The Lost Posts: a guide to post-hiatus posting.

In November of 2022 I decided to stop blogging after sixteen years.

However, in some ways I never stopped.  Sixteen years is a long time to do something, and as such I'd gotten into the habit of treating my life as a source of blog content, to the point where sometimes I'd make plans solely because of their potential as fodder for postings. (I realize that this would be commonplace if I was a seasoned influencer, but at the time it was a new concept to me.)  As a result, out of habit I kept making notes, saving links, doing screen captures, and taking pictures just as if I was going to post the results  - ghost posting, if you will.

And then, a recent conversation about ukulele lessons made me think that maybe I should start blogging again, that my ongoing phantom content creation was me sending myself a message. 

So, as of March 24th, 2024, I revived The Infinite Revolution.

However, I still had all of those notes and photos and so on, and it seemed a waste not to use them. (After all, no one wants to have to explain a big gap in their blogging resume.)  So, without further ado, I present The Lost Posts, a fragmentary catalogue of my life as a geek between November of 2022 and March 2024 - this post and my "I'm back" posting act as bookends for The Lost Posts - it seemed appropriate to come back with a book metaphor.  I'll apologize in advance for any anachronisms, twonkies or similar Coke-bottle-in-the-midden artifacts caused by travelling into the past. 

Just to be clear, I'm not going to add the missing posts all at once, but posting them as opportunity and impulse allow.  And who knows, at some point I may just remove all three of the posts about the hiatus and my return, and retcon the whole thing.

- Sid

It may stop, but it never ends.

The Infinite Revolution is on indefinite hiatus.

Almost 16 years and 1,127 posts, not including this one - not a bad run, but it's getting to be like work.

Peace out.  (Drops mike.)

- Sid

Let the marketing tie-ins begin...

The Avatar sequel drops December 16th.

- Sid

"Crying out for help."

The Doctor : This whole world is swimming in Wi-Fi. We're living in a Wi-Fi soup! Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi, harvesting human minds, extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web, stuck forever, crying out for help.

Clara Oswin : Isn't that basically Twitter? 

The Bells of Saint John, Doctor Who

Well, it certainly is right now.  Do you think Elon Musk watches Doctor Who?

- Sid

Chekov's Fire Axe.

The concept of Chekov's Gun is fairly well known: it's a philosophy of narrative economy based on the idea that if you have a gun hanging on the wall in a play, it should be fired at some point, or else don't put it there.

I've just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's 2019 novel Salvation, the first in his Salvation Sequence, and now I think that there needs to be an opposite to Chekov's Gun - Chekov's Fire Axe, if you will.  Chekov's Fire Axe needs to say that you can't have a crucial prop appear from nowhere.

Without rehashing the entire plot of Salvation, there's a scene where the main characters are gathered together in the spartan lounge of a research station which has been constructed to investigate a crashed alien spaceship.  At a pivotal moment, one of the characters kills another character with a fire axe, thereby revealing that their brain has been replaced with an alien organism.

Okay, wait wait wait.  A fire axe?

Fire axes are a pretty specific tool.  Their functionality is based around the need for firefighters (or people fighting fires) to chop through doors or other barriers, smash windows, or cut holes in walls or ceilings for ventilation. Why is there a fire axe on a futuristic research station - which is in a vacuum - without a piece of wood in sight, or any possible benefit to chopping through the station walls?

So, Chekov's Fire Axe:  IF YOU NEED A SPECIFIC PROP TO ACHIEVE A PLOT POINT, IT SHOULD ALREADY EXIST OR LOGICALLY EXIST IN THE SETTING.

I'm sure that Chekov would approve.

- Sid

Soylent Green: Change my mind.

"Soylent Green is made of people!"*

Detective Robert Thorn, Soylent Green

As part of my birthday trip to Victoria in September, I made a shopping trip to the Cavity Curiosity Shop, which I've found to be an excellent spot for vintage science fiction shopping.  I've been trying to restrict myself to the purchase of replacement books, but sometimes it can be hard not to colour outside the lines, and unfortunately (or fortunately) Cavity offers a wide range of temptations.

On this occasion, one of those temptations was a copy of the classic SF novel Make Room Make Room! by Harry Harrison, which I've somehow managed to go without reading up until now.

Harry Harrison is quite a good writer, and has an excellent bibliography.  He’s one of the large group of workmanlike and perhaps lesser-known SF authors from the 60s and 70s, authors like Colin Kapp, Keith Laumer, Robert Sheckley, A. Bertram Chandler, and Brian W. Aldiss.

