Art-R-Not-US

When I was young, I had it in my mind that I would be an artist. More specifically, a commercial artist, like, say Norman Rockwell.

I'd have done it, too, except for two little things:

1) No talent, and 2) No chance of getting any ...

I dabbled. Conned my folks into buying me the Famous Artists correspondence course when I was sixteen. I did two lessons, didn't like what they had to say, and quit. Spent three years paying for it at twenty bucks a month.

I once did an oil painting for a friend. He wanted a still life, a bowl of fruit. He was happy with it. Of course, he went on a couple years later to become a smack freak, so mayhaps his judgment was less than sound.

I did a storefront window banner at a meat market once, using tempera paint. My mother got me the job. It was terrible. Two of the words I lettered onto the glass summed it up: Fresh Tripe.

Later, I came across an engraving instrument used to identify tools, and realized that the process could be used to etch glass. I did a handful of pictures this way, and sold a couple at a flea market. As a gimmick, if you put them into a shadowbox and used a tensor light along one edge, they would glow an eerie green.

There were a few cartoons along the way. As a hippie, I was the staff cartoonist for an underground paper called The Word. Cost a quarter, if you had it. If not, Hey, no charge, man, peace. Did a panel about a bunch of -- what else? -- dope-smokin' hippies: Odd George, with JJ, the Kid, and Sweet Maryjane, whose head was always shrouded in smoke ...

Did some toons for a couple of house magazines for the forestry industry a buddy of mine edited.

Found a method of itty-bitty-dot drawing that appealed, and did a book cover for a doctor's self-published poetry book, based on his daughter.

Eventually, I transferred this technique to scrimshaw.

But, all in all, I didn't have the chops and knew I never would. I think the moment I realized it was the first day of college, when I stood in line next to a guy who had been a portrait artist at Jackson Square, in New Orleans, and who was putting himself through school that way.
He took a pencil out of his pocket and on the back of a notebook, and in about forty-five seconds, sketched a portrait of me that could have been a fuzzy photograph. I couldn't begin to do that, and knew I never would be able to learn it.

Writing is so much easier ...

Hai! Karate!

Summer of 1966, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the first ever karate school there opened its doors. Had to be Goju-ryu though nobody ever got that detailed back then, it was just called "karate," and that to differentiate it from judo.

The teacher's name was Kako Martinez, an ex-GI who had been stationed in Okinawa for a couple years, and who got his black belt -- first dan -- just before he shipped home. He was probably three or four years older than I.

More than forty years ago, and I can remember how excited I was to hear that a dojo had opened in my town. Back then, such places were rare outside the west coast or New York City, and the only source of information about those was Black Belt Magazine.

I was out of high school and attending LSU, just eighteen, and I signed up for the first white belt class. There were only four of us to start, though a few more joined in the next couple of months.

The place was on Florida Blvd., behind a drugstore in what would eventually become a mini-mall.

The pictures are from my first Polaroid Land Camera, probably a Swinger, Model 20, and taken by my then-girfriend, later mi esposa. You shot the picture -- B&W only -- and it developed outside the camera. You had to wipe some vile-smelling chemical goop across the image using a little plastic-sponge thingee, or it would fade away. Miss a spot and it did just that -- you can see that on the edges of these pictures.

Most of my first karate lesson was spent doing a sanchin form. Basically, this is a convoluted and passing-weird breathing exercise, with a pigeon-toed stance, and you go back and forth in a kind of sweeping step while punching and blocking in slow motion. I was a lifeguard at the time, swimming a mile a day, and fit, and I can remember how exhausted I was after a few minutes of this.

Kako -- he wouldn't let us call him sensei -- gave out rank in small degrees, in order to keep student interest. You started as a white belt, then dyed half your belt yellow. Next step was full yellow, then half-orange, half-yellow, then full orange, then half-orange, half-some other color, etc. I was there about six months, made it to yellow belt. Then I got married and my bride and I pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles, where I spent a couple weeks checking out karate schools there before settling on Okinawa-te.

