¡Rábanos Radiactivos! #2236

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2236^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3684, March 20, 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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I spent last Thursday afternoon at my sister Sherrill's apartment, working in my study there. After dinner, we went to the weekly LASFS meeting. Not much memorable happened, but I got the March issue of Locus from the club Library.

On Saturday, the 15^th, voting began for the 2007 Ursa Major Awards. I sent out the press release that I had prepared, and it was on two Furry news websites by the end of the day. Voting is open to the public; LASFen included. If you are unfamiliar with Furry art or literature, the URL links will show you some good samples.

The final ballot for the 2007 Ursa Major Awards is now available for voting. Voting is open to April 20. The Awards will be announced and presented at Morphicon 2008 in Columbus, Ohio on May 16 - 18.

Please go to http://www.ursamajorawards.org/Voting-form-2007.htm to get the ballot. You will be required to register to vote, but only your name and country of residence are required. Those who sent in nominations for the final ballot will receive the ballot automatically.

The ballot includes a URL link for each nominee that has one. Click on the links for further information about the nominees.

There are five nominees in each category, except where there was a tie for fifth place. By popular demand, the Best Fanzine category has been renamed Best Magazine.

The nominees are:

Best Motion Picture (Live-action or animated feature-length movies.)

The Golden Compass (New Line Cinema; Rhythm & Hues, December 7)
Ratatouille (Pixar Animation Studios; Walt Disney Pictures, June 29)
Shrek the Third (DreamWorks Animation; Pacific Data Images, May 18)
Surf's Up (Sony Pictures Animation, June 8)
TMNT (Imagi Animation Studios; The Weinstein Co.; Warner Bros., March 23)

Best Dramatic Short Work or Series (TV series or one-shots, advertisements or short videos.)

Gridlock (Dr. Who, Series 3, Episode 3; BBC1, April 14)
The Natural Order (DTDigital TV adv't for Cascade Premium Lager, November 4)
Naturally Juicy (Psyop & Stink studios TV adv't for Orangina, November 16)
Pouring In (MJZ; Rhythm & Hues TV adv't for Jeep Liberty, October 3)
Shaun the Sheep (Aardman Animations, March 5 to September 14)

Best Novel (Written works of 40,000 words or more. Serialized novels qualify only for the year that the final chapter is published.)

Black Dogs, Book 1: The House of Diamond, by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press, April)
Common and Precious, by Tim Susman (Sofawolf Press, January)
Coyote Season, by Michael Bergey (Five Star/Thomson Gale, November)
The Hero, by Teiran (Bad Dog Books, July)
Inside the Cage, by Kyell Gold (in The Prisoner's Release, and Other Stories, by Kyell Gold; Sofawolf Press, January)
Life's Dream, by Bernard Doove (CreateSpace, December)


Best Short Fiction (Stories less than 40,000 words, poetry and other short written works.)

Chrysanthemum and Cabbage, by Gerald Perkins (in Renard's Menagerie #4)
Don't Blink, by Kyell Gold (in Heat #4)
For Love or Family, by Kyell Gold (in The Prisoner's Release, and Other Stories)
A Non-Biodegradable Fox, by Ryan Campbell (in New Fables #1)
Putting the Universe Back Together, by Chas. P. A. Melville (in Tales of the Tai-Pan Universe #43)

Best Other Literary Work (Story collections, comic collections, graphic novels, non-fiction works, and convention program books.)

All the Newshounds Fit to Print, by Thomas K. Dye (Lulu.com, January)
Digger, vol. 3, by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press, July)
A Doemain of Our Own, vol. 2: Shift Happens, by Susan Rankin (Spit-Take Studios, July)
Fur-Piled, vol. 2, by Leo Magna (Sofawolf Press, July)
The Prisoner's Release, and Other Stories, by Kyell Gold (Sofawolf Press, January)

Best Comic Book (Traditional comic books, ongoing series or one-shots.)