Originally serialized in three parts in the United Kingdom science fiction magazine Impulse and then published in novel form in 1966,  Make Room! Make Room is a low-key near-future eco-disaster drama set in 1996 New York, population 35 million.

It's a sad little dystopian story of overpopulation, deprivation, overcrowding and misery, with none of the excessive drama that you find in other Malthusian** not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper novels like John Christopher's 1956 novel The Death of Grass, or Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, both by John Brunner.

It's also the relatively unknown inspiration for the 1973 movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and featuring veteran actor Edward G. Robinson in his last movie role.   

Soylent Green, which, slightly ironically, is set in 2022, received mixed reviews generally but was more favourably received by the science fiction community, winning both a Nebula award and a Saturn Award, and receiving a Hugo nomination.***

To be honest, I don’t think I would have chosen Make Room! Make Room! for a Harry Harrision movie adaptation - his 1970 political SF novel The Daleth Effect strikes me as a far better choice.  Make Room! Make Room! is an understated cautionary tale: subtle, nuanced, and without a definitive resolution to its rendition of life in 1996 New York, and as such it seems an odd choice for Hollywood to option.  It's equally odd that, having chosen to adapt Harrison's slice-of-life story, the producers decided to change it into an action-filled conspiracy thriller.

It's a heavy-handed change to the original plot, but it does succeed in terms of creating something that probably felt more like a science fiction movie script to the producers.  (There was probably a similar process involved in the transition from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the script for Bladerunner.)

Now, just to make this clear, I'm not saying that Soylent Green is a better story than Make Room! Make Room!, but the concept of recycling humans as food* is certainly a bold science fiction concept that falls firmly into the "My god, what if" approach to SF.  

The re-written storyline gives the plot a specific direction by changing the accidental murder of a mob boss by a frightened teenage thief into the assassination of a Soylent Corporation executive to prevent him from going public with the truth about Soylent Green.

In Harrison's original text, the term "soylent" refers to a mix of soy beans and lentils used to create food patties - the original Impossible burger, come to think of it.  In the movie, it's a more abstract concept, partially because it's supposed to be made from plankton, which turns the name Soylent into a futuristic sounding buzzword.

As is very often the case with science fiction set in a specific time, both Make Room!  Make Room! and Soylent Green have passed their best before date in terms of predictive accuracy, although that in no way diminishes their value in terms of social commentary and cautionary warnings.

However, the good news is that none of the current vegetarian meat substitutes on the market are made out of people - at least, not that I know of.   Our version of 2022 certainly has some issues, but I'm reasonably certain that's not one of them.

- Sid

*My apologies to anyone who was unaware of this climactic plot twist and has now had the movie spoiled forever, but let's be fair, Soylent Green came out almost 50 years ago and I feel that it's somewhat in the public domain in terms of surprise endings.

** This is the sort of thing you learn by reading science fiction.  In his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population, British clergyman and scholar Thomas Malthus suggested that it was inevitable that population growth would exceed food production, an idea which the science fiction community has referenced again and again over the years.

*** Nebula Awards are in some ways the science fiction equivalent of the Golden Globes in the same way that the Hugo Awards are the Oscars of SF. The Saturn Awards are movie-specific and were originally developed by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films to address the lack of genre recognition by the Oscars.

"I want to know what happens next."

"Right, Doctor Who-ever I'm about to be - tag, you're it."

The 13th Doctor, The Power of the Doctor

No spoilers, but I laughed out loud in delighted surprise at the unexpected results of 13th Doctor's regeneration scene tonight.  A brilliant twist to end Jodie Whittaker's excellent run as the Doctor.

- Sid

"WARNING: Choking Hazard. Small parts, not for children under 3 years."

The pandemic isn’t really over, but now that it’s become more of an ongoing state of affairs rather than an emergency, I’m enjoying the opportunity to cautiously resume attendance at public events like the Capital City convention that we visited in Victoria or the historical fantasy discussion at the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Earlier in the week, my sister-in-law Stefanie kindly and considerately forwarded an ad for the Vancouver Comic and Toy Show for my consideration.  It's fortuitous timing:  my wife has a social event to attend that will occupy most of her day, leaving me at liberty to do a little comic and toy shopping, so here I am, standing in line at the PNE Forum at 11:00 AM on a seasonally cool and cloudy Saturday morning.  I don't really need to buy anything - to be honest, I feel that my recent Disneyland purchases have fulfilled my toy quota for 2022 - but I'm curious to see what the show has to offer.  I'm also a bit curious as to whether or not it would be a suitable venue for a future sale of the greater part of my book collection.

