Happy Birthday, MTV

Who killed the video star? Was it MTV? (Pictured: Video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles)Wait, I’m how old?

Yep, MTV — that’s “Music Television” for those of you who may have forgotten what the acronym “MTV” stands for — just turned 30 years old yesterday. It was on Aug. 1, 1981 that MTV aired “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. Since that time, MTV indeed did sort of kill the radio star. Or, at least, MTV ushered in a new age of image-, not music-based, music consumption.

Once upon a time, MTV more or less controlled the music industry, or at least the popular understanding of music and its increasingly coiffed image. If you recall, MTV played music videos hosted by on-air hosts known as “VJs.” Remember Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn? Wasn’t J.J. really annoying?

Kids like me growing up in a small, rural town didn’t have cable. So to catch MTV, I had to hang out at my friends’ houses in the next bigger town to see the likes of David Bowie, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Culture Club, The Fixx, The Police, and The Cars strut down the street, play their guitars on rooftops and enact some hokey drama involving street gangs, locker rooms or candles blowing in the wind.

The channel quickly has its imitators: HBO had a program called Video Jukebox, SuperStation WTBS created Night Tracks, NBC launched their MTV-like Friday Night Videos, ABC had its ABC Rocks, and TBS started the Cable Music Channel, then sold it to MTV, who turned it into VH1.

In its day, MTV had a profound impact on the music industry and popular culture. But by the 1990s, the video had lost much of its appeal and novelty, and MTV began programming (and pioneering) reality TV series such as “The Real World,” “Jackass,” and talk shows such as “Loveline” and “The Jon Stewart Show,” and later, celebrity-based reality shows like “The Osbournes.”

The times they have changed. I prefer to think of those days of the 1980s,when like parrots we’d repeat the slogan “I want my MTV” and stay up late watching Van Halen, RATT, and Def Leppard videos (in between watching Heavy Metal for the 7th time and checking to see if the signal from the Playboy Channel was still scrambled. Yep, still scrambled).

Here’s a link to the other 10 “first” videos that ever aired that day: Aug. 1, 1981.

The occasion of MTV’s  anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on how we consume music and the Hollywood star system. And what changes the Internet has already wrought. It’s YouTube and Facebook that monopolizes our time. Do people even listen to the radio any more?

Meanwhile, is it fair to say that iTunes killed the video star?

[This post originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad]

On His Birthday (Today), You Can Help the Memory of Gary Gygax Last Forever

[Originally appeared on wired.com's GeekDad]

Logo for the Gygax Memorial Fund. Also the Gygax family heraldry, this shield was used by the knight on the cover of the AD&D DM's Guide and was the coat of arms of the city-state Fax in the campaign setting of Greyhawk.Today (July 27) is the birthday of Gary Gygax, who would have been 73 this year had he not passed from this earth in 2008 to dance forever on the astral plane, which (according to the DM’s Guide) is a realm of thought and memory, and also the place the gods go when they die or have been forgotten.

Gygax, D&D’s co-founder, is gone, but certainly not forgotten. One way he’s being immortalized is in bronze and stone. Previously I wrote for GeekDad about the Gygax Memorial Fund and the increasing likelihood that a monument in his honor will be built in Gary’s hometown of Lake Geneva, WI. The city has granted parkland for the memorial, and the fund has incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Now the next step is to raise money, and the hope is for much of the dough to be croudfunded, with this year’s Gen Con and Gary’s birthday as the impetus.

D&D die-hard and occasional Geek Dad contributor Tavis Allisontells me that at this year’s Gen Con (Aug. 4-7), the fundraising for the monument begins in earnest. Gen Con, you see, was Gary’s baby.

Over at the booth for ye Old School Renaissance Group (booth #1541), a collective of publishers and fans working to carry the torch of Dungeons & Dragons the way Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson imagined it, Mr. Allison says Gary’s widow, Gail Gygax, will be “talking about conversations she had with her husband before his death about how he wanted to be remembered, the resulting vision for the statue, and the goals of the Memorial Fund.”

And I can’t imagine anyone who stops by to drop some spare change in the bucket will be refused.

This illustration by Erol Otus is the cover of a new book Cheers, Gary a collection of Gary's correspondence with his fans. The image is Gary, as the wizard seen on the front of the original D&D box set.To encourage you to give, Tavis says that cool donor rewards include T-shirts with the Gygax Memorial logo, and a book calledCheers, Gary “which selects the best of his correspondence with fans at the EN World Q&A threads.” Editor Paul Hughes will be signing books, which have an Erol Otus illustration on the front cover depicting Gary as the wizard seen on the front of the original D&D box set.

The big goal?  Raise $500,000 via Kickstarter. Allison thinks it’s doable, with your help, of course.

“I think there is real potential for the Fund to achieve the $500K goal for this campaign through crowdfunding alone. This would be the most ambitious Kickstarter goal in history, but it’s not unprecedented and if Gary doesn’t have ten times the dedication than Robocop does I’ll eat my dice bag,” Tavis says.

To help continue the Fund’s momentum, and in recognition of everything Gary meant to gamers everywhere, Allison asks for your assistance in getting the word out about these efforts. Even if you can’t make it to Gen Con, please pay tribute to Gary’s birthday and the role D&D played in your life by posting news to your blogs, social networks, and communities that the Gygax Memorial Fund will be at Gen Con booth number #1541, and that folks can donate in memory of Gary at Gen Con, or directly on the website,http://www.gygaxmemorialfund.com/.

See you in the dungeon.

‘Trollhunter’ director pays homage to Norwegian folklore

The troll hunters approach a massive “Jotnar" troll[This article originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

by Ethan Gilsdorf

Eighteenth- and 19th-century Norwegians believed in trolls. These huge humanoids wandered wild, marginal places and wastelands and caused trouble when they encountered humans.

Nowadays, no one believes in trolls. But they still haunt and inhabit Norway’s folkloric consciousness, a still-pristine landscape of woods, mountains, and fiord lands, largely as comic characters. Think of the dim-witted troll in the Norwegian tale “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,’’ easily tricked by the goats and the butt of jokes.

“Trollhunter,’’ which opens Friday, dusts off those fairy tales and updates them with a fresh, 21st-century coat of adventure and suspense — and ironic reality check.

Trolls exist.

But “fairy tales don’t always match reality,’’ grumbles Hans, the film’s misanthropic antihero.

Written and directed by Norwegian André Ovredal, “Trollhunter’’ shares the first-person-reportage feel of “The Blair Witch Project,’’ as well as the shaky-camera monster-movie vibe of “Cloverfield.’’ Ovredal’s vision also includes doses of Steven Spielberg’s effects-driven shock and awe, as well as that director’s prevailing mistrust of authority.

“I wanted to blend my love of ‘Indiana Jones’ with my love of trolls,’’ said Ovredal, 37, in Boston to promote his debut feature. Which explains why Hans the troll hunter wears a fedora.

As with “Blair Witch,’’ what the audience sees, ostensibly, is footage shot by students. There are three of them, investigating a series of bear killings in the wilds of Norway. They hope to interview the “poacher.’’

Finally agreeing to let the video crew follow him, the poacher is revealed to be Hans, a middle-aged, burned-out government employee working for the fictitious Troll Security Service (or TSS, an echo of the PST, Norway’s version of the CIA). His job: keep the troll population under control. Meanwhile, TSS bureaucrats devise bogus explanations — tornadoes, floods, bears — to explain any isolated troll-wrought damage or deaths.

The troll hunter is played by Norway’s most famous and controversial comedian, Otto Jespersen, known for his crass, dark sense of humor. Here, Jespersen doesn’t aim for laughs. The portrayal is straight. “There’s nothing heroic about what I do,’’ he deadpans to the wide-eyed college kids.

While the troll hunter is supposed to ensure Norwegians never learn that trolls exist, Hans eventually tires of the cover-up and lets the students document his methods. In doing so, “Trollhunter’’ manages to pay homage to Norway’s rich folklore and take jabs at government bureaucracy and politics. He complains he gets no overtime pay. After every killing, Hans must fill out a “Slayed Troll Form.’’ The current controversy over building electrical towers in Norway’s hinterlands is cleverly woven into the plot. Let’s just say those high-tension lines serve a purpose beyond bringing power to the people.

“Because Norway has such rugged landscapes, it’s not surprising that many of the creatures of their cultural lore are connected so deeply with the earth and its perils,’’ noted Sandra Hordis, a professor at Arcadia University, in Glenside, Pa., who specializes in medieval literature and folklore. “They are beings sprung from soil and stone, and have come to permeate much of the folklore of the region.’’

Trolls have given their names to natural features such as the rugged, dolomite formations called Trollholmsund and Trollstigen, a dramatic mountain road that translates as “Troll’s Ladder.’’

Ovredal, who is known in Norway as a director of commercials, and his special-effects team wanted their trolls to have idiosyncratic and distinct personalities. Their creatures aren’t the Hulk-like, Middle-earth trolls Peter Jackson brought to life, nor are they the cute, neon-haired dolls from the 1960s. These trolls were inspired by “The Fairy Tales of Asbjornsen and Moe,’’ a book from the 1850s that Ovredal’s grandparents read to him as a boy.

“I never read ‘Lord of Rings’ and never played the game D&D [Dungeons & Dragons],’’ said Ovredal. “There was a missing, collective mythology I had to create.’’

