Comics: Retro White Bread

Now, in the last installment, I mentioned that I was a fan as a kid of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern. In fact, I would put myself in the DC category as a kid - DC had more stories per issue (since I didn't know that many of those tales were republished from earlier books), while the Marvel books were continuing tales, and in a world without Direct-Sale comics shops, the chances of getting two books in a row were thin indeed.

But I have to tell you, one of the reasons I eventually shuffled over to Marvel was that the DC universe was filled with middle-class, middle-aged, white guys. The JLA was filled with white dudes, even the Martian Manhunter, who was obviously green, was a white guy.

All that stuff about depth of character and political views and evolving relationships between heroes? Most of it after my time, starting with the "Hard-Traveling Heroes" era of Green Arrow and Green Lantern. But a lot of the history and personality of these guys were added pretty much after the fact.

Look at their secret identities - Supes is a reporter, Bats a millionaire playboy (OK, he's above middle class), Wondy held a number of jobs in the military and government. Green Lantern was a test pilot, Flash a forensic scientist before CSI made it cool, Martian Manhunter was a cop. Hawkman was a cop from outer space. Elongated Man was a mystery writer. Not a struggler or slacker in the bunch. In fact their secret IDs were pretty much just a hook to get them involved in the story.

And the stories were pretty much detective stories. Something odd happens, the hero gets involved, follows the clues, reveals a greater crime, fights the baddie, everything gets resolved. All that differed was the hows and the impediments. Batman would have his lab in the batcave, Flash would solve matters with super-speed, Green Lantern would have his power ring. Need to slow the heroes down for storytelling purposes (or to reach page count)? Kryptonite for Supes, dehydration for Aquaman, fire for Martian Manhunter. Throw something yellow at Green Lantern - yeah, here was a hero who could be defeated by Spongebob Squarepants.

But what about how yellow representing fear, which was the enemy of willpower, the source of the Green Lanterns' abilities? Later stuff leavened into mythos through retroactive continuity (The dreaded RetCon you always hear about). Ditto with the Speed Force, which didn't even exist when Barry Allen sacrificed himself in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Now the speed force is part and parcel of the Flash Mythos, and the Fear/Yellow impurity has been deeply justified, removed, and reinstated a couple time in the Lantern vocabulary.

So here's another dualism of modern continuity storytelling - Statics versus Change, or perhaps call it the Issue versus the Series. The old comics I read as a kid were timeless in the fact that they did not ever change. Flash would always be late to dinner with his girlfriend Iris West. Green Lantern would lose planes are an alarming rate as he had to bale to be Green Lantern. Clark Kent would continually have to disappear whenever it was a job for Superman. Only when they engaged with the nature of time, of connecting the serial issues together into their larger mythos, did suddenly filling in all the blanks become important. Then the cracks of repeated action began to appear, and the stresses for the character to change over time suddenly become apparent.

Stresses, in the case of many of DC Heroes, to (temporary) death and (temporary) replacement. And in particular, to revisions of their past heritage, putting stuff in that that wasn't there before, and creating the illusion that it was always so.

One more thing I want to say on this, but for now, More Later,

Comics: Dead Men Tell More Tales

So I was talking about Free Comic Book Day a while back, and I mentioned the DC giveaway, Darkest Night, which was a promotion for the upcoming major event of the same name. And it is a pretty good tease, in that it raises my interest in at least the core books of the series, but it does underscore several challenges to serial story continuity in general and to DC in particular.

Here's the book in brief. Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and Barry (Flash) Allen gather at the grave of Bruce (Batman) Wayne and talk about death and mortality. In the course of it, they mention they have both been previously dead, along with a bunch of the current DC pantheon. A supervillain, the Black Hand, is watching the conversation, and after the heroes leave, decides to raise someone from the dead to be part of his "Black Lanterns" (though the exact "who" is up in the air, as it is a bit confusing).

The back half of the book is a tour through the rainbow of various lantern corps, but that's a problem for another day. The thing to note here is that both of the main protagonists have been dead previously. Dead and replaced by younger individuals. Dead and supposedly never to be replaced.

And yet, here they are. Standing over the grave of another deceased hero, who has a timer on his gravestone for his eventual return. And Hal even lost his "grey-at-the-temples" look.

Now, there is a behind-the-scenes reason for this, involving the balance between backstory and nostalgia. Both Hal and Barry were Silver Age heroes, meaning they showed up in the fifties and early sixties. As time progressed, the people who locked in on those characters got older, and the heroes seemed less relevant and more clogged with history. So Barry Allen died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and was replaced by his former sidekick, Wally (Kid Flash) West. Hal got a shoddier deal, going crazy, blowing up a lot of stuff, before eventually sacrificing himself as well in some lame followup (and eventually became the replacement for ANOTHER superhero, the Spectre).

OK, tempus fugit. Time marches on. And though I read the Barry and Hal versions back as a kid (Green Lantern drawn by Gil Kane, Flash by Carmin Infantino, who drew his characters with chins sharp enough to open soup cans), I was willing to follow up with the new guys. In fact, the new Flash books were much more interesting than the originals, and I came to like Kyle Raynor as the "last Green Lantern" (something else that did not stick).

So what happened? Why are Hal and Barry back? I think part of it is that there was an age bracket of fans who DID feel that the heroes were taken from them too soon, and it took the passing of years to get these fans to the decision making level with the controlling media company. So looking at the slumping sales of the replacements (actually All Comics have sales that are slumping - it is the nature of that particular beast), they could reasonable speak of the resurrection of the old traditionals.

And so Hal and Barry are back, joining the legions of the formerly dead (Superman, Green Arrow) and those cuing in the anteroom (Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Firestorm). And just for clarification, I'm not talking about staged deaths, one-issue deaths, dreams, elseworlds, or imaginary stories. I'm talking about long-term yep-the-hero's-gone throw-the-funeral deaths. In fact, I think only Wonder Woman hasn't been dead-dead of the DC Pantheon.

Zombies. The entire DC Universe is now made up of restless dead. Probably not something you really want to think about, but it is the unfortunate result of the continuing and opposing forces of backstory versus nostalgia as a drive for making comic book stories.

More later,

Sauna

And when I said I intended to sit on my back porch and embalm my nerve endings in alcohol, I meant to say I intended to put a sledgehammer through my neighbors' sauna.

We have great neighbors - Ron and Connie. Connie is a school teacher and Ron's retired from working a body shop. He's also a handyperson who always has a project or ten that he's working on. He's the guy that can patch together your lawn mower when it rusts out, or is over with his chain sawwhen a deadfall comes down. He's build and rebuilt a lot of things over on their property, including a small sauna.

Now in regards to this sauna, it was built some 37 years ago at their first house, and moved over here when they moved. It was about five foot square and ten foot high, and made of local cedar. But time and rot has taken its toll in places, so they decided to take it down.

And I'm sitting my back porch and I hear the banging, and Connie shouts over "You want to help?" and I say sure and spent the next hour or two helping them reduce the old sauna to kindling. And I had to work to keep up with Ron, who does have a few gray hairs on me. And Ron had built it SOLID all those years ago, with 4x4 cedar posts that were really 4x4 (ask your local wood technician why a 4x4 is not 4x4 anymore). So with must effort, we managed to bring it down without either snagging the power lines above it or crushing Connie's lucifers (well, not crushing them too much, and they will come back).

So all in all I would call it a good afternoon's work, and a great way of blowing off steam. I offered my sledge-wielding services if they wanted to destroy anything else in the future. Because that's just a good-neighbor thing.

More later,

Returned

I've spent the past week in another land, far from this one, on business for my company. And I have to say I was a most insufficient, but low-maintenance, tourist.

I spent most of the week within a particular five-square-mile area, its borders defined by the airport, the hotel, and where I was working. My day consisted of awakening, preparing, breakfasting, commuting, working for four hours, lunching for an our, working for another four hours, returning to the hotel, dinner, then catching up on other work and finally crashing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I placed a very light load on the tourist industry, and in appreciation it in turn made things easy for me to go about my business.

I did only the smallest smattering of sight-seeing, and while I was greatly pleased with the results of the week, and the people whom I was working with, it is the sort of thing that I can't talk about right now. The responsibility was such that, even though I had Internet access, I had nothing to say here, nor even the time to craft a coherent message. I did not even turn on the TV over the course of the week. The image that sticks in my mind is the evenings, watching the sun set over the valley beyond my hotel window in brilliant hues.

Nevertheless, I am home now, and even though everything went very well, I am very, very tired. I'm thinking of just sitting on the back porch today, replacing as much of my bodily fluids with alcohol as I dare, and just dialing everything back a notch. Or ten.

