Decisions, decisions...

Two Brits and a sofa

Gee, I love podcasts...and here’s another good one: Starship Sofa. It’s just two sci-fi geeks from the UK named Tony and Ciaran, chewin’ the fat about their favorite literature. But they do it in a most unique way. Take, for instance, their very first episode. The half-hour was dedicated to a discussion about the great Alfred Bester, but it occasionally drifted off in umpteen different directions and onto all sorts of interesting topics. Yet, somehow, the show tied together quite nicely, and everything managed to have, if tenuously, some relevance to Bester. Very cool. This seems to be the regular pattern of Starship Sofa — and it works! Go here to find MP3 downloads of all the episodes, which include chats about John Brunner, Phil Dick (a three-parter), and even oddball items like the old movie Dark Star. There are few more pleasant ways to spend an afternoon than with these two delightful Brits.

A SciFaiku moment

hanging between planets
free organic drifters float
Homo astrum

Hooked on HEROES

So far, so good. What little I’ve sampled of this year’s new crop of genre shows from the broadcast networks is top notch. Last week, it was CBS’s Jericho that had me cheering. Now, NBC’s new Heroes has got me happily hooked...at least until they prematurely cancel the series, as networks are always prone to do once they hook me. The “scroll” that opened Heroes’ pilot read:

In recent days, a seemingly random group of individuals has emerged with what can only be described as “special” abilities.

Although unaware of it now, these individuals will not only save the world, but change it forever. This transformation from ordinary to extraordinary will not occur overnight. Every story has a beginning.

Volume One of their epic tale begins here...

Epic tale? And Volume One? That’s quite an optimistic promise from a pilot episode. I’d like to see the wheelbarrow creator-writer Tom Kring carries his balls around in.

But Kring makes good on his promise. The first episode of Heroes was dynamite — and a fanboy’s dream. This is a superhero series that emphasizes character over flash. The biggest visual effect in this first hour involved a high school cheerleader who’s discovered she has Wolverine-like regenerative powers; other characters’ “powers” were revealed much more subtly. A nice touch. And you gotta love a TV series that acknowledges its sources; one young geek in Japan (played charmingly by Masi Oka) quotes Kitty Pride from X-Men comics while trying to explain to a co-worker how he believes he can bend time and space and teleport himself. (Incidentally, when Oka finally does teleport himself in a big way, the moment is absolutely exhilarating.)

If you love comics, Heroes won’t disappoint you. And if you missed last night’s premiere, NBC is rerunning it tonight at 8:00. (Its normal timeslot is Mondays at 9:00.) Or maybe look for a download of the episode at NBC.com or iTunes.

Well, hellooooo, Dagny!

The rumors were true! From Variety, September 21:

Jolie Shoulders ‘Atlas’
Thesp slated for Rand adaptation

By Pamela McClintok

Angelina Jolie is set to star in the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s iconic tome Atlas Shrugged for Lionsgate.

Howard and Karen Baldwin (“Ray”), who hold the rights to Rand’s most ambitious novel, are producing with Media Talent Group topper Geyer Kosinski, Jolie’s manager.

Jolie, a longtime fan of Rand’s, was eager to play the role of Dagny Taggart, the most powerful female character in any of Rand’s books.

A movie version of the Russian-born author’s novel, which runs more than 1,100 pages, has been long in the making. For years, producer Al Ruddy tried to bring Atlas Shrugged to the bigscreen, attracting the interest of Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway along the way.

Also producing are Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns and president of production Michael Paseomek, who were instrumental in bringing the project into the indie studio.

The Baldwins acquired the film rights in 2003 upon leaving Crusader Entertainment, a partnership between Philip Anschultz and John Agliatoro’s company.

Book Review: THE GHOST BRIGADES

John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades is more follow-up than sequel to his Hugo-nominated Old Man’s War. It’s set in the same universe. A secondary character from OMW plays a much larger role in this book. But otherwise, it’s a standalone novel — and a very entertaining one, if not quite as good as its predecessor.

