Well, it's been two days and they're *still* counting the caucus votes in Texas. At the moment, they're approximately 40% through the results, with Obama leading Clinton by 56% to 44%.
As for the primaries, Clinton defeated Obama with 51% of the vote. Now if you've ever actually studied math, you probably regard that as a "close race" or a "narrow margin." However, you may recall from 2004 that the Republicans declared 51% to be a "historical sweeping landslide of Biblical proportions that indicates a mandate set not only by the people but by the Lord God Himself." So I guess Clinton should feel pretty proud right about now.
If you're from a state with a less-retarded voting system, you may be asking yourself, "What's all this primary/caucus stuff?" Well, if so, then you're shit out of luck because I've lived in Texas my whole life and I *still* don't understand how the candidate selection process works here for Democrats.
The Republicans have their primary elections. All of their faithful supporters show up and cast their votes for the Republican who hates gay people and foreigners the most. They tally the votes (at 1 for each white voter, and 3/5 for everyone else) and then they send their delegates to the Republican National Convention to nominate their man.
But the Democrats here have a system known as the "Texas Two-Step" that's more convoluted than the plot of Lost. You see, first you go to the primary and cast your vote for the candidate of your choice. The results of the primary are represented by 126 delegates. Once you've voted in the primary, you are eligible to attend the caucus and vote yet again. Only this time, you're voting for the delegates rather than the candidates. I think. The results of the caucus are represented by 67 delegates; 25 have already been selected by the party, while the remaining 42 are elected at the caucus.
And, just in case your head hasn't exploded yet, there are 35 superdelegates! These roguish, devil-may-care delegates play by their own damn rules! They laugh at your silly little primary results, and they spit on your caucuses! They vote however the hell they feel like voting, and if you don't like it, you can run home and cry to mommy, you colossal pussy!
So that's it in a nutshell. There's also some calculus involved, plus everyone knows that the Hair Competition is worth 35% of the final score. In the end, the results will probably be determined by those wild card superdelegates.
One interesting thing about the primaries was the record turnout of Democrat voters. They actually outnumbered the Republican voters by 2/1, which is pretty remarkable in the reddest of red states. (The last time Texas cast its electoral votes for a Democrat was 1976, for Jimmy Carter. Of course, that was back before Democrat, liberal, and evil all became synonyms in the conservative dictionary.)
Of course, conspiracy theories abound. Some folks claim that the Republicans are attempting to sabotage Obama by sending folks to vote for Clinton, which strikes me as kind of funny. I know Rush Limbaugh has been inciting his listeners to vote for Hillary, because he thinks that'll make things easier for the Republicans in November. (Rush apparently assumes that American voters are more sexist than racist.)
But it could end up being a moot point. While doing the morning talk show circuit the other day, Hillary mentioned the possibility of a Clinton/Obama ticket. Of course, they'd have to settle the matter of who gets to be on top with a quick round of roshombo or a game of quarters.
What's interesting is that, ordinarily, talk of a join ticket is seen as a concession. However, Clinton timed it just right and may end up appealing to folks who see a vote for her as a vote for her and Obama. Plus, it opens up the opportunity of Clinton serving her one or two terms, then stepping aside to let Obama do the same.
Personally, I still have my problems with Hillary Clinton, none of which are actually related to the issues. I hate the way her campaign just seems to go negative by reflex (her team is already blaming the caucus results on Obama's team, claiming they cheated and kept certain voters from attending). And her heartfelt, sincere moments feel so contrived and manipulative.
But she's pro-environment, pro-choice, anti-war, anti-torture, and has plans for economic stimulation that go beyond constant tax cuts to the wealthiest .00001%. I may not like her as a person, but I can at least support her on the issues. I'm still pulling for Obama, but I don't think Clinton in office would necessarily be a *bad* thing.
Of course, it's hard to say for certain. After all, that bar has been set pretty low over the past eight years...
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The 1d6 People You Meet in Heaven
Gary Gygax, 1938-2008
Ernest Gary Gygax--writer, game designer, and 23rd level nerd--passed away this morning. He'd been suffering from health problems for the past few years, including an abdominal aneurysm.
For the benefit of those readers who got laid in high school, I should probably explain that Gary Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons (along with Dave Arneson). And if you don't know what Dungeons & Dragons is, then you have no business mucking around on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet.
As soon as the news broke, the geek grapevine was abuzz. One of my coworkers was telling me about it just as one of the managers sent out an email. And then, Stephanie called me to let me know and to make sure I was okay. I told her I was going to take a personal day to spend some quality time with my dice and lead figurines.
I never actually met the man, but I was an unabashed fan of his work. My first attempt at a novel, The Long and Rather Pointless Adventures of Verbal Reynard, Cutpurse Extraordinaire, was an affectionate parody of Mr. Gygax's World of Greyhawk and my love letter to all things Dungeons & Dragons.
I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons back in 1981, when I was in the 8th grade. Unfortunately, it was around this time that the Baptist Church lost its mind and became convinced that D&D was a gateway to Satan worship and black magic. My mom and stepdad were concerned because my friends and I had become somewhat obsessed with the game. We spent all our money on rule books, game modules, and funny dice. And when I wasn't playing the game with them, I was shut up in my room, mapping out elaborate dungeons and thinking of horrific and brutal ways to kill their characters.
It was around this time that Sean and I decided to make our epic Dungeons & Dragons movie, which worried my parents even more. Seeing us all geared out in our makeshift armor and wielding our wooden swords, they no doubt imagined we would eventually make our way down to the sewers and hack each other to death in some kind of diabolical blood ritual.
(To be fair, their entire perception of the game was pretty much formed by films like Mazes and Monsters or retarded publications like Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons. Dungeons and Dragons became a scapegoat for misbehaving teenagers, sandwiched somewhere in between backwards messages in rock music and Grand Theft Auto.)
For my parents, the final straw came in 1984. We had a visiting preacher at church who devoted his entire sermon to the evils of Dungeons & Dragons and how it made the Baby Jesus cry. So on Monday, while I was at work, my mom and stepdad went through my closet and they found my copy of Deities and Demigods (one of the D&D rulebooks). This was all the proof they needed that I was involved in some kind of pagan cult. When I got home from work, they had a little intervention and they informed me that my days of playing Dungeons & Dragons were over.
I protested that it was only a game, that nobody I knew had any trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy. I argued that Dungeons & Dragons was a creative outlet, that I was in effect writing stories. I pointed out that I was making good grades, that I had a job, and I was in band and yearbook staff. I was not only going to church every week, but I was in the orchestra there. Plus, our circle of geeks had recently expanded to include some real live girls!
Moved by my pleas, my parents agreed to a compromise. I could continue to play D&D, but I wasn't allowed to use any of the other gods in my game. My players had to worship God and Jesus. I agreed to their terms, and even went so far as to draw up some stats for God and Jesus. You know, in case the players ran into them in the game... and wanted to fight them. I don't remember any of the specifics, but I do recall that killing God would yield some primo experience points...
My interest in the game waned somewhat when I graduated and went to college. I had some geeky friends and we'd get together for the occasional game, but the days of marathon gaming sessions had passed. When I was at Brinker, I hooked up with a gang of nerds there for a couple of nostalgic sessions. I had a lot of fun, but I got a little embarrassed when they came in my office and started discussing the game in front of my other friends. One guy, Joey, asked me why I was embarrassed, and I told him, "Dungeons & Dragons is like masturbation... I enjoy doing it, but I don't really want to talk about it in front of a bunch of people."
Most recently, I discovered that Stephanie was no stranger to the dice. I dusted off my old books and ran her, Sean, and a couple of other friends through an old school 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure. (It was the Desert of Desolation series, in case you're interested.) It was a blast! It turns out that Dungeons & Dragons is even more fun when you're sleeping with one of the players! But I digress...
So that's how Gary Gygax shaped my teen years and made me the successful nerd that I am today. I look back on the time I spent with my friends during that period, and I remember it all quite fondly. The funny thing is, I don't remember many of the details about the games themselves. I just remember the all night sessions, with six to ten of us gathered around somebody's kitchen table with our dice, rulebooks, and character sheets, stuffed full of Mr. Jim's pizza and hopped up on Mountain Dew, cracking our dumb jokes and discussing, in all earnestness, what would happen if you put a Sphere of Annihilation inside a Bag of Holding.
Rest in peace, Mr. Gygax.
Ernest Gary Gygax--writer, game designer, and 23rd level nerd--passed away this morning. He'd been suffering from health problems for the past few years, including an abdominal aneurysm.
For the benefit of those readers who got laid in high school, I should probably explain that Gary Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons (along with Dave Arneson). And if you don't know what Dungeons & Dragons is, then you have no business mucking around on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet.
As soon as the news broke, the geek grapevine was abuzz. One of my coworkers was telling me about it just as one of the managers sent out an email. And then, Stephanie called me to let me know and to make sure I was okay. I told her I was going to take a personal day to spend some quality time with my dice and lead figurines.
I never actually met the man, but I was an unabashed fan of his work. My first attempt at a novel, The Long and Rather Pointless Adventures of Verbal Reynard, Cutpurse Extraordinaire, was an affectionate parody of Mr. Gygax's World of Greyhawk and my love letter to all things Dungeons & Dragons.
I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons back in 1981, when I was in the 8th grade. Unfortunately, it was around this time that the Baptist Church lost its mind and became convinced that D&D was a gateway to Satan worship and black magic. My mom and stepdad were concerned because my friends and I had become somewhat obsessed with the game. We spent all our money on rule books, game modules, and funny dice. And when I wasn't playing the game with them, I was shut up in my room, mapping out elaborate dungeons and thinking of horrific and brutal ways to kill their characters.
It was around this time that Sean and I decided to make our epic Dungeons & Dragons movie, which worried my parents even more. Seeing us all geared out in our makeshift armor and wielding our wooden swords, they no doubt imagined we would eventually make our way down to the sewers and hack each other to death in some kind of diabolical blood ritual.
(To be fair, their entire perception of the game was pretty much formed by films like Mazes and Monsters or retarded publications like Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons. Dungeons and Dragons became a scapegoat for misbehaving teenagers, sandwiched somewhere in between backwards messages in rock music and Grand Theft Auto.)
For my parents, the final straw came in 1984. We had a visiting preacher at church who devoted his entire sermon to the evils of Dungeons & Dragons and how it made the Baby Jesus cry. So on Monday, while I was at work, my mom and stepdad went through my closet and they found my copy of Deities and Demigods (one of the D&D rulebooks). This was all the proof they needed that I was involved in some kind of pagan cult. When I got home from work, they had a little intervention and they informed me that my days of playing Dungeons & Dragons were over.
I protested that it was only a game, that nobody I knew had any trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy. I argued that Dungeons & Dragons was a creative outlet, that I was in effect writing stories. I pointed out that I was making good grades, that I had a job, and I was in band and yearbook staff. I was not only going to church every week, but I was in the orchestra there. Plus, our circle of geeks had recently expanded to include some real live girls!
Moved by my pleas, my parents agreed to a compromise. I could continue to play D&D, but I wasn't allowed to use any of the other gods in my game. My players had to worship God and Jesus. I agreed to their terms, and even went so far as to draw up some stats for God and Jesus. You know, in case the players ran into them in the game... and wanted to fight them. I don't remember any of the specifics, but I do recall that killing God would yield some primo experience points...
My interest in the game waned somewhat when I graduated and went to college. I had some geeky friends and we'd get together for the occasional game, but the days of marathon gaming sessions had passed. When I was at Brinker, I hooked up with a gang of nerds there for a couple of nostalgic sessions. I had a lot of fun, but I got a little embarrassed when they came in my office and started discussing the game in front of my other friends. One guy, Joey, asked me why I was embarrassed, and I told him, "Dungeons & Dragons is like masturbation... I enjoy doing it, but I don't really want to talk about it in front of a bunch of people."
Most recently, I discovered that Stephanie was no stranger to the dice. I dusted off my old books and ran her, Sean, and a couple of other friends through an old school 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure. (It was the Desert of Desolation series, in case you're interested.) It was a blast! It turns out that Dungeons & Dragons is even more fun when you're sleeping with one of the players! But I digress...
So that's how Gary Gygax shaped my teen years and made me the successful nerd that I am today. I look back on the time I spent with my friends during that period, and I remember it all quite fondly. The funny thing is, I don't remember many of the details about the games themselves. I just remember the all night sessions, with six to ten of us gathered around somebody's kitchen table with our dice, rulebooks, and character sheets, stuffed full of Mr. Jim's pizza and hopped up on Mountain Dew, cracking our dumb jokes and discussing, in all earnestness, what would happen if you put a Sphere of Annihilation inside a Bag of Holding.
Rest in peace, Mr. Gygax.
Monday, March 03, 2008
&$^@#!?*% Verizon!!!! (a Trois)
While I was nerding it up at ConDFW, my internet connection died on me. I had no idea until I got home from the conference and started up my PC, only to find myself being mocked by Windows Vista's "limited connectivity" icon. Usually when this happens, I just power off my modem and power down my PC, then bring them both back up and hey, problem solved!
(As you may recall from the last time I had this problem, my modem is slightly older than John McCain, and was apparently constructed prior to the invention of on/off switches. So in order to "cycle power," I have to reach around behind it and pull out the power cord. My modem sucks, and I hope it dies alone and unloved.)
Anyway, despite my best efforts, I just wasn't getting any connectivity love. So once again, I broke down and did something that never seems to bode well. I called Verizon Customer Service.
Now apparently Verizon has decided that the whole DSL thing is beneath them, so they've quit supporting it themselves and farmed it out to some very nice folks for whom English is, to be kind, most likely a second language.
So, with much trepidation, I dialed Verizon Customer Service and reached the soulless automaton who would be my guide. Her soothing, robot voice informed me that I was at the Main Menu, and I could return here at any time by saying "main menu." And so, comforted by the thought that safety was never more than two words away, I plunged into the swirling, nightmarish abyss of Verizon's nested menus.
I informed the godless fembot that I was calling with regards to Verizon High Speed Internet, that my phone number was indeed correct, and that I was having connectivity issues. After much clicking and whirring as she attempted to process this human emotion called love, the she-droid informed me that she was going to perform some tests on the line and it might take a few minutes.
This is the part that always kills me, because while waiting for the results, another helpful recorded message always sees fit to inform me that "the solutions for many common connectivity issues may be found online at the Verizon website." Thank you, Verizoputer 5000. I'm sure if anybody ever bothered to point out the fallacy in that logic to the robots manning the phones, they would short out and their heads would explode.
The fembot finally came back on the line to let me know that she had found a problem in the network and she was transferring me to an agent who could assist me further. I have to say, this filled me with hope. If she'd already managed to figure out the problem, hopefully I'd be up and running in no time. Right? RIGHT?
Wrong. I was finally connected with a very nice human being in a drastically different time zone who had me go through the usual rigmarole of shutting things off and turning them back on again. Because they never believe you when you tell them you've already done it 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. I told her that the magic voice on the phone had already found the problem, but unfortunately the robots and the Indian contractors don't seem to be speaking with one another these days. After exhausting her bag of tricks, my agent informed me that she was going to escalate the issue to her supervisor, or something like that. She said they would be in touch and let me know when the issue was resolved.
Well, I got the call on Friday that the problem was solved and my connection to Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet should be up and running. I went to check, but no connection. I unplugged the modem, powered down the PC, and brought them both back up. Still no connection.
On Saturday, I sat down to place another call to Verizon Customer Support. I found myself at the familiar Main Menu, and once again worked my way through the myriad options. When I finally informed the cold, mechanical fembot that I was having connectivity issues, she gave me the following choices:
I was eventually connected to another exotic customer service agent who apologized profusely for the inconvenience and reopened my ticket. We went through the reboot thing again, and I'm sure you can imagine my surprise and astonishment when that didn't work. So she said that she would escalate my call to her supervisor, and they would be in touch with me.
