Wondercon

Wondercon was a relatively small convention the first time I attended it with Len, probably in 1992 or 1993. It was held in the convention center in Oakland, walking distance from some decent restaurants on the Bay. Noel Wolfman and I would spend the days visiting antique shops in Oakland or go across the bridges to visit San Francisco proper or maybe go north to Sausalito.

We went relatively frequently when the convention picked up at least part of our hotel costs to have Len in attendance. He went without me sometimes when I was too busy for work, and then he had many long gaps in attendance, during which time the convention moved across the Bay to the Moscone Center and the convention would no long kick in on the rooms.

Last year, Len was once again invited to be a guest and I took several days off from work to drive up to San Francisco and enjoy the vacation. Things had changed. It was approaching Comicon size with some 50,000 people expected. It was the kind of event where you had to make plans to meet with people, because you weren't going to run into them anywhere. (The only time we saw Neil Gaiman was at his panel, even though we were in the same hotel.) We were actually assigned a couple of minions (for which we were grateful) who managed to make sure we got lunch while we manned a guest table on the show floor or who watched out for stuff when we went to panels.

Because of Mark Evanier (in the photo with Len before the interview he did at Wondercon), we also got to see Beach Blanket Babylon, which has been running since I lived at Stanford in 1974-75, but which we had never seen. Hysterical, but the wigs and costumes were the truly amazing part. We saw a few friends we normally don't get to see and we had some notable meals. We met the "Goths" from the Amazing Race (which was on the air at the time and they hadn't yet been eliminated) and it was the first time that strangers came up to me because the recognized me from Jeopardy! Having had such a good time, we resolved to return this year.

Well, we did return, but not to San Francisco. Renovations at the Moscone meant the convention couldn't be there, so the con-com, the same people who run Comic-con, decided to give Anaheim a try. That made it a no-brainer for us to attend, and we even brought Michael along for the weekend.

The Anaheim Convention Center has grown significantly since the last time the World Science Fiction Convention was held there (I think around 2006, but I'd have to look at photographs to be sure), and we don't get down to Disneyland very often any more. The convention was well attended, but it was only one of three events being held that weekend (one of the others was a huge cheerleading competition and I can't remember what the third was), so parking was dreadful (at least we had hotel parking) and getting anything to eat in a hurry was next to impossible.

There was one guest I was intent upon meeting at the convention: Joe Hill. I'm a big fan of his Tweets and I had been following him for quite a while.  Since Len has known his father since they were comic fan boys in the 1960s, I figured it was a good bet that we would meet him.  As it happens, Joe was a huge fan of Len's and invited us out to dinner with his publisher and some friends the first night of the convention. It was the best meal of the weekend, and the conversation was sparkling.

Joe's the one standing with Len. Joe and his friend Jason Ciaramrella (sitting next to me in the photo) found out about my run on Jeopardy! and peppered me with questions about it. We also talked about Joe's father's experience on the Jeopardy! Celebrity Tournament of Champions many years ago. Oh, right, burying important information (if you can't tell by the clear resemblance): Joe's father is Stephen King.

Wondercon was the first opportunity for DC to promote Before Watchmen, the somewhat controversial project which will be published over 38 weeks, starting in June.

Len is writing one of the books, Ozymandias, and the original pirate serial that runs two pages at the back of every one of the 38 issues, The Crimson Corsair.

The thing that happens at conventions is that we run into people who live very close to where we do, whom we rarely see outside of the convention circuit. Here's Len with Michael Davis, a very funny and talented gentleman.

They've known each other a very long time.

Hall costumes and costume competitions are omnipresent at comic and science fiction conventions. I'm very fond of the steam punk look that is so popular these days. I haven't yet attempted to participate, though Len has.

This group of people were hanging around in the halls on Sunday, just before we left to go home. I love the jaunty hat on the woman and the grenade launcher on the fellow on the left. Len's been pulling together pieces of a costume over the past couple of years. He particularly likes the proto ray guns that look like the come from Jules Verne. We have several of them on display at the house, the most beautiful of which comes from Weta, Peter Jackson's design house.

