Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled by castle Wed 27 Mar 02 13:55>
  

    
Adriana~ seen it, bought the DVD player for Kevin Smith movies
actually,...I'm a secret sucker for dick and fart jokes, with wry humor
inserted in between.
As a side note, My mother just (literally, I took the laptop to the
hospitial) woke up (sorta) from the reverse the temp colostimy, things
are looking so much better.

Annie,...roast kitten, sounds like when I threaten to take mine to the
chinese place down the street.

Oh man, I just heard Dudley Moore just passed,...after seeing him in
Bedazzled, I've always liked him, even in the not-so-good movies.
He said in his last interview, "There's not much point feeling angry.
There's always this feeling of 'Why did it hit me?' and I cannot make
peace with it because I know I am going to die from it." 
This strikes me as a very honest statement.

Blessed Be to all
 
  

    
Milton Berle has died as well.

When I was 12, I suddenly and inexplicably became obsessed with Peter
Sellers and Dudley Moore. I watched everything I could find, and bought
copies of most of that.

Milton Berle had this way of popping up in a cameo role in some of my
favorite movies ever, including a goofy Marilyn Monroe movie I watched
maybe a billion times in high school. My grandmother told me a story a
long time ago about Milton Berle that she had heard from her father,
who had a bit part in a movie with him. I completely forgot about that
until today.

It's strange and sad and sweet, that people I've never met are all
tied up in things about myself I forgot. Hearing about their deaths
brought up all these other things I haven't thought about in a long
long time. 
  

    
Jouni -- it's probably up to the Scandinavian publishers, and up to
how much I can do in a year.

Dan Guy -- I'm pleased you enjoyed the book. Currently I don't feel
like any of those things, but then, I'm tired from too much flying.

Annie -- I know how you feel (and I've been escaping a lot from the
eternal winter this year).

Tracey -- yup. I called Dave McKean, who has always loved Dudley
Moore. And it was Terry Pratchett who long ago pointed out to me what a
great actor Moore was: in Bedazzled you can see how uncomfortable Cook
is and how he's looking for his cue cards, while Dudley makes you
believe...

Maure -- yup.

Mike Ford -- if you're out there, seeing we've been having bits of
this in conversation for many years... Someone's sending me a copy of
The Final Affair; I found JM (formerly Hank but you'd not know it from
the Prisoner covers)website about McDaniel
http://www.manfromuncle.org/mcdanielbystine1.htm -- and found a website
which claims that Rafe Bernard, author of the oddest of the INVADERS
novels, was actually Keith Laumer (who wrote the first couple)...
  

    
Oops. The word Stine fell off the last posting, after Hank.
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
     Dan -- to compress a long and complicated story, the late David
McDaniel wrote what just about everyone considers the best of the
original UNCLE novels from Ace -- DAGGER AFFAIR, MONSTER WHEEL,
RAINBOW, UTOPIA, and I know I'm missing one or two.  (He also wrote one
of the PRISONER originals, which involves the Secret Masters giving
Number Six KAR 120C as a distraction, but whose title I forget.)   He
also wrote THE FINAL AFFAIR, whose plotline I won't give away, but
which was never published.  Copies exist, and there have been various
attempts to get it into print over the last three decades, but
something has always interfered.
      Incidentally, the editor on the Ace series was the great (and
also unfortunately late) Terry Carr, wonderful editor, outstanding
though insufficiently prolific sf writer, and fine guy in general.
      Extremely incidentally, DAGGER AFFAIR (which is about the inner
workings of THRUSH) led to the creation of THE FINAL REFLECTION, but
that's a -really- odd and much less interesting story.
      Oh, and Mr. Hank Stine (not to be confused with G. Harry Stine),
author and onetime editor of GALAXY magazine, is now Ms. JM Stine.
       And I haven't even mentioned the . . . uhm, whatever.
  

    
So it's Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday, if you like).  

