April 10, 2011
Uncensored "From Here To Eternity" To Be Published In May
Scribner insisted on removing some four-letter words and a couple of references to homosexuality before it agreed to publish James Jones' twentieth century classic. Now, the uncensored version will be coming out as ebook only, no paper edition. It will be available in Amazon Kindle format as well as other formats.
From the epublisher's website:
James Jones’s epic story of army life in the calm before Pearl Harbor—now with previously censored scenes and dialogue restoredAt the Pearl Harbor army base in 1941, Robert E. Lee Prewitt is Uncle Sam’s finest bugler. A career soldier with no patience for army politics, Prewitt becomes incensed when a commander’s favorite wins the title of First Bugler. His indignation results in a transfer to an infantry unit whose commander is less interested in preparing for war than he is in boxing. But when Prewitt refuses to join the company team, the commander and his sergeant decide to make the bugler’s life hell.
An American classic now available with scenes and dialogue considered unfit for publication in the 1950s, From Here to Eternity is a stirring picture of army life in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author’s estate.
permalink | April 10, 2011 at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2011
"Dagny Confronts The Union [Rep]"
Unidentified and fading into the background in this clip is, of course, my favorite: Eddie Willers.
permalink | April 4, 2011 at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2011
Vietnam Stories
Vietnam Stories: Dreams To Nightmares by Ted Pannell of Palm Desert should be mandatory reading for every 17-year old who is thinking about joining the military to go overseas to fight in the current war of the moment.
The book is the firsthand account of a California farm boy who, offended at the abusive treatment of American soldiers by the Vietnamese communists, volunteered in 1966 for two years in the U.S. Army. The book is his story of some of the events he experienced there, plus his struggles with PTSD and alcoholism after he came home in 1968 just as the Tet offensive was beginning.
It's brief (169 pages), not preachy, not a lecture, not an analysis of why we should or should not have been in the war, not a paean to the American way, not a treatise on the failures of communism. Mr. Pannell is, clearly, a storyteller with stories to tell. Like this, upon arriving at Bien Hoa airbase:
In single file, we picked our way through the rubble until we came upon a smoldering shell crater. I threw my hand to my mouth to keep from throwing up when I saw two mangled, charred bodies of American soldiers. Somewhere in our group I heard gasps, and someone heaved his guts out. My legs wouldn't move fast enough to get past those poor young men.
The book flows fascinatingly through his two years of training and war as his friends and comrades lose their lives or body parts. I found myself reading it by flashlight at Death Valley while I cooked my dinner. There is one irregular, jarring paragraph where the author steps out of the first-person narrative to repeat the urban legend that Vietnamese refugees were responsible for a wave of dog thefts in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s. This is the only part of the book where he reports something he did not see or experience himself. He provides no evidence to support this accusation and my Googling only turns up news stories of urban rumors and refutations of the accusation as "racist." Otherwise, the author himself steers clear of racism, although sometimes his fellow soldiers express racist sentiments about the Vietnamese.
Very nearly all of the text is highly polished and well written, but there's a thread of bizarre misspellings and a handful of simply indecipherable sentences that made me wonder about his editing process. Some of the errors would have been caught by a simple spellcheck. His consistent spelling of "damm" for "damn" is curious, but misspelling "guerilla" as "gorilla" is shocking to me. It made me wonder if Mr. Pannell had ever read anything about wars in the post-World War II era. I'd volunteer to help clean up those errors if he ever decides to go for a second edition.
Every generation of American youth seems to think that they will get war right this time; that victory will be achieved without friendly fire, without torture, without killing innocent civilians, without bad decisions, without inadequate intelligence; that our victory will be just and inevitable. You can't get a 17-year old to watch McNamara's The Fog of War", but you could probably get him or her to read Vietnam Stories. It's not written as an anti-war book.
