P is for finding the print source via Facebook

Van Vogt and his agent, Forrest J. Ackerman, acting without attorneys, met a total of nine times during 1979 and 1980 with Fox attorneys and executives

My wife is not on Facebook. That is, by NO means, a criticism. There are plenty of reasons to avoid the social media vehicle. But it does make things interesting.

I joined Facebook to keep track of my sisters and their daughters. Niece Rebecca Jade traveled to Greece and Italy in May 2017 on a music Cruise, and I probably wouldn’t have known about that otherwise.

I’m FB friends with some of her work colleagues and relatives. One of my wife’s first cousins had an accident involving farm equipment in 2016. I would take his wife’s Facebook notices and email them to my wife and my mother-in-law.

So I appreciate the 17-year-old who deleted all her social media and felt much better.

On the other hand, my friend, writer/artist Steve Bissette, extols it as a source of research. He had seen MULTIPLE web texts claim that A.E. Van Vogt filed legal suit against people behind the movie ALIEN for plagiarism. Reportedly, van Vogt’s 1939 short stories “The Black Destroyer” and especially “Discord in Scarlet,” (both included in the revised novel-format THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE, 1950) were ripped off.

The supposed lawsuit was filed sometime in 1979 or 1980, but settled out of court. But Steve could not find ANY hard evidence for this claim, “not a single print source from 1979-1981 supporting this oft-repeated anecdote. NOTHING in the motion picture trade publications such as VARIETY or BOX OFFICE, or science-fiction magazines of the period.”

As it turns out, one of Steve’s friends found “what may be the one-and-only print source for this long-circulated rumor. From ‘Van Vogt Wins ALIEN Settlement,’ Locus #237 (Sept. 1980, Vol. 13, No. 9), page 3” with extra special thanks to Rob Imes for locating this singular print source article:

“A. E. van Vogt has settled out of court with 20th Century Fox for $50,000 after pointing out similarities between the movie ALIEN and his story ‘Discord in Scarlet’… Van Vogt and his agent, Forrest J. Ackerman, acting without attorneys, met a total of nine times during 1979 and 1980 with Fox attorneys and executives and reviewed excerpts from the various screenplays evolved for the movie. No question of direct plagiarism was involved; rather, van Vogt and Ackerman felt that since the story line was similar to the movie, Fox should buy the story or the entire novel [The Voyage of the Space Beagle]. Fox initially offered $30,000 for settlement of all claims; van Vogt suggested $130,000 for the story or $250,000 for movie rights to the book.

“Van Vogt feels that Fox should have hired someone with expertise in science fiction to act as ‘idea monitor’ before buying scripts in a field which has such a large backlog of copyrighted stories. While no one could keep up with the current output, most of the major ‘spectacle’ stories were published some time ago.

“The decision to accept the out-of-court offer was based in part on van Vogt’s age. Although he is in good health, a lengthy court battle might lead to a useless settlement after van Vogt’s death. Van Vogt, who married late last year, is 68.”

Now THAT is using Facebook for good.

ABC Wednesday, Round 21

Getting prepared for the whatever

Living in upstate new York isn’t the worst place to be

An article in Forbes notes that “nine states will no longer allow travelers to board an airplane with just their state issued driver’s licenses as of January 22, 2018. To get past TSA security checkpoints, another form of identification will be required: passport, permanent resident card/green card or a military ID.”

The states are Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington.

However, this map from the Department of Homeland Security suggests that more than half the states, plus Puerto Rico and all of the territories, are under scrutiny. These include California, Illinois, and New York by 2020 at the latest, if their drivers’ licenses aren’t compliant.

“DHS is currently reviewing extension requests from states with extensions that expired on October 10, 2017… In the meantime, there will be no change in enforcement status for these states. States will have a grace period until January 22, 2018, meaning that Federal agencies (including TSA) will continue to accept driver’s license and identification cards issued by these states in accordance with each agency’s policies.”

