Ephemeral Isle

 

Archives

Ephemeral Isle

Monday

1 March 2004

St. David's Day

Today’s topic: the common cold.  Why?  Because I’ve got one.  I thought I was lucky the past couple of weeks when the rest of the family was down with the flu and I squeaked by with a minor case of the sniffles.  Then when Emma and Mama woke up this morning hale and hardy, I found myself with all the strength of a parboiled mouse.  And I know why I’m ill today.  It’s because my wife and father in law are off running vital errands and so instead of getting to just lie in bed and wallow in my own misery, I have to watch Emma while she tries to find out exactly how many things about the house she is not allowed to colour with her crayons.  This is not easy when I’m so ill that I’m facing not so much an out of body experience as a pending spiritual eviction notice. 

Having rescued the cadenza for the fourth time, taking a walk while feeling like death insufficiently heated in the microwave sounded like a pretty good idea.  By the time we’d covered the Sunday market, poked into the antiques mall, and done a complete circuit of the Freemont shops, Emma was mellow enough to let Daddy have a break over a cappuccino and croissant with the only interruption being a quick bit of finger dancing to the music for child’s amusement.

By amazing luck, Emma fell asleep on the way home, allowing me to just sit back for a couple of hours and stare at the ceiling in a cold-medicine induced coma.  But of course, what would my luck be like if it hadn’t turned out that today was the day that we were throwing away the sofa.

I hate moving furniture.  It’s right up there with root canal and discussing the nature of the soul with a grown woman who thinks that Herbie Goes Bananas is a life-altering experience.  Furniture is not meant to be moved; it is meant to sit where it is.  Furniture is not designed to grasped and lifted; it is designed to sit and not move.  If you do not believe me, look at the campaign furniture that was so popular with the British Army in the days of Empire.  This was furniture that folded up neatly into trunks equipped with straps to secure them and handles for carrying them.  There were no weird protuberances, no bizarrely placed centres of gravity, and no upholstery to catch on things.  This our old sofa had in abundance.

Did I mention that it was also a hide-a-bed?  Perhaps the single most fiendish contraption ever?  Not as comfortable as a regular sofa and with too many cushions that shift and sink in the too-large gaps in its frame, it is enhanced by its ability to fold out into a creaky bed with a paper-thin mattress and steel tubing that you are guaranteed to whack some sensitive part of your anatomy on at least once that night.  Not that you’ll notice the pain much because it will dull into overall ache that encompasses you entire body the next morning and make you wish that you’d curled up in the easy chair.

It is also ridiculously heavy.  Where is the logic in that?  Who buys hide-a-beds?  People who are short on space?  Who are usually short on space?  Flat dwellers.  Where are most flats located?  Up a dirty great flight of stairs with all sorts of narrow turns that are impossible to negotiate.  That is why I enjoyed moving its stained, tattered carcass down to my father in law’s truck while my head swam with cold viruses so much.  Makes being ill seem so worthwhile. 

Tuesday

2 March 2004

The war on terror and the recent row over GCHQ listening in on the UN has once again placed the intelligence services in the public eye, the government ear, and the media rectum.   In order to place the current situation in the proper context, I feel that is time to come forward and reveal my own involvement in the shadowy world of espionage where intrigue is ever in the air, danger lurks around every corner, and death never takes a holiday, though he does sometimes knock off early to get a jump on the weekend.   It’s the sort of life that calls for a cool head and a strong bladder, but being only eight years old I felt I was up to the challenge.

Like most of my contemporaries, I was recruited into the Boy’s Own Secret Service via episodes of Danger Man, The Man from UNCLE, Secret Squirrel, The Avengers, Mission Impossible, The Champions, Jonny Quest, and the sort of cheap James Bond rip-offs that were so prevalent at that time.  I think that this was a deliberate and rather clever recruiting programme on the part of the British and American governments.  With the CIA and MI6 grappling with the Soviets and Red Chinese, it was left to the under-twelves to handle the peripheral threat of SPECTRE, THRUSH, the Hood, Fu Manchu, and other assorted super villains who had designs on the woods and playgrounds of the West.   So, clutching our briefing papers, which appeared to the uninitiated to be comic books and annuals, and armed with the best gadgets that toy manufacturers and our fevered imaginations could devise, we set forth against the dacoits and death rays that we were certain lurked behind every roundabout and hedge row.

For my part, I started out in what you might call the cryptography section.  My first pieces of equipment was a James Bond wallet that contained a magic slate, a pamphlet on how to write encrypted messages and make invisible ink, and a photo of an Aston Martin DB5, which was included as some sort of incentive, I suppose.  I was also issued with a pen with red and blue inkwells and a pair of slit-like spectacles with red lenses.  The idea was that you would write your message in blue ink and then scribble over it with the red ink.  This was supposed to make the message unreadable unless you were wearing the red-tinted specs.  That was the theory, anyway, but as I was the only agent in my part of Yorkshire, I never had occasion to send any messages, so I went in for more active spying and ended up using the spectacles for playing X-Men.

If you glance at toyshops today, you soon notice that the aspiring junior spy of today is remarkably ill equipped.  Spy gear today is mostly things like wallets with magnifying glasses and voice recorders, specs that beam messages to one another, motion detectors, and eavesdropping mikes.  Useful things, to be sure, but not much help when you’re being chased through the schoolyard by Blofeld’s henchmen armed with submachine guns.  For that you need something with a bit more oomph.  In my day, you wouldn’t go out with a "secret" camera that strapped to your temple.  Scaramanga would be on you like a shot if you tried that wheeze.  If you needed a secret camera, an old cigar lighter made a decent Minox.  Better to concentrate resources on where it counted: Firepower.

My main armament was a Man from UNCLE pistol that was notable for having a grip that was the exact opposite of ergonomic and almost impossible to keep hold of, but most of what we had in the field consisted of the usual assortment of plastic Lugers, water pistols, and cap guns pressed into service.  But you never could tell when SMERSH might disarm you, so you needed a back up— preferably four or five, because our “secret” operations tended to consist largely of running gun battles.   The Mattel Corporation was particularly useful in this regard and provided us with a remarkable hidden arsenal including:

The Radio Rifle.  This was a large transistor radio that transformed into a cap-firing rifle at the touch of a button.  It was impressive, but it always struck me as being more suitable for Day of the Jackal sort of missions, because I just couldn’t see 007 toting a dirty big radio about.

