Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Richard Dansky's LiveJournal:

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Monday, May 28th, 2012
10:40 am	Oh. Hey. Stuff. A new book review is up over at Green Man. This one's for Robert Kroese's Mercury Rises, which hovers in roughly the same neighborhood as Good Omens. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is out. You should go play it, as it is massively shootery goodness. You can still get the super-dooper all-editions version of Don't Read This Book, edited by Chuck Wendig and featuring my story "Don't Be Your Father". And of course, there's still the award-winning Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, with "The Man Who Built Haunted Houses". And that's about all I'm allowed to talk about this week. Next week, maybe something a little different... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
12:15 pm	GRFS GRFS GRFS Tonight, we had midnight launch events for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Various Red Storm folk went to various local Gamestops and hung out, signed autographs, talked to folks and generally celebrated the fact that GR:FS was, as they say, a thing.  Me, I went to the store closest to my home, which is to say the Brier Creek one. I've spent a lot of money there over the years, gotten to know some of the folks who work there, and so it was a cool thing to share. I'd never done a midnight launch, you see. They were always kind of for other people. Various games I've worked on have had various degrees of launch pomp and circumstance - anything from massive star-studded launch parties in Hollywood to "wait, that came out? Really?" So tonight was kind of special. This game has been a long time coming, and there's a lot of blood and sweat and tears and other, possibly less identifiable fluids that went into it (OK, there was a memorable trip to Harry's New York Bar in Paris, where the fluid in question was an absinthe cocktail served up by the greatest bartender in the history of humanity, but I digress), and to see it finally real - and to see folks that eager to play it, well that meant a lot. And the best part was, as we signed posters and game cases and discs and bandannas, that so many of the folks who were there thanked us for making the game."We know you worked hard." "I appreciate how hard you guys must have worked." "Ghost Recon was the first game I ever played online - thanks for that." "I came here straight from work." Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but that really did mean something. The understanding that a lot of people - actual people, who busted their butts for a long time to make this thing happen and deserve recognition for the long hours and late nights they put in - made this, instead of a faceless company, well, I like to think that's a good thing. Which leads me to say this: thank you, to the folks who showed up tonight, and to the folks who are excited to play the game. It doesn't happen without you, either.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 7th, 2012
11:44 pm	A Thought on Amendment One Dear Friends: If you live in North Carolina, I would humbly request that you exercise your right as a citizen tomorrow and vote, and that when you do so, you vote against Amendment One. Regardless of your stance on gay marriage and civil unions - and I am not going to attempt to change anyone's mind to my way of thinking, because, frankly, that trick never works - you should vote against this thing. You should vote against it because it is bad for North Carolina. It drives off potential skill workers who might exist in "non-traditional" civil unions. Drive off the talent, and you make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers. Make North Carolina a less appealing place for employers, and companies leave. And when companies leave, jobs leave. So. Vote against the job-killing legislation. Even if you don't support the right of two consenting adults to get married because of their particular biology, this thing's bad for you. And for all of us. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
12:31 am	The Stages of Response to Bad Books The idea that a book is somehow sacred because it is, well, a book, is hooey. There are plenty of crappy books out there, and anyone who says they haven't encountered one is either lying, sheltered, or possessed of such generous taste that they'd call Tarnsman of Gor a "sensitive coming of age story". Reactions to lousy books differ, but they tend to come in a few broad categories: Resignation - Commonly expressed by readers who haven't yet figured out that you don't have to finish every book you start, much in the same way you don't actually have to clean your plate. In economics, they call this a sunk cost; in the real world, it's called throwing good money, time, and brain space after bad. But no matter how bad a book is, there are those who will grimly slog to the finish, just to say they finished. At that point, they will take it as a badge of honor that they managed to do so, under the mistaken impression that someone gives a damn, or that they've unlocked some sort of book-based XBox Live