Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 28 – The Little People

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Captain William Fletcher (played by Claude Akins) lands his space ship on an asteroid (of course) to repair damage done by a meteor shower.  His copilot Peter Craig bellyaches about the inconvenience of being stuck on a boring speck of dust and about having to obey Fletcher’s orders.  When Fletcher asks him why he’s so allergic to taking orders Craig confesses that what he wants more than anything else is to be the big boss.

While Fletcher is busy repairing the ship, Craig goes out exploring the asteroid.  He discovers water but what is astonishing is that he discovers a civilization of tiny people smaller than ants.  They have towns and automobiles and boats.  And what makes Craig really happy is that he has become their leader and in fact their god.  Because he can destroy anything in their world just by stepping on it the little people fear him and will obey any order, he gives them.

The next day Fletcher discovers that the little people have built a life size statue of Peter Craig.  Craig had ordered them to build it and complete it in one night.  But when Craig starts stepping on some of the little people’s town, just to keep them afraid and show who’s boss, Fletcher knocks Craig down and berates him for behaving like a sadist.

Later on, Fletcher tells Craig that he’s repaired the ship and now it’s time to leave.  Craig refuses to leave and when Fletcher attempts to force him to go Craig pulls out a blaster and threatens Fletcher with it.  In fact, he blows the head off of his statue to show he means business.  Craig intends to stay on the asteroid and spend his days as the deity of the little people and their curse.  Craig gives Fletcher an ultimatum, leave or die.  So, Fletcher blasts off in the rocket and Craig laughs as the ship ascends into the sky.  But later a space ship lands and two giants as tall as mountains happen upon Petr Craig and one accidentally crushes him to death while trying to pick him up.  The giants are saddened by the accidental death they’ve caused but they drop Peter back on the ground near the little people’s settlement as they leave.

Later we see that the little people use ropes to tip over the statue on top of the corpse of their former god.

What can I say?  Claude Akins is an amusing character actor but there’s not much to work with here.  It’s sort of a riff on Gulliver’s Travels and the bad guy gets his comeuppance, I guess.  C+ is the best I can do.

Finding the Missing Link between Microbes and Men

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Unless we include progressives there doesn’t seem to be any close relationship between bacteria (a prokaryote) and humans (a member of the eukaryote group).  In fact, even something as humble as a fungus has more in common on the cellular level with humans than it does with bacteria.  Assuming that bacteria were here first (which is an assumption that needs to be tested) it isn’t clear how the jump happened from the bare bones simplicity of the prokaryote to the remarkable complexity of even the most simplistic eukaryotic cell.  Recent discoveries in the organisms that fall somewhere in between these two groups (archaea) is fueling additional controversy.  According to one theory the archaea are the ancestor of the eukaryotes and therefore sort of our multi-great grand uncles.  This rubs a lot of biologists the wrong way.  There are even feuds based on this disagreement.  I don’t have a dog in this fight but I am interested in advancements in the understanding of how life evolved on Earth.  An interesting aspect of the story is that certain components of the eukaryotic cell (like the mitochondria and the chloroplasts) started out as independent bacterial cells that were ingested by some ancient organism but somehow survived inside the cell and formed a symbiotic and permanent arrangement.  And many modern biologists see similar symbiosis between the bacteria living in our intestines and our human selves.  Both species profit from the relationship and in our cases couldn’t survive without the other.  What a strange and remarkable world we live in.  Interesting read.

The Trickster Microbes that are Shaking Up the Tree of Life  by Traci Watson

 

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 27 – Person or Persons Unknown

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Richard Long plays David Gurney a married man waking up with a hangover after a very late night out with his wife Wilma.  As he staggers around his bedroom trying to shake off his hangover he berates his sleeping wife for not even removing his shoes before letting him fall asleep the night before.  Getting ready for work, he is sore at his wife because she can sleep late so he slaps her on the butt to wake her up.  She wakes up but then becomes noticeably upset claiming Gurney is a stranger to her and threatening to call the police if he doesn’t leave her bedroom immediately.  David decides it’s some sort of joke cooked up between his wife and one of his friends at work.  After a few sarcastic words with Wilma he heads out of the house and drives to his job at the bank in his car.

