Gnomic Statement XVI.

I was disappointed to discover that there apparently isn't a station.

- Sid

New Orleans 4: "It's a fez, I wear a fez now."

Fezzes are cool.

No, I didn't buy it, but it was a near thing, let me tell you.

- Sid

(For those of you out of the loop on this one, it's a Doctor Who joke.)

New Orleans 3: "We are so much more than a book shop!"

We're a safe, progressive, accepting community center for nerds, geeks, freaks, and the like.

 - tubbyandcoos.com

As always when I travel to a foreign city, I did a quick search for science fiction and fantasy bookstores a couple of days before Karli and I left for New Orleans.  Tubby & Coo's Mid-City Book Shop was at the top of the results, but it appeared to be well to the north of our hotel, and I didn't want to spend too much of our limited time there sorting out the transit system.  As such, I shrugged and regretfully resigned myself to not having a chance to meet Tubby and Coo, whoever they might be.*

However, Karli suggested that a trip to the New Orleans City Park might make a nice change from the downtown, and completely by chance I noticed Tubby & Coo's signage from the streetcar window as we rattled along North Carrollton Avenue.  We had an enjoyable if overly warm walk around the park, and then paid Tubby and Coo a visit on our way back to the hotel.

Tubby & Coo's has a surprisingly small footprint.  It's located in four small rooms on two stories of a semi-detached house, as as such its inventory is relatively small.  However, as is often the case with small independent bookstores, the selection of books and merchandise has obviously been chosen very carefully, with more of an eye to quality and uniqueness than mass market interest.

 

The stairwell to the upstairs is a little homage to Harry Potter, complete with a room under the staircase, Hogswarts house posters, and the Sorting Hat on the newel post, and the walls are covered with invisible bookshelves.

 

The upstairs is split between two rooms, with a child's-perspective book section at the top of the stairs, and a gaming room in the front.  (And when I use the term "child's perspective" I only mean the trompe l'oeil wall painting for the space:  as you can see in the photo below, the selection includes Feminist Baby Finds Her Voice, Rad American Women A-Z and Ruth Bader Ginsberg: The Case of R.B.G. vs. Inequality - it's not exactly Mother Goose.)

Whenever I visit a bookstore when travelling, I like to find something a little bit unusual to make it a more memorable shopping experience.  In this case, Tubby & Coo's distinctive choice of offerings made it easy.  I picked out Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer - having seen the movie, I was curious about the book; a fascinatingly illustrated Neil Gaiman novel entitled Fortunately the Milk; The Dame, The Doctor and The Device, a collection of pulp-influenced stories; and, just for fun, Winterworld, by comic book writer Chuck Dixon, from the dollar box.  Because a dollar.**

 

Overall, I found Tubby & Coo's to be a quirky***, enjoyable little store, but I think that it's necessary to look deeper than that.  Their web site says that Tubby & Coo's is "way more than just a book shop.  We build community", and the signage on their front door emphasizes that they are a safe space for everyone.  The way things are in the world right now, that may be way more important than the fact that they sell books, too.

- Sid

* I was disappointed to discover that neither Tubby nor Coo are involved in the management of the store. Owner Candice Huber, who opened the store in 2014, named it after her grandparents, who lived in the same neighbourhood as the store's location.  

** Not as cheap as it sounds, that's something like ten bucks Canadian right now.

*** Credit to Karli for helping me find the right adjective.

New Orleans 2: "We don't get many steampunk fans in here."

"And at $400 a hat, you won't get many more."

- Sid

P.S. Does everyone know the joke about the bear who walks into a bar?

New Orleans 1: Curiosities.

“The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here.

You could be dead for a long time.”

Bob Dylan

I've just returned from a visit to New Orleans:  if there's a city in North America that will make you believe in voodoo and vampires, this is it.  Much of the city is just like any other city, but that doesn't matter - the heart of New Orleans is really in places like the French Quarter and Garden City, where the modern era is a thin facade over the past.

