#2148

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2148^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3596, July 19, 2006.
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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Michael Burlake brought me to last Thursday's LASFS meeting, the first of the new administration. George Van Wagner has been club President before, so his style of running the meeting offered no surprises. Dr. Martin Young did an exemplary job in his inaugural meeting as Scribe; he was complimented on his reading of the previous meeting's minutes in his rich British accent. I spoke with Marc Schirmeister about finalizing the arrangements to hire a professional caregiver to accompany me throughout the five days of L.A.con IV. There was rejoicing at the announcement that Lee Gold had passed her surgery with flying colors, or whatever the term is for as well as anyone can expect. The meeting ran smoothly and ended early enough that I had time to watch about 15 minutes' worth of the program (Charlie Jackson's video sampler of scenes from his favorite movies & TV shows) before we had to return me to the hospital, leaving just after the titular musical sequence from Disney's The Three Caballeros.

On Friday, my sister Sherrill e.mailed me that she had just found an ideal large ground-floor (no steps) apartment with three bedrooms and a patio near the corner of Moorpark Street & Vineland Avenue. It is just a block from the freeway exit, and about two blocks closer to the LASFS than is my hospital near Vineland Ave. & Oxnard St., although on the other side of the LASFS. She can drive right up Vineland to Oxnard, and turn right for just a couple of blocks to my hospital. She expects it to take a couple of weeks to have the apartment renovated to her tastes, and have her personal belongings shipped from Long Island. By the beginning of August, she should be ready to have me as a frequent guest. I will not leave the Golden State Convalescent Hospital as my regular home, since I need the daily professional medical care that I get there, but Sherry's apartment will have one of the bedrooms set aside for me where I can start building up my collections again, and keep valuables that might be stolen at the hospital. Sherry will shop for a car large enough to take me to LASFS meetings and similar events when Michael Burlake and Rob Powell are not available.

On Saturday. Rob Powell took me to the July meeting of Cinema Anime at Freehafer Hall. Marty Cantor was there as we arrived, and he recommended his new Toyota Scion as a car suitable for me & my wheelchair. We tried it out. I fit into its passenger seat very nicely, but my wheelchair had to be disassembled to get it into the rear. Cinema Anime showed the usual anime half-hour TV episodes. We saw episodes #2 & #3 of Ouran High School Host Club, which was definitely set in Japan, not London - as the high school of the richest & most upper-class teenagers in the world, they have either moved Big Ben to Tokyo or built a duplicate of it for their imitation British public school. We saw the final episodes of Fruits Basket; much more somber than most of the series but still very much a romantic soap opera. We saw episodes #22 & #23 of Samurai Champloo, which gets wackier as it goes. #23 featured a fantasy early-19th-century ninja baseball game between America and Japan that presented hilariously libelous depictions of Americans, Japanese, and baseball fans. Other anime titles included an episode each of Dai-Guard: Earth Defense Corporation, Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Azumanga Daioh!, Heat Guy J,, Ah! My Goddess, Bleach, Genshikan, Slayers Next, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - 2^nd Gig.

On Sunday, Michael Burlake and my sister Sherrill met at my hospital at 12:45 p.m., and we all went to the LASFS to meet Marty Cantor for a couple of hours' worth of getting me into & out of Burlake's older Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan, Cantor's Scion, and a borrowed-from-the-showroom Dodge Magnum SXT which was the best car that Sherry had found so far. Rob Powell showed up later with a tape measure to make specific measurements of door sizes, heights of car floors from the ground, etc. We demonstrated (to my satisfaction, at least) that the Scion was the easiest of the three for me to get into & out of the passenger seat of, but both the Scion and the Dodge were too small to hold my wheelchair fully assembled as the Silhouette could. Sherry had to leave us about 3:00 p.m. to go sign the lease for her apartment. Burlake & I looked into Freehafer Hall before leaving to see what was going on in the aftermath of the Board of Directors meeting earlier that morning. Lots of people were watching Doctor Who episodes, playing a Railroad Tycoon board game, etc. I asked Burlake to return me to the hospital early.