In La-La-Land, I could have trained with Chuck Norris, who had a school then; or at a Chinese kung-fu school on Hollywood Blvd. that allowed round-eyes, or in any of several other Korean or Japanese halls that were open in 1967, but on the day I went into Doversola's school, they were sparring, kicking the crap out of each other, and laughing about it, and I thought, "Wow! How tough are these guys?"

Turned out not as tough as they pretended, but they did play hard, and it was the most impressive school I'd seen back then. Plus Doversola had minor parts doing heavies in the movies and on TV, and had trained some actors for martial arts roles. There were pictures of them up on his office wall. Two I recall the most: Anne Francis -- you will recall her from Forbidden Planet -- did a short-lived series trying to become the American Emma Peel, Honey West. And Henry Silva, who was the houseboy/spy who duked it out with Frank Sinatra in the original movie version of The Manchurian Candidate, the best paranoia-brainwashed movie ever.

I signed up, and spent three years there, taking classes three or four times a week, getting to brown belt, and becoming an assistant instructor -- I had a key to the building! -- before we left town and moved back to Louisiana. Toward the end, I used to spar with folks like Jim Kelly, from Enter the Dragon, and was pleased that I could hold my own with anybody who walked in the door ...

Ah, the good old days ...

Long Ago and Far Away

April, 1969
Los Angeles, California

Back when I was young and stupid and in my second martial arts class -- Sensei Gordon Doversola's Okinawa-te school on Sunset Blvd., almost to Hollywood, I used to think that smashing my hands into bricks and boards was a keen thing to do.

I gave that up a couple years later when somebody slipped a firebrick in on me ...

Found this in the old photo album. The first time I ever broke a brick with a "karate chop."
If you look really close, you can see my beatnik-style beard, such that it was ...

Stick 'em, Dan'l - part 3

After pounding sand with feet and body and doing a fair amount of knifework this past weekend, I feel the need to point out yet again that if you are in close proximity of someone who a) has a knife b) has a clue about how to use it and c) wants to use it on you, you are in dire peril.

Let me rephrase that: Deeeep shiiiit ....

You are in huge trouble if you are barehanded; slightly less so if you have a knife of your own and have some ability with it. Once you are close and blades flash? Bad. Bad.

There are several sayings amongst knife fighters that address this, but one I heard this weekend sums it up: When two knife experts fight, the winner is the one who dies second ...

Can you say, "Pyrrhic victory?"

A Few Pictures from the Seminar

I have several short, low-quality AVIs, too, but they aren't for public consumption. (If any of the attendees want copies, I can email or burn them to a disk for you. They range from about three megabytes to almost ten megs. They are: Guru showing a groundwork takedown with the knife; Ron and Serge doing groundwork; the leg warm-ups; and Guru doing some standup knife) stuff. You can have any of these, but only on the condition that you don't post them on the net, or pass them around to anybody who might.)

More Seminar Stuff

Well, I survived without breaking anything. I hope you won't think me any less manly if I admit to being a tad on the decrepit side -- I'm gonna need a hot tub of balur tomorrow. I've discovered muscles I didn't remember I had, and they are all sore ...

The short version of the report is that the group was mostly Sera students, and we had a fine time rolling around in the wet sand -- 'cause it rained from time to time. We played with knives, and with sticks, substituting for machetes, did way too much ground work, two days of intense training. I got a lot of pictures, and even a couple of short vids, with the knife and some warm-up stuff for ground work.

I hope Guru decides to keep having the gathering at his house. Dogs, cats, horses, ducks, chickens, kids, and Special Forces Army guys all wandering around, a great venue.

Guru and his lovely wife Kim cooked and supplied a terrific dinner and lunch, the centerpieces of which were barbecued satay skewers with Stevan's secret-recipe peanut sauce.

