LA-bound tomorrow to meet Bill Henderson at the Hollywood Bowl for his birthday. Oh yeah, Herbie Hancock will be there, too!

Joe's Birthday

Today is Joe’s birthday. He’s what – 86? Something like that.

Joe is an amiable fellow. He likes to eat, drink, and be merry. He enjoys conversation, and is an excellent party guest.

He has a dark side, I suppose, inasmuch as when he drinks too much, he becomes overly friendly with women – a touchy-feely thing that doesn’t endear him to some female companions – and he can become overly argumentative, even belligerent, with some men-friends. But that’s only when he drinks too much, which isn’t often.

It probably would be a problem more often if Joe were younger, and if his vision were better, and if he could get out to his favorite restaurants and watering holes. Unfortunately, his vision is growing dimmer by the day. Glaucoma.

He’s had the pharmaceutical treatments and surgeries. Nothing has worked particularly well, although there were months where he seemed slightly better, or perhaps the progress of the disease was slowed.

But graphed, it’s a downhill line. He knows it. He broods about it. He feels trapped, mostly, in his home, dependent on friends and family to take him out.

It doesn’t make matters better that his older brother, John, is in a health crisis. John is 91 and going downhill fast in the past months. Diabetes has been John’s problem for years, and at his age...

On the other hand, Joe’s older brother, Fred, is a healthy 97 and still jetting around to see his 93-year-old girlfriend. His new girlfriend, that is. Last year, Fred had a different girlfriend. I think she was too young, though – probably only in her late 80s.

Anyway, today is Joe’s birthday. Happy birthday, Joe!

Face It

My face is unfamiliar to me. It’s not like I remember it – thin and babyish, which led my father to call me ‘Babyface.’

That nickname led to a great deal of annoyance on my part, especially when I was pitching. Dad would call out from the stands, “Come on, Babyface. Throw a strike!” It got results, of course, in part because I was a control pitcher and a little extra focus and incentive – thanks, Dad – helped me find the strike zone.

My fastball topped out at 79 mph, so I had to be a control pitcher. I had a decent curve and a good change-up, along with an occasional sidearm fastball that tailed away from left-handed hitters. All together, my repertoire was enough for me to get by as a pitcher through the age of 15 or so. After that, there were bigger and faster pitchers who threw fastballs in the mid-80s. I faced a few of those guys and waved at a few blurs going through the strike zone.

Probably my finest game as a pitcher was back in 1969, when our Wildcats played the first game of the minor-league season. I was 9, too young to be eligible for the majors, and we were featured in this opening game at the major league field at Rancho, which was a big deal. We Wildcats won 3-2. If you’ve ever seen a minor league Little League game, you know that that was a pitchers’ duel.

There were no pitch-count rules back then. About the only rule I can remember was that every kid had to play at least two innings in each game.

My Dad was 51 at the time – about my age, in other words. I wonder what he thought of his face?

The fuss about Inception

I’ve been looking forward to saying this for a long time: I saw Inception. It was my first movie-date with Michelle,and it went very well. I discovered that she has no irritating movie-house habits. She doesn’t talk during the movie, either to me or to the screen. She doesn’t chew her ice. After the film, we had an intelligent and engaged discussion about it.What more could a movie-lover ask?

Meanwhile, about the movie. It’s good. Of course it’s good, because it’s from Christopher Nolan, and he hasn’t made a bad film. I suppose he will, eventually, make a dull film. Also, let’s admit that Insomnia was not a wonderfully cut and highly polished gem. But so far, his track record is splendid.

Nolan is a writer/director I (sort of) met in 1998 at the SFIFF, when he showed Following, his first feature film. He was a boyish 27 at the time, and he’s a boyish 40 now. I admire the fact that he works with his wife, Emma Thomas, producing his films.

I distinctly remember thinking, “This is a guy to watch.” You know how you know that kind of thing? Well, you know, then.
Oh, right – the fuss about Inception. It’s a crazy, convoluted, messy plot that will sustain little logical scrutiny. The film is dramatically strong, and the cast is terrific. I never really worried about the labyrinthine plot. I sat back and enjoyed. No fuss, just fun.

It will be more fun to see Chris Nolan going further, and eventually doing something that will top Memento in terms of deserved fuss. I really look forward to that.

I do (partly) blame her for my distraction from social media. I do.

On one hand, I regret not updating my social media for many days at a time. On the other hand, it means I'm having a good'n'busy life...

Sayings

Among the many sayings famously attributed to the ancient Chinese, one is rendered thus: “May no new thing arise.”

It’s not so, of course. Research shows this saying to be no older than 1950, when it appeared in a story in Astounding Science Fiction. Patrick O’Brian used it in his The Wine-Dark Sea, transporting its origin to Catalonia: “Que no hayan novedades,” Stephen Maturin said to a man on the street in the port of Callao. (For the character of Maturin, this was a perfect match of sentiment, linguistic origin, and situation.)

Of course, new things do arise. Growth, change, and evolution are necessary – although this doesn’t make any of them easier, or simpler to accept, than stasis. Rather the contrary – the slowing-down of time, the moments in which ticking stops, are easier to understand, remember, and enjoy.

