200 Words on Footwear

I have recently started wearing  slippers. Slippers. On my feet. Not every minute of the day, of course, but generally. Especially when I have to go into the garage to get a soda, or a frozem pizza or something.

This is a pretty new development. I have owned slippers almost my entire life, and up until just about a month ago never really found them comfortable. Too warm. And they’re still pretty warm, actually.

But they keep my feet dry when I go out to make sure the dryer vent is covered or something.

Also: I like Izod socks. This is an unsolicieted remark, alas. Last year I made a road trip to Chicago. For reasons I don’t actually know, one of the demands of the trip was that I wear red socks. As it turns out, red socks are pretty difficult to come by. I stopped at an outlet mall with small hope.

Small hope going in, but success coming out! The Izod socks proved to be very comfortable, and wore like iron. Except they got chewed up by a lost insole. But the replacement pair, also from the Izod outlet is performing up to snuff, which is great.

More than a Holiday Hippo Masseuse

As we enter the end-of-year, everyone-gets-a-holiday season, odd are pretty good that, at some point, you'll encounter the Ur-Urban Fantasy Christmas Song*.

 I am talking about "I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," which you knew. Because, as everybody knows, only a hippopotamus will do.

What you might not know is that a few years after endearing herself to children the world 'round with dreams of impossible pets, and simultaneously sprinkling them with nightmares of the omnivore water horse in the garage, because mom is a more reliable source of information than teacher, Gayla Peevey entered a new phase of her career under a new name. I especially like this because pen names are fun.

True to her genre roots, among the cuts she released as Jamie Horton was "Robot Man." It was a bigger hit later for Connie Francis, but what wasn't? What's great about this song is... what's not great about this song? Robots! Love! And so on!

* Nearly all the "facts" in this post are made-up. Get the truth here. It's out there. Sorry. It's not out there. The site is down now (in 2022).

Weekend Video: Première Plume

Here's a final project from a student somewhere in Belgium.

I like the colors, and I like the character design. It reminds me a bit of Battle of the Planets (which is what I watched)*.

But totally not Battle of the Planets in what's going on here.

Sometimes little bird people need a moment to understand that the yearnings of their loved one's hearts call them to strange changes. Or something. Take a moment and enjoy Première Plume.


Première plume from marie magro on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend.
__________
*Holy cow, things get strange and complicated from an era when Japanese animation got pulled across the Pacific and re-dubbed, and re-edited for a middle American youth audience. What can you remember, what did you put together from missed episodes, what did you hear got cut from the original material? It's like watching Cirque du Soleil from a distance through a slice of baby Swiss cheese with cotton in your ears. So, since I brought all this up, here are a couple of additional videos for your weekend.

O! The trumpets!





The teeth! The TEETH! Show me those TEETH!



That's all for now. Seriously.

Science, fiction, snow, and creatures

It’s snowy. It’s mid-November.

There’s been a snow day for the oldest. In mid-November!

Holy cow. Here’s the science fiction part: I’m happy about it.

Seriously; so I guess that’s not all that fictiony.

Winter is rolling in, and things are looking up. But there are some vacant houses around, some of them even pretty close. Close enough to walk by. My dad came in today to tell me that the house one over from the amazing guy next door had a tauntaun looking in the front window.

Hang on. That’s pretty science fictiony, but it’s pretty wrong, and sort of backward. It was a standard poodle, actually. And apparently it was inside the house. The vacant house had a poodle in it, looking out the window at the snow.

Snow in November.

Well, look at that... huh.

When I was younger, there were things I cared about acquiring which now I wouldn't seriously consider were they to stop my my house and say, "hi! I'd be a neat thing for you to have," much less having to go out and buy. 

This isn't to say they're frivolous, but rather that my tastes, and priorities, have changed. I still hold on to kind of a lot of these things. Should I get rid of them? Probably. Will I? Probably not any time soon.

