Great Old TV Episodes....from The Avengers

THE LIVING DEAD is one of my favorite episodes from the British spy series The Avengers starring Patrick McNee as John Steed and Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.  This series was already on for years in the early 1960s with Honor Blackman teaming up with McNee, but she quit to go into films (like Goldfinger) and Rigg, her replacement, was so wildly popular that in America ABC decided in 1966 to cancel their own similar series Honey West and replace it with this British import.  With Mrs. Peel on board, it was one of my favorite series then...and now as well, so much that when I recently bought the complete set of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. series on DVD, I also bought all the episodes of The Avengers featuring Rigg.  The Living Dead first aired in early 1967 and in retrospect seems like an improved remake of an earlier episode, The Town of No Return.  In a small English town with an abandoned mine due to a fatal accident a few years earlier, one of those thought to have died in it has been seen rising up out of the grave...and ringing the church bells!  Steed and Peel arrive to investigate, and their trail seems to involve murder and ultimately a sophisticated conspiracy that threatens the country.  I loved the suspenseful climactic scene at the end: one of our heroes is running out of time while the other fights their way to a last second rescue.  Well, it was suspenseful the first time I saw it...

Today's Florida Track Club Headwaters 5K

 

This morning my running race drought...the last race was in December 2019...ended with a 5K event hosted by the Florida Track Club at Hogtown Creek Headwaters Nature Park here in northern Gainesville a short distance from my home.  A couple of weeks ago I checked out FTC's website to see what they were doing in the midst of this COVID period and discovered that they were holding races...last month they held both a marathon/half marathon and a 10K trail race.  I became a member for a year's span at $30, which gives me some free races as well as discounts on others.  I had never been to Headwaters Park before...it's on NW 45th Avenue just west of US 441 (NW 13th Street in Gainesville).  As the pictured sign indicates, it has its own trail...but our race course had us leaving the park and going down 45th Avenue past Norton Elementary School to 24th Boulevard, turning right on NW 53rd Avenue, turning right soon thereafter on a bike trail that led back the 45th Avenue and back to the park...nice course: I might just use it in the future for training runs!  The race, which didn't use chips with the runners' finishing times simply recorded on paper at the finishing line, began at 8.  It was an unusually cold morning for this time of year with temperatures in the low 40s...I started out with a light jacket that I took off almost halfway through.  I ran a relaxed, consistent pace throughout, finishing with a time of 32:40.  There weren't too many runners entered, so I didn't have to be concerned about overcrowding.  FTC provided water, Starbucks coffee, bananas, and packaged breakfast foods for us after the race was over.  As for COVID protocols, most of the entrants I saw never wore masks and quite a few seemed oblivious to social distancing.  Still, at the starting line when we were more or less bunched together, a few "fellow travelers" and I put on our masks until the race began...as did the FTC volunteer starting the race.  All of the people there, especially the Florida Track Club organizers, were super-friendly and supportive...I'm looking forward to the next event!

Just Finished Reading Later by Stephen King

Later, just published last month, is the latest novel by the legendary horror writer Stephen King, and it fits that genre well. As his books generally go, it's not very long...and with the protagonist recounting its events in the first person I read it feeling that at least he, young Jamie Conklin, wasn't going to be in mortal danger, all indications at times to the contrary.  Jamie, living in New York City with his single mother Tia, who is struggling in the publishing industry to make ends meet for them, states up front that he sees and can converse with dead people, naturally bringing to my mind that kid in the movie The Sixth Sense with similar "talents".  But Jamie denies the similarity and lays out the way the encounters go: the dead are usually found in places they are used to being in, seem to recognize his awareness of them, and must answer his questions truthfully.  At first his mother doesn't believe he sees the recently deceased, but an encounter in Central Park with an accident victim changes all that.  Jamie's secret was to be between just the two of them, but circumstances give mom what turns out to be a really bad idea, as she enlists his help in talking to a newly dead writer.  The secrecy bubble gets burst...just enough for another person to pick up on Jamie's abilities, eventually putting his life and others' in danger.  The story jumps from incident to incident, starting when the narrator is 6 and ending at the "present" when he is 22.  As I said (and Jaime as well), this is a horror story...but also one about crime and desperation. Sometimes you really don't know someone until you experience them with their back against the wall and nowhere to go...with you as their only way out.  Maybe that aspect of Later is scarier than all the grotesque imagery Stephen King presents here.  I liked the book and I think I left enough out of the review to where I think you might as well...

Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

Modern man has virtually everything one could desire, but too often we’re still not fulfilled. “Things” don’t bring happiness. Some of my finest moments came while running down the open road, little more than a pair of shoes and shorts to my name. A runner doesn’t need much. Thoreau once said that a man’s riches are based on what he can do without. Perhaps in needing less, you’re actually getting more.

                                                                                       ---Dean Karnazes

I've never been much of a materialist and don't quite relate with those who are...when it comes to material affluence, I believe in the concept of "enough".  Enough to eat, enough shelter, enough transportation, enough whatever. Investing great amounts of time, effort and attention at going far beyond that has never made much sense to me...besides, I've discovered that the greatest things in life don't cost much or involve accumulating "stuff".  I've long been a fan of ultra-distance runner Dean Karnazes, whose autobiographical book Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, is on my Kindle and often referred to.  Running is the ultimate nonmaterialism activity, in my opinion.  Karnazes lays out his life philosophy in this book. Being pretty successful by the world's standards in both academics and business, he realized at a crucial point in his life...specifically his 30th birthday...that the materialistic dog-eat-dog, keep up with the Joneses version of the American dream was empty and meaningless.  And he returned to his earlier love of running and never looked back.  I can relate to his experiences, although to be perfectly frank I don't think I ever bought into the consumer society to which the vast majority of those around me seem to be in bondage.  And some of my own finest moments have also come while running down the open road...if you've never run distance you probably don't know what I'm talking about.  Not that you can't spend a bit of money on running...and I do to the extent that I invest in good shoes (I'm in need of a new pair), have a gym membership that I plan to use more when the pandemic abates, and likewise enter a fair number of races which should hopefully resume in the not-too-distant future.  But to just step out my door and trudge down the road on my own course: priceless...       

My March 2021 Running and Walking Report

For March I ran a total of 114 miles and walked for 137.  My longest single run was 5.6 miles and I ran on each day of the month...even on the day of my COVID vaccination when they say you should take it easy with the exercising (I ran a little "easier").  I wouldn't say that March was a breakthrough month with my running, but it definitely took a turn for the better and I am looking forward to April to possibly get my distance at a higher level.  As for walking, my job within a large warehouse-type building inherently involves quite a bit of it and this has been the primary way for me to build up my mileage.  I've been looking back on my blog at an entry from 2016 where I listed all the running races I entered from 2008 to that time and decided to update it to the present...that entry will appear in a few days on this blog.  I also noted that the vast majority of these races used digital chip technology with the results posted online soon after the event.  Yet when I go back in the year 2021 to try to find them on the Web I am often thwarted...many of the race results have either been removed or they are sunk so far back among all the other information that retrieval is too tricky.  Once I wrote on this blog that there was a great information chasm in our world, between our digital/Internet era and the time preceding it all the way through the distant past (click here to read it).  Yet even with our current ready access to so much information, there are serious gaps in different areas...running race results need to be consolidated and not spread out over numerous sites that often expunge those results: I could use a "Race Results Wiki"...

Update (4/3/21): I found a website, Athlinks.com, that pretty much did what I was searching for, i.e. consolidate my race results.  I have an account now and a list...with links to race results...for most of the races I've run since 2008, including my twelve half-marathons and one marathon.  There are a few still missing, though...I think a lot of that has to do with certain individual race organizers not properly stepping up to the plate and fulfilling their obligation to properly post race results.  If you're a runner you might try this site: I'm impressed...

Weekly Short Stories: 1969 Science Fiction, Part 4

Below are my reactions to the final three stories appearing in the retrospective anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1970, containing selections by editors Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr of what they deemed the best from 1969.  That year saw me become something of a spectator sports fanatic as I followed local teams the Miami Floridians (the American Basketball Association) and the Miami Dolphins (American Football League), along with pretty much the entire 1969 Major League Baseball schedule.  I followed most of the games on the radio...even with the Dolphins their home games were blacked out on TV.  I got to know the '69 Chicago White Sox pretty well since the local station, WKAT, broadcast their games.  That was a tough time in my life as I was an awkward, messed up young adolescent, and since then I've grown to appreciate how sports can help to get people away from dwelling on themselves: it was difficult, I'm sure, for a lot of folks last spring when the pandemic abruptly shut everything down.  But I digress: here's my take on those last three stories...

