Weekend Assignment #197: Missing Words

Oops!  I forgot to crosspost this!

Ok, we're going to try this. John Scalzi left off with Weekend Assignment #196, so with his permission and encouragement, let's try to keep it going. Here then is Weekend Assignment #197 (numbering corrected Saturday at 4:38 AM):

There's not a lot on tv these days.

Weekend Assignment #197: Now that the WGA strike has had lots of time to affect the prime time television schedules, how is it affecting you as a viewer? What show do you miss most, aside from reruns? Do you miss your weekly appointment with that ill-behaved doctor, or your visits to Wisteria Lane? Does it bother you not to laugh at fresh jokes on your favorite sitcom? Or are you just as happy watching reality shows, or new episodes of shows that have been held back until now? We want to know!

Extra Credit: how are you spending the time instead?

To be honest, I don't watch much broadcast TV myself. Most of the time I watch DVDs instead, if anything. But even I am missing the few shows I normally do watch. Three of them are--or were--on NBC's Monday night sf lineup: Chuck, followed by Heroes, followed by Journeyman. I kind of lost track of Chuck after he fought with his beautiful C.I.A. minder once too often, but I watched the other two every week.

And much as I like Hiro and Peter and Claire, I have to say the show I miss the most that night is Journeyman. I'm a sucker for time travel shows anyway, and this one does it well. Sure, it's essentially a Quantum Leap ripoff, but there are worse things to rip off--much worse. And the character dynamics are interesting, as the wife struggles to cope with her frequently time-lost husband, their young son starts to catch on to what is happening, and the traveler's brother struggles to make sense of what's happening with more mundane explanations. Good stuff!

Then there's Tuesday night. And yes, Julie, I do miss House MD, probably more than Journeyman. I think.

And what do I do on Monday and Tuesday nights? Why, I spend it at the computer, of course, with a DVD running on one laptop and ten tabs of Firefox open on the other!

Your turn: write up what you miss (or don't miss) on tv these days, and come back here (or to the Outpost) and leave a link in comments. If for some reason you have trouble commenting (although it should work for everyone, one way or another), feel free to email your link to mavarin at aol.com. To give time for word to spread and everyone to play, I'll do the roundup of your links in one week, next Thursday night. Got it? Good! Thanks, folks! I know I'm no John Scalzi, but we don't have to lose his legacy, as long as some of us care enough to keep it going!

Edit: I have been taken to task for not explaining what the WGA is and why it matters. I don't want to get into the politics of it (let's just say I'm pro-WGA and leave it at that), but here's what it's about:

WGA is the Writer's Guild of America, the folks who write the TV shows. As has been widely reported over the last few months, they're on strike, so networks and production companies are running out of new episodes of comedies and dramas. Why it matters, aside from inconvenience to the viewer and economic impact on the entertainment industry and the New York and California economies, is that it's a battle over writers being compensated for their work in new media such as Internet downloads. The result will set a precedent in determining the extent to which new tech is made part of the royalty pie.

Karen

*** copying over the first comment from the Outpost:***

  John Scalzi said...
Hey! My first time as a participant! And I'm the first to post!

My answer is here.

Thanks for taking these up, Karen. I think you're going to do a great job.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Tags: Weekend Assignment

Remembrance of Weekend Assignments Past

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin because it seems appropriate:

Stories of the Weekend Assignments

Weekend Assignment #156: Repost your favorite Weekend Assignment from the past three years. Or, if you can't choose, post the first Weekend Assignment you ever participated in.

Extra Credit: Should we keep doing the Weekend Assignments? Or after three years, should we give it a rest? Let me know; I'm curious.

When I first saw this assignment this afternoon, I thought it would be quick and easy. All I needed to do was look up Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends, repost it, and I'd been "rolling with puppies," or whatever it is that Willow says in that one Buffy episode. Then I though I ought to actually look and see what else I've written at Scalzi's behest since June 2004. I started with a search for Weekend Assignments on Musings from Mâvarin, and never really got beyond that. After all, between the two blogs, I've written over a hundred of these things. It really wasn't possible for me to read (or even skim) all of them tonight.

But I did read or skim a bunch of them, and I found two contradictory patterns emerging:

1. Despite the occasional overlap, there really has been a huge variety of subject matter in Scalzi's assignments.
2. Despite #1, I personally tend to write responses that hook in to my own obsessions. Several times I've worked in some kind of time travel story or premise, relating to The Beatles, Disneyland, Doctor Who and certain early U.S. presidents. I've written about my novels, about books by L'Engle and others, and about friends, teachers and relatives of the past and present. And when the assignment was something that didn't interest me, such as pie, I tended to dispose of it as quickly as possible and find a tangent to carry us someplace more interesting.

That last thing under #2 led to the entry I'll be reposting tonight instead of the picnic with Thomas Jefferson. Oddly enough, it involves the same "Scalzi's clone" photo that Scalzi himself reposted today. I don't like it much, and wasn't terribly interested in captioning it, but that was the assignment that night. So I did it, and then I had an interesting conversation about it with my pirate house guest, Black Rose Katie Specks. Enjoy.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
9:17:00 PM MST
The Clone and the House Guest

Weekend Assignment #84: Take a look at the picture below. Tell us what you think is going on in the picture. You can write as long as you want, or as short as you like -- even a photo caption works. Now, it's a fairly weird picture, but I thought that would just give you more to work with. Ready? Here you go:

John Scalzi is finally forced to admit it was a bad idea to crib
his cloning experiment from a Treehouse of Horror episode of
The Simpsons.

Extra Credit: Would you like to see more "explain what's going on in the picture" sort of assignments?

No. Not as such. There's not enough material here for writing one of my patented long entries. Yet somehow I'll manage anyway, especially with my nosy house guest asking questions!

"Tell me again who John Scalzi is," Black Rose Kate orders.

"He's AOL's designated, professional blogger," I tell her. "He's there to encourage and inspire people to post in their AOL Journals, give tips on how it's done, point the way to interesting or amusing stuff online, and generally entertain us."

"Then by what authority can he assign you to do anything?"

"Oh, it's completely voluntary. But it gives me something to write about that I might not have thought of otherwise."

"Is this something you wanted to write about, now that he's thought of it for you?" she asks pointedly.

"Not really, but I'm proud of the caption I came up with for it."

"I do not understand it. What is a clone?"

"A clone is an exact copy of a person, like a twin, but made by science instead of nature. It's been done with a sheep and other animals. Nobody's ever really cloned a human being yet, as far as we know, and a lot of people say we shouldn't even try it."

"But the monster on the left isn't an exact copy," Kate points out.

I decide not to mention that "monster" would not be a politically correct term for a "cloned American," even a wonky-looking  one like Scalzi's. "That's because the premise of the photo is that the cloning experiment didn't quite work out," I explain. "It's supposed to be a joke."

