THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/18/07 -- Vol. 25, No. 46, Whole Number 1441
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Administrivia
Correction
Bangs and Whimpers (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Bayes's Law (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Hammer Resurrected (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE PROMISE (WU JI) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SUPERMAN (1980, Telugu language) (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
BLACK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Unexpected Interconnectivity (letter of comment
by Kenneth Howard)
This Week's Reading (Powell's Books) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Administrivia
This issue is early because on Friday we will be at a ceremony
where my father will become a Professor Emeritus of Western New
England College. We will return to our usual schedule next week.
[-ecl
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
The letter of comment in last week's issue of the MT VOID which
suggested that the lie Obi Wan told could be corrected in the next
revision was by Gerald S. Williams, not Gerard W. Ryan. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Bangs and Whimpers (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
If you want to see the plots for twenty good science fiction
novels (well, maybe eighteen) you might find of interest "Discover
Magazine"'s survey of twenty ways the world could end. Well, the
world will end some time, and these are what "Discover" magazine
considered the twenty most likely ways. I can think of a few
others, like the end we see in CHILDHOOD'S END. Most I had heard
of, but rarely collected in one single place.
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld/article_print
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Bayes's Law (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
One of the arguments usually given for Creation or Intelligent
Design is that things had to be just the way they were or
intelligent life would not have existed. That argument comes from
a possibly willful misunderstanding of Bayes Law. But it is a lot
like believers asking, "Without Divine Intervention how do
geologists account for the claim that the original prehistoric
super-continent Pangea would break up just perfectly to create the
continent shapes we have known about since childhood?" [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hammer Resurrected (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was just writing about Hammer Studios a couple of weeks back
(in the 04/27/07 issue of the MT VOID), and now they are in the
news again. Hammer was the company that revived gothic horror
films in the late 1950s to early 1970s. They were famous for
their Dracula, Frankenstein, and Quatermass series. Hammer did
good stuff that a lot of people my age remember fondly. Their
quality deteriorated over time, slowly raising levels of gore and
slowly dropping the levels of necklines. But throughout their
run they managed to sprinkle in at least a few intriguing films.
The name still conjures up pleasant memories among a lot of fans.
It seems over the past week a European firm has bought up the
rights to the Hammer catalog and the rights to make more films
under the Hammer banner. It was sold to John de Mol, the Dutch
creator of a reality-TV series called "Big Brother." (I know
nothing about it.) Hammer films is a familiar name to me, Big
Brother is much less so. De Mol claims to want to create a "new
generation of horror lovers." To me that sounds good and I would
like to think this is good news, but frankly I am less than
thrilled.
Hammer's horror films were films of their time. Their reputation
was for graphic horror, but the truth was that they did not so
much push the outside of the envelope as to tickle it a bit.
Their films worked--those that did which admittedly were fewer as
time went by--because they had two very good actors. Peter
Cushing and Christopher Lee were fine artists. And more
importantly they knew they had to play their roles seriously. In
the United States, Vincent Price was playing the same kind of
roles and enjoying his roles more than I was enjoying watching
them. He seemed much too frequently to be playing tongue in
cheek. He was tearing down the horror genre with humor while
Cushing and Lee were building it up. They might have been having
fun with the material, but they were having it off-camera, not
on.
But trying to revive Hammer horror now is like trying to revive
Orson Welles's "Mercury Theater". Both were reflections of their
times and of the personalities of specific people involved with
the production. Pushing the envelope on graphic horror would be
very different today. These are different times and different
creative people would be making the films. And after the
lamentable advent of slice-and-dice slasher and torture horror
films it is unlikely that audiences would respond to the old sort
of Hammer horror.
The de Mol consortium is probably just buying a familiar brand
name and putting it on a completely different product. It is
like me building cars and calling them Tuckers, claiming it is a
rebirth of the Tucker tradition. Simon Oakes, one of the two men
charged with running the studio says, "Hammer is a great British
media brand that has lain dormant but lived on in people's
imaginations. It is more intelligent and character-driven than
traditional American 'goreography,' and we intend to capitalize
on this and make it a global brand."
"Capitalize?" "Global brand?" That part does not sound good.
