Discussion of the man and his work.

Alan
Deadlines = creativity.

Item of Interest for Harlan Ellison?
This was buried in a more elaborate post I made earlier:

"There was a local kiddie show in New York called, "Joya's Fun School" and later "Time For Joya", which started in 1970 and it was hosted by Joya Sherrill (who just passed away last month at the age of 85). She invited Duke Ellington to appear on her show and it turned out to be one of his last appearances on TV. The video is long gone, but the audio does exist, albeit not in the highest of fi, but there is good fi to be had. She sings, "My People" to Ellington's accompaniment and later Ellington playfully mangles the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" while playing a bit of "Ko-Ko" underneath.

If you are interested, I can send you a CD of this performance."

Also, with Susan's permission:

"MMMMMMM-MWAH!"

Ummm...It's probably better if I leave that stuff to Mary.

Brian Phillips

Harlan's Back!
I was about to add some comments about this and that when I saw something that made my week...

Nice to have you back, Unca Harlan.

Now what the hell was I going to say?

Eh, it'll come later...but this is for you Harlan...(with Susan's permission...)

MMMWAAAh!

Now to remember what it was I was going to say...I'll get my memory back somehow.

A tip of the hat ; to creativity.

Hello Harlan,I was wondering if over the years you have resorted to systems of prompting creativity when facing times or instances of dead ideas that just are not working and not certain how to save a path or direction of an idea or plot that has merit just not now or then when attempting? I recently read a bio on the late John Cage and Merce Cunningham and they used a variety of "System Logics". I believe Edward Debono wrote many books on the subject of prompting creativity.If you have time I just wondered.

Yr.Pal always,Alan Schneider

Riding the Rails
I think it's an introduction for the script of the Discarded

But what do I know

OK, I'm completely intrigued: what exactly is this 'Riding the Rails in Atlantis' we're hearing smidgeons and snippets about here and there? Fact? Fiction? Faction? Sorry if I missed a memo. Commissioned or just being done out of, well, having to do it? Que?

Sounds good, Harlan.

ah, ahem...
WORLD WAR I. Word War I? Hmmm...

Harlan Ellison, Punning Linguist
Ya hey dere, welcome back, Harlan, "Amuck" ... you are the above!

* Reconditioning a somewhat old Chicago Daily News article about HE attending The Space Circus sci-fi entertainment expo at the Chicago Amphiteatre in June 1976. Should be "cooler than a crossword puzzle" very soon and sent to The Ellison Archive via HERC. Workin' it. Missed that expo, but later smoked some fatties and attended British band Yes -- in the round. Circular slowly rotating "Lazy Susan" stage. Oh, wow! 360 degrees, man ... Said article states this, regarding Harlan:

"Across the back of his robe were the words:


"DON'T BUG ME."


* AMPARION (apologies to JERRY MAGUIRE): "you had me right from the word "dirigible." Protect those Anarchist Exposition ideas. Folks will want to steal them. Helium, yes, after the Hindenburg disaster. "Better than a load of hot air!"
You have me returning to THE BANQUET YEARS: THE ORIGINS OF THE AVANT GARDE IN FRANCE - 1885 TO WORD WAR I by Roger Shattuck and A NOMAD OF THE TIMESTREAMS by Michael Moorcock.

* UNREPENTANT: great inspired title / a latent image, Harlan. It develops ... Only 300 copies?

A great weekend to all.

It looks like kids are more altruistic than we might have thought:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oh71h8be-I

Conservatives push competition into the mix and that's how you get the overacheiving, egotistical mook, that will later piss you off when they spout bile on Fox news.

Competition is what makes a child's natural altruism bend south.

Collective sharing is the way. Yahwah loves us.

--------------

Amperion, pish.

Dear Chris:--Don't worry about the postage. Your package will be mailed out to NSW today.

Dear Sven: Your package will also be mailed out to Germany today.

Kind regards--Susan

I’m not sure why, but I find this one of the funniest things I’ve seen. I share with you all.

http://www.emergencyyodel.com/

Mike

And, oh yeah --


UNCA HARLAN:

Great to see your back.

Even better to see your front.

