Well, that's.... odd.

Hello all, sorry for my long absence. It's not that I haven't thought about blogging, it's just that I've been writing other things. Like museum labels. And Call of Cthulhu adventures. And strongly worded emails. And... ergh. Yeah.

Truth to tell, I actually did write something resembling a work of actual fiction a few months ago. It was a short story, and I wrote it as a submission to Machine of Death volume 2. Ordinarily I don't even think about writing fiction--truth is strange enough, honestly, and I don't feel I have a gift for that type of storytelling. But an idea hit me, and I figured why not write it down. For those who haven't heard of it, or are too lazy to click the above link, Machine of Death is an anthology in which all the stories have a single premise--there's a machine that can unerringly predict an individual's cause of death from a blood sample. That's it. The idea first came from this comic, by the amazing Ryan North. The first volume hit #1 on Amazon last October, pushing Glenn Beck's newest book off the chart for a day and earning his considerable animosity. It's available as a CC by SA pdf, free of charge, on the MOD website. And it sold so well that the editors decided to put together a volume 2.

So I bought the book, and I enjoyed it, but when volume 2 submissions were solicited I didn't think twice about it... until I had a sudden idea for a story a scant 10 days before the submission deadline. I busted a move, wrote a story in 4 days, and got it in on deadline. As did nearly 2000 other people! This week is the week when authors find out which of the 1958 stories submitted were chosen for publication, and let's just say I'm not getting my hopes up.

But to keep us entertained, a couple weeks ago the MOD website put up a "title cloud" of all the story titles submitted for volume 2. The rule is, the title has to be a cause of death from your story--so this title cloud is a hodgepodge of silly, sad, horrific, hilarious ways to die, and it's available as a pdf download or as a poster to purchase.

Of course I did what ever other author did, and immediately downloaded it to look for my story title in the tiny tiny fine print. I couldn't find it, but I found something else that was frankly more disturbing than the thought of death by Rapture:


Do you see it? Look closer.


Yes. That's my name, among nearly 2000 other causes of death. I actually had a sort of Donnie Darko moment where I wondered if it was just that I was going insane, and if I blinked and looked again my name wouldn't be there anymore, and then a giant vampire rabbit would show up in my bedroom and a plane would fall on me. But nope, it's there for realz. I checked in with the MOD folks, and they reassured me that someone else hadn't written a story where the protagonist dies of Me. Far less sinisterly, it was just some sort of glitch with importing the story titles between tetchy pieces of software. I'm really sort of thrilled--even if my story isn't chosen, I can legitimately say that Machine of Death put my name in print....

Debbie Reynolds' Costumes

A few months ago, some of you may recall (though many of you may not) my museum hosted a traveling exhibit called "Incredible Costumes from Film and TV." The exhibit itself, from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, featured a lot of costumes from Star Trek, Star Wars, the Terminator, and so on…. which was fabulous, but since our average visitor is 5 years old and the mere sight of Arnold ominously declaring "AHL BE BECK" is enough to reduce many of them to tears, the exhibit team was charged to enhance the exhibit by adding some costumes with Broader Family Appeal. So our Director of Collections set about making phone calls to various costume brokers/collectors/storage facilities, etc… and one of the people she ended up talking to was a guy named Todd Fisher.

Todd's mother is actress Debbie Reynolds, who is currently (for about another 12 hours—more on that later) the owner of the world's most comprehensive collection of Hollywood costumes from the silent era on forward. Due to her unique position as both participant in and collector of Hollywood history, she's accumulated costumes and associated props that go beyond amazement for us film nerd-o types—not just from her own films, but from every freakin' movie you ever loved. And it's been her intention to house all of this collection in a Hollywood history museum someday. Those of us in the museum world were aware that the possibility of a Debbie Reynolds costume museum was floating around out there for quite a while—I know some of the collection's been on display at a venue in Vegas, and I think there have been other places as well. But the long-term museum plan didn't work out, for whatever reason, and the collection is being sold at auction. All of it.

Debbie Reynolds, seen here in one of her most memorable film roles

Our museum doesn't have the wherewithal to buy a collection like that. No museum does, frankly, in this day and age. But our curator talked to Todd F. about the possibility of borrowing a few items from the collection prior to the auction—and he was nice as could be and talked to us about it at length. As it turned out, the timing was poor; an auction house needs to have the items a good 2 months before an auction to prep the catalog, and our exhibit didn't close til May 12. So it didn't happen, and we ended up getting some fabulous stuff from other sources, some of which I blogged about on the museum's website, if you're interested. The exhibit was a great success, and Arnie didn't make anyone cry (as far as I know,) so I think it was all good.

Anyway, this week I finally saw the catalog for the Debbie Reynolds costume auction, and it's unbelievable. Incredible, one of a kind stuff from the movies I grew up watching over and over—I kept flipping back to the page with the horrible green check suits from the "Fit as a Fiddle" number in "Singin' in the Rain" for some reason. I hope someone buys both and keeps them together. I hope that whoever buys most of this stuff finds a way to keep segments of the collection together and intact, and makes it available to the public and to researchers, as the projected museum would have.