Calling them intelligent and character-driven sounds a little
more promising. And after I say that, I will say that I might
have reacted with the same sort of skepticism in 1957 that anyone
would still enjoy horror films with the same monsters whom Abbott
and Costello were playing slapstick games with.
Hammer films meant a lot to me from the time I saw the double
feature of CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HORROR OF DRACULA at the
Capitol Theater in Springfield, Massachusetts. I think that must
have been about 1962. After that I always looked forward to the
next Hammer Film I could see until about 1974 when on a trip to
Toronto I saw a movie marquee with TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER,
Hammer's second Dennis Wheatley "Black Magic" film. That was the
last good Hammer film. With that film the era of great Hammer
films came sadly to an end. If this is a rebirth of that era,
nobody will be happier than I. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE PROMISE (WU JI) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a Chinese fairy tale told in the style of very
old Chinese fairy tales but brought to the screen with very
modern CGI. A little girl makes a Faustian bargain with a
goddess. Huge armies march. Men out-race the wind. Assassins
make devious plots. There are some spectacular scenes that we
know are generated largely in computers, but they are still
fabulous. Chen Kaije's film is the melodramatic and complex
story of a princess who has made this bargain and now must choose
between a great general and a superhero, knowing she must lose
whomever she picks. China's film industry is learning to make
fun films. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
There are broccoli films and pizza films. Broccoli is
nutritious, and while you are eating you may even appreciate
texture and flavor with a little effort. But it is not enjoyable
like pizza. There was a time in the 1980s and 1990s when Hong
Kong was making some enjoyable action films and at the same time
China was making films that were lofty and edifying. The Hong
Kong films were like cinematic pizza while Chinese films,
following some socialist ideal, were intended to be uplifting--
more the cinematic equivalent of broccoli. China's best
uplifting film director was probably Zheng Yimou. Meanwhile the
Hong Kong film industry was doing well with their action films,
the cinematic equivalent of pizza. The first pizza film to be
made by China, to my tastes, was Chen Kaije's THE EMPEROR AND THE
ASSASSIN, a film of armies, action, and assassins. Somehow this
film was appreciated, but did not get a really big following.
Perhaps it was just not promoted as a pizza sort of film and
people were expecting broccoli. Ang Lee's CROUCHING TIGER,
HIDDEN DRAGON was only part Chinese, but it probably demonstrated
to the Chinese that they could make entertainment films. Zheng
Yimou has been awkwardly transitioning from broccoli films to
pizza ones. His HERO was a beautiful film and even somewhat fun.
THE HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS was even more beautiful, but the
story was melodrama and at times just silly. His CURSE OF THE
GOLDEN FLOWER is visually exquisite but was not dramatically
involving. Now Chen Kaije has made a bigger film of armies,
action, and assassins. It is not as exquisite as THE CURSE OF
THE GOLDEN FLOWER--few films are--but is one big dollop of screen
entertainment, a big Chinese fairy tale writ large across the
screen.
THE PROMISE is the story of a promise and a deception and the
long-term effects of each. In the film's first prolog a poor
little girl, Qingcheng, promises that in return for riches and
glory she would lose any man she would ever love. It a mythic
bargain reminding one of Alberich's fateful bargain in the
opening of DAS RHINEGOLD. In the second prolog a great
conquering general Guangming (played by Hiroyuki Sanda) of a
crimson red army acquires a slave Kunlun (Jang Dong-Kun) with the
magical power to run as fast as the wind. Almost immediately the
general is wounded, apparently mortally, and asks his new slave
to perform a mission in the general's all-encompassing armor so
people would believe it is the general himself. Kunlun does and
on the way saves the life of Qingcheng. At the heart of this
story is a love triangle among the general, his magical slave,
and the woman who dare not let herself love either. Mixing into
the brew is the evil assassin Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse) who covers
half his face.
At thirty-five million dollars this is China's most expensive
film to date. While that price tag seems modest by Hollywood
standards it buys a lot of labor in China. Computer graphics, it
should be remembered, are actually very labor-intensive.
