Vegas

The best view of Las Vegas, states a friend from St. George, is in the rearview mirror. I’ll go further – going to Vegas is like licking a clean ashtray.

Yeah, l'll give you a moment to let the chill finish running down your spine. I have no real love of the town, but it’s the best and cheapest gateway to the Colorado Plateau, and so we flew in and out of it.

And Vegas surprised me – it offended sensibilities I didn’t even know I had.

Mind you, we weren’t planning on spending a lot of time in Vegas anyway. But it took 45 minutes to get to the highway, which was, like six blocks from the airport. So we had a lot of time to notice all the adverts for the various shows in town – there are 35 major shows currently playing in Vegas, and 33 are Cirque Du Soliel.

So throwing me into the worst traffic jam of my last decade would not put me in the mood to think well of the town (and we are talking about an 8-lane road that runs from the airport, crosses the Strip, and immediately hits the highway- 45 freaking minutes!). But on the way back, we came to town with about eight hours to kill. We could have spent it at the airport (which we knew had the incessant chatter of slot machines at the boarding gates) or go for a walk along the Strip.

We went for the walk. Really, really, really bad move. OK, you get the soul-deadening whirring white noise of the casino, the empty eyes of the gambler zombies, and the Innsmouth look of the tourists. You know all about that already. Heck, we’ll even claim fault to the tourist look, traveling with the gawkers and the drunks and the hicks. But what really steamed us were the cardsnappers.

These are the hawkers that mob every corner, about a dozen of them, channeling the traffic. Each of them is snapping a deck of cards and handing them out. Snap, hand, snap, hand. The cards are for escort services, massage operations, and strippers. The cardsnappers look like crystal meth addicts, but not as healthy. And they are indiscriminate in their targets – men, women, couples, mothers with strollers. Snap, hand, snap, hand.

I realized that these were the living equivalents of pop-up ads, but that realization did nothing for my mood. You start out being polite, but polite don't work. By the end of the third block the Lovely Bride was using her tightly-clenched purse as a weapon to keep them at bay.

Vegas supposedly has determined that there is no profit in family-oriented fare and has slipped back to its sin city version. That change is clear from the slime they put on the streets to assault the tourists.

Now, judging Vegas from the heart of the Strip is like judging Pittsburgh from Liberty Avenue (which apparently just closed down its last adult theatre), and there are three nice things I can say about the city:

1. They have a really nice Cactus Garden, well-stocked and informative. This is tied into an expensive chocolate shop, under the rumble of the airport runway, but its nice.

2. A great In-And-Out Burger on Tropicana. And it’s right by the highway, so you make your escape to civilization easily.

3. A Monet exhibit at one of the casinos. Most Monet exhibits I’ve been to have been mob scenes, where you have to put up at least a dozen people looking at the brushstrokes. Because this was Vegas, we had the display pretty much to ourselves. If you look at a Monet from twenty feet back, you see the incredible form and luminosity he brings to the work. Yeah, it’s a diamond in the very rough.

But Vegas in general? It’s like licking a clean ashtray.

And sometimes its not that clean.

More later,

Bunyanism

So there we were, standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It was sleeting hard, so the Lovely Bride and I had most of the Southern Rim to ourselves. The far side of the canyon was an invisible blur of dark grey, and beneath our feet tendrils of fog swirled among the blood-red outcroppings.

And, I, experiencing the geological equivalent of finding a fine pocket watch on the beach, a thing of beauty out of place with its surroundings, had to ask: How did this come about?

The immediate options were not promising:
- An angry Old Testament god who went about smiting people did this. Why smite such a place in first place? Practice for more practical smitings later?
- A forgiving New Testament god who went around pardoning people did this. Turning the other cheek, though, is not a process that produces stunning geology.
- The slow process of erosion and uplift used the natural forces of nature to produce, almost at random, the scene before me. Possible, but both stylistically unfulfilling and boring to boot.

And then it came to me, the tales from my youth – the Grand Canyon was created by Paul Bunyan dragging his axe across the Colorado Plateau. Yes, that seemed right. Only a gigantic physical figure could create such a vista. Don’t give me any of those mysterious forces or unseen gods. A real being made this, and this was in turn physical proof of his existence.

And suddenly I was enlightened. And I google checked and found that the mighty Bunyan, with his apostles Babe the Blue Ox and accountant Johnny Inkslinger, was responsible for much of the building of this country. Not the political building, but rather the physical arrangements. Primeval America was a void without feature. Paul dug the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, and the dirt he threw up became the Alleghenies and the Rockies. His wading ashore created the tides at the Bay of Fundy. He made Puget Sound and cleared the great forests of North Dakota. In an attempt to out-do the Great Wall of China, created the Mima Mounds.

It is so clear to me now that this is Paul Bunyan’s world – and we only live in it. Doesn’t the Bible itself support this view by saying “There were giants in those days”? The only explanation for the world is a race of American Titans, who worked their wonders on the land in a prodigious, productive, and prolific manner, building this land through their sweat and oversized muscles. These are beings worthy of our worship, who up until now have been cast into the darkness as mere “folk tales”.

There is an American Pantheon with Bunyan as its leader. We have John Irons and Pecos Bill and Joe Magarac. We have Stormalong, who is the Folk America version of Aquaman – lame, but necessary. We have a host of colossi that made America great, as any fool can see!

SO I call upon my government to reject the false idols of both creationism and science, and instead embrace the only beings worthy of our fervent worship. With the creation of my American Titanic Church, we will carry our message further, infiltrating school boards and making outrageous demands of the Park Service. We will make ourselves a tax-exempt lobby under our gods, and use them as justification for all our actions in their name. We speak for the trees, in the voice of Paul Bunyan!

And here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor. Priesthoods are available at reasonable rates. Gimme a Hey Paul, here!

More later

New Story

My latest story can be found here. It is called "War's Wage", and is a Magic: The Gathering story for a new expansion.

I'm really enjoying doing these on-line stories, by the way. They usually involve very interesting characters, they move very, very fast from start to completion (usually about a month) and I'm not under any compulsion to leave the primary characters alive after I'm done with them.

More later,

Sorry, Wrong Number

So this has been bouncing around the various blogs and online reports this week - it turns out that the "Number of the Beast" is not 666, but is rather the more prosaic 616. So apparently the devil's area code includes Battle Creek and Kalamazoo. I always knew that Kellogg's Rooster was dangerous.

But the news made me think of the book of Revelations. This was always a favorite book of the bible, since it read like a comic book, or at least a major motion picture. Big plot beats! Explosions! Epic grandeur! More Explosions! Seals breaking! Monsters! Loose Women! Lakes of Fire! Big Finish! (Did I mention Explosions?) So, yeah, I was willing to think that this stuff could come true, and come true in my lifetime (hey, I was 13, and thought I was the center of the universe - what was your excuse?) Books like Late Great Planet Earth just fueled that thinking, much like the Left Behind series does today.

Only later did I pick up the whole idea that the Revelation of John was pretty much written to pummel the dominant political operation of the day - Rome. Its a very political work as opposed to a prophetic one. The seven horns of the beast were the seven hills and number of the beast was accepted code for Nero or Caligula or whoever was doing the persecuting in those days. And I think it got into the final draft of the Bible after the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD) in part to keep that uppity Patriarch of Rome in line. Indeed a lot of latter-day maneuvering and interpretation of the Book of Revelations seems to come from the fact that it was aimed pretty squarely at Rome, which would be all well and good, except that the church then blossomed in Rome, and now they had to fend off the very imagery they incorporated. ("No, we're not the beast you're thinking of - you want a later beast").

Late Great Planet Earth was instrumental in showing me that non-fiction does not necessarily equal true (Similar books on ancient astronauts and the lost continent of Mu helped drive the point home). When I first read Late Great. . . , I was waiting for the entire scripted apocalypse to unfold on cue. Despite millenial bugs and terrorists, we are still here. (The apocalypse has not been averted, we are now informed, as much as it has been delayed, being pushed back to 2009 or 2014, depending on the tightness of your tinfoil hat).

But this latest revelation (pun intended) is one of the joys of studying the Bible, and I mean really studying it - bringing to bear knowledge to enhance one's comprehension. Over the course of my own lifetime, the Bible has shown itself to be more historically accurate than it had been earlier assumed, and in uncovering the hows and whys and whos of its creation is to my mind a tempering and strengthening of the faiths based upon it, as opposed to an assault on those faiths. That is one joy of a secular outlook - the ability to say "Well, I guess I was wrong", and the go forward with new knowledge. New discoveries enhancing old thoughts. New wine in old bottles.

Oh, by the way, the Satanists have gone on record as saying they will still use "666" as long as it cheeses people off.

More later,

While You Were Out

So I've spent the past few days catching up. When I was on vacation, I was well and truly vacating - no phone, no lights, no motorcar - OK, I needed the motorcar, but we only used the sound system to play Big Bad Voodoo Daddy while on Route 66 ("The Midlife Crisis Road"). I left the computer behind, I took only books I wanted to read, and the cell phone was out of range in 90% of the places we were at ("Can you hear me now? What?")

So I've been catching up, and I don't think I missed too much. The stock market continues to suck, which surprises me, since I fully expected it to have a elastic rebound just in time to make my entry on it look dirt-stupid. Gas prices are absolutely cranky, but I didn't need the media to tell me that. The war in Iraq has taken a definite hard patch. There was a fourth Presidential press conference in five years, which apparently no one really did well at, so it quickly passed into history without much comment. And all of this was ignored by the media is favor of a Runaway Bride ditching her wedding. Ah, priorities. Oh, yeah, the North Koreans launched another test missile, but we as a country were more interested in a kitten caught in a tree.

But there was one neat piece of news - the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is still alive and well and living in Arkansas. When I was a kid, I found a huge book of Audubon prints in the library, and was impressed by this creature more than any other, and was sad to know it was gone. Now I'm waiting for the return of the Carolina Parakeet.