I heard back just two hours later from somebody here in the continental U.S. He said they were going to upgrade my connection for free, and I'd be receiving a new and improved modem (and cables) in the mail in the next few days. He also gave me his number and said I could call it if I ran into any problems getting the new stuff up and running.
So I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. Hopefully I'll be back online before my social security benefits kick in. In the meantime, I'm making due with my internet connection at work, and the occasional low-quality wireless signal that I can grab with my laptop.
Can you hear me now?
(As you may recall from the last time I had this problem, my modem is slightly older than John McCain, and was apparently constructed prior to the invention of on/off switches. So in order to "cycle power," I have to reach around behind it and pull out the power cord. My modem sucks, and I hope it dies alone and unloved.)
Anyway, despite my best efforts, I just wasn't getting any connectivity love. So once again, I broke down and did something that never seems to bode well. I called Verizon Customer Service.
Now apparently Verizon has decided that the whole DSL thing is beneath them, so they've quit supporting it themselves and farmed it out to some very nice folks for whom English is, to be kind, most likely a second language.
So, with much trepidation, I dialed Verizon Customer Service and reached the soulless automaton who would be my guide. Her soothing, robot voice informed me that I was at the Main Menu, and I could return here at any time by saying "main menu." And so, comforted by the thought that safety was never more than two words away, I plunged into the swirling, nightmarish abyss of Verizon's nested menus.
I informed the godless fembot that I was calling with regards to Verizon High Speed Internet, that my phone number was indeed correct, and that I was having connectivity issues. After much clicking and whirring as she attempted to process this human emotion called love, the she-droid informed me that she was going to perform some tests on the line and it might take a few minutes.
This is the part that always kills me, because while waiting for the results, another helpful recorded message always sees fit to inform me that "the solutions for many common connectivity issues may be found online at the Verizon website." Thank you, Verizoputer 5000. I'm sure if anybody ever bothered to point out the fallacy in that logic to the robots manning the phones, they would short out and their heads would explode.
The fembot finally came back on the line to let me know that she had found a problem in the network and she was transferring me to an agent who could assist me further. I have to say, this filled me with hope. If she'd already managed to figure out the problem, hopefully I'd be up and running in no time. Right? RIGHT?
Wrong. I was finally connected with a very nice human being in a drastically different time zone who had me go through the usual rigmarole of shutting things off and turning them back on again. Because they never believe you when you tell them you've already done it 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. I told her that the magic voice on the phone had already found the problem, but unfortunately the robots and the Indian contractors don't seem to be speaking with one another these days. After exhausting her bag of tricks, my agent informed me that she was going to escalate the issue to her supervisor, or something like that. She said they would be in touch and let me know when the issue was resolved.
Well, I got the call on Friday that the problem was solved and my connection to Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet should be up and running. I went to check, but no connection. I unplugged the modem, powered down the PC, and brought them both back up. Still no connection.
On Saturday, I sat down to place another call to Verizon Customer Support. I found myself at the familiar Main Menu, and once again worked my way through the myriad options. When I finally informed the cold, mechanical fembot that I was having connectivity issues, she gave me the following choices:
I see that we recently closed a ticket for you on this issue. You may need to restart your modem and your computer. To repeat this information, say "repeat." To return to the Main Menu, say "main menu."I tried again and again, but I couldn't seem to get past this barrier of computer logic. No option to reopen a ticket, no option to speak to an agent, nothing. Annoyed, I returned to the Main Menu and this time when she asked me what my issue was, I said, "Other." Fortunately, my unpredictable human brain proved too wily for her circuitous logic, and I was able to pierce the clever defenses of the Verizon Customer Service Automated Menu System. I felt like such a hacker.
I was eventually connected to another exotic customer service agent who apologized profusely for the inconvenience and reopened my ticket. We went through the reboot thing again, and I'm sure you can imagine my surprise and astonishment when that didn't work. So she said that she would escalate my call to her supervisor, and they would be in touch with me.
I heard back just two hours later from somebody here in the continental U.S. He said they were going to upgrade my connection for free, and I'd be receiving a new and improved modem (and cables) in the mail in the next few days. He also gave me his number and said I could call it if I ran into any problems getting the new stuff up and running.
So I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. Hopefully I'll be back online before my social security benefits kick in. In the meantime, I'm making due with my internet connection at work, and the occasional low-quality wireless signal that I can grab with my laptop.
Can you hear me now?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Zen and the Art of Blog Maintenance
My list of Blogs That Aren't Mine was getting a tad long, so I went through and deleted links to those guys who haven't updated in 6 months or more. Yeah, I know I live in a glass house when it comes to that sort of thing. I'm totally at peace with my hypocrisy. I hope, some day, you too will be.
Oh, and the counter is back. I thought about starting it off at 184,359 or something, just to make my blog look popular, but I'm really not that insecure. Right? You guys don't think I'm insecure, do you?
Oh, and the counter is back. I thought about starting it off at 184,359 or something, just to make my blog look popular, but I'm really not that insecure. Right? You guys don't think I'm insecure, do you?
Googler? I Don't Even *Know* Her!
Here's something kind of funny that my buddy Silver sent to me.
Marissa Mayer was Google's first female engineer, and is currently serving as the Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. When San Francisco magazine recently ran a profile on her, they referred to her as the "gorgeously geeky Googler" and went on and on about her glamorous clothes, opulent lifestyle, net worth, and love of frosting. So, in other words, hard news.
But here's the funny part. Apparently the editors of the magazine aren't up on the hip lingo that perverts and naughty people use on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet, and they cleverly referred to Mayer as "Googirl." The online article got yanked almost immediately, but some 115,000 copies of the magazine made it onto the newsstands.
I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure those bastards at Yahoo! are to blame for this...
Marissa Mayer was Google's first female engineer, and is currently serving as the Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. When San Francisco magazine recently ran a profile on her, they referred to her as the "gorgeously geeky Googler" and went on and on about her glamorous clothes, opulent lifestyle, net worth, and love of frosting. So, in other words, hard news.
But here's the funny part. Apparently the editors of the magazine aren't up on the hip lingo that perverts and naughty people use on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet, and they cleverly referred to Mayer as "Googirl." The online article got yanked almost immediately, but some 115,000 copies of the magazine made it onto the newsstands.
I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure those bastards at Yahoo! are to blame for this...
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Once You Go Barack, You'll Never Go Back
Last month, I joked that I was going to vote for Hillary just so we'd have a Bush -> Clinton -> Bush -> Clinton order of progression. But after watching the debates, I've decided to throw my support behind Obama. Yes, that's right, Barack. Your pasty white geek contingency just went up by 0.00003%. You could probably quadruple that if you learned to speak Klingon.
And here's the weird thing... it wasn't really the issues that made me a fan of Obama. They may differ in the details, but for the most part, Hillary and Barack come down on the same side of the major issues. No, what made up my mind was the way they're running their campaigns.
Perception is everything, and whether it's 100% true or not, the perception is that Obama is running a clean, above-board campaign. Clinton went negative pretty early on, and it backfired on her. I think a lot of voters are sick and tired of all the retarded mudslinging and have finally come to see just how insulting and condescending those negative ads truly are.
Take the debate in Austin last week. Clinton brought up the issue of Obama's alleged plagiarism (an issue that, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, should have been DOA from the beginning). Obama dismissed the whole thing and blamed it on "the silly season in politics." Clinton came back with the prepared line, "Lifting whole passages is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox." And she looked out smugly at the crowd as she said it, no doubt imagining a roar of approval for her witticism. Instead, awkward silence. Crickets. And a smattering of boos. Obama just shook his head in disbelief. And as a result, Obama came off looking rather noble while Clinton just seemed petty and spiteful.
Taking a lesson, Clinton did a quick turnaround and tried to take the high road at the end of the debate. She praised Obama and said that if she did not win the nomination, the nation would be served well by him. It earned her more applause than anything else she had said all night.
Unfortunately, Clinton's civility was short-lived. Obama's team recently distributed a pamphlet highlighting the differences between their guy and Hillary. Clinton's team responded almost immediately by accusing Obama of printing misleading information and outright distortions. Now was there any merit to the accusation? Who knows? But perception is everything, and at this point, I think everybody except the most diehard Clinton supporter is willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Clinton went so far as to claim that Obama had "taken a page from Karl Rove's playbook." Meanwhile, the Clinton team released a photo to conservative muckraker Matt Drudge that shows Obama dressed in a turban while visiting Kenya. It was a transparent attempt to play on the inherent racism of American voters, and I guess it was successful, since a lot of conservatives really seem to be up in arms about the whole thing. And to add insult to injury, when Obama's team accused Clinton's team of "fear-mongering," they responded with the statement, "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed."
That kind of shit plays well amongst the Republicans. Back in 2000, Bush pretty much snaked the Republican nomination away from McCain by spreading the rumor that McCain had an illegitimate black child from an extramarital affair. Karl Rove all but owned up to it, claiming it was legal because he hadn't actually *told* people that McCain had an illegitimate child, but had simply asked them what they would think *if* he had an illegitimate child. Karl Rove is a slimy, unctuous bastard who probably hunts the homeless for sport.
The negative hate-mongering has become such an ingrained part of Republican politics that many of them simply shrug it off as "part of the game." I honestly can't believe anyone was retarded enough to believe half the crap that their man Bush was spewing about John Kerry back in 2004, but they simply embraced it because hey, them's the rules.
The Republicans claim that anyone who buys into Barack Obama's hype is naive and misguided. Of course, most of them still believe that a secret cabal of Jews controls the liberal media, that Bible verses are science, and that the world will be safer once George W. bombs all the terrorism out of it. So I guess naivety is a matter of perspective.
Ironically, Clinton's team has jumped on the "naive and unexperienced" bandwagon as well. Hillary has been totally mocking Obama's optimism that things can be better, while doing everything in her power to paint him as an indecisive coward, a plagiarist, and a terrorist. If anybody is taking a page out of Karl Rove's playbook, I'd have to say it's her.
Optimistic does not equal naive, no matter how much the cynics would like to pretend otherwise. Nobody thinks the change is going to be easy, or come quickly. Whoever wins the election this year is going to inherit a massive shit sandwich eight years in the making. I don't think the situation is hopeless, but I think we're going to need to adjust our way of thinking if things are going to get better. McCain and Clinton represent more of the same. Obama is promising change, and I *really* want to believe him.
So is it naive to vote for a candidate because he represents something better than we've had for a long time? No, not really. It's not nearly as naive as, say, reelecting a cocaine-abusing, warmongering, illiterate retard because of something you read in an email or saw on FOX News. I'm looking at you, lower 51% of the American voters!
And here's the weird thing... it wasn't really the issues that made me a fan of Obama. They may differ in the details, but for the most part, Hillary and Barack come down on the same side of the major issues. No, what made up my mind was the way they're running their campaigns.
Perception is everything, and whether it's 100% true or not, the perception is that Obama is running a clean, above-board campaign. Clinton went negative pretty early on, and it backfired on her. I think a lot of voters are sick and tired of all the retarded mudslinging and have finally come to see just how insulting and condescending those negative ads truly are.
Take the debate in Austin last week. Clinton brought up the issue of Obama's alleged plagiarism (an issue that, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, should have been DOA from the beginning). Obama dismissed the whole thing and blamed it on "the silly season in politics." Clinton came back with the prepared line, "Lifting whole passages is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox." And she looked out smugly at the crowd as she said it, no doubt imagining a roar of approval for her witticism. Instead, awkward silence. Crickets. And a smattering of boos. Obama just shook his head in disbelief. And as a result, Obama came off looking rather noble while Clinton just seemed petty and spiteful.
Taking a lesson, Clinton did a quick turnaround and tried to take the high road at the end of the debate. She praised Obama and said that if she did not win the nomination, the nation would be served well by him. It earned her more applause than anything else she had said all night.
Unfortunately, Clinton's civility was short-lived. Obama's team recently distributed a pamphlet highlighting the differences between their guy and Hillary. Clinton's team responded almost immediately by accusing Obama of printing misleading information and outright distortions. Now was there any merit to the accusation? Who knows? But perception is everything, and at this point, I think everybody except the most diehard Clinton supporter is willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Clinton went so far as to claim that Obama had "taken a page from Karl Rove's playbook." Meanwhile, the Clinton team released a photo to conservative muckraker Matt Drudge that shows Obama dressed in a turban while visiting Kenya. It was a transparent attempt to play on the inherent racism of American voters, and I guess it was successful, since a lot of conservatives really seem to be up in arms about the whole thing. And to add insult to injury, when Obama's team accused Clinton's team of "fear-mongering," they responded with the statement, "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed."
That kind of shit plays well amongst the Republicans. Back in 2000, Bush pretty much snaked the Republican nomination away from McCain by spreading the rumor that McCain had an illegitimate black child from an extramarital affair. Karl Rove all but owned up to it, claiming it was legal because he hadn't actually *told* people that McCain had an illegitimate child, but had simply asked them what they would think *if* he had an illegitimate child. Karl Rove is a slimy, unctuous bastard who probably hunts the homeless for sport.
The negative hate-mongering has become such an ingrained part of Republican politics that many of them simply shrug it off as "part of the game." I honestly can't believe anyone was retarded enough to believe half the crap that their man Bush was spewing about John Kerry back in 2004, but they simply embraced it because hey, them's the rules.
The Republicans claim that anyone who buys into Barack Obama's hype is naive and misguided. Of course, most of them still believe that a secret cabal of Jews controls the liberal media, that Bible verses are science, and that the world will be safer once George W. bombs all the terrorism out of it. So I guess naivety is a matter of perspective.
Ironically, Clinton's team has jumped on the "naive and unexperienced" bandwagon as well. Hillary has been totally mocking Obama's optimism that things can be better, while doing everything in her power to paint him as an indecisive coward, a plagiarist, and a terrorist. If anybody is taking a page out of Karl Rove's playbook, I'd have to say it's her.
Optimistic does not equal naive, no matter how much the cynics would like to pretend otherwise. Nobody thinks the change is going to be easy, or come quickly. Whoever wins the election this year is going to inherit a massive shit sandwich eight years in the making. I don't think the situation is hopeless, but I think we're going to need to adjust our way of thinking if things are going to get better. McCain and Clinton represent more of the same. Obama is promising change, and I *really* want to believe him.
So is it naive to vote for a candidate because he represents something better than we've had for a long time? No, not really. It's not nearly as naive as, say, reelecting a cocaine-abusing, warmongering, illiterate retard because of something you read in an email or saw on FOX News. I'm looking at you, lower 51% of the American voters!
Obama 2008!
Change you can (reluctantly) believe in... maybe!
Change you can (reluctantly) believe in... maybe!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The Lost Geekend, Part II (Electric Boogaloo)
The Lost Geekend, Part I
Saturday (cont.)
The Beagle Has Landed
After a couple more panels (The Haunted City: Urban Fantasy Today and Playing in Someone Else's Sandbox: Franchise Fiction), Stephanie and I went to the signing table to meet Peter S. Beagle. Stephanie, who is usually the epitome of poise and composure, was utterly giggly about meeting her favorite author. But of course, she was charming and lovely when we got up to the table. Which is a good thing, because I was my usual gobsmacked self. Mr. Beagle was astonishingly nice and soft-spoken, and seemed genuinely delighted to meet Stephanie. He signed her book and DVD of The Last Unicorn, and even sent us to the Conlan Press table in the dealer room to get a new DVD case (hers was worn and covered with security-tape schmutz).
