What Would Tetsuo Do?

We were watching some Everwood and one of the characters was in a stressful situation that he handled well. When complimented on his grace under pressure, he responded with:

Is he really the best role model? Because I'll tell you what Tetsuo would do.

He would yell Kaneda's name,

then he'd build himself a robot arm of garbage after the original is amputated by a space laser,

and then he'd turn into a giant blob and destroy the Olympic stadium,

which would probably result in a bit of "swallow the spider to catch the fly" escalation of his situation.

Balticon 50 Part 1: Friday, I'm in Love

We went to Balticon 50 for Memorial Day weekend.  I was actually pretty lukewarm on this convention at first, but as my friends tagged along to (Re)Generation Who because I was so enthused about it, I figured the least I could do would be to repay them that courtesy. I wound up having a really good time, so it all worked out in the end anyway.

Our cast

Me: Josh, the hero of this blog.
Jen: The long-suffering Mrs. Josh.
Lily: Our precocious daughter.
Nicole: Our next door neighbor, the George R.R. Martin superfan.  She planned to disguise herself as his porkpie hat and elope with him.
Jeremiah: Mr. Nicole, third corner of the George-Jer-Nicole love triangle, video-game podcaster extraordinaire!
Young Master J: Their son, Linus to Lily’s Lucy.

Long Day's Journey into Maryland

We drove down on Friday in Jen’s vehicle.  Even with the convention discount, rates were pretty high, so we stayed at a different hotel than the one where the con was being held. It was just a couple blocks away, so it worked out pretty well.  We arrived shortly after registration opened, and it all went smoothly. Jen was dressed as a Weeping Angel and the kids went as Black Widow and Falcon. I was supposed to do a father-daughter costume of Deathstroke and Rose Wilson with Lily, but she changed her mind at the last minute, so I went as a fat dude in a comic-book t-shirt instead. (It was very convincing) If anyone asked, I told them I was dressed as Kevin Smith.

Part of the reason for my initial ambivalence about the con is that when I think of geeks, I do have a negative initial impression, even though I identify as one. Without any other context, when I hear the word, I think of misogynistic basement dwellers engaged in games of petty one-upmanship. Yeah, #notallgeeks, but I take a rather dim view of our subculture, as we’re a subset of humanity, another group of which I have pessimistic expectations.

However, my expectations were subverted in the best way possible, because the people that we came to see (George Martin, Peter Beagle and the staff from March's Dr. Who con) were all really cool. People were friendly and courteous towards Jen and the kids with their costumes, and it was all pretty wonderful. There were tons of workshops and people sharing their passions and that kind of thing. It was a pretty great crowd.

The I saw someone in a ROADMARKS t-shirt. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and he was gone before I processed it. It had writing on the top of the image, and my best guess is that the image from the book was used for another convention or appropriated by a fan group. I really wish I’d been able to catch the guy to ask him. Zelazny had been the guest of honor for Balticon 21 in 1987, and I thought the shirt might have been from that, but the program book featured a different image. (Also, the t-shirt would have been thirty years old and they seldom last that long.)

The First Night 

My status update on Facebook for that night: I'm at Balticon, and I'm the only person in the restroom. Another attendee enters, loudly proclaims "Excellent!" and heads into a stall. Meanwhile, my daughter and her friend have co-opted the abandoned table full of pamphlets for a Furry convention, and are enthusiastically welcoming all passers-by.

Going to be a memorable weekend.

I'm not sure quite what was going on for the first part.  It happened pretty much as I described it there.

 

The Furry convention in question was Fur the 'More.  That's not my particular scene, but I've got to admit that's a pretty great name for a con. We bought a shot glass from them when they returned later in the weekend.

The kids were really cute at the table.

Continue on to part two, Saturday!

Balticon 50, Part 3: Sunday Morning Coming Down

Part three of our trip to Balticon 50, covering Sunday.
Part One; Friday
Part Two: Saturday

Sunday

The last day of a convention is always kind of quiet. Balticon actually runs for four days, but we were only staying for three, so this was the last day for us.

I was mostly wandering around and watching the kids. I wanted to go to a panel on writing for RPGs, not because I’m interested in doing so as a career, but because I was curious about the techniques involved. Unfortunately, the room was double booked and the panel was either going to be moved or rescheduled. I didn’t hang around to see which one it was. I had Lily in tow, and she was already getting pretty antsy, so we wound up in the anime room instead. We watched the second half of My Neighbor Totoro and all of Kiki’s Delivery Service. I’d never watched either in a group before. It was fun. They’re both great movies. I first showed Totoro to Lily when she was three and she’s loved it ever since. I maintain that the scene where they’re dredging the pond is one of the best directed scenes in all cinema, animated or otherwise.

