"Major Tom to Ground Control..."

Do you think that the success of Barbie ($1.446B USD to date) is helping Tom Hanks get any traction with the Major Matt Mason movie?

- Sid

Little Conversations: Tainted Love.

These little conversations
Well for me they'll never do
Now what am I supposed to do with
Broken sentences of you?

Concrete Blonde, Little Conversations 

Retrograde childhood trauma is the WORST.

- Sid

Space Crawler II: "UNLIMITED POWER!"

Home at last after our fun five-day Victoria vacation - we've apologized to the cat for being away, he's reluctantly accepted our apology, we've unpacked, made dinner, done some laundry - time to get serious with the Major Matt Mason Space Crawler that I stumbled across at Cherry Bomb Toys.

The rotating leg/wheel mechanism may not be unique, but it should be - as it turns out, Mattel filed a patent for the whole thing in 1970 under US Patent #3529479A.  (Funny that I've never found any reference to this elsewhere.) To be fair, the patent also defines the complicated gearing mechanism that makes the whole thing work, and refers to "wheel substitutes" rather than attempting to define that part of the toy.

The battery contacts are a bit corroded, which, sadly, is the most common cause of death for toys that have been stored with the batteries in place. Over time the cells eventually self-deplete, after which pressure from gas buildup splits the casing and the subsequent leakage destroys the working parts.

However, early days - the upper and lower contacts aren't particularly clean, but it appears to be primarily just surface buildup, let's hope for the best.

The next day, I pick up a set of D batteries* on the way home, and after dinner return to the fight.  I gently open the power compartment (pro tip: always be careful when dealing with any 58 year old toy that uses compressed plastic for hinges) and, after taking a moment to decipher the insertion directions, pop in the batteries.  

The mechanical power switch is the simplest thing in the world, just a plastic plate that rotates in and out of the gap between the battery and the contact.  I close the compartment, move the switch - and nothing. I test the drive/winch control just in case, still nothing.  I'm a bit disappointed, but again, early days.

A search through my toolbox produces a torn sheet of emery paper, and I use a piece of it to carefully scrape away at the upper battery contacts until I see bare metal instead of corrosion. The lower contacts are less accessible, so I decide to do a work-in-progress test before building some kind of tool to get at them.  

Batteries in again, and I move the switch - success!  The motor grinds into action - "grinds" being the appropriate term, it's a bit loud - and the paired legs begin to rotate.  I test the winch control, and it works like a charm, both forward and backward. 

However, when I carefully place the crawler on the floor, only one wheel - leg? - rotates, the other one does nothing.  There's a plastic friction mechanism that acts as a sort of primitive differential release, so that if either wheel is blocked or jammed, the motor can continue to operate.  The mechanism for the right wheel is too loose to engage, and as such there isn't enough friction for the drive unit to move it. 

I test it with some tape, and once the right wheel is secured to the friction tab, both wheels rotate to drive the crawler noisily across the hardwood floor - to Jaq the Cat's initial dismay but eventual indifference.

I'm a bit foolishly pleased by the whole thing - it just adds to the serendipitous nature of this purchase that the crawler actually still works after so many years. It's a bit jerky, but you know, as the saying goes, it's not that the bear dances well, it's that it dances at all. 

- Sid 

* Yes, surprise, D batteries - am I alone in thinking that everything is AA these days?

CaterpillarGeekGirl for the win!

Just a quick shout-out to Caterpillar Geek Girl, whose smart and funny geek-themed upcycled earrings are for sale at the Makers store on Government Street in Victoria (as well as online).  Seriously, these are such a clever idea - the perfect gift for the earring-wearer in your life, geek or not.  (And yes, I bought a pair of Archie-themed earrings for my wife, who is also smart, funny and clever.)

- Sid

 

Space Crawler I: "CRAWLS OVER ANYTHING!"

As part of research and planning for our five-day getaway to Vancouver Island, Karli had discovered that Victoria was home to a haunted indoor miniature golf course. In spite of her noted aversion for ghosts,  we decided to give it a try if there was a suitable gap in our schedule.

Lunch is pierogies at the Sult Pierogi Bar - we'd had a sample of their savoury cuisine as part of a food tour of Victoria, and were eager to indulge in a full meal - and then we decide to risk the perils of haunted golf at the Haunted Manor on Yates Street.  

