Disorderly Content

I recently became addicted to Corner Gas, a Canadian comedy series about a combination gas station/coffee shop in a nowhere town in Saskatchewan. I'd caught most of the episodes on WGN, but finally ordered DVDs of all four seasons to make sure I hadn't missed any. While listening to the commentary on a season two ep, I heard mention of the town where the show is filmed, and where they built the titular gas station. That led me to Google, which got me to the town's home page. Where I learned virtually nothing, since way too many of the site's pages say the same thing:

Help... we need information for this page!

If you are a resident of Rouleau and would like to help out, please submit accurate and detailed information to:

info@townofrouleau.com

So I'm not a lot wiser about the "real" Dog River, although there's a pretty good virtual Dog River on the show's website. And isn't that what really matters?

Spring is late in Alberta. As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent last week in Calgary for the day job. Nice town, Calgary. But the weather... You see, I decided to take a day off to drive out to Banff National Park, an hour and a half west in the Canadian Rockies. Unfortunately, what started as cold but clear weather turned into pearl gray skies and a bit of snow. Not enough to make the roads treacherous, but enough to turn my color pictures rather more monochrome than I'd planned. As I looked out of my hotel room window at the snow blowing around, I wondered if I was crazy to head to the mountains. But the weather service said it would be okay, and when are they ever wrong? So I got pictures of gray rivers and white snow and off-white skies and gray-green trees, or at least that's what my camera captured. And listened to the locals complain that they were sick of winter. I can of course relate; winter in the Bay Area sucks. Having to wear a sweater. Having to carry an umbrella. Awful.

Last week I was in Calgary for work. It was my first international trip since I got my iPhone, and only my second since I started carrying a smart phone (the dreaded Nokia E62). Not wanting to get slammed with roaming charges, especially given the amount of surfing I do on my phone (not just email, but maps and weather, and browsing - lots of browsing), I forwarded my phone number to my BlackBerry and left Data Roaming turned off. And for four days I lived in a colder, less interactive world. Turns out there are a couple of interesting problems with the BlackBerry. Like the fact that it doesn't come with any ringtones at all, so I had to feel or hear the vibration when a call came in. And worse, voicemail doesn't work at all outside the US of A; when I tried retrieving voicemail, it would just hang up on me. I had the same problem with an older phone in Australia; apparently, AT&T doesn't believe the phone is really mine when I call in via one of their partners. Fortunately, there was nothing critical in the two messages I received. And even more fortunately, I'm back in the Land of the Free, where my unlimited data plan really is unlimited. Not that Canada wasn't nice and all, but it can't compete with an iPhone and a good data plan...

This is why I loved the Intertubes! Boing Boing introduced me to Untooned, the work of the blogger on Pixeloo. He's been creating real world versions of 2D cartoons, starting with Mario and Homer, but achieving true brilliance with Jessica Rabbit. I am in awe.

At Romantic Times (yes, I'm still going on about that), I'd introduce myself as Barry Eisler's entourage. At first Barry was uncomfortable; he thought I was underplaying the help I provide him. But it wasn't long before he started playing along. I'd describe myself as his entourage, he'd say I was the best he could afford and we'd agree that was a sad state of affairs. Not Abbott & Costello, but we thought it was funny.

But I have to remember that not everybody sees Barry as I do: that cool guy who shared the misery of a startup that didn't, and who's now having a well-deserved success. Talking to reps from a local Pittsburgh entertainment publication called Lux, I did my best to calm the young interviewer's nerves about meeting Barry. Not that she had reason to worry; among his many skills is the ability to make you feel he's as pleased to meet you as you are to meet him. Sincerity, in other words. And as George Burns so famously said, if you can fake that, you have it made.

Still, it's a surprise, and a nice one at that, to be acknowledged in their blog of their RT experience. And not just Barry, but me too. Maybe I should upgrade my title to sidekick...

One of the many amusing aspects of Romantic Times is/are the giveaways. I mean, when was the last time a computer company gave you a vial of strawberry flavored personal lube? (Seriously, when? 'Cause I really want to know...) Much more interesting than the stacks of books; I think my bag was ten pounds heavier on the return flight, and that's because I turned down half of the volumes I was offered. But my favorite tchotchke had to be the felt puppet in the gift bag from an erotica publisher called Ellora's Cave. (The one in my bag was a sheep, although there were also bunnies, elephants, whales and other creatures.) I couldn't figure out the point of the puppet. I mean, who has a hand narrow enough to fit into the thing. Then I found out it wasn't my hand that was supposed to go inside. And suddenly all was clear, if rather intimidating.

(Ellora's Cave was responsible for another... umm... feature of the con: a bunch of overmuscled, sweaty guys they call the Cavemen. The women went gaga over them. But I don't know why. Heck, I don't think they're even real cavemen. I mean, not a mastodon cloak in the bunch. Although they did provide a nice proof point for my belief that the only difference between men and women is that we admit we're shallow.)