There is a tradition in many Catholic parishes to have a supper before
the Mass, modeled on a Passover seder.  There was one tonight, and
when Denny got up to give the homily, he brought a glass of wine over
to the ambo.  He talked about seders, and seder traditions,
particularly the tradition of having the children call out the ten
plagues of Egypt. Everyone takes a few drops of wine from their glass
for every plague, to remind themselves that while it may have been a
joyous thing for the Jews, other people were suffering, and their joy
must therefore be diminished.

Then he talked about allegations in a neighboring parish that their
priest abused a teenager 25 years ago, and his removal pending
investigation.  He said, "When I hear about allegations like these, and
the pain of the parishioners, I am saddened, and we are all
diminished."  And he poured a few drops of wine from the glass into a
bowl.  And he talked about the victims of all the recent cases, and
their betrayal by authorities who swept allegations under the carpet,
and said, "When I hear these things, I am saddened and we are all
diminished". And poured a few more drops.  He brought up the Passover
bombing in Israel, Enron, Sept. 11th, hearing parishioners backbiting
and fighting over petty things, seeing committees struggle for power at
the expense of the good of the parish, the deaths of friends and
family members.  Each time, "I am saddened, and we are all diminished".
 And a few more drops of wine.

You could have heard a caterpillar crawl in that church.  We were
mesmerized by the beauty of the image.  Me, I just cried.  But I got
accustomed, a long time ago, to Denny making me weep like a child.  As
scary as it is to be that vulnerable, I wouldn't trade one of his
homilies for 10 pounds of Godiva.

Thank God he's not that moving every week. ;-)

 
  

    
Mary- Wow. That's really all there is to say to that. To everyone who
actually celebrates Passover or Holy Week, a peaceful and reflective
holiday to you.
  

    
Lisa Snellings Clark's art is fucking gorgeous.
  

    
Dave McDaniel and Hank Stine were both good friends of mine in the '60s.
Dave was known in fandom under the name "Ted Johnstone" where he wrote
and sang filk songs.  (One of them "Widsith's Song" was inspired by
an interesting novel-a-clef called "Silverlock." )  I remember Dave/Ted
best for his folk renditions of "The Wild Colonial Boy" which inspired
me to want to learn how to play guitar.  Hank acknowledged me as
a root source in the dedication to his first Prisoner novel, which
was as close to fame as I ever got in those days.

I'm at Minicon, right now.  Finally picked up the new Flash Girls
album and listened to a couple of tracks on my computer's CD ROM
drive.  I'm looking forward to seeing/hearing them tomorrow night.
There's going to be a music party in a couple of hours, to which
I've been invited to bring my harmonicas.  (There'll also be a
general filk music space in one of the convention rooms.)  The
young con committee appears to be bearing up well, so far.  They were
accompanied at the opening session by rolling drum support provided
by Steven Brust, Jeff Schalles, Fred Hollander, and others.
  

    
Maure - Well, bits of it are kind of scattered all over my apartment
just now, so I haven't forgotten. And Lisa Snellings (and her art) are
cool. I have one of her pieces in my bedroom. If you ever get one,
these days it will not be allowed as a carry on item... just so you
know.

Pam - I liked the description. :)

Jade - Enjoy the trip! Mmm... pretty sunsets. Damnit, I need another
vacation. This not-going-anywhere-now-so-I-can-afford-to-go-later thing
sucks!

On kittens not roasted - My cat (er, that would be the ex-boyfriend's
cat, who actually lives with him, and I've never forgiven him for that)
stretches out on the back seat (we opened the door to the cage) and
enjoys the sun. Especially on the freeway. Once you hit stop-and-go
traffic, or sharp turns, she's all nervous again, but then she settles
down. The best was when I used to bring her home from the vet. She'd be
all worked up on her way there, but when we left she was calm (and
probably a little exhausted). She'd be all perfumed from the flea bath,
with a ridiculous pink ribbon round her neck, and curled up in the
back seat warming herself in the sunlight. Then we'd stop at McDonald's
and I'd order fries and a soda and I'd give her a couple french fries.
 I don't know how it got started, but it was tradition. erg.. now I'm
hungry.