"Well, I fail to see the humour in it," says Kate. "What does your caption mean, about The Simpsons? You have DVDs with that name on them. Are there clones in The Simpsons?"

"Not that I recall," I admit. "But the fake clone in the picture looks a little like the drawings of Homer Simpson in the tv show."

"There are drawings in the tv show?"

"It's nothing but drawings. You can watch some of the DVDs tomorrow if you like."

"And the treehouse of horror? What, pray tell, is that?"

"It's a series of Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, in which horrible things happen. If a cloning experiment went wrong on The Simpsons, it would probably be in a Treehouse of Horror episode."

Black Rose Kate shakes her head. "I think I have done very well so far in understanding your century; but this explanation remains unclear to me."

"It's not important," I tell her. "Nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it."

Kate nods thoughtfully. Then she hits me with a question that I should have expected but didn't. "Am I a clone?"

I look at her. There is no denying that Katie Specks looks enough like me that she could indeed be my clone. It is also true that she still doesn't know how she got here. I can't blame her for wondering whether she might not be who she thinks she is.

"You're not a clone," I tell her.

"Am I  a twin?"

"Not of me, you aren't. Perhaps we're related."

"Aye, perhaps. Were your ancesters from England or Ireland?"

"Some of them. I used to jokingly refer to the Irish ones as Viking Irish royalty, the ones who got tired of returning north and became landed gentry instead."

"Aye, I come from the same hardy stock," says Kate. "Mayhap we are relatives. But stay, I have one more question for ye."

"What's that?"

"Am I fictional? You told people that I was a fictional character."

Uh-oh. "How do you know about that?"

"I read the emails you sent to Paul and Gem."

Poor Kate! I'll have to approach my explanation delicately. "I didn't think you would learn to use my computer so quickly," I admit.

"I find your keyboard difficult to operate, especially the keys with the letters missing. But even I can point and click with the mouse. What is your explanation, Karen?"

"What would you have me tell everyone, Kate? If I post the truth, that you're really here but we don't know why or how, people will either assume that I'm lying, or that I'm crazy, or that I'm telling a story. As a fiction writer, I'd rather they think I'm writing fiction than that I'm lying or crazy."

"You think people will not believe the plain truth?"

"That's right. People just don't turn up from centuries past, alive and well and asking questions."

Kate chuckles. "Fair enough. All right, then. We can pretend that you're spinning a yarn, an it helps you preserve your reputation."

"Thank you."

"But you should have asked me, Karen."

I nod. "Yes. Sorry."

"Aye, well, 'tis unimportant now. Tell me more about The Simpsons. Do these drawings you mention move, like the images in Buffy?"

I think I'll spare you the rest of that conversation.

Karen

Some Fictional and/or Time Travel W.A.'s:
Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends
Not Your Usual Subscriptions
With the Beatles

Black Rose Katie Specks
An 18th Century pirate looks at the modern world.

• On Halloween and Modern Life
• On Technology and Fictional Pirates
• On Love and Death...and Life
• The Clone and the House Guest
• A Pirate Incognito
• Kate Weighs In
• Absent Friends

Classic Spooky Music!

Cross-posted, as usual, from Outpost Mâvarin (except the pictures here are bigger)....

Weekend Assignment: We're making a Halloween Music Mix! Suggest a song. The song can be scary, spooky or silly, but it should fit into Halloween somehow. All genres are acceptable; indeed, I'd be very interested to know of a country or samba song that would work.

Extra Credit: Are you spooked easily?

You know, I could swear I've written about this before, complete with posted photos of my Haunted Mansion and Buffy Once More With Feeling CDs. But Google says no. AOL Journals search says no. Actually reading titles on the Musings archive pages for 10/05 and 10/04, and looking at any entries that sound as though they might contain what I remember, I still can't find it.

Yes, well, okay, I did find my "Haunted by the Mansion" entry, but that wasn't so much about the music. I don't care. I remember writing about party music involving Disney attraction music and Buffy and Quantum Leap...oh. Okay, that's the problem. It was party music in general, or sf and fantasy party music, not specifically Disney or Halloween. Even if I still haven't found the entry. It was probably on the Outpost, anyway.

So, for the record, I'll just recap the Halloween standards around here before moving on to some other selections:

The Haunted Mansion 30th Anniversary CD. Features the entire Disneyland attraction narration and music and effects, outtakes by Paul Frees and others, a clip from the Florida one, a Vincent Price narration for Phantom Manor, and even a Japanese Ghose Host. But the main drawing card is still that great song, "Grim Grinning Ghosts," with Thurl Ravenscroft as one of the singers.

Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. I don't actually have this on CD, but I used to play the sound effects side of this Disneyland record every year when I was a teenager.

Pirates of the Caribbean CD. Same kind of deal as the Haunted Mansion one. It's not as overtly Halloween, but you gotta love Paul Frees intoning "Dead men tell no tales!" On the CD, several dead men proceed to tell tales in outtakes.

But, as I say, I've already expressed by appreciation for these recordings. Let's change the channel - literally.

The new Frigidaire

This afternoon, as I waited for the refrigerator to arrive, I turned our digital cable on to the music channel labeled "Sounds of the Season," and immediately got to hear "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. 11 hours later, that channel is still on, on its second run through its surprisingly large Halloween playlist. I've heard three different songs by Bobby "Boris" Pickett (two of which of boringly derivative of his one real hit), soundtrack music by John Carpenter, Elvira sounding a little like Julie Brown, "Bewitched" (the tv theme) by Peggy Lee(!), a parody song called "Drac the Knife," two songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show, songs by the Ramones, the Cramps, Bing Crosby, Andrew Gold, Michael Jackson ("Thriller," of course) and whatever unknowns someone called Drew recorded on surprisingly decent cover versions of songs for Halloween party CDs. Good stuff, some of it, plus a lot of forgettable stuff, and a few clunkers, such as "Dracula's Theme from Swan Lake," in which a silly, badly acted spoken word scenario in a graveyard is combined with Tchaikovsky.


Still, classical music does deserve its rightful place on the Halloween playlist. On the Fantasia soundtrack alone (which I bought on LP back in college, and had to exchange several times due to a bad pressing) has Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the quintessential spooky organ music, plus Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. (Actually, I was reading today that the Fantasia version of Night on Bald Mountain I know was heavily revised by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Leopold Stokowski.)


But my favorite spooky classical piece (albeit less so now than when I was a kid) has always been Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. (Listen to it here.) It's based on a medieval allegory about dancing skeletal figures from all walks of life - the rich and the poor, the powerful and the peasants - all called by Death. (Hey, these people were dealing with the Plague at the time.) I remember being exposed to this musical masterpiece back in elementary school, and even seeing a cartoon that went with it. But like that blog entry about spooky music, I can't prove that what Iremember ever existed. Yes, there's a great Disney cartoon called The Skeleton Dance, the first Silly Symphony ever made. I've even read claims that the music for that was the Danse Macabre, or, at least, that brilliant cartoon composer-arranger Carl Stalling adapted the Saint-Saens for it. But it just doesn't sound like it to me. Ah, well. Next you'll tell me there is no wooden bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland that depicts the Dance of Death on its wooden panels. But there is. I photographed it when I was 15 years old. And no, I don't have the pictures.