Ovredal worked out a detailed “natural history of trolls’’ as fastidious as an entry in the D&D “Monster Manual.’’ His lexicon delineates four species: the one-armed “Ringlefinch,’’ the three-headed “Tosserlad,’’ the cave-dwelling “Mountain King,’’ and the massive “Jotnar.’’ All have oversize faces and bulbous noses. Norwegians know that sunlight turns trolls to stone. In Ovredal’s world, flashes of bright light also can make them explode. Here’s the scientific explanation: The UVB rays accelerate vitamin D and calcium production in their bodies, which either calcifies or detonates them.

In a nod to folklore, “Trollhunter’’ also includes a bridge scene reminiscent of “Three Billy Goats Gruff.’’ And just as in the “fee-fi-fo-fum’’ nursery rhyme, these trolls can smell Christian blood.

The director cut his teeth on Spielberg’s alien and fantasy films such as “Jaws,’’ “E.T.’’ and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’’ In those films, he said, “We have to figure out what is psychologically true in the fantastic.’’

But overall, “Trollhunter’’ is more skeptical than Spielbergian. Ovredal likens his film more to “Man Bites Dog,’’ the Belgian mockumentary about a film crew following a serial killer. He didn't want to make the “typical Norwegian socialist-realist film.’’ Like “The Host’’ for South Koreans, perhaps this overlooked Scandinavian nation needs its own monster movie.

“I hope they experience an adventure they have never seen before,’’ Ovredal said of US audiences. “A sense of humor that’s different. A monster they’ve never seen before. [And leave the theater] with a big smile on their face, and talk about it.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

Video games and kids: How young is too young?

A screenshot from Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner. Too much for 8-year-olds?[This posting originally appeared on wired.com's Geek Dad, then was republished by CNN.com]

I was visiting my nephews, again. Within seconds of seeing me fiddle with my iPhone, my older nephew, Jack, who is 8, asked me, again, if my iPhone had any videogames on it.

"Uh, no, sorry Jack," was my reply, letting a white lie skip through my teeth. I knew his mother and father might be none too pleased to see the two of us hunched over the tiny screen playing "Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner" or "Lego Indiana Jones 2."

What his parents are doing is difficult. They've chosen to keep Jack videogame-free for as long as possible.

Of course, Jack has gotten a taste of videogames. He gets to play on special occasions, and will probably play at friends' houses where the rules are different.

I suspect his parents will persist until they can't hold out any longer, until peer pressure from schoolmates, combined with the reality that kids of Jack's generation will be inexorably bound to video technology like none before them, forces them to relent.

Perhaps it's a lost cause. Still, key questions can be raised here, and they are good ones to consider.

What is the appropriate age to let kids loose in the digital playscape? Are videogames OK for 8-year-olds? Seven-year-olds? Six? How young is too young?

Some games are appropriate for certain age groups and some games aren't; obviously, no one is allowing their 5-year-old to play "Grand Theft Auto." (Jeezum, let's hope.)

I'm no expert, but I've been reading up on some of the research. For one, the trend is that each year, younger and younger kids are experiencing screen time.

This article references a study saying that since 2005, "the average age that U.S. youngsters started to use electronic gadgets had fallen from just over 8 to just over 6 1/2."

Educational psychologist and author Jane Healy recently wrote: "My position is that children are better off without computers before the age of 7. By age 7, their brains have undergone a great deal of maturation and the basics should be in there. They can start to expand the type of thinking they can do so they can actually start to get something worthwhile using good software, for example, good simulation programs."

To my mind, the issue goes beyond the debatable ill-effects of videogame violence -- which I debunk in this op-ed, suggesting that videogame violence can be a good thing.

To me, the issue isn't about fears that games instill violent behavior, but rather that videogames are usurping the power of more conventional toys. There may be merits to shielding boys and girls like Jack from their digital futures, at least temporarily, if kids can first learn to amuse themselves without automatically reaching for a game controller.

The truck, the toy sword, the soccer ball, the sandbox, the board game, the pad of paper, the book: All can be as magical and entrancing as anything a game studio can cook up. Perhaps this is the rule of thumb: Once a love of non-digital play is instilled in young minds and habits, then let kids run free through the wild world of pixels.

Obviously there are no definitive answers. These are questions that have been discussed on Wired.com before. But I hope this space can continue to provide an excellent forum to discuss the issues. I'm curious to hear your viewpoints. Please comment below.

And, next time I see my nephew Jack, I'll have a better idea of how to counter his whining -- sweet whining, but whining nonetheless.

Gygax memorial makes progress

Gary Gygax the way the folks at "Futurama" drew his cartoon versionLake Geneva, Wisconsin, was always a mythical land of enchantment to me, a kid raised far away on the east coast who spent much — OK, way too much — of his allowance on Dungeons & Dragons gear.

While the mailing address — TSR Hobbies, Inc., POB 756, Lake Geneva WI 53147, U.S.A. — felt like an imaginary realm, I knew it was also a real land where that mysterious co-creator and co-godfather of D&D lived and worked: Gary Gygax.

When my local hobby shop didn’t have a module or rule book on their shelves, I’d mail in my order form directly to the source in Lake Geneva (with my check, of course, that covered the price plus “shipping and handling”). The elves and orcs who toiled there would fill my order, and in a few weeks I’d get a package in my mailbox. And the next crucial adventure could continue.

Ever since Gygax passed away in 2008, his widow Gail Gygax and others have spearheaded an effort to honor him and his contribution to gaming lore with a public monument in Lake Geneva. The Gygax Memorial Fund website just announced that goal is one step closer:

The Gygax Memorial Fund has reached a huge milestone. We have been granted land for the memorial site at Donian Park. Donian Park is a four acre open space site which encompasses a wetland and the 100 year recurrence interval floodplain along the White River in downtown Lake Geneva.

On the website for the Gygax Memorial Fund, there’s a link to donate, if you are so inclined. There’s also a forum to share your testimonials of how Gary and D&D changed your life for the better.

Long live Gary!

Stake Land hits its mark

Young Martin (Connor Paolo) faces a vampire in "Stake Land"Post-apocalyptic scenarios never used to be inundated with the undead. Take the classics: Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, The Terminator. Plenty of unsavory characters who’ve fashioned impressive wardrobes out of leather, your pick of unspeakable acts. But no zombies.

Of late, our dystopian worlds tend to be overrun with the plague-ridden. Whatever killed off the humans and caused the US government to collapse was not nuclear, not alien, but viral, spread one sweet bite at a time. Ah, sweet human flesh.

In the case of Stake Land, blame a vampire epidemic. Unlike standard animated corpses, who stumble about while comically shedding limbs, these “vamps’’ are more orc-like: buff, agile, growling, with a bad case of ’roid rage. We don't know where they came from, or what caused the plague, but you don't want to mess with them.

Still, the standard wooden stake to the heart does the trick. Or twisted and hammered into the sternum. Or jammed into the brain stem. Each type of undead --  "vamp," "scamp" and "berserker" --- has its own special way to stop ticking, and "Mister" knows each special way to kill 'em good.

When Stake Land begins, a lone, vampire hunter known only as Mister (Nick Damici, of World Trade Center) saves young Martin (Connor Paolo) just as the baddies kill his parents and munch on his baby sibling. Through spewing black blood, Dad's last burbling words to Mister are "Save him." The misanthropic takes Martin under his wing and trains the boy in anti-vamp hand-to-hand combat. There's a nice scene of the kid waiting in an oversized football helmet and pads, armed with a wooden spear, as Mister unleashes a zombie captured in the trunk of his car expressly for his impromptu boot camp. 

The boy deemed ready to kick his own undead butt, together, surrogate son and father cruise northward in a clunky gas guzzler hoping to reach Canada, a.k.a. “New Eden,’’ a promised land where life is supposedly better and the weather's too cold for the vamps to survive. At night, they chain length of metal fencing to the car's exterior to protect them as they sleep. Sometimes they stay up at night to lure the zombies with bait like a teddy bear, then pounce. Mister collects teeth from his trophies They pick up a nun, played by a shorn, haggard-looking Kelly McGillis (a long way from her Witness and Top Gun days), a pregnant girl country singer (Danielle Harris), and an Army deserter (Sean Nelson). In the weakest plotline, they must fight off a creepy cult leader (Michael Cerveris) and his burlap-wearing minions. It seems that in the future, the end of the world has encouraged nihilistic Christian sects -- what else is new? --- and this cult has a way of air-dropping the undead fodder on the encampments of the living, terrorist-style, much like medieval siege engines hurled plague-ridden carcasses over the ramparts to infect castle residents. There's also marauding bands of cannibals (though it's unclear if, taxonomically, they're undead as well or just hungry).

As in The Road Warrior, a young narrator’s experience is the prism through which we see rape, death, devastation. We watch Martin morph from wide-eyed boy to jaded young man. Damici plays Mister as all brood and no bluster. More of a tight-lipped western drifter than sci-fi action hero, he keeps watch while the others sleep, and utters advice like “One day you’ll learn not to dream at all." The ultimate coming of age training.

