The OTHER Tony Show

As I mentioned earlier this week, I don’t have HBO, so I did not see the final episode of The Sopranos. Instead I was watching the other Tony show, the annual American Theater Wing Awards. The Tonys are the NHL of the major award shows, little watched and hardly anyone knows who won or is even in it. Every year the Tonys are up against the NBA championship which makes me one of the few straight males in the country that watches this celebration of glamour on The Great White Way.

The non-whacking of the other Tony also assassinated the Tonys ratings with fewer than seven million viewers turning in. The theme of night was “There Is A Little Broadway In Everybody”, a demonstrably ludicrious assertion despite Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to usurp Guiliani as New York’s most show-tune loving mayor.

I watch for two basic reasons. I like to root for the shows that I saw that year and I like to preview potential future reasons to travel to New York. This year the only nominated show that I had seen was A Chorus Line which got steamrolled by Company in the Best Revival category. You can’t go up against Sondheim and expect to win. My favorite show, High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby book/John Cusack movie) was only nominated for best scenic design where it got beat by Mary Poppins. The bitch!

Since I had no dog in the other fights, I watched the production numbers to see what looked good. Curtains starring David Hyde Pierce looked awful even though it won Pierce an acting award. The number from Grey Gardens was also fingernails-on-chalkboard grating.

The big winner for the night was Spring Awakening which is about horny teenagers hooking up in nineteenth century Germany. The music was written by Duncan Sheik who is following in the proud tradition of lightly talented pop stars taking refuge on The Great White Way. Rupert Holmes and Elton John, among others, have learned that writing rock musicals is harder than it looks. This show seems to pull it off.

The “Bitch of Life” number they performed impressed my wife enough to get her to order some tickets for later this summer. Check out other perfomances on their official site. Since it can now can put “Winner of 8 Tonys” on the poster, I suggest you get tickets before they figure out that not all the orchestra seats have been recategorized as “Premium” seats. We got face value tickets for a matinee in the second row, but other seats further back are nearly twice as much.

In order to maintain my façade of manliness and keep the testosterone level up, I play a little mental game as they go through all the minor awards between 9 and 10 while the other Tony is (or isn’t) getting whacked. I try to determine whose evening gown is the most low cut. Unfortunately, the younger hotter presenters were way too tastefully dressed. The clear contenders in this category were Felicity Huffman and Cynthia Nixon. My wife cattily remarked that when you have nothing to hold in, you can take the neckline down to the waist.



I was feeling a little queasy ogling woman than can be described as “of a certain age”, but an IMDB search reveals that Felicity is barely a year older than me and that Cynthia hadn’t graduated high school by the time I had. Now I really feel old. But the definite winner in the Cougar Category of Deep Cleavage was Swoozie Kurtz.


Yikes! To cleanse the palate, please linger as long as you want on Idina Menzel. She sure cleans up well from her role as The Wicked Witch. I just read in Defamer that they are casting for a Broadway version of Shrek. Idina would be a shoo-in as Fiona since she already looks good in green.


Finally, I have seen both of these television stars on stage, Niles in Spamalot and Doogie in Assassins, but I never quite caught the cross-generational Separated At Birth® resemblance between the two.



Someone needs to put together a script where these two get to play father and son.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Do I need to surrender my RealGuy Card for just watching the Tonys, let alone blogging about them? I even blogged about them last year.

Sopranos Finale

My bittorrent finally finished and as a public service to all those without my mad internet pirating skilz, I am posting the shocking finale to The Sopranos:




Hope you enjoyed it.








Yeah, I know it's a lame joke and not even particularly original. That guy beat me to the punch by a day and has 11,000 views to my nine. Such is the nature of the interweb. Time is of the essence.

Feel free to virally pass along my version. Post links to it. Embed it on your site. E-mail it to people that always e-mail you stupid stuff. Just don't use your name if you expect them to remain your friend.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Leave your angry tirade here.

