Japan 01: But how would I explain the hair loss?

In Japan with a NASA hat and a Canadian lapel pin – fighting a terrible urge to shave off my beard, keep the mustache, and tell people I’m Chris Hadfield.

- Sid

Better late than never.

- Sid

P.S. The instructions on the card said to pick it up and wave it around, which produced additional cool lightsaber noises, but the camera I was using for the video artifacted the motion like you would not believe.

Project Apollo.

Thank you for your interest and for helping to keep alive the spirit of space exploration and its history.

Kipp Teague
October, 2015

I don't normally just post links to online content, but I've made an exception in this case because it's such an astonishing resource.  Kipp Teague, who is an IT Director in Virginia, has had a long association with NASA and the presentation of visual records of space flight.  His most recent project is the creation of a Flickr archive containing over 11,000 (yes, ELEVEN THOUSAND) unprocessed images from the Apollo missions.  The archive is unedited - there are blurry images and shots of random pieces of hardware mixed in with the more impressive photos, but personally I think that adds to the value of the collection, it's like getting a real time view of the events being recorded.

The archive can be found at:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/ - if you have any interest in the history of space exploration, I strongly recommend browsing through the gallery.  And, if you happen to be part of the lunatic fringe that thinks the whole thing was a hoax, I welcome your comments on how poorly the images have been faked - I enjoy a good laugh.

- Sid

Counting down.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown,engines on
David Bowie, Space Oddity

It's 8:30 on Sunday morning as I start to type this - we leave for Japan at 4:20 PM on Tuesday.

When I originally posted my travel plans at the start of this year, I had every expectation of making the trip to Japan on my own. The biggest (and best) change since then has been the addition of the gorgeous, smart and funny Karli to my life.

Initially Karli was reluctant to join me on the trip - I couldn't quite afford to pay full fare for two people on my own, and she wasn't sure about spending the money.  However, I had the good fortune to find a great deal on flights from All Nippon Airways, and that was enough to tip the balance. (To my intense satisfaction and happiness.) 

The framework of the trip hasn't changed very much - we'll start by visiting Kyoto, then spend time in Tokyo and Yokohama before making our way to Takasaki to stay with my friend Terry and his family for a few days.  A pilgrimage to the geek Mecca of the Mobile Suit Gundam statue and exhibition is still very much on the list, but now I don't have to take my own picture there, there will be someone with me to take care of that.

Thank you for agreeing to come along on my adventure, Karli!  It's going to be infinitely better with you there to hold my hand and enjoy it with me, my love.

- Sid

Stayin' Alive.

I didn't expect to find the time to for Ridley Scott's adaptation of The Martian before leaving on our Japanese adventure, but I received an unexpected inquiry from my lovely girlfriend Karli as to whether or not I'd be interested in seeing it this weekend, and after some negotiations off we went to a 3-D* Saturday matinee.

Overall, the film version of The Martian scores well in its presentation of Andy Weir's novel.  Inevitably, there are the changes and compressions required to move from one medium to another, but the movie keeps the feel of the original story, while enhancing it with the visual brilliance which is the trademark of Ridley Scott's handiwork.

Scott fills the movie with epic shots of the Martian landscape, shots that emphasize Watney's isolation on an alien world, and that emphasis is probably the largest change from the book to the movie.  In the book, Watney moves from solving one problem to the next, with very little time spent on the emotional impact of being the only man on an entire planet.  Matt Damon's Watney experiences excitement, fear, pain and frustration - the movie humanizes the character to a much greater degree than the book.

Damon is the ideal casting choice for Mark Watney, Martian castaway.  Long portions of the book are first-person narrative, and Damon's affable, approachable manner puts the perfect face on the smart, funny character from the book.  For that matter, everyone shows well in their roles, although one or two of the actors felt underutilized, notably Sean Bean and Kristin Wiig.  Regardless, it's a pleasure to see Sean Bean survive to the end of a film.

