Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Almanac's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, March 17th, 2012
9:29 am	The Playtime Silliness Never Ends Keeping up the proud tradition started in 2008 and continued in 2009, 2010, and 2011, I would once again like to offer up a challenge in honour of the holiday for anyone reading this: Comment here with a topic, any topic, and I will write a limerick about it for you. Please keep it to one topic per comment--though you can comment more than once, and there's no deadline for submitting a request. As such, feel free to drop back in whenever you're in the mood for a limerick. :) If you don't have a LiveJournal account or other means of logging in, please let me know how you got here, and make sure to sign your "Anonymous" comment(s) before submission. I know I can be notoriously slow at replying to comments sometimes (and it's not as if I've been posting a lot lately :/), but as with previous editions of this challenge, I'll do my best to be as prompt as possible on this. Current Mood: unproductive (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 7th, 2011
12:39 pm	Tell Me Why I Love You Like I Do This has been an election-rich year in Canada. Besides the federal election, whose results were exactly the opposite of what I'd hoped, there were also provincial elections here in Manitoba as well as in neighbouring Ontario this week, with more provincial elections in most of Canada throughout the year. Unlike that federal election, though, where I expected more of the same and instead got the dreaded Conservative majority, the Manitoba election was almost entirely pointless, with the New Democrats getting another majority government and the seat totals remaining essentially identical. The NDP did pick up a vacant seat (going from 36 to 37), but the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals have the same seat totals they had going into this race (19 and a lonely 1 for the party leader, respectively). On a more personal note, I'm also acquainted with two candidates who failed to unseat the incumbents in their ridings. My friend Anlina Sheng was a first-time candidate for the Green Party, while I went to high school with Paul Hesse, who's been involved in the provincial political scene for a while and has even been talked about as a potential future leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party. What confuses me most about the way Canadians seem to vote is how much of a difference there is between various levels of government--Manitoba itself is largely Conservative at the federal level, but largely New Democrat at the provincial level (albeit with a glaring urban-rural split on the electoral map). My own riding of Fort Garry-Riverview (The Fighting Riverview!) is a microcosm of this, in which there was a very safe win for the NDP MLA in this election but a slim victory for the Conservatives in the equivalent federal riding (where the NDP candidate finished a distant third). The CBC has an editorial today arguing that this happens because of "the time-honoured Canadian practice of hedging our political bets," but it still seems strange to me that the same voters would go for the mainstream right-wing party and the mainstream left-wing party in the same year. Does this happen in the United States? Do any of the Americans reading this have similar examples in their own districts, with (for example) a Democrat in the State Legislature but a Republican in the House of Representatives? Current Mood: confused (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 11th, 2011
11:21 pm	Recordatio Postremum If you're interested in reading my recollections of where I was and what I did on 9/11, written on its five-year anniversary, I encourage you to do so--and to comment on that entry even now if you wish. People never seemed to rush to do so, even though I posted followups in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. For whatever reason(s), I just never got much of a conversation going in that regard. Back in 2006, I asked a number of questions, including: What do you hope the world will be like on September 11, 2011? Is that the same as what you expect the world will be like then? If not, what are the differences? Disturbingly enough, there are a number of good things I feel the world wouldn't have had in the five years since I wrote that without the original impetus of 9/11 happening. I'm not sure there would've been an Arab Spring without it, for example, and I'm very sure there wouldn't be a President Obama without it. The historical forces at work which brought about those events started from that source, just as it caused many negative events (unnecessary wars, the erosion of civil rights) to occur. Does that mean that 9/11 was, in some ways, "worth it?" I'm very reluctant to say that, as I still feel that the negatives outweigh the positives. What I am also sure of, on a personal level, is that this is the last anniversary I'll spend revisiting the source itself on this blog. I've arrived at the date envisioned when I wrote that original entry, and although I know I'll be just as morbid and pensive about this date and these issues for many years to come--and the issues, at least, will definitely come up from time to time--the moment has come to bring a measure of closure to this particular thread. The dialogue, of course, can always be continued or reopened. That part is up to you. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 9th, 2011
