Small wonder

So, Wonder Wife and I needed to buy a third-birthday gift for the daughter of some friends and thought it would be cool to get her some Wonder Woman-themed clothes. We took ourselves down to the local discount department store and rummaged among the toddler apparel. We didn't find anything Amazonian, but there were several items with some sort of superhero design. Unfortunately, they all had once characteristic in common:

PINK!

We talk about this stuff all the time - the gendering of children's toys and clothes and the subtle socialization that comes along with that. Sadly, it seems to be getting worse instead of better, perhaps due at least in part to the rise of Princess Culture. In any event, it's one thing to talk about it in the blogosphere and another to come face-to-face with it when you just wanted to buy a cool present. All we wanted was a star-spangled outfit - sweats, a t-shirt, a hoodie, whatever - in the Wonder Woman red, blue, and gold motif. (Wonder Wife did say it would be great if we could find something that came with silver bracelets.) Instead, what we found was nothing but girlied-up versions of superhero logos and images - nothing that resembled the actual characters or their actual design elements.

So, we out together a punk-rock tutu outfit instead, and she will be an awesome power grrl (even though we couldn't find little Doc Martens). But I lost an opportunity to spread my geek culture to the newest generation.

I guess it's Pinterest and Etsy now!

Due respect

So, Wonder Wife and I needed to mail in some primary election ballots the other day. Ever since Wonder Wife wound down her in-home business, things like stamps aren't as readily accessible as they once were. After a little digging, we found a leftover sheet of Batman Forever Stamps - as in Forever Stamps honoring Batman, not stamps honoring the movie.

Of the 20 stamps on the sheet, 16 had been regular rectangle stamps with images of Batman, but the only two that were left were from the four circular Bat-signal stamps. I'm not sure I ever used a circular postage stamp before, and for a second Wonder Wife thought they were just decorative stickers, until we looked closely at them and she remembered using the other two.


After using the last stamps on the sheet, I took a look at the back:

So, is Jim Lee's version to go-to marketing image for Batman now? I remember when just about everything from stickers to pajamas had a Dick Giordano drawing. I guess Lee does do a good job of presenting a Batman recognizable to older fans but still in line with the more current, armor-y version.

Besides the image, the back has a bunch of text. In describing the images on the stamps, the text mentions how the depictions move through the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern Ages, but it really only talks about Batman's origin in the thirties. There's no specific mention of the TV show or any of the various cartoons or any of the movies - it takes three paragraphs to move from Action #1 in 1938 to Detective #27 in 1939.

And the most impressive thing about this obscure little text is its matter-of-fact recognition of the contribution of Bill Finger:

Wow - has this battle actually been won? It was heartening to see Finger get the recognition that he so richly deserves, even in such an ephemeral genre as the postage stamp sheet.

Wonder Wife Wednesday: Fantastic

So, my sister sent me a gift just because. Just because it was comics-related and just because she is sweeter and more sentimental than she would ever let on. But here, let Wonder Wife help describe it for you:



Now, there's no way I would have expected Wonder Wife to get Karnak or Gorgon or Crystal, much less Wyatt Wingfoot, but besides Thing, maybe she should have been a little closer to the mark on the FF, since we did watch the first FF movie together.  Although she did in fact fall asleep during the climactic final battle.

That she did get Medusa says something about the purity of that character design. If I recall correctly, wasn't Madame Medusa created independently, and then retconned into the Inhumans with the ol' amnesia gag? That might be germane.

As always, thanks to Wonder Wife for being such a good sport about these pop quizzes.

Geek Girl Con Goes Fo(u)rth!

So, I made it to Geek Girl Con again this year - a four-peat! (is that even a thing?) I was intrigued by the inaugural event in 2011, gushed over it some more in 2012,  and gave a late report on it last year, and herewith is this year's installment.