SHIP OF SHADOWS by Fritz Leiber

This novella examines...from the viewpoint of one of its residents...a large spaceship that has been out there so long that its origins are lost to those dwelling within it.  Spar, a seemingly elderly man who has lost much of his vision as well as his teeth, works at the ship's Bat Rack, its version of a bar, while a talking cat (Kim) has adopted him and dispenses its own very blunt criticisms.  Talking animals, vampires, zombies, space travel, apocalypse...it's all here for you the reader to decipher (if you can) as much of the story's mystery is in figuring what the heck's going on here.  But don't worry, it all explains itself in the end, which didn't make me feel much better about the general state of things...especially that dismal view of the ugly big orange round thing outside the ship's window.  I thought Leiber did a great job here of describing how people might adapt over time to a zero-gravity environment...

NINE LIVES by Ursula K. LeGuin

Libra is a distant planet suitable for little else besides mining, especially for the much needed large amounts of uranium this seismically-active world has in abundance.  Two advance engineers, Pugh and Martin, have been there on assignment for some time and have discovered the ore and laid the foundations for the development party to extract it...their isolation, though, has left them lonely and testy.  But this incoming crew, which turns out to be a ten-person clone of a renowned, deceased engineer, makes matters worse as they are all into each other (on a number of levels) and demonstrate little desire for any meaningful interaction with the "old hands".  But one day while the clones are all down there with the uranium a severe earthquake happens and the demographic equation drastically changes...

THE BIG FLASH by Norman Spinrad

Reading this story you might think "This could never happen", but since it is all about mass hypnosis with people voluntarily submitting themselves to mind control, sadly something similar is going on today with the manipulation of whole segments of our population by media, both of the mass and social varieties.  Set ostensibly in the "present" time period around 1969, the U.S. government is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons to decisively beat back the enemy in southeast Asia...but the president is aware that the general population strongly opposes such a strategy.  Meanwhile, a new rock band,, aptly named The Four Horsemen, with an apocalyptic message and show, is storming the country and becoming wildly popular.  After noting that their use of atom bomb explosion graphics in their concerts is swaying the public's opinion in favor of atomic warfare, the president decides to stage one of their concerts in a desert where he will set off a nuclear bomb, hoping to tip the tide of public opinion behind his proposed SE Asia policy.  But the plot gets out of hand because of that mass hypnosis...you can manipulate a mob to a certain point beyond which you lose control over it, a lesson for our times as well...

Next week I begin looking at the year 1970 in short science fiction...

Game of the Week...Hidato

Hidato is a numerical logic puzzle invented by an Israeli engineer several years ago.  I first encountered it while browsing my excellent (but sadly now closed) local Borders bookstore a few years ago in the puzzle book section...I walked out buying a couple of Hidato books.  For a stretch of time it was also featured on my Hewlett Packard printer's daily puzzle page: of late, though, I haven't done Hidato.  Its premise is simple enough: starting with the numbers already given on the puzzle's grid, connect them together in a sequenced counting string, going left, right, up, down, or diagonally.  Above is pictured an excerpt from an old newspaper puzzle section some 10-11 years ago containing a Hidato puzzle in the corner. Like all puzzles of this sort, it's more fun for me to avoid the "hints" section and figure out shortcuts and strategies for myself.  Of course, nothing is preventing me from going online and ordering for myself another Hidato book, but since I do have online newspaper archives at my disposal I thought I'd go down that avenue first...

Just Finished Reading The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

The Girl Next Door is a 2014 novel by English mystery writer Ruth Rendell, the last to be published before her death.  It's one of those stories that start out going in one direction but transform into something substantially different.  In 1944 in an English town the children there like to play in the "tunnels" underneath a hillside...eventually revealed to be an unconstructed house's foundation.  Michael, one of the kids, has as parents a mother who carries out sexual escapades with various men and a father who by all measures is a pure psychopath...one day he decides to murder his wife and her lover, cut off their hands and save them in a tin box...pretty gross and disturbing, right?  I don't think I'm giving away the story, though, as this all happens in the beginning.  After ridding himself of his wife, the father ships Michael away for his sister Zoe to take care of...the story then shifts sixty years into the future as the children are now around 70 and the creepy old dad is approaching 100, living in a luxurious senior's home after living his whole adult life off the labors and inheritances of others.  The bulk of the rest of the book deals with the relationships between these elderly "tunnel children": besides Michael there is the "girl next door", Daphne, who attracts Alan...one of those tunnel kids and a later teenage flame...into leaving his longtime wife Rosemary for her.  There are other subplots with other characters, but the essence of the story is the lives of the grown children, now on the other end of their life spans.  It lays forth the notion that life goes on with all its complications and drama far into old age...I'm not sure what to think about this since I'm 64 now!  As for my reaction to the novel, I didn't particularly like Rendell's emphasis of the relationships in all their tawdriness over the story's underlying murder mystery...the tone reminded me of J.K. Rowling's "adult" novel The Casual Vacancy:  is this a kind of "English" thing in fiction?  Ruth Rendell's novels are pretty much split in number between her standalone books and those in the Inspector Wexford murder mystery series: I think I'll focus more on the latter category in the future...

