Denver ComicCon 2013

This weekend my family attended their first ComicCon, not the big one that everyone talks about in San Diego, but the newly organized Denver ComicCon. A ComicCon is a convention for people interested in all things nerdy like comic books, superheroes, science fiction, animation, and other small corners where a crowd of interested fans accumulate.

Our experience began on Saturday morning when we trudged off to the Denver Convention Center to join a multitude of strangely dressed trekkies, gamers, aliens, and others in the longest line we had ever been in in our lives. The line stretched under the viaduct, all the way along the side of the building. Bets were made to guess how long the wait would be, which turned out to be surprisingly short at just under thirty minutes. The costumed crowd made the wait entertaining and more interesting than an amusement ride at Disney World.

Once inside, lines started appearing everywhere and with no apparent reason. One costumed group of people I talked to said happily that they were in line to ride the escalator. After checking out a few lines and getting our bearings straight, we joined the line into the exhibition hall, which was still fairly empty. It was there that we met Frank Beddor, author of the novel series The Looking Glass Wars, based on the future adventures of Alice in Wonderland. Ben also met Steven Seagle, one of the writers responsible for creating the Ben10 series. Each of the authors was approachable, friendly, and excited that we were fans of their work.

In addition to a huge exhibition hall filled with writers, artists, and other stuff, panel discussions were being presented in smaller conference rooms. The first one we attended was on “nerd rock,” a sub-genre of rock devoted to the loyal fans of nerdy things. It was at this panel that we were introduced to the groups Harry and the Potters, Kirby Krackle, H2Awesome, and The Doubleclicks, who talked about what it was like to write about things that interested them. They espoused a message find your people, follow your dreams, and sing about what you like most. Later we attended a panel on Ben10 where all the questions were asked by the kids in the audience. The funniest panel was in one of the many, always full speed-dating sessions where 
a fully covered horse-head wearing person was talking to another participant.  I hope horsey
found true love. 

Hana was the only one of us dressed in cosplay, which is short for costumed-play, the combination of a fan looking and acting like their favorite character. She made us feel like we were body guards for a real-life celebrity, receiving many requests for photos and hugs.. While the number of anime fans were fewer than Doctor Who fans, there were sighting of other characters from Hana's anime series Hetalia and she was the only Russia. People often approached her by complimenting her costume and asking if they could take her picture. This added to her experience and allowed her to be on constant lookout for "her people." I was hugely impressed with the people in attendance at the Con who all seemed nice, open, accepting, and kind. It is easy to see that this was a highlight of the social calendar for many of those in attendance.

We all returned to our room in early afternoon for a bit of a break. Hana and I even took naps, a rare occurrence and sign of information overload. Instead of returning to the Con, that night we met an old high school friend for dinner and checked out Denver’s independent bookstore The Tattered Cover.  Returning to the hotel room also gave us a chance to plan our attack on the Con for Sunday.

On Sunday morning I set out early to see if I could acquire a special wristband that would allow me to attend the William Shatner talk. This put me in before 8 am with strangers, in a line which started at 5:30 am. By 9:30 am, I had my wristband, and went to the back of the exhibition hall to see if I could glimpse Shatner, George Takai, or any of the famous celebrities signing autographs. Charlie and Ben attended a talk by Colin Baker, the 6^th Doctor Who incarnation. I joined Hana at a panel on discussing how to attend a cosplay summit in Japan. Afterwards, we all reconvened and went to get an autograph from Dee Bradley Baker, voice actor for many of the Ben10 aliens, and some other favorite characters from The Last Airbender, and Adventure Time. He chatted with us and did the voice of Nanomech, a Ben10 alien. 

My William Shatner experience involved standing in yet another line between two Doctor Who reincarnations and Mr. Spock. Once inside I found a seat next to Black Widow from the Avengers and felt much safer. Shatner opened with a funny story about the aging of his dog Starbuck, and also answered questions by many fans. I found it astonishing that two of the first questions came from aerospace engineers inspired to work on the space program by Star Trek. The line between science and fiction is much finer than I ever would have imagined.