To summarize quickly, the war between humankind’s Colonial Defense Forces and every other known race in the universe continues. But now, three disparate races have united to wipe out humanity, and they’re aided by a traitorous human scientist named Charles Boutin, who knows much too much about CDF’s sometimes problematic methods and motives. To help them find Boutin, CDF plants the scientist’s memories into one of their elite Special Forces soldiers created from the DNA of the dead, Jared Dirac. At first, Boutin’s memories don’t seem to take, but when they do eventually surface, then, as they say, the hi-jinks begin.

Like its predecessor novel, The Ghost Brigades focuses on identity: what makes a person, well, a person. Is it memory? Is it personality? Or is it something else entirely? Also like OMW, this book is an effective anti-war novel. Scalzi never glamorizes combat; in fact, most of Ghost’s images are really horrifying. And, as I hinted before, the author shows us that in wartime, the intentions of even the so-called Good Guys are, more often than not, dubious.

Maybe because I was already familiar with Scalzi’s world, The Ghost Brigades didn’t pack the wallop I got when I read the first book. But this is a great, quick read anyway, and I recommend it without reservation. A third (and final?) novel in this series comes out next May, titled The Last Colony. I’ll be there.

"Uncle Warren's Attic"

I don't often hold a grin on my face for 15 minutes straight. But that's just what I did this afternoon while listening to my oldest and bestest pal whom I've never met face to face Warren Bluhm's new podcast, Uncle Warren's Attic. Warren stuffed all sorts of goodies into this first episode, including an alternate fadeout of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," an obscure but delightful little ditty from the '60s by a group called the Incredibles, some old radio commercial spots, and even an old tune by Warren himself. The direct download link is above. Or you can find it at B.W. Richardson's Imaginary Age site.

It's a short program. Too damn short, I think. But you'll love every minute.

Alas, Jericho

Ever since Mrs. Dolmen, my second grade teacher at the Lutheran school, instructed us to march quickly into the chapel if we ever heard the sirens, nuclear annihilation has kinda, well, obsessed me. I was raised on Panic in Year Zero! fer chrissakes, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, and Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon. Yeah, I was a cheery little kid alright.

So just as I felt compelled to visit the old Nevada Nuclear Proving Ground a few months back, shit, I had to watch last night’s series premiere of the apocalyptic Jericho on CBS. This show is a real throwback to the Cold War era’s The Day After, even more so to Panic in Year Zero!, since it’s set in a small town located a “safe” distance from a string of nuclear blasts. I almost expected to see Ray Milland and Frankie Avalon among the folks loading gas cans into the trunks of their cars. And that’s what makes Jericho work for me. It’s not about high-priced lawyers, brilliant surgeons, or dysfunctional detectives. It’s about everyday people. It’s about the lady who runs the tiny grocery store, the return of the prodigal son, a bus full of school kids. And it’s about whether or not they’ll survive everybody’s worst-case scenario.

There was a lot to like about Jericho’s pilot. The performances are fantastic, from Skeet Ulrich (“Scream”) as the son returned home after five unexplained years, to Gerald McRaney (“Major Dad,” “Deadwood”) as the mayor, to Shoshannah Stern (“Weeds”) as a deaf teenaged girl. The set-up of the show’s Lost-like mysteries — the biggest one being what the hell’s happening “out there” — was well-handled. And three of the pilot’s moments absolutely staggered me: (1) the little kid perched on a rooftop, spotting a mushroom cloud on the horizon; (2) the eerie-as-hell recorded last phone call from a teen’s vacationing mother; (3) Ashley Scott’s nighttime drive to the airport being interrupted by sudden, unexpected bumpiness in the road, which turns out to be caused by the bodies of hundreds of dead birds. I’ve still got chills, and yes, I will be watching the second episode next Wednesday night. Jericho is worth giving a chance.

Oh, and I mentioned that Ashley Scott is a featured player on the show. This alone would prompt me to watch most TV series. Ever since the short-lived Birds of Prey, I’ve been a Scott fan. So much so that I might as well take this opportunity to post a nice photo of Ashley here. Even in the face of nuclear war, a man’s heart can melt.

"I see dumb people..."