For me, one of the best aspects of both the book and the movie is that The Martian is very nearly not science fiction at all. I don't have the background to judge whether or not it's entirely within our current technological envelope, but my feeling is that the scientific framework around Mark Watney's trials and tribulations is as accurate - and feasible - as possible.**

However, I missed the problem solving aspect of the book.  Mark Watney's ability to surmount the various barriers to survival that are placed in his path is the best part of the story for me, and the movie either eliminates or simplifies many of those barriers. Nonetheless, the movie does an impressive job of realistically presenting the manner in which the story of a stranded astronaut could play out.

Most impressive of all is the impeccable timing of NASA's recent announcement regarding evidence of liquid water on Mars.  Logic says that it's accidental marketing, but I'm more than a little curious (and a bit apprehensive) to see what NASA announces for the sequel to Independence Day that's coming out next year...

- Sid

* If you haven't seen the film yet, there is no need to spend your money on the 3D version - I cannot think of a 3D movie that I've seen in which it was less necessary or less emphasized than in The Martian.

**  Apparently astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who does have the background, agrees. 

Tardisbuilders.com

And now, an unexpected guest posting from my friend and co-worker Joe Shewfelt:

My nephew Mark’s kid Brock bought a small farm near Anola Manitoba last year and moved there with his other half, who had a ready-made family of two boys. They have to wait in pretty nasty weather for the school bus so Mark and Brock built them this:

Pretty cool, eh? I’m proud of them.

 - Joe

As a postscript to this posting, impressed though I was by the TARDIS bus shelter, to my educated eye there was one glaring omission:  the iconic POLICE TELEPHONE sign that should appear on the door.

Realizing that Joe might not even recognize this problem, let alone know how to solve it, I took the liberty of finding a source for police box door signage, and chipped in ten bucks - I think it's very important to support the arts.

- Sid

The Who Fighters?

Hi Sid, just wanted to ask what size t-shirt do you wear now, is it a medium or a large?
Colin
p.s. This information may not automatically indicate that a t-shirt is or will be purchased with you in mind.

When it's coming up on your birthday and your best friend asks you what t-shirt size you wear, it's difficult to avoid doing a bit of deductive reasoning regarding possible gifts coming your way.

However, this morning when I opened the parcel that Colin had sent me, I was bemused to discover a handcrafted wooden box with the image of my Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol carved into the lid.  Intrigued, I opened the box to discover a matching picture on cloth inside a plastic bag.

I opened the bag, and to my extreme pleasure found that it contained a 20th Anniversary Foo Fighters t-shirt, decorated with an image of the same ray gun.*  I'm not a big Foo Fighters listener**, but I would be willing to bet that very few people who own that t-shirt own the matching sidearm.

Frustrated by my inability to get an attractive crease-free shot of my new apparel, I decided to resort to the internet in hopes of getting a good catalogue shot of the front of the t-shirt.  To my astonishment, I discovered that what I had in my possession was a limited edition item from a run of only 750.

As a result, I actually felt a bit guilty.  I can't help but think that someplace out there, a serious David Grohl fan is grinding their teeth because they place the 751st order for an anniversary t-shirt - just after Colin placed his.  Regardless, it's a great gift for people who are fans of ray guns rather than rock bands - thanks again, Colin!!

- Sid

P.S. Other blogworthy*** presents include a very cool Spider-Man T-shirt from Karli's sister Stefanie (along with old-style liquorice cigars, very much appreciated) and a Doctor Who scarf from Christi - oddly enough, also in a wooden box.  Is this a thing?

My thanks to everyone for their gifts!

* This is actually a double score from the SF fan perspective.  The phrase "foo fighter" originates during World War II, and was used to refer to Unidentified Flying Object sightings by pilots.

** Colin was kind enough to include a CD of the band's greatest hits so that I could remedy this gap in my experience.

*** In order to give full credit where it's due, my girlfriend Karli presented me with a fabulous, wonderful, deeply personal gift and an incredible day - neither of which had any application to this blog, which is actually sort of impressive all on its own.  Thank you again for everything, my love!!!!

Gotta represent my peeps.