2:09 pm	Come and Dance on Our Floor Those of you who've known me for a while will already be aware that I occasionally do a bit of film work, though I don't talk about it that much. Most of what gets filmed in Winnipeg is made for television or direct-to-video, so (even though I've plugged some things I've worked on in the past) I tend to think of it now as something I quietly do on the side. For once, though, I got onto the set of a film intended for theatrical release when I worked for two days last year on Faces in the Crowd, starring Milla Jovovich, Julian McMahon, and Michael Shanks. I hadn't mentioned anything before now because I was starting to wonder if it was ever going to come out, but io9 (a site which I've admittedly complained about before) let me know in its snarky way that the trailer is out for the movie, so the general public is aware of it anyway. If you don't want to go to the article, just watch the trailer right here: I worked on a bunch of scenes set in a nightclub in a generic (presumably destined to be unnamed) American city. You can see clips of those scenes starting at around 1:35 in the trailer, though I wasn't able to spot myself. Those two days were spent dancing, running in terror, getting my photo taken for visual effects shots, and trying desperately not to make "Leeloo Dallas Multipass!" references around the film's star. To her credit, however, she seemed friendly and had a sense of humour about herself, at one point making (what I thought was) a hilarious Resident Evil joke when director Julien Magnat told her she needed to be "angrier" during a scene rehearsal. Faces in the Crowd will be out in October, and (even though the premise is...well, interesting is a diplomatic word for it) I'm sure I'll end up in a cinema seat on opening weekend, doing my best to once again support the local film industry. Current Mood: energetic (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 26th, 2011
2:08 pm	I'm Telling You Just How I Feel Lost in the Delta Quadrant, Found in Winnipeg: Tim Russ, Robert Picardo, and Me, Winnipeg Comic and Toy Expo 2011 Back in March, I attended the very, very small Winnipeg Comic and Toy Expo. For a mere five dollars, I thought it provided rather good value, with both Tim Russ and Robert Picardo in attendance. (Where else are you going to see two opening-credits Star Trek castmembers at that price?) I considered writing it up at the time because it was the first fannish event I'd attended since my disappointing time at last year's Central Canada Comic Con, which was run by the same people. Why am I talking about it now, then? Well, a few reasons. The last time I brought up cons in general and local cons in particular, I mentioned that Central Canada Comic Con had been bought by Wizard World, and I had concerns about how that would change the con. I didn't give it too much thought after that until I started to hear rumblings in June that something was amiss. Before long, Bleeding Cool (once again) broke the official news that Wizard World had dropped out of the con, leaving things up in the air. Their corporate listing is gone and the con's old website is back with the previous organisers in place and quite a few Star Trek guests announced for this year, but without more information on what happened with Wizard World and why, the whole thing comes across as rather sketchy. That impression makes me rather sad, because I enjoyed the expo overall. I was disappointed at the lack of Star Trek merchandise available, since you'd think dealers would be on top of this With two bigger actors from the franchise as guests--where were the novels or graphic novels featuring Voyager characters (or at least other stuff which has come out relatively recently), let alone the older stuff? Nevertheless, the brief actor encounters were fun, even if I mostly talked to the (exhausted-looking) Russ about his recurring role as Principal Franklin on iCarly and to Picardo about his local work on the upcoming Beethoven's Christmas Adventure (the coincidental reason he was in Winnipeg in the first place), where he described his acting in the role of the main villain as "so over-the-top, you can see it on Google Maps." (He seemed to feel similarly about his performing experience on the epic Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, which also came up briefly.) Picardo also complimented me on my "classic" name, both reminding me of LeVar Burton's comments about given names when he was here and amusing me as it came from someone who famously played a character without any name at all, and I was impressed by how complete his photo selection was, including not just his recent roles but earlier work from The Howling to Legend. At any rate, all of this would be idle reminiscing if my original plan for the upcoming long weekend were still in place. After deliberating the options for con-related travel in 2011, I'd decided I was returning to Dragon*Con this year after five years away. I bought my membership in July, before the price went up, and I was getting ready to book my flight when I discovered unexpectedly that my schedule wouldn't allow me to take time off to go to Atlanta...which I learned at the beginning of this month, right on the very eve of the deadline for transferring one's (non-refundable) membership. Not only will I have to wait a while before taking a (far less fannish) trip to Georgia, I'm now simply out the hundred dollars I've already spent and missing the con that money is helping to fund in the process. :/ (If someone would like to explain to me why a large event like Dragon*Con is perfectly set up to take my payment online and willing to believe in my identity in that format, but insists on a printed form directly signed by two parties in order to transfer a membership--along with a thirty-day deadline that ignores the concept of a last-minute cancellation where a transfer would be most useful--I'm all ears.) I'm trying to make the most of the situation. Although I'm sad about the guests and programming I'll be missing out on, not to mention the chance to see people like carencey77 (and assorted media tie-in writers of my acquaintance) again, I've taken solace in the fact that Fate is bringing William Shatner to me. I don't know what's going to happen with local fandom shindigs, since I've grown sceptical of Central Canada Comic Con's ability to live up to its promises by October, but I'm trying not to get too bitter about how things have panned out. Instead, I'm looking to the future...isn't that what genre fans do best? Current Mood: apprehensive (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