More later,

Comics: The Pull List

It's Free Comic Book Day, so if its been a while since you've dropped in on your Friendly Local Comic Book Shop, now's your chance. Mine is Spy Comics, as I've mentioned before, down in Federal Way. It is also an excuse to update my pull list. Since I'm a regular, I give the store a list of books I will definitely be buying each week, and they pull them from the shipment. That way they are available, and then I skim the shelves to see if there is anything I want to add (I usually go for the three-book rule on most new attempt - I buy three issues of an ongoing before I add it to the pull list. Limited series, of course, I decide with the first issue). But looking over the new list, I see the results of the most recent attempts at big ticket events. DC, which pitched its entire fictional universe into a Final Crisis that killed Batman, has practically evaporated from my list. A few team books are all that remain from a following that included the Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern main books and followers. Marvel, on the other hand, did very well by its Secret Invasion and follow-up Dark Reign. Quick Summary here: in the former, the Skrulls invaded. In the latter a bunch of villains get their act together and take over the heroic roles. And as a method of expanding book sales, it has been pretty successful. Not content with two Avengers titles, they now have four - Mighty Avengers (formerly Tony Stark's Republican Avengers, now led by Hank Pym, being deceived by Loki), New Avengers (formerly Captain America's Liberal Avengers, now led by Hawkeye, who was dead but apparently got better), Dark Avengers (led by Harry (Green Goblin) Osborn in a Thunderbolt-like attempt to pass off villains as Heroes), and Avengers: The Initiative (left over from Civil War as a training operation, manipulated by Skrulls, no one in charge right now). Not a bad little franchise, and what happens when you do a mega-event right. Also increasing on my list are books I am not reading, which the Lovely Bride is following, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (OK, I read that one), Angel, and Spike, as well as the Marvel adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which the LB says has all the lines right, but the pacing is weird. So she's slowly being drawn back into the comics world as well. Anyway, if you get a chance, go check out your local comic book shop, tell them I sent you, and enjoy the puzzled look on their faces because the don't know me. More later, Update: So I get to Spy before noon, and the place is packed. I'm serious. Easter-Sunday at church packed, with Rick working the cash register in a flurry and Paula helping people in the crowded aisles and passing out bags of the free comics. I got about ten feet in before I gave it up as a hopeless and left the field for the happy customers with copies of graphic novels under their arms. I really hope everything went well for them, because the joint was jumping. On the swag itself? A very nice self-contained Wolverine story from Marvel which covered the last bit of Logan's life that had not been examined. Aliens/Predator promo from Dark Horse that were the opening pages from new series. A Sonic comic from Archie that patches together frames from earlier comics with more text than its target audience will want to read. A Cars (the Pixar film) comic from Boom that tells the protagonist's story with a perfect example of unreliable narrator. A bunch of articles from the Wizard/Toyfare group that may be a bit questionable for the youngsters. A chapbook sample from a Magic Novel, Agents of Artifice by Ari Marmell, from WotC. And "Issue 0" of Blackest Night, the Green Lantern themed big summer event, which really deserves to be unpacked and examined on its own, since it underscores a lot of what comic universe simultaneously cool and frustrating. But more on that later.

100 Days

So, how's the New Guy been doing?

Seriously? Not too bad.

I mean, for comparison, about this time in the Previous Administration, we had just emerged from the first testing of presidential mettle when the Chinese grabbed one of our spy planes over their territory. With great resolve, the administration proceeded to apologize, grovel nicely, and get the plane back. Victory!

In comparison to that, the New Guy's first big foreign policy crisis showed up in the form of Somalian Pirates, allowing him to show chops similar to Bruce Willis in "The Fifth Element" ("Anyone ELSE want to negotiate?"). OK, its a small thing (except to those held hostage), but it shows the grace under pressure that this administration seems to just ooze.

A lot of the first hundred days has consisted of cleaning up the mess from the frat party of the past eight years. Gitmo's closing (but not closed). Black sites are gone. Iraq is winding down (but not wound down yet). Torture is back to being un-American as opposed to necessary evil. Stem cells are back on track, some of the more onerous destruction of the environment, EPA, and OSHA have been stemmed. Job stimulus bill. SCHIP. Middle class tax cut.

Oh, and high speed rail. That's what happens when your Veep commutes in by train.

And the little things. Almost equaling the previous guy's total first-term press conferences. High visibility. The dog. The wife. The kids. The garden. Dan Rooney - ambassador to Ireland. Video weekly addresses. Understanding the net. A fearless competence. And then there's the even smaller stuff.

Oh, and we're no longer being jerks to the rest of the world. It is interesting to see some actual diplomacy in our diplomatic efforts.

I don't like everything that's happened. More accountability on torture, please. Drag some people up about bugging the citizenry. "Just following orders"? - not such a good defense. Let's make sure we're playing smart ball in Afghanistan, the war we launched and then forgot.

And while all this is happened, the distinguished opposition has been regrouping and... what has been going on in the right side of the aisle?

Oh. I see. Wow. Circular firing squad stuff. Mocking volcano monitoring a week before a volcano goes off in Alaska. Dropping pandemic preparation just before Aporkalypse (a "Ham-demic" as a co-worker put it) strikes us. Still griping about Palin? Daring McCain to bolt the party? Every time you think they've reached bottom, they punch through the floor and find another sub-basement.

So bad that even Arlen Specter couldn't stomach it and had to bail. And guys, while I like the idea of the true big tent party, getting a new conservative Democrat is like getting another tie for your birthday.

It's going to be a long haul. The economy is going to suck for a while. We're still hanging out in global neighborhoods where we've broken a lot of windows. We are going to hit stuff that we aren't even THINKING about right now.

But I'm pretty positive. There is a cool confidence and a solid sense of progress going on. We may just get out of this one yet.

And I guess I have to stop calling him the New Guy. Looks like he's a keeper.

More later,

Paranoia

So to best explain why I was protecting my deck from ninjas at 1 AM, I need to talk about my prostate.

(I don't think there is as single sentence as simultaneously intriguing and off-putting in the English Language. No, don't try.)

Without getting too graphic (yeah, I know you're disappointed), when I went in for my checkup, the bloodwork had an elevated PSA (Prostate Serum Antigen). PSA may be a indication of prostate trouble, but can be affected by other factors, which give a false positive. So I met with the urologist and we decided to eliminate those other factors, which include potential infection.

And to address that end, I've been taking ciprofloxacin.

Now, I have been very fortunate (touch wood) to not have to take anything heavier than tums. So a daily regimen of an antibiotic is a new thing for me. And I so I read the (huge) list of warnings about the drug side effects - effects including dizziness, drowsiness, hives, rapid heartbeat, hallucinations, paranoia, stomach cramps, diarrhea, nerve damage, sensitivity to sunlight, joint sensitivity, headache, fever, skin rash, trouble sleeping, and nightmares.

I think the nightmares come from reading the warning labels. The drugs may come from doctors, but the warning labels definitely come from lawyers, and include every possible effect. We could probably solve the street drug problem merely by giving them the same level of information.

In any event, since starting the regimen, I've been keeping track of potential side effects, and save for the continuing head cold (note: Cipro does not work on colds or flu), have been pretty safe (again, touch wood).

Until last night, when I was awakened by some chance noise - teenagers at the school or some animal in the backyard. I was awake, and within a matter of moments absolutely convinced that someone was out of the back porch outside the bedroom. Upon finding nothing (and not hearing anything else), these mysterious someones became ninjas who were watching, waiting for me to go back to sleep.

The rational mind said this was goofy, but the irrational mind was in charge, and waited by the door to the porch for the ninjas to make their move. Paranoia is a side effect of the drug, apparently (check the laundry list above). Fortunately, I had the antidote, in the form of the Lovely Bride, who instructed me to quit clowning around and come back to bed.

Now, most people know about cipro in the wake of the anthrax attacks of about eight years back, when a large number of concerned and powerful individuals were downing the stuff in hopes of evading the potential of infection. Now, given the possible side effects of the drug, maybe the last eight years have ANOTHER explanation. Just a thought.

Keeping an eye out for the Ninjas. More later,

While I Was Out ...

Goodness. I've been home three days and I am still digging my way out of previous posts and announcements. Here's the latest news:

ArenaNet has announced that we've sold 6 million copies of our games, just as we are coming up to our 4th anniversary. I'm delighted by the continued popularity of the Guild Wars and am excited about where we are going with the game.

Also, the company has started distributing the game on Steam, so you can purchase stuff online.

In other news, The Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 2, (which contains Ed Greenwood's story, "Elminster at the the Magefair", adapted by yours truly) has been nominated for an Origins Award. I am delighted by the nomination, though I think both the fiction and nonfiction categories are tough this year.

Jim Lowder was both an editor and a contributor to the WoD&D Vol 2, and is also the editor of the recently announced Family Games, The 100 Best 100, sequel to Hobby Games, the Best. Yep, I have something in this one, too.

But not all news is good. I got this note from my agent, Ashley Grayson, about the recent Google Books settlement, which legitimizes the "not evil" corporation's previous posting of other peoples' copyright material and gives creators the chance to "opt-out" of their continued use of such information by a method that is currently on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. Right now I am trying to figure out which (if any) of the shared world projects which bear my name would be covered by this, and if I need to brave a leopard. Oh, did I mention you have to decide RIGHT NOW about this?

And watch, they can put up the Starcraft Archives without any prob, but I'll get in trouble for quoting Hitchikers' Guide.

More later,

Days of Miracle and Wonder

I've been out of town for the past couple days on a business trip, and had no time even for the most inconsequential of posts or the slightest check of Facebook. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Instead, I have to say how easy it is to move through the travel system. Yeah, we all have horror stories, but I find it amazing that it takes me all of fifteen minutes to go from curbside to plane gate. Yeah, including the TSA. It is a combination of several things - ticketing kiosks with well-designed software, no luggage, and an educated traveling population that knows (mostly) to have their ID out and ready.

But it is more than that. On my brief sojourn I encountered competent service personnel, helpful hotel staff ("Would you like a king-sized bed instead of two twins, Mr Grubb?"), friendly airport personnel, tolerant cabbies, courteous wait-staff, and even a breakfast buffet worth the price. Oh, and my traveling companion lost his phone, and they found it and called me to say they would have it for him at the airport for his return trip. All of this with putting a hundred plus people into a tube and shooting them across the country so they can make meetings before noon at their destination.

These are days of miracles and wonder, indeed.

More later,

Update: And of course, after putting together a post that speaks of how easy it has become to move about the world these days, we have news out of Mexico City about a swine flu (Aporkalypse?) which is spread just as easy as catching the next flight to LA, New York, or Kansas. In blogging, like comedy, it is all in the timing.

Monster

And this morning I ran over some baby ducks.

Yes, it was a accident. And yes, I'm completely broken up about it.

I think I've mentioned how my office is in a bottomland crisscrossed by channels and shallow bodies of water. And with spring we have an abundance of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl raising their young. We have signs up and everyone is very careful about driving around.

