Armadillocon looms!

Tomorrow beings Armadillocon 36, and although I posted this earlier, it seems appropriate to offer a refresher.

Most of my Friday will be devoted to instructing at the Armadillcon Writers Workshop. The impressive lineup this year includes Mario Acevedo, Ted Chiang, Nicky Drayden, Mark Finn, Derek Johnson, Claude Lalumiere, Stina Leicht, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Ian McDonald, Joe McKinney, Alex C. Renwick, Kat Richardson, Dr. Anne-Marie Thomas, Martin Wagner, Jacob Weisman, Martha Wells and Skyler White.

Here is the rest of my official ArmadilloCon 36 schedule (* denotes panel moderator):

Friday
9-10 p.m. Beyond the Plunder: Which genre books, movies, shows correctly portray historical pirates?
Blaschke*, Clarke, Hardy, Leicht, Rogers

Saturday
1-2 p.m Autographing
Blaschke, Wells

8-9 p.m. Interview with Ted Chiang

9-10 p.m. Fireside Chat: The quartet talk about anything and much mirth will be expected.
Denton*, Blaschke, de Orive, Lansdale

Sunday
10-11 a.m. Best Cons from Genre Books: Not many people are good at writing capers. Which books do it right?
Webb*, Blaschke, Maresca

2-3 p.m. Contagion: What diseases/syndromes/parasites could kill the entire population of the world if we didn't have current restrictions set. (Not including malaria.)
Blaschke*, Faust, Frater, Leicht, Moore

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Babylon 5: The Parliament of Dreams

I am re-watching the entire Babylon 5 television series. I had not seen a single episode since B5 completed its tumultuous run. Does J. Michael Straczynski still have the touch? Come along and find out.

In Valen's Name: Earth Alliance has imposed a week-long religious festival on Babylon 5, so that all races might share the dominant belief of their civilization and learn something about each other. The human contribution to this festival has been dumped on Commander Sinclair with no guidance, and he's at a loss on how to present "Earth's dominant belief system" to the other races. To complicate matters, his on-again, off-again girl friend Catherine arrives, and tension between them mounts. Meanwhile, Ambassador G'Kar receives a courier from the Narn homeworld bearing a message about an impending assassination attempt on G'Kar's life. G'Kar, who has made many enemies, grows paranoid. He suspects his aid, Na'Toth of being part of the plot. An alien bodyguard he hires is promptly executed by the mysterious assassin. Finally, the Narn courier reveals himself, torturing G'Kar, but Na'Toth rescues G'Kar and they turn the tables on the hit man. The episode ends with Sinclair introducing the alien contingent to a host of humans representing the vast spectrum of Earthly theological belief, ranging from atheism to Catholicism to Buddhism and everything in between. The scene pans along the line of humans religious, and fades to black before the end is reached.

What Jayme Says: This marks the first of what I call the "Poetic titles" of the series. They're evocative and abstract, and generally can be counted on to be a keeper, if not pivotal. "Parliament of Dreams" isn't necessarily pivotal the the overarching narrative, but it is for the first season in general. This feels like the first episode of Babylon 5 where the confidence of the actors, writers and director really manifested itself in the final product. The main plot of G'Kar's assassination is the least important element in the entire episode. Yes, it's fun to see the bombastic G'Kar squirm and squeal, but when you get right down to it it's a very straightforward narrative with no real jeopardy. G'Kar is one of the main characters on the show, and series never kill off main characters. Right? Sinclair's relationship with Catherine doesn't have much substance, either, but it serves as a nice piece of character development for the commander--and works far better than the similar attempt from "The Gathering." No, the best part of the episode is what we only get to see the edges of, the belief sharing amongst the different species. Through deft use of symbolism, the rituals we see reflect the generalized traits of the various species on the show. The Centauri, generally viewed as a foppish empire in decline, has a raucous, drunken celebration of life that dates back to a time when their people were younger, stronger and fighting for their very survival. By contrast, the disciplined, aloof Minbari have a somber ceremony that quotes their great prophet Valen, and introduces the recurring phrase, "And so it begins." But it's the human presentation on religion that leaves the most striking impression. Having all those faiths lined up drives home the diversity of belief we humans engage in. It was deft, nuanced and respectful, all the more impressive since JMS is, of course, an outspoken atheist. Now, there's no reason why an atheist can't write about religion in a thoughtful way. None. But here my own biases and baggage come into play. I know any number of folks with diverse beliefs--Christian, pagan, Jewish, atheist--and by an large they're just swell. Wonderful people (because I try not to associate too closely with jerks). However, on occasion my path crosses that of an outspoken atheists, and more times than not I've encountered visceral contempt from them directed at anyone who might dare believe in anything beyond this mortal coil. Regardless of whether or not they know the particulars of my belief or non-. Add to this the fact that my biggest beef with Star Trek is its pervasive, paternalistic, condescending attitude toward religion and, well, all I can say is that I was primed for more of the same from Babylon 5. JMS turned that on its head. He may not believe in religion, but he understands that it is an integral component of the human condition, something we as a species are not likely to "outgrow" in a few hundred years. He gets that, and what's more, he uses it to create a richer, more powerful story while making meta-statements about our contemporary world. It is not coincidental that the Jew and Moslem are standing next to each other at the head of the line. Would that it only takes a few hundred years for us to reach that level of maturity.