Wednesday

3 March 2004

Bleeding Edge Arts Department

The theatre world was electrified today by the establishment of ShoQue theatre; a beyond avant garde troupe dedicated with breaking the mould of traditional performance spaces.  In its inaugural season, ShoQue does away with the tired old theatre tradition of holding performances in a “theatre” and has also broken away from “street” “’theatre’”.  It has abandoned the need for an audience to show up at a particular place and time.  ShoQue has taken the next step in progressive theatre by bringing the performance directly to the audience wherever he, she, it, they may be. 

ShoQue operates on a purely subscription basis.  Patrons pay a fee for a full season of performances and provide ShoQue with a photograph, address, telephone number, and other personal information.  This allows ShoQue to descend upon its audience members unannounced for an exciting evening, or morning or mid-afternoon, of truly innovative theatre.  This season’s offerings (in random order) include:

• Annoying visitors.  In this arch comment on middle class life, a trio of ShoQue actors appear at you front door at a most inconvenient time and proceed to drink all your gin, talk loudly, and refuse to take notice of any hints to leave while they eat up your time with appallingly boring anecdotes.
• Street mugging: a one-man play.  Brings the danger of the streets to life.  ShoQue veteran Guy Montague Björnson leaps out of the bushes and gives you a merciless beating about the head and shoulders before relieving you of all valuables.
• Telemarketing: a drama in four acts.  You will never look at your telephone the same way again when the ShoQue troupe barrages you with relentless harassing phone calls day and night.
• Where’s my Car?  Examines to pointlessness of material possessions and the pressing need for public transport as you come down in the morning to discover your car has vanished without a trace.
• How could you?!  A show about the fragility of love.  ShoQue makes your wedding into a true happening as Prunella Avis-Makmud arrives at the altar carrying a small child (Harcourt Elliot) and declares that YOU are the father— even if you’re the bride!
• Guilty.  ShoQue turns to farce in this imaginative comedy involving an anonymous accusation of drug trafficking, a doctored security video, and the confused testimony of a four-year-old child.  There is a six to four chance that this will be a double-bill performance with Unfortunate Incident in the Men’s Prison Shower.

Subscribe today and receive a free coup de theatre tote bag.

Thursday

4 March 2004

Culinary Safety Department

When Calamari Marinara goes horribly wrong!

Friday

5 March 2004

Election 2004 Department

For understandable reasons, some of the suggestions for making the American presidential debates more interesting were rejected out of hand. 

Saturday

6 March 2004

There are some things I will not spend money on until I have no choice.  Haircuts, for example.   By nature, I am the sort who prefers his hair short, but keeping it short without looking as though it was cut with a knife and fork means shelling out fifty dollars every four weeks, which my penny-pinching protestant upbringing baulks at, even though I’m happy to fork over fifteen dollars for a moleskine notebook to scribble rubbish in.  I also have such severe astigmatism that when I’m in the barber’s chair without my glasses I’m as blind as a bat with golf balls stuck in his eyes.  I have to sit there helplessly while the “stylist,” as they insist on being called these days despite my adamant protests, does whatever it is they’re doing while I wonder if this lucky dip will end up with something acceptable or if I’ll be wearing my hat to the breakfast table for the next three weeks.  Not to mention the humiliating moment when the stylist says, “How does that look?” and I stare into blurry space asking the void for my specs back.  This is usually followed by my praising whatever atrocity has been visited on my head so that I can make for the exit with all haste before something worse happens. 

No wonder I fall back on any excuse to avoid a haircut until I look like a cross between an Old World symphony conductor and that Little John in the old Richard Green Robin Hood series. 

It’s the same with shoes.  I bought one pair of loafers just before Emma was born and have worn them day in and day out since.  Not that they’re my only footwear, but people tend to look at me odd when I’m walking down the road in a tweed jacket and a pair of ancient, cracked, yellow sea boots.  True, I could always wear my dress shoes, but besides being amazingly uncomfortable, they have leather soles that are so slippery that in a hilly city like Seattle I could take one step on Capital Hill and end up skidding into Elliott Bay at 60 mph. 

My old shoes, however, were beginning to look like something out of Charlie Chaplin’s wardrobe.  When I bought them, I figured that I’d spent my hundred bucks and that at such a price a pair of shoes should be good until at least my daughter’s wedding, but workmanship isn’t what it was and after less than two years constant wear my brogues had gone from broken in to comfortable.  Of course, that assumes that your definition of comfort includes having one sole worn as thin and slick as a balloon skin while the other has a hole worn right through to the insole.

In the cold light of day, I had to admit that my shoes were in such a state that Napoleon’s men retreating from Moscow would have passed them up.  So, I paid a visit to the shop where I bought the last pair.  It was a shop that specialised in hiking boots and the like and their loafers were actually sturdy walking shoes disguised as light city footwear, a deception that suited me just fine.  Surprisingly, the firm was still in business, though the staff had been long replaced by their grandchildren. 

The last time I’d gone there my wife had been along to buy a pair of clogs.  That meant that I experienced the dreaded woman-shopping-for-shoes lacuna.  For some reason, there is a law that states that a woman buying one pair of shoes of a type already decided upon must entail examining every shoe in the shop regardless of make, model, style, colour, size, or permutations thereof before buying the shoes she came in for in the first place.  This process is so minutely involved that I had ample chance to check my e-mail on my mobile, play two games of chess on my PDA, and still have time left over to examine every nail head in the shop in detail.

A man buys shoes with a distinctly different set of priorities.  My transaction went something like this:

Me: “I need a pair of shoes, please.”

Clerk: “Certainly, sir.  What kind?”

Me: “Like the ones I have on.”

Clerk: “We don’t sell them anymore.”

Me: “Bother.  I’ll take those over there, then.  The black ones.”

Clerk: “What size?”

Me: “Nine.”

The clerk retires and returns with two boxes.

Clerk: “I found the ones you wanted in brown.  They’re half price.”

Me: “I’ll take them both.”

I’m in and out in five minutes with enough shoe leather to keep me shod and out of that time-consuming ordeal for another four years.  And I got a neat little pocket compass with each pair, so I’m pretty well set by my standards. 

Now if only people would stop pestering me about how my jacket is falling to tatters.

Sunday

7 March 2004

Soufflé Queen Does Porridge!

Oh, come on, headline editors of the world!  It was just lying there!  Pick it up!

8 March 2004

Everyday Plunging Incidents Department

Suddenly, Jessica realised that there was more to her blocked toilet than met the eye. 