The French Quarter in particular is one of the defining aspects of the Crescent City's mythology.  Its shuttered, silent houses, legacy of its European roots, lend it an air of brooding withdrawal, and its elaborate ironwork and distinctive architecture hark to a different time.

There's a faint underlying scent of mold and rot that permeates the Vieux Carré, an odour of degeneration and decay that belies the bright lights and cheap drinks of the Quarter at night.  The main thoroughfares are crowded and well lit, but the side streets are dark and empty - it's not hard to imagine that an unwary visitor might wander away from the light and have a terminal encounter with a nosferatu.

The other defining feature of New Orleans is its evocative cemeteries, filled with crumbling crypts and tombs, worn by time and weather.  You have to visit the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 - Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, is buried here. They say she never aged, that she could see the future, that she could be in more than one place at one time.  They've restored her tomb, but the triple-X markings of worshippers are still visible under the masking white paint, and people still manage to leave behind an offering or two in hopes of a boon from the Queen.

It used to be that anyone could go into the Cemetery No. 1, but there were too many problems, too much vandalism, too much violence.  Now admission to the Cemetery is only allowed for groups with licensed guides, people who have relatives buried there, and, who knows, perhaps for people who are already buried there themselves.

You could be dead for a long time...

- Sid

Ready Player One: Life Imitates Art.

While I was working away at my desk today, I heard my office mate explaining to a disapproving IT representative that they keep their password on a Post-It™ note on their monitor just for convenience, and that really, no one could do anything with it anyway.

I cheerfully contributed that in Ready Player One, the villain keeps HIS password on a Post-It™ note in his VR module, and as such the good guys are able to hack into his system and do all kinds of things that he doesn't want them to.

Apparently this didn't help, but I felt that it had to be said.

- Sid

P.S. Given the heavily referential nature of the movie, it's a shame that after Wade Watts meets Sorrento, the aforementioned villain who is played by Ben Mendelsohn, he didn't say "And he looks just like the bad guy in that Star Wars spinoff prequel movie!"  Okay, it's really more of a Deadpool thing to break the fourth wall, but still.

Angels and Lives.

 

We are secrets to each other
Each one’s life a novel
No-one else has read

Rush, Entre Nous

As previously reported, I've fallen behind on my New Year's book-of-the-week resolution, but it's still proven to be a useful impetus for reducing my stack of unread purchases.  Having recently finished re-reading* Ready Player One, I belatedly realized while getting ready for work this morning that I needed a new book, so I  quickly pulled Clockwork Lives out of the pile before running out the door.

Clockwork Lives is a bit of an oddity.  I purchased it last year in Penticton during the annual Peachland winery tour as a curiousity more than anything else: the embossed, gilded cover caught my eye, and I was intrigued to see that Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush**, was one of the authors, along with Kevin J. Anderson.  Although, to be honest, I hesitated for a moment because of that second name.  I think of Kevin J. Anderson as a professional collaborator/adapter - not quite to the point of being a ghost writer, but you do tend to see his name on a lot of book covers following some else's name and the word "and".

Regardless, my curiousity was piqued, and I added the book to my stack of purchases.

As it turns out, the book was written as companion piece for Rush's final studio album from 2012, Clockwork Angels.  (The live album from the follow-up Clockwork Angels tour was their final album before retiring as a band.) 

I started reading Clockwork Lives  on the bus this morning, and I'm cautiously pleased so far - it's an alternate reality steampunk novel with a bit of a fairy-tale feel to it, surprisingly like something that Neil Gaiman might have written, and the early chapters are quite promising in their description of a young woman who must fill the pages of a book with other people's lives as captured in a drop of their blood in order to receive her inheritance.

I was even more pleased to find the following description on page 30:

He lifted the lid and removed a leatherbound book with an oxblood red cover stamped with clockwork gears and inset with alchemical symbols...Flustered, she opened the cover of the volume, to find that the title page said Clockwork Lives.

 

Full points to all involved:  having the book that I'm reading appear in the book that I'm reading is a marvelous little touch, and, really, this is exactly the kind of trick that makes reading a real book fun - you just can't do this sort of thing on a Kindle.