$10 for the Kindle edition. $11.04 for the paperback. Or, quite likely available at bookstores in the Coachella Valley and other areas of sufficient literary sophistication.
permalink | March 15, 2011 at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2011
Hank Comes Home
I don't know if I need to set this up or not, but just in case: all the people in this scene are living off of Hank Rearden's money.
BTW, when the right wing nuts try to latch onto this film, watch to see if they talk about Ayn Rand's hardcore atheism. I expect they'll try to sweep that under the rug.
permalink | February 21, 2011 at 10:56 AM | Comments (2)
February 11, 2011
I Can Hardly Believe This Is Finally Going To Happen
Atlas Shrugged Part 1. There will also have to be Atlas Shrugged Part 2, Atlas Shrugged - John Galt's Speech and then Atlas Shrugged Part 4.
Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart.
Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden.
Edi Gathegi plays Eddie Willers, my favorite.
Jsu Garcia as sexy Francisco D'Anconia.
Who is John Galt? Actually, I thought they might try to keep that secret until the movie opens on April 15, but no. John Galt is simply Paul Johansson who happens also to be the movie's director! Well, it is all about ego.
Screenplay by Brian Patrick O'Toole and John Aglialoro who's got no other movie credits at all, but is the producer of Atlas Shrugged. He's the Chairman and CEO of Cybex International and is supposed to be the 10th richest executive of a small public company.
There will be a private screening held February 24 at Sony Studios in Culver City.
permalink | February 11, 2011 at 09:04 PM | Comments (2)
January 17, 2011
E-Bbooks, E-Readers
First, here's an article about a study at Princeton University that indicated recall of information that is read is enhanced if it is presented in some less-legible typeface than the ubiquitous Times New-Roman, Arial, presumably Helvetica too, and Caecilia (which is used on Kindles). They don't tell us which typefaces are more memorable, except to say "Disfluent fonts, the ones people tend to laugh off, fonts that are comically ugly, they tend to be the best for learning and for memory." Like this maybe?
The research was published in the journal Cognition and you can buy a copy of the article here for only $40. The journalists (I don't know if the original researchers, Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Erikka B. Vaughan, did this because I haven't shelled out the 40 bucks) have taken a leap further and asserted that e-readers encourage the brain to be lazy. While it's true (I think) that all e-readers right now are limited to a selection of these well-known, easily read fonts, all the manufacturers have got to do is update the software to include some irritating font (Comic-Sans?) and see what happens.
Second, here's an interesting, long article about the history of e-books and e-readers and John Siracusa's hopes and suggestions for them. He spends a lot of time going back - way, way back before the Kindle - to the 1990s, a period when most e-readers still burned whale oil for illumination. He talks about the resistance from publishers.
As you read that article you've got to be very aware that it was written more than a year ago. That means that while the Kindle was on the market, they were still months away from releasing the $139 model that sent sales through the roof. Also, the iPad had not been introduced yet. The author had long thought that Apple was the logical company to bring e-books and e-readers to the masses, although he doesn't seem to resent that a massive book retailer did it instead. He does think the e-reader should be more than a one-task tool, like the Kindle. The iPad is closer to his ideal.
permalink | January 17, 2011 at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2010
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Not #1
The seventh Harry Potter novel was supplanted as the best-selling product at Amazon by the $139 Kindle. On December 25 a new record was set in the number of Kindle initations, although they don't give us a firm number.
Amazon also reported that on their best day ever, November 29, 2010, "customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 158 items per second."
permalink | December 27, 2010 at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2010
Amazon Kindle Healed!
I have been holding off on buying the bottom-end Kindle since it appeared in August. A reading of the 8,638 customer reviews on Amazon reveals a pattern of random lock-ups and reboots. I figured it was some glitchiness in the new hardware that would get all ironed out after Christmas (and maybe they'd trim another $10 off the price). But lo! The problem has been determined to lie in the $35 optional non-lighted leatherette Kindle covers. Something about the metal clips is messing it up. Take off the cover and your Kindle will soar with the eagles.