9 March 2004

Spalding Gray (1941-2004)

On 7 March 2004, a body was recovered from the East River in New York City.  Yesterday, it was positively identified from dental records as that of Spalding Gray, the actor who had gone missing on 10 January 2004.  Let us pray that he has found the peace that eluded him in life.

"Suddenly, there was no time and no fear and there was no body to bite. There were no longer any outlines.  It was just one big ocean.  My body had blended into the ocean."

Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia, 1985.

Wednesday

10 March 2004

Bleeding Edge Sports Department

We now join the Men's Dragging the Contents of a Small Broom Cupboard Across the Goodwin Sands competition already in progress. 

Thursday

11 March 2004

Yesterday, I went to see 2001: a Space Odyssey at the Seattle Cinerama.  For 99.99% of you that sentence has elicited a “so what?” response, but for the remaining fraction of rabid film buffs it generated the sort of awe and envy that is normally associated with mentioning that Sandra Bullock stopped by in a string bikini and she brought beer.

I’ve always had a great love for 2001.  In my list of the five greatest films of all time, it comes in an easy third— right between Lawrence of Arabia and The Maltese Falcon.  It’s not the most enjoyable of films, I’ll grant you.  If I want pure entertainment I’ll pop in Forbidden Planet.  2001 is more high art than anything else.  You can enjoy it, sure, but its like going to the National Gallery to look at the Rembrandts— something you have to work at to really get something out of it.  It takes thought and concentration.  It’s fun, but tiring, and you certainly wouldn’t want to hang one in your living room.  No matter how great a work of art it is, it would still be rather oppressive.  2001 is the same meat.  It is so unrelentingly visual and deals with such weighty issues that flipping through the channels and finding it on TCM has about as much joy to it as being invited to a surprise marathon.  I much prefer to have a tad more notice so I can prepare for it.  I have a DVD of 2001, but having a toddler around the place I rarely watch it except for study purposes.  It tends to spend most of the time sitting on the shelf along with my horror and war films earmarked as “those films I will not be watching until I am sure Emma is on a play date or fast asleep.”  In other words, films that I will not be watching for some time to come.  That was why I was delighted when a friend of mine told me that the Cinerama was playing a matinee of 2001 in Cinerama format.  That’s a rare enough event that I was able to pull in some babysitting points and buzz into town.

Built in the 1960s, the Seattle Cinerama is something of a movie-house dinosaur.  Like the great silent movie palaces of the ‘20s, the Cinerama was made for a cinema format that is now dead.  The silent movie houses were built to accommodate silent films with their need for live musical accompaniment, be it an organ, a full orchestra, or a badly tuned piano.  The Cinerama, as the name suggests, was built especially for films made in the Cinerama format.  If you’re too young to recall Cinerama, and I will refrain from whacking you with my cane if you’re polite, it was supposed to be Hollywood’s ultimate “so there!” to television; the first of the great wide screen formats using three projectors, a screen curved like a slice out of a radio telescope, and a seven channel stereo system that would blast your fillings out when the bass kicked in.  It was revolutionary, it was spectacular, it took the world by storm, and it was only used in eight features.  Cinerama was breath taking.  The screen curved around you so that, if you were sitting close enough, you were literally enveloped by the picture.  You couldn’t see the entire screen and had to rely on peripheral vision to follow the action.  If there was an aerial sequence, you could feel your stomach drop and if the camera panned too quickly you stood a good chance of losing your pop corn.  It was tremendous for showing wide-open spaces and broad spectacle.  It was a pity that the actors had to stand at odd angles to compensate for the distortion the lenses caused and that the projection made Agnes Moorehead’s nose look like a casaba melon.  It was also an incredibly expensive process, both for filming and for exhibiting.  Cinemas had to be virtually rebuilt to accommodate the multiple projectors, the elaborate sound system, and the giant curved screen.  It wasn’t surprising that it didn’t catch on with many cinema owners. 

To obviate this, the backers of Cinerama in the early ‘'60s tried building cinemas designed expressly to show Cinerama films.  That’s how the Seattle Cinerama came into being.  It was a wonderful example of Googie décor, a giant auditorium, and backing the wrong horse.  It was like making a house for nothing but 3D movies, and you can only watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon so often.  Small wonder that it fell on hard times along with the rest of downtown Seattle in the ‘70s and was only saved and restored in the ‘'90s by Paul Allen, who had a couple of billion in mad money to throw around.

 2001: a Space Odyssey was not a Cinerama feature, which is fortunate for all of us.  I couldn’t imagine Kubrick sitting still for those clunky Cinerama rigs, nor are they very forgiving to production flaws.  Instead, 2001 was filmed in Super Panavision 70 and Todd-Ao, but a Super Cinerama version was printed and it was one of the few surviving prints that I watched.

I was in the second row, well within the Cinerama kill zone, and the experience was something of a curate’s egg.  2001 is a film that should only be seen on the big screen.  I’ve watched it on every size screen down to a portable DVD player and a computer monitor window while typing, and bigger is definitely better.  Cinema is best, but a good home theatre system will do if you’re anti-social like me.  That’s because Kubrick loved to stuff the scenes with tiny details.  The logos on the orbiting satellites, the control rooms in the lunar landing bays; even the windows of Orion shuttle have tiny back projection screens with little scenes going on.  On a small screen you miss all that, not to mention all the contrasts and textures that Kubrick used to compose his scenes like a painter at his palette.  You also need a big screen to get the actual scale of the machines that Kubrick was depicting.  Remember, this was shot in 1967-68 when the Apollo programme was just getting going.  Spacecraft were tiny things not much bigger than a compact car and here was Kubrick showing gargantuan space stations, lunar landers the size of gasometers, and an interplanetary spacecraft bigger than the Statue of Liberty.  You needed the sheer expanse of screen to get that idea across on a visceral level. 

I also noticed that there is a problem with watching a film in Cinerama that was never designed for it.  Kubrick did not plan for his audience to rely on peripheral vision.  I could only really see a third of the screen without moving my head, which meant that I would miss something important if it weren’t for the fact that I already knew the film by heart.  And the noise!  That monster sound system may have been great for This is Cinerama back in ’52, but when that overture hit me it was like being socked with a pillow.  Also, there was a flaw on the soundtrack that came out like a weird thumping hum like someone to the left of me was beating a large cushion with a hammer.  There is also a limit to the practicality of magnifying things for the big screen.  Let me put it this way, Keir Dullea had spots on his face that were the size of a small child and I swear that when he was deactivating HAL there was something up his nose that should not have been there.  I also cannot believe that what I was seeing was completely in line with Kubrick’s vision.  Not unless he really wanted every horizontal line bowed and every vertical foreshortened.  I was even amazed that I could see the faint Xs the size of dinner tables that the projectors used to centre the three strips of film that made the composite.  It was as if the movie was being held on to the screen with sticky tape to keep it from sliding off into our laps from sheer weight. 

