Hodags Forever

Once a a Wisconsin hodag, always a hodag. Even though we didn't do the Ultimate Championships this year, Ace Reporter Roberta had a special feed direct from Boulder, and gave us regular updates over the weekend.

It probably couldn't be said better than Chris Spittal on the UPA site...

"Head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur, and tail of an alligator, the Wisconsin Hodags were the better team in the 2008 Open UPA Championship Sunday, and their superiority was apparent from start to finish."

Wisconsin took it all with a 15-9 win over arch-rival, Florida. I suspect that many were the blue-eyed Hodag tattoos later that evening.

And here's a highlight reel direct from the Hodags site:

How Bad Are Things in the Newspaper Biz?

So bad that someone - with no irony - has created a site called Praying for Papers. Its self-described mission:

"This is a troubling time in the newspaper business. Every day we hear stories from papers that are laying off employees and struggling to stay afloat.

Our idea at Praying for Papers is to encourage anyone who is touched by this shift in our industry to include it each day in their prayer life..."

The Boston Globe continues to devolve into just another paper with another group of columnist layoffs, including the aptly named Royal Ford, whose last column was at the end of April. Ford was replaced by a generic column from cars.com. I suspect that something like the Kindle will become part of the surviving papers' business model in the future. How they'll make money remains to be seen, but certainly the dead tree distribution can be replaced by something more cost-efficient.

Walks With Hawks

If you know me you know that I've had a propensity for ah, "enthusiasms," since I was a kid. Those could be anything from racing MG-TDs to bee-keeping, to rocketry to time travel to sailplaning.

Whatever it was, it was usually triggered by a book I had just read and wildly impractical for a 12-year-old to take up. Not that that ever stopped me. I'd simply head for the 1964 version of the Web - back in those days we called them "libraries" - and haunt the reference sections until I had absorbed everything I could find on the subject. If I couldn't actually do whatever had caught my attention, I could sure learn everything I could about it, on the off-chance that I might eventually get a hands-on opportunity . Thus, I can still provide such useful tidbits of information as that M.G. stands for "Morris Garages," that you corner a sports car by cutting through the apex of the curve; that "laser" is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation; that royal jelly is fed exclusively to bee larvae in order to create queens, and that the leather strap used to tether hunting birds is called a "jess." More about that last in a bit.

It's not a bad quirk for a writer to have, as I've learned over the years, although it's occasionally wearing on Peggy who has to listen for weeks - sometimes months - at a time as I take up yet another subject. On the other hand, my long-suffering wife does listen to my babbling and even occasionally acts upon it.

This all takes us up to Manchester, Vermont, where Peggy and I spent last weekend on a postponed anniversary trip. On an earlier trip to Manchester, we had come across a tiny sign in front of a nondescript building that read "The British School of Falconry." Now, I'm totally wild about raptors. It was one of those enthusiasms I mentioned, where I spent several months as a kid wanting nothing so much as to take up falconry and immersed myself in jesses, goshawks, bells, merlins, hoods, peregrines and gloves. Many years after that enthusiasm had all but been forgotten I had spent one of the best summers of my life watching two red tail hawks raise a family of three from just-barely-flying to full-fledged hunters. I made Peggy laugh out loud that summer as I only half-kiddingly presented my gloved arm to the oblivious hawks on the off-chance that one might glide down to me.

Looking for something different for us to do on our 24th, Peggy had looked into getting us a room at The Equinox, a ritzy Manchester resort which is way out of our league except on special occasions. The Equinox has a co-op deal with the group behind the British School of Falconry and Peg was able to get us a package deal that included an introductory handling and flying lesson with a Harris's Hawk as well as a "Hawk Walk" where I was able to fly our hawk along a trail at the Robert Todd Lincoln estate, Hildene.

As it turned out, The Equinox was undergoing major construction, and we decided to take a pass on staying there, instead booking a room at The Wilburton Inn, a delightfully funky place in the off-season run by two true eccentrics who are also wonderful hosts. The Wilburton is highly recommended. And we still did the falconry thing at The Equinox package price.

