# 2120

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2120^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3568, December 29, 2005.
Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital, 10830 Oxnard Street, North Hollywood, California 91606-5098.
Telephone: hospital(818) 763-8247; personal (818) 506-3159 * eMail:fredpatten@earthlink.net

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Thursday I already had an appointment for a TV interview before I was supposed to go to the hospital. This interview had been set up a couple of weeks previously with Dan Persons. He is a TV producer from New York. He was working on a documentary on the history of anime in America for broadcasting along with a Japanese program called Samurai Seven on the Independent Film Channel. He was video interviewing me for a a history of Anime that was supposed to be on a TV special along with the premiere of Samurai Seven. That lasted for about two hours, from about two to four o'clock, and then after that was over, just as he left, the nurses announced that it was too late in the day to transfer me over to Mission Community Hospital, so I wouldn't go until Friday morning. I said, "If I'm going to be here tonight, then I want to go to the LASFS meeting," but the only person I had time to notify was Michael Burlacke. Fortunately he was still able to take me over, so I did get to the LASFS Thursday of the previous week, that being the 15^th. I was very glad I was there, because that was my patron saints week, so I had a chance to hear that. Michael Burlacke and the other people who saw me at LASFS said that I didn't look very good, so apparently it was wise that the nurses were sending me to this other hospital on Friday. When they did, on Friday, just after noon, at that time I was feeling really sick and had a temperature of over 101°. I'm not entirely sure what I was sick with, but I was there from Friday until the next Wednesday. They kept feeding the antibiotics all the time. Mission Community Hospital is not as nice as this place or as Rancho Los Amigos was, so I was glad when I got back here, but they put me in this isolation room and I have not been able to get back into my regular room to get to my telephone or my computer. I guess I've got a lot of e-mails piling up. I know that several people have tried to phone me and they haven't been able to get through, because they won't let me at my regular phone. They tried giving me a few cell phones, but the reception has been very bad. The only time I had a good cell phone was when Tom Locke came to visit me. He has a cell phone which works fine, but the only person that I could get when I tried calling out was Marty Cantor, so I guess that takes care of that. I still don't know when I'm going to get to the LASFS again, but probably not by this Thursday.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on APA-L 2118 Distribution:

Comments to June Moffat: You ask where to get made-to-order license plate frames. It's also been a long time since I've seen any advertised and I get the impression that it's one of those bits of popular culture that has become passé, like pocket calendars used to be. I used to find those little counters that would fit in your wallet very handy and it used to be that so many companies sent them out as free advertising, then all of a sudden they just stopped, and you could not find pocket calendars anymore. It seems to be the same way with made-to-order license plate frames, so I hope that you have good luck finding where to get some made. ## Regarding the missing number, that's something have to rely on whoever is putting together my APA-L 'zine to do. I'm not sure whether it's Vanessa or Marty, but in any case I never know until I see APA-L itself whether they got it right or not.## I assume that my DVD that was stolen, the attraction was the content, which is Madagascar, because nobody has ever been interested in stealing any of my Japanese animation videos and Madagascar is the first popular American movie I've had, so I feel that somebody had to go out of their way to steal that in particular and leave all of the Japanese anime DVDs that I've had on my table for weeks still there. ##Margaret Dumont played the role of Shirley McLain's mother in What A Way To Go. She played it much more seriously than any of her Marx Brothers roles. She played it very seriously, rather than sort of exaggerated in the way that she did, which proves that Groucho Marx's comments in his autobiography about how she was really as pompous and haughty as she appeared in the movie were not correct. She was obviously a very capable actress. Of course, maybe she learned to become a capable actress after the Marx Brothers movies, because What A Way To Go was about 15 or 20 years later than any of her Marx Brothers movies. ## If you get the Dickson/Anderson collection The Sound and the Furry, that has all the Hoka stories in it, so you'd be able to replace all your other books and that would probably end up saving you shelf space. ## I did not get all the issues of the LOSCON 31 con newsletter myself, but since they would just have gone to the University of Riverside library, I hope somebody sent the U.C. Riverside library a complete collection of all the LOSCON publications, including the program book.## The seven Narnia Chronicle books have been renumbered, putting The Magician's Nephew in the number one spot and The Lion, Witch And The Wardrobe in the number two spot because The Magician's Nephew is the earlier, even though it's published sixth. I personally disagreed with this, but a lot of people have disagreed with it during C.S. Lewis's lifetime and Lewis himself made it very clear that he thought people should read The Magician's Nephew first because it was chronologically first, even though The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is much more dramatic and it sets up a lot of the mystery and questions that were answered in The Magician's Nephew, so if you read them The Magician's Nephew first, it's like reading the end of a murder mystery to get all the answers before you read the story, I think, but Lewis himself disagreed with that very strongly so I guess the publishers are just following Lewis's wishes. I'm glad that they made the movie starting with The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe because I think it would have been a big mistake if they had started it off with The Magician's Nephew.