Next year? We're not sure where Wondercon will be. If it is back in San Francisco, we might go. If it is in Anaheim, we will most certainly attend. This is going to be a major travel year for Len. I've already traveled to Chicago with him for Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) where he was a guest and we got to see my niece perform at Steppenwolf. He followed that with trips to Vancouver and Dallas and will be off to Albuquerque in two weeks, Toronto in August, Montreal in September, and New York in October. There's also an invitation to London in February. And we'll be in San Diego for Comic-con in July.

Vistors

Last evening, as we were getting ready to go out for dinner, I heard one of my dogs barking. It was a different kind of bark than he usually makes. I took a peek and saw he was standing at the kitchen door and calling out periodically. I asked my son if there was something in the back yard. Turns out that there was:

I'm pretty sure it's the same breeding pair of mallards I saw strolling across a neighbor's lawn last week.

After the fire at the old house, as the place was sitting in limbo before the actual rebuilding began, a pair of mallards started hanging out in the back yard.  The first time I discovered them, it startled me, but then I got used to them swimming around the pool and looking for bugs under the cedar trees along our back wall. Basically, with no dogs around, they could live in peace with a big swimming hole (they didn't mind the algae build up) and a certain level of shade from a tree that had branches hanging to the water.

With three Golden Retrievers in the yard, on of which is quite aware she's a water dog, the new house is hardly duck heaven. But they got a nice swim in and got to walk around Maui East for a while, much to the frustration of the dogs in the kitchen window.. By the time we got home, they were gone, but I expect they may show up somewhere in the neighborhood again.

Beltane Moon

My digital camera like to argue with me. When I set it on manual and tell it that the exposure is the same as on a sunny day, it refuses to release the shutter. "You can't possibly be right," it says. "I've got almost 40 years of professional experience," I tell it. "I know the proper exposure is the inverse of the ISO at f/16. Dammit, listen to me!" It won't, so the image isn't as sharp as it should be because I have to fool it into releasing.

So this is the lovely moon over the San Fernando Valley tonight. I'm glad it was clear.

A Visit with Janis

Janis Ian came to town to work on an audio book of her autobiography. I was introduced to Janis in 2001 at the Philadelphia Worldcon, just as she was announcing  that she had just met Connie Willis and needed to go cry. She's a fan-girl geek at heart. We met up again the following year and have maintained a lovely friendship since then, solidified when I asked her to be my toastmistress at the 2009 Nebula Awards. Chuck Lorre, who turned out to be a huge fan of Janis' work, was my keynote speaker, and his partner in crime, Bill Prady is an even bigger Janis fan. So Janis' latest L.A. visit gave us an opportunity to get together for a taping of The Big Bang Theory. (The show ran a mere 10 days after it was shot. It's the one about Sheldon refusing to go to Amy's aunt's birthday party so he could play Star Wars on-line with the other guys.)

Here we are on the couch in the boys' living room. That's David Gerrold (who introduced me to Len Wein in 1989) and me in back of the couch and my husband, one of our "adopted daughters," Dani Dornfeld, and Janis in "Sheldon's place."

Janis wanted a photo of the forever-broken elevator. This set is redressed for each floor every time you see people using the stairs. They had to dig a hole for the down stairs on the right, because the rest of the set is on the ground floor. Penny's living room and the boy's living room flank the hall way, and those are the three permanently standing sets for the show.. The comic book shop swings with various bedrooms and Amy's stripped efficiency set was where we got to sit with the writers during part of the show.

Everyone wanted a chance to sit in "Sheldon's place." When I went to photograph Len in it, I couldn't help but notice that a copy of his DC Legacies hard back was sitting on the coffee table. I did not put it there. When we mentioned it to Bill Prady he said "we know what we're doing."

Janis was in town long enough for us to have dinner a couple of times and she even came by for a Sunday Super Supper Squad dinner. She was very impressed that I made bread and insisted on being photographed with it and Len, who had just donned his Captain America wardrobe. Yes, I am married to a 12 year old.