More later,

Vacation

So I've been on vacation for the past week. You may not have noticed it only because I wrote a buncha stuff in advance and passed it along to the Monkey King to keep up the tawdry facade of semi-daily communication (Thanks to the Monkey King for his aid). Actually, we've got enough back issue material nowadays that next time I go away, I'm thinking of running a "Best of Grubb Street" sequence (like this favorite quote from 1993 - "When will the President let his hair down and indulge in the same hobbies and interests as the rest of the country?")

Oh, yeah. The vacation.

The Lovely Bride and I headed for the American Southwest, landing in Vegas and circulating clockwise around the Grand Canyon. We visited friends in St. George, hit Zion and Bryce National parks, cruised on Lake Powell, and river-rafted down the Colorado to Lake Mead.

We also fought incredibly inclement weather throughout, We were snowed upon in Bryce, hailed upon in Zion, caught in a massive thunderstorm on Lake Powell, and caught sleet while hiking the rim of the Grand Canyon. However, it was beautiful floating down the Colorado (the Lovely Bride is proud of her head-on confrontation with white-water rapids, and can now say "I've done it once", when she refuses similar offers in the future). In any event, as a result of all the rain (this and earlier storms), the desert was in bloom to a degree I had never seen before - cholla, prickly pear, ocotillo, jimson weed, and all manner of wild flowers. It was amazing, though in talking about the local weather, the punchline "We're from Seattle" quickly became old.

I'll probably have more later on the trip, but for the moment, this is just to tell folk that we survived and have stories to tell (including hanging from chains over a 900-foot drop in Zion.)

More later,

PC

I must be getting old, because when I hear someone say:

"I may just be politically incorrect . . ."

All I hear is:

"I may be dumber than a sack full of hammers . . . "

But then I'm just getting old.

More later,

Talking About the Weather

I'd tell you what the weather is like out here, but then I would have to charge you.

No, seriously. There's a bill moving through Congress right now that will get the National Weather Service out of the forecasting business. Actually, out of the business of giving it away to anyone who wants the information. Why should the feds compete with good old American business, in particular since business can make a buck off of it?

The bill is sponsored by Pennsylvania's absentee Senator, former neighbor Rick Santorum, and will benefit companies like AccuWeather that take the government's data and sells it to you. Oh, did I mention that AccuWeather is based out of State College, PA, and contributes to the Santorum campaign? Odd, I thought that part would be obvious.

More later,

Book: Bender

Liquor: A Novel by Poppy Z. Brite, Three Rivers Press, 2004

Blame the Monkey King for this one. Or rather, blame his tendency to maintain the best Friends List on the LiveJournal. He's always tinkering with his list, adding and subtracting people, and his close circle overlaps my close circle, so instead of having to maintain a friends list, I just use his. And where he reaches out and picks up new voices, I find them interesting enough to follow myself.

Case in point - Poppy Z. Brite. The Monkey King put her on his friends list, and I started catching up with her life, in particular with her recent novel Liquor. Now, I've never been a fan of her earlier, more genre material. Cheerfully dark cannibals and mass murderers were her early themes, and she was very popular with the Vampire: The Masquerade crowd. So I would have missed this book entirely if not for the Monkey King.

Which would have been a pity, since it is a wonderful change of direction, and aimed squarely at one of the niches I happen to be inhabiting at the moment - the Foodies. People who watch Food Network and America's Test Kitchen and actually use the recipes in Alton Brown's cookbooks. Ms. Brite has written a Foodies book, and she brings the same level of detail and interest to it that she brought to her earlier works.

Here's the brief. Rickey and G-Man are characters from Brite's earlier stories, but they are line cooks who have worked in a number of New Orleans restaurants. Rickey is the driven idea man, G-Man the more easy-going, moral center of the pair. The two cook and drink, and Ricky comes up with a killer idea - a restaurant where all the meals are made with alcohol. Liquor is the name of the restaurant and the book is the story of making the dream real. The boys are helped by an Emeril/Nixon melding of an older restaurateur, and hindered by a number of crisis large and small, the largest being Rickey's old boss, who makes a descent into madness fixating on Rickey's success.

It's all interesting and engaging, and it feels like a set-up book for more to come (indeed, the next book, Prime is already out. The food porn is here, taking you into the kitchen. And New Orleans is here too, though not the New Orleans of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras and Anne Rice. This New Orleans felt like, well, Pittsburgh to me - working class, industrious, and bit run down and always seeking a better deal. It was an interesting change-up for me.

So Poppy Brite is currently in two worlds - a new one as a mainstream novelist, watched by the ghosts of her old world. Speaking as someone who may make the same journey someday, I will be following her career with great interest.

More later,

DOW and OUT

My guilty pleasure of the daily paper is the business section, because it is such a trip into the Twilight Zone. You might think that the sports page is the press's haven of blind optimism and rampant home-town boosterism, but it has nothing on the business pages.

Seriously. Here's a section where news of layoffs is greeted with elation and lower unemployment is cause for concern. Where the announcement that an airline is packing more seats on its jets is held in high regard, while failure to offshore your phone support is seen as a betrayal to sound business practices. And it's where the latest business crime is regarded with shock, simply shock that such bad apples could be found in the halls of commerce.

And then there's the DOW average. Some people check their horoscope - I look at the DOW. I don't have stocks directly (like most of the country, I do funds, who is turn invest in stocks), and I don't follow even the local heroes on a daily basis. But I look at the aggregate as a mark of how we're doing.

And the current verdict is - not as well as we would like. We've been running in place for a couple years, always stalled at the mid-10,000s. Sometimes higher, often (such at as the moment) lower, but always ending up around 10.5 k.

I had the entry written for when the DOW would hit 11,000. Really. I felt it only right since I was bagging on it as it was hanging around at 10k levels, then put up a shoot towards 10,500 (to much hoopla from the business press), then slouch back downwards. Yet for much of the winter and spring, the stocks ratcheted themselves ever-upwards, buoyed, I think, in part that a great anticipated windfall in the form of Social Security Privatization. With that dollop of snake oil stalling out, and gas prices comfortably over 2 bucks a gal, inflation up and wages inert, the DOW has returned to the 10,500 mark, and now is below.

The amusing thing is that the most recent series of drops has been greeted on the business page with the stone-cold sobriety of just-the-facts news, while every good day gets headlines as the birth of a new boom. It's the Tinkerbell school of finance - if you applaud, it, the market will come back to life. It creates the odd illusion where there is great news that we reach the 10.5 level, followed by a long quiet period, followed by great news that we reach 10.5. The feeling of déjà vu doesn't seems to exist in the timeless boosterism of the DOW.

And that's why the business section amuses me.

More later.

Local Politics

So it's been a while since checking on the madness of local politics. For those who haven't been paying attention (meaning most of us), here's the way it has been going out here since November:
1. Republican officials declare there is a serious, stunning, obviously-criminal problem in the count.
2. Local Hate-Radio latches on and pummels away at the Democrats
3. Someone actually examines the offered evidence and finds it to be less serious and less stunning and likely more uncriminal than it first appears.
4. Republican officials declare there is a NEW serious, stunning, obviously-criminal problem in the count.

And the cycle turns - dead voters, military ballots, felons, provisional votes - each in turn have risen like haunted house ghosts popping up behind cardboard tombstones. There may even be an ember of truth at the bottom of all this, but it is covered by a pyroclastic flow of rhetorical ash. The latest attempt, an attempt to pull everything together, was a GOP report that stated that if EVERYTHING that they claim is true, and then a bit of statistical voodoo is worked, Rossi would have won, though by a even-smaller margin of victory than Gregoire finally got.

The problem is, while these GOP accusations make good sound bites, these never seem to make their way into court with the official suit that they have brought (which starts officially in early May).

The suit, by the way, seems to be shaping up this way:
1. The State GOP must show there was error.
2. The State GOP must show that the error favored the Dems.
3. The State GOP must show that it was a conspiracy.

The first, I think is a lead-pipe cinch - despite the fact that the Washington State Election got high marks from other states for the accuracy of its election, the fact remains that this was a very close election, and a few hundred votes could (and did) swing it.

The second is more difficult, and is why the GOP is leaning on King County for its evidence, while simultaneously seeking to suppress Democrat efforts looking for similar mistakes in other, redder counties. The GOP, when they talk about "Felons voting" want you to think about poorer, more urban felons, who should therefore be Democrats. Unfortunately, the nature of a felony in the state of Washington includes more upscale crimes like fraud, conspiracy, embezzlement, cooking the books, voter fraud (cue the irony) and building a device to get free cable. In other words, a lot of Washington State's felons might just be getting the Wall Street Journal as home delivery. For my part I'm waiting for the political poll of former felons to surface.

The last charge is the hardest one to prove, given the nature of Democrats themselves. As Abby Hoffman once put it; "Conspiracy? Hell, we couldn't agree on lunch!" Will Rogers chimes in;"I don't belong to an organized political party - I'm a Democrat". The GOP is legendary for its marching orders (more on that later in this column), while the Dems seem, at the best of time, to be like herding cats. And the fact that it works at all is one of the good things about the party.

Whatever the result of the court case will be, this is going to end up in the State Supreme Court, because the loser (Blue or Red) will not let it rest. They should have gone there directly, but I suppose this is how the dance is done.

In other news, having failed to unseat the Governor or bring down the (Republican) Secretary of State, the GOP guns are now turned on the King County Election Director, and by coincidence King County Executive Ron Sims, who is (surprise) coming up for re-election. The latest big gun rolled forward to attack is former Senator Slade Gorton, who is shocked, simply shocked by the corrupt, slipshod way Sims allows things to be run. Which would have more ethical tonnage, of course, if Gorton didn't happen to be the campaign chair for the guy running AGAINST Sims.