DVD Review: IMMORTEL

Some of you may have heard of the brand-spankin’-new William Shatner DVD Club. OK, so the club’s name doesn’t necessarily recommend it. But for fifty bucks a year, they’ll send you 13 DVDs representing what they call “the best underground Sci-Fi, Horror & Fantasy movies available.” These DVDs are yours to keep, and when I broke the numbers down to about $4 per DVD (shipping included), I couldn’t resist the offer. Sure, you don’t get the usual packaging — your monthly disc arrives in something only slightly nicer than a Netflix envelope — but I figger that if I really like a particular film, I can create my own packaging.

Anyway, my first shipment just arrived, and so far, I’m not disappointed.

When the Shatner Club said their movie selections are “underground,” they weren’t kidding. Before this past weekend, I’d never heard of 2004’s Immortel (Ad Vitam), but I’m now happy to add it to my collection as one of the most visually stunning sf movies I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s a French-produced, English-language film directed by Yugoslav-born comic book artist Enki Bilal, based on his graphic novel La Foire aux immortels. Here’s a quick and very confused synopsis of Immortel’s almost indecipherable plot: It’s New York City in the year 2095. Egyptian gods live in a pyramid that hovers over the city. One of those gods, the falcon-headed Horus, is sentenced to death and allowed just seven days to descend into town, make contact with a hot, blue-haired, extraterrestrial girl named Jill, and mate with her. But Horus needs a human vessel in order to do the, uh, horizontal bop, so he finds Nikopol, a political prisoner who’s been in cryogenic storage for 30 years.

Got it?

What Immortel has going for it isn’t its plotline, obviously, but the vivid science fiction world it presents. Manhattan 2095 is a retro-future, Fifth Element kind of place — old 20th century cars flying among both old and new skyscrapers. It’s got that sci-fi noirish feel I love so much. The movie was shot much like Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the actors playing against bluescreens and the backdrops and sets dropped in later. These effects are terrific, and the movie looks like a graphic novel brilliantly come to life. Many of the actors, for some unexplained and very unclear reason, were also “dropped in.” About half the cast are CGI characters like those in the Final Fantasy movies. With the exception of the animal-headed gods, these computer-generated characters don’t really work for me, but the effect is intriguing.

Overall, Immortel is a “keeper” that I’ll re-watch and share with friends. It’s gorgeous to look at, never dull, and blue-haired Jill ain't hard on the eyes at all.

The irrepressible Harlan Ellison

The first time I ever heard Harlan Ellison speak was at L.A.Con I (aka the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention). Harlan was 38. I was an impressionable 18. Harlan, author of three of my favorite stories of all time ("A Boy and His Dog," "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World," and "Along the Scenic Route") and one of the greatest collections of essays ever published, The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, was four-lettered, outrageous, and politically incorrect in an era before political incorrectness officially existed.

Last month, I saw Ellison speak a second time, at L.A.Con IV (aka the 2006 Worldcon). Harlan was 72. I was...well, you do the math. Harlan’s still four-lettered, politically incorrect, and yes, he did grab Connie Willis’ boob at the Hugo Awards ceremony. (So what? You wanna make somethin’ of it?) Anyway, Harlan more than once announced that L.A.Con IV would be his final convention appearance. A real shame. But here’s a free, downloadable MP3 of his “one-man show” on Saturday afternoon, August 26, at Worldcon.

WARNING: There’s something in this hour-long lecture that will offend you. I guarantee it. But you should have a good time nonetheless.

To vote, or not to vote...

Crushing trademark scofflaws

A small, 10-seat café in Brooklyn has been forced to change its name from Little Dishes to Little D’Eatery. It seems the owners were visited recently by high-power attorneys for Uncommon Grounds, Inc., who own the federal trademark rights to the word Dishes®, the name of Uncommon Grounds’ Dishes® chain. The lawyers told the Little Dishes owners that having “Little” in their name wasn’t sufficient to prevent confusion among potential customers. So Little Dishes is now Little D’Eatery.

“As a new small business,” the Brooklyn restaurateurs wrote to their patrons, “we did not have the resources to fight to keep ‘Dishes’ part of our name and have agreed to make a change.”

Can everybody now understand why I have a problem with federal trademark and copyright laws? Sheesh. I need a break. Maybe I’ll grab a cup of coffee®, drive down to the beach®, and listen to some music® or read a good book® for awhile.