achievement. Fortunately, most readers grow out of this stage. Indignation - Also known as "I can do better than this crap", this is the inspirational response that causes the reader to put down a bad book and actually try to write. Whether it actually produces writing that is, on average, better than the stuff that inspired it is debatable, but at least it means fewer people reading crap books on airplanes. Rage - The penultimate stage of reaction, this occurs when the reader comes to the conclusion that not only is the book they're reading bad, but they've also wasted some combination of both time and money, i.e. part of their life they will never get back, engaging with it. The realization that they have spent time on, oh, let's say a science fiction novel that features loving descriptions of how the heroine saves the galaxy by repeatedly flashing her rack at space aliens who fire AK-47s that they could have spent doing literally anything else is enough to bring out a Hulk-like rage, often punctuated by the book in question going airborne. While counterproductive, it's quite cathartic. Peace - Eventually, one comes to the place where one can simply realize a book is bad, put it down, and never bother with it again. If one has truly achieved bad book enlightenment, one can discern which of one's friends might actually enjoy said book and gift it to them, without judgment or commentary. This is the ideal to which many of us achieve - the wisdom to choose the right book, the confidence to put the wrong book down, and the grace to let it find its audience. For my part, I'm perfectly content to stick with Rage, which is one of the reasons I haven't migrated my reading to any electronic platform. There's always the chance that I'll let fly before realizing that, oops, that was the surprisingly aerodynamic iPad that just went across the office, and nobody wants that. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
10:43 pm	Submit! Hey, folks - just want to send out a quick reminder about two upcoming submissions deadlines.  The first is the 30th of April, and it's the deadline for the issue of Wily Writers I'll be guest editing. The guidelines are here, and the topic is Cryptofiction. What is Cryptofiction, you ask? It's fiction about sasquatches, yeti, Mongolian Death Worms, Nessie, and more - about critters that just might exist for real.  If you've got a story about a skunk ape, I want to see it. The second is on the 2nd of May - it's the deadline for getting in submissions for the Game Narrative Summit at GDC Online in Austin this October. The guidelines are here; the conference is, in my humble opinion, a superb place to hobnob with those who care about writing and narrative in games, as well as being located in Austin. So, in short, if you think you have something to say about narrative in games, pitch a talk. And pitch it quickly :-) (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
11:41 pm	Ne'er More The Raven is not the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater. When I was 12 years old, a bunch of friends and I biked down to the GCC Orleans 8 at Roosevelt Mall in Philly and paid hard-earned cash for Treasure of the Four Crowns (in 3D). That movie was so bad, I have blocked out everything about it except the final shot, wherein a snake shoots out of a skull's eye socket, directly at the audience. It was the 80s, and it was 3D.  When I lived in Atlanta, I spent a rainy evening sitting in a theater watching Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to the young lady who went with me; to be fair, the other choices that evening weren't any better, and I had these vague hopes that the presence of Matt Frewer would at least render the film tolerable. I was wrong, and that was the second-worst movie I'd ever seen in a theater. The third-worst movie I ever saw in a theater was Doogal, a re-dubbed version of a CGI movie based on a European kid's show. It featured the vocal talents of both Jon Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, which meant that for my wife, it was the equivalent of porn. Three minutes in, she leaned over and whispered, "Honey, I'm so sorry".  Which means, despite stiff competition from Fantastic Four 2 and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Date Movie, The Raven is probably the fourth-worst movie I've ever seen in a theater.  Now, I am sure of a couple of things. I am sure that there are those among you who will go see it and feel that I'm way off base. That's your right; if you can find enjoyment in it, you have my heartfelt blessing. I'm also sure that even if you do like it, you will find laughing out loud at the closing credits sequence, which looks to have wandered in from an entirely different movie, one which possibly starred Matt Damon, or Daniel Craig. And I am absolutely certain that you will agree that, receding hairline or no, John Cusack looks nothing like Edgar Allan Poe.  