Japan 06: Mobile Suit Gundam.

Japan is a country of contrasts between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern. On Tuesday, my friend Terry takes Karli and I to Haruna Jinja, an isolated Shinto shrine which was founded in 586 AD. Our visit is quiet and contemplative - it is impossible to ignore the spiritual feeling of the temple and its mountain location.

Wednesday finds us in Tokyo's ultra-modern Odaiba district, the artificial island home of the imposing 18 metre statue of Mobile Suit Gundam, taken from the 1979 animated series of the same name.  The statue stands guard over the Diver City Plaza, which houses the Gundam Front multimedia experience and exhibition.

Mobile Suit Gundam is a bit like Japan's Star Trek. The original groundbreaking series actually didn't do well in terms of ratings, and only 43 episodes were produced.  However, as with Star Trek, the program developed a large underground following, and over time that cult popularity led to new TV shows, movies, video games, novels, comics books and model kits.

This culminated in the construction of a life-sized reproduction of boy-pilot Amuro Ray's original powered battlesuit in 2009, in order to commemorate the show's 30th anniversary.  Originally located in Shizuoka Prefecture, it was relocated to Odaiba in 2011*.

The statue has been on the global bucket list for geeks since it was built, and Karli astutely asks, "This is why we came to Japan, isn't it?"  Not entirely, but I freely admit that it was certainly the first thing I thought of when I started planning a Japanese adventure.

The crowd surrounding the statue indicates that I'm not the only person who felt obliged to visit this towering entry from the Geek Seven Wonders of the World.**  It's impressively detailed, with all the little access panels and stencilled warnings that you would expect on a 60 foot military warbot, and it's obviously kept clean and in good repair.  It's actually a bit sad to think that there are more legitimate monuments that receive much less attention.

In saying that, I do the original Gundam series a bit of an injustice. Series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino wanted to illustrate the grim reality of war - the first episode prominently features the deaths of innocent civilians, and the pilots of the opposing mobile suits are never shown as faceless drones, but as soldiers who feel pain and fear as they die.

Once we finish admiring - and photographing - the statue, we head inside for a visit to the Gundam Front exhibition for part two of the mobile suit experience - posting to follow!

- Sid

* Sadly, I gather that they took it apart and moved it rather than having it walk or fly to its new home.

**  Other entries would be the original San Diego Comic-Con, the Doctor Who Experience, Kennedy Space Centre and the Lord of the Rings sets for Hobbiton.  I welcome suggestions for two more geek must-sees.

Japan 05: Idoru.

Her black hair, rough-cut and shining, brushed pale bare shoulders as she turned her head. She had no eyebrows, and both her lids and lashes seemed to have been dusted with something white, leaving her dark pupils in stark contrast.

And now her eyes met his.

He seemed to cross a line. In the very structure of her face, in geometries of underlying bone, lay coded histories of dynastic flight, privation, terrible migrations. He saw stone tombs in steep alpine meadows, their lintels traced with snow. A line of shaggy pack ponies, their breath white with cold, followed a trail above a canyon.

The curves of the river below were strokes of distant silver. Iron harness bells clanked in the blue dusk.

Laney shivered. In his mouth a taste of rotten metal.

The eyes of the idoru, envoy of some imaginary country, met his. 

William Gibson, Idoru

The manner in which life imitates art, or more specifically science fiction, never ceases to amaze me.  In William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru, a musician decides to marry a digital Japanese pop star, or "idoru", who makes her public appearances as a hologram.

Welcome to the future - literally.  Hatsune Miku, whose name is Japanese for "the first sound from the future" is a vocaloid, the public face of a singing synthesizer application.  Miku started her virtual career in 2007, and has been doing live holographic appearances since 2009, including a performance as an opening act for Lady Gaga's ArtRave tour and a guest spot on David Letterman.

It's easy to see something like this as the future of pop music - a library of customizable digital performers who can be programmed with the musical style of your choice, and modified to match any audience demographic as desired. Come to think of it, have you ever noticed that when Taylor Swift* is performing live, sometimes you can almost see through her to the drummer...?

- Sid

* Dear Ms. Swift:  I tossed a coin and it came up heads, so I went with your name rather than Katy Perry's.  Please don't write a song about me. 

Japan 04: Gnomic Statement XIII.

If the Umbrella Corporation has a branch office in Yokohama, I'm thinking it must be here.

- Sid

P.S. Seriously though, could the architect have possibly designed a less friendly looking building?

Japan 03: Big in Japan.

The crowded open-air market on Nakamise-dōri near the Buddhist temple at Sensō-ji is a Tokyo landmark.  Over 80 small shops sell a staggering selection of items in a location which has been active since the 16th century.  Karli and I are touring the market with my friend and ex-coworker Terry and his wife Misaki, who are acting as hosts and guides for the middle part of our trip.

I'm not a huge shopper when it comes to travel souvenirs - generally I like to pick up a mug if I can find something suitable, if it survives the trip home a mug is a practical item that will last for years if you're careful doing the dishes, but most of the merchandise at the I ♥ SOMEPLACE level leaves me cold. However, as we make our way through the masses of people, a t-shirt hanging at one of the shops catches my roving eye.

For me, the recognition of Astro Boy (Mighty Atom in the original long-running  - and incredibly popular - Osamu Tezuka manga*) is immediate.  In its animated version, Astro Boy defined the look of anime* at its beginnings, and was one of the first Japanese animation exports to reach North American audiences, making its NBC debut in 1963, long before Sailor Moon or the Transformers.  It doesn't hurt that the shirt says SCIENCE FICTION in large lettering, either.

Rather than attempt to turn against the tide in order to take a closer look, we make our way to the end of the market and return via a side route with much less traffic.

Once back at the store, I take a second look and discover that the image is actually a lenticular add-on that shows Astro Boy's internal structure and outer shell, depending on the angle of view. It's maybe a bit pricey at ¥3,900, but it's enough of a unique item that I'm willing to make the investment - provided that the woman running the store can find something in my size. I wait patiently while three women hold t-shirts to my back, examine my shoulders and debate sizing in English and Japanese.

As it turns out when we get to our hotel and I have a chance to try the shirt on, I'm comfortably snug in a Japanese XL, which in North America would probably hang a bit loosely on me.  I might have even been able to wear an XXL in the unlikely event that they'd had one - even finding the XL involved a bit of digging around.

Sadly, this trend continues through the trip. Sorry, Colin - I know that you'd placed a request for a t-shirt or two, but Japanese sizes don't translate well (so to speak) to the larger North American physique.

- Sid

* Every now and then I need to remind myself that not everyone who reads these postings will be conversant with the specialized vocabulary of my interests - in other words, you may not speak Geek. Manga are Japanese comics, which are commonly published in more of a softcover format rather than the North American comic book layout. Anime refers to Japanese animation, which has always had a unique style and feel compared to Western animation. In terms of quality, anime compares to the Flintstones in the same fashion that the Mona Lisa relates to wallpaper.

Japan 02: And now, the latest in an unplanned series of Imperial Stormtrooper jokes.

Move along, move along...

- Sid

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.