http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019800.html

Teenager, fighting with security: Fuck you! Fuck all y'all! Obama, baby! (storms out)
Preppy guy: See, this is why I vote Republican.

--14th St & Union Square

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019799.html

Old man to passing girl: Boo!
(girlfriend shrieks, old man lets out an evil, villain laugh. Girl and her boyfriend walk away quickly, boyfriend chuckling)
Old man, looking back at them as they walk away: Hahahaha! No, no wait! Wait, I'm sorry! I'm sorrryyy!

--77th St & Broadway

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/how-to-play-with-your-food.html

I'm in Chicago right now, for ALA: the annual meeting of the American Library Association. I've been to a couple of them before and have always had a marvellous time -- once, with people like Art Spiegelman and Scott McCloud and Colleen Doran explaining to curious librarians what graphic novels were and why they should have them in their libraries, another time getting to visit New Orleans for the first time Post-Katrina, when I went to two dinners with Poppy Z Brite, and one of them was the first time Poppy's husband, chef Chris DeBarr, ever cooked for me*.

When I was in Melbourne, five years ago, Poppy was a guest of honour with me, and somewhere back then it was decided that we would be going to Alinea, a Chicago restaurant of remarkable coolness. The years went by and I was never in Chicago for long, and Katrina happened, and once Poppy went back to New Orleans she did not want to leave, but we knew one day it would happen.

And tonight it did. Poppy flew up from Chicago and took me to dinner. It was expensive, and, I only discovered at the end of the meal, Poppy was paying. (This is a big public thank you.)

The service and friendliness and sense of enjoyment from the Alinea staff was remarkable. I've had, on rare occasions, food that was as good, and, rarely, I've had food that was better, but I do not ever recall any meal that was as much fun to eat. 23 Courses (hmm, very illuminati) of things that melted or popped or squrunched in your mouth in astounding ways.

I think my favourite not-actually-putting-something-in-my-mouth moment was when the table was covered with bubbling belching dry-ice smoke, and I asked Poppy very nicely if she wouldn't mind saying, "Tonight, my creature, I shall give you Life!" for me, and, bless her, she did.

If anyone reading this is at ALA, I'm doing two signings at the HarperCollins booth 2011, one at 1.00pm on Saturday, the other on 9.00am on Monday (which should have some amusement value). Also a panel on Monday at 1:30pm on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The rest of the time is filled with interviews, receptions, speeches and such.

I'm actually here to receive the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Which will be presented on Sunday night, and for which I have written (and already recorded) a speech. (Which will be played if I forget how to talk on Sunday night. It's possible.)

And I want to thank Harper Collins for indulging me, and keeping up the free version of The Graveyard Book on the mousecircus website all that time. You can still listen to (or watch) me read The Graveyard Book, chapter by chapter, across America, at http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx. You can also buy it.

(And to answer a sharp-eyed questioner, yes, there are a couple of changes in the latest printing of The Graveyard Book; I fixed an error in astronomy I'd made, and a misspelled foreign word, and fixed some paragraphs in the acknowledgments that were truncated in the original US edition.)


(And that reminds me: yes, I will be at San Diego Comic Con briefly on Friday July 24th, to do a panel with Henry Selick about Coraline, and a one hour signing afterwards. I'll be at the Eisner Awards for a bit that night, then will zoom across town to the Benefit concert that Amanda Palmer and Vermillion Lies are doing for the CBLDF.)




*Chris says people have been asking for "The Mezze of Destruction", the code-phrase that tells him they were sent from this blog, at the Green Goddess, and getting special extras -- restaurant Easter Eggs, as it were, and I have been getting happy messages from people who have eaten there who tried it. And, almost needless to say, lived.


Right. Bed.

As you know, Bob, noble metals such as silver and gold reject vampires. Thus, a vampire cannot be seen in a mirror, because the mirror is made with silver. It cannot be photographed, because silver is used in film emulsion. Presumably a vampire could be seen in a mirror made with a base metal such a mercury, or photographed with a digital camera which does not use silver-based films. (But could the image of the vampire pass through the camera's contacts? Contacts in electronic equipment are frequently gold-plated.)

What interests me is this: what effect would noble gases have on vampires? I've never seen this question addressed. Would a room full of argon, say, reject a vampire, the way a pool of water blessed by a priest rejects a witch?¹ Might an atmosphere of 10% helium cause harm to a vampire? Besides ruining his dignity by making him talk like a duck, that is.

