I found these pictures on my hard drive after synching with my Palm Pilot. They are grainy and crummy for the most part. Bob Sargent and I jumped a train recently to be at our mutual friends' Bob and Claire's wedding at the Franklin Institute in Philly.. they got married in front of the giant beating heart.

The reception was a great old time...



(as usual, I apologize for the 50megs ad...)

---

For those of you not in the know, DAVE THE DUDE runs a neat little podcasting show on DaveTheDude.com-- I find it a pleasure to listen to a guy ramble on about such diverse subjects as pulling the plug on coma patients, the ultimate fate of that crazy bitch in Alaska who cut off her boyfriend's penis and flushed it down the toilet, and an explicet analysis of the use of irony in Alanis Morissette songs (and that's just from the latest show!). If they only knew what was playing in my headphones in cubicle land. I guess that's what Podcasting is all about, neh?

Dave the Dude will be having one of my heroes on his show SAINT PATRICK'S DAY. MARCH 17th (not this Friday, sorry, I got that one wrong!)-- namely Penn Jillette, the large, talkative half of avant garde comedy/magician act PENN AND TELLER. Send Dave your questions for Penn and listen in.


You can play most podcast directly through a browser, or download to an Ipod like device. I use a Palm Zire 72c which is great for listening to MP3s with.

Note the date change... I had somehow gotten the impression this broadcast would be this Friday. It ain't... it's on Saint Paddy's day. By rhe way, I sent in these questions:

1. Will you ever consider doing a show, book, tv special or documentary that focuses on debunking faith healing and other swindles, possibly in conjunction with James Randi? I know the issue is near and dear to you as I have read your books.

2. I've seen your act numerous times and bought & read the Penn and Teller books. I get a sense that you appreciate the history of magic and magicians from the very early days onward. Would you have some suggestions for the listening audience about good historical sources for the history of presitidigitation in the United States and Europe?

I know, I'm a drooling, slobbering fanboy.

Have fun!

---

I can't stop looking for keen new chrome to add to blogs.

My latest fun little toy is BLOGCHAT, a service now in beta that will allow
little chat windows to open up on your blogs.

I have no idea if this will continue to be a free service, or will start charging after they are out of beta test. I hope not. There are some free alternatives that could be used that are almost as good as Blogchat.

This is a fairly spiffy web-based app that pretty much works as advertised (outside of firewalls). I had a very difficult time getting the master console to run when running it in a browser at work. However, no problema from the homestead.

SO! if you see the little green diamond, click on it and launch a chat window. I promise I'll be something less than surly and a Jack Nastyface.

---

Gene Scott passed away, and Hunter S. Thompson blew his head off over the weekend

LOS ANGELES - Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died, a family spokesman said. He was 75.

Scott died Monday after suffering a stroke, said the spokesman, Robert Emmers.

The longtime pastor of Los Angeles University Cathedral began hosting a nightly television broadcast of Bible teaching in the mid-1970s. His University Network eventually aired a nightly talk show and Sunday morning church services on radio and television stations in about 180 countries.

Scott's church, a Protestant congregation of more than 15,000 members, raised millions of dollars through round-the-clock Internet and satellite TV broadcasts, where he would demand of viewers: "Get on the telephone!" to donate.

In some of his speeches, Scott would deliver complex lectures on Biblical languages to make points about the meaning of faith. But he also spoke on current events, sometimes lacing his sermons with profanity.

He supported the war in Iraq (news - web sites). "Iraq is a threat to the world," he said in a 2003 speech posted on his Web site. "So kick the hell out of 'em, George."

Recognizable by his mane of white hair and scruffy beard, Scott never stuck to a conventional format in his talk show. He sometimes smoked on the show and once wore glasses with eyes pasted on them.

Unlike other televangelists, Scott's sermons did not condemn homosexuality, abortion or other hot-topic sexual issues. He argued such issues were a personal choice.

Scott, the son of a traveling preacher, had a lavish lifestyle that included a chauffeured limousine, contact with political bigwigs and, he claimed, 300 horses.

But he also spent lavishly on charity. After a fire badly damaged the Los Angeles Central Library, he organized a telethon that raised $2 million. In 2002, Scott gave $20,000 to save the Museum in Black from eviction. The museum has some 5,000 items from the slave and civil rights eras.

Scott came under scrutiny by authorities on several occasions, including by the state attorney general's office in 1977, which suspected him of fraud. The investigation was dropped, however, after the Legislature passed a law barring prosecution of civil fraud against tax-exempt religious organizations.

And Hunter Thompson shot himself:

ESPN.com news services
Feb. 21 DENVER — Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67. Thompson's wife, Anita, had gone out before the shooting and was not home at the time. His son, Juan, found the body.

Thompson "took his life with a gunshot to the head," the wife and son said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News. The statement asked for privacy for Thompson's family and, using the Latin term for Earth, added, "He stomped terra."

Neither the family statement nor Pitkin County sheriff's officials said whether Thompson left a note.

Investigators recovered the weapon, a .45-caliber handgun. An autopsy was planned. Joe DiSalvo, a spokesman for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department, said the investigation was continuing but declined to elaborate.

Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

Thompson, whose early writings mostly appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on such figures as Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."

Thompson also wrote such collections as "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.

In recent years, Thompson penned frequent columns for ESPN.com's Page 2 since its launch in November 2000.