And then I ran over the baby ducks. Now I'm a monster.

I came around a curve into our parking lot. I never saw the ducklings, and saw the mother duck only when I was right on top of them. Looking in the rearview I saw one of their little bodies flapping around on the asphalt and realized what I had done. I parked and went back but by that time it was too late.

There were two of them. The one I saw flapping was dead by the time I got back, and I found the body of another one, crushed, nearby. I moved them off the parking lot into the low marsh nearby, to where the mother was squawking loudly at me with her surviving brood. I apologized to the mother and offered a quiet prayer. But I had blood on my hands.

There had been another driver, right behind me coming in, but it doesn't feel right to share the blame. Or to blame the ducks for picking that particular moment to cross a heavily-traveled lot. Or to remember all the times I stopped, or even got out of the car to shoo ducklings to relative safety. Or to seek comfort in the fact that there are survivors, and part of the entire idea of raising a lot of duckling is that some will not survive, taken down by predators or illness or accidents.

But in this case the accident was me. And I feel like the clumsy giant, the uncaring ogre, the bad neighbor, the savage fool. Killing without purpose, an engine of destruction.

The guilt will remain with me for a while, as it should. I still feel the karmic debt for running over a chipmunk in Lake Geneva almost 20 years back.

I'm going to be carrying those ducklings for a while.

More later,

Theatre: Tales Both Told and Yodelled.

Breakin' Hearts & Takin' Names, written and performed by Kevin Kling and Simone Perrin, Seattle Repertory Theatre, through 10 May.

Through acts of both gods and mortals, the Seattle Rep is running two similar shows at the same time, each featuring two characters. In the big theater is Carrie Fisher and her alter ego Leia Organa, and in the Leo K is Kevin Kling and Simone Perrin. And while I liked the Fisher/Princess Leia show, I really liked this one.

I've talked about these two before. Kevin Kling is a commentator and humorist who shows up on NPR. Simone Perrin is a femme fatale armed with dulcet tones and a deadly accordion. Together, they fight crime!

Well, not crime. But they do make a cool couple. Kling tells stories about his youth his family, and Minnesota, Perrin chimes in on occasion, providing support material, and delivers torch songs and yodeling. Yeah, yodeling. Deal with it.

And the thing is, it feels so much more grounded and realistic than the stories in the other theater. I've never hopped a freight in search of a seafood dinner, nor have I woken up next to a dead Republican, but Kling's storytelling makes the first perfectly feasible and understandable.

The audience at Breakin' Hearts was different, too. A lot less of the older crowd who'd remember Debbie Reynolds. A lot of young people, along with people who have never been in that particular theater before (that is, people who come in the wrong door and then have to move across the entire row to get to their seats). So I'm thinking - either someone has done a great job marketing tickets to unlikely sources, or NPR is a lot more popular with the kids today than I thought.

In any event, the crowd was loud and engaged. They were laughing hard and applauding harder. And this was something I noticed about how we treat storytellers and how we treat musicians. Kling would finish a story and we would all nod or laugh. Perrin would finish a song and we would all applaud. That's kinda irritating for the storyteller, but seems to be the way we engage with the subject matter.

On the down side? Not much. It is a recession show, a small-cast number with talent shipped in from out of state. Saving money on the tip of the theatrical iceberg (the actors) while the (slightly reduced) staff puts as much effort into the production itself as it would normally (the set was hardly minimalist - a nice re-creation of every bar I've been in when I lived in Wisconsin).

But really, Seattle Rep, I'd to see some REP in our Repertory, M'Kay?

End of the day? There are two such shows at the Rep running now, and they're both good, but the one in the smaller theater is the better.

(Yeah, and saying so may make for some uncomfortable backstage meetings between the matinees and the evening shows. So be it).

More later,

Jeff and Kate's Day Off

I'm thinking of declaring the Friday after Tax Day an annual familial holiday.

The Lovely Bride wrapped up her tax preparation this week, and I've been pushing hard with the day job and a convention the previous weekend, so we decided, by mutual consent, that today was a day off. Put in the vacation request and everything, and made sure I was caught up before leaving the team to go on without me.

So, over the course of the day, we -
- Overslept.
- Had oatmeal.
- Noted that the rain of the previous evening
- Went to the Woodland Park Zoo. Always enjoyable, though this afternoon a power transformer went out, plunging the buildings into darkness and causing the indoor exhibits to close prematurely.
- Took a chance on a restaurant that Dave Gross had recommended years before he left town.
- Had stuffed pizza at Delfino's, in the University Village. Really good pizza, excellent service, nice window view to watch the other consumers. The pizza itself was delicious, and though we will pick nits, its the best stuffed pizza I've had in Seattle. Recommended.
- Got caught in a massive traffic jam coming home (what, first nice day and everyone decides to leave the office early?).
- Napped
- Sat on the back deck, reading Jay Lake's Trial of Flowers, leaving the lawn for tomorrow, until it got too dark and I retreated to my office.

All in all, a very successful day off.

More later,

Advanced Book Announcement

Odd, I could have sworn there was a cat in this bag.

As has been confirmed quietly on the GW boards and by the author, fellow Alliterate Matt Forbeck is currently writing the first of the Guild Wars novels. The initial info (much of it incorrect or undetermined) appeared on bookseller sites and spread through the Guild Wars fanbase quickly.

Yes, we've been working on it with Matt for a while now. Yes, it's really good.

Sigh. Now I'm going to have to find something ELSE to wrap up and give for Wintersday. If ya'll get a waffle iron, you'll know why.

More later,

Play: Princess Diaries

Wishful Drinking Created and performed by Carrie Fisher, Directed by Tony Taccone, Seattle Repertory Theatre, though 3 May.

This is many things. One woman show. Therapy through writing. Nostalgia act. Theater as book tour. Possible prep for the leap to Broadway. Last-minute fill-in. That final one is because the Seattle Rep got a short, sharp shock to the schedule and had to scramble. And to be honest they did pretty well as a result (since the original option was Godot)

Carrie Fisher you know from being Princess Leia in Star Wars, back in what was my youth and for most of you was a bajillion years ago. Yes, she's older and wider now, but I'm not one to talk. Fisher, however, does talk - about her heritage as the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, about he marriage to Paul Simon, about her addictions, about the dead guy in her bed four years ago (this is the opener). And about Star Wars.

Fisher paces the nicely-designed stage with a confident intensity and ranges out into the audience looking for victims. Oh yes, there is audience participation. Sort of like being in the front row of a Gallagher show, but with glitter instead of watermelon guts. You've been warned. She takes questions from the audience (about her dead guy). She picks up a few souls in the audience to commune with. She takes volunteers (and no, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it's hilarious).

And she does not take herself too serious. For a woman my age, she sounds older, a creature of another age, a survivor with a knapsack full of nostalgia and gossip. Sometimes she sounds like my actress mom-in-law. Sometimes she sounds like Harlan Ellison. And she does a dead-on Debbie Reynolds impression.

She does use visual aids - no Mike-Daisey-lone-guy-at-a-table here. They range from the family tree of multiple parental marriages to backdrop slides to some comfortable chairs for here to perch in. Still trying to figure out the deeper significance of the garden gnome, though.

Its nice, its bright, and its a good afternoon spent. Its like spending the afternoon with the wild, creative aunt, once you're old enough to hear the REAL family stories. For me, coming from a Science Fiction Convention, it was sort of a perfect ending to Norwescon. Definitely worth catching if you're a Star Wars fan (and that's,what, about 90% of Seattle).

More later,

Norwescon Notes

Conventions have been a hit and miss affair for me over the years. I've attended well-managed, well-run, and enthusiastic conventions, and I've had more than my share of bankrupt con committees, disastrous personal relationships among the con organizers, con nazis, vaporware scheduling, car accidents, personal injury, midnight fire drills, LSD-laced juice, and surprise visits by the police and/or EMTs. So my approach to cons is always with the politeness that one would normally show any explosive device you might suddenly find in your kitchen.

And just so there is no surprise, I put Norwescon in the former category, under the well-run, the well-managed, and the enthusiastic. Yes, there is always something going on or going wrong, and a good team rises above it and keeps everything moving smoothly, helping the convention experience of the participants.

The big challenge for the convention was parking, which approaches legendary proportions. The con is located at the Doubletree at SeaTac, and things filled up very fast. This year, they got additional parking available behind an office building two blocks away. I had to balance my convention panels with my day job, and soon discovered I could drive up, valet the car for a modest surcharge, and let the hotel staff find a parking place for me. It was a neat trick, but unfortunately, by Saturday the hotel had rumbled the ruse and restricted valet service to those staying at the hotel. Even so, it was only two (reasonably long) blocks away to the overflow parking, so it wasn't like it was going to kill me.

The gaming track of panels was very strong. This year they invited Bob Salvatore as GoH, and WotC as Publisher. Often SF conventions treat gaming like the AV room - a space put aside that they occasionally toss raw meat into (I'm looking at YOU, Emerald City). In addition to several such locations (open gaming and planned events), we had a boatload of panels on gaming and the gaming industry. AND Seattle has such depth of creative writers, designers, and editors, that not everyone was on the same panels (I think I teamed up with Erik Mona three times over the course of the week).

I also liked the fact that they got me out of my comfort zone in a number of places, putting me on panels that were not horrible strong points for me, like talking about Tolkien on a panel with a real Tolkien scholar, or talking about creating comic books with Paul (Concrete) Chadwick and Donna (Desert Peach) Barr. Those were my favorite panels because they were so outside my regular topics (and I really liked the fact that the Tolkien scholar gave a shout-out to the Gnomes of Dragonlance for being really cool).