Stephanie chatted with Connor Cochran, who has been Peter's business manager for the past four years. She pointed out that she had purchased her DVD directly from Conlan Press, instead of buying it retail, and Connor thanked her profusely. When we were walking away, I asked her what the deal was, and she told me that Peter had been screwed over royally by Granada International, which owns the rights to The Last Unicorn film. When Peter discovered that Granada had sold nearly a million copies of the DVD without paying him royalties on it, Conlan Press began campaigning on his behalf. Conlan and Granada are still in negotiations (which are being mediated by an unnamed but "eminent" third party), and Connor is optimistic that the situation will soon be resolved. In the meantime, Lionsgate Entertainment has released a special 25th anniversary edition of the DVD, and has agreed to let Conlan Press market it directly, so at least Peter is getting some money from sales.
Later, after attending the Pop Culture Explosion panel (hosted by our old friends Glenn Yeffeth and Chris Roberson), Stephanie and I went to a reading by Peter S. Beagle. He read a couple of selections from his book The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances. His first piece, a clever short story entitled "The Naga," was a lot of fun. But for his second, he chose the non-fantasy story "My Daughter's Name is Sarah." It's a simple story, elegant and moving, told from the point of view of a father who marvels at his young daughter's happiness and desperately longs to protect her from the inevitable hurt and heartache he knows she'll one day feel. Peter wrote the story when he was 18, and hadn't looked at it in decades. His voice broke and his eyes teared up while he was reading it, and I think the entire audience got a little choked up. Seriously, if you're capable of listening to Peter S. Beagle read that story without getting all teary-eyed, then thank you visiting my blog, Vice President Cheney.
Mmmm... Just Love That New Author Smell
That evening, after hanging in the bar with my new best pal and droppable name Chris Roberson, Stephanie and I attended a book launch party for J.M. McDermott's Last Dragon. This is McDermott's first novel, and he was positively giddy with the experience. Not that I can blame him. I jokingly asked him if he'd provide a blurb for my first novel, and he said he'd be glad to read it, but couldn't promise anything. I really hope he likes Space Jesus.
Anyway, there was booze and Xbox 360 and raffles for several prizes. I won a nifty tote bag! I also bought Stephanie a copy of the novel, and she asked McDermott to sign it for her. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I have to admit the opening paragraph is a real grabber.
These Boots Were Made For Walking
After rubbing elbows with the McDermott entourage, Stephanie and I ran down to the lobby to see the results of the short story contest. I had submitted "But I Digress..." and "Orange Alert" for the judges' consideration, but somehow my literary genius was overlooked. Personally, I blame the Jew-run liberal media.
So we were making our way back up to the room when we passed a couple in the lobby. I wasn't really paying attention, but Stephanie immediately made a beeline for the woman and said, quite dramatically, "You must stop right now and tell me about your boots."
The woman's name was Shai (pronounced "shy," as she frequently introduced herself "I'm Shai, but I'm not.") and she was wearing turquoise boots. Stephanie was wearing what she lovingly calls her "bitch boots," and she and Shai fell into a discussion of all things bootational.
The guy, Paul, stood next to me while this was going on, watching with great interest. When Shai and Stephanie discovered they wore the same size, they swapped boots and walked around the lobby. Paul turned to me and confided, "I'm totally into boots, man. This is so hot."
I had assumed that Paul and Shai were a couple, but Paul told us that his wife was upstairs at a party and insisted that we should go up and "see her boots." I was a little leery, because I was imagining some kind of weird gathering of boot fetishists clomping around, listening to Boots Randolph, watching Das Boot, eating boot-shaped cookies and drinking Piña Coladas from, you know, boots. But Stephanie was game to check it out, so we went on up.
It turned out to be a fairly normal gathering of nerds who were there to promote their own convention coming up in May. We immediately spotted Paul's wife, who was parading around in a pair of shiny pink hip boots straight out of Frederick's of Hollywood. There was cheap champagne in plastic cups, and lots of joyous geeky chat. I know I say a lot of snarky things and you probably think I'm being a smartass, but I swear I mean this sincerely. I'm a total dweeb, and it can be downright exhilarating when a bunch of nerds, unfettered by public decorum, simply cut loose and let their geek flag fly.
Sunday
All Good Things...
On Sunday morning, Stephanie's friend Heather made her way to the hotel to join us for a day of geeky fun. By the time she arrived and Stephanie got dressed, we'd missed the beginnings of the 11:00 panels. No great loss, although we had been mildly interested in hearing the presentation on the "open-source space program" entitled Luna City or Bust! Since the government and the military no longer have any interest in going to the moon, it's up to the general public to make our way up there and start staking out territory.
But we blew it off and went to grab lunch instead. We made it back for The Phantom Returns: Pulp Fiction for Modern Writers, which was a lot of fun. There was one guy in the audience whom Stephanie and I had seen before. He was tall and clean-cut, dressed in a button shirt and a sweater vest, and he was constantly stopping the panelists to ask them how to spell things so he could write it all down in his little notepad. So when he interrupted the discussion to ask the panelists for author recommendations, I let out a weary sigh and Stephanie whispered for me to be nice.
One of the panelists, an editor named Scott Cupp, suggested that Notebook Guy look into the works of "an up and comer named Christa Faust." Notebook Guy started scribbling furiously, then stopped and asked, "Is that Christa with a 'K' or with a 'C-H'?" I sighed again and muttered, "Is that Faust with an 'F' or with a 'P-H'?" and Stephanie nudged me in the ribs and told me to knock it off.
Afterwards, the three of us were having drinks at the bar and waiting for the It Was His Time: Killing Off Characters with Style panel to begin. It was obvious the convention was winding down. The crowds had dispersed, the booths in the dealer room were packing up, and the Klingons were on their way out the door, suitcases in hand.
Just then, Stina Leicht wandered by. Stephanie had spotted her at the hotel a couple of times that weekend, but we hadn't really had a chance to say more than hi. Stephanie waved her down, and she came over to the bar to chat with us. I even bought her a drink, and when she protested, I told her I didn't get the opportunity to buy drinks for real writers very often. Smooth, huh?
Of course, the subject turned to writing, as it inevitably does, and Stina let us in on a little secret. (I sincerely hope I'm not damaging her mystique by revealing this little tidbit to my threes of loyal readers.) Stina said that she honed her writing skills through... Dungeon Mastering! Yes, that's right! Stina parlayed her years of playing Dungeons & Dragons into a successful writing career. I think she may be my new hero.
So that was it. Our weekend in Nerd Paradise (or Nerdvana, if you will) was finally at an end. We said our goodbyes to Stina, and headed on home. But the good news is that both Stephanie and I are all gung-ho about writing again. Stephanie's already cranked out one short story that's totally brilliant, and I'd say that even if I weren't sleeping with her.
And me? I've been too busy writing this damn blog entry. But as soon as I'm done, I'm going to get right to work on my novel about Space Jesus and the guy who is half pirate and half race car. Don't miss Chris Irby's Space Jesus vs. Cap'n Bony Jack McZoomatron: Apocalyptic Smackdown in the Year 3000!
Saturday (cont.)
The Beagle Has Landed
After a couple more panels (The Haunted City: Urban Fantasy Today and Playing in Someone Else's Sandbox: Franchise Fiction), Stephanie and I went to the signing table to meet Peter S. Beagle. Stephanie, who is usually the epitome of poise and composure, was utterly giggly about meeting her favorite author. But of course, she was charming and lovely when we got up to the table. Which is a good thing, because I was my usual gobsmacked self. Mr. Beagle was astonishingly nice and soft-spoken, and seemed genuinely delighted to meet Stephanie. He signed her book and DVD of The Last Unicorn, and even sent us to the Conlan Press table in the dealer room to get a new DVD case (hers was worn and covered with security-tape schmutz).
Stephanie chatted with Connor Cochran, who has been Peter's business manager for the past four years. She pointed out that she had purchased her DVD directly from Conlan Press, instead of buying it retail, and Connor thanked her profusely. When we were walking away, I asked her what the deal was, and she told me that Peter had been screwed over royally by Granada International, which owns the rights to The Last Unicorn film. When Peter discovered that Granada had sold nearly a million copies of the DVD without paying him royalties on it, Conlan Press began campaigning on his behalf. Conlan and Granada are still in negotiations (which are being mediated by an unnamed but "eminent" third party), and Connor is optimistic that the situation will soon be resolved. In the meantime, Lionsgate Entertainment has released a special 25th anniversary edition of the DVD, and has agreed to let Conlan Press market it directly, so at least Peter is getting some money from sales.
Later, after attending the Pop Culture Explosion panel (hosted by our old friends Glenn Yeffeth and Chris Roberson), Stephanie and I went to a reading by Peter S. Beagle. He read a couple of selections from his book The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances. His first piece, a clever short story entitled "The Naga," was a lot of fun. But for his second, he chose the non-fantasy story "My Daughter's Name is Sarah." It's a simple story, elegant and moving, told from the point of view of a father who marvels at his young daughter's happiness and desperately longs to protect her from the inevitable hurt and heartache he knows she'll one day feel. Peter wrote the story when he was 18, and hadn't looked at it in decades. His voice broke and his eyes teared up while he was reading it, and I think the entire audience got a little choked up. Seriously, if you're capable of listening to Peter S. Beagle read that story without getting all teary-eyed, then thank you visiting my blog, Vice President Cheney.
Mmmm... Just Love That New Author Smell
That evening, after hanging in the bar with my new best pal and droppable name Chris Roberson, Stephanie and I attended a book launch party for J.M. McDermott's Last Dragon. This is McDermott's first novel, and he was positively giddy with the experience. Not that I can blame him. I jokingly asked him if he'd provide a blurb for my first novel, and he said he'd be glad to read it, but couldn't promise anything. I really hope he likes Space Jesus.
Anyway, there was booze and Xbox 360 and raffles for several prizes. I won a nifty tote bag! I also bought Stephanie a copy of the novel, and she asked McDermott to sign it for her. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I have to admit the opening paragraph is a real grabber.
These Boots Were Made For Walking
After rubbing elbows with the McDermott entourage, Stephanie and I ran down to the lobby to see the results of the short story contest. I had submitted "But I Digress..." and "Orange Alert" for the judges' consideration, but somehow my literary genius was overlooked. Personally, I blame the Jew-run liberal media.
So we were making our way back up to the room when we passed a couple in the lobby. I wasn't really paying attention, but Stephanie immediately made a beeline for the woman and said, quite dramatically, "You must stop right now and tell me about your boots."
The woman's name was Shai (pronounced "shy," as she frequently introduced herself "I'm Shai, but I'm not.") and she was wearing turquoise boots. Stephanie was wearing what she lovingly calls her "bitch boots," and she and Shai fell into a discussion of all things bootational.
The guy, Paul, stood next to me while this was going on, watching with great interest. When Shai and Stephanie discovered they wore the same size, they swapped boots and walked around the lobby. Paul turned to me and confided, "I'm totally into boots, man. This is so hot."
I had assumed that Paul and Shai were a couple, but Paul told us that his wife was upstairs at a party and insisted that we should go up and "see her boots." I was a little leery, because I was imagining some kind of weird gathering of boot fetishists clomping around, listening to Boots Randolph, watching Das Boot, eating boot-shaped cookies and drinking Piña Coladas from, you know, boots. But Stephanie was game to check it out, so we went on up.
It turned out to be a fairly normal gathering of nerds who were there to promote their own convention coming up in May. We immediately spotted Paul's wife, who was parading around in a pair of shiny pink hip boots straight out of Frederick's of Hollywood. There was cheap champagne in plastic cups, and lots of joyous geeky chat. I know I say a lot of snarky things and you probably think I'm being a smartass, but I swear I mean this sincerely. I'm a total dweeb, and it can be downright exhilarating when a bunch of nerds, unfettered by public decorum, simply cut loose and let their geek flag fly.
Sunday
All Good Things...
On Sunday morning, Stephanie's friend Heather made her way to the hotel to join us for a day of geeky fun. By the time she arrived and Stephanie got dressed, we'd missed the beginnings of the 11:00 panels. No great loss, although we had been mildly interested in hearing the presentation on the "open-source space program" entitled Luna City or Bust! Since the government and the military no longer have any interest in going to the moon, it's up to the general public to make our way up there and start staking out territory.
But we blew it off and went to grab lunch instead. We made it back for The Phantom Returns: Pulp Fiction for Modern Writers, which was a lot of fun. There was one guy in the audience whom Stephanie and I had seen before. He was tall and clean-cut, dressed in a button shirt and a sweater vest, and he was constantly stopping the panelists to ask them how to spell things so he could write it all down in his little notepad. So when he interrupted the discussion to ask the panelists for author recommendations, I let out a weary sigh and Stephanie whispered for me to be nice.
One of the panelists, an editor named Scott Cupp, suggested that Notebook Guy look into the works of "an up and comer named Christa Faust." Notebook Guy started scribbling furiously, then stopped and asked, "Is that Christa with a 'K' or with a 'C-H'?" I sighed again and muttered, "Is that Faust with an 'F' or with a 'P-H'?" and Stephanie nudged me in the ribs and told me to knock it off.
Afterwards, the three of us were having drinks at the bar and waiting for the It Was His Time: Killing Off Characters with Style panel to begin. It was obvious the convention was winding down. The crowds had dispersed, the booths in the dealer room were packing up, and the Klingons were on their way out the door, suitcases in hand.
Just then, Stina Leicht wandered by. Stephanie had spotted her at the hotel a couple of times that weekend, but we hadn't really had a chance to say more than hi. Stephanie waved her down, and she came over to the bar to chat with us. I even bought her a drink, and when she protested, I told her I didn't get the opportunity to buy drinks for real writers very often. Smooth, huh?
Of course, the subject turned to writing, as it inevitably does, and Stina let us in on a little secret. (I sincerely hope I'm not damaging her mystique by revealing this little tidbit to my threes of loyal readers.) Stina said that she honed her writing skills through... Dungeon Mastering! Yes, that's right! Stina parlayed her years of playing Dungeons & Dragons into a successful writing career. I think she may be my new hero.
So that was it. Our weekend in Nerd Paradise (or Nerdvana, if you will) was finally at an end. We said our goodbyes to Stina, and headed on home. But the good news is that both Stephanie and I are all gung-ho about writing again. Stephanie's already cranked out one short story that's totally brilliant, and I'd say that even if I weren't sleeping with her.
And me? I've been too busy writing this damn blog entry. But as soon as I'm done, I'm going to get right to work on my novel about Space Jesus and the guy who is half pirate and half race car. Don't miss Chris Irby's Space Jesus vs. Cap'n Bony Jack McZoomatron: Apocalyptic Smackdown in the Year 3000!
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Lost Geekend, Part I
In case I haven't mentioned it lately, I am dating a beautiful, smart, funny, and astonishingly nerdy girl named Stephanie. The fact that she and Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper both exist in the same universe is proof that God likes me, regardless of the mean things I occasionally write about Him.
Despite her love of all things geeky, Stephanie had never been to a Science Fiction or Fantasy convention when I met her. So last year, I took her to ConDFW, which is a "literary science fiction convention in the Dallas-Fort Worth area." Basically, authors and artists of some renown show up, along with small press publishers, rare book dealers, and vampire belly dancers. Throw in some folks dressed like Klingons and playing Risk, and you've got a heady brew of geekdom, my friend.
Although the event runs all weekend long, we just showed up for Saturday's festivities last year. It was me and Stephanie, along with Sean (my playwriting buddy) and Silver (whom I can't mention without bringing up our homoerotic Valentine's Day dinner). Stephanie's friend Heather showed up as well, dressed adorably like Dr. Who.
