So I went down to Calgary for my 3rd Calgary Expo in 4 years. Took holidays from work for it, bought my pass months in advance, but due to extremely poor planning on their part, kind of had a mixy matchy weekend. By the time I got there on Friday there was only an hour left, since the doors closed at 8. 8! What kind of convention ends at 8?
Saturday was the big day, the entire cast of The Next Generation was reunited for the first time in over 20 years. It was announced that the fire marshal stepped in and shut the doors and so thousands upon thousands of people, those with passes or without, it didn't matter, were stuck outside. I had been inside for about an hour but stepped off the floor to have a sandwich before going to a panel (Robert J Sawyer was doing one on writing believable science fiction- and after that I was heading to the costume contest) and was then SOL for the rest of the day. Luckily I still had a great time talking to many many other convention-goers who were in a similar situation. ie I made the most of a shitty situation but it wasn't the day I paid for. I spoke to many, many people who weren't very happy at all- some had, like me, traveled from elsewhere, gotten hotel rooms, paid almost $500 for a photo with the Star Trek cast, and because the Expo organizers oversold, they were stuck outside with no apology. Even, in some instances, attitude from the volunteers. Calgary Expo, via their social media feeds, seems to have chosen to not acknowledge any error on their part, insisting that it was all the fire marshal's fault, and indeed, us convention-goers' fault for showing up all at once instead of in nice and orderly groups of two or three thousand. Today on the CTV News there was a report that the fire marshal has denied any involvement in shutting the doors, but I can't find a news article online to confirm, yet. Here's my photoset, though, got lots of great photos with all the other attendees who were stuck outside.
Sunday was a bit better, I got there early and stood in a crazy long line that went alomst the entire way around the convention grounds, and that was just for us pass holders. They cut off the door-ticket-buyers at 11 and many got sent home.

Back. Tired. Started to upload some photos but going to bed. Lots more to say tomorrow.

I'm heading to the Calgary Expo tomorrow!  I'm gonnabe ascited! Here's some of the geeky things I'm into lately.
Game of Thrones season 2, of course. Who isn't into that?
The Legend of Korra is finally here, and cheers to Nickelodeon for making the episodes available online for free, even for us Canucks. Sometimes we have a hard time watching tv shows from American websites, something to do with CRTC rules or something. (but wait, didn't you say you were watching Game of Thrones....) Korra kicks ass!  Worth the wait (it was announced at SDCC 2010, though I wasn't in the room at the time of the announcement, I think I was just down the hall...). A perfect show for Pallas, at least as far as having strong female protagonists to emulate. We like to fight bad guys, Darth Maul being a particularly persistent foe, he shows up several times a day to get his butt handed to him. By a 3yo girl!
Darth Maul shows up in the current season of Clone Wars, looking forward to seeing that on DVD. The Cartoon Network being one of those networks that don't let Canadians watch their shows. But that's ok, I have the entire original Marvel Star Wars series in Omnibus form! Finally finished reading it. I think it's really cool that the final (and my personal favorite) run was done by a female writer and penciller, Jo Duffy and Cynthia Martin. For the mid-80s that was a rarity. Hell, it's a rarity now.
And I'm rereading Perdido Street Station, this time for book club. Loving it just as much, maybe more, this time around.

Pallas has a new imaginary friend, though in true athenian from, she has her own unique twist on it- she takes on the identity of PallMall and says that Pallas is the imaginary one. Today Pallas fell out of my car but luckily PallMall (Pellmell! I dunno where she came up with that) appeared and really, she's as much fun to have around as Pallas.
Also, as I was trying to contain the chaos of two little girls, Pallas asked me if I was mad.
"No, I'm not mad, I'm just . . ." I groped around in my brain for the word that means "a little overwhelmed by how crazy it is to be responsible for two little girls who are not capable of sitting still for two seconds to get their shoes on".
And she said, "You're just fwustawated?"

This be what befalleth, Laurence!  This be what befalleth!

I am quoting, of course, from Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragical Romance, that lost Shakespearean play recently unearthed by Adam Bertocci.  Sir Walter is admonishing young Laurence Sellers on what befalleth when thou firsk'st a stranger 'twixt the buttocks. And what befalleth, of course, is Sir Walter wrecks yon corvette. Never mind that the vessel in question is not captained by little Laurence.
Mashing up The Big Lebowski and Shakespeare (and doing it well) is beyond brilliant. Being able to do it without using even one f-bomb is an accomplishment worthy of the Bard. There's even helpful footnotes and woodcuts just like we all had in our Shakespeare books back in high school. The Dude becomes the Knave.  "I must protest; the Knave mindeth. This will not stand, this uncheck'd aggression..."
But in the end, the Knave abideth.
Here's a bonus minimalist poster for The Big Lebowski that captures the spirit quite nicely.