Strange Endings

It's mandatory that all bloggers express an opinion about the final episode of The Sopranos whether they saw it or not. Really. I got the memo and everything. Since I don't get HBO, I only get to watch the mobbed-up drama when I am on vacation at hotels that carry HBO (and I'm usually just waiting for Entourage or Real Sex MCMXLIV to come on) or if I stumble across it channel surfing on basic cable.

I have a rule about watching R-rated movies on basic cable: Don't. After watching the famous "Pine Barrens" episode on A&E this week, I am extending that ban to syndicated HBO shows as well. They sure "do" a lot of "freakin'" when they have to redub all the dialog.

Sorry for no spoiler warning, but you don't get one for The Sopranos. Everyone in the world is supposed to know the ending by now and that means there was no ending. There are only so many ways to end a long running television show. Let's review:

The Big Life Change. This is the most common and tritest. Everybody gets married, graduates from college, gets home from the war, etc. Whatever. Borrrring.

It Was All A Dream. Nothing tops the last episode of Newhart. Ever. And you can't even try. Sure, that ending was a variation of the St Elsewhere snow globe, but Newhart did it best.

Nothing Changes. The previously most hated series finale was Seinfeld where it all came back to the start. David Chase may have been going there, but I don't know. My bittorrent is going pretty slow. I'll let you know if and when I see it.


What I do know is that they better not screw up Battlestar Galactica. The show has announced that next season's 22 episodes will be the last. This has caused some hand-wringing and consternation in the geek community, but I am in favor of the idea.

I have postulated the theory that the whole point of BSG is so that Ronald Moore can give a big "FUCK YOU!" to Brannon Braga and the others that destroyed the Star Trek franchise in excrutiating slow motion starting with Voyager. Despite years of silly Gilligan's Island plots, ST:VOY actually pulled off a decent return to Earth and destroyed the evil robots chasing them across the galaxy in the process. Moore better find a better way to resolve the final showdown between humans and the evil robots chasing them across the galaxy or I will hunt him down and make him watch the season finale to Who's The Boss continuously for a week straight. I mean it.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What is your favorite series finale?

Balticon Diary: Wrap-Up

After Day 2 at Balticon, I had only gotten a couple of hours of sleep, but still had one more morning of events to go.

Monday

9:00 Getting woken up every two hours while keeping track of my son did not make for a good night's sleep and my goal of another morning in the gym are ruined. I wake up just in time to shower, eat and get to the Pournelle Kaffeeklatsch.

10:00 The full story of a cranky Pournelle was previously blogged.

11:00 We load all the luggage into the car and check out. Since hotel check out is at noon there is a big exodus of other convention goers stuffing junk into their cars. We had a small suitcase and a couple of backpacks. Other people had boxes and boxes of crap including leftovers from the late night parties.

11:30 My wife goes out for one more round of shopping.

11:45 I make one last lap through the dealer room and admire the swords my son wants. I don’t even check the price. I don't want to know, but the craftsmanship is excellent. I suspect some go for well over a hundred dollars. Earlier in the weekend I had inwardly chuckled at some costumed Klingons admiring a batleth. When the Klingons gawk in admiration, you're good.

12:15 I get suspicious that the sign-up sheet for the Niven Kaffeeklatsch had the time wrong, so I go to the celebrity suite and bluff my way into the standing room only crowd. I have to sit on the spiral staircase which gives me a great view of the whole room. At one point the group wanders off into a side conversation amongst themselves while Larry just listens. I interrupt to ask him a question just to get things back on track. I don't want to listen to a bunch of fans yammer at each other when LARRY NIVEN is in the room.

1:00 I find my son in the hotel lobby reading and we call my wife to come pick us up. I get home and take a long nap.

Wrap-Up

Over the past eight or so years, I have been to Balticon four times. This was the first time we had stayed on site at Balticon, but we had been to other out of town conventions. Several years ago we went to Philcon in Philadelphia (duh) and that is where my son first got into the gaming. He really enjoys the late nights and can easily pick up friends to play the games.