And damnit, I want a kitty cat!

squeaks, no offense to the rodent critters whom I love.
  

    
Squeaks, i still have a couple extra cats that i foisted off on my
mom. She'd be happy to give them up. ;) Really sweet, loving kitties,
but not very well behaved- they've both got varying amounts of maine
coon cat in them (i think the mother is half, so her daughters are
about a quarter or so m.c.). I've never met a set of cats who're so
agile yet so clumsy; they can climb up onto just about anything, but
then invariably knock a whole bunch of stuff down before we manage to
remove them. They're like large dogs stuck in cat bodies. So strange.

It's finally becoming more spring-like up here! Weather in the 60's
today and tomorrow, but then we get another bit of lake-effect snow on
thursday... *siiiiiigh*

annie h.
  

    
Mary and Tara,  have either of you ever gone to a Giant Step show?
They're a band that plays at the Doubledoor a lot. I work with the
singer's sister, and promised her I'd do some promoting. So this is me,
promoting. They're pretty good. I'm not the best judge of rock-type
music, but they're really fun live. They play with another local band,
Verbow, pretty often.


Michelle,  will make a note of that (not carry-on-able). My poor
laptop went through the wringer, literally - a man asked whether or not
he could run some tests on it and put it through this thing that looks
like a sideways washing machine. He let two other laptop people
through. I must look relatively dangerous. You would laugh at that, if
you knew what I look like (think the little blue fairy, Merriwether,
from Disney's Sleeping Beauty). 
I really love two of the Snellings pieces I saw, and want to buy one,
but I'll have to negotiate with my inner accountant for a while. She's
generally a pushover, but can be the nastiest creature when it's an
amount I can't justify by saying, "I'd have just spent it on food or
alcohol anyway."
  

    
Lisa Snellings *Clark*... erg! Well, to be fair, I don't think she was
married when I met her.

I was walking down Market Street the other day and the SPCA or Humane
Society or somesuch organization had a little booth set up and two
sweet kitties in cages waiting to be adopted. If the apartment complex
I live in would allow for cats (which they should, as there are 18
living in the complex from the time before the rule was made!) I would
have taken one of them home. The rats wouldn't have minded, and the
mice could live in the bathroom. Eep, I'm just going through feline
withdrawal syndrome. It's my current primary reason for wanting to
move. 

Maure - It's the harmless, sweet, innocent looking ones that are most
dangerous, so naturally you and your laptop were a target for search.
Also, wearing the silly Merriwether garb tends to attract attention...

Neil - Fingers crossed for the Bram Stoker Award. And yay for Caitlin!
"The First Adventures of Miss Catterina Poe" was one of my favourite
Dreaming stories ever... even before the recent kitty obsessiveness.

-squeaks, who must concern herself with an overweight mouse now.
  

    
re my #61:  that should have been Fred Haskell (not Hollander), Minneapolis'
famous Minicon founder, guitar player, and Jerry Garcia look-alike.

I saw Neil, briefly, in the hall the day after the music party referenced
above. At the party, I found myself playing harmonica next to a spunky-
looking female guitar player.  The guitar player eventually resolved into 
I knew when she started playing the "I Would Walk a Thousand Miles" 
song.
  
I didn't see anyone from this list other than Neil and Laurel Krahn
at the Flash Girls concert (unless you count pnh, who was up on stage
providing stawart guitar support for them). Emma wore an interesting 
costume that made her look like a cross between a Jaguar Woman
and an insect super-heroine.  (I was privileged to be on a panel with Emma,
Steve Brust, and Peg Kerr before the concert on Music in Fiction, where
we discussed ways that science fiction stories evoke a sense of music
and musicians in readers.  Authors who were mentioned included R.A McAvoy,
Pat Wrede, Pamela Dean, and Patricia McKillip, along with Steve and Emma,
themselves.)

There was a music party after the Flash Girls, and there's going to be
one tonight, too, in a couple of hours.  
  