My Neighbor Totoro

The basic plot of the movie is that a young professor and his two daughters move out to the countryside in postwar Japan in order to be close to the mom, who had been hospitalized for spinal tuberculosis. It's such a nice little film. I had vague recollections of having seen it as a teenager, but I don't think I ever watched it all the way through, because it has neither ninja nor giant robots.


I thought it might be scary for Lily at three, because they talk about parents dying, but she weathered it just fine. There's a scene where the eight-year-old sister, Satsuki, is talking to the four-year-old, Mei. Their mom was supposed to come home for the weekend, but her visit from the hospital had been postponed because she had caught a cold. Mei says that she wants mom to come home anyway, and while Satsuki does too, she understands the reality of the situation and knows that she has to stay. But Mei is insistent and in her disappointment and frustration, Satsuki yells at her sister "Do you want mom to die?!"

Mei starts crying and she runs away and decides to walk to the hospital by herself. She gets lost and the whole village is searching for her. Satsuki is running all over the countryside, and someone catches her and tells her that they found a little girl's sandal by the pond and it might be Mei's.

So Satsuki races there as fast as she can, and you see the adults are dredging the pond. She runs up and an old woman holds up the sandal and asks if the sandal is Mei's. What follows is a ten-second eternity while Satsuki catches her breath enough to answer the question. The whole scene is so well put-together, and while we wait for Satsuki to answer, the frame slowly draws in on the woman holding the sandal, and that effect and the half-hopeful, half-fearful expression on her face gives the impression that the whole world is closing in.

Roger Ebert loved it. It's on his list of great movies.

From the review:

Here is a children's film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap.

 There is none of the kids-against-adults plotting of American films. The family is seen as a safe, comforting haven. The father is reasonable, insightful and tactful, accepts stories of strange creatures, trusts his girls, listens to explanations with an open mind. It lacks those dreary scenes where a parent misinterprets a well-meaning action and punishes it unfairly.

 I'm afraid that in praising the virtues of ''My Neighbor Totoro'' I have made it sound merely good for you, but it would never have won its worldwide audience just because of its warm heart. It is also rich with human comedy in the way it observes the two remarkably convincing, lifelike little girls (I speak of their personalities, not their appearance). It is awe-inspiring in the scenes involving the totoro, and enchanting in the scenes with the Cat Bus. It is a little sad, a little scary, a little surprising and a little informative, just like life itself. It depends on a situation instead of a plot, and suggests that the wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need.

Well, that was a long digression, but this post would have been pretty short without it.

Then it was time to go home after the rest of our group finished watching their panels.

One More Thing

One other thing happened at the con. On Friday night, as we were walking back, Lily met her first person. All the adults walked past him, and she stopped and apologized for not having any money, then picked a flower to give him from a bush near a bank building. We decided at that point to give him some money. I'm happy that she saw him as a human being deserving of respect.She's very good and very gentle, which sometimes worries me, because I think Hemingway was right about what the world does to those kind of people, but mostly I’m proud of her persistence and her compassion.  I was thinking of the parallels between that and how she rescued the stray cat that came to our house. Each time, she saw an injustice, and didn't have the power to correct it herself, so she petitioned someone who did and kept at it until we helped.

All right, enough being serious. The con was fun. I’m really happy I had the opportunity to talk to the organizers from (Re)Generation Who. They’re great people with a palpable enthusiasm for their passions, and absolute professionals about running the show.

We almost got to talk to Peter Beagle, but missed him twice. I didn’t meet with George R.R. Martin, but Nicole did, and she said he was a great guy.  It was a wonderful experience.

Plus, we bought the Kittens expansion for Munchkin. How can you top that?

Li'l Voldemort

"Class, can anyone tell me who keeps trying to kill Harry Potter?"

"Beats me, professor."

Deckard's Revenge

Let me start out by saying that I'm not superstitious.

I needed an umbrella, so I thought I'd pick out one I'd enjoy. I ordered the nifty light-up Blade Runner umbrella off Amazon.

It arrived, and I opened it up inside the house, which, as we all know is bad luck, but I wanted to see the glowy part.

My phone is a Nexus 6. Same model as Roy Batty.

Two hours after I open the Blade Runner umbrella inside the house, my Nexus 6 takes a tumble. It falls two feet to the kitchen linoleum and breaks. Despite the Gorilla Glass, despite the protective clamshell case.

The short lifespan is a the failsafe.

I'm not coming right out and saying that the Blade Runner "retired" my Nexus 6, but

"Wake up, sheeple!"

Choosing My Own Adventure

I think Choose Your Own Adventure books are as close to universally loved as anything in geek culture.  Geek Culture is notoriously contrarian, and you don't have to look hard to find those within who actively hate Harry Potter, Star Wars, and even, as hard as it is to believe, Firefly.

