Missed opportunities.

This morning, my wife Karli and I experienced a rare crossover in our sleeping schedules: she woke up early and I slept in a bit, which resulted in both of us being awake at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning.  We decided that we should celebrate this unexpected overlap by going out for breakfast, and strolled down Broadway to the Sunshine Diner, one of Vancouver's iconic breakfast spots.

We found a pleasant table in the shade, enjoyed a somewhat expensive breakfast (welcome to the 2022 economy, even eggs are not cheap right now), settled the bill, and started our walk home.

As we left the restaurant and headed past the rest of the outdoor dining, I unexpectedly caught sight of  what appeared to be a familiar face.  

Photography is funny, taking someone's picture can often embed them quite solidly in your memory, and in this case I was certain that I'd photographed the person in question eight years ago at a Vancouver Writer's Fest event, featuring cyberpunk legend William Gibson, and two newcomers on the scene, fantasy authors A. M. Dellamonica and Sebastien de Castell, the second of whom was apparently discussing toast options with a waitress at the restaurant we'd just left.

I waited until we'd walked a discreet distance along Broadway, and then excitedly told Karli of my sighting.  She urged me to go back and talk to him, but I felt reluctant to accost someone trying to have a quiet breakfast on the off chance that I had correctly recognized them from an eight-year-old memory, and convinced her that we should just head back to our apartment.

When we got home, I checked my original blog posting from 2014 and took at look at his web site, and decided that it might well have been Mr. de Castell after all. Conveniently, the web site included a contact form, and I thought it would be polite to pass along my best wishes, regardless of whether or not it had actually been him, and composed the following: 

As my wife and I were leaving the Sunshine Diner on Broadway this morning, I turned to her and said, "THAT was Sebastien de Castell ordering breakfast back there!!! He's a brilliant fantasy author, I saw him at a Writer's Fest event with William Gibson a few years ago!"

She said, "Did you want to go back?"

"No, I don't want to interrupt the man's breakfast just to be a fanboy, what kind of Canadian would I be? And I could be wrong, it might not be him."

But, just in case, I would have said that I've really enjoyed your Greatcoat books, excellent stuff, thanks so much! And if it was you, I also hope you enjoyed your breakfast, it took us forever to get coffee.

To my mild surprise and extreme gratification, I received a response a couple of hours later, presumably after he had finished breakfast, returned home, and decided to check e-mail.

Hi Sid,

Yes, that was indeed me. Why didn’t you stop by and say hello? I wouldn’t have minded at all. More importantly, it would’ve impressed my wife tremendously, which is really the primary motivation of my existence. The only occasion on which someone’s come up to my table at a restaurant and asked if I was myself was at the lovely Fable restaurant down on 4th. The person who came up was an as-yet unpublished novelist named Nicholas Eames, who’s now a much more famous novelist than I am.

So just think what you missed out on ;)

Thanks for the kind words about the Greatcoats!

Best,

Sebastien

It's always a pleasure when someone who is in the public eye in any way responds well to their fan base, and I feel that Mr. de Castell's response is both friendly and gracious.  In return, I strongly recommend his writing to anyone reading this post - for more information, please visit:

https://decastell.com/

And, if you believe that lightning strikes twice and you'd like to have your own brush with greatness, you are welcome to visit the Sunshine Diner at 2649 W Broadway in Vancouver, who knows, you may get lucky.  Although, full disclosure, I only go there for breakfast once in a while.

- Sid

"When I was a young Warthog..."

Master Chief: "You told me there wouldn't be any cameras."

Sergeant Johnson: "And you told me you were going to wear something nice!"

- Halo 2

Today, Karli and I paid a rare visit to Walmart in search of the perfect shower curtain ring - we'd purchased a new shower liner at Bed Bath and Beyond, but Karli didn't like their hardware options for hanging it, so we decided to look elsewhere.

While we were wandering around the store, I did a quick pass through their toy section.  Walmart stores often have a surprising range of movie and video game related toys, and I always like to take a look at their shelves to see what's on display.

This time, I was surprised to see a boxed Warthog Light Reconnaissance Vehicle from the Bungie Studios Halo gaming franchise, on sale at half price: twenty dollars rather than the original $39.99 sticker price.  Generally I'm much more of a browser than a buyer, but in this case I decided to add a Warthog to our shopping cart - what's life without the occasional spur of the moment purchase?

The Warthog comes in several pieces, with some assembly required, as toy package labelling cliché would have it. It's not terribly challenging - you snap the tires onto the ends of the axles, mount the tribarrel machine gun into the socket on the back of the vehicle and connect the ammo feed, clip the four red fuel cans onto the rear storage rack, and you're good to go.  The Master Chief figure which is packaged with the vehicle fits snugly into the driver's seat - it's unfortunate that there isn't a second figure to man the tribarrel, but I acknowledge the manufacturer's inevitable desire to make a buck by having you buy a standalone figure or two to fill up the crew.  

My purchase clearly illustrates the difference between what we'll refer to as play-grade and collector-grade toys.  The Warthog mold is detailed and comprehensive, and the body finish has been given some manufacturing equivalent of dry-brushing* for a more weathered look.  However, I feel that a collector grade toy would have more moving parts than just the wheels. The undercarriage is glued together rather than a single piece, but there's no articulation for the suspension, winch or axles, and the tribarrel mount isn't really designed to rotate, which is kind of a shame. The tribarrel itself also seems to be a less sharp mold than the rest of the pieces.

The 3 3/4 inch Master Chief figure doesn't have a lot of detail, although it does have reasonably good joint articulation, which, admittedly is probably better for play time than the opposite. And that's a key element regarding the comments above: a plastic toy made with extra moving parts and realistic suspension probably wouldn't last a day in the destructive hands of a playful 9-year old.

Ultimately, I recognize that it's just a toy, and as such it's definitely a fun little piece of shelf decoration that wasn't too expensive - if you'd like one for your bookshelves, I encourage you to hurry on down to your local Walmart while supplies last.  Oh, and Karli strongly recommends their shower rings, in case you feel that you need a more adult excuse to do some shopping.

- Sid

*  For readers not involved in miniatures and modelling, dry brushing is a painting technique in which almost all the paint is wiped off the brush, and then the remaining paint is lightly applied to a basecoated model to accentuate details and edges, which gives the model a more realistic appearance.

Virtual Insanity?

In other news, Meta né Oculus is raising the price of their Quest 2 virtual reality headsets by about 30%.

It's an unexpected decision - normally as a new technology gains a foothold, the price goes down, rather than up, and Meta has been doing its best to increase its presence in the marketplace.  So far, Meta has sold almost 15 million of the Quest 2, which represents 90% of VR headset sales to date, and you have to think that affordable pricing is a large part of the reason for their market share.

In their reluctant defence, my god, what ISN'T getting more expensive right now?

- Sid