Extra Credit: well, I am a little spooked that I can't prove what I remember, and also that it's past 2:30 AM already!

Karen

Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Halloween Music

E Plebneesta and the Dangerous Writers

Weekend Assignment #133: Share with us a person or person who you think is a model for free speech in the United States. It can be one of the Founding Fathers, another historical personage, or someone who is living right now. Yes, this is slightly more work than the usual Weekend Assignment, but, you know. Free speech is worth it. For those of you in the UK or Canada, you can nominate someone who represent free speech in your own country, or pick someone from the US.

Extra Credit: A favorite controversial book (it doesn't have to be from an American).

I'm not up for the full-blown rant on this subject, at least not tonight. Tonight I'm just going to toss out some names and a few anecdotes, and call it a night. Maybe over the weekend I'll take the subject and run with it.

When I was in high school, the U.S. Constitution always reminded me of a silly bit in a Gene Roddenberry-penned episode of Star Trek, "The Omega Glory." It still does, really. In the episode, the Yangs would trot out a tattered American flag as their leader chanted a garbled version of the Preamble to the Constitution. "We the People of the United States" became, at least to my ears, "E Plebneesta."

And if you break it down, "E plebneesta" makes a surprising amount of sense. "E" also begins the Latin motto "E pluribus unum": "from many, one." "Plebn" could refer to plebians, or ordinary people. And "eesta" could be "ista," a (usually)plural suffix found in words like "Sandinista" or "fashionista." So "E plebneesta" becomes "From the ordinary people and their proponents." And that's pretty much what the Constitution is, the ordinary people (as represented by wealthy landowners) ceding certain rights to various branches of government, while retaining others for themselves.

Yes, I know the Preamble and the Bill of Rights are two different parts of the Constitution. I'm mentioning the E Plebneesta anyway, because to me the whole Constitution is important and sacred, its priniciples worthy of a lot more respect than certain politicians give it. So there. That's my preamble to this entry.

Thinking about the actual Bill of Rights, though, leads me to an entirely different memory, from a Weekend Assignment two years ago. The actual assignment was about which Founding Father we'd each like to hang out with. It provoked in me an account of a fictional 21st century picnic, to be attended by John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James and Dolley Madison. In my first entry, I merely mentioned the guest list and the two destinations, but the follow-up entry was a vignette in which time traveler Karen invited the Madisons to the 2004 picnic, and mentioned the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights, image enhanced slightly for visibility

So, now that I've fictionally partied with Tom Jefferson (left), who believed that "half a loaf" of rights secured to the people was better than none, and James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights (partly cribbed from the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the writings of John Locke), what proponents of that all-important first amendment right of free speech do I especially admire? Well, those two guys for sure, and Samuel Adams, for starters. I really should learn more about Madison; he didn't say much during that picnic. He did mention, however, that he mostly put the Bill of Rights together to keep the newly-formed Constitutional government from collapsing in the wrangle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

More contemporary outspoken people who made a difference in my lifetime: Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably the most important one. If you're going to say things that people don't want to hear, it's helpful to have a thirst for justice, a substantive message backed up by action, and a gift for oratory. Some of those old speeches still blow me away. At a more personal level, I used to admire the heck out of George Carlin, with his infamous Seven Words. It wasn't that I actually liked or used every one of those words myself, although I did use the two biggies in those days. What I admired was Carlin's ability to satirize the folly of thinking those words, of all the words in the language, were so dangerous and harmful that they must never be broadcast.

I was going to work in a riff about Harlan Ellison here, but let's skip it.

Favorite controversial book? That's got to be A Wrinkle in Time, of course. This classic about love and faith, friendship and family, and individuals fighting evil (including enforced, mindless conformity) rates high (#22 in the 1990s) on banned book lists. It's been slipping down the charts with the advent of new targets for self-appointed censors, but it's still an important and misunderstood book. But I've already ranted that rant, at least once.

Karen

Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Ethics, Constitution, Bill of Rights, L'Engle

My Titanic Struggle to Post a Picture of a Horse

Yay!  I finally got my Edit buttons.  See above.

Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin:

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Horses are nice. Show us a horse picture you've taken. It can be new, or one from your files. It just needs to have a horse in it.

That doesn't sound so hard, does it? After all, at some point in my life, I must have taken at least one picture of a horse. Or I could take a new one. After all, this is Tucson, part of the fabled Old West.

Well...yes. I've taken pictures of horses before. And yes, Tucson has its place in Western history.

But no, it wasn't easy to come up with a horse photo.

Attempt #1: Invisible Horses on Tanque Verde Road

I thought it would be nice to actually take a new photo of a horse. But where could I do that, on a Monday evening in the city of Tucson? Contrary to the history and image of the place, it's been a long time since horses on the street were a common sight around here.

But there's horse property on Tanque Verde Road, between the OK Corral Steakhouse and the Catalina Highway turnoff. So after work I turned right instead of left, and headed north and east. But it was sunset, and I guess the horses were in for the night. I didn't see a single one.

Attempt #2: Horses as Business Signs

I kind of had the idea that there might at least be a life sized statue of a horse on top of the OK Corral restaurant. I looked as I drove by, on my way back from looking for the real thing. Nope. There was a life-sized steer on the roof. No horse.

Well, then, what about Trail Dust Town? They have a Museum of the Horse Soldier, and lots of Western props and artifacts. But there was a car behind me as I pulled in, and the parking lot near the museum was full. I couldn't even get a good look at the graphic at the museum entrance, let alone take a picture. No horse statue outside, either. I drove around the complex, but although there were plenty of wagons, none of them had even fake horses to pull them. Drat! I went home.

Attempt #3: The Horsie in the Window

There are two buildings in town that remind me so strongly of each other that I don't always remember which one has a full-size statue of a horse in a lit second story window. That would be a neat trick, I think, and a neat picture - a horse on the second floor!

One of the buildings is a saddle supply shop, the other an animal hospital. Both have huge windows and lit rooms on the second floor. One is a couple of lights from my home, on 22nd St. near Swan. The other is farther north, at Speedway and Swan.

So when I went to get dinner for John and myself, I made a side trip to check whether the building on 22nd is the one with the horse. Bad mistake. The road was torn up at Craycroft, with a night construction crew working. One guy was in a hole up to his waist. The only lane open in either direction was the right turn lane. I was trapped for about twenty minutes, trying to drive a few blocks and then turn around. And - you guessed it - it's not the animal hospital on 22nd that has the horse in the window. It's the saddle supply on Speedway. And I'd already delayed dinner too much to go any further out of my way, just to take that picture.