We're hoping Janis will be back out in L.A. to perform again sometime next year. She hasn't been out here as a singer for two or three years now. We could probably fill the audience just with our gang.

Dejah Thoris

 The golden age of science fiction is twelve. I started reading science fiction a bit earlier than that, but it set me on a journey which has taken me to wonderful places and given me amazing friendships and acquaintances. I read Edgar Rice Burroughs at exactly the right age, when I wasn't aware of his shortcomings as a writer, but I could soar on his imagination.  I loved his Mars books.

When I married Len and came out to California, our circle of friends grew to include several of the writers and the producer who were working to bring A Princess of Mars to the big screen for Disney. That movie never got made, but somehow a Pixar director got the project brought back to life and the movie hit the screen two weeks ago as John Carter.

It has been hailed as a flop of the magnitude of Ishtar, when the problem is not the film but the Disney marketing department.

My observations of the Disney marketing department go back to the time when Len was editor-in-chief of Disney Comics. This was at the height of the comic book collecting frenzy where books were selling in the millions to people who thought they would eventually get rich selling their copy of the "Death of Superman" or an Image #1 book. You would think that Disney would be happy to support this product which appealed to kids of all ages, but you would be wrong. Disney refused to make space in its stores for the 1 square foot of space a comics dump display would take for the monthly books. Disney's in-house U.S. comic book division lasted two years and they outsourced it again. I have a pretty low opinion of the Disney marketing division when it comes to supporting anything but the core Mickey Mouse characters and theme parks.

The first problem with marketing John Carter is the title. Isn't John Carter a character on ER? (Just another example of where Michael Creighton stole things.) My friend, the original producer whose name does not appear anywhere, not even in a credit to thank him for getting ERB, Inc. to agree to a Disney deal back in the 1980s, says that was part of the original agreement and that ERB, Inc. wanted that title for trademark purposes. ERB, Inc. is notorious for using trademark law as a way of maintaining control of a character where the copyright has long expired. (You can find plenty of examples where they've done this with Tarzan over the years.) As I said, big mistake number one. From a trademark stand point, the title could still have been big-letters-John-Carter, but it should have added a subtitle indicating that it is a series (and bolstering the trademark claim.) JOHN CARTER: A Princess of Mars would have been perfect.  JOHN CARTER: Under the Moons of Mars (the original title in serial form) would also have worked. If I hadn't turned down Danton Burrough's offer of employment 7 years ago--a short story for another time--maybe I could have convinced somebody this would be a very good idea. Oh, well.

The second problem with the marketing of John Carter was the lack of any reference to Dejah Thoris, either as a kick-ass scientist-warrior or as the love interest of the film.

Rumor has it that Disney did not want "princess" in the title, because boys won't go to a "princess" movie. They didn't want "Mars" because of some other flop they had. Disney had its head in a dark place about this one. LOTS of twelve year old boys read A Princess of Mars growing up. Depending on their current age, they will talk about covers by Frank Frazetta (below), Michael Whelan, or another artist. Some of them will even admit to entering puberty upon seeing those covers. As for "Mars," maybe if the other film had been less of a POS, it would not have flopped.

 I saw exactly one trailer for John Carter. It did not make me want to see the film. But we went anyway, with some trepidation because it wasn't going to be the film Ted and Terry or Melinda wrote for Michael, and we knew where the broken hearts were. Knowing Michael Chabon wrote the film we were going to see was encouraging, and seeing how some writers we knew with advanced screenings felt encouraged us.

We loved the film. I thought it started out slowly, but it reached an emotional hook and carried me through to the end. John Carter looked just fine, although he lacked the wear-and-tear I pictured a Civil War vet from the south would have. Tars Tarkis and Sola were wonderful, and who could resist Woola. And I loved, loved, loved Dejah Thoris.

