Tooting My Own Horn A Bit

Well, Readers Mine, I'm pleased to be able to announce that as of today, I'm officially a published writer. Watcher Junior: the Undergraduate Journal of Whedon Studies, published it's latest issue today, and I'm in it! "'We Just Declared War': Buffy as General" grew of out a presentation of the same name I gave at Slayage 4 in St. Augustine last year, and I'm still pretty proud of it. Go check it out!

Books, E-books, and Reading

My Kindle, as Appian's The Civil Wars

I’ve been chewing on this one for most of a year now, Readers Mine, so I figured it was about time to ruminate publicly. As you may know, I am an avowed bibliophile, and have been since my early teens. Over the years I’ve managed to compile a respectable library, and have developed into one of those people who, in the words of Anna Quindlen, “believe that decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” Let’s be clear, though. I’m not a collector. Oh I have a few moderately valuable editions, and some signed copies, but they came to me through accident or happy opportunity rather than careful acquisition. Above all, I’m a reader, so my library is as much mass market paperback and ex-library editions as anything else.

All of that is to remind you that I am a lover of books not merely as communications technology, but also as things, as objects to be possessed and treasured, touched, held, and smelled. At the same time, I am a reader, so the idea of having the equivalent of my library accessible through one, lightweight, hand-held device that I can carry with me pretty much anywhere is a heady proposition. So I waited, and watched e-readers – and the Kindle specifically – go through a few generations, and kept an eye on the development of e-books in general, and finally, last year, I bought my Kindle. It wasn’t an unprepared plunge. By this point I’d dipped into Project Gutenberg and Google Books, and even had the opportunity to read a book on a first-gen iPad. I find computers and other back-lit screen devices adequate for short pieces, but when I get the chance to curl up for a weekend and really read a novel or two, or get so hooked in one that I say to hell with it and stay up until 3am to finish it, the back-light really begins to hurt my eyes. It seemed that the Kindle’s (and now Nook’s), non-backlit, e-ink display was the way for me to go.

And it was. Crisp, print-like text, light (particularly when compared to the iPad), and capable of storing approximately 3500 books, the Kindle is a device built for readers like me, who are apt to spend hours on end reading. To be fair, I was also not looking for a device that lets me play Angry Birds or surf the web, or play my music. I just wanted an e-reader, pure and simple, and that’s what the Kindle is. Financial concerns also entered into my decision. Not so much the cost of the device (though I waited until competition had begun to have its effect, price-point-wise), as the cost of content. Look, as far as I know, it is impossible to obtain hardcopy formats of the complete works of Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, H. Rider Haggard, Mark Twain, Alexander Dumas, A. Conan Doyle, etc, etc for $5 or less apiece. I have all of the above on my Kindle for about the price of a hardcover book. Literally over 1000 books, plus stories, poems, essays, etc, for the price of one. Not only that, but many of these writers’ works are hard to find, even when you’re just looking for Haggard’s Alan Quatermain adventures. I’ve always wanted complete collections of these guys, and now I have them. Of course, the price is reflective of their (mostly) public domain status, but still.

Beyond the classics, I’ve read histories, classic and modern SF, how-tos, PDFs (which the Kindle isn’t so hot with), poetry, and even used a Kindle version of the Bible for a recent class. I really like the device. Reading on it is a joy, the battery-life is fairly long, and the thought of having so much content right there in my hand still makes me a bit giddy. I’ve read on the Kindle in waiting rooms, on vacation, at home, over lunches, and my Kindle travels with me to class every single day, slipping into my backpack without adding any appreciable weight, and insuring that I never unexpectedly find myself without something to read. It’s fantastic. That being said, e-books are not going to replace books for me. They comprise reading material in addition to, but not in place of, books. When favorite authors publish a new book, I still want it in hardback. Add to that the usual discounts offered by Amazon and Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble on new releases, and hardcovers generally aren’t much more expensive than e-editions. Yet. I still want the sense of physical possession that books bring, especially with favorite writers, and e-books just don’t cut it when it comes to that.