Attempt #4: Rodeo Shots at the Bar

But when I got to Chuey's, which is half sports bar, half Baja-themed mesquite grill, I thought my luck had finally changed. Some of the tv sets happened to be airing a rodeo! So while I waited for the food, I positioned myself by a likely tv set and started taking pictures. But darn it, those cowboys are fast! This was the best horse picture I got out of about eight shots I took. Mostly, I kept ending up with blurry action shots of the cowboy roping a steer on foot.

Attempt #5: Horses by Breyer


I always knew I could resort to a shot like this if I had to. Here are a couple of old, plastic Breyer horses. The mare is the exact model and color of the Breyer horse I had as a kid. The foal turned up at a yard sale years ago, stained and with legs bent out of postition. It cleaned up fairly well, and although it's not perfect I like it. But Scalzi didn't say anything about pictures of toy horses.

Attempt #6: Horses on File

So I went through the photo files on my computer. I actually don't have a lot of horse pictures on it. Not at all.


How about an "Iron Horse"? This is one of several shots I have of the locomotive at Old Tucson.



This is another Old Tucson shot. The rear end of this horse as photographed is terribly lightstruck, and you can't see the head much at all.

Attempt #7: Painting the Pony


As an experiment, I used the cloning tool on my cheap software to recolor the shaggy horse. How do you think I did? I'm not too happy with it, myself.

Attempt #8: A Photo of a Photo

My scanner has apparently died since I unplugged it recently, so that John could clean it and use it (he did neither). When I click on the scanner icon, it crashes the software. So if I want to show you a physical picture taken 20 years ago, I have to find a way to photograph the photograph without the image getting too flashed out or skewed.


It took a while - three mini-photo sessions and about a dozen shots - but with the right arrangement, careful cropping and some photo editing, I finally came up with a picture that's not too, too terrible. I took this a few seconds before I got a much closer, better picture of the dog on the horse. I won second or third place once in a photography contest with that one, but I've used it in a Scalzi assignment at least once before. So we'll settle for the prequel.

And that will have to do. Good night!

Karen

P.S. You would think that would be the end of the struggle, but the Blogger server that hosts the Outpost was having problems last night and this morning. When I hit the "Publish Post" button, I repeatedly got a white screen that nevertheless said "Done" at the bottom (as in, "Done loading the page"). No confirming email, no entry when I refreshed the blog. Arrow back: the entry was still in the Create Post window, anyway. What a relief! I did a Save as Draft in case that helped, and the page showed a draft of the entry and also the actual entry. But the entry still wasn't there.

Finally, at Carly's suggestion, I opened the edit window in a different browser, and posted from that. There was at least a minute of the looping notice that it was 0% published. Then, oh joy! 40%! Then 100%, and I heart the new email alert sound. Success! But this morning, Betty reported that the photos, which are hosted on that same Blogger server, weren't showing up on my crossposting to Musings from Mâvarin. Darn server! Try again, Betty! They should be showing up now.- KFB

Wednesday night:  now the photos aren't showing up for me (except the Breyer one; go figure). AOL and Blogger (the latter is where the photos were uploaded) aren't talking to each other, seemingly.  So I just uploaded them to mavarin.com instead.  Here's hoping!

Technorati Tags: Scalzi, Monday Photo Shoot, Horses

Fascinating Tucson, Part Two

For the other three parts of this (one in Musings, two at the Outpost, click below:

Outpost: Intro, Climate

In Musings: The Desert

Outpost: History and Culture

This is going to be a "fast and dirty" entry so that I can go to bed. Tucson is surrounded by four sets of mountains:

North: The Catalinas.



This is where Mount Lemmon is, with Summerhaven at the top. My very first Round Robin Photo Challenges entry was a series on a trip up Mount Lemmon. (Speaking of which, the next Round Robin topic is "Nostalgia." Click the link for details.)

Here is a shot at Molino Basin, about a quarter of the way up Mt. Lemmon Highway. The habitats at different elevations are called "sky islands," because they represent distinct ecosystems that are separate from surrounding areas. You'll find different species of birds among the aspen pines beyond Summerhaven than what you'll see in the trees at Molino.

More on Mount Lemmon:

Diary of a Day Trip, Part One

Diary of a Day Trip: Mount Lemmon, Part Two

Diary of a Day Trip: Mount Lemmon, Part Three

Diary of a Day Trip: Mount Lemmon, Part Four

East: The Rincons



The Rincons are similar to the Catalinas, but shorter and undeveloped (i.e., no roads or houses on them). They are part of Saguaro National Park East. Colossal Cave is at the Rincon end of town.

South: The Santa Ritas.



These are a bit farther away than the others, down below the airport and Davis-Monthan AFB, toward Green Valley and including Madera Canyon. There was a fire in the Santa Ritas in 2005.

West: The Tucson Mountains



The Tucsons are very different from the other three ranges, looking like a bunch of piled rocks more than anything else. (Southern California has many mountains like these.) We used to live in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. The range separates Tucson from the Avra Valley, where the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and Old Tucson are, and where Saguaro National Park West is. The most spectacular way from the city to Old Tucson is across Gates Pass, a steep, scary, winding road with a great scenic lookout at the top. The photo is of my dad in Gates Pass in 2005.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Mountains, Tucson

Fascinating Tucson, Part One

Your Weekend Assignment #126: What is the most interesting thing about where you live? "Thing" in this case would be a famous landmark, a famous current celebrity or historical personage from your home town or county, a notable celebration or sports event -- basically, anything that makes where you're from interesting and unique.

Extra Credit: Are there any books that feature your home town (or someplace nearby) in any way?

THE most interesting thing about Tucson?  I don't think I can pick one thing. (Big surprise, huh?)  I will tell you right off the bat that it's not Flandrau Planetarium, the Diamondback bridge or the statue of Padre Kino. Nor is it the fact that Lee Marvin lived here, John Dillinger was once captured here and Linda McCartney died here.  Some Tucsonans might point to the University of Arizona basketball team, but I don't watch basketball. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is the largest in the country, but I don't care. No, no.  None of the suggested ways for a place to be interesting are even in the running as reasons I find Tucson interesting.

As far as I'm concerned, Tucson is most notable for the following:

• The desert, including the critters, the cacti, the washes, etc.
• The mountains that surround the city
• The climate, so different from the Syracuse weather I grew up with
• The history and culture of the place

As an experiment, I'm going to write about two of these at the Outpost, and the other two in Musings. Each of the bullet points above will have its own entry, one per blog per night.