Captain Carrot and the Final Ark!, by Bill Morrison, Scott Shaw!, and Al Gordon (DC Comics, #1 & #2)
Furry Guardians, by Cyberklaw (FurNation Multimedia, #1 to #3)
Gargoyles, by Greg Weisman, Gordon Purcell, Dustin Evans, and Greg Guler (Slave Labor Graphics, #4 to #6)
Genus, by various (Sin Factory, #82 to #86)
i.s.o., by Vince Suzukawa (self-published, #3 & #4)
Usagi Yojimbo, by Stan Sakai Dark Horse Comics, #100 to #108)

Best Comic Strip (Internet or regular newspaper strips.)

Bristled, by Stephanie Mebius (January 1 to December 31)
Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures (DMFA), by Amber M. Pankyo (#730, January to #859, December)
Lackadaisy, by Tracy J. Butler (#24, January to #49, December)
Newshounds II, by Thomas K. Dye (January 1 to December 31)
Ozy and Millie, by D. C. Simpson (January 1 to December 31)

Best Magazine (Professional magazines, amateur zines, fanzines, internet-only magazines.)

Anthro (#9, January-February to #14, November-December)
Heat (#4, July)
New Fables (#1, Summer)
Renard's Menagerie (#1, January to #4, October)
South Fur Lands (#44, March to #47, December)
Spontoon Island (January to December)
Tales of the Tai-Pan Universe (#43, August)

Best Published Illustration (Illustrations for books, magazines, convention program books, cover art for such, coffee table portfolios.)

Blotch: cover of Fur Affinity United 2007 souvenir book
Heather Bruton: cover of Common and Precious, by Tim Susman
Heather Bruton: cover for Life's Dream, by Bernard Doove
Baron Engel: cover of Further Confusion 2007 program book
Sara Palmer: cover of The Prisoner's Release, and Other Stories, by Kyell Gold
Georgi Valchev: cover of Furnation Anthology Magazine #8

Best Game (Computer or console games, role-playing games, board games.)

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (High Impact Games; SCEA, February 13)
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (Insomniac Games; Sony Computer Entertainment, October 23)
Sam & Max, Season Two, Episode 1: Ice Station Santa (Telltale Games; Game Tap, November 8)
Sonic and the Secret Rings (SEGA, February 20)
Sonic Rush Adventure (SEGA, September 18)

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Cover - (Cantor) When I first saw this cover, I wondered if it was only coincidence that the split strawberry looked like a gaping mouth, until I saw the other illustrations by Worth in your zine. Very clever!

March 5 Was National Cheese Doodle Day - (Cantor) No, I am not really interested enough to look up what a cheese doodle may be. ## I do not know about Rupert Murdoch, but I am disgusted by a novel that I am currently reading, Fell, by David Clement-Davies, which takes place in Moldavia twenty-five years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453), or 1487 (not a typo) by Clement-Davies' reckoning. A character with a funny accent comes from the black forests of the far west, "the region that one day men would call Bavaria." But the name Bavaria goes back to the 8^th century and earlier; Charlemagne conquered and deposed Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria in 788 A.D. There is a mention of the King of Hungary's "High Court of Budapest", but the capital of Hungary was Buda alone until the Danube was bridged and Buda merged with Pest on the opposite bank in the 19^th century. I would not bother to finish reading Fell except that I am committed to review it. It will not get a good review from me. ## Lint the size of a 78 rpm record does not come from human belly buttons, anyway. Maybe from Disney's Willie the Giant? ## I did not join the LASFS until I was 19 in 1960 and was allowed to borrow our family car to get to its meetings, but I read about fandom all during the 1950s in the articles and columns by Bob Bloch, Rog Phillips, and others about fandom, the reviews of fanzines, and the announcements of the annual Worldcon that appeared in Amazing Stories, Other Worlds, and other prozines.