The whole ComicCon experience was focused on finding your people and following your dreams. This rang especially true following our family discussion earlier in the week about how people working sometime find their jobs lacking in fun, reward, or challenge. Some of the people at ComicCon found ways to work their passions into their lives, for the improvement of themselves and the happiness of others. Returning to the mundane on Monday was much harder than I had imagined.

Revisiting my youth

I am a reluctant movie-goer at best, often waiting until a movie is released in DVD and then forgetting that I wanted to see it in the first place. Last summer, I found out how fun it was to see a packed movie with friends, loved ones, and a bunch of fans. My nephew Erik's visit to Utah coincided with the release of the last Harry Potter movie. We pre-purchased tickets and took him to the midnight showing and had a fabulous time.The anticipation of waiting hours, both outside and inside the building, the perks of many costumed fans, really cool round 3-d glasses and free food, all added to the enjoyment of the whole experience.

That being said, there are a few movies that I would endure waiting hours in line. Our family are huge Lord of the Ring fans, having seen all the movies multiple times, even ALL in one day, and having traveled to New Zealand motivated, in part, by the movie. Still we did not attend the midnight showing of the The Hobbit, and instead opted to wait until the Sunday following the movie’s release, for viewing and host a post-movie Hobbit party. This decision probably had more to do with the fact that the release was on a school night. Because we live in a community predominantly views Sunday as the Sabbath, going to an early showing  of a newly released movie is like owning your own theater.

I am an admitted and committed trekkie, and have seen almost every TV series and movie connected with this title since I was really young. As a pre-teen, I used to stay up late and watch the first series in 1980s reruns through a crack in my bedroom door. In college and beyond I watched the Shatner / Nimoy movies. Even now, I can hardly believe that the first Wrath of Khan movie is 30 years old. My children were introduced to the movies and series years ago. While they thought the original series too boring, and the Picard series boring and slow, they seemed to like the movies and had favorite characters among Spock, Kirk, and Bones, just like I did. Because of this fact, we saw Star Trek Into Darkness (STID) this weekend.

STID was a big production, in 3D, and certainly fit the bill as an action-packed adventure. The basics of the plot were no different than any of its predecessors; there is a really, really bad guy who is going to do something horrendously bad unless the crew of the Enterprise stops him, and by the way, Spock doesn’t seem to show any emotions. While strange looking aliens, and huge sets have become commonplace in movies,this movie focused on a patriotic and moral message. We were all brought to the theater to relive our feelings during the 9/11 attacks as a flying object controlled by a madman crashed into a large building in a heavily populated city. Young Kirk, fueled by righteous anger over the loss of many lives including his beloved Captain Pike requests the mission to find the bad guy. The bad guy, who it turns out is Khan, a genetically engineered superhuman from the past, hiding in enemy territory is to be executed without trial, introducing one of the many moral dilemmas to the movie.


On the lighter side, there quite a few nods to the old series in this new movie. In this way, trekkies like me had the satisfaction of connecting with feelings from their younger selves. Not that there weren’t inconsistencies. Khan, played by the brilliantly talented Benedict Cumberbatch from the BBC's Sherlock series, changed the character both ethnically and personally. He reinforced the movie stereotypical bad guy with a British accent, but he could have been so much more than a madman with weapons. As the stronger, smarter adversary, he should have been allowed to trick the good guys before they outsmarted him.

This being said, for trekkies, the Star Trek series is about the relationships of the characters that we've grown-up and not the intellect and plot twists that make many movies worth seeing. The movie explored the Kirk / Spock and the Spock / Uhura relationships, while leaving most other characters underdeveloped such as the antagonism between Spock and McCoy. Scotty played a surprisingly important role off-ship leaving one to wonder how he maneuvered a ride on the Admiral's secret ship, USS Vengeance. Finally, Sulu and Chekov were just too young to be believable. But then again, all the actors are much younger than I am, so from that perspective I might be the flawed aging audience.Overall, I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours in a dark theater with my favorite fictional people from my youth.

