Awakening at one AM after dreaming
not of Byzantium,
not of Babylon, but better —
Not Shangri-La, but shaded limb —
The pine I climbed when I was nine.
No Acropolis, only
fallow farm and rising sun.
Across, a distant treeline
ascends to render Athens’
Parthenon prosaic.
Exceeding empires, exceeding
even Elysium, is
This slumber’s ordinary boyhood field.
Like a lot of brilliant ideas, this is a simple one that even seems obvious in retrospect. What a smart, kind soul it takes to come up with something like this.
I won’t lie to you — not all of the sci-fi short films that Oats Studios produces are fantastic. Writer-Director Neill Blomkamp’s cutting-edge online creative project does produce its share of duds. But when it’s good, it’s very, very good, and “Adam” is proof of that.
Like Blomkamp’s “Rakka” and “Firebase” before it, “Adam” is an unfinished serialized tale that mixes raw emotion and disturbing imagery with hints of brilliance — all set within a detailed and truly creative sci-fi universe. I highly recommend it.
I bought this pumpkin a week before Halloween. It is now January 5. It’s as firm as the day I bought it, without a hint of rot. That’s got to be some kind of record, right?
I’m tempted to think it was chemically treated somehow by the seller. But I bought another pumpkin from the same batch that soured pretty predictably. It had to go out on the porch after a couple of weeks. (Come to think of it … I don’t actually remember putting that one in the garbage pails. Did a raccoon carry it off?)
I’m having a little trouble verifying that this comic cover is actually real. But I believe it is, and I believe it was published in the early 1950’s. I have no information about the artist.
[Update: Blog Correspondent Pete Harrison informed me immediately after I posted this that the “cover” indeed appears to be a fake. The GCD (Grand Comics Database) contains no record of this title, and it looks like a gag constructed by the “Atomic Romance” website. (I was confused because I had actually seen it at several other websites too.)]
NBC’s “Knight Rider” might be the granddaddy of all 1980’s high-tech super-vehicle shows — if I had to guess which one was the most popular or most fondly remembered, this would be it. (I suppose the other leading contender would be “Airwolf,” which we talked about a couple of months ago — but that was aimed at an older audience.)
“Knight Rider” was cheesy. But most 80’s action shows were cheesy, and I still remember it as being decent enough. Lord knows I and Mikey Wagner, the kid on the next block, were fascinated by it.
As anyone who remembers this show can attest, there is a key character that isn’t even hinted at in the intro below. The car was sentient. His name was K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand), and he was an artificial intelligence who actually who had a hell of a lot of personality. K.I.T.T. was a super-intelligent, talking, futuristic, sleek, black sportscar, and he was an incongruous damned hero to us kids.
The other star was Davis Hasselhoff as Michael Knight. We looked up to him too. Hasselhoff, of course, is now better known for his subsequent starring role as a moronic lifeguard on the categorically awful “Baywatch” (1989 – 2001). I remember seeing snippets of “Baywatch” in the 1990’s — it was constantly playing in the newsroom at my first job as a cub reporter. (The guys there loved it.) I remember being disappointed that one of my childhood heroes had somehow morphed into a male bimbo on the most saccharine and brainless TV show I had ever seen. Hey, “Knight Rider” was a show for kids … but it was goddam “Masterpiece Theater” when compared with “Baywatch.”
Weird trivia — the voice actor for K.I.T.T. was none other than William Daniels, who also gave a stellar performance as John Adams in 1972’s film adaptation of Broadway’s “1776.” It’s so weird seeing that movie and hearing the voice of K.I.T.T. come out of Adams’ mouth.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 