Check Out The Illuminoids!

The surf-guitar band The Illuminoids is a bunch of great guys.

The Illuminoids play a broad spectrum of melodic surf guitar instrumentals.  I contacted one of their members regarding permission to use one of their tracks and they've been more than kind.

I even got asked to do the graphics for their new release!  Yep, that's my "graphic design":

 

You can buy this single from their website for $7, including shipping.  It's a great deal.

Their other full-length releases are great examples of the surf-rock genre that are flavored with eclecticism and a sense of humor.  Please support them by checking their music out.  Then buy it! 

See you Monday.
 

He's Been a Model Citizen

I didn't have this one, the instructions came from good friend Ed Porter.

Take a god look at this setting.  What better illustration for TREK's description as "Wagon Train in space"?  Here we have the lead drover drawing a bead with his trusty six-shooter on that pesky rattlesnake that reared up and scared the calves.

 

And here we have a Romulan Bird of Prey.  And you thought these things were Klingon!  Nope, my theory is that when somebody typed "Bird of Prey" in an early draft of the STAR TREK III script and then filled it with Klingons, the typer had forgotten that the designation "Bird of Prey" applied to ships from the Romulan Empire.

 

So now we had various TREK apologists having to concoct a theoretical Klingon-Romulan alliance to explain the use of the term "Bird of Prey" in regards to a Klingon not Romulan ship.  Sheesh!

Book Review -- Hit List by Richard Belzer & David Wayne

READ  THIS  BOOK

for some truths

 

 

Great Summation of Research -- Improved Easy-to-Follow Format

 

This book is a follow-up and intensification of the topics from the authors’ 2012 Dead Wrong.  Whereas that book’s usefulness and readability was hampered by tables, sidelights, and charts that interfered with the nonfiction narrative and actually made the book harder to figure out, this volume is a model of conjectural word-flow.

 

The book is a brief examination of the deaths of fifty people who were witness either to the JFK assassination or to parts of its surrounding events and cover-up.  Some deaths are open homicides, some are accidents whose timing seems odd, and some are supposed suicides that are a little hard to believe (a guy wrapped himself with fishing weights and jumped from a boat, shooting himself in the head in midair before hitting the water?).

 

The point is, the idea of so many people with knowledge about the JFK hit and its aftermath all dying (most by questionable causes) is mathematically and actuarially unlikely.  Of course, everybody dies!  But these folks meeting the Grim Reaper in such a high percentage when compared to any other Joe Schmoe is highly suspicious.  Many died just before being compelled to give testimony to congress or in other legal proceedings.

 

The deaths whose timings kick up as suspicious but who still seem coincidental to the JFK assassination are listed that way.  Not all of these fifty deaths appear related to the crime or cover-up, but their timing kicked them onto the list of possibles.

 

Possible WHATs, you ask.  Say it:  Many people appear to have been killed because they knew that JFK’s death was not a lone-nut crime.  There were US intelligence elements, and organized crime elements, and individuals related to the sub rosa struggle against Cuba’s government.  While I don’t go so far as to agree that LBJ was a willing foreplanner, he certainly knew some folks with their fingers in this horrific pie.

 

Let me cite the few mistakes and quibbles I have with the book.

 

Page xiii, the first page of text, opens the book with a heading quotation from Jim Marrs’ 1989 book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy.  Then the authors write, “Thus began the promotion of the 1973 film Executive Action ….”  No, the producers of a 1973 film DID NOT quote a book from 1989 that was still at least 15 years into the future.

 

On pages 155 and 157, the authors misspell the name of one of the FBI agents present at the JFK autopsy.  The agent’s last name is given as O’Neal, when the correct spelling is O’Neill.

 

Twice in the bottom paragraph on page 224, the word “rogue” (as in a rogue or runaway agent) is misspelled “rouge” -- quite a different meaning!

