Regular Life

It was just Ben and me. A man and his boy. Father and son. The bond that can be neither understood nor broken. Or something like that.

Now, on to complete sentences. Well, mostly.

Ben and I headed out at about 6:00 Friday evening, and finally got to my mom and dad’s at 1:15 a.m. At the time, I didn’t know just how lucky I was that he fell asleep at 9 p.m. and stayed that way the rest of the trip.

Saturday we went to Dad’s farm, where members of the local SASS chapter were shooting at his range. I’ve never participated in the shoots, but if lawlessness ever broke out, I would want these folks on my side. They’ve beaten FBI agents in a direct challenge.

When Ben and I arrived, the BANG-PING! BANG-PING! sound of bullets hitting metal targets filled the ear. The occasional BANG!, with no PING, meant a miss, and misses meant lower scores.

I got Ben out of the car seat and he said, “Make a noise. Make a noise.” That’s his standard response when he hears a sound he doesn’t recognize.

“That’s right, Ben, they are making noise. Let’s go see what it is,” I said.

“Yes.”

I outfitted Ben with ear and eye protection (which all shooters wear at all times) before we headed down to the range so he could see what was causing all the clatter. All I could find were a pair of orange, hard-plastic noise-cancelling earmuffs and a pair of dark sunglasses. He was the complete image of gun safety, or maybe a miniature airport runway guide without the neon orange batons.

We were immersed in a wild west world. At a typical SASS range, most of the “stages” feature some sort of old west building facade — either a saloon, a livery stable, or something else straight out of the late 1800’s. It could be something as simple as an old wagon or a campfire ring. Their clothes and their guns also are from that period.

Then we were jarred back into this century.

We saw Dad’s golf cart. He uses it to haul his guns and ammo to the range, or just to run other small errands without having to start up his gas-powered four-wheeler. At least, I figure that’s why he uses it. Oh, I mean “figger.” Almost forgot we were in the old west.

Mom suggested that Ben and I take the golf cart for a ride around some of the wooded roads (but not downrange, of course), so I set Ben in the seat. I noticed a large, white travel mug in the open left dashboard compartment. I shook it to make sure it was empty, then put it back. After taking some pics of Ben at the wheel, I took it and moved him to the passenger’s seat. I wondered if hybrid cars ran as quietly as golf carts. It’s so strange to hear nothing as you move. Like sailing, but without the wind and the water. Ben asked to sit in my lap. Considering it was a golf cart and we were on a grassy forest road with no other vehicles, I acquiesced.

As we headed down a small hill and started getting bumped around pretty well, I moved my foot to the brake pedal. When I pressed down, it didn’t move. We kept speeding up, getting closer to where the road met another to form a “T.” I pushed again, this time with both feet. Nothing. I looked down at my feet, where I saw the travel mug lodged between the brake pedal and the floor. Ben bounced on my lap as our speed picked up. I wrapped my left arm around him as I tried to kick the travel mug loose.

The woods at the top of the “T” in the road were fast approaching. Figuring my feet could match the cart’s speed if I had to bail, I prepared for it.

“Hold on, little man!” I said.

I gave the travel mug one more kick and it came free. I hit the brake in time to make a controlled left turn. It was a very boring finish to an exciting few seconds. Even people into risky hobbies like skydiving, rock climbing, hanggliding — whatever — will tell you that boring finishes are the best kind.

We had a great visit with my folks, and dropped by to see an old friend’s mom. I left missing the natural beauty of the area. Ben kept saying, “Trees,” during the first few hours of the drive, perhaps because now we’re surrounded by old corn fields with the occasional patch of trees. His tone didn’t tell me whether he was fondly recalling a time when we saw woods every day, but I certainly was.

Here’s a history of how swallowing live goldfish began (at Harvard), including a back-and-forth battle between schools and the records set throughout the years. See? The highly educated can be just as stupid as everybody else. Sheesh.