It's Hardyville Film Fest time again!

Hey there, liberty-lovin’ movie junkies! It’s time again for the Hardyville Freedom Film Festival, when Claire Wolfe’s little mid-nowhere town of Hardyville becomes bigger than Cannes, Venice, or Telluride and we honor movies that, in one way or another, promote the freedom message. Like last year, I’m joining Claire and Oliver Del Signore to, as Claire writes, “bang our heads together, argue vehemently, and bestow Judge’s Awards (including some special, surprise awards) to be announced November 1.” But here’s the fun part: you readers get to vote for your own favorites! “Screenings” started today, and you have until October 20 to catch up with a few unseen movies, visit the link above, and cast your votes for the People’s Choice Awards. Here are this year’s nominees:

BEST FILM
Theatrical or DVD release within the last two years

Good Night, and Good Luck
Off the Map
Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical
Syriana
V for Vendetta

DOCUMENTARIES
Any yesr

America: Freedom to Fascism
The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. MacNamara
Why We Fight

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
Any year

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Downfall
Underground

HALL OF FAME
Older than 10 years

Metropolis
Nixon
The Battle of Algiers
The Fountainhead
The Milagro Beanfield War

Now get to it!

A lesson from Jack London

Five years ago, on a visit to Glen Ellen, California, Debbie and I visited the grave site of Jack London, novelist, journalist, adventurer, and socialist activist. Deb drew my attention to the letter below, on display in an adjacent museum. I kept a copy of it, believing there’s a message here for This Movement Of Ours.

Honolulu, March 7, 1916

Dear Comrades:

I am resigning from the Socialist Party, because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis upon the class struggle.

I was originally a member of the old revolutionary up-on-its-hind-legs, a fighting, Socialist Labor Party. Since then, and to the present time, I have been a fighting member of the Socialist Party. My fighting record in the Cause is not, even at this late date, already entirely forgotten. Trained in the class struggle, as taught and practiced by the Socialist Labor Party, my own highest judgment concurring, I believed that the working class, by fighting, by never fusing, by never making terms with the enemy, could emancipate itself. Since the whole trend of Socialism in the United States during recent years has been one of peaceableness and compromise, I find that my mind refuses further sanction of my remaining a party member. ...

My final word is that liberty, freedom and independence are royal things that cannot be presented to nor thrust upon race or class. If races and classes cannot rise up and by their own strength of brain and brawn, wrest from the world liberty, freedom and independence, they never in time can come to these royal possessions...and if such royal things are kindly presented to them by superior individuals, on silver platters, they will not know what to do with them, will fail to make use of them, and will be what they have always been in the past...inferior races and inferior classes.

Yours for the Revolution,
Jack London

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Technorati Tags: New Libertarian, Movement of the Libertarian Left

MLL poster: Go Counter-Economic

Inspired last night by an image from Fritz Lang's film classic Metropolis, I created this poster for the Movement of the Libertarian Left. You can download a fullsize PDF of it right here.

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Technorati Tags: New Libertarian, Movement of the Libertarian Left

A little Serenity for Xmas

The folks at Monsters in Motion now offer, for a measy twenty bucks, a very cool 6-inch model ornament/display of Mal Reynolds' Firefly class rogue ship Serenity from the Firefly TV series and Serenity movie. This thing is fully painted and comes with both a removable hanger (for hanging on the ol' Christmas tree) and a nice, heavy base. It's so nifty, I bought two of them at Worldcon, one for myself and one for a Browncoat friend. The direct link to the product is here.

By the way, in the photo at left, it looks like the words "Monsters in Motion" appear on the base. They don't.

Essential Richman

Do not, do not, do NOT miss Sheldon Richman's terrific post from yesterday, "Ten Lessons from 9/11."

In pursuit of counter-economics

In an excellent piece for Strike-The-Root-com last Friday (“Creating a Calculated Revolution — In Your Neighborhood”), comrade Per Bylund advises libertarians to eschew both politics and revolutionary force as tactics for change and pursue instead counter-economics as a strategy. I wish Per had credited Samuel Edward Konkin III, the late granddaddy of agorist Left Libertarianism, for first detailing this strategy 26 years ago in New Libertarian Manifesto, but he does offer a nice link to agorism.info. Great piece. If I may quote from it in part:

[Counter-economics] takes about as much time and energy as would any other strategy, but with the substantial difference of creating real freedom for you and doing it now. ...

