Pushing Paper

Tuesday, May 3 3:26 AM

This was clearly a night for mind-numbing, "Brazil"-like bureaucratic errands. It was all about moving papers from Point A to Point B. One set of papers was a stack of receipts for travel expenses. Even though my official author portrait has been deftly Photoshopped with the "Sincerity" filter, my word apparently wasn't good enough for the boys in Accounting.

The guy on the phone seemed to have this wise-a** tone in his voice when he said "And we're all really looking forward to seeing an actual receipt for that 'helicopter rental' you put in the invoice." So I've substituted a receipt for a rental car instead. Let them choke on the disappointment.

A well-known company with their fingers in personal electronics, computers, and media wants to show me something cool next week, but not until I sign and return an NDA. Done. Another company wants to pay me for a job I did, but they won't make it happen until I sign and return a 1099. I don't know why they're getting all Felix Unger-ey on me all of a sudden — the job was to illegally smuggle endangered Central American bird species into California for feature-film stuntwork — but sure, whatever it takes to get my check.

A second NDA, which will represent the biggest puzzle of the week. The company is famous for only two products, and their email specifically said that this briefing would have nothing to do with either of 'em. I've signed the NDA and scheduled the briefing but obviously these are treacherous waters. It could be news on the scale of "Apple will be unveiling a new PDA operating system which will initially be available on an Apple-logoed smartphone" or it could be "Apple will be a major sponsor of the season finale of 'Desperate Housewives'."

The company in question isn't Apple but still, you get the idea. One day next week, I'll be seeing this Company That Isn't Apple at 9 AM, also known as Nine In The Freakin' AM, which also ups the stakes considerably. I suppose the hour implies a good chance of free danish. The best way to hedge my bets would therefore be to leave the house with a couple of big Ziploc baggies in my backpack. If the news sucks, I'll take home the whole tray of snacks.

Well, on and on. Admittedly, if one day I set aside my foolish pride and actually got my fax machine working again, I wouldn't have to make the trip to Kinko's. But at this stage, that seems like giving up. Fax is still a disgustingly analog-smelling procedure. I am adamant on this point. All that's necessary for tyranny to fall is for One Good Man to make his stand.

Besides, it gets me out of the house. I had extremely good iTunes Pepsi Giveaway karma tonight, too. I was shooting 100%: one freebie from the Pepsi machine at Kinko's, and one from the pizzeria where I grabbed a slice for dinner. No, I haven't switched from my Coke allegiance. But Diet Pepsi tastes as much like Coke as Diet Coke does (ie, not even close) so you might as well pursue the mercenary angle.

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Never has an ambigious gate assignment been so thrilling.

Tuesday, May 3 9:20 PM

I am edgily sitting through a commercial break, hoping against hope that one pair of people I don't even know make a connecting flight, and that a second pair of people I don't know don't make a connecting flight. Even though they're both streaking to the same desk at the same airport at the exact same time.

Holy Zarquon's Singing fish do I love "The Amazing Race." It's the only reality game show that's worth a dam.

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Along with a matching grant from the No Violent Weasel Left Behind Fund

Thursday, May 5 8:19 PM

Boy! The past ninety minutes of my day has been sponsored through a generous grant from the "People Truly Suck" Foundation.

First, I got cursed out -- at length and with great hostility -- by a janitor at my local post office. Granted, I had it coming. I shouldn't have riled him like that, by taking the three letters that had been mistakenly placed in my PO box and sliding them under the door to the window area, just as I was told to do two or three years ago by someone wearing an actual Postal Service uniform instead of a torn Aerosmith tour shirt. He was very correct to point out my thoughtless behavior, and I was forced to admit that the whole reason why I had done it in the first place was specifically to make life difficult for him, a man against whom I had obviously been nurturing a dark and longstanding grudge.

I walked away a better person for the experience. I shall write him a nice thank-you note later tonight, enclosing an Omaha Steaks gift certificate to underscore my sincerity.

The second incident came in the form of an email that was waiting for me when I got home. I've received plenty of positive and negative responses to today's highly-positive Sun-Times review of Tiger, but let's just say that this one was Special. I'd describe the email in detail, but even the tiniest quote would be blocked by the naughty-words-filter on your company, school, or library Internet routers. And the whole post would probably be flagged out by my homemade blogging software's stringent "No Whining" screener.

So, okay then. The email is going into the Trash, and I'm going off to Somerville. Earlier today I'd been waffling about whether or not I'd take the night off and go hear a few bands. But I've been a very good boy tonight, what with my getting through the past 90 minutes with my sense of elan intact. Spending a few hours watching people who are clearly performing solely out of their love for their Art — I happen to know how much money this venue pays its live acts — is exactly how I want to spend the evening.

Plus, I can TiVO "The Apprentice."

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Testing, Testing...

Friday, May 6 12:16 PM

Nothing to see here, folks...just testing the system...

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It's allllll good, man. It's alllll good.

Friday, May 6 12:37 PM

Okay, I think it's fixed. My thanks to the (many) people who let me know that May's monthly archive page had gone all catty-wumpus. That it'd been skeezixed. That clearly, it was treading the hazy margins between Too Much Alcohol and Not Nearly Enough. Et cetera.

Here's why the archive page went all screwy: when my blogger tries to open a monthly archive file but fails, it (quite correctly) assumes that this the first post of a brand-new month and that the file hasn't been created yet. So it goes ahead and mints one, using a template file for inspiration.

Ah. But the identity of this template file is hard-coded into the software. And when I overhauled the site design last year, it appears that I forgot to point the software to the new, way-cool-looking template. So instead, it creates a new month that's based on the old style.

An easy thing to fix. Absolutely. But the problem is that I only encounter this problem once a month and fixing the file manually takes all of two minutes. Fixing the app so that this mistake never happens again? That'd probably take at least ten. You can see my moral quandary.

This time, when I manually moved the new content into the right template file, I accidentally moved the marker that tells my blogger code where to insert the new posts. So the app was sticking the new stuff inside the page's sidebar area.

Apparently, the page now loads properly. As to fixing the actual problem...um, I'll get to that real soon.

Now that I've done 24-Hour Comics Day, maybe I ought to pioneer the concept of "24-Hour Software Day." There are so many things that I've been meaning to add to CWOBber, features that I've actually already coded up and everything. Maybe I ought to just commit to a single 24 hour period in which I try to do as much for CWOBber as I can.

