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Ryan turned eighteen today, and we spent the day at Disneyland with him.
There are some photos in my buzznet blog, taken before the battery on my Motorola POS-4000 went from three bars to zero bars in fifteen minutes. (It's really time for a new phone).
Happy birthday, Ryan. You're awesome and I love you!
When the feds raided Ted Stevens' home, they obviously did not show up in a big truck. So do you think they arrived via bridge or tube?
Rogers borrowed from me recently, so I'll borrow from him today:
The Con's current scale hammers home the hackiness of the standard American media narrative. I noticed multiple news camera crews, and each time it was the same. 124,000 people at the Con, give or take. But if you turn on your news coverage you won't see the giggling, happy five year-olds with their parents, having the "together family time" we're always whinging on about. You won't see the young woman who wrote and drew a comic about her time as a soldier in Israel. You won't see the scrum of young Marines I spotted as they compared Magic the Gathering cards. You won't meet the junior high teachers who are using my comic in their predominantly Hispanic classrooms to spark discussion about racial representation in the media. You won't see the indie film-makers, the kid who shot this 25 minutes in a week and left every industry pro who stumbled across him slack-jawed.
A thousand stories, tens of thousands of familes ... yet the newshacks couldn't wait to hustle up the dozen or so real freaks in costumes, the literally .001% that gave them what they wanted. Not even the kids in the Harry Potter outfits, or the Japanese anime kids, or even the clever unfolding Transformer rigs -- no, they found every empty-eyed overweight forty-five year old Flash or flab-rolled part-time stripper Catwoman and latched on tight for the creepy interview.
In the American media there are two constants. In politics, it is always and forever 1968, and liberals are Dirty Fucking Hippies. In culture, anyone who decides to poke their head out of the cultural world of the CBS primetime line-up is a sad, basement-dwelling loner screaming into his Hello Kitty pillow as crackling video dubs of the original Spider-Man cartoon flicker on his television.
For the record, I do not own a Hello Kitty pillow.
My friend Danica has a new book out, and CNN noticed:
Danica McKellar has a message for girls: Cute and smart is better than cute and dumb.
McKellar, who played Winnie on the 1990s television show "The Wonder Years," is coming out with a book, "Math Doesn't Suck," to encourage girls to get into math.
[...]
The book includes tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians. "I want to tell girls that cute and dumb isn't as good as cute and smart," she said.
FTW, Danica! It's awesome that the Mass Media is paying attention to smart cute girls instead of spoiled stupid whores for a change.
I saw Danica at an audition recently, and she was really excited about this book coming out, because she wants girls to know that it's cool to be smart. If any girls are reading this, I'd like to let you all know that there is nothing sexier than a smart girl. The guys who go for stupid girls? They're fucking losers who will just break your heart and will never respect you. Being smart is cool. Being stupid is embarrassing, despite what you see on the MTV and the YouTube. Listen to me, I'm a wise middle-aged old man now. Also, get off my lawn with your big brains and your hot pants and your culture I don't understand (but understood as recently as the day before yesterday).
You can buy Danica's book through this kickbacktacular link to Amazon. My ever-growing science fiction library thanks you.
Inspired by Danica's observations, I feel compelled to close this post by quoting Dean Wormer: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
(sent via iChat bonjour from my son Ryan, who is fifteen feet away from me on the other side of the wall.)
I just got my schedule for the Big Honkin' Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, and I'll be reading from The Happiest Days of Our Lives on Thursday, August 9, at 6:45 in the evening. There will be signings before, after, and all day Friday and Saturday, but the performance is on Thursday. At 6:45. Awesome time slot, ain't it? I'm sure all the people who can't come in until the weekend are as thrilled as I am, but I had nothing to do with the decision.
Creation will only cover two nights of hotel, so If I want to stay until Sunday to meet more fans, I have to pay for it myself. I find this outrageously lame and insulting, so I won't be staying through until Sunday. Something about paying my own way to appear at a convention really annoys me, and makes me feel like it's "pay to play," which I'm not going to do. It's not the money, really, as much as it is the principle, you know? (Note that it's not just me. This is, apparently, Creation policy for everyone who is, as we say, "second tier or less" in this particular world).
However, I'll be there from about 1pm on Thursday until they close up shop and kick us all out on Saturday, so I'm confident there will be plenty of chances to meet up and talk with WWdN:iX readers.
I should have all my books, and maybe even copies of Just A Geek: teh Audiobook, as well as a limited-edition, convention-only chapbook of all my TV Squad TNG Reviews to date. There will, of course, be the obligatory photomagraphs and automagraphs.
I wanted to do a poker tourney, but I without knowing well in advance how many people are going to play, it would be hard to convince the Hilton to block off some tables and give us dealers and a Tournament Director. In fact,it's a damn unreasonable request, and I'm not going to make it. Instead, I think we'll just end up asking them to open one or two semi-private tables to spread a mixed game on Friday night. I'll have the final details on that once I get to the con.
If you're coming to the show, would you visit the Eventful page I made and let me know? I'm trying to get an idea of just how many readers are going.