- Sid

Any questions?

I think it says everything you need to know about the challenges of my Saturday when I say that until just now, I had completely forgotten that the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who premiered today.

- Sid

"A moustache can tell you a lot about a man."

A moustache can tell you a lot about a man. When properly administered, it can say, “this man has commanded spacecraft”, “this man escorted Soviet bombers out of Canadian airspace”, or “this man lived in a research vessel at the bottom of the ocean.” These can be tall orders to live up to – having a moustache is a big responsibility.

www.chrishadfield.ca

A happy 56th birthday to retired astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield, the best thing to happen to space exploration since Neil Armstrong took one small step.

And, of course, a happy birthday to your moustache too, sir.

- Sid

Olive drab for SG-1, please.

I was recently invited out by my friend Chris for a celebratory birthday dinner and drinks. Now, should this information cause any of you to start composing a short note expressing your regrets at having somehow missed my birthday, let me reassure you that your calendar hasn't betrayed you - my birthday is still at the end of September.

Then why the premature celebration?  Well, in a way, it wasn't so much a celebration of my birthday as it was of Chris' present - or rather presents, to be accurate.

When I opened the package, it contained an impressive summary of the last fifty years worth of science fiction iconography from film and television* in badge form, gathered over time with some degree of effort and dedication on Chris' part.  Flushed with success, Chris couldn't wait for the delayed gratification of September, and so, an early dinner invitation to give me my gift. 

Once I got over being impressed, I admit to having a bit of bafflement as to how to best make use of my bounty.  After all, even the most dedicated fan can only put so many patches on a jacket before becoming self-conscious about it.  Then I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to create some custom geek baseball hats, albeit with a bit of stitching** on someone's part.  In fact, not very long ago I spent some time searching for a Nostromo crew hat without any success.

And, as my girlfriend pointed out, there's a convenient tie-in for a birthday gift from someone else:  eleven baseball caps.

- Sid

* On one hand, you could make a case for a Battlestar Galactica patch.  On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that there are damn few people reading this who recognize the provenance of the patch in the lower right without the aid of Google™.

** They're iron-on patches, but unless state of the art in hot fabric glue has changed since my previous experiences, I'd rather go with thread.

"Hi, I'm Scott."

"Did he just say, 'Hi, I'm Scott?"

Hope van Dyne, Ant-Man

Karli's away with her sisters for a Father-Daughter weekend, what to do, what to do*... how about a movie? Well, I'm not going to waste my time on the Fantastic Four movie, enough other people have made that mistake to keep me from following suit...

Wait, is Ant-Man still in circulation?

As it turns out, yes, Marvel's second foray into the B-List of superheroes is still in commercial release.  I had heard positive reviews when it first hit the streets, but I've been busy enough that seeing it didn't seem to be a priority.

I may do Ant-Man a bit of an injustice in referring to the character as a B-List hero.  In the comics, he's a founding member of the original 1963 Avengers, and Ultron, the cybernetic nemesis who appeared in the second Avengers film, is originally a product of Ant-Man's genius rather than Tony Stark's.

Regardless, the character has never quite achieved the prominence that Iron Man, the Hulk or Thor have in the Marvel Comics Universe, and as such he's an interesting choice as an addition to the MCU movie lineup.

Oddly enough, Ant-Man doesn't in the least play like a superhero movie, at least not a superhero movie like the Avengers or Captain America films.  Ant-Man is Marvel Comic's take on one of the standard Hollywood plotlines - the underdog who makes good.

Paul Rudd takes the role of Scott Lang, thief with a conscience, who is determined to go straight now that he's paid his debt to society for his moralistic crime against an oppressive corporate villain. His ex-wife has an intimidating new boyfriend who happens to be a cop, and without a steady job Lang can't handle the child support payments he needs to make in order to see his beloved daughter.  Having been turned down for work by even Baskin-Robbins, he succumbs to the temptation of just one more burglary to get the money he needs.

