Category: Entertainment

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The cold that had been threatening me all last week finally hit on Friday morning, and I’ve spent the last four days in haze induced by a mixture of the cold and DayQuil. I actually went home early on Friday, dropped onto the couch, watched some Netflixed Justice League, and felt like I was staying up late when I went to bed at 9:00 or 9:30.

Out of sheer determination I dragged myself to Worldcon/L.A.con IV on Saturday. Katie stayed home since her main experiences with SF-themed cons were a few post-millennial Loscons, and Loscon was really going downhill at the time. Fortunately, this was more like I remember past Worldcons and earlier Loscons.

Classic Star Trek CostumesMy parents are SF fans, and they regularly brought us kids along with them to conventions. As far back as I can remember, it was a Thanksgiving Weekend tradition to visit family on Thursday, have Friday free, then go to Loscon on Saturday and Sunday. As for Worldcons, I’d been to three before: L.A.Con II in 1984, ConFrancisco(?) in 1993, and L.A.Con III in 1996. (Hey, if Worldcon is on the order of a 10-mile drive, you may as well take advantage of it.)

So I staggered through the dealer’s room, the art show, the exhibit hall with original Star Trek costumes, genre cars like the Batmobile and the DeLorean from Back to the Future, mock-ups of the lunar lander and rovers. I went to some panels on things like “What will future historians get wrong about our time,” the rise of theocracy, fixing things that go wrong in space, and what past sci-fi got wrong about the present.

There was a group (IIRC, from a local college) with a bunch of remote-control robots. As I walked by, there was a college-aged group sitting and eating lunch from In-N-Out, one of whom had placed her hamburger (still mostly wrapped) on a little remote-control car, and was driving it around the floor, dodging obstacles (like feet). Then tragedy struck, and the burger fell off.

While I was in the art show, someone started up music nearby. The song sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it until it reached the chorus. It was the “Make your own kind of music” song that was used in last year’s Lost season opener! The music turned out to be the accompaniment to a dueling artists bit.

Cardboard box with rocks: Pluto thanks you!Someone had responded to Pluto’s demotion to “dwarf planet” and set up a display labeled Pluto Needs Rocks, all about a campaign to collect rocks and launch them at Pluto to increase its mass so it can clear out its orbit and get its status back as a planet. Yes, there was a collection box beneath the display. And yes, it had rocks in it.

I ended up running into my parents and some family friends, and we set up a time to meet and go to dinner. I figured I had enough time to drive home, pick up Katie, and come back, as long as we met outside the convention. Unfortunately, the freeway was backed up, and I realized there was no way we could have made it back in time. (One of the family friends had something to go to after dinner.) I called to cancel, and by the time I got home, I began to realize I wasn’t really in shape to continue driving. I realized later I’d been running on DayQuil and willpower, and my willpower had just run out for the day. So I ended up collapsing on the couch as soon as I walked in the door.

Current Mood: 🤒sick

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Start your own cable company like Jack and Jill* did!

Hello! We're Time Warner Cable! (With a picture of two children.)

This showed up in our latest cable bill. Time Warner is taking over from Comcast, and while their “Hello, my name is ____” campaign makes sense in a sort of cutesy way, I can’t figure out the logic of this one.

Though I imagine many people would agree that their cable company acts like it was run by eight-year-olds.

*I was trying to think of something to name the kids. My first thought was something like Wakko and Dot, but it didn’t fit the tone. Then I thought of Jack Warner, and Jill was obvious.

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Apparently Stargate: SG-1 has been canceled after 10 seasons. I wasn’t a fan, but you’ve got to admit, 10 seasons is a serious accomplishment. But I found one remark interesting:

Ironically, this is the first year since Season Four that plans were already in place, both creatively and in signed actor contracts, for another year. The show has lived on year-to-year since moving to SCI FI, with the writers forced to write a possible series finale every year — only to find the show renewed once again.

A space-based show on the Sci-Fi Channel, used to planning one year at a time, has finally decided to plan two years, only to find themselves cut off halfway through. Starring (among others) Ben Browder and Claudia Black. It sounds oddly familiar. Where could I possibly have heard something like this before?

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While writing an article on Earth-Prime yesterday, I had an interesting thought linking Superboy Prime’s “continuity punches” from Infinite Crisis with the early appearances of Earth Prime.

DC Comics established Earth-Prime as the reader’s world. It was basically the same as the real world, with no super-heroes, and allowed DC characters to interact with a world in which they were fictional characters. It also allowed the comics’ writers and editors to write themselves into stories. In 1985, as DC was dismantling the multiverse concept with Crisis on Infinite Earths, they established the existence of a Superboy on Earth-Prime, just before they destroyed the universe. This Superboy returned after a 20-year absence as one of the main villains in Infinite Crisis.

Flash #228 (1974), “How I Saved the Flash,” featured writer Cary Bates traveling to Earth-1 and meeting the Flash. Up until this point, the conceit had been that on Earth-Prime, comic writers would dream about super-heroes’ adventures on Earth-1, just as Earth-1’s writers would dream about heroes on Earth-2. In this story, the connection went the other way, too: Earth-Prime’s Cary Bates was able to influence events on Earth-1 by sheer force of will, which he called “plotting power.” Continue reading →

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