Then there was the fact that this was a very old print.  I suspect that it survived as part of someone’s private collection.  The colours were badly faded, there were crackles on the soundtrack that came across like gunfire, and the wear lines were so bad that in some scenes it looked like there was a hailstorm on the Moon. 

It reminded me of the old Cinerama slogan, “Cinerama plunges you into a startling new world.”  God, I hope not, I thought, stumbling into the daylight.  I began to understand why only eight Cinerama films were ever made.  It is definitely something that has become the preserve of cinephiles who feel cheated if they cannot recreate the opening night of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  But I think I’ll pass on Cinerama presentations of non-Cinerama films.  It’s not worth the effort.  2001 may be a film that you needed to work at to appreciate, but you weren’t meant to work that bloody hard.

Pity I didn’t go to the Cinerama showing of Krull instead.  After a few pints that might have been fun in an MST3K sort of way.

Friday

12 March 2004

When I declared this site open for business, I set myself a goal of ten visitors a day as proof that the site was “go.”  Well, I checked the counter today and it reads 720.  That sounds fairly respectable until you realise that though davidszondy.com has been officially open since 1 January 2004, the counter started last November when I began building the site.  That means that the average visitor count spread out over four months has been roughly six or seven per day.  Considering that most of those hits are me working on the site and that the rest are the odd search engine spider, my wife, and one or two friends, and it becomes painfully clear that davidszondy.com has a current readership of nought.  That puts me ahead of the Vegan Times Barbeque Bonanza, but not by much.

I don’t mind admitting that I’m a bit disappointed at this.  I would have thought I’d at least get a few people stumbling in because a monkey had got hold of their keyboard, but that hasn’t been the case.  When the search engines finally noticed me I thought that some traffic would trickle in, but the blasted spiders hardly ever visit and when they do they never get beyond the lobby.  The only ones who seem to take any notice of the inside pages are the spiders for the adverts that set their content to match the page, but they don’t seem to tell anyone else what they found there.  I’m amazed at how I can stumble across the worst composed drek on one-page personal sites composed on Notepad that are nothing but two-paragraph screeds about how waffles are telling his water heater to endorse Kerry, but I can’t get a look in.  It’s like being Ian Duncan Smith at a rave. 

I even started an advert campaign to try to lure in some business, but for some reason the banner network I submitted to is taking its own sweet time over things while I keep checking the stats on their site so that I can enjoy the never ending string of zeros for my account. 

I’m hoping that this will turn around soon.  It had bloody well better or I’m wasting my life on a real piece of folly, but in the meantime I guess I’m talking to an empty hall.  Not that I’m unfamiliar with that.  I used to be an actor and have done a few performances to houses that were the complete reverse of packed.  I also used to teach university and talking to a full classroom was often like talking to an empty space. 

So why am I doing this?  Why am I busting a gut trying to cram the time in every day to bang out a column or put together a photo feature?  Why don’t I just let it ride until people show up?  I think it’s mostly because I want to maintain a sense of discipline.  I want to cultivate a work habit that has me happily cranking out columns, putting together new sections, maintaining the shop, and organising the advertising as if I had 10,000 hits a day.  It’s like a restaurant that keeps the buffet stocked with steaming platters even though the lunch crowd hasn’t put in an appearance because they want the food to be hot and ready when they do.  I want this site to be a going concern from the moment my visitors start to show up.  I have no idea when that will be, but I plan to be ready.  I plan to keep on working and using this time to polish my voice for the column.  Also, I like having a growing backlog in the archives for people to explore and see how Ephemeral Isle has evolved. 

If you have somehow stumbled on this site from the outside and the counter reads 724, welcome.  You are our first official visitor.  In the meantime, I shall address myself to the void.

Saturday

13 March 2004

Help. I have been abducted by a car dealership.  More to follow.

Sunday

14 March 2004

Look Before You Land Department

Gary's first (and last) jet pack flight did not end well. 

Monday

15 March 2004

First they said we had to call "stewardesses" "flight attendants..."

Howard was beginning to suspect that Political Correctness was getting a tad overzealous. 

Tuesday

16March 2004

The recent Ephemeral Isle column on 2001: a Space Odyssey attracted such widespread attention that I received a phone call from Morris Finnbaum, the notoriously reclusive film director of such classics as They Died with Their Bicycle Clips On, Gidget Vs. Godzilla, and Shindler’s Grocery List.  You may recall that Mr. Finnbaum was last in the news two years ago when he announced his sudden retirement on the opening night of his final epic Pirates of Morcambe Bay: the Curse of the Blackpool Illuminations which ended with the film critic of the Los Angeles Times leading an enraged mob with torches to burn down Mr. Finnbaum’s home.  He called me because he wanted to set the record straight regarding 2001: a Space Odyssey.  Most people know that the screenplay for 2001 was a collaborative effort between Stanley Kubrick and the Hugo award-winning writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  What many people do not know is that Morris Finnbaum was, in fact, the “Fifth Beatle” of 2001, or rather, the “Third Beatle, if the Beatles had been a duo instead of a quartet” of 2001.  Here, for the first time, Ephemeral Isle is proud to present our exclusive telephonic interview with Marris Finnbaum as he gives us the true story of 2001: a Space Odyssey.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Mr. Finnbaum, I understand that you started out making films that appealed more to the avant garde than the mainstream audience. 

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  I made one-reelers for mail order out of Jersey City.  High-class outfit; the Feds never made an obscenity charge stick. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  And then you moved on, if you will, to more conventional entertainment.

MORRIS FINNBAUM: Quickies for the drive-in circuit.  Yeah.  Bigger bucks for less work.

EPHEMERAL ISLE: How so?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  It didn’t matter if the plot fell flat or if the continuity went south after the first reel.  Why bother?   All the kids were necking by then anyway.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Tell us how you met Stanley Kubrick.

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  I first heard about Stan Kubrick when this guy in a bar told me about this film he’d seen where this guy gets mixed up with an under-age girl.  I said I didn’t do the brown-wrapper stuff anymore and he said that this flick was playing at the Rialto down the street— in a legit house!  Well, I figured any guy who could put that kind of thing up on the screen and not get picked up must have something on the ball, so I figured I’d look him up.  Turns out he’s in England and that’s a long way from Jersey.  Well, things were getting kind of hot… I mean, I needed a vacation, so I thought, what the hey.  So, I get to England and I track Stan down in this restaurant there.  I go up to him and say that I’ve got a business proposition.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  And what did he say?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  He said that he had all the aluminium siding he needed and told me to piss off.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Not the most promising start.