Comments to Marty Cantor - Thanks for the information about the Union Pacific board game. I will try to make sure that Michael Burlake gets this information, although I would I think that he will have seen this distribution of APA-L himself. ## Agree with you that whatever printing equipment the LASFS has should be available to the printing needs of the members, because, basically, the members are the club, and while there has to be some kind of limitation, such as members not being allowed to check books out of the LASFS library and just keep them as their personal property, the LASFS printing has always been a sort of key part of the club, and something that is sort of unique to a science fiction club, so while I would encourage individual members to get their own printing done at their local photocopy shops if possible, I think that the LASFS printing equipment should be available to members as long as members do not abuse the privilege.

Comments to John DeChancie - They said I was commuting daily, but I was a speaker on the program and as a program participant, I was told that I was entitled to free parking and in fact they did give a free parking validation to Michael Burlake, who was providing transportation for both of us. I guess that you should somebody should've told you that you should've asked about free parking validation when you checked in as a speaker.## While I would never compare myself with Robert Heinlein in quality terms as an author, I also write, and my standard practice for writing is to overwrite in the first draft, and then start cutting things out to make it more succinct as I get down to a required maximum word limit, if any. And so I would sort of hate for anybody to publish any of my first drafts or at least to replace the finished draft with the first drafts.

Comments to Lee Gold - I am not familiar with first run movies screened in the theater with subtitles for the deaf. I didn't know that was ever done and I assume it's a good idea, but I'm glad that the movies that I've seen recently did not have subtitling for the deaf, because I can agree that the sound effects subtitles, such as "slithering sounds," "ominous music," and so on would detract more than anything else. They do have those subtitling or closed captioning or whatever they call it on some Japanese anime and most fans do not like it at all. I agree that it detracts from the the ambience of the overall movie. So I'm glad the the screenings of the Narnia chronicles that we both saw did not have the subtitling.## I have not read the (mnikans? )which featured intelligent monkeys from the kingdom high in the Antarctic either, though I would expect that should as an expert in furry literature. To quote Bill Warren's oft-quoted line about science fiction movies, it's not that I want to see every science-fiction movie ever made, but I want to have seen every science-fiction movie ever made. Since I am an expert in whether they're good movies or not, I'm going to have to know what they're about.## Thank you for continuing to check on my wheelchair and to make sure that the firm from which you bought the wheelchair delivers the parts which they were paid for, way back when.

Comments to Marty Helgesen - Please do let us know what you think of the book, The Moose That Roared : The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose by Keith Scott. Keith Scott comes from Australia and he is no relation to Bill Scott who wrote many of the Rocky and Bullwinkle scripts, and was the voice of Bullwinkle, but he has since become a professional voice actor. he is definitely one of the current living experts on the Jay Ward shows. He has visited Los Angeles several times and he has spoken at ASIFA events. I've had a chance to meet him and have very high impression of them.

Comments to Phil Castora - I don't suppose that musical The Demolished Null-A, or Now You Don't still exists in any form. I'm sure that it would be worth putting on today, even if both science-fiction and SF fandom have advanced very much since 1952.## Probably most people refer to the LASFS directors as "members of the Board of Directors" because "director" used to be the title for the leader of the club, which is now called "the president." Back before the club incorporated and was required to have a Board of Directors and the LASFS needed to follow the government requirements for incorporation, but they did not want to confuse a previous office of directors with the new office of the Board of Directors. That's presumably why they refer to members of the board rather than directors. ## The story about Kay Tarrant, John Campbell's assistant editor, bowdlerizing the stories that they received in the incoming contest for new writers which was won by George O. Smith, referring to a tomcat as a ball-bearing mousetrap, is well-known, very well-publicized in the '50s after Smith got away with doing it, so it's it's an old story that needs to be kept up in people's memories. It's good that it is being commented on again.##I also enjoy fruitcake. Some are obviously better than others, but I don't recall ever eating any fruit cake that was really bad. ##There have been several articles both published by Mad Magazine itself and outside of Mad Magazine giving examples of earlier versions of Alfred E. Neuman, going back to the 19th-century. Mad never claimed that Alfred E. Neuman was their creation, although they did claim credit for associating the name Alfred E. Neuman with the image.## I somehow can't imagine completely forgetting considering all the work that Elst Weinstein has put into his church of Herbangelism.

