Tea Party

A couple months back, Oni-Anne celebrated her graduation with tea at the Queen Mary Tea Room. Here is photo of our merry band immediately afterward:



(Click to Embiggen)
FRONT ROW: Shelly, Little Elf Hat (head buried in her dad's shoulder), Wolf, Janice (Who is sane and doesn't have a blog)
BACK ROW: Anne's husband Sig, the Lovely Bride, the Humble Author, and John.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Anne

This is not news, but even I get tired of looking a Norman Rockwell portrait of Nixon after a while.

More later,

Your Art Lesson For The Day

I really like this painting:



I don't care much for the subject, though. Nixon was the first "utter rotter president" in my lifetime. And while you can pick on the post-war prezzes - FDR and HST and Ike and JFK and particularly LBJ, but Nixon was the first obvious and complete disappointment, and rattled my faith in the Presidency and left me leery of politicians for the rest of my life. Secret bombings, secret tapings, secret deals, dirty tricks, and every so often some old tapes resurface that remind us of how embarrassing he was. Plus the fact that he was anti-charismatic, a political cartoonist's dream, with continual five o'clock shadow, pinched features, beady eyes, trademark nose, and a feeling of flop sweat.

None of that is visible in this portrait, by Norman Rockwell and hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. Instead we see a relaxed man comfortable in his own skin. His sallow features are more natural, and his eyes wide, alert, and intelligent. I've seen cropped versions of the painting which just have the headshot, which is insufficient - the left-hand-to-the-chin by itself doesn't work without the relaxed right hand draped casually over the top of the couch. The empty area (negative space for those who pay attention to those things) in the upper left creates a dynamic feel for a sitting subject, and a relaxed intimacy that the man never projected in life.

And that is the power of art.

Norman Rockwell is best known for his commercial work, primarily covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and his whimsical themes and homespun Americana. Yet I've always thought he should be presented in the museums as a truly American painter with his own strengths and power. This portrait just confirms those feelings for me, and we should see more of his work in the great American art collections.

More later,

Yep, That's a Paddling

So today we went canoeing on Lake Washington. Yeah, I know, those of you familiar with my previous adventures with small craft are already backing away in horror from the machine, expecting some tale of sunken ships and drowned rats.

No such luck this time, though I will admit I preferred to being kneeling in the canoe as opposed to sitting on the seat provided. Mainly because I have a rather large center of gravity and would prefer it to be as close to that of the boat itself (similar the Spelljammer "gravity plane") as possible. As a result of my caution, there was no tippage involved. So there.

In any event, we canoed around the Lake Washington Arboretum for a couple hours. It was a warm day, not too chill on the Lake itself, and the lake was filled with families celebrating Father's Day (Hi Dad!) in aluminum boats. Far to the south a line of rare thunderstorms were marching across the horizon, but save for the occasional rumble of thunder (which caused all typical Seattlites to look that direction, amateurs that we are), there was no real threat on the lake (thank you convergent flow, which kept most of the bad weather outside of Seattle).

It was also a special day in that they closed I-520, which runs along the northern end of the arboretum. And by "along the northern end" I mean through the area that consists of Duck and Foster islands, and the area where all the canoeing/kayaking/rowboating occurred. As a result, there was a sudden ABSENCE of car noise in the area, and something that I had not heard before while visiting - birdsong.

It was like visiting one of those "After Man" specials on the Discovery Channel, particularly paddling under abandoned and partially dismantled overpasses. But in this case it was "After Cars" instead - the bridge was a ghostly structure, while the water was alive with families in boats.

And alive with other things as well - turtles, ducks, a large number of blue herons, a eagle, a beaver house, and a kingfisher (with fish). And the water lilies were in bloom, creating a Monet-like landscape, in particular where the footbridges arched over the lake itself.

All in all, a wonderful experience, and one I recommend. the 420 should close more than a few times in the next few years, as they replace and expand it. And while the fate of the arboretum end is still up in the air, now is the time to check it out.

More later,

Nerdcore

John "That PC Guy" Hodgman at the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.

More later,

Steampunk Dreams

With more than just a tip of the top hat to Gil Scott-Heron and the lads at Wondermark.

