Property Brothers

Yeah, dudes.  I do watch stuff other than sci-fi.  I watch the mess out of some HGTV!  My favorite show on the channel is Property Brothers with twins Drew and Jonathan Scott. (Actually, now that I go to type this, I realize my favorite show is Love It or List It.  Why didn't I write about that one?  Oh, well.)  The Property Brothers are both real estate agents, and Jonathan is also a contractor.  He's the rugged one.  Drew is the smart one who keeps his suit clean.  The thing about that show is, everyone who's ever been on it has clearly never seen it.  I mean, it's completely bizarre!  The first thing they always do is show the couple their dream house, and if you know anything about the planet Earth, you know that nobody can afford their dream house.  If you have more money, you just want more house.  It's a pretty easy concept.  But when they show these people the first house and tell them they can't afford it... the couple always feels shocked, hurt, offended and betrayed. 

Every time. 

Every single time. 

It's seriously baffling, I mean it's a hugely popular show.  Never since Jerry Spinger have so many people gone on a TV show without ever watching it first.  So anyway, Drew shows them some houses and Jonathan shows how they could be fixed up.  Then they buy a dump, renovate it and an hour later, voila! They have their dream house.  Well, usually a much smaller version of it, but the plumbing and wiring are safe and all the finishes are high-end. It's pretty fun to watch, and if you're anything like me you'll spend the entirety of each episode trying to decide if there's actually a hotter twin.  

You're not eligible; you know about the first house thing.

Don't ask me.  Jury's still out.  

The Chronicles of Amber

A few years ago I noticed that being nerdy was beginning to gain popularity.  I'm sure you've noticed it too; and I'm equally sure that we can thank blond, beautiful Penny for befriending the astrophysicists next door.  I've known I had nerd potential since high school.  When I was around 15 or so, I read The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny...

Next on the list

Actually, I read the first four books.  About a year ago I discovered that there were SIX MORE BOOKS in the series.  If you've ever been a stay-at-home-mom of two preschoolers, you'll understand why I had ten-volume collection checked out from the library for nearly that entire year.  But I digress.

When it hit me that those stories were sci-fi/fantasy and I actually loved them, I had a kind of shift in my reality.  I had seen the Star Wars movies and I hadn't liked them (don't take away my nerd card, though) so I assumed that the reputation was correct: that sci-fi nerds were people you wouldn't want to have to talk to, ever. Now, the guy I was seeing at the time was one of those guys, but I just kind of overlooked it.  After a while I kind of found it adorable.  He was even the one who loaned me the Amber books in the first place, so there's that. 

When I read those books I realized that anyone could like them.  Anyone could get into the idea of alternate universes and a supernatural royal family.  Murderous, scheming shape-shifters, a magical untouchable unicorn... written well, these are the things that turn over and over in your head and follow you to sleep.  It's not all cheesy, clumsily animated Muppets that sing songs with David Bowie, you know.

Since the rise in popularity of both The Big Bang Theory and Netflix, I've gained access to all sorts of things I was missing: Cybermen, The Borg, Reavers, Adamantium, Sam and Dean, Sam and Al; The Smoking Man and the man whose silhouette probably started it all: Alfred Hitchcock.  From The Chronicles of Amber to The Martian Chronicles, I've seen a lot and read a lot.  I can't decide if I hope the nerd trend continues so I can have such ready access to all these things awhile longer or if I hope it dies down soon so prices will drop, but one thing is for sure: It's fun seeing all of these new things and meeting new introverts I can momentarily connect with.  It's great to have you along for the ride with me. 

CoastCon '16

Last weekend I went to CoastCon, just like I said I would.  I had a blast and I intended to learn a few things about gaming but it didn't really work out for me.  The first two days I was by myself and I didn't see ANYONE there that I knew, much less anyone who could show me anything about gaming.  On Sunday I planned on going to a panel called How To Learn RPGs When You're Alone With Nobody to Show You (pretty sure that's it...) but it happened to be right at noon and that was the day I brought The Bookworm with me and he needed some $4 million lunch to pick at and ultimately throw away.  My kids are rarely allowed soda, so he was definitely too preoccupied to eat.

This is my only clear picture from Sunday for some reason

I brought The Bookworm on Sunday to meet Steve Blum and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn because he's obsessed with Digimon and they do voices for the cartoon and the video game. To help him understand what that even means, I made him watch I Know That Voice, which is a documentary about voice actors that I'd seen a few months ago on Netflix.  He wasn't pleased to have to sit still watching some people do voices, or to have the magic kind of explained away, but it helped in the long run because when we got there and he saw the pictures of Guilmon and I told him the Guilmon guy was THERE... he knew enough to be excited.  

When we walked up to the table, Steve Blum could obviously guess which show this little kid was a fan of.  I say which show because he's a busy, busy guy. He's got 612 credits on IMDB for shows like Star Wars: Rebels, Cowboy Bebop, Regular Show and a zillion incarnations of Batman and X-Men.  PLUS he is in the Guiness Book of World Records for doing more video game voices than anyone else.  He's done God of War, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty... know what? Just look it up.  Here's the link.

Anyway, we walk up to the guy and he instantly goes into the voice and my kid grins like a maniac and does that insanely cute little-kid giggle.  It was the greatest!  He signed our video game (my kids and my husband play video games most of the time, so I feel like I can probably hear this dude's voice in my house at any given moment) and he was so charmed by The Bookworm that he very generously signed a couple of extra things for us.

