Going to China

So this week I found out (I think through the Stranger Blog) that China Mieville was going to be at the University Bookstore reading from his new novel, Un Lun Dun. I really have live China's novels and wanted to hear him read. I mentioned it to the Monkey King, who had previously done a lot of work with Mr. Mieville on a huge recent issue of DRAGON magazine (still available in your finer stores) on the world China presented in Perdido Street Station and other novels.

So we met down there. It was an excellent turnout (to be read: they had to set more chairs to handle the crowd). China read for about ten minutes, and in those ten minutes, convinced me to buy the book. The book (a young adult novel) has that hidden London vibe of Gaiman's Neverwhere, but in addition some beautiful passages, as well as pictures of meat-eating giraffes and trashcan-shaped Binjas (British pun).

China himself looked and sounded good, though seemed a bit worn from the tour. But there is nothing like a British accent for a reading. He was patient with all of the questions, though preferred to be talking about the new stuff as opposed to the earlier books. His favorite volume of his earlier trilogy was also mine, he recommended books on Pirates and garbage, he explained his writing process (binge and purge), and generally gave the viewpoints into writing that the outside world demands but does not fully understand. The question I wanted to ask was "do you feel that Revolution can only be sustained in a moment of time", but when I got his autograph, all I could do was congratulate him on his monsters.

Afterwards Wolf and I retired to the Big Time Pub on University Avenue, where we were accidentally joined by most of the Paizo publishing staff, who were also at the reading. Paizo publishes Dragon and Dungeon Magazines, so they know Monkey King, but of the group I only knew Erik, and then remember him as a young pup at WotC (yes, my age is catching up with me). The "new kids" were Jason, Wes, James, and Erik's young lady Danika, and I remembered that the last time I was at the Big Time, former Dragon Editor Dave Gross was telling me his Shakespear conspiracy theories. Ah, the passage of the generations. Still, we had a fine old time talking about Milwaukee, the viaduct, old games, older gamers, and new projects.

And a fine time was had by all.

More later

Someday, We All Will Be on YouTube

So a long while back I mentioned that I had a tiny bit part in a movie, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising which should get a release real soon now. And we had a party which we showed some of the movie, including my tiny bit part. Well now the clip with my tiny bit part has made it to YouTube, along with an tiny bit of the interview I did that afternoon for GGTV.

And the only reason I found out was that one of my fellow Tai Chi students was a "stunt ninja" in the shoot. "You're on YouTube!" was the phrase he greeted me with. Not quite "Your Chi is Mighty!," but it will do.

Please count this against my 15 minutes of fame.

More later,

The Jeff Recommends: Good Comics

So enough whinging and moaning about Civil War. There are a number of worthwhile, interesting, fun comics out there for your perusal, even if they don't get the same level of attention as the mega-events. Here are some.

Truth, Justin, and the American Way is by Scott Kurtz (of PVP fame) Aaron Williams (Nodwick) and Giuseppe Ferrario. You liked the old TV show, The Greatest American Hero? This is that book. Indeed, it exists in TV-Land of the 80s, and has cameos of every sitcom and action star of that era. Five issues, it just wrapped up, and they really should do a trade (Image Comics).

Nextwave by Warren Ellis (Writer) has also wrapped up with 12 issues and needs a trade as well, is just brain-melting goodness. The concept is that a group of lower-tier heroes (Machine Man, Bloodstone's daughter, Boom-Boom from the New Mutants, the black female Captain Marvel) discover the corporation they are working for is evil and strike back. It sounds serious, but it really isn't, taking massive swings at all that comics holds dear, from SHIELD to Forbush Man to Elvis MODOKs. Good for what ails you (Marvel).

New Universal, also by Warren Ellis exumes the corpse of one of Marvel's frequent attempts to open up a new universe, in particular, their New Universe from the 80s. The original was painful in places at the time (it was touted as "The World Outside Your Window", and then they blew up Pittsburgh), the new version is getting off the blocks and looks interesting. (Marvel).

Helmet of Fate, a little miniseries of four unrelated issues that is supposed to set up DC's magic in its post infinity-crisis era. The best of the group are Sargon the Sorceror and Black Alice. Detective Chimp was fun, but pretty much set up as a funny funny-book.(DC)

Brave and the Bold How can I recommend a book (by Mark Waid, words, and George Perez, pictures) after one issue? Well, its like this - A long while ago, in comics time, Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan went a little nuts, turned into a villain, and offed the rest of the Green Lanterns, among other crimes. He got better, but there were trust issues with the JLA, in particular Bruce (Batman) Wayne. So I was dubious about a teamup book launching with these two. And much to my surprise, there wasn't a word about the psycho-history, instead an old-school mystery and punch-em-up that rewards the silver-haired fans of days of yore.

Daredevil and Immortal Iron Fist, both currently by Ed Brubaker, but Daredevil has some good earlier stuff by Brian Bendis. Here's a great example of pushing the heroes beyond their comfort zones and forging new territory. Over in Daredevil Matt Murdock is outed as a superhero in a fine old style, and gives Daredevil a new starting point without either negating the change or the character. Over in Iron Fist (about three issues in), Brubaker turns the 70s kung fu champion into a line of legacy heroes. I really disliked the retcon this writer pulled on the X-Men (short version, Professor X IS a jerk), but here he shines. (Marvel)

Welcome to Tranquility Twin Peaks weirdness in a town of retired superheroes. Nice off the beaten track stuff from Gail Simone, who wrote the Black Alice book. (Wildstorm)

The Spirit (Jeff Loeb, writer)Three issues in, go looking for the previous ones. There is no character so identified with his creator as the Spirit, and this series both gives its props to the master, Will Eisner, but does not copy. All the tales are excellent and accessible, and around issue three, we get an origin story. (DC)

Girl Genius Available only as collections and worth hunting down, this great series is now running as a web comic that you can follow Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I mention it here because it looks like it is just starting a new arc. Danger! Romance! Mad Science! (Studio Foglio).

So there ARE good comics - they just don't get the attention of "mega-events" from their companies.

More later,

Stay, Al, Stay!

So an irresponsible online poster (that would be CNN), unleashed the rumor that, upon winning the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore would announce his intention to run for President, despite his repeated dousings of cold water on the idea previously.

While Mr. Gore is capable of making up his own mind, I hope he doesn't run.

I mean, right now, Al Gore has all the benefits of being a former President of the US without having to have actually gone through the pain and agony of actually BEING the President of the US. He's been able to focus on issues that matter to him and carries with him the gravitas of his office. He's been able to make jokes without becoming a viagra punchline. His daughters have steady jobs as opposed to well-thumbed files at the National Enquirer. He has a sense of gravitas from a media that gave him grief when he was veep. Why would he want to give up all that, for the chance to literally clean up after the Elephant at the circus?

The moment Gore declares, the Right Wing Pundits go into full howl, and the mere fact that past few years have been a cavalcade of graft, incompetence, and corruption, they will dig as deeply as they need to. Remember - Al was once present at a fundraiser where there may have been funds raised! Boo! Oh, and he's boring, remember? Right now he catches the occasional potshot, but gets to revel in the fact that he has been right on his issues all along. An inconvenient truth, indeed.

And indeed I think a big part of the appeal of an Al Gore Candidacy is that he is unavailable. "You had your chance", the left can sniff. "You don't deserve him" (Like we deserve what we ended up with). It is also a bolt hole for voters - allowing them to say "I would have voted for Al, but as a second choice I will settle for Hil/Barry/John-Boy/Mitt". It is a failsafe device, since all your supporters don't have to worry about actually dealing with the fact that you might win, and what happens then.

No, enjoy the moment, Al. You can put on a few pounds or grow a beard and the national media does not flip out. You can have a life and actually have an effect on the world around you. It is very strange that our former Democratic Presidents have a more active public life than our former Republicans, and you've got that already. Savor the moment, and best of luck tonight.

More later,

Steve Shafer

So, long-time friend Steve Shafer (That's him on the left) celebrated his 50th birthday this afternoon with a party that involved a large group of his friends taking to Lake Union in small boats on a scavenger hunt.

Let me explain.

Steve's lovely bride, Kelly, made arrangements with the Seattle Electric Boat Company for a party, in groups of 10 or so we all took electric boats (about twenty feet in length), given a camera and a list of things to find. The ship named after Tolkien's first novel (Hobbit), the ship named after the Norse goddess of love (Freya, though we never found it), count the smokestacks on the top of a local genetics building or the dishes on top of Channel 13.

We thought we did very well, in part since we had me and my Lovely Bride, a champion navigator, and a lot of people who were long-term natives of Seattle. And despite a rather hairy moment with a landing seaplane (we zigged and it zigged in our direction, we zagged and it zagged back), we thought we did pretty well. Alas, the other boats ALSO had long-term natives, and we didn't even place (mind you, we were CONVINCED we had found everything correctly, which may have just been madness of the sea).