2:32 pm	Feeling the Pain as Innocence Dies As I write this, the body of the Honourable Jack Layton, Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada, is lying in state in the House of Commons in Ottawa, two days after dying in the early hours of Monday morning. Layton is receiving this honour, along with a state funeral this Saturday, even though it is usually only accorded to the very highest levels of Canadian government. I could go on about the political legacy of Jack Layton, his effect on the New Democratic Party, and how the NDP will fare without him, but (as you can see) much more comprehensive guides can be found elsewhere. (For those of you not in Canada, the article on his passing in The New York Times does a good job of providing historical and political context.) The Winnipeg perspective has also been covered already, with queensugar providing her own personal reaction followed by a roundup of reactions from other local bloggers. Tributes are pouring in from all sides, and others have been collecting links to those as well. Journalists have offered accounts of how they learned the news, and comedians have compiled montages of Layton showing a sense of humour amidst the political battlefield. I've mentioned before in my posts about the Canadian political scene that my general sentiment already lies along the Liberal-NDP spectrum, but a lot of the historic success the NDP experienced in this year's federal election had to do with Jack Layton personally. If you ever had any doubts that the cult of personality plays a big role in political success, look at the most memorable NDP ad of the last election and how much it centres around Layton, keeping in mind that Canadians don't vote for the head of government directly (unlike American presidential elections). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the New Democratic Party is the Official Opposition now because Jack Layton was charismatic and former Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff was not. Even when I didn't vote for his party, I still admired Jack Layton as a human being, whether he was writing a book about homelessness in Canada or using the word "bling" in the federal leaders' debate. Beyond any political affiliation, I think it would be good to keep in mind the words with which he closed his last letter to Canadians: My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world. There's a provincial election in Manitoba this autumn, and I have yet to be properly enumerated for that. If anything could serve as a reminder that the time for political engagement is sooner rather than later, this is it. Current Mood: mournful (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
12:34 pm	Wake Up the Members of My Nation What can I say? I was wrong. Not in a good way, of course. The Canadian federal election came and went last week, but I've been reluctant to write the post-game wrap-up because the results were so disheartening. People reading this in the United States and elsewhere can start with CNN's article about the election results, which has some decent background information on the Canadian political scene. Here is the parliamentary seat count, before and after: Conservative Party = 143/167 Liberal Party = 77/34 Bloc Québécois = 47/4 New Democratic Party = 36/102 Green Party = 0/1 Independent = 2/0 After confidently proclaiming in my last entry that "I expect everything to be more or less the same in Ottawa in a few weeks, after the votes have been counted," you can see from those results that there has been quite the change, and the status quo has definitely shifted--in the bad direction I feared in that same entry. With a Conservative Majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper can do pretty much anything he wants, which doesn't bode well for the fates of things like government funding or public-sector employment. (Defunding Planned Parenthood? Yeah, our Conservatives plan to do that, too.) This takes away a lot of the joy over left-wing developments like the NDP surging to become the Official Opposition for the first time or the Green Party electing a Member of Parliament, because anyone who isn't part of a majority government basically gets to sit there and complain about what's happening for the next four years without any teeth to fight it. There has been a lot of talk about the number of new MP's elected this time around, even though they get trained like all other freshman politicians. In particular, a lot of the attention on rookie Ruth Ellen Brosseau seems both sexist and insulting to the voters in her riding, who had the chance to look at her qualifications and decide if they wanted her to represent them--which they did. This is the classic paradox of voter sentiment in a nutshell: People complain over and over about "establishment politicians" and how much of a "need for change" there is from "politics as usual"...and then go on to complain over and over about the lack of experience in anyone new who actually does get elected to a position. You know, everyone was a new politician once--if you don't want dynastic legacies to dominate political discourse, don't react negatively when the narrative actually veers away from that. Although voter turnout was somewhat higher than the historic low of the last election, it was still an unimpressive 61.4%, and I haven't been able to find any official figures on the youth turnout. I'd like to think it was higher than in the past, but I suspect it wasn't. As for some of my other predictions: The incumbent in my riding was defeated by the Conservative candidate who kept robocalling my place, much to my surprise and chagrin. Fears of a left-wing political coalition were, naturally, unfounded--not that it matters in this new landscape, anyway. There is now some talk of a Liberal-NDP merger (Liberal Democrats?), but I'm actually not in favour of that. Aboriginal issues in general were, indeed, all but ignored--and I don't expect them to suddenly jump to the forefront with this government in place. The dominant feeling in my mind now when it comes to Canada's future is dread, with a good mix of disappointment in the Canadian electorate who've reacted to everything Stephen Harper has done by giving him more and more power with each passing election. I can only hope that four years of virtually no checks and balances will snap them out of it. Current Mood: disappointed (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