At 2:00 on Saturday we were with our trainer, Rob, who brought me through the basics of handling my hawk, Sprint, as Peggy acted as observer and photographer. The 45-minute walk-through ranged from holding (left, gloved arm, jess held between thumb and fingers); walking with (hawk needs to face into the wind or will bait [i.e. flap around in an unseeming manner], often backwards and/or sideways; raptor psychology (essentially, smallest possible effort for largest possible reward); training of raptors (essentially, hunger = interest. A satisfied raptor is interested in nothing except standing on the nearest perch); why we were using hawks instead of falcons (Falcons work wide open spaces, gliding around and then swooping on prey. Hawks are more suited to New England woods, able to maneuver around trees and brush and able to take a heavy beating when necessary); and how to cast and retrieve your hawk.

We were with another couple - the woman acting as handler and the man as observer - and we exchanged our hawks for another pair and set off to Hildene and our hawk walk. All our hawks were Harris's, chosen because they tolerate humans much better than most raptors, and interestingly, who like to hunt in teams. Most raptors will attack each other rather than work together. Trained Harris's tend to treat both dogs and humans as members of their hunting pack - "we're the hired help" Rob called it - expecting us to flush out the game for them.

I have many memories I treasure: landing a seaplane for the first time; hiking the Grand Canyon; Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands; Niagara Falls. I added a new memory last Saturday, a surrealistic walk through the woods, two free-flying hawks pacing our group, gliding from tree to tree, occasionally swooping into the brush after unseen game; flying to our gloves if given the opportunity to see if they could convince Rob to provide some free meat. I was flying a hawk named Wallace, the other handler-in-training, Maya, had a hawk named Skye. At the end of the walk, I held up my arm for Skye who, at the last moment, dipped under it, soared a few inches off the ground, and then rose up to gracefully perch on Maya's glove.

It was one of the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen.

Peggy's photo album of the training and walk can be found here, although most of the remaining shots are just me with a goofy grin and a hawk perched on my arm.

The "once-in-a-lifetime" phrase is an overworked term that writers learn to avoid. But I came as close to a once-in-a-lifetime experience as I'm likely to have, thanks to Peggy. If I regret one thing, it's that she didn't get to try too, as the rules say one handler and one observer per couple.

But if I have my way, we'll be doing it again. Soon.

Think Gas is Expensive?

Well, yes it is. Peggy and I spent $110 on the weekend to fill up the Murano and Mini. (The Mini, btw, which requires premium, broke $40 for the first time in my fill-up history). But, everything is relative. Be glad your car doesn't run on Pepto-Bismol.

Here's a meme currently making the email rounds...

Gas.............................................$3.60 per gallon
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ....... $10.32 per gallon

Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ....... $9.52 per gallon

Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ............. $10.17 per gallon

Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ........ $10.00 per gallon

Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 .......... $33.60 per gallon

Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ....... $178.13 per gallon

Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 ........ $123.20 per gallon

Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ................ $25.42 per gallon

Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 ..................$84.48 per gallon
Evian Water 9 oz $1.49…….... $21.95 per gallon
Printer ink ………………...... $5,200.00 per gallon

I'm 81 Percent French in Bed

Or so says the Are You British in Bed? quiz, today's productivity-buster.

It Was 24 Years Today

That my life began.

Fred (heart) Peggy.

.

Twittering Into the Future

I've been playing with Twitter of late. You can find me there at FredatDreamtime if you're interested in me. You can also find me at DylanTweets if you're interested in Bob Dylan news. My geeky side is particularly proud of DylanTweets, which is automatically pulling content from the Dreamtime blog as I post it.

The fast 411 on Twitter is that it can be thought of as a real-time (or near real-time) micro-blog. You're limited to 140 characters per post. That's characters, not words, sharply restraining you to pithy statements. A lot of Twitter is of the "I'm eating a cheese sandwich" text message variety, but some of it can be very cool and interesting, depending on who you're following. "Following" at Twitter is essentially subscribing to someone's news. Every time they decide to inform the world they're noshing on another cheese sandwich, the message shows up on your Twitter home page.