They should warn you about the post-con crash. They really should.

I got home last night from The Happiest Place on Earth, after a mere twelve hours in transit. Disneyland? One of its many siblings? No. And no. Not even Burbank, home to my annual Farscape weekend. No, my new candidate for THPoE was the Pittsburgh Hilton, itself an unlikely candidate thanks to remodeling that wasn't nearly as far along as was promised. (And why are you not surprised?) And what made it so happy? It was home to Romantic Times, a convention for people who write romances, people who read romances, and people like me, who never do the former and only occasionally do the latter, but am perfectly happy to spend time around both. Try to picture something over a thousand women: tall women, short women, old women, young women, large women, small women, loud women, quiet women... well, I think you get the idea. Now imagine fifty or so women to every man. And imagine them all having a girls' night out, only for four straight days. And nights.

And no, nothing untoward happened. At least not to me. (Dammit.) Just lots of conversation, and lots of laughter, and some world class hugs. It was quite remarkable, and unlike any of the hundred or so conventions and conferences and trade shows in my storied career. I'm already looking forward to Next Year in Orlando, as my people are wont to say every Passover. Or at least we would if we were being honest. I mean really; Jerusalem doesn't even have a theme park...

A blog post on The Consumerist pointed to a finance quiz on U.S. News & World Report, which is a sampling of questions posed to 12th graders. The average on the test is 52%; my score on the six sample questions was 6. Which led me to wonder if that was good or not. Is that 6 out of 6? Or 6 out of a hundred? I worry about these things, you see.

Turns out to be six out of six, by the way. Which I guess means I am actually smarter than a 12th grader, about some things at least.

As much as I like to think otherwise, I am in many respects shallow. One example is my choice of travel guides. I have many volumes produced by Dorling Kindersley. Not, I hate to admit, because their guidebooks are the best, but because they're so pretty. Shiny pages with lots of pretty, pretty pictures. As a photographer, I guess I got sucked in. And usually it's not a problem, given the degree to which I depend on guidebooks. But every once in a while...

Like this weekend. I had an about-to-expire free ticket on Southwest, which I used to fly to Phoenix. But what to do when I get there?, I thought. And then, the day before, I went to my DK Guide To The Southwest, which told of the wonders of the Apache Trail, a road that winds its way through the mountains an hour or so east of Phoenix. Perfect, thinks I; that's where I'll go.

And it started out pretty well. Lots of twists and turns through hills full of saguaro cactus (cacti?) and yellow spring wildflowers. Some nice vistas, when I could find a place to park that wouldn't risk losing the car, or me. Until... about an hour in... there was a sign. With words. The kind of words to give one pause:

Pavement Ends 500 Feet

Ulp. Okay, so now what do I do? I wasn't ready to turn back, but did I really want to risk whatever lay ahead, especially in a rental car, especially in a place with no cell service and maybe not that many passing cars? I suspect a wise person would have done exactly what I didn't do. Me, I forged ahead. Slowly. Over a combination of corrugated dirt road and what must have been pavement a long, long time ago. Twenty-two miles of it. Up and down and up and down again. And, although I certainly enjoyed the views, and got some good material in my camera, I have to say that I was more than a little pleased when the asphalt reappeared at the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Which, if you will pardon the pun, I was dam glad to see.

Oh, and later I checked my guidebook to see how in my enthusiasm and my carelessness I missed the warning about the unpaved nature of most of the journey. There was a simple explanation, as there often is: they didn't see fit to mention it.

A professional blogger, that is. Why? What did you think I meant?

Last night was our monthly blogger non-meetup. A non-meetup because I would hate to violate somebody's trademark, and since Meetup.com started charging, we started deciding that we could meet just as well without their permission. Anyway, there we were in the local non-Starbucks coffee shop. (And yes, you can get coffee from somewhere other that Starbucks. Good coffee too.) And among all the usual suspects there was a new player. New but awfully familiar looking, until I realized he looks like a younger Aasif Mandvi from the Daily Show. But he's not Aasif Mandvi; he's the Silicon Alley Insider's first employee in Silicon Valley, a brand new professional blogger. And, shockingly enough, he fit right into our assortment of strangeoids and oddballs and ne'er-do-wells. (Which am I, I wonder. Or am I *shock* *horror* all of the above?) The conversation wandered far and wide, as it generally does, although new guy (sorry, I've already forgotten your name - Vox?), Elke and I talked a bit about the sad fate of newspapers, new guy being a recovering journalism major.

Oh, and how did he find us? Turns out Valleywag includes us in their little roundup of interesting things going on around these parts. Imagine! Us, interesting!

Of course, it could just be a misprint...