Fest #2

The Kansas City Renaissance Festival.

Or, as I call it, total sensory overload. Sixteen acres. Hundreds of artisans, and as many performers wandering about. A dozen stages with constantly rotating acts and seemingly every high school choir in a four state area. Pubs. Wenches. Sword fights. Let's just say that it's a lot to take in.

A few of you will know what I mean when I say that the festival is organized like Majora's Mask: a schedule that repeats each day, with multiple intersecting storylines that meander across the grounds before finally rejoining at the end of the day. I'm a little embarassed to admit that I'm tempted to get a season pass one of these years, just because it would take multiple visits to follow them all. To make matters worse, it's one of the few places in the world I regularly get hopelessly lost.

They put a lot of effort into these things. They have apprenticeships that go on for months, their costumes must be historically accurate in composition and material, and they have scripts so that they can stay firmly in character at all times, and so forth. A bit obsessive, to be sure, but not inherently moreso than, say, D&D. Remember those kids who were big into drama when you were in high school? It's just them, a bit older but still children.

Favorite find: A solid wood tankard, lined with ceramic inside. They're beautiful and highly functional. That pint of Woodchuck never tasted so good. Ordering

I'll leave you with a few random pictures from the Festival, culled from their vast yet terribly organized website: 1 2 3 4 5

Fest #1: Beer

Oktoberfest. Or rather, Kansas City's slightly warped take on it. The main points were all there, I suppose. Gigantic tents, polka bands, fraulines carrying trays of beer. But past that, it was more like a state fair that happened to have a particularly large beer garden.

I suppose I can't blame them, but they forgot that it really wasn't supposed to be a family-friendly event. It's supposed to be a celebration of BEER, damn it all. Their selection was narrow, overpriced, and extremely mediocre. Empyrean Ales used to throw a far superior fest, god rest their souls. Oh well. Anybody want to go to Free State sometime?

Other assorted highlights:

• Blinking LED steins
• The Darth Vader nutcracker
• Runzas
• Pig races
• Povitica
• Getting completely smashed for the first time in a long while

Current Readings

Stopped in at Barnes and Noble tonight. I'd rather forgotten that they stay open until 11:00 each and every night (including the cafe), making it my kind of place.

Picked up all seven volumes of the Nausicaa manga. It really wasn't much of a leap of faith, between my adoration of the anime and my friends' raves about the comic book. I'm going on vacation next weekend, and I'll need quite a bit of reading material. It should do nicely. Might have to drop it off afterwards at the desk of a comic-obsessed but American-centric coworker...

Also picked up the first two volumes of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I think that Gaiman is one of the most interesting authors writing today, and he made his name with Sandman. Very broadly speaking, the stories follow Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, who is somewhere between the protagonist, antagonist, and narrator. Gaiman did the writing, but there was a different artist almost every issue (rather like American Splendor). If you get into graphic novels at all, this one is VERY high on the list.

PS: Added bonus for Final Fantasy fans: Gaiman recently collaborated on a graphic novel with Yoshitaka Amano, most famous as the character designer for nearly all of the FF games. You know that characteristic look of the game's logos, very dark and flowing? Well, imagine a whole book like that. It rocks.

PPS: Turns out he also wrote the English script for Princess Mononoke, meaning that everything in this post is actually related to everything else.

BDO

Someone (and I wish I could remember who) once proposed that a subjective but useful measure of a historical figure's importance is their "fertility", in the sense of the number of other people they inspire. Philosophers are probably fond of this one, for obvious reasons.

I'm surprised that the same criteria isn't more often implied to technology. (Well, it is, but usually subconsciously, not explicitly.) The Internet, yeah, but really all of the most important inventions of the past 500 years or so have been related to communication, transportation, or both. Increasing contact between people is the single most important thing any invention can do, because it spawns still more inventions.

I was pondering this while trying to figure out why the Stargate, an archtypal Big Dumb Object, manages to be such an enduringly popular fictional artifact that you can hang an entire TV series from it. I'm guessing it's just the logical next step along the continuum of communication and transportation - and for extra bonus points, it's both at once. Making it the most useful plot device ever.

Purgatory or Limbo?

Cooling my heels in the Albuquerque airport. It's a good thing my second leg is late, because I would have totally missed my connection otherwise.

When, exactly, did free wireless access become a universal airport feature? Sometime in the last two years since I did a lot of flying, I suppose.

Spending the weekend down at Rusty's in Phoenix. If you've got any messages for him, Tom, Amy, et cetera, et cetera, let me know.

