Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
June 3, 1983, Hollywood: The movie “WarGames” was released. My good friend, Harvey Warnke, created these huge display screens that you see in the movie, just as you see them in this famous scene from the film.
That was 40 years ago. He actually created these huge displays with dozens of slide projectors, projecting from behind the set, triggering them remotely, because computers at the time [Read more…]
(On cellphone, scroll down.)
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Panda Express, Medford, Oregon, May 14, 2018 — My favorite, and pretty much only place I get lunch when I don’t want to cook/prep, is Panda Express, because you can get vegetables instead of rice, and while not perfect, it’s a pretty healthy meal.
I take gooddog Charlie so he gets an outing, but I don’t let him out so I bring him the fortune cookie. (He eats them, but I do not.) And so naturally that means the fortune is actually gooddog Charlie’s fortune.
Lately I’ve begun to question these Panda Express fortunes that he gets. I was suspicious last week when he got, “You will be a great success, both in business and socially.”
And now, after yesterday — when he got “Good news will come to you by mail.” — I am seriously questioning the accuracy of these Panda Express fortunes.
Medford, Oregon, May 6, 2018 — Sometimes I’m kind of material-minded, and think “down to earth” thoughts. Other times I feel rather woo-woo, but there it is.
I believe there are multiple universes, our physical universe being but one. And that, in a way, these can be pictured as all in ONE place, but “invisible” and generally inaccessible to each other. My hippie years suggest they have a different vibration, but really I’ve no clue, and because time and space seem to be pretty darn twisty anyway, it may be that 70 million light-years away may sometimes be as nearby as the house next door, under the right conditions.
And I believe that these universes are infinite, and that more are created all the time.
I *suspect* that every time one of mus makes a decision it *may* spin off another child universe which is the same except for that decision which was made, so there is a YOU in many or most of them.
Now because of decisions made by someone else way back, perhaps in some of those universes you are the Queen of England, and in another it’s called the Queenie of Poodlesnoot, and in another you’re living under a [Read more…]
Daly City, 1989: If you read a Dashiel Hammett book about Sam Spade, or even a modern Sue Grafton book about Kinsey Milhone, you will discover that their investigations are exciting, dangerous, and apparently pay the bills. (Though Sam Spade seemingly just throws his bills into the trash.)
When I was Dr. Detecto, the private investigator, my own investigations were neither exciting, nor dangerous, nor did they pay the bills.
As proof, I respectfully submit my most exciting, dangerous, and profitable case — the Case of the Rescued Rope …
I was musing in my Geary street office one afternoon in the early fall in San Francisco. The air had just turned crisp, and I was thinking about the gubbamint and dozing off, when a tall woman walked past the window. I knew she was tall because my office was on the second floor. [Read more…]
Mount Shasta, February 15, 2004: As I was sleepily rising, Adrienne called from the kitchen. The fat robin was in trouble.
In our back yard, near my office door, the holly tree sports bright green prickly leaves, and bright red berries. Mothers around the world have warned us as children: Don’t eat the berries! That’s why I believe, and you believe, that the berries are poison.
Our robins, however, have never been warned by their mothers, and appear to gobble the berries throughout the winter. And do the robins appear dead, lying feet up in the snow?
They do not.
But one of the robins, the big fat one — we marvel that he can even fly — is sitting in the snow, today. Adrienne had spotted him in the branches, sitting very still. She worried, when she went outside, that he didn’t fly away.
And now he’s on the ground.
He’s not dead, for he looks around at me as I peek from the chilly doorway. I diagnose the freezing cold, rather than the holly berries, as the problem. Luckily, as I picked up a dog towel from the floor, Adrienne gives me professional advice on towel size, and provides me with a smaller one.
On the porch as I crunch through the snow, I speak softly to the big fat robin, and he permits me to wrap the towel around his little body. As I return to the kitchen, this fine wrapped bird in hand worth two in the snowy bush, Adrienne jitters.
“Don’t bring him in here!” she cries. “Take him out in the garage … to warm up!” But I don’t think the garage is very warm. I’ve been in that garage.