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Friday Night Videos

"Weird Al" Yankovic has a new album out, which is reason for celebration. Of all the tracks, "Word Crimes" has got to be my favorite, but while the animated video is clever, it's can't quite match the shameless lunacy of "Tacky."

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Hall & Oates.

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Bettie Page Reveals All

Bettie Page Reveals All is a fascinating, if flawed, documentary feature about the world's most iconic pin-up and fetish queen. Page died in 2008 at the age of 85, a famous woman who disappeared at the height of her modelling career to become an enigma. Popularized in part by artist Dave Stevens including a Page-like character in his comic The Rocketeer, Bettie Page's pin-up work saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s that continued to grow as the years past. For much of this time, Page was unaware of her return to the spotlight, subsisting on Social Security as she lived a life of anonymity. Eventually, she was located and connected with an agent who ensured she received compensation for the rampant use of her likeness. Her later years were comfortable.

Page rarely appeared in public following her rediscovery, and avoided having her picture taken, as she preferred people remember her as she had looked in the 1950s. Fortunately, before she passed away, she gave extensive interviews about her life, which makes up the bulk of this film. Age had turned her voice gravelly, but hearing her southern accent matter-of-factly discuss this topic or that is fascinating, even if the clip art and stock footage used to illustrate her story in the early going is arbitrary at best.

The fact that Page essentially tells her own story is both the film's greatest strength as well as weakness. Many of the topics she touches on are jarring in their abruptness, one or two sentences at best before moving along. Frustratingly, over and over again she makes a comment that begs for a follow-up question that never comes (the interview was conducted in a Q&A format, but apart from a couple of brief interactions, the interviewer is edited out). Speaking as a professional interviewer (is that even a thing?) the myriad things left unsaid and unexplored are maddening. One example come early on, when discussing Page's education. In high school, she desperately worked to become valedictorian, because Vanderbilt guaranteed full ride scholarships to the top student in every Tennessee high school class. Despite her efforts, she ended up salutatorian, mere tenths of a point behind a male classmate. Instead of a full ride to Vandy, she got a $100 scholarship to Peabody College. The immediate thing that leapt to my mind--and The Wife's as well--was that in 1942, women didn't often pursue higher education. In many cases, they were active discouraged. It doesn't take much imagination to picture a school principal in Tennessee tweaking the grades so that the Vandy scholarship wouldn't be "wasted" on a woman. Page would face gender discrimination--if not outright misogyny--time and again throughout her life, and her valedictorian/salutatorian issue would've added an interesting bit of context. Alas, the question remains unasked, that bit of history unexplored.

