The Orange Chimera

A slice of mutant orange on a light box.

Hey, kids, it's Mutant Monday! 

While working at the food bank last Friday, Karen and I found an orange that was colored half orange, half yellow. I demanded an explanation from the Facebook hive mind, and we settled on two leading possibilities: a botched dye job, occurring when oranges are sometimes dyed a deeper color to make them more attractive for market; or a chimera, a rare mutation in which an organism (it happens in both plants and animals) contains two distinct genotypes--basically, two different critters mushed into one.

Today we cut it open and . . .  it's a chimera! The color contrast goes all the way through to the core. It's a more subtle difference than the skin, but four segments are lighter orange and six segments are darker.

Unfortunately, if Professor Xavier calls asking if our orange can join the X-Men, we will have to decline on account of we ate it. In our final experiment, the two colors of flesh tasted the same.

As an indicator of how exciting my life is, this orange is the most fun I've had in quite a while.

Splashdown!

The aircraft carrier USS Hornet was built during World War II, served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and recovered Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 from the South Pacific in 1969 before being decommissioned in 1970. She spent a couple of decades in mothballs before becoming a National Landmark and museum now floating in San Francisco Bay at the Alameda pier. As my six regular readers know, my daughter Laura is on the museum staff, and I never tire of telling people that my little girl has the keys to an aircraft carrier.

I think Laura had something to do with me being invited to speak and sign copies of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow at last Saturday's "Splashdown 45" event, marking the 45th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11. But it wasn't entirely nepotism; I believe that at least some Hornet board members independently knew about my book. Still, I think I owe the kid a lot.

Did I mention that the star of "Splashdown 45" was Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin?

That was sufficient motive to rise at the crack of dawn Saturday and leave Comic-Con for a flight to the Bay Area.

Got there on time, thanks to my daughter Robin's airport shuttle service.
Same clothes I wore at Comic-Con; I travel light.

The Hornet is a huge ship that usually swallows crowds with ease, but I've never seen it as packed as it was Saturday. I was talking with the museum CEO and he guessed more than 3500 attended. Buzz Aldrin was scheduled to speak on the big main stage in the Hangar Deck at 1:00. I was slated for the same stage at 11:30, asked to talk on the topic of Space Art and Illustration.

I widened that mandate to include a lot of the themes I worked into WHTTWOT: mainly the idea that the stories we tell about ourselves and our future are as important in shaping that future as the hardware we build. "Beat the Commies to the Moon" is as much an aspirational narrative as "Boldly go where no man has gone before." I focused mostly on art and illustration but also ventured into movies, TV, literature, and tried to tie them all together.

So I took the big stage and gave a 35- or 40-minute talk that in 162 fast-paced slides managed to name-check Galileo, Hevelius, Cassini, Maria Clara Eimmart, John W. Draper (who took the first photograph of the Moon), Gustav Dore, Jules Verne, HG Wells, Angus MacDonall, Scriven Bolton, Lucien Rudaux, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Frank Paul, Will Eisner, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, George Melies, Fritz Lang, George Pal, Chesley Bonestell (of course!), Wernher Von Braun, Walt Disney, Charles Schulz, Robert McCall, Ludek Pesek, Don Dixon, William Hartmann, and more.

Just reeling off names like that makes it looks like a random laundry list, but I think I was able to build a theme and make a point that people seemed to get and appreciate. The Hangar Deck was set up with several hundred chairs facing the stage, and projection screens and speakers hanging half the length of the deck. It was obviously rigged that way so that everyone throughout the ship could see and hear Buzz Aldrin, but it worked to my advantage as well!

At the Hornet's book sales tent. One of these things is not like the other. They had about 1000 of Aldrin's books and 50 of mine, plus maybe another dozen in the museum gift shop. I'm very happy with that ratio.

Blah blah blah blah. Why won't this guy shut up? We Want Buzz!

Pulling back a bit, my wife Karen took this shot from the first row of seats. The podium was not initially set up with a monitor for me to see my own slides, which would have been disastrous because a lot of my talk relied on a rapid-fire "bang bang bang" clicking through the pictures. The speaker before me resorted to standing at the back of the stage and watching the rear projection on the big screen. I griped enough to the audio-video team that before I spoke they rewired one of Buzz Aldrin's teleprompters to show me my slides instead. Saved the day. Hope they remembered to re-rewire it for Buzz.