It is the endless summer day of childhood I recall – the stretching-out of an afternoon, the sense of never-ending sunlight, and the endless possibilities before dinnertime. Years later, it would be a languorous dusk in the arms of a lover, the post-coital drowsiness as evening settles in, when nothing is missing and perfect contentment is possible.

Nothing lasts forever, of course. Moreover, we wouldn’t want anything to stay the same. There’s something disturbing about a fly in amber.

But, that said, some things endure. Some moments remain in memory, unchanged. They are the perfect moments we want to remember – caught on an endless summer day, the light just so, her smile ever thus.

You know those days. You remember those moments. You, reader, you – you smile at your own private amber.

Stay there – y que no hayan novedades.

Benedict Canyon

I am in Los Angeles for a moment. My cousins are staying at this house in Benedict Canyon. It’s 3300 square feet of living space, with a pool in the back and a tennis court in front.

The tennis court is a perfectly laudable use of space, as it sits on land that would otherwise be relatively useless, next to the 80 meters of driveway that lead uphill to the house.

Everything is quiet, except for the intermittent traffic noise and the nearly constant pool pump. You quickly get used to those. They become background susurrus, and all you hear are the hawks crying above, as well as the various other birds, and squirrels. For crazy punctuation, once in a while you hear the lizards chasing each other through dry leaves. Those kids.

In short, a lazy day here is not too bad. Until further notice, I will be sitting by the pool, getting nothing done.

Battlestar Galactica

I’ve watched BSG about 2.5 times, I think. I’d like to watch it again. It is my favorite TV show ever, ahead of Mad Men, Dexter, and Star Trek, among other competitors.

Why? It’s the characters. Sure, the main plot was fun. To quote Wikipedia:

Battlestar Galactica is set in a distant part of the galaxy, where a civilization of humans live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies. In the past, the Colonies had been at war with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons. With the unwitting help of a human named Gaius Baltar, the Cylons launch a sudden sneak attack on the Colonies, laying waste to the planets and devastating their populations. The approximately 50,000 human survivors flee into space aboard any spacecraft they can reach. Of all the Colonial Fleet, the eponymous Battlestar Galactica appears to be the only military capital ship that survived the attack. Under the leadership of Colonial Fleet officer Commander William "Bill" Adama (Olmos) and President Laura Roslin (McDonnell), the Galactica and its crew take up the task of leading the small fugitive fleet of survivors into space in search of a fabled refuge known as Earth.

It’s a sturdy plot. There are plenty of fun subplots, and subsubplots. There are many twists, turns, and unexpected events. But, no, ultimately, it isn’t these elements that make me adore BSG.

Rather, it’s the characters and their evolution. They act in realistic ways. They evolve. They are sometimes noble. Often they disappoint. But always, they engage. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you become involved with them.

SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to talk about the characters in ways that could totally spoil things up for you if you don’t know BSG and intend to watch it someday.

Did I mention this is a SPOILER ALERT? Okay. Good.

Nominally, the series is about four main characters: Bill Adama, Laura Roslyn, Lee Adama, and Kara Thrace. These characters, along with characters called Gaius Baltar, Number Six, and Number Eight, are played by the top-billed actors, whose names appear in the opening credits.

But there is a long list of other characters who started small and ended up being hugely important: Saul Tigh, Karl Agathon, Galen Tyrol, Felix Gaeta, Anastasia Dualla, Cally Tyrol, Samuel Anders, Number Three (D’Anna), Ellen Tigh, Tory Foster, Dr. Cottle, and Number Two (Leobin), to name a dozen.


None of the actors playing those characters ever moved up into the land of ‘series regulars’ who were named in the opening credits – not even Helo, who went on to become the Grandfather of Humanity. It was a seven-star show from beginning to end. But I could name another dozen characters which were important and riveting: the vile Number One (Cavil), the endearingly fiery pilot Kat, and the president’s sweet assistant Billy, for instance, were all compelling characters who we loved or hated.

When Billy died saving Dualla (the episode was called ‘Sacrifice’), I felt kinda sad. He was so young. He hardly knew anything about girls. I realized, of course, Billy was a character in a TV show. I understood that about ‘Billy.’ But somehow, the way his character grew, my Inner Viewer forgot about that. My Inner Viewer was connected to Billy because he fell in love with Dualla – and who didn’t love Dualla?

(Let’s leave aside the fact that Paul Campbell, the actor who played Billy, was offered a five-year contract for the series, and when he didn’t display appropriate enthusiasm for the opportunity, they wrote him out of the show. That’s a subject for another blog – the way things happen behind the scenes, and how it affects the scenes.)

That was season two. By season four, when Dualla unexpectedly commits suicide, I had gotten used to the fact that these people – er, these characters – were human. I knew them well, and yet they surprised me, just like regular people I know in regular life.



Starbuck was probably the most human character of all. What a piece of work. When she revealed that her single biggest fear was “being forgotten,” it felt Shakespearean. When she disappeared in the final moments of the final episode... I have never been more moved by a piece of fiction.

I’m going to stop now and return later to BSG. Meanwhile, isn’t it nice to think there will be another movie in the future? Or perhaps another series? That’s what the fan press is reporting, anyway.
Hope springs eternal.