I guess I slept all day just so I could be awake right now

[sovay]

My uncle was in the army. Actually a couple of my uncles were in a couple of armies, but I mean my father's youngest brother who lived with us for a few months after he was demobbed from patrolling the DMZ. I was in seventh grade at the time. He was thin, wiry, brown-haired, not much taller than me; he could drop twenty feet out of a tree and land as springily as a cat while I dropped twenty feet out of the same tree after him, landed flat on both feet, and fell over convinced I had just driven my tarsals up through my ankle bones. (My mother yelled at him.) He admitted to knowing some Korean but refused to teach me any of it, which at the time seemed like some nonsensical adult gatekeeping and now I just figure his Korean was either NSFW or sketchy of application or both. He brought me and my brother gifts from South Korea. Specifically, he brought us clothes. My brother got a quilted black jacket with a dragon embroidered on it. I got—I am honestly still not sure what I got. It may not be a traditional garment. It's cut like a bathrobe, it's made of at least artificial silk, and it is peony-pink with red chrysanthemums embroidered on the sleeves and on the back. It would have been a great present for someone who liked and/or looked good in pink, neither of which was me. It spent a lot of time at the backs of various closets.

I am wearing it as we speak. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon sorting mid-'70's fanzines and other sfnal ephemera for a friend who inherited a small archive and the material is fascinating and and invaluable (so much mimeography! so many ditto sheets! so many perzines, genzines, and apazines I had never heard of, not to mention conventions—I want a university to take this stuff before it disintegrates) and I am allergic to dust and everything else you find associated with cardboard boxes that have been in a garage for any length of time. I got back to my parents' house and put my clothes in the wash. That was fine; I had known I might react and the material is worth it. Then it turned out that this quarter-century-old, extremely pink object was the only thing resembling a bathrobe currently in circulation.

My niece observed me emerging from the shower and yelled wide-eyed, "You're wearing pink!" I had to remind myself that she has not yet seen Bringing Up Baby (1938) and therefore responding with "I just went gay all of a sudden!" would only confuse her.

Comments

[lilysea]

My niece observed me emerging from the shower and yelled wide-eyed, "You're wearing pink!" I had to remind myself that she has not yet seen Bringing Up Baby (1938) and therefore responding with "I just went gay all of a sudden!" would only confuse her.

Hee! :D

[sovay]

Hee!

I wonder what the youngest reasonable age to see Bringing Up Baby actually is. She's already been introduced to Singin' in the Rain (and like every reasonable person under those circumstances, promptly tried to run up a wall).

[gwynnega]

Sorting those fanzines sounds fascinating, albeit dusty.

[sovay]

Sorting those fanzines sounds fascinating, albeit dusty.

It's amazing. The degree to which they and do not resemble modern social media and fansites is fascinating all on its own; then there's the historical value of all the organizations that don't exist anymore and all the 'zines that were constantly proliferating in and out of existence and every now and then someone like Mike Glyer or Jessica Amanda Salmonson would go by in the letters of comment or I'd hit a couple of progress reports for MidAmeriCon and then it was back to one-sheets banged out on a typewriter by a name I didn't recognize for an association whose acronym has since been taken over and there would be a lot of photocopied art. (Sometimes by Phil Foglio!) I'm enjoying it so much, which is fortunate, since there's like a dozen boxes of this stuff. I can't imagine trying to reconstruct any history of science fiction fandom—or even just what people who weren't professional reviewers thought of now-famous works when they came out; for example, the letters of comment in one 'zine got eaten alive by a conversation about Shulamith Firestone, which I wasn't expecinting, and several totally unrelated 'zines contained what I would now term a comments war over Harlan Ellison's review of Delany's Dhalgren—without access to this kind of no-budget, essential material.

[moon_custafer]

That reminds me: I was bored a few days ago and began looking up names of my older, deceased family members on-line. My great-grandfather, who I never met, wrote wilderness-adventure stories in the first few decades of the 20th century, and I came across a summary of his papers, currently at U of T.

