Earlier today I looked up a book on my electronic reading device and found the following notice:
"This work has been previously published and carefully edited by humans to be read digitally on your eReader."
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Parents of 'holy terrors' can stay home
The folks in my neck of the woods were expecting a huge snowstorm today, but it didn't materialize.
(Not that I'm complaining.)
In anticipation of the storm that wasn't, many schools canceled classes and other events.
According to the list that one of the TV stations is running continuously at the bottom of the screen, these cancellations include an open house at
BLESSED SCAREMENT SCHOOL
(Not that I'm complaining.)
In anticipation of the storm that wasn't, many schools canceled classes and other events.
According to the list that one of the TV stations is running continuously at the bottom of the screen, these cancellations include an open house at
BLESSED SCAREMENT SCHOOL
Thursday, January 27, 2011
It ain't the Red River Valley, kiddies
In his excellent blog, The Laughorist, Paulie Kokonuts, my very good friend and staunch (not stanch) defender of the serial comma, wonders what John Steinbeck would say about bloggers.
Interesting question. I couldn't begin to speculate.
But I can try to imagine what Tom Joad would say in his farewell to his mother before venturing out into the Dust Bowl of cyberspace....
"I’ll be all around in the blogosphere. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can surf. Wherever there’s a flame war so witless goofballs can argue, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a troll beatin’ up a poster, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way needy nonentities brag when they’re cravin' attention – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re anonymously dishing dirt on some helpless nerd. An’ when the people are loggin’ off their systems, and lookin' for an actual purpose to their lives – I’ll be there, too.”
Interesting question. I couldn't begin to speculate.
But I can try to imagine what Tom Joad would say in his farewell to his mother before venturing out into the Dust Bowl of cyberspace....
"I’ll be all around in the blogosphere. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can surf. Wherever there’s a flame war so witless goofballs can argue, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a troll beatin’ up a poster, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way needy nonentities brag when they’re cravin' attention – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re anonymously dishing dirt on some helpless nerd. An’ when the people are loggin’ off their systems, and lookin' for an actual purpose to their lives – I’ll be there, too.”
Monday, January 24, 2011
A conundrum Darwin never considered
Who has the shorter life span:
Any cop who gets partnered with Dirty Harry
Or
Any new girlfriend of any lead character in any TV medical show of the '60s and '70s?
Any cop who gets partnered with Dirty Harry
Or
Any new girlfriend of any lead character in any TV medical show of the '60s and '70s?
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Who says computers don't have feelings?
When I got up today, the wind chill was minus 12.
As I write this, the temperature is 6 above with a wind child of minus 10.
Tonight temperatures might hit a record low.
Earlier today, I was playing my computer Scrabble game.
At one point, my virtual "opponent" placed this word:
BRRR.
As I write this, the temperature is 6 above with a wind child of minus 10.
Tonight temperatures might hit a record low.
Earlier today, I was playing my computer Scrabble game.
At one point, my virtual "opponent" placed this word:
BRRR.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Me vs. Technology (Hint: Don't bet on me)
Two occurrences from this past week:
1. I was invited to volunteer my services for a local project that places locally designed posters – including locally written haiku – on downtown streets. I’ve agreed to interview some of the artists and poets by phone while recording the interviews, which I am to then transcribe and edit into blurbs that will appear on the back of the posters.
2. I opened the obituary pages and found that a local lawyer and professor, whom I’ll call Joe Farrelly, had died.
You will, of course, agree that this was an eerie coincidence.
Oh, you won’t?
I totally understand – you didn’t know me 36 years ago…..
(Cue the harp glissando as the special effects folks screw around with the picture to cleverly indicate a trip back in time.)
It was the fall of 1974, and I was a student in a Mass Media class. My big project, shared with another student, was to do the promotion for a career night that the instructor was putting together.
As part of this project, I set up an interview with Joe Farrelly and his wife, whom I’ll call Isabella, and who was also a lawyer. The interview was to run in the student newspaper, along with a photo of the couple, which was to be taken a couple of days after the interview.
I decided that the neat thing to do would be to record the interview.
So I signed out a cassette recorder from the college’s AV department and brought it to the interview, which took place on a Saturday afternoon at the house where the couple lived with their six children.
I cleverly set up the recorder somewhere near my chair and began asking questions.
Isabella, sitting on a couch perpendicular to my chair, gamely answered my lame queries while her youngest, who was maybe less than a year old, squirmed beside her. (Even at his young age, he was obviously reacting to the insipidity of my inquiries. I recall that at one point, when his mother picked him up, she and I both noticed a round, wet stain on the couch – as eloquent an editorial comment as I’ve ever seen.)
