Weekend Assignment #317: My So-Called Social Life

For Weekend Assignment #317: Merry Meetings, I posed the following questions...

Weekend Assignment #317: Merry Meetings
People used to socialize with each other on street corners, at cocktail parties, at club meetings, and in a later era, at shopping malls. These days, however, we seem to do most of our socializing online. Where do you go most often for face time with friends and acquaintances?

Extra Credit: Do you ever hang out with co-workers after hours?

The first of our Quantum Leap adventures, August 1990

There was a time, throughout the 1990s in fact, when I got to hang out with friends in two different but overlapping fan clubs, one for Doctor Who and one for Quantum Leap. The Murray twins, Dimitra C. and I, or some portion thereof, drove to California on a number of occasions to attend conventions and/or interview Quantum Leap's actors, writers, producers, etc. Back at home, Teresa Murray and I used to write, transcribe and edit the club fanzine, The Observer, and (in the early days of the club) process memberships. Eventually the tv show was canceled, and we handed over membership and fanzine duties to the same people who are handling them today, all these years later. Meanwhile, our local Doctor Who club lasted almost exactly a decade before falling apart due to people moving away or losing interest. The last time I saw anyone from the Who club, aside from my friends Kevin and Samantha whom I see every week, was at Linda H.'s birthday party last September.

Those two clubs made most of the 1990s a great time it for me, full of friendship and adventures. During that period my Doctor Who fan experiences also led to my first professional writing credits in a decade, co-writing articles with Teresa for Starlog, and writing the backs of Doctor Who trading cards for Cornerstone. Then it all went away, with me disengaging from Quantum Leap fandom and most of my Doctor Who friends leaving town for one reason or another. So what do I do these days by way of social interaction, aside from the occasional email or instant message, and sending virtual gifts in Facebook to people who are no more than names to me?

This is may sound a little pathetic or misguided, depending on your point of view, but it's the truthful answer. I go to church. Almost every day, in fact.

No, I don't mean that I go to Mass every day. When I was a kid, I was aware that St. Ann's Church in Manlius held masses every morning, but all those weekday masses were, as far as I could tell, meant for and attended by a handful or little old ladies in their pillbox black hats with little black veils. Here in the present, St. Michael's doesn't always even offer masses every single day of the week, and when it does, I'm mostly a no show. I attend on Sundays, of course, and one Saturday a month because it takes place in between the finance and vestry meetings, and on most but not all major holy days. This week, for example, is Ascension Thursday, with an evening mass followed by a pot luck in the Parish Center. I'll be there, assuming I remember!

Jan joins in on a drumming for peace event (or something), Jun 2009

Here's where we start to get closer to the point of my long-winded answer, because Life at St. Michael and All Angels, as the blog title goes, includes much more than sitting through thirty to ninety minutes, depending on the occasion, of prayers, incense and sermons. I carry the cross or a torch at Mass nearly every Sunday morning, but when mass is over, I'm still on the St. Michael's campus (or, as Father Smith sometimes jokingly calls it, "the plant"). By 11:30 AM or so, Kevin and I are sitting at one of the tables near the front of the Parish Center, usually chatting with Jan or Mary or both, and perhaps a few other people. I'm drinking an Arnold Palmer, having "invented" the mixture of ice tea and lemonade a few years before learning at Coffee Hour that the combination was already well-known, and named after a famous golfer of a generation ago. I probably have a few cookies on a napkin, having rationalized that anything eaten at Coffee Hour doesn't "count" with respect to dieting. And around the table we're talking about, well, any number of things, from vampire novels to the biology of sociopaths, from collectibles to call center jobs, from specialty knitting needles (and I don't knit, at all) to the Purple Conspiracy. While all this is going on, people are asking me to take pictures of some person or object, and sometimes we have to table our private conversations in favor of a presentation on immigration issues or the plight of poor people in Haiti or Guatemala or elsewhere. Maybe instead there's a bake sale that week, or a bazaar with goods from around the city and around the world. And most weeks I'm touching base with Father Smith or Pat Miller about some job-related point of information - because St. Michael's is also where I work part time, the only job I have at the moment.

Father Smith admires his cake as the Coffee Hour crowd sings Happy Birthday to You

That's where the rest of my weekly socialization comes from, aside from Coffee Hour on Sundays and watching tv with John at home. Most weekdays I stop by sometime in the afternoon, check in with Nancy or Alicia, the Parish Administrators, and say hi to that day's office volunteer. As I put in a few hours of work, people stop by to drop off or request bags of food, to get a key and permission to use the library or practice the organ, to drop off and pick up notes and mail for various church organizations, and to arrange for weddings or funerals. Father Smith may be around, depending on the time of day and day of the week, in which case I usually try to grab a few minutes to consult with him about one thing or another. I might ask Nancy about her foot surgery, or chat with Mary B. about Syracuse weather or Les S. about First Magnus, or Jim P. about whether we owe him money to fill in a grave. One volunteer drills her grandson in his spelling homework every week in the room next to my office. I listen with interest, even though that child, who has seen me every week for 11 months, has never yet said hello to me.

