Month: January 2024

My Kingdom for a Scorpion

You’re a writer – you know how it goes. You get fixated on this idea, and it just won’t go away until you finally get it sprawled out on a piece of paper.

Same thing with videos.

During our visit to the SoCal Wing of the Commemorative Air Force for the California Air Museums project, Ron Fleishman, the Wing’s historian, told us this great story about something called The Battle of Palmdale.

The story’s about the powerful and massive Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighter, a single-engine airplane that can rightfully claim the lion’s share of air victories in the skies over the Pacific during WW II.

Like the compact disc, the cassette tape, and the LP vinyl record, technology bypassed these remarkable airplanes so quickly that they were obsolete within two years of the war’s end. By 1956 they were used as radio-controlled drone targets for guided missiles – they didn’t even rate a pilot.

So, anyway, this battle story involves one of these remote-control Hellcats that goes haywire and flies, completely out of control, over Los Angeles in 1956.

The Air Force dispatches two state-of-the-art F-89 Scorpion jets to shoot it down, but they fail. And not just fail, but, COMPLETELY fail, firing a total of 208 missiles at the lumbering old timer – every single one of them miss.

It’s a great story, and I think it would make a terrific video. Now, of course, you can’t quite get your hands on real airplanes, but, hey, what about 3D models?

You can score a good-looking Hellcat for five bucks on Turbosquid.

But an F-89? Fogeddaboudit!

I scrolled through literally thousands of models, wishing, and a’hoping, and a’praying that somebody mislabeled their model when they uploaded it. Hey, it could happen!

F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, 22s,35s, 84s, 86s, 100s, even F-101 Voodoo fighter jets aplenty were to be found.

But an F-89 Scorpion? No, sir, not to be found in this man’s 3D universe. What’s up with that?

Actually, I did finally find one, and it was for free, but you had to sign up for this guy’s website, and that was, like, $65. Uh, no, thank you.

So, yes, I did find one. And, although I’d gladly trade my kingdom for a good model, I’m not uh idiot!

And that means the story has to stay on hold until I can figure out another way to shoot it. There are several videos on The Battle of Palmdale, but they all use old stock footage from the DOD.

Surely we can do better!

Hmm, how to acquire a Scorpion… and evil plot unfolds…

A New Venue

My wife tells me that I have two problems: I don’t listen to her, and, uh, something else.

The one time I DID listen to her recently, she suggested a great idea.

See, I’m a nerd. I get all excited about dopey stuff that doesn’t mean anything, and then I have to do something with it.

Enter California Air Museums, a site dedicated to inspiring young parents to bring their kids to California’s many air museums by presenting video tours and stories about the museums themselves.

All good and well, but the Holidays and the wintry weather have rather put a hitch in my museum-visiting git-along, so to speak. What to do?

“You’re a nerd,” she tells me. “You get all wrapped up in weird little pieces of information and details. Write about that.”

Enter One Motor, Many Planes, the first blog post in the new Stories feature on the website’s front page.

Casting the article as a story rather than a blog post gives it more gravity – more bottom. That’s a sailing term. See, sailing ships have a presence in the water, and the deeper the hull the more bottom she presents… eh.

I digress.

A funny side note to Motor story: the museum’s historian told me two entirely different aircraft, a hot combat bomber and a lumbering transport made use of the same engine. Isn’t that fascinating?

I began writing the story with that fact as my premise, only to find out in doing the research that he was not correct. Much digging and figuring out resulted in proving that he was correct, but not in the way he thought, and a much more interesting story.

Anyway, now I have to go try and remember what else my wife told me. Something about a fire…

Managing the Empire

I’ve been reading The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. So much of what he details revolves around maintaining empires – Roman, Ottoman, Sassanids… but he forgot to mention mine.

Now, before you scoff and mutter some obscenity-laden little comment under your breath in the “who does he think he is” vein, let me just toss you a couple of wait-a-minutes and then we’ll see who’s what, know whatta mean?

Let’s talk about you for a moment. You have a cell phone, and probably a computer. You probably have a car, a dwelling, some furniture. Maybe a significant other, and perhaps a child or two, wandering about aimlessly. Coupla books, some pots and pans. And clothes. You’ve got a job, a career, a large pile of hopes and dreams. You’re a writer, after all…

Face it, my friend, this is your empire.