 

On page 247, we are told about the way to short-circuit the JFK administration’s pressure on organized crime would be to not attack Attorney General Robert Kennedy, but his boss and brother, JFK.  The authors meant to say that removing President Kennedy from power would “defuse” Bobby’s efforts.  However, they use the word “diffuse,”  which means to thin out or dissipate.  Both words could be technically accurate, but I bet they wanted to de-fuse the powder keg that was Bobby Kennedy, not “spread him over a large area.”

 

On page 317, after a handy chart-type listing of all the deaths covered in-depth in the earlier chapter, there are several mentions of how you could add this or that person to “the list” or “the original list.”  But the names given are already on the list just given over the previous pages.  It’s unclear which list -- this book’s list or a list from somebody else -- is referred to.

 

Pages 319-320 ends the book with another table of people who were covered in previous pages.  Why give their names again when they were just talked about in earlier pages?

 

As you can see, these are minor quibbles and easily remedied in a later printing.  This book is a solid entry to stack up against the silly people who set aside or try to explain away the many recorded occurrences that make the simple Oswald-did-it storyline impossible.

 

If that “lone nut” killed the President and was bumped off by an over-reacting Kennedy family sympathizer (Jack Ruby), why would this cause the switching out of the rifle originally found for the one history now accepts as “the murder weapon”?  Why is there evidence of somebody pretending to be Oswald running around Dallas at gun ranges and taking test-drives (Oswald couldn’t drive)?  Why was evidence messed up and switched? 

 

If it was only a crazy guy with a rifle, how could that “truth” have caused the government’s own photographs of the autopsy to NOT MATCH UP with the government’s own x-rays supposedly taken at the same time, of the same head with the same wounds?

 

And on and on we could go.  But we are faced with the apparent fact that fifty years ago our government was changed by taking the choice away from the American people (they voted, you know) and letting that choice be made by various people who didn’t like the guy who was in charge.  It may not have been a simple process of (like in STAR TREK’s Mirror Universe) “kill the captain and we all move up in rank,” but it was wrong and it was a denial of every democratic and republican (lowercase letters) principle that our country has tried to live by.

 

You can trace nearly the entire soured-mistrust-of-government of the past five decades to this open wound of history, whose first cut was the murder of the president.

 

This is a valuable book, and it’s put together well.  It synthesizes years and generations of findings to make the point that things shouldn’t have happened the way they did.  Not without help from some bad men.  The fact that some of these bad men tried to justify their murders by justifying them with spy babble or face-saving rhetoric only makes their personal foulness and depravity stink all the more.

 

People who had not been given the right -- they decided to change the government of our country.  How dare they! 

 

Amos 5:24:  “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”  Read this book and find your righteous anger fueled.



Welcome to the Fortress of Markitude! #2

NOTE:  all of these pictures were taken a few years ago when the place was less cluttered.  All text is in the present tense anyway.

 

This view is the first thing you see if you are brave enough to stick your head in.

 

The grey file cabinet contains issues of magazines like Scary Monsters, Famous Monsters of Filmland, MAD, Enterprise Incidents, UFO Universe, and the like.  STARLOG issues are boxed up in the attic, several hundred of ’em.

 

Atop the file cabinet is a DC Wonder Woman figurine diorama, a boxed Superman figure, and a small (kiddie) safe, made of metal, with the caption “Saving is powerful!” embossed below the Superman art.

 

On the right side of the file cabinet (the side you can see) is a poster from Burger King advertising their Superman The Animated Series kids’ meals.  (In the attic is a life-size animated Superman cardboard stand-up from the same promo)

 

At the back of the file cabinet, stretching towards the blue wall, is a shelf unit with some of my  (presently) 1152 CDs.

 

One of the things atop the shelves is the Superman Record Player.  It’s copyright 1978 (to cash in on Superman: The Movie, I’ll warrant).  Our next instalment of “Welcome to the Fortress of Markitude!” will feature this record player.