Meanwhile, real reform is moving through the state senate, the biggest piece (supported by Secretary of State Sam Reed) being moving the primary date forward, to give the state more time to get the general election ready. Oddly, the state GOP opposes this bit of rationality, which at the time surprised me. Then I saw this bit in the Seattle Times, where the state GOP pretty much announced that they don't want to deal with a primary for upcoming Senate seat anyway, but would rather have their candidate selected by the White House.

I'm serious about this. The party directive (with an apology for any Republican readers who thought they would actually be given a choice) is that would-be Governor Rossi gets first crack (he has said he has no interest in the position, but is it truly a lie when no one really believes you?). But if he doesn't bite (and despite everything, he remains the best-liked potential GOP candidate), then a hand-picked candidate will be offered. Making the pilgrimage east to visit the big boys in DC has been former congressman Rick White, and state GOP chairman Chris Vance (who has been the chief verbal bomb-thrower in this post-election campaign). Mike McGavick, a former Slade Gorton aide (yeah, its is a small world) and CEO of Safeco is also having his name bandied about. But the directive is clear - no primary. The last time they took this route was with Nethercutt, silencing more conservative voices in the process and cheesing off support.

Of course, I'd feel a little better about the state GOP's defense of democratic principles if they, you know, practiced them occasionally.

More later,

The Blog Goes Ever On And On

Bits. pieces, and updates from previous posts.

A while back I talked about the chintzy yellow ribbons on SUVs, and voiced the opinion that only those signed by actual vets should be given any slack, comparing the signed ribbons to the old WWII-vintage blue stars that people posted in the windows to show a family member serving (yes, that’s a Norman Rockwell moment). Then I saw exactly that two days ago on the highway – a blue star on a white field with a red border. Very, very classy.

I haven’t had anyone come up with earlier instances of the “impromptu car lots” I’ve been seeing around here on the weekends. The closest I’ve gotten was a friend in New York City, who always remembered students selling books and albums (that dates his sighting of this phenomena) in Washington Square at the close of each semester. It could be the same spirit (and needs) that motivates both.

The destruction in the front yard still continues, and the ditch is filled in, the front hillock mildly scraped, the mailboxes moved three times, and the road widened but not asphalted yet. No casualties among our trees in the front, but our neighbor on the left lost one of his. The road crew wanted to know if we wanted the wood – otherwise they would charge to haul it away. The neighbor on the left, a very pleasant elderly gentleman, felt he had “enough wood for the rest of his life”, and so the neighbor on the right (who is trying to keep his oil heating bills down) took it. In general, the road crew has been pretty pleasant – they have respected the various properties they are working with, and only mildly intrusive (meaning – they blocked my front driveway with a steamroller only once).

Oh, and I did choose “Benedict” in the "name-the-pope" office pool. Got five bucks and two “Hail Marys”.

More later.

What is Bliss?

So just for the purposes of argument, let's say that you made combatting terrorism a major part of your job. Such that you invoked it for causes both directly tied to combatting terrorism (better airport security, Invading country A which harbored terrorists), and for more than a bit more iffy (reducing civil liberties, invading country B which did not harbor the same terrorists as Country A). So its a big part of your self-declared job description.

And, just for grins, let's say that a report, that has been coming out annually for nearly twenty years, points out that the number of terrorist attacks is up. Way, way up. Even if you don't count any problems in Countries A or B.

Would you, perhaps, Stop Publishing The Report??

I don't know about you, but I feel safer already.

More later,

Play: Foolish Consistencies

The Constant Wife by W, Somerset Maugham, Directed by Kyle Donnelly. Seattle Rep, April 2 - May 1, 2005

Here's the short version:

ACT I
He: I am having an affair
ACT II
She: I know
ACT III
She: I am also having an affair, but for better reasons than you.

And that's about it. This is one of those plays where the actors are talking to the audience, not to other actors. You can tell they're talking to the audience because the blocking puts them turned towards the audience, and their explanations evolve into short societal essays - long-form non-sequiturs. In fact, if you want to write like Maugham, add 2d12 words to each sentence. Then watch the actors race to finish their lines before they run out of breath and pass out. This is Shaw all over again, without the potential blessing of a plane hitting the house and killing all the characters.

So, Constance (Ellen Karas) is the wife of John (Jonathan Fried), who is stepping out with Marie-Louise (Bhama Roget*). The secret of the affair is out and mother, sister, and friend all descend on the house to comfort, discomfort, and provide help for the apparently clueless Constance. But Constance is not clueless, and rather than being in denial she accepts the state of affairs, translates her situation into a set of economic balances, and then proceeds to take bloodless revenge in the third act, both putting John through the wringer, while denying him even the satisfaction of thinking that her actions are some form of emotional vengeance.

OK, this is an alien world for me, a place where where gender roles are fixed, indiscretions must be winked at, places must be kept, and reputations must be preserved. The John/Constance relationship is stressed as being caring, affectionate, sweet, and while not passionate is hardly a sham. The relationship is half-full as well as half-empty. They love each other but are not in love with each other. And it seems that Constance is taking the long way around to justify her own planned infidelity, but this is a domain where the proper forms must be observed. Indeed, it is her reasonableness which was the shocking bit 75 years ago, though it rattles emptily today.

Despite this, it was an enjoyable afternoon. The direction is broad and comic, and watching Fried self-destruct in the final act was a delightful comical disaster (and may have wandered far from author's original intent). Most of the characters were horrible people, but the actors were excellent. In fact, they were too good in some cases. Mark Elliot Wilson, as Constance's earnest potential lover, sells the idea that he is NOT going off to Europe with Contance in the third act so well that for a moment, you wonder if all of the Constant Wife's announced plans are merely a head-game she's playing with her philandering spouse. There are funny bits, nice pieces of action, and long Wildean observations.

Yet the center does not hold for me. So I'm wrestling with it for the moment.

More later,

* Ms. Roget's mother actually wrote me after the review of Noises Off- hi Betsey! Bhama carries off the role of the other woman with an open-eyed, Hugh Laurie-esque flair that captures the supposed shallowness of that generation (Think Bertie Wooster from the old Wodehouse stories). She and the other actors were very, very good. My fretting is with the material, not those that presented it.

What I Do For A Living

Every now and again I mention in this space that I'm up to something at the office, but I can't talk about it yet. But now things are starting to break loose and show up in the real world.

The big project from the previous year has been Attacktix, a battle figure game with figures based on the upcoming Star Wars movie. I did the special powers and the initial rules, as well as the bulk of the text for the CD-ROM that is in the Starter set, parts of which show up on the web site (The web site, by the way, was created by True North, the company I work for - and in this case, mostly by Bob and Richard (Hi guys!)).

Back to Attacktix. You can find a bunch of initial reviews here. Much to my surprise, the Attacktix game already has its own blog, but who doesn't, these days?

Also on the "recently-released" front is a new online minigame for the Xevoz toy line. It's called Xevoz Challenge, and it was produced in conjunction with Martini Design. A nice little run-and-shoot game. Check it out.

And yes, I'm working on more stuff, but . . . I can't talk about it at the moment.

More later,

Watching My Language

Wrapped up in some other work - have a meme.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

More later,

On the Road Again: Flash Car Lot

So yesterday I went down to my boss's place, a horse ranch south and east of here, past Ravensdale. The drive is through the leading edge of the development wave, so you have malls and subdivision giving way to scattered farms and new development giving way to lumbered areas, watershed, and gravel pits (sign in front of one of the nearby houses declared "400 trips a day is too much", which I think is a reference to the heavy trucks on the road.

But the thing I noticed on the way down on a Saturday morning was the impromptu car lots that have sprung up wherever there are clear spots along the side of the road. I first noticed one of these out on the peninsula, across the street from one of the casinos, about a dozen vehicles, parted diagonally, backed-in, to show off their profiles. At the time I made obvious conclusion that the cars were for sale by unsuccessful dice players. Now I'm seeing them a lot more of these Saturday morning car lots, and a lot closer. The cars are all for sale by owner, apparently driven to a central location and parked there so your random drive-by shopper can find a whole mess of them at once.

I've been thinking that the area has been recovering from the latest recession, but the sudden blooming of these lots gives me second thoughts.

More later,

Tommy Lasorda

So the robotic spirit of Tommy Lasorda called last night to brag that his social security is fine, but unless the rest of my generation straightens up and flies right, he's going to trade the lot of us to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Just in case you were wondering.

More later.

Jeopardy

This is a quick Alliterates story. Author and fellow Alliterate Doug Niles got a call from his sister Monday, and then an email from his sister-in-law:  Both women had been watching "Jeopardy" that day.
 
The Category:  Alternate History
 
The Answer is:  This German field marshal is a character in the novel "Fox on the Rhine".

Doug is positively delighted, since Fox on the Rhine is by Mr. Niles and Mr. Dobson. Ah, you're no one until you're recognized by Alex Trebec.
 
Oh, yeah. The Correct Response is:  "Who is Rommel?"
 
More later,

Doctor Redux

The highest praise I can give a TV show is to recommend it to my Lovely Bride. And when she got home from Tai Chi last night, I said "You really should watch this".

I was pretty darned impressed with the new Doctor Who (see previous entry). Yes, it has been updated in its sensibilities (cell phones, the Internet, conspiracy theory) and has more of a quick-cut, MTV pacing. And the four-or-six-episode story has been shrunk down to a single hour show. But it works.

Christopher Eccleston makes a good Doctor, evoking Tom Baker's good-natured 4th Doctor more than any of the others. And Billie Piper is the latest companion, Rose Tyler, an action-girl hottie. In fact, the whole first episode is about her move from normal life to companion-ness. The big bads are the Autons, animated plastic creations of the Nestene Consciousness. They were kinda goofy when they appeared before in the series in the sixties (big plastic-headed dummies), and have a bit of that silliness still (mannikins wearing wedding dresses running amok, a carnivorous recycling bucket). The special effects are nice, but not state-of-the-art. Yet it pulls together nicely and gives the series a great start.