While the question on whether Twitter is actually useful for someone like me remains to be seen, I have been going up the slow scale of awareness from "what is this thing good for except as a major productivity buster?" to the, "Hmm..." stage. Two examples.

One of the people I'm following on Twitter, is the tech pundit/writer, John C. Dvorak, who's a panelist on one of the podcasts I listen to, TwiT (no relation to Twitter). On Monday's show, Dvorak mentioned as an aside a coffee he purchases in San Francisco, whose name I couldn't make out. Someone else on Twitter asked Dvorak for the coffee machine he uses and I chimed in asking about the coffee. 20 minutes later I had my answer direct from the man himself.

So, consider, a podcast recorded on a Monday in California, listened to by Fred in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Fred contacts one of the panelists on Tuesday with a question, and has his answer within a half-hour.

Or consider this: Roger McGuinn, yes that Roger McGuinn, twitters. And if you had been following him on Twitter you would have read that Bruce Springsteen invited him backstage at his concert last night, and the two ended up on-stage doing Turn, Turn, Turn. And indeed a video of that duet is already on YouTube, which I'm not linking to, as the video quality is of the Cloverfield variety. But again, here I am sitting in New Hampshire, reading notes from a rock star in almost real time, and then watching a video of what he's talking about a few hours later.

In some ways we really are living in the future.

R.I.P. Skybus

Not even a year old, the no-frills airline, Skybus ceased operations today. A pity, I liked the airline a lot, recommended it to several people who themselves liked it, and had even considered buying us $10 tickets to Florida for a weekend day-trip this long Winter.

Here's an excerpt from a post I wrote last May on our Skybus experience, three days after the airline began operations...



"...After the Hodags took the regionals, my brother-in-law, Ted, sent an email telling us it was never too early to start thinking about booking a flight to Ohio and - incidentally - he had just read about this start-up no-frills airline called Skybus based out of Ohio that was selling $10 seats from Portsmouth, NH to Columbus. Skybus wasn't flying yet when I checked out their Web site. In fact, they hadn't even received their FAA certification, but after doing some research on the company and assuring myself they were legit and safe, I booked us on a flight on what would be - we hoped - their third day of operation.

Skybus did, indeed, receive their certification a week or so before they were to start flying, and sent us email telling us Flight #2 from Pease Trade Center (originally Pease AFB) to Columbus was departing as scheduled at 9:05 Friday morning, the 24th of May. Peggy and I went down to Pease the weekend before to check out the scene - and a weird one it was. Imagine something like 28 Days Later, but without the zombies. A few cars in an otherwise empty lot, a totally deserted terminal, a sign for the Pan-Am Clipper, a couple of Skybus kiosks. We were relieved to see the last, as it was the only evidence that the airline existed.

On the Skybus

So, here's some basics on Skybus:

1. $10 Seats? Yep, they do sell $10 seats, a minimum of 10 per flight according to their Web site. But those seats go fast. And whether $10 or not, you need to book early for the best rates. A quick check of the Skybus site today shows the first $10 seats now available on the Portsmouth to Columbus route are in late October. I booked our seats for late May in early April, and it cost $30 apiece one-way. The same seats can cost as much as $110, dependent on the date you want to travel and when you book your flight. Flights from Columbus to San Francisco (really Oakland, as "Boston" is really Portsmouth on a Skybus flight) were ranging from $225-330 in June to $50-$150 in November. Again, you need to book early for the best rates.
   
   A $120 round-trip for two was a bargain when a comparable trip from Manchester, NH and back would have cost over $600. I should note that the $120 wasn't really $120, though. With taxes, baggage fees and priority boarding, our total round-trip cost for two was $202.60. See #2 below.
   
   
2. How do they do it? First, they sell sponsorships. Our jet was displaying the logo of Nationwide Insurance on the outside and Skybus plans to also sell advertising space in the cabin, too. Our flight attendant closed her little landing speech by noting that if we'd like to sponsor that announcement, please check out the Sponsors page at Skybus.com.
   
   
3. Second, they also offer a variety of geegaws and gadgets for sale during the flight - everything from perfume to chocolates to a kid's knapsack to iPod accessories. Think of the in-flight catalog items you see on most airlines... that sort of stuff. They only difference is you can buy it right then and there.
   