 

At the far right edge of the photo you can see the east entrance to the Comics Closet.  (On the left side of the photo you can see the west door.)  Above the two doors, about sixteen feet in length, is a continuous row of shelving holding action figures, glasses (the drinking kind), Thermoses, etc.

 

Below that shelf, between the two doors into the Comics Closet,  is a fishnet holding (via bent paperclips) various unopened action figures, a Viewmaster page or two, and the like.  Below the fishnet and mostly hidden by the grey file cabinet is the stereo rack.

 

Sticking out from the back wall (as a  mirror leg to the shelves/grey file cabinet leg) is a double-sided shelf that holds paperbacks.  This wooden shelf was present in a Salvation Army thrift store about five blocks from home and when they began to close down, I offered 25 bucks and they took it.  I stained it and added a bottom edge that sits on the floor.

 

On the front edge (facing us) of the paperback shelf are, top-to-bottom, a Darth Vader Halloween mask; a Cylon face that came with the Battlestar Galactica complete series DVD set ( I mean THE REAL Battlestar Galactica); and a ten-inch-tall Superman figure -- hollow, made from an injection mold.  He’s hollow because he needs to be -- his shoulders are attached to strings running to a parachute made of filmy plastic.  You fold up the parachute and wrap it around his waist; toss him into the air; and wait for the thing to unfold as he sails gently to the ground -- often in a neighbor’s tree or a nearby roof.

 

Atop the paperback shelf, at the end nearest to us, is a clear plastic case that once held pastries at a convenience store, now containing some die-cast metal Star Trek ships, another Viewmaster reel, and the like.  Some other knick-knacks are in between, but on the far end of the top of these shelves is a double yellow-plastic shelf bearing other memories, such as a finger bowl from Beverly’s Restaurants (Google “Chicken in the Rough” to know more); a teacup of the golden harvest wheat pattern that came as a premium in laundry soap in the 1960s; and other stuff.  Unlike the photo below, I don't have a saucer for my teacup.

 

 

Between the paperbacks shelf and the fishnet-covered wall is a book spinner for DC graphic novels, bought from Oklahoma City Atomic Comics owner Jerry Wall for ten dollars.

 

Against the outside wall on the far left are more bookshelves.  Sitting atop the books is a Dr Pepper cooler. The black box-shaped thing on the wall in the corner close to the ceiling?  That’s a SPEAKER, children.  I know that most of you don’t know what that is, but it’s from a time when you heard music in the air.

 

Left from that and a bit closer to us is another bookshelf crowned by a wonderful bit of technology, whose designation is a Sony CFD-S39.  It’s a CD-player/cassette-player boombox, with a clock inside, and a remote control.  This thing was made in 1999 and is still a workhorse and a jewel.  It’s my alarm clock.  When I was opening a store for my employer around 2003, an eight-foot tall metal upright post (http://www.rxshelving.com/catx/catxdisplay_part.cgi?partkey=33) for gondola shelving fell across it. I imagine the thing weighed 15+ pounds.  The pole fell across this boombox and glanced off.  The top plastic of the boombox is cracked, but it’s otherwise unscathed!

 

 

To contrast, two or three years earlier an identical pole fell across my right foot.  It broke my big toe knuckle and required surgery to remove bone chips.

 

On the wall above the Boombox of (Figurative) Steel are two fan-art works of mine, a copied panel from the Batman story that flashed back to Joe Chill’s murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne (the story that named Joe Chill and was reprinted in Batman 198).  You can see the panel I imitated on the cover in the below repro of that comic-book cover.

 

 

Below that is my version, in pencil and black-light paint, of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery album cover, from 1973.

 

Hanging from the AC vent in the ceiling -- toward top center -- is an eight-panel spinner of Alex Ross art from 1998, also courtesy of Atomic Comics.  And from it, a foam-filled plastic pillowy thing plugging Superman The Animated Series.

 

Whew!  That’s enough for now.  See you next week!

MA-73 - American Favorites

Music I love to hear because it reminds me of the great country I love and am proud to have been born in.

