THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/30/09 -- Vol. 28, No. 18, Whole Number 1569
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Sleep Just 4 Hours a Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Does Germany Have a Better Class of Rich People? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Radio Drama: Frankenstein (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Disassembly Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (BEYOND RICE AND BEANS: THE CARIBBEAN
LATINO GUIDE TO EATING HEALTHY WITH DIABETES,
JULIAN COMSTOCK, and SUDDEN FICTION: AMERICAN SHORT
SHORT STORIES) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This week's MT VOID is brought to you by the Pre-Owned-Humvee
Owners Exchange. Buy a used Humvee today. The Earth is just not
that important. [-mrl]
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TOPIC: Sleep Just 4 Hours a Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
It has recently been discovered that the human body functions
better on non-contiguous short sleep periods. You actually can
feel more refreshed and have a mind that works faster with only
four hours of power-naps a day. Your reasoning and understanding
will improve. I have been on the regimen for two weeks and I find
my mind is a whole lot more lucid and effective. I find all my old
mathematics ability coming back. And amazingly I do get all that
on only four hours of sleep a day. I sleep in four power sessions:
Midnight to 2AM, 6AM to 8AM, Noon to 2PM, and 6PM to 8PM. That's
all it takes. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Does Germany Have a Better Class of Rich People? (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
According to BBC News, "A group of rich Germans has launched a
petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay
higher taxes. The group say they have more money than they need,
and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to
aid Germany's economic recovery."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8321967.stm
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Radio Drama: Frankenstein (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
It is rare that someone adapts the Mary Shelley novel to a dramatic
form and still remains faithful to the source material. There have
been all kinds of films and radio plays supposedly based on
FRANKENSTEIN. I know of only one film version that is accurate.
That is VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN (a.k.a. THE TERROR OF FRANKNSTEIN), a
Swedish-Irish co-production.
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0076881/
However, The Quicksilver Radio company has now made a radio version
that is short enough to be entertaining and still remains faithful
to Shelley's story.
http://tinyurl.com/Quicksilver-Frankenstein
This shows what can be done with radio drama. By the way if you
are interested in a faithful radio version of DRACULA, Orson Welles
did one as his first Mercury Theatre radio broadcast. A copy can
be downloaded from http://www.mercurytheatre.info/.
Good listening. And have a great Halloween. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Disassembly Day (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Not long ago I was helping out a friend. He had lived in a large
apartment--actually a half of a house--since he was young. Now the
time had come for him to move to a new home. He had lost his
parents and was now living in this apartment all by himself. He
had a lot of memories in this house and a large accumulation of
items. One cannot live without accumulating all sorts of "stuff"
in your house. Most houses I know of are full of items of
sentimental value that would mean absolutely nothing to someone
else. One person's memento is another's junk. This was a house
that was filled with memories, and a lot of them took corporeal
form in the shape of a stack of comic books or a model from "Star
Trek" or a box of lenses for some sort of a device to magnify and
illuminate the pages of a book. These memories are made of metal
and plastic and cloth, but the most common material is paper.
There is a magazine on a shelf with the date June 1979 and with a
bookmark in a six-page article that someone still has the intention
to read when there is time. Just loose papers are probably the
most common category of memento.
Owning a house makes the collecting even worse. When you live in
an apartment you have a monthly reminder--when you pay the rent--
that the premises do not really belong to you, and some day you
will have to remove all this stuff. Perhaps then you do not
collect so much of it. Paying rent is a chronic splash in the
face. It reminds you of the reality that someday you will have to
get all this stuff out of your home. But when you actually own a
house, well, you own the house. You don't get the reminder. You
can put things where you want them to be and nobody has any say in
the matter. The house is yours for now and you have the illusion
it will always be.
