Peter S. Beagle - Giants Still Walk Among Us

Back when I was much younger, and more naive, and wanting more than anything else in the world to be a writer, when I thought about my heroes - writers like MacDonald, Bester, Heinlein, Ellison, Peter Beagle - I figured they all lived comfortably, had tons of dough, and had no problems past figuring out the plot of the next book.

Then I got older. As time passed, I met many of my heroes, and little pieces of the fantasy would chip off. Interviewing Steve King - probably the most successful writer I've met - around the time of the publication of 'Salem's Lot, I said something to the effect that it must be nice to get anything you write published.

"You think that, huh?" King answered and opened a file cabinet's worth of manuscripts. All rejected, most multiple times. In the interests of full disclosure, many of those manuscripts eventually got published under the Bachman pen name. But I bet there's a few still in that cabinet.

I discovered that Bester, Heinlein, and MacDonald all had serious health problems; and found that wasn't all that unusual in the writing community. Maybe it's the sedentary lifestyle. Maybe like Heinlein, Hammett, and several others, they turned to writing to earn a living because of their health problems.

I found out from Harlan Ellison that Fritz Leiber - one of the best fantasy and sf writers of his time - lived in a one-room apartment - and typed most of his stories using a 2x4 plank as his writing desk, and not because he wanted to. Ted Sturgeon - another giant of the sf field - had more personal and financial problems than you could count.

Some of the giants had feet of clay. I was once tongue-lashed for what felt like an eternity by a writer who had the reputation as a super-nice guy, but who felt that I had picked the wrong place - a bookstore - and time - he was book browsing - to ask for an autograph. Another one turned out to be a drunk who liked playing grabass with female fans. One who had a frightening reputation was Harlan, but he turned out to be a sweet guy who even took me into his home and family for awhile.

They were just people. Assholes and sweethearts, sometimes both in the same package. Same problems, same foibles as you and me. Maybe sometimes a bit exaggerated. They were - are - writers after all. A lot of them - like me - aren't good business people, and for all their literary success aren't doing well financially.

Peter S. Beagle is author of such wonderful works as The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place, and the road book, I See By Your Outfit. If you're a Trekkie, you may know Beagle as the scriptwriter of the STNG episode, Sarek. In 1978, Beagle wrote the screenplay for the animated version of The Lord of the Rings. Beagle was paid a "consulting fee" of only $5,000 and offered a lot of promises for future work by the movie's producer.

The movie wasn't very good, as you probably know if you saw it, but that's neither her nor there. The producer of the original ended up collecting over $200 million in licensing fees from the later Peter Jackson Rings trilogy, of which not a penny has Beagle ever seen. There's no legal reason why Beagle should see any of that money... but maybe he still should. Here's some of the background:

Q. Just how badly was Peter shafted on this screenwriting deal anyway? What was the going rate back in 1977?

Peter was paid $5,000 as a consulting fee to make suggestions on how to fix the existing draft by Chris Conkling. Peter's advice: this can't be fixed, it needs to be replaced. Saul Zaentz then talked Peter into doing more work, by making promises that were never kept, and Peter wound up writing eight or nine drafts of a brand new screenplay.

Today's equivalent of that 1977 $5,000 would be about $17,000. Certainly not to be ignored, but still nothing compared to what the WGA currently mandates as a minimum for writing eight or nine drafts of a feature animation script. That number? $246,496!

The 1977 equivalent of today's minimum fee would have been $72,500. So Peter was underpaid by at least $67,500. And it should be noted that this figure represents the WGA minimum, the amount you are supposed to get even if you've never sold anything before. Screenwriters who aren't newbies don't get WGA minimum, they get more — and Peter was already an accomplished screenwriter with several credits when he adapted THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

You can read the full FAQ of the story at the link above, and it includes suggestions for helping Beagle out should you feel so inclined. Me, I'm ordering something from Conlan Press, since Beagle gets more money - more quickly - from that venue.

No Room for Dylan

Title kinda sounds like it'd make a good sit-com, huh?

via the Beeb:

Celebrated Dylan photo recreated

A celebrated photograph of Bob Dylan surrounded by scruffy "waifs" in a Liverpool doorway has been recreated 40 years on.



The original picture was taken by photographer Barry Feinstein while the new image is created by Dylan fan Chris Hockenhull, from Waterloo, Merseyside.

He tracked down eight of the 10 people who appeared in the first image and took them back to the Dock Road area.

But he did not ask Dylan to come back as there was "no room for him".

Mr Hockenhull, 50, who teaches a Bob Dylan course, explained why he had chosen to re-create the scene.

"It was such a clash of 1960s culture. The kids looked like Victorian street urchins and Dylan looked like a man from Mars with his loud shirt and wild hair. That's what fascinated me," he told BBC Inside Out.

"It began when I first saw a Bob Dylan picture without any location credits in the mid-1970s. Something just convinced me it was from Liverpool.

"When Barry Feinstein's book, Early Dylan, came out in early 1999, the picture with the children in the doorway caught my attention.

"I started looking around various sites in Liverpool and finally stumbled across the place where it was taken. I couldn't believe the building still existed.

"The kids lived around there in the 1960s, in what could be termed now as real squalor. The Swinging Sixties hadn't hit that part of Liverpool."

He said the houses were demolished about two years after the photograph was taken and the children were dispersed around the city. He added: "Very few of the children had any recollection of the event in 1966. They were oblivious to the fact that the picture had gone all around the world and been used on CD covers and in magazines.

The former children were tracked down using the electoral roll, through visits to the pubs where they drank and by placing adverts in local newspapers.

The resulting shot was taken in November 2006, but without the legendary Dylan.

One of the women in the photograph, Bernadette Gill, 47, now a doctor's receptionist from Knotty Ash in Liverpool, said of the original image: "We really did have a lovely childhood but it looks as though we haven't changed our clothes for years, let alone months.

"We used to go and play in the warehouse as soon as we were let out, that's the only place we had to play.

"I don't remember a thing about the original photograph. Only a couple of us do. I don't remember being given money, I probably went straight to the sweet shop and spent it.

"It's lovely to look at it, and realise what you've been part of. I wasn't a Bob Dylan fan. I still can't say I like all his music. I like some of it though."

Mr Feinstein, Dylan's sole photographer during his 1966 and 1974 world tours, remembered of the youngsters: "They were all like waifs. They weren't your Beverley Hills kids."
The search for the children in the photograph and their reunion will be featured on Inside Out on Friday on BBC One at 1930 GMT. Digital viewers can watch the documentary on channel 101 or 948.

The Name Game

Where else but in the Dreamtime podcast could you get Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon, R. Crumb, ZZ Top, Louis Bellson, the Ramones, Snoop Dog, Wendy Carlos, and Allan Sherman - all in 10 minutes?

Plus, a special guest appearance by Jack Klugman!

I Am in Serious Technolust

That's the iPhone to your left, and Mr. Jobs knows how to press my buttons (no pun intended).

Not available until June, pricey (the 8GB model will be $499) and one should never buy a product until a couple of revs have shaken the most egregious bugs out...