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Comments to Karl Lembke: Regarding why the TV producers of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. would put in a detail like Napoleon Solo being divorced in the series Bible, I think other APA-L contributors have commented about how when a show is being set up, they have to make sure that all the characters are referred to consistently, even if it includes details that never actually used in the series. Specifying in advance that Solo was divorced or single or separated or whatever would ensure that any comments written about his marital status in any further episodes would be consistent. ## I'm sure the early LOSCONs in the 1970s and maybe the early 1980s offered supporting memberships as well as attending memberships. I don't suppose it's of any import, other than trivial historical import, to find out when LOSCONs stopped offering them and if in fact there's not been any recent sign that anybody is interested in buying a supporting membership, there's probably no sense in offering them now, but it might be interesting to at least investigate it. The file of LOSCON Progress Reports and the LOSCON archives would indicate and probably somebody should do a study of whether LOSCON ever got enough supporting memberships for it to be worthwhile.## I'm glad that the situation with the Wikipedia has received a lot of attention in the media and that people have reported that attention in detail here in APA-L. It sounds to me that, as I said previously, while Wikipedia does have definite problems, its assets are still better than its drawbacks. The fact that they're requiring users to register so as to make it harder for people to put false information in will help improve it even more.

Comments to Lee Gold: I do not recall from reading The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe - I read the novel many times in the 1950s and 1960s, I did not see the British television production, and I cannot remember whether the novel specified the Stone Table is being in the shape of the 10 Commandments or not. Frankly, if it was shown in the shape of the 10 Commandments, I think that might've made Lewis's Christian allegory a bit too blatant. Lewis obviously meant for the novel to be a Christian allegory, but I think he was trying to avoid hammering the images too obviously to the readers. Certainly making the Stone Table in the image of the tablets of the 10 Commandments would've been really obvious, so I think it's probably well that whoever made the new movie for Disney (I won't say Disney made the movie, because as far as I know, Disney just gets to distribute it) did not make the Christian imagery overly blatant. I personally thought that they made it awfully English, with the Tudor roses and so on, but that is probably consistent with C.S. Lewis. Most British juvenile fantasy that refers back to the days of knighthood and so on are overly image conscious about the Crusades and Richard the Lionhearted and Henry VIII. They sort of mix up the Plantagenets with the Tudors.##Thank you also for the additional information about Wikipedia's accuracy and correcting the errors on it.## As I said in the beginning of this contribution, I did in fact attend the LASFS meeting on the Thursday after my birthday and I got to hear the comments made on my patron saints week. I'm sorry I didn't have time to notify everybody that I was going to be able to attend that LASFS meeting but, as I said, I only found out about it myself in time to notify Michael Burlake and ask him if he could still pick me up and take me to LASFS and fortunately he was able to, since I had almost no advance notice to give him either.## I can't recall from seeing the Narnia movie whether they they referred to the Santa Claus figure as Santa Claus or as Father Christmas. Certainly he looked more like Father Christmas, but I think I recall a line of dialogue referring to the Santa Claus as wearing a typical red suit, so as a comment I would have to see the movie again to see whether the dialogue was consistent with the Father Christmas imagery.## Thank you for the information about how Medicare defines a low income senior. I'm confused as to whether I'm on Medical now automatically since I'm over 65 or whether I just qualified and I still have to be officially enrolled. ## Golden State Convalescent Hospital has not suggested that I get an HMO. I understand correctly I don't need one if I am on Medicare now.