Of course, I have to face the fact that this likely springs from the fact that easily 95% and more of my reading life has been through books. It is a format I am intimately and unconsciously familiar with. When I want to find a specific passage or quote in a book, I can often find it because I remember where it falls, physically, in the book, and so open the book to the appropriate section without need for a look at the index or table of contents. My brain and body have been programmed through years of practice to be a surprisingly efficient search tool when it comes to books. Plus, whether I buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Got Books? I only need one “device” to read it: the book itself. (The real revolution in e-books will occur when there is one standard file format, or all e-readers come with the built-in ability to reformat files so that I can read all my e-books on one device, no matter where purchased.) Younger generations, particularly those who will grow up with e-books, will undoubtedly develop similar technology-specific skills as those I have for books.

In the end, go get an e-reader. It’s totally worth it, though I recommend doing some research and test-drives to determine which one is right for you, and whether you want a dedicated device or something more like a tablet. It turns out the magic isn’t in the device, anyway. It’s still in the words.

Super 8: B-

A couple of weekends ago, Mock’ was throwing a fillies only shindig in honor of the Belmont Stakes, so I picked my horse, placed my bet, and then ABD and I got out of there and headed for the theater to check out Super 8. The movie earned a resounding “meh,” from us both. There is much of the nostalgia piece about this movie, for those long ago days when Spielberg really knew how to make a movie. Echoes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. abound, although given a somewhat different, darker twist by director J.J. Abrams. It’s a period piece, and necessarily so as some pretty significant plot points hang on having to wait three days for 8mm film to be developed, and on the lack of cell phones and the internet.

In a nutshell, a group of young teens and ‘tweens have been bit by the moviemaking bug, made possible by Super 8 cameras and a proliferation of amateur movie-making and Fangoria-esque monster-makeup magazines. The hero of the piece is the techie, Joe Lamb, the talented model builder turned sound-man and makeup artist for the kids’ monster movie, played by Joel Courtney who falls hard and innocently for the 14 year old ingénue Alice Dainard, played by Elle Fanning. Keep an eye out for these two actors. In fact, keep an eye out for all 6 of the young actors who form the core of this film. They bring a level of talent and heart to the screen that I haven’t seen in far too long. Fanning, in a lovely movie-within-the-movie scene where she is rehearsing an emotional goodbye to her husband in the kids’ film, manages in a few lines to remind us how magical the art of acting can be, and how powerfully we can be moved by it. I really just can’t heap enough praise on this group of young actors. They make the movie worth it.

Unfortunately, the talent is better than their vehicle. The plot proceeds along the expected lines. Witnessing a horrific train accident, the kids are the first to know that something fishy’s going on in this small Ohio town, and knowing more than the adults who refuse to listen to them, they set out to investigate and eventually our boy-hero saves our girl-heroine and the alien gets to go home. Pretty much cookie cutter filmmaking here, Readers Mine. Still the first hour to hour and fifteen minutes of the movie are quite good. J.J. Abrams is actually very good at portraying human interpersonal relationships, often very complex ones, and in creating three dimensional characters, and when he sticks to that, as he does with the kids in the first half of the film, he's really good. However, he didn't take the time to equally develop the adults in the story or their relationships with their kids, and this winds up really hurting the film. Where Abrams consistently falls short, though, is when he attempts to bring the fantastic, whether aliens or islands.

In the last half of the film it begins to feel like you’re watching two different movies that never quite manage to get together as the kids’ storyline and escaped alien storyline careen into overdrive and at best just kind of glance off one another. I literally found myself thinking in classic MST3K fashion, “meanwhile, in another movie…” This is exacerbated by Abrams' stock trick of delaying the reveal of the monster through a series of fast, blurred, and partial glimpses of the beast, or just sound effects followed by shots of after the fact devastation. It doesn’t work. Not in LOST, not in Cloverfield, and not in Super 8. The reveal, as usual, is a letdown. It just can’t compete with the monster you’ve built in your head, and doesn’t. This kind of tease-and-reveal is incredibly hard, and even artists who are really good at it, like H. P. Lovecraft was, have a hard time pulling it off. Abrams isn’t good at it. Rounding out the stock-plot is the evil military colonel, the misunderstood alien, and parents learning the lesson of how wonderful their kids really are. All great stock-plots. Stock-plots that made Spielberg! Abrams, however, is no Spielberg, and in his hands the final half of the film winds up clunky and forced. (And let’s face it; once the monster has started chowing down on humans, I’m with the bad colonel. Hell, I’m with Ripley: nuke the town from orbit: it’s the only way to be sure. Letting the thing escape just doesn’t seem like a good idea, you know? Round up the kids and send in the SRBMs.)

