Fritz Leiber

Still enjoying reading Fritz Leiber's The Silver Eggheads novel. From 1958, he sure saw the future of our noble robotic world. Also finished reading another of his books, Our Lady of Darkness which is a whole other story. 1970s San Francisco scares! Both these books are great reads if you can find them.

C A

at the dining hall

The King was There

la-la-ladies

Found these ladies at the Music Library

another California comedy legend

Bob Hope

We went to a movie theater where they actually still show 35 mm films! While watching The 39 Steps, I realized an interesting similarity to a Bob Hope film, My Favorite Blonde. When I mentioned that to the host before the second feature began, I was met with a long moment of silence.

gargoyle

Gargoyles are on most of the buildings at USC. This one's one the Geology Building.

feet paparazzi

old library chairs

tribute to Jack Benny

the film library

The film library took me back

card catalog

Of course I made a bee-line for the library at USC. It's magnificent. They even had the sense to keep their card catalog! Bless them!

palm reader

Hard to believe we were in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago. It's cold and windy and rainy here.

The Silver Eggheads

Up to page 37 of Fritz Leiber’s novel The Silver Eggheads. Fun read! I’ve laughed a few times out loud. I’m surprised to find his main character is French like in my new book The Air Over Paris where Los Angeles has become a French city. Turns out Leiber’s book is also similar to the novel I’m currently writing! Leiber seems to be quite on target with the recent obsession to have robots make art. In the future of The Silver Eggheads, book writing is done automatically by Wordmill computers until the human ‘authors’ who oversee production revolt and retake the creative process, only to discover “they could no more create it inside their bodies than they could make honey or spider silk.”

in the woods

Every workday I take a walk in the woods. Here's a couple wonders I saw:

on 8th Street

Big Action on page 94

The Hollywood Pitch for The Air Over Paris

"It’s 2042 and ex-astronaut Mel Blanc has three semi-sentient speedbumps from Mars employed on the streets of Los Angeles. At Paris Bagels, gravity is turned upside-down and he turns to help from his robot and a flying chair named Charlemagne. A futuristic fantasy that ends with love and Poe’s black bird."

paragraph from Chapter 22

page 89 of The Air Over Paris

The Rhinoceros

selling blue

winter roses

imaginary horses

page 60 of new book

The Fate of Lambchops

In case you're wondering what happened to beloved mushmouth puppet Lambchops...

page 52 of new book

stairway

The stairway at work. 3 floors of art!

paragraph from chapter 9

page 44 of new book

Tati

One of my favorite movies. Tati is the name of the robot in the new novel.

Martian spread

Here's a spread from the new novel:

Mel Blanc

The star of The Air Over Paris is named Melville Blanc in honor of Mel Blanc.

the start of Paris

This is how The Air Over Paris begins...