Knowing me, though, I'd probably wind up doing more to it than for it. For it's Spring, and who can concentrate on XCode when happy fluffly little bunny-wunnies are gamboling and romping and cavorting just outside my window?

That reminds me...there's probably a shiny object off in the middle-distance somewhere that I need to be distracted by. Anyway, thanks for all the alerts, folks.

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When there's a shine on your shoes, there's a melody in your heart

Saturday, May 7 5:15 PM

I dropped off a pair of shoes to be cleaned and polished today, and so long as the guy was going to be putting them up there on the big pneumatic lift anyway, I had him swap out my old laces for new ones, too. It wasn't exactly an episode of "Pimp My Shoes" but it was about as close as you can reasonably get if you don't own an '82 Dodge Dynasty with mismatched tires and no trunk lid.

I'm a regular at Eagle Shoe Repair. All right, I only stop by a few times a year but the point is that I give this guy 100% of my annual shoe-maintenance budget. I'm sure the owner thinks he's earned my repeat business by consistently deliverying quality service at competitive prices. In truth, what really keeps me coming back is that fact that he looks a lot like Bob Elliott of "Bob and Ray" fame.

Don't get me wrong. He does a great job on my shoes, and this is one of those shops that predates continental drift so it's a well-worn, lived-in place that smells great and is a treat to walk into. Nonetheless, every time I approach the counter I imagine that I'm Ray Goulding and I'm here to interview Bonfiglio Jorgenson, owner of the only shoe-repair shop in New York that's located inside a bowling alley.

"So tell me, Mr. Jorgenson: how's business?"

"Well, in retrospect, I guess it's possible that I was being optimistic when I chose this location. You would think that with all these hundreds of bowling shoes right here in the facility, a shoe-repair business would be a guaranteed winner. But what I've found over the past nine years is that very few bowlers decide to get their rental shoes shined or repaired before they return them."

"How many, would you say?"

"The actual number would be zero, Ray. In fact, once or twice I've caught people putting a quarter into the automatic bowling-ball buffing machine over there, and then using the rotating brushes to clean their street shoes. That really sort of smart, I don't mind telling you."

This is one of the reasons why I would never want to operate a storefront business. You earn a Harvard MBA and you land some valuable internships and you rely on the advice of mentors. Then you open up shop, thinking that you know everything you need to know about attracting customers. And yet it turns out that you owe a certain percentage of your success to your very slight resemblance to a guy who used to be on the radio thirty to fifty years ago.

Would I be steering you people towards Eagle Shoe Repair in Norwood, Massachusetts if the owner just looked like some guy on a bus? No, indeed. Millions of people read this weblog (note: AD 11,020 projected cumulative statistic) and he's about to be inundated with new business. And he's probably going to chalk it all up to that 1/8th-page ad he took out in the program for his granddaughter's junior-high play last month.

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Luminous, peanut-centered and candy-coated creatures are we!

Monday, May 9 1:07 AM

Apparently, through the simple act of noticing that the local CVS had a special on peanut M&M's and then grabbing a bag at random on my way from the dental care aisle, I have registered my support for the Light Side of the Force. I didn't even realize that I'd done it until just now, when I broke the bag open and saw Han Solo there on the package.

Well, all I can say that as a method of putting people on one list or another, "The M&M Test" beats all that crap about Mitichlorians that they kept babbling on and on about in Episode One.

But I think when I die and make it to Valhalla, I'll keep quiet about how I got there.

"My father is a Lord in the celestial court of the God of War," the big guy in front of me will tell me, making small talk as we wait in line to check in and get our room keys. "He set before me ten tasks, hitherto thought impossible, each more dangerous and bedevilling than the last. You see this?"

At this point he lifts up his left arm, which ends in a stump bound with rough strips of bronze.

"For my tenth and final task," he continues, "my father ripped my soul from my body and cast it into the lowest depths of Hell. 'Your soul is your honor,' he said to me, 'and the man who is unwilling to fight the ultimate battle for such a prize is of absolutely no use to me, to my armies...or to any man.' That's exactly how he said it, too: or to ANY man. I tell you, I sang as I plunged down after it, even as charring heat and shards of living glass tore at my flesh. And after four months of single combat with every manner of otherworldly beast, I finally located my soul, in the heart of the lair of the first-born spawn of Satan himself. The vile demon attempted to devour it when he saw me coming, of course. So I plunged my bare hand into his mouth and tore it straight from his throat. The effort cost me an appendage but it won me my soul...and ultimately, my place here, among the honored dead."

I'll tense up at this point. The story's over and clearly, he's about to ask me The Question.

"And how did you prove your worthiness to spend Eternity among the gloried defenders of Light?" he'll ask.

I'll say that I had gone through pretty much the same sort of thing, adding that a week after escaping back to the surface with my newly-recovered soul, I actually had to go back down into the pits of Hell, because I realized that I must have dropped my sunglasses while I was there in the lair of the first-born spawn of Satan. It'll probably make him feel pretty good, knowing that he hadn't made such a stupid blunder.

The honest answer, of course, is "Well, you see, I like candy, and I also like 'Star Wars'..." But if we wound up with rooms in the same dorm it could lead to a lot of awkward moments in the laundry room.

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This item has been redacted.

Tuesday, May 10 5:28 PM

This is why I try not to schedule morning meetings. If I need to be somewhere at 9, I can bear down, draw upon emergency reserves of strength and determination, and somehow manage to get to my meeting on time. If I really have my act together that morning, I won't even have to shave and dress while I drive.

But for an early-AM meeting to work out, everything needs to go precisely according to plan. Because if I wake up, turn on the TV, and discover that the one highway that can take me where I need to go is, at that very moment, hosting a fairly ambitious tractor-trailor fire, well, I'm pretty-well stuck for solutions. It was hard enough to get my butt out of bed when the early hour was the only thing I was up against. If I'm expected to battle both the injustice of an early morning wakeup and one of the fundamental elements of Nature, it really makes more sense for me to just turn the TV off and go back to sleep. You have to pick your battles.

Any other time of day, of course, I'd have been all over the problem. But the Andy Ihnatko of 8 AM is most definitely not the guy you turn to for quick-thinking, cunning plans, and flawless execution. If you desperately need a torn aorta repaired at 8 AM and your only two options are either having me operate on you (and please assume for the sake of argument that I'm board-certified in cardiac and thoracic surgery), or turning to one of those people who wiggles a bag of crystals over your head and then sticks a hose up your bum to flush out any angry gnomes, my advice to you is to wear loose trousers and hope for the best. No question.

