National Review of Science Fiction

The many obits on William F. Buckley, Jr. fail to mention what his greatest accomplishment might have been: his magazine, the "National Review" had a real column devoted to reviewing recent works of science fiction. The reviewer was no less than Ted Sturgeon. Back then this was amazing and astounding, almost a fantasy fulfillment, almost as if I was transported to a fantastic world of tomorrow.

Science fiction was now acknowledged in the magazine of William F. Buckley, the erudite man of letters and rapier witted host of "Firing Line." I used to search for new copies of the "National Review" every time I visited the school or base library. One thing I noticed: the other articles seemed dull and lifeless in comparison to Sturgeon's column, and the merciless fortnight deadline meant that the "National Review" often resembled a political zine rather than a polished journal (still NR never was never as bad as the "New Republic" in the 1980s). The "National Review" has the proud disintinction of having discovered Philip K. Dick years ahead of the "Rolling Stone."

Thanks to a progressive English teacher, I had been reading Marshall McLuhan, and I understood enough to realize that Buckley's true medium was television. Television captured his wit and patrician graciousness. Only television could capture Buckley's prep tell: he always and unconsciously unfastened his lower coat button when he sat down and immediately re-fastened it when he stood up.

For those who lament that we lost sophisticated discourse and civility on television in the era of Limbaugh and Colbert, I would suggest viewing the debate between Buckley and Gore at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Then as now, there were insulting comparisions to the Third Reich and sexually oriented insults:

Taking No for an Answer

I read Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life by Harry Mount over the weekend and found it fascinating and enjoyable. Especially so since I skipped the declension and conjugation tables, which the author encouraged. Mount, a journalist who majored in classics at Oxford, explains Rome and the Latin language in a breezy and fun manner and confirms suspicions long held about some of the prep-school Latin masters.

Mount and others have said that learning a language is akin to peeking inside a culture's inner thoughts. This may well be true. I was especially struck by how questions in Latin are constructed in two different ways. A question prefaced by "nunc" is asked when the anticipated answer is yes; when prefaced by "num," the answer would be in the negative. Romans, it seems, were adverse to being surprised.

The Van Gods Live Again!

Van art has all but disappeared, but once it was impossible to avoid barbarians and their princesses and Aztecs warriors and their princesses. Perhaps this for the better. It never occurred to me to take pictures of vans in the 1970s. This would've been risky on the free, and I wish there had been some record of the Airborne Infantry tribute panel van I saw in San Jose. Sad to say, this form of pop art went into the crusher two decades ago, but for 30 seconds it comes alive again in, of all things, a Honda Odyssey commercial:

Gus Arriola Passes Away

The cartoonist Gus Arriola died in Carmel: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/02/BACTUR8VU.DTL

Not well known or appreciated today, Gus Arriola's strip "Gordo," always promised eye catching Mexican themed colors and designs. When I was a child, every Sunday I would grab the comics and be fascinated by how Gordo could talk with his animals (a dog, cat, pig, chicken, and owl); I was very amused by how Gordo's animal friends insisted on taking their siesta on top of him. There were was an insufferably cute kitten named Bete Noire, an eternally shedding cat named Poosy Gato, and even a poetry spouting beatnik spider named Bug Rogers who also used spider webs as his art medium. The strips were not all aimed at children, and at the time, I didn't understood the interplay between Gordo and the attractive female tourists riding in his taxi, Halley's Comet, an antique, tequila fueled bus. Still, "Gordo" was considered acceptable reading material even by the nuns in the predominantly Hispanic school I attended in a Texas border town.

A review of Richard Harvey's work "Accidental Ambassador Gordo: The Comic Strip Art of Gus Arriola" provides a samples of his work: http://www.rcharvey.com/gordo.html