The Desert

When we first came to Tucson in 1986, we fell in love with the desert here. It was full of interesting new birds like pyrrhuloxias and phainopeplas, curve-billed thrashers (like the one shown here) and brown towhees, and fun mammals such as coyotes and javalinas. We learned about rivers that only have visible water when it rains, and riparian habitats where water supports trees and certain kinds of birds.  We found out that a palo verde is a tree with green bark and yellow blossoms, and how an ocotillo looks very different during a rainy season (such as the monsoon) than the rest of the year. And we learned that when it starts to rain at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, getting under a ramada may not protect you much. A ramada is basically a roof for providing shade, and sometimes it's made of saguaro ribs (the sticks inside a saguaro cactus that hold it up) laid side by side.  That's good for shade, but it doesn't do much to block precipitation, when there is any.

A very green patch of desert in March 2004, across from the Target on Grant Rd.

Yeah, we liked the desert a lot. About two weeks after we got here, we bought a house in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains, where the desert was in our back yard.  We had saguaros and sagebrush and palo verde trees, coyotes and tortoises and javalinas and over 50 species of birds.  I like the house we're in now, but I really miss having the desert out my door.

Toward the bottom of Mount Lemmon, March 2005

On the Outpost: Climate

Tomorrow night: Mountains.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Desert, Monsoon, Tucson

A reminder - I do NOT condone or support the advertisement found above this entry - whatever it is. Nuts to B of A, Quisno's and the rest.

This may be "cheating," but I'm just generating an alert here to tell you I did the Weekend Assignment there.  I've been blogging a couple of times a day - are you keeping up? 

Karen
Outpost Mavarin - my new main blog
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Messages from Mavarin (for my Saturday fiction entry)
http://mavarin.blogspot.com

Interesting - now I can't even reach the subject line after the fact.

Not Your Usual Subscriptions

Weekend Assignment #85: What magazines do you subscribe to and why? This assumes you currently subscribe to a magazine or two, of course, but I'm reasonably confident most of us do. If you don't have any current subscriptions, however, you can list some of your most recent subscriptions or magazines you want to subscribe to.

Extra Credit: What was your first magazine subscription?

All my subscriptions to mass market magazines have lapsed. TV Guide?  There's no point any more.  On the rare occasions when I watch anything other than House, Bones or a DVD, I can always look stuff up online or on the tv itself.  Newsweek?  I let Mom's subscription die, a year or two after she did, 'cause I wasn't getting around to reading it.  Reader's Digest?  Ditto.  MacAddict?  John would snarf the CD-ROMs and stick them in a desk drawer. I would usually read the Letters section, and that was that.  When was the last time I fired up the Mac?  It's been a while, that's for sure.

Here are the two magazines I do subscribe to. 

Mâvarin Monthly is kind of muckraking and sensationalistic, but its reporters are extremely good at finding out what's really going on at the Palace and elsewhere. Somewhat complicit in the old regime prior to the Restoration, the Monthly has been making the most of its freedom of the press since the Awers' fall from power.  I mostly read it for the newsmakers' interviews, but I also enjoy the magazine's lively arts section. 

For a different perspective, I also read The Citadel, which is published out of Mâton.  It's definitely biased, which isn't too surprising, considering it's government-controlled.  Nevertheless, it's interesting, and a good way to understand the politics and culture of the mages' island nation.

The Journal of Contemporary Time Travel is not as fluff-oriented as its cover would indicate.  There are some serious articles in here about the Laws of Time (both physical and legislative), dealing with paradox, and other stuff the serious time traveler needs to know.  This one, too, I often read for the interviews, especially the ones that are more about theory, and less  about "My Lunch with Genghis Khan."  The biggest problem with this one is figuring out when the subscription expires.

Extra Credit:  I remember that I used to get Jack & Jill magazine back in second grade or so, plus Weekly Reader at school; but that was not something I did for myself, obviously.  I think my first subscription that I paid for was TV Guide, but it may have been National Wildlife. 

Karen

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Magazines, Fiction, Time Travel, Mâvarin

The Clone and the House Guest

Weekend Assignment #84: Take a look at the picture below. Tell us what you think is going on in the picture. You can write as long as you want, or as short as you like -- even a photo caption works. Now, it's a fairly weird picture, but I thought that would just give you more to work with. Ready? Here you go:



John Scalzi is finally forced to admit it was a bad idea to crib
his cloning experiment from a Treehouse of Horror episode of
The Simpsons.

Extra Credit: Would you like to see more "explain what's going on in the picture" sort of assignments?

No.  Not as such.  There's not enough material here for writing one of my patented long entries. Yet somehow I'll manage anyway, especially with my nosy house guest asking questions!

"Tell me again who John Scalzi is," Black Rose Kate orders.

"He's AOL's designated, professional blogger," I tell her.  "He's there to encourage and inspire people to post in their AOL Journals, give tips on how it's done, point the way to interesting or amusing stuff online, and generally entertain us."

"Then by what authority can he assign you to do anything?"

"Oh, it's completely voluntary.  But it gives me something to write about that I might not have thought of otherwise."

"Is this something you wanted to write about, now that he's thought of it for you?" she asks pointedly.

"Not really, but I'm proud of the caption I came up with for it."

"I do not understand it.  What is a clone?"

"A clone is an exact copy of a person, like a twin, but made by science instead of nature.  It's been done with a sheep and other animals.  Nobody's ever really cloned a human being yet, as far as we know, and a lot of people say we shouldn't even try it."

"But the monster on the left isn't an exact copy," Kate points out.

I decide not to mention that "monster" would not be a politically correct term for a "cloned American," even a wonky-looking one like Scalzi's.  "That's because the premise of the photo is that the cloning experiment didn't quite work out," I explain.  "It's supposed to be a joke."

"Well, I fail to see the humour in it," says Kate.  "What does your caption mean, about The Simpsons?  You have DVDs with that name on them.  Are there clones in The Simpsons?"

"Not that I recall," I admit.  "But the fake clone in the picture looks a little like the drawings of Homer Simpson in the tv show."

"There are drawings in the tv show?"

"It's nothing but drawings.  You can watch some of the DVDs tomorrow if you like."

"And the treehouse of horror? What, pray tell, is that?"

"It's a series of Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, in which horrible things happen.  If a cloning experiment went wrong on The Simpsons, it would probably be in a Treehouse of Horror episode."

Black Rose Kate shakes her head.  "I think I have done very well so far in understanding your century; but this explanation remains unclear to me."

"It's not important," I tell her.  "Nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it."

Kate nods thoughtfully.  Then she hits me with a question that I should have expected but didn't.  "Am I a clone?"

I look at her.  There is no denying that Katie Specks looks enough like me that she could indeed be my clone.  It is also true that she still doesn't know how she got here.  I can't blame her for wondering whether she might not be who she thinks she is.

"You're not a clone," I tell her.

"Am I a twin?"

"Not of me, you aren't.  Perhaps we're related."

"Aye, perhaps.  Were your ancesters from England or Ireland?"

"Some of them.  I used to jokingly refer to the Irish ones as Viking Irish royalty, the ones who got tired of returning north and became landed gentry instead."

"Aye, I come from the same hardy stock," says Kate.  "Mayhap  we are relatives.  But stay, I have one more question for ye."