I like having them, and I still value the experience of having acquired them. I like sharing them. Like I'm about to do.

A bunch of these things are comic books, holy crap. I use a service called Stash My Comics (stop by, say hi!). Over the course of this past year, I've been cataloging my holdings, and, according to my wife, rather often been saying, "well, look at that... huh." She keeps waiting for that "huh" to be follow up with, "and this one's worth eighty thousand dollars." That not going to happen.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen.

My holdings only come to a few long boxes and a couple of short boxes. I have about half a long box, and that will wrap up to cataloging part of the project. Here's last night's surprise issue. 

I'd have to do a review of my holdings, and I'd probably find that I'm wrong, but I think I have about seven issues of X-Men comics ranging across a variety of titles and eras. Marvel was my publisher of choice in junior high, when I used to play RPG's such as Marvel Super Heroes. But I was more of a Power Man & Iron Fist guy. And a bit more Iron Fist than Power Man. Also, Marvel had Star Trek at the time, and that was pretty cool. Mostly, though, I bought smatterings of interesting looking back issues when I had a handful of cash and could get to a flea market. I was in junior high, and this was the mid-1980's, so the ready supply of current comic books was, for me, limited to spinner racks in grocery stores. I liked the idea of subscribing to comic books in the mail, but could never quite get my act together to do it. But I never did care much about the X-Men.

So what am I doing with Days of Futures Past, in the first edition, sitting in a long box, and probably never been out of its bag since I bought it brand new and read it in about an hour? 

I do not know. 

SMC lists it as a trade paperback, but I'd call it Prestige Format, since that's what DC was calling that sort of thing at the time. And, at that time, I was a DC guy, having started buying comic books in college, when I had more ready cash, and more ability to get around. The first comic book I bought in the era of buying too many comic books was Batman: Year One, part 4. Off a spinner rack at the grocery store. Then I learned that there were stores where you could go to buy current issues, and recent back issues, and even older issues, without having to play the crap-shoot of a flea market.

So I started spending too much money on comic books, which included buying things like Days of Futures Past for (from the perspective of twenty years or more later) no clear reason.

Weekend Video: Let There Be Sound

I really enjoyed this student film.

It reminded me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while not being derivative or even homage-y. It just seems to come from the same place. Wherever that is.

It's... oh. It's a bit vulgar, so there's that, too, somewhat more so than Slartibartfast. Which, in the final moments, I guess, is apt.

Enough throat clearing. Enjoy.

Let There Be Sound from Tom, Dick & Harry on Vimeo.

Have a good weekend. I have a fundraiser, child's holiday public performance, and furniture moving on my agenda.

Liking TV shows children like

I was just watching my three-year old watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. She was sitting on a table, smiling. Smiling, that is, until Dad Tiger tells Daniel that it’s time for bed. Then she frowned for a moment. The smile came back pretty quick, but even in the morning, it’s clear that the idea of going to bed is like a trip to the dentist. Something that’s a good idea, but doesn’t sound like a good idea.

I’m really glad that public TV has a place for Fred Rogers more than a decade after he died. Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood is not really retread of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, even though it shares some structural similarities. It really is a fairly typical young child’s show teaching life lessons with a host character who talks to the viewer. What it shares with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, something that really makes it uncommon among children’s shows, is that it shows interactions between children and grown-ups. It’s not unique in this way; both Sesame Street and Arthur share this characteristic.

The reason it isn’t really a retread of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is that these interactions are between on-screen characters. There really was no children’s cast on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Mister Rogers spoke directly to each child watching the show. This individual connection in a mass medium was his seemingly magical humanity. It's why people who grew up with the show still love Mr. Rogers. It’s different from these other shows, where there’s minimal engagement directly with the viewer.

But watching my daughter watch the show, she’s engaged. She talks to the characters, sings along, dances when they dance, and talks about the lessons for hours and days after.

Different is just different, and worth exploring celebrating. Just like Mister Rogers always said.