(See, that wasn't a typo.)

Just another rant

Guys,

Some of you might get a kick out of my latest American Currents blog post, rendered on the subject of WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan war -- all wars, really -- in determined ignorance of the latest developments, whatever they may be:

http://www.americancurrents.com/2010/07/wikeleak-and-same-old-same-old-of-war.html

Typewriter Question
Greetings All and Sundry.

Been away for a while dealing with a family medical issue that, sadly, resulted in the dreaded convalescent home for someone, and it was extremely nerve wracking.

My daughter is a real pip. She's eleven, going on thirty in some ways, but still eight in others. She gets a kick out of what she describes as technology from "the olden days", meaning clothes drying racks, etc. Part of this is my doing, as I've had them watching classic films for a long time (my kids are probably among the very few who can tell you about Rear Window and the original King Kong). Recently my eight year old son said to his grandfather "Don't you know who Clark Gable is??".

Any hoo, the other day my daughter requested an "old fashioned" typewriter. Not electric. Not a word processor, but an honest to goodness key clunker. She proceeded to mime the typing movements and sliding the carriage bar to make her point.

I'm wondering if anyone here can recommend a good model, and more importantly where supplies like ribbons can purchased? Any information is appreciated of course.

-Dennis

ps: I'm very glad that Mr. Ellison has poked his nose back in. I hope it'll be for a long time to come.

That Sinatra thang
Wonderful to see our host back here. Hurrah!
In other news, boingboing.net have just posted a link to the website Cool Tools' '100 greatest long-form magazine articles ever published'... and in the top five is 'Frank Sinatra Has a Cold' by Gay Talese.
www.boingboing.net
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php
Cheers!
Jes

World Enough And Time
That's okay Frank, I hold you in utter contempt also.

Harlan enjoys you, and most of us tolerate you It helps knowing you enjoy playing the troll.

I recall my confusion at five or so, when I was carted off Sundays AM to a Baptist Sunday school in Gardena, a then working class white suburb of Los Angeles. We spent the morning learning Bible tales and so on, standard Sunday school stuff. Meanwhile my mom was in the church. In my five year old fashion I puzzled out the hierarchy: Sunday School was somewhat like Kindecgarten, which I was either in or jrecently sprung from, and the Church was akin to the rest of the Elementary School, where you got to mix with the Big Kids and not be in a caged off separate area where you played with blocks the size of basketballs.

So imagine my wonder when one Sunday all of the Sunday Schoolers were told they were going to get to go to the Big Church and see how that worked.

It was explained to me that the Big Churchit was God's House, and I took it literally. I remember wondering what He would look like, and once we had suffled in to our portion of the building, craning my neck to see over the pews and the huge pile of flowers gathered before the podium altar leccern thingy where the minister must have been. All I knew was this huge voice was booming out some stuff about this and that, and I could not SEE the guy talking, but it must be God Himself I thought in my five year old way. I was terribly frustrated I could not see who it was.

It was somewhere about that same time that I got my first toy gun, a plastic, battery powered Grease Gun style sub-machine gun with a red piece of plastic thatwould move back and forth in the "muzzle" while a tinny speaker made "ack ack ack| sounds.

I got that machine gun one Sunday after church, maybe as a reward for graduating from Sunday School kinds' sorta'.

Anyway, my view of Jews has been colored by two faactors: that Sunday School made a big deal about the Israelites and we learned more Old Testament stuff than New. Jews were like heroes in all those stories. They were always slaying Bad Dudes, and generally being righteous and holy.

Then, about the same time, my dad's older sister, the only aunt or uncle that had followed him to the Gold Fields of Califoria Aerospace from the cornfields of Missouri, married a Jew about that time. Did that bother me? Are you kiding?!

He had actually been a macnine gunner on a B-17 and had a wound he showed me in his leg when we went swimming at the Blue Dolphin Swim School the day I got my Minnow Cetificate.

You have no idea how cool that was to a war movie infatuated five year old in the fifties, who had a National Guard Armory down the street from his front yard where he could look through the cyclone fence at real tanks and halftracks and cannons, and dream about killing Nazis jand (excuse me, it was the Fifties) "Japs"!