   
4. Third, they really are no-frills, and they charge for everything except the use of the bathroom. Checking in bags? It will cost you $5 a bag, with a maximum of two bags per passenger. Have more than two bags? The price goes up to $50 per bag. If you can carry it on, it's free, but the Skybus space restrictions on carry-on baggage are very tight. Carry-on items can't weigh more than 22 pounds, and can't be larger than 9 inches by 16 inches by 19 inches.
   
   Want priority boarding - a fancy way of saying you get closer to the head of the line? You can get it for $10 a person. I bought it for us, but I'm not sure it was worth it. However, if you like the Exit seats or want to make sure you're not sitting in the middle seat, it might worth the price to you. I'm not sure how many "priority" seats Skybus sells per flight. All they say is that it's limited. We were with a group of maybe 15-20 people in our priority lane out of 109 people on the flight from Portsmouth to Columbus.
   
   
   Want a pillow or a blankie? You have to buy it (on the up side you can keep it). Want something to eat or drink? You can't bring food or refreshments on the plane, since they want to sell everything to you. Meals - ranging from cheese plates to salads to sandwiches to mini-dinners - run from $8 to $12. Beverages run from $2 (coffee, water) to $5 (booze) - about standard or a little higher for airline fare these days.
   
   
   
   
   
5. How's the Experience? Not bad at all, in fact unsurprising, which is meant as a compliment.
   
   If you fly Southwest or one of the other economy airlines you're not going to find much different on Skybus. You have to walk out on the tarmac and use a set of stairs to get on/off the plane, which may be a little problematic during bad weather. On the other hand, that's what generations of passengers did into the late `60s, and still do in many locations. The jets are brand-new Airbus jets. Since they were just recently FAA certified and are flying a new fleet with experienced pilots, Skybus is as safe - perhaps safer - as any other airline. Peggy commented that it's the first time she ever was on a plane with a "new car smell." Seats are three across throughout the cabin. Leg room is good, maybe a little above standard.
   
   As I mentioned, the attendants come through the cabin, pushing a cart with all the things they have to sell. There's no hard sell. They ask. If you say, "No," they move on. But I have to say that was the only part of the Skybus experience I found disappointing. While I wasn't expecting a carnival - or maybe I was - I was kind of hoping for some kitsch; Skybus t-shirts, caps, key chains, stuffed animals, that sort of stuff, all the bling they have for sale on their site, in fact. Instead, I was presented with Toblerone candy, iPod accessories, and watches. Personally, I think Skybus is missing the march on this. If I'm brave enough to fly a no-frills start-up, I'd like to have a souvenir, not something I can get anywhere.
   
   The flights were - again - standard flights. The flight into Columbus left and arrived on time; the biggest hassle was getting through the tiny security section in Portsmouth, which is not set up to handle getting a 100+ people through security screening in any timely fashion. The flight back was delayed about an hour-and-a-half because of some computer glitch, in this day and age, not unexpected. The only - minor - criticism I had was the the Skybus personnel were obviously new at what they were doing, not bothering to announce the gate, flight destination, or number of the delayed flight to Portsmouth, almost causing us to miss the plane, not bothering to change departure signs (our departure gate said our flight was bound for Pasadena further adding to the confusion), stumbling through the announcements, forgetting to deliver coffee. Minor stuff as I said, and all could be chalked up to birthing pains, considering we flew on the airlines' third and fifth days of operation.
   
   
6. Would we fly Skybus again? Definitely yes, especially if it matches up to our travel plans. Skybus currently flies to only a handful of destinations (map above), and like Rome, all Skybus roads lead to Columbus, Ohio. While it's possible to work out a multi-point itinerary (say, Portsmouth to L.A.), it probably won't be the easiest thing to do. You have to pick up and re-check your baggage, for instance, and expect a lengthy layover in Columbus.

Skybus promises more routes are opening soon. But for now, if you're planning a trip to/from one of their destination cities, looking for an economical flight, can book well in advance, and are willing to be a little flexible for the savings, I'd recommend taking a look at Skybus.

