I always give the customs people at Amsterdam a good laugh. . . . → Read More: Roming Again]]> Having gotten married and having moved all our worldly possessions to one flammable location, and placed them under the protection of a pair of fire-breathing slavering beasts and a gang of meth-addled bikers, Diana and I flew off to Italy for a few weeks of workingvacationmoon.

I always give the customs people at Amsterdam a good laugh. Last year it was my underwear. This year they were curious about an electrical device cunningly hidden in my copy of Norwich’s History of Venice. I guess it looked suspicious on the x-ray when they saw I had a flat electronic device, about the size of a page, secreted inside a book. When the young woman searching my bag realized it was an e-reader, she laughed almost hysterically and had to show all her co-workers: Hey, an e-book inside a paper book! At that point I decided not to leave her a tip.

This year the Castello d’Engitudine is a palatial residence, just off Via Nomentana. We’re very happy with it. It’s about a mile from Piazza Bologna, where Centro Linguistico Italiano Dante Alighieri is located–that’s the school hosting this year’s ASA Italy program.

Last night we wandered down to Pizza San Marino, a pretty good pizzeria marred by some mediocre service. Our waitron would disappear mysteriously for long stretches of time, but we were helped out in the interval by other people on the staff. And their Pizza Capricciosa was good enough to cover a multitude of sins.

Today we met some of the great people at CLIDA who, it just occurred to me, might not want to be blogged about, so I’ll ask them before I mention them here.

Then I thought we’d hop on the subway and run around the city a bit. But the gates on the station at Piazza Bologna were down. Okay, I figured–it’s probably maintenance or something; we’ll take a bus to the next stop. But the buses were bizarrely slow, even for Rome, and we ended up walking to the next Metro stop… which was also shuttered.

My mind was aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention, and not in a good way. I didn’t know if I could run the ASA Italy program from Piazza Bologna if the Metro B line was down and the buses decided to be unreliable.

When we finally got to Stazione Termini, the answer was staring me in the face:

It’s one of Italy’s patented one-day transit strikes. No problem! At least as of 5 PM. I talked to one of the union reps who was fielding questions from angry tourists, and he assured me it was just for the day. He also declined to have his photo taken, but you can hardly blame him. This is not a day when transit workers are very popular in Rome.

We took a taxi home and I laid in some supplies.

Because you buy necessities first, then luxuries.

1. I want to move.

2. I hate to move.

3. I ought to move.

4. I hate to move.

5. I have to move.

6. Find a place to move to.

7. I will pack up my things. Tomorrow, sometime. Or the day after.

8. Oh. I move tomorrow. I guess it’s time to pack.

9. So. Many. . . . → Read More: Moved to be moody, and moody to be moved]]> THE SIXTEEN STAGES OF MOVING

1. I want to move.

2. I hate to move.

3. I ought to move.

4. I hate to move.

5. I have to move.

6. Find a place to move to.

7. I will pack up my things. Tomorrow, sometime. Or the day after.

8. Oh. I move tomorrow. I guess it’s time to pack.

9. So. Many. Boxes. Of. Books.

10. I hate to move.

11. How important is a cleaning deposit, anyway?

12. Ow.

13. I hate to move.

14. Moved.

15. I’m glad I moved.

15b. But I am never moving again.

15c. And next time I’ll do it so cunningly that there will be no stress whatsoever.

16. I want to move.

It seems crazy to give a spoiler alert about movies a couple generations old, so I’ll cut to the chase. Both stories end with the . . . → Read More: Make Womb! Make Womb!]]> As fate and my innamorata would have it, I watched (within the space of a few days) two movies based on old Ira Levin novels: The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby.

It seems crazy to give a spoiler alert about movies a couple generations old, so I’ll cut to the chase. Both stories end with the main character, a woman, happily at home in the heart of her family, and in an extended and supportive community.

In other words, these are nightmares.

Do the stories need to be told? In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary (played by an infantile Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (a snakelike and disturbing turn by John Cassavetes) move into a rent-controlled apartment in New York. The delightfully wacky couple next door (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) are the leaders of a Satanic cult who are hoping to bring about the birth of the Antichrist. They recruit Guy to their cause fairly easily: he’s a struggling actor and they use their magical powers to destroy someone standing in his way. Then, with Guy’s help, they drug Rosemary and the devil shows up to impregnate her, in what is the dumbest moment in the movie. (Certain things are more disturbing if they’re implied.) The second half of the movie follows Rosemary as she catches on, which happens very… slow…ly. So… s.l.o.w.l.y… I found it difficult to like the character or sympathize with her. The Satanists provided some nihilistic entertainment whenever they showed up, though. In the end, Rosemary is confronted with her child and accepts him, to the approval of all. She is, after all, his mother.

Polanski directed the movie–a man who knows something about creepiness from the inside out. Rosemary’s dreams were nicely unsettling collections of images. And when Rosemary picks up the issue of Time magazine with the (in)famous cover-story IS GOD DEAD? it was a very sneaky moment of ironic horror. She doesn’t know it, but there’s no question for her. That is hell, nor is she out of it.