Still, we had a great time, and wish Steve a most merry birthday at the half-century mark, and promised we would spread his adorable mug, complete with pirate hat, far and wide. Such in the gift of the Internets.

More later,

Comics: Uncivil War

So it is two in the morning, and I am up with an upset stomach and I THINK it was something I ate as opposed to the wrap-up of the Marvel Civil War mega-event, but why take chances? This is presented in spoiler-vision (TM) means that I go on with this intro until I reach the point that I get past the cut-off of the RSS feeds, just so I don't give anything away to those who really want to be, uh, surprised.

OK, here's the short version - at least it wrapped up sooner than the Iraqi Civil War, but unfortunately, just about as neatly.

The concept which let up to this dog's breakfast is pretty interesting - there is a superhero disaster in which innocents are killed. A group of superheroes, including the supposedly smartest guys on the planet, decide the best answer is to register all superheroes and reveal their identities. Those that don't go along are hunted down and thrown into a Gitmo in the Negative Zone. Iron Man leads the pro-registration group, while Captain America leads the rebel forces. I've said before, it is not a left-versus-right argument, but rather one of head versus heart - the thinking heroes against the feeling heroes. Spider-Man starts in one camp and ends up in the other.

And the thinking heroes have been at a disadvantage since they are forced into all sorts of twisted rationalizations to support this Very Bad Idea, often going back on their very core ethics in order to pull it off (Mr. Fantastic, who STOLE A ROCKET at the start of his career, stressed the importance of obeying laws, even bad ones. Tony Stark, whose technology seems to go rogue more often than his employees get lunch breaks, thinks superheroes have too much power). Also, the pro-registration guys have to fight Captain America. How can Captain America be wrong? Over the course of this much-delayed event, Spider-Man is outed, Thor comes back as an insane clone, the dead original Captain Marvel returns, heroes die messily, and supervillains are put in positions of trust and authority.

Through it all, continuity was a hash, as characters who fled to Canada or France were suddenly back in the mix, characters who were dead were suddenly living, and characters who backed one ethos suddenly were on the other team. There was some good writing in all this in the required tie-ins- the Black Panther books provided a refreshing island of sanity and McDuffie, the new FF writer, came up with a better reason for Mr. F to be such an ass that was in keeping with his background (Reed Richards invents psychohistory and discovers that unless they do this, humanity dies. OK, then. What's Tony's excuse?). But in general it has been a slow, painful crawl through broken glass. I ended up dropping books, a rarity for me during the fever of a crossover.

And how does it end up? With a big superhero battle with each side upping the stakes. Cap's side breaks into Camp 42, Tony's side is waiting for them, Cap's side breaks out the prisoners to help them, Tony's side tries to trap them, Cap's side has Cloak (I think he was dead, once), teleport everyone to downtown Manhattan, Cap's side takes another turn as the Atlanteans attack, Tony's side brings in the New Superheroes they've been cobbling together, including the Cloned Thor, Hercules kills Cloned Thor making a Dan Quayle-era quote, etc .... And it all comes to down to Captain America and Iron Man brawling together.

And Captain America almost wins, except a group of New Yorkers stop him, and he realizes that in the battle they are being the very threat that Tony's registration forces worry about. So he surrenders.

And there you have it. Head beats heart. Brains beat emotions. Smarts beat feeling because feeling cannot rationalize away its crimes and smarts can. Bleah.

There is a long epilogue after that of Reed writing to get Sue back, which has a bit of a magic wand approach, though the words are undercut by what is being shown. There is an "Amnesty" for all the rebels (meaning what - they get to register? Wasn't that what they were fighting in the first place?) Everyone loves the idea of an extradimensional prison for malcontents outside due process. Tony Stark is made director of SHIELD, since there's no chance of him losing control of THAT technology. Fifty new superhero teams are formed, one for every state (controlled by the state legislatures? The national government?(Though they do show one of my favorite under-used teams of the 80s, the Rangers)).Cap becomes Nelson Mandela, penned up in a cell (while all the other rebels freed and supervillains get on the teams? Huh?). And there is an aside that underground rebellion continues, with Cap's former allies making up the "cool-kid" Rebel Avengers (Luke Cage, Spidey, Wolverine, and Doc Strange, for Galactus's sake), while the "recognized, official Avengers consists of Iron Man, the female version of Captian Marvel, the female version of the Hulk, and uh, some other guys who never got permanent books of their own. We're not stacking the deck here at all.

Oh, and the prison was called "42' (a play on DC's 52) because it was the 42nd Great Idea that Reed came up with make the world a safer place. 43 is cleaning up SHIELD, which apparently involves humiliating the former director. Man, I'd love to see the rest of that list - #35 was to alienate every black hero in the Marvel Universe. #36 was to clone Thor but make him more amoral. #37 was to kill off a black hero just to show they mean business. I thinking screwing up Peter Parker's life had to be in the first dozen, because Spider-Man obviously wasn't suffering enough for the rest of humanity to survive. Ooo! And Tony hiring the Titanium Man to attack Congress to make his point. THAT has to be in the first five! I bet they had to drop universal health care in order to get that in.

End result? Frustration, and a grisly curiosity about where this open-ended disaster is going next The answer is - THE RECONSTRUCTION, I mean, THE INITIATIVE. I applaud attempts to put heroes outside their comfort zones and to create events that do have long-lasting effects on the continuity of their universes. But I would not use this series to support either concept as a good idea.

More later (Nope, stomach still hurts),

Random Notes from the National Desk

Sometimes things just happen too fast to make serious fun of:

On Monday, there was a news blip about how the third-in-line to the throne of England was preparing for deployment in his Grandma's Army. And on a Tuesday we have the sudden announcement that the British Army has won the war (their part of it, anyway) and is going to go home.

It turns out that a big Terrorist Financier is also a big GOP donor. The fact that the NRCC is recommending withholding judgment should be a note to all other Terrorist Financiers - give to the Republicans and we won't forget about due process when you get caught. I swear, every time I think the modern GOP has hit bottom (Outing a CIA Agent, Supporting a sexual predator congressman, shooting an elderly man in the face), it punches through the floor and drops another hundred feet. What's left? Selling indulgences?

Of course, the scandal the Republicans are desperately trying to get traction on is the fact that the Speaker of the House gets a (Homeland-Security mandated) plane. By this point in the non-scandal, all they have left is that the Speaker's plane is larger than the previous Speaker's plane. Yep, let me say it again: The pale males at the GOP and FOX have plane envy.

And speaking of humor, last week a member of the NBA said something stupid about gay Americans. Hey, we don't pay these guys way too much money for their brains. Now while superstar Charles Barkley is kissing refs on the lips to show support for the gay community, George Takei unleashes this video, which not only makes Jimmy Kimmel's latenight show relevant, but puts Sulu up there with Shatner in establishing a new career in taking shots at his own image.

I swear, this is why I'll never write comedy. I just can't keep up with reality.

More later,

Barenaked Ladies

I apologise for posting something that some may not be able to read (It is a YouTube Video), but this made me smile, because:

A) Despite my advanced years, I found it to be a great tune.

and

B) Despite my advanced years, I recognized a lot of the YouTube acts featured on the video, like Dancing Matt and the Mentos guys.

More later,

Blogger Busted

So I'm not posting as much at the moment. Part of it is the workload, but part of it is the nature of Blogger itself.

Last year, Blogger was bought by Google, who promised to "improve" the service. So far, the improvements seem to be similar to the ones AMC brought to Harley-Davidson, or CBS brought to the Fender Stratocaster guitar (or more locally, New Times brought to the now-undead Seattle Weekly). After a few months of warnings, my old blogger account no longer functioned, and I had to create a Google account in order to access my blog.

This is followed by the discovery, after making the irreversible change, that the new system does not support my current Mac browser, Safari (yes, I can get another browser, but see the top paragraph - I'm a little busy at the moment). So if I blog, it is off the portable - very doable, but I have other things I do with it.

And then, through arcana of the new process, I am writing in a default New York font, then having to change it all over to Verdana when I am done. Again, there is probably a better way, but it is not particularly elegant at the moment.

So I am muddling through,and pushing off reviews and comments for later. And thinking seriously about picking up another service. Any recommendations?

More later (I hope),

In the 21st Century

So this morning I am talking to a friend in Hing Hay Park in the International District, next to a pagoda made in Shanghai. I'm in Hing Hay park. My friend is in Brooklyn. Somewhere in the ether between us communication occurs.

While I'm on the phone, a group of young people come up the street, with cymbals and drums. They stop at a flower shop, six of them dress up as dragons, and they set off firecrackers. I start to explain what must sound like gunfire and he breaks in "I understand. Happy New Year".

I think it is finally sinking in that I'm in a different century now.

No flying cars, though.

More later,

Politics

Three items, spanning from national to local:

Item One: Blogroller Nikchick posted an entry on our relentless drumbeat to an Iranian War, as well as submitted it to own local paper, the P-I. Her original entry is here, and the letter column version is here. Good going, Nicole.

