RoBoTNiK

Tags: Koschei the Deathless; Dudley Manlove; the Gipper; eat your heart out, Edmund Morris.

We talked about the Reagan years in one of my classes this week. That’s all the excuse I need, really, to recycle this post of mine from the week Reagan died (and I got my PhD): the Ronald Reagan alternate history film festival. (Oh, and speaking of deceased American icons: did you hear about Captain America?)

The Ronald Reagan Alternate History Film Festival

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Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome.

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

New Mexico: It’s The Newer Mexico

Do you think they ever get tired of jokes like that in New Mexico?

<--The picture they don't want you to see: me witnessing an alien autopsy, or Jonathan Frakes hosting a crappy special on Fox? You be the judge…

(Don’t Go Back to) Roswell

You may not consider it anything to brag about, but I was a UFO geek long before a certain alphabetically named television program brought the wonderful wide world of ETs, MIBs, and EBEs into America’s living rooms. And–with the possible exception of Nevada’s Area 51, which is in the middle of a missile testing range and not real hospitable to roadtrippers–Roswell, New Mexico is the Mecca of UFO geekdom.

Here’s the facts, sort of. In July 1947, something crashed in the desert northwest of Roswell. A U.S. Army press release said that the army had recovered pieces of some form of “flying saucer.” The next day a second press release declared that the object was in fact a weather balloon, and that’s been the official story ever since.

Now, maybe “flying saucer” was just a poor choice of words by some dumb Army Press Department hack who has been peeling potatoes for his screw-up ever since. Or, just maybe, the Roswell Crash is one lone crack in the facade of a fifty-year coverup engineered by a massive and ruthless conspiracy stretching to the highest level of government, if not the very stars!

Now, which explanation do you think brings more tourists to Roswell?

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I was going back and forth on whether this was too flimsy to post at 20x20' Room but it seems TypePad is down today, so that makes my decision easy. (Karma for Six Apart and the pain upgrading MT is currently giving me, heh heh heh--oh wait, this also inconveniences me! Damn you, Six Apart! Now watch my LJ implode.)

Primetime Adventures players take note! And see if you can follow along: The title story in Kelly Link’s new collection, Magic for Beginners, is about (I’m quoting a review in The Believer) “a TV show called The Library, a teen drama whose cute, hormonal, conspicuously quotable friends are devoted fans of a TV show called The Library, a paranormal, ass-kicking series of mysterious provenance that pops up without warning at ungodly hours on random cable stations. … The hero, Jeremy, is a sentient TV character, obsessed with Fox, a character on the show within the show within the story, who turns out to be real.” A show within a show within a story, eh? If this is anybody but Jorge Luis Borges…

I’m thinking of taking Primetime Adventures with me to Florida over the holidays, where I’ll be with most of my family. They’re a mix of non-RPGers and long-ago-RPGers, but I might be able to get them to give it a whirl. (We typically play a lot of board games when we all get together, but bulky board games will be a hassle to lug down to the Sunshine State on a pre-Xmas post-Patriot Act plane.) Anyone reading this ever tried PTA with a group of non-gamers? Or does anyone have alternate suggestions of easy-to-transport board/card games or newbie-friendly one-shot RPGs?

See, my subject line is like an answer to the "Central Question" at the top of the Believer review, and there's this old joke, and...

So, as I might possibly have mentioned in this journal already, I graduated! (See icon for robe and funny hat.) Thanks to everybody who traveled from far and wide to mark the occasion (my parents, L's parents, Kofi Annan, princeofcairo, Ali G...) and to everybody who came to my party last week, which raged from about eight pm to midnight and then instantly turned into a pumpkin. Which is actually pretty much how I like it. It was so great to have Mom & Dad here—their only visit to Boston this millenium (they did make it to Amherst for the wedding). My Mom apologized for getting weepy. We're such WASPs. Weepiness is good! It reminds me that this graduation thing might actually have been kind of a big deal. Thanks for everything, everyone.

Another great success was djwilhelm's salon, where a random sample of our generation's greatest minds gathered to discuss the weighty issues of the day. It was a lot of fun, and some of those present may have said something intelligent at one point or another, though alas, nobody was writing anything down, so our genius will be lost to history. The one moment I will remember is when narcissime suggested I do an LJ post about five alternate Harvards, and I said something like, "Five goofball variations on some ridiculous premise seems to have become my thing." And Ken Hite said, quite rightly, "Your thing? [Krusty the Klown voice:] If this is anybody but Avram Davidson, you're stealing my bit!"

Which I shall treasure for a couple of reasons:

1. Because it's actually validating to have someone as cool as Ken Hite acknowledge that I am blatantly ripping him off, occasionally artfully.

2. Because while the geek conversational habit of just tossing out obscure references without stopping to explain them can be deeply irritating if you don't know, for example, who Avram Davidson is (he's a science-fiction author and fabulist whose influence can definitely be seen in Ken's magnificent Suppressed Transmissions), or you don't immediately recognize a line from The Simpsons (Krusty the Klown gets a prank phone call from rival TV host Gabbo. After realizing he's been punk'd, he says, "If this is anybody but Steve Allen, you're stealing my bit!"), it is both pleasing and flattering when you do.

3. Because Ken had no way of knowing that that line from The Simpsons is an old favorite of mine. See, in my Golden Words days (GW = the weekly humor publication at Queen's University), I became keenly aware of the long chain of homage, inspiration, and outright plagiarism that lay beneath each attempt at "original" "humor." I started out a somewhat slavish imitator of the senior writers and cartoonists on the paper, but stayed long enough to be imitated myself. By the time I reached the lofty heights of editor-in-chief, I often responded to cartoon and article submissions with some variation of Krusty's klassic line. "If this is anybody but Joey DeVilla, you're stealing my bit!"

Literature is full of such coincidences, which some love to believe plagiarisms. There are thoughts always abroad in the air, which it takes more wit to avoid than to hit upon.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

We're all part of the great circle of rip-offs, remixes, and pastiches. It's like that Elton John song with the dancing warthogs. Hakuna Matata, baby. You're stealing my bit.