Identity

So, in our house, we only have broadcast television, no cable or satellite, so we wind up watching that like, not at all. We do, however, have the internets connected to the TV screen, and Netflix streaming gets a lot of play. We usually pick one series, usually one that is off the air now, and watch it through. Without commercials, regular shows are about forty-five minutes long, a nice little period that allows for some passive/relaxing/snuggling/decompression time without consuming the whole evening.

The show that we are currently watching is Warehouse 13, a somewhat goofy fantasy series perhaps best summarized as "Mulder and Scully working for the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark." Set in the same universe as the goofy sci-fi series Eureka, it has the same implausible science, outlandish plots, and tongue-in-cheek approach that create a decently diverting series. It has the added bonus of a wealth of literary and historical allusions and references, since the Artifacts (you can hear the capital "A" every time they say it) that the principals are chasing and guarding are all related to famous people or incidents. But most of all, we like it for the characters:

The main agents are Myka and Pete, your usual oil-and-water partners, Secret Service agents recruited into Warehouse service when they stumble into a case involving an Artifact. Myka is a logical, analytical bookworm; Pete is an intuitive, emotional frat-boy. Within the constraints of episodic television, the characters have developed beyond their stereotypes, at least a bit. Claudia is the wunderkind computer hacker, a late-millennial post-ironic poster-girl who literally says "squeal of delight!" when pleased and uses slang not heard since Scooby-Doo. And leading them all is Artie, a former NSA cryptographer who has been with the Warehouse since the seventies, the cranky old man of the group. Pretty conventional fare, made a little more interesting by a slightly steampunk vibe, and I only mention it here because of an observation I made while watching the show:

My Identification character is Artie. Even in escapist entertainment, I can no longer imagine myself the square-jawed protagonist, much less the rookie or the boy wonder - it just doesn't work, especially when I look in the mirror. You've got to face it when the reflection looks more like Vulko than Aquaman. With the more-than-a-few miles I've got on me now, my contributions to the Cause - real or imaginary - tend to be subtler, often less flashy, but (it is hoped) still critical. I can leave for others the Achillean heroics; my role has evolved from that, and is based more and more on experience - creaky and maybe even cranky, but valuable. And there are some perks to being the boss in exchange for not being the lead.

My last post concerned things I am just now really understanding, and I forgot one: some years ago, a colleague said to me regarding my leadership "Maybe it's time to move from brash to wise." Yeah, I can live with that.

After all, I can still wear my Chucks.

I'm still not sure...

Here are some things that, when first encountering them during my formative years in high school and in college in the early seventies, I was sure I knew what they meant. Now, in the autumn of my years, I know that I had no idea then what these things mean, and I am beginning to think that just now I am getting the idea.

"It's amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired."
~ Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, 1975




~ Mary Hopkin, Those Were the Days, 1968


"Some parts wake up faster than others."
~ Sonny Steele (Robert Redford) in Electric Horseman, 1979


"Youth is wasted on the young."
~ Folklore and It's a Wonderful Life ("Youth is wasted on the wrong people!")




~ Frank Sinatra, When I was Seventeen, 1965

"I know one thing, that I know nothing."
~ attrib. Socrates

Action (figure) Man Strikes Again!

So, t'other day, when I get home from campus, my sweet partner Coco hands me a bundle and says that it was left at our front door sometime during the day. The bundle contains two action figures and no note or markings, but I know that it comes from my great and good friend Jim Wilson, the Emmy-winning sound designer, proprietor of the wonderful Let's Not Talk About Movies film review blog, and all-around stand-up guy. I know it was him because (a) he's the only person who gifts me with action figures anymore and (b) they are always awesome and these were awesome.

The first was a Martian Manhunter figure, this one from the All-Star series*. Here it is:

Pretty slick rendering of J'onn J'onzz and it has lots of those, whattayacallem, articulations. Plus a kinda weird look on his face:

Can't quite read his mood there. Anyway, the figure is awesome not really in and of itself, but because of the synergistic boost it gives to this:

Behold, the Martian Manhunter Memorial Lavatory! Y'see, my sweet partner Coco, who is an artist, a feng shui maven, and  personal generally endowed with good taste, has been in total charge of decorating our townhouse, except for two rooms. That's why our place looks so well-put-together and beautiful, except for two rooms. One of those exceptions is my office (of course) and the other is the guest bathroom. It started when we first moved in - Coco was actually in Hawaii and I was doing the heavy lifting (literally) myself. I brought this J'onn J'onzz poster into the house and and found there was already a nail in the bathroom wall; the die cast at that moment.