Item Two: One of the downsides of continual democracy is that elections pop up like mushrooms after the rain. There was one for the King County Conservation District yesterday, and word percolated out through the blogs. Usually these get really low numbers of votes, but in this case there was a pretty hefty turnout at the limited number of open polls.

Item Three: The Sonics have announced they want to move to Renton, provided we give them tons of money. The location they are looking at is at a narrow spot between the Renton Highlands and the lake (and, as noted by the P-I, not for sale at the moment). Two roads run near that patch of land going North/South - I-405 and Lake Washington Blvd. If this goes through I despair of ever being able to commute home from work ever again.

More later,

While I Was Gone ...

When I was on the road I had limited Internet (WiFi only from the hotel lobby) and Media acess (TV was out in the room). As a result, my news consisted of the front page of the USA Today left at in the elevator lobby. So I missed a few things ....

...An astronaut flew into a jealous rage and went a little crazy, getting more press ink than any of the shuttle missions she went on.

...A former Playboy Playmate who had an outrageous life experienced an outrageous death, getting more press ink than all the shuttle astronauts who ever flew.

...Several candidates declared that they wanted the most unwanted job in the world - cleaning up the mess left by the current administration.

... Republican sources announced, and the media duly reported, that the new, Democrat, Speaker of the House demanded an Air Force Jet to get back to her home district. Then it was revealed that her Republican predecessor got the same deal, and that Homeland Security demanded it, not her. Leaving the only controversy being why the media would report such a thing as "news".

...The head of the Cartoon Network resigned after a major American city spazzed out, confusing guerilla marketing with guerilla infiltration. Namely, a promotion for Aqua Teen Hunger Force (hey, I don't make these up) was suspected as being a terrorist lite-brite. Similar devices were found in the Seattle area, whose local governments reacted badly by merely removing the devices and not panicking, and as a result not getting a cool two mill for their overeaction (well, I hope we learned an important lesson there).

... And yeah, other people noticed that at $2 million, the corporate prank was still cheaper than buying time at the Superbowl (where the only commercial I remember is Robert Goulet sneaking into your office and messing with your stuff).

...The court marshal of a US Soldier who refused to deploy to Iraq was declared a mistrial, even though said soldier was not allowed to offer a defense. This, of course, got less column space than a crazy astronaut or a dead playmate.

...We had extreme weather in upstate New York in the form of very heavy snow, which allowed people to sniff about global warming while conveniently ignoring an example of catastrophic climate change.

... We seem to have succeeded in Iraq while I was gone, since we're now busy planning to attack Iran.

... Apparently things are going real well in Afghanistan, too. There hasn't been any news on that at all. We must have caught that Osama guy, and I just missed it.

Then again, maybe I should just check into another hotel for a week.

More later,

Voice of Thunder

So while I was in New York, my hotel caught fire.

I was dreaming of designing a game about a spider going up a water spout, chased by cats and avoiding drops, when I was roused from my sleep by a voice over the loudspeaker:

Attention Residents! There is No Danger! Do not evacuate!

This was at four in the morning. Needless to say, I was suddenly very awake.

Attention Residents! There is No Danger! Do not evacuate!

And at that point, I was aware that I had a loudspeaker in my room. And for some reason, this did not make me feel particularly secure.

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! There is No Danger! Please stay in your rooms.

OK, let me roll over and go back to sleep!

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! There has been a small fire on the 2nd floor. The fire department has been called. There is No Danger! Do not evacuate!

And now I heard the sound of water running, in the walls. It was the reason I was dreaming of water downspouts. It sounded like a river. And somewhere in the distance the peeping of a fire alarm. And in the air, the faint smell of .... smoke?

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! There has been a small fire on the 2nd floor. The fire department has it under control. There is No Danger! Please stay in your rooms.

So I stayed, in particular since the Voice of Thunder was going off every minute, I was not getting back to sleep. And every time I thought I would, it went off again.

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! A burst pipe has caused a small fire on the 2nd floor. The fire department has it under control There is No Danger! Do not evacuate!

So why are you telling me this? I am 21 floors above it?

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! A burst pipe on the 29th floor has caused a small fire on the 2nd floor. The fire department has put the fire out! There is No Danger! Do not evacuate!

Well, that explains the water in the walls, at least.

And so it went throughout the early morning hours.

Attention Residents! This is the Head of Hotel Security! Have you ever wondered if you've chosen the correct path in your life?

OK, they didn't say that, but it went on forever, repeating itself in case someone might have missed the previous twenty reports. Finally, it abated, and they let the people who apparently ignored the warnings and came down go back to their rooms (Yeah, they announced that as well).

And in the morning the power was out for half of the hotel, the elevators were on manual, and there was the smell of smoke in the air.

Of the Voice of Thunder, however, there was no sign. I think he went home to bed.

More later,

Hole in the Heart

So I am in New York City. The whys and wherefores do not matter, and, to be honest, I can’t discuss what I’m up to at the moment. But the discussions and meetings had a hole, about three hours in size, large enough to allow a trip into the frigid outside world beyond the hotel. I had not been in the city for about a decade, and while much is the same, some things have changed - more flatscreens everywhere, the Toy Building is going condo, and Times Square is more brilliant and gaudy than ever.

So I went to Ground Zero to pay my respects. It’s been a decade since I’ve been here.

When I came into the city earlier in the week it was just after twilight, and the Empire State and Chrysler buildings were lit up, dominating their neighbors. I’ve never been a native New Yorker, but New York is in the national blood – its locations are familiaf to us. The city and its various districts and boroughs belong to the national consciousness (unlike LA, where all of its locations are punchlines, but that’s another tale). Anyway, coming into the city from JFK I could not help but smile from the strange warmth and familiarity that it gave off.

And then I looked towards the south, and there was a hole in the skyline, and my throat got thick and my eyes watered a little. There is still a hole in the heart of Manhattan.

I got on the E train to go downtown this afternoon. “We don’t give change” said the woman at the booth. “I’m new here,” I said. “You go to that machine and you can get a single ride pass. It costs two dollar. We don’t give change. The machines work. Those idiots say they don’t, but they don’t know nothing. They work, just follow the directions.” And the machines worked and spat out a ticket and I descended into the subway and caught the E train to the last stop.

Now a decade ago I would be shameless in my open distain, even hatred, of the World Trade Center. And I would not be alone in that opinion – they were ugly buildings, buck teeth planted at the end of the island, far from the true heart of Manhattan. They weren’t elegant in appearance, like the Empire State, or even novel in design, like the Sears Tower in Chicago. They were ugly. brutish buildings, and to make matters worse, their first movie appearance was with Tom Hanks in the horrible, horrible movie “Mazes and Monsters”. So I have no love for the towers. But now they are gone and the hole is left and I miss them.

And subway let out right on the edge of the construction. A heritage sign along the road still talks about them in present tense, as an engineering marvel. The site itself has been excavated, and the foundations and infrastructure are already going in, including the rail lines. You can navigate around the entire site, so I paced around it, alongside a damaged building still being deconstructed, along the various fences and windows, through the Winter Garden, and along the north side. I was not alone - there were others, still surprised, and shocked, and angry and sad, who came to see and picture the structure as it was and as it may yet be (and just a note – the models of the planned structures look a lot better in three-dimensions than the artistic renditions I’ve seen).

And in the end I got back on the subway going north and a pair of hiphoppers danced and panhandled and got out at the gaudy Time Square where a group of young girls under watchful police eyes were waiting for someone named Hillary to finish taping an interview with MTV. But there was one other thing at the site.

On other of the pedestrian overpasses, an artist had put in an installation called “Floodwall” It was nothing but drawers – simple drawers, wooden, warped, and water-damaged, from chests and closets that once held simple things, all on end, all along the length of the passage. The only thing odd about these peeling, bleached, wooden drawers was that they were from New Orleans, rescued from the rubble of Katrina, brought north and laid out in a vista along the side of Ground Zero.

There is a hole in the heart of Manhattan. There are other holes in the heart of America.

Update: It has been noted that actually, the 1976 version of King Kong predates the 1982 release of Mazes and Monsters (Thanks, Bradon!). Rather than just make the change above into "one of the first film appearences" or something similarly weaselly, I will just not the change here, since it allows me to state again that Mazes and Monsters really blew chunks.

Make Levees, Not War

So I have been very, very busy of late, both in the office and on my own time, and haven't done a lot of posting. But I came across this, first on the Pittsburgh Press site, then at the P-I (though nothing from the Seattle Times). In short, it says that a lot of levees need repaired.

The article, pretty much identical in the Press and the P-I, makes a passing reference to the fact that a lot of the sites are located in Washington State, though this seems to just be passed on without much comment by our local press. This is particularly interesting since, if you check out the pdfed list, you find that a lot of the areas of concern, where maintenance of the levees has been turned over to local authorities and since lapsed, are along the Cedar and Green Rivers.

