Joseph T. Major, Louisville, Kentucky

http://members.iglou.com/jtmajor

"Theme Dream": "Don't step on my blue suede tentacle sheaths." "Elvis has left the Dome.

" Our condolences on the loss of Jesse.

"You Heard It Here" First: A ghastly thought; that a day may come when the only way a traditional fan can afford to attend the conglomeration of pros, performers, and media-kiddies that bears the name of "WorldCon" will be as invited (and costs-covered!) guest. Alas, I fell under the second category of people Taral couldn't notify, being at a reunion of my wife's family.

"To Build a Fan": "'He's almost as good as Austin Powers!'" We don't expect adult judgment from children, that's why the separate categories exist. However, one wonders about Chris's judgment: Perdido Street Station was next. What the hell was I thinking." What were you going to do next, Philip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown?

"Let he who would know Africa, eat lion sperm."

"Cooking With Fats": One imagines, as the elders sat in their shambolic huts thrown up on the verges of the new great and now empty ocean, they spoke yet of the high civilization and memorable wonders of Atlantis, trying desperately to evoke some pleasant memories of the joyous times before the Downfall.

We live in a modified shotgun house ­ a partial second floor was added, which contains Lisa's and my bedroom and my office. The house itself was originally built around 1903 (when my stepcousin, the WWI vet here in Louisville, was two years old) and was not flooded in 1937.

"An Astronomical Note": Thanks to the wonders of Google Maps, I have determined that the facilities of my cousin Ed's florist greenhouses in Hopkinsville will have less than one second less of totality from the maximum for the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. This eclipse will be part of Saros 45, which began in 1639 and will end in 3009. The previous eclipse in this saros was in 1999 and was reported on in Plokta. Therefore, I will keep in good standing with Ed and his sons Lee and John (who help him run the greenhouses), and with any luck will have access to a site of reasonable comfort from which to view the eclipse.

Thanks for teaching me a new word. I thought "Saros" was Willie, the fan from Texas.

"My World Tour with Guns 'n Roses": "How does it feel that you're going to have to live the rest of your life knowing that your dad is cooler than you?" Ah yes, we may be going into an era of Metamucil and AARP, but we have the warm cuddly feeling of knowing that those young whippersnappers of Gen X and Gen Y can never be as cool as we are.

Nor as cold as we soon will be.

"Music(als) of the Spheres": I think this shows that SF & F are very hard to transfer to the stage, even more so given the mindset of the performing arts community. "Wake up and Smell the Coffin!": While The Boat inspired a classic early graphic novel, Phil Foglio's The Capture, it really wasn't viable as a con bid; more intriguing to imagine than to actually carry out. Especially these days, when there is so much one-day business.

Nevertheless, the Boat came in second in the 1988 bidding, with almost half as many first-place votes as New Orleans. Whether this was because fans thought a worldcon on a cruise ship was a cool idea or wanted to exclude the impecunious from their number is a question for someone who voted that way.

You get one ophthalmic migraine a year? Only one? Lucky you! (I get them irregularly but far more than you do.)

I bruise my knuckles knocking on wood, but my migraines don't hurt as much as they used to. When I was a kid they nauseated me for hours.

Such is the way of the world; one of Lisa's best friends at Assumption Greek Orthodox is the partner of Cliff Amos. And she had the news that Cliff had had to go into the hospital for some work on his pacemaker. However, he seems to be out and around all right.

We shall not see their like again. Those times have receded into the mists, gone in the haze of golden memories. We sit in the ramshackle huts near the beach and tell tales of the glories of downfallen Atlantis.

The Chorus Lines: And, the Heinlein Circle has cruised resolutely on, ignoring the lapses both historical and current (i.e., the memory book that was supposed to be available at the Centennial and still isn't). We can endure this sort of behavior in subfandoms. But for the Great Progenitor of our own center of being?

Earl has described the solution explained by Zeb Jones to John Lyle; be guilty of something, but a lesser something than they want to get you for. I said RAH was the Great Progenitor.

I got Capote on DVD, and picked up a second copy at ConGlomeration to give to my brother, the literature professor. Capote did so well with In Cold Blood because they were his sort of people; though he was part of the New York literary circle, he didn't disdain the people of Kansas. Or Perry Smith, though that was his problem. He only mentions himself once in the book, and yet he pervades it. And yes, Capote displays the terrible contradictions of the case that tore Capote apart.

Did you know, by the way, that Truman Streckfus (his original name) taught himself to read at age two and a half? I knew there was something interesting about the man.

My only complaint with the film Capote was that they didn't take more care to duplicate the actual murder scene, the Clutter house -- familiar from the film of In Cold Blood.

It's well known (see Bill Patterson's The Martian Named Smith) that Stranger in a Strange Land began as an afterthought on "Gulf", Heinlein's story for the "Trick Issue" of Astounding. But Patterson, and Patterson alone apparently, claims that Heinlein, not Campbell, had the idea for that issue. Is Patterson's biography of Heinlein needing so much editing because Patterson used Heinlein's own sources, and not enough of anyone else's?