12:57 pm	Show Me That Smile Again I hadn't brought it up here until now, but a federal election was called in Canada a couple of weeks ago, to be held on May 2. (If nothing else, Americans reading this may have caught Stephen Colbert making the announcement.) You can follow the news on it more closely if you'd like (there are plenty of social media options for this, too), but let's start with the basics. This was the parliamentary seat count as of the writ being dropped: Conservative Party of Canada = 143 Liberal Party of Canada = 77 Bloc Québécois = 47 New Democratic Party = 36 Independent = 2 Vacant = 3 There is some disagreement on why there's an election now, but the proximate cause was a committee finding that the government itself was in contempt of Parliament, which has never happened before in Canadian history. As a result, the Opposition voted that they no longer had confidence in said government, leading to its automatic fall. If you're wondering why it's taken me this long to bring it up (besides general offline distractions), it's because I've had a hard time mustering up much enthusiasm for this election, the way I did for our last election in 2008. At the time, the simultaneous elections happening here and in the United States left me hopeful that a wave of progressive liberalism was sweeping through North America, changing the whole political landscape for the better...and then the Conservative Party actually gained seats instead. Most polls were already predicting yet another minority government, but I thought I might feel more optimism for change after taking in both the English debate and the French debate (which, just in case you forgot this was Canada, got rescheduled so as not to conflict with the NHL playoffs) between the party leaders--or the ones whose parties already had seats in Parliament, at any rate. Other than apparently discovering a "Francophone Joe the Plumber," however, this all seems like a very familiar story. Once again, my riding of Winnipeg South Centre (The Fighting South Centre!) seems like a very safe seat for its Liberal incumbent. Once again, there is a lot of fearmongering about the possibility of a left-wing political coalition, even though coalition governments are pretty common around the world and (as I pointed out the last time this came up) every party in the House of Commons has been involved in such talk at some point in the past ten years. Once again, the Conservatives want to reassure everyone that tax cuts (especially corporate tax cuts) are the best way to grow the economy, even though that is demonstrably untrue. Once again, Aboriginal issues in general are all but ignored. Once again, political candidates are making ignorant comments which are often condescending and play on international stereotypes in a hot tub. (Before anyone gets on a high horse about this, I'd remind them that the Tories don't have a monopoly on disturbing comments, as candidates for the Greens and the Liberals have already proven.) Once again, I doubt this will actually make a difference. Unfortunately, I expect everything to be more or less the same in Ottawa in a few weeks, after the votes have been counted. I'd like things to change for the better (from my perspective, a government somewhere along the Liberal-NDP spectrum), but fear they could change for the worse (from my perspective, a Conservative majority government). I'll still be following along, of course, but I don't see the status quo shifting at any point in the near future. Current Mood: apathetic (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 17th, 2011
9:57 am	Give Me Your Best and Leave the Rest to Me Just as I've previously done in 2008, 2009, and 2010, I would once again like to offer up a challenge in honour of the holiday for anyone reading this... Comment here with a topic, any topic, and I will write a limerick about it for you. In the past, I've come up with limericks on subjects as diverse as the Canadarm, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Postcolonial Theory, so don't hesitate to get creative. Please keep it to one topic per comment--though you can comment more than once, and there's no deadline for submitting a request. As such, feel free to drop back in whenever you're in the mood for a limerick. :) If you don't have a LiveJournal account or other means of logging in, please let me know how you got here, and make sure to sign your "Anonymous" comment(s) before submission. I know I can be notoriously slow at replying to comments sometimes, but as with previous editions of this challenge, I'll do my best to be as prompt as possible on this. Current Mood: awake (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 28th, 2011
2:06 pm	Microchips Here and There I had turned into quite the regular visitor of the whole Gawker Media family of sites, especially io9 (ostensibly their science-fiction blog, but really a catch-all site for whatever they feel like posting), over the past couple of years--enough that I was a "starred commenter" on some of them (which gives your comments more prominence, along with some other features). However, all of them recently went through a redesign blatantly aimed at facilitating advertising and thus revenue generation at the expense of the user experience, leaving the sites all but unusable (especially when I'm away from home and have to access them using an older browser). Some workarounds have surfaced--the so-called "Canadian Version" of a Gawker site looks like it used to (for the moment), and older browsers now get redirected to the scaled-down mobile version of a site. Both lampbane and I were similarly frustrated by this, so I responded to her complaint about it on Twitter with an idle tweet of my own. I didn't think much of it, especially since I've been too busy lately to do much of anything online... ...so naturally, my reply ended up being quoted in a TechCrunch article on the subject. :} I don't read TechCrunch all that often (although they've covered my friends at Regator before), but that was quite the pleasant and unexpected surprise--as was the flood of retweets, replies, and new followers I received after the article showed up. Clearly, my previous strategy of posting frequent, thoughtful, and/or witty content on Twitter was (as with so many things online) the wrong way to go about getting noticed. ;) Current Mood: less surprised than bemused (Comment on this)