See? Blurry.

In the course of our conversation, my little guy casually dropped the name of another Digimon he likes and the lady sitting next to Steve Blum perked up and cried, "Hey! That's me!" It was Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and she did the voice for him with a big smile.  "Whatever-mon digivolve to... Something-Woman!" Clearly, I have a mind like steel trap. 

So, she does the voice, right?  And my kid FREAKS THE FRICK OUT!!! It was like all those people in the black & white footage fainting when Paul McCartney tipped his hat to them or whatever.  I couldn't even deal.  Best day ever.  Just reliving it makes me exhausted, so I'll end here and leave you with some photos I took from the rest of the Con.  Enjoy, and leave your own stories in the comments section about the time you met your favorite celebrity.

 

Game of Thrones

Okay, complaint:  I don't like to watch TV shows until they're completed.  Like, when I'm a few weeks out from the final finale I'm okay to watch the pilot.  So I've been waiting patiently for Game of Thrones, right?  Because it's not done yet.  I'm not too bothered by spoilers but I can't stand the wait between episodes, or worse, between seasons.  Because...

I did my waiting! Seven years of it! In Azkaban!!!

Actually, I did do six years of waiting for one of the Dark Tower books by Stephen King.  And then six more years for the next one.  I've used up my allotment of patience. 

But then my husband decided he couldn't wait any longer and he had to watch it whether I was joining him or not!  Can you even?! So about halfway through last season we caught up with real life.  To be honest, it was a jolt.  Waiting a week to see how my Westeros crush, Tyrion Lannister was faring was horrible, but now... I swear, I've been waiting MY ENTIRE LIFE for next season to start! This is no way to live, guys.  It's barbaric. 

So while I wait, I'll leave you with a question: Do you think Jon Snow is really dead?

And with this amazing picture that my friend Carrie-Ann Pierson (who's on Facebook and takes commissions) drew for our public library's "hero" day.

 

Fight Club

A while back, I listed my favorite movies and one of them was Fight Club.  Now, often when I enjoy a movie, I have a specific story explaining why I came to love it, or how it's affected me.  Fight Club... not so much.  It's just two incredibly attractive men being manly.  That's it.  If you read the other post, though, you'll remember that my friends and I tried to fit the snack into the theme of the movie the night we watched it.  Wanna know what I put together for this one?  It was tapioca pudding with pink food coloring served in Ziploc baggies.  We had to bite off a corner and slurp it out without spoons.  I think they all thought I was crazy until the part with the bags of cellulite outside of the liposuction clinic.  When we got to that part, everyone put their pudding down.  I was pretty stoked.

It was good times.

I mean...

Saturday Spotlight: Derek E Dykes

This post may be short since I'm writing it on my cell phone. Yikes. I'm a pro at putting things off, and this is where it's gotten me. So, first of all, I'll have to start out with a little background info on myself. When I read a book, even if the story is amazing, I can't enjoy it unless the author's voice is one I can relate to. Because of that, I hate... I mean DESPISE... buying books directly from the author. At cons, you often meet authors, they're often nice people, and they're usually selling their books (you know, doing their job). When I pick a book in a bookstore, I read passages at random to determine how I think I'd like the book. I'm terribly picky and I most often put the book back. Since I can't even IMAGINE doing that with the person who wrote the book staring me down, I tend to pick one book for con weekends almost at random and just hope for the best. 

Last year I hit the jackpot! An author in a panel for writers mentioned a plot detail and I decided to buy that book. It's called Madness and it's by Derek E Dykes.  Set in the future, it involves mental illness, murder, future tech and pure evil. In the beginning of the book the main character, who's an FBI agent, happens upon a decades-old crime scene.  The victim's DNA shows that she's a positive match for our heroine's maternal grandmother, who died not decades ago but only a year ago.  I don't want to give too much away, but it's really intense and at one point I literally had to put the book down to hyperventilate. 

I actually ran into him at the con today and he very graciously posed for a picture with me.  I was a little disappointed that he didn't have any books with him but not to worry.  He'll have some tomorrow, and you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be there to get the next book; I'll get as many books as there are in this series.  (Two.  There are two more books in this series.  I was being dramatic.  But I am buying both of the other two.) 

I think he actually did the cover art as well

Nice work Derek Dykes, you beautiful twisted freak.

The Oscars

The Oscars were on a few days ago and as everyone knows by now, Leonardo DiCaprio finally won that Oscar that he's deserved for so long!  I was nothing but excited for him and it reminded me of my time in boot camp.  I'd really never even watched the Oscars before or even cared who won but that year Hilary Swank was up for Best Actress for Boys Don't Cry.  I actually really wanted to know who won and there I was in boot camp where I could never possibly find out... except someone's mom or friend or something sent the next day's newspaper pages in the mail! So just a week or two late we all got to find out who had won all the Oscars.  It was such a fun and exciting moment that it made me love the Oscars and now I never miss it.  Plus I love to see the dresses and the hair.  That's really my favorite part, and I watch the E! red carpet coverage all day long.  Ross and Giuliana are the best! If anyone reading this knows Ross Matthews personally, tell him to get ahold of me.  We'll be great friends.  Thanks.

My favorite ever Oscar gown

I swiped the pic from here

But the fact that it sells anything is just a coincidence.