These rivers are very close to here, like just down the hill from us. And indeed, both are rivers that had historically different and often random paths before the authorities channeled and leveed them into submission. The Green is particular was known for frequent flooding, and the region now occupied by WotC, the big Southcenter Mall, and the upcoming Federal Reserve Bank, were all regularly flooded (there was a racetrack in this area once, and I have seen pictures of it underwater).

But just because the local waterway was once tamed does not mean it stays tamed, and the heavy rains of the past few years have given concern. Now the feds are voicing the same concern, to the tune that the locals either have to get on the ball, or those in the floodplains will have to pony up for flood plain insurance.

Given that a lot of large businesses (commercial and light industry) are now in the path of the Green, I have a feeling that we will be hearing about this again in the near future.

More later,

Now If I Can Just Get His Royalties ....

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

More later,

Gaming On Bainbridge

So Martin Stever, late of Cap City and WizKids, has relocated across the Sound to Bainbridge Island, where he and his lovely wife and child have a nice house not too far from the ferry himself. And he has regularly, since moving out there a few years back, invited me out to one of his frequent gaming afternoons.

And most times I have not been available, whether from deadlines or other life-requirements (the most recent being when Steve Miller broke his ankle and I spent some time at the ER with him). But today I didn't have any commitments, so I headed across the water. Parked the Hybrid under the Viaduct (parking free on Sunday) and walked on the ferry. And the trip across was smooth as silk, a great way of getting across the Sound if you're just going to Bainbridge. It actually had a WoW vibe to it with the zeppelins - get on, get off, you're there.

The afternoon itself was pretty amusing - played two new games for a total of five times Vegas Showdown was an amusing game of casino building, where you're fitting slots, gaming rooms, eateries and even theaters on into your casino. It had a nice, breezy style to it, with a lot of things that reminded me of Vegas (twisty, turning passages, for example, or continual labor problems). It has a lot of nice little grace notes, and plays pretty well. Recommend it.

The other game was Blue Moon City, a Reiner Knizia game from Fantasy Flight. It is one of those cooperative/competitive games where you are trying to rebuilt a fantasy city, and want to make sure that the dragons see you do it so they will reward you, with the goal of turning in gems so you get the top billing on the obelisk in the center of the city. One of the group had played it a number of times before, but we promptly took it in some strange directions. In the first game, we were so competitive that we tied (the game was decided by a secondary victory condition), and in the second game we all sat on our resources that we outstripped the game's components (we had to keep track secondarily, and I would have won if I had but one more victory component. I would not say we broke the game, but we did sprain it.

But then the trip back (after a highspeed race to get to the docks before the ferry pulled out). It was near sunset, and the sun was behind us, cutting through a light red shroud of clouds. Seattle itself was illuminated like a gem against the hills and not-so-distant mountains, Rainier was out in full view, and you could even see the shadowy form of Adams to the north. The city was a jewelbox, and even the much-bemoaned viaduct along the edge gave it a toylike, train-set quality. It was a reminder why I live out here. That and when I got off, I walked two blocks to Elliot Bay bookstore, which was still open at 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon, and picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Yeah, after all the snow and bad weather, I needed to be reminded why I'm out here.

More later,

A Little Promotion

So first off, fellow Alliterate Wolfgang, known to parts around here as the Monkey King, commands a large percentage of this month's Dragon Magazine with a series of articles on China Mieville's excellent world of Bas-Lag. Bas-Lag is the setting of his novels, including Perdido Street Station (reviewed here). Wolf revealed his work on the project to our Alliterates months ago, and I, for one, have been incredibly jealous ever since. If the magazine is not enough, he has a couple more monsters that did not make it into the mag here and here.

In other news, Guild Wars Nightfall has been nominated for Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. I'm delighted on behalf of my co-workers, and it is a honor to be nominated.

More later,

The I-65 Superbowl

So this year, at least, I'm not at all conflicted. Last year, it was my home town (which bleeds black and gold) against my adopted city (which is proud of the fact that it is louder, and that part of the reason is engineering behind their stadium). This year, no prob. Da Bears over the Colts.

I was in Lake Geneva during the years of the Super Bowl Shuffle (the 'Hawks, by the way, never got a goofy themesong, which puts them behind Pittsburgh, where every freakin' radio station had its own "Go Steelers" song), so even though everything has changed (except the owner's family), there is still enough good will in my heart to root for them.

The Colts, on the other hand are not only from Indy. Indy is a city which has improved in the last twenty-five years remarkably, but alas, I have not lived near it for twenty-five years, so for the same reason I am positively disposed towards Chicago from great pizza, great museums, and a great lakefront, I am similarly disinclined to support Indy from the memories of a downtown closed at 8 PM Friday and a grimy, hostile environment. Even though Purdue, my Alma Mat, was poised between the two metropoli, my interests were always more northern than southern. But there is another reason from the past to root against the Colts.

It is a traitor team. Back in 1984, the Colt owners backed the truck up to the stadium in the dead of night, loaded everything up, and were across state lines before the loyal fans knew what hit them. That simple. They booked out. Cut and run. Now, I think Manning is a better quarterback than Grossman, but the taint of blue horseshoe remains. When I was growing up, there were old baseball fans who never forgave the Dodgers for moving to LA in '58, even if they weren't Brooklyn fans in the first place. It was the principle of the thing, and even with the passing years and changes of management, they would not forgive.

Yeah, I can understand that. Indy is a better place than it was 25 years ago, but I just can't let them off the hook. So I'll be rooting for Da Beloved Bears when the time comes.

More later,

Play: Half an Oeuvre is Better than None

The Lady From Dubuque by Edward Albee, Directed by David Esbjornson, Seattle Repertory Theatre, though February 10, 2007

Some playwrights you steel yourself for, going in. If the work is by David Mamet, you expect the rapidfire profanity. If its August Wilson, there is often (though not always) a moment of rage that leaves you wondering if you had missed a clue earlier. Shaw? Class warfare and other big issues crowding characterization to the margins. And with Albee, you are resigned to casual cruelty among the players and ruminations of the "modern condition". It's his bag, his thing, his body of work.

And yes, you have all that in Lady from Dubuque, but for the first half of the play, he pulls it off and pulls it off brilliantly. A mixed bag of friends, by turns kind and cruel, spend an evening together primarily because they have always spent evenings together, such that their offensiveness no longer registers. All are a bundle of strengths and vulnerabilities. Jo is catty and nasty and dying and sympathetic and sweet. Her husband Sam is by turns supportive and enraged that he cannot feel her pain, that she is in a dimension that he cannot reach. Neighbor Edgar returns for regular abuse because it is one of the few places where he can stand up to his dominating domestic wife, Lucinda. Self-proclaimed redneck Fred has gone through three wives already and is introducing potential number four, Carol, self-proclaimed dumb brunette, to the civil little weekly war the group holds at Jo and Sam's.

And yes, they are all horrible and wonderful to each other in turns, both rejecting each other and needing each other for support. Carla Harting in particular is brilliant as Jo, her callow toughness and frightened vulnerability flipping past effortlessly. The group breaks up in several arguments and reconciliations. These people are struggling with each other and struggling with Jo's impending death - the elephant in the room. It is really, really good. The characters are well-rounded, and the actors bring their personalities across as real.

Then, in the closing moments of the first act, two strangers arrive, looking for Jo, and we go to the intermission with odd questions. And when we come back for the second act things go off the rails a bit.

The strangers, Elizabeth and Oscar are either angels of death or compassionate murderers, come to take Jo away. It is all a bit fuzzy, and from this point on no question is ever answered directly. Elizabeth claims to be Jo's mother, and all of the rest of the cast except Sam, accepts this without question, even to point of arguing with Sam (who knows the truth) and restraining him. Jo, who shines in the first act, is reduced to an deathly object in the second, and all the friends who moved off the stage at the end of Act I now come back, but now are even more brittle and hard edged. There is no support here from them, only hate. They begin to drift into Albee-esque caricatures - returning because it would be a shame to have them in the first act and not use them again.

Part of the problem between the two acts is that Jo dominates the first act, but Elizabeth (Myra Carter), who confounds Sam, is a very different creature. Her performance is mannered and precise and theatrical, and undercuts the reality of the disease that is claiming Jo (that Ms. Harting sells so well). Similarly, the first act is peppered with fourth-wall breaking antics (where the other actors join in, calling on the audience to play referee to their private mindgames), but with the addition of a second strangeness (what is the power of these visitors, such that they can not be made to leave?), it suddenly vacates as well. It is two very different beasts, and the second is not a good as the first.

Yet I really enjoyed the play. The pain of not being able to share a loved one's pain comes through, the loneliness of death and the shallowness of live in the face of mortality comes through. Carla Harting as Jo and Chelsey Rives as Carol are wonderful, and indeed, Rives' character has to carry the play forward to its denouement because Jo is dying, Elizabeth is an enigma, and Sam is shattered. And she does it very, very well.

So it is a mixed bag. The first half is a great play. The second half, less so. Its worth seeing, but yes, it feels like an Albee play all over.