 

01. The Star-Spangled Banner - Jerry Goldsmith (1:22)

02. This Land Is Your Land - Peter, Paul & Mary (2:27)
03. Let’s All Be Americans Now - Arthur Hall (3:05)
04. People Like You and Me - Glenn Miller & His Orchestra (3:46)
05. The Stars and Stripes Forever - The US Army Ceremonial Band (3:33)
06. Home on the Range - The Sons of the Pioneers (2:41)
07. God Bless America - Kate Smith (2:04)
08. Variations on “America” - Charles Ives (7:10)
09. The House I Live In - Frank Sinatra (3:39)
10. The Magnificent Seven Main Title - Elmer Bernstein (1:59)
11. Pleasant Moments - Scott Joplin (3:02)
12. Ragged Old Flag - Johnny Cash (3:08)
13. No Restricted Signs (Up in Heaven) - Golden Gate Quartet (2:59)
14. You're a Grand Old Flag - James Cagney (5:39)
15. High Noon - Tex Ritter (2:47)
16. Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) - Glenn Miller & His Orchestra (3:11)
17. Battle Hymn of the Republic - John Williams & The Boston Pops (5:01)
18. A Lincoln Portrait - Aaron Copland (15:44)
19. The Stars and Stripes Forever - Vladimir Horowitz (4:00)

 

Track 1 is Jerry Goldsmith's wonderful arrangement of our national anthem.  He produced this for Poltergeist.  It's the TV station's sign-off!  But this is one of the best instrumental arrangements EVER.

Track 9 may be cheesy to some, but I am un-ironic and I love it.

Track 13 is about "No Restricted Signs" in Heaven.  And that's how it should be here in the USA, too.

Track 14 is, of course, from Yankee Doodle Dandy.

The crowning jewel is Track 18.  Although there are some hiss issues here and there, let me tell you the story.  I recorded this from a live radio performance some time in (I believe) the 1980s.  Aaron Copland himself, the composer, is also the narrator of President Lincoln's stirring, healing words.

And the final track is a wonderful, swaggering piano performance.

God bless America, and Happy Fourth of July!  Thank God for your freedoms, and live your life to spread those liberties (and responsibilities) to everybody.

See you Monday!

SoonerCon Is Over, Let Me Catch My Breath ...

 SoonerCon 22  was an amazing feat here in Oklahoma City.  We had between 1500-2000 people all having SF/Fantasy fun.  Plus we raised money for a great charity,  Anna's House.

Our annual Saturday Night Dance was themed "Superhero Prom."  (FUN FACT:  Did you know that the phrase "superhero" and all its hyphenated/capitalized variations is a jointly held copyright by DC Comics and Marvel Comics?)

There were quite a few Superman capes.  One great Abby from NCIS, and others.  Check TwitterFace for others.

Also was some guy as "The Flush," a sewage worker who was hit by the backsplash from a nuclear power plant's toilet water and gained superpowers to clean up crime.

Note the toothbrushes on the helmet and the chest emblem which is a toilet over which are a plunger and a toilet scrub-brush.

I think The Flush used to be more slender once, because the front of his long johns is held together by industrial safety pins.

The doubtful girl happens to be my daughter Julie.

SoonerCon 23  will be June 27-29, 2014 with Glen Cook as our Writer Guest of Honor, many more to be added.

See you next week with something more substantial!  -- as if The Flush weren't substantial enough! I thought super-speed made you burn calories ...

  

See you next week!

See You After SoonerCon

SoonerCon 22  is in a few weeks and I am part of the Program Book team.  I'll be taking off from here until some time in the beginning of July.

We've still got some work to do on putting the beast to bed.  See you in a few weeks!

Welcome to the Fortress! #1

 

 

 

This is the first in a few instalments of the Super Blog to show you around the Fortress of Markitude, where many things fannish and Silver Age-ish come to collect dust.