- Sid

* My previous reading of Ernest Cline's tribute to geek life was a loaner book, so my reading was still technically of a newly purchased book.

**  It's an odd coincidence that I randomly chose a book by a member of Rush to follow Ready Player One, which contains a whole section where the protagonist has to play the title track from the Rush album 2112 to obtain a clue for the Third Gate in the quest to find the ultimate Easter Egg - a section which was, sadly, left out of the movie version.

Book nerd!

And proudly so!  Thanks to my gorgeous fiancée Karli for the pin!

- Sid

Or seven.

From: Terry
To: Sid

Thoughts on Infinity War - saw the post on the IR blog you saw the IMAX 3D version. Worthy of Big Ed’s first trip to the movie theatre?

- Terry

Hey, Terry.  Should Avengers: Infinity War be your son's first opportunity to see a movie on the big screen?

Hmmm...

Nope.  Nope nope nope nope nope.

Not that it's a bad movie, rather the opposite, but let me give you some fairly spoiler-free information about the film.  Infinity War does NOT have a happy ending.  Or a happy start.  Or a happy middle.  No spoilers, but the good guys lose, and a lot of people die.  No, let me rephrase that:  A LOT OF PEOPLE DIE.  A lot of them are the good guys. I went to a screening where a lot of adults were audibly expressing their shock, it might be a bit much for Ed, who is what now, six (or seven)?

Now, admittedly, it's the first of two movies, and my long-term experience with comic book plotting (and the original comic book version of this story) tells me that a lot of the people who aren't around at the end of this movie will almost definitely be back by the end of the sequel, but that might be an abstract expectation to explain to a six (or seven) year old.

Or maybe he'll be fine, it's not like I have a lot of experience with six (or seven) year old children.  It's certainly an epic film, and it literally spans the universe, so there's certainly lots and lots of eye candy for young Edward.  If you go either with Eddie or perhaps decide to go on your own (or with your wife, get oba-chan to watch the kids) I strongly recommend 3D - and if IMAX is an option, do that too.

It's also pretty much the definition of action-packed, so at least Edward wouldn't be bored, although it is quite a long movie. It goes from battle to battle and climax to climax without a break - a struggle for the Asgardian refugee ship, another clash in the skies of New York, combat in Edinburgh to save the Vision, Thor's quest for a new weapon with which to focus his godhood, one team racing Thanos to Knowhere to obtain the Reality Stone, another going head to head with Thanos on his destroyed homeworld of Titan, a third fighting alien armies in Wakanda, and the successive shocks that mark the final confrontation.  It actually gets tiring after a while - you can only be astonished so many times in 160 minutes, after all.

However, if any of those scene descriptions made no sense at all to you, you've obviously missed a few movies.  Because this is such a full court press for the Marvel Comics Universe, you pretty much need to have seen everything from Marvel going back as far as the first Captain America movie or a lot of what's going on will be a mystery to you.  (Okay, you can skip Ant-Man, nothing is referenced from there - I think...)  For a very minor example, I felt that they completely wasted the potential of the long-awaited phone call from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers - which, again, is going to make no sense to you if you missed Civil War.  Has Edward seen all the other films?

In addition to all the references to the other movies, they've included a few Easter Eggs aimed at the long-term comics fan: without very much fanfare, Tony Stark appears to have switched to the Extremis nanotech armour that debuted in the Iron Man comic back in 2005, and we see Spider-Man using the Iron Spider armour, complete with extra legs, that first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #529 in 2006.  Given that Edward is six (or seven) it's unlikely he's familiar with the back issues of either comic book.

For myself, that sort of background knowledge* meant that I had a pretty good idea of where the story would end up, thanks to familiarity with the original 1991 Infinity Gauntlet comic book series by writer Jim Starlin and artist George Pérez. 

Speaking of which, the script writers have managed to make Thanos, the mad Death-loving** Titan of the comics, into a surprisingly sympathetic character for the film - okay, sympathetic to a point, he's still the villain, regardless of the sacrifices he makes, and he's unlikely to be voted Father of the Year, either.  There's been a lot of discussion about Thanos' solution to the problem of the inevitable (in his mind, at least) exhaustion of the universe's resources - again, no spoilers, but the consensus is that having infinite power would give him options other than the one he chooses.