[This strategy’s] success must be considered much greater than the alternatives: to engage in politics or direct and speedy revolution. The beauty of this idea is that it is so simple: you only have to live your life in the way you already tell people you want to live it. It does not involve politics, compromises or force, yet it is essentially a controlled revolutionary process towards a much better world.

Counter-economics is a very simple and powerful strategy for creating a truly libertarian world, starting with yourself and your neighborhood. It is a mystery that libertarians do not embrace it, especially considering the alternatives.

Hat tip to Tom Ender for pointing me to this article.

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Technorati Tags: New Libertarian, Movement of the Libertarian Left

The ultimate secession

From Reuters, yesterday...

WASHINGTON — Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

These solar systems feature gas giants known as “Hot Jupiters,” which orbit extremely close to their parent stars — even closer than Mercury to our sun, University of Colorado researcher Sean Raymond said.

The close-orbiting gassy planets may help encourage the formations of smaller, rocky, Earthlike planets, they reported in the journal Science.

“We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own,” Raymond said in a statement. ...

“I think there are definitely habitable planets out there,” Raymond said. “But any life on these planets could be very different from our. There are a lot of evolutionary steps in between the formation of such planets in other systems and the presence of life forms looking back at us.”

As many as 40 percent of the 200 or so known planets around other stars are Hot Jupiters, the researchers said.

So let's start working at getting off this friggin' rock! Spaceward, ho!

Did Brad Linaweaver really "wake up"?

“On September 11, 2001, I became unhinged and forgot what I’d spent a lifetime learning,” confesses Brad Linaweaver in his new book, Post-Nationalism: George W. Bush as President of the World. “I became such a strong supporter of American military responses that fellow libertarian science-fiction author L. Neil Smith concluded that I had become a neo-con. Me, a neo-con!”

I had high hopes for Brad's Post-Nationalism, his attack on Bush and the neoconservatives. After all, it’s dedicated “to the memory and inspiration of Samuel Edward Konkin III and Chauntecleer Michael [Green].” Its cover displays the blurb “A New Isolationist Broadside,” referring to SEK3’s short-lived newsletter of the 1990s. Brad even wrote “Wally, I woke up!” in my review copy. All those “clues” had me hoping that Brad had not only turned his back, as advertised, on five years of saber-rattling for the War on Terror but was also finally moving leftward from his long-held right-wing minarchist position to join us on the anarchist, agorist Left. But listen to this:

“In 2006, I stopped defending Bush. I’d run out of excuses and rationalizations. In common with patriotic liberals, I can draw a distinction between supporting our troops and believing in any particular war. I don’t have to make that distinction at the moment because I continue to see some merit in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq even though I now reject the political reasons put forth — reasons far too incoherent to rise to the level of a conscious falsehood. We have been given bromides in place of a sound policy.” [italics mine]

And this:

“[W]e should fight to take back the Republican Party. We should criticize the puppets on Reich-Wing Radio, the ones who never show independence from the ideology we hate. We should no longer accept mere opposition to liberals as sufficient reason to support someone. We should stop parroting the delusions of the War Party even when we support particular military operations.” [italics mine]

After wading through this admittedly entertaining but philosophically muddy 150-page rant, I’ve concluded that:

(1) Brad doesn’t really oppose the War on Terror; rather, he dislikes the way it’s being run and distrusts the people running it (i.e., neoconservatives).

(2) Brad remains a thoroughly right-wing minarchist (aka “conservative”) and therefore tends to blame the people running the State and never the very nature of the State itself.

(3) Brad wishes Ronald Reagan were still president.

Brad and I run in the same libertarian circles. We share some friends. We’ve appeared on the same panels at libertarian supper clubs. Brad was even one of those who presented me last March with the Karl Hess Club’s first Samuel Edward Konkin III Memorial Chauntecleer. I like Brad.