A museum centered around this collection would have been an amazing thing to visit. I would have killed to be its exhibit developer. (Not that I don't love being an exhibit developer where I am now… but come on, seriously. I'd jump at the chance to write labels about Gene Kelly's shoes any day, and twice on Sundays. I'm just that lame.) I'll be watching the auction online tomorrow, and I might even bid on a couple things. Not that I'll be in contention for any of it, but it's about the experience. And I hope with all my heart that some of it—a lot of it—ends up in someone's museum, and doesn't just disappear into some billionaire's closet.

If you want to check it out, go to Profiles in History and download the catalog. It'll blow your mind.

I have good news, and bad news...

The good news is, I got my bike back.

The bad news is, I got raptured and wrecked it into my car.

Well, That Was a Hell of a Month.

April's always seemed like such a nice month, in past years. Showers, flowers, spring in the air... But as most of you probably already know, my April 2011 started with the sudden and unexpected death of my grandpa Fred. One could argue that at the age of 96, death isn't technically "unexpected"--and he'd have been the first to make this point, honestly--but it was still a shock, as he was in excellent health for 96, still living on his own, and still getting a lot of joy out of life. This in mind, of course, it's really great that he just dropped dead--"cocked up his toes," as my great-aunt Esther would have put it. (She cocked up her own at the age of 90, about 15 years back.) So many of the possible scenarios for Grandpa Fred's passing were so much worse that while I'd very sad about it, I can't think of a better way for things to have worked out (other than immortality, and frankly I suspect he wouldn't have gone for that even if it had been on offer.) But it was still a shock. And in the wake of that event, I had a serious veterinary issue with one of my cats, which led to problems with one of the other cats (apparently a cat with a cone on her head is the most terrifying thing in existence, as Other Cat hid in the space under the stairs for no less than 3 days straight after getting a brief glimpse of this eldrich horror.) Then I went to Washington DC on business for a few days, which was a nice break from the emotional chaos, but it led to getting a cold, which has now turned into a tidy case of walking pneumonia.

FUCK YOU, APRIL 2011.

But then I remind myself, it's still just April. It's still spring, there are still flowers and baby squirrels and all that jazz. And as my grandpa was quite an appreciator of flowers, I figured I'd post up some pics of what's blooming in my yard in his honor. Bring on May! I'm ready.

400!!!!

For my 400th blog post, I'd like to make an announcement.

I got a new bike.

Yeah, OK. When last you saw me (at least in this context) I was railing on at the unfeeling skies about having had my much-beloved dark orange Trek 7.3FX stolen from my workplace, from right in front of a security guard. At that time I was hopeful that I might still get the bike back, as 1) we knew who did it, and 2) I had the serial number and a detective and everything. I still don't think that was an unreasonable hope. What I didn't know was that when 2 of the museum's staff identified the guy from his mug shot, a third staff member identified totally the wrong guy. And that, as they say, is that, at least in the eyes of the prosecutor. They're not going to spend time and money prosecuting someone who's not 100% open-and-shut. My detective was kind enough to tell me roughly where the guy lives; so I'm still cruising through that neighborhood on my way to and from work, in hopes of coming across some asshole riding my bike one of these days. But in the meantime I needed a new one. I put it off, hoping that 2011 would bring back orange as a color choice for that bike (or any bike, really) but apparently orange is Out. Unless you favor mountain/dirt bikes, which I don't. So since switching brands wasn't going to give me a color advantage, I figured best to stay with the make and model I'd known and loved for the last 4 years. I therefore give you: The 2011 Trek 7.3 FX, in "Royal Maroon."



I ordered it last weekend, picked it up this weekend, and we went for our first ride together yesterday despite it being freezing cold out. I still miss my old bike. I wish death on the guy who took it, and I'm not going to stop looking for it everytime I go through that neighborhood. But I'm OK in the meantime. I've got another bike to love, and spring is here.

No Excuses

Whyfor no blog for 6 months? Lots of reasons, none of them particularly interesting or good. :) In the interim, I went to Hampshire, England for pleasure and Edmonton, Alberta for work. I opened two exhibits and closed one. I lost 3 of my 5 dart frogs, and bought 1 new one. My diabetic cat went back on insulin, then into remission, then back onto insulin. And my bicycle was stolen.

You might remember my bicycle; I blogged about buying it back in May of 2007, and before that I blogged about my lust for this particular bicycle (or one like it) for at least a year or two. It was the first big purchase I made when I became full-time employed again--my reward to myself for sticking out the 5 years of living frugally with only part-time work and sponging off my parents keeping me afloat. This bike was special in a sappy sentimental way, and also in a this-bike-fucking-rocks kind of a way. I hadn't had a new bike since 1984, and this 2006 Trek FX 7.3 was worth the wait, I have to say.