"What's that?"

"Am I fictional?  You told people that I was a fictional character."

Uh-oh.  "How do you know about that?"

"I read the emails you sent to Paul and Gem."

Poor Kate!  I'll have to approach my explanation delicately.

"I didn't think you would learn to use my computer so quickly," I admit.

"I find your keyboard difficult to operate, especially the keys with the letters missing.  But even I can point and click with the mouse.  What is your explanation, Karen?"

"What would you have me tell everyone, Kate?  If I post the truth, that you're really here but we don't know why or how, people will either assume that I'm lying, or that I'm crazy, or that I'm telling a story.  As a fiction writer, I'd rather they think I'm writing fiction than that I'm lying or crazy."

"You think people will not believe the plain truth?"

"That's right.  People just don't turn up from centuries past, alive and well and asking questions."

Kate chuckles.  "Fair enough.  All right, then.  We can pretend that you're spinning a yarn, an it helps you preserve your reputation."

"Thank you."

"But you should have asked me, Karen."

I nod.  "Yes.  Sorry."

"Aye, well, 'tis unimportant now. Tell me more about The Simpsons. Do these drawings you mention move, like the images in Buffy?"

I think I'll spare you the rest of that conversation.

Karen

*********THIS JUST IN**************

The date, time and format for announcing the winners of the VIVI Awards has been, um, announced! Click below for details!

  <---click here for the announcement

Thanks to Gregg (Golden Child NC) for the category nominee graphics!

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Clones, Black Rose Kate, Pirates, Fiction

Would You Approach This Character on a Dark Night?

Weekend Assignment #83: Tell us a scary Halloween story... that happened to you. What I'm looking for here is a story where you were spooked or scared by someone or... something... in or around Halloween (or, alternately, a story where you spooked the heck out of someone else). Please note I don't want stories in which you or others were genuinely in danger -- I'm talk about you getting one big BOO! moment, which, after you were able to get your heart back into your chest, resulted in you saying something along the lines of "Don't do that!" to whomever was giving you a spook. A fun frightening, in other words.

Extra Credit: The song "Monster Mash": Fun or lame?

If this journal seems to be turning into all Halloween, all the time, that's only because it pretty much is.  Don't worry; it's temporary.  Heck, this is nothing.  Last year I gave the mostly-oblivious public two weeks of graveyards and coffins, costumes and treats, toys and decor.  This year, we're talking about just over a week, interrupted from time to time with other stuff.

First off, let's dispose of the being "spooked" part of John Scalzi's assignment.  I honestly don't remember ever being particularly scared on Halloween.  Being shy, I probably didn't like to approach a house alone, but since I always went trick-or-treating with one friend of another, that usually wasn't a problem.  We admired the artists' skull and Hamlet record next door, stuck to familiar neighborhoods, skipped the houses that weren't lit, and never got as far as the haunted house at the fork in the road between F-M Road and High Street.  (We often peeked in the windows of this dilapidated, abandoned but still-furnished old house by daylight, but we never broke in or anything.  We were good kids.  At least, I was.)

So I have to turn instead to more recent times, with me doing the scaring.  "Not Rani" plays a major role in this little story, so I'd better explain about him.

You probably recognize this picture.  I used it as my sidebar photo for much of 2004, and it's back again this month for Halloween. A different version of it is one of my LiveJournal icons.

This is probably my favorite of my recent Halloween costumes.  I call it "Not Rani" because it's about as close as I can come to impersonating a tengrem, short of modifying a pantomime horse costume or gluing a horn on my head.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, that probably means you haven't been reading Mall of Mâvarin, or browsing www.mavarin.com.  How can you vote for me in the VIVIs if you haven't read any of my fiction, hmm?

Okay, for the sake of expedience, here's the short version. In my first novel, Heirs of Mâvarin,  Rani Fost is a 15-year-old apprentice tanner who is suddenly transformed into a monster, and then hunted as his own presumed murderer.  He seeks help from his best friend, who is the Prince of Mâvarin but doesn't know it yet.


A tengrem looks like a nightmare combination of several other mythological creatures.  It has four legs, a somewhat bear-like upper torso, a horn on its wolfish head and dragon-like breath, the latter only when it's really angry. That's not important right now.  The point is that this mask looks a lot like a tengrem head (but without the dirty yellow horn), which is why I bought it.

The photo of me in my Not Rani costume dates to October 31st, 2002, six weeks before my mom died.  I remember this because I stopped at her adult care home on my way from Walgreen's, where I'd bought fake black nails as claws.  They didn't work well, and I ended up mostly doing without them. By the time this picture was taken, after the hundred or so trick-or-treaters had been and gone, I'd long since given up on the claws, but the fur was still hanging in here, and the black makeup was still giving my fingers pretty much the effect I wanted. And after all that, I watched a tv special about coffins and cemeteries, even though it made me feel a little creepy.  This was a few weeks after I chose my still-living mom's grave marker style, and designed the text for it.

I don't get to Halloween parties since the Doctor Who club drifted into oblivion, but I dress up anyway, often for work and always to hand out the treats.  In 2002, the year of Not Rani, I affected a growly voice, but dropped it in a hurry when I noticed that the kids were genuinely scared of me.  The little children wouldn't even approach without a lot of encouragement from me and from their parents or older siblings.  More than once, I pulled off the mask to reassure them.

Okay, little kids are one thing, but what about the older ones?  I did the growly voice thing for kids in their teens, and even they were scared, some of them!  About 9:30 that night, a couple of teenagers got out of a car, started up our driveway, and stopped when they saw me standing there, watching for stragglers and trying to cool off in the night air.

"Hello," one of them called out, a little tentatively.

"Hello!" I growled.

"Are you really a monster?" asked one of the nervous teens.

"No," I said loudly, in a more normal voice.

"Are you going to eat us?"

"Nooo," I said, in the tone one uses when faced with a  really stupid question.

Now, I would have assumed that this was all a joke, just a couple of teenagers from another neighborhood cruising around, mooching for candy and having fun.  I don't think they were even wearing costumes, or else they were in lame "we're too cool and grown-up to do it right" costumes.  But even after all that, these kids - I can't remember whether there were two or three of them - were extremely reluctant to approach me for their bags o' toys and candy.



Left: The ghoul's self-portrait.


Right: Queen Cathma, later in life. (Why, yes, I am obsessed with my Mâvarin characters.  Why do you ask?)

The next year I bought this ghoul mask at Walgreen's on the night of October 30th, because it was only $8 and I liked it a lot.  Remembering the way the kids had reacted to Not Rani, I dressed in my 2001 Queen Cathma costume for the early arrivals, and switched to the ghoul at about 8 PM.  Normally I like to change costumes every year, but for 2004 I ended up doing the same thing as in 2003, except that I switched to the ghoul a little earlier.  (The reason is a long, uninteresting story, so I'll spare you.) 