As it turns out, I always travel on planes and trains with my passport, which doesn’t expire until 2020. It HAS come in handy. I looked at it recently and realized I had stuck a rarely-used credit card and a $5 bill in there. The Wife’s passport expires when mine does, but the Daughter’s has lapsed, and we need to fix that.

This has been all part of a preparedness mentality the last few years of disasters has created. We have a manual can opener because the power can go out. We need to replace our bottled water; I assume they feel the plastic will leak into the beverage.

That said, I’m thinking that living in upstate New York isn’t the worst place to be. It’s not prone to wildfires (western US) or hurricanes (mostly south of here) or flooding or tornadoes (Midwest) or drought.

October rambling: Twilight Zone & the Confederacy

We are living in a kakistocracy

Hands up, don’t shoot (Nah, that never happened…)

The Twilight Zone and the Confederacy.

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism

How the Nazis Used Jim Crow Laws as the Model for Their Race Laws

Trevor Noah: Race and Identity (NY Times interview)

No longer a convicted murderer, Carl Dukes faces life after 20 years in prison

A Fire Story -Brian Fies

Journalists’ lament

Heather Fazio’s exodus from the Times Union blogfarm

John Oliver: Why The Equifax Breach Is A Big, Scary Problem

The lie that poverty is a moral failing was buried a century ago. Now it’s back

How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Labour will lead NZ Government

LIGO Detects Fierce Collision of Neutron Stars for the First Time

The day the sky turned red in the UK – but what caused rare phenomenon?

The Story Behind the Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar

We are alienating each other with unrestrained callouts and unchecked self-righteousness

Chuck Miller: Crossing past my failures

Burger King ad: Bullying Jr.

Vikings Razed the Forests. Can Iceland Regrow Them?

Archaeology in Albany

How did people sleep in the Middle Ages

The shortest regularly scheduled airline route on earth

Swedish death cleaning is the morbid new way to de-clutter your life

28 Boring Words and What to Use Instead

Where do mansplainers get their water?
From a well, actually.

How to Pronounce Paraskavidekatriaphobia

5 Zombie Walks to do for Halloween

Magazine of the Living Dead: The bloody rise and frightful fall of Fangoria – at FantaCo in 1980-1988, we sold a ton of back issues; #9 was considered rare

A brief history of Bat-marriage

The Great Catnip Caper Of 1909

Now I Know: Why Things are Tawdry and When Baseball Players Left it on the Field and The Special Sound a Mercedes-Benz Makes Before a Crash

Steve

THE MADNESS OF DJT

We are living in a kakistocracy

Taking Hostages and The chaos grows

The Self-Dealing Presidency

Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump

Grief, compassion -advice ignored

George W. Bush: Bigotry in any form is blasphemy

Lawrence O’Donnell: ‘Stunned’ by John Kelly’s attack on Rep. Wilson and video of her 2015 speech at new FBI building

How Badly Is Neil Gorsuch Annoying the Other Supreme Court Justices?

MUSIC

We Will All Go Together When We Go – Tom Lehrer

Almost like Praying – Lin-Manuel Miranda and friends sing for Puerto Rico support

Since I Don’t Have You – Skyliners

What goes on – Beatles (Lennon vocal)

Coverville 1190: Indie Hodgepodge & Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute

K-Chuck Radio: But they’re not doing the Time Warp…

Hey Ya! – Walk off the Earth (Outkast Cover)

Up In A Puff Of Smoke – Polly Brown

You’re Still A Young Man -Tower Of Power (1972)

Go Go Shoes / Go Go Place- Lonnie Youngblood with Jimi Hendrix, May 1966.

Shocking Omissions: Joan Armatrading’s ‘Walk Under Ladders’

Female-female songwriting teams

Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius

Hallelujah! The Songs We Should Retire?

Why we really really really like repetition in music

Who first said, “Writing About Music is Like Dancing About Architecture”?

CAREER IN MUSIC IS DAMAGING TO MENTAL HEALTH

Music throwback: Roger Miller

“I can’t breathe in the morning ’til l get myself a cigarette lit”

I’m fairly sure I got my first Roger Miller album, the greatest hits collection pictured, from the Capitol Records mail order club circa 1966. While he was billed as a country performer, he was really a crossover artist whose lyrics I often found hysterically funny when I was a kid. And his name was Roger.

