a pretty good idea, really, a subset of a blog reserved just for trading cool pictures… Hmmmm.

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May112011

I’d Buy This Book

Nifty piece of artwork here by a cat named Phil Noto:

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There are, of course, quite a few Star Wars tie-in novels that focus on everyone’s favorite Corellian smuggler pilot, but none sport a cover done in the style of classic 1960s pulp paperbacks, and that really is a shame, you know? As a lover of that era’s commercial illustration aesthetic, I almost wish my favorite movie had been made 10 years earlier. Yeah, I would’ve missed seeing it in the theaters and all, but just think of all the cool book covers that would’ve come out!

No? Okay, fine, I’ll just enjoy the post-modern retro-fantasy stuff then…

Incidentally, this came to my attention via Boing Boing. Naturally.

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May062011

Friday Evening Videos: “Roll Me Away”

It’s been a solemn week around the old Bennion Compound. My uncle Layne, my mom’s brother, died early Monday morning following a lengthy hospital stay. I intend to write more about him when I get the chance, but for now, I’d like to offer what I think — what I hope — is an appropriate musical tribute.

I have to confess, I really didn’t know Layne very well. He led a wild, troubled life that wasn’t very conducive to close family ties. But I know he liked motorcycles — in his younger days, he actually rode with a notorious Utah biker gang called the Sundowners — and I also know he liked classic rock music. In fact, one of my strongest memories of him is the huge record collection he used to own, several hundred vinyl LPs spanning an incredible range of artists and styles. (I’ve written before about this collection, about how fascinating, titillating, and sometimes downright scary the album covers were to my sheltered young self.) I seem to recall that there were a number of Bob Seger records in that collection, scattered in among the southern rock and heavy metal, but if I’m somehow misremembering that, there should have been. Seger’s music, with its often melancholy tales of blue-collar guys just trying to figure out how to make it in a cold, thankless world, would have made a fitting soundtrack for my ne’er-do-well uncle’s life. Or so I imagine, anyway.

One of my favorite Seger tunes, “Roll Me Away,” seems particularly fitting. Its themes of restlessness and searching for some kind of redemption out there on the open road struck a chord with me years ago. And I suspect it might have done the same for my uncle Layne, if perhaps for different reasons. Regardless, I’d like to post it in his honor. I couldn’t find an official video for it — videos aren’t really Bob Seger’s thing, it appears — but I thought this fan-made clip was pretty good, and in any event, it’s really the song itself that matters here.

Wherever you are now, Layne, I hope you’re rolling along with warm wind in your hair and miles of open road stretching out in front of you. Keep riding, keep searching, and maybe, as the song says, next time we’ll all get it right…

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May042011

Midnight in the Arrivals Terminal

Friday afternoon, I got a phone call from the wife of my old friend Keith — now living on the east coast — who had to fly into Salt Lake on very short notice to attend to some important family business. She wondered if he could impose on me to pick him up from the airport? Sure, I said, no problem. She apologized that it was so last-minute, and that Keith’s plane was arriving so late. Again, I said, no problem… I tend to be a night owl anyway, and I actually like going to the airport. It lets me people watch and fantasize about going somewhere myself.

Well, his plane got delayed — he texted me from Chicago, with another apology, to which I replied with another “no problem” — so by the time he finally arrived in SLC, it was very late indeed. Just in case you’ve never been in an airport past 10 PM, let me tell you… things get kinda weird. People tend to let their hair down a bit more than they might when broad daylight is streaming through the skylights above.

Continue Reading…

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May032011

100 Things I Love About the Movies

I noticed this semi-meme list thingie over at Michael May’s Adventure Blog the other day and thought it looked like something I ought to do. There are no rules, really; it’s just an exercise in free association that asks you to name 100 things you love about movies. I interpreted that as things that made me fall in love with movies, or that rekindle my love for them when I see them again. Anyhow, it’s a list of movie-related stuff I like… how could I resist that?

Continue Reading…

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May022011

And in Other News…

NASA says it will be at least May 10 before they make another attempt to launch Endeavour. The engineers have decided to replace something called a Load Control Assembly (LCA), which I understand is similar to  a circuit-breaker box. The faulty LCA is believed to have been causing the problem with the heaters on the Auxiliary Power Unit, which led to the scrubbing of last week’s launch attempt, and it will take some time to swap it out and retest everything it connects to.

It’s funny… even knowing that this will be Endeavour‘s last flight, I’m still as impatient with these delays as I was when I was a kid. Once those birds get out to the launch pad, I want to see them fly… irrational, isn’t it? Considering that a successful launch only means we’re that much closer to the end of the shuttles forever. But I’ve never claimed to be rational when it comes to things like this.

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May022011

One More Thought on the Bin Laden Mission

It would’ve been nice, I think, if the previous administration had given more weight to the “intelligence, patience, and commandos” approach that was used yesterday to such great success, rather than going directly to “Hulk SMASH!!!!” mode and bankrupting us with full-scale wars in two separate countries. I’m just sayin’. 

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May022011

Bin Laden

So the son of a bitch is dead. Good. Now can we get the hell out of Afghanistan and stop having to take our shoes off at the airport? I know the answer to both questions is “probably not,” which for me beggars a third one: what practical good did bin Laden’s death accomplish?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m as thrilled as anyone that this particular “i” has finally been dotted. It’s been a long time coming. But after all the cheering dies down, what, if anything, has actually changed? Al Qaeda is still out there, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them stage a bunch of retaliatory attacks, possibly even here on American soil; we’re still hemorrhaging resources into a country that’s known as a historical breaker of empires (and our empire is so very close to being broken, isn’t it?); we’re still running the anti-American gulag at Guantanamo (yes, I’ve heard some of the intelligence that got bin Laden came from Gitmo; doesn’t change the fact that the place’s very existence runs counter to all the American values I learned as a kid from Star Trek and Schoolhouse Rock); the PATRIOT Act is still in effect, making a mockery of our Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted search and seizure; the TSA is still getting its jollies without even buying us dinner first; people still need jobs; the ice caps are still melting; we’re still running out of oil; Hollywood is still creatively bankrupt (although there’s sure to be a movie or three about today’s big story); and the Republicans are still trying to dismantle 75 years of social progress. In short, the 21st Century continues to suck. Hard.

On the other hand, bringing down the monster who is directly responsible for steering our nation into the Bizarro-world dimension we’ve inhabited for the past 10 years has had an undeniably positive effect on the country’s psyche. I noticed on my way into work this morning that a lot of people are walking with a renewed spring in their step, and the prevailing mood seems to be, if not actually happy, than incrementally less miserable than it’s been in a very long time. I find myself thinking of Doolittle’s Tokyo raid that accomplished very little tactically speaking, but was a huge morale booster in the dark months after Pearl Harbor. Bin Laden’s execution is perhaps the same sort of event… it didn’t really change a damn thing, as I’ve noted, but everybody’s feeling better because of it. And I must confess, that includes myself.

Of course, it could just be that the days are finally starting to warm up, and the tulips in the downtown sidewalk planter boxes are looking lovely… that always makes me feel a little happier…

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