Cusack's just part of the problem with the film. He's at least energetic at points, though he walks into every scene with his face in an "o" of surprise. Most of the rest of the acting is so wooden that they should spray the theater for termites. I'm guessing that was director James McTeigue's take on "period" - everyone's so stiff they sound like they've already been embalmed. Then again, that may be the fault of the script, which manages to hit the sweet spot of nearly limitless exposition - this thing lays more pipe than the Keystone XL - with still leaving plot points major and minor unexplained. The internal logic of the film is spotty, too. The villain demands that our hero, the occasionally alcoholic Poe, perform a specific task, and then goes about making it impossible for him to perform it (he somehow does it anyway, largely offscreen). A lantern that's blown out in one shot is lit in the next; the richest man in Baltimore apparently belongs to a parish church miles from civilization. And of course, the plot is set up that the villain is yet another supervillain serial killer, capable of performing astonishing acts of butchery, carpentry, mechanical engineering and masonry on a timeframe that would make The Flash blush. In a nutshell, this film lives at the intersection of Sherlock Holmes 2 and Saw 4: a famous period detective-type, mixed up with moments of torture porn. If that's your thing, go for it. It certainly wasn't mine. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
12:31 am	Oh. Look. A Book Review. Over at Sleeping Hedgehog, actually - not one of the more positive ones I've written, I'm afraid. (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
11:45 pm	A Guy Walks Into A Bar In Elkridge... Monday was not a good day.  We buried my Aunt Sheila that morning. She was a lovely lady who always lived life to the fullest, and whose struggles with the disease that killed her were heartbreaking. And, just like in a bad comedy, other things went wrong. Directional snafus. An incident with the rented van. Clothing getting caught on said carnivorous van and getting torn. Other stuff. Like I said, not a good day.  We headed out of Long Island after the post-funeral reception, after the hugs had been given and the stories been told and the pictures shared. The family had driven all the way up from NC the night before, myself and my parents and my sister and her two children (who did their uncle's heart good by singing along with the Muppets playlist he'd queued up, and who successfully retold one of Fozzie Bear's best jokes). We'd started at 9:30 in the morning, hit the hotel at nearly midnight, and were still shaking off road dust the morning of. So everyone was tired and drawn when we piled back into the rented van to head south, slaloming along the Belt and over the Verrazano, and across the arch of the Goethals Bridge into Jersey and points south. It had been decided by mutual consent that we wouldn't go all the way back that night. No doubt we could have done it if we'd pushed, but really, we were in no shape. So I got us a couple of hotel rooms at a Best Western just south of Baltimore, and we pulled in at a reasonable hour and unloaded. Mom and the kids went up to one room, where my nephew insisted on watching the dying minutes of the Bruins-Caps playoff game. Dad went up to the other, took off his shoes, and settled in to watch a little TV and relax. And my sister and I went over to the bar next door to grab a beer, because, by God, we each needed one.  (Note: My sister, while I stepped out for a minute to deal with something, also bought me a couple of fingers' worth of Glenlivet. I like my sister.) And we sat, and we talked, and we sipped our beers - Blue Moon for her, Sam Adams Alpine for me, both draft. She also chatted with the woman on the stool next to her, who was chowing down on a bowl of chowder, and both of us talked to the bartender, a striking woman who'd apparently played soccer at the University of Maryland and who discussed the minutiae of breaking down a bar at the end of the evening with my sister, who's a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and thus knows such things. Eventually, my sister wandered off to bed. I'm one of the all-time great drink nursers, a trick I learned from my dad, and so my scotch levels tend to go down slowly. So I sat, and I talked with the soccer-playing bartender some more - when she learned I lived in Durham, she began going off about how the soccer pitches at Duke are oddly shaped, and how she'd gotten this close to scoring a goal there once, and how she was glad I wasn't a Duke fan because, really, well, Duke fans - and I sipped scotch. After a while a couple came in and sat down, and ordered drinks made with Malibu. They'd just gotten in from San Diego, where the weather was apparently terrible, and they were in town to pitch the Navy on the green products their company manufactured. They were friendly, and we chatted, and they chatted with the bartender, and they talked about tungsten coating on light bulbs that would oxidize and disinfect the air, and I talked a little bit about video games, and the bartender took a picture of my business card and passed it along to a friend of hers who wanted to make games.  