So when I got out of work on Saturday November 13, I was naturally pretty upset to discover that it had been stolen from the garage, right in front of the garage greeter who isn't always an actual security guard. My friend Sarah--a goddess if ever there was one--drove me around the neighborhood for nearly an hour looking to see if we could catch someone out and about on it, but to no avail. Returning to the museum, I learned that the thief had been caught on camera, and furthermore had had multiple alteractions with our security staff after trying to chain his own bike (yes, he arrived on a bike) to a guard rail fence. When he was told he needed to chain it in the garage instead, he became abusive, and shouted that he was a ticket scalper who worked downtown and didn't have TIME to waste putting his bike in the garage. (Apparently he did have time to steal my fucking bike. And time to get a ladyfriend of his to walk over to the museum and pick his own bike up while I was standing 10 feet away in tears trying to file a security report. It was only later upon review of the camera footage that we realized this.) When we heard the bit about him being a ticket scalper, Sarah said, "You've got to be kidding me. I know him, he walked in behind me from the garage today and I remembered him from when I used to work downtown. He's always scalping tickets near the Circle." (For the non-Hoosiers out there, ticket scalping is legal in Indiana, and any major event sees dozens of guys on street corners downtown offering to buy or sell tickets.) So, wow, I thought. At least we know where he works, sort of, and we have a good picture of him.

It took me a couple days to dig up my serial number, and the police wouldn't make a report without one, so I filled in time by posting REWARD flyers all over the neighborhood around the museum, and visiting the two nearest pawn shops to give them info on my bike as well. Once I'd filed a report, the police department actually assigned a detective to my case, and he assured me he'd come down to the museum to look at the footage and see what he could do... but I was rapidly giving up hope on getting my bike back. I got a copy of one of the stills from the security video myself, and made up some new flyers with my case #, the bike's serial #, the dude's description and photo, and a picture of a Trek 7.3 FX for reference purposes, planning to give them to the police officers downtown and see if that got me anywhere. Then the museum's concierge let me know she had cheap tickets available for that night's Pacer game, and I thought, hm. Well, I'd like to go to the game, and then I'll be able to hand some flyers to the cops who work around the Fieldhouse, so why not?

While the thought had occurred to me, I was really more or less unprepared for the possibility that I might actually find the guy myself. Yet as I tooled around looking for inexpensive downtown parking, suddenly there he was at the corner of Washington and Pennsylvania. My heart skipped, and not in a good way. While I am the first to admit I'm pretty terrible at remembering faces, I'd been staring at his photo on my desk for the better part of two days, and I knew instantly it was him--I'd thought his eyes were closed in the photo, but he actually is a pretty fat guy and his eyes are sort of permanently squinted, and he looked really identical to the photo, right down to the hat he was wearing. I looped around the block just to get another look, and this time I ended up stopped in traffic not 10 feet from him. We made eye contact. I'm sure he thought I was a potential customer for his handful of Pacer tickets, but I looked away and hit the gas as soon as the light changed, and then frantically took the nearest parking space I could find. Ran the three blocks back to the Fieldhouse and found a cop; I was panting so badly that I couldn't really explain myself, but Thank God for those flyers! I was able to hand one to the cop, point, and say "This guy is scalping tickets... gasp... two blocks up on Penn... help me..." The policeman was nice, told me he couldn't leave his post but that I should go see if the dude was still there, then call Dispatch and tell them I needed a patrol car asap. I did, and he was, and I did.

I then spent about the longest 20 minutes of my life standing in the freezing cold a half block from the dude who stole my bike, who remained blissfully unaware of my scrutiny. (If you're wondering why I didn't confront him, 1. He didnt' have my bike with him, and 2. The dude is the size of a mack truck. And apparently has anger management problems, judging from his performance at the museum. I don't particularly want to have my teeth punched down my throat by an angry scalper-bike-thief dude, so I stayed back.) The cops finally showed up, and once again I was able to just give them the flyer, babble incoherantly a bit, and then point up the street at the dude. "Wow," said the cops. "Usually people aren't this... er... well prepared." They strolled over to question him, while I stayed by the patrol car. Then they came back and said since he didn't have my bike they couldn't arrest him, but they were going to run his ID for warrants. Which they did, and there weren't any, but now we had his name and address attached to my case number. WOOT. When they gave the guy his ID back, he protested loudly that he didn't know anything about my bike, or any bike, he didn't have a bike, and this was *bullshit*, and then he walked off. The cops said, "We'll see if Vice is out here tonight. If they are, we'll have them go pick him up and take his tickets. That'll ruin his night." Suck on that, douchebag.

So that's the story of me finding the guy who stole my bike, but not the bike itself. The bike is still missing. My detective brought a photo array to the museum, and two different security staff were able to ID the guy. I haven't heard from the detective since then, though, so I assume things haven't just been open and shut, they got a warrant and went to his house and found my bike. I'm sure it's probably long gone, sold to his dealer or to someone who specializes in stolen bikes. At least my serial # is in the database that the pawnshops check against.

On that happy note--well, Jake asked for it!--I'll leave y'all. Hopefully I can get back on the blogging horse without too much trouble; lord knows I haven't stopped having stuff to say. :)

And in Other News, Soccer is Still Boring. Film at 11.*

Sorry for the long absence, those of you who are still paying attention (or were kind enough to put me on their RSS feed.) Work kind of sucked the life out of me on many levels for the months of April and May, and I was unable to think of anything witty or pleasant to say for over 60 days straight. However, here's a funny post about squirrels I wrote quite a while ago, which came to light during my Lost Period.

