Green Room

appears from its trailers to be exactly the sort of horror movie I skip:  a bunch of dumb teens do dumb things in a dumb setting while an only slightly less dumb killer chops up most of them.  After Steve saw it, though, he said that it was more of a bleak and violent noir film than a horror flick.  The presence of Patrick Stewart also made me consider it.  Finally, trusting Steve and hoping for the best from Stewart, I went to see it recently.

I'm quite glad I did.  Steve was right:  though often horrific, Green Room is not a horror film.  A good way for a noir narrative to begin is for someone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often for no particular reason, see something, and consequently begin a horrible journey.  That is exactly the structure of Green Room.

The acting is uniformly good, and the plotting and pacing are tight.  From start to finish, the ride is intriguing and compelling; I never wanted to look away.

I don't want to give away anything about the film, so let me say simply that if you are up for 95 tense minutes of entertainment, and if you can handle violence on screen, don't miss Green Room.

If you know Steve

you need to enjoy this photo.

Definitely click on this one to see a larger image.  That's the only way you can truly appreciate the majesty that is this outfit, or understand Steve's total commitment to the look; check out the nails.

If you don't know Steve, either you don't live around the Triangle, or you're bound to meet him soon.

And the winds blew

The panel on ethics in SF was proceeding nicely at illogicon iii earlier today. Moderator Metricula and panelists John Kessel, Jim Minz, Liz Woods, and I were ranging far and wide in our discussion of the topic, and the audience seemed to be engaged and enjoying the conversation. 

Then all the phones in the room went off, most buzzing, a few playing their ring tones.  All carried variations of the same message:  Tornado warning.  Severe storms were churning up our area as a front passed through.

No problem; just a warning.  We finished the panel, and all was well.

I moved immediately to my next panel, an in-con recording of the Baen Free Radio Hour.  Show host Tony Daniel had invited John Kessel, Jim Minz, Gray Rinehart, and me to discuss the future of the book.  By now the wind was whipping the trees and blowing the rain sideways.

All the phones went off again.  This time, though, the messages they carried all contained the same instructions:  Take cover.  The hotel had already spread through the con its instructions for safe (or, at least, as safe as possible) passage during tornadoes, which were basically to head to the ballroom, a large space with no exterior walls. 

So some of us did.  Most of the con did not.  Those of us who did enter that room sat there until the warning was over about ten minutes later.

The show resumed.  We did the podcast, which you should sometime soon be able to access via the link above.  I enjoyed the conversation, which was as wide-ranging as the first one.

As I was getting ready to leave the con, I ran into Steve, who said, "I hope your house is okay."  I had no idea why it wouldn't be, but Steve had heard that 85-mph (that's not a typo; eighty-five mile-per-hour) winds had knocked down a tree at the closest exit on I-540 to our house. 

The house proved to be fine.  Branches were down, but nothing particularly large.  Cone Man had fallen,

Click on the image to see a larger version.

but Allyn had already returned him to his standard standing pose. 

So, the winds blew, they blew really hard and really fast, but we're all fine.  For which I'm grateful. 

Some Fourth pictures

As many of you pointed out, the link I posted did not work. It appears that Kodak's gallery, which Gina uses for her photos online, does not want to let her share those pictures with the world. So, while she looks around for another Web-based home for her lovely photographs, I thought I'd pass on a few that are available now.

Almost all come courtesy of Steve, who posted over a dozen on a Flickr page. Check them out here.

The exception is this lovely day-after photo, which Dave supplied.



Dave sets up the launch area before we arrive, which is a nice treat. A far bigger treat, however, is the work he does after every show: he hauls in the tarps and launch pallets, polices the area, and then burns the trash. As you can probably tell from this picture, the burn pile is impressive.

I'm already looking forward to next year's show!

More on the Fourth

A few folks have been kind enough to share some of their photos of yesterday's fireworks party.



Steve Burnett sent me copies of these three photos, which nicely capture some of the fireworks in the sky and, in the last picture, from the ground view.






































Dave, who also does the thankless job of cleaning up after the show, donated this shot of the assembled wreckage; the chair provides a sense of scale.
















Finally, for a collection of lovely photos by Paul Cory, check out his flickr page for the party (a link he also provided in a comment to yesterday's entry). From some of Paul's pictures I think you can get a reasonable sense of the scale of the show.

It was awesome, and I thank these folks for capturing images of parts of it.