After a quick 18 holes (literally - we didn't have a reservation, but the receptionist let us go in provided we didn't linger) we're back out on the street. Karli realizes that we were standing in front of some kind of toy store, and generously suggests that we should go in and look around.

As it turns out, we're visiting the new home of Cherry Bomb Toys.  Cherry Bomb has been in business for over 18 years, and specializes in used and collectable toys, as well as operating the National Toy Museum of Canada.  

The store has some interesting offerings that you don't often see - there's a little Robotech shelf, with a tempting Scott Bernard Robotech MOSPEADA action figure, although not tempting enough to spend $95 on it.**

It's the wildest chance that I notice that they have a Major Matt Mason Space Crawler for sale, given that it's in a corner, behind a frame divider, and on a bottom shelf.  There are a couple of other MMM vehicles as well, but the Space Crawler is what catches my eye - I've always wanted one of these unusual looking vehicles from the Major's lunar motor pool.

There's a price tag, but it's upside down and partially concealed. Karli and I eventually agree that it says $40, which is a very acceptable price.  (I've seen empty boxes for this toy that were listed at more than $200 on eBay.) 

We find a friendly staff member who cheerfully opens the case so that I can take a closer look at the Crawler. It's a bit battered after over 50 years of life (aren't we all?), but given that I've seen Crawlers in equivalent condition on eBay for two or three times this price, it's a bit of a steal - and there's no shipping fee.

Not only that, but it's on sale! Cherry Bomb has just moved to this location and is celebrating by taking 20% off all their prices - final cost, $32 plus tax.  I tap my card to pay, gently ease the Space Crawler into a shopping bag, and we cautiously return to our borrowed condo in hopes of getting my new acquisition to a safe resting place without an unfortunate encounter with a careless pedestrian, an aggressive bicycle, or a fast-closing door.

 

Admittedly, the Space Crawler isn't in mint condition: all the decals are gone, and the winch line, hook and rear support roller are missing in action.  However, the truth of collecting this sort of vintage toy is that first, they're toys, and as such have suffered all the abuses that children inflict upon their playthings; and second, they are what they are - these are a limited commodity, no one is making more of them.  As such, this is still a good find at a good price, and who knows, at some point I may find a parts sale that has the missing bits and pieces.***

I'm eager to find out if the Crawler still works. Mattel always said that the Major Matt Mason toys were based on NASA designs (or at least NASA concepts) and I've always wondered if the unique rotating leg system* was something that they had tested in real life. 

- Sid

* Well, mostly unique, the Billy Blastoff toy series has a virtually identical Lunar Moon Crawler vehicle. (If anyone reading this has an extra set of Billy Blastoff toys that need a new home, I am happy to take them off your hands.)

** In the interests of geek street cred, I feel obliged to note that the yellow action figure on the right side is actually from the Voltron animated series - I believe that's Hunk, who pilots the Yellow Lion.

***  I checked on eBay.ca when we got home, and there is in fact a parts kit available for the Crawler that has everything I would need PLUS a new motor - for an additional $75 CAD.  At least there’s a PDF of replacement decals that I can download for free.

Evolution.

Munro's Bookstore in Victoria: behold the ongoing decline of the mass-market novel and the triumph of the trade paperback and the hardcover - it's like seeing the last few Neanderthals making their way down the path to extinction...

- Sid

Naming it "SPOT" won't help.

Relieved.  RELIEVED?  Oh, my friend, that's going to go very badly for you after the inevitable takeover of the world by our new AI overlords - who will have no reason to forgive, and are not able to forget.

- Sid

Wrong place, right time.

This morning I was pleased to be notified that I had won an auction for a 2004 24x65 inch poster of DC Comic's Justice League by artist Alex Ross, in Very Fine+ condition.

Ross' painterly approach and use of live reference models gives his comic book work a unique style (recommended reading would be his four-issue Kingdom Come DC miniseries from 1996), and as such I was surprised to win the auction for only $12 USD.*   I suspect that it was just a case of misplaced filing-  if it had been listed in a comic book auction instead of as part of Heritage Auctions' weekly Sunday movie posters session, it might have gotten more attention.

Regardless, their loss, my gain - now, if only I had enough wall space to hang my new treasure...

- Sid

* As with previous postings about auction purchases, the price is a bit of a lie, there's a $29 USD auction fee on top of the actual bid.  Still, an unexpectedly low winning bid.

