Pilot's Log

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There's one friend who is still on the low side of the Internet learning curve. I still have to call him or send snail mail every so often. Although we're kind of falling out of touch.

And yes, I often have problems reading his handwriting.

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With My Luck, One Of These. Tho' I'm more of a sim guy, so it'd be more like a dream machine in my driveway, be it car, mecha or aerospacecraft.

The Prize Being A New Car!

No, I'm not thinking about replacing Moonshine. I am thinking about replacing my father's old Buick Skylark. Or there might be somebody else I know who would get a car for a gift. Either way, I need YOUR votes to make it happen. Go to the link, choose a car, and if you are going to participate in this sweepstakes, let me know so I can scratch your back too!

Thanks in advance.

FP

Did the Knoxville IPMS meeting tonight and the Judging exercize and my main lession: I have no hope in Creation of winning a prize in competition with my own work so long as Mike Driskill is around.

Maybe I'll feel like Judging the show this year. I took some years off because of that one disastrous show we had.

Played phone tag with Mike Birchfield. Be glad he still doesn't know his way around a computer yet.

I don't sing Paul Francis' praises enough, and I suppose it is impossible to do such a thing.

He is an artist who spent a good share of his career working on make-up and special effects in Hollywood, only to have his future shoved aside by the advance of computers in the filmmaking field. Didn't stop him, tho'. He came back to his Tennessee home, erected a pleasure dome of corrogated steel in the hills, and builds monsters, monster cars, and tiki gods.

His current projects include reproducing the Terror Dog puppet from the first Ghostbusters movie. Exact copies of the ones actually used by the effects studio. Today I watched as he and an assistant were in the process of assembling silicone molds. When he's finished, the completed molds will go to a factory and a horde of Terror Dogs will be cast.

But that isn't his only project. Or even his scariest or weirdest.

At the modeler's meeting a man showed up with diecast scale models that he wanted re-done in his racing team's paint livery. That said livery was DESIGNED by Paul about twenty years before...and Paul had forgotten it in the years since. Paul and the man had known each other back then, and Paul had even hung out at a few races.

Paul didn't want to do the job, but quoted him a price anyway in the hopes that the man would refuse to pay and go away. The man decided the price was reasonable and they shook hands.

Right now the models are sitting on a table in Paul's garage as components, the paint sandblasted off the bodies.

I tell Paul that Aleks would have loved to do the job for him, and that Aleks is probably laughing at him from Heaven--and cheering him on.

I just sent Pulse invitations to bunches of people. Would you connect with my Pulse? If you've already got a Yahoo! identity, send me an invite. Go to Pulse and "connections" and Yahoo will show you how.

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Sure. Polarity changes very little in human relationships.

...Mike Birchfield has Internet access. And a Hotmail account.

No further details are yet available. You have been warned.

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Tell. If it happened to me I'd want somebody to tell me.