Other undead movies needlessly foreground the action. Stake Land has its fight scenes, and they're shot conventionally, with none of that slow-mo, high-flying acrobatic all in vogue. Here, they action is also secondary. While paying debts to John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, director Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street), who wrote the script with Damici, has his own aesthetic, which smartly lingers not on violence but on the silent, poignant details of this desolate world— a ruined factory, an abandoned home the travelers scavenge for food and a place to sleep, a Virgin Mary figurine left on a makeshift grave. The beautifully bleak vision is enhanced by Ryan Samul’s exquisite cinematography and composer Jeff Grace’s plaintive piano and violin arrangements. In one touching moment, McGillis recognizes that one of the attacking vamps is a fellow sister of the cloth. She winces as the nun is finally laid to rest, but not before the bitch is skewered by a stake.

This doomed world may feel familiar, full of paranoia and desperation, but Stake Land remains one of the genre’s smartest entries in years. As in The Road, our hope hinges on the survival of this makeshift family. Which suggests the hidden purpose of zombie movies: Given these folks’ post-apocalyptic woes, can the recession be all that bad?

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

D&D Haiku, Tolkien on Crack, and Other Mischief: Latest FF&GG newsletter

D&D Haiku, Tolkien on Crack, and Other Mischief: Summer 2011 Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks News!

Thanks for tuning into this, the next installment of my intermittent Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks newsletter.

There are plenty of news, rumors and geekery recommendations since you last heard from me.

Read the news here!

D&D poems [starring the Umber Hulk, Gelatinous Cube and girls]

The muse has hit me like a vorpal sword.

I've been working on some poems for an upcoming comedy performance (called "Funny As a Crutch," Mon, June 13 in Boston)—and it was impossible to resist the temptation to pen some D&D-inspired poems. For those of you who can'y make it, or for those of you itching for a sneak peek, here's a taste of some of the material I'll be reading. Note to 4th edition D&D players: I'll be kicking it old school).

Wizard: "Does this work on the ladies?"D&D Haiku

1.

Sister Jess takes a peek:

dice, graph paper, B.O.

Too many teenage trolls.

2.

Shopping list: rope, sack,

chain mail bikini.
D&D or 
is this S&M?

3.

Roll the dice. The world

stops. Sorry, page 7 says 
fire-
ball won’t work on girls. 

Umber Hulk Love Poem

The Umber Hulk, in love.

Another tiff. Another row. Another rift.

Predictably, I was sulking in my burrow,

dragging earth with iron claws. Chucking loam.

OK, I was tunneling down, I was deconstructing love,

mulling who knew how to better cook tubers and shrews (me),

whose turn it was to weekend with the other’s in-laws (she).

Why this union was corridor-like, one path, blind.

I reached the end of my passageway, Some unbudgeable rock.

But suddenly, my she-hulk arrived. She removed

her bedroom gloves and cracked her knuckles.

“What about your nails?” I asked. She shrugged

and burrowed beside me.

I paused to I admire her large, bipedal form,

that insectoid aberration, her ape-like build.

Her body a dull black, shading to yellowish gray on her front.

Lovely.

Her ivory mandibles. Still ivory.

Twenty years and I still admired her ability to confuse

any creature that sees all four of her eyes.

I still desired her.

“My umber love,” I cooed.

“You’re my knight, ” she replied.

We hunkered down. We dug.

We hunted for soft sweet human flesh together.

Hobbits taste good too.

A Rap for Geeky Heroes

Let’s say you’re Harry, Frodo, Leia, or Sam,

Matthew, Mark, Luke or Han,

Or Perseus, Jason, the Tin Man,

Jesus? Kenny of South Park? Another sacrificial lamb.

You’re bored in your corner of the galaxy – Kansas,

Tatooine -- raised by Bilbo, nagged by Aunt Beru,

‘cuz your parents, they gone, they ancient history, they been embalmed.

Your mother, probably she was Bambi's Mom.

You might got some prophecy, scar on your forehead.

Cursed, perchance. Wimpy. Better off dead.

So, our brave hero, you’ll need a mentor to guide you,

someone to edify, inculcate, enlighten your mind.

I’ll teach you Jedi dice tricks, Jedi beer pong tricks,

the chicanery of Cheetos, Doritos, Dew,

how to cast spells like Force Field, Atmospheric Dry Ice,

Glowing Blue Saber (or Sword), How to Be Nice,

How To Hit Armor Class Zero –- THACO!

I’ll be with you, beside you, crit your attacks,

you levitate rocks and I’ll be chillin’ piggyback.

You want to hunt for heart, courage, brain-ing?

Now’s the time to remove your +2 Wheels of Training.

I think I’ve prepped you to accept danger unaided,

set out the door, flip down your blast shield,

take the first step unafraid-ed, so launch your path,

level up from hobbits to jawas, pixels to bloodbath,

stop at this tavern, then wear a disguise,

you’ll know thine enemy, he’s the one with red eyes.

Embark on your voyage, your crusade, your trek to a far-away earth,

middle-, high- or low-, you’ll walk and you’ll walk, lose some of that girth,

and finally arrive at your destiny, that one doom, that ironic fate,

that M. Night Shy-a-malan-ding-dong for which you can’t wait. 

The final reel twist? No, I am your father.

And Frodo is your step-brother (I boinked our evil step-mother),

who, by the way, had sex with Voldermort.

And Gary Gygax is your father. Got it?

You sigh. Your brow doth furrow. Boo hoo. Your puppy eyes widen.

You ask, “What must I do?” Poo or poo not, I reply. There is no try.

You will take the Ring, to Mordor, or to East Timor.

WTF. Join the Peace Corps. I don’t care what you quest for.

Any damn thing. Just get the flip outta here.

The Gelatinous Cube Vs. Laurie McClintock

What are the moves of the gelatinous cube?

Few.

Undetected, invisible, pretty much

a 10 by 10 block of Jello.

“Gelatinous cubes are nearly transparent

and are difficult to see (and thus surprise on 1-3),”

so says then Monster Manual, page 43.

Yet I like the idea of the cube, waiting, eating time,

hoping for lost damsels to blunder by in the dark,

like me, on the couch, in my living room.

alone with Laurie McClintock.

The Electric Light Orchestra plays on the turntable,

“You got me runnin' goin' out of my mind,

You got me thinkin' that I'm wastin' my time.

Don't bring me down,no no no no no.”

The “nos’” accompany the rising of crescent of cicadas outside

on this sad, after-dark August of the Carter Administration.

The gelatinous cube is silent.

The gelatinous cube makes no move.

The artists copped out. On page 43, there is no picture of the gelatinous cube.

Just a blank space, like my angsty ribcage.

Like that useless weapon between my legs, invisible to girls.

“The gelatinous cube is one of scavengers not uncommon

in dungeons,” says page 43. “As these monsters travel about

they sweep up metallic and other items which are ‘indigestible’ to them.”

I want to collect Laurie McClintock’s necklace.

Snare her earrings with my tongue.

Unlock that rusty chastity belt, or gauchos, or whatever.

I wonder, what sort of breasts sprout under her sweater?

Stalactites, or stalagmites?

I scavenge her in the dungeon of my mind.

“You got me shakin' got me runnin' away,”

You get me crawlin' up to you everyday,

Don't bring me down,no no no no no ...”

The gelatinous cube still makes no move. Wisely:

“If a gelatinous cube touches (hits) an opponent,

a saving throw versus paralyzation must be made,

or the creature touched anesthetized for 5-20 melee rounds.”

“The ‘cube then surrounds the victim,

secretes digestive fluids, and digests a meal.”

Laurie McClintock has been anesthetized.

I want to secrete on her, then eat her.

Then Laurie McClintock fights back.

“Gelatinous cubes can be hit by all forms of weapons,” page 43 declares,

by which it means swords, axes, daggers, morning stars.

Pole arms. Just not “electricity, fear,” or “holds.”

Alas, Laurie McClintock’s hold is powerless on me.

“You're lookin' good just like a snake in the grass,

One of these days you're gonna break your glass.”

I realize ELO makes no sense. The cicadas taper off.

Lights blind the driveway. “No no no no no.”

High beams shimmer through the living room window.

My glass body shimmers. It’s Laurie McClintock’s Mom. 

The fight is over. She gets up. Goes to the door.

The gelatinous cube makes no move.

D&D Grammar Lesson

To be. Conjugate. Repeat after me.

I am an elf.

You are an elf.

He is an elf. Is she an elf?

We are all elves, and dwarves, and halflings.

I really hope she is an elf.

There are too many he-elves around here.

Simple present: I have five pounds of dice.

Simple past: I killed thirteen orcs.

Conditional: If I had known your mom couldn’t drive, I would have brought the pizza. Dork.

Present perfect: Ethan has played D&D every Friday night for five years straight.

Future perfect: By senior year I will have kissed a girl. A real one.

Adjectives:

Write the comparative and superlative forms of the following adjectives:

Awesome: Awesomer. Awesomest.

Evil. Eviler, Evilest.

Wicked, More wicked. Cool.

Vocabulary:

Open your Dungeon Masters guides to page 123.

Use any of the following “prostitute phrases” in a sentence:

Slovenly trull, cheap trollop, saucy tart, wanton wench,

expensive doxy, aged madam, rich panderer, brazen strumpet.

Repeat.

Dialogue:

Caroline: Zorg, est-ce que tu veux aller au cinema avec moi?

(Caroline: Zorg, do you want to go to the movies with me?)

Zorg: Non. Me detest toi.

(Zorg: Non. Me hate you.

Zorg est malfaisant chaotique.

(Zorg is chaotic evil.)

Conjunctions. Co-ordinate conjunctions include: and, but, or, nor, for and yet.

