La Jolla Joliday

So, yesterday we did Comic Con in the lowest stress way possible: we went to the beach in La Jolla for a guided sea kayaking tour of the Underwater Park.

The morning paddlers.

Before:

Taking a beautiful trolley-then-bus ride out along the coast. Eating a wonderful brunch at an outdoor table in nice little restaurant. Taking a somewhat despairing walk along the beach trying to assess the thick mist/fog that seemed to be hugging the shoreline. Buying a cool pair of flip-up sunglasses and an ice cream cone as the mist cleared to a beautiful blue sky. Putting on sunscreen. Checking in with the tour company and renting what turned out to be the world's crappiest waterproof digital camera.

During:

Discovering how crappy the digital camera was. Listening to instructions from the tour guide. Discovering that I could still paddle strong. Listening to not-bad patter from the tour guide. Discovering that I am still prone to occasional seasickness. Seeing sea lions up close. Discovering how hot it is on the open water during a heat wave in California. Getting caught in a six-kayak traffic jam inside a sea cave. Having a good time anyway. Making it back.

After:

Crashing with dehydration, overheating, and hunger. Being semi-conscious all the way back to the hotel and then taking a nap. Having dinner in the room.  Realizing I like to eat more than twice a day. Eschewing any Comic Con activities in the evening for another nap and a tabletop game in the room. Realizing again how easy-going the Karminator is.  Watching San Diego public television coverage of Comic Con before going to sleep. Realizing that I didn't sunscreen my head and that the kayaking helmet slots left little sunburn streaks.

Post Script: 

Today we go into the belly of the beast! Well, not the belly, since we don't have badges, but maybe the  throat, or even just the lips. Outside Comic Con, here we come!

Just let me have breakfast first.

Not quite at Comic Con... or, we don't need no stinkin' badges.

So, here's how it happened. I'm sitting at my desk on campus the day the San Diego Comic Con badge purchase process (AKA The Hunger Games) opens and casually mention to my admin, Crazy Face, that I have never gone to Comic Con and didn't ever expect to, partly because the process to obtain a badge is so onerous and partly because I'm not really sure I could even handle the Con itself.

Crazy Face mentions that her previous employer, a specialty printing company, used to print the Comic Con badges and that they always got freebies and she could probably hook me up. I told her to go for it.

A few days later, she texts me to say she has made a connection for two badges, but that her buddy will have to mail them up from San Diego so it will be a few more days. We finalize things and I give her a check to pass along.

The deal is done -  I hook up with my gaming pal Karminator (Wonder Wife would have a meltdown ten minutes into something like Comic Con). She seizes the bull by the horns and gets us a flight to San Diego and accommodation 25 minutes away from the Convention Center on the Green Line Trolley. It's looking good.

A few days after that, Crazy Face texts me to say that my badges have arrived and sends me a photo of the two badges. To Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle.

Talk about the mother of miscommunications. All this time, Crazy Face is thinking I am talking about Emerald City; the San Diego element in the conversation is just a coincidence that reinforces my own presumptions. There was never any connection for San Diego Comic Con tickets at all.

Of course, all the travel arrangements are non-changeable and non-refundable.

I must say that the Karminator is the best person in the world with whom to encounter this kind of fubar. Her first response when I tell her about it is not to get pissed off but to remark that there are so many cons now that it would be very easy for someone to get confused. Talk about easy-going! So we cave to inevitable: either kiss off the cash or take a vacation to San Diego anyway. We opt for the vacation.
 

 Lemons and lemonade

 
A little research tells us that we were in good company: there's a whole deal known as Outside the Con - I find a couple of websites about it. The Comic Con such a big deal for the City of San Diego that there are plenty of people without Con credentials who can still be swept up into pop culture events and cosplay events and movie launches and star visits and suchlike (and separated from their simoleons at many of them).

So that's how we found ourselves on a flight south from Seattle yesterday and then throwing ourselves in the throng of Deadpools and Daleks and Lolitas on the Green Line. We are booked into a huge hotel resort - our building is a five minute walk from the trolley stop, although the lobby is about thirty miles away on the other end of the complex, so that we had quite the warm walk to check in. But now it's easy to get into the Convention Center/Gaslamp area to sample what the Con has to offer.

Happy Con attendees on the Green Line

We did just that last night, to get a late supper after a long travel day.  We walked through the crowds, under a five-story image of Keifer Sutherland on the side of hotel, past a Batmobile and a 20-foot statue of Superman in the park, watching the cars and cabs and tricycle rickshaws slowly make their way through the crowded streets. In the Gaslamp, we ate at a restaurant that was totally themed for Incorporated, a new SyFy TV series.