Technicians have to labor over each frame of a film to get it
right. A million dollars buys a lot of digitized tweaking in
China. We see huge battles. And there are individual martial
arts fights obviously enhanced with wirework. The story may be a
little complex and not be easy to follow. There may be a few too
many over-dramatic scenes, but this is a fairy tale in a
traditional Chinese style. It may not always be coherent, but it
is a beautifully visualized fairy tale. The images are highly
stylized with strong use of primary colors.
This may be one of the most purely enjoyable films we have seen
coming from China. In the end the film may be less than the sum
of its parts, but some of those parts are simply marvelous. It
is not so much like a RAISE THE RED LANTERN as a Chinese THE
SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, not good in every detail, but with some
wonderful images. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0417976/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: SUPERMAN (1980, Telugu language) (film review by Mark
R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A man is able to fix his family's problems when Hanuman
gives him super powers. This 1980 Tollywood film is an ultra-
cheesy rip-off of the DC Comics character Superman. It was a
blockbuster in an India at a time when busting blocks must have
been extremely easy. Rating: -2 (-4 to +4) or 1/10
This Tollywood film (like Bollywood but in the language Telugu)
creates a cheap Indian version of the famous superhero. The main
character in this film is called "Superman", but the film gives
every indication that was not the name it was shot under. It
could easily have already have been completely filmed before the
decision was made to name him that. My un-informed guess is that
he was to be called something like Hanu-Man. But under the title
SUPERMAN it was much more likely to be a hit. Raja, the main
character, wears a super-suit much like the DC comic hero, but he
has a big "H" on his chest.
While our hero has powers like Superman, his origin is closer to
that of Batman. The film begins during a festival to honor
Hanuman. (Note: Hanuman is ape-like and actually the Lord of
Apes. If this sounds a little like Sun Wukong, China's Monkey
King, there may be a common origin. Hanuman is a loyal servant
to Lord Rama in the Ramayana.) Getting back to our story, young
Raja is partaking of the festival with his loving parents. They
honor a strange-looking stone statue of Hanuman, preparing an
offering of valuable gems. But then three badmen, apparently
outlaw cowboys, break into the house, steal the gems, and kill
Raja's parents before Raja's eyes. The mourning and angry Raja
prays to the Hanuman statue that he might be given the power to
avenge his parents. The statue at first does nothing, but as his
prayers become more fervent suddenly he stands not in front of a
statue but before Hanuman himself. Hanuman transforms the
grieving Raja into a boy with the powers of Hanuman which are
pretty much those of our Superman. His suit is also a minor
variation on Superman's suit including a big "H" on his chest.
Still, everybody calls him Superman in the dialog and Tollywood
songs.
But there the similarities end. Forget about Truth, Justice, and
the South Asian Way. Raja has his hands full just punishing his
enemies. Raja can fly as a last resort, but prefers to chase
villains in his not-very-super mini-van. There is no changing in
phone booths for this Superman. At will he can just flash
between street cloths or super-suit. In his secret identity he
does not wear glasses. In fact, I could not detect any visual
difference in his face between his normal and super forms. I
guess the tights distract the locals and his identity remains
secret. This makes it even less understandable why nobody
recognizes him than it does for Clark Kent. Neither Clark Kent
nor Raja can dance, but at least our Superman at least knows he
can't dance. It has been aptly observed that the actor who plays
the adult Raja looks like an Elvis impersonator from Elvis's
later, fatter years. Even in tights Raja looks more like a
lounge lizard than a superhero, and in or out of costume he looks
like just exactly the same lounge lizard. Rama Rao, who plays
the adult Raja, could take acting lessons from Paul Naschy. The
film attempts a romantic and has a ten-rupee version of the "Can
You Read My Mind" idyllic flight.
The special effects of the film have no magic whatsoever and are
several steps below even the 1940s Superman serials. At least in
the serials the filmmakers knew that they could not do flying
effects. In this film when you see Superman fly he is clearly
standing on a solid floor and the floor seems to fly with him.
To change direction the actor stands still while the camera flips
upside-down. The effect is less convincing than it sounds. One
rarely sees a film that leaves the viewer with the feeling he
could have done the special effects better.
The actor who plays Superman is almost as interesting has the
character he plays. Earlier in his career, N. T. Rama Rao had
been in a very large number of mythological films, frequently
playing deities such as Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. This film
was made late in his acting career. Three years later he was
elected the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a southern India
state. It did not work out well as he was thrown out of office
only to be elected again and again be thrown out of office.