So now I'm just waiting to see if it drops by $10.
permalink | December 22, 2010 at 09:37 AM | Comments (4)
December 13, 2010
"The Niihau Incident"
This book, by Allan Beekman, is one I started reading, but didn't get finished, during my one trip to Hawaii which was in 1986, IIRC. That was a bunch of us from Boston and Colorado who went together, guided by Ken, now a Bostonian, who grew up in Hawaii. His father still lived on Oahu then, and we went to his house for Thanksgiving dinner. That's where I ran across this book and started reading. A third of the way into the fascinating story I was interrupted by dinner, and the next day we all flew home, so I didn't get a chance to finish it.
Couple things made this such an interesting story. First, it's about a Japanese pilot who, unable to return to the fleet after the Pearl Harbor attack, made an emergency landing on Niihau, the last inhabited island in the chain, southwest of Kauai.
That's Niihau on the left, Kauai on the right.
The other thing that made it so interesting was Niihau itself. Other Japanese pilots might have crash landed on other islands in the chain, but nobody writes books about that. What makes Niihau different is that it is completely privately owned by one family and has been operated as a fiefdom since it was purchased from the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1864. In 1941 only one house had electricity and there was only one radio on the island - it was not for two-way communication. The first clue the islanders had about any attack on Oahu was this single Japanese Zero doing a belly flop in a field. The Japanese thought the island was uninhabited (where did they get their intelligence?) and the plan was to send a submarine to pick up any pilots who might land on Niihau. The submarine never came.
Here's an aerial photo of Niihau from the north.
Also in 1941 more than a third of the population in the Hawaii islands was of Japanese descent. That included many of the residents of Niihau. The persistent racism of the time meant that although they were American citizens, children of Japanese descent were taught that they were something less than real citizens and should consider themselves Japanese.
In addition to that, Kauai was blacked out and the Navy was not permitting anyone to sail any boats anywhere. The usual method of signaling Kauai that there was an emergency on Niihau (easily visible only 17½ miles away) was to light torches on the cliffs above the beaches. Because of the ban on taking boats out to sea, that did them no good.
Roll that all together (Pearl Harbor, Japanese pilot crash landing, bizarre feudal desert island, war, racism, confused loyalties, no communication, help won't come) and you've got almost enough for a movie - sorry, there is no sex in the story.
Imagine my torment these years as I searched fruitlessly for a copy of the book in New England. Remember that the late 1980s were pre-internet days. The book gradually dropped deeper and deeper down my memory hole. Maybe the recent anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor floated it back up. I did an Amazon search, and there it was, a 1998 reprinting. I got it pretty fast and finished it off even faster. Not to give away the ending, but somebody dies.
I can put a ✔ to that one now. One of the other guys who went on that trip to Hawaii has already asked to read the book next, so I'm mailing it off to him. The rest of you will need to find your own copies. Not available for Kindle yet.
permalink | December 13, 2010 at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
December 6, 2010
Google eBooks
Google has announced that their eBook store is open and doing business. Their pages of helpful explanation are here. It has done well in making all of its books readable on computers, the Sony and Nook eReaders, Android systems (duh!), and the Apple-verse. But the 800-pound gorilla, Kindle, still stands aloof. They have also tried to do a good thing in storing your ebooks in "the cloud," that is, on their servers instead of on your hardware. This allows them to synch your reading across all your devices. You could read on your computer at work, and then when you turn on your Nook for the commute home, it knows where you left off while at work. Nice thing. It also means you don't have to worry about the storage capacity of your device (does anyone?). But it also means that you will not be able to read your Google eBook when you are in one of those gaps not reached by the internet, wi-fi, or (presumably) 3G or 4G systems. For people in the San Francisco Bay area, this is no problem. But someone who wants to take their Sony eReader to Saline Valley, or even Furnace Creek, or just up the road to Joshua Tree National Park will be out of luck. IOW, the Google eBook is not national park friendly. Some readers will find this a serious problem, especially if they planned to rely on a national park guide in ebook format.