But what the heck. It's all good, a chance to interact with people who are mostly older than I am, and a few who are younger, in service of a local institution that tries to serve God and our neighbors around the world. Is it any wonder that I mention St. Michael and All Angels Church just a little too often in this blog?

Oh, and yes, I do spend at least a little time with Father Smith, Pat, Alicia or Nancy when I'm not working, but most of it, you guessed it, is at church! I did attend a church outting to a Sidewinders game with Father Smith once, though.

Karen

All Those Years Ago

The year was 1991. Or maybe 1990. One of our new fan clubs, the United Whovians of Tucson, had done a panel at TusCon, and afterward someone came up to me with a tractor feed printout of messages about Doctor Who. They were off a Usenet newsgroup. I got friends to explain about the Internet, but at the time it didn't seem all that easy for a non-techie to cope with. Months laters a Leaper (Quantum Leap fan) mentioned a "neat service" called Prodigy in a letter to me, sort of like CompuServe only cheaper. John got me the Prodigy software for Christmas. Somewhere in there, a Whovian named Tom ran a local bbs (online bulletin board service) for our club, where we could chat online with each other - but only if Tom had the server up and running at the time.

But Prodigy was national, maybe international. It belonged to Sears, believe it or not. My new modem connected to it over the phone every night at a blistering 2400 baud, and showed short messages on a monochrome screen. There was no long term storage, and posts would drop off the service in 3 to 8 days or so, depending on how busy that particular message board was. The original software had no copy or paste functions and no uploading or downloading. Obviously there were no photos, just text. Eventually a third party app came along for my Mac SE that enabled me to finally save messages or paste in canned text, such as info on our other club, Project Quantum Leap, and my FAQ, Common Questions About Quantum Leap. Email cost 25 cents per message, and did not initially go beyond the confines of Prodigy itself.

Oddly enough, I don't remember following Doctor Who on the P* boards. My main interests there were QL (which appeared just above the "RUSH" section of the TV-radio boards; it took me a while to learn that Rush was a person's first name, and about half an hour after that to learn that I opposed everything he stood for) and HG, or H2G2, or, to give it its full name, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

HG was the really fun area on Prodigy in those days. The service did not allow screen names, aliases or handles, but the HG "froods" merrily adopted handles in the texts of their postings, becoming characters, creatures and even objects from the Hitchhiker's book, radio show, tv series, LPs, audio tapes and printed bath towel. Sara G. was the Cricket Ball, Jim R. was the Voice of the Book, Sarah K. was Lord the Cat, Lesley H. was the Dolphins, and so on. We also had an Arthur and a Zaphod, of course. As for me, I bucked the trend and did my best to change my handle with every single posting, based on the concept that I, like the Universe in Douglas Adams' books, was bizarrely inexplicable. Or something. Going off-topic was against the rules, but such was the zany nature of the HG board that we sometimes made a point of being as off-topic as possible, in the funniest possible way.

I also entrusted my Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, already signed by one of the HG actors, to one of the froods so he could get Douglas Adams to sign it for me at a public appearance. I never got the book back, and I no longer remember who the irresponsible frood was who failed to return it.

Twenty years ago, we were interviewing actors like John Levene in L.A.

It was all a very long time ago. A year later, Prodigy raised its rates without improving its service much, and everyone started migrating to the new killer app, America Online. In my offline life, I was editing fanzines for both the Doctor Who and Quantum Leap clubs, and making a few trips to Los Angeles each year for conventions, interviews with actors and writers, and to buy scripts and photos. I met some of the online people, including Julie B., at an early Quantum Leap screening for fans, and subsequently at three conventions held in metro L.A. But Quantum Leap was canceled in 1993. I eventually passed on the editing of The Observer to Sharon Major, and of TARDIS Time Lore to several successors before the Doctor Who club folded in 2000, five years before the show returned to television.

It's been months since I've watched a Quantum Leap episode, although I have the complete run on both DVD and videotape. A Doctor Who DVD, on the other hand, is currently on pause in the next room. The first actor I ever interviewed that played the Doctor, Jon Pertwee, has been dead for a while now. I probably haven't seen Julie B. in person in over a decade, although we're in frequent touch online. And of course, the landscape of the Internet itself is utterly different now, except in some of its essential purposes: communication, to the world and peer to peer.

The reason I'm waxing all nostalgic and wistful tonight about the days of Prodigy and those early cons is that two things happened today that brought home how long ago it was, this wonderful, technologically backward, utterly irreproducible era of my life.

First, I got a friend request today on Facebook from Lesley H. It took me about 30 seconds to place the name. Seventeen years ago, she was a teenager on the HG boards, better known as the Dolphins. Plural. Now she's a lawyer. She was as weirded out about me calling her Dolphins as I was that she's a lawyer.

