Noise in the Shape of Writing

Got a chance to see to good film this weekend...

MACHUCA
Came out in April. It's a VERY well crafted film about an 11-yr-old boy's coming of age in 1973 Chile. Right at the time when Pres. Allende was courting Cuba and Russia (before he got his head blown off by the military loyalists, who then supported Pinochet... and boy, wasn't Chile so much better under him!). Anyway, it's a touching story and what's great is that it sticks very firmly to a "through the eyes of a child" point of view. The kid is quite a good actor. Won tons of awards and is the selection from Chile for the foreign film Academy Award.

Wish I could get out more often to see indie films. I'd have not thought it possible, but mainstream filmmaking is sucking more than it did last year so far.

We, the jury, find Michael Jackson NOT GUILTY on all 10 counts against him.

[Jacko breathes a sigh of relief as his fans lift him up to carry him out of the courthouse]

However --

[the fans pause, mid-hoist]

-- we find the poseurish, grandstanding gaggle of media and the sycophantic, mewling, devoid-of-taste fans who stank up the steps of this courthouse for the last 5 months GUILTY on all counts. You have a 30 second head start before we release the dogs.

Hearing about Nick's encounter with Harlan (not knowing who he was -- see comment section from SCM #1) reminds me of a sublime moment from (I think) Enigmacon 3...

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DAVID, GEORGE & ISAAC
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David, Joe and I commandeered an unused room that year and staged an impromptu panel starring David Brin, George Clayton Johnson and Issac Asimov. I forget what room we used, but it was definitely in Ackerman and it was one of the main panel rooms. There was no sign by the door and yet attendees kept coming in just to see what the hell was going on. It was basically me making various "lucy in the sky" references as George. David doing the various Brin pulpit issues (women, cavemen, Frankenstein, bell curves, religion, Ralph Bakshi, etc.) and Joe slumped over in his chair as Asimov. Most of the people watching us knew what was going on. I remember there was in fact one guest who actually loved it. (We didn't know she was a guest at the time.) I'm pretty sure that was the first known instance of Enigmans doing guerilla comedy at an event.

And you know what, you could do the same bit today and nothing would need to be changed.

Two brief things to interrupt my Sublime Convention Moments thread:

JOHN CLEESE STRIKE #3!
Cleese was supposed to perform on stage with the political news sature comedy troupe I write for this Thursday, but he balied with some excuse about going to England. Hrmmm. That's the third time he's done that. Grrrr. I'd still walk on shattered Life of Brian DVD shards and eat Spring Surprise just to spend a moment in the room with him. (Or [swoon] to have him perform something I'd written).

SERENITY GUN
It was here. At work. I saw it. The actual gun from the movie. Alas, my hand was too big to serve as "hand double" for the poster. Still pretty cool.

For those who enjoyed Sublime Convention Moment #1 yesterday (Harlan and his cake... go read it!), I present SCM #2:

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GEORGE RUNNER LOGAN ESTEVES SHEEN CLAYTON SCHIAVELLI SHATNER FRAZER MURPHY JOHNSON
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Back in '94 at Westercon, which was held at the LAX Hilton, there was a large Enigma contingent. Those were the hay days (or is it "hey" days? for Enigma. The Enigma Players had begun rehearsing, Live Games were really taking off, and Magic the Gathering was sweeping the community. (I recall someone saying Scott Martin had thousands of cards and no one would ever catch up with him... I think many did, however.).

At conventions, Enigmans were a quiet-but-known force. We had thrown several of our own cons and we knew how to party. Often, we were welcomed at room parties as warmly as any Guest of Honor. We partied, danced, went back to the parties, back to the dance. We rocked til 2am to the tunes of Oingo Boingo. We OWNED that dance floor. We made that Rasputin song *our* anthem. We seemed to like dancing mre then most anybody else at the cons.

We also like drinking.

Well, some of us anway. Ok, me, anyway.

Recently, I had discovered the joy of the Dead Elvis. A lore passed down from someone to Steve Mandel to Enigma to me. For Westercon, the NST posse decided to bring a large but portable cooler of the stuff. For the curious, a Dead Elvi are (I hope I get this right) Vodka, Lemonade and Blue Caracao. (or is it lime juice?) Anyway, we made these little stickers with Elvis on them and a big "X" through his face. We went from room to room and everyone who dared taste of our brew got a sticker. We only gave out one sticker per person, even if they wrangled multiple sips from us. If we HAD given out multiple stickers, someone in particular would have been covered in them.

George Clayton Johnson.

He became our shadow. He showed up miraculously at every party we went to feigning ignorance of previous encounters with us. Eventually he claimed to be a follower of the Great Elvis Gods (us) to whom he was indebted for the life sustaining juice we provided. Honestly, if we hadn't been on such a Logan's Run kick recently, we wouldn't have given him a second look. Instead he became one of NST's icons.

I remember at one point running into a guy who had dry ice and black lights and a hazmat suit who was serving something almost as tasty as Dead Elvis at one of the parties. We exchanged stickers. Fun was had by all.

This was back in the Days Before the Puking of Enigma.

Not that those days were'nt fun, too. Just messier.