Sense of Adventure

Yes, dinosaurs. As in, I make toy dinosaurs fight.

How can you possibly resist?

If you should happen to find yourself at NASFiC/Archon on Thursday afternoon, August 2, at 4:00 PM, clearly you can’t.

I’ll be reading from my finally-nearing-completion-dammit high fantasy epic novel The Dinosaur Lords. The excerpts I read at the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society meeting last month got a pretty rockin’ reception from the audience. Of course, you could probably read from the phone book white pages and get a good reaction if you accompany it by having a molded-plastic Allosaurus bite a model Corythosaurus on the neck.

(Friendly tip: if you write to tell me Allosaurs weren’t, so far as we know, contemporary with Corythosaurs, I shall mock you. They are on my world, buddy boy. As I’m at pains to tell my audiences right off, it ain’t Earth. Please feel free to go back and review the definition for “high fantasy” if you need a refresher, here.)

So anyway, of course I have to schlep a pack of the things in my luggage to St. Louis. This will complicate my keeping my checked bag under the airline’s 50-pound limit. One is tempted to stuff ‘em in the backpack. One can, however, too readily imagine the grotesque melodrama that would educe from “security” screeners. That’s enough of a nightmare already, thank you kindly.

Oh - just struck me: I’ve actually made to-scale plasticine dudes, weapons, and even a howdah to help me visualize my action scenes. I’m sure the bitty figures would not survive the trip, so I thought about just taking a block of modeling clay and making them up when I get to the hotel.

Then I thought again. That’d go well, given the most recent phony terror scare. So, sadly, the fans’ll have to settle for dinosaurs sans riders.

Anyway … Dinosaur Lords is a smokin’-hot yarn, even without the visual aids. On the other hand, if you’ve never seen a middle-aged 230-pound guy with a ponytail thrash around onstage making model dinosaurs attack each other while making growling noises - and very, very few have - it’s not to be missed.

Really.

And if you have to miss it, there’ll be another performance at Bubonicon in August. Even if you have caught a prior reading, I should be reading different excerpts. And there’s no telling what’ll happen when I get rolling with the ’saurs!

And of course, Friday the 3rd is my birthday. Just to drop an unsubtle hint like a brick, there.

Hope to see you soon. The cons really will be fun. Both of ‘em. And so will my readings.

I just got off the phone with a pleasant young woman reporter for the Weekly Alibi, mentioned below. Her name was Marisa Demarco. In my currently slightly-fuzzed mental state (still battling a low grade infection, which has migrated to my lungs, hopefully on its way out) I’m afraid I got her name wrong.

I hope she’ll be kind enough not to do the same to me.

Anyway, it was all set in motion by Patricia Rogers, a wonderful friend of mine and most of the New Mexico SF community, fans and pros alike (I consider myself both, by the way.) She got the notion she wanted to promote us NM SF authors - a noble notion indeed - so she called up her friend Devin O’Leary, who’s the alibi’s movie columnist as well as a star in some of Scott Phillips’ demented masterpieces. What with Bubonicon on its way in another month (!) or so he talked his editors into doing interviews with some of New Mexico’s dang innumerable science fiction and fantasy authors.

So I got my call as scheduled, and had a nice and what I hope was at least near-coherent conversation with Ms. Demarco. She said the piece is due to come out in the next issue next Thursday. So we shall see.

I have to thank her - as well as for taking the time and trouble to talk to me - for reminding me how scandalously behind I am in updating my online bibliography. I’m, good Lord, five or six books back. Although since I have plenty of actual writing to do before I head out to St. Louis it’s an open question as to whether I’ll actually get the page updated before then. Maybe on the road when I find a wireless node.

Anyway, my thanks to Patricia for heroically taking the trouble to get this rolling, and Devin and Marisa and the alibi. Subject to revocation depending upon what they actually say about me, of course.

It’s not often you can use the words “fun” and “freedom” together in the context of net.commentary. Pro-freedom writing online can generally be described with words like embittered or despairing.

