StanleyWheeler

There are many faults with J.J. Abrams'  Star Trek (2009), but Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy isn't one of them. He succeeds much better at catching the spirit of Bones than do any of the other actors at capturing the essence of their characters from the old series. Here are a few of his too-few lines that I particularly liked: "Space is disease and danger, after darkness and silence." "I'm a doctor, not a physicist." "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" "Green-blooded hobgoblin." I can practically hear De Kelley's voice when Urban delivers those lines. And that's all I got to say about that.  *** Smoke has been available for pre-order for over a week. It goes live for your reading pleasure tomorrow. Don't dawdle. Get your copy while supplies last! In my own reading this week, I started two new books. They were both books that I got for free for being a member of Prime. I had only intended to start one book, b...

Naturally, my wife was curious to know how things went when I returned home after spending part of the evening in the arms of another woman. She (my wife) didn't get too excited about it when I told her that everything went fine with the play. We just finished the first week of this p roduction. We have one more week to go. I haven't broken a tooth yet. Still, that wasn't the highlight of my day. I'll get to the highlight shortly. Here's a hint. While putting on my shoes this morning, I found myself whistling Gordon Lightfoot's "Ribbon of Darkness." I can't remember the last time I heard that song, but it's still lodged in that tape deck in my head. Apparently an auto run program was tripped. It must have been something like, "Mind idle. Search the musical memory banks; play random selection. Repeat until manual override is initiated." So it looped for a while.  I had to pull the vent covers from around the exterior foundatio...

Lost in Space (2018 episode 1) No Spoilers (But with completely unnecessary quotes from Shakespeare's Richard II -- in italics) After viewing the first episode, I have mixed thoughts about the show, but " To be a make-peace shall become my age ." I was thrilled to see Toby Stephens in the role of John Robinson . I remember him from one of the James Bond movies, and from Vexed in which he played the charming and hilariously politically incorrect male chauvinist DI Armstrong. Naturally, I was disappointed to see, in this first episode at least, that he was relegated to fulfilling the role of the ineffective father who is only allowed to think and act for himself when his wife (some kind of scientist/engineer/astrophysicist/geologist/etc is unconscious); even then, it's the whining son who proves more useful than the father. It's as though John Robinson is forced to say, " I am disgraced, impeach'd and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with slander...

She walked in hotter and sweeter than a peppermint candy cane covered in white phosphorus. She had my attention and held it like a pup in a steel trap. I had never enjoyed a trap more. There was just one problem. She wanted me to find her husband. She was the first woman to complicate my life that day. She wouldn’t be the last. The investigation soon took a sudden turn, just like the quarry road where her husband’s car didn’t. He challenged gravity and came in second. Was it murder or suicide? Was it a business rival? The mob? Were they after the secret Nazi diamonds her husband had lifted at Berchtesgaden at the end of the war? Either way, I had to walk carefully to avoid joining him on the wrong side of the grass. The police detective formed his own conclusions. It didn’t look good for the dame who had stolen my heart. I didn’t let the second murder alter my judgment; I refused to believe that my doll was the killer. I had to prove her innocence. The last thing I needed was...

So I took up sewing this week. I did a so-so sew-sew job--I sewed two pairs of denim pants--both of the same famous brand. They come in styles designated by three digit numbers; the numeric designations for both of these began with "5." One had a hole in the crotch, the other in the seat. They were my most comfortable jeans that didn't already have the knees worn out. I wanted to wear one of them in an upcoming theatrical production in which I have a small role.  I know that denim isn't easy to sew. I remember breaking the needle on my mom's sewing machine when I tried to hem a pair of jeans. I remember repeating the process on my wife's sewing machine, and achieving the same result. Neither of the machine owners commented favorably upon my attempts. Wisely, I must say, this time I opted to go with genuine hand stitching.  There are websites that give simple directions for patching jeans . There are also sites that give more detailed directions . Naturally...

Note: After the review is a Vidangel Versus -- this time it's Cowboys and Indians. When I was in college, I read a poorly written science fiction novel which, I believe, was call Khyber Pass - but I can't find any reference to a sci fi book by that name; perhaps I've forgotten the actual name. I do remember that the Khyber Pass (which is between Kabul and Peshawar) played a prominent role in the book. I remember nothing else about that book--except the cover was bluish with a guy in a white coat holding some kind of firearm. The book did get me interested in the actual history of the Khyber Pass. I looked for and found a book--I believe it was called The Northwest Passage -- which was confusing, because I thought the northwest passage referred to the waterway through North America connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (and which didn't exist, notwithstanding the great confidence in its existence)--about the history and significance of the pass. That book was e...