And, oh, yes, beer. Even some that Euro-trash stuff, Dutch, in this case. Naturally, I avoided it like the vile stuff that it is ...

I'll post some pictures later, once I sort out the incriminating ones ...

Seminar '07

The annual Silat Serak seminar at Guru Plinck's house. In the sand pit, John teaches Edwin how to sing soprano ...

More later.

Welcome to Corgiville ...

This weekend is the neighborhood' s annual garage sale. Already, the streets around my house are thick with shoppers and bumper-to-bumper traffic. No place to park on the street, and you have to shoo them away from blocking your driveway.

Walking the dogs is always fun during these sales. They get to meet a lot of people and other dogs. And dog-lovers and most children smile at Jude and Layla -- face it, the stubby little critters are way cute. Not like taking hellhounds out and watching people run to cross the street.

More often than not, when somebody sees the pups, they'll grin and say something. And more often than not, here's how the conversation goes:

"Cute puppies! What kind are they?"

"They're corgis."

(Sometimes they get this much. "Are those corgis?" To which I say, "Yes, they are the Cardigan Welsh variety.)

Eight times out of ten, this comes next:

"Huh. I never saw one that color before." (The other two times, they say: "Huh. I never saw one with a tail before." Sometimes they say both.)

"Well," I explain smiling, "probably most of the ones you've seen are the Pembrokes -- like the Queen of England has? Usually those are brown and white, and the tails, which come in stubby, are generally docked. These are Cardigans, this color is more common among this breed."

Actually, among Cardis, black-and-white with a touch of brindle is the most common color, which means chances are good the speaker has never seen one at all.

My wife and I have heard this so many times it's become a private joke. I want to say, "Oh, yeah, we dyed them that color because it goes with the carpet." Or: "We had tails grafted on because we think is it cuter."

Naturally, I would never actually say this, since that would be obnoxious. It's a passing parade, and simple ignorance, which I can remedy by explaining, and that's part of my job as an owner of a relatively-rare breed. Last time I looked, there were only nine hundred or so Cardigans registered with the AKC, and over ten thousand Pembrokes. Nowhere near the numbers of Labs, which are well over a hundred thousand, but still, Pems are much more common than Cardis. (In fact, another family joke is that the Pembrokes are as common as dirt, leading to the shorthand description, "Jude and Layla and I saw a dirt corgi on our walk today ...

So now you know ...

Optimistic

One of the cool things about my not-too-long-ago acquired car, the Morris Mini, is the retro-look dials and gauges and switches. If you enlarge the picture and look to the bottom-left of the cup holder, you'll see the airplane-style switches that control the windows and door locks, each protected by a steel half-ring so you don't accidentally hit it.

But for the really amusing stuff, look at the speedometer, center-mounted in the dash, and notice the gradations: Top speed, 150 mph -- 248 kph for those of you on The Continent.

The tachometer, over the steering column, redlines at 6800 rpm. (What that means for you non-techno folks is that once the engine speed gets to the red line, that's like Kirk demanding warp eleven from Commander Scott. "I canna doo it, Cap'n, she won' hold together!")

And even if the engine wouldn't blow up at that speed, a bump in the road as big as your little fingernail would send the car into low orbit, and adios, mate ...

This speedometer is what is known as "optimistic ..."

Meanwhile, back in the Jungle ...

So my hand healed up enough to try the rope again.

Went fine, and pleased I was that it did.

To -- I hope -- forestall a recurrence of the malady tenosynovitis or tendonitis, whichever, I am going to try it on an every-other-day schedule, alternating with a couple sets of fifteen chin-ups on the off-days. This will allow me to keep the upper body muscles worked, without putting so much stress on the hands.

Hell getting old, but one must make accomodations.

As for the picture here, you can probably figure out who those guys are. Two points if you can name them all without having to check on the web. I got three out of four ...

Guitar Man, Or

You Love That Guitar More Than You Love Me ...