The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed
You will not be able to stay home, old mate.
You will not be able to flee the smoke, go to ground, and lie doggo.
You will not be able to lose yourself on absinthe and opium,
Skip down to the club or the public for a quick one,
Because the revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be transmitted in dots and dashes
Translated by Powell’s semaphoric boys.
The revolution will not show you stereographs
Transmitted to your handheld
Or posted broadsheet-style on the street for the plebes.
Of the Great Game and Chinese Gordon and Shaka Z.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be come to you over the mojo wire,
Distant electronic discharge accumulated on the babbage,
Quoting Jules V and Herbert G and Oscar Wilde
The revolution will not expect every man to do his duty.
The revolution will not evoke God and country.
The revolution will not lay back and think of England, because the revolution will not be telegraphed, Old Bill.

There will be no pictures of you and Bertie Wooster
Cradling a policeman’s hat, rushing down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that suspect soup tureen into the boot of a stolen lorry.
The Beeb will not be posing updates at the top of the hour,
or results from the outer boroughs.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

There will be no engravings of the pinks at Homestead in the dailies.
There will be no engravings of the pinks in Haymarket in the dailies.
There will be no pictures of Spring-Heeled Jack in the dock at the Old Bailey, no shots of Albert in the can.
There will be no Muybridge sequence of Doctor William Gull fleeing an angry mob of consulting forensic experts and aether-linked mediums who had come to the same conclusion at the same time.

The ink-blurred protagonists of the penny dreads will not shed their copyrighted shackles and go blinking into the public square.
Aqualunged writers will not drive by and bang on the sides of their coach and fours, shouting out the numbers and roles they need,
hoping those released from literary Newgate will trade their freedom for a chance to once more play the Palladium.
No one will give a damn about what happened to Little Nell.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

There will be no boffins providing exposition, no suffragettes in slacks smoking, no mute servant class made of dutiful coils and springs.
Its libretto will not be written by Gilbert.
Its music will not be penned by Sullivan, and it will not be sung by Lilly Langtree, nor dedicated to Emperor Norton.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be a glass-domed ticker tape unspooling
about an iron age, iron horse, iron chancellor.
You will not have to worry about the valley of death, about jam tomorrow, about standing on the burning deck.
The revolution is not a joy forever.
The revolution will not creep in on little cat feet.
It will not look where it treads.
The revolution will be a dark and stormy night.

The revolution will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed
will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will be no busker’s show, Old Nick;
The revolution will be live.

More later,

Hey, Hey, We're the Monks

Anathem by Neil Stephenson, William Morrow, Kindle version, 2008.

So here’s my history with Neil Stephenson's works:

Never read Zodiac or Big U. Thought the first fifty pages of Snow Crash were brilliant, but it trailed off after that. Loved the first fifty pages of Diamond Age, then drifted off after that, not finishing. So I had an idea that Mr. Stephenson wrote a great first fifty pages, then slacked a bit after getting the gig.

Then Cryptonomicon. Good book, filled with juicy bits, but now he no longer had to do the first fifty pages, so it started in low gear and stayed there for the duration. Great bits, but at the end, I had to fess up that I didn’t quite get a “what have we learned” sort of moment (OK, independent systems beat organized systems, but that’s kind of meta).

Loved the Baroque Cycle, but by this time I knew what I was getting into, so I was very tolerant of the (regular) digressions into British coinage and the anachronisms (turning Jack Shaftoe’s entrance into Paris into a Hollywood musical was inspired, but purely playing to the crowds). The series became my "vacation books" - to be lugged around when I knew I would have a lot of down time. I think it took me longer to read it than it took Mr. Stephenson to write it.

Now Anathem. Probably his best work to date. It is his best story as a story, in that it has a strong narrative flow. Also missing his more detailed digressions, sending his more detailed mathematical proofs to the back of the book and its appendices.

The book is a about aliens, monks, mathematics and philosophy. In an alternate world of Arbre, progress has halted for thousands of years at a particular level of technology, with advanced science being relegated to monastic organizations. Erasmus is a monk in one of those organizations, and we get a good feel for monastic life before something strange makes orbital insertion and all rolling hell breaks loose.