 

Because it's such a busy movie, there are some things that are just glossed over: no one ever explains why Peter Dinklage is the tallest person in the film, how Vision is able to look like a human, or why Bucky has been released from suspended animation.  Or maybe they're comic book references that I just didn't recognize, you're welcome to look those up if you're curious.

My final advice?  Take him to Solo instead.  It's apparently full of Star Warsy goodness, it's half an hour shorter, and I'm more than a little confident that Han and Chewie will both be alive at the end - which sounds like a better ending for a kid who's only six.  Or seven.

- Sid

* No, I don't mean that I remember in what specific issue of Spider-Man the Iron Spider first appeared, but I recognized what it was. Same with the Extremis armour.

** In the original comics, Thanos is literally in love with Death - the female personification of the end of life.

Ready Player One: Digital Man

 

He picks up scraps of information
He's adept at adaptation
'Cause for strangers and arrangers
Constant change is here to stay.

Rush, Digital Man, Signals

And the votes are in for the Ready Player One movie - I agree with Karli, it was fun.

Fun at a price, in terms of being faithful to the original.  As expected, most of the extreme geek gracenotes from the book are gone, disappointingly so to anyone who particularly enjoyed the nerdish 80s nostalgia that provided the basis for so much of the story.

However, I have to say that Zak Penn, who also worked on the scripts for The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men: Last Stand, and Ernest Cline, author of the original book, do a noteworthy job of humanizing the story and tightening things up.  The referential background is updated and expanded, resulting in a stream of background visual cues that will undoubtedly result in a lot of frame by frame analysis when the film is released for the home viewing market.*

 

The IRL performances are uniformly well done. Tye Sheridan, who failed to impress me in X-Men: Apocalypse, redeemed himself as a completely believable Wade Watts, and Olivia Cooke and Lena Waithe both deliver solid performances.  Ben Mendelsohn plays Nolan Sorrento, the villain of the story, with the same air of grim menace that he displayed in Rogue One, and Mark Rylance does a surprising fragile turn as James Halliday, inventor of the OASIS.

And, speaking of the X-Men, it's obvious that the producers weren't able to make a deal with Marvel for any of its intellectual properties.  DC gets a few references, including the uninviting prospect of climbing Mount Everest with Batman, but there's no sign of Captain America, no friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, no invincible Iron Man, and so on - and when you think about it, there would undoubtedly be thousands of Wolverines in an unrestricted virtual reality.**

However, the computer gaming companies obviously felt no compunctions about having their creations appear in the film, along with lots of anime, science fiction and pop culture Easter Eggs.

 

All of the mechanics of the movie aside, as above, it's just fast paced fun, with good acting, lots of inside jokes, and an upbeat theme. Sadly, though, I couldn't help but think that Ready Player One was a movie out of its time, overwhelmed and overshadowed by the superhero franchises that dominate the box office right now.  Ironically, it might have been a blockbuster film if it had been released in the decade that provided the background for the book.

- Sid

* For example, the astute reader will look at the shot at the top of this page and see the Winnebago Chieftain from Spaceballs, what looks like the powerlifter from Aliens, and a Battlestar Galactica Viper Fighter suspended over ED-209 from Robocop, who is standing beside the Ferrari from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  There's a glimpse of a Buck Rogers Thunderfighter, the maintenance pod from 2001, and the Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop.

** You do have to wonder how that sort of thing is policed in the OASIS.  Does Wade's friend Aech have to pay anyone for the right to build a replica of the Iron Giant?

"First to the key! First to the egg!"

(Contributed by Karli Thomas)

When my dinner plans fell through on the same night that Sid was going to see Ready Player One, he invited me to join him. I hadn't planned on seeing the movie as I had heard mixed reviews and hadn't read the book. But, I love popcorn, I love going to movies and I love Sid, so I said yes, and joined him.