As a minor sidebar, I save about 10 or 15% off the ticket price by paying fifteen dollars cash as a walk-in.  The ticket's not actually cheaper that the online option, it's just that there are no fees associated with paying at the door, whereas the web site had a couple of mystery charges attached.  It's a shame it's not the other way round, I would have been happy to see that extra money go to the cheerful volunteer who stamps my wrist and wishes me a enjoyable visit to the show, but life is rarely that fair.

The Vancouver Comic and Toy Show is exactly what it says it is: comics and toys. There are a few outliers on display: a handful of t-shirts, one table of trading cards, a lunch box dealer, and some books, but really, people are here to buy comics and toys, and they're serious about it.  (It's also immediately obvious that this isn't the venue I want for selling my books.)

The crowd ranges from hard core collectors down to hopeful children with their parents, although a lot of the merchandise might appeal more to dad than junior in terms of when it originally hit the market.  The choice of dad over mom in that description is deliberate, it's very much a male crowd - not entirely, but female shoppers are definitely in the minority. There's a smattering of costumes, but only a few, again, it's not that kind of a show.

The dealers are equally serious.  There are a lot of professional retailers such as Langley-based Toy Traders, who have an extended multi-stall footprint, ranging down through smaller sellers to an individual with crossed arms and a grim poker face seated at an unlabeled table covered with with about 20 bagged comics. 

There's a certain freedom in attending a show like this without a mandate, it's like wandering around a grocery store when you don't need any food.  As such, I'm able to survey the booths without being captured by their contents, I don't need to stop and obsessively sort through a collection of Hot Wheels cars in hopes of finding the rare 1969 pink Volkswagen Beach Bomb for sale, complete with original surf boards.

If I had to choose one franchise that dominates the show, it would have to be Star Wars, both in terms of current products and various vintage toys from throughout the nearly 40 years of the franchise's existence.  But really, the broad range of toys from all eras that are laid out on the tables demonstrates that fame can be fleeting: yesterday's prized plaything quickly becomes today's abandoned interest - and tomorrow's collectable. 

The toys on display are broken down into little clusters of pop culture: Transformers, Star Wars, Star Trek, The World Wrestling Federation, He-Man and The Masters of the Universe, The Simpsons, Hot Wheels, and so on. There's even a display of the classic 12 inch GI Joe dolls from the 1960s, which probably don't even have prices on them:  as the saying goes, if you need to ask, you can't afford them.  Or, perhaps more accurately in the collecting environment, if you want them, you don't care how much they cost.  And there are countless Funko Pop! figures for sale - as their website says, everyone's a fan of something, and the range of choices on display reflects that fact.

It probably shouldn't be a surprise, but a lot of the toys for sale are loose or in plastic baggies rather than in any kind of of original packaging, let alone MOC or MIP (Mint On Card or Mint In Package).  I suppose this speaks favourably to the number of toys that children actually take out of the box to play with.  

There are any kinds of one-offs to balance out the mass market selections:  what appears to be a fully functional Pip-Boy from the Fallout gaming franchise; some quite expensive robots from 1970s Japanese animated series; an equally expensive Elvira statuette; what I think is a Mega Man arm cannon; Gumby and Pokey together in their original packages;  a small herd of Furbys; and a lonely copy of Beatrix Potter's Rabbit Nutkin, that I can't help but feel has just wandered into the wrong neighbourhood by accident. 

I'm a bit saddened to see that there are bins of comic books on sale for a dollar, it's a telling comment on the uncertain nature of the comic book collecting marketplace.  It's a bit tempting to take a look, I suspect that everything in those boxes is selling well below cover price, but fortunately my subscriptions to Marvel Unlimited and DC Infinite eliminate any need for physical copies.  And really, there's no need to add to my current burden of storage challenges if I can help it. 

In spite of the abundance of options, there actually isn't very much on display that speaks to me.  I stop briefly to look at a half dozen or so ranked Macross Valkyrie VF-1 Veritech fighters from the 1985 Robotech animated series, but they look a bit the worse for wear, they don't seem to have their gun pods, and as such I don't really need to spend $80 on one of them. 

I do find one table that catches my eye: it's a selection of art books and comic portfolios, with a massive limited edition copy of The Incal, a graphic novel series written by famed filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by French fantasy artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius.  However, my interest is quickly extinguished by the $995 price tag, that's quite a long way over my budget for this sort of purchase.

Just over an hour into the show, and the relatively narrow aisles between booths are virtually impassable.  At this point, I decide that I'm done and make my escape, without having made a single purchase. It's partially because I still haven't seen a lot of toys that match my specific range of interests - apparently I mine a narrow vein of fandom, in my own way* - but the real reason is that I'm just overwhelmed by the massive range of choices.  