No doubt most of you (that’s two?) have heard that an Assembly of God Church actually included swallowing live goldfish as part of its youth ministry, ostensibly to help kids conquer their fears. The AP story on Yahoo! stresses PETA’s angle, but my take is that this is ridiculous nonsense regardless of how the fish feel about it. I mean “fishers of men” and all that, but come on.

I did a little “fishing” for information, just to find any reports of injury from this kind of thing. I wouldn’t want some live fish wriggling around in my stomach even for a few seconds. The link at the top of this post is the only thing I found that was not related to the church youth group story.

Have a great weekend! Not sure I’ll post again before it’s over.

A friend sent me a link to SNL’s Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy, and I had to share this one, considering my previous post.

If aliens from outerspace ever come and we show them our civilization and they make fun of it, we should say we were just kidding, that this isn’t really our civilization, but a gag we hoped they would like. Then we tell them to come back in 20 years to see our real civilization. After that, we start a crash program of coming up with an impressive new civilization. Either that, or just shoot down the aliens as they’re waving goodbye.

I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction lately, but stay with me on this.

What if we’re it? What if the creatures of Earth are the only living things in the universe? Authors and scientists long have fantasized that we are not, but we have yet to find any proof otherwise. I think.

Given time, we will use up the Earth’s resources. Humans and other creatures on our planet will fade from existence. We just happen to be doing a lot of things to speed up that process, so that humans might be gone much sooner than the rest.

Now, many would like to think that there is life out there, somewhere, and some folks even like to think there are intelligent life forms. The problem they see is that we’re just too far away from them for our current space travel methods to bring us together.

I’m not so sure that’s a problem.

Don’t we have enough awe and wonder here on Earth? I guess exploration is just in our nature. Aren’t there former civilizations on Earth who wish they had never seen an explorer, and who did everything in their power to stop them from invading their territory?

Do we explore to find signs of life? Do we explore so that we will have a place to settle when Earth is no longer habitable? Can we maybe try to put that need off a little longer?

It seems the attitude of too many people is, “As long as I get what I want while I’m on this rock, I’m happy.”

Would it make people feel any differently if they knew Earth was the only host to life? The only host to intelligent life?

We might be unique in this dark expanse. There might be nobody else.

If you are a grown person and can help it, do not take an extended ride in the backseat of a Ford Explorer with another adult, a two-year-old, and a dog. By “extended ride,” I mean any time whatsoever. Regardless of who’s driving, your mother, brother, father in-law, best friend, just do not do it.

I’m sure the good folks at Ford Motor Company might not appreciate this, but I mention their vehicle only because it happened to be the one involved. I’m sure had it been any other SUV, the experience would have been about the same.

To save some gas money and do our part in conservation, we rode to Tulsa with the in-laws. It’s about a four-hour drive.

First, we didn’t take my bicycle because it could have scratched the paint if we strapped it to the luggage rack. I had planned to take my first street ride with a guy I had met online. It could have made for a good blog entry, as I met him through my somewhat misplaced tirade about people riding bicycles in inappropriate places. Kind of a “rivalry-turns-to-friendship story” straight out of Hollywood. Or, Tulsa, anyway.

On the other hand, it could have ended up a headline in the Tulsa World. Cycling Tourist Killed by Known Local Maniac. “Why anyone woulda took a ride with that whacko is beyond me. After he got out of prison, he always kind of kept to hisself and tinkered with them bikes.” (Don’t flame me; it’s just a joke about trusting strangers. I have no reason to believe he ever broke the law or is criminally insane. But every person in Tulsa talks exactly like that.)

On the way up, I started out in the front seat, and Ben was difficult until we stopped to get some toys from his bag. (That wasn’t so easy on the trip back.) About halfway through I switched with my mother in-law. In the backseat we now had: me at 5′11″ (about 2 meters, for those who see things that way), my wife at 5′7″ with long legs, Ben in his carseat, and our cocker spaniel at 28 lbs. (12.7 kilos). I added that last detail because the dog had to be in a lap for this trip.