One small gripe - the more modern approach to directing results in us losing some dialogue. Part of this is the script (several cases of cross-talk, made more difficult for us North Americans by British accents), and part having characters talk over explosions. But I guess that' a good enough reason for taping.

And yeah, with it available to Yanks only near the northern border, there will be tapes floating around, if not pirate downloads. If you get chance, and you're a fan of the old shows, you really should watch this.

More later,

Doctor

Why yes, I had a checkup this morning, but that’s not what I want to talk about (I’m healthy as the proverbial horse).

The new Doctor Who shows up in North America tonight, and I have to admit I’m a bit pumped about it, being a fan from my college days. In those days of yore, the good Doctor only showed up late Sunday on WTTW, the public station out of Chicago. This was the height of the Tom Baker era, and a lot of American fans date from that time.

OK, let me back up for the saner members of the readership. Doctor Who is a children’s show from Britain, starting in the 60s, about a time-traveling doctor and his young companions who move through time and space in a machine that looks like a big blue police callbox (beating Bill & Ted’s excellent phone booth by a couple decades). The episodes were serial, about four or six in a row, and featured a mix of history, SF, adventure, and really cheesy-looking monsters. I mean hokey rubber-suited stuff that would never pass the muster of today’s world. But that was part of the charm, because to compensate, you only got a glimpse of the bad guy over the course of the adventure, creating a feeling or dread that left many young brits cowering behind the couch (Lost In Space did the same for me, which is laughable now, but true).

Part of the charm of Doctor Who over the years was its rotating cast. The Doctor is always getting new companions, and, since the Doctor was an alien, was capable of regenerating into a new form. This allowed a new actor to step into the shoes and take the Doctor in different directions. So far we have had the grandfather, the clown, the secret agent, the happy hitchiker, the upper-class batsman, the sad one, the second clown, the FOX version, and now the new guy.

Also part of the charm was that the original show’s release was limited, spread by tapes and word of mouth, and so too it’s the case today – the Doctor is not being broadcast in the States, but rather on the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which we get on the nethermost registers of our cable. So once again there’s a time lapse for the time lord, and while we know that the new episodes have gotten good play in Britain (and the ninth Doctor will not be back for another season, leading to a tenth doctor), we don’t know quite what he’s like.

So like I said, I’m a bit pumped. I have treated Enterprise and the Star Wars movies with a long pole because I so enjoyed the originals, but this one, I feel good about. Even if I get rubber-suited monsters.

And yes, there is room behind the couch to hide.

More later

On the Road Again: Torn to Ribbons

So about a month ago, one of my co-workers came in late, with the following reason: The FBI had blocked off a street near his house. A quick google search pulled up that the FBI/BTF had raided the home of a local property manager, who in addition to belonging to a radical branch of the Aryan Nation had a large collection of illegally purchased firearms. I mean huge. We’re talking enough rifles to kit out a couple squads of marines in Mosul. Oh yeah, he lived across from a school.

But he’s not what I want to talk about.

Both local newspapers covered the raid the next day, and both used near-identical photos of an agent carrying all these guns out past a car in his driveway, presumably his. The photos were snapped either by the same photographer seconds apart, or by two photographers standing next to each other. One photo showed the agent carrying big a armload of guns past the guy’s car. The other showed the same thing a half-step further on, and showed what his body was blocking in the first image.

One of those cheap “Support the Troops” yellow ribbons. The magnet types, which show your support for our armed forces through purchase of stuff made in mainland China.

The Yellow Ribbon Magnet has become ubiquious these early years of the new milennium, occupying an odd space between “Have a Nice Day” and “American, Love it or Leave it” in the political spectrum. There is an entire taxonomy of these magnetic ribbons – variants on the theme (instead of “Support Our Troops” they read “Pray for our Troops” or “Bring Them Home Safe”), other colors (Flag-styles, or for the more militant, desert chamo), and even completely new messages (Pink ribbons for women’s issues, and a Blue and White version with paw-prints instead of stars. stating the importance of spaying you pet). However, there are three that deserve mention:

The Personalized Ribbon – These carry names on them. I assume they are loved ones serving in the military, and therefore show a tad bit more involvement in the issue than someone who just slaps one on. I like these a lot.

The Pale Ribbon – OK, the manufacturers didn’t figure we’d be two years on and still in-country, so they didn’t use the high-quality lacquer finish (Yeah, imagine the managerial meeting in Canton where they made THAT decision). So a lot of the Ribbons have weathered to a ghostly shade of wheat beer. All I can say is that they are marginally better than the shredded American Flags people were flying for a while.

The Ghost Ribbon – You see these on unwashed SUVs, the shadow of a ribbon that has been removed. Were the ribbons stolen, like a Garfield suction-cup doll? Did the owners tire of supporting the troops, perhaps having some middle-of-the-night epiphany and running out in their PJs to remove them? Did they just fall off, the magnetism about as strong as the lacquer? One thing I can state – they did not come off at the car wash.

Had I the power, I would ban all such ribbons except the personalized ones – they’re the equivalent of the blue star hanging in the window in WWII. You would put one of these on your vehicle if you had a spouse or child in the service. That way, when the rest of us get cut off in traffic by an SUV with one of these posted, we’re more likely to forgive the driver.

In the meantime, It’s been two years. Support the Troops, regardless of who’s driving.

More later,

Comics Stash Redux

No more Comics Stash – I ran it for a month and now have stopped. The intent was to track what I was buying and see if any patterns showed up. Sort of like when you’re on a diet and writing down everything you eat. So if you were tolerating it - well, we're done. And if you were enjoying it, well, we'll go off and do somethine else for a while.

But what have we learned from the experience? What conclusions can I draw from this?

1. Not as Independent as I once was. As a younger struggler, I was reading independently-published books: Love and Rockets, Cerebus, and Elfquest. Now they have fallen by the wayside. I’m definitely doing the four-color heroes in capes, and among those, mostly from the big two (Yes, Authority and Ex Machina are Wildstorm, and Promethea was America’s Best Comics, but they are satellites of the DC/Warner Empire). Have the “ground levels” gone away, or is their subject matter (a lot of them fell into the Bad Girl art pit in the 90s and never climbed back out) just not my pipe of tea?

2. I prefer teams to individuals. Missing from my reading list are the Big Heroes – the Superman and Batman family of books, and the Spider-mans (except for Ultimates and Straczynski). I am reading JLA, most of the core X-men, JSA, Teen Titans, and other gatherings of heroes. I must like group dynamics.

3. I’m reading writers, but I'm not buying because of the writers. While I my point out “star-casting” in the writing, I am reading Joss Whedon and J Micheal Straczynski’s books, and enjoying them. And yes, recognizing the name on the masthead (Claremont, Waid, Bendis, Eliis), gives me an idea of what kind of story I am getting into, but I'm not actively seeking out their works.

4. I’m carrying some dead wood. I can’t give you a good reason why I’m reading Hawkman or Aquaman. The stuff I enjoyed in these series has been ignored (The whole Hawkman/Hawkgirl reincarnation romance has gone by the wayside, and I prefer to large-issue politics of Aquaman to the gritty Batman-underwater stuff). I am going to have to edit down my list.

5. I’m willing to experiment. I have a three-issue rule, so I’m more likely to pick up an issue 1, or to hang through a six-issue miniseries. Often a book gets added to the permanent list. Similarly, I will drop a book (Doom Patrol, Ultimate Iron Man, Age of Apocalypso) if it doesn’t take.

6. I follow continuity, but I like to see worlds evolve. DC is driving its universe darker, which gives me qualms, but I’m still along for the ride. Marvel is shattered among a handful of sub-universes – core, ultimate, lost stories, year ones, alternate futures, alternate presents. I’m not horrified by any of this.

7. I like the Ultimate line. I'm suprised by this. When it got started with Ultimate Spider-man, I was very much of the opinion that here was another poor attempt to reboot the universe, bagging down origin stories with even more continuity. Instead, its provided fresh, interesting looks at the heroes. Still, it is strange that I can accept the Ultimate Vision as an alien robot but not Ultimate Iron Man as a mutated-in-the-womb supergenius.

8. Green Arrow is the Wolverine of the DC Universe. Intentional or not, he’s everywhere, every week. Weird for a guy who was dead a few years back.

OK, enough on comics for the moment. More later,

The Week That Was

Well, that was fun.

The short version - a work project that had been back-burnered became front-burnered, and while I already had most of the resources in place to turn it around quickly, it still required a shuffling of schedules and a few twelve-hour days. My creative contribution is wrapped, and now comes the most frustrating part - leaning over my programmer's shoulder and saying "Is it done yet?"

This has all left me tired and little cranky. Of course, having a steamroller parked in your front yard could make anyone a bit out of sorts. Yes, we're being thwacked with the development stick again, as the county is widening the road on our side, laying in culverts, filling the ditches, and laying asphalt overtop for a kinda-sidewalk. At the moment, its a lot of disruption, irritation, and a reminder that I've gained about 60 new neighbors down the street, with three more big farms now sprouting development signs and soon to be converted to high-density suburbia. Most of the neighbors remember when our hunk of road was a backwater - now its becoming a main drag in the morning and evening hours. Even the UPS guy is frustrated that there is too much traffic to park so he can make deliveries.

The Lovely Bride is in Second Tax Rush. The First Tax Rush occurs in January, where everyone who keeps records and is expecting a refund comes flooding in. Then things subside (a touch), and now comes Second Rush, when everyone who doesn't keep records and worried they have to pay shows up. We'll pause now for several of our readers to smack their foreheads and say "Oh, yeah, I have to do that".