And then, in a friendly way, one of the folks from San Diego asked me if I believed in the Bible. Now, there are three things you don't talk about in bars with strangers: politics, religion, and sex. (It used to be taxes, but let's face it, taxes are politics these days). Our bartender had reminded us of just that fact as a guy on the other side of the bar spent the entire evening going off about various political topics, loudly enough to drive away the entire UMBC Women's Volleyball team, who'd come in earlier to watch the tail end of the Orioles-White Sox game. (Orioles came back from down 3 and won in extra innings, in case you're interested. Which you're probably not). But here I was, being asked if I believed in the Bible. I thought about it for a second, and I took a sip of the Glenlivet - the Sam Adams was long gone - and I said, "I believe in the laws of the physics, man's inhumanity to man, and the inability of two Philadelphia sports franchises to ever win a game on the same day." There was a second, and then they laughed, and I laughed, and the bartender laughed, and we were on to something else. We swapped business cards, and I finished my drink, and then I went back to the hotel to grab a couple of hours of sleep before the alarm went off.  The laws of physics. Man's inhumanity to man. The inability of, well, never mind. Doesn't matter if that's what I actually believe or not. It was the right thing to say in that time and in that place, and it led us out of a place that might not have had as many laughs. For that night, and I think for a lot of nights, that's more than enough. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
11:00 pm	Geek's Dream Girl Interview Generally these days when I get interviewed, it's about a video game. Less frequently, it's about fiction. And every once in a great while, someone asks me a few questions about my days in tabletop. Lillian Cohen-Moore just did one of the latter - a series of questions about Wraith, and Charnel Houses of Europe in particular - and you can find the result over at Geek's Dream Girl. Looking back over it, I realize that A)I'm a wordy bastard B)I use the word "folks" a lot and C) there were still a few things I wanted to get off my sternum about what I was trying to do with Wraith, back in the day. So read it, if you're interested in getting down among the dry bones of the past. And let me know what you think, if you do. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 9th, 2012
11:31 pm	Don't Read This Book Buy it, yes. But read it, absolutely not. If you do, you'll find stories like my "Don't Be Your Father", which is about the lengths one man will go to in order to protect his daughter from the nightmares that plagued him as a child. Or Robin Laws' "Don't Lose Your Shit", which I'll let him tell you about. Or other pieces by folks like the mighty Matt Forbeck, Mur Lafferty, Monica Valentinelli, Will Hindmarch and many more. Wait. Which book am I talking about? Why, it's Don't Read This Book, a collection of stories inspired by delightfully nightmarish RPG Don't Rest Your Head and edited by devilishly clever raconteur Chuck Wendig. It's going to be good. But don't read it. Unless you're the sort of reader who doesn't do what they're told. (Comment on this)
12:15 am	Park and a Little Recreation Found a park today that I'd never been to today. I was over at my folks' place, feeding their cat and taking care of some paperwork for them while they were out of town. That took about an hour and a half, most of which was spent with their cat either in my lap or grabbing my hand with her forepaws to ensure appropriate skritches, and when it was done, I found myself making a detour on the way home.  The Triangle's full of signs, you see. Little brown signs that mark the entrances to parks, or to wildlife viewing areas, or "Waterfowl impoundment areas", which always brings to mind traffic cops slapping a bright orange boot immobilization device onto a mallard, or possibly a great blue heron. And you drive past them a hundred times, and never follow them, and never give them a second thought. They're part of the landscape. They're white noise. They're invisible. Except today - which, to be fair, was a beautiful day - I saw one. I'd seen it a few dozen times before, at least. A sign, lonely, stuck on the side of a major traffic artery, right by some office park and industrial stuff, and definitely looking way up there on the sad-and-lonely meter, noting the entrance to a park. This time, I didn't drive past it. I made the turn, instead. And I drove past some office park stuff, and some warehouses, and some places that were maybe abandoned. I made a left turn, followed some more signs, and then, of course, missed the turn into the park. Fortunately, there was a warehouse of some kind just up the road whose driveway I could turn around in, and so I did. The park was nice. Not many folks parked in the lot I pulled into, but that's to be expected. There was a lake, visible through the trees, and a lodge, and the usual message board with a map and posted activities and a map and all that sort of good stuff. I got out and walked down to the lake, skirting the chain that was up across the gravel road leading down that way. It was a trek of maybe a hundred feet. As I got closer to the water, I saw other folks on various points along the shore, heard a vociferously contested basketball game on one of the park's courts, saw water going over the top of a dam and downstream in a measured thin sheet. Remarkable features? There were none. It was a small urban park, tucked away in the northeast corner of a city, in a place where those who wanted or needed to find it, would. That was enough. I stayed maybe five minutes. That was enough, too - to have been there, where I hadn't thought to be before. And then it was OK to go.   (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
