Why Can't Comic Con just be BattleSpacedGaimanlactica Con?

A geek milestone for me is fast approaching: Comic Con.

I have never been to Comic Con before, and will be attending this one as a fan and also to pitch a manga-inspired comic book I've co-written with my best bud and partner in Veronica Mars superfandom, Joe T. I can't wait to go but have no idea what I'm doing. It's turning out to be an expensive trip, even without factoring in all the Veselka and Italian pastry and metrocards I need.

I have no idea what my weekend passes cover. Can you go to panels for free? Is everything cool a ticketed event you have to fork over even more cash for? Will I be shot on sigh tif I don't buy Awesome Official New York Comic Con Merchandise Enhance Your Comic Con Experience! ?

I do know I'm going to a special Neil Gaiman ticketed event and I am thrilled to British scifi fantasy author pieces about that. And that the powers that be in charge of the Comic Con are looking out for my best interests, as this excerpt from their website illustrates:


CAN I BRING A SWORD? CAN I BUY A SWORD?
If you're bringing, buying, or selling something that could maim, damage, or cause serious bodily harm, we're going to take issue. Please read our Costume Weapon Policy and Weapon Sales Policy before attending or exhibiting at New York Comic Con with a weapon.

PS

I also know I'm going to dress up for Comic Con. It shouldn't be hard. I'm going as my alter ego Kim Pine.

Also: My Patronus Is Corporeal

!!!

It makes me so happy in a silvery-stag-in-the-woods kind of way. Dementors beware.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little George Michael

Big news in geek town:

Michael Cera is slated to play Scott Pilgrim in Edgar Wright's film adaptation of the best comedy/romance/adventure/ninja-vegan-ass-kicking/manga-inspired comic EVER!

Is this good or bad news? MC is funny, sure, but Scott is supposed to be hot. A ladykiller in shaggy sandy hair and a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt. But eh, I'm sure the young Canadian will do a fine job playing a young Canadian. The real question is who's playing KIM PINE?!? The second: who's playing Wallace?!? The third: will Edgar Wright dip into his vast stores of British comedians to fill out other roles? WILL BILL BAILEY PLAY KNIVES CHAU?!?

Dark Marks and Bookmarks

Working at a tiny, "well-curated" bookstore in an esteemed private research library/historic landmark in Chicago's upper-crusty Gold Coast means your customers are going to tend to be drenched in perfume and politesse. Their tastes are fine. They will usually enjoy slim hardbacks about Queens doing silly things like reading, Philip Roth novels, and travel literature. Especially chronicles of romping through Italy. They can also be THE HOUNDS OF HELL. Nay, the PURSE DOGS OF HELL.

And some of them even work here.

One demon hellbitch in particular is always well-dressed and evil. She never smiles or speaks above an irritated, droning whisper. Her color palette is cream and grey and beige. Smooth, soft colors. Deceptively enrobing the bitchass viper beneath.

She graces me with her presence every other week or so, never missing a fraying seam on my workaday peasant garb, or a blemish on my cheek. My reading material usually chafes her brain as well: this time she caught me surfing jezebel.com, a feminista pop culture e-rag that is usually witty...except for when they post gigantic (and dreamy) pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal that fill the screen.

She throws items down at me, clucks her tongue ever so, and gives off the impression that she has never experienced joy in her entire life. Think Cruella De Vil, if Cruella De Vil didn't love killing puppies for sport and outerwear.

After she painedly paid her fee today, I googled her very specific and ridiculous Norse-sounding name to see what dirt I could dig up. Who knows, maybe she was a dominatrix in younger, happier days. Or a serial killer.

But what I found was even better than all that.

Someone put her in Harry Potter fanfiction.

Yep.

Her AND her granddaughter, who, I fact-checked, is indeed named Julie. Some creep out there has quite the thing for ol' Julie and her "soft, near-perfect skin, even whiter against the small mole on her cheek". My meanie is a wheezing crone who offers her services to the Deatheaters.

How appropriate!

Robot Love?