But I don't think I've ever met anyone who actively disliked them. I was first identified as "gifted" in the first grade, and I got to pick one of two books to read instead of doing regular classwork. My choices were some generic YA novel or the CYOA book, Your Code Name is Jonah. I picked Jonah, and that began my lifelong love affair with the books.

The creator of the series passed away earlier in the month. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy. His obit said, "Montgomery, who was passionate about education all his life, felt that interactive fiction was critical to reluctant readers in achieving reading fluency, which is the final stage of achieving true literacy."

He credited the actual authors of the books in the series, rather than forcing them to use an in-house pen name, a la Lester Dent, which helped some of them launch successful careers. He continued writing books in the series himself, almost until his death. He really, genuinely believed in what he was doing. The world is poorer for his absence.

Not to conclude on a down note, two CYOA links of note.

Mapping the outcomes: Maps of the outcomes of many of the CYOA.

You Choose Wrong: A Tumblr commemorating some of the more memorable CYOA deaths.

Tale of the Toilet

I've mentioned in the past that I used to work in Competitive Intelligence. I kept it vague, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that I have a distinctive name, and should I ever return to the field,  this will serve as a record. Another is that the more vague I am, the more interesting it sounds. I worked in the field of Competitive Intelligence, yes. On its own, it sounds all high stakes baccarat and spy pens and femme fatales. It's considerably less interesting if I mention that it was the Construction market. More specifically, plumbing. Even more specifically...toilets.

"Good merchant Vama, wait! I would have words with thee." 

"Yea, Kabada. What wouldst thou?" 

"It is difficult to find the words I would have with thee. But they do concern a certain state of affairs which hath aroused considerable sentiment on the parts of thy various adjacent neighbors." 

"Oh? Speak on then." 

"Concerning the atmosphere ... " 

"The atmosphere?" 

"The winds and breezes, perhaps ... " 

"Winds? Breezes?" 

"And the things they bear." 

"Things? Such as ... ?" 

"Odors, good Vama."  

My boss at the job was certainly the smartest person I know personally, he holds several patents, and invented the toilet seen here. He has a background in math and accounting, but not in engineering. He taught himself the principles required to design a new type of toilet from the ground up. He's the person narrating this video.

"Odors? What odors?" 

"Odors of, well, odors of, of fecal matter." 

"Of ... ? Oh! Yes. True. True enough. There may be a few such. I had forgotten, having grown used to them." 

"Might I inquire as to their cause?" 

"They are caused by the product of defecation, Kabada." 

"Of this I am aware. I meant to make inquiry as to why they are present, rather than their source and nature." 

"They are present because of the buckets in my back room, which are filled with such, items." 

"Oh?" 

"Yes. I have been saving the products of my family in this manner. I have been doing this for the past eight days." 

"Against what use, worthy Vama?" 

"Hast thou not heard of a thing, a wondrous thing, a thing into which these items are discharged, into water, and then a lever pulled, and then, with a mighty rushing sound, these things are borne away, far beneath the ground?" 

"I have heard some talk of such ... " 

"Oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. There is such a thing. It has but recently been invented by one whom I should not name, and it involves great pipes and a seat without a bottom, or a top, really. It is the most wonderful discovery of the age, and I will have me one within a matter of moons!"

Despite my theoretical toilet expertise, I don't have a lot of hands on experience. I'm a bright-ish guy, but I'm not handy around the house. However, my mother was coming up for her first visit in years. We performed some extensive work on the bathroom, and we decided that the old toilet would have to be replaced. It looked like the toilet from Trainspotting.

"Thou? Such a thing?" 

"Yea. It shall be installed in the small room I have built onto the back of my home. I may even give a dinner that night and permit all my neighbors to take use of it." 

"This is indeed wondrous, and thou generous." 

"I feel so." 

"But, of the, smells ... ?" 

"They are caused by the buckets of items, which I am preserving against the installation of this thing." 

"Why?" 

"I should rather have it on my karmic record that this thing was used for these items beginning with eight days ago, rather than several moons from now. It will show my rapid advancement in life."

One of the advantages to living in 2014 is that there are tutorials for everything. The instructions for installing the toilet were clear, and the videos helped clarify anything that wasn't. I might not be handy, but I can follow instructions.  The biggest problem was getting the floor bolts loose, and after that, it was simply a matter of plug and chug.

"Ah! I see now the wisdom of thy ways, Vama. I did not wish it to appear that we stood in the way of any man who seeks to better himself. Forgive me if I gave this impression." 

"Thou art forgiven." 

"Thy neighbors do love thee, smells and all. When thou art advanced to a higher state, please remember this." 

"Of course." 

"Such progress must be expensive." 

"Quite." 

"Worthy Vama, we shall take delight in the atmosphere, with all its pungent portents."

