Year: 2007

Today is Ariel’s 16th birthday. Sweet sixteen.

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Dragon*Con so far has been its usual amazing combination of controlled chaos, with tons of people everywhere, fans decked out in hall costumes that are better than what you see in most masquerade competitions, and a steady flow of enthusiastic fans.

This evening I MC’d the Dragon*Con Awards ceremony in which the organizers present special plaques to the designated guests of honor. A surprise to me, however, was the winner of the Julie Award, an award conceived of by Dragon*Con some years back in honor of Julie Schwartz. It’s given for achievement in a variety of media, and past winners have included Harlan, Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. This year–and I suspect it’s why Con organizer Pat Henry wanted me as MC–I was the recipient of the award. I couldn’t be more pleased, although it serves to remind me of just how much I miss him.

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Pundits are having a field day dogpiling on poor Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina Teen. Asked in competition, “One fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map; why do you think that is?” her response was rambling and literally incoherent, with non-sequitor observations about Iraq and South Africa. She has since said she froze. Genuine freezing might have been preferable; saying nothing would have been better than what she did say.

I refuse to make fun of her. Personally–and I’m completely serious here–I’m wondering if she didn’t have a sort of mini-stroke brought on by the stress of the moment. It makes sense to me. People who have had strokes sometimes find themselves unable to say the words they’re thinking; instead random words are tossed out. Circumstances such as those that she found herself in would be enough to burst a blood vessel in anyone’s head. They probably did dry runs with her about assorted world topics and her synapses just started spitting out fragments of those replies.

Second, I don’t think that a country that has tolerated seven years of a president so characterized by malaprops that entire 365-day calendars are devoted to them–a president whose town-hall meeting questions are carefully vetted before they’re spoken–gets to laugh too hard at a scared teenager who had a tough question sprung on her. Caitlin Upton has to do her own damage control; she doesn’t have a press secretary to face reporters the next day after a session of babbling incoherence and say, “Okay, what she MEANT to say was…”

And it WAS a tough question, because in thirty seconds she had to try and come up with an answer that was fundamentally upbeat and positive because, hey, that’s what beauty pagents are all about. If someone asked me that question and I had to come up with an off-the-cuff response, it would be this…

Continue Reading “Miss South Carolina Teen” →

If one of those classic blunders is never to get involved in a land war in Asia, then only slightly less known is this: Never COMPARE your own land war to a land war in Asia.

I mean, lord almighty, George, this is just basic debating tactics. You avoid negative associations. It doesn’t matter that you’re trying to sell the notion that, if we pull out of Iraq, then people will die as happened in Vietnam. (Let us even put aside that people are already dying, and will continue to do so whether we’re there or not, the only difference being that if we’re there then we’re the ones dying. And if you’d been so dámņëd concerned about people’s lives, maybe you’d actually have paid attention to everybody who was trying to point out how screwed up Iraq was going to become BEFORE you got us there.)

The problem is that if you mention Iraq and Vietnam in the same breath, the details and shadings of your point will fall away. Days later, all that most people are going to remember is Iraq being equated with Vietnam. And that is a Very Bad Thing as far as you’re concerned. You don’t WANT people making that association. It’s the very association that you and your people have been trying to AVOID people making.

And now you’ve sent them right to it.

In the words of a famous Ghostbuster when faced with his partner’s faulty strategy that unleashed a gigantic monster upon them: “Good thinking, Ray.”

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We’re back from Cape Cod.

The writing course went better than I could have hoped. Dave Seidman, who’s taught courses on comic book writing, gave me some pointers and direction as to what to do, so that helped a good deal. But what really worked out was the quality of students I had. It wasn’t a huge class–it’s the first time that they’ve had a comic book writing course there–but this was a case of quality versus quantity as story concepts and script ideas were batted around and the students actually helped each other in developing their various scripts. A special guest came by on Friday: Paul Levitz, who happened to be on vacation with his family in Cape Cod. He spoke to the class about the business side of comic books (who better?) and joined in our group discussion about “Watchmen” (which is a terrific work to analyze as part of a class since it’s such a textbook vision of how to do comics right.)

Overall it was a great experience.

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My last issue of “friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” it’s the Spidey/JJJ confrontation that’s literally years in the making. Whad’ja think?

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I am currently up in Cape Cod, about to embark on teaching a week long course on writing comics at the Cape Cod Writers Conference. This is genuinely new territory for me. I’ve done single session lessons on story breakdowns and such, but never five ninety-minute lessons. Kath keeps telling me I’ll be fine, and I’m hoping she’s right. That once I’m up and talking to the class, all my trepidations will vanish.

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