When he gets to work nobody greets him and everyone acts as if they don’t know him.  When he sees someone sitting at his desk he gets angry and tells the occupant to leave.  The bank guard comes over and Gurney gets into an altercation with him.  The guard pulls his gun out and forces David out onto the sidewalk.  There waiting for them are a few policemen and Wilma.  David attempts to convince them that he is who he claims to be but they arrest him and take him in the patrol car.

In the next scene David is in the office of a psychiatrist who tries to convince him that he has built up an imaginary persona under the influence of a mental illness. To convince David of this the psychiatrist calls up the telephone numbers of the friends and family who David says will know him.  All of them, including his mother deny the very existence of David Gurney.  Desperate to prove his existence David dives through the office window and escapes in a stolen truck.  Going to his favorite bar he tries to get his friend the bartender to recognize him but with no success.  Finally, he goes to a photographer’s store and asks for the photos that he had taken with Wilma.  Looking in the envelope he sees a photograph of himself with his arm around Wilma.  Just as he’s leaving the store, the police and the psychiatrist intercept him.  David triumphantly tells the psychiatrist that he’s found proof of his own existence but when the psychiatrist looks in the envelope the picture only contains David.  Now David breaks down and starts wailing that he does exist.

The scene shifts to David back in his bedroom crying out in his sleep.  Wilma wakes up and tries to reassure him that he’s only having a bad dream.  David is overjoyed to wake from the bad dream to find that his wife knows him.  He wants to kiss her but she tells him to wait until she takes off her cold cream and her hair turban.  But when she returns from the bathroom Wilma is now a blonde instead of a brunette and even though she knows David he is seeing a woman different from the wife he married.  Dant, dant, Dahhhh!

To start off I’d like to express the opinion that Wilma #2 is significantly better looking than Wilma #1 so all things considered this hardly seems like a nightmare ending he’s left in.  Secondly this episode is a “man screaming at his surroundings” episode which I have often condemned on aesthetic grounds.  But I must confess that a number of details in the episode amused me.  First off, I found his hectoring of his sleeping wife and then slapping her on the butt very naturalistic. I always enjoy the portrayal of the war between the sexes as long as the playing field isn’t tilted against the husband as it so often is.  Secondly Richard Long is a decent actor and he made the character personable and sympathetic.  And finally, the psychiatrist was not as ingratiating and condescending as so many characters in that persona typically are portrayed.  Let’s give it a B-.

If You Need Something to Cheer You Up Today

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Roger Kimball of the Spectator opines that AG Barr is not a man to trifle with.

https://spectator.us/doggedness-william-barr/

 

“The man is part terrier (and another part Sphinx). He will get to the bottom of this whole rotten story and (as he explained in that earlier confirmation hearing) he will neither pursue anyone groundlessly because he has influential enemies, nor will he forbear to indict someone who has broken the law because he is politically powerful. I believe this is true. Like Koko in The Mikado, I have a little list on which are the names of several prominent Democrats who I believe have broken the law. William Barr surely has a similar list, though his is probably longer.”

Brexit Party Strength in EU Elections Signals a Fight Coming Up

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Farange and his Brexit party are attracting voters from both Tory and Labor voters.  The new party is out-polling both of these parties in the upcoming British EU elections and it is plain that in the future the Brexit Party will attempt to force the Brexit by winning seats from both the Tories and Labor in an upcoming general election at some time in the future.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1126422/Brexit-latest-news-brexit-deal-labour-tory-talks-theresa-may-deal

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/11/poll-surge-for-farage-panic-conservatives-and-labour?__twitter_impression=true

Can Farange save the exit from the EU?  Well, that’s a question mark at this point, but whatever else happens the Tories look to be out as the majority party once the next election finishes.  And a self-inflicted death blow is the only way to describe it.  This is what we’d expect from the likes of John McCain or Mitt Romney.  Arrogant tone-deafness is the description I’d attach to this level of  imbecility.

The French Connection – A Movie Review

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When the “The French Connection” came out in 1971 I was a high school freshman.  My home room teacher was trying to come up with a class trip that would be less boring than the usual trip to a museum.  So, he took the class to a Manhattan theater to see this film.  I would say that was the only successful school trip during my four years there.