The people I know who like this film, like it to laugh at its
incompetence. I generally do not rate a film higher for
ineptitude. I will however say that people who do like bad films
for parties could do a lot worse than the Telugu SUPERMAN with or
without subtitles. I have to rate it a -2 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 1/10.
An excerpt can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj8ApCdC3PM; however, the film
*did not* plagiarize the song "Can You Read My Mind?" from
SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE. The music in the film is much more like
what you hear in the last ten seconds of this clip.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0371968/
Thanks go to Lakshmikanth Madapaty for showing me this film and
serving as a reference for technical details. The information is
his; the errors are mine. Sorry I could not rate it higher, Lax.
[-mrl
===================================================================
TOPIC: BLACK (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The story of Helen Keller and THE MIRACLE WORKER is
transplanted to Northern India so that it can be embedded in a
larger story. Ayesha Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee share the role of
Michelle McNally, blind and deaf from infancy. She is rescued
from limbo by a brilliant teacher (Amitabh Bachchan) who years
later must be rescued from the ravages of Alzheimer's Disease.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali built a visually beautiful film around the
story of "The Miracle Worker." It is hard to imagine such an
elegant and satisfying film coming from the Bollywood system.
Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Some of the most artistic and beautiful films we are seeing these
days are coming from Asia. That is in large part because
computer graphics have made a small proportion of new Western
films visually spectacular, but at a very large cost. SPIDER-MAN
3 is rumored to have cost more than a third of a billion dollars.
Asia has responded with their own films of visual splendor.
Production and labor costs are so much less there that beautiful
films simply cost a lot less to make. Filmmakers like China's
Zhang Yimou have been making stunning-looking films, though of
late in films like CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER his images seem
more important to him than is his story. In 2002 Indian director
Sanjay Leela Bhansali made an opulent adaptation of the popular
melodramatic novel DEVDAS for a small fraction of what such a
beautiful film would cost in the US. Bhansali knows better than
Zhang how to balance story and visuals in this new technological
environment. For BLACK he wrote his own story, no doubt inspired
by some version of THE MIRACLE WORKER. Here the story matches
the visuals in power.
BLACK is the dramatic story of Michelle McNally, once a girl
retrieved from the oblivion of being left blind and deaf from an
early childhood disease. Later in life she must return the favor
to her teacher who is then lost in his own oblivion in life that
is Alzheimer's disease. THE MIRACLE WORKER apparently inspired
the story, and in fact much of the first half of BLACK is a
recapitulation of THE MIRACLE WORKER. The second half of the
film tells of Michelle's struggle to adapt to the world in spite
of her disability, her relationship with the teacher who saved
her, and later her attempts to retrieve him from the clutches of
Alzheimer's. As she has been becoming more aware of her wider
world, his world is collapsing in on him.
Rani Mukherjee plays Michelle McNally as an adult who is three-
quarters British, one quarter Indian and lives in Northern India.
As the film begins her beloved Mr. Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan) is
found wandering in her town years after he disappeared. Her
memory goes back to what this man has meant to her. An early
childhood disease robbed her of both her hearing and her vision.
Much like Helen Keller she lived like an animal because there was
no known way to reach her. An alcoholic teacher, himself almost
giving up on life, takes on the task of teaching Michelle. A
fictional story of this taming might be expected but because the
filmmakers could not improve upon the story of Helen Keller in
the play and film THE MIRACLE WORKER they instead simply borrow
it. That story forms most of the first half of the film.
As the story continues, Michelle goes to college and (surprise!)
she finds that it actually is very difficult for her. But with
patience she learns Braille and is able to see a much more
complex world. The story covers family drama and her life at
school and her religious life. Slowly we see Mr. Sahai fighting
lapses of memory. He then disappears altogether. The film
builds to the moment that started it. After ten years of
apparent wandering Sahai is back in Michelle's village and in
need of help. This is melodrama, but it is good melodrama.