A guy named George Gould wrote a piece on LRC called The Classified NIE that’s both hilarious and incisive. So I emailed him and told him what I thought about it (“Brilliant.”)

So anyway he was kind enough to write back and thank me, and also mention he’s got a new blog. I checked and it’s pretty good. So he’s going on the blogroll.

Tell me truthfully, now: who else really wants to see Harry Potter & the Mount of Venus? Show of hands. Everybody? Or is it just me?

(*crickets*)

Okay. It’s just me.

Again.

The embargo is busted.

The New York Times and the Baltimore Sun have posted reviews of the (allegedly) final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The Sun reviewer specifically disavows the presence of spoilers. You may consider the NYT review to contain them. Read the reviews at your own risk.

But then, ain’t it always that way with these here now Interwebs?

Is a winner.

I went ahead and busted loose from my somewhat (read: way too) insular routine and caught an afternoon matinee of this Wednesday, Opening Day.

I loved it. A fine action movie. Definitely the best Die Hard since the first.

Nits may be picked, of course. It’s based on a seminal work promulgating the “Electronic Pearl Harbor” myth, John Carlin’s WIRED article “A Farewell to Arms,” ably debunked by Great EPH Trasher George Smith on his Dick Destiny Blog and in (much) more detail here. But even as the curmudgeonly Smith seems to admit, it’s a plenty-good premise for an action flick.

Despite some … imposing … stunts and special effects, the dreaded Michael Bay Effect I alluded to in my earlier post seemed missing. There is one moment, when McClane leaps from a stricken F-35 strike fighter to a fallen freeway overpass - I’d preface that with a spoiler warning, but since it’s in every freakin’ TV trailer, there seems little point, yes? But even that doesn’t stretch belief’s suspension bridge into Galloping Gertie the way, say, Obi-Wan Jr. and Miz Scarlett surviving a 65-story fall down a skyscraper does in The Island. (Nice save attempt to Bay and his screenwriters for having the rotund black construction guy say, “I know Jesus loves you.” But, no.)

Actually, the whole third act is basically the same as in True Lies. Fortunately it leaves out anything near as creepy as the Arnold-stalking-his-wife-Jamie-Lee subplot. Unfortunately it does entail going the hated Screaming Female Hostage route. Still, there’s something about an SCF who invites the lead bad guy to step outside and settle things face-to-face: points on for that.

Overall I loved it. The Apple Mac is engaging as the would-be white hat programmer caught up in schemes beyond his dreams who winds up as unwilling partner to the crusty McClane. McClane himself still comes across as a basically believable character who’s still, yes, resourceful, unbelievably tenacious, and, yes, just a wee bit lucky. The lunch-pail approach, even to the most extraordinary challenges, that made the character stand out in the first film seems very much intact. The interaction between the two male leads doesn’t become cloying. Silent Bob Kevin Smith plays, basically, Kevin Smith as super-cracker. Of course, there do seem to be fewer “character-based” moments in this than in the original.

Still, it works. The action is mostly crisp and fairly convincing. The villains are … deeply OK. Timothy Olyphant is sinister but petulant in a role better played by Eric Bogosian in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, but then, no one wrote him dialogue as crisp and cool as, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captor speaking…” Maggie Q is incendiary - kinda literally, there at the end - as usual, playing the Head Henchwoman. And just as in last year’s (also superb) Casino Royale, there’s a goon who practices the eccentric French roof-hopping sport of parkour.

It’s a shame the movie doesn’t sport more memorable antagonists. I suppose a villain of Hans Gruber’s magnitude and coolness factor is a lightning-in-a-bottle sort of thing. And they are certainly adequate; they don’t detract. They simply don’t add that much.

On the whole, though, it’s excellent. There’s even a nicely understated message on the true nature of heroism: that it consists simply in doing what must be done when there’s no one else to do it. Which strikes me as fairly Heinleinian.

I’m fairly stoked to see Live Free or Die Hard. The first was the definitive modern American action movie. The second sucked a mighty wind. The third was deeply OK but way too convoluted.

I’m made a little uneasy by the TV trailers for this, though. It looks as if it’s very special effects-heavy. That could take it into Michael Bay territory, and nobody wants that.

