¡Rábanos Radiactivos! # 2241

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2241^st Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3689, April 24, 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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Last Thursday my sister Sherrill took me out of the hospital early enough to stop at her apartment and watch a DVD screener that I was just sent by Urban Vision Entertainment, of the Japanese 2005 live-action theatrical feature (112 minutes) Azumi 2, a.k.a. Azumi: Death or Love. Urban Vision sent me the first Azumi a year and a half ago, and it was shown at one of George van Wagner's Asian Cult Cinema screenings. Azumi 2 is more of the same; a historical melodrama, more of a ninja movie than a samurai movie, taking place in the early 17^th century just after the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, starring Aya Ueto again as the pretty teenage assassin. It has beautiful Japanese forest scenery, nonstop action, and lots of ninja fantasy action meaning lots of leaping 20 feet up into the trees, unbelievable weapons, dead bodies & blood. It is the kind of movie that the LASFS used to hold theater parties in the 1960s to go see. You can get the Azumi 2 DVD for yourself on May 6th, although it will probably be shown at an Asian Cult Cinema screening soon. Don't miss it.

After dinner, we went to the LASFS meeting. It was so short (39 minutes) that nothing memorable happened. There were no cheese samples. CLJII began a new serial, the 1937 Republic SOS Coast Guard featuring Ralph Byrd and Bela Lugosi. Marty Cantor gave me his latest fanzine, No Award #17, which had a lot of the 1962-'64 fanzine art that I gave him in it. It felt good to see it used at last. No Award #17 has a Schirmeister cover that ought to be good enough for a Fan Artist Hugo nomination by itself.

A couple of months ago Fox Cutter asked me to review the Kitty Norville series of werewolf romance novels by Carrie Vaughn, for Renard's Menagerie. This has made me aware of the new genre of paranormal romance novels for women, that seems to have exploded since 2005. Most of them seem to be about young women who have recently become vampires or who have fallen in love with handsome vampires, and how this affects their love life, their ability to hold a daytime job, how to tell their parents, etc. Hunky, handsome demons are also popular.

I have just followed up on Locus's recommendation of a more comedic series, the Katie Chandler novels by Shanna Swendson: Enchanted, Inc. (2005), Once Upon Stilettos (2006), Damsel Under Stress (2007), and Don't Hex With Texas (2008). The LAPL has the first three of these and will presumably soon get the newest. Katie Chandler is a Texas country girl trying to hold a job in sophisticated Manhattan who is hired by a magic company precisely because she has no magical talent of her own, and can act as a "reality check" for their new spells and warn them against dark magic aimed at them by unscrupulous competitors. There are flying pixie secretaries, gargoyle security guards, a surly boss who is literally an ogre, and naturally, handsome wizards on the R&D team.

It just occurred to me that twenty or thirty years ago, if these books were published at all, they would have been marketed as genre fantasy. Today they are genre women's romance, and there are enough of them - dozens, according to Amazon.com -- that there must be as large a fandom for paranormal romance as there is for anthropomorphic fiction. Are there paranormal romance conventions? I have not heard of any, but how well known are the Furry conventions outside of the hard-core Furry fandom itself? Does the LASFS Library have any of these? Should it?

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Only 17 pages? Apa L is dying!

I Rein In Iguanas - (Gold) How many iguanas are you driving? ## The LASFS history for the website and for the Loscon Program Book are slightly different. If the Board of Directors does not renew Barry's appointment, I would like to see their reason for not doing so. ## I have written two reviews for the LASFS website, and I will wait until they are posted before writing more. CLJII has asked me to review only books that are in the LASFS Library and to keep the reviews to less than 300 words, so most of my reviews for magazines which let me write 1,000 words or more, and of books which are not in the LASFS Library, would probably not be appropriate. In fact, one of my two reviews for the LASFS Library is a new, shorter review of The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman, which I wrote a much longer review of for Anthro. I post Anthro's web link here frequently, and I am sure editor Quentin Long will not mind if the LASFS website adds links to my reviews there. ## I went to UCLA from 1959 to 1962, but I cannot remember ever taking any Phys Ed classes there. Considering how much I detest Phys Ed, my mind may have blanked out all memories of it. ## I do not consider Heinlein's Glory Road to be an adventure novel. A phony adventure novel, maybe, that segues into More Serious Literature.