... but I still want one.

Now.

Badly.

The Education of a Poker Player

My brother, Lee, sent this book as a birthday present, having found a 4th edition of the original printing in a used book store in Camden, Maine, and thinking I'd be amused by it, even if, as my non-poker-playing brother said, "the tactics are probably out of date."

Interestingly, while some of the games aren't played often anymore (Variations of Five- and Seven-Card Draw, such as Five-Card Draw, with Deuces Wild and the Joker, and Spit in the Ocean), the card strategy that Yardley outlines applies just as well to Texas Hold `Em today as it did for those card games when the book was first published in 1957. That strategy can pretty much be summed in these observations:

1. Many players play too many hands.

2. Most players who play too many hands are also
optimists.

3. Most players only have one game.

The first observation is self-evident to anyone who plays poker regularly. You realize after a time - if you're improving your game, at least - that you're now throwing away many hands - Aces with bad kickers whether soooooooooooted or not, small pairs when there is a raise and callers (or even not) ahead of you - that you used to play whether it made sense to play them or not. You realize you've stopped calling as much, and most of betting is either fold, raise, or re-raise.

I'm raising hell at the $5, $10, and $20 SnGs on UltimateBet of late by applying both observations. At such small buy-ins, the usual players on the table are newbies or don't-care-bies. They're there for the action - such as it is - or they're learning the game, or they may even dimly realize that their style of play confines them to the smaller beer tables because they're regularly and expensively trounced at higher buy-ins. In any case, with any given table of 10 at $5-$20 buy-ins, you can safely assume that anywhere from 3 to 5 players are going to be betting cards that their Mamma would be unhappy to see them play. And once in, most of those will keep betting in the hope of pulling out from their nose-dive before crashing.

The game usually goes so that by the 15-30 limits at least two people are gone, having gone all-in, sometimes with decent cards, oft-times with nothing but a wish and a prayer. And there's one to two players with oversized stacks, having done the same and won, sometimes with the best starting cards, sometimes through some unbelievable suck-out.

My modus operandi in the games is usually to lay low at the beginning and only bet when I can get in cheaply. I won't play past the Flop unless I think I've got the hand locked. Even then, I'll fold against all-ins that I can't cover and if there's some sort of draw on the board that I couldn't beat.

Even with all the limits I put on myself, I tend to win the hands that I play. And I tend to win more chips than I really should have, because of Observation #2 above.

The aggressive players cull themselves and we get down to 4-5 players and near the Bubble. If I've won - or maintained - enough to still have a viable stack and the limits are still relatively low (which happens more often than not thanks, as I said, to the aggressive action), I usually have a very good chance to make it into the money thanks to Observation #3.

Few people I've seen in those lower buy-ins can change gears. Even the ones that can tend to fall back into their normal betting pattern over time... because it is their normal betting pattern. So, aggressive players still tend to be aggressive, even when it's in their best interests not to be. People who have tried to run bluffs will try to bluff again, even after being caught out at them. People who like to bet draws won't fold them. Tight players stay tight, even when their stacks are being flensed to the bone by the Blinds.

I'm not very good at changing gears myself - especially as it concerns that last sentence above - unless I stay focused and think about what I'm doing. Lately, I've been able to do that. So, I tend to bet more hands in this latter part of the game, especially against the smaller stacks, play the aggressive players more aggressively, call the bluffers.

And it seems to work more often than not. Will it always work? Variance catches you out. You get a lousy run of cards, the Blinds eat you up, you have to start gambling. Or, you get crippled or knocked out altogether because of some buffoon's bonehead play. It is gambling, after all.

"Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't," as Old Lodge Skins once said.

The author of "The Education of a Poker Player," Herbert O. Yardley, who died a year after the book's publication, began his career as a code clerk with the U.S. State Department. During World War I, Yardley served in the cryptologic section of Military Intelligence with the American Expeditionary Forces. After the war, Yardley lead the first peacetime cryptanalytic organization in the United States, MI-8.

Funded by the Army and the State Department, MI-8 was disguised as a New York City company that made commercial codes for businesses. Their actual mission was to break the diplomatic codes of different nations, an endeavor in which the were fairly successful, especially as it came to the Japanese pre-WWII.

In 1929, the State Department closed down MI-8, according to legend with Secretary of State Henry Stimson famous disclaimer: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”

Unemployed, and accustomed to the finer things in life, as you can tell from "TEoaPP", Yardley wrote "The American Black Chamber," which revealed the work of MI-8. The book became an international best seller. Although the Army tried, the espionage laws at the time contained a loophole that prevented the government from prosecuting Yardley. Yardley continued to act as a cryptanalytic consultant for several other countries, but never worked for the U.S. again.

More about Yardley - where I found the above information - can be found at the NSA site.

American Life in Poetry: Column 093

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Newborns begin life as natural poets, loving the sound of their own gurgles and coos. And, with the encouragement of parents and teachers, children can continue to write and enjoy poetry into their high school years and beyond. A group of elementary students in Detroit, Michigan, wrote poetry on the subject of what seashells might say if they could speak to us. I was especially charmed by Tatiana Ziglar's short poem, which alludes to the way in which poets learn to be attentive to the world. The inhabitants of the Poetry Palace pay attention, and by that earn the stories they receive.


Common Janthina

My shell said she likes the king and queen
of the Poetry Palace because they listen to her.
She tells them all the secrets of the ocean.

Reprinted by permission from "Shimmering Stars," Vol. IV, Spring, 2006, published by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Copyright (c) 2006 by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

Music industry softens on podcasts

via ars technica:

Sony BMG has decided to dip its toes into the world of podcasted music with its recent agreement with marketing agency Rock River Communications (warning: annoying Flash site) Inc., making it the first (and only, for the time being) major music label in the US to license music for podcasting.

While you may not have heard of Rock River Communications, you will most likely recognize what they do. The agency creates promotional mix CDs for companies like Volkswagen, The Gap, Verizon, Chrysler, and more to hand out at retail stores and dealerships. Rock River, in an attempt to move past CD-only distribution, is now creating promotional podcasts for Chrysler and Ford Motors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford and Chrysler are both paying Sony BMG a flat fee to license music for podcast distribution for one year, no matter how many copies are downloaded. On the customer's side, the podcast will be free and can be kept forever. Rock River says that they are in talks to license music from more music labels in the future for podcasting.

It's no secret that the music industry has always been very much against any form of digital distribution that is not DRMed. Unprotected files of songs or podcasts with songs in them could be chopped out of the podcast and widely distributed via those nasty P2P networks, with no royalties paid back to the labels as they usually are in radio. The Internet, after all, is often viewed by the music industry as the Wild West in that regard.

However, labels are beginning to slowly test the waters with unprotected files—in Weird Al's case, offering MP3s for free via his web site helped propel him into the Billboard Top 10 for the first time in his career. Sony BMG's actions seem to indicate that the company is willing to do some cautious risk-taking in hopes that the podcasts will spur customer interest in buying more music, and other labels are sure to keep an eye on Sony's success.

