,0 F E S S O
IND5ESY
This issue's editorial from the Professor scales
unimagined heights for him. Readers, this manuscript
issues from the bow els of an eletromc
Genie/Wizard/Savant - Gasp! - a computer! For those
of you unaware of the Professor's history, he harks
from the dark time, long ago. Chaos had not been
differentiated into matter. God had not handed out
genitalia to the respective genders. Mankind had not
decided that w omen w ere the w eaker sex. The
four-leggeds and the two-leggeds dwelt in sweet
symbiosis and harmony. The earth w as a silver-blue
jewel.
I'm old school: tw eed woolen sportscoats, standard
transmission, wood heat, baked ham with the bone in,
flannel sheets, Perry Como records, Tonkin cane fix
rod, Bag balm, argyle socks.
"It's only a tool!", people tell me. Well, I've ow ned
and operated tools for years. I still have my
grandfather's shingling hatchet, and it fits my hand like
my own fingers. For thirty years it has led and clothed
me. Hell, the set of mortising chisels Travis Tyrell sold
me years ago belonged to the grandson of Old Stoncy,
Andrew Jackson, himself. Don't talk tools to me'. I've
sharpened my life on tools. But this tool. Hmmm.
The Professor has dabbled in words, rest assured
dearly beloved, but numbers scare him. He received a
C- in high school general math and was once made
physically ill for two days al ter glacing inside the cover
of a vector analysis text in the college bookstore. I
compute on my fingers. If my checkbook needs
balancing, I consult the abacus bequeathed to my family
by the Honorable Chinese Godfather, Hemsoon Moy. 1
skipped the pocket calculator era completely. The
Professor abhors television, as any of those who know
him will testify, and villifies the bloody contraption at the
drop of a hat.
Now, when I return home and glance at my library,
the quiet shelves of my book friends, I see this interloper
on my desk - a kind of TV set thing, for God's sake,
sitting there on a stack of alien plastic machinery - beige
plastic machinery. The manual accompanying the
machine uses odd words; by tes, software, hard drive,
menu, floppy, enter. You can glance into "Windows
95" on new computers, I'm told. The nomenclature
sounds like some sort of soft pornography lingo. I'm
uneasy.
My friend described the shattered life of his
aquaintance who began "Surfing the Internet" on his
computer (w hatever on God's earth that might mean!),
and has abandoned all sensible pursuits - w ife, job,
family - to stare, glazed-eyed, at the Interacts c
Electronic Cyclop. He has taken a bite ol the poison
Apple, one might say, or a "byte" of the forbidden fruit
of the Macintosh.
The nightmares I conjure. Electrtxlcs hooked to my
body. A lurid interface with virtual reality. My spirit
communing with that humming TV screen on my old
maple desk. Ahhhh! Help me!
To confirm my uneasiness, this morning's paper says
that the taxpayers of the great state of Oregon w ill pay
123 million dollars to finance a computer for the Oregon
Department of Motor Vehicles. H uh.’ What?
Geez, folks. I hope that this thing will sen e as a
handy typewriter for the Professor's articles. If not, I'm
keeping a few sheets of foolscap and a #2 pencil for
times when the power's out.
My heartfelt thanks go out to my friends who donated
and recycled this computer to me. I guess they 'll drag
me kicking and screaming into the 90's in spite of
myself.
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"Once I mas Narab"
Commentary by George W. Earley
1 see by the papers that Leonard Nimoy has
finally made peace with his pointy-eared alter ego.
An autobiographical tome, I Hm Spock, made it
into the bookstores late last fa ll. . . just in time for
all the Trekkers to either buy it or put it on their
Christmas wish list.
I haven't read it . . . nor have I read the book
Nimoy wrote some 25 years ago, out of the
anguish of not being able to persuade fans that "I
am Not Spock," which, of course, is the title he
gave that book. I was doing a lot of sci fi book
reviewing back then but it never crossed my desk
and not being a Trek enthusiast [they were called
Trekkies in those days] never bothered to chase it
down. Maybe someday.
I'm still not much of a Trek viewer but do like to
read about them from time to time, as I did recent
ly when James Van Hise' pb The U nauthorized
H istory of Trek [HarperPrism; $5.99] appeared
in my mail box.
It's an interesting book and will likely stay in
print for a goodly while even though it covers only
the original Trek tales plus Next Gen and the first
three movies. [For more, you have to buy his The
U nauthorized Trekkers Guide to The Ne«t
Generation and Deep Space Nine. Not having
seen that one, I don't know how many movies it
may also cover.]