In all the time Princess of Mars was part of the dinner discussions with our friends, I don't remember us ever taking about who would play Dejah Thoris. We spent plenty of time on casting John Carter. Disney wanted Tom Cruise, which we all thought was a terrible idea. Tom Hanks wanted the part before he had two Academy Awards, but Disney said no (I love Tom Hanks, but I don't see him in a period piece.) Michael (the producer) wanted Viggo Mortensen, before he did Aragorn, after seeing him in A Walk on The Moon. That would have been brilliant casting. I pushed for Hugh Jackman from the moment we saw him as Wolverine. He turned the part down. He could have had two franchises. So we got Gambit instead of Wolverine. I can live with that.

But Dejah Thoris? It's not the kind of part a lot of actresses get to play. Carie Fisher played her in Star Wars (and make no mistake about where George Lucas stole a lot of Star Wars) and Karen Allen played her in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think that Lynn Collins, whom I had only seen previously in Wolverine, did a great job. Smart, brave, honorable. A great role model for girls, much as Hermione is in Harry Potter (as opposed to that idiot Bella in the Twilight franchise.)

I want my Dejah Thoris Disney Princess Barbie Doll. My husband (and every male I know) wants a Woola stuffie. But Disney didn't even bother to do merchandise based on this film, which says to me they scuttled it from the get-go. Nevertheless, I think you should all gather up the family and go see John Carter.  You really will enjoy it. It is a beautifully designed and executed swashbuckling film. And maybe this fan trailer will do what the Disney trailers didn't do for me: make you want to see the picture.

Kvelling

My niece Kristina Valada-Viars just opened in her first play at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Reviews were posted last night in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere, and I am just so proud of her. The play is Time Stands Still and it runs until mid-May. She's wearing the blue scarf in the photo below. Yes, that's her natural hair (just like her mother's.)

Kristina was an understudy for Steppenwolf's New York production of August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best new play and garnered a bunch of other Tony Awards. She made her Broadway debut in that show, performing at various times in the three different roles she understudied.

She worked with Austin Pendleton, her director in Time Stands Still, in an off-Broadway play by Romulus Linney called Punch Drunk Love at the end of her run in August: Osage County. In the photograph above, you can see why reviewers call her "leggy" or, sometimes, coltish. She's got legs that go from here to there and back again.

The photographs are publicity stills I pulled down from the Internet. If I knew who took them, I'd be happy to give credit. If the lower one was shot by Joan Marcus, "Hi, Joanie. Do you still have that picture of me with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in your files?"

HE Himself

I first photographed Harlan Ellison about 10 years before we were actually introduced. It was at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston in 1980. I had started shooting for the Washington Post only a few months earlier and I ran into the illustrious Michael Dirda who was planning an article for the Sunday book supplement. We hooked up and the WP ran several of my photographs, including one I got of Harlan talking to a small group of people after his full-house performance.

I've seen Harlan in action many times since then, usually from a much better vantage point because we've been close friends ever since I photographed him in 1989 and the photograph rather knocked his socks off.  You can find it--illegally and in poor resolution--on the Internet when you do a Google Pictures search under his name. It is usually among the first that come up. He's sitting on the back of a chair in strong directional lighting. Somebody scanned it from the back of the Harlan Ellison Hornbook. I had a dispute with the LA Times when they illegally used it one day, proving the value of an actual copyright registration when you want a quick resolution to copyright infringement.

Harlan hasn't been doing too many appearances lately, but he recently did two evenings at the Cinefamily/Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles for an SRO crowd. One was in November, the other was last week. Screenwriter Josh Olson (see, Josh, I spelled it right this time) "interviewed" him, which means Josh occasionally got to say something so Harlan could go off on a tangent. In theory, both nights were about Harlan's work as a television writer, and a very fast research in the projection booth managed to get things up on the screen to illuminate the "discussion." Another theme of the more recent evening was the publication of a spectacular reprint of "The Glass Teat" and "The Other Glass Teat," two collections of television (and, frankly, political) commentary articles Harlan wrote for the Free Press many years ago. Read it. The issues haven't changed.

A bit more than halfway through the evening, there was a commotion as this guy came up to the stage muttering and using his cell phone to record things. For a moment I thought it was a fan with a lack of manners, and then I realized it was Patton Oswalt doing a great turn as a fan with no manners. Patton took over "interviewing" duties from Josh for a bit, and for whatever reason, I can't seem to upload the four minutes I caught on video. Trust me, it was hysterical.

