Monthly Archives: February 2016

Condor XXIII – This Weekend

So I will be participating at San Diego longest running SF convention, Condor, this weekend. If you are in the area drop by, it is a small but fun conventions. Here are a list of pnael evets you will be able to find me taking part in.

Friday

12:00 p.m. The Internet Generation: For better or for worse, the Internet has profoundly changed our lives. Some say it’s turned us into media zombies who go into withdrawal without our social media fix. Just how addicted are we, anyway? Windsor Rose (D. Gerrold, R. M. Evans *, B. Benson)

1:00 p.m. RPGs as Fanfic: Basing a campaign on your favorite book, comic, or movie. Brittany (R.M. Evans, J. Swycaffer*, W.H. Stoddard, K. A. Murphy)

2:00 p.m. The Bromance of Star Trek. Yes, Kirk was the Captain and Spock was the First Officer, but wasn’t a lot of the series just a buddy adventure show? Brittany (J. Trimble, R. M. Evans.)

4:00 p.m. Art, Eroticism & Censorship: Implied and explicit sexual content in the visual arts. When is it a valid theme and when is it exploitation? Is there ever a justification for censorship, or for rejecting the claim that something is “art”? Clarendon (S. Dawe, L. Maudlin*, R. M. Evans.)

Saturday

2:00 p.m. Workshop: Read and Critique headed by Robert Mitchell Evans Bring 1500 words of a story. Le Sommet. 2hr.

 

Sunday

11:00 a.m. Crossing Genres:  Science fiction westerns, horror romances, fantasy mysteries. Crossovers are hot these days, especially in the YA markets. What works? What doesn’t? And how do you come up with something fresh enough to sell? Clarendon (J.L. Doty*, J. Robinson, K. Thompson, R. M. Evans.)

12:00 p.m. I Don’t Want to be Eaten: Zombies, vampires and werewolves: is the trend of these stories fading or will I have to continue to sleep with garlic and carry a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot? Brittany  (J. Robinson*, R. M. Evans, T. Dawson.)

2:00 p.m. Self-Publishing: Reality vs Myth- the Good, the Bad & Ugly How to succeed and avoid the traps. Clarendon (J.L. Doty*, D. Welch, R. M. Evans.)

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My trip to Fire station 45

So for the past year my sweetie-wife and I have watched as the city built a new fire station near our home. Today, after several months of operation, Firestation 45 hosted an open house for the public, and while my sweetie-wife need to work I managed to attend. Here are just a few picture and thoughts from that visit.

Bunkhouse

This is the area called the bunkhouse. It is the ‘living room’ for the station for the people on duty. Off to the left is a big screen TV and a stack of DVDs. ( I was informed because that cable and internet access has yet to be connected.) Now you can see that those recliners look quite comfy, and they are, but they are not a product of your tax dollars. The city provides utilities and  toilet paper, everything else including the food, the personal pay for themselves. They work 24 hours on, then have 24 hours off, after 4 work periods they get 4 days off.  I learned that smaller stations the people on duty just brown bag it, but at larger ones like 45 they chip in each day for a grocery run and buy the food communally.

kitchen-2Here is the kitchen. It’s very nice and ultra modern, but then again this is a brand new station.

Here is a reverse angle of the rest of the kitchen.

Kitchen-1

 

 

 

 

I learned that station 45 is the Hazardous waste specialists for San Diego County and so they are on call for any Hazardous waste issues county wide. Fire department personnel also suffer cancers at a higher rate than the general population due to their continual exposure to burning chemical. Because of this the department goes to great lengths to reduce exposure whenever and as much as possible. Those bulky protective uniforms are washed after every use and each person has two sets of ‘turn outs’ so that one can be in the process of being cleaned while the other worn on a call.

Here is a [picture of a fire truck and a fire engine. The truck is one the left, the yellow hose is Truck and Engineconnected to the exhaust to reduce carcinogen exposure. The difference between a ‘truck’ and an ‘engine?’ A fire truck carries a tank of water, this one I think has 500 gallons, while an engine doesn’t carry water but carries ladders and equipment. Essentially a Fire Engine is a giant motorized tool box.

 

 

I mentioned that the people on duty are on duty for 24 hours at a stretch, so of course there has to be living spaces. They don;t live, at least not at this station, in a giant barracks style room, butquarters here you can see that they have private rooms. The one picture is unoccupied. There were two wings and the occupied wing was off limits to the public.

