Justin wrote:

Yeah, I’m about done. That didn’t take long, did it? I guess as I get older I have less and less patience for what I consider to be bullshit. All the endless crowds and lines and asshole people have conspired to drain just about all the fun out of this experience. Such a shame.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have had me some fun. Yesterday I got to see Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillian in person, and that was a blast (my wife especially enjoyed the Fillian part – she loves her some Captain Hammer/Malcome Reynolds), and seeing the cast and writers from Family Guy and American Dad was great, but it’s everything surrounding those things that wore me out. By the time we were out of there, I had nothing left in me. And this morning, when I got up, I knew I couldn’t face another round offighting people and standing in lines, so I’m going to miss the Hereos and Lost panels. Not that I could have gotten into those anyway since people started lining up last night at midnight to get into those. I am bummed.

Plus, my wife is even more tired of it. She had planned on trying to get Dean Koontz’s autograph and sit in on his panel, but now she doesn’t even want to go back into the con at all. I hate that, because I knew she was really looking forward to that, and knowing that her fun has been taken away tarnishes the experience a bit for me.

Anyway, today I’ll I’m going to do is go the Starkville/Tenth Wonder panel, and then possibly see if I can find the Geekscape podcast, and then I’m going to leave.

I don’t think I’ll be coming back to the con for at least a couple of years. It’s just too much, and my patience is too little. Here’s hoping Dragon*Con proves to be a more enjoyable experience.

Justin wrote:

Dear lord, my feet are sore, and I think I nearly drowned in geekness. Yesterday was a Preview Night, with most of the time taken up by just getting our four-day passes (why they don’t mail them is beyond me, especially given the chaos of that process), but once we had our passes we went into the con and checked it out. First off, it is HUGE. I think the building is about five or so city blocks long, but after winding your way through throngs of people it might as well be five miles. My wife and I wandered a bit and bought a few shirts before she bugged out while I stuck around the do an interview with Jonathan London (http://www.geekscape.net). The walk out of there and back to our hotel felt like it took all the strength that I had left in me.

Once I was back in the room, I settled in at the small table, opened the program guide, and began to map out what panels I wanted to see. It was a healthy list. I then eat a burger, took a shower, and went to bed.

This morning my feet felt pretty good, which surprised me. My wife decided to rent a car so that she could tool around San Diego and perhaps go to Tijuana while I geeked out. Traffic nearly kept me from making it to my first scheduled panel, which was a solo discussion given by J. Michael Straczynski about professional writing. Luckily, I made it, and It was fantastic. On a down note, though, the recording I took of it is really quiet. I’m hoping that I can pump up the volume of his voice so that it is easier to listen to without also pumping up louder bits. We shall see. I then went to another panel (not as good), was somewhat forced to sit through another panel (meh), but then got to sit in on a fairly interesting talk. The recording on it was better. But, by the time that one was over, so was I. I managed to make it throuh one more, but that one was strictly for me. It was a spotlight panel on Bill Willingham, the writer of Fables, one of my favorite comics.

Once the panels were done I wanted to roam around the con floor a bit to pick up some new books and such. And, I managed to find a few good ones, but it took me hours to find them in the midst of everything else. Some cool finds just aren’t worth the pain.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day, but this time I’m going to take it easy. I’m going to skip a panel in the late morning and just try to get in early enough to get a seat in the Joss Whedon panel, which will be followed by panels for American Dad and Family Guy. I’m hoping I’ll leave tomorrow in better shape than I’m in now. Otherwise… ooff.

And with that, I bid you all a good night…

Greetings, Robots! This is Justin Macumber Amanda Cales speaking. Oh, what, you thought Cap’n J-Rock was the only one with show note powers? Haha, think again, oh faithful listeners. In this episode we talk about genre, specifically everybody’s favorite high-tech futuristic playground: Science Fiction. (What else would you expect from episode 42???) So get out your favorite towel and a glass of prune juice, kiddies, ’cause it’s time to talk Sci-fi with the Dead Robots!

