Photos from CONvergence

I’m not going to fill the blog with photos, but the link to my CONvergence 2009 walking-around-photos is here:

CONvergence 2009.

Sunday morning CONvergence 2009

Hmm, what happened to posting yesterday morning? Lost by the wayside . . .

We took the kids back to the con last night for their first taste of nighttime convention. They both really liked it. The halls are filled with people in goofy and cool costumes, all acting silly. And, frankly, before 10:30 pm, most of the drunk people are not THAT drunk, so the kids’ perceptions of goofy people are reasonably accurate. Not to mention the fact that most of the sober people are also acting goofy.

I went into more cabana parties than I have in years — I tend to avoid them because I don’t want to get drunk and I don’t want to make a ton of small talk. But my kids are a great conversational opener. They love the room parties, they love the zombies, they love the ghostbusters, they love the Xena University carnival. My kids ran to the TARDIS with glee, they ogled steampunk weapons, they hugged a stuffed clown.

We spent a while in the Garden Court where I watched the boffer fighting while the kids played with glowsticks. K and M struck up conversations about weapons and costumes and Circus Juventas. I loved the boffer fighting, how often the bouts ended in mutual kill. Um, yep. If you get close enough to hit the other combatant, she can hit you.

I also went up to the 22nd floor for the first time in years. The Gaming Floor. We went up to watch the fireworks after it got dark, but, again, I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t have the kids with me. Having them along gives me a different convention than I have experienced in the past. I think I like the mix — some time with kids, some time kid-free, in which I can sit and watch anime for an hour. (Ouran High School Host Club is, by the way, great.)

We’re heading back to con shortly, for more swimming, another sweep through Dealers’ and Art Show, and perhaps meeting friends. It’s been a good con.

CONverence 2009 Friday morning

1. The theme of the convention may be comedy SF/F, but the unofficial cultural gestalt theme from the collective unconscious is steampunk. More — a lot more — on that later. The brief note of my thinking is, why do we as a culture choose this moment to attach ourselves to a mythos that glorifies colonialism, freedom from society, and individual achievement over cooperative action?

Understand that I love steampunk. LOVE IT. I am pining for a pair of those freaking awesome goggles for sale in the Dealers’ Room. PINING.

2. I also love working Ops. I am exactly that person who, if there is a crisis, I want to be in the middle of it. Because I think — rightly or wrongly — that can do good, can help. Working Ops gives me a defined role and lets me exorcise that urge in a useful fashion.

3. Every year, as I spend time in Theater Nippon, I remember how much I love J-Pop. Because, as Silmarian twittered to me during the con, I am not-so-secretly a twelve-year-old girl. I actually dispute that. I am a fourteen year old girl, in my musical taste, thank you very much.

July is upon us

1. Tomorrow starts CONvergence, the BIG, multi-genre, multi-medium science fiction and fantasy convention here in the Twin Cities. And I do mean big. The economic downturn is expected to take a slight dent out of it, but I’m still expecting a packed hotel.

I really like CONvergence. Its parent convention, Minicon (the one it split away from over a decade ago in an extremely acrimonious fannish divorce,) was my First Convention. At my first Minicon I ended up shanghaied by the Volunteers department and ran the Consuite Bar for three hours on Saturday night after Something Had Happened to the Consuite Department Head. Thrown into the deep end of the pool, indeed.

CONvergence is sometimes described as having no focus. I dispute that. It does have a focus, and that focus is “we are all geeks together.” Anime and comics and NASA and RPGs and movies and books and elves and Klingons — everybody’s got space at this con. I walk into the hotel and I grin, knowing that it’s the weekend celebration of my tribe.

2. Comics are so good right now. My spring malaise has passed, and I am merely super excited each week.

3. My mom got rear-ended on the Stephenson Expressway yesterday morning, crossed three lanes of traffic twice, and somehow ended up unhurt. Thank goodness.

4. I bought a new car yesterday! Well, a used car. I have said this already, but omg, if you ever need to buy a car, try to do so on the last day of the month on the last day of the fiscal quarter during a massive economic recession. Sure, the dealership had the car I wanted. But. I had 1) a working car, and 2) four other similar models for similar prices in the metro area. When the salesguy didn’t give me what I wanted, my family and I started to leave. We didn’t get out the door.

Let me note that the car salesmen (and I didn’t see ANY women selling cars in the last few weeks) were universally smarmy.

Detective Comics #854

I haven’t yet read a thing by Greg Rucka that I didn’t love. Detective Comics #854, aka The One With Batwoman, is no exception.

I love this book.