Fortunately, by 8:20 AM I had regained enough of my faculties that I was once again able to operate a pushbutton telephone, so I called the two guys I was supposed to meet up with. I quickly described the conflagration and suggested that we move the venue. It was really nice of them to agree to the change. They didn't have to do that; they were in a rental car, after all. I know that if I were in a rental, I wouldn't pass up such a golden opportunity to find out what it was like to drive through a wall of fire. But there was indeed an upside for them, too: by avoiding getting gridlocked on the shut-down highway, Ted and Stan avoided having to make about two hours' worth of front-seat small talk with each other. I mean, if that had happened, the first words out of Ted's mouth at the meeting would have been "If it's all right with you, Andy, Stan here will be doing all the talking today. Because it turns out that he knows everything, and I know absolutelynothing!!!"

Then he'd burst into angry tears and Stan would sigh, shake his head, and click into the first slide in their PowerPoint presentation.

The good news is that the briefing was worth my getting up early for. This was indeed the one that I mentioned the other day, the meeting about The New Device Which Isn't Either One Of The Only Two Things That This Company Is Known For.

The device itself wasn't shockingly new. Conceptually, it's like what the first iPod was: a familiar product with a simple new twist. But also like the iPod, it's a simple twist that potentially brings with it a lot of big and way-cool implications. Underscore "potential." I'll have one in my hands sometime in the next few days and then we'll see what's what.

But hey! Tiger! Tiger, Tiger, Tiger! Mac OS X 10.4! Automator! Dashboard! Spotlight, people! Spotlight!

After six months of being prohibited from telling the world "I've been using Tiger since October and even in pre-pre-pre-release form, it pre-kicks ass!" I'll never get tired of openly acknowledging that I've actually heard of this product.

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The Howard Hughes Years Begin

Wednesday, May 11 9:51 PM

All righty...well, when you're sitting in a WiFi-equipped bakery cafe, it's certainly a slightly creepy experience to click on a link that a pal has just iChatted to you, and find yourself reading a blog post in which a stranger writes about how they've spotted you in that selfsame bakery cafe.

But "Welcome to the 21st Century," I suppose.

(Glances around the office. Waves shyly at the Boba Fett mini-bust perched on a shelf a few feet away, just in case there's a netcam hidden inside it.)

Just for the record, I didn't give Paul the brushoff last week. He was with this nice-looking girl, you see, and for all I knew, he was in a first-date situation. And I asked myself: would his progress be helped by my sitting down and inserting myself into their evening, or would it be hindered?

That very question happens to be the Third Pledge of the International Fraternity of Heterosexual Men, printed right on the back of the membership card. There are many responsibilities of IFoHM membership but none are more important than this: when you encounter a brother member in the company of a lady, one must not risk doing anything that might mess up the situation. The Third Pledge is even more crucial than the one about making sure that your handtowels don't quite match your bath linens.

I asked myself the question, I assessed the situation, and then I wisely moved on. I see from Paul's blog that the lady is actually his wife. Good for him! I'm pleased to learn that through my simple act of discretion, I might have made some small contribution to their happy union.

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Oh, Billy Billy BILLY Billy Billy Billy...

Friday, May 13 2:53 PM

There is no dignity on the Internet. Hey, I'm sure they're working on it. I think there's a Working Committee that's hoping to develop something that the ISOC can release as a formal RFC in the next couple of years, with a white-paper to follow before 2010. But if you're looking to do anything on the Internet and come away from it with the same high opinion of yourself that you had just one Grace Hopper-sized nanosecond before you clicked on a link...well, clearly you're thinking of that other Internet. Sorry.

I refer you to this online Caddyshack Trivia Quiz. See if your internal monologue is anything akin to what mine was:

1) I'm going to do great on this; "Caddyshack" is one of my favorite movies. I actually know Michael O'Keefe (the guy who played Noonan). Got a Christmas card from him last year and everything.

I rule.

2) Question Four: "What line did Carl Spackler NOT say in the movie?" Hmm. "You're a tremendous slouch" is Ty Webb's line, so it's clearly the third one. But two of the other three are incorrect quotes. Well, that's nit-picking.

I am so much smarter than whoever it is who wrote this quiz.

3) Question Five: "Which two Caddyshack characters actually had a relationship after the movie?" Umm...none of them, obviously. They're fictional characters, made from stardust and dreamsand, dissipating the moment the MPAA rating card flashes on the screen after the end-credits. If the question is meant "which two characters apparently hooked up after the big golf tournament?" then it's definitely Lacy and D'Annunzio. If it's supposed "which two actors dated for a while after the movie wrapped?"...then I've no idea. Chevy Chase and Cindy Morgan, maybe?

"Actually" seems to imply "real people." So okay: "Ty and Lacy" it is.

I am a much better communicator than whoever wrote this quiz.

4) Question Six: "What professional sports franchise owner purchased Rolling Hills Golf and Tennis Club near Fort Lauderdale, the public course used in the filming of the movie, then turned it into a private club?" Who cares? This, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between a geek and a nerd. I'm a geek. I watch this movie at least a half-dozen times a year, so I happen to remember a lot about it. But — to my shame — I confess that I haven't really been keeping myself up-to-date on what's happened to its actors and locations since the film was released.

Don't get me wrong: I wish the Rolling Hills Golf and Tennis Club all the best in its future endeavors. The thing is, the two of us don't really mix in the same social circle, you see. So I'll just take a guess.

If I had written this quiz, I would have had a much better question. "Of the following four animals, which one did Carl not sculpt in plastic explosive as he prepared for his final assault against the gopher? Gopher, Rabbit, Squirrel, Snake/Worm." Which is pure Tabasco as a question. It forces you to sit back and replay the scene in your head.

5) Question 8: "One of the five brothers of Caddyshack star Bill Murray was a co-star of the recent ABC sitcom 'Dharma and Greg.' Which brother was it?" And at this stage I raise my hand, wait to be called on, and then I clear my throat and ask "What the ****?"

See Item Four. Oh, I should give you a new question, too. "The Bishop is a veteran of one of the branches of the armed services. Name it."