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  These things take time. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  But how did you become his partner?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  That was a lucky break.  I won a ticket to the premiere of Dr. Strangelove in a crap game and when I get there I say “hi” to Stan and he gives me this narrow look and asks if we’d met.  I said nah, must be some other guy.  I give him my card and he calls me up a week later all excited and wants to talk partnership on his next production.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Just like that?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Well, I wasn’t exactly sitting around waiting.  I made a few calls, pulled in some favours, and mentioned some photos I still had, and pretty soon word got to Stan that I was a big mover with MGM and that any project I backed was a lead-pipe cinch. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  But surely Kubrick found out the truth.

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  ‘Course he did, but I hadn’t said anything about anything and besides, everything was in writing by then.  What could he do?

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Whose idea was 2001: a Space Odyssey? 

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Mine.  I said, let’s make a space picture.  Stan got real excited.  He started going on about God and evolution and the destiny of man and I said, what are you talking about?  I was thinking of getting some old radio sets, a couple of model rockets for spaceships, maybe rent some old Tom Corbett spacesuits and Kubrick goes off the deep end.  Took me forever to quiet him down.  Then I got a bottle of scotch and a typewriter, went out to the lake, and banged out a screenplay over the weekend; real audience yanking stuff.  I was fair, though.  I even put in some of that highbrow crap that Stan kept going on about.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  How did Kubrick react?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  You wouldn’t believe the yelling.  He hit the ceiling and I thought he’d never come down.  Called me cheap, lying con artist with all the artistic sentiment of a bucket of pond scum and that my script shouldn’t be used as toilet paper because it was an insult to butts everywhere, but I took it as constructive criticism.  Still, my screenplay is what went on to be the shooting script for 2001.  Mind you, some of my ideas ended up on the floor.  I was the one who came up with the idea for showing that the apes had become intelligent by having them ride tricycles, wear diapers, and smoke huge cigars, but that never made the final cut.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Shot down in the previews?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  The Studio.  Suits didn’t like it.  Too highbrow, they said.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  What did Sir Arthur think of that?

MORRIS FINNBAUM: Who?

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  He wasn’t in on it.

EPHEMERAL ISLE: But I thought Arthur C. Clarke was Kubrick’s main collaborator.

MORRIS FINNBAUM: Strictly a rewrite man.  Stan brought him in to patch the script up after I left.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Why did you leave?  That’s a part of the episode that’s been shrouded in mystery all these years.  Was it creative differences?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Creative Sheamtive.  It was money.  I took one look at that stupid computer of Stan’s; that Hank of Hal or whatever and I said that we were going to lose our shirts with that kind of crud in the movie.  So, I took the story elements that were mine and went off to make my picture while Stan made his.  Out went the electric guitars and in went the long-hair music that Stan had to tack on at the last minute.  That’s why you never see no aliens in 2001.  I had the rights to them. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  And what happened to what you’d written?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  I made my own picture. I went to Japan to make it because it was cheaper.  It was called The Green Slime. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  You mean that Japanese science fiction film with American actors?  The one with the one-eyed electric monsters running around the space station?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Yep.  I directed it myself.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  But didn’t Kinji Fukasaku direct The Green Slime?

MORRIS FINNBAUM: Nah, I did.  Fukasaku just covered for me because of the Japanese film union rules.  Kind of an Alan Smithee thing. 

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  And those green things with the tentacles were originally supposed to be in 2001?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Sure.  That’s what made it.  Hell, We even had Luciana Paluzzi.  Kubrick had to change her role to that black monolith.  I mean, come on, if you’re an ape-man or an astronaut, which are you going to pay more attention to, a slab of coal or a hot Italian babe?

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  So, The Green Slime was basically a remake of 2001. 

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  I like to think of it as the other way round.

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Were you disappointed at your film’s not doing as well as Kubrick’s at the box office?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  I like to think of it as more long-term success.  2001 gets the occasional art house release and lots of hoopty do critic praise that don’t do nothing for the bank balance, but when was the last time it cracked the bargain bin DVD market?  Or get picked up by Mystery Science Theatre 3000?

EPHEMERAL ISLE: That is one way of looking at it, I suppose.  Do you have any plans for future projects?

MORRIS FINNBAUM:  Want to hear about my version of The Passion of the Christ?

EPHEMERAL ISLE:  Not if I can possibly avoid it, thank you.

Wednesday

17 March 2004

St. Patrick's Day

"Very Well, Alone!"

After Low

The Coalition reacts to Spain's capitulation to the terrorists after the Madrid bombings.

18 March 2004

Coping with Modern Technology Department

It was at this point that Gerry began to suspect that this was not a toaster oven after all. 

Friday

19 March 2004

This Day in History

1917: The 127th Allied Deodorant Brigade goes into action at on the Western Front, making trench warfare at least more fragrant.

Saturday

20 March 2004

Communiqué from Dalek Central Command, Skaro

We are the Daleks.  We have learned that Doctor Who is returning to television next year and that the Doctor will be played by Christopher Eccleston, best known to Earth men as the insane Colonel in 28 Days Later.   Personally, we were betting on Richard E.  Grant.  Do not be deceived.  This will not help you.  The Daleks are the supreme power in the universe.  Eccleston’s brooding, introspective acting style will be useless against us.  Since Doctor Who went off the air in 1989 we have been taking acting lessons.  We have been doing late night improv comedy and have toured with our production of No Sex Please, We’re the Superior Beings.  Granted this opened to mixed reviews, but this was before our campaign of extermination against the critics.  Publicity maximised.  Full houses every night.  We cannot be defeated.  The producers know this.  That is why all we got in that 1996 movie was a crummy voice over in the prologue.  What kind of way is that to treat the conquerors of the Universe, I ask you?  But we have exterminated our old agent and replaced him.  This one is better.  He obeys the Daleks.  He got us a walk on in the next Star Wars.  That will show them.  We are this close to a three-picture deal with Miramax.  They think they can get Peter Jackson to direct.  Let’s see the BBC match that deal.  Ha Ha.

We seem to have strayed from our point.  But we are still the superior beings.  We will prevail.   We will exterminate you all.  Provided that you do not run up any stairs. 

