I listen to podcasts while I do my work at the day-job and I have discovered a couple of new shows, new to me that is that I think are well worth sharing.

First up is the Revival Theater Playhouse. The Revival Theater started up a fan run podcast to fill the void when we were left without any version of Mystery Science 3000 that later expanded to start producing radio plays comedies, under the Playhouse podcast. Their brand is to take something well knows to fandom and give it a strange twist. Productions include Plan 9 From Outer Space as written by William Shakespeare a strange and hilarious mash-up of Soylent Green with A Christmas Carol, and a lovely homage to War of the Worlds. With lively voice actors and a willingness to go nearly anywhere for a gag, including comedic commercial interludes, the productions are a fun way to kill a few hours.

The second discovery is You Must Remember This, a podcast dedicated to the Hollywood history. The host Karina Longworth creates themes for her seasons, such as exploring the cycle of horror films by following the lives of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, or an entire season dedicated to ‘Dead Blondes.’ Karina presents the history in a comfortable conversational manner while exploring interesting nooks and crannies of tinsel town.

If you are into the Podcast you should give both a spin.

A few months ago I took one of those DNA tests that helps determine your ancestry and genetic traits. While the results are not particularly surprising it is interesting to see jus how shockingly white I am. Of course anyone who has seen me burn in the sun would intuitively understand my ancestry is European. By the numbers my genes would indicate that I am 98.3 percent European, with a full 64.5 percent from Britain and its islands. Another nearly 14 percent is designated to French and German ancestry which means I am perpetually at war with myself, followed 4 percent Scandinavian, 2 percent Iberian, 1.5 percent comes from Sub-Saharan Africa almost a third of a percent of me is Finnish.

This was all very cool and fun seeing where my material came from before it reached this particular evolutionary dead end. (I have no kids.)

Seventeen years on this date old the World changed forever. Others will be more eloquent and more analytical about the importance and reverberations echoing from that terrible evil act and I will leave such remembrances to their skillful prose. So, not to ignore but to reflect on a happier occasion I’m going to post about the only party I ever went to during my high school years.

In high school I was very much a loner, I had a small tight circle of friends, but the larger social environment simply was alien. Because of that I don’t have the usual American experience of attending games, proms, or parties held while a student’s parents had departed for an evening or weekend. However there was one exception to this, my acting class.

In my senior year, 1979, as an elective I took a class in acting taught by the engaging Mrs. Linda Crumbo. It was a fun and lively class and one where I even slipped in a bit of my own original writing as a prose piece that I performed. The class was small, we became friends, and towards the end of 1978 it was planned that there would be party held at Mrs Crumbo’s house. Her husband had been wrangled by members of the class to arrange things so that the party would surprise to Linda. The event’s evening arrived and I rode out to the party with four classmates, among our little troupe was Roberta and Pam who during the entire drive out discussed a horror film, Halloween,  that they had recently gone out and watched.

The drive I must tell you was not an urban one. We drove through darkened wood on a small two-lane road with only the car’s headlights for illumination. Pam and Roberta recounted to film with great detail and the tension in the car grew as we transverse the dark and somewhat threatening forest. Eventually we arrived at Linda’s two-story wood-frame house.

Every window was dark.

We sat for a few moments debating how to proceed. Naturally someone had to go to the door and find out what was going on but after the tales of violence and murder no one wanted to venture alone from the car. The wood seemed to close in around the house and around us. Several more moments passed and together we got out of the car and crowded around the door, knocking loudly. A second story window illuminated and footsteps proceeded down the stairs and to the door. Linda Crumbo, a robe closed around her, her eyes bleary from sleep, her blond hair disheveled, opened the door.

“We’re having a party!”

I’m not sure who or how many shouted that as greeting and the scrum of students invaded her house. Nearly at once we encountered her husband, half way down the interior staircase and her said. “I forgot!’

The Crumbos got dressed and a pleasant party filled the remainder of the evening hours. This was not a drunken bacchanal and it is one of my more pleasant memories from that time.

There was a bit on twitter the other day where someone asked others to describe their weirdest dream in five words. This followed describing favorite books and movies also with the five-word limitation. This prompted me to remember a dream from 1977 when I was sixteen and spending the summer with my older sister,

My niece Heather was an infant and as is the way of infants rarely slept through the night. By a quirk of chance the times that I went to sleep, rather late, synchronized with Heather’s cycles in such a manner that when she awoke in the night it often interrupted my middle of the night dreaming. People dream on a roughly 90 minute cycle and those dream from the middle of my sleep are particularly odd.

I remember bits and pieces of those strange phantasms but this one I think is the strangest. First off I am not in the dream. I do not know how common this is for other but I will occasionally have dreams in which I never appear. In these I am a spectator, much like watching a fully realized film that happens to carry smell, taste, and touch in addition to visuals and sound. In fact I have had dream that really were movies, complete with known actors in some of the parts. This dream had no named actors.

The situation is a newly wed couple. The husband has come home from work and they have seated themselves to the dinner she prepared, a whole roasted chicken. Their conversation slides from loving to sniping and arguing. As the scene progresses it becomes obvious, though I could not say how, that the chicken, the dead and cooked bird centered in the table, is manipulating their minds with its own psychic powers. The couple’s disagreement turns to shouting but on the cusp of becoming violent they recognize that it is not their own will at work but the chicken’s. (My, that’s a strange sentence all by itself.) Before they can do anything about the foul fowl the chicken reveals further psychic abilities and takes control of their bodies, forcing the couple to grab a broom handle and feed it into the kitchen’s garbage disposal. Unable to release their grip on the shaft the pair struggles in horror as they are drawn down into the strangely deadly device.