Now, I want this blog post to be a cogent, articulate review. I want it to be a clear discussion of the text that conveys the high quality of the writing and the shocking brilliance of J.H. Williams’ art. I think I’m going to fail at that. I think I am just going to squeal in delight. But I’ll give it a shot.

The last single issue of comic I re-read four times on the day it came out was Astonishing X-Men #1. I thought, and think, that Joss Whedon’s story and John Cassaday’s art made a near-perfect re-introduction to the X-Men. This 25-issue run is the one I most often recommend to people who want to try out the X-Men. But, let’s be honest, folks — selling me on an X-Men comic really isn’t that hard. For a DC comic to achieve this level of lip-biting, squeal-suppressing glee has not happened prior to this. (Not even the Birds of Prey issues in which Dinah and Barbara declared their eternal love commitment to the partnership.)

Let’s talk about the art. Williams does something that —

Okay, let me interrupt myself. Mr. Rucka? Can we see the script for this issue? Because I deeply want to know who to credit for the sheer genius in panel design.

But let’s say it’s Williams. Williams makes strong, obvious style differences between the scenes about Batwoman and the scenes about Kate Kane. Batwoman’s scenes are not only gorgeously shaded, beautifully hi-lit, and incredibly dynamic, they are all in a panel / border structure that represents Batwoman’s bat-symbol. And the way this is used, and they way the panels are broken, and the sheer energy this structure conveys in the end-of-book fight scene, this is amazing.

Which makes the transition into life as Kate even more fascinating. The Kate panels and scenes are flatter, overlit, harsher and more raw than the shaded, painted nuance of the Batwoman scenes. And that, that my friends is somebody’s genius, because that right there tells us which life the red-headed woman who leads this book prefers. The Kate panels are regular, they are bordered, they are regimented. Except where her other life bleeds into the daylight, and red is not only the color of her hair, but the color of her blood spilling.

People in superhero-land are superheroes because they can’t help it. Because, at the end of the day, they can live with themselves as long as they go out in tights and fight crime. Some, like Dinah Lance and Dick Greyson do it because being a hero makes them feel good. Some, like Barbara Gordon, do it because they really can’t live with being mundane and helpless. Some, like Helena Bertinelli, do it because they can’t stand the other things they inevitably are. Some, like Tim Drake and Renee Montoya, do it because they are good at it. And some do it because it’s the only time they like themselves. Because without a purpose, there’s not really a point to getting up in the morning.

All of which is a complicated way of saying that I look forward to watching Kate try to deal with the fact that she would rather go out and get hurt night after night than talk about her feelings with an attractive woman. Like Kate Bishop over in Marvel’s Young Avengers, at some point you have to ask the character why they choose this? Fear? Anger? Hatred? Self-loathing? I don’t know yet.

This is, to return to my opening lines, Rucka’s forte. Renee Montoya, Tara Chace, Carrie Stetko, Sasha Bordeaux, and Kate Kane are all of an ilk I love. Extremely strong women, competent, skilled, capable, intelligent, and flawed. Not grievously or dramatically flawed, and certainly not in need of rescue, these characters are driven and motivated and in deep need of a good friend. There’s a loneliness they share that makes them compelling fictional characters — while they are solving crimes, engaging in international espionage, and kicking ass they are also observing the world from some internal distance. From within some safety and solitude that has inadvertantly locked themselves away.

This is nowhere near as coherent as I want it to be. And I didn’t even get around to discussing my sheer joy at the scene in Kate’s apartment. Or the villain. Or the supporting cast. Or the backup story, with Renee Montoya as The Question, which is a whole ‘nother realm of love and joy for me. But this is clearly the start of a great, great superhero detective story.

Detective comics, indeed.

You’ll excuse me. I have to go re-read this issue again. How about you buy it, and let me know what you think?

Slow weekend

It’s been a mighty slow weekend. My family’s been in Chicago, and I truly miss them. But they come home late tonight, so, yay!

Rob Ashby’s memorial is today at 4:00 at the Bloomington Sheraton. That hotel holds a huge amount of our community life together — conventions and weddings and pool parties and concerts and meetings — it seems fit and right that it hold a community funeral.

Work’s been fine – it’s a frustrating time of year in the sectors. Lots of small popcorn storms and showers. These are more work than, say, the huge continent-spanning storms. THOSE are predictable, we can see them, and we just tell people, “um, hi, avoid that really huge storm.” These little things, we can’t see them as well on the radar, they develop and dissipate quickly, and pilots don’t avoid them as assiduously. So, more work and talking and handholding. I don’t mind it, but it is mentally wearing.