The original was character-driven and offered up lots of well-shot and edited and mostly credible action. Giving all due credit to Bruce Willis for his surprisingly excellent (to me, at the time, anyway) portrayal of John McClane - resourceful, incredibly durable, and still thoroughly Everyman - the film was made by its suave, mellifluous-voiced villain, Hans Gruber. A perfect blend of scripting, direction, and Alan Rickman’s acting made Gruber one of the all-time best screen heavies.

This one - well, I’m eager to see how it turns out, whether it’s Die Hard or Blow Harder. I may even cut loose from my current Rogue Angel book and the new Wild Cards story and go catch a matinee.

I mean … it’s Die Hard. Yippee-ki-yay!

So, who the hell made up the phrase, “If it’s too loud, then you’re too old,” anyway? If you are old, if it’s not too loud, you can’t hear it.

You think Stones concerts were loud in the Sixties? I bet nowadays they’d powder corundum. You got all these ancient guys up on stage who have to be deaf as marble columns.

Granted, I’ve thought Keith Richards was clinically dead since sometime back in the early Eighties. But dead is pretty deaf, right?

Mind you, I don’t think he’s died and been replaced. It’s still him. He’s just undead. All the drugs are preserving him.

Specifically, I salute music label EMI for firing a much-deserved 9mm bullet into the back of the head of the monster known as DRM.

Digital rights management - DRM - has never been about protecting the rights of creators. If by creators we mean the artists and authors and filmmakers who actually produce the works in question. Rather they represent an attempt by the giant corporations (i.e., governments-by-franchise) not only to usurp the status of “content creators,” but to destroy the property rights of the consumer.

But the market has spoken. DRM is not acceptable - especially in the form of invasive malware like the evil Sony rootkit of fond memory. I also salute Apple for offering DRM-free downloads now through its iTunes service: I may actually buy something from them now. And kudos to Steve Jobs for taking a big stand against DRM a few weeks ago. He may actually have been hopping an approaching wave more than standing; but it was a good thing withal.

I still recommend subscription service eMusic. They never have had DRM: everything’s MP3. I’ve subscribed for a couple of years now. If you insist in current chart-toppers you’ll no doubt have better luck on iTunes. But if you go for indy music, or Classical (they have the whole, superb Naxos catalogue), or New Age, or folk, or other less mainstream music, they’re definitely worth a look. And they still charge only, I believe, $.33 per DRM-free song. You might check ‘em out.

Holy cats! They’re actually broadcasting the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee on ESPN! (At least according to Deadspin.)

That’s gonna be like watching mold grow on those containers of semi-identifiable foodstuffs in your fridge!

Unless, of course, you have a stake in the proceedings. Such as your kid is participating. Then it’s merely hours of boredom punctuated by bursts of sheer terror. Like war. Except without the chance of being blown to bits. Unless you’re homeschoolers, in which case you risk being taken out by an NEA hit squad.

I feel entitled to make fun of broadcasting the National Spelling Bee, inasmuch as I was in it in 1968.

After several years as a perennial contender, I finally won the New Mexico state bee in my final year of eligibility. Off to Mordor Washington I went, all filled with eagerness and youthful dreams.

The practice round went swimmingly for me. Too bad it didn’t count.

Then came the first round. The first - flippin’ - round. My turn comes, I step up, and they give me my first word. And I confidently sing out, “E-M-O-R-Y.”

Unfortunately that’s a university. A “fine-grained impure corundum used for grinding and polishing” is E-M-E-R-Y.

Ding! “You … lose.”

On a five letter word. A Five. Letter. Word.

It was official. I totally sucked.

Fortunately, I was able to recover from my humiliation after only a couple of decades spent as an anonymous yak herder in Bhutan.

And that’s the story of my Secret Shame. Which, sadly, was headline news at the time, back in Burque. Nothing feeds the adolescent ego, I assure you, like sucking in the newspaper.

Anyway, when it comes to watching on TV … I’ll pass. Too rich for my blood.