Freelance writing has been interesting - I've signed on for some worldbuilding for WotC and may do another short story online for them. At the moment I'm parked in my office, seeing that the weeklong rain has subsided, and realized that now would be the best time to go after the dandelions in the back yard (most of the ones in the front have been taken care of by construction equipment).

More later,

"Mr. Rockford? This is Filler."

I tend to taunt my fellow corporate creatives/bloggers when they are swallowed by their jobs and don't post, but it is my turn in the hopper. Several things have erupted all at once like a nest of Alien eggs, and lest I want my face grappled, I have to turn my attention elsewhere. However, in the meantime, have some TV Trivia links.

Want a full list of everything Bart has written on the chalkboard at the start of the Simpsons, go here. Couch gags in the opening sequence? Go here

That dense block of text at the end of Dharma & Greg episodes? Go here.

And all the messages left on Rockford's answering machine (back in the day when answering machines were new and cool)? Go here.

I'll give you original content when I'm good and ready, by gum.

More later,

Graceland

The Monkey King clued me into this. A fellow named Qwantz broke down the Ghostbusters theme song in a list format, and has sparked a new meme on the boards. Here's mine, from Paul Simon's Graceland album, since Memphis, Tennesee looms large in my mind at the moment.

• Mississipi Delta
  • Shining
  • National guitar


• River
  • Following (on highway)
  • Historical note
  - Civil War (cradle)


• Graceland
  • Where I am going
  • In Memphis, Tennesee


• Others going to Graceland
  • Poorboys
  • Pilgrims (with families)
  • Traveling companion
  - Nine years old
  - From previous marriage
  - Ghosts
  - Empty Sockets
  - Empties (may also be sockets)


• Reason for Travel
  • Belief in being received (all)
  • Undetermined
  • Desire to visit (partial)


• Reason she returned
  • Inform me of departure
  • Why I would know this already
  - Familiarity with bed
  - Familiarity with her hair care


• Losing love
  • Heart (window)
  • What everyone sees
  - You’re blown apart
  - Wind blow


• Girl
  • New York City
  • Human trampoline (self-identified)


• Understanding her meaning
  • Falling
  • Flying
  • Tumbling in turmoil
  • Bouncing (Graceland)


• Obligations
  • Defend
  - Every love
  - Every ending


• Question if obligations exist
  • Restatement of reason for travel
  • Restatement of destination

More later,

Interoffice Memo

Monday, March 28, 2005
Good morning everyone!

This week our company will enable all synergistic applications!

We want to maximize start-up metrics.

According to our current President and CEO, "No one can pull the trigger on the world’s cutting-edge deliverability better than us!"

We will lead the way in extending the world’s leading mindshare.

Nope, not original, but rather a toy from yourdictionary.com. But I have read memos like this before.

More later.

Cat Update

We’re three months into the new three-cat regime at Grubb Street, and everyone seems to have settled in. The Lovely Bride and I have adapted to upgunning the household to multi-animal status, as well as adapting to the personality quirks of the various beasts (Emily, Harley, and Vic, for those coming in later).

First off, we’re still adjusting to larger amount of food and litter we have to pick up. Original cat Emily was eating a little dry food, a little wet, and we worried about her weight loss. Now, not only the two new cats are hoovering up everything in sight, but Emily’s appetite has rebounded. Indeed, she seems more alert now that she has two younger siblings to terrorize. Downside is that she wakes up at sunrise (6ish nowadays) in order to be fed.

Similarly, we're getting a lot more litter. The young kids are, shall we say, enthusaistic about their litter box duties, so that the gravel is frequently flung far from the box. We keep dustpans by all the litter boxes these days.

We’ve also become aware that we cannot leave things out on the counters anymore unless we want them to become cat toys. Of particular intereest to the new cats are tomatoes. Cats don’t eat tomatoes (Garfield aside, its bad for them), but the kids love to roll them around on he floor and bite them like they were little, red, oozy mice. So we have had a number of tomato-casualties, laying on the ground with little tooth marks puncturing their skin.

Both of the new cats are fascinated with the outside, particularly with the big backyard filled with birds, squirrels, and other cats. Harley is the one who wants to get out, which means that opening the outside doors always involves shoving her away to keep her from escaping. We have let the previous cats out, but they in general have had the sense to keep near the house and away from the road. I’m not sure that Harley is that smart.

Vic, on the other hand, is the cat-most-likely-to-be-accidentally-locked-in-a-closet. She moves around at the edges of rooms, very quietly, and often sneaks into any open space. We’ve taken to double-checking before we close doors to see if the ghost-cat has snuck in.

All three are lovable. Emily controls the bedroom and the bed, and stands on top of people who are (trying to be) asleep. Harley sprawls in the middle of the room. Vic remains standoffish, until she decides she wants attention, then she’s all over you.

All in all, its working out.

More later,

The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)

Wow. Just that. Wow.

Elizabeth Bear posted the link on her journal, and I'm posting it here to get some throw-weight to it to those who do not tune into her. And to say, um, wow.

So I've been a fan of John Varley's since he first popped up on the scene in the late 70's, primarily in Galaxy magazine and later in his collections and novels. He disappeared for about a decade in the mid-eighties, swallowed by Hollywood, who took one of his good stories and turned it into a not-so-good movie, and now he's back. I missed this particular short story back when if first came out in '84.

It is one of those stories that rattles you, and makes you want to go hug a loved one. You know the old joke that "Actor X would be great reading the phone book"? Well, John Varley is amazing reviewing the phone book.

More later.

Not a Break-In

Excitement like this I do not need.

At about 1:30 this afternoon I got a call from T’Ed, with a message to call Bill. Bill had earlier gotten a call from Brinks Security about the security alarm going off at my house.

Backstory – A few years ago our house was burglarized in the middle of the day, when Kate and I were both away. They got in through a blind corner of the property not visible from the street, and took the TV, all our CDs, a broken computer, and a pin made out of a skull from the Terminator movie. Only the last piece was irreplaceable. They missed Kate’s more valuable jewelry and all the original art on the walls. Soon afterwards we got a security system installed.

When the alarm goes on your system, the security company tries to call you at your work number. Failing that, they have a backup, a friend or family member to contact. If they can’t reach the backup, they call the police automatically. Bill is my backup. The alarm went off over lunch, so he came back to his office to find the message on his machine. That was about an hour after the initial report.

Bill and I agreed to meet at the house, and I drove in a fury up the hill, worrying if I was dealing with gutsy, deaf thieves (the alarm is rather noisy). There is no sign of entry, but only a bright green tag hanging on the front doorknob from the King County Sheriff, noting that they had investigated, found no visible signs of entry, and warned of civil penalties for multiple false alarms. The time on the report indicates that while they were not Batmobile-style fast, they would have gotten there about the time the would-be-thieves were loading the TV onto the back of their truck, were there any thieves. There weren't.

Bill and I checked out the house and the alarm system, which indicated that a door on the upper balcony was open. And that was our problem. I had not secured and locked it the previous night, and the wind (yes, we have winds up on the hill) blew it open. No thieves.  No break-in.

I called both the Sheriff's office and the security company to confirm that there were no additional problems, but it all left me a little rattled. I am not only glad I have a system in place, but that it functioned as well as it did given all the small things that went wrong (no one was available for the initial calls, my backup couldn’t reach me, etc . . .). While I felt badly to have had a false alarm, it was comforting to know that the system works.

More later,

The Fate of the Big Box

So, the nominations for the Origins Awards have been announced, and my fellow judges revealed (look at the bottom of this page). And I have to say I was generally pleased with the results in that as a disparate group we were pretty much in agreement. The only regret is that every judge had some cool “Small Press” project in their top five, but we all favored different “cool projects”, so none of them made the final list.

But what of the Big Box of Games? What was its fate?

Well, even after taking out the stuff I would use/keep, it still was pretty prodigious. So I brought it into the WotC offices and gave the people that had earlier helped me scout down copies the first crack at it. The rest went to the WotC gaming library for future use.

I’d like to thank the various companies that submitted products for review, and reassure them that their stuff got a good home (as opposed to showing up on, say, E-Bay).

More later,

Comics Stash

So the Comics Stash is winding down. I intended to only run it for a month or so, and we’re at the point where books are already looping back around. Part of this because of schedule shifts, but part of it is also that some books go “semi-monthly” these days, which means two books in the same month, to increase sales and interest.

That’s why there are repeats in this write-up. Just so you know. Don your Spoiler Helmet and follow me (for likely the last time) into the Comics Stash.

It seems that this week was “everybody mambo!” week, where more and more guest stars were added to the mix of the team books, until you need a scorecard to identify the players. JLA #112 has the team fighting The CSA, and the JLA has pulled in the JLE and JSA* to help, and then the New Gods show up for some yet-unrevealed reason. In Uncanny X-Men #457, they’re still fighting dinosaurs, but have added the Savage Land Mutates** to the mix. And in Teen Titans #22, the eight members of the team are getting whupped by Doctor Light (who kidnapped Green Arrow for this week’s Green Arrow appearance), so they throw another twenty or so former Titans at him, including a new Hawk & Dove.

Flashbacks are also big this week. Incredible Hulk #79 has Mr. Green Genes on an island fighting supposedly dead opponents, while flashing back to Banner’s childhood, where the Hulk is Bruce’s “imaginary friend”, a gamma-irradiated Hobbes to his Calvin. Captain America #4 *** has the Captain flashing back to a WWII which may or may not be true, as he investigates the desecration of the graves of two former Captain Americas. Black Panther #2 continues in the same fashion as #1, wih an NSA briefing for the Marvel Universe’s version of Condi Rice. The briefing lays that the Black Panther and his home nation of Wakanda doesn’t want or need any help from the US, making both of them a danger to national security. And Young Avengers #2, starts revealing secret origins of a group of mini-frosted versions of Cap, Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk. In this issue, Iron Lad is revealed to be the younger version of the villain Kang the Conqueror, who fled back in time to avoid his own future. This last book also brings back the Vision, who was messily slain, what, three months ago?