You gotta read The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. Not to give anything away, but his premise is this: the resources of the universe are finite, and all civilizations must grow. Ultimately, there’s only room for one.

Chilling, am I right?

That has NOTHING to do with what I’m actually writing about, but it’s a cool book. I enjoyed Three Body Problem, the first book in the series, more than The Dark Forest, but both are excellent, excellent reads.

Anyway, the stuff you own, the stuff you are, the stuff you dream about – that’s your empire. And you know it’s all important because you spend your days defending it, making it grow, keeping it vital.

And, really, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why we wake up in the AM? Not just to lay it back down in the PM, but to better our empire, move our lives forward, each and every day?

Sure, the Mongols had armies and swords and stuff.

At the end of the day, though, aren’t we all just doing the same thing – managing the empire?

On Ruins and Wreckage

I’m sitting in my kitchen on a terribly uncomfortable chair. We replaced the frumpy chair pads with nifty red ones for Christmas. Alas, the holiday ended, and the pads are packed away. O, how I long for those frumpy chair pads…

I hope your holiday was glorious and that your new year holds  nothing but grand promise.

My holiday ended finally just this last weekend, with the return of my daughter’s stuff to her college dorm. She’s officially ensconced in her small liberal arts school in what is right now the frigid wasteland of Central Oregon.

Oh come now, a frigid wasteland? you say with that subtle tone of parental correction, surely it cannot be as bad as that.

Listen, mister, or sister, I know what I know, and saw what I saw, see?

Actually, the ice storm was really quite beautiful, the trees, the fences, even the blades of grass perfectly outlined in ice.

We were stopped long enough on the freeway that I got to mess around with the quarter-inch thick sheet of ice on the K-rail divider. What was so amazing to me was that the vertical surfaces were just as coated as the flats and tops. How could this be?

My fingers are still cold.

We met some lovely people while stranded in Grant’s Pass – a guy from Hawaii and a girl from Denver, both of whom used to be in the oil business, but who now run a farm and sell pies. A guy from Baltimore who works at one of only four biodynamic wineries in the whole world.

Wait, where’s the writer’s story in this, you ask with that tone that really moans are you ever going to land this plane?

Okay, okay, okay, here we go…

Because of that mega ice storm that laid flat Central Oregon, why, I haven’t scheduled a fourth shoot for the California Air Museums project.

…crickets…

Yeah, see, we were both so wiped out from battling the ice storm (oh please, you moan) that I haven’t even turned on my computer since getting home Monday night.

…crickets…

And I haven’t put out a single query letter on my novel this entire year!

…yawns…

Well, there it is, isn’t it?

Central Oregon in ruins, my hosting career at a standstill, my novel in the dumpster.

…sad violin music…

Marketing-wise, I did plant a link to the California Air Museums site in this post. That’s pretty cool.

And, like my mom used to say, “Life ain’t beer and skittles, you know.”

Although I still don’t know what that means, let us remind ourselves that out of calamity comes creativity, out of ruin comes rebirth, and it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Or until the fat lady sings, although I don’t quite get that one, either…

Of Captions and Mattresses

Hey – I discovered something you should never do! Well, I’ve actually stumbled upon quite a few. Phew. What a year!

So, the kids came home for the holidays – well, two out of three. The youngest daughter and the son and his wife. All was warm and cozy and happy, and the day after Christmas the son and his wife flew off to Omaha to embrace the balmy winter snow storm that dropped six inches…

The youngest daughter decided she’d like to stay the rest of her holiday vacay on the same bed the son and his wife had used. As the daughter’s bed had been brute-hauled into my wife’s office to make room for the son and his wife, no hearts were broken.

But, what to do with the daughter’s bed? The thing was easily 25 years old, and not worth a plugged nickel. We’ll call the garbage man!

Sure, says he. Put it out at the curb tomorrow morning and I’ll pick ‘er up for free. Won’t cost you a plugged nickel.

Well, my wife and I both work, see. So, we dutifully hauled the beast, bedframe, box spring, and twelve-ton twin-sized mattress down to the curb that night. What could go wrong with that?

Enter the Atmospheric River. Dang if it didn’t POUR on that poor mattress.

Two o’clock in the morning and I’m listening to the rain pounding on the roof, and I get the wise idea to put a tarp over this enormous marshmallow of a bed at the curb. OMG it rained and blew, and I had to lug the entire bed… thing… out a little into the street because it was blocking the gutter!