Twenty years ago this weekend,
I turned on the tv and saw this scene.

Second, I got email tonight from Julie, conveying greetings from an actor I interviewed repeatedly for The Observer. Richard Herd is one of those working actors that you see everywhere but may not know by name. He was Captain Galaxy and Ziggy the Miner on Quantum Leap, George's boss on Seinfeld, an Admiral and a Klingon on various series of Star Trek, and so on. I like him a lot. Richard and I exchanged greetings tonight through the kind auspices of Julie, who is at the first Quantum Leap convention in a decade or so. It's the 20th anniversary convention, in fact. Twenty years ago this weekend, the show premiered on NBC, and took over a good chunk of my life for several years.

I didn't even remember about the anniversary, or that the convention was this weekend, until Julie emailed me tonight. Now I wish desperately I was there, seeing those fans and friends again, the actors, writers and directors I interviewed nearly 20 years ago, and the wonderful land of Hollywood where the con is taking place. But I can't. Just can't. Having been unemployed all this time, I'd be selfish and mad to spend money on that now. But I want it, at least as badly as I wanted to go to Gallifrey One last month and meet one of the producers of the revived version of Doctor Who.

Ah, well. At least I have a color screen to type this on, and copy and paste, and this posting won't age off some not-quite-internet sometime next week. And an email to Julie won't cost me 25 cents. I guess it will have to do.

Karen

I Remember Fanzines

Today Julie sent me a heads-up email that two blogs - one of them from radio station WFMU - had pictured one or more of the Quantum Leap fanzines/newsletters I edited long ago. It turns out that io9 snagged the picture of The Observer #4 from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which in turn snagged my photos, more-or-less uncredited, from a 2006 Outpost entry. No big deal; WFMU did include a link to the original article. The other blog did not, and so far has not "approved" my comment to their entry. Apparently a discussion of mild Star Wars fan porn meets their standards of information and amusement value, while my musings on the history of fanzines and the technology of making them did not. Or maybe no human has yet reviewed my application to be a commenter. Yeah, that must be it.

So I'll rant to you folks instead.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about 1973, I read about the existence of something called Star Trek fanzines in a couple of books by David Gerrold, most notably The World of Star Trek. In November or December of that year I put together my own zine, 2-5YM, which was short for Second Five-Year Mission, something we Trekkies all longed for back then. That five page ditto led to my meeting my friend d, a young English teacher who later became a librarian. Soon we merged with STAR Syracuse, the local Trek club. We continued to publish 2-5YM until 1977, by which time it was published by offset press, if I recall correctly. At least a few issues in between were done by mimeo, typed for us by a little old lady in Fayetteville.

The Observer #1, late 1990

After I met my future husband at the Clarion '77 writers' workshop, and STAR Syracuse morphed into a Dungeons and Dragons group at Syracuse University, I never expected to edit another fanzine. But by March 1990 I found myself writing fan fiction, a crossover serial involving the Doctor (from Doctor Who) and Sam Beckett (from Quantum Leap) and a cast of dozens. That month I found my way into a new local Who club, later called United Whovians of Tucson, and was elected editor of its fanzine, TARDIS Time Lore, between pledge breaks at KUAT when I was out of the room. In August 1990 we asked permission to start a Quantum Leap fan club. The first membership cards for Project Quantum Leap were issued on Thanksgiving of that year, and the first issue of The Observer followed shortly thereafter. It was written in MS Word (3.0 I think) for Mac, and laid out in PageMaker, with pasteup involving photocopied art by Sherlock. It predated AOL and the World Wide Web, but not by much. By the time I turned The Observer over to Sharon Major to edit, Quantum Leap had a lively online community, PhotoShop was de rigeur, and PageMaker was passé.

I could go on about this, pointing out that fanzines existed as far back as the 1950s, which makes it silly to refer to a 1990s zine as "early." I could track the evolution of fandom as it moved online, if I wanted to make the effort of researching it properly, and note the technological changes along the way. But I won't, not tonight anyway. 'Cause as I researched this entry, I happened across a listing of myself at something called ZoomInfo.com, and got sidetracked for two hours. Somehow they cobbled together an old business card of mine (or something) and one of my online bios, and ended up with a listing for Karen Christine Funk, an employee of Worldwide Travel. Two problems with this: I haven't been Karen Funk since 1979, and I haven't worked at Worldwide Travel since 2005.

In trying to correct that info, I found I couldn't "claim" the listing as myself because it required either an email address for me at Worldwide Travel, an email address at Syracuse University, where I was a student long before email existed, or a credit card number issued to Karen Funk. So I emailed through a contact page instead. Along the way I discovered that I've been almost as lax as they were in listing up-to-date info on myself online. My home page, last updated in 2006, implied I was still at First Magnus, although I didn't name the company. They folded in August 2007, of course. And my bio page, last updated in 2004, had me still at Worldwide Travel, and still going to school! No wonder the Zoom folks didn't get it right! So I spent an hour or two updating three of my personal web pages.