What else is new? Hmmm. I did in fact get paid to draw about a half-dozen maps for a Call of Cthulhu product in their Ancient Rome setting, which was a lot of fun. Will let you all know when it comes out so you can rush to buy a copy. In the process of this I learned a lot more about Photoshop--or at least, how to turn black and white line drawings into something decent-looking with Photoshop CS4. Not a bad skill to have, even if they never call me for another map. My cat's diabetic again--this is bad, but not unexpected honestly, the remission lasted 2 years and that was pretty damn amazing. And I've lost 10 lbs since January, which about knocks my socks off. While I've never worried a whole lot about my weight, I figured the best 40th birthday present I could think of would be to get off my butt and lose a few, and it seems to be working. Huzzah me. Hopefully I'll have something more entertaining to post soon, our exhibit just opened and I'm starting to feel my strength returning...

*Apparently there's some soccer thing on TV right now, and USA has failed to lose to England--which just goes to prove my point. Any sport they can play for hours and still end with a score of 1-1 (or, ye gods, 0-0) is just not my cup of coffee...

Maybe Twitter IS Useful...

Two weeks ago I was idly monitoring my Twitter feed in the background as I worked on the current Projecto Disastro at work, and I saw a tweet go by from @ab_Chaosium; these are the guys who publish the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and who used to publish the RuneQuest RPG. Those two things together have taken up a tremendous amount of both my free time and free cash since sometime around 1989, so I feel I owe Chaosium a certain debt of gratitude for all the entertainment of the last two decades. The tweet was something to the effect of "We need a quick map drawn for an upcoming publication, anyone out there want to submit something?"

Now, to say I love maps is no small thing. I collect world atlases and geography books; I have a prized 1923 atlas that I use when I run Call of Cthulhu, and a very cool one from 1941 that depicts Countries Invaded by the Axis and Countries Annexed by the Soviets and so on, with obviously last-minute overlays showing changing borders... I have a full set of Carpenter's Geographical Readers, dating from 1899-1920 or so. I draw elaborate maps for the role-playing games I run, when I have time; my favorite is to put them on foamcore and use map tacks to represent player and bad guy locations. So naturally I emailed Chaosium and offered to submit a map. They responded in the affirmative, so I drew them a very quick-and-dirty map per their instructions and fired it off.

Dustin--who's been with Chaosium for ages and who I know I met at some of my 1990's Gencon forays--is a very cool guy and was quick to let me know that they might need some more maps in the near future, and would I mind sending him a few samples of my work. One thing led to another, and I ended up drawing him 3 samples: a straight-up geographic map of Tasmania, an interior map of a 1950's malt shop done entirely in Illustrator, and this:


Now, setting aside the fact that the title font's hard to read, I thought it turned out rather well for a 100% silly map. I wanted to do something illustrative (that is, something with some dimensionality/pictographic depictions of features vs. a straight overhead view.) Once I got started I just kept on adding little goofy bits to it til I finally figured that I'd better stop before I sank my chances with Chaosium completely. But--perhaps not surprisingly, Dustin was amused (by the satellite dish in particular, it seems) and responded by giving me a few small art assignments for an upcoming product. So, what do you know! Twitter led me to a gig where I'm doing something that is pure pleasure for me (drawing maps) and getting to hopefully eventually see them in print from a company whose products I love. Can't beat that with a stick!

Less Fun than Bees

I have a friend who is in the final stages of terminal cancer at the moment. She was one of my best friends in the last couple years of high school, but we fell out of touch and despite occasional second-hand news of one another, it stayed that way until I got my current job at the museum, where her older sister also works. Via her sister I heard about my friend's first bout with cancer, her remission, her marriage and kid-having, and then the recurrence of illness nearly two years ago and the ups and downs that have followed. She and I talked about getting together for coffee or something in these last couple years; we played a little phone/email tag, but never quite worked it out. Then a couple weeks ago they finally discontinued her chemo, and that, as they say, is that.

I'm not going to post here about my friend being a cool person (though she is) or how genuinely sad the prospect of her death at age 38 seems to me (very.) What I've been thinking about more has to do with the assumptions we make on a daily basis that affect how we go about dealing with serious shit like death. I think one of the reasons I'd not been hugely proactive about getting in touch with my friend over the years had to do with my assumption that we were Very Different People from who we'd been when we were friends at age 17. And therefore, what would we have to talk about? The people we all were in high school are long gone (or so we imagine--hell, so we hope, right? I was a wildly moody little cuss for 4 straight years, and I seem to recall everyone else being much the same.) Add into that the fact that dying young is pretty fucking horrible, and pretty well beyond my ability to wrap my brain around, and I assumed we really, REALLY would be strained for conversation. So I was worried/depressed about about the coffee.