Visually Bhansali creates his images with a limited set of
colors. He rarely strays from white, gray, blue, and, of course,
black. Black is very important to the entire film. Michelle
creates her own definition for the color black that has engulfed
her life. Black becomes for her a metaphor, a mystical
metaphysical color.
BLACK is a very moving film. It is nearly as moving as Arthur
Penn's version of THE MIRACLE WORKER and then tells its own story
which is nearly as powerful. I rate BLACK a low +3 on the -4 to
+4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0375611/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Unexpected Interconnectivity (letter of comment by Kenneth
Howard)
In response to Mark's article on unexpected interconnectivity in
the 05/11/07 issue of the MT VOID, Ken Howard writes, "I saw this
week's editorial. Thanks for the citation. I agree with your
general point about side effects, but would point out that an
important factor is how we adopt the technology, rather than just
the technology itself. Cars, for example. Two from food
processing: high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable
oils are also candidates." [-kh]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
When we visited Washington and Oregon in April, my major
destination in Portland was Powell's Books. Powell's Books is
the largest bookstore in the United States, filling an entire
city block, three stories tall--and that is just their main
store. They claim over a million volumes in their main store.
(The Strand claims 18 miles of books, which I calculate is also
about a million volumes, but it is crammed into a smaller space,
and they do not have the extra locations that Powell's has.)
Powell's has all the features of an independent bookstore: staff
picks, notes about authors hanging on the shelves ("Looking 4
Andrey BIELY? <- Try it spelled BELY"), and so on. It also had
something which may be unique to them--the inter-filing of new
and used books. (I have known other stores that have tried this,
and then given it up.) [Actually, I saw this later in one of the
small stores in Astoria as well, so it may be more common than I
thought.] There are even in-store computer screens where one can
look up what room and aisle a book is in. Oh, yes, the place is
divided into rooms: the blue room is literature, the purple is
history and philosophy and so on.
Unlike many bookstores, Powell's concentrates solely on books.
Oh, there are some non-book items: travel gadgets in the travel
section, literary action figures (Poe and Shakespeare), magnetic
poetry, and Powell's shirts, mugs, etc. But they do not have
music, movies, or any of that sort of stuff. (They do have audio
books, which are shelved separately in the Coffee Room, rather
than inter-filed with the non-audio counterparts. Odd.)
Bookshelves go up to very high ceilings, but the top few shelves
are labeled "Overstock--employees only" and everything that is
shelved for customers was within my reach (I'm 5'3"). There did
not seem to be any step-ladders, but every room has a staffed
information desk whose person can assist you if you cannot reach
something. And the staff are invaluable for answering questions
such as, "Where are the anthologies shelved?" or "Where are books
on bookstores?" While you might know which room you want, still
each is a bit of a maze.
Everything is well-labeled, and findable with the computer--if
you think to ask, rather than just looking where you *think*
something should be. For example, Boehmer's CITY OF READERS,
about Portland's bookstores, is filed with "Pacific
Northwest/Portland" in the Green Room, not with the rest of the
bookstore books in "Books on Books" in the Blue Room.
It is an amazing store, unique among bookstores. With all this,
it seems mean-spirited to point out its shortcomings. But there
are shortcomings: selection, size, and price.
I had read somewhere that it had every book in print; this is
probably not possible, but I had hoped to find an improved
selection because of the used books. However, Powell's is
primarily a *new* bookstore. I would estimate that used
books are less than 25% of the stock. (Mark said that the
sections he looked at were less than 10% used.) The coverage of
several authors was somewhat spotty. There were no copies of any
of the collaborations between Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy
Casares. The only Russell Hoban novels they had were
KLEINZEIT, PILGERMANN, and RIDDLEY WALKER. (He has had at least
four recent ones that I would have thought still in print.) They
did not have Howard Waldrop's recent collections CUSTER'S LAST
JUMP or DREAM FACTORIES AND RADIO PICTURES.
One has to be sure one is looking in the right place, of course
(as with the Boehmer book mentioned above). There were whole
sections I did not get to because I did not realize they existed.
For example, there is a "Classics" section apart from
"Literature". Had "Literature" been called "Fiction", I would
have looked for "Classics" as well. (On the other hand, I think
"Classics" might be just Greek and Roman classics, as I seem to
recall seeing Dickens on the "Literature" shelves.) Their
"Metaphysics" is in a separate room (Red Room: "Scene of
Discovery") from their "Philosophy" (Purple Room: "Where Past
Meets Present").