Stephenson builds his own jargon for a religious order on an alien word, and does a fantastic job, in that his jargon evokes both religious and scientific meanings at the same time. Erasmus belongs to a math, which evokes mathematics, mass, and myth, and is a member of a concent, a nice conflation of convent and concentration. Such words-you-almost-understand pepper the volume, and while it has a nice glossary in the back, by the time you reach it you know most of them through usage.

Stephenson also plays fair with the reader. We get to know things as Erasmus gets to know him, and his slightly out-of-it nature means we get a lot of background in the outside world as a result of his actions. The object in orbit kicks up a lot of dust in that outside world, to the point that astronomy is banned within the maths, then the panicky Saecular Powers bring in the learned brothers and sisters to solve the problem.

Erasmus and his fraas and suurs within the math are more rounded characters than I have seen before, and while I expected them to be merely replaceable viewpoints, they all developed into characters I recognized by the end. This goes for those in the outside world as well. There is a brief whiff of Hogwarts in some of the monkish proceedings, as Erasmus is just the young man to be in the right place at the right time, but it serves to keep the story humming along.

Stephenson also provides probably some of the best-grounded arguments against advanced technology I've heard. His Saeculars make sense in their embrace of a technology lower than they might otherwise have, and he comes up with a good excuse for how to keep technology at a slightly-advanced for 21st century level. They aren't bad guys, which also nice. And he explains why all that jargon sounds so similar to our own, and why Arbre is like our world but different.

It is an elegant, straightforward read. At first I credited the Kindle I was reading it on, but the fact is that the story pulls the reader through smoothly. The writing is almost sparse in places given the scope he has taken on. The ending verges on 2001-inside-the-monolith head trips, but in the end Stephenson delivers an excellent book that not only presents a good tale, but bulls its way through most of Terran philosopher, from Plato to Descartes to Schrodinger.

My one regret? It being electric bits, I cannot pass it along to someone else so they can enjoy. That's a downside of the Kindle, turning everyone into end users, but such is the nature of Saecular plots of the panjandrums.

More later,

Iran

I spent part of the weekend watching Iran unravel. Most of this has been on the net, since the networks and the print media have been pretty darn useless (the Seattle Times managed to get a Page-One-Below-the-Fold headline on Sunday, but had two more articles on the official meme of North-Korea-Ohmighod-its-dangerous).

The best combined coverage so far has been from the generally sane conservative Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic. Most of his sources are twitter feeds and cellphone pics from the sources themselves - notable in the lack of gatekeepers and filters.

My freshman year in college, I had an Iranian roommate, and as a result had front-row seats for the fall of Shah and the depredations of SAVAK. There is an extreme Animal Farm vibe in the current uprising, as the heirs to the previous revolution embrace the tactics of their former oppressors to keep their positions of power.

More later,

Updates: By Tuesday morning, the Times finally kicks in with the Iran story as the major story of the day. Andrew Sullivan turns his site green in support, and the site nearly collapses from the amount of traffic sent its way. And Twitter puts off a scheduled downtime in order to keep the feeds coming out of Iran.

Penguins

So the Pittsburgh Penguins rallied and took the Stanley Cup in seven games from the hated Red Wings. Bwah-hah-hah!

And in other penguin-related news, Janna has created a customized penguin for the Woodland Park Zoo's Penguins on the March exhibit. Her Cleopenguin is brilliant!

Penguin trifecta now in play. More later,

Update: Mike Selinker completes the trifecta with this Video of a penguin going shopping. Those who bet on the penguin trifecta please pick up your winnings at the window.

"...and I hope we passed the audition."

So, I will fess up. I'm not much a fan of Rock Band and its relatives. I've played it, it is an OK way to spend time, but I haven't embraced this half-way point between air guitar and real chord progression. Maybe playing REAL guitar has ruined it for me, or that I recognize this game's real ancestor.

Simon.