1. This is the reason you often see pools of blessed water used as trampolines by witches on holiday.

http://io9.com/5312234/the-only-good-scene-in-i-robot

For those of us who loved Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, the Will Smith movie was a pile of confusing disappointment. But there is one scene in the movie that's worthy of the original book, and this is it.

Unfortunately it's literally the last scene in the movie, which seems to begin right around the time that the robots begin taking on the characteristics that make them so interesting in Asimov's fiction. You know, like being autonomous, thoughtful, contradictory, and, well, ready to take over the world.

In this scene, we get a glimpse of the robot revolution to come. The one robot who has exhibited signs of self-awareness, Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), is trying to figure out what to do next. Mostly because all the robots of his model were recently taken over by a bad-guy silent upgrade that turned them psycho - and now the company that made them is trying to order them into storage-container retirement.

But instead of following the robo-masses, Sonny decides take matters into his own graspers. Just as the annoying movie is about to wind down, we see a hint of a glorious robot liberation movie that could have been. I love that moment of Sonny looking down at all the robots, quietly entering the storage containers. Then they see him standing there, and stop following orders.

If you want to know what comes next, you'll have to read Asimov's I, Robot.

I, Robot via IMDB

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019798.html

Blonde chick: So...isn't she going to want her stuff back?
Dude with cute voice: Actually...she doesn't know I have most of her stuff.

--Broadway & 28th St

Overheard by: Stormy

Just spent ten minutes or so talking at kniedzw, trying to figure out how to make a certain plot point happen, and at the end of it all I decided the best method is: embarrasssing Galen.

Poor boy. I so terribly mean to him.


ETA: I originally typed "humiliating Galen," then decided to downgrade it. Now that I've written the scene?

I had it right the first time.

Poor boy. I'll make it up to him in the next couple thousand words.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019797.html

White girlfriend to Asian boyfriend intentionally blocking the door: What are you, 12 years old?
Asian boyfriend: Only from the waist down.

--76th & Columbus

First of all, I am writing this on my phone because the hotel internet is $13 a day, which I will NOT pay. It is absurd. Second, I love Readercon and today reminds me of why. Intelligent people talking about fiction and a high percentage of my favorite people. However, due to the blogging-on-phone aspect, my presence this weekend might be scant. You should know, though that I finished Chapter 2 on the train and began chapter 3.

Comments? -- Link.

Still have the cold, which deducted a 2 hour nap from my afternoon. Managed 1,700 new words nonetheless. Should have time to wrap my weekly quota tomorrow. Tired of being sick.

Originally published at jlake.com.

I planted these last year and they didn't bloom until after I left for Seattle and they were gone by the time I got home. I've been loving them this year.

I made the last hamburger bun into a Nutella and sunflower seed butter sandwich for lunch this week. Yeah, it was pretty good. I also ate lentil salad every single day for 7 days and just tossed the last couple of scoops into the disposal. No one should have to eat the same lentil salad 8 days in a row.

After fondling the box in Target during every visit for the last three months I finally bought the first two seasons of Angel on DVD. My note here says "Angle" and I had to scratch my head for a minute before I figured out what I meant. I watched the series premiere last night and you know who's in it?

Sawyer. I know. I couldn't believe it either. I had to check the internet to make sure it was real. I don't want to give too much away but he gets staked in the first 10 minutes.

I went to Trader Joe's this morning. I've cut way back on my wine drinking purely as a waistline thing so my trips to TJ's have become less regular. I can't believe they haven't called and asked if I was okay. This morning I couldn't find any Glee Gum. I asked and my checkout person shook her head with some genuine distress. "I don't know what happened," she said. So now I'm going to order giant bags of it from the internet and try different flavors and keep bowls in every room.

I feel like I've been busting ass the last couple of days with nothing really to show for it. I've got high hopes for tomorrow.

Who knew you could transcribe a Hüsker song so that it sounded like something you might hear in your dentist's waiting room? Or worse, the New Age Spiritual Guidance Center?

(For a reference point, here's the original song, about 3:13 into the clip)

http://io9.com/5312322/and-the-movie-green-lantern-is

Well, that didn't take too long: Deadpool's Ryan Reynolds will be adding a second movie superhero to his resume with this evening's announcement that he will play DC Comics' Green Lantern in next year's Warner Bros. movie. [Variety]

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019796.html

Crazy Jesus guy: Repent! Judgment is upon us, and we are all sinners!
Suit: Hey, there are some sinners in the next car.
Crazy Jesus guy: We indulge in things, and it's a sin!
Suit: Some really bad sinners.
Crazy Jesus guy: Repent!
Suit: They're just there in the next car.