The writing in Black Panther is very good, but the best plotting in the Marvel Universe this week is over in its Ultimate universe, where you recognize the heroes (mostly) but they have a slightly different spin. Ultimate X-Men #57 has a different take on a handful of mid-eighties characters – Longshot, Mojo, Arcade, and Spiral, and plays them off in unexpected ways. Also unexpected is Ultimate Spider-Man #74, who, without the baggage of hundreds of appearances in the mainstream MU, can be fresh and react to things like a teenager again. And in The Ultimates 2**** #4, the Ultimate universe’s version of the Avengers have taken care of the Hulk and now are turning on Thor, who may or may not be mentally unhinged. The Ultimates are also interesting in that most of them are jerks to one degree or the other, so the de facto assumption that they are right because they are heroes does not apply.

There are others in the stash– Stormbreaker #3 of 6 continue the fight between Beta Ray Bill and a Herald of Galactus. Wonder Woman #214 wraps up a crossover from Flash #219. Exiles #61 wraps up their tie-in with the resurgent Age of Apocalypse. And Fantastic Four: Foes #3 of 6 inadvertently underscores one of the problems for the mainline FF – they are beyond the reach of a lot of their bad guys these days – Annihilus, a mysterious and potent force in the Ultimates version, is written off quickly here, as is the Superskrull.

OK, that’s it for the time being. I think we’ve looped around now into a full month, so next time I get to do some analysis.

More later,

*The CSA is the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, the “Evil JLA” of another universe. The JLE is Justice League Elite. The JSA is the Justice Society of America. There also was a Justice League Europe, a Justice League International, and a Strike Force Justice League, but lets not muddy the waters further (too late).
**In the Marvel Universe if you DNA was kinked a birth you’re a mutant, if your DNA gets kinked as an adult, you’re a mutate. Potato, potahto.
*** He’s alive in this book, though he was shot dead in another book. However, his former sidekick, the Bucky of the fifties, has been shot and stuffed into a trunk.
**** That would be issue #4 of the second series of the Ultimates. Again with screwy numbering series.

Stan!

So last night about 60+ people gathered in Kent to see off Stan! of the Stannex, who is leaving Seattle to go to Sunny (?) California for a new gig with Upper Deck. It was a fine sendoff, masterminded by Tammy Ryan and Sue Cook, and involved munchables, soda, cake (in the form of one of Stan's Comics), speeches, music, gossip, dancing, and, Stan being involved, Karoke. A good time was had by all, but the merriment was tinged with sadness at the fact that Stan must be going.

Best of luck, Stan! And come back soon to visit!



(Above, The Lovely Bride, Stan! and Our Flounder)

More later,

Andre Norton

Fantasy author Andre Norton has passed on at the age of 93. More information is here.

Andre Norton has, over the course of her career, written over a hundred novels.The most important, for the authors who followed her, was Quag Keep, which was the first D&D novel (Though published by DAW, not TSR, as TSR did not publish books at that time), and was set in the World of Greyhawk.

Those of us who have followed in her footsteps offer our thanks.

More later,

And the Nominees Are . . .

This is the penultimate entry on the Big Box (I think) and the saga of the Origins Awards nominations. The other gentlemen of the jury got their votes in, and GAMA has officially announced the nominees. The full details are listed here, but here are the results of the category I helped put together:

Best Role-Playing Game Nominees: (Role-Playing College)
Ars Magica 5th Edition - Atlas Games
Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game - Wizards of the Coast
GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition - Steve Jackson Games
The Authority Roleplaying Game and Resource Book - Guardians of Order
World of Darkness Storytelling System Rulebook - White Wolf

Best Role-Playing Game Supplement Nominees: (Role-Playing College)
Dark Champions - Hero Games
Eberron Campaign Setting - Wizards of the Coast
GURPS Dragons - Steve Jackson Games
GURPS Fantasy - Steve Jackson Games
Unearthed Arcana - Wizards of the Coast
Vampire: The Requiem - White Wolf

I'm pleased - these are good games. All the results were in my top ten, though not all of them were in my top five. There are things I voted for that did not get on the list, because while I may have thought well of them, that opinion was not held by my fellows (or, more truthfully, they felt that other projects rated higher in their esteem). Most of the entries had at least three of the five jurors putting them in their top tens. All in all, its a pretty good representation of the industry as it stands in 2004.

What happens next? Well, there will be voting by the Academy membership, and announcement of the winners at the Origins convention in Columbus, Ohio. Nope, no open voting this year - its more like the Oscars than the People's Choice Awards. However, membership in the academy is free, with the following requirement - "Any person with a verifiable published credit for writing, design, sculpting, illustration, graphic design, editing, line development, or brand management in three or more gaming products is eligible for admission to the Academy. Admission to the Academy is free to those eligible." More information for those interested (and the preceding definition includes a number of the readers of this journal) can be found here.

Now, I'm a big believer that the horse race is as important as the result, and I hope to see reactions to the list - which game is the obvious favorite, which ones should not have made the list, and the obvious travesty of justice that left out "Fuzzy Bunnies: The Heckening"). And I think that's good. The day before the Oscars, everyone talks about you. The day after, you're the answer to a trivia question. Part of the reason for awards is recognition, but part is also promotional. So if you're nominated, go promote - if you didn't have a good game, you wouldn't have made it this far. It is an honor to just be nominated.

And I just saw on someone else's journal that they picked up the D&D Basic and Vampire, mentioning in passing that they were Origins nominees. so I think my work here is done.

Comics Stash

Yes, this week’s Comics Stash is late because of the Adventure of the Big Box, but it was a light week as well. This review process has been very interesting (to me, at least) because it’s shown my own comic-book habits as well as an idea of what’s going on in the industry.

So, the Spoiler Light is on, and we move into this week’s (well, last week’s) Comic Stash.

Let’s start out with Shining Knight #1 of 4. This is part of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers project. This is the first payment on the creative promise written in Seven Soldiers #0, and is pure Morrison – visceral, cerebral, and sometimes obtuse. Young Sir Justin witnesses the harrowing of Camelot by the hero-hunting alien Sheeda. He’s the junior member of Camelot’s version of the JLA. He also has a flying, talking, horse who at one point pulls out a green lantern (continuity alert) to drive back the bad guys. Boy and horse end up in 21st Cent. LA as a result of the battle. Yep, it’s a first issue, and a very interesting one at that.

Once upon a time the Golden Age heroes of DC lived in Earth-2, and the Modern Age ones in Earth-1. Now if you want to do a teamup between the two you have to do time travel, and that’s what JSA #71 does, sending the current JSA into the 50's to convince their old counterparts to put the band back together. It’s a time-travel that has spent the past five issues or so gathering the players together, and now they’re finally after the big bad, a Time Traveler out to kill the President.

Thunderbolts #6/87* uses the hook of a bunch of second-banana Marvel villains who try to turn heroes. Its got tons of characters zipping about, so you need a scorecard, but that's not the interesting thing in this issue. What amazed me in this issue was that the Big Bad, Baron Strucker, set off nukes in Manhattan. Yeah, its so Radioactive Man (the original, green Chinese supervillain, not the Simpsons character) can absorb the blast, and the Speed Demon (I told you these were second banana bad-guys) could run the last bomb into New Jersey, but the idea of such offhand mass violence is a sign that the comic book universes are finally recoveringfrom the trauma of the Towers’ Fall.

Speaking of massive municipal destruction – over in the DC Universe they sunk half of San Diego and turned its inhabitants to water breathers (this is what happens when you have a major Comic Book Convention in your town, I guess ). This “sub-Diego” has been the thrust of Aquaman #28, who was a mystic hero only about two years back, so is definitely looking for his "niche". This is a transition issue in the series – Aquaman has a female sidekick who he doesn’t consider a sidekick. A new potential sidekick, a mutated shark man, shows up to “help out”. Aquaman gains a reporter contact. Atlantis shows up again. And it turns out that a corporation has put the patent of Aquaman’s DNA. It’s all setup, but it underscores the lack of foundation the character has had in the past and need to give him some grounding.

No comics stash is complete without a mention of Green Arrow, who appears in his own book, Green Arrow #48, with his team of three other archers (former sidekick, long-lost son, new sidekick). They are fighting robotic cowboy, which is every bit as stupid as it sounds, and ends up with blowing up a building. Again I note that the comic books have recovered to the point that massive destruction is once again a good thing.

Adam Strange is a favorite silver age character – one of the great science heroes, who, like John Carter of Mars, goes to another planet to become a hero. Adam Strange’s adopted planet was always threatened by weird things like flying magnifying glasses and tornado men. There have been a couple attempts to resolve his story, but none of them have taken. Adam Strange #6 of 8 has him back on the science trail, finding out where someone has stolen his planet. The series has also been a tour of the present-day DC aliens and space teams, with Thangarians (Hawkman’s people - militaristic fascists), the Omega Men, and the LEGION (which is not the Legion of Superheroes, but does have a modern day version of Brainiac 5) all showing up

Ultimate Fantastic Four #16 is a reinvention of the original team. In this universe the FF got their powers much earlier, in teen-genius Reed Richard’s teleporter experiments. The Thing is a jock, not a war hero. The Invisible Girl is as smart as Richards. The Human Torch is still a weenie. And in the Negative Zone, they still meet a guy named “Annihulus”, and they still don’t get a clue that he’s a bad guy (well, the Thing does, which is why they bring him along).