My assumptions, as it turns out, were complete crap--I'm happy to report this. First off, we haven't actually changed all that much. She's married, with two kids; I'm a long-term bachelor who likes small children in smaller doses. She had a job with tremendous organizational responsibilities; I am lucky if I can remember to tie my shoes in the morning. But at the core, we're both smart, we both laugh at a lot of the same things, and we still (I hope!) like one another's company. I realize a lot of high school friendships generate heavy baggage which it's best not to unpack later in life... but probably one of the few plusses of our not having stayed in touch is that I really don't remember much of the stupid shit. I remember that there WAS stupid shit--and maybe I just have a terrible memory, but honestly the details are long gone, and I don't think it was more than just the usual dumb crap kids do and say when going through the exceedingly painful throes of teenagerdom.

The other assumption, that the fact of her impending death would make normal interaction impossible, was also mercifully crap. I've been lucky enough to get some time to visit with her in the last couple weeks, and while her illness is always present, it's not in charge of the conversation. Today I found out how she met her husband (I'd been wondering!) Last week we had discussion of where to find the best milkshakes in town. I can't think of a better way to spend some time with a friend, dying or not, than sitting around, catching up, and shooting the shit for a while. :)

So the long and the short is, if you're ever in a situation like this, DON'T BE AN ASS. Quit assuming you know how it'll go down before you even make a move. Call your friend, forget whatever that dumb high school shit was, and go bring them a damn milkshake and some conversation. You'll be glad you did.

I'm Wearing Bees! On My Feet!

I haven't bought new tennis shoes in years; though I gave in to the lure of 2 pairs of Keens over the last two summers, and I finally bought new shoes for work after *cough* nearly a decade--remember I was out of work for 5 of those years, I didn't NEED nice shoes--but I've been a loyal fan of New Balance since college, and frankly every time I went in the shoe store and looked at the racks of New Balance, I thought urrrghhhhhh. So..... very..... bland.... It was as if there had been some kind of horrible bleaching accident at the women's shoe factory, so that every shoe had had any sign of color and life bled from it, leaving only tiny pink or blue accents here and there, near the eyelets and so on. But in looking at the Adidas Star Wars Originals collection online (it was for work! seriously! well, it was AT work) I felt a deep-seated desire for new tennis shoes. Since the Luke Skywalker pilot orange ones were not available, I settled for these.


CHECK. IT. OUT. WHAT?!?!

I am totally in love with these shoes, even though they're a tad too small (they were on clearance, limited sizes available.) They're like bees. Shoe bees. Deadly yet beautiful foot bees.

I also bought a pair of ASICS, which are cool though shinier than I was anticipating. I will wear them happily. But the bees.... the bees will be saved for special occasions...

Oh, Dear.

I seem to have left my blog unattended for far longer than I'd really meant to. This seems to have corresponded with a period of Holy Crap What the Fuck at work, so I'm blaming it on that... But my new year's resolution is Blog More! So I should be all over that in 2010.

. . . .

New Year's was over a month ago, wasn't it? Aw, hell.

Happy Binary Day!

Woooo! It's 011010!

Yeah, ok, that was pretty lame...

Happy Holidays, Dammit

I've noticed a rather surprising amount of crabbiness this year directed at those of us who wish folks a "Happy Holiday" instead of "Merry Christmas." Some random stranger in the grocery the other day was wishing the clerk Merry Xmas--she was wearing a Santa hat, so seems safe to assume she's a celebrater of the holiday--and he had to do a 30 second diatribe on how he wasn't ashamed of saying Merry Xmas, and he wasn't going to be "politically correct," and got very self-righteous about the whole thing, although, as I said, the clerk was wearing a Santa hat at the time and therefore wasn't likely to argue with him. I've heard this in multiple places this year, in varying degrees. Not sure if it's just conservatives who feel "Happy Holidays" is part of the uncomfortable secularization of our (already secular by law) nation now that Bush and his god are out of office, but I find it mind-boggling. Back when I worked at the game store, our bookkeeper--who was a wonderful sweet person and I liked her a lot--sent me an Xmas card, with the statement that she didn't care whether I was a Christian or not, because SHE was, and so she was sending me a card, dammit. (Not that she'd have said dammit. She'd never have said dammit.) That seems to be the prevailing theme in all this bitching and moaning I've heard this year, with a slight edge of being the persecuted minority. As if Christians had ever been a persecuted minority in this country, for heaven's sake.

I'm one of those people who celebrates the Christmas season as a time for family and joy and love, even though I'm not a Christian. I don't object to friends telling me to "Have a Merry Christmas!" because I certainly intend to do so, and I appreciate the thought. But it just seems like common courtesy to wish strangers a Happy Holiday Season--if you don't know what holidays they celebrate, then why not cover them all with a single blanket statement of good wishes for the new year? It's not about you and your holiday, it's about them and theirs. Getting over yourself a little bit--that'd be a truly Christmassy thing to do, now wouldn't it?

Hope you're all having marvelous holidays of whatever type you desire!

Twilight: New Moon in Ten Paragraphs Or Less

All right, so first off, let me say that New Moon is better than Twilight I, merely due to the fact of it having a quantity of bare-chested native american hunky guys, and Graham Greene, who is an actor of a quality far exceeding that of the script. Let's see if I can sum it up in 10 paragraphs or less.