Since we were only there for a few hours, we didn't really get a chance to immerse ourselves in all things nerdy. We attended a couple of panels and met with a couple of authors. Stephanie got a book signed by Emma Bull, while another author (whose name I won't mention) spent several minutes staring straight down Stephanie's cleavage while he was chatting with us. We also met Stina Leicht, a writer from Austin who's friends with Silver. She's nifty.
Stephanie had a blast, and said she'd be game for another convention. We toyed around with going to Comic-Con in Los Angeles or VCON in Vancouver (where I got to meet my hero Tim Powers in 2002). But when we learned that Peter S. Beagle was going to be the guest of honor at ConDFW 2008, Stephanie got all excited. It turns out that The Last Unicorn is one of her favorite books of all time, and she was giddy at the prospect of meeting the author. So we decided to hit ConDFW again this year. And although the convention was only about 20 minutes away from my apartment, Stephanie and I decided it might be fun to get a room at the hotel and make a weekend of it.
Friday
In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Laugh
Friday night was pretty much a bust, as far as nerd content goes. We got to the hotel in time to catch a panel titled Comedy in Space! Humor in Science Fiction. The only problem was that the five panelists, while admittedly humorous in print, were tragically unfunny in person. On the Universal Comedic Scale™, these panelists ranked somewhere between the comic strip Mallard Filmore and a clown dying hilariously in his sleep. Here's a highlight from the evening's discussion:
Nerd in Audience
You mentioned that a lot of science fiction is about feelings of awe and majesty. How can you reconcile that with humor? How can you make that funny?
Panelist #1
Um...
Panelist #2
Oh, um... like...
Panelist #1
Oh, okay. Like, let's say you've got a guy on a spaceship and he's discovered this alien city. And he's like, "Oh, this is so beautiful! This is so majestic!" But then he's like, "Oh, damn. I forgot my camera."
Panelist #3
Right! Right! Or like, he's discovered this new sun or something, but he forgot his sunglasses!
Panelist #2
Right. Something like that.
We also spent about half an hour at a screening of Hercules Goes to New York (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, billed as Arnold Strong). Audience members were encouraged to shout out hilarious comedy à la Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it turns out that moviegoers just aren't that goddamn funny without a team of writers. After 30 minutes of listening to people simply describe what was happening on the screen in wacky voices ("Oh, he's crossing the street! Hey, a car!") Stephanie and I finally decided to call it a night and start fresh on Saturday.
Saturday
Putting the "Pub" Back in Publisher
We started Saturday morning off with the panel Starting Your Own Publishing Company. I really didn't have any interest in the subject matter at first, but Stephanie was curious, and I'm totally whipped, so there you go. Anyway, unlike the dud on Friday night, this was actually an entertaining and informative discussion. I still have no intention of starting a publishing company, but at least now I know what the hell those guys are thinking when they're poring over manuscripts.
The panel included Glenn Yeffeth, from BenBella Books. Back in 2003, when I decided I was going to be a Writer™, I figured I could skip past the whole "honing my craft" step and go straight to being a famous author. I imagined everybody would be chomping at the bit to sign a writer of my caliber. "Oh my God," they would exclaim as they immersed themselves in the genius of my prose. "This is his first book? Get me a wheelbarrow full of money and warm up the copter!" Anyway, long story short, BenBella was the first publisher to send me a rejection letter and disabuse me of that notion. But unlike these guys, they weren't dicks about it.
Also on the panel was Chris Roberson, the founder of MonkeyBrain Books in Austin. Stephanie and I ran into him at the bar later that evening, and wound up chatting with him for an hour or so. Actually, Stephanie did most of the chatting. I tend to get dorky and self-conscious when I'm around anyone who's been published. It's like this mystic veil that I've yet to pierce, so some retarded part of my brain makes me act all awestruck. But the upside is that my social awkwardness spared Mr. Roberson from hearing me pitch my brilliant idea for an epic novel where Space Jesus fights a guy who's half pirate/half race car*. I only hope he comes to realize how close a call that was.
(Incidentally, Chris informed us that someone wrote a Wikipedia article about him. I looked it up, and was surprised to learn that he's an outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles. Then I realized I was probably reading the wrong article.)
Coming Soon: The Lost Geekend continues with Peter S. Beagle, hot chicks in boots, and nerds partying like it's on sale for $19.99.
-------------------------------------
*When I first mentioned half pirate/half race car guy to Stephanie, she immediately said, "So I guess his favorite sport is NASCAAAAAR!"
Sigh... she completes me.
Despite her love of all things geeky, Stephanie had never been to a Science Fiction or Fantasy convention when I met her. So last year, I took her to ConDFW, which is a "literary science fiction convention in the Dallas-Fort Worth area." Basically, authors and artists of some renown show up, along with small press publishers, rare book dealers, and vampire belly dancers. Throw in some folks dressed like Klingons and playing Risk, and you've got a heady brew of geekdom, my friend.
Although the event runs all weekend long, we just showed up for Saturday's festivities last year. It was me and Stephanie, along with Sean (my playwriting buddy) and Silver (whom I can't mention without bringing up our homoerotic Valentine's Day dinner). Stephanie's friend Heather showed up as well, dressed adorably like Dr. Who.
Since we were only there for a few hours, we didn't really get a chance to immerse ourselves in all things nerdy. We attended a couple of panels and met with a couple of authors. Stephanie got a book signed by Emma Bull, while another author (whose name I won't mention) spent several minutes staring straight down Stephanie's cleavage while he was chatting with us. We also met Stina Leicht, a writer from Austin who's friends with Silver. She's nifty.
Stephanie had a blast, and said she'd be game for another convention. We toyed around with going to Comic-Con in Los Angeles or VCON in Vancouver (where I got to meet my hero Tim Powers in 2002). But when we learned that Peter S. Beagle was going to be the guest of honor at ConDFW 2008, Stephanie got all excited. It turns out that The Last Unicorn is one of her favorite books of all time, and she was giddy at the prospect of meeting the author. So we decided to hit ConDFW again this year. And although the convention was only about 20 minutes away from my apartment, Stephanie and I decided it might be fun to get a room at the hotel and make a weekend of it.
Friday
In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Laugh
Friday night was pretty much a bust, as far as nerd content goes. We got to the hotel in time to catch a panel titled Comedy in Space! Humor in Science Fiction. The only problem was that the five panelists, while admittedly humorous in print, were tragically unfunny in person. On the Universal Comedic Scale™, these panelists ranked somewhere between the comic strip Mallard Filmore and a clown dying hilariously in his sleep. Here's a highlight from the evening's discussion:
Nerd in Audience
You mentioned that a lot of science fiction is about feelings of awe and majesty. How can you reconcile that with humor? How can you make that funny?
Panelist #1
Um...
Panelist #2
Oh, um... like...
Panelist #1
Oh, okay. Like, let's say you've got a guy on a spaceship and he's discovered this alien city. And he's like, "Oh, this is so beautiful! This is so majestic!" But then he's like, "Oh, damn. I forgot my camera."
Panelist #3
Right! Right! Or like, he's discovered this new sun or something, but he forgot his sunglasses!
Panelist #2
Right. Something like that.
We also spent about half an hour at a screening of Hercules Goes to New York (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, billed as Arnold Strong). Audience members were encouraged to shout out hilarious comedy à la Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it turns out that moviegoers just aren't that goddamn funny without a team of writers. After 30 minutes of listening to people simply describe what was happening on the screen in wacky voices ("Oh, he's crossing the street! Hey, a car!") Stephanie and I finally decided to call it a night and start fresh on Saturday.
Saturday
Putting the "Pub" Back in Publisher
We started Saturday morning off with the panel Starting Your Own Publishing Company. I really didn't have any interest in the subject matter at first, but Stephanie was curious, and I'm totally whipped, so there you go. Anyway, unlike the dud on Friday night, this was actually an entertaining and informative discussion. I still have no intention of starting a publishing company, but at least now I know what the hell those guys are thinking when they're poring over manuscripts.
The panel included Glenn Yeffeth, from BenBella Books. Back in 2003, when I decided I was going to be a Writer™, I figured I could skip past the whole "honing my craft" step and go straight to being a famous author. I imagined everybody would be chomping at the bit to sign a writer of my caliber. "Oh my God," they would exclaim as they immersed themselves in the genius of my prose. "This is his first book? Get me a wheelbarrow full of money and warm up the copter!" Anyway, long story short, BenBella was the first publisher to send me a rejection letter and disabuse me of that notion. But unlike these guys, they weren't dicks about it.
Also on the panel was Chris Roberson, the founder of MonkeyBrain Books in Austin. Stephanie and I ran into him at the bar later that evening, and wound up chatting with him for an hour or so. Actually, Stephanie did most of the chatting. I tend to get dorky and self-conscious when I'm around anyone who's been published. It's like this mystic veil that I've yet to pierce, so some retarded part of my brain makes me act all awestruck. But the upside is that my social awkwardness spared Mr. Roberson from hearing me pitch my brilliant idea for an epic novel where Space Jesus fights a guy who's half pirate/half race car*. I only hope he comes to realize how close a call that was.
(Incidentally, Chris informed us that someone wrote a Wikipedia article about him. I looked it up, and was surprised to learn that he's an outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles. Then I realized I was probably reading the wrong article.)
Coming Soon: The Lost Geekend continues with Peter S. Beagle, hot chicks in boots, and nerds partying like it's on sale for $19.99.
-------------------------------------
*When I first mentioned half pirate/half race car guy to Stephanie, she immediately said, "So I guess his favorite sport is NASCAAAAAR!"
Sigh... she completes me.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Hey, You Kids Like Candy?
Back in 2001, my buddy Ego (who, sadly, no longer blogs) introduced me to his online circle of friends. Since he'd already told everybody that my name was "Irb," I never really got a chance to come up with one of those really cool online handles, like DarkPhalcon or AssMagnet844.
So anyway, one day when I was supposed to be working, a bunch of us were logged into a public MSN chatroom. While we were babbling away inanely, some girl named "Meredith" popped into the room and said, "my name is meredith and im 16....is their ne1 else my age in here"
The youngest of us at the time was around 28 or so, but that didn't stop one of the girls from saying, "irb's 16... aren't you irb?"
So I played along. "yeah im 16. i wear big pants and ive seen titanic 34 times."
Meredith replied, "ooo i luv that movie....my name is meredith cuz my favrite singer is meredith brooks"
I said, "rly? my name is irb cuz my favorite singers are peaches & herb"
This resulted in a bunch of LOLOLOLs, ROFLs, and ROFLMAOs from the peanut gallery, and suddenly Meredith realized she'd been had. "ur not 16!!!!!!!!!! u suk!!!!!!!!!!" And then, she logged out.
It was all good, clean Christian fun, but that kind of crap would never fly today. Ever since NBC Dateline started airing their To Catch a Predator segments, people have become convinced that Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet is a massive community of pedophiles, perverts, and freedom-hating terrorists. And a geezer like me claiming to be 16 years old would probably set off all kinds of alarms. Especially if anyone ran across my evil twin in the Plano Registered Sexual Offenders database.
In case you haven't seen To Catch a Predator, basically it works like this. Members of a volunteer watchdog group called Perverted-Justice set up fake online profiles of underage kids and enter chatrooms as decoys. They are inevitably approached by an adult and, more often than not, the conversation turns sexual. Anyway, the adult makes arrangements to meet the underaged chatter. A youthful looking 18 or 19 year old poses as the minor and meets with the adult. And then, Chris Hansen comes jumping out from behind a tree or something to confront the predator. As the culprit tries to worm out of it, Hansen often reads incriminating excerpts from emails and chat logs and badgers the bastard until the police show up to take him away.
So a few months ago, after watching a few uncomfortable confrontations with Chris Hansen, I finally turned off the TV and went in the other room to play some World of Warcraft. I'd been playing my character Verbal for about 10 minutes (and chatting in the general channel) when a player calling herself Batwoman whispered to me, "ur so funny".
I replied back, "thanks" and went on with my life. But Batwoman was in a chatty mood.
Batwoman> ur hilarious. how old r u?
Verbal> probably old enough to be your father
Batwoman> im 17 but all my dad's friends say i look older
Verbal> that's great
Batwoman> so how old r u?
Verbal> 40
Batwoman> thats not so old
Verbal> well, thanks
Batwoman> yea my dad's friends say i look at least 21
Verbal> that's great
And so it went. I didn't want to be rude, but I was getting a little creeped out by how she kept on trying to convince me how mature she was for her age. And that whole To Catch a Predator thing was still fresh in my mind, so I kept imagining some old, fat guy sitting at his PC, trying to trick me into saying something inappropriate.
Finally, I decided I'd give up and log on as another character. So while she was going on and on about how she's always dated guys that were older than her, I informed her that I was logging off.
Verbal> well, i gotta log. see you later.
Batwoman> wot do u mean youve got a log?
At that point, I panicked and glanced out the window to see if Chris Hansen and his camera crew were standing outside my door. Hurriedly, I corrected her.
Verbal> no, i've got to log off.
Batwoman> o lol can i add u 2 my friends?
I signed off without answering and waited a couple of days before logging back on as that character. I haven't run into Batwoman again since that night, so I'm hoping that means I won't be showing up unexpectedly on Dateline anytime soon...
So anyway, one day when I was supposed to be working, a bunch of us were logged into a public MSN chatroom. While we were babbling away inanely, some girl named "Meredith" popped into the room and said, "my name is meredith and im 16....is their ne1 else my age in here"
The youngest of us at the time was around 28 or so, but that didn't stop one of the girls from saying, "irb's 16... aren't you irb?"
So I played along. "yeah im 16. i wear big pants and ive seen titanic 34 times."
Meredith replied, "ooo i luv that movie....my name is meredith cuz my favrite singer is meredith brooks"
I said, "rly? my name is irb cuz my favorite singers are peaches & herb"
This resulted in a bunch of LOLOLOLs, ROFLs, and ROFLMAOs from the peanut gallery, and suddenly Meredith realized she'd been had. "ur not 16!!!!!!!!!! u suk!!!!!!!!!!" And then, she logged out.
It was all good, clean Christian fun, but that kind of crap would never fly today. Ever since NBC Dateline started airing their To Catch a Predator segments, people have become convinced that Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet is a massive community of pedophiles, perverts, and freedom-hating terrorists. And a geezer like me claiming to be 16 years old would probably set off all kinds of alarms. Especially if anyone ran across my evil twin in the Plano Registered Sexual Offenders database.
In case you haven't seen To Catch a Predator, basically it works like this. Members of a volunteer watchdog group called Perverted-Justice set up fake online profiles of underage kids and enter chatrooms as decoys. They are inevitably approached by an adult and, more often than not, the conversation turns sexual. Anyway, the adult makes arrangements to meet the underaged chatter. A youthful looking 18 or 19 year old poses as the minor and meets with the adult. And then, Chris Hansen comes jumping out from behind a tree or something to confront the predator. As the culprit tries to worm out of it, Hansen often reads incriminating excerpts from emails and chat logs and badgers the bastard until the police show up to take him away.
So a few months ago, after watching a few uncomfortable confrontations with Chris Hansen, I finally turned off the TV and went in the other room to play some World of Warcraft. I'd been playing my character Verbal for about 10 minutes (and chatting in the general channel) when a player calling herself Batwoman whispered to me, "ur so funny".
I replied back, "thanks" and went on with my life. But Batwoman was in a chatty mood.
Batwoman> ur hilarious. how old r u?
Verbal> probably old enough to be your father
Batwoman> im 17 but all my dad's friends say i look older
Verbal> that's great
Batwoman> so how old r u?