Now, I know the thing was already sodden, but I thought, maybe, if I could just keep extra water from coming in, maybe it would drain off into the now-unplugged gutter.

Just as I finish tying down the tarp, soaked to the bone, the rain lets up.

Sigh.

Also during her holiday vacay, my daughter suggested I add closed captions to the YouTube videos at California Air Museums.

Sure. No problem. Piece of cake. Alls ya gots ta do is tell YouTube that you want to use the closed-captions, and their AI does the rest.

Great!

I didn’t look until just last night, and OMG, they’re a MESS!

The AI tries to match the rhythm of the soundtrack, but just plain doesn’t spell or understand context or know placenames worth a plugged nickel.

Google counted spell Mugu to save its life! Mcgoo, Mago, MGOO…

And me, Mr. Professional, sent emails off to other museums, offering to come shoot videos at their facilities, unaware that I’d added these whack-a-doodle, nonsensical captions to my professional work!

I’ve spent the last two evenings fixing and correcting and spelling and spacing and timing… in truth, now they look pretty good.

But, note to self: do. not. trust. ai. It does some stuff pretty well. But closed captioning? Eh…

What ties these two stories together, of course is my daughter, who has jetted off to Hawaii, yes, Hawaii, to finish out her holiday vacay.

Probably ran out of helpful suggestions…

Right off the Pier

Hey, it’s a new year. Why not make it a new you, too? All it takes is a couple of new year’s resolutions, a little elbow grease, and some stick-to-it-iveness. You’ve got all that, dontcha?

You’re a writer, you know how it goes. You best days are those spent, keyboard at hand, stirring the creative pot and letting stuff fly. My goal was to tap into that bliss.

So, one of my resolutions was to write a good piece of fiction every day. Every day, Louie, and let no day pass unwritten.

Well, let’s see. Today is 4 January. I’ve been busy, working at work, writing non-fiction promotional stuff, making videos, building 3D models. And now I’m sitting here, writing this.

Yesterday was 3 January. Worked at working, you know, working at work. Got home, was kinda tired. Didn’t do much beyond play solitaire.

Before that was 2 January. Worked at work (are we sensing a theme yet?) and came home and messed with the boats.

Boats? Yes, boats. Yachts. Seacraft. My darling love and I acquired two kayaks, yes, paddle-your-keester-around-the-sea kayaks. Really nice ones.

The little boat, a 10-footer, was on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The salesguy was himself a kayaker, but seemed to have been hit in the head by a paddle one too many times. How much is this boat, he repeats our question. How much? Let me see, here. I should be able to figure this out… I figured it out, and he agreed with my assessment.

The other boat is a lithe 14-foot beauty. Man, she’s nice. The owner was asking a lot of money, but dropped the price to a third without any haggling. He was like, just take it – I’ve got to get rid of it. In thinking about it, now I rather hope it floats…

FYI, I am the worst haggler in history. I mean, bad. I bought a car once, and asked the salesman if it would be okay if I paid the price that was in the windshield. He said only if he could add a ten dollar consultation fee, to which I readily agreed.

Idiot.

Anyway, last year my wife and I acquired a Honda pickup truck. My lovely, trusty Ford was just beginning to shift on its own, without waiting for me, which was a sure sign that the constant-variable-transmission was just about to become inconstant. I donated her to one of those cars-for-causes charities – they looked at the battered paint, and the 248,000 miles on the odo, and said “gee. thanks.”

To get the boats, I had to fit a rack in the back of the Ridgeline, which is no mean feat, whether you have mean feet or not. But, now that we have the truck, we have no excuse not to get the boats, which we did.

And that’s how I spent the night of the second – installing the racks on the truck.

I am most sorry, but I’ve lost the thread.

Oh. Fiction. Write a piece a day. That was my plan.

Not a word so far this year. Every day, every shmay, I say.

This is sad. Even as I sit here, writing this, I’m thinking man, I should be writing fiction. Here goes:

I thought she loved me, but she didn’t. She was interested, but only in the reaction she caused in me, not in me myself. It took a few terse conversations, filled with misguided inuendo, for each of us to see that simple truth. I think of her, sometimes.

There. Fiction. Well, not really…

Anyway, good luck with YOUR resolutions. As far as mine go, I seem to have driven right off the pier.

Lucky for me, I’ve got yachts!