Even so, I’m actually a bit pleased with myself for leaving empty handed.  Even if you put yourself on a diet, it’s not easy to go into a candy factory and come out without a single chocolate bar.

- Sid

* Admittedly, it's impossible to make a complete survey of what's for sale, but in my casual walk through of the show I don't see a single toy from my own little collection on display, although my Pop! Tron was probably in there someplace.
 

Fabulous Fantasy.

The fantastic, for me, is this beautiful straight road to wonder.

Steven Price (J. M. Miro)

It's not our usual date night routine, but tonight Karli and I attended an event at this year's Vancouver Writer's Fest, a conversation regarding historical fantasy featuring Canadian authors Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Price (writing as J. M. Miro) and moderated by critic and and fellow author Rob Wiersema.   

If you're a reader, I strongly recommend that you try an event like this, regardless of your genre of interest.  It's a unique opportunity to hear authors talk about their work in their own voices, to speak to their inspirations and how their lives have informed their writing.

Guy Gavriel Kay has impeccable credentials in the world of fantasy writing.  At the age of 20, a family connection gained him an invitation from the J. R. R. Tolkien estate to travel to England and assist Christopher Tolkien in editing his father's unpublished writings in the world of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with the results published as The Silmarillion.  His high fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, was published ten years later to universal acclaim.

Kay has a thoughtful, artistic style which has stood the test of time over his nearly 40 year writing career.  All the Seas of the World, his latest novel, continues his exploration of fantasy set in slightly altered historical settings, in which magic and the supernatural are part of the story.

Ordinary Monsters, set in Victorian England at the turn of the century, is Steven Price's first fantasy novel, and the first in what will be the Talents series.  He is better known for his poetry and his mainstream historical novels, By Gaslight and Lampedusa.

The two authors were well paired.  Kay's speaking style is almost professorial, measured and deliberate in the presentation of ideas based on almost four decades of writing.  By contrast, Price offered a more frank and immediate commentary on his first foray into the world of fantasy after a life-long love for the genre. 

Over the course of the evening, they shared a fascinating dialogue on the topic of writing and their personal approaches to it - albeit, in Guy Gavriel Kay's case, accompanied by the observations that "The research phase is by far my favourite part of writing. Actual writing is hell. Those who tell you they love it shouldn't be allowed to live, I feel very strongly about this."

When asked about his shift from the classic high fantasy of his first trilogy to historical settings, Kay explained that there were specific personal reasons that he wanted to make a statement in that style, after his experience with the Silmarillion. He had strong thoughts about "what was wrong, what was missing in fantasy at the time", specifically in North America, and The Fionavar Tapestry was his response.

After finishing his statement, he was ready to move on.  He acknowledged that there was pressure to repeat his previous success - “If something is successful, people want you to do it again," - but he was unwilling to repeat himself, or, as he succinctly put it, “I don’t believe in four volume trilogies.”

In his writing since then, he's found that his core interest in history and the past has provided him with a different tool, a different weapon in the arsenal to “keep you reading until three in the morning.”

“And it's worked!”

The fantasy elements that he weaves into his novels offer an alternative perspective on history, one which helps him to avoid what he refers to as the smugness of most historical fiction, the tendency to look down on the less advanced beliefs of the past.

Whereas for Steven Price, it’s not so much a question of genre, he sits down to tell the story he wants to tell, which may require a fantasy element as easily as a historical setting.  As he simply put it, "The fantastic, for me, is this beautiful straight road to wonder."

To end the evening, Wiersema asked the two authors for reading recommendations. Guy Gavriel Kay recommended Mary Renault's novels set in classical Greece, such as The King Must Die, or The Mask of Apollo, which he considered to be "beautifully written, transgressively written", and which he had first read when he was 12.

Steven Price suggested the book which had changed his life when he was 12, the fantasy classic The Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin, which he described as "profound, timeless and beautiful".  For a more contemporary choice, he recommended Spear, a queer retelling of the Arthurian legend by Nicola Griffith.

For me, the most significant part of the evening came near the beginning, when Wiersema asked Price why, given the success of his more traditional fiction, he had turned to fantasy:

"I grew up reading fantasy novels - they're my home, it's where I come from.

I was a very lonely boy, I did not fit in - like so many writers and readers who have that experience – I didn’t fit in, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I found my refuge in books.

This was in the 1980s before there was an internet, where you could find like minded kids – find your tribe, find your people.

And I took refuge in the fantasy novels of the 80s that I could find at the mall bookstore - Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffrey, Guy Gavriel Kay books, the blockbuster fantasy novels that were available at the time.