I just can't get into the social aspect of the events. I spend a lot of time standing in line and chat with the people in line, but I never follow up. Since this is my second year in a row, I recognized several people that had been there the previous year as well, but I can't say that I know them. Unlike last year, I don't even run into someone I know from "real" life except for the three kids that are friends of my son.

I do enjoy science fiction conventions, especially ones with guests I am familar with. I like the seminars, panels, and talks. I just can't get into the social aspect and it's not snobbishness. Fandom is very inclusive and is a great safe harbor for people who might otherwise get shunned. It's easy to get all worked up over the stereotypes of the unkempt social misfit (and stereotypes emerge for a reason) but I would say that on average the attendees at a SF con are smarter and more successful than the mean.

I have been to seven science fiction conventions including a WorldCon, but I can't really say I am a serious fan. I go to the ones that have good guests or fit into my travel plans. To the outsider that seems pretty hardcore, but there are people so much more into the scene than I am.

One lady I was eavesdropping on was listing the Worldcons she had missed. It was only a few in over twenty years. I enjoy science fiction and it is my favorite genre, but I have a lot of broader interests. I am lucky to have a spouse that indulges my hobby even though she has no real connection. She threatens to take me to a romance novel convention. I say throw me in that briar patch. I would find my way to stay amused. It could be fun.

Next year's guest at Balticon will be Connie Willis. She is an award winning author, but I don't think she is well known outside the SF community. I went to one of her readings when we were at Philcon and she is very funny. I'm just not sure she is as big a draw as Niven/Pournelle and definitely not the rock star level of Neil Gaiman.

This time next year, my son will be graduating from high school with all the attendant hoopla that entails. I suspect my calendar will be too busy to take several days out of Memorial Day weekend to make a membership at next year's con worth it for me. I'm sure Balticon will get along just find without me.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: So just how big of a geek am I? And do you know bigger ones?

Balticon Diary: Day Two

I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon, a major science fiction convention. I talked my family into staying onsite so that we could experience the con 24/7. Some of us more than others it seems as I tell in the summary of our second day:

Sunday

8:00 I wake up and head down to the hotel gym. I do 20 minutes on the stairmaster and a couple of circuits of the weight machine.

9:00 I return to the room to shower and then go down to the hotel snack bar and eat breakfast. They have the TV tuned to the SciFi Channel.

10:00 I go to the lecture on building self-replicating machines. The few pictures of real examples look like a garage workshop gone fractal. We’re still a few years from needing the Three Laws.

11:00 The artist guest of honor Joe Bergeron is giving a slideshow of his artwork. Larry Niven slips in to watch.

11:45 I sneak out to go stand in line for autographs. The line is already down the hall and around the corner, but nowhere near as chaotic as for Neil Gaiman last year. I chat with the guy behind me in line. We decide a comedian could do well re-telling Jeff Foxworthy jokes as science fiction fan jokes. The audience never thinks the put-downs are aimed at them.

12:30 My wife wanders down from the room and buys an iPod case from the dealers’ room.

12:40 My turn to get stuff signed. My wife gets my picture.

12:45 I get in line to sign up for the Kaffeeklatsches with the guests on Monday.

1:00 I walk in on the comedy singers Funny Music Project in progress. The FuMP is groups of song parodists trying to become the next Weird Al. A song about Quark’s Bar cracks me up so much that I buy a CD from The Great Luke Ski, on of the better members of the ensemble.

2:00 I catch up with my wife and we decide to eat lunch. The main restaurant tells us they are closed but I can see Niven, Pournelle, and other VIPs still in there finishing up. We go to the lounge to order bar grub instead. The whole hotel is now smoke-free, so the atmosphere is breathable. Last year, just walking through the bar made us nearly pass out from the fumes. The Eastern European waitress doesn’t know what a Smirnoff Ice is, so I just order Coke.

4:00 Larry Niven gives his talk to a mostly full ballroom. One of the other fans in the audience is wearing a great Battlestar Galactica costume. There were relatively few media themed costumes. I saw one Jedi knight, but it was mostly pirates and generic elves and fairies.