I was really amazed by how simple the entire experience was. It feels pretty good to improve something around the house like that.

Some thoughts on Game of Thrones

I can't remember why I picked up Game of Thrones. It was in 2007, well before the TV show would become a phenomenon. I knew Martin's work from his Wild Cards series, which was okay, but which only caught my interest because Roger Zelazny had contributed a couple stories to it.

In general, I don't like fantasy books, because most of them are pretty awful. That's true of everything, Sturgeon's law, et cetera et cetera, but fantasy comes in so many variations of awful, with the Tolkien pastiches, the Conan ripoffs and the gaming fiction. I can't remember what would have moved me to pick up this fantasy series of which I knew nothing.

Now, I've read all the books and caught up with the show. I live next door to a Game of Thrones superfan. (Hi, Nicole!) I'm listening to the first book again. It's interesting coming back to it, now that I have a different perspective.

If I may digress for a moment, something that I tend not to like in my fiction is when the characters are handed unearned victories. A couple years back, Emma Coats, a story artist at Pixar, tweeted a series of loose guidelines she had picked up from her more senior colleagues. They're all pretty great, and the entire list forms the centerpiece of another post I'm writing, but the one that sticks with me is:

Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

Too often, writers are so in love with their characters that they have the characters succeed through outrageous coincidence, (Oh, you can't paralyze me through that pressure point at the base of my spine! I'm immune, because of a hitherto unrevealed war injury!) or profound incompetence of the part of the villains.

I thought I was going to hate Game of Thrones, because, near the end of the first book, Ned was bungling his investigation badly, and I figured that he'd succeed anyway. Either he'd goad Cersei into a "Yes, I did it and I'd do it again!" confession in front of Robert, or he'd unearth some flimsy evidence that would be treated as incontrovertible proof.

But he didn't. I don't want to say that he deserved his fate, because that implies a value judgment, but it certainly seems like a probable consequence of the way he went about his investigation.

I never liked Ned much anyway. His "honor" always struck me as a pose. Honor is like a nickname. It has to be bestowed on you. You can't tell everyone that you're henceforth going to be called "Ace". You don't act in a particular way because you're an honorable person; you're called an honorable person because you act in a way that people deem honorable. It's a small distinction, but I think it's an important one. If you have to make a big deal and constantly puff and posture about it, well, then there is probably less there than meets the eye.

Personal honor is a good thing, but a good leader should never place his personal honor above the good of his people. Being responsible for any number of people means making compromises and acting in ways you may find distasteful. There's a line near the end of Avatar the last Airbender that always seemed to sum this up very well, when the pacifist main character is seeking advice about how to remove the threat represented by a tyrant: "Here is my wisdom for you: selfless duty calls for you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world."

Plus, his honor slips when it's convenient for him. (I'll just edit your last will and testament so it's a little more convenient for me, Robert. You don't mind, do you?) I assume he had to be in violation of his sacred oaths when he marched to overthrow Aerys. And anyone willing to throw the kingdom into a bloody civil war by backing Stannis, an able wartime commander, but the very definition of lawful evil alignment, is not a good man, full stop.

Farking Ned, man. Boromir should march on over and play hacky sack with your head.

The Losers are still losing, but Ned Stark is finally a head

Robb is similar. He's honorable, when it's convenient for him. He puts his own needs over those of his people, and it comes to bite him in the ass in the end.

(Every day on my way into work, I pass a sign for Frey smiles, and this is what I think of)

Edit. Can't believe I left this out. It's one of my favorite scenes.

"No. They hate you because you act like you’re better than they are. They look at you and see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he’s a lordling." The armorer leaned close. "you’re no lordling. Remember that. You’re a Snow, not a Stark. You’re a bastard and a bully."

"A bully?" Jon almost choked on the word. The accusation was so unjust it took his breath away. "They were the ones who came after me. Four of them."

"Four that you’ve humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I’ve watched you fight. It’s not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they’d be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?"

Jon hesitated. He did feel proud when he won. Why shouldn’t he? But the armorer was taking that away too, making it sound as if he were doing something wrong. “They’re all older than me,” he said defensively.

“Older and bigger and stronger, that’s the truth. I’ll wager your master-at-arms taught you how to fight bigger men at Winterfell, though. Who was he, some old knight?”

“Ser Rodrik Cassel,” Jon said warily. There was a trap here. He felt it closing around him.

Donal Noye leaned forward, into Jon’s face. “Now think on this, boy. None of these others have ever had a master-at-arms until Ser Alliser. Their fathers were farmers and wagonmen and poachers, smiths and miners and oars on a trading galley. What they know of fighting they learned between decks, in the alleys of Oldtown and Lannisport, in wayside brothels and taverns on the kingsroad. They may have clacked a few sticks together before they came here, but I promise you, not one in twenty was ever rich enough to own a real sword.” His look was grim. “So how do you like the taste of your victories now, Lord Snow?”