So, over all, Super 8 gets a “B-,” mostly due to the efforts of the group of young actors at its center, and for the first half of the film. Be sure and stick around for the credits to see the 8mm movie the kids were actually making during the film, it’s one of the best parts. Super 8 is well worth putting in your Netflix cue or hitting for a $5 matinee, but go to the Dollar Store before hand and smuggle in your candy. No need to give the theater too much money for this one.

Watching TV (on DVD)

Recently I’ve undertaken a rather intensive rewatch of the insanely wonderful Australian science fiction series Farscape on DVD. This comes on top of – and for the moment is supplanting – my ongoing rewatch of Angel, and comes only a few months after viewing the first five seasons of Supernatural on DVD in a four month period. I’ve been watching a lot of TV on DVD lately, in other words, and it’s got me thinking.

As someone who has begun to look at TV as something worth studying critically, and who remembers the days before even VCRs were generally affordable, I’m struck by the way technology has changed not only how we access various TV shows, but the individual and cultural experience of TV as well. Over the past four years I’ve done a lot of catching up on TV shows through a variety of media. I watched the last 2 seasons of Battlestar Galactica via my DVR (and deleted every episode in a fit of pique after the atrocious series finale was phoned-in from the SF Plot Convenience Warehouse, completing the last season and a half’s utter betrayal of the show’s brilliant promise) since my work had me getting home halfway through the original air-time, and often beat to boot. I used the DVR again during the mercifully brief run of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, so that Mock and I could watch them together, and we watched the series finale “Epitaph 2” streaming from Hulu when Fox changed the air-time and the DVR missed it. I caught up on the dark, brilliant, and beautiful genius that is Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad (back on July 17^th, BITCH!) by means of DVD sets for seasons 1 and 2, and, with the kind permission of a friend, iTunes for season 3, which I watched on my larger screen TV via a HDMI cable. Recently, I’ve been advised to watch Showtime’s Spartacus via streaming media from Netflix.

So, DVR, DVD, free streaming through Hulu, paid downloads from iTunes, and subscription streaming through Netflix. That’s how I watch my TV today. Seriously, Readers Mine, these days the only time I watch a TV show on its original air date and time is when I’m in a hotel, or idly flipping through channels on the couch with Mock’ and she finds something she’s willing to light on for longer than 1.8 seconds (or decides to torture me by stopping on the “History” Channel, which will be showing something about Ice Road Truckers, or How to Make a Snickers Bar, which, while it may be interesting, ISN’T FRELLING HISTORY!!!!). This is wildly different from the TV habits of my youth, when if you missed the original airing, you had to wait for the rerun, and in the era before cable began its habit of the 1 hour later, then every hour on the hour for three days reruns of shows they thought were popular the wait could be a long one. This change in the means of viewer access has led, in turn, to a change in viewer culture, and the rise of an interesting type of nostalgia-viewing, typified by the rewatches of Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Nik at Nite, the blog of Nikki Stafford, who literally wrote the books on both shows.

As TV became common throughout the United States, viewer culture grew up around the imposed schedules of the Big Three (later Four, then Four and A Half) networks. Viewers became used to a schedule of programming where a show aired at a certain time on a certain night, weekly, with terrible doldrums in the summer months perhaps enlivened by reruns or old favorites now in syndication. In any event, sometimes millions of people would all gather around their TV sets at the same time, on the same day, watching the same channel to follow the ongoing adventures of Marshal Dillon, or Hawkeye Pierce, Archie and Edith, Andy Sipowicz, or Buffy. That episode was followed by a week of waiting, often discussing the show with fellow viewers in “water-cooler talk,” and anticipating the following week’s installment of the story. This anticipatory period was heightened between seasons, when one had to wait several months for new episodes, often after the previous season had wound up with a cliff-hangery finale (to borrow a term from David Lavery’s Buffy Lexicon). TV was a strange sort of shared experience, even if the people you were sharing it with lived a thousand miles away. A fairly big chunk of America was howling right along with you as Jerry dealt with a woman with “man hands,” or the reanimated corpse of Lenin awoke and began a zombie-like quest to destroy capitalism because Homer Simpson was in command of a US ballistic nuclear submarine (deep cuts folks, deep cuts), or were waiting just as anxiously as you were for November to roll around to see if Chris Carter had really killed off Mulder and/or Scully.

