¡Rábanos Radiactivos! ... es no. 2234

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2234^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3682, March 6, 2008.
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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My sister Sherrill brought me to last week's LASFS meeting. CLJII greeted me with a new bottle of ginger beer he had found at the Burbank Empire Center, AJ Stephans Jamaican Style Ginger Beer, "Made with pure cane sugar!" Yum! It was good, and I do want to taste-test all brands, but my favorite remains D&G Genuine Jamaican Ginger Beer. I reported getting an e.mail from George Senda asking me to announce the death of Shirley Dickensheet from a heart attack; the first heard from Senda in about forty years. The program, Heide Nichols' demonstration of monster makeup, was cancelled, so the most excitement at the meeting was generated by Doug Crepeau's attempts to talk over Marcia Minsky's gavelings of him as out of order to give other people a chance to talk.

Sherry has been spending the last couple of weeks sightseeing with an old school chum, Arlene Thiel, who has been living in Paris for the past few years. Last week they spent a half-week in Las Vegas where Sherry went wild buying souvenirs at the Liberace Museum. This Tuesday they brought me with them to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We attended a 1-hour docent tour of American art from the Colonial period through the mid-20^th century, and went through the brand new (opened last week) three-floor Broad Contemporary Art Museum of modern art from 1960 to the present. I am not ready for an art museum that considers Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to be Old Masters. It was all very fascinating, though. The collection of African art is small but impressive. There was much more that we did not have time to see, but the cherry orchard outside the Pavilion for Japanese Art was in full bloom, which was almost worth the visit to LACMA by itself. Afterwards we went to Solley's Deli in Sherman Oaks for dinner.

Cubist says that Anthro #16, March - April 2008, is taking longer to edit than usual, but it ought to be online by next Thursday if not this week with my latest Furry book reviews.

Nominations for the 2007 Ursa Major Awards closed at the end of February; officially on the 28^th, although we (the Award's administrators) agreed to accept any last-minute nominations that were received on the 29^th. Last year 107 fans registered to nominate; this year we received 190 registrations. We spent several days over the weekend tallying the nominations and deciding what to do about irregular nominations such as Amazon.com URL numbers instead of the books' titles (accepted, but they will probably be ruled ineligible in the future), and individual chapters of serials as short stories (rejected). "By popular demand", the Best Fanzine category will be renamed Best Magazine; there are not enough periodicals in Furry fandom to have separate fanzine, semi-pro magazine, and magazine categories. The final ballot, with the top five nominees in each category (6 or 7 nominees in cases of tied nominations for fifth place), will be announced when voting opens on March 15^th. The 2007 Awards will be presented at Morphicon 2008 in Columbus, Ohio on May 16 - 18.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

February 23 was International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day - (Cantor) When I was a child, my mother complained about my eating our dog's milkbone biscuits instead of the cookies that she bought for us. The milkbone biscuits tasted better, and I suspect were healthier. ## What would Rupert Murdoch's motive be for falsely teaching that William McKinley was a Democrat, and that Chester A. Arthur declined nomination for a second term?

Godzilla Verses #180 - (DeChancie) Today the Narnian Chronicles are recommended for All Ages, but at the time they were published they were considered childrens' books, so a high school library might not have gotten them. The more I think about it, the more I think that I got them from the Children's department of the L.A. Public Library. ## Clown costumes do usually include gloves, but that would not explain why they became three-fingered on cartoon characters' hands. Also, even if Koko the Clown wore white gloves as early as 1916, I do not think it would have become a universal tradition if there had not been a practical reason for it. Hmmm, a hasty scan of 1940s Terrytoons characters shows that Mighty Mouse wore white gloves, but none of the other Terry characters - Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, Dinky Duck, the Terry Bears, Li'l Roquefort - did. ## When I was in my mid-20s and wore my hair in a crew-cut, I was told by the elderly widow of the Austro-Hungarian military attaché to the Imperial General Staff that "you look joost like Feldmarschall von Hindenburg ven he vas your age". I took her word for it. ## Adolf Hitler could not paint people and he knew it. All of his 1900s-1910s paintings that survive are landscapes or of buildings like old churches, not bad but no better than mediocre.

De Jueves #1572 - (Moffatts) Define "rescue the book". Fortunately it was a new book, so it was easier to buy a new copy than try to unstuck and iron out the water-soaked pages. ## I am currently writing a critical review of the popular "cat sleuths" series in which I argue that Murphy's Joe Grey mysteries are the only ones that deserve the title. Braun's The Cat Who novels have never even made a pretense that Koko does any detecting. He presumably foretells the crimes by psychic abilities, but not being anthropomorphized, has no feeling of how to communicate with humans. Brown's Mrs. Murphy novels and Douglas' Midnight Louie, Feline P.I. novels are, as I have said previously, phonies in which the cats talk with each other and to the reader and superficially detect, but never share their finds with the human amateur detectives who are left to discover the murderers on their own. Braun's, Brown's, & Douglas' annual novels have become too-similar variations on the same amateur-detective theme. Since Murphy postulates her cats wander freely throughout town, and consciously investigate the murders they run across or learn about from following the police, they seem more "plausible" than the others' novels, which depend upon their human amateur detectives getting innocently involved in murders year after year after year. ## Did Isaac Asimov ever come to Los Angeles? There are probably lots of s-f authors who were never in L.A. in their lives, such as H. P. Lovecraft, and therefore never had the chance to visit the LASFS.

Vanamonde #770 - (Hertz) Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson certainly had the requisite stfnal sense of wonder for young readers during the 19^th century; practically the only pre-Vernean novel which did. ## Well, the Cypriot and Kosovar flags are certainly distinct, even though they are difficult to draw accurately. The U.S. flag is complex, but possible to draw with a straightedge, even including all those stars.

Oh, All Right!!! - (Lembke) I donated over fifty units of "regular" blood during the 1970s to the early '90s before the Red Cross started refusing me because of my high blood pressure. ## I am pretty sure that I received my plaque to go with my Patron Sainthood. Most if not all the trophies that I did have at the time of my stroke - my Evans-Freehafer trophy, my Sampo trophy, my Inkpot trophy - have not yet been found by the Eaton Collection cataloguers, so I am not sure.

I Juggle Birdseed - (Gold) Mr. Peanut was always supposed to be a gentleman, so he would be drawn wearing white gloves if he originated in the World War I era. ## Any changes in Kosovo's boundaries ought to be reflected on the map on its flag, if they are recognized by the national government. The Cypriot flag shows the whole island because the Cypriot government does not recognize the secession of Northern Cyprus, even though Northern Cyprus has existed successfully as an independent country since 1983. ## I vaguely remember some attempted association between the Red Robin restaurants and Furry fandom in the 1980s. I think some fan was urging us to patronize them because their mascot on their menus and napkins was an anthropomorphized cartoon robin. There were none in Los Angeles to patronize. ## I seem to recall that Mars has been described as an "airless but windy" planet in most of the realistic s-f that I read (not Bradbury's).