"Hunter Thompson's passing is a tremendous loss, not just to the ESPN family, but to any fan of American literature," ESPN.com Editor-In-Chief Neal Scarbrough said. "He was a trailblazer, a literary icon who has given generations of writers and readers many lessons in finding their voices. As with any sudden loss, there is a search for answers about Hunter's passing. ESPN.com owes him a debt of gratitude for continuing his work on Page 2, where he was — from the start — committed to the success of the page and gave us his best as he continued to reach out to his fans, old and new. Through it all, his writing and perspective managed to occupy a space that no other writer could fill. It's sad to realize it's a voice we won't hear from again …"

Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and once said Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."

Thompson was often linked with fellow writers Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe as part of a troika of literary titans who invented a reporting style in the 1960s that came to be known as the New Journalism. But Talese, for his part, never saw it that way, saying Monday that Thompson was an original.

While all three writers took an eye for description and detail to new heights, only Thompson immersed himself so thoroughly — and often so outrageously — into his stories, Talese told The Associated Press.

"I will miss him as a man who was amusing while he was also insightful," the author of "Honor Thy Father" said by phone from his New York City apartment. "He was amusing and also maybe wretchedly out of step with the current morality. At this time of political correctness, he was never politically correct, and that is what I'll miss the most about him."


Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury." He was portrayed on screen by Bill Murray in "Where The Buffalo Roam" and Johnny Depp in a film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

That book, perhaps Thompson's most famous, begins: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

Later in the book he wrote, "We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers."

Whether he actually prepared for his assignments with that kind of indulgence, Talese said he didn't know. "You never know what these people do," the author said. "They know what is entertaining about their material, and sometimes what is not true about their life becomes part of their persona."

Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

In one of his more recent books, "Kingdom of Fear," he described the members of the current Bush administration: "They are the racists and hate mongers among us — they are the Ku Klux Klan." And those were his more polite terms for them.

"He had more to say about what was wrong with America than George W. Bush can ever tell us about what is right," a fellow writer, Norman Mailer, said in a statement released Monday.

And it was Thompson's relentlessness that drew so much appreciation.

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home. "It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party. "But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers." Thompson's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant trying to chase a bear off his property. But despite the gunfire and the wild, drug-addled image he projected in his writing, Thompson was on good terms with the sheriff's department and was friends with Sheriff Bob Braudis and with DiSalvo, the sheriff's director of investigations.

"I would definitely call him a friend," DiSalvo said. "This was not the way I expected Hunter to die." Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stockton Thompson served two years in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner. Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts for stories that didn't materialize. It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion. Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us." Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while." The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste. "That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Attribution: Gene Scott story from Yahoo News (API), HST story from ABC News.com, both respective copyright 2005 and all rights reserved thereto.

I promised myself this BLOG wasn't going to go all weepy whenever a cultural icon from my youth passed away, which has been happening with distressing frequency lately (see my post on the death of Frank Kelly Freas, back in the archives). Death is a fact of life, of course, and for many it is a portal to a better existence or even a release from pain. But for those of us who are left behind, death can be a bitch, even for people you have never met, or only knew from media exposure, or even just kind of wanted to hang out with.

And suicide can be the biggest bitch of them all.

Some of you might be blinking and asking Gene WHO???

Well, he was a crazy late night televangelist... a guy who started out as a bible thumpin' come-ta-Jaysus preacher but ended up way left of center, droning on in strange, discordant and disassociative sermons, from a director's chair, usually wearing a crazy hat and smoking a big fat cigar. He often would make his crew sing hymns and bitch them out if he didn't like the job they were doing.

He had a little network of late night affiliates on low rent tv channels (usually UHF, like WDCA 20 in the DC area). He was on late.. I often caught his gig in a state of intoxication which added to the surreal quality of his already hugely surreal broadcast style. Imagine Dali combined with Billy Graham.

He was an original, you have to hand it to him.

As for Hunter S. Thompson's suicide, what can I say?

Suicide isn't noble. It's God-awfully painful for the people you left behind. Thompson's suicide will leave open a lot of unanswered questions and protract his wife Nancy's grief probably for the rest of her life. Well, likely it will, I can only guess.

So I'm not going to publish any enconiums for what I consider a selfish and destructive act.

With that said, I loved the guy's writing style... intense, paranoid, delusional, witty, incredibly driven and verbose.

My favorite HST piece is one from (I think) GENERATION OF SWINE... it's not political, it's a reflective piece typed at 4 in the morning. Thompson had just chopped off the head of a giant hog that was was going to be barbecued on a spit at the spiffy Florida Keys vacation spot (Sugar Loaf key, I think), put lipstick on it, and stuffed it in the resort owner's bathroom toilet. Now he was regretting it, desperately debating trying to go in and retrieve it or bolting from the resort on his boat as fast and far as he could. Simply hilarious.

I met him once, handshake and compliments only, at the U-Maryland lecture circuit, many years back. He was far more coherent and serious than he has been portrayed by the media. And relatively gracious, for him.

So, Hunter, I hope you're wowing them in whatever circle of Hell that Dante reserved for the self-annihilating. I'll miss your work. You have your reasons for killing yourself which most of us will never be privy to, leaving your reading public baffled (again!)

---

From the AP Wire, Berlin:

Berlin restaurant caters for people who would rather not eat
News
BERLIN (AFP)
Thursday January 13, 2005

With her white chef's hat, Claudia looks at home in the kitchen of this Berlin restaurant, but her culinary talents are being used to feed people who, like her, suffer from eating disorders.


Katja Eichbaum
AFP

The owner of "Sehnsucht", or Nostalgia, in the German capital's Tiergarten quarter is Katja Eichbaum, and she too has come a long way back from the brink.