UPDATE: Some of the technical problems with Google eBooks including that it seems not to cache more than a page at a time, so if you try to go to the next page when you are in an area of weak internet connectivity, you will have a long wait.
Google eBooks will partner up with independent bookstores to sell ebooks. This could help independent bookstores stay in business as well as provide a greater diversity of ebooks than one might get if it were all left up to our Google overlords to choose the inventory.
permalink | December 6, 2010 at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2010
Literacy Festival At The DHS Library, Saturday
Riverside County Library SystemFirst 5 Riverside and C.V. Literacy Network
proudly presentThe 2nd Annual
Literacy Festival
Planting Words
Harvesting FuturesSaturday
November 20, 2010
10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Desert Hot Springs Library
11691 West Drive, Desert Hot Springs
(760) 329-5926The festival is intended to encourage and inspire youth and community members to discover the countless opportunities and benefits that can be attained through reading.
With guest of honor, Juan Felipe Herrera
Award-winning author, distinguished poet, UCR creative writing professor and spell-binding storyteller.
Free books, interactive booths and cultural entertainment for all attendees.
For more information, please contact Arlene Cano at (951) 233-6160
permalink | November 17, 2010 at 07:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 2, 2010
Yet Another Opinion On Atlas Shrugged
I have a theory that someday we will arrive at a point in time when the criticisms and reviews of Atlas Shrugged will, if pasted all together, match the length of the novel. Then SOMEthing will happen, but I don't know what. Economic collapse, magic trains, 10-foot tall women in tight dresses, something. Here is John Scalzi's take on the big fat novel by Ayn Rand.
All of this is fine, if one recognizes that the idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else. Yes, he’s a genocidal prick with excellent engineering skills. Good for him. He’s still a genocidal prick. Indeed, if John Galt were portrayed as an intelligent cup of yogurt rather than poured into human form, this would be obvious. Oh my god, that cup of yogurt wants to kill most of humanity to make a philosophical point! Somebody eat him quick! And that would be that.
permalink | October 2, 2010 at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 1, 2010
Alyson Books To Go Paperless
Alyson Books will cease paper publication according to Publishers Weekly. Alyson has never released an ebook, but plans to publish their first in 9 to 12 months and publish nothing but ebooks from then on. They are going back to renegotiate with 24 authors whose works remain unpublished.
permalink | October 1, 2010 at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2010
2,160 Clearwater High School Students Get Kindles
They cost $177 each and will replace some textbooks. Obviously, not all texts are available in Kindle format yet. The students have less weight to carry around and the school district saves some money. "John Just, Pinellas County's assistant superintendent for management information systems, said that because of savings on books, the school's English department's wish list was completely fulfilled." Obviously, there's an English department that needed a bigger wish list. "A traditional English textbook costs $95 but the electric [sic] version can be downloaded on the Kindle for $80." The outrageous price of textbooks, it seems, will remain outrageous, but at least carrying them around will be simplified.
Students can buy insurance for the Kindles and, through Amazon, the district will be able to shutdown lost or stolen Kindles.
permalink | September 18, 2010 at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)
Theater In A Crowded Fire
An article about the book by Lee Gilmore, Theater In A Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Ms. Gilmore lectures in religious study and anthropology at Cal State Northridge. Her first Burn was 1996. She interviewed 300 Burners for her book. An interesting statistic emerged (although there's no guarantee of its accuracy): 30% of participants describe themselves as atheist or agnostic; 60% describe themselves as "spiritual, but unconnected to Western or Abrahamic religious traditions;" only 6% describe themselves as Jewish or Christian. That leaves 4% wiggle room. Wonder where she put the Buddhists, because I'm sure more than 4% of the participants are Buddhist. The number of statues of Buddha alone make up more than 4% of the population of Black Rock City. I suppose Buddhists and Hindus would go in that 60% category. The 4%, then, would include Muslims (I met one there once) and those who were too stoned to answer the question.
