The Explorers Club
No. CLXXXI - Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1909-2000) & the U.S. Navy Beach Jumpers.









Project PALINDROME
K. Steeze & I have finished plotting the ten-issue comic book series that is Project PALINDROME and have moved on to the scripting phase (PALINDROME has not been divided into goal-specific tiers as has Project TROIKA). I've never written a script to a comic book before, but have been assigned three issues, while Steeze has taken four (and he'd already scripted the first three issues before he invited me aboard the project as his junior partner). My instinct is to write them as conventionally formatted prose, but the counterpoint to that view is that I've rarely ever finished a work of conventional prose; so, the change to the screenplay format that Steeze uses might light a fire under me. The deadline for my first script (regardless of format) is 1 December; wish me luck.

Grow or die.

The Queue
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope should be moved from the "Currently" bin to the "Recently" bin. I have resumed Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew and was again immediately enthralled by the true tales of spies and spy-catchers.

Autobahn
Almost three weeks hence, Love/Hate invited me back to her apartment to spend the night. Lumi chose that moment, parked on South Saginaw Street in downtown Flint, not to start. When the wrecker dispatched by A.A.A. arrived and I described the problem to the driver, he immediately and confidently concluded that Lumi was ailed by a dead battery, despite my protests that there was plenty of electrical power (evidenced by the many interior lights still in operation); I said that I'd be thrilled to be wrong, thrilled if the problem was as simple as a defunct battery, but I admit that I experienced a vicious sort of joy when the fellow's attempts to jump-start Lumi met with utter failure. Subsequent evaluation by the fine fellows at Drago's revealed that, indeed, the problem was buried deep in the starter assembly; the battery had plenty of charge and was holding it just fine. Since then, Lumi's been a peach, though the rather worn tires will have to be replaced before the winter if I am not to perish. Lumi is fifteen years-old and has put in over 160,000 miles, recalling to mind Dr. Jones's sage pronouncement, "It's not the years, it's the mileage." These sorts of things happen with a fifteen-year-old motorcar.

Nonetheless, something changed that night. As I recorded in my journal, "A bond was broken, a trust was violated, a faith was breached." And no, I'm not talking about the lost opportunity to spend the night with Love/Hate; to excerpt further from my journal entry of 29 July, "It's not about [Love/Hate], because it's not like I would have made love to her, and if there's any real chance of anything happening between us then there will be other opportunities." Lumi's given me years of faithful service, and my mother many years of faithful service before those, and put in a lot of good miles for our family. But she left me stranded on the side of the road. Say what you will about The Mousemobile—and, brother, don't I know that she suffered more than her fair share of mechanical failures and inexplicable, inopportune breakdowns—but The Mousemobile never left me stranded on the side of the road. The Mousemobile always got me home. Even when she was older than Lumi is now, The Mousemobile never left me stranded on the side of the road.

Lumi's a good car, and I still love her and hope she will continue to provide me with safe, more-or-less reliable transportation for the foreseeable future, but things can never again be as they were before that night. I now find myself in the formative stages of the search for not just my next automobile, but the true and rightful heir of The Mousemobile… The Son of the Mousemobile!

31/29: The Loot
I received the rest of this year's loot over a week ago, when we sojourned to *shudder* Ohio for the presentation of my mother's sixtieth birthday to my father: a flight in a T-6 Texan, including time spent at the controls performing aerial maneuvers. (Wayback Machine.) By happy coincidence, my father's warbird flight took off from the small airport in Where's Teddy?'s hometown, allowing us the bonus of a visit with my now toddling nephew.

{4a} Team Zissou correspondence stock (for which I have been asking for years, in part because it didn't seem as if it would be as special if I just bought it for myself)
{4b} Team Zissou T-shirt (!)
{5} Airplane! on D.V.D.
{6} rubber stamp, "From the library of Michael Patrick Wilson"

The Team Zissou T-shirt and Airplane! were both brilliant off-list improvisations. Airplane! was chosen because Airplane II: The Sequel already sat in my motion picture library and the asymmetry was intolerable to the gift-giver, offensive to his sense of order. I've teased him that I should add Predator 2 & Die Hard 2: Die Harder to my collection as a cost-effective way of also acquiring Predator & Die Hard.

Photographs have now been taken of my Ferrari Truck Lego set and will be published as soon as they are developed.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Metric, "Black Sheep" from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: A fortnight ago, I'd never heard of Metric, and now they provide the R.B.D.S.O.T.D. for the second time in nine days. Coincidence that Steeze nominated their song "Stadium Love" as the R.B.D.S.O.T.D. so soon before Metric provided the music performed by Envy Adams's band The Clash at Demonhead in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? In the words of "plain, simple Garak," "I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."