11:55 pm	There comes a time in every man's life when he stops, looks around, and says to himself several things that are absolutely unprintable. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
1:36 am	Book sale adventures Sunday, I stopped by the Wake County Library booksale, mainly out of reflex. Every year I go, usually in the company of Melinda and/or friends, and every year I buy books. Usually, I circle it on the calendar; there are excited emails between me and various book-loving friends, and then once the sale arrives, the frenzy begins. This year...not so much. I parked probably a quarter of a mile away from the actual book sale building. This was deliberate, to discourage me from filling up more boxes with books than I could carry that distance (i.e., 2). We're at the point where the primary cost of getting books is the space to put them in; the days when I could snaffle up books on a "that looks like it might be interesting so I'll take a chance on it" whim are gone*. Now I have to be picky, which is why I went on Sunday. Sunday, you see, is when most of the good stuff is gone. For three days it's been picked over; what's left on Sunday is the obscure (which I like), the weird (which I like) and the stuff there's so damn many copies of that a few have, salmon-like, run the gauntlet of grizzlies/readers and made it all the way upstream. It's also the day you see people literally shoveling books by the armload into their boxes, but hey, at $5 a box, can you blame them? (OK, maybe a little). And since the stuff I want is generally the stuff that makes other people go "buh?", I'm OK with Sunday. The horror section had been picked mostly to bones by the time I arrived. 95% of what was left was Dean Koontz, Koontz in hardback, Koontz in paperback. Koontz from the early days, Koontz' most recent books. I could barely imagine how many Dean Koontz novels had been up for sale originally for there to still be this many. Mystery, for its part, was still pretty densely packed. I picked up a couple of Michael Connollys on the premise that they make good plane books, then put them back on the grounds that they were heavy, and didn't regret the decision. I think I ended up with a couple of oddball Swedish mysteries on general principle; at this point, I'm really not sure. Science fiction had been picked over pretty thoroughly as well. I did manage to find some goodies - a Kage Baker I didn't have, the hardback edition of Mythago Wood, a copy of The World and Thorinn, old-school stuff that presumably was already owned by people who wanted it and too creaky for those who didn't. Most of the long tables were bare, though, with just occasional oases of clumped books, and book sale volunteers consolidating, consolidating everywhere. One exception - there were a couple of dozen copies of Elemental, by Brad Wardell, all shiny and new and suspiciously far apart from all of the other science fiction novels. It was if the other books wanted no part of them, and having read the first few chapters, I can see why. If you ever wanted a book-length, less interesting "Eye of Argon", this is your read. It's a tie-in novel for a game that didn't exactly set the market on fire, written by the game's designer, and apparently edited between the hours of 3 and 3:15 PM on the last Friday before Christmas break. Those books were still sitting there on the table when I left; for all I know, they're sitting there still. Whoever set the sale up had a sense of humor; Religion and Science ran side by side down the same long tables. Of course, Religion was Religion, while Science consisted largely (by the time I got there) of books about cats and innumerable copies of Marley and Me, which are to science what I am to dunking from the foul line, which is to say, what the hell? Science, though, is where I generally make out like a bandit, grabbing books on spruce trees or cod or whatnot that are engrossing reads without the weight of being Very Weighty Books indeed. I like nibbling around the edges of knowledge like that, historical and scientific in the same place, and in a normal year I can fill a box in that section alone. This year, I was a little more cautious, a little more "am I actually going to read this at some point in the next twelve months", and a little less "one man's guide to trying to catch every species of catfish in Argentina? AWESOME!". Still picked up a book about a female explorer and pandas, and an alternative medicine debunker's magnum opus, and a few more, but it could have been worse. It could have been much, much worse. I wrapped it all up with a few titles out of the history section, then paid up and walked out. To cover the distance to the car, I