And its been years since Bob and I have had a chance to talk, and we were nattering on like old grandmothers (grandmothers talking about server loads and poly counts for our respective MMOs, but still grandmothers). Plus it was the first time I've seen a lot of long-lost local friends for months, so it was way cool.

Norwescon is a strong costume convention as well. I showed up in my long-running costume as "older gaming professional". This consisted of a loud Hawaiian shirt and jeans during the day, and adding a black or linen suit coat for the evening panel. It was fun seeing guys in Klingon Battle Armor giving me the "Who's THAT guy" look in the halls. I think I was freaking the fandom.

And the fans themselves were extremely nice, and the bozoid particles seemed to be operating at an all-time low. The wonderful thing about having a long career in a number of different areas, is that I never know what I'm going to be talking about when a fan comes up (Of course, some fans may say I don't know what I'm talking about, regardless of the subject (NOTE: REMEMBER TO INSERT SMILEY FACE HERE)).

The dealer's area was heavily stocked for all the basics of modern fandom, such that armor, cloaks, corsets, weapons, wands, games, and videos vastly outnumbered books. I set out to find a copy of The Anubis Gates in non-collector-first-printing-signed-by-the-author version. I was unsuccessful, but I did score big at Night Shade Books, which had a Jay Lake book I've been meaning to read, the first two parts of a trilogy by Matthew Hughes, and a pirate short story collection with a Howard Waldrop tale in it. Bonus!

Plus, I ended up at a signing party next to Ken Scholes and his lovely (and expecting) bride, and now have to pick up a copy of his first novel, Lamentation (hmmmm... I see I can get it for the Kindle...).

So all in all it was a great convention for me - a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, a lot of interesting stuff going, panels that I wanted to attend, and good, solid level of enthusiasm and professionalism. Good Going, guys.

And then, of course, there was the part where a member of audience was making out with Carrie Fisher. No, wait. That was later in the day, at the Seattle Rep.

More about that later,

The Punishment Fits the Crime

So Pierce Watters, a fine gentleman who works for Paizo Publishing, writes reviews for Kobold Quarterly, and teaches Tai Chi, gifted me recently with a CD of The Mikado. The Mikado is one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most popular comic operas, and this particular recording was from the Bell Telephone Hour version of the 60s, starring Groucho Marx as Ko-Ko the Tailor-turned-Lord-High-Executioner.

I've been listening to it over the course of the week on my commutes, and now cannot get it out of my head. Bad enough the songs of Misters G & S are infectious, throwing that bit of Groucho into the middle of it is enough the drive one mad.

In general recap,it is a general madcap G&S - Minstrel Nanki-poo loves maiden Yum-Yum, who is supposed to marry her guardian, Ko-Ko, who in turn was appointed Lord High Executioner by the town of Titipu because he was himself the next to be executed (and he would not be able to execute any until he had lopped his own head off, a novel solution to capital punishment). But the ruling Mikado notices the lack of death in the town, and demands an execution. Nanki-poo, bereft from Yum-Yum, decides to kill himself, but Ko-Ko makes a deal with the Minstrel - Nanki-poo can marry Yum-Yum if at the end of the month he agrees to be executed. But it turns out the Nanki-poo is the Mikado's son, on the run from his father's own whimsical justice. And then things get wacky.

The end result is a rather sunny musical in which all the characters sing about death. No one dies, mind you, but there are all sorts of threats of death, suicide, and punishment. It is practically bouncy in its morbidity, and only after it is all said and done do you realize that no one perishes, and the worst punishment doled out is marriage.

The Bell Telephone presentation is an adaption, which means that content was edited for time and to fit the venue. Some minor characters disappear, the town's own complicity in the various shams is minimized, and Katisha (who is the closest thing to the "heavy" in the plot, though you would think Ko-Ko, who is initially keeping the lovers apart, should be) loses her initial appearance before the end of the first act. As a result, some of already intricate and dodgy logic is handwaved away entirely.

One reason that the role of Ko-Ko does not require as much vocal ability, and can be played by someone with good stagecraft but not an operatic voice. I've seen a version with Eric Idle in the role, and one that shows up on local cable fairly regularly starred local radio talk-show host Dave Ross. That allows more "stunt" casting as opposed to the talent casting, which actually helps is trying to untangle the plot.

And Groucho works adroitly, with enough of his "You Bet Your Life" persona, and in Ko-Ko's courting of Katisha (which provides part of the resolution of the pretty mess everyone is in) evokes his earlier romances in film with Margaret Dumond (in particular in "There is beauty in the bellow of the blast"). And Groucho is eminently listenable to, as he hurtles through the Gilbert's libretto.

But, as a kid with too much Halloween candy, I have overindulged, and now I've got a little list trapped in my head, and it is keeping me up at all hours.

More later,

Dave Arneson

Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D with Gary Gygax, passed away last night. In a little more than a year, we have lost both founders of the game.

I never had the opportunity to work with Dave - his (staggering) contribution to the hobby was at a time when I was but a nascent fan. But I do remember, in later years, how excited our freelance wrangler, Bruce Heard was, when we started work on what would be the DA series of modules. I met Dave in the flesh a handful of times, always under the convention lights, and always found him to be kindly, friendly, and modest.

Gary and Dave were the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of our hobby, the names by which later generations would conjure. They created what would be modern roleplaying, and the rest of us are caught up in their wake.

Rest easy, Dave. You will be missed.

More later,

Norwescon Schedule

All the cool kids are doing it, so here's my schedule for Norwescon.


Thursday
Novelization of a Game 8:00 PM Cascade 7

Many video games today have accompanying fiction, often providing a more detailed storyline of either what was going on in the game, or what came before or after the game’s events. Many roleplaying games have series of novels expanding their worlds with characters and cities and events that become canon in that setting. Join our panelists as they discuss how a game’s setting is translated into a novel that, in turn, gives back to the game.
Janna Silverstein, Richard Baker, Jeff Grubb

Where are All the Sci-Fi Games? 9:00 PM Cascade 7

Dungeons. Dragons. Swords. Magic. What about the lasers? Interstellar space travel? Aliens? Netrunning? The Dark and Gritty Future? Are they all video games these days? Panelists discuss why fantasy is king in gaming right now, when Sci-Fi will make its comeback, and what Sci-Fi gamesAREout there right now.
Randall N. Bills, Jeff Grubb


Friday
The Tabloid Game (Ripped from the Headlines!) 1:00 PM Cascade 5

Our group of expert game masters will create a scenario before your very eyes using only a selection of tabloid newspapers. Come join in the fun and throw out a few suggestions of your own.
Erik Mona, Jeff Grubb, Andy Collins, Darrin Drader

Playing God, Part II: Gods and Religion 8:00 PM Cascade 8

Part of world building is designing the pantheon responsible for the whole thing. Our game experts discuss how they go about filling the cosmos with deities worthy of a hero’s worship, and how they manage to stay upright on such a slippery slope as religion in gaming.
Erik Mona, Wolfgang Baur, Sean Reynolds, Jeff Grubb


Saturday
Autograph Session1 11:00 AM Evergreen 1 & 2

Grab your books! Our Guests of Honor and many of our pros will be available for autographs.

R.A. Salvatore, Geno Salvatore, Todd Lockwood, Richard Baker, John P. Alexander, MH (“Maggie”) Bonham, L.J. Bothell, Ted Butler, Jeff Carlson, Greg Cox, Darrin Drader, Michael Ehart, Elton Elliott, Spencer Ellsworth, Roberta Gregory, Jeff Grubb, Warren Hammond, Paul Melko, G.David Nordley, Sean Reynolds, Kat Richardson, Ken Scholes, Jeff Sturgeon, Tiffany Trent

(Note: I haven't written a new book for years now, so I think this one will be pretty quiet for me. Show up and we'll make fun of the cool kids (and celebrate the fact the Liberty's Crusade finally earned out).

Forgotten Realms: Past, Present, Future 6:00 PM Evergreen 3 & 4

Now in all the lands 'twixt bustling Waterdeep and the sparkling waves of The Sea of Fallen Stars, no men were more loved -- and feared -- than the stoic swordsman Durnan, the blustering old rogue Mirt, and the all-wise, ancient wizard Elminster. Dragon Magazine #218 These were the very first words written about the Forgotten Realms, written in 1967 by an 8-year-old Ed Greenwood, who originally designed it and began writing little stories of his own about heroes adventuring in an imaginary world and publishing a series of short articles detailing the setting in Dragon magazine. Since 1987, this campaign setting has grown and developed, generating over two hundred novels, dozens of computer RPGs, and a host of adventures and gaming supplements. Join our distinguished group of gaming professionals as they discuss the history of the Forgotten Realms, and recount their parts in developing it.
Jeff Grubb, Richard Baker, R.A. Salvatore, Sean Reynolds
(Note: I'm supposed to be leading this one, so expect a train wreck.)

Tolkien Has a Lot to Answer For 7:00 PM Cascade 4

With Lord of the Rings, Tolkien established the fantasy genre and many of the current fantasy traditions. Has this now hindered the growth of the fantasy genre?
Michael Martinez, Jeff Grubb, Eric Mona


Sunday

Writing for Comics 10:00 AM Cascade 4

Somewhere between novels and screenplays can be found the comic book. How does one write for the comics? What's the difference between script-first and plot-first? Can you write for comics if you have no artistic talent whatsoever? How do you break into the field in the first place?
Donna Barr, Jeff Grubb, Paul Chadwick

Expect light blogging as I juggle my regular life and the convention.

More later,

Age

So I went to my GP today for my annual physical. And I'm in pretty sound health, though I could be better in many ways.

We talked about the colonoscopy and the prodigious size of the non-cancerous polyp they removed and the need for another screening in three years, but I didn't feel bad about that.

We talked about the fact I was running a mild fever, and that at my age, baby aspirin would be a good safety measure against heart disease, and I didn't feel bad about that.