Part of the reason I fell out of love with Joss Whedon's writing is that his characters are kind to each other, but anywhere from dismissive to hostile to anyone outside their little clique. And if someone is nice to you, but "rude to the waiter", they are not a nice person. No one ever called them to account on their hypocrisy. Martin, partially through the virtue of the rotating POV manages to avoid the pitfall of protagonist centered morality, and the work is that much stronger because of it.

In the books, the Red Wedding was foreshadowed to a much greater extent than it was in the show. With the show, you can kind of see odd hints dropped here and there that something bad is on the horizon. With the book, it was like "How could you possibly miss this?!"

The series is extremely well put together, and it's the actors from the show I imagine when I read the books. Even the smallest roles range from professional to outstanding. Peter Dinklage, in particular, stands out. He gives consistently phenomenal performances. Likewise, Gwendoline Christie is superb. It had to be difficult to cast actors in those roles, which are in large part defined by the physical characteristics of the characters, but they nail it. They're as good as anyone and better than most on the show. Joffrey is also great. It can't be easy portraying such a loathsome character. 

I could watch this all day

Did I say everyone was great? There is one unfortunately exception. Emilia Clarke is terrible. She has the flat affect of the recently lobotomized, and her performance compares unfavorably to a block of wood. When she's upstaged by Khal Drogo, whose only instructions from the director were "Scowl harder!", there's a real problem. I grew to hate the character in the books. With Daenerys, it seems like Martin is guilty of what he so ably avoids with the rest of the characters. Her victories never seem earned. She's got one story arc, repeated about a dozen times, with Ser Jorah, Khal Drogo, Selmy Barristan and Daario. "Hi, Daenerys, I think you're so swell that I'm going to solve whatever problem you're facing right now and then dedicate the rest of my life to serving you." Ugh. It's like watching someone DM for his girlfriend.

The final scene of the third season, where Daenerys frees a bunch of slaves, was somewhat troubling. They spanned a large variety of races in the books, and my understanding is that they were played mostly by people with dark skin because that's what the available extras looked like where the scene was filmed. Still, Daenerys is as white as they come, and I'm not especially comfortable with the implication that these beknighted dark people needed to wait for Mighty Whitey to come and free them.

Other things: On arriving, Robert mentions offhandedly that Winterfell is as big as the rest of the kingdoms put together. Big, empty and cold? Sounds like Alaska. I guess that makes Ned Sarah Palin.

Winter is coming, Herp Derp

 Listening to first book again, it's very clear the Lyanna and Rhaegar are Jon Snow's parents This isn't subtext. It's practically text. It's possible that Ned is his father, in the same way it's possible that time-traveling Batman is his father. Nothing explicitly contradicts it, but there's no evidence for it, and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Sansa. She's eleven years old in the books, and fourteen, I think, in the series. It's not hard to believe a highborn eleven year old acting in that way. It's hard to imagine Sansa growing up to become the person she was in the harshness of Winterfell, as neither of her parents seem inclined to shelter her from the harsh realities of life in Westeros. I kind of like Sansa. She's the anti-Daenerys, suffering through no fault of her own. (Yeah, she made some bad mistakes early on, but most of her problems are not of her own making.)

It's funny. There was a time when I hadn't ever seen the show, and I was discussing it with my friend Tim, who had never read the books. He had no idea how the names were spelled and I had no idea how they were pronounced. Heh heh.

Looking forward to the Fourth Season.

New Year's Rockin' Eve

I attended what was, perhaps, the most hardcore of all New Year's Eve parties. Here's proof.

Gangster! (See that bottle? That's Aquafina, bitches!)

Shit just got real.

Our return to the Great Allentown Comic Con

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

Well, we went to another con this weekend. And I dressed up. I fought it for more than thirty years, but I guess it's time to stop denying that I'm anything but a great honkin' nerd.

It was the Great Allentown Comic Con. Lily and I had gone last year. This time it was the whole family.

We all wound up dressing up. Lily's initial plan was to go as a fashion designer and I asked her if she wanted to dress up again for the con like we did  Rhode Island, but she said she didn't, because "there are no fashion designers in comic books."

I said, "What about Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp?" Daddy's knowledge of b-list superhero civilian careers saves the day once again!

I intended to go as Dipper Pines.



I had the hat already, and the vest. The only thing I was missing was a red shirt. Perhaps it was some vestigial fear from Star Trek. I don't know.  Jen went to a thrift store, and as it was just a few weeks after Halloween, there were a ton of costumes for sale. (It struck me as somewhat ridiculous that someone would donate a costume to a thrift shop, but, seeing as we bought one there, I won't question it further.) She grabbed a mask and a cape, and Lily wound up going as Batgirl instead of the Wasp.