Great Old TV Episodes...from SpongeBob SquarePants

 

GRAVEYARD SHIFT, from Season 2 of the enduring Nickelodeon hit cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants, is one of my all time favorites.  This series, which I took to around 2002-03, features the title character as an annoyingly expressive sponge (in yellow kitchen sponge form) living at the bottom of the sea with his best friend Patrick (silly starfish), next neighbor Squidward (cynical octopus) and boss Mr. Krabs (greedy, stingy crab).  He works with Squidward at the Krusty Krab fast food joint...in this episode Krabs discovers he can make more money if his place never closes: hence, the graveyard shift.  Squidward can't stand it, and SpongeBob thinks it's the greatest thing ever..."Wow, we never have to stop working!".   Fed up with his coworker's unbridled enthusiasm, Squidward decides to play a joke on him and dreams up a ghost story about the "Hash-Slinging Slasher", supposedly a former employee who accidentally cut off his hand, got run over by a bus, and will come back to "Get you!"  It works on SpongeBob, who shrieks repeatedly until Squidward tries to shut him up by telling him it was just a joke...then he switches to  laughing repeatedly (see above picture).  Later that night the clues that Squidward laid out about the Slasher's return start coming true, and the two are left shaking in terror as the sinister figure holding a spatula enters the restaurant...

I have worked the graveyard shift on three different jobs: a weekend shift as a clerk in a traffic management office in Miami Shores, a very brief stint at a Gainesville convenience store, and for around 18 years as a clerk at the post office.  There something just not quite right about leaving for work late in the evening and getting off when the sun has just risen in the morning...I never completely got used to working those hours, and on my off days I would sleep the late night/early morning as if I had more normal hours.  The world outside gets eerily silent in those wee hours of the morning and you can hear some pretty distant sounds...all sorts of nocturnal wildlife like to make their appearance then as well.  Nowadays with my afternoon/evening work schedule it's a major chore for me to just get up at 7 in the morning, much less work all night long.  SpongeBob's Graveyard Shift episode is loaded with laughs...unfortunately, although this series continues on to this day with new episodes, I don't think the ones after the fourth season are very funny: if you haven't seen it yet, I'd focus on those early seasons if I were you...

My Favorite Songs So Far in 2021

For most of my life my favorite music in any particular year coincided with what was newly released, played, and popular at the time.  This changed in 1991 when I rediscovered Led Zeppelin and explored their catalog of music, coming up with some gems going back two decades.  Since then some of my favorites from year to year are from earlier times...for example, my "song of the year" for 2018 was from 2006: Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups.  Last year many of my favorites were from the late, great Prince, many going back to the 1980s: this year my favorites range from 2014 to the present...yet in my mind they are "2021" favorites.  Below is my list of favorite songs for the first three months in 2021.  Check them out...YouTube is a good starting place.  Each song is listed by title, artist, and year of original release...

1 LADY'S GRACE...Kerani (2015)

2 WHITEOUT CONDITIONS...the New Pornographers (2017)

3 PILLS...St. Vincent (2017)

4 PLAY MONEY...the New Pornographers (2017)

5 THE ASCENSION...Sufjan Stevens (2020)

6 ILLEGAL FIREWORKS AND HIDING BOTTLES IN THE SAND...Jeff Rosenstock (2020)

7 PALOMATRONICS...Green Isac (2014)

8 NOBODY ELSE WILL BE THERE...the National (2020)

9 HIGH HOPES...Panic! at the Disco (2018)

10 KOMBUCHA...Winnetka Bowling League (2021)

11 SVANIRE...Angele Dubeau (2015)

12 VENDETTA...Ice Age (2021)

Quote of the Week...from Toni Sorenson

When you run, the road belongs to you.                                    ---Toni Sorenson.

