It's not a "spill"!

"Oops! Let me get a paper towel and wipe that up." "What a mess! That'll take some doing to clean up!" Those are "spills". But this:

Free live streaming by Ustream
is no mere spill. It is an oil volcano, a gusher. But not a spill.

Happy Birthday, Ray Harryhausen!

I hear at Films in Review that today is Ray Harryhausen's birthday. They have an overview of his career so far, which includes this:

To those who may not know, Ray Harryhausen, known primarily for his stop motion special effects, is the auteur of approximately 18 feature films, many of which sprang, initially unscripted, from theme-based drawings created by him years before and put away before being eventually presented to his long-time producer, Charles Schneer. Among these is a small “children’s fantasy”, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, which was the hit of 1958 and, in historical hindsight, truly changed everything.

The Guardian says, "The revered FX legend celebrated his 90th year at a star-studded BFI celebration. But this was no sycophantic wallow. He's someone who really changed film." The Press Association reports: "Movie veteran Ray Harryhausen is offering his life's work to the National Media Museum."

His official website is here. There are photos of his creations here. FilmReference.com says, "No one who works in science-fiction or fantasy films can escape the influence of Ray Harryhausen, and works as diverse as Flesh Gordon and The Empire Strikes Back draw upon techniques he perfected." Bright Lights Film Journal has an article and interview and says, "Harryhausen has unexpectedly come to rival Hitchcock (with whom he shared a favourite composer, Bernard Herrmann), as the filmmaker exerting the most influence on succeeding generations." Wikipedia has an article on him.

"every Ray Harryhausen animated creature in feature films, presented in chronological order":


I have blog posts on these:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1954)
It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956))
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Mysterious Island (1961)
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
First Men in the Moon (1964)
One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Green, Green Grass of Home

I heard Green, Green Grass of Home on WEVL the other day. Hearing old-time country music reminds me that Daddy always liked country music. I could never stand it. I "get it" more now, but he's not around for me to share that with. Here's the song sung by Porter Wagoner:

Dark Shadows

Today is the anniversary of the 1966 premier of the tv show Dark Shadows. I planned my after-school schedule around this show once I discovered it. I found it after Jonathan Frid joined the cast (episode 211) as everybody's favorite tormented vampire Barnabas Collins.

This is the opening theme:


There is talk of a 2011 film with Johnny Depp in the role Frid created.

Mother-in-law's Tongue

Many people don't believe me when I tell them my Sansevieria blooms every year, but it does. The blooms are about spent for this year, but the picture above is of one of the plants in bloom now on my patio.

Gojira

Not long ago, The Younger Son and I were at Spin Street, and he found Gojira. This is the original 1954 Japanese Toho Studios film that was later edited heavily and released as Godzilla. I had been looking for this locally for years without coming across it, so I bought it even though it was new and not on sale. We watched it tonight. It is directed by Ishirō Honda and stars Takashi Shimura It's much longer than the American version, which stars Raymond Burr.

trailer:

Slate calls it "a remote, primitive thing". Roger Ebert describes it as "a bad film, but with an undeniable urgency." Moria says that, although

The plot of Godzilla is substantially taken from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), plus a little of King Kong (1933) ... it is the ferocity of Inoshiro Honda’s direction and his ability to propel the monster story to the level of metaphor that makes Godzilla an altogether remarkable film.

FilmReference.com says it

actually owes its origin to the long-held desire of special effects man Eiji Tsuburaya to make not a new and potent myth, but rather his own version of King Kong , Hollywood's most impressive monster film to date. In addition, an obvious intertextual influence was the outpouring from Hollywood's "B" producers of similar science fiction films in the American market. This trend was well established when Tsuburaya received the go-ahead from the executives at Toho Studio to make something quite similar.

DVD Talk says,

Gojira is a new kind of implacable atomic enemy: A mobile natural disaster, a typhoon in the form of a firestorm. The film grabbed the Japanese public at a gut level -- revealing a horror that had been living with them intimately for ten years, only they never knew it.

Sarah Orne Jewett

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1909 of author Sarah Orne Jewett. I ran across her book The Country of the Pointed Firs on a sale rack years ago and bought it because the book itself was a beautiful edition. When I read it, I loved it. It seems to be considered her best work. Wikipedia says of it, "The novel can be read as a study of the effects of isolation and hardship experienced by the inhabitants of the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast." It is not plot-driven or action-filled, and that's the truth. I found the language striking. You can read the book online at several sites.

She was born in South Berwick, Maine, where her home is a museum. The Historic New England site says she "spent much of her life in this stately Georgian residence, owned by her family since 1819." South Berwick has a walking tour ("A visitor to contemporary South Berwick can follow in Sarah's footsteps and see much of the built and natural environment that shaped her life and influenced her writing"). There is a Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project, which "contains the complete, known published works of Sarah Orne Jewett, with the exception of a very small number of hard-to-find items."