Jen was Buffy. She was on the fence about dressing up, but it was supposed be a dollar off admission if we did, so she threw together a costume. We didn't get the discount, but it's possible that the woman at the door didn't recognize that we were supposed to be anyone, other than perhaps a streetwalker and a grown man in short pants.

This photo probably didn't help. Lily took it. My instructions were to "Pretend you're eating the book". She told Jen to look horrified, but that was probably unnecessary. 

A wedding was held there as well, and they asked friends, family and anyone who wanted to attend to proceed. We thought it would be neat, so we did. We sat behind a pair of Klingons. Lily has attended two weddings in her seven years, and they were both costume weddings. We're warping the poor kid.

I didn't buy a ton of stuff. It was packed and we didn't feel like fighting our way back after the wedding. Lily bought some stuff from the artist at Geek Boy Press, whose work I had picked up for her at Monster-Mania a couple months ago. He's an extremely nice guy and a talented artist. I always try to support those artists whose work I enjoy, so please click through the link and check him out. 

Guest-wise, they had a few celebrities who had been present in the Rhode Island Con, among them Walter Jones, who had played the Black Ranger in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Bonnie Piesse, who had been Aunt Beru in the Star Wars prequels. Comic artists and a ton of vendors rounded it out. 

Overall, the con itself was okay. A lot more crowded and with many more costumes than last time. I really think they're going to need to move to a larger venue next year, because there was barely room to move. Some guy dressed as the Joker was periodically setting up a camera on a tripod to take footage of other con-goers which did nothing to help, but the Joker always was an asshole.

A trip to Rhode Island Comic Con

I went up to the Rhode Island Comic Con this past weekend, with Jen and Lily as well as my friends Frederick and Jen. (With two Jens, we call the first "Jen Classic" and the other "Kenobi Jen")  It was a really nice little trip, and surprisingly inexpensive. We drove up in one car and stayed in a Motel 6, with boys in one room and girls in another.

This was Lily's first time at a big convention. We'd been at the Great Allentown Comic Con last year, but that's pretty small and local. This was the real deal.

In talking about the Monster Mania Con in August, I mentioned that there is often a lot of bleed with the theme of conventions. A comic con will be billed as a comic con, but they'll take any celebrity who answers the invitation. Monster Mania largely avoided this dilution, but Rhode Island Comic Con didn't. So, consequently, we had legitimate genre celebrities, Billy Dee Williams, Danny Glover, the actors who played the Bounty Hunters and Admiral Ackbar, but we also had a bunch of wrestlers, and the actors from weekend at Bernie's, the latter of which struck me as almost completely inexplicable.

We arrived around one on Saturday. Jen Classic's plan had been to see the local attractions around Rhode Island, while the rest of us took in the con, but she was feeling a bit under the weather and wound up just seeing local attractions near the convention center.

The costumes were nice. There were a ton of bounty hunters. As I was getting my wristband, one of the convention guys asked, "How many bounty hunters do we have at this con?" and I was like "We don't need their kind of scum."

We also saw Magneto in a plastic helmet. I can only assume he was cosplaying as Hipster Magneto. Any pictures that come up when I google that phrase?

Ah, there we go.

Lily enjoyed the costumes. (Though she asked why one scantily clad Batgirl was "walking around in her bra") She was in her shy mode, and generally didn't want to talk to people, so I did it for her, and everyone we approached was very nice about having a picture taken. (Also, kudos to the RI CC for having a clearly stated "Cosplay is not Consent" harassment policy posted). I thought a bunch of them were really neat, though I won't be posting any of the pics here. I did like the pair of friends who were dressed as Korra and Asami.

Frederick: Isn't that the Avatar?
Me: God, that's racist. Just because she's in a Water Tribe outfit doesn't mean she's automatically the Avat-. Oh, she's with Asami. Yeah, she's the Avatar.

We all had a pretty good time. We came in under budget, because I didn't really see anything I wanted to buy for myself. Lily saw a caricaturist, and she posed more or less patiently for her sketch.
 (It helped that she had a good view of the crowds passing by). We also bought some series 5 Lego minifigures. When we told him which figure we wanted, the dealer helped us feel the packages to try to identify the figures within, which was awfully nice of him.

She just looks so happy there.

There were a large number of artists there as well. We picked up a Wonder Woman poster that I quite liked.


Kenobi Jen  was familiar with Providence because she went to school at Brown...

Well, she graduated with a degree from Brown, and since

A.) she was surprised that the school had a stadium,
B.) all of her stories about Providence are about bars and/or coffee houses,

I'm not sure she spent all that much time at the school itself.

We visited Swan Point Cemetery, but that is worthy of its own post.