Anyway, the answers to those questions and more are in the book which can be purchased from the University of California Press for $25 paperback, or $60 hardcover.
permalink | September 18, 2010 at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2010
Cheaper, Lighter Kindle Introduced
There are now three models of Kindle:
- The big DX model, $379, 9.7-inch (diagonal) display;
- The "3G + Wi-Fi" (I think that's what they call it) for $189, 6-inch (diagonal) display; and
- The new "Wi-Fi" (they need to hire somebody to come up with some better model names) which is the same size as the "3G + Wi-Fi," but is only $139 (and lacks 3G).
The "3G + Wi-Fi" model is the only one available in a choice of colors: graphite or white. The other models are all graphite. If you have to have white, then you have to go with the "3G + Wi-Fi" model.
My suggestions for model names:
- DX model = "Fred"
- "3G + Wi-Fi" white model = "Ricky in New York"
- "3G + Wi-Fi" graphite model = "Ricky in Havana"
- "Wi-Fi" model = "Lucy"
The lack of 3G means only that the Kindle can't connect via the cellphone network, which for most people won't be a problem. If, however, you read your stuff really fast and you are often away from any computers, you'll want the 3G. I'm sure Amazon would want me to point out that you don't need to have a computer at all to use the Kindle. But you do have to occasionally bring yourself into a zone of wireless connectivity somewhere, unless you are completely satisfied with all the books you already have and never need to acquire a new one.
Here are the claims for the latest "Wi-Fi" and "3G + Wi-Fi" models:
- They're 21% smaller: 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335" - but all models have the same memory capacity "3,500 books" (I hate that sort of "measurement") which is double the older models. In objective terms, it's 4 gigabytes.
- 17% lighter: 8.5 ounces for "Wi-Fi," 8.7 ounces for "3G + Wi-Fi."
- With wireless turned off, the battery charge should last a month. Can be fully charged in 4½ hours.
- 50% better screen contrast. Still black & white only.
- Page turning is now 20% faster! That means cliffhangers will hang for only 80% as long as they do on older Kindle models.
- "Kindle can now display Cyrillic (such as Russian), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), and Korean characters in addition to Latin and Greek scripts."
- The PDF reader is improved.
- The menus are now Text-to-Speech enabled. Previously, some (most?) English texts could be listened to rather than read, but the menus could only be read, which didn't do blind readers much good.
- You can load MP3s on the Kindle (via USB) and listen "while you read," although I'm sure the Kindle will continue to play music even if your eyes are not scanning the display.
If you already own one of the following devices you can download FREE Kindle software for it and never have to buy a Kindle. Text-to-Speech works only on the Amazon Kindle hardware, though.
- PC
- Mac
- iPad
- iPhone
- Android
- Blackberry
permalink | July 30, 2010 at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2010
Audrey Moe Honored
Desert Hot Springs citizen Audrey Moe will be honored with the Community Pride Award from The Children's Nature Institute tomorrow night. They credit her as the author of Beachwalk and Dessertwalk [sic]. I wonder if people will ask her for recipes.
The Desert Sun misses the mark as well saying "Her books include 'Desertwalk' and 'A Search for the Secrets of the Desert.'"
Through the magic of the internet Ron's Log has been able to solve this mystery.
- Desertwalk: A Search for Secrets of the Desert (More info.)
Desertwalk is an odyssey into that unusual world of cactus and creosote, of intense heat and vast space. It contains stories of exploring desert trails, experiencing elusive wildlife, and learning to appreciate the spirit and temper of that stark, mysterious and hauntingly beautiful land where rains are seldom and winds sweep the sands. Over 100 delicate and realistic watercolor paintings by the author illustrate the chapters and contribute to the inspirational tone of desert understanding.
- Beachwalk: An Everyday Journey Through Sea, Sand And Soul (More info.)