I am so glad that I did. The movie was full of delightful surprises. Not having read the book meant that I didn't know what I was missing, or if there was even anything to miss. The joy of spotting characters and hearing references from the 80s was fresh in a way it couldn't have been if I'd read the book.

 

Early on in Ready Player One there is a race sequence that plays a lot like a car chase. Full disclosure, there's not much I find more boring in movies than car chases. The longer a car chase goes on, the more bored I get. Car chases are where I find myself wondering what I should make for dinner, or if I should add pink streaks to my hair, or if I should rearrange the furniture in my living room.  (The two exceptions to this are The Italian Job and any chase sequence in any Bourne movie.) The race sequence in Ready Player One was exactly the right length to hold my attention and full of interesting extras to keep me entertained. It was during this sequence that I had the thought "Well, this is fun!".

 

And the fun continued!  The action sequences were interesting and the pace of the film neither rushed or dragged. The Shining sequence edged right up to 'too long' but didn't step over that line. The High Five were sweet and innocent and full of tame rebellion. I felt as though I was watching a good YA novel unfold on the screen. After the credits finished rolling and the lights in the theatre came back on, I turned to Sid and said "I loved that! It was just pure fun!"

In the days since seeing Ready Player One, I find myself thinking about it and wanting to talk about it. To me this is the the true test of a movie's enjoyability (not a real word, but it should be). If you haven't read the book, don't! Enjoy watching it unfold as a movie instead!

- Karli

Thanks for an excellent guest posting, Karli!  On behalf of the movie Easter Egg crowd, reading from left to right, you will note that the race starting line image above features 1) The Mach Five car driven by Speed Racer in the anime of the same name; 2) the classic television series Batmobile, and Mad Max's V-8 Interceptor from The Road Warrior.

 - Sid
 

Ready Player One: Easter Eggs.

Use the key, unlock the door
See what your fate might have in store
Come explore your dreams' creation
Enter this world of imagination

Rush, Twilight Zone, 2112

I've just finished an enjoyable re-read of Ready Player One, Ernest Cline's epic 2011 homage to 80s pop and geek culture.  I was thinking about seeing the Steven Spielberg movie version, but my somewhat disappointed co-worker Christi reported that it was a long way from the book, so I thought that I'd refresh my memory of the story before making a final decision.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it tells the tale of a near-future world on the brink of collapse, where most of the world's population spends its time in the OASIS, an immersive virtual reality that has replaced the internet.  James Halliday, the inventor of the OASIS,  has recently died, leaving behind a complex puzzle in place of a will.  Whoever solves the puzzle will win control of both his incredible fortune and the OASIS, effectively making them the most powerful person on the planet.

Wade Watts, the 18-year-old protagonist, spends all his spare time attempting to solve the riddle left behind by Halliday.  Halliday never abandoned his fascination with the geek lifestyle of his youth in the 1980s, and as such Wade has become an obsessed expert in both Halliday's life and the 80s, especially the nascent computer and arcade gaming culture of the period.

Ultimately, the book is a tribute to (and justification for) that sort of obsession, making it a pathway to being the richest person in the world rather than the dead end that it is often is in real life.  It's one thing to memorize all the dialogue from War Games in order to become a billionaire, but perhaps a bit sad if you're doing it because you have nothing else in your life.

Surprisingly, the book won an award from the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services division in 2012, which puzzles me more than a little, given the book's fanatical reliance on 80s geek trivia - I would expect that in spite of its frequent explanations, most of the book would be gibberish to a young adult reader, although I admit that the novel does teach larger lessons about life.

 

I'm also puzzled as to how anyone who wasn't around in the 80s could appreciate most of this book in the first place - in fact, just being around in the 80s probably isn't enough to make the grade. I'm a science fiction-fantasy-computer game geek who turned 19 in 1980, and, as such, I'm right in the zone for Ready Player One. I know what a Trash-80 is, I played Zork* and Joust on my 8-bit Atari 800XL (which I still have in storage**), I know who Gygax Sector is named after, I smiled when I read that the password for the hero's teleportation ring is Brundell, I still have an MP3 version of Oingo Boingo's Dead Man's Party in my iTunes library, and on and on and on.  I can't claim to recognize every single reference, but I strongly suspect that I score higher than a lot of people in my generation, not to mention anyone born after 1990.