Let me say again the GGC is the most inclusive, accepting, laid-back con I have attended; the contrast with the PAX event a few weeks ago couldn't be more striking. In addition to the Usual Suspects, I used an extra pass to pull in my colleague and office-neighbor, a biology instructor. She brought along her son and daughter and was not only thrilled to find so much pro-STEM content aimed at girls, but found herself having a great time right along with her kids, even though she is almost totally non-geek. It's just that kind of event.

This might have been the best year yet for me; here are three highlights before the usual parade of pictures.

Wonder Wife

As I predicted last year, the addition of Introvert Alley (a quiet-only zone where people can go to de-stress) was enough to get Wonder Wife to attend along with me, and she did so in style: we went as a cosplay team, Artie Nielsen and Claudia Donovan from Warehouse 13, the steampunkish Syfy series.

I think I did a pretty good job.

But I think Wonder Wife was spectacular!

Wonder Woman

Before yesterday, I would have told you that the last time I had sought an autograph was from Isaac Asimov at a Sci-Fi Convention in New York in 1978 (and that's a story for another time). I have never considered autographs important or even sensical.  Well, at this GGC I broke that longstanding streak: one of the guests was Susan Eisenberg, the talented voice actress who portrayed Wonder Woman in the Justice League animated series and several other projects, along with her other geeky and non-geeky work. That show, and her interpretation of Diana, has given me so much enjoyment that I just got swept up. I'm going to display the autograph proudly in my office.

Wonderful to Say (mirabile dictu)

As great as my costume was and as natural as that wig looked, I discovered after attending my first panel that the hairpiece did need some adjustment, so I went into the men's room and trimmed it with the scissors on my Swiss Army Knife (Officers' Model). A little while later, I discovered I was without my knife, apparently having left it in the restroom. I looked fruitlessly and then checked Lost & Found with little hope. They didn't have it, but took my name and number and said they'd let me know if it turned up.

I didn't expect anything, but a couple of hours later I got a text telling me the knife had been turned in. When I picked it up, the Agents (that's what they call con staff) said that even though it had been found elsewhere than I described, when it was turned in they connected it to me right away.

Tell me at what other convention of 5,000 or so people would an easily transportable, untraceable, hundred-dollar item be turned into Lost & Found and proactively returned to its owner? GGC is just that kind of event.

The Photos!

Pride of first photo goes to my partner in crime Margaret, who this year came as Ianto from Torchwood. The coffee cups turned out to be the critical part of the cosplay!

After all the reboots and re-interpretations, it was cool to see Classic Sherlock.

A totally adorable Korra; we didn't get to see it, but she was faux-waterbending with foil ribbons.

Groot meets the Dalek!

Jeanie showed up, just for Super Sissy (who is a big fan).

Agent Hill of SHIELD has a burgeoning fan following:

I am not familiar with Kill la Kill, the anime these characters are from, but these girls were rocking it awesome:

Sunday's con was at the same time as a Seahawks game, and this cosplayer covered both with SeaHawkgirl, complete with Shayera's name on the uniform and a spiked football for a mace.

After Captain Marvel won her round, I played on this giant Tsuro game. And lost.

So, listen to Wi-Fi the Robotic Squirrel: come to Geek Girl Con!

See y'all next year!

w00t! Loot!

So, this rock has made another trip around the sun and I am officially one year older today than I was before. Some folks were kind enough to want to mark my natal anniversary, so we held a little "Sputnik Soiree," a start-of-the-space-age themed masquerade party, with folks coming in late-50s vintage get-ups. And a swell time was had by all.

Wonder Wife as Alla Masevich, head of Tracking Systems for the Sputnik Project

I suggested donations to the food bank in lieu of gifts, but some folks wanted to express their esteem materially, and who am I to say no? Herewith, the loot:

A great treat of the day was receiving a package from my sisters back East. Slightly-older Sister had just returned from a Budapest to Amsterdam river cruise which apparently called at Nuremberg, Germany, since that's where Ultra Comix is located, and she got me some stuff from there. But really, the gift is hearing from her, and from Much-older Sister, whom I see all too infrequently.