After hanging the poster (and the idea of taking it down was never seriously considered, not for a minute), it just seemed natural to put my old Martian Manhunter action figure in there as well. I even kiped a few images from the internets and framed them. Well, from there in the concept just grew. Mostly through Jim's generosity (perversity?) I kept acquiring more and more MM figures, and the theme bathroom became spectacularly overwrought, to wit:

A DCAU "true-form" figure  and "invisible" figure stand on spacey paintings.

The windowsill holds a New Frontier figure...

..and a JLI figure.

An eclectic mix stands on the left side of the sink: 

DCAU "regular" figure, old-school Kenner toys model, 

and a really nineties version.

Two more statuey editions sit on the right side of the sink:

the "official collector's-edition, hand-painted, cast-in-lead" figurine, 

and a bust with a really Byronic affect.

A larger "invisible" figure hides in the corner near the sink.

One portrait with a tiny figure perched on the frame...

and a Twin Towers memorial picture hang over the sink.

Even the lights convey the theme!

I guess at some point we will reach Martian Critical Mass and something will have to give, but for now I think there are still a few nooks and crannies to fill in there.

Now the second item in the bundle is just made of awesome, and becomes even awesomer in context. Allow me to present...

That's right - Perry White! Not so much an Action Figure as a Repose Figure, Clark (Superman) Kent's editor and boss (Silver Age version) is nonetheless fully articulated and has an aggressive pointing index finger. He looks pretty grim, too:

Now, having an action of figure of this stalwart but still second-string supporting character would be cool enough, but it is cool-squared when combined with another figure Jim gave me several years back:

That's Peter (Spider-man) Parker's publisher and boss, J. Jonah Jameson! With his own aggressively pointing index figure! What a clash of titans this is -- I just need to find a suitable venue in which to commemorate them.

Jimbo, let me buy dinner and we'll brainstorm it. Thanks, man.

Waterloo on concrete and asphalt

I grew up in a working-class home, and while I never felt deprived, I also knew that my family was not exactly top shelf. As a child, my immediate evidence of this condition came from toys. While I had more than enough toys for any child, I had fewer than many or most of the other kids I knew, and there was also a qualitative difference as well as a quantitative. As much as my parents wanted to me to have the latest and the greatest, the actual items I would up with were usually second- or third-tier. I didn't ever resent this pattern, for it brought me the first great triumph of my life.

During the holiday shopping frenzy of 1961, when I was just past my fourth birthday, this was the hottest toy going:

The Johnny Reb Cannon by Remco. The TV commercials showed boys in Civil War garb straining to drag it up hills and over embankments; those wheels must have been a foot in diameter. A resounding boom! echoed every time they let loose a shot onto enemy forces.  Of course I wanted one.

What I got was this:

About eight inches from trailer hitch to muzzle edge, this was the Howitzer from the Marx Battlefield series of toys. Meant to be used with toy soldiers on a plastic battlefield play-mat, it spring-fired bullet-shaped shells with a tinny twang. That I was disappointed goes without saying, but I guess Mom and Pop raised me right, because it didn't last long, and I took my new cannon out in the wintery streets of Brooklyn to fight Nazis or Martians or Nazi Martians.

As I set up my artillery piece, who should come walking down the street but two Big Kids, perhaps seven years old, or maybe even nine, pulling a Johnny Reb Cannon.

They stopped and laughed at my little howitzer. Close up, I could see that their Johnny Reb was no great shakes: all plastic and flimsier than it seemed on television. There was a metal rod in the center of the barrel, and the cannon balls had holes in them and were slid down the rod with the rammer, which also had a hollow core; it all seemed very un-cannon-like.

The Big Kids decided we were going to have a war and moved a little further down the sidewalk, turning Johnny Reb to aim right at me. I had no choice; the battle was on, and it was beyond my control to stop the conflict. Gamely, I cocked the spring mechanism of my Marx Howitzer and dropped a shell down the barrel. The Big Kids made quite a show of loading the Johnny Reb, and then graciously offered me the first shot.