I became ill by eating the Cheetos and drinking all the Dew.

The jocks should have arrived or will be arriving soon to take our dice away.

The Dungeon Master had promised to not to kill us but did not keep his promise.

Let's Put on a Show!

Henry hams it up.I was hanging out with my nephews over the weekend.

Jack and Henry are aged 8 and 4 respectively. A couple years back, Jack took tap dancing lessons.

When he outgrew his shoes, and became a wee bit self-conscious about being only boy in the dance class, he hung up his vaudeville dreams. But now the shoes fit Henry. And before I knew it, while we were all eating dinner, the tap shoes had been produced and Jack was giving Henry a crash course in everything tap.

“You go like this,” Jack instructed, kicking his lower leg back and forth while the rest of us tried to finish our pizza. “Click and click and click.”

Meal over, the boys disappeared. To treat Uncle Ethan, they had secretly decided to put on a show.

This was DIY at its best. They went over their routine somewhere upstairs. Total rehearsal time: about 15 minutes. They selected their costumes: a dress shirt, their Dad’s tie and silly hat and sunglasses for Henry; and just a shirt for Jack. Total time allotted for costume change: probably 5 minutes.

Then Jack returned to announce that the show would commence in the living room.

“Would you please, you know, shut off your phones and other noisy things,” Jack announced to his audience of three. The kid is 8, going on stage manager.

As for the spectacle itself, there was dancing, and hamming it up, and Jack whispering instructions to Henry as he clicked and clacked his way to tap dancing glory. “Now Henry will do something he’s been working on himself,” Jack announced as third act began: Henry pretended to pour tea, then blew out a candelabra of three lit candles.

Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines they were not, but the show was unbelievable in its own way.

The Uncle shouted “Encore!”

The parents shouted, “Bedtime!”

 The impromptu performance reminded me of my summer days as a kid. I was always putting on a play, or a puppet show, or making a Super 8 claymation movie, or writing a new Dungeons & Dragons adventure, or painting a mural, or building a tree fort — or planning a D&D adventure/performance/movie in a tree fort. I would make grand pronouncements about some new creative direction I had decided to devoted my life to. Summer vacation was always a time for projects, a chance to try out new material. Even if my audience was three: my sister, brother and mother.

My nephew’s nutty, goofy, fearless example recalled those days, but also imparted a key lesson. Namely: be brave. Risk embarrassment. Put yourself out there. Try out that new material. Test it in front of real people (not just the real people in your mind.) Gussy up the barn, sew a curtain from that old bolt of gingham, reunite the jug band and put on a show!

Some writers crave limelight but sit back and wait for the light to find them. “I’ll just wait till someone calls me” is a common myth about building your literary career. It doesn’t work that way. You have to make your own calls.

Putting on your own event is also a good antidote to that grumpy feeling creative people can get. You know the one I’m talking about: that everyone else seems to be getting recognition except you. Miffed that you’re not being invited to read your poems for that new hot reading series? Bummed that the such-and-such bookstore or library or nightclub won’t host you? Find a non-conventional venue like a bar or church basement or backyard, write up a press release, make a Facebook event and invite your friends. (My pal Jane Roper hosted a great book launch for her novel about summer camp, Eden Lake. The event took place at a VFW hall and featured a sing-a-long and Sterno cookers for DIY s’mores.)

Put on your own show. It’s a great way to get experience performing your work, and to test out new material. One piece of advice: I do recommend writing and rehearsing for a bit longer than my nephews did.

[If you'd like to see my efforts in this gingham-and-jug-band arena, four performing pals and I are putting on a performance of writing, comedy and music called "Funny As a Crutch" on Monday June 13 in Cambridge, Mass. The show includes dirty limericks, educational raps, recipes for cooking raccoon, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry, children's stories that shouldn't be read to children, and fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini. More information here. Hope to see you there.]

Hobbit talk

NOT in The Hobbit? Artist John Howe's vision of Dol Guldur, Sauron's fortified hangout and HQ tucked away in the forests of Mirkwood.As I recently wrote about in my posting at Geek Dad on wired.com, there's some interesting talk in the Tolkien fan world about The Hobbit movie adaptation.

First, it was confirmed that Orlando Bloom would reprise his role as Legolas in The Hobbit production now being filmed by Peter Jackson and company down in New Zealand. As many of you know, while Legolas features prominently in The Lord of the Rings, the blond elf does not appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s earlier book, The Hobbit.

Then, a few days ago, the news was made official that The Hobbit would in fact be two films. (The rumor mill knew this for eons.) “The first film, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be released on December 14, 2012. The second film, titled The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year, on December 13, 2013,” it was declared on the production’s Hobbit Blog.

The simple choice to make two more complex films out of one simple, 300-odd-page kid’s book has pricked up the ears of some fans—i.e., me, for one—and has made other fans prickly.

Upping the ante was what Peter Jackson revealed on his Facebook page earlier this week about the plot of The Hobbit movie:

“I’m not going to say just what and when, but I will confirm that both the White Council and Dol Guldur will feature in the movies. And not just in one scene either. Just how to visualise it has been a challenge, but fortunately Alan Lee and John Howe went crazy with ideas, and it should look pretty cool.”

For the unwashed, Dol Guldur is Sauron’s fortified hangout and HQ in the forest of Mirkwood for more than a millennia of the Third Age (back when he goes by the handle of the Necromancer). The White Council is sort of like the Council of Elrond, an All-Star assembly of Middle-earth heroes, formed in response to the rise of Dol Guldur. The members include the Wizards Saruman the White and Gandalf the Grey, Lady Galadriel of Lothlórien, Master Elrond of Rivendell and a few others. These goings-on are only alluded to in The Hobbit.

The latest announcement explains the reason why Cate Blanchett will be back to reprise her role as Galadriel. It also makes sense that Christopher Lee will be back to play Saruman (although, as of yet, this has not been confirmed). Less clear is how Legolas/Bloom will be integrated into the movie.

To work in these elements, Jackson and the other screenwriters have made it clear they’ll be adding material not actually in The Hobbit, but drawn from other sources in the Tolkien lengendarium. But as reported in The Guardian and elsewhere, some question the wisdom of this move. Is turning what is essentially a kid’s book into high epic fantasy more along the lines of The Lord of the Rings such a great idea? Remember, both in tone and in treatment, The Hobbit was written for and targeted mainly to children, with very little of the heady, wearying Sturm und Drang of LOTR.

Of course, PJ and the gang at Wingnut and Weta have not only oodles of fans to please, but oodles of money to make. And most of those LOTR fans are movie fans first and foremost, not readers of the trilogy. So fashioning a plot and movie look-and-feel that’s as seamless with the Middle-earth millions already know from the LOTR movies makes money sense.

Tolkien purists put their trust in Jackson the first time around and, squabbling aside, most were generally pleased with the elements he added and subtracted to LOTR. The appearance of Legolas, the White Council and Dol Guldur is plausible; these logically would have happened concurrent with the events of The Hobbit.

Still, I can imagine the most fevrent fans of The Hobbit (the book) might want to revoke Jackson’s creative license.

But I can also imagine the cheers in the audience when Legolas appears wherever he’s going to appear. We’ll have to wait till Christmas of next year out find out.

The Uncle in Carbonite

I was drawing pictures with my nephew Jack.

“What shall we draw?” I asked.

“Let’s draw Star Wars,” Jack said, innocently enough.

We began to draw Star Wars. Jack drew a guy, then a box. Next he drew a face and feet in the box. Then he made a line so the guy next to the box had an arm that touched the guy in the box.

“What the heck is that?” I asked.

“That’s me,” Jack said, adding his name to the figure on the left.

“So what is that?”

“How do you spell ‘carbonite’?” Jack asked, a big smile beaming across his face. He started to giggle.

“C-A-R …” I began. He began to write. The kid was seven. “B-O-N … I-T-E.”  Then he added another word: “E-T-H-A-N-[space]-I-N.”

The giggling commenced.

“Wait. Is that me?”

More giggling from Jack.

I was incredulous. “You little … So, that makes you … Boba Fett?”

Uncontrollable giggling. “Uncle Ethan! You’re trapped in carbonite!”

Read the rest on wired.com's Geek Dad

A Hard Day's Knight

In the short film "A Hard Day's Knight," an average guy (Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) dons his chain mail and takes to the streets to find glory, camaraderie and donuts. Searching for Gandalf, Frodo and Harry Potter, our hero battles indifference and ridicule as he tries to convince others to join his fellowship and begs for spare change for the quest. 

WATCH ON FULL SCREEN HERE | Watch on YouTube

Classic Video Game Competition Returns to Funspot

If you’re a 30- or 40-something geek like me, you probably played video games as a kid. Not on the personal computer, which in the 70s and 80s was only in its infancy. I mean the big, hulking, stand-up video arcade machines. The ones that ate your allowance (or cafeteria milk money): Pong, Space Invaders, Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Joust, Centipede, Tron, Dragon’s Lair, and my personal favorite, Robotron 2084.

As I wrote about last summer after visiting the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, these games have had a powerful effect on an entire generation. And now that generation is all grown up. Like with a lot of childhood or adolescent hobbies looked back on with the 20-20 hindsight of adulthood, these old school arcade games can generate a powerful wave of nostalgia.

