Tonight we were down by the river having a swim when a hispanic fellow with bad burn scars on his hands came up to me out of the blue, shook my hand, and said in broken English “You look like that wrestler, Stone Cold Steve Austin.” He went on to point out my shaved head and goatee, and rambled on about WWF for a minute or two. I assured him I wasn’t Steve Austin, and that the only wrestling I did was with the kids, who I indicated to him. He seemed unconvinced, but eventually lost interest in the conversation and wandered off again. A very odd experience indeed.

I haven’t read any Ian Fleming since I was a
teenager, and back then I gave more time to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
(which I still love, incidentally) than to the Bond stories. But when I saw
this in the books on tape section, and thought about how much I enjoy the Bond
films in a kind of check-your-brain-at-the-door way, I decided to give it a try.
I was very surprised to find a quite different Bond in this story than one is
familiar with in the movies. The tale revolves around a single shooting
assignment, and has a grand total of only about 5 characters. Most of the time
is spent just waiting for the actual shooting to take place. Strangest of all
for those of us who cut their teeth on the film version of 007, he seems to
actively dislike his job, at least the shooting-other-people bits. So,
Bond fans, is this typical of the books? Have the movies led us astray? Or was
Fleming just getting crochety in his old age or indigested or something of the
sort?

One of the time honored rituals of my misspent youth was the Saturday
Evening Lineup: 10:30: The Twilight Zone 11:00: Star Trek 12:00:
Battlestar Galactica. When I joined Netflix, I discovered that they had
the complete Twilight Zone and Star Trek collections on DVD,
and have been having a self-indulgent relapse to childhood by renting them
and watching them with my kids. The most interesting thing about this
experience has been seeing how well each of the shows has held up over time.
The original Star Trek looks downright silly these days, though the
experience is a bit more fun than it otherwise would be now that I know that
James Doohan is missing a finger
and watch carefully to see how they hide it. (Thanks to Robert for tipping
me off.) But the Twilight Zone episodes have held up remarkably well, and my
wife and kids are quite enjoying them, in spite of the fact that they’re not
hooked by the nostalgia in the same way I am. I think the difference is due
in large measure to the fact that Star Trek relied heavily on special
effects and visuals, where in The Twilight Zone, most of the interesting
action occurs in the characters’ or the viewers’ minds. (In fact, the
weakest point in The Odyssey of Flight 33 was when you get to see the
stop-action dinosaur out the window.) Maybe they’ll get the Battlestar
Galactica episodes out soon, and I’ll be able to complete the tour.

I’ve been considering documenting my experiences with various vendors for a while so that others can avoid the places I’ve been stung by and encourage the businesses that provide good products and services. Today I implemented that functionality on the site, and would welcome feedback from anyone who has had experiences with the vendors I mention. I’ll post new items here, and will accumulate them all on the Vendor Experiences page as well.

Late in the evening on August 7 I placed an order with shopaudiovideo.com
for a camcorder. I promptly received an email acknowledgement of the order.
The next morning, I found another vendor which had the same camcorder for
$200 less, so I immediately sent shopaudiovideo.com an email request to cancel
the order. They still haven’t replied to my request to cancel the order 5
days later, and they took the liberty of charging my credit card the full
amount for the order on August 8 as well. They have made no effort to
communicate in any way since the initial confirmation of the order. I will
be sending another email today to request a refund. So far, my experience
with them has been uniformly bad, and I would steer others away from ever using this vendor. Update: The camcorder arrived on August 15 in spite of the order cancellation, but Shopaudiovideo.com has still not responded to any of my emails. Update The Second: Shopaudiovideo.com finally contacted me on August 22, 2 weeks after I sent my first email, which they were unable to locate. They say they’ve arranged for UPS to come by and pick up the package.

Tess Gerritsen’s Gravity is a sort of plague drama, wherein people die by the Space Shuttle-load. The cover says “Better than Chrichton!” which may well be true, but doesn’t seem like quite the compliment they intended it as after his recent works. The story is fairly solid, and though it only really paints a few of the characters as fully three dimensional, there’s enough of interest going on to keep you engaged. A fun read for the idle afternoon you’re wondering how to fill, but probably not worth plugging up your reading queue with if it’s already crowded.

Yesterday we signed the papers to sell our Denton house to the new business
editor of the Denton Record Chronicle.
Today, we signed papers to buy the San Marcos house in which we’ve been
living since late March. In a couple of days, all of the transferring of
funds, mailing of legal-sized small print forms, and badgering of notaries
public should be complete. Our biggest plug goes to our Denton Realtor, Darlene Mullenweg, who was a tremendous
help in the process of getting our old house sold. What a relief; what an
answer to prayer.

Tonight the kids and I watched Stop
Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert movie. David Byrne has
a wacky, disturbing, highly energetic charisma that makes him an offbeat,
off-balance pleasure to watch. The rest of the band seems almost startlingly
normal to look at, but is effusively energetic as well, which combined with
the other on-stage goings-on makes the whole show entrancing. One of the
best ways to ensure that the audience of a live performance is having fun is
for the performers themselves to be having fun, and boy do Byrne and company
have fun here.

Return to Mars frustrated me on so many levels that I nearly yanked it from the tape player and hurled it from the window in an attempt to spare other library visitors the agony of listening to it. That would have been a shame, because there is finally a bit of interesting payoff at the end of the work, but it was a challenge to get that far. First, the stuff that was Ben Bova’s fault: the ethnically diverse crew has been a staple of science fiction since Star Trek, but it’s not enough to be ethnically diverse; the characters need personality other than “Russian” or “Navajo”. (Look to Hillerman for how to do this right.) The team had constant issues with authority that got very tiresome. And the story really lacked a central issue to pull it along, which made it difficult to stick with. Now, the things that were the fault of the audiobook producers: Harlan Ellison is a great author, but a lousy reader. His thick ethnic accents compounded Bova’s sins of cardboard characters. His vocal levels varied so wildly that it was impossible to set a level on the tape player that wasn’t either annoyingly soft or gratingly loud at times. A bit of compression would have gone a long way toward making this production easier to listen to. All in all, probably better to watch reruns of The Simpsons than to spend the time on this one (unless you’re driving).

Well, we all made it through the memorial service, and Dad and his brothers are off to Oklahoma City for the service and burial there. Among the best times for me was a couple of hours we spent on Sunday night with the minister, reminiscing and telling stories. I was surprised to learn of my grandfather’s involvement in some early civil rights stands. He angered his whole block when living in Tennessee by paying the black man who did yard work for him twice the going rate. He also landed in jail after playing in a baseball game against a team of black youths when mixed-race games were still illegal. It was fascinating to hear of some of these sides of his personality I’d never been aware of before. Also a pleasure was the time with my Uncle Bill and Aunt Cathy, who were down from Vermont and hadn’t ever had a chance to meet the rest of my family. (Kathy and I were married 5 years ago, and the last time I got to visit with the Vermont contingent was 1992.)