And lastly we have the Fortean Times #194 – Huh? What’s that doing in the stash? Well, Bookworld ,where I get my comics also carries the magazine out of the UK, so I make it part of my stash. It’s a collection on the interesting and weird, UFOs and Bigfoot, and in this issue, they cover EVP** (in connection with the now-forgotten White Noise movie), and Foaf-tales (Foaf = Friend of a Friend). The most stable part is the reviews, which cover a large amount of popular weirdness.

More later,

*Remember I talked about Marvel’s strange numbering system? Well, this comes out of that, but in this case the first T-bolt book died a messy death, then came back as this one.
** Electronic Voice Phenomena - the dead want to talk to you, and they are willing to use AM Radio to do so. Insert dittohead joke here.

Karen Wynn Fonstad

Cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad has died of complications from breast cancer. The information is here.

In addition to producing the wonderful Atlas of Middle Earth and Atlas of Pern, Ms. Fonstad created the Dragonlance Atlas and the Forgotten Realms Atlas, and was was instrumental in transforming text from novels and game product into full representations of Krynn and the Realms, and grounded these fictional worlds with a sense of detail and reality.

More later,

Play: Death and Princesses

The Secret in the Wings, created and Directed by Mary Zimmerman, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Through March 26.th

Mary Zimmerman created two of my favorite plays - Metamorphoses, which took on the stories of Ovid and the ancient Greeks, and Odyssey, which brilliantly retold the saga of Ulysses. Both made ample use of a talented cast and the interweaving of individual stories, with an admixture of modern sensibilities and a wry sense of humor. The Secret in the Wings, which applies the same process to the Grimm fairy tales, is an earlier work, and if a little murkier than the later two, is still brilliant and thoughtful at the same time.

Its no surprise that the original pre-Disney fairy stories were much darker than their santitized, modern descendents (a fact impressed on me by an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show but it is a fact which is re-"discovered" every few years). And the Grimm tales that this production is built upon are grim indeed - infanticide, incest, self-mutation, being buried alive, murder, cannibalism, a veritable laundry list of the dark times these tales came out of. And the production neither pulls punches nor titilates, but rather barrels through, taking the dreamworld of faerie at face value and underscoring the tales told.

The organization of the play is like a set of Russian dolls, or the involuted tales from the Arabian Nights. Each story pauses at a climactic moment to allow another tale to begin, which spawns a third tale, and so on, and finally, closes every parenthesis in working its way back up to the original story like a diver rising from the murky depths. The outer framework is Beauty and the Beast, recast into a darkened midwestern cellar where young girl has to deal with a ogre babysitter who both has a tail and a tale. Each story fractures within the story before, until reaching the story of the Seven Swan Brothers, which completes in full, and then in turn answers each tale before (the Princess who never laughed, the two snakes of healing, the Princess who fled rather than marry her father), until returning again to the Beast, who is not a beast after all.

The tales, like the text, is ripe with uncomfortable sexuality on multiple fronts, yet handled with a deft touch, pulling from the rhythm of the told tales. The Princesses of the tales run the gammut but come out poorly (drowned, blinded, horribly lost). And the tales, like the original text, are oddly truncated, as loose ends abound and logical holes appear. Indeed, one sequence within the play shows the onging battle between reason and dream, between maturity and childhood, between reality and dream.

The company (most of whom have been on previous Zimmerman productions) is brilliant, comfortable, and solid. The stage dressing gave me problems, in that while it captured the spooky basement of a midwestern home (1001 Wisconsonian Nights, perhaps?) some of the set blocked the actors. So too, the use of a greek-style chorus on the speakers captured the moody, dreamy nature of the tales, but were distorted to the point of being incomprehensible in places. The intent seems to be to capture the half-heard, muddled feeling of fantasy, but it leaves the viewer wondering if he had missed something.

And yes, a working knowledge of the stories does help. I knew most of the Ovid and Homer from previous productions, but my own childhood lacked the scary horror stories of traditional fairy tales (I seem to remember coming across them in various tomes in the library with color-co-ordinated names). And while Zimmerman's later works seems sharper, The Secret in the Wings left me with thinking of dreams and childhood and old stories, grimm and otherwise.

More later,

While You Were Out . . .

Despite the empty patch on the blog, the world continued to happen around us. Here's an update, for those who use this blog for news and information (and I worry about that, sometimes):

How's the Economy? You know the old joke - it's a recession when you get laid off, it's a depression when I get laid off? Well, it's a recovery when three friends get gigs over the course of a week - Congrats to Brainstormfront, Stan!, and Mystical Forest on the new jobs. The stock market is bumbling along at just under 11000, and the dollar is weaker than a talk-show host's monolog, but at least there's hope.

Social Security? Turns out there isn't a crisis after all, unless we screw around with the system like we're planning to.Then we've got a crisis.

Homeland Security Alerts? The Technicolor rainbow of doom may be going the way of the dinosaur with new management in Homeland Security. On the other hand, Ferry security is getting an upgrade.

Clear Skies Initiative? The most cynically-named piece of legislation since No Child Left Behind didn't even get out of committee. Now they're back to trying to drill in ANWR. Bruce Cordell has details on that.

Iraq? We're still there. Afganistan, too. The good news is that my friend's daughter has rotated back from Kuwait, where she did her BOG. Bad news is that another friend in Kate's RPG group may be rotated out to the Big Sandy come fall.

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Never were any. Sorry about all the fuss.

Volcanoes of Mass Destruction? Why yes, Mt. St. H let off a good-sized plume of ash and steam, which drifted Northeast into the Yakima valley and beyond. You could see the plume from Portland. People in Seattle say this a lot - You can see the active volcano from Portland. Portland.

Weather Very, very dry. Horribly sunny. Miserably pleasant. Only Seattlites get worried about the lack of rain, and for good reason - we rely on the rainy season to get us through the summer months in our aquifer and snowpack. The Gov has told people to prepare for a very dry summer, and already plans are going into place. Seattle should be able to weather it without too much, at least for one season. It's the Eastern half of the state that's going to catch it in the teeth.

Gregoire? Still governor.

Rossi? Still trying.

Osama? Still missing.

More later? OK, more later.

What was in the Big Box?

For the past week and a half, Grubb Street has been practically untouched. My World of Warcraft characters have been on extended leave. My tapes of Iron Chef are gathering dust on the television. And my comics stash sits, unread, at a corner of my desk. And all because of the Big Box. The Big Box has dominated all my free time. So what was in the Big Box?

Games. Games were in the Big Box. A lot of games were in the Big Box, and I needed to read them all.



Here's the story: Every year the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design gives out awards for best games of the previous year, to be awarded at the Origins Game Convention in Columbus. This year, they are handling the nomination round differently. Instead of the normal free-for-all, they have chosen five experts in each field, who will among themselves choose what the final ballot for their category will look like. I found about about this through Matt Forbeck, and volunteered to help out as a Judge in the RPG category.

I volunteered for a number of reasons. I'm a believer in trying something before complaining about it. I don't have any product in the running in that category this year (I do have potential nominees in the miniatures category, which I'm not involved in). I thought it would be good thing to contribute. I'm a bit of old gaming grognard now, and can use my experience to help future generations. Why, yes, free copies were involved. And it was a bit slow at the office at the moment.

And it was not as if I was reviewing everything that was published last year. Getting a product to nomination is a two-stage process - the product had to be submitting for nomination (either by the manufacturer or one of the creatives), and then copies had to be sent to the Judges. There were very good products that were not under consideration simply because they were not submitted for nomination, or because copies were not sent for review.

So I volunteered, and got a Big Box of stuff. The Big Box took its time getting here, more the fault of UPS than the Awards Committee, but the time-frame for review was already pretty tight, in that we were expected to go through a large amount of product in a small amount of time (hey, we volunteered). I was fortunate that I had read some of the material under consideration in advance, but the missing box caused me to put out an APB with friends at Wizards of the Coast for their copies of some of the material.

And the pros at Wizards stepped up - Bill Slavicsek, Jonathan Tweet, Michelle Lyons, and John Rateliff all lent me products to get a leg up on the reviews. They got me a lot of product that was not otherwise available, including a lot of product from other manufacturers. Thanks guys.

So I've been reading. And creating characters. And running short combats. And reading outside reviews. And making calculations. Our gang (I'm not going to "out" any of my fellow judges) came up with a quick method of analysis to ultimately produce a "top ten" list from each judge, which would be combined to produce a nominations ballot. It worked out pretty well, in that the approach supported some products I knew were good, and also brought to my attention products that I might otherwise have passed on.

So my review is done, and the contribution turned in. And it's been a very interesting experience. I'll pass more information on as I get it. But it has sucked up every moment of available time.

More later,

Frost and Snow

Eighty years and two ago, Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", was published in New Republic magazine. Go ahead, read it. Yes, you can sing it to the tune of Hernando's Hideaway, if you must.

Olé!

More later,

Play: These and Those

The Chosen Adapted by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok from the novel by Chaim Potok, Directed by Aaron Posner, Seattle Rep, 5 Feb - 20 March

The Box and its younger sibling are both now here, and, having disgourged their contents onto my downstairs table, demand attention. Yet despite those demands, Kate and I got out Saturday afternoon to a wonderful performance of The Chosen.

The original piece has mileage on it - It was a good book in the 60's and and good movie in the 80's, and the theatrical version showed up in 1999 (At Pittsburgh's City Theatre, no less). It is the story of two Jewish boys who meet as opponents in a heated baseball game and become deep friends. Reuven (Connor J. Toms)) is Orthodox, 20th Century, and Americanized. Danny (Gabriel Baron) is Hassidic, Talmudic and Old World. It's Brooklyn. It's the End of WWII. It's generational change. Reuven's world is warm, cluttered, modern, and chaotic. Danny's world is colder, organzied, and pre-ordained. Reuven has an easy relationship with his academic father David (Larry Paulsen), while Danny and his rabbi father Reb Saunders (Eddie Levi Lee) do not speak, unless to discuss the Talmud. Each youngster is changed by the other, and both simultaneously disappoint and delight their fathers.