The crime in question involves cracking a mysterious safe at the home of Dr. Henry Pym, but to Lang's intense disappointment, the safe contains only a strange suit and helmet.  When he tries on his unusual loot, he discovers to his shock and dismay that it gives him the ability to shrink to the size of, well, an ant.**

It turns out that Pym has staged the entire crime in order to recruit Lang to wear the suit and help prevent his shrinking technology from falling into the wrong hands.  Lang reluctantly agrees, and the plot instantly becomes every underdog story you've ever seen.

Pym is the curmudgeonly mentor with a heart of gold and a secret heart-breaking backstory, his daughter is the love interest who is initially disdainful of Lang but soon grows to appreciate him, and Lang goes from bumbling student to successful hero as soon as he seizes on his need to see his daughter as the happy thought that will allow him to communicate with his ant allies.

Of course, the bad guy is Pym's scientific protegé gone bad, Lang has three comedy-relief criminal associates that might as well have been drawn by Disney animators, and the final battle between hero and villain is to save Lang's daughter, not the world - in fact, the world may still be in peril at the end of the movie.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Ant-Man quite a bit.  It was an unexpectedly well-scripted and clever take on the whole superhero meme, and all the actors do good work with their characters - Paul Rudd deserves particular recognition for his portrayal of reluctant heroism. The effects are wonderful, the scaled shots of the world from an ant's perspective work beautifully, but ultimately, Scott Lang could have been training to race stock cars and the movie's plot would have been very similar.

All that aside, I do have one strong criticism.  It's made clear from the onset that Pym's suit functions by shrinking the gaps between molecules, which means that Lang maintains his full-sized weight when miniaturized.  This allows him to hit the bad guys like a 180-pound bullet - so how is he able to ride a flying ant?

- Sid

* Other than blogging - I don't normally explain gaps in my blogging schedule here, this is a hobby not a job, but this DOES offer a convenient opportunity to catch up on a lot of backlog - or backblog, perhaps.

** I'm reasonably confident that this isn't a spoiler - I think that the movie's title sort of gives this one away going in.

Fail.

I recently had the dubious pleasure of watching Lavalantula, a film which combines giant lava-spitting spiders with a partial reunion of the Police Academy cast.  Lavalantula, like Sharknado or Megashark versus Crocosaurus, is one of those Syfy™ movies that we're not intended to take seriously, which supposedly fall into the category of "so bad that they're good."

What a bizarre concept for the entertainment industry to have developed, and how sad that they've chosen to apply it to science fiction.* 

I own several thousand science fiction novels, and, to be brutally honest, they're not all perfect.  There are books from the early days of the genre** that are poorly written, books that are stilted and cumbersome, books that are light years (pun intended) away from the artistry and craft of more talented authors who would follow in their footsteps.

But those books were written in earnest - they represent an author's best attempt to express a concept or an idea that captured their imagination, something that they desperately wanted to show to the world.  None of them chose to do work that was deliberately shoddy, they did the best they could with the tools that they had, and the results, although flawed in some cases, introduced concepts and ideas that helped to build the foundations of the science fiction genre.

I admire these authors for their creativity, eagerness, and enthusiasm, and forgive them their clumsiness - their intentions were all for the best.

Lavalantula and its companion films, on the other hand, represent a decision that I can't admire.  People, if you're going to decide that deliberately cliche-ridden dialogue, stupid, shoddy plotlines and poor acting*** are your actual goal, you need to take a long look at what you're doing with your lives.  Maybe you should set your sights higher - why not aim for the stars?

- Sid

* It embarrasses me to call these travesties science fiction, but unfortunately, the shoe fits.

** And a few that are a lot more recent, to be fair.

*** Credit where credit is due:  there's a young actor named Noah Hunt in Lavalantula who really does do his best with what he's been given. 

Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

I'm going to have to science the shit out of this.