Monday, January 31st, 2011
2:41 pm	Armies of the Night, Evil Taking Flight Despite the fact that the series itself has been off the air since 1996, I actually managed to update my Kindred: The Embraced Timeline this weekend. Besides some tweaking to rephrase entries, add bits of detail, and update a relevant champagne price, the new content comes from an America Online chat (Remember those?) some of the people involved with the series gave shortly after the first (and only) season originally aired on Fox. (This was, of course, in the era before we became so thoroughly aware that launching genre shows, then quickly cancelling them, is basically the way Fox does things.) I'd long ago saved a copy of the chat for just this purpose, but had never gotten around to incorporating its in-universe content until now. To be honest, I haven't watched the series itself in a long time--and I'm glad I never opened my copy of that DVD set, since (as you can see by the price it's going for these days) it's now considered a collector's item. I doubt the videotapes I used to originally compile the timeline are in very good condition anymore, but if I wanted to rewatch it for the purposes of trying to glean even more timeline information, I'm sure there are a number of online options for that. It might be nice to go back to the series just to relive the glory days of the Old World of Darkness, that time in the Nineties when Vampire: The Masquerade was all the rage. After all, the whole reason I was drawn to the show was because I found the setting more compelling than the actual roleplaying game... In the meantime, we're in the midst of a resurgence in vampiric popularity, so feel free to have a look at a whole bunch of other timelines linked from the timeline site which connect to vampires in one way or another, including the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Series Chronology and the Kolchak the Night Stalker Timeline by Chris Wike (caericarclight), the chronological list of Forever Knight Flashbacks by Valerie Meachum and Dorothy Elggren, the Supernatural Timeline by Joanna Browning, the Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline by Fritz Baugh, the Twilight Timeline (which I've blogged about before), the Timeline of (Anne Rice's) Vampire Chronicles by Katherine Ramsland, The CastleVania Timeline by Andrew Modeen, and (naturally) White Wolf's World of Darkness Timeline by Jonathan Burt, showcasing the setting which led to Kindred: The Embraced in the first place. That should be more than enough to suck away your blood...or at least much of your free time. Current Mood: Embraced (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 24th, 2010
4:36 pm	With Your Family Around You, You're Never Alone You've seen me get philosophical, whimsical, and Gallifreyan at this time of year before, so you may be wondering where I'm at as 2010 draws to a close. There are certainly a lot of options to take in--everything from Minty the Candy Cane Who Briefly Fell on the Ground to a song about propositioning Santa Claus--but right now, I'm mostly feeling sentimental. Despite the very corporate origin of this ad I first saw on my trip to Chicago a year ago, it captures my appreciation for the many people in my life, old and new: On that note, I'll be rewatching It's a Wonderful Life tonight, as usual, just to turn that sentimentality up a notch. Happy Holidays, everyone. I hope you've taken advantage of The Year We Make Contact, and that you've stocked up on enough joy to go around. Current Mood: joyous (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 6th, 2010
9:47 pm	When the World Never Seems to Be Living Up to Your Dreams Caught in a Harry Situation: Garrett Wang and Me, Central Canada Comic Con 2010 No sooner had I blogged my brief thoughts on how I found this year's Central Canada Comic Con disappointing than the news came out that the whole shebang has now been acquired by Wizard World. (Credit must go to xandersgirl for first letting me know about this--and for taking the photo above. :) I have no idea how long it would've taken me to learn about this development otherwise...) They don't waste any time, either, as the website link for the con I used in my last entry already redirects to Wizard World's company page for next year, and they're encouraging people to join their new Facebook Group for the convention instead of the well-established Facebook Group that previously existed. I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, this will almost certainly lead to a better overall selection of guests than we had in Winnipeg this year, which is one of the things I was complaining about. On the other hand, this will give the event an even more corporate atmosphere than it has now as it scales up, which I was also complaining about. When lampbane let me know that Bleeding Cool broke the story, I noticed that their take on the potential changes is pretty cynical; while xandersgirl thought these sorts of things shouldn't even really be called "cons," since that term usually connotes something more fannish in a grassroots way. If you've attended one or more of Wizard World's many events, I would welcome your own thoughts on how they run things. As long as I'm asking for input, I'll reiterate that I'm considering a trip to one of the bigger cons out there in 2011. Here is my current shortlist, in chronological order, with some quick pros and cons: FedCon (I could visit friends in Germany like axoaxonic, but the expense and the language barrier are serious impediments) ConVergence (close and thus easier to get to, but I had a disappointing first impression this year) Shore Leave (virtually every tie-in author on my friendslist will be there, but it's harder for me to get to) San Diego Comic-Con (included for completeness, as I believe I missed the 4.7 femtoseconds when I could've bought a membership or booked a hotel room) Worldcon (I've been to two, but 2011's Worldcon is in Nevada and I may be better off with the Chicago Worldcon in 2012) Dragon*Con (I'd know way more people than I did in 2006, but it would be even more appealing if I also knew my friends living in Atlanta would definitely be there) New York Comic Con (a long-awaited return to New York City, but I'm not sure how I'd work out the accommodations) Since I know many of you regularly attend at least one of these cons, please let me know where you think I'd get the most out of my next con-related voyage...or let me know about a better option I haven't mentioned yet. :) Current Mood: surprised (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