Ode to a Skywhale

(photo credit The Canberra Times)

 

As the sunset melts behind the distant hills, the first flight of Skywhale across the countryside of Canberra comes to a close. Suspended, floating a short distance above the ground, she hovers with a satisfied all-knowing grin across her wide chin. Huge udders adorn her head like curled locks of hair framing her face. She is a creature borne of evolution of the mind, no longer held back by the water and land that once contained her. Wings would only hinder her flight as she flows gently over the land. Ephemeral, she floats above the earth for all to see and admire her essence and experience.

So many things in life are borne of experience, why not a skywhale? She comes from the mind of an artist, carefully rendered on paper, filled with air and dreams. Does the flight of only a day, or even an hour make her any less real? Life should not be measured by duration but by immersion. The sun fades at the close of each day, even as actions remain fresh in our minds long after the last light fades. Likewise, skywhale’s flight continues long after the air has left her silk-like skin.

Skywhale’s journey evokes the phrase “flight of fancy” as it seems to express more about the creative mind than the physical world. And yet, we do not have a phrase for the evolution from mind to physical form. Create seems too small for a being of such immense size and presence. Likewise, neither fantasy, dependent on disbelief, nor imagination, an internal image of the minds creation, are adequate descriptions for this fully evolved form. She, like her image, requires new parameters of the creative process to help ground her birth and being. The fact of her existence makes her much more than fancy.

Even as she smiles, it seems that Skywhale would be a lonely Cetacea, having left the water and all her friends behind to take flight. Would that her mournful song could carry across the lands, singing of the time when her strings would be cut and she would simply float away high into the heavens.

Festival of the Cats

While trolling for interesting news stories, I happened to find a reference to Kattenstoet,  “festival of the cats,” which is held triennually on the second Sunday of May in Ypres, Belgium. The last festival was celebrated in 2012.

I was drawn to the festival by the photo above featuring a giant cat / woman that would put the Macy’s parade balloons to shame. She was led around the town, over the uneven cobblestone streets, by a band of mice / children.  Her size, as she dwarfed the old buildings along the parade route, gave her the perfect vantage point for peeking into even highest second floor window.

One of the many curious elements of the festival is that it only occurs once every three years. A Belgian website dedicated to the event provided more insight into the festival. There have been 43 festivals held to-date with the first occurring in 1955. The festival includes floats, giants, bands, theatre, and dance groups. It is said to feature“evocations of the cat throughout history, the cat in language and legend, the cat around the world.” And, it is the only festival of its kind that I can find reference to on the internet.

Lacking details, I turned to Patrick Robert’s blog Purr ‘n’ Fur more pictures and complete history of the festival.  Ypres was said to have a booming wool trade, with the wool stored in a town building called Cloth Hall. Cats were used to keep rodents away from the wool, until it could be sold. When spring came and the cats were no longer needed, they were thrown off the tower by the town jester. The town was said to end this inhumane practice in 1817, and now holds the festival to celebrate the cats and their history.  

I was surprised to learn that the large white female cat in the parade is named Minneke Poes. She was married to Cieper, “King of the Cats” (black cat below), in 1971. They have a “baby Pieperke” born in 1983, who does not regularly appear in the parades. Apparently the festival is continuing to create its own lore and history to grow the tale of the cats.

Reading about this cat festival made me wonder if was unusual, or if there were more cat festivals throughout the world that I was missing out on. A brief search of the internet produced two recently developed festivals dedicated to cat videos in Oakland and Minneapolis. Fresh Step cat litter also sponsors the “Catdance” film festival annually. I was excited to find out about the C.A.T.S festival in San Antonio, Texas, until I learned that the acronym stood for Cigar Aficionados Trades and Sale.

Finding my search fairly fruitless, I returning to the Purr ‘n’ Fur blog and found more creative cat-options. In Catskill, New York, the Cat’n Around exhibition features larger-than-life decorated cat busts throughout town. There is also a “The Moon Cat” in the town of Lloret de Mar, a writing contest sponsored by the international Cat Writer’ Association, and a cat collector’s convention held annual in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Given my folklore interest in Oscar, the therapy cat who predicted deaths in nursing homes with uncanny accuracy, maybe some additional research in this topic is merited at a later date. I’ll be sure to mark date 10 May 2015 of the next festival of cats in Belgium on my calendar today.