And yes, the kids were scared of the ghoul, too.  I can't really blame them!

And this year? Well, if you're playing along at home, you already know that it involves a skull, and that I'll be wearing boots. Your third clue is that it's not a rerun from 2001-2004, but it is a rerun of...something else.

Extra Credit: The song "Monster Mash": Fun or lame? Hey, I like the Monster Mash.  I like pretty much all Halloween songs, andwish there were more of them.  The one that stick in my had this year is one I learned in elementary school, The Wobblin' Goblin:

The wobblin' goblin with the broken broom
Could never fly too high
'Cause right after take-off,
Another piece would break off,
And soon he would be dangling in the sky....

I've never known where this song came from, whether a teacher wrote it or it was published somewhere.  Other than myself, I haven't heard anyone sing it in about 40 years now.  Maybe I'll Google it tonight, and see if anything turns up.

Tomorrow night:  a Halloween poem - I hope!  How do you feel about AABB rhyme schemes?  Yeah, I hate them, too, but we may be stuck with one this time.

Karen

From last year: The Wolf at the Door and Ghoulish Fun

Update: The Wobblin' Goblin was the B-side to a 78 RPM record by Rosemary Clooney in 1950. (Some kind of aircraft also got that nickname.)  The full lyrics to the song can be seen on a rather interesting thread about Halloween songs at http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=3113&page=2

Tags: Halloween, Weekend Assignment, Scary

A Childhood Full of Books

Weekend Assignment #82: What was your favorite bedtime story as a child?

Extra Credit: As an adult, have you shared that favorite bedtime story with a child?

This may sound strange, coming from someone who owns thousands of books, including at least a hundred kids' books; but I don't recall ever being read to at bedtime.  That's right; I said ever, E-V-E-R.  While it may have happened, all my memories are of me doing the reading, with or without adult assistance, and doing so by daylight.  I don't know why.  That's just what I remember.

But that's not to say that I don't have fond memories of early encounters with particular books:

I remember Mrs. Livingston reading Winnie-the-Pooh to our first grade class, and my grandmother's subsequent gift  to me of her personal copy of the book, printed in 1945.  I still have it, dark with age and cigarettes, worn and dog-eared. 

I remember how much I loved One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Still do.  I bought it again as an adult, but it's hiding from me just at the moment. I can still recite two of the poems in it from memory, but I'll try not to do so now. My two other Dr. Seuss favorites were Green Eggs and Ham (I told you about my dad making green eggs and ham for me, remember?) and Ten Apples Up on Top.  The latter book is attributed to Theo LeSieg, not Dr. Seuss, but that's just another variant name for good old Ted Geisel.  I think he didn't put the Seuss name on books unless he did the illustrations.

I remember reading something called Little Dog Tim over and over in the school library in first grade.

I remember getting and reading my brother's hand-me-down Whitman books of Tom Sawyer and of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood.  I think I got Black Beauty for Christmas or my birthday.  Other beloved hand-me-down books from Steve were Sunnybank: Home of Lad and Further Adventures of Lad by Albert Payson Terhune; and another Whitman book, Lassie and The Secret of the Summer.  I read the Lassie book so many times that I can still tell you that Jeff's favorite musician, according to the book, was someone named Dan Dawson.  But I had to wonder, who the heck was Jeff?  Lassie's proper owner was Timmy, in my experience.

I remember reading a biography of Henry Ford once when I had the flu, and one of Helen Keller (I think I was healthy for that one). 

I remember reading another of my grandmother's old books, given to me around 1965.  It was an 1865 edition of The Cricket's Friends by Cousin Virginia.  As I recall, the Cricket's close friends included a saucepan and a teakettle.  Go figure.  I think it was a little water-damaged (probably by me), but basically still in nice shape.  There was even a tipped-in sheet of tissue paper protecting the frontispiece.  In the early 1970s, my mom encouraged me to donate the book to the Arents rare book collection at Syracuse University's Bird Library.  I got a nice letter back from the collection's curator, thanking me and identifying the mysterious Cousin Virginia by full name.  I'm sorry to say that I almost regret the donation, though.  I'd like to reread the book!  Maybe someday I'll buy a copy online.  I know it turns up for sale, in several printings from the 1860s.

I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time when I was in fifth grade.  It's fair to say that it's had a lasting impact on my life.

I remember loving The Little Prince, and also The Little Lame Prince (no relation), The Little Lost Angel and The Five Little Kittens.  Well, maybe not so much the kittens.

I remember a book called Surprise in a Tree (apparently by Lillian Moore), and one about baby black bears who get into some paint and end up in the polar bear exhibit, and another one about a boy named Billy.  In the latter Easy Reader Book, Billy makes his mom a a birthday cake.  Quoting from memory here:

Hmm.  This cake looks kind of bumpy.
Maybe Ma won't see it's lumpy.
I know it will be good to eat.

In the second half of the book he makes his mom a hat out of all  sorts of things, including a bird cage:

"No, Ma, please, Ma, no, Ma, no."
She said, "Billy, you are silly.
Why do you say 'No, Ma, no?'
This is junk.  Out it will go."

(Great, now that's gonna be stuck in my head all night.  But I'd rather have that than I've Been Working on the Railroad, which chugged around in my tired brain for an hour this morning.)

I remember the books I bought for myself:  Skip (about a blind dog)and Follow My Leader (about a blind boy and his dog) from the Arrow Book Club, and Peanuts books from Economy Books at Shoppingtown, back before it was a mall.  I think the Peanuts books were 50 cents at the time.  My allowance was a quarter.  That meant I could buy one every two weeks, if managed to scrounge the tax from Mom.

And I remember fairy tales, especially a very small book of The Bremen Town Musicians, and other one of The Princess and the Pea. The first one I loved because it was about animals.   I'm not sure how I feel about the second one now.  Like Snow White and Cinderella, the protagonist is virtuous and downtrodden, which certainly has its appeal.  But are we supposed to applaud her for being oversensitive, supposedly a sure sign of royal blood?  If that were true, I'd be a queen!

Did I have a favorite story?  Sure.  I had lots of them, at different times.  Little Dog Tim was a big hit with me for a while, probably because it was illustrated with photos instead of drawings.  I remember Ten Apples Up on Top being my favorite at one point.  I remember reading and re-reading the Snoopy books, probably every day for a while.  At one time or another, probably nearly every book I've mentioned above was my "favorite."

And I still love them.  That's why I've bought back as many of these books as possible, in the same editions I had as a kid.  Too bad I can't Google up the story of Billy and his mom.  I don't know the title, and the most memorable lines brought up nothing but a message board in which guys were sayingterrible things to each other for fun.

Extra Credit:  I don't have kids, and never had a younger sibling, and my godson lives hundreds of miles away.  I did tell most of the plot of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to some kids I babysat once.  Years later, when I was in college, I told the same story around a back yard campfire to the kids next door.  Oh, and the last time my godson was in town, I read a few selections from Heirs of Mâvarin to Jacob and his parents.