More later,

Meet the Flintstones

So I'm driving to work, single cartoon theme songs (What? Like you never did that?), when I had an illumination about the closing theme of the "Flintstones". The original ran -

Someday, maybe Fred will win that fight,
Then that cat will stay out overnight.

And the cartoon shows him taking the cat out, who then jumps back in and throws Fred out of the house. But the cat (a man-sized sabertooth) is never a real member of the family, appearing only irregularly, and the family pet is Dino (who in his first appearance could talk, but that's a story for another day).

But once you remove the pictures, the song means something else. The "fight" is not with the cat, but rather with Wilma, and "that cat" is not a real cat, but a hip reference to Fred himself. Fred suddenly becomes more domesticated and henpecked, hence a real cat was inserted into the setup to make Fred more of a family man.

Why yes, there was traffic on the way to work, and I had time to think about this a lot. Why do you ask?

More later,

Warcraft: Full and Empty

So I was snowed in yesterday, so I didn't get a copy of the Burning Crusade expansion (as opposed to friends who stayed up until midnight Tuesday in order to get on as soon as possible). So I picked up a copy on the way to work, and the guy checking the receipts at the front door said "You're already behind".

I have friends and co-workers who were doing beta - I could have been the first official player and STILL have been behind.

But I WAS on WoW last night, playing my Tauren Hunter, Thunderchild, and finishing up some quests. There was a half-hour wait to get on, but after I got into the game, the zones I was running in were EMPTY. It was because all the high-levels were already in the new high-level territory, and all the low-level new races (Blood Elves and Blue Devils) were in the low-level racial home areas. As a result, I had most of Dustwallow Marsh to myself. It was strange, sort of like having Disneyland all to your lonesome, but I got a lot done.

And now I have joined up with the new hotness, like the rest of the cool kids.

More later,

Good Grief, More Snow!

So there is snow again at Grubb Street, about an inch of big, fluffy flakes in time for the morning commute. Working out of the home office today, but I have to say that I'm pretty much sick all this Wisconsin weather without the benefit of Wisconsin snow plows.

More later,

Have you noticed?

That the same clowns who were supporting the administration's war two years ago because it was the will of the people now are supporting the war because they are "independent thinkers" who will not be pushed around by the will of the people?

Just asking,

More Snow Madness

So this morning Steve Miller, who writes nifty reviews on unreviewable movies here, slipped on the ice outside his apartment complex and broke his ankle. While otherwise immobilized, he did manage to call us on his cell, and a good chunk of the day was taken up with helping out with the ER, rapidcare visit, prescriptions and other minor matters that occur when a friend fractures his fibula.

It is not that surprising that Steve was laid up, given that the snow we had early in the week hung around through surprisingly cold temperatures, and that the apartment complex management apparently thought that the polished ice surface they generated in the parking lot was some sort of benefit to their tennants. As a result of the running around, I had to be in and out of that parking lot three times, and each time I briefly lost control of the vehicle to a ice-bound skid (I learned to drive in Pittsburgh and spent a fair share of my life in Wisconsin, so I knew the drill about turning into the skid and generally heading for dry asphalt). And each time, at the entrance to the parking lot, there was some benighted fool from warmer climes (like California) who was struggling to get his minivan up the rise and out onto the main road. The surprise would be not that Steve was injured, but that there were not more such injuries from the complex's ice-bound negligence.

Once out of the parking lot, the main roads were fairly dry, with just enough ice in the shady parts to make it all an adventure. There have been two types of drivers this week - those driving way too fast for conditions, and those driving way too slow. As a result, it has been the ice capades combined with demo derby.

And through it all, I got the Seahawks game on a second audio channel while dealing with other matters. The game on in the background of the waiting room of the rapid care facility. The practitioner in the ER getting a phone call, saying "Yes!", then hanging up. (I had to ask "Seahawks score?" and she nodded). The Fred Meyers where I picked up the prescription had the game on in the electronics department, but only on the radio (they couldn't access the TV feed, apparently). In many ways, it felt like we were in the "B" plot of the episode while the Seahawks were the "A" plot. The upside was that the ER and rapid care units were pretty empty when we came in, since everyone else was watching the game. When I finally got home, I turned on the tube to hear words, "" ...and we'll be speaking with Coach Holgren about his disappointing loss."

But Steve is now resting comfortably (I hope), with his leg up and his bloodstream enhanced with an anti-inflammitory and a couple Limbaughs. And if he is reading this, we're rooting for him, and note that he should have his leg up, even if he's cruising the net. Now!

More later,

Allez Cuisine!

Memories are made of this - The Monkey King was taking photos at the holiday party.

Left to right: Janna, Janice and Our Flounder, decked out in stylish Christmas Hawai'ian Shirt and kilt (mostly hidden by the counter). The implement of destruction in my right hand is a fork/meat thermometer which I think is real cool.

Yeah, this goes on the Christmas cards next year.

More later,

Da Bears

So, another football game where I am conflicted.

Part of it is that I don't shed football teams over time. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I'm a Steeler fan. I lived in southern Wisconsin, in a town which precisely straddled the line between Bear country and Packer land, so I'm partial to those two teams. And now I'm in Seattle, so I am swept up in 12th Man Madness.

But the chances of one team I like fighting it out with another team I like has gone up over the years. Last year's Super Bowl was a mixed blessing, and I for one am glad that Pittsburgh won, particularly since they flushed away the season this year. I am also pleased that the Hawks have already defied expectations by surviving the wild card game and getting into the "real playoffs". I'm still going to watch the game -the 'hawks have been playing cardiac-attack football of the style that made the classic Bears seasons a combination of excitement and raw panic.

I don't know what it is about the NFL that inspires such brand loyalty. I don't root for the MLB teams the same way - Pirates and Brewers and Cubbies. Part of that may be that those teams I connected very strongly with their on-air radio personalities - Bob Prince and the Gunner for the Pirates, Bob Uecker, and Harry Cary. The voices stay with you, and were a source of continuity over the long seasons. Football, its more coaches and franchise players, with the bright spots appearing over the season.

I can say that I'll be happy no matter who wins, but I will really feel sorry for the losing side. So like I said, I'm conflicted.

More later,

Snow Fun

So two days ago, Tuesday, we were supposed to get a big snowstorm, the fourth of the year in an area where it is unusual to see one. Everyone in the city left their offices early, jamming the roads but leaving them nearly empty by about seven. The Lovely Bride and I had no trouble getting downtown for our tai chi class.

So yesterday, same story, though they were talking about it hitting north of the city this time. People were less panicky, right up to the moment when it started to snow heavily in Bellevue. Big, lumpy snow, with the weight and texture of styrofoam. That was about 4:30.

This was followed, of course, by panic. Our office complex has about a dozen buildings and only two entrances, and those entrances became parking lots as people tried to flee to get onto the roads which were also parking lots. The storm was mostly north of the city, and I figured when I could finally reach the mainroads, it would be a smooth commute home to the south.

What I did not expect was that there was a second wave of the storm which moved SOUTH of the city, between Bellevue and Renton. I found this out about seven, when I tried to get home, and spent an hour in traffic trying to get to the highway on jam-packed, ice-covered service roads.

I was almost to the highway when the Lovely Bride called. They were shutting down her tax office on the East Hill, near where we live, and she was walking home. She was putting two of her front desk staff up at the house overnight because they could not get home. And, worst of all, they had closed the roads up the hill (which were, of course, parking lots).

So I turned the car around and went back to the office, intent on sleeping there (the hotels were already all booked). Then I looked at the webpage for the road conditions and discovered that the roads north were now empty and green, while the roads south were as black as the intestine of a shrimp.

So I called the Monkey King and Shelly, and asked if I could crash at their place in Kirkland. It took only 15 minutes to reach their home along roads that five hours before were impassible. Crashed on their futon, slept like a rock, glad for a hot shower and that I always pack emergency underwear in my computer bag (yeah, I know, too much information).

And as a result, I am really the only person in the office at this (for our team) ungodly hour. Others, such as Mystical Forest, had a horrible time getting home (they're in the same neighborhood), and I count myself as fortunate.

More later,

Fact Check at Register Three

So the whole gas price thing has become a bit of a motif here at Grubb Street, since there is always a new development or tweak to report. The media seems to have gone through a "gee, I don't know if there's something going on" phase, to a "well, MAYBE there is something going on, but we don't know" phase, and has settled into a "Yeah, it looks like something is going on, but whattaya going to do?" phase.

Meanwhile, one of our readers, Joe (Hi Joe!) dug up the information that I was unable to ratchet down. You can find it here, and indeed, it shows gas prices dropping steadily through the summer, bottoming out the last week of October/first week of November, and starting to rise again almost immediately thereafter (despite the fact that OIL prices have been dropping).

Funny how not a lot of folks have noticed this.

More later,

Snowclones for Everyone!

I love finding a new word, and the new word (still a toddler at three years old) is snowclone.

