Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/21/20 -- Vol. 39, No. 8, Whole Number 2133
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, *mleeper@optonline.net *
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, *eleeper@optonline.net *
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Topics:
Hazard (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
First on the Moon (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
ALL HAIL THE POPCORN KING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Restrooms (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
Americans and Guns (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
Hot Food (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
This Week's Reading (Classics Illustrated comics)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hazard (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
From Mark Leeper's Diary March 13, 1987:
At the request of certain people at certain insurance companies who
provide AT&T benefits, we are moving the science fiction club
notice to Friday, rather than Wednesday. It seems that there is
concern that some people in the club are not taking the precautions
necessary to avoid Mondays altogether. Every week, there are AT&T
employees who suddenly come to the realization that it really is
Monday and that they have a whole week of stressful work in front
of them. Mondays have been attributed to stress, heart attack,
suicide, colitus, Ostran's Disease, and in-grown fingernails. It
has been considered to move Monday later in the week so that it
would not be so stressful, but that suggestion was dropped after
one very high AT&T official labeled the idea "dumb-ass." More
popular with management has been the idea of encouraging people to
work their normal hours on weekends as well as during the week so
that Mondays would be no more stressful than any other day. This
of being for the good health of the general employee population,
for the simple reason that it was expected that some of the
employees, not knowing what was good for them, might balk at the
abolition of days off. Then, one of the bright young executives in
the board room came up with a suggestion worthy of this innovative
company. It was simple and elegant. He suggested increasing the
work pressure on employees so they would voluntarily work on
weekends. The rest is history.
However, until the plan reaches its final phases, there is the
problem that there are still some employees who participate in the
unhealthy practice of not working weekends. For these it is feared
that the shock of discovering that it is Monday could be
disastrous. To counteract this danger we are arranging that notice
arrive later to make it more convenient to be read on Monday. It
is hoped that reading the notice and seeing how bad my writing is
should make anyone feel better and perhaps downright superior.
Please, then, if you get the notice on Friday--and some locations
do--don't read it right away. Scientists have determined that you
need very little cheering up on Fridays. That need peaks for
almost everyone at 8:37 AM on Monday as the realization of just how
far away a weekend is dawns on the average employee. The need then
diminishes as the week wears on. Save the notice and we can all
read it on Monday. Jumping the gun or postponing could be a
serious health hazard. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: First on the Moon (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
We are re-watching the HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon"
and in the episode about Apollo 11, the TV reporter seems to be
baiting Buzz Aldrin about the fact that he won't be the first to
step on the moon, and wouldn't he like to be? And this apparently
leads to Aldrin tryiing to get NASA to change its mind about the
order.
I suppose I believe all this happened as shown, since they do seem
to be striving for accuracy. But my question is whether Aldrin
continued to regret it (or still regrets it), or whether the effect
that Armstrong's selection had on him made Aldrin come to be
happier that he was not first. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: ALL HAIL THE POPCORN KING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: ALL HAIL THE POPCORN KING is a study of the surrealist
writer Joe R. Lansdale, author of 50 novels and 500 short stories.
He has a coterie of twisted but loyal fans as twisted as Joe.
This makes for a fun film. I rate this 55-minute documentary a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
It is hard to tell which is the most insane, Joe R. Lansdale, the
stories he writes, or the effort to disentangle the two. Each
seems to crawl spiderlike along the border between surrealism and
reality. Like his fiction, Lansdale's novels and stories do not
fit into a world defined by others. The result comes tumbling out
of Lansdale's typewriter with a frenetic style like Monty Python,
but with a sharper, darker edge. The film covers Lansdale from his
pre-school days when he was reading and writing and his age was
deep in the single digits.
This film is a fun biographic study of Lansdale entitled ALL HAIL
THE POPCORN KING. It clocks in at 55 minutes, just a bit too short
to be feature-length and is just a bit too long not to be
dangerous. Don Coscarelli, who wrote and directed BUBBA HO-TEP is
among the fanatic Lansdale followers, and is also interviewed in
ALL HAIL THE POPCORN KING.
BUBBA HO-TEP takes place in the present day in an East Texas
nursing home. It imprisons Elvis Presley (played by Bruce
Campbell) and John F. Kennedy (played by Ossie Davis). Both are
alive, contrary to popular opinion, but getting darn tired of the
life of dismal routine. So the two patients set out for reasons
never explained to try to capture the mummy, a walking deadly
Pharaoh, who is wrapped in bandages and thousands of years old.