 Not "Die neue zweiundfünfzig"?

Wonder Wife continues to fill in my comics library with these important works that I should be embarrassed to say I didn't own before yesterday, except that I ran out of embarrassment in the late 80s.

No capes?!

Brah Phil brought his internet A-game with these two great finds. First, a magazine that is almost precisely as old as I am. Despite its "Fine" condition, I am going to open it, read it, and stick it in my back pocket, as was intended.

I think I have read the Asimov and Sheckley stories already...

And in the same theme, he brought another I-had-one-of-those! goodies:

It actually belonged to a cousin, 

and I surrounded it with green army men, since it was a flying saucer.

That's just the way we rolled back then.

There were actually a lot of non-geeky elements to the celebration, but that's for another blog, right?

5x5 Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

1. There are still over a million hits on Google for "Days of Future Past" when excluding X-Men, Marvel, or Wolverine, and only a few are misspellings of the Moody Blues album title: most use the expression in connection with articles about either about nostalgia or predictions. Was the 1981 comic book story arc the real source of this phrase, and has it really become that ubiquitous just since then? I never actually read the Marvel series, but I knew enough about the story going in that the movie didn't surprise me.

2. The seventies ambience was not quite as wonderful as the sixties ambience on display in First Class, but it may have been even more authentic. And it proved that even Peter Dinklage can't make seventies fashions look good, and that did surprise me.

3. The best thing in the movie was the Xavier-Magneto relationship, both in the past and in the future. Everyone else, even Wolverine and Mystique, seemed to be there just for window dressing, without any internal life at all.

4. I am pretty sure I am done with Wolverine movies, even if he is one of Wonder Wife's favorites to watch; Hugh can hang up the claws any time, as far as I am concerned. Not bloody likely: he's still in like every third Marvel comic, isn't he?

5. I am also getting close to being over superhero movies in general. After so long wishing somebody could do one right, it now almost seems that there are too many being done all the time. Maybe I am just waiting for someone to do one really well.


And was I the only one who thought Quicksilver was too fast?

Wonder Wife Wednesday: Maximum Minis

So, here's a thing that happened: watch Wonder Wife go through eleven boxes of Pathfinder figures and one bottle of Trader Joe's beer.

Whom

For anyone connected to the Internet at all, it would be hard to know nothing about Doctor Who. The British television series premiered the day after President Kennedy was shot, and aired for about 25 years. It was then revived about ten years ago after a fifteen-year hiatus and has been continuously running in some form ever since, having just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

To say that this show is popular would be both accurate and misleading. Doctor Who seems to occupy a space similar to Star Trek in the American consciousness, in terms of its longevity and ubiquity as an institution rather than a singe show. But really, the fuel in its engine is the extreme loyalty of its dedicated followers, who put the "fanatic" back in "fan." Trekkies have nothing on Whovians, that fandom that lives and breathes the show, the story, the backstory, and the fan-fiction.

And as much as it has cost me some geek cred from time to time, I have had to admit that I have never watched the show, much less been a fan. Oh, of course, I have watched clips of, seen stills from, and read articles about it; as I said, it's hard for a fan of any nerdcore to avoid The Doctor. But actually watching the show - nope.

Oddly, Wonder Wife and I did watch Torchwood, a spin-off from the revived series that centered on an anti-weirdness squad led by the dashing and omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness. Wonder Wife loved the ever-present and fluid sexuality of the show ("Everybody sleeps with everybody!" is how she described it to friends), and the science-fictional elements were fun and engaging. But it wasn't exactly Doctor Who.

Well, after our preoccupation with Dr. Jin ended along with the series, I caught WW on a time-travel roll and we decided to binge-watch Christopher Eccleston's 2005 revival season of Doctor Who. (No way was I going back into "classic Who" from the pre-1989 era.) We raced through the whole short series and the ultimate verdict: not bad.