So I looked on Jews as a hero race. Of course this all mixed in with the heroic view of the modern Israelis common in the Western world until about 1970. It was liberally hip all through the Sixties to support Israel and sing Hava Naghila around the campfire. That's all forgotten now.

Just like no one knows that the Fabian Socialists that founded the Labour Party were Imperialists. One purpose of raising the living standards of the British peoples was to make them a "Race Fit For Empire!" In other words, let's raiase up a breed of healthy Brit's properly equipped physically, mentally, spiritually and morally to go out and settel the hash of all little brown and yellow people and teach them how to wear pants and behave like proper folk.


In a hundred or so years there's a lot we think of as prim and proper that will horrify our grandkids. It'll even probably be cool to be white.

Again.

Apropos of the ethnic slantins' here in the recent threads, the Shirley Sherrod news has rekindled an important point about all discourse on race or culture: it should never be without historical context, which otherwise sanitizes the issues thereby losing the empathy from most listeners.

It was a good reminder for myself as well.

Dear Susan,

I am afraid that I posted a check for the books and posters and somehow missed placing a stamp on the envelope. As it hasn't returned to me I must assume it will arrive with "postage due"!
I am terribly embarrassed and will drop another envelope in the post filled with stamps dipped in apologies. Luckily, I'm traveling in the U.S. so at least it's not international mail.

Thanks and please accept my apologies.

On the subject of Riding The Rails... I have read a chunk of the thing (a small one, I hope), and it's as close to an autobiography as we'll ever get. And that's not a putdown. It's goddam BETTER than an autobiography. You'll have to wait and see what I mean, but I suspect you'll agree. It's just groovy, and I'd say that even if my name didn't pop up in it from time to time (although not enough.)


On another front, Harlan has instructed me to tell you all that I am Solomonic in my judgement.

So:

I am Solomonic in my judgement.

Have a nice day.

On The Road With Ellison Volume Four
arrived today! woot!

There is a new documentary out called HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST AND REBEL. It looks to be much more DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH than THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR. It's directed by Brigitte Berman who won an Oscar for her documetary of Artie Shaw. Should be interesting.

Harlan's post: FRANK CHURCH ASKED ME ...
THIS is why I come back here almost daily, and am gladgladglad that the Interboogers didn't drive our host away forever. It's also why I don't post more often my own self; chalk it up to feelings of verbal and conceptual inadequacy.

Holy shit, sir - well said.

Buy Crom!
Mr. Perry, I'm not surprised that your relationship with Conan proved remunerative. My grandmother always told me that Cimmerians were good with money.

Susan, thnak you so much, my order arrived yesterday and looks tremendous. Thank you for all of your hard work on the Purge

Steve Perry, now that you mention it Conan did look kind thew-ish (very nice, sir, a tip of the hat to you)

Harlan, I need to tweak you a little bit, as someone who has a copy of the Phenomenon of Man in his library, it is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (I still owe ya for calling me an anti-semite on the phone a few years ago)

All the best,

Mark

The J-word
Back when I was writing whatever I could get my hands on to make up for a loss of income when my wife wanted to be a consultant and left her well-paying job, I took on a series of novels featuring R.E. Howard's best-known creation, Conan the Barbarian.

Yes, Virginia, before the Governator swung his aluminum blade onscreen, there were a slew of books and stories about the lad from Cimmeria, and some well-known writers who stooped to pen them.

It was clean work, I sometimes tried to sneak in quotes from T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland, which my editor nearly always caught, and it paid some bills. Conan the College Tuition for my Son; Conan the Income Taxes; and my favorite, Conan the Hot Tub.

Howard, a product of Texas in an era not known for openness in regard to women, colored folks, and Jews, was fairly racist, sexist, and followed the anti-Semite views of the day in his writing.

Naturally, being more enlightened myself, I didn't go down those roads, but I confess that I took a certain pleasure when I ventured out in public to speak at assorted gatherings to now and then refer to the brawny Conan as "thew-boy."

It was always fun to look around the room to see who got the joke and smiled, and who didn't and frowned ...

Perry

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