But nobody's home

If my apartment's management merely slipped letters under vacant apartment doors, they'd be absentminded at worst. But it's the fact that they also put letters under the door of the electrical closet that pushes them into the realm of hilarious incompetence.

More Wedded Bliss

Went to (believe it or not) my very first gay wedding today. The bride and the bride were both quite lovely. One was of African descent and the other Irish; as such, there was both handfasting and jumping the broom; the latter ritual turns out to be common to both cultures. Very cool stuff.

The White Crows

(Apologies in advance for the horrible mangling and simplification of science and philosophy and the philosophy of science. Clay may never forgive me.)

So, it's a general principle in science that it's impossible to reason your way from observations to absolute truth; you can disprove, but you can never prove. No theory in all of science is ever beyond question. To take the famous example: you've seen a great many crows in your life. They've all been black. Can you therefore conclude that all crows are black? Of course not.

I think it's pretty much the same story across the hall in philosophy-land. There, you don't worry so much about what can or cannot be observed, but there are still axioms, and they are never beyond reproach, and yadda yadda yadda you get the idea.

What I really wanted to say was that I miss the white crows. You know, the experiences that cause you to completely reevaluate what you think and start over from scratch. It happens all the time when you're young, but these days, I can't think of the last time I saw a white crow. Which is a pity, because it means that the patterns of my thought are staying basically the same. Which sucks. You're either learning or you're dying.

Thought at a wedding

When the bride walks down the aisle, the photographers are invariably snapping away madly at her. But I think they miss an even better image: the look on the groom's face.

Tommy Lee

So I just got done watching the first two episodes of Tommy Lee Goes to College, and while it's always nice to see your alma mater on television, I'm afraid it just doesn't work.

Obviously, it's intended to be a "fish-out-of-water" show, but they just didn't think it through. Tommy Lee is a painfully nonfunctional human being in any situation. Much like Ozzy and Anna Nicole, just following him around on any normal day would be liable to produce scenes of utter absurdity. Putting him in a college setting is just plain confusing, like you'd asked the bear riding a unicycle in a tutu to also escape from an underwater straightjacket while he's at it.

So is it entertaining? Occasionally, vaguely, and seemingly in spite of itself. I'll probably watch it anyway for the "I know that guy!" factor, but I don't expect any Emmys. Other random observations:

• They more or less managed to match the correct exterior and interior shots together, which is kinda impressive, since of course they didn't have to. The major exception being...
• Neihardt? My ass. I wish there'd been a room that huge when I lived there. I could almost believe it was some room I'd never seen, right up until the kegger. Uh huh. Funny how they glossed over the dry campus bit.
• The staff in general, and the professors in particular, come off shockingly well. They obviously managed to ignore the cameras and hullabaloo far more than I'd have expected.
• Did they take any of their own exterior/aerial footage, or did it all come straight from the recruiting office? The campus has never, never looked so good.
• Three full hours of free, primetime, network television commercial is a pretty good deal, but I bet they're not entirely happy about the timing. Classes start next week; by the time people are actually applying for next year, the show'll be long forgotten.
• The show is also a commercial for Tommy Lee's new album, but I wonder if that'll backfire. Above and beyond the unfamiliar equipment and styles, it doesn't seem too wise to depict your star as a man whose drug habits have obliterated any musical talent he might have had.

More Good Movies

There's a couple more movies I'm looking forward to that I forgot to mention before. With trailers:

Proof - that rarest of things, a movie about mathematics. I'm not sure whether my math major friends will be entertained or dismayed by it. But I saw it on stage a few years back and it rocked. (September 16)

Corpse Bride - Finally, the sequel, more or less, to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Only took a decade or so. We must have been very good boys and girls to get two Tim Burton films in one year. (September 23)

Serenity - Joss Whedon's utterly amazing TV series, Firefly, finally comes to the big screen. (September 30)

The Fog - remake of the 1970s John Carpenter horror flick of the same name. I've considered it a forgotten gem for a long time; apparently somewhere else is too. Hope it manages to be as atmospheric, no pun intended, as the original. (October 14)

The Chronicles of Narnia - Nuff said. (December 9)

And the trailers I neglected to link to last time:

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - November 1?

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - November 1?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - November 18.

Rent - November 23.

Pro-?

Construction begins on a new cathedral. They haven't managed to put up more than a few stones when the project is cancelled. It will never be built; we'll never know what it would have looked like.

Elsewhere, a sudden earthquake strikes an existing cathedral. The walls tumble, and all trace of it is rapidly erased. No one will ever get to see it again.

Which of these two situations is the more tragic?