I have been absolutely overwhelmed with totally awesome birthday wishes from just about everyone I know, and just as many people who I don't know. Thank you!
This trip around the Sun, my 35th 36th*, has started out better than I could have ever dreamed, and it keeps getting better.
Now I'm going to go have a party with my family . . . and not just any party, but a pirate party. Arrr!!
*Shut up. Get off my lawn.
Today was much better than yesterday. Both of my panels were a fun (and I think the audiences enjoyed them) and I got to spend a bunch of mostly uninterrupted time getting my geek on with Ryan.
"You keep calling yourself a nerd," he said to me while we ate lunch, "but you're not a nerd. You're a geek."
"What's the difference?" I asked.
"Nerds don't know they're nerds, but geeks know they're geeks, and they embrace it."
I thought about this for a second.
"We're totally geeks," He said.
"Yeah, we are." He said, as I gained 1d6+2 HP.
After we ate, we tried to get into the Futurama panel, and had one of the more entertaining waiting in line experiences of my life while we did it . . . but we didn't quite make it into the room before they cut off the line. I think we were like 40 people away from the door, so it was like playing in a poker tournament and making it two tables off the money after three days.
I know there's more to share, but I'm so wiped out, I can't seem to put the words together at the moment. I'll leave you all to the photos I snapped while wandering around today which tell their own story. I've left comments there to help with the narrative.
Ryan came down from LA this morning, and we spent the day wandering around the con. I was really looking forward to hanging out with him and getting our geek on, but I think we were both disappointed with the day.
It was sold out today, so by two in the afternoon, it was incredibly difficult to walk around and enjoy the main floor: if you wanted to stop and look at something, there were people pushing around you. If you wanted to get somewhere in less than a year, there were all these damn people stopping in the aisle to look at things.
We did have some good times, though, including Ryan's first ever con food experience.
"You haven't really been to a con," I said, "until you've paid too much for food you really don't want, but feel compelled to eat so you don't die."
"Mission accomplished," he said.
I finally got to meet Neil Gaiman in person today, and thank him properly for writing the introduction to Just A Geek. After standing near him for about thirty minutes today, surrounded by people who love and admire him to an extreme that borders on worship and mania, I think I know what it must have been like to be close to the Beatles in 1969.
"I feel like I'm standing next to John Lennon," I said to one of his friends who was there to keep him sane, which could not have been an easy feat; the attention he got would have made any mortal absolutely crazy.
I can't quite find the words right now to express how patient, kind, and generous Neil in with his time and energy, and how impressive it was to me. Every single person who got close to him treated him like he was a god, and he took time for every single one of them, even when it was clear to me that he was exhausted. When I thanked him, he told me to hang around for a moment after he was done so we could talk, but I saw how wiped out he was, and knew that he still had other panels and signings to do, so I thought it was better to sneak away and leave him to what little bit of peace he could get before the mob started following him with shoes and gourds again.
I gave Warren Ellis a couple of Sharpies from my backpack when there weren't any available for him at his signing this afternoon. It was a pretty cool moment.
Biggest surprise of the day? I didn't buy a single thing except one fifty-cent button of zombie jesus. There are some awesome T-shirts here, but the company selling them wants $35 for 2 of them. Are they out of their fucking mind? $10 for 1, maybe, but $17.50? And $85 for 2 hoodies? What planet does this company live on? It must be the "we have three booths at Comic-Con so we're charging you up the ass" planet. How about you get none of my money, then? Does none work for you? I'll give it to indie designers who live on planet Earth, thank you.
Tomorrow is going to be insane. When I talked with Scott Kurtz today, I could tell that he was more than a little freaked out about the record-breaking crowds they are expecting tomorrow. I must admit that I'm right there with him.
Ryan and I had dinner with Luis, my editor from Tokyo Pop, and we got to nerd out about comics and manga. That was totally cool.
Overall, it was a good day, though I didn't get the ultra-geek-bonding day with Ryan that I'd hoped for, which left me feeling sad. I think that's just a consequence of Comic-Con's overwhelming size and the massive crowds that were everywhere.
We did count nearly-naked cosplay babes together, though. If that's not geeky father/son bonding, I don't know what is.
We stopped at 7, for those of you scoring at home.
I had an awesome night last night, hanging out with writers (and feeling, for the first time since I decided to be a writer, like I deserved to be among them as an equal).
Rogers captured a bit of why it was so cool:
John: Exactly. Problem is you can tell these guys are FX freaks.
Wheaton: Just love showing how beautiful their CG and textures are.
John: They jerk off to TRON.
Wheaton: Well, what part of TRON?
John: ...
Wheaton: Because if it's the light cycle chase --
You must go read the full post. The power of Flynn compels you.
These are the stories Wil loves to tell, because they are the closest to his heart: stories about being a huge geek, passing his geeky hobbies and values along to his own children, and vividly painting what it meant to grow up in the ’70s and come of age in the ’80s as part of the video game/D&D/BBS/Star Wars figures generation.
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