You know them. You use them. You didn't know what they were. Here are a couple well-worn examples:

"I, for one, welcome our new X overlords"
"In space, no one can here you X"
"Men are from X, women are from Y"

Slip in your choice of X and Y (and sometimes N and Z) and you have an instant mini-quote, punchline, or bit of sloppy thinking, which sounds good only because your listener is familiar with format.

Snowclones have been around for a good long time ("If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they X"), but only were named recently. The name itself comes out a discussion about the Eskimo Snow Hoax - a snowclone which runs "If the Eskimos have N words for snow, then X have N words for Y", which has been debunked but remains part and parcel of our cultural lore.

Snowclones have already gotten their own page on the Wikipedia, which of course, is only a stepping stone to The American Heritage Dictionary, and then the big time of Webster's! So do your part and spread the meme. It is a celebration of both American Language and American Pop Culture. Because, are you know, in Soviet Russia, Snowclones overuse YOU.

X later,

This Just In - Irony No Longer Dead

So let me get this straight -

The Administration says it's AOK to open my mail, but doesn't want anyone to know who is visiting the White House.

Just asking,

Hail, Hail

Yep, yesterday it hailed in Seattle - twice over the afternoon, leaving a thick, frozen crust on a lot of vehicles and proceeding to screw up the evening commute even more than usual. Add to that snow north of the city and a threat of freezing fog up on Cap Hill, and I think we've seen every except the TV-Minister-promised tidal wave.

But the Sturm und Drang did relent last night for the Lovely Bride to celebrate her Legendary Birthday. We gathered at the Melrose Grill, a excellent little steak house in downtown Renton which the LB and enjoy. All told, there were 11 of us at the table, most of them regulars for the Lovely Bride's Thursday Evening games, and included a Microsoft researcher, a social security administrator, our resident Tolkien expert (who was hit up by the NYTimes for a quote the week before), a King County Deputy (who was the first on the scene at the Skyway Bowling Alley shooting on New Year's Eve), and a newly-minted Captain back from Iraq, several tax preparers and game designers. Needless to say, the conversation at the table was spirited and as good as steaks.

Afterwards some of the gang retired to the house, where they played classic D&D into the wee hours. A good time was had by all, and with the completion of the Lovely Bride's birthday and that of my mother's (Hi, Mom!), the holiday season for me finally comes to a close.

So I guess its time to take down the tree...

More later,

Wet and Dry

So if I had hopes that things would improve in January, I hoped in vain.

It is not anything major, and Lord knows that there are those who have been kicked around by Mom Nature in this state much more than us here on Grubb Street, but the reign of petty frustrations continues. It is sort of like getting paper cuts all over your body, then streaking through a lemon juice shower.

The weather continues to be flaky for the Pacific Northwest, as in the rest of the country, including the Eastern Midwest (sunny and warm) and the Western Midwest (buried under snow). We had a dusting of snow after Christmas, which would normally have siezed up the area were it not for the horrible storms earlier in the month. Then rain. Lots and lots of rain. Not Seattle rain, either, but Chicago rain - big heavy drops, applied continually. Low areas were flooded out (Including the main drag in Auburn, trapping me there after my regular check-up), and standing water everywhere as the soil and drainage systems were overloaded. Five inches since the New Year and its only the 3rd.

And due to this (maybe), the water main serving our collection of buildings in the lowlying area south of Bellevue cut out, leaving all but two buildings without water. Or more importantly, bathrooms. So there have been several long hikes over the day to the not-too-adjacent buildings which HAD water. Nothing critical, but still a royal irritation.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, nor with a wimper, but by being pecked to death by baby ducks.

More later,

Gassing Up (Again)

So a couple months ago I started keying in on gas prices, in particular on the fact that they were dropping nation-wide in the weeks leading up to an important election. Notable sage heads and magazines all noticed this phenomenon, but concluded it was due to regular market forces as opposed to any sinister market manipulation. Of course, a nail in the coffin to this theory would be if, say, after the election, prices started climbing back up again.

And sunovagun, if that didn't happen. The Seattle Times had a graphic in the Business section over the break (unfortunately not on its web site that I can find) that shows Seattle area gas prices hitting their lowest on about 9 November, and have been inching their way back up ever since. This price rise shouldn't be a surprise to drivers in the area, but it has been relatively quiet on the news front, as previous rises have been.

Well, its not really news, until someone brings it up on the radio and connects some of the dots. Oh, wait a minute, someone has. Conspiracy, anyone?

More later,

The Lost Week

So the company was closed down between Christmas and New Years, and I had intentions of making the week off count. Some writing that needed to be done, a short story that needed to be finished, and outline that begged to be completed, some entries to this blog that I've been mulling about for way too long, cleaning up my office, and cutting down on the clutter that is in the downstairs archive room.

In reality, I did none of those things. I did end up playing a lot of games, though, which was nice.

Part of it was the timing. Saturday and Sunday were primarily in prep work for the Holiday Dinner, Monday the dinner itself, and Tuesday the cleanup and a general collapse. Wednesday I ended up doing lunch with an old friend who was getting back into World of Warcraft, and much of Wed and Thur were taken up with grinding up my original Tauren Hunter, Thunderchild, to level 42 (Of sufficient level for a mount, but, unforturnately, not enough gold). Thursday night was gaming with friends, Friday and Saturday with other computer games I have been promising to check out, now that I have a new Dell 1710 Behemoth. Sunday we had an open house for gaming, and today I managed to accomplish one thing on my original list - get to the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at the Pacific Science Center (an odd venue, since the center is an IMAX-and-hand's-on-demonstration kinda place).

So I've been playing a lot of games.

WoW felt like going back to your own highschool, and now that I have been part of creation of these, I can see a lot of seams and rivets holding the thing together that I didn't notice before. A highpoint was finding Landro Luckshot in Booty Bay, a character I created for Upper Deck for their promotion for the licensed card game (If you run into him, he'll offer a bunch of stuff, but only if you can give him the secret code from the cards). But I am looking at story more, now, since its the sort of thing I've been involved in, and I am very aware of the huge amount of "Go Here Kill This" sort of quests that exist as jumbled chapters in a larger tome.

I also waded through most of the tutorial of Oblivion: Elder Scrolls IV, which is interesting, though off-putting in a number of small ways. The looks for most of the characters look like cavemen from those insurance company commercials, with ruddy looks and heavy jaws. The character animation looks a bit off a well, parts of it too animated (the facial muscles look like they are in continual spasm) while others not nearly enough (one of the guards talking to me in first person reminded me of a South Park character for its animation). The background visuals are stunning. Weirdly enough, the use of recognizable name talent (Patrick Stewart as the king who just happens to need your jail cell to escape the palace) actually is more off-putting than inclusive. The fact you immediately recognize the voice pulls you out of the fantasy. I'm not far enough along in the story to give more comments than that.

The voice talent was also an irritation on Civilization IV, though in this case it was another actor I liked, Leonard Nimoy. Civilization has the same "plot" in each version - you start with a settler in the stone age and you are supposed to get to Alpha Centauri. And Civ II did probably the coolest Wonder cinematics ever put together, which the versions since then - III, VI, and Call to Power, have not managed to pull off. In IV, when you get a new tech, you get a quote, which Nimoy reads aloud. I'm not certain on this, but I think it is going to be a feature I am disengaging. Still getting the hang of the differences in the new version, so I can't really comment much beyond look and feel (the stylized battle animations are nice, and the city construction that makes every city on the board look individual looks good).

In non-computer games I ended up playing Clue Mysteries, Betrayal in the House on Horror Hill, Carcasonne, Ticket to Ride, and kibutzed on Settlers of Catan. Clue Mysteries is an attempt to fix some of the challenges of the original game by providing more plot and characterizations and get it away from that murder-thing (in the mystery we we working on, the "crime" was the discharging of an antique pistol, which didn't even graze anybody). Betrayal is an excellent game in the tradition of Pacesetter's old Black Mourn Manor, and breaks the game into two parts - the explore the house phase, followed by the discover the nameless evil phase, where things go horribly, horribly wrong. As an entertainment, it is better than most of the programming on the SciFi channel, but given the huge number of random variables in the game, one side or the other can be overpowering when the nameless evil is revealed.

Ticket to Ride I got for the Lovely Bride, as we both love train games, but this one may be just a bit TOO competitive, as it is easy to keep an opponent out of particular cities through overbuilding (I ran afoul of her when I took the direct route into Dallas - she has since forgiven me - she says). We did, however, addict The Monkey King to the game, though we understand that there is a kinder, gentler European edition that may be better for our needs. Similar in addictive experiences was teaching Ellie, the wife of one of the Lovely Bride's gaming gang regulars, how to play Settlers. She got into it quickly and deeply. It is a nice reminder of how a well-designed game can just suck you in.