ended up balancing the box of books on my head; it seemed the most sensible way to distribute the weight. And on a day when there was a marching band competition inside the Dorton Arena building - one of the buses that had hauled kids there had the legend "Chariots for Hire" on the side - it was far from the weirdest thing anyone was wearing on their head. *Please, no "You should switch to ebooks" rants. If you like ebooks, great. More power to you, happy reading, and it's great you've found a way to experience literature that works for you. Seriously - I'm glad you enjoy reading that way. Me, I like my books solid state and platform independent, not to mention tangible, and that's just how I like reading them. This does not make me a bad person, a relic survival along the lines of an australopithecus, or a hipster. It means I like books that way, and that is all. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
1:02 am	Stuff. By Me. This month's Storytellers Unplugged post is up. Beware: It includes harsh language and a Zardoz reference. There's a review of Charles De Lint's Eyes Like Leaves up over at Sleeping Hedgehog. And there will be all sorts of news about short stories coming soon. Promise. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
1:38 pm	Bigfoot Versus Aliens Versus My TV As some of you may have surmised, I dig Bigfoot. I have for years, ever since I was a kid and caught my first glimpse of the “In Search Of” episode dedicated to the Patterson-Gimlin film, and I feel absolutely no need to apologize for it. I think there’s something ineffably cool about the notion of a big old critter like that still lurking in the weeds, and I will continue to do so until the day the very last clump of trees larger than a portapotty is knocked down to make way for a strip mall, leaving the big fella without any cover. Now, I don’t consider myself a True Believer. I don’t wander out into the woods every weekend to make noises like a Ricola spokesman on a coke bender, and I don’t think that there are sasquatches in my backyard. I’m more fascinated by the stories, and the need for the stories, and the scientific implications, however unlikely, of the critter being out there.  And, to be honest, I’ve had more than one friend – solid, serious folks who spend a lot of time outdoors and know what a bear looks like – tell me they’ve seen something out there that wasn’t quite human and wasn’t quite right, and I’ll be damned if I call any of those folks a liar. So color me a hopeful agnostic on the whole Bigfoot issue, and in the meantime, I livetweet Finding Bigfoot every Sunday night when it’s on. This is partially done for humor value and partially done out of blind rage on behalf of the scientific method; I’m fairly certain that if you had to list the least effective methods of Bigfoot tracking out there, they’d include tramping around in the woods with a camera crew, setting off fireworks, and shouting DID YOU HEAR THAT every time a squirrel farts in the near vicinity. If you condensed down all of my tweets from all of the episodes of that show, they’d probably equate to one long “HYYYNNEEEARRGGHH”. But I enjoy it, and people seem to be amused by it (judging by the number of folks at GDC who wanted to talk to me about Finding Bigfoot), and, well, yeah. However, season 2 is done, and God knows when season 3 will arrive, which meant that the other night, in an attempt to fill the Sasquatch-shaped hole in my viewing, I actually tuned in to the episode of Ancient Aliens” that was about the supposed link between Bigfoot and UFOs. This, as you might have guessed, was a mistake. Now, Ancient Aliens may in fact be the dumbest show on television. One gets the feeling that the mastermind behind it, whom I will call George Molari of House Molari of the Great Centauri Republic, took at look at his fridge one day in college, noticed that his six pack was missing a beer, and rather than question his roommates, decided that his PBR had been stolen by ALIENS. It’s that kind of show. Ancient humans did something? ALIENS. Two rocks are stacked on top of each other? ALIENS. You get the idea. So the idea of watching him trying to wrap Bigfoot in shiny space alien packaging, and maybe claim Bigfoot made the Nazca lines, had all the right elements of train wreck TV. To be fair, I actually tuned in by accident Friday night – I’d finished off another project and was going to watch a little TV before bed, and hadn’t realized that the show was on. But it was, and the little box in the corner of my tv screen informed me that if I wanted to, I could restart the broadcast so I could watch the thing from the beginning. Of course I wanted to see it from the beginning, so I hit the appropriate button on the remote, and waited. And the TV turned itself off. So I said, “Hmm.” And I turned it back on. And once again, I hit the button when I was asked if I wanted to see the show from the beginning. This time, the television didn’t shut off. It just waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Until finally, it told me that it couldn’t show me that particular piece of television. I tried again. Twice.  I got the same result. Twice. All of which tells me that my television has limits. It will let me watch all the Finding Bigfoot I want. It will let me watch Thundarr the Barbarian marathons at 2 AM on Boomerang. It will let me watch Philadelphia Eagles football. But at Ancient Aliens: Bigfoot and UFOs, it draws a line. It would rather die, than show me that particular slab of television. It’s a humbling thing to know. And I guess I’ll have to Hulu the show on my iPad instead. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