1. Bella is still stupidly in love with Vampire Ed--apparently it still has not occurred to her that perhaps she is not thinking clearly in this matter. They snuggle together in English class as they watch a Romeo and Juliet movie which Edward has memorized (because apparently being a vampire means Edward is doomed to an eternal hell of repeating the eleventh grade over and over.) Shortly after declaring his undying (heh) love for her, Edward dumps her, for no easily discernable reason--which does tie in nicely with his being an 11th grade boy. He leaves town, vowing that it will be as if he never existed. Would that this were true.

2. Bella's heart and mind are shattered, as she apparently sits in a chair and looks out the window for 3 straight months. Inexplicably, instead of having her forcibly committed, her father just looks worriedly at her from behind his facial hair and makes halfhearted threats to send her to live with her mother. Our window into Bella's distressed state of mind comes via the crude plot device of Bella's emails to Edward's "sister," Alice, who is one of the few enjoyable characters in the film. We see early on that all of Bella's emails to alicecullen@yahoo.com are bouncing back marked Account Deleted; yet we keep hearing her write them, in increasingly pathetic-sounding voice-overs.

3. Bella is just almost starting to act like a normal 16 year old girl again--which is to say self-involved and annoying, but social--when she discovers that doing something stupid or dangerous causes Edward to appear to her in ghost form, saying "er, don't do that." Ghost Edward is an improvement over Real Edward, in that he disappears after blurting out each warning and doesn't sneak into her bedroom to watch her sleeping. Thus Bella decides that occasional visits from Ghost Edward are worth risking grave bodily harm and possible sexual assault, so she goes for a ride with a random bike ganger, just to goad him into showing up. Then she buys a junky motorcycle of her own, and asks her incredibly hot ripped-out Indian friend Jacob to fix it up for her.

4. Bella and Jacob grow closer and bond over the bike repair project, and she emails Alice's non-working address to tell it that she thinks she is falling for Jacob. OH NOES! How will she handle these feelings of not-Edward?? By agreeing to go to a movie with that nice boy at school who she generally treats like crap, and inviting Jacob along, that's how. And so begins Bella's career as the world's biggest cock-tease. Nice boy wants her, she ignores him for Jacob. Jacob wants her, she turns him down at the crucial second. He swears he will be her friend forever.... aaand then the moon turns full and he runs off and doesn't come back. Bella's heart and mind are shattered, and--waaaaait a minute....

5. It is at this point we realize that we are watching the SAME GODDAMNED MOVIE as last year! Bella falls in love. Bella acts like a dumbass. Boy loves her back. Boy suddenly becomes distant and weird. Boy has a secret. Bella whines and moans until she finds out secret--Boy is a Monster who Might Hurt Her if they ever Had Sex or Anything Like That and so therefore Bella Cannot Have Love. But she wants love anyway! And boy loves her and wants to protect her, and *****sounds of violent retching****

6. Werewolves are way cooler than vampires. This is all that is necessary for us to know. Werewolves jump off cliffs for fun. Werewolves work out and are incredibly tan and buff. Werewolves have an endless supply of spare gym shorts to replace the ones that shred off each time they transform. Werewolves catch and eat vampires. They eat the annoying vampire with the dreds from the first movie. They chase the redhead vampire chick off a cliff, but can't follow her despite their mad cliff-jumping skillz, and she swims away to safety in the next film.

7. Bella jumps off a cliff. Because everyone is doing it.

8. Jacob saves her and brings her back to her house; her father is off dealing with the fact that Graham Greene has died, no doubt wisely, as it saves him appearing in "Eclipse." Somehow, miraculously, Alice is waiting in her house, despite not having been invited in and despite the fact that she and her family are theoretically hundreds of miles from Forks. Her weird psychic powers told her Bella was dead! So she came to....er....hang out in Bella's empty house and eventually scare the shit out of her grieving dad? Alice is not a good planner. She and Jacob have some tete-a-tete, and then the phone rings, and Jacob tells the caller that Bella's dad isn't home because he's arranging a funeral. DOHHHHHH!!!! It was EDWARD on the phone!!! Now he thinks Bella is dead, due to this bizarre coincidence/misunderstanding! Now he is going to kill himself because he cannot live in a Bella-less world! Wait wait I get it this is just like Romeo and Juliet, right down to the ridiculous gimmicky ending! OH NOOOOOOOOOOO

9. At THIS point, the plot jumps the rails. There was a plot, albeit a feeble one, involving Bella and Jacob and the mean redheaded vampire and all those indian dudes who we'd like to see a little more of, thanks. Bella opts out of this plot with nary a backward glance, as now she must go to Italy with Alice to save Edward (because when vampires commit suicide, they have to go to Italy to do it.) It was here that I actually said, out loud in the theatre, "What the SHIT just happened?" as Bella's airplane streaked out of Sea-Tac.