See, all those technological enhancements don't help much if we don't use them!

Karen

Do Spoilers Spoil?

I couldn't think of a metaphor to tie this to the entry's subject.

Think of your all-time favorite ongoing series. I don't care what it is - could be a series of novels, a tv show, a series of movies, any kind of fiction issued over a period of months or (more likely) years. You've watched or read everything that's been released so far. Heck, you've practically memorized it. Now you're waiting for the next installment. It's still months away. Or maybe there's a whole series that starts up soon. Either way, you're starting to get antsy.

Now suppose someone offers you a copy of the script or manuscript ahead of time, something that will tell you more or less what happens at the very end, but won't give you the whole experience. Or maybe you know of a website where lucky fans of Your Favorite Thing Ever are reporting their knowledge of what they've seen, secret revelations the world isn't supposed to know about until June at least.

Do you read it, or do you stay well away to avoid spoiling the full impact of the work when it's properly released, in all its multimedia glory? Or do you nibble at the edges of the forbidden knowledge, trying to pick up a few hints without ruining whatever big surprises are in store?

What I've just described above are called "spoilers." And I'm deeply ambivalent about them.

Some of my Quantum Leap scripts

Back in the early 1990s, my friends and I would go to Los Angeles a few times a year, making the pilgrimage from Tucson to attend Gallifrey One and the Quantum Leap conventions, visit Universal Studios yet again, and buy scripts and photos at the Hollywood memorabilia shops. During these trips we always stopped by the office of Belisarius Productions, makers of Quantum Leap, and interviewed whoever we could, usually writer-producers on staff. Another time, two of us were on the Universal lot, watching the actual filming, taking a few pictures and chatting with extras.

In those days the security wasn't all that tight for scripts from upcoming episodes. Nothing was watermarked with the name of the person, or kept carefully out of sight. Sometimes we would be given a script outright, sometimes we would find one lying around somewhere, and sometimes we bought one in a shop. Usually they were from past episodes, or just "sides," a few script pages reproduced for use in auditions of guest cast. Several times, though, we had an entire script in hand for something that would be on tv in a week or two, or possibly later. The most memorable case was when we ended up with the script for the last-ever episode, "Mirror Image," about two or three months before air date.

These days when something like that happens, there's a good chance someone will scan it and put it online immediately, never mind the legalities. We didn't do that. For one thing, the technology wasn't quite there yet in February 1993. For another, it would have been a breach of trust.

But we could read it. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

I know I read "Private Dancer" before it aired, and one or more of the "Trilogy" scripts, and at least one other episode. I didn't regret it. I can't remember whether I held off on "Mirror Image." It was an astonishing episode, and I don't recall the effect being diminished by my having the script. Perhaps I only read a few pages ahead of time.

It was all a long time ago, and I forget the details.

The reason I mention all this tonight is that four times in the past week, I've learned details online about the last episode of this year's series of Doctor Who.*

• Someone reported the names on the guest cast trailers, on location for the season finale.
• Later he and other fans witnessed and photographed what looked like the last scene of the season, except for some final cliffhanger.
  
• A few days later, someone else posted a rundown of what has been announced in magazines, mentioned in interviews or observed on location about the entire 2008 series. It was meant to be safely tucked away in a "Spoilers" thread, which I don't read, but the person accidentally posted it in the set report thread, which I do. It was so detailed that I read it for a full hour, unable to stop myself.
• And today, yet another person photographed, at a distance, bits of filming and setup for two truly iconic scenes from the series finale, including another, very different "final" scene. It probably takes place before the other final scene, but that doesn't lessen its impact. One of the fan photos is my new desktop photo.

Yet funnily enough, as much as the fans have learned and disseminated about the show's super-secret series finale for 2008, we all agree that it adds up to more questions than answers. We're sure of the major guest stars, returning characters, returning villain (courtesy of a catalog of upcoming licensed toys!), and one important location. We know it all follows on from an episode in which the Doctor barely appears, if at all. We even know a line or two of dialogue. And yet we still have no clear idea how it all fits together, what exactly is going to happen and why. Which is as it should be.

My question is this: should I now stay firmly out of that set report thread for the next three months, to avoid learning any possible answers to my many questions?

Would you?

Karen

*I should explain that the nomenclature of British tv is different from U.S. tv. Each season of Doctor Who from 2005 in is technically called a "series." The 2008 episodes are called Series Four of "New Who." It doesn't mean the end of the show, however. In 2009 there will be four specials, and in 2010 a new full series - which is more of a commitment to the future than the BBC has given any other franchise.

A Tale of Two Saturdays

I can't believe it's been sixteen years.