I was 12 years old - I decided a lot of things when I was 12 years old - most of them have never come to pass, but one of the things that I stuck with was that I wanted to write fantasy novels. That dream stayed with me all through my adolescence and I never told anybody."

He registered for a writing course in university, switched to poetry, and stopped reading fiction for a few years. Following the publication of his first collection of poems, he was exhausted, and needed something to read that was different from what he had been working on.

I went to the bookstore, went to the Fantasy section, and pulled down a book, I remember clearly that it was a Brandon Sanderson novel. 

I found this refuge again, this refuge that I had found as a boy.

At this point, he seemed to become self-conscious, muttered, "This is a really long answer", and quickly explained how reading fantasy stories to his children at night had provided the impetus for his novel before falling silent.

I wanted to stand up and shout, "Steven, it's okay, it's safe, you've found us! We're the tribe you couldn't find when you were 12, and that's why we're here tonight!"

So, Mr. Price, my warm congratulations to you, both on fulfilling the dream of a twelve-year old, and on finding your people. Here's hoping that your book will provide the same refuge that you found to a 12 year old who needs one, and that it helps them to find their home.

- Sid

Flyboy.

X Wing Pilot – A pilot, sometimes called a flyboy, directly controlled the operation of a vehicle while located within the same craft. A pilot was often assisted by a copilot, navigator, astromech droid, weapons officer, or other crew members. The term “pilot” was applied across vehicles used on land or in water, air, and/or space. The military designation for a pilot was PL-1. Whether this applied to all pilots or only starfighter pilots is unknown. On smaller ships, the word pilot and captain were interchangeable, but on larger vessels, the pilots were rarely the commanders of the vessels. 

Rebel Legion web site

When I bought my X-Wing Pilot's Helmet at Disneyland, Karli suggested that it would be a great start to a costume, a sentiment that I cautiously agreed with after giving it a bit of thought. However, she immediately raised the ante by commenting that Hallowe'en was only a couple of weeks away, which added a degree of deadline pressure that I hadn't originally had in mind.

But, maybe it's more practical than I think. What's actually involved in creating a Star Wars Rebel pilot costume? How hard can it be?

The basics are easy to find through Google™ as per the reference shot above: an orange flight suit, black boots and gauntlets, the white flak vest, that Darth-Vader style chest box, and those weird belts/straps on the legs* - and the helmet, of course, which I don't have to worry about.

It would cost a bit of money, but most of it would be simple enough: orange coveralls are common, boots are boots, I'd probably make the flak vest out of foam and glue on white nylon material (I can't sew), and strapping material is easy to get at Home Depot. The little chest box would involve some construction, but nothing insurmountable, or I could buy either an Etsy duplicate or a 3D printing template if I decided to invest money rather than time.

But, as always, the devil is in the details, and if you want to pass muster with the Rebellion, there are actually a LOT of details involved in producing a flight-ready uniform that will get you admission to an X-Wing cockpit.

In this case, it's not actually the Rebellion, it's the Rebel Legion, an international organization of Star Wars Rebel, Resistance and Jedi cosplayers (as opposed - literally - to the 501st Legion, which is made up of Imperial, First Order, Sith and bounty hunter cosplayers).  In order to join the Rebel Legion, you need a professional quality film-accurate costume - and they do mean accurate.

The Rebel Legion is very specific regarding the criteria for an acceptable flight suit costume.  VERY specific.  For example, here are the specifications for the white flak vest:

The entire list of requirements can be read here.  Apparently I was wrong, boots are not just boots.

There's some variation from movie to movie: Luke's pilot's uniform from the encounter on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back is a two-piece combo, and the belts and other accessories are very different from his uniform from A New Hope. In Rogue One, General Antoc Merrick's flight suit is dark blue with ribbed white sleeve appliques, and has a modified flak vest. Regardless, the standards are equally strict.

However, to quote Terry Pratchett, what an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of human experience!**  Surely there must have been some individuality in the Rebel pilot corps - coveralls that were permanently stained by coolant leaks and singed by cockpit fires, someone refusing to give up the battered but functional life support unit that saved their life during the Battle of Yavin, Biggs always forgetting to wear his leg emergency flares, and all the other little real-world quirks that would vary from the strict specifications set out by the Legion.

The final resolution to all of this is that I'm unlikely to pull together an X-Wing pilot's costume for Hallowe'en, regardless of canon accuracy, although the resources to enable such a costume are certainly in existence.  And, ultimately, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with a comment that I read in one of the user's groups that I visited while doing the research for this posting:

"If you show up with the helmet and orange coveralls, you're 70% there."