Mark Watney, The Martian

Until I saw the trailer for The Martian, I was completely unaware of the best-selling self-published 2011 novel by Andy Weir that provided the original story for the movie. Intrigued by the concept, I took the book with me as vacation reading on a long weekend getaway, and found myself completely caught up in the trials and tribulations of American astronaut Mark Watney, left for dead on Mars after a piece of debris knocks him out and disables his suit telemetry during the evacuation of his mission team due to a dangerous dust storm.

When Watney regains consciousness, he finds himself alone and stranded, faced with the very basic challenge of staying alive, followed by the longer term project of contacting Earth in hopes of being rescued before he runs out of food. Watney's first person mission logs detail his ingenious solutions to the obstacles that he needs to overcome in order to successfully meet these two challenges.

Weir stacks the deck in Watney's favour in a couple of ways.*  First, the marooned astronaut is an engineer/botanist, the perfect combination for the situation – there might well have been a completely different outcome if the stranded crew member had been a psychiatrist/pilot.  Second, NASA has conveniently provided a few raw potatoes for the crew’s Thanksgiving dinner, which gives Watney immediate access to something that he can cultivate in the mission's habitat in order to extend his food supplies.

I found it to be a fun, entertaining read, although not terribly deep (any book which relies heavily on jokes about 70s television shows is not going to challenge Crime and Punishment in terms of psychological depth) and completely enjoyed it.  Oddly enough, I'm not sure I’d recommend the book to everyone, although I suspect it’s going to work very well as a movie, especially with Matt Damon providing the voice - and face - for Watney's narrative.

Why wouldn’t I recommend the book to all and sundry?  The plot of The Martian is made up of an extended series of scientific solutions to the problems of survival, solutions that are heavily based in math, chemistry and physics.**  Weir does an excellent job of making the science comprehensible, but even so, there's an awful lot of discussion of caloric units, wattage, surface areas, molecular composition and so on.

I've always been more interested in the more scientific side of science fiction, and as such I found Watney's solutions to be ingenious and interesting, but I know a few people who would blink a few times and then abandon the book in favour of less technical narrative.

However, the real question that The Martian raises is one that we have yet to face in our limited exploration of space:  how far would we go to rescue an astronaut marooned in space?  Space travel relies on a limited supply of resources and hardware which are incredibly expensive and time-consuming to assemble and construct.  Would we spend millions of dollars and jeopardize other missions in order to stage a rescue effort which might not even succeed?

Regardless of the manner in which that question is answered in The Martian***, I'd like to think that we would.  In my mind, there's an unspoken covenant between humanity and the people that have chosen to be our pathfinders into the universe, a covenant that says that if they find themselves in peril, we will do everything in our power to rescue them - it would be a betrayal of their dedication and courage to do anything less. 

- Sid

* This is surprisingly common in castaway stories. The original Robinson Crusoe has an entire sailing ship full of supplies to draw upon:  guns, gunpowder, tools, wood, clothing, canvas, and so on. The astronaut in the 1964 movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars miraculously (and improbably) discovers open water, edible aquatic plants, rocks that release oxygen when heated, and an alien man Friday.  Tom Hanks gets the contents of random FedEx™ packages – including a volleyball.

** I spent about thirty minutes looking for an official name for the physics trick involving lateral pressure on a taut cable that Watney uses to get a flipped Mars rover upright again, without ever finding the right search terms to get the results I wanted. If anyone finds out what it's called, please leave a comment!

*** No spoilers here, Dorothy.

Planet Earth.

As an artist, I am inspired by the element of perspective within my paintings. I approached my earlier series “Sea Change” from a dramatic vantage point. The infusion of colour and texture expressed a wealth of emotions projected onto a landscape. While nature was the departure point, the series Sea Change (coined by Shakespeare in The Tempest) explored romantic illusions in life.

In the last couple of years, I have become more of a realist. I’ve seen great changes politically, economically and socially within our world. On an environmental level, we are seeing the impact of our civilization. There is a transition happening on every level of our society. It is because of this that I am compelled to paint my new series, Planet Earth.

Norah Borden

In 2010, my friend Norah Borden started to see the world in a different way - literally.

