Changes coming.

I will be making some changes here in the next week or so; the purpose of the site will remain essentially the same as indicated in the message below this one from last February, but things will get more active in these parts. Stay tuned.

How Can You Miss Me If I Don’t Go Away?

Per the last post, I have migrated some of the more significant posts from here over to Mermaids (well, copied them actually, since I left the originals in place here) and, as of now, those of you following my thoughts and adventures as recorded here should book mark that site to stay on the journey.

There will be irregular posts here in the days and weeks ahead but all those will be mentioned on and like from Mermaids, so you won’t miss anything if you regular visit there. Be sure to stop by Monday which is the anniversary of The Biggest Day Ever.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, He Said, Shamefaced.

My ex-wife use to hate it when I said “Trust Me.”

She may have been onto something.

Despite all my grand promises of how this website stuff would be repurposed, I’ve found that the split between “personal” and “political” I made by moving all the latter over to the new I Have Heard The Mermaid Singing just isn’t working for me.

Come Monday, everything not related to beer (that stays at Jack Curtin’s Liquid Diet) will be posted at the Mermaids site. I’m even copying some of the recent posts from here over to there for the sake of continuity.

What will happen here is either the place will be, basically, dead or, more likely, it will be a repository for various print pieces I want to have online to link to when necessary, photos and other “support” material. There may be an occasional post, mostly to direct wayward visitors to one of the other sites, but the action will be at the new/old digs.

I hope you’ll join me.

Pohl on Asimov.

Frederik Pohl, whose The Way the Future Blogs is a site any SF fan should have bookmarked, has recently begun a series devoted to his boyhood pal and SF legend Isaac Asimov. The first installment is here, the second here.

Go. Read. Thank me later.

Yeah, I Can Live With That.

From Dick Jerardi’s column in today’s Philadelphia Daily News:

Speaking of Villanova, football and basketball are 32-2 since Labor Day weekend with a national championship and, if Selection Sunday were today, a No. 1 seed.

Can you say “Golden Era,” boys & Girls?

Damages Returns With a Shocker.

Damages returned last night with an intricate and ultimately shocking third season premiere that was once again a reminder of just how great a show it is. Together with Mad Men and the soon-to-return Breaking Bad, this is high level, superbly written and well acted drama that proves that it is the message and not the medium which matters.

If you’re a fan and missed the opener, get thee now to a rebroadcast.

The Spot.

When I moved into this apartment over three years ago and the Girl Dogs, Fergie & Di, were still alive, I could leave them alone here for hours with no fear of any problems. And when I”d return, I’d open the front door and find Fergie sitting roughly 15 feet in front of me in the center of the hall. Always.* Sometimes Di was right behind her, sometimes she was lying further back in the middle of the living room.  Fergie was always the alpha dog of the pair and so it was not surprising that, after she left us, Di moved up and took over The Spot.

High Maintenance Buddy, on the other hand, earned those adjectives in large part because of his deep separation anxiety, a not unusual characteristic for a rescue dog. The result has been that I take him with me whenever the situation is right and leave him in a crate when I have to go without him, generally cutting things short to get back as soon as I can because he is given to constant barking and the last thing I need is trouble with the neighbors. To be honest, though, most of them, after they meet him, assure me that anything he wants to do is fine with them and isn’t he so cute. Man, I haven’t been able to pull that off myself in decades now.

Of late, when I’ve left him for brief stints, no more than 10-15 minutes, I’ve come back and heard no barking as I approached the door. There he was, in The Spot. Last night, with the apartment in front of me empty and the guy upstairs away, I took the big leap and left him here for a couple of hours while I did the Robbie Burns thing, the longest stretch ever. Damned if it didn’t work. In the spot, on the spot, when I got back, smiling happily.

Whether this is a long-term breakthrough will be determined as we do it several more times, but I sure wish I knew what it was about that spot on the rug. If I could bottle and market it, I’d be a rich man.