As a result, I would expect the movie to abandon a lot of the dense deep-dive geek content that fuels the book, purely out of self-defense.  Based on the trailers, the movie relies more heavily on visual cues from a wider range of pop culture, which would certainly makes it a lot more accessible to the average viewer.  People are far more likely to recognize iconic images like the Iron Giant than they are to pick up on the arcana of 1980s Japanese giant robot anime, for example.  Even so, I suspect that there's a lot of obscure references to modern geek culture buried in the script, which should satisfy my desire for otaku superiority.

I had almost decided to pass on the big screen version of Ready Player One, but after finishing the book I decided to give the movie a chance.  I'm coming in quite late in the film's run, but fortunately it's still showing in 3D at theatres in Vancouver, and I'm off to a showing this evening.

I was originally going to attend on my own, but Karli's plans for the evening were cancelled at the last minute, and she's agreed to join me, thereby providing a useful non-geek control group for recognition of Easter Eggs. Oh well - my level of obscure geek knowledge may not make the richest person on the planet, but at least I'll be able to use it to impress my girlfriend - a term that hardly ever ends up in the same sentence as "obscure geek knowledge".

- Sid

* To tell the truth, I never liked the interactive text games like Zork, I was much more of an arcade-style gamer.  And I never did manage to get the damn Babel fish into my ear.

** And which actually still works, although it took a few minutes for it to warm up the last time I hooked up all the bits and pieces.

P.S.  There are two Easter Egg references in this posting, let me know if you find both of them.

May the Fourth: Art Vader

Painting by David T Cho

 May the Fourth is once again here, which seems an appropriate moment to comment on the astonishing degree to which Star Wars has become a common design motif.

 

Yes, the galaxy far, far away has all the same sorts of marketing merchandise as any other pop culture franchise - t-shirts, hats, bedsheets, action figures and so on – but how many of those franchises have toasters?  Or waffle irons?  Or gas barbecues, for heaven's sake?* 

 

A brief search of the internet reveals a plethora of Star Wars derived items: dresses, measuring cups, screwdrivers, fish tanks, shoes, tape dispensers, cookie jars and so on.  I'm not certain that Hello Kitty has even managed to achieve the same degree of horizontal coverage that Star Wars has.

With this sort of thing apparently becoming more and more common, it's not hard to see a point in time where Star Wars is recognized as a historical design movement like Art Deco, Bauhaus or Scandavian Modern – Art Vader, if you will. One imagines some future socialite commenting to a friend, “Oh, that’s my Lucas VII chair, it’s in lovely condition, isn’t it?”

Ultimately, though, I think we need to draw the line somewhere, and I think I've found the place.  Mummified Ewok head purse, anyone?

 

- Sid

* I don't know why, but for some reason a Tie Fighter Gas Grill strikes me as being a little more absurd than a waffle iron.  Really, though, they're probably equally odd.

May the Fourth: "That is why you fail..."

I recently made a positive comment on a co-worker's performance in a new job, to which they replied by saying, "Oh, I try." And it was all I could do not to bark out, "Do or do not!  There is no 'try'!!!"  I may have missed an opportunity, though - because it would have given me a great follow-up line if they don't succeed in their new position...

- Sid

May the Fourth: "Everything you've heard about me ... is true."

Leia: Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking…nerfherder!
Han: Who’s scruffy-looking?

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

If it's not already obvious based on previous postings, I just love this sort of thing.  I wish I'd pulled my jacket straight, though, I feel that I'm not matching the sartorial standard of the rest of the group - and it's pretty obvious that Lando Calrissian agrees, based on the look he's giving me.

On the other hand, judge not lest ye be judged.

 

- Sid

"But this... does put a smile on my face."

My wonderful fiancée Karli is taking me to see Avengers: Infinity War in IMAX 3D tonight! Take THAT, May the Fourth!!

- Sid