Karen

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Books, Reading

Back to Courthouse Square

Weekend Assignment #81: Share one of your favorite science fiction movies. Note that this doesn't have to be the "best" science fiction film ever, or the most popular, or the most significant; it doesn't even have to be a good science fiction film. It just should be a science fiction film you enjoy watching over and over again -- the kind that always sucks you into the couch whenever it's on TV.

Extra Credit: Who is the coolest science fiction character ever? Note that this character doesn't have to be in the film you've selected as your favorite -- consider the entire genre.

Whenever I think about what my favorite movies are, Back to the Future is the first one that comes to mind.  I'm not sure it's my absolute favorite film of any kind, but it's got to be right up there. 

Why?  Well, for one thing, it's a time travel movie, and I'm a sucker for time travel stories.  The time travel aspect is well-thought out, and a lot of fun, while still allowing room for speculation on how it all works.  Someone once wrote an entire article for Starlog about the "second" Marty McFly, the one who grew up near Lone Pine Mall instead of Twin Pines Mall.

Second, it's got backstory, further developed in the second and third movies.  I love a rich, detailed story, the sort of thing that usually develops only in a series of books, movies, or tv shows. The first movie is perfectly constructed, with every line of dialogue paid off in some way later on.  Everything fits together, everything makes  sense in context, and everything leads into everything else. I love the parallels from film to film, such as Marty being awakened by Lorraine (or her ancestor), and his having the same basic reaction every time.  The only plot elements that don't have a "through line" from the first movie to the last are Marty's "chicken" bugaboo and Doc's interest in the Old West.  These omissions from the first film are a big part of why the second and third movies aren't quite as satisfying as the original.  The "chicken" bit and the Old West seem tacked on as afterthoughts, which of course they were.  I'm  sure that if Bob and Bob (writer-director Zemecki and writer Gale) had known that there would be sequels, they would have found a way to lay in these plot elements from the beginning.

And of course, it's a comedy, and it has a happy ending.  By and large, I don't like depressing films.  I like life-affirming stories, with likeable characters trying to do the right thing.  Doc Brown and Marty McFly fit that paradigm perfectly.  It takes him three movies to fully recover his initial optimism, but Doc Brown ends up with a philosophy that really works for me: "Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one!"

Oh, and by the way...did I not say just two nights ago that I'd been to Hill Valley?  Well, here's your proof!  I took these pictures myself, in different decades!



The Hill Valley courthouse in Courthouse Square, 1955 version.  I shot this photo in 1987 - or did I?



The Hill Valley courthouse in Courthouse Square, 2015 version.  I actually took this photo in 1990 or so.  Notice the lack of water on the mall, and the missing clock, not to mention the absent gargoyles.  Apparently, Universal finally had need of the courthouse for different purposes than keeping the Back to the Future Part II configuration for the tourists, and was starting to dismantle the 2015 elements.  It was supposed to look like this, as seen in a screen capture from the DVD:



And here's the 1955 version again, as seen in the first film:



More recently, it's often been without the clock tower entirely, let alone the clock:



This was in the early 1990s, I think,but it may have been late 1980s.  Too bad I've never gotten in the habit or organizing and labeling my photos!

Unfortunately, I can't find the photos from our best BTTF photo shoot ever.  In 1989, John and I were at Universal Studios, one of half a dozen visits we've made together.  I've been there just as often without him, mostly during the run of Quantum Leap on tv (1989-2003).  But John and I were there together on the 1989 trip. Back to the Future, Part II had already come out in the theatres, but the 2015 dress for the storefronts and theatre of Courthouse Square were still mostly there. 

There was filming on the lot that day, so the trams of the Universal Studios Tour got backed up, waiting for the cameras to stop rolling.  Our tram happened to get stopped for about ten minutes in Courthouse Square, in full view of the futuristic storefronts.  John shot about a roll of film in those ten minutes.  Darn, I wish I could find those photos!

The rest of these photos are from before and after that day.  The earliest ones, including the DeLorean with the logo and the video displays, are from 1986 or 1987.  Most of the others are from August, 1990, the trip during which Tracy, Teresa, Dimitra and I first met Scott Bakula.  That's Dimitra getting out of the DeLorean in the Universal Studio Tour's Special Effects show.  The same show is also the source of the DeLorean model shot, and the Courthouse FX shot.  And the picture of the hoverboards and other props probably dates from 1992 or 1993, when Back to the Future...The Ride was finally up and running in California, having premiered in Florida first.  I love that ride!  The pre-ride has a number of nifty little ancillary films featuring Doc Brown, and of course Christopher Lloyd and Thomas F. Wilson star in the ride itself.  Some of this stuff used to be available online as Quicktime films, but not all of them.  I think I still have them on my Mac--the ones that were available, that is.  I wish I could get good copies of all the ride films!  Trust me, it wouldn't diminish my appreciation for the ride itself.  It's my favorite non-Disney park attraction in the world.









My second favorite sf film, if it counts as sf rather than fantasy, is probably Pleasantville (1998).  It has many of the same strong points as BTTF - good, likeable characters trying to do the right thing, humor, an intricate exploration of the nature of reality, and a basically positive ending.  Maybe I'll write about it some other time, but I'm tired now, and this entry has too many photos as it is! 

Honorable mentions go out to two early, silent sf films.  A Trip to the Moon  (Le Voyage dans la lune), directed by Georges Méliès, goes all the way back to 1902.  It's imaginative and funny, one of the first films to feature special effects, and probably the very first sf movie.  Am I right on that last part, John Scalzi?  (He says yes.) Incidentally, someone really needs to write up this movie properly for IMDB.  The listing for the English version is sadly bare, except for a reference to the rock group Queen, and the date doesn't match the one for the French title.  I've tried to send the basic corrections; we'll see if they go through.  My other honorable mention is for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari) from 1920.  I saw this in college, and was extremely impressed with its surreal, Deco-inspired sets, all odd angles and disturbing images.

Extra Credit:  I've gotta go with Doc Brown on this one, until or unless there's a Quantum Leap movie.  Christopher Lloyd has had a very interesting career, from Reverend Jim on Taxi to the Klingon who indirectly killed Kirk's son, from Uncle Martin the Martian to dead Uncle Fred to weird Uncle Fester, from a baseball-loving angel named Al to evil John Bigboote from Planet 10, from Judge Thatcher to Judge Doom. I've enjoyed his work in almost all of those roles. But his best character is Dr. Emmett L. Brown, a man brilliant enough to invent a time machine, but foolish enough to think he can get away with giving the Libyans "used pinball machine parts" instead of plutonium, and to take Marty's modern-day expressions a bit too literally:

Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull? - Dr. Emmett L. Brown

Karen

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Back to the Future, Science Fiction Films, Time Travel