Toni Sorenson is an author of novels with faith-based themes...she apparently is also an avid runner to have come out with the above quote, which I agree with.  When I'm out on the road running...and I'm talking about residential streets or walking pathways, not major highways...I feel that it's my road, which I'm willing to share with others (as long as they don't get in my way).  While generally socially compliant by demeanor, I tend to get into a much more assertive frame of mind when I'm out there pounding the pavement, with a sense of proprietorship and belonging as I have made this setting part of my world and embrace it.  I have vivid recall of different running courses I have trained on, past and present...there is, though, one funny exception to Toni Sorenson's quote for me.  Back in April 2010 while visiting Manhattan with my wife and daughter, I got up in the morning at our Times Square hotel and went out onto Broadway for a jog...not such a cool idea.  The streets were, of course, crowded with people, many of them in business attire, and here I was in a tee-shirt and sweat pants skirting in and out among them.  Because I didn't want to have to wait at intersections, I made the ill-advised decision to turn the corner at each red light...eventually finding myself hopelessly lost among the skyscrapers.  Somehow I stumbled back onto Broadway after meandering around for blocks east of my area.  So no, the road doesn't always belong to you when you run...I did the remainder of my running that vacation high up in the hotel's exercise room...

Constellation of the Month: Hydra (the Sea Serpent)

 

It was tough for me to pick March's constellation of the month: Canis Minor, although possessing a first magnitude star in Procyon, is pretty tiny with two generally visible stars...that's still better than Cancer, loaded with very faint stars and a cluster called the Beehive.  Then there is Carina, but nearly all of it is below the horizon unless you happen to be living around the Equator or points south.  Instead I picked Hydra, which starts as an evening March constellation at its western end (right, looking south) that represents the sea serpent's small head and winds its way eastward as April and May constellations...it's just south of the Zodiac constellations of Cancer, Leo and Virgo.  One way to find dim Cancer...besides interpolating in the empty space between the brighter constellations of Leo and Gemini...is to locate Hydra's very visible head and then go straight northward. Alphard, the brightest star in Hydra, is also prominent in the evening March sky...it is a 2nd magnitude giant at about 177 light years distance.  On the other end of Hydra are two Messier objects: M68 is a globular star cluster while M83 is a spiral galaxy.  When considering a constellation as stretched out as Hydra...to me an example of celestial gerrymandering...I think they could have come up with a better way of "connecting the dots" and created constellations easier to recognize and identify.  But this is convention, and we're stuck with the current system for better or for worse.  In any event, other than those Messier objects I mentioned, the most interesting part of Hydra is its west end from Alphard to the serpent's head, this smaller segment in itself worthy of selection as my constellation of the month.  Next month's pick is much more clear cut, although my second choice is pretty prominent, too...

Weekly Short Stories:1969 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reviews of three more sci-fi short stories from the year 1969 as they appeared in the "year's best" anthology World Best Science Fiction 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr...science fiction storytellers in their own right...with their selections from the previous year.  Richard M. Nixon was sworn in to be president in January, and the news from the tumultuous year of 1968 seemed to settle a bit...although we were still mired in the Vietnam conflict.  The first human landings on the moon happened in July and November...I remember reading something in a '69 newspaper article quoting Vice-President Agnew as predicting a manned Mars landing by 1990.  That seemed a lot more realistic to me than what really happened, with America eventually cutting short its Apollo moon mission program and spending the last 48 years in low Earth orbit with the capability to go much farther...can you imagine any science fiction writer predicting that scenario?!  Well, here are those reviews...

SIXTH SENSE by Michael G. Coney

A most brilliantly conceived story, it is unrelated to the later ghost movie starring Bruce Willis.  Set many generations into the future, a telepathic man has deliberately moved into an isolated life as an innkeeper in a remote area on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea.  A party of two families with their own peculiar relational hang-ups arrives for a stayover. As they reveal their stories, much of it through the innkeeper's psychic abilities, you think the story is going in one direction: one couple's teenage daughter seems to be telepathic as well.  Then the ending comes and everything is turned upside down, making the reader go back and read everything in a completely different light...including the story's title.  This one's a winner...