The movie is shot in the gritty and sometimes annoying cinema verité style that was popular at the time and the soundtrack is full of weird and fairly arbitrary sounds and music meant to add a disorienting sensation to the movie.  And the New York City streets and low life environs that make up a good chunk of the geography of the film are an ugly and depressing scene.  But the movie succeeds on its own terms.  It is the story of Popeye Doyle (played by Gene Hackman) a New York City Police detective who works undercover with his partner Buddy Russo (played by Roy Scheider) to try to stem the flow of heroin into the city.  Popeye is a cowboy who will use violence and intimidation to find out where the low-level drug dealers are getting their heroin from.  And his recklessness in capturing the bad guys has led to the death of a fellow cop at some time in the past.

Based on the info of an informant Popeye learns that a huge shipment of heroin is coming into the country from France.  The mastermind behind the deal is a Frenchman named Alain Charnier who is accompanied by his hitman Pierre Nicoli.  They are arranging to sell the drugs to a small time Brooklyn gangster named Sal Boca who along with his young wife Angie run a sandwich shop and drug dealership.  In the movie Popeye and Buddy discover Sal’s part in the drug deal completely at random.  They were in the Copacabana after work for a drink when Popeye notices a number of mob-connected drug dealers socializing with a young couple that neither of the detectives recognize.  On a hunch they follow the couple and see them change cars and appearance before assuming the part of small business owners in Brooklyn.  After checking their police records and observing Sal enter the building of a known drug financier named Joel Weinstock, Popeye becomes convinced that Sal is part of the heroin deal and asks his boss to request wire taps for Sal’s home and business.

The two Frenchmen reach New York and Popeye and Buddy, assisted by some federal agents, follow Sal and identify his contacts.  But Charnier is aware of the surveillance and plays a game of cat and mouse with Popeye, in one case outwitting him in a game of follow the leader on a subway car.  But the lack of results frustrates the police hierarchy and the assignment is cancelled with Popeye and Buddy sent back to the street work they usually do.  But Charnier’s hitman Pierre Nicoli is unhappy with Popeye knowing so much about the plan and he tells his boss that he will take care of the detective.

In the next scene Popeye is walking home to his apartment in the Marlborough Housing Project off 86th Street in south Brooklyn when a rifle shot strikes a nearby woman wheeling a baby carriage.  After Popeye avoids another half-dozen rounds, he goes up to the roof to find the sniper.  He finds the rifle but Nicoli has fled and looking down Popeye sees the man fleeing the area.  He chases Nicoli to the elevated subway station of the B train and sees the killer escape on a train.  Popeye flags down a motorist and commandeers his car.  What follows is one of the greatest car chase scenes in movie history.  The elevated train line Straddles and constricts 86th Street running beneath it.  And this narrowness and the congestion of the traffic along this busy road makes the high-speed chase that Popeye attempts essentially suicidal.  He’s chasing an overhead train on a crowded road by weaving in and out of the oncoming lane while traveling at what’s supposed to be sixty miles an hour.  Suffice it to say the unlucky motorist wouldn’t be getting much of his car back at the end of Popeye’s race.

Meanwhile Nicoli is commandeering the train and preventing it from stopping at the local stations.  In the commission of this plan he shoots an NYPD officer and the train conductor and gives the subway motorman a heart attack which leads to the train crashing into the back of another train on the same track.  Staggering out of the wreck Nicoli tries to leave the elevated station but Popeye has managed to reach the station ahead of him and when Nicoli tries to run Popeye shoots him in the back and guards his body until the police arrive.

After the killings committed by Nicoli, the investigation is relaunched and Popeye and Buddy are in charge again.  They discover the drugs hidden in a car planted for the exchange and once the deal takes place, they spring their trap.  A small army of police surround the deserted building on Ward Island where the drug dealers are holed up.  Sal is killed in the gun battle but the rest of the New York gang and the drugs are captured by the police.  Now Popeye and Buddy go after Charnier.  Popeye tells Buddy that Charnier is in the far end of the building.  Popeye walks straight toward the room but when a figure appears in the doorway Popeye cuts him down with five shots from his revolver.  But when Buddy goes over to the body it’s the federal agent that Popeye disliked the most.  Popeye ignores the gravity of what he’s just done and says he knows Charnier is in the room and charges in.  We hear a shot ring out and the scene ends.