I recently contacted Sony BMG to see if Dreamtime could podcast Dylan's Christmas/New Year's Theme Time Special, as the XM press release had mentioned that the episode was also being made available for "non-commercial" radio broadcast. I couldn't think of anything much more non-commercial than Dreamtime, so even though I guessed the answer would be "No!" I zipped off an email to the Sony BMG rep. And received a response, - in the negative as I had anticpated - but both polite and prompt and noting that podcasting raised too many legal issues that Sony BMG wasn't prepared to address at the moment. I replied with a "if things change in the future, please think of Dreamtime," and again received a speedy "will do" response.

But, the above article is a hopeful sign that someone at Sony BMG is at least exploring the idea of podcasting music, and maybe next year the answer will be "Yes!" I was also amused that the Theme Time Xmas show had Our Host reading another pseudo-email where the supposed writer mentioned in an aside that she was copying the Theme Time shows to CD and sending them to a friend in Finland or someplace where the broadcast wasn't available. It's easy of course to fall into the trap where every Dylanesque comment (or in this case, non-comment) is interpreted like a sheep's entrails. But I think one could safely assume that in this case Dylan and/or XM is acknowledging the reality that Theme Time lives on long after being broadcast.

I'm not such a virgin that I don't realize the whole licensing/permissions scenario takes on a whole new intricacy moving from broadcast to podcast, but I bet it can be worked out if enough leverage is applied. Brian Ibbott over at Coverville pays licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI (although if you read the full, exhaustive thread you'll see differing opinions as to whether even this fully covers the licensing issue). For Dreamtime, what I try is keep my use of music to fair use commentary/criticism excerpts, or talk over the music, or clip it, or something. Anyone in desperate enough straits to be chopping music out of Dreamtime, let me know, and I'll be happy to consider gifting you the 99 cents to get the music legally.

The Top 10 Lamest Superheroes of All Time

The title kind of says it all. I can't argue with the choices (well, maybe with #3 The Legion of Superpets, a personal favorite). I'll have to give some thought on the Top Ten Lamest Supervillans, although I can tell you instantly who would be #1:

#1 - Ten-Eyed Man: Philip Reardon served as a veteran in the U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam until he was honorably discharged after a grenade fragment hit him between the eyes. He returned to civilian life as a warehouse guard and was knocked out by thieves who plant a bomb to blow up the warehouse. When Batman arrived at the scene, Reardon recovered and his vision was blurred, mistaking Batman as one of the thieves and battled him. When he recognized Batman, the warehouse exploded and Reardon's retinas were burned, which impacted his war injury and blinded him permanently in both eyes.

A brilliant doctor named Dr. Engstrom reconnected his optic nerves to his fingertips, enabling him to see through them [the term brilliant in this case seems a bit dubious - fhb] He blames Batman for what happened and takes his revenge on him under the identity of the Ten-Eyed Man, and because of his indisputedly unique abilities was employed by persons unknown as the only villain worthy to attack Man-Bat.

He fought Batman on two occasions and came up short both times, and could only be kept in a jail cell by keeping his hands locked in a special box that kept him blind all day and night, because with his eyes on his fingers, "escape would be child's play for him," although precisely how this would be the case was not elaborated upon.

Info from Wikipedia Bracketed comments my own.

Maudie at PokerWorks

A new/old addition to the blogroll at your right, my buddy Maudie now has a column over at PokerWorks, joining Iggy as well as a few other bloggers whose names will be familar to those who follow the poker blogging community. Congrats, Maudie!

Good news is we should get more Maudie on a more regular basis. Bad news is that PW, in my experience so far with it at least, ain't the most Firefox-friendly site I've ever visited, possibly because of all the spinnin'/scrollin' ads, possibly because FF chokes on some of the CSS. But it seems to come with the turf. The look-and-feel surrounding Wil Wheaton's column over at CardSquad is just as bad from my perspective.

Linda Geenan, who seems to be the senior editor/main blogger of PW, has come up with the good idea of aggregating some of the best blogging commentary in one place. It should work, and should give some good writers both added recognition, and maybe even a couple of bucks.

Electric Kool-Aid alone won't bring back Kesey's bus

via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

By JEFF BARNARD

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Dreams of getting author Ken Kesey's original psychedelic bus, Furthur, back on the road again have hit a pothole.

The Kesey family is looking for a new sponsor to finance restoration work and a television documentary after breaking things off with Hollywood restaurant owner David Houston, who had hoped to raise $100,000 to restore the bus made famous in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" as a rolling LSD trip.

Stephanie Kesey, who is married to the late author's son Zane and is overseeing the project, said the bus has been cleaned up a bit, and singer Willie Nelson has offered to put in a biodiesel engine, but they don't want to do any major work until they have a restoration expert and a documentary deal lined up.

Nelson's publicist did not immediately return phone calls for comment.

"I want to make sure we do this right and get involved with the right people," Stephanie Kesey said. "This involves the memory of my father-in-law and I take that very seriously. We just want to work with people with the same ideas about the bus as we do. We want to be sure it's on display for the most people possible.

"We are not looking to commercialize this, and a lot of people are," she added. "A lot of people have their own agenda of what they want to do with the bus. We have to make sure we both have the same vision for the bus, and are not out to make money or make commercials.

"We want to make sure it stays pure."

Houston owns The Beanery, an old roadhouse in Hollywood, Calif. He did not want to discuss details of the breakup.

"I thought everything was in sync," he said. "We wanted to restore the bus and tell the story. I think some other things were going on, I guess.

"They are just going with somebody else at this point. It's unfortunate, because we were really excited about it."

This is the vehicle of which Kesey was famously quoted as saying, "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus," which became a way of saying someone was part of the psychedelic explorations of the 1960s or not.

Fresh from the stunning success of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey bought the 1939 International school bus in 1964 from a San Francisco Bay Area family that had fitted it as a motor home.

With a jug of LSD-laced juice in the fridge, Kesey pals known as The Merry Pranksters inside, and Neal Cassady, the driver in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," at the wheel, the bus crossed the country from California to New York.

More than 15 years ago, Kesey put the bus into retirement in a swampy patch of woods on his farm in Pleasant Hill, and bought a newer one, which in typical Prankster style he tried to pass off as the original.

After being approached by Houston with the restoration plan, Zane Kesey and some of the Pranksters towed it out of the swamp last year.

"This is an icon of America," said Ken Babbs, a writer, Prankster and close friend of Ken Kesey. "It would be nice to see it back out on the road again to bring the reality of the '60s into the 21st century."

Satellite radio is growing faster than any consumer product except for the iPod

via the NY Times

Last year’s debut of Howard Stern’s radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio put the technology on the map, raising the public’s awareness of satellite radio and helping to boost significantly subscriber totals for Sirius and its larger rival, XM Satellite Radio.

Today, thanks in part to the outsize radio personality, the Stern Effect has increased Sirius’s base to about six million subscribers, up 80 percent from one year ago. XM has increased its numbers by more than 30 percent, ending 2006 with 7.7 to 7.9 million customers.