With the evolution of fast and reliable mobile broadband, and growing ownership of smart-phones, TV is becoming as ubiquitous as music and with just as much potential variation in content being viewed at any one time. TV is now available on the viewer’s schedule rather than the networks, and content providers are struggling to keep up. Note the rise in “on demand” and “start over” programming. And we’re already way beyond DVDs. DVR/TiVo devices, streaming media from an ever-growing number of sources, a multitude of ways to have access to an enormous amount of material without it ever taking up space on your shelves or the storage space on your hard-drive (if the device you’re watching it on even needs a hard drive). The collective aspect of TV is disappearing. People no longer necessarily even try to watch shows when they air, preferring to wait for the inevitable DVD release after the current season. And there’s no longer any need for that deliciously annoying anticipatory period between episodes or seasons, you can watch Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes back to back until “Zinda – his face black, his eyes red” if you want. Cliff-hanger finale? No sweat, pop in the first disc/start streaming the first ep. of the next season, no muss, no fuss, no commercials, no waiting – ain’t America great?

And it is! It is great. I love it, love being able to forgo commercials and watch two years worth of TV in two months or less. Love being able to return to Babylon 5 again and again and revel in the stories, love having the ability to watch what I want, when I want, how I want, where I want – mostly. And yet… The thing about the art form of television that has set it apart from film, theater, and novels is that all of the former are brief experiences, whereas M*A*S*H premiered the year I was born, and aired it’s last episode when I was 11. ST: TNG began its run on my 15^th birthday and when it ended I had already been a college drop-out for 4 years. You can have a frakking relationship with a TV show. You can grow up with a TV show. A film is over in two hours or less, generally. Hell, it wouldn’t even take more than a couple of years – max – to read Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth/Mission Earth series if you wanted to (but you really don’t), but man, I lived with some TV shows for years! Now what used to be a committed relationship boils down to an affair of a few months. I suppose it’s the difference in hearing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on your handy-dandy iPod and going to see it performed by a professional orchestra. Live. In 1826. When music wasn’t available at the touch of a button, or at all beyond your and your friends’ own abilities to remember and carry a tune. Can you even imagine what it must have been like to assemble in a hall full of people, in that day and age, and hear such music? What the experience must have been like? How much power the music would have held? I think it must have been something like catching a glimpse of God.

Now you can just pause playback if something comes up, or just have it on for background noise, you know, without really listing to it. Don’t get me wrong, I love music on command, but sometimes I think I might trade it for music with the power to stop the world and make it listen. I wouldn’t trade my DVDs and streaming capabilities, but sometimes I kind of miss staying up until 2 am on a Saturday night because I didn’t have cable and that was the only time I could catch Babylon 5 when it originally aired. I was there, every week. I gritted my way through the season breaks and every continuing story arc. It was a part of my life for five years. Babylon 5 was also the first TV series I ever owned on DVD, and revisiting it at my leisure is one of the pleasures of my life. While it’s lovely to be able to pick and choose my episodes these days, I can’t escape the sense that I’m not seeing the work as J. Michael Straczynski composed it, as if I was reading War and Peace by dipping in at chapter 30, then chapter 3, etc. The experience is fundamentally changed, and the tension between acts is oddly diluted without the commercials to build-in anticipation.

I think this kind of nostalgia is what drives the rewatches over at Nik At Nite, where a limited number of episodes are viewed each week, and in the interim, participants engage in an ongoing conversation via comments on Nikki’s blogs, discussing the episodes they’ve just seen, sharing their personal experiences with watching the shows either currently or previously, and speculating on where things are going and why, and where things have been, and why. It’s a throwback to the old TV culture, ironically made possible by the same technologies that have fundamentally changed that culture, and people love it. So, maybe we can get the best of both worlds as fan-culture continues its long-time mass infiltration of the interwebs, so that no matter what show you’re into, you can find your people, be they ever so rare or, you know, Dutch. It also appears that the new media are at least partly responsible for the Golden Age of Television we’re currently living in. Neilson and his families no longer have control, or at least have less of it.