6) Question 11: "What PGA Tour player was given the nickname 'Spaulding,' after Judge Smails' nephew, by high school friend.

"Ty slices a golf ball off into Carl's greenskeeper shack. The brand is mentioned by name at least twice. What brand is it? Top-Flite, Slazenger, Titleist, Maxflite."

7) The quiz is finished and I click the "Submit my answers" button to get my score.

It is much lower than I anticipated. Hunh.

I couldn't possibly have done that poorly. Let's see what I supposedly got wrong.

8) Question One: I'm right and the quiz is wrong. Lacy is indeed the Judge's niece...not the Bishop's.

Question Five: I got it wrong, but only because of the poorly-phrased question.

Question Twelve: I got it wrong, but only because the question asked for "an Eighties film" and the correct answer, "Animal House," was released in the Seventies...so I'd eliminated it from consideration, even though I knew that it was otherwise correct. "A trick," I thought, "cleverly-designed to entrap those less-clever than I."

Question Thirteen: I'm right and the quiz is wrong. If the shack is deemed in-bounds, and it's not considered a natural part of the course, then it's a man-made obstruction, akin to an irrigation hose left on the fairway. The golfer who hits into it can receive relief without penalty, so long as he replaces his ball no closer to the hole and less than one club-length from the obstruction.

So. If it weren't for a poorly-phrased question, a bunch of questions that require me to care, for instance, about the childhoods of minor pro golfers, and questions where the answers are flat-out wrong...I would have gotten a perfect score.

Once again I re-confirm that if the world is a wretched mess, it's only because I'm not running the whole show. "Better to let the Humans make their own mistakes," I swore lo those centuries ago, when I was first dispatched to your planet, and although my great fondness for your species sometimes makes it painful for me to refrain from meddling in your affairs, in the long run I'm confident that I'm doing the right thing.

To sum up, we sort of return to my first reaction: I rule.

But now I have to fully confront the fact that as lame as this quiz was, I took the time to complete it. And then I took the time to challenge the answers.

And now, here I am...blogging about it.

There. Is. No. Dignity. On. The. INTERNET. Write it down, kids. That piece of wisdom represents at least 12% of the value of a college degree, right there.

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Love Letters and Perfectly Reasonable Explanations - $5.

Tuesday, May 17 2:54 AM

So now's as good a time as any to start telling people about a certain venture that I and my pal Ellen will be undertaking next month. Here's the press release, which we wrote up rather belatedly after realizing that maybe we'll raise more money if we, you know, tell people about this ahead of time:

LOVE NOTES AND "PERFECTLY REASONABLE EXPLANATIONS": $5 EACH.

Professional writers team to get people out of tricky social situations...and raise money for charity.

Have you ever been in such an awkward situation that you thought "I'd pay a million dollars for a note that would get me out of this"?

Good news: on June 17 and 18, it'll only cost you five bucks. And every penny will be donated to the Red Cross.

No kidding. Writers Andy Ihnatko (columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times) and Ellen McGirt (columnist for MONEY magazine) will be sitting in a booth at the Big Apple Comic, Art, and Toy Convention in New York City, listening to people's feeble explanations, descriptions of poor behavior, and tales of unrequited and unexpressed emotions. On the spot, they will then translate them into letters that are designed to go over well with bosses, spouses, and objects of affection.

"We're sort of like the Ghostbusters of letter-writers," Ihnatko explains. "Clearly, you should have apologized for what you did at your in-laws' big annual family barbecue right then and there. But if you were that clever, you wouldn't have gotten yourself in trouble to begin with, would you? No, when you're obviously in way over your head, it's time to call in the pros. We don't have the cool jumpsuits or the tricked-out car, but all the same, we'll rid your house of the invisible spectre that could potentially wreak ungodly havoc on everything you hold dear."

Ihnatko specializes in "thanks, apologies, excuses, alibis, Perfectly Reasonable Explanations and recovery from heroic acts of social blundery," while McGirt's expertise is in "notes of love or sincere apology for the tongue-tied, the mojo-challenged, the viscerally shy or current residents of the proverbial doghouse."

The writers believe that it's all about the love. "Romeo and Juliet, Charlie Brown and the Little Red Haired Girl, the Hatfields and McCoys - we could have brought these crazy kids together," says McGirt. "We consider this an important public service." Well written notes have unexpected side benefits as well. "Recent studies have shown that bad poetry and pathetic prose may contribute to toxic acid reflux, chronic sphincter spasms and other troublesome health outcomes."

Though this is the first time that the pair has offered their unique talents to the general public, they've long found themselves thrust into this role by friends and family.

"It seems like I'm always writing a paragraph or two for somebody to copy down into a Hallmark card," Ihnatko says.

For her love letters, McGirt relies on her not insignificant street credentials. "Hey, I've been dating for twenty seven years," she laughs. "There isn't a love note, Dear John letter or other outpouring of amorous intention that I haven't seen or perpetrated by now. I've ghost-written more 'will you shack up with me?' notes and best man speeches than I care to remember."

As a kid, Ihnatko was not above using his powers for evil.

"Well, let's call it Enlightened Self-Interest," Ihnatko explains. "I've been fascinated with technology every since I was in grammar school, but a high-speed modem, for instance, really wasn't priced with an eleven-year-old's weekly allowance in mind. I could certainly afford stamps and envelopes, though, so I sat down and wrote letters to all the major modem manufacturers. I explained that while I couldn't afford to actually buy their hardware, sending me a freebie was a fantastic opportunity that they'd be foolish to pass up."

Did it work?

"I got so many modems in the mail that I wound up donating all but two of them to my school system."

But McGirt and Ihnatko's labors at the Big Apple Convention on June 17 and 18 are all for charity. "It all goes to the Red Cross. Five bucks is the stated price but if you give us a crisp hundred, we'll handle the situation with dignity and aplomb."

"We'll also probably send you a very nice, professional thank-you note," McGirt adds.

###

CONTACT INFORMATION:

ANDY IHNATKO is The Chicago Sun-Times' technology columnist. He also contributes to several magazines and has his own series of tech-related books for Wiley Publishing. He lives in Boston with his two goldfish, Click and Drag. Andy can be contacted at ai@andyi.com.