And that’s where I woke up to Heather’s cries for a feeding. I laid there in the dark waiting for Rod Serling to step out of the corner and begun to post episode wrap up. It would have been nice if someone explained that dream.

There were other weird dream that summer, humanoid aliens with glowing spots in their forehead invading New England but stopped by the alligators and so on but nothing as odd at the mental, mad chicken.

For many years now most Sunday finds my Sweetie-wife and I at the World Famous San Diego Zoo. It’s a lovely way to get in a few miles of walking while seeing lovely animals from around the globe. If you follow my social media accounts you’ll often see photos snapped with my iPhone whenever I am lucky enough to capture an interesting moment.

In all the years and all the Sundays of these Zoo excursions we have never seen the mountain lion our side of its den.

This is not surprising as mountain lions are crepuscular, that is they hunt during twilight, the dim light of dawn and dusk are when they stalk their prey. Midmornings, when my Sweetie-Wife and I would arrive at the enclosure located near the back of the facility, the big can is found in its den, sleeping.

This Sunday was different.

We had crossed the recently completed canopy bridge that spans over the canyon where you can find the pandas, and emerged just outside of the Elephant Odyssey exhibit when she noticed that there was a crowd at the mountain lion enclosure. We walked over just as a zookeeper, standing in the enclosure itself, was completing a talk. Evidently we had arrived just as they were about to feed the feline. I scanned the enclosure and spotted the lion’s meal, a dead rabbit the usual meal offered carnivores at the zoon, placed on a tree limb. The keeper finished his and left the cage. A few moments later the mountain lion entered.

These two photos are the best ones I got and it was such a treat seeing that big cat stalking about his home.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. -Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who has hung around writers or artists is familiar with the concept of WIP, the Work In Progress and da Vinci’s quote when coupled with the idea of the WIP leads us to the conclusion that all art is a WIP until it is abandoned.
While an artist is crafting their piece they may go through a number of drafts, revisions, and alterations as they search for the right expression of the motivating ideas. A work in progress has flaws, expression that in conflict with the ideals of the piece, sometimes you have to wave your hands around the troubles, sometimes you have to cut them out entirely, and sometimes you have to incorporate them, turning defects into admirable qualities. The artist must struggle to maintain a clear vision of their art, neither refusing to be dragged into despair by the faults nor allowing the beauty to blind them to the required work and corrections.
The United States of America is a social and political work of art and like all art it remains a work in progress. More importantly America is a collaborative work, all of use, left and right, majority and minority, are the artists working together crafting this monumental, lasting, and inspiring project. We suffer the same pitfalls of any artist as work. It is easy to see only the flaws in our history the terrible crimes committed by the artists before us and feel the temptation to burn the canvas in defeat and despair. It is also easy to see only the shining moments of greatness, to see only the ideals and be blind to real and continue pain falling short of those ideals inflict upon others. Both views are necessary and seeing the work in only one aspect leads to walking away, either because you hate the flaws or because you refuse to see the work that lies ahead, but the work waits for us. It is up to us to continue the craft of this amazing piece, this inspiring project, and to pass on to another generation of artists the vision of what is the United States of America,
Let us not abandon this art.

Two weeks ago today I underwent a minor surgical procedure. Anyone who has met me knows that my eyelids droop and that my right eyelid dipped much farther than my left. During an eye exam last year it was discovered that the lid was drooping far enough to begin to interfere with my vision and it was suggested that I have an operation to correct it. Being that the surgeon was booked up for months and my day-job was hitting its busiest period of the year we delayed the surgery until this month.

I live just a couple of miles away from the hospital where he performed the surgery. It was an interesting experience/. They used a local to make sure I felt no pain or discomfort and a sedative to make me relaxed but there was no general anesthetic, throughout the entire operation I was awake and aware.

We started, after I closed my eyes, with the doctor making marks on my lids to guide his incisions. I could tell, even though there was no discomfort, when he switched from inking up the area to slicing it with a scalpel. As he worked he listened to Motown and R&B songs prompting me to think about the scene Doctor Strangewhen we are introduced to character in a surgical theater. Occasionally either he or someone else would ask me to make sure I was doing well and no feeling any pain and aside from the bride lighting, which penetrated my lids, I was comfortable.

I spent about an hour and half in post-op and recovery, exhibited no signs of any adverse reactions to the drugs they had administered and by late afternoon I was sent home.

The first several days with tedious, ice packs applied every hour to my eyelids and pretty much stuck in a reclining chair unable to do any of my normal activities. The doctor had instructed me to stay home from the day-job for a week and that is what I did.

Now I have been back on my feet doing things normally and everything is healing as expected. My lids are dis discolored and inflamed but I am able to work, read, and most of the time simply ignore the slight discomfort they present.

Today is the day I have a minor surgical procedure. It’s outpatient and I should be back home this afternoon. As it deals with my eyelids I suspect that for the next several days I shall not be posting on this blog.

Have a good time everyone

I awoke with asymmetrical sinus congestion and a migraine. While I have made it to the day-job there will be no essay posted today.

As I may not be feeling my best in the morning, here is a preloaded video from last week’s Saturday Night Live.

Consider it a Friday Funny.