Pop!

Although my girlfriend Karli isn't an old school geek like I am, she's not completely without street cred in the area of fandom.  She's a loyal watcher of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, and also follows Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick through social media.

As a result, she took note when Mr. Hardwick and his wife Lydia recently visited the Pacific Northwest and made a stop at the Funko head offices in Everett, Washington.  Intrigued to discover the unexpected existence of this nearby geek El Dorado, we decided to pay their storefront location a visit as part of a weekend getaway to Seattle.

***

It's an overcast Friday morning as we hit the road for the United States - and Everett.  A quick breakfast stop at Tim Horton's, and we're headed south.

The rain holds off until we reach the border.  In one of those odd bits of happenstance that no one would ever believe in a movie, Madonna's Borderline plays on the radio as we go through US Customs and continue on Interstate 5.

As a non-driver, it's my job to act as navigator when in locations where roaming fees make Apple Maps directions impractical. I guide us to Exit 194 and along Everett Avenue to the centre of the city.

Studying the map, I say, "Turn left and it's along here someplace."

Karli turns the corner and dryly comments, "I think I see it."

Her tone of voice is instantly explained as I look up from the map. Suffice it to say that it's unlikely that anyone will mistake the Funko head offices for Everett's city hall.

 

What, you ask, is Funko?  It's possible that you don't know who I'm talking about, but it would be a surprise to discover that anyone reading this could be completely unfamiliar with Funko's signature Pop! figure line. If you don't own one of these blank-faced three and three quarter inch vinyl collectables yourself, you very likely know someone who does. Since its modest four-character introduction at San Diego Comic-Con in 2010, the Pop! catalogue has expanded to fill virtually every niche in the pop culture market, with more than 3,000 different Pop! figures currently available.

As the Funko website quite accurately points out, everyone is a fan of something. By cleverly going beyond the limitations of genre fandom, Funko has been able to reach a much larger audience with its Pop! actors, musicians and sports figures.  After all, why shouldn't people who love the Ramones or Golden Girls* have the same opportunities for collectables as fans of Thor and Wonder Woman?

Their 17,000 foot retail store, which opened in Everett in August of 2017, is a fully featured showcase for the Funko retail line. Different parts of the store are dedicated to particular fandoms - Harry Potter, Star Wars, DC Comics, Marvel, Disney - with life-sized** versions of the Pop! and Adorbz figures decorating each section.

 

 

The store is not just about figures.  It also offers a full range of Funko-themed t-shirts, backpacks, bags, pencil toppers, key chains, stuffed toys, and all the other bits and pieces of merch that warm a fan's heart - and empty their wallet.  The store also features limited edition items that are only available there.

 

There's also a Pop! Factory section where visitors can build their own Pop! people or monsters from a selection of heads, bodies, hands, and accessories.

 

Funko's attention to detail is impressive, to the point that the standard Funko brown-paper shopping bag perfectly holds two of the Pop! Figure boxes beside each other. Adding a third box horizontally fills the bag exactly to the top, indicating that Funko has a pretty good idea of what's buttering their bread.

We discover this bit of trivia by, of course, buying some figures. Karli picks up the mixed bag (no pun intended) of Wonder Woman and Joey Ramone. To be honest, I'm actually not in love with the aesthetic of the Pop! figures, but I still end up purchasing a glow-in-the-dark Pop! version of the original Tron from the 1982 movie.

Because, after all, everyone's a fan of something.

  - Sid

P.S. If you want to create a Pop! version of yourself like the one of me at the top of this posting, the Funko website has a Pop! Yourself page.


* Or both, that may be a thing for someone - in fact, Karli may belong on that list.

** If that's the right way to describe it.

Texts.

My Ursula K. Le Guin story

When I was living in Toronto, I was a frequent flyer at the annual International Festival of Authors. Over the years that I attended, I was privileged to see some of the great names of science fiction and fantasy, including Samuel R. Delany, L. Sprague de Camp, William Gibson, and, to my great good fortune, Ursula K. Le Guin. When her appearance at the Festival in October of 2000 was announced, I instantly purchased a ticket, and when the date arrived, hurried down to the venue at Harbourfront Centre so as to obtain a good seat.  Successfully seated in the lower centre of the theatre, I eagerly waited for the evening to begin.

