George Takei Puts a Bigot in His Place

I don’t follow basketball and I wouldn’t know Tim Hardaway from Tim Conway, but apparently he is taking some heat for bluntly admitting in a radio interview last week that he has a problem with gay people. That’s not an unusual attitude in our society, of course, and you can even make an argument that Hardaway is to be commended for his honesty. I, for one, would certainly defend his right to say whatever’s on his mind no matter how ignorant. But he should be prepared for the consequences:

Sulu rocks…

Feb202007

Manamana, Vader-style!

Someday, somebody is going to do a master’s thesis about Internet content in the early 21st century and attempt to explain how and why so much of it was regurgitated nuggets of 1970s and ’80s pop culture. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course:

Feb192007

From My Latest Reading

No particular comment here, just sharing a nifty passage from the novel I’m currently enjoying. I especially like the image at the end. The characters are shy young Quakers who are beginning to discover that they have a thing for each other; the setting is New York in the year 1778, during the American Revolution:

Rob was enthused about the scientist William Herschel.With his improved telescopes, Rob said, Herschel had discovered nebulae and galaxies strewn across the heavens as a farmer could scatter flaxseed. …The night had grown cold, and they blew on their fingers and stamped their feet as they stared up at the spangle of stars. The arm of Rob’s coat brushed Kate’s cape and she saw tiny sparks dance in the wool.

–From Shadow Patriots: A Novel of the Revolution by Lucia St. Clair Robson

Feb192007

Everybody Talks About the Weather…

A month ago, it was so cold you couldn’t even breathe and the city was shrouded in murky, filthy “haze” (i.e., air pollution thick enough that it recalled stories of Jack the Ripper stalking Victorian fogbanks). Then about two weeks ago the air finally cleared out and temperatures rose to the relatively comfortable range they’re supposed to occupy in the winter months, between the high 30s and low 40s. The past two days have been spring-like, with temps in the high 50s and beautiful crystalline skies.

I woke up this morning to about five inches of snow.

I love Utah…

Feb162007

The Paintings of Donald E. Davis

As long as I’m talking about painters whose craft I’ve admired since childhood, I ought to put in a shout-out to Don Davis. His imaginative renderings of what it would look like inside Gerard O’Neill‘s proposed space colonies — essentially giant cylinders that would spin to simulate gravity — seemed to be on every third magazine cover when I was an impressionable kid in the 1970s. Don’s got his own web site, naturally enough, and it turns out that he’s offering a number of those iconic images up to the public domain, for folks to do with as they please. I remember this one (or one very like it) in particular. Go have a look, and see if you remember any of these yourself…

(My thanks to the Paleo-Future blog for mentioning this.)

Feb162007

Peter Ellenshaw

I just learned of the death of a Hollywood great you’ve probably never heard of, but whose contribution to classic cinema cannot be underestimated. Peter Ellenshaw was a special-effects master whose specialty was a now-defunct art called “matte painting.”

Feb152007

Trolley Aftermath

I don’t want to dwell too much further on the Trolley Square shootings. Not to sound insensitive or cold-hearted, because I’m absolutely not, but I find all the public wailing and gnashing of teeth after these random acts of violence overblown, and all the new-agey, namby-pamby talk of “healing” especially annoys me for some reason (I guess I’m a “climb back on the horse and keep riding” kind of guy). Nevertheless, there are a couple of articles in the Trib that I think are worth passing along.

Feb152007

Gotham West

Man, I live for headlines like this: Batman Sighting Puts Schools on Lockdown.

The short version: a middle-school student in Pheonix, Arizona, saw someone in a Batman costume running across his campus, and authorities responded by locking down three nearby schools for 45 minutes. A reasonable precaution, I’d imagine, since there was probably a lunatic clown in a purple suit somewhere in the area, too…

Feb132007

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Another entry in the “People Suck” category: The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Maltese Falcon has been stolen.

More specifically, an authorized reproduction of the prop from the 1941 film classic The Maltese Falcon, one which was used for publicity stills for the movie and which was signed by actor Elisha Cook, Jr., was taken from a locked cabinet in John’s Grill, a well-known San Francisco bar where Falcon author Dashiell Hammett and his fictional alter ego Sam Spade used to hang. Several vintage and signed Hammett books were taken as well.

A reward of $25,000 has been offered, but I have a hunch the owner of John’s will never see the Black Bird again. Bastards.

Feb132007

The Jealous Astronaut

Why don’t we take a break from all the doom and gloom of the Trolley Square thing and enjoy a little music video by The Phantom Surfers, inspired by the strange story of astronaut Lisa Nowak:

Courtesy of Boing Boing, naturally enough.

Archives