It's been a rough week so far, and it's barely Wednesday. We've lost rhinestone-studded country singer Hank Snow, legendary singin' cowboy Rex Allen, and actor Desmond Llewelyn, best known as "Q" in the James Bond pictures. Of all, Llewelyn's passing hits me hardest, probably because the producers of the most recent Bond opus, the middling "The World is Not Enough," took pains to "retire" his character, in what Roger Ebert correctly called "an appropriate and, darn it, touching way."

This one's for Desmond, for several reasons: he never thought of retiring for real ("I'll keep doing (Bond movies) as long as the producers want me and the Almighty doesn't," he once said), and because - let's face it - his was the only character that survived the really crappy Bond films. Think of "Moonraker" ("Balls, Q?" "Bolas, 007"), "Licence to Kill" ("Ah, we must be related") and "The World is Not Enough" ("Never let them see you bleed"): his was the only character whose dialogue didn't instill pity. "I never joke about my work, 007," he told Sean Connery in "Goldfinger," and he never did. But he did, however, have no end of fun with the job - right up to the end.
 

The alarm clock blows up. The belt fires a rappelling cord. The car cuts other cars in half with a high-powered laser. Don't touch that sandwich - it's Q's lunch, dammit. Q's Lab features all the goodies Q saddled James Bond with for all his little escapades - from saving England from an electromagnetic pulse blast to saving the world from poison gas pods fired from an orbiting space station. And all he ever asked of Bond was maybe, one day, getting some of those expensive doodads back to the lab "in pristine working order." Needless to say, Bond never returned a single one, and by the time "The Living Daylights" rolled around, Q was popping heart pills like M&M's.
 

Q provided Bond with a Lotus Esprit that transformed into a submarine in "The Spy Who Loved Me," and while U.S. Submarines doesn't offer anything that sexy (no, Barbara Bach isn't factory standard), they do have a line of personal submersibles that'll truly float your boat, pun intended. Just feast your eyes on these babies: large acrylic viewports, fully-equipped galleys, powered by a combination of diesel and battery power, and capable of diving to 305 meters "in air conditioned comfort" - why come up? Especially when M's just gonna give you a bunch of shit over the way you keep racking up expenses?
 

"(He will) deliver George Jetson's ride," Wired Magazine confidently predicted of Paul Moller. Some would say he's already delivered it: Moller International's M400 Skycar, a personal craft capable of vertical takeoff and landing, a top speed of 350 MPH and a range of 900 miles. I dare not list the other specs on this little baby - runs on unleaded, excellent luggage space -- because they'd send you into an apoplexy, particularly the $1 million price tag. (Moller predicts that once his cars go mass-market, the price may drop as low as $60,000). The first few M400s will take to the sky by 2002, which puts Bond significantly behind the curve: when last seen, he was still trying to master a BMW. Maybe Q was wise to keep this good news to himself.