Regular readers have come to expect some serious journalism from me once in a while. This is where a waiting world learned of the 1972 zombie invasion of Hollywood. Here the public finally received confirmation that the twin towers were moved to New York from West LA, where they were originally built. I also published compelling evidence that UFO’s are responsible for San Diego having the nation’s best weather. You don’t have to thank me; I consider it part of my duty as a citizen.

Here is a single frame from the famous video from the 1928 opening of Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 movie “The Circus.” Folks have been debating whether or not this woman is speaking into a cell phone. Obviously this is ridiculous, since there were no cell towers in Hollywood in 1928. The truth? She’s speaking into a satellite telephone! We all know that UFO’s have been a fact of life for centuries. Satellite telephone technology has been in use among select human beings since at least the time of Ancient Egypt.

I am prepared to suggest an answer to what is really going on here.  To begin with, let’s get one thing straight: this is not an isolated incident. For the first time anywhere, let me be the one to connect some very important dots for all of you. Our second example of time travel caught on film comes to us from Canada, in1940.  This isn’t some video off of YouTube, either – it’s a photograph from the Bralorne Pioneer Museum in British Columbia, Canada.

OK, now take a look at the above image.  Can you identify the time traveler? It’s worth noting that this photograph had been available for years as part of an exhibit “Their Past Lives Here” before anybody noticed the conspicuous guy from the future.

Who are these people? Why have they chosen to go back in time? It’s quite simple, really. A couple of intrepid, determined radio artists are doing everything they can to bring their listeners pristine examples of ancient recorded music! They go back in time to collect old discs and cylinders to bring back to the present for the entertainment of their listening audience. Let’s take a closer look at each image:

A careful look at the 1928 image strongly suggests that our first time traveler is not a woman at all! Scroll back up and take a look at the full image. Look at how big “her” feet are! It seems pretty obvious to me that, for whatever reason, Andy Senior felt the need to dress as a woman while talking on his satellite phone in Hollywood, back in 1928. He must have had his reasons. Maybe he felt the need to try to avoid being too conspicuous, which is more than we can say for the second time traveler, isn’t it?

Radiola is a weekly, two-hour podcast that features jazz and pop music from the 20′s and 30′s. Most, but not all of the music featured on this tremendous program comes from the “electrical era.” The sound quality of the recordings Andy presents is spectacular. It’s pretty obvious that he’s playing pristine copies of records he bought in Hollywood during trips back to the 1920′s and 1930′s, isn’t it? Incidentally, the Radiola shows offer subtle evidence that frequent time travel might be harmful to one’s health. That might explain how “Wake Up, Chill’un,” by Willard Robison and the Ipana Troubadours, was chosen as the show’s theme song.

The Antique Phonograph Music Program, on WFMU, is presented by Michael Cumella. In the color photo, Mac is explaining the fine points of acoustic recording without electricity to Nipper (the RCA Victor dog).

Mac clearly isn’t afraid of publicity, as proven by the nice article about his show from the Wall Street Journal.

The Antique Phonograph Music Program specializes in acoustic-era records and cylinders, played on original equipment. This is another brilliant program, where music from 100 years ago comes to life as if it had been recorded a few weeks ago – because, in fact, that’s how old some of the recordings really are!

It’s evident that Mac was caught on camera when he was visiting Canada to join the crowd at the famous cylinder record liquidation sale that was held in British Columbia in 1940. Once again, it’s not hard for a trained listener with a good ear to be able to tell that, although the recordings played on the Antique Phonograph Music Program are authentic, neither the cylinders, the discs, nor the record and cylinder players Mac uses are very old at all. On occasion Mac brings his son on to co-host the show. Rumor has it that, technically, Mac is younger than his son, the consequence of a birth control accident in a time machine. If true, this would be only the second documented case. (The first was Zaphod Beebrebrox.)

As one who appreciates the lively timelessness of good old recordings, here is one of my favorite spoken word pieces by Eddie Cantor, recorded at the very end of 1929.

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The image to your left is an example of the former. This is a fine screw indeed, for one simple reason: it goes out as well as in. Let me explain. If you’d like to learn a couple of lessons about the value of persistence and stubborn devotion to duty from a guy with the sort of keen intellect and clever “outside the box” thinking of smart men like Shemp Howard, this story is for you.

Since the mid-1990′s, my life has been a series of Fujitsu laptops. Not surprisingly, the first one I owned ran Windows 95. The computer at the heart of today’s little parable is a C Series Lifebook, running Windows XP. I like it and it has a lot of expensive programs installed. Sadly, the 40 GB hard drive that came with the unit was showing signs of getting ready to give up the ghost, things like being 42% fragmented at the end of running all the defrag and disc maintenance programs on hand.