It all began in 2004, when we had a new addition built onto the back side of the house (the north side).  The room on the right, above, was the Secret Origin of the Fortress of Markitude!

 

Now you, too, can find out what it is, and how it came to be!

 

 



 

This is a shot of the exterior door.  On the top half is a Monty Python "Ministry of Silly Walks" poster.  The odd thing about the poster is the "How-to-do-it" stills across the top and bottom edges of the poster.  They are numbered 1-6 on the top and 7-12 on the bottom.  However, they are not in the correct order to perform Cleese's little maneuver correctly ...

 

At the bottom of the door is a comics shop poster promoting the  1992 "Death of Superman" storyline.

 

 



 

Hanging atop the Silly Walks poster is the little come-in-or-stay-away sign I made.  One side of it, shown in the door photo, is the image at the top of the post, "Welcome to the Fortress..."  and this is the other side.

 

As if anybody pays attention!

 

Take a look at the doorknob hanger.

 

 

Just for fun I made up the above conglomeration to hang when the room needs service.  This is a real laugh, because not only would nobody else ever try to straighten things up in here (or ever be able to stop once they started), it's probably been years since some of the stuff has had a fresh fingerprint.

 

This is the other side of the door hanger.  As you can see, this is an actual artifact.  I stole it from the Holiday Inn where we spent our honeymoon night on January 14, 1978.  The hairdo on the girl is a fine example of Young Person couture of the late 1970s/early 1980s.  Joyce had a similar 'do at one of the sorority dances we went to.

 

Next time, we will actually take a step INSIDE this chamber full of Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruin (Shakespeare via T S Eliot).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Build 'Em

 

From the early 1970s come the Klingon  "Battle Cruiser Space Ship."

 

It has lots of flat surfaces, with little of the layering and detailing that came around in the post-STAR WARS films (and models based on the films).

 

 

Still, you could hang it from the light fixture in your room and shoot rubber bands at it.  At least, that's what I did ...

 

 

More Star Trek Model Instructions

Well, Joyce and I saw STAR TREK Into Darkness (along with son Matthew) Friday night.  Even my lovely non-Trekker bride was able to follow things, and laughed at the right lines.  I think it's a pretty fun ride, even though the whole lens-flare thing appears no longer a style choice but a nervous compulsion.

Back in college, a local channel showed episodes of Star Trek  every afternoon, and there were plenty that I had missed the first time through on NBC.  One of these was "The Galileo Seven," with its cliffhanger ending.

At least, for a college kid less savvy to story construction, it was a cliffhanger!

Anyway, it was a Friday afternoon and time to send off my girlfriend Joyce home in her car to her folks for the weekend.  While she was packing, I was waiting downstairs in the dorm's lounge, where "The Galileo Seven" was on.

I had never seen this episode!

She wanted me to walk her out and say goodbye AT THE EXACT TIME as the climax of the episode, with the shuttle's engines failing after liftoff.

So I grimly walked out on the Galileo Seven as they went burning back into the atmosphere, and told Joyce goodbye and sent her off with a wave.  It would be a year or more before I got the chance to see this episode's ending.

If that's not the self-sacrifice of true love, then what is?

It took me several viewings to realize that the "Seven" in the episode title was NOT the serial number of the shuttlecraft, but the number of people on it.

Amazon's Wacky Suggestions

 

 

Never mind the whys and wherefores, as Gilbert and Sullivan used to say ... because I read an art book about Cold War tensions, that must mean I need to sew somebody up!

And because I read a book on Superman, I need a writer's style guide??

You tell me!

Motivation for SoonerCon Attendance

SoonerCon 22  is going to be at the end of June, here in Oklahoma City.

Among almost a hundred panels and activists, video room, Exhibitor's Hall, Art Show (the biggest in the region), and other things, we're having a little thing called a masquerade.