To sate this desire, the annual International Classic Videogame Tournament returns to the American Classic Arcade Museum  (ACAM) this weekend (Thursday, June 2 through Sunday, June 5). ACAM  is the “first 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage coin-operated amusements” (so sez the website). If you saw the documentary King of Kong, ACAM is the familiar site of the Donkey Kong showdown. If you were at PAX East in Boston, you probably saw the traveling collection of video games they brought down from New Hampshire for all of us to play. Wicked fun.

In the tourney, players will compete in a variety of arcade games. To maintain a fair and balanced playing field, ACAM says, the game titles won’t be announced until the first day of the event. The only exception will be the first ever “World Championships of Galaga®,” to celebrate Galaga’s 30th anniversary.

What’s cool is, unlike other museums, at ACAM you can touch the displays. Some 300+ games are available for play. Best of all, the place is a time capsule. Classic 80s music is pumped into arcade, and there isn’t a song or a game, any newer than 1987.

And if you support the preservation of these classic games, please donate to ACAM.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky,” National Public Radio described as “Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road” and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com

Tolkien hippie stickers resurface

[NOTE: you can also read about this on wired.com's Geek Dad]

I attended the recent 3rd Conference on Middle-earth (in Westford, Massachusetts) where I listened to talks on blond elf imagery and debates on how to adapt The Hobbit into one movie or two movies (and the wisdom of that latter endeavor).

I also wandered over to a vendor table manned by an older gentleman named Ed Meskys, who has been involved in science fiction and fantasy fandom since the early days. In addition to selling and giving away old copies of “The Tolkien Journal” and “Niekas,” the magazine he used to publish, he had stacks of old book jackets and other mysterious items. Meskys had been cleaning out his garage, he told me, and wanted his old treasures to see the light of day again. “I want to get them into the hands of people who will read and appreciate them,” he wrote in a recent issue of his e-fanzine “The View From Entropy Hall.” Most of the stuff was a buck or two each, or free.

Among the ephemera were these yellowed, dusty, wonderful, terrible, Lord of the Rings stickers. It was the end of the day, and Meskys gave me his last sheets of stickers for free.

I later asked him where they came from.

“When I was president of the Tolkien Society of America 1967-1972,” Meskys wrote in an email, “I received promotional materials from a number of places. All I remember was that the stickers came from Australia. I was sighted at the time and was not impressed with them. They were a little too unrealistic for my taste.” Though Meskys is now blind, clearly the image of them still made an impression in his memory.

So the Nine (yes, there are nine stickers in all) have come to light again. I’ve done my best to clean them up without destroying them. As you’ll see here (BELOW), the artist has taken some liberties with Tolkien’s vision. Legolas looks more like a crime-fighting Robin than elf, Aragorn wields an ax, Tom Bombadil is sporting some groovy bellbottoms, and Frodo resembles a pig on crack. My favorite might be Gandalf “Keep on Truckin’” the Gray.

Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Or, drop the ring, or these stickers, back into the fiery chasm whence they came. Dig? 

[Any further information on the artist or the origin of these stickers is welcome. To subscribe to “The View From Entropy Hall,” which Meskys ends by email only, contact him at “edmeskys” at “roadrunner” dot “com”]

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"Funny As A Crutch" comes to Cambridge 6/13/1

"Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] [more press photos below]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 19, 2011

**For more information or to arrange interviews with the performers, contact Ethan Gilsdorf at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com 

**For compromising press photos of the performers holding vegetables, dressed in chain mail and stuck in back-yard composters, see: http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

EVENT LISTING

What: The Drum Literary Magazine presents “Funny As a Crutch”

When: Monday, June 13, 7pm 

Where: The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, Cambridge, Mass.

Brief event description: A performance of dirty limericks, educational raps, recipes for cooking raccoon, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry, children's stories that shouldn't be read to children, and fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini. Performed by Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine residents Kevin Kennedy, Ethan Gilsdorf, David Petrie, Carol Hammond, and Jeff Stern. Presented by The Drum (http://www.drumlitmag.com), the “literary magazine for your ears.”

Cost: $5 donation encouraged

More info and press photos: ethan@ethangilsdorf.com or http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

download "Funny As a Crutch" poster here

PRESS RELEASE

“Funny as a Crutch”: Writers, geeks, bloggers, musicians bring their funny to Cambridge’s Enormous Room

Dirty limericks. Educational raps. Recipes for cooking raccoon. Dungeons & Dragons-inspired poetry. Children's stories that shouldn't be read to children. Fiction about the miracle of motherhood as seen from the bottom of a martini.

This deep, dangerous vein of comedy and music and more will be mined by the five performers of “Funny as a Crutch.”

The event unites authors, bloggers, geeks, actors and musicians from Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, who will be presenting their funniest work at the Enormous Room (567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, Cambridge, Mass.) on Monday, June 13, at 7pm.

“Funny As a Crutch” is presented by The Drum (http://www.drumlitmag.com), the  “literary magazine for your ears” that publishes short fiction, essays, novel excerpts, and interviews exclusively in audio form.

“I’ve been to enough solemn literary readings to appreciate the value of getting goofy,” said Marlboro, Vermont, resident Kevin Kennedy, founder of the event whose alter ego, Natureman, blogs about tapping trees with a 30-30 Winchester, cooking raccoons and building a flamethrower to get rid of the snow in his yard.

Kennedy, who lives in Marlboro, Vermont, has worked on the fringes of marketing and journalism for most of his professional life and is currently the communications director at the Five College consortium in Amherst, MA. His articles, columns and cartoons have been enjoyed by dozens in a variety of obscure trade journals. He has eaten raccoon, moose, bear, goat, cattails and milkweed. 

Natureman will be joined by Ethan Gilsdorf, David Petrie, Carol Hammond, and Jeff Stern.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the Somerville-based self-professor geek, gamer and author of the award-winning travel memoir/pop culture book “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.” A regular contributor to the “New York Times,” “Boston Globe” and “Washington Post,” Gilsdorf’s blog Geek Pride is a frequent feature at PsychologyToday.com. He plays with his dice as often as possible.

Brattleboro, Vermont, resident David Petrie writes about parenting on the Huffington Post. Even though he worked on a locked adolescent psychiatric ward and managed a program for juvenile delinquents he learned the most about kids while driving a school bus through the cornfields of Iowa. David now lives in Vermont with his wife and four children and works as an editor for an educational publishing company. His stories appear in places like The Rumpus, The Good Men Project Magazine, the Springfield Republican, and The Commons. Petrie will be reading selections from “The Big Book of Children's Stories That Probably Shouldn't Be Read To Children” and “Daily Affirmations for Tired and Worn-Out Parents.”

Carol Hammond is a writer from Portland, Maine, where she cobbles together a living helping businesses present themselves as far more exciting and successful than they would otherwise seem. She also blogs at unworkinggirl.wordpress.com about the travails of being hopelessly unemployable. Carol will read a story about a woman contemplating the miracle of motherhood from the bottom of a martini.

Jeff Stern is a Cambridge-based director, screenwriter and actor whose work has screened at the Woods Hole, Olympia, New Hampshire and Boston Underground Film Festivals, among others. After stints as an ice cream truck driver, brickstacker, lead singer, and hotel AV guy, Stern has settled into an all-too comfortable life as a filmmaker and teacher. Always on the brink of disaster, Stern believes this could be the night when everything blows up and he again finds himself wandering the streets, unsure where his next sandwich will come from, not a friend in the world. At the event, he will be administering self help, dirty limericks, and educational raps.

The Drum is an online literary magazine that publishes short fiction, novel excerpts, essays, and interviews exclusively in audio form. You don't read The Drum. You listen to it. Since launching in May 2010, The Drum has published new work by New York Times best-seller Jenna Blum, PEN award-winner Jennifer Haigh, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, and other notable writers like Ben Percy, Bret Anthony Johnston, Lauren Grodstein, and many more and interviews with authors such 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winner Paul Harding. Visit www.drumlitmag.com to hear The Drum's brand of Literature Out Loud.

“Funny as a Crutch” will be presented at the Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, in Cambridge, Mass. (T: Red Line, Central Square, http://www.enormous.tv/), Monday, June 13 from 7 to 9pm.

A $5 donation is requested to cover expenses.

For more information, contact Ethan Gilsdorf at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com or http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/ethanfreak-blog/2011/5/23/funny-as-a-crutch-comes-to-cambridge-6131.html

PRESS PHOTOS:

download "Funny As a Crutch" poster here

"Funny As a Crutch" performer Carol Hammond, with Spider-Man. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Carol Hammond]
"Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Natureman, aka Kevin Kennedy. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Kevin Kennedy] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Jeff Stern. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Jeff Stern]
"Funny As a Crutch" performer Ethan Gilsdorf. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Meg Birnbaum] "Funny As a Crutch" performer Ethan Gilsdorf. Click to download hig res version. [photo courtesy of Meg Birnbaum]

Reconnecting separated siblings

[By Ethan Gilsdorf. This story originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2011]

• 

Ashley Figueroa and her brother Jonathan went to Camp to Belong in Massachusetts.

[photo by Ann Hermes/Staff]

Ashley Figueroa will never forget the day in 1995 when she and her siblings were taken away from their mother and placed in foster care.

"They told us we were going to McDonald's," she says. "We were all crying. What kid doesn't want a Happy Meal? But we didn't get a Happy Meal."

Their mother struggled with substance abuse and lived with an abusive boyfriend. Their father was absent.