CW is country, AC is adult contemporary.

Dang Me: #1 CW for six weeks, #7 pop in 1964
Chug-A-Lug: #3 CW for two weeks, #9 pop in 1964
One Dyin’ and a Buryin’: #8 AC, #10 CW, #34 pop in 1965
Kansas City Star: #3 AC, #7 CW, #31 pop in 1965

But more remarkable was that he was one of a relatively few artists in the 1960s to have MULTIPLE songs that got to the Top 10 on THREE different US Billboard charts:

King of the Road: #1 AC for TEN weeks, #1 CW for five weeks, #4 pop in 1965
Engine Engine #9: #2 AC for three weeks, #2 CW for two weeks, #7 pop in 1965
England Swings: #1 AC, #3 CW, #8 pop in 1965/66

Those songs were all on that hits albums. King of the Road I’ve been thinking about a LOT. Here’s a guy down on his luck, a charming scoundrel:

Two hours of pushin’ broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means, king of the road…

I smoke old stogies I have found short, but not too big around…

I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain’t locked, when no one’s around.

Then I bought his subsequent LP, with the big hit, the more serious Husbands and Wives, #2 AC, #5 CW. #26 pop. “It’s my belief pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.”

Here’s someone’s list of his best songs.

Roger Miller died on October 25, 1992, 25 years ago this week, at the age of 56 from lung cancer. The prophetic lyrics of Dad Blame Anything A Man Can’t Quit:

I’m a two pack a day man, smoke like a fiend
Like a burned out bearing in a bad machine
I can’t breathe in the morning ’til I get myself a cigarette lit
I say, “Dad blame anything a man can’t quit”

Still I keep it up, keep it up and do it all the time
Every now and then I make up my mind
To give it up, give it up, throw it away
I usually change my mind later on up in the day

Links to all songs, though one or two sound like rerecordings by Roger Miller.

A panoply of reunion festivities

Sharkey’s is a contender to the throne of spiedie creator.

My sister Leslie decided to attend her ##th reunion from Binghamton (NY) Central High School. If MY class had one last year, I didn’t know about it, AND I’m not sure I would have gone. The last one of mine I went to be more than a decade ago, when the Daughter was very small.

Leslie flew to Albany on a Wednesday night, crashed my choir rehearsal on Thursday, then, on Friday, she drove us to the Parlor City, its old nickname, dropping me off with a high school friend and her husband, while she stayed with a grade school chum of ours.

She picked me up a couple hours later and we attended a mixer at a place called Remlick’s. It was a bit overwhelming; a few dozen people from BCHS I hadn’t seen in decades, without the benefit of name tags. But it was a pleasant time, as the cobwebs of forgotten events began to dissolve.

Sharkey’s is a “contender to the throne of spiedie creator,” and that’s where we went Saturday at lunchtime, running into six of my sister’s classmates.

Leslie had attended to Binghamton University, then called SUNY Binghamton, and it was homecoming weekend. So we went to the campus and listened to three choral groups, each performing a piece my church choir has performed. The Women’s Chorus (Zion’s Walls by Aaron Copland), The Chamber Singers (Sicut cervus desiderat by Palestrina) and Leslie’s old group, the Harpur Chorale (Hark! I Hear the Harps Eternal arraigned by Alice Parker).

Onto Thirsty’s, where Leslie sees her old friends Cathy and Bobby and their family, then to a separate room, where a bunch of my First Ward chums were gathering. That was likely the high point, as I recognized several of them without assistance. I got to talk about genealogies, and libraries, and book writing, among the topics.

Round Two of the BCHS reunion was at the Holiday Inn. Now that I had seen many of these folks the day before, AND they had name tags, I was in a much more comfortable situation.

Leslie made the trip specifically for the high school reunion. That it, the First Ward reunion, AND the SUNY-B homecoming were all on the SAME DAY was astonishingly convenient, and wonderful coincidence.

Ramblin' with Roger
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