Other work, the writing, has been going well. I’ve seen preliminary or finished art from four of the artists with whom I am working and . . .

And, damn, but it is a heady freaking thing to see my writing there, made real by the hands of another. I just sort of want to hop up and down in glee. Of course, once I have art in my hands I have to do the production, which, frankly, I really don’t like.

I made a playlist today of all my The Sounds, Paramore, and No Doubt music in preparation for the July 5th concert. PARAMORE!!

Work, why you gotta be this way?

The last few days of work have been full of the wtf-ery. Including, but not limited to, an adjacent center controller violating my airspace while being an ass about it, bad weather and thunderstorms, inexplicable pilot accents, horrible military radios, lightning strikes on radio frequencies, surprise radar outages and repairs, and representatives of the department of homeland security engaging in activities counter to national security, safety, and trust.

Seriously, work, why?

. . . diminishes us all.

Rob killed himself last week.

I’ve started this post three or four different ways. And I’ve realized — I can only describe Rob in terms of how I saw him. This is an obvious truth, of course. But it’s an important point when discussing loss — my personal loss is minor. Rob was an acquaintance of mine, someone I saw at conventions or community events — other people’s housewarming parties, other people’s birthdays. He was intermittantly in my shooting league, that sort of thing. I sincerely doubt that I had a personal conversation with him in ten years. So for me to talk about his death seems presumptuous. Shouldn’t someone who knew him better talk about him? Shouldn’t those who loved him mark his loss?

They do; they will; they are. For those who loved Rob, his loss is great and frustrating and anger-inducing. For me it’s a little more distant.

A little more distant — and isn’t that the sort of thing one ponders with a suicide? The distance, the lack of knowledge, the high gloss of surficial and superficial interactions? Rob had friends, he had community. In the course of his decision-making, Rob had to look at those. I wonder, from my vantage over here, what weight those relationships had. I wonder what things unseen weighed more, in his mind. I heard that Rob declined to offer an explanation for his actions. That choice of his is now a truth with which his friends and family will have to live, like the truth of his absence. I wonder what truths he saw as being so equally immutable that his life could not coexist among them?

While at times our human presence seems to be unstoppable the presence of any single one of us is a flickering light. Irreplaceable and uniquely contributing to the accomplishments of the whole. That whole is now less than it might be. The loss of any one of us diminishes us all.

Apparently I Know Who Satan Is

Well, I may not know who Satan is. But the above is the title of the new book from Sara J. Ford: Apparently I Know Who Satan Is: My Fight Against Maturity and Other Irritating Social Norms.

I should say, up front, that I know Sara. I see her almost every week at Circus Juventas. One of her sons is friends with my kids, they’ve been in classes and performances together over the last few years. When we met Sara and C., Sara and her partner were enrolling C is circus school so he’d stop flinging himself off of high objects and breaking his limbs. Not that they wanted him to stop the flinging and the leaping, you understand — they wanted him to learn how to do it without breaking anything. This, right away, tells you something about Sara and her book.

As humorous memoirs go, well, this is one of them. If you like humorous memoirs you will like this one. But even if you don’t generally like the genre you may want to give Apparently I Know a try. Sara’s tone and voice capture something about the haze of memory that memoirs often try to obscure. After all, in writing one’s memoirs it makes sense for the writer to, you know, make sense of things. To present the reader with a coherent narrative. Or at the least a sequence of linked events. Sara presents us with events in which she, as the narrative lead, is often a bit adrift. In “Shrink Wrap, Diet Cokes, and a Kazoo,” for instance, we hear of her experiences as a balloon-deliveryperson, in which she remains bemusedly on-task through circumstances others may have abandoned.

Apparently I Know is funny, charming, and completely un-depressing. There’s no angst here, no dark secrets. And we don’t need them — everyone’s life is befuddling enough as is. This collection of essays reflects that truth. And it shows that adulthood eventually sneaks up on us all.

My days off:

1. I am doing worldbuilding on a new original comic idea. It’s fun, and I haven’t done it in ages.

2. It’s gloomy and cold here, as if it were April and not June. I object.

3. I saw Terminator Salvation last night and thought it had the worst world-building since Waterworld.

4. I am out of coffee in my house.

5. My kids are, individually, in two different and irritating phases of whiny and problematic behavior.

6. I have to attempt to fix my sink this week.

7. I am no longer sick!

Today: Home school, lunch, get comics, afternoon playgroup, housework, dinner, K’s video pick, kiddo bedtime, writing.

Tomorrow: breakfast, groceries, lunch, home school, circus, choir rehearsal, kiddo bedtime, housework.

At some point in there, I’d like to read this week’s comics.