I just wish a little more Konkin would rub off on him.

DEMOLISHED MAN kicks Ninja ass

The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas — the always endearing Summer, Joe, and David — continue their hour-long examinations of classic retro sci-fi with a recent podcast about Alfred Bester’s 1951 novel The Demolished Man, which was the first ever to win the Hugo Award (in 1953).

I’ve read the book three times in the past 30 years, and it remains one of my favorites. Alfred Bester may have been the first author to tackle the idea of telepaths, and this book may also be the very first noir sf novel. The telepathic badguy “Bester” in the 1990s Babylon 5 TV series, played brilliantly by Walter “Chekov” Koenig, was a tribute to The Demolished Man and its author. I believe that with a few simple editorial alterations, this book could be released “new” right now and it’d be hailed as a “breakthrough” science fiction novel. It’s that contemporary in style and approach to its subject matter. Bester was a friggin’ genius.

As usual, I can quibble with several of the Ninjas’ opinions about The Demolished Man. But if you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, or even just want to know what all the fuss is about, this podcast is worthy of your time. You’ll find the download here.

Discovering SciFaiku

At L.A.Con IV almost two weeks ago, I think it was Day Three, I dropped by a table promoting the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Nice folks. They loaded me down with lots of free buttons, journals, and chapbooks, which I stuffed into my Cthulhu book bag and promptly forgot about. Well, I finally started plowing through all my Worldcon goodies this past weekend and found that the real treats among all that stuff were the journals and chapbooks from SFPA. The richness of the poetry subculture in fandom is something that had escaped me until now. Whew. Some absolutely wonderful stuff.

Among my favorites are poems called SciFaiku, inspired by traditional Japanese haiku. Much of it follows the familiar 5-7-5 syllable format. Some is looser. But all SciFaiku are tightly written, ultra-minimalist, and elegant. A brief essay titled “The SciFaiku Manifesto,” found online at scifaiku.com, says: “Traditional haiku is about nature. SciFaiku is about science fiction. ... Traditional haiku contains a season word — a word which evokes a season, as snow evokes winter or tulips evoke spring. SciFaiku often contain a ‘science’ word that evokes a technology or science-fiction setting: words like space, genetics, robot, or laser.”

Here’s a SciFaiku by John Dunphy that has special meaning for me, since I visited the Nevada Test Site a few months ago:

ex-nuclear test site
a prairie dog peers from its hole
with both heads

Deborah P. Kolodji’s latest chapbook of “speculative haiku,” Red Planet Dust, brims with fantastic images. A few examples:

veteran
of the xenophobe wars
tentacle tattoo

red planet dust
covers beta colony
the only green her eyes

rusty plates
finding grandma’s old robot
in the garage

Hmm. I’m tempted to try my hand at SciFaiku.

Missed opportunities for outreach

Sheldon Richman, editor of The Freeman, has not-too-gradually thrown himself into the Left Libertarian camp over the past year. He posted yesterday on a major failing of libertarians — missing opportunities for outreach to the Left. If I may, here’s Sheldon:

“Libertarians constantly miss opportunities to appeal to good-faith left-leaners who are concerned that working people get the short end of the stick. Yes, they are subject to economic fallacies that should be addressed. Yes, they may misuse or misinterpret wage and total-compensation statistics. Yes, they may fall victim to demagogues such as Paul Krugman. Yes, people generally live far better today than they lived 20 and 30 years ago — although we don’t give enough attention to how the Fed’s easy-credit policies can create illusions of prosperity or how the government has inflated the price of housing, food, medicine, education, and energy. All those things should be explained patiently and clearly.

“But I fear that we miss the forest for the trees. We live in a corporate state, not a free economy. What are we arguing about? Whether the corporate state treats workers better than the left says it does? Big deal! What does that do to advance the cause of liberty?”

This post should really be read in its entirety. You’ll find it at the link above. Also see his related article, "Eye on the Ball," which you will find here.

Sunday morning concert

"Three Dog Night" serenading us from the backseat of our SUV. Our dog Cheyenne takes center stage. Left and right of her are two visiting pups, Isabeau (left) and Jah Liv (right). Photo was shot with a cell phone.