Her appetite began to disappear when her parents split up while she was a teenager. She lost 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds), then put the weight all back on again in no time and was admitted to hospital for three months in 2003.

Since then, a long period of therapy has begun bearing fruit, she explained recently, sitting on one of two huge lounge chairs placed in the restaurant's entrance to make the clients "feel at home".

Katja and Claudia consider that they have recovered and began helping others like them last month by opening the first restaurant in Germany, and perhaps in all of Europe, where anorexics and bulimics can eat without feeling ashamed.

Anorexia nervosa, from the Greek word meaning "loss of appetite", is an affliction stemming from a fear of gaining weight and leads sufferers to deny their hunger and essentially starve themselves.

Bulimia, which like anorexia is predominantly contracted by women, is a virtual food obsession that leads to eating binges followed by acts to make up for it like self-induced vomiting or excessive exercise.

"What is important is that the girls take the first step, that they at least have a taste. They can also ask for small portions," said Eichbaum.


Claudia at "Sehnsucht"
AFP/File

So that they don't feel stigmatised, nothing out front or in the entryway suggests that people are entering a restaurant that caters for those with special needs.

Indeed Sehnsucht is open to everyone, which helps the owners make money, at least enough to be encouraged by in the establishment's early stages.

The cooking? "Absolutely normal. Neither too little nor too much," said Eichbaum, who is keen, above all, to reassure her clientele.

Katja drew up the menu herself without any medical advice or help from a nutritionist. "I learnt how to eat again through my therapy," she said.

She has held down a number of different jobs and is convinced she can best help her clients, who often come in groups, like the members of the "Dick und duenn", or the Fat and Thin, association.

Some 30 or so people with eating disorders have hesitantly pushed their way through the doors at Sehnsucht in the month since it opened.

According to Thomas Falbesaner, a medical expert on anorexia and bulimia, the establishment could be helpful as "a reserved space for people who are returning to a normal life, but who are still sensitive about food."

The names of the dishes are often poetic. "Wolf's Hunger" describes a lamb dish, "Soul" is the name for cappuccino creme with biscuit. Other techniques help entice people for whom food has taken on another dimension to the table.

Breakfast is served on three small plates piled up in tiers rather than on one small one, while ice cream comes in tiny bowls.

Then there are the staff, most of whom have normal appetites. Under no circumstances will a diner catch a glance or hear a comment that might undermine their desire to finish a meal.

"It can happen," acknowledges Claudia, who despite her own eating problems has never found it difficult to prepare meals, even copious ones, for other people.

In February, Eichbaum plans to open a centre next to her restaurant where anorexics can meet, think about organising meals, go shopping together and cook, and she is hoping she will be able to get some government funding.

According to the institute for food medicine, some 100,000 anorexics, most of them women aged 15 to 35, live in Germany. Men are estimated to make up five to 10 percent of anorexics but their numbers are on the rise.

Some 600,000 people suffer from bulimia.

Not to be outdone in this fierce rivalry, Parisian restraunteurs have announced the creation of a French counterpart to Sehnsucht, called "Le Spew".

I wonder if they distribute a feather and a bucket with the bulemic menu...

(No, I'm not trying to be deliberately insensitive, so... SHADDUP!

---

For those who are interested in books, I have been trying to catch up my occassional book review BLOG, entitled AM I BETTER SERVED STARING AT MY FEET? You can see the link to it at the top of my "Other BLOG" list on the left.

Recent additions to this shamefully neglected site:

A Survey of the Flashman series, by George MacDonald Fraser, brought on by the news that FLASHMAN AT THE MARCH will be published this Spring.

A review of the new McDevitt novel, Polaris

A Look at my current book pile, which is repeated below (so don't bother with that one).

Have fun!

---

Here's a cute little tool from AT&T.

NATURAL VOICE DEMO PAGE. Type the phrase in, the computer spits it back out at you. It's meant for all sorts of helpful stuff, like web-based education. Me, I like to type in filthy, obscene phrases and have it play back into my headphones.. but then again, I'm such a small-minded man. Really.

---

A random sampling of USENET topics on Goggle's Goggle Groups:

"How to learn English in Hong Kong"
"Gambling guide on Net"
"Ebay Auctions"
"The World's Largest Sex & Swinger Personals site!"
"Have you ever play Loteria Mexicana?"
"Top Online Casinos Updated"

These are some of the postings you might expect to see sprinkled liberally throughout one of the nicer USENET groups-- e.g., a group that doesn't explicitly handle porn, politics, holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, get-rich-quick schemers, and amateur historians of the Armenian Holocaust (the latter is a long, long story).

The total effect of this kind of thing has been to render USENET marginal over the years. Once the world's bulletin board service, USENET has been in sad decline for at least 5 to 10 years-- as the people who made the community what it is left in disgust and the crazies and hucksters took over.

To their credit, GOOGLE (which bought the rights to the USENET archive from DEJANEWS a few years back) has made GREAT strides in filtering out the garbage. Their new Group reader beta is by far and away the best iteration yet, and keeps out about 80% of all the offtopic crap that ruins boards. Still, there's that annoying 10-20% that think it's amusing to vent their spleen on USENET, and their going to be hard to get rid off.

An interesting alternative to the Google approach is the Talkabout Network:



Which is, according to their mission statement:

The Talk About Network is a family of websites allowing for open communication around the world and in your neck of the woods. We allow members to have conversations (topics) that can last minutes, days, months or years. We allow these to be archived and fully searchable and readable by visitors so they can benefit from the knowledge of past and future visitors.