On Monday, Sherry e.mailed me that since a minivan seemed best for me, she was now considering a Dodge Caravan SXT minivan; and that she had leased the apartment for a year. More later.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

De Jueves #1486 - (Moffatt) In The Brave Little Toaster, the little boy is not shown as having any toys to play with, which could mean that he rejected all toys long before the beginning of the movie in favor of the friendly household appliances; but the more obvious inference is that he adopted the appliances as his toys due to a lack of anything else. ## I do not have that Mike Shayne mystery around to double-check the context of the reference to the bank robber's suitcase full of $50 and $25 bills, but twenty $5 bills or twenty-five $1 bills would hardly seem worth taking. Logically the $25 bills are (is?) probably a typographical error for $20 bills. Speaking of typos and homonyms, I have just finished reading (and reviewing for Anthro) Tales of the Fur Side. Here is a preview of part of my review: "This is the most poorly proofread book that I have ever seen. In addition to regular misspellings, the text is full of divided words such as 'in stead' and 'with out'; and apostrophes that are missing ('the animals left eye') or present where they should not be ('the two Zebra's looked up'). Some of the homonyms are so grotesquely misplaced that they are amusing (a 'wonton' loss; 'knocking' the bloody arrow; looked into his 'dieing' eyes; he did not 'here' his mother; the 'course' yellow paper; he was the 'Berger Meister' of the village; orders to shoot him on 'site'; rendered 'deft' mute; it didn't even 'creek' under her weight; the 'Jew Dao' Christian beliefs); unfortunately, the inadvertent humor usually spoils the dramatic mood of a story. Dialogue is commonly missing either the opening or closing quotation mark." ## Most Fursuiters do wear fur only where clothing does not cover it (heads and hands), when their costumes are of clothes-wearing animals; otherwise the fur under the clothing would be an unnecessary expense and make the costume much too warm. However, these Fursuiters are in the minority. Most portray "nude" two-legged animals such as wolves, foxes, coyotes, skunks, squirrels, tigers, rabbits, lions, and raccoons, with lots of head-to-foot fur. ## It is my impression that most modern urban houses do not have eaves large enough for pigeons to fit under. They are fine for sparrows, which is a major reason there are so many sparrows in cities. Pigeons need larger nesting places, such as corners on the upper floor ledges of commercial buildings, or behind those large green freeway signs. In Winter when tall trees lose their leaves, you can often see large abandoned crows' nests in the bare upper branches. ## Yes, mockingbirds should love to imitate power saws.

What's My Zine? #5 - (Castora) The LASFS Library should make a point of having all of John DeChancie's books, as a LASFS author. ## Tony the Tiger always struck me as a character with great potential which was wasted appearing in only those Kellogg's cereal commercials. But he was designed for that purpose (by the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago), after the days when it was permissible to use cartoon characters like Elsie the Cow, Sugar Bear, and King Leonardo for both advertising purposes and as characters in regular "entertainment programming" (comic books and TV cartoons). ## I never heard that Vaughn Bodé considered changing his name. As far as I know, he was happy with the European spelling and the Texan pronunciation. ## Little Toot, by Disney animator Hardie Gramatsky, was first published in 1939. Presumably you had outgrown little children's picture books by then. ## According to the Soda Museum website: "There is an interesting story about the origin of the Nehi trademark that took place in the 1920's. Supposedly, Claud Hatcher overheard a route salesman enter the plant one day and describe a competitor's tall bottle as being "knee-high." This phrase falling on the receptive mind of Claud Hatcher became Nehi, which was destined to become America's best known soft drink flavour line. The Nehi line of fruit flavours (orange, grape, root beer, etc.) was introduced in 1924, and the line became so successful that in 1928 the company changed its name for the second time, from Chero-Cola Co. to the Nehi Corporation. The Nehi Corp. was listed on the New York Curb Exchange. In 1930, the company's second major crisis occurred. Reflecting the Great Depression which followed the stock market crash of October 1929, sales of Nehi Corp. dropped one million dollars in 1930 from a high of $3.7 million in the previous year. Sales continued downward until the bottom was reached in 1932, the only year in which the company had ever lost money. Almost every Nehi bottling plant in the organization was in the red during the years 1931 and 1932. By 1933, the low point had been passed and the business was just beginning to stabilize when another tragedy struck. Claud A. Hatcher, the company's president and guiding light from its formation, died suddenly December 31, 1933." (from a very long article about the company that, after several more policy &/or name changes, mergers, "being acquired by"s, etc., is now Triarc Companies, Inc., known best today for Royal Crown Cola, Diet-Rite Cola, and the Snapple drinks). Nehi Soda is apparently made today in only grape, orange, and peach flavors, and is marketed only in the Southeast U.S. although it is carried by specialty beverage stores like the Beverage Warehouse in L.A.