- Sid

P.S. If anyone reading this is aware of a good source for affordable near-canon orange flight suits, please leave a comment with a link, it would be greatly appreciated.

* These are apparently ejection straps.

** Feat of Clay

Disney 2022: "I am one with the Force"

"Does that thing get smaller?"

TSA officer, LAX

It's Friday morning. We're packing up for our post-Disney flight back to Canada, and I'm facing the consequences of my actions: I have to get a light saber and an X-Wing flight helmet past airport security, onto an airplane, and through Canadian customs.

Fortunately, the flight helmet fits in my carry on bag, although it's a tight fit.  (I considered wearing it if it didn't fit in my bag - I can only wonder how that would have been received by the good people of the TSA.)  I'm more concerned about the light saber, which I have to carry loose. Logically, I should be fine.  People travel with canes all the time, it's about the same scale, it really shouldn't matter that it lights up and makes whooshing noises*, but somehow, somehow, I'm just not as confident as I'd like to be. 

The TSA agent at the airport doesn't love the fact that I want to run this thing through her scanner, but I wedge it into my bag at an angle that satisfies her concerns, and away it goes.  

It comes out the other side, and nothing happens.  I'm more than surprised - I expected that someone would at least want to look at the helmet just to see what the hell that thing was that they were just looking at.

Ironically, Karli’s bag is hand checked and run through the scanner twice - is Disney popcorn is more suspicious than a flight helmet and a light saber? It turns out that she's left her iPad in her shoulder bag, which you don’t have to pull out at YVR security.  No blood no foul, they scan her bag again and we're both through.

The next hurdle is boarding - as with so many flights, Westjet is cracking down on oversized carry-on luggage, and I’m extremely aware that my flight helmet makes my bag too wide to fit in the bag measuring device - and I can’t check it, I’m completely certain that the massed weight of the other luggage would crack the helmet like an egg. Again, I suppose I could wear it if I had to, but there would probably be some questions.  That sort of thing is charming if you’re ten, less so at 61.

To my astonished relief, the gate crew never even glances at my bag in their rush to board the flight, which is only about ten minutes behind schedule (it may help that we’re in the exit row, hard to say.) Regardless, there are times when you take the money and run, no need to question good luck.

The flight attendant waiting at our seats for the emergency exit orientation cheerfully comments, “Ah, a light saber!” To which I reply, “I hope the Force is with me and it doesn’t get broken up here!” as I put the hilt on top on Karli’s bag, with the blade over my bag. That still leaves about eight inches exposed, but the flight attendant promises to keep an eye on it, lord knows how. Fingers crossed, I settle into my seat and buckle up. At this point, I’ve done well - security and boarding are out of the way, all we need is a bit of luck and no serious turbulence on the flight.

195 uneventful minutes later, we touch down on the tarmac at YVR. The landing is a bit rough, which worrries me. The seat belt light goes off, I stand up, carefully open the bin, and all appears good. I can’t test functionality just yet, but at least nothing has shifted and broken the plastic blade. I’m actually a bit relieved that this isn’t a full length creation from Savi's Workshop at Galaxy's Edge, it must be nerve-racking to consign a $249 USD light saber to the whims of the luggage bin gods.

Canadian Customs shows no interest in our luggage - NEXUS was probably one of our best purchasing decisions in recent years. Karli's mother and stepfather pick us up and drop us off, we unlock the front door, Jaq the Cat suggests that it is dinnertime NOW, and we're home.  I release the light saber from the improvised elastic bindings on my shoulder bag, switch it on, and success, everything is in working order, and the helmet is also undamaged by its experience - apparently the Force is with me after all.

- Sid

* I used to know someone who used the word "VON" to emulate the sound of the light saber swinging through the air.  Try this at home if you'd like.

Disney 2022: TANSTAAFL.

There are times during our Disneyland visit when I'm depressed by the high cost of doing business with Disney. The assault on your wallet is relentless: very little is free at Disneyland - and all the souvenir pricing is at the low end of wincing.

I mention this to Karli and she agrees wholeheartedly.

"They could give away something simple and cheap, it would be easy.  One of the characters could just walk up to you and say, 'Here, have a balloon.'  Or popcorn, popcorn is really cheap to make, they could easily give away free popcorn."

I appreciate that Disney is a business and needs to make money, but part of me feels that Disney must have all the money in the world at this point - isn't some room in there for free popcorn?

- Sid

Disney 2022: "I can('t) do this all day."

Karli and I both enjoyed and appreciated our Disney experience, but there were times when it was more of an exercise in patience than usual. 