Beachwalk searches the subtleties of nature and connects them to urban living. Observations on the beach lead to discoveries that see past the obvious and dig into the inner self. Inspiration is found in the subtle as well as the obvious. From a tiny beach-washed shell to breaching whales, the reader walks the sandy shore through stories and delicate water color paintings by the author.
permalink | May 26, 2010 at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2010
Day Trip to L.A.
Yesterday, sort of on the spur of the moment, I took the train from San Bernardino into Los Angeles to join a bus tour around the Los Angeles area to see locations related to three James Cain's novels that were made into films: Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
The day started at the Metrolink station in San Bernardino.
The station is on 2nd Street, so the sensible thing to do is exit 215 at 2nd Street and go left under the highway and then a few blocks to the station. Except 2nd Street is completely closed west of 215 and no one has thought to put up any signs on 2nd Street or on 215 to suggest an alternate route to the train station. It's like, why would anyone go there? So I had to tweak my GPS by driving far enough out of the way that it realized I was not going to take 2nd Street and began to offer suggestions for other ways to get there.
I had time to wander around the station before my train departed, so I got a lot of photos. I was surprised to see that offices for the Southern California Association of Governments are there. "SANBAG" is also there. Now, since it's a train station, I first thought SANBAG was some sort of baggage handling company that Amtrak had contracted with to run the station. Indeed there were several guys in blue uniforms coming and going from a doorway labeled "SANBAG." Well, of course, Amtrak doesn't handle baggage. SANBAG is actually the San Bernardino Associated Governement. I'm still not sure who the blue-uniformed guys were. A logical guess would have been security, but whenever I passed near one they made a point of looking away, like they were bouncers. I would expect security to look at me, to see if I was up to no good.
The WikiPedia page on the San Bernardino train station.
The Metrolink train ran perfectly on time and was pretty full. The most interesting thing was the tickets were checked by genuine, official, uniformed Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies! And they looked at people. I guess there's no wiggle room between not having a ticket and getting a citation from a deputy.
A wing of Union Station that you can look, but not go into. I wonder if it's only use is for movie shoots.
Next door to Union Station is the Metropolitan Water District which is NOT the Los Angeles Department of Water Power, in case anyone is fuzzy on that point.
The MWD has a couple of very nice fountains.
So nice that there's even a turtle living in one of them.
The Bus Riders Union is staging a camp-in protest against higher fares and reduction in service. They claim racism. You go to their website and you have to really dig and piece things together to figure out that charge. I'd think if they were going to make that their central charge, that right on their front page they'd explain it. But if you shovel around you'll find that they say 90% of the bus system's passengers are people of color [their phrasing], and that back in 1992 the MTA simultaneously announced plans to spend a billion on what must have become the Gold Line to Pasadena and an increase in bus fares and a reduction in bus service due to a shortage of funds. Okay, that was 1992. They haven't got any updated information on the racism issue since then.
The Post Office Terminal Annex is not far from Union Station.
And just past the post office is The California Endowment which is NOT the people who send you spam.
The tour group met on the sidewalk outside Philippe's which claims to the place where the "French Dipped" [same as "French Dip"] sandwich was invented. And why not by the French?
We boarded a full-size inter-urban bus (what's that, like almost 50 seats?) and it was pretty full. The guide was called Richard, and he had two assistants with him, one of whom let me know that Gypsyland in Desert Hot Springs was her favorite place to shop. While we drove, Richard would talk about James Cain, his novels, how they got made into movies, and on and on. Basically, he knew everything. On the DVD player he showed photos of Cain, his book covers, other people who were part of the history, and clips from the films themselves.
First stop was the apartment building that was shot from the outside as Walter Neff's (Fred MacMurray) home. The interior of that building was copied and reproduced on a set for the interior scenes.