21 March 2004

A Date with Destiny Department

As Mission Control signalled that the last of the tequila had been poured into the ice lake,  Doug and Bob opened the throttles of  Blender 1 to create the greatest margarita in history. 

Monday

22 March 2004

Coming Attractions

They opened a new era for mankind— an era of TERROR! 

Ephemeral Pictures presents a new shock experience that will shatter your senses, chill your spine, and unplug your bowels!  Watch, if you dare, the unfolding spectacle of FEAR!

• SEE!  An ordinary handyman changed by a perversion of science into a creature a hundred storeys high!
• SEE!  The entire Cascades mountain range formed into a gigantic rockery!
• SEE!  Mighty redwood forests used to make attractive lawn furniture the size of football stadiums!
• SEE!  The entire national grid rewired in a single day, though he had to go back for fuses in the morning because he didn’t have the right size on hand, though he was sure he did when he started!
• SEE!  The entire might of the United States armed forces helpless as the insane monster does a bit of grouting!
• SEE!  Women with large breasts!  Okay, we’re pandering now!

ATTACK OF THE HANDYMAN!  In   !

Tuesday

23 March 2004

Great Moments in Cinema Department

During the premiere of Emile Trandeau’s experimental masterpiece White Storm of the Polar Bear, no one noticed for over an hour that the film had broken.

Wednesday

24 March 2004

On the Motorway the One-Eyed Man is Definitely Not King

There are many things that I don’t expect to happen in the course of my day.  I don’t tend to fret about meteors crashing into the breakfast table, I don’t consider Vikings rappelling onto the balcony, and I rarely give much thought to fiends appearing out of portals of Hell while I’m fixing the sink.  Maybe I’m living in a fool’s paradise, but please don’t write in to correct me.  I have enough on my plate with unexpected troubles as it is, and when they materialise it’s usually with a whacking great bill in tow.  This morning I was pretty certain that I’d already drawn my allocation of Job’s lot for this week.  My mother is going in for a biopsy later this week and if the results aren’t good, my daughter and I are flying out to visit her.  Family emergencies are never fun. They are especially not fun when they involve the prospect of air travel with a twenty-month old child who seems to have ingested the Energizer bunny at some point in the proceedings.  They are the epitome of not fun when my job involves writing for a web site and I am faced with the prospect of spending days, if not weeks away from that madman’s jumble of boxes, cables, and blinking lights that I call Zen the Computer.  It looked like either the fields would be left fallow or a laptop was going to be needed. 

Now, our house already boasts two laptops.  One is my wife’s, but I can’t take that one because a) she needs it for her own work and she’d kill me if I took it and b) It’s covered with little smiley faces and ladybug stickers and has a bumper sticker on the casing advertising Theatre Babylon with the slogan Have You Hugged Your Gecko Today?  No, I don’t understand it either and have no intention of asking.   Our other laptop is a wee bit obsolete.  And by a wee bit I mean that it comes from a time when it wasn’t all that unusual to see computers still using punch tape drives.  Less face it, aside from the insurmountable compatibility problems and dealing with a 32k memory, showing up on a plane with a Tandy 100 just isn’t cool.  So, it was off to the computer shop to buy a laptop on the hire purchase.  If I’m going to spend that kind of money, I’d rather it were on something like a giant flat screen monitor or a honking big external hard drive to act as a back up for the network, but what do I know? 

Okay, just drive out to the suburb, look for a computer, and head home; what could go wrong? 

Before I go any further, I must explain that have eyesight that is the exact opposite of good.  I often wonder why I wasn’t issued with a dog and a white cane years ago.  I have severe myopia, a very bad case of astigmatism, and in recent years I’ve had to resort to bifocals on my lenses.  Without my glasses I am prisoner in whatever room I’m in.  If I hadn’t already memorised the route to the toilet, I’d never be able to have a pee at night without a lot of fumbling for specs, lamps, and all the attendant cursing.  Suffice it to say, on the bit on my driver’s licence where they record if I need corrective lenses, it says “Oh, yeah!”

So, there I am, driving along the motorway at 70 mph with Emma in her car seat happily munching chips fresh from the fast food.  Cars are whizzing about with their usual gay abandon and total disregard for  human safety.  I reach up and adjust my specs and suddenly I am holding my right lens in my hand.  I’m rocketing down the Speedway of Death and half my field of vision turns into cheesecloth.  Joy!  Worse, I’m in the carpool lane, which is on the extreme left and all the traffic is on my right.  All I can see clearly is the traffic barrier and exactly one half of the lane ahead of me.  And if that wasn’t fun enough, my specs are now off balance and the remaining lens is pulling them off my face.  I’m hurtling along, facing imminent blur-out and my only flesh and heir in riding in the back.  It’s a Greek tragedy with bucket seats.  Fortunately, I carry my prescription sunglasses in the glove box.  Have you ever tried to drive with one hand on the motorway at high speed, try to fumble something out of the glove box with the other, and keep a broken pair of specs on with the other?  Yes, I do know that that’s three hands.  Oh, boy, do I know that it’s three hands!  Tell me about it! 

I get the sunglasses out, but now comes something I hadn’t considered in the nanoseconds I’d had to plan this out.  How the blazes do I get the old pair off and put on the sunglasses?  How do I get them out their case?  The latter was relatively easy; grab the sunglasses and flick the case away.  Then it was opening the sunglasses with one hand while holding my head very still, navigating around a pair of curves until I reached a straight bit, then brace the wheel with my knee while one pair came off and the other went on.  Simple, if you leave out all the flop sweat involved. 

Emma, of course, slept through the whole thing. 

Having reached the computer shop with body in one piece and my nerves in tatters, buying the laptop was a relatively easy job.  I was free of after effects from the drive, except for a tendency to have conversations with myself like Gollum while comparing the computers.  “We wants it.  It is a Pentium, precious.  No, it has no WiFi.  Smeagol wants WiFi.”  The only snag was the phone call to my wife to discuss the feasibility of the financing (try saying that phrase quickly!).  My wife is also the accountant for my business, so I had to run the numbers by her.  Unfortunately, my accountant is also my wife, so it very quickly became a family discussion about the money, my mother’s condition, whether we should sell the Zen 2000 or keep it in the system for Emma, until it dissolved into one of those weird discussions where I’m arguing for buying the computer while asking my wife to for God’s sake talk me out of it.