Ironically, another problem is that Powell's is too large. When
I go into Shakespeare & Co. in New York, its selection is small,
but well-chosen to include a lot of interesting books one does
not see elsewhere. These books are probably all at Powell's, but
there are *so* many books that it is hard to find them.
Powell's "Science" section is a bit small, but they have an
entirely separate Powell's Technical Books store a couple of
blocks away, so the bulk of science and math may be there.
Have I been spoiled by the Internet? Undoubtedly. But it is
also a resistance to new book prices--when 75% or more of the
books seem overpriced to me, it makes the store less appealing.
(I hardly ever go to Borders or Barnes & Noble either.) For me,
the Strand is more attractive. The selection is spottier,
perhaps, since (almost) everything is used (they do have a couple
of tables of discounted new books). But when I find a book in
the Strand, I am reasonably sure that the price will be
reasonable. (As Mark expressed it, if dimes were dollars, he
would have found a lot of books in Powell's he wanted.)
It is not just American prices. In fact, these may be relatively
cheaper than elsewhere--slim mass-market-sized volumes of
Borges's works in Spanish were $12.99 each. (Of course, the fact
that they actually had four different Borges titles in Spanish is
a tribute to Powell's!) And part of my feeling on prices may be
because I have become more selective since retiring. It's not
that we are suddenly poor, but there is a psychological change
that happens when you swap a salary for a pension. When I was
working, I would buy some new hardbacks, and the price was not a
major issue. (Even then, space was a bigger concern.) Now I
rarely buy new hardbacks, and even paperbacks at $7.99 seem
expensive. For that matter, the only section I saw which seemed
to have a large selection of used mass-market paperbacks was the
science fiction (and horror). Most of the rest tended toward
hardbacks or trade paperbacks. And the paperbacks in the science
fiction section were older, out-of-print ones, priced
accordingly. Powell's is not a place to go for half-price
science fiction paperbacks.
And of course, added to all this was the fact that we were
traveling with just carry-on luggage, so buying books meant we
had to pack them. There is no incentive to pay full price for
books we can get at home for the same price or less.
We did buy three books, all used. I bought a copy of Evan
Morris's THE BOOK LOVER'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET, now ten years
old and woefully out of date--but I *am* mentioned in it (for the
"rec.arts.books" FAQ and also my "encyclopedic" bookstore lists).
We picked up a copy of Bernard DeVoto's THE COURSE OF EMPIRE for
$5.95 that had been $17 at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center.
And Mark bought a fantasy origami book. One additional benefit
of Powell's is that, being in Oregon, there is no sales tax!
[In regard to THE BOOK LOVER'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET, Mark notes,
"This is not a recommendation. You have heard of the Boulevard of
Broken Dreams? This book charts the information super-highway of
broken links." -mrl]
No bookstore lover should miss visiting Powell's. In competition
with any new book store, it is a clear winner. But people
expecting a vast supply of cheap (or cheap-ish) used books are
likely to be disappointed.
A word about parking is probably in order. Powell's has its own
garage, which is almost always full (but worth checking out--it's
on the west side of the building, which is one-way heading
*towards* Burnside). It was full on Saturday, but we had no
problem getting in late Sunday afternoon. Well, what I mean is
that there were lots of free spaces. But the in/out ramp is very
steep and has the tightest turn I can remember--we had a small
car, and it took me a three-point turn going in and a *five*-
point one going out to make the turn. (Not only is the turn
tight, but one must be very careful of the support pillars right
next to it!) The first hour is free with any purchase; the
second and third are $1.25 each. Metered parking on the streets
nearby is limited to 90 minutes, which probably would not allow
you enough time (assuming you could find a space), and lots are
not cheap. Your best times may be weekends, when parking can be
found for $3 all day. Or use public transportation. Powell's is
open 9AM-11PM 365 days a year, so you could also try late
evenings. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Illusion is the dust the devil throws
in the eyes of the foolish.
-- Minna Antrim, Naked Truth and Veiled Allusions