The truth is that whether you own or you rent your home the day
will come when you have to empty it. All the objects and memories
that you have stored for years will have to be removed. This big
accumulation of stuff will have to be disassembled. Things that
you have not seen for a long, long time will suddenly claim your
attention again. Like kindergarteners besieging their teacher all
these old objects will want your attention at the same time. "I am
your mother-of-pearl shoehorn. What do you want to do with me?"
"We are your grandmother's spoons. Where should we go?" "I am a
photograph of your father when he still had hair. Do you still
want me?" You can put to the back of your mind that this day will
come. But it will. Disassembly Day is coming. This is the day
when your home has to be disassembled and you see old the old
artifacts sitting around. You may die before Disassembly Day
comes, but then someone else will disassemble your things and most
or all will become junk.
Today you accumulate a bit at a time. "The extra blender blades?
We can put those in the back of the kitchen drawer." "The game
diskettes from the Atari? Those can go in the back of the top
shelf of the linen closet." "Those shirts that no longer fit?
Well, until you lose weight those can go up in the attic. Just
until you lose weight." Six months later you ask yourself, didn't
we have more blender blades? Didn't we put those in the linen
closet? You tell yourself you will remember where things are, but
there are too many things to remember.
In our household we have a computer spreadsheet that lists where
the things we look for the most have been kept. But you cannot
track everything. Some things get moved and the list becomes no
longer accurate. People are better than records. I depend a great
deal on Evelyn's memory to locate the double-faced tape or the
dental floss. Sadly my memory is terrible and I cannot be as much
help to her when she is looking for something. It is a rare joy
when I can locate something she is looking for. Even Evelyn
forgets where some things have been put. In unjust frustration I
respond that this object has gone forward in time. It has fallen
through a time warp. We will meet up with it again on Disassembly
Day. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait writes and directs a
surprisingly sharp and cynical story about success, public image,
and fame and is about both those who have it and those who don't.
Robin Williams plays a middle-aged high school teacher who is a
failure in just about every aspect of his life. He is raising a
son who is pointedly obnoxious and vulgar. But a change is coming
for both father and son. This is a story of sharp irony and strong
sarcasm. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Note: The premise of this film is seen only after a plot twist and
will not be revealed here.
The title makes this film sound like the sort of wholesome family
comedy that Disney Studios would have made in the 1960s. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Robin Williams plays Lance, a man
who seems to be met with failure wherever he turns. He teaches
high school poetry in an elective course that almost nobody is
electing. Lance has tried to be a writer and after five novels
nothing he has written has ever made it into print. He would like
a relationship with the attractive art teacher Claire (Alexie
Gilmore), but though she finds him good enough to bed, he is not
good enough to be seen with in public. And the worst thing of all
is his repugnant son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) who hates the world--Lance
most of all. Kyle is totally self-seeking, repulsive, and
offensive. As a single parent Lance is being worn down and chewed
up by all that is happening in his joyless life. But he will get a
chance to have his writing make a difference.
In some ways this film is very much like some of my favorite dark
films, Billy Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE and Budd Schulberg's A FACE
IN THE CROWD. It falls short of those films, but not by as much as
I would have expected from a film by Goldthwait. (Though this is
the first movie I have seen that he directed.) Like the above two
films WORLD'S GREATEST DAD is about the media and how easily public
opinion is formed and deformed. With this deceptively simple film
Goldthwait is playing in the same ballpark as some of the big boys.
By now Robin Williams has been in a wide gamut of roles, but
rarely has he played someone as troubled as he is here. His part
in this film rivals the intensity of his role on ONE HOUR PHOTO and
is probably an edge up on his killer in INSOMNIA. One scene in
this film in which he appears on television and on the edge of
hysteria, ambiguously laughing and crying, is going to be
remembered for a good long time. The touch of showing on the
margins posters and clips from zombie movies, Lance's favorite
genre, seems oddly appropriate to what this film is really about.
I would like to tell you what it is that this film does well.