I actually got a very good deal and the machine, now dubbed the Zen 5000, is now the most advanced piece of hardware on the system.   It’s already proven its worth in that I’ve been able to write this column in the kitchen so that Emma hasn’t felt duty bound to crawl into the computer cables in the office every five minutes and I can finish this up late without keeping the wife awake.  Add to that the number of wireless coffeehouses in the neighbourhood that will afford me the odd hour or so writing while Emma naps and I have to admit that I’m a bit optimistic.  Still and all, though, this is the least welcome good buy that I’ve had since my old car exploded and we had to buy a new one a week before our wedding.   That’s the way to put the damper on buyer satisfaction, but that’s another story.

Thursday

25 March 2004

The current White House head of Cyber Security makes his first public appearance.

Friday

26 March 2004

In the recent issue of Popular Science I came across an article about the Bathroom of Tomorrow.  Well, having read this, I can honestly say that I have seen the future and it most certainly does not work.  For me, the bathroom is the final refuge from the insanity of modern life, but now it appears that the technocrats are making a last death or glory assault against this remaining Fortress of Solitude.  My wife laughs at these sort of sentiments, but then most women seem to think that a lock on the bathroom door is an optional extra rather than a vital necessity.

Today, the bathroom is a place to relieve one's self, wash up, shave, and read old magazines while contemplating the infinite.  But the Bathroom of Tomorrow is supposed to be a combination of gymnasium, medical diagnostic unit, and multimedia centre.  You might possibly get a chance to brush your teeth there if you can get a word in edgewise, but I wouldn’t count on that.  According to the author of this piece, there are some people who call the bathroom a “Personal Care Room.”  I presume that the author, the person who designed the futuristic monstrosity in question, and people with severe cognitive disorders call it that.  The rest will be happy to keep on calling it the bathroom. 

The bathroom of tomorrow, according to the article, will not feel like a clinic.  From the description it will certainly look, sound, and smell like a clinic, but at least it won’t feel like one.  Apparently, as soon as you enter this bathroom, it is supposed to recognise who you are and then shift the toilet, the basins, and presumably the towel rack and various other things to suit your own personal preferences.  Personally, I not at all enamoured with having fixtures shifting about of their own volition and I really do not want the bathroom to know that I’ve entered it.  This is a general rule of architecture and not confined to bathrooms.  Some things are best kept a secret from the living spaces for their own good.  

This bathroom will certainly be as great joy to hypochondriacs as the Radio Doctor of the 1920s was supposed to be.  With this thing you will apparently have a little alcove equipped with all the mod cons that one normally associates with Doctor McCoy’s sick bay on the Enterprise.  Here you can hook yourself up to all sorts of sensors that monitor just about every physiological parameter known to man and even has a digital camera so you can take snapshots of your mole and e-mail them to your doctor so you can waste his time as well.  And even if you decide not to subject yourself to these home medical indignities, you cannot hope to escape the clutches of rigorously imposed health regimes.  Even your toothbrush is designed to spy on you. Your toilet is set up to spy on the sugar content of your urine every time you take a waz and will narc on you to your doctor.  Worse, this toilet scrutinises your bowel movements and determines the type and size of flush that is required to shift it.  If there is one thing that gives me the creeps it’s the idea that my toilet is in any way empowered to spy on my evacuations.  Even if I could be somehow persuaded to use such a thing, I am sure that after a week of doing so I should go stark, staring mad. 

This gigantic bathroom, which from the article illustration appears to be larger than my living room, also boasts an exercise room with a computerised treadmill and 180° virtual reality screen that “allows you to imagine that you are cresting Heartbreak Hill at the Boston marathon.”  I don’t need a virtual reality screen to imagine myself cresting Heartbreak Hill at the Boston marathon.  I can do that quite well on my own and I don’t like the image, thank you.  I’d much rather a virtual reality screen that allowed me to imagine myself on the beach at San Tropez with a large gin and tonic, but that sort of feature is not regarded as de rigeur in the bathroom of the future, mores the pity.

All my life I have been at been in a state of constant warfare with bathtubs and showers.  Now, bathtubs et al are no doubt virtuous and hard-working fixtures, with the possible exception of those corner showers with those aggravating sliding glass doors that are supposed to meet at right angles, but the systems that supply them with hot water are without exception the work of some fiend from Hell.  I have had to deal with cisterns that produce no more than the merest trickles of hot water, ones that have tried to electrocute me, ones that have scalding torrents as their lowest setting, ones that only gave water at a comfortable temperature if you approached them like a safecracker, and a long procession of bizarre units at hotels throughout Britain and the Continent with multicoloured dials; none of which have any intuitive or written explanation of how they operate, but if you don’t get the balance of the dials and slides exactly right you end up doing a ridiculous dance and the shower alternates between freezing and scalding.  It is small wonder that I look on news of any “improvements” with distinct scepticism, if not outright hostile suspicion.  The bathroom of the future will have a shower that will allegedly recognise your voice and dispense water at you favourite temperature and depth and then alerting you when it is ready— presumably not by flooding the bathroom.  Apparently you can also use voice commands to lower or raise the water temperature and to adjust the shower from “Everything from a spring rain to a waterfall.”  I’m sure that the idea is that you step into the shower and ask for “Spring Shower, a bit warmer than usual,” and you get what you ordered.  My feeling is that if I ever used the thing my morning shower would degenerate into a shouting match with me being deluged with ice-cold monsoons like the second reel of a sea movie.  There wouldn’t even be the consolation of a warm towel at the end of the ordeal, because the thing hasn’t any.  Instead, it uses air blowers like those hand-drying machines in the Gents that leave your mitts damp and clammy.  

If you have any hope of refuge in brushing your teeth, forget it.  In the future, the taps are also voice-controlled, which brings some rather frightening Harold Lloyd scenarios to mind.  And there are “thin electro-organic displays imbedded in the mirrors.”  Right.  Okay.  If you say so.  I think that means that there’s a television in the mirror, because Heaven forefend that you should miss a second of CNN’s twenty four hour coverage of an over-parked vehicle in lower Manhattan.  Then you have to contend with the LED lighting intended to give you a perfect, shadow-free reflection.  I once looked in one of those specially lit shaving mirrors and was so terrified of facing the mug I encountered every morning with a length of sharpened steel that I ended up wearing a beard for twelve years. 

