Arrgh - I feel awful. After my doctor's appointment yesterday I called in sick and spent a lot of time in bed. Today I woke up feeling like death warmed over - my head cold is moving into my chest, and the DayQuil I took hasn't seemed to kick in yet. But I have an important meeting at 2 PM I couldn't miss, and so I dragged myself to work for that when I probably should have just shut off the alarm and rolled over and gone back to sleep. End of organ recital.Last night I watched a curious film I had never heard of: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). Reading the Netflix reviews, this was apparently a beloved baby boomer flick which I never knew existed. I was eight and crazy about space in 1964 - how did this get released without my knowing about it? I was too busy playing Beatles, I guess.
It wasn't all that good; in fact, it was pretty lame. Adam West and a monkey named "The Woolley Monkey" were in it, if that tells you anything. But, still, I found it curiously watchable. Whomever did the control panels on the space ship did a good job - I would have loved them as a kid.
I got into a minor argument recently with somebody about Star Trek starship control panels... was it my son Ethan? Anyway, this person insisted that the panels were flat. Oh no, not in the 1966 original series, they weren't. They looked sort of like backlit marbles - here's proof - I remember them very well. I loved that look: saturated NBC "in living color" TV, colors on glossy black panels. Magnificent. So much better than the dreary color palettes of subsequent productions...
Picard's: too beige.
Bakula's ship: again, too putty-colored.
The movie reboot: way overlit.
As some of you longtime blog readers know, a central mystery in my life and an annoying genealogical brick wall is the identity of my great-great-great-grandparents Clark. (I know who my 2nd great grandfather Clark was, but not his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.) An energetic e-mail correspondent who, for some benevolent reason of his own, has taken an interest in the problem and has been e-mailing me very helpful suggestions for further research. It looks like a trip to the Princeton, NJ campus library is in order sometime this year to examine some Clarke family papers they have on file. The "smoking gun" documentation that will enable me to step back another generation I have been searching for may be there. It's a bit of a reach, but a not altogether unreasonable one. Also - I understand there's a Clarke family bible at Rutgers. I need to get a look at that, too. (Hey Rutgers and Princeton, here's an idea: digitize your collections!)
I've started Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male. So far, so good. From wikipedia: "The book influenced David Morrell's first novel, the 1972 "hunted man" action thriller First Blood, which spawned the Rambo film series." Hmmm. I suspect the source material was the best, as is often the case.
Today I'm wearing A-Men - and subsequently smelling of caramel and patchouli. It's a weird scent that took some getting used to. It's okay - I like it - but I prefer the flanker I own, A-Men Pure Malt. The notes in it are malt, fruit and peat. Odd, I know, but it smells absolutely great. I got an e-mail announcement today of another flanker, A-Men Pure Wood, to be released in July. I'll have to stop by a Nordstrom about then and get a sample; I'm sure the sales assistants will be pushing it hard. I hope the wood note in it isn't oud, or agarwood. (There's a fragrance bandwagon for oud right now.) That's a hard one to get right. About half the oud scents I have smelled are nasty and medicinal/pharmaceutical.
69 degrees and party cloudy tomorrow in Outpost Springfield, which means yard sales. And probably a whole lot of napping if I don't feel better.
Have a great weekend!
0 Comments