From what I had read, I expected to resonate with Eccleston's Ninth Doctor, since his is apparently the most working-class of all the "regenerations" of the character thus far - and his trademark plain leather jacket has a simplicity compelling if only for its contrast to the sometimes fussy outfits of other Doctors. Likewise, the traditional companion for this Doctor, Rose Tyler, starts out as shop-girl before traveling time and space in the TARDIS. The two of them had a nice chemistry and brought a bit of a prole vibe in their encounters with authority, alien or human.


The special effects accompanying the melodrama were not quite as cheesy as I had been lead to believe; in particular, the Daleks seem to have been heavily upgraded from the original, amateurish models.

A nice surprise was that this was the series that introduced the Jack Harkness character, so we got a bit of a prequel to Torchwood.

In for a penny, in for a pound; we're going to give the Tenth Doctor a go as well. David Tennant is a little too cute for my taste, especially after the rough-hewn Eccleston, but we have been enticed enough to string along for now.

But I'm not buying any TARDIS-shaped tchotchke any time soon.

Time flies like an arrow

So, Wonder Wife and I have finished watching the complete Dr. Jin, a Korean television show based on a Japanese manga about a modern-day brain surgeon cast back in time to Seoul at the end of the Joseon era, roughly the 1860s. We've had good luck with what I call Seoullywood - for my money, Korean films and TV, particularly the sci-fi, are consistently imaginative and entertaining, and Dr. Jin sure delivered for us.

Jin, initially somewhat cold and arrogant, becomes the very model of medical altruism as he struggles to treat patients with 19th century technology (abetted by a small bag of medical supplies that conveniently traveled with him - more on that later.) Over the course of the season, he handles two subdural hematomas, a cholera outbreak, a case of syphilis (caught from a Westerner, and for which he manufactures penicillin sixty years ahead of time); a tumor on the neck, and a caesarian section, as well as numerous sword and gunshot wounds and the initial emergency tracheotomy that establishes his reputation as an exceptionally skilled doctor.

Of course, a medical drama must be part medicine and part drama, and there's no lack of soap opera here: Jin is attracted to a noblewoman (from a disfavored house) who looks just like his fiancee in the current day, and his first and best friend is a distant royal relative destined to become the Prince Regent in a regime change. There's a puppet king, a scheming Prime Minister and his lackeys (including the Royal Doctor), a stalwart but conflicted police officer, a wise gisaeng (kind of a Korean geisha), a gangster with a heart of gold, and the brother of the noblewoman, who is a scholar by day and a bandit/proto-socialist revolutionary by night. Personal and political intriguing follow Jin's arrival, with Jin sometimes guided by and sometimes confused by his knowledge of the future. It sounds like a total romp, and it is. I'd recommend anyone check it out.

Thee series's only failing (for me) is its model of time travel. It didn't give Wonder Wife too many headaches, because there's not a lot of jumping around - Jin is just stuck in the past - but the show raises a few questions about how it thinks time travel actually works. (What follows is somewhat spoilery but I doubt that will ruin the enjoyment of anyone who seeks the series out.)

This chart shows the three common conceptions* of time travel:

The Fixed Timeline theory lends itself to deep drama dripping with irony: at is most mawkish, it is represented by things like you can't prevent the Titanic from hitting the iceberg, and in fact your misguided attempt to take over the wheelhouse to save the ship actually causes the accident. In the beginning, we think Dr. Jin is going to be following this model: he saves a woman from a head injury, and she is caught in the cholera outbreak; he manages to keep her alive through the disease, but then she dies in fire. Only then does Dr. Jin think that maybe she was not supposed to live on. We see the same forces at work in the political events depicted  - no matter how much Jin influences major actors, circumstances always intervene to force a return to the historical record of events, culminating in a French invasion of Ganghwa Island in response to persecution of Catholics.