So is this actually a win-win situation for the viewer? You know, I think it may be. For the moment anyway. If anyone’s got any thoughts about this, I’d love to hear them. Comment away, Reader’s Mine – I’m off to watch some TV.

Thor: Grade "C", but the Destroyer is "A+"

Last weekend, while Mock’ was having a girls’ night, I called up my friend All-But-Dissertation (ABD), and we headed out to the movies to see Thor. Now, I’ve been a Thor fan for many years, particularly of the Walter Simonson years, and may actually have squealed a little back in 2007 when Marvel asked J. Michael Straczynski to head up their Thor reboot. Over the next two years, Straczynski would put the God back in the God of Thunder in a big way and thus make my Geek Guy fan-love for him eternal. (I’m kidding. He had me at “I was there, at the dawn of the Third Age of mankind…”) Furthermore, my interest in the Thor comics grew out of an even earlier interest in Norse mythology, so I walked into the theater last Saturday already primed to dislike the film, as both mythology and the comic’s narrative history would undoubtedly be “Hollywoodized.”

Nor was I wrong. In the end I gave the film a “C.” ABD, on the other hand, who is not familiar with either the comic or Norse mythology, gave it a “B” to “B-.” Judging from the box office numbers, his reaction is closer to the norm, and my letter-grade difference can no doubt be mostly chalked up to everything I brought into the theater with me. Mostly. I was both delighted and a bit appalled to see Straczynski get writing credit on the film. Delighted because it’s always great to see such a good writer getting some big-bucks, big-film exposure, and appalled, because this Thor was so NOT Straczynski’s Thor. Turns out Straczynski was involved in the writing in a very early stage, breaking and outlining the story, and only sought screen credit at the behest of the other writers on the film. This reassures me somewhat, and it was nice to see him get a bit of a cameo in the film too!

However, I have some real problems with Thor. First and foremost, there seemed to be an almost desperate haste to reassure the audience that the Asgardians were most definitely not gods, and never thought of themselves that way, but instead were just some type of humanoid, Viking-esque, technomagically advanced alien race, who had only associated with humanity in order to fight off the evil frost giants who, for reasons left unexplained (lebensraum?) were intent on turning the Earth into Hoth. So don’t worry, Jesus, they’re not Gods, just aliens, and everyone knows those don’t exist. (Please come to see the film! It’s inoffensive! We promise! Please?)

Okay, so Hollywood is running scared of declining box-office numbers and thus becomes a complete wuss when it comes to summer “blockbusters” in order to maximize audience numbers by trying to offend no one. I get that. It’s idiocy, but I get it. What I don’t get is why Natalie Portman has apparently decided to stop playing strong female characters altogether. Portman plays Jane Foster, who in this version has gone from nurse to brilliant theoretical astrophysicist, and who comes completely unglued with one look into Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) blue eyes and proceeds to fulfill every trope and clichéd stereotype of the Hero’s Love Interest and Hapless Female up to and including being a woman who can’t drive well! Seriously, Foster as Woman Driver is a recurring gag throughout the film. Portman’s character is about as two dimensional as you can get, and was obviously written to be that way, with the glaring exception of a pair of false eyelashes that seem to leap off of the screen, even in the 2D version we were watching. Of course, the magically scientific Asgardians are no better. At the end of the film, when Thor has destroyed Bifrost, the magic wormhole generator that connects Asgard with Earth, the Asgardians, Odin included, have apparently thrown away the blueprints and forgotten how they built the damn thing in the first place, so they are left waiting for Foster to figure out how to recreate their connection with Earth, which she is striving to do out of her boundless love of Thor. Apparently, with tall, blonde, and blue-eyed off the planet, Foster is able to revert from dewy-eyed ingénue to dedicated genius physicist. But only to get her sweetie back, and then, I’m sure, he can take charge again.

The Marvel movies have not done well by their women characters thus far, and the trend is continuing. Which is odd since Straczynski did a phenomenal job in making both Spiderman’s Mary Jane (and a kick ass Aunt May) and Thor’s Jane Foster into strong, independent, three-dimensional characters during his run on the comics. I guess comic book readers are better able to handle strong women than move-goers in America.