We talked about the fact that my blood pressure is a little up - not badly, but still above normal, and that I should engage in better diet and exercise, and though I will miss the goldfish crackers in the breakroom, I didn't feel too bad about that.

No, what bothered me was the fact that I have apparently shrunk, and am one inch shorter than I had been a decade ago. And that, more than anything else, bothers me, probably because there is nothing I can do about it (except stand up straight and preserve what height I still have).

Such is the price of age. More later,

To The Emerald City

So this morning I drove downtown for the Emerald City Comics Convention, a show which has just crested over the status of "up and coming" and may be verging into the domain of "fandom overload". It is a two-day convention (for which I appreciate), and the last few years was in the cavernous depths of the stadium complex next to Qwest Field. This year it moved to the downtown convention center, and neatly occupies its main floor while giving both the booths and the fans sufficient space to breath.

Still, it was a mob scene. It was, however, probably the most polite mob I've ever seen (that's a Seattle Thing). When I arrived they had formed into a serpentine queue snaking through two rooms, which they KEPT to all the way through (no line-jumping). The lines moved quickly, and I thought it was because of all the people who had purchased tickets in advance. Imagine my surprise when, getting to the head of the line, the big block was at people trading their prepurchased tickets for badges, and almost no one was at the "pay cash to walk in" section. I felt pretty good about my procrastination (well, my local comics store was sold out by the time I remembered).

The floor was nicely packed, with frequent fandom clots. And while I am tolerant of all the stoppages due to a) costumes being photographed and b) families with strollers, I have no patience for the back-pack wearers who suddenly drop to their knees at the crosspaths, trying to dig something out of the voluminous packs. Saw a lot of friends, most of them behind booths, which was pretty cool. There was a "when nerds collide" equality here from the largest and most popular companies and creatives to the small press and self-published, all in one great room.

The longest line was for Wil Wheaton. The second-longest line was for the DC booth, where they were giving away Wonder Woman Tiaras and Flash rings (I got one of each, gave the tiara to my wife, and the ring to a friend whose booth was on the long line into the DC area. The third longest line was for writer Brian Michael Bendis. Met Doug Sneyd, who did wonderful cartoons for Playboy (yes, when I was young, I read Playboy for the cartoons). I bought the last copy of Keith Knight's "K Chronicles" compendium from the artist. Bought my annual trilobite from Phil at the Studio Foglio/Girl Genius booth (I buy one every year - someone admires it, and I make it a gift to them, then have to buy a new one the next year). Picked up some literacy t-shirts ("Will Work for Books").

The convention is just getting big enough to more than a peaceful afternoon. A lot of folk are avoiding San Diego as it gets larger and larger (To quote Yogi Berra again - "Nobody goes there anymore - it's too crowded"), and local conventions like Emerald are picking up the slack. Last time I went there was a rise of Cthulhu and Oz books. Now there is a strange coming together of young families and the Suicide Girls. And, of course, zombies.

Its a good show, and should slow down a bit tomorrow, if you're interested in browsing the floor. Go have fun.

More later,

DOW Breaks 8,000!

[Note to the new arrivals: I look in on the American economy every so often, using the DOW crossing a millennial number (in either direction) as a guide. You can find other entries by searching for "DOW Breaks", and will probably discover that I find that Wall Street does not intersect with Main Street, and that our larger markets involve more fantasy than will be found in an entire year's worth of Forgotten Realms novels.]

Well, we're back up 1000 points, so I guess the recession is over.

Yeah, right.

Actually, I expect more wild gyrations over the next year as we approach something that resembles a "new stability". I think the current short-term bull market comes entirely from an administration that declared a) we're in a hole, and b) we think this is a good time to stop digging. Its amazing what kind of effect it has on markets based on what people THINK things are worth, as opposed to what they ARE worth.

And yeah, I have an opinion on the entire AIG matter. Yes, the bonuses ("retention" bonuses, because you want to keep people on who did such a good job), are but a tiny fraction of the entire bailout, like paying $100 and quibbling about a dime. But if we are investing in such companies (and I prefer the idea of "investing", since its our money being poured in), we are going to get to quibble about such such things and make the lives of those who got us into this mess rather unpleasant. Because then they will be more interested in getting their company ship-shape and GETTING RID of our continual attention.

So if you want things to go back to normal, banks, consider this an inducement. I think the idea that we'll STOP paying attention to your bonus structure will be a great encouragement to you fixing the mess you've created post haste.

More later,

Grognards

Let me lay out my credentials. I started playing with Airfix plastic soldiers when I was but a child, and quickly graduated to the Milton Bradley/American Heritage Series of games (Dogfight, Battlecry, and Hit the Beach). I got into board wargames in junior high. My first real (hexes and paper chits) wargame was Avalon Hill's Panzer Blitz, and my first issue of S&T was Fall of Rome (1973). I got into RPGs in the fall of '75, in my freshman year of college, back when the game consisted of three little booklets in a fake wood-grain box, along with the Greyhawk supplement.

Yet despite this rich (and aged) heritage, I am afraid I am not a grognard.

"Grognard" is an evolving word. It takes its origin from Napoleon's veteran grenadiers, who had seen their way through many campaigns, and were known as "The Grumblers" (though the modern translation of "grumbler" in french is grognon. It jumped the species boundary into wargaming as a reference to older gamers in general (according to this story from Alan Emerich, quoting Jim Dunnigan).

This was in the mid-seventies, and the phrase quickly spread among the gaming fans. For our group at Purdue University, the term referred to the older gamers at the university's gaming club. Most of these guys were miniatures gamers - primarily WWII armor but some Napoleonics as well (which may have aided the adoption of the name). There was some early friction between the tankers (who would push three tables together, cover it with a green dropcloth, and spend the Sunday afternoon with their tape measures and panzers) and the D&Ders (who would also want three tables for a host of younger gamers, and spend all the time talking). So for me, the term grognard is usually a wargamer, tape-measure and spotting charts in hand.

Now that definition has moved on, so that now a grognard is now an adamant fan of older games, particularly games that are no longer in print, or that have been revised to the point they no longer resemble their original. There is a grapeshot-whiff of nostalgia among these nouveau grogs, which often blossoms into a full-fledged mad-on about anything more recent than Unearthed Arcana. They are fans a particular era, and anything since has gone beyond the pale, jumped the shark, nuked the fridge, and passed into the lower planes in a handbasket.

In the D&D world, these new grogs tends to collect around the time of one of the early basic sets (called the "Holmes Basic" after its editor), aided by the first Monster Manual (back in those days, we got ONE hardback a year, and we LIKED IT!). That puts it about 1977, and was the time when D&D made its big explosion into a larger market. I have a lot of friends who came to the hobby in this era. And it was a good time join, since without a solid grounding in miniatures gaming, those original little booklet rules were pretty darned impenetrable.

So I should be among these later-day grognards. Heck, my history PREDATES theirs. I still have a copy of Tractics on my shelf, for Gary's sake. I should be telling THEM to get off my role-playing lawn.

Yet I can't - I've been an early adapter of many of the revolutions in gaming (Computers, CCGs, prepainted plastic miniatures), have missed others (LARPs, ARGs), and have seen a few that never were (anyone remember Disk Wars?). Why can't I get into the spirit of declaring my own personal golden age, and bemoaning that after that, there came the deluge?

I think part of it is because I see gaming as an evolving thing, sometimes smoothly, and sometimes (like in the break between the tankers and the D&Ders, the arrival of CCGs, or the current edition wars) with a sharp disconnect. Each new generation brings its own experiences to the party, and creates new things. I don't always agree with new developments, but I see potential solutions in the next generation beyond, as opposed to retrenching in the past.

And part of it also the recognition that the first drafts of great new ideas are just that - first drafts. D&D blossomed with problematic rules. Magic: The Gathering was infested with broken cards. Early computer adventure games had, to be kind, primitive graphics. The "Indie Game Movement" has both the blessing and the curse of self-publishing.

I like the original D&D, but I also like the various incarnations of Basic, A&D, 2nd Ed, 3rd Ed, and now 4th Ed. And I will probably be around for 5th and 6th as well, as the conversation continues and the game continues to evolve. The new edition of White Wolf's World of Darkness does not offend me (though I really like what Monte Cook did for them with the same basic building blocks). I've drifted away from Magic and World of Warcraft and many other games, and drifted back (a couple times).

I love my old games, but I'm equally curious about where we go next.

More later,

Advanced Screening

So previously in this space I've addressed the concerns of our fans regarding the upcoming release of Guild Wars 2, pointing them in the direction of this post by our head honcho Mike O'Brien (Short version: Chill out, dudes, we got this covered). And the great majority of the fans are cool with this, and have sent notes to the effect of getting it right is more important than getting it right now, and all of us appreciate that.

This hasn't stopped a number of fans from creating their own trailers for the upcoming game, most of which are very nice and real cool and, to be frank, we like them here at the office. But the one I've embedded below actually uses footage from the game, which gives all of us pause.

Take a look, and know that our team of ace cybertrackers are hot on the trail of those responsible.

Oh, and have a nice day.

More later,

Update: Yes, it is Poisson d'Avril. My fellow writer and game designer, Ree Soesbee, came across this while looking at fan-generated trailers, and I pocketed it for just such an occasion. Thanks, Ree (and warning, her site comes with music - though no Rick Astley).

Update Update: Got an email from one of the individuals who created this video (for those of you who stayed for the credits - they read "You have been GW Rolled by Infested Kerrigan Shadow the Troll, Gabe Fall, Uobie May, and X Aldiminica X"). Thanks to all you who made this.

Update Update Update: Massively covers what we REALLY did for Guild Wars this year, which was wonderful. And they name-check this blog (must have been a slow news day). But because it was covered in Massively, I got to rickroll some of my fellow employees that are normally too smart for that kind of thing. Still, I am regretting I never put a counter on this page.