The camera is on Farrow most of the time. That’s a weakness in the film, as her character was very passive and Farrow–um–played the character much as written. But there’s a lot of creepy interest generated by the supporting players: Ruth Gordon (who picked up her sole Oscar as a supporting actress for this role), Ralph Bellamy (as the warmly officious Dr. Sapirstein who looks like that fellow in the movies–you know–Ralph Bellamy), and John Cassavetes (as the wife-pimping Satanist and sometime television actor). Almost all the Satanists were familiar faces, in a third-tier sort of way. (One of them was Phil Leeds, for instance, whose last semi-regular role was Judge Happy Boyle on Ally McBeal.) When they shout, “Hail, Satan!” or crap like that, it felt like I was watching a sitcom broadcast from Hell. That is the best and the worst thing I can say about this strange and disturbing movie.

In The Stepford Wives, Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) and her husband Walter move to the village of Stepford Connecticut. The village has a bunch of mindlessly happy homemakers and a crew of smug upper-class husbands who all belong to the Stepford Men’s Association. Joanna, a woman with arty ambitions (she wants to be a photographer) feels stifled.

Joanna falls in with kindred spirit and patented insto-friend Bobbie Markowe (played by a rather glorious Paula Prentiss). Together they try to bring Stepford some consciousness-raising. (Remember that, kids? No? Oh, well–you can always google it.) But they get no takers: all the Stepford wives are contentedly empty and willing to spend their lives in the service of their husbands almost as if they’re robots or something.

When Bobbie is robotified, Joanna knows she’s next and she tries to get away. But her kids have been taken away. She’s told that they are being kept in the headquarters of the Men’s Association and she goes there to get them. But it’s a trick. The head of the Men’s Association patiently explains to Joanna that he knew she would come there, because she’s a good mother. Then she is killed by her robot double, and good old Walter gets the robot wife he thinks he deserves and (let’s face it) probably does.

The director, Bryan Forbes, is by no means as skilled an operator as Roman Polanski. (I’m not endorsing the character of the famed director and rapist. I’m just saying he knows how to make a creepfest.) But Forbes does the job pretty well, and the idyllic stills of a happy and inhuman family running behind the credits were a nicely ironic touch.

Plus, the robot-Joanna was different from the real Joanna in two significant and disturbing ways. Its eyes were darkly vacant orbs, and it had cartoonishly large breasts (as opposed to Ms. Ross’ sleeker frame). You can imagine her husband Walter putting in his order for this thing, looking at the body of Katharine Ross (de gustibus, and all that, but she was and is an undeniably beautiful woman) and saying, “But I want it to have bigger tits. LIKE THIS.” It was funny and sad, unexpected and yet, in retrospect, inevitable.

There are some good performances by the supporting cast here, too, especially Paula Prentiss (before and after her robotification), and some of the men who show understandable grief and guilt even as they cooperate in the murder of their wives.

In a way, both these stories are the same story. These women are destroyed by their identities as mothers. Rosemary, a passive cipher of a character, can’t imagine herself as anything but the mother of her baby. She can reject her husband, when she finds out what he’s done, but she can’t reject the bouncing baby Antichrist. Joanna is much more decisive and prepared to act, in defense of herself and others. But the need to recover her children lures her into the final trap, where she surrenders almost as willingly as Rosemary.

In the 37 years since The Stepford Wives, though, society has changed and men no longer consider women as mere commodities for their own gratification.

Ha ha. I kid. But I think this nihilistic view of motherhood is both the biggest strength and weakness of the films. We can’t afford to assent to this dark hellish view of something essential to the survival of the species. But we can’t deny that there is a threat to the individual in something so transformative, so enwebbed in obligations to others.

I called him up to commiserate. I said, “This is starting to look like a cultural bias against Minnesota expatriates! The Nobel committee has some explaining to . . . → Read More: What a Nobel Mind is Here O’erthrown…]]> The Nobel Prize Committee passed over me and Bob Dylan again, in spite of my tireless efforts on behalf of American sword-and-sorcery and whatever it is that Dylan does.

I called him up to commiserate. I said, “This is starting to look like a cultural bias against Minnesota expatriates! The Nobel committee has some explaining to do!”

He implicitly agreed, saying, “Who the hell are you and how did you get this number? Stop calling or I’ll have you arrested.”

It’s enigmatic crap like this that’s made him the prophet of a generation, maybe even a generation and a half.

And no Nobel yet. Amazing.

Going to see my baby there.

Actually, I went down there with her:

so sweet, so warm, so fair.

We saw/heard these guys there, among others: Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. They were great.

Ten years ago today I was teaching a Latin class when the news came in about the terrorist . . . → Read More: James Enge Decennial Blues]]>

Went down to the Black Swamp Arts Festival.

Going to see my baby there.

Actually, I went down there with her:

so sweet, so warm, so fair.

We saw/heard these guys there, among others: Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. They were great.

Ten years ago today I was teaching a Latin class when the news came in about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. I felt then that we should have gone on with the class, although it didn’t work out that way. (People had people that they were worried about, and that has to come first, even before things as important as Latin.)

