A Couple Random Things

This past weekend was the Wizard World Boston comic convention, held at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston, something that the New England Garrison has been planning for almost a year now. This has been quite the year for conventions for the group. We were at the Boston and Granite City Comic Cons earlier this year, then Celebration 5, and now this one, with SupermegaFest coming up.

Generally, I'm not a fan of conventions. I don't like standing around, waiting for people to take pictures of me with them. I never really feel that it's a good use of my time and so forth, but this one had a bunch of options to allow us to really interact with the general public: A Jabba the Hutt puppet that people could pose next to, and a shooting gallery, where we raised around $840 for Autism Speaks, a charity that the NEG works with closely.

The weekend was also Megan's first time at a con, along with the added bonus of getting to see some of the people from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm not a huge fan, but she and some of her friends enjoyed it – We inducted James Marsters into the 501^st as an honorary member.) Adam West and Burt Ward (Batman and Robin - at $60, they were too expensive to really talk to), Doug Jones' Manager (Jones himself was talking to someone else when I was around) and Christopher Golden, who wrote the book Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, which I coincidentally picked up at the same con.

The opportunity to take part in the shooting gallery was definitely the highlight, because I could act out a bit and be really ridiculous with it. Kids, somewhat unsurprisingly, are really good shots with dart guns, and I was hit in the face and head a lot. Something about a Storm Trooper falling flat on his face seems to get people laughing, so that made it worth it. I've got a couple of pictures here.

I've been doing a bit more reading lately, and I've got a stack of really good books stacked up next to my bed. Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories is the book that I'm carrying around at the moment, which is a fantastic collection from a fantastic author, while I'm also reading the aforementioned Baltimore, which is proving to be a really cool read (and with some awesome illustrations from Mike Mignola), Cherie Priest's Dreadnought, which is proving to be fun (but not quite as much fun as her prior book Boneshaker, but better than Clementine), Masked, edited by Lou Anders, which is a fun, but somewhat dense anthology of superhero stories, and Nights of Villjamur, by Mark Charan Newton, which is proving to be a slow read, and unfortunately, not as good as I was led to believe. (It's interesting thus far though). I've got a couple of other books on the horizon that I really want to read before the end of the year: Ian McDonald's The Dervish House and China Mieville's Kraken.

I’m thrilled at this pile of books, and some of the other ones that I’ve read already this year - The City and the City (China Mieville), Pattern Recognition (William Gibson), Stories (edited by Neil Gaiman), Spellbound (Blake Charleton), How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Charles Yu), Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (N.K. Jemisin, and the River of Gods (Ian McDonald, just to name a few, because I've fallen into company in person and online that have pointed me to some fantastic books and I feel that I've learned and grown as a reader and writer because of them. There's been some duds of reads this year, but overall? I've been pulled into fantastic world after fantastic world.

Still, reading is something that I enjoy, and I've been finding that I really don't enjoy the entire book-blogger environment that I discovered. Too much drama, complaints about how SF/F isn't perceived as a legitimate genre, sucking up to authors and so many reviews a week / month that I can't believe that people can read and retain the contents of dozens of books a year. It's not for me, and I've found that I've got little patience and interest in it. I'll stick with my moderate pace and go from there.

John Scalzi posted up a fascinating essay earlier today, Today I Don't Have To Think About..., which fully and utterly puts one into one's place. After being amongst and listening to a number of coworkers, family members and friends complain about how things are going in their lives and the drama that ensues, this is a really good thing to read, because there are people who are a helluva lot worse off than me in the world. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but it's worth remembering. I've taken the essay and printed it out. One copy went onto my desk’s wall. I’m not sure where the other nine will end up, but they should be read.

Just What Does Star Wars Have To Do With St. Patrick's Day?

Yesterday was one of the New England Garrison's biggest events of the year, the South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade, held on the Sunday before the holiday every year. It's been an annual event every year for our group, and this year was probably one of the best ones that we've ever done - there was a lot of happy, but tired troopers at the end of the route, which was great.

This was my second year trooping this event. Prior years, I had been busy, and not as into the 501st as I am now. This time around was markedly different from years past - it was warm. 2008's parade was around 30 or so degrees throughout, which wasn't too bad while we were walking around, but when we had to stop and wait for things to start, it was frigid. This time around, temperatures were in the upper forties to low fifties, and sunny. It allowed for some fantastic pictures, and time spend waiting not huddled together for warmth.

This year also marked the first year that the Canadian Garrison (at least the members from Montreal), came down to troop with us. I met up with them in Montpelier, and we drove down in a small 501st convoy to Boston. We spent part of the afternoon in Boston walking along the Freedom Trail to sightsee for a bit, which was fantastic, because I haven't done that sort of thing in a long time.

Saturday night was the Garrison meetup at a Cambridge bar, where everyone socialized, got to talk, play pool and have fun. Things wrapped up around 1 am, where everyone went off to bed to prepare for the long walk. This is the part that I really like about our group - I count many of the New England Garrison as some of my closest friends, and given the distances, I don't get to see many of them very often. I don't get out as much as I'd like to, so this was one of the times when I've been able to really socialize.

Sunday was game day. I spent the night at a fellow garrison member's apartment, and we were up pretty early, where we got our things together, picked up another couple members and arrived at our assembly point, where most of the garrison had already arrived. We had to get there early, to avoid the crowds and closed roads, and we waited around before suiting up and getting in formation around noon. There were pictures aplenty. I uploaded all of mine, taken before we all suited up, and you can see them here.

The parade was one of the best troops that I've done in a long time. It was long, four miles, and up and down hills, something I'm paying for today, but it was worth it. I used my Clone Trooper for the first time, and was up in front with several other clones and got to see the reactions of people as we appeared. This is one of the fun parts, to watch as people's faces awake with recognition at who were were. There were a ton of kids who were extremely excited to see us, shake and slap our hands, and to take pictures with us, but also the older college students and adults in the crowd. They called out for Vader and ran out to take pictures of us - at times, a little annoying, because we had to keep a steady pace in the parade. I felt bad at having to motion that I had to keep moving - I'd love to take pictures with whomever wanted them. It's quite something to bring a character to life for people.

After the parade was over, we rode back on buses, desuited and departed. Unlike last year, we didn't all go out to dinner, although I was driving back up with the Canadians, and we stopped for dinner on the way up, before we departed our own ways along the route as we stopped for gas or breaks.

This is why I troop - it is events like this that make it worthwhile, to see the faces of the crowds upon us. That sort of excitement is addicting, and I'm more than happy to bring it to life for people.