De Jueves #1579 - (Moffatts) Does it have tentacles? I do not think it can be a genuine Cthulhu wreath without tentacles. ## The Bugs Bunny drawing on the 1939 Warner Bros. pressbook is recognizably Charles Thorson's original model design, which all the cartoon histories say was never used because it was too cute for the sassy personality the animators wanted to use. Only the Bugs Bunny name was kept. The Sniffles is also Thorson's drawing which has been attributed to him elsewhere, and I suppose the others could be, too. Thorson did not last at WB or any studio for long; he was an argumentative drunkard. Mary Jane was never in any of the Sniffles animated cartoons; only the comic books. Oliver Owlet was one of the other animal children in the first Porky Pig cartoon, "I Haven't Got a Hat" (1935), which portrayed Porky as one of several children in a classroom. None of the others, including Beans Cat who was intended to be his regular partner, caught on. Thomas Cat appeared in the first WB cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, "The Night Watchman" (1938), but I think he was never supposed to be more than a one-time character - or if WB was hoping for audience response to bring him back, they did not get it. ## Double Star and The Door Into Summer both had adventure in them, but I would not call them adventure novels because their protagonists and other characters were too well fleshed out and detailed. The stories were more about them personally than the adventures that they had, unlike Heinlein's juveniles such as Space Cadet where the protagonists barely existed outside of their adventures. ## A 1993 TV set is practically an antique today. Unless the service is practically free, it may be more cost-effective to buy a newer TV set.

When A Cement Truck Collides With ... -- (Cantor) I vaguely recall reading that several of the top Army commanders just before World War I opposed the Army getting rapid-fire weapons like machine guns because they were wasteful of bullets. They believed in an Army composed of riflemen who could make each shot count. By World War II, marksmanship except for snipers did not count for as much as spraying lots of bullets as fast as possible. This may be why the Army no longer considered the ability to hit targets with individual shots as important.

Godzilla Verses #187 - (DeChancie) I was caricatured by only one famous cartoonist, or maybe filmmaker would be a better description - Ernie Pintoff, the director & producer of "The Critic" which won the Oscar for Best Short Subject (Cartoon) in 1964. Where that caricature is today, I don't know. (Well, presumably somewhere in the Eaton Collection.) I was told that my name appeared as a character in a Daffy Duck comic book, but I never was sure enough that was true to spend any time trying to track it down. ## Novels that get published professionally are usually by professional writers who do not need to ask fans to help them polish their manuscripts up. As I said previously, I am not aware that any of the fans who asked me to critique their stories ever went to my recommended next step of finding an agent. Roz Gibson will presumably be the first to do so. Incidentally, I am not Roz's only advisor. She has asked several of her friends to read her manuscript, and we all agree that it is a unique s-f novel in a good way that should have no trouble getting picked up by an agent.

Urban Vision Returns with Manga-Based Azumi 2 Film
posted on 2008-04-01 12:32 EDT

Death Note director's live-action sequel about Koyama's assassin ships in May
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After close to a year and a half of inactivity in the North American market, the anime and Japanese live action cinema distributor Urban Vision Entertainment is returning to the market with the May 6 release of the Azumi 2 film. Shusuke Kaneko, the director of the two Death Note movies, oversaw this sequel to the 2006 live-action adaptation of Yu Koyama's Azumi manga. The film continues the story of Azumi, a girl raised by a clandestine group to be an assassin in feudal Japan. Yoshiaki Kawajiri, whose long list of anime credits includes the classics Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and the X OAV and television series, wrote the screenplay. Azumi 2 will sell for US$24.95.