The children lived in a series of foster and family-based kinship homes both in their hometown of Lowell, Mass., and as far away as Ohio and New York.

Then three years ago, seven of the 10 kids came to Camp to Belong in Hinsdale, Mass. "We lost contact for six or seven years," says the bubbly Ashley, now 20. "Camp to Belong brought us together."

"We had never been to a place like that before," says her brother, Jonathan, 13. "We had never been so happy."

Now in its 17th year, Camp to Belong (CTB) has a mission to reunite siblings ages 8 to 20 separated in foster homes and other out-of-home care situations. The camp experience changes lives.

Lynn Price, founder of the camp, was herself once disconnected from a sibling due to foster care. "I didn't know I had a sister until I was 8 years old," she says. But as she began working with the homeless and children in foster care, she started to see how brothers and sisters were losing track of each other. "I realized they were going to miss out on childhood memories."

CTB has grown to nine camps in eight states – Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon,California, Washington, and, new this year, New York – plus Australia. Ms. Price's hope is to one day offer camps in each of the 50 states.

Some 550,000 children live in foster care in the United States. But even if they live in the same town or go to the same school, 75 percent of these kids live separately from a sibling. CTB gives them a chance to connect and feel empowered by that sibling connection, to read a book or eat breakfast or roughhouse together – the kinds of daily interactions most families take for granted. Thus far, the organization has forged bonds among more than 3,700 brothers and sisters.

"For the first time, we were surrounded by kids who understood," Ashley says, recalling her first summer at the week-long Massachusetts camp. "We were finally all in the same place." The Figueroa kids found themselves among peers for whom foster care was not a source of shame.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Taken for a ride

With the new Pirates of the Caribbean out in theaters, it's clear the movie-theme park synergy is conquering our entertainment dollar

In search of movie plots, Hollywood has mined books, plays, TV shows, mythology, epic poems, even religious texts. Today, cinematic narrative is unearthed in other, less traditional places --- comic books, video games, cartoons, toy and theme parks rides.

Take "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which opens Friday, the fourth film in the multi-billion-dollar franchise based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction featuring  "Avast, mateys!" pirate talk, skeletons at the ship's wheel, and buccaneers chasing wenches.

Why keep making feature-length adventures inspired by what are essentially elaborate, 10-minute log rides? Is Hollywood that desperate for ideas? Are audiences that unadventurous?To make money? Perhaps. Intellectual property owners do want to make money. The "Pirates" ride at Disney is a beloved institution, with name recognition. Well-executed as a movie series, the Johnny Depp juggernaut have conquered the box office, spawned spin-off novels, picture books, action figures, and video games.

But there are other forces at work here.

Newer generations of genre fans don't want merely to absorb narratives on the big screen. They want to participate in fictional worlds. Multi-platform, movie/book/video game tie-in products are built to sate this desire to experience the narrative outside the movie theater, to interact more directly with the storyline, or to help create a narrative --- whether by playing an video game, writing fan fiction or collecting tchotchkes or other fandom activities.

Movie-inspired amusement park attractions complete the cycle. Take your pick from dozens: Peter Pan to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (all based on Disney movie adaptations of classic books); Shrek to E.T. to Men in Black; Revenge of the Mummy, Jaws, to Jurassic Park. The Star Tours motion simulator attraction (now closed at US Disney parks for an upgrade and open only at Tokyo Disneyland) takes place in the "Star Wars" film universe. Warner Bros. Movie World (in Australia) has attractions based on "Batman," "Austin Powers," "Scooby Doo" and Marilyn Monroe. At Thorpe Park (in Britain), there's Saw, the world's first roller coaster based on a horror film. We've come a long way since the first roller coasters began appearing in15th century Russia.

So far, only the Walt Disney Company has the pop-cultural relevance and gravitas to get away with basing a movie on an amusement park attraction. That said, few of these adaptations have raked in pirate-like booty. Take "The Country Bears" (2002), based on the Country Bear Jamboree, both critically derided and a $35 million box office dud. Performing better was Brian DePalma's "Mission to Mars" (2000), partially inspired by the old attraction of the same name that was discontinued in the early 1990s; the EPCOT ride Mission: Space was built after the film came out and houses several of the movie props plus the rotating "gravity wheel" set. "The Haunted Mansion" (2003) also did somewhat better. ("Tower of Terror" (1997), based on the Disney-MGM Studios ride, was a made for TV movie.)

What's clear is that amusement parks have always been associated with deviance. Ever since the carnival came to town, so have carnies, serial killers, and torrid summer romances with strangers. In "Rollercoaster" (1977) --- released in Sensurround, an effect that vibrated theater seats with huge bass speakers --- Timothy Bottoms's plot to blow up a roller coaster is thwarted by ride inspector George Segal. Then here's the creepy side to those "It's a Small World" robots. In the dreadful "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" (1978),  the '70s rock band, in full makeup, battles an evil engineer turning park-goers into mindless cyborgs. In the adult-themed Wild West amusement park of "Westworld" (1973), androids malfunction and start killing the patrons; its sequel, "Futureworld" (1976) concerns a cloning machine and a sci-fi-theme. The "Jurassic Park" movies (1993, 1997, 2001) further fueled fears of mad scientists and technology run amok, and nicely skewered the wholesome, antiseptic Disney park experience.

Of course, theme parks aren't just for cyborgs and dinosaurs; the undead also love them. Two brothers, Jason Patric and Corey Haim, are the new kids in town in "The Lost Boys" (1987), and must confront Kiefer Sutherland and his gang of teenage vampires plaguing an amusement park set on the California coast. In "Zombieland" (2009), zombie apocalypse survivors Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg hit the road in search of a safe haven, eventually landing in the "Pacific Playland" amusement park, where various rides play a role in the climactic battles.

But not all theme parks are nefarious. "National Lampoon's Vacation" (1983) begins with the lighter theme of summer vacations gone wrong. Chevy Chase drives his family cross-country to the Disney-like Walley World, only to find the park closed for repairs. Which drives Chase crazy, turning him into a BB gun-wielding psychopath. The funny kind. In the 15th James Bond installment, "The Living Daylights" (1987), the Ferris wheel at Vienna's Prater park is where Timothy Dalton scores with one of his Bond girls. In the dramedy "Adventureland" (2009), recent college grad Eisenberg (again) is stuck with a summer job at an amusement park in his hometown (bad), then falls in love (good). At least there are no zombies.

The most lucrative scenario for an entertainment mogul would be to base an entire amusement park on a single franchise. Disney began this by dividing its parks into vague "worlds," like Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Adventureland. The "movie studio" parks at Universal and Disney/MGM developed this concept, basing parks around various but mostly unrelated movies ("Jaws," etc). Then Universal's Islands of Adventure created mini-parks devoted to themes like Marvel super heroes, cartoons such as "0Rocky and Bullwinkle," "Jurassic Park"/dinosaurs, ancient myths, and the world of Dr. Seuss. One of these "islands," The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, has blazed a new trail by devoting itself to a single consistent, fictional world. The park opened last year, and features Dragon Challenge, a double roller coaster with intertwining tracks; a more conventional steel roller coaster called Flight of the Hippogriff; and a tour of Hogwarts Castle  called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey that ends with a broomstick ride past spiders, the Whomping Willow and Dementors. The "set" includes a restaurant, various fake storefronts and real stores where you can purchase merchandise like sugar quills, lemon drops, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, and your own broomstick.

It's only a matter of time before entire, giant theme parks are based on the most lucrative franchises in history: Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar. But if they build them, will fans come?

In the Boston area, there's an entrepreneur who is hoping that answer is yes. Based at Patriot Place in Foxborough, Matt DuPlessie's company 5 Wits taps into our desire to be part of a movie plot. DuPlessie's walk-through spy adventure Espionage (not affiliated with the James Bond franchise, but definitely inspired by it) opened last fall, and another attraction, 20,000 Leagues, based on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," opened in March. Neither limits users to train car tracks or restricts their motions with seat belts; visitors walk freely through the sets to solve puzzles and, hopefully, save the day.

As the movie-theme park alliance has offered successful synergies, audiences have grown more sophisticated in their taste for special effects. The environments of the original Anaheim and Orlando Disney rides seem primitive by today's standards. Oddly, the quartet of "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies also have very little to do with the ride's original plot, such as it is, which simply evokes generic pirate-themed worlds. To fix this, the old attractions have been retro-fitted and refurbished with better lighting and audio effects. Audio-animatronic figures of Captain Jack Sparrow, his nemesis Barbossa, the squid-faced Davy Jones (all voiced by Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Bill Nighy respectively) have been added that match the movie world more closely. Of course, the franchise branding had to be updated too; the pirate ship banner and other signage outside the Disney rides now matches the movie poster typeface and other marketing collateral.

While the digital bling of XBox Live, CGI and motion capture may have usurped the power of theme-park attractions, it turns out roller-coaster rides and haunted houses still have their nostalgic tug. They remain an outdated but nonetheless real-world way to participate in cinematic narrative. Taking a ride can still make us feel part of the movie.

As long as the movie is worth the ride.

Recently there's been talk of Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") directing a film based on the entire Disney theme park, Magic Kingdom, but no details yet on what the plot might be. Undead Mickey with assault rifle? 