More later,

Sheep Go Boom

Wired has an excellent article on one of the great modern board games, Settlers of Catan, which deserves every accolade that has be placed upon it. A surprisingly easy game to teach and play, it has a perfect mix of random chance, personal interaction, and strategy.

One thing that is missing in the article is how these more expensive German games first made their initial inroads in America. And that involves another game Magic: The Gathering. Magic was the phenomena before the European Board Game phenomena. The card game was incredibly popular and incredibly collectible, such that early series were worth huge amounts in the aftermarket, both as speculation and in the game (the game has become more balanced over the years, but lacks the excitement of having a rare card in your deck of those early years). A lot of my friends got into Magic, played the heck out of it, then sold their cards are amazing prices to others.

So they had money, they had an interest in games, and suddenly the world of European Board Games, which had poked along for many years (usually with translated rule sets in the box (if you were lucky)) opened its doors to them. AND the European games arrived with its own killer app, Settlers of Catan. And that's how I first learned to play - from early adapters who were getting out of CCGs.

I'd like to say I still have my original set, but I ended up spreading this meme myself in those early years. I would teach someone to play, they would love it, and I would give them the game we were playing (yeah, I'm always recruiting future gamers). It was popular among my family, as my then-young-nieces quickly understood the game and became mavens at it. The heading of this article is a result of one of those games - I don't know how we ended up talking about sheep (probably we had a surplus of them) and one of them coined the phrase "Sheep go boom". Still a family punchline.

The game itself remains a favorite for gaming days and gaming nights with friends. Inevitably, there is a new player. Inevitably, they end up winning or coming darn close in the game. Inevitably, we find someone who is very interested in the game. And since it it easier to get on this side of the pond, I don't have to give away copies anymore.

More later,

Deathsticks for Everybody!

This is my favorite part of the Attack of the Clones movie.

More later,

Any War In A Storm

My co-workers are a fickle group, as a rule. They fall hard for the latest new arrivals in games, play the heck out of it, analyze it to death, then move onto the next new coolness. They played Team Fortress into the ground, have played all the big MMOs upon release, and of late have been cutting a swath through a host of Tower Defense Clones.

And occasionally I get sucked in. I'm usually trailing edge, playing City of Heroes or Civilization into the ground as opposed to getting involved in something new. But give me a new game, an interesting game, a FREE game, and I get swept up in it all.

In this case the game du jour is Warstorm, a deck-building online fantasy card game. You build a deck made up of cards with particular summoning times, attacks, defenses, and special abilities. Then you play them. HOW you play them is completely inconsequential - the machine plays out the game with very strict rules on who attacks who. Individual choice exists only in what you put into your army. You can play against AI opponents (most of whom have abilities you don't get at the outset) or in challenges and tournaments against other live players. And since the "game" is really just a formality, you can watch it at any time (sort of like taping a football game - it isn't going to change after you tape it). Your opponent doesn't have to BE there, so it makes it a little leisurely, and does not put those with reduced available time at a disadvantage.

The human and elf armies, in relatively slow-casting versions, are free. If you want good stuff - reanimating undead, flying dragons, and the like, you've got to pay for some of the "non-basic sets". And though I've been having a good time with the basics, I find it extremely tempted to work through some of the more advanced packs.

For the moment, I'm trying to wrap up the basic (free) mission chains, and doing the odd challenge. I can be found as Horgarth on the net, and will gladly take on all challengers.

For the next week at least, until we all move onto something else.

More later,

Cthulhian Renaissance

You never know when you're going to hit a golden age until one lands right on top of you.

For several years, the Call of Cthulhu game has been a bit moribund in the adventures department. Chaosium, its publisher, has been quietly steaming along, primarily with upgrades of various classic adventures (some of them brilliant), but with only a few new things in print, and some of those primarily little more than translations from a more vibrant German scene.

Then, in the past few months, there has been a veritable onslaught of Cthulhiana.

Start off with Super Genius Games, which has been publishing short, snappy adventures for the game. "Murder of Crows" and "The Doom from Below", for the 1920s, by the brilliant Stan! and "Midnight Harvest" by Owen Stephens both are true to the classic intent of the game.

And in referring to classic, there's "New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley", set in the heart of Lovecraft country, from Miskatonic River Press. I have not read it (someone else will be running the adventures, but I did pick up a copy. The sad and untimely passing of the company's president and star writer/editor, Cthulhian veteran Keith Herber, has put future releases in doubt. So if you see it, pick it up.

Pagan Publishing arrives with "Mysteries of Mesoamerica", a sourcebook on the Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs, and other peoples of central america, with four adventures spanning twenty years.

And on a pulpier side, Goodman Games has launched its "Age of Cthulhu" line with "Death in Luxor" by Harley Stroh, which deals with elder corruption in Cairo. And with luck, we may even see the long-awaited "Pulp Cthulhu" from Chaosium itself.

What can be said? It looks like the stars finally came right.

More later,

Ellisonia

I haven't heard much from Harlan Ellison since the end of the WGA strike (short form - he didn't like the deal). But now he is back on the radar, going after Paramount for payment from derivative rights for his classic Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever". And going after the WGA as well for not standing up for those rights.

Harlan, who has moved over the years from Enfant Terrible to Grand Old Curmudgeon with nary losing a step, points out that he's in it for the money. More importantly, the money that they legitimately owe him.

One of the amazing things about Hollywood is that while no one would think of stiffing their plumber or their doctor, it is a regular feature to give the writer convoluted and often arcane contractual rights, and then ignore those rights as soon as it becomes inconvenient. And keep ignoring them until said writer finally comes after them with a two-by-four.

More later,

Demise of the P-I

So today is the last edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, making Seattle a one-daily-paper town. The paper will be survived by its on-line phantom, in the same manner as Dungeon and DRAGON survive in pixelated format at WotC site.

I mourn the disappearance of the P-I in the same fashion that I regret the disappearance of the coffee shop on the corner that I don't go to, or the local store that doesn't ever seem to have pants in my size. I regret its loss as part of the neighborhood, but I haven't done a whole lot to keep it in business.

When we first moved out here, ten years back, we tried out both local papers. The P-I was part of the Hearst chain, a little more Seattle-centric, and little more sensational. The Times was locally owned, more conservative, and had a bit more of a regional spread (it mentioned Renton!). They also had better science coverage, as well as carrying Doonesbury on their otherwise-conservative-pitched editorial page. We went with the Times.

So the impact of the loss of the P-I is on one hand minimal. The Times may take a more liberal swing to pick up the lost market, or may go even more conservative now without a balancing force (Regardless, it will defend to its dying day the right of wealthy newspaper owners to avoid estate taxes). On the other hand, we as a community are lessened by the loss of major paper.

One reason is that a reduced newspaper presence results in less engagement in local issues and politics. It has been no great shakes of late, given that both papers were reducing their reporting headcount and thereby their coverage, but without the fourth estate to shine bright lamps on them, institutional rot sets in at a rapid pace.

Similarly, the reduced exposure to the arts makes it harder to make people aware of things that are new and different, which feeds the steepening spiral of less people engaging with the arts. Even if you don't go to any of the dozens of shows, exhibits, or festivals, knowing they are there pulls people together. It helps define us as a community to know about Sakura-Con or the latest play at the Rep or who's musical career has been embalmed and is on display at the Emerald Queen Casino.

The P-I will survive as an on-line aggregator-style version of a newspaper. this only works, of course, as long as there are things to aggregate. The increasing use of such sites are also vulnerable to manipulation, astroturf, and sockpuppetry. These problems exist in print, but the longer cycle time of a newspaper allows more time for sources to be investigated and bias discovered and reported. Now the press to publish is instantaneous, and unless kept under a firm hand and watchful eye, can quickly go astray.

And oddly enough, this is what newspapers bring you. It is the talent and the stories and the cartoons, but it also an editorial guidance. THIS story rates the front page. THIS is important but can be tucked back a few pages. THIS merits a summary. This one? Something smells bad - let's check it out, first. That can be what the electro-P-I has, but the jury will remain out.

Newspapers also, oddly, bring you stuff you didn't necessary want, or don't know you want. You don't want to know about a politician's problems until they are presented to you. You aren't going to go look for information about recalls but you'd like to have that information available when they happen. You don't need to know about unrest in Pakistan ... yet. The newspapers are supposedly the first draft of history, and with them we can see, in tangible form, what we think and what we want to think.

So long to the P-I. Your cousin, the Times isn't looking too healthy at the moment as well. And may you unlock the secret to online publishing and continue to be a force in Seattle (at least, you could catch up with the Stranger Blog.

More later,

Flying Polyps

I don't go into great detail about health issues because a) I don't want to bore you with my problems, and b)I don't want you to feel that you have to share YOUR problems in return. But this is important, so I'm putting it here.

If you are 50 or over, I strongly recommend a colonoscopy.

I had one this past Friday, and would go on in odious detail, but Dave Barry has gotten there first, and is much funnier about it than I would be on the subject. My experience is similar to his. In my case, they found a single (huge) polyp that appears benign, but they are doing a biopsy on it and I should know the results in a couple weeks.

This is a serious major step for anyone in regards to managing their own health (and that would be ... all of us). Colon cancer is the 2nd major killer of men in my age group (and third for women). The procedure is time-consuming from the standpoint of preparation (see the Dave Berry article), but is outpatient surgery and was handled professionally and (yes) painlessly.

This is a case where silence IS deadly, so pay attention and check with your GP.

More (hopefully less of a buzzkill) later,

Your Plutonian Science of the Day

Yesterday was the 79th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto. I was otherwise occupied, but make up for it by providing this excellent link on 10 things you don't know about Pluto.

Well, most of them I did know, but I've read up on that sort of thing.