Leap Day has been over for a few hours as I write this. For most people, I suppose, it's little more than a chronological curiosity; but for me it's a reminder of a Saturday in 1992. Quantum Leap was in its fourth season, and some fans (mostly one fan) had come up with the bright idea of lobbying to get actor Dean Stockwell a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Since Dean cared a great deal about environmental concerns, the cost was to be raised by the fans through recycling.

So it came to pass that Johnny Grant, the "Honorary Mayor of Hollywood" who was in charge of the Walk of Fame, agreed to Dean's nomination, and furthermore agreed to hold the Star ceremony on a Saturday, something that he seldom did. That particular Saturday was February 29th, 1992: Leap Day. Dean's star was unveiled near the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. After the ceremony, fans held a luncheon in his honor. I sat at a table with Julie B. In theory we'd designed the commemorative booklet together, but in fact Julie did all the work. It was a great day, and more fun was yet to come. The next day was the first Quantum Leap convention, with over a thousand fans and a few dozen guests. And in and around these scheduled events, Tracy, Teresa, Dimitra and I went to Universal Studios and to Hollywood Book and Poster and elsewhere, interviewed people in the Belisarius production office and generally had a grand time.

Fast forward to Saturday, February 16th, 2008. I was back in Los Angeles for another sf media convention, this one dedicated to my other favorite tv show of all time. Unlike the other trip, I was traveling alone, a fact that in a fit of tired introspection I moaned about at some length later that night. But in truth it was mostly a great day:

That Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed sometime after 10 AM, having blogged until about 4 AM. By the time I again made use of my expensive broadband connection, showered and got dressed, I had just enough time to get downstairs, buy juice and a muffin in the hotel lobby, and get down to "The Undercity" for a live DVD commentary for the Doctor Who episode "Blink." Taking us through the show's most celebrated episode of 2007 would be its award-winning author, Steven Moffat, known to fans as "the Moff."

One slight problem: Gallifrey One's Nineteenth Symphony had the convention's biggest turnout ever, 1080 all told. Somehow the convention staff managed to accommodate all those fans with very little difficulty, but the Moffat "Blink" commentary was an exception. When I got to the venue with my juice and my muffin, I was unable to even get into the room. It was completely full, just barely fire marshall-compliant. So I stood in the hallway with ten or twenty other "spillover" fans, and watched and listened from there as best I could.

And it was totally worth it. Moffat was funny throughout, cracking jokes about the proposed sequel, "Sally Sparrow Takes a Bath," and the Weeping Angels' apparent willingness to pay the electric bill on the abandoned house. Great stuff!

After that I went next door to "Malcassairo" for a panel discussion entitled "Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Doctor Who?" The previous panel, "Save Our Shows" with Lee Whiteside, was just finishing up. The "Too Much" discussion approached the question from several angles, from the issuing of additional stories in print and on audio, to the plethora of toys and accessories, to the airing of two spin-off series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

At one point writer Gary Russell asked fans whether we would like to see more than thirteen episodes a year plus the Christmas special. Writer's strike aside, it's a short television season compared to an American series, which usually manages about 22 episodes per year. (Decades ago, some tv series made far more than that.) And yet Doctor Who fans are aware that making even 14 episodes a year is an enormous amount of work. Lead actor David Tennant, who plays the Doctor in nearly every scene, has a ten month shooting schedule. In his video diary from the end of Series Three, Tennant mused that one could not keep up the pace forever, "because it will kill you." And he's just one of the many people who work long and hard to get the show done. In agreeing with other fans that 13-great-episodes-plus-Christmas was better than 22 mediocre shows, I remarked, "And we don't want to actually kill David Tennant."

Gary pretended to mishear me. "You want to kill David Tennant?" As late as Sunday evening he was jokingly pretending that was what I'd said. To which I could only reply, "Oh, Gary, you're such a troublemaker!"

After that I hit the dealer's room, collected up items to be autographed later, and got a burger to go from the sports bar. Another live commentary was coming up, and I didn't want to take any chances that I wouldn't get in the room. I ended up wolfing down the burger while watching a presentation on "The Cassini Mission," with cool slides of Saturn's rings and stuff.

Then it was time for Paul Cornell to do the live commentary for his two-part 2007 masterpiece, "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood". He'd barely started when they cut the volume on his microphone to almost nothing; apparently the folks on the panel in the next room couldn't make themselves heard otherwise, having no amplification themselves. But I was well inside the room this time, and hearing Paul wasn't a major problem. He was doing the commentary with his wife, but once things got started he did nearly all the talking.

At one point he invited fans to call out questions if he went silent or we wanted to know something. I did so, twice. I asked what was going on in Smith's head as he looked down on the exchange between Rocastle and Son of Mine.

"He's trying desperately to come up with an alternate explanation for what's going on," Paul said. (I may be paraphrasing.)