A BOY AND HIS DOG by Harlan Ellison

This is a very brutal story of a future dystopia divided between constantly warring violent hoodlums...either in gangs or alone...separated from isolated pockets of throwback civilization deep underground, the tone reminiscent of the movie A Clockwork Orange (based on the Anthony Burgess novel).  It is far into the future...in the year 2024 (!)...as following a nuclear apocalypse the world's surface is run by violent, rapacious thugs, of which the story's protagonist, a fifteen-year old young "man", is one of the worst as he relates his story in stark, profane terms.  He has with him a dog, one with specially developed telepathic abilities, and their bond is strong...just how strong is revealed in the story's ending, which makes all the preceding atrocities in the narrative seem tame by contrast.  This is NOT a tale for the faint of heart...

AND SO SAY ALL OF US by Bruce McAllister

In a grossly shortsighted push to use mental patients thought to have paranormal powers to promote America's agenda in the ongoing cold war during the story's time setting in the near future (from 1969), a government-contracted scientist focuses on one particular patient with known telekinetic and telepathic abilities and works to resolve his inner multiple personality conflicts through telepathic suggestion: the unintended result bodes ill for the world at large as parapsychology, mental illness, and religion merge together within one intellectually-challenged but very powerful mind...

Next week I conclude my look at some of 1969's science fiction short stories...

Game of the Week: Cryptograms

 

Cryptograms are encoded puzzles, often appearing in grocery store variety puzzle magazines...the above photo is of one of these.  Each letter in a message is encoded with another letter...the trick is to find certain patterns of letters and pick out the more common words like "the" and some of the two-letter words.  Then, after getting some of the more common letters like e, s, t, r, l, ....you know, the ones Wheel of Fortune automatically gives its final puzzle contestants...I should be able to piece the rest of the cryptogram together.  There is always a threshold I reach after decoding a certain number of letters beyond which I can go back to the beginning of the message and then plow right through it.  Although I enjoy the process of solving cryptograms, the resulting message is often a disappointment.  Unsolved on the page, they all look very intellectual and profound...much like how an unknown foreign language sounds...but like another language, they are in the end just transformations of things whose meanings we are already acquainted with.  The first puzzle above, for example, turned out to be a silly, corny joke while the next one was a serious, positive motivating statement from a famous figure in history.  Once I bought a book of cryptograms at a used book sale.  Unfortunately, many of the quotes therein were by Benjamin Franklin: it got too easy to pick out his name at the bottom of those cryptograms and almost instantly translate the puzzle.  The longer the cryptogram the generally easier it is to solve...the same goes to putting the name of the individual who said it at the bottom.  There are variations to cryptograms as well...one that I like has a category at the top and then lists come coded words that fit it...these also tend to be in those variety puzzle mags...

Just Finished Reading Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins

Gregor and the Code of Claw, published in 2007, is the fifth and final volume in Suzanne Collins' children's fantasy series The Underland Chronicles: beware, I'm bound to throw in some plot spoilers here. Gregor, the title character, is a twelve year old boy living in New York City with his mother, father, and two sisters.  He and his family have a secret: there is, deep beneath the ground, another world where descendants of human settlers from centuries past interact...sometimes in friendship and sometimes in war...with the native creatures there, all human-size, intelligent, and speaking versions of our rats, bats, cockroaches, mice, spiders, fireflies, ants, and so forth.  The series, like way too many in the fantasy genre, has devolved into a dire winner-take-all war between the opposing camps of the humans with their allies (the bats, cockroaches and mice) and the rats.  The final battle has the rats...led by the now-insane, giant albino Bane...invading the final human stronghold "down under", as Gregor...stuck down there with his mother and eventually both sisters...discovers that the prophecy in question has him, the so-called "Warrior", dying before it is all over.  He finds himself falling in love with the human princess Luxa while trying to save their home territory from the invaders.  He also finds himself pitted against the manipulative human military commander Solovet, Luxa's grandmother and a forerunner (in my opinion) of the author's later Hunger Games character of Alma Coin from District 13.  Part of the final conflict revolves around breaking the rats' special code of communication: the Code of Claw.  The most compelling character in this book...and the series as a whole...is Ripred, the tough, colorful rat who is the humans' greatest ally.   I found this concluding book a little tedious, knowing pretty much what to expect: like I said before, there is the typical (yawn) epic final battle, along with the attempt on the part of the author to tie up the loose ends of the series.  When it does get to the end, I was pleased to discover that it is Ripred who not only, by revealing his attitude about those aforementioned prophecies, enlightens young Gregor, but also with Gregor and Luxa presents a reasonable resolution to the conflict.  Still, it wasn't close to being my favorite fantasy series...but hey, it's for kids anyway and I enjoyed it on that level, having once been one myself...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Honey West