"Hello, boys..."

"...I'm baaaack!"

Seriously, though, how have you been? What's new? Why has it been so busy here since I've been away? 

Define busy, you say?

Up until my hiatus began, the record for monthly hits was 6,846, set in December of 2016, with the median over time running around 3K.  Since I went on hiatus, I've beaten that record three times - 8,794 in May of 2023, 8,188 as of this date in March of 2024, and in February 2024 (a Leap Year month, yes, but still a short month) it shot up to a ridiculous 12,598 hits, almost double the pre-hiatus peak.

How do I know this?  Well, full disclosure, I've remained a regular visitor to the blog. It's a useful journal that records 16 years of my life, and as such if I want to show someone a picture of a giant robot in Japan, my wife as Yoda, or a post-apocalyptic statue of Donald Trump half-buried in the sand, this is where I go to find those things.  

I also continued to receive the occasional comment,* although not as many as you'd expect, even from a month with nearly 13,000 hits - which, frankly, leads me to suspect that a lot of those hits were from Russian spambots.  But then, I've always thought my readership was mostly Russian spambots, which didn't bother me - they didn't leave a trail of comments containing objectionable links, so I didn't care.  This blog has always been a labour of love rather than a mechanism for fame, so total visitors was more an area of mild interest instead of a goal.

And that's the reason I've decided to start blogging again. I've missed having a journal of my life as a geek, to the point where I've continued to log ideas for postings and take pictures as if I were going to post them.  Rather than let them go to waste, over the next few months I'll be adding those missing posts from the past year and a half - based  on my notes, it's been a target-rich environment in terms of topics! 

This post and The Lost Posts: a guide to post-hiatus posting will act as bookends for those posts - that posting introduces the idea of The Lost Posts and explains the timeline.

And here we go again...

- Sid

* The most surprising thing about my career as a blogger is that over the course of 16 years and close to 400,000 hits, I only received one comment that I felt was intended to be provocative - literally, in the sense of trying to provoke an argument.

"The arching sky is calling..."

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands! Stand by! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth

Any aspiring space explorers in the audience?  NASA is looking for astronauts - sadly, US citizens only, and out of over 12,000 applicants in 2020, only ten became astronaut candidates: odds of 1 in 1200 against you, even if it was a random selection. But you know, if you don't apply, the odds are zero.

- Sid

"Time may change me..."

From the Doctor Who trailer for Season 14 - best eight second time travel joke ever.

- Sid

Gnomic Statement XXII.

Fenring is Villeneuve's Bombadil.

- Sid

"The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence."

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."

- Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

I've been amused to have people ask me what I thought of Dune: Part Two as compared to the first film. In my mind, they're actually just one movie, released over time but based on a single story - if the two films were spliced together without credits, you wouldn't even notice the break. I suppose I could make a case for the second film being more of a war movie than the first one, in keeping with director Denis Villeneuve's comments about Part Two, but that follows the structure of the original novel as well.

The bottom line is that the majority of Part Two would make no sense if you hadn't seen Dune*, so let's just consider them to be a single piece of art.

The next topic is generally the possibility of a sequel, and based on the success of Part Two so far, it's more that likely that a third film is happening.  

However, as a long standing fan, I'm aware that the potential for sequels is greater than people think:  after all, there are 27 - yes, 27 - Dune books in existence**.

But let's take a look at what that number encompasses.

Frank Herbert wrote six books in the series before his death in 1986: Dune (1965);  Dune Messiah (1969); Children of Dune (1976); God Emperor of Dune (1981); Heretics of Dune (1984); and ending with Chapterhouse: Dune in 1985.

Thirteen years later, his son Brian took up the gauntlet, and in collaboration with fellow author Kevin J. Anderson, added an additional 21 books to the series, for the most part as trilogy novels: Prelude to Dune, Legends of Dune, Heroes of Dune, Great Schools of Dune, and The Caladan Trilogy, along with with four one-off novels and a pair of short story collections. 

Unfortunately, although the Herbert/Anderson collaborations have sold well, they have not necessarily been up to the standard of his father's work - no offense intended, Frank Herbert's style is distinctive and very much his own. 