ELLEN McGIRT is a senior writer with MONEY Magazine, covering health care, personal finance, and the coming crisis in just about everything. She is also writes MONEY Helps, a consumer advocacy column which helps wronged or snafu'd readers untangle red tape messes and get some justice. She lives in New York City with her cat, Adlo - who would love to meet Click and Drag someday.

THE BIG APPLE COMICS, ART AND TOY convention is held at Penn Plaza Pavilion, 401 7th Avenue at 33rd Street, directly across from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. It runs from Friday, June 17 (12 PM to 8 PM) to Saturday, June 18 (11 AM to 7 PM). Its official website is at http://www.bigapplecon.com/.

So there it is. Please do pass along this link to anyone who might find our little experiment (in fundraising and social Bondo) interesting.

And hey...if you're going to be anywhere near Penn Plaza Pavilion on Friday, June 17 or Saturday, June 18, do stop by and say hi. Better yet, go ahead and give us money while you're there. We haven't been assigned our booth location yet but we're thinking of just putting up a huge banner with the word "AWKWARD" on it, and then just letting our target audience's instincts take over from there.

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The Force Will Be With You; No Spoilers

Wednesday, May 18 4:15 PM

1) Cellphone: charging.

2) Digital camera: charging.

3) High-amperage rechargeable AA batteries, for my digital SLR and my Sunpak flash: charging.

4) Beard-trimmer, which I'll need to knock down three days' worth of facial growth before I go at it painlessly and humanely with my electric razor: charging.

5) That Device Which I Can't Talk About Because It Hasn't Been Released Yet: Charging.

Suffice to say that lots and lots of electrons are being snatched from their carefree lives and incarcerated inside batteries this afternoon. And why, do you ask? It's all in preparation for that moment when I load up my backpack and set out for the AMC Theaters Framingham 15 and join whatever line I encounter for the midnight premiere screening of "Revenge Of The Sith."

6) Special ultra-bright super-miniature LED flashlight that I

(Sorry. The mid-day newscast just started airing a story on Episode III and I had to dive for the remote and change the channel.)

6) Special ultra-bright super-miniature LED flashlight that I bought at the MIT Flea Market on Sunday, because it has a cool little clip that mounts it perfectly on the brim of my hat and it's the perfect thing for reading a book in line after the sun goes down. I have successfully detached its useless keychain-thingy.

7) Laundry: in the spin cycle.

I was out of clean shirts, you see. This is a big rule of mine: every time I'm at the Opening Day of a big sci-fi/fantasy film, or a comix convention, or any other gathering with a serious geek demographic, I have to be wearing laundry-fresh clothing and a nice (-ish) cotton shirt that buttons up all the way. The group of people there will almost certainly contain a number of men my age who are unshaven, whiffy, and wearing the same dirty tee shirt they slept in.

Okay, some of them have been living in that line for three days. I'm willing to give those guys a mulligan.

But as for the rest, I have these words: you stand there in line not just as eager fans of the "Star Wars" franchise, but as ambassadors of the proud Nation Of Grown Adults Who Still Greatly Enjoy Movies About Hobbits And Talking Robots. Don't you realize that every time you appear on the local 11 O'Clock News wearing a riddled Captain America shirt that barely makes it down to your navel, you set the Cause back ten years?

Please. Shower and shave. And put on clean clothes, somewhere between Casual Casual and Business Casual on the Presentability Index. Because somewhere out there, there's a 37-year-old middle manager who wants to talk his boss into letting him take a personal day to see the premiere of "King Kong"...and your decisions today will have an impact on he, your Brother in Geekdom.

8) Movies: are being copied to the device mentioned in Item Five. I have selected the middle movies of both Trilogies ("Empire" and "Clones"), and am willing out much of the rest of the device's storage capacity with that "Late Night" segment where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog gave such a hard time to the fellows waiting in line for Episode II; last night's "Star Wars" theme Top Ten list from Letterman; and because I still had well over a gigabyte left..."Trekkies 2."

9) Earphones: the kind with silicone inserts that shut out all outside noise. Cleaned and prepped. I'm hoping to actually enjoy the whole joie de vivre environment of The Line, but there are a lot of evil idiots in this world. I must keep in mind that there was a charity premiere of Episode III last week, the novelization's been out for nearly a month, and you know, there's also this thing called The Internet. So there's always the risk of encountering some idiot who thought it'd be Really Funny to ruin the whole plot for everybody.

And when I say evil idiots, I also include morning radio DJs in that group. I just assumed that we could take that for granted. I guarantee you that somewhere in the country, there's a fourth-place morning show — possibly Farto and the Stain, the Mid-Morning Madmen of Ypsilanti — that's brainstormed just such a Wacky Stunt. "Let's send Donny the Drunken Stuttering Vomit I Eat My Own Underpants Tourette's-Syndrome Slightly Shorter Than The National Average Of Five-Foot-Nine Guy over there to the Star Wars line in the party van," Farto, or perhaps The Stain, suggested. "Then while tape is rolling, he gets on a bullhorn and shouts out all all the major surprises from the movie! It'll be hysterical!"

The Stain (or perhaps Farty) considers this for a long moment, and in the normal collaborative back-and-forth that contributes to all great comedy, from "Your Show Of Shows" all the way to "Mr. Show," suggests that the diaper be a soiled one. And perhaps they ought to hire somebody big and beefy to infiltrate the line, to make sure that Donny gets the crap beaten out of him even if the beatdown doesn't happen organically.

I shouldn't denigrate all morning radio DJs, of course. Chiefly, I'm talking to the ones out there who don't know what "denigrate" means and who have just made a note to look the word up later, just in case it might have something to do with the human anus.

Finally, I have prepared

10) A Big Knife, just in case someone spoils the story for me despite all of my preparations. "Here's a spoiler for you!" I'll say, as I make my seventh, eighth, and ninth plunging incisions. "This is what a cross-section of your large intestine looks like!!! Bet you didn't want to know that, huh? HUH?!?"

I will wait patiently for the police and I will go away with them without any sort of struggle or difficulty and when it comes time to talk to the DA, I'll explain the situation calmly and clearly and he'll immediately offer to plea the Murder Two charge down to a misdemeanor Aggravated Battery.

Yup, I've been tightening my Cone of Silence on this film steadily for the past six months. I saw the teaser trailer when it first came out. Absolutely. But honestly: I don't know anything else about "Revenge Of The Sith" that I didn't know ten years ago. I haven't seen any of the visuals. I did accidentally see a few seconds of Jedi Master Shaft airing his ominous concerns about a plot against the Jedi Order, and I think I glimpsed a Wookiee assault for half a second yesterday.