Answering the Question That No One Has Asked

What if Charles Schulz had created Watchmen?

via Evan Shaner.

Now You Too Can Send Mail to the Past

An idea whose time has come... yesterday.

Fading Away

You could claim as one of the casualties of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) the poker blogging community, although that wouldn't be entirely true. The UIGEA certainly did serious damage: it's become more difficult to move money in/out of online poker sites, and perhaps more importantly, to transfer money between various sites. Many poker players - including me - used something like NETeller as a waypoint to move money from a healthy bankroll into a dwindling stake at another site or to create a new account if there was interesting tournament happening somewhere we weren't registered. Can't do that now, and the consequence was that many people just focused on one or two sites, and if/when their bankroll faded at a site, why so did they.

But while the UIGEA probably deserves the lion's share of the blame, you could probably also chalk up the rapidly shrinking poker blogger community to such things as the community getting older - not in the graybeard sense, but in the "growing up and having kids" sense. Two of my favorite podcasts, Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio and PokerDiagram both went down because kids and responsibilities overwhelmed the weekly poker game, which in turn was what drove their respective podcasts.

And, like all fads - and the Texas Hold `Em craze was a classic fad - at some point it seems like everyone suddenly wakes up and says, "Exactly why was I investing in tulip bulbs again?" A lot of people - including on occasion, this person - thought that they might have what it takes to make scads of money from poker, but instead found that whatever it takes to be a consistently successful poker player was beyond them. Me, I found out I was a hobbyist.

Wil Wheaton lost interest in online poker, PokerStars laid him off, the Wheaties collapsed (although several other games sprung up to take its place); and more and more poker bloggers started to cash in - some officially calling it quits, like Maudie, some just fading away, like PokerDiagram. Maudie, btw, has broken cover, come out of the closet, taken off her mask, opened the kimono, or whatever revealing metaphor you prefer, and officially announced her Yes, a blog blog, where she's no longer Maudie, but yes Herself, Kym. I've known about that "other" blog since she started it, but now that Kym has made it public, I can talk about it. Go and visit.

The only other poker blog I regularly followed was Iggy's Guinness and Poker site which has seemed to be in the throes of ugly self-destruction for the past several months. As someone noted...

"... [Iggy] has now basically reduced himself to three things: Quoting in full (although usually not linking) the occasional newspaper article on something poker related, quoting in full articles related to the US presidential race, usually with a very obvious slant of pro-Obama, con-Hillary, and posting poker stories by Johnny Hughes. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of his posts are in the second category. And if you’re wondering what exactly it is Iggy writes himself in all of this, you’re touching a good point. I think my post here today contains more words than he’s written himself in the past year...."

Iggy sheepishly admitted to the truth of the criticism, and then blithely continued on with the same stuff. As far as I can tell, the only reason he keeps G&P going is for whatever income the various affiliate links he has on the site still bring. It's certainly no interest in poker.

I did a quick tour through Maudie's and Iggy's blogrolls to other poker blogs I occasionally visited. A few are still gamely going on - some seem to be writing about things other than poker, the poker players seem to write more about bricks-n'-mortar play than online. Some claim the reports of their death are greatly exaggerated and that they'll be back. A few are - or have - winded it up.

Life goes on.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Dreamtime has hit episode 52, a very difficult one to produce, as it turned out. I had a touch of the flu last week but still needed to work on the podcast to keep to my "one every couple of weeks" schedule. I decided to do a compendium of Dylan's Season 1 TTRH poetry readings, figuring it'd be easier than creating/researching/writing a completely new podcast, as those take a good 3-4 days to accomplish, even when I'm feeling well. In total, I put maybe 4-6 hours of work into any given Dreamtime, but since I have to do it around paying work, those few hours stretch into several days of real-time.

Anyway, as it turned out going through 52-odd hours of TTRH episodes, some segmented, some not, some with easily found poetry readings, some not, was a much more daunting task than I had planned, and took much longer than I had wanted. I was still working on the podcast this Monday when, for the first time in 52 shows, Audacity completed corrupted the 30-minute audio file to the point of non-recovery. I ended up starting from scratch, but, with the poetry readings now categorized at least I was able to repeat the work much more quickly and eventually posted the podcast on Wednesday.