Stepping farther back into the cavernous Hangar Bay to show one of the screens set up to broadcast presentations throughout the deck. There were three of these screens hanging from the ceiling. It's a big ship.

My view from the podium.

From the start I had a pretty big audience, which grew as my talk went on. For a little while I thought I must have been orating better than anyone had ever orated before: more and more people were coming to watch me! Slowly it dawned on me that no, they were just staking out good seats to see Aldrin, who was going on 45 minutes after I finished. Still, it also worked to my advantage. Captive audience or not, I was the only thing on the stage at that moment so they had no choice but to sit and listen.

After my talk I sat at a bank of tables with other speakers and presenters to sign books. That went splendidly! Not everyone who bought a book got it signed or even realized I was there, but I had a steady stream of really nice people come up to chat and get an inscription. Having just left Comic-Con, I couldn't help noticing that Space People are a lot like Comics People but generally brighter (no offense to Comics People but c'mon!).

My book signing set-up amidship.

From time to time I had a little line, but nothing unpleasant. People couldn't have been nicer.
That's my daughter Robin beside me. 

This whole family was terrific. Very enthusiastic about the book and posing for photos with its author.
That doesn't happen to me very often.

I think this guy was hired by the Hornet. I hope this guy was hired by the Hornet.

Aldrin was preceded by a short video highlighting the Apollo 11 mission. I was surprised. I've seen the same old footage so many times I thought I was relatively numb to it, but I got an honest-to-God lump in my throat and tears in my eyes watching that Saturn V blast off into the Florida sky. Man. Aldrin was introduced by astronaut Yvonne Cagle, with whom I once shared a pizza.

At 1 p.m., Buzz Aldrin took the stage. Topic One of every conversation the rest of the day: how does an 84-year-old man do it? He boarded the ship at 9 a.m., did press interviews for three hours, then gave a one-hour speech, then signed books for three hours, then appeared at a reception and dinner in his honor until probably 10 or 11 p.m. Could you do that? I couldn't do that. I guess once you have the Right Stuff, it never really goes away.

Buzz drew a bigger crowd than I did.

Buzz's talk touched on his Air Force and academic career before settling on Apollo 11. I'm sure he's told the same "magnificent desolation" stories 300,000 times before, but he tells them well. Then he segued to his current passion, drumming up popular support for manned exploration of Mars. I wouldn't presume to debate Aldrin on the wisdom of that, but will say that he makes his case convincingly and enthusiastically.

Buzz World
Preparing for "Splashdown," I jokingly told some people I'd be spending the day "hanging with Buzz Aldrin." In fact, one does not hang with Buzz Aldrin. He had a black-shirted security detail of about six persuasive men who kept the respectful mob at bay. He also had one handler whose main job was being the bad guy so Buzz didn't have to. No, you cannot have a private word with him. No, he will not shake your hand. No, he will not sign your photo.

Buzz's book signing was a rapid assembly-line process--necessarily, given the hundreds of people in line. I had no special access, just queued up with everyone else, wondering what I might say to the Great Man when I had the chance. What hasn't he already heard 30 million times before? What could I possibly say that he might chuckle at and remember at the end of the day? Maybe something smart and obscure, a question about orbital rendezvous (the subject of his Ph.D. thesis) or his Gemini 12 mission?

In the moment, I froze up tighter than little Ralphie meeting Santa Claus in "A Christmas Story."

Buzz Aldrin and me.

To be fair, I only had about two seconds to spin around for Karen to snap a photo and spit out my carefully crafted bon mot. I believe I said, "It's a great honor to meet you." He looked up and said, "Thank you." Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still got that original insight rattling around his brain.

I should have asked him for a Red Ryder BB gun. 

After the day's main public event, Karen and I stayed for a VIP reception. Here, again, you get a unique perspective on spending time in the orbit of one of the most celebrated men in the world. Buzz came to the reception and seemed accessible--he was 10 feet away! Yet actual interaction with him was defined by invisible circles enforced by his polite but firm security team. Only certain people got inside the circles. I wasn't one of them.

Here's what I mean. It appears that I could just walk over to Buzz's table and share a nice drink with him. There he is! Right there! But if I'd taken one more step in his direction, a large man would've gently taken me by the elbow and steered me away.

This is no criticism of Aldrin. I'm sure it's what he has to do to manage the millions of people who "only want a minute of his time" and get through the day. I just found it a fascinating glimpse at what goes into being Buzz. It was impressive and a little sad. I imagine it gets very tiring.