No problem. I’ve been sliding new hard drives into laptops since before a lot of you were born. I went out and bought a nice 650 GB drive and came home to enjoy the smooth and easy transition that has been my standard experience in these matters. I attached the new drive externally and ran a cloning program with no problem. After that the first screw securing the hard drive caddy – the one depicted with such loving and sharp clarity in the photo – came out with no problem. Sadly, the second one stripped and remained in place, mocking me, a part worth a fraction of a penny telling me my computer soon would be worthless and that I likely was powerless to do anything about it.

I presented this situation to my beloved wife, who cares about my wellbeing and happiness, and who doesn’t enjoy life so much when I am lying on the floor, biting the carpet with frustration and misery over some computer mishap.

“How old is that laptop?”

“Four and a half years.”

“You know, I think probably Santa would get you a new laptop for Christmas if you were a good boy.”

“That’s nice, but I’m not going to need it because I’m not going to be getting screwed by this screw. I’m going to sort this out and this new hard drive over here is going to be in that laptop over there, working fine, really soon.”

Over the subsequent couple of weeks, I learned about screw extractors at the local hardware store and I watched how-to videos. I checked out the family power drill, which I brought into the house and started to examine. I tried to use the screw extractor. I didn’t get the screw out. On the other hand, I did not damage the laptop further. My wife appeared to be relieved that this setback left me undaunted but I could tell she was worried it all would end in tears.

I slept on the problem, and decided to escalate the level of violence. I  waited until nobody but the family dog Rainbow was in the house with me.  The laptop found itself face down on a pillow on the dining room table, its battery out and its AC cord unplugged. I put the smallest bit into the drill and brandished the power drill at the prone laptop.

“You’re not mocking me anymore, are you? You’re gonna give up that screw right now and like it, or it’s gonna hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me. If you continue to defy me, I’ll bring Lana and Em’s brother Jason in here with his hockey mask and power saw. You’ll look back and wish you’d surrendered that screw a long time ago.”

It’s important that you show the laptop who’s boss. That’s something they don’t tell you in the computer user manuals, at least not in the ones put out by Fujitsu.

I got to the business of cutting a little doughnut in the plastic around the bad screw. I figured if I could cut away a bit of the plastic I’d be able to use tweezers or needle nose pliers to remove the screw. As I was completing the task, the drill bit touched the side of the screw and turned it. I was able to remove it with my fingers. The hard drive caddy slid out without further delay. My delight was tangible. I sent Alexis a text, telling her about what a tech-savvy spouse she’s married to.

The first three of the four screws that attached the old hard drive to the caddy came out with no problem. The fourth did not. It instantly stripped and remained in place. The last thing that could have gone wrong went as wrong as it could go wrong! Somebody explain the justice of that! Something inside me started to snap. Slowly, deliberately, I walked up a few of the stairs toward the bedroom and I got down on all fours to start chewing at my favorite spot in the carpet, when I noticed Rainbow at my side.

“Don’t do it. Your teeth are in no shape for that kind of work, and you know I’m going to get blamed for it anyway. That’s not fair. Go back and finish.”

Sometimes you have to take your dog’s advice. I went back to the table and looked at the hard drive caddy, with three screws lined up neatly to one side and one screw keeping the old hard drive held fast. I decided to do what any experienced, mature grownup would do: I grabbed that damned hard drive and began twisting it furiously until I was able to break the old hard drive off the caddy entirely. Ha! That’ll teach the #$%@& thing to mess with me for sure! I threw the old hard drive to the table with contempt and with a sense of triumph. Then I noticed the hard drive caddy in my other hand and looked at the twisted, broken piece of metal that once housed the fourth screw. That part was going to require further careful, delicate surgery. I got out a pair of pliers and flattened out the shredded piece of aluminum as well as I could.

To my delight, the new hard drive slid in with no problem and the three remaining screws mounted it straight and solid. It went into the computer and the surviving external screw, the one pictured in all its glory at the top of this post, smoothly went back into place. I plugged in the laptop, hit the ‘on’ button, and the computer booted up perfectly and has been working like a champ ever since.

Perseverance Furthers.

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How nice. So why bother writing about it? Who cares? Well, maybe nobody cares, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to join the crowd of people who express public contempt for Microsoft Vista. I thought, fine, I’ll just upgrade to Windows 7. I got an upgrade disc at a faculty discount, but it wouldn’t work! I experimented with Ubuntu, which finally failed – and brought down Windows with it!

One day I hope to reject Windows in favor of an open-source operating system. For now, however, I must say Ubuntu has done me a huge favor! It forced me to reformat my hard drive and start over. This photo proves that an external web cam is up and running under Windows XP.

I love Fujitsu laptops! As for Microsoft operating systems…

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That’s more than enough consumerism for now. No doubt you are well-pleased to have spent precious moments of your life thinking about transistor radios over the decades. That’s not something everybody gets to do every day, is it?