Twannng. The little shell popped out,  covered maybe half the ten-foot distance between the gun emplacements, and hit the sidewalk, rocking back and forth just for a moment before lying still and impotent on the concrete. I sighed, resigned to my fate.

One Big Kid shouted. The other pulled the lanyard. Johnny Reb fired with more of a scrrrape than a boom. The cannonball whistled over my head.

And bounced on the sidewalk.

And rolled into the street.

And was promptly run over by a passing car (with perfect timing) that flattened it into a small black disk.

One Big Kid ran bawling into the street, picked up the now useless hunk of plastic, and just sort of hunched over it, weeping and cursing. The other Big Kid retrieved him and guided him back onto the sidewalk and the Johnny Reb. Together they grabbed the toy cannon by its tow line and went back they way they had come, their skirmish with me forgotten.

I picked up the spent shell and looked at it, thinking how things that were round like balls rolled a lot and things that were round like crayons didn't roll quite so much.

Smiling, I picked up my little howitzer and scurried back into the house for some Yoo-hoo.

The gift of giving

A few weekends back, it was Emerald City Comic Con time here. One of the steampunk gals at school wound up with two extra tickets for the Sunday session after her blended-extended family plans changed (as they can often do). I knew that Katie Sackhoff, Starbuck from the new Battlestar Galactica, was going to be there, and I knew that my sister would just just love to see Sackhoff live and in person. So picked up the tickets, planning to surprise Sissy.

Well, as mice and men know, things gang agley - Sackhoff cancelled her appearance. Dang.

That weekend I texted Sissy: I bought an extra ticket to the emerald city comic con for tomorrow so you could come with me and meet katie sackhoff. But then she cancelled.

Sissy texted back: You're kidding, right. I've been trying to talk phil [her husband] into going tomorrow all week. The walking dead people are there!

The Walking Dead cast appearances hadn't even been on my radar, but I knew Sissy and Phil were big fans. So, I gave them the tickets. Tucked them in an envelope, drove down to their townhouse, slid them under the door, and there it was.

They went together and had a great time, a wonderful respite from some trying times they had been handling. Both Sissy and Phil sent me several texts from the event and they were clearly having a ball.

Best money I ever spent.

Just last weekend, I took a tour with my honey of all the Value Village thrift stores in the area so she could look for long, flowing, lightweight clothes to take on a trip to Thailand. She found some, and I had a chance to pick up odds and ends like a sweet electric pencil sharpener. Along the way, I snagged a little bag of Homies - plastic figurines of contemporary Latino characters from the urban West Coast. I had seen these before and was intrigued by the craft and the concept, so I grabbed the bag of one large and ten small figures for a couple bucks, just to have the chance to check them out closely.

I brought them into work a few days later to show them to my partner in crime, the Associate Dean, who had grown up in Southern California. As I spilled the little plastic people out of a paper bag into her desk, the A.D.'s face light up like a kid's on Christmas. With wide eyes, she started setting the figures up and laughing with familiarity and recollection; picking up one little cholo, she said "I went to school with guys like this!" Her pleasure was so intense and immediate, I said "You know what? You keep all these."

As I left her office, she was laying out all the little figures to take a phone phone to send to her husband, who is Hispanic. He replied to her text immediately, saying that it looked like a picture of his high school graduation.

She took them up to show one of our faculty members who is Chicano. He was tickled and gave her some academic analysis of the problematic nature of the figures and pointed out one that he said looked exactly like his brother. So she gave him that one and a few of the others.

Who knew four bucks could spread so much pleasure?

It's a trite homily that it is better to give than receive, and I would never stoop to that cliche here. But I have to tell you, I have never gotten as much real joy from getting something for myself as I have from giving stuff to others and seeing it make their day. Each of these instances made me feel happier than the possession or experience of the purchases could have ever done. So what do we call that? Altruistic self-interest?

I can't wait to do it again.

Annual reminder

In what has become a bit of a tradition, here is a restatement of the "resolutions" that I make every year. They are more like reminders of the habits of mind that I try to live by:

Listen more and talk less.
Ask more questions and make fewer statements.
Approach every circumstance with compassion and a little kindness.

Love and rockets, world.