Comment to Kay Shapero - I assume that the copies of The Sound and the Furry being listed on Amazon.com for sale as new are in fact used copies being sold through bookshops. As far as I know, the Science Fiction Book Club has never sold directly to dealers, but since the book is four years old now, doubtlessly individual copies have been sold by the SFBC members to used bookshops, and as long as a book is in essentially mint condition, they will be advertised as a new rather than used.##I fought my way through both of Woodall's books One for Sorry, Two for Joy and Seven For A Secret. Disney may have bought the rights to One for Sorry, Two for Joy but I assume that Disney would change it considerably, considering all the supporting characters that were all killed off in the book. If this gets made into a Disney talking animal movie, I'm sure they will not have that number high number of fatalities, and while I'm glad that Woodall makes it very dramatic, both the writing and the action is so overly melodramatic that it's hard to take seriously as it was supposed to be taken. I just did a review of the second book and I described it as either readers would gasp with admiration or will throw the book across the room in disgust. I did not say which readers are likely to do, but I think anybody reading between the lines will gather my reaction to it. I've actually seen other authors that are much better than Woodall have an ending as outrageous as this and get away with it, but they were classic authors and not the hack authors, as Woodall is.## My teacher was complaining to my mother about my reading the entire book instead of just the one chapter that was assigned to the students, but even then I still had a higher opinion of Dick and Jane than I did of Perry Mason.## Continued thanks for your continuing to print folk songs in APA-L for those of us who enjoy filk songs but don't read any of the filking fanzines.

Comments to John DeChancie - Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I have been cold enough during Southern California winter. The last couple of nights I've had to ask the nurses at the hospital to put extra blankets on my bed. I'm certainly glad that I don't have to go back to Pittsburgh at this time of year. I hope you are having a good time there and I'm glad to see that you say that your enjoying the opportunity of seeing old friends.

Comments to Marty Cantor - While I think the LOSCON Green Room this year had better combustibles than it had last year, there is no doubt that since it's been at the LAX Marriott, the Green Room has not been as good as it was when it was at the Burbank Hilton, however I think that this year showing improvement over last year's shows that the LOSCON committees are trying to improve on the situation and I'm glad that they have gone as far as they did this year and I hope they will improve it even further by next year. Since I'm a fan guest of honor next year, I expect to spend a lot of time in the Green Room.

Comment to June Moffatt - The CAPS meeting at the bowling alley was more successful than I expected, because I'd also heard about bowling noise from bowling pins, but fortunately the sort of social area of the bowling alley was far enough back from the actual bowling lanes that there was not much trouble hearing people talking.##I'm glad that you were in agreement with me that the LOSCON Green Room was much better supplied this year than last year, however there's still room for improvement in the hope that next year's will be even better. ## Assume that the president refered to in your long-ago cartoon about the fireplace being boarded up was Franklin Roosevelt, who was famous for giving his fireside radio chats

Comment to ??: The current practice of restoring all of Robert Heinlein's original good drafts to his novels reminds me of how August Derleth was so militant about keeping H.P. Lovecraft in print that he even published an essay that Lovecraft wrote for the first grade when he was only about five years old. I doubt that Lovecraft would have ve wanted that published and I really wonder whether Heinlein would have wanted his original drafts published, rather than the versions that were published. Heinlein is supposed to have complained about some of the editing that his editors did to them, so he might want some changes restored to his own version, but still I really wonder whether he would would've wanted his first drafts published rather than his final drafts the he sent to his publishers.

Comments to John Hertz: I noticed that since the Soviet Union fell apart, Russian postage stamps all spell the country's name as R-O-S-S-I-J-A which I assume is the way that they want people to pronounce it. I suppose it's hopeless to try changing the standard English spelling to the preferred Russian version. I myself can never remember the new official spelling of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. I keep spelling it the Russian Way - KIEV - which I know is not the Ukrainian way, but I can never remember what the new Ukrainian spelling is. I think it has an umlaut over a Y, or something equally weird.

Comment to Phil Castora - I notice that this year it seems very popular to complain about the enforced secularization of the Christmas season and how the word "Christmas" or any relation to the religious aspect are being downplayed in favor of simply winter themes. Of course, most of the winter themes have to do with snow, which is not appropriate for Southern California in any case. I did hear Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer once or twice this year but I did not hear a I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas or All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth at all and I'm just as glad I think.## Is kindergarten mandatory in California? It may be now, but was not in the 1940s when I first went to school. At that time kindergarten was optional and you didn't have to go to school before the first grade. I suppose it's not worth the trouble to look up when it became mandatory in California by California law.

All errors are the fault of the transcriber. Please don't bug Fred about them. Thanks - Vanessa

Mildly further edited by Kay Shapero - I think I removed more bugs than I added....