The backseat proved to be okay — at first. Anybody with moderately long legs will notice within five minutes that the floorboard on an SUV is raised, I guess for more clearance than cars. Funny, because most SUV’s see no more offroad action than a compact car. My knees were uphill from my hips, so my feet took all the weight.

That’s not so bad until you put a cocker spaniel on your lap.

My left foot (a great movie), already unhappy with the heel spur brought on by planter fascists — I mean plantar fasciitis, got pissed. I’m just glad my knees aren’t arthritic — yet.

Getting out felt good, and the weekend went well. I saw Serenity for a second time, confirming my belief that it truly is a good movie. If it’s still on in theaters in your area, treat yourself to at least a matinee. Then watch the series “Firefly” for more time with these characters and their adventures. It’s currently on Sci-Fi channel on Friday nights, and available on DVD. Ben had a blast seeing family. He and his mommy and daddy skipped Oktoberfest to find a Halloween costume. We came up dry, but the nuclear family time was good, much better than nucular family time.

On the return trip, I was in the backseat all the way. My poor wife had no break from the backseat either direction. I took lap-dog duty, because my better half was handling most of the Ben management. My feet did fine, I guess because they hadn’t just been on a hard office floor all day.

Ben was quite tired by the time we left and, whereas he normally would fall asleep in his carseat, he wanted to stay awake with his mommy and daddy. Anybody who has been around kids knows that even a mild-mannered child will do things completely out of character when tired. Wait, maybe that’s adults. Anyway…

A toy car in each hand, Ben hit various passengers and did his loud grunt-growl. Here’s how that sounded:

Ben’s car on his mommy’s hand: Whap!
Ben’s mommy: Ben, no, do not hit. I’m going to take that car away if you hit again.
Ben’s car on his daddy’s arm: Whap!
Ben’s daddy: No, Ben, I’m taking your car away because you are hitting with it.
Ben: Want it a coa! Want it a coa!
Ben’s daddy: Whining won’t get your car back.
Ben: Want it a coa! (grunt-growl)

Most of the Rice Krispies Ben had in a Solo cup ended up in his carseat, so I at first had a time keeping the dog from turning that direction. The hardback book Read to me, Grandma held Ben’s attention for a few minutes, but mostly served as a surface to roll his cars. About two hours into the trip, just as I was about to pull out the secret weapon (my laptop with its DVD player), he fell asleep. To our delight, he stayed that way and the rest of the trip was uneventful.

Let me revise my first sentence. Do not ride in the backseat with a cranky two-year-old, period. Sorry, Ben, but that’s essentially where this catharsis has led me.

Go to a science fiction convention, have your words and deeds spread to every continent.

Now, I’m not new to the Internet. I got my first dialup account and made my first meager Web page in 1995 (the one I have still is pretty meager). Viewership of my online content was few and far between, rarely extending outside family and a few friends.

Another first in my life changed all that.

The first expansion of my tiny readership came when I started reading the blognovel Simon of Space, published in serial format, the author writing it on-the-fly. Readers could (and boy did we) comment at any time on our thoughts about the story’s progress, the characters foibles and hopes, or on the weird word verifications we were getting when posting comments. We formed an online community, although admittedly it had help from the folks who already had formed one around Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. Some of us now read each other’s blogs, and eagerly await the book’s “dead-tree” version, coming soon.

Fast-forward to October 16, 2005, when for the first time I attended a science fiction-related convention. It was not a Star Trek convention, nor was it for any specific entertainment franchise. It was the Dallas Comic Con, a gathering of comic book artists, sci-fi and horror movie stars, and — this is the part you can’t believe until you see it — lots of people in costumes. A Klingon had us form a line that didn’t block traffic. We did exactly what he said. Here’s more detail on the convention itself, if you want.

Attending this event was an actor whose movie was still in theaters. Still is as I write this. It is called Serenity, and it’s one heck of a flick, based on a great TV series called “Firefly.” Like so many quality programs on TV these days, it was cancelled after its first season back in 2002. The movie was second at the box office on its opening weekend, behind Jodie Foster’s Flight Plan.