Other than all that gaming, not a lot has been accomplished over the past week. The only other thing that has pulled me away from social and computer gaming has been Thomas Pynchon's latest bugsmasher of a tome, Against the Day. I had finally escaped from the wieghty tomes of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and this monster lands, and it pulls me in immediately (opening sections involve airships, and I'm a sucker for them). So something else is demanding my time.

And all the stuff I needed to do? I will have to get done, but now within the course of my daily life. I just want to warn all those people who are making the New Years Resolution to "Play More Games" that they may be cursed by their desires.

More later,

Seasoned Greetings

'Twas the day AFTER Christmas, and the cleanup's begun ....

Yesterday was our annual Holiday Feast, and a good time was had by all. John and Janice, Janna, Steve, Bill and M'iko, and Wolf and Shelly, with a special new guest, their sweet-dispositioned child Heidi. We did the roast, brined turkey, with one of the best carving jobs I have ever done, traditional cranberry sauce, dressing, two types of mashed potatoes, poppyseed rolls, green beans with chipote butter, and a carrot/zucchini dish that went over well. Appetizers were our traditional rumaki (bacon-wrapped scallops and black olives), and stuffed mushrooms). Dessert we indulged on a cranberry cheesecake and a pear/cranberry tort. Needless to say, way too much good stuff, and we're still cleaning up today.

As the season has turned out, we handled a number of miscues, known and revealed. The tort was supposed to have a sweet red wine reduction that got TOO much reduced (to a dull reddish-black paset), so it ended up having a DRY red reduction instead with a backup wine. We sat down to the table forgetting the dressing, which we had crisping in the oven, and got a bit too dry (fortunately we had the savior of dry stuffing at the table - gravy). And I was so busy with the cocktails (I really have to stop treating them like chemistry experiments) that I had forgotten about the bird for an extra half hour. Fortunately, it NEEDED the extra half hour (It was a large bird) and it came out perfect.

Conversation was great, since this feast has become a holiday tradition, and young Heidi was a delightful, gurgling presence at the other end of the table (She didn't want out turkey, we, in turn, didn't poach on her Cheerios). Learned much I did not know, including that the Mint did commemorative coins back in the 20s (including one celebrating Confederate veterans) and a recommedation for Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragons, whether CSI has ever done a show on penny-smashers, and the existence of a channel that plays Music Videos like MTV used to.

And I did my share of the cooking wearing my new Christmas present from the lovely bride, a kilt. Actually, a dark green utilikilt made by a local company here in Seattle. It made things much more comfortable in the hot kitchen. I haven't quite decided if it is my style. but it is very comfortable.

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Season's Greetings

From all of us at Grubb Street, we wish you a safe, happy, and (relatively) sane holiday season.

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Tis the Season

I have to say, the holiday season has been more of an uphill push this year.

Mind you, most of October was a mad dash for the now-award-winning Nightfall to go live. And November was mostly spent in transit to far-off lands like Germany and Pittsburgh. So December was going to be a little easier, in theory.

Such was not to be. Starting with the insanity of the heavy snow and ice following Thanksgiving, we have seen a multitude of weather challenges - heavy rains, heavy winds, really heavy rains, REALLY heavy winds, colder temps than normal. The recent windstorm STILL has people in the dark, and everything else seems to have balled up behind it.

And yes, it all ripples out. A single traffic light out of commission snarls traffic for five blocks in every direction. A single block without power jams up everything else. Even such holiday norms as the tree and the cookies have been a challenge - the tree is lovely but fought me every step of the way, and the Lovely Bride's had to conquer several baking disasters. It has been a challenge of a season this year, but as we close in on the of it, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

And by light, I mean the radiance of an oven cooking a brined twenty-pound turkey on Christmas Day. That's when I know I will be getting some downtime.

Well, after the dishes are done.

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Announcing . . .

Yeah, I want to enter the main ballroom with this rolling off the chamberlain's tongue.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Count-Palatine Jeffrey the Antique of Barton in the Beans Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Accompanied by his Lovely Bride: Lady Madame Catherine the Antediluvian of Piddletrenthide Under Booth Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

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A Bit of Good News

Guild Wars Nightfall took PC MMORPG of the Year from Gamespy.

You may now resume your normal Festivus activities.

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The Ongoing

The mere fact that the Lovely Bride and I have power and have cleaned up the yard does not mean that its all over.

Power is still out to a nice chunk of the Western Washington area. The utility companies are still addressing the "big chunks" - areas where blown-down trees have blacked out entire neighborhoods. Mostly it seems that these "big chunks" are either in older neighborhoods with older infrastructure (White Center, Rainier Valley, West Seattle) or in new territories where the houses have gone in recently (Fairwood, Petroviski, Redmond Ridge).

The newer developments are particularly vulnerable since they reflect the developer tendencies to level everything except a few trees when they're putting in the new housing. Those few trees, sometimes kept as a "beauty strip" along the roads (where the power lines are) no longer have the protection of the rest of the forest that they grew up with, and are more vulnerable to being toppled.

And given the strength of the winds, it is not just new developments that are in peril. Our huge cedar out front has lost of lot of bark - on the windward side of the blow. Near as I can figure, this bark flaked off when that part of the tree was in tension from the wind load (wood does well in compression, not so good in tension). We've seen a lot of trees come down in our area of late, and this isn't helping matters for the survivors.

The air smells burnt at the moment, which is the result of pollution from a million people suddenly deciding to use their fireplaces. Coming down the hill, Kent and Renton were under a cloud that would Victorian London proud. Add to that the new category of death and danger as people are running portable generators (and in some cases charcoal grills) indoors. We are seeing more fires as well as people are not used to dealing with flame.

Finally, when I say that the power companies are getting the "big chunks", that means that at lot of small bits are still unaddressed. Stoplights are out in many places (Getting to Crossroads mall in Bellevue is a near-imposibility), and powerlines are down. There are cases where half an apartment complex has light, heat, and comfort and the other is still in the dark. And then we get to the tertiary services of cable and Internet, which is spotty beyond belief.

So we're still in the midst of it all. It is not Katrina-level, but is probably giving people a lot of pause about what happens if a high-level county-wide emergency hits.

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Time Out

So, I guess, now that Time magazine has recognized the blogs, I can stop blogging.

No, really, as "Person of the Year" the newsweekly has chosen - YOU. As in "You who are blogging, getting your news from the net, checking out videos on the Youtube, and otherwise not buying our damned magazine". It is lame (as in lamer than usual) choice, and has a whole lot of "We couldn't figure out what to put up so we punted."

Now, of course, when the newsweekly pays attention to something, that is usually a sign that it is past its prime. And indeed, there has been a lot of fallout and refinement among the bloggers over the past year. Some have settled in to a regular market and subject matter (politics, comic books), while others have gone private or stopped writing entirely. The cases of "someone posts someone private to the web and discovers that everyone can google it" are getting fewer and further between. People are drifting off to the "next big thing", whatever it may be (myspace, facepage, whatever). In a decade, online journals may be viewed with the quaintness currently held for Civilian's Band radio.

In the meantime, I'm going to get what I can while I can, and continue to run this private soapbox for as much as I can get away with (even if I do have to update to the next interation of the service).

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Happiness is ...

... A neighbor with a chain saw and a need for a lot of maple wood.

We've survived the big blow better than most. Ron, said neighbor who burns wood through the winter, was over yesterday afternoon, and by the time I got home, the trunk of the toppled Deadfall Maples (Chosen #1 by Fox News as "Great Names for your rock band) had vanished, along with the major branches, leaving me only to gather up the remaining branches and other blowdowns, which took most of the day today. The yard still has a lot of stuff that needs to be gathered up, but it more raking than heavy lifting a this point.

The power and phone are on at the house, and at the place of business as well, which was running yesterday despite the fact we were in Bellevue and had three half-fallen trees leaning against the south wall of the structure. The roads, however, were an absolute zoo, mainly because the traffic lights were out in places, snarling traffic horribly. Even so, we had the traffic lights back up by last night.

Power remains a hit and miss affair. Our neighborhood is fine, but go a mile north and they're out until you get to Renton, which is good, then another spot of darkness through Newcastle and then back on in southern Bellevue, the out for most of Bellevue itself. One of the big concerns for people have been gas stations - those that have had power have been overwhelmed from drivers who normally buy elsewhere. In the meantime there are a lot of trees being sawn up, and downed bows and sawdust are common on the highway.

And anyone who doesn't understand the importance of infrastructure is welcome to visit Seattle. This was just a mild wounding at the hands of nature. It could have been much worse.

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The Blustery Night

We're OK. House is unscathed, as are the cars, and all that we lost in the yard was the bird feeder, which was smashed flat by a 60-foot bigleaf maple.

But start at the beginning. The big weather story for the past two days was the approach of a huge windstorm. Usually these stories have two resolutions - either the storm fizzles and everyone looks funny at the meteorologists, or we discover that we aren't as well prepared as we thought when faced with the latest climatic challenge.

This was one of the latter cases. We had brought in the lawn chairs and tied down the cover to the hot tub, but other than that, we were pretty cool. I even went to the company Christmas party, in Issaquah.