Verbal> 40
Batwoman> thats not so old
Verbal> well, thanks
Batwoman> yea my dad's friends say i look at least 21
Verbal> that's great
And so it went. I didn't want to be rude, but I was getting a little creeped out by how she kept on trying to convince me how mature she was for her age. And that whole To Catch a Predator thing was still fresh in my mind, so I kept imagining some old, fat guy sitting at his PC, trying to trick me into saying something inappropriate.
Finally, I decided I'd give up and log on as another character. So while she was going on and on about how she's always dated guys that were older than her, I informed her that I was logging off.
Verbal> well, i gotta log. see you later.
Batwoman> wot do u mean youve got a log?
At that point, I panicked and glanced out the window to see if Chris Hansen and his camera crew were standing outside my door. Hurriedly, I corrected her.
Verbal> no, i've got to log off.
Batwoman> o lol can i add u 2 my friends?
I signed off without answering and waited a couple of days before logging back on as that character. I haven't run into Batwoman again since that night, so I'm hoping that means I won't be showing up unexpectedly on Dateline anytime soon...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Attack of the Bizarro Irb
I have an evil twin.
Okay, maybe "twin" isn't quite the right word. My wicked doppelganger and I don't really look that much alike. For one thing, he's several years younger than me. Also, he's black.
But his name is Christopher R. Irby, and he apparently lives somewhere in the Dallas area. And, just in case I haven't mentioned it in the past sentence or two, he's evil. EEEEEEVIL!!!!!!!!!!
It all started back in 1993, when I moved into my first apartment in Dallas. I'd only been there a month when I got a letter from the Dallas Probation & Parole Office addressed to Chris Irby. The letter informed me that I had missed several scheduled meetings, that the phone number I'd given them was invalid, and that I was in direct violation of my probation. If I didn't contact their office within 48 hours, a warrant would be issued for my arrest.
I didn't have a phone at the time, so I went across the street to Jack in the Box to use the pay phone there. I called the number and explained to them that I'd never been arrested for anything and I'd never been on probation. After a few minutes, they finally told me that they'd been trying to track down a Christopher Irby, and when my change of address had gone through, they had assumed that I was their guy. They were very polite, and they apologized for the mistake. They told me that if I received any further notices, I could disregard them.
In 1997, the same day that George W. Bush was reelected governor of Texas, my apartment was burglarized. (I'm not implying one had anything to do with the other, you understand. I'm just saying.) Anyway, having had enough of inner city living, I decided to move out to the suburbs. I was working for Brinker International at the time, and was making more than enough money to live in a less unsavory neighborhood. Once again, I filled out the proper change of address information. And, once again, I received a notice from the Dallas Probation & Parole Office. And although they'd told me I could disregard it, I called anyway, just to be safe. They apologized and told me they'd make a note of it.
It was about a year later that I finally got a look at the vicious felon who was besmirching my good name. My friends Scott, Eric, and I were playing around on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet at work, looking up property values for people we knew in Plano. (No reason for it... we were just bored.) Mike discovered the link to the Plano Registered Sexual Offenders page, and clicked on it. As a joke, he did a search on his name and pretended to be relieved that there were no hits. (I assume he was pretending.) We searched for Scott and Eric as well, with no results. But then they typed in my name, and got a hit. Christopher Irby.
I can't remember what his specific crime was, or if they even listed it. Fortunately, there was a picture of him there, so I didn't have to convince anybody that I wasn't leading some kind of crazy Marv Albert/Bill O'Reilly double life.
For the next few years, I heard nothing about my evil twin. But in 2002, just a month after I had left Brinker and set out to be a Writer™, I got a voice mail from some company that leases credit card verification equipment. The woman who left the message sounded rather agitated, and was threatening legal action if I didn't call her back immediately.
I called her, and she was very, VERY belligerent. She told me that I owed several thousand dollars in back charges, and if I didn't return the equipment to them, they'd tack another $10,000 to the total. I told her I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, and that I'd never leased any equipment from them.
She asked, "Is this Christopher Irby?"
I said, "This is James Christopher Irby."
"Is this the Christopher Irby who owns Cleaning Solutions?"
"I have no idea what Cleaning Solutions is."
"Do you reside in Plano?"
"No, I live in Dallas. I'm not the guy you're looking for."
"There can't be that many Christopher Irbys in the area. You're telling me you don't own Cleaning Solutions?"
"No, I don't own any kind of business."
So she demanded my social security number. I refused to give it to her, since she was the one that had originally called me. I told her she could give me the number she had, and I'd tell her if it was correct or not.
Then she started yelling at me. "I am trying to investigate a case of fraud here! If you really are innocent, you should be trying to help me instead of stonewalling!"
So I started yelling, "I'm not stonewalling anything! You've got the wrong guy!"
She was quiet for a second. Then she said in a particularly vicious voice, "I can't wait until our lawyers get you on that stand." And she hung up.
I was trembling with rage, and not sure what to do next. The first thing that occurred to me was that this was some kind of identity theft, so I went online and checked my credit reports. Nothing unexpected, nothing out of the ordinary. Then, I remembered Christopher R. Irby, who was a registered sexual offender in Plano. I tried to look up his information online, but I couldn't find a listing anywhere.
The next morning, I got another call from the credit place. This woman was much nicer, and was obviously the supervisor of the bitch I'd talked to the day before. She asked me if my name was Christopher Irby, and I told her I was James Christopher Irby. She asked me if the last four digits of my social security number were 3191, and I told her no, they weren't. She apologized profusely for the call I'd received the day before, and she said she'd make a note of it in the file so I wouldn't receive any more calls on the subject. I mentioned to her that there was a Christopher R. Irby who lived in Plano, and that I had received his mail on a couple of occasions. She thanked me, and that was it.
Well, almost. I still get calls on the matter every six months or so. The file gets handed off to somebody else to investigate. And they apparently check for a directory listing of Christopher Irby, and get my name. And saying to themselves, "Wow! I can't believe nobody thought to do this before," they call me and I have to explain to them that I'm not the Christopher Irby they're looking for.
The last call I got was in April of last year. The guy didn't even bother confirming my social security number or anything. I told him he had the wrong guy, and he apologized for bothering me. I haven't heard back, so I'm hoping the issue is resolved.
Every once in a while, I'll do a Google search for "chris irby," just to see if I'm wanted for any brutal murders. So far, I seem to be in the clear. The first three hits are all me, baby. There's also a Chris Irby who works in the Industrial Services Group with Collies Spectrum Cauble, whatever the hell that means. Sometimes, I get hits on a Wingate University football player named Chris Irby. And, at the moment, there is a YouTube video of somebody named Chris Irby who is apparently "riding wheelies on Flat Shoals road."
But my evil twin, for the time being, appears to be lying low. Probably holed up in his dark lair, waiting and plotting my demise...
Okay, maybe "twin" isn't quite the right word. My wicked doppelganger and I don't really look that much alike. For one thing, he's several years younger than me. Also, he's black.
But his name is Christopher R. Irby, and he apparently lives somewhere in the Dallas area. And, just in case I haven't mentioned it in the past sentence or two, he's evil. EEEEEEVIL!!!!!!!!!!
It all started back in 1993, when I moved into my first apartment in Dallas. I'd only been there a month when I got a letter from the Dallas Probation & Parole Office addressed to Chris Irby. The letter informed me that I had missed several scheduled meetings, that the phone number I'd given them was invalid, and that I was in direct violation of my probation. If I didn't contact their office within 48 hours, a warrant would be issued for my arrest.
I didn't have a phone at the time, so I went across the street to Jack in the Box to use the pay phone there. I called the number and explained to them that I'd never been arrested for anything and I'd never been on probation. After a few minutes, they finally told me that they'd been trying to track down a Christopher Irby, and when my change of address had gone through, they had assumed that I was their guy. They were very polite, and they apologized for the mistake. They told me that if I received any further notices, I could disregard them.
In 1997, the same day that George W. Bush was reelected governor of Texas, my apartment was burglarized. (I'm not implying one had anything to do with the other, you understand. I'm just saying.) Anyway, having had enough of inner city living, I decided to move out to the suburbs. I was working for Brinker International at the time, and was making more than enough money to live in a less unsavory neighborhood. Once again, I filled out the proper change of address information. And, once again, I received a notice from the Dallas Probation & Parole Office. And although they'd told me I could disregard it, I called anyway, just to be safe. They apologized and told me they'd make a note of it.
It was about a year later that I finally got a look at the vicious felon who was besmirching my good name. My friends Scott, Eric, and I were playing around on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet at work, looking up property values for people we knew in Plano. (No reason for it... we were just bored.) Mike discovered the link to the Plano Registered Sexual Offenders page, and clicked on it. As a joke, he did a search on his name and pretended to be relieved that there were no hits. (I assume he was pretending.) We searched for Scott and Eric as well, with no results. But then they typed in my name, and got a hit. Christopher Irby.
I can't remember what his specific crime was, or if they even listed it. Fortunately, there was a picture of him there, so I didn't have to convince anybody that I wasn't leading some kind of crazy Marv Albert/Bill O'Reilly double life.
For the next few years, I heard nothing about my evil twin. But in 2002, just a month after I had left Brinker and set out to be a Writer™, I got a voice mail from some company that leases credit card verification equipment. The woman who left the message sounded rather agitated, and was threatening legal action if I didn't call her back immediately.
I called her, and she was very, VERY belligerent. She told me that I owed several thousand dollars in back charges, and if I didn't return the equipment to them, they'd tack another $10,000 to the total. I told her I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, and that I'd never leased any equipment from them.
She asked, "Is this Christopher Irby?"
I said, "This is James Christopher Irby."
"Is this the Christopher Irby who owns Cleaning Solutions?"
"I have no idea what Cleaning Solutions is."
"Do you reside in Plano?"
"No, I live in Dallas. I'm not the guy you're looking for."
"There can't be that many Christopher Irbys in the area. You're telling me you don't own Cleaning Solutions?"
"No, I don't own any kind of business."
So she demanded my social security number. I refused to give it to her, since she was the one that had originally called me. I told her she could give me the number she had, and I'd tell her if it was correct or not.
Then she started yelling at me. "I am trying to investigate a case of fraud here! If you really are innocent, you should be trying to help me instead of stonewalling!"
So I started yelling, "I'm not stonewalling anything! You've got the wrong guy!"
She was quiet for a second. Then she said in a particularly vicious voice, "I can't wait until our lawyers get you on that stand." And she hung up.
I was trembling with rage, and not sure what to do next. The first thing that occurred to me was that this was some kind of identity theft, so I went online and checked my credit reports. Nothing unexpected, nothing out of the ordinary. Then, I remembered Christopher R. Irby, who was a registered sexual offender in Plano. I tried to look up his information online, but I couldn't find a listing anywhere.
The next morning, I got another call from the credit place. This woman was much nicer, and was obviously the supervisor of the bitch I'd talked to the day before. She asked me if my name was Christopher Irby, and I told her I was James Christopher Irby. She asked me if the last four digits of my social security number were 3191, and I told her no, they weren't. She apologized profusely for the call I'd received the day before, and she said she'd make a note of it in the file so I wouldn't receive any more calls on the subject. I mentioned to her that there was a Christopher R. Irby who lived in Plano, and that I had received his mail on a couple of occasions. She thanked me, and that was it.
Well, almost. I still get calls on the matter every six months or so. The file gets handed off to somebody else to investigate. And they apparently check for a directory listing of Christopher Irby, and get my name. And saying to themselves, "Wow! I can't believe nobody thought to do this before," they call me and I have to explain to them that I'm not the Christopher Irby they're looking for.
The last call I got was in April of last year. The guy didn't even bother confirming my social security number or anything. I told him he had the wrong guy, and he apologized for bothering me. I haven't heard back, so I'm hoping the issue is resolved.
Every once in a while, I'll do a Google search for "chris irby," just to see if I'm wanted for any brutal murders. So far, I seem to be in the clear. The first three hits are all me, baby. There's also a Chris Irby who works in the Industrial Services Group with Collies Spectrum Cauble, whatever the hell that means. Sometimes, I get hits on a Wingate University football player named Chris Irby. And, at the moment, there is a YouTube video of somebody named Chris Irby who is apparently "riding wheelies on Flat Shoals road."
But my evil twin, for the time being, appears to be lying low. Probably holed up in his dark lair, waiting and plotting my demise...
Monday, January 28, 2008
Y Cant Irb R34D - A Literary Meme
With all the words spelled with numbers or being abbreviated to a single letter, it's become obvious that Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet isn't exactly packed with literate types. That's why, when I ran across this meme on my pal Professor's blog, I jumped at the chance to prove that I had, at some point in my life, read a book that wasn't about Spiderman or Jesus.
1. What was your favorite book as a kid?
I absolutely *loved* the Great Brain series by John Fitzgerald. In case you don't remember, it was about a Catholic family living in Utah during the late 1800s. The narrator (supposedly Fitzgerald himself) related tales of his brother Tom, the titular Great Brain, who was a con artist and swindler. Most of the stories involved Tom's convoluted and utterly brilliant schemes to part his friends from their money. My third-grade teacher gave me a Bowdlerized version of Gulliver's Travels that jump started my love for Johnathan Swift. I liked Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I also really dug A Wrinkle in Time, The Borrowers, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
2. If you were stranded on that proverbial desert island (again!), what book or books (up to 5) would you want to have with you?
A nice, heavy Robert Jordan novel would come in handy for killing pesky polar bears and Others. But for reading purposes, I guess I'd have to go with those books that I read and reread without getting tired of them.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers
3. What was the first “naughty” book you read and in what way was it naughty?
Probably the Bible. Have you actually *read* it? Jeez! There's more sodomy and incest in Genesis than in all of Peter Greenaway's films put together!
4. If you were to publish your autobiography today, what would be the title?
Nerdvana: The Chris Irby Story. I was originally considering Diary of a Mad Black Woman, but Tyler Perry already stole my idea...
5. Would you rather look at nude pictures/pornography or read erotic fiction and why?
I would have to go with the reading, as long as it isn't slash furry Star Trek fan fiction...
1. What was your favorite book as a kid?
I absolutely *loved* the Great Brain series by John Fitzgerald. In case you don't remember, it was about a Catholic family living in Utah during the late 1800s. The narrator (supposedly Fitzgerald himself) related tales of his brother Tom, the titular Great Brain, who was a con artist and swindler. Most of the stories involved Tom's convoluted and utterly brilliant schemes to part his friends from their money. My third-grade teacher gave me a Bowdlerized version of Gulliver's Travels that jump started my love for Johnathan Swift. I liked Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I also really dug A Wrinkle in Time, The Borrowers, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
2. If you were stranded on that proverbial desert island (again!), what book or books (up to 5) would you want to have with you?
A nice, heavy Robert Jordan novel would come in handy for killing pesky polar bears and Others. But for reading purposes, I guess I'd have to go with those books that I read and reread without getting tired of them.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers
3. What was the first “naughty” book you read and in what way was it naughty?
Probably the Bible. Have you actually *read* it? Jeez! There's more sodomy and incest in Genesis than in all of Peter Greenaway's films put together!
4. If you were to publish your autobiography today, what would be the title?
Nerdvana: The Chris Irby Story. I was originally considering Diary of a Mad Black Woman, but Tyler Perry already stole my idea...
5. Would you rather look at nude pictures/pornography or read erotic fiction and why?
I would have to go with the reading, as long as it isn't slash furry Star Trek fan fiction...
Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore's Internet News
Google's Lost in Translation
So my pal and occasional hero John, of Random Squeegee fame, discovered yet another oddity in Google's translation tool. Sometimes, for reasons known only to the Lord, Google Translate will convert the English word "Crap" to the Spanish name "Guillermo."