Joe Farrelly sat in a chair at the other end of the room. He was tall and very low-key (think Jason Robards on Quaaludes), and his voice was so soft that I decided I’d better try to write down some of his quotes in case the microphone didn’t pick him up.
After the interview, I went home and played the tape.
Nothing.
I’m not even sure you could hear dead air.
So quiet, you could hear my grade-point average drop.
Visions of the end of my college career came crashing down. (Can visions really crash? Oh well, it certainly felt that way.)
I imagined myself going to the registrar’s office on Monday to quit, dunce cap in hand.
But then I pulled what was left of myself together and decided to tough it out.
Luckily, I had a couple of things going for me:
1. The quotes from Joe that I’d written down, along with a quote from Isabella.
2. The Farrellys had provided a joint resume that uncluded everything except what the couple had for dinner on St. Swithin's Day, 1967. It made the average Thomas Pynchon novel look like a pamphlet.
I was able to somehow arm wrestle some of this stuff and the quotes into an article that the paper ran under a headline that referred to the Farrellys as “He-she barristers.” This was several years before I began writing headlines for a living, but even then that sounded weird to me, though I suppose that today it might be the springboard for another David E. Kelley show. (Coming to NBC: “Hermaphrodites at Law”!)
I attended the career night but was careful to avoid the Farrellys because somehow their picture was never taken; the student photographer said they weren’t home when he came by that night. Though it wasn’t my place to challenge him, my instincts told me he’d blown off the job (a family of eight away from home on a school night?), and I feared that the Farrellys would threaten to sue me over being stiffed….
This weekend I’ll get a start on my poster project work by trying to open the plastic package containing my new microcassette recorder. (Why do I always manage to cut my long fingernails a few days before they would have come in handy?)
Wish me luck.
1. I was invited to volunteer my services for a local project that places locally designed posters – including locally written haiku – on downtown streets. I’ve agreed to interview some of the artists and poets by phone while recording the interviews, which I am to then transcribe and edit into blurbs that will appear on the back of the posters.
2. I opened the obituary pages and found that a local lawyer and professor, whom I’ll call Joe Farrelly, had died.
You will, of course, agree that this was an eerie coincidence.
Oh, you won’t?
I totally understand – you didn’t know me 36 years ago…..
(Cue the harp glissando as the special effects folks screw around with the picture to cleverly indicate a trip back in time.)
It was the fall of 1974, and I was a student in a Mass Media class. My big project, shared with another student, was to do the promotion for a career night that the instructor was putting together.
As part of this project, I set up an interview with Joe Farrelly and his wife, whom I’ll call Isabella, and who was also a lawyer. The interview was to run in the student newspaper, along with a photo of the couple, which was to be taken a couple of days after the interview.
I decided that the neat thing to do would be to record the interview.
So I signed out a cassette recorder from the college’s AV department and brought it to the interview, which took place on a Saturday afternoon at the house where the couple lived with their six children.
I cleverly set up the recorder somewhere near my chair and began asking questions.
Isabella, sitting on a couch perpendicular to my chair, gamely answered my lame queries while her youngest, who was maybe less than a year old, squirmed beside her. (Even at his young age, he was obviously reacting to the insipidity of my inquiries. I recall that at one point, when his mother picked him up, she and I both noticed a round, wet stain on the couch – as eloquent an editorial comment as I’ve ever seen.)
Joe Farrelly sat in a chair at the other end of the room. He was tall and very low-key (think Jason Robards on Quaaludes), and his voice was so soft that I decided I’d better try to write down some of his quotes in case the microphone didn’t pick him up.
After the interview, I went home and played the tape.
Nothing.
I’m not even sure you could hear dead air.
So quiet, you could hear my grade-point average drop.
Visions of the end of my college career came crashing down. (Can visions really crash? Oh well, it certainly felt that way.)
I imagined myself going to the registrar’s office on Monday to quit, dunce cap in hand.
But then I pulled what was left of myself together and decided to tough it out.
Luckily, I had a couple of things going for me:
1. The quotes from Joe that I’d written down, along with a quote from Isabella.
2. The Farrellys had provided a joint resume that uncluded everything except what the couple had for dinner on St. Swithin's Day, 1967. It made the average Thomas Pynchon novel look like a pamphlet.
I was able to somehow arm wrestle some of this stuff and the quotes into an article that the paper ran under a headline that referred to the Farrellys as “He-she barristers.” This was several years before I began writing headlines for a living, but even then that sounded weird to me, though I suppose that today it might be the springboard for another David E. Kelley show. (Coming to NBC: “Hermaphrodites at Law”!)
I attended the career night but was careful to avoid the Farrellys because somehow their picture was never taken; the student photographer said they weren’t home when he came by that night. Though it wasn’t my place to challenge him, my instincts told me he’d blown off the job (a family of eight away from home on a school night?), and I feared that the Farrellys would threaten to sue me over being stiffed….