The actor’s name is Adam Baldwin (no relation), and he plays a hilarious character who speaks precious few lines in the movie. Such is the way of movies versus television. He appeared in an open Q&A session at the convention. Anybody who paid their $5 for that day, or who had special passes for more money, could raise their hand and ask that burning question that had been plaguing their mind since the first time they saw “Firefly” on TV. “Did you really have a crush on Inara?” was one such mind-boggling query.

I never saw a rule prohibiting video cameras, so I toted my trusty miniDV Handycam along with me. I taped some of Baldwin’s session, mainly just to show I was there, but also to test my video camera’s capabilities. After it was all over and I got home, I decided to edit the video a little and create a web page linking to my pictures, video, and blog post of the event. I posted a link on the dallascomiccon.com message board and left it at that.

Shortly after, all manner of heck broke loose. I was getting hits from all over the world, and when I looked at my sitemeter.com stats, I saw that they were coming from other forums of which I had never heard, and from other fans’ own blogs. On that first day I got about 1200 hits. By the next day, that number exploded to more than 9,000. They downloaded the 12MB video more than 1300 times, and the shorter clips more than 1600 times combined. My photos on Fotki got their fair share of views, too.

Visitors came from countries including Germany, France, Australia, Malaysia, USA (just about every state), Canada, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, England, Spain, Africa, and many others. I don’t drop these names to impress anyone — just to share my amazement at how communication has changed in the past 10 years. Before the Internet, the average individual would rarely reach a group that large, much less that widespread.

Now, for any major Web site, this number of hits is no big deal. For me, though, it has been a wild ride. The last time I’ve had that many people see or read anything I produced was when I worked as a reporter/photographer. It was nice to be “out there” again. The hits have slowed considerably now that the link is no longer in those sites’ latest entries. Good thing, too, as I got halfway to my bandwidth limit in two days.

Just today, I found another site that had posted a link to my site on October 18. One of the members asked if anybody had contact information for the guy who shot the video of Adam Baldwin. I contacted them and now I have another acquaintance.

This weekend? I’m going cycling with a guy I met online when I posted a comment that rubbed him the wrong way. Tune in later to see how that went.

There was no way I was buying a magazine.

His name was Antjuan, an African-American young man who told me he was 19 and had lived in a Syntaxis Youth Home. He wore a denim jacket over a long-sleeved pink shirt. His jeans matched his jacket, and the tops of his pink boots were folded down to reveal white fur. The hands on his neon green wristwatch pointed to Roman numerals.

Antjuan (spelled that way on his ID) was a good-looking kid with a fast-paced, very effeminate talking style. Considering that coupled with his outfit, I could only imagine the responses he was getting going door-to-door in the North Dallas area. He had an engaging personality, though, and I was bored, so I listened to his pitch.

He spoke in phrases like “live positively” and “investing in America’s youth,” and when he asked, “So would you like to take an interest in me today?” he meant, “How many magazines do you want to buy?”

Antjuan said he wanted to go to Juliard to learn to be an actor and to dance. I barely kept myself from telling him that they would furnish him the pink boots if he got the part.

He gave me a somewhat disappointed look after I asked what was the cheapest magazine he offered. “Hey, if I buy anything from you, it’s better than if I turn you away.”

He replied without missing a beat.

“Like my grandmother used to say, ‘Oatmeal is better than no meal.’”

He asked me for advice for a rising young man looking for success. Take off the pink boots. I said something my brother once told me: “Work hard and always do a little more than what is asked of you.” Now that I think back, my brother actually said something more like, “Do everything that’s asked of you and a little more,” but it was close enough. I’m pretty sure my father told me this, too, but at a time when I was less receptive to sage advice.

I wanted to find out a little about Antjuan, besides the fact that he smelled like women’s perfume, and help curb my suspicions that his backstory was a line to sell more magazines. “So, who was your favorite person at the Youth Home? There must have been some great people working in a place like that.”