So, any theories? I'm betting some anonymous Google programmer used to get pantsed and thrown in the girl's locker room by a high school bully named Guillermo. Or perhaps this is a personal vendetta being waged against Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Speaking of Tom Cruise and Anonymous Vendettas...
A gang of hackers who are calling themselves "Anonymous" have declared war on the Church of Scientology. So far, their attacks seem to consist primarily of posting melodramatic videos to YouTube about how they're going to bring Scientology down. The Church of Scientology International (or CSI, so you just know David Caruso is somehow involved) has responded by releasing a statement claiming that the videos have sparked interest in their "faith" and inviting people who want to learn more to visit their website.
The whole thing apparently started when a video of Tom Cruise was leaked onto the Internet. The video, excerpted from a Scientology presentation, features Cruise all wide-eyed and earnest as he claims:
The Scientologist's hamfisted tactics inspired a gang of self-proclaimed hackers to declare war on them. Usually, these guys devote their efforts to stealing passwords and harassing online communities who don't share their love of anime. But this time, they decided to put their talent for annoyance and mischief to work for the greater good.
I honestly don't know who to root for in this battle. On the one hand, you've got a massive organization with a history of bullying, brutalizing, and blackmailing people who have spoken out against it. And on the other hand, you've got a bunch of console cowboy wannabes who have obviously watched V for Vendetta a few times too many. It's like a cage match between Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter. I don't care who wins... I just wanna see lots of blood spilled.
To tell the truth, I would probably be more sympathetic towards Anonymous if I didn't think their campaign against CSI was simply a self-aggrandizing ploy full of sound and fury signifying nothing. I've always been a huge fan of subversive attacks on organized religion. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was a brilliant response to the Kansas School Board's decision to teach Intelligent Design as scientific theory. The First Church of Shatnerology hounded Bob Larson mercilessly with crank calls after he cheated on his wife with an employee named Margo. The satire of Landover Baptist Church is so convincing that several of their articles have been forwarded on by outraged Christians who weren't in on the joke. And God knows, I love me some Melba!
But there is nothing particularly clever or daring about the Anonymous attack on Scientology. In their videos, they claim (with kewl digitized voices) that they will "systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form." Yet, so far, their campaign of terror has consisted of some half-assed denial of service attacks (which accidentally took down a school in the Netherlands). Anonymous wants to pretend like they're a band of ragtag freedom fighters struggling against an oppressive evil organization. But while the Church of Scientology certainly fits the bill as an Evil Empire, Anonymous is not the Rebel Alliance. Hell, they're barely Jar Jar Binks.
Their "bold" attack actually comes off as petty, juvenile, and a bit silly. It's like expressing your outrage at the Bush administration by leaving a flaming sack of dog poo on the White House porch. The Church of Scientology has weathered organized assaults from people who were far better informed and far better equipped to damage them. Somehow, I doubt the pranks being perpetrated by Anonymous are going to have any lasting effect.
Ironically, if anything is going to bring down the Church of Scientology, I'm betting it'll be Tom Cruise.
So my pal and occasional hero John, of Random Squeegee fame, discovered yet another oddity in Google's translation tool. Sometimes, for reasons known only to the Lord, Google Translate will convert the English word "Crap" to the Spanish name "Guillermo."
So, any theories? I'm betting some anonymous Google programmer used to get pantsed and thrown in the girl's locker room by a high school bully named Guillermo. Or perhaps this is a personal vendetta being waged against Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Speaking of Tom Cruise and Anonymous Vendettas...
A gang of hackers who are calling themselves "Anonymous" have declared war on the Church of Scientology. So far, their attacks seem to consist primarily of posting melodramatic videos to YouTube about how they're going to bring Scientology down. The Church of Scientology International (or CSI, so you just know David Caruso is somehow involved) has responded by releasing a statement claiming that the videos have sparked interest in their "faith" and inviting people who want to learn more to visit their website.
The whole thing apparently started when a video of Tom Cruise was leaked onto the Internet. The video, excerpted from a Scientology presentation, features Cruise all wide-eyed and earnest as he claims:
When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help. We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures. Now is the time.The Church of Scientology responded with their usual level of restraint by immediately sending out cease and desist letters to anybody who had ever come within 5 feet of a computer and threatening legal action against anyone who dared to offer the video for download. Because that always works. Few people took the Scientologist threats seriously (although the video did vanish from YouTube for a few hours before reappearing with a vengeance). Some folks consulted lawyers of their own and determined that CSI's legal team was, frankly, talking out of its collective ass.
The Scientologist's hamfisted tactics inspired a gang of self-proclaimed hackers to declare war on them. Usually, these guys devote their efforts to stealing passwords and harassing online communities who don't share their love of anime. But this time, they decided to put their talent for annoyance and mischief to work for the greater good.
I honestly don't know who to root for in this battle. On the one hand, you've got a massive organization with a history of bullying, brutalizing, and blackmailing people who have spoken out against it. And on the other hand, you've got a bunch of console cowboy wannabes who have obviously watched V for Vendetta a few times too many. It's like a cage match between Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter. I don't care who wins... I just wanna see lots of blood spilled.
To tell the truth, I would probably be more sympathetic towards Anonymous if I didn't think their campaign against CSI was simply a self-aggrandizing ploy full of sound and fury signifying nothing. I've always been a huge fan of subversive attacks on organized religion. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was a brilliant response to the Kansas School Board's decision to teach Intelligent Design as scientific theory. The First Church of Shatnerology hounded Bob Larson mercilessly with crank calls after he cheated on his wife with an employee named Margo. The satire of Landover Baptist Church is so convincing that several of their articles have been forwarded on by outraged Christians who weren't in on the joke. And God knows, I love me some Melba!
But there is nothing particularly clever or daring about the Anonymous attack on Scientology. In their videos, they claim (with kewl digitized voices) that they will "systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form." Yet, so far, their campaign of terror has consisted of some half-assed denial of service attacks (which accidentally took down a school in the Netherlands). Anonymous wants to pretend like they're a band of ragtag freedom fighters struggling against an oppressive evil organization. But while the Church of Scientology certainly fits the bill as an Evil Empire, Anonymous is not the Rebel Alliance. Hell, they're barely Jar Jar Binks.
Their "bold" attack actually comes off as petty, juvenile, and a bit silly. It's like expressing your outrage at the Bush administration by leaving a flaming sack of dog poo on the White House porch. The Church of Scientology has weathered organized assaults from people who were far better informed and far better equipped to damage them. Somehow, I doubt the pranks being perpetrated by Anonymous are going to have any lasting effect.
Ironically, if anything is going to bring down the Church of Scientology, I'm betting it'll be Tom Cruise.
Friday, January 25, 2008
R.I.P. Tom Cruise Heath Ledger
Poor Heath Ledger. Like it wasn't bad enough that his tragic death had to be somehow tied to one of the Olsen twins, now he's getting dissed by Google.
Some bored Googlers unearthed an odd bug in Google Translate, where translating "Heath Ledger" from English to Spanish would convert his name to "Tom Cruise."
Of course, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet was abuzz and it was only a matter of time before Google became aware of the issue and fixed it. So now, Heath is no longer in danger of being confused for a closeted couch-hopping maniacal Scientologist, and his spirit can rest in peace.
At least until Mary Kate Olsen starts doing the talk show circuit.
Some bored Googlers unearthed an odd bug in Google Translate, where translating "Heath Ledger" from English to Spanish would convert his name to "Tom Cruise."
Of course, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet was abuzz and it was only a matter of time before Google became aware of the issue and fixed it. So now, Heath is no longer in danger of being confused for a closeted couch-hopping maniacal Scientologist, and his spirit can rest in peace.
At least until Mary Kate Olsen starts doing the talk show circuit.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Framing the Fearful Symmetry
A few weeks ago, I took this test to see which political candidate is most aligned with my views and opinions, and I discovered that Dennis "Gollum" Kucinich and I are soul mates. I actually out-liberaled Hillary. I feel like such a Communist!
Even so, I've decided that I'm pulling for Hillary in the 2008 election. Not for reasons of politics... Lord knows, basing your vote on issues requires far more effort and intelligence than slightly more than half of the American voters are willing to expend. No, I am supporting Hillary purely for reasons of symmetry.
I like the idea of a Bush -> Clinton -> Bush -> Clinton progression. In fact, I'm hoping Hillary will serve for two terms, and then be followed by Jeb Bush for two terms. By that time, Chelsea and the Bush twins will probably be old enough to run.
Or, better still, maybe Mary Cheney could perform the ceremony to marry Chelsea to one of the Bush twins, thus uniting the two families into a powerful Bush-Clinton dynasty. Of course, they'd be hard pressed to come up with an heir unless they adopted, but still. You have to admit, the idea holds considerable appeal.
At least until Schwarzenegger spearheads the inevitable Kennedy Rebellion.
Even so, I've decided that I'm pulling for Hillary in the 2008 election. Not for reasons of politics... Lord knows, basing your vote on issues requires far more effort and intelligence than slightly more than half of the American voters are willing to expend. No, I am supporting Hillary purely for reasons of symmetry.
I like the idea of a Bush -> Clinton -> Bush -> Clinton progression. In fact, I'm hoping Hillary will serve for two terms, and then be followed by Jeb Bush for two terms. By that time, Chelsea and the Bush twins will probably be old enough to run.
Or, better still, maybe Mary Cheney could perform the ceremony to marry Chelsea to one of the Bush twins, thus uniting the two families into a powerful Bush-Clinton dynasty. Of course, they'd be hard pressed to come up with an heir unless they adopted, but still. You have to admit, the idea holds considerable appeal.
At least until Schwarzenegger spearheads the inevitable Kennedy Rebellion.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Not Feeling the Melodramatic Love
There's a small theater here in Dallas called Pocket Sandwich Theatre. The main item on their menu is pocket sandwiches, so it's not just a clever name, my friend. They do a wide variety of plays, but their bread and butter is the melodrama.
A melodrama is a silly play where the audience is invited to participate by cheering the hero, booing the villain, and sighing wistfully for the damsel in distress. These plays are crammed so full of bad jokes that they're in danger of collapsing in on themselves, and they are acted so broadly that no scenery is left unchewed. A piano player provides the musical score, and popcorn is provided (at 50 cents a basket) so the audience will have something to throw at the cast. It's intentionally bad theater, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
My friend Sean and I have been going to PST (as we aging hipster doofuses like to call it) since the mid 80s. In fact, it was the summer after my freshman year at Texas Tech that Sean and his girlfriend of the time took me to see Fu Manchu: The Melodrama, and I was hooked.
All through the 90s, we were regulars at PST. Our table of choice was the "moose table," a booth along the back wall decorated by an enormous stuffed moose head. And after seeing dozens and dozens of the melodramas, Sean and I came to realize, 'Hey, I bet we could write one of those!"
Our first effort was in 1992. We decided it would be fun to write a swashbuckling pirate play, so we went to work on Blackbeard: The Melodrama. Our plot was pretty threadbare, but we had one gag that was guaranteed to kill. It was my idea to start Blackbeard off as a regular looking guy. Then, near the end of the first scene, he loses an eye. Sometime in the second scene, he gets his hand cut off. All through the play, he loses body parts until the last act, when he shows up with an eyepatch, a hook, a pegleg, etc. It was comedy gold, I tell ya!
We met regularly at Jason's Deli, which was right next door to Pocket Sandwich Theatre, and we hammered away at our plot, trying to stretch it out to the requisite three acts. And just about the time we got our first act into shape, PST announced their brand new play, Captain Blood: The Melodrama. And one of the gags involved a man who starts off relatively normal, but who loses body parts over the course of the play until he's left with an eyepatch, a hook, a pegleg, etc.
(To this day, I still maintain that it was an unfortunate coincidence. Sean, however, is convinced that somebody overheard us and stole our ideas.)
We were a bit disheartened and abandoned our efforts for several years. When we started talking about writing another melodrama, I suggested we try to come up with a genre that hadn't already been done. Sean suggested we meet somewhere else besides Jason's Deli.
Monster movies and science fiction had been done to death, so Sean and I brainstormed to come up with something different. Sean wanted to do a film noir, with gangsters, a private detective, and a femme fatale. We played around with the idea for a few weeks, but we just couldn't think of anything to do with it. Then, one night, we happened to catch Stalag 17 on AMC and inspiration struck. I suggested we write a melodrama making fun of WWII POW movies, such as Stalag 17, The Great Escape, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Sean suggested making our emcee General Patton, and we could have him stand in front of an American flag when he was introducing the play.
One by one, we came up with great bits and hung them on the basic plot of Stalag 17 (with a little bit of The Great Escape and Casablanca thrown in). A group of American POWs, led by the dashing and handsome Colonel Francis Blake, have made several failed attempts to escape from Stalag 18. A couple of British pilots, recently shot down over Wankendorf, are brought to the stalag and interred there until they can be taken to Berlin for questioning. But one of the pilots is actually the beautiful Marie LeVoleur, a cross-dressing assassin in the French underground. And, as it turns out, she and Blake were once romantically involved. So, in order to keep her from falling into the hands of the Gestapo, they come up with a ridiculously convoluted and totally retarded plan to help her escape. We named our play The Great Escape from Stalag 18: The Melodrama.
Now, the TV show Hogan's Heroes had been a parody of Stalag 17 as well. In fact, the character of Sergeant Schultz had originally appeared in Stalag 17 (although he hadn't been nearly as buffoonish as his television counterpart). I knew comparisons between our play and Hogan's Heroes were inevitable, but I wanted to downplay them as much as possible. When Sean pitched our play to Pocket Sandwich Theatre, he emphasized that it was a parody of WWII POW movies, and that it was based on Stalag 17 and The Great Escape.
So in September 2005, we submitted our play to Pocket Sandwich Theatre. In December 2005, they told us that they'd loved it and wanted to add it to their 2006 lineup. They eventually scheduled it to run through July and August. Sean and I were, in a word, ecstatic.
We met with the director in March, and the first thing he told us was, "I really like this play. It's just like Hogan's Heroes!" He also gave us some notes and requested some modifications. Some of them rankled me a bit, but most of them were sound and made total sense. (He wanted us to flesh out one of the bad guys, bringing her into the play earlier and giving her a proper come-uppance at the end. He also suggested shifting some of the bits around so the play would flow better and the acts would be more balanced. He suggested some subplots that we could weave into the main story to pad it out a bit.) We made the requested changes and the play went into production. And, much to my chagrin, it was billed as "a spoof of 1970s WWII television comedies."
It was my first real theatrical experience, and I have to admit that it was a blast. All of the actors seemed to love their parts (Sean and I had labored to make sure just about everybody had at least one memorable bit). The director had come up with some slapsticky interpretations but, as I mentioned before, lowbrow is the name of the game with these plays. I had no complaints.
Until the last dress rehearsal, that is. I knocked off work and met Sean up at PST to watch them go through it one last time before opening night. Everything went swimmingly. It was pure magic. And then, they got to the last scene and suddenly our hero Colonel Blake is delivering this plodding, unfunny speech about how they'll keep trying and trying and won't rest until everybody has escaped, so get back to digging and blah, blah, blah.
Our original ending had been a takeoff on Casablanca's "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The director apologized to us and said he'd tried to make our ending work, but he just couldn't, so he'd written this other one.
I was furious. I hated the new ending, and didn't see where it was any kind of improvement over the original. It was just a clunky, unfunny coda. People accused me of being defensive, but it wasn't like I felt the original ending was sacrosanct or anything. I was just pissed that the director had taken it on himself to rewrite it instead of asking us.