Our server, Patty, told us that the place was usually Maryjane's, an affiliate of the Hard Rock Cafe, but that every year the SyFy channel comes in and completely re-skins the place for whatever show they are promoting the most at the Con: new wallpaper, new table covers, the host counter, the bar, the insignia on the back of seats, window treatments, menus - even the receipt printed out by the POS system is reprogrammed.

Patty's pen: I wasn't kidding about the completeness of the re-skinning.

It's incredible how much money is flowing through this event: it's truly a spectacle. We hung around until travel-tiredness took hold, and then caught the trolley back to the hotel.

 

Today, we're going to do something way outside the Con: kayaking in La Jolla. But that's another story.

5 x 5 Movie review: Ghostbusters

1. So, I came of age with the classic 1973 Richard Lester film version of The Three Musketeers, which I thought was a close to perfect as a movie adaptation could get to Dumas's vision. When the Brat Pack made their version twenty years later, my first response was "Why? The Lester version is close to perfect!" The I realized that my love for my version ignored many prior films that other people no doubt had a soft spot for and that every generation can have its own version of whatever story the public cares about and wants to see again. This new film is Ghostbusters for 2016; the earlier versions just don't matter when we look at it, and they're still there if you want to watch them.

2. That said, I think I liked this movie better than I liked the original. Memory dims with time, of course, but the resonance from the first film that sticks with me the most was that Peter Venkman was kind of a dick. On the other hand, this movie positively echoes with teamwork and relationships throughout, along with all the ass-kicking action (and there's plenty of that, with all sorts of cool ghost-getting gear). I liked all the characters, I laughed out loud several times, I had fun: what else is a summer blockbuster movie for?

3. Not that it is a close-to-perfect movie: there are some real problems with pacing and editing, and the plot doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. But, hey, the performances by four very funny women - Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones - and a tour de force turn by a surprising hilarious Chris Hemsworth more than make up for any flaws.

4. The movie does make a few nods to the original film - some of them clever, some of them forced and awkward - and takes a few cool in-story swipes at the anti-woman, you-destroyed-my-childhood hysteria that rose from the asshat brigade during the making and marketing of the film. The cameos by the original cast seemed wasted; only Ernie Hudson seemed to have any ethos and Bill Murray in particular seemed to be having flashbacks to his early days a sketch comedian.

5. Of course, like the rest of the planet, I am totally crushing on Jillian Holtzmann.

The New 52

So, my eldest sister once again proved that she is the more thoughtful sibling. Today, for no specific reason, just out of the blue, I received a package from her in the mail, as I do from time to time, with a little token of her esteem and affection.

This particular item was as wonderful as the others - a deck of playing cards with a wide assortment of images from comics. Some of these are likely in the public domain, but I am certain some others aren't. I'm not sure who the publisher, Nicky Bird Design, is and how he or she thought to do this, but it's pretty cool.



Pretty nice back design.

Two interesting things about the side panel. (1) Who says the Great Age of the Comic instead of the Golden Age of Comics? and (2) In my world, Lichtenstein is pretty much discredited as nothing more than a swipe artist.

Enough kvetching. Here are some of the more noteworthy images.

Lots of love for the Marvel Family in this deck.

I'd wager the off-panel exclamation comes from the Big Red Cheese, too.

Some excellent Kirby art - always the Great Age, no matter when. 

 Just the kind of thing Lichtenstein would swipe.

 

Racy stuff!

 

Okay, now that's just creepy.

 

Sounds like some cats I know... not mine, of course.

 Wait... why... how would you even do this? 

 

"Snifffff..."

Y

 "Yellow-bellied Commie" I have heard a lot, but "Moscow Maniac" sounds like cocktail.

 

C'mon, who names a robot Martha? 

I think this might be the most recent stuff: these guys were married, but as you can see, they had some issues.

 

This looks like a pretty generic boy hero, but check out the back-up strip:

 

 Sandusky and the Senator? It's like the Dundee and the Culhane of comics!

 

The DC sub-genre of WW2 Combat with Added Dinosaurs was actually pretty awesome sometimes.

 

This looks a lot like Maudlin's Willie and Joe, but I don't think it is.

 

This looks a lot like Commissioner Gordon, but I don't think it is.

 

This looks a lot like Gorgo, and if it's not, I'll be annoyed.

 How'd you like to defend these before a House Sub-Committee while crashing from Benzedrine?

 

I call shenanigans - this isn't a comic book cover, it's a pulp magazine.

 Not sure what bar this guy works in...

 

The best for last: classic Gil Kane haymaker-knocking-someone-ass-over-teakettle shot!

(I had this comic!)

So, thank you dear sister. My cribbage games will be even more lively with this deck!

 Me and my big sister from looong ago.