In reality, they follow a USENET styled threading and posting system, but seem to be very good about filtering out garbage posts. How this is achieved, I don't know yet. The depth of topics is not quite as good as the USENET system is/was/used to be, but I have not detected a lot of spurious posting in the four or five groupings I've been to so far. New topic creation appears to be easier than the voting system on USENET, as well. There's still the same old crap that comes from human squabbling, but that's impossible to avoid.

Some modules of interest to me:

Historical Miniatures
Development and Design
Arts, Photography
Arts, Graphic Design ++
Arts, Science Fiction ++
Arts, Video ++
Arts, Comics ++
Arts, Literature ++
Recreation, Motorcycles
Computers, Internet ++

(++ indicates that there are subsidiary levels)
Best of all, it's free, like all the good things in the world.

---

This time, recording a little audio from a George Carlin album.

First test of AVANT BLOG for the Palm Pilot. I'm actually typing this on AvantBlog's webform, which synchs up to BLOGGER.COM via an AvantGo Channel. Interesting, albeit pretty limited way to enter text.



I don't know if I'm SO crazy about posting constantly that I'll ever use half of the tools that are available for me to Blog with. Some are cool, like this one (and AudioBlog), and others suck.

Not to be critical but I notice that Avantblog posted this sucker twice.. still a few bugs in the system!

---

Something I hadn't noticed before... Audioblogger, which is a free service here on BLOGGER.COM. I like this thing.

If you're dying to hear THE VOICE OF NIZZ, click on the link below.

---

It's my habit to read several things concurrently, depending on input
stream.. audio book, e-books on the Palm, the old fashioned bound kind. This is what is currently on the pile:

I'm currently reading Jack McDevitt's POLARIS (his latest, but not
best, novel). Jack tends to write "space archeology/mystery" stories,
and ALL of them (except MOONFALL) are good, addictive, reads. His
best is A TALENT FOR WAR (about debunking a 'hero of the galazy' myth
through detective work... excellent.. and POLARIS is set in the same
setting). (bound, h/c)

I'm also reading McSWEENEY'S ENCHANGED CHAMER OF ASTONISHING STORIES
(short stories, Ed. Michael Chabon). I picked it because of the
editor, Michael Chabon, who wrote THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND KLAY.
Hit or miss, but some great stories so far-- I like Joyce Carol Oates
a lot, and she wrote the first story in the collection. (bound, trade)

Also, LOST IN A GOOD BOOK by Jasper Fforde. This is vol. 2 in the
"Thursday Next" series.. a very odd little group of books about a
literary detective that can actually insert herself in book plots to
prevent history from changing. Quirky and excellent. (bound, trade)

If you like horror/mystery/historical fiction:

I have these in from the library: THE NARROWS by Michael Connelly
(starring one of my favorite hard-case detectives, Harry Bosch...
Bosch novels are like literary crack for me). THE VIRTUES OF WAR by
Stephen Pressfield (whose Thermoplyae novel GATES OF FIRE is being
made into a movie right now). VoW is about the tutelage of Alexander
the Great.

I just re-upped at the Science Fiction Book Club, and received:

Rincewind the Wizzard (the first four books of the Discworld series, I
have only read the first one)
Gods in Darkness (the Karl Wagner short story collection)
the Crown of Conan (the new Robert Howard Conan anthology)
the Second SFBC Barsoom collection (books 4-6 I think)
Fevre Dream, a book about Riverboats and vampires by George Martin.

I also ordered another book (the h/c vol. 1 of League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen), but they didn't have it. I'll have to select another book,
which will probably be the FIRST volume in their Barsoom anthology...
I have all of them already in paperback, but these are so handy,
especially when I'm working on Barsoomia.

Oh... and I have a bunch of Robert E. Howard, Dashiel Hammett and
Clark Ashton Smith short stories loaded on my PDA in e-book format, as
well as the much longer DEED OF PAKSANARION trilogy by Elizabeth Moon.
The latter is quite enjoyable so far!

I'm listening to THE SAGA OF THE SEVEN SUNS by Kevin J. Anderson in
the truck. It's mid-level space opera, not great, but nicely detailed
and enjoyable. Nothing that will garner him a nebula award. He's not
a great, or even consistently good writer, but he really hit the mark
this time.

---

Word of explanation: I'm tormented by memories of late night movie watching in my early years. I remember the plot of a movie, and want to see it again, but have no idea what it was called-- I just remember seeing it on an old black and white TV when I was ten. Lately I've been able to find the name of movie memories by posting questions to the right sources.

For instance, I remember a movie that STRONGLY reminded me of RESERVOIR DOGS. A super-criminal hires a bunch of bank robber types who don't know each other, and encourages them to grow beards. They must not EVER mention their names to each other, in case they are caught.

What the heck was this? I saw it in 1972. Answer: DAY OF THE WOLVES, a brilliant done-on-the-cheap caper film filmed in Northern California for almost nothing. I got tipped off in a DVD discussion forum.

Another cunundrum (quoting the eurotrashparadise Yahoogroup)

From: "Neil Vokes"
Subject: Re: [eurotrashparadise] Re: Allo, Wolfie

yup-that's what i recall-a budget saving bit of camera trickery but it's actually effective ;o)

Take Care,Neil
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Thats_All_Vokes
www.theblackforest.net
---Original Message-------

From: La Bête Humaine
Date: 02/15/05 12:51:05
To: eurotrashparadise@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [eurotrashparadise] Re: Allo, Wolfie


--- In eurotrashparadise@yahoogroups.com, "neil vokes" wrote:
>
> that the one with lloyd bridges and angie dickinson and the aliens
> are having a battle on earth disguised as humans-thus the glasses?
> THE LOVE WAR?
> -nels
>

Neil:

Does it end with some confrontation where the glasses fall on the
ground and you just.. barely.. ALMOST see an alien in them as he (it)
walks away?



