#2149

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2149^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3597, July 20, 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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Last Thursday, Michael Burlake took me to the LASFS meeting. It was St. Marc Schirmeister's week, and he brought two tubs of ice cream to celebrate. Someone (my apologies for not getting the name) had created a really spectacular "shadow box" paper sculpture of the LASFS coat of arms. Both Kay Shapero and Karl Lembke brought me library books, from the L.A. city and county libraries, respectively. The program was a discussion of the future of LASFS programming. I suggested that, despite having two weekend clubs devoted to Japanese anime, there were many regular LASFS attendees who were unfamiliar with anime, and that some of the more hard-core s-f programs such as Planetes ought to be especially popular with LASFen. If our programming has room for one program per month of old Warner Bros. or Fleischer Bros. theatrical cartoons, it ought to have room for a program of the better s-f anime. (Including the really good space opera series, like Outlaw Star.)

On Saturday, my sister Sherry and Michael Burlake came to my hospital to help me practice getting into & out of Sherry's new minivan before taking me to the July Cartoon/Fantasy Organization meeting. Sherry had leased a brand-new Dodge Caravan SXT minivan, "magnesium" colored (which looks like light Prussian green to me) with leather seats. The hardest thing about getting into it was holding onto the doorframe to pull myself up, since it was 110º on Saturday and the doorframe was too hot to hold by the time we got into the parking lot. Other than that, the Dodge minivan was almost the same as Burlake's Oldsmobile minivan for getting into & out of.

Due to the practice, we were an hour late getting to the C/FO meeting and missed the two episodes of Eden's Bowy. We did see the scheduled two episodes each of Mai Hime, Wild Arms: Twilight Venom, and Samurai Deeper Kyo, and the first episode of The Twelve Kingdoms that was shown as a time-filler before the Business Meeting. This was Sherry's first experience with anime, so I suggested that we call it enough and leave to get dinner before the feature, which I had already seen. It was the three half-hour episodes of Detatoko Princess, which is a silly parody of the whole "magical princess" genre but probably would be meaninglessly confusing to anyone who would not recognize the ingroup references to Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, etc. Teenage Princess Lapis is an airhead who gets her magic powers from eating instant tapioca puddings. In the middle episode, she has to protect the instant pudding orchard from being seized by the villains before the instant puddings can be harvested. Ha-ha. The three of us went to Denny's for dinner (none of us ordered pudding), and spent more time practicing on my getting in & out of Sherry's minivan since it was now cool enough that I could pull myself up into it by the door frame without getting burned. Sherry hoped that her new apartment would be ready for me to visit by the end of next (this) week.

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¡ZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

The last two weeks' actually, since the last page of my last week's ¡RR! was omitted. Here it is, with last week's comments following:

Fish Out of Water #178 - (Helgesen) The King Features Syndicate website shows the Flash Gordon strip, by Jim Keefe today, as currently available to newspapers, but does not mention that it is only a Sunday strip now.

Godzilla Verses #95 - (DeChancie) You can't imagine drinking hot soda pop? I can't imagine drinking hot coffee. Let's leave both to Tweech Hizzone. ## I had to get used to flashlights being called electric torches in older British mystery novels that used such pre-World War II words as luncheon and omnibus instead of lunch and bus, and when banks and stores regularly made records of the serial numbers of all paper money that people spent since banknotes rather than gold & silver coins were so rare. I gather that electric torch was/is an older and more international term than flashlight. ## It is good to know that Nehi soda is still served at some places in L.A. ## Thanks for the Conzilla report. I attended and enjoyed Westercons for over forty years, and got an attending membership in Conzilla before my stroke, but do not know whether I will ever be able to attend one again.

Moving SUCKS - (Minsky) Welcome to Apa L. Hopefully it will not take as traumatic an event as a move before you contribute again. ## I am a mint condition fanatic, and I have wondered in what condition my collection arrived at the UCRiverside Library. But the books & fanzines will not be in mint condition after they are processed with property stamps, etc., for the library anyway. Oh, well. It is still better than them all being thrown in the trash.

Let Us Have A BLOCK Party - (Cantor) You knew the person who invented Dr. Pepper? He must have been quite old, and you quite young, since according to the Soda Museum Dr. Pepper was created in 1885 and became nationally known at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Charles Alderton, the young pharmacist who invented it in 1885, died in 1941. If the person whom you knew was a friend of your then business partner, it does not sound like we are talking about the same person. ## Thanks for letting me try out getting into & out of your Toyota Scion last weekend. But your claims for the Scion are not as impressive as those Kay Shapero made for the Subaru Justy she used to have (still has?), which she said could reach Warp Ten speeds and shoot down Death Stars.