    
Lenny,  it sounds like you're having a fabulous time. I have yet to
hear the Flash Girls live. I completely missed them at MadCon. How do
you mean, the writing evokes a sense of musicians? Do you mean, the
writing's rhythm and cadence is like music, or that the writing is
reminiscent of specific music or musicians that exist apart from the
story? I understand both, really. What an interesting panel that would
be. 
  

    
Hmmm, that came off a bit more Gilbert and Sullivan and less
Simpson-esque than I intended.

Neil--Dianna Graf says hello and is most chuffed at her entry in
AITDT. She and her boy Mark came to play with me in Melbourne over the
Easter break and I took some time out from being Countess Snot-ular
(flu, don't ask) to take them to the greatest pub in the world and and
the Gershwin room and the room behind the Gershwin room and to the
toilet that all the famous people go to. And there were circus people
and perfumiers and puppies and fairies.

No. Really. And it's not the medication talking.

Tree
Who is very very tired and back in Brisbane again.
  

    
I am very tired this morning... but it is Monday and that sort of
thing is to be expected.
Among other things, I got my hair bleached and dyed silver this
weekend, so I now look about 20 years older than I am. When I use this
thick white eyebrow pencil on my eyebrows and mustache, the
transformation is damn near complete and *poof* Einstein walks the
streets of San Francisco. I'll have to post a photo soon... 
It threw my family for a loop, as I hadn't told them i was doing it
and simply showed up for Easter supper with my hair a wild tangle of
silver locks. They've learned by now to expect almost anything from me,
though, so it was more of a "tickled and startled" than "stunned and
horrified."
All of this is apropos to nothing, but I felt the need to post
something this morning and I haven't read my Lafferty books yet
(although they did finally arrive this weekend.).
  

    
yay goldfish yay!

I spent the week-end up in Wisconsin with the backflip boy. Saturday
night, we got together with a bunch of friends from Bristol, and two of
the backflip boy's martial arts/gymnastics buds and had much too much
fun on the spring floor and tumble track and tramps at the gym where
the boy teaches kids to be upside down and stuff in Burlington. He
tried to teach me to do a back hand spring, but I fell on my head.
Twice. Apparently, need more upper body strength first. I am very very
sore in place I ddin't even know I had, today. But a good time was had
by all. 

Maure Luke: Yay! I am definitely going on Saturday to the con, and I
shall bring you a chinese yo-yo. Nope, haven't seen Giant Step. What
sort of music are they? I was a very bad monkey and hid in my apartment
and missed both Fonnmhor and the Prodigals when they played Chicago in
March. I suck.

Mary: I's coming! I swear! Um... how are we getting there, again?
  

    
Tara--the Blue Line?

Speaking of ....did y'all hear that we had a guy living in the train
tunnels here in Chicago?  Bit of a nutter (shades of Eddie Izzard
going, "weirdo transvestite....executive transvestite")  He was sort of
"weirdo Neverwhere denizen".  But I still wanted to ask him if he knew
the Marquis.....

Maure--Tara *will* bring you a Chinese yo-yo.  She'd bring one to
Neil, too, but he's usually being Grown Up, and won't fap people with
yo-yos.  

I think "fap" is a lovely word.

Mary (who got Live at the Ambassadors *&* Urepeatable today, and is
now eligible to take over the world)
  

    
Maure: the panel covered both points you mentioned.  Emma was mostly
interested in the rhythm and cadence thing, and I talked about authors
who put musicians in their stories, a bit.  (Steve Brust made drummer
jokes.)  One author I didn't get to mention is Grant Carrington, who
wrote a Fennario story for Ted White's Amazing Stories in the '70s
featuring a Jerry Garcia-like guitar player in a future setting.
  

    
Tara,  a Chinese yoyo?? You're not referring to the wonderful cello
player, are you? Giant Step is, I don't know. Loud, and spastic.
Interesting lyrics, some good songs, and some throwaway ones. But I
mostly listen to old jazz and odd music - I have no idea what's on the
radio these days, so I can't think of a comparison. It sort of reminds
me of early nineties indy/college rock. I don't know.