Text on the screen tells us that only a couple of criminals served time and even that wasn’t for more than a few years.  Doyle and Russo were transferred out of the narcotics division and reassigned.  Charnier was never caught and was believed to be back in France.

As noted above this movie suffers from being a product of early nineteen seventies film-making.  New York City at that time period was a pretty gritty place.  At best, Popeye Doyle is a flawed hero but more accurately he is an anti-hero.  But his cowboy approach to police work is fast-paced and riveting.  Hackman and Scheider have a good chemistry as cop buddies.  And without a doubt, the chase scene is a must-see experience.  On a personal note I grew up in the area where Popeye Doyle lived and where the chase scene took place.  I can attest that only a heavily armed individual with a death wish could live in the Marlboro Projects back in the 1970s with no fear for life or limb.    And if someone tried to drive down 86th Street in the way represented by the movie’s chase scene the body count would have been truly noteworthy.

I recommend the movie to all fans of action movies and crime dramas.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 26 – Little Girl Lost

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Chris and Ruth Miller wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of their six-year-old daughter Tina crying for them.  Chris puts on his slippers and goes into Tina’s room but she’s not in her bed.  He calls to her and she answers him but he can’t see her.  Thinking that she’s rolled off and under the bed he looks underneath but she’s not there.  Ruth comes into the room and turns on the light.  Now they see she’s not in the room but they can still hear Tina crying out for them and now her voice seems to be coming from different places in the house.  Chris says he’s going to check under the house but as he opens the kitchen door the little family dog Mack runs inside and runs past Ruth and under the bed.  But Mack disappears too and only his bark indicates that he’s still nearby.

Chris rushes back in the room and after catching up with what happened from Ruth, he tells her that Tina isn’t under the house and he is going to call for help.  He calls his friend Bill and tells him to hurry over.  Ruth wants to know what Bill can do.  Chris tells her that Bill is a physicist and maybe he can explain what is happening.

When Bill arrives, he listens to the story from the couple and then with Chris’s help he moves the bed out of the way.  After some trial and error poking at the floor and wall behind the bed he finds a door sized area of the wall that, though it appears solid, allows his hand to pass through it.  Borrowing a piece of chalk from Ruth he draws an arch around where the portal to another dimension seems to have opened.

Bill tells the Millers that the portal is an opening between our three-dimensional universe and a higher dimensioned space that temporarily are juxtaposed next to each other.  Bill asks why he can’t just go in and get Tina and Bill says that the other dimension may not be normal enough for human sight to navigate it successfully.  He suggests that they call to Tina and tell her to hold onto Mack and follow him back out when they call the dog.  Apparently, the sharper senses of the dog would be a more reliable conduit for escape back into our world.

Tina does indeed see Mack and she begins to follow their instructions but while Chris is coaxing her to follow the dog, he falls into the portal and now is standing in the strange murky and confusing space inside the wall.  With much back and forth talk between Chris and Tina she slowly follows Mack back to where Chris is waiting.  Meanwhile Bill is imploring Chris to hurry the process as much as possible.  Finally, Chris has Tina by the hand and all at once the two people and the dog come tumbling out onto the floor of Tina’s bedroom.  Ruth grabs Tina and takes her out of the room for safety.  Bill stands talking to Chris about the escape.  Chris asks Bill how he was able to see him to pull him out of the portal.  Bill explains that Chris was never fully in the portal.  His back was still in the room.  And now Bill slaps his hand on the wall where the portal used to be.  It was shut.  Bill told him that it was closing all the time he was half in and half out of it.  Another few seconds and he would have been cut in half by its closing.

This is a weird one.  The dramatic effect of the episode is marred by a few problems.  The voice of Tina is actually noticeably that of a grown woman affecting a childish sound.  I found it quite annoying.  And the scene in the other dimension where Chris is calling to Tina and each can’t see the other but keep calling back and forth is also kind of monotonous and annoying.  I get that they were trying to build suspense and excitement but I thought it was overly long and not very effective visually.  And the fact that Chris would call a physicist to handle a missing child is kind of “Ghostbusteresque.”