Bernina of Oklahoma City has graciously donated a great prize for Best in Show at the Masquerade:

 

The  Bernina 215   sells for over $1100.  We'll have some Bernina gift certificates as smaller prizes too.  So if you know anybody in this neck of the woods who's a costumer, they should plan on SoonerCon!

 

See some of you there, I hope!

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

This book is a real disappointment.

 

            BOTTOM LINE:        A book that mocks the subject matter and makes fun of the subject matter’s devotees is a stupid idea and depressing to contemplate.

 

            From the title, which is hipster-speak for “ooh, secret dangerous stuff about to be revealed!” -- it isn’t; to the last pages, wherein we learn that the book only has a bibliography, not endnotes; it’s sad to see so much obvious effort expended for just another uninspired and, in fact, mocking, tale of Superman’s history.

 

            A big downside is the smarmy. snarky tone taken by Weldon, which may or may not be a job requirement for his NPR gig.

 

            Surprisingly, there are only a handful of actual errors in this book:

 

·         Page 45 - composer Sammy Timberg’s name is given as Timber (lumberjacks rejoice!)

·         Page 99 - we have a case where an opening bracket “[“ is closed by a parenthesis “)” instead of a second bracket

·         Page 100-101 - in the retelling of how Superman and Batman learned each other’s identities in Superman #76, Weldon says “a bright light” is what lit up the darkened stateroom, when in the story the light comes from rising flames from a fire that they are changing to battle

·         Page 105 - Jimmy Olsen’s stretchable alter-ego, Elastic Lad, has NEVER had the word “The” on the front of his shirt

·         Page 121 - Superman’s lost Kryptonian love, Lyla Lerrol,  has her last name misspelled “Lerroll” on this page but it’s spelled correctly elsewhere

·         Page 125 - in his narration of the Superman Red/Superman Blue story in Superman #162, Weldon mistakenly says that the resulting twin Supermen have outfits that are all-blue and all-red, when in the story the yellow parts of their costumes stayed yellow

·         Page 142 - How can you say “Elliott S. Maggin” when everybody knows it is “Elliott S! Maggin” (with an exclamation point)?

·         Page 165 - Amalak the space pirate is called a “low-rent villain” when in fact he appeared seven times, almost killing Superman several times; Amalak believes his home planet was destroyed by Kryptonians

·         Page 178 - Is it Plexiglas or Plexiglass?

·         Page 264 - The TV programming block was called “Kids WB,” not “WB Kids”

·         Page 289 - What Superman eats is not “beef burgundy with ketchup” but SPECIFICALLY  “beef bourguignon with ketchup” - this is important because this specific phrasing has even been a life-or-death (!) secret code between Lois and Superman

·         Page 304 - In Superman Returns, Lois DOES NOT have “conversations with her husband” - especially since in the previous paragraph Weldon tells us that Lois is “engaged” not married

 

 

            One way in the book is accurate is in its explanation as to why Superman Returns was flawed from the start.  Aside from its disturbing depiction of Superman as a creepy Super-Stalker (let’s X-ray vision my ex-girlfriend’s life and use Super-hearing to eavesdrop on her!), the Superman we knew and loved would never put himself first and run away from the people that need him.

 

            Another disappointing aspect of this book is the paucity of its index.  For example, Sammy Timberg’s musical theme is mentioned several times, since it appeared in the Fleischer shorts and on the radio shows.  But the composer isn’t listed, even by the way his name is misspelled in the text.  A slightly bigger name, President John Kennedy, is also missing.

 

            So, in summary, this is an unnecessary telling of Superman’s story with nothing really new and a disturbing snarky hipster tone.  If you are going to put this amount of effort into a book, why condescend and make fun of the stuff?  One disturbing example is that after his summary of “The Superman Super-Spectacular,” after JFK stood in for Clark Kent, Weldon takes a dump on our childhood by saying, “1964, ladies and gentlemen.”

 

            I wish I had NOT  spent the money to buy this book.

 

            I can’t wait for the day that the “ironic” mindset becomes outmoded.