Otherwise, my mind is damned-near a blank slate on this flick. These days, way, way too much information is given out before a movie opens and naturally, it isn't just a problem with Star Wars. If you want to do a little Googling, you can get the whole plot of any movie, detail for detail, months before it opens. Even the average trailer is far, far too excited about its own story to be trusted. If "Citizen Kane" were released this year, we'd find out who or what "Rosebud" was before the trailer's first propane-truck explosion.

One of my favorite movies — definitely a top 100, possibly a top 50 — is "The Stunt Man." I'd love to write about it, but I can't. At this moment, you folks know absolutely nothing about it, apart from the fact that I'm sitting here urging you to go rent it. That's how I saw it, the first time. Is it a love story? A comedy? A supernatural thriller? A film with a 'hidden twist' ending?

I ain't telling. "The Stunt Man" is a movie that completely and brilliantly understands the entire psychological process of watching a film, and nothing, nothing, should interfere with that process. If you have a one-sentence synopsis before you push "Play," it's a good film. But if you come to it with nothing...it's a fantastic one.

So I have moved heaven and earth to make sure that I enter that theater with my mind open, empty, and willing to be filled with the Holy Spirit. With The movie, I mean. The movie.

After all, that's how I saw the Middle Trilogy. Oh, life was so much simpler back then, children. Can you imagine a secret as big as [the big secret from 'Empire Strikes Back'] remaining a secret for so long? I remember seeing Episode 5 on the first show of opening day; there were gasps, audible and ample ones, when The Line Of Dialogue rang through the speakers. I suspect that today, the loudest response to that sort of revelation would be the clk-clk-CLKs of smartphone keypads, as text-messengers post to their blogs. "RUMR 21 CNFRMD - MOR L8R"

It's absolutely amazing. I saw the first chapter in this story when I was...gosh, I can't even remember how young I was. Nine? Ten? And now, more than 25 years later, I'm finally going to see the last part of it.

There is still wonder and amazement in this world, my friends.

Off I go. If you see me in Framingham, do go ahead and say hi. But don't forget about #10.

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ajild; ajiaji;9031-j ef -- too excited to type. (No Spoilers)

Thursday, May 19 6:21 PM

Unbelievable. Unbelievable!

"Revenge Of The Sith" is clearly the best of all the Prequels, but that sounds like faint praise at best and sarcasm at worst. It's better than "Return Of The Jedi" and I have to ask myself if it isn't better than "A New Hope," too. When I come down off the endorphin buzz, I'll probably conclude that no, it isn't, but the fact that I even have to consider such a question says a whole hell of a lot about this movie.

I liked the movie. Yes, indeed. Ten bucks well-spent. You should go see it. In fact, I'll go this far: if you see it and you don't like it, I'll personally refund your ticket price. Just come up to me and show me your torn ticket stub.

This, of course, is just a ruse to lure you within slapping distance. Because anyone who comes out of that theater unconvinced that they've seen Something Very, Very Special desperately needs some sense slapped into them. Either they have no taste in movies at all, or else they're Trekkies whose disappointment at the early cancellation of "Enterprise" and the complete and utter collapse of their entire franchise has led to bitterness and ugly jealousy.

The lurching pacing, wooden acting, and the sometimes mind-numbing political maneuvering of Episode I has been abolished. Nixed. Banished. Picked up and dropped, screaming, down a ventilation shaft and straight into the reactor core of this fully armed and operational battle station. Episode III is thrilling where it needs to be thrilling, intense when it needs to be intense, and sad and moving at the points where such things can be utterly devastating. I've always said that a truly great movie knocks fifty or sixty IQ points right out of your head. At one key scene — those of you who've seen the movie can probaby guess which one it is — I was shaking my head incredulously and thinking, nearly saying, "For God's sake, don't do it!"

This is officially Opening Day, which means that the majority of Earth's sentient population has yet to see the film. I won't spoil any story details. Instead, I'm going to talk about the Middle Trilogy. You know what I did as soon as I got home from the midnight screening? I put "A New Hope" into the DVD player. While I was standing in line, I watched "Attack Of The Clones" on my PDA, which means that I had seven hours of practically uninterrupted Saga. Episode II transitions cleanly into Episode III, and by golly, Episode III transitions cleanly into Episode IV. I don't know how the blazes they did it, but they pulled it off: these are, indeed, six chapters of a master story.

It's the oddest thing. I've lived with the Middle Trilogy and kept it close to my heart for more than twenty years now. And yet, my entire perception of those films has suddenly shifted. Before "Revenge Of The Sith," those movies were about how evil was vanquised and peace and democracy were restored to the galaxy. Now, it's the story of three Jedi — Obi Wan, Yoda, and Anakin — and how each one came to their ends, each one doing the thing they needed to do in order to finally bring about the downfall of the Emperor.

Another insight came as I was driving home. "La Dolce Vita" is one of the most favorite films of a good pal of mine. The main character, Marcello, is a young gossip reporter who's just beginning to question the direction of his life. The film follows him for what appears to be several years. My pal saw it when he was about the same age as the reporter, and felt an instant connection to Marcello. And as he ages, he still feels the same connection...but with additional maturity and perspective.

This is why "La Dolce Vita" is such a powerful film for him. It's intensely personal; as he ages, he can understand different dimensions and different problems. "Star Wars" has the same power over certain folks of a certain age. When you see "A New Hope" as a kid, you immediately identify with Luke Skywalker...eager to kick the dust of his childhood off his boots and go out there to find his destiny. Ten years later, you see yourself as Han Solo. No longer wet behind the ears, been around the block, been there and done that, too smooth to be suckered in, a guy who can handle himself in a tight spot.

And now, it's another ten years later and we're in our Thirties. As we watch the Prequels, through which character's eyes to we look? Obi-Wan's. We would like to think we've acquired a certain amount of Wisdom. We know what sort of mistakes can be made by acting out of emotion instead of after careful reflection. With at least ten or fifteen years of full-on adulthood to our credit, we understand all too well that while certain acts have immediate consequences, others won't show their impact — good or bad — for many years to come.

You're also aware of the Luke Skywalkers and Anakins all around you, and how they refuse to listen when you urge them to stop and think for just a moment.

