Category: Entertainment

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Opera Software has just released a new beta version of the desktop web browser, Opera 9.50 beta 2. The splash page makes me think of something a bit different, though:

Opera 9.5 beta
Speed, security, and performance matter.

Now, we’ve made the fastest browser in the world even faster. Opera’s new beta is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications.

Hmm, a red and yellow blur, zooming across the view? And an emphasis on speed? That reminds me a bit of this guy:

The Flash

Opera has long promoted itself on its speed, and it has used a super-hero theme in its advertising before. The vaguely Superman-like* “Opera Man” was used heavily in advertising Opera 8, despite being ridiculed by most of the browser’s user community.

So why not a subtle reference to the Flash?

*Blue costume + red cape. Hey, if a blue shirt and red jacket work for Clark on Smallville, you know the color scheme has become iconic.

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The CBLDF has issued a press released detailing the victory in the Gordon Lee case. This was the case in which a comic book store in Rome, Georgia, as part of a 2004 Halloween promotion, was handing out free comics left over from that year’s Free Comic Book Day. Among over 2,000 comics, they accidentally included a copy of Alternative Comics #2, which included a story about Picasso which included him running around his studio in the nude. And they accidentally gave it to a kid. The parents wouldn’t accept an apology, and pressed charges instead. The DA has been determined to make an example out of him, pushing grossly overinflated charges including felonies that would have given him prison time. 3½ years, 3 trial dates, a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct, and $100,000 in defense costs later, the Rome DA finally agreed to drop the case in exchange for a written letter of apology — which is exactly what the store owner had offered in the first place.

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Recently, I was reminded of a conversation about songs with twist endings. Like a Twilight Zone episode, they’ll set up one situation and then in the final verse, switch things around to a completely different perspective.

One example would be Vertical Horizon’s breakthrough hit, “Everything You Want.” The chorus repeats:

He’s everything you want,
He’s everything you need.
He’s everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
He says all the right things at exactly the right times,
But he means nothing to you and you don’t know why.

Most of the song presents this sort of detached, third-party view of someone who perhaps is concerned for a friend, but that’s all. Then the bridge hits, with lines like, “It’s only what you’re asking for,” and the intensity builds, until you get to the final chorus:

I am everything you want,
I am everything you need.
I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be.
I say all the right things at exactly the right times,
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why.

It suddenly becomes clear that the speaker is himself right in the middle of things, and the woman’s affections are in fact extremely important to him.

Another one would be the Jim Steinman song “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” made famous by Meat Loaf. The speaker keeps pleading with a woman that…

I want you
I need you
But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you
Now don’t be sad
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad

At the end of the song, he explains “There’s only one girl that I will ever love” and that, when she left him, “She kept on telling me…” at which point he launches into the refrain. Suddenly, this guy who sounded unreasonable throughout the entire song turns out to have been on the receiving end of the same dysfunction in a previous relationship—and he’s still messed up by it.

What other songs can you think of that do this?

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The Value of Space Exploration, via Phil Plait.

Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting by a madman that’s inspired its share of stories.

And from Comics Worth Reading, our WTF entry for the day: Paradise by the GoPhone Light. It’s a commercial done in the style of a music video, featuring Meat Loaf and Tiffany as the parents of a kid who wants a GoPhone. Completely surreal, especially once the random explosions start.

It’s just occurred to me that, aside from it being some sort of cell phone, I have no idea what a GoPhone is. [/me types “gophone” into Google] Ah, OK. Pre-paid cellphone. Meh. (And now I’m imagining how much spam is going to get posted to this thread. *sigh* )

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You may have noticed I’ve been thinking about fan conventions lately. 🙂

It started after last year’s Comic-Con, when I decided I wanted to go to something a bit less…intense. 😯 Last year’s Wizard World LA was nice, but a bit sparse, so I went looking for more comic and general sci-fi/fantasy cons within driving distance of the LA/OC area. Surprisingly, I didn’t find much. Gaming conventions, costuming conventions, Anime Expo, sure, but sci-fi? Pretty much just Loscon, which we both gave up on after 2002 (and from what I’ve heard, hasn’t picked up again). I asked around a bit on some forums, and someone on either the Comic Bloc or Newsarama forums suggested WonderCon, and suggested considering the city as a vacation destination, not just a place to find a hotel for the con.

Since WonderCon worked out so well, I’m looking at what else might be fun. That’s part of why I did my price comparison last month, and Kevin Standlee’s comments got me looking at WorldCons and the like again. Not for this year, but maybe a few years out.

Looking at all these cons, I realized that beyond a certain threshold, distance doesn’t matter. Only the destination. If it’s far enough away that you have to fly, the only thing that distance impacts is the cost of your plane ticket. Whether your flight is 5 hours or 10 hours*, it’s still going to take up most of a day or night when you factor in dealing with the airports. Everything else, from hotel prices to whether you need a passport, a phrasebook, or currency exchange, is a factor of the destination.

WonderCon, I think, was at the boundary of driving distance from here. We could make the trip out in one day, but it was a lot more fun to break it into stages and make it a road trip. San Diego is at the boundary of commuting distance. We could drive out there in the morning and drive back at night (and I did that with my parents for over a decade), but it’s not practical to do for more than one day. Whereas if I wanted to, I could easily commute to Wizard World Los Angeles 2 or even 3 days. (As it was, we only went for Saturday.)

With two cons in Q1, and San Diego coming up in July, any traveling we do later this year is probably not going to be convention-related. As it is, we’ve talked seriously about three possible non-con vacation spots. But it might be worth casting a wider net for cons in 2009 or 2010.

*Katie and I were talking about this, and realized that it’s probably different if you have kids. In that case, a 5-hour flight probably would be significantly harder to manage than a 3-hour flight.

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