* Requisite disclosure: once during Fergie’s last year, I went out the front  and snuck around the building and in the rear door and saw her up by the door I’d left through, standing and staring at it. I assume this was her behavior in the period right after I would leave and that she would then move back to The Spot, so there’s some sort of timing factor involved in all this mysterious doggie lore.

Interviewing Robert B. Parker, 1984.

I’ve been immersed in all sorts of things the last few days, catching up from last week’s devotion to wiping out some late deadlines and prepared for deadlines on the near horizon,  and somehow missed until this morning  news of the death of Robert B. Parker, the prolific creator of Boston PI Spenser (no first name ever revealed) and other memorable characters, at his desk, writing, on Monday.

Here is the New York Times obituary, but for a real in-depth look at this very popular writer and his work, I commend to you this posting at J. Kinston Pierce’s Rap Sheet, an excellent blog devoted to crime and mystery fiction. The piece includes a good selection of links to other commentary.

I own every Spenser novel ever published, (38 of them to date, with another two at least still in the pipeline), plus all the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall books which he introduced in more recent times.  I actually became somewhat disenchanted with the Spenser stories for a bit in the middle of the long run, but I still bought and read every one and slipped easily back into the fold as Parker, Spenser and I all grew older. Each new one was ordered immediately, devoured upon receipt—if they had a serious flaw it was that they were so easy to read,  so fast to finish. Like any great writer, Bob Parker always left you satisfied and at the same time craving more.

Parker gave me permission to call him “Bob” and did me a grand and wonderful favor back in 1984, just as his latest in the series, Valediction, was being published. He was on a book tour in May and coming to Philadelphia for a signing at the center city Encore Books. I was trying to put together a public access cable show (bearing the same name as this blog now does) and contacted his publisher about doing an interview for my first episode; I was told his schedule was too tight.

Then, the morning of his visit to town, I got a call. The person handling the author’s travels said they could free an hour for me if I could get to Encore at, I think, three that afternoon. I called the cable company I was working with, got a cameraman scheduled to meet me there, showered, shaved, wished I’d gotten a haircut and headed downtown, trying to formulate my questions on the fly.

We did the interview in a room not much larger than a closet, barely space for the two of us to sit facing one another, with the cameraman shooting from the open doorway.  After Parker left, we had to shoot a series of  “back shots” In which I faced the camera and tried to recreate what I’d said at certain points so that the finished tape could periodically cut away to my face.  He was witty, gracious and, while he was known not to suffer fools gladly, kind enough to treat me gently when, revealing that desperate and all-too brief preparation of mine on the train, I stumbled a bit here and there.

I just pulled out that old tape for the first time in more than 20 years (the show ran for six episodes and then graciously slipped away into history) and was, I must admit, impressed. I asked a lot of the right questions, touching on aspects of his work still being mentioned now in various obituaries and reminiscences, and he revealed some interesting aspects of his creative process and how he saw Spenser who, we both agreed then and everybody agrees now, was a far cry from the traditional hard-boiled private eye he had been  in the first books.

I wish I had the skills or capability to post that tape on YouTube since it’s a bit of history that few have ever seen and I’d love to have it on the record. But I don’t and can’t, so anybody who’s really interested will just have to come over to my place.

Photo acquired from this obituary

Possibly the Worst Concept Ever.

This was a full page advert in Parade, a 1950s style  newspaper insert which was receiving in thousands of American households yesterday as part of their shrinking Sunday paper, assuming said households are in areas which are lucky enough to still have one.

So, you put on this secret hearing aid that looks like one of those nerdy telephone headsets, right?

And that means that, what, people will now think you’re cool?

Will it enhance your status at a cocktail party?

During business conferences?

In those (ahem) intimate moments?

Who comes up with this stuff?

Who buys this stuff?

I’m thinking Tea (please dont’ call us baggers anymore) Partiers. It makes them look more like Glenn Beck.

Do Not Think Too Hard About This.

Carl P. passes along to this link to what may be the creepiest Craig’s List post ever.

The comments are priceless.