THE LOVE WAR???? Amazing! I've been thinking about that stupid movie for a freaking DECADE, and someone answers this in point-blimfark.

Thank Jeebus there's bigger geeks out there than me!

---

Of interest.. the NYT's article on the hobby of "wargaming", with a decidedly pro-Warhammer perspective.

Full Story here

Copyright, 2005, the New York Times

February 15, 2005
Painted Armies, Tabletop Battles
By JULIE SALAMON

HOUSTON - At 6 feet 4 inches, with a shaved head and a spiky beard, Adam Floyd, 21, may seem fierce and freaky. Wearing a black T-shirt that says "Storm of Chaos," he is exactly the type you might expect to find at a competition for a fantasy game involving military strategy, in which the goal is to annihilate an opponent's army.

But hold those preconceptions. Mr. Floyd is not in a dark, forbidding gaming store, but at the bright, expansive indoor visitors' plaza at NASA's Johnson Space Center here. The 70 fighters gathered for a tournament last month also included Chris Goodchild, a cherubic 12-year-old, and Carl Bellatti, 54, a grandfather and middle school band teacher in Houston, as well as computer programmers, lawyers, prison guards, an all-state football player from Texas, a substantial smattering of adolescent boys and one woman.

Mr. Floyd, the son of teachers, is a mild, articulate fellow, a theater major at Idaho State University in Pocatello. He flew in with his friend and fellow strategist Matt Wyse, 21, a history major and competitive tennis player, who has been playing the game, Warhammer, since he was 14.

What drew this unlikely assortment of people together was a chance to compete at Warhammer, popular in Britain, Europe and Australia for more than 20 years but known in the United States mainly to its numerous cultish devotees. In a culture dominated by virtual diversions and mass marketing, Warhammer has acquired an ardent following by being tactile and mysterious, using no advertising at all. Games Workshop, the British company that makes it, has licensed two video-game versions, but it is usually played with three-dimensional figures by opponents who face each other across a real-life table.

The armies consist of tiny metal and plastic models, measured in millimeters. The soldiers, often nasty-looking creatures operating arsenals of weapons, have gross or sanguinary names, like Snotlings, Tyranids and Chaos, but they are assembled by their generals with glue and then painted with delicate brushes, often with obsessive precision.

Warhammer begins with a fairly simple set of rules: dice are thrown, imaginary shots are fired, soldiers are moved. But the game quickly becomes complex and arcane as different armies are assigned special rules that modify the basic principles of battle. There are thousands of figures and dozens of armies, each with its own lore, abilities and point values, explained in a series of 64-page manuals called codexes and army books, which include tips on painting and modeling techniques.

Like poker and football, Warhammer appeals to men and boys far more than to women and girls. It allows a particular kind of socializing, the kind that requires no conversation apart from talk of the game. Sergio Sciancalepore, a shy 13-year-old with wavy hair and huge dark eyes, was at the tournament. He has an Xbox and loves chess, but when he discovered Warhammer at a store in a Houston shopping mall three months ago, he was hooked. He goes back to that store every Saturday night looking for a pickup battle.

Physicality is a crucial component. "You get to touch the pieces," Sergio said, "pick out your battles, see them from an upper view, move your army, paint it your own way."

His father, Vincent, has encouraged him. "I used to build models when I was a kid," said Mr. Sciancalepore, a printer who grew up in Queens but has lived in Houston for 25 years. "I feel I'm passing it on."

Two days before the tournament, Mr. Floyd decided his army wasn't attractive enough. He pulled an all-nighter redesigning his soldiers.

"It takes a bit of creativity, a bit of imagination and a good sense of humor," he said.

His friend Mr. Wyse added, "And a warped sense of priorities."

Like the Space Center, Warhammer is something of a throwback, combining a futuristic vision with nostalgia. It updates the toy soldiering made popular a century ago by H. G. Wells in "Little Wars" and Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts.

But for these toy army generals, craftsmanship matters as much as tactics, and it is this aspect that most distinguishes Warhammer from fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons. At the Houston competition, prizes were awarded for best general and best army, but also for best appearance (won by Mr. Floyd's soldiers, turned out in official Warhammer "scab red" and "scorpion green") and for best-painted. Throughout the day, clusters of boys sat transfixed by a table where a master painter, Mondel Garcia, showed them the intricacies of painting diminutive limbs with very fine brushes.

Courtliness counts too: the second most coveted prize was for best sportsman. This game requires mental ferocity and a certain delicacy. The players - some overweight, some string beans, clean-cut and tattooed, boys and men - toted their miniature warriors as carefully as little princesses carting collections of fragile dollies.

The company's sales methods are old-fashioned; it uses no advertising, relying on word of mouth and its 320 stores worldwide (57 in the United States, in 19 cities) and 4,000 independent games retailers that carry Warhammer to lure new customers. "We truly believe the only way to get people into this hobby is to put an empire soldier in their hands and let them play," said Will Postell, metro manager for Games Workshop in Houston, where there are four of the company's stores in shopping malls with lots of foot traffic. The company has set up "battle bunkers" in Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis and Baltimore, where staff members have 8 to 20 gaming tables set up, ready to give tutorials to newcomers.