Norah is an accomplished artist, who, until that point in time, had been painting interpretive, ethereal landscapes and seascapes. But in 2010, she saw a world in a global crisis, a world that was being shaped and changed by political and economic forces that sharply emphasized the divisions between countries and cultures.  Norah's response to these changes was to begin seeing our planet from a higher perspective, looking at the world as an interconnected whole that ignores the lines between countries and ideologies.

Photographs don't do justice to Norah's work - the art is incredibly textural and conceptually developed, and the large canvases that she has chosen for Planet Earth emphasize the detail and artistry that has gone into the creation of her work.  The swirling colours combine with the thick layering of medium to create a perfect artistic interpretation of our world as seen from orbit, while at the same time evoking a microscopic view.

If you'd like to get a good look at Norah's art in person, her work is currently on display at Telus Science World here in Vancouver.  She's doing a show in cooperation with Urthecast, a Vancouver-based company that provides access to data from high definition cameras mounted on the International Space Station.  If you get a chance, I strongly recommend that you take a look at her show - everyone should have an opportunity to see the world the way that Norah does.

http://www.ourplanetearth.ca/ - on display until September 14th, 2015.

- Sid

*Norah, who is a tiny perfect blonde person, works on her large canvases in an equally tiny perfect studio space - I've never seen her painting, but I imagine it as the artistic equivalent of building a ship in a bottle.

The Secret of the Ninth Planet.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix. The engineer must worry about the water and oxygen and food you'll need in space, about how much extra fuel it will take to launch your shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef tacos. A solar cell or a thruster nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements don't start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without sleep.

Mary Roach, Packing for Mars

On July 14th, NASA's New Horizons probe did a flyby of Pluto, which resulted in a treasure trove of information about the erstwhile ninth planet and its five moons, and is considered to have been a resounding success in adding to our limited catalogue of data for the outer reaches of the solar system.  But, you know what my first thought was when I heard about the flyby?

I wish we were doing this with people.

Yes, people are not the ideal tool for space exploration.  As per the opening quote form Packing for Mars, people are a problem when it comes to life in space, and I can't deny that NASA is doing a brilliant job of expanding our scientific knowledge of the solar system with automated probes and robotic rovers that are indifferent to the difficulties involved.  But ultimately, space exploration has to include the goal of having human beings travel to the same destinations – otherwise, we’re just watching it on TV.

- Sid

P.S. The title of this posting is an homage to a 1959 young adult novel by Donald A. Wollheim which was part of the science fiction selection at my grade school library. I don't normally provide the sources for the blog titles (and most of them do reference other genre material) but Wollheim's novel has a bit of a special place in my heart, and I felt that it deserved a bit of recognition.

Shouldn't Star Wars have been an option?

 "I don't need a doctor, damn it, I am a doctor!"

Leonard McCoy, Star Trek

The head of my company's skateboarding department* asked me a question this morning about a meeting on Friday, and I explained that I hadn't been in attendance, I'd been moving furniture.

"Oh, did you move?"

"No, my girlfriend moved in with me."

"That's great!  Which one is she, Star Trek or Doctor Who?"

I laughed and said neither, but it's an interesting question when you consider the two options.  My girlfriend Karli is fully aware of my interest in Doctor Who, and I've suggested that we watch a couple of episodes** at some point so that she can get an idea of how the show works.  (In return, I've kept track of what's been going on in The Bachelorette, it's important to share things in a relationship.)

It would never occur to me to make a similar suggestion about Star Trek. Whether or not someone has watched any episodes from the original series or seen either of the reboot films, the characters and concepts are inextricably embedded in the pop culture matrix - why would it be necessary to introduce anyone to Kirk and the Enterprise at this point in time?

Doctor Who, on the other hand, may be one of the last remaining bastions of pure geekdom.  It's very much a revered institution in the United Kingdom, but outside of the broadcast zone of the BBC, it's still a niche show, one that would never be shown during prime time on CBS, for example.  Similarly, I've revealed a couple of pivotal plot spoilers from Doctor Who to Karli without even thinking about it, because I don't really expect that she'll decide to catch up on the last nine seasons of the Doctor's exploits, let alone sit down with 50 years of the show.