“There is a tendency to view satellite radio as if the glass is half empty, and that it is a failure or disappointment,” said Craig Moffett, senior cable analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein.

“In fact, nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “Satellite radio is growing faster than any consumer product except for the iPod.”

But Sirius and XM shares have taken a battering on Wall Street, with prices for both off about 50 percent from their year-ago levels. On Friday, Sirius closed at $3.54, while XM ended the year at $14.45.

And now, the industry may be getting ready to try an even more dramatic third act — a possible attempt to merge the two services.

The benefits of a merger have been promoted by the chief executive of Sirius, Mel Karmazin, for a number of months, and Sirius officials continue to say that a merger would be a good thing. XM has not commented on the possibility, and neither company has said whether they have actually discussed the issue.

“When you have two companies in the same industry, we have a similar cost structure. Clearly, a merger makes sense from an investor’s point of view to reduce costs, and to have a better return,” said David Frear, the chief financial officer for Sirius.

Both companies have continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars because of marketing and other subscriber acquisition expenses. During the year, XM sharply lowered its expectations for 2006 subscriber levels, from January’s predicted end-of-year total of 9 million to a maximum of 7.9 million. (Sirius reduced its subscription projection by about 100,000.)

Nate Davis, XM’s president, said his company believed that the slower-than-expected growth rate was of its own making and not a result of any market indifference. “We did not stimulate the market with new products,” he said.

XM’s most talked-about receivers, the Pioneer Inno and Samsung Helix, were first announced one year ago. Several new receiver models will be introduced later in 2007. In addition, production of some receivers was temporarily halted to stop a condition that was allowing satellite signals to be picked up by neighboring vehicles.

The hiccups typical of fledgling industries appear to be over. Both companies have their programming lineups largely in place and a wide range of receivers available in retail stores.

In addition to Howard Stern, Sirius features personalities like Deepak Chopra, Judith Regan, Richard Simmons and Martha Stewart. Sports programming includes N.B.A., N.F.L., and N.H.L. games; Nascar programming begins this year.

XM has shows with hosts including Bob Dylan, Ellen Degeneres, “Good Morning America” personalities, and Oprah Winfrey. XM broadcasts every Major League Baseball game as well as P.G.A. golf.

Yet the vast majority of programming remains duplicative. Each company offers a wide variety of rock, pop, folk, and other musical genres, as well as the same news channels, which include the BBC, CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. Sirius and XM each claim that their music channels are more compelling than the competition’s, but most casual listeners would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

“The services mirror each other tremendously,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group, a research firm. “More people know that one service has Howard Stern than know which one has him.”

Except for a relatively small handful of viewers looking for particular programs, consumers searching for a satellite service in a retail store often make their decision not on the merits of one over the other, but which one is more convenient to buy.

“For the subscriber, it all comes down to which one of the two is closer to the cash register. Customers cannot tell the difference between the two services,” Mr. Moffett said.

Customer choice will play an even smaller role in the coming years as both companies come to rely more on selling satellite radio as a factory-installed option on new cars, and less on receivers sold at retail stores.

Both companies have exclusive agreements with the automobile companies. Customers typically get free service for a number of months, and then must pay $12.95 a month to continue listening.

XM has exclusive arrangements with General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and Porsche. Sirius has similar alliances with BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Kia and VW-Audi.

Today, about 63 percent of XM’s subscribers are buyers of new cars, and Sirius’s new subscribers are derived equally from new car and after-market sales. As more cars are equipped with satellite radios, the new car market could grow to as high as 70 percent of sales in the next few years, Mr. Moffett said.

“We see greater and greater demand in the car market,” said Mr. Davis of XM. “And we think the used car market will be an opportunity to sell to new subscribers.” Used car subscribers incur no additional hardware costs if the receiver is already in place.

And if the companies were to merge and effectively double their subscriber base, the new company could reduce programming costs through increased negotiating clout, removal of duplicative channels and elimination of redundant employees.

Whether Sirius and XM attempt to merge, a number of variables that will determine the size of the industry’s success remain unknown.

They include the number of new cars that will be equipped with satellite radio receivers; the percentage of new car owners who will subscribe after the free trial period ends; and whether purchasers of used cars equipped with satellite radio will be more or less likely to subscribe than new car owners.

The business may also be vulnerable to subscription overload, Mr. Doherty said, if consumers find that monthly recurring expenses from cellphone bills, cable TV, and other services are too high.

Yet even if that is true, there is little doubt that the concept of satellite radio is no longer alien to consumers. According to Sirius, 83 percent of consumers aged 18 to 55 are now aware of the technology.

Mr. Frear became personally cognizant of that when he tried to rent a car with a Sirius radio recently but found they were all taken.

“Every year, satellite radio just sinks deeper and deeper into the public consciousness,” he said.

Bert Lahr Cowardly Lion costume from The Wizard of Oz on eBay

Closed at $700,000 on December 14th to a Johnny Dann :-) Well, maybe not that last. However, Johhny D. was at that auction in 1970 mentioned below.

In the interests of posterity- since I don't know how long it will stay up - here's the listing info:

130. The Original "Cowardly Lion" costume worn by Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz. (MGM, 1939) After an absence of nearly 60 years, the "Cowardly Lion" triumphantly returns to center stage! Yes, this is the ACTUAL costume worn by Lahr in the revolutionary 1939 fantasy classic, "The Wizard of Oz". This film was notable not only for its amazing story, which virtually transported the audience from their chairs to the wonderful Land of Oz - but did so by using the most exciting and imaginative sets AND breathtaking costumes that moviegoers had ever seen! The art of filmmaking was forever changed.

The history of the "Cowardly Lion" costume since the completion of filming is interesting, if not miraculous. Presumed lost after the last frame was shot, it was literally discovered at the 11th hour before the 1970 MGM/David Weisz Auction, the most famous and legendary sale in the history of Hollywood memorabilia. The costume had been bagged and tucked away in Mrs. Culvers barn in Culver City, California, and was stumbled upon by some Wiesz staff members whod been looking through the barn for a few last items. The costume had literally been forgotten for the previous 39 years!

Understanding the magnitude of this discovery, Weisz had an addendum to the auction catalog printed that very afternoon, which was passed out to the bidders who turned out on auction day. Thus, there were no advance announcements or publicity for the costume.

A California chiropractor who happened to be at the auction bid on and won this magnificent costume for the bargain price of $2400. Without the cash on hand to pay for it in full, he put down a $1000 cash deposit to hold his purchase, and returned approximately one week later to pay the balance and take possession of his prize. A perfect case of being in the right place at the right time!

Since 1970, the costume has changed hands only once - purchased by the current owner, world-renowned artist Bill Mack, in 1985. However, the costume sat quietly until 1996, when Mack set about having it preserved and displayed in all its original glory. As the costume is constructed of real lion pelts, some minor deterioration had occurred over its 50-year life span. Mack took the costume to a well-known Midwest taxidermist who painstakingly restored the costume, added a lining, and mounted the costume on a flexible steel armature. Mack then skillfully recreated the headpiece with a lifelike sculpture of Lahr in character in all its glory

Thus, the costume has arisen from the clutches of time, so to speak, to re-emerge as a fantastic and gorgeous relic from the past - a touchstone to one of the greatest films in the history of the art.