Now Issaquah is further inland than Seattle, and when I got out of the party, it was a mild night, no wind, a hint of rain. Nothing much, but as I drove back towards Seattle, the wind and rain picked up, and my ears started popping from the pressure changes. By the time I reached Renton, I was driving very slowly on almost-abandoned highways. By the time I reached the bottom of our hill, the car was rocking from the wind buffets when it was stopped at the lights.

And ten minutes after I got home, a tree branch, six inches across at the base, dropped square between our two parked cars, damaging neither one of them. Twenty minutes after that, the power, flickering through the evening, went out entirely.

And the evening was spent listening to the wind howl, and the occasional crash of branches. One particular crash shook the house, but it wasn't a "hit-the-house" kind of thump, but a "something big came down in the yard" sort of thump.

That was when we lost the bird feeder. One of the Deadfall Maples (still available as a name for YOUR rock band), the last large one, came down, missing the Aztec Temple Sacrifice Grill, missing the giant standing cat bird bath, missing the bronze herons, missing the red maple that Longshot is buried beneath, and slammed into the bird feeder, rendering it unto flinders.

And we're in cleanup mode. Power and phone have come back on at the house (though not Internet, yet - I'm updating over lunch at work). Traffic lights were still out near Panther Lake (with resultant messes). Branches are littering the front driveway. No newspaper (power cut out at the presses last night). But we're OK.

And I just found out my neighbor is itching to try out his new chainsaw on my downed tree, and needs more maple wood for his smoker. Things are getting back to normal.

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Dreamscape

I have been having the oddest dreams of late.

They've been "unifed dreams" - ones where a lot of things happen in series, and where I have a mental "map" in my head of where I am and how it all fits together with everything else I've dreamed that night. At least, within the dream I have the feeling that it all fits together. I have dreamed entire towns and cities and nations in the past, usually with me walking/riding/driving through them.

But for the past week, I've been stuck in the same dreamspace, where all the previous night's dreams seem to feed into the current dream. The landscape is flat and southern, which is to say open fields and highways with tightly clustered forests in the mid-distance. Open highways. Blue skies. Fields of cows (not cattle - just cows). Diners. Leggy blonde waitresses with big hair. Rural towns made of tornado-friendly wood structures. Trucks and customized cars on the road.

I feel like I've been dreaming "Smoky and the Bandit" again and again and again. Can someone get in touch with Burt Reynolds and get his PO box? I'd like to send his dreams back.

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Windstorm

Every year, the Lovely Bride makes a wreath for the holidays. Part of this is because, every year, we have a large windstorm up on the hill, which brings down a lot of pine branches (and we have holly growing in the back wilderness).

And this year the windstorm hit this morning. I was awakened about 6 AM from the hail hitting the skylight. Then the wind. Then the lightning. Bright, close, lightning, much more of a midwest effect that we normally see in the Sound area. I lay in bed, counting the ticks between flash and boom, and figured the storm was moving off.

Then the power went off. For about an hour, but enough to mess up all the clocks. Finally, I got up and dressed in the dark (and my ensemble this morning looks like it - sorry, no pictures).

The sun came up, the clouds cleared, and the lights came back on. The bird feeder in the back yard has a decided list to it, now, and one of the plastic downspouts near the hot tub blew down, but otherwise, no real damage.

But the Lovely Bride is going to have to make a bigger wreath.

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The Year That Wuz

Lifted this meme wholesale from Nikchick. Its a little gibberish-y, but then at the moment I am in a bit of gibberish-y mood. The year in review, taken from the first lines of the first posts of each month

January: So I've been playing World of Warcraft for over a year now.
February: Well, someone woke up on the snarky side of the bed this morning . . .
March: So I’ve been doing an “American’s Top Forty” Countdown on the commemorative quarters the mint has been churning out.
April: Ah, the one woman show - another potentially perilous part of the theater experience, but the Rep tends to do it well.
May: So over brunch, the Monkey King and I were talking about his Friends List - he had made some shakeups recently - adding some people, removing others.
June: True conversation:
July: I was going to go on about comics, so consider yourselves lucky.
August: So Brainstormfront has sent me a note wondering why I haven't done much local politics, and sent me this link.
September: It is the first of September, and while the weather is still frighteningly warm and sunny, it is time for Grubb Street to suddenly turn boring.
October: Last year was rocky for the Seattle Repertory Theatre.
November: So Nightfall has arrived safely, rolling out on Friday to great acclaim and accolades, and I have to say that everyone did a fantastic job on it, putting in all sorts of hours to make the game as good as it is.
December: So, while I've been jetting around the country, other things have been happening:

But the last words of the month always is:

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Legacy

So I've been thinking about the effects of D&D on Fantasy.

Stop laughing, I'm serious.

There are certain things about fantasy that were not true before 1975 that have become true later on. I'm not sure that D&D is specifically responsible for these tropes, but they have spread like wildfire. For example:

A multiplier of monsters: Certain creatures of myth and legend that were unique are now full races of the beast. I'm thinking of minotaurs in particular. Once there was a single Minotaur, connected with his maze. Now there are huge hordes of them (or in World of Warcraft, guilds of them).

A rainbow of dragons: The first Pern books showed up in the late 60s, but even given this, D&D did a lot to promote the idea that dragons come in flavors, like a box of Crayolas. In addition, the various flavors all breathed stuff other than fire. Do we have a reference to a chlorine-breathing Green before 1975?

Transforming a God: Tiamat was a many-headed serpent in Babylonian myth, a hydra-like deity pretty much forgotten. Now she (and definitely she) is a five-headed dragon, made up of the primary color prism of evil dragons.

A technology of gnomes: Yeah, I claim responsibility for turning the D&D gnome from short humanoid who speaks to burrowing mammals to its current Mad Scientist incarnation (something else you see a lot of in WoW). But I was making fun of engineers in general (as I am/was one). Previous incarnations include destructive gremlins of WWII and kindly cobbler elves. Were there the crazed inventor short people before Dragonlance lumbered onto the scene?

This is just what I've been thinking about. Are there others?

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The Ongoing Story

Raving Nutbars: We are shocked, simply shocked that a Muslim congressman wants to take his oath of office on a Koran instead of a Bible!

Rational Human Beings: Actually, congressmen are not required to take their oath of office on a Bible at all.

Raving Nutbars: We are shocked, simply shocked that congressmen aren't forced to take their oaths of office on a Bible!

(Should I ever be elected to public office, I intend to take my oath of office on a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 (first appearance of Spider-Man).

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Play: Mom and Daughter

Memory House by Kathleen Tolan, Directed by Allison Naruer, Seattle Repertory Theatre, November 16 - December 17, 2006.

OK, I get it, finally. One act plays are like short stories. You don't have the requirement of the rising action, intermissional cliff-hanger, and changing of the sets. You can just tell tidy little stories.

And we have a tidy little story here. Mom and daughter, New Year's Eve. Mom Maggie (Jeanne Paulsen) is baking a pie. Daughter Katia (Sharia Pierce) is supposed to be finishing an college entry essay. Maggie is divorced and dealing with her ex's continued success without her. Katia is adopted, originally from Russia, and doesn't have a sense of her own heritage and identity. Maggie wants to hang onto her daughter but also let her go free and avoid the mistakes she made. Katia wants to be her own person but doesn't know what person that is.

Hey, I said a tidy story, not a simple one. And Tolan's script weaves around Mother/Daughter relationships, desires, and blueberries adeptly. Maggie and Katia have an incredibly good relationship, as such parental things go, and while the dialog hits the Mamet-levels in profanity, very little of it is done with heat or agression. You see a lot of family dysfunction on the stage, but this isn't one of those situations. There is concern and conflict, but you don't get the mad bomber attitude in most portrayed generational wars. Paulsen and Pierce have believable, understandable, likeable characters - you don't get the feeling that writer Tolan is setting up straw opponents, or that she is asking you to choose sides.

It works. It is straightforward and comfortable in a way that traditional theater can be. It sidles up to the big issues and goes for the heart and avoids being shmaltzy and embraces family values. The only thing I can criticize the production on is the pie itself - up in the cheap seats, many of the audience were critiquing the pie recipe (and Maggie's comical production of it) more than the other action on the stage. So add that to not working with children or animals. Don't work with pie.

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A Little More Self-Promotion

So, while I've been jetting around the country, other things have been happening:

My short story, "Beowulf and the City of the Dark Elves", has appeared in The Further Adventures of Beowulf, Champion of Middle Earth. You can find a nice review here off Bookgasm.

Another short story, "The Sacrifice", has appeared in Furry Fantastic, and got good reviews from my parents. Hey, that makes me smile, since after all it is a story about human sacrifice.

And while other friends did all the heavy lifting, our previous game, Guild Wars Factions, won Multiplayer Game of the Year at the Digital Entertainment, Media + Marketing Excellence awards. Which I think is pretty cool as well.

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