Monster-Mania 25: An Unexpected Journey

I was chatting with my friend Frederick last week and I asked about his plans for the weekend, as I usually do of my friends by the time the week rolls around to...Tuesday. He said he might hit a horror con down in Cherry Hill on Sunday. I replied "Great! When can you pick me up?!"

In retrospect, that might not have actually been an "invitation", but carpe diem and all that.

Jen and Lily were out of town and I was looking for something to do to keep me out of trouble on Sunday anyway, so this was just about the optimal solution to my problem.

Frederick has acted in a couple horror movies, so when he got to the house, I asked him to sign my Zombie Food shirt. Lily also signed it.

My first autograph of the day.

Jen and Lily took off for their trip and Frederick and I took off for ours. We wound up heading in the exact opposite direction initially, but through the magic of GPS, we made it there on time.

It was nifty. This is the 25th Monster-Mania. I want to say it's the 25th "year", but I see that Monster-Mania 26 is being held in September 2013, and I don't know if they've always been semi-annual.

I go to conventions now and again, but it's been a year, since I attended my last one, and that was small and local.

The thing that surprised me the most about this one was how focused it was. Comic conventions tend to cast a wide net and welcome anyone with even a fig leaf justification for being there. This was billed as a horror convention, and that's what it was, by God!

The only exception was a local TV channel. I don't know what they were doing there. The interns staffing the table never had any reason to look up from their phones, and their pile of literature had clearly not been touched. Here's a picture of their van.

The con had a pretty impressive guest list. Carrie Fisher was there, which, aside from the TV station, was their only dilution of its horror theme (though I assume that if Carrie Fisher accepts an invitation, you make whatever concessions you need to in order to keep her there), George Romero, Danny Glover, Christopher Lloyd, Malcolm McDowell.

George Romero (Most well known as the director of the original Night of the Living Dead and godfather of the genre) is of particular note, because Frederick and I were wandering around the hotel looking for a particular booth hosted by a friend of his, when Frederick looked past me at some guy. I was like "What? What? What is it? What?" and then the guy continued on his way, and I was like "Did he look a little like George Romero?" and Frederick was like "Yes, he did."

Then Frederick excused himself to jump on top of George Romero and yell "I'm going to keep punching you in the face until you start making good movies again!" He had to be pulled off by security. It was awkward.

Also in attendance was Gary Busey. It was weird, because he looked exactly like he does in the movies. The other celebrities there looked different, not being favorably lighted and airbrushed and made up, but Busey looked exactly the same.

R2-D2 was there, and he sure looks different when I saw him later without his makeup.

With makeup

Without makeup

We attended a charity auction to benefit Yorkshire Terriers, where Frederick picked up some nifty stuff, and then it was on to the screening of a movie called Baggage, by a friend of his. It was a short film and we came in a little late and missed a bit too much of it, but Frederick had won a copy at the auction, so we figured we could catch up at our leisure later. That was followed by a movie titled Déjà vu?

Frederick: Ah, man! I've already seen this one!

Me: *Baleful look*

We also did some shopping, and I'll show you pictures of my booty at the end of the post.

I'll probably have some pics of the stuff I bought, too.

Near the end of the convention, we saw some zombie face painting, which Lily would have loved. I said it was cute. A couple minutes later, I described something else as "cute", and this time Frederick called me on it.

Frederick: Did you just call two things cute in the last five minutes?

Me: Yes. And I don't know why it's suddenly my go-to word at a horror movie convention.

Frederick: ...

Me: Awww!!! That fetal pig is adorable.

We wrapped up our time at the convention and met with our friend Jen at the local Barnes & Noble. She got there shortly before we had, and was trying to browbeat the staff into joining her Jane Austen book club.

The pair of them immediately began harassing me, over all things, the clothes I was wearing. I had on jeans, sneakers and a shirt-sleeved collared shirt. It wasn't like I was dressed up for high tea. And yet, the man in the neon green Holiday of the Dead t-shirt was giving me shit about what I wore to the convention.

Actually, I did make a decision to dress somewhat conservatively. (We were going to wear our matching  "I'd rather be hunting zombies" shirts, in their garish shade of traffic cone orange, which my lovely and generous wife had picked up on clearance a while back, but Frederick couldn't find his.) I had asked Lily what she wanted for a souvenir, and she said one picture of a guy in a scary costume and one of a pretty girl in a costume. I wanted to come off as un-skeevy as possible, so I went with the collared shirt instead of a t-shirt.

(We did get some pictures, but few people were dressing up on the third day of a three day con.)

Had a nice time shooting the breeze with Jen and Frederick in the B&N. We walked around the plaza, before settling on the Wegman's as a place to eat dinner.  The conversation turned to the Superman movie and one of them asked if the "S" was really a symbol for hope. I gave the answer I used in my blog post about Man of Steel, that it's been canon for a while that Superman's "S" chevron represents the Crest of the House of El, but it's a newer idea that it also represents a symbol of hope.

