#2169

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2169^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3617, December 6, 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, I received a DVD of Cars from Disney (technically from Buena Vista Home Entertainment) "for your consideration". This was not the commercial DVD but a special screener of the feature only, accompanied by a stern notice that this was for my eyes only, though phrased more diplomatically with assurances of how they respected me as a responsible viewer, than the letter that accompanied the screener two years ago of The Incredibles which threatened me with dire legal punishments if unauthorized eyes were allowed to see my particular DVD. Maybe some recipients were so offended by those threats that they complained?

Michael Burlake brought me to last week's LASFS meeting. There was lots of yummy chocolate cake, but not as many Loscon 33 reports as I had expected. What reports there were were favorable, though.

On Sunday, my sister Sherrill took Michael Burlake and me in her minivan to the Henry Huntington Library in San Marino. Burlake went to Sherry's apartment first to ride with her before they picked me up at the Golden State Hospital, so he got to see my entire s-f art collection, not just the 11 paintings that were displayed at Loscon 33. We went to the Huntington Library to see the "Treasures from Olana" exhibit of 19th century artist Frederic Edwin Church's landscape paintings, dominated by his massive "Chimborazo" painting of what was then believed to be the highest mountain in the world (1864). The exhibit runs through early January and is well worth seeing. While at the Library, we looked at as many of the other exhibits as we could see before the 4:30 p.m. winter closing, especially the early books including the only known preliminary draft of the Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible, and many others. After the Library closed we had dinner at a very good Chinese restaurant Burlake recommended within walking distance of the Disney studio, Joy Feast. I spent a couple of hours in my study at Sherry's apartment before being returned to the convalescent hospital for its 10:00 p.m. curfew.

On Monday the finalists for ASIFA-Hollywood's Annie Awards were announced. In the theatrical feature category: Cars (Pixar-Disney), Happy Feet (Warner Bros.), Monster House (Columbia Pictures), Open Season (Sony Pictures Animation), and Over the Hedge (DreamWorks Animation) are the five finalists. Flushed Away (Aardman Animations-DreamWorks), the other major animated feature of 2006, got lots of nominations in the other Annie categories, but not for the theatrical feature award. (Flushed Away is getting flushed away at the box office by Happy Feet. So far, Happy Feet has grossed over double what Flushed Away has -- $121,000,000 vs. $60,000,000 - despite having played in theaters two weeks less.) ASIFA-Hollywood's ballots should arrive before the end of the year, and the Annie awards will be presented next February 11th at ASIFA's usual formal-dress gala at the Alex Theatre in Glendale (tickets are $100 to the public; see http://www.annieawards.com/). I do not really like the practice of crediting the movies to their American theatrical distributors rather than the actual animation studios, although it can be justified in that the films are unlikely to have been made without the prior guarantee of theatrical distribution and often advance production money from those distributors.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Apahacker - (Cantor) But there are no "d" or "g" in "apahacker". ## I should have addressed this comment to Phil Castora the previous week, but why are all coins fiat coins today, "except pennies"? Do you mean the British pennies? The American coin is officially the cent, and it is now a copper-coated steel slug, no longer copper or bronze bullion for several years.

Oh, All Right!!! - (Lembke) In retrospect, I am shocked to realize that I never got up to the Con Suite at all during Loscon 33. I suppose this was a compliment to the Green Room, that it had such good nibblements that I never thought about going up to the top-floor Con Suite. Was it wheelchair-accessible?

Fish Out of Water #199 - (Helgesen) I remember enjoying Nelson Bond's Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales very much when I read it about fifty years ago. That is the collection that contains "The Bacular Clock", after which the LASFS named the clock with the hours numbered backwards that was on the wall in Freehafer Hall for many years. (Whatever happened to that clock, anyway?) The LASFS' clock did not make time run backward, though. The Los Angeles Public Library still has it and The Thirty-First of February; I may reread them after I finish all the books that I have out now. Bond adapted his "Mr. Mergenthirker's Lobblies" itself and George Orwell's Animal Farm into stage plays, which the LAPL also has the scripts for.

I Bake Stuffing Dressing - (Gold) Thank you for your Loscon report. I regret not seeing you & Barry more than in passing in the Green Room. The Loscon may look small in comparison to the Worldcon, but it has more to see & do than can be covered in three days. ## If Diane Duane is successful in her self-publication of her third Feline Wizardry novel, she may be persuaded to similarly write her fourth Door novel. ## The LASFS could create a program to donate s-f books to libraries in Michael Mason's name, with a special bookplate; but considering the current worrying about whether the club is operating at a deficit today, a proposal of a new expenditure is not likely to happen. At the Loscon, the librarians from the UCRiverside Library actively solicited donations of s-f books.

Godzilla Verses #116 - (DeChancie) I don't know about Barnes & Noble, but at the L.A.con IV's panel on independent (s-f specialty) bookshops, the other panelists said that it is an open secret in the book industry that most publishers will no longer sell books to Borders unless they receive full payment in advance. When my sister drove me to Loscon 33 a couple of weeks ago, we passed through my old neighborhood in Culver City and I saw that the big Blockbuster store where Jefferson Blvd. merges into Sepulveda is now a vacant building. ## The "Bat Durston - You'll never read it in Galaxy" adv't certainly appeared in Galaxy during H. L. Gold's editorship, whether he was its author or just approved it. ## Thank you very, very much for enabling Phil & Fruma Klass to visit the LASFS, even if not on a Thursday night. One of the reasons he was such an excellent guest-of-honor is that it was clear that he was enthusiastically interested in fandom and in the LASFS, which is more than some past author g-o-h's have been.

However - (Castora) Bills smaller than $20 will exist for as long as the people prefer them to coins in those denominations. $2.50, $5, and $10 gold pieces used to be in regular circulation before 1933; why doesn't the government try to reintroduce them? ## It is considered comical today that many of Horatio Alger's popular "success" novels of the 1880s and '90s ended with the young hero wining a job that paid the great sum of $10 a week, ignoring the fact that this was a good salary for a startup position at the time.

De Jueves #1507 - (Moffatt) One of the dilemmas of convention panelists is when (or whether) to say something to justify your place on the panel, when you feel that the other panelists are more interesting to listen to than you are. ## What about the image of plutocrats like Diamond Jim Brady or J. P. Morgan using $100 bills to light their cigars? Were any instances of that true, or was it all only Socialist propaganda?

Tennth Planet #1 - #5 - (Lembke) Thanks very much for including these in Apa L, even if #5 is misnumbered as #3.