11:56 pm	And the Big Man Left The Band The first time Melinda and I went to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live, it was two or so tours ago. Organist and longtime band member Danny Federici had just passed away shortly beforehand, and there was a fairly lengthy remembrance of him during the show. Springsteen told a few stories, there was a shared moment, and then the show went on. It felt warm and appropriate and suitably moving, that they were taking time to acknowledge the loss of their friend while doing what they had all done together so well, for so long. We went Monday to see him again. Before this tour, long-time E Street Band member Clarence Clemons, the Big Man, had passed away. It wasn't entirely surprising - he'd been looking unwell for a long time, and had taken to spending most shows seated on an overstuffed throne onstage until it was time to limber up his mighty saxophone. But there's a difference between knowing it's going to happen one of these days and actually having it happen, and going on anyway. This time, Springsteen didn't stop the show to tell stories. He didn't eulogize Clemons, nor did he stop to tell stories, or call specific attention to his absence. Of course, he did replace the Big Man with a five piece horn section - one man simply being not enough - that included Clemens' own nephew, a lumbering giant in cool shades and superb saxophonist in his own right. But there were no shout-outs, not projected pictures, no moments of maudlin sentimentality or pausing in loss. Three hours, non-stop, no intermission and no let-up. And then, in the last song of the last encore - and there was none of the usual passive-aggressive running off stage just to get called back on again, because these guys act like they've been there before - Springsteen and the band launched into "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out". For those who don't know, it's one of the band's classics, and it details the story, more or less, of how Bruce, aka "Bad Scooter", got the band together. According to legend, Springsteen and his then-band, a sort of proto-E Street, were onstage on a rainy night in New Jersey when suddenly, the door to the bar they were playing in was literally blown off its hinges. Standing there, framed in the doorway with rain whipping around him, was a big man with a saxophone, who said, "I want to play with your band." And the rest, it was music. "The E Street Shuffle", which they played Monday, references this. So does "Tenth Avenue Freezeout". For the last verse, there's a little shift in the lyrics. Springsteen shouts, "Now listen, this is the important part," with the next two lines being "When a change was made uptown/And the Big Man joined the band". And Monday night, he got there, and he stopped. The band stopped. Springsteen held up the microphone. And the crowd, it roared. Sometime later, much later, the song started back up again. Which was, come to think of it, just right. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
12:36 am	A Quick Note On Travel Stories My dear friends: I freely admit that I have travel goblins. In the immortal words of Mike Lee, regarding an evening that included wild dogs, an unexplained circus, a Serbian oompah band, meat frisbees, and Joe Biden, "This shit never happens when you're not around". Weird things just happen to me when I travel, and most of them involve lengthy flight delays. And yes, I post these things, and often I do so in a certain style that is, shall we say, calculated for effect. Why? It's not because I'm mad, honest. It's not because I want sympathy. It's because, honest to God, I find all this crap funny. A flight crew trapped in Tulsa? "We're going to try to reboot the plane"? Seriously, how can I take it...seriously. So I write the stories, and I try to write them in a way that will be suitably amusing, and I post them. Hopefully, they provide a chuckle or two. That's all I want or can ask for. They're most certainly not serious, nor are they intended as blows against the Pearson-LaGuardia machine. Just a giggle, often at my own expense. And I wouldn't want them to be anything more. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
7:39 pm	Hey, Look. Book Reviews In no particular order: Jonathan Wood's No Hero, about yet another plucky but underfunded British secret agency saving the world from icky death Cecil Castellucci's First Day On Earth, which hammers home that both high school and being abducted by aliens can suck Daniel Polansky's Low Town, a tale of a detective in a world of magic, drugs, magical drugs, and real estate values Peter S. Beagle's Sleight of Hand, which is a collection of short stories largely about family problems, with occasional monsters Warren Ellis' Desolation Jones, an old review of an old graphic novel that can be summed up as Spider Jerusalem's Burn Notice (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 12th, 2012