*** Click HERE to listen now! ***

Links:

Mandaray’s Music Profile (because Ryan WILL pay for even suggesting I might like Miley Cyrus)

Yep, that’s right. I actually made a sale. One of my short stories was accepted by the online sci-fi magazine Ray Gun Revival (www.raygunrevival.com), and it will be published soon. The pay was small, but the validation and encouragement more than make up for it. I’m really excited. I’ll post more when I know more. So, for now, know that I’m one happy guy.

Also, I’ll be off this weekend to Comic-Con in San Diego (which in German means a whale’s vagina – true story). I’ve been looking forward to this since I failed to go to last year’s Comic-Con. I purchased four day tickets for my wife and myself as soon as they were available. I’m hoping to sit in on a lot of panels, and maybe get an interview or two that I can play on my podcast. Wish me luck! Either way, I know I’m going to have a good time. I’ll also be snapping pictures like crazy, so expect to see some of those.

Anyway, bye for now!!

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A few people have noticed recently that Google has been listing us as an attack site (which we’re not; promise). This is largely because, a few months back, the site was compromised and various spammy links were inserted into a blog post.

I’ve now upgraded WordPress to the latest version, 2.6, which should hopefully prevent any more such nonsense, at least until someone figures out a hole in WordPress 2.6, whereupon the whole circus will start again. Hopefully the attack warning should disappear in the not-too-distant future, too.

Amanda wrote:

Say it ain’t so!

Oh, but it is my friends. Yes, as a special treat to help make up for putting off Ep4 for so long, Episode 5 of Dreamfall is now available, a mere three days after I posted the last one! Cool, huh?

I also have some other fun things to share…

A funny YouTube video guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of any Star Trek or Monty Python fan.

And another interesting video for the writers out there…I think I want to be like him when I grow up. (NSFW)

Also, is this not the coolest sounding game? Almost makes me want to buy a PS3. (Almost.)

Finally, I suggest this podcast for anyone who wants to get in shape, or who needs a way to stretch out all the aches and pains of a physical job. (Such as cashiering) It’s done wonders for me, and I’ve only been watching for the past three weeks or so. (I love my shiny new iPod with it’s video capabilities, oh yes I do)

Also, I saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army this past Sunday. (three cheers for having a short shift at work on a Sunday! w00t) Condensed verdict is that I really liked it, though there are a couple of things that bothered me. One I can’t tell you about because it’s a spoiler. The other is that Abe Sapien is no longer voiced by David Hyde Pierce! This makes me very unhappy. No offense to the new guy, but it really took away something from the character, at least in my opinion. He wasn’t nearly as funny or sharp-witted as before. Instead he ended up being kind of bland and neutral, which is a shame, because Abe is probably my favorite character after Hellboy himself. But it was still a good movie.

That said, I can tell I’ve been spoiled by the hi-def plasma TV screen my mom bought for the family last month. When I got to the theater I couldn’t help but notice how blurry and grainy the picture was, (which KILLED me because the graphics/costumes/etc. were SO EFFING COOL) and the sound was up so loud it was truly painful during action sequences. I can’t wait for Hellboy 2 to come out on DVD so I can watch it at home and get all the gorgeous detail I missed in the theaters. From now on I don’t think I’m going to bother seeing movies in an actual theater, unless it’s so I can go out with friends. Everything looks better at home. (It’s cheaper, too, and you don’t have to put up with all those other people in order to watch your movie, even though the crowd at Hellboy was pretty well behaved.)

/ MAJOR LINK DUMP

Have a good day, everybody! =D

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Robert Heinlein. The man is a Grandmaster of science fiction, and in my opinion one of the greatest writers of American letters yet born. For me, what he did best was to put humanity back into a genre that is too often accused of being cold and technology oriented. His stories were always about the people, about the human condition, and sci-fi was just the setting he chose to do that with, though he does use plenty of science and technologican themes as well, but always and only in service to the people. I wish I’d been able to meet the man before he left us.

Now, as for which of his works that I liked best, I have to go with “Time Enough For Love.” A lot of people mention “Stranger In A Strange Land” or “Starship Troopers” as being favorites, and both of those are great novels, but I always liked his Lazarus Long character the best, and “Time Enough For Love” is the best of the LL stories. “To Sail Beyond The Sunset” is another great novel, and it is a LL book once removed (it’s about his mother), and I also enjoyed “Fear No Evil” (the story of a rich old man who has his brain transplanted into the body of a young woman – he doesn’t know that’s where he’s going when he dies – and finds that her spirit is still in the body).

Let me end this post by saying that I adore Heinlein, I wish I’d known him, and I can only hope to one day be a fraction as good as he was. Everyone should read his work, even if they aren’t sci-fi fans.

Today I want to talk about J. Michael Straczynski. The man is a prolific writer, involved in projects in just about every medium you can imagine, but for me his greatest achievement is, and always shall be, the television series “Babylon 5.” For those who never watched it (and shame on you), Babylon 5 was the story of humans and aliens trying to build a future together on a space station. The first three Babylon stations were destroyed while being built, and the fourth one mysteriously disappeared just before going live, but Babylon 5 made it to completion, and it served as the platform for communication and understanding. When JMS created the show, he envisioned it in its entirety as a five year story, and that was how he pitched it to Warner Bros. And, incredibly, they said yes. Of the show’s 110 episodes, he wrote 91 of them, and he oversaw damn near every aspect of every episode. Sadly, even though the WB said they would give him his five years, later on they cut it to four, so he had to radically alter his timeline and change a great number of elements. In a strange twist, the TNT cable network picked up the show and gave him his fifth season, but of course that was after he’d truncated the five year story to four, so he had to take stories he’d removed and rework them for that final season, which in the end gave the show an uneven feel. Be that as it may, I think Babylon 5 is one of the greatest science fiction stories ever told, and certainly one of the greatest TV series. I think only the new Battlestar Galactica trumpts it in the sci-fi genre.

Now, what is it that made me love Babylon 5? First, it was the fact that JMS never let it JUST be a sci-fi story. I always felt like it had more of a “Lord Of The Rings” feel than anything else. The stories went to places I never imagined they would go, characters actually died off, and the stakes were always incredibly high. I loved the different characters, and each of them was true to their motivations, even if if made them do bad things. JMS never compromised his story or his characters to make them more palatable. And, I think most importantly for me, he had real vision. An example of that are the two big alien races in the story. On the one side of the conflict you have the Vorlons, who are supposed to be the good guys. In the show, their philosophy is represented in the statement, “Who are you?” On the other side of the conflict you have the supposed bad guys, the Shadows. Their philosophy is, “What do you want?” Now, those seem like simple questions, but they really aren’t, and how you answer them says everything about who you really are. And, by the end of the show, who is good and who is bad is not so easy to say.

Anyway, I loved Babylon 5. I thought it asked questions that no other show asked, and it told its story with characters who were real, who were epic, and who surprised you. If you haven’t watched the show, I highly recommend you do so ASAP.

JMS also wrote a comic book series that I greatly enjoyed called “Rising Stars.” “Rising Stars” was about a group of people who were born with special abilities after a mysterious ball of light flew over the town their mothers were in while they were in utero. It followed their lives, showing how a world would react to people with super powers, and how those “Specials” would react to that world. As with JMS’s other work, the stories and characters all felt honest and true, and the writing was top notch. There have been parallels drawn between Rising Stars and two TV shows – The 4400 and Heroes. And, I have to say, if JMS ever wanted to sue over it, he has a strong case, and some situations and characters are too similar to be coincidence.

And, with that, I bring this entry to a close. Babylon 5 is a show that is close to my heart, and I know that it has influenced my outlook on the sci-fi genre. I wouldn’t be writing what I am today, I don’t think, without it.

Amanda wrote:

Episode 4 of Dreamfall is finally up! http://www.amandacales.com/dreamfall_ep4.html

Sorry for the long wait, everyone. I am a terrible, lazy person and should be mocked until I work harder. ^_^;;

Please enjoy the episode! I had fun with this one.

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Okay, everyone, today is the day to help Matthew Wayne Selznick make this a Sovereign Summer! Please click on the link below to go to Amazon.com and preorder your copy of “Brave Men Run.” Matt is a great guy and a wonderful writer, and he deserves to have this be a success. So please, do like I did and preorder your copy today.