This weekend I’ll get a start on my poster project work by trying to open the plastic package containing my new microcassette recorder. (Why do I always manage to cut my long fingernails a few days before they would have come in handy?)
Wish me luck.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Anne Francis
Most of the obituaries for Anne Francis, who died last week, seemed to emphasize her most famous movie, “Forbidden Planet,” which belongs in the category of Cult Films I Never Have Gotten Around to Watching.
I guess I’m more partial to another film she made around that time at MGM: “Bad Day at Black Rock,” with a cast that also featured Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and John Ericson. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing a 1950s film that still holds up, though the basic setup has been copied to death and beyond: A stranger with a mission travels to a small town where he is made to feel violently unwelcome. The motive behind the antipathy (I’ll let you find out for yourself) certainly isn’t dated.
“Bad Day” can also be seen (by me, at least) as a confrontation between two generations of actors: young punks Marvin and Borgnine think they can beat the crap out of Tracy, who is much older and whose character has one arm. They find out they’re wrong.
Years before I saw “Bad Day” I saw Anne Francis in what might have been her most famous role, in the TV series “Honey West.” It ran only one season, but I always remembered it.
Some years ago a cable TV station ran a bunch of episodes. The bad news, I found, was that the episode themselves didn’t hold up that well. The plots weren’t much, and although Honey West was supposed to be a very independent, I-can-take-care-of-myself lady, it seemed that near the end her partner, Sam Bolt, who was played by John Ericson (who’d played her brother in “Black Rock”), was always coming to her rescue.
The good news was that despite these limitations, Francis came across very well as a woman who was tough-minded and refused to take crap from anybody. In one episode, I believe Honey was supposed to be a bodyguard for a little girl. Honey made it clear that she didn’t like kids. On another series, the lead character and the girl would have been buddies by the final commercial. I don’t think this was the case here. (It didn’t help that the girl, as I remember, wasn’t sweetness and light either.)
Honey West’s refusal to get all mushy at the end impressed me – I wondered whether her attitude influenced the great Sue Grafton when she created Kinsey Millhone, who also has professed a lack of fondness for kids.
For years Anne Francis had a website in which she would write sweet little essays. She was obviously a nice person, and I’m sorry I never met her. But she’ll always belong in that pantheon of 1960s actresses whom I always remember from my growing years, along with Elizabeth Montgomery, Paula Prentiss (of the too-short-lived series “He and She”) and Diana Rigg, whose “Avengers” character, Emma Peel, was at least as tough as Honey West – with the addition of cool wit.
I guess I’m more partial to another film she made around that time at MGM: “Bad Day at Black Rock,” with a cast that also featured Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and John Ericson. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing a 1950s film that still holds up, though the basic setup has been copied to death and beyond: A stranger with a mission travels to a small town where he is made to feel violently unwelcome. The motive behind the antipathy (I’ll let you find out for yourself) certainly isn’t dated.
“Bad Day” can also be seen (by me, at least) as a confrontation between two generations of actors: young punks Marvin and Borgnine think they can beat the crap out of Tracy, who is much older and whose character has one arm. They find out they’re wrong.
Years before I saw “Bad Day” I saw Anne Francis in what might have been her most famous role, in the TV series “Honey West.” It ran only one season, but I always remembered it.
Some years ago a cable TV station ran a bunch of episodes. The bad news, I found, was that the episode themselves didn’t hold up that well. The plots weren’t much, and although Honey West was supposed to be a very independent, I-can-take-care-of-myself lady, it seemed that near the end her partner, Sam Bolt, who was played by John Ericson (who’d played her brother in “Black Rock”), was always coming to her rescue.
The good news was that despite these limitations, Francis came across very well as a woman who was tough-minded and refused to take crap from anybody. In one episode, I believe Honey was supposed to be a bodyguard for a little girl. Honey made it clear that she didn’t like kids. On another series, the lead character and the girl would have been buddies by the final commercial. I don’t think this was the case here. (It didn’t help that the girl, as I remember, wasn’t sweetness and light either.)
Honey West’s refusal to get all mushy at the end impressed me – I wondered whether her attitude influenced the great Sue Grafton when she created Kinsey Millhone, who also has professed a lack of fondness for kids.
For years Anne Francis had a website in which she would write sweet little essays. She was obviously a nice person, and I’m sorry I never met her. But she’ll always belong in that pantheon of 1960s actresses whom I always remember from my growing years, along with Elizabeth Montgomery, Paula Prentiss (of the too-short-lived series “He and She”) and Diana Rigg, whose “Avengers” character, Emma Peel, was at least as tough as Honey West – with the addition of cool wit.
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