Lansdale's story may have a great feel of location but also
intentionally uses its time to play with the readers' sense of
passing time. Joe was born in Nacogdoches. He got his start in
writing by eating his mother's popcorn made with rancid lard. It
gave him bad dreams that he used as a source of fantasy for his
writing career, so that, such as it is, is literally built on his
dreams. Director Hansi Oppenheimer uses an art motif borrowed from
a rundown drive-in.
As director, Oppenheimer shares some secrets of Lansdale's writing
style. Every page of Lansdale is drenched in Texas atmosphere that
feels authentic.
This film is a paean to deep counter-culture. Overall I rate ALL
HAIL THE POPCORN KING a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits:
*https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12860922/reference
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12860922/reference*
What others are saying:
*https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_hail_the_popcorn_king
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_hail_the_popcorn_king*
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Restrooms (letter of comment by Steve Milton)
In response to Paul Dormer's comments on "loos" in the 08/14/20
issue of the MT VOID, Steve Milton writes:
"Loo" from the French "L'eau". [-smm]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Americans and Guns (letter of comment by Keith F. Lynch)
In response to Evelyn's comments on Americans and guns in the
08/14/20 issue of the MT VOID, Keith F. Lynch writes:
Before I lived here (a rented room in a townhouse in Merrifield,
Virginia), a Ukrainian visitor was renting what's now my room. I
was visiting when he asked his (now my) landlord/housemate and I if
he could borrow a gun, as he wanted to shop at the Target across
the street. This is a very safe neighborhood, and neither of us
has ever owned a gun. [-kfl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hot Food (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
In response to Robert K. Shull's comments on hot food in the
06/26/20 issue of the MT VOID, Scott Dorsey writes:
[Robert K. Shull writes,] "What you get depends a lot on where in
the US you are. There's an Americanized Chinese dish called
"pepper chicken". I've seen it in Washington, DC with black
pepper, in New Hampshire with bell/green pepper and on buffets in
Texas it's usually a 50/50 mix of chicken and jalapenos. (New
Hampshire is still the only place I've ordered Thai food "five
star" spicy and still found no detectable trace of "heat".)
These are two different dishes. The thing with green pepper will
be listed on the menu as quing/jiao/niu/rou or "pepper steak." It
is an Americanization of the traditional Fujian
quing/jiao/chao/rou/si.
That dish has also become traditional Thai, Korean, and Japanese
food, after being adapted from the Chinese as well.
The black pepper thing is an adaptation of a southern Chinese thing
that you see in Hong Kong as hei/jiao/niu/liu. (Literally black
pepper beef tenderloin.)
Part of the problem here is that we use the same basic word for
pepper, and the Chinese have totally different words for black and
green peppers. Don't even get me started on long pepper. [-sd]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The other day Mark was looking for the Classics Illustrated edition
of ROBUR THE CONQUEROR that he was sure he had. Well, we couldn't
find it, and checking the catalog turned up no entry, so it must
have been something from his childhood that had disappeared. We
did had a Marvel Classics Comics edition of MASTER OF THE WORLD,
but that was not the same story. This got us into a discussion of
whether the Marvel comics were just the "original" Classics
Illustrated with a new cover. I thought they were, but Mark
(correctly) said they were not.
Well, it turned out that we had four different editions of
illustrated comics of THE INVISIBLE MAN: the "original" Classics
Illustrated #153 (price 15 cents), Marvel Classic Comics #25 (1977,
price 50 cents), the Spanish-language edition of the "Classics
Ilustrados" #M-9 (1981, price M$33 in Mexico), and the new Classics
Illustrated #20 (1991, $3.95). The two Marvel editions are the
same artwork, while only the text in the text blocks differing in
language. Their artwork is reminiscent of the original Classics
Illustrated edition, but not identical and the text also differed.
The new Classics Illustrated was the most different. To start
with, it is on heavy glossy paper bound as a book (not on saddle-
stapled newsprint), complete with an ISBN (0-425-12663-3). And the
artwork is of a much more modern style, and did not imitate the
original nearly as much as the Marvel did. (The latter had panels
that were very similar except for distance from the action, or
characters wearing the same red scarf, and so on.)
By the way, I put "original" in quotation marks above, because
Classics Illustrated began as "Classic Comics" (1941 through 1947).
However, the series appears to have just changed names, rather than
restarting, so I do not believe there was a "Classic Comics"
version of THE INVISIBLE MAN. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
*mleeper@optonline.net *
Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.
--Elizabeth Taylor