10. Edward wants the vampire council to kill him, because he can't do it himself. The vampire council, who look--as a friend of mine said on facebook--like a flaming cross between Monty Python's inquisitors and La Cage aux Folies, tell him no. So apparently the only way to force them to off him is for him to go out and sparkle in public, thus violating Vampire Law by revealing the carefully guarded secret of the vampires' existence. But before he can completely drop trou in the town square, Bella shows up and grabs him around his pale skinny chest and hugs him back into the shadows. Whew, that was close! Now comes the really scary part, where they meet the deadly dangerous and terrifying vampire council and.... wait, hang on. Nothing happens. Hm, that wasn't scary at all. They make Alice promise to turn Bella into a vampire sometime soon, and then turn them all loose. Whew! Close call, guys! Good thing you didn't piss off the council, they might have got out the Soft Cushions and the Comfy Chair....

And so Edward and Bella return to Forks, and she cockteases Jacob a bit more before admitting that she likes Edward best. Jacob points out that if Bella gets vampireated, the werewolves will go completely freestyle on the Cullen clan. Bella says "Whatever!" Jacob leaves, and Edward tells Bella that before he can have sex with h--er, before he can make her a vampire, they will need to---***DUN DUNNNNN***---Get Married! Yes. No biting before marriage for this Romeo. Aww how romantic! Roll end credits!

(yes, I know, it was 11 paragraphs. Stuff it.)

The Weekly WTF, Episode 1: Holiday Edition

For quite a while now, I've been meaning to start a series of blog posts devoted to the vast number of pictures I have of things that make me go Holy Crap What the Fuck is Up With THAT? There is more weird stuff in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy... In fact, if you were to build a philosophical worldview out of some of this shit, you would end up with a belief system far more damaging even than The Dao of Whiskey.

Now, I wanted to start this off with something light. Something holiday-themed, perhaps, something even OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING NOOOOOOO MY EYES



Festive, isn't it? Nothing says Christmas like drunken Santa stumbling into the midst of Sigfried and Roy's holiday performance at the Mirage, and collapsing to sleep off his bender against the flank of a tiger who has alrady slain and is preparing to eat one of his elves.



No doubt this is an act of revenge, in response to Drunk Santa's having grabbed a tiger cub and crammed it in his bag of presents "just for a laugh." Cruel old bastard.




This is actually an item from our museum's collection, and I have to say that on a 1-10 scale of scary, this is only about a 6 compared to some of the Xmas stuff we own. It boggles my mind how many different ways people can find to make something as innocuous as Santa Claus unintentionally creepy, ugly, or downright disturbing. But for sheer surreal incongruity, this has to be one of the finest holiday creations I've seen. So There you have it! Join us again next week, when I will have yet another photo of some high-quality What the Fuck on display for your edification. Thank you, and good night.

In Which a Free Book is Won

Apparently, my admission that I read Wondermark in my bathroom was the clincher. The marvelous thing is that not only did I win a free book--thus freeing up my cash to buy more of the Wondermark backlist!--but so did Robin, whom I have been barraging with Wondermark links for over a year now. Huzzah! I think I forgot to mention that David Malki also makes short films which are fairly excellent. If you like that sort of thing, go check out Expendable, which is about the rough life of the supervillain henchman.

In other news, I got to go see Star Wars in Concert last night, which was utterly fabulous. Live orchestra performing selections from all 6 films, with clips showing on the huge hi-def screen behind them and a laser/light show surrounding. The whole thing is given some coherence by live narration from Anthony Daniels--very cool to see and hear him in person. Here is a man who is making the most of a career primarily spent playing one character over and over (though I did love him in this.) The narration itself was a little over-the-top silly; Fathead didn't like it at all, but I figured it was aimed primarily at the kids in the audience, of which there were thousands. And seriously, the music's incredible, our seats were amazing--thank you, Lucasfilm, for comping the museum some dead-center floor seats!--and I had a great time. Best thing I saw was a gang of little teeny kids having a lightsaber battle with cones of cotton candy (pink and blue, of course.) Hilarious. Who could ask for anything more?

Going Stag

I write you all today from Hartford, CT, a city primary known for insurance, mutual funds, and mutual fund insurance.


The Hartford Stag was a staple image of my childhood, though I'm not entirely sure why--must have been sponsoring something I watched religiously on TV, or something. Technically, that should be the Hartford Hart... I wonder when "Hart" and "Hind" were replaced by "Stag" and "Doe" in the American lexicon. Hmm. Hmmmmm....

Anyway, the point--such as it is--is that I flew into Hartford last night for a business trip, to be greeted by a massive thunderstorm that was following on the heels of 5" of wet snow. Last time I was here, it was fall, and New Englandy-looking in a completely different sense; but honestly, I'm fairly pleased with the current state of the weather. Today it's sunny, there's still snow everywhere yet traffic is humming past my window at a decent clip, so I've no complaints. I'm just sitting around the hotel waiting for my coworker to show up--she's been on the coast for a few days, so was taking the train from NYC to New Haven, picking up a rental car, and driving to pick my other coworker and I up before we head over to LEGO for our brainstorm meetings. Eric's watching Firefly over in his room... not a bad way to spend a morning. Think I'll join him.