I recently stumbled across something semi-humorous, semi-silly, and wholly disturbing whilst being a geek and reading this daily sci-fi nerd blog I read: a prediction that within 5 years humans will find it the norm to have sex with robots, and within 40-50 years we will actually be falling in love with them. Someone, a man named David Levy in particular, has written a book about the subject aptly titled "Love and Sex with Robots."
Here's a link'>http://io9.com/347239/once-you-go-bot-you-never-go-back?autoplay=true">link to a clip of the author on the Colbert Report, basically getting ridiculed and calling his thesis "not science fiction, but science fact."
Science fact is that peeps have been doin' it with robots since the dawn of vibrators and those terrifying machines I have glimpsed from time to time when in the company of my more internet-porn-adventurous friends. But falling in love with them? Programming them to love you, and as the good (mad?) doctor says, ocassionally reject you because "an important part of sexuality is "the possibility of failure or denial," and thus sexbots will need to be able to mimic human "capriciousness." ??? That is a freaky possibility. I imagine this superlovebot would be a combo of an high-end "lifedoll", those expensive German vibrators they sell at high-end pleasure boutiques, and an iPod shuffle. On one hand, I see something as fantastical as this making some truly lonely people happy, but on the other...it makes me want to stockpile all technology and burn it in a sparkly display of rejection: rejection of the walls we put up to keep each other out in favor of some perfect thing that does exactly what we want all the time, never challenging us or teaching us anything. I think expecting whomever (whatever?) you love to be a conduit for your every whim and desire is pretty jacked.
Though I'm totally reading the http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002662_2.html">book when it comes out.
Thoughts?
And on the lighter side, which of these robots would win your heart?

Orgasm.PDF

Fellow aspiring screenwriters (or scribes as us hepcats say in the trades)...I have just come upon a divine internetic loophole. And you might already know about it, if you are a slightly-more-on-the-ball aspiring scribe, but still...

REAL movie scripts ONLINE and FOR FREE and...

TOTALLY PRINTABLE OFF YOUR WORKPLACE'S STURDY BUT NOISY PRINTER!

Glory be, hallelujah. Now I can dissect the "quirky dialog" of Juno with my trusty quirkometer, at length, in the comfort of my own living room...FOR FREE!

Follow the link below for the internetty amazingness.

http://bigscreenlittlescreen.net/2008/01/10/get-your-scripts/

There are scripts for Waitress, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly...

It's so exciting!

Almost as exciting...someone is selling paintings from The Royal Tenenbaums on eBay here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320206099338

Which is a little sad. Wes Anderson should have invented his own version of eBay, a prettier, more precious version, where you pay with white vinyl Kinks albums instead of Paypal.

Oh, happy day!

APOCALYPTIC MIASMA...my new favorite phrase.

When you're an endlessly fidgety talkaholic like me, working in a bookstore can be your own private hell. And by private, I mean public. With lots of people shuffling around, peering at overpriced cat-themed ephemera, ocasionally taking time out of their busy schedule of disrupting any sense of alphabetical order to hit on you, or make a tsking sound when they find out no you are not a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, just a film-school grad loser cashier.

Of the sundry of human tics and tacs, what gets me most is the silence, the shuffling, and the hushed tones of independent, academia-drenched bookstores. As if raising your voice, laughing, or breathing through your nose instead of your mouth were an affront to the impenetrable tomes lining these walls, just waiting to be scooped up by someone better and above the habits of emoting and courtesy best left to the lower class.

There are few things that keep me sane in my daily drone of waiting for the customer to squirm up to the register. A favorite is wiki by free-association, usually beginning with a general review of the James McAvoy page (too sparse, in my opinion) as Wiki Prime. But since ogling the pride of the Scottish highlands probably wouldn't go over to well whilst ringing up mass quantities of Garrison Keillor, I turned to an old high school computer class standby: googling song lyrics.

Not just any song lyrics, mind. Those of Bruce Springsteen. And "miasma" sticks to Brucey like mashups to Soulja Boy.

It means an "unwholesome, poisonous, or toxic atmosphere." And when applied to Bruce, a wholly accurate description of his haunting, high-octane music. Check this random review I didn't write:

On Magic, he's outdone himself, with every song summing up the prevailing apocalyptic miasma sucking the soul out of a fractured nation, thanks to this Voldemortian White House.



And, for my next favorite phrase...

Voldemortian White House.