“I wanted you to see him,” I said, but before she could come over to see, suddenly between my warm hands a wild flutter and the bird launches, from within the towel, scrabbling and flying at the ceiling, the doorway, then quick as lace around a corner into the living room’s tall roof and the windowsill ten feet above the floor.
There he perches upon the sill, and flutters at the glass, perches and flutters, perches and flutters.
I ponder. I ponder over a cup of coffee, then another coffee. I ponder over toast and peanut butter. Pondering becomes me, but Adrienne has become impatient.
“Go on,” she says.
I try the magic trick. Holding my arm up toward the bird, with one finger outstretched, I say, “Come land on my finger.” It worked once with a fly; maybe it will work now.
Nope. It doesn’t.
I fetch the ladder from the garage. I clatter through the doorway, and set up the ladder below the window.
Up I go.
My balance is not what it was, but, hey, I’m only four feet up, daring bird charmer I. I have my specialty bird towel, and I speak calmly to the fat robin. He’s a little excited. Probably doesn’t get so much company, so up close and personal, most of the time.
I wait.
Sure enough, his perch and flutter method first takes him to the far side of the sill, and then his perch and flutter method brings him near. I wrap the towel around him; he is caught. He goes still, wrapped secure in the towel.
Outside on the back porch, I unwrap him and attempt to place him on a branch, thinking perhaps we might have a conversation. But once free, like a bat out of hell, or perhaps more like a robin freed from monsters, away he speeds in a straight line, away to the west to the tall, tall, distant evergreens so safe and dark on the far side of the block.
Probably just now he’s telling robin buddies about his adventure and his escape. Probably they don’t believe him. Among the branches, in the chill they stomp their feet and hunker down, awaiting the warm weather to come again.
Soon the talk turns to more acceptable subjects such as eggs and nests and cute lady robins, and bugs to eat.
San Francisco, 1984: Back in Henrietta, Texas, the Edmonds Public Library was calm, quiet, and cool in the summer. The children’s section and the Science Fiction section had that same smell as a grade school, a scent of varnish and puppies.
I got to know those books very well. Books about secret codes, books about the Hardy Boys, and books about Rocket Ships. Those were favorites. Even today, checking the news online, whenever a new photograph appears — Jupiter, a comet, the Crab Nebula — it’s astounding, like deja vu of something never seen.
In college, I was complaining to Crazy Becky Jarvis one day, about my sorry love life. She tilted her head to one side.
“I bet you’d like Patty L.,” she said.
And I did.
A small woman, with that hair that moves all together, she wore a plaid skirt, a white blouse, and tall boots. In those days of beehive hairdos, she was a welcome relief. An infectious smile, mischievous nature, and a cozy attitude.
On a certain day, I was to pick her up from visiting her parents in Dallas. As it turned out, I was early, and, having nothing much to say to them — or perhaps, they having very little to say to me — they invited me to watch the television, where I saw Star Trek for the first time.
I no longer recall the plot, probably it was about a terrible monster.
We left, and drove the Morgan back to Denton with the top down, always fun, but I was thinking about the guys in the Rocket Ship. And now, we’ll leave Pretty Patty and move forward to San Francisco, many years after.
In San Francisco, Star Trek is still on television, but as it begins to wind down, they begin making movies. And one of these was playing on Van Ness, so Derek S. and I went.
This 
particular Star Trek movie, however, had them coming back in time to San Francisco, where we are watching the movie. With their space ship in high orbit, they have beamed down, and now these men from the future are walking around the Marina Green. Now they’re downtown. And now they are walking on Van Ness.
And now they are standing at the bus stop outside the theatre where Derek and I are watching them standing at the bus stop outside the theatre where we are watching them.
Yes, that’s right, these people from my past, who are from the future, at a later time in the future have come back to a time later than my past, which is in fact now, and are now standing just outside the theatre where we are watching them from inside the theatre.
The movie wasn’t great.
The mental meltdown was superb.
Does God make up these practical jokes? Or do they just happen?