But the use of the dimensional portal as a plot element in the conventional setting of a normal American household is original and interesting.  Well, at least original for TV.  After all, I remember Heinlein had that story “And He Built a Crooked House.”  Either way it’s an interesting story concept.  Despite the less than brilliant dramatic elements I’m giving this a B+.

Sharyl Attkisson Tells Us Why Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Was Targeted by the Russia-Gate Scam

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Attkisson was spied on by the Obama Justice Department because of her sources in the Intelligence community and she knows quite a bit about how and why.  She points out that Flynn as the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama knew what was going on and was supposed to clean up the FISA malfeasance.  And that’s why he was targeted.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/10/the_government_spied_on_me_you_could_be_next_140291.html

Guest Contributor – War Pig – SF&F Movie Review – EEGAH!

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EEGAH!  (also known as; “EEGAH! The Name Written In Blood”)

A 1962 schlock sci-fi movie apparently shot on a budget in the double digits. It is notable for three things; first, being one of the 50 worst movies ever made. Second, introducing us to Richard Kiel who went on to star as the giant alien in the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”, and as the melancholy villain/henchman Jaws in the James Bond franchise. Lastly, it proudly introduced America to the dune buggy, a sort of hot rod with “tires filled with water for traction” meant to climb desert sand dunes. If you ever watched the cartoon Speed Buggy as a child, you’ll get the drift.

The comely Marilyn Manning plays the beautiful damsel and a forgettable Arch Hall, Jr as the hero with a DA haircut and a poorly recorded singing voice.

Kiel was the only decent actor in the lot and he played well considering what he was given to work with. I love the movie as I love all scholcky sci-fi movies, the worse, the better. Arch Hall, Sr drafted his son as the hero and himself played a part in the movie. Senior wrote it and headed the film company.

Poor EEGAH. He somehow survived in a cave from the caveman days to present, along with his mummified family. How he managed to live years in the area around Palm Springs without discovery is a mystery, but the movie glosses over all that. Fumes or something. He is in the road looking for roadkill and is almost hit by the comely heroine, who passes out at the sight of him and accidentally scares him off by honking the horn. An Easter egg is that there are sheep bleating in the background when EEGAH picks up a deer carcass and carries it off. She tells her father, a sort of amateur archaeologist or something, who goes out in a helicopter to be dropped off to look around. The chopper drops him off but that is the last we hear of the chopper. It breaks or something so the hero and heroine ride off in the new Dune Buggy to go look for dear old dad.

Dad is found, the hero sent off, and the heroine captured by the amorous caveman. She’s the best looking things he’s seen in 10,000 years and she smells good, too. The heroine tries to keep EEGAH interested enough in her so that he doesn’t kill them both, while at the same time keeping things from going too far. Pretty much like a date with a fratboy, I guess. She shaves her father for some unknown and inappropriate reason, then EEGAH wants a shave, too. So she shaves him while he tries to make zug-zug with her and eat the shaving cream at the same time. A hilarious scene for me.

At any rate, the hero returns from wherever, gets dad and daughter out of the cave, and there is the predictable chase scene with the three of them running away from EEGAH in the dune buggy back to Palm Springs in time for a pool party which allows the heroine to show off her bikini bod (and a rather good, one, too), then to change into a form fitting sheath dress for a later party. Poor EEGAH comes to town looking for his love and instead gets into a comical series of adventures with civilization which were apparently stolen straight from the caveman scenes in Dinosaurus, another sci-fi movie from two years earlier. Then he crashes the pool party, whips all the fratboys, tries to run off with his lady love like a good caveman will do although he carries her instead of dragging her off by the hair. But the cops arrive and that is the end of poor EEGAH as he finds out a good club and a 7’2” frame are no match for little metal pellets going 1100 feet per second.