More later,

Your Cartography of the Day

Here we have a map of the Imperium and its neighbors, from Traveller. You can get it in poster, atlas, and "candy" formats, and zoom up to system-size (Offer good only in mapped sections of the Imperium, offer void when dealing with Hivers and the Two Thousand Worlds).

More later,

Your Literary Nostalgia Quote of the Day

Courtesy of the LA Times blog, the Daily Mirror, which reprints old articles from the LA Times morgue, there is this quote from Raymond Chandler.

Chandler has another book coming out next month - "The Lady in the Lake", which he says may be his last mystery. "There's no money in them," he admitted regretfully. "Not when 10,000 copies is considered a good sale!"

The more things change.

More later,

Your Game Link for the Day.

Here, let me destroy your productivity for the week.

More later,

Play: Green Knight

The Seafarer by Conor McPherson, directed by Wilson Milam, Seattle Repertory Theatre, February 26- March 28.

Well, now I know where all the unspoken words in Pinter's Betrayal ended up - they were harvesting them for this sprawling, brawling, brilliant Irish play.

This is the second McPherson play I've seen - the first was The Weir at The Intiman almost ten years back. Both are set in Ireland, both dealing heavily with alcohol, and both get spookier as we move deeper into them.

Sharky (Hans Altwies) is back home on Christmas Eve, looking after his recently-blinded elder brother Richard (Sean G. Griffin). Sharkey has given up drink, a task made more difficult by the near-continual drunkfest in the house, such that at the start the near-demented Richard is passed out in his chair and family friend Ivan (a wonderfully befuddled Russel Hodgkinson) is sleeping in the upstairs bath. There is a bit of the loser about all three men - Sharky's drinking has burned a number of bridges and run him through a number of jobs, Richard was blinded while dumpster diving and swings wildly between patriarch and victim, while Ivan has lost his glasses while drinking and now faces the wrath of his wife on Christmas morning.

Add to this Nicky (Shawn Telford), a fast-talking sort of loser who ended up with Sharky's woman and his car, who drops by, along with Mr. Lockhart (Frank Corrado), who has been driving him around southern Dublin on a pub crawl. They're there for a traditional game of Christmas Eve poker. Its all a cascade of characterization and interaction, until you get to the point where Lockhart reveals he knows Sharky, and then things take a wonderfully sinister turn.

One of the great things about good scripts is that they work on multiple levels. Not just "single man/greater issues" levels, but the fact that two people in on the stage know something, the rest don't, and you (the audience) are let in on the secret as it unspools. The Seafarer does this wonderfully, combining family interaction, societal alcohol pressure, and well-meaning comrades with the supernatural and the aforementioned game of poker. And probably the best description of heaven and hell ever put onto the stage.

And the title comes from an old poem of the same name, wherein a sailor talks about the difficulty of his life at sea as opposed to the warmth of the hearth, and Sharky's vow of abstinence in an alcohol-fueled world reflects that. But what drives it forward is another tale - that of Gawain and the Green Knight, of promises made and debts collected.

All the actors are excellent, and most get the chance to show themselves at their best and at their worst over the course of the play. Altwies holds it together as the play's center, but Griffin and Telford roar and sparkle and Hodgkinson is just brilliant as the slightly-addled Ivan. All get their parts and all have their comic relief moments as they spill over a stage littered with beer bottles and cans. Corrado is good as well, flipping his menace on and off over the course of the evening, though his accent wanders through all of the original 32 counties of the Emerald Isle.

The stage itself is done up in "household clutter" mode, and while a maze of exits and stairs, the stage does not move, leaving that to the more-than-capable actors. The set is a minefield of not only furnishings, but of remains of beer and whiskey bottles and cans of Guinness (the lobby was selling the beer at intermission, with the sign "We may use your cans for props in the show"). Some of the drunken cascades the characters perform are initiated by some misstep on the deadly stage.

So the play is funny and serious, sad and thoughtful, terrible and bright. It is tough not to be jealous of a brilliant living playwright (the dead will do no more damage), but I'd definitely toast McPherson in hopes that I can be jealous for a lot longer.

More later,

Film: All Along the Watchtowers

Watchmen, Directed by Zack Snyder, Screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the comic book by Alan Moore (uncredited, at his request) and Dave Gibbons.

So the office all went to Watchmen in the middle of the day today, and we pretty much outnumbered everyone else in the theater(pretty full for the 11:30 show, but most of it was us). And I like it, and will recommend it, with a few major caveats, in particular the fact that it is what we used to call a "hard" R-rating. But there are parts that bother me as well.

Now, the movie-going universe divides into two groups - those who who have read the original comics and those who have not. I'm in that first group - hey, I'm one of the old guys who read the comics when they were still a (mostly) monthly book, which is a different experience that reading them in collection. Let me just state right here that SPOILERS ABOUND, because it is very, very hard to go into a movie these days without someone or something giving you hints and expectations (and yeah, I hate friends who say "You'll never guess the twist", which of course points out that there IS a twist). So just so you know, I will be talking about the giant psychic squid

Watchmen is set in 1985 in an alternate universe where costumed vigilantes exist. The opening credits are not going to be read, since it is all overwhelmed by the images of how the superheroes screwed around with history as we know it. The original costumed heroes of the forties, things going bad in the fifties, the arrival of a true superman in the sixties. We get superheroines posing for bomber nose-art and stealing the famous VJ Day kiss in Times Square, influencing the Kennedy assassination and taking pictures of Neil Armstrong on the moon. All to the tune of Dylan's "Times They Are A'Changing". And you know that this is a different America.

And the alternate America is a conservative's utopia. The USA has the ultimate weapon in the form of the superpowered Dr. Manhattan, who wins the Vietnam War in a week. Nixon is still in office after five terms. The Cold War is still on, as the Soviets are building massive stockpiles and testing America's resolve in Afghanistan. We move closer to atomic armageddon that seems so much more comfortable in these terroristic times. And we're a little more violent and little more blase about shooting civilians at home, whether they are hippies or protesters demanding the return of police protection. Eventually the masks are outlawed and go into retirement or start working for the government.

Then one of them is killed - the Comedian, who's been doing a lot of wetwork for the government. On the trail of his killer is Rorshach, an unwavering and brutal investigator with an ever-shifting mask. En route we get to know the rest of the modern retired heroes, Silk Spectre, who went into the business because her mother was the original Silk Spectre. Nite Owl, another second generation hero, who keeps his old technological toys in the basement. Ozymandias, the world's smartest man. And Dr. Manhattan, the only truly superpowered hero in the world.

Rorshach is a violent, paranoid man, but he's right. Something IS going on with the superheroic community, and it plays out against increasing east/west tensions. And the ultimate question becomes - what would you really do to change the world?

The film succeeds, generally. The comic it is based upon is texturally dense and extremely metatextural. There are wheels within wheels, motifs swallowing their own tails, and continual hints and red herrings. In a more visual media such as film, it is difficult to bring all of that across. And the movie succeeds, using the original comic almost as storyboard, to the point that major panels are recreated verbatim.

The order of the story is smoothed out, a lot of loops are removed, and a great deal of the secondary story is jettisoned. It does have an effect. Within the comic, we continually return to a corner news stand in Manhattan, which is seen only in the final scene. And entire substory involving a pirate comic book (there are real super-heroes, why have comics about them?) which reflects the main themes of the book are jettisoned, Nite Owl's mentor is introduced and never touched upon again (with the result that new Nite Owl loses a lot of his own personal growth). All changes needed to get it down to a still overlong 2 1/2 hour movie.

Yet it does hit the major points and does a better job of honoring the original than most other popular culture-to-movie translations. Let me put it this way - there were no Legolas-shield-surfing-the-steps scenes here.

And it gets to the end and it changes. The wheels don't exactly fall off, but they do wobble just a bit. The original ending was a bit hard to swallow (go ahead, old fans - use the term 'giant psychic squid' without giggling). What replaces that actually makes more sense and fits with the MO we've established so far for the villain of the piece.

What wobbles is what they retain (here comes the big spoilers, folks). As in the original, a huge (and murderous) hoax apparently threatens the world, causing all the nations within to pull together. That's a big sell, made even tougher in the film by what they replaced the giant psychic squid with.

But that's not my problem with the ending. More importantly, they deviate in the "villain's" final joy in him triumph (in the comic, he wasn't sure it would work, in the film he remains cool as ice). Also, they jigger around the various characters coming to terms with the new reality. This is the payoff sequence for everyone. In the comic, they spend a lot more time slowly realizing that the "villain" got it right. Yes, its been two hours already, but cutting down those scenes actually did more damage to the film than the, um, giant psychic squid.

And when you hear "we changed the ending because of 9/11", it is not the, um, giant psychic squid they are talking about. They keep a very 9/11 vibe, but spread it out more. And unfortunately weakening the strength of the argument itself.

On actors, the Comedian (absolute bastard) and Rorshach (psychotic) nailed their parts, and Dr. Manhattan, working through glowy blue special effects and nudity, conveyed a detached humanity to his role. Nite Owl had the heart of his story removed, and is left as supermensch to Manhattan's Uberman. Ozymandias, one of the most enigmatic characters in the comic, feels weak on the screen.

But it is the young Silk Spectre character that has the hardest time. She's the only one of the bunch that the story ultimately demands growth of (Nite Owl does in the comic, but again, much of his story was jettisoned). She proves to be too slender a reed to carry everything she has to go through. I think that is one of the movie's weak spots as well.

And there is such a thing as following the book too closely. And by that I don't mean going shot-for-shot. In the original comic, the story was broken up into a regulated grid 3 panels by 3 panels per page, which made larger panels pop more. Problem is that these panels are mostly vertical, and the movie screen is mostly horizontal. So in following too tightly, we are losing a lot of the versatility of the camera itself. I cause myself tracking on when the director shook loose and made a movie as opposed to bringing a comic to life. It was noticeable.