5:30 We drag our kid out of the game room and head out to Silver Spring Mining Company for dinner. Good food in a fake western motif. My son says he wants a samurai sword for his birthday. He pouts the rest of the meal when we tell him absolutely not.

7:30 I head down to the con to kill some time. There is a roast for some podcasters that seem to be popular. A storyteller retells an old joke very well. One of the music parodyists from earlier in the day does a solo show. He does a take-off on a song by internet sensation Jonathon Coulton. The crowd is into it.

9:30 I make my son take a break to come listen to a scientist from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab give a talk about his doodling on the physics of the Ringworld and how seasons could be simulated by oscillating the ring along the axis of rotation but the inertia from the dirt and water would eventually dampen it down. I tell my son to go apologize to his mom for being a jerk at dinner or he is going to have a short evening.

10:30 I scarf some munchies as Niven and Pournelle do their half-hearted talk about the science of Heinlein.

11:30 Larry Niven is in a nearby room listening to the open mic filking. The Bohnhoffs are among the players. They do their Eagles tuned tribute to vintage Cadillacs called “El Dorado”.

12:00 My son is back in the game room. I tell him not to stay out too late. He warns me that his cell phone battery is nearly dead and that he might go over to a different game soon.

12:15 I take the long way back to my room to check out some hall parties being thrown by future conventions. The look lame so I head back. In the far stairwell I have to step over a couple making out on the steps.

2:00 I read about half of my new Niven book and fall asleep.

4:15 My wife is trying to reach my son on his cell phone. I tell her that it’s probably dead, so I go out looking for him. The air conditioning in the game room has failed, which is usually the most fragrant room at a con anyways, so they have spread out into the hallway, but he’s not there. I wander way down towards the 24-hour con suite and find him at a table at the bottom of the escalator playing a complicated looking game. One of the players is a girl he knows from school and they claim the game would be ruined if he had to leave.

4:30 I reassure my wife that he is fine and I go back to sleep.

6:00 My son makes it back to the room. Dawn is cracking through the window.

If my kid is going to stay out all night, it's better in the relatively safe environs of a science fiction convention. As for the sword, his eighteenth birthday falls just short of next year's Balticon. If he wants a bladed weapon, he is on his own once he is an adult. I take a lot of heat for being the "fun" parent, but even I was a little concerned about him just wandering around all night. I think if he wasn't with someone we knew, I might have been more reluctant to let his stay out.

Be sure to read my previous posts about Larry Niven and Day One.

Tomorrow: Balticon winds down.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Your opinion on the late hours or the sword lust?

Balticon Diary: Day One

There was more to do at Balticon than just stalk Larry Niven. With the help of the program guide, I have reconstructed my weekend immersed in the world of fellow science fiction geeks. To avoid boring you all at once, I am going to post my recap in three parts starting with:

Saturday

9:30 I rouse my family out of bed at least two hours before their normal wake-up time. We grab some bagels and head up to Hunt Valley.

10:30 We get in line for pre-registration pick-up. My son was registered under his internet alias, but I don’t have the courage to go as yellojkt, so I’m there under my real name. I am wearing a Yellow Jacket tee shirt just in case. My son says he’ll be in the game room. My wife takes the car keys and heads off to the Talbot’s outlet store.



11:00 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle give a joint interview. I ask a question about who comes up with the story ideas. They say they both do, but Jerry focuses on plot continuity and character development. Niven concentrates on the big “wow” ideas.

12:00 Time to cruise the dealer room for first editions to get signed. I had brought with me copies of The Ringworld Engineers and Footfall that I had bought second hand earlier. I find a copy of The Gripping Hand and a previously signed copy of The Smoke Ring. The book dealer has a $30 minimum for charges, so I pick up a paoerback of Draco’s Tavern, a Niven story collection I had never heard of.

12:30 I run into a girl in my son’s marching band. She shows off the artwork she has on display in the gallery. They are some small drawings of elves and furry-ish creatures that she is selling for five bucks each.