 

Now in case you were getting sentimental about Firepolethings and felt that traditions were dying out, here for your pleasure is the fireman’s pole. Yup, they actually use that pole for quick transits from the upper floor to the ground floor. One thing that did surprise me, though it makes sense from a middle of the night safety thing, is that the pole is actually inFirepole door an enclosed space behind a door. This is of course so that you don’t stumble and fall through it by accident. (And no they were not letting us use the pole.) The display above the door is a ticker tape sort of thing that during a call continuously flashes the call and which units are responding.

I’ll end this post with a panoramic view from the second floor balcony.

panorama 45

 

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The Two Most Influential SF Films of the 2000s

So here I have come to the end of my occasional series. I started with the silent era treating it as a single decade, most unfair, and the  decade by decade I have laid out what I think are the two SF films that influence the genre and movies in general. With the years 2000-2009, there are no more complete decades to review. I honestly thought that this would be one of the hardest because it is the most recent. Sometimes,m it can be very tricky seeing the lasting influence amid the noise of fads, but surprisingly I found it easy to make my selections.

1-XMen1posterX-Men (2000) My first pick popped out right at the start of the decade, Byran Singer’s superhero film, X-Men.  Awash in superhero movies it can be hard for a modern viewer to appreciate just what a groundbreaking movie this was.  Before X-Men superhero movies always operated in a world of camp and with winks towards the camera letting the audience know not to take the subject too seriously. And while films like Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s Batman made big box office, they remained in that slightly campy quarantine. X-Men, from it’s gritty start amid the Holocaust through it’s epic finale grounded itself in realism, treating the subject and inviting the audience to treat the subject, seriously. These were real characters with real motivation talking about real human conditions, but using the fantastic as their vehicle. Without this movie both in its style and in its success, it is unlikely we would be in our current riches with both the Marvel and DC cinematic Universes.

1-sky captainSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. (2004) Set in an alternate history where Zepplin travel remained popular and pulp heroes battled mad scientists Sky Captain was a wild ride that never quite found success at the box office, but like another of my picks, Blade Runner, its influence it outsized to its ticket sales. This film pioneered for feature films the wide scale use of virtual sets.  Of course Lucas was doing this already with his Star Wars prequel movies, but I do not think Lucas, with his endless piles of cash and reputation for being a technophile, produced the impact that Sky Captain did. By making this film with a modest budget, Kerry Conran illustrated that these techniques were available to all sorts of production that did not have ILM behind them. It also did not hurt that Conran shot Sky Captain with flair and style, making a film that had a distinct look over the flat perfect seen in Lucas’ Star Wars prequels.

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Movie Review: Hail, Cesar!

So, despite the mild flu that came along and bushwacked me out of attending the 3rd day of the Southern California Writers Conference here in San Diego, yesterday my sweetie-wife and I went out for a matinee movie and lunch. (A light lunch as my appetite had not yet recovered.)

1-hail-cesarFor me, the Cohen brothers are hit and miss, some of their films work very well for me (I am looking at you The Hudsucker Proxy and Burn After Reading) and other do not live up to the hype (Now I give Fargo and The Big Lebowski the stink eye.) Hail, Cesar! is neither top tier like Burn after Reading, but for me, it works far better than Lebowski.

Hail, Cesar! is the story of Eddie Mannix, the man responsible for making sure the fictional movie stud1io of Capital Studios gets its product turned out on time. He deals with every manner of crisis, taking him away from his family and his life. There are lots of plot line in the movie because Eddie is always dealing with problems. The plot lines do not all converge at the end because the real story here is Eddie and the decision he has to make about the direction of his life. If you watch the trailers you might think that the kidnapping of his lead star Baird Whitlock is the major plot, but it is just one of several problems Eddie has to resolve.

I enjoyed the film, more than my sweetie-wife, but she also had a good time. The more you know classic Hollywood and Communist Theory the funnier the film will be for you.

I think the film also has, within its film in a film conceit, a lovely and moving passage on Christianity that comes off as neither preachy nor satirical. (Though there is a laugh at the end delivered through performance and not smug superiority.) This is interesting considering I am not a Christian but I thought the speech painted a Christianity I wished more people took to hear.

So, knowing that your mileage may vary, I recommend seeing this one.

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A few thoughts on the death of Scalia

This president’s day weekend I was off at the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego, so I have been busy and light in posting. (The Conference was good, though I have gotten sick and missed the last day as I stayed home without appetite and with a light head.) I was at the conference when I saw the news appear on my phone that Scalia had died.