But we see some Dynamic Timeline elements at well, so this deterministic interpretation does not obtain totally. In one episode, Jin meets a boy with the same family name and wonders if he's an ancestor. When the boy is injured playing with a toy Jin gives him and Jin must operate (of course), Jin starts becoming immaterial as the boy begins to fail. This cheesy version of the paradox effect never happens again, but there is an even more tangled feature to the overall situation.

Jin initially falls back in time when an unidentified patient from whom he had removed a weird tumor steals some medical equipment and goes to the roof of the hospital muttering "I must go back." In an attempt to prevent him from jumping off the roof, Jin falls, holding the medical bag - and lands in the past. It becomes clear - when we learn that Jin is developing a tumor - that the unidentified patient was -- will be? -- Jin. If this premise were played out, we would have the solipsistic circumstance in which Jin causes Jin to go back in time so Jin could come back to the present to cause himself to go back in time. (See, this is where WW's head would start to hurt.) This is the more complex kind of paradox that is generated from sophisticated treatments of this model.

Unfortunately, the series does not sustain this model, and in the end, clumsily falls into the Alternate Timeline model. (Major spoiler.) Jin does return to the future and becomes an unidentified patient who has a tumor removed - but then his identity is discovered and all is set right. He is back in the present and does not go stumbling up to a roof with a bag of medical supplies. He reads some history books closely and finds subtle differences between what he recalls from school and what he reads. He seems to be in a different future, and just shrugs it of with the Korean equivalent of "oh, well." (To make things worse, he is visited by a ghostly version of the Joseon Prince Regent for a farewell chat in a cringe-worthy scene reminiscent of the worst George Lucas excess.)

But don't let this last complaint sour you on the series: Dr. Jin is 99&44/100% fun. The Joseon-era escapades are wonderful, with good production values, engaging characters, and some nice action sequences, as well as all the medical melodrama you can handle. As they say in Korean: 예!

(That's "yes," pronounced a lot like "yeah.")

*There are a few good discussions of this topic to be found on line: I recommend Larry Niven's piece and Dr. Kaku's.

On the thirteenth day of Newton: The End

So, that's it, boys and girls: another winter solstice/holiday/calendrical-milestone season is behind us. For all intents and purposes, today is just Sunday. And Sunday, of course, means The Funnies:

Inasmuch as tomorrow is Monday, and the first day of winter quarter, and the focus returns to working instead of celebrating, I'll just relax with Wonder Wife today and take a deep breath before returning to what passes for normal around these parts.

See you in the funny pages!

On the fourth day of Newton: Geek Girls! (and guys)

So,  because it was such a Busy Quarter™, I didn't post (or make) my annual Geek Girl Con video this year. But I did indeed go to Geek Girl Con 3 back in October, keeping intact my record of having attended every one that has been held. Here are some photos, mostly of the cosplay:

My buddy Margaret came to the con with me, since Wonder Wife begged off from the crowds/noise/overstimulation/&c. Margaret was Bilbo the first day and Kaylee the second day, with stuff she just happened to have around. (She actually dresses pretty much like a hobbit most of the time anyway....)

Okay, I neglected to write down this girl's name, and she wasn't a cosplayer, but she played with us in a role-playing game whose mechanic was not dice-based but rather jenga-based. And she was like a jenga superhero - I mean, she must have had mutant jenga abilities or something. She kicked ass. I don't know how you could use that ability to fight crime, but she was a good gamer and a sweet kid. Margaret will remember her name.

Lots of crossplay:  here's a Doctor and a Link.

This awesome Skyrim lady was also very patient with me as I tried to capture her spooky lit-up eyes.

I met one of my former students at the Con - she's the Snow White with her friend, another Link.

This Gears of War/Hello Kitty mashup guy was telling me in the restroom about designing costumes to make sure he could, uh, use the restroom easily.

Awesome Robin I had to snap for Super Sissy.

GGC has a place for folks to sit quietly, read, rest, and recharge (not talking). I texted this pic to Wonder Wife and it made her decide that she would come next year after all!

