Angus MacDonald is a minor sf (science fiction) writer in Northern California. His published work is reprinted below for your reading enjoyment:
"Disassembly" - originally in Amazing Stories, Summer 2000
(after bringing
out that issue, Amazing ceased operations; these things happen.)
(However, four years later, the magazine resumed publication.) (Then,
after a few more issues, it went "on hiatus"; dang.)
"The Edge of the Bed of Forever" - a
collaboration
with Jonathan Lethem
- originally in The Magazine of Fantasy &
Science
Fiction, August 1997
"In Transit" - originally in Tomorrow
Speculative Fiction, May 1996
"Dead Language" - originally in Midnight
Zoo,
July 1993 issue
(authorized Polish translation published in Nowa Fantastyka, October 2003)
I've been admiring the state commemorative quarter-dollars since they've been coming out; my favorite so far is the one for Alabama.
The San Francisco Chronicle published this slice of life under the title "Sax Man Makes Pets Go, Cats, Go" on 2-26-1998.
Don't you kind of miss hearing about that Pink Floyd / "Wizard of Oz" business?
And as long as we're talking about cultural synchrony, here's something (in part regarding subliminal messages and the Beatles) that probably should have come to light about thirty years ago.
With the six-hour/two-month time difference, maybe Starbuck was in a geosynchronous orbit exactly above Charles Widmore's freighter.
We've had our landline phone number for almost 23 years. Both of us have been registered Democrats that whole time, except for a while when I went Peace & Freedom.
In the last 24 hours we've had two calls from Mitt Romney's campaign for the Republican nomination.
The first, yesterday evening, was the voice of Romney himself.
The second, ten minutes ago, was the voice of (wait for it... yeah, keep waiting, you'll be glad you did... ) former Senator Rick Santorum.
Really. A taped message from Santorum himself, telling two lifelong Bay Area Democrats that John McCain is too liberal, so we should vote for Romney.
Needless to say, these calls are filling us with partisan glee at the Romney campaign's apparent fiscal profligacy and ineptitude. Wish I could be certain that the whole GOP is like that.
Jay Leno's monologue on January 2, his first since the start of the WGA strike, was much better than usual.
Now I'm guessing that all this time, he's avoided hiring writers who are as funny as he is.
I enjoyed last night's half-season finale of "Heroes"; as the series has proceeded, I've been wondering more and more about show creator Tim Kring's feelings regarding his parents.
The sudden death of Council member Michael Chavez this past weekend is a tragedy not just for his family and those who knew him, but for the City of Concord as a whole.
Those interested in the lawsuit by songwriters Tommy Dunbar and James Gangwer against Avril LaVigne (and against her co-composer Lukazs Gottwald, her label, and so on) over the similarities between her current hit "Girlfriend" and the 1979 Rubinoos recording "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" might get something out of reading the actual complaint filed in United States District Court, Northern California (fair warning: four-page PDF version of optical scan).
As an old Beserkley/Pynotic fan (see below), I'm curious as to whether the plaintiffs' apparent main attorney Nicholas A. Carlin is related to original Rubinoos member and Psycotic Pineapple mainstay Alex Carlin.
Holy Gee. I never thought I'd feel sorry for John Ashcroft.
Last night I was pleased to see that YouTube now has three videos of performances by Earth Quake, but then I was dismayed to read in the response comments that guitarist Gary Phillips died in January, age 59.
Before he was in Earth Quake, he was known as Gary Philippet and played in Copperhead [with John Cippolina and Pete Sears] and Freedom Highway; after Earth Quake, he was the keyboardist in the Greg Kihn Band [playing on Kihn's most successful singles].
After that, he apparently moved to Washington State to farm and do good works.
His version of Bobby Fuller's "Let Her Dance," on the Spitballs album of covers that the Beserkley label put out, is one of my favorite recordings. I always hoped to see him front his own band, but I'm glad he spent his last couple decades doing what he wanted.
The tribute website is www.garyphilippet.com
Enjoyed the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. My wife is not a
big fan, but she watched it with me.
Afterward, she said she
thinks she's read that Bob Dylan is suing the producers, because he never
had an affair with Edie Sedgwick.
Correction: as Mike Knell points out, "Gimme Some Money" was not Spinal
Tap but the Thamesmen, at least according to some.
What's even weirder than the McCartney thing (see below) is that the Tap's
"Gimme Some Money" has turned up in a tv commercial. Didn't catch the
whole spot, but I'm pretty sure it's real. Can't remember the advertiser.
As the song says, "'Dog Dog Pop Dog' Means 'I Love You.'"
Apparently, CBS has decided to use the "Survivor" show to fulfill Charles
Manson's old dream of engulfing America in race war.
Jake Hansen told me that Paul McCartney's current album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is pretty good, and that turns out to be true.
However, the song "English Tea" sounds inexplicably like a parody of
Spinal Tap's mid-Eighties, no, sorry, "mid-Sixties" track, "Cups and
Cakes." I can't believe that McCartney's team let him record this thing
without speaking up about the resemblance.
So later that same evening, I went into the Tower Records store here in Concord and said, "I want to get everything by Kanye West."
Fortunately, there was a sale.
Saw this last month; liked it quite a bit, though my wife thought
Paul
Giamatti's performance was overly reminiscent of Chris Elliott's work in
serious roles. Even so, "What Happens in Solvang, Stays in Solvang."
Saw this last night. Bill Murray plays pretty much the same character as he did for Lost in Translation, but he's really good at it.
It almost seems like director/co-writer Wes Anderson put the very brief topless shots in to make sure the rating would be "R" (probably required by contract) rather than "PG-13"; there didn't seem to be enough real swearing to insure that.
This movie may be Anderson's best so far, even better than Rushmore, and is certainly the best underwater picture I've ever seen: it fulfills the promise made by the original newspaper ads for Thunderball, the 1965 James Bond release. The fact that the imaginary sea creatures turn out to be animated not digitally but with good old stop-motion models is especially beautiful.
Fond memories: Gridlock.
You can send MacDonald correspondence at: P.O. Box 577, Concord, California, 94522-0577, USA; for his electrical mail address, try asking around.