There will probably be too many people too ready to do that. Just
be aware this is a good film and not at all the film that the title
makes it seem. It is not even the film you will expect it to be
half an hour into the film. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 7/10. This film has raw language and sexual situations.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1262981/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1213731-worlds_greatest_dad/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
MAS ALLA DEL ARROZ Y LA HABICHUELAS: LA GUIA LATINO-CARIBEÑA PARA
COMER SANO CON DIABETES (BEYOND RICE AND BEANS: THE CARIBBEAN
LATINO GUIDE TO EATING HEALTHY WITH DIABETES) by Lorena Drago
(ISBN-13 978-1-58-040221-7, ISBN-101-58-040221-6) is a food guide
in the format of an Ace Double, one side in English and the other
in Spanish. I had hoped to find some good recipes to serve my
father, but it is not a cookbook. Rather it is a guide to adapting
Puerto Rican/Dominican/Cuban cuisine for diabetics. Reading it,
though, I learned a lot about Puerto Rican cuisine I did not know
(or realize). For example, my father is always asking for more
liquid when I served him beans. It turns out that Puerto Rican
cuisine includes the concept of "el caldito do habichuelas", or
bean sauce, served over rice. (This is not a thick gravy, but
something of soup-like consistency.) Presumably this started as an
economy measure way to stretch the beans further, but it seems to
be popular even when economics don't demand it.
At the very beginning of the book, Drago tells of a home health
nurse from Puerto Rico who asked a weight loss center for
information on Latin diets and was handed a menu that contained
enchiladas and tacos. "Where are the menus with pasteles, and
arrox con gandules?" she asked. And Drago also cited an article
titled "Dominicans Do Not Eat Tacos" by Joan Clifford. This book,
at least, seems to recognize the differences. (Oh, and it does
have a couple of recipes.)
JULIAN COMSTOCK by Robert Charles Wilson (ISBN-13 978-0-7653-1971-
5, ISBN-10 0-7653-1971-3) is good, but disappointing. Why
disappointing? Because I have been a fan of Robert Charles Wilson
from way back, and he has moved away from the very original works
with which he started.
His first books included THE HIDDEN PLACE (a fantasy set in a hobo
camp during the Great Depression), MEMORY WIRE (about cybernetics
in 21st Century Brazil), GYPSIES (about children who can "sidestep"
into other worlds), THE DIVIDE (about the experimental enhancement
of intelligence), THE BRIDGE OF YEARS (about time travel), and
HARVEST (about aliens who come to transform the human race into
something higher).
And while JULIAN COMSTOCK is well-constructed and well-written, it
covers fairly familiar territory. It's set in a post-apocalyptic
future (though it is the "end-of-oil" collapse rather than plague
or nuclear war), the United States has mutated into a
fundamentalism totalitarian state, and we follow a simple farmboy
from his small town home to the bigger world and his adventures
therein. The religious element reminds me a bit of Wilson's
MYSTERIUM, an alternate history in which Gnosticism has prevailed.
The religious nature is emphasized by his choice of the central
character's name (Julian Comstock ... J.C. ... get it?) and his
nickname "Julian the Conqueror", with its echoes of "Julian the
Apostate".
SUDDEN FICTION: AMERICAN SHORT SHORT STORIES edited by Robert
Shapard and James Thomas (ISBN-10 0-87095-265-2) is both a good
idea and a bad idea. I like having a book of very short stories,
because they are great for reading when I have only a few minutes.
(One suspects this book has ended up in more bathrooms,
proportionally, than most any other.) But it is also a book that
"jumps around" so much that it is difficult for the reader to
decide that their time might be better spent elsewhere. I had the
constant feeling that while the story I just finished was not that
good, the next one would be better. After a while, though, I
decided that modern literary fiction was not my thing, and read
only the authors I was interested in (e.g., Ray Bradbury, Tennessee
Williams). I think that I prefer this sort of collection within
the speculative fiction field. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Don't think of us as senior citizens--
think of us as the great old ones.