I'd pay to see that.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures the Huffington Post called “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky," National Public Radio described as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

Sucker Punch misses

Sucker Punch

 What happens when you mix Heavy Metal (that episodic, 1981 sex, rock and violence fantasy movie) with teenage boy fantasies of girls in mini-skirts kicking ass with automatic weapons and samurai swords, and a treacle-infused revenge and sacrifice plot about escape from mental institutions?

 You get the chaotic, seething, psycho-nonsense that is Sucker Punch.

 The premise had some promise. In the unnamed 1960s, the doll-faced Babydoll, played by Emily Browning (The Uninvited), accidentally shoots and wounds her evil, molesting step father. No problem; she acts in self-defense. But a stray bullet also offs her little sister. Ooops. Off Babydoll goes to Victorian, thunderstorm-swept Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, hilariously located in Brattleboro, Vermont (where I once lived). Here, dozens of other girls have been incarcerated, and like Babydoll, her compatriots inexplicably have hot-sounding pseudonyms perfectly suited for our Age of Madonna and Days of Lady Gaga. There’s the not-so-sweet Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of Bright Star), the chummy Rocket (Jena Malone from Into the Wild), and two others with microscopic roles, the non-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens, who appeared in the High School Musical films) and the near-invisible Amber (Jamie Chung of Sorority Row), They’re all possibly insane or, like Babydoll, just abandoned by wicked step-parents.

 The big, scary Lennox House is full of nut house clichés, from rusty doors, peeling paint and white tile, to the oblivious orderlies, the lecherous cook (who of course is obese), and the doctor (Jon Hamm of “Mad Men”) who administers the lobotomies. A megalomaniac lech heads up the institution (Oscar Isaac from Robin Hood). There’s one understanding psychiatrist, Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino from Watchmen), whose play-therapy shtick equates imagination with freedom. “That world you control,” she says with her Slavic accent. “That play can be as real as any pain.”

 Lovers of games and genre “escapism” already get the point of fantasy: We enter these realms when, sometimes, real life’s crap bears down too hard on us. High expectations also weigh on director Zack Snyder, whose past movies Watchmen and 300 mostly pleased his fanboy and fangirl audiences. (A recent profile in the New York Times Magazine plumbs Snyder’s sudden surplus of geek cred). Clearly, he loves his graphic novels and his Dungeons & Dragons, and for Sucker Punch, he unfurls that well-trodden path of a quest for something—honor, courage, freedom—by an ordinary-person-with-extraordinary-and-hidden-gifts.

 But here, more so than his other outings, Snyder is preaching, even pandering, to the converted, with wild and disappointing results.

 First, you have to swallow this: More than half of the movie takes place in BabyDoll’s mind. Supposedly, to keep her sane in the loony bin, our Snow White begins to have fantasies of being a hooker trapped inside a Moulin Rouge-like whore house run by the creepy pimp (Isaac again; everyone plays at least two roles in the film). Apparently, in the girl’s mind, being a whore is a step-up. But Babydoll inserts another fantasy layer inside the first (I know, but stay with me here): a quest to obtain five items—a map, fire, a knife, a key and a fifth thing TBA. If she succeeds, she can escape the institution and bring her friends with her. This second fantasy she can only access when she revs up her erotic dance routine for the voyeuristic men. (Cleverly, Snyder never lets the audience see her sexy moves.)

When BabyDoll embarks on quest Part One, a solo adventure set in feudal Japan, she meets an unnamed “Wise Man,” the veteran actor Scott Glenn, who’s been wonderful in movies ranging from The Right Stuff, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs and The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, his grizzled, grandfatherly Wise Man character is Master Po/Yoda to Babydoll’s Grasshopper/Luke. “What are you looking for?” he asks, before handing over some serious firepower. “A way out,” replies the stoic Babydoll, who doesn’t break a smile all movie. Emily Browning’s wide, inviting, snow-white face, punctuated by two giant eyes, is an anime artist’s wet dream.

After defeating a trio of troll-like, giant armored samurai, Babydoll invites her ragtag galpals to join her on the next installment of heroic derring-do. Like in the Rupert Holmes song, she wants them to “Come with me and escape.” And they do: first to the zombie-infested trenches of World War I, then into a WW II–medieval castle-siege mash-up scenario, and finally on a bomb-defusing mission on some craggy rock next to what looks like Saturn. Luckily, for the viewer, the babes march off into battle, often in slow-motion, dressed like “slovenly trulls” and “brazen strumpets” from Babydoll’s Prostitutes & Pimps role-playing game. (Check the “Random Harlot Table” from your Dungeon Master’s Guide for details). This set-up permits the young ladies to wear fishnet stocking and high heels as they fight undead German infantrymen and shiny robots from the future. The Wise Man reappears in each fantasy episode as quest-giver, instructing the gals where they’ll find the particular item on their wish list. He also offers advice like “Don’t ever write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass.”

In shooting his asylum/brothel scenes, Snyder composes his shots with a painstakingly, almost achingly overthought attention. But at least these shots are mostly quiet. Once the fantasy ass-kicking begins, the bloody camera can’t stay still, sweeping, pivoting, dipping, swooping, all the while shooting with jerky, “Hey, aren’t we missing a few frames of film here?” look-and –feel that’s all the vogue these days. Adding to the head-throbs are the blaring remixes of classics like Eurhythmics’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Queen’s  “We Will Rock You” and “I Want It All,” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Each fight episode feels like a video game level sponsored by a record label. Advil, anyone?

Meanwhile, the production design and digital landscapes have been steeped—OK, soaked—in a sea of sepia. Some of it is stunning. We see some cool cross-pollination of genres. Those big samurai dudes wield “naginatas” (a pole arm with curved blade on the end, much like a European glaive) but also primitive machine guns. In that siege scene, the ruined castle is swarming with orcs and foot soldiers in plate mail; into this mess the gals air drop from a bomber plane, then kill a sleeping dragon. Back in WW I, there’s zeppelins but also zombies and an anime-inspired, jet pack-powered bipedal armored fighting machine emblazoned with a pink bunny. That’s piloted by Amber, who handles all the flying duties. At one point, when Wise Guy barks at the ladies, “They’re using steampower and clockwork!” I half expected a subtitle to pop up: “Hey Steampunk Fans: We get it!” followed by, in smaller type, “[Hey Newbies: Steampunk is a genre the uses anachronistic technology or futuristic inventions as Victorians like Jules Venre might have envisioned ...]”

That first action scene, where Babydoll faces the giants with glowing red eyes (they glow, therefore they are evil), has its pleasures. But here’s where the major flaw of Sucker Punch is revealed. There’s nothing at stake. We know each mission is a fight of fantasy. The girls are imbued with awesome superpowers—with their blades they deflect bullets from nasty German undead; they leap, slow-mo, over the crude weapon blows dealt by Japanese trolls; they are thrown across temples and train cars and tossed through stone walls; they are pummeled by shiny robots. Nary a scratch on their milky cheeks. The audience figures out these gals are impervious. So where’s the danger? Babydoll has as many lives as a video game avatar. Only towards the end do we see real death, but the moment is laughable.

Sucker Punch aims to work on the level of universal heroic fantasy epic, but it barely functions as pulp. The Sweet 16 set may get off on the “grrrrrl power” theme, and not a few boys will dig the upskirt action shots mixed with oodles of cartoon violence. But the cocktail of comic book clichés is too sour to swallow. Strong female heroines are welcome, but their impact as role models is diluted when we see their exploits are simply fantasies nested within further fantasies, like level 60 Russian Night Elf dolls.

So what are we left with? Men are horrible, predatory pervs? That they “silence” a young woman and her “voice” via real or imaginary lobotomies? That, as the film’s PR material touts, the only resort is her “dream world” which “provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality.” Or that we should thrilled by the ambiguity of it all, because the filmmakers say, “her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.” Sucker Punch, meet Jacob’s Ladder, A Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, Psycho and about a hundred other movies with imaginary characters or unreliable (or insane) protagonists and narrators.

Yes, a lobotomy would be the ultimate bummer. But so is that “What chains us? Who holds the key?” voice-over doggerel right before the credits roll. “You get out there and live for all of us,” are Babydoll’s final words before her own grim ending begins.

I think even teenage girls will have more fun playing a couple hours of World of Warcraft, Halo or Portal.

 Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

What's up with alien invasion movies?

Battlefield: Earth

When alien visitors do not come in peace

The White House was one of several iconic sites destroyed by aliens in Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film, “Independence Day.’’ (20th Century Fox via AP)

By Ethan Gilsdorf

Boston Globe Correspondent / March 11, 2011

“We’re facing an unknown enemy,’’ barks a Marine officer once the alien spacecraft have begun their assault in “Battle: Los Angeles.’’ In the film, which opens today, the attackers arrive in metallic ships. Other times, they arrive in asteroids, as in “The Day of the Triffids’’ (1962). Or they use asteroids as weapons: in “Starship Troopers’’ (1997) the Arachnids, or “Bugs,’’ from planet Klendathu launch a large space rock that flattens Buenos Aires.

But no matter the mode of transport, nothing gets our flags waving and patriotic juices flowing more than the threat of Earth’s destruction at the hands of ruthless, repugnant, anonymous aliens.