On the third day of Newton: secret identity

So, last time here I showed you how I enjoy the holidays. Here's how Wonder Wife does it:

The holidays can both enrich and exasperate, especially for someone who is more introverted in the first place.  (Wife considered this recently on her own grown-up blog.) I don't get it totally, but I do try to understand and work with it. As long as I can get Chocos, I'll be happy!

Wonder Wife Wednesday: Poetry Corner

So, among all her other talents, Wonder Wife is an occasionally-published poet. We have sometimes called her the Blood, Birds, and Buddha poet, since so much of her writing and art is woman-centered and uses a lot of specific imagery. Here's one that's online in the Licton Springs Review.

She's on a bit of a sabbatical this summer from her healing practice and has been exploring how she is going to integrate her creative pursuits into the rest of her enterprises. The other night, she asked me for a poem prompt, just so she could stretch some creative muscles. I wanted to give her something that would bridge our chosen genres, so I said Supergirl.

Turns out Wonder Wife knew nothing about Supergirl, so I had to explain the story - the real one, of course - about how Kara Zor-El was in Argo City when Krypton exploded, and the whole city floated off in one piece, and how Kara floated through space for a while until she, too, was sent to Earth in a rocket. I showed her the cover of Action Comics #252 and explained how Superman stuck her in an orphanage to protect his secret identity. She asked me how old Supergirl was; I said she was about fourteen or so. Wonder Wife seemed taken by the idea of this young girl growing up on a tiny fragment of an exploded planet.

A little while later she sent me this:

SUPER GIRL

had no sex education like I did –
no old textbook diagrams of fallopian tubes,
or tampons dipped in blue-tinted water
to see them puff and float like sacred specimens.  

Instead, Argo drifted in space, detached
from its Kryptonian world, a chunk of planet
to fend for itself, just as Super Girl did,
ripening without notice, alone to witness
her first drops of woman blood
staining her muslin dress, wondering  

if this was the end, a disease just as cruel
as Krypton’s demise… 

… but then she saw a similar stain
on her girlfriend’s dress, and then another
and another, and she knew that something
miraculous had happened – like Krypton,
she had the power to bleed and survive.

Wonder Wife Wednesday - special holiday edition!

It's Independence in the USA, and what better way to celebrate than with the star-spangled shield-slinger! Or as Wonder Wife would call him, Go-America Guy...

Bomb Squad: Origins

So, I have already gone on record as a fan of the 2013 Disney film John Carter, which has been entered into the account books as an unmitigated bomb. I understand the numbers: if a movie costs $250 million to make, there's a chance for it to lose a lot of real money. I still dont undersatnd the critical response: it may not have been as witty as The Avengers, but it was every bit as visually appealing and engaging as Avatar or or any of the Pirates of the Caribbean entries, and those made a ton of money. But I am not going to beat that dead thoat any longer. This phenomenon, however, did get me thinking: if John Carter was a bomb, and it was actually awesome, maybe some other movies that were considered bombs are actually pretty good, too.

Here's the most recent listing of films that are the fifty biggest box-office bombs, courtesy of those crowdsource scholars at Wikipedia:

John Carter is the gold standard, coming it at the bottom of this list. I've highlighted the movies I have already seen in yellow; that leaves of lot of bomb disposal ahead. Some of them are films that I have wanted to see anyway; some are notorious; some I have never heard of. Wonder Wife has agreed to work our way through this list together, looking for diamonds amid the dross. I'll let you know how it turns out, of course.

The Scent of a Stan the Man

So, I stopped wearing cologne when I was nineteen, but I am almost tempted to give this a try:

Stan Lee Signature Cologne from JADS International. Available in pre-order now for delivery sometime in late summer (too late for prom!).

Or maybe I can get Wonder Wife to attempt a homebrew with her aromatherapy supplies. Let's see... the main notes are bergamot, ginger, white pepper, basil, and violet, with cedar, vetiver and musk as well. Man, even Stan's scent is overwrought! Still, how hard could it be?

Excelsior!