Disneyland always requires patience - guests queue up for security, line up to get into the parks, wait in crowds for the ropes to drop, stand in line for refreshments, and wait times for rides can last hours - but that's expected, it's very much the price of doing business when you visit the Magic Kingdom. 

However, we were surprised by the number of times we were forced to wait even longer due to breakdowns and delays on rides at every level of sophistication.  

Over the course of our three day visit, we completed a total of 29 ride experiences, which may not sound like a lot, but it's actually a pretty good performance, given the number of people vying for seats.  Out of that number, we experienced ride problems to a greater or lesser extent ten times - over a third of our total, not a very good average. 

We accepted the possibility that the shorter delays might have been caused by pausing the rides in order to accommodate the transfer of mobility challenged riders into their seats or something similar, but in most cases it was obviously hardware failure - or perhaps software, in the case of the more sophisticated experiences. 

Toad's Wild Ride broke down literally as we were taking our seats in the ride carriage. During the first of our three visits to Star Tours*, they announced that they were experiencing delays, and on the second, we sat in our StarSpeeder 3000 for close to fifteen minutes, without a word of explanation, until the ride finally began.

The new Web Slingers ride at Avenger's Campus stuttered without stopping, cutting short our time at the first scene, Midway Mania stopped working just as we were in the final leg of the queue, and not only did Indiana Jones have delays, but there seemed to be dead areas on the ride, places where there should have been some kind of effect but where we just bounced around in the dark.  For our final trip through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, the iconic stone globe effect completely failed to work, which rather ruined the climactic conclusion of the ride.   The Haunted Mansion both stopped in its tracks and slowed to a crawl, and The Little Mermaid ride left me uncomfortably face to face with a glassy-eyed Ariel animatronic figure for a little too long.

On our last day, Smuggler's Run announced that they were experiencing delays and that they would resume service as soon as possible. Ironically, at that moment Garr, one of Ohnaka Transport's less perceptive employees, decided to publicly inform Hondo over the PA system that there was a maintenance problem with one of his ships, the kind of a problem that results from crashing into buildings - either boldly on brand or an astonishing coincidence.

Sadly, there's a very simple bottom line to all of this, and it's just that, the bottom line. Disneyland is a big machine for making money, and as such the people running the machine are probably unwilling to turn it off for maintenance if they can help it at all.

- Sid

* Star Tours has a mix-and-match system that adds up to 54 versions of the tour, which makes it a popular choice for repeat trips.

Disney 2022: Avengers - some assembly required.

I'm sorry to say that I was a bit underwhelmed by the new Avengers Campus in the California Adventure park at Disneyland Anaheim. I was hoping that the Campus* would have the same kind of immersive feeling that Galaxy's Edge offers, an opportunity to step into another world. To my disappointment, it's an interesting addition to the park, but it doesn't achieve the same kind of comprehensive atmosphere that Black Spire Outpost offers to its visitors. 

There's actually Marvel canon backstory for the new area: the campus is located in an alternate universe to the main MCU timeline, a universe in which the Blip never took place. As such, the Campus is home to the full roster of Avengers, including those who are no longer part of the team in the MCU: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk**, and the Black Widow, along with associated characters such as Captain Marvel, Ant Man, the Wasp, Doctor Strange, and the Black Panther. Loki can also be seen on the site, whether as friend or foe is difficult to say. 

The location was originally home to a temple of the Vishanti, the mystical god-like trio who act as patrons to the Sorcerer Supreme. The temple has fallen into ruins, but retains its connection with the magical realm. 

Centuries later, Tony Stark's father Howard decides to build his experimental flying car facility on the site, and the US Government's Strategic Scientific Reserve constructs a lab on site to study the abandoned temple and the strange temporal effects that it causes.

Tony Stark eventually repurposes the site - he builds Avengers Headquarters, and converts the vintage car factory space into the home of the Worldwide Engineering Brigade , or WEB*, where Peter Parker and other young scientific minds from around the globe develop new technologies. Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne decide to set up a cafeteria to support all of this (no, seriously, that's the storyline, and weirdly, I can sort of imagine Paul Rudd doing this in a movie) and open the Pym Test Kitchen and Tasting Lab, where they use Pym particles to resize the menu offerings as needed.

All that being established, what does the Avengers Campus have to offer? 

As with Galaxy's Edge and Cars Land, the Campus relies on a couple of major rides. The WEB facility is home to the Web Slingers Spider-Man Adventure, a VR ride in which riders help Spider-Man defeat runaway replicating Spider-Bots that are on the verge of disassembling and destroying the WEB facility and then the world. 