Here’s one reason: Because our angsty, modern-day wars don’t let us demonize the enemy as in decades past, it’s hard to get excited about blowing apart Iraqis and Afghans, whether in the real world or onscreen. Hence the appearance of “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ or last year’s LA-invasion “Skyline.’’ Combating hulking spacecraft and silvery foot soldiers whose weapons are surgically implanted ends up dicier than anything Al Qaeda can throw at us. In one scene, the platoon’s Nigerian medic grumbles, “[Expletive]! I’d rather be in Afghanistan.’’

Not all alien invasion movies are created equal. Earthlings might be mere bystanders in a battle between alien races: Take “Transformers’’ (2007) and its tagline “Their war. Our world.’’ Or “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator — Requiem’’ (also 2007). Watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’’ (1956, 1978) and you will notice the aliens don’t rub out metropolises; the Pod People colonize one citizen at a time. Or they walk unnoticed among us, as in “Men in Black’’ (1997). In the Godzilla “giant monsters’’ genre, or even “Cloverfield’’ (2008), they’re not even technically aliens, since the monsters (mostly) hatch from our atomic waste. The cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens’’ (2009) combines these elements: A human beaned by a meteorite grows gigantic and joins forces with creatures to battle an invading alien robot.

You could argue these invasion films serve a higher cultural purpose. They can be seen as metaphors for some nameless fear — communism, viral infection, illegal immigration. Or think of these films as talismans. Directors imagine the worst, then the ruination won’t happen in real life.

But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “War is a war is a war is a war.’’

What follows are battlefield reports from a few memorable movies where the little green men invade armada-style in a coordinated attack, unilaterally and unprovoked. They storm the beaches of, say, Santa Monica, like it’s the Normandy invasion, ray guns a-blazin’. They harvest our resources, take no prisoners, and destroy our beloved strip malls and skyscrapers. When they do, we guiltlessly circle our wagons and fight back. As in “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ there’s only one rightful response. “You kill anything that’s not human.’’

“War of the Worlds’’ (1953, 2005)

You might say H.G. Wells’s 1898 book kick-started the whole alien-invasion genre. At least two major film adaptations (and one freaky radio broadcast) have followed, transposing the battleground from London to US cities. In the 1953 film version, the setting is Southern California. A meteorite falls, and out pop the manta-like Martian ships. A friendly greeting is answered by heat rays and electro-magnetic pulses that vaporize our backyards. Even our A-bombs are useless. When all hope seems lost, it turns out the aliens have no defense against our germs. Should have had their flu shots! Weirdly, 2005 gave us three remakes: two low-budget, straight-to-video affairs, and the Spielberg-Cruise megalith that takes us on a paranoid road trip from destroyed New York through the ravaged New England countryside to Boston, all the while the tripedal aliens hot on the refugees’ tails.

“Mars Attacks!’’ (1996)

Think of “The Day the Earth Stood Still’’ (1951, remade in 2008) or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ (1977). An alien ship arrives. Do we strike first or parley? Do they talk back in musical tones or English? Do they play fair? In Tim Burton’s spoof starring a Hollywood who’s-who (Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Jack Black, Natalie Portman, and more), the conventions are overturned. When Martians surround Earth with their flying saucers, negotiations begin. But the tricksy aliens infiltrate the White House and the destruction commences. The evil invaders even redo Mount Rushmore with Martian faces. Luckily, there’s always a weakness: This time their demise is Slim Whitman, whose yodeling voice in “Indian Love Call’’ causes alien brains to explode. Makes you want to place your K-tel order today.

“Independence Day’’ (1996)

The xenophobia and hawkishness of some of these invasion dramas aside, perverse pleasure can also be found in seeing beloved cities and monuments obliterated: the Eiffel Tower, White House, Golden Gate Bridge. That’s what we get in Roland Emmerich’s alien-inundation flick. Ragtag survivors gather in the Nevada desert in a last-ditch effort — on July 4 — to plan retaliation. But first the audience is treated to the deployment of dozens of 15-mile-wide saucers whose blue energy blasts decimate some of our favorite urban vacation destinations: DC, LA, New York. Eventually, a computer virus (not the common cold) defeats the ship’s force field, and Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith prevail. Yay, Earth!

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far, far away": Hanging with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg

from the feature story by Ethan Gilsdorf in the Boston Globe

Like Tolkien and Lewis, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are British and longtime friends. Also like Tolkien and Lewis, Frost and Pegg tell stories that please them. “Paul,’’ the latest film they wrote and in which they star, opens Friday. It’s about two British geeks who leave the pop-cultural convention Comic-Con, in San Diego, on an RV excursion through the Southwest, only to take on an unexpected passenger: the title character, a gray-skinned, big-eyed, Area 51 escapee (voiced by Seth Rogen). Greg Mottola (“Adventureland,’’ “Superbad’’) directed.

“We’ve written a film that we want to watch and laugh at with our mates,’’ said Frost, in Boston last week to promote the film. Unlike the socially-awkward, aspiring science fiction writer Clive Gollings he plays in the film, the cheery Frost sported dark-rimmed glasses that self-consciously bespoke “nerd.’’ “That’s always what we have always done. You find that there are pockets of ‘us-es’ everywhere.’’

Those pockets of fanboys and fangirls will have a hard time not whispering to their theater seatmates when they spot the dozens of dorky inside jokes riffing off of “Star Wars,’’ “Star Trek,’’ “The X-Files,’’ “The Blues Brothers,’’ and nearly every fantasy or adventure film in the Steven Spielberg canon, from “Close Encounters’’ to “Raiders.’’

“The movie is very much a tribute to him,’’ said Frost, who was 10 when “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’’ was released in 1982; Pegg was 12.

Some of the references are more “sci-fi 101,’’ said Pegg, who plays Clive’s best friend, the wannabe comic book artist Graeme Willy. That’s to make sure average moviegoers and not just hardcore genre geeks will buy tickets. “We had to make this film appeal on a broad level because it cost a lot of money. Because of Paul, really. He’s expensive. It’s like hiring Will Smith, literally, to get Paul on the screen.’’

But Pegg promised the film has plenty of obscure references, too. “It’s replete with gifts for those who know their stuff,’’ he said. “For the faithful.’’

One such nod: “Duel,’’ an early Spielberg film, is listed in red letters on the movie marquee seen toward the end of “Paul.’’ “ ‘Easy Rider’ is on double bill with that,’’ said Frost. “The street we were [shooting] on was the street where Jack Nicholson meets Peter Fonda.’’ Be on the lookout for even more abstruse references, and cameos.

In fact, geeks might bring bingo cards that replace numbers with such items as “swooning Ewok,’’ “mention of Reese’s Pieces’’ “Mos Eisley cantina music (played by country band),’’ “dialogue from ‘Aliens,’ ’’ and “bevy of metal bikini-costumed, ‘slave girl’ Princess Leias.’’ Drinking coffee in a hotel suite overlooking the Charles River, the two stressed that the point of “Paul’’ was not to ridicule those who collect samurai swords or speak Klingon (as both characters do in the film), but to celebrate them.

“We never wanted to make fun of it,’’ said Pegg. “Obviously those kind of fans are our bread and butter and helped get us where we are. We didn’t want to then turn around and say ‘Ha, ha. You big bunch of losers.’ ’’ Clive and Graeme are portrayed as mildly, and endearingly, dysfunctional and codependent, but ultimately good guys with big hearts.

Both actor-writers long ago established their geek cred. Pegg costarred with Frost in the cop-action movie spoof “Hot Fuzz’’ (2007) and the “zomedy’’ “Shaun of the Dead’’ (2004). Pegg cowrote both films and more recently voiced the character Reepicheep in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.’’ “Young Scotty,’’ from “Star Trek’’ (2009), is his highest profile role to date. He will also star in the planned sequel. Both have acted in the forthcoming “Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,’’ and when the Spielberg-Peter Jackson motion-capture juggernaut hits screens later this year, each of their stars will rise even higher into the dweeby firmament.

On the “Paul’’ set, they also geeked out on special effects required to bring the pot-smoking, wise-cracking space-dude to life. Rogen (“The Green Hornet,’’ “Knocked Up’’) shot a video reference version of the movie and recorded dialogue on a sound stage, but never joined the actors on location. Instead, Pegg, Frost, and the rest of the cast, which includes Jason Bateman and Kristen Wiig, acted with “a child, a small man, a ball, a stick with balls on it, some lights,’’ said Pegg. “All the way through I was thinking, this is never going to work.’’

Lining up sightlines between the eyes of humans and the yet-to-be generated CG Paul (to establish believable connections between the characters) caused the biggest headaches. “How do I know where to look?’’ Pegg said. “But it worked.’’ (“You see Ewan McGregor looking at Jar Jar Binks,’’ he added, taking a swipe at the “Star Wars’’ prequels. “He’s like looking above his head.’’)

If one geek fantasy is finally to defeat the bully, get the girl or boy, and find fame or fortune with your secret passion, then “Paul’’ fulfills the dream. Not to spoil the ending, but Willy and Gollings do become rock stars in their own realm.

Another holy grail is that geeks might get to hang with real wizards, orcs, hobbits, superheroes, or robots. For two hours, “Paul’’ brings this pipe dream closer, too.

“We always see these characters in fantasy environments. We see Gollums in Middle-earth and all the ‘Star Wars’ animations are in the ‘Star Wars’ universe,’’ said Pegg. “The context fits the sprite. But in ‘Paul,’ we wanted that character to be in an environment that was totally, literally, alien to him.

“And that makes him seem even more real, because you don’t expect to see him.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.