Back on track Wednesday

My mom's having some health issues, which I have to take care of. Will be back to blogging on Wednesday.

My Scrabble Books Took Precedence

Hello, all my faithful readers out there in computer land.

I've missed several days of posting and I apologize for it. I've been working on two Scrabble books (Eve Le QiNu's Flashwords) which help people to learn the 2 and 3 letter Scrabble words.

I won't provide links here since this is an apology not a sales pitch - but if you do like to play Scrabble, go to the Kindle Store (or the Nook Store) and type in Eve Le QiNu and my two books will be brought up. (Eve Le QiNu is an anagram.... see if you can unscramble it. Bear in mind my publishing name is Magic Mirror Press)

Anyway, I finished volume 2 yesterday, and today I'm chilling out...so regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Thanks again for your patience.

Muhammad Ali vs Superman

This was a comic book from the 1970s. Aliens kidnap Muhammad Ali - they are going to force him to fight their champion. Victor gets the world. Superman wants to fight also, but Ali says - no, they want an earthman and you were born on Krypton.

So Ali gets to fight the alien's champion, while Superman fights the Alien.

This comic is available on Amazon, as is the statue - for $285!

Travel, Wyoming: US 85 through Cheyenne, WY

I will be taking photos and listing businesses and other locations along Highway 85 (Greeley Highway) through Cheyenne.

US 85 enters Wyoming from Colorado 8 miles (13 km) south of Cheyenne. In Cheyenne it joins with Business Route 87, and a mile later with Interstate 180 until it meets with U.S. Route 30. The segment with I-180 is the only fully at-grade interstate route in the U.S.

At exit 12, it joins with I-25 and U.S. Route 87 in a concurrency for 5 miles (8.0 km) until US 85 leaves at exit 17 and travels northeast towards Meriden. From there it heads north to Torrington, where it meets with U.S. Route 26 and concurrencies for 10 miles (16 km) until Lingle, and 47 miles (76 km) later it meets U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 18 at Lusk. It shares the next 47 miles (76 km) with US 18 and 33 miles (53 km) later meets U.S. Route 16 near Newcastle. From here it is 29 miles (47 km) until it enters South Dakota in the Black Hills.

As you enter Wyoming from Colorado on US 85, the first thing you'll see on the left is a blank brown sign.

If you were to look at the sign from the other direction - as it might be if you turned into the parking lot of the Stateline Oasis Lottery seller and Off Track betting parlor, you'd see that it looked like the above photo.

(When I first moved to Wyoming a year ago, this sign had various colors for each letter of the word colorful. A few months ago they took that one down and put up this one, with each letter a plain white. Never have known why they decided to do that.)

Restaurants: Grand Opening Advertising - Panda Express

There was more to the Walmart parking lot on Dell Range Road up until about two to three months ago, when the new Panda Express started being built. I think it's been open for about two weeks now, and has already been very popular. Nevertheless, there was a big "do" today - a man in a Panda suit outside the restaurant waving at folks, a giant Air-Panda, and free food.


The big air-panda was new today. There was also someone in a Panda suit, whom you can see in a couple of photos, going into the restaurant. He'd been standing outside the restaurant waving at folks, but by the time I got my camera out, was going inside.





You've got about 5 hours left TODAY to get a free plate of food at the new Panda Express located right by the Walmart. They are giving away a plate with two entrees, and a free drink, from 11 am to 8 pm.

Movie Soundtracks: The Raven

I collect soundtracks - of movies that I've seen and liked, or at the very least of movies that I'd've liked to have seen. This separates me from the majority of soundtrack collectors, I think. They seem to collect music just because they like a certain composer -- they have no interest in seeing the film from which the movie came!

My collection is not large, indeed it's extremely small.

One reason it's small is because most of my soundtracks were vinyl records that I purchased in the 70s and 80s, and in the process of many moves these were lost. I used to have the original Star Wars soundtracks, for example, and Star Trek, etc. etc. etc.

I've only recently started adding to that lost collection, and re-acquiring that old collection via CD - purchasing them from Ebay and Amazon's used music service. (I do feel guilty about that. If I were the producer of a new CD or record, and found that my sales were being cut into by Amazon offering used CDs on the same page, I'd be pretty torqued. But as a collector of many, many things, whose discretionary funds do not really include funds for music CDs, I have to go with used copies.)

Anyway, today I received The Raven/An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe - both composed by Les Baxter, from Kritzerland. They are a small label who have done about 100 soundtracks... the vast majority of their stuff is not science fiction related and is of no interest to me.

I shall start this series of articles on soundtracks with the three from Kritzerland that I have, then list the 3 sf-related ones that they've done that I don't want, but offer up as knowledge to other potential SF soundtrack collector) before moving on to my other soundtracks.

Well, The Raven isn't science fiction , but rather fantasy, but it, and An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe, did star Vincent Price, and I'm a fan of Price's. Indeed, I'd like to assemble soundtracks from all his movies - but he made so many and I doubt if more than a handful are available... well, that would make it easy to assemble a collection, anyway!

According to the Kritzerland folks, they could find only one of the two original reels that the music for this movie was on, which is why they fleshed out the CD with music from An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe.

On its own, I don't know that I'd care for this music, but because I've seen both movies (and indeed, have them on DVD), when I hear a certain track I can call to mind the action in the movie that goes with it, and it's that conjunction of memory and music that makes this fun to listen to.

(Vincent Price plays Erasmus Craven, a sorcerer who lives in a castle with his daughter. He is meek and mild - drinks milk and spends his time studying and mourning his dead wife, Lenore. He is visited by a raven who can talk - Peter Lorre. Craven learns that sorcerer Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) was turned into a raven by his arch nemesis - Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Bedlo also tells him that he saw his wife, Lenore, in Scarabus' castle! So he and Bedlo, and his daughter and Bedlo's son (played by a young Jack Nicholson) set off for the castle to defeat Scarabus. But all is not as it appears.)

This CD is sold out at Kritzerland (they only made 1000 copies) but is available at other soundtrack websites as Intrada.com

The liner notes, as usual for a Kritzerland release, are disappointing for those who want to be educated about the music, and don't need to be told anything about the film! (The more so since the guy who does these things is very knowledgeable about music. But he prefers to hoard that knowledge, I guess.) For those who are "casual" fans of the movie, the liner notes are of interest to expand their knowledge of it.