There are no right answers, of course, but I suspect your gut feeling might predict some very important opinions...

Needlessly inflammatory

Last night I had a dream. I found myself in a desert called Cyberland.
It was hot. My canteen had sprung a leak and I was thirsty.
Out of the abyss walked a cow -- Elsie.
I asked if she had anything to drink.
She said, "I'm forbidden to produce milk.
In Cyberland, we only drink Diet Coke."

Heady Times

I just realized that this November is going to be my personal entertainment apocalypse. Not only are Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess coming out, but so are Rent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Brokeback Mountain. That month also happens to be my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

Somehow

I ranted a while back about how I wished that more screenwriters would dare to change the ending when they're doing an adaptation. But I forgot the prototypical example, which I saw tonight: West Side Story. It reenacts Romeo and Juliet, scene for scene, right up until the very end, which is dramatically different. In a way that makes it far more tragic than the original. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's high time you see it.

Speaking of, it must be a good musical to survive the ritual slaughter that is community theatre. I swear, the orchestra experienced some sort of collective musical puberty on stage. As Adam put it, "SomeWHERE A key for US"...

Code Insomnia

Oh, so that's why I don't code at home after work - I'd almost forgotten until I did it again last night. If there are any issues still unresolved by the time I go to bed, and there usually are, then I can't sleep a wink. I'm debugging and simulating in my head and it won't let me rest. Augh.

And Ever, Amen

So, one of my favorite anime series is Revolutionary Girl Utena. Even my anime-inclined friends can't seem to get into it, and I'll freely admit it's pretty strange. But it gets weird in a very serious sort of way towards the end. It's almost as much of a mind-fuck as Evangelion, as a matter of fact. But anyway.

One of the show's major themes is eternity. More specifically, the question of whether anything in this world is truly eternal. Nearly every character is obsessed with finding a way to be remembered forever, or dwell forever in some happy memory, or find some way to cheat death. Not among those is the title character, Utena. And thereby hangs the tale.

We see, in flashbacks, that both of her parents died suddenly when she was very young. She hides in a coffin, wanting to die, wondering aloud why we are born at all if it is our destiny to die. She is visited by a "prince" who, somehow, breaks her depression. Utena's life is profoundly altered by the experience, but what did he show her?

(Minimal spoilers) Near the end of the series, we discover that Utena was presented with a vision of eternal suffering, that the prince himself was powerless to stop. The little girl vows that someday, when she's grown, she'll find a way to become a prince herself and save the one who is suffering. In adulthood this gives her an untouchable sort of nobility that all of the other characters admire; indeed, it's what makes her the heroine of the series.

I was going somewhere with this... oh, right. I've always seen this all as a metaphor for relationships, somehow. We fall in love with people in part because we hope it will last forever, even though we know it can't. And sometimes the suffering from a failed relationship can last far longer than the relationship itself. Some people despair, but others seem to have a reservoir of strength. I have a lot of friends I could file into each category. What is the difference between them, I wonder?

Pairwise

Note: this is a very old series of thoughts, and NOT inspired by any recent encounters or particular individuals.

One of the weirder things to discover about myself is my total inability to deal with couples. Even when two people I really like get together, the combined entity they represent baffles me utterly. Some sort of gestalt personality forms, and even if it's perfectly pleasant, I can't seem to deal with it.

So I find myself instinctively encountering people separately, trying to pry them apart from their partner. As if one-on-one is the only workable social configuration for me, the only way I actually have something to say. Three people is totally unstable, and four is too static - double dates usually feel terribly forced to me.

You think that being part of a couple myself - for the first time in a long time, I might add - might have changed things a bit. Particularly since I'm encountering other couples a lot more often than I did in, say, a place like Kauffman. But no. It might even have gotten worse. Theories as to what the heck is going on in my head are welcome.

Getting back into the Gate

Watched the first four episodes of Stargate end to end with Stolee last night. Despite all of the casting changes this season, I'm digging it so far. Though the extreme reliance on flashbacks is pretty strange.

Spoiler-type theory: the Ancients and the Ori parted ways all those millennia ago over philosophical difference. In particular, the treatment of less advanced races. Not a huge leap, I know, but it would explain a lot. It'll be interesting to see whether the Ancients will be willing to get involved if large numbers of their bretheren aren't obeying the rules.

Fortune cookie at dinner: "Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century."

Synchronicity

...is watching a days-old episode of Family Guy including a parody of A-ha's "Take On Me"; and then, an hour later, hearing the selfsame 80s song in its entirety, coming through the wall from my neighbor's apartment.