"I am not the Doctor" - Mr. John Smith, in a line cut from the story

Yes, that made sense. Later I asked about a clip that appeared in the trailers but was ultimately not used in the story. Paul Cornell pointed out approximately where the line of dialogue, "I am not the Doctor!" had originally appeared. He also pointed out that the line wasn't really needed in the episode, the point having been amply made by that point that Smith did not want to believe in his Time Lord alter ego.

There's lots more of Saturday to cover in my interminable con report, but it will have to wait until after my weekly dose of adequate sleep.

Karen

Musical SEEs

When I was in travel agent school back in 1987, shortly after the fan-tailed warbler debacle, the head of the school included a term in her curriculum that I've remembered ever since - sort of. I can't quite remember now whether it was Significant Emotional Experience or Significant Emotional Event. Either way, it was a SEE. I'm not sure how helpful the jargon is, but the concept has stuck with me. We all have significant, life-changing moments from time to time. Not all of them have a huge or devastating impact, but even the minor ones affect us in some small way as we go on with our lives.

I was reminded of this concept tonight as Carly notified me I'd been tagged for the following meme:

1. Name between 5 & 10 songs that have made an impact on your life. I'll leave it up to you to decide how many you wish to describe.

2. Pass it onto five other people with a link back to your own post and this one as the original.

Yes, folks, some SEEs are musical ones!

1. Taxman by the Beatles, off the LP Revolver (1966). I could have named any song from Revolver, but this George Harrison song is the one that leads off the album, the first Beatles LP I ever owned. As I believe I've remarked here before, I bought it from my brother's record club without knowing anything about it, except that it was the Beatles and cost 50 cents less than Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But I loved it, every song on it, starting from the opening "One, two, three, four, one, two" of Taxman. The British income tax issue didn't mean much to me at age 10, but it was easy to appreciate "If you take a walk, I will tax your feet!" I was pleased with myself for knowing who Mr Wilson and Mr Heath were, and asked around to find out what "declare the pennies on your eyes" meant. I've probably played this album hundreds and hundreds of times over the decades, and it's is still one of my favorite LPs of all time.

2. The House Song by Peter, Paul and Mary, from the LP Album 1700 (1967). This is another case in which I'm letting one song stand in for the album it's on. My best friend, Joel R., moved away after seventh grade, and I spent eighth grade in a bit of a depression, listening to this mostly-depressing but rather good LP from PPM. The House Song is the most intriguing track on it. AllMusic Guide disagrees with me on what it's about; they're probably right and I'm probably wrong:

This room here once had childish laughter
And I come back to hear it now and again.
I can't say that I'm certain what you're after,
But in this room, a part of you will remain.

I quoted from the song before, rather extensively, in connection with a past Round Robin Photo Challenge. A sample from that is above.

3. Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers, from the "M.I.A." episode of Quantum Leap. This is one of the most romantic songs of all time. I even quoted from it in a love letter once, many years ago. Many people remember it from the film Ghost, but for Leapers it's a key element of a scene between the hologram of lovelorn Al Calavicchi and his wife in 1969, who thinks Al is dead. Al begs her to wait for him, but she doesn't hear. They then dance to

4. Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles, from the "M.I.A." episode of Quantum Leap. They dance, not quite touching, and Beth seems to be aware that Al is somehow there with her. When Sam leaps out somewhere off camera and Al disappears, Beth stops, upset that Al is gone. Great, great scene. I will never hear either song again without thinking of that episode.

5. Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis, from the "Good Morning Peoria" and "Miss Deep South" episodes of Quantum Leap. This is the third and last of the songs I associate heavily with Quantum Leap, and a great, great song quite apart from that connection. Sam Beckett performed it in a Carmen Miranda outfit in "Miss Deep South," and played it during his stint as a disk jockey in "Good Morning Peoria." It's also the only song I've ever performed in karaoke (and I only did it once). At one time my favorite radio station, Cool 92.9 FM, was so in sync with my tastes in music that Alan Michaels played songs 3,4, and 5 of this list during the same shift, before I got around to calling in to request any of those same songs. Two weeks later, they changed the playlist, one of several times in which that great radio station was pretty much ruined. Cool as I knew it is long gone now, but it was great while it lasted. Sometime I'll write about that in detail.

6. Song for Ten by Neil Hannon, from the Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack. This song, written by Murray Gold, first appeared in the first Doctor Who Christmas special, "The Christmas Invasion", sung by Tim Phillips. (You can hear that version here.) I've always liked it. It accompanied a scene in which the new Doctor chooses an outfit from the TARDIS wardrobe, and then walks into the Tyler flat and smiles at Rose. The CD version, sung by Neil Hannon, has a new verse that's basically about the Doctor and Rose being separated forever. It's a rather good song, and one of the reasons I listen to that soundtrack almost every day. But it has one repeated lyric that bothers me:

I wish today was just like every other day
'Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed

The lyric first struck me as wrong when I noticed it in a televised charity concert, Doctor Who: A Celebration. It seems to be saying that the singer wishes today were ordinary, when he should be wishing that every other day was great. When I sing along in my car, I drown out the lyric with my own revision:

I wish each day could be like what we had today
'Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed

Yes, I know it's a bit nuts. What can I say? I do the same thing with

7. Cherish by the Association.

Oh I'm beginning to think that man has never found
The words that could make you want me
That have the right amount of letters, just the right sound
That could make you hear, make you see
That you are drivin' me out of my mind

No, no, no. "right amount of letters" is bad usage. Should be "right number of letters". It scans and everything. Next verse:

Oh I could say I need you but then you'd realize
That I want you, just like a thousand other guys
Who'd say they loved you, with all the rest of their lies
When all they wanted was to touch your face, your hands
And gaze into your eyes

The implication is that she would "realize" something that's incorrect, namely that he's just like those other guys. Also, the word "realize" is also in another verse, so it's repetitive . Try this instead:

Oh I could say I need you but then you'd theorize

That solves both problems. But I suppose I'm 40 years too late to get Terry Kirkman to change it! Too bad, because I like the song otherwise. I've seen some latter-day version of the band in concert, and grew up hearing their greatest hits, since they were favorites of my mother and brother. I even met one of the band members once, after my mom used one of their songs (Requiem for the Masses) in her 1968 satirical revue, They'd Rather Be Right. Speaking of Mom...


8, 9. 10. The Ending of Desire, Merry-Go-Round and The John Burp Marching Song by Dr. Ruth Anne Johnson Funk. These were three of my mom's best songs, and I'm probably the only person in the world who still has them memorized. John Burp was a satire, and the other two were about failures of love, or failures to love, written over a decade before my parents' divorce. I got the church organist to play The Ending of Desire at my Mom's funeral, and it's quoted on her grave marker.

So don't be sad; there's nothing more to say;
At least we had a passion yesterday.
Don't try to clutch a love that slipped away;
It was too much trouble anyway.

Thanks, Carly! Good thing I got seven hours of sleep this afternoon, because it's quite late now. Good night!

Karen

Random lists, Sancho Panza and Scooby Snacks

Cloudage viewed from 5th and Wilmot

National De-Lurking Week, or whatever it's called, has not been a stellar time for two-way communication here at the Outpost. Aside from the usual winter doldrums and the fact that I didn't even mention the delurking thing until now, it may be because I've mostly been trying to communicate with pictures rather than words, and so haven't elicited many words in return. Worse, I've mostly been obsessing about my Mâvarin characters, a topic that's probably of limited interest outside a small circle of beta readers and close friends. Someday people outside that circle will care about Rani and Carli and the rest, but that day has not yet arrived. First I need to sell the books to a publisher, and then they have to go through the whole publishing process. When Heirs of Mâvarin hits the bookstores, then I can reasonably ask the fantasy fans among you to care about Fayubi and Cathma.

It's also true that I haven't been writing many tour de force blog entries of late, being distracted with Wikipedia, Madeleine L'Engle and the whole Tor submission situation. Tonight is no exception. It's 4:45 AM already. I'm going to post a few pictures, explain the title of this entry, and then go the heck to bed.

In reverse order, then:

Scooby Snacks

I'm somewhat embarrassed to report that Tuffy, always a finicky eater, really seems to like Scooby Snacks. John bought them for her after she started burying a large proportion of her dog biscuits in the mud in the back yard rather than eating them. My objection to these latest treats, aside from the higher cost, is that I've never been fond of Scooby Doo, either the show or the character. Tuffy, of course, has no idea who Scooby Doo is, or that the green biscuits are shaped like ghosts, the brown ones like Shaggy. That's probably as it should be.

As for my own culinary experiments, such as they are, I finally went to Delhi Palace today with some people from work. I resisted for a long time, because my last visit to an Indian restaurant, in London in the early 1990s, did not include much food that I found at all palatable. I'm such a coward when it comes to food adventures! But today's buffet was just fine - not wonderful or even splendid, but reasonably pleasant and a nice change.

Ernie Sabella and Sancho Panza

In the course of my wanderings on Wikipedia tonight, I took a look at the article for Ernie Sabella and ended up working on it for at least an hour, pulling up web sites as research and adding a bunch of info to the entry. Who is Ernie Sabella? you may be wondering. Well, I'll tell you. He's this guy. He was in the Quantum Leap episode "Catch a Falling Star," playing the dual role of Manny (a smalltime stage actor) and Sancho Panza (as seen in Man of La Mancha). He did a batch of NyQuil commercials back in 1994, appeared in his friend Nathan Lane's short-lived sitcom Encore! Encore!, and sat naked on the subway in an episode of Seinfeld, a show I personally hate. But you probably know him as the voice of Pumbaa in The Lion King, its sequels and its spinoffs. He's also been on Broadway, where he played Sancho on stage several years after doing so on QL.