Spring is bringing some lovely little flowers. Some, like the nice tomato flowers to the far left, are going to end up on the dinner table. Others, such as the other tiny and treacherous  flowers you see, are destined to be ‘eliminated.’

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Avatar is the most accurate and sensitive portrayal of the US Military since that classic documentary Dr. Strangelove.

Avatar tells the story of a blue-skinned tribal race on an alien planet.  Earth forces invade because they want to take a valuable mineral, a vast concentration of which lies beneath ground the native people hold sacred. This mineral has a stupid movie name too, something like “reallyrareium.” A US Marine takes the place of his dead scientist twin brother in a program to put human consciousness into the cloned bodies of blue-skinned indigenous people.

This US Marine ‘goes native’ and marries the Chief’s daughter. At the end of the picture the sexy native alien princess kills the ultra-racist military leader by shooting him in the chest with two poison-tipped arrows. Native forces combine with the life forces of the planet and a lot of cool animated alien animals to destroy the high-tech  military force and send them packing back to their (our) home planet.

I see the movie as a retelling of the Native American tale, but this time with the natives repelling the coarse, godless invaders. It’s a feel-good story for the whole family. Plus, it has the greatest actress of our generation, Sigorney Weaver.

Don’t buy into the hype that the producers have reinvented cinema or done anything more than create a really fun cartoon/live action hybrid motion picture.  Yes, it’s a compelling movie experience. Even an innovative, fun movie like this, one with a message I find uplifting and satisfying on many levels, doesn’t really capture me. The pictures are better in radio drama, or in the written word. Avatar is a hyper-violent film with a lot of chase scenes and computer-animated battle. Doesn’t that description match many, many movies? How many last-minute rescues and dangerous near-falls from high places are we supposed to pay to watch each year?

“Theater of the imagination” is more powerful than talking pictures.

When did they start playing 15 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of previews? The worst couple of minutes of this horrible stretch of force-fed commercialism was the overtly Nazi offering from our United States National Guard. I’ll bet Leni Riefenstahl is smiling up at all of us from Hell, content that her contribution to the visual arts and her national ideology have found a comfortable (if unsafe) home. My reaction when I sat in the dark with strangers, watching this highly-produced bit of domestic propaganda, was that we’re all being prepared for the regular presence of American troops on our streets. I feel safer already, don’t you?

One has to pause for a moment to consider the mixed messages we received at the Ultra Star Cinema this afternoon. On the one hand, we were offered the US National Guard as a place to devote our love, loyalty, fidelity, honor, respect, goodness, Americanism and apple pie-ism. Then in the feature picture we saw the US Military presented as a bunch of racist mass-murders who feel they “have to fight terror with terror.” I suppose in a sense this is progress: at least the movie didn’t have a hero like Col. Mike Kirby, saying, “Out here, due process is a bullet.” (Lines like that one go to the bad guys in this picture.)

Avatar is a good movie, but it is not worth $34.50 for two adults and one child. See it, but don’t pay retail the way I did!

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For those of you who aren’t veterans of what passes for a legal education today, here’s a bit of legal lingo for you. We study the law in part by looking at hypothetical stories, where the facts present legal issues. We call these stories “fact patterns” because it makes us feel better about spending a fortune to go over simple stories word-by-word, kind of like first graders.

Got it? “Fact pattern” = little story with legal issues. Cool.  Here’s today’s Contracts Fact Pattern!

Mama goes shopping and scrutinizes everything. Here is how her shopping went.

Mama: “I don’t like the looks of this whitefish.”

Merchant: “Lady, for looks you don’t buy whitefish, you buy goldfish.”

Mama: “Oy, and this chicken, it has a broken leg.”

Merchant: “Look lady, you gonna eat it or dance with it?”

Mama: “And before you weigh the meat, take out the bones.”

Merchant: “Lady, I buy with bones, you’ll buy with bones.”

Mama: “I don’t pay with bones.”

Merchant: “All right, no bones.”

Mama: “Thank you, you are a gentleman. Now put the bones in a separate bag for soup. And never mind the meat. I don’t like your meat anyhow.”

1.  Have the parties formed a binding contract? Discuss.

2.  Assume for the purposes of this question only that Mama is a “merchant” under the UCC. Would that make it more likely that Mama and Merchant entered into a binding contract? Discuss.

If elite law schools did more good than harm, John Yoo wouldn’t be a free man, much less a faculty member at a fancy law school…but don’t think about that. Instead, think about fact patterns.

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Yes, we know it is so tempting. Pianos are heavy and so darn awkward, and given the looks of this semi-demolished house, the stairways may be questionable. But honestly, is this the best you can do—a half-Nelson and poor footing on a moving piece of machinery? Why not just tie the darn thing on and let it take its own chances?

On the plus side, nice hat.