You heard me. Not the Pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster. Not Woody Guthrie's folk guitar, emblazoned with the sticker "This Machine Kills Fascists". Not Dylan's Gibson Nick Lewis Special (or his later Fender Strat Reissue he went electric with). The origin of the Rock Band-style game is that chirping little four-color disk that dares you to keep up with it. Heck, it even uses the same color scheme.

But anyway, I come not to praise Rock Band but to marvel at the opening cinematic for its newest version: Rock Band: The Beatles. Now being an old grump who remembers when the Beatles first landed, you'd think I'd be dubious about the entire retro operation, but I have to say it is bloody marvelous, encapsulating the groups' career, with shout-outs to the movies and public appearances.

Bloody marvelous, I say. Go check it out.

More later

Lawn Wars

There’s a hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The Lovely Bride and I have our pied-à-terre in the exurbs between Renton and Kent, near Panther Lake. We have a nice bit of tree-shaded property, which is divided into the following sections - House, Lawn, Garden, Wilderness, and Driveway.

Maintaining the House is a team effort, while the Wilderness along the back property line is generally ignored by both. The Lawn is mostly my worry and the Garden is mostly the LB’s (The Driveway is a demilitarized zone, but that is a subject for another day).

Now changing these borders requires careful negotiation. While I hate mowing and weeding, I enjoy the wide expanse of grass behind the house, viewable from my office. The lawn itself is a motley collection of grasses, weeds, and wildflowers (current dominant inhabitant - buttercups). However, I am always wary about surrendering any of that space to the Garden division, so the Lovely B has been waging a “hearts-and-minds” approach to getting more space for her tomatoes, intent on putting them in the sun.

There are plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The simple fact is that the lot is very shady, protected by maples, pines and spruces on all sides. While this makes it nice to avoid the prying lenses of photo satellites and Google Streetview, it does make it difficult to grow things. And while the Lovely Bride has been successful with her flowerbeds and with beans and asparagus, tomatoes have been a running battle. So finally, she wanted to install a pair of raised beds in the middle of the yard, right over the septic tank pipes.
Now, after mowing the lawn a few dozen times since February, I don’t mind losing a few more square feet to the garden. But the new arrangement involves more EDGES. And anyone who has had to mow knows that mowing is brute force, while edging is the real pain. So there were negotiations.

There are slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The end result was that the two beds are going in, but leaving enough space so we could still do lawn bowling between them. And from the way she has laid them out, it looks pretty good, and does not destroy my “field of green” too much. Plus, she had to mow the lawn in order to clear the space for it all.

There are spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

So all this happened the past weekend, while I was striving against a massive head cold (and losing). And when I am sick, I tend to, um, sing. Bad songs, with lyrics of my own devising. And while she was toiling in the sun (because that is why the new beds are there in the first place), I was on my back porch, singing the above song, making up more lyrics as I went along.

There is moss on the spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There is moss on the spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-urk!! –

And that, your honor, is when she threw a tomato plant at me. Don’t know why.

More later,

Travel Book

So since I spent a good chunk of the past month out of town, it is a good time to revisit my old friend, the Kindle, and note how it has turned into the (pretty-darn-) perfect travel book.

Good points:
Portability: Let’s not quibble about this – it is easier to carry around a kindle in its case than to lug about a Neil Stephenson epic. Add to the fact that I could (when I chose to) carry a NUMBER of books and be able to cart them all around.
Anonymity: One of the things that get you to buy a book (a colorful or interesting cover) also works against you reading it in public (You want everyone to know you read that stuff? Or worse yet, it invites others to TALK to you about the book). A simple screen is very nice, and lets you read alone in a restaurant without attracting any attention – it looks like you could be taking notes on PDA.
Expandability. Finish a book? Buy a book. Talk about your instant gratification.
Battery Life: Enough to last a week, which carries it through most business trips. If you’re going to be longer away from home base, then you should bring the charger.