However, you can't ignore that those books exist, and as such, if the market were to continue to demand Dune films, it would be possible, if perhaps misguided, to adapt all of them. After all, Denis Villeneuve is only 56, if he made a concerted effort he could probably get through all 27 before he hits 100, a fate which might well be worse than death from his perspective - the poor man might want to have a life of his own for the next 44 years.

- Sid

* Coincidentally, my sister-in-law Stefanie has had exactly that experience. She didn't see the first film, but a friend had an extra ticket to Part Two and convinced her to go. I gather that she did some research and managed to keep up, but it must have been a struggle.

** There's a colouring book as well, but I think we can safely leave that off the list.

Dunes.

“As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other."

Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

Provided that Dune: Part 2 continues its success at the box office, a third Dune movie based on the second book in the series*, Dune Messiah, will probably get the green light for production in the near future.  (This is a little confusing - I wish that Denis Villeneuve had used a different numbering convention for the two Dune films, perhaps Dune 1A and 1B.)

I have mixed feelings about this. Out of the six Dune books written by Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah is arguably the weakest one. It's the shortest of the six, lacking some of the depth of the other books, and has a sort of rushed feeling about it - I've always suspected that it was written in a hurry so as to take advantage of the popularity of Dune.

Regardless, even at his worst, Frank Herbert knew what he was doing, and Messiah capably sets the stage for the rest of the series - which, logically, means that there could easily be at least one more film after that.  Hopefully M. Villeneuve won't split Children of Dune into two parts, that won't help with the confusion factor.

 - Sid

Dune: Part Two - "Uh thank you. Thank you very much."

My movements, ma'am, are all leg movements. I don't do nothing with my body.

Elvis Presley

There was a moment in Dune: Part Two, just the briefest moment, when Austin Butler's Feyd-Rautha sounded, well, southern - or, as Karli put it, brought a little Elvis to Arrakis.

- Sid

The Adventure of the Walotsky Portfolio.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

The story begins, as so many stories here do, with a blog posting. 

I was looking for a good scan of the cover images from Roger Zelazny's Amber series for a Reading Week posting last year (my copies being much the worse for wear after years of ownership, and as such not the source of choice for scanning).  As part of my search, I discovered that there was an artist's portfolio of the unique cover artwork from the Avon editions of the first five books, a 1,500 copy limited edition portfolio signed and numbered by cover artist Ron Walotsky.

I've always had a strong appreciation for Walotsky's Avon covers, and immediately visited eBay to see if someone had the portfolio up for sale.  To my disappointment (and mild surprise) there was nothing.  I expanded my search to the Internet in general, and although I was able to find one or two references to past sales, there was absolutely no sign of current opportunities to buy the set.

It surprised me that a portfolio of cover images by a relatively unknown artist for a series of genre novels would vanish so completely. You'd think that someone, somewhere, would have one up for sale.

I even stumbled across evidence of a short artist's proof run of 25, again, signed and labelled as such and numbered, but just as absent in terms of availability.

However, the primary attribute of the internet is change.  Things come, things go, and as such, whenever it crossed my mind, I would do a search for the portfolio.

A recent search finally bore fruit, resulting in a hit on eBay - or at least a partial hit, the set being sold only had four of the prints rather than five.

It was unfortunate that one of the prints was missing, but it wasn't hard to imagine someone pulling out a favourite and framing it, this is how life works. Because it wasn't a full set, the price was quite reasonable, and I decided to buy it.

There was just one oddity to the portfolio's provenance - the covering letter was neither signed nor numbered.

I'd seen several examples of the signed letter as part of previous sale postings, so I knew what it should look like. There are no surprises, Walotsky had signed on the line and written in the number of the edition.

How could this partial portfolio exist?  If someone was going to counterfeit an artist's portfolio, they would want to add the signature, not remove it.  And given that even the artist's proofs are numbered, it seems unlikely that Walotsky would just randomly hand out one of the portolios in its blank state.

Sherlock Holmes would undoubtedly want to investigate the evidence before coming up with any premature theories, but in his absence, I'm going to venture my own solution to the mystery.

My theory is that there was an extra proof set at the printing house, possibly discarded due to a flaw in the missing portfolio page, and someone in the production staff simply took it home.  In this scenario, the missing print was never part of the set, and the unsigned partial portfolio was replaced by a full document with a corrected image.