Mary,  I didn't hear about the nutter in the tunnels! Which line?
What's his name? Do I know him? How interesting. And . . . chinese
yoyo?? Is that the thing on the stick that slides out in a spiral? I'm
always looking for new ways to whack the students . . . They think it's
excruciatingly funny when I threaten them with, "If you don't have
this done, I will beat you with a stick!" Maybe I can change "stick" to
"chinese yo-yo."

Lenny,  I'd have loved to listen to that panel. A lot of good writing
reminds me of music, one way or the other. Some bad writing does too,
actually. And some writers have a particular rhythm and cadence that is
common to all of their work - I guess people generally call this the
writer's "voice?" I don't know. In the magazine Downbeat, they do this
thing - the Blindfold test - where they have a guest musician listen to
recordings. Sometimes they've heard it before, sometimes not, but the
musician has to figure out who's on what instrument, a lot of times
they tell the era, and they give a brief review of what they're
hearing. My ex-roommate made me do this game until I could tell in
seconds whether a tenor player was Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, or
Ben Webster - it really works after a while - none of them sound alike
to me now. The reason I'm babbling about this is because there are some
writers whose writings you can identify as theirs right away, even
without cheating. For me, that's like the jazz singers - easily
discernable, for the most part. And then there are some writers who are
more subtle (these are generally my favorites), whose writing is
unique, but who write so organically that the tone and the composition
is intricate enough to be tricky to someone who hasn't spent months
doing the blindfold test as practice for spotting the little tells.
I've never really tried to put this into words, so I apologize if I'm
so jumbled that what I've really done is just stolen minutes of your
life you will never get back. I probably should have thought about it
more before writing. I'm too exhausted today to think about re-writing
this tomorrow, so I'm posting it anyway. Sorry!
  

    
As my glasses are at LensCrafters overnight and I *really* don't feel
like doing my workout. Although after Tara's back handspring incident,
I maybe should get offline and start up the videotape...

Lenny - That panel sounds awesome. I would have loved to have been
there.

Maure - I know exactly what you mean. I don't do it so much with
writing as with music; but the few authors I have read much of
definitely have a rhythm and a style that makes all their work
particularly their own. It's why I can buy something by the few authors
I collect in First Edition Hardcover without having heard anything
about it, knowing I'll like it. I find that the people who are still
trying to find their style, or who purposefully try to alter it, are
the people I'm more hit-or-miss with. The best is when you have more
than one artist collaborating on a piece (music or writing) and you
find yourself being able to pick out little pieces of who did what -
doesn't work so well if you can draw distinct lines between the
collaborators, but in little bits here and there I find it fun and
fascinating.

Dan - So how long is the hair going to be like that? Wanna be sure to
sneak in a photo or four. Which reminds me... am I the only person
taking photos from Barking Mad Poker? I'm (very slowly) putting up a
page of photos, but if anyone else has any to add...

Tree - You sound like me when I was trying to describe stuff at the
Gorey Ball ('Death and Batties and Fairies, oh my!')

Neil - You called Robert Zemeckis "Bob". It sounds so bizarre... Not
as bizarre as if you were to call him "Abigail" or something, but it's
still strange to me.

Um, that's it. OH! When climbing stuff in the storage room at work,
make sure the crate you lean on for support is actually well grounded,
because when it falls it kind of takes you with it and then you very
nearly have to replace the company phone... *sigh. (I'm fine now)

This public service announcement brought to you by:

squeaks, who has learned the hard way that screaming really doesn't do
much unless the people you're screaming at can actually hear you. :)
  

    
Man,..........I actually voted on moving.
Long ago and far away there lived a little girl.
She was tired of living in her small town, with no water in sight.
She listened to her father's tale of the sea where he grew up every
night as she slipped into sleep.
When asked to cast the deciding vote in wheather the family moved 15
years ago,.....she voted for the sea.
Now,.....as she sits in front to the glowing green and reads the list,
of everyone one she's ever wanted to meet who is still living,
a list that takes place in the very town she voted against living in,
a single tear runs down her cheek.
Man,......

Tracey who has taken artistic licence with the tears part