This beautiful costume is composed of real lion pelts, which have been sewn together to form the complete outfit. The costume is positioned in the memorable "Put em up, put em up" pose from the film, and is mounted on a wood pedestal with a Yellow Brick Road diorama and poppyfield border. Designed to accommodate interchangeable tails, the costume comes with the one supported by wire apparatus. Complete documentation accompanies this piece, including the David Weisz Co./MGM auction catalog and addenda (showing the costume as lot #950A); the original auction tag with cash receipt for the first $1000 payment (made the day of the auction); 1970 bidders paddle; and detailed ledger pages of the items in which the buyer was interested, at the head of which is noted the Cowardly Lions costume.

One of the most coveted pieces of Hollywood history extant, it stands alone as the sole "Wizard of Oz" costume that remains available to collectors in the public domain: the "Tin Man" was largely destroyed (only pieces remain), and the "Scarecrow" is currently housed in the Smithsonian. Considered the "Holy Grail" of all Hollywood memorabilia, this costume is worthy of inclusion in the very finest collections of film artifacts!

Judy Garlands blue and white gingham pinafore, of which at least ten were made for the film, and at least six survive in private hands, sold at auction in England in 2005 for $285,000.00, and another sold at auction in England in 1999 for $324,000.00. $400,000 - $600,000

1953 and Changes in the Wind

Dreamtime closes out 2006 with a turn around the radio dial and a look back at a year when music was about to change forever... 1953.

American Life in Poetry: Column 092

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Home is where the heart. . . Well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.


Home Fire

Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad,
I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss
up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say
"I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now
reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery
instead. I've learned where the lines are drawn
and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house
with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs
and a bed where the moon comes in. I've thrown
myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find
that home is best after all. Home where I sit
in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own
rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood
and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed
in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page
of night, without waving or giving myself away,
and return with my words burning like fire in the grate.


Reprinted from "Home Fires: Poems," Sow's Ear Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

American Life in Poetry: Column 091

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.


Driving Through

This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.

Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.


Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

An addendum

to my "pretty good of" list for 2006. The trouble with blogging is that it's hard to surprise relatives with any news. But now that they're safely in the air on their way here. Here's one more "pretty good of"


Electronic toys: 300-hr TiVo® Series3™ HD Digital Media Recorder. Bought with poker winnings. I'm proud to say. :-)

Happy Holidays!

and see you in 2007.

Fred, Peggy, Bear, and Curl!

Grrrrrrrrrrr

via BuddyTV:

The not-so-unexpected cancellation of LOST's would be stop-gap, Day Break, left what few fans the show had in the middle of an enigma. Just what forces were behind Detective Hopper's stuck-in-time dilemma? Originally hailed as a short-term mystery with a conclusive resolution, will Day Break fans ever know the fate of their time-bound hero?

The good news for the small number of watchers is that ABC will continue the series to its conclusion online. Since Day Break was bought and paid for, and wrapped production earlier this month, ABC will use the series to bolster its selection of online programming.

Currently, the plan is to release new episodes to the web on their usual day and time, Wednesday's at 9:00pm EST. Once editing is complete, however, the entire series may be made available on ITunes, which would allow really dedicated fans to wrap the series up even quicker.

But I don't want Day Break on the Web or iTunes. I want it on my TV, damnit!

Well, everything eventually comes out on DVD, as Mark Evanier says, and given the fact it's a closed-end series, the chances are probably pretty good it will. But what a wicked pissah, huh?

All we have left is the cape.

via email from my buddy, Jill...

[Jack (Jill's 3-year-old) just said he had to go to the bathroom] Well, I untied his trusty Superman costume (the one he has worn since Halloween) and he ran down the hall. I went looking for him, thinking he had gone down to the bathroom near the playroom. Then I hear, "Well, I washed it." I went to my bathroom, where I found naked Jack, a blowout diaper on the floor, and

NO SUPERMAN COSTUME.

"Where did you wash it, Jack?"
He smiles, points to the toilet, and says, "Right there."

"Did you FLUSH it?"

He smiles, points again, and says, "Right there.:"

Sigh. We may never know.There's no sign of a stopped up toilet...no water on the floor, no problems when I test flush it now. But I have looked the house over and no Superman. I honestly think I might cry. :-)

All we have left is the cape.

You say it's your birthday?

Well, it's my birthday, too, yeah!

2006 Roundup

I don't really believe in "best of," maybe more like "pretty good of" lists. Here's stuff I read/heard/saw/did/liked during 2006... and maybe you will too.

Book (Fiction): Pound for Pound - F.X. O'Toole.

I was a little leery of this novel, since it was edited from O'Toole's incomplete manuscript. And indeed, it's an uneven book, with characters disappearing and sketchy scenes begging to be fully fleshed out (and instead, told after the fact). But even so, it's a worthy successor to Rope Burns/Million Dollar Baby, and a fitting capstone to Jerry Boyd's much-too-short writing career. If you like boxing, boxing books, or the movie Million Dollar Baby, go find this book, which, like Rope Burns before the movie, already seems to have disappeared without garnering much fanfare.

Book (Nonfiction): The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast - Douglas Brinkley.

A lot of books came out in 2006 about Katrina. This is one of the best, in my opinion, with a clear time line of the storm and its aftermath,and the stories of both the heroes and villains... of which President Bush and his incompetent team of political appointees are the major ones.

Book (Graphic Novel) : Lost Girls - Alan Moore, Melinda Gebbie.

A beautifully-package three-volume set. Certainly won't be to everyone's taste - and very probably will deeply offend some. Alice of Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy of Wizard of Oz, and Wendy of Peter Pan reimagined by one of comicdom's master storytellers as Victorian erotica. Amazon, btw, has this for 40 percent of its list of $75, and I would assume you can pick it up elsewhere for the same, or even less. Worth the full price, it's a bargain at $47.25.

Book (Graphic Novel): The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation - Sid Jacobson, Ernie Colon

The most accessible version of the 9/11 report available. I was able to get through the original 800-page report, but it was tough slogging at points. This version is painstakingly faithful to to the original, does not over dramatize the events, and provides a valuable visual time line on when things happened. Highly recommended.

Radio: Theme Time Radio Hour (with your host, Bob Dylan). Available through XM Radio, AOL Radio, and various other venues.

I'm writing an article with the working title of, How Bob Dylan Helped Me Fall in Love with Radio (Again) and... he did. One hour of dreams, themes, and schemes, a playlist that encompasses everything from I Heard the Voice of the Pork Chop to Jailbait (Peggy's favorite TTRH song to date), plus commentary and def poetry readings from Mr. D.

Radio the way it was, or maybe the way it should have been.

Online Poker site: PokerStars

I throw this one in only because of the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act," which, in fact may or not have an impact on playing online poker. Two members of Congress, in response to my mail, stated flatly that the UIGEA did not make the playing of online poker illegal. Of course, both of them conveniently overlooked the fact that the bill will - or may - make money transfers in/out of poker sites near-impossible, but who knows? We'll have to wait and see what happens.