Frederick: So, if the "S" stands for hope, what's the Kryptonian symbol for dickwaving?

Me: A bat.

Heh heh heh.

Also, Batman has fallen on hard times and is selling pictures with the Batmobile.

As promised, here are some of the pictures of our purchases. I bought a pillar of skulls for $5 at the pillar of skulls table.

Frederick bought a Jayne hat. Le Sigh.

 Pretend you're a Firefly fan.

 Make a face like a douchebag.

Douchier!

I said douchier!

Great!

Now spend the next 10 years bitching about how your crappy show was cancelled.

This is for Lily, Princess Leia as the Mona Lisa. It's from the Thirteenth Floor. Here is a link to their website, where you can buy their prints, which I found both very high quality and very reasonably priced.

I also liked Geek Boy Press but there seems to be a problem with his website so I can't link to it. I wasn't absolutely sure if that pig was supposed to be Waddles until I saw a Mabel pin too.

He had prints too, but I only spotted him near the end of the con, and was already approaching the end of my budget. I do plan to buy some more from his website, however.

Pretty great and surprisingly inexpensive weekend. Very happy with how it went.

"And for those who might be interested... a giraffe!"

Ranking the Neils

There was a somewhat contentious debate within my circle of friends over which Neil is the best Neil. This is the proper order. You may print this list out and laminate it and keep it in your pocket as a handy reference guide.

1. Neil Armstrong
2. Neil deGrasse "I killed Pluto and I'd do it again" Tyson
3. Neil Gaiman
4. Neil Patrick Harris
5. Neil Diamond
6. Neil Peart 
7. Neil Young
8. Young Neil
9. Neil Sedaka   
10. General Zod. He's pretty great, but the cardinal rule in Ranking the Neils is always "Neil Before Zod"

Mütter's Day

I finally got around to visiting the Mütter Museum with my friends Jen and Tim this weekend. All three of us are big fans of John Hodgman and Sarah Vowell, each of whom mention the megacolon in their respective writings. We'd been looking forward to this for a long time.

My friend Frederick is also a fan of the place. He had a poster from the museum in a frame that was clearly many times more expensive than the poster.

En route, we played 20 questions.

The answers were:

• A unicorn
• An elbow
• Lucas Lee
• A cactus
• The TARDIS
• Lindsay Weir

We parked for five dollars, which was pretty cheap, and walked a couple blocks to the museum. It was a bit different from what I was expecting.

1. It was quite a bit smaller than I thought it would be: Just three rooms. Nicely laid out and everything, but that couldn't change how small the place was.
2. Very well lit: I was expecting to be the kind of place the Franklin Institute was before it was renovated, with expansive, dimly lit halls. But the lighting was very good.
3. Body parts: I've got a decent general science education, but I'm not a doctor or a biologist, and my last experience with body parts was dissecting a fetal pig more than a decade ago.The thing that struck me is how much smaller the organs were than I was expecting them to be, the brains in particular. Zombie movies have lied to me! 
4. Accessible: I enjoy science museums, but I do think they cleave much more closely to entertaining than informing. Mütter was no exception, but I thought the exhibits were accessible without being patronizing or simplifying the material to the point of meaninglessness.  
5. No pictures allowed: I had to resort to a stock photo of the megacolon! #Firstworldproblems
   
6. The Megacolon: It wasn't as mega as we were led to believe. We were hoping we could walk through it like the giant heart at the Franklin Institute.
7. Skullduggery: There was a wall with a good 40 or 50 skulls on it, As a lay person, I tend to think of skulls as pretty uniform, but seeing so many in one space, I couldn't help but notice the significant amount of variation visible even at a causal glance. 
8. Skullduggery, part two: They had a forensics of Grimm's Fairy tale theme going on in the upper gallery and I really liked one of the paintings that went with it.

Afterwards, we had some lunch, because seeing dozens of anencephalic fetuses in jars really works up an appetite. Afterwards we visited Fat Jack's Comic Crypt and had some gelato at Capogiro's, which was voted the best ice cream in the world by National Geographic. It was pretty yummy. I'm not sure if I've ever had gelato before. I thought it was vegan, but apparently not. 

Todd Ingram: Gelato isn't vegan?

Vegan Policeman: It's milk and eggs, bitch.

Fat Jack's was really nice. I had read about it in Joe Matt's Peepshow, so I was especially interested in seeing it, though it's not like I need an excuse to check out a comic book store. It's really one of the nicest stores I've ever been in. A great, well-organized selection, friendly and knowledgeable staff that seem to enjoy being there, ten terrible comics for a buck in the bargain bins. 

Great visit all around. Next time we return to Philly, it will be to camp in at the Franklin Institute.