Weekend Video: Ghost V

Because I can't give up on Robert Sheckley. I mean, I don't want to give up on his work, and have no plans to. But there's a lot of it, holy cow. 

The one collection I've picked up is a brick of a book. The Masque of Mañana is slightly oversize in its cover dimensions, and then it's, like, nearly 600 pages of short stories. My library will want it back before I'm able to get through it. They'll want it back again, in fact. Last time I got about three stories into it, what with one thing and another.

Anyway.

Here's a two-part animation adapting one of his stories about a guy, and the monsters of his youth getting him spooked when he's a grown-up. N. Latinsky did a nice job with the look and feel of this.

Ghost V: Part 1




Ghost V: Part 2



Have a great weekend.

What do I read when I'm not here?

A few thoughts on some of the books I’ve been reading lately, but haven’t yet finished...

Eternity’s End by Jeffery A. Carver.

Space Opera! Galaxy-spanning empires, over-lapping spheres of influence, trippy FTL technology, and at the center of the novel, the very human character of Renwald Legroeder, wrongly accused of complicity in the loss of his ship to pirates. Carver does a great job balancing a large cast, a huge universe, and one person’s story to survive, clear his name, and regain a measure of the ordinary human life that was stolen from him. He has to work with mysterious aliens who share humanity’s mistrust of the other, trust new friends, and new enemies. Although this isn’t the first book in the Star Rigger cycle, I feel well taken care of by the author.

Ulysses by James Joyce

So much has been written about this novel, that I don’t feel an introduction is really necessary. I am enjoying it. This is the third or fourth time I’ve made a serious stab at reading it, and I’ve gotten about 20% so far. My approach is to enjoy what I can, gloss over what I’m missing, and not worry too much about the rest of it. Keeping in mind that almost all if it is Bloom’s POV (either visually, or the other senses) helps. Also, taking it easy--two or three or maybe five pages a session--keeps the pressure off.

The Jefferson Bible

This is a cut & past job of The Bible by Thomas Jefferson. This edition only contains his clippings form the King James Version (his full project included Greek and other languages). Basically, Jefferson said, “huh, I don’t think this fits,” to a lot of the material, and kept very little narrative stuff. It’s almost entirely quotes from Jesus, with a bit of framing dialog from the Apostles. Beyond that, there’s not a lot to say--it’s The Bible, after all.

The Masque of Mañana by Robert Sheckley

This is a 2005 selection of Sheckley’s short work. It’s a hefty tome, and I’ve only read a couple of stories.

There’s a famous bit of praise where Douglas Adams, who had been compared--favorably--with Sheckley, pointed out that Sheckley is the better writer. Adams also said he hadn’t heard of him until Adams was already established, so that’s probably good, because if he had heard of him, he would probably not become a writer. So, if you like Adams, I guess watch out to have your Adams circuits blown!

Or, more reasonably, expect to enjoy yourself. I’ll report back on this one in the future.

What have you been reading lately, or what do you think I should be reading?

200 Words of Thanks

Thank you.

This project is only half complete without your presence, and a bunch of you have shown up in the last week.

Most of you have visited the Phil Strobe Facebook page. A few of you have taken a moment to visit my G+ page. Some of you have even gone so far as to buy my first publication.

Thank you all for all of that. I hope you’re enjoying things so far. Please let me know.

I am hard at work on the next publication, and am getting the Kindle edition ready for publication. I will certainly let you all know when those things are ready. But in the meanwhile, I’ll be here posting away. Three days weekly, short, and somewhat chatty.

And so, something chatty. Last Friday was Halloween. One of my children is old enough that, when he’s a grown-up, this will be a Halloween that sets the standard for what Halloween is supposed to be. It rained most of the day, was blowy and quite cold most of the afternoon, and when it came time for Trick-or-Treat, things were dry and just cold enough that two hours on the streets was plenty.

Thank you.