This marketing strategy has worked well abroad for Games Workshop, which went public a decade ago. Revenues for fiscal 2004 were $284 million, up from $241 million in 2003, with a comparable increase in profits. The company had an extra boost four years ago, when New Line Cinema licensed it to make the official tabletop battle game based on the "Lord of the Rings" films. (Designed as a variation on Warhammer, it also features painted models and tabletop battles.) When the company sponsors its annual Game Day in Birmingham, England, 10,000 players show up.

For Chris Goodchild, it was love at first sight. His family, which is British, was living in the Netherlands when he saw the "Lord of the Rings" game in a store four years ago. He immediately called his father, an executive with Shell Global Solutions. "He was in an important meeting," Chris said. "I told him I saw those models and really needed them."

Though attracted to Warhammer because of his fixation on "The Lord of the Rings," Chris said, "I became obsessed with the game and painting the figures."

The game's popularity has grown slowly in the United States, where it has been around for about 15 years. "Having a hobby travel by word of mouth isn't hard to do in Britain because it's a small country," said Mike Jones, Games Workshop's vice president for the United States southern region. "Because of U.S. geography and topography and sheer size, it's more of a well-kept secret," he said of the game.

But its appeal wasn't lost on Mike Wampler, sales manager at the Space Center in Houston, who invited Games Workshop to hold its tournament there to pep up the slow season, when only 1,100 visitors might show up on a Saturday. He also invited the Pokémon Rocks tour on Memorial Day weekend and the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge for the spring.

"Sixty percent of our visitors weren't born when NASA accomplished the man on the moon," Mr. Wampler said. "I want our guests to leave saying, 'That's one of the coolest places we've ever been.' You have to do Warhammer events; you have to do Purina dog events. These are the links to the future."

Warhammer isn't cheap. Though starter sets with 48 figures are available for $45, the lust for military might, even on this small scale, can be infectious, and expensive. Garrick Ruscher, 37, a computer programmer whose four boys - and his wife - play and paint Warhammer, said he found himself spending $700 a month on figures that can cost as much as $54 for a 12-inch model of Mumakil from the "Lord of the Rings" group.

"How they remember all the rules staggers me," said Helen Goodchild, Chris's mother, a brisk, amiable woman who might be the ultimate Warhammer mom. Eighteen months ago, her husband thought the family was being transferred from the Netherlands to Kenya, a land of limited shopping possibilities. To prepare for a two-year stay, the Goodchilds began stockpiling crucial supplies, including a huge collection of Warhammer figures - about 2,000 of them - for Chris and his brother, Michael, 10.

Instead the Goodchilds were sent to Houston, where they discovered that Warhammer had preceded them. "We didn't know there would be such a good representation here," Ms. Goodchild said. "The boys made friends quickly through it." At her sons' school, the British School of Houston, children play Warhammer at lunchtime. The boys have discovered Friday night open-gaming sessions at local Games Workshop outlets.

Does the game's warring aspect bother Ms. Goodchild? "It got them off the computers," she said. "It's creative. They make the models and paint them and then turn up with the models and meet people."

Similarly, Jacqueline Bellati, whose husband Carl is a gamer, says she doesn't mind being a Warhammer widow. "It's not smoking; it's not doing drugs; it's not being in a barroom," she said. Has she thought about joining her husband in the game? "It doesn't interest me at all," she said.

COPYRIGHT 2005 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Not a bad thumbnail of the hobby, but I would like to get the author to come to COLD WARS some time...

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I'm using a Palm Zire 72 these days, with a high resolution screen.



A nice toy-- it does a lot of cool stuff that's sort of extra... MP3 player, camera, video camera (none of which it does well, but it's nice to have it handy). Now I can get it to play computer wargames! I was surprised to learn there's a new Palm Apple II emulator out there, called PalmApple. This utility allows you to run a complete A2 emulator on your palm pilot, disk drives and all, and also has a DSK to Palm Database utility that runs in command line mode. It's relatively easy to convert a DSK file to run via the emulator. I've managed to get SSI's old GETTYSBURG, ANTIETAM, WARSHIP and PANZER LEADER to run on my Zire. The processor on the Palm is actually a lot faster than the old C-64 or Apple II the software was designed for in the first place! Resolution was surprisingly good, although the interface was clunky at best. It takes a little getting used to to move a cursor around by using the palm writing area to enter in numeric commands, but once you master the menu you can have a lot of fun with this thing.

I've mentioned (earlier) a repository of DSK images from the bad old days of SSI, SSG and etc. If you don't want to run them on a Windoze machine you can always try the Palm Pilot!

Here's an image of Ultima IV running on a Palm. If like that sort of thing..

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Dead roots

on the wall of an overpass...

I don't know what this plant is called, but it takes over EVERYTHING in Virginia during the Spring.

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We did great! Garrett swept the Tiger category in the Pinewood Derby this year!

Wooohooo!

Seriously, ALL THE BOYS did a fantastic job on their cars. What a great event!

Check out the pictures HERE

Garrett's (winning) car is on the left, here:


My (slow as molasses) car is here:

As you know, the previous post was about hiding your piety and good deeds so that only the One Guy who needs to know will ever see them. I try to live like that. Keeping things in INFORMATIONAL MODE only (e.g., I'm not prosletyzing, just sharing an idea), I thought I'd share a Stealth Prayer method I've come up with for meditation and praying while walking. I know, it sounds nuts. But I like it, and it seems to work for me.

Here's How I say the rosary without beads.. in secret!



(sorry about the orange popup from 50megs.. that's the price for free)

Hope that wasn't too wacky.. I came up with this after I left my beads at home
one day and I like it better now.