Despite the wide swath of questions not asked, Page does cover a tremendous amount of territory with her good-humored voice over. Others who played a role in Page's life, from Paula Klaw to Bunny Yeager to Hugh Hefner provide extensive commentary in their own right, either via new or archival footage. Even if their thoughts are not deeply insightful, the anecdotes are certainly entertaining and amusing. A minor annoyance--Paula Klaw actually took the vast majority of the Page photos sold by her brother, Irving Klaw, but the film portrays her more as a business manager than a creative talent. A very interesting revelation involved the mediocre 2005 movie The Notorious Bettie Page, starring Gretchen Mol (the film's worth watching for Mol's impressive turn as Page). At the time it came out, Page was very vocal in her displeasure with it, yet certain scenes that were dismissed as fabrication at the time are confirmed here by Page herself. There were several other points where Page seemed to be fudging the truth some, or simply mis-remembering events. It would've been nice to have some cross references, a corroborating witness or document to back Page up, but this is very much her show and what she says goes unquestioned. For the most part, she's bluntly honest, and it's a credit to her that her solo narrative can carry the film so long.

To be honest, as I watched this film, I was struck more and more by the similarities between Bettie Page and Edna Milton, who I interviewed extensively before she died for my book on the infamous Chicken Ranch (which is still sitting on publishers' desks, looking for a home). Both were born in the 1920s in poor, rural America--Milton in Oklahoma, Page in Tennessee--to dysfunctional families with the Great Depression and World War II disrupting their lives. Neither had children, yet both went through a string of tumultuous marriages while making a living as best they could before abruptly disappearing to anonymity at the height of their fame. There's a difference between pin-up modeling and prostitution, but in 1950s America the distinction was a very narrow one. They survived in an era of rampant discrimination and succeeded despite the deck being stacked against them because of their gender. It's a sobering thought to imaging how many times that same story played out across the country in that era, and how many women didn't have the happy ending Page did, or even Milton's relatively soft landing.

Anyone who is a fan of Bettie Page--devoted or casual--will enjoy this documentary. After a bit of a slow start, it builds momentum and simply dazzles with hundreds of still photographs of Page (many of which I'd never seen, and some never-before published). Her sad descent into schizophrenia is well-chronicled, as is her religious beliefs and efforts to become a missionary. It's all here. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.

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What's Jayme drinking?

Tonight's beer is (take a deep breath) "Harpoon Black Forest Imperial Cherry Chocolate Porter." Whew! That's a mouthful! I'm drinking this beer because... well, upon seeing this in the store, how could I not pick it up? I like good porters. Chocolate and cherry can both be done well. Imperial is more iffy, because often it's just code for "high alcohol, hopped-up IPA." But with luck, those others would balance that element out. I'm not terribly familiar with imperial porters, but my expectation is that it should be pretty malty and roasty, which is right up my alley.

The beer poured a a clear, dark caramel with a thin, transient head. Despite this, it appears almost black in the glass. No lacing to speak of. Right away, this beer is defying my expectations--especially for one with an alcohol content of 9.8 percent! The nose is odd as well--some toasty malt, yes, but also alcohol and cola. First sip, the mouthfeel is thin. Not watery thin or Bud Light thin, but thinner than I'd think a beer with all this going on should be. There's a definite Coke-a-cola flavoring on the front end, that quickly segues into Cherry Coke. The comes malt, then deep, dark chocolate. Alcohol is well-hidden. This doesn't taste hot at all, which is a surprise given the prominent alcohol scent in the nose. Finally, there's a resurgent cola aftertaste. This is a sweet beer, with only a little bit of burnt bitterness. To be honest, it could stand a bit of sharpening more hops would give it (and given my dislike of over-hopped beers, that's saying something). Right now, hops are pretty much absent from the profile. It's not a terrible beer--they certainly managed to get the chocolate flavor right--but it is stratified, for lack of a better word. There are a number of different flavors at work here, but they're all separate, layered atop each other very distinctly rather than blended. There's no real interaction amongst them, no complexity to make this beer interesting. And an imperial cherry chocolate porter should be interesting, if nothing else. Subdued carbonation doesn't help much, either.