As it was, this was a very special day for me. In addition to spending the day on the Hornet (always fun!) and making such a memorable impression on Buzz Aldrin, I think this was my most successful speaking/book-signing event ever. My talk went very well. The museum sold all of its WHTTWOTs, so that by the end of the day I was doing sketches for disappointed people who hadn't been able to buy my book. That never happens for me.

I opened my talk by saying that if I had a time machine and went back to tell 1969 Brian that someday he'd be standing in that spot, on that ship, speaking on the same stage that Buzz Aldrin would be taking in less than an hour, there's no way I could make him believe it. "Splashdown 45" pushed every emotional button I've cultivated for 45 years.

I was Buzz Aldrin's opening act. Lifetime achievement unlocked.

Bookmaking

I wrote this post eight days ago but embargoed it until certain announcements could be made today at Comic-Con International in San Diego (where last night I either won or lost an Eisner Award, I didn't know which when I was composing this last Friday and I think I just blew my mind).

Last week my editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, spent several days in my hometown with photographer Geoff Spear, who did a little shooting for my book Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, and designer/editor/writer Chip Kidd. They didn't come to see me, but rather a humble little museum down the street dedicated to the work of "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. As was just announced at Comic-Con, Abrams is doing a new book on Schulz's art. I got to tag along while they worked on it.

(Some of this I hinted at on Facebook at the time. I probably shouldn't have done that.)

All these photos are by my wife Karen unless she's in them.

BBQ chicken dinner at my house. That's me, Chip, Geoff and Charlie. I don't know why the latter two drank Cokes, I offered them the good stuff.

Chip found one of his books on my shelves and graciously offered to sign it, but pouted when he saw the sticker indicating I'd bought it on clearance. After peeling off the sticker, he signed it anyway. 

Backstage at the Schulz Museum, Geoff lines up a shot of the original art for a "Peanuts" Sunday strip. At the table behind him is Maggie from the museum's staff. They treat original Schulzes like Fort Knox treats gold bars (as well they should). Generally, only museum staff touched the artwork, and there were two or three of them on hand at all times. 

Geoff snapping a photo, digital of course. Geoff is well-known and well-regarded for capturing all the lumps, bumps and texture of the objects he photographs. They look real on the page. Tactile. He achieves that by using a single bright light source at a low angle and shooting a range of time exposures, which he combines in Photoshop to even out their brightness. It's clever yet simple; elegant.

Geoff, Chip and Charlie discussing the size of a piece of art and how it might be reproduced. It was interesting to watch them work and construct the book. Chip and Charlie came in basically knowing what they were looking for, but every newly opened box turned up Schulz treasures that'd never been seen before. Many decisions were made on the fly.

Maggie at left, wearing her nitrile gloves. Chip and Charlie are taking reference snapshots of a particularly good piece that Geoff is getting ready to shoot.

Wine Country dinner Thursday night. There's Karen! We tried to make our guests feel at home.

This was neat. I think the guys got more than they expected and everything they needed to produce an exceptional book of Schulz art. I got to spend some time with my pals. We ate well. Good days.

Look for the book, title to be determined, next year.

When Worlds Collide

Not everyone will appreciate today's topic, but a very small number of the right people are going to lose at least an hour of their day and thank me for it.

"Forty Acres" was the nickname of a 29-acre (I know) movie studio backlot in Culver City, California active from the days of silent films into the '70s. It provided facades for western towns, small towns and downtowns. At various times it housed Tara from "Gone With the Wind," Stalag 13 from "Hogan's Heroes," King Kong's giant gate and Tarzan's jungle. The lot got its greatest sustained exposure as Mayberry over several years of "The Andy Griffith Show."

Demonstrating precisely why the Internet was created, many courageously dedicated souls--some clearly cursed with OCD--have combed through pretty much every television program and movie made during those decades to produce a meticulously cross-referenced visual catalog of Forty Acres. Want to see how the same street looked in "Superman," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Star Trek," "The Untouchables," "Land of the Giants," "Lassie" and "Batman"? These guys can help you with that.

I've seen the "Star Trek" episode "City on the Edge of Forever" a thousand times but never really tumbled to the fact Captain Kirk and Edith Keeler stroll past THE Floyd's Barber Shop from Mayberry.