I happened across this in the local bookstore yesterday, and it's hard to imagine a guitar player who won't find something to like in it.

Guitar Man: Or, You Love That Guitar More Than You Love Me, by Will Hodgkinson, is one the best books on why to play the guitar I've ever seen. Touching, amusing -- might-have-to-change-your-pants funny in spots, it chronicles the adventures of a thirty-something British writer who decides he need to learn how to play, and who sets himself a goal of playing in front of an audience in six months. And some of the players he interviews and tries to learn from along the way.

My edition is from Da Capo Press, just out in the states, apparently, though it saw publication in the U.K. in 2006

It is worth buying just for the scene where Will decides to get out of his basement and go into he woods to practice, to commune with nature using his acoustic guitar. Time I got to the end of the scene, I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.

If you play guitar, get it. You'll like it. If you are a good player, it will bring back memories of when you weren't.

If you are a beginner, it will give you hope ...

Daniel Keys Moran

I came across Dan's blog via Steve Barnes's blog -- you can click the links over on the right side of my page to get to either -- and saw that he was considering the possibilty of doing new books.

Lord, I hope so. Moran is one the best space-opera writers ever. I thought The Last Dancer, the third book in the Emerald Eyes, The Long Run, um, trilogy, was as good as they get.

Probably hard to find these day, and buying them used doesn't put any money in his pocket, but if you can find copies, you should read them.

And hope that he gets back into the field ...

Bunch/Perry/Perry Novel

The Star Risk, Ltd. novel, The Gangster Conspiracy, a collaboration between the late Chris Bunch and the Perry boys, Dal and Steve, is scheduled to ship July 3rd. (I think they would have done it on the 4th, which will be the second anniversary of Bunch's passing, save for shipping problems on a holiday.)

You can get your copy here. Buy several. Pass them out to your friends ...

Star Trek-ery

Some of you might be aware of the Star Trek online series, New Voyages, which is essentially a bunch of fans who wanted to continue the original series ... so they did.

The powers-that-be at Paramount decided this was okay, and now you can log onto the website and stream episodes featuring Kirk and Spock and McCoy and all the rest on Gilligan's -- oops, I mean, the starship Enterprise, with fan actors.

The episodes start a little rough, but they get better, and the latest one, "World Enough and Time," starring George Takei (Sulu) is set for a theatrical premiere at the end of August.

My collaborator, Michael Reaves, and Marc Scott Zicree, wrote and directed this episode, based on an idea that Reaves had pitched to Phase II -- a series than didn't get made because they went for a movie instead -- back in the day, and the script was terrific. From what I hear, the episode is also going to look terrific.

Information about when you can see it can be found on the New Voyages website.

(As to my connection, if you watch the episode, which comes out on August 23rd, and if you listen carefully during the opening sequence, you'll hear a com exchange with a shuttle pilot requesting permission to dock his craft. That would be me doing the voice-over.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille ....)

Book Deadline Looms

The Predator novel, Turnabout, is due next month and I am hammering away at it, which is why I haven't been blogging much of late. Lotta blood and gore, guns going off, all like that. Stay tuned, I'll let you know when it gets turned in, and when it is supposed to be published.

Alan Maisey's Keris Catalogue

If you have any interest in such things, go check out Alan's latest collection for sale. Just put it up today. (They go fast, given his prices and the condition. If you want one, pick a back-up, in case your first choice is gone. Lot of times, it is.)

Aside from being a knifemaker of some repute himself, Alan is a terrific guy, easy to work with, and much more trusting than I. Australian, married to a Javanese woman, speaks the language, travels to Java every year or two. Knows more about these things than anybody else I've ever dealt with.

An Unexpected Gift Last Evening

Guru Plinck and his Granddaughter

Djuru #16 ...