5 X 5 Waiting for the Trade: The Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw

1. So, I came about reading this trade paperback collection of Image comics in a different way: I didn't wait for it, I was introduced to it by a text from my pal John that went Reading Autumnlands: tooth and claw. 7 dollar collection on Amazon. Thought you'd like it. Maybe a lot. A few clicks on the computer later and it was on its way, even before I had finished my texting with John - hey, his recommendation is worth risking $7.42 (free shipping with Prime) - and I deliberately didn't research it any further or try to figure out ewhat it was about - totally sight unseen.

2. John thought I'd like it, and I did, but maybe not not as much as he had, or he thought I would, but enough to out this one in the win column. It has beautiful art by Benjamin Dewey - including what John had referred to as very well rendered dirigibles - and Kurt Busiek certainly knows how to build a plot and tell a story. In this case, the story is about a future-world, post-apocalyptic society of humanoid bipedal animals (of a wide variety of species) who use magic to hold their civilization together, and the conflicts that ensue after wizards reach back into time for a legendary Champion to help stave off the end of that magic and things (of course) go badly.

3. Overall, the conceit and the story both hold up quite well. My fantasy OCD quivered a bit at some of the choice made for for the different characters and extras - like having owls and dogs the same size, and the birds having arms and hands. Most often things seemed pretty random, which could be a deliberate effect,  but then we get a fox as the wily schemer, and it seems both obvious and out of place. The Champion himself seemed a little too competent, but I guess that's why he was The Champion. These sort of small quibbles aside, the story kept me turning pages until the end - of the trade, but obviously not the tale. I'll read the next installment, for sure.

One additional treat: each chapter begins with an "excerpt" from a pulp novel telling the story from a different perspective, with period art to match. Pretty cool.

4. John also mentioned that he thought the setting would make for a great RPG campaign, and I have to agree with him there: there's some excellent world-building going on, and the technology (flying cities as well as airships) and magic seem consistent and workable. The difference between the character species are enough to allow for customization of abilities - a dog-person announces that since he's a terrier, he can run all day - but overall the power levels seemed pretty compatible.

5. One last note: I can't review this without saying that if you squint, it seems like nothing more than a grim 'n' gritty Kamandi pastiche. I don't know if Busiek had that in mind,m but even if he did, it;s worth the read.

Gender confusion

So, Wonder Wife ran across some greeting cards and said that once she saw them, she had to buy them for me. Here's the first one, called Heroes & Villains:

Let's see, we have:

• Darth Vader,  Iron Man, a Tusken Raider, and Robin (Burt Ward version)
• Some bug guy I don't recognize, Bobba Fett, another guy I don't know (although he puts me in mind of J. Jonah Jameson's son in his Man-Wolf identity), and Batgirl (Yvonne Craig version)
• Robocop,  Red Power Ranger, Batman (Adam West version), and C3PO
• Another guy I don't know, a Storm Trooper, Spider-Man, and Skeletor.

A fairly wide-ranging group. Odd to see C3PO without R2D2, or Skeletor without He-Man.

The next card, Heroines & Villainesses:

This one has:

• Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Wednesday Addams (I think), and Storm
• Sorceress of Castle Greyskull, Wonder Woman, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland version), and Catwoman.
• Pink Power ranger, Uhura, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Supergirl 
• Evil-lyn, She-Ra, Princess Leia, and someone I think I should know but don't - is it Hit-Girl?

An even more wide-ranging group, I think.

The non-traditional style of illustration just seems to add a more fine-arty cachet to the pieces, and the Warhol-style array design drops these works squarely into the Pop Art bucket for me. They're pretty cool - it doesn't show here, but the colors really pop on the printed cards - but one thing I can't figure out.

The first piece is Heroes & Villains and the other is called Heroines & Villainesses. The use of the almost-totally-out-of-style feminine forms of these words clearly signal a presentation divided by gender.

Then why is Batgirl on the Heroes & Villains card?  She is the only female depicted in the group. She is also on the Heroines & Villainesses card, though, and there are no males depicted in that group at all. I can't get his to make any sense - is it an error, a message, a change in focus, what?


I like these cards but it;s hard not to let this bug me.

Little things mean a lot

So, I saw this:

and it reminded me of one of my favorite bits of Douglas Adams's writing, from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  The eponymous hero is helping his client and friend remember an encounter with a woman. Dirk tells him:

'She was wearing a dark blue cotton velvet dress gathered to a dropped waist. It had raglan sleeves gathered to the cuffs, a white Peter Pan collar and six small pearl buttons down the front - the third one down had a small thread hanging off it. She had long dark hair pulled back with a red butterfly hairgrip.'

'If you're going to tell me you know all that from looking at a scuff mark on my shoes, like Sherlock Holmes, then I'm afraid I don't believe you.'

'No, no,' said Dirk, 'it's much simpler than that. You told me yourself under hypnosis.'

Richard shook his head. 'Not true,' he said, 'I don't even know what a Peter Pan collar is.'

'But I do and you described it to me perfectly accurately.

Sublime.