Posted on by mwhybark

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL…

… and he shall appear.

In tonight’s episode of ENTERPRISE, a comedy number featuring the NX-01 being boarded by Ferengi pyrates aided by (help me, Batman!) knockout gas, one of the crafty interstellar, er, “traders” was played by…

None other than Clint Howard, ladies and gentlemen, mentioned just ONE DAY AGO on this broadcast! At that time, I was referring primarily to his previous immortal role in the alll-time classic ROCK AND ROLL HGH SCHOOL but also by way of his appearance in the Classic Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” as “Commander of the First Federation flagship Fesarius”. He was all of seven at the time.

It says here that he was born on April 20, 1959; if we accept the data, that’s FORTY-THREE years between episodes (unless I’m missing an appearance, a distinct possibility) and a whopping EIGHTY-SIX percent of his life to date – very possibly a new record for coming full circle as a guest actor on Trek.

You can also see him in the role here as well as in some other choice roles. As Balok, he ends the episode with the unforgettable words “This… is tranya. I hope you savor it as do I”, and pours everyone a little cup of orange juice.

Ladies and gentlemen, CLINT HOWARD!!! (applause)

(beat)

(beat)

wait a minute… “The Clint Howard Variety Show”? What the hell is going on here?

Posted on by mwhybark

INNOVATION in UNION BUSTING

An AP wire story out of Miami by Ken Thomas (Workers: Voodoo Signs Present Before Union Vote):

“Workers at a nursing home testified Monday that they felt threatened by voodoo signs they saw before a union election that lawyers for the facility say should be nullified.”

The evidence:

“Lula Torina McClain-Barrett, a dietary aide, said she was worried after finding half-filled cups of water placed on cabinets and rows of three pennies in drawers that held sheets.

She said she was warned by others who knew about voodoo not to touch the pennies.

“After she told me they could be evil, I left them alone,” McClain-Barrett said.”

Well, geez, no wonder they were worried. The case is in adjudication by the NLRB. If they admit it as a harassment case, it sets an interesting precedent for what could be admissible in the future.

Far be it from me to mock someone’s belief system – um, wait, no, no, it’s not.

On the other hand, maybe this means I can put a voodoo curse on the American Enterprise institute:

In the name of Papa Legba and Baron Samedi, may all you pinheads at AEI experience catastrophic software failures that make it impossible for you to disseminate your evil propaganda.

Great! got that problem all taken care of, at least until someone accuses me of lining pennies up.

Posted on by mwhybark

WHISKEY FUMETTI

Fumetti are photo-based comic strips. Readers of the National Lampoon in the seventies will recall the form from there.

Here is a cautionary tale concerning the inherent dangers of John Barleycorn.

Here are some other comix I’ve done, in the more conventional pen-and-ink manner: comix.whybark.com

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Akira Kurosawa, part one

PBS’ Great Performances recently ran a 2-hour documentary biopic on the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

It was pretty interesting – and included some truly horrifying newsreel shots of the carnage and most especially corpses left after the great Tokyo quake and fire of the mid-1920s, in which as many died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thought to have pershed. Apparently the young Kurosawa was toured through the wreckage and stinking dead by his older brother; it’s thought to be reflected in Ran (which I love because of its’ unredeemable hopelessness about humanity).

There were some tiny excerpts from films he made during the war, too, that I found interesting.

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Smithsonian, April 2002

Lovely Lincoln portrait cover.

My faves in the mag were the extremely cool photos by Edward Burtynsky of shipbreaking in India – the scale of the fragments of the ships, and their worn quality, reminds me very strongly of SF art that impressed me as a child.

These images seemed to point out to me that what is really interesting in SF is the intersection of technology and human, the amazing and dangerous juxtapositions that come from this. It’s as though someone had grounded not an oil tanker on the shores of the Indian subcontintent, but an interstellar freighter.

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