In any case, while some poker sites - PartyPoker the most notorious - decided to cut off their relations with U.S. players and run for the hills, PokerStars (and some others) stepped up to the plate and said, "we're here to stay and the status is quo." So far, that's been so.

I've been with PokerStars almost since I started playing online lo' two years ago now. It's a good site, good graphics, minimum connection problems, relatively good and polite players (given that I play at the very low money levels).

If you were looking for a site to try online poker and asked me, my first recommendation would be Stars.

Podcast (non-commercial): Coverville

It's been kind of a bad year for the podcasts I like to listen to, "Card Club" closed its doors, unfortunately ending with a very poor final show. Columbo migrated his "One Minute Mysteries" over to another poker podcast which I find unlistenable on the whole. PokerDiagram is still around, but has gotten very erratic both with releases and sound quality. "This Week in Tech" seems to be suffering from burnout, with wildly inconsistent shows week-to-week. I still like "Five Hundy by Midnight," but there's only so much Vegas news you can take unless you're planning a trip to Vegas.

One of the few podcasts that I was listening to regularly last year that I'm still listening to regularly this year is Coverville. As the name says, host Brian Ibbott plays cover versions of popular songs, sometimes a hodge-podge, sometimes with a theme based around a particular artist. Or even album. One of my favorite Covervilles was a track-by-track cover of Dark Side of the Moon.

I've bought several pieces of music from iTunes after hearing them first on Coverville, and in fact played an artist's music on Dreamtime after hearing him on Coverville. Higher praise I can't think of giving to a DJ and his show.

If you still don't get podcasting, see if Coverville doesn't change your mind.

Podcasts (Commercial): This American Life and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me

Well, "commercial" in the sense that they started life as NPR shows. NPR gets podcasts, happily. I used to listen to "This American Life" back in the days that Peggy and I were commuting to her parents every other weekend, and would try to catch WWDTM while I was out running my chores on Saturday. Now, I listen to them when I want. And that's what podcasting is all about folks.

I assume you know of both shows already. If not, WWDTM is a "weekly news quiz" show and one of the most consistently funny shows you'll hear. TAL is basically just like Car Talk. Except just one guy hosting. And no cars. No, I'm kidding. You can learn more about it here.

If the Car Talk boys and Prairie Home Companion weren't such greedy bustards, my NPR => podcast life would be complete.

Online news - PopURLs

I'm not doing a blog category as I'm suffering from blog-reading burnout. I still visit a few regularly, but with nothing near the consistency of even a few months ago. Partially that's because some blogs have changed - Scott McCloud is on a year-long family trip cum book tour, for example, and Mark Evanier has gotten more into posting YouTube videos than commentary - and in some cases I think I've just overdosed on the blogger's personality.

One agggregator site I like a lot and still tread every day is PopUrls - links, as they say to "the latest web buzz." One major plus of PopUrls is it spares me of even accidentally reading anything posted by Cory Doctorow - who is one of the few writers I've ever run across who can set my teeth on edge with almost every word he writes - while still having access to BoingBoing news.

CD - Modern Times

Kind of a mulligan, I know, but I don't buy all that much music. If you're not a fan of Dylan's, this probably isn't going to make you one. I wasn't even sure how much I liked it after a few listens. But, just like with 'Love and Theft,' I'll find myself humming something, and then realize it's Nettie Moore or Spirit on the Water.

Music that sticks.

CD - Modern Times Live - The Roots and Wounded Flowers

This is something you'll either know how to find without me telling you more... or you won't. A fan dream 3-CD compilation of music that can be traced as sources of Modern Times, interspersed with cuts from Dylan's latest U.S. tour. Johnny B. Goode; Roll and Tumble Blues Hambone; Beyond The Blue Horizon; Hellhound On My Trail; and Highway Of Regret are just some of the cuts.

The sort of labor of love that seldom makes it to commercial release.

Road Trip - Lopstick Lodge and Cabins, Pittsburg, New Hampshire.

If you've ever felt the need to go to the Great North Woods for a spell, you couldn't do better for accommodations than Lopstick. Their cabins have a nice blend of the modern and the rustic and the area's scenery is beautiful. Lots to do if you're into hiking, kayaking and the ilk. Nothing to do if you're into just rusticating.

I'd bring an SUV rather than a Mini the next time I went, though.

TV series - Day Break

Largely ignored by the media after it's premiere in November, I was leery about this show both because of its premise - which is essentially that of Groundhog Day done as a murder mystery - and a trashing review in The Boston Globe. But I like episodic TV thanks to TiVo, and decided to get a season pass to give it a try.

And boy, am I glad I did. I'm hooked. I like Heroes, but I like Day Break better. I like it almost as much as 24, which is #1 on Fred's TV hit parade.

Time travel/time loop shows have to follow their own internal logic religiously, or the viewer's suspension of belief quickly breaks down. It's one of the reasons why Back to the Future and Groundhog Day and various Star Trek: TNG work as well as they do. Day Break follows its rules, and while doing so tells an addicting story. Good acting, good writing, tight plotting.

Now, at this point I should tell you to go and see it. But if you haven't you're probably going to be totally Lost (pun intended) at this point in the series. But I'm going to be disingenuous and tell you to watch it anyway, because ABC has announced it's being pulled from its time slot after December 27th, with no word about where the hell it's going, and by god, if they leave me hanging with five episodes to go, there is going to be such plotzing in the Halls of Merrimack like you've never seen. And by God, it'd better come out on DVD then and quickly!

pant. pant. Okay, end of list. Hope I gave you one or two pointers to things you haven't tried and might like. See You Real Soon.

American Life in Poetry: Column 090

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand, but poetry is a means of communication, and this column specializes in poems that communicate. What comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage, shows us how to make something delicious to eat.


Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

Start with the square heavy loaf
steamed a whole day in a hot spring
until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast
grow dense as a black hole of bread.
Let it age and dry a little,
then soak the old loaf for a day
in warm water flavored
with raisins and lemon slices.
Boil it until it is thick as molasses.
Pour it in a flat white bowl.
Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream
to melt in its brown belly.
This soup is alive as any animal,
and the yeast and cream and rye
will sing inside you after eating
for a long time.


Reprinted from "Playing the Black Piano," Milkweed Editions, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Bill Holm. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

Tats, Toos, and Double Dichos

My never-met buddy, Maudie, finally did the virtual stripdown and went skinnydipping in the pool, and got that tattoo she's been threatening us with for lo these many weeks. "Character is destiny" is the loose translation of the konji, says Ms. M.

I might slightly disagree, as the phrase reminds me of one of Hemingway's "double dichos," a saying that makes a statement forward or backward. From my view, destiny is character. We become who we are through the path we walk.

It's a good essay. I wish Maudie would write more, which is about the best compliment I know to give a writer.

If you go to the posting and follow the link, you'll also get a brief commentary cum criticism of the recent Winter poker blogger get-together via Michael Craig, which I'm sure is going to provoke some reaction and probably some invective in our small corner of the blogosphere.