THE SWINGIN' MRS. JONES was the first episode in the half-hour private eye series Honey West, which lasted only one season on ABC from late 1965 through early 1966, with 30 episodes in all.  It starred Anne Francis as the sultry blonde detective with martial arts skills along with John Ericson as her associate Sam Bolt...and Bruce the ocelot.  When TV Guide came out with the three networks' fall lineup issue in August or September of 1965, as a nearly nine-year old television fanatic I studied it intensely.  One of the featured new series was Honey West, and I instantly fell in love with its star just from the pictures.  Tragically, when it was time for the new season to start, my local ABC affiliate in Miami, Channel 10 WLBW, wouldn't show this series for some reason and Palm Beach's ABC Channel 12 just didn't come in on our rabbit-ears-antenna TV set.  So I never got to see it back then...as a matter of fact I only saw my first episode, this one, a few weeks ago because it was on YouTube!  In it Honey West has been hired by a wealthy middle-age married woman being blackmailed for indiscrete behavior at a resort with one of the attractive young men hanging out there.  She goes undercover as a young married, rich woman looking for some action when her husband wasn't around and quickly discovers that the resort itself is running the ring.  The acting is top-notch and funny...it reminded me of a great concurrent series with the same theme from Britain: The Avengers, starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg.  Before writing this article I read up on the Honey West series and discovered that they not only wanted the Avengers' original star Honor Blackman (who played the role of Pussy Galore in the Bond flick Goldfinger) to play the Honey West part, but that the network decided after a year of Honey West that it would be cheaper to cancel it and just import the wildly popular British series and stick it in that same time slot.  The irony of it all is that Honey West was critically acclaimed and Anne Francis was nominated for an Emmy for her performance.  Francis was already an established actress...I've seen her also in the old Twilight Zone episode The After Hours (about mannequins) and as a villainess in a couple of early Man from U.N.C.LE. episodes.  During that era while I was 9-10 years old I had a string of crushes on pretty female celebrities: besides Anne Francis as Honey West there were Julie Newmar as Catwoman in Batman, Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise from that movie, and Nancy Sinatra as...well, Nancy Sinatra.  Now that I've finally seen an episode of Honey West from my 64-year old perspective, I wonder how I would have reacted to it had I been able to see it way back then... 

About Where We're Going with COVID

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that, after all this time of lockdown, social distancing and mask mandates regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, people who are fully vaccinated...along with those who have contracted it in the past and recovered...cannot finally return to some semblance of normal life and shake off the distancing and masks: I'd also like to be able to browse the shelves of my local public library again some day, thank you...if it ever opens to the general public again.  The other day Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) was arguing with disease expert Anthony Fauci over the need for those recovered or vaccinated to continue wearing masks, Paul taunting those already vaccinated for even wearing double masks just for show...I'd been wondering the same thing myself.  Fauci's response was, to me, chilling: it's the variants of this coronavirus out there across the world that is the reason for continuing this, and that "herd immunity", which seems to be the standard for completely reopening the society, will always be questioned as long as there is any place on Earth where the disease is still active...because of these new variants they keep discovering, you see.  Of course, in Texas they've already completely done away with any government-mandated masks or restrictions even though we're still in the thick of the fight to prevent COVID's spread: that's way too early!  But there will have to be a point...maybe sometime this summer...when everyone in the U.S. wanting vaccines has had access to them and that booster shots for variants are in full swing: can we then please go back to sitting inside Starbucks and participate in running races, concerts and assemblies, or has a sea change occurred in our society and we're now and forever going to be germophobes with hand sanitizer dispensers around every corner and doing Detective Monk imitations while feeling we're constantly on the verge of new restrictions?  Sean Hannity, someone I generally loathe, recently tweeted...with the lead-in comment "HERE WE GO"... a link to another disease expert who was extolling the idea of social distancing and mask-wearing every flu season from now on.  I received my first Pfizer vaccine three days ago and will get my second one early next month. I will continue to respect the mask and distancing guidelines while they are in place as I already have, going on a full year, because I take this terrible scourge seriously.  But at some time in the not-too-distant future, this country will have a reckoning as to which direction we're going with this all...it doesn't make me feel any better to find myself even only in partial agreement with both (ugh) Rand Paul and (mega-ugh) Sean Hannity, the latter whom I regard as an anti-American fascist because of his past support for overthrowing the free and fair 2020 presidential election in favor of his cult idol: dictator-wannabee and pandemic-denier Donald Trump...