Early on in The Big Lebowski, the Narrator (none other than the immortal Sam Elliot) describes The Dude as quite possibly the laziest man in the world. Certainly he's lazy, but I would say he's more a man who just prefers not to have a job. He's definitely not lazy when it comes to getting his rug back, and everything that follows from that. No, I'd say the laziest man in the world would have to be Dishwasher Pete (now, Dishwasher, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from...) aka Pete Jordan. Though he did manage to write a book called Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States so maybe he's not all that lazy either. He first came to my attention in one of my podcasts, This American Life most likely, and then that same week I saw his book in one of the bookstores I frequent, so obviously it was fate that I read it. Glad I did, I haven't laughed so hard in a while. He just wanted to wash dishes. Even chopping carrots was too much- once when a boss asked him, he deliberately chopped them way too thick. "Like this?" "No, thinner." So he'd do it paper thin. "Like this?" "No, thicker!" and he just did that back and forth a few times till his boss just gave up and let him be. Letterman even invited him on the show but he sent someone else in his stead. An impostor! So yeah, definitely a recommended read.
 I was washing the dishes with Pallas just tonight. She always pulls a chair over from the kitchen table to stand on. Lots of times she pulls my chair over, so today I asked her to take her own chair, since hers is already all ruined and wrecked from being spilt on and suffering sundry other abuses that only a toddler can impose. I've noticed that mine is starting to show some signs of damage from her overflowing destructive forces. So I said, "Pallas can you just use your own chair?"
 "Why?"
"Because yours is already wrecked and I like to keep the damage to a minimum."
Then she said something along the lines of what's wrong with a little healthy carnage?
"Well all the stuff you wreck costs money. Spending money on stuff just so you can wreck it makes daddy sad."
"But I don't want daddy to be sad."  She started crying.
"No, sweetheart, I'm not THAT sad."
"But I don't want daddy to be sad." Fullblown sobs now.
"Wait, I didn't mean sad! I'm not sad. More just, mildly chagrined."
"Sniff sniff. Okay." And then she was happy.

So the Commodore guy passed away today. It's too bad he never became a household name- in fact, I had to just now google it to remember what it is- Jack Tramiel. According to this obituary he wasn't part of Commodore anymore when the Amiga came along, but the Amiga was my first home computer- the original one and then, a few years later, the Amiga 2000 with an astonishing 20 Mb hard drive. But my neighbour had a Commodore 64 and we spent many hours playing Aliens and Rambo on it. Games were what I mostly did back then, and on the Amiga there was this kickass paint program called DeluxePaint which I spent many, many hours on but unfortunately my mastery of that never translated to any kind of affinity for Photoshop. Anyways.

We went and saw John Carter last night, and while I was a little disappointed, I don't think it deserves the fate it was handed as one of the biggest flops (in the financial sense) in history. Going in, I wanted to feel that director Andrew Stanton would clearly be the victim of studio honchos who felt that calling a movie "John Carter" rather than "John Carter of Mars" or "A Princess of Mars" was a wise marketing decision. Someone on my Twitter feed said that'd be like renaming Raiders of the Lost Ark "Henry Jones". Anyways. The movie had three separate beginnings, never a good sign and not one that helps vindicate the director, and was that Michael Chabon I saw sharing the screenwriting credits? And having just watched 4 seasons of The Wire it was a little jarring seeing Officer McNulty being, uh, whoever Officer McNulty was trying to be. Though it was fun seeing Julius Caesar and Marc Antony reunited- not to mention Posca! I do want to say that the Tharks were pretty much Tars-tastic. And they were pleasantly faithful to the source material, as pulpy and muddled as it was, so really, I guess I should just be thankful they didn't cast Rosie O'Donnell as an adorably spunky sidekick to Tarzan. I mean, John Carter. Speaking of flops, I just read Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops. As well as his memoir, The Big Rewind. My Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast pals are all friends with him and always borrow (ie steal) his ideas. So I thought I'd go to the source and read his actual books. Who would have guessed that the guy who came up with the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl led such a shitty life? Not shitty in the filled-with-terror-but-also-crazy-adventure way that Jeannette Walls describes in The Glass Castle. Just shitty in that he was so very angry and had no one on his side and thus wound up in mental hospitals and group homes. The sad thing to me is that not even Nathan is on Nathan's side, or it seemed to me anyways after I finished the book and couldn't really think of a single redeeming thing to say about him- not because there are none, but because Rabin himself seems to have gone out of his way to avoid pointing any out. Here's another flop, starring me! Someone took this video at work. The star was supposed to be the truck driver, who is a new trainee and also the brother of the guy taking the video. You know, take a video of the kid brother at his new job to show grandma kinda thing. I guess this would be an outtake.