Harpoon Black Forest Imperial Cherry Chocolate Porter should've been a winner, in my estimation. It's got all the pieces in place, but ultimately the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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Friday Night Videos

Hall & Oates had a big year in 1984, with the release of their album Big Bam Boom. It was a change of pace for them, breaking away from their blue-eyes soul sound of previous albums. The lead single, "Out of Touch, was but the first in a string of hits from the album. The video for it was perfect for the era, gaining very heavy airplay on MTV, Night Tracks and Friday Night Videos. It's not hard to see why: Despite being filled with skads of 80s excess and questionable fashion choices, it is inventive and a whole lot of fun. The giant drum kit alone is iconic in music video history. And the song's not half bad, either.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Chris Rea.

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Farscape: Till the Blood Runs Clear

My Farscape rewatch continues with "Till the Blood Runs Clear," a reference to an earlier-revealed fact that when cut, Luxans must stimulate the wound to bleed otherwise they'd suffer a kind of septic shock. While D'Argo is indeed injured in this episode, and his wound is stimulated to make the blood run clear, that event is incidental to the plot, marking this as another of Farscape's throw-away episode titles.

While studying the formation of wormholes around a star that's throwing off massive solar flares, Crichton's Farscape module is damaged and he, along with Aeryn, are forced to land on an arid planet for repairs. The radiation-blasted planet looks suspiciously like the one Aeryn (ie Claudia Black) visited in the movie Pitch Black, but Vin Diesel doesn't turn up and Aeryn doesn't get dismembered. Yay! Crichton and Aeryn discover Mrs. Hoggett--apparently traumatized after the events of Babe: Pig in the City--working as a starship mechanic going by the name of Furlow. Furlow agrees to fix the ship, but there's something shifty about her. Aeryn and Crichton then discover a Peacekeeper beacon in the middle of the outpost broadcasting a wanted alert for Zhaan, D'Argo and Rygel, three escaped prisoners. Bounty hunters--the dog-life Vorcarian blood trackers--are already there, anticipating the fugitives' arrival. Crichton bluffs them into thinking he and Aeryn are bounty hunters as well, and the four agree to cooperate for the time being. Aeryn discovers a coded message for her in the Peacekeeper beacon--Crais promising her "retirement" with full rank restored if she helps turn over Moya and the escaped prisoners. Aeryn explains that Crais' "retirement" means execution. While this is going on, D'Argo lands in search of Crichton and Aeryn. The Vorcarians pick up his scent, ambush and capture him. Crichton discovers the Vorcarians torturing D'Argo. They've cut the Luxan, so Crichton punches and squeezes the wound on D'Argo's tentacle in the guise of torture so the blood will run clear and D'Argo won't die. More and more people are poking around the Farscape module, as word has apparently got out that it's been exposed to wormholes. Aeryn fights one, and is subsequently blinded by a solar flare. Crichton rescues D'Argo, but D'Argo, furious about the whole torture thing, fights Crichton. They do the macho thing until coming to a truce, and them promptly get into a firefight with the Vorcarians. Things get nasty, but Aeryn reprograms the Peacekeeper beacon to project Crais cancelling the bounty on the escapees. With no more bounty at stake, the Vorcarians disengage and let Crichton and D'Argo be on their way. Furlow does indeed complete the repairs to the Farscape module, but demands Crichton's accumulated wormhole research as payment, to which he reluctantly agrees.

Commentary: Not a terribly tight episode as far as plotting goes, this one is still a fun ride. The desert location and over-exposed scenes do a good job at conveying an alien world on a limited budget. Furlow is a simply repulsive character that has a certain charisma about her. The Vorcarians are incredibly stupid--they so easily and repeatedly duped by Crichton and Aeryn that it's a wonder how they don't starve to death as bounty hunters. Indeed, it's a wonder how they ever got off whatever world they evolved on. That's good for some cheap jokes, but doesn't make for a very logical episode. There's a minor subplot in the episode regarding the star's massive flares giving Zhaan "photogasms," which is the first hint in the series that Zhaan is a plant-based life form. Crichton's trading away his wormhole research will come back to bite him in the future, but the whole incident with Crais' offer to Aeryn pretty much closes the book on her long-running internal conflict over her break with the Peacekeepers. Not a great episode overall, but entertaining, in a silly way.

Crichton Quote of the Episode: "I’m Butch. This is Sundance. We're the Hole in the Sky gang."

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