10:19 pm	You Take the Good, You Take the Bad I'd like to be able to say that I enjoyed this weekend's Central Canada Comic Con as much as or more than I have in the past few years, but the con has definitely taken a step down in quality. I gave the event a full con report in 2008 because I enjoyed it so much, and even though I didn't do the same thing in 2009, I thought they were growing at a good pace and didn't do anything that rubbed me the wrong way. For 2010, however, there were signs of trouble. The worst of these--which I'm sure annoyed a lot of other people and affected attendance--was the last-minute cancellation of Ray Park, the con's headlining guest. Now, last-minute guest cancellations happen all the time, but (despite the embarrassment of admitting this after you've printed everything up with his name and photo bigger than everyone else's) the con's news feed should've been upfront about it rather than simply trying to scrub references to him from the website. Winnipeg has had enough problems with sketchy convention-organising practices, and I'd hate to see that extend to the newest prominent player in the area. On a personal level, I also wasn't able to get a full sense of how the con went because I was only able to go on Friday and today, but not Saturday (generally the busiest day of any con), due to a weird cascade of circumstances which kept me away. (More on that in a future entry.) My impression from the two days I did attend was that fewer people were around, and I know I felt like I'd seen just about everything there before. Oh, and despite my feeling like it has less to offer, the convention now costs twice as much as it did two years ago. :/ Having said all that, the con wasn't all bad. Meeting Garrett Wang was very cool, even if I didn't get to talk to him long (his excitement over seeing snow was cute, but his confusion over Canadian geography was disheartening); there was some great cosplay in evidence, including a convincing Marty McFly (with hoverboard!) and an awesome female Tenth Doctor (What is it with me and crossplaying Doctor Who outfits?); and my nephew once again enjoyed himself. :) All of those elements provided enough cool visuals that I'm sure my photos will show up online in some form (if not in this particular post), and I did find enough to spend money on that I had to stop myself from buying some Chibi Futurama Stickers I discovered late in the afternoon. Between this and my feeling underwhelmed by ConVergence in Minneapolis, I haven't had a great track record with cons in 2010. :( Strangely enough, though, my response to that is a desire to go further afield next year, and once again attend one of the larger conventions out there...any suggestions? Current Mood: disappointed (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
10:42 pm	Recordatio, Etiam Atque Etiam Holding to tradition, I'll point you to my entry about 9/11 from 2006, if you're curious about my memories of the event and my thoughts on its aftermath. My invitation for feedback in the comments on that entry remains open, even though not many people have taken me up on it since then. MSNBC's tradition on this anniversary is to devote at least part of the day's airtime to a rebroadcast of NBC's live news coverage of the event. My morbid side tends to get the better of me when I wake up to this in the morning, so I watch it for a while and end up pensive for the rest of the day--even as I see people in general thinking less and less about it over the years. Those who have been thinking about it seem to have gotten more ignorant and less tolerant this year as opposed to how they were at this time last year, when I was feeling rather optimistic. I almost can't believe that there was almost a public Qur'an burning in the United States today, and the ongoing debate over the "mosque" in lower Manhattan is disheartening and dumb for all sorts of reasons (not the least of which is the fact that there was a Muslim prayer room in the World Trade Center itself). In my original 9/11 entry, I asked what the world might be like on September 11, 2011...as close as that date is now, my hopes aren't nearly as high as they could be. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
6:18 pm	Until Tomorrow, The Whole World Is My Home After nineteen days overseas, I've travelled to and through six countries on three continents across eight timezones, traversed almost twenty thousand kilometres using five airlines, spent money in four currencies, spoken at least briefly in five languages, taken over a thousand photographs, researched seven generations of my family tree, heard about a dozen calls to prayer, caught one international dog show, and accrued a very healthy amount of debt as a result of it all. More details will follow in time, but I've been in recovery mode since getting back, trying to catch up on everything I've missed and keeping rather odd hours in the process. If there's something online that you think I should see, please let me know, especially if it's from over a week ago. Everything else is quickly falling by the wayside... Current Mood: statistical (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