I don't know if no laws actually apply to tour buses in the Los Angeles area, or if the drivers just act that way. Our driver simply stopped right in the lane of traffic and we sat for a few minutes while Richard described the building and showed it to us in a still from the movie (at night, so hard to see). At this stop we did NOT get off the bus. The windows on the bus were moderately dirty, so this was kind of disappointing. I did resort to a few shots through the glass, but not of this building.
Then we circled the block and returned to the intersection of Western and Hollywood. On the southwest corner of the intersection is this building known as the "Motion Picture Arts Building." It was the home of the Production Code Administration, which was responsible for enforcing the Hays Code which Cain's films ran up against. In Double Indemnity this building was the drug store to which Walter Neff drove Lola Dietrichson, stepdaughter of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Today this building has a CVS drug store on the ground floor.
From there we followed Los Feliz Boulevard out to Glendale, the route that Phyllis drove when she and Walter killed her husband. We stopped at the Glendale train station and got out to look around.
The spot where Walter and Phyllis dumped the body near the tracks was not far away, but the area is a residential development now, so access is difficult and it doesn't look at all the same, so we didn't go there. We did, however, drive on over to Forest Lawn Glendale, the cemetery where Mildred Pierce buried her younger daughter, Kay. All we did here was to walk inside the gates to the pond where one can see "Duck Baby," the first piece of sculpture bought for the cemetery by Hubert Eaton in 1915.
That's our guide Richard; "Duck Baby" is on your right. The sculpture on the left is "Frog Baby."
We headed over to North Jackson Street, where 1143 was the residence of the happy Pierce family.
At the beginning of the movie, Mildred Pierce announces that they live at 1143 North Jackson, but I'm not sure if an exterior shot of this very house was used in the movie. Readers who have a copy of the movie are asked to give it a look and let me know. Our bus dropped us off a half block away and Richard asked us to stand across the street from 1143. I imagine there have been som legal difficulties.
Old swastika design on the base of lampposts in the neighborhood.
Did you know that a new production of Mildred Pierce is underway? Yes, indeed. Kate Winslet will play the role of Mildred. Mare Winningham has taken on the monumental task of playing Ida Corwin, who was played by Eve Arden in the original film. There's no way she could be as good as Eve Arden.
It's going to be a 5-part HBO program. And the draw is that they are going to put all the sex back in that the Hays Code made them take out of the 1945 film. Here's a link to a long video of some of the shooting which is being done in Peekskill, New York. I sure hope they aren't trying to move the story out of southern California. The YouTube video begins with 2 minutes and 44 seconds of paparazzi chasing Sarah Jessica Parker and her little daughter down the streets of Manhattan. Why that's included in this video, I have no idea. But my link should take you directly to the 2m 44s point.
We hopped back on the bus and drove from Glendale clear to Skid Row where James Cain hung out in order to learn the speech of grifters so he could write The Postman Always Rings Twice. We went to a dive bar, the King Edward Cafe which opened (as a bar) in 1922 during Prohibition. It's a genuine skidrow bar where the ashtrays in the smoking box are empty sardine tins. A pint of Newcastle Brown Ale is only $3.25. Domestic beer is $2. Pitchers of Bud are $9. Cute women might get a free shot of Jameson's. I've been in crummier bars, but this was crummy enough to be real. They don't take no credit cards. I put my camera away in my backpack before we got off the bus, but one couple from Alberta kept snapping away inside the bar. About a half dozen of the tour members just stayed on the bus which circled the block for about 20 minutes while we got likkered up. I've never been in Skid Row before, and now I know I need to go back and walk some of the streets.
From the King Edward, the tour got much better (and not just because of the Newcastle). Traffic was all jammed up downtown because of the bicycle race, so our intrepid driver went east on 4th across the Los Angeles River into Boyle Heights. I'd never been over there either, and it looks a little safer for walking than Skid Row. We saw junkyards. We saw the L.A. County Coroner's office (it has a gift and thrift shop!). We saw Mariachi bands. We saw the headquarters of the L.A. Police SWAT and bomb squad. There is no sign outside. I looked at it in Google satellite view and there's nothing interesting to be seen there, so I'm just not going to say where it is.