Bad Points:
Air travel: It is an electronic device, so off it goes on takeoff and landing. Bit of a bummer.
Accessibility: Was reading Anathem, which has a glossary and several chapters of back matter. Referring to it is a pain from the main narrative flow.
Art: OK, let us be honest - Kindle does text well, art, not so much. The screen emulates my old Macintosh SE as far as screen graphics. Even simple drawings have a case of the jaggies.
Inadvertent button pressing: I have developed the tendency to shut everything down (not a difficult thing) when I do anything else, even to carry it about. Otherwise you may leap ahead dozens of pages. I have lost my place a number of times, and had to search through numerous identical pages to figure out where I was.
Electricity: The battery can hold out for a good week, but you still need to recharge.
Lack of Sharing: Great, you finished the book and want to pass it along. No, sorry. You just have that bundle-o-bits, deadended into your machine. Not good for infecting others with the meme of reading.

End result: Not a bad thing, all in all. I'm not abandoning the Big Pile of Books next to the bed, but it is a nice thing to travel with. I suppose the next thing is to get my portable computer shrunk down as well.

More later,

Sixty-Five Years

More later,

Enterprise

So I spent a good part of May on a starship.

No, I was not shot into space, unlike the cooler game design legends. Instead, I was in another city on long-term business and living out of a modern American hotel. And after a few days, I realized that I was living on the Enterprise-D.

Now this is the Enterprise of the Next Generation. The original Enterprise of the Kirk/Spock era was a military cruiser operating in cold war era space, much like America of the era, facing hostile rivals (Klingons serving as Russians) and more highly advanced but flawed entities (Organians, Talosians, the Squire of Gothos, the Olympic gods, all filling in for old Europe). No, this was the Enterprise of Picard and Riker, which stressed more of the floating community of families on a long-term voyage than military men on a combination exploration/patrol mission.

The Enterprise hotel, then, was filled with a large multi-cultural staff of knowledgeable specialists (front desk, chefs, hotel personnel, security). My role was that of one of those visiting scientists who showed up every other week with some personal mission that may/may not endanger the ship. I and my away team (the other members of my company) would take a shuttlecraft (rental car with keyless ignition) down to the planet (to the job at hand) and return in the evening to find the starship still parked in orbit and running smoothly.

And like the Enterprise-D, the starship hotel is broken down into private quarters (that can be accessed if need be) and communal areas (bar, pool, restaurant, holodeck – hang on – that could be cable TV). There was a replicator with illusions of endless plenty (the breakfast buffet). While on the planet surface, mysterious individuals arrived and cleaned up the place, leaving it in pristine condition afterwards.

And like the Enterprise-D, there is an amateur/enthusiast approach to art and culture. Exporting culture was a big thing in Next Generation, and so too here. The lobby was filled with copies of famous bronzes (a lot of Remington), and the evenings in the bar had a blonde pianist rolling through classical numbers and showtunes. Nothing too deep, but enough to declare that culture is here (They did not need a pianist – there was a robo-piano (Data?) in the restaurant, and I started changing when I hit the breakfast buffet/replicator because if I heard Windham Hill’s Winter into Spring one more time, I would surely go mad).

Oh, and there were other teams on board, all working on their own missions. Country musicians. Brides. The President of Taiwan. I was used to being the scruffiest person in the room until the game design nerds started showing up for E3.

For my part, as a member of the visiting science team , and did nothing to engage with any of the mysterious folk RUNNING this starship. Had to rescue something from the lost and found another team member left behind (security), and get a new electronic keycard (front desk). Had to deal with alien technology (keyless remotes, strange wake-up call systems), alien foods (a set of springrolls that nuked both myself and another member of the team) and strange cultures (what is this thing about greeting you by name, anyway?)

Yet the mission ends, the data is gathered, and we are beamed back (via Alaska Air) to the home port, but the starship exists out there, for the next time we need it.

More later.

Twenty Years

(Well, THIS blog has been dropped off Beijing's Friends List).

More later,

A Haunting We Will Go

Haunting Museums: The Strange and Uncanny Stories Behind the Most Mysterious Exihibits, is now out at your finer book shops and e-tail establishments. The book has been dedicated to the late Brian Thomsen, and this ignoble worthy contributed to the initial essay on the Carnegie Sauropods.

More later,

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around.

visited 47 states (94%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Like this? try: Visited Countries

And I have stories to go with most of these locations.