Apparently these include an unpublished memoir: Canadian Sagalands: Wild Editors I Have Known, and a bunch of correspondence with his literary agent in NY, Otis Adelbert Kline-- whom I’d actually heard of, because he was Assistant Editor of Weird Tales magazine for a while, was literary agent for a *lot* of writers, including Robert E. Howard, and, whatever fandom legend may say, probably didn’t really have a feud going with Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[sovay]

Apparently these include an unpublished memoir: Canadian Sagalands: Wild Editors I Have Known, and a bunch of correspondence with his literary agent in NY, Otis Adelbert Kline-- whom I’d actually heard of

That's pretty cool. Can you get in to read it?

[moon_custafer]

Probably, but I imagine I'd have to request it specially, and finding the time to do it is the hard part.

[heliopausa]

I love the picture of your uncle dropping twenty feet out of a tree and landing springily, like a cat.

(Note to self: must check out Bringing Up Baby.)

[moon_custafer]

Bringing Up Baby also features a cat! Well, a leopard. And not anyone’s uncle.

[sovay]

Well, a leopard. And not anyone’s uncle.

This reminds me of the time that Kelly Link pointed out that the movie makes so much sense if Cary Grant is a were-leopard.

[sovay]

I love the picture of your uncle dropping twenty feet out of a tree and landing springily, like a cat.

Thank you! As you can tell, it made a great impression on me.

(I was in a tree earlier this afternoon, actually: my niece wanted to see me climb one. I took off my shoes and swung up into it and came back down while she watched from her wading pool; she did not follow me, although I suspect she will when she's older. Then I will feel a circle has been closed.)

(Note to self: must check out Bringing Up Baby.)

I recommend it! It was probably my first encounter with screwball comedy, even though I'm not sure it's typical of the genre except in its total chaos.

[a_reasonable_man]

She's a perceptive child. I would have been startled to see you in pink, too.

[sovay]

I would have been startled to see you in pink, too.

There are no photographs, I'm afraid.

[thisbluespirit]

so many perzines, genzines, and apazines I had never heard of, not to mention conventions—I want a university to take this stuff before it disintegrates

There is actually a place (a university??) in the US that takes zines specifically that you might be able to give them to - I don't remember where, but I can ask my flister who's been there if you would like to know.

[benbenberi]

The University of Iowa has a big collection of zines. They might be interested in these.

[sovay]

The University of Iowa has a big collection of zines. They might be interested in these.

We are in communication with the University of Iowa: I'm sorting and semi-cataloguing these boxes because they want some idea of what the collection contains before they say yes. I just feel strongly they would be fools to say no. You might get multiple copies of progress reports from MidAmeriCon, but I can't imagine they're overflowing with duplicates of Mythologies and Meeper Blue and Dynatron and Phosphene and Mad Scientist Digest.

[thisbluespirit]

That is probably the one, then!

[cmcmck]

I get much the same reaction if I ever wear pink, especially from the younger rellies. :o)

[sovay]

I get much the same reaction if I ever wear pink, especially from the younger rellies.

What kinds of colors do you normally wear?

[cmcmck]

I'm what the 'colour me' scheme calls 'deep autumn' so browns, dark greens, greys and blues are real favourites.

Bringing up baby

[lauradi7dw]

I would think people of almost any age would find it interesting - the reactions would just be different. Small children often like dinosaur bones, or leopards, or dogs.
Sooner or later, movie watchers or book readers will be introduced to the (unfortunate?) trope of someone in an incorrect engagement who finds a better person in the end. Possibly BuB is the best movie to begin that with, although it isn't clear to me that David and Susan will be happy for long.

Re: Bringing up baby

[sovay]

I would think people of almost any age would find it interesting - the reactions would just be different. Small children often like dinosaur bones, or leopards, or dogs.

That's my hope. She's just being brought up on very different movies than I was, and I wasn't even brought up on that many movies.

Possibly BuB is the best movie to begin that with, although it isn't clear to me that David and Susan will be happy for long.

I think they are fundamentally, perhaps even existentially immiscible, but whenever they swing through each other's orbits, they'll never get bored.

Early movies

[lauradi7dw]

I think a number of the movies we showed our daughter when she was little were the ones we had loved at a similar age - The Mary Poppins that nineweaving can't stand, "Hard Day's Night," which came out when we were about eight, and had a profound effect not just on us, but on many people our age. And oddities - "Cold Comfort Farm" might not have been the most appropriate choice for a small child, but maybe one can never be too young to know that there was something nasty in the woodshed.