As of right now Poetry Readings with Your Host Bob Dylan has already broken the Dreamtime record for downloads in a 24-hour period - well over 700. The traffic was so heavy for awhile that it brought down my cheap lil' GoDaddy podcast site for a couple of hours. Episode 52 is already on its way to becoming my most popular show ever if the numbers hold steady. I've also had over a thousand visitors to the site within 48 hours - comparably, I usually get on the average of 1,000 visitors a week.

This is all very pleasing, but it's also a bit humbling, since none of the content for Episode 52 is my own. Of course, I know, and have known from the beginning ,that Dreamtime lives and dies by Bob Dylan and Theme Time Radio Hour - my audience was cut in half almost immediately after TTRH went on hiatus last year. It's to be expected. It comes with the turf. Mr. D. has a much bigger fan base. And all in all, it's not total woe is me. I do get regular fan letters from people who like the background, the trivia, the history I provide through Dreamtime. Episode 52 seems to be a rising tide lifting all Dreamtime boats, too. I've had an increase in downloads of all shows over the last few days, and many new subscribers to the podcast/blog.

So, I have nothing to complain about. But it'd sure be nice to write a Dreamtime that only passingly referred to Bob Dylan and still get that amount of traffic.

"We're FlockdUp: Friend Me!"

The great Merlin Mann's winning proposal for the "worst website ever" at SXSW: the imaginary but very realistic flockdup.com.

I really like the ability to add comments to a video. But apparently it only works as a Wordpress plugin. Another reason to consider migrating the Dreamtime blog over to WordPress at some point.

REALLY Do Not Reply

You know those automated emails we all get from banks, insurance companies, utilities et al;? Many of them use a "donotereply.com" return address because a lazy IT department doesn't want to 1) deal with replies and 2) doesn't want to deal with bouncebacks.

Now here's the scary thing... someone owns that "donotreply.com" domain, and gets all those replies/bouncebacks. Why is that scary? Go and read his blog.

If Summer Glau was any hotter, would she explode?

Title and photo courtesy of i09, which is reporting that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will, ahem, be back. We pause for a moment...

YAY!

... TTSCC isn't perfect by any means, but it ain't no Bionic Woman either. Like the little girl with the little curl when it's good, it's very, very good. It deserves a chance to find an audience now that the Writer's Guild strike is over and, if nothing else, at least we're not going to be left (this season at least) with a cliffhanger never to be answered.

One recommendation for Season 2, O TTSCC writers:

1. More Glaubot!

The Last Giant Falls

Arthur C. Clarke, the last of the "Big 3" classic science fiction writers, died early Wednesday morning in Sri Lanka. Clarke was 90.

Like his peer, Isaac Asimov (but unlike his other peer, Robert Heinlein), Clarke wasn't all that good a writer in my opinion. His characterization was terrible, with protagonists so wooden that you'd risk splinters if you had brushed against them. And many of his plots were simply there for Clarke to hang scientific speculations on. But it's that last where Arthur C. Clarke outperformed nearly every other science fiction writer.

"A radar pioneer in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Clarke wrote a 1945 article in Wireless World magazine in which he outlined a worldwide communications network based on fixed satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 22,300 miles -- an orbital area now often referred to as the Clarke Orbit.

Clarke's seminal article, for which he received $40, was published two decades before Syncom II became the world's first communications satellite put into geosynchronous orbit in 1963." LA Times Obituary

Besides the communications satellite, a strong argument can be made that Clarke also predicted space stations, moon landings using a mother ship and a landing pod, cellular phones and the Internet.

Thanks to a bout of the flu last week, I've been feeling a bit too mortal and of my age of late. It hasn't been helped by the fact that Dave Stevens - younger than I - passed away, or that a co-worker's cousin - younger than either of us - had a massive stroke over the weekend and passed away a few days ago. Nor that one of my literary heroes, Harlan Ellison, who I knew fairly well when I was a teenager and he he was in his mid-30s has somehow turned 73 - reminding me that I'm in my mid-50s.