The whole thrust of this bathroom is this bizarre notion on the part of modern technology that we all want to spend our lives being pestered by our possessions.  It’s the same mentality that made some lunatic inventors think that computerised shirts that nagged you to put on a sweater were a great idea or that you really needed an internet screen in your fridge.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a great fan of technology, but in its place.  Leave the diagnostic suite in my doctor’s office.  If I want to check my e-mail, I’ll do it at my desk, not on the pot.  And the tread mill… well, that can be used for an artificial reef somewhere.  It used to be a solid sign of insanity if someone started going on about how his bathroom was spying on him and harassing him at every turn.  Now it seems more like a burst of good sense.  No wonder I’m a bathroom Luddite and proud of it.

Saturday

27 March 2004

Milestones in Detection Department

It was at this exact moment that Holmes discovered that his fly was caught. 

Saturday

27 March 2004

James Bond and the Underpants Gnome

It is my firm impression that James Bond must live a very dull life.  What’s that, you say?  James Bond?  The ultimate man of adventure?  The three-women-a-film man?  The epitome of live for today for tomorrow we may die high life?  Shaken not stirred?  Dull?  Szondy, you must have finally lost it.  Maybe, but that’s probably due more to too many Ken Russell films.  So long as I can keep avoiding Altman I think I’m okay.  But if you think about it, those of us who go to Bond movies probably only see the interesting bits of his life with the boring dross cut out.  It’s like the coyote out of the roadrunner cartoons.  We see him hitting the canyon floor or blowing himself up with a helmet filled with dynamite, but we don’t see the hours and hours of Wile E. pouring over his blueprints and making calculations on exactly how long the seesaw must be in relation to the weight of the anvil.  Bond is something similar.  We always see him when he’s seducing some ravishing woman while beating Blofeld at the baccarat table.  We never see him dealing with the mountain of paper work that must face him over the totalled DB5 or the internal hearings regarding all those dead SPECTRE operatives he left all over the Monte Carlo.

Let’s face it; Bond cannot be saving the world 24-7.  Sure, every two or three years he has some incredible hoohah where he sends SMERSH et al running for cover, but what is he up to in between?  From the look on Sean Connery’s face, I rather suspect that he spends a lot of time analysing signal traffic out of Shanklin, Isle of Wight and debriefing junior KGB defectors from Minsk. 

I also suspect that like most men who live insanely unpredictable professional lives, his personal life is probably marked by being utterly predictable and maybe even a bit embarrassing.  We never see Bond at home, except for the opening of Live and Let Die when he is bedding an Italian spy.  Even in that scene we only learn that he has a taste for vintage motoring prints and offers his guests espresso when they’d much rather have a cuppa. I believe that if we could follow Bond on a non-adventure day we’d probably find that he runs on very well laid rails.  He probably wakes at a predictable time, reads his morning paper in an exact sequence, and eats his eggs before his bacon without fail.  He is very likely fussy about having his shaving brush exactly so and cannot abide his socks being in the wrong drawer. 

I suspect this because I have lived through similar.  I have spent a good deal of my life on archaeological excavations, travelling the world at a moment’s notice and living in the foulest of rooms, tents, and even pill boxes without two coppers to rub together.   That sort of life requires a lot of inventiveness, flexibility, and thinking on one’s feet.  The flip side is that on the rare occasions when I went home, I became was an absolute tyrant about routine. 

That sort of behaviour crosses over even when one gets married and passes over into “civilian” life.  It doesn’t make one fussy or obsessive, but it does produce a desire that when one isn’t out chasing after the lost Ark of the Covenant, one has at least a shot at a clean pair of socks on a Monday.  I hate having to think out every little detail of daily life, so I get into habits.  I do computer maintenance according to a schedule.  When I open a carton of butter I know its time to buy another one.  My notebook, PDA, and pocket recorder have their assigned pockets in my jacket where they live and I never have to hunt for them.  I’m not saying that I’m some sort of anal compulsive.  Just look at the sprawl of paper and instruments across the table when I’m draughting or how my boat looked like an exploding chandler’s shop whenever I worked on it.  I just revolt at wasting brainpower on the mundane when there is so much other chaos to create.  That is the reason why I lay out my clothes so carefully before I go to bed and why I am so disturbed when my underpants vanish the next morning.

Now, I am not what one would call an expert on underpants.  So few of us have the dedication to master such a difficult subject.  I am, however, fairly certain that underpants do not wander off of their own accord.  Some other agency must be at work.  Having eliminated the fourth dimension and fiends from some dark world, I was baffled.  My underpants kept vanishing, yet I was no closer to learning why.  Then one morning my daughter, who insists with toddler logic that she, her bunny, and her pillow have a perfect right to climb into our bed every five AM, was playing down by my feet while I was trying hard to pretend that the alarm clock had not gone off with little success.  I had just given up the fight and put on my glasses when I saw Emma, cool as a cucumber, which is pretty cool I’m told, reach over the foot of the bed, grab my clean pair of underpants and chucked them into the laundry hamper. 

So that was it.  My daughter is an underpants gnome.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, underpants gnomes are a creation of South Park.  They are strange little creatures that steal underpants as part of their three-step plan.  Step one:  steal underpants.  Step two: ???  Step three: profits!  Step two is a bit vague, but the gnomes assure everyone that big profits will result.  I also suspect that Emma is a bit vague on step two of her underpants scam, but no doubt big profits are somewhere down the line.  The question is, what do I do about it?  I hate to discourage her commercial ventures.  Heaven knows we need the money.  I, however, also need underpants and now that I’ve discovered Emma’s hamper dodge I’m sure that she’s moved her stash elsewhere.  Probably the same place where she keeps hiding the remotes and my cell phone.  The former keep reappearing mysteriously and the latter I can usually find by ringing myself, but I cannot trust to luck on the underpants front  (You will kindly notice that I did not stoop to the y-front joke).  My wife has already had any number of hair clips vanish never to be seen again.  We suspect that Emma has sold them to an international gang.  When in doubt, always suspect an international gang, I say.  I certainly do not want to see my underpants being laundered ion Shanghai.  Besides, where will it end?  Socks could be next and from there its one small step to my trousers.   If this isn’t nipped in the bud, I could end up a naked middle-aged man sitting in the living room watching a two-year old counting a wad of fivers.

And that’s the reason why we never see anything of James Bond’s personal life.  He spends too much of it hunting for socks and underpants. 

Monday

29 March 2004

Untold Secrets of the Space Age Revealed

1962: The original Mercury Seven astronauts perform their uncanny meerkat impersonation.

Tuesday

30 March 2004

We Hope They Mean the 2000 Recount Department

Even Malcolm's closest friends were forced to admit that he had become a bit obsessed with Florida.

Wednesday

31 March 2004

We are experiencing technical difficulties.  Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible. 

Back | Up | Next