Here’s another of their images, which they entitle:

Location, Location, Location

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Alexis and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. We loved it. I went into the theater looking for a movie that would deliver the idealistic creative spirit of The Original Series – extra-terrestrial green-skinned belly dancers! When a nearly-naked green-skinned woman from Orion made her appearance early in the movie, I knew the people behind this picture understood Gene Roddenberry’s philosophy and were living up to its high principle.

For what it’s worth, I judge this new movie to be substantially better than almost all of the hundreds of episodes of TV and the many hours of movies that make up the Star Trek catalog. The cast in this picture is much better than the original. The script is better. Personally, I’d cut about 15 minutes of video game action sequences, but who am I to quibble with Artists who appreciate the value of buxom green aliens?

My mom worked on Star Trek from 1966 through 2004. This movie is the first Star Trek show to come out after her death. I’m sure she would have enjoyed it.

I got to hang out on the sets of The Original Series back in the 60′s, and my parents and I attended the Star Trek Christmas party in December, 1968. I was 10 years old. I got to sit in Captain Kirk’s chair and stand on the transporter pads. The whole cast was there, boozing it up and enjoying themselves in a melancholy way – the show had been cancelled (for the second time) and everybody there knew that this third season would be the last. If anybody at that party in 1968 had promised the group that the show would be more popular than ever in 2009, their car keys would have been confiscated.

James Doohan called me over to his table. “Well, young Scotty, I guess your mom is letting you stay up past your bedtime to be with us…”

The most memorable part of the evening, aside from walking around all of the sets, was being with the cast and crew as they showed the collected blooper reel on a projector and screen. I’d never seen anything like it. Although these three clips aren’t complete, they’re highly entertaining. Watch for yourself and enjoy!

Parts One Two Three

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Going to the movies is not my favorite activity. Growing up in Hollywood and hanging out on movie lots left me more than a little unimpressed with the picture business…but I do enjoy a good movie, and “Frost Nixon” qualifies. I figure Tricky Dick would like this movie, because he is portrayed by one of the most attractive old men in show business today.

But wait! The important thing about this experience at the movies can be seen in the fine print of this ticket. Look right above the big number 8.  This is a Senior Ticket!

It pays to look older than you are. They stopped carding me shortly after I got my first driver’s license, which was most convenient. Now I’m getting the Senior Discount the the movies without even asking for it. Who says people don’t respect their elders?

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Not many people remember American Motors, (AMC). This is a car company that went broke and died out years before it became fashionable.  Behold a not-in-showroom-condition ’71 Hornet Sportabout.

My friends and I used to refer to this car as the “Silver Rolls”. What this car lacked in looks it made up for by being distinctly uncomfortable. Seeing this car makes me smile – for all its shortcomings, it still brings back memories of adolescent freedom. Yes, I remember back in June of 1977, driving north on Cahuenga towards Franklin, listening to the Young Marquis and Stanley on KROQ AM play “Back in the Saddle” by Aerosmith, along with Sparks and the Ramones. There was one speaker set into the middle of the top of the dashboard.

My dad crash tested this car in September of 1972.  My mom and I were in the car with him; it was a typical family affair. We were going up the narrow and twisty Hollyridge Drive in the Hollywood Hills at dusk. As my dad drove around a blind curve, a teenager in a stolen Cadillac hit the front corner on the driver’s side. It turned out that the Hornet could take a punch.

This car lived a surprisingly long and expensive life. After that, my parents drove Hondas.

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We begin 2009 with a Presidential innaguration coming up and hundreds of millions of people all around the world yearning for peace.

Here’s a campaign poster that has been on the wall since I was 13 years old. See the big burning pile of American wealth behind Mr. Nixon? We’ve been stoking that fire ever since, sadly.

Mr. Obama has promised to spend more, not less, on war. What a tragic waste.

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Coffee mugs are some of the most common drug paraphernalia around. Here we have a friendly, feline-oriented mug that dates from 1980. Today, 28 years later, you can see that the mug is doing its usual splendid job: exploiting the forces of gravity to keep hot coffee contained within its walls. You can also see that the mug is sitting on a granite counter tonight. This mug spent many years on more humble surfaces.

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This is the finest pocket radio ever made.

It is the Grundig 100 PE. It gets AM, FM stereo, and six shortwave bands. Here is a little gadget that achieves fantastic performance within a small package powered by two rechargeable AA batteries. Sure, it could use a fine-tuning control, but for what it is this radio is just about all you could hope for.

The fidelity on all bands is good, and with headphones it rivals far more expensive competitors. This radio has been on some long trips with me over the years.

Today I’m using it to follow the fires that are consuming thousands of acres throughout southern California. Right now it is tuned to KNX 1070, Los Angeles.

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My dad was born 80 years ago today. Here is the proof. Sadly, he did not live to see his 75th birthday.

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