Many thanks to the Rosary Center Website for the prayer links.

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Was hot, long, and standing room only. Anne and I went, as Gar needed some "me time" with his mom. Once again, I was struck by the beauty and significance of Matthew: 6

1 "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2 "Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 "And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread; 12 And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; 13 And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 16 "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

How much of the good that we do, we do because we want to be seen doing good? We want people to like and admire and approve of us for doing it?

I'm not suggesting I'm holier than anyone-- I gave up my seat on the bus the other day to an elderly woman, who was properly thankful. I saw the women on the bus grinning somewhat embarassed by my old fashioned courtesy, out of place today I guess. That made me wonder if I gave the lady a seat because I felt bad about her standing or just wanted the ladies to think I was a nice guy.

It's always like that for me.. questioning my own motives as i do things. Like doing a ethical stutter-step... "is this the right thing to do, will I look like a show-off doing it?" etc.

I pray often. I am resolved to say the Rosary once a day during Lent. I've come up with a way of doing this without drawing attention to myself like the "Gentiles" mentioned above, but that's a story for another post-- I need to take pictures of how I hold my hands to tell this.

Happy Fat Tuesday, fellow believers.

Bourbon Street Camera

Note Bene: this IFRAME refreshes periodically.. the Bourbon Street LIVE feed is here. Warning! NOLA.COM attempts to set cookies.

The Mardi Gras Parade Cam

Note Bene: this IFRAME refreshes periodically.. the Parade LIVE feed is here.

Warning! NOLA.COM attempts to set cookies.

(Cams courtesy of NOLA website)

Here's the LIVE webcam at the Tropical Isle, an establishment where I have punished a few "hand grenades" in my day..

More Webcams from Mardi Gras:

Tricou House

Balcony Cam on Bourbon Street

Earthcam (3 locations to choose from)


Have fun!

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For those of you who have read my previous XangaBlog (and the stats suggest somebody was reading it, routinely), you'll note my previous comments about the TWO "War of the Worlds" movies being released in 2005. One is a giganto budget Spielburg flick SET IN MODERN TIMES (which I think is heresy!):



(I have to admit, love the poster, Steve!)

The other movie is a small budget British effort from Pendragon Films, which reputedly will keep the story set in the late Victorian/Early Edwardian era it was written for.

Natch, I'll probably see both, but I'm far more interested in the period piece.



Pendragon Films just released a new movie trailer that gives a little more detail than their website. You get to see a little bit of the Tripods in this one. Check it out.

also, here's the Cast Trailer and a previous, less explicit general trailer.

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Compiled from various sources...

THE DIRTY NAME LIST

A. Nellsechs  A. Nelprober  A.S. Muncher  Amanda D. P. Throat  Amanda Hump  Amanda Lick  Amanda Mount  Amanda Poker  Anita B. Jainow  Anita Dick  Anita Dickenme  Anita Hanjaab  Anita Hardcok  Anita Head  Anita Hoare  Anita Naylor  Annie Position  Anya Neeze  Ben Derhover  Ben Gurgen Hoffe  Ben N. Syder  Ben O. Verbich  Ben R. Over  Benoit Bawles Berry McCaulkiner Betty Drilzzer  Betty Humpter  Betty Phuckzer  Bo N. Herr  Brooke N. Rubbers  Bruce D. Cocque  Buster Cherry  Buster Himen  C. Mike Rack  Clee Torres  Colin Forsecs  Connie Lingus  Craven Moorehead  Curley Pubes  Dang Lin-Wang  Daryl B. Payne  Dick Long  Dick Myaz  Dick Pound  Dick Ramdass  Dill Doe  Dixie Normous  Dixie Rect  Dixon B. Tweenerlegs  Dixon Butts  Dixon Kuntz  E. Jack Ulayte  E. Norma Scock  E. Norma Stits  E. Normous Peter  E. Rex Sean  Eaton Beaver  Eileen Ulick  Eric Shun  Fawn Dillmiballs  Fonda Dix  Fonda Peters  Freida Brest  Fudd G. Packer  Hans Omaicok  Harry A. Nuis  Harry Azcrac  Harry Balsonya  Harry Balzac  Harry Beaver  Harry Cox  Harry Dix  Harry Dong  Harry Johnson  Harry Kuntz  Harry Nutt  Harry P. Ness  Harry Peters  Harry Sach  Harry Scrote  Harry Weiner  Helda Coccen-Mihan  Helda Dick  Holden A. Pare  Holden McGroin  Haywood Jablomi  Howie Feltersnatch  Hugh G. Dildeaux  Hugh Gebrests  Hugh Janus  Hugh Jardon  Hugh Jewnitt  Hugh Jorgin  Humphrey Willy  I. Yankit I.C Yadick  Ilova Gudfach  Ima Butmunsch