After Yesterday's Opening Round Play in the NCCA Men's Hoops Tourney

As apparent by all the upsets occurring in yesterday's opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, my bracket strategy of going with all the higher-seeded teams fell apart...as I knew it would since, as I said, upsets do happen.  That still doesn't mean that I wasn't going with the best probability for success, considering that it's next to impossible to determine which games will be upsets.  Besides, on Thursday with the four "First Four" games, the teams facing off each had the same seedings: my strategy couldn't apply to them and I would have needed to delve into each team's rankings to predict their outcomes (which I didn't do).  Friday afternoon, fortunately for us Gator alumni and fans, the University of Florida, seeded 7th in their region, managed somehow to defeat Virginia Tech, 10th, in overtime 75-70 to advance against one of those upset winners, Oral Roberts, seeded 15th, who stunned 2nd seed Ohio State 75-72.  UF should...I said should...get past them Sunday to make it to yet another Sweet 16 round.  Although after getting home from work I watched some of the games on TV...they're spread out over multiple channels (at least for this round) like CBS, TNT, TBS, and TrueTV (which I don't get), while at work I got to listen on my Android to the game of my choice using the excellent TuneIn Radio app.  There's more action for today...let's see if Florida State can't advance as well: they're playing UN-Greensboro this afternoon.  This is a "bubble" tournament, with all the games in various sites in central Indiana and the players and staff sequestered...you'd think Purdue would do well here, but they, a 4th seed, were knocked off yesterday by North Texas, 13th.  After Monday it should clear out considerably, with the remaining schools trimmed from 68 to 16 teams...

Quote of the Week...from Franz Kafka

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.                       ---Franz Kafka

Ever since I began this blog nearly 14 years ago, I have felt that writing like this has greatly helped me sort out my thoughts and feelings, sharpening those that I conclude are worthwhile while disposing of those that don't pass the test of rational examination.  Kafka was a famed early twentieth century Czech/German writer who is said to have injected surrealism and social commentary into much of his work: this was certainly true from the one book of his I've read so far: Metamorphosis.  Sometimes I observe how thoroughly deluded and irrational people express themselves on TV and in social media, and I wonder whether a daily writing habit might not help some of them learn to use better judgment when it comes to discerning truth from fantasy and displaying a more civil, sociable demeanor in what they say to others.  Along with this blog I have recently begun a daily journal...for my eyes only...to document the day-to-day happenings in my personal life and further assist me in more sanely reacting to the often invasive world that seems to come down on me from different sides.  The very act of formulating sentences and connecting trains of thought is therapeutic, and I sure that as a result my perspective on reality and society has greatly benefited, regardless whether other readers would agree or not with the words I've put down.  I found Kafka's above quote from a search I did on the excellent book review site Goodreads, which posted an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Max Brod in the 1920s...

My 2021 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Bracket...in a Nutshell

For the 2020-21 season with the NCAA men's basketball championship tournament slated to begin today, it's become an annual tradition for people to fill out intricate brackets predicting who will advance to the next round...and then who will win that round, all the way to the championship game.  Naturally, once you get a game's result wrong, it upsets the whole bracket...and upsets do happen.  Still, I think the most reasonable bracket I could fill out respects all of the seedings.  So if you want to know "my bracket", let's skip the complicated chart and follow two principles: I always predict that the higher seed within a region wins, and then in the final four...presuming all number one seeds advance...I go with the pretournament national rankings: #1 Gonzaga, #2 Baylor, #3 Illinois, #4 Michigan.  This method has the advantage over traditional brackets by renewing itself with each new round in the tourney...if in the Final Four two teams with different regional seedings are playing each other I go with the one with the higher regional seed.  By the way, on the women's side with their tournament, I know next-to-nothing about the teams involved...but my "bracket" follows the exact same principles.  Yeah, I know, upsets always happen...but how am I supposed to magically sort them out from the expected results?