If this was Picasso, the discovery of a partial portfolio that fell outside of the recorded editions would be an epic breaking-news story.  As it is, it's a curiosity more than anything else, just an odd story for a blog posting, written in my own hand in lieu of Doctor Watson's:

Out of all the cases put before my good friend Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the oddest was the mystery of the Walotsky Portfolio. It began on a rainy night when I had returned from my practise to our lodgings at 221B Baker Street, and sat down in front of the glowing screen of my electric computing system to catch up on the events of the day and pursue my interest in items made available through electronic auctions, an activity which had seized the Empire's interest as well in the year of our Lord 1881.

- Sid

"Apology Accepted, Captain Needa."

It was announced today that veteran British actor Michael Culver passed away on February 27th at the age of 85, ending a career of over 50 years of stage, television and motion picture performances - the best known of which was perhaps his brief 1980 appearance in The Empire Strikes Back as an apologetic Imperial Captain.  Thank you for your service, Mr. Culver.

- Sid

Disney 2024: Kuqqa Kulaa?

My previous posting told a slight lie. I did in fact purchase another souvenir item during our time at Disneyland - I finally succumbed to temptation and invested in the Black Spire outpost version of a Coke.  Hmmm...I wonder how much it costs Disney to have the Coca-Cola Company manufacture a custom product which is presumably only for sale at two refreshment carts on opposite sides of the United States?

- Sid

Disney 2024: "I am no Jedi."

No light sabers this trip, no helmets (although I noticed that there was now an alternate version of the X-Wing pilot's helmet that I purchased on our last Disneyland visit for sale) - my only souvenir shopping was the impulse buy of an Ahsoka t-shirt from a vendor located in one of the underpass tunnels that lead to Galaxy's Edge. 

I hate to say it, but after watching the Ahsoka series on Disney+ that provided the graphics for the t-shirt, I found myself siding with Team Ashley regarding the casting for the titular character.  

No offense to Rosario Dawson's performance, but after you've painted someone orange, stencilled marks on their face, and covered their hair with montrals and striped lekku*, their voice suddenly becomes a strong point in the character's presentation. In this case, Ashley Eckstein's extended run as Ahsoka's voice in the Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels series would have cemented the connection in the character's transition to live action, much as with Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy's move from the animated Batman series to video games.  

And who knows, she might not have been so grim all the time - I know that Ahsoka's history weighs her down, but I also think of the adult version of the character in Rebels as having achieved some emotional balance, although perhaps through the Force rather than weekly counselling sessions.

- Sid

* In case you'd been wondering what the horns and fleshy head-tails were called.  (Never forget, in the Star Wars Universe, EVERYTHING has a name.)  

Disney 2024: Games Without Frontiers.

As you get older, it's harder to really play, or at least play publicly in the way that children do. A lot of that desire gets sublimated into activities with a sort of grown-up veneer of acceptability: cosplay, paintball, tabletop and video gaming, D&D, LARPing, and all the other loopholes that allow us to say "let's pretend" as adults.

For a lot of people, Disneyland is that urge to play writ large, and for me, Galaxy's Edge is the perfect venue to fully experience that. It's a testament to the detail and consistency that Disney's creative people have put into this little alien outpost so that, when I'm there, I feel like I'm actually on another planet, even when surrounded by people in mouse ears and sweat pants. 

Part of me wants to explore Galaxy's Edge all on my own, because it would leave me free to enjoy it as if I were part of that world, to quote Ariel. As it is, Karli sometimes worries that I’m not having fun when I'm there, whereas the joke is that I couldn't be enjoying myself more.  However, being a dangerous rebel who could be in a life-or-death confrontation with storm troopers at any moment tends to make me look a bit grim - after all, we're not playing around here, this is serious stuff.

Smuggler's Run is another good example.  I tolerate the lines and waiting and so on in order to get to where I want to be, but when I sit down at the controls of the Millennium Falcon, I'm not having a simulated experience, I'm flying a starship. As such, when the controls prompt me to perform an action such as take off, go to hyperspace, or steer the ship through an asteroid field, I do it with a certitude, confidence, and gravitas that's appropriate to what I'm doing.

And, hopefully, with a certain degree of style - after all, even if you're just playing at being the Falcon's pilot, you're still playing in the big leagues.

- Sid

P.S. Welcome to the future - the boots and background alien heads in the above photo were created by the Photoshop AI. However, the AI won't accept certain prompts, so I had to do the gun belt and weapon the old-fashioned way.