This movie is so loaded with cheese that it’s really a comedy. Marilyn Manning has two other IMDB credits, one of which was the actually good Sadist. Pity, as Ms Manning was very easy on the eyes, especially in a bikini. She could have given me a shave any day, if I had shaved back in 1962. Cuter than Annette Funicello of the Beach Party movie franchise. Mr Kiel went on to do bit parts calling for a tall guy and also got some better roles. As mentioned, he was an alien in Twilight Zone and Jaws in the James Bond franchise. He also played the tall man in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore. Overall, he has 82 credits on IMDB and had a successful career. Arch Hall Jr has a total of 9 IMDB credits, 6 of them his father’s films. He left acting to become a pilot. What happened to Marilyn Manning after her three movies is not known and I can find nothing really about her. She was a chiropractor’s receptionist in the same building as the film company for EEGAH! and was brought in because of her very good looks.

Overall, EEGAH! Is a hilarious send-up of sci-fi/horror movies. Like Plan 9 From Outer Space, it’s so bad, it’s good.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 25 – The Fugitive

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In the first scene we see some boys playing softball.  When one is called out by the umpire a little girl with a leg brace (Jenny) complains about the call.  An old man (Ben) with a big moustache chastises her for contesting the umpire.  Then the old man is up to bat.  He hits the ball and it disappears over the trees like a rocket.  The kids lament the loss of the ball and the old man promises to make up for it by playing a game where they are space rangers and he is an outer space monster.  When the kids sneak up on the monster’s lair (a large bush) a real monster comes out and the kids “shoot” it with ray guns (really just their fingers pointing like a gun and making a ray gun noise).  The monster pretends to be shot and falls behind the bush.  And immediately the old man jumps out and says to the kids, “I think you got him.”

Old Ben carries Jenny (because of her disability) back to the apartment building where they both live.  Ben lives alone and Jenny lives with her very unpleasant Aunt Agnes (played by Nancy Kulp who was Miss Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies).  Aunt Agnes is unhappy because she’s been forced to take responsibility for her orphaned niece.  And Agnes hates Ben whom she thinks encourages her niece to misbehave.  When Ben brings Jenny home, they both get abused verbally by Aunt Agnes.  Ben heads to his apartment.

Two men who claim to be police detectives show up at Aunt Agnes’ door and want to know information about Ben.  They imply that he may be a fugitive that they are chasing.  Hearing this, Jenny sneaks away to Ben’s apartment to warn him.  When Ben hears about the two men, he tells Jenny that he really is a fugitive but from a different planet.  And that he must leave Earth to escape these two men.  Suddenly the two men and Aunt Agnes are banging at the door of Ben’s apartment.  When they come in, they find Jenny but Ben is gone.  After interrogating her they bring her back to her room and the two men leave.  Aunt Agnes yells at Jenny and sends her to bed without supper.  As soon as she is alone, she takes a mouse out of her hand and putting it down it becomes Ben.  Ben tells her it is time for him to leave but before he goes, he has something for her.  She closes her eyes and Ben takes out a hand held device that has a whirling propeller and gives off a light and a noise.  He plays the light over her crippled leg and she is cured.  Ben turns into a fly and disappears out the window.

Jenny runs down the stairs to go after Ben but before she gets out the door, the two detectives point another device like the one Ben used before and Jenny falls unconscious to the floor.  A doctor is summoned and tells Aunt Agnes that Jenny seems to be dying.

Ben returns to Jenny’s room as a fly and then becomes himself.  Using his mysterious device, he wakes Jenny and tells her that the two men did this to her to force him to return.  And now they enter the room.  But what we discover from their talk is that Ben is a runaway king of a far distant world and these two men are loyal servants sent to bring him back to his loving subjects.  Ben acquiesces to returning home.  Jenny begs to go with Ben but the men say it wouldn’t be allowed by their laws.  When Jenny asks them to leave to the room to allow her to say goodbye to Ben the agree as long as Ben promises not to escape.  When they return Ben has changed himself into a twin of Jenny.  Since neither of the twins will admit which is Ben, the detectives will be forced to take both Jennies back to Ben’s world.

Serling’s closing monologue confirms that Ben doesn’t appear as an old man back on his planet.  A picture of him seems to be a boy of about sixteen, even though chronologically he’s hundreds of years old.  And Serling says when Jenny grows up, she’ll be a queen.

Most of the episode is a somewhat sentimental science fiction version of Cinderella.  But I found the idea that Old Ben who was very grandfatherly toward ten year old Jenny would eventually become her husband quite creepy.  Honestly, it ruined the whole thing for me.    F