11:42 am	Until Tomorrow, I'll Just Keep Moving On I've mentioned this to a few people on my friendslist already, but I'm heading off for a two-week trip to Europe very shortly. Just about all of my time will be spent in Portugal, despite an itinerary which includes momentary stops in three other countries. :/ This will be the first time I've been overseas since 2003, when I hopped over the pond for my sister's wedding (with a side trip to Germany to visit axoaxonic). You all see me talk about travel often enough, but that little statistic is the simplest way to show how often my trips stay within North America. Even for someone with as much wanderlust as I have, it's not always easy to get the logistics together for a trip further afield. (It's also not particularly easy right now, as my credit cards will tell you...) Most, if not all, of this trip will be spent with family members, and along those lines, I'm hoping/planning to get some research done on my family history whilst I'm over there. I've always had an interest in genealogy in general and my own background in particular, but when your parents are immigrants, international travel quickly becomes a necessity to make any real headway into the past. Once I'm back, I'll start compiling what I have into a proper family tree, so any advice (especially on software) from someone with genealogical experience would be most appreciated. If anyone would like me to track down an item (a postcard, a foreign-language edition of a book, a Region 2 DVD, something else entirely) or accomplish some particular task (not that I'm on The Amazing Race or anything ;)), let me know...quickly...and I'll do my best to hook you up. Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
Monday, August 9th, 2010
2:37 pm	Be Honest with Yourself, Forget Your Fears and Doubts Longtime readers of my blog may recall my frustration with the Degrassi franchise, whose popularity was leading it down a road of glamourisation (and, to be frank, Americanisation) which I didn't like, since it detracts from the authenticity at the heart of the series' appeal. I was beginning to feel like this hallmark of Canadian television had jumped the shark. With Degrassi: The Next Generation going Hollywood and then taking Manhattan, I wasn't exactly reassured about where things were going. I continued to drop in from time to time, but Season Nine only seemed to continue the trend with ripoffs of Gossip Girl and Twilight, along with weird detours into storylines about LARP campaigns and Mary Sue fanfic. My hopes of (eventually) putting together a Degrassi Timeline for the whole decades-long saga also fell by the wayside when I realised the various acts of time compression and expansion had messed up previous continuity in favour of a "soap opera time" approach to things. This season is portrayed as occurring in the present day, but since recent seasons have only covered a semester apiece, it should really still be around 2008. Having said all that, I thought the decision to make forty-eight episodes this season (explicitly adopting a telenovela format, with four new episodes a week for the summer) was insane...but, much to my surprise, the series is actually showing quite a turnaround in quality. The show has (perhaps wisely) dropped The Next Generation from its title, since a decade of production is getting close to The Third Generation territory, but this new "generation" of characters is drawing me into their lives in a way other successors had failed to do in recent years--even if, on a personal level, I'm trying not to think too much about the fact that some of these actors/characters were born the year I graduated high school. The most intriguing of these newcomers for me is Adam Torres, a transgender character played by Jordan Todosey who's also an opening-credits regular castmember. Degrassi has taken (what I feel is) the right approach up to this point, where Adam has been playing a supporting role in other characters' storylines without his gender identity being mentioned at all. (One of these storylines also happened to feature the brief appearance of a fake Manitoba Driver's Licence which actually looked accurate. Good job, researchers! :)) Although there's a brief allusion to it in the music video teaser for this season, things like the cast profile linked above and Adam's in-character Twitter have yet to make any direct reference to his transgender status. Admittedly, this storyline requires a certain suspension of disbelief--Adam has been "passing" very successfully at the school so far, which I don't think would really happen. (Judging by the comments on MuchMusic's site, at least some younger viewers just think he's a tomboy.) Regardless of that, though, I'm very interested to see where Adam's character arc is going, especially since the advertising points to his big character revelation coming this week. The only thing that sucks about that timing, for me, is that I'll be out of the country for part of the storyline (more on that later), so I'll have to catch up after the fact. One of the panels I attended when I went to ConVergence this year was called "Sci-Fi Made Me Gay and Other Influences," which (as you might imagine) was largely about GLBT representation in genre fiction. At one point, the discussion turned to how the "T" in GLBT was still lacking today even as the "GLB" progressed, and after the panel, I (privately) lamented that this was unlikely to change anytime soon, since I wasn't sure how transgender characters could be introduced into television series without being seen as mere tokens. However, with examples coming along like Adam Torres and Nadia Schilling, an intersex regular played by Florentine Lahme on the short-lived Defying Gravity (whose gender identity was only hinted at before the series was cancelled), perhaps there is hope for more inclusive, three-dimensional portrayals of such characters after all. Current Mood: genderqueer (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