 

The ride relies on sophisticated motion tracking systems to allow the riders to shoot virtual webs that destroy the Spider-Bots and manipulate the virtual environment. Riders can also purchase add-on accessories that give them different abilities in the game, such as Iron Man's repulsor rays. 

It's an impressive experience with an entertaining introduction by Tom Holland as Peter Parker, but the ride action itself is perhaps a little too busy - Karli received the highest score in our WEB transport by destroying a giant Spider-Bot, but had no idea that she'd done such a thing, or how she'd done it. That's not as strange as it sounds - the ride's frenetic pace makes it challenging to determine exactly what's happening and which webs are yours as you shoot wildly at the hordes of Spider-Bots in front of you. I felt that I'd need to do the ride a few times to really understand how it worked, which would have involved a lot of time standing in line, it's a popular attraction.

The second option is the Guardians of the Galaxy-themed Mission: BREAKOUT! at the looming 60 meter tower fortress of Tivan the Collector, located at the edge of the Campus. It's a free fall vertical shaft ride which was rebranded from the Tower of Terror to the Guardians version in 2017 as the first stage of integrating the Avengers into the park. Karli and I had previously experienced Breakout on our last trip to the park - it's an adrenaline-driven experience that's undeniably exciting, but not really to our taste, so we don't make a repeat visit to the Collector's dungeons.

A third ride was planned for the Campus, an Avengers Quinjet flight simulator adventure, but Disney announced that development of the ride was put on hold due to cash flow issues caused by the pandemic shutdown. As such, the Avengers Headquarter building that would have housed the ride is being used as a temporary stage for superhero appearances.  

The superheroes also wander the Campus grounds and interact with the visitors for photo opportunities. Spider-Man does regular scheduled shows on the WEB building that involve gymnastics and web-swinging***, and Doctor Strange performs feats of magic on the grounds of the ruined temple.

It's an extensive entertainment offering, so why was I disappointed?

One of the things that makes Galaxy's Edge work so well is its consistent, connected design. Every part of Black Spire Outpost is carefully planned out, and it all works together: guests wander along side streets and past alcoves, through arcades and down staircases, with the central plaza and the Millennium Falcon providing an impressively unifying centerpiece for the entire artfully composed creation, a creation that makes you feel like you're actually part of the story. 

Avengers Campus lacks the same degree of cohesion - all the parts are there, but it's more of a disconnected collection of structures and rides than a coordinated set piece. Admittedly, Black Spire has the advantage of being enclosed by walls and mountainous cliffs, but Avengers Campus could easily have wrapped itself in protective barriers and security gates to achieve the same effect, and the Quinjet located on top of Avengers Headquarters would be a great photo opportunity if it were at ground level instead.

Overall, the new Campus area is detailed, has good art direction, and offers a wide range of things to see and do - I just wish it had made me feel more like an Avenger.

- Sid

* It's actually CAMPUS: Centralized Assembly Mobilized to Prepare, Unite, and Safeguard, which, as with the Worldwide Engineering Brigade (WEB), could not be a more obvious example of retconning an acronym into a name.

** In his public appearances, the Hulk is wearing his protective time travel suit, which would not exist on this timeline if there was no Blip - just saying.

*** The web swinging portion involves a mannequin, which is probably a good thing, there are some embarrassing YouTube™ videos that show the stand-in Spider-Man bouncing off the walls and tumbling off the building.

Disney 2022: The Ears.

If there is one thing that most represents the global might of the Disney Empire, it is...The Ears.

The original Mickey Mouse ears were created as an accessory for Mickey Mouse Club cast members by Disney artist/writer and adult Mouseketeer Roy Williams in 1955, and quickly became a top-selling souvenir at Disney World in Florida following its 1971 opening.  

At the consumer level, the Mickey ears have been eclipsed by the Minnie headband. Originally just featuring Minnie’s iconic bow, the headband has since become an asexual branding platform, as likely to be worn by Disney Dad as Disney Mom.

The headband is a universal currency of franchise display, supporting every possible iconography: glamourized, astrocized, glitterized, robotized, Avengercized, Rebellionized, there is nothing that can't be attached to a headband in symbolic form.

Surprisingly, there's one place in Disneyland where you can't buy either the ears or the headband:  Galaxy's Edge - for the simple reason that Disney has decided to make Black Spire Outpost as close to an alien spaceport as possible, including restricting the kinds of merchandise that are up for sale.

The good news is, that means that we can hopefully avoid this scenario ever happening in Black Spire Outpost: 

It's one thing to have Kylo Ren stalking the streets, but I draw the line at Darth Goofy.

- Sid