Best Space Operas

Space Operas are my favorites, so I am glad to see SF Signal's list from various authors:

Captain Future stories of Edmond Hamilton
Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series
Allen Steele's Coyote series
James Blish's Cities in Flight series
Alastair Reynolds' Inhibitor series
Gwyneth Jones's Aleutian trilogy
Stephen Baxter's epic Xeelee Sequence
The Lensman series
The Mote In God's Eye (Niven/Pournelle)
Eon (Bear)
The Forever War (Haldeman)
Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton
Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld
Hellflower series by Eluki bes Shahar
Iain Banks and the Culture novels
Dune, the first three
Asimov's Foundation series
Ursula K. Le Guin, Hainish cycle
Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan novels
Lee & Miller's Liaden Universe books
Kristine Smith's Jani Killian books
The Kimbriel Nuala books
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel; Between Planets; Farmer in the Sky (Heinlein)Vernor Vinge - Fire Upon The Deep
David Brin - the Uplift War trilogy
Bruce Sterling - Schismatrix

If I've read appreciable numbers in a series I put it in bold, even if I haven't read them all.

Praying Mantis Rescue

The Daughter and I went to the mall last night, and as we pulled onto the street we noticed a baby praying mantis clinging for dear life to the windshield. I drove slowly, but it became obvious the struggling bug would never last until we got to the mall. I pulled over to the side of the road, and The Daughter got out and let it hop up onto her hand so she could let it out in the bushes. We'd rather have kept it on our patio, but the closest refuge was best in this case.

The photo above is one I see scattered all over the web, sometimes sited as being from Wikipedia.

David O. Selznick

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1965 of film producer David O. Selznick. PBS considers him one of the American Masters. FilmReference.com says, "he should be remembered as one of the Hollywood's greatest independent filmmakers."

Although best known for Gone With the Wind, he also produced Rebecca, The Third Man (uncredited) and A Star is Born (1937), all of which I like better than GWTW.

Summer Solstice

Today is the Summer Solstice, and it's been our practice since the kids were little to watch the sunset and have donuts for supper on this day. Tonight we watched the sun set over the Mississippi River. We haven't always come here, but it's a wonderful spot for it and we've gone downtown and sat in Tom Lee Park for several years now. It's been unseasonably hot lately, but it was pleasant on the river tonight. The Daughter finished her camp counselor gig in time to come with us, but The Elder Son had to work and The Younger Son made other plans before he realized what day it was.

Other years:
2009
2008
2007

MacArthur Park

MacArthur Park may be the most dreadful song ever sung. I can't listen to it without singing along in major dramatic style. The Kids roll their eyes on those rare occasions when we hear it on the radio.

When The Bough Breaks

When The Bough Breaks is the first in the Alex Delaware mystery series by Jonathan Kellerman. It won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. I read it because it was first in a series by a well-respected mystery writer and because it won the Edgar and read it despite the fact that the plot revolves around child endangerment and child abuse. I like the characters and the writing style but not enough to seek out others by this author while I still have so many books in my tbr stack.

from the back of the book:

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

It's psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past.

This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.

The Late Great Planet Earth

I remember when The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey came out in 1970. There were a few of us who got a kick out of looking up and trying to make sense of all his Biblical references. I was a Christian of the mainstream protestant sort, and had trouble making the Bible say what he said it did, but his take on things was fascinating. My fascination didn't last long, though I kept the book for years -along with Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods?- but some people stayed with it. At one church I attended there was a man who brought that book along with his Bible any time we were going to look at anything related to the End Times. Our study of the book of the Revelation was colored by his use of the Lindsey book as a serious commentary on the Bible, and, I swear, I think he held Lindsey in almost equal reverence. It comes up now because I see from Film Chat that the video of the 1979 documentary based on the book is up at youtube in 17 parts. In looking, I find it in one piece at google video:


The video is narrated by Orson Welles.

I wish I had kept the book, though, because the subsequent editions have changed remarkably to keep current, as time after time the older editions were just plain wrong.

Herenton says don't use "any form of drugs"

'cause "where does it stop?" What kind of stupid question is that? The Husband is an insulin-dependent diabetic, and his drug use stops at the limit of the prescription and in cooperation with his doctor. I had an infection once that required drugs. The Mother/Grandmother is on a couple of drugs. Useful things, drugs. Sheesh.

"Where does it stop?" I know that where it stops should not be up to some lame politician who claims that only a black politician can represent a black constituent but doesn't seem to mind that the only candidates running are men.

The quote comes from the Memphis Flyer article, which closes with it:

He acknowledged there was “medical evidence that supports utilization of marijuana for various diseases,” but said, “Let me tell you that I’m conservative and oppose that. I’m afraid that if we utilize any form of drugs, where does it stop?”

Happy Birthday, Astronomy Picture of the Day!