12:45 I try to check in at the hotel front desk, but they don’t have any rooms ready. I wander the halls checking out the costumes. Since Pirates of the Caribbean 33-1/3 opened the same weekend, lacey shirts, head scarves and eyepatches are very popular.



2:00 The musical guests of honor, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, give a concert. Their gimmick is that they do science fiction-y parodies of classic rock songs. “Hotel California” becomes “Hotel Dealer Room”. Their retelling of the Charlotte’s Web story to the tune of the Firefly/Serenity theme song kills.

3:15 The hotel room is finally ready. About the same time, my wife returns from her shopping spree. I help haul her booty up to the room. We leave a message for our son to come get a key. No response.

3:30 Jerry Pournelle gives his talk on inventing the future.

4:30 I go up to the room and munch on the snacks my wife got at the Amish market.

5:00 My son finally shows up to get is room key. He shows off the prize he got in the tournament for a game he has never played before. We all leave the con to take him to a graduation party a friend of his is throwing.

6:30 We show up at Claude’s pig roast, which both he and I have already blogged about.

9:00 The mosquitoes start coming out so we have to get my wife back indoors.

9:30 I check out the Masquerade costume competition but it’s standing room only and they are only on the kid’s costumes. My son calls and tells me his party is winding down so I go pick him up.

11:00 My son heads down to the game room. I head up to the room exhausted.

12:00 Our son calls to tell us the game he is playing is running late. I tell him to come up as soon as the game is over. I fall asleep.

1:30 My son comes up to the room and goes to bed. I sleep through all the change rattling and bedtime routines because I am exhausted. I had no idea how long my day tomorrow would be.

Tomorrow: The big day at the con including a little domestic drama.

When Worlds Collide

My Achenbuddy (and occasional blogger herself) kb sent me this comic because she knows I love strips with blogs in the punchline.


They make a great way for a comic artist to make quick joke about lame self-absorbed people.


I'm not sure I agree with that stereotype, but it's out there. The problem is that many of our family, friends, and coworkers don't know we are bloggers. While I don't blog at or about work, I would dread letting my boss know about my secret obsession. And while my wife knows I have a blog, I'm not sure she realizes the extent of the community I formed.

On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, fellow Baltimore blogger Claude of Baltimore Diary had a housewarming pig roast that he invited me to (and he of course blogged about it). I had a hard time explaining to my wife how I actually knew Claude. Since she knows I read the Comics Curmudgeon a lot, I explained that we both read the same blog and left it at that.

As an ice-breaker, I explained that Claude and she both worked in education, just at opposite ends of the bell curve. With NCLB as a common enemy, they got along fine. Claude's girlfriend and daughter were wonderful hostesses and his girlfriend's daughter is just a riot.

The pig roast was great. It was mostly neighbors with a few bloggers. Since I am not very social in the Baltimore blogging community, I didn't know anybody, but everybody was great fun. I even promised Malnourished Snay that I would get him added to my blogroll. It turns out he is even funnier in person than he is on his blog. If hadn't known that a good part of the crowd was bloggers, you would have mistaken us for old friends sharing some drinks and some great pork.

I just want to make the point that bloggers are just people. People with the overwhelming need to overshare in public to complete strangers. Is that so wrong?

Stalking Niven

Just like last year, I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon, the Baltimore area science fiction convention. Last year’s guest of honor was goth rock star Neil Gaiman. This year they went completely the other direction with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, two old-school rock-hard science fiction writers. Last year we just daytripped to the con in Hunt Valley from our home in Ellicott City. Since that is a long roundtrip and many events run pretty late, this year we ponied up for a room onsite.

Larry Niven is easily one of my top ten favorite science fiction writers and his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle are landmarks. I made it my goal to get to every event possible that featured one or the other.