But who knows, perhaps I'm doing both Karli and the Doctor an injustice.  For all I know, she'll be intrigued enough by a sample of the adventures of the last Time Lord to watch some more episodes.  But she certainly doesn't have to - I think she'd agree with me that emotional compatibility is far more important to our relationship than whether or not she knows why the damn thing looks like a police box.

- Sid

*  Yes, my company has a skateboarding department, which occupies a pivotal role in our marketing and community relations strategy.  It also has a small skate park in the lower parking area at our head office if you're looking for a spot out of the rain to do some lip tricks or grinds.

**  I'm thinking Blink and The Doctor's Wife, if you're curious.  Blink because it's such a good episode, in spite of the fact that the Doctor doesn't play a huge part in the plot, and The Doctor's Wife because Neil Gaiman's treatment of the relationship between the Doctor and his TARDIS is so well written and acted.  However, I'm open to other suggestions.

I thought that the Dark Side had cookies, not cupcakes...

It's touching to find out that your co-workers will always take your interests into account when randomly picking up cupcakes.  Thanks to Christi and Wendy!!

- Sid

Tatooine Gothic.

Looking at the display of Sandpeople costumes that were part of the Star Wars and the Power of Costume exhibit at Seattle's EMP, I was irresistibly reminded of the classic painting by Grant Wood.

- Sid

Rebel, Jedi, Princess, Queen.

The Star Wars saga has its flaws: there are issues with dialogue, the science is doubtful, there's the whole unfortunate Phantom Menace/midi-chlorian thing, and really, it's hard to deny that the movies have gone downhill a little bit more with each iteration in the series.*  However, it's impossible to ignore the artistic brilliance of the films, the visual creativity that illuminates and informs George Lucas' epic tale of good and evil.

The Star Wars and the Power of Costume exhibit, currently on display at the EMP in Seattle,  explores and explains the large part of that visual storytelling which dedicated to the costuming for the films.  The exhibit features costumes from all six of the films, and clearly illustrates the crucial role played by the wardrobe department in the creation of the Star Wars universe.

The iconography established in the first film is classic and simple from start to finish.  The faceless Stormtroopers; Darth Vader's black armour and sinister helmet; Luke's simple farmboy garb; Obi-wan's monastic robes; Han Solo's morally ambiguous black-and-white gunslinger outfit; Leia's elegant white costume; each one contributes to a clear visual guide for each character's place in the story.

This fundamental symbolism continues for the next two movies:  Luke never returns to the innocence of his original costume, and over the course of time, his clothing indicates that he may be getting closer and closer to inheriting his father's dark legacy.  Leia's costumes confirm her position as a leader of the rebel forces, she dons an all-concealing disguise in an attempt to rescue Han from Jabba the Hut, is displayed in a degrading slave girl costume to emphasize her role as a captive, then symbolically uses her chains to strangle her captor.

The costumes of the second trilogy are more ornate and decorative, with only the robes of the Jedi retaining their simple design.  We are shown a more developed palette of colours, and it is no longer a simple matter to determine a character's allegiance based purely on their clothing, which enhances the more duplicitous turns of the plot:  Amidala appears as both Princess and handmaiden, Senator Palpatine's true nature is concealed then revealed, and Anakin Skywalker undergoes a slow transition from Jedi to Sith, with the final change to the dark trappings of his new persona as Darth Vader.

I visited the show during a recent weekend trip to Seattle with Karli, and it is fascinating to see the costumes in person - the degree of detail and craft is astonishing, and each display is accompanied by explanations and footnotes regarding various aspects of the costumes, their creation, and the influences behind their design.  It's on display at the Science Fiction section of the EMP until October 4, 2015, and if you're visiting Seattle, I'd say that it would be well worth your time to pay a visit and get a closer look at the costumes of a galaxy far, far away.

- Sid

*  Although I think we all have high hopes for the upcoming seventh film.