Opening night, the audience was packed with people who love me and Sean. (There was also a celebrity in the audience... no one I know, but apparently he has a show on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or something). We took our usual seats at the moose table. Stephanie attended the show with me, looking astonishingly hot and making me feel like a real stud. The director invited us to come backstage for a toast before the curtain went up. I was never involved in anything remotely theatrical (unless you count a decade of marching band), so it was all swanky. Add to that the tens of dollars that Sean and I made for our writing effort, and I was really feeling pretty goddamned glamorous.
Despite the new ending (or maybe because of it... what the hell do I know?), the play was apparently a success. Most of the performances sold out. Sean stayed in touch with several of the actors, who wanted to know when we were going to write another one. The guys at PST started bugging us for a new one as well. So in December 2006, Sean and I got together and discussed our next magnum opus.
We still liked the idea of doing a film noir gangster movie type thing, and we brainstormed plot ideas for hours. We riffed on movies like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, but we couldn't think of anything funny to do that didn't come off like a fifth rate Carol Burnett sketch. I suggested doing something akin to Scarface or The Godfather, about a young man's rise to infamy in the world of organized crime. But still, we couldn't help but feel like it had all been done before.
Then, Sean hit on the brilliant idea of making our hero a masked avenger, like The Shadow or The Spirit. He envisioned some guy in a dark trench coat and fedora wearing a mask and wielding guns. Playing off of that, I suggested we go with a radio serial theme. Our emcee could be the radio host and could remain a character throughout, narrating the action. One of us (I can't remember which) came up with the idea of adding horribly dated commercials to the mix ("Sophisticate Cigarettes, now with asbestos to prevent lung fever.") As we hammered out our plot, our noirish story became rather outlandish. Our hero evolved into a shadowy mystic who was orphaned in the Himalayas and trained in the inscrutable arts of the Orient. After several rejected names, we finally settled on Captain Phantasm. His opponent, whom Sean dubbed Dr. Noir, was a maniacal French genius whose scheme was to poison the Metroville City water supply so he could sell his bottled water to the masses. The first and second acts ended with dramatic cliffhangers, and the second act even featured a musical number with lyrics by me and Sean. It was gold!
In September 2007, Sean and I finally finished Captain Phantasm vs. the Nefarious Dr. Noir: A Melodramatic Serial in Three Parts and sent it in to PST. Then we sat back and waited for a response. And waited. And waited. And waited. Sean followed up with them to make sure they'd received it.
We finally heard back from PST a few weeks ago. It seems the person who is now responsible for reading the new scripts is the man who directed The Great Escape from Stalag 18. He emailed Sean to let him know that he'd gotten behind in his reading, and hadn't managed to get to "Capt. Nefarious" yet. So we won't make the 2008 schedule, but we will "go into next year's consideration."
So we'll see. Sean's the one in touch with PST, so I'm unloading all my prima donna demands on him. "Tell them they can't make any changes to the script without consulting with us." "Tell them we want to be involved in writing the promotional material." "Tell them we don't want any brown M&Ms in our candy bowl." I'm sure they'll come back with suggestions/demands of their own.
But I'm not really feeling the melodramatic love this time around. Despite that, Sean and I are about to start on our third and likely final collaboration (not counting the Blackbeard fiasco). It's a murder mystery entitled Dial M for Melodrama, and we're going to be ripping on geezer mystery series like Murder She Wrote, as well as all those Law and Order and CSI shows.
And if Pocket Sandwich Theatre says no, I guess we can always act the goddamn thing out with hand puppets and post it to YouTube...
A melodrama is a silly play where the audience is invited to participate by cheering the hero, booing the villain, and sighing wistfully for the damsel in distress. These plays are crammed so full of bad jokes that they're in danger of collapsing in on themselves, and they are acted so broadly that no scenery is left unchewed. A piano player provides the musical score, and popcorn is provided (at 50 cents a basket) so the audience will have something to throw at the cast. It's intentionally bad theater, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
My friend Sean and I have been going to PST (as we aging hipster doofuses like to call it) since the mid 80s. In fact, it was the summer after my freshman year at Texas Tech that Sean and his girlfriend of the time took me to see Fu Manchu: The Melodrama, and I was hooked.
All through the 90s, we were regulars at PST. Our table of choice was the "moose table," a booth along the back wall decorated by an enormous stuffed moose head. And after seeing dozens and dozens of the melodramas, Sean and I came to realize, 'Hey, I bet we could write one of those!"
Our first effort was in 1992. We decided it would be fun to write a swashbuckling pirate play, so we went to work on Blackbeard: The Melodrama. Our plot was pretty threadbare, but we had one gag that was guaranteed to kill. It was my idea to start Blackbeard off as a regular looking guy. Then, near the end of the first scene, he loses an eye. Sometime in the second scene, he gets his hand cut off. All through the play, he loses body parts until the last act, when he shows up with an eyepatch, a hook, a pegleg, etc. It was comedy gold, I tell ya!
We met regularly at Jason's Deli, which was right next door to Pocket Sandwich Theatre, and we hammered away at our plot, trying to stretch it out to the requisite three acts. And just about the time we got our first act into shape, PST announced their brand new play, Captain Blood: The Melodrama. And one of the gags involved a man who starts off relatively normal, but who loses body parts over the course of the play until he's left with an eyepatch, a hook, a pegleg, etc.
(To this day, I still maintain that it was an unfortunate coincidence. Sean, however, is convinced that somebody overheard us and stole our ideas.)
We were a bit disheartened and abandoned our efforts for several years. When we started talking about writing another melodrama, I suggested we try to come up with a genre that hadn't already been done. Sean suggested we meet somewhere else besides Jason's Deli.
Monster movies and science fiction had been done to death, so Sean and I brainstormed to come up with something different. Sean wanted to do a film noir, with gangsters, a private detective, and a femme fatale. We played around with the idea for a few weeks, but we just couldn't think of anything to do with it. Then, one night, we happened to catch Stalag 17 on AMC and inspiration struck. I suggested we write a melodrama making fun of WWII POW movies, such as Stalag 17, The Great Escape, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Sean suggested making our emcee General Patton, and we could have him stand in front of an American flag when he was introducing the play.
One by one, we came up with great bits and hung them on the basic plot of Stalag 17 (with a little bit of The Great Escape and Casablanca thrown in). A group of American POWs, led by the dashing and handsome Colonel Francis Blake, have made several failed attempts to escape from Stalag 18. A couple of British pilots, recently shot down over Wankendorf, are brought to the stalag and interred there until they can be taken to Berlin for questioning. But one of the pilots is actually the beautiful Marie LeVoleur, a cross-dressing assassin in the French underground. And, as it turns out, she and Blake were once romantically involved. So, in order to keep her from falling into the hands of the Gestapo, they come up with a ridiculously convoluted and totally retarded plan to help her escape. We named our play The Great Escape from Stalag 18: The Melodrama.
Now, the TV show Hogan's Heroes had been a parody of Stalag 17 as well. In fact, the character of Sergeant Schultz had originally appeared in Stalag 17 (although he hadn't been nearly as buffoonish as his television counterpart). I knew comparisons between our play and Hogan's Heroes were inevitable, but I wanted to downplay them as much as possible. When Sean pitched our play to Pocket Sandwich Theatre, he emphasized that it was a parody of WWII POW movies, and that it was based on Stalag 17 and The Great Escape.
So in September 2005, we submitted our play to Pocket Sandwich Theatre. In December 2005, they told us that they'd loved it and wanted to add it to their 2006 lineup. They eventually scheduled it to run through July and August. Sean and I were, in a word, ecstatic.
We met with the director in March, and the first thing he told us was, "I really like this play. It's just like Hogan's Heroes!" He also gave us some notes and requested some modifications. Some of them rankled me a bit, but most of them were sound and made total sense. (He wanted us to flesh out one of the bad guys, bringing her into the play earlier and giving her a proper come-uppance at the end. He also suggested shifting some of the bits around so the play would flow better and the acts would be more balanced. He suggested some subplots that we could weave into the main story to pad it out a bit.) We made the requested changes and the play went into production. And, much to my chagrin, it was billed as "a spoof of 1970s WWII television comedies."
It was my first real theatrical experience, and I have to admit that it was a blast. All of the actors seemed to love their parts (Sean and I had labored to make sure just about everybody had at least one memorable bit). The director had come up with some slapsticky interpretations but, as I mentioned before, lowbrow is the name of the game with these plays. I had no complaints.
Until the last dress rehearsal, that is. I knocked off work and met Sean up at PST to watch them go through it one last time before opening night. Everything went swimmingly. It was pure magic. And then, they got to the last scene and suddenly our hero Colonel Blake is delivering this plodding, unfunny speech about how they'll keep trying and trying and won't rest until everybody has escaped, so get back to digging and blah, blah, blah.
Our original ending had been a takeoff on Casablanca's "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The director apologized to us and said he'd tried to make our ending work, but he just couldn't, so he'd written this other one.
I was furious. I hated the new ending, and didn't see where it was any kind of improvement over the original. It was just a clunky, unfunny coda. People accused me of being defensive, but it wasn't like I felt the original ending was sacrosanct or anything. I was just pissed that the director had taken it on himself to rewrite it instead of asking us.
Opening night, the audience was packed with people who love me and Sean. (There was also a celebrity in the audience... no one I know, but apparently he has a show on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or something). We took our usual seats at the moose table. Stephanie attended the show with me, looking astonishingly hot and making me feel like a real stud. The director invited us to come backstage for a toast before the curtain went up. I was never involved in anything remotely theatrical (unless you count a decade of marching band), so it was all swanky. Add to that the tens of dollars that Sean and I made for our writing effort, and I was really feeling pretty goddamned glamorous.
Despite the new ending (or maybe because of it... what the hell do I know?), the play was apparently a success. Most of the performances sold out. Sean stayed in touch with several of the actors, who wanted to know when we were going to write another one. The guys at PST started bugging us for a new one as well. So in December 2006, Sean and I got together and discussed our next magnum opus.
We still liked the idea of doing a film noir gangster movie type thing, and we brainstormed plot ideas for hours. We riffed on movies like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, but we couldn't think of anything funny to do that didn't come off like a fifth rate Carol Burnett sketch. I suggested doing something akin to Scarface or The Godfather, about a young man's rise to infamy in the world of organized crime. But still, we couldn't help but feel like it had all been done before.
Then, Sean hit on the brilliant idea of making our hero a masked avenger, like The Shadow or The Spirit. He envisioned some guy in a dark trench coat and fedora wearing a mask and wielding guns. Playing off of that, I suggested we go with a radio serial theme. Our emcee could be the radio host and could remain a character throughout, narrating the action. One of us (I can't remember which) came up with the idea of adding horribly dated commercials to the mix ("Sophisticate Cigarettes, now with asbestos to prevent lung fever.") As we hammered out our plot, our noirish story became rather outlandish. Our hero evolved into a shadowy mystic who was orphaned in the Himalayas and trained in the inscrutable arts of the Orient. After several rejected names, we finally settled on Captain Phantasm. His opponent, whom Sean dubbed Dr. Noir, was a maniacal French genius whose scheme was to poison the Metroville City water supply so he could sell his bottled water to the masses. The first and second acts ended with dramatic cliffhangers, and the second act even featured a musical number with lyrics by me and Sean. It was gold!
In September 2007, Sean and I finally finished Captain Phantasm vs. the Nefarious Dr. Noir: A Melodramatic Serial in Three Parts and sent it in to PST. Then we sat back and waited for a response. And waited. And waited. And waited. Sean followed up with them to make sure they'd received it.
We finally heard back from PST a few weeks ago. It seems the person who is now responsible for reading the new scripts is the man who directed The Great Escape from Stalag 18. He emailed Sean to let him know that he'd gotten behind in his reading, and hadn't managed to get to "Capt. Nefarious" yet. So we won't make the 2008 schedule, but we will "go into next year's consideration."
So we'll see. Sean's the one in touch with PST, so I'm unloading all my prima donna demands on him. "Tell them they can't make any changes to the script without consulting with us." "Tell them we want to be involved in writing the promotional material." "Tell them we don't want any brown M&Ms in our candy bowl." I'm sure they'll come back with suggestions/demands of their own.
But I'm not really feeling the melodramatic love this time around. Despite that, Sean and I are about to start on our third and likely final collaboration (not counting the Blackbeard fiasco). It's a murder mystery entitled Dial M for Melodrama, and we're going to be ripping on geezer mystery series like Murder She Wrote, as well as all those Law and Order and CSI shows.
And if Pocket Sandwich Theatre says no, I guess we can always act the goddamn thing out with hand puppets and post it to YouTube...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Neurodiversity Training
My nephew Campbell was diagnosed as mildly to moderately autistic this week.
It didn't really come as a surprise to any of us, but it's still a little weird to hear so definite a term put on it. He's two years old and hasn't started talking yet. He tends to get frustrated and start screaming for inexplicable reasons. He's surprisingly passive, to the point that any time his twin brother Luke snatches a toy away from him, he simply shrugs it off and picks up another. He's always been partial to playing with blocks, and he spends hours just stacking them up, knocking them down, and then stacking them up again.
So the possibility of autism had definitely been discussed, but it's such a nebulous and odd condition that nobody seemed to know for certain. Last year, when my sister Sunny was grocery shopping with the twins, Campbell started screaming. He wasn't agitated or freaking out or anything. He was just screaming. When Sunny finally got him settled down, a woman approached her and started asking her all these questions about therapists and programs. She told my sister that her son had been diagnosed as autistic the year before, and started giving her all kinds of advice. No doubt the woman meant well and was just happy to find a kindred soul, but it freaked my sister out a little. She told the woman that Campbell was seeing a therapist, but they were still trying to determine just why he was so slow to develop. The woman told Sunny that she and her husband were in denial as well, and now she regretted taking so long to get her son diagnosed. My sister finally thanked the woman for her "kind words," paid for her groceries, went home, and bawled her eyes out.
So now it's official, or as official as anything regarding autism can be. There's a lot of culture that has sprung up around the condition, and a lot of controversy amongst people with autism and their families. There is actually an autism rights movement that encourages autistic people to "embrace their neurodiversity" and encourages the "neurotypicals" to accept autistics instead of trying to "cure" them. Some even view their autism as a gift, and resent being treated as if they are somehow disabled.
But while embracing the condition may work for those who are mildly affected, it isn't quite so easy for the moderately or the severely autistic. The nature of the condition makes it difficult for them to develop any kind of meaningful relationships with others. Some are able to "learn" the empathy necessary to interact, but others never develop that understanding.
So of course, there are some who feel the autism rights movement is doing more harm than good by extolling autism as a virtue and a gift rather than a condition. They want a cure, and they fear that efforts might be compromised if people view autism as a lifestyle rather than a disorder.
(And for the record, the whole idea of an autistic savant is one that has been exaggerated in popular culture. While many autistic people do show a real aptitude for logical, process-based disciplines, like mathematics and engineering, true savants are a rarity.)
I have no idea where I fall in this spectrum. I guess it will depend on how Campbell develops. Right now, one of the major milestones is to develop his language by the time he's six. If he can do that, he'll have a fighting chance.
I love my nephew, and all I want is for him to feel that and know what it means. He has two parents and an older brother (Christopher) who are devoted to him, and I have no doubt his twin brother Luke will be as well. No matter what happens.
There have been a few controversial studies that have linked autism with "geek" and "nerd" behavior. If that turns out to be true, then Campbell was certainly born into the right family...
It didn't really come as a surprise to any of us, but it's still a little weird to hear so definite a term put on it. He's two years old and hasn't started talking yet. He tends to get frustrated and start screaming for inexplicable reasons. He's surprisingly passive, to the point that any time his twin brother Luke snatches a toy away from him, he simply shrugs it off and picks up another. He's always been partial to playing with blocks, and he spends hours just stacking them up, knocking them down, and then stacking them up again.