In Which Wondermark is Touted

Yes yes, I know, I promised you a Jell-O ad. But look, this is way more important. Many of you already know of my love for Wondermark; as you can see, it's already linked right down there on the sidebar. I've passed it on to friends. I've fanned it on Facebook. I Tweeted it on Thanksgiving (and even got re-tweeted, thanks very much David Malki!) I have a signed comic on my wall, and a copy of Beards of our Forefathers in my bathroom. (Yes, the bathroom. Shut up. Don't judge me.) But do you know WHY I love Wondermark so, and why you should too? Here are three good reasons:

1. Art. While Malki! can draw—we've seen it happen—the look of Wondermark comes from his massive library of illustrations from 19th and early 20th century books and magazines. It's utterly fucking brilliant. I've no idea how he finds so many pictures of squids.

2. Beards. Malki's obsessed with beards. I can get behind that--as many of you know, I'm quite fond of beards myself. My own ambition to be a bearded lady at the circus was sadly dashed when I showed absolutely no signs of hirsutism from an early age; but I fully support the beardage of others, without bitterness.

3. Shirts. My last order from TopatoCo included what may be my current favorite t-shirt: Steam Powered Heart. Additionally, I had to buy this one for a friend (inspired, of course, by this comic) and this one for another friend. An abundance of riches! I'm giving serious thought to the Bibliophibian Onesie for Jen and Patrick...

All this shameless plugging of course has nothing to do with the fact that blogging about Wondermark enters me in a contest to win a free book. Nothing to see here. Move along. Look, a Jell-O ad from 1923!


(A basketful of happiness? Seriously? Her mom sent her out for groceries, and she comes back with 40 boxes of Jell-O and "happiness"? That's grounds for willful orphaning.)

No Such Luck

As promised, here is the first of several wonderful ads purchased at this weekend's postcard show. I didn't fully appreciate how awesome this particular one was until I got it home, as you're about to see.

This is an ad from the Ladies' Home Journal in 1919--the heyday of entertaining magazine advertising, to my way of thinking. It's advertising a now forgotten brand of soap called "Olivilo" (pron. Olive-eyelow.)


The first mystery to me is why one would market a soap with the word "vile" in the name--I do realize it's trying to evoke the nourishing properties of olive oil, and I can overlook the gimmick that the name's a palindrome, but why put that long I sound in there? It gives me a sense of ick before I've even unwrapped the bar. Also, it's packaged in a black wrapper, which doesn't exactly cry out "SPARKLING CLEAN" to me. Those are basic facets of the product itself, though, so I accept that the pitchmen in Olivilo's marketing department may have been stuck with these problems for some time before devising this particular ad.

The first great thing here is the threat implicit in the image. "Do you believe in Luck?" it asks, in enormously loopy handwriting font, the word "in" squiggling precariously upright. "Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya? Then try our #%@*& soap!"

Next comes the promise: Fate cannot harm you, if you use this soap. Apparently, Olivilo is the detergent version of a mafia bag man. Among other things, it will protect you from the unlucky influence of the rather bitchy looking black cat who is staring balefully out of the ad with eyes like creepy green footballs. OK, that seems worth a 10¢ cake of soap to me... And hey, at no extra charge you get a sidebar explaining that black cats are unlucky! Except when they aren't.




Thanks, Olivilo, for that fleeting educational moment.

However, the single most spectacular thing in this ad, the thing I didn't even notice until I got it home, was this teeny tiny plug for one of Wrisley's other products--Wrisley's Eau de Toilette. What could be nicer than pleasantly scented floral water, right?



GAHHHHH WHAT THE FUCKING HELL???? THE IMPRISONED SOULS OF FLOWERS??!?!! Holy farking Jesus, who thought THAT would be a pleasant image for potential buyers?? **shudder** It makes me want to buy a bottle just so I can give it a decent burial in my backyard. I can only conclude that Olivilo is truly the soap of the damned.

Join us next time when I deconstruct a Jell-O ad from 1921...

Yes, Yes, I Know.

It's been forever since I blogged. The whole canal thing had me pretty beat, frankly, and then I decended into the hell that is bathroom renovation, and I kept thinking "I should blog about this!" and then failing to do so, because it wasn't done yet. And then it was done, and I was sick of the whole thing. I'll get back to it, the topic is rich with satire--but look! I'll make it up to you right now with this gem from the Postcard and Ephemera Show I went to today with Haywain McTarry.

As most of you know, I love old advertising ephemera, and I have a fondness for particular types of postcards as well. So I was thumbing through the cards at one of the bigger dealers at the show when Haywain said, "Come here, you have to see this card!" I looked, and saw the following unremarkable picture of HRH Queen Elizabeth II and her corgis:


Then, at Haywain's behest, I turned it over.


Of course I bought it. How could I NOT buy it? I also bought some singularly hilarious soap ads from the 1920's, which will be used to decorate the newly remodeled bathroom which I haven't posted about yet. Sadly, they're too big for my scanner bed... but maybe I can use the one at work. Because you deserve to see them in all their ridiculous glory...