7:43 pm	Why Do We Always Come Here? (I Guess We'll Never Know) As I alluded to at the end of my last entry, I was (finally) able to convince someone from out of town to visit me during the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. The combination of my friend Theresa's presence and an (unusual) abundance of free time on my part made for a somewhat different experience of the Fringe than what I had last year, especially in terms of what to see. I'm very used to charting my own course of shows at the festival, but now had to (mostly) balance my own preferences and past knowledge of performers with the inclinations of a Fringe newcomer. That balance actually worked out pretty well, and I'm glad that once again, not one of the twenty-five shows I managed to make it to this year was a stinker. Some of the highlights this time around included 7 (x1) Samurai by David Gaines, which I was concerned about seeing (without reason, it turns out, since the show was awesome) due to my fondness for the Akira Kurosawa movie; The Excursionists: A Matter of Seconds by Baronspieler (Jonah Von Spreecken and Christopher Bange), the sequel to a hilarious show they brought to the Fringe in 2006; Kunst Rock by Die Roten Punkte, everyone's favourite fictional German punk band, whom I'd been trying to see for years without success; When the Killer Mutant Lizards Attack, an underrated show by Brent Hirose which I feel didn't get enough of an audience; and Freud vs His Ego by Monster Theatre, another pleasant surprise from what I thought would be yet another boring biographical profile of an historical figure. (Maybe I was just projecting?) Thanks to Theresa's mad charting skills keeping our schedule organised, the annual tradition of Nudity Day--a day of only seeing Fringe shows with nudity warnings--also went very well. Any Nudity Day which gets a mention on the Winnipeg Fringe Twitter feed itself has to be considered a success. ;) On a completely different note, I was a little thrown off by the number of celebrity lookalikes scattered amongst the casts of various Fringe shows. It was surprising enough that the actual Kevin McDonald was hanging around this year, but I also encountered performers reminiscent of Craig Bierko, Summer Glau, Joseph Fiennes, Neil Patrick Harris, and Alan Tudyk during those twelve days. After a while, I started to imagine the high-powered-by-proxy cast I might assemble, if only I could get their powers of resemblance to combine... There were two Broadway musicals at the Fringe this year--the very metafictional [title of show] and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which is much more straightforward--and while I saw (and enjoyed) both, I tend to think that it's out of place to include such shows in a fringe theatre festival. I've been watching the Winnipeg Fringe slowly change in this direction over the past several years, and I worry that more and more companies will choose to play it safe and go for this kind of surefire hit instead of taking artistic chances. To be frank, I don't think the goal of the Fringe is (or should be) to offer a venue for people to see Broadway hits for ten dollars. Reflecting my own concerns, there's been an ongoing debate since the Fringe ended in a blog entry by Fringe performer Sterling Lynch about Fringe audiences and what makes a Fringe show successful, where many of the comments have been along the same lines. Seeing that dialogue, and knowing as a result that I'm not alone with these thoughts, has kept me pensive about what might be lost and what's worth saving in terms of the festival overall--about the nature of its essential Fringeness, in other words. Personally, I like the long lines, the rush to get to a show on time, the last-minute switch when a planned show is sold out (often leading to an unplanned show which totally blows you away), the outdoor atmosphere of Winnipeg's Exchange District, the late nights at the pub, all of the random conversations and unexpected encounters which (to me) make the Fringe memorable and special in the first place. Without the alchemy of those elements mixed together, the Winnipeg Fringe becomes "just" another theatre festival, a collection of performances which happen to be staged in the same two-week period for the convenience of patrons...and I would hate for that shift to happen. Current Mood: defensive (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
9:52 pm	If You Threw a Party, Invited Everyone You Knew Captain Jack, you look fantastic: Minneapolis, ConVergence 2010 I hadn't brought it up here beforehand, and I didn't even mention it to too many people otherwise, but I semi-impulsively decided to attend ConVergence in the Twin Cities this year. I'd heard many, many stories over the years (from locals and others) about how awesome it was, so I decided I should check out this con for myself. ( Bring on the Bad Guys ) All of that makes it sound like I had a wonderful time at the convention, right? Well, not really. To be honest, I wasn't in a very good mood going into the con, so (despite my description) I don't think I was as outgoing and sociable as I could've been. One of the main people talking up ConVergence (and still encouraging me to go again) was twinkiegirl, who was (unfortunately) not able to go this year, and (despite all the local stories) I encountered very few Winnipeggers or other people I knew there. All of that left me a little adrift after my own plans had been finalised, and I feel like I never got a good handle on it so I could shift solidly into Meeting New People Mode. :/ That's not the con's fault or anyone else's fault, but just a reflection of my own attitude and approach at the time. ConVergence also has a reputation as a real hard-partying convention...and frankly, I've seen my share of harder parties. After saving up my energies for the last night and what I anticipated would be some epic Dead Dog carousing (especially since it was the Fourth of July, my first spent in the United States), I discovered that everything had thoroughly shut down by around midnight. I later heard through the grapevine that the con is deliberately trying to "tone down" those elements which led to that reputation--which is ironic, since the con itself came into existence because of a schism with another Twin Cities con, leading to the "cool" side separating from the "serious" side. If something just like ConVergence existed in Winnipeg, I would be all over that--it seems to combine the best aspects of the two annual conventions the city has now--but I'm not sure what I experienced really justifies flying (or even driving) down to Minneapolis every year. After I got back from the con, I barely had time to settle in before preparing for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and a visit from my friend Theresa...but that's a subject for a different entry. Current Mood: frustrated (Comment on this)