I'm sorry to say that Australian author Robert Drewe, the first of the three authors on the program that evening, didn't impress me - the writing was acceptable, but he was obviously a bit nervous to be reading it to an audience.  Aleksandar Hemon, who read next, delivered a fabulously entertaining anecdote about teaching Canadian Literature in Russia when he was younger - and making it all up. (Because, really, how would anyone in Russia know, before the internet?)

Finally, Ursula K. Le Guin came to the podium.  I was surprised a bit by her stature - she was quite small - and her voice: she had a mild lisp. She announced that she was going to do a reading from Searoads, a collection of short fiction set in a small seaside community in the Pacific Northwest.  The piece she had chosen was called Texts, describing the experience of a woman who reads the words left behind in the foam from ocean waves.

It says a great deal about the experience that I am able to remember what she read.  Normally my personal memory is a thing of impressions and sensations, sensual rather than factual* yet I’m able to evoke a clear memory of Ursula K. Le Guin reading aloud her description of the language of the sea foam:

Do I want to know what the sea writes, she thought, but at the same time she was already reading the foam, which although in vaguely cuneiform blobs was perfectly legible as she walked along beside it. "Yes," it read, "esse hes hetu tokye to' ossusess ekyes.  Seham hute' u."

Utterly without my planning it, my subconscious mind had selected my second-hand copy of Le Guin's award winning The Left Hand of Darkness as reading material for the day. The previous owner had apparently been using it as a study text for a course of some sort (or was an extraordinarily thoughtful reader*) and as such my copy was liberally decorated with marginalia and annotations that illustrated the more significant themes and motifs of the novel.  When it was announced that Ms. Le Guin would be available for autographs after the event, I somewhat nervously decided to get in line with my battered book.

 

When I reached the front of the line, she smiled sweetly at me and asked me in her quiet lisp what I had for her to sign.  I stammered out my little anecdote about the annotated text, and showed her the flyleaf as an example. She smiled at me again and said, "With books like this, I always sign them left handed and mirror reversed."  Switching hands, she rapidly signed the title page as below, which, when you flip it horizontally, is recognizably her name.

As you can see, I still have the book, although it's showing signs of age almost 20 years later  - but then, aren't we all?

And that's my Ursula K. Le Guin story.

- Sid

* Which is why if anyone asks me casually how old my sister Dorothy is, I say "Early sixties" rather than remembering that she was born in 1954.  Which I had to look up.

** This is not as unlikely as it sounds.  I loaned a book to my friend Laurie at some point, and when she apologetically returned it (after belatedly realizing that it was a loan rather than a gift) I was amazed to find that she'd used a yellow highlighter to mark the more significant paragraphs.  I've no idea why - I'm reasonably certain I didn't say that there would be a test.

The Farthest Shore

“For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

I was saddened to learn from my friend Chris on Tuesday that veteran science fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin had passed away.  Not surprised - when someone has reached the age of 88, the news of their death is unlikely to be surprising - but certainly sad.  Ursula K. Le Guin was a remarkable presence in the world, and her departure is an enormous loss.

I've given a lot of thought about what to say in regards to Le Guin's passing, and it all seems clichéd and banal in the light of her personality and her work.  She was a powerful, brilliant, imaginative, thoughtful, witty, evocative author whose writing was both moving and literally thought-provoking. Much of her work fell under the umbrella of fantasy or science fiction, which is why I had the good fortune to discover her, but so much of it defied definition.  Regardless of genre, her skill and craft as a writer was extraordinary, with not a word wasted or misused, and the world of letters - and the world in general - is diminished by her departure.

If you have not had the pleasure of reading anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, I strongly recommend that you do.  It doesn't matter what.  A quick search through Google™ will give you a list representing her more popular pieces, but that's just a guideline, reading anything that she wrote will be equally rewarding.  I suspect that her shopping lists were probably more entertaining and absorbing - and better written - than a lot of books by better known authors.  The only introduction I will give her is from her own words as used in introducing another author:

Here are
Some real stories.

  - Sid