And finally the sex and violence. A lot of people point to the original as being a hallmark for moving into unfamiliar territory, and it was - this was a post-code book and had cursing and blood and naked blue men. But the director pushes the R as far as he can go. In comics, you can fill in a lot into the gutters between the panels. Here, we went with a lot more direct and blatant violence. (the comic stresses the mortality of the characters, but in the opening fight and throughout, it is clear that the collateral damages are turned up to 11, and you can punch through walls and use and opponent' face to engage in major home renovations). Be warned, this is not a film for kids.

Final summary? Good. I honestly liked Iron Man better, which carried through more on spirit of the original source than on plot. in Watchmen they filmed the unfilmable, and did a better job that I would ever expect. And while the ending feels rushed (and the problem is NOT insufficient giant psychic squids), it stands up well.

And yeah, I've gone on long, and have yet more to say. But as we say around here, more later.

Your Art Link of the Day

Spectrum, the long-standing showcase for fantasy and science fiction art, has announced the winners for Spectrum 16:The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art.

Taking the Gold and Silver awards in Concept art are Daniel Dociu and Kekai Kotaki, who are co-workers here at ArenaNet.

Not that I'm bragging, or anything.

More later,

The Little Vandals

So the woodpecker assault moves towards resolution: Our Christmas woodpecker has been gouging out larger and larger holes in the telephone pole across the street. Yesterday they (the mysterious "they" that does such things) put in a new pole, right adjacent to the old one. Thinner and hopefully more woodpecker-resistant than the old pole, the various utilities are now moving their services from one to the other.

That's about two months between initial report and replacement (They also replaced two more poles along the street that were in need). Not bad for a non-crisis situation.

More concern-making was that local vandals set a nearby mailbox on fire. Last night our doorbell rang, and an unfamiliar woman was at the door. She and her husband were driving down the street and noted that a mailbox several doors down was on fire, smoke billowing out.

Yes, we still have street mailboxes, a memory of more rural days. Metal ones with little flags (of late, the kids have been putting the flags up on their way to school). And most of the houses are set back far from the street, so we were the first house that the woman came to that she could see all the way to the door.

So I walked down to the burning mailbox. Our neighbor across the street joined us - she had been walking her dog and heard some fireworks popping. The owner of the mailbox was not home. I fetched the neighbor who shared the mailbox stand with the target. We called in a report, and fire truck was dispatched, just to be sure. The Lovely Bride come down with a watering can to put out the small fire.

Under the flashlights, it looked like someone stuck a bunch of sparklers in the box (still filled with mail) and lit them. The mail inside was lost. The firefighters (arriving in good time, by the way) made sure the fire was quenched, took our statements, and said they would pass the incident on to King County (we're in their jurisdiction).

This isn't the first bit of vandalism we've had over the past decade. Back before the curbs were put in, mailboxes were regular targets of idiots in cars with baseball bats (the older mailboxes still have dent marks, or often fortress-like housings). We lost a garbage can once (taken, complete with garbage), and a lightweight sea serpent in our lawn (and of all the things lost, I still miss that). The neighbor across the street lost her house numbers. Our neighborhood is just rural enough to have houses far apart and set back, and just dense enough to have strangers wander through without much notice.

Who's responsible? Probably kids, but we don't know. I've met the neighbors whose box was hit once, so I don't know if it was targeted or just an act of random vandalism. So now we're keeping our eyes peeled, just in case.

Sigh. The woodpecker was so much easier to deal with.

More later,

DOW Breaks 7,000!

A whole cluster of thoughts accompanying this one, spanning the spectrum from rational to rather deranged:

First off, it is amusing (in a black humor sort of way) to watch the media react to the initial 5000 point drop as being merely a bump in the road, and to hyperventilate as we continue to settle downwards. This is the reverse of what we saw as recently as two years ago, where every good day was trumpeted from the battlements and every bad day was quietly forgotten.

The good news (such as it is) is that the same guys who were ignored when they said that things were going to get worse are now saying that things are going to get better. And they’re still being ignored.

Digging out the aluminum foil hat* for a moment, the origins of the present crisis seem to be birthed in decisions of four years ago. If you’ll remember, that was when there was a major push by the administration to put your social security funds into the market, to the point of declaring the re-election a mandate for just that kind of change. It was one of the few cases where the nation at large delivered a “hell no” to the admin, and they backed off.

But if they had, would the increase in liquidity keep the pot boiling, the bubble expanding, for a few critical months? Would the current disaster have been put off a year or two, making it someone else’s problems? (This is my gripe with term limitations – the planning is confined by how long you keep the job.) This assumes that the admin knew what it was doing (despite appearances) and saw the marketization of social security as the only way to keep it from falling in on their watch. They didn't get it, the roof fell in earlier than it should have, and they have to take the rap for it.

And here’s something else from the metallic chapeau department – Many (many) years ago, I was unemployed in the Reagan recession of the early eighties. It was a pretty nasty time in the US, but it was worse for Japan. In fact, Japan (which during the seventies was supposedly poised to eat our lunch) suddenly found itself crippled and has yet to regain its economic strength thirty years later.

Now, we’ve recently been faced with China as a rising power also threatening to eat our economic lunch. And with the sudden economic downturn, its manufacturing cities are emptying as everyone is going back to their family farms. The newly-built fiscal infrastructure, like Japan's two decades previous, may not recover.

Which leads the paranoid to ask - Is the current crisis a form of economic warfare? Is there still more going on behind the scenes here?

Just some thoughts,

More Later,

*”Tinfoil Hat”, while tripping off the tongue, doesn’t make much sense. No one uses tinfoil anymore, not even in gum wrappers (Which would be hard to make a hat from, anyway). That stuff you’re wrapping leftovers with? Aluminum foil, which replaced tin foil in its consumer niche sometime in the early part of the last century. The word survives, while the product does not.

A Pint of Pinter

Betrayal by Harold Pinter, directed by Braden Abraham, Seattle Repertory Theater, Through March 22, 2009

It is 1981 and I am sitting in the audience of the Pittsburgh Public Theater, housed in one of Carnegie's old libraries on the North Side. I am with the woman who will a year and a half in the future become the Lovely Bride. I am living in a carriage house in Shadyside with a friend and working as a civil engineer for a company making structures for air pollution equipment. Harold Pinter has written the script for the new film that has just come out, The French Lieutenant's Woman.

And it is 2008 and I am sitting in the audience of the Seattle Rep, next to the Lovely Bride. And I am living in a nice house near Panther Lake and building fantasy worlds for a living. Harold Pinter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, has been dead these past two months.

That's my time travel story. It's not much, I know, but I think I've weathered the past 27 years better than the play. (The LB, for her part, denies that she was at the play my 1981 timespace version, but I can think of no other valid reason for me to go a Pinter play in 1981).

The play itself travels through time in a nonstandard fashion, told in reverse, an artifice that has made it all the way down to "Seinfeld" in the intervening years, but in the 70s? New hot stuff. Also hot were the bubbling volcano of resentments within the characters that filled the pauses and silences of conversation with fire and resentment. And that the play was all about the unspoken bits. And martial infidelity. All the hypocrisy of all that British reserve. All very hot stuff for my 1980's self, but now feels as dated as a powder blue leisure suit.

Emma (Cheyenne Casebier) and Robert (Alex Podulke) are married. Emma and Jerry (David Christopher Wells), Robert's best friend, carry on a seven year affair. Two years after the end of the affair, Emma tells Jerry that Robert knows about the affair. Robert tells Jerry that he knew about the affair for years. Jerry is upset by the revelations, and we start tripping backwards to see how we got here.

So Emma and Jerry betray Robert with their affair. Emma betrays Jerry by admitting the affair to Robert. Robert betrays Jerry by not telling him he knew about affair, which leaves Jerry at the end of the timeline/beginning of the play distraught, not about losing Emma (who has, since the affair's breakup, moved onto other interests and other men), but because Robert's glacial calm shows he has been playing his best friend for a fool.

And that's about it. Jerry is shallow and a cad, living in the moment, aided by his own unreliable memory. Robert stuffs his rage inside, so that his moment, when the infidelity is revealed, is met with a stiff upper lip instead of an explosion. Holding it all together is Emma's character, who is the one who is revealed to have grown from the experience. Cheyenne Casebier, having been a maniacal Milady in "The Three Musketeers", reigns in beautifully as she makes the trip from her older self to her younger persona. She visibly and emotionally changes - the two men, not so much.

Emma feels the most real of the three, though part of that may be nature of the part in addition to the power of the actress. Robert and Jerry come off a wasps trapped in mid-seventies amber, emotions hidden, scandals revealed. But all three actors must walk the very fine line of a world transformed in the past 30 years, where quick British wit gives way to punchlines, and Pinteresque pauses threatens to pitch into Pythonesque parody.

The set is simple, and should have stayed that way - two walls, two windows, and a door. The projected grainy home movie against the rear wall was unneeded save to fill space between prop changes, and the rear wall advancing on the audience (Ah! The walls truly ARE closing in!) just drains more of the life out of the first/last scene.

And yeah, the first temporal/last presented scene felt undercut (again, I'm going to fault the play, not the presentation). This should have been the punchline, yet it resolves with a cold closing to match the cold opening of the start of the play. There is a uniformity of tone within, as if the Britishness has starched all the flexibility out of it.

Back to my personal time travel. I remember thinking in 1981 - did I miss something? I was new to the playgoing experience on a regular basis, so maybe there was something here I didn't catch - Was it just too subtle for me?

It wasn't and I didn't. It is at its heart an empty experience wrapped about a catchy bit of artistic effect. Great for its time, and worth presenting, but like its male characters, ultimately trapped in amber.

More later,