De Jueves #1574 - (Moffatts) Will Firefox allow you to get http://www.belfry.com/comics/? It currently has links to 4,802 comic strips, which should include the half-dozen that you want to read. I have never tried to edit the list down to just the comics that I read, though; I go down the whole page and pick my favorites out. If those you are looking for are all daily strips, they will be at the top of the page and there are only 280 of them in alphabetical order. Many of my favorites are semi-weekly or weekly. ## The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's three-floor Broad Contemporary Art Museum is limited to paintings and sculptures dated 1960 and later. Earlier art is in other buildings of LACMA. So in the Broad building, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are Old Masters. ## I thought that the photograph of Lilian Jackson Braun in her first "Cat Who ..." novel in 1966 made her look like she would be dead of old age in a year or two. I see that she was born in 1913, which means that she can't go on writing novels for too much longer. I wonder if the one to be published later this year, The Cat Who Smelled Smoke, will be her last? ## The cartoon about the legless frog is by Sam Gross. Since it was published in The New Yorker, which sells frameable prints of its most popular cartoons, Gross has probably made a fortune from the royalties on this. My own most memorable frogs'-legs cartoon was in a French-language (Belgian) magazine in the early 1970s, in an article about the boorishness of American tourists. The stand-alone cartoon showed a stereotypical American tourist (Hawaiian shirt and shorts) at a European sidewalk café, ordering frogs' legs and orange juice, and the waiter having heart failure. Aside from the obvious point that it is a faux pas to order frogs' legs together with orange juice, I had to have the cartoon explained to me. There are also the frogs that make up the main diet of The Triplets of Belleville...

Fish Out of Water #266 - (Helgesen) The clippings that Sherry sent me from The New York Post did not include the weather reports, so I do not know how accurate or inaccurate they may have been. However, I once attended a seminar at UCLA featuring Leonard Wibberley and some local retired newspaper writer who was a friend of his. Drinks were provided, and Wibberley and his friend were soon trading stories about the worst newspaper assignments they had had. The friend had once had the duty of writing a positive weather report every day to please the paper's advertisers by encouraging shopping. If a monsoon was predicted, he had to write, "Refreshingly cool day today; perfect for shopping." Wibberley, of course, told about being assigned to write the L. A. Times' editorial analyzing the U.S.' peace treaty with Japan formally ending World War II (in the 1950s), which he felt was so liberal that it was his inspiration for The Mouse That Roared. ## I once read the Bible, or at least the first part of Genesis, rewritten as a Western. Chamiel, by Edward Pearson, if I recall correctly. It was intended to make the Bible palatable to modern readers who don't read it because it is so old-fashioned today. Heaven was a vast ranch owned by God, who had appointed the charismatic Lucifer as his foreman to run it in his absence. Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and the other seraphim down to the regular angels were the senior and junior ranchhands. When Lucifer decided to take over the ranch for himself, the cowboys split into those who followed him and those who remained loyal to their absent boss. I vaguely remember a lot of galloping about and the good cowboys trying to head off Lucifer's gang at the Pass. I have not read the Bible retold in manga form, but there have been several traditional American comic book versions of the Bible. Animated cartoon versions, too; Hanna-Barbara did one. There are several anime versions, too, one by Tatsunoko Pro that I understand was financed by the 700 Club for American TV in the late 1970s (it bombed in both the U.S. and Japan), and one commissioned by the Vatican from Tezuka Pro in Tezuka's cartoon style for Italian TV.

Godzilla Verses #182 - (DeChancie) "Mr. Schrodinger's Neighborhood" could be performed at the next Loscon, following the Ice Cream Social. In Roman togas, even.

Oh, All Right!!! - (Lembke) Thanks for eventually getting the library book to me. ## There has been so much debate since the 1950s over whether it is more enjoyable to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before or after The Magician's Nephew that I wonder why someone hasn't tried to conduct a Scientific Test to find out. It sounds like the sort of project that a Ph.D candidate could do his/her thesis on.

I Levigate* Diamonds - (Gold) Can Bob Null fill in some of the gaps in the list of LASFS members before 1960, or the missing dates when members joined, from the LASFS archives? He was the one who tracked down when the club first started meeting every Thursday (not until July 1942).

The cover of Fell shows what is recognizably Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, built by Ludwig II during the 1880s - not a typical example of castles in Moldavia, Wallachia, or Transylvania during the 15^th century.