More later,

I Talk to the Kobold

Readers of this journal already know I have a face made for radio. Now discover that I have a voice made for the printed page as I do a podcast with Ed Healy and Wolf Baur over at Kobold Quarterly. Yes, I'm trying out all this newfangled technology!

More later,

Omnibus

So I was pleasantly surprised to find out the one of my original books, The Brothers' War has been re-released as an omnibus edition, combined with J. Robert King's The Thran in a big bug-basher(not that Brothers' War was all that short a novel to start out with) called Artifacts Cycle 1

I had no knowledge that this was coming, but it's pretty cool.

More later,

Comics: Isn't That Special?

One more, and I will be done with kicking about Blackest Night. As I said, it wasn't a bad comic book by any means, but it shows a lot of the stresses that affect serial storytelling. We talked about Statics versus Change (or Issue versus Serial) and Backstory versus Nostalgia (noted here as the Return of the Zombie Heroes). There's one more dualism that I have that is shown in the back end of this comic.

The Unique versus the Popular.

Here's the challenge. You create a hero/protagonist. He's popular. And one of the cool things about your super-powered protagonist is that he or she is unique. At least at the start. Last survivor of a dead planet, or only individual to receive the Super-Soldier Serum. Hit by a lightning bolt spilling chemicals on him.

But then they might get a sidekick with similar powers. Or an opponent with a similar origin, and before you know it, you are hip-deep in characters with similar powers to your once-unique hero. And in attempting to deal with that strange dualism, a new cycle is created, of cutting back the kudzu of similarity, only to see it regrown over time.

Take Flash. For many years, he was pretty stable, with a super-powered sidekick (Kid Flash) and an opposite number (Professor Zoom). Yet in Barry's passing, there was a sudden uptick in speedsters. Kid Flash became the new Flash, and in turn picked up his own sidekick (Impulse) and speed-powered foes (A new Zoom). Oh, and a cult of super-speedsters worshiping a bad guy named Savitar. And the return of the original Golden Age Flash (the golden agers were confined to another earth for a while, then were moved off-stage for a few years, then brought back). And a super-powered opponent for Impulse. And couple OTHER golden-age speedsters (Johny Quick and Max Mercury (originally Quicksilver)) and a future version (XS). And a bunch of russians with super-speed. So suddenly our unique hero has bunches of competition.

Such that Flash, newly returned to his own book, now seems to be (not-so-slowly) reducing the power levels of the other speedsters, in what would be a return to uniqueness. Of course, this may be lethal to the others with those powers.

Green Lantern has it worse. For a while, he was a guy with a magical ring given to him by an alien. But soon we found he was just ONE guy with a magic ring among a bunch of OTHER aliens, all with magic rings. This was the Green Lantern Corps. And a lot of the dynamic of the series swung between Green Lantern as a member of the corps in space, and Green Lantern as a hero on Earth. Sometimes the GLC went away. Sometimes Hal as Green Lantern went away (creating MORE Green Lanterns as replacements on Earth). But the dynamic of a specially-powered individual among other specially-powered individuals was pretty established.

But now things have gone off the rails entirely. Now we have a host of lantern corps, one for every color of the spectrum. Some are logical pickups - Green Lanterns hate yellow, so Green Lantern's arch enemy, Sinestro, has a yellow ring (remember what I said before about even-matched enemies). But that was a unique item. Now he has his own yellow lantern corps, which acts on fear like the GLs work on willpower. OK, that's a logical expansion. But now Star Sapphire, another GL villain, gets HER own corps. And we add the Red Lanterns (Anger), Orange Lanterns (Greed), Blue Lanterns (Hope), and Indigo Lanterns (Beats the heck outa me). And of course the Black Lanterns (Death, not really an emotion, but neither is willpower, really).

So now we have a large percentage of the universe with color-based ring-powers. And now not only the Hal have to compete with three other human GLs and the horde of fellow corpsmen, but now a huge collection of OTHER aliens with OTHER rings. And then the challenge is how to make YOUR hero special in a universe filled with others with similar abilities.

I would put a fiver down on a massacre, with just enough survivors that will pop up over the years to keep the stories coming.

More later,

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,