Astronomy Picture of the Day has been around for 15 years. Their main index, which groups available photos by category is here, and the archive of all the past photos is here. You can subscribe to a RSS feed of the site here.

I didn't include a picture from the APOD, since I had a bit of trouble understanding exactly how free I was to copy the images, but they're well worth checking out.

Genre Books You Must Read

Floor to Ceiling Books shares a list of "Genre Books You Must Read" from a panel at Alt Fiction:

Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Lavondyss, the sequel to Mythago Wood
the work of Jonathan Swift
the plays of Euripides (some of them)
The Wizard of Earthsea by LeGuin
Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn
The Man Who Was Thursday by G K Chesterton
The Short Timers, by Gustav Hasford
Glen Cook's Black Company
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Morte D'Arthur, written by Sir Thomas Malory
The Once and Future King
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Bradbury
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Jack Finney's Time and Again:

Ones I've read are in bold print. It was fun seeing so many old classics mentioned.

G. K. Chesterton

"In this video you will hear some of all four of the only known sound recordings in existence made by G.K. Chesterton, along with a couple of seconds (literally) from a news reel of him & his wife Francis."

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1936 of English author G. K. Chesterton. The Chesterton Society has a web site here. Short biographies can be found here, here and here. My first exposure to him was in reading the Father Brown mysteries. You can read them online at these links:

• The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
• The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)
• The complete collected Father Brown stories

He was a noted Christian apologist, and his 1908 book Orthodoxy can be read online. His autobiography can be read here. Other works by and about him are available widely, including at The University of Adelaide, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and at Project Gutenberg. Christianity Today celebrated the 1974 centennial of Chesterton's birth, and their article includes this:

Chesterton's immoderation was known to all men. He worked, ate, and drank too much. He grew fatter and fatter. His nostalgic hankering after the robust Catholicism of the Middle Ages included the feasts and the hogsheads of wine but stopped at the fasting.
...
Not surprisingly, Americans loved him.

He wrote on fairy tales, which endears him to me, and included a chapter on them in his book All Things Considered. In the Tremendous Trifles chapter Red Angel he says,

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

There are many books by and about this author available online, though our repressive copyright laws restrict access to any written after 1923. (That's 87 years, folks, and is an amount of time much more likely to squelch creativity than encourage it.)

Politically he was a Distributist and had this to say on the subject of progressives and conservatives: "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." (That quote, according to the Chesterton Society, comes from the Illustrated London News.) Distributism is opposed to both capitalism and socialism.

There is a Facebook page associated with the American Chesterton Society.

White Rabbit

White Rabbit (Go Ask Alice) is a Jefferson Airplane song written by Grace Slick. The Younger Son and I heard it on the radio last week, and he had never heard it before. It doesn't get nearly as much air play as some of the other "oldies".

This video is from 1967:


This song is on the list of 500 Songs that shaped Rock and Roll from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Rural Fantasy Reading List

Mark Charan Newton has an evolving list of "rural fantasy" books - "a starter list":

Richard Adams – Watership Down
Piers Anthony – Xanth novels I've read some.
James Baylock – The Elfin Ship
Lois McMaster Bujold – The Sharing Knife books
Orson Scott Card – The Tales of Alvin Maker
G.K. Chesterton – The Flying Inn
John Connolly – The Book of Lost Things
John Crowley – Little, Big
Stephen Donaldson – The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
Lord Dunsany – The King of Elfland’s Daughter
Neil Gaiman – Stardust
Alan Garner – The Owl Service
Kenneth Grahame – The Wind in the Willows
Barbara Hambly – Dragonsbane
Robin Hobb – The Farseer series
Robert Holdstock – Mythago Wood (and the rest of the Rhyope series)
William Horwood – The Duncton Chronicles
Brian Jacques – Redwall series I've read some of the early books.
Guy Gavriel Kay – Ysabel
Paul Kearney – A Different Kingdom
Greg Keyes – The Briar King
Stephen King & Peter Straub – The Talisman
Ursula Le Guin – Always Coming Home
Charles de Lint – Someplace to be Flying, The Little Country, Over Sea Under Stone
Jeremy Love – Bayou (graphic novel)
Patricia A. McKilliip – The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld, The Changeling Sea
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
Hope Mirlees – Lud-in-the-Mist
William Morris – Well at the World’s End
Garth Nix – The Abhorsen Trilogy
Flannery O’Connor – A Good Man is Hard to Find
Nnedi Okorafor – Zahrah the Windseeker
Terry Pratchett – Lancre sub-series of Discworld -I've started these.
Spider Robinson – Time Pressure
Mary Stewart – The Crystal Cave
Thomas Burnett Swann – The Forest of Forever
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, Tales from the Perilous Realm, Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham
Manly Wade – The “Silver John” books
Sean Williams – Books of the Change
Terri Windling – The Wood Wife

Ones I've read are in bold print. Some of them are books I've been looking for locally for years. I may have to break down and order them.

HT: SF Signal