Given that I've never been to one of the poker blogger meetups, Craig's posting pretty much reflects my opinion of them just from reading the trip reports. I probably wouldn't go solely for one - although it'd be nice and fun to finally meet Iggy and Maudie and TroubleCat and a couple of other people in person if I happened to be in Vegas, or if the community decided to do an East Coast meet at Foxwoods. But, I'm not much of a people person - few writers are, bar talk bores me, my days of marathon drinking are some 20-odd years in the past and I'm just as happy about that, thank you very much, and stories of people passing out in restrooms or flicking cigarettes into pools at places where they're guests makes me feel more sad or annoyed than amused. You'll have to forgive my cynicism, but I've had too many drunks in my life to find drunks very funny.

I'm sure it's one of those "you had to be there," things, but you take a random sampling of trip reports from of the meetups, they all seem to be of the, "I went to Vegas, got drunk, spent too much, didn't sleep, caught a massive cold, and was ready to go home by Sunday. Oh, and it's all about the people!" variety. Some people's thing, I guess. Not mine.

Fishhooks beat Presto

Between a bad run over the past several weeks - which was the usual combination of bad cards and bad play - and a bad cold, I had decided to lay off the WWdN for awhile. But cold finally reduced to cough and feeling like I could actually make it past 8:30 for the first time in about 10 days, I decided mid-day yesterday to fire up ol' Wilson's and see how my game was.

I have Wilson's Turbo Tournament set up to mimic a WWdN, although I wish I could program some of the avatars to bet the Hammer, and I've found that if I'm playing well in the computer game - even if I finish out of the money - I'll usually play well in that night's WWdN - even if I finish out of the money. If get bored or frustrated playing the computer, well, that usually means an early night in the WWdN for Mr. Rico.

Taking a couple week layoff from the tables seemed to have resparked my mojo, so still feeling pretty good at 8:30, I joined a field of 38. About 3 hours later, the ever-tough Budohorseman finally closed the door on me, and I finished in second yet again - I think now for the fourth time - pocketing $90-odd bucks to boot. It'd be nice to be a Bride more than once, but being a four-time Bridesmaid ain't bad, especially when you're being paid.

Ol' PokerStars seems to be constipated right now, and doesn't want to share the tourney stats, but it was the usual combination of pretty-good cards and, if I dare say, some pretty good play, that got me into the money. As you can see from the pic to your left, I also put the whack on the Luckbox when he played his pocket 5s, nicknamed "Presto" for somewhat arcane reasons, against my fish hooks, aka pair of Jacks. CJ finished in 8th, and ricoM got name bragging rights for next week's tournament for taking him out. Unfortunately, next Tuesday is also a client's annual holiday party, so ironically I probably won't be playing. In any case, I still have Wil to gun for, given that he stops blowing off his own tournament.

It was a New Hamster night. Budohorseman was born in Manchester. I live right down the road, and xkm who lives right down the road from me, was there sweating for me. The usual suspects were there, and it was the usual fun, enjoyable night.

More poker talk after the New Year.

What happens after death?

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

via Robert Anton Wilson

Dreamtime is back....

with a cool closing theme, although we still need to get announcer Jailbait Jones in again to do our closing credits. Jailbait, email Dreamtime with your schedule, please!

Writer, musicologist, Mix Master, cartoon character, game inventor, radio producer, Eddie G. seems to have re-invented himself as many times as Bob Dylan.

Where he'll appear next, no one knows, but whatever he does next, you can bet it will be interesting. Episode 23 of Dreamtime takes a deeper look at the man behind Theme Time's curtains.

And there were camels, too

Back when I was just a sprout, my parents would take me each year sometime around my birthday - which falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas - to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes in their Christmas show.

I don't remember the first time I went, probably in the mid'50s. I do remember the last time, which would have been sometime during November-December of 19 and 62. The movie playing at Radio City was That Touch of Mink, starring Cary Grant as a long-in-the-tooth playboy and Doris Day as the world's oldest virgin.

Back in those days, the Christmas show was only around 20-30 minutes long, and was sandwiched in between movie showings. The Rockettes came out, did the March of the Wooden Soldiers, which they've been doing since 1933, do a Christmas number which would culminate with Santa's sleigh zipping onstage, and then finish with The Living Nativity, the other big show-stopper that Radio City Music Hall has also been doing over the holidays since the `30s.

Saying that I enjoyed the Christmas Show is the wrong word, somehow. It's like saying you enjoy Christmas, y'know? It's kind of silly to think otherwise. It was expected; it was a big part of my life during the Winter season, one of those roadmarks you have in your life as a kid. Me, it was Thanksgiving, the Rockettes, my birthday, and then Christmas. I liked the show, and would have been dumbfounded if I had gone to Radio City and it wasn't there. And I got a big kick out of the live animals in The Living Nativity, especially the camel. The camel usually came on last, and I waited impatiently until he appeared, and then was content. Baby Jesus in his creche, camel chewing his cud. Show over for another year. All's right in the world.

Being the storyteller I am, I've told the story to Peggy more than once, who, never having the opportunity to go to Radio City would usually eye me skeptically when I got to the camel. "A live camel, onstage?" she'd question. "It's the Nativity!" I'd counter. "They also had sheep, and a donkey, and I don't know what-all! It was cool!"

But I could tell she didn't believe me.

In 1979, long after I had stopped going, Radio City redid the show, and it became a full 90-minute spectacular, sans movie. And last year the Christmas Spectacular hit the road and one of their destinations was Boston. We didn't go last year, instead my cool birthday present was catching Bill Cosby at Foxwoods, but this year around October, Peggy looked at me and said, "Howza 'bout we go see the Rockettes for your birthday?"

I was up for that.

So, this Saturday we hopped in the Mini around 3:00 and zipped into Boston for the 5:00 show. We got into the Wang - which isn't the Wang anymore but I've given up tracking all the corporate renaming - around 4:30, and started down the aisle looking for our seats, which Peg thought were around four rows back from the stage. And an usher glanced at them, gave us the once over, and said, "oh, you're in the pit."

And indeed we were. We kept on going down to where the orchestra pit would be if they had been using an orchestra. But they weren't and the had installed four rows of temporary seating. "Cool," I thought to myself. "We're going to be very close."

In fact, we couldn't have been any closer to the stage without being on the stage. For arcane theatre reasons, orchestra seats are numbered backwards from the stage. Thus, row 4 turned out in reality to be row 1. And we had the two aisle seats in row 1 in the sold-out Rockette's Christmas Show.

The show started with near-military precision at 5:00, had a 15-minute break after 45 minutes of dance and song, and then had another 50-odd minute segment. It was ah... it was...

It was indescribable, is what it was.