A good convention really makes the guests sing for their supper (in the case of the musical guests, literally). Larry and Jerry were booked into at least three events a day. We blew off the first night of the con, but made sure we arrived early enough Saturday to catch the joint interview. I don’t know how it is when they are working together, but it’s good thing Niven is a fairly quiet individual, because nobody gets a word in edgewise when Pournelle has the floor.

At the joint interview they were very proud that the final draft of Inferno 2 (the sequel to a book I haven’t read) was delivered to the publisher. They are also pitching an epic-sized novel that will examine the response of society to a clear and present danger and if and how society can return to normal once the threat has passed. I expect the plot will involve an extinction event sized threat from space since, as they admit, they have made a good living throwing things at Earth.

Pournelle recycled a talk he gave to a group of international secret agency types that want to guard us against future threats. The theme was that the future can’t be predicted because too many random events disrupt the linear progression of events, but that the future can be invented and shaped if you know your goals as a society. He gave a personal anecdote about how the need for precise guidance systems for ballistic missiles created the computer industry. He also tiraded against Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, and Robert McNamara.

Niven recycled a speech about how our only defense against the Deep Impact/Armageddon sized meteor is a serious space program. Larry is a pro-space advocate and thinks any excuse to be up there is a good one. He had some good science to back-up his ideas but admitted that raising the sense of urgency in the general public is a daunting task.

Both did a full hour of joint book signing. This attracted the usual smattering of people trying to push up shopping carts full of books of everything they wrote. A three item or less rule got the line moving again.

I had been scouring used book dealers for the past few months and came up with first editions of Footfall, The Gripping Hand, and The Ringworld Engineers. I had plenty of time to try to chit-chat with Larry while waiting for Jerry to find the right page in a very old issue of Byte to sign. I asked Pournelle if he remembered Joel Achenbach interviewing him at a book signing earlier in the week for the Achenblog post called The Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Show. Jerry could barely remember that there was a reporter there.

Click on the picture to read my tee shirt.

They both showed up for a talk ostensibly about Robert Heinlein’s contribution to science. They found the topic baffling saying that the science in Heinlein’s work was clear and lucid and rarely original. Most of the gee-whiz ideas he used were around all the popular science magazines and showcased in the 1934 World’s Fair. Jerry went on another rant and Larry slipped out claiming it was late. After Pournelle finished pontificating and getting huffy with the unruly audience, I found Niven a few doors down listening to the open filk music session. It seems he likes participating in all the other stuff the regular fans do and knew the musical guests.

The next morning I had signed up for Kaffeeklatsches which are small group sessions with the guests. Pournelle’s was first and got off to a bad start. The room didn’t have any coffee or water or snacks. Jerry had a Ziploc bag of about a dozen pills to take and no way to swallow them. Without caffeine or any way to take his meds, Jerry moves from his normal crankiness right into cantakerous. After a fan ran off to get him a cup of joe, he resumed his rant against public education and pissed off a special ed teacher in the audience. After a long digression about dyslexia and ADD, he finally got steered back to writing. He feels creative writing classes are useless. He sees science fiction magazines as good ways to get into the business because they are so desperate for material since they pay so little. Nevertheless, he’s not keen on the idea of posting his stuff on the internet for free and is especially miffed at other people that post his stuff on the web. He gave some nice personal stories about the early days of Byte and other computer magazines before his time was up.

Because of scheduling confusion, I missed the first half of Nivens’s small group talk but I still got a lot of good insight. He talks slowly and measured but always has a point. Unlike Pournelle, he is quiet and thoughtful when others talk and it sometimes takes effort to steer the talk back to his opinions. Larry just wants to see us in space. It's the mindset of a fan that grew up reading the Golden Age giants. He likes the idea of private enterprise in space aviation because that is how it was always envisioned in things like "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and Destination Moon. He writes short stories just to keep his writing skill sharp.

It was great to see two of the masters still at the top of their game. They sound enthusiastic about their upcoming work and still think the future has a chance. For more pictures of Niven and Pournelle and other sights from Balticon, check out my Balticon 2007 Flickr set.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: What author would you like to stalk?