First I will not take in joy nor will I celebrate in any fashion his passing. His family, his friends, and those close him are in grief and to them I offer my sincere condolences.

I am relieved that he will no longer be influencing the Court, though it would have been better for all if this result had come from retirement and tragedy.

Yes, he was a brilliant man and he was a complex man. (Through back channels advocating for Kagan to be elevated to the court alone shows that he was not a simple caricature of a right wing extremist.) However, his clearly displayed intellect made his failing as a justice even more plain.

He was not a champion of human rights and liberty, he was a champion of states right when the states acted in a manner of which he approved.  If a state moved in a direction that he did not approve of, such as legalizing marijuana or legalizing assisted suicide then his used his considerable intelligence to craft logical arguments designed to arrive at his predetermined and desired outcome even if that flew in the face of his stated beliefs about states’ rights and such. To my eyes, he was not a principled justice, but one who consistently applied the power of government to compel his views on morality. I will not miss his voice denying individuals their liberty.

You are certainly welcome to feel differently.

 

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Video Review: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

I have been a fan of filmmaker and author Nicholas Meyer since he exploded into my consciousness as the creative force behind the best Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. His other films include Time After Time, The Deceivers, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and many others.  Among the films he has written The Seven Percent Solution is one I have wanted to see for years and  years. Unavailable on DVD, I have been patiently waiting for its release. By a stroke of good fortune I learned that HBO Now had it on their menu of on-demand movie this month and together with my sweetie-wife we watched it.han

The film is set during the period when Holmes (Nichol Williamson) is believed dead, but it actually starts just prior to that. Watson (Robert Duvall) is happy married to mary and is suddenly summoned to Holmes’ side. Holmes is suffering from a paranoid attack brought on my his abuse fo cocaine. Fearing for his friend’s life Watson engages the assistance of Holmes’ brother Mycroft (Charles Gray) and the collude to bring Holmes to the only doctor who might break his addiction, Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin.)

This film plays within the cannon, but also breaks the cannon, providing an alternative explanation for Holmes’ disappearance after his final confrontation with Professor Moriarity (Lawrence Olivier.) There is a light-hearted tone to the film though not as comical as Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Overall it was enjoyable to watch and I adored Nichol Williamson as Holmes. (Many fans will know him as Merlin from John Borman’s Excalibur.) Alan Arkin is fine as the famous Freud, and most of the cast perform their roles competently. Sadly Duvall’s English accent is a terrible affront to the ears and grated on me throughout the movie.

If you have HBO and its on-demand services it is certainly worth a go.

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The Creative Process

Now that I have completed – at least in a submission form – my latest novel and it’s off to my agent it’s time to that start the gears turning on the next one. That has got me thinking about the creative process and how vague ideas turn into prose.

Every artist has a different thing that primes the pump. For me on of my most valuable tools is a solo trip to a theme park.

Theme parks are not something most people engaging in alone. They are family affairs, days out with friends, or a way for couples to bond, but I discovered a few years ago that solo trips held a special interest for me.

I have been described by some people as a shy extrovert. It is true that forming an initial one on one conversation without someone I do not know is a challenging task, but once that bond is formed I’ll happily chat at length. I also need alone time to think to ponder and to let my idea bounce around in a random Brownian fashion. This alone time doesn’t mean there can be no people, just people I am not interacting with. In my life there are lots of people I care about and lots of people I will interact with if they are around. Since I have a day job and writing is not a full-time profession, I don’t have an empty house to wander through, a solo trip to a theme park perfectly fits my needs.

Theme parks engage me enough that I am distracted, but do not require focused attention, allowing my mind to make those wonderful unplanned connections. I can spend four or five hours enjoying myself and never say more to anyone than ‘I’ll have that hot dog.’

For the last few years, my go-to park has been Universal Studios Hollywood. The annual passes were affordable, had no blackout dates, and on Super Bowl Sunday the attended has been light and the freeways clear. This Sunday will be my last Super Bowl Sunday trip to Universal Studios Hollywood. Now that their newest attraction is about to go on-line, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter,’ they’ve dramatically raised their prices on the annual passes, introduced blackout dates, and in general driven me away.

I am going to investigate Knott’s Berry Farm as my go-to park of the future, but until then, this Sunday will be spent with the tourists and guides at Universal Studios Hollywood.

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