“Well, sir, I had a bad time at that home, so nobody really.”

That was either the truth, or a very bad dodge. I let it slide.

It was 85 degrees and sunny.

“So, where are you from?” I asked.

“Columbus, Ohio.”

“It gets cold up there.”

“Yes sir, why do you think I’m wearing all these warm clothes?”

Later, we saw another young man walking along our neighborhood sidewalk with a folded packet of magazine order forms similar to Antjuan’s. His back was to us as he headed down the street.

“So, are you selling magazines?” I called out.

“Yes sir,” he said as he turned to face me, continuing his progress by walking backward.

“Do you know Antjuan? He already found us,” I said.

“Did you take an interest in him?” the young man asked, still walking backward.

Did I take an interest in a girly teenage boy who smelled like my Aunt and looked like a Vegas dancer? “Yes, we did. We got Nick JR.” Hey, he doesn’t watch Nick, but it will give Ben something to look forward to when he goes to the mailbox with his mommy.

As I finished strapping Ben into his car seat, the young magazine peddler smiled and asked, “How did you like his boots?”

First, here is the page that has my pics and videos of the event.

I did it. Although I do not own any clothing or costumes resembling famous sci-fi characters in movies or TV, I went to the Dallas Comic Con this weekend. I went only Sunday, but my buddy Alvis and I had a good time.

When we got there at about 11:30, we had to wait in line to pay. We saw Marc Singer, who played Beastmaster and the lead guy in the “V” miniseries. Hands stamped for proof we were nerds just like everybody else, we went back outside to wait in line for the start time. The line extended across the street to the east parking lot, until a Klingon directed us to swing the line over to the sidewalk.

Which put us inside just in time to watch Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) walk right past us for a smoke break. I have a pic of his private moment here. I couldn’t help it. It just hit me funny.

Our first activity was a great Q&A session by Adam Baldwin, of “Firefly” and Serenity fame. He’s been in other things you might have seen, too, such as Full Metal Jacket, “Angel,” The Patriot, and others. I’ve seen a total of about two of those things he’s been in, but that was years before I knew who he was.

(Serenity spoiler alert)
Baldwin was funny and gave some memorable comments about working on the series and the movie. He admitted somewhat reluctantly that he was “pissed” that Wash died in Serenity. First he said that, for him, any future involvement in the franchise would strictly be in movie form, but later said that if the offer and the treatment were right, he would do it on TV again. He also mentioned that he disagreed with one comment that there was too much western flavor in the series, and that he wished there were more horses.

Lady in the crowd: Do you have any advice for someone aspiring to be an actress but who doesn’t know where to start?

Baldwin: Stay in school.

Overall, he seemed much smarter and more grounded than the stars who usually make the talkshow rounds. It takes guts to do an open Q&A with no question screening.

After Baldwin, Alvis and I wandered into the main autograph room. Jonathan Frakes (and his wife), Erin Gray, Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Peter Mayhew, Marc Singer, Adam Baldwin, and a few whose names I can’t recall, were in there, gladly taking $25 to autograph basically anything a fan put in front of them. We politely declined. When Kenny Baker came back to the room after a short break (sorry about the pun), he brushed against Alvis’s knee.

There were lots of people dressed like Jedi, stormtroopers of various types, sandpeople, Darth Vader — and a notable dearth of beautiful women. I don’t say this because it made any difference to me. I only noticed it as someone with a minor in sociology. In the Dallas metroplex, if a gathering of any size lacks beautiful women, you know there’s something nerdly going down. I don’t think that’s the way Durkheim or Weber would have put it, but it was only my minor.

When I stopped at the booth for Feeping Creatures, the artist commented that he liked my shirt. I had picked it out because it was the only thing I owned with a nerdly theme. The front of it reads, “I’d like to change the world, but I can’t find the source code.”

Note to the technical people at the Plano Centre: Test your sound system in the main auditorium before handing the microphone to the celebrities. Feedback is not a feature.