Yancy Derringer

Back in the dawn of time -- 1958 -- there was a television series called Yancy Derringer, starring Jock Mahoney, a former stuntman turned B-movie/TV leading man. Mahoney did a series called Range Rider before Yancy Derringer, then went on to do, among other things, a couple of Tarzan movies -- he was forty-something when he played the ape-man. His last screen appearance, if I recall correctly, was in Hooper, the Burt Reynolds movie about a stuntman, loosely based on Mahoney. Reynolds was dating Sally Fields at the time, and gave Mahoney a bit part. (Jocko was Sally Fields' step-father, and as a boy, I thought he was waaaay cool.)

Yancy Derringer, about a gambler who became a kind of undercover operative in New Orleans after the War Between the States, was a black-and-white series with a lot of shooting and things burning down or blowing up. Derringer's sidekick was Pahoo, played by X Brands, a loyal Indian who had saved Derringer's life, and somehow had to be responsible for him thereafter as a result. Pahoo never spoke, and communicated in a weird sign language.

Pahoo -- aka Wolf Who Stands in Water -- wore a blanket poncho and had a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun under it that he employed frequently. Also carried a knife in a sheath behind his neck and could draw and spin that sucker like a drummer doing stick twirls before he threw it and skewered a bad guy.

This was back in the day when violence on TV was rampant -- the body count in this series was pretty high. Kill 'em all, God will know his own ...

I had fond memories of ole Yancy and Pahoo, and had heard that the prints of the episodes had all been destroyed.

However, it turns out, they had not gone away.. Tonight, my son showed up on my doorstep with the DVDs of the series. I must have mentioned it to him in a good light, because he was quite pleased at being able to present it to me.

As was I pleased that he remembered.

I've watched a couple of them, and they -- naturally -- aren't as good as I recalled. Over-acted and fairly silly, but it was almost fifty years ago, after all. The ten-year-0ld Steve was a tad less sophisticated about such story telling.

Even so, they have a certain ... je ne sais quoi. I plan to watch 'em all ...

Audio Book

Hmm. Apparently Blackstone Audio Books has made an offer for The Musashi Flex, which means that people will be able to get it on CD, or as a downloaded MP3, so's they can listen to it on their iPods or somesuch.

How fascinating is that?

Dunno how long it'll take before it shows up, there will be contracts to sign and like that, but hey, ain't it great to be living here in the future ... ?

Mechanical License

Blind Whitebread Perry

In musical circles, if one does covers of another artist's work, one must pay for the privilege. If you cut an album and decide to offer Sir Paul's song "Yesterday" on your CD, and depending on how many copies you press, it will cost you a certain amount in royalties for each copy.

Typically, this is about nice cents each. You get this mechanical license by going through the agency that reps the artist for such things, places like BMI, ASCAP, Harry Fox.

The music industry, finally having come into the 21st Century, has now included MP3s and other internet media in this licensing process, although this is somewhat tricky, and the cost is about the same. I'll get to the tricky part in a minute.

I bring this up because I am learning how to play El McMeen's arrangement of Jay Ungar's fiddle tune, "Ashokan Farewell" on my guitar. Assuming I ever get it down, I want to post it on my SoundClick page. If I allow people to download MP3s of the song, then I need to send Harry Fox nine cents every time somebody does so. (Practically speaking, what one does is get a license before posting the tune, based upon one's best estimate of how many people might download it. If you figure five hundred, that runs you $45. There is a minimum of 150, and so if you figure that maybe nine people will download it, too bad.)

License is good for a year, and I suppose that if fewer people download it than you figure, you might get change back, but I dunno.

If you are selling the MP3, you might make a profit. If you are giving them away for free, not so much ...

Since this would be the only piece on my site that isn't public domain, or stuff I wrote, I figured I should pony up, so I have gotten the license. Now all I have to do is learn the piece ...

Oh, and that tricky thing I mentioned? If you don't allow downloads, if the material is streaming-audio only? Apparently it doesn't count, though some quirk in the way the rules are worded. So somebody can log on and listen without getting the MP3 and it's no harm, no foul.