Toony Loons #3 - (Zeff) Good luck with selling your first novel, and finishing your second.

Nightmare This Week - (Gold) Apparently that http://anthrozine.com/revw/rvw.patten.05.html has already been corrected, because I just tried it and it leads only to my current Earthlink address. There is no sign of any reference to Comcast. ## Thanks for sending my hospital its monthly payment. By September, my sister Sherrill should be ready to take over this responsibility. ## I do not know what Rembrandt's "Night Watch" painting may look like now if it has been cleaned of its dark varnish overlay. I assume that all the well-known reproductions of it in art books show it before it was cleaned. In any case, the cover painting for Garth Nix's Sir Thursday is clearly designed to be very dark, lit by only the glowing sword in its center. ## Thanks for your Conzilla report, also. ## If I were to list my favorite ice cream flavors in order, the top three would be mint chocolate chip, Burgundy cherry, and Rocky Road, I guess, but pistachio would definitely be somewhere in my Top Ten, along with regular chocolate and strawberry.

Vanamonde #686 - (Hertz) I read John Taine's s-f novels in my early teens, and remember enjoying them. They ought to be reprinted today. Speaking of reprints, one of the library books I got last week has an odd publisher's statement: Why Shoot a Butler?, by Georgette Heyer, originally published 1933, this edition 1976. The statement: "It is our pleasure to keep available uncommon fiction and to this end, at the time of publication, we have used the best available sources. To aid catalogers and collectors, this title is printed in an edition limited to 300 copies." I am all in favor of reprinting out-of-print worthwhile books, but how available to collectors is an edition of only 300 copies?

Fish Out of Water #179 - (Helgesen) I do not know about $15 bills, but there was a 15¢ bill in circulation from 1869 for the next decade or so. Reportedly they were too easy to counterfeit. The dollar must have really been strong back then if it was worth counterfeiting 15¢ bills. ## One of the things I learned in Renaissance history was that Henry VIII of England appropriated the title of "your majesty", which was supposed to be exclusive to the Holy Roman Emperor (although the kings of France and Spain had gotten around this by calling themselves "most Christian majesty" and "most Catholic majesty"). That set off all kings calling themselves by that title. So any historical dramas set prior to Henry VIII's reign that show the king being addressed as "your majesty" are anachronistic.

Nightmare Over; Residual Saddle Sores - (Gold) Our mother has a house in Mission Viejo where my sister Sherry has been staying until her apartment in North Hollywood becomes available. I do not know what Sherry plans for our mother when she becomes too old to live alone. ## My eyes have been checked twice during the year that I have been at Golden State Convalescent Hospital. The optometrist pronounced my vision as fine with my current glasses. The double vision has not returned; I assume it was the result of eyestrain after watching four movies in a row. ## Point taken about the Tommy Hambledon novels, since there was seldom any mystery as to who the villains were. ## No, I have not gotten the new special $450 pillow yet. I assume that my medical insurance has not been billed for it, either.

It Is Only + 103F Today - (Cantor) I assume that the arrangements that are being made to have me attend L.A.con IV call for me to be taken from the Golden State Hospital to the Anaheim Hilton at the start of the Worldcon, on Wednesday the 23^rd. My ¡RR! for that week's dist'n should be finished by the prior Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. By late August, maybe my sister Sherry can have it photocopied at Office Depot or Staples to save you the trouble.

Godzilla Verses #96 - (DeChancie) Beatniks in Space!? That suggests one ideal LASFS anime program; episode #14 of Cowboy Bebop, "Bohemian Rhapsody", where the interplanetary bounty hunters track down a supposed master swindler to a "flower power" space habitat. For that matter, all the episodes of Cowboy Bebop are good s-f.

De Jueves #1487 - (Moffatt) Wikipedia says of the flashlight: "Although a relatively simple device, its invention did not occur until the late 19th century because it depended upon the earlier invention of the electric battery and incandescent light bulb. The batteries in the first ones were of such short useful life that the common method of operating them was to flash them just long enough to discern the environs, and only as needed; hence the term "flash-light". It is, however, reminiscent of the far-earlier "bullseye" lantern."