--Downtown 1 Train

Overheard by: Nora

So yesterday I was biking along the Midtown Greenway through Uptown in Minneapolis. Just about where this picture was taken (back when the Greenway was still a railroad bed), a sixteen or seventeen year old kid rode slowly past us, and I couldn't help but stare because the kid looked like a spitting image of Bob Stinson as he might have looked before all the booze took its toll and his hair started to thin. I know there's a million and one kids in this city with some sort of Swedish/Danish/Norwegian heritage so the chances of seeing someone who looks like Bob Stinson are pretty high, but I still thought it was kind of neat.

http://io9.com/5312297/youd-be-surprised-how-many-science-fiction-novels-can-fit-this-description

Someone over at the Straight Dope message boards asks for help identifying a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world reduced to primitivism, where the rulers use technology (lasers) disguised as magic (wand-blasts). Oddly enough, that could describe many books.

All the message-board poster knows is that the book was published around the same time as A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller, or maybe a bit earlier. And he gives this description:

The novel ... is "set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, in which some of the main characters appear to do miracles or magic, but it turns out they're actually using technology - either rediscovered or reinvented. So we have 'spears' that emit killing beams - actually lasers - etc."

As with many of the other similar incidents where someone remembers vague details but not the name of the story or the author, it turns out to have several possible answers. Possibilities include Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, Robert A. Heinlein's Sixth Column, one of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, Gather, Darkness by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun and Harry Harrison's Deathworld trilogy. According to one poster, the Leiber and Heinlein books are similar because editor John W. Campbell fed the same idea to both writers, not worrying about there being too much overlap.

Of course someone has to bring up Clarke's law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

To which someone else responds, puzzlingly:

Got your nose.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/019795.html

Gay guy: Oh fuck, motherfucker!
Female friend: Why must you be so white?

--Bleecker & 7th Ave

Overheard by: molina1230

http://io9.com/5312182/blood-the-last-vampire-delivers-swords-schoolgirls-and-1970s-angst

In Blood: The Last Vampire, a sword-toting, half-demon schoolgirl matriculates into high school on a US military base in 1970s Japan. She's there to whack some demons, fry your eyeballs in their sockets, and entertain the hell out of you.

Sort of like a mix of Buffy, Vampire Hunter D, and Abel Ferrara's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which also takes place on a military base), Blood is a ninja romp with style. Saya is a half-demon who has been a schoolgirl for seemingly hundreds of years, working occasionally with the mysterious "Council" to off evil creatures who walk among humans. In particular, these demons seem to enjoy impersonating teenagers, high school teachers, and members of the US military stationed in Japan. Which kind of makes sense, actually.

From the moment Saya arrives at the base high school, we know awesomeness will ensue. We've already seen that the kids at the school are racist and mean, making fun of Soya's soon-to-be-bestie Alice and calling everyone who isn't American a "Jap." The 1970s setting adds an extra dimension of weird to the movie. We know that the Vietnam War is happening off-screen, and it gives the Council members - who pretend to be CIA - an air of retro creepiness. Plus Alice is always sneaking off to groovy rock concerts, and Saya to her probably seems like just another far-out, glam creature - Grace Slick with a sword.

Based on a popular manga of the same name, Blood is a thoroughly international production. It was written by Chris Chow (scribe behind Jet Li's Fearless) directed by a crazy French guy named Chris Nahon, and stars Korean pop idol Gianna Jun as Saya the half-demon schoolgirl. Soya's sidekick Alice is played by American Allison Miller, most recently seen in the short-lived TV series Kings. And most of the movie is in English.

When Alice discovers that her classmates are demons, and then her father is murdered by a Council member gone rogue, Alice goes rogue herself. She sees Saya doing mega-sword fighting with an entire bar full of demons and decides to team up with the monstery loner to fight bad guys. Who exactly the bad guys are is a little unclear. Obviously the demons are bad, as are the military people who cover up her father's death. Also the council guys are bad too.

So everybody is bad, which is great because we get more scenes of Saya kicking and swording the shit out of everybody. Though this movie clocks in at a modest 90 minutes, even I have to admit that some of the fight scenes were a bit too long. I love monsters fighting monsters, and schoolgirls fighting vampires, but endlessly slicing people's faces in two - sigh. Especially when the blood all looks like the zero-G blood from Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. Big pellets of CGI goop erupting from monster necks, gullets, arms, whatevers? Cool the first time, but a bit wearying after a while.

Eventually it emerges that there is a really, really, really bad person named Onigen (whom I kept thinking was named Onigiri, which made me hungry). And Saya is off to kill Onigen, who is like the Big Bad of the demon world and also killed Saya's dad.