We saw lots of old style advertising too:
More photos from the day can be seen here.
permalink | May 23, 2010 at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
Coming In November: Mark Twain's Autobiography
Samuel Clemens died 100 years ago and left instructions that his autobiography was not to be published until 2010. The first volume will be released by UC Berkeley in November. Proceeds from the sales will be used to help fund "museums and libraries that preserve his legacy."
permalink | May 23, 2010 at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2010
Kindling
A 99-year old gets her first computer, and it's an iPad. Her friends use the occasion as an opportunity to get drunk, while the old lady wisely surfs. I think it is of note that she hunts and pecks, although I've never tried touch-typing on a virtual keyboard myself.
The video opens up with her looking at a collection of free books that are on the iPad. So she's either doing Kindle for the iPad or her friends have gotten her some books from Project Gutenberg or, uh, something else.
I recently downloaded Kindle for the Mac. The app is free. The books (etc.) mostly are not.
The disadvantage to using Kindle on my laptop, compared to an iPad or Kindle device, is that I can only use my laptop display in landscape mode, and that means I have less text displayed than I might like. Nonetheless, after a teeny-tiny learning curve I've found that the Kindle app gives me the most comfortable reading I've ever done on any computer. I can zoom up the text to a size where I can easily read it without eyeglasses. Paging through a document is easy using the up/down cursor keys (or about a half dozen other methods). And the nice thing about paging in Kindle is that paging down and then up always brings you back to the same exact spot. Try that in Acrobat or Word or a text editor and your position is likely to be a little (or a lot) different, depending on a lot of different factors. In Kindle there's no half line of text running off the top or bottom of the display. You always get whole characters. IOW, a pleasant, predictable, non-maddening, non-geeky interface.
Downside to the free apps for Mac, iPad, Windows and (I assume) iPhone and Blackberry is that the text-to-speech feature (available on only some books) does NOT work. That's only for the Kindle device. I found that out by digging through the Kindle discussion forums. You know, don't you, that there's virtually no way to actually contact "Amazon" anymore (whatever "Amazon" is/are), so don't expect to be able to ask them for help.
There are many very low priced (under $2) and free Kindle books. You can buy this Kindle book ($2) which tells you how to find the free ones. I haven't. Amazon does provide this link to free books. The description of many of those books includes this information: "This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web." Immediately I thought Project Gutenberg.
Indeed, Amazon is taking some of the free books from Project Gutenberg, converting them to Kindle format and then re-distributing them for free. This is an entirely legal process. But, if you want, you can completely skip the Kindle step and go directly to Project Gutenberg to find your own free books. All of them are available as plain text. Some also come in HTML format and some are in PDF format as well. You'll want the HTML or PDF formats if the text includes essential illustrations, like maps in a history book, for example. But if it's Jane Austen, the plain text alone will do you fine. If you get a book directly from Project Gutenberg you will not get the very nice Kindle interface, but you've got a much larger selection of free books to choose from.
I took a look at newspapers for the Kindle, and focused on the negative customer reviews. I only looked at the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal. For all three newspapers customers complained that the Kindle price was higher than subscribing to the paper or on-line editions. They also complained that all three newspapers were incomplete in significant ways. Missing sports and editorials were the most frequent complaints on that subject. The N.Y. Times is the most expensive ($20/month), but customers complained that sometimes it arrived a day late! They also said it randomly drops articles. Too bad for all of that, as it would seem the Kindle would be a way for newspapers to keep some readers, but not if they simply can't deliver material.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer gets the highest average customer review: 5 stars! But it's only got two reviews. One customer says the Kindle version arrives complete, no missing articles. The other one likes it too, but complains about the price, which is only $7/month.
Looking for a suggestion to start with? Here it is: Anna Karenina. It's free and the best damn book ever written.