The play is compact and fits perfectly into the Leo K theatre. The backstage is divided into the fathers' studies - Reuven's study a cluttered, vibrant mess, Danny's a stately, imposing temple. Forestage takes up the rest of the actions - baseball field, hospital room, class hallways, with a minimum of set design. The cast is similarly compact at five - The two boys (wonderfully acted), the two fathers, and the elder Reuven (Aaron Serotsky), who glides beautifully between narator and bit player through the action. The cast is comfortable, and it no doubt helps that the director was also an adaptor of the original work.

This is a "Jewish play" in that it is rich Judaic history and lore, from Gematra to the Holocaust, but its also a "guy's play", which means its about communication and affection and how difficult it is to break through and how worthwhile it is once you do so. It has laughter, tears, pain, redemption, and fires off naturally and effectively. The narated framework works in that it doesn't distance the audience from the young men, but instead provides a link for them into a now-distant time and place.

If you get a chance, go see this one. It's been extended a week in its run.

More later, for the Box awaits.

Comics Stash

The Big Box has finally arrived, and its Evil Not-Twin-Brother Box is outside Spokane as I write this. No, I can't tell you what's in them - yet, but their very presence has caused me a lot of effort so far this week, and will cause spotty communications over the next week or so. However, it was a light week of comics as well, and I wrote the following before Big Box #1 arrived, Here's another spoilerific installment of Comics Stash.

Back when I was a lad, Marvel was the "simple" Universe, and DC was the "confusing" one. DC's stories took place mostly on Earth-1, but the Golden Age ones took place on Earth-2, which was the same as Earth-1 but Superman was around for WWII and you had things like the grown-up version of Robin and two Flashes and real old heroes like Mr. Terrific still hanging about. And there were Earth-3s, Earth-Primes, and Earth-Xs as well, which all led up to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which solved the problem, except it didn't. Marvel, on the other hand, had the Marvel Earth, and while there were all manner of alternates out there, most of the tales took place in the same universe. This was before the "What If?" story explosion and various future timelines, back when the Avengers fighting JLA clones known as the Squadron Supreme was a big thing.

Nowadays, Marvel exists in a whole heaping handful of universes, all with analogues of your favorite heroes, so there's no bet who, what, or where your character is. Tales from the past, tales from the future, tales from the futures that no longer apply, tales from universes where Spider-Man is a kid again, tales from the past of that universe where Spider-Man is a kid again. Take a dinner plate, hold it out at an arm's length, and drop it. The resulting pattern on the floor represents the state of Marvel Continuity.

Let's start with the Ultimate Marvel Universe, generally a good place for re-imagining Marvel Characters (see previous notes on Ultimate Nightmare). Ultimate Spider-Man # 73 re-introduces Harry Osborn, son of The Green Goblin, giving him some basis to become the Ultimate Hobgoblin, and giving him multiple grudges against Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Pretty good. On the other hand, Ultimate Iron Man #1, written by Orson Scott Card (more stunt casting in the writer's department) robs Tony Stark of his humanity, turning him into a kinda-mutant when his pregnant scientist mom gets infected by a super-monkey virus while carrying him (don't you just hate it when that happens?).

Meanwhile, in an alternate timeline of the Marvel Universe from about ten years back, the bad guy Apocalypse took over the world to create the Age of Apocalypse. Supposedly this future was wiped out, but now its back for the an anniversary with Age of Apocalypse#1 of 6 and the Age of Apocalypse one-shot. Neither adds a lot to the original, except to show a world that rebounded incredibly quickly from the nightmare Apocalypse-world of the first series. Add to this Apocalypso Exiles #60, which sends a band of heroes, whose job it is to bounce between the various Marvel "What If" universes, into this particular dimension. I'm as nostagic as the next geek, but how can I miss it if it won't go away?

So I mentioned the Squadron Supreme, Marvel's pseudo-JLA from another universe. J. Micheal Stracynski (see the last "Comics Stash"), has re-imagined the characters so they are an entirely new universe (so now with Earth-Marvel-Squadron-1 for the old versions, and Earch-Marvel-Squadron-2 for the new versions). Doctor Spectrum #5 is the story of the Squadron's Green Lantern clone, who has an alien power gem mounted to the back of his hand. It is back story while the main tale continues elsewhere.

Marvel Team Up #6 is a relaunch of the old title, though it does not stop at merely teaming up X and Y. The Spidey/Wolverine teamup is tied into a Doc Strange/FF team up which moves to a Spidey/Wolverine's daughter team-up and now a Captain America/Blackwidow/Spidey/Wolverine's Daughter teamup. The big bads in this story arc have been a kid that explodes, a Tony Stark from an alternate future Marvel Universe where he turns into Doctor Doom, and a nasty badguy who stays in the background for the entire arc, only showing up to beat up Sunfire, who doesn't Team-Up with anyone. Its a bit of a muddle, and a good analogy for the core Marvel Universe.

The only Marvel book to stay in its home universe entirely this week is Captain America and the Falcon #13. And in this, an Evil Cap is running around acting like the Punisher working for the Neo-Cons. The Falcon is reverting to his urban "Snap" personality. And the real Cap gets shot in the head by a punk and dies. I'll admit I'm curious about how this turns out.

Over in DC, Justice League Elite #9 is grappling with the same problem as the Invaders over in Marvel - the team is supposed to play rougher than its parent group, but without the common ethics of being "super-heroes", the group has pretty much self-destructed. The team consists of heroes pretending to be villains, villains trying to be heroes, a villain trying to be a hero but turning out to be a villain, and Green Arrow, because Green Arrow is the Wolverine of the DCU and needs to be everywhere, every week. So far on the team we have one death, one suicide, one betrayal, one apparent betrayal, and a lot of carnage without a lot of upside.

Lastly, The Intimates #5 belongs to the Wildstorm universe, an offshoot of DC (The Authority lives there), and deals with a bunch of super-powered kids at super-powered high school. What I like about the book is that it comes with footnotes, making it the most text-heavy book of the lot, but pulls it off in a smooth fashion that works with the storytelling. The theme in this issue is one of teen suicide, and the characters handle it like, well, high school students.

That's it. Big Box has arrived - things will quiet down here for a little while.

More later, but later than you would expect.

Novel: Borges in Waterdeep

Perdido Street Station by China Mièville, Del Rey

Here’s an ugly secret about writers – when they read other people’s work, they’re always thinking, “Yeah, I could do that.” Seriously. Whether its Joe Conrad or Tom Clancy, Naked Lunch or The Da Vinci Code, at the heart, the writer who reads is evaluating, comparing, thinking, “Yeah, I could have done that, given enough time/interest/encouragement/drugs”.

And then you hit something like Perdido Street Station and you just let out your breath in a whistle of admiration and admit that you’ve been beat.

The first 400 pages or so of this book are fantastic and fascinating, engaging in a way that few books are. Mièville takes the time to spin out the world around his characters and brings the plot in slowly, growing organically from his characters’ actions and desires. And it’s a jewelbox of a world, a beautiful setup necessary for what is to come.

The center of the book is the city, New Crobuzon, a fantasy city in a fantasy world. But it’s an advanced fantasy of wheel-lock pistols and steam engines, melded effortlessly with thaumaturgic engines, flesh-twisted humans, and scientific approaches to spellcasting. It is a multi-racial city as well, with humans predominant but other races such as bug-headed khepri, vulture-like garuda and cactus men, all of which have their own outlooks both as races and, more importantly, as individuals. And lastly, it is a city of transitions, as the flavor of one neighborhood flows into the next, changed by purpose, population, and industry into a new thing, but difficult to say where the change occurs.

The city feels like Paris, which I have visited, but it also feels like Buenos Aires, the one I only know from reading Jorge Luis Borges. It is alien and accessible and always viewed in different lights and from different angles. It is always in motion, and always at rest.

Most of the book is all about transformations, evolutions, and transitions. New Crobuzon is in the Interzone of William Burroughs, a city made up of disparate, often conflicting parts, and his main players are similarly creatures that live in the gaps between worlds. Isaac is a young mad scientist whose brilliance gives him a long tether from his university masters. Lin is his lover, an insect-headed xeno whose art defies the norms of her more traditional sisters. Both are given commissions for work, Isaac by a wingless vulture man who wishes to fly, and Lin by a polyglot crimelord looking for a self-portrait. These challenges set in motion a series of events that ultimately unleashes a plague of nightmare creatures on the city itself.

And through the bulk of the book, Mièville pulls it off elegantly and smoothly. He missteps once when action is finally demanded, descending into the organizational melee rounds of keeping track of multi-body combat, and again when he calls in “adventurers” to help (the societal role of an adventuring “class” in a fantasy universe is the subject of another essay). At this point, he teeters on the edge of mere pedestrian reporting, to the point that I can say, “yeah, I could do that.” But he recovers through the actions of his characters who are characters first, and heroes fourth or seventh or tenth. He flirts with genre but does not embrace it.

I have always felt that Conan’s creator, Robert E. Howard, would be comfortable among the barbarians of Greyhawk, and that Grandfather Tolkien would be at home at the Old Skull Inn in Shadowdale. New Crobuzon is someplace that Bill Burroughs and Borges could be found playing chess at a sidewalk café. Furthermore, New Corbuzon feels like it could have been an influence on WotC’s new Eberron setting. The similarities are striking, from techno-magical devices to living constructs (ReMade in the novel, Warforged in Eberron), to the whole “lost generation” noirish feel that pervades the air around the cities. If you’re a fan of Eberron, this would be a book to check out. Even if you’re not a fan, it’s a rich, rewarding novel, which encourages me to find the author’s other work.

Because I am not afraid to say that I might (I said MIGHT) be able to do something this good, but it would be an uphill fight.

More later,