One of the things I wanted to add to the article was a screen capture from the Quantum Leap. So I pulled out my Quantum Leap Season Two box set, and quickly got thoroughly annoyed with it. The CDs are two-sided and barely labeled, and there are no special features at all on the disc containing "Catch a Falling Star." This is a major, important episode. It should have had a commentary and interviews. But no, they didn't even get the facts right on the one-sentence episode description. Grrr. But I watched the episode anyway, and I got my screen captures. I even went to the Sancho Panza article and added a section about MoLM, since the article didn't even mention that the character had ever been anything except the Cervantes novel.

L'Engle at Random

When I checked my Wikipedia edit count, I was up to 1694, six edits short of being able to update my little box to claim "over 1700 edits." (The update itself would be 1701, you see.) I thoght I would do a handful of quick and easy edits, but instead I spent a few hours on one edit for the article on Random House. Various people had made half-hearted attempts to mention some of the companies and imprints that are part of Random House these days, but it was ill-organized and highly incomplete. I took a chunk of listings from their web site and turned it into a partly-annotated list of divisions and imprints. It needs work, but it's a start.

As I did my research for that, I noticed belatedly that a L'Engle book I special ordered recently, The Ordering of Love, was featured on a page for Shaw Books. The weird part about that was that this used to be Harold Shaw Publishers, but not it's part of Random House. When did that happen? Random House now owns about all the publishing companies and book imprints you've even heard of, and a bunch that you haven't; but I don't recall ever seeing that one on the list before. It means that L'Engle is getting to be about as much a Random House author as a Fararr, Straus & Giroux one. FS&G publish all the novels in hardcover, and that's the edition I prefer except for the whole let's not-wreck-the-expensive-book thing. The Shaw imprint means that a bunch of her non-fiction and poetry is now Random, along with all the paperbacks.

5:45 AM. I may not have entertained you with all these nearly-random ramblings, but say hi anyway, willya? Meanwhile I'm going to bed.

Karen

MPS Cover Me

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of something you've made. Pottery, cookies, a drawing or painting, a poem or a pipe cleaner stick man -- it's all good, it just has to have been made by you. Show off your creativity.

First of all, John Scalzi, Carly, Steven, Pat and I want you to know you've put us in a bit of a pickle with this one. Compare your topic with the one announced this past Thursday for the next Round Robin Photo Challenge, entries to be posted on Wednesday, November 1st:

Pat (Deslily) author of the journal, "Here There And Everywhere 2nd Edition," has chosen "The Creative Side Of You" as our theme for the challenge.... Show off your creative side, by posting photos of anything you have created from scratch.

See? Pretty much the same thing, isn't it? You've kinda stolen our thunder here.

Of course we'll forgive you if you plug the Round Robin Photo Challenges. We've being doing these for a year and a half, and you haven't mentioned them yet, perhaps because we didn't ask! Well, we're asking now - nicely, even. Pretty please, beloved Blogfather? Hey, you can even be a Robin yourself if you want to!

While our favorite Campbell Award winner is mulling that over, let's get on with posting a few pictures of things I made. These are three issues of The Observer, the Quantum Leap fanzine / newsletter I used to edit. I designed all of these covers (and many others), wrote much of the stuff inside and edited the rest.


This first cover doesn't look like much, but it's from the first issue of the zine, back around Christmas 1990. It's also an almost exact replica of the cover of a report issued to members of a Senate Committee deciding the fate of Project Quantum Leap in the second season premiere episode, "Honeymoon Express."


This cover is from the fourth issue. I didn't take the photo, and I certainly didn't create or design one of the premiere news magazines of all time. But I did design this parody of their distinctive covers. It refers to a line of dialogue in the pilot episode, in which Al tells amnesiac Sam Beckett that "Time Magazine even called you 'the next Einstein.'" I sent a framed copy of this to the show's production office, back in the day.



Now we come to the best cover I ever did, certainly the most ambitious and labor-intensive. Back in 1993 I did have access to PhotoShop, unlike now, and worked on a Mac. On the other hand, it was 1993, a long time ago in terms of technology. I replaced every face, every object on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with someone or something Leapish. I had trouble photographing the glossy cover well, but you get the idea. Click on the photos for much larger versions of the Observer 9 (Number nine, number nine) cover.


The four Beatles in the center are QL creator Donald P. Bellisario, stars Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula, and writer/co-executive producer Deborah Pratt. The four waxwork Beatles to the left have been replaced by the four founders of Project Quantum Leap the club. The rest of the cover has guest stars, writers, producers, fans, a crew T-shirt, Dean Stockell's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Panavision camera. And Look! Teresa Murray's holding a copy of Observer 4 in her waxwork hand!

If you'd like to join in on the Round Robin topic, we'll be delighted to have you! Please see the Round Robin blog for details. The posting date for entries about "The Creative Side Of You" is Wednesday, November 1st.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Creative, Fanzines, Round Robin Photo, Monday Photo Shoot, Scalzi, Quantum Leap