Ima Homeau  Ima Hoare  Ima Horndawg  Ima Reilly Cumming  Issac Dick  Iva Biggin  Ivana Fuccu  Ivana Hafsechs  Ivana Shroomslap  Ivanna B. Spanked  Jack Knauf  Jack Meoff  Jed I. P. Impe  Jen Italworts  Jenny Tayla  Jenny Tulworts  Jew C. Tuatt  Jocelyn Cocque  Joy Ryde-Myaz  Justin DeFront  Justin Heras  Justin Hermouf  Kareem M. Pants  Kari Mysac  Liz Bien  Lou Skunt  Lou Swimmin  Madame Dick Burns  Manny Kanblo  Master Bates  Mike Hunt  Mike Oxsbig  Mike Rotch  Mike Rotchburns  Miles Long  Mister Period  Moe Lester  Mrs. Hiscock  Neil Anblomi  Neil Down  Neil Enbob  Neil Inlick  Ol' Dirty Bastard  Oliver Clozov  Ophelia Cox  Otto B. Astripper  P. Nisenvi  Pat Herboub  Pat Hiscock  Pat Maweini  Pat McGroin  Pat Myaz  Peter Beter  Peter Fitzinwell  Peter Insidya  Phil Accio  Phil C. Rottencrotch  Phil McAvity  Phil McCrackin  Phil McCreviss  Phillip A. Butt  Phillip McCrack  Ray Pugh  Rhoda Hotte  Rocco Z. Caulk  Roch Myaz  Rod Gozinya  Ron Chee  Rueben G. Spaut  Rueben Z. Clitz  Semour Asscrack  Seymour Snatch  Shara Dick  Sharon Cox  Sharon Head  Sharon Peters  Shea Verpussi  Stacy Rect  Stella Virgin  Sylvia Dooble-Fitz  Tal E. Whacker  Tara Dickoff  Tara Himen  Tara Holenme  Vye Agra  Vye Brator  Wang Phat  Watson Herbusch Wayne Kerr  Willie B. Hardigan  Willie Dicker  Willie Eetmioutt  Willie Focker  Willie Layer  Wilma Dickfit  Wilma Fingerdoo  Zig Steenine

Enjoy!

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John Vernon just died. He was a great character actor, who played his share of villains, to be sure. Once you get past Dean Wormer, you find him in all sorts of stuff-- comedies, adventure stories, mysteries and whatnot. His career went back a long way.

I liked the way he could always play a villain that had a conscience (when the script called for it)... such as his role as the turncoat Confederate captain hunting down his own men in THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES.

A complex character. He will be missed.

THE STORY:

John Vernon played dean in 'Animal House' film


The Washington Post
February 4, 2005


John Vernon, a stage-trained actor who played a series of slimy villains and authority figures, never so well as in "National Lampoon's Animal House," in which he was the evil college dean, died Feb. 1 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from heart surgery. He was 72.

Vernon had more than a passing resemblance to Richard Burton and played rugged figures in dozens of films and television shows.

With sinister good looks and a surprising vulnerability, he was cast in such gritty fare as "Point Blank" (1967), "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Topaz" (1969) and "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976).

As Dean Vernon Wormer in "Animal House" (1978), he was the antithesis of a good time. He ignores his alcoholic wife, cuddles up to the repulsive mayor and disdains the fun-loving students.

He declares war against the worst fraternity on campus, led by John Belushi and Tim Matheson.

Vernon reprised Wormer for the short-lived ABC television spinoff "Delta House" (1979) and appeared in several spoofs. He was a psychiatrist in "Airplane II: The Sequel" (1982), Police Chief Ferret in "Fraternity Vacation" (1985) and the underworld figure Mr. Big in "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" (1988).

I want a town. I want one for my very own.

I've been trying to collect a "pulpish downtown" for adventure minis games for years. I've got a ton of ERTL's 1/64 Cow Town play sets, but the largest building in one of those looks like a clapboard townhouse. Not exactly the effect I'm going for-- I want cobblestone streets, street lights, tall buildings with many stories, a nice turn of the century look.

I think K-Line, the model railroad manufacturer, might have my solution in their O-Scale "MainLine" series. They are a tad large for 28mm but not so big as to be ridiculous. Definitely the smallest scaled O scale manufacturer.

I had bought stuff like The K-Lineville classics before, and have a set of three buildings with extensions. An example of this is the Pharmacy building (11-1-b, below).



They are a tad clunky and cookie-cutter looking but can easily accomodate interior floors and 28mm characters shooting out the window. I have a white, blue and red one.. I know one is a pharamacy but I've forgotten what the other two are. That can be changed with a paint job and signage, of course.

K-Line now has a line called Mainline (downtown). These are truly the ticket. Pre-painted, with lots of detailing (unlike the k-linevilles). I recently won the coffee shop (see below) on Ebay for fairly cheap.



Other items in the series are the fisherman's resturaunt which could make a great speakeasy. There is also a combination building



and what looks like a residential



and a really neat urban firehouse.



With judicious blending of some of my old model railroad stuff, the less obnovious ERTL buildings and the K-Lineville items, I might be able to build a very small downtown with a waterfront (natch).

What the scenario will be, who knows, but I've always wanted a little town to call my own...

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Found at the cheap, cheap, cheap bin at Walmart yesterday...

The 300 Spartans, 1962.. a nice surprise. Very well done even with the awful costumes. They got the quotes right, which I had to love...

"Tommorrow, we will DARKEN THE SKY with our arrows!"

"Good. It's hot and now we can fight in the shade"

"Lay down your weapons!"

"Tell Xerxes.. if he wants our weapons, he can come and take them!"


Those Spartans were tough.. and they knew how to turn a phrase.



The Beast. 1988. A great little movie about a lost Russian tank team in the Afghan Occupation by the Soviet Union, filmed while the war was still going on. With real T-55 tanks! And a French Super Frelon helicopter painted up to look like a Mi-8 Hind!



Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla 1955, B&W. No, I'm not kidding. This was the only film appearance of Kirk Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, dead ringers for Martin and Lewis, who eventually were served a cease and desist order by lewis because Petrillo did Lewis better than Lewis did! Not much of a plot but definitely worth a dollar.



All told, I think it all tallied up to about 11 bucks. Thanks, WalMart!