But I still kind of feel that way. I don’t believe, I never believed, the “9/11 changed everything!” slogan. That was used by a political faction who wanted to ram through a partisan program of high deficits, perpetual war and the slashing of both civil liberties and social services. They succeeded, and we are not better off for it. We should have avenged our dead, kept them in memory and moved on.

9/11 changed some things but not others. One of the things it didn’t change was this: living well is the best revenge. Music is a part of that and, in extreme cases, dancing.

I flew in on Friday evening, met Diana, my partner in crime, at the airport, then rolled into town to check in. The con hotels were all full when I booked my room in July, so we ended up at the Regency Suites, three stops north of . . . → Read More: Dragon*Con 2011…]]> … was a blast. That’s what it’s for, I guess.

I flew in on Friday evening, met Diana, my partner in crime, at the airport, then rolled into town to check in. The con hotels were all full when I booked my room in July, so we ended up at the Regency Suites, three stops north of the con on the subway.

Last year’s check-in process was a megillah, wrapped in a disaster, inside a snafu. I was dreading something like that or worse this year… but instead I sailed through and got my (pre-registered) badge in minutes. NOT HOURS. Even the same-day registration lines were efficient and swift-moving. I have no idea who is responsible for the change, but they should get some kind of Nobel Prize. (In Peace? Economics? That has a “con” in it, anyway.)

That night we had dinner at the French American Brasserie. It was pretty good, I guess. (From a Minnesotan, that’s a four star review.)

It was great to see Lou Officially-the-best-longform-editor-and-he-has-the-Hugo-to-prove-it Anders, whom I hadn’t seen since before he won the Hugo for Best Editor, Longform, which he won recently at Worldcon, where they give out the Hugos. He regaled me with tales of Renovation and Armadillocon.

Also great to see the Pyr/Prometheus crew out in full force this year: Jill and Lynn from Prometheus, and Rene Sears, just starting her second year on the editorial staff at Pyr, and new Pyr copyeditor Gabrielle Harbowy.

I nobbed and hobnobbed with fellow Pyr authors Sam Sykes, Ari Marmell, Erin Hoffman (and her husband Jason, a great guy), Clay & Susan Griffith, Andrew Mayer and also Jon Sprunk, whose fiendish plot known only as the Great Sprunkening proceeds apace.

I even signed a few books at my signings, and had some great conversations with readers about history, werewolves, zeppelins, magic, and other related matters.

I had no panels scheduled for the convention, but I ended up at two anyway: the “Pyr: Burning Bright” panel on Sunday afternoon, and the panel on “Blood and Steel: tales of swords, sorcery & grim adventure”, which I was invited to crash by Lou. Was I going to argue with him? The man has a Hugo.

At the Pyr panel, the audience and I simultaneously got the first glimpse of the cover for A Guile of Dragons, the new Morlock novel due out next summer. (The first draft is done. It’s pretty rough in spots, but it looks like I’ll make my deadline. I don’t post updates here, usually, because, eh, I don’t usually do that.) The cover looks really cool… I guess you’ll have to take my word for it, for the time being.

The sword and sorcery panel was interesting. There was a general sense in the room that genre distinctions don’t matter. I sort of disagree with this (although I think people can make too much of them), so I expect I made a contrarian jerk of myself. Lots of good things were said, by panellists and audience members (which included Moses Siregar); it was a very freeform question-and-answer thing.

The thing everyone agreed on, even me, was that grit was the thing. Whether it was S&S or epic fantasy, grittier backgrounds and grimmer, more compromised characters are now the thing.

I agreed, but then I found myself thinking twice. If everyone agrees on something, it must be wrong! Besides, grit is becoming so universal that it’s less like dirt and more like those industrial-colored cosmetics some people wear. If everyone is zigging, maybe it’s time to zag. So from now on all my stories will be about parfait gentil knyghtes. “Down these mean streets a man must go…” etc. Until I get bored with that.

The lines for media panels were nightmarishly long; we didn’t even think about seeing the Shat or any of the other big names. But the Art Show was fun–the usual mix of the awful (“Look! I can draw tits! VERY BIG TITS!”) and the weirdly wonderful. Michael Whelan was the Artist Guest of Honor and he had some beautiful pieces on display. There was some interesting creepy/cartoony art by Gus Fink and Dante DeStefano also.

One of the best things about Dragon*Con, but the hardest to communicate, is the otherworldly carnival atmosphere. There were some guys running around with protest signs, for instance, doing a pretty good parody of those Westboro scumbags.

Then there are the guys in costume. They varied from the perfunctory (“I’ll throw on a Star Trek shirt!”) to the kind of thing people work on for the better part of a year. Here’s my partner-in-crime posing with Dr. Rockzo and Zazz Blammymatazz. I wish I had an audio: that guy had the Leonard-Rockstein voice down pat.

And here’s Diana being terrified by a Dalek, as we were on our way to dinner with the Pyr crew.

A wildly fun weekend. I would say attending next year is a sure thing… but I don’t think I can bring myself to pass up on Chicon. The World SF Convention hasn’t often been (and won’t often be), that close to the Fortress of Engitude. I’ll probably wait until too late and make my decision with a coin, as usual.