Now, I gotta tell you. The show is so full of kitsch and schmaltz that I'm hesitant to recommend it. And, it is like a frozen slice of time from the 1960s, unrepentantly WASP white-bread Christian Christmas, complete with Santa and Baby Jesus. It's full-bore "Merry Christmas," not "Happy Holidays," and if you celebrate an alternative to the Christan Christmas, you're probably going to be unhappy with the show, if not downright offended. No, I don't particularly want those days completely back, either. But, if you kinda miss when one could put on a Christmas pageant without going to court, and you're a fan of kitsch and schmaltz, or maybe, even better, have kids who haven't world-wearied out on you yet and you want to give them a memory, then you should go.

What you get is the hardest-working Santa in show biz, who sings and dances in some nicely staged numbers, mostly I think to give the Rockettes time to switch costumes between acts, in a somewhat Irish brogue (Santa is Irish? Who knew?). And you get a group of singer/dancers backing Santa, all who look like they've come straight out of The Jackie Gleason or Red Skelton shows and who make with the crowd scenes in the Boston and New York acts. And you get a very funny Dancing Teddy Bear act that seems to be a deliberate good-natured parody of the show's main competition, Boston's traditional The Nutcracker holiday show.

And you've got the Rockettes, who do synchronized stepping and stomping - and kicking - like you've never seen unless you've seen them. They do dances as rag dolls, as snow queens, as Santas, and, of course, as Wooden Soldiers.

And at the end, with political correctedness totally on the run, you've got The Living Nativity, as striking as I remember it when I was kid.

And, yes, there were camels, too. All's right in the world.

American Life in Poetry: Column 089

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Loss can defeat us or serve as the impetus for positive change. Here, Sue Ellen Thompson of Connecticut shows us how to mourn inevitable changes, tuck the memories away, then go on to see the possibility of a new and promising chapter in one's life.


No Children, No Pets

I bring the cat's body home from the vet's
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth.

When the death-energy leaves me,
I go to the room where my daughter slept
in nursery school, grammar school, high school,
I lie on her milky bedspread and think
of the day I left her at college, how nothing
could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax
out from between her floorboards,
or taking a razor blade to the decal
that said to the firemen, "Break
this window first." I close my eyes now
and enter a place that's clearly
expecting me, swaddled in loss
and then losing that, too, as I move
from room to bone-white room
in the house of the rest of my life.


Reprinted from "Nimrod International Journal: The Healing Arts," Vol. 49, No. 2, Spring-Summer, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, whose latest book is "The Golden Hour," Autumn House Press, 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

Nike McFly

Apropos of nothing, except the power of these here internets. Apparently because an earlier post used the title, "Back to the Future," I received an email from an "AC" noting...

Hi Fred,

A sneaker campaign was started almost a year ago to get sneaker giant Nike to make the futuristic sneakers worn by Marty McFly in the second episode of Back to the Future. The campaign is going strong. So far, there are over 25,000 signatures from sneaker fans.

You can check out the sneaker campaign here

http://www.petitiononline.com/future2

And here's the accompanying video...

Back to the Future

When I was 12, I was absolutely convinced I'd be walking on the Moon and Mars by now. Not hoping, not wishing. Convinced.

Heinlein, Walt Disney. Boys' Life. Even the Saturday Event Post, for crissakes, all took it as a given that we were going into space... and would stay out there once we got there. It wasn't just 12-year-olds, either, Scientists like Freeman Dyson were confident that they'd be taking a grand tour of the solar system in an atomic spaceship by 1970. If you haven't read Project Orion, btw, and like either science or science, find the book.

Sometime during the intervening 42 years, we lost our way to the future. Without the impetus of those crazy Reds painting a hammer and sickle on the moonscape and maybe lobbing nukes down on us, we left some dusty tracks, flags, and a few tons of equipment and junk on the Moon after a few trips.

And flew away.

And, as much as I like the shuttle from a pure balls-out piece of cool machinery, it doesn't really do much from a perspective of getting us to other planets or even into space permanently. Do we have a permanent space station? No, unless you're super-loose with how you describe "permanent" or even "space station," for that matter. Can we get to the Moon or Mars any easier than we could 37-odd years ago? No.

NASA says we're going back. And I say it's about time 'cause this aging 12-year-old ain't get any younger.

The estimated time frame for NASA's lunar plans are:

2009 -- a first test of one of the lunar spaceships.

2014 -- the first manned test flight of the Orion exploration vehicle but no moon landing.

2020 -- the first flight of the four-astronaut crew to the moon.

2024 - Permanent base.

I'll be 72 in 2024. 72 is young. Hell, Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis was over 100 when he decided to go look at the Asteroid Belt. I can make it.

Ja! Da! It's time to take back the future.

Fire, Walk with Me... at last

via The Boston Globe:

David Lynch was his charming, inscrutable self at the Brattle Theatre Sunday. In town for a screening of his new movie, "Inland Empire," the director took a few questions, but answered obliquely. Asked, for example, about the bunnies in his new film, the "Blue Velvet" director said, " They're not bunnies, they're rabbits." Lynch did manage to make a little news, announcing that the second season of his long-ago TV series "Twin Peaks" is coming out on DVD next spring. At that, the crowd erupted in applause.

The box set of the first season of "Twin Peaks" is sitting in my DVD cabinet, waiting...

Before there was a Heroes (which, I have to admit, I wished I liked more even though I watch each episode religiously every week), before there was a 24 (and boy ain't I going to be happy that we have the TiVo when January rolls around), before there was a Veronica Mars, before there was a Medium (which doesn't get the press of the others, and yes, I know, isn't really episodic, but still is one helluva show), there was "Twin Peaks." Sometimes self-indulgent, sometimes infuriating, there are still episodes I remember scene-by-scene to this day. The whole thing flew apart after the resolution of "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" but for awhile, "Twin Peaks" gave a hint of how good television could be. And I'm not sure any of the shows I cited above would have come to be without it coming first.

Lynch's new movie, Inland Empire, sounds suitably weird, and means I may have to take a trip to MA to catch, as I doubt that many of the New Hamster venues I haunt are going to be hosting a 3-hour movie shot in video that features "giant talking rabbits — which seem to be living in Ralph Kramden’s apartment."

American Life in Poetry: Column 088

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This wistful poem shows how the familiar and the odd, the real and imaginary, exist side by side. A Midwestern father transforms himself from a staid businessman into a rock-n-roll star, reclaiming a piece of his imaginary youth. In the end, it shows how fragile moments might be recovered to offer a glimpse into our inner lives.


My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono

In New York City for a conference
on weed control, leaving the hotel
in a cluster of horticulturalists,
he alone stops, midwestern, crewcut,
narrow blue tie, cufflinks, wingtips,
holds the door for the Asian woman
in a miniskirt and thigh high
white leather boots. She nods
slightly, a sad and beautiful gesture.
Neither smile, as if performing
a timeless ritual, as if anticipating
the loss of a son or a lover.

Years later, Christmas, inexplicably
he dons my mother's auburn wig,
my brother's wire-rimmed glasses,
and strikes a pose clowning
with my second hand acoustic guitar.
He is transformed, a working class hero
and a door whispers shut,
like cherry blossoms falling.


Reprinted from "Folio," Winter, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Christopher Chambers, who teaches creative writing at Loyola University New Orleans. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.