In spite of all of this, Thor has some good stuff. Asgard is beautifully rendered as the ultimate science-fantasy city, the power of Thor is well done, and the story of a vain, powerful, o’erweeningly prideful prince learning humility and responsibility (Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V anyone? Now you know why Branagh.) is well done, if somewhat predictable, and the Destroyer is absolutely perfect. In fact, the Destroyer is the best part of the film, and was the one point that got my heart beating in sheer joy at seeing a piece of my childhood really come to life on the big screen. I mean that thing was AWSOME!!! Even the sound effects of its blasts were exactly right, a sense-blotting KRAK! that obliterated every other sound in the scene. This was by far the best job of bringing a Marvel bad-guy to the screen that I've yet seen.

Perhaps because the Destroyer device/creature steps onto the screen straight off the comic-page without adulteration, updating, or re-imagining. Hummm...

There’s a lesson in that Hollywood. Pay attention.

Old Seed, New Breed

I am a feminist. This means that I recognize the fact that women are 100% complete, real-live human beings in and of themselves, and need no type of male validation, permission, etc to enable them to achieve this status. Furthermore, this means that any and all social, cultural, religious, political, economic, and military structures which fail to recognize this simple fact, and continue to treat women as inferior based solely upon their gender, are deeply flawed and must be reexamined and reformed for the betterment of human society as a whole.

Recently, I’ve been following the debate surrounding a form of feminist activism called a SlutWalk. My purpose here isn’t to join in this debate directly (the best overview of which can be found here), but to address the core issue involved, which is violence against women, and particularly sexual violence against women. Currently it is estimated that 1 in 4 women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, and that 80% of those assaults will be committed by someone the women knows. I browsed about the interwebs checking this statistic, and found it to be accepted by multiple sources. (For a quick, well documented breakdown of this and other stats, check out this PDF from the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence). This, Readers Mine, is unacceptable. Note that these statistics apply to the United States alone, not the world, and not an undeveloped, violence-wracked nation teetering on anarchy, and the numbers become an abomination.

The people committing these crimes are overwhelmingly men, so it follows that the problem must be addressed in the way men are raised and educated in our culture. Radical feminists often argue for the total abolition of patriarchal social structures, but I believe that a few very specific elements of that socialization are worth retaining. For the case in point, the traditional injunction to males from earliest childhood on that a man must never hit a woman and that such an act is unconscionable by any decent male. (I will insert a caveat here that any woman who is intent on causing grievous bodily harm to another person leaves herself open to preventative and defensive violence as defined under the social and legal codes of self-defense and defense of others, as does any other human being.) This injunction against violence towards women is deeply rooted in the patriarchal system, and in ideas of women as the lesser, weaker sex. However, it seems to me that it can be divorced from these roots and retained as a valuable tool of socialization.

This code of non-violence towards women was a part of my upbringing and was given to me largely by my father, the core being that good men, decent men, don’t hit women, and furthermore, they do not sit idly by while bad, indecent men do so. Indeed, a good man is almost always obligated to intervene in such cases. I’m not saying that women can’t take care of themselves in a physical conflict. I know better. What I am saying is that it is up to men to create a culture in which violence against women is taboo, and punished by severe sanctions, particularly cultural, extra-legal sanctions administered by the larger male culture itself. The instillation of non-violence towards women can begin at an extremely early age, and I believe, lays the groundwork for a later enlargement of the principle as the adolescent male develops sexually which defines unwanted sexual acts against women as violent and therefore taboo as well.

Note that there are two vital elements in this process: instilling the belief that physical violence directed against women is wrong, and that unwanted sexual acts of any type towards women are a form of physical violence, and therefore just as wrong.

Will teaching male children not to hit girls/women eliminate sexual violence against women? Sadly, no. In addition, there are other, non-physical forms of violence used by men against women, which can be equally as devastating as physical/sexual violence, and which are beyond the reach of this particular process of socialization. Nonetheless, will it help? Hell yes. Our social and cultural ethics are created early on. We must begin to teach male children that violence against women in all forms is just plain wrong, wholly unacceptable, and is only practiced by degenerates who may be male but will never be men. Further, we must teach them that it is the duty of all good men to stop and punish the perpetrators of violence against women and so begin to create a new masculine culture in which such violence is properly viewed as the abomination that it is.