Proud Kiva Plug

I've reached a point where I have no idea how long it has been since I've posted a blog. This has gotten so bad that I didn't even check to see that I had comments awaiting action. So I apologize to Mike Garrett, who wanted advice about appearing on Jeopardy! I hope he had a great run on the show. According to the J-Archive, his episode(s) (which shot in mid-December), has (have) not yet run, so I can at least look forward to watching him compete.

And congratulations are in order for Amy Stephenson,  a fellow member of the Friends of Bob Harris lending group on Kiva, who had a three-day run on Jeopardy! earlier this month. She'll be contributing some of her earnings to our worth efforts when her check shows up late this spring. Thus far, our group has loaned over $1.5 million and Bob himself has loaned over $100,000.

Bob Harris himself is on the down-hill side of finishing his book about micro-loans called The First International Bank of Bob. I highly recommend his previous books Prisoner of Trebekistan and Who Hates Whom.  While I sometimes feel I've known Bob forever, we met only about four years ago. Before that I "knew" him from his many appearances on Jeopardy! as a regular contestant, a Tournament of Champions contestant and a contestant on two different special Jeopardy! championship series and from the radio commentaries he used to do for KNX radio that may have been syndicated around the country. Bob and I also both have degrees from Case Western Reserve University (his is an undergrad degree and mine is from the law school) but we were there about 10 years apart. Should he ever appear in your area to do a talk or a book signing, go.  He's very, very funny.

Because of Bob, I joined Kiva and talked about it when I appeared on the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions in 2010. I've made 80 loans so far, all of them to women who are trying to improve their lives and the lives of their families in something in excess of 30 countries. It's a great way to remind myself that I am helping to improve the world $25 at a time with money that can then be re-loaned upon repayment.  Feel free to join me.

S'mother

I met Adam Chester because he's an amazing pianist who provided the accompaniment for What's My Line Live on Stage (for which I became the production photographer.)  Adam's accompanied Elton John's band in rehearsals and sung with him in concert.  A few years ago, Adam set up a website where he posted some of the  1300 letters he's received from his over-protective mother over the years.

I understand over-protective mothers.  When I went off to college, mine handed me a 1 pound bag of sugar packets, so people wouldn't spike my breakfast cereal sugar with marijuana.  I am not kidding.

Adam found a publisher (or a publisher found him) and, just in time for Mother's Day, a selection of the letters appeared in book form as S'mother.  Last night, Adam and his mother Joan appeared on The George Lopez  Show.

I don't give my cell phone number to my mother either.

Reruns

I wasn't home last night to see it myself, but Harlan Ellison called me to tell me I was on Jeopardy! reruns. If your local station does Jeopardy! reruns on the weekend, check next week.  I have no idea if they are running all five of my days of regular play or not, but if they are, I'll be on for the next four weekends.  I was disappointed when I seemed to be skipped over between the runs of two other people who were on the Tournament of Champions with me, but I wasn't the only one who got skipped.  I'm hoping that we'll see Col. Dave after my run.  And I'm also hoping that last year's Tournament of Champions gets its two week run during the weekday Jeopardy! reruns this summer.  Original episodes generally end this week or next.

The reason why we weren't home is that we decided to catch Green Lantern last night. Len had seen it already and I decided to give it a try despite the critical hashing because I liked what we saw up in San Diego.  Also, I wanted a chance to see one of Len's characters up on the screen, which he did not see when he went to the 3-D screening.  Sometimes, it just takes two sets of eyes, because Len did not see Walt Simonson in the Valhalla scene of Thor on his own either.

First of all, the movie is getting a bum rap.  It's quite entertaining and Ryan Reynolds is charming. It's not X-men: First Class, but few superhero films are.

We saw Galius Zed in one of the early GL Corps scenes peeking out from behind Hal Jordon, so you can pick up your GL Galius Zed action figure and help pay for Casa Wein-Valada.