10:26 pm	How to get from Durham to Toronto in a Few Easy Steps That Include Detroit Realize that I need to be up around 4 in the AM, and thus go to bed early. Realize that it doesn't matter if I go to bed early, as my body refuses to believe anything not in single digits qualifies as "bedtime" Try not to disturb sleeping spouse, who really has done nothing to deserve any of this. Fall asleep around 1:30 AM Wake up in blind panic, convinced I have overslept. Attempt to turn on cell phone to get a look at what time it is. Attempt to type in password. Fail. Attempt to type in password again. Fail. Attempt to type in password again. Fail. Attempt to type in password again. Fail. Consider possibility of being locked out of cell phone, which is also being used as my alarm clock. Quietly freak out. Attempt to type in password very slowly. Fail. Curse under my breath. Type in password. Succeed. Realize it is now 2 AM. Curse more. Double-check alarm time. Turn cell phone off again. Fall asleep again at 3. Get up at 3:59 in acute awareness that cell phone is about to go off. Decide this is my mutant power. Get up and turn off alarm. Brush teeth, which somehow triggers a nosebleed. Interrupt tooth brushing long enough to stop nosebleed. Ascertain that nosebleed did not get blood in the toothpaste, and finish brushing teeth. Get dressed and grab luggage. Head to airport. Arrive at airport at 4:45. Be astonished that there is parking. Perform awkward luggage dance to the amusement of fellow travelers. Head to terminal. Attempt to check at Delta kiosk using passport. Fail. Attempt to check in at Delta kiosk using credit card. Fail. Attempt to check in at Delta kiosk using entirely different kiosk. Fail. Debate having a nosebleed all over Delta kiosk, and instead try confirmation number, which works. Nearly have a coronary when successful checkin then asks for passport scan. Get on plane. Fly to Detroit. Walk to appropriate gate at Detroit, pausing for breakfast. Note that they're lined up 20 deep at the Einstein Brothers bagel stand, and decide to be afraid. Listen to announcement at gate that our flight crew is trapped in Tulsa, and won't be arriving until 12:30. Delta promises to try to find another flight crew, but, well,  no promises. Half an hour later, listen to announcement that there will be no alternate crew, we'll be leaving at 12:30, and that under no circumstances should anyone leave the gate area because we might get another flight crew and leave before 12:30. Watch everyone leave the gate area. Send details of holdup to beloved spouse. Beloved spouse suggests turning around and coming home before plane gets eaten by Godzilla. Confess that beloved spouse has a point. Eventually, get on plane. Sit on plane. Sit on plane a while longer. Sit on plane until captain announces that the jetbridge is stuck and we're not going anywhere until they unstick it. Resist urge to suggest they try soap and hot water. Sit a while longer. Sit even longer. Listen to announcement that there is a new development, in that there are checked bags belonging to passengers who did not appear to get on the plane. As such, the TSA is removing the bags. Realize that this means unpacking and repacking entire plane. Mention this to beloved spouse over IM. Beloved spouse makes more noises about inevitability of being nommed by Godzilla. Eventually, and without fanfare, take off. Land in Toronto. Go through customs. Get luggage. Get nosebleed. Reflect on circular nature of life. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
11:51 pm	Things I Never Expected to Hear You can put "a full orchestral treatment of the theme from Splinter Cell: Conviction" on that list. And yet, there it is. And of course, in the comments section of the linked page there's all sorts of mudslinging about the choices of tracks on the album this came from, what that says about recent AAA titles vs. classic games, how things that don't conform 100% to a given poster's expectations and desires automatically suck, and so forth. It would be nice, when a project like this came along, for folks to say, "Hey, maybe not all of the stuff I would have chosen, but I think I might just judge it on its own merits", as opposed to taking the typically hyperbolic CD title - seriously, did ANYONE think that this track list was compiled in an effort to be definitive for the ages, as opposed to the CD being given a title that might sell a few more copies - as some sort of betrayal of the Platonic Ideal of Game Music? I know, I'm crazy. Then again, my favorite game music comes from Colony Wars, so any opinion I have on the greatest game music of all time is probably a little skewed anyway. But in the end, it's neat to hear the Conviction theme get the full orchestral treatment, and I would hope that even the folks who don't think it's One Of The Greatest Games Of All Time, or Some Of The Greatest Game Music Of All Time would at least enjoy the track for what it is. (2 Comments |Comment on this)