“Remember Johnny, you must never hit a girl. Ever. Good boys never hit girls.” Small seeds, big frellin' trees.

PCAS/San Antonio Wrap Up

Okay, Readers Mine, with exams knocked out it’s time to finish up my San Antonio Tales. Saturday, our final full day, was not so much about the conference as it was about getting out and playing tourist in San Antonio. To which end we linked up with a couple of friends who’d driven out from Huston and set out to do the town, starting in the logical place:

The Alamo. Which is right downtown among a lovely series of public spaces and parks, where San Antonio was hosting a celebration of Turkish food and culture all day, complete with kebabs, dancers, music, and fezzes. Unfortunately we just didn’t have time to dive into that, but it was an interesting admixture to the day. For months before the trip every time I would say that we were going to San Antonio, I’d be asked if we were going to see the Alamo, and when I replied in the affirmative I’d get some variation on “Well, don’t be disappointed. It’s really small.” Actually, it’s not. First there’s this huge neo-socialist realistic monument in the middle of the street across from the mission that is anything but small. The surviving building, the mission church itself, is no Notre Dame de Paris, but it’s not exactly an outhouse either. Near this are the surviving Long Barracks were the Texians and their fellows made their last, hand to hand, stand, and between is a beautiful, cool, and shady park dominated by an ancient live oak that spreads its twisting limbs over something like half a city block. Now, maybe people are referring to the fact that the structures which have survived since 1836 comprise only a small portion of the original structures within the Alamo’s walls, but I have to say that overall the Alamo is one of the most beautiful, well maintained, pleasantly informative historic sites I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Plus, you get a deep cut from Phil Collins, who turns out to be the world’s #1 collector of Alamo relics and a long time supporter of the historic site (pictured above in his Geneva home with some of his Alamo memorabilia). He even narrates the voice-over for the diorama re-enactment in the History Store which sits atop the active archaeological dig, and provides visitors with a look at the actual dig and the artifacts found there. One note I will make is that, when you go buy the audio guide for the mission church and gardens, but don’t bother with it once you get into the Long Barracks, the historians and Daughters of the Republic of Texas who have overseen the site since the early 1900s, have provided comprehensive historical displays and readings that far outstrip the audio-tour’s narration (NOT done by Phil Collins), and you get to the point where you can read faster than the guy on the audio tour talks. All in all it was a really fun day for a total of $11/person.

The Original Mexican Restaurant was next on the agenda, since walking about the Alamo for several hours can bring on an appetite. The Original Mexican Restaurant solved this dilemma with some fantastic Tex-Mex cuisine. I recommend the Chiles Rellenos, and if you don’t try the fresh guacamole, particularly on a hot San Antonio day, you have made a grave error, and missed something special. The restaurant is right on the river-walk, and for those looking for a bit of a break from the heat is nicely air-conditioned inside.

The Mercado. After being revived with great food, we hopped one of San Antonio’s trolleys and headed out to the Market Square, or Mercado, a several block square collection of shops and restaurants, where is stocked a truly astounding quantity of Mexican imports, up to and including Mexican Wrestling masks! Much fun was had tracking down souvenir gifts to take back to family, friends, and dog sitters, while Mock’ managed to find one or two things for us as well.

Clash of the Titans (1981). Finally, after returning to the hotel for a nap we rejoined our friends and set out for the PCAS/ACA Science Fiction Area’s annual Saturday night movie and raffle, where Mock and I sat in the back and snarked through the film a la MST3K, much to the delight of our seat-mates, fortunately. Still, how can you resist poking fun of a film that includes Laurence Oliver as Zeus, Burgess Meredith as the plucky theater owner, and Harry frakkin’ Hamlin as the hero Perseus? Release the Kraken!!!

Afterwards we bid our friends goodbye all prepared to return to their various homes and schools across the country and in Canada, and, truth to tell, I think everyone was ready. The conference was a huge success, and massive fun, but it takes a little out of you, for sure. Still, I’d go again in a heartbeat, and I can unreservedly recommend San Antonio to anyone as an absolutely lovely, fun city to play around in.