¡Rábanos Radiactivos! ... es no. 2248

Written by Fred Patten, and intended for Apa L, 2248^th Distribution, LASFS Meeting No. 3696, June 12, 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 Tuesday, my sister Sherrill took me to the Petersen Automotive Museum in the Miracle Mile district, primarily to see the exhibit of original production art and models from Pixar's "The Art of Cars" exhibition that is there through November 2. While we were there, we toured most of the rest of the museum as well. As interesting to me as the animation art exhibit was, I found many of the museum's cars more impressive. The exhibits ranged from the permanent "Streetscape" which includes examples of autos from the beginning of the 20^th century to the present, with both a lot of remembered nostalgia (a Helms bakery truck, wood-paneled station wagons) and brands from the 1910s and 1920s that I had never heard of before, and the Hollywood Gallery of distinctive cars from movies and TV programs like the Batmobile, Speed Racer's Mach 5, the Green Hornet's Black Beauty and Dr. Fate's car from The Great Race. (The information noted that while the vehicles in older movies and TV programs had to actually exist and move, the Mach 5 from the 2008 Speed Racer movie was only a prop since all of its action in the movie was computer effects.) "Treasures from the Vault" had important cars including a Tucker Torpedo, official touring cars of Franklin Roosevelt and Nikita Khrushchev, and specially commissioned cars by those who could afford them such as a Rolls-Royce with round doors. "La Vida Lowrider" had some of the fancier personalized lowrider cars from the Chicano sections of L.A. "Alternative Power" featured cars powered by fuels other than gasoline including steam, solar power, electricity, and fuel cells. Most of these were cars that had either existed in the past or were recent working prototypes, but there was a small section of "nuclear cars of the future" that included a Frank R. Paul painting of a flying car from one of Gernsback's magazines. (I was disappointed that no actual flying cars were included, since some have been built even if they do not work as well as the one in Paul's picture.) There were a few sections that did not interest us such as one on NASCAR racing cars. On the whole, the museum was more interesting than I had expected, and I am very glad we went. Most LASFen would probably consider an afternoon there very enjoyable.

Last Thursday Doctor Michail sent me to Mission Community Hospital for four days of medical tests. So I missed last week's LASFS meeting, and I had a miserable time being stuck with an intravenous tube and crammed into x-ray machines and having blood samples taken every few hours and so on. At the moment I am on a pureed food diet and back at Golden State Convalescent Hospital.

I got back just in time to see Dr. Alan Cholodenko on his latest visit to America from Australia, doing animation research for a paper to be delivered at a symposium in Bournemouth, England. As usual, he was staying at UCLA's guest house for visiting scholars while he was here. My sister Sherry arranged to pick him up there on Tuesday morning and take him to her apartment to see my s-f art collection of over 130 paintings, then bring him to the hospital to visit with me for an hour. It would have been nice if I could have gone to her apartment with them to see Alan's reaction to my paintings, but c'est la vie.

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ˇZANAHORIAS ELECTRóNICAS!

-- Comments on Last Week's Distribution:

Cover - (DeChancie) I haven't heard much lately about the unreliability of Wikipedia. The website seems to have established its reputation for accuracy despite its being open to change by the public. Contrariwise, whoever heard of a Ph.D thesis being accepted based on research in encyclopedias only? Don't Ph.D's demand original research?

Little Lord Font-Leroy's Zine - (Cantor) Correction on availability of postage stamps at different post offices noted. I guess I have only gone to larger post offices that had all the stamps currently in print. ## "Politically Correct Little Red Riding Hood" seems too similar to too many other politically correct parodies of fairy tales written during the last forty years, not to mention the movie Hoodwinked and several animated cartoons made by young Disney cartoonists for TV and then censored by management. Scott Bradfield, a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, has been writing them for literary magazines for the last twenty years. To quote from my review of a collection of his stories, "'Pig Paradise' returns to the world of forcibly civilized animals. Hubert Armstrong the pig and Harry the Wolf share an office at Mama O'Brian's All-Veggie Pies, a major corporation in a society of animal equality since the passage of the Cultural Intercession laws. But although Harry has never been anything but friendly (and their wives Angela/pig and Muriel/wolf are best friends), Hubie is too nervous around a wolf to work efficiently. So he files an interspecies harassment complaint with Employee Relations and, well, things escalate out of control from there." Bradfield's stories are too cynical to take in large doses.

Godzilla Verses #194 - (DeChancie) Stories also need words! And characters! Have you seen the news recently about a hopeful writer whose stories on his computer were accidentally deleted? He sued SBC for $2.7 million that was what he claimed his stories (screenplays, actually) would have sold for. The courts disagreed, finding that the fault was partly his for not having saved them. ## El Zorro had a costume before either the Phantom or Superman. Superman was the first superhero to wear a costume, because he was the first superhero, and he was the first to dress in costume rather than to wear it as a disguise. ## I recently read a published story that "hadn't needed proofreading" that had hawks eating birdseed. ## I was often concerned that the menace in some Superman comic book story could have been negated by the situation or solution in another story a few issues earlier. Of course, after a few years of comic book stories, there was little new that could ever happen that hadn't been covered by some earlier story.

De Jueves #1586 - (Moffatts) I do not remember ever having a polling place that was not a school auditorium. ## But do you have the Freefall strips that were published in Yarf! from 1990 on, before Stanley began publishing Freefall himself on the Internet in 1998? Stanley has stopped talking about publishing any Freefall collections, unfortunately. ## Since Faith is also a woman's name, there could be a Saint Faith. ## Thanks for stapling Dian's story for me to read. At over 100 pages, I am still having trouble holding it in my left hand only.

Vanamonde #784 - (Hertz) The question of whether The Bear Comes Home is s-f or fantasy was asked for Marty Cantor's benefit, since only he is concerned about dividing novels into the two categories. I just enjoy it as a fine story.