So the possibility of autism had definitely been discussed, but it's such a nebulous and odd condition that nobody seemed to know for certain. Last year, when my sister Sunny was grocery shopping with the twins, Campbell started screaming. He wasn't agitated or freaking out or anything. He was just screaming. When Sunny finally got him settled down, a woman approached her and started asking her all these questions about therapists and programs. She told my sister that her son had been diagnosed as autistic the year before, and started giving her all kinds of advice. No doubt the woman meant well and was just happy to find a kindred soul, but it freaked my sister out a little. She told the woman that Campbell was seeing a therapist, but they were still trying to determine just why he was so slow to develop. The woman told Sunny that she and her husband were in denial as well, and now she regretted taking so long to get her son diagnosed. My sister finally thanked the woman for her "kind words," paid for her groceries, went home, and bawled her eyes out.
So now it's official, or as official as anything regarding autism can be. There's a lot of culture that has sprung up around the condition, and a lot of controversy amongst people with autism and their families. There is actually an autism rights movement that encourages autistic people to "embrace their neurodiversity" and encourages the "neurotypicals" to accept autistics instead of trying to "cure" them. Some even view their autism as a gift, and resent being treated as if they are somehow disabled.
But while embracing the condition may work for those who are mildly affected, it isn't quite so easy for the moderately or the severely autistic. The nature of the condition makes it difficult for them to develop any kind of meaningful relationships with others. Some are able to "learn" the empathy necessary to interact, but others never develop that understanding.
So of course, there are some who feel the autism rights movement is doing more harm than good by extolling autism as a virtue and a gift rather than a condition. They want a cure, and they fear that efforts might be compromised if people view autism as a lifestyle rather than a disorder.
(And for the record, the whole idea of an autistic savant is one that has been exaggerated in popular culture. While many autistic people do show a real aptitude for logical, process-based disciplines, like mathematics and engineering, true savants are a rarity.)
I have no idea where I fall in this spectrum. I guess it will depend on how Campbell develops. Right now, one of the major milestones is to develop his language by the time he's six. If he can do that, he'll have a fighting chance.
I love my nephew, and all I want is for him to feel that and know what it means. He has two parents and an older brother (Christopher) who are devoted to him, and I have no doubt his twin brother Luke will be as well. No matter what happens.
There have been a few controversial studies that have linked autism with "geek" and "nerd" behavior. If that turns out to be true, then Campbell was certainly born into the right family...
Monday, January 14, 2008
Getting to Know You... IN THE BIBLICAL SENSE!
I was browsing the TV Tropes website, which has become a primary time suck in my life in recent days, when I ran across this ad. All I could think was "Wow! Check out the enormous rack on that Christian! Please turn in your Bibles to the Book of Hooteronomy!"
By the way, Christians are allowed to join for free. I wonder who makes that distinction. Do Mormons count? Not if you ask the Baptists. Do Baptists count? Not if you ask the Church of Christ. "Sorry sir, but the obscure Gnostic sect to which you belong was declared heretical by Pope Angus VI back in 983 A.D. I'm afraid you'll have to pony up the $25 service charge."
By the way, Christians are allowed to join for free. I wonder who makes that distinction. Do Mormons count? Not if you ask the Baptists. Do Baptists count? Not if you ask the Church of Christ. "Sorry sir, but the obscure Gnostic sect to which you belong was declared heretical by Pope Angus VI back in 983 A.D. I'm afraid you'll have to pony up the $25 service charge."
Friday, January 11, 2008
Keep Watching the Skies!
Actual excerpts from Essentials of Survival: Emergency Action to Save Lives, a pamphlet published by the Dallas City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission in 1958.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking our country will probably make great strides in international diplomacy once we finally get someone into office who didn't grow up reading this shit.
Civil Defense will prevent us from becoming a panic-stricken mob of people, unable to organize and fight back immediately after such an attack. Civil Defense will keep us alive, alert, and organized -- able to hit hard and fast as this Nation of 170 million people has shown the world it is able to do under our democratic way of life....
When the only way an atomic bomb could be dropped on our Country was from an airplane, we might have had sufficient warning time to evacuate our City. With the perfection of Intercontinental missiles and missiles launched from submarines, our warning time may be cut to zero....
Therefore the Mayor contemplates he will give no "order" for everyone to evacuate the City.
Certain "essential citizens" will have to remain to conduct the business of law enforcement, rescue, medical attention, public utilities and like services. Other citizens, including many women and children can make their plans to leave the City should information over Conelrad indicate the probability of an attack.
Lie flat on ground. Pick a gutter, ditch, or a curb. Protect head and neck with your arms. Remain until shock wave has passed. Move quickly to nearest protection from "fallout" -- a building, basement, your home or other shelter....
Communism is a way of existence in a total socialist state, such as the U.S.S.R. It is an ideology which results in slavery under a system of terror imposed by a Communist dictator government. It is a device by which the International Communist Conspiracy intends to rule the world. Communists want America. They want your property and you....
Although there are scores of books written by Communists and others on the theory, philosophy and ideology of Communism, it all boils down to this:
The Communists pretend they will make the world over into a paradise of materialism, in which each man will share according to his needs.
- By promising a Materialistic heaven on earth they appeal to the Godless.
- By stressing science they interest the unwary intellectual.
- By promising security they capture the mind of the poor.
- By pretending to Champion the Underprivileged they ensnare the idealistic.
- By promising something for nothing they win the support of the shiftless.
The Communist Party U.S.A. operates in the open and also underground. The open party is not very large nationally, having a total of perhaps 15,000 dues-paying members. They purposely limit their hard core membership to keep tight control among the dedicated revolutionaries. However, there are many thousands of fellow travelers, pinks, fifth columnists, Communist Front Members and others who are in the Communist orbit and who could not be counted on for loyalty to our government in time of Communist threat. These are people very dangerous to our country. Many are disgruntled with their state of life. Many are opportunists. Many are intellectuals who are soft on Communism for reasons known only to themselves....
The underground Communist organization is composed of spies, saboteurs, couriers and others who can work themselves into strategic positions in government, industry, art, unions, news media, school systems, entertainment, Religious organizations and civic groups. In fact practically every phase of American life has been infiltrated by Communists or Communist sympathizers.
The principles of Americanism that have made this Country the greatest in the world are:...
- A belief in God
- Freedom of the individual
- Private Enterprise System of Economy -- the right to own property and work for reward
- Representative Republic System of Government where the government is the protector of the individual under the Constitution
- Determination of policy by persuasion and not by force.
With God's help America will remain a land where people still know how to be free and brave.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking our country will probably make great strides in international diplomacy once we finally get someone into office who didn't grow up reading this shit.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Holy Catch Phrases, Batman!
Recently, I was reading through John's archives over on Random Squeegee. He's a funny, funny boy who deserves to have hordes of slavish followers, and the fact that he isn't a world-renowned celebrity on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet is just one of the many things that mocks my childlike faith in God. And if it sounds like I have a little bit of a man-crush on him, what can I say? One time when I was feeling low, he sent me a picture of Rodney Dangerfield's zombie eating the brains of Karl Rove. So although I've never actually met the guy, I'm not ashamed to say that I love him with the robust, manly love that might exist between two vikings who are secure enough in their manhood to dress up in red chiffon and ride each other up and down the hallway...
What the fuck was I talking about?
Oh, yeah. Anyway, John has posted at length about his co-worker Joe, who is apparently more annoying than a sack of Bill O'Reillys. As near as I can tell, Joe is a socially-awkward man in his fifties who attempts to reach out to people by spewing random pop-culture catch phrases that make absolutely no sense out of context.
Full disclosure time... I think I used to be like Joe. I was constantly tossing off non-sequitors and regurgitating crap I'd heard on TV in an effort to make myself seem interesting. How bad was I? Well, I remember when that horrible Rob Schneider skit debuted on Saturday Night Live where he played the office worker who sat near the photocopier and kept regaling his co-workers with silly variations of their names. "Kristine! Kristiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine! The Kristinator! Kristyl! Krystal Burger! Onward Kristian Soldiers! Makin' the copiiiies!" And when I went to work on Monday, no fewer than five people made a point of telling me, "There was a guy JUST LIKE YOU on Saturday Night Live!"
So I'm probably lobbing stones from the patio of my glass house by giggling at the Joe stories, but in my defense, that was 20 years ago. I've since grown out of it. I no longer spend my every waking moment trying to be the wacky office guy. Life's just too short.
(Recently, one of the senior managers where I work told me that I reminded him of Jim Gaffigan. I choose to believe it's because of my wry and insightful sense of humor, and not because I'm whiter than a klavern of albino Republicans.)
During the 90s, when I was working at Brinker International (the restaurant company, not the armored car company), I was surrounded by folks who were trying way too hard to be funny. And, like Joe, they did it by randomly spouting catch phrases that had long since surpassed their use by date. Any remark made in a group of three or more was certain to be met with unfunny retorts like "Don't go there," and "That's just a little tooooo much information," and "That's what she said," and OH MY GOD! SHUT THE FUCK UP, TRAGICALLY UNHIP CO-WORKERS!
There was one programmer named Rex who performed no discernible function, yet managed to retain his job at Brinker for several years. We used to joke that Rex was a barometer for the rest of us, because he illustrated just how badly we could fuck up and still not get fired. Anyway, Rex got hold of the phrase "That's not what you said last night," and continued to flail away at it long after it was little more than a horse-shaped pile of dust. I mean, it didn't even have to make any sense. He used it like most people use punctuation.
So one day, I conspired with my friends Scott and Mike. The programmers and the QA team were getting together for a group lunch, and we decided we were going to catch phrase everyone to death. The plan was this: every time somebody said anything, no matter how innocuous, I would turn it into an innuendo. Scott would reply, "Well hell, who doesn't?" And Mike would end it with, "That's not what you said last night."
For nearly half an hour, the conversation at the table went like this.
Someone:
I don't think we're going to be able to meet that deadline.
Me:
I've got a deadline you can meet.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Maybe we could shorten the testing schedule.
Me:
I've got a testing schedule you can shorten.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Can we push back the rollout date?
Me:
I've got a rollout date you can push back.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Jesus, would you guys stop doing that?
Me:
I've got something you can stop doing.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Our little object lesson did nothing to curtail Rex and the rest of the catch phrasers. If anything, they became even more egregious. In fact, most people hadn't really noticed it before Scott, Mike, and I had done our little stunt, and now they blamed us for having started the trend in the first place.
However, Hands Across America didn't solve the homeless problem and We Are the World didn't put an end to famine in Africa, but they're considered successful because they raised people's awareness of those issues. And I like to think that's what Scott, Mike, and I did. We raised people's awareness, baby. We raised the *shit* out of it.
The world "hero" gets bandied about so often that it has just about lost its meaning. But like Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi, we took a stand against a perceived injustice. And although this act caused us to be labeled pariahs and outcasts, I like to think that future generations will vindicate us as heroes.
I've got something you can vindicate.
Well hell, who doesn't?
That's not what you said last night.
What the fuck was I talking about?
Oh, yeah. Anyway, John has posted at length about his co-worker Joe, who is apparently more annoying than a sack of Bill O'Reillys. As near as I can tell, Joe is a socially-awkward man in his fifties who attempts to reach out to people by spewing random pop-culture catch phrases that make absolutely no sense out of context.
Full disclosure time... I think I used to be like Joe. I was constantly tossing off non-sequitors and regurgitating crap I'd heard on TV in an effort to make myself seem interesting. How bad was I? Well, I remember when that horrible Rob Schneider skit debuted on Saturday Night Live where he played the office worker who sat near the photocopier and kept regaling his co-workers with silly variations of their names. "Kristine! Kristiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine! The Kristinator! Kristyl! Krystal Burger! Onward Kristian Soldiers! Makin' the copiiiies!" And when I went to work on Monday, no fewer than five people made a point of telling me, "There was a guy JUST LIKE YOU on Saturday Night Live!"
So I'm probably lobbing stones from the patio of my glass house by giggling at the Joe stories, but in my defense, that was 20 years ago. I've since grown out of it. I no longer spend my every waking moment trying to be the wacky office guy. Life's just too short.
(Recently, one of the senior managers where I work told me that I reminded him of Jim Gaffigan. I choose to believe it's because of my wry and insightful sense of humor, and not because I'm whiter than a klavern of albino Republicans.)
During the 90s, when I was working at Brinker International (the restaurant company, not the armored car company), I was surrounded by folks who were trying way too hard to be funny. And, like Joe, they did it by randomly spouting catch phrases that had long since surpassed their use by date. Any remark made in a group of three or more was certain to be met with unfunny retorts like "Don't go there," and "That's just a little tooooo much information," and "That's what she said," and OH MY GOD! SHUT THE FUCK UP, TRAGICALLY UNHIP CO-WORKERS!
There was one programmer named Rex who performed no discernible function, yet managed to retain his job at Brinker for several years. We used to joke that Rex was a barometer for the rest of us, because he illustrated just how badly we could fuck up and still not get fired. Anyway, Rex got hold of the phrase "That's not what you said last night," and continued to flail away at it long after it was little more than a horse-shaped pile of dust. I mean, it didn't even have to make any sense. He used it like most people use punctuation.
So one day, I conspired with my friends Scott and Mike. The programmers and the QA team were getting together for a group lunch, and we decided we were going to catch phrase everyone to death. The plan was this: every time somebody said anything, no matter how innocuous, I would turn it into an innuendo. Scott would reply, "Well hell, who doesn't?" And Mike would end it with, "That's not what you said last night."
For nearly half an hour, the conversation at the table went like this.
Someone:
I don't think we're going to be able to meet that deadline.
Me:
I've got a deadline you can meet.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Maybe we could shorten the testing schedule.
Me:
I've got a testing schedule you can shorten.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Can we push back the rollout date?
Me:
I've got a rollout date you can push back.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Someone else:
Jesus, would you guys stop doing that?
Me:
I've got something you can stop doing.
Scott:
Well hell, who doesn't?
Mike:
That's not what you said last night.
Our little object lesson did nothing to curtail Rex and the rest of the catch phrasers. If anything, they became even more egregious. In fact, most people hadn't really noticed it before Scott, Mike, and I had done our little stunt, and now they blamed us for having started the trend in the first place.
However, Hands Across America didn't solve the homeless problem and We Are the World didn't put an end to famine in Africa, but they're considered successful because they raised people's awareness of those issues. And I like to think that's what Scott, Mike, and I did. We raised people's awareness, baby. We raised the *shit* out of it.
The world "hero" gets bandied about so often that it has just about lost its meaning. But like Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi, we took a stand against a perceived injustice. And although this act caused us to be labeled pariahs and outcasts, I like to think that future generations will vindicate us as heroes.
I've got something you can vindicate.
Well hell, who doesn't?
That's not what you said last night.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
New Year's Resolutions for 2008
- I will spend more time lying on the couch and watching TV. (It's important to set realistic, attainable goals.)
- I will never miss an opportunity to refer to the World Wide Web as "Nobel Prize winner Al Gore's Internet."
- I will hone my Photoshop skills so I can finally get my lolmanson page off the ground.
- I will stop bugging Stephanie to fulfill my Little Debbie fantasies by dressing up in a gingham dress and bonnet and feeding me Swiss Cake Rolls.
- I will do everything in my power to eradicate the words guesstimate, ginormous, and chillax from the English lexicon.
- I will make an effort to go door to door and meet my neighbors, in accordance with the terms of my probation.
- I will post at least once a month to avoid any embarrassing gaps in my blog archives. If I can't come up with anything clever to post, I'll steal something from John's blog and claim it as my own.
- I will start a wave in church.
- I will celebrate the end of George W. Bush's presidency by drinking wine from the skull of Ann Coulter.
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