But we're getting away from Narab, mentioned
up there in the title of this little piece.
At one point in Hise' Trek book, he does capsule
biogs of the various major actors, mentioning what
other cinematic and/or TV roles they've done
Nimoy, says Hise, once appeared in a loser of a
movie called Kid Monk Baroni, a film apparently so
bad that not even Leonard Maltin includes in his
guide to films you might encounter on your TV
some night.
But Hise never mentions Narab.
Kid Monk Baroni, which appeared in 1952, is
mentioned under the entry for Nimoy in Katz' Film
Encyclopedia, but Katz doesn't mention Narab.
However . . . in that same year [1952] over at
Republic Studios, the powers-that-be have put yet
another serial before the camera. It's to be the
third and last one featuring a helmeted hero who
flies about in a rocket suit foiling various nefarious
plots against us earth folks.
Oddly enough, though the suit was the same,
different heroes fought the good fight against evil.
Tristam Coffin as Larry King was King of the
Rockef Men for 12 chapters in 1949.
King's foe was another earthman, the usual
mad scientist, here called Dr. Vulcan, who lusted
for power and piles of gold. Vulcan lost, of course.
An off-planet enemy cropped up in 1952 when
Commando Cody [no, not the rock band fella but
an actor named George Wallace] donned the
rocket suit to fight the Radar Men from the
Moon. Cody even beat NASA to the moon, hitting
the enemy on his own turf during the course of his
12 chapter battle against Retik, emperor the
Moon and would-be conqueror of earth.
So where's Narab, you ask? I already told you -
in the 3rd serial
Earth got attacked again in 1952, this time by
Martians who were, for some odd reason, identified
as Zombies of the S tratosphere But where
Emperor Retik had sent only a single invader [Peter
Brocco as Krog, probably Hollywood's most out-of-
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this-world looking actor in those days] to attack
earth, the high poobah of Mars had dispatched
three: Marex, Narab and Elah.
Have you guessed by now that Narab was
played by Leonard Nimoy . . . ?
Marex was the leader, Elah piloted the Martian
spaceship, and Narab did all the grunt work,
hauling heavy boxes from the outer cave to the
inner cave by way of an underwater tunnel. The
Bomb, which was to blow the earth out of its orbit
thereby allowing the Martians to move their chilly
planet to our warmer spot around Old Sol, was in
that hidden inner cave.
Our hero was Larry Martin [aka actor Judd
Holdren], an executive of the Inter-Planetary
Patrol [altho there was no evidence the IPP had
been doing much patrolling as the Zombies had ob
viously established a base on earth before the first
chapter of this 12-episode cliff hanger began.]
The Zombies all wore long john pants, snug
fitting sweatshirts, and hoods . . . no visible ears
for Mr. Spock, oops, Mr. Nimoy, in this one.
But Nimoy did get the last word . . . at least
the last word from the invaders. The final furious
battle found the Martian spaceship blasted out of
the sky with only Narab surviving long enough to
tell Our Hero where the bomb was. And fortu
nately, there was enough time for Rocket Man to
fly to the cave, take a swim and disarm that lethal
device or we'd all be spinning through outer space
right now freeezing our tushes off. Whew!
Yes folks, especially you younger folks, there
were interplanetary adventures long before Star
Trek and Star Wars and if you don't think the folks
who brought you The Rocketeer some years ago
weren't influenced by those old Republic serials,
why just you check 'em out. All three are available
from various mail order video shops and some of
the more enlightened local rental stores carry
serials in the nostalgia section of their shops.
Actually, there are a host of old serials avail
able on tape and I sure hope that when those re
cently touted Digital Video Disks [see The Orego
nian, 1 / 9 / 9 6] start coming on the market, they'll
include those marvelous old serials among their
offerings. Given the low budgets and the available
technology at the time, yesteryear's filmmakers
did quite well . . . it's just too bad they didn't hire
some good sci fi writers to do the dialogue.
Today's sci fi flicks owe a lot to those old
serials, more than just invading aliens and rocket
suits. Even back in the days of the silent films, sci fi
elements were present in both serials and feature
films. Men like Lucas and Spielberg freely admit
their debt to the past. And for curious folks like
me [and, hopefully, you] the past two decades
have seen an increasing number of books about
those early years. Fascinating reading! Stop in
Powells or Barnes and Noble . . . or ask the Beloved
Rev for some cinemagic guidance. Ciao. « A
© 1996 by George W. Earley
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