Fair turnabout: in "The Andy Griffith Show" Opie rode his bicycle past the 21st Street Mission (note the sign in the window) where Kirk and Spock found a hot meal and the tools needed to build a computer during the Depression.

It's all at the Forty Acres website. If you grew up watching TV and films from this era, these streets may seem like old familiar friends to you. It took me a minute to get the hang of navigating the site; use the tabs at the top to select topics. Clicking on most photos magnifies them. It all interesting--like I said, for some tiny proportion of the population (I'm looking at you, Lynch and O'Kane)--but I thought the real gold was in the four-part "Virtual Tour."

I dunno. Maybe I'm not hooked up right.
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I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

Somebody recently paid $5.8 million at auction for a unique pair of antique pistols. I think they got a bargain:



When our girls were 16, Karen and I took them on our first (and to date only) family trip to Europe, cruising around the Mediterranean. Very near the top of my list of most delightful discoveries was the National Museum of Monaco, which we stumbled upon just wandering around the city-state after forgoing the organized tours. We figured, "It's a museum, the price is OK . . . ehh, let's take a look." It turned out to be entirely dedicated to old dolls and automatons--ingenious wind-up robots built in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

My girls and I approaching the Museum.

We had the place almost to ourselves and had just started up a staircase when a docent came rushing down, herding us with his arms and commanding us in rapid-fire French (which none of us understand) to turn around and descend. We wondered if we'd done something wrong and were being thrown out. But it turned out we'd arrived just in time for the tour, and our guide took us from display to display, wound them up, and stood back to watch our amazement. The automatons had the most incredible life-like action. Graceful, delicate, even poignant. Some of them breathed.

The automaton in the video below wasn't in our museum, but she's pretty representative of the sort of that was:



One of the things that interests and amuses me about history in general, and the history of science and technology in particular, is the subconscious arrogance most of us carry around. We seem to think we're smarter than all the generations that came before us. We're not. To paraphrase Newton, if we see farther, it's only because we're standing on their shoulders. Never, ever underestimate the ingenuity of a person in any century trying to solve a problem or make something work. Look at what skilled craftsmen could accomplish with gears and springs (and without electricity) two centuries ago!
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Independence on the Hornet

I had a great Fourth of July with my daughters, who treated me to an afternoon and night aboard the USS Hornet, as apt a place as any to celebrate U.S. independence.

As I've mentioned before but wouldn't expect anyone to remember, my daughter Laura is a docent aboard the Hornet, which was decommissioned as an aircraft carrier in 1970 after recovering Apollos 11 and 12, and is now a dockside museum in Alameda, Calif. My other daughter Robin has since signed on as a museum volunteer (though not a full docent . . . yet) and they've particularly enjoyed staffing the ship for sleepovers by groups like Boy and Girl Scouts. Because they often work overnight, they've been assigned quarters--an honest-to-goodness officer's stateroom, which is where they invited me to spend the night after watching fireworks over San Francisco Bay at the end of the Hornet's big July Fourth Family Day. (My wife Karen opted out--something about peace, quiet, solitude, not sleeping on a steel floor, yada yada.)

The Hornet was really buzzing (heh) yesterday, with a couple thousand people enjoying a day of food, drink, bounce houses, bands performing on two levels (Hangar and Flight decks), plus an entire aircraft carrier to explore. I particularly appreciated meeting some of the other docents, generally older gentlemen who served on the Hornet or ships of her era and had very interesting stories to tell as well as nice compliments about my girls. As Karen and I say, it's like Laura and Robin have 50 grandpas. Then at night everyone gathered at the Flight Deck's stern to watch fireworks, which I honestly think were disappointing for some. Too low and distant. Not for me, though. Sitting in the cold bay breeze watching glowing dandelions of light puff into the sky was the perfect cap to a full day.

Flight Deck of the Hornet (facing the stern), laid out with picnic tables, a band stage, food and beverage tents, and porta-potties. The silhouette of San Francisco is visible on the horizon. If I'm not mistaken (and there's a 60-40 chance I am), I shot this photo in the very spot President Nixon stood when he welcomed Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins back from the Moon.

Looking the other direction toward the bow, where some aircraft and bouncy-houses were lashed to the deck.

My girls Robin and Laura on their way up the staff gangway. Laura did a four-hour docent shift yesterday, which is why she's in the navy and khaki uniform. Looking sharp.

Laura also took the time to give me a private tour of some parts of the ship normally closed to visitors that I hadn't seen before. Here in the Engine Room, I'm givin' her all I got, Cap'n! ("Bridge, she canna take any more!") Laura later explained that the two wheels I'm so desperately spinning controlled the "ahead" and "astern" steam valves, and by opening both simultaneously I probably would have blown up the turbine. This is why I don't service my own car.



I shot the above video walking from one end of the Hangar Deck to the other. PLEASE NOTE that at the beginning of the video I state that I'm walking from bow to stern. I'm actually doing the opposite. I knew that! Seconds before shooting this, I was standing out on the ship's fantail (i.e., the back end) and knew exactly where I was. I just misspoke. This is why I don't service my own garbage disposal or lawn mower, either.

A sorry attempt at artistry. Again, that's San Francisco in the distance, with the Sun setting behind the Bay Bridge (as well as a crane barge thing docked next to the Hornet).

While the Hornet's history of service during World War II, Korea and Vietnam make it an interesting historic artifact, it is the ship's service in the exploration of space that really gets me tingling. The video below is a quick survey of some of the ship's Space Age artifacts. I preface the narrative saying I shot it just for Friend O' The Blog Jim O'Kane, but everyone else is welcome to watch, too. I'll have a few notes on the other side.



The Sea King helicopter is the same type used to recover Apollo astronauts from the Pacific after splashdown. However, this is not the original #66, but was painted with its livery for use in the movie "Apollo 13." The Hornet acquired the chopper after filming and kept the paint job. The Apollo Command Module capsule CM-011A was used for suborbital tests in 1966. This very capsule was shot into space and recovered by the Hornet, and still has a big dent in its underside from drop-impact testing conducted after it returned. Also in the video is the Mobile Quarantine Facility, a modified Airstream trailer used to isolate astronauts returning from the Moon to protect the Earth from hypothetical space germs. This particular MQF was used for Apollo 14, which the Hornet did not recover; however, nearly identical trailers were used for the astronauts of Apollos 11 and 12, who were retrieved by the Hornet. The "Gemini Boilerplate" is a dummy Gemini capsule used for testing. It's tiny; hard to believe two men fit inside (the real ones, that is).

Me in one of the three most famous Airstream trailers in the History of Forever.

My daughter Robin took this photo of me and a random boy inspecting the interior of the Apollo capsule. He walked right up and explained everything to me. I posted this picture to my Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow Facebook page because this is exactly what my book is about.

My girls and I spent the night aboard ship and emerged around 8:30 this morning to find the Hangar Deck deserted. We took a chopper for a spin around the Bay and then went home.

Thanks to my girls for giving me an Independence Day that was more fun for me than Father's Day and Christmas put together! And again, if you're ever in the East Bay with a few hours on your hands and the remotest interest in any of this stuff, I highly recommend a visit to the Hornet. Ask for Laura.
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He's an iPod Wizard, There Has to be a Twist

Truth, lies, self-deception, confirmation bias, illusion, wisdom, and three iPods. You're just going to have to trust me that this is worth 4 minutes 22 seconds of your time.

A Fun Art Idea

Here's a neat twist on a concept that's been floating around the Web a while: "Camera and Pencil," in which artist Ben Heine appears to be holding a scrap of paper with a pencil drawing that perfectly merges with the real background, usually with some added bits of whimsy or fantasy. I like it! (Follow that link above to see more.)

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I write "appears" because it's not clear to me how Heine does it. You're supposed to think that he sketched it on-site with incredible skill and held it to align perfectly for the camera. I dunno; maybe he did! But a much simpler method occurs to me: take a photo of your hand holding a blank piece of paper, then go home, do the sketch in perfect alignment and perspective, and paste it into the blank space with Photoshop. Or I suppose the entire thing could be assembled in Photoshop--the background elements, the paper, the drawing, the hand--but that would circle back around to being unnecessarily difficult.

To be clear, I'm not accusing Heine of "cheating." I don't really care how he does it--I think it's nifty and you can't spell "art" without "artifice" (wait, I have that backwards...). I just can't help speculating through the filters of "I wonder how he did that" and "If I were going to do that...." In any case, check out and enjoy the fun drawings.
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By Alexander Courage, Lumberjack

This is for Mike Lynch. Nobody else needs to bother pressing "Play," unless you want to watch a street musician play the "Star Trek" theme on a saw. Which, who wouldn't?!

A Visit from an Arch-Nemesis, by the Cosmic Kid