Clarke's passing marks another milestone. So many of the giants that shaped my sense of wonder - Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein most of all, Alfie Bester, C.M. Kornbluth, others - have fallen.

The Rocketeer Falls

Not the best of news to greet you when you're not feeling all that hot yourself. via Mark Evanier:

"...Illustrator Dave Stevens, best known for his "good girl" art and The Rocketeer, died [Monday, March 10] following a long, wrenching battle with Leukemia...The Rocketeer made Dave's reputation and also spawned a resurgence of interest in fifties' figure model Bettie Page, whose likeness Dave used for the strip's heroine."

The Rocketeer was one of the books that that got me back to reading comics in the `80s, and was, I think, the first independent - published by Pacific as I remember - comic book I ever bought. Stevens, as Mark and I'm sure all other obituaries will note, was not prolific by any stretch of the imagination, but he was one of the best illustrators ever to work comics in my opinion. Sadly, from Mark's report, producing The Rocketeer wasn't particularly rewarding for him... at least financially. I had heard he had moved from comic books to the more remunerative movie storyboarding, including, I believe, the storyboards for one of the Indiana Jones movies. Mark notes that he also did private commissions. Would that I had had the money to commission a Dave Stevens work.

Stevens was also directly responsible for the resurgence of interest in `50s pin-up gal Bettie Page and would later, as Evanier reports, become friends with Page.

"Bettie Page who, though once thought deceased, turned out to be alive and living not all that far from Dave. They met and Dave became her friend and, though he was not wealthy, benefactor. Deciding that too many others had callously exploited her likeness, Dave voluntarily aided Ms. Page financially and even took to helping her in neighborly ways. One time, he told me — and without the slightest hint of resentment — "It's amazing. After years of fantasizing about this woman, I'm now driving her to cash her Social Security checks."

Stevens was 52.

World's Oldest Animation?

Maybe, maybe not. As the X-Files has it, I want to believe, because it's so cool.

The story of the animation on the piece of 5,200 year-old pottery has been around for at least four years. It's recently been getting a bit of press again because of a new 11-minute documentary the bowl, which was discovered in a grave in Iran by an Italian archaeological team in the late 1970s.

So, did a potter watch images swirl on a wheel in front of him and realize that he could create an animation? Or did s/he just create a set of sequential images which coincidentally happen to animate well?

When is a fake not a fake?

Damn it, we like Robert Irvine!

No graduation from the University of Leeds.

No 360 lb wedding cake for Princess Di

Never cooked for Bush (or any U.S. President)

No knighthood.

No castle in Scotland.

sigh. And the sad thing is that Dinner Impossible is a great show.

Link to BBC story.

Today's Productivity Buster

and new internet meme, via Brainiac...

"... A couple of weeks ago, a Los Angeles-based Flickr user who calls herself Karakrio (Occupation: Live Concert Production) started a Flickr group photo pool titled "CD Cover Meme." She challenged other Flickr users to "make your own CD cover" using the following formula:

1. Generate a name for your band by using WikiPedia's random page selector tool, and using the first article title on whichever page pops up. No matter how weird or lame that band name sounds.

2. Generate an album title by cutting and pasting the last four words of the final quote on whichever page appears when you click on the quotationspage's random quote selector tool. No matter what those four words turn out to be.

3. Finally, visit Flickr's Most Interesting page -- a random selection of some of the interesting things discovered on Flickr within the last 7 days -- and download the third picture on that page. (Even better: Click on this link to get a Flickr photo that's licensed under Creative Commons.) Again -- no cheating! You must use the photo, no matter how you feel about it.

4. Using Photoshop (or whatever method you prefer), put all of these elements together and create your very own CD cover, then upload it to the CD Cover Meme photo pool.

As of this writing, over 1,000 CD covers have been generated by 650 Flickr users."

The weird thing, as the Brainiac columnist, Joshua Glenn, notes is how much these random, made-up elements resemble real CD/record covers. The French theorist Baudrillard called this the "precession of simulcra" problem, where the original seems like a copy.