So where do we go from here? I dunno. Logically, we would enter our Darth Vader phase, where we see ourselves as the irrevocable result of a lifetime of choices, and that our future is now set in stone. And the lesson from "Return Of The Jedi" would be that there's always a chance to put things right again.

Well, that's term-paper stuff. What I've always liked about "Star Wars" is that it never forgets that Job One is to provide two hours and ten minutes of fantastic entertainment. If I paid ten bucks for each of my Opening Day tickets to the three prequels, I figure that I got six dollars' worth out of "The Phantom Menace," the full ten from "Attack Of The Clones," and "Revenge Of The Sith" was worth sixteen if it was worth a penny.

Simple math puts me two dollars ahead on the whole deal. Which won't even buy me a small popcorn or a bottle of water at the concession stand, admittedly, but I still insist that the Prequels were, on balance, A Very Good Thing Indeed.

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"You know when you made that movie? Star Wars? That was really cool."

Friday, May 20 5:09 PM

Okay, that freakin' does it: I have siezed the bull by the cat's pajamas, taken matters into my other foot, and finally added "The Charlie Rose Show" to my TiVO subscription list.

It happened to me again. Here in Boston, we're fascinated by the accounting tools of ancient Silk Road traders and new techniques for slipping a little cumen into an appetizer without anybody noticing...so much so that having just one PBS station on the dial simply won't do. No, we have WGBH and WGBX, which means that if you happen across a good program on Channel 2 but you missed the first half-hour, there's a good chance it'll be aired again on Channel 44 later in the week. Thus, when I tuned in to the last 24 minutes of Charlie Rose's interview of George Lucas, I didn't sweat it. "Note to self:" I said. "Make sure you record the 11 AM repeat of this tomorrow."

Most of you are clever folk and naturally, you immediately spotted the flaw in this. The whole point of a Note To Yourself is that you sit down and make it an actual note that sits on the fridge or the bathroom mirror, where it can remind you later on. If all you do is say it aloud, you're really just one level of abstraction above asking Santa.

I forgot all about it, of course. And because my brain hates me, it didn't do anything so passive as simply letting it slip from my mind completely. Of course not. It chose to really stick it to me, and have me remember the George Lucas interview at at 1:30 in the afternoon. I hate my brain. I've got a couple of listings up on Monster.com and Craigslist and believe me, as soon as I interview a replacement candidate that's even halfway competent, my brain will find its ass out on the curb, clutching a cardboard box with one hand and its "You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here...But It Helps!" novelty mug from the breakroom with the other.

But those problems are now in the past: TiVO has been told to record the 11 AM "Charlie Rose" repeat every weekday. It's been a long time coming, too. It seems like at least five or six times a month, I happen to tune in to the last minutes of an interview of his that I wish I'd caught from the beginning. I'm amazed that it's taken me this long to finally apply a dose of TiVO to the problem and this is yet another reason why I'm currently accepting resumes for the soon-to-be-vacant position of Supervising Director of Neurological Services.

I love good, real interview shows like "Charlie Rose." They're a vanishing breed. I think Jay Leno is never more entertaining than when he's talking about the science of comedy, but you never get that out of him when he's a guest, of course. Like nearly everone else, he plays to the studio audience. He tells the Dinah Shore Show story for the nth time and then he waits for the interviewer to set him up for the "buying his parents a VCR" story. Charlie Rose has no studio audience, and with an entire commercial-free hour to fill, he has all the time and patience in the world. He was interested in learning how George Lucas had made the big choices in his early career. What drew him into filmmaking? And once he started making movies, what got him making studio films instead of documentaries or art films?

He asked The Question and then, unsatisfied with the answer — whether because he'd asked it poorly, or because he'd been given a quick and superficial answer — he kept refining and re-asking it until Lucas had painted a much more satisfying picture for Rose, the audience, and even maybe for himself, explaining the sort of person he was as a young man and where he had pictured himself going.

For entirely random reasons — the sort of reasons that annoy and enrage those people whose livlihoods rely on their ability to predict the desires and behavior of television viewers — I started keeping the TV on CBS after the Letterman show, instead of switching over to Conan. I'm liking Craig Ferguson more and more as time goes by. "The Late, Late Show"'s opening-act comedy bits are still, well, unfortunate, but I'm starting to think that Ferguson is the best interviewer on network television, inheriting a mantle abdicated by Bob Costas when he gave up the "Later..." program. He managed to talk to Ozzy Osbourne about his addictions without allowing the proceedings to devolve into either "Just Say No" prostelatizing or juvenile, fratboy hooting.

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"Do a radio interview?" Here I am, with a brain the size of a planet...

Monday, May 23 1:32 AM

I've done a lot of phone-in radio interviews and I'm starting to worry that no matter how many times I do them, I'll never get the hang of The Finish. The host thanks you for being on the show, you thank the host for having you on the program, and then he either moves on to the next bit of the show or else he throws to a commercial. But what am I supposed to do? Do I hang up now? Do I wait for an all-clear from the producer? Will the host want to thank me again while the commercial is on?

My customary answer is to count to fifty and then, after confirming that nobody knows or cares that I'm still on the line, I hang up. Actually, instead of counting to fifty I hum "But I Haven't Got A Hat," a tune from an old Warner Brothers cartoon:

I'd tip my hat to you, I'd do just that
Take it right off for you, but I haven't got a hat
I'm just a college boy, even at that
I'd tip my hat to you, but I haven't got a hat

(bridge)

I'm really not a sap, it's plain to see
But if I wore a cap, they'd never let me back in the University

I think you're swell, I do, I'm standing pat
I'd tip my hat to you, but I haven't got a hat!

Oh, and you're supposed to make "bom-bom-bom-BOM!" sounds between each line, descending in pitch, each one evoking the sound of a bass being plucked. But I suppose you already knew that.

I urge you to seek this song out. It's one of the most useful (and catchy) tunes ever created; "But I Haven't Got A Hat" is exactly the length of A Brief Wait and I exploit this fact several times a week. "How long should I wait before I rinse the conditioner out of my hair?" "Should I bail out of this line right now, or should I stick it out a bit longer and hope that the lady finds a working credit-card soon?" "Have I spent a respectful amount of time kneeling at the casket yet? Can I get up and mingle with the rest of the folks here at the wake?" In each case, the right answer is I'd tip my hat to you, I'd do just that (bom-bom-bom-BOM!)...

It's particularly well-suited for the end of a radio interview because if they forgot to tell you that you're free to go and they left your mic hot, the producer will scramble to kill the connection before you've even gotten to the third line. That dial tone is the sound of Freedom, my friend.

Still, it's an awkward moment. Have you ever been out on a first date, you've said a long series of goodbyes in front of the restaurant and just as you're thanking Allah that you've managed to get through the whole evening without making a total prat of yourself...you discover that you both need to walk to the same subway station? That's what it's like at the end of a phone-in radio interview. Except you're denied the graceful "out" of telling her that you think you left your gun behind in the booth and that she should go on ahead, alone.

Tonight's awkwardness came at the end of "Are We Alone?", the SETI Institute's weekly radio show. So me and SF writer Robert Sawyer got to talk with SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak about the science and the fiction of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" for an hour. It was a lot of fun and the only hiccups came when I got asked the kind of Hard Science questions for which even a PhD physicist or cosmologist would have to shrug and say "We just plain don't know."

Take faster-than-light and hyperspace travel, for instance. I said "I don't know and nobody else knows, either," but I wanted to say something that didn't sound quite so dismissive, so I parried it into a question about practical versus purely theoretical physics. I think I did all right (I talked about what happens to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-atomic particles as they get closer to the speed of light) but really, I think I'd have been better off if I'd simply noted the universal ignorance on the subject and then shut up.

On the whole, I give myself a B or a B+ for the hour. Click on the SETI link to hear the whole show. An archive ought to pop up later in the week.

I've got another interview coming up on Wednesday and it's for an audience of one: a magazine writer who's researching a major feature about a friend of mine. I'm kind of sweating it...I mean, jeez, wasn't this the first act of an "I Love Lucy" or a "Dick Van Dyke Show"? It seems like this is a huge opportunity for me to make a blunder so profound that for decades afterward, dignitaries will visit my front yard, accompanied by a full press corps, to solemnly lay a wreath at The Spot Where It Happened.

I'm probably worrying about nothing. Still, there's every chance that I'll buy the magazine, read the introductory paragraph and discover that a simple, offhand comment I made in the closing moments of the interview was rather spectacularly misinterpreted. And that a million readers now believe that my friend was raised as a girl for the first fourteen years of his life.

Oh, well. If I sense that the interview is starting to head south, I'll just use that line about the gun and then I'll sing a few choruses of "But I Haven't Got A Hat," and I'll keep it up until I hear a dial tone.

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25 Days in May

Wednesday, May 25 12:27 PM

In a few days' time, Boston will close the books on the second-coldest May in more than 130 years of recorded weather. It is currently forty-three degrees. The Earth (or at least the bits of it I've got under surveillance) is being pummelled mercilessly by rain, as if God caught it sleeping with His wife or something, and the wind is causing the house to make the sort of noises that instinctively make me worry that I'm about to get that new skylight that I've been thinking of for the second-floor office. As well as for the first-floor living room and possibly the laundry room in the basement.

I swear, I'm beginning to think that I don't have any influence on the weather at all.

Look, I've done my best. A few weeks ago, in anticipation of May-like weather, I took the nice, thick, cozy comforter off the bed. And even though this has left me more or less defenseless against the slings and arrows of outrageous temperatures, I refuse to take it out of the hamper and put it back on. After all, swapping the largely-ceremonial thin cotton blanket for something more substantial would be caving in, and would send a dangerous signal to the Weather that it's free to do whatever it wants without any fear of retribution. If we just roll over and play dead every time a hurricane destroys our homes, then what, precisely, is Weather's incentive to show any self-restraint? So I've been shivering in protest — quite valiantly, with my teeth smugly chattering the chatter of the Just — ever since.

It's been three weeks, but still, I fully expect the other side to cave. I have sent a communique through diplomatic back-channels and the Weather is now fully aware that if it refuses to back down, then I'll have no choice but to put on my cargo shorts and my sandals and do some barbecuing. And what will happen when all of the other fundamental forces of Nature see me out there on the porch in my sunglasses and my Aloha shirt, merrilly grilling, apparently undistracted by the 38-degree temperatures and the driving rain and the hysterical mooing of the wind-swept cows that occasionally cartwheel through my yard.

Yes, Weather: you'll suffer a massive loss of face, that's what'll happen. I guarantee you, the incident is going to come up. "Am I hallucinating," your friends will say, snorting and freeze-framing the video, "or is that a badminton net he's stringing up? While you were trying as hard as you possibly could to intimidate him into cowering indoors under a heavy comforter?"

It saddens me that it's finally come down to this, Weather, but I bought a sack of self-lighting briquettes this morning and the ball's now in your court. If you ever want to get a decent table at a restaurant ever again, you'll do the right thing and send some blue skies and 68-degree temps to Boston. Immediately.

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But I'm far too mature to gloat about it

Tuesday, May 31 4:09 AM

I'm sure that you're all on tenterhooks, desperate to learn how my standoff with Boston-area weather is going. Well, just get a load of this:

I demanded blue skies and 68-degree weather, toot sweet. And by golly, all weekend long and for nearly the entirety of the coming week, we'll be basking underneath blue skies and 68-degree weather. All I can say is that the next time a newspaper or magazine publishes a "100 Most Influential People In The Technology Industry" list and I'm not on it, I'm going to forward them the URL to this blog entry. If I don't receive a florid apology followed by an immediate printed retraction, then I honestly would have to wonder if this whole "Top 100" concept isn't fundamentally flawed and arbitrary.

You've noticed, of course, that rain is forecast for later tonight, followed by thunderstorms on Monday. I refuse to interpret this as a breach of detente; that'd be nitpicking. I have no complaint against a day of thunder and lightning, chiefly because it's Really Cool. And the nice thing about a rainy afternoon is that it's a fine opportunity to invite a female friend over to your house, on the pretense of her accompanying you as you go out and compare prices on a backhoe rental. You put on a Bill Evans record just before she arrives and then, after welcoming her inside and noting that the entire Backhoe Rental District will surely be closed down during weather like this (damn the luck